The Lost Lullaby

by Jason Segel

  “Jancy?” Rocco asked. “She left early yesterday. Said she wasn’t feeling well—and right after she said it, she proved it by vomiting all over the coach.” Rocco used a sweet potato fry to point to a table on the other side of the cafeteria where a miserable-looking boy was eating soup. “Lester’s eating alone. Jancy’s parents must have kept her home from school today.”

  Charlie put down his sloppy joe. He’d just lost his appetite. INK was at large; she’d been to Ms. Abbot’s house, where every plant was poisonous; and now her sworn enemy, Jancy Dare, was sick. He hoped there wasn’t a connection.

  “Maybe the stuff Alfie’s been putting in the football team’s water made Jancy sick,” Paige said, taking a slurp of tomato soup.

  Alfie gasped. Paige’s words must have felt like a sucker punch.

  Charlie couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “Paige!” he exclaimed. “You shouldn’t even say stuff like that.”

  “I swear! It’s just vitamins and electrolytes!” Alfie added.

  “I guess we’ll just have to take your word for it, won’t we?” Paige replied, raising an eyebrow as if to suggest that she wasn’t at all convinced. “You’re so much smarter than the rest of us. If you swear there’s nothing bad in your secret recipe, what choice do we have but to trust you?”

  “I drink the stuff too,” Rocco spoke in Alfie’s defense. “And I feel perfectly fine.”

  “Sure, for now,” Paige said. She picked up her tray and left the table.

  “Wow, what was that about?” Rocco said as Paige walked away.

  “You guys, I cross my heart and hope to die! There’s nothing in the water that would make anyone sick!” Alfie said, looking a little nauseous himself.

  “We know,” Charlie said. “Paige is just mad that you took over our science class. Ms. Abbot’s her idol. Don’t worry. I’ll go talk to her.”

  But Paige wouldn’t listen to a word of reason. No matter what Charlie said, she refused to forgive Alfie, and her terrible mood wouldn’t go away. At the end of the day, Charlie was relieved when he spotted his dad waiting for him outside the school. Even though he desperately needed to search for INK, he was eager for a break from his feuding friends. He left Paige, Alfie, and Rocco on the steps and ran to greet his father.

  “Hi, Dad. What’s up?”

  “Thought I’d drop by and give Jack a ride to Hazel’s Herbarium,” his dad said. “Then you and I are going to take a little trip to Orville Falls.”

  Charlie perked up. “Really?”

  “Yep, got a call this afternoon from a newspaper reporter who works up there. She said some workmen found something while they were tearing down that weird old mansion on the hill….”

  “Kessog Castle?” Charlie asked.

  “That’s the one. They think the item they found might be some kind of antique, and they’ve asked me to come have a look at it. When I mentioned it to Charlotte, she insisted I take you with me. I think it’s your stepmother’s way of apologizing for not canceling your appointment with that science teacher yesterday. So how about it, kid? Want to come?”

  “Are you kidding?” Charlie asked with a laugh. He couldn’t turn down a chance to do some snooping at Kessog Castle, but that was only half the draw. The best part would be spending alone time with his father—while Jack was stuck at work.

  The last time Charlie had visited Orville Falls, the zombielike Walkers had taken over the town. He could barely believe how much had changed in just a few short weeks. The stores were open again, there were cars on the road, and everyone they passed looked perfectly clean and drool-free.

  Andrew Laird pulled up to a stoplight, and a boy in the car next to them began pointing at Charlie. Soon the kid’s parents and siblings had recognized Charlie and were banging on the windows and waving at him as if he were their long-lost best friend.

  “Do you know those people?” his dad asked warily. Such displays of enthusiasm were rare back in Cypress Creek.

  Charlie shrugged. “Kind of, I guess. The man driving is the coach of the Orville Falls soccer team. I think his name is Winston Lindsay, but I’ve never really spoken to him,” he said. It was the truth—but not the whole truth. Charlie and the soccer coach had never had a conversation, but Winston Lindsay had certainly heard Charlie speak. After all, Charlie had given the speech that had saved the Lindsays’ entire town.

  “Hmmmm,” Charlie’s dad replied. “I always thought Orville Falls was a little weird.”

  “Really?” Charlie said nervously. “I don’t know, Dad. It seems perfectly normal to me.”

  They drove through Orville Falls. At the far edge of town, the wilderness began again. Andrew Laird slowed down and squinted at the side of a mountain that lay dead ahead of them. Men and machinery covered the space, hard at work. “So you think that’s the place? If so, it’s changed so much that I barely recognize it.”

  For a moment, Charlie couldn’t have said for sure if they were looking at the remains of Kessog Castle. There wasn’t much of a building left. Crews of workmen had taken most of it apart board by board. Even the tall wall that had once surrounded the building had been reduced to a pile of stone. Everything the goblins had added over the summer was already on top of a rubbish heap. Only the oldest part of the castle was left. As they drove through the field that lay below the castle, something in the distance caught Charlie’s eye. It was large and brown and almost perfectly round.

  “Can you slow down for a second?” he asked his dad. “What’s that over there?”

  Andrew Laird squinted. Then he laughed. “I think it’s a sheep,” he said.

  “A brown sheep,” Charlie muttered.

  “Sheep come in a variety of colors,” Andrew joked. “That one looks like it hasn’t been sheared in a while. Maybe he’s an ancestor of one of the famous escapees.”

  “Escapees?” Charlie asked.

  Andrew Laird stepped on the gas and steered the car up the drive toward the building on the hill. “There used to be a big wool mill here in Orville Falls, and the owner kept a flock of sheep in the fields out here by the castle. From what I’ve heard, the animals weren’t treated very nicely. Then one day, someone snuck into the pen and set them all free. The townsfolk tried to round them up, but most of the sheep escaped into the forest and were never seen again. Now they’re a local legend. Every few years, there will be a story in the papers about someone who claims to have stumbled across a rogue sheep in the woods.”

  Were the escaped sheep the ones from ICK’s dream? Charlie wondered as the car came to a stop. He looked out the windshield and realized that they’d reached their destination. A pretty blond woman was waiting for them outside. She looked exactly like her niece.

  “Charlie! I didn’t know you’d be coming too! Welcome back to Orville Falls!” Josephine said, wrapping Charlie in a hug and planting a peck on the top of his head. Then she held out a hand to Andrew Laird. “I’m Josephine, Paige Bretter’s aunt and your son’s biggest fan.”

  “Wow, Charlie, you sure are popular in this town,” his dad marveled. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there’s a statue of you downtown.”

  “Not yet,” Josephine chirped. “The sculptor’s still working on it.”

  “Can we go inside?” Charlie asked, desperate to change the subject before his dad realized that Josephine wasn’t kidding.

  “Sure,” said Josephine. “Follow me!”

  She guided them into the last remaining section of Kessog Castle. It was just as dreary as Charlie remembered it. The walls were made of damp, rough stone, and the blackened windows were a haunting reminder of the goblins who’d recently lived there. As Charlie and his dad trailed behind Josephine, he tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a place like the castle. It must have felt like being cast into a dungeon.

  After a short walk, the trio arrived at a room at the end of a hall. It was small and bare, and part of the floor was missing. Josephine told them that the workmen had been ripping up the floorboards when
they’d come upon the box that was now sitting in the center of a workman’s tarp.

  “This it?” Andrew Laird asked, kneeling down beside the strange container. It was roughly two feet wide, two and a half feet long, and two feet deep, Charlie figured. It was made completely of wood, and the name Kessog was printed in black on a little metal tag that was screwed into the top.

  “Sure is,” Josephine confirmed. “They found it hidden in a secret compartment beneath the floorboards. One of the men told me it had about an inch of dust on it when they pulled it out. It must have been down there for a very long time.”

  “Well, let’s see what we’ve got,” Charlie’s dad said. He flipped the clasp on one side of the box and it opened like a book into two parts that were joined together by a hinge. Andrew Laird sat back on his haunches and gazed in wonder at the contents of the box. The only thing he seemed able to say was “Oh wow!”

  Inside the box were rows and rows of little glass bottles, all neatly labeled by hand. There must have been at least a hundred of them. Andrew Laird picked one up and gave it a little shake, stirring the white powder inside.

  “ ‘Sodium cyanide,’ ” he read off the label.

  “Cyanide,” Josephine gasped. “The poison?”

  “Yep,” Andrew Laird confirmed. He picked up another bottle of white powder. This one he didn’t shake. “ ‘Ammonium nitrate,’ ” he read. “It’s the main ingredient in certain kinds of bombs. And look—this is amazing.” He pointed to yet another bottle of seemingly boring white powder. “Here’s sodium azide. I’ve heard of people accidentally pouring this stuff down their drains. It reacts with the metal pipes and makes them explode. I’d say most of the chemicals in these bottles are pretty ordinary. But there are about a dozen extremely dangerous substances here.”

  “Why would someone hide a box full of chemicals under the floorboards?” Josephine asked.

  “And since when do you know so much about chemistry?” Charlie added. “You’re a history professor.”

  “Well, to answer the less insulting question first, I suppose there are a million reasons someone might have hidden something like this under the floorboards,” Andrew Laird said. “If I owned it, I wouldn’t want anyone to touch it either. And to be perfectly honest, my dear boy, I don’t really know anything about chemistry. But I know exactly what this is because my grandfather had one. He used to take it out and show me when I visited his house. It’s a chemistry set. This is a really nice one—and there’s a stamp on the inside that says it was made in London. Sometime in the 1930s, I believe.”

  “So Alfred Kessog liked to do chemistry experiments in his spare time?” Charlie asked. It didn’t make sense.

  “It didn’t belong to Alfred Kessog.” The voice came from the doorway. Behind them stood a very old man.

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Pike,” Josephine said. “Allow me to introduce you to Professor Andrew Laird and his son Charlie. Andrew works at the university in Cypress Creek. He kindly drove up here this afternoon to help us identify the contents of the box. Andrew and Charlie, this is Mr. Pike. He owns a farm just down the road.”

  “Thought I’d drop by and say farewell to this old eyesore before it’s nothing more than a mound of rubble,” Mr. Pike explained as he shook hands with Charlie’s dad. “Place is full of memories. I wouldn’t say they’re fond memories, but they’re still memories, and at my age, I suppose I’m lucky to have them.”

  “Does that mean you knew Alfred Kessog?” Andrew Laird asked.

  “Sure did,” the man confirmed. “Most cantankerous old coot I’ve ever met.”

  “And you say this chemistry set they found here wasn’t his?” Charlie asked, eager to solve the mystery. “His name is on the box, and I thought he was the only one who lived in the castle.”

  “Nope,” said Mr. Pike. “Guess I’m the only one around here old enough to remember those days. Alfred Kessog was a miserable old hermit, and his only hobby was meeting with his lawyers and looking for ways to make other people’s lives more difficult. No, that box didn’t belong to him. It belonged to the girls.”

  “They came to Orville Falls round about 1939,” the old man said. “My brother and I called them the Limeys.”

  “That’s a slang word Americans use for English people,” Charlie’s dad explained. “It’s not very nice.”

  Mr. Pike snorted. “Maybe not, but everyone else in town called them imps. There were two of them—sweet-looking things, as I recall. Always nicely put together. You never saw a scuff on their shoes or a stain on their skirts. Which was pretty darned amazing when you consider how much trouble those two were always in.”

  Charlie’s dad laughed, as though the thought of two prim little girls wreaking havoc in Orville Falls was completely ridiculous. He didn’t know ICK and INK.

  “What kind of trouble?” Charlie asked, his tone perfectly serious.

  “Any and all kinds,” the old man responded. “Those girls didn’t have anyone looking after them, and that weird old uncle of theirs wouldn’t let them go to school or have anyone come to visit. I don’t think they liked Orville Falls very much either. I figure their plan was to cause so much trouble that they got sent back home.”

  “Where was home?” Josephine asked. “It looks like that chemistry set was made in London. Is that where they came from?”

  The old man shrugged. “Can’t remember,” he said. “They could have come from anywhere in Britain. It was wartime, remember? World War Two. Britain’s enemies were dropping bombs all over their country, so a lot of folks sent their kids this way. It was safer here in America than back at home, with the sky exploding every time you looked up.”

  Charlie remembered INK telling Jack that her old school was destroyed by a bomb. He’d assumed she and her sister were the bombers. Now Charlie realized that the Germans must have been responsible.

  “You said the girls were always in trouble. What did they do that was so bad?” he asked.

  “Well, it started off with pranks,” the man said. “The kind of silly stuff that kids still do today. For instance, the spring they arrived, the Limeys were caught setting off stink bombs at the ladies’ garden show. Didn’t matter how many flowers there were in that building—whole place smelled like a giant fart for the rest of the year.”

  Charlie couldn’t help but chuckle.

  The old man grinned. “Yeah, I thought that one was pretty great too. They followed it up by adding baking soda to all the ketchup bottles at the diner down on Main Street. The stuff caused some kind of chemical reaction inside the bottles. Whenever anyone took a cap off, the ketchup would erupt like lava out of a volcano. The girls didn’t get caught that time, but everyone in town knew it was them.”

  “Sounds like they must have been pretty good at chemistry,” Andrew Laird remarked.

  “Oh yes,” the old man agreed. “Rumor had it that their dad was a famous chemist back in England—or maybe he was a pharmacist. Can’t remember. Anyway, he worked with chemicals, and he taught his daughters how to use them. If I had to bet, I’d bet that he bought that box for them. And if the Limeys had stuck to harmless pranks, like stink bombs and disappearing ink, they would have been the heroes of every kid in town. But they didn’t stop there.” Mr. Pike’s face had turned grim.

  “What did they do?” Charlie was almost afraid to ask.

  “I couldn’t even begin to list everything,” Mr. Pike replied. “For about six months, it felt like the whole town was under siege. Those girls must have been pretty desperate to go home, because they seemed prepared to do just about anything. I remember one of the first things they did was toss smoke bombs through the school’s windows so we all had to evacuate.”

  That didn’t seem so terrible, Charlie thought. But he could see Mr. Pike was just getting started.

  “Then they spiked a punch bowl at the town fair with ipecac,” he said. “Do you know what that is?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “It’s a syrup that makes
you vomit,” the man said. “They must have added the gunk right before the mayor made his big toast to celebrate the start of the festival. About two hundred people drank the punch. Now imagine all two hundred of those people throwing up at once.”

  Grimacing at the thought, Charlie glanced up at his dad, who looked like he might vomit too.

  “Couple weeks later the Limeys snuck out at night and filled all the door locks downtown with something that looked like bubble gum but turned as hard as stone. Nobody could get inside their stores the next morning.”

  “Why didn’t anyone try to stop them?” Josephine asked. “Weren’t the girls ever punished?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they were punished,” the old man said. “Their uncle wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed practical jokes—even the safe kind. But in the end, the Limeys got exactly what they wanted. And they sure went out with a bang.”

  “Oh no,” Charlie said. He had a hunch that he knew where the story was going.

  “When you were driving through town on the way here, you must have passed our town square—with the fountain that stands in front of city hall,” Mr. Pike said. “There’s a little park around it.”

  “Sure,” said Charlie. He remembered it well.

  “That fountain may look like an antique, but we old folks know it’s only a replica of the original. In the winter of 1940, the Limeys blew up the park. To this day, nobody’s figured out how those girls did it, but one afternoon that whole square disappeared in a big ball of fire. Fortunately, the weather was terrible, and there weren’t any people in the park that day. But the mayor’s dog was relieving himself on the fountain when it happened. Poor little Gertie was never seen again.”

  “Two young girls blew up the town square?” Josephine marveled. “I’ve heard about the disaster, of course, but I never realized two kids were behind it.”

  “Yep,” said Mr. Pike. “Hard to believe, but there’s no other explanation. Maybe you never heard about the culprits because they never got caught. Of course, after it happened, everyone in town marched right up to Kessog Castle. The Limeys had been making us all miserable for months, but they’d never come close to killing anyone before. When the crowd got there, Alfred Kessog himself opened the door. He said it was his job to punish his nieces and he wasn’t going to let a bunch of vigilantes do it for him.”