Tales from the Haunted Mansion Vol. 1: The Fearsome Foursome Read online

  “Really? Wait till today, when you hear my cheering section.”

  Willa lowered her head. “I won’t, Tim-bo. I won’t hear anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not going to the game.”

  “But…you gotta come, Will. It’s the All-Stars.”

  For an instant, she heard the real Tim. The familiar sweetness in his voice. And she made the mistake a lot of strong girls make. Willa melted. “Okay, Tim-bo, I’ll be there. On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “You have to use your own glove.”

  “This is my own glove.”

  “No!” Willa caught herself, not wanting to shout. “I mean your old one. The one I bought you. Think you can do that? Think you have the guts?”

  Tim charged her like an angry gust of wind, backing Willa into a corner. With Tim wearing cleats, they were the same height. “I got all the guts I need, dollface. Why don’t you scram? Sew something. Make the beds, wash the dishes!”

  Willa knew she’d better leave. If she stayed, Tim might be attending the All-Star game in traction. She started for the door, pausing when she remembered why she came. “I found this online,” she said as she yanked an article from her bag. “It was buried pretty deep. But I went back years until I found it.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Lefty Lonegan. The real Lefty Lonegan.”

  “I’ve forgotten more about Lefty than you’ll ever know!”

  “Oh, yeah? So then you knew he was into voodoo?”

  Tim seemed to shrink before her eyes. Sure, he’d heard the rumors: that Lefty’s skills were unnatural. But voodoo? Willa continued: “The tattoo on the mitt. The snake. The symbol. I looked it up.”

  “A lot of people have weird tats, Will.”

  “Let me finish.” She was determined to get through to him; she was a girl on a mission. “It says Lefty made a deal with Houngan Atencio. He was a powerful voodoo priest who lived on the bayou. Atencio agreed to make Lefty a star, a six-fingered wonder, in exchange for ten percent of everything he earned. At first, Lefty kept his side of the bargain. And Atencio kept his. But as his star continued to shine, Lefty conveniently forgot about the magic. He actually believed it all had to do with him. Sound familiar? By the time those major league scouts started wooing him, Lefty had stopped paying Atencio. So the voodoo priest showed up at one of his games to remind him. Lefty had him ejected from the park, humiliated, a laughingstock. And that’s when Atencio cursed him…by cursing the glove.”

  She held up the article for Tim to see. Next to a picture of Lefty was a pencil sketch of Houngan Atencio. It was the vendor from the flea market, the old man who had sold Tim the glove.

  Tim cradled the glove against his chest. “If you’re trying to scare me, save it for the Fearsome Foursome.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? It’s a test!” Willa might have been guessing, but that was okay; her guesses were usually right over the plate. “What Lefty did cost him more than his hand. It cost him his soul. That’s not the game, Tim-bo. That’s not baseball.”

  “And what do you want me to do about it?” he questioned with a voice that sounded like the real Tim.

  Willa sighed with relief. “Get rid of it, for a start. Bring it back to Amicus Field and bury it with Lefty. I’ll help you. We’ll bury it together!”

  Willa looked into Tim’s eyes, hoping she’d see the soul of the boy she cared for. But the thing she saw didn’t have a soul. Lefty’s spirit now manifested itself when Tim wasn’t wearing that accursed glove. Tim’s mouth had twisted into the smarmy smirk of a dirty ball player. It was Lefty’s mouth. And it had a few choice words for Willa, some of which are not suitable for printing. “Get rid of it? Bury it? You want me to throw it out? I’d just as soon throw you out! How’d that be, little girl? How’d it be if I stuck you in the trash and rolled you out to the curb?”

  Willa would never have believed it before, but Tim was scaring her. And he knew it. He knew she was afraid, and it pleased him. “Gotta go, dollface.” He slung his equipment bag over his shoulder. “See ya at Cooperstown.” Tim blew past her, out the door and out of her life. He had an All-Star game to attend.

  The game was scheduled to begin at one o’clock at Bulldog Park. Families arrived from all over town. There were ice cream trucks and hot dog stands, and the deputy mayor was even there to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

  Tim watched from the dugout, losing his patience with the pregame festivities. How many people could they possibly thank? As Lonegan’s glove tightened around his wrist and a sixth digit rooted into place, he shouted from the bench: “Let’s play some ball already!”

  The ump shot him a look. “You’re an All-Star. Try to act like one.” Tim grumbled under his breath. The umpire approached. “What was that?”

  “Nothing, blue. Just clearing my throat.” The ump locked eyes with Tim. “Next time you’re out of here.” The glove caused a tickle in Tim’s hand. It was trying to get him to laugh at the silly little man in the umpire’s uniform. Tim bit down on his lip, fighting the urge, waiting for the ump to walk away.

  Coach Anderson leaned in. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothin’, Coach. I’m a hundred and fifty percent.”

  “There’s no such thing as a hundred and fifty percent. Clean up your act before you get tossed.”

  “Sure thing, Coach. Whatever you say.”

  After the school marching band massacred “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it was time to play ball. Tim’s team took the field. He was starting at first, not his usual position, but unusual things happened at All-Star games. Just ask Lefty.

  Right away, a kid blooped one over the shortstop’s head, dropping it in for a hit. Tim was sure to let the batter know when he reached first that it was a lucky shot. Lonegan’s voice whispered in Tim’s ear: Tell him his grandma hits better than that. So Tim told him.

  The pitcher made a pick-off attempt, throwing the ball to first. Tim swung his arm to make the tag, smacking the kid harder than he had to, shoving him off the bag and tagging him out. It was a cheap move, one not befitting an All-Star. But perfectly legal. As Lefty used to say back in the day, “All’s fair in love and war and baseball.”

  The crowd jeered and Tim laughed. He laughed like a hyena. Like Lefty Lonegan.

  In fact, he laughed his way through three complete innings. And when he wasn’t laughing, he was shooting rays of sunlight into the eyes of the opposing outfielders with his mirrored shades. A fine day at the ballpark. Rah-rah-rah, Master Lefty. Oh, I’m sorry. I meant, Master Timothy.

  It was the bottom of the fourth when Tim entered the batter’s box for his second—and final—at bat. On the first pitch, he took a wild swing and the bat flew from his hands, helicoptering all the way to the mound, where it almost nailed the pitcher in the shins. Hey, bats slip. It happens. You can’t prove anything. But if you check the record books, you’ll see Lefty Lonegan did the same thing back in the day.

  The ump had seen enough and, as threatened, tossed Tim out of the game. That was just as well; Coach Anderson was about to do the same.

  Tim grabbed Lonegan’s glove, his only friend, from the bench and walked across the field to a chorus of hisses. And he continued walking for what seemed like miles before starting to run. It wasn’t an especially graceful run, but that was a good thing. It meant he was running like Tim. And all the while he was thinking: about the crummy things he’d done. About the mess he’d made with Willa. She was right, of course. It was the glove, not him. The glove was evil.

  When Tim finally slowed down to get his bearings, he found himself in the center of a parking lot. But there were no cars, only weeds sprouting from every unpaved crevice. Where was he? Tim shuddered when he figured it out. It was the flea market where he’d first laid eyes on the accursed glove.

  He passed through the front gate, and when he came out on the other side, Tim found himself standing on a ball field. He located
the scoreboard over the right field wall. He could make out some lettering, faded from the sun. No, it couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. The date said July 17, 1955. Tim’s heart skipped two beats. It was the day of the All-Star game, the one Lefty never got to play—though he did make a swinging appearance out in the field.

  The sound of an organ crackled from the stadium’s tinny loudspeakers. Da—da—da—da—da—daaaaaah! “Charge!” yelled the organist. Tim could see him from the field. It was good ole Rusty McCallum, dead twenty years. What was left of him was back in the booth. Those bones played a mean pipe organ.

  Now the crowd was arriving. Hordes of corpses settled into the bleachers with their balloons and their banners held up high, a nightmare in the daytime.

  It was time for a quick getaway! Tim made a move for the exit but the players were already taking the field, blocking his escape. There were eight figures in various uniforms, All-Stars in their time. Today you could scarcely call them human. They were more like living skeletons, in differing stages of putrefaction. Some of them were legless, crawling out of the dugout like slugs. Others were exposing their crumbling rib cages, airing out their rotted entrails.

  Tim tried to appeal to their, uh…better natures. “You got it all wrong. I don’t belong here! I’m not even a real All-Star!” But the shuffling piles of decayed flesh cared little about what he had to say. They simply kept on coming, forcing Tim back onto the first-base line. There was no escape. Nowhere for him to run. He was part of the team now. And his time had come to…

  “Plaaaaay ball!” called out a thing from behind the catcher. It was the umpire. A description of how it looked would cause you to skip dessert for a year.

  The leadoff batter, a one-handed collection of bones in a tattered Devil Rays uniform, stepped up to the plate. Number thirteen. Lefty. He was holding a Louisville Slugger in his right hand—not coincidentally, the only hand he had. He pointed the fat end at Tim, who somehow found himself covering first. Strange things happen all the time at All-Star games. Especially ones being played by the dead.

  “I want my glove baaaaaaack,” Lefty gurgled in a voice that belonged to the grave. Perhaps it was that unfortunate incident with the noose, but his elocution was plain awful.

  Tim yanked the glove as hard as he could, but like a newly grafted appendage, it wouldn’t come off. So he pulled at it some more, screaming with each yank, over and over again, but to no avail. “It doesn’t come off!” he tried explaining. If only Lefty had had ears.

  The putrid vision on the pitcher’s mound—a right-hander might be the polite way to describe it—sent a sinker over the plate. Lefty was all over it like rot on a zombie, connecting with a one-armed swing. A dribbler moved up the first-base line, an easy play. But Tim was too busy wrestling with the glove to notice. The ball passed straight through his legs and entered the outfield.

  The crowd went wild, clackety-clack clapping with their bony digits, but an error was the least of Tim’s problems. Lefty was now chugging toward first. “I want my glove baaaaaack.” The undead thing was coming for him, as unstoppable as the game itself. Again, Tim tried explaining: “It won’t come off!” But Lefty wasn’t buying any excuses. He had a thick skull. Literally.

  Tim abandoned first base before Lefty crossed the bag. “I want my glove baaaaaack.” Tim rounded second, then third, on his way to home. His plan was to keep on going, straight through to the exit. But he broke the first rule of base running. He turned and looked. One itty-bitty mistake and it cost him. Tim tripped, falling forward, his arms sticking straight out to protect him from the fall. He hit the ground in a face-first slide and, through it all, retained the overwhelming desire to complete the play.

  As luck would have it, the ball arrived from the cutoff man—make that the cutoff thing—about the same time Lefty ambled into home. “I want my glove baaaaaaack!”

  Tim scooped the ball out of the dirt and, as he pivoted to make the tag, yelled into the hole that had once been Lefty’s ear: “So take it!”

  Did Tim make the play? Was Lefty safe? Or was he dead on arrival?

  They’re still debating it in the netherworld. There was no instant replay. And the ump behind home plate no longer had his eyes. But Lefty did take back what was his—over that there is no dispute. The crowd of living corpses settled into a respectful silence as they listened to the exquisite popping sounds emanating from the field: bones being separated from bones as limbs were relieved of their sockets. Talk about a seventh-inning stretch. Lefty dismantled Tim, piece by piece, until all that remained in the center of home plate was Lonegan’s glove.

  Tim’s disembodied head rolled to the pitcher’s mound, arguing the play as it went. “You were out! Out by a million miles!”

  “Safe,” insisted Lefty as he staggered toward the pitcher’s mound. Tim had done wrong by the game. And now the game had done wrong by him. His head watched from the mound as number thirteen retrieved his glove and reattached it to his rotting stump. Lefty sauntered off across the field, his skeletal form slowly disappearing into the shimmering glow of the stadium lights.

  The librarian completed the final passage and looked up from the page. “Lefty certainly got a piece of that one. What do they call that in baseball? A singleheader?”

  The others remained dumbfounded. Not even a groan. Steve was the first to comment. “Lame, lame, lame. Why in the world would Lefty come back as a zombie?”

  The floor was now open—that’s how the Fearsome Foursome’s meetings worked—so Willa chimed in with an opinion. “That was a little weak.”

  “Pray tell, elaborate.”

  “Well, for starters, having Tim rip off the old man makes him an unsympathetic lead.”

  The librarian nodded. “An excellent observation.” He looked at Tim. “Would you not agree?”

  But Tim didn’t answer. He didn’t move. He just stood there, white as a sheet. Noah weighed in with his thoughts, too. “Not to be rude, but that whole voodoo angle? They did it a hundred times in the old horror comics.”

  The librarian had a blank expression on his face. “Horror…comics?”

  “Dude, it’s the twenty-first century. Make it an Internet curse.”

  Steve shook his head. “Naaaah.” As usual, he had a critique for the critique. “The Internet’s so been there, done that. And don’t get me started on that whole baseball plotline.”

  The librarian appeared flabbergasted. “It is no longer the national pastime?”

  “Sure. And that’s the problem. You have to think globally. I would have gone with soccer. It’s got worldwide marketability.”

  The librarian lowered his head in a respectful bow. “Impressive. You three certainly know your genre. Of course, we have not heard from the lead, as the young lady so aptly referred to…Master Timothy himself.”

  The three friends turned to look. Tim hadn’t moved, except for his left arm, which was now raised above his lap. “I picked it up at a flea market,” he whispered mournfully. He was wearing Lonegan’s glove.

  The others appeared startled, but the librarian’s morbid appetite had been satisfied. “The genuine article, is it not? May I see?”

  Tim shook his head. “It—it won’t come off.”

  The remark sent shivers throughout the group and, remember, shivers were their specialty. By then, Noah was seeing things Steve’s way: it was time to adios. Yet there were no visible entrances, which also meant no visible exits. He started checking bookshelves, hoping to find a trip switch or a lever. “There’s got to be a secret passage.”

  “Oh, yes,” confirmed the librarian, “the house is filled with secrets.” That sent more chills up and down their spines as it became obvious: the librarian had no intention of allowing them to leave. At least, not yet.

  Steve cut to the chase. “Okay, old man. I’ll play your game. Read mine next!”

  The librarian’s smile expanded as wide as a jack-o’-lantern’s. “So eager, are we? Daring me to get yours over with?”

&
nbsp; “Wh-why’d you say that?”

  The librarian had hit a nerve, not just for Steve, but for the others as well. “I think we’ll save yours for last.”

  Steve plopped down into an antique chair, where he remained in obedient silence, awaiting the next tale. For the others, that was scary! They’d never seen him back away from a challenge before. Then again, Steve had never been challenged by the likes of the librarian before.

  The talking skull—ahem, librarian—turned his attention to Willa. “The young lady has something she needs to hear. Isn’t that right, Mistress Willa?” Yes, he knew her name, and no, she didn’t ask how. They had already gone through that routine with Tim.

  Willa moved in close, like it was part of the rules—rules she somehow seemed to understand.

  The librarian held out the book, gesturing for her to turn to the next chapter. So she did, her bracelet sounding like a wind chime as she flipped the page. The librarian’s finger touched the charms as he identified the animals. “The rabbit. The parrot. The goldfish.” He stopped short of naming the fourth charm, for that was Willa’s job.

  “The guinea pig,” she said, tears welling from her eyes.

  The librarian glanced down at the book. The next chapter had arrived. Willa’s story. So he began to read….

  Pets live. They eat. They poop. They die.

  It’s what they do.

  Chubs died peacefully in the night. One hopes. There were no witnesses. But Willa’s guinea pig certainly wasn’t playing dead when she found him keeled over in his cage. He’d gone the way of her goldfish, her parrot, and her rabbit. More or less.

  Pets die. It’s what they do.

  Willa’s family gathered that same morning to bury Chubs in the yard. There was a modest pet cemetery a few feet from Mom’s veggie garden, with markers for the beloved creatures that had come and gone before him.

  A cardboard casket containing Chubs’s remains was lowered into a hole, twelve inches deep. The box used to contain frozen strawberry strudels until about a half hour before, when Billy ate the last one. Willa’s dad asked her if she would care to say a few words. She was trying to keep her emotions in check. All Willa could manage was “I love you, Chubs.” She sprinkled dirt onto the carton.