by Kaleb Nation
There was a giant sign that read Welcome Ye to East Dinsmore over the escalator. There was a long row of people in sharp suits and ties waiting at the bottom, holding signs with names of executives they were there to pick up in their sedans. They all looked alike—except one. In fact, he didn’t appear to be human at all. His skin was entirely gray in a sickly manner and hung off him in blobs of blubbery fat, poking out from under his dingy shirt, which was far too small to even cover his waist. He had the head of a man, though, with wild rolls of fat surrounding his neck, but where his arms should have been, he had six thin tentacles, three on each side of his body. The lower two sets were crossed impatiently, and the upper pair held a sign that read: Barn Ha’brick.
“Oh no…” Bran said to himself. One of the creature’s tentacles snaked around his back to lift up his pants, which kept falling down. Bran swallowed hard and approached him.
“I think you’re my…driver?” Bran said aloud. The squat man looked up at Bran.
“Eh?” he said, bending out an ear. “You Barn?”
“Bran,” he stammered in reply.
“Bran?” the creature said. “Eh. Oswald.”
One of the tentacles moved toward him, and Bran guessed that he was supposed to shake it. So he did with only a bit of hesitation, and it felt as if he was shaking hands with a balloon.
“Car’s out this way,” Oswald said in a nasally, snorting voice, folding the sign and waddling ahead toward the doors. “Got any bags on th’ wheel?”
“Not besides these,” Bran said, and Oswald took the heavier one right out of Bran’s grasp, lifting it onto his shoulder as he ambled along, the legs of his faded jeans swishing against the tile floor.
“Don’t plan on stayin’ here long then I suppose, eh?” Oswald said. “Not too much to be packed in ’er.”
“Hopefully just a day or two,” Bran said.
“Really?” Oswald replied, shooting Bran a strange glance. “And you’re visitin’ Gary down there? Would have thought you’d stay at least some, bein’s no one’s gone in so long.”
“No, just a short time,” Bran said, and Oswald dropped the subject as they went outside, where it was windy and cold. They crossed two lanes of bus and taxi traffic and came to the parking garage. Oswald led Bran down a way and stopped at his cab.
It was perhaps the most battered piece of machinery Bran had seen, and that was after years of suffering through Sewey’s Schweezer. The trunk lid was white and had the number 314 painted on it like a race car, and the hood was a slightly different shade of yellow than the body. The door on the driver’s side was purple, and attached to the back of the car appeared to be a large propeller from a boat engine. There were at least four antennae attached to the back, one nearly scraping the ceiling of the parking garage.
“Had Shirley here for nineteen years,” Oswald said proudly as he popped the trunk open. “There ain’t no cab in all of West and East Dinsmore that’ll take you where you need to be this morning.”
“And you drive this…for a living?” Bran said.
“Every day,” Oswald replied, slamming the lid with Bran’s bag inside. “Let’s head off before traffic gets bad.”
The tears in the seats scratched against Bran’s jeans, as did the holes in the carpet which were not quite being held down by the duct tape stretched across its tatters. There was a single, orange curtain on the far window, drawn aside on its rod so that Bran could see out.
Oswald was an adept driver, swerving around every car on the road, never staying in the same lane for more than ten seconds. There were at least fifteen times that Bran was certain they were about to run someone over, but the other drivers always got out of his way, as if they were very accustomed to this. Bran imagined Sewey and Oswald would make a perfect race car team.
The city sprawled out with skyscrapers and businesses all about, even busier than two or three Deeper Dunces put together. Oswald navigated it all by memory, heading across the city and never once having to stop for a red light.
When the buildings ceased to block Bran’s view, he saw to the west a giant bridge with at least twelve lanes of traffic going back and forth. It was painted bright yellow and crossed a wide, rushing river far below. The bridge separated East Dinsmore from West Dinsmore—but Oswald was not heading in that direction at all. He was pointed straight ahead toward a long, wooden dock, which poked out far ahead into the seemingly endless ocean. In the distance there was an island, and on the island was a lighthouse.
“There’s Elsie Island,” Oswald said, nodding. “I’ll have you there soon enough.”
“There’s a ferry?” Bran asked as Oswald roared around a corner so he could get to the pier. Oswald didn’t seem to hear him, because he didn’t reply. Bran looked ahead but could not see any large ferries docked there, and very few boats even.
“Is this the right place?” Bran asked.
“Eh?” Oswald replied. “Of course it is. Can’t you see Elsie right out there?”
Bran could not argue with this, but then the tires of the car met with the beginning of the dock, and the land disappeared behind them.
“What are you doing?” Bran shouted, but they were going so fast it came out as a garbled and embarrassing scream. Oswald looked in the rearview mirror.
“Eh?” he said. “What’s that now?”
“Look where you’re bloody going!” Bran roared, and Oswald obeyed, swerving back into the middle of the pier.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “We’ll be on our way in no time. Here’s it now.”
He waved one of his free tentacles toward the front window, though they were going so fast Bran could not see anything except for the end of the dock.
“Are we getting on a ferry?” Bran shouted.
“Eh?” Oswald replied.
“A ferry!” Bran said even louder. “Are we going to wait for a ferry?”
“No ferries here,” Oswald said. “What do we need a ferry for?”
“Because we’re surrounded by water!” Bran nearly screamed. Oswald shook his head, disregarding Bran entirely as they raced across the pier, the boards threatening to pop beneath them. The car just went rumbling on as the end got closer and closer with each second—until there was no pier left. The car left the ground and went soaring through the air. For a moment, Bran felt weightless, and he couldn’t draw in enough breath for a shout. They seemed to float there for a second, sailing like a glider, as Oswald calmly turned his radio dial to 88.1 FM and turned the volume all the way up.
The moment the radio was tuned, classical music blared out from the speakers in a fiery flash of pianos and trumpets, and at the same time, something happened to the outside of the car. There was a whoosh, and something invisible sealed the outside so that the air felt different; as the car tilted forward, Bran saw the water coming right at them and the hood break the surface and go diving down into the waters below.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion, but the moment they were under the water, time rushed back. The car dove so smoothly that it seemed it was far more accustomed to being below the water than above, and its motion was so effortless that if it had had a mouth and eyes, Bran felt the car itself might have been smiling with glee, as the violins and the horns and the flutes continued in victorious song.
***
Two men stood, shivering and yet sweating with terror, in a narrow alley of East Dinsmore, their hands bent behind their shoulders as if attached to the brick wall. Both had perfectly smooth, tanned faces, with bleached hair. But their faces were bloodied now as Joris stood before them, wielding his pistol as they tried to quiet their pained moans.
Elspeth appeared from the shadows with a look of calm annoyance on her face. She paid no heed to Joris.
“Look at me,” she hissed to the men, and they struggled to lift their heads in their painful, bent positions. They whimpered, breathing
harshly as she looked upon them with disdain—the same gaze she had held when she had shoved them into the van at the airport, then pushed them into the alley, and then slammed their skulls and bodies against the bricks.
“I really, really want to kill both of you,” Elspeth said, her voice never rising. “I want to torch each of your bodies so no one even knows who you are anymore, then I want to put your remains into a dumpster where no one can tell the difference between you and the garbage.”
The men trembled.
“But that is so tiresome,” she said, putting one of her hands under each of the men’s jaws and lifting their faces. “I’ve got so many better things to do. And I would love to be distracted by them instead of having to entertain myself with you.”
She let their heads drop and lifted something in front of their eyes.
“How did this get into your bag?” she said. She held a small black ball with a miniature antenna. The men blinked at it, shaking their heads in denial.
“N-never seen it before,” the first man said shakily, sweat pouring down his face.
“You didn’t take it from someone?” Elspeth asked. “Not a boy, about fifteen years old?”
“No!” the man choked, his breath going in and out in quick gasps.
“Just kill them,” Elspeth hissed at Joris, and the men screamed terribly until the other man shouted.
“Wait, wait!” he said. “I do remember a boy though! He was on our plane!”
Elspeth turned to him. “What did he look like?”
“Brown hair,” the man stammered. “He was right across from us.”
“You know where he was going?” Elspeth pressed.
“Yeah,” the man wheezed. “He was heading off to Elsie Island. And we told him he couldn’t get there, but he said he was still going that way.”
Elspeth shifted, turning the man’s head higher so she could stare deeper into his eyes. He seemed to bend under the pressure of her gaze.
“But nobody ever goes out that far toward Elsie Island,” he went on, “because of the undertow and the rocks: it drowns divers and wrecks the ships.”
“And the ghosts,” the other man said. “The island’s haunted, they say. There’s light under the water there, you can see from far off on really dark nights.”
He nodded his head painfully toward the open end of the alley, where the outline of the Elsie Island lighthouse could be seen towering out of the mist, its bulb turning across the waters.
“It’s off limits, on account of the lighthouse,” the first man rasped. “They say there’s a man who lives there who keeps it runnin’, but he’s got special order to be let alone.”
The man whimpered, fear in his damp eyes. “I-I don’t know anything more.”
Elspeth gently stroked his cheek.
“Of course you don’t,” she said gently, and she gave a smile as if to reassure him that she was done. She turned to walk away. Joris lifted his pistol and shot twice, the sound of it silenced. The moment Joris finished, the gruner leapt at the head of the first man, ripping his body from the wall and tearing into his flesh with its teeth.
“How do we know they were telling the truth?” Joris asked Elspeth, moving to follow her as the alley filled with snapping and thrashings from the gruner as it fed. Elspeth did not answer him but stood at the end of the alley and stared, as if her piercing eyes might discover where Bran was hiding.
“He was,” she assured him after a few moments.
“How do we get over there then?” Joris pressed. Elspeth shook her head.
“Don’t worry,” she replied. “We won’t need to. Bran will come to us.”
“How?” Joris said.
“Thomas will make him,” Elspeth said. “And he will return with the missing piece.”
She looked to Joris. “Thomas has this going exactly according to plan.”
Joris didn’t like to hear her speak of Thomas in this way, with reluctant admiration. After a few moments, the gruner gave a low growling purr and slid against Elspeth’s leg, but she continued to stare into the waters, her eyes never leaving the waves as they crashed against the rocky walls of Elsie Island.
Chapter 21
The Lights beneath the Water
Bran could neither move nor speak as the taxicab plunged through the water, the speed of its descent slowing the deeper they got, until the walls of the cab were buffeted gently by tall grasses. They rocked side to side a bit until the car hit the bottom with a soft bump.
Oswald turned the radio down, and all was silent within the car. It was very dark deep under the surface—Bran was frozen in his seat, waiting for the walls of the car to break and let the water consume them.
“Aye there, mate,” Oswald said from up front. “Doing all right, eh?”
He snorted loudly and flipped a switch on the dash, and the headlights flashed on, illuminating the world outside. A school of silver, glimmering fish rushed away from the light, swimming around the car. Oswald turned the ignition, and the car came to life again.
“How in the world is this working?” Bran asked.
“Eh?” Oswald replied, looking at him from the mirror. “My cab? I told you: ’tis the only cab in all of West and East Dinsmore that can take you to where you need to be. No doubting that, no sir.”
And that was all Oswald would say on the matter. He shifted gears, and the car started forward, its tires throwing back a tiny spray of dirt behind them as they went. The car pushed through the water as if it was dry land and the floor was the road, carrying them over bumps and around reefs and grasses, parting schools of fish as they went.
Bran didn’t think the six-tentacled Oswald would find a fairy odd, so Bran let Nim out of his bag. She flew up to the window and pressed against it, watching with wide eyes. He wished he had a camera—no words would ever be able to describe what he was seeing. He also wished that Astara might be there with him. The thought made his heart fall.
They drove on, Oswald steering them around wavering grasses and things sticking out of the ground, until they came over a hill and saw the tall form of Elsie Island poking out toward the surface. The island itself was shaped oddly—much like a rough stone pillar that had been placed into the ground, sloping out closer to the bottom. The house had been built into it, so that only part of the gray stone and the dirty glass windows stuck out from the rocky sides, age and water having caused the structure to go dull and washed out.
As they approached, Bran began to really see just how tall the inside of the house must be, the windows crawling all up the side of the mountain in odd, crooked places, curtains drawn over them so that he couldn’t see in. At the bottom, lights glowed atop an encircling brick wall. Behind the wall, the water was somehow kept away, so that Bran could see the dimly lit forms of dead trees and moldy statues.
The cab pulled up to a large gated entrance, and on the outside stood two towering, monstrous stone statues: the hideous forms of creatures, black with wings overshadowing the gate like a canopy, long tusks, and large eyes wide with rage. They seemed to watch Oswald and Bran as the cab approached. It felt like few had ever come this far toward that house in recent days, the wall so high that as they approached, it blocked the view of the garden entirely.
The gate was black and made of stone, solid and smooth save for the silver emblem of a giant crow in the center. Oswald didn’t hesitate at the menacing statues, driving under their wings until water around them disappeared, and they were once again on dry land.
“Here we are now, to the gate,” Oswald said, throwing his door open. The outside of the car was dripping with water. Oswald had Bran’s bags out and was opening his door before Bran had fully come to his senses.
“That was amazing,” Bran said, still in wonder.
“Aye,” Oswald said, gesturing for him to slide out. Bran did, and Oswald moved to get back into his car.
<
br /> “Wait!” Bran said. “What do I do?”
Oswald didn’t turn back. “Well, I don’t have a ticket in now, mate,” he said gruffly, and the roughness of his voice seemed to be a disguise for his uneasiness. “Gots to be going before something terrible happens with no way to vouch for it. Good day.”
He slammed the door of the cab, glancing nervously up toward the wings of the statues. He shifted gears and rocketed backward, and the moment he left the shadow of the wings, the car was again enveloped in water and started to float toward the surface. Bran was left alone, aghast.
It was eerily silent—the only sound Bran heard was the beating of his heart. Nim blinked at him and the gates before them.
“Well, we’ve got to get in somehow,” Bran said, leaving his bags and stepping closer to the gate. The second he moved, however, a great rumbling sound made him turn. The heads of the black statues moved, and Bran backed away until he stood trembling against the gate.
“Have you an invitation?” The lips of the statue on the right parted, revealing solid, black teeth and an endless stone mouth. The second statue pulled its head closer, its nose nearly touching Bran as its eyes studied him.
“I-I’m here to see Gary,” Bran stammered, not sure what to say.
“No one has approached this gate in many a day,” the second statue said, its voice hissing. “We are to be left alone. The house is to remain untouched. You are not welcome.”
“But I was sent here,” Bran protested. “By Adi Copplestone, his sister.”
“Gary’s sister has no authority here,” the first statue replied. “Even she must have an invitation or suffer the consequences.”
“But she sent me to see her brother,” Bran stammered. The statues were not impressed, their heads edging closer to him as if they might snap his head off.