Gargantis

by Thomas Taylor

  “What’s happening?” Vi hisses.

  “He’s grovelling,” I reply, but suddenly I’m less concerned about what’s going on down below. My eyes are drawn upwards.

  Above us is the tower in the centre of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. Most people in Eerie have no idea what the tower is for – and don’t know what Lady Kraken has installed in it – but I do. And it’s about time Violet did too. Filling the space in the tower is a strange contraption of gears, levers and oddly shaped lenses. At the apex, surrounded by shuttered windows, is one giant crystal lens, like a great all-seeing eye.

  “It’s a cameraluna,” I whisper, pointing up, answering the question I can tell Violet is about to ask. “Lady K uses it to spy on Eerie-on-Sea. It works by moonlight.”

  Violet blinks at me in amazement.

  I aim the thin beam of the torch upwards at the large crystal. The light hits it and is deflected out at an angle, criss-crossing between lenses, until it shines back down into our faces. I shut off the torch and rub my eyes.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “So this is what we’ve come for?” Vi asks. “This … cameraluna?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “I mean, no, not exactly. It’s just…”

  I look up again. Despite the tower windows being shuttered, the gleam of moonlight is finding its way inside. The wind of the approaching storm is roaring around the roof, whistling through the gaps in the rafters, but for now the sky above the hotel is clear. The moon is still out.

  “What’s wrong, Herbie?”

  Down below, we get a seagull’s-eye view of Mr Mollusc’s shiny bald patch as he heads back to the elevator, alone.

  “Never mind,” I whisper. “Come on.”

  And I lead the way to the far end of the attic.

  Here I take particular care not to creak the floorboards, because now we’re directly above Lady Kraken’s stately sitting room. There’s a circular hatchway in the floor of the attic here, kept clear of objects and furniture. Above this is a system of oily gears – designed to open the hatch when the cameraluna is in use – and yet another crystal lens. But that’s still not why we’re here.

  We’re here because all around the circular hatchway there is a gap – a finger’s width, no more – which gives a surprisingly clear view down into the room below. I found it once, while I was exploring, and I thought it would come in handy one day. It looks as if that day has arrived.

  Taking great care to be silent, we lie flat on the dusty boards and peer down into Lady Kraken’s private chambers.

  As long as Lady Kraken doesn’t use her cameraluna while we’re up here, we should be fine.

  “I am not in the habit of allowing strange men into my rooms,” says Lady Kraken, “and if it hadn’t been for the claims you make, I wouldn’t have admitted you at all, Mr…?”

  She’s sitting in her bronze-and-wicker wheelchair, at the large round table she keeps directly beneath the circular hatchway in her ceiling. When the cameraluna is in operation, this is where its light projects. And on the table, beside Lady K, is a long-stemmed glass with a little golden wine inside.

  “Forgive me, Lady Kraken,” says Deep Hood, with a slight incline of his head. He’s occupying an armchair on the other side of the table, with the metal-bound box on his lap. His face is still concealed.

  “I must maintain my anonymity,” he continues. “I assure you, it is for the best reasons. And speaking of reasons, you will no doubt be eager to hear why I have come to you tonight.”

  “You said something to Mr Mollusc, my manager, about a tincture.” Lady Kraken bobs her turtle head suspiciously. “Some sort of ‘ocean potion’ that you claim can help me. I’ll tell you now, Mr Stranger, that I do not buy fandangles from door-to-door salesmen.”

  “I am no such salesman,” comes the gurgling reply, “though I will propose a trade. But first, I believe a little demonstration is in order.”

  Deep Hood flips the catch on his metal-bound box and lifts the lid.

  From our vantage point, Violet and I can easily see the heaps of small gold bars inside, gleaming in the lamplight. We glance at each other. Surely Lady K isn’t interested in gold? But then Deep Hood burrows his hand into the treasure and pulls out a tiny bottle, in the shape of a teardrop. He pulls out the stopper.

  “My tincture,” he coos in his slippery voice as he strokes the bottle. “Unique in the world. Its properties are miraculous.”

  “That remains to be seen,” huffs Lady K, and she picks up her glass in a way that suggests her patience is running out. But what Deep Hood says next makes her look back at him with surprise.

  “Tell me, Lady Kraken, how long have you needed a wheelchair?”

  “I … I haven’t walked for forty years,” she replies. “It isn’t merely age that puts me in the chair. I have a condition. I do not wish to discuss it. It is incurable—”

  “It is not incurable,” Deep Hood interrupts. “Allow me…”

  The pink tentacle slithers out from his hood and coils itself around the bottle in his hand. In a moment, the bottle is carried across to Lady Kraken, until it is poised over the glass she’s holding. With a gesture of surprising precision, the tentacle tips the bottle and delicately shakes a tiny, tiny droplet of some fluid from its lip. The droplet lands in the glass, and the tentacle retracts.

  The golden liquid in the glass turns purple and strange.

  Now, I’ll say this for Lady Kraken – she’s not easily flapped. Most people, if tentacled at by a stranger with no face, would be freaking out about now. But Lady K has no flaps to give. It’s as if tentacles and potions are all in a day’s work for the owner of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. And perhaps they are. The old lady merely raises her glass.

  “Bottoms up!” she declares, and gulps down the lot.

  She bangs the glass down on the table in a cloud of dust.

  “I hope you can see, Mr Stranger, that if your intention in coming here tonight was to try and scare a helpless old lady, then you have failed miserably. I will now ring … to have you escorted … from the premis … prem … ssss…”

  Lady Kraken starts to shake.

  OCEAN POTION

  I ADMIT, I nearly give the game away when I see Lady Kraken convulse. She may rule the Grand Nautilus Hotel like a geriatric dragon up in her top-floor nest – breathing fire at anyone who disturbs her peace – but she’s always been good to me. Lady Kraken took me in when I washed up in Eerie-on-Sea. And she gave me my position as Lost-and-Founder, when plenty of others had a better claim to it. There was no talk of “outsiders” from Lady K, just a beady eye sizing me up, and a cap and uniform to wear. So, no, I will not lie here while my benefactor is poisoned!

  “Shh, Herbie! No!”

  It’s Violet saying that, clutching my arm to stop me jumping to my feet.

  “Look!” she whisper-shouts, jabbing her finger down towards the gap in the floor.

  So I do.

  And Lady Kraken is standing. She’s standing up!

  The embroidered blanket has slipped from her legs, and she has risen to her feet. She teeters a moment, still shaking, but then steps away from her chair.

  And doesn’t fall!

  Lady K embarks on a jerky walk across the sitting room rug, vanishing out of our sight. When she returns to view again, the jerkiness has gone entirely. She’s walking normally now, and not only that – she skips her last few steps and then twirls like a ballerina.

  “Ta-da!” she cries, looking down and raising each goose-pimply leg in turn to inspect it. The fact that she’s wearing nothing but a pair of antique silky bloomers on her lower parts doesn’t seem to bother her one bit. “Well, isn’t that marvellous? It seems I shall go to the ball!”

  “I take it you are impressed, Lady Kraken?”

  “Indeed!” cries the lady, doing a little jig. “I only wish I really had been invited to a ball. Think of the sensation I’d cause.”

  “Sadly,” Deep Hood continues, “you would still have to be home by the st
roke of midnight. This tincture is miraculous, yes, but its effects do not last for long. You will only have use of your legs for a few hours before needing a further dose.”

  “Then I shall take a dozen bottles,” Lady K declares. “Money is no object, and I will buy more when the time comes. You, Mr Stranger, have just found a regular customer.”

  “Sadly,” Deep Hood says again, “there is but one bottle. And that bottle, as you have seen, is almost empty.”

  Lady Kraken stops dancing.

  “You mean…?”

  Deep Hood inclines his head in confirmation.

  “My miraculous tincture, my ‘ocean potion’, as you call it, is about to vanish from the world for good.”

  Lady Kraken slumps back down into her wheelchair.

  “Unless…” Deep Hood says.

  “Unless what?” The lady jumps forward again. “You mean, you know where to find more?”

  “Not only do I know where, Lady Kraken. I can show you. With the help of your cameraluna.”

  I look at Violet in alarm.

  From down below I can hear Lady K saying, “How do you know about my cameraluna?” But I can also hear her flipping switches on the arm of her wheelchair, where she keeps the cameraluna control box.

  “I know many of the secrets of Eerie-on-Sea,” comes Deep Hood’s reply, as the gears above us burst into life. “More than any who now lives.”

  “Get back!” I gasp to Vi, and we slide away just in time. The circle in the floorboards we’ve been peering around splits into four parts and blooms open like a great wooden flower. Violet has to roll to avoid getting her hair caught in the mechanism.

  There’s a clanking and creaking sound from the centre of the attic. The shutters over the tower windows are winding open, letting moonlight pour in. A mechanical clicking tells me that the lenses up in the tower are shifting position, gathering up the moonlight and concentrating it into a single beam. That beam fizzes horizontally along the attic towards us, where it hits the large crystal directly above the circular hatchway.

  From this last crystal, the light descends into Lady Kraken’s sitting room in a cone of rippling illumination, splashing onto the large dusty table below.

  Violet is standing now, her disbelieving eyes afire with reflected moonlight. Before I can stop her, she reaches out and touches the ferocious beam that is fizzing and crackling along the length of the attic. She snatches her fingers back and puts them under her armpit.

  Cold! she mouths to me.

  Now that the gears have settled down, I edge towards the hole again and motion Violet to do the same. If we are careful, we can still watch what’s going on below. And when we do look down again, what’s going on below is certainly worth watching!

  The round table is twinkling with dancing dust motes – tiny points of reflected moonlight that swirl and swarm as Lady Kraken adjusts the controls. Soon three-dimensional shapes begin to form – buildings, streets, the rocks on the beach. A sparkling model of the pier shifts into view, stretching out from a sparkling promenade, with sparkling waves churning around it. It’s a living, moving tabletop model of Eerie-on-Sea, made of dust and conjured by enchanted moonlight. I can feel Violet holding her breath beside me.

  “So, Mr Stranger,” says Lady Kraken, “my cameraluna is at your disposal. What do you wish to see?”

  “Do you know of the Vortiss, Lady Kraken?” Deep Hood drools. “I wish to see the Vortiss.”

  “Of course I know of it!” cries the lady. “My seafaring ancestors would whirl in their watery graves if I didn’t know what the Vortiss was.”

  And she begins turning levers on her control box.

  Below us, the model of the town slips away as our viewpoint moves out to sea. From the attic it almost feels like we are looking down from a hatchway in some airship as it sails out over the ocean. Silver waves pass below us, but soon they are peppered by spikes of rock that rise from the crashing water. These are the infamous Maw Rocks that edge the bay. They grow in size and number as we move further out, forming a complex maze of waterways. But then a gap appears in them. And in the sea that fills that gap, the water turns in a mighty whirlpool.

  The Vortiss.

  “I hope you aren’t going to tell me that this is where your potion comes from,” says Lady K. “No one ever sailed near the Vortiss and lived to tell the tale.”

  “There is one who did,” Deep Hood replies. “A fisherman called Squint Westerley. He sailed too close to the Vortiss and was lost …”

  “Of course he was! The fool.”

  “… but he survived, and he returned with a miraculous tale, and the tusk of a legendary creature.”

  “Creature?” Lady Kraken asks. “What creature?”

  “Gargantis.”

  “But…” Lady Kraken bobs her head. “But that is the name of a storm, not a creature. A storm from legend. The locals use the word when the weather gets bad, that’s all.”

  “And yet, there is the tusk,” says Deep Hood. “Westerley showed it to me. It is proof, though I lied to him about it. The creature is real.”

  Violet grabs my arm. We stare at each other. Dr Thalassi said he’d seen this tusk. And Mrs Fossil.

  “Bah!” Lady Kraken snaps. “What has any of this nonsense to do with ocean potion and my legs?”

  “When I had the tusk in my possession,” says Deep Hood, “I was able to retrieve some soft parts. Some flesh. From this I derived a small sample of oil, an oil that has miraculous properties. An oil that you have just sampled, Lady Kraken, and which restored the use of your legs after forty years in a wheelchair.”

  Lady Kraken has no reply to this. Her head bobs from side to side.

  “Still you do not believe me!” Deep Hood splutters with sudden anger. “Show me the storm! With your cameraluna, show it to me!”

  Lady Kraken twiddles her controls, and the glittering dust motes on the table spin and change as the view moves further out into the bay.

  Below us on the tabletop, the heaving sea grows dim under a swarm of whirling dust. This dust becomes a boiling cloud bank, which is whipped by a wind that has nothing to do with the atmosphere inside the room. It’s the edge of the great storm that is closing in on the town, crackling with lightning.

  “My cameraluna cannot pierce the clouds,” Lady Kraken says. “There will be little to see…”

  She stops.

  The wall of cloud parts, and something gargantuan appears.

  GARGANTIS!

  “A FLIPPER!” CRIES LADY K, pointing a trembling finger. “That is … a flipper! And fins! And … and an eye!”

  Over the circular table a long, sinuous form coils through the clouds, paddled by a bank of fins along its side. Two enormous flippers, like those of a blue whale but ending in long, curving claws, beat the air, making the storm clouds swirl and spark with lightning. A low-slung mouth, lined with teeth and tusks, gapes below a strange dangling lure that sprouts from the monster’s forehead. And in its head vast ichthyosaur eyes roll around, as if searching.

  Then the clouds close over this nightmare vision, and it is hidden.

  Lady Kraken makes a last desperate turn of her dials, but to no effect. The clouds boil so much that all definition is lost, and soon all there is to see is a swirling billow of dust motes and moonlight over the sitting-room table of an old lady who lives by the sea.

  “What was that?” gasps Lady Kraken. “What was that thing in the sky?”

  “Gargantis,” says Deep Hood. “Not the storm itself, but a creature that causes it. A storm fish from the lost tales of creation, obscured in the retelling of the Legend of Saint Dismal, but obscured no more. It is the calamity that will destroy Eerie-on-Sea.”

  There follows a long silence before Lady Kraken speaks again.

  “I see now, Mr Stranger, your true intention. You have come to taunt me. You give me back the use of my legs, only to take away all hope. There is no way this storm fish can be caught, so no more of your miraculous oil. And now you tell m
e my town will be destroyed!”

  “There is one in Eerie who has the means to catch Gargantis,” Deep Hood replies. “One who has the bait. His name is Herbert Lemon.”

  “Herbie!” Lady Kraken’s turban almost jumps off her head. “My Lost-and-Founder? The dunderbrain? What has he got to do with all this?”

  “The bottle that was brought to your hotel, the one found by the beachcomber and entrusted by you to the Lemon boy? It contained something precious. Something precious to the monster. It is something – maybe the only thing – that can lure Gargantis.”

  “I have every confidence in my Lost-and-Founder,” says Lady K, “to keep that bottle and its contents safe—”

  “Lady Kraken,” Deep Hood interrupts. “I’m sorry to say that your Lost-and-Founder has given in to temptation. He has betrayed your trust. He has opened the bottle and stolen what was inside.”

  What!

  For the second time I almost give the game away. I want to shout, “Hey!” and jump down onto the table and confront Deep Hood. How dare he say I stole the sprightning. I didn’t steal it – it just zapped out!

  And for a second time, Violet grabs my arm.

  “Herbie, shh!”

  I force myself to calm down. Under my cap, the sprightning quivers and sparks as if as shocked and annoyed as I am.

  “I … I don’t believe you,” declares Lady Kraken. “Herbert Lemon may be a Force Ten ninny about some things, but he has an honest heart. He might just be the greatest Lost-and-Founder we’ve ever had.”

  “The matter is easily settled.” Deep Hood’s voice lowers to an even more sinister tone. “Summon the boy here now, with the bottle. If the bottle remains unopened, I will withdraw my accusation. If, however, there is the slightest opening in the stopper and the bottle is empty, then the accusation stands. In that case, I suggest that you turn the boy over to me so that we may use him to catch the monster.”