Odds Are Good

  The angel shimmered and began to disappear.

  Michael stretched out his hand. “Wait!” he cried.

  The angel reached down. He took Michael’s withered hand and held it tightly in his own.

  “You have done well,” he whispered.

  He kissed Michael softly on the forehead.

  And then he was gone.

  Duffy’s Jacket

  If my cousin Duffy had the brains of a turnip it never would have happened. But as far as I’m concerned, Duffy makes a turnip look bright. My mother disagrees. According to her, Duffy is actually very bright. She claims the reason he’s so scatterbrained is that he’s too busy being brilliant inside his own head to remember everyday things. Maybe. But hanging around with Duffy means you spend a lot of time saying, “Your glasses, Duffy,” or “Your coat, Duffy,” or—well, you get the idea: a lot of three-word sentences that start with “Your,” end with “Duffy,” and have words like book, radio, wallet, or whatever it is he’s just put down and left behind, stuck in the middle.

  Me, I think turnips are brighter.

  But since Duffy’s my cousin, and since my mother and her sister are both single parents, we tend to do a lot of things together—like camping, which is how we got into the mess I want to tell you about.

  Personally, I thought camping was a big mistake. But since Mom and Aunt Elise are raising the three of us—me, Duffy, and my little sister, Marie—on their own, they’re convinced they have to do man-stuff with us every once in a while. I think they read some book that said me and Duffy would come out weird if they don’t. You can take him camping all you want. It ain’t gonna make Duffy normal.

  Anyway, the fact that our mothers were getting wound up to do something fatherly, combined with the fact that Aunt Elise’s boss had a friend who had a friend who said we could use his cabin, added up to the five of us bouncing along this horrible dirt road late one Friday in October.

  It was late because we had lost an hour going back to get Duffy’s suitcase. I suppose it wasn’t actually Duffy’s fault. No one remembered to say, “Your suitcase, Duffy,” so he couldn’t really have been expected to remember it.

  “Oh, Elise,” cried my mother, as we got deeper into the woods. “Aren’t the leaves beautiful?”

  That’s why it doesn’t make sense for them to try to do man-stuff with us. If it had been our fathers, they would have been drinking beer and burping and maybe telling dirty stories instead of talking about the leaves. So why try to fake it?

  Anyway, we get to this cabin, which is about eighteen million miles from nowhere, and to my surprise, it’s not a cabin at all. It’s a house. A big house.

  “Oh, my,” said my mother as we pulled into the driveway.

  “Isn’t it great?” chirped Aunt Elise. “It’s almost a hundred years old, back from the time when they used to build big hunting lodges up here. It’s the only one in the area still standing. Horace said he hasn’t been able to get up here in some time. That’s why he was glad to let us use it. He said it would be good to have someone go in and air the place out.”

  Leave it to Aunt Elise. This place didn’t need airing out—it needed fumigating. I never saw so many spiderwebs in my life. From the sounds we heard coming from the walls, the mice seemed to have made it a population center. We found a total of two working lightbulbs: one in the kitchen, and one in the dining room, which was paneled with dark wood and had a big stone fireplace at one end.

  “Oh, my,” said my mother again.

  Duffy, who’s allergic to about fifteen different things, started to sneeze.

  “Isn’t it charming?” asked Aunt Elise hopefully.

  No one answered her.

  Four hours later we had managed to get three bedrooms clean enough to sleep in without getting the heebie-jeebies—one for Mom and Aunt Elise, one for Marie, and one for me and Duffy. After a supper of beans and franks we hit the hay, which I think is what our mattresses were stuffed with. As I was drifting off, which took about thirty seconds, it occurred to me that four hours of housework wasn’t all that much of a man-thing, something it might be useful to remember the next time Mom got one of these plans into her head.

  Things looked better in the morning when we went outside and found a stream where we could go wading. (“Your sneakers, Duffy.”)

  Later we went back and started poking around the house, which really was enormous.

  That was when things started getting a little spooky. In the room next to ours I found a message scrawled on the wall, BEWARE THE SENTINEL, it said in big black letters.

  When I showed Mom and Aunt Elise they said it was just a joke and got mad at me for frightening Marie.

  Marie wasn’t the only one who was frightened.

  We decided to go out for another walk. (“Your lunch, Duffy.”) We went deep into the woods, following a faint trail that kept threatening to disappear but never actually faded away altogether. It was a hot day, even in the deep woods, and after a while we decided to take off our coats.

  When we got back and Duffy didn’t have his jacket, did they get mad at him? My mother actually had the nerve to say, “Why didn’t you remind him? You know he forgets things like that.”

  What do I look like, a walking memo pad?

  Anyway, I had other things on my mind—like the fact that I was convinced someone had been following us while we were in the woods.

  I tried to tell my mother about it, but first she said I was being ridiculous, and then she accused me of trying to sabotage the trip.

  So I shut up. But I was pretty nervous, especially when Mom and Aunt Elise announced that they were going into town—which was twenty miles away—to pick up some supplies (like lightbulbs).

  “You kids will be fine on your own,” said Mom cheerfully. “You can make popcorn and play Monopoly. And there’s enough soda here for you to make yourselves sick on.”

  And with that they were gone.

  It got dark.

  We played Monopoly.

  They didn’t come back. That didn’t surprise me. Since Duffy and I were both fifteen they felt it was okay to leave us on our own, and Mom had warned us they might decide to have dinner at the little inn we had seen on the way up.

  But I would have been happier if they had been there.

  Especially when something started scratching on the door.

  “What was that?” said Marie.

  “What was what?” asked Duffy.

  “That!” she said, and this time I heard it, too. My stomach rolled over, and the skin at the back of my neck started to prickle.

  “Maybe it’s the Sentinel!” I hissed.

  “Andrew!” yelled Marie. “Mom told you not to say that.”

  “She said not to try to scare you,” I said. “I’m not. I’m scared! I told you I heard something following us in the woods today.”

  Scratch, scratch.

  “But you said it stopped,” said Duffy. “So how would it know where we are now?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it tracked us, like a bloodhound.”

  Scratch, scratch.

  “Don’t bloodhounds have to have something to give them a scent?” asked Marie. “Like a piece of clothing, or—”

  We both looked at Duffy.

  “Your jacket, Duffy!”

  Duffy turned white.

  “That’s silly,” he said after a moment.

  “There’s something at the door,” I said frantically. “Maybe it’s been lurking around all day, waiting for our mothers to leave. Maybe it’s been waiting for years for someone to come back here.”

  Scratch, scratch.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Duffy. “It’s just the wind moving a branch. I’ll prove it.”

  He got up and headed for the door. But he didn’t open it. Instead he peeked through the window next to it. When he turned back, his eyes looked as big as the hard-boiled eggs we had eaten for supper.

  “There’s something out there!” he his
sed. “Something big!”

  “I told you,” I cried. “Oh, I knew there was something there.”

  “Andrew, are you doing this just to scare me?” said Marie. “Because if you are—”

  Scratch, scratch.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing her by the hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I started to lead her up the stairs.

  “Not there!” said Duffy. “If we go up there, we’ll be trapped.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Let’s go out the back way!”

  The thought of going outside scared the daylights out of me. But at least out there we would have somewhere to run. Inside—well, who knew what might happen if the thing found us inside.

  We went into the kitchen.

  I heard the front door open.

  “Let’s get out of here!” I hissed.

  We scooted out the back door. “What now?” I wondered, looking around frantically.

  “The barn,” whispered Duffy. “We can hide in the barn.”

  “Good idea,” I said. Holding Marie by the hand, I led the way to the barn. But the door was held shut by a huge padlock.

  The wind was blowing harder, but not hard enough to hide the sound of the back door of the house opening, and then slamming shut.

  “Quick!” I whispered. “It knows we’re out here. Let’s sneak around front. It will never expect us to go back into the house.”

  Duffy and Marie followed me as I led them behind a hedge. I caught a glimpse of something heading toward the barn and swallowed nervously. It was big. Very big.

  “I’m scared,” whispered Marie.

  “Shhhh!” I hissed. “We can’t let it know where we are.”

  We slipped through the front door. We locked it, just like people always do in the movies, though what good that would do I couldn’t figure, since if something really wanted to get at us, it would just break the window and come in.

  “Upstairs,” I whispered.

  We tiptoed up the stairs. Once we were in our bedroom, I thought we were safe. Crawling over the floor, I raised my head just enough to peek out the window. My heart almost stopped. Standing in the moonlight was an enormous, manlike creature. It had a scrap of cloth in its hands. It was looking around—looking for us. I saw it lift its head and sniff the wind. To my horror, it started back toward the house.

  “It’s coming back!” I yelped, more frightened than ever.

  “How does it know where we are?” asked Marie.

  I knew how. It had Duffy’s jacket. It was tracking us down, like some giant bloodhound.

  We huddled together in the middle of the room, trying to think, of what to do.

  A minute later we heard it.

  Scratch, scratch.

  None of us moved.

  Scratch, scratch.

  We stopped breathing, then jumped up in alarm at a terrible crashing sound.

  The door was down.

  We hunched back against the wall as heavy footsteps came clomping up the stairs.

  I wondered what our mothers would think when they got back. Would they find our bodies? Or would there be nothing left of us at all?

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  It was getting closer.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  It was outside the door.

  Knock, knock.

  “Don’t answer!” hissed Duffy.

  Like I said, he doesn’t have the brains of a turnip.

  It didn’t matter. The door wasn’t locked. It came swinging open. In the shaft of light I saw a huge figure. The Sentinel of the Woods! It had to be. I thought I was going to die.

  The figure stepped into the room. Its head nearly touched the ceiling.

  Marie squeezed against my side, tighter than a tick in a dog’s ear.

  The huge creature sniffed the air. It turned in our direction. Its eyes seemed to glow. Moonlight glittered on its fangs.

  Slowly the Sentinel raised its arm. I could see Duffy’s jacket dangling from its fingertips.

  And then it spoke.

  “You forgot your jacket, stupid.”

  It threw the jacket at Duffy, turned around, and stomped down the stairs.

  Which is why, I suppose, no one has had to remind Duffy to remember his jacket, or his glasses, or his math book, for at least a year now.

  After all, when you leave stuff lying around, you never can be sure just who might bring it back.

  Homeward Bound

  Jamie stood on the steps of his uncle’s house and looked up. The place was tall and bleak. With its windows closed and shuttered, as they were now, it was easy to imagine the building was actually trying to keep him out.

  “This isn’t home,” he thought rebelliously. “It’s not home, and it never will be.”

  A pigeon fluttered onto the lawn nearby. Jamie started, then frowned. His father had raised homing pigeons, and the two of them had spent many happy hours together, tending his flock. But the sight of the bird now, with the loss of his father still so fresh in his mind, only stirred up memories he wasn’t yet ready to deal with.

  He looked at the house again and was struck by an odd feeling: while this wasn’t home, coming here had somehow taken him one step closer to finding it. That feeling had to do with the horn, of course; of that much he was certain.

  Jamie was seven the first time he had seen the horn hanging on the wall of his uncle’s study.

  “Narwhal,” said his uncle, following the boy’s gaze. “It’s a whale with a horn growing out of the front of its head.” He put one hand to his forehead and thrust out a finger to illustrate, as if Jamie were some sort of an idiot. “Sort of a seagoing unicorn,” he continued. “Except, of course, that it’s real instead of imaginary. I’d rather you didn’t touch it. I paid dearly to get it.”

  Jamie had stepped back behind his father without speaking. He hadn’t dared to say what was on his mind. Grown-ups, especially his uncle, didn’t like to be told they were wrong.

  But his uncle was wrong. The horn had not come from a narwhal, not come from the sea at all.

  It was the horn of a genuine unicorn.

  Jamie couldn’t have explained how he knew this was so. But he did, as surely—and mysteriously—as his father’s pigeons knew their way home. Thinking of that moment of certainty now, he was reminded of those stormy nights when he and his father had watched lightning crackle through the summer sky. For an instant, everything would be outlined in light. Then, just as quickly, the world would be plunged back into darkness, with nothing remaining but a dazzling memory.

  That was how it had been with the horn, five years ago.

  And now Jamie was twelve, and his father was dead, and he had been sent to live with this rich, remote man who had always frightened him so much.

  Oddly, that fear didn’t come from his uncle. Despite his stern manner, the man was always quiet and polite with Jamie. Rather he had learned the fear from his father. The two men had not been together often, for his uncle frequently disappeared on mysterious “business trips” lasting weeks or even months on end. But as Jamie had watched his father grow nervous and unhappy whenever his brother was due to return, he came to sense that the one man had some strange hold over the other.

  It frightened him.

  Yet as scared as he was, as sad and lonely over the death of his father, one small corner of his soul was burning now with a fierce joy because he was finally going to be close to the horn.

  Of course, in a way, he had never been apart from it. Ever since that first sight, five years ago, the horn had shimmered in his memory. It was the first thing he thought of when he woke up, and the last at night when he went to sleep. It was a gleaming beacon in his dreams, reassuring him no matter how cruel and ugly a day might have been, there was a reason to go on, a reason to be. His one glimpse of the horn had filled him with a sense of beauty and rightness so powerful it had carried him through these five years.

  Even now, while his uncle was droning on about the household
rules, he saw it again in that space in the back of his head where it seemed to reside. Like a shaft of never-ending light, it tapered through the darkness of his mind, wrist thick at its base, ice-pick sharp at its tip, a spiraled wonder of icy, pearly whiteness. And while Jamie’s uncle was telling him the study was off-limits, Jamie was trying to figure out how quickly he could slip in there to see the horn again.

  For once again his uncle was wrong. No place that held the horn could be off-limits for him. It was too deeply a part of him.

  That was why he had come here so willingly, despite his fear of his uncle. Like the pigeons, he was making his way home.

  Jamie listened to the big clock downstairs as it marked off the quarter hours. When the house had been quiet for seventy-five minutes he took the flashlight from under his pillow, climbed out of bed, and slipped on his robe. Walking softly, he made his way down the hall, enjoying the feel of the thick carpet like moss beneath his feet.

  He paused at the door of the study. Despite his feelings, he hesitated. What would his uncle say, or do, if he woke and caught him here?

  The truth was, it didn’t matter. He had no choice. He had to see the horn again.

  Turning the knob of the door, he held his breath against the inevitable click. But when it came, it was mercifully soft. He stepped inside and flicked on his flashlight.

  His heart lurched as the beam struck the opposite wall and showed an empty place where the horn had once hung. A little cry slipped through his lips before he remembered how important it was to remain silent.

  He swung the light around the room, and breathed a sigh of relief. The horn—the alicorn, as his reading had told him it was called—lay across his uncle’s desk.

  He stepped forward, almost unable to believe that the moment he had dreamed of all these years was finally at hand.

  He took another step, and another.

  He was beside the desk now, close enough to reach out and touch the horn.

  And still he hesitated.

  Part of that hesitation came from wonder, for the horn was even more beautiful than he had remembered. Another part of it came from a desire to make this moment last as long as he possibly could. It was something he had been living toward for five years now, and he wanted to savor it. But the biggest part of his hesitation came from fear. He had a sense that once he had touched the horn, his life might never be the same again.