Chapter Six

Any Old Thing Will Do

Chapter Six

“I’m disappointed in you,” said Mrs. Strumpet.

Jenny was sitting in the back of her alcove, knees curled up to her chest. She’d been there ever since her father had brought her home from school, after the half-hour long lecture she’d gotten from the principal about destroying things that weren’t hers. Nobody had listened when she had tried to tell them that she wasn’t the one who’d done those things. And the boy from lunch, who she’d thought could be her friend, hadn’t said anything to defend her at all.

Her mother was sitting awkwardly on top of the attic stairs. It showed how upset she was, thought Jenny, that she’d come all the way up there to talk to her. Her mother hated the attic, and hadn’t set foot inside it since they’d moved into the little house.

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Jenny, her voice muffled as she buried it in her school sweater. “I was attacked.”

“Miss Fletchley told your father what happened,” said Mrs. Strumpet. Then she sighed. Her fingers were tapping impatiently against the wooden floor. “Just because a couple of boys make faces at you, you destroyed an entire classroom? No Jenny �"“

“You don’t understand!” she said. She dropped her arms from around her knees, sitting up straighter. “It wasn’t me! There was this…this thing!”

“This thing?” said Mrs. Strumpet. Jenny knew suddenly that she had said exactly the wrong thing �" possibly the most wrong thing she could have said. “And what sort of ‘thing’ was it?” she asked.

“This…monster!”

She winced when Mrs. Strumpet slapped her hand against the floor. “Jenny!” she chided. “You are not a little girl! You should know better than to make up stories like this.”

“I’m not �"“

“Do you realize how much trouble you’ve caused? Your dad was already on his way to his job interview when he got the call from the school. He had to cancel just to go and pick you up! He just called back a little while ago to reschedule and found out that they’d given the job to somebody else.”

Without even realizing that they were about to come, Jenny felt hot tears begin to splash down her cheeks. “I’m really sorry, okay?” she said.

“Sometimes sorry isn’t enough!” said her mother. “Now you go down to your room and stay there. We’ll talk about your punishment in the morning.”

“I’m not going to my room!” said Jenny. “I don’t want to be anywhere close to you! You don’t believe me! You don’t even care about me,” she said, feeling a little pinch in her chest as she used her sleeve to wipe her face.

“Jenny-“ her mother began.

“I hate you!” she snapped.

Mrs. Strumpet looked stunned. Jenny suddenly realized just how horrible what she had said really was, but she was too angry to apologize. Instead she buried her face back in the sleeves of her sweater, waiting until she heard the creak of the attic door closing and footsteps on the stairs before she finally looked up again.

She waited until she couldn’t hear anything else, then moving over to the door she pushed the heaviest box that she was able to move over on top of it.

Everybody was mad at her. Even her dad, who never got mad, had been upset when he’d showed up at her school to pick her up. The principal, she decided, was a nasty little man. He had threatened to expel her at first, finally settling on a week’s worth of what he called ‘in school suspension’. Jenny had finally figured out that that meant she would be locked away in a room, with only the horrible principal for company, for an entire week before she was allowed to go back to normal classes again.

If she had had any hope that the other kids would get over their first impression of her, Jenny now realized that she was definitely going to be the class freak for the rest of the year. Maybe forever. And to top it all off, the one friend she had thought she might actually have had betrayed her at the first sign of trouble.

“I officially hate Buckley’s Hollow,” she said out loud, to nobody in particular.

And after that, she didn’t say anything else. She curled up in the bright moonlight, in the same spot where her father had found her on her tenth birthday, and let the time pass by. She would spend all night there, she thought. It wasn’t as if anybody would care. They were all too mad at her to care.

At one point she heard footsteps and a scratching sound as somebody tried to come up into the attic and found the door too heavy to push open. Her dad called her name, twice, before he too went away.

Jenny didn’t know when she fell asleep, or what time it was when she awoke to hear a faint scratching sound against the attic glass. She sat up, yawning. For a moment she didn’t know what it was that woke her up, until she heard the scratching again.

She got to her feet, moving to the window and looking outside. There was nothing out there, except the light of the full moon. After struggling with the locks for a moment she managed to pull the window open, letting the warm air of late summer rush into the drafty room.

 

Sitting down on top of a box, she let her thoughts drift once again to the shadow monster and the dust. Her thoughts were still occupied with the creature when, as if on cue, there came a faint fluttering sound and an enormous crow sailed into the room and landed on the box next to her.

She shrieked, and then clapped her hands across her mouth. The crow turned its head first one way, and then the other, finally squawking at her and hopping up and down as it ruffled its feathers. “Go away!” Jenny whispered miserably.

“Why?” said the crow.

Jenny muffled another small shriek. It fixed its beady gaze on her, and distractedly began to peck at his wings. Finally her hands dropped down and she leaned forward. “Can you really talk?” she asked.

The crow stopped what it was doing, looking around at her again. “Of course,” it said. “Can you?”

If this was a strange thing for a bird to say, Jenny didn’t notice, mostly because she had never expected for any bird to actually be able to talk to her at all. “Are you the monster from my school?” she asked.

Turning its head once again, it looked up at her. “Yeah,” it said finally. “I’m really sorry about that.”

Neither of them said anything for a little while. “Why aren’t you trying to kill me, or something?” she said.

“Hope,” said the crow, fluffing up its feathers again and hopping from one foot to the other.

“Hope? What does that mean?” asked Jenny.

“It’s what’s in the bag. The dust,” it said. Then it paused. “Don’t you know what it is?” it asked.

“The dust? You said �"“

“No, not the dust. The box,” said the crow. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

Jenny shook her head slowly. Then, remembering sneaking into her father’s office, she thought about the word that he had written down on the yellow post-it note. “Is it a Panda…Pandem…”

“Pandora’s Box,” said the crow. It flapped its wings taking off into the air and doing a quick circle around the room before landing on top of a stack of magazines off to one corner. Jenny jumped up and walked over to him, now able to look the creature right in the eyes.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Oh, only about the oldest magic in the world,” said the crow. It almost sounded as if it were trying to be funny. “I’ll tell you, I sure am glad to be out of there. I’ve been cooped up in that thing for over two thousand years! Hey, do you have anything to eat?” it asked.

“Uhm…wait a minute,” said Jenny. Leaving the crow where he was now roosting, she pushed aside the box and pulled open the attic door. She tiptoed down the hall, being especially quiet as she passed by the room where her parents were sleeping. Making her way to the kitchen, she poked around the refrigerator and pulled out a jar of pickles, a Tupperware container filled with the spaghetti her dad had made for dinner, and a container filled with fresh berries. She fished in the silverware drawer for a fork and quietly returned upstairs.

She almost thought that the crow would be gone when she got back, but it was sitting in exactly the same place when she pulled herself back up inside. Pushing the box back over the door, Jenny opened up the jar of pickles and the container of berries, laying them out on top of the box, saving the spaghetti for herself.

“No honeyed bread? No olives? No barley?” it said, glancing down in what could almost be described as a suspicious manner.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Jenny, using the same line that her mother always used on her when she was being fussy. She scooped up a forkful of the pasta and watched the crow as he stared at the food, finally picking up and swallowing most of the berries before he fished a pickle out of the jar and leaned his head back, swallowing it whole with several jerky movements.

“Do you have a name?” asked Jenny after he had also swallowed a second, and a third.

“Coronis,” it replied.

“I’m Jenny Strumpet.” Jenny put out her hand and after a moment the crow reached out with one claw, latching onto her finger. “You really scared me, you know,” she said. “And you really did get me in a lot of trouble at school.”

“I can’t help it,” said Coronis. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. At least I don’t think I was. I really can’t remember much since the last time I got trapped inside the box.”

“What is the box anyway?” she asked. “You said it belonged to a woman named Pandora.”

“Oh, that?” said the crow. “That part’s a myth. There’s no way all the evils in the world can fit inside one little box. At least, not anymore. The world is a much bigger place than it used to be. Why, I can remember flying from one end of the earth to the other in a day. Two millennia ago the same distance took me an entire week. I’m afraid to think how long it might take me now.”

“So what is inside the box?” asked Jenny, shivering a little as Coronis talked about things that were “evil”.

“Oh, a great many not-so-nice things. A handful of nasties. And one or two terrible, horrible things.”

“And you’re…not so nice?” asked Jenny.

“I prefer to think of myself as misunderstood,” said Coronis.

She stayed in the attic with Coronis a little while longer, until her eyes started to drift shut and she realized that as upset as she was there was no reason to spend the entire night sleeping on the cold, hard floor. She promised to leave the attic window open for Coronis as he flew back outside. Then she went to bed.

 

The next week was a difficult one for Jenny. She spent every day at school alone in a tiny, cold room, under the ever watchful eye of the principal �" or, when he was off doing more important thing, his secretary.

Every day when she rode the bus, Eric passed by her and paused for a moment beside her seat. But Jenny put her backpack right in the empty spot and refused to move it, staring out the window until he moved on and found somewhere else to sit. She couldn’t help but be mad at him. After all, he was the one who had wanted to be her friend, and then he had gone and gotten her in trouble.

Mrs. Strumpet wasn’t home much during that time, spending evening after evening locked up in her office. Mr. Strumpet was busier than usual, too, spending almost all of his time locked up in his office looking for a new job. With nobody else to talk to, she started heading to the attic almost every day after school.

Sometimes Coronis would be there.  For the first two days after she had met him he didn’t return and she thought for sure that he was gone for good. But then one evening, as she did her homework, Jenny heard a loud fluttering and looked up to see him sailing in through the window.

“Got anything to eat?” he would usually say, and Jenny would sneak off to the kitchen to find whatever she thought would look most appealing to a crow. Then once she returned to the attic he would tell her a little more about Pandora’s Box. Soon, Jenny learned everything about it, from the dark things that lived inside to the Hope she had found buried deep inside it.

Just about the only thing Coronis couldn’t tell Jenny, having been locked inside the box for so long, was how it had come to end up in a nothing little town like Buckley’s Hollow.

Once, when her week of punishment at school was almost over, Jenny told him about her visit to Grumman and Fletchley’s Department Store with her dad. While she was at school, Coronis flew over to the shop and circled around for a while, looking for anything that might be considered suspicious.

Apart from a group of pigeons and a crazy old woman (Miss Molly, guessed Jenny) who had thrown a handful of rocks at him there had been nothing out of the ordinary about the store.

Neither of her parents seemed to notice the time she was spending in the attic, and they certainly didn’t notice Coronis spending more and more time in the Strumpet home. At least, not until that weekend.

Mrs. Strumpet had finished up her work early that week. With nothing else to do, and no work to bring home, she decided to go about cleaning the entire house. Jenny didn’t think anything of it. She was in the den, playing with Trevor when she heard a loud scream.

“Oh no!” she said to herself, racing upstairs to find her mother running out of the attic and her father coming out of his office.

“A huge black crow just flew in!” she said. “I threw a bottle of cleaner at it. Jackson, go up and see if I managed to kill the thing.”

“Kill it?” shrieked Jenny, who darted around her mom and dad and ran up the stairs. To her relief there was nothing but a handful of feathers covering the floor. Her heart was just beginning to slow down when she turned and saw her parents coming up the stairs after her.

Mrs. Strumpet fixed Jenny with her best, ‘you know what you did’ expression. “Did you leave the window open?” she said, her hands on her hips. When Jenny nodded her mother marched straight to the window, yanking it down and closing the latches underneath it. “From now on, it stays closed. We don’t want any nasty birds with…with diseases, and bugs and things coming in here.”

Ignoring her mother, Jenny ran downstairs and yanked on her shoes. Mr. Strumpet got to the door just as she was yanking it open to leave. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

“I have to go find…something,” she said, stopping herself before she said Coronis’ name.

“Your mom says…” started Mr. Strumpet.

“Please?” Jenny turned around, practically bouncing on the heels of her feet. “It’s really important. More important than most things that I think are important, I promise. Please, can I go?” she begged.

He thought about it for a moment and finally he held the door open for her. “One hour,” he warned.

“Thanks!” said Jenny, sprinting out the door and down the street with her neck craned up in the air for any sign of sleek black feathers. At least twice she thought she saw Coronis, and called his name, before realizing that it was just any other old bird.

She was already two blocks away from her house when she saw somebody moving very quickly in her direction, on the other side of the street. It wasn’t until that person got a little closer that she saw it was Eric. He glanced up and, seeing her, ducked his head down and started to walk even faster.

Stopping for a minute, she finally called out to him and waited for a car to pass by before she ran over to him. “Eric!”

He looked up, seeming surprised. “Uh…yeah?”

“Have you seen a big black crow fly by?” she asked.

He stared at her for a minute, and she thought that he probably thought she was crazy now too. Then he suddenly turned around and started walking. She thought he was running away from her until he glanced over his shoulder. “Follow me,” he said.

Jenny caught up with him. He moved away from the main street and onto a small, narrow road that eventually turned into a little dirt pathway.

“I wanted to say I’m really sorry,” he finally managed, as they came to a little bridge. “You know. For getting you in trouble. I didn’t mean to. I just thought that...it was just really scary. That’s all.”

His sudden apology surprised Jenny.  She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything for a little while. He led her off the path and toward the side of the bridge. Up high in the trees she heard a loud, familiar squawking. Coronis! She started to call out to him but then realized that Eric was still there.

Jenny turned toward him, sighing. “There really was a monster in that room,” she said.

Eric nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

“Then…you don’t think I’m a freak?” she said.

“No. I think you’re really cool. You stayed and fought the monster.” There was another long pause. “If the other kids saw that, they’d probably think you were really cool too.”

Jenny smiled then, even if she really didn’t believe what Eric was saying. “Can I tell you something?” she said. And when Eric nodded again, she suddenly found herself telling him everything that had happened since her tenth birthday. The box and the store, the crow and the strange feeling she always had, now, that something wasn’t right.

Eric listened to all of this very seriously. “Then…there are more of them,” he said when she had finished. “I was right! Jenny, I was coming to see you today…”

“You were?” she said, both surprised and pleased by this news.

“Yeah…the thing is, some kids down in the Gray Hollows were hanging around in this old abandoned house, and they saw…they heard…well, the same thing we saw, back at the school.”

Jenny and Eric heard a faint twitter and, turning, realized that Coronis was sitting there watching them. “I knew it,” he said. “My brothers never stray too far from the box.”

Eric yelped, and started to dart away when Jenny reached out and grabbed him by the arm. “We have to capture them, then,” she said. “And…and get them back in the box. Is that right, Coronis?”

The bird nodded. Jenny turned to Eric again. “I’m going to need to come over to your place sometime, so you can show me where the monster is.”

“No way!” said Eric. He yanked his arm free from Jenny. “I…you can’t see my house.”

“Eric!” she put her hands on her hips. “This is a matter of…of monsters!” she said. “It might even be the most important thing we ever do! We have to work together.”

Eric looked at her, and then at Coronis. And finally he nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll see what I can do.”

 

 

 

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