The Haunted Serpent Read online

  “See? See?” Lucy demanded. “You can admit I was right anytime now.”

  Marietta gasped, then clamped a hand over her nose. “Id is a body!”

  Spaulding leaned in for a closer view. Dark suit, gloves—make that glove, singular. The other was shredded to bits, and most of the fingers that should have been in it were gone, too. “This is him! This is the guy I was looking for!”

  Marietta wrinkled her forehead, still holding her nose. “You doh dis guy?”

  “This is the guy I saw out by the pond before. When I read about the grave robberies, I figured—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Since wed are there grabe robbers idbolved? You didn’t thig you should bention thad little detail to us?”

  “It was in the newspaper! It’s really everyone’s own responsibility to keep up with current events. And stop holding your nose, he doesn’t smell.”

  Lucy looked cheerful again. “This is so exciting! What do we do now?”

  Marietta folded her arms. “We do nothing now. There’s a psycho on the loose digging up graves, and we’re not getting mixed up in it.”

  “Come oonnn,” Lucy whined.

  “We’re just doing a little research,” Spaulding said. “Maybe a stakeout. We won’t do anything dangerous.”

  “We won’t, huh?” Marietta stabbed a finger at his nose, then at the corpse. “Haven’t you noticed we already are in danger? Whoever killed this guy might still be around.”

  Lucy gave a whimper, but Spaulding held up a hand. “Calm down, Marietta—he wasn’t murdered.”

  She glared at him. “Oh, no?”

  “No, because he’s not really dead. Or, I mean, he is, but walking-around-dead, not regular dead.” He picked up a stick and gave the corpse an experimental nudge. “Wake up!”

  The stick sunk into the man’s side with an unpleasant squelch. He showed no signs of moving.

  Marietta slapped his hand. “Stop poking that thing! Let’s go. You can tell us all about your hallucinations after we get home and call the police.”

  “I’m telling you, he’s going to move. Hang on . . . I need to get my camera. I have to get proof . . .”

  He ran back down the road to the bikes, the girls close behind.

  “Fine,” Marietta said as he rooted through his bag. “You can get your picture on our way past, but we’re not—”

  The sound of voices nearby interrupted her.

  “Well, I am very sorry you feel I’m doing such a bad job,” a woman’s voice said sharply. “I’d like to see you try supervising—”

  “Silence!” A second, deeper voice cut off the first, and a man and woman stepped out of the trees a few feet away. The man jerked his head in their direction.

  “What are you children doing here?” the bulldog man demanded. He didn’t sound angry, exactly—more like he was used to getting answers to his questions, and quickly. The woman was silent, her narrow, ice-blue eyes unblinking.

  Spaulding cleared his throat. “We’re riding our bikes? Sir? And this isn’t private land, so, I mean—is this private land? Uh . . .” Darn it. He wasn’t coming across nearly as confident as he’d intended. Talking to people who looked so important and rich made him feel small and unworthy.

  A sharp finger poked his ribs. “Be polite,” Marietta hissed. “Don’t you know who that is?”

  He gave her a blank look. Since he obviously didn’t know who it was, she took over the talking duties.

  “We’re sorry, Mr. Von Slecht, Dr. Darke, we didn’t mean to trespass—and we weren’t doing anything or anything—and we were just leaving and everything . . .”

  Spaulding didn’t know if he was more surprised by meeting the mysterious owner of Slecht-Tech out in the woods or by seeing Marietta reduced to a blithering idiot by his mere presence.

  Mr. Von Slecht sniffed and gave a grand sort of nod, as if granting them permission to continue existing. “See that it doesn’t happen again. Run along now.”

  “Yessir!” Marietta grabbed her bike and raised her eyebrows at Spaulding and Lucy to do the same. “Thank you, sir!”

  Von Slecht made a little shooing motion with his fingers. “One does like to see children that respect authority, eh, Darke?” he said, turning back to the doctor.

  Spaulding glanced back out of the corner of his eye, taking his time to follow Lucy and Marietta. Von Slecht seemed to have forgotten their existence the instant he dismissed them, but the doctor was still watching them.

  “As I was saying,” Von Slecht began, “if you’re going to keep losing track—”

  “Shh!” Dr. Darke hissed, elbowing him sharply. “Not now!”

  Von Slecht rubbed his side and grumbled. The doctor ignored him. She glared at Spaulding, who suddenly felt like he should be pedaling a lot faster. Marietta and Lucy were already out of sight around the next corner. As he caught up to them, Lucy gasped and slammed on her brakes. Marietta and Spaulding swerved to avoid crashing into her.

  “What—where—it—” Lucy gabbled. She pointed into the bushes where they’d found the man in the suit.

  Only now, the body was gone.

  The thinking spot turned out to have room for three, although the extra occupants did make the roof creak alarmingly, and nobody had much shoulder room. As soon as Spaulding shut the window behind them so there was no danger Aunt Gwen would overhear, everyone began talking at once.

  “One at a time,” he yelled over Marietta and Lucy. “First off, we need to organize our thoughts.” He flipped his notebook open to a fresh page.

  “That’s Dr. Darke,” Marietta said, reading over his shoulder. “Mr. Von Slecht’s business partner. And there’s nothing suspicious about them being out for a walk. We were the ones trespassing.”

  “We were not,” Lucy argued. “Nobody owns those woods. Spaulding’s right—they were acting weird. Why did they want us to leave?”

  “They probably thought we were going to vandalize something. You know, you just so happen to be talking about our father’s employer. Mr. Von Slecht is a very intelligent, hard-working, successful—”

  “See, she’s not gonna be able to think straight about this,” Lucy interrupted. “She’s got a huge crush on him.”

  “I do not!”

  “Yeah huh. He’s her hero ’cause he’s a big business-guy and she wants to start a business someday.”

  Marietta pressed her lips into a tight line and scowled into the distance.

  Spaulding giggled, then tried to cover it with a cough. “Okay then, how do you explain that the dead guy was in the woods right by their factory at the same time they were out there?”

  Marietta sniffed. “Circumstantial evidence. A judge would laugh you out of court with this stuff.”

  “Legal junk,” Lucy broke in again. “That’s her other thing, besides economics and local history. She likes really boring stuff.”

  “Can we please focus on the important thing?” Marietta snapped. “We just found a dead body. And Crazy Pants over here wants to say it’s no big deal because he was a revenant.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t a big deal—I just said there weren’t murderers lurking in the woods. The guy had already been dead. We weren’t in any danger.”

  “The problem is, no one but you believes in the living dead. You do realize that, right?” She shook the notebook at him. “And yet here you’ve already concluded that there are revenants, and that they’re connected to Slecht-Tech. Real investigators don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “I believe him!” Lucy protested. Spaulding and Marietta ignored her.

  “I admit I haven’t found hard evidence yet.” He grabbed the notebook back and updated the list.

  “See? No jumping! So now let’s find out if I’m right once and for all by staking out the cemetery.”

  “No way.” Marietta jumped to her feet. “I already told you, we’re done. Out. Good-bye.” She started to stomp off to finalize her grand exit. Then she hesitated. “Um . . . how do you get down from here, exac
tly?”

  “Wait!” Spaulding burst out.

  She glanced at him expectantly. “Yeah? What?”

  He thought fast, eyes darting around for inspiration. There had to be some way he could convince her to believe him. If she left now, still thinking he was crazy, he had a feeling she’d avoid him forever. His gaze landed on the house next door.

  “What if . . .” he leaned forward and lowered his voice, “I could show you absolute proof that the paranormal exists?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”

  “If I just tell you, you’ll say I’m crazy. You have to see for yourself. Will you meet me over there at midnight?” He jerked a thumb at Mr. Radzinsky’s yard.

  The look of curiosity on her face evaporated, replaced by an eye roll. “You want to meet outside the crazy dead guy’s house at midnight? Gee, I wonder if someone’s going to try to convince us the place is haunted.”

  He avoided her eye, flustered. “I—that is—would you just wait and see, please? Anyway, what do you mean, crazy dead guy? He was crazy?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Marietta folded her arms. “Total lunatic. One of those people who’re, like, afraid to go out in public or talk to people.”

  “Agoraphobic,” Spaulding said.

  “A what? No, that’s someone who’s afraid of sweaters or something.”

  He sighed. “You’re thinking of angoraphobic—except that’s not a thing—”

  Marietta gave him a withering look. “My point is, he lived there with his parents, and he never left the house, and after his parents died he stayed there alone with his giant boa constrictor. Then, if that’s not crazy enough, finally that freaky snake of his ate him. And then,” she concluded with great relish, “they never found the snake! It’s still wandering the neighborhood, starving, bloodthirsty . . .”

  “I told him that ages ago,” Lucy interrupted.

  Marietta scowled.

  “When are you going to go in and find out for sure?” Lucy clasped her hands together eagerly

  Spaulding leaned back against the side of the house. “I kind of already did. And I don’t want to jump to any conclusions or anything”—he waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at Marietta—“but I witnessed some very unusual things.”

  Marietta’s mouth fell open before she could help it. She shut it again with a snap. “Says the kid who believes in fairy tales.”

  “Witchcraft! I mean, I do not. Anyway, you don’t have to believe me—just meet me tonight and see for yourself.”

  “Pleeease, can we?” Lucy batted her eyes at her big sister.

  At that moment, the branches of the ash tree overhanging the porch rattled, as if a wind had sprung up suddenly—only the air was perfectly still. Everyone glanced around, puzzled.

  And then, in a shower of brown leaves, something large and heavy fell from the tree and hit Mr. Radzinsky’s roof with a thump.

  Marietta and Lucy shrieked.

  Spaulding barely stifled a shriek of his own, turning it into a sort of snort-cough. “Ah, yes,” he said when he’d recovered. “That would be David Boa. Merely one of the unusual things I was telling you about. Perhaps you’ll reconsider now?”

  “This doesn’t seem like a supergood idea anymore, Spaulding,” a voice whispered from the darkness.

  “This is by far the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” hissed a second voice. This one sounded both bored and furious, a difficult combination to pull off. Marietta, however, was an expert at it.

  “Shh!” Spaulding flapped a hand at the shrubbery.

  It was midnight, and they had just crept through the hedge into Mr. Radzinsky’s overgrown yard. Spaulding had asked the Bellwoods to hide in the bushes while he knocked on Mr. Radzinsky’s door. He suspected the ghost wouldn’t answer if he knew anyone else was around. Although, if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted the ghost to show up. He was still pretty nervous about that bargain. He just hoped he could talk his way out of it if he had to.

  “Mr. Radzinsky?” Spaulding called. Nothing.

  The azalea bush gave a loud sigh, and Marietta stood up. “This is ridic—”

  The door swung open.

  Marietta gave a little yip and threw herself back into the shrubbery.

  But Mr. Radzinsky was nowhere to be seen. The door might have just blown open—or maybe some ghostly power had opened it invisibly.

  “Mr. R.?” Cautiously, Spaulding stuck his head inside the door. An instant later, he found himself staring at a pointy yellow-and-white face, inches from his own. A tongue whisked out and flicked the tip of his nose.

  Spaulding screeched, dropped his flashlight, and fell backward down the steps, before realizing it was only David. The snake had apparently been draped over the top of the doorframe inside, either keeping watch or dozing.

  Behind him, Spaulding heard stifled snorting and the rustling of azalea leaves. Drat. He could have lived without anyone seeing the shrieking-and-falling-down-the-stairs business.

  “Stroke his head,” Mr. Radzinsky’s voice rang out. “He’s offering you a rare honor!”

  The snake had followed Spaulding down the stairs and was now presenting his head for patting. Spaulding gave him the quickest tap he could manage and leaned away—somebody had a severe case of mouse breath going on.

  Above them, Mr. Radzinsky’s head popped out through the windowpane. The azaleas gave a choked squawk. The ghost didn’t seem to notice.

  “Good evening!” he said cheerfully. “It’s quite rude of you to call without advising me beforehand, but David approves, so do come in.”

  Spaulding got to his feet and went inside. The ghost followed right on his heels, so close Spaulding could feel a cold, clammy breeze on his back. They walked through the mudroom and into the living room.

  Mr. Radzinsky floated over to what he seemed to believe was a chair, but which to Spaulding’s eyes was nothing at all, and made himself comfortable in midair. “Have a seat.”

  Spaulding hesitated. He had a feeling Mr. Radzinsky wouldn’t think it was polite if he mentioned that the room was empty, so he perched himself on nothing and tried to look relaxed.

  Mr. Radzinsky narrowed his eyes and looked Spaulding up and down. “You didn’t bring any sort of recording device, did you? You understand this is all to be kept secret. The last thing I need is a lot of yokels realizing I’m here and coming to gawp at the phantom.”

  Spaulding tucked his camera deeper into his pocket. “So you wouldn’t consider letting me take some pictures or anything, huh?”

  The ghost’s skeletal hands knotted into fists. “Pictures! So you can sell them to some sleazy ghost-hunting website, or one of those idiotic television programs, I suppose?”

  A faint shivering in the floorboards crept up through the soles of Spaulding’s sneakers. He swallowed hard. “I just meant . . . so I don’t forget anything.”

  “Humph! You’ll simply have to take thorough notes, as any good researcher should.”

  “Okay, but—it’s just it would be a big help for me if I could get my parents to believe me. Nobody else, just them. And if I could show them just a teeny-tiny bit of proof—” Mr. Radzinsky shot to his feet, his face withering into an oozing death’s head. All over the house, doors slammed.

  Spaulding winced. “Never mind!”

  The ghost lowered himself slowly back into his nonexistent chair. The house creaked as the pressure in the air eased. “I’m glad we have an understanding. Now . . .” He steepled his long, thin fingers in front of his face and lowered his voice. “Let us discuss the details of our . . . agreement.”

  Spaulding wiped his palms on his jeans. Here it was—the part where Mr. R demanded Spaulding go out and murder people for him, or let him leech off his life force, or something else ghastly and horrible and—

  “I need you to go to the pet store,” Mr. Radzinsky said. “David Boa just loves dog biscuits, but I haven’t been able to give him any for years. And his solar-powered heat lamp burned out six
months ago, and I’ve been just at my wits’ end trying to think how I’d get him a new one. Oh, and you might pick up a new bed for him, too—not fleece, it makes him itchy. Flannel will do nicely. Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”

  Spaulding let out the breath he’d been holding, half relieved and half irritated. If people had any idea how annoying ghosts were, nobody would go out looking for them. “That’s what you need a living person for? Errands?”

  Mr. Radzinsky raised his eyebrows. “I can’t exactly pop down to the market myself, now can I? Don’t worry, I have a bit of money squirreled away. You never know—you might even get a dollar or two for yourself!” He winked and chuckled.

  Spaulding tried not to roll his eyes. Of course he was glad to find out he hadn’t entered into a monstrous bargain with an undead creature . . . but he hadn’t expected it to turn out to be quite so much like doing chores for a cranky uncle, either.

  Mr. Radzinsky listed a few more errands, which Spaulding dutifully wrote down. Just as Spaulding thought he might slip into a boredom-induced coma, the ghost snapped his fingers. “I nearly forgot! There is one other thing—”

  “I won’t feed him!” Spaulding said quickly.

  The ghost scowled. “That’s not what I was going to ask. Although I must say that’s not very cooperative of you. Anyway, this isn’t an errand, exactly. I’ve had a concern on my mind recently, and I’d like your assurance that you’ll help. It may never come up, but . . . if something bad ever happens in Thedgeroot, I want you to look after David Boa, and make sure he gets away safely, if it comes to that.”

  Spaulding frowned. “Wait a minute, what are you talking about? Do you think something bad is going to happen?”

  “I don’t know for certain. It’s just a feeling. There’s some sort of unrest in the world of the dead. It’s been growing for some time, and it’s centered on Thedgeroot.”

  “Really?” Spaulding asked, his pen racing. “Graves have been disturbed in the local cemetery—could that be it? Maybe if that’s where you’re buried—” Too late, he realized his mistake.