The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding Read online

  You think it stinks to be named Prosperity? Try being named Prosperity when you get straight Ds in school, and everyone in your family starts hinting you should consider trash collecting instead of college. I don’t know what’s wrong with that. Trash collectors are nice people, and they get to ride on the back of trucks all day and do the important work of keeping the streets clean. That sounded pretty good to me.

  But from the moment I’d first fallen asleep in his class, Mr. Wickworth had decided that I was garbage that needed to be disposed of, and Prue only proved his point when she swept in and acted like she had to clean up my messes, no matter how small.

  “You know how Prosper is,” Prue said sweetly. “He’s, ah, well…he’s Prosper. But clearly he needs glasses.”

  The girls behind her snickered.

  “Glasses don’t fix stupid,” one of them said.

  “And they won’t fix his face either,” said another.

  I flinched as Prue coughed to disguise her laugh. A few of the adults nearby chuckled, craning their necks to get a better look at us. This was what it was like to be a Redding: when we were in Redhood, we were no better than zoo animals. I was surprised no one interrupted to ask for a selfie.

  “Please excuse us,” Prue continued. “We’re due back at the Cottage for a family dinner. Will we see you tonight at the Candlelight Parade, Mr. Wickworth?”

  The man couldn’t help himself. He actually bobbed his head, like he was giving her a little bow. “I will see you there, Miss Redding.”

  “I’ll see you too,” I said between my gritted teeth. “After I get myself a pair of glasses.”

  “You do that, young man,” Mr. Wickworth said. “Perhaps then you’ll also be able to spot your manners.”

  I had something to say to that, but Prue tugged me away, leading us off Main Street. Behind us, the bonfire roared to its full size, sending sparks up into the shadows of the evening sky. People applauded and cheered, lining up to begin to toss in their regrets. I looked back, just once, to see the way the light made the nearby statue of Honor Redding glow so I could commit it to memory and sketch it later.

  Once we were out of sight of the square, Prue finally let go of my arm.

  “Why do you always have to stick your nose in everything?” I asked. “They already think I’m an idiot without your ‘help.’”

  Prue rolled her eyes. “If I don’t play hero, who’s going to rescue you? Besides, we’re already late. You-know-who’s going to kill us as it is.”

  Prue slowed down to let me catch up to her, digging in her bag until she pulled out a blue notebook. “Here—I accidentally picked this up instead of mine.”

  Heat rushed to my face, even as my shoulder slumped in relief. I snatched it out of her hands and stuffed it into my bag, like that would be enough to bury it forever. Of course she found it. How could I have been so stupid? She probably had gone through all the old sketches with her friends, making fun of every single one. She should have just thrown it away when she realized it didn’t have her class notes in them. My breath locked in my throat.

  “Some of those are pretty good,” Prue said, keeping her voice casual. “I mean, you’re no da Vinci, but they’re not half bad. I didn’t realize you still kept a sketchbook and drew those…characters.”

  From the stories I used to invent to make her laugh, back when she was stuck in her hospital bed. Why did I still draw them? I don’t even know. Maybe in the hope she might want to hear the stories again. The way she looked at me, then, lips pressed together to keep from laughing, told me that was going to be the day after never.

  I gripped the strap of my backpack. You don’t know anything about me, I wanted to say. This is the first time we’ve talked in a week.

  “Are you ever going to show them to someone? What about Mrs. Peters?”

  Here were a few things I would have done to avoid showing my drawings to the crusty art teacher at the Academy:

  1. Cut off my toes.

  2. Eat my own liver.

  3. Walked the length of the United States to swim through shark-infested waters to Hawaii so that I could throw myself in a volcano.

  The other kids at school already had enough ammunition against me without knowing I liked to sketch pictures of them, not to mention benches and gardens around Redhood.

  “What about Mom? Or Dad? He likes museums, I guess.”

  As crazy talented and smart as my family was, not a single Redding could call him or herself an artist. The only exception was maybe Nathaniel Redding, a second cousin once removed, who wrote the New York Times best-selling book The Lost Longship. It was an incredibly popular story about time-traveling Vikings and the conspiracy to cover up that they had killed off the real Pilgrims from the Mayflower in a bloodthirsty rage.

  I thought it was pretty awesome, but Grandmother just about went supernova when she read the first few chapters. Dad had bought a copy for Mom as a joke, and they had laughed together as he read passages of it aloud. And laughed. And laughed.

  So I didn’t need to imagine the look on my parents’ faces if I were to show them my sketchbook. I didn’t need to tell them I liked art. I already knew what their reaction would be. When you and Prue are old enough to help us run the Foundation, Dad would say, then we’ll really change the world. Then Mom would smile, and talk about how the most important thing in the world was to help others. And then the only thing left in my head was the realization that art was something I loved, but it didn’t do anything for the world, did it? It just made me happy.

  So I kept my sketchbooks closed, until I was sure no one was looking.

  I shook my head, my face turned down. “Can we just hurry? We’re already late.”

  “Then let’s go this way.” Prue turned off the leaf-splattered road, and I felt a chill slither down my spine.

  There was a small patch of dark forest between Main Street and the Cottage. I knew it pretty well, seeing how I’d spent all twelve and a half of my years trying to avoid it. It might have been a good shortcut, but it didn’t make me feel any better as I slid down the soggy hill.

  The woods made me feel like my skin was shrinking around my bones. There was a strange light there that turned the bright fall leaves to gray mulch. A little less than four hundred years ago, a terrible fire had torn through the area, and it was clear the trees never really recovered. Their trunks had grown a splotchy bark to hide the scars, but their bodies were twisted. They leaned away from the center of the forest, like they had tried to pull up their roots and run from the flames.

  Sometimes, when the rain cut through their bare limbs, I thought I could hear the echo of the trees screaming. Don’t be stupid, I’d think, but the sound stayed in my ears for days. The place was damp, freezing, foggy, or some combo of the three, even in the summer. Even squirrels didn’t like it, which is saying something.

  “Prosper,” Prue said suddenly. “Why does Wickworth give you so much detention? I thought you were feeling better….”

  I shrugged. “I just doze off sometimes.”

  “Pros—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” I picked up my speed, running harder, pulling ahead of her. Anger and frustration made my head feel like it was boiling inside. “My teachers are just boring. I hate school.”

  That wasn’t really true. I sort of liked school, aside from homework and tests. It was just that every few nights I had these dreams….This enormous dark cat would come stalking toward me, eyes glowing like emeralds. Sometimes it would just watch me from behind a flickering line of fire, pacing back and forth and back and forth, teeth clattering in anticipation. Other nights, it would be cleaning meat off bones, licking the blood off its teeth. And always, just before I woke up, I’d hear the same words snarled over and over again: Awaken the singing bone.

  I’d read that dreams, even nightmares, are our brains’ way of trying to work out a problem, or remember something we’ve forgotten. So clearly this was my brain trying to tell me that my grandmother was going to try to peel off my skin and eat me one day.

  It was nothing. Compared to what Prue had gone through, it was less than nothing. I didn’t want my parents to have to worry about me even more than they already did.

  Prue opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. She reached over and punched me lightly on the shoulder. “Whatever you say. I’m always up for a rescue.”

  That was the problem. I didn’t want her to rescue me. I just wanted her to like me again.

  “We’re here,” I announced, tucking my chin down against my chest, waiting for her to lead. As always. Prue darted forward, only to stop dead in her tracks.

  “What the—?” The words seemed to drop off my lips.

  At the base of the hill was the start of the Cottage’s long driveway—and dozens upon dozens of people, familiar and strange, were waiting there.

  For us.

  It wasn’t that me and Prue hated our grandmother. It was just that we thought she might be the Devil in a dress suit.

  She was our only living grandparent after Mom’s parents, Grannie and Pa-Pa, were killed in a terrible car accident, and Grandpa Redding died of a heart attack. You think we’d all be super-close since we only lived a few streets away, huh?

  Yeah. Right.

  She didn’t try to hide the evil lurking beneath her jewelry and expensive clothes either. She would skin a puppy if she thought it would make a good hat. Besides handing out fake money to the homeless, electing herself mayor of Redhood for ten consecutive years, and once forcing a gardener to continue pruning her roses after he had fallen off a ladder and broken both arms because she was hosting a party that night, Grandmother was also responsible for my name.

  In the 325 recorded years of Redding family history, there had only ever been two sets of twins: Prosperity Oceanus Redding and Prudence Fidelia Redding in the seventeenth century, and Prosperity Oceanus Redding and Prudence Fidelia Redding in the twenty-first.

  I don’t know how she talked Mom and Dad into it. Maybe Mom was still out of it or something, or Grandmother bribed the doctor and nurses to let her fill out the birth certificate? And, okay, I get that there are worse Puritan names in the family we could have inherited. Be-Thankful, Help-on-High, Diffidence, and Obedience, to name just a few of the awesome options. Let me tell you, though, there is a special kind of awkwardness that comes from being surrounded by cousins with names like David and Josh.

  And both David and Josh were waiting for us on the driveway below.

  “What the…?” Prue squinted down at them.

  It felt like someone had head-butted me in the chest. “Oh my God,” I said, dropping my schoolbag. “Something happened to Mom and Dad.”

  That was the only explanation. Founder’s Day always brought out weirdo distant cousins, but not this many. The last time I had seen this kind of a crowd was when my second cousin once removed had croaked. Half the family showed up at the Cottage to see if they had made it into her will.

  “No,” Prue said, shaking her head. “No way. They would have told us in school. I don’t even recognize half of these people—she’s just having a special party and forgot to tell us, as usual.”

  Okay, that wasn’t impossible, but why did it feel like they were waiting for us?

  The wind whistled through the dense trees around us, stirring up the whispers of the leaves on the ground. I felt it nudge at my back, pushing me forward down the steep path, toward the cobblestoned driveway. The wild ivy that grew alongside it stopped at the exact point where stone met dirt, as if too frightened to grow in the direction of the house. The birds in the trees stopped their chattering as they fluttered down to the wrought-iron fence that guarded the estate like the barbed back of a serpent.

  “Is that…?” I began, squinting.

  It was. My grandmother was standing in front of the family, holding a silver tray of chocolate chip cookies.

  I almost didn’t recognize her. Grandmother, who only ever wanted to be called Grandmother or Grandmère even though none of us were French and had no plans of becoming French, was a lady with sharp features. Her hair was the same shade of gray as an overcast sky, always kept in a tidy little bun at the base of her skull. Grandmother was tall and always rigid—and I mean rigid. Sometimes, when she wore a gray dress suit, it felt like I was talking to a frosty streetlight.

  “Ooooh, children!” she sang out. “Hurry, won’t you? We’ve been waiting for you.”

  That was it. I whirled around with only one goal: to run back up that hill, through the creepy forest, and straight out of Redhood. If she was giving us sweets and talking in that strange, drippy voice, it could only be for one reason. She was going to poison me.

  Prue caught my elbow. “I’m so sorry we’re late. Mrs. Marsh’s orchestra was playing in the gazebo and we were enjoying ourselves so much we lost track of time.”

  There was a slight twitch at the corner of the old lady’s right eye, but she recovered quickly. “No matter, my darlings.” She handed the tray of cookies to one of my aunts and motioned for my other one to take our schoolbags.

  A drop of sweat ran down the back of my neck despite the cold air. Everyone, at least fifty people, was staring at us. Even Great-Uncle Bartholomew, who had been engaged in bloody warfare with my grandmother over the Cottage for years. He was missing his left eye, which Grandmother swore was because he had an “unfortunate run-in” with a fireplace poker. Personally, I think she was aiming for his heart, and had missed.

  Grandmother ushered Prue into an awkward hug. Her arms were stiff as twigs, and one hand came up to pat Prue’s back, like she was burping a baby.

  I took a step away, but my cousins swooped in.

  “Prosp, it’s so great to see you,” said David, who once locked me in the Cottage cellar for ten hours to see if the mice down there would eat me.

  “It’s been too long! What’s up?” said Josh, who spread the rumor at the Academy that I still wet the bed.

  Sarah, who had stolen one of Grandmother’s diamond bracelets and dumped the blame on me, asked, “How is school going? I hear you have Mr. Wickworth this year….”

  And Charlotte, the oldest of all of us, the one responsible for throwing me off a second-floor balcony to see if I could fly, only smiled and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. They all looked like my aunts: tall, extremely blond, and tan, even in the dead of Massachusetts winter.

  The rest of the family came at us like ants swarming a piece of candy on the sidewalk. We were crushed in a sea of white suits, silk dresses, and fur coats. I was passed up through a line of family members, half I didn’t even recognize. They didn’t let me go until I reached the foot of the curved marble stairway that led into the Cottage’s grand entry. My grandmother stood at the top step, staring down the length of her nose at me.

  She clapped her hands three times, summoning silence. The lights flickered on behind her, the candles in the hanging lanterns sparking to life like magic. I glanced up at the dark sky and felt my chest tighten. Behind us, the curls of fog from the nearby woods were rolling down the hill, spreading like curious fingers along the grass. Trying not to shudder, I turned to look for Prue.

  I caught the spark of her red hair at the other end of the crowd. But standing beside her, like he belonged there, was the stranger. He glanced toward me, bright eyes narrowing. I shifted on my feet and looked at the ground.

  “Good evening,” Grandmother said finally. She handed her apron to the servant that had popped up like a daisy behind her. “We’ve awaited this night for a very long time, and it warms my heart to see so many of you decide to travel back to your ancestral home. Rest assured, we will put this all behind us tonight and finish our great ancestor’s work. We will be free of the last chain holding us back.”

  I snorted, the sound deafening in the silence. Grandmother turned to look at me. Her light eyes slanted with the tight smile that spread over her face. “Welcome home.”

  Let’s get one thing straight—the Cottage wasn’t really a cottage. It wasn’t a little wood house, with flowers and vines climbing up the white walls like you’ve seen in fairy-tale books. No. A better word for it would have been estate or palace.

  New England Architecture magazine called it a “castle,” but that was kind of a stretch. Sure, if you went around back you’d find stables for horses and an acre filled with nothing but my grandmother’s garden, but it wasn’t like there was a moat and drawbridge. As my dad tried to explain to the reporter a good ten times on the tour, the Cottage was only called that because it sat on the site of the original Redding family cottage, from when they had first settled in Redhood.

  The building is somewhat difficult to describe, the reporter had written, being a mixture of the kind of stone castle you would expect to see in Europe and the grand tradition of colonial estates. The overall effect is sturdy, imposing, and hideously wealthy. What had once been a dark wood one-room cabin now contains thirty-eight fireplaces, marble imported from Spain, an indoor pool, a wine cellar, a front portico the size of a normal home, fifty guest rooms, a private spa, and a series of towers capped by finials, gables, and turrets.

  Grandmother glowed like the moon when she read that. But, frankly, I thought it made the Cottage sound like a hotel for rich people to come get murdered. The kind you see in scary movies. Where the halls are haunted by ax-wielding monsters.

  With one hand on Prue’s shoulder and one hand on mine, Grandmother guided us into the largest room on the first floor: the Louis XIV drawing room. I had no idea who Louis XIV was, but someone seriously needed to have a talk with him about his sick obsession with gold naked-baby-angel statues.

  A great-aunt, an interior decorator for Lilly Belle, you know, from Southern Comfort, was explaining why I was supposed to care about the scene of lambs painted on the ceiling when the first tray of food appeared. The waiters glided around the room, their crisp red uniforms blazing against the pool of white.