Penny Dreadful Read Online Free

good.
    Shortly after that people began calling from fancy stores and credit card companies. Each time Penelope answered the phone and told whoever was at the other end of the line that her mother was away, they asked her to please tell Mrs. Delia Grey that she needed to call and discuss her bill. Penelope stopped answering the telephone.
    Then one Thursday, Josie the housekeeper quit, saying that she absolutely refused to keep up with the trail of litter that Dirk left behind him as he wandered the house lost in thought. She stormed out, waving her hands in the air and yelling, “Crazy man! Owes three weeks’ back pay and can’t pick up his own socks! I am
not
your mother, and I don’t have to put up with your mess anymore, thank goodness!”

    Dirk ran after her, pleading. “I’m sorry, Josie! I’ll wash my own coffee cups from now on! I’ll stop walking on your wet floors, I promise!”
    But Josie was gone, and that was a problem, because while managing the staff had always been Delia’s job, managing the house itself wasn’t something
any
of the Greys knew much about. It was a very large house—four giant floors, full of rooms—and it got away from them. Dishes piled up in the sink, once-shiny floors grew dim, and small mountains of clutter multiplied in rooms all over the house, though nobody said a word about it. Penelope tried to see the mess as an adventure, but it was really just plain depressing.
    As the mess got worse, Penelope tried not to think about the wishing well.
It was just a silly game
, she told herself.
I didn’t do this. I couldn’t possibly have done this
.
    On top of everything else, as June wore into July, the house also became unbearably hot. Penelope wasn’t sure whether the air-conditioning was broken or Delia had shut it off to save money, but either way, Penelope didn’t want to complain about it. So when the temperature became absolutely intolerable, she went down to the cellar with a flashlight to read in the darkness beneath the stairs. Though it was cooler there, sitting alone in the basement was really just a different kind of sad.
    Through all of this, the Greys didn’t snipe at each other or fight about whose turn it was to sweep up. Instead, Dirk and Delia walked around the house avoiding each other and closing the doors on any particularly messy rooms. Delia unplugged the phone and stopped singing to herself completely. In the evenings she sat on the couch in the dark and sipped what seemed to be an endless glass of white wine, alone. Dirk continued to mutter in his robe, read old newspapers, and drink cold coffee. Lightbulbs burned out, and the great stone mansion became a vast series of dark hallways and shut doors. It was as though the house had gone to sleep, and Penelope watched it all worriedly, wishing everyone would go back to their old, boring ways.
    This might have remained the sorry state of things for a long, long time if, one afternoon, Dirk had not loaded the washing machine with seven towels, a pair of running shoes, and two bathroom rugs, so that it made an alarming
thumpity thumpity
noise and walked itself across the laundry room before it broke. At first Penelope and her parents simply ignored the piles of towels and clothes as they’d ignored everything else. They all pretended not to notice the gray mildewy smell hanging in the air. Then the piles of laundry turned into mountains, until
everything
in the house was dirty.
    Penelope—worried into silence herself—tried very hard not to bother her parents, but the day she could not find a single clean pair of pants and was forced to wear the elephant costume from her dress-up trunk, she finally had to say
something
. She found her father, who was rooting through jars and bottles in the refrigerator looking for a snack.
    “Daddy,” she said cautiously, “I—I kind of need some pants.”
    “What’s wrong with the ones you’re wearing?” her father asked sharply, without removing his head from the