The Unseen (13 page)

“Hey, Ratchet,” she was whispering as she moved forward—but then it was gone. Nothing remained above the cabinet but a ray of dusty light. Several seconds went by as Xandra moved back to stand beside the white bird's nest and go on waiting and watching, but nothing more happened. At least nothing she could be sure of. There was an exciting moment or two when she thought she heard what sounded like the tiny, pitifully helpless cry of a very young kitten, and a little later she was able to get the slightest whiff of a smell that was vaguely reminiscent of Stinky's distinctive aroma.

The sights and sounds and smells were all uncertain but at that moment there was, for Xandra, one feeling that was becoming more and more certain. And the feeling was that something—or perhaps many somethings—was all around her. Many friendly creatures were very close by, even though she wasn't quite able to see and hear and touch them. Not able, at least, to see them the way she might if only …

Suddenly she pulled the string that held the feather up over her head, and grasping it in both hands, she held it high. And for a long moment she considered doing more. She felt sure she could do it. She could remember exactly the way Belinda had shown her to move her hands and then …

And then she stopped, as other memories began to
arise—distinct, vivid memories of all the terrible shapes and sounds, and the piercing, stabbing pain. And although she tried not to, she found herself recalling how the grandfather had said that no one had the use of a Key for very long, and that it was possible to be lost in the Unseen.

Shuddering, she hung the feather back around her neck and made her way past the furnace and then very quickly through the storage area and out into the morning daylight. Stopping briefly just outside the door, she turned to look back into the huge cluttered area that was the basement of the Hobson Habitat, and made a new promise. A promise this time to the friendly creatures of the Unseen that she was not leaving for good and always. That she would find a way to come back and see them again.

She would come back, she promised. However, there was, of course, only one way she could ever go back into her basement hideout and use the Key again—and that was for Belinda to come with her. Belinda had by now undoubtedly learned a great deal more from her wizard grandfather about all the things that might happen. Had even learned, perhaps, how the evil monsters could be held back and controlled.

That would be particularly interesting: if the evil creatures of the Unseen with their huge gaping mouths and glittering teeth could be clearly seen as they slunk around the edges of the storage room, but at the same time kept at a safe distance.

So the next step would be getting Belinda to talk to her again and make plans about what could be done and when it could happen. And when Monday morning finally arrived, Xandra was prepared to do exactly that.

She knew it wasn't going to be easy. Not easy, even though she no longer cared about not being seen talking to Belinda. As far as Xandra was concerned a meeting anywhere and anytime was fine. Early in the morning, perhaps, while everyone was arriving at school, or in the cafeteria at lunchtime or else in the classroom before Mr. Fernandez's arrival. Xandra was willing to approach Belinda in any of those places, and so she did. But the hard part turned out to be getting Belinda to answer important questions, or in fact to say anything at all except what she whispered over and over: “You mustn't use it anymore. Not ever anymore.”

Standing beside Belinda's desk before the last bell rang, Xandra finally demanded angrily, “But why not? You said it would be all right after you found out more about how it works.” But Belinda only bent her head over her language arts book and pretended to be reading. Xandra wanted to grab a handful of her long straggly hair and pull it hard, or else to push her book off the desk—wanted to, but didn't do it. But she was still in a yanking, pushing mood as she made her way back to her own desk On the way Marcie,
the
Marcie of Marcie's Mob herself, grabbed Xandra's arm and whispered, “What did she say? Did she say anything about me?” But Xandra only jerked her arm away and stomped on down the aisle.

That same day, late in the afternoon, Xandra paid an unplanned visit to the basement. It happened in a startling and entirely unexpected way. Xandra was just arriving home from school, walking down the driveway, when she heard something—a clattering, thumping noise that seemed to be coming from just around the corner, where
the driveway curved into the garage. As she stopped to listen, there was a louder thump and then a high-pitched wail. A familiar high-pitched wail. When Xandra rounded the corner at a run, there she was: the little family favorite, lying on her stomach across a beat-up old skateboard, yelling her head off. Even after Xandra lifted her off the skateboard and sat her down, she went on yelling for a minute before she suddenly wiped her long-lashed doll-baby eyes with the palms of both hands, sniffed, smiled and said, “Hi, Xandra.”

“Hi,” Xandra said without smiling back. “Are you hurt?”

Still sniffing, Gussie examined her left knee and then her right elbow, both of which looked a little banged up but not much more than normal. “I guess not,” she said. “I thought I was.”

“Yeah, it sounded like it,” Xandra said. She was about to ask, “When did you take up skateboarding?” when something familiar about the beat-up old skateboard made her change it to “Where did you get that thing?”

Gussie's tear-shiny face lit up like neon. “In the basement,” she said. “I found a lot of good stuff down there. Like skateboards and scooters and all kinds of things like that.”

Xandra stared in amazed alarm. “When?” she finally managed to ask. “When did you go in the basement? I mean, do you go in there a lot?”

Gussie thought for a moment before she said, “Oh yes. A lot. But not until today. Before today I peeked in some but it was too spooky. But today I went right on down the steps and I found all sorts of things to play with.” Gussie's
smile showed the space where one of her baby teeth had fallen out. “Did you know about all those things in the basement? Like this skateboard, and there's a scooter that's just a little bit broken and—”

“Yes, I know about it,” Xandra interrupted. “It's just a lot of junk that nobody wants anymore.”

“That nobody wants anymore?” It was Gussie's turn to sound amazed. After she'd thought for a minute, she went on, “Then why don't they give it to someone who does?”

Xandra tried a sarcastic smile, which of course Gussie didn't get. “Good question,” she said. “I guess they think they might want it again someday.” A sudden thought occurred to her. “Hey, where's Clara? Does Clara know where you are and what you're doing?”

Gussie's smile was a little bit sheepish. “Clara's taking a nap,” she said.

“A nap?” Xandra looked at her watch.

Gussie was smiling again. “Not an on-purpose nap. Just a rocking chair one.”

“Oh, I get it,” Xandra said. “So Clara went to sleep and you skipped out. Well, I think you'd better get back in there before she wakes up and starts having a fit. Come on.”

“No.” Gussie tried to pull the skateboard out of Xandra's hands. “First I have to put this back where I got it.”

But when Xandra said, “No, I'll do it,” Gussie began to wail and say she had to do it herself. “I have to,” she gulped. “I promised I would.”

“You promised? Who'd you promise? What are you talking about?”

“I promised all the others. I promised all the rest of those things in there.”

Shaken speechless by a sudden suspicion, Xandra stared and gasped before she grabbed Gussie by one of her skinny little arms and gave her a shake. “What kind of things did you see in the basement? What did they look like? Did they bite you?”

Gussie stared wide-eyed for a moment before she jumped up and ran.

X
ANDRA WAS HALFWAY
up the stairs to the back door when she slowed down, stopped and gave up. Gave up trying to catch Gussie before somebody like Clara, or Geraldine, or one of the siblings appeared and wanted to know what was going on. Collapsing on the back steps, Xandra sat there imagining what the conversation might be like. Imagining what the rest of them might say if Gussie started blubbering about monsters with big teeth who lived in the basement. At last Xandra shrugged, sighed, went back to pick up the skateboard and headed for the basement door.

She was almost there, in fact reaching out for the latch, before she stopped to ask herself why. Why was she going into the basement? Well, she answered her own question, to take the skateboard back where it belonged so that …
A good reason would be …Yes, so that Gussie wouldn't get in trouble from whichever sibling it belonged to when they found it lying in the driveway. That was a perfectly respectable reason. But the other reason, the one that she was just on the edge of owning up to, was to find out who, or what, it was that Gussie had been talking to when she'd promised to bring the skateboard back.

She'd gotten about that far in her thinking and had started cautiously down the dimly lit flight of stairs, glancing nervously from side to side with every step when, without any warning at all, something grabbed her by the back of her shirt. Only halfway stifling a scream and dropping the skate-board, which clattered noisily on down the steps, Xandra whirled around to find herself face to face with … Gussie. Gussie was screaming too. Staring at Xandra with wide, unblinking eyes, Gussie shrieked loud enough to wake the dead. And went on screaming while Xandra's fright turned to quick relief and, then to exasperation. “Shut up, you little creep,” she commanded. “Why are you yelling?”

Gussie's terror-stricken expression quickly changed to a wobbly smile. “Because you were. Why'd you do that?”

“Never mind that,” Xandra said. “What are you doing back here? I thought you were looking for Clara.”

Gussie nodded. “I was. But I didn't see her, so I decided to come and show you where it goes.”

“Where what goes?” Xandra demanded.

“The skateboard.” Gussie went down the steps, picked up the board and made her way down one of the narrow pathways to where a bunch of skis, scooters and other skateboards leaned against a far wall. “See?” she called
back over her shoulder. “Here's where it lives. Right next to all its friends.”

Xandra was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that Gussie's promise to bring the skateboard back hadn't been made to a mysterious creature after all. At least not to the kind Xandra had in mind.

“Okay,” she said. “When you said you promised to bring it back, what did you mean? Who did you promise?”

On her way back to the stairs Gussie stopped long enough to consider Xandra's question before she nodded. “I promised its friends I'd bring it right back so they wouldn't feel bad because they didn't get to go too.”

“Friends?” Xandra asked.

“Its friends.” Gussie pointed. “The other skateboards and the scooter and …”

Throwing up her hands in disgust, Xandra said, “Okay, okay, I get it.” She did get it and she was about to use a bunch of words like “stupid” and “ridiculous” until something made her remember that Gussie wasn't the only one who sometimes talked to inanimate objects. Objects like stuffed toy animals, for instance, who, you had to admit, weren't much better conversationalists than skateboards and scooters.

At the top of the steps Gussie turned to take a last long look behind her. “There sure is a lot of stuff in here.”

Xandra pulled her out of the way and shut and latched the door. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “A lot of stuff. And you think we ought to …” She was about to repeat what Gussie had said about giving it away when a sudden idea interrupted her train of thought—an idea that just might
be a useful topic of conversation the next time she tried to get Belinda to talk to her.

Xandra was tucking that idea away for future use when Gussie asked another question. One that needed a more immediate answer. They were inside the house by then, halfway down the back hall, when Gussie stopped and asked, “Is there something in the basement that bites? Why did you ask if something bit me?”

The first idea that flitted through Xandra's mind was
rats
. She could tell Gussie that there were big rats in the basement and that rats sometimes bit people. That might even scare her enough to keep her out of what had always been Xandra's very private territory. But something, perhaps Gussie's wide-eyed stare, made Xandra decide against the rat story. Instead what she said was the truth, or at least part of it. “I don't know for sure. It's just that once when I was in the basement, I had this feeling something was biting me. I wasn't sure what it was because I didn't quite see it, but I really thought something was biting me.”

“Oh.” Gussie nodded. “Like a mosquito, maybe?”

Gritting her teeth to keep from yelling, “No. Not anything like a mosquito,” Xandra took a deep breath before she grated out, “Yeah, something like that, I guess.”

Anyway it worked. At least Gussie stopped asking questions and when Clara came down the hall looking worried and half-asleep, nobody mentioned the basement or skate-boards or even vacuum cleaners. But vacuum cleaners were still very much on Xandra's mind the next morning when Belinda got off the bus in front of the school.