“Hi, Mr. Gains.”
“I told you to call me ‘Gerald’.”
“Okay, Gerald.”
“Did you see them last night?” The old man pointed toward the sky and apparently forgot to keep hold of his support rope. His red arms windmilled as his body tipped dangerously backwards. Terrified but unable to help, Zachary held his breath as his elderly neighbor teetered then finally tipped forward onto his knees. Gnarled fingers scrabbled to get hold of the rope again.
“Probably should have a second rope, huh?” Gerald said, looking over at Zachary with a grin.
“Or tie that one around your waist,” Zachary suggested. For fear of hitting the bruised back of his head on the window, he went to push it further open and accidentally struck his cast against the windowsill. Pain rang like a plucked guitar string from his wrist to his elbow.
“Ahhh!”
“You okay?” Gerald asked.
Zachary gently shook his broken arm.
“Yeah, I just keep forgetting about this cast. I’ll be glad when it’s gone.”
Gerald stood and lifted his binoculars to study the mountain peak that loomed beyond the end of their short street.
“’Don’t know where they all came from last night,” he said.
“Where who came from?” Zachary asked.
“Bats,” Gerald said.
Zachary froze. A chill spread from his chest to the back of his neck. Goosebumps broke out across his arms. “You saw bats?” he managed to ask.
“There were thousands of them. Circled over our street for quite a while before flying over the mountain. I’m surprised you didn’t hear all the squeaking.”
Zachary’s thoughts spun. Had Krage found him? Since the bats hadn’t attacked it was probably just a coincidence, but what if it wasn’t? Though he hoped he was just being paranoid, he had to keep his eyes open.
Gerald put his binoculars to his face, making him look like a red beetle with bulging black eyes. “You have a boot-shaped freckle on your nose,” Gerald said.
Not remembering any freckles, Zachary brushed at his face.
“Oops,” Gerald said, balancing on the roof while he turned the binoculars and wiped the lens against his red suit. “Broccoli, I think.”
“Did the bats come near anyone’s house?” Zachary asked. He tried to sound nonchalant but shivered at the prospect.
Gerald scrunched his bushy eyebrows into a V then shook his head.
“Nope, they stayed up there for the most part.” He pointed at the sky.
“I imagine that must happen around here a lot,” Zachary said hopefully.
“Nope,” Gerald said. “And certainly not a herd that size. Or would that be flock―oh, what’s the difference? There were a lot of them.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t wake up,” Zachary said.
“Try taping one eye open,” the old man suggested. “It works for me.” He straightened his red rain cap. “You don’t want to be caught sleeping at the wrong time around here. Some of the stuff on this street would scare the spots off a tiger.”
Zachary opted not to mention that leopards, not tigers, had spots. Just then he heard the sound of a familiar motor backfire at the top of the hill. Tires squealed as Stanley’s dented red truck swerved and zoomed down the small dead end street known as Station End.
“Ha!” Gerald exclaimed. “My morning pizza!”
Zachary couldn’t believe the old man had already eaten the six pizzas that had been delivered the night before, which made twelve pizzas yesterday alone. Stanley squealed to a stop in front of Gerald’s one-story ranch. His truck continued to bounce even after Stanley got out balancing a stack of six more large pizza boxes in one hand. Zachary turned his attention back to Gerald and saw that the old man was crouched at the edge of his roof, facing a flagpole a few feet away.
“No!” Zachary yelled. But it was too late.
Things might have gone better if one of Gerald’s boots hadn’t tangled with the rope, but when it did, the old man’s leap fell short, his fingers missed the pole and he pitched headfirst toward the ground.
Zachary fought the urge to cover his eyes as—
Blinking and rubbing his eyes, he struggled to understand. It didn’t make sense. Gerald’s red rain cap had fallen to the ground but the rest of his body had jerked to a stop and now floated upside down in midair!
“Help!” the elderly neighbor yelled.
Had magic followed Zachary all the way from Boston to New Hampshire? What other explanation could there be? Until a few days before, Zachary hadn’t believed in magic, and now it seemed to be everywhere—
Or not.
Just then, Zachary noticed the chimney rope curled around Gerald’s ankle. It was the rope—not magic—that held him from falling to the ground.
“Less gawking, more helping!” Gerald exclaimed, his red sleeves flailing.
Zachary yanked his head back inside and hurried with bare feet into the dining room. Snorts and snores came from Madame Kloochie’s blanket-covered mass on the couch. He slipped into the kitchen, passed the mountain of dirty clothes, ran out the back door, down the stairs and into the neighboring yard where he found Gerald hanging above him like a huge, red Christmas ornament.
“It’s about time,” the old man said. “Go save the pizzas, Zach! Stanley can’t be trusted with pepperoni. Hurry!”
Zachary stared up at his red rain-suited neighbor.
“Go, Zachary!”
Torn between saving Gerald or doing as asked, Zachary finally sprinted around the house where he found the heavyset delivery boy sitting on Gerald’s front steps with a tall stack of pepperoni-smelling pizza boxes resting on his wide lap. His pudgy fingers looked suspiciously ready to open the top box.
“He coming or what?” Stanley asked. “These might spoil, you know.”
“He got hung up,” Zachary said, using his good hand to gently remove the pizza boxes from Stanley’s grip. Balancing all six boxes on his cast, he slid them safely onto Gerald’s porch. Then, once the pizzas were safe, he explained that Gerald had fallen and might soon turn as red as his rain suit. “Will you help?”
“Sure,” Stanley said. “He’s our best customer.”
Zachary didn’t know if that meant a bad customer would have been left dangling, but the point seemed moot since few people seemed likely to wind up in that position. Stanley turned out to be exactly the right person to ask. He pulled his beat-up pickup truck into the back yard, stood on the truck roof―leaving two more good-sized dents―and pushed Gerald like a tire swing until wrinkled fingers could grab the flagpole. Once Stanley untangled his foot, the old man flipped right side up and slid safely to the grass.
By the time Zachary got back upstairs, Madame Kloochie had heaved herself to a seated position on the couch. Except for the orange color, her tangled hair was like the mess you might find at the bottom of a shower drain. Purplish, fat feet stuck out from under a pink blanket.
“Where have you been?” she asked, angrily. Without giving him a chance to answer, she added, “I’ve decided to have you open the store today—by nine.”
Zachary groaned but didn’t argue because anything had to be better than spending another day cleaning. He did say, “Couldn’t you hear Mr. Gains yelling outside?”
“That old coot is always making some kind of noise,” she said. “Belongs in a nut house if you ask me.”
“He was hanging off the roof out there.” Zachary pointed to the window beside her bedroom door.
“I don’t look out the windows,” she said matter-of-factly. “Now get ready for work.”
“But I don’t know anything about running a store,” Zachary said, more to warn her than to get out of it.
“This’ll be a good time to learn,” she said.
Zachary heard a crunching sound as he stepped on an empty pastry box that Madame Kloochie must have dropped after he’d gone to bed the night before. What was the sense of cleaning if she kept throwing her garbage right back on the floor?
It occurred to him that maybe they should get a large trash barrel for each room. At least he’d have a place to throw Madame Kloochie’s trash as he cleaned up behind her.
Praying that his uncle would change his mind and come back to get him, Zachary trudged back to his room. He’d only been in Madame Kloochie’s house for one day and already hated it beyond belief. Her filth was nearly as disgusting as the worms Krage had put in the spaghetti back in Boston, and even if he spent a solid year cleaning, he wasn’t convinced he could get rid of the sickening smell of the place. Easing his sore back onto the bed, he wondered how things could possibly get any worse.
As if in answer, a sudden ear-piercing scream filled the air.
Zachary rushed to the window and peered through his plants. Back on his roof, Gerald had replaced his rain suit with baggy blue coveralls and a baseball cap. Crouched, his elderly neighbor was getting ready to leap onto the flagpole again. Zachary jammed his head out the window.
“What was that noise?”
“No idea,” Gerald said, straightening up.
“’Sounded like a baby screaming,” Zachary said.
Gerald lifted his cap and wiped sweat from his nearly bald scalp. “No, it definitely wasn’t human.”
“An animal then?” Zachary asked.
“Not one I ever heard.” The old man pointed at a stack of boards leaning against his chimney. “That’s why I’m building a catwalk.”
“A cat what?”
“It’s like a watch tower,” Gerald said. “Something’s not right around here, and I intend to find out what it is.” He faced the flagpole and crouched.
“You could fall again,” Zachary