Tales from the Hood (2 page)

She lay in bed, enjoying the cool breeze drifting through her bedroom window. The model airplanes hanging from the ceiling swayed back and forth. She watched them for a while, imagining her father building them when he was her age. He had put a lot of effort into the models. They were painted, glued, and assembled perfectly. Her father was meticulous.

Her little sister, Daphne, lay asleep beside her, breathing softly into her pillow. Sabrina glanced over at the alarm clock that sat on a night table next to her bed: 3:00 a.m. It was a good time, she thought. There were no emergencies to deal with, no impending chaos, no responsibilities, and, best of all, no prying eyes. She climbed out of bed, rushed to the desk sitting in the corner of the room, and opened the drawer. Tucked in the back was a little black bag. She snatched it up and tiptoed into the hallway.

Once she was in the bathroom, she flipped on the light and closed the door. It was nice for once to have the bathroom to herself. There were a lot of people living in the big old house in addition to Sabrina and Daphne: Uncle Jake, Granny Relda, Puck, and of course Elvis, the family dog, who often used the toilet as a drinking fountain. And they all shared one tiny bathroom. The line was long and privacy was in short supply.

Sabrina unzipped the little black bag, revealing a personal treasure trove of makeup: tubes of lipstick and lip gloss, eye shadow, mascara, blush, and foundation, as well as a variety of barrettes she had purchased with her allowance at a local drugstore. She dug her hands into the bag and went to work.

First she tried to apply the foundation, but it made her look like a ghost. Then, she accidentally put on too much blush, giving her a look of perpetual embarrassment. The mascara was thick and gloppy, and combined with the eyeliner, it made her look like an angry raccoon. The lipstick was fire-engine red.

When she was finished, she studied herself in the mirror and nearly cried. She looked like the joker from a stack of playing cards. She was hideous and worse, hopeless. She would never learn to use this stuff. Frustrated, she washed it all off. It was times like this when Sabrina especially missed her mother.

Lately, Sabrina’s appearance had become more and more important to her. Though she didn’t fully understand the changes she was going through, she knew they had something to do with growing up. It seemed like yesterday when she couldn’t have cared less about what she looked like, but now she spent hours contemplating hairstyles. She gave serious consideration to whether her shoes matched her tops. It seemed as if all she could think about was how others might see her, and she hated herself for it. She had always detested girlie-girls, with their little dresses and hair in ribbons. They were so stupid and superficial. Unfortunately, she could feel herself becoming one of those girls. Each time she applied her lip gloss, she imagined another fleet of brain cells dying a horrible death.

Luckily, no one in her family had noticed her preoccupation with vanity—most importantly Puck. If he discovered she was visiting the bathroom in the middle of the night to primp and study her flaws, he would make fun of her until she was old and gray.

Abandoning her beauty regimen for the night, she washed her face and was about to shut off the light and go back to bed when she heard something bubbling in the toilet. The lid was down and she couldn’t see what was causing the noise, but she had her suspicions. Before Puck moved in with the family, he had lived in the woods for a decade. So modern conveniences mesmerized him—none more so than the toilet. He loved to flush it over and over and watch the water swirl down the hole and disappear. For months he was convinced that toilets were some kind of magic, until Uncle Jake explained how indoor plumbing worked. Unfortunately, this knowledge only increased Puck’s interest, and it wasn’t long before he was conducting what he called “scientific research” to discover what could be flushed down the tubes. It started out with a little loose change, but the items quickly grew in size: marbles, wristwatches, doorknobs, balls of yarn, even scoops of butter pecan ice cream swirled and disappeared. Granny finally put an end to it all when she caught Puck trying to flush a beaver he had trapped by the river. Ever since, the toilet had been coughing up Puck’s “experiments.” Last week Sabrina found one of her mittens inside. Now, apparently, something else was making its way to the surface. She bent down and lifted the lid, hoping it was the missing television remote control, which had vanished months ago.

But it wasn’t the remote control. Instead it was something so shocking she would have nightmares about it the rest of her life and an unnatural fear of toilets in general. Who would expect to lift the toilet lid and find a little man sitting inside?

“Who goes there?” he said in a squeaky voice. He was no more than a foot tall and wore a tiny green suit, a green bowler hat, and shiny black shoes with bright brass buckles. His long red beard dipped into the toilet water.

Sabrina shrieked and slammed the toilet lid down on the creature’s head. The little man groaned and shouted a few angry curses, but Sabrina didn’t stick around to hear them. She was already running down the hallway, screaming for her grandmother.

Granny Relda stumbled out of her room. She was wearing an ankle-length nightgown and a sleeping cap that hid her gray hair. She looked the picture of the perfect grandmother, except, of course, for the sharpened battle-ax she held in her hand.

“
Liebling
!” her grandmother cried in a light German accent.
Liebling
was the German word for
sweetheart
. “What is going on?”

“There’s a person in the toilet!” Sabrina said.

“A what?”

Before she could answer, Uncle Jake came out of a room at the end of the hall. He was fully dressed in jeans, leather boots, and a long overcoat with hundreds of little pockets sewn into it. He looked exhausted and in dire need of a shave. “What’s all the hubbub about?”

“Sabrina says she saw something in the toilet,” Granny Relda explained.

“I swear I flushed,” Uncle Jake said as he threw up his hands.

“Not that! A person!” Sabrina shouted. “He spoke to me.”

“Mom, you’ve really got to cut back on all the spicy food you’ve been feeding the girls,” Uncle Jake said. “It’s giving them bad dreams.”

“It wasn’t a dream!” Sabrina cried.

Daphne entered the hallway, dragging her blanket behind her. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes with her free hand and looked around grumpily. “Can’t a person get some shut-eye around here?”

“Sabrina had a bad dream,” Granny Relda explained.

“I did not!”

“She says she saw something in the toilet,” Uncle Jake said.

“I swear I flushed,” Daphne said.

“Ugh! I’ll show you!” Sabrina said as she pulled her grandmother into the bathroom. She pointed at the toilet, then took a step back. “It’s in there!”

Granny set her battle-ax on the floor and smiled. “Honestly, Sabrina, I think you’re a little old to be scared of the boogeyman.”

The old woman lifted the toilet lid. There was the little man, rubbing a red knot on the top of his head and glaring at the crowd.

“What’s the big idea?” he growled.

Startled, Granny slammed the lid down just as Sabrina had done. Sabrina, Daphne, and even Uncle Jake cried out in fright and backed out of the bathroom.

“Now do you believe me?” Sabrina said.

“Oh, my!” Granny cried. “I’ll never doubt you again!”

“What should we do, Mom?” Uncle Jake asked the old woman.

“Elvis!” Granny Relda shouted.

Seconds later an enormous blur of brown fur barreled up the stairs, knocking a few pictures off the wall as it stampeded into the bathroom and came to a screeching halt. Only then could Sabrina see him properly: Elvis, the family’s two-hundred-pound Great Dane. He barked at the toilet fiercely, snarling and snapping at the lid.

“Get him, boy!” Daphne ordered.

“You better surrender!” Uncle Jake shouted at the toilet. “Our dog is very hungry!”

Just then, another door opened down the hall and a shaggy-haired boy in cloud-covered pajamas stepped into the hallway. He scratched his armpit and let out a tremendous belch. “What’s all the racket out here?”

“There’s something horrible in the toilet!” Daphne shouted.

“Yeah, I think I forgot to flush,” Puck said.

“Not that! A little man,” Granny Relda said.

“Oh,” Puck said. “That’s just Seamus.”

“And who is Seamus?” Sabrina demanded.

“He’s part of your new security detail. Now that Mr. Canis is in jail, the house needs looking after, and to be honest, I’m too busy to do it myself. So I hired you all a team of bodyguards.”

“Why is he in the toilet?” Uncle Jake pressed.

“Well, duh! He’s guarding it, of course.”

“Whatever for?” Granny asked.

“The toilet is a vulnerable entrance into this house,” Puck explained. “Anything could crawl up the pipes and take a bite out of your—”

“We get the idea,” Granny Relda interrupted. “What are we going to do when we need to use it?”

“Seamus takes regular breaks and has lunch every day at noon,” Puck said.

“This is ridiculous,” Sabrina said. “We don’t need bodyguards and we don’t need you to put some freak in the toilet!”

Puck frowned. “You should really watch who you’re calling a freak. He’s a leprechaun.”

Seamus lifted the lid and crawled out of the toilet. He now had two purple lumps on his head and an angry look in his eyes. “I didn’t sign on for this abuse, Puck. I quit!”

“Quit? You can’t quit,” Puck said. “Who will I get to replace you?”

“Go find a toilet elf. What do I care?” the leprechaun shouted as he stomped down the hall and between the legs of Uncle Jake, leaving a trail of little wet footprints behind him.

Puck frowned and turned back to Sabrina. “Now look what you’ve done—you’ve made Seamus quit! Do you know how hard it is to find someone to sit in a toilet all night?”

“How many more leprechauns are in the house?” Daphne asked, peering behind the shower curtain.

“That was the only one,” Puck said.

“Good!” Sabrina said, relieved.

“But there’s about a dozen trolls, some goblins, a few elves and brownies, and a chupacabra staking out the other vulnerable areas of the house.”

Sabrina gasped. “There are freaks all over the house?”

“Again,
freak
is a really ugly term. It highlights how ignorant you are. This is the twenty-first century, you know,” Puck replied.

Sabrina clenched her fist. “I’m going to highlight your mouth, pal.”

“Give it your best shot!” Puck shouted. “Wait a minute. What’s that on your lips?”

Sabrina quickly wiped her mouth on her sleeve, leaving a lipstick stain on her shirt. She quietly cursed herself for not washing well. “Nothing,” she said sheepishly.

“Puck, we appreciate you looking after us,” Granny said, stepping between Sabrina and Puck. “I know Mr. Canis would feel better knowing you are taking over his duties. I guess it can’t hurt to have a ‘security detail’ around the house, but perhaps the bathroom might be the one place we don’t need an extra set of eyes.”

“Suit yourself, but if a dragon crawls up the pipes and toasts your rear ends, don’t come crying to me,” Puck said with a snort and headed back to his room.

Daphne peered into the toilet. “Could a dragon really fit in here?”

Granny Relda assured the little girl that her rear end was safe from dragon attacks. She praised Elvis for his bravery and scratched him behind his big ears, then encouraged everyone to go back to bed. “We’re going to visit Mr. Canis bright and early tomorrow,” she reminded them.

Another wasted trip
, Sabrina thought to herself.

Granny, with Elvis trotting behind her, returned to her room, leaving Sabrina and Daphne alone with their uncle.

“Have you been up all night?” Daphne asked him.

Uncle Jake rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Want to see where she is?”

“Absolutely,” Sabrina replied.

The girls followed him back down the hall to the door to the spare bedroom. The room was sparsely furnished, with only a full-length mirror against the far wall and a queen-size bed in the middle. Lying on the bed were Henry and Veronica Grimm, Sabrina and Daphne’s parents, who were currently the victims of a spell that kept them sound asleep. Nothing Sabrina and her family had tried could wake them up. They were like two Sleeping Beauties, only one of them needed a shave. Recently, there had been a glimmer of hope for the sleeping Grimms—a woman from Henry’s past who might be able to right the family’s tragedy. Uncle Jake had been keeping a close watch on her via one of the Grimms’ most valuable magical possessions—a magic mirror.

Mirror
wasn’t exactly the best word to describe what it was. Mirrors reflect back what is in front of them, but this mirror was reflecting something else—or rather, some
where
else. Gazing into the silvery surface, Sabrina saw a beautiful curly-haired woman with a round face and green eyes. She had a splash of freckles on her button nose and her blond hair looked like precious gold against the bright blue sky. She was wearing a billowy white dress and sitting atop a camel. There were other people with her, each also on a camel, and they were snapping pictures of an ancient pyramid standing in a rocky desert.