The Lurking Lima Bean Read online

  For Mom—see what happens when you make your kids eat lima beans?

  Greetings, friends… It is I, the Keeper, your mysterious narrator and guide into the unknown. You have opened this book because you are interested in the unknown, the strange, the unexplainable. Well, look no further. For I am prepared to share with you the true and terrible tale of what happened in Wolver Hollow one bleak November. But be warned! What you are about to read may frighten you beyond belief. Continue if you dare… but do not say you weren’t warned.

  1

  A cold wind rattled the windows, but Madeline did not look up. She stared at the chipped, white porcelain of her plate. Not at the plate itself. Not at the smeared remnants of what had been her mashed potatoes. Not at the remaining crumbles and gristle and fat of her pork chop, or the bone pushed aside. No, Madeline stared at the small pile of pale-green lima beans in the center of her plate.

  She stared at their wrinkled little skins, at the fine, bristly hairs that poked up here and there, and at their weird kidney shape.

  “Madeline Harper,” said her mother, “eat your lima beans.”

  “No.”

  “No?” her mother repeated. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

  “I mean,” said Madeline, looking up from her plate for the first time in fifteen minutes, “that I am not eating those disgusting lima beans.”

  “Lima beans are not disgusting,” her mother said, “and I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Mind your mother,” said Madeline’s grandmother, pointing her fork at Madeline.

  Madeline glowered. Her grandma was the one who’d bought the lima beans in the first place.

  “They’re mushy, they taste like dog throw-up, and they make my tongue itch,” said Madeline. She set her fork down and leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. “I’m not eating them.”

  “They’re good for you,” said her mother.

  “Don’t you want to be healthy?” Grandma asked. “You are what you eat, after all.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t want to be a lima bean,” Madeline said. “Who’d want to be a wrinkled, gross, green, pathetic excuse for a vegetable that no one likes?”

  Madeline’s mother stood up and carried her own clean plate over to the sink.

  “Well, you can sit there until you eat them,” she said.

  “But, Mom—”

  “I won’t hear another word about it,” her mother said. “The sooner you clean your plate, the sooner you can get up from the table.”

  Outside, the fierce gale hammered the shutters again and shook the house.

  * * *

  Madeline sat alone at the table, watching the hands of the clock slowly crawl along. Fifteen minutes, twenty, a half hour. Her mother was watching television. Somewhere in the living room, Grandma was knitting.

  Madeline’s dog, Tucker, lay curled at her feet under the table. He whined at the storm and looked up at her, nose sniff-sniffing what was left on her plate.

  “I wouldn’t even feed these beans to you, Tuck,” said Madeline. “And you eat beetles.”

  Tucker whined again.

  “Madeline Harper,” said her mother, standing in the kitchen doorway. “Eat. Your. Lima beans.”

  Madeline dragged her fork across her plate. It made an awful screech.

  “I. Said. No.”

  Madeline’s mother pointed down the hall.

  “That’s it, young lady,” she said. “Go to your room. Now!”

  Madeline pushed her chair away from the table and stalked to her room. Tucker followed.

  “And I am leaving these lima beans right here until you decide to eat them!” her mother called after her.

  Madeline slammed her bedroom door.

  Madeline tried to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. She pushed a few pieces around her chessboard. She dusted her chess trophies and organized her bookshelf. She tried to do a crossword puzzle, but she just couldn’t stop being angry about being sent to her room for not eating lima beans.

  She stared out her bedroom window, arms crossed, angrily tapping her foot. The moon was peeking through the treetops. It cast deep shadows across the backyard. Long, twisted shapes like monster claws, one that looked like a cat arching its back, and, if she wasn’t mistaken, one shadow that looked too much like a lima bean. She turned away from the window and stared at her chess set, trying to think of her next move. She was an extremely good chess player and had won those trophies to show for it. Mom’s move had been to send Madeline to her room. It was Madeline’s move. She put on her pajamas and left her room. She needed a glass of water.

  But when she entered the kitchen, she stopped. Her plate was there, but the lima beans were gone.

  “Oh, good, finally,” said her mother, striding into the kitchen. “You came to your senses. See? They weren’t that bad, right?”

  Madeline had certainly not eaten those lima beans, and apparently, neither had her mother.

  “That’s a girl,” said Grandma, rubbing Madeline’s back. “I knew you could do it.”

  But I didn’t, Madeline thought. And neither did Grandma. It wasn’t Tucker; he’d been in her room with her the whole time.

  She rushed to the garbage can and threw open the lid. No lima beans. She pulled the refrigerator open, looking for leftovers. Not a lima bean in sight.

  “Okay, this is going to sound really weird,” Madeline began, “but—”

  A shrieking banshee of wind slammed the side of the house, and everything went dark.

  The power was out.

  2

  The entire kitchen, the entire house, was pitch-black.

  “Oh dear,” said Grandma.

  “Maybe the breaker’s tripped,” said Mom. “It’ll have to be reset.”

  The breaker was in the basement. Madeline hated the basement. The basement was full of cobwebs and spiders and thousand-leggers and camel crickets as big as her hand.

  “You have to reset the breaker, Madeline,” said her mother. “Just like flicking a switch.”

  “Only, that switch is in the basement,” Madeline said.

  Tucker whined again and moved closer to Madeline’s leg.

  “You know I don’t do stairs,” said her mother. “They terrify me.”

  Madeline almost wished that she had a phobia of stairs too, so that she could have her own reason for not going down into that creepy basement. But that would mean not being able to go to Lucinda’s for sleepovers. Lucinda lived in the apartments across from the school, on the third floor. That meant stairs.

  “But, Mom—”

  “And Grandma can’t do it,” said her mother. “Not at her age.”

  “Oh heavens no,” said Grandma.

  The old elm tree in front of their house swayed and rocked. Its branches seemed to reach for the window like a skeletal hand, just barely scratching the glass.

  “Fine,” said Madeline. She wanted the power on. The dark was suffocating, and she had the very strange feeling that she was being watched. Goose bumps appeared on her arm, and she shivered. “Where’s the flashlight?”

  Her mother shuffled through the darkness, arms out before her to make sure she didn’t bump into anything. There was just enough moonlight to show Madeline a dim outline of her, and she thought her mother looked like a zombie, hungry for brains.

  “Get a hold of yourself, Madeline,” she said.

  “Ah, here we are,” said her mother. The flashlight clicked on, and the yellow beam cut a path through the darkness. She crossed the kitchen and handed Madeline the flashlight. “Be careful.”

  Madeline shone the light on the basement door. She’d been down there exactly three times. Once when they first moved in, to make sure there weren’t coffins, or creatures living down t
here. Once when her cousin slept over and dared her to stay in the basement for five whole minutes with the lights off (the longest five minutes of her life). And once to turn the breaker back on after the biggest thunderstorm they’d ever had. She made a habit of avoiding the basement.

  The rusted old doorknob turned with a grinding click, and when she pulled the door open, it squeaked and squealed on grime-encrusted hinges. She pointed the flashlight at the first step and the narrow, plaster-covered walls that descended into the depths. Dust-choked cobwebs hung in the corners, and when she stepped onto the first board, it groaned.

  Tucker backed away from the open doorway and growled. Madeline swung the flashlight back into the kitchen. The hair on Tucker’s back was up, and he let out another low warning growl.

  There was something in the darkness, Madeline thought. Tucker sensed it too. All the more reason to get these lights back on.

  She steadied herself, cast her light back down the stairs, and, with very careful steps, made her descent.

  The basement reeked of stagnant water, clay, musty earth, and centipedes. It was a long, low-ceilinged room with a dirt floor and a thousand pipes and wires running across the bare-beamed ceiling.

  The circuit breaker was at the far end of the basement. Madeline pointed the flashlight at the breaker box cover, the corners of the basement, the walls, and the ceiling. Nothing—besides the webs and camel crickets, and the dust particles floating through the ray of the flashlight.

  “How are you doing, dear?” her mother asked from the kitchen.

  “Whose idea was it to put the breaker box at the far end of the basement?” Madeline called back.

  Madeline didn’t wait for an answer. She kept the light trained before her, moving it side to side. She managed to reach the breaker box without running face-first into a cobweb or having a camel cricket land on her. There must have been hundreds of them clinging to the walls in little pockets of spindly terror.

  She held the flashlight in her left hand and used her right to pull the metal breaker box door open. It took several tugs, and she almost fell back onto her behind. The hinges on this door, like the hinges on the basement door, were rusted and old and not used very much.

  Sure enough, the main breaker had tripped. All she had to do was push it back over to the on position.

  Her flashlight flickered and then went out. Madeline sucked in a breath and tried not to scream. She was in complete and absolute darkness. The only thing that had kept the camel crickets at bay had been her light. She couldn’t even see the low ceiling beams. She could walk right into one, smack her head, and knock herself out, only to wake up with the antennae-twitching, crunchy cricket things on her face and in her mouth. She’d have to feel her way forward, but if she did that, she might put her hands through cobwebs crawling with spiders. Some of the spiders were massive, brown, hairy things with fangs that could punch right through the skin of her hand. Her breath came in ragged, frantic bursts. She smacked the flashlight. Nothing. She smacked it again.

  And then… something moved in the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” she called.

  Something made a noise in the corner. It was coming closer.

  She pressed her back to the cinder-block wall, and something landed on the back of her bare neck.

  She screamed and reached for the main switch, finding it in the darkness and pushing it to the on position.

  The bare bulbs of the basement popped to life, chasing away the darkness.

  Madeline’s jaw dropped, and the flashlight fell from her hand.

  There, painted across the cinder blocks of the far wall, the fresh paint still dripping, was a message. It read:

  EAT. YOUR. LIMA BEANS!

  3

  Madeline did not sleep well that night. The power was on, and the storm had died down, but she could not get that message out of her mind. If she did not know for a fact that her mother was terrified of stairs, she might have thought that it had been some cruel joke to make Madeline eat her vegetables. She played the whole night back in her mind. Step-by-step, move-by-move, like a game of chess. It wasn’t Mom, it wasn’t Grandma, and it wasn’t her. But someone, or something, had written that message on the wall. Madeline had a feeling that it was something terrible.

  Tucker slept at the foot of her bed that night, watching her bedroom door. Madeline had closed it and locked it and pulled her blankets up over her head like a cocoon. Or a pod, she thought. A bean pod. A lima-bean pod. She thrust the blankets down and watched the moon instead.

  She didn’t remember falling asleep, but at some point she must have. Her mother was knocking on her door and jiggling the doorknob.

  “Madeline Harper, get out of bed and open this door. You’re going to be late for school.”

  Madeline groaned, half standing, half falling out of bed. It was still dark outside, the sun just beginning to crest the horizon.

  “I’m up, I’m up,” she grumbled.

  She got dressed and dragged herself into the kitchen.

  “Where’s Grandma?” she asked, plopping down at the kitchen table.

  “Oh, she’s not feeling well,” said her mother. “Went to bed early last night. Well, earlier than usual.”

  Madeline had just popped a spoonful of Sugar Fluffs into her mouth when Grandma strode into the kitchen.

  “Good morning, human child named Madeline,” Grandma said, grinning from ear to ear, all teeth. “I see you are consuming a nonnutritious meal of sugar and milk.”

  Madeline swallowed her bite but froze, spoon still in her mouth, staring at her grandmother.

  “Grandma?” asked Madeline, the word slurring out over her spoon-filled mouth. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Grandma pulled out the chair next to Madeline and sat down.

  “I am excellent,” she said, still grinning, not blinking. “Thank you for asking. This day is lovely, yes? My shoes are filled with happiness to be… to be… to be…”

  “Mom?” Madeline said. She put her spoon down and slowly slid her chair away from the table.

  “What, dear?” asked her mother, pouring her coffee.

  “I think Grandma is really unwell,” Madeline said.

  “What makes you…?” asked her mother. “Oh, Mom, good morning. You must be feeling better. I didn’t expect you this morning.”

  “Well. I am well,” said Grandma. “I am very well, thank you for asking.”

  “Mom, I don’t think Grandma is as good as she says she is,” said Madeline.

  “That’s silly,” said her mother. “She just said she was. Why would she say that if she wasn’t?”

  “Yes, Madeline Harper,” said Grandma. “Why would I say that if I wasn’t? Why would I say that, hmm? Why would I make lies and say silly things?” Grandma reached out and clamped her hand around Madeline’s wrist. Her grip was very strong and very cold. She leaned forward, still grinning, and stared at Madeline. Madeline did not remember her grandmother having green eyes. They had always been a nice shade of blue. Then her grandma leaned even closer and whispered, “Why would I not eat my lima beans?”

  Madeline screamed and pulled away so hard, her chair fell back and she crashed to the kitchen floor.

  “Madeline!” said her mother. “Stop fooling around, before you get hurt!”

  “Whoopsie!” said Grandma, clapping her hands and quickly standing up. “Who wants a nice, healthy plate of lima beans? What do you say, Margaret? A batch of beans to start the day?”

  Madeline’s mother laughed and waved Grandma off. “You’re so silly sometimes, Mom.”

  Madeline grabbed her lunch bag off the counter and pulled her coat and schoolbag off the hook on the wall. She tried to form words, but they were caught in her throat.

  “I… school…” was all she could manage as she scrambled for the front door.

  “Have a good day, dear,” her mother called after her.

  “Don’t forget to give Grandma a kiss!” said Grandma, running down the hall after
Madeline, green eyes boring into her and a toothy grin still plastered across her face.

  Madeline flew out the door and slammed it behind her just as Grandma reached the end of the hall.

  Madeline ran across the front lawn, half expecting the door to be ripped open and Grandma to come charging after her, but no. When she reached the sidewalk and looked back, Grandma was standing in the living room window, staring at her.

  As Madeline watched, her grandmother wrote something with her finger in the cold condensation on the glass.

  EAT. YOUR. LIMA BEANS.

  4

  Madeline had never been happier to be at school. Whatever had happened with her grandma this morning was just another weird event in a growing series of weird events. She trudged by the Wolver Hollow Elementary School sign. She passed by the BE KIND, BE COURTEOUS, BE A PART OF THE PACK poster hanging in the front foyer. She slipped into Mr. Noffler’s classroom and took her seat with the rest of the fifth-grade class. But no matter how much she tried, Madeline could barely pay attention the entire morning. All she could think of were those lima beans. Where had they disappeared to after she’d gone to her room? Who, or what, had written that message on the basement wall? Why had Grandma been acting so weird? Could she have written the message in the basement? After all, Grandma had traced the same message in the frost on the living room window this morning. Madeline shuddered.

  Before she knew it, it was lunchtime. She opened her lunch bag and set her sandwich in front of her, her apple to the side, and her bag of chips on the other side. She reached inside her bag and fished around. Nothing. Mom had forgotten to pack her a drink.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Lucinda, Madeline’s best friend. She sat down next to her at the lunch table.

  “No drink,” Madeline said. “Watch my stuff? I’m going to go get something.”

  “Sure thing,” said Lucinda. She tossed a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth and began to lay her own lunch out.