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5
They spent an hour dragging in all their suitcases and boxes from the Honda up to the third floor. Grandfather untied Peter’s bike from the roof of the car and stowed it away in an old, wooden garage back behind the house. Peter looked around inside at the ancient Ford truck, the dust-covered tools on the walls, and the stacks of bug-eaten newspapers lying everywhere until Grandfather chased him out.
After that, the old man disappeared down a hallway on the first floor and Mom went to fix something to eat.
Dinner was not in the giant room Peter had seen by the main hall but at a cozy little table in the kitchen, which ran along the back of the house. Unfortunately, the food wasn’t very good: canned peas, canned sauerkraut, canned beets. Beth was having fun, though, smashing everything flat like pancakes and then licking it off her palms. Grandfather was nowhere to be seen.
Mom watched him scrape at his plate. “I’ll get better food tomorrow, Pete, when I go into town. It’s all I could find in the pantry.”
“Why isn’t he here to eat this stuff?” Peter grumbled.
Mom sighed. “That’s just Grandfather. He’s probably in his study, reading away.”
“Mom, this place is weird.”
She smiled sadly. “Yeah, I know. I’d forgotten a lot.”
“What’s in all the locked rooms?”
Shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You lived here all your life and you don’t know?”
“One thing you’ll find out, Peter, is that when your grandfather tells you not to do something, it’s best if you don’t even think about doing it.” She turned to Beth and forced a spoon into her fingers. “Honey, don’t eat with your hands.”
“What about the garden?”
Mom’s eyes got big. She acted scared but broke into a smile as she talked. “Ohhhh, don’t go in the garden! Whatever you do, don’t go in the garden.”
She stared off into the distance. “I think I was…five or six, maybe, and I went and picked some tomatoes for my mom? Put ‘em in my dress and held it out like this.”
Even though she was wearing jeans, Mom pantomimed holding out a dress by the corners to form a basket of sorts.
“When I brought the tomatoes in, my dad – Grandfather – he got so mad, he spanked me till I couldn’t sit down for hours. I cried and I cried…”
Mom snapped out of the daydream. Her face grew slightly angry, and she stabbed at her beets with a fork. “And I never went in that garden again.”
“Why aren’t we supposed to go in the garden?”
“I don’t know, Peter. Your grandfather said it doesn’t belong to us. He said not to go past the rose bushes, because none of it belongs to us, and they might think we’re trespassing.”
“Well, who does it belong to?”
Mom’s face clouded over a bit. “I’m not sure, but I think there’s a bunch of hobos who eat the food.”
“Hobos?”
Mom caught herself and smiled. “Homeless people, honey. I’m sorry, hobo isn’t the accepted word these days. But ‘hobo’ was what we called them back then…they used to ride the trains all around the country and live on the really poor side of life. I think Grandfather kept the garden for them, I’m not sure.”
“Did you see the hobos?”
Mom cocked her head, as though trying to remember. “Only once…it was night, and I saw somebody…or something in the garden. I didn’t go find out what it was because I was scared. But there’s no need to worry, I lived here eighteen years until I left for college and nobody ever bothered us. Hobos are harmless, kid. Just don’t go in the garden, and don’t make any problems with Grandfather, okay?”
Peter nodded. “Okay, Mom,” and he meant it.
Whatever it took to avoid Grandfather’s anger, that’s what Peter was going to do.
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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.
