The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp (16 page)

“Why, Mama, I think you were worried about me,” I said, pushing my luck.

“Worried you wouldn’t come back?” she asked. “Or worried you would!”

She regarded me slyly. “Where you bin anyhow? You look like three sheets to the wind and somethun the cat drug in.”

Still, I hoped to distract her. “I’m half-starved myself,” I remarked. “I haven’t had a thing to eat all day but whole-grain high-fiber product and a chaser of vitamin C concentrate.”

“Talk sense,” Mama said.

She dragged me to the table and dropped me in a chair. When she turned up the flame on the lamp, its reflection flared in her crystal ball.

“Now then.” She settled into a chair opposite. “I asked where you bin one time. I won’t ask agin.” She pointed at Paw’s strop. “I’ll let that thing do the talkin’.”

“Much as I’d like to chew the fat with you all evening, Mama, I have a busy night ahead of me and no time.”

She squinted at me over the crystal ball. “You got all the time I say you got.” Reaching into her shroud, she pulled out a plug of Bull Durham and commenced to jaw it at her leisure. “Start at the beginnin’.”

“Well . . . it’s like this, Mama. Last night I nipped back to the high school to get some homework I’d left in my desk. And lo and behold, if the janitor didn’t come along and lock up all the doors! I was stuck in that high school all night, Mama. Why, I had to sleep under Miss Blankenship’s desk. I overslept as it turned out, and the first thing I knew, it was morning. Miss Blankenship was taking attendance! So of course, all I could do was go through the regular school day as usual. That’s about what happened . . . basically.”

There was a disturbing pause before Mama said, “That ain’t even close.” She made a point of staring into her crystal ball like she could read the truth in it. “Try agin.”

I fetched up a sigh. It’s always difficult to explain anything to a mother, as I’ve often said. “The truth is, Mama, I did something you told me not to do.”

“That don’t come as a shock to me,” she remarked, drumming her long fingers on Paw’s strop.

“I went out to the old abandoned Leverette farmhouse last night.”

Mama’s eyes flashed, but she looked deep into her crystal ball. “And what did you find out?” she said cautiously. She was staring hard at the ball, but she was seeing nothing. She was all ears.

I thought of a way to flatter her somewhat. “I found out you were right, Mama. Remember that time you went into one of your trances and said, ‘Not all the Unliving are dead’? You hit the nail on the head that time.”

Mama folded her arms across her front and made a satisfied sound. “I’m never wrong,” she remarked. “What did I mean exactly?”

“You meant that while some of the Unliving are dead, the rest of the Unliving haven’t been born yet. They’re the people of the future.”

Mama gave this some thought. “That’s real interesting, ain’t it? Them trances of mine is a marvel. I don’t know how I do it.”

“Me either, Mama. When it comes to Powers, you don’t know your own strength.”

Mama almost beamed. I figured this was as good a time as any to make my exit. “However, even with my puny Powers,” I told her, “I can read your mind this minute.”

She froze. “Git outta my head, girl.”

“Oh, yes, Mama, I read you like a book. You just
as well hand over that gunnysack at your feet. You know yourself you’re fixing to send me out into the night to borrow a nice, plump frying chicken.”

Mama looked uncertain, but hungry. She could all but smell that chicken frying now, though she had unfinished business with me.

I had unfinished business with her, too. If she lived to be a hundred, she’d never tell me how strong her Powers are. She’d half known the old abandoned Leverette farmhouse was haunted by the future, so to speak. But I bet you a nickel my Powers are stronger. I can’t picture Mama traveling through a time warp. Not to mention what they’d think of her if she turned up in Bluffleigh Heights. I am no oil painting, but Mama would scare a bulldog off a meat wagon.

Mama had stood at the door of the Dreadful Future. There was no doubt in my mind about that. But I had crossed the fatal threshold!

She fished up the sack and scooted it across the table to me. When I reached out for it, I palmed her set of false teeth that were resting by the crystal ball. I slipped her teeth into my pocket and said, “I’ll be off now to pay a call on Old Man L—”

“Hush yore mouth,”
Mama commanded. “Don’t
never
tell me where you git them chickens. What I don’t know won’t hurt me!”

“Oh, Mama.” I sighed. “I’m glad you said that.”

Then I hightailed it out into the night.

I
F YOU
’
D BEEN LINGERING
around outside Old Man Leverette’s house in Bluff City on the night of October 30, 1914, you could have seen it all for yourself. Delayed by Mama somewhat, I wasn’t there a moment too soon, but a slicker operation was never pulled off.

Though I’m not used to approaching that particular house from the front, I slipped like a shadow across the Leverette yard, swerved around a sugar maple tree that shades his porch, and nipped up to his parlor door. I rapped but once before the door opened, and Old Man Leverette let me in. I’ve rarely, if ever, seen him in a better mood.

Minutes later both me and him reappeared on the porch. My form was draped in various white bed sheets. My head was bound up in a pillow slip that fitted tight across my forehead and flapped behind.

My face was a work of art. Old Man Leverette had smeared my cheeks and chin with lampblack and a coating of goose grease to make my entire face shine like a raw wound. Under my eyes he’d painted
ghastly circles and bags with a red vegetable dye he’d prepared especially. I was Barf City.

In my hand I carried a red railroad lantern with the wick turned low. Under his arm Old Man Leverette carried a stepladder. He was chuckling and snorting in advance, worse than a kid himself.

“If we don’t show them boys a thing or two,” he wheezed, “you can call me a—”

“Never mind about that, Old—Mr. Leverette,” I replied, all business. “Just steady that ladder and help me up that maple tree.” Which he did.

I heard the ladder close below me and Old Man Leverette’s heavy footsteps as he tramped back up on the porch and into the house.

The last leaf had fallen from the sugar maple, and its branches were slick with the evening damp. I needed to find just the right limb.

Flailing around in the tree like a big bird, I was hampered by my sheets. A limb overhung the front steps, but it was puny. I’d fallen out of one tree lately and didn’t wish to make a habit of it. I eased into the gutter and rested from my climb. It was dark that night and chilly up there on the porch roof.

Turning up my lantern, I spied a stouter limb. It too branched out over the front steps. Throwing caution to the winds, I stood up in the gutter. Without looking down at certain doom or a broken leg at least, I flexed my knees and took the leap.

The lantern swinging from my elbow threw weird shadows across the yard. I hooked the stout limb
with an arm and a leg and hung there swaying. Then I pulled myself up to a sitting position. I might have been a large white owl gone to roost up among the bare branches.

I practiced my gymnastics then, arranging the folds in my sheets so they wouldn’t trip me up. I meant to put on a ghastly show, but I didn’t plan to hang myself into the bargain. As it happened, I had little time to practice. From down the unpaved street I heard the unstealthy footsteps of boys. Three boys.

From my high perch I saw these shadowy three scramble off the crown of the road and skulk along in the weedy ditch. Though I couldn’t make them out, I figured Champ and Bub were the front ones and Alexander was bringing up the rear. My lantern burned low.

When they came even with the fence by the Leverette property, they bent double and skulked for the house. Through the pickets I watched these three toad forms moving up toward the porch.

They cut around then for the steps and were soon in a bunch right beneath my dangling feet. They were punching each other and snorting with laughter, which they muffled with their sleeves. I got a strong whiff of horse manure.

They eased onto the porch, crab-fashion. “Who brought the matches?” I heard Alexander ask. He can’t ever plan anything since he never thinks a minute ahead.

I couldn’t see them then because they were working
up by the front door. Bub doubtless planted the paper sack of manure on the porch floor. Champ doubtless brought the match I heard struck. Alexander doubtless rang Old Man Leverette’s doorbell.

“Trick or treat!” Alexander cried out in a breaking voice.

“Oh, shut up,” Bub said. Then they must have set the sack afire, for the porch glowed.

Now was the moment when Old Man Leverette was supposed to jerk open the door, see a small fire on his porch, and jump on it to stamp it out. The boys were poised for flight the second they saw that front door begin to move.

They never saw it. While up above I hooked my legs around the branch, Old Man Leverette wrenched his front door open with lightning speed. Never setting a foot outside, he swung his shotgun just over the three boys’ heads and let fly with both barrels.

Rock salt raked the porch ceiling and pounded in a hailstorm on the porch floor. The explosion was heard downtown. It was like the Day of Judgment, only louder.

This was followed by a piercing shriek which could only be Alexander. When they could move, Bub dived one way over the side of the porch, and Champ dived the other. They both vaulted over a matching pair of lilac bushes and lit, running.

There was a scuffling sound as Alexander’s boots seemed to run into each other. Then he turned and
plunged down the front steps, just as he was meant to do.

At the last possible moment, I popped Mama’s false teeth into my mouth. Being too big for my head, they made a wonderful show. With all my might I swung forward on my branch.

Just as Alexander hit the porch steps in wild retreat, my deathly face, upside down, swung level with his. I held the lantern, turned up full blast. It lit my awful black and red features. Mama’s terrible teeth grinned at him, and that is some sight. The night breeze caught my drapings. I was a floating head, and my sheets were the shroud from some troubled tomb.

It stopped Alexander cold. He couldn’t see my knees hooked over the branch above him. He could see only a face with the features upside down in red shadow, hanging inches before him.

A pitiful gurgling sound formed in his throat. His elbows were tucked up at his sides for running, but he was paralyzed. His face seemed to dissolve. He spun around in panic and pounded back up on the porch. Which was another mistake.

Old Man Leverette had doused the small fire with a bucket of water he had ready. Now he’d picked up the paper sack which had burned down to the manure. In both hands the old gentleman hefted up the soggy sack.

Alexander ran straight into it, face first.

H
ALLOWEEN
D
AY
dawned bright and fair, Indian summer as such weather is called. All the thoughts of us freshmen were upon the Halloween Festival Haunted House. Especially mine. But it was still a school day.

In homeroom Miss Blankenship took attendance as usual. Her daily
Hamlet
quotation was already on the blackboard:

We all sat restless in our rows, with scrubbed and shiny faces. Alexander Armsworth’s face looked especially scrubbed.

But he wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to me or not. I could read his mind like a book as he sat in the desk ahead of me. His ears glowed pinkish. Like Mama, he had some inkling of the mystery in the old abandoned Leverette farmhouse. But where I’d gone night before last when I’d walked through that fatal door, he couldn’t be sure.

He also wasn’t positive that it was me who was the ghastly floating red and black head which had caused him so much fear and discomfort last night. Hamlet himself had no more trouble making up his mind than Alexander.

But his ears were glowing redder. Just as the bell rang, ending homeroom, bells seemed to ring in Alexander’s brain. He turned on me, hissing.

“Listen, Blossom, if I find out it was you last night you-know-where who made me get hit in the face with you-know-what, I will make you one sorry girl.”

I looked back at him with wide and innocent eyes. But it didn’t work. The bell had rung, and so I gathered up my schoolbooks and twitched up the aisle in Letty Shambaugh’s way.

Alexander had not cooled off by history class. Long before the day was over, he had me tried and convicted in his mind.

“Listen,” he hissed again, right under Mr. Lacy’s nose, “you might as well come clean, Blossom. It was you up that tree because who else would pull such a disgusting stunt, you little—”

“Chill out, Alexander,” I whispered sternly. “You had better keep your accusations to yourself until after tonight at least. That is, if you want any fortunes told in your so-called Haunted House.”

This didn’t calm him down, but it shut him up. “We have the reputation of the freshman class to consider,” I added, sniffing.

All in all, it wasn’t one of Alexander’s better days. For one thing, he’d lost his freshman beanie someplace and didn’t know where to find it.

I had it. Last night, when he’d received a faceful from Old Man Leverette, his beanie had shot off the back of his head, rolled down the porch steps, and come to rest under my dangling head. In the confusion that followed, Alexander had sped away, blind into the night.

I’d gathered up his beanie along with a plump fryer, cut up and ready for the pan, which Old Man Leverette gave me to remember the occasion by. Mama had made quick work of the chicken, but I still had Alexander’s beanie. In such a mood as his, I didn’t figure he deserved to have it back.

Mostly to hush us up, Mr. Lacy sent me down to the office with the attendance slip. As usual, I detoured past the girls’ rest room to drop in on Daisy-Rae. Seemed like ages since I’d seen her last.