OKAY, I ADMIT IT, the cockroach didn’t say anything.

Even in Australia cockroaches can’t talk. At least, I don’t think they can. There probably are talking cockroaches somewhere in Australia since they seem to have every other weird animal on the planet. Anyway, this cockroach didn’t. And if I’m being totally honest? There wasn’t even a cockroach.

But there should have been, because the inside of Uncle Grey’s house—our house, now, I supposed—was even more trashed than the outside. If there’d been a swarm of cockroaches, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

There was stuff everywhere.

Boxes of smelly books and papers were piled high in teetering stacks around the living room like a mountain range. There seemed to be about twice as much furniture as anyone would ever need and almost all of it was broken in some way: the padding leaking out of a split seam here, a quivering spring waiting for some unsuspecting butt there. Behind the couch was the giant stuffed bear, but you already know about that. There were a few more stuffed animals dotted around too—a moldy old crow, a weird-looking wombat, a giant moose head with its antlers painted bright green. I’m guessing Uncle Grey wasn’t exactly what you’d call an animal lover.

And then there were the paintings—hundreds of them—big ones, small ones, square ones, and tall ones. They were stacked and racked against the walls and furniture in rows six deep. Every inch of wall space was covered and it was clear that they were pretty much all painted by the same person.

“Ewww,” Georgia said, peering at one of the biggest, which hung at an angle above the dusty mantelpiece. “What is that supposed to be?”

“It’s not supposed to be anything,” I said. “It’s an abstract, just like Mom’s paintings.”

“It stinks,” Georgia said, before losing interest and wandering off toward what sounded like the kitchen.

I stared at the painting and suddenly forgot all about werewolves and broken furniture. The drumming of jackhammers from the freeway overhead faded away.

Looking at the painting was like staring into deep space. A thick swirl of blue paint on a darker blue background was crisscrossed and dotted all over with splashes and marks of yellow and green and lilac. Thin trickles of paint danced crazily across the canvas, as though a drunk mouse had fallen into a can of paint and then set off home, dragging its tail behind it. For all I knew, that was exactly what had happened. This thing was a complete and total Aussie mess, an explosion in a paint factory, a peek inside a fantastically mixed-up mind.

I loved it. Whoever had painted this was a genius. Georgia didn’t know her Picasso from her El Greco.

I dragged a footstool over and stood on it to straighten the painting. As I did, I noticed a signature scrawled in a corner: G. Khatchadorian, 10.11.1987.

Uncle Grey was the genius!