The House in Poplar Wood Read online

  Now Gretchen gave him a sour look.

  “Funerals aren’t stupid,” she told him. “What happened to Essie was awful, even if she was who she was. I’m showing decorum, and so should you.”

  A muscle twitched wrongly in Asa’s jaw. “Like decorum changes anything. She’s still dead, isn’t she?”

  Gretchen did not reply. She was looking beyond Asa, toward the border of Poplar Wood. At the top of a hill, two figures were standing among the trees, looking down on the cemetery. They had obviously not been invited to this burial.

  “Hey!” she called out. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Gretchen began to stomp up the hill, and as she moved up, she got a better look at the intruders. One was tall and russet-haired, with lanky limbs; Gretchen recognized him from school. The other boy was short and small, and his hair was just as dark as hers. Over one of his eyes, he wore a patch. At first, both boys looked down at Gretchen in bewilderment as though they thought she was talking to the poplars and not to them. Then realization touched the face of the one with the covered eye. He grabbed the elbow of the other, and the two boys fled back into the wood.

  “Hey!” Gretchen called again. “What’re you snooping around here for? Explain yourselves! I know who you are, LEE VICKERY!”

  But Lee Vickery and his friend did not slow down, and Gretchen was left staring after them, new mud stains on her tights. She looked down the hill, to where Essie’s mother was crying and Asa was kicking at sod. What was there for any snooper to see? Only drawn faces and mist and gloom—decorum at its worst. An end to an unthinkable accident, that was all.

  Still, one question hung over Gretchen, like the low, damp clouds above:

  Couldn’t she dare to think the unthinkable?

  There were many things about his twin brother that Lee Vickery did not understand. One was how Felix could be so content to talk to no one but Lee, their father, and Death. Another was why Felix did not like town. If Lee had been bound to work all his days within Poplar Wood until his sixteenth birthday, he would be itching to get away. He would’ve stayed out long past eleven o’clock on Halloween and into the dewy hours of dawn, to the very last seconds before Death returned from vacation.

  Luckily, Lee wasn’t bound to Poplar Wood. He could go to school and the grocery store and Creek Diner. He knew street names and kids his own age. Town was familiar, and every year he took pride in showing it off to Felix—the shops that had opened in the past year, the shops that had closed and shuttered their windows, the new streetlights and better-paved roads—as though he’d personally had a hand in paving the roads and laying the bricks of the stores.

  The brothers walked down Main Street together, past storefronts decorated with pumpkins and fake cobwebs. The sun was slipping behind the town hall spire, and younger children dressed as superheroes and royalty were already on the streets, toting pillow-cases and plastic buckets. Now that they were in town and far from Boone Cemetery, Lee’s heart had fallen into a steadier patter. The sight of Gretchen Whipple storming toward them had been downright petrifying, but if Felix hadn’t grabbed Lee, he might have stayed and tried to explain himself. They hadn’t been snooping, after all. It was just that the cemetery bordered Poplar Wood, and passing through it was the quickest way into town.

  “That girl wasn’t nice,” Felix said as they turned onto Hickory Street, the busiest road in town.

  “She thought we were trying to cause trouble, I guess.”

  Lee did not mention that the girl was Gretchen Whipple. Felix already didn’t like town, and running into one of the Whipples—the Vickeries sworn enemies—would hardly improve his opinion.

  “Whose funeral was it?” Felix asked.

  “Essie Hasting’s.”

  This was a name Lee had not known until two days ago, when school had suddenly rippled with whispers about Essie, whose body had been found by hikers early that morning at the bottom of a steep cliff in Hickory Park. Lee didn’t understand why everyone liked to whisper about it so much, like it was something exciting. Lee just felt sad about the whole thing.

  “You and Dad wouldn’t have seen her as a patient,” he told Felix. “She died by accident.”

  “I wondered,” Felix said softly. “A candle went out this week, but it wasn’t someone Dad had attended to. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Most days, when Lee came home from school, he told Felix all about what was going on in town, whether Felix wanted to hear or not.

  “Dunno.” Lee shrugged. “Guess it slipped my mind.”

  But the truth was that Lee hadn’t told Felix on purpose. There was already so much talk of death and Death at Poplar House, and Lee got tired of it.

  “Here we are!”

  They had arrived at Creek Diner. The diner wasn’t situated anywhere near a creek, but rather on a street called Creek Lane. It was a small brick building with extra-large windows, booth seats, and a soda fountain. In the corner of the restaurant, a group of boys with close-cropped hair sat drinking sodas and sharing a big plate of fries. They looked to be around Lee’s age, but he told Felix, “I don’t know those guys.”

  “Good,” said Felix. “I don’t want to meet anyone.”

  They sat down at the counter, and Mr. Harvey, a potbellied man with a goatee, came to take their order. Lee studied the chalkboard specials and then ordered a salted caramel shake and a plate of fried pickles for the both of them.

  “That’s expensive,” Felix said, once Mr. Harvey had gone back to the kitchen.

  “Yeah. Mom gave me some money.”

  Lee pulled a tattered wallet out of his back pocket. Vince may have given Felix a later curfew, but Judith gave Lee a better allowance.

  The store bell clanged, and Lee turned too quick to realize he shouldn’t have turned at all.

  “What’re you looking at, carrot top?”

  Asa Whipple had walked into Creek Diner. He strode straight over and flicked Lee’s ear.

  “Teach you to gawk,” he said, hurtling over the counter and barging into the kitchen, shouting, “Clocking in, Mr. Harvey!”

  “Since when did he start working here?” Lee muttered.

  “Your ear’s red,” said Felix. “Why’d you let him do that?”

  Lee touched his throbbing ear. “It’s Asa. That’s just what you gotta do.”

  “Asa Whipple?”

  So much for keeping up Felix’s opinion of town. It seemed the brothers were fated to run into every Whipple in existence.

  Lee had told Felix all about Asa. He was a junior at Boone Ridge High and was feared far and wide by every kid in town. He was strong and fast, and he enjoyed picking on anyone even an inch shorter than him. He beat up plenty of people just for looking at him funny. He’d been suspended from school four times but never expelled because he was the mayor’s son. And since he’d turned sixteen and gotten a motorbike, he’d been able to terrorize the town’s younger citizens all the more conveniently.

  Mr. Harvey emerged from the back with an iced glass mug of caramel shake and a piping-hot plate of fried pickles, which made Lee forget all about his stinging ear.

  “You’re going to love these.” Lee waved a pickle under Felix’s nose. “I bet Dad doesn’t make anything as good as fried pickles.”

  “We’ve been eating a lot of bean soup lately,” said Felix, cutting at a pickle with his knife and fork.

  Lee laughed and grabbed the knife from Felix’s hand. “Not like that. Like this.”

  He dangled a whole pickle spear above his mouth and chomped down half of it. Green juice ran out the corner of his mouth.

  Felix took his knife back and continued to saw his food. “This is the way we do things in my part of the house.”

  “Fine,” Lee said, resigned and wondering just how many things about Poplar House’s east end he would never find out.

  And all because of the stupid Agreement. Had the Agreement not existed, there would be no east or west ends at all. Lee took a long gulp of caramel sha
ke, only to contract a terrible case of brain freeze.

  “Oww,” he yowled, thudding his head on the counter.

  “We drink our drinks slower, too,” Felix said, smiling a little.

  Lee lifted his head. “Thanks a lot.” Rubbing at his temples, he said, “Do you ever think maybe we just did it wrong?”

  It had been almost two years since the brothers had tried out their plan—a plan to break the Agreement once and for all. They had failed, and they had been punished and warned to never try again. Human plots were nothing against the will of the Shades, especially plots crafted by humans as young and weak as Lee and Felix. That is what Death had told them. Lee’s left ear could still hear every word carried on the dark, oily voice of his brother’s master.

  The Agreement was permanent, and not a thing to be broken. The terms were these:

  Poplar House would forever be divided into two parts—

  east and west.

  On the east side, Felix would live

  with his father and Death.

  On the west side, Lee would live with

  his mother and Memory.

  Their parents would never set eyes on each

  other for the rest of their days.

  Felix would never see his mother, and

  Lee would never see his father.

  The twins could meet, but only

  outside the house.

  That was the Agreement, and it would stand in perpetuity. The brothers had learned this the hard way. But every so often Lee let himself wonder if there was another way—a way to break the Agreement that the brothers hadn’t yet tried.

  “You shouldn’t get your hopes up,” Felix said. “Those are the patients we have the most trouble with—the ones who hope when they shouldn’t.”

  Lee chewed on his pickle. “You should always hope. That’s what Mom says.”

  “That’s because Mom lives with Memory, and Memory’s kinder. But even if Memory would allow us all to see each other again, Death wouldn’t. He never changes his mind.”

  “I wish we lived in another town,” Lee said. “I hear the Death in Chattanooga is nice. His apprentice gives out chocolate candies so you have a sweet journey to the afterlife.”

  Felix scoffed. “I don’t see how sugar makes the dying any better.”

  Lee noticed that Mr. Harvey had stopped cleaning the counter. He was standing still, staring at the brothers. Felix might not have known it, but Lee did: Ordinary people looked at you funny when you talked about Death and Memory as though they were real people who made Agreements.

  “Come on,” Lee said, placing a wad of money on the counter. “Let’s go.”

  “But we’re not done.”

  Lee took the last two fried pickles, wrapped them in a napkin, and shoved them into his coat pocket. “Now we are. We want a good spot for the bonfire.”

  Felix sighed but followed Lee out of the diner. Lee looked back only once, through the glass of the closed door. Mr. Harvey was no longer watching them, but someone else was. Asa smiled a horrible smile in Lee’s direction. He raised two fingers to his eyes, then pointed them at Lee. A gesture to say I’m watching you, kid.

  Lee shuddered. He had a sneaking suspicion that even if the Whipples and Vickeries weren’t sworn enemies, Asa Whipple still wouldn’t be his friend.

  Night was thick over Main Street. The streetlights had not turned on as they ought to have, and corners Felix thought he knew from Halloweens past were darkened, all unfamiliar.

  “Why aren’t the lights working?” he asked.

  “It’s because of that storm,” said Lee. “A big bolt of lightning knocked out something electrical, and they haven’t been able to fix it yet. It’s . . . a little creepy.”

  “Right time for it, though, I guess.”

  “Oh, definitely,” Lee said, even as he shivered.

  A light appeared in the distance. It came from Featherstone Park, where the Halloween bonfire was held each year. As they walked toward it, Felix wrapped an arm around his brother. He wasn’t going to tease Lee for being a little creeped out. If Felix hadn’t lived with Death his whole life, he knew he’d be scared, too. Felix understood very well why kids his age were afraid of dark streets. He understood why tales of werewolves and bloodied maniacs sent gooseflesh tickling up the skin. He understood those fears very well—but he never felt them.

  It wasn’t that Felix considered himself braver than his brother or other boys his age. He just didn’t fear ghosts, blood, and darkness, because he knew what he did need to fear: Death, the Shade he served. It was a fear so great and constant that Felix wondered if it had simply pushed out all the normal fears to make room for itself and itself alone.

  “Watch it, would you?”

  Felix had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed a girl’s sparkly shoe underfoot.

  “Sorry, it’s hard to see,” said Lee, tugging Felix away from the girl, who was dressed like an angel and scowling so hard through her glittery makeup that even her tinsel halo seemed provoked. The bonfire light was bright here, and Felix could see just fine, but the girl had been on his unseeing side.

  “Come on,” Lee said to Felix. “We’ve got to find our friend.”

  “Find our friend” was Lee’s way of fibbing their way to the front of the crowd. It meant crawling underneath arms and through legs and just barely avoiding elbows in the face. When it was all over, the boys were so close to the fire that Felix’s seeing eye stung with smoke.

  The bonfire swelled before them, a great big arrogant thing. Sparks cracked out, whizzing into the night. Beside Felix, a grown woman chomped greedily at a candy apple; it was a gruesome sight, all red shards and unchecked spit. Felix closed his eye and took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of burning wood and frost-nipped leaves. Around him, people spoke—dozens of voices all ducking and weaseling in and around each other. The sound of conversation was still strange to Felix, no matter how many Halloweens he had heard it.

  “You!”

  Felix opened his eye to find a nose at his chin. It was a particular nose, pinched at the bridge and rounded at the end like a jelly bean. Felix backed away from a girl with wild black hair, which was matted so badly it looked like it belonged to a poorly treated stuffed animal. Fake blood leaked from her mouth, and purple crescents puffed beneath her eyes. It was the eyes that Felix recognized: This was the girl from earlier, at the cemetery. Though the rest of her looked like an undead monster, her eyes were very much alive with anger, and they were fixed on Lee.

  “What was that about?” she demanded. “Why were the two of you funeral crashing?”

  Lee opened his mouth to the approximate circumference of a soup bowl. No sound came out.

  “Just what’s so interesting about a burial, huh? Don’t you know it’s not polite to stare while dead people are getting shoved in the ground? Don’t you know it’s rude to stare, period? What, Lee Vickery, have you lost the capacity for speech?”

  Lee closed up his mouth. It looked as though he’d forgotten what words were. There was no choice, Felix decided. He would have to be the one to speak.

  “We didn’t know there was a funeral going on,” he said. “We were just walking into town, and you don’t own the cemetery, so leave us alone.”

  This was why Felix hated talking to people. They didn’t understand anything, and they assumed and they yelled and they pointed fingers, just as the girl was doing now. Her pointing finger was so close to his face, he swatted it away.

  “How dare you!” she cried, though she now looked more excited than angry. “Who is this, Lee? I’ve never seen him around.” She turned to Felix. “You don’t go to school with us, do you?”

  Felix shook his head.

  “Then you go to Harpeth Prep?”

  Felix shook his head again.

  “So you’re from out of town.”

  Felix considered this. “Yes.”

  The girl squinted. “What’s your name?”

  Felix didn’t answer,
so the girl said, “My name’s Gretchen.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Gretchen frowned. “Fine. If you won’t tell me your name, I’ll just call you . . . Zeke. You’ve got a lot of nerve, hitting a girl like that, Zeke.”

  “I didn’t hit you! Have you ever heard of personal sp—”

  “Inconsequential.” Gretchen turned to Lee and looked him over from toe to brow. “Why aren’t you wearing a costume? It’s Halloween, doofus.”

  Lee looked sheepish. “Don’t you think we’re too old for costumes?”

  “Everyone wears a costume on Halloween. Even this weird friend of yours is.”

  “No I’m not,” said Felix.

  “Sure you are. You’re a pirate.”

  “No,” said Felix, “I’m not.”

  “Cut the tomfoolery, Zeke! What do you call this?”

  Gretchen grabbed at Felix’s eyepatch. It bent under her thumb and hit Felix’s forehead with a stinging smack. Gretchen stepped back. “Whoa. Oh, whoa. Is that real?”

  Shame swam into Felix’s cheeks and burned them, stovetop hot. He didn’t answer Gretchen. He ran. He thudded into the chest of a clown, then spun out and knocked a glass of cider from a princess’s hand. He didn’t apologize. He pressed on, beating through flesh and fabric until he was past the crowd entirely. Even then, he kept running, until he stumbled over a branch and fell right into Poplar Wood.

  He sat up, heart a-thump, plucking out sprigs of pine needles that had lodged into his shoes.

  “Felix? Felix!”

  Lee emerged, panting, and hurried to kneel beside Felix, who shrank away.

  “Don’t touch me, I’m fine.”

  “She didn’t know,” Lee said, breathless. “Really, she didn’t, Felix, or—”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Felix got to his feet. “I told you I don’t like town, and I don’t like the people here. Now do you finally get why?”