How Do You Boo, Wolf Boy? by A. J. Gillespie

“The night was dark and stormy.

As the rain was raging, we were approaching the old Roosevelt Estate to arrive just in time for the reading of a will. I could sense something foul from the very beginning—” the boy was interrupted.

“Come on, Wolf Boy, don’t be so dramatic,” said one of his friends, the driver. “I don’t know who this guy is—or, was, but it’s super cool that he included you in his will!”

“Dev, I asked you to not interrupt me while I am trying to create a mood,” Wolf Boy seemed annoyed at his friend’s gimmick. “I’m telling you: I am taking the best out of the situation. You can choose to ignore the fact that this guy’s name is literally Sonny Falso, but I sense a scam in it. And since the three of you bullied me into going there to receive my—whatever there is, I will do my best to turn the tide in my favor,” he wagged his finger first at Dev, then at the other two young people in the back of the car. “I can use these recordings to write my screenplay. So, if you don’t mind, shut your mouths for a tiny second while I make an adequate recording,” having said that, he turned on the voice recorder and started the same phrase all over again.

“What are you going to write about, anyway?” asked another boy.

“Oh, you know, I may write a classical detective story. A murder mystery or a story about a series of kidnappings in a large mansion. I may give the story a supernatural twist, too, to make the owner of the mansion a real, actual vampire, or a werewolf, or whatever. Right now I am not sure, but Cal, my man, we will soon find out. I mean, we’re gonna meet so many people, some of whom may be real vampires!”

“Yeah, talk more about real vampires and they’ll call your shrink,” Nan, the fourth person in the car, started. “Do you really expect to see a ghost tonight?”

“Are you even familiar with the word ‘duh’?” Wolf Boy asked, sarcastically. “Whether or not we’re catching ourselves some ghoul tonight, I am thinking of a way to flip my story around.”

As soon as the gang arrived, a stalwart man met them with a crooked smile on his face. “Good evening. You mus-s-st be mis-s-ster Zeb Hardy,” he said, hissing and pointing at Wolf Boy. “My name is-s-s Phineas-s; I was-s the butler of the late Mr. Fals-s-so. Come in, we are s-starting in jus-s-st ten minutes-s.” The gang came out of the car and Phineas was confused. “Who are thes-s-se people?” he asked. Cal tried to joke with a little, “Eh, support team?” but it seemed slightly off.

When the gang entered the house, the first thing Wolf Boy did was take his voice recorder and start rolling, “I was walking down a corridor of the infamous manor. The lights were dim and lighted the place poorly. I could see some intricate florid ornaments on the wallpaper, but couldn’t really decode the decorations. It seemed as if the paintings on the wall, dark as the rest of the long corridor was, followed me with their stares.” Having finished the phrase, Wolf Boy turned off the recorder with a phrase of approval, “Ooh, that was nice! I’m definitely keeping that.”

In the sitting room there were four people already. A woman with strong facial features was sitting on a sofa and sipping wine. She was dressed as if she was a socialite, and resembled the people in the pictures which there were plenty in all of the house; maybe she was the late man’s relative?

An elderly lady was sitting in an armchair, huffing and puffing about everything. Unlike the first woman, she had completely different features, round face and blonde hair, which by the will of Father Time had almost completely turned gray.

A man was sitting on the sofa next to the first woman, seemingly trying to spark up a conversation with her, but all in vain. The man had a smart attire and he kept looking at his watch every so often, as if he was anxious about something.

Finally—and quite unexpectedly—there was a pastor. He wasn’t wearing a soutane, but it was clear that he was a clergyman: Dressed in all black, the man was wearing a clerical shirt with a tab collar.

Phineas, the butler, asked the gang to make themselves comfortable and quit the room. The gang tried to put themselves at ease, but they couldn’t. The room was spooky. Each of the four youngsters hoped that after the creepy dim-lit corridor they would enter a room of light, but their hopes were shattered to pieces the moment Phineas opened the sitting room door. They were simply standing there in awkward silence, occasionally listening to the elderly woman’s huffing and puffing or the smart-dressed man’s attempts at starting a conversation with the beautiful woman. Luckily, they weren’t tormented with the silence for too long: Phineas opened the sitting room door for one last time and introduced everybody to the late man’s lawyer, “This-s is-s-s Bela Reinhardt, Es-s-squire. Mis-s-ster Reinhardt has-s been the lawyer of the late Mis-ster Fals-s-so for the las-st thirteen years-s-s, and it is-s his-s duty to now read his-s will.”

“Thank you, Phineas,” said Mr. Reinhardt in an indifferent, formal tone, and proceeded: “In fact, I won’t be reading Mr. Falso’s will. He will do it himself,” he said to everybody’s gasps of surprise. “Oh, don’t be so astounded. It was the late Mr. Falso’s will to record his will on tape, so that no one could doctor it. Phineas, would you mind bringing the phonograph, please?”

As soon as Phineas brought the mentioned phonograph and the lawyer placed the vinyl disc in the slot, the room started to fill with the scratching sound of the tape and the late man’s coughs. “Welcome, my dear relatives and friends,” The phonograph started chanting. “If nothing sordid happened over these weeks, in this room must be my darling third cousin twice removed Formaldehilde Todd; Mrs. Willemina Schwarz, my housemaid of fifty years; Dr. Josias Sargent, my physician; Rev. Martin Keane, the pastor at a local church; and Zebadiah Hardy, my distant nephew.” The former four people mentioned on tape started looking at each other and at the gang in distrust, disgust, and disapproval. The gang, however, looked visibly lost. The phonograph continued: “You all must know I was a wealthy old man, and my fortune I want to give to the five of you. Each of you will get five hundred thousand dollars, but there is one little condition. You all have to spend the whole night here, in Roosevelt Estate, the most haunted manor on all of east coast. Whoever chickens out and flees the premises will lose their share of the fortune for forever, and their five hundred thousand dollars will be divided between the remaining heirs and heiresses. Goodbye and good luck.”

The tape stopped rolling; the recording was finished. Everyone was silent for a while, then the physician broke the silence, “Well, haunted or no haunted, five hundred grand is five hundred grand, and I’m not losing this opportunity.” His opinion was seconded by every other heir in the room. Wolf Boy Zeb had a different intention to stay here, though. “I didn’t know this place was so haunted! Hell, this is going to be the best screenplay ever!” he was agitated.

“Reality check, Wolf Boy. Ghosts don’t exist,” Nan voiced her argument again, for the second time that night. But Wolf Boy was too excited about this whole adventure that she decided it would be pointless to keep fighting with him.

“You will s-s-sleep in s-separate rooms-s,” Phineas said as he was putting the phonograph back in the cupboard. “Follow me, pleas-s-se.”

He escorted the group of eight into a different wing of the house. “This-s-s is-s the Wes-st Wing. The mos-s-s-st hauntede-s-st wing in all of Roos-sevelt Es-s-state.”

“Why would you place us in the most haunted part of a most haunted place?” cousin Hilda asked, to which Phineas replied: “Mas-s-ster’s-s order.”

The bedrooms were big and spacious, and it would have been a nice stay if it weren’t for the presumed haunted quality of the house. Wolf Boy wasn’t going to sleep that night: He was overflowing with ideas, so he took his voice recorder and started speaking and speaking, one idea after another, until he had so little memory left he had to go to the car and collect his laptop so that he could transfer the files from the recorder to the laptop and free up some space.

But when he exited his room he wouldn’t go straight to the car. He bumped into his friends: All three of them were going somewhere. “Yello guys, what are you doing out of your rooms at such a late hour?”

Dev was the one to talk: “I think I heard something, so I decided to come out of my room and check what was going on. Then I saw Nan and Cal, they heard something too. Bet you dumbass was so enthusiastic about your screenplay you couldn’t hear anything in the five-feet radius if you tried.” He chuckled quietly, trying not to wake up other guests of the house. “Anyway, come on, join us. You wanted adventure, adventure you get.” Dev’s last utterance was music to Wolf Boy’s ears; he hopped on the bandwagon as soon as he could hear the word “adventure.”

They entered the same old eerie sitting room where they were hearing the will. Except now, as the lights were out, it was much darker and eerier. “Quick, someone find a switch. It’s dark as a pocket in here, I can’t see anything,” Dev said and immediately the lights were turned on. “Thanks—What the hell is that?!” he couldn’t contain himself. Right in the center of the room, on the sofa, was lying a body of cousin Hilda, eyes wide open, a frozen grimace of a painful grin crooking her beautiful face. At that moment none of the gang could contain themselves, and all screamed. “Is she—is she, you know, dead?” Cal asked—rhetorically as it seemed, but he might have been so shocked by the hideous visage of that lovely woman’s corpse that he would ask the simplest questions and dead-seriously waiting for an answer. “Of course she is,” Nan replied, “Look! She was stabbed to death. There are multiple stab wounds on her stomach. I wonder where the knife is.”

“What is that?” Wolf Boy asked as he was picking something off the floor. “Is this a—a revolver gun?!” He wasn’t delirious or ridiculous—it really was a revolver gun that he found. It wasn’t the murder weapon, but someone was trying hard—maybe too hard—to make it seem as if it was.

“Who would stab someone to death and then leave a revolver gun at the scene of the crime?” Dev asked himself, and Nan answered: “The gun might have belonged to cousin Hilda, and the murderer had a knife, or some other cold steel. Wolf Boy, you found the gun lying on the floor, didn’t you? She simply might have dropped it when she was, I don’t know, stabbed to death a dozen times. Makes sense, doesn’t it, Dev?” the two exchanged angry looks, and then all four were startled by Phineas. “What is-s-s going on?” he asked just before he noticed the cadaver. “Oh my God! Poor cousin Hilda! What have you done?!” Phineas gazed at the gang.

“Phineas, you have to believe us,” Wolf Boy started. “We are completely innocent. In fact, we came here just before you did.”

“And you expect me to believe you?” he seemed rather distrustful, even more so after Wolf Boy started defending himself and the gang. “Well, I don’t. We had a community for years-s until my poor mas-s-ster died, and then… you came,” he pointed his index finger at Wolf Boy, as if he was the bringer of the plague. “You came here and now… cousin Hilda is-s dead.”

He would go on for hours, but Dev interrupted him, “Listen up, old man, there’s no reason throwing shade at anyone. Not yet anyway. Wrongfully accusing each other won’t bring Hilda back to life. But we may save everybody else. There is no guarantee that Hilda was the murderer’s only target, so we have to stay sharp to make it through the night alive.”

Their loud debate woke up other tenants. Dr. Sargent came into the room sleepy and ready to argue about the loudness of speech at night, “What is going on there, I—Sweet mother of Jesus!” he exclaimed when he saw cousin Hilda. After him came Mrs. Schwarz and the clergyman.

“Oh my, oh, what are we going to do, oh?” Mrs. Schwarz asked.

“I’ve got a plan… sorta,” answered Dev. “Our gang will split up and search the house, while you… The three of you may return to your bedrooms, lock the doors and make sure there is no way of entering. No one in or out until the morning comes. After the break of dawn, you’ll get your five hundred grand and be free to leave.” The plan seemed like a disaster, but it was the best they had, so everybody just agreed to it.

When Mrs. Schwarz, Dr. Sargent and Rev. Keane withdrew back to their bedrooms, the gang started plotting their routes: “So, there’s four of us, but we can’t go all alone. So I suggest we split into pairs, it’s the next best thing,” Dev said. “Nan, you go with Cal, and I’ll go with Wolf Boy.”

“Fine,” said Nan, “Cal and I will inspect the kitchen. Maybe we’ll find a knife that was used to stab Hilda.”

“And we’ll go to Mr. Falso’s office,” Dev replied. “We might find something of interest in there.”

Unlike the rest of the house, the kitchen was much less dim and had a divine atmosphere—possibly because, as a rule, kitchens are filled with a lot of food, and God did Cal love food. First thing Nan did when she was in the kitchen was open the utensil drawer to look for a knife with the blade just the right size to match Hilda’s wounds. First thing Cal did when he was in the kitchen was open the refrigerator and look for something to eat. “Na-a-an, look. There’s a cake. You want some?” he asked.

“Don’t you dare eat that—” she stuttered. “Cal, I think I saw something. Follow me.” She quickly ran out of the room to Cal’s disappointed sigh, as he was obliged put the cake back in the fridge. “We’ll meet again soon, baby,” he said and locked the refrigerator.

Cal ran out into the corridor and followed Nan until they came out of the house into the backyard. “Did you see it?” Nan asked.

“See what?”

“I saw a figure. It was some man, not very tall, but definitely sturdy.”

“Well I didn’t see anything,” Cal replied. He sounded offended. “I couldn’t even think you would betray me that much! I’ll go to the kitchen and take a bite of that cake.” As he said, so he did, and Nan was left in the backyard, thinking of who this dark figure could be.

Meanwhile in the late millionaire’s office Dev and Wolf Boy were searching through his papers in hopes to find at least some clue. Suddenly, Wolf Boy exclaimed “Eureka! Look what I found here.”

“It’s a… birth certificate?” Dev was astonished. “That’s peculiar. I thought old Falso was childless.”

“It seemed so to me too. The certificate says he had a child, a son named Abel. I wonder what happened to the boy.”

“Well, obviously, he didn’t make the cut for the will, that we can say for sure,” Dev joked. All of a sudden, the two boys heard a gunshot, then a shriek coming from somewhere in the house. “The hell is that?”

“Let’s find out, come on!”

Nan and Cal also heard the sounds, so the team gathered again and raced to the room where the sound originated. Suspiciously, it was the same sitting room where first the will reading took place and where eventually someone tragically took cousin Hilda’s life. On that same sofa where just a couple hours before lay the body of Hilda, was now the lifeless body of Dr. Sargent. He was shot in the chest, the bullet hit him right into the heart. There was no second-guessing: He was dead.

Just before entering the sitting room, Nan noticed someone exiting it, the same dark figure. “After him, go, go, go!” The gang chased the masked villain until they lost him. They had to return to the sitting room and inspect the body. But how immense was their surprise when, as they returned to the room, they found no body.

“Curiouser and curiouser!” exclaimed Wolf Boy. “Wait a second, what is that?” he picked something up off the floor, again: A cuff link. “Eureka!”

“Looks like our murderer was lousy enough to leave us a major clue,” Dev was ecstatic. “We still have to investigate the rooms a little bit before we finally catch the murderer. Nan, you and Cal go investigate the cellar, Wolf Boy and I will take the attic. We’ll meet in Wolf Boy’s room in half an hour, alright?” Everybody agreed.

The cellar, as opposed to Cal’s fears, was not as morbid as the rest of the house. It was well-lit and there wasn’t anything scary in it—except for the source of the light: A giant furnace. Nan and Cal were clever enough not to make any noise from the start, so when they saw fiery flames and the two shadows standing right at them, they hid behind wine barrels and watched. The two men were wearing dark clothes and the only light thing on their faces were their masks: The Carnival of Venice type. One of the masks was fashioned to resemble a jester, face twisted in a ghoulish grin—especially ghoulish when the fire lighted the wearer’s face,—exactly in the same way as cousin Hilda’s face was all crooked. The other mask had a much calmer expression and resembled Dr. Sargent’s face. They were conversing about something, but the fire was so loud neither Nan nor Cal could understand anything. Suddenly, someone started speaking in a voice so clear they understood every last bit: “S-so, you are s-spying on us-s-s?” Phineas was behind Nan and Cal.

In the meantime, Wolf Boy and Dev had an adventure of their own in the attic. Their vision of a rich life was crushed when they got there: The man was a magpie. He had stuff stored and hoarded in the attic, while the rest of the house was presented in a more or less proper fashion. “How can we ever find anything in here? It seems as if I am suddenly an eight-year-old boy and my parents took me to the bazaar of Cairo,” complained Wolf Boy. “Oh wait, take that back, I think I found something.” It was a photo album titled: Abel. “Oh look, so old Falso did have a son.”

“Yes he did, you dolt, we literally found a birth certificate of a boy named Abel like an hour ago.”

They looked into the photos, but the boy in them was never growing. Supposedly he died as an infant or simply his mother stopped communicating with Mr. Falso. Then on one of the pictures they saw a sign that put everything into place: Ms. Dahlia Reinhardt’s Workshop! Dahlia Reinhardt—the mother of Bela Reinhardt, Esq.—was a lover or a maiden at Sonny Falso’s house. She got pregnant and had a baby—Abel, Falso’s presumably illegitimate son—so she drove away with the baby. Now Abel, under the alias of Bela, is trying to kill every heir in Sonny Falso’s will, so that he, as a blood relative of the latter, could inherit the fortune. “Sounds perfectly clear, doesn’t it?” Dev asked rhetorically.

Next thing the boys did was rush down as fast as they could to share the news with Nan and Cal but, even though half an hour passed already, they weren’t at the meeting point. “Something is wrong,” said Wolf Boy, worried. “We have to, I don’t know, call the posse?”

“No, by the time they come it will be too late. We have to take justice into our own hands. Go to the kitchen and get everything sharp you can get—knives, meat cleavers, forks—whatever helps. I will return to Falso’s office and look for the blueprint of the cellar so we know what is where. We’ll make up a rescue plan, we’ll save our pals, and when the dawn comes, we’ll return home and you’ll write that damn screenplay.”

They did as Dev said, and when both returned to Wolf Boy’s room, started thinking of a plan: “So look, there is a staircase under which we can hide opposite to the furnace. Let’s just hope there are some barrels or building materials or anything that will conceal us at least for a little while.”

“We need to think how we’ll release Nan and Cal, so that we have more people on our side if a fight happens.”

“Yes. When the crook—or crooks—turns his back, we will stun him with a hit on the back, tie him, and then release Nan and Cal. If more come, Nan and Cal will already be free to help us fight. Plus, don’t forget about knives and cleavers that you brought. It will be alright, Wolf Boy!” Dev cheered him up.

“I really, really do hope so.”

By that time, Nan and Cal were already tied in the cellar and the three crooks—two masked strangers and Phineas—were getting ready to strike Wolf Boy. “Where do we find him?” the Jester asked, to which Phineas replied “When I last saw him he was heading for the kitchen, Sir.”

The two masked scoundrels left the cellar, leaving Phineas to guard the prisoners. The masked men headed for the kitchen, having no knowledge of Wolf Boy being in his room in the opposite wing.

When Dev and Wolf Boy came up to the cellar door, Wolf Boy whispered, “We have to be really quiet now. I don’t think the cellar is empty.” As quietly as he could, Wolf Boy opened the door, pushed it, and entered the cellar, Dev followed him. They hid under the stair; Phineas had no chance of seeing them.

Yet Nan and Cal did notice them, so the boys decided that it could play into their hands. “Keep him occupied,” Wolf Boy said exaggeratedly, hoping that Nan or Cal would read his lips. And read his lips they did, so when they tried to embarrass Phineas with children’s riddles, Dev rapidly—but still discreetly—came up and knocked Phineas out with a frying pan. “Well, I’d be damned, but I think I found my new most favorite thing in the world!”

They tied Phineas and started making a trap for the other two: They would string a rope tight on the stairs, so the crooks would fall down. The fall wouldn’t be too extreme for them to break their necks but they might pass out—and if not, Dev with a frying pan would be right there. It would be too dark for them to see the rope, so the plan should work just right. Then they would tie them all together and wait for the police to arrive.

When the masked figures entered the cellar, they called for Phineas but heard no answer. At that moment they knew something was cooking, so they rushed down the stairs. And it was then that the plan of the gang did work: The crooks did fall down and pass out just long enough for the youngsters to tie them.

“Now let’s see who these two are,” Wolf Boy said.

Behind the masks they found Bela Reinhardt, Esq. and Rev. Martin Keane. As the story unfolded, the gang learned that Bela was in fact Sonny Falso’s illegitimate son born as a result of his mother being raped. She was a maiden at Falso’s manor and had to stay and work for him for a few years after the fact—she had a child to care for, and, heartbroken and disgusted at the sight of Falso as she was, she stayed for the sake of little Abel.

Later on she would move to Oregon and open a tailor’s workshop. She would sew dresses practically for nothing, enough to just feed and afford hand-me-downs for her child. At that moment, Abel would conceive a grudge against his father.

Martin Keane was not actually a reverend until the last few months of his life: it was then that he would come to a local church and become a pastor as a cover for the whole thing. In fact, he was a lover of Reinhardt’s and they had conspired this whole plan together.

Phineas was the informant from the inside: He was the one who encouraged Falso to give a part of his fortune to Keane’s church; he was the one who recommended Reinhardt as a lawyer; he was the one who would cover up the murders.

When the posse finally arrived, it was already sunrise. “Congratulations-s-s, the money is-s yours-s-s,” hissed Phineas. The gang learned that after the second murder the huffing and puffing Mrs. Schwarz was so scared for her dear life she decided: “To hell with the money, I’m calling a cab and leaving this place now,” so technically, Wolf Boy was the sole heir to inherit not five hundred thousand, but 2.5 million dollars.

Too bad these were 2.5 million monopoly dollars!