Gargantis

by Thomas Taylor

  “I had no idea that bully had a link to you, too,” says Violet, looking up at me.

  I shrug.

  “I’ve done my best to forget it. Besides, I don’t think that’s the reason the mermonkey chose this book for me.”

  And I point to the drowning people sinking to their doom on the cover.

  “Herbie.” Violet looks me straight in the eye. “When people consult the mermonkey, they search for meaning in the book it chooses for them. But the meaning they find depends on them.” She lifts my book in the air. “This book doesn’t have to mean—”

  “It does,” I interrupt with a sad nod. “I’m a castaway, a survivor. There’s no need for me to wonder what happened to my parents, is there? Or my whole family, maybe. It’s pretty clear what the mermonkey was trying to tell me. We were on a ship, and that ship sank.”

  “Herbie, have you actually read the book? Maybe, in the story, there’s something else…”

  “There isn’t,” I reply. “This book is the story of the SS Fabulous – a luxury liner that sank in the ocean. There’s only one survivor mentioned in The Cold, Dark Bottom of the Sea, and he spends the rest of his life convinced he is destined to share the same fate as his shipmates. He never gets on a boat again, and neither will I. I know this book is only a novel, Vi, and not about real events, but the mermonkey gave it to me as a warning.”

  Violet looks shocked, and desperate to say something else. But in the end she just shakes her head.

  “And I won’t be getting any more books from the mermonkey, either,” I add, glaring up at Erwin on his windowsill. He narrows his eyes at me.

  Upstairs in the hotel, we hear the hour of 11 p.m. chime as the storm roars fiercer than ever. The last log in my little wood burner settles, and I decide not to throw in another. The strange antique bottle has gone quiet, as it lies – mysterious and enticing – in its pile of soggy towel in the middle of the floor.

  “You can sleep here tonight, Vi,” I say with a yawn. “And Erwin. Then we can make a proper start on The Case of the Fish-Shaped Bottle in the morning. In the meantime, this is going right out of sight.”

  And I pick up The Cold, Dark Bottom of the Sea by Sebastian Eels, bury it in the box of lost guidebooks, and shove the whole thing back on my bookcase.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Violet agrees, looking more subdued than I’ve seen her for ages. “We need to get on with the next adventure, not worry over the remains of the last.”

  And with this she walks around behind the clothes rack to find her favourite spot, deep among the coats and lost blankets.

  “Goodnight, Herbie.”

  Erwin jumps down from the window and follows her.

  But I’m not in the mood for bed, not just yet. I turn down the lamp and settle back in my chair with a blanket. It feels strange now that someone else has seen my secret book, but it doesn’t really change anything. I still want to forget all about it.

  Outside, the storm thunders on, and my mind fills with bearded saints and ancient scripts and our strange new guest with his face lost in the shadow of a deep hood. Nameless, sightless creatures crawl into my imagination from the cold, dark bottom of the sea. It will be a miracle if I get any sleep tonight.

  But sleep does come.

  Only to be interrupted in the most extraordinary way imaginable.

  TOUCHÉ!

  AT FIRST, I DON’T KNOW what it is that wakes me. I open my eyes to see everything around me bathed in a cold blue as the small light of early morning creeps through my window. I have a vague sense that I heard something. Did I hear something?

  Then I hear it again.

  Ting.

  It’s a very small sound, as if something metal was lightly tapping against something glass.

  Ting tang.

  Quietly, I sit up.

  In the gloom I see that there’s something on the floor of my cellar, something that isn’t usually there. Then I remember – it’s the ancient bottle. My mind begins to turn around the question of where I can store this old bottle while I have it, since it can hardly live in the middle of the floor like that. I feel myself start to drift off to sleep again…

  Ting tang tingle-CLANK!

  I sit up again. My mouth falls open in disbelief – disbelief because the bottle is moving. Yes, moving! It has risen jerkily off the ground and is dipping one way then the other as it makes its way towards the stairs, to the sound of light tapping from little metallic feet.

  I reach over to the table beside my chair, and my fingers feel around among the objects there. Magnifying glass? No. Screwdriver? No. Torch? Yes!

  I point the torch and switch it on.

  In the sudden beam of light, I see what is holding the bottle up.

  It’s the clockwork hermit crab!

  Four long brass appendages are extended from the trumpet end of the shell and wrapped awkwardly around the bottle. Another four brass limbs reach to the ground, acting as legs. The whole thing is straining and stumbling under the bulk of the bottle as it reaches the first step. I sit there, struggling to take in what I’m seeing, as the shell makes an enormous effort and succeeds in climbing onto the first step, still balancing the bottle above it. Then it begins to climb to the next…

  “No!” I shout, leaping from my chair and dropping the torch. I race across the cellar and grab the bottle.

  There’s a brief tug of war before the bottle slips free of the metal appendages, and I fall backwards, landing on my bum. The bottle escapes my hands and rolls away across the floor.

  I scramble to my feet and switch on the main cellar light. I need to catch this stupid shell thing once and for all.

  But the shell isn’t trying to escape. It has righted itself and is standing at the bottom of the stairs on its four brass legs, the other four appendages raised towards me like the forelegs of a praying mantis. As I watch, fascinated and horrified all at once, there’s a sudden sschl-i-i-ik! sound as steel blades slide out from each of the four raised arms.

  Then, whirring with clockwork determination, the shell advances towards me.

  In the log basket beside my wood burner is a poker. I grab it, my mind racing. I try to remember if there’s a rule of lost-and-foundering that says it’s OK to smash a lost object to smithereens if it tries to pinch your stuff and then attacks you with swords. I don’t think there is one.

  Too bad.

  It’s a shame to break such a remarkable thing, but it would be a greater shame to let it break me. And what if it went after Violet while she slept?

  I lunge forward and swing the poker – which is heavy and made of iron – down onto the shell with all my might.

  The shell parries my blow.

  Three of its blade arms cross, and it catches the poker, absorbing the impact. I feel the poker being tugged from my grip as the mechanical shell twists its blades and attempts to disarm me.

  I leap back and twirl the poker. Then I swing again, and again and again. The shell dodges from side to side, parrying my blows with sparks and stabbing forward with at least one blade each time. There’s a sudden flash of pain, and I stumble backwards and look at my hand. There’s a thin line of blood running down the back of it.

  My mind spins. A few minutes ago I was sleeping soundly. Now I’m wide awake, sword-fighting a clockwork hermit crab. And the hermit crab is winning!

  I fling the poker at it.

  The hermit crab is caught by surprise and knocked off its feet. I don’t wait for it to recover. Thanking my lucky stars I didn’t take my shoes off last night, I run to the stricken shell – which is scrabbling to get up on its metal legs – and give the blasted thing an almighty kick up the trumpet.

  The shell flies away from me, spinning out of control, and vanishes from view up the stairs. I hear a satisfying pang! as it hits the stone steps, and know with certainty that something has broken. I snatch up the poker and run to finish it off, but I see the legs of the hermit crab vanish over the desk in my cubbyhole above. There’s the sound of l
ittle brass feet skittering away across the polished marble floor of the hotel lobby, then silence. The clockwork hermit crab has escaped once again.

  I slump down on the stairs, halfway up.

  Down below, in the cellar, I see a sleepy Violet appear. Beside her is an even sleepier Erwin.

  “What’s going on, Herbie?”

  I’m about to answer when I notice something on the step beside me. It’s a hinged rod of brass. I pick it up and turn it in the light. It’s one of the sword arms of the hermit crab, broken off at a hinge and slightly bent. The steel blade is still extended and feels razor-sharp.

  “What’s going on,” I say to Vi, “is that someone just tried to steal the bottle.”

  I show her the back of my hand, which is still bleeding slightly.

  “And now Erwin’s not the only one to have had a close shave with that little clockwork monster.”

  GENIE

  WE PICK UP THE BOTTLE, and I’m relieved to see that there’s no damage to it, not even a crack. As we lift it back into the nest of soggy towel in the middle of the cellar floor – I still haven’t worked out where else to put it – we feel it tremble and see the light flicker inside.

  “You think someone’s controlling the clockwork shell?” says Vi, after I’ve explained what happened. “Or do you mean the shell is acting on its own and wants the bottle for itself?”

  “I don’t see how a clockwork hermit crab, no matter how complex, can want things for itself,” I reply. “But is it really possible to control a thing like that remotely? I don’t know.”

  I go to my repair desk, push some clutter aside and place the severed brass arm in the light of the desk lamp.

  “It’s nicely made, this thing,” I say, sitting and peering at the bent and broken limb through the magnifying glass. “And it looks old. I hate that I had to break it.”

  “Never mind about that, Herbie,” says Vi. “You should get your hand cleaned up.”

  “Yeah, in a sec,” I reply.

  I take two pairs of rubber-jawed pliers and manage with a grunt to straighten the brass arm. This allows me, with a bit of careful fiddling, to get the blade to retract and the spring to reset. Now it looks as good as new. Well, except for the part that snapped.

  “This arm only broke off because a small brass bolt sheared in two,” I explain to Vi, who I can hear building up the fire in the stove behind me. “I’m sure I’ve got a spare part to fit that. I could probably get the hermit crab fixed up, if only I could catch the pesky thing and stop it from trying to chop us.”

  “I’m sure you could,” says Violet. “But don’t you think it’s more important to figure out why it tried to take the bottle?”

  “Maybe.” I rummage in a little drawer full of bolts and screws. “If we can figure out the why, then that should lead us to the who… Ah, this should do it.”

  And I place a small nut and bolt neatly on my desk, beside the restored arm. It’s made of steel, the bolt, and is a bit plain beside the beautiful workmanship of the brass limb, but it should fit nicely and make the thing work as good as new. And you never know – that shell might get handed in again one day, once its spring has wound down, and I could fix it.

  “If someone is using the shell to try to steal the fish-shaped bottle,” says Vi, “then that makes five, that we know of.”

  “Five what?”

  “Five people who want the bottle: Mrs Fossil, Dr Thalassi, the fishermen as a group, the boy Blaze Westerley, and now some mystery person with a clockwork sidekick.”

  “That mystery person,” I say, rinsing my hand in the sink and wrapping a cleanish sock around it, “must be the strange new guest who arrived in the hotel last night. The one who handed in the shell.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I shrug. “I just think of him as Deep Hood.”

  “He arrived before the bottle was found, though,” Vi says. “Can he really count as someone who is claiming it?”

  “Only just before,” I reply, hearing the first gurgle of hunger from my stomach. “Maybe he knew the bottle had been found and was likely to be handed in. Anyway, if we’re going to Scooby-Doo that list of names in order of suspiciousness, I reckon Deep Hood goes at the top.”

  There’s a rattling sound and we both turn to look at the fish-shaped bottle. It quivers all by itself as light flickers somewhere in its frosty blue-green depths.

  “And I reckon,” says Violet, “that the very best way to Scooby-Doo this whole eerie mystery is to open that bottle right now and see what’s inside.”

  A moment or two later, Vi and I are crouching down next to the bottle, our noses almost touching its cold, frosted exterior. At this close range, the detail of the fish’s scales and fins is impressive. But, try as we might, we just cannot see through the glass.

  “It’s too foggy,” I say. “Too, too … sea-glassy? Is that a word?”

  Violet doesn’t answer but presses her ear against the glass. She gives the bottle a ringing tap with her fingernail, and it shudders and flickers with light in response.

  “OK,” I say with a sigh. “Maybe there’s a way we could just peek inside. Without opening it completely, I mean.”

  “Peeking inside might not be enough, Herbie,” Violet replies. Then she sees my face. “But I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

  We crawl around to look at the stoppered end. Straightaway we see that getting that peek is going to be easier said than done.

  “It stinks,” says Vi, wrinkling her nose at the stopper, “like the bottom of the sea.”

  And it’s true. The bottle appears to be stoppered with a plug of rubbery wax. Into this, generations of seaweeds have rooted, grown, died and then grown back again, hanging from the mouth of the bottle. The overall effect is that the glass fish looks as if it’s throwing up some particularly nasty sushi.

  “We could melt a small hole through it,” I say. “If this really is wax, that is.”

  “Melt it how?”

  “Well, by heating up the end of a screwdriver,” I reply. “That way we could peek inside and then melt the hole closed afterwards. No one would ever know we’d done it.”

  Violet stares at me thoughtfully.

  Then she snatches up a screwdriver from my repair desk and wedges it in the door of my wood burner – which is just starting to heat up nicely.

  “I see,” I say. “So that’s decided, then? We’re actually doing this?”

  “Come on, Herbie, you want to know what’s in there as much as I do.” Violet shoves her hair out of her face. “And you said it yourself: no one will ever know we looked.”

  “And the thing inside?” I say. “What if it tries to come out?”

  “The hole will be tiny,” says Vi. “How could it come out?”

  “It didn’t matter how much or how little Aladdin rubbed the lamp,” comes a voice from behind us, “the genie only came out because he wanted to.”

  We both turn. Sitting on my big tatty armchair, Erwin is watching us closely with his ice-blue eyes. Violet beams back at him. She loves it when he talks, though no one can ever predict when he will, or why he does. Like many of the eeriest things in Eerie-on-Sea, Erwin follows no rules that I know of.

  “It’s OK, puss,” Violet says. “We’ll be careful.”

  Erwin twitches the trimmed side of his whiskers, as though he’s trying to tell us something. Then he licks his paw as if he’s just like any other cat in the world.

  And now the screwdriver is hot enough.

  SPRIGHTNING

  I PLACE THE TIP of the screwdriver against the wax, and it hisses. A curl of smoke rises and fills the cellar with a heady perfume. I expected it to smell foul, the melted wax, but instead it’s strange – balanced somewhere between “!” and “?”. It makes my nose tingle and my mind think of years ago, and faraway, and the sea.

  With an effort, I push the hot screwdriver right through the wax stopper. After waiting a moment for the screwdriver to cool, I turn it by the handle and ease i
t back out. And now there’s a neat little hole, narrower than a pencil, in the ancient wax.

  I crouch down to look into it.

  “What can you see?” Violet’s voice is an excited whisper. “Herbie!”

  I squint as hard as I can.

  “I can’t really see anythi—” I begin, but there’s a flash, and something hot and fierce hits me on the nose.

  “Ow!” I jump back, startled.

  On the floor in front of me is a tiny flickering ember, singeing the rug.

  “What did you see, Herbie?” says Vi, looking back at the bottle. “What’s in there?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything in there, Vi. At least, not now. I think what was in there was that.”

  And I point at the smouldering ember, which is starting to roll … no, crawl forward, as if on little hands and knees.

  “What is it?” Violet crouches down beside me. “A spark?”

  I reach down with one finger and give the tiny thing a poke.

  It erupts with light.

  Violet and I shrink back as the object – brilliant and fizzing now, like a blazing star – rises from the rug and darts at us, crackling with power.

  Erwin gives a hiss of alarm and jumps from the chair. The fizzing light, as if spotting the terrified cat, darts towards him. Erwin runs to the window and scrabbles at it, but it’s locked. The light swoops to a sparkling halt above him, and then it fires a miniature bolt of lightning down at the hapless feline. Erwin shrieks “YE-OW!” and leaps into the air, then flies in desperation towards Violet, the tip of his tail smoking.

  In a moment we’re on our feet, backing away.

  “So much for just taking a peek!” I cry. “How are we going to get that back inside the bottle?”

  The light approaches, spitting sparks in all directions. It makes another dive for Erwin, but Violet grabs the cat up in her arms. The light darts away but then swoops back to crackle angrily right in front of Violet’s face.