“Sorry,” Tobias said lamely.
Like a messy volcano, Martha’s body erupted from the floor, smoke streaming from her ears. Her brown blouse was untucked, and her apron had come untied from the back and was hanging from her neck. Martha grabbed Tobias by the collar of his red hoodie.
“How dare you?!”
“Honestly,” Tobias tried. “That was a massive bite, even for you.”
“You almost killed me!”
“I was about to call 9-1-1,” Tobias said.
Martha’s anger consumed her. She planted her feet and screamed as Tobias and Charlotte plugged their ears and leaned back on their heels.
“This was not part of my assignment,” she barked. Her hair was wild, and there were traces of brown gravy and spittle foaming up around her thin lips. “This is the reason I don’t have kids.”
Martha stomped her feet on the floor like a spoiled child. She spun on her sensible shoes and stormed toward the front door.
“Wait,” Tobias pleaded.
She kept storming.
“Seriously,” Tobias hollered. “Your apron—”
Martha threw open the front door and lunged through it. As she stepped outside, an apron string caught on the edge of the door frame. The apron snagged and spun her like a top. Her body moved forward, but her neck was caught. The string ripped, and she flew down the three front steps and skidded across the lawn on her face and knees. She flopped over onto her back, giving Tobias and Charlotte a perfect view of the giant grass stain smeared across the front of her body.
Tobias ran up to her and reached down.
“No!” she screamed. “Don’t touch me!”
Martha cursed as she struggled to get back up. Her large rear looked like a small brown cloud fighting to become airborne. She was still tangled in bits of apron, and there were flecks of gravy all over her. It was too much to handle; both Tobias and Charlotte began laughing.
Martha stood all the way up, shook her fists violently, tilted her head back, and bellowed into the twilight sky like an obese wolf.
It was at that moment that something very, very bad happened—Mr. Eggers pulled into the driveway. Not that Ralph Eggers coming home was a bad thing. Normally Tobias and Charlotte were happy to see their father. No, the bad thing was that he was pulling into the driveway at the very worst possible moment. It would be quite difficult for Tobias and Charlotte to talk themselves out of something their dad could so clearly see.
It’s funny how an act as normal as a father coming home early can change two children’s lives forever. Not “ha-ha” funny—more like “it is the end of any happiness in our lives” funny. Which, if you think about it, really isn’t that funny at all.
CHAPTER 2
HOW NOT TO PUNISH YOUR CHILDREN
Ralph Eggers had not had a particularly easy go at life. He had been born during a hurricane, gotten married during an earthquake, and lost his wife to a drowning accident. His own parents had died in a fire, his brother had been killed by a bear, and his sister had passed away in a strange country after drinking something foreign.
Ralph was a tall man with thick brown hair and small feet. He had a smooth face and no need to shave more than once a week. His eyes were brown, and they sat over his nose like two rusted pennies. He walked with a slight hunch as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Ralph struggled with holding down a job. Ever since his wife had died, it was difficult for him to focus. He had worked at seven different jobs in the last two years, and he had been fired eight times. He was fired as a mailman for dropping an important package. He was fired as a librarian for whistling too loud. He was fired as a clerk in a convenience store for insisting that a rowdy customer not “come back again.” He was fired from being a waiter when he suggested the head chef should add more salt to the peas. He was fired from being a test subject in a science lab when he didn’t experience any side effects from the pills he was testing. Ralph had also been fired once as a bus driver, for driving too slow, and twice as a barber—first because he refused to give a man a mullet and second because he actually did.
Life was not easy for Ralph, and things were getting worse. His two children were acting up more than ever. They had always been rather crafty kids, but lately they were acting extraordinarily spirited. Tobias constantly challenged Ralph. In the last few days alone, they had gotten into a dozen arguments over a number of dumb little things. It was as if both Tobias’s and Charlotte’s good-natured, pleasantly stubborn, highly mischievous, and brutally clever personalities were really exploding. And to make a bad situation even more rotten, Mr. Eggers had just been fired from being a house painter because he had mixed his primary colors all wrong.
Ralph’s intentions had been to come home early and seek the solace of his children. Unfortunately, as he pulled up and saw Martha on the lawn with a full-body grass stain and his children laughing, he lost it. The veins on his forehead throbbed, and his entire body overheated. He jumped out of the car and ran across the lawn.
Martha was screaming. “I’ve … send them away … Tobias!”
Tobias opened his mouth in an attempt to explain, but his father cut him off.
“Inside!” Ralph ordered his children. “Inside!”
“But…,” Tobias tried again.
“Now!”
Tobias and Charlotte guiltily shuffled inside as their father tried to calm Martha down.
“I’m so sorry,” Ralph pleaded. “We’ve been having a tough time. Tobias is just going through a phase.”
“Charlotte!” Martha steamed.
“Charlotte just follows his example,” Ralph reasoned.
It didn’t matter what Ralph Eggers said, Martha wasn’t buying it. She drew in a huge breath and slapped him soundly across the cheek.
“That’s for having children,” Martha screamed hysterically. She slapped him again. “And that’s for having those children.”
“But—”
“Of course,” Martha bellowed. “A foul word from an unfit father.”
Martha picked up her ripped apron, got into her car, and drove off in a cloud of dust and gravel.
“You wanted this job!” Ralph yelled at her disappearing car.
Ralph turned slowly back to his house. The curtains quickly closed, and he could hear his children scurrying about inside. He took small, methodical steps toward the front door.
Closing his eyes, Ralph counted to ten … twice. He then pushed the door open and walked into the small family room. The place was eerily quiet; only the thin tick of the wrongly set clock filled the space with an uncomfortable beat. The pulsating veins on Ralph’s forehead began to slow. A clear memory of his childhood flashed into his mind, giving him an idea.
“Tobias!” Mr. Eggers yelled. “Charlotte!”
Ralph heard their bedroom doors open. The sound was followed by footsteps crossing the creaky wood floor. After a few moments of silence, his children’s faces appeared around the hallway corner.
“Come here,” their father said.
Tobias stepped out first, and Charlotte followed. They walked toward their father and stood side by side a few feet in front of him. Standing next to each other, they looked a bit like a sad set of salt and pepper shakers. They were a pair, a set, and doubly in trouble.
“Dad, we didn’t—” Tobias couldn’t get his words out before his father interrupted.
“You must have holes in your head,” Mr. Eggers said calmly.
While it is true that everyone has holes in his head—mouth, ears, nose, etc.—neither of the Eggers children felt it would be right to point that out to their father at the moment.
“Get in the car,” Mr. Eggers ordered.
“You have to understand,” Tobias tried again. “We—”
“The car!” their father insisted. “GET IN THE CAR!”
Tobias and Charlotte shuffled slowly out the door and down the steps, with their father right behind them. It was getting dark now, and the s
ky looked as if it was slipping into something a bit sinister.
When they got to the car, Tobias climbed into the back seat, and Charlotte got in next to him. Mr. Eggers took the driver’s seat and slammed his door shut. He turned the key, and the engine roared. It was at that moment the first drops of rain began to fall. They plinked off the windows as the car wound through the neighborhood and onto the main street.
Their father drove the car onto the freeway. He pressed the gas pedal, and they flew down the interstate like a charging bull. The previously little raindrops became gushy wads of water that slapped at the windshield as they raced on.
Mr. Eggers kept his hands on the steering wheel in the positions of ten and two o’clock. His knuckles were white, and the back of his neck looked like a steamed ham. He stared straight ahead through the wet windshield and out at the dark road. The rain grew stronger, and the car shivered as the wild wind blew through it.
“He looks pretty mad,” Charlotte whispered to Tobias.
“That’s a look worse than mad,” Tobias said.
Headlights from the cars on the other side of the freeway flashed past them. In the rain the lights appeared messy and shot past them like wet sneezes. Mr. Eggers kept his eyes on the road and drove directly into the storm.
“My stomach hurts,” Charlotte said.
“Mine too,” Tobias agreed. “I really didn’t think Martha would take such a big bite.”
A sad and silent half an hour later, their father turned on his blinker and they exited the freeway. The rain seemed to slow as they traveled east down a small two-lane highway. Tobias and Charlotte gazed out the dark windows. There were no lights anywhere. It was just a dark, wet desert with little form or definition.
“It looks like there’s nothing out here,” Charlotte whimpered.
As if on cue, a large weathered sign came into view: WITHERWOOD.
Just past the sign, Ralph Eggers turned off the highway onto a small road. The road was straight for a few hundred feet and then grew twisty and steep. Tobias and Charlotte rocked back and forth as the car turned and climbed up the road to the top of the dark mesa.
“I’m going to be sick,” Charlotte grunted.
The road leveled out, and Mr. Eggers brought the vehicle to a stop. Through the windshield, Tobias saw the headlights shining on what looked like the bars of a large gate. Their father turned around and stared at them.
“Get out,” he said calmly.
“What?” Tobias asked nervously. “Here?”
“Maybe Martha was right,” their father said. “If you choose to act like brats, then maybe it’s time somebody else raised you.”
“Dad,” Charlotte said, shocked. “Martha’s awful.”
“Out,” Mr. Eggers repeated.
“You can’t just leave us here,” Tobias said angrily. “It’s nighttime, and we’re in the middle of nowhere!”
“You made this decision,” Mr. Eggers said, determined to stay tough. “Everything’s a joke to you. Well, no more. Now out.”
Tobias pushed open the door and stepped into the dark night. He stumbled a little as he turned to look back into the car. “Come on, Char.”
“We can’t just stay here,” Charlotte argued. “Dad!”
Mr. Eggers turned and stared out the windshield.
“Out,” he said one last time.
Charlotte took Tobias’s hand and climbed out of the car. It wasn’t raining at the moment, but the air was moist and it mixed with the tears on her cheeks, making her feel wet all over. Their car moved in reverse and then spun to the side and turned around. They watched in horror as the rear lights grew smaller and smaller. They stood there on the side of the road in disbelief.
“He’ll be back,” Tobias said, trying to comfort his sister. “He’s just trying to scare us.”
“Well, it’s working.”
Tobias kept his arm around Charlotte as she stared into the distance, willing her father’s car lights to reappear. A gentle rain started falling, and their wet hair and clothes made their bodies feel as heavy as their hearts.
“Where are we, anyway?” Charlotte asked, sniffling.
“We’re on the top of some hill,” Tobias guessed.
“What was that gate?”
They had been so intent on staring down the road that neither of them had turned to look in the other direction. As they twisted their heads, a weak lamp high atop a wooden pole buzzed. It shone for a second and then went dark again.
“Did you see that?” Charlotte asked.
“It was kinda hard to miss,” Tobias replied.
The light sparked on once more, and they saw a massive brick wall with an iron gate between two huge stone pillars.
Charlotte squeezed Tobias’s right hand. “What is that place?”
“I don’t know,” Tobias said. “Looks like something from a book or movie.”
“It’s no chocolate factory,” Charlotte whispered.
Tobias took a deep breath. “Yeah, it doesn’t smell like chocolate.”
The light snapped off, and once again darkness smothered them. They both turned their heads to look in the direction of the winding road.
“I hope Dad comes to his senses soon,” Charlotte said, shivering.
“Me too,” Tobias replied. “Me too.”
It’s sad how sometimes you can hope all you want, but still the thing you hope for is just not going to happen. Very sad indeed.
CHAPTER 3
SLICK ROADS AND HIDDEN RIVERS
Ralph Eggers drove slowly down the steep, twisting road. Most level-headed people might think Ralph was out of his mind, and they would be right. Ralph, however, believed he was doing something good. You see, years ago, when Ralph was a kid, he had accidentally set his tree house on fire while playing with matches. So Ralph’s father, in an effort to teach him a lesson, had driven him out to the same spot and dropped him off. Ralph’s dad thought he needed to be shocked into understanding. It had worked for Ralph. He cried for twenty minutes, and then his father had driven back up the mesa and picked him up. Since that day, Ralph had never lit anything on fire. Even now he still had a hard time using a gas stove or lighting a water heater.
Ralph reached the bottom of the mesa and turned onto the two-lane road. After a couple of miles, he exited the road and stopped near an abandoned rest area. He shut off the car and listened to the tiny raindrops hitting the top of the roof. He knew his children would be terrified, but he was hoping the terror would teach them a powerful lesson.
“This is for the best,” he said, trying hard to convince himself.
It didn’t work. His shoulders began to shake, and his body bounced up and down as he cried softly. He wiped at his eyes and tried to catch his breath.
“I am quite possibly the worst dad ever.”
The situation he had found when he came home was awful, but it now felt far less drastic than what he had just done. He had loathed his father when he had done this horrible thing, and now he had done the same to the only two people who mattered to him in the world.
Ralph wanted to mourn the loss of his wife. He also wanted to scream about his troubled life and the situation he was in. But more than anything, he wanted to get back to his children. The anger he felt had subsided, and in its wake was a searing guilt.
“I’ve done a foolish thing.”
He started his car and drove to the edge of the road.
“I’m coming!” he hollered.
Ralph gunned it and flew along the road at eighty miles an hour.
“What was I thinking?” he said, chastising himself.
Half a mile before the Witherwood sign, a large animal jumped out of the darkness and ran directly in front of Ralph’s car. He turned the wheel, missing the creature and driving off the highway. The car raced down a steep ravine, crashing through cedar trees. It slammed into a large boulder, flipped twice, and came to a stop upside down at the bottom of the tree-covered ravine. The wheels spun as the car settled, and the headl
ights flashed twice before darkening.
Ralph Eggers was going to be a little late picking up his children.
CHAPTER 4
THE IRON GATE
The Eggers children stood in the dark like two shadows. Tobias lifted his chin and looked up into the wet black sky. It should be noted that while Tobias possessed clear blue eyes, it was the swatch of freckles that ran beneath them that made him striking. Depending on his mood and the lighting, Tobias’s freckles always looked a little different.
“How could he do this?” Tobias growled, his freckles wet and dark.
“We shouldn’t have done that to Martha,” Charlotte said.
“Dad doesn’t even know what we did,” Tobias said. “Maybe Martha was attacking us.”
“Dad’s not stupid.”
“Still,” Tobias insisted. “That doesn’t mean he can just dump us at night in the middle of nowhere.”
The rain began to pick up.
“While it’s raining,” Tobias added.
“He’s been really sad lately,” Charlotte reminded Tobias.
“Well, he’s not the only one,” Tobias said. “I still miss Mom.”
Charlotte didn’t like thinking about the mother she had lost three years ago. The green T-shirt she was wearing ironically had the word HOPE printed across the front of it. Well, hope seemed to be absent as water trickled down her arms and pooled in her shoes.
“Mom never would have done this,” Tobias said.
“I’m cold,” Charlotte whispered.
“So am I, and I’m not waiting here any longer. If Dad thinks I won’t go in there, then he’s wrong.” Tobias pointed to the foreboding iron gate. “He dropped us here, so we should go in. Maybe it’s nice inside.”