CHAPTER 20 UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS
CASTLES IN NEW YORK
“Mom,” I say, parsing out my breaths in quick puffs to keep myself from hyperventilating. “I think it’s reanimated.”
Mom takes a tentative step toward the little window, where the raven is still tapping on the glass. “I—I don’t think so,” she stammers. “No. That can’t be.”
“There was something about reanimating animals in those notes we found,” Noah says.
Images of the strange book flood my mind. I had seen Noah’s name there alongside my mom’s and there had been something else. The small figure of a bird . . . a raven.
I go to the window and flip the latch, sliding the pane up.
The bird hops onto the inner ledge and stands there, its head tilted to one side.
Tufts of black feathers are missing from its chest and the ribs beneath are visible through tears in the gray-colored flesh.
Something small and white and wriggling falls off and lands on the floor.
“What the hell?” my mom whispers.
Another white object no bigger than a grain of rice falls to the floor and begins to inch its way toward the kitchen.
It’s a maggot, and the crow’s broken chest is filled with them.
The wriggling creatures have already made meals of the rotting organs and they continue to fall, plump and squirming, onto the floor in front of us.
“Did Dad do this?” I ask. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
“Why would he?” Noah asks. “What’s the—” He stops short as he approaches the bird. “There’s something on its leg.”
I step closer, crushing a few of the maggots under my shoe. Affixed to the bird’s leg is a small cylindrical tube about the size of a crayon. I reach for it and the bird pecks the back of my hand.
“Shit,” I say. “He’s vicious.”
Noah steps in and removes the little cylinder from the bird’s leg. It pecks him too. Takes a chunk right off the back of his hand but he only gives me a little smile and hands me the makeshift container.
It’s made from the barrel of a stick pen that’s been broken in half and sealed on the open end with tape.
“What is it?” my mom asks.
I give it a shake. “There’s something inside.”
Peeling back the tape, I tip the contents into my hand. It’s a rolled-up piece of paper. As I unroll it, my heart begins to race. It’s a note.
I read it aloud. “ Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. ”
“What’s that mean?” Noah asks.
The raven squawks, then lowers its head. The white of its cervical vertebrae show through a patch of open skin and missing feathers. A grumbling noise erupts from its chest and then . . . ?it speaks. The same not-quite-human voice that had come from the raven by the falls echoes through the hall.
“Roscoe.” It pecks at the few remnants of seeds that lie on the ledge but doesn’t eat them. “Roscoe,” it repeats.
Noah steps back, his mouth hanging open. “Everybody heard that, right?”
I nod. So does my mom.
“They can do that,” I say, recalling what my dad told me.
“Who the hell is Roscoe?” Noah asks.
“No idea,” I say.
My mom takes the paper from me. “Meka, this is your dad’s handwriting.”
My dad had sent the bird. There’s no other explanation and I suddenly feel like I’m running out of time, like maybe it’s already too late to save him.
“Google it,” Noah says.
I go into the office and sit down at the desk. I quickly type the quote into the search bar and the results come up immediately. I’d worried it would be some obscure thing that we’d have to go searching for but it’s not.
“It’s from Frankenstein ,” I say as I look over the results. “Except for the Roscoe part. The rest is from the book.”
Mom stares down at the screen, the pale light illuminating her worried face. Her eyes are searching and glassy, like she’s on the verge of tears.
“Have you ever read Frankenstein ?” my mom asks.
Noah and I both nod. “We read it for English last year,” I say. “We watched a movie too. The one from the thirties.”
Mom sighs. “I don’t know how that helps us.”
Noah leans over me and types “Frankenstein Roscoe” into the search bar. The only thing that comes up is some novel written by an author with the last name Roscoe but nothing about the quote.
I huff and shove the keyboard away from me. “What do we do?”
Mom paces in front of the desk as Noah gently rests his hands on my shoulders.
“What do we know?” Noah asks. “Let’s think about this.”
“Those people, those other reanimates, have my dad,” I say. “We know that. And now they have the book, too.”
“But they can’t use it without him,” Mom says. “They can’t even really see it. They need him. At least, they need someone like him.”
I look down at my own hands. I’m like him. I’m like him and everyone before him.
“We don’t let them get anywhere near Meka,” Noah says. “We do whatever we need to do to keep that from happening.”
My mom gives a firm nod. “Meka, baby, google ‘Roscoe’ again but put ‘New York’ after it.”
“It’s a place?” I ask.
She nods. “I’m pretty sure it is. Sounds familiar but I can’t think straight.”
I do as she says and a few minutes later I’m knee-deep in fishing and camping accommodations for Roscoe, New York.
“It’s all outdoor activities and stuff. Nothing useful—” I stop short.
As I’m scrolling through the page, there’s a small picture of what looks like a castle.
I click on the photo. “Dundas Castle,” I say. “A castle? In New York?”
“There’s a few actual castles upstate,” my mom says as she comes back around the desk to stare at the screen.
“Rich folks love to build outlandish things, don’t they?
People also use them as wedding venues, retreat locations, stuff like that.
” She sighs. “It’s pretty but I don’t see how it helps us. ”
Noah points to a small caption on the screen. “It says exterior shots of the castle in the 1931 movie Frankenstein were filmed there.”
My heart ticks up. “That’s gotta be the connection, right?
That has to be what Dad was talking about, right?
” The word “castle” is highlighted and appears to link to an external source.
I click it to see if there is any more information and am taken to a page about the actual Frankenstein’s castle in Germany.
“Wait,” I say, confused. “This says actual castle. Frankenstein was real?”
“No,” my mom says. “It’s made up. Like Dracula or the Wolf Man. But it looks like this castle in Germany was the inspiration for it.”
I scroll down the page and read about the history of the real Frankenstein’s castle.
“It says Mary Shelley may have known about the legends of the castle which included rumors of a mad scientist who lived there at some point. It even says she might have visited it in person.” I continue reading, when about halfway down the page I stop.
There is a name I recognize but it takes me a second to remember where I’d seen it before.
When I finally put it together, I stand up, pushing my chair back.
“What?” Mom asks. “What is it?”
“Look,” I say. “That name, Johann Konrad Dippel, his name was in the book.”
My mom cranes her neck to read the information on the screen. “He’s one of the reanimated?”
“His name was at the beginning of the book, not the end like all the others,” I say.
“Like, maybe he wrote it?” I lean over the computer, reading the rest of the information.
“He was an alchemist, and he was born in the real Frankenstein’s castle in Germany.
It says he may have been the inspiration for Doctor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel. ”
“Wait,” Noah says. “The monster was a doctor?”
“Did you even pay attention in class?” I ask.
“I was too busy paying attention to you,” Noah says.
Heat rushes to my face. This is not the time or place but damn.
“Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster,” I say.
“Oh, okay,” Noah says. “That makes way more sense. But I’m still confused. What does that have to do with you or where your dad is?”
“One thing’s clear,” I say. “My dad is trying to tell us where he is. The quote is from Frankenstein and this place, this Dundas Castle, is a dead ringer for the actual location. This has to be where my dad is.”
“Why not just send us the address?” Noah asks. “Why all the codes?”
“Maybe he was worried he’d get caught,” my mom offers. “Maybe he doesn’t know the actual address.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “We know and now we can go get him.”
“Hold on,” Noah says. “We’re just gonna gloss over the fact that Frankenstein is like a fictional version of your actual family. The guy who inspired that story has his name in a book you own—that’s not weird to you?”
“Everybody needs a mascot,” my mom says. “Even a group of reanimated dead people, apparently.”
I take out my phone and type “Roscoe NY” into the maps app. “We’re only about two hours away. We gotta go. We have to get him.”
Mom and Noah exchange glances, then my mom grabs her purse off the little table in the hallway and slings it over her shoulder.
“Wait,” Noah says. “Should we bring a weapon?”
“Like what?” Mom asks.
“Maybe like a chain saw or something?” Noah suggests.
“You think I have a chain saw just lying around?” Mom asks.
“I don’t know,” Noah says. “Maybe? I thought maybe Mr. Redwood—”
Mom huffs out a laugh. “Baby, that man couldn’t wield a chain saw if his life depended on it.”
She heads out the back door and Noah hangs back as I shrug into a thick sweater and try to pretend like I’m not scared out of my mind.
“Ready?” I ask.
I grab Noah’s hand and step toward the back door but Noah stops me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” Noah says. “Well, maybe everything, right?”
I squeeze his hand. “This whole situation is like something out of a really bad movie.”
He nods. “I know we’re in a rush, but I just need a second to catch my breath.” He frowns. “Not literally but you get what I mean.”