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4

 

If the house was crazy outside, it was double crazy inside. Maybe triple crazy.

 

The main hallway was three stories high. A giant wooden staircase angled up to the left until it reached the second floor, then sloped up to the right until it reached the third. Peter could imagine Dill having tons of fun sliding down the banister from the top floor all the way to the bottom – if the railing had curved around instead of jutting out at sharp angles. Peter pictured Dill tumbling off into space at the first hairpin turn and shuddered.

To the left there was a living room with antique furniture and stained glass lamps. A giant Arabic rug covered the polished hardwood floor, and a coffee table with a glass plate in the middle sat in the center of the room.

On the right side of the hallway was a cavernous dining hall with a table that looked like it could have served 30 people or more.

Under the stairwell was a door with an ancient lock, the kind in old movies that opened with skeleton keys. Peter gave it a glance and was about to walk on when his Grandfather clamped a hand on his shoulder again.

“We have some rules around here, boy. Number one is you are to NEVER ENTER THAT DOOR.”

Peter looked at it with new interest.

“You are never to try to open that door, you are never to play with that door, you are never to TOUCH that door. ON PAIN OF DEATH. Do I make myself clear?”

Peter stepped back. “Why?”

“And you are never to ASK ABOUT THAT DOOR.”

Peter looked from his Grandfather to the door and back again.

“Very well, moving on,” Grandfather muttered and started up the stairs. Peter followed.

“There are many, many rooms in this house,” Grandfather growled. “If a door is shut, DON’T OPEN IT. If a door is locked, DON’T BOTHER IT. There are plenty of open rooms for you to go in and destroy, which I know you will.”

They reached the second story. The hall stretched off a very long way in either direction, longer than Peter would have thought possible.

“Are we going down there to – ”

“No.”

Grandfather continued up the stairs.

As he reached the third story, Peter looked down at the hardwood floor thirty feet below. He got a little dizzy. Actually he got really dizzy, and had to look away until he was off the stairs and safely on the third floor.

Grandfather pointed to an open doorway as he walked by. “That is your mother’s.”

Peter peered in on a windowless room with a large canopy bed and paintings of bowls of fruit.

“Next to it is your sister’s.”

That room was windowless, too, and nothing Beth would want. The walls were dark purple, the furniture was straight out of George Washington’s time, and the only painting on the wall was of three women in white robes knitting a long piece of cloth. One of them held golden scissors over the thread, waiting to cut it.

Grandfather wasn’t so good with little girls, Peter was guessing.

“And this is yours.”

Whoa.

It was almost as big as his mother’s, with a large bed along the center wall and a writing desk and lamp in the corner. But the main thing was the giant window across the room, which poured sunlight onto the floor. Even better was a perch in front of the window, a pillow-lined ledge set two feet into the wall, perfect for sitting and watching on a rainy day.

Peter hopped up on it and looked outside. Beyond the glass panes were the branches of an enormous tree, just right for climbing. Peter had never snuck out in his life, but that tree was the perfect way to do it.

Not that he had the faintest inclination to try. In fact, when he looked at the ground over thirty feet below, he got woozy even thinking about it – just like on the stairwell – and had to look away again.

The view was amazing. Behind the house, a vast field stretched for a quarter mile until it just ended, as though it dropped off into the light blue sky.

There was Dill’s house off to the right, completely visible from front to back. The roof was missing shingles here and there, and generally looked as rundown from above as it did from the ground level, but the place had a backyard as big as a soccer field – and with next to nothing in it. A rusty metal swing set and concrete patio kept the weeds company before the overgrown grass gave way to miles and miles of forest.

Separating Grandfather’s property from the tiny house was the rickety fence where Peter had met Dill just moments before. Its sagging rails and leaning posts stretched down the meadow for hundreds of yards, then finally collapsed in a jumble of rotting logs beneath the overhanging tree branches.

Back in Grandfather’s yard, an untrimmed barrier of rose bushes lined the rear of the house. Even from this height, Peter could see the different colored blooms: red, pink, yellow, white, and a dozen variations.

Funny, Grandfather didn’t seem like the kind of guy to grow roses.

“I’m surprised Mom didn’t want this room for herself,” Peter mused.

“Everyone gets the rooms I assign them.”

“Why’d you give me the one with the window?”

“In case anything ever came through it, I figured you’d handle it best.”

Peter stared at his grandfather for a hint of a smile, any indication of a joke. There was none.

Okaaaaay…

Peter turned back to the window.

A hundred feet beyond the roses was what he guessed to be the garden Dill had mentioned. It was surprisingly large, almost as big as a football field, but overgrown and wild-looking, with a forest of green corn stalks standing guard over twisted mounds of vines. Here and there were bright green specks that could have been watermelons, he supposed.

“I guess the garden grew back,” Peter commented absentmindedly. Only after the words were out did he realize maybe that wasn’t the best subject to bring up.

“What did that little vandal tell you?” Grandfather snapped.

“Uhhhhh, he said there was an accident. But it looks like everything’s fine now,” Peter added with forced cheerfulness.

“Stay out of that garden, boy,” Grandfather commanded.

What a relief. Unhappy visions of himself toiling and sweating in the midday sun, picking peas and cucumbers, completely disappeared.

“Are you the only one who works out there?” Peter asked warily.

“No one works out there. It’s not our garden. Stay out of it.”

Peter looked back in confusion. Beyond the garden, the vast meadow was empty except for a jumble of stones that looked tiny in the distance.

“Is it Dill’s family’s?”

“It’s no one’s. Leave it alone, and DON’T GO INTO THAT GARDEN. And don’t go down to the ocean, either.”

“What?!” Peter gasped. “That’s the ocean down there?”

“At the edge of the meadow is a giant cliff,” Grandfather warned, “with a hundred foot drop to the rocks below. Stay away. And don’t get within ten feet of that blasted garden, do you hear me?”

Grandfather stomped out of the room.

Peter looked back out the window and down at the garden.

If it didn’t belong to anyone…then who had replanted it after Dill burned it down?

 

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PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) consists of four stories and is available for the Kindle, the Nook, and on Smashwords.com.

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All material is copyrighted 2007-2011 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.