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  The Scariest Night

  Betty Ren Wright

  For

  ROBERT W. SWAIN,

  Uncle Bob

  Chapter One

  “He’s not here!” Erin Lindsay’s voice spiraled upward. She was on her knees, hunched next to an overflowing shopping bag and searching under the driver’s seat in front of her. She felt a pink plastic lipstick. A map of Wisconsin. An empty soda can. No cat.

  “Of course he’s here,” her mother said. “He has to be. Keep looking.”

  “He’s not!” Erin shoved her foster brother’s feet out of the way and reached under the seat on the passenger’s side. A book of ghost stories. A Styrofoam cup. A music magazine. No cat.

  She straightened up. “He’s really not here,” she repeated, too frightened to cry. “You opened the window back there at the gas station, Cowbird. I told you not to, but you did. And Rufus got out!”

  “I didn’t,” Cowper said uneasily. But from the way he answered, Erin knew she was right. When he didn’t complain about her calling him Cowbird instead of Cowper, he had to be guilty.

  “It’s your own fault for letting him out of his travel case,” he protested. “We might have died sitting in the car with all the windows closed and no air conditioning.”

  “It’s not my fault we’re traveling a million miles on the hottest day of the year,” Erin retorted. “Poor Rufus was dying in his case.”

  “Now stop that,” Mrs. Lindsay said sharply. “Rufus was perfectly all right where he was, Erin. If he’s lost, you’ll have to take part of the blame.”

  “Daddy—” Erin leaned forward.

  “I’m already looking for a place to turn around,” her father said. He sounded tired. “I’ve been looking for the last five miles. I just wish you’d noticed before that he was missing. It’s been twenty minutes since we left that gas station. By this time …”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, but Erin knew what could have happened by this time. Rufus seldom went outside their yard at home in Clinton. He didn’t know what could happen to a cat on the highway. He didn’t know about cat-nappers. He didn’t know about mean dogs. By this time he could be lying somewhere in a ditch. She might never hold him again and pet him and listen to the Rufus-purr that was almost a growl.

  Erin threw herself back in the seat, aware that Cowper was watching her uneasily. “If Rufus is gone,” she mouthed the words so that her parents wouldn’t hear, “I’ll never forgive you. Not ever.”

  Cowper looked out the window, his round face set in tight lines. As if he cares! Erin thought.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, and then Erin’s father said something else that made her stomach turn over. “The filling station’s just around the next curve. Keep your eyes open. Erin, you watch one side of the road, and Cowper, you watch the other. Rufus may have started out on his own.”

  And been hit by a car! Erin pressed her forehead against the glass. Don’t let him be lying there, she prayed. Let him be walking along, looking for us.

  The gas station was on a slope, set back from the highway. Two huge semitrailer trucks filled the entrance, blocking their way.

  “Blow the horn, Daddy,” Erin said. “Make them move.”

  Her mother shook her head. “Honestly, Erin, you’re going to be a terrible driver someday. You can’t just go around blasting people out of your way. There must be some good reason why those trucks have stopped. Be patient.”

  Erin couldn’t bear it. She threw open the door and slid out before her parents could stop her.

  “I’ll go with her,” Cowper said, scrambling after her. Trying to make up, she thought, and hurried up the blacktop past the trucks.

  The driver of the first truck was out of his cab and looking down at something on the road. Two other men were standing with him. Erin caught a glimpse of orange-red fur at their feet.

  “No!” she wailed. “Oh no!”

  The truck driver turned around, and then Erin saw Rufus, his back arched, his tail three times its normal size. His lips were pulled back and he was hissing like a snake.

  “Rufus!” Erin smiled and ran to him. “Oh, baby! I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  The driver stepped back. “He yours, kid? Good thing you got here when you did. One more minute with this four-legged roadblock and I was going to flatten him with my rig. This here’s the stubbornnest beast I ever met.”

  “He’s not stubborn!” Erin said. She gathered Rufus into her arms and cradled him. “He’s just frightened half to death. What would you do if a great big truck was coming at you?”

  “I’d move,” the driver said, and the other men laughed. Behind her, Erin heard Cowper snicker.

  “He was too scared to move!” Erin exclaimed. Rufus peered over her arm and began his purr-growl. “You should have just picked him up like this and—”

  “Picked him up!” the driver exclaimed. “I’d rather pick up a rattlesnake. Now if you’ll clear the road …”

  Erin darted back to the car, with Cowper right behind her. They climbed in, and Mr. Lindsay backed up and turned the car around.

  “Well, thank goodness, that’s over,” Mrs. Lindsay said. “Put the cat in his case, Erin. It’s safer.”

  “You should have seen him.” Cowper chuckled. “He wasn’t going to get out of the way for anybody. If we hadn’t come back, they’d probably have had to close up the gas station for the day.”

  “That’s silly,” Erin said. She dropped Rufus into his case on the seat between them and closed the door. “Don’t you mind, baby,” she crooned. “Pretty soon we’ll be in Milwaukee, and then you can run and play.”

  “And that’s another thing,” Mrs. Lindsay said, as if she’d just been reviewing a whole string of problems. “We don’t know how that cat is going to take to apartment living.”

  “We don’t know how any of us will take to apartment living,” Mr. Lindsay commented. “I’ve only been inside an apartment building a few times in my life. But we’ll get used to it, I guess. We’ll manage. It’s just for the summer, after all, and it’s for a great cause.” He winked at Cowper in the rearview mirror.

  “I’d rather be home in Clinton,” Erin said. “A billion times rather!”

  She laid a hand on the case so that Rufus could sniff her fingers through the wires. Then she looked at Cowper—his short, round body, his shining glasses, the blank look he’d put on like a mask now that they were on their way again.

  It’s his summer, Erin thought crossly. He was the one who mattered. She’d suspected it for a long time, but she hadn’t been sure until her parents announced that they were going to move to the city for the summer so Cowper could take a master class in piano. Cowbird the wonderboy!

  She sighed. This was supposed to have been the Great Shake-and-Shiver Summer of Horrors. She and Heather and Emily and Meg had been planning it for months. First they were going to explore the old haunted schoolhouse south of Clinton. Then they were going to rent the best ghost-and-horror videos they could find. They were going to spend whole nights in Heather’s tent in Heather’s backyard telling stories about witches and werewolves.

  The Great Shake-and-Shiver Summer of Horrors. Erin had named it and planned it. And now it was all going to happen without her.

  Chapter Two

  Erin had been trying to be a good person for as long as she could remember. Three years ago she’d put aside her favorite mysteries and ghost stories to read a book called A Little Princess. Then and there, the heroine, Sara
Crewe, had become her ideal. Sara was very rich, but she didn’t act as if she thought she was better than anyone else. She shared her riches with her friends at boarding school, and she tried to make everyone as happy as she was.

  Then Sara’s father died, and she discovered that all his money had been invested in a diamond mine that hadn’t produced any diamonds. Overnight, Sara became the poorest girl in the school. The headmistress let her stay on, since she had nowhere else to go, but now she was the servant girl who had to scrub floors and make beds and wash dishes all day. Some of the students, the ones who had been secretly jealous, were cruel to her, but Sara stayed as sweet and good as ever.

  She was perfect.

  Erin read A Little Princess four times. In some mysterious way, Sara Crewe became a part of her. Not that she wanted to be Sara, a lonely orphan in turn-of-the-century England. She had enjoyed being Erin Lindsay, the much-loved only child of schoolteacher parents. But to be good and sweet and kind like Sara, no matter what happened—that would be wonderful. It hadn’t seemed so hard until Cowper became part of the family.

  Now, as the car rolled through the outskirts of Milwaukee, past endless acres of one-story factories and motels and parking lots, Erin tried to think Sara Crewe thoughts. After all, Rufus was safe in his carrying case once more, none the worse for his adventure. And Cowper hadn’t let him out of the car on purpose.

  Cowper’s just a little kid, Erin’s Sara Crewe self said firmly. Nine is a baby compared to twelve. So forget it! But forgetting wasn’t that easy. Cowper might be just a little kid, but he was running their lives.

  Without wanting to, Erin recalled the day, two years ago, when Cowper moved into the Lindsays’ spare bedroom. His mother and father had been killed in a car crash the night before, and the Lindsays, his parents’ best friends, had tried in every way to comfort him. Erin remembered those first few days vividly. Cowper had clung to her mother but had hardly answered when they tried to talk to him. When Erin offered to play a board game or take him up to her treehouse, he had shaken his head and turned away. Most of the time he sat at the Lindsays’ seldom-used piano, just staring at the music as if he could hear it by looking at it.

  “He’s a spooky little kid,” Erin said one day when she and her mother were frosting sugar cookies. Her mother’s reply had changed her whole life.

  “Cowper is a genius, dear. That makes him different from the rest of us, not spooky. Raising a child like Cowper will be a big responsibility. His parents devoted their lives to him. I hope we’re up to it.”

  Erin froze. “You mean he’s going to stay?” She’d been making a face on a cookie, using M&M candies, and one brown eye stared up at her as she tried to take in what her mother had just said.

  “He needs us.” Mrs. Lindsay spoke slowly, carefully. “Think how you’d feel if you lost Dad and me. Put yourself in Cowper’s shoes. He’ll keep his own name—Cowper Williams—that’s only fair to his parents. He can go on calling us Aunt Grace and Uncle Jack, the way he always has. But from now on he’ll be our little boy and your brother.”

  Erin stared down at the table. She knew what Sara Crewe would do. She’d say, “How wonderful to have a little brother!” Then she’d find Cowper and give him a big hug and welcome him to the family. But Erin Lindsay didn’t want to do any of those things. She wanted to run to her bedroom and slam the door and cry for hours.

  She hadn’t done any of those things either. In the end, she’d just stood there saying nothing. After a while she found another chocolate M&M and gave the cookie a second eye.

  “I’ve always wished you had a brother or sister,” her mother went on. “An only child can have a lonely time of it.”

  “I’m not lonely,” Erin protested, but something—maybe it was Sara Crewe—had stopped her from saying more. It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. She knew Cowper was there to stay, and nothing would ever be the same again.

  “Here’s our exit ramp.” Mr. Lindsay swung the car expertly into a steeply sloping turnoff. The freeway was left behind, and they plunged into a bustling city street. Mrs. Lindsay wrinkled her nose.

  “It takes a little getting used to,” Mr. Lindsay said apologetically. “After a while you won’t notice the exhaust fumes.”

  Erin thought her father sounded like a tour guide. Well, he’d never convince her that Milwaukee was a better place to live in than Clinton. Clinton had Market Park, with a swimming pool and a skateboard ramp. The Mississippi River was just a few miles away. From the Lindsays’ house on Robertson Street you could walk to the Dairy Queen and the library and the movie theater. Friends were close by.

  What are Heather and Emily and Meg doing right this minute? With a pang, Erin realized she knew exactly what they were doing. Today was the day they’d planned to bike out to the haunted schoolhouse on the edge of town. In the evening they were going to a double-feature horror show at the Capitol, then to Heather’s house for the first tent sleepover.

  It was going to be the scariest night of my life, Erin thought mournfully. She wondered if her friends were missing her as much as she missed them. Probably not. They had each other.

  “Where’s the conservatory?” It was the first time Cowper had spoken since they left the gas station. His eyes were anxious behind his glasses.

  “It’s east of here,” Mr. Lindsay said. “A beautiful old building right on the Lake Michigan shore. We’ll search it out during the next few days, after we’re settled. You don’t have to worry about getting there, buddy,” he added. “I’ll take you until we find out about bus connections.”

  “I don’t think the bus is a good idea at all,” Mrs. Lindsay said. She was looking at the traffic with a frightened expression. “We can take you over there on the mornings you have your class.”

  “I’ll have to go every day,” Cowper said in his funny, flat way. “I’ll have to practice at the school because there’s no piano in the apartment.”

  “Then we’ll take you every day.”

  Erin bit her lip. Somewhere in this huge, noisy city there was a beautiful old building with a practice room and a piano waiting for her foster brother. There were teachers eager to tell him how special he was. The Lindsays had been in Milwaukee for barely five minutes, but Cowbird already belonged there.

  “Watch for Kirby Avenue, folks.” Erin’s father squinted into the late-afternoon sun. “It has to be pretty close now.”

  “That was it,” Cowper announced a moment later. “We just passed it. I didn’t see the street sign, but there was a Kirby Market on the corner.”

  “Are you sure?” Mrs. Lindsay sounded uneasy. “That didn’t look like a street where people live.”

  She was right, Erin decided, when they had circled the block. Shabby little stores, bars, and, most of all, empty lots—that was Kirby Avenue. Here and there a tired-looking office building towered over its neighbors and peered down at them through dusty windows.

  “It’ll get better,” Mr. Lindsay promised. “Nineteen twenty is still a few blocks north.”

  They rode in silence. Fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred—it didn’t get any better.

  “Oh, there’s the YWCA,” Mrs. Lindsay said brightly. “Erin, they’ll probably have some summer activities you’ll enjoy while we’re at the university.” Both Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay planned to take summer school courses during their stay in the city.

  Erin glanced at the big gray building without interest. She couldn’t imagine herself going through those huge doors and signing up for a class with a lot of strangers. At home she knew people wherever she went.

  “Hey, look at this!” Cowper exclaimed as Kirby Avenue angled left around a warehouse and presented them with a new view. “It’s like a scene in a war movie.”

  “Good heavens!” Mrs. Lindsay stopped trying to sound cheerful. “Jack, are you sure you have the right address?”

  For at least six blocks ahead and two blocks on either side, every building but one had been torn down. The remaining structure stood lik
e a lighthouse in a sea of vacant lots and crumbling foundations.

  “That can’t be our building,” Mrs. Lindsay said. “It isn’t, is it, Jack?”

  “That’s the nineteen hundred block,” Cowper reported. “I’ve been counting.”

  Mr. Lindsay cleared his throat. “Ken Krueger did say something about a new expressway coming through his neighborhood,” he said uneasily. “He mentioned there were going to be a lot of changes, and he’d be making a move before long. But I had no idea …”

  “A lot of changes,” Mrs. Lindsay repeated. “I’d call that the understatement of the year. Cowper is right—it looks as if someone has tried to bomb the whole street off the face of the earth.”

  The car slid to a stop across from the remaining building. Rufus mewed unhappily from inside his travel case as if he shared the Lindsays’ shock.

  “It’s like an old castle,” Erin blurted. “All that carving and the fancy doorway. But nobody lives there, do they? They couldn’t!” The battered-looking old building made her shiver. Nothing good could happen there.

  Cowper pointed. “Curtains on the windows.”

  “Well, we can’t live in a place like that,” Mrs. Lindsay said. “I wouldn’t feel safe for a minute.”

  Erin took a deep breath. Maybe they’d be back in Clinton much sooner than she’d thought.

  An old man came out of the apartment building and started down the street, pulling a flimsy grocery cart behind him. The Lindsays watched him, not speaking. At last Mr. Lindsay turned around, his expression a mixture of disappointment and determination.

  “Before we give up, we’d better keep one thing in mind,” he said solemnly. “Ken Krueger’s charging us very little—I can see why now—and if we go looking for another apartment we’ll have to pay three or four times as much. That’s out of the question. We can go in and look around, or we can start for home right now and forget the master class and summer school. It’s as simple as that.” He paused. “Ken is a cautious soul. I know he wouldn’t stay here if he thought the building or the neighborhood was dangerous.”