Meddling Kids

by Edgar Cantero

  “Who knows,” Nate said, shrugging it off. “A deposed god. A fallen alien. According to horror authors, one of several primordial chaos entities that used to rule the earth and now lives underground, cast away by rival spirits, in the nightmare city that its hideous slave race built below a location that was once revealed to a possessed Arab as the Sea of Yottha: what we call Sleepy Lake. And there Thtaggoa lies sleeping, bound by magic, waiting for the day it will be summoned back and set loose on to the world, and when that happens…” He abandoned the sentence.

  “What?” Kerri prompted. “What comes next?”

  Nate shrugged again, showing his empty hands. “I guess apocalypse.”

  An anticoda of background conversations and Cyndi Lauper underscored the word.

  “Apocalypse,” Kerri parroted, scratching an imaginary itch on her forearm. “That’s a big leap from sheep smuggling.”

  “Wait,” Andy tracked back. “You said ‘it will be summoned back.’ By who?”

  “Whom. Well…” Nate puffed, searching for inspiration. “Shit, I don’t know. Demonic cults, deranged wizards, Nazis…the Illuminati…If it’s specific names you want, Damian Deboën comes to mind.”

  “Because he owned some books?”

  “Let’s say if he wanted to summon a primeval leviathan from its millennial slumber, he’s got the right bibliography.”

  “But you said earlier no one alive today can read the books,” Andy argued, shepherding the gang out of the gloom. “Right? And maybe Deboën could, but he’s dead.”

  “Yeah, well, about that,” Nate said, stiffening back up. “Uh…I might have brought him back.”

  “Good. Well broken,” Peter judged, leaning back on his seat, a single-stroke grin inked on his square face.

  The girls took a minute to chomp through Nate’s line.

  “Oh-kay,” Kerri spelled. “Uh, care to elaborate?”

  “Sure,” he said with a sigh. “Look, one of the books I saw in that attic thirteen years ago was the Necronomicon. It’s—”

  “I’ve heard about it,” Kerri stated icily.

  “Good.” He explained to Andy instead: “It was written by an Arab who had visions of…the world as it once was and the beings that ruled it. According to Old Acker, this book is supposed to contain instructions to communicate with entities beyond our existential plane. It tells how to raise a spirit out of salts distilled from human remains: textbook necromancy. In Deboën’s lab there was a pentacle—”

  “Painted in blood!” Andy jumped in, recalling.

  “No,” Nate said disappointingly. “Pentacles only need what’s called a ‘blood signature’—that’s like…a caller ID, a piece of yourself you put forward to claim control over the pentacle; you don’t need to draw the whole thing in blood; that’s a myth.”

  “Good thing we established that,” Kerri commented, legs stretched on her seat. “I hate it when people mix superstition into strict demonology.”

  “Look, I’m just saying how it’s supposed to work. Dunia said her father used to talk to people in his lab, that she heard him questioning them. That makes sense: to learn everything he needed to raise Thtaggoa, Deboën had to consult many before him, and I think this is how he did it: by finding their remains, distilling their salts, and summoning their spirits; as long as they were trapped in the pentacle, he could coerce them, he could torture them. I saw the urns and the pentacle myself. But the main point is, if he was able to bring the dead back to life on a regular basis, what stops him from making arrangements for bringing himself back in case of an accident? He could have prepared the essential salts from his own body and left everything ready to be raised again. Think of it as a backup copy. A safety net.”

  “He’d still need someone to summon him back,” Andy pointed out.

  “Right. Well, remember the last night of the Wickley case, when we were in the mansion, searching for clues?”

  “Yes,” Andy picked up. “We’d split up in pairs; I was with you and Sean, and Peter was with Kerri…(She points at Kerri.) But then Peter lost you.”

  “I fell through a secret trapdoor,” Kerri recalled. “And I landed in the coal room, where the lake creature—I mean, Wickley in his fucking costume—grabbed me and tied me up.”

  “Peter came running upstairs saying he’d lost you, and we all split up again to look for you. His idea. And I found you, but a lake creature—”

  “Wickley.”

  “No,” Andy objected. “A lake creature was coming after me, so I took you into the dungeon, and we shut ourselves in.” She swallowed, her mouth dried up like she’d just climbed a mountain. “And there wasn’t one lake creature. There was a horde.”

  Kerri lowered her eyes, her left hand instinctively pining for Tim. The dog noticed and gently kissed her palm.

  “Right, well,” Nate resumed, impressed with their progress, “while all that was happening downstairs, I had discovered the attic and Deboën’s lab. And there was a workbench full of pots with powders in them, and a pentacle on the floor, and the Necronomicon opened on a lectern in the middle of the room. And the Necronomicon was written in Arabic, I think, with handwritten notations in English around it, like a pronunciation guide, and I started to read it…and I might have read it aloud.”

  The girls clicked out of the spell, and for a second just gaped at the implications of that line.

  “Way to fucking go, Nate,” Andy evaluated.

  “Okay, wait,” Kerri started, “Nate, now you’re speculating.”

  “No, listen, I swear something happened. There was like this dark green smoke coming out of one of the urns, and I felt a presence around me.”

  “Nate, that’s crazy!”

  “How can you—you just dissected a monster, for fuck’s sake!”

  “The monster is real; you’re talking magic!”

  “Yo, the what is real?!”

  The whole table, canine included, turned to Joey Krantz, who had uttered the last line. This was immediately followed by a second realization—that they had been talking way too loud again.

  Conversations around them started to rekindle.

  “Sorry I interrupted,” Joey said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you all day: Is it true about the thing you found at the lake?”

  What puzzled Andy the most was not the excited half of the tone, but rather the concerned half.

  “Who told you that?” Kerri asked him.

  “Oh, it’s all around. Copperseed told Mr. Quinn, who told Irene, who told Deaf Anne, who told Will Martin, who told Mr. Moretto, I think.”

  Kerri stopped to wonder how the information continued to flow past someone called “Deaf Anne” while Nate took over. “Yeah, we caught the lake creature.”

  “Shut up!” Joey whisper-cried. “So it’s true! There’s something up there!” He couldn’t stop going from one to another. “Are you all okay? Copper said it was nasty.”

  “We’re fine,” Kerri said. “Nate shot it.”

  “Really?” Joey bro-fisted Nate’s shoulder. “That’s awesome. Mystery always has a way of finding you, eh?”

  The compliment floated unclaimed over the table.

  “So, hey, listen, I meant to tell you guys this earlier, but…” Joey breathed in, stiffed up, moved the tray out of view. “Uh, it’s clear that the Blyton Summer Detective Club is back. This is not just a reunion; you guys are here on business.”

  Kerri and Nate and Tim looked away, two in modesty, one in genuine indifference.

  “And I just wanted to say that…I mean, I know you guys are a man down. I read about Peter Manner. Real shame.”

  “Didn’t know my obituary made it into Tractor Drivers Weekly,” Peter quipped, rolling his eyes.

  “And, well,” Joey went on, “all I wanted to say is, if you guys need an extra hand, you can count on me. I don’t have your experience, but…I have wheels. And a boat!” he remembered. “My dad sometimes goes fishing downriver; we can truck it to the lake. So…there’s that.”

&nb
sp; Kerri and Nate eyed each other, deciding who would go this time.

  “Uh…we already have a car,” Kerri said.

  “I know, I know, it’s just…Look, I know you guys and I weren’t best pals. I mean, fuck, I know I was a pain in the ass. But…I respect what you used to do here. Shit, without you patrolling the streets Blyton Hills’s gone to hell. So, anything you need, okay?”

  He was looking at Kerri now. And Kerri was looking back. For more than two seconds straight. More than four.

  “Gee. Thanks, Joey.”

  “NO!” Andy capslocked.

  All heads turned toward her, and Andy stared back at them as the only speaker for sanity at the table usually does.

  “No way! What the fuck, man, you think you can come thirteen years later and brush it all aside with ‘I know we weren’t best pals’? You abused us! You went for any low blow you could! You picked on Kerri for being a nerd, on Nate for being a wimp, on me for being butch and dark-skinned and a girl—you were an obstacle to every single case we worked! And now you think everything’s cool because you got over it? You’re over it because you were on fucking top in the first place!”

  Kerri and Nate sat through this speech, neglecting the state of their mouths. Tim ducked under the table.

  Joey stuttered, defenseless, before fighting back with surprising strength. “Shit…Andy, I’m sorry! I really am, but…I wasn’t on top! You were the good guys, I wasn’t! I envied you; I handled it badly! Jesus, I was a kid!”

  “How is that an excuse?!” Andy howled. “Why do all bullies think they can get away with ‘I was a kid’? Guess what: I was a kid too, and I didn’t make other people feel like shit! You were not a kid, you were a cunt!”

  Peter hollered, covering his mouth as if someone who mattered could hear him.

  JOEY: Okay, I was! I was a cunt, I’m not anymore! I grew up! Have you grown up too, or do you want us to fight like kids all our lives?

  (Andy grabs Joey’s apron, pulls him down, sinking his face into the lunch special.)

  The others got up at that point, Nate to dodge the splashing beans, Tim to eat what had landed on the floor, Kerri to spare her parka and stop Joey from retaliating if he tried, which he didn’t.

  “Right, time to go,” Kerri said. “Joey? We appreciate the offer, okay? Don’t call us, we’ll call you. (To the others.) Let’s go.”

  She put a ten on the table and they left, pulling Tim away from the free meal.

  “Okay,” Joey called, rice snowing off his nose, under the restaurant’s unsympathetic stare. “Any time.”

  —

  They were pulling over at Kerri’s five minutes later. Tim jumped for land like the silence inside the station wagon was too thick to breathe. Andy came out right after him, and didn’t feel any better. The same static filled the air around them, not so much a storm brewing as a nuclear airstrike waiting to happen. It felt cold and yet she was sweating; air was still and yet it spoke in her ear. She could sense the firs and pines eyeballing them warily as they walked up to the little house.

  The inside had barely grown accustomed to human presence. Kerri dropped the keys and headed upstairs.

  “Hey, guys,” Nate said, “we gotta talk about—”

  “Give us five minutes,” Andy cut him off, tailing her.

  “But—”

  “Nate!” she threatened/implored. “Five minutes, please!”

  She ran upstairs, where the door to Kerri’s room had just slammed.

  Peter plopped down on the sofa.

  “Sure, take all the time you want,” he called after her. “Whatever. I mean, we were just talking about Nate bringing a warlock back to life, but please, go deal with your girly business; make sure we move that subplot forward. Do your girl things, talk through it, hug it out, try on each other’s bras.”

  (He and Nate stay there, eyes fixed on the upstairs balcony.)

  PETER: Do you think they’re actually doing that?

  NATE: Shut up!

  Tim stood to attention, wondering, Sorry, was I speaking?

  —

  Andy knocked softly on Kerri’s door and pushed it a couple inches.

  “Hey.”

  Kerri was sitting on her bed, orange hair humming brightly in the twilit room. The wardrobe was still blocking the window.

  Andy didn’t dare to walk in uninvited. “Are we okay?” she asked.

  Kerri looked up, caught off guard, and gave a yes just as automatic and hollow as such a question always engenders. Then she took some time to think, searched her heart, and gave the second answer.

  “Yeah, we’re okay. Come in.”

  “You want me to move the wardrobe back?”

  “No, it’s fine there.”

  Andy sat down beside Kerri. The sight of the paisley quilt alone comforted Andy more than anything else. That room worked miracles.

  “You shouldn’t have been so quick to smite Joey,” Kerri said.

  “We don’t need him.”

  “We’re a man down. Joey’s got a boat. And he can shoot. His father used to take him hunting. He’s familiar with guns.”

  “That…that is the last quality you’d look for in anybody!” Andy protested. “You hate guns!”

  “Yes, I do. There’s a one in a million chance I’d want to hang out with a gun freak. And this is that one situation.”

  Andy considered the point, and in the meanwhile said something else. “I don’t want to replace Peter.”

  “Me neither,” Kerri said. “But you know one thing Peter could do that none of us can? Shoot.”

  “I can shoot.”

  Kerri drew a blank.

  “I can,” Andy insisted. “I did air force basic training, remember? I learned how to shoot.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Because you don’t like guns.”

  Tim wandered in, sniffed the carpet, the foot of the bed, the magic in the air, and chose to lie down.

  Kerri had frozen at the childish, self-evident straightness of that last answer. She scoffed, looked down, all while Andy stared like a six-year-old.

  “Do you always drop lines on women like that, or am I just silly for walking under them?”

  Andy doubted for a second, then quickly stated, “You’re not silly.”

  “Right,” Kerri said. “If I start to retrace our conversations this week, will I find many moments like this?”

  “Please don’t,” Andy begged. “Please, please don’t.”

  “Okay.” She smiled. “I won’t. Just for truth’s sake, you’re smoother than Peter.”

  “I’m…what?”

  “At dropping lines,” Kerri explained, bringing her legs on the bed. “Peter asked me out.”

  “What?” Andy repeated. “He…when?”

  “That last summer. He was thirteen, you know. Puberty kicking in. It’s all biology.”

  “You rejected him?”

  “Hmm, no…not explicitly. We never really talked about it. I didn’t think of him that way; I didn’t think of anyone that way yet. And he was nice enough not to push it. Then…” Her hands tried to communicate something very emphatically. “You know, the Sleepy Lake case happened, and we never really talked about that summer at all, ever. But he was interested. He wrote me letters. Look.”

  She sprang off the bed and switched on the orange-shaded lamp on the diminutive desk, where her neatly ordered compass and magnifying lens and pocket dictionaries waited eagerly to assist in the case. She opened the first drawer, filled with postcards and colored envelopes and lined sheets of her own round junior-high handwriting shrieking for attention, and retrieved an envelope with a U.S. Bicentennial stamp.

  “After spring break he mailed me a few notes to Portland, and then when I got here in June I found this waiting for me.”

  She held it out to Andy, who didn’t take it. “I…I guess it’s private.”

  “It’s nothing scandalous. He was a very sweet kid.”

  “I know. I’d just…ra
ther not,” Andy declined. As much as she wanted to escape the subject, she suddenly remembered: “The call. You said he phoned you the day before he…”

  “Yeah.” Kerri’s eyes, weighed down by the memory, lowered to the carpet. “He probably needed to…talk.”

  Andy swallowed, noticed a bad taste in her mouth. Even for this bedroom, that was a moment a little too bitter to help it go down.

  Tim approached the ajar door, anticipating the next character entrance. Nate knocked.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Club meeting, please?”

  Kerri seized the chance: “Yeah, okay. Club meeting.”

  She slid the letter in the back of her jeans and they sat cross-legged on the carpet. The low-key orange lighting in the bunker infused the scene with an extra air of secrecy. Andy felt solace in it. She made sure to take it in before inaugurating the session.

  “Okay. So. New development in the Sleepy Lake case: turns out there was a Sleepy Lake creature.”

  “There were many Sleepy Lake creatures,” Kerri acknowledged darkly.

  “Not to mention a former pirate, mining tycoon, and part-time necromancer back in Deboën Mansion,” Nate added.

  “We don’t know that,” said Kerri.

  “Well, we should consider the possibility.”

  “Yeah, and let’s also factor in the chance the sky’s made of jelly!”

  “Why do you always—” Nate started but scrapped, too angry. “Christ, do I look like a scared kid to you now?! I was in the attic, with a book on a lectern, in a pentacle in the middle of the room—”

  “It was staged!”

  “It was a trap!” Nate cried. “I felt it when I read the words; I saw smoke coming from an urn! I did that!”

  “Nate, we can’t trust what we saw thirteen years ago; that’s why we came back!” Kerri raised her hands, stopping an objection from Nate before it came out. “Tell me, with your hand on your heart, that you can absolutely trust everything you see or hear.”

  “Ha!” went Peter, standing up. “What a ridiculous question! Of course he can trust anything he sees—tell her, Nate.”

  Nate sat still, painfully struggling to avoid eye contact with him.

  “Nate? Come on. Of course you can— (To Kerri.) Course he can trust everything he sees and hears! Nate! C’mon, tell her!”