The Tell-Tale Start (6 page)

WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW…

THE
boys’ homeschooling went well the first week, even if they had to slow down a bit to accommodate their Aunt Judith. Then Roderick Usher went missing.

Edgar and Allan looked everywhere for him, even checking inside the walls to ensure that their poor cat had not somehow been walled up alive, as one of their great-great-great-great granduncle’s most famous stories, “The Black Cat,” had involved just such a terrifying incident.

But they found nothing.

Allan and Edgar were distraught.

Roderick was special—and not just because he was the last gift their mom and dad ever gave them.

Over the past seven years, Edgar and Allan had taught him many tricks. There was the Stuffed Cat, where he
froze on command. (His cue was two lines from one of their great-great-great-great granduncle’s poems, “Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche, how statue-like I see thee stand.”) Roderick could hold a pose for so long that visitors often mistook him for a work of taxidermy, and their shock when he seemed to come suddenly to life (cued by a finger snap) was very gratifying.

Also, Roderick was born able to imitate the sound of various birds, which proved helpful to his expeditions through the tangled branches of the neighborhood trees. Edgar and Allan added many other sounds to his repertoire, including monkey calls, hissing snakes, crying babies, barking dogs, and whistling teakettles. Who knew when the odd sound effect might come in handy?

But their cat’s most useful talent was untying knots with his unusually strong and agile paws. The cue was the twins’ whistling “Ring Around the Rosy.” The Knot Trick was especially entertaining down at the Baltimore docks, where he was able to fray, unravel, and then unknot even the thickest rope to release moored yachts. The boys loved watching yachtsmen in sport jackets and leather deck shoes toss their cocktails aside and dive into the water to swim after their receding boats.

And Roderick could work wonders with smaller
knots as well, which made him a great help around the house. When Uncle Jack’s back was so painful that he couldn’t bend over, Roderick untied his sneakers for him. Aunt Judith, a semi-professional knitter, relied on the cat’s help whenever a project snarled.

After Roderick disappeared, Allan and Edgar barely slept or ate.

Fortunately, just a few days after the disappearance, Aunt Judith got a phone call with the good news that Roderick had apparently wandered into a delivery truck and survived for days on leftover fast food that the driver had tossed carelessly into the back of the cab.

He was alive and well in Kansas.

What a relief!

Naturally, Aunt Judith offered to pay for Roderick’s return via airplane, but the man who had found him refused.

“What’s he want, a ransom?” Uncle Jack asked that night at dinner, when he heard the story. “Is he some kind of nut?”

“Not at all,” the boys answered. Aunt Judith already had filled them in on the details of her conversation. “He’s an animal lover.”

“Who is he?” their uncle asked, tucking his napkin into his shirt.

The boys tossed onto the table a brochure that the man had faxed a few hours before. “He’s the owner and operator of some kind of
Wizard of Oz
–themed amusement park in Kansas. It’s called the Dorothy Gale Farm and OZitorium,” said Allan. “It’s also his home.”

“He goes by the somewhat unoriginal name of Professor Marvel,” Edgar added.

“So he
is
a nutcase,” Uncle Jack remarked.

“No! He’s an animal lover!”

They explained that the professor believed it would be cruel to lock Roderick inside a small cage stowed in the dark belly of an airplane along with luggage and airmail and who-knew-what-else. And the boys agreed. It reminded them of another of their great-great-great-great granduncle’s stories, “The Premature Burial,” in which a poor soul suffers the horrors of believing he has been buried alive in a coffin. Their cat simply could not undergo such a fearful experience.

“But flying’s the best way to travel, boys,” Uncle Jack said as he forked a pile of spaghetti onto his plate. “For cats as well as humans.”

“Not for
our
cat,” Allan answered, stabbing his knife into the rubbery chicken parmesan that sat beside the spaghetti. “Imagine what it would feel like to be locked inside a little box, Uncle Jack. Have you no heart? Imagine being in a coffin, buried under six feet of cold, damp earth.”

“Nobody’s talking about burying your cat,” Uncle Jack replied evenly.

“But putting him in a pet carrier is like walling him into a stone tomb,” Edgar said as he picked all the mushrooms out of the sauce on his plate. “Imagine the darkness, the stale air, the frigid chill, the terror.”

“So what do you two propose we do?” With a sigh, Uncle Jack put down his fork and picked up the grainy black-and-white fax of the brochure for the Gale Farm and OZitorium. “You want to leave the poor animal with this crazy professor?”

“No,” the boys replied. “We want to drive there to pick him up, and then we’ll drive him home.”

“Drive?” Uncle Jack replied, dumbfounded. “That’s thirteen hundred miles away!”

“But Uncle Jack, please—”

“Are you two sure this isn’t an excuse to visit this weird amusement park?”

Edgar snatched up the fax and read aloud. “‘Visitors will discover on our grounds the actual home of Dorothy Gale, famous heroine of the beloved Oz story.’”

Aunt Judith narrowed her eyes. “How can it be the ‘actual’ home of Dorothy Gale when she was a fictional character?”

Edgar continued, “‘In addition, we offer a live musical production of
The Wizard of Oz
, performed daily.’” He tossed the brochure back onto the table. “Does that sound like someplace my brother and I would
ever
want to visit, Uncle Jack?”

“Actually, yes—it’s just the sort of place you two would find funny.”

“Just the sort of place where you could wreak havoc,” Aunt Judith added knowingly.

“Driving twenty-five hundred miles round trip is out of the question,” Uncle Jack declared. “And that’s final.”

“But Uncle Jack—”

Aunt Judith didn’t let them finish. “Can’t this discussion wait until tomorrow?” Her voice was uncharacteristically edgy.

“But Roderick—”

“The darned cat’ll keep!” Aunt Judith snapped.

Everyone turned toward her, surprised.

She slapped her palms on the table, making the dishes and water glasses jump. “Have you boys forgotten that the representative from the Baltimore School District is coming tomorrow morning to evaluate our home school? To evaluate
everything
?”

Actually, Allan and Edgar
had
forgotten it.

She collected herself. “Tomorrow’s too important for us to wear ourselves out arguing about Roderick.”

The twins settled back in their seats, their minds working fast:

A representative from the school district…

Evaluation…

Roderick Usher fifteen hundred miles away…

After a moment, identical grins spread across their faces. Suddenly, they weren’t worried about any of it—they had a plan.

At breakfast the next morning, the boys assured their nervous aunt that they would be models of good behavior for the school district representative.

It was no lie.

What they did
not
tell her was that in the wee hours
of the night they had snuck out of bed and into the attic. There, by flashlight, they had removed the painted flats and props from their Halloween dungeon, carried them down into the basement, and silently transformed Aunt Judith’s spic-and-span “classroom” into something else entirely.

“More pancakes?” Aunt Judith asked the boys, unaware of their handiwork.

Uncle Jack had already left for his morning walk.

“No thanks,” Edgar answered, taking a sip of his morning Darjeeling tea.

“You needn’t worry about us, Aunt Judith,” Allan added, pouring himself a glass of prune juice.

The boys took no pleasure in what they were about to do to her, but what choice did they have?