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The Adventures of Kandy Kaine

Chapter 1

Moving In

I suppose I should start at the beginning, as that is where most stories start. There is so much to tell, and I don't want to appear to jump all over the place, or skip over something and leave it out. So much has happened that I wouldn't want to confuse you, as it seems confusing enough to me, and I was there. I know you might think this is just a girl making up stories, but I was there, I know it happened. If I start to jump around, just say so, and I'll try to stay on story. So...where to start....?

  I guess I should start with an introduction. My name's Kandace Evangeline Kaine, but my friends call me Kandy. I'm 12 years old, and I live in Morningside Heights. I could bore you with details about when I was younger, but it was boring, and not a really good story there. I'll start here where the adventures began. The day Mom came home and said she had accepted a new position as a housekeeper on the other side of town. She made her living this way, so we moved a lot. We always had a house, but never a home. Most of the time, it was some rich family with a couple of brats that either I couldn’t or I just wouldn’t play with.  Sometimes, the parents were snobs, and didn't want their children associating with the hired help. Or usually the way it worked out, if the parents were cool, then the kids were such brats that I just wanted to stay away from them. I spent a lot of time alone. Mom said this is what makes me so independent.

 Like the place before this, the Rogers, Mom's last job. Since I was the child of the hired help, I was not allowed to associate with the family, I wasn't allowed in the main house. My presence was merely tolerated; as that is the only way my Mom would work for somebody, if I were given room and board also.  Times were hard, and Mom had to take the job. I know she hated it too, but it was a roof over our head, and food to eat. Leftovers and cold usually, but it was food. Sometimes, late at night when she thought I was asleep, I would hear her crying a bit, because she thought it was so unfair to me. I told her it was OK, that I knew since Dad disappeared, this is how she provided for us. I told her I really didn't mind. One thing for sure, I was proud of my Mom. How she handled those brats, and cleaned up the messes they made without strangling them is beyond me. I thought she had it much worse than me. I would tell her that, and she would smile, but I knew how much it bothered her. She once told me that if she is going to be a housekeeper, then she was going to be the best housekeeper in Morningside Heights. And she was. She always did everything that way. She would never do anything half way, much less ever let me do anything half way.  I know one day I’ll thank her for that, she told me so.

 Of all the jobs she had though, this was the worst. Mr. Rogers got his money the old-fashioned way. His father gave it to him. Since he didn't have to earn it, he didn't know the value of it. It was the worst of jobs. Like I said, some places, the parents were the problem, some places the kids were the problem. This place was both. Mr. And Mrs. Rogers were snobs beyond snobs. If your bank account didn't have a lot of zeroes in it, then you were only there to serve their needs. Since I was a child, I served none of their needs. They preferred I stay out of sight.  Not like I could ever be considered an equal to their precious darlings, Roman and Randy. Those kids were the worst. Rich, Spoiled, and Bratty. Roman, the boy, was bad enough. Fat lazy and dumb. He was set for the rest of his life, and acted like it. He was OK I guess, because he was dumb and slow, so he was easy to outsmart. He pretty much left me alone because I could outsmart him even though he was a couple years older than me. He would sit in his room playing video games and picking his nose all the time. He was a lump, a bump, only this and nothing more. He didn’t want to be much more. I think I just felt sorry for him more than anything.

Randy was a different story. She would never let me forget she was rich, and I was not, and that we were living in HER house. She was a snot. We were the same age, so she was always telling me how much better she was than me. How her hair was prettier, and her clothes were better. She hated that we went to the same school. She hated the fact that I made it into Morningside Academy on an Academic Scholarship, where she only got in by having money, and her Daddy built the new library. She hates the fact that I get all A’s and she doesn’t (not even close).  And don’t even get me started about Zack.

We'd been here about three months, and I hated it. But I'd never tell Mom how much I hated it. She had her hands full with the Rogers, and I'm a big girl, so I'll handle it. That's what big girls do. I think the thing that bothered me most is the way Randy would treat my Mom. Like getting ready for school in the morning, she would throw her clothes on the floor, and snap her fingers at Mom, saying Clean this; clean that; pick up those, iron this for me. She would walk in from school and just throw her stuff on the floor, and snap her fingers. She was a full time job all right. She was always snapping her fingers, expecting everyone to jump whenever she wanted. I think that more than anything is why I hated her. Mom worked hard enough as it was, and Randy just made the job unbearable.

We lived in the "maid's" quarters there. It was a small little house out back by the fence. Near the garbage cans, as Randy seemed always ready to remind me. Like I said, it was a roof over our head. It had a kitchenette, a bathroom, a room we could sleep in and a living area. The bed was sort of small; they didn't make these houses for families. Most nights Mom would fix us a dinner, and fall asleep exhausted. We didn’t have a TV, so I would usually sit up and read until I fell asleep on the living room rug. Mom was pretty cool about letting me keep my books and stuff all over the living room. Mom was always pretty cool about stuff like that. Even though we never had much money, she always found a way to get me a book every once in awhile. I don't know how she did it, but whenever I would say she shouldn't, and the money should be spent in better ways, she would give a quick kiss on the head, and send me off to my studies.  How she ever scraped together the money to get my laptop, I'll never know. I'll ask her one day.

I guess you could say we were poor, in that we didn’t have a lot of money. It really was just never talked about. I knew we had no money for extra things and just accepted it as fact. Mom would not allow that to be an excuse to whine about something, or complain about not having something. She once told me that the best advantage to not having many things is how special the things you do have are.  We were rich in the important things she would say.

 In places like the Rogers', since I wasn't allowed in the house, I spent my time with my books and my laptop, Bert.  Yeah, I named my laptop Bert. I remember the day Mom brought it home. I was so excited about it. It didn’t matter if was a few years old, and that it didn’t have a lot of memory, or even that the speakers didn’t work. It was my laptop. How Mom was able to scrape up the money for it, I’ll never know. She was so happy that I got so excited about it, she almost cried. I know I did.  It was a real computer, MY real computer. I know I used the ones at school, but it’s not the same as having your very own computer

  I could get on the wired, and was able to travel all over the world that way. Bert was my window to a big exciting world out there. If I wasn’t doing that, I was solving chess problems with him. He came with a pretty good chess program.  To me, the game of chess represents pure logic, one mind against another mind, with the element of luck removed. I think I’m getting pretty good at the game, I can beat Bert half the time now.

One time at school, when I pulled Bert out of my backpack to take some notes, Randy started making fun of him. She said it was a piece of junk, that all the cool kids had the new Micron 2000. No other computer could possibly be worth using. I looked her right in the eye.

“ Actually Randy, your parents gave you that computer to shut you up. My Mom gave me Bert because she loves me. That makes Bert worth a hundred times more than any computer you would EVER own.” I was so mad, I almost spit out the last part. She didn’t get it, but that’s Randy. Mom said Randy just thinks price equals value, when every smart kid knows it doesn’t.

Some of the kids at school think I’m sort of weird.  I always have my head in a book, or my hands on a keyboard. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to learn new things, and explore new worlds and adventure. Oh, how I wanted to adventure. I would read about kids that went adventuring, and exploring and made discoveries, and dream that I were there, that I was doing the exploring, that those were my adventures. Since I couldn't do it in real life, I did it in my head, and dreamed of the day I could actually do some adventures of my own. Little did I know how soon that would happen.

I had fallen asleep on the rug again. Mom woke me up and said she wouldn’t be there when I got home from school that day; she had an errand to run. She had taken the day off, and had to go across town.  I was to come home, do my studies, and make my own dinner. But she promised to be home to kiss me good night.  This struck me curious. Mom never took a day off. She was always there when I came home from school. She arranged her afternoon break so we could see each other when I got off the bus. We would meet by the back door, as she wasn’t allowed to use the front entrance. I asked her what was so important, but she wouldn’t say, only that it was important, and that I would learn about it later. She plucked a hair from my head, and out the door she went.

I got home that day, did my homework, and warmed up some macaroni on the hot plate.

I was trying to get Bert to boot up again when she came home. She flew in the door, and said to pack my things. She had taken a new position, starting immediately.

I asked her where the new job was.

"13 Raven’s Head Road," she said, without a second thought.

I almost fell out of my chair. "13 Raven's Head Road!!" I gulped. "There? THE 13 Raven's Head Road!!!  You took a job there?"

She looked at me and only said, "Would you rather stay here?"

That did it for me. Anywhere was better than here, even if it was on the other side of town, in a big old house, that an old Mad Scientist lived in. Oh, did I mention it was haunted? We packed and moved that night.

 I wish I could have been there when Mom told Mr. Rogers we were leaving. It had taken him six months to find a housekeeper who would work there, and it would probably only take longer to find another one. I wonder if Mom told him it was because of his bratty kids that people don't want to work there. I wonder if she told him that everybody thinks they are snobs, and they treat people like they are worthless just because they don't have a lot of money. I wonder if she kicked Randy in the behind. I would have, but that’s just me.

On the drive over to the new place, I was a little worried. You should know that most kids in Morningside are afraid of the house at the end of Raven's Head Road. All kinds of weird things are supposed to have happened there. Lights in the middle of the night, all kinds of weird sounds, explosions, smoke, UFOs...you name it. At one time or another they came out of that house, sometimes all at the same time. And the old guy that lived there, I’ve heard all kinds of stories about him. And none of them good. I had heard once he caught some kids on his lawn, and he zapped them with a laser beam. Burnt them to a crisp it's said. One story said he fed them to the giant aliens that must live there. Some say he turned them into Zombies, and they are now slaves in his laboratory fetching brains for his weird experiments.

Mom just kept looking ahead, it didn't seem to bother her.

I mean, we could be walking right into dinner, with us as the main course, and me as the appetizer, and she just looks ahead. We could be volunteering to be the subjects of some weird experiment that will turn us into zombies, spending eternity slaving away in an evil laboratory and eating brains for dinner. And she just kept looking ahead, driving in the night. It had started to rain. I mean doesn’t she know what we could be getting into here? Still she just kept looking ahead, as if nothing could possibly be wrong with this scenario. HEEELLLLLLLOOOO!!!

 Well, if it didn't bother her that much, I wasn't about to let her know how worried I was. She had enough to think about, so I rode in silence. Then somewhere in the silence it dawned on me; this was actually my very first REAL adventure, my first step into the real unknown, my very first dance with danger.

I remember thinking to myself;

' Oh, a fine one you are, Kandy Kaine. Here you are, about to go where most kids are too scared to go. A place that most kids run from, you are now moving into. You've waited all your life for a real adventure and you have one right in front of you, staring you right in the face, and all you can think of is campfire ghost stories and school-ground legends. Now, put on your brave face, and head right down this road with your head up. If Mom finds out how scared you are, she'll turn around and we'll be back at the Rogers before you know it. Anything would be better than that, even being a zombie slave.'

"Mom," I asked, "what do you know about this place?"

 I tried to sound brave, but try as I might; I probably sounded at least maybe just a little bit scared. 

She smiled a bit. Not a fake smile, but that smile she gets when she knows something. The smile she gets when she knows something I don't. That smile she gets when she knows something I don't, and she's not going to tell me. You know that smile; your Mom probably has a smile like that too.

"Why, Honey? What have you heard?" She asked. Her smile got bigger. I don't know if that was supposed to make me feel better, but it only made me worry a bit more.

' What if she's in on it. What if she sold me to this guy for his next experiment, or the latest menu item at an alien Bar-B-Q! ' OK; now I was being silly, or at least I was hoping I was being silly.

"Oh, some of the kids have said some things." I said, "Just curious that's all."

She just smiled and looked ahead. It began to rain harder. Then the lightning started.

Lightning. 'Great' I thought, ' if you were to write some horror story, or go see a scary movie, this is how it happens. Driving down a creepy, empty road, wind blowing, rain and lightning. All we need now are the monsters to come out to eat our brains.'

We turned onto Raven’s Head. There it stood. At the end of the street, there it stood, alone. The big iron gate, and behind that the big old house. It was dark, no lights on at all. It looked kind of spooky with the lightning and all. Looked pretty run down, a couple broken windows. The yard was overgrown. What were once probably rose bushes had grown into some kind of knotted tree of thorns.  It looked empty; it looked haunted. As much as I heard about it, this was the first time I had actually seen it in person. Mockingbird Manor. Right there, right in front of me. Everything I had heard of, and more. This place was spooky. And here we are pulling into the driveway. Don't ask me how I even got out of the car. Well, if this was it, I'm going to be brave. If Mom can do this, I can.  She knocked on the door. It opened. It opened into a dark living room. What a mess. Even in the darkness I could see that. And I can smell it. In she went, I followed.

"Hello!" Mom hollered, "Anybody here?" She turned on a light and headed down the hallway, hollering for someone.

With the light on I could take in the room. It was more like a study. The first thing that caught my eye was the books. Thousands of books, thousands of books everywhere! On the floor, the tables, even some on the bookshelves. Some lay open like they were being read. Some face down, some with pages torn out and pasted on the wall. More books than were even in the library at school that snooty old Randy Roger's Dad built. In the middle of the floor was a chess set. A real chess set, and it looked like a game was being played. I walked over to check out the board.

I heard a noise. I startled, even though I told myself I wouldn't. I turned around and there he was standing in the shadows, The Mad Scientist, the Alien Keeper, the Monster Maker of Morningside Heights. Right there, right in front of me. I know I let out a gasp; OK maybe it was a yell. Mom came crashing back into the study.

"Are you all right? What happened?" She asked. Then she saw him too. Then something happened that I never, ever, never in a million years, expected. 

She ran over to him, and gave him a hug, and a kiss on the cheek. He was hugging her back. She knew him. Obviously she knew him well. You could've bowled me over with a feather. He stepped into the light, and turned toward me. He looked me up and down, and then looked right in my eyes. He had blue eyes. Blue eyes that looked like ice, and they twinkled. Blue eyes that could look right past your face and right into your thoughts. Not what I expected. Not what I expected at all.

"You must be Kandy. Nice to finally meet you." He sounded okay, not like a madman at all. This didn't seem like a man who made monsters, or is trying for world domination. He reached out his hand.

'Yeah,' I thought, 'this could all be an act. He's trying to trick us into being comfortable, and then out come the ray-guns and the zombie slaves to take our brains'. But I promised myself I would go out with my head held high and my brave face on.

I shook his hand firmly. "Glad to meet you, Sir" I said. I looked him right back in the eyes. I had my brave face on.

He smiled. He turned to Mom and told her to find a place for her stuff, and a room for me somewhere.

"I'm in the middle of something, so I have to run. You can find a place over there" He waved his hand at the hallway, as he headed off in a hurry, towards the basement. Then he was gone, as quick as he came in.

 I looked at Mom; she was smiling again, but a happy smile. A smile I hadn't seen since Dad disappeared.

"Come on Kandy, let's go see your room." She waved at me to follow her. I picked up my bag and followed her down the hallway. What a big house. The hallway stretched from one end of the house to the staircase that lead upstairs. The floor creaked when we walked over it. Most of the lights were out, and with the lightning going on outside I started to get a small case of the creeps. Even that though couldn't overcome the thrill of being in the middle of my first real adventure.

I wanted to poke around, and look into some of the rooms we were passing, peek at a few things.  I wanted to explore things.

"We should hurry," she told me." I guess you can see I have a lot of work to do, so let's get you settled so I can get started." She went up the stairs. I followed.

I had a hundred questions I wanted to ask. I wanted answers. How does Mom know the Mad Scientist of Morningside Heights? What are we really doing here? When do our brains get eaten?

We got to the upstairs landing. She said," When I was here earlier, I picked out this room for you. I hope you like it."

She opened the door and flipped on the light. I walked in. I had to blink twice before I could believe what I was seeing. The room was huge, bigger than the whole house we were staying in at the Rogers’. Going down the right side of the room were bookshelves, and more books, wall-to-wall books. The wall of bookshelves turned left into a huge bay window. You could probably see most of Morningside from that window. It had a small bench there to sit on and look out the window. It took up almost the entire wall.

' An escape window when the zombies come’ I quickly thought. To the side of the window was a writing desk, very old but very elegant, with a matching chair. You could sit there and see out the window over Morningside while you worked. The wall turned left from there, and then I saw it.

The bed.  The giant bed. It looked like something out of a fairytale. It was so big; that there was a small stool next to it you had to use to climb on it. With the canopy and curtains and all, you would think it just came out of a castle.  That at one time or another a princess had slept in it.

And the dust. Everything everywhere was covered in dust. It must have been years since someone has been in this room. I was just standing there staring at the room when Mom said,

"Get unpacked, clean up the room a bit, and dinner will be ready in an hour or so, if I can clean up the kitchen enough to cook in it tonight."

"But.....what...how...? I mean, how do...we.....us? You........?" There were a hundred questions but only one mouth. You know when that happens, that's how the words come out. I hate when that happens, as you know I usually am very precise with my words and questions.

She sat on the bed, and took me in her lap.

"I know you have a hundred questions, Sweetheart, you always do. And we'll have time to talk about it all later over dinner. What you need to know for now is that man is sort of related to your father. I've known of him for a long time. There was an unfortunate incident with a previous housekeeper, so he needed a new housekeeper, and I needed a new job. You'll find out, he's a fairly harmless guy, at least most of the time." She hugged me and off she went. There was something different about her though. There was a dance to her step, a song in her words. She had a rag in her hand all ready, and was wiping down a wall as she headed back downstairs to the kitchen. It's almost like she was looking forward to the monumental task of cleaning this huge house, which looks like it hadn't been cleaned in years. I could hear her find the kitchen. The sounds of water running, pots clattering and doors slamming filled the air, and I swear I heard her singing. I hadn't heard that in awhile. I wanted to sneak downstairs and listen, she had such a pretty voice, but I had my own job to do.

This room was big all right, and big rooms become big messes. I set myself to busy cleaning up and putting things away.  The closet was bigger than the bedroom we were in at the Rogers house. My few clothes and things barely took up any space at all. ‘Plenty of room for closet monsters in here’ I thought. I got so caught up in getting done that it seemed like only minutes before Mom was calling me down for dinner.

Over dinner, things began to make a little more sense. It turns out my Dad was actually the great-nephew of a second cousin, or something like that, of Uncle Mike (he said I could call him that). And the last housekeeper accidentally walked into an experiment and had been turned into a zombie. Well, not a real zombie, but it did knock her stupid. She fled, and no other housekeeper would work in the house after that. That's how the house became such a mess. Uncle Mike is not the neatest of people, as I would come to find out.

 Uncle Mike was a REAL Mad Scientist though, at least as real as they get. He said only the luckiest scientists get to go mad, so he really was lucky more than mad. I also found out that he was rich, even richer than the snobby old Rogers were. He had invented all kinds of things, like aglets, (you know.... shoelace tips) and all kinds of stuff like that. He traveled around the world learning and discovering things. He had been gone for the last two years to Pago-Pago, researching the effects of moonlight on daydreams. He just returned to Morningside Heights yesterday. As soon as Mom found out he was in town, she went to find him.

Uncle Mike vaguely remembered my Dad he said. He didn’t know about me until Mom came over to introduce herself this morning. As soon as Mom explained who she was, and who I was, they decided we would be better off here. So here we are.

Mom was clearing the dishes and getting some coffee for him, when he turned to me.

"Well, Miss Kandy, there hasn’t been a child here in almost 40 years. I guess if you're going to be staying here, we're going to need to set some rules." 

'Oh, here we go...' I thought,' Better to be seen and not heard, back to staying in my room, and staying out of sight.' I could picture 10 bazillion rules again, just like at the Rogers.

" I really only have one rule I can think of. I would prefer you not to mess around in the laboratory. I have a lot of experiments going on, and you might get hurt if you’re messing with something you don’t understand."

"That's it?" I asked, “ Just stay out of your lab?”

“Let’s say, stay out of the lab for now.” He gave me wink and put his finger to his lips, Ssshhhhh…and pointed towards Mom.

 Well, it turns out Uncle Mike was nothing like I expected. This whole house, I could go anywhere I wanted in it, anytime I wanted. In fact, he said, I was to act like it was my house, as I lived here now, so that makes it my house, too. He looked kind of puzzled when I acted like I couldn't believe it. I told him the story of the Rogers, and how they treated us. He knew the Rogers, but had paid them no mind. In fact, he paid little attention to most of Morningside Heights. He preferred to be left alone.

"Don't worry," He said. " You'll never have to go back there again. I think you and I might get along just fine. You seem like a bright child, and I can tolerate bright children. Your Mom says you're in Morningside Academy on an academic scholarship. That's something to be proud of. Now, is your room OK? Did you find everything you needed?"

I wanted to tell him it was possibly the best bedroom in the whole world, and that Mom and I had lived in houses smaller than that room, and how there were more books in there than I had ever seen in my whole life, and how the desk was a perfect perch for Bert, and how the bed must have come straight from a castle and princesses must have slept in it, and I wanted to tell him that I would be happy with a mat on the floor and a couple books, but none of that came out. Even I was surprised when the words tumbled out of my mouth...

"Can I have a TV?" There it was, it was out, too late to take it back. Now he'll think I'm greedy, and ungrateful for all I had all ready been given.

He let out a small laugh. " A TV? I hadn't thought of that, I don't watch it much myself. Kelly, tomorrow, could you make arrangements to have a TV delivered for her room?" She nodded, and went back to cleaning the kitchen.

Uncle Mike finished his coffee and rushed back to the lab. Had a couple things to finish up he said. I was helping Mom clear the last of the dishes. I was kind of in shock here, half thinking I'll wake up any minute and be back on the carpet at the Roger's, that this all is really a weird, happy dream. If it was, I didn't want to wake up.

"Mom," I asked, "is this real, is this really happening?"

"Yes Kandy, this is real, we're really here. We’re here to stay."

She told me that she was more than just the housekeeper here. She was the Household Manager. The Household Manager of Mockingbird Manor. Her job was to run the whole house however she saw fit, so Uncle Mike could concentrate on his experiments. She told me the salary was very, very generous so we need never worry about money again. She warned me though, that Uncle Mike gets a little distracted when he had work going on which was pretty much all the time. So I must watch for his comings and goings and step out of the way, as he probably won't see me. Easy enough.

Later, Mom was tucking me in. After using the stepstool to get up into the bed, I sank into the covers. I had never known beds like this even existed, much less ever been in one. It took a minute, but the funniest feeling came over me. Comfortable. I was comfortable. The warmth of the blankets washed over me, and I tried to remember the last time I felt like this. Not for a while, anyway, not since Dad disappeared.

'I could get used to this' I thought.

Mom sat on the edge of the bed, and brushed the hair from my eyes, gave me a kiss on the head.

"Sweet Dreams Sweetheart," she whispered. And out the door she went.

I looked around the room, still not believing this was my room, MY room. Not believing the turn of luck, the twist of the tale, the adventure that brought me here.

'Not bad for your first adventure', I thought, 'not bad at all, Kandy Kaine...not bad at all.'

I snuggled into the blanket, and sank into the pillows.

I was home.

I was finally at home.