“Come on, pal, you can do it,” I said. “It’s just one compliment. Just one. I seem to possess…?”
Some… He nearly choked on the words. Artistic ability. If they desire this decrepit hut to be a fountain of wealth, then I will show you what I know of such things, teach you how to present it, and it shall be so.
“And, in exchange, I ask Nell your question,” I finished. “What’s the catch here? How do I know I’m not accidentally agreeing to a contract?”
Because, Maggot, he said, when we form our contract, it will be because you’ve asked for it yourself.
I began to suspect that Nell was right about Uncle B being behind the housecleaning when I found the bulk of the materials and props piled in the overflowing garbage can in the side yard. Whatever couldn’t fit inside the canister had been piled up neatly beside it, waiting for trash day.
“All right,” I said, after I’d dragged it all back inside to assess the situation. “You ready, Al?”
Who is this “Al” you address? Surely not myself, a noble, malicious prince of the Third Realm—
“Sure, Al pal,” I said, feeling the first trickle of hot needles rushing through my good arm and legs. Something sparked at the center of my chest, spreading its heat out through my blood. When I closed my eyes, the glimpses I’d had of each room in the house slid into place. I began to sort all the supplies by the rooms they belonged to, lifting enormous, hulking piles of fake tombstones and trees as easily as if they were rolls of old parchment. My hands were blurs as they jammed everything back into its right place, strung up the blackout curtains, stretched and draped what had to be miles of cobwebbing. I found a shovel leaning against the side of the house and began to dig up fresh dirt and grass to pile onto the floor of the graveyard on the second story, using the empty trash can to haul it all up the stairs.
No, Maggot, she had it arranged like so….Al used my hand to tilt one of the crumbling headstones back up. By the realms, your brain is the size of a mouse’s. I can see it quiver with effort.
The only other part of the room that was missing was the blood shower. I glanced up at the ceiling, trying to find the sprinkler system they must have used, only to see a pale, translucent face staring back at me.
I jumped over the nearest gravestone, tripping over my feet until I backed straight into the wall.
The ghostly woman—the ghost, I realized—leaned down farther through the ceiling, examining my work. With a long, delicate arm, she pointed at the fake bats I’d pinned to the ceiling, and then pointed a short distance to the left of them.
A shade, Alastor confirmed. Likely bound to the house, by choice or by magic.
“Oh, right,” I managed to say. “Um, thanks?”
With the room finally back in order, the woman drifted down through the air, her old-fashioned white dress fluttering as though it had been cut from fabric, not moonlight and mist.
The shade reached out her arms. “My sweet boy—”
“Okay, bye!” I shut the door firmly behind me, leaning back against it. Something rotten wafted up to my nose, and I didn’t need to lift my arm to know that it was me. Upstairs, whatever creature was behind the locked door on the right began to pound against the door and yowl.
Funny. Whatever it was, it almost sounded like my furry friend Toad.
Wait.
“Toad?” I’d been so distracted by Nell and the house itself that I hadn’t realized the changeling hadn’t made an appearance since leaving that morning. My feet pounded out a steady, quick clip against the old wood, until I gripped the banister just a bit too tight to keep my balance and splintered the wood.
“Whoa,” I muttered. “Settle down, Hulk.”
The chains on the door were gone, but someone had wedged a doorstop under it to keep it firmly shut. I kicked it away and threw the door open. “Are you—?”
With a ferocious, hair-raising screech, Toad flew out of the room, his tiny paws raised like a boxer’s gloves. I ducked, narrowly missing a claw to the eye as he took an indignant swipe.
“Are you okay?” I asked. Toad ignored me, his wings slapping at the air as he darted past, inspecting the rooms before zooming downstairs. All the while, he sniffed and sniffed and sniffed, like he was trying to track or find something—or someone. “Do you know who did this? Was it Uncle Barnabas?”
Do not trouble yourself, Maggot. The changelings have brains smaller than even your own.
But the CatBat shook his head. He let out a low, mournful noise as he looked around the half-finished zombie-hospital floor, finally landing in the middle of the room with a dejected thump. The edges of his fur began to shimmer and I let out a yelp as the creature dissolved, splashing against the floor as nothing more than a puddle with big, green eyes.
“Holy crap!” I dropped to my knees beside him, trying to scoop him back together. “I’m working as fast as I can, but I need your help, okay? We won’t finish setting up in time for the run-through without whatever spells Nell’s mom used. Can you go find her and bring her back?”
With a loud pop! the changeling shifted again, this time into a large, green-eyed raven. Caw-caw!
He agreed, Maggot, said Alastor, who, apparently, also spoke evil bird.
Toad flew to the door, his wings beating against the wood until I opened it for him. Leaving a window open for his eventual return, I set to work finishing the first floor, ignoring Al’s suggestion I use my own blood to splatter the walls. Instead, I used a mixture of what was left in the ketchup bottle in the refrigerator, flour, and water, smearing the fake blood on the plaster and scratching a message into it with my own hands.
I didn’t know what to do with the ghost room upstairs. I turned the house and backyard inside out looking for whatever machine they had used to chill the room so brutally and make it feel as though you were standing over a crack in the earth that sank as deep as the underworld.
A witch would never dare to open the realm of shades, for fear of unleashing the unhappy dead.
So it must have been an illusion, then.
I have another thought about this room.
I saw the thought as clearly as if I had slipped inside a memory. The hazy film that seemed to cover my vision lifted, revealing a dark, damp stone room. A drip, drip, drip set my hair tingling against my skin. Layered just beneath that sound was a faint clicking and clattering—no, a scrabbling. Almost like…
A thousand insect legs. The walls crawled with spiders, some as small as my pinky, others bigger than my head. I tried to lurch back, only to bump into something heavy, something sticky. Whirling around, I came face-to-face with a long, shimmering white cocoon and whatever poor creature was wrapped inside it. When I took a step back, two glowing red dots appeared through the webbing. Eyes.
The spiders swarmed my feet, crawling up my legs, into my hair. “Get me out of here!”