The Haunted Serpent Read online

  Spaulding shook his head. Unbelievable. Boa constrictors on houses—just when he thought Thedgeroot couldn’t get any more ridiculous.

  He grabbed his notebook and flipped to a fresh page.

  He leaned over to check again. Still there, still dozing. Could it be dead?

  At that moment, the snake twitched. Its tongue flicked out. It gave an enormous yawn, then curled into an even tighter spiral. Spaulding shivered. It was kind of cute, if you ignored the huge fangs and glistening, gaping throat.

  Should he call the police? Animal control? That would be the responsible thing.

  But if he did that, it would all be out of his hands. If something interesting were going on, he’d never know. Some stuffy official would show up and tell him to run along home like a good boy.

  He needed a better look.

  Cautiously, he crawled to the other side of the porch roof. Now he had a clear view, unobstructed by the ash tree. There was the ray of sunlight, there were the peeling shingles—and that was all. No snake.

  But it couldn’t have gone far; it hadn’t had enough time. He’d just wait. Surely something so big would have to show itself again sooner or later. Tucking his hands into his pockets, he settled down against the wall of his house once more. Gradually, the evening fog rolled down over the trees, and a cold wind sprang up. He blew into his hands. There was no sign of the boa.

  He had just decided to give up and go inside when a movement caught his eye. His gaze snapped back to the empty house. But it wasn’t the snake. Someone was inside. All he could make out through the window was a mop of black hair hanging over a sallow face. The figure glided by the window, staring straight ahead, and disappeared into the next room.

  Spaulding’s scalp tingled. Snakes, dead-or-possibly-not guys in the woods, and now a suspicious lurker in the abandoned house next door? Mysteries were practically falling into his lap!

  He made up his mind. Forget Marietta’s advice to blend in—that was never going to work for S.S. Meriwether. No, he was going to make a name for himself as an investigator or die trying. He’d be the kid who captured the giant snake, or proved the existence of the living dead, or something. If that didn’t win him some friends, he didn’t know what would.

  But after that, it seemed Thedgeroot had made up its mind to be the most boring little town it could be. For days, Spaulding didn’t encounter anyone any more out of the ordinary than Mrs. Welliphaunt—although she was certainly bad enough.

  He didn’t face any dangers other than Katrina’s sharp tongue—which, again, was quite bad enough.

  And he saw nothing out of the ordinary in the house next door, even though he spent every afternoon in the thinking spot keeping watch.

  He’d probably imagined the whole thing, he thought glumly one day as he sat watching the house yet again. The man in the suit, the snake, the figure in the house, all of it. Katrina was right, he was crazy and dumb and weird and—

  “Hey!”

  Spaulding flinched at the sudden yell and almost toppled from his perch. He grabbed the edge of the roof to steady himself.

  A girl had appeared at the side-yard fence. She looked about eight or nine, and she had a tuba case slung over her back that was nearly as tall as she was.

  “Why are you up there spying on people?” she asked.

  “I’m not spying, I’m thinking,” he snapped.

  “It looks exactly like spying. Can I help? Are you spying on ol’ Mr. Radzinsky’s house? Isn’t that kinda boring, since it’s empty?” She put down her tuba case and hooked her arms over the fence.

  “I don’t need help spying—I’m not spying, I mean. Who are you again?”

  “I’m Lucy Bellwood. Marietta’s sister. We live down the street. Hang on, let me just get Daphne over the fence, and I’ll be right up.”

  “No! Why are you coming up? Why are you putting your tuba over the fence? And who’s Daphne? Wait—is that what you call your tuba? That’s a terrible name for a tuba.”

  She paused, the big black instrument case teetering atop the fence. “I’m coming up to help you! And where I go, Daphne goes. She’s not a tuba, she is a euphonium. Anyway, I hate stereotypes about tubas, even if she was a tuba. Which she isn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t need help. So don’t come up.” He folded his arms and tried to look stern. The last thing he needed was a little kid hanging around pestering him.

  Lucy gazed up at him, her chin trembling.

  He stayed stern for another second. Then his shoulders sagged. “All right,” he sighed. “I suppose you can help by providing information.”

  She stuck her lip out. “Sounds boring.”

  “It’s a very important job. Do you know anything about that empty house? Is someone buying it?”

  Lucy gave up on heaving Daphne over the fence and hugged the case to her chest instead as she jigged up and down on her tip-toes. “Oh, I can give you all sorts of information about that! There’s no way anybody’s gonna buy that place, it’s a dump. Nobody cleaned it up after ol’ Mr. Radzinsky died.”

  “But there’s someone in there right now.”

  She shook her head. “Nah. No one sets foot in there, ’cause everybody knows they never caught that snake of his after it ate him.”

  Spaulding’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding?”

  “Nope! It was a few years ago. Nobody knows what happened to the snake afterward.”

  He was about to tell her he’d seen the reptile himself, but at the last second held back. Maybe it was better not to tell anyone just yet.

  Lucy glanced at her pink plastic watch and sighed. “Darn. I guess I better go before I’m late for my music lesson.” She turned away. “But don’t worry,” she called over her shoulder, “I’ll help with spying more later!”

  Spaulding watched her run off up the street, the massive instrument case thumping on her legs. He shook his head. What a strange neighborhood. But at least now he knew where the mystery boa constrictor came from.

  He also knew it was a killer.

  Aunt Gwendolyn’s study door was shut when he went inside. A closed door signaled that a character or even a whole plot was misbehaving, and she was not to be disturbed until she had the situation under control. It could be days.

  For Spaulding, that meant one thing: potato-chips-and-jelly sandwich free-for-all. Maybe even double-deckers. He deserved it.

  After he made dinner (not only a double, but also strawberry jelly with jalapeño chips—a new and excitingly risky combination), he went straight to his room.

  He didn’t allow himself even a glance at his thinking spot as he passed. He wasn’t in the mood to think about shadowy figures or killer serpents or creepy guys in suits. He was accumulating quite a collection of things not to think about, actually.

  However, trying not to think about things isn’t a good recipe for a restful night’s sleep. (Also not a good recipe, as it turned out: strawberry-jelly-and-jalapeño-chip sandwiches.)

  After lying in the dark for some time, thinking every creak was the sound of the snake coming to eat him, Spaulding couldn’t stand it anymore. He sat up and threw off the blankets. Maybe a sip of water would help.

  He shuffled into the hallway. Outside, the dark shape of the house next door loomed. It seemed closer than it did in daylight, somehow. Almost like it was peering in through the window at him, instead of the other way around.

  He forced himself to look away. He was being ridiculous. But . . . there was something odd about it, wasn’t there? Something out of place.

  The window—that was it. The window was lit by a faint greenish glow. The shadows in the room shifted and jumped like someone was walking around in there with a candle.

  He had to find out what was going on. A little voice in the back of his mind suggested it might just possibly be a bad idea to sneak into a house where some unknown person was creeping around after midnight, but he tamped it down.

  He went back to his room and yanked on his sneakers, then hurrie
d downstairs, tiptoeing carefully past Aunt Gwendolyn’s study.

  But Aunt Gwen had finally emerged.

  As he passed the living room doorway, she looked up from her book—something with spaceships and laser-gun-wielding aliens on the cover—and frowned at his sneaker-clad feet. “Going out at this time of night, Spaulding? Whatever for?”

  “Research,” he said shortly. “Has to be under cover of darkness.”

  “Research?” She stared at him. Then she turned back to her book. “In that case, best get my flashlight from the hall table—fresh batteries.”

  Spaulding grinned. You had to say that for Aunt Gwen: she understood research.

  “Oh, and Spaulding,” she called after him.

  He glanced back.

  Aunt Gwen gave him a look over her glasses. “Be back in a half-hour on the dot. I’m willing to assume you’re not up to anything silly, but I don’t want you wandering all over town. And if you’re late, I’m afraid I’ll have to make you face . . . the fan mail.” She gave an evil-villain chuckle.

  Spaulding squinted at her. “You wouldn’t by any chance be looking for an excuse to put me on fan mail duty, would you?” He and Aunt Gwen both loathed fan mail duty—Aunt Gwen’s fans tended to be weird, and if they didn’t get detailed replies, they wrote back. Often.

  Aunt Gwen batted her eyes innocently behind her crooked glasses. “Of course not! I just have to make the consequences severe or you won’t take me seriously.”

  Spaulding covered up a smile. It was kind of hard to take Aunt Gwen seriously. Currently she was wearing an old fedora, her bathrobe, and cowboy boots. “Fine. But I’m noting the time. You’re not going to pull a fast one and claim I was late so you can stick me with extra letters. Again.”

  Aunt Gwen gasped. “I would never!”

  After a brief delay while the contract was drawn up, Spaulding raced up the street toward the house next door. Inside, the light was still visible. As he watched, it drifted across the front windows and disappeared on the far side of the house. He’d have to move fast while he knew whoever-it-was was out of the way.

  He tested the knob on the side door—stiff, but it opened. He held his breath for a moment, afraid someone would have heard the creak. All was silent. He slipped inside.

  He was in a tiny mudroom, bare except for a few boxes and a coat rack. To the left, a door opened into a dark and empty living room. The intruder must have either gone upstairs or down the hall, but there was no way to tell which. The house was still perfectly quiet—oddly quiet. Shouldn’t he hear a footstep, or squeaking floorboard, or something?

  Just then, the shadows on the staircase shifted. A green glow washed over the walls and ceiling. Someone was coming downstairs.

  Spaulding needed a hiding place—fast.

  He backed up a step, but there was something behind his foot. Something he was sure hadn’t been there before. It felt cylindrical and heavy, like a log, but immovable.

  There wasn’t time to get his balance. In an instant he was flat on his back, the air knocked from his lungs, his head ringing. As he lay stunned, the log-like thing slid out from under his calves.

  And then it popped up right in front of his nose. He caught a whiff of something much like Aunt Gwen’s ancient alligator purse (he always had hated that thing).

  It was the snake. The snake with a history of eating people—people who fed it and were its friends even, whereas Spaulding was not its friend, not even an acquaintance, really—

  The snake opened its jaws wide. The smell washed over Spaulding again. His stomach churned. Boy, if he ever made it home again, that stupid purse was going straight into the garbage.

  “There, there, my dearest,” crooned a hollow voice from somewhere nearby. “Don’t be frightened.”

  Spaulding sat up and scuttled across the floor, looking around for the speaker and keeping an eye on the snake at the same time. “Who’s that?” he called. “Where are you?”

  “Stupid as well as nosy,” the voice said. “I should have you arrested for breaking and entering. Get out, before I give David the command to attack.”

  The greenish light had appeared at the door to the mudroom. Someone must be standing there with a flashlight or glowstick or something. He held up a hand to shield his eyes, squinting.

  And then he understood.

  It wasn’t a person shining a light in his eyes. It was a person giving off light. In fact, it was the person he had seen in the house before—the weirdo with the crazy hair. Only now he seemed to be fluorescent.

  “You glow in the dark,” Spaulding said unnecessarily.

  The figure gave a snort. “Brilliant deduction, Mr. Holmes. Astound and delight us with another, won’t you? I said get out!”

  “But I thought no one lived here.” Spaulding’s head ached, and it took him a moment to understand the obvious. “Wait, are you . . . Mr. Radzinsky?”

  “Who wants to know? Are you selling something? Come here, dearest.” The snake gave one last threatening hiss before returning to its master, speeding across the floor with a sound like leaves blowing across pavement.

  Spaulding wiped his palms on his jeans. He wished he dared take out his notebook and jot down every detail. This guy was clearly dead, but also quite different from the man in the suit. That meant Spaulding had now discovered two distinct varieties of undead. His parents hadn’t managed that in ten years of their idiotic TV show.

  What he needed to do now was stay on the ghost’s good side. Then he could come back with a camera and get some solid proof. He had a feeling he’d better be as polite as possible—Mr. Radzinsky seemed a bit testy.

  “Thanks for not calling the police, sir. I only came in because I saw someone inside. I thought it might be vandals.”

  “Oh.” The ghost scratched at his chin, which made Spaulding notice the rather gray and peeling quality of his complexion. Where his eyes should have been, there were nothing but two deep wells of shadow, each with a tiny spark of green light deep within.

  “You needn’t have bothered; I’m well protected by my dear David Boa.” Mr. Radzinsky gave the snake a pat, his hand passing right through its scales.

  Spaulding nodded and smiled weakly at the snake. Mr. Radzinsky seemed to be relaxing a little. Spaulding tried to think of some small talk appropriate for chatting with a spirit.

  “So, how is it you’re still liv—I mean, still here? Everyone in the neighborhood seems to think you, y’know . . . went away.”

  The hand that had been petting the boa constrictor stilled. The ghost stared at Spaulding from the blank pools of his eyes. Something started to happen to his face. The skin shriveled away from his eye sockets. His lips cracked and peeled back. Spaulding found himself facing a yellowed, grinning skull.

  “I’m not a fool, you know,” the skull said through its teeth. “I do realize I’m dead.”

  “Of course, sir. I was only trying to broach the subject politely.”

  Before Spaulding could even blink, the ghost was right in his face.

  “You can’t bring up my death politely.” His voice dropped to a hiss. David reared up beside him, also hissing. “I see now—you’re here to laugh at me, aren’t you?”

  A faint rattling began to build, coming from all sides. Spaulding darted a glance around. The windows and doors trembled. Some unseen force was shaking the whole house.

  “No! I’d just like to talk to you. For research.”

  Mr. Radzinsky’s face—his eyeballs shriveled into little gray raisins, his mouth stretched hideously wide, as if he’d unhinged his jaw—remained frozen, inches away.

  The boa constrictor began to twine around Spaulding’s body, starting at the ankles and working its way up. He tried to dislodge it, but it was too strong.

  And then Mr. Radzinsky spoke. “Research, you say?” He leaned back, looking thoughtful. “I myself did a great deal of research. The brilliance of my work was never recognized, but I did have a number of irate letters-to-the-editor published in
various periodicals. I suppose as a fellow researcher, it wouldn’t be right to kill you, even if you were trespassing.”

  The snake’s death grip loosened slightly. Spaulding had just enough air to squeak, “Much appreciated, sir—if you could just call off your snake—”

  The ghost chuckled. “Oh, goodness, don’t be frightened of David. He wouldn’t harm a flea.”

  “But he ate you,” Spaulding blurted out.

  Mr. Radzinsky flapped a hand at him. “Shh! He bears a lot of guilt about that! He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been suffering from an undiagnosed mood disorder. I blame myself. Anyway, it was for the best. I have the peace and quiet I never had in life, and we’re closer than ever.”

  This was about the creepiest thing Spaulding had ever heard. He was fond of animals himself, but it seemed like you should draw the line once they ate you alive.

  David Boa finally uncoiled himself, but he didn’t go far. He just slid down Spaulding’s torso and draped himself across Spaulding’s lap, soaking up his warmth. Spaulding tried to look like he wasn’t bothered by the snake’s cold weight pinning him down.

  The ghost tilted his head, his face slowly returning to normal as he gazed at Spaulding and the snake. “You know, I’ve just had a thought,” Mr. Radzinsky said. “Since I’m choosing to let you live, you are indebted to me.”

  Spaulding gulped. Based on his readings, you didn’t want restless spirits expecting favors from you. If you failed to help them, you could be in for a severe haunting. But telling Mr. Radzinsky no also seemed dangerous.

  “I don’t know many—well, any—living people these days,” Mr. Radzinsky continued, “and I have certain . . . uses . . . for someone in possession of flesh and blood.”

  Uses? Flesh and blood? This was not sounding good.

  “Gee, sir,” Spaulding said, trying to subtly shift David Boa off his lap, “I’d like to help, of course, but right now my aunt is expecting me back any minute.”

  Mr. Radzinsky’s eyes narrowed to slits.