“That’s good,” said Cordelia, who had a plan. “Start making sounds. Like this: Woooo-oooh.”
“What, like we’re at a party?” Brendan said.
“Silence! Come for’ard—”
“Like we’re in a graveyard! Like we just climbed out of maggoty old coffins. C’mon!”
Eleanor understood. She let out an eerie cry as Cordelia called to the pirate on the ship, “We’re spirits of the dead!”
“No ye aren’t. Yer just the ankle biters, and ye somehow got away from them sharks! How’d ye manage that?”
“We’re ghossstss-sss!” Cordelia insisted.
“Yez think I’m gonna fall for that, jesh because I had a few dips of the grape? Ghosts float!”
“Ooooo-eeee,” Brendan said. “Everyone knows ghosts can’t float over water, chuuuump—”
Cordelia cut him off. “Aren’t you Ishmael Hynde?” she asked.
“What?” the pirate blurted. “How’d ye know my—”
“Father!” Cordelia called.
“I ain’t yer daddy,” said Hynde.
“We are the ghosts of your unborn children,” said Cordelia.
“My unborn children?!”
“Why have you abandoned us, Father? Why have you left us alone, to fend for ourselves, in all the corners of the world?”
“Naw, ye can’t be. I got no children—”
“Were you ever in Barcelona?” asked Cordelia.
“Yes,” said Hynde, smiling. “Spent five glorious days there!”
“And I am the fruit of those days!”
“Yer a liar!”
“And the boy here?” said Cordelia, pointing at Brendan. “He’s from Monaco!”
“But I only spent three hours in Monaco!”
“And for those hours he will haunt you forever”—as Cordelia spoke, she reached for her phone—“for being a deadbeat dad. I mean for abandoning us—” Her fingers slipped!
Cordelia’s phone fell. She let go of the rope and grabbed it in a desperate swoop, hanging by her legs with her ankles wrapped around each other.
“Deal! Are you—I mean, Ooooo-oooo!” Brendan called to Hynde.
“Yer not me children!” the pirate screamed, taking aim. “What kinder ghosht has ta keep itself from falling?”
In answer, Cordelia put the phone under her chin and lifted her head. The bright screen transformed her face into something truly ghostly—especially if you were a sailor with a preschool education who’d never seen an Apple logo. Lit in blue from below, Cordelia’s nose and cheeks cast a shadow over her eyes, turning them into black pits above her shining mouth. She looked like a turquoise-faced zombie from the bowels of the Titanic.
“Why have you done this to us, Fatherrrr!” Eleanor screamed.
“My babies!” Hynde shrieked. He reached out, tears spurting from his eyes. “Please forgive me!”
He ran toward the Walkers and leaped over the edge of the ship, stretching his arms out, trying to embrace his “children”—and fell into the ocean. He managed to fight the sea for a few moments, popping above the waves to shout, “Forgive meeee!”
Within moments Hynde was surrounded by sharks. He started to scream as they tore at his body and dragged him underwater.
“Ugh, that could’ve been us,” Brendan said in a small voice before leading the Walkers the rest of the way to the Moray’s stern. When he was close enough to touch the wood, he dropped his feet, held the rope with his hands, and started swinging back and forth.
“What are you doing?” Eleanor asked. “You’ll shake us off!”
“Hang tight, pun intended,” said Brendan.
He gathered momentum and went airborne, pointing his legs at a circular window to the left of Sangray’s cabin. He smashed through the glass with both feet. He had sort of planned ahead, enough to bend his knees to catch himself on the edge of the window—but he hadn’t counted on his head swinging back to whap against the side of the Moray.
“Ow!”
For a moment, as he hung upside down, Brendan saw stars: literal ones and those of the cartoon variety. Then he tensed his stomach, dug deep for the kind of strength he always needed to do the last sit-up in lacrosse practice, and pulled himself up to peer into the cabin on the other side of the window.
Brendan gasped.
“What?” said Cordelia.
“It’s . . . just . . . forget it. Nothing!” Brendan climbed inside the cabin, steadied himself, and stretched back for Eleanor.
“I’m cool,” she said, waving him off. She had grabbed the thick, rusted bolts that held together the Moray’s sides and used them to climb down. She came inside with Brendan—and froze just as he had.
“Whoa.”
“What?” Cordelia started, climbing in last.
It was a small cabin, eight feet by eight feet.
And the floors, walls, and ceiling were covered with human bones.
The floor was tiled with leg bones. Tibiae and fibulae interlocked so that there was little space between them. The bones weren’t set in anything, so when the Walkers shifted their feet, the floor moved, clicking and snapping.
“What is this place?” Cordelia asked. The walls were covered with thinner radii and humeri—arm bones—which also didn’t appear to be mounted in anything. “How are those sticking to the wall?”
“Magic,” said a stunned Eleanor.
“Let’s get outta here,” Brendan said. “They’re only bones; they’re not gonna hurt us. And check this. . . .”
Brendan pointed to a cutlass mounted on the wall. A spear hung beside it along with a bunch of other weapons. They were the only things in the room that weren’t made of bone. Brendan reached for the cutlass and spear—
“Wait, Bren!”
But it was too late. When he pulled them off the wall, he triggered something.
The room started coming alive.
It began at Brendan’s feet. The bones jittered and shook, each activating the one next to it, spreading like a wave until . . .
Brendan froze. Years ago he had seen a nature documentary, and he recalled a vivid scene set in a cave filled with bats, where the floor was so filled with bat poop (guano, they called it, but really it was bat poop) that it became a living carpet of mealworms and beetles. You glanced at the guano and it looked like a normal floor, but if you focused for a moment, it wriggled and swarmed. It was one of the freakiest things Brendan had ever seen, and now the floor of bones was doing the same thing.
A femur stood up in the middle of the room. “Duck!” Brendan yelled to his sisters. Cordelia and Eleanor just managed to comply as a humerus zipped past their heads.
“What’s happening?” Eleanor asked.
The bones clicked and clacked and stood and flew, like an explosion played in reverse. Many somersaulted through the air, while others shot forward like arrows. The weapons that were still mounted on the wall went with them. Every bone seemed to have a purpose, flying toward the center of the room, right next to Brendan. He buried his head in his elbow, certain he was about to get hit, and peeked out as the bones and weapons started interlocking. Triquetra snapped in place with cuboids; scaphoids met calcanei; hunks of skull and teeth sailed down from the ceiling. For a minute the Walkers thought some kind of horrible super-skeleton monster was being constructed . . . but then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.
The room was now a simple wooden ship’s cabin.
And the bones had formed a rectangular dining table.
“You okay?” Cordelia asked Brendan.
“Um, impressed, actually.” Brendan tapped his fist against the table. It didn’t wobble; the bones had fused together perfectly. And on it were actual place settings!
The plates were made of shoulder blades. Upside-down skulls formed goblets (mounted on tripods of ribs). Finger bones, with toe bones for tines, served as forks. Knives were made of ribs and teeth.
“All that’s missing is food!” Brendan said. He looked up. “Please, God, could we get s
ome food in here?”
“I don’t think God made that table come together,” said Eleanor. “Besides, aren’t those human bones? You can’t eat off human bones!”
“Hey, I’m hungry. Right now I’d split an ice cream sandwich with the Wind Witch,” said Brendan.
Cordelia laughed, but Eleanor held her stomach. “I actually feel sick thinking about it,” she said.
“Are you okay?” Brendan asked.
Eleanor shook her head. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“You’re getting seasick,” Cordelia said. “The ship is moving more than the house did. Go to the window for fresh air.”
Eleanor did—but it was too late. Spit was flooding her mouth. She got on her tiptoes and tried to aim out the window . . . but nothing came out. She was dry heaving.
“Ick!” she said, wiping stringy spit from her mouth. “I haven’t eaten in so long I can’t even throw up!” She started crying—
And suddenly three sizzling porterhouse steaks appeared on the bone plates, along with hand-cut french fries and creamed spinach.
“Whoa,” Brendan said.
Root beer rose inside each skull goblet until fizzy bubbles popped out. Brendan lurched toward the table—
“Don’t do it.” Eleanor grabbed him. “I haven’t eaten anything but corn for the last two days, but even still I know it’s not right to eat that stuff. There was something in The Heart and The Helm about it . . . it’s some kind of test the pirates set up to protect them from their enemies.”
“It can’t be that big of a deal, right?” asked Brendan.
“Probably not,” said Cordelia.
Cheese appeared on the fries. Dripping, creamy, orange cheese.
Brendan shoved Eleanor aside, grabbed a fork, and constructed a bite of steak, fries, and cheese that filled his mouth with 100 percent pleasure—which became 200 percent when he washed it down with a swig of root beer. Brendan didn’t even realize it, but he closed his eyes as he ate, and when he opened them he was looking at Cordelia, who was having just as good a time, slicing off her second strip of meat.
“Cordelia!” screamed Eleanor. “You’re supposed to be the logical one!”
“I doummppphht”—Cordelia chewed quickly, swallowed, and continued when she could properly articulate her response—“I doubt that I’m gonna die from this food after all the other insanely dangerous stuff we had to go through.”
“You guys are idiots!” Eleanor said. “I’m happy that I’m seasick!” She headed for the door—
As Brendan slumped on the floor. Unconscious.
“Bren!”
Cordelia and Eleanor rushed to him. His head was twisted back, and his tongue stuck out. “I told you!” Nell said—
And Brendan sat up and laughed.
“You—” Cordelia shrieked, smacking her brother as she showed off some of the new vocabulary she’d learned from Captain Sangray’s men.
“Lighten up!” said Brendan. “Can’t we have a little fun?”
“Not like that! We thought you were dead!”
“Whatever.” Brendan returned to his plate. Cordelia joined him. When the two siblings finished, taking care not to eat so much that they would get sleepy, they picked up the cutlass and spear that Brendan had pulled off the wall.
“Why are you staring at me?” Cordelia asked Eleanor.
“I’m waiting for you to shrink to the size of an ant or get super fat like in Alice in Wonderland.”
“Very funny.” The Walkers left the cabin and stepped into the lower decks of the Moray, holding the cutlass and spear.
Tiptoeing so as not to arouse the interest of any pirates who weren’t partying above, they moved a few feet . . . to what had to be Captain Sangray’s cabin.
Hanging on the door was a stuffed goat’s head with emerald eyes. Muffled screams came from inside.
Brendan put his hand on the doorknob—but then it started to turn on its own. The Walkers scrambled behind a barrel as the door swung open and Tranquebar, the first mate, stepped out of the room.
“Captain’s starting to really lose it,” Tranquebar mumbled to himself, scratching absently at his eye patch as he walked down the hall.
“Can we do this?” Brendan asked when Tranquebar was gone. He put his hand back on the doorknob. The Walkers looked at each other. Brendan had the cutlass; Cordelia had the spear; Brendan still didn’t have a shirt on. They were covered with dirt and cuts and bruises; Brendan had lost the tip of his ear. They almost looked like pirates.
“Let’s do it,” said Cordelia.
Brendan opened the door.
Captain Sangray’s cabin resembled a witch doctor’s den. It had Polynesian masks on the walls, many small candles on the floor, and two huge black cauldrons next to the door, seated on coals, filled with bubbling black fluid.
In the center of the room was the table, made of gray stone.
On it were Will and Penelope.
They were chained to the table, covered in thick black tar; it looked like they’d been fished out of a bog. They struggled desperately against their chains . . . and they screamed through the gags around their mouths, which were two slimy, thick, dead eels.
Captain Sangray stood over them, wearing the mask the Walkers had seen through the stained glass: a rat mask with a giddy, toothy face and a long nose that ended in walrus whiskers. He held a wavy dagger over Penelope’s chest.
“My friends!” His voice boomed through the mask’s too-white teeth. “Welcome! You’ll make a fine addition to my bone collection!”
The Walkers’ hearts and mouths and hands froze. If Captain Sangray hadn’t been masked, and he hadn’t made Will and Penelope into pitch-dark golems, and his cabin didn’t look like a place where children got turned into newts . . . then they might have charged him and taken him out. But hesitation breeds hesitation. Sangray smiled behind his rat teeth.
“Oh, so you came to watch? Then let the vivisection begin!”
“Nuh!” Penelope Hope begged underneath him.
Sangray unleashed a high-pitched laugh. He sounds like a rat, thought Brendan in some far-off corner of his brain. Penelope twisted back and forth on the table, trying to bite through the eel that gagged her—
But Captain Sangray sank the knife into her chest.
“Nnnngggggggggeeee!”
Penelope’s gag couldn’t muffle her scream. “First,” Sangray said, “we open up the chest cav—”
“No!” Brendan shouted, charging with his cutlass.
Brendan’s jab pierced Sangray’s hand. The captain cried out and dropped the knife. Cordelia threw her spear but missed; it clattered off the stained-glass window behind Sangray.
“Split up!” Cordelia yelled.
She and Eleanor ran for opposite corners of the room. Sangray tore off his mask to inspect his wound. “You cut a hole in me,” he mused, rotating his bloody hand in front of his face, staring at Brendan through the slice in his palm. Then he charged.
Brendan backed against the cabin door. Sangray jerked his chin up—left, then right—to draw out the curved razor-sharp daggers that were attached by straps to his beard. As he ran toward Brendan, he whirled his head in circles, spinning the knives like helicopter blades. The daggers spun so fast that Brendan could only see flashes of chrome. Brendan held up his cutlass, trying to sever the straps—
But one of the whirling blades slammed into Brendan’s sword. He dropped it.
“Help!” Brendan called, knowing that the electric tremor in his arm was the last thing he’d ever feel. “He’s gonna chop me into tuna tartare!”
At that moment Eleanor pushed over one of the bubbling cauldrons. The tar inside hissed as it hit the wood of the cabin, causing Sangray to turn his head. His spinning daggers were inches from Brendan’s face.
Brendan took the opportunity to kick Sangray in the groin. Penelope had taught him well.
The captain fell, his beard blades clattering to the floor as his injured hand landed in steaming tar.
“Rraaaggh!” He shot to his feet and turned to Eleanor, spiraling his beard. “I’ll kill you all!”
The sound of the rotating blades was the worst part, like an industrial fan in a wind tunnel. Eleanor dove—but one of the blades caught her shoulder, slicing deeply. She screamed as she landed next to Cordelia, who was unchaining Will from the table, and then she gritted her teeth and started crawling toward Cordelia’s spear.
Cordelia had already freed Will’s ankles; she was working on his wrists, unwilling to touch the smelly eel wrapped around his mouth.
“Guh thuh uv muh!” Will said.
Cordelia closed her eyes and grabbed the eel from behind Will’s neck, yanking down, causing the creature to burst into two slimy pieces that fell away from his face.
“That’s more like it!” the pilot exclaimed, spitting out some bits of eel guts, as Cordelia freed his wrists. Sangray turned, his head still spinning the deadly blades, and moved toward Will. The pilot rolled off the table and hit the floor. Sangray’s blades struck the stone, shooting out sparks that hit his greased beard—
And turned into flames that licked up his face!
The captain cursed and stopped in his tracks, patting out the fire with his good hand. Eleanor retrieved the spear and handed it to Cordelia—and Cordelia thrust it into Sangray’s chest, holding on to the shaft as if to drive it through his heart.
The captain was too strong for that. Even as his beard filled the room with the smell of singed hair, he grabbed the spear’s shaft and turned it, wrenching Cordelia’s arm aside. She cried out as her elbow twisted the wrong way. She let go of the spear. Sangray ripped it out of his chest. Will crept along the floor toward a wooden chest in the corner.
Captain Sangray opened a wall cabinet and removed a brass pistol inlaid with niello. It was a beautiful gun, and he admired it for a moment as Eleanor snuck behind him, opened her mouth, and bit down hard on his ankle.
“Ankle biter!” Sangray cried. Eleanor bit through the skin, drawing blood, and then scampered up the captain’s back and climbed onto his shoulders.
House of Secrets Page 20