Billy and the Birdfrogs (7 page)

Mrs. Whingle sat on the edge of the bed for a moment. “It’s very late now,” she said gently. “It’s half past ten. You must be exhausted. Tomorrow we’ll register you for school, and buy you some clothes and a nice new lunch box that says ‘BOBBY’ on it.”

Chapter 11

I Decide What to Do

I tried hard to go to sleep. I thought it would be a relief and better than all the horrible thoughts that were going around and around in my mind. I might have slept for a few hours, but pretty soon I was awake again and my mind wouldn’t rest.

Just that morning I had woken up in my own bed, in my grandmother’s house. Now I was lying in a strange bed with a new family. Everything was different, and everything had gone horribly wrong. My grandmother was gone.

But had she really been crazy? It was like insulting her after she was gone. Like spitting on a person’s gravestone. It was horrible and I didn’t want it to be true. If she was gone forever (I could still hardly believe it), then at least I wanted to be able to remember her as the most fantastic and wonderful grandmother in the world.

I started to think about all the reasons why she might have been crazy.

First off, birdfrogs. I knew that birdfrogs sounded pretty crazy. But that was just a word she had invented. She didn’t really know what kind of animal it was. Couldn’t a new kind of animal live in a cave in the ground? New kinds of animals are discovered all the time. Maybe birdfrogs weren’t even new. Maybe they had been discovered long before, and any expert would know about them. Maybe they had some real name like the Eastern Spotted Quoggly.

So maybe the birdfrogs were okay. They weren’t so crazy. But there wouldn’t be any birdfrogs without the hole in the basement. Was there actually a hole in the basement? I had never seen it. The Whingle’s had never heard about it. But would they necessarily know? My mother had promised to keep the hole a secret, and the construction workers who had found the hole had also promised to keep the secret, so maybe nobody knew outside of a very small circle of people. It was possible that even the other families who lived on the block didn’t know.

So the hole in the basement might be okay too.

Mrs. Whingle had said that our row of houses was built in 1923. According to my grandmother, it was built about thirteen years ago. That was a problem. That was a real stumper. At first I couldn’t see my way around it. But what had Mrs. Whingle said, exactly? The man who had sold them the house, he had told them it was an antique house from 1923. What if he had lied, just to make the house seem like a nicer place, or to get the Whingles to pay more money for it? They would have been less impressed by an antique house from thirteen years ago. Maybe that was it.

It seemed like I had to stretch a lot of points, and there were a lot of unknowns. But still, it was possible that my grandmother had told me the truth and that she hadn’t been crazy.

She had been right about one thing. Mr. Earpicker really was an awful man, and he had invented a scheme and gotten our house away from us. Maybe he had lured her out of the house with that letter, just so he could push her in front of the steam rollers? When I thought about that, I wanted to rush out, find Mr. Earpicker, and kick him. My legs were pretty strong from running up and down the stairs, and I thought I could kick him clear across his office. I imagined him bouncing off the wall on the other side and shouting, “Blast! I hate that!” Maybe I could kick him in front of a steam roller. But I couldn’t really kick him unless I had proof that he had done something wrong. It was still possible that he and Miss Pointy had rescued me from a genuinely insane person. So it all came back to the same question: was my grandmother telling the truth, or was she making up crazy stories?

As I lay in the dark, I realized that there was only one way to find out. I mean, to find out for sure. I had to get back into our house again, get into the basement, and see if there was a hole. And I had to climb down the hole with a flashlight and see if it really went down hundreds of feet and had extinct animal bones in the walls. There was no other way. I had to see for myself, even if the birdfrogs got me. I’d be willing to brave the birdfrogs, for the sake of my grandmother’s honor.

The whole plan came to me as I lay in the dark. It was very simple. The Whingles’ attic connected to my grandmother’s attic. All the attics in the row were connected. If I snuck up into the attic, I could get across to my grandmother’s house. My grandmother had nailed boards over the trap door, but maybe if I pushed hard enough, or hammered with old pieces of furniture, I could get through. The boards were meant to keep out birdfrogs, not humans.

Lots of things might go wrong. Mr. Jubber might already be in the house, and then he would hear me and catch me.

But he might have decided not to spend the night there yet. After all, the house was full of our furniture, not his. He probably would not move in for a day or two. I would have to try to get in as soon as possible, before he moved in, which meant that tonight was the best possible time.

It was amazing how much better I felt, and how much more awake, as soon as I had made up my mind. I didn’t feel happy, of course. I felt sad because of my grandmother. But I felt determined, and there was no trace of a fog on me now. I was ready.

Chapter 12

I Sneak into the Attic

Next to the bed, the glow-in-the-dark clock read 12:30. I couldn’t hear any sounds from inside the house; only the comforting bang of cars driving over the metal plates in the street.

I sat up and pulled off the blankets. There was no question about going in my pajamas. I couldn’t. If I was going to climb down a rocky shaft in the ground, I needed my jeans to help protect me, and my sneakers too. I looked around the guest room in the dark, and saw a blob that might have been a chair. I crept out of bed and snuck across the floor, my hands outstretched, and when I got to the chair I felt over its seat and found my clothes in a pile. I knelt and felt around on the carpet, and found my shoes side by side under the chair. I dressed very slowly. It was better to take extra time and be perfectly quiet, because if I was caught I probably would never get another chance. I might even be sent back to Miss Pointy, and then I would get remediated in some awful way.

When my sneakers were securely tied I crept to the door and turned the doorknob very, very slowly and opened it. Just like in my grandmother’s house, this house had a staircase running up through the middle of it, and I came out of the bedroom onto the small, second-floor landing. A dim light filtered down from above. I think it was a nightlight at the top of the staircase. Dennis’s room was on the second floor, right across from my room. He had taped a sign to the outside of the door; his name was written on the sign in what looked like dead worms glued to the piece of paper.

I was glad the Whingles had carpeted their staircase. I walked up very quietly and slowly. I had to step over three plastic army men lying on the floor. If I had stepped on them, they might have snapped and made a noise, so I made sure to watch the floor carefully. I knew that the third floor would have another bedroom, and when I got to the landing I could see that it was Candy’s room. Her door had a sign printed out on a color printer, full of rainbows and birds and cows dancing around her name. There were no dead worms on her sign.

I walked up the last flight to the fourth floor, and heard Mr. and Mrs. Whingle snoring through the closed door of their bedroom. They were snoring in different keys, and in slightly different rhythms. The trap door to the attic was right outside their bedroom door. It would be almost impossible for me to open the trap without waking them up. But I had to try, because there was no other way.

I held the end of the chain that dangled from the trap door, and waited. When both of the Whingles gave a snore at the same time, I gave a tug. It was only a little tug, and the trap door opened about half an inch with a very soft thump. It didn’t make too much noise. It must have been pretty well oiled. One little tug at a time, I opened the door, and a metal ladder unfolded and stretched down toward the floor. After a while I didn’t need to pull anymore; I had to hold up the ladder and let it down slowly, bit by bit, so that it wouldn’t whack onto the floor.

The hinges on the ladder squeaked, and I froze and listened to their snoring. One of them stopped, and then the other one stopped too. I waited, with the metal ladder half unfolded in my arms, my heart pounding. I wondered what I would say if they came out and saw me. I couldn’t think of a story that would sound at all plausible. I tried to think of one, my mind racing, but then I heard them start to snore again. I let the ladder down the rest of the way, and then stood and rested for a moment until my arms and legs stopped
trembling.

I began to climb the ladder. My sneakers made soft metallic thumps on the steps, so I went very slowly. All I could see above me was a square of pure black, and I hoped that I would not crash into anything loud. When I got to the top of the ladder and my head was well inside the attic, I started to see dimly in the light filtering up from below. I could see some cardboard boxes, and just over my head, a string for a light. I pulled on the string, and the light clicked on with a horrible loud snap. But this time the Whingles didn’t stop snoring.

I didn’t dare pull the staircase up after me, or turn off the light, so I had to leave it as it was and hope that Mr. and Mrs. Whingle didn’t get up in the middle of the night.

The attic had no windows. It was full of old furniture and boxes and lots and lots of dust. The only light came from the dim bulb I had just turned on, hanging from a rafter under the sloping roof. The bulb was swinging and sent shadows darting and moving all around me, which was frightening at first. But then I got used to it. I could see only a little way around, and then the space faded into darkness. The attic was one very long room that stretched from one end of our row of houses to the other, with no dividing walls. The Whingle’s house was near one end of the row, so I stepped carefully across the rough, unvarnished, dusty floorboards toward the other end.

I wondered if people in other houses would hear my footsteps and think that a ghost was walking around the attic; but the dust did a good job of muffling the sound.

Chapter 13

Nobody Is Home

My grandmother’s house was eight houses away, so all I had to do was count eight trap doors. That was easy. But I had better count carefully, because I didn’t want to come down into someone else’s house and get arrested for burglary.

Every trap door had a light bulb over it. When I got to the second trap door, I could hardly see in the dimness, so I felt around for the light string and pulled it. The click echoed loudly around the attic. A big spider, upside down on the rough splintery boards of the ceiling, looked at me angrily and then ran away to a darker place. I would have to turn on each light as I got to it, in order to see where I was going.

When I got to the eighth door, I knelt beside it and inspected it. The metal staircase was folded up intricately and lay on top of the trap door. I pushed down on it, but it didn’t unfold downward. It wouldn’t, of course, because it was blocked by the boards that my grandmother had nailed into place. Then I tried pulling up on it, and it lifted a few inches although it was very heavy. The machinery of rods and springs was designed to be pulled downward from below, but I thought I could hinge it upward if I pulled hard enough. I braced my feet far apart, grasped the metal rods, and heaved, and the whole trap door swung up on its end. I didn’t want it to topple back again and make a booming noise. Also, if my head was in the way and it fell on me, I would get splattered. So I found a baseball bat sticking out of a box, and used it to wedge open the heavy door.

Then I knelt beside the square opening. I was looking directly down on the three wide boards that my grandmother had nailed into place. They were nailed at either end, the nails driven up into the ceiling. I crouched forward and put my eye to the crack between two of the boards. I found myself looking down from a ceiling view into my own house, and saw one of my socks on the floor eight feet below me. I wanted more than anything to get down there, just to be back home again. It was very strange, but I felt as though my grandmother would be there, like usual, if I could only get in.

I was pretty sure that if I jumped in the air and landed with my full weight on the boards, I would go crashing through them and get into our house. But that would make a lot of noise, and I might get hurt.

If I could pry loose one of the boards, I was sure I could fit through the space. The boards were pretty wide. But I would need a tool to pry it loose with. I don’t know why, but people put their tools in the basement and their books and clothes in the attic. There were lots of books and clothes.

I found a plastic ice scraper for a car window, but when I tried to pry loose one of the boards, the ice scraper broke. Then I found a large plastic Donald Duck doll sticking out of a box by the back legs. When I took it out and looked at it, I realized that the hand was thin and flat, so maybe the arm would work as a wedge tool. It could bend a little, so it wasn’t likely to snap off like the ice scraper had done.

It was slow work, and I kept scraping my knuckles on the rough boards. Gradually, one of the boards came loose. The nails were very long, and made a groaning sound as they pulled out, one bit at a time. I had to fetch some old clothes out of another box and wad them under my knees. I was there for about half an hour before one end of the board finally came loose. The other end was easy to loosen after that. I held the board tightly with two hands and wiggled it until the last nail came loose, and then I drew the board carefully up and set it next to me. Then I put back all the clothes I had borrowed, and also put back the Donald Duck.

I slithered through the hole where the board had been, feet first, and dangled by my hands. I was only a few feet above the floor, so I let go and fell with a loud bang. I didn’t care about the bang. I didn’t think about it, because I was so excited to be home again. I looked into my bedroom. I felt like I hadn’t seen it in a thousand years, but it was the same as always, my bed messy and unmade. Then, my heart hammering, I ran downstairs.

I knew my grandmother would never come home again. But everything looked so normal around me that I almost felt like she had to be here. “Grandma?” I said. I didn’t shout. I didn’t want to make too much noise. I really half expected to see her in her bedroom, but it was empty. I stood in the doorway and turned on the light. I even looked under the bed. I knew she wouldn’t be under there, but I wanted her to be home so much that I wasn’t thinking clearly.