For Those Who Came In Late: Billy and Marisa continue their search for the ten Story Plagues that a mysterious stranger has unleashed upon Alliance. After removing Robin Hood, Little John and his Merry Men from Memorial Park, they set off in search of their next challenge.
***
The rainstorm struck suddenly.
One minute, Marisa and I had been riding our bikes west on State Street, with Memorial Park and the memories of Robin Hood and his Merry Men at our backs. The next minute, we were hiding under the branches of a large tree on Seneca Avenue as buckets of rain came down.
“Weird!” I shouted over the downpour. “There wasn’t a cloud in the sky a second ago!”
“That’s what worries me,” Marisa shouted back. “This might be part of the next Story Plague!”
I tried to recall stories that had anything to do with rain. I could think of only one, but since there wasn’t an ark or pairs of animals nearby, I decided I was wrong. I’d been wrong about a lot of things, I realized, and it was time to apologize.
“Marisa,” I said, moving closer so I didn’t have to shout, “that was a pretty good stunt, diving into the stream and yanking Robin’s ankle.”
She wasn’t used to receiving compliments from me. “Uh, thanks,” she said.
“No, really. You know a lot about stories and stuff. How’d you get to be so smart?”
She shrugged. “Billy, you’re great at baseball, right?”
I nodded. I had made the Hot Stove All-Star Team two years straight, and I was the homerun leader so far this season.
“Well,” she continued, “how’d you get to be so good at that?”
I laughed. “I love baseball! I play all the time!”
“That’s how I feel about reading. So I do it a lot.”
I paused. It had never occurred to me that somebody could love to read. But I had to admit that the stories we were experiencing were exciting, and I was curious about what happened to Ichabod Crane, Tom Sawyer, Alice in Wonderland, and Robin Hood. Maybe there was something to this reading thing.
Just then, a bolt of lightning flashed behind us, followed by a crack of thunder. We turned to see where it had struck, and that’s when we saw the house.
It was more like a mansion, really. The huge walls were painted black, with two large windows staring out like eyes from the second floor. It was surrounded with a thick fog, and I could just barely see a small crack that ran from the top to the bottom of the house. A row of hedges and a small stream circled the property, reflecting the house in the dark water. I’ve lived in Alliance all my life, and I knew that house didn’t belong there.
“See that crack in the foundation?” Marisa asked. “This is the House of Usher, from the story by Edgar Allan Poe. Come on!”
I grabbed her arm. “We’re not going in there, are we?”
She nodded. “We have to cure each of the Story Plagues, and this one’s next.”
Marisa was right, but I didn’t like the idea of going inside that creepy place. As we walked toward the mansion, another flash of lightning revealed a black cat sitting on the front porch. Marisa knelt down to pet it, and it purred loudly while rubbing against her leg.
“Look here, Billy,” she said. The cat was missing one eye, and had a spot of white on its breast. “He’s the animal from another Poe story, The Black Cat. His name’s Pluto.”
As we petted the cat, the front door of the home opened, and a tall man dressed in black stepped onto the porch. He was wringing his hands nervously. “Welcome, welcome, please come in.”
At first I thought he was talking to Marisa and me, but he looked past us, down the sidewalk. Three men, dressed in old-fashioned police uniforms, were approaching.
“Sorry to bother you, sir,” said one of the officers, tipping his hat. “A neighbor reported hearing screams coming from your place, and we need to investigate.”
“Certainly,” the nervous man said. “I had a nightmare while taking a nap, and I woke up screaming. You’re welcome to come in, gentlemen.”
The three officers climbed the steps and went inside, followed by the nervous man, who gave us a suspicious look as he closed the door.
Just then, a large black bird flew from one of the bushes and landed above the door. It flapped its wings, then settled down on the mantle.
“Nevermore,” the bird croaked.
“D-Did that bird just talk?” I asked. It had been a strange afternoon, what with the magic book, the Headless Horseman and the Mad Hatter, but this was downright creepy.
“Yes. It’s a raven, from Poe’s poem,” answered Marisa. “My teacher made us memorize the first stanza last year.”
“But what’s it doing here, in The House of Usher?”
“I don’t know. These stories all mixed together. I don’t know what to do next!”
“Well, I hate to say it, but we need to go inside.” I sounded braver than I felt. We climbed the steps and turned the doorknob. The door swung open silently, and we entered. Pluto had jumped into my arms, and I hugged him tightly.
Upstairs, we heard footsteps and the nervous man’s voice. “Please, have a seat, officers. Nothing to hide here,” he said.
Marisa whispered, “He’s lying. He did something terrible and hid the evidence in that room, like in The Tell- Tale Heart. He’s crazy!”
Before I could respond, a loud scream echoed through the house!
“It came from down here,” I cried, running for the basement door. I thought the scream would bring the police, but they were still chatting with the man on the second floor. Apparently, the characters from the different stories couldn’t speak or hear one another.
We ran down the steps into a basement that was far too large to be a part of the house above. Actually, it looked more like a dungeon, with torches set into the walls and a cold stone floor. Pluto twisted fearfully in my arms, but I held onto him.
In the center of the dungeon, we saw a man tied to a table. Above him, swinging nearer and nearer to his chest, was a huge steel pendulum, just like the one that swings back and forth in a grandfather clock. Only this pendulum was larger and heavier, and I could see that its end was razor sharp.
“The Pit and the Pendulum!” Marisa cried. “That man is being tortured by the Inquisition.” We’d stepped into another Poe story. I handed her the cat and rushed to the poor victim, dodging the end of the pendulum as it arced above.
“Watch the walls, Billy!” Marisa cried. I didn’t know what she meant until I’d untied the man. Instantly the pendulum stopped swinging. I heard a grinding sound. The walls were beginning to close in on all sides!
The man and ran for the basement steps, with Marisa and Pluto ahead of us. We reached the top just as the walls below smashed together, grinding the table and the pendulum into splinters.
“We did it!” I said, taking Pluto back from Marisa. “We’ve solved another Story Plague!” Laughing madly, the tortured man ran out the door. I waited for the house to disappear, but it didn’t. Pluto hissed and squirmed out of my arms.
“Hey, come back here!” I cried.
“No, let him go!” said Marisa. “I bet he’ll lead us to the plague we need to cure!”
The cat ran up the steps to the second floor with Marisa and me in close pursuit. At the top of the stairs he darted into a bedroom, where the three officers and the nervous man sat, talking politely.
Pluto ducked under the nervous man’s chair and began to meow loudly, hissing and rolling over the hardwood floor. The officers stood. One of them reached down and tugged on a loose floorboard. As he did, the nervous man stuck his fingers into his ears and began to scream, “I did it! I confess! I confess!”
I tried to peek beneath the floorboard, but Marisa pulled me away. “Trust me, you don’t want to see what’s there. Besides, we have a bigger problem. Listen!”
A low rumbling noise, like an earthquake or a tornado, echoed from all sides of the house, growing louder and louder. Looking up, I saw that the roof had cracked in half!
We sprinted down the stairs, out the door, and to our bikes before looking back. When we did, we saw that the House of Usher had split completely down the middle, and was crumbling to pieces. As the stones fell, the house began to disappear.
Marisa grabbed the magic book from her bicycle basket.
“What’s the clue?” I asked, still amazed at all we’d seen.
She held out the book. There, next to the title Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe, I read our next clue: Muttonchops I am not.
“Come on,” Marisa said. “Let’s put this haunted house behind us. There’s nothing left here, anyway.”
“Not quite,” I said, bending down. From out of the mist came a one-eyed black cat with a spot of white on its stomach. “Looks like we’ve got a new partner!”
Marisa scowled, but she let Pluto ride in her basket as we pedaled off. Neither of us knew then how important that cat would become at the end of our adventure.
To Be Continued
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