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“Mr. Kincaid said you’d be pleasantly surprised, Mary.”

Mrs. Stanton frowned. “I don’t know, Robert. How would they know where I wanted everything? I mean, really …”

Jim’s father led the way to the front door and unlocked it. He pushed it open and let his family walk in first.

“Wow!” Laura skipped around the room. “Look at all the brand-new furniture.”

Jim took his cap off and ran his hand through his hair. “You must have the wrong house, Dad. This isn’t our stuff.”

“It is now. The company took care of it. They put all our old things in storage.” Dr. Stanton waved his hand. “All this is ours.”

“Does that go for the kitchen too?” Mrs.
Stanton yelled from the next room. “All the dishes and pans are brand new.”

Jim’s father grinned. “Wait till you see the bedrooms.”

Laura and Jim looked at each other and then raced up the stairs. Jim pushed open the first door on the left. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Signed pictures of major-league baseball stars covered the walls. The furniture was dark oak. It all looked like something out of an expensive catalog. There were even clothes in the closets and drawers.

The walls of Laura’s room were painted her favorite color—pink. Her bedroom set was white. In the center of the large canopy bed was a big, beautiful doll with long golden curls. Jim stood in the doorway and watched Laura timidly step toward the bed. She stopped and glanced back at him.

He rolled his eyes. “Pick it up, stupid. They put it there for you.”

That was all she needed to hear. She ran to the bed and cradled the doll in her arms.

Jim walked back to his room and plopped down on the bed. He grudgingly looked
around. The bedroom was twice as big as his old one.

His mother’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Jim! Laura! Come down here. We have visitors.”

Jim slid down the banister with Laura giggling and racing close behind him. When they reached the bottom they saw a woman and two kids, a boy about Jim’s age and a little girl, standing stiffly in the living room and staring at them.

“This is Mrs. Tyler.” Mrs. Stanton gestured toward the petite, well-dressed woman, who was holding a platter of cookies. “And these are her children, William and Karen.”

“Please. Just call me Marcia,” the woman said in a nervous, bubbly voice. She handed the platter to Mrs. Stanton. “These are for
you. It’s our way of saying welcome to the company.”

The boy put his hand out to Jim. He smiled, but it was an odd smile, artificial and definitely not friendly. “We are very glad to have you here.”

Jim shook the clammy hand and looked the boy up and down. He was wearing dress pants, a white starched shirt, and polished shoes. “Thanks, William. Hey, could you show me around town?”

The boy dropped Jim’s hand and looked anxiously up at his mother. The woman put her arm around her son’s shoulders. “I’m afraid not. Perhaps later … you know, when you’ve been here longer.” She propelled the two children toward the door.

“Won’t you stay and have a glass of iced tea or something?” Jim’s mother asked.

The woman kept moving. “Thank you, no. We were instructed—that is, we were chosen—to welcome you and then let you get on with your day. It was so nice to meet you all. Goodbye!” She pulled the door shut behind her.

Jim’s father raised one eyebrow. “Strange woman.”

“She might be strange, but boy, can she cook! Taste one of these.” Laura held up one of the small white cookies. It had a perfect red rosette in the center.

“Be careful, Laura, they probably have some kind of poison in them.” Jim sat down on the arm of the new couch. “I hope everybody in this town isn’t as weird as they are.” He leaned back and sighed. “Did you see how that William was dressed, and what happened when I asked him to show me around?”

Jim’s father hesitated, thinking; then he shrugged. “Why don’t you go out and see the neighborhood for yourself? Your mom and I have a couple of things to catch up on here anyway. Take Laura and be back by supper.”

Jim thought about asking if he could leave Laura behind, but the look on his father’s face already told him the answer.

“Okay. Come on, squirt. Let’s go exploring and see what kind of mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Laura followed him through the door and
down the sidewalk. “Look, Jim. There’s somebody.” She pointed at the mailman, who was carefully sorting through the letters he held as he walked toward them.

The short, balding man stopped in front of them. “I’d say you two are new around here.”

Jim nodded. “How did you know?”

The man looked nervously behind him. “When you’ve been with the company a while you … well, let’s just say that you don’t quite fit the mold … yet.”

The man looked around again and then moved past them. Over his shoulder he said in a loud voice, “So nice to have you here.”

“Everyone keeps saying that,” Laura said.

“I know,” Jim said, and started walking. “But somehow I get the feeling they don’t really mean it.”

They walked until they reached downtown Folsum. Each neighborhood they passed through looked exactly like theirs.

“I don’t know who designed this town, but they sure didn’t have much of an imagination.” Jim looked at his watch. “We have just
enough time to get a look at Main Street and maybe play a fast video game before we have to head back.”

Laura pulled on the back of his T-shirt. “Jimmy, I don’t like this place. Where are all the people?”

Jim shrugged and looked at the deserted sidewalks. “Maybe we’ve moved into a town full of blood-sucking zombies that only come out at midnight.”

Laura stopped. “That’s not funny. I want to go home.”

“I’m only kidding, squirt. Look, there are people in that grocery store across the street.”

They watched a woman who could have been Mrs. Tyler’s twin sister, except that she was taller and had darker hair, come out of the store and put a sack of groceries in her car. A little girl dressed in a white pinafore almost identical to Karen Tyler’s followed her.

Jim raised one eyebrow. “Must be a shortage of clothes stores.” He felt another tug on the back of his shirt. “What is it now?”

Laura pointed to a sign in the window of a
small ice cream shop. “Can we go in?” She looked at him hopefully.

“Normally I’d say forget it. But since I don’t see an arcade, it looks like ice cream is the only thing this town has going for it.”

Jim pushed the door open and a little bell jingled from above. They sat down at the counter and waited. Finally a man dressed in white came in from one of the back rooms.

The man’s eyes narrowed when he saw them. “You two aren’t from the mountains, are you?”

Jim shook his head. “We’re the Stantons. We just moved in today. My dad’s a scientist.”

“Oh.” The man’s face changed. He smiled the same sort of strange smile William had given them earlier. “That’s different, then. What can I get for you?”

They placed their orders and sat on the stools, silently eating. No other customers came in. Jim noticed that the waiter never moved very far away, almost as if he was keeping an eye on them.

When they finished, Jim stepped up to the cash register to pay. Before he could get his
money out, the man held his hand up. “It’s on the house, son.”

Jim looked confused. “Thanks, mister.”

The man gave him the strange smile again. “No problem. Welcome to the company.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be careful.”

Mrs. Stanton poured a glass of orange juice and pushed it across the counter. “We’ve only been here a couple of days and you don’t know your way around yet.”

Jim took a gulp of the juice and started for the front door. “I’m only going for a short hike in the mountains. Besides, how am I ever going to know where anything is if I don’t get out there and find out?”

“All right, but just be sure you’re back here
by two o’clock. We have to go down to the lab for our physicals.”

Jim set the glass down. “The whole family has to have physicals?”

His mother nodded. “Something to do with the company insurance policy.”

“Why can’t you just give them my last report? It’s only three months old.”

“I already thought of that, but your dad says the company insists on giving its own.”

“I guess it won’t kill me.” He grabbed a leftover cookie and headed out the door. “See you later.”

He stopped on the front step and looked around. As usual, there were no people in sight, but he thought he saw a curtain move on the second floor of the last house on the block. He stared at the window a moment, then shrugged and started up into the hills.

The woods were thick with brush. Sometimes he had to break off branches to get through. The trees were still green and beautiful, even though summer was drawing to a close.

Jim thought of his friends back home and how different it was going to be to start school without them this year. He shook the thought from his mind. It felt good to get outside the town. Folsum was stuffy and there wasn’t anything to do. No mall or arcade. They didn’t even have a ball field.

He walked aimlessly for almost a mile until he came to a meadow. Off to one side of the clearing was a small, dark pond.

“All right!” Jim said out loud. “Things are starting to look up.”

He raced to the edge of the water and skipped a rock halfway across the surface. He picked up another rock and pretended to be an announcer.

“And here is the world-famous White Sox pitcher, Strikeout King Jim Stanton, stepping up to the mound.”

He reared back to wind up for the pitch.

Before he could let it go, another rock came sailing out of the woods behind him and skipped the entire length of the pond.

Jim whipped around. “Who’s there?”

There was no answer.

He scanned the trees, but no one was in sight. Quietly he stepped away from the pond into the cover of the forest and listened.

An eerie screeching echoed across the meadow. Then nothing.

A lump caught in his throat. Aloud, in case anyone happened to be listening, he said, “Wouldn’t you know it. The only halfway decent place to go around here and it’s haunted.” He walked cautiously back to the pond and looked down at the water.

He stared at his unhappy reflection and sighed. “It’s probably time for me to get back to Weirdsville anyway.”

Another reflection appeared in the water beside his. It was the face of a dark-haired girl about his age.

His eyes widened. He thought about running but his legs were frozen and wouldn’t cooperate.

The face smiled. “Hi, Strikeout King Jim Stanton. My name’s Maria.”

Jim looked up. Hanging in a tree above the pond was a girl. A real live human girl with a small brown monkey clinging to her back.

He breathed a sigh of relief. “You had me scared there for a minute. I thought you were a … well, a …”

“A ghost?” The girl slid back on the branch and dropped lightly to the ground. She pushed a strand of her long, thick hair behind one ear. “I know. I planned it that way.” She held the monkey in her arms. “Sammy and I had to see if you were one of them.”

“One of them?”

Maria nodded. “You know, one of the mad scientists from down below. Sammy came from down there. My uncle rescued him from one of their crazy experiments.”

Jim’s chin went out. “My dad is a scientist.”

Maria let Sammy slip to the ground and walked around him. “I don’t get it. How’d they miss you?”

Jim closed his eyes in exasperation. “Is everybody in this part of the world crazy? What are you talking about?”

She folded her arms and continued to study him. “My uncle says it’s the water, but I think they do brain removal. Which is it?”

Jim threw up his hands. “I give up. The first
person I run across who will actually talk to me is a complete wacko and carries a monkey around on her back.” He turned and stalked off in the direction of town.

“Wait!” Maria ran after him.

Jim stopped and turned around. “What?”

“You wouldn’t want to play catch, would you, Jim Stanton?”