The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox

by Nigel Quinlan

  Then he roared, and the engine roared with him, and we left home and made our way out into the world.

  CHAPTER 12

  LIZ

  Neil went off with Ed in Ed’s big truck to have adventures and do cool things while we stayed behind to work and work and work. I was mad, but I was sorry I’d said what I’d said. Those things were my secret and saying them out loud only hurt everyone and showed what a silly little girl I was. I tried to be a little more like normal, even though nothing would be normal ever again. I tried to give Mum and Dad a way to think that everything was OK.

  “Stupid Neil,” I said. “Why does he get to go?”

  “He’s got a job to do,” Dad said. “And so do we, OK? We have to guard the phone box and the house and protect each other.”

  “They’ll get into trouble,” I warned. “Neil always gets into trouble.”

  “So do you,” said Owen. Tiny Neetch purred in the crook of his arm. “You get into trouble all the time.”

  “Yeah, but when I get into trouble, it’s other people who have the trouble and not me. Neil’s just a trouble magnet. I’m more of a troublemaker.”

  “Yes, we know,” said Mum, and she tried to give a bright, encouraging smile, though it came across as more of a hideous snarl. “Now, let’s all go decide whether it’d be easier to start tidying the house or to just burn it down and build another one.”

  Really? That’s what we were going to do instead of stopping Mrs. Fitzgerald?

  Everything was broken, everything was torn, everything was wet and stained and smelly. It was almost interesting how Hugh had done all of this, just him. He had broken Mum’s favorite porcelain statue and destroyed all the framed photographs of us and the paintings Mum’s mum had done of the sea and the mountains and the birds. The stuffing from the sofa and the armchairs was spread all over the walls and the ceiling. One half of the broken coffee table was embedded in the plaster of the wall. The chairs had lost all their legs.

  He had done all of this, and in a way that was kind of amazing and cool, even though it made me angry and plot revenge.

  “Hugh, you do, then we do you,” I chanted.

  If he could do this, what could she do? I wondered.

  I didn’t make a chant for her. I didn’t dare.

  The kitchen was even worse, and all that mess was in the way of our breakfast, so we started there until we had cleared enough to let Mum start cooking. Owen and I went to sit on the stairs and mope and smell breakfast.

  Dad was sitting on the floor of the living room, cross-legged, eyes shut tight. The phone was beside him, balanced on a pile of broken stuff that had been our sofa. He was watching out for more atmospheric attacks on the house, and taking a break every now and then to try calling the Weathermen’s Club. They still weren’t answering.

  There was a knock on the door. We stepped over the piles of broken stuff and opened it.

  Standing on the step outside were Ed Wharton’s hags—tall, thin, crooked old women, leaning on tall, thin, crooked old sticks. Their long white hair hung down to their waists in huge frizzy knots, full of leaves and twigs and cobwebs and spiders. Their faces were covered in wrinkles, their mouths had no teeth, their clothes were muddy and torn, and they had no shoes or socks on their feet.

  I swung the door shut. Too late. One of them hit the door with the end of her stick and pushed it back against me. She was stronger than she looked.

  “Hello!” the other one said, coming inside, leaning over us. “We’d like a room!”

  “With a bed!” said the first old woman, stepping inside too and making a muddy footprint on the floor.

  “Two beds!”

  “And a working toilet!”

  “And one of those things where the water all comes out and it’s like you’re in the rain only the water is all lovely and warm!”

  “Two of those as well, please!”

  “And breakfasts!”

  “Two breakfasts!”

  “In bed! With hot tea in cups!”

  “In the warm rain thing!”

  “Don’t be silly! Your tea would get wet!”

  I pulled Owen behind me and backed away from the doorway. One of the old women stiffened and peered sharply down at Owen.

  “What is that?”

  “What is what?” said the other.

  “The boy.”

  “The boy? It’s a boy? Shocking!”

  “The boy. The boy has a cat.”

  “So? Boys have cats. Give a boy a cat and he has a friend for life. A boy and his cat off on their merry adventures.”

  “Our cat!”

  “Our cat? Unpossible!”

  “Calamity! Treachery!”

  “Catnapper! Bad boy! Bad cat!”

  “Go away!” I said, moving backward, pushing Owen along behind me. The two old women followed us down the hallway, their sticks raised, pointing, their hair alive, wriggling with spiders, fluttering with moths, buzzing with flies, their eyes dark and malicious. Neetch struggled in Owen’s arms, yowling.

  “Not without our cat!”

  “Not without our breakfast!”

  “We’ll have cat for breakfast!”

  “Useless cat!”

  “Tasty cat!”

  “Tasty boy!”

  “Oh, no, dear. Cat for breakfast.”

  “Boy for lunch?”

  “Lovely!”

  “Hello?” said Dad coming into the hall with Mum. “Can I help?”

  Me and Owen ran and hid behind them.

  “They want to eat us!” wailed Owen.

  “Don’t be silly!” said one of the women in a tiny, creaky voice like a door blown open by a breeze. They were suddenly bent and stooped and leaning on their sticks again, looking old and fragile and weird but not scary.

  “We want beds!”

  “And breakfasts!”

  “We have moneys!”

  “Lots of moneys!”

  They reached into hidden pockets and threw torn and crumpled and dirty notes on the floor, along with a few wood lice and a bright red centipede.

  “So much moneys!”

  “We have been saving all our moneys for years and years, and all so we can have a lovely holiday in your beautiful house of beds and breakfasts!”

  “And warm rain!”

  “And sweet, sweet children!”

  “So delicious!”

  “And well behaved!”

  Neetch was complaining loudly and furiously trying to swipe at the old women with his claws.

  “Take him outside,” Mum said, and Owen fled, but I stayed.

  While Dad took a dustpan and brush to the insects, Mum picked up the money, straightened it, scraped some of the dirt off it, taped some of it together, found an envelope, stuck the money in the envelope, and put the envelope in her back pocket. Then she showed the ladies the guestbook and asked them to sign in. The old ladies spat on their hands, then spat on the tip of the pen and each drew a strange scrawl, spirals and lines and squiggles, instead of names.

  Their signs reminded me of something, something bright and hot in the darkness.

  Mum studied them for a moment. Her lips were thin and her face was pale and her hands shook slightly. Maybe she was thinking about what she’d said last night—about the hags helping us against Mrs. Fitzgerald. Perhaps just saying it the way she had had been a kind of invitation to them, or maybe they would have come anyway. I don’t know if she and Dad could have made them go away, so maybe the best thing to do was to make them welcome and hope they were more or less on our side.

  Mum shut the book, smiled her most welcoming woman-of-the-house smile, and led them to their room. I followed, keeping well out of reach of their sticks. Mum apologized for the state of the place, all the broken windows and furniture and stuff.

  “Oh, my dear,” one of them said. “I hope you didn’t go to all that trouble just for us! How sweet!”

  “Just like home!” the other said. “I hope you have chorizo! We do like chorizo!
Perhaps a snack of chorizo and a nice cup of tea for dipping? That would be nice!”

  They squealed with delight when Mum showed them into the room, and one began jumping up and down on the bed and the other went straight to the shower and turned it on and climbed in fully dressed. The wildlife in her hair was soon going to be clogging up our drains.

  Mum told them the time for breakfast, and then we fled.

  “Mum,” I said. “Should we really have them in the house? They’re dangerous. They’re her sisters!”

  “I don’t think we could have kept them out, hon. It’s hard to say no to that sort of … person when they call around. We’ll just have to hope they don’t mean to harm us, and that when push comes to shove they’ll want to put her back in her shell. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”

  “They could kiss and make up and decide to help her be Weatherman?”

  “Yes,” Mum said. “That would be about the worst. Still, we’re OK until breakfast. Hospitality and kind treatment can go a long way with people like them, as Mr. Wharton has shown. I’m hoping they’ll really like the shower.”

  “The spiders probably won’t.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind, Mum.”

  * * *

  The dining room had, thank the Lord, not been touched by Hugh’s rampage, so we sat at a table and devoured our own breakfast and then the hags came sweeping in calling for food and tea and newspapers. They seemed different—less haglike, taller and straighter than they had been before. They weren’t wearing their old raggy rags anymore, either. They had long loose dresses on now, all white and shiny, and their eyes didn’t seem as dark and their faces didn’t seem as wrinkled. They smiled pleasantly and seemed to have somehow grown a few teeth. Weirdest of all, their hair seemed shorter and less silvery.

  “It’s miraculous,” one said, sitting on her chair and putting a napkin across her lap. “Positively miraculous what a nice hot stream of clean water will do for you. Isn’t it, my dear?”

  “To be sure, my dear,” said the other. “Much better than simply rolling in the furze bushes once a year whether you need to or not. I feel like a new person!”

  “Speaking of new persons, I could eat one for breakfast!”

  “Oh, my darling, no need! Look at the delicacies promised by this menu! Muesli! I rather fancy some muesli! I do like foreign food! I hope it’s not too spicy!”

  “Oh, go on, you, you always had a taste for the exotic! I myself will dine on cuts of slaughtered pig, blood pudding, and chicken embryos. I may even ask for two chicken embryos!”

  “Um, uh, how do you want them cooked?” I asked, trying to take all this down on the notebook. “The, uh, embryos and stuff, I mean.”

  “Cooked?” said the lady. “Oh, well, why not? Yes, go on then, cook them.”

  “Right,” I said, and fled to the kitchen, where Mum and Dad were heating the frying pan and boiling the kettle. Owen was hiding behind the fridge.

  “Stay away from them,” I whispered to him, and Dad broke a few eggs into the hot frying pan.

  When I brought in their breakfasts, they were reading newspapers. I had no idea where the newspapers had come from.

  “Such strange goings-on in the world,” one remarked.

  “Indeed, my dear. We aren’t safe in our beds.”

  “Or our showers.”

  “Did you see this? An indoor flood!”

  “Oh my goodness, how dreadful! Did they have too many showers?”

  “No idea, my dear, but it sounds terribly dangerous, what with wind and rain all over the place!”

  “What fun!”

  “No, dear, how awful!”

  “I do beg your pardon. How awfully fun. How terribly, terribly fun!”

  “I see by your paper that there was a kidnapping!”

  “There was?”

  “Yes, dear, there was. It says so. On your paper.”

  “Does it? Oh, my dear, I forgot how to read years ago. I was just looking at the pictures.”

  “Bizarre, bizarre trouble, dear.”

  “How dreadful! Dreadfully, dreadfully fun!”

  “Those are last weeks’ newspapers,” I said, looking at the dates. They glanced at me and smiled.

  “Clever child!”

  “How can she tell?”

  “The dates, dear.”

  “Terribly, terribly, deliciously clever!”

  “Perhaps she knows all about the big fight?”

  “The dreadful, dreadful fight!”

  “In the woods with the policemen and the people and the trees.”

  “Trees fighting people and policemen! What will they think of next?”

  The newspaper rustled.

  “Oh, blood will flow and heads will roll and limbs will be chopped off! If only they could fly!”

  “What are they teaching in the schools these days? Imagine not being able to fly!”

  I backed away from the table, keeping them in sight until I was out of the room. They smiled and waved at me the whole time.

  CHAPTER 13

  NEIL

  Ed Wharton drove, and I sat and enjoyed the view over the hedges and through the trees. I loved to see the spread of fields and the wrinkling hills and the huddled woods and copses. Cattle grazed and horses trotted amiably through meadows seeded with wildflowers and tall, protective grasses. Purple mountains shouldered their way across the horizon like disgruntled giants, and the sun shone warmly through the yellow sky and the massive windshield, heating the plastic molding on the dashboard. After about half an hour, the heat and the sickly sky and the motion of the hedges and houses and electricity poles as they went past on either side began to make me feel ill. I sank back in my seat and groaned.

  I looked over at Ed Wharton. I would be lying if I said I was happy about being sent off to Dublin with a more or less complete stranger for company while the Fitzgeralds were threatening my family, but I told myself it was OK. It’d be a quick trip. There and back.

  “Are we nearly there yet?”

  Ed Wharton sighed and smiled.

  “Soon,” he said.

  “Soon we’ll be there, or soon we’ll be nearly there?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Right,” I said.

  The cab shuddered as he downshifted roughly and took us around a sharp corner.

  “Hey, easy there,” I said. “It’s not a race car, you know.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “It’s a great big truck. Race cars are smaller and faster and they look like the letter T with wheels.”

  “It’s not a race car, but it is a racing truck. It’s a truck, and I raced it in a race. In a race it doesn’t matter what you are, all that matters is who gets over the finishing line first.”

  “Oh. Did you win?”

  “Heh. God, no.”

  “Did you come second?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Did you lose? Did you come last?”

  “I certainly did.”

  “You seem awfully happy about it. What was this race?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Island of Abasa?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a little rock in the Mediterranean. I mean, literally a rock. It’s about two meters wide.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We had to race across it. Took us four days.”

  “That’s a long time to go two meters.”

  “That’s because they shrunk us down to the size of ants.”

  “Who did?”

  “The Wives of Abasa. There were four of them and they were looking for husbands.”

  “I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take an ant four days to cover two meters.”

  “It would if they were desperately trying to lose the race.”

  “Why did you want to lose the race?” I asked. “Oh. Because the winners got to be the husbands to the Wives of Abasa, right?”

  Ed nodded. “Right.”

  “No, wait, if they w
ere wives, wouldn’t they already have husbands?”

  “Technically they were widows.”

  “And the old husbands?”

  “Funny story, that. The Wives of Abasa are beautiful marble statues, and they live in a beautiful but ancient stone temple in the waters just off the island. One of the temple pillars fell on the four husbands and crushed them to pieces.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “No? You should have seen the expression on their faces. Anyway, the four wives needed four new husbands, so they held a race for the honor of their cold white hands.”

  “If you didn’t want to marry one of them, why did you enter the race?”

  “Another funny story. I was just driving through Greece, minding my own business, when suddenly this chariot pulls out in front of me.”

  “Chariot?”

  “Yup. Horses, reins, rider, whip, the whole kit and caboodle. Dressed up in old-style armor the charioteer was, riding hell for leather, pursued by a giant marble ox. Anyway, I veered off the road to avoid hitting the chariot, straight into the charging marble ox who scooped me up in his horns and carried me off to the Isle of Abasa, where I was shrunk to the size of an ant and made to race against four other guys in chariots.”

  “So you were in a truck and they were just in chariots, and you still lost?”

  “Wasn’t easy.”

  “Didn’t you want to be married to a beautiful marble statue?”

  “Wouldn’t have lasted. We’d nothing in common.”

  For a while we drove on in silence. I didn’t mean to drift off, but I did, and slept most of the way into Dublin. I was gently prodded into wakefulness by the voices on Ed’s radio talking about weird atmospheric phenomena and strange behavior reported by pet owners. Dogs had stopped barking. Cats had stopped purring. Budgies had stopped singing. Fish had stopped swimming. And turtles refused to come out of their shells. It sounded like a silly season story, the announcer said, until you realized that it wasn’t just a few cranks; it was hundreds of cranks, all saying the same thing.

  “It’s as if the animals are worrying about something,” one of the guests remarked.

  “Must be the economy,” someone said, and everyone laughed.

  “Maybe it’s the weather!” suggested the announcer. Nobody laughed.

  “Maybe it is,” someone said. “Have you looked out a window lately? Have you ever seen the sky that color?”