The Book of Bad Things (9 page)

I
T HAD BEEN A SLOW MORNING
, nothing like the one before. Dennis, Deb, and Rose had all left early for work and various errands. Cassidy figured that she and Joey had run Rose through an emotional rinse cycle, and if she had anything else planned for their summer, it would most likely come much later. Now, it was only the two of them left to clean up in silence after breakfast.

Despite the calm end to the previous day, Joey had finished the evening withdrawn, stuck in his head, ignoring Cassidy almost entirely. Before retiring to her room upstairs, she had caught sight of Ping in the driveway next door with her two brothers and went out to say hello.

She’d been happy to share her strange day with Ping. When she mentioned the figures she’d seen out in the street the previous night, Ping looked curious but unsurprised. This was a
strange state
they were living in after all. Cassidy went on about the conversation she’d tried to have with Joey during the art class, then about the visit to the general store, where she’d heard that people had been seeing the ghost of Ursula Chambers. They’d agreed to get together the next day, with Joey or without.

Outside, the air was misty, the sky covered in thick clouds. Deb had left the Weather Channel blaring from the television in the living room, and once Cassidy had finished loading the dishwasher, she plopped down on the sofa and switched the channel to the Cartoon Network. To her surprise, Joey eventually came over and perched on the other side of the couch. They sat together just like that through a few old episodes of
Adventure Time
, though several times, Cassidy just stopped herself from leaning over and asking him what he thought about the ghost stories they’d overheard yesterday at Moriarty’s. She was dying to know if he’d woken sporadically in the night like she had, heart pounding, limbs tingling, ears straining to hear shuffling sounds out on the street, but she didn’t want a repeat performance of his art class explosion.

There was a knock at the sliding door. A dark shadow stood outside on the patio, holding up hands to peer through the glass. Joey groaned, but got up to answer it. He slid open the door and asked, “What the heck do
you
want?”

Cassidy sighed. She had hoped he was done taking that tone.

“Is Cassidy here?” It was Ping.

Joey nodded toward the living room. Cassidy sat up straight and waved. “Hi!” Ping slipped past Joey and into the kitchen.

“Sure! Come on in!” Joey said, waving his arms to indicate that he was not in fact invisible.

“Thank you.” Ping nodded politely. Cassidy couldn’t tell if she was oblivious to his sarcasm or if she was merely awesome. Ping winked, and Cassidy stifled laughter. “Hey, did you guys see the news this morning?”

“Of course,” said Joey. “We never miss the stock report. It’s so fascinating.”

Ping ignored him, stepping closer to Cassidy. “You’ll both want to know,” she whispered, eyeing Joey briefly. He scowled and slammed the sliding door before stomping back to his spot on the couch.

“Forget it,” said Ping, holding up a hand. “Cassidy, let’s take a walk.”

“Wait,” said Joey, looking suddenly frightened to be left alone. He took a deep breath. “Is it about Ursula?”

Ping raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “You sure you want to hear about it?”

He closed his eyes, mouthing the word
yes
.

“Okay then. They lost her.”

“They what?” Cassidy said at the same time Joey asked, “They,
who
?”

“The funeral parlor over in … I forget where. But a couple days ago, the day of the burial in fact, the morticians opened the casket and found it empty. I heard about it this morning on the
Today
show. One of those
weird
stories.”

“Someone
stole
Ursula Chambers?” Joey was pale, his lips open slightly, trying to keep his breath even.

“That’s their theory.”

“And what’s your theory? That she just got up and walked away?”

Ping turned pink. No one spoke. Joey glanced between the two girls, then leapt up and ran toward the stairs.

T
HE CURTAINS WERE STILL DRAWN
in Joey’s bedroom, so when Cassidy and Ping climbed the stairs behind him, they walked in darkness. From the hall, they heard him rummaging around. A blipping sound rang out, and the blue light of a computer screen spilled into the hallway.

“Are you okay?” Cassidy dared to call through his open door.

“Yeah,” he said. “I just want to see if I can find something about this on my computer.” After a moment, he added, “It’s really weird with you guys standing there watching me.”

Cassidy sighed, then wandered into the room, stepping over piles of clothes that lay like booby traps across the floor. She pulled open the curtains and grayish light filtered into the small space. Ping stood behind Joey at his desk.

It took him a couple minutes, but eventually he found the page he was looking for. “Here we go,” he said, pulling out his desk chair and sitting down.
“Hoarder Mystery Deepens as Corpse Disappears,”
he read. The story went just as Ping had told it.

“She’s just
gone
,” said Ping.

Joey turned to look at the girls. “Like Lucky,” he whispered. “You do believe me now. Don’t you?”

“I believed you
before
,” said Cassidy. “That’s what I was trying to tell you yesterday, when you” —
totally FREAKED OUT
— “you know, left the art class.”

“I’ve seen him too,” Ping added. “Your dog. Out by the oak tree in your backyard.”

Joey turned his chair around. Quietly, carefully, he said, “I thought you were making fun of me.”

“Well, there’s nothing fun about this,” said Ping with a wry grin, as if this was the exact kind of thing she found to be if not fun then at least intriguing.

“Downstairs,” said Cassidy, “Ping mentioned that the theft was only one theory of what happened to the body. But what’s the other theory? Is there a connection between Joey’s missing dog and our missing hermit?”

“Besides you seeing them walk down the street the other night?” Ping asked, wide-eyed.

Cassidy’s skin tingled. “But that’s not what I saw,” she insisted.

“It’s not?” Ping squeaked out. “You sure?”

“The walking dead,” said Cassidy, her memory wandering into the shadow world of Monday night. “It’s not possible.”

“But it happened.”

Joey swallowed violently, as if choking down some sick. “You guys are
really
thinking that this stuff is real? You’re not joking?”

“We’re not joking,” said Ping. “Why do you keep asking that?”

“It’s just that … for the past year, whenever I’ve told anyone what I’ve seen or heard, they laughed at me. And then, with my parents sending me to talk to Dr. Caleb … It’s all just been … confusing.”

As Cassidy listened to Joey talk, she thought of the Joey she used to know. The boy who spoke softly, kindly, who’d have done anything to make her summer the best summer it could be. Feeling something in her own chest open up, she fell back onto his bed and clutched at his sheets, as if that could stop her from melting into a tearful mess.

“
Confusing
isn’t quite the right word,” said Ping.

“Close enough,” said Joey, turning back to his computer screen.

Cassidy waited for the pressure behind her eyes to dissipate before going on. “So, let’s say there is a connection between what I’ve seen over the past few days and the missing body.” She glanced at the back of Joey’s head and added, “Bodies.”

“Could it have to do with what you guys overheard yesterday at the deli?” asked Ping.

Joey turned around, mouth agape. He shook his head at Cassidy. “Word travels fast around here.”

“We chatted last night,” said Ping. “Cassidy caught me up on what happened.”

“The
connection
,” said Cassidy. “According to the stories we heard at Moriarty’s, people all over Whitechapel have seen her. Ursula.”

“Yeah,” said Ping, “but not just
anyone
. You said that Ursula has appeared to those who took something from the Dumpsters in her driveway. She’d warned them to bring her stuff back. Or else. Does this confirm that Ursula’s visitations aren’t just hallucinations?”

“Possibly,” said Cassidy.

Ping began, “So if this supernatural stuff is plausible —”

“It
is
,” Joey added.

“Then the question is, have these people in Whitechapel been seeing Ursula’s ghost? Or have they seen Ursula herself?”

A
N ENGINE RUMBLED
into the driveway. From Joey’s bedroom window, Cassidy watched Rose climb out of the white hatchback, grappling with several bags of groceries. “Your mom’s home,” she said to Joey. The three peered out the window. “Looks like she needs help.”

“We can continue this later,” said Ping.

They all made their way downstairs. Outside, the spitting mist coated their faces as they made their way to the car. When Rose saw them approaching, her eyes lit up. “Oh, wow. Volunteers,” she said with a smile. “Hi there, Ping. Nice to see you.” Ping nodded hello.

As Cassidy took a couple of heavy paper bags from Rose, she sensed that something was wrong. Rose’s skin was practically green and her long neck was slouched as if she were wearing a heavy coat instead of a light pink tank top. By the time they’d emptied the car and brought all of the groceries to the kitchen, Joey’d noticed too. “You okay, Mom?”

Rose dropped a head of lettuce into the vegetable drawer in the fridge. She straightened her spine and twisted her neck slightly, releasing a disturbing cracking noise. After a moment, she said, almost to herself, “I suppose you’re going to hear about it eventually.” The three kids sat on the high stools at the countertop that divided the kitchen from the living room. Rose closed the refrigerator door, then leaned against it. “I’ve got some bad news.”

Mrs. Moriarty was dead.

Cassidy stopped listening after she’d heard those words, her mind racing through what she remembered of yesterday, of the old woman’s ghostly tale from behind the deli counter. Something about a mirror that had belonged to Ursula. A gift from her son-in-law. She remembered Mr. Chase from the day she’d arrived back in Whitechapel — the man who’d been fascinated with Ursula’s taxidermy animals. Foxes.

Rose was still talking —
asphyxiation, choking, possible stroke, they discovered the body this morning
— but Cassidy could think only of Ursula’s threat.

“Cassidy?” Rose said. “Are you feeling okay?”

Cassidy lifted her forehead from the countertop, not realizing that she’d even lowered it. “It’s just … we saw Mrs. Moriarty
yesterday
.” She glanced at Ping and Joey who were wide-eyed, their faces empty of blood. She knew they were piecing together everything they’d been talking about upstairs only minutes earlier.

Could it be that these were merely coincidences? Ursula’s ghostly appearance followed by the passing of Mrs. Moriarty? The discovery of the missing corpse right after Cassidy’s nightmare vision two nights prior?

When no one else responded, Rose flushed, realizing that she’d opened a can of snakes that would be difficult now to contain. “These things happen,” she said. “It’s sad, of course, but Mrs. Moriarty lived a long, good life. And now she’s with her husband.”

Cassidy wanted to speak up, to tell Rose about Ping’s and Joey’s theories on the subject, but she remembered what Joey had said he’d been through in the year since Lucky’s death. Rose wouldn’t hear her. In fact, she might even get angry and send her back to the city. Only yesterday that idea might have seemed like a good thing. Now, however, she felt like Joey, and in a way even Ping, needed her here.

Rose clapped her hands. “Okay then!” she shouted. “No more gloom and doom! Let’s make some lunch and then we’re off. I don’t know where to but it’ll be someplace fun. Ping, call your mom and tell her. We’re going on an adventure.”

Despite the widening pit Cassidy felt in her stomach, she remembered once more why she’d loved coming to Whitechapel, even if, this time around, it had become a twisted version of the past.