Harrison Squared Page 17

  “Don’t we need to get going?” I said.

  “Where are we going?” Lub asked.

  “No,” Lydia said. “No. He can’t just … tag along.”

  “We can trust him,” I said. “He’s been helping me. He saved me from the Scrimshander.”

  “That’s how you got away?” Lydia asked.

  “That’s right,” Lub said. “I’m like Aquaman.”

  “Who?” Lydia asked.

  “Told you,” I said to Lub. Then, to Lydia: “Where was Micah going?”

  “Waughm told him to come to the church,” she said.

  “Waughm,” I said. I was suddenly grateful that I’d taken the opportunity to strangle him. “So where’s the church?”

  “He means the school,” Lydia said. “Same thing, really. It was the only building left standing after the Great September Gale of 1815, so they started using it for everything—church, school, jail, hospital. It still does double duty.”

  “That explains so much,” I said.

  We followed the curve of the street, and suddenly the school was looking down at us from its pedestal on the rock. The moon had broken through the clouds, casting a hard light on its walls. It was so clearly a temple. How could I not have seen it before?

  We didn’t go up the front steps. A long black car with tail fins was parked in front of the school. “I saw Montooth get into that car,” I said.

  “It’s Mr. Waughm’s,” Lydia said.

  She led us around the side of the building. A row of metal garbage cans were set beside a cement loading dock that looked like it had been wedged into the building’s stone. The cans reeked of dead fish.

  “Something smells delicious,” Lub said.

  “Shhh,” Lydia said. She climbed onto the loading dock and pulled out the necklace of keys. Somehow in the dark she found the one she was looking for and inserted it into the lock of the big metal door. The door opened with a clunk.

  “Another key that someone left lying around?” I said.

  “Shhh,” Lub said.

  * * *

  We were in the kitchen. Lydia flicked on her flashlight and led us through the dark to the nurse’s office, then to a long hallway without doors. Her light followed a stripe that ran down the middle of the floor.

  “I’ve been here before,” I said. “This is the outer loop.”

  “What’s it outside of?” Lub asked.

  “Quiet,” Lydia whispered.

  We stopped talking, but we weren’t silent. Lub’s big feet slapped the linoleum: Whap. Whap. Whap.

  Lydia halted. “Would you cut it out?”

  “What?” Lub said.

  “Clown shoes,” she growled.

  The corridor took the final turn I remembered—but we weren’t in the atrium. We’d somehow gotten to the far end of the school, where the stone steps led down to the pool. “This way,” Lydia said, and we went down. The light illuminated only a couple steps at a time, but at least Lub was quieter on stone.

  “How do you know they’re down here?” I asked Lydia, keeping my voice low.

  “Waughm said ‘the church.’ And this is where the church meets.”

  “By the pool?”

  “Baptists have pools,” Lydia said defensively.

  We went into the girls’ locker room. I was braced for a sudden upgrade in the facilities—girls’ bathrooms were always nicer than the boys’—but as near as I could tell from the peripheral glow of the flashlight it was the same dismal setup as on the other side.

  Lydia clicked off the light. “I’ll go check it out,” she whispered. “Stay here.”

  In the dark I couldn’t tell if she’d gone. I slowly became aware of a faint patch of light somewhere ahead of me. And were those voices?

  Lub said, “How long are we going to wait?”

  “Just hold on,” I said.

  After another thirty seconds, he grabbed my arm and said, “The doorway is right over here. Come on.”

  He seemed to have no trouble in the dark. He pulled me around another corner and we were in an arched entrance that overlooked the pool amphitheater. Only a couple of the overhead mercury lights were on, casting a yellow glow near the edge of the pool, but most of the space was in shadow.

  Someone hissed. It was Lydia, crouched behind a stone row. She gestured for us to get down, and Lub and I crawled over to her.

  I could make out figures down by the water. Mr. Waughm, his neck protruding from his suit like a turtle’s, paced back and forth at the pool’s edge. Sitting in the first row, his back to us, was Micah Palwick. But standing nearby, his arms crossed, was a chubby man whose bald head reflected the light. Chief Bode was part of the Congregation?!

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. This explained why Bode said that the Albatross had been in Ruck’s garage for weeks: He was covering for the church. Aunt Sel and I had trusted him because he was a police officer. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Not in Dunnsmouth.

  “How damaged is it?” Waughm said. His voice bounced around the big space. It was a terrible place to hold a clandestine meeting. Why wouldn’t they do this in Waughm’s office?

  “It’s not good,” Micah said. “It weren’t so much the fire. Whoever did this, they knocked a new hole right through the patch Ruck had made in the side of the boat.”

  I looked at Lub. “You did that?” I whispered.

  “Aquaman,” he said.

  Below us, Micah was describing the state of the Albatross. “We’re back to square one,” he said.

  “It’s got to be the boy,” Waughm said.

  “He did know the boat was there,” Bode said.

  “But how did he know about it?” Waughm said. “That ‘anonymous note’ story he gave you? Please.” He looked out at the surface of the pool, then resumed his pacing.

  “Plus he somehow broke into Ruck’s,” Chief Bode said. “How’d he do that?”

  “Ruck said the place was locked tight,” Micah said. He sounded nervous. “You all agreed Ruck could be trusted. It wasn’t my decision to—”

  “Don’t try to weasel out of this,” Waughm said. He stopped in front of Micah. “Someone is helping him. We have a traitor in the Congregation.”

  “You can’t mean me!” Micah said. “I served the church my whole life.”

  “Just as your brother did,” Mr. Waughm said. “Until he didn’t.”

  Micah jumped up. “I ain’t my brother!”

  “No,” Bode said. “You ain’t half the man he was.”

  “You hold on there, Bode,” Micah said. “Badge or no badge, you can’t just—”

  Something in the water had caught Micah’s attention. He tried to take a step back, but the bench was behind him, and he sat down hard.

  The surface of the pool was bubbling.

  Waughm pointed to Micah. “Now you’re in for it.”

  Something big was surfacing. The water broke, and then a huge creature, big as an orca, burst onto the surface. Waughm jumped aside, and the massive thing threw itself onto the lip of the pool.

  It was a woman. A gigantic woman at least ten feet tall and almost as wide. A gigantic woman with a pile of oil black hair, wearing a floral print muumuu the size of a tent.

  “This better be important,” she said.

  17

  The very deep did rot: O Christ!

  That ever this should be!

  Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

  Upon the slimy sea.

  I didn’t scream. I didn’t breathe. Brain and body shut down, almost like my blackout this morning in Montooth’s office. But this time it wasn’t anger that short-circuited me, but the sheer wrongness of what I was seeing. I couldn’t process it. The scale of the woman was impossible.

  I think Lub and Lydia were as shocked as I was. None of us moved. None of us made a sound. That probably saved us.

  Waughm and Bode had dropped to their knees. “O Toadmother,” Waughm said. “Blessed Intercessor, Most High of the Congregation—”

>   “Yes, yes,” the giant said. “Get up, already.” Her huge head grew out of the top of her dress like a poisonous mushroom, deathly white splotched with red: scarlet lipstick, pink eye shadow, a smear of blush on each cheek like a rash. My phantom leg ached as if it were in a vise.

  “Can I say how lovely you look this evening?” Waughm said.

  She (it?) pushed at her hair, then swung toward Micah. The man had stayed where he’d fallen between the rows. “You get up, too,” she said.

  He scrambled to his feet. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”

  “Who are you? You look familiar.”

  “My-my-my—”

  “Who is this man, Waughm?”

  “Micah Palwick, Toadmother. Elijah Palwick’s brother.”

  “Oh, yes. I see the family resemblance now.” She leaned forward until she was towering over him and put a giant paw on his shoulder. Her nails were pink. “Are you a troublemaker, Micah?”

  Water from her dripped onto his face. “No ma’am,” he said in a small voice. “I mean Intercessor. I mean—”

  She released him and eased back. The tail of her muumuu floated on the pool’s surface. I realized that she’d never come completely out of the water. Was there more of her down there? How much more?

  “So what’s this I hear about the Albatross?” she said.

  Waughm told her about the fire at Ruck’s, and the damage to the boat, and kept mentioning that it was Micah’s responsibility to keep the craft in working order. If the Albatross had been a bus, Waughm would be throwing Micah under it.

  “We think it’s the Harrison boy who did it,” Chief Bode said.

  Waughm nodded vigorously. “He’s a wild one. No self-control. Just today he attacked me!”

  “Ooh, attacked by a teenager,” she said, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Thank the stars you survived.”

  Chief Bode chuckled once, then quickly silenced himself at the Toadmother’s glare.

  “Micah Palwick,” the woman said, turning again to Lydia’s uncle. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Uh, ten o’clock?”

  “No! The time is nigh. The First tell us that the Ashen Light will appear soon.”

  “Uh, Toadmother?” Waughm stepped forward. “Do you think you ought to be telling him about that?”

  “The stars are right!” she shouted. Her voice made the air tremble. “The last time we had this chance was over a dozen years ago. We don’t know when it will happen again. Urgaleth, the Mover Between Worlds, is returning, bearing its precious cargo, and you, Micah Palwick, you have endangered everything!”

  Micah looked at Waughm, then Bode. “The scriptures are real?”

  The Toadmother’s great hand smashed into the side of Micah’s head. The man flew sideways and crumpled to the ground. Beside me, Lydia gasped, but the sound was masked by the Toadmother’s shouting.

  “Yes they’re real!” the Toadmother said, indignant. “Who raised you?”

  Chief Bode moved toward Micah’s body, hesitated, then crouched beside him. Micah moaned.

  The Toadmother turned her attention to Waughm. “Fix that boat by the end of the week,” she said. “We will not fail this time. The First are ready. And we have the perfect vessel, primitive yet sturdy.”

  “Uh, when you say ‘vessel,’” Waughm said, “are you talking about the boat, or…?”

  “The Harrison woman, you idiot!”

  “Oh. Right. So she’s still alive?”

  “Of course she’s alive. We need her breathing, don’t we?”

  “Yes, but the Scrimshander has a habit of … well—”

  “He knows his job. Unlike you, Waughm. Now get that Palwick out of here before I eat him. And don’t bother me until the Albatross is repaired, or the Ashen Light appears in the sky.”

  “Yes, Toadmother. Thy will be—”

  “Can it, Waughm.”

  She seemed to twist in place. Her head bent toward the water, and her body followed her like a giant Slinky. The splash was surprisingly small.

  * * *

  We hunkered in our hiding spot, waiting for the room to clear. Waughm stalked out through the doorway that led to Coach Shug’s office. Chief Bode looped an arm around Micah and helped him limp out. A few minutes later the lights shut off, and we were sitting in the dark. We waited another minute in silence, and then Lydia clicked on the flashlight.

  “I am never going in that pool,” I said. My invisible leg still ached, but the pain was receding.

  We crept back to the girls’ locker room, and from there upstairs to the outer loop, then through the kitchen. We didn’t talk, though whether that was from fear of being overheard by Waughm or from, well, fear in general, I couldn’t decide. So many thoughts were tumbling in my head, but I kept coming back to this: Mom was still alive. The Scrimshander had her, but she was alive.

  We finally reached the loading dock outside the school, and Lydia made sure the door locked behind us.

  “That was amazing,” Lub said. He didn’t seem frightened at all. “Are there more of them down there?”

  “God, I hope not,” I said. “I thought maybe she was one of your people. One of the Dwellers.”

  “Nobody’s that fat down there,” he said. “Besides. No gills.”

  We started walking back home. I said, “So this Intercessor isn’t a Dweller. Lydia, do you have any idea what she is? Lydia?”

  “They’re really going to do it,” she said. She was holding the flashlight, so I could barely see her face. “They’re going to summon Urgaleth.”

  “And they need my mom to do it,” I said. “They called her a vessel.”

  “A primitive but sturdy vessel,” Lub said.

  “Yeah, what’s that primitive crack about?” I asked. “Is that because she’s native Brazilian?”

  Lydia hesitated. “Some people in the Congregation are a bit preoccupied with, well, racial purity.”

  “That woman’s half fish!”

  “Hey,” Lub said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But she’s half something, right?”

  Lub looked at Lydia. I already knew he could see in the dark much better than I could. “What?” I asked.

  “Do I have to spell it out?” Lydia said.

  “Yeah, I think you do.”

  Lub flexed his gills. “Years and years ago, the First and the humans living here, they sort of…”

  “Interbred,” Lydia said.

  “So you and Lydia are probably cousins?”

  “Let’s not go that far,” Lydia said.

  “But yeah, she could be,” Lub said happily.

  “We’re getting off track,” Lydia said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “The important thing is to find the Scrimshander before this Ashen Light thing happens. Do either of you know what that is?”

  “I never heard it in English,” Lub said. “But I think it’s the same as the—” He made a warbling noise. “The Elders talk about it all the time.”

  “It’s in our hymns,” Lydia said, and sang a string of syllables.

  “Your accent’s terrible,” Lub said.

  “The point is, it’s happening soon,” Lydia said. “Urgaleth will rise.”

  “Bringing some ‘precious cargo,’” I said. “Whatever in the world that is.”

  “That’s the thing,” Lydia said. “It’s not going to be of our world.”

  “Too many unanswered questions,” I said.

  We’d almost reached Lydia’s house. The lights were all still on. She said, “I should check on Uncle Micah.”

  That surprised me. I thought she hated him. I said, “Lub, can you give us a second?”

  He ducked into the shadow of a clump of trees, and I walked with Lydia toward the front door. “We need a plan to find my mom,” I said. “I was thinking about Tobias Glück’s diary.”

  “Way ahead of you,” she said. “We’re going to need the Involuntaries. Come to the meeting house tomorrow night.”

  She
reached for the door, and I said, “Wait.” I lowered my voice. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened to your parents?”

  She regarded me silently. “I told you,” she said finally. “Anybody who crosses the Congregation, crosses the Scrimshander.”

  “I don’t understand. The Scrimshander did that to them?”

  “My parents were going to leave the church. Move out of Dunnsmouth. They couldn’t go along with the Congregation anymore. Then one night, when I was eight years old, they disappeared. They were gone for two weeks. When they found them, lying on the shore, they were like this.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “They didn’t know what to say. They couldn’t do anything for them. Then the insurance ran out and they couldn’t stay in the hospital anymore. So, Uncle Micah and Aunt Bee took us in.” She took a breath. “Harrison, the Scrimshander works for the Congregation. And if he has your mother…”

  “I get it,” I said. “We just have to find her before that happens.”

  * * *

  Lub walked with me down the hill. He kept trying to talk, but I was so distracted I could barely hear him. When we reached the rental house, he pointed and said something about visitors.

  Saleem’s taxi was parked in front of the house. It wasn’t running, and there was no one behind the wheel. “I better go see what that’s about,” I said. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Don’t look so worried,” he said. “The current will carry us home.”

  Inside the house, the lights were all on, but there was no one in the kitchen or the living room. Aunt Sel’s bedroom door was closed.

  “Aunt Sel?” I called out. “Did you call a taxi?”

  There was no answer. I went to her door. “Aunt Sel? Are you all right?”

  From inside I heard a thunk that sounded like a body hitting the ground. I reached for the doorknob—but then the door opened a few inches.

  “Harrison, you’re home.” Aunt Sel was dressed in her nightgown. “Good study group?”

  “It was fine. Did you call Saleem? His car’s out front, but—”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh,” I said.

  She smiled brightly. “See you in the morning!”

  * * *