The Classy Crooks Club (6 page)

“Good night.”

I'm obviously not going to sleep this early, but in case Grandma Jo checks under my door for a stripe of light, I turn off the lamp and read one of Ben's old comic books by flashlight for a while.  After about an hour, I tiptoe down the hall and press my ear against the door of the master bedroom. I'm not sure I'll be able to tell whether my grandmother is asleep, but then a snore that sounds like a chain saw rips through the air, and I have to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. My grandmother is
ridiculously
unladylike when she's sleeping. I like her so much better this way.

I go back to my room, switch my light on, and wonder what to do with my newfound freedom. I consider taking my skateboard out after all, but it doesn't seem smart to skate around in the dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Then again, that doesn't prevent me from skating
inside
. Thinking about how much Grandma Jo would hate that makes me smile. Maybe I can even figure out where those weird noises from earlier were coming from, now that everything's so quiet and still.

I put on my sneakers, grab my board and my flashlight, and tiptoe downstairs, testing each step before I put my full weight down to make sure it doesn't creak. I had thought Grandma Jo's house was creepy during the day, but it is
way
creepier in the dark. As I tiptoe across the foyer, I have this eerie feeling that someone is watching me, even though Stanley and Debbie are long gone by now. It's probably just all the portraits on the walls that are making me uneasy. About half of them are of people, but the other half are of birds, like the one in my bedroom. It figures that my grandmother would love the one animal I can't stand. I lower my flashlight and try to keep my eyes on the cold, smooth marble floor so I won't feel their beady little painted eyes staring at me.

There's a small creaking noise to my right, and I whip the flashlight in that direction, half expecting to see my grandmother lurking in the shadows, her eyes glowing yellow like a raccoon's. But there's nothing there, only the long, empty hallway Grandma Jo told me was off-limits.

Perfect
.

I switch on the light in my grandmother's study and leave the door open enough that I can see where I'm going. Then I hop onto my board, and having it under my feet makes me feel more like myself. The tension drains out of my shoulders as I glide up and down, humming softly to myself. Skating on a marble floor isn't the same as skating on the sidewalk—there are no gritty bits to help me get traction—but I get used to it pretty quickly. It becomes a problem only when I try to do an ollie and the board shoots out from under me and hits the door to the storage room with an earth-shattering bang.

I'm positive Grandma Jo is going to appear any second wearing a long black nightgown and toting a shotgun, but I don't hear any footsteps, just a slow, quiet creaking sound. I've probably knocked the storage room door ajar. I press myself into the shadows and hold very still until I'm sure nobody's coming, and then I tiptoe toward the room to close the door back up.

But it's solidly shut. When I test the knob, I find that it's locked.

Okay. That's kind of weird. My heart's beating quickly now, but there are a bunch of doors in this hallway, and any one of them could've creaked. Maybe it was the house settling, like my dad said earlier. But now I've freaked myself out, and sneaking around in the dark is starting to seem more terrifying than fun. I decide to steal another piece of cake from the kitchen, take it back upstairs, and call it a night. Maybe I'll eat it in my bed. Grandma Jo would
hate
that.

I'm reaching for my board when I hear a girl scream.

I've heard lots of screams in my life. There's the happy kind; the frustrated “We lost the game by one point” kind; the creeped-out “There's a spider on my arm” kind. But this isn't any of those.  This is the “There's a stranger hiding behind the shower curtain with an ax” kind. It sounds super close, like whoever's screaming is
in this hallway
. I grab the skateboard, hold it up like a weapon, and whip around. But there's nobody here but me.

Another scream echoes through the house, long and loud and terrified, and this time it sounds like it's coming from inside the storage room. This must be what I was hearing earlier. I can't believe my grandmother's sleeping through this. Should I wake her up or investigate the situation myself?

I still haven't made up my mind when I hear a totally normal, conversational woman's voice say, “Knock it off, Tommy.” As I'm trying to make sense of this, I hear that creaking door sound again, followed by a third voice shrieking, “Let me out! Let me out!”

Oh wow, there are
lots
of people in there. My grandmother has
multiple
people
locked inside her storage room. No wonder this hallway is off-limits. If
this
is the secret Grandma Jo told her friends I couldn't keep, she's 100 percent right. I'm going to do whatever I have to do to set them free.

Even though my heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my fingertips, I reach out and knock softly on the door. There's no answer, so I knock again, louder this time. “Hello?” I call. “I'm here to help you. Can you open the door?”

I hear a rustle. “Knock it off, Tommy,” a voice says again.

“It's not Tommy,” I tell them. “My name is AJ. Tommy's not going to hurt you anymore.” I have no idea who Tommy is, but it seems like the right thing to say.

“Let me introduce you to my trusty knife,” a raspy voice says, and a thrill of terror races up my spine. I jerk away from the door and stumble back a few steps. Is there a guard inside the room, watching my grandmother's prisoners to make sure they don't escape? Or was that one of the hostages talking? I know people in prison sometimes make knives out of things like toothbrushes if they're desperate to protect themselves. What has Grandma Jo been
doing
to these people?

“Please put your knife away,” I say, trying to sound calm. “I'm unarmed. I'm just a kid. Can you tell me what's going on? Are you tied up? How many of you are there? Should I call the police?”

For a few seconds there's no answer. Then I hear the desperate woman's voice again. “Let me out, let me out!”

I wonder if I should call the cops right now and let them deal with this situation, but I doubt they'll take me seriously if I don't have any proof. “Okay,” I say. “You don't have to tell me anything. I know you're scared. I'm going to get my phone and something to open the door, and then I'll come right back and get you out of there.”

I fly upstairs, careful to avoid the creaky spots I discovered earlier, and grab my phone off the table next to my bed. Then I dig through my backpack until I find my library card—Maddie and I found an online video about how to open a locked door with one. I've only managed to do it once before, on her upstairs bathroom door (to the great annoyance of her oldest sister, Lindsay, who was getting out of the shower). Let's hope I can do it again, now that it really matters.

Back in the forbidden hallway, I knock gently on the door again. “I'm here,” I say. “I'm going to try to open the door now, okay? Please stand back.” Nobody argues with me, so I figure I'm welcome.

Just like in the video, I slip the library card between the doorjamb and the door, then slide it down so it's resting right on top of the bolt. Then—this is the tricky part—I tilt the edge of it toward the doorknob and jiggle it. It takes a little while, and my sweaty hands aren't helping, but I finally feel the card slide in a little farther. When I force it back the opposite way, the bolt pops open. I turn the knob and push against the door, and it gives.

I'm in.

I leave the door mostly closed for a second so I can grab my flashlight and skateboard from the floor; if someone in there really does have a knife, I don't want to face him without a weapon of my own. Then I call, “I'm coming in, okay? Please don't attack. I am
on your side
.”

I take a deep breath, brace myself, and push the door open.

The first thing that hits me is the weird smell—sort of like wet cardboard and sawdust and rotting fruit. I feel around for a light switch, but I can't find it, so I do a quick sweep of the room with my flashlight to see what I'm dealing with. I'm expecting a cage full of terrified prisoners or maybe some ankle shackles like they used to have in medieval dungeons, but the only thing my light hits is a bunch of boxes, some stacks of newspapers, and a half-upholstered armchair. There are also some tall wooden stands with branches sticking out in all directions. Are those torture devices? And where are all the
people
?

“Hello?” I call quietly. “Can you say something so I know where you are? Don't be afraid.”

And then a voice very,
very
close to my head says, “Ahoy, matey! Walk the plank!”

I gasp and flinch, whacking my elbow against the wall and dropping my flashlight, which winks out. I'm so startled by the nearness of the voice that it takes me a minute to register what it said. Did he just tell me to
walk the plank
? Was that the same voice that was talking about the knife? Is there more than one guard in here?

“Hang on,” I say. My voice is trembling, but I try to keep it away from total hysteria. “Let me find the light switch, okay? Then we can talk this out.”

“
Walk the plank! Walk the plank!”
the voice screeches again, followed by another irritated “Knock it off, Tommy,” and a shrill, earsplitting scream.

I fumble desperately along the wall next to the doorframe with both hands, so scared and confused now that I feel like screaming myself. Finally my fingers land on a switch, hidden underneath some sort of wall hanging, and the room explodes into light. I blink quickly to help my eyes adjust to the brightness, and wheel around.

And then I blink a bunch more times, because what's in front of me makes absolutely no sense.

Scattered around the room, perched on the wooden stands and the backs of chairs, are about fifteen
parrots
. The light and the screaming must've disturbed them, because they're all rustling around, shaking out their feathers and looking at me with their glassy, unblinking eyes. They're all different colors—red and green and blue and gray and white—and they'd be superpretty if they were in a picture. But close up, they all have razor-sharp beaks and scaly dinosaur feet with claws that could easily gouge out my eyes. None of them are in cages. I stumble back until I'm pressed flat against the wall, and knowing there aren't any birds behind me makes me feel a little better, but not a lot. I hold my skateboard up in front of me so I can swat them away if they try to fly at my face.

But the weirdest thing is that I'm definitely the only person in the room. Where's the guard? Where's the screaming girl? As I struggle to calm down and make sense of everything, a big gray parrot with red tail feathers cocks its head, stares right at me, and opens its beak.

“Let me introduce you to my trusty knife,” says a familiar raspy voice.

And then the bird next to it, which has a yellow front and blue wings with one yellow feather right at the tip, goes, “Walk the plank, matey!”

Oh my God. I am so stupid.

It's not like I didn't know parrots could talk—everyone knows that. But I guess I thought they all said stuff like
Polly want a cracker!
and
I'm a pretty bird!
Who the heck teaches their birds to threaten people?

My grandmother, apparently. This is
so twisted
.

“
Let me out, let me out! 
” shrieks another voice near the back of the room. It sounds like a woman, but I trace it to a white bird with yellow feathers that stick up in a line on its head like a Mohawk. It stretches its wings a little, screams one more time for good measure, then hops down to a lower perch and starts nibbling on a toy. From the other side of the room, another large gray bird opens its beak, and the creaking door sound I keep hearing comes out.

Okay, I definitely did
not
know birds could do that.

There's clearly nobody here for me to rescue, so there's no reason for me to linger in this horrible, bird-filled room any longer. I'm about to go upstairs and have a good, long think about everything I saw, but then I notice a couple of terrariums in the corner. There aren't any birds over there, so I make my way toward them, skirting the edge of the room carefully and trying not to make any sudden movements. Inside are a couple of gigantic snakes, coiled back and forth on themselves like someone squeezed them out of a frozen yogurt machine. One of them is bright green and another has brown patches on a tan background. They both look super dangerous, and I wonder if either of them is an anaconda. A little farther back, there's another terrarium holding a lizard with a spiky ruff of skin around its neck. And in the very back, almost hidden behind a stack of cardboard boxes, there's a big metal cage with a large cat curled up in the corner. A
really
large cat . . . with spots.

That can't possibly be a baby
jaguar
, right?

A small gray bird across the room croons, “You'll be safe here with me, pretty.  You'll be happy here with me.”

It sounds exactly like my grandmother.

And that does it—I am officially too freaked out to spend one more second in here. I don't know
what
is going on, but I'm 150 percent sure I want nothing to do with it.

I turn off the light, shut the door behind me, and bolt.