Every House Is Haunted (4 page)

Ahh, the Haxanpaxan. How he made our lives so very interesting.

“Soelle, I told you to turn off the TV if you’re not watching it.”

“The Haxanpaxan’s watching it.”

“The Haxanpaxan is watching
Canada’s Next Top Model
?”

“He likes it. He says the models remind him of himself.”

“Soelle, did you leave the back door open?”

“The Haxanpaxan did. He went outside to do his business.”

“Well, can you tell him to close it when he’s done?”

“You don’t
tell
the Haxanpaxan to do anything.”

“Can you ask him, then? Pretty please, with sugar on top?”

“Toby, do you remember what I said about being funny?”

“Soelle, do you know anything about the Conroys’ minivan getting smashed up last night?”

“I’m afraid not, Toby. But on a side note: the Haxanpaxan doesn’t like minivans. And he doesn’t like the colour lime green. He finds it offensive to the senses.”

“Uh-huh. The back door was open again all night.”

“The Haxanpaxan was out.”

“Doing his business?”

“No, silly. He was looking for aces.”

On an unseasonably warm Saturday in March, I was outside on the porch swing reading the paper when Soelle came skipping up the cobblestone path.

“Hard day at the office?” I asked.

“Look what we found.”

She was bouncing around and waving something in her hand. It took me a moment to figure out what it was: a playing card. The ace of clubs.

“The Haxanpaxan was the one who found it, actually. He’s very smart.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Mrs. Ferguson’s birdbath.”

“Mrs. Ferguson?” I pictured an old woman who lived alone with her pet Rottweiler. An animal she could’ve thrown a saddle on and ridden around town. “You went into her back yard?”

“Duh. That’s where her birdbath is.”

“What about Kramer? Wasn’t he outside?”

Soelle flashed me a wicked grin. “Oh, he was there all right. But one look from the Haxanpaxan and his fur turned completely white.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yep. Then he ran around the side of the house and we went over and got the card.”

“Aces.”

“That’s right.” She winked at me and skipped up the porch steps and went inside. I was picking up my paper when I heard the porch steps creak. The front door swung open on its own, then closed again.

Just the wind, I thought.

Soelle called me from a payphone and told me I had to come over to Mrs. O’Reilly’s house.

“Who?” I asked, groggily. I had been asleep. I looked over at the clock radio and saw it was half past two in the morning. “Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s not important. You need to get over here now.”

“Who’s Mrs. O’Reilly?”

“My Algebra teacher. Duh!”

Soelle gave me the address, but the house turned out to be easy to find. It was the one on fire.

A pair of fire engines were parked out front, blocking off the street. Firefighters ran hither and yon, dragging heavy canvas hoses. A group of rubberneckers stood off to one side. Soelle was among them.

“What the hell’s going on?” I asked her in a low voice so the others wouldn’t hear.

“I didn’t do it,” Soelle said immediately. “The Haxanpaxan did.”

“There
is
no Haxanpaxan.”

“The Haxanpaxan doesn’t like it when—”

I grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Stop it, Soelle. This is serious.”

“You’re telling me.”

She nodded at the house. The firefighters had stopped running and were staring at it, too.

The flames were green.

“So you’re saying you didn’t burn down your algebra teacher’s house because she was the one who confiscated your deck of tarot cards and got you expelled.”

“Ex.”

“What?”

“She was my ex-Algebra teacher. I feel the need to have that stated for the record.”

“The record? You’re not on trial, Soelle.”

“Really? You could’ve fooled me.”

“You said the Haxanpaxan did it.”

“That’s right.”

“But there is no Haxanpaxan.”

“I wish you would stop saying that. It makes him very angry.”

“Was the Haxanpaxan angry at Mrs. O’Reilly?”

“No. I guess you could say he was angry on my behalf.”

“And that’s why he burned down her house.”

“I don’t control the Haxanpaxan, Toby. He knew I was upset, and I guess he just took it out on her.”

“Well, that’s just . . . just . . .”

“Aces?”

“No, Soelle, it isn’t aces. It’s the exact opposite of aces.”

I got a phone call from the guy who owned the convenience store. He said Soelle was loitering around outside, and if I didn’t come down and collect her, he was going to call the police. I realized this was the guy who started all the witch talk. He sounded terrified. As I got in the car and drove over, I wondered how he got our phone number.

Soelle wasn’t there when I pulled into the strip mall. I parked and went around back to where the dumpsters were. I found her writing on the brick wall with a piece of pink chalk. She was drawing squares, one next to the other, one stacked on top of another.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re tagging the back of the store.”

“Tagging? Oh, Toby, you’re so street.” She snickered and kept on drawing. “And it’s not graffiti. It’ll wash off in the rain.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Testing a theory,” she said vaguely.

She drew one final square, then walked back to where I was standing. She handed me the piece of chalk and walked further back, toward the screen of trees between the plaza and the lake. She stopped on the grassy verge, turned around, and suddenly ran full-tilt at the wall. I started to call out, but she sped past me, arms pumping, brow furrowed in concentration.

At the last moment, she leaped into the air, throwing her legs out in front of her like a long-jumper, and landed on the wall.

And stuck to it.

She stood frozen there, in a half-crouch, on the wall. Then, slowly, she began to stand up straight . . . or rather, sideways. She was standing in the middle of the first square she had drawn. She hesitated a moment, then hopped sideways and landed on the next one. I tilted my head, trying to watch her, but it was disorienting. It was one thing to see her defying gravity by sticking to the wall, but it was quite another to watch her hop up and down in a sidelong fashion. It was like watching someone walking up the crazy stairs in an M.C. Escher print.

It wasn’t until Soelle reached the final square and turned around and hopped back that I realized what she was doing.

Playing hopscotch.