The Trap Read online

  “Oh, we shouldn’t—” I said.

  “We gotta, Henry.”

  “Helen, think—”

  “No more thinking!” said Helen. She jumped to her feet.

  “But we really need to think—”

  “Henry, you’re like a broken record!” said Helen, and she zoomed out of the house, to her bike.

  Well, there was no TV to watch.

  I put the soup on simmer, and followed.

  A couple streets over from Alan’s, on a block of new one-level homes, we hid our bikes in the bushes and hiked behind the houses. Each one had a back porch and screen door.

  “This blue one,” said Helen, pointing. “This is him.”

  “We should stop and think—” I began.

  “Shush,” said Helen, “you’ll get us caught.” As if any trouble here was my fault. “He’s not home,” she said, scanning the street. “See his driveway? You know his car.”

  McTavish drove a red Chevy, and Helen was right—it wasn’t there.

  “He’s probably at practice,” I said.

  We walked onto the back lawn and up to the porch. Helen climbed the steps like they were her own, turned the knob on the door, opened it . . . and then, for the first time in my life, I was trespassing in someone’s house.

  I was scared, thinking we’d find McTavish standing right there. Maybe his car was at the shop, or maybe someone was borrowing it, or maybe he’d sold it . . . why had I not thought of any of this a minute ago? But as we stood in the silent living room, it became apparent that the house was empty.

  “I guess there’s a first time for everything,” I whispered.

  “First time?” said Helen.

  “Breaking into someone’s house,” I said.

  “First time for you maybe,” said Helen.

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “Not here,” said Helen as she strode confidently forward, “but other places.”

  “Helen, why?” I said. “It’s not right.”

  “It’s interesting,” said Helen. “You get to see how people live. Did you know that the Murgutroys have—”

  “Shush!” I said. “Don’t tell me.”

  Helen snickered. “Okay, Mr. Proper, now help me find some clues.”

  McTavish’s living room was a lot like ours. I hadn’t expected that from someone I now thought of as a supernatural kidnapper, but here was a pretty nice couch that was a similar color to ours, sitting in front of a TV that was the same brand we used to have. I found myself staring at the screen a little jealously.

  “Henry, get cracking!” said Helen.

  “Sorry,” I said, “it’s just that The Dead of Night is on right now.”

  We started searching. It’s funny, I’ve read some detective stories where people break into places looking for clues. They always go to a back room and open a filing cabinet, and then say, “Here it is!” But where is that back room? McTavish did not appear to own a filing cabinet. While Helen breezed through the kitchen and disappeared down a hall, I examined the living room.

  There were a few framed photos sitting on a corner table. One showed McTavish with his arm around a brown-haired woman. She was really big, kind of like him, but they didn’t look similar otherwise. I squinted at the photo. As far as I knew, McTavish wasn’t married.

  I went into the kitchen, even though Helen had already been through it, and saw a calendar with notes in some of the squares, like “Rotary Club” or “Haircut” or “Baseball.” I saw Mr. Brody’s funeral written in for this past Tuesday, the date circled in red. There was one other date circled in red—tomorrow. But there was nothing written. That seemed kind of ominous.

  I was ready to go, but Helen was still rooting around elsewhere, and I knew if I asked her to hurry she’d do the opposite. She’d hide in a closet and stay all night, even.

  So I returned to the living room to wait. I stared forward into the blank eye of the TV. Well, I thought, as long as I’m here anyway . . .

  I turned it on. The little dot appeared, and the tube whined as it warmed up. I sat on the couch. The dot brightened, and burst into the world of my favorite show. What was more, even though it was a rerun, it was an episode I’d never seen before. I was captivated. A rich old man sat in his enormous living room, which was way nicer even than Mrs. Brody’s. He was sipping wine, and around him were a bunch of clocks, all ticking. Then the clocks stopped and the Devil appeared—tall, with a black cloak and the horns and tail. “You’ve grown old,” said the Devil, laughing. “Soon you’ll die, and you’ll lose all of these riches. But what if you could live forever? What would you do . . . for all the time in the world?”

  “Forever . . . ?” said the old man. At that moment, all of his clocks started ticking again. They’d been ticking his life away for years, and I could tell that the idea of Forever was the most beautiful thing in the world to this old man. He looked around at all of his possessions. “I would do anything,” he said.

  Just then Helen, a little deflated, entered and sat next to me. “Okay,” she said, “I struck out. Let’s go.”

  “No,” I said, not even turning to look at her.

  She saw my gaze trained on the TV. “Oh, okay,” she said. She normally wasn’t very interested in The Dead of Night, but this episode seemed to grab her attention.

  The Devil told the rich man he’d live forever if he could find two people to take his place. In other words, if he murdered two people, the Devil would grant him immortality.

  The rich man agreed, and went out looking for victims. In a dingy, small park he found two bums drunk on a bench. Clearly, they didn’t deserve to live as much as he did. He went home and mixed some rat poison into a bottle of whiskey, intending to give it to the hoboes. Then the show took a commercial break. I’d seen the first ad a ton of times, for a fancy kind of vacuum. It started with a husband coming home from work, opening the front door.

  Only, the sound of the door didn’t come from the screen.

  It came from behind us.

  Helen and I both whipped around on the couch, and saw McTavish standing there.

  I gulped a breath of air, which I thought might be my last as McTavish’s little eyes bored into us from behind his horn-rimmed glasses. His huge black beard looked like the smoke of hellfire. In one arm, he held a brown grocery bag.

  He didn’t speak, just looked at us. He closed the door behind him and walked into the kitchen, out of sight. I heard him put the grocery bag down, and I turned to Helen to see if she wanted to make a break for it—but McTavish returned too soon. He crossed the room, each footfall so heavy I could feel it reverberate through the floor. He sat across from us, next to the TV in a cane chair, and turned down the volume knob as the episode came back on—but I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I was staring at McTavish, sweating bullets.

  Really, I should be in tears right now, I thought, and was surprised that I wasn’t. Yet I heard some of the sounds I usually make when I cry. The quick intakes of breath, and the nervous wheezing.

  I turned to Helen and saw something I’d never witnessed before: the failure of her courage. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, it would have been funny, because she barely knew how to cry. Her shoulders went up and down like pistons, and a little chirp came out each time.

  Soon she quieted enough to take a panicked gulp of air and say, as a warning, I guess, “Our dad is a soldier. He’s—he’s killed people.”

  McTavish nodded. “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” he said. “But you are trespassing in my home. I think I deserve an explanation.”

  Strange. Here we were, alone with the guy who’d kidnapped my subtle form, and he was putting on a show like he had no idea what was going on. I’d thought for sure he’d reveal the inner workings of his plan, and when he didn’t, I started to doubt some of my assumptions. Maybe it wasn’t him in the woods. It could have been some other big, bearded guy. With a furtive glance at Helen, I decided, for lack of any other ideas, to say somethin
g like the truth. “I had a dream about you,” I said.

  “A dream,” said McTavish, repeating it maybe to highlight how ridiculous it sounded.

  “I’m in Longbelly Graveyard,” I said, “and so are you.”

  McTavish’s beard completely covered any expression on his face. His little eyes flicked back and forth between me and Helen. On the TV next to him, The Dead of Night ended, marking the first time in my whole life I’d failed to watch an episode all the way through. The program switched to the news—a story about the rail strike. There was a close-up of a rail yard, and of some people in suits standing next to a boxcar. I wondered what they were saying, and wished I could be there instead of here.

  Finally, McTavish spoke. “I’ve had that dream too,” he said.

  I gulped. Now it was going to come out. Helen tensed up next to me.

  “I’m in the graveyard,” he said, “next to Joseph Brody’s grave. I’m sitting on the ground, and I can’t move.” He paused. “I’ve had it three nights running. And last night, Henry, you were in it.”

  “You’re . . . paralyzed?” I said.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “So you didn’t bring me there?”

  “Bring you?” said McTavish. “We’re talking about a dream, Henry.” He paused. “Aren’t we?” There was real curiosity in his voice.

  I didn’t know what to say. This conversation was upending everything.

  “Mr. McTavish,” said Helen, “what do you have planned for tomorrow?”

  McTavish clearly didn’t know what she meant, but I did. “It’s circled on your calendar in red,” I said.

  “You two have had a look around, then,” said McTavish.

  “We’re trying to figure things out,” said Helen.

  McTavish stood without uttering another word and then returned to the kitchen. I glanced at Helen, but now we were both too curious to run. I heard McTavish rustling the grocery bag, and then he entered carrying a bouquet of flowers. It was beautiful, with lots of little white blooms leading up to six red roses in the middle.

  “Who are those for?” Helen asked.

  “My wife,” said McTavish.

  “Is it her birthday?” said Helen.

  “No,” said McTavish. “The opposite.”

  I understood then that his wife was dead. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” I stammered. “When did, um . . .”

  “She passed away three years ago,” said McTavish. He didn’t offer an explanation of how she died, but his voice, when he spoke, sounded much smaller than I’d ever heard it. This guy, who could get a whole class of junior high students to shut up in under two seconds, sounded . . . tiny.

  I felt terrible about breaking into McTavish’s house while he was getting ready to put flowers on his wife’s grave.

  “It took me a long time to come back to the world, after she left it,” he said. He placed the flowers on the corner table, next to the picture of him and his wife. “It was my work as a teacher that finally helped. And baseball. You have to find those things—the things that connect you to people.”

  “Is that why you’ve been trying to help Mr. Dunn?” I asked. “Alan said you want him to start pitching again.”

  “It’s for both of us,” said McTavish. He paused, then stepped toward the front door. “You two should get on home,” he said. “Henry,” he added as he put one hand on the knob, “if you have any more strange dreams, let me know.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “And next time you need answers, try asking a few questions first. Save breaking in for later.” He opened the door and we stepped through. I think I’d never been so happy to see the sun.

  “Um, Mr. McTavish,” said Helen, “thank you, sir, for . . . for not killing us.”

  “You’re welcome,” said McTavish. He smiled.

  You can believe that Helen and I rode fast once we got on our bikes. Helen was thrilled, and when we turned onto our own street, she zigzagged all over. “I can’t believe he didn’t kill us!” she said, laughing. “I would have killed us for sure.”

  “Me too,” I laughed.

  We rolled up our driveway, parked, and went into the house. In the kitchen, the corn chowder was simmering just as I’d left it.

  “So, I guess McTavish isn’t the one who kidnapped me,” I said.

  “Or he was lying,” said Helen.

  “I don’t think he was lying,” I said.

  “If he’s really paralyzed, Henry, you could use that. Poke him with a stick or something, until he tells the truth.”

  “That’s what you’d do?” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Geez, I wish it was me out there, and not you.” Her eyes shone with the idea—the adventure of it.

  Since the chowder still wasn’t quite ready, we went into the living room, where there was still no TV. I picked up the book I’d borrowed from Mrs. Brody, opened it, and started to read, but I didn’t get very far. It turned out to be really boring. The text was very dense, in small type, and the first part was about population statistics. I wanted to like it because I liked Mrs. Brody, but there just wasn’t anything I could enjoy. I stared a little forlornly at the space where the TV used to be. Then I went upstairs and grabbed Airman Crusader Versus the Bat Creatures.

  This one started right where Airman Crusader Versus the Centipede King had left off. Airman Crusader and the airmen departed from Earth in their galactic cruiser, looking for the potion of immortality on the planet of the bat creatures. When they landed, the planet was all dark, the air ringing with the cries of the rabid bat creatures overhead. Airman Crusader tied a hook onto some fishing line, cast the line into the sky, and caught a bat creature like a fish. He forced it to reveal the location of the potion.

  I dog-eared the page I was on and went to the kitchen to check on the chowder. It was ready.

  Helen put out bowls for us. As we ate, she tried once more to convince me to let her rescue me from the graveyard, but I held firm. I was scared, though, especially as the sun crept past the horizon and the light faded outside.

  Just then, the telephone rang. Helen answered, then held the phone out to me. Before I heard the voice on the line, I knew it was Alan, because I could hear the sounds of a baseball game in the background. Alan’s dad was watching while Alan talked in the kitchen—almost every conversation I had with him was like this, with people cheering and announcers commentating.

  “Henry,” said Alan without any preamble, “I’m worried about you. I want us to rescue you tonight.”

  “But we decided,” I said.

  “I know,” said Alan. “But you could really be in trouble, Henry.” He paused. “I mean, maybe you’re going to disappear like . . . like Carl.”

  “We’ll find him, Alan,” I said. “Maybe I’ll learn something useful tonight.” I was putting on a show like I wasn’t scared, but I was very scared, and Alan’s worries were adding to my own.

  “Henry, we’re just kids,” said Alan.

  “But Mrs. Brody is helping now,” I said, “and aren’t the police looking for Carl?”

  “Not really,” said Alan, bitterly. “They don’t care. It’s always been like that, even when we lived in Minnesota. Because we’re Indians. Carl got in trouble when we were kids all the time, even before he started doing anything wrong. Sometimes I think he got mean just because people expected it.”

  I didn’t really know what to say to this, so I just sat on the line. “Sorry, Henry,” Alan said. “I guess I’m just tired of feeling helpless, you know? I want to do something.”

  “Give me tonight,” I said, hoping my voice sounded more confident than I felt. “I’ll see what I can find out. Then we’ll know enough to be smart.”

  Suddenly Helen shouted from across the kitchen, “You always want everybody to wait!”

  Alan heard her, and laughed. “Okay,” he said. “But after tonight, you’re going to get help whether you want it or not.”

  “I’ll want it,” I said.

  We said g
oodbye and I hung up, but I hadn’t taken my hand away before the phone rang again.

  “Nilsson residence,” I said, putting the receiver to my ear.

  “Hi Henry, it’s Nicki.”

  “Oh, er . . . h’lo,” I said, making my voice a little lower than normal.

  Nicki also requested to come rescue me.

  It was nice to have so many concerned friends, that was for sure.

  Eventually, minute by minute, it got late. Helen and I brushed our teeth together upstairs. I was wearing my Saturn shirt pajamas, but Helen showed up wearing her nicest pair of jeans with a white belt and a short-sleeved red shirt. Also, she had her earrings in, which she almost never wore—little gold hoops Mom had bought her two years ago.

  “Why are you so dressed up?” I said.

  “It’s what I’ll be wearing in the subtle world,” said Helen. “And I’m going to meet up with Nicki . . . and Alan.” Helen sawed her toothbrush around in her mouth. “Seriously, Henry, do you think Alan might ask me? I mean, do you think he likes me?”

  “I’m sorry, Helen, I just don’t know,” I said. “I’m a little preoccupied right now.”

  “It’s your own fault for not letting us rescue you,” said Helen. She sighed. “Oh Henry, I hope you get out. I’m worried about you, I really am. And I’m also worried about being asked to the dance.”

  We hugged each other for luck, and went to our rooms.

  I got into bed and turned on my radio, softly. It was playing a song by Roy Orbison called “In Dreams.” I like Roy Orbison a lot, and think he has a great voice, almost as good as Elvis’s. As he sang, I began to count.

  IN THE DISTANCE, the branches were singing. My eyes flicked open to find once more the starry sky overhead, with a sliver of moon high above the treetops.

  I was in the graveyard, the white sawtoothed trap still clamped onto my leg. I was wearing the same clothes as before—my subtle self hadn’t been home to change since it visited here with Mrs. Brody.

  And not twenty feet away, I saw the figure from the previous night, the flames from his head lighting the gravestones around him.