“Good job, soldier.”
“What are you doing sitting down there?” the policeman mocked her, peering through the window. “Get in. I’ll drive you and your friends to camp.”
“No. No thanks,” she pushed out between puffs. “We’ll just stay here.”
“Are you sure? The army will be here any minute,” he said. It might have been sarcasm, Andy thought; it was hard to tell with Dirty Harry types.
“It’s okay,” she murmured, gazing at the rest of the team standing near Kerri’s house. “We’ve got a bunker here.”
The others stood under the gentle drizzle and fresh morning sun, eyes still lost on the desolation road on the hillside.
NATE: You know what would be a brilliant twist now? If everything turned out to be just a guy in a mask.
Kerri laughed first; it was the kind of humor that ran in the family. Joey came to it a little later. About to surrender to her own fatigue, Kerri rounded on Nate and hugged him tightly.
“I am so proud of you,” she whispered. “Peter would be so proud of you.”
Nate said nothing. Instead, he looked past Kerri’s hair, at the jock standing by them. He leaned out a hand for him.
Joey inspected it first, smudged with human blood and alien blood and who knows what else, and checked that his own did not look much better, and they shook.
“We okay now?” Joey asked.
“We okay. Thank you, man.”
Joey gazed back at the scarred hillside. Beyond it, far away, black smoke billowed up.
“You think the lake is still there?” he wondered. “My father’s gonna kill me if something happened to the motorboat.”
“He’ll be fine when you show him what’s in the glove compartment,” Kerri commented.
—
The boat was not afloat, as a matter of fact: the tidal wave caused by the undergod rising had hurled it to the shore, actually into the woods, unmolested by everything that came later. The glove compartment was still locked, four gold ingots safe inside, guarded by the vigilant firs.
Across the waters, Deboën Isle was now a pile of ruins, the trees there conspiring for the best way to bury the ton of bricks and mortar under their roots and pretend that the last two centuries had never happened.
A brave little bird was the first to descend to the isle and check the air quality for itself, only hours after the cataclysm. It was used to this dangerous task. It had worked as a mining canary for a whole day.
First, it perched atop one of the firs on the isle, rocked by the breeze, then fluttered farther down, chirping for animal life, to alight on a little mount of blue shingles. From there it hopped onto a jutting split beam, still warm from the recent fire the waves had extinguished, and then it skipped along the scattered bricks of what had been a chimney onto a leather boot, from which it could survey the eastern and southern shores. The water level was a little lower, although the scouting canary did not consider asking for an official calculation that might have stripped the lake of the title as the second deepest in the Americas.
Suddenly the leather watchtower collapsed under the canary’s feet, and the poor scared thing barely held itself in the air, heart skipping a beat out of 200 per minute, as it scurried out of the way of the awoken mammal jacking up from the grave, spraying stone and timber.
Tarantula fingers, burned down to their phalanxes, caressed the bricks around their burial site as she scanned the landscape, the black eye in the whole half of her face taking in the glorious cobalt-blue sky, a rainbow, a panicking yellow bird fluttering by in the immaculate morning quiet.
DUNIA: Shit. Did I miss it?!
Summer came early and yellow and mint-flavored. Nate grabbed a two-liter Diet Coke from the fridge while he skimmed through the Pennaquick Telegraph and observed that the accustomed reports on roadworks around Belden had finally bumped the Blyton Hills incident off the front page. An item dealing with the outraged defense statement from RH Corporation, entrenched on defending the safety of its lost chemical plant, had been moved to page four. Poor smeared ecovillains.
Nate paid for the newspaper and the groceries, jumped on his bicycle parked on the sidewalk, and headed home, with Tim scouting ahead and deviating from course every now and then to dissolve suspicious groups of pigeons. The detectives didn’t make it into the papers this time. Kerri and Deputy Copperseed agreed that it was better to wait for the authorities to string their own interpretation of the events. Once Kerri tipped the words “limnic eruption” to FEMA personnel, the official version clung to that rare but not unprecedented phenomenon and pointed at the frequent seismic activity in the area as the probable cause behind both the explosion in the abandoned chemical plant and the violent gas leak from Sleepy Lake, which in turn had poisoned the pilot of a rescue helicopter assisting the evacuation, crashing it against Deboën Mansion. Scientific tests performed around the area confirmed its affinity with the incident in Cameroon, and the media agreed that the prompt evacuation of Blyton Hills had saved hundreds of lives.
As for public opinion in Blyton Hills, the proverbial hostility toward RH Corporation and Dunia Deboën, who had mysteriously disappeared before the town evacuation, kept suspicions from attaching to the Blyton Summer Detective Club.
Military funerals were held for the whole crew on the helicopter: USAF Captain W. B. Ainslie, First Lieutenant B. C. Grand, and veteran Captain Al D. Urich, with full honors. Deputy Sheriff Copperseed of the Pennaquick County Sheriff’s Office and the Blyton Summer Detective Club attended. Andy Rodriguez was presented with the flag from Urich’s coffin. She kept it folded on top of all the trinkets inside his cookie tin of BSDC case mementos.
The way everybody, including the media, had embraced the official explanation and neglected loose ends that clearly deserved further inquiry (such as the hardly random distribution of squashed trees in a twenty-mile-long straight path from Sleepy Lake to Blyton Hills) had kept Nate wondering for some time—particularly after reported sightings of a colossal disturbance among the hills, coming from as far as Brish Quarry, forty miles north, were so quickly dismissed as hallucinations caused by mild hypercapnia. It was as if authorities, or some authorities, had been too swift to provide explanations for a story that seemed not to have caught them completely by surprise. Maybe, Nate thought, the Necronomicon and its mythos were known outside scientific circles and sci-fi aficionados by people in relevant positions who did not take them as a mere historic curiosity. Or maybe Nate was missing the comforting Saturday morning harangues of conspiracy theorists in the low-security floor of Arkham.
His train of thought was derailed by Joey Krantz knocking on the window of Ben’s Corner as he rode by. He stopped by the curb and waited for him to scoot out, in apron and hat.
“Hey. Have you seen the Telegraph?”
“Barely. Got it right here.”
Joey stole his copy from the basket, flipped to page four. The one column not part of the item led by “RH Speaker Digs Company Deeper into Disrepute” dealt with some mysterious occurrences in the abandoned amusement park in Sossamon Valley. Nate didn’t read past the first paragraph.
“So what?”
“So what? One guard’s gone missing, the other talks about an evil clown sabotaging the rides. Sounds like our next case.”
“Sounds like two assholes stealing aluminum,” Nate retorted.
“Probably, but not every case’s gonna be all car chases and creatures from the underworld,” Joey said, with an interesting mix of relief and resignation. “You should tell the girls about this.”
“They’re very busy,” Nate lied.
“Oh, come on. I’m taking two weeks off in July; we should look into this.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll pass it on to them.”
“Do it!”
“I will, promise. See you, Joey.”
“Okay, bye. Bye, Tim!”
He hurried back into the restaurant as Nate pedaled back onto Main Street. On the other hand, in a country where the words
“evil clown” still made it into the local paper, how could “limnic eruption” not sound convincing?
He raced Tim for the last blocks, the dog kiting ten inches of tongue happiness behind him and a single tattered ear flapping in the air. Fur had grown back over his flanks, concealing his scars as much as they ever would. Still, he wore them with pride.
They came into view of Aunt Margo’s house, windowsills brimming with orange helenium flowers. Rivaling them, the freshly waxed Chevrolet Vega Kammback wagon shone boastfully on the driveway, black racing stripes darkening its brow like the memory of past battles. Nate had to shield his eyes from the glint as he closed the little gate door behind him and entered the house.
They parted ways inside, Tim running upstairs while Nate popped into the kitchen to unpack the groceries and get a knife. Then he crossed the living room to the new screen door to the backyard. Aunt Margo was bound to freak out when she saw this part, but they had asked for her permission. And she would have to admit the white stone pavement outside helped lighten up the living room.
Kerri and Andy were just where he’d left them and where they’d spent the afternoon and most of May: lounging on the deck chairs by the lustful blue swimming pool, water glistening like an Oscar nominee’s sequined dress under the Tom Jones of suns; Andy’s dark skin indifferent to ultraviolet rays, Kerri’s impervious to them, a childish smile on both their faces that not even a month of pool enjoyment had managed to wear off.
Nate unbagged the Coke while Kerri talked on the (also brand new) cordless phone.
NATE: You two are the most spoiled heroines I ever worked with.
ANDY: Shh. (Re: the phone in Kerri’s hand.) University.
NATE: (Loud, into the phone.) She’s so spoiled! Give her a job, for God’s sake!
KERRI: (Laughing, shielding.) Ah, you prick. (On the phone.) Sorry. Mad cousin. We’re mailing him back to Arkham first thing tomorrow.
ANDY: (Serving the refreshments.) Where’s Tim?
NATE: Upstairs, with me. I told you, he doesn’t like the new lake.
(He goes back inside.)
ANDY: (Gazing over the pool.) Can’t figure out why.
KERRI: (On phone.) Okay, I’ll come for a tour then. No, no, thank you. Sure. Thanks. Good-bye.
She hung up, sipped on her soda, and for a while basked in the recent praise, pretending nothing happened. Andy watched her, spying smugness behind Kerri’s sunglasses.
“Well? Which was it this time?”
Kerri flipped her hair, waited for her own ego to ebb down a little. “Berkeley.”
“Ooh. You really like Berkeley.”
“Yup. Amazing how many doors a spec paper on carbon dioxide–breathing cells will open.”
Andy noticed her smile fading out.
“What’s up?”
“Berkeley is a little far, isn’t it?”
“Nah. Must be a…six-, seven-hour drive?”
“I thought Copperseed was supposed to help you with your criminal record—when are you gonna be able to get on a plane?”
“I don’t know; when are we gonna jump off one?” She sat up, pointing at the imaginary scoreboard. “Boom! In your face, Kerri Hollis!”
(Laughing.) “Shit, I don’t even know whether this is literal or not anymore and I’m afraid to ask at this point; it’s so embarrassing. (Beat.) No, but seriously. It’s a little too far from…this.”
Andy understood what “this” implied. The house and the swimming pool could wait; one had waited for thirteen years, the other they had waited for even longer. “This,” however, was beautifully delicate.
“I could come along,” she said.
“You would?”
“Why not? I could find a job in San Francisco. We’d rent a studio. Drive here on weekends.”
“A one-bed studio?” Kerri smirked.
“Would you rather have two beds?”
“No.”
“Then one it is.”
Andy closed her eyes and pointed her face to the sun, declaring the subject settled.
Kerri instead faced her, raising her sunglasses. “I feel a little bad for you.”
Andy turned again, a twenty-five-year-old woman in a bright saffron bikini, lying on a deck chair two feet from a paid-in-cash swimming pool: “Kerri, tell me how anyone can feel bad for me right now.”
“Andy, I know this is not what a normal girl-girl relationship is like.”
“This is not any girl-girl relationship; it’s a you-me relationship. There has never been a precedent; there has never been a normal. There has never been a better either.”
“But I feel like you’re waiting until I allow something to happen.”
Andy sighed, stretched out a hand across their chairs.
“Baby, I’m not waiting until you allow anything.”
Kerri’s fingers reached to latch on. They held hands for a few seconds, like they would often do, and said nothing.
Then Andy dissolved the handshake, took a sip of Coke, and added: “I’m waiting until you beg.”
And the imaginary scoreboard went up another point, while Kerri stared in awe and orange curls went simply mad.
“You…you bitch and your one-liners. Where did you…?” she argued, while the camera drifted away from them. “Don’t give me smiles; how am I supposed to leave you alone in San Francisco eight hours a day?”
“V.”
“No, stop it with the word games. V, what? It’s probably…‘vagina,’ I bet!”
“What?! No, it was ‘voluptuous’!”
“Fuck off!”
“Honestly, Kay, you’re obsessed!”
“Shut up, Andy Rodriguez.”
Their voices faded away as Nate closed the window to the backyard and returned to the half-drawn diagram on the boys’ room floor.
He took one of the eggs he’d just bought, cracked it, poured it in a bowl, and placed it in the center of the circle, left of the Sign of Clairvoyance. Then he went on to his signature: with the kitchen knife, he drilled a wound on his fingertip and smudged his own blood on the south edge.
The Seal of Zur was ready, if he had correctly interpreted the notes in the grimoire and Old Acker’s advice. All that was left to do was light the candle (one was enough for a small seal) and burn the parsley leaves.
“Okay. Tim. Come here, boy.”
Tim, cuddling with his penguin in a corner of the room, looked up, scarcely interested, but decided to see what the fuss was about. He sat down where Nate indicated, in the middle of the drawing, and awaited the next command.
Nate, on his knees, drew back from the circle, dragged the Necronomicon closer, and read aloud:
“ ‘Per Anemai, per Ngovalis, Ab Vrna Driadha quaeso spiritua dh’flui Zur vsathla uthurragathik.’ ”
He paused for a reaction from the earth’s tectonic plates. They refused to comment.
He set aside the grimoire and faced the Weimaraner, his own eyes slightly above the dog’s ghostly blue ones.
“I am very sure that the ritual to summon or expel Thtaggoa required five human souls,” he told the dog. “Not animals. Otherwise, Dunia could have just tossed a hedgehog, a dung beetle, a toad, and a smuggled sheep inside the pentacle and gotten it over with. So, if the ritual worked with you…if there is an avatar inside this vessel, then show yourself,” Nate concluded.
A thin slice of summer afternoon flew by. Tim’s attention drifted over the ceiling, then over Nate’s jeans, then at some scar on his hip that still itched from time to time.
Nate insisted: “Just tell me who you are.”
Tim looked at him, eye to eye, his Byronian visage peacefully sliding into a solemn acknowledgment.
Nate clenched a fist when he saw the Weimaraner’s loose lips stiffening up, then deliberately moving.
“I am Ashen Fox,” the dog said. And like in the aftermath of a nightmare, in a split second Nate captured the unfakability of the event, all the meticulous details that made it real: the slim tongue cooperating with
the tiny front teeth, the droopy lips helping, the voice not essentially different in pitch from Tim’s barks, the pale blue eyes unequivocally addressing Nate as an equal. “Third Moon Shaman of the Walla Walla, from the Sky City in the Warm Snows.”
Nate tried to swallow that revelation, forced it down his throat, then spoke again.
“You helped us with the ritual. You told Andy about the aklo. No way she could remember that on her own.”
“I simply helped her recall the words she had heard. You are a powerful sorcerer, Nate Rogers.”
Nate made sure to record that compliment.
“How long have you been here?”
Tim answered, words blown gently out of his mouth like the whisper sound of a summer breeze on firs. “You did raise an avatar from a jar of salts that night when you were a child. They were my salts, prepared by Deboën from the remains he stole from my burial site. They were still on his workbench when you wandered in, read the spell, and brought me back.”
Tim licked his leg. The itch must have been too much.
“Your dog was kind enough to serve as my vessel,” Ashen Fox added. “Please do not feel deceived: he has been your dog all this time. I just ride along.”
“But that was Sean,” Nate argued, fearing the next answer. “Sean was the dog we took to the house thirteen years ago; not Tim. Tim is his great-grandson.”
“Well, as Deboën told you, aging forth and back is not difficult. Switching ourselves with one of the younger cubs is. It became easier once Kerri left for college and went months without seeing us.” Tim shrugged, a bittersweet smile in his mouth. “You know. It’s all been done before.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edgar Cantero is a writer and cartoonist who was born in Barcelona in 1981. Meddling Kids is his second novel in English; his first was The Supernatural Enhancements.
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Meddling Kids Page 33