Bark vs. Snark

by Spencer Quinn

  “Uh, let’s try one more thing,” Bro said.

  Harmony’s gaze stayed on him a little longer. Then she nodded. Bro pulled the rope up out of the well, took it to the nearest tree, wrapped it around the trunk, and began tying a knot. “Rabbit comes out of his hole, goes around the tree twice, around the hole, and back in the hole,” he said as he worked. This was a bit confusing since there was no rabbit to be seen, heard, or smelled in the vicinity.

  Bro rose and came back, wrapping the free end of the rope around his waist.

  “And your plan is?” Harmony said.

  “Rappel down,” said Bro.

  “I must have missed when you learned how to do that,” she said.

  “Saw it on TV,” he told her. Then he stepped up onto the top of the well, turned so he was facing out, got the rope nice and taut, and began to lower himself down. Harmony moved closer and peered down. Since by that time I was on her shoulder, I had a good view, although mostly what we saw was the glare of Bro’s headlamp. I could feel the fear inside Harmony. There was lots of it, but she didn’t say a word.

  Using the rope and his feet, which must have been what rappelling was about, Bro went down and down. Then came a faint splash, and the headlamp beam swept back and forth over the wet stone of the well. I glimpsed Bro way way down there, standing in water up to his chest, and Maxie soaking wet and shivering whenever the beam passed over him.

  “Maxie,” Bro said. “Just breathe.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can,” Bro said. “Just breathe and get on my back.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Try.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t think, Maxie. Get on my back.”

  Bro’s headlamp blinked out. The inside of the well went black, down beyond the moonlight.

  “Oh my god!” Maxie cried.

  “Bro?” said Harmony.

  “Battery died,” Bro called up. “We’re good. Ready, Maxie? On two.”

  “On two what?” said Maxie.

  “Hang on,” Bro said.

  The rope went very taut. Bro grunted once or twice, quite softly. At the same time he seemed to be humming under his breath. Was that possible? I turned to Harmony, her face so close. It wore an expression I’d never seen on it before. She was scared but also proud of her brother, no doubt about that.

  And now he rose up into the moonlight, hand over hand on the rope, bare feet—he’d lost his sneakers—walking up the side of the wall, and all this with Maxie on his back, his arms wrapped around Bro’s chest. Up up up they came and as they approached the top, Harmony set me on the ground, turned, and grabbed Maxie’s shoulders with both hands, and hauled him out of the well. Bro scrambled up and then there we all were, standing by the wishing well in the moonlight. Well, except for Arthur, still here, in a manner of speaking, but now lying down and fast asleep, tongue hanging out to the side in his usual way.

  Harmony patted Bro on the back. “My Bro,” she said. She looked about to say more, but at that moment Maxie started crying.

  “It’s so horrible!” he said.

  “You’re safe now,” said Harmony.

  “You don’t understand!” Maxie said. “There’s someone else down there. Down in the darkness!”

  “Who?”

  “I couldn’t see. But I could sense him. He just sat there across from me, not saying a word. I—I didn’t even hear any breathing.”

  There was a silence, the kind that comes after a thunderclap.

  “Time to get Mom,” Bro said.

  IT’S NOT SO EASY TO SLEEP WITH LOTS of commotion going on, but I’m pretty good at it. Clinging to sleep is one of my best talents. Did that mix with a career in law enforcement? Why wouldn’t it? I wriggled around a bit on the warm grass, closed my eyes a little tighter, made my mind as fuzzy and foggy as I could. Which is plenty fuzzy and foggy. I’m kind of brilliant when it comes to mental fuzziness and fogginess.

  “Lydia—you all right down there?”

  Hmm. That sounded like Sheriff McKnight. He and I were pals of course, so I was happy to welcome him into my dreams. But then came a click and a pop and a bright light flashed on, way too bright, turning the insides of my eyelids red. It was too much even for a champion sleeper. I opened my eyes.

  Uh-oh. So much to take in all at once. I prefer to take things in slowly, one every couple of days or so. How was I supposed to handle this?

  First, it was still night, except around the wishing well, where it was as bright as day. Second, there were so many people: Mom, Harmony, Bro, Maxie Millipat, the sheriff and some of his other deputies, the hard-hatted crew headed by Lydia—the woman who’d been in charge of digging up the tomato patch—although there was no sign of Lydia herself right now. And let’s not leave out Queenie, perched on Harmony’s shoulders. She looked at me. I looked at her. I knew what I wanted: to be on Harmony’s other shoulder. I’d never been on Harmony’s shoulder, or anyone else’s. Why was that? As for what Queenie wanted, I had no clue.

  Third, there was so much activity. One of the crew stood in the back of a truck, aiming a big spotlight on the wishing well. Another truck, of the cherry-picker type, was parked right next to the well. The sheriff stood by the cherry-picker platform, over the well, and a cable dangled down from the platform and out of sight.

  “Lydia?” the sheriff said. “Say something.”

  From down in the well came Lydia’s commanding voice. “Haul away.”

  A crewman on the platform moved a lever. A sort of grinding machine noise started up and the cable began to rise. Up, up, and then another platform came into view, a small platform with Lydia crouched at one edge, the white ponytail dangling from under her hard hat. Taking up most of the space on this platform was a figure, motionless and muddy, who … who seemed to have a big red nose. And … and seemed to wearing the clothes of a clown. I barked. I didn’t know why. The bark, very high-pitched, nothing like my normal bark, just came out of me.

  “Oh my god,” Harmony said.

  “Cuthbert?” said Bro.

  “Has to be,” said Harmony.

  The sheriff glanced over at her and gave a quick, tiny nod. Mom stepped between the twins and put an arm over each of their shoulders. Everyone’s eyes seemed huge and black in the bright white light, like … like bits of the night no light could get rid of. Except for the eyes of the figure lying beside Lydia, which were closed.

  More machine grinding and the small platform was lowered to the ground. Lydia stepped off and the sheriff went over to her. She looked at him and shook her head. They gazed down at the figure in the clown suit.

  I found myself wandering over there, too, for no particular reason, and joined the sheriff and Lydia in gazing at the clown. A man, for sure, which I knew from his smell, human males and females smelling very different. There’s also a smell that comes when a creature stops being alive. I wasn’t picking that up, not exactly. Were his eyes open? No. Was his chest going up and down? No. I was about to have a thought or two about all that, but before those thoughts got started, I picked up the aroma of a certain kind of biscuit I like, coming from Lydia’s direction. Wow! My nose was on fire tonight! Not really on fire, of course, which would be terrible. I just meant my nose was stepping up big-time. Not really stepping, of course, since noses can’t just up and … and I forgot where I was going with this.

  Sheriff McKnight knelt and placed his finger on the inside of the clown’s wrist, held it there for a bit, and sighed. Then, very gently, he removed the red ball from the clown’s nose. “Anyone here ever seen Cuthbert out of costume?”

  People shook their heads.

  The sheriff and Lydia’s crew got busy, making a sort of yellow tape fence around the small platform and the well. The bystanders backed away. And there I was, all by myself next to Cuthbert, if that was who he was. I sniffed at him, then again and again. I picked up all sorts of smells—watery smells, muddy smells, smeared makeup smells—but what I did not pick up was that one
certain smell that means the end. That was confusing. Sometimes when I get confused, I bark an odd sort of squeaky bark that doesn’t even sound like me.

  “Arthur?” said Harmony from the other side of the yellow tape. “What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t know, which was why I was confused. Harmony ducked under the yellow tape and came over to me.

  “Arthur? What are you doing?”

  I seemed to be very close to Cuthbert, sniffing and sniffing.

  “Arthur?” Harmony crouched beside me. She gazed at Cuthbert, then at me, and back to Cuthbert. I could feel her thinking, like something powerful was cranking up. She leaned forward so that her face was almost touching the end of Cuthbert’s nose. “No breath at all,” she said quietly. “So what are you trying to tell me, Arthur?”

  I barked my squeaky bark.

  “I read somewhere about this drowning where the cold water kept … ,” Harmony began, maybe finishing the thought inside her head. Then she reached out, placed a hand on Cuthbert’s chest, and pushed. Nothing happened. She tried again, pushing harder this time. Still nothing. Harmony tried once more, on her knees and with both hands, real real hard, hard enough to make her grunt and to hurt whoever’s chest was getting pushed like that.

  Cuthbert groaned. A soft little groan, but no doubt about it.

  “Sheriff!”

  THE SMALL PARLOR IS ONE OF MY favorite rooms in the inn, especially in winter, when Elrod builds a roaring fire. From the top bookshelf where the old paperbacks are piled—and there’s nothing more comfortable than a paperback pile—I often pass a whole day just gazing into the flames and thinking deep thoughts, mostly about me. No fire now, of course, it being summertime. The night—maybe the longest of my life—was finally ending. Through the windows overlooking the herb garden—old leaded windows, the most beautiful feature in the whole place, according to Mom—came the first light of day, that weak milky light that only lasts until the sun comes up.

  There’s a long table in this parlor, usually pushed against one wall, but now in the center of the room. Sheriff McKnight sat at one end. Maxie sat two chairs down from him on one side. No one else was in the room, just the three of us. Nothing was happening, except for some twitching of Maxie’s legs, first one and then the other. The sheriff sat very still, gazing out the leaded windows.

  “Um,” said Maxie, not looking at the sheriff, “what are we doing?”

  “Waiting for your mom,” the sheriff said. “I like to have a parent in the room when I talk to a kid.”

  Maxie got upset. “But that means she’s going to find out!”

  “A dead man got pulled out of that well, Maxie. Well, almost dead. And dead for sure if it hadn’t been for Harmony, plus there’s no guarantee the docs can save him. The whole town’s going to find out.”

  Maxie’s mouth opened wide. “Oh, no! Do you think I had anything to do with … with whatever happened to him? He was already down there when I fell in.”

  “How did you fall in?” the sheriff said.

  “I guess I misjudged the holding power of the ground.”

  “Not following you, Maxie,” said the sheriff.

  “It was too soft, probably from the rain last week,” Maxie said. “I didn’t factor that in.”

  “Maxie?” said the sheriff. “How about backing up a little?”

  “You mean about the tent pegs? They’re ten inches long, so I figured they’d hold.”

  “What were they holding?”

  “The rope ladder, of course. But I was only down a few feet when they gave way.”

  “And you fell to the bottom of the well?”

  Maxie nodded. Both his legs were twitching now. Maxie gazed down at the table. The sheriff gazed at him. There was something in the sheriff’s gaze that reminded me of Mom. Very strange. I was trying to sort that out when the door, which maybe hadn’t been quite closed all the way, opened, and in came Arthur. That, too, was strange. He’d never figured out how to push open a door that wasn’t fully closed. Unless it was already open wide enough for him to pass through, he never came in, just stood there waiting for … well, who knew? And now, out of the blue, he’d figured it out? This was a new development. In general, I’m against new developments. Arthur walked in and stood next to the sheriff, standing rather tall for Arthur, his gaze, just like the sheriff’s, on Maxie. What had gotten into Arthur? I’d only been gone for … hmm. The truth was I didn’t know how long I’d been gone. That realization reminded me of my enemy, out in the world somewhere. I rose and paced among the paperbacks. Silently, which is my way. No one looked up. They hardly ever do.

  The sheriff stood and looked out the window. “How long should it take your mom to get here?”

  “The distance is two point seven miles so assuming an average speed of twenty miles an hour it would be seven minutes nineteen seconds, give or take. But there are unknowns—did she have to get dressed? Was there a problem with Captain Eddie? What if she’s low on gas? She never looks at the gauge and—”

  “Who’s Captain Eddie?” said the sheriff.

  “Our pet bird,” said Maxie.

  Ah, yes. Captain Eddie, quite a large bird, mostly blue except for some yellow tufts spreading from its head—and most important living uncaged at the Millipats’ house. I’d once been taken there on a visit, but hadn’t had the pleasure of spending any private time with Captain Eddie, just the two of us.

  “Getting back to knowables,” the sheriff said, “how come you wanted to go in the well in the first place?”

  “I just don’t believe in Magical Miranda,” Maxie said. “That’s the basis of it.”

  “Who’s Magical Miranda?”

  “A fraud, but I can’t prove it. Yet.”

  “Not quite keeping up with you, Maxie,” the sheriff said.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Maxie said. “It happens all the time.”

  “With other kids, too? Or just adults?”

  “Both.”

  “There’s not even one kid who can keep up with you?” said the sheriff.

  “Nope. Well, maybe Harmony. And Bro, too, in a weird way. But that’s it.”

  “And what about Magical Miranda? Is she a kid?”

  “Kinda. She guesses your weight at the county fair, and she’s always right—like to the pound. That’s impossible without some kind of trick, and I’m going to prove it.”

  “Why is it impossible?” the sheriff said.

  “Because of science!” Maxie said. “And if those tent pegs had held, I’d have the proof already.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I saw her throw a device into the well. That means she knows I’m hot on the trail.”

  “What sort of device?” the sheriff said.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” said Maxie. “A body mass scanner of some kind, very sophisticated.”

  “How deep is it down there?” the sheriff said.

  “Two feet, ten and a half inches,” said Maxie. “Give or take.”

  The sheriff got on his phone. “McKnight here,” he said. “Have we got a trained diver on the team?” He listened, a tiny frown appearing on his face, but vanishing right away. “But what happens if we have to search a pond or—” He listened again. “Lydia handles it? Okay, here’s what I want you to do.”

  Then came some instructions. I might have tuned them out in any case, but at that moment I spotted a mirror hanging on the wall across from me. That was new. Mom must have hung it there. A brilliant idea. I could see myself perfectly without having to change position in the slightest. How good I looked! Amazing, after all I’d been through. I blotted out everything happening in the room, all the comings and goings, and simply gazed at myself and thought nice thoughts about ME.

  A trance, if you like. I fall into them from time to time, just another fascinating fact about me. When I came out of it, kind of like waking from a lovely dream, I felt refreshed. I was still up on my paperback shelf. Sheriff McKnight sat alone at the table, two red balls in front
of him. Clown noses, perhaps? Whatever was going on, clown noses had to be a part of it. I’d already figured that out by myself, and I hadn’t made the slightest attempt to even bother trying. The sheriff moved the balls around a bit, then shifted them back to the way they’d been. I left out Arthur, napping on the floor, his head resting on the sheriff’s highly polished shoes. The door opened and Harmony and Bro came in.

  “Hi, kids,” the sheriff said. “Take a seat.”

  The kids sat down.

  “No news on Cuthbert yet,” the sheriff said. He pointed to the table. “Two clown noses. This is the one Cuthbert was wearing. This is the one found buried in the tomato patch, presumably by Arthur.” Under the table, Arthur’s tail rose and fell with a soft thump. Almost as though he was following the proceedings. What an amusing idea!

  “Your mom,” the sheriff went on, “is pretty sure she saw Arthur running around the house with the second one in his mouth. Did either of you?”

  The kids shook their heads. “But if that clown nose was in the house, what does it mean?” Harmony said.

  “Whoa!” said Bro. “A clown was in the house?”

  “Not in costume, of course,” Harmony said.

  “You mean a guest?”

  “Maybe.”

  They both turned to the sheriff. “I’ll want to go over the guest list with your mom,” he said. “But meanwhile, what can you tell me about the photo shoot? Did the clown say anything?”

  “Nope,” said Bro.

  “The lady from the cat magazine, Ms. Vance, joked about it,” Harmony said.

  “Oh?” said the sheriff.

  “She asked if the cat got his tongue,” Bro said.

  “Yeah,” said Harmony. She gazed at the two red balls. “By the way, his nose was green.”

  “Cuthbert’s?” said the sheriff.

  “Shouldn’t we be saying ‘the clown who took the pictures’ instead?” said Harmony.

  “For sure,” the sheriff said. “Thanks for coming in. You’ve been a big help.”

  The kids stood up. They turned to the door, then paused and exchanged a look. “Maybe it’s a pattern,” Harmony said. “The cats get switched.”