From a nearby wooden Adirondack chair, a crudely fashioned sackcloth doll observed August with empty button eyes. A scrap of patterned silk was pinned at its chest with a flower-shaped brooch of lilac stones.
“Can you hear that, Delfine?” wondered August. (Delfine was named for Madame Marvell’s dead grandmother.) “That’s my stomach rumbling.”
It had been eight hours since August was awoken by dawn light, seven since he shared the last of Marvell’s sausages for breakfast. The boy thought ruefully of the package of Mudd Pies in his knapsack, now languishing in the murky depths beneath them, likely consumed by catfish and other river dwellers.
He regarded the water lapping at the barrels beneath his dangling feet, contemplating a swim to shore. But visited by the memory of yawning pink jaws, a quivering black gullet, and ice-cream-cone-sized teeth, he quickly dismissed the idea.
On further thought, he realized that, in any case, there was no shore as such to swim to—only the dense, watery undergrowth of the surrounding swamp.
He picked up Madame Marvell’s binoculars from the deck, smiling as he recalled learning that the wild child, all those months ago, had been watching him, just as he had been watching her through his telescope.
He scanned the river in both directions for any sign of rescue. But the binoculars revealed nothing but a stately ibis stalking the reeds and, nearby, an abandoned “No Entry” sign languishing at a crazy angle.
August sighed. He did not relish spending a second night sleeping on the houseboat’s floor.
“You know we’ll hear a boat,” said Marvell from the cabin doorway, “before we see it. Might as well relax. It’s almost four; you know what that means!”
“Four?” August suddenly brightened; he’d almost forgotten. “Stella Starz?”
Stella Starz (in Her Own Life) was a television show surrounding the wacky exploits of a California teen and her group of loyal friends, to which August was devoted. Madame Marvell had inadvertently introduced him to Stella’s world by mooring her houseboat (and her television) in sight of August’s Locust Hole bedroom.
After Marvell (and her television) had departed, August had attempted to insert Stella Starz into the group of shows that made up the “approved” programming at Locust Hole.
But unfortunately, in the first episode to which Hydrangea had been exposed, Stella had uncovered the new school librarian as a smuggler of exotic animals—specifically, butterflies! When a flurry of the winged insects had exploded colorfully from a crate, Hydrangea had sprinted from the kitchen like an Olympian, shrieking, “Never again!”
August had desperately missed the show, particularly the camaraderie of its principal characters. Indeed, it was a desire to experience this sense of belonging for himself that had led the boy to run away with a zombie in search of a magic marble.
“But wait.” August frowned. “Doesn’t Stella Starz air on Mondays and Thursdays?”
“They repeat both episodes back to back,” explained Marvell, “on Saturday afternoons.”
Reception was poor in the remote forested area, and the outdated nature of the rabbit-ear antenna didn’t help the situation. But despite the fuzzy picture, August felt incredibly thankful that the generator was not lost with the engine, for he was thrilled to revisit the antics of his old friend Stella and her posse.
“It’s been months,” he confided to Marvell with an ecstatic grin.
Perhaps it was in contrast to the empty, quiet vacuum of August’s involuntary break from Stella’s world, but the double episode seemed particularly jam-packed. The title character accidentally dyed her best friend Kevin’s hair purple. Her other best friend Morning acquired an ill-mannered llama.
Most dramatic of all, Stella’s new stepmother, Hedwig, under attack by Stella’s cat, managed to stumble and horribly rip the poster of Stella’s heroine Yuko Yukiyama, the one-eyed xylophonist, celebrated almost as much for her creative and glamorous eye patches as for her extraordinary percussion skills.
The situation deteriorated quickly. Accusations were made. Counter-accusations followed.
But August would have to wait to discover the fate of the poster and of Officer Claw, for Claudette suddenly gripped his forearm. Her head was cocked. She was listening.
August turned down the volume dial on the battered old television and, sure enough, heard the distant putt-putt-putt of an engine.
On deck, August was greeted by the welcome sight of a small tugboat approaching from the direction of Pirates’ Pier.
“Rescue!” cried the boy, stretching up his arms and waving them like scissor blades.
As the vessel drew closer, August could see a figure in the wheelhouse and another two on the bow. One of the mariners uncertainly returned August’s salute.
“They think I’m just saying hello,” cried August. “Wave, you guys, wave like you’re in trouble!”
The tugboat was almost parallel, about to pass them in the narrow channel.
“SOS!” yelled August. “Save our souls!”
The vessel turned in their direction.
“They’re coming!” cried Marvell, as Claudette joined the effort by hoisting her recovered arm high and thrashing it through the air above the children’s heads.
They were moments from rescue. The vessel was only yards away, close enough now that August could see the crew’s faces.
But upon the zombie’s appearance, their expressions of concern were replaced by disbelief, then horror, then fear.
“No! Wait!” cried August. “She’s armless…I mean harmless!”
But it was too late. The pilot was yanking the wheel in the opposite direction and opening up the throttle. The tugboat righted its course and made off at high speed.
“Hold tight!” cried Marvell, for the retreating vessel had churned up a powerful wake.
The houseboat flopped about violently and was swept by successive foamy ridges to the river’s edge, into the reeds. As they glided past the “No Entry” sign and the startled ibis took flight, August braced himself for impact, anticipating the houseboat’s collision with muddy banks and sunken tree trunks.
But as their passage remained uninterrupted and smooth, August realized that the vessel was being propelled through an inlet penetrating the stand of cypress roots, thick with water plants, but not impassable.
The sunlight sparkling on the canal retreated as, for a minute or two, the ebbing ripples of the tugboat’s wake nudged the houseboat deeper into the thicket.
Just as it seemed the craft would finally become ensnared by the watery undergrowth, the leafy passage discharged the travelers into a small lagoon.
Although merely twenty yards or so from the canal, the shady pond was entirely concealed from it by densely packed trees and shrubs. The air was still and twinkled with flying insects, and the place had a lonely feeling.
But it was immediately apparent that August and his companions were not alone.
At the center of the lagoon, supported on a rickety network of stilts and platforms, a ragged cluster of shacks and splintered cottages floated inches above a raft of water hyacinth.
A crudely formed jetty extended toward the houseboat, bearing a large hand-painted sign that indicated the travelers had arrived at “Gardner’s Island.”
Beneath the banner sat or stood several children, ranging in age from three-ish to ten-ish. All were ginger-haired and heavily freckled, and observed the drifting houseboat without expression and in complete silence.
The only movement derived from a girl, around five or six, who was swinging her legs over the water; the only sound from a mosquito buzzing in August’s ear.
The crippled vessel spun slowly closer to the huts, and August’s heart fluttered as he realized that the hamlet was dotted throughout with many more lurking, silent figures, motionless and ginger-haired, childr
en and adults.
The houseboat finally came to rest against a tangle of bony forms protruding from the purple plants, which up close August realized represented a watery graveyard of corroding boat wreckage. Gazing up, the boy saw that the dwellings forming Gardner’s Island were cobbled together from similar such fragments of nautical scrap, their walls and roofs formed from rudders, keels, and rust-streaked steel hull panels.
A yard away and just a foot or so higher than the houseboat’s deck, the closest of the villagers—a man and a girl—squatted on the scaffold of their riveted, patched-up metal cottage, building a flat-bottomed canoe. After a moment or two of regarding the houseboat and its crew in silence, the man spoke.
“Godfrey Gardner,” he said indifferently, with an almost imperceptible nod. “This my girl, Grizel. You on Gardner’s Island.” August looked around, confused.
“I don’t see any island. This seems like the opposite of an island.”
“Used to be one,” said Godfrey Gardner. “Before Grizel’s time.” He pointed a screwdriver beyond the houseboat. “Before they sliced up the swamp with canals for their oil boats. Now when the hurricanes come, the dirt just wash away down those blasted things. Every year, less dirt, more water. Less island, more stilts. Less corn, more…” He waved his tool at the muddle of rusting marine salvage.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said August, “about your used-to-be island.” The man nodded, quietly eyeing August’s butterflies and the one-armed zombie.
“You don’t look like oil folks,” he remarked. “What brings you down Channel Fifteen B?”
“We’re headed from Pepperville to Croissant City.” August glanced behind him, toward the houseboat’s stern. “But we had a…um…hitch.” The man studied the damaged pontoon with raised eyebrows.
“Now who, or what, you run into that might cause such a heap of trouble?”
“Would you believe me, sir, if I told you it was a giant white alligator?”
“I’ve heard more fantastical tales than that,” Godfrey said, almost smiling, “round these parts.”
Godfrey slowly scanned the entire houseboat, and August imagined he saw a look of hunger in the man’s gaze. He wondered if Godfrey Gardner was mentally butchering the houseboat into sections for reuse.
“I don’t suppose,” August said, gazing around the uniquely composed community, “you have a spare outboard motor?”
The man stood, wiping his palms on his overalls.
“Well now,” he said, “that’s business talk. And round here, it’s the Admiral takes care of business. You best be talking to her.”
He waved his screwdriver at the children on the pier.
“Gaspard, Gilbert, Gabrielle: fetch them in and take them to the Admiral.”
A rope was thrown from the jetty and, shortly thereafter, the houseboat was moored and its crew had disembarked.
Following Gaspard, Gilbert, and Gabrielle past one freckled, staring face after another, August was reminded of that certain grocer’s delivery boy; the boy who had, the previous summer, been instrumental in luring August through his front door for the first time.
“Do you happen to know,” he asked his young guides, “a boy named Gaston?”
“Last name Gardner?” asked Gaspard or Gilbert (August was unclear which was which).
“I’m not sure.”
“Ginger hair? Freckles? Overalls?”
“Ye-es,” responded August uncertainly, for this might well have described every single person in sight.
“Sure,” confirmed Gaspard or Gilbert based on the scant evidence. “He’s one of ours.”
The orange-haired trio led the way through the water-locked village, across a confusing fretwork of creaking gangplanks and walkways.
One of these, unsettlingly long, narrow, and without barriers, extended into the lagoon far beyond the gently bobbing carpet of water hyacinth. Inches above the dark green water, a platform supported a unique dwelling.
The wooden bow of some antique oceangoing ship had been cleanly sawn away from the rest of the vessel and placed on end to form a sort of pointy hut. The curving, weatherworn planks of the hull were pierced by a crooked metal chimney and small windows, the latter fitted with lace curtains. What once was a horizontal hatch now served as a low-slung front door. It stood open to reveal an interior lost in shadow.
Gaspard or Gilbert disappeared inside and returned momentarily.
“The Admiral awaits,” he announced stiffly, as if reciting rehearsed lines.
When his eyes adjusted from brightness to gloom, August found himself in a place somewhere between an office and a junkyard. Stacked high against the walls was an impressive assortment of nautical salvage of the smaller variety that might fit through a front door: ships’ wheels, anchors, propellers, and weathered life preservers bearing the faded names of forgotten vessels. At the center of it all presided a large desk of cream-colored metal, rust streaking from the rivets that held it together.
Much of the leather desktop was concealed by an assortment of repurposed containers, filled to brimming with even smaller treasures. A size-twelve sneaker box overflowed with leather wallets.
One large pickle jar contained rings of gold and silver, many plain, others set with gemstones. Another jar was packed with wristwatches and another with spare change.
The silence was punctuated by an occasional snapping pop that originated from the mouth of the woman behind the desk.
She was older than Hydrangea, not tall, but solidly built. Her double-chinned face was daubed with garish makeup. Sparse ginger hair peeked from beneath a bicorne hat worn side to side like those of officers and generals of the olden days. Occasional bright pink bubbles formed from her bright red lips, inflating impressively to the size of an apple before bursting with a satisfying smack.
Plastic pineapple-shaped earrings jiggled as the woman rapidly counted out paper money, rolled it into tidy wads, and secured it with rubber bands. The loose skin around her fleshy wrists jiggled too.
“Folks keep talking about some giant white gator,” she said through a wad of bubble gum, without looking up. “Now they tell me it’s gone and brought about some so-called hitch for you kids and your zombie pal.”
August and Madame Marvell glanced at Claudette, surprised by the woman’s matter-of-fact attitude.
“Round here,” August remarked curiously, “you don’t much seem to mind the undead. Claudette generally causes a bit more of, um…a ruckus.”
The Admiral swept the rolls of cash into a coffee can and raised heavy black lashes to reveal small but shrewd blue eyes.
“Sugar,” she responded, working the gum like a cow chewing cud. “When you live at the edge of Lost Souls’ Swamp, you see a thing or two. All manner of folks”—she stared pointedly at the lazy circle of butterflies above August’s head—“pass through Gardner’s Island. Mostly living. A couple not so much.”
She turned her attention to Claudette as a bubble formed and popped.
“I’ve seen her kind before. Some call them monsters, but I say they’re restless souls I do and, as such, deserving of our pity.”
“Restless why?” August wondered aloud. The Admiral folded her ample arms and, chomping loudly, leaned back in her chair.
“Unfinished business I reckon. Death is rarely welcome, but when it comes, there’s those of us who realize we don’t belong here anymore and move along without complaint. Then there’s others who are stricken before they’ve said what they got to say, before they’ve found what they got to find, before they’ve done what they got to do.”
She wagged a finger accusingly at Claudette.
“Now, dissatisfied spirits? They can’t quite quit this place. They linger somewhere nearby, not quite here, not quite there, vulnerable to those who would use some magical object—a Go-Between I reckon they call them—to reach
in and drag them back.”
August revealed that the trio was, in fact, on a mission to track down such a Go-Between—the one responsible for the existence of this very zombie.
“But…,” he explained. “Well, the alligator.”
Madame Marvell nudged August pointedly and nodded at a pile of battered outboard motors leaning against an unlit iron stove.
“We were just wondering”—August cleared his throat uncomfortably—“if you might be able to help us. Ma’am. I mean, sir. I mean, Admiral.”
The Admiral glanced over her shoulder to where Marvell’s eyes were focused, then returned August’s gaze with a look of vague amusement.
“When you live on an island, sugar,” she said, “that’s no longer an island, you got to make a living any ways you can. In the swamp, nothing comes for nothing. What you got in the way of exchange?”
August rummaged in his pockets and emptied them onto the desktop.
“Seventeen dollars, thirty-two cents, and an empty Mudd Pie wrapper?” scoffed the Admiral. “That’ll get you one of these wallets, but one of these wallets won’t get you where you want to go.”
She studied August’s crestfallen expression.
“I hear,” she said, casually blowing and popping another bubble, “you’re acquainted with our Gaston.”
August nodded, thinking that Gaspard or Gilbert had certainly conveyed a generous amount of information to the Admiral during their brief conference.
“I wouldn’t do this,” said the Admiral, “but for a friend of the family. It’s not near a fair exchange, but”—she pointed a fleshy finger—“I see something that I want.”
“What do you imagine,” August wondered, “the Admiral wanted with Claudette’s necklace? It was so old and dingy.”
The boy was steering the rudder of a dented, sputtering outboard motor. As the starboard and central portion of the rear deck and transom had been lost to the alligator’s jaws, the engine now sat off-center, and required constant adjustment to prevent the vessel turning in circles.
The Zombie Stone Page 3