An excerpt from ‘Black at Night,” the fifth case in The Frontenac Sisters: Supernatural Sleuths & Monster Hunters mystery series.
The strange man’s speaking voice sounded more like singing, and just those few words lulled Nelly, inviting her to listen, and listen closely. The storyteller raised his eyebrows at the group—fourth through seventh graders sitting cross-legged on the scuffed gym floor—but no one answered.
“Let me guess,” he went on, crooking a finger across his thin lips. “A stinky basement or a dusty attic. Maybe your father coming home after you’ve been mischievous.” He winked at them. “Whispers in the hallway outside your bedroom. The sounds your house makes at night. The dark.”
How Nelly loved that voice, sliding into her ears like a song, the words flowing like poetry. Around her, Nelly’s classmates were nodding, lulled like her, some with their mouths hanging open. The storyteller, Mr. Shelley, didn’t name any of her fears, though. Attics and whispers and the dark were the fears of sweet, sheltered people who hadn’t truly been afraid yet. Nelly feared the things you could never see or imagine, in the light or in the dark.
More than those things, Nelly was afraid of herself.
The storyteller paced in front of the seated audience, taking long, slow, graceful strides. “Grown-ups are scared, too. Of grown-up things, of course, but also of the dark and the monsters and whispers that hide there.” His slow steps jingled the beads on his shoes, which were fastened there on safety pins. Each bead, Mr. Shelley explained, represented a story he’d written, and he had dozens of them, colorful and sparkling. He paused to stare at his audience.
The kids who’d already seen his show had told Nelly the storyteller was ugly, but she didn’t find him so, just cross and unfriendly looking, though Nelly didn’t think he was either. He was odd. Very tall and thin and straight, like someone had grabbed the top of his head and his feet and stretched him out.
What really unnerved her, though, wasn’t how he looked, but how he moved. When in motion, Mr. Shelley was as expressive as a dancer, but when still, he reminded her of a man lying in a coffin. That a man could look so lively and yet so lifeless gave her the creeps. He stood still and lifeless now, from his toes to his eyes. And his eyes! The lashes were so spare they looked exposed and raw. He stared at them. He should’ve spoken by now, but hadn’t, and the oddness made the air in the room crackle. All around her, the other kids grew restless and fidgety.
Suddenly, Mr. Shelley was reanimated, the straight line of his eyebrows rolling over his eyes, making waves across his forehead. He bent at the waist, bringing his deep, singsong voice closer, and Nelly imagined his breath ruffling their hair as it passed over them, asking: “Do you think being afraid is a good thing or a bad thing?”
He seemed to look at every single one of them in turn, waiting for their answer, but no one was brave enough to speak.
“A good thing,” Nelly shouted without raising her hand. She never raised her hand. This annoyed all her teachers, but Mr. Shelley actually smiled. “It warns us of danger.”
The storyteller nodded. “Excellent point, young miss. And you’re right. But sometimes, fear can give us too many warnings, and then it’s no longer helpful.” He clapped his hands together. “Would you like to hear a story about that?”
A hundred kids nodded. Nelly answered aloud for all of them, because their silence was annoying. “Yes, Mr. Shelley.”
He smiled at her again, and with spindly fingers, swept his dark hair from his forehead, then clicked his heels together and dropped his head. The lights dimmed, making her nerves tingle; at long last, Mr. Shelley had come to the fun part—the story. Nelly leaned over her crossed legs, the better to hear his voice. The younger grades—who went to the assembly the day before—said they’d had nightmares after, which must mean Mr. Shelley’s stories were scary. There was nothing Nelly loved more than a scary story.
A spotlight shone on the storyteller, and he raised his head and began.
“There were once two brothers, Jakob and Willem… Jakob was older and more clever but afraid of the dark. Willem was younger and brave but not very smart.
“Willem never understood why his brother was so afraid of the dark. There were a lot of things he didn’t understand, for he was a simple-minded young man, and this fact caused him and his family great shame. And so Willem asked his father to teach him about fear. Not wanting to bother giving the lesson himself, Willem’s father enlisted his brother, a mischievous man fond of pranks, for help. And so Willem went to his house to stay the night.”
Mr. Shelley was an excellent storyteller. Willem, his father, and his uncle each had his own voice, his own way of standing, his own expressions, and appeared before the students as real, vivid people. Nelly easily imagined herself standing next to Willem as he stared into the darkness of his uncle’s house and implored an invisible presence to make itself known. And when it did, she watched Willem plunge into the darkness and shove the silent intruder down the stairs. The next morning, she was with Willem as his aunt dragged him from her house, because he’d actually pushed his uncle and broken his leg. And she felt Willem’s pain as his father, disgusted with his son’s incurable stupidity, banished him from his house.
Nelly couldn’t get enough of Mr. Shelley’s comforting baritone. His vowels soared through the gym as if on wings, while the consonants thrummed deep inside her chest like a drum. His whispers caused shivers, and his shouts made her freeze. His timing and pace were perfect: pauses were orchestrated to make her ache with suspense, and then he’d race through the most exciting parts, leaving her breathless. She barely noticed the other students anymore. It was just her and Mr. Shelley and his story and his voice, which took her down a wooded road, where Willem met a man who promised him a night of terror to cure his ignorance. That man—and Mr. Shelley—pointed out a log in a clearing. Nelly could almost see it, massive and moss-covered, sitting incongruously on the gym floor.
Mr. Shelley mimed the character’s voice, thin and raspy as dried leaves: “‘Sit here all night and you will surely learn what fear is, for all manner of terrible creatures come alive in these woods when darkness falls.’”
Willem sat on the log, and Nelly beside him, as it grew inky dark and creatures roared from the shadows. He yelled at their animal voices until, one by one, the animals appeared. A wolf and bear. A mountain lion. A sharp-beaked eagle. A boar with long tusks. A wolverine.
“Willem saw each animal was alone, the only one of its kind. The bear had no bear friend, and neither did the eagle. He knew how they all felt, for he, too, was alone in the woods at night and—he realized sadly—also had no friends.”
And so Willem invited the animals to pass the evening at his side, sharing his food and fire. The wolf told wolf stories, and the bear his bear stories. Everyone shared a little bit of themselves until they were all friends. By the morning, when the animals were all gone, Willem cursed the man who’d promised to help him, for he still didn’t understand fear. It was a good story, and Nelly enjoyed it, but she’d hoped for something much scarier and was starting to get bored. The younger kids were babies if they had nightmares after hearing such a quaint little tale.
As she thought this, the quality of Mr. Shelley’s voice changed. It grew softer and more ponderous. He dropped his head and stared at them all from beneath scowling brows, looking positively sinister. Nelly’s fingertips tingled as the story took the dark turn she was hoping for: Willem had found his way into a haunted mansion, where he would spend three nights. If he survived—Mr. Shelley used the word survived, so now things would really get interesting—Willem would be rewarded with trunks of gold.
Mr. Shelley gave the mansion’s owner, Mr. Vandewart, a quavering, eerie voice that tickled Nelly’s ear deliciously. Now that she thought about it, she also felt rather dizzy, like her head was floating somewhere near the ceiling…
Willem wasn’t frightened on the first night—no, the mattress took him on a thrilling ride around the house, and Mr. Shelley hooted and cheered to show what fun it was, but it sounded like his voice was singing from behind a closed door rather than in the same room, only a few feet away from where Nelly sat.
Headless men and women tumbled down the chimney and out of the fireplace and then wandered about aimlessly, for they had no eyes to guide their way. This must’ve been Willem’s second night, and like the first, he was not afraid. Laughing at the dead men’s forgetfulness, he brought Nelly along as he searched the mansion for decapitated heads, finding them squeezed in cupboards and drawers, hiding beneath racks of coats in dusty closets. Nelly’s fingers sank into a pair of cold whiskered cheeks as she pulled one head out from under a bed, her stomach lurching. When all the bodies and all the heads were reunited, everyone had a merry party that lasted all night.
In the morning, Mr. Vandewart found Willem sleepy yet content, and the man was quite surprised by this. With a reedy cackle, he told Willem he would not escape the final night unscathed. No, the final night would, once and for all, teach the simple-minded boy what he so desperately needed to learn. With surprising speed, that final night came, and Willem and Nelly tumbled into their beds as if they’d both had a very long day. Sleep took them quickly, until a terrible roar yanked them from oblivion.
Nelly opened her eyes to find the room—and the three sinister men standing in its doorway—oriented sideways. It took her a moment to realize she was lying down, and when she sat up, the men advanced into the room while something hidden behind them snarled and stomped. Something heavy and large and angry.
“What do you three want?” Willem asked impatiently, for he was tired and wanted to go back to sleep. But Nelly was confused. She searched around the dark room for the other voice, the intrusive, narrating one that seeped from the walls and ceiling, pointing out everything they were doing.
The man in the middle smiled, and it was he who answered. “We heard you’re in search of fear, that you long to know what it means to be scared. Is that so?”
Next to her—she was standing now—Willem smiled broadly. He seemed to understand what was happening, but Nelly was so confused. She was standing in this dark, unfamiliar room, but also knew she was sitting somewhere else, somewhere that smelled of wood polish. What was happening?
“Where is that voice coming from?” Nelly whispered, but Willem didn’t hear her. “Where am I? Here or there?”
“I do, indeed!” Willem answered the three men. “Will you show me, good sirs, what I have yet failed to understand?”
“We will happily teach you fear, young Willem,” said the man on the right, “because you are about to die.”
In one quick motion, all three men stepped aside—one to the right, and two to the left—and revealed what they had been hiding behind them.
It was a cage almost as tall as Willem himself, and inside Nelly only saw a mouth, opening wide. Its breath was rancid, as if the stuff between its teeth had rotted, and Nelly wondered what that stuff could be. But then it flashed its fangs, and she made a terrifying guess—
Her entire body jerked. She was paralyzed, dumb, and mute in her own body. She concentrated on making her fingers move. Dangling over her knee, each one answered slowly with a twitch. Her body jerked again.
Someone gasped. The kid next to her was biting his nails. Had she fallen asleep? Mr. Shelley was still at the front of the group, hunched over now and moving his hand upward—miming the opening of the cage from the story.
Even though Nelly knew nothing was there—just the storyteller and his spotlight and the boring gym—she didn’t want to stay and see what kind of beast bounded out of the cage and into the sea of children. She didn’t want to see what it would do to them.
But the beast wasn’t real, was it?
It had to be. It was real just a second ago.
Wasn’t it?
Nelly was terrified of what she believed, with every cell in her body, was about to happen, knowing, just as adamantly, that it was impossible. She didn’t like how dizzy and distant she felt. And she didn’t want to listen to this strange man anymore, with his unusual voice that slithered into her ear and carried her away.
The fear grew, cold and black, telling her body danger was near and she should escape. She’d learned long ago to listen when instinct said something was wrong.
Long ago, fear had saved her life.
She unfolded her legs, numb from sitting, and stumbled down the row of her classmates, tripping over their shoes, making them hiss at her. She stumbled until she found a clear path of yellow wood and walked, as calmly as possible, to the double doors, slamming them open into the hallway and its familiar black and white tile.
Outside the gym, the light was white and blinding, and she took deep breaths to stop her head from spinning. Soon, a heavy hand was on her shoulder, and a teacher spoke firmly into her ear. Nelly didn’t hear her words but could guess what she said.
But Nelly was not going back into the gym.
Fear demanded she get away from Mr. Shelley’s voice, and so she listened to that fear, running outside, down the walkway, to the parking lot—as far as she could go.
She couldn’t let that voice catch her.
