One does not simply go, unaccompanied, looking for the entrance to the attic of a haunted house.
That was a rule to live by, but unfortunately, it was not one I’d thought about before running upstairs after Bahar.
Attics are like the brains of haunted houses.
I didn’t wait to ask if Brenden was coming with me, and I couldn’t see or hear Bahar. But when I got up to the third floor of the Purdy House,75 there were two of those super-creepy pull-down attic ladders at opposite ends of the upper hallway, both of them opened, and they were pointing in opposite directions as though the house had two separate attics.
Two brains.
And I naturally chose the wrong one.
I climbed up.
The room that I reached was very small and very dark. There was no window and no light switch, either. From what little bit of light was coming up through the trapdoor, I could see that along one wall there were shelves cluttered with jars and small boxes, as well as a few pieces that must have been Mr. Blank’s “works in progress.” Another wall seemed to be the house’s main electrical panel, with switches labeled KITCHEN, LIVING ROOM, BASEMENT, and so on.
But it only took me about a second to realize two things: first, this was not where Boris and Bahar were; and second, what the (excuse me) heck was I doing inside such a small, dark, windowless room?
I took a deep breath and turned back toward the trapdoor ladder I’d climbed to get there, but I must have grabbed on to the mechanism that releases the catch, because in just a matter of seconds, the ladder retracted and folded upward, closing me inside.
So there I was, all alone in the dark.
And then not alone anymore.
“If attics are the brains of a haunted house, then basements are the bellies!”
A light came on, and I found myself once again face-to-face with an armadillo named Bartleby. Also, I was apparently somewhere else inside the Purdy House, which was not a comforting thought. But I knew I had been there before, and it was all teasing at me, whispering—like a dream that you just can’t recall, but you still can somehow sense that it’s hiding there, tickling away at your thoughts.
Then it all came rushing back to me, a memory from when I was four years old and trapped in the hole that would forever come to be known as “Sam’s Well”—the broken chair; the woodstove with the hanging and disconnected chimney pipe (which probably explained where Bahar’s bats had come from); the playing cards and chest of drawers with the pennies and buttons in it; the twisted, witch-hair-like roots tangling down through the impossibly dark ceiling overhead.
I was back inside Ethan Pixler’s secret hideout—the belly of the Purdy House.
“Ah! Remember, Sam? This is where it all began!” Bartleby said, and when he said “all began,” he made a graceful rainbow in the air over his head with his stubby front armadillo arms, like a bloom opening up.
“Where what all began?” I asked.
Bartleby squinted and pointed his snout to the left, then to the right, and then just for good measure back to the left again. “You know—you and me. Our journey through life together, Sam!”
“Oh. That,” I said. “And how did I get here? The last thing I remember is that I was up in an attic in the dark. How did I end up down in this place?”
“Ha ha! Don’t you remember? You fell down a hole when you were just about the size of a potato bug!” Bartleby laughed and slapped what would be his knee if armadillos had such things as knees.
Most of the time, Bartleby could be absolutely infuriating. And the rest of the time, he was merely annoying.
“I’m just kidding!” he said. “You followed me here through the secret passageway. No respectable haunted house could ever be built without lots and lots of secret passageways! And it was a lucky thing you needed me too, because I’d never have thought my old pal Ishmael would still be around here, just hanging out—and with a lightbulb sticking out of his noggin to boot! Ha ha! So, thanks for pointing him out to me! And, if I might add, I’m sure the only things that come out of my head are brilliant ideas, as opposed to lightbulbs! Ha ha! Brilliant! Like a light! Get it, Sam?”
Ugh.
Ishmael. The more-than-a-century-old lamp-raccoon with the bald leg.
And of course he’d be a friend of Bartleby’s.
Bartleby had mentioned the name Ishmael that day I went to the Uniontown Mall, when Mom had wanted to make me try on all those school clothes.
For so many years, I’d always assumed that Bartleby was just a dream I’d have—something that popped into my head when I had claustrophobia, and then disappeared again once the claustrophobia was over. But there was something else about Bartleby that just had to be real.
“You really are real, aren’t you?” I said.
Bartleby scratched at the whiskers under his armadillo chin. “Is that really a real question?” he asked. Then he laughed. “Ha ha! Brilliant! You want to know how I can really prove I’m really real?”
But the last time Bartleby had tricked me into allowing him to prove he was real, he’d (excuse me) pooped on my foot, and I wasn’t about to fall for that again.
“Um. No, thanks,” I said. “I believe you.”
“Oh. Well, that’s nice, Sam. Because I’ve always believed in you,” Bartleby said, and if armadillos could have a hurt look in their eyes, Bartleby had one at just that moment.
I felt bad for hurting his feelings. After all, Bartleby had always been there whenever I’d needed him, even if at times I hadn’t thought I did. Even if up until tonight, I’d never really believed in him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was mean of me.”
“So. Does that mean you want me to prove it?” Bartleby grinned a sharp-toothed armadillo grin.
“No.”
“Well, if you’re finally giving up on disbelieving what is the honest truth, Sam, then you should probably know that we need to get back to the attic before that Brenden kid calls the police, which—trust me—he is about to do.”
It really was turning out to be just like what had happened to my dad, James’s mother,76 and Oscar Padilla, and I desperately did not want to end up being taken to jail like Dad was.
“So!” Bartleby said. “To the secret tunnel!”
And when Bartleby said “secret tunnel,” his eyes widened to the size of shiny black quarters.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
I was confused, and a little bit scared that this was some kind of final good-bye from Bartleby, and nobody likes good-byes. Nobody.
All these good-byes.
“I thought you needed to tell me something, or something,” I said.
Bartleby snickered. “Ha ha! Something, or something, or something really real. Ha ha, Sam! You know all the best words!”
Then came the sound of a distant knocking, and I heard Brenden Saltarello somewhere in the house calling, “Sam! Sam!”
He must have been knocking on the attic door, way up above us.
“Come on, Sam! Follow me!” Bartleby waved me toward the tiny doorway in the dirt floor—the same one where Oscar Padilla had gotten stuck that night he’d taken the dare and stayed here with my dad and Linda Swineshead in the Purdy House.
Bartleby ducked inside his secret passageway, and then paused for a moment before turning around to look at me. Upstairs, Brenden knocked and knocked, bats flew in a permanent circular holding pattern, Bahar was probably cleaning up pork and beans from the bathtub, and stuffed animals moved around when no one was watching them.
Bartleby said, “I will tell you this, though, and I swear on Ethan Pixler’s coffin that it’s the truth—that I believe you’re going to do just great at the new school, Sam! Think about it. It’s everything you’ve always wanted! And I believe you’re going to make lots and lots of friends there, so stop being so scared and get over it. It’s time to be brilliant, Sam! And I believe you have a crush on your friend Bahar too, and you should stop being scared of that.”
I protested, “I do NOT—”
But Bartleby cut me off with a raised (and dirty) armadillo claw in a gesture of, Hold it right there, pal.
He said, “But it doesn’t matter at all what I believe, Sam, because all of that—everything—is up to you, and what you believe in.”
Everything went completely black. Then slashes of light broke a rectangle in the floor. I was back inside the little attic room with all the labeled electrical switches on the wall, and Brenden Saltarello was coming into the attic to look for me.
Brilliant.
75. The same floor where we had seen little Boris standing at the window wearing a nightshirt in the photograph that Karim had taken just a few days ago, which now seemed like years ago.
76. And I still could not get over the fact that they were boyfriend and girlfriend when they were teenagers.