WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THE MONSTER PEOPLE
How could anyone possibly know the extent to which the balance of the universe might have tipped off kilter now that actual (probably) living people had taken residence in the Purdy House?
We watched the movers until they finished and left, but nobody else ever showed up outside. No welcoming committee; no housewarming gifts caravanned by cousins or other distant relatives. And nobody appeared on the other side of the very creepy windows either. It was almost as though the three non-Wormack people in the photograph Karim had taken had simply vaporized into the darkness inside the old house.
Like ghosts.
On the other hand, I thought this was almost like a Princess Snugglewarm adventure. She’d never be afraid of the Purdy House, no matter what horrible things it kept hidden inside.
In the early afternoon, the three of us walked down Pike Street, past my family’s miniature golf course and Colonel Jenkins’s Diner, as we made our way through the bustling center of town16 toward whatever lean summer pickings might be available from the Blue Creek Public Library.
“We probably would have been better off just going up to the door, knocking on it, and welcoming the new people to Blue Creek. Maybe Sam could cook them a casserole or something,” Bahar said.
“We already thought of that,” I said. “Too scary. No one has ever been inside the Purdy Gates for as long as anyone can remember. And these days nobody likes casseroles, anyway.”
“I bet you could make a great one,” Bahar said.
Naturally, I had to agree with her. And I was already thinking up recipes I might try for a Michelin-star17 welcome-to-the-neighborhood casserole, except for the whole terrifying haunted house thing. Red flannel hash with beets, fennel, and corned beef sounded like something I would do if it didn’t involve stepping foot past those gates with the NO TRESPASSING signs.
And just when we turned the corner from Pike to Central and stood before the glass-and-cinder-block facade of the library, Karim stopped suddenly and said, “What if they’re vampires? That’s why they never came out after sunrise. That’s why they didn’t even look out the windows all day long.”
Karim, who apparently was a scholar on vampirism, had a look of pride on his face, like he was the only kid in a classroom of dunces who knew the answer to the teacher’s question about percentages or the prime meridian or something.
I was impressed by his detective skills, and instinctively felt my hand rubbing the side of my neck, because what if they were vampires?
Bahar nodded thoughtfully, even though there was no way I would ever believe that sensible and reasonable Bahar would entertain the possibility of our new neighbors being undead soulless bloodsuckers.
Also, I would have been really scared now if it wasn’t daytime, and if my friends weren’t there so that we could nervously discount every ridiculous theory and then laugh about it.
Karim took his phone out of his pocket and began typing something into it.
He said, “I’m keeping a list of everything we find out about those people.”
And when Karim said “those people,” he made it sound like he was talking about bloodthirsty man-eating monsters.
Karim’s list looked like this:
What Everyone Needs to Know about the Monster People:
Have not been seen in daylight. May be vampires.
And Bahar added, “You should also put down that they have an ugly lamp made out of a stuffed raccoon.”
She was right. I’d seen the movers carrying that lamp into the house earlier.
Karim said, “How do you spell ‘raccoon’?”
So Karim’s amended list looked like this:
What Everyone Needs to Know about the Monster People:
We split up once we were inside the library. Bahar went to the Special Collections Desk to search through the entire bound set of Blue Creek’s weekly local newspaper, the Hill Country Yodeler. Karim browsed the nonfiction section, looking through books that offered mostly true accounts of haunted houses, taxidermy, and supernatural activities. And I resisted my urge to look through the Culinary Arts section,18 because about thirty seconds after we’d gotten inside the library, my attention was kidnapped by the huge wall display near the Teen Zone, featuring the brand-new Princess Snugglewarm graphic novel, which was called Princess Snugglewarm versus the Charm School Dropouts.
I’d had no idea there was a new Princess Snugglewarm book.
“I had no idea!” my mouth said, involuntarily, and also a little too loud for a library.
“Isn’t that cool, Sam? We just got it in on Tuesday!” I felt a hand on my shoulder. The hand was attached to the arm and the rest of the body of Trey Hoskins, the librarian in charge of the Teen Zone, the guy who’d just asked me if I thought Princess Snugglewarm was cool, which, Duh!, yes.
Karim, Bahar, and I hung out in the Teen Zone of the library at least twice a week during the summer. There were always fun things to do there, like video game tournaments, or stitching franken-creatures from cut-up parts of discarded plush toys and plastic dolls. There was a bulletin board where people put up notices for part-time work for teens, and a space where kids could post their own résumés if they were looking for jobs. Michael Dolgoff, a kid who went to school with us whose dad ran a business called Fat Mike’s Worm Farm, had a colorful flyer up in which he advertised himself as a “bait wrangler,” whatever that was. There were pictures of worms and katydids on the ad, and a pale, shirtless Michael Dolgoff standing knee-deep in Blue Creek, holding up a crayfish in each hand. Naturally, I had my own flyer there, advertising catering and fine dining services.
Trey Hoskins was probably the coolest non-kid in Blue Creek. Grown-ups often scowled at him because he looked like he was about sixteen years old, even though he had graduated from librarian college and everything. He had a high level of tolerance for noise (which is probably something all teen librarians need to have), he insisted that all the kids in Blue Creek call him by his first name,19 and he knew about and read EVERY SINGLE THING that had ever been shelved in the Teen Zone, which, of course, included the Princess Snugglewarm graphic novels. Also, Trey liked to make his hair all kinds of crazy colors. This week, it was a brilliant turquoise.
And I suddenly found myself feeling sad when I realized that I was going to have to say good-bye to the library, the Teen Zone, and to Trey.
“I literally had no idea there was a new one,” I kind-of repeated, my eyes wide.
“Yeah. And it’s the best one so far! I don’t know how anyone can make a murderous unicorn so nice and heroic,” Trey said.
“Can I check it out?” I asked.
Trey bit the inside of his lip. “Well, I wasn’t going to let any of them go out until after Saturday. The author is coming on Saturday, and we wanted to be able to get all the library copies signed by him.”
“A. C. Messer is coming here? To Blue Creek?”
Trey laughed and pointed his pale and spidery librarian finger at the flyer tacked to the Princess Snugglewarm wall. The flyer confirmed that A. C. Messer, the deranged visionary behind all things Princess Snugglewarm, would be visiting Blue Creek Public Library this coming weekend. I was so excited, I wanted to run through every aisle until I found Karim and Bahar to tell them the thrilling news.
Except neither Karim nor Bahar liked Princess Snugglewarm comics at all.
“Why?” I asked.
Nobody ever came to Blue Creek unless they had to.
A. C. Messer was a hero of mine. He should have been a hero to all kids everywhere. He’d published the first Princess Snugglewarm graphic novel when he was just fifteen years old. The only thing that could make him more heroic would be if he was also a chef, but nothing I’d ever read about him had had anything to do with cooking at all.
“I’ll tell you what, Sam. I’ll check a copy of Charm School Dropouts out to you because I know you’re a fast reader,” Trey said. “But I’m counting on you, and you have to swear to return it by Saturday morning, before our visit from the author.”
“Excuse me, but I never swear, Trey. However, I will promise to bring it back on time, and stay for the visit, too. Thank you so much!”
It was only Sunday, which gave me nearly a week to read the book and still manage to find a way to put off what I was supposed to be doing for my new school.
And as soon as I had the book in my hands, I wanted to sit down and start reading immediately.
It was almost as though every thought I’d had about the Purdy House, Little Charlie, who had eaten who, monsters, ghosts and vampires, unsweetened iced tea with Bahar, James Jenkins wanting to drop out of his dance program, and moving away from home had been permanently wiped from my mind.
Except, the spiders started doing laps in my belly again.
16. That’s a joke, unless you’re measuring the excitement level of grasshoppers and cicadas.
17. Michelin stars are generally accepted to be the top award a chef can receive. I figured that, in my case, it was only a matter of time.
18. I already knew they didn’t have anything contemporary there, and I refused to even look at books like 101 Delicious Ring Mold Dinner Recipes.
19. This constantly angered Mrs. Barshaw, the librarian who ran the front desk.