“I need to tell you something, Spark.” I stand up and follow him over to the water’s edge. “I didn’t mean to do it, I just—”
Spark flies by me, heading for another pile of rocks about thirty feet from where I stand. I get up and run after him, barely able to see his pin-width-size blue body around the edge of the mist. I dodge a branch, duck under the mist, and finally see what he’s doing: He’s stalking a group of mosquitoes, each one larger than the one I just smacked. Dinnertime. Just as he dives in for his feast, I smash my right foot against a pointy gray rock, kicking something that shatters. I tumble, hands outstretched, and end up pressing the heel of my right hand on something sharp. I yank my hand up, but my knee’s cut too—I seem to have kicked a bottle that broke. My fingers rake around the thick grass, picking up shards of the bottle as Spark returns, flitting around me.
“Ouch,” I say quietly. Spark zooms in front of my face, bobs up and down, then heads back to a rock and slurps up another mosquito. My hand is bleeding. Figures. “How to Make a Rotten Day Even Worse,” by Polly Peabody. I suck on my bloody wrist, blinking back tears as I brace my back with my left arm. Only my left hand touches something else in the grass, something that is smooth, not sharp. I lift it up in front of me, wiping the tears away with the back of my bleeding hand.
It’s a key. A long, bronze skeleton key, with a cut-out on the top. On the base there are words etched on the side:
WATER. NATURA NIHIL FIT IN FRUSTRA. +/-
I forget all about my hand as I realize that I’m holding a key that looks
exactly the same
as Aunt Edith’s key that opened Enid’s turret.
My mind is whirling—Aunt Edith’s key? Here under the cherry blossom tree? Spark darts in between me and the key.
“Did you know about this?”
I wait for Spark to spell, but he just bobs up and down, until he swoops over my shoulder and literally eats a mosquito in midair.
I stare back at the key. Water, I understand. But plus minus? And the words in Latin?
“Hey. Your mom told me to find you.” Basford pushes through the boughs of the tree. His eyes are drawn immediately to the mist. “Yowza.” Then he eyes me strangely, looking at my knees, my face.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing,” I say as I press my hand into my shirt, blotting the cut.
“Not that. Your leg.”
I look down and see blood gushing out of my knee.
“Aw, cheese and crackers,” I groan. “Here, hold this.” I hand him the key and stretch out my shirt, pressing the cloth into my knee. “I broke a bottle.”
Basford examines the key in front of his face as I soak up the blood on my leg. “I just found it,” I explain. “I’m going to Google the words as soon as I get inside.”
Basford’s eyes flicker toward me, a slight smile playing across his lips.
“You don’t have to Google it,” he says. “It’s Latin. I know Latin.” His cheeks flush red. “I mean, I know some Latin.”
“Well, what is it?” I ask him. “Tell me.”
“It means,” he speaks carefully. “ ‘ Nature does nothing in vain.’”
The words hit me square in the chest. “What?”
“ ‘ Nature does nothing in vain,’” he repeats as I feel my face turn white. Basford’s smile slips away.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “Polly?”
I hear him, but I can’t answer because I’m thinking about all my afternoon picnics with Grandmom, all my strolls around the White House, all our talks under this cherry tree.
Nature does nothing in vain, Polly. Make sure you remember that.
Grandmom’s words. On the key.
Someone’s trying to tell me something. I glance up, searching for Spark. There’s a million dragonflies in the mist, none of them paying any attention to me.
“I could be wrong,” Basford says. “I could have screwed up the translation.”
“No,” I tell him, hearing Grandmom say the words again in my head. “You’re absolutely right.”
SAME DAY, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2
Enid’s Necklace
I feel bad about ditching Basford, but I’m not ready to show him Enid’s turret. It isn’t because I don’t trust him, because the truth is, he’s the only kid my age who’s been nice to me in my entire life. It’s not even because he might freak out at the crazy things that go on in the turret, because I don’t think he would. It’s just that I have a feeling the turret is mine, only mine.
And Aunt Edith’s. Of course.
I’m trembling as I climb the stairs. Going up here makes me think of Aunt Edith. It also, unfortunately, makes me think of the crickets.
I force myself to focus on only one step after the other: Take out the key, put it in the lock, turn it slowly, hear the bolt slide out of place. I breathe fast, shallow breaths as I push open the heavy door, then jump back in the hallway quickly, in case any cricket decides to terrorize me. Nothing seems to move. I cautiously take a step, crossing over the threshold into the turret.
And
then
the Monster cricket rushes me, leaping up on my shoulder.
“Hey!”
Monster cricket jumps off, landing on a stack of dusty books. He waves his legs around like he’s swaying his arms to a funny song.
“Are you laughing at me?”
The cricket picks up his front leg to answer, but I’m suddenly distracted by the strand of ivy that comes off the walls. It weaves its way from the wall over to where I stand, and then forms an archway over my head. Then another strand detaches itself from the wall, doing the very same thing.
They’re creating my own pathway, my own personal, magical maze.
The light is soft, shining in wide arcs throughout the room. I cast my eyes around quickly as theories pass through my mind.
Did Spark bring me to the key? Did he want me to come here? Is this part of a plan? Am
I
part of their plan?
The maze pushes me through the room, passing by stacks of books and drawing me right around the curved wall where a big drawing of the farm hangs. The ivy moves just ahead of me, winding me slowly over toward the window. Finally, it stops at a round, dusty, tiled table.
The Monster cricket leaps onto it, startling me again.
“Aaaah!” I yell. “Please stop doing that!”
He extends his leg, pointing to a small black box lying dead center on the same table. I pick it up and glance back at the Monster cricket. He nods his big black head.
There’s a small card inside. In old-fashioned handwriting, it reads
For Enid
. I pull apart the white tissue paper, finding a long, gold roped necklace.
“It’s just like the one Aunt Edith wears. The one that holds her key.” The Monster cricket nods. “Is it for me?”
When I ask, about fifteen new crickets start to jump all over the place, joining with Monster, who hops to the highest book on the stack. Honestly: The crickets perform some kind of quasi-cheerleading routine, each of them perched on a different book at a different height. Then the ivy twirls around me, and more bugs—big, ugly stinkbugs—show up too, extending their front legs so that they form a circle. It’s like they’re playing ring-around-the-rosy. Kind of cute, and at the same time, incredibly gross.
The ivy spells out a word in its archway. Y E S. 4 U.
I take the key out of my pocket and thread the necklace through the keyhole at the top. When I look up, I have another visitor: Spark. He’s just flown in through the window.
“Hey!”
I dangle the necklace in front of him, but he’s not interested. He flits around the room, rushing over to the cricket. It seems like they have a full-blown conversation; Spark’s bobbing and weaving, Monster cricket is leaping and extending his long black leg.
Things are quite dire if my only option is to ask a stinkbug.
“What’s going on?” I ask the biggest one.
He doesn’t answer for a long time. And when he does, I’m pretty sure he gives me a stinkbug fart. Yuck.
Luckily, Spark flies back to me when he’s finished with Monster. He flits around the room quickly, in small little darting moves, always turning around to make sure I’m looking. I think he’s nervous.
“Do you want to tell me something?”
He bobs in the air.
“Wait,” I say. “I have to say something first.” I take a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to hurt Harry. I swear,
I swear
, I’m going to make him come back, I’ll do anything—”
I . . . K . . . N . . . O . . . W.
But he’s making it too easy. This is the first time I’m saying aloud what I’ve done, and I want to make sure it’s really clear how sorry I am.
“There’s one root left and it’s small, but I’ll water him every single day if I have to,” I continue.
Spark bobs up and down impatiently. He’s annoyed. So am I.
“What is it that’s so important?” I ask him.
W . . . A . . . T . . . C . . . H.
“I’m watching,” I tell him. He backflips away and begins to spell.
“Is than an S?”
He bobs up and down before he flies in a straight line up to the ceiling.
“I?”
Again, he bobs his answer. His next letter also seems to be a straight line. Up. To the right. He does it again. Up, to the—
“L?”
SIL?
Uh-oh. My smile stiffens.
“Spark? I hope it isn’t what I think I it is . . .“
He finishes, flying round and round in one perfect circle.
Silo.
I see our enormous black Silo in front of my eyes, like some kind of living, breathing monster. No way.
Spark hovers in front of my face, almost defiantly.The ivy stops moving, the stinkbugs drop their legs, and the cricket leaps to the table. They are all watching me.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Is this your way of getting back at me about Harry? Making me go to a place that’s
haunted
?” I stop, opening my eyes and sweeping around the room. “A place that’s full of
mutant slugs
?”
Spark zips around my head, ending by my right ear. He won’t give up. The other bugs stay silent, frozen, even the Monster cricket.
“I told you I was sorry about Harry. And I am. I’ve never done anything so awful to anyone. I’ll do anything I can to bring him back to life. But there’s no way. There’s just no way I’m going to the Silo. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
The ivy drops to the floor when it hears me refuse. I look over to the Monster cricket, who’s waving his long black leg.
Tsk, tsk, tsk
, he seems to say.
“No,” I say louder. “I’m sorry, but no.” I swallow hard, then trudge over to the door. “Thanks for the necklace.”
I slam the door shut and bolt it quickly, as if this would stop the bugs from following me—as if I have any real control over them.
When I get to my room, I put the necklace and key in my top drawer and sit by my window. I force myself to stare in the one direction I always avoid.
The Silo.
From my window, the Dark House looks like a capital letter
L
. The flat part is the shed where the Giant Rhubarb grows in barrels without any sunlight, and the tall part is the Silo. The Silo has been here forever, back when that Italian prince founded the farm. But the shed was built when Grandmom called up some scientists at Yale after she read about their work taking oxalic acid from rhubarb leaves and shooting it into the atmosphere. Dad said it was one of those classic Grandmom moments: She had an idea about something, called the right person, and bam! We were growing Giant Rhubarb for a lot of money and for the good of our worldwide community. Dad called it a “win-win” situation.
The Giant Rhubarb gets giant because of something called “forcing.” We dig the plants up from the field and plant each one of them in tin barrels, moving them into the shed for about six weeks. We water them while they’re in the shed, but we keep it completely dark: That’s why the shed and the Silo are painted black. Like all plants, rhubarb will literally grow themselves to death searching for the sun. All their energy is forced into the leaves, which is why they grow so big, and we’re able to extract so much of the acid that helps with the ozone.Then, after the six weeks, we take them out of the shed before they die and replant them in the ground. The whole thing is called the Transplanting—even though most people only know about the big party that happens on Halloween, the same day that we replant the plants into the field.
Dad insists that the shed isn’t a terrifying place, and that I’d realize this if I just let him show me around. But I can’t. My fear is rooted so far deep that I think it’s probably part of my bones. Some people are scared of black cats; others are scared of roller coasters. I’m scared of the Dark House.