He leaped across the last few yards of meadow, down onto the muddy little path that ran up toward the farm. In a moment he was on the dock, such as it was, untying the painter of Willoughby’s rowing boat. It was half swamped with rainwater. Jack bailed it with a dipper even as he pushed off and settled onto the middle thwart. He unshipped the oars, plunged them into the water, spun the boat half around with the first crazy heave, and then settled to it, pulling out toward the middle of the pond and letting himself drift down as he bailed.
He was safe – wet and cold, but safe. He set his feet on cither side of the boat spinning toward town. With the current he’d be there in no time at all – long before Dr Brown would suppose. There’d be time to think, to plan. They could go to Dr Jensen, perhaps, and get his advice. Jack looked up into the falling rain. The sky was dark and whirling with clouds torn to bits by wind. The moon was high by now, showing through the clouds themselves, then through the sudden rents between them, then disappearing altogether and leaving the earth dark and cold.
Circling above, illuminated for a moment in moonlight, was a bird – a crow, following the lazy course of the river. When the moon blinked out beyond storm clouds the crow was gone with it, invisible against the night.
Helen pulled the door back and found Skeezix on the stairs, grinning up at her. ‘Smells like the devil up here,’ he said, wrinkling up his nose and looking around.
‘I’ve been burning the curtains,’ Helen said to him.’
‘Ah. Look what we’ve found, Jack and I.’
Helen looked at the thing in his hand, a disc as big around as a saucer. ‘What it is? Looks like it’s made of seashell.’
Skeezix looked around warily, surprised, perhaps, to see that Helen had been burning the curtains, or someone had. ‘I thought I heard voices. Were you talking to someone?’
Helen shrugged and took the disc out of his hand. It was a tremendous button, with two holes drilled into the centre of it, made of abalone, probably, and a monstrous abalone at that. ‘This is fascinating, isn’t it? You’ll give it to Dr Jensen, I suppose, and he’ll put it with his other giant trinkets, and you can go over and look at them on rainy Sunday afternoons and wonder where they came from.’
Skeezix gave Helen a dubious eye. ‘Sorry you stayed behind, are you? You missed it up in the hills. Dr Brown was there; MacWilt. He nearly killed Jack.’
Helen flinched a bit despite the ‘nearly’. ‘Is Jack hurt?’
‘No. I hit him with a rock – Dr Brown, that is. He’s a shape-changer, you know. Half the time he flies round the countryside as a crow. He was in a tree, and I hit him with a rock. Pow! Just like that.’ Skeezix thumped himself in the chest with his balled-up fist, then reeled back with a look of surprised chagrin on his face, imitating Dr Brown as a crow.
Helen nodded. ‘Just like that? He was a crow? How did he almost kill Jack, peck him in the forehead?’
‘Not the crow – MacWilt. Blind as a cave fish, but seeing through Dr Brown’s eyes. It was spooky, I can tell you. Here he came, around the hill, tapping with his stick. I could see that something was wrong, so I circled back around and hid. Jack stayed to talk. It was just like Jack – very polite to a blind devil with a gun.’ Skeezix grinned and shook his head, recalling it, glorying in his own good sense. Helen gave him a withering look, though, and he went on, telling her about slamming the crow with the rock and the two of them going for the gun and very nearly getting rid of the crow for good and all, and MacWilt staggering away sightless and shouting while Jack and Skeezix ran down over the hills toward Mrs Oglevy’s orchards, looking to get another crack at the crow.
‘You didn’t get him.’
‘No,’ said Skeezix, sitting down at the table and idly thumbing Mrs Langley’s book. ‘He was frightened for his life – flew like he was shot from a catapult. I wouldn’t be surprised if he packed up his carnival and left. If he was smart, that’s what he’d do, and without waiting for an invitation.’ Skeezix brushed his hair back out of his face and squinted at Helen. It was the look of someone who’d done a dangerous job and done it well.
‘You nitwit,’ said Helen, squinting back at him and giving him a smarmy sort of look – a look that made it clear she saw right through him. ‘Pack up and leave! I told you hot to go out there meddling around. So did Dr Jensen. What did you find? I’ll tell you what – nothing, that’s what. You nearly got killed, and what for? So you could come back here and carry on. Well, I’ve had a few adventures of my own. I’ve met a couple of curious people.’
‘Like who?’
‘Like Mrs Langley.’
Skeezix looked around him all of a sudden. The sarcastic face he was making dissolved.
‘She’s gone now. She disappeared when you came fumbling at the trapdoor. She was on the verge of telling me everything. Her husband’s been there, and –’
‘Been where?’
‘Why, to the magical land, idiot. Where do you think, San Francisco? Areata? Where else would he have been?’
‘All right, all right.’ Skeezix held up his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘Relax, will you? Take a few deep breaths; you’re all worked up.’
‘I’ll relax you with this button.’ Helen menaced him with the button, holding it over his head with both hands. ‘Anyway, her husband’s been across, and back again. You can find all sorts of worlds over there, she’s been telling me. Worlds full of giants here, full of tiny little men there. And after a bit you grow or shrink to size – very convenient, except that your clothes don’t grow with you. I promised I’d take this change of clothes down to the cove where her husband – Jimmy – is supposed to come in. He won’t have a thing to wear, otherwise.’
‘The filthy –’ began Skeezix, but Helen waved him silent.
‘He isn’t filthy anything. He’s a wonderful man and he’ll seem like a giant to us, but then he’ll shrink out of his clothes. He probably already has and they’re scattered down the coast by now.’
‘The shoe!’
‘No, not the shoe. That stuff wasn’t his. I asked Mrs Langley.’
‘Then whose is it?’
‘How should I know whose it is? I got all this from Mrs Langley. She’s a ghost, for goodness’ sake, and lives in this attic. She’s no oracle. Her husband’s come from little worlds, too – crawled up through gopher holes. There’s any number of ways you can come across, but she recommends coming by water. It’s too dangerous the other way. You’re at the mercy of every mole you run into.’
Skeezix grimaced. ‘I dare say. And bugs, too. Imagine running into a potato bug when you’ve shrunk down to the size of a worm. It’s horrifying, isn’t it? So what did you find out that we can use? This is all very nice – first-rate gossip. But look at the source. A ghost, after all.’
‘Sshh!’ said Helen, widening her eyes. ‘You should have seen what she did to Peebles. He tried to burn the place down, with me in it, and –’
Skeezix stood up and punched his fist into his open palm. ‘I’ll murder him. Where is he now? He’s downstairs, in the kitchen. I saw him there. I’ll feed him to the dogs.’
Helen pushed him back over into the chair. The look on his face seemed to her to indicate that he’d do what he said. ‘Wait a moment. I’ll help you do it, but there’s more to tell you first. Mrs Langley threw Peebles downstairs?’
Skeezix blinked hard, then looked around slowly. ‘Good for her!’ he said with an air of sudden overwhelming approval. ‘That’s just what I’ve been saying about her, haven’t I? Isn’t it? I’ve got nothing but admiration for a woman like that – living up here like a monk, nothing but the finest furniture all heaped around like this. It’s a wonder, isn’t it? I mean really.’ He gestured roundabout, then peered into the shadows, grinning weakly as if half expecting Mrs Langley to materialise there, perhaps intending to pitch him down the stairs too.
‘Relax,’ said Helen. ‘She likes you. She told me so. She likes Jack, too. Jack isn’t hurt, is he?’
Skeezix shook his head. ‘I g
ot there in time. Jack was lucky.’
‘I’m sure he was,’ said Helen. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to get these clothes down to the cove, the sooner the better.’ Then in a whisper she said, ‘I don’t think he’s going to come, actually. He’s been away years now. But she’s such a dear old thing; I want to do it just to satisfy her.’
Skeezix nodded. He could see the value in that. ‘Smells like someone’s cooking something awful.’
And it did. There was a rotten, fishy sort of odour coming up through the vent – clearly not cabbage soup. The two of them stepped across and peered through. There was Peebles, rolling out dough on the wooden counter. The bucket that had held the strange fish still lay on the table, empty now but for two inches of bloody ocean water. The fish lay beside it, flayed and hacked and boned. A heap of its little fingerlike fins lay alongside the muck cleaned out of the fish, into which had been shoved the creature’s severed head, eyes open and staring.
Helen turned away, sickened. There was something in the cut-off fins that reminded her of – what? Peebles’s regrown finger. That was it.
‘Look at this!’ whispered Skeezix.
‘I can’t. It makes me sick.’
‘He’s making up a pie, a fish pie! Good God! He thinks he’s going to feed us Solstice fish!’ He walked over to where Helen sat at the table. ‘Let’s go down there right now and make him eat it. Raw. Every bit of it, guts and all. What in the world do you suppose would happen to him? I bet he’d become immune to gravity, float right up into the sky until the thin air exploded him. He’d rain down over the village like -’
‘Shut up, will you? Enough about guts.’
‘Of course,’ said Skeezix. ‘Let’s go down and see what’s up. We’ve got to meet Jack anyway in a couple of hours, and we might as well haul these duds out to the cove first. No telling when this naked Jimmy will reel up out of the weeds.’ He scooped up the clothes and headed for the trapdoor.
Miss Flees met them in the hallway. She had a distant, glazed look in her eyes, as if all the conjuring and chasing after magic had tired her out. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she smelled of wine. She stopped them by putting her arm across in front of them. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
She’s been drinking, thought Skeezix; he grinned at her and widened his eyes. ‘In to eat.’
She stared at them both, as if she were trying to think of something to say – some reason that Skeezix’s answer wouldn’t do. She stood just so, reeling slightly, then nodded. ‘Watch yourselves. You two are a little bit too high and mighty these days. Coming and going at all hours. Lying. What do you do up in that attic?’
‘I talk with Mrs Langley,’ said Helen, looking straight into her face. ‘Mrs Langley threw Peebles down the stairs today. I asked her to do that.’
Miss Flees stiffened. She knew about Peebles and the stairs. She’d have to; Peebles had cried and shouted enough. Helen had heard him carrying on during her conversation with Mrs Langley.
Helen kept at her. ‘Peebles tried to burn the house down two hours ago; do you know that?’
Miss Flees jerked herself upright, trying to paint a proud look onto her face, but succeeding only in sort of pinching together her mouth and chin. She licked the palm of her pawlike hand and touched her hair with it. ‘Young Mr Peebles is an intellectual,’ she said. ‘You two wouldn’t know about that. Children like him are often frail. They’re … prodigies. That’s what they are, prodigies, and it’s not for the likes of you to judge them. We understand each other, Mr Peebles and I.’
‘I’m certain you do,’ said Helen. ‘Birds of a feather, I suppose. You were a prodigy too, weren’t you? Wasn’t that what you were telling us?’
‘Well,’ said Miss Flees, shrugging, ‘I won’t say I wasn’t, in my time.’
‘You much be a very fortunate lady. I was telling Skee – Bobby here that I envy people of genius like you – the things they might accomplish.’
‘Envy is a sin, of course. In this case I can understand it, though.’ Miss Flees seemed to have gone blank, as if someone had reached into her head and switched off the bulb.
Skeezix gritted his teeth at Helen, as if he could hardly stand it and at any moment would say what he meant. Saying what he meant wouldn’t hurt anything much, of course. He’d done it before. Miss Flees couldn’t pitch him out because she’d lose the little bit of income the village paid her, and besides, Skeezix had too many friends, including Dr Jensen. So did Helen. That in itself was maddening. But saying what he meant would end in shouting, and shouting would end in Miss Flees ordering them out, and that wouldn’t do any good, because what they wanted was to see what it was that Peebles was up to.
‘Peebles is cooking something nice, isn’t he?’ asked Helen, placating Miss Flees, who smiled broadly, showing off her tilted teeth.
‘I’m sure he is. There’s nothing for you children, though. Perhaps you could eat out. Our Mr Peebles says there isn’t enough to go around. He’s making me a pie. He won’t let me into the kitchen. “His little surprise,” he says, and that’s just like him, isn’t it?’ She shook her head, thinking of her dear Peebles.
Skeezix grinned. So that was the way it was. Peebles was going to feed her the Solstice fish. And she’d be too addlebrained to know what it was she was eating. Or maybe, heaven help her, she did know, was going to eat it on purpose. Things were getting desperate indeed. He’d give anything to watch, but from the look of Peebles, messing around in the kitchen, Miss Flees wouldn’t begin to shove it down for another forty-five minutes. Maybe they could get down to the cove and back by then. He nodded at Helen and gestured toward the front room, toward the door. She nodded back, and both of them pushed past Miss Flees and set out.
‘What’s that bundle of clothing?’ the woman asked after them, suspicious suddenly. ‘You can’t steal those clothes!’
‘There’s a naked man on the beach,’ said Helen over her shoulder. ‘These are for him. It’s Mrs Langley’s husband, come home from the wars. Save some dinner for him.’ And with that they were through the door and gone. They could hear Miss Flees sputtering as the door slammed shut. She’d have no idea what to make of talk like that. Having no sense of humour herself, she couldn’t recognize it in others. She’d understand everything literally, and it would confound her. Just as well, Helen thought. In the last couple of hours she’d somehow come to the conclusion that such people deserved what they got, although it was a bit much that Miss Flees had got Peebles. Almost no one deserved Peebles.
The tide was up, washing very nearly across the entire beach. The strip of sand that lay exposed was littered with kelp and seashells and driftwood and flotsam out of the ocean. Rain had fallen and had wetted things down pretty thoroughly, but it had let up again and now the night was dark and windy beneath a cloud-hung sky. Skeezix carried a lantern that he’d got from Miss Flees’s shed. He and Helen stood beneath the trestle, looking at shadows and wondering what, exactly, to do with the clothes. Somehow simply leaving them there seemed foolish – as if they were leaving an offering to a sea god that both of them knew didn’t exist, or if he did exist, wouldn’t show up to claim the gift.
Skeezix set the lantern on a high shelf of cut stone beneath the trestle and began poking around beneath it. Rocks were tumbled and heaped there, the cracks between them jammed with weather- and ocean-worn debris – broken mussel shells and sticks and tangles of dried seaweed. ‘We can hide them here,’ Skeezix said. They’re sheltered enough from the rain, so they’ll stay dry, except that the fog will get at them. A really high tide will get them too, but there’s nowhere else as good, not if Mrs Langley wanted you to leave them at the cove.’
‘That’s what she said.’ Helen pulled rocks loose, letting them roll down onto the sand. Little beach bugs scurried away, and a big red crab scuttled back into the shadows, eyeing them warily. ‘Here, what’s this?’ Helen reached down into the rocks, half expecting to be pinched or bitten. A bit of blue material lay just visible in the light of the
lantern, wedged under two round stones. They both pulled stuff clear, levering one big rock loose with a stick and jumping back as it thumped onto the sand.
Helen got a hand on the cloth and pulled, tearing a chunk away and hauling it out. It fluttered in her hand – a piece of shirt, maybe, with the button still attached. ‘Darn it,’ said Helen. ‘I didn’t mean to rip it. Let’s get it out of there. I’ve got this curious suspicion.’ And the two of them pawed through the rock pile until the cloth was exposed. It was a shirt, just as Helen thought. Beneath it were trousers, neatly folded, and lying across the top of a pair of shoes with socks stuffed inside them. Helen looked into the collar of the shirt, and there, scrawled in ink, was the name. J. Langley.
‘Well, I’ll be,’ said Skeezix, wondering at it. ‘I wonder when –’
‘Twelve years ago.’
‘She was dead last Solstice, wasn’t she?’
‘She got someone else to do it, like she did me.’
‘Who? How do you know?’
Helen gave him a look. Here was a chance to play one of her trump cards. ‘Lars Portland, Jack’s father.’
‘No. You’re making that up.’
‘So don’t believe me. / don’t care. Believe what you want. Revel in ignorance, prodigy.’
Skeezix made his cabbage-broth face at her, then reached into the rocks and yanked out one of the shoes. ‘Look here,’ he said, pulling the sock out of it. A rock had been shoved into the shoe along with the sock, to weight it down, perhaps. Under the rock was a bit of paper, folded very neatly. There was writing on it in a shaky hand, the ink lightened and spidery from years of misty air. Skeezix held it to the lantern. Three, it said simply. There was nothing else on the paper.
‘It beats me,’ said Skeezix, turning the paper over and back again.
‘Not me.’ Helen took it from him. ‘These have been here longer than I thought – twenty-four years. I’d bet on it. She said he’d been gone five times and had come back twice. These were left at the third Solstice, after he’d been and gone a couple of times already. He never came back after them, cither.’
Land of Dreams Page 18