Mr. Shivers held out a thin hand. “Fenton Shivers,” he said. “I’m pleased to meet you, sir. Billy’s told me so much about you. How kind you’ve been to him. You and your shop have been the best things to happen to Billy since his accident.”
“It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Shivers,” said Mr. Rapscallion, shaking the other man’s hand. “Billy’s a credit to you. Polite, thoughtful, hard-working, diligent and a keen reader. Need I say more?”
“That’s good to hear.” Mr. Shivers glanced around the shop. “What a great place this is. I can see why Billy likes it here.” Then he sighed. “But I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Rapscallion. I was of two minds about allowing Billy to join in something like this.”
“You were?”
“We’re not like most people, Mr. Rapscallion. Me and my wife. We don’t do much socializing, sir. We keep ourselves to ourselves. Let me ask you something. This scary story. What’s it about?”
“Dad,” protested Billy. “Please, you’re embarrassing me.”
“Billy, I’m your father. It’s my job to look out for your spiritual welfare.”
“Ghosts.” Mr. Rapscallion shrugged. “Apparitions. Specters. The usual kind of stuff.”
“Oh, that’s all right then.” Mr. Shivers smiled. “So you’re saying there’s nothing unpleasant or unholy about this story of yours.”
“Are you a religious man, Mr. Shivers?”
“Yes sir, I am. Is that a problem for you?”
“No, not at all. I respect you for wanting to look out for your son’s spiritual welfare. Not many parents do, these days.” Mr. Rapscallion pulled a face and lowered his voice. “Between you and me, Mr. Shivers? The so-called scariest story in the world is not half as scary as I’d hoped. In fact, I’m kind of worried about what’s going to happen. To be honest, I’ve kind of oversold it. The other four kids are not exactly what you would call shrinking violets.”
“So I hear from Billy,” said Mr. Shivers.
“I’m a bit worried what they’re going to do when they realize they’ve not been scared at all,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Putting it mildly, they’re rather less forgiving than your son.”
Mr. Shivers smiled again. “I can believe that,” he said. “Billy’s an unworldly sort of boy, Mr. Rapscallion.”
“Nothing wrong with that, Mr. Shivers. Nothing wrong with that. We all need our dreams. Our own idea of heaven.”
“I’m sure everything will work out for the best,” said Mr. Shivers.
“I sure hope so,” said Mr. Rapscallion.
“I know so,” said Mr. Shivers. He reached for his back pocket and pulled out a couple of folded sheets of paper. “There you go. The consent forms. Like you asked.”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Billy. “Thanks for letting me do this.”
Mr. Shivers turned and went out of the door.
Mr. Rapscallion went down to the Reading Room accompanied by Billy, Mercedes and Elizabeth.
In addition to the six chairs that had been bought from the old Edgar Allan Poe Club, in Boston, the Reading Room had some oak paneling on the walls that had come from a haunted castle in Scotland. All the thick purple drapes had been pulled and there was a small coal fire and a clock ticking loudly on the mantelpiece to help with the “atmosfear.” A large tank of tropical fish added a surreal blue light to the room.
Not that this “atmosfear” was having any effect on the four kids who were in there. Not yet, anyway.
Wilson Dirtbag, Hugh Bicep, Lenore Gas and Vito Capone were hardly the kind of kids to wait patiently for the arrival of their host, Mr. Rapscallion. In the absence of a television set or a cell phone, they were easily bored. And when they were bored they became…mischievous, which is a nice word covering a whole multitude of sins that any one of the four was capable of committing.
Wilson Dirtbag was disappointed that there were no books on the empty bookshop shelves. Not because he would have read one but because he would have liked to burn one. Wilson loved to start fires. He thought about burning the stuffed raven on the bust above the door, and only the thought that this might have disqualified him from winning the thousand dollars deterred him from tossing it onto the coals. So he took out a marker pen and amused himself by writing several rude words on the oak-paneled walls.
Hugh Bicep, no less badly behaved than Wilson, ate his banana and threw the skin onto the floor in the hope that someone else would slip on it, the way they did in cartoons. Next he unwrapped the large packet of sandwiches his father had given him and ate two in as many minutes. Then he peeled the buttered bread off another and tossed it up at the ceiling to see if he could make it stick there. And when it did, he tossed another and then another, until the ceiling was tiled with squares of white bread. At this point he sat down to admire his handiwork and thought it very funny when one of the slices of bread fell, buttered side down, onto Lenore’s head.
Lenore had been amusing herself by testing her own not inconsiderable strength. She had picked up the poker from beside the fireplace and, in an effort to test her strength, managed to bend it several inches when the slice of buttered bread fell onto her head. At first she didn’t notice since she had so much hair on top of her head it looked like a bird’s nest, and it was only when Hugh Bicep started laughing at her that she guessed what had happened. So she peeled it off her head and smacked the buttered slice onto Hugh’s face, which at least stopped him laughing. Although only because as soon as Hugh had peeled it off his face, he put the slice in his mouth and started to eat it. Hardly satisfied with the effect that her retaliation had had on her muscular fellow contestant, Lenore took another of his sandwiches, peeled it in half and slapped the two slices hard against his ears.
Upon entering the Reading Room, Vito Capone sat down in a chair and closed his eyes. But the light from the tank was too bright for him to doze. And not to be outdone by the juvenile delinquency of the other three, he got up and looked more closely at the tropical fish, to see if there was any havoc that could be caused in the tranquil blue underwater world of the tank. He decided he didn’t like the fish because they reminded him of a dentist’s waiting room, and he hated dentists almost as much as he hated policemen and judges and the feds. So, first of all, he heated the poker in the fire and then doused it a couple of times in the water, just to see what effect it might have on the fish. Not a good effect, it has to be said. But that didn’t appear to bother Vito. In fact, it seemed to give him an idea. He took two of the fish now floating on the surface of the water, folded them in the brown paper that had been wrapping Hugh’s sandwiches and laid the little parcel on Mr. Rapscallion’s chair.
“That’s a Sicilian message,” he told Wilson and the others.
“Meaning what?” asked Hugh.
Vito realized he had only a vague idea what the message meant.
“I’m not exactly sure,” he admitted. “I think it means you can’t get any sleep when there are fish in the room.”
When Mr. Rapscallion came into the Reading Room he did his best to ignore the graffiti on the walls, the slices of bread sticking to the ceiling, the bent poker and the parcel of dead fish that had been laid on the chair that had once belonged to Edgar Allan Poe. There seemed little point in making things worse by trying to confront the culprit(s). Besides, he was still rather hoping against hope that the story might deliver a real scare to these unpleasant brats. Even if that did mean he might also scare Billy.
And yet. As he watched the boy take his seat, for some reason he couldn’t quite explain, he wasn’t worried about scaring him. Not anymore. Not since speaking to Mr. Shivers. There was a strength in Billy he hadn’t perceived before. And a realization that, in his own way, Billy was actually every bit as tough as the other four. Perhaps tougher. How could Billy not be tough? It was obvious that Billy’s family circumstances were very hard. His father had been wearing the oldest clothes Mr. Rapscallion had ever seen.
“All right, settle down,” he said to no one in particular. “Right, the
n. If everyone’s ready?”
He glanced over at Mercedes and Elizabeth, who were going to observe the proceedings from the edge of the room.
“Ready,” said Elizabeth.
“Ready,” said Mercedes.
“Are you all sitting comfortably?” Mr. Rapscallion asked the five kids.
“I’ll be a lot more comfortable when I’ve got that thousand bucks in my hand,” said Wilson Dirtbag.
“Dream on, Dirtbag,” said Hugh. “The green stuff is as good as mine.”
“The only green stuff you’re leaving with,” said Lenore Gas, “is the salad in your sandwiches.”
“I’ll take care of the muscle boy’s green stuff,” said Vito Capone. “Out of my share.”
“All of you be quiet,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “The next person to talk will be disqualified.”
He opened the cover of the book by Mary Shelley and John Polidori, which creaked loudly like an ancient wooden door in a remote Romanian castle, and a rather damp, musty smell filled the air, as if a coffin had been opened.
Mr. Rapscallion read the title aloud he found on the first page: “The Modern Pandora, or The Most Frightening Story Ever Told. By Mary Shelley and John Polidori.”
The second that Mr. Rapscallion finished reading out the title and before he could read any more of what was printed there, the very peculiar thing happened. Once again. The book seemed to produce a knocking, hollow sound, like someone banging the tip of a walking stick on the bare wooden floor of an empty old house.
Wilson Dirtbag gulped loudly. “What was that?” he said. “That weird sound?”
“It seemed to come from inside the book,” said Hugh.
“It did,” said Mr. Rapscallion, and carried on reading from the title page: “ ‘Let the reader beware. The story contained in these pages is not to be trifled with. Frightful it is. And supremely frightful is the effect of that which lies herein. Under no circumstances should this story ever be read alone, or on a dark and stormy night. No more should this story ever be read aloud to children, to the mentally infirm, or to those of a nervous disposition. You have been warned. M.S. Villa Diodati. Italy. 1816.’ ”
“You never said it was an Italian story,” said Vito, making a fist. “And in case anyone hasn’t noticed, it is a dark and stormy night.”
“Relax, will you?” Lenore Gas shook her head and whispered. “He’s just trying to scare you.”
“Shh,” said Billy. “I want to hear.”
“Yes, Billy’s quite right,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Shh.” And, turning over the page of the old book, he began to read the story itself.
Mr. Rapscallion did his best to make the story seem more frightening than it was. He read it in his deepest, scariest, most sepulchral voice, with full expression, as if he had been an organist sitting in front of a church organ, pulling out all the stops to make the organ come alive. By doing this he hoped to inject some more “atmosfear” into the story.
Mr. Rapscallion was an excellent reader. Billy thought he sounded professional, like an actor onstage. Vincent Price could not have read better, and he was an actor whom many people thought an expert in the delicate art of sounding sinister.
After ten minutes it was already becoming clear, however, what had been clear to Mr. Rapscallion from the first time he read the story himself: that the words in the story were too long and the ideas too complicated for young minds to grasp. Kids reared on cheap cartoons and comic books had little or no understanding of the proper English used by Shelley and Polidori. He might as well have read them a dictionary. In short, the scariest story ever written was too old-fashioned to be scary anymore.
Wilson’s eyes were closing. Hugh was yawning. Lenore was shifting impatiently in her chair. Vito was scratching his butt. Only Billy looked as if he was at all interested in something other than the possibility of winning a thousand dollars.
And then something strange happened. The clock on the mantelpiece stopped ticking. Of course, mechanical clocks stop ticking all the time. That is why they must be wound up with keys. But it was the way that the clock on the mantelpiece stopped ticking that made this seem a little more strange than it might otherwise have been. This particular clock stopped ticking and instead it started tocking. Only it couldn’t properly be called tocking so much as talking, because the noise the clock started to make sounded much less mechanical and much more human, as if someone inside the clock was actually repeating the word “tock” over and over again:
“Tock-talk-tock-talk-tock-talk-tock,” said the clock.
“Excuse me,” said Wilson Dirtbag. “I’m very sorry to interrupt you, dude, but, like, is it my imagination, or is the clock actually talking?”
Billy shook his head. “I can’t hear anything.”
Mr. Rapscallion paused for a moment and looked up at the mantelpiece. “Perhaps it does seem to be making a slightly different sound to the one it usually makes,” he admitted. “What of it?”
“Tock-talk-tock-talk-tock-talk-tock-talk,” said the clock.
“Hello-oh,” said Lenore. “They’re just trying to scare you, birdbrain.”
Ignoring the insult—which was hardly an insult, since his mother was always calling him “birdbrain” and he was quite used to the name—Wilson Dirtbag got up to investigate the timepiece. It was a large, rectangular wooden clock with an unusual mechanical feature. In a little arched window above the actual dial was the tinplate model of a small, dwarfish man wearing a brown suit and a black bowler hat. The man held a large, lethal-looking ax and was chopping at another dwarfish man’s neck in time with the clock’s movement.
For a moment or two, Wilson looked closely at the clock. “Cool clock,” he murmured. Then he pressed his waxy ear against the clock face and listened closely.
“Hear anything?” asked Billy.
“Shut up,” hissed Wilson. “I can hear something.”
A second or two later, all of the color drained from Wilson’s spotty face. He took a step back and looked gravely at the mantelpiece. For it seemed to Wilson that a dark, almost spectral voice had spoken directly to him from inside the clock.
And this is what the voice said to him: “Wilson. Yes, I am talking. I’m talking to you, sonny, you evil little creep. You’re a very naughty, horrible, disgraceful boy, Wilson. Even worse than those kids back in the London workhouse, in 1820. I’ve seen rabid dogs I liked better than you, Wilson. Who were better behaved than you, too. And if you don’t mend your ways soon, I’m going to leave this clock and come after you and chop off your head with an ax. Don’t think I won’t. Because I will.”
No one else in the room had heard what was said to Wilson, but everyone else in the room couldn’t help but notice that all his greasy, straw-colored hair was now standing on end. Billy thought Wilson’s hair looked exactly like a wheat sheaf.
“It’s a trick.” With fumbling fingers Wilson opened the door on the front of the clock and peered inside. “There must be some kind of transmitter inside the clock.” But there wasn’t. All he could see were sprockets and wheels and weights and pulleys. All of which stopped moving quite suddenly. Even the little man with the ax stopped moving.
Wilson closed the clock and, expelling a deep, unsteady sort of breath, he moved away from the mantelpiece and was about to sit down when the voice spoke in his ear again.
And this is what the voice said to him: “It would be a grave mistake to think that I’m inside the clock. And I mean a grave mistake. That’s where you’ll be if you’re not careful, you mongrel. So. You can’t get away from me. I’m going to be watching you from now on, Wilson.”
Wilson squealed and spun around on his heel, as if looking for someone. But there was nothing there. All he saw was everyone else looking at him strangely.
“Stop fooling around and sit down,” said Hugh.
“Didn’t you hear it?”
“They can’t hear me,” said the voice. “Only you can hear me, Wilson. And just in case you think you’re ima
gining this, here’s a little reminder that you’re not.”
Wilson squealed again as something invisible squeezed his elbow and pinched his earlobe. This was too much for Wilson and, screaming with fright, he ran from the Reading Room, out of the Haunted House of Books and into the street, where he was pursued by his mother, Fedora, and several news reporters keen to buy his exclusive story. Because good news doesn’t sell newspapers.
Back in the Reading Room, everyone was astonished, most of all Mr. Rapscallion.
“That’s very odd,” he said.
“Very,” agreed Billy.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Mr. Rapscallion. “I haven’t even gotten to the frightening part of the story yet.”
“No kidding,” said Lenore.
“You haven’t gotten to the interesting part either,” yawned Hugh.
“And then there were seven,” said Vito.
“Seven?” said Hugh. “What do you mean, seven?”
“Seven,” repeated Vito. “What, are you blind? Mr. Rapscallion, you, me, Billy, Lenore and the two ladies observing. That makes seven people in this room.”
“No, no,” said Hugh. “There are eight of us here, surely. All of the above. And the baby.”
“Baby?” Vito laughed. “Are you crazy? There’s no baby in here. Who would bring a baby to hear some old man read a scary story?”
“So-called scary story,” said Lenore. “Let’s be accurate here.”
“Less of the ‘old man,’ please,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “If you don’t mind.”
“Of course there’s a baby,” said Hugh Bicep. “Can’t you hear it? It’s on the other side of that door, in that room.” He was pointing to a small door in the oak-paneled wall behind him.
Everyone listened closely for a moment. Lenore Gas shook her head of red hair very slowly.
“You’re losing it,” she said.
“That’s just a closet,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Where I keep a mop and the vacuum cleaner. There’s no room there. And certainly no baby.”