Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat

by John Eubank

  “Did you see him go?” she asked.

  Will shook his head. Hendrelmus often vanished, but they never saw him exit a door or sneak out a window. This time, between finishing lessons on an outdoor picnic table and doing chores, they’d had a pretty good view of the street. Unless he could turn invisible, Will thought, his dad hadn’t left that way. How did he do it?

  Usually he was gone no more than a few hours, but sometimes he vanished for a whole day. Then, they’d discover him making a sandwich or repairing some gadget, as if nothing had happened. Never had he warned them he was leaving or said where he’d been.

  “You have to be on your nose all the time,” he’d lectured, meaning “toes.” “You have to be ready for anything.”

  When his dad hadn’t returned after 24 hours, Will grew worried. That night, he’d had a horrible dream about being lost in a strange place with no sense of up or down, left or right. When he’d seen a possible way out, his body refused to move that direction.

  Then, he’d realized he was dreaming not about himself but his father. Henry called out for help in weak and extremely diminished voice, which alarmed Will, because he’d never heard him sound so scared. He decided it was just a stupid nightmare and not to tell Angelica.

  They’d just have to do their best until their dad came back, Will thought. Surely he’d return! Was it legal for kids to live without a parent? What would happen if people found out?

  ***

  Another day passed, and there was still no sign of their father. Without him to help run the complex machinery, they’d shut down many non-essential systems, and even then, they felt overwhelmed. The dishwasher, for example, ran continually, as Will didn’t know how to turn it off. As he looked for a wrench, a high pitched scream came from upstairs.

  “Will!” his sister shouted. “Hurry!”

  He raced up and burst into Angelica’s bedroom, where she pointed out the window. He ran over and looked down into the yard. Except for a few chickens and goats, nothing caught his eye.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  “There was a man,” she said excitedly, “in a bright green coat, and he was peeking in our downstairs windows!”

  “Green coat?”

  “And a leather cap. I wish I hadn’t screamed, or you would have seen him. He got scared and ran.”

  Will wasn’t sure what to say. Had a man in a green coat really been peeking in their windows, he wondered, or was his sister so upset from their parents’ absence that she was seeing things?

  “Oh,” she gasped, “I know who it was. Rasputin!”

  Will made a face. “Huh?”

  “It had to be.”

  “Who?”

  “Rasputin.”

  “I heard that. Again: huh?”

  She had to take a moment to calm herself.

  “One night I couldn’t sleep,” she explained, “so I went downstairs to get some milk. Mom and Dad were talking, and they didn’t know I could hear. I didn’t mean to listen to them. I couldn’t help it.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “What did they say?”

  “That someone named Rasputin wanted to kill us! He must be very evil, because they called him ‘our enemy’ and sounded very worried.”

  “Rasputin? Are you sure you heard them right?”

  “Yes!”

  He took a moment to frame his thoughts. “Angelica, I don’t know what to tell you, because Rasputin is dead.”

  ***

  Even with his assurance that the mysterious “enemy” was dead, Angelica wouldn’t leave her room until Will, armed with a crossbow, patrolled the yard several times and made sure no one was there. He asked her to toast them some cheese sandwiches while he got a history book, and he showed her how the infamous mystic, Rasputin, had indeed died in Russia, long ago.

  “See?” he tried to calm her. “He couldn’t have been in our yard. He was murdered.”

  “What if he’s a vampire?” she argued stubbornly.

  “Oh, come on.”

  She pointed at his picture in the book. “Well, he looks creepy enough to be one.”

  “But the sun’s out. Look, I bet this is what happened. Some random guy got curious about our smokestack and animals, so he snuck up to check us out. When you screamed, he ran away, and we’ll never see him again.”

  “Maybe. Who’s Rasputin, then?”

  “A dead guy.”

  “Then, who are Mom and Dad scared of?”

  “You got me.”

  “And why do we learn to fight with swords and crossbows? What about all the safety drills?”

  Will grew concerned. She was getting very worked up.

  “We have fire drills,” he said gently, hoping to calm her, “in case Beverkenhaas starts burning, and we have boiler alarm drills because - well, boilers are dangerous, if you don’t take care of them. You know that.”

  “But what about ….” Something about her sentence frightened her so much that she couldn’t finish.

  “What?” Will urged.

  “They always creep me out.” Still scared, she lowered her voice. “Shadovecht drills.”

  Will laughed. “Is that what you think he is?”

  “No, he’s too small, but what if he’s spying for them?”

  “Shadovecht? They aren’t even real.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s the sort of things parents make up to frighten their children into being good.”

  “But that would be lying! Dad says we can’t do that.”

  “Do you even know what a Shadovecht is?”

  That stopped her a moment. “Well, they’re very bad, and I know Dad wouldn’t lie like that.”

  “Okay, maybe Shadovecht is his word for burglars, and those drills are so we know what to do if there’s a break-in. But it won’t happen because we don’t have anything worth stealing. So cheer up!”

  ***

  “Angelica,” Will called that afternoon, “can you hold the light?”

  Earlier they’d shut off the haaskooler or house cooler. By noon, Beverkenhaas had become a sweltering sauna, so Will had decided to turn it back on. That meant reconnecting the belt drives that spun circulating fans, the chain drives that ran the compressor, and the gear system that worked the heat exchanger. Creating a simple on-off lever for this was one of many items on his father’s long “to do” list.

  His sister arrived with a lantern, but he knew she’d been staring anxiously through a window at the yard.

  “You should see your hair,” he said, hoping to distract her.

  She saw her reflection in a window and laughed. It was particularly hot and humid that day. Normally, her hair stood up like a vase full of ornamental yellow grass, but with all the moisture in the air, it snaked uncontrollably in all directions.

  “Like Medusa,” she teased. “Watch out!”

  He smiled. It was her first joke since their dad had vanished. Even though he’d moved his bed into her room, the past few days had been tough for her. She’d awakened several times a night, screaming from terrible dreams, and often he’d heard her whispering to herself: “Be tough.” Maybe, he thought, she was gaining some control over her emotions.

  “Just put the haaskooler on halfway,” Angelica said. “Not like before.”

  “With my luck,” Will said, stretching a chain-drive, “it’ll start snowing in the living room, and glaciers will carve channels down the staircase.”

  “Hey, Will?”

  “Hey, what?”

  “Dad’s coming back soon, right?”

  “Yeah. Probably tonight.”

  She nodded, and Will sensed she was doing everything she could to believe it.

  “Why does he talk about going home?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, thinking how he was just about to corner him on the subject before he vanished. “Maybe we’re political refugees. Maybe if we went home we’d be arrested.”

  “Isn’t Beverkenhaas our home?”
>
  “You know what he says. It’s not our real home.”

  “It’s my home.”

  “Yeah, but do you feel like you really belong here?”

  “I love Beverkenhaas!”

  “So do I,” he said. “I mean this area, these people. I don’t feel right here, but what if we go where Mom and Dad are from, and it’s even worse?”

  “What’s so bad about here?”

  He put down his tools. “We’re different, Angie-bee.” That was her nickname, because when she was full of energy, she seemed to buzz about the place like a hyper little honey bee. “Haven’t you noticed? Just wait until Brie starts asking why her mom thinks you’re weird and why you can’t text.”

  “She already does. I told her we could dig a trench and run a speaking tube from my bedroom to hers.” Beverkenhaas had a network of brass speaking tubes connecting most of the rooms. “She said ‘ew,’ and I guess that meant ‘no.’”

  He thought about the friends he once had, when he was her age, but then they’d noticed how different he was. For example, the Steemjammers sheared wool and converted flax plants into linen to make comfortable, homespun clothing, but his friends guessed it was from a thrift shop. Saying his parents were too poor to buy real clothes, they teased him mercilessly, so he’d stopped seeing them.

  “Why can’t I text, anyway?” she asked.

  “Do you even know what it is?” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s like a tiny typewriter you hold in your hand.”

  “That runs on electricity. Haven’t you heard it six thousand times? ‘Electricity is dangerous.’”

  A guilty look crossed her face. “I meant to tell Dad. I really did.”

  “What?”

  “The subject got changed, and then he vanished.”

  “Angie-bee, say it.”

  She looked down. “I used my friend’s computer.”

  “Really?”

  “I played games and looked up stuff.”

  “What? It didn’t break?”

  “No.”

  Distracted, he caught his thumb between the chain and sprocket. “Ow!”

  “That didn’t hurt,” she said.

  “Oh, really?”

  “You have to be tough. Dad says so.”

  “Stop being annoying.”

  “I’m not. He also says you can’t carp, and don’t tell me it’s a fish, because it’s not. It means to complain without any good reason.”

  He started to show her the blood blister on his thumb, but she’d turned her head toward the nearest window, already wanting to go check the yard.

  “The man’s gone,” he said. “Stop worrying.”

  She frowned. “I can’t. Will, something’s wrong. Can’t you tell? It’s not only that Mom and Dad are gone. That Dutch we’re learning? It isn’t Dutch!”

  “Huh?”

  She explained looking it up on the Internet at her friend’s house and discovering that she could barely understand the real Dutch on a number of sites.

  “We must be from some backwater, remote place in Europe,” he guessed, “where they speak a version of Dutch that no one uses anymore.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  With a heavy sigh, he put down his tools.

  “I may have been there, when I was really little,” he confessed as a vague and distant memory wafted ghost-like through his mind.

  Her face lit up. “Tell me!”

  “It’s not much. I remember big mountains with snow and a huge waterfall. And some stone buildings, like an old castle. Once, I tried to ask Dad about it - really ask him. You know, not let him wiggle out and give a non-answer.

  “But I wasn’t able to do it. As big and strong and smart as he is, I got this feeling it would hurt him, that I shouldn’t push. So I didn’t.”

  She looked down, thinking.

  “I feel the same,” she said.

  Worried she was about to get moody, he fished around for something to say and realized they’d forgotten a chore. “Verdoor, what about the prince and princess?”

  “Poor things,” she said. “They must be starving.”

  “While I finish this, you put out some herrings to thaw, and we’ll let them out. You know how protective they are. If that weird man’s still anywhere near, they’ll smell him and make him wish he’d never been to Ohio!”

  ***

  As Angelica approached the igloo, a frantic tapping erupted on the other side of its little wooden door. She opened it, and out surged a pair of large aquatic birds, honking huffily as if to say “it’s about time!” Called Koonen-Kroogen (Royal-Crowned) penguins, they waddled speedily down a narrow path in the woods behind Beverkenhaas.

  No ordinary Antarctic fowl, these had deep purple feathers the color of high quality amethyst. Their undersides glistened silvery white, and the tops of their heads were crowned with tufted, golden yellow plumage. Will and Angelica had to trot to keep up with them.

  In the summer, the birds preferred the coldness of their igloo, but they needed exercise, even if the only available water was warm and fresh. This chore never felt like work to the kids. The large and intelligent birds, with their awkward waddling and playful natures, always made them smile.

  Deep in the vacant land behind their house, a tiny creek fed a shallow pond. Prince Toorstin and Princess Clementina, as they were called, squawked with joy and rushed ahead. They belly-flopped off a mud bank into the clear water and streaked around like a pair of purple torpedoes, while the Steemjammer kids tossed them partially thawed herrings. They liked them cold.

  “The man in the green coat’s long gone,” Will observed, “or Toory and Clemmie would have sensed him. And look.”

  He pointed at fresh footprints in some mud.

  “See how far apart they are? That means he was running and probably very scared. We’re safe now.”

  His sister had something else on her mind.

  “There are no mountains in Holland,” she said out of the blue. “It’s totally flat. I saw it on the Internet.”

  “Yeah,” Will said absentmindedly as he tossed cold herrings left and right, making sure one bird didn’t get more than the other.

  “Dad says we’re from Holland, but you remember snow-capped mountains. How?”

  He stopped in mid-throw, realizing she was right. That was weird.

  “Never thought of it,” he said, tossing the fish. “Maybe it’s not a memory. I could have seen a picture.”

  But he knew that wasn’t true. He could still feel the sting of cold in his nose and the pain in his chest when he ran or went up steps. Like a dream, he recalled his mother’s voice explaining “thin air” to him.

  “Or maybe something isn’t right,” Angelica said, wagging a herring at him. “You know there’s no such thing as purple penguins. The Internet says so.”

  Will made a face. “So, we’re feeding herrings to what, hallucinations?”

  “Maybe Dad dyes their feathers.”

  Will burst out laughing. “Did you ever see him do that?”

  “Did you ever see him vanish?”

  “Good point. What is this Internet thing, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s like a magic crystal ball. It can tell you about anything.”

  “Except purple penguins. You know what Dad’d say.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She glanced down and became very serious. “Where do you think he is?”

  Stay positive, he warned himself. Keep her happy. “He’s looking for Mom. I’m sure of it.”

  He believed it, too. He knew that she was constantly on their father’s mind and that he desperately wanted to find her.

  “Yeah,” Angelica said.

  “Or he’s hiding,” Will ventured, “and this is some weird way to test us.”

  “He wouldn’t do that!”

  “He could. There are rooms in Beverkenhaas I’ve never been in.”

  She stopped in mid-throw and arched an eyebrow.

  “If you’ve never been in them,�
� she said, “how do you know they’re there?”

  “I just do. There’s a four-foot space, for example, between your bedroom and Mom’s sewing room.”

  “Ect neet!”

  “Yep. And there’s a big space between the library and the dining room. Maybe ten feet wide.”

  She threw the last herring and squinted, trying to process what he’d just told her.

  “What do you think’s in there?” she asked.

  He thought how he’d always wanted to know but had been afraid to search for the hidden door that had to exist, and a mischievous grin crossed his face. With his dad gone, what could stop them? Furthermore, the discovery of footprints had alarmed him, making him think his sister really had seen someone peeking in their windows. It was time to get some answers. “Let’s find out.”

  ***

  An hour of rapping on the walls of the dining room and library produced nothing. Hoping to find a hidden catch that might open a secret door, they tugged on wall sconces, and Will got up on the library’s ladder to push knobs on the crown molding. His sister worked the flue lever in the small fireplace, but she only got soot on her hand. No secret door opened.

  Angelica tensed with fear. She’d seen something out of the corner of her eye and wondered if it was one of those strange creatures they’d been preparing for.

  She had no idea what Shadovecht were, except that they were bad, like burglars or kidnappers – and yet somehow worse. Each room in Beverkenhaas had weapons hidden in secret compartments, but she wasn’t supposed to fight. During a Shadovecht drill she had to lock herself in a safe room and not come out until a family member tapped a special code on the door.

  She’d asked her father a lot about Shadovecht and had received few answers, save for the distinct impression that they weren’t even human. He’d told her to report anything she saw that was strange or out of place.

  “Will,” she whispered, not daring to move.

  He didn’t hear her and continued pushing at knobs.