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Sophomore Year, Fall
When Dan receives a week’s worth of detention for ditching lunch at the cafeteria in favor of studying at the school library, Regan is less than pleased.
“For God’s sake, Daniel!” Regan shouts, leaning forward with his hands planted on his desk, as Dan lounges on the couch. They’re in Regan’s office at the Wheeler stables, and Dan is doing his best to calmly and efficiently explain the situation.
“Do you think you could manage three consecutive days without landing yourself in trouble?” Regan exclaims. “Would that be remotely possible?”
“Possible, but not plausible,” Dan drawls. “I swear to Christ, even the staff of Arkham Asylum would be more efficient at running a school than the current administration at Sleepyside High. If you ask me, with the way our school’s standardized test scores have tanked the past couple of years, they should be grateful at least one of their students has so much as a passing interest in learning.”
“How clever of you,” Regan snaps. “Not only do you get in trouble at school, but you come back here and joke about it with me. Thank you. It’s quite endearing.”
Dan stretches, straightens into an upright position, and then stands. “Well, what do you really want me to say?” He asks, walking over to stand in front of Regan’s desk. “So I chose to get my homework done rather than eat. ‘Out of assigned area,’ or whatever they call. It’s no big deal. The admin is overreacting and inserting malice into an action that was completely innocuous. I may not have been following the rules, but absolutely no one was harmed, either directly or indirectly, as a result of my actions.”
Regan rolls his eyes. “So, you’re just being unjustly persecuted, is that it?”
“That’s about the crux of the situation, yes,” Dan confirms placidly.
Leaning back in his desk chair, Regan tilts his gaze upward, as if looking to the heavens for divine intervention. “Daniel. Please. As if the circumstances under which you arrived in Sleepyside weren’t enough, you wear clothes every day that seem specifically selected to feed the rumor that you are, in fact, a practicing Satanist —”
Dan glances down at his ensemble: his BWG jacket is the only item he’s wearing that isn’t black.
“— and insist on listening to that morbid music —” Regan jabs a finger emphatically at Dan’s T-shirt.
“Smashing Pumpkins is a great band,” Dan informs him coolly.
“— now you’re having issues with authority! Is there really no end to the headaches you’re determined to give me?” Regan demands.
A spark of irritation flares within Dan, and he decides to break through the frost of his icily calm demeanor. “I’m a little bit surprised. I would have thought you’d known all along that I have issues with authority figures. I’ve never been much of one for the rules . . . seems to be a family trait, huh, Liam ?”
“Liam” was his mother’s name for Regan, her brother. Perhaps because of that, Regan seems to hate its use. They had some sort of family conflict, about, or possibly leading to, their loss of contact. Or something? Dan has never been precisely certain on the details. His mother’s past, particularly where exactly Regan fits in, is a nebulous byzantine to Dan, and Regan seems intent on ensuring it’s one mystery that remains unsolved. A part of Dan is curious, but a larger part of him just wants to let whatever family drama there is to stay buried in order to focus on the future.
The past must be particularly unpleasant, though, because Regan has never been willing to put it aside. From the day Dan arrived in Sleepyside, he could sense that it characterized Regan’s behavior toward him, and has done so ever since.
Now, Regan’s entire frame stiffens, and his jaw clamps shut, tightening. His green eyes narrow dangerously, but Dan is unfazed. If anything, maybe he’ll have some kind of answer or closure about what exactly happened between Regan and his mother.
Whatever Regan is about to say is lost, however, when the office door bursts open, courtesy of Matthew Wheeler.
“Regan, my good man,” their employer begins, but he interrupts himself when he sees Dan. “And Daniel’s here to see us! Goodness, lad, it’s been far too long.” Beaming, he reaches out an arm, grabs Dan’s hand, and gives him a thorough, enthusiastic handshake.
“Good to see you, too,” Dan responds cautiously. While individuals are certainly allowed their idiosyncrasies, and Mr. Wheeler does seem like a very kind and capable gentleman, Dan’s often wondered if he actually knows Dan’s identity or role at the Manor House. Never has he once indicated that he’s actually aware of Dan’s unsavory history, or that Dan is a servant on his retainer. Instead, Mr. Wheeler seems to view Dan solely as a neighbor, or a friend and schoolmate of his children. Occasionally, he seems under the impression that Dan is a lost teen in need of sage fatherly advice, which Mr. Wheeler is only too happy to impart to the best of his abilities.
“I just finished a rousing game of racquetball at the club, and guess who I saw there?” Mr. Wheeler gives Dan an amicable clap on the shoulder.
“Um . . . Ambrose Bierce?” Dan suggests uncertainly.
Mr. Wheeler scoffs good-naturedly. “No! A. Damian Devlin!”
“Oh, hey, that’s Taz’s father,” Dan notes, naming one of his friends outside of the BWGs.
“Quite right!” Mr. Wheeler claps a hand amicably on Dan’s shoulder. “And he told me that Taz and Avery are throwing a Halloween party. A ‘bash,’ as you hip kids call them these days. Well, Damian wanted to make sure the BWGs know they’re invited.”
“I’ll pass the message along,” Dan replies dutifully, though all of them are already aware of the party and planning to attend.
“Splendid! What do you and your fellow kids say? Oh, yes — ‘what a champ!’ ” Mr. Wheeler jostles Dan’s shoulder sportingly, before releasing him and turning to Regan, who has been watching the entire exchange with skepticism written all over his face. “Now, Regan, I was at the club with one of my business associates, and he mentioned he’d be interested in boarding a few recently acquired horses here while he’s out of the country. He’s waiting in the library up at the house, and as my stable manager, I assumed you’d want to speak with him before giving me your assessment of the situation.”
“Of course,” Regan replies pleasantly. “Let’s make our way up there right now. Daniel,” he adds, a note of irritation returning to his voice, “We’re finished here for now. I trust you’ll find something constructive to do in your spare time.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Mr. Wheeler says, starting for the door. “Actually, I was also considering—oh, yes, goodbye, Daniel, stay safe—what you might think of . . .”
Their voices and footsteps fade as they exit the stables, and once they’re gone, Dan leaps into action. He still needs Regan’s signature for his detention slip, but hell if he’s going to ask him and become embroiled in another overdramatic argument imbued by a mysterious but significant ongoing family conflict.
Yanking open the top drawer of Regan’s desk and rummaging through the papers he finds, Dan inadvertently glances at Regan’s computer screen, and raises both eyebrows. For whatever reason, his uncle is looking up directions to some cemetery. Weird—the obvious reason for Regan to be going to a cemetery would be to visit a grave, but who would he know that would be buried there?
Dan’s mother, possibly? The night she’d died, Dan was placed in a temporary foster home, and he’d left, catching a bus to New York City. And the less said about his misadventures there, the better. But though he occasionally wondered, he never found out where his mother was buried. But if Regan was going to visit his sister’s grave, why wouldn’t he inform Dan, her son? Did the exclusion indicate he really thought that Dan was that much of a nuisance?
Dan’s father? But he was declared MIA on a mission overseas when Dan was in foster care. There hadn't been any body to bury, and though Dan isn’t fully knowledgeable about procedures for such incidents, he doesn’t think his father was ever given a grave.
No time to muse now. Regan might be back at any moment, and Dan still needs to locate a paper with his signature.
Extracting a hefty pile of letters from the desk, Dan quickly flips through them, only to find that every one of them is addressed to Regan, from someone else— the same guy, by the looks of it. If Dan cared, he’d wonder who Regan’s pen pal is, but surely that’s not important.
Scowling, Dan replaces all the papers into the desk. Even if he isn’t risking another one of Regan’s lectures, he’s eager to return to the cabin and start his latest inflammatory op-ed piece for the high school newspaper.
Signature, signature, where to find one of Regan’s signatures? Scanning the room, Dan’s eyes land on the filing cabinet. Of course; Regan signs off on each and every veterinarian visit.
Pulling open the cabinet drawer, Dan quickly happens upon suitable records and takes care of his paperwork. Then, deliberately not looking back at the computer, he exits the office, closing the door firmly. Let Regan keep his secrets; until Dan has a reason to become invested, he sees no cause to care.
On Halloween night, Dan finds himself lounging on another couch, this time the Beldens’, in the den of Crabapple Farm. As punishment for his week’s worth of detentions, Regan volunteered Dan to the Beldens for an evening of supervising Bobby, including taking him trick-or-treating. Mr. and Mrs. Belden are attending the birthday celebration of a family friend (only ever enigmatically referenced as “Ralph”), while the older Belden siblings, along with the other BWGs and many of their classmates, are at Taz and Avery’s Halloween party.
Thinking of all the fun he’s likely missing, Dan sighs. Woe, if only he could be like any other fourteen-year-old and be allowed to have a social life.
“Five minutes until bedtime, kiddo,” he informs Bobby.
“You’ll read me a story, right?” Bobby looks up from the coffee table, where he’s been kneeling, possibly in reverence, as he sorts through his mountains of candy while watching Halloween specials on the Disney Channel. “And do the funny voices?”
“Funny voices and all,” Dan confirms.
“Good!” Bobby passes him a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, perhaps as a reward.
Shrugging, Dan unwraps the candy and pops it into his mouth; he usually isn’t one for sweets, but the combination of peanut butter and chocolate is where he’s willing to make an exception.
A few minutes later, Dan sends Bobby up to prepare for bed, himself remaining to stay downstairs and trying to righten the chaos Bobby wreaked throughout the den and kitchen. Earlier in the week, Diana’s uncle, known to all the BWGs but Dan from a trip to Arizona last Christmas, mailed sugar skull kits to his nieces and nephews. The Lynch twins thoughtfully passed one along to Bobby— much to the chagrin of all other members of the Belden household. Tonight, Bobby proved their fears with what was essentially an amatuer redecoration of the kitchen walls and floor. Truly, it was the darkest of horrors for the Belden family.
After about fifteen minutes of sweeping and scrubbing with plenty of elbow grease, the kitchen looks less like an avant-garde painter’s workshop than it did previously, and Dan returns to the second story to supervise Bobby brushing his teeth.
Bobby spits the last of his toothpaste into the sink. “I want you to read Calvin and Hobbes to me! I have the book about Calvin pranking his babysitter.”
“What a happy coincidence,” Dan replies as he pours Bobby a Dixie cup of children’s mouthwash. “Here, rinse out your mouth, too. Hopefully, that will wash away any leftover sugar from all the candy you ate tonight.”
When finished, Bobby races back into his room, and Dan follows at a more relaxed pace. Passing through the doorway, he pauses to retrieve Bobby’s Scooby-Doo costume from the floor. The two sets of Lynch twins joined Bobby for the evening, dressed as the other members of Mystery, Inc., though they’d been escorted by their nurses. Luckily, Dan reflects as he places Bobby’s costume on a hanger and sets it in the closet, he was not solely responsible for all five of those children. What a truly repugnant punishment that would be. Even the protagonists of Greek tragedies weren’t expected to perform such Herculean feats.
“Story! Story! Story!” Bobby chants, clutching the book of comic strips as he jumps up and down on his bed.
“All right, bud. You ready to hear about a boy and his stuffed tiger?” Dan sits on the edge of the bed.
“Yes!” Bobby settles beside him, opening the book and selecting a page. “Start here. And use the funny voices!”
For the next twenty minutes, Dan obligingly reads from the comic strips, varying his tone and pitch to imitate a variety of voices and sounds effects, much to Bobby’s delight. As the hour nears ten o’clock, Dan concludes storytime, says goodnight, and departs, turning out the lights as he leaves, unyielding to the protests of his young charge.
Once back downstairs, Dan surveys the kitchen and does what he can to make amends. Switching on the faucet of the kitchen sink, he makes the water as hot as possible, intent on scouring the dye off of the dishes that were stained in the process of Bobby’s sugar skull “creations.” After scrubbing away as much of the coloring as possible, he loads the dishwasher, adds detergent, and twists the necessary knobs and dials to start the wash cycle.
While there’s still plenty of work to be done, it’s been almost five full hours of constant Bobby exposure, and Dan decides to treat himself to a break. Ambling back to the couch, he looks around for The Book of Lamentations by Rosario Castellanos, a text he’s been reading in his leisure time. But his attention is instead captured by the scene currently playing across the television screen.
It’s a video promotion for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, a sing-along that involves a group of Disney villains — the witch from Snow White , the Big Bad Wolf, Captain Hook, and Maleficent — skulking around while “Grim Grinning Ghosts” plays. A vague memory from childhood drifts into his mind, bringing the corners of Dan’s mouth to briefly upturn into the barest vestige of a smile. He’s seen this same clip before, back when he was a young kid and owned some Disney theme park video collection. God, it’s almost unbelievable to think that he watched it on VHS tape.
The promo ends and some godawful Disney sitcom begins, leading Dan to grab the remote and change the channel. He happens upon an episode of The Addams Family TV series, and since he’s always liked that bunch, Dan lets it play as he tries to locate The Book of Lamentations. He’s always admired the depths of devotion Gomez and Morticia held for each other and their children. Notably, Dan mused, The Addams Family was never a depiction of a family divided, but always about a family together and doing their best to interact with a world that wasn’t quite prepared for or understanding of them.
Yet there’s a continual nagging at the back of Dan’s mind, even as he locates his book and tries to sit down and read. Something’s been niggling at him since he saw that Haunted Mansion video, and he hates the uncertainty of not knowing what it is.
Determined to put his frustration to rest, Dan retrieves his laptop from his backpack and swiftly locates the Haunted Mansion video online. Leaning back into the couch, he turns off the volume of the video so the music doesn’t distract him, and gives his sole focus to the visuals. It doesn’t matter if he has to watch and rewatch the clip until his eye glaze over; he’s going to figure out what seems off to him about the video.
But reviewing the clip three times brings him no closer to any kind of conclusion; he’s about to close the browser window, dismiss the issue, and go back to his book when he notices one of the related videos in the right sidebar. Titled “Grim Grinning Ghosts — Phantom Manor,” this video’s thumbnail still displays Jafar, a Disney villain who wasn’t included in the video Dan just finished watching. Curiosity piqued, Dan clicks on the video and is overwhelmed by an eerie sense of familiarity as it plays. This video is the version he remembers from his childhood, the one with Jafar. The segment that played on TV, for whatever reason, swapped out Jafar and replaced him with Captain Hook. But why two versions?
An online search quickly determined that Phantom Manor was the Haunted Mansion feature at Disneyland Paris. A quick perusal of listings for Disney Sing-Along Songs tells him that 1) there was a video collection that featured the Phantom Manor version of “Grim Grinning Ghosts”: Let’s Go to Disneyland Paris!, released in 1993, and 2) the collection playing on the Disney Channel tonight would have been Happy Haunting — Party at Disneyland, released in 1998. Not that the latter is truly significant, but perhaps it’s noteworthy for comparison’s sake.
Pausing in his “research,” Dan breaks for a moment to contemplate what he now knows. He must have owned the Disneyland Paris tape as a child. Thinking back, though, Dan can’t recall who gave him the tape. The obvious guess would be his parents, but would they really give him a tape for the Paris Disney park rather than either of the two in the US? Of course, it’s not impossible, not even necessarily unlikely, but it still seems strange. And some intangible, inexplicable aspect of the situation continues to nag at him.
Intrigued by these questions, however trivial they might might seem, Dan clicks on a related video for Disneyland Paris — something about “Main Street, USA,” but for God’s sake, it’s not the USA, it’s Paris, France. Jesus, as if this scenario isn’t convoluted enough already.
Beyond Dan’s annoyance on behalf of geography, the song and the video are boring and saccharine as hell, and Dan is just about to close the browser when a cloudy memory drifts into his mind.
I’ll take you to Paris one day, Danny. That’s a promise.
Eyes flying wide open, Dan tries to bring back the precise memory, but is unable to do so. He can’t recall the exact words, only the basic impression. Someone promised to bring him to Paris. Someone who . . . no image or name follows the words into his mind. Someone who Dan can’t clearly remember, then.
Could it have been either one of his parents? Staring at the television, absent-mindedly noting it’s shifted from The Addams Family to some slasher horror flick, Dan tries to draw rational conclusions. Though his family never was troubled for money at any point he can remember, they also weren’t inundated with wealth. He can’t picture either of them resolving to give him such an extravagant vacation.
Closing his eyes, Dan concentrates on the memory, trying to urge it forth.
You like Paris? One day, Danny, we’ll go there together.
Whoever had said that to him was nearby when the video was playing. And Dan would have been watching the video at home, meaning the person was with him in his house. At least of that part, Dan is fairly certain. The person was an adult, a “grown-up” to his child self, and Dan wasn’t paying too much attention to him when he spoke, significantly more interested by the wonders of Disneyland. But this person . . . as much as he struggles to remember a name or a face, he thinks he recalls feeling affection toward him, enjoying being around him. Liking that this person was friendly to him.
Isn’t Paris beautiful, Danny? We can go there sometime, if you’d like.
And it stood to reason, Dan realizes, that if he couldn’t remember who gave him the Disney tape, or who promised to take him to Paris, that it was the same person. And if this mystery person gave Dan a gift like the tape, and was in his house, then his parents would have known him — well, presumably.
Yet Dan has no idea of the identity of this unknown person.
“Who are you?” he wonders aloud.
A shrill scream from the television, echoing in the otherwise silent house, is his only answer.
“Goblins and ghoulies, creatures of fright…
We summon you now, to dance through the night!
”Spirits and ghosts on your proud stallions,
accompany the beautiful bride through the night!”
“Warlocks and witches, answer this call,
your presence is wanted at this ghostly ball!
”From the twelve knolls of midnight to the morning bells,
we shall waltz together, gruesome debutante!”
“Join now the spirits in nuptial doom:
A ravishing bride… a vanishing groom!”
—Madame Leota, Phantom Manor in Disneyland Paris