by Неизвестный
Brian looked around to make sure nobody else was in earshot. This succeeded in making Edwin even more curious and eager for the news, even though he tried to stay away from office gossip.
“There may be a daemon on the island,” Brian said.
“That's not funny.”
“It's not meant to be funny. Something crawled its way out of the center of the world and emerged at the edge of the Wetlands.”
“Daemons aren't real, Brian.”
“Well, something killed that poor Russian girl.” Brian patted Edwin on the shoulder. “My condolences.”
Edwin pushed away the hand. “Svetlana may have had some unusual illness from the mainland. I don't know that she was killed.”
“But the old doctor said her lungs were full of seawater.”
“I know. I've been thinking about it, and the old doctor's main skill is identifying one type of liquid, and it isn't seawater.”
Brian looked confused.
“Rye,” Edwin said. “Or, in a pinch, vodka.”
“Irregardless, a daemon means trouble for everyone on the island.”
“Regardless,” Edwin said. “Irregardless is not a word.”
“Regardless, then. You'd better salt your doorway and windows before you go to sleep tonight.”
Edwin frowned and rearranged the stacks of paperwork on his desk. “I should say the same to you.”
Beaming, Brian said, “Not a problem for me. The daemon only eats virgins.”
His voice rising in volume, Edwin said, “That's chowder! The whole notion is chowder.”
Some others in the office turned to stare, and Edwin knew that soon he would be the subject of even more gossip. Imagine. The mourning would-be groom, back at work and having temper tantrums. Worried about imaginary daemons that eat virgins. Was it true? Was Edwin a virgin? They'd gossip amongst themselves about his love life, because, after all, he was such a heartthrob, with half the young girls on the island either in love or kid-love or full-on lust with him.
“You could do something about your situation,” Brian said.
Edwin shooed Brian away, saying, “I'm sure you have a lot of work.”
“Not really.”
“Great, you can take a few of these files,” Edwin said, pressing some folders against Brian's chest.
Brian took the folders and grumbled as he walked away.
He left Edwin to his paperwork, but returned an hour later and wordlessly placed a bag of salt on the young man's desk, to the amusement and titillation of all the women in the office.
* * *
Edwin was idly plotting revenge on Brian, perhaps a temporary hair color change shampoo from the pixies—Brian did take pride in his remaining locks—when his aunt, Patty, came into the office.
He took one look at her reddened face and said, “What's Peter done now?”
She seemed concerned about people hearing them, so they left the office and took a stroll outside, stopping in the courtyard near the giant boot that was the chapel. He sat with his back to the boot, so he didn't have to look at the place he didn't get married in.
“Peter didn't come home last night,” Patty said. “He's disappeared, off with that girl.”
“The Newface?” Edwin laughed to himself. “Pretty girl, that one. I can't say I don't envy him. She's probably teaching young Peter a few things from the mainland. I wouldn't worry about it.”
“But there's a daemon afoot,” she said.
“Oh, come on, Patty. That's just gossip to sell newspapers.”
“I know you're not a believer, and I didn't think I was either, but your feelings change when it's your one and only child who doesn't come home. Heaven knows what could happen to a person out in the woods.” She stopped and held her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Edwin, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to bring up your Svetlana.”
“She wasn't my Svetlana,” he said. “I hardly knew her, except for the letters. And even then, it was not so natural, you know? Sometimes her communication was very good, poetic even, but other times her letters were stilted, and focused on how much money I earned.”
Patty looked around, then up at the sky and got a strange look. “Maybe the goats were playing tricks on you.”
“Aunt Patty. I don't believe the goats talk, let alone type letters to people.”
“Would you consider calling a search party for Peter, though?”
“It's only been one night?”
“One very long night.”
“If he's not back tomorrow, I'll see what we can do. I'm afraid we're short-staffed right now, with people already looking into those fields that burned down.”
Patty's eyebrows lifted high, putting deep wrinkles into her freckled forehead. “Fire? Might have been the daemon. They say it turns things to smoke and sucks them down.”
“You're projecting,” he said with a knowing smile. “You want a cigarette, and you're projecting your desire onto an imaginary creature. Humans do this. It's all part of our denial system.”
“Oh, Edwin.” She patted his cheek, which was smooth and freshly-shaved. “Always a logical answer for everything.”
“We can't go blaming imaginary monsters for everything. I suspect the culprit was someone with a grudge against Hargrove Farms. Did you know that in the last year, two smaller family-run farms have gone into bankruptcy?”
“Ah,” she said. “Money is the worst monster.”
“Or the lack of it.”
She patted him on the knee. “Thanks for calming me down, sweetie.”
“Glad I could help.”
“Peter's probably having a great time. I bet they roasted up some land squid for dinner and slept in hammocks. Mothers worry, though.”
“He's probably having more fun than both of us put together,” Edwin said.
Chapter Thirteen
Earlier that same day
Opal awoke before her eyelids opened, and she took a moment to think about where she was. She was not in her new bedroom at Waleah's house, nor in a jail cell, nor washed up on a rocky shore. She heard breathing that was not hers, so she sat up with a start.
Peter, who seemed to be looking right at her, startled and made a yelping noise. He wore his camouflage-print cargo pants, and his olive green t-shirt, though the shirt was on inside out.
“You can see!” she said.
“No, I can't!” he said, closing his eyelids tightly.
She looked down at her thin cotton underwear. The cave was bright with daylight, and the goats were nowhere in sight. Opal's clothes lay near her, but the garments were not on her, which caused her some concern, especially if Peter could see.
She quickly grabbed her clothes and held them over herself. “You can so see, Peter, and you were looking at me in my underwear, you little perv. You're Pervy McPerverson.”
“No I'm not!” he said. “I can't see anything. I had to get dressed by feel only.”
“Then why are you clenching your eyes shut?”
“Just for your comfort. Should I open my eyes?”
“No. I mean yes. Do whatever is best for you.” She rubbed her face and felt terrible. “I'm so sorry your eyes aren't back to normal this morning.”
“My leg feels better, at least.”
She put her dry clothes back on. Everything was dirty, and her orange and pink runners were now close to brown, but at least they were dry. “What was the deal with that peephole in your family's bathroom, anyway? Is that normal around here for people to watch each other use the bathroom?”
“No!”
“But you were watching me.”
His eyes were still clenched shut. “Because you're a Newface. You can't be trusted.”
“As if!” She marched to the edge of the cave. All the talk of bathrooms had made her realize how much she had to go. “I'm going to pee in the woods now, so you stay here and don't… don't listen.”
“I'm not pervy!”
“As if!” She stepped out to the trees, which immediately misted lukewarm
water down on her. “Great!” she yelled at the trees, kicking one of them for good measure, which only seemed to make them rain down harder.
She found a spot that looked as good as any, out of sight and hearing of the opening of the cave, and started to do what nobody could do for her.
Not five feet ahead of her, a shadowy person appeared from nowhere.
“Hello?” Opal called out.
Because the figure had dark hair, she thought it might be Zara, so she called out, “Zara?”
The shape moved, turning, yet the figure was much darker than Zara, more like the absence of light, with no face, no features.
Opal froze in fear.
Just as quickly as it had appeared, the figure vanished.
Opal ran back to the cave and breathlessly told Peter what she'd seen, finishing with, “Is that normal?”
“If you mean, do people around here teleport, or beam up and down from spaceships like they're on that mainland TV series, Star Trek, then, no. No, they do not. That is not normal.”
“You're sure?”
“I don't know everything about magic, but teleporting! Cheese and jam! Even if teleporting around was possible, it would be forbidden.”
“Okay.” She looked into his eyes, which looked almost amber in the early morning glow. “Now what?”
“We get the honey, to help my sight.”
“How much further is the bluebee territory?”
Peter was distracted, running his hands over the floor of the cave. He held up something—two sticks of white chalk—and said, “Hey, what are these?”
“Chalk, just like Artie in the storybooks used to carry around.”
“Artie?”
Opal explained a little more and discovered that, for once, she knew something about the island Peter didn't—that a woman on the mainland had written about her adventures from when she'd lived on the island, in books published as fiction for kids. Sadly, however, Opal didn't remember much from the books that would be of use to her, since the adventures were mostly about things like stealing pies from windowsills and putting messy things in people's shoes. Her favorite parts, and what had stuck in her mind, had been Artie drawing magical stairs on the faces of cliffs and mountains, or the doors. He'd drawn doors inside caves.
Peter repeated, “Doors inside caves? I've never heard of that. Must be a witches' secret.” He shook his head and furrowed his brow. “They don't like to share knowledge. Do you think it would work?”
“A chalk door? I don't know what to think. Even if it did work, where would the door lead?”
“Somewhere else.”
She took one of the sticks of chalk from his hand. “Fine. I guess we can stick our head through and look around. We don't have to jump through.” She looked around for a nice, flat spot, found one, and drew a door a foot taller than herself on the cave wall.
Peter said, “Did it work?”
“The chalk lines are sorta glowing, like light coming through a crack.”
“That is SO COOL!”
“Peter, I'm worried about that shadow person. What if it was someone spying on us? The witches said I wasn't allowed to do magic.”
He was reaching blindly toward the glowing chalk line. “But magic is so cool.”
“Peter, don't touch that. You could end up in a giant owl's nest.”
Peter rubbed his stomach. “At least we'd get some breakfast! We'd whip up a giant omelet with one of those eggs.”
Opal's own stomach growled. “I wish you hadn't said that.”
A roar reverberated through the cave.
“Opal! That's some hungry belly you've got.”
“That wasn't me. I think the sound was coming from outside the cave.”
“Do you see the shadowy person?”
She shushed him. The roar sounded again, this time closer, and the trees at the mouth of the cave began to rain harder, then pour.
“Tiger?” she whispered.
Again, a noise filled the cave, though now it was more of a grinding than a roar. It sounded neither human nor animal, but like something Opal had heard at a monster truck show, when a car had been crushed in an auto-wrecker's machinery. The glass windows had popped out as the metal car whined and squealed horrifically.
The sound from the woods was even worse.
Now Peter's face was a mask of fear, his mouth frozen open. He seemed to be trying to speak, but nothing was coming out.
She whispered, “What is it? Do you know that sound?”
“Daemon.”
“Is that bad?”
“Daemon.”
Opal grabbed the sharpened sticks they'd brought in with them and handed one to Peter, but he could barely hang onto it, let alone fight.
The thing made its rending, scraping noise again. The ground trembled and the trees at the entrance began shedding their leaves along with the downpour of water.
Peter said, “We're dead.”
Opal tucked the stick of chalk into her pocket, and took one more look at the door outlined on the cave wall. The edges were glowing, inviting.
She tossed the sticks on the ground, grabbed Peter's hand, and pulled him behind her as she lunged for the chalk door. Part of her expected to smash her face against the side of the cave, concussing herself so she wouldn't even put up a fight when the creature reached the cave to eat her. But the other part of her had faith, because she had climbed those stairs. Those impossible stairs.
They went through the door, into darkness.
And they fell, down, down, down.
Chapter Fourteen
Waleah
The floors in the old house squeaked.
Waleah and Mitchell didn't entertain much, but if they had, surely people would have commented that the mansion was a little worn-out or worn-in these days, and a shadow of its former glory.
If the old wooden floors weren't so worn and sad-looking, the Weirmas could have a dinner party, or one of those modern cocktail parties, where everyone gets embarrassingly drunk on martinis by quarter past seven, and eventually the guests, who've been expecting a dinner that isn't being served, eat up all the little snacks, then turn on the hosts and ransack the kitchen for crackers.
The floorboards had to be dealt with first, though.
Waleah thought happily about waxing and having parties, but the girl—Opal, of all the things to name a child—still hadn't returned from her errand. As Waleah poured the last of the frozen bluebees on top of her hot oatmeal, she smiled and recalled her own adventures, back in the day.
Sleeping outdoors at night while gazing up at the stars had been one of her most favorite things. Nowadays, her joints creaked at the mere thought of spending a night on anything but her soft bed or one of the sofas.
“Do you think she'll be alright out there?” she asked her husband, Mitchell.
He hadn't said much since he'd discovered another pesky living, breathing human inside his house, and it didn't look like he was about to break his silence just yet. He glowered at his own bowl of oatmeal, devoid of bluebees, sugar, or joy.
“It'll be nice to have someone to talk to,” she said as she joined him at the table where they'd shared thirty-nine years of breakfasts and almost as many decent conversations.
“Kids from the mainland adjust better than adults,” she said, not waiting for any encouragement to continue talking. “Helps if you throw them right into the thick of things, I figure. Of course, now that I think about it, I could have sent her into town for fresh croissants. She'd be back by now, and we'd have croissants.”
Mitchell grunted.
“What are you doing down in the basement? Still trying to get one of those radios to work?” He didn't answer. “There's nothing legal about what you're doing down there, don't think I don't know. I'd tell the authorities myself if I thought you were in danger of actually getting something to work.”
The edge of his mouth betrayed him with the tiniest of smiles.
“No! Mitchell! Don't tell me you've g
ot those old things working. Have you?”
He shook his head, no, and continued shoveling in oatmeal.
She felt satisfaction and disappointment at once.
After a moment, she said, “Would you mind picking up a few things in town?”
He stood, picked up his empty bowl, placed it in the sink, and disappeared off to his workshop in the basement.
“How about you, Waleah?” she asked herself. “Would you like to run into town for some croissants? Oh, look at the time. I reckon the pub might be open. What's that? You wouldn't mind a little drinkie-poo? Me neither! Let me just get my purse and we'll be off.”
* * *
The barman, Khet, had Waleah's drink poured before she took her seat at the bar.
“You're a good man,” she said. “Never retire.”
He whipped a bar cloth over his shoulder and said, gruffly, “Course not. And let some goat-talker run the place and have all the fun, flirtin' with m'patrons?”
She giggled like a schoolgirl into her glass of wine. “Where's Hoover?”
“Sunnin' himself under the lamp in the back room, along with Mittens. Where's your new one?”
“I don't know,” she said, feeling concerned. Concern was a new feeling for her, and she'd been feeling it for hours now, since that morning, when she'd discovered Opal wasn't in her bed. And now she was feeling even more concern about all these new-found feelings of responsibility for a younger human—a human she hadn't known existed two days prior.
“Don't know or don't care?” He stroked his snowy white beard.
“She's running an errand for me,” Waleah said, staring into her glass. “She roped young Peter, that's Patty's son, into going along with her, from what I hear.”
Khet laughed. “The girl's no dummy. Reminds me of another girl, when she was fifteen.”
Waleah smiled. “I'm so glad I don't have to be young again. And to be a Newface, here? After a life on the mainland?”
“Let's not call her that word,” he said.
“Oh, Khet. What if she wants to be a witch? What if she thinks that's the only way she can fit in here?”