The Sea-Quel

by Mo O'Hara

  I told you they were really similar!

  We both left the table and headed upstairs to change out of our wet clothes and have another look in Mark’s room. As our sneakers squelched up the stairs, I thought there had to be a clue to Mark’s evil plan somewhere—we just had to find it.

  As we finished getting changed, Dad knocked on our bedroom door. He had just come down from Mark’s room.

  “Have you two seen Mark?” he said. “The lighthouse keeper just mentioned that he saw him take off in the motorboat this morning, but he hasn’t come back.”

  Pradeep and I looked at each other. It hadn’t occurred to us that Mark might still be out there with the eel. What if it woke up on the boat and knocked Mark overboard, or if he ran out of fuel or got lost? He might be evil, but I didn’t want anything that bad to happen to him.

  “We saw him go out on the boat when we were playing with Sami,” I said.

  “He was fishing for the eel,” Pradeep added.

  Dad got a really worried look on his face. I know looks, and in one second Dad had about six different “Worried about this or that happening to Mark” looks stream across his face.

  “I’m sure he’s OK,” I said.

  “I’m sure he is too,” Dad replied. Which was a lie. “I’m sure Mark’s fine” was definitely not one of the looks I saw.

  CHAPTER 11

  ROWBOAT TO THE RESCUE

  “I’m going to go talk to the lighthouse keeper,” Dad said. “Pradeep, get your dad and meet me downstairs.”

  Once the dads and the lighthouse keeper were all in the living room, Pradeep and I lurked in the hall and stared through the glass panels in the closed door. Although we couldn’t actually hear what they were saying, Pradeep and I had been practicing lip-reading as an emergency measure in case our secret looks, secret calls, or secret flag signals ever all failed at once. This is what we worked out:

  1) Dad had called the local coast guard, but they were already out looking for another missing boat.

  2) A coast guard helicopter was being sent from another county, but they said it might take a while.

  3) The dads were planning to take the rowboat out before the rain got any worse. They could look for Mark in the coves that the lighthouse keeper knew along the bay. It would take both the dads to row and the lighthouse keeper to show them the way, which would mean leaving us alone to look after Sami.

  Pradeep and I stepped forward into the living room.

  “You’ve gotta go look for Mark,” we said at the same time. (We still do that sometimes, but we’re working on it.)

  “Sami will be OK with us,” Pradeep added. “We’ll give her some soup when she wakes up and keep her warm and safe.” He held up his fingers in his Cub Scout salute. “We promise.”

  For Pradeep that was as good as swearing that he would never have Choc Rice Pops, his favorite food on earth, ever again.

  The dads both nodded. Maybe this doing-things-at-the-same-time thing was catching.

  They headed outside to the rowboat. The rain was getting heavier. I looked at my watch—two p.m. I gave Pradeep a look that said, “They still have loads of time before it gets dark. As long as that fog from last night doesn’t come back in again, they’ll be fine.”

  The lighthouse keeper turned to me and said, “If the fog rolls in, we’ll just follow the lighthouse beacon back here. That’s what it’s there for, boy,” and he gave me a wink.

  Pradeep shot me a look that said, “Our secret looks were just compromised by the old lighthouse keeper. Years of practice down the drain. How did he do that?”

  We walked the dads and the lighthouse keeper down to the dock.

  “Now, you kids stay outta trouble,” the old lighthouse keeper growled. He gave us a sideways look that could have been “And I’ll know if you pesky kids have been meddling with my lighthouse too!” Or it could have been “Don’t use all the milk as I’ll want some for my tea later.” It was hard to get the hang of reading his looks through all the wrinkles around his eyes.

  Then they all got into A Vision of Velma and rowed out into the bay.

  As soon as they were gone, Pradeep went to check on Sami, and I headed up to Mark’s room to look for more clues.

  I walked over to the bed where Mark’s suitcase was.

  The white lab coat’s gone, I thought. The chemistry-set bottles were missing too. And the drawing of the evil eel. Mark must have come back and taken all his stuff to complete his evil plan!

  I ran downstairs to tell Pradeep. He had Sami sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of soup in front of her. He was doing that flying-spoon thing that parents do to get little kids to eat their food. She just shook her head and frowned.

  “Pradeep, Mark must have come back here after he caught the eel. He’s been in his room. The white lab coat and bottles from the chemistry set and the drawing are all gone!”

  Pradeep snuck a mouthful of soup into Sami’s mouth as she opened it to yawn.

  “But if he came back, then where is the boat? And where is he now?” Pradeep said.

  I ran out the door and looked out into the bay. The rowboat was too far away for the dads to hear me shout.

  That was when I wished I had learned real semaphore and not the made-up flag signaling that Pradeep and I use. In our version:

  Waving a World Cup flag = all’s well.

  Waving an Olympic flag = someone’s coming.

  Waving one of the pirate flags that we got in a party bag one time = danger. Or pirates.

  And waving two pirate flags at the same time = dangerous pirates, but we lost one of them, so we’re hoping we never really meet any dangerous pirates because we won’t be able to signal that.

  I was about to run back inside to tell Pradeep it was too late to call our dads back when I glanced down. Under the jetty was the motorboat.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE SECRET EVIL SCIENTIST SCHEME

  Daphne’s Delight was all tucked up underneath the wooden jetty so you couldn’t see it from the lighthouse or from the top of the dock. It had a couple of branches thrown over it to cover it from view. So Mark was definitely back then … but what about the evil eel?

  I looked over at the lighthouse on the outcrop of rocks jutting into the bay. How could Mark have carried the eel from the boat up the path to the lighthouse or anywhere else? Then I spotted the wheelbarrow. It was at the bottom of the metal fire-escape steps that spiraled around the outside of the lighthouse.

  I ran back inside again. Sami turned and smiled at me.

  “No more soup,” she said. “Ice cream?”

  “I think she’s feeling better,” I said. “Pradeep, come outside. I think I might have figured out where Mark went with the eel. And it’s a lot closer than you might think.”

  We bundled Sami up in a raincoat and hat and went outside. The three of us stood at the bottom of the fire escape and looked up. I showed Pradeep the wheelbarrow and pointed out the boat tucked under the jetty.

  “Come on then,” Pradeep said, and we all headed up the stairs. The sky had got so dark that the lighthouse beacon had come on above us and was shining out to sea.

  At the top of the lighthouse was a balcony with a door leading into the lamp room. The only way to look inside was through a tiny window at the top. Pradeep put Sami on his shoulders so we could find out what was going on.

  “Evil eel!” she said. “In kiddie pool.”

  “Do you see Mark?” I asked.

  “No Mark. Naughty eel sleepy,” she said.

  “We need to get in there and see what he’s doing,” Pradeep said.

  On the count of three, Pradeep, Sami, and I shoved hard on the door. It sprang open easily, sending us flying across the room to land in a tangled heap.

  “Morons, I’ve been expecting you,” Mark said with a mocking laugh as he walked over and stroked the head of the sleepy-looking eel.

  We jumped up and stood close together in a row. Sami seemed to be pointing at the floor underneath
us, where someone had drawn a big chalk line, but we had more important things to worry about.

  “We don’t know what you’re up to, Mark,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s evil and it involves killing that eel!”

  “We can’t let you do it,” Pradeep added.

  “I’m not gonna kill the eel,” Mark said with a particularly evil smile, “but I can’t have you meddling kids trying to stop my actual evil plan, so…” He paused and pulled on a rope that was hanging next to him. Immediately three life preservers dropped from the ceiling and fell over our heads, trapping us with our arms pinned to our sides like … well, like three kids trapped in life preservers!

  Mark walked over and wedged the rings more tightly around our arms. “Thanks for standing on the booby-trap line I drew. That made things a lot easier, morons.”

  We looked down at our feet. If Scooby-Doo had taught us anything, it was don’t stand in a circle of rope, on anything that could be a trapdoor, or on a chalk line drawn on the ground. Sami had been trying to warn us and we’d ignored her! Pradeep and I hung our heads in shame.

  “Well, as you can see, I’m kinda busy so…” Mark started to push us all toward the balcony door.

  CHAPTER 13

  MWHAHAHAHA HORROR

  As Mark shoved us outside into the rain, I looked back at the eel coiled in its shallow rubber kiddie pool. It was still under Frankie’s zombie stare! Frankie. He wouldn’t have got caught like this. He would have foiled Mark’s plan somehow.

  “Now you’re outta the way, I can get on with my experiment.” Mark grinned.

  “Experiment?” cried Pradeep, Sami, and I at the same time.

  “We thought you were going to kill the evil eel,” I said.

  “Why would I kill it when I can make it into a zombie eel instead?” Mark said, and laughed his Evil Scientist laugh. “You have, oh yeah, had a pathetic zombie goldfish. But I’m gonna have an evil zombie mega-eel, so I can take on anyone that messes with my evil plans. No one’s going to give me detention, or ground me, or stop me from taking over the world now!”

  “But how are you going to make the evil eel into a zombie like Frankie?” Pradeep asked.

  “All I need to do is gunk up the water with my toxic green goo and then add a little spark.” Mark grinned.

  At that exact moment a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder rocked the lighthouse.

  “Sorry, gotta go,” Mark said, and slammed and bolted the door, trapping us outside.

  “We’ve got to see what he’s doing,” I cried. “Pradeep, if you kneel down, I can stand on your life preserver and see in!”

  It was a bit wobbly, but I could just about see into the window at the top of the door. Mark walked over to the kiddie pool. He took out a test tube of green bubbling sludge from his white lab coat pocket and dumped it in the water with the eel.

  I concentrated on my lip-reading. “Now, I’d better go get that spark,” Mark seemed to say. He put one end of a long pole into the toxic green goo with the eel. The other end of the pole went up through the roof, past the lighthouse beacon, and into the open air.

  I jumped down. Pradeep and Sami looked at me. “Mark’s going to use the lightning to shock the eel just like we used a battery on Frankie. The evil eel could be the most evil zombie thing we’ve ever seen!” my look said. At the same time, I wriggled out of my life preserver. Years of being squeezed through the dog flap at home by Mark meant that I’d had lots of practice wriggling out of things. As soon as I was free, I pulled the rings off Pradeep and Sami, too.

  Lightning cracked again all around the lighthouse. Pradeep put his arm around Sami as she pulled her hat down over her ears to drown out the thunder.

  I took out the little pirate flag from my pocket and waved it, for all the good it would do. We were in danger, no matter how you looked at it. I wished I had twenty more flags to wave.

  Then Pradeep got that look on his face that meant that he had a big idea. “The flag!” he cried. “We can signal for help. Maybe the dads and the lighthouse keeper will see it and come back.”

  “But how can we signal to them?” I said. “They won’t see us waving this flag from here.”

  Pradeep grinned. “What would Batman do?” he said.

  CHAPTER 14

  SOZ—SAVE OUR ZOMBIE!

  Pradeep, Sami, and I raced up the next flight of the fire escape to the very top of the lighthouse where the beacon was. We stood on the walkway directly in front of the light. Pradeep and I knelt down and tried to bend ourselves into S shapes, while Sami curled up into an O between us.

  We were trying to spell SOS, which Pradeep said means “Save Our Souls.” Secretly, I tried to make my S look a bit like a Z so it could stand for Save Our Zombie! instead.

  Hopefully the dads and the lighthouse keeper would see our signal and come back to shore.

  Pradeep said that, technically, we should have spelled out Mayday, but we didn’t have enough people for that.

  At that moment, I looked down at the floor and noticed we were standing on what looked like a trapdoor. My first thought was, Have we learned nothing from the booby-trap thing before? But my second thought was, Hang on! We can use this to get back into the room below and stop Mark!

  As quietly as we could, we creaked open the trapdoor and looked down. There was a ladder leading right into the room.

  Sami went first, then Pradeep, then me. We were halfway down the ladder when a gust of wind blew the trapdoor shut above our heads.

  Slam!

  Mark spun around and saw us all hanging on to the ladder. Our cover was totally blown! I tried to go back up through the trapdoor, but it was stuck.

  “Morons! How did you…?” He stared at us angrily, then grinned and shook his head. “Never mind, you’re too late anyway.”

  At that instant, a bolt of lightning struck the rod on the roof.

  The surge of electricity blew the lighthouse beacon out completely. With all the rain and the fog that had just started to roll in, it was as dark as night outside.

  The same flash traveled down the pole to the eel in his kiddie pool. He flipped just like Frankie had done when we shocked him back to life.

  Suddenly the eel reared up, knocking the lightning rod out of the pool and onto the floor. Electric sparks flew from its scales as it writhed. Its eyes tried to focus through a glow of zombie orange.

  Mark had done it. He had created an evil zombie mega-eel!

  CHAPTER 15

  LIGHTHOUSE, FRIGHTHOUSE

  Mark took a step toward his giant new zombie pet. “You’re mine now and you’ll do whatever I say,” he commanded. “Now, come here!”

  The eel just stared at Mark with his glowing orange eyes.

  “I said, come here, moron eel!” Mark shouted.

  The eel slid out of the pool toward Mark. Its fins sent tiny electric pulses into the air that made all our hair stand on end. Now Sami, Pradeep, and I actually looked as scared as we felt.

  The eel was right in front of Mark now!

  “Stop,” he said, holding up a hand.

  But the eel didn’t pay attention. Instead it wound around Mark’s legs and coiled around his middle until all you could see was Mark’s head sticking out the top of a pile of scales and fins.

  “Help!” Mark squelched.

  Then I heard a gurgling in the drainpipe against the lighthouse wall, then a rattling of the metal pipe, and then finally a whoosh of water as Frankie shot out of the open end of the drain!

  “Frankie!” I yelled.

  He must have seen our bat signal and swum all the way back from out at sea!

  Frankie slid across the floor toward the evil eel, flipped up in front of its face, and spat a mouthful of drain water at him. That got his attention.

  The eel unwrapped itself from Mark and tried to swipe its tail at Frankie, but Frankie easily dodged the attack.

  Mark crawled out of the way of the eel and over to the ladder.

  “Go up!” he yelled.
/>   “The trapdoor won’t open!” I yelled back. “We need to come down!”

  The only way out was through the door on the other side of the zombie eel.

  By now, the two zombie pets were squaring off in the kiddie pool, preparing for a mega-zombie smackdown. (Just so you know, even though it would be an awesome name for a comic book, it’s not an awesome thing to be stuck in the middle of.)

  Frankie’s green eyes glowed as he tried to hypnotize the evil eel. The evil eel’s eyes glowed back in a burning, bright-orange zombie stare. Its huge body fizzed and sparked with electricity as it flung itself at Frankie. Frankie leaped in and out of the paddling pool and into the puddles of goopy green water that had splashed onto the floor. Neither of them seemed able to get the upper fin. It was like undersea championship boxing!

  Then Sami jumped down from the bottom rung of the ladder, ran past Mark, and jumped between the two angry zombies.

  “Stop fighting, naughty fishy things!” she yelled.

  “Sami, no!” shouted Pradeep, scrambling down the ladder to get to her.

  Both Frankie and the eel were in full zombie-stare mode—and Sami was caught in the zombie-stare crossfire! Suddenly Sami was looking both at the wall of the lighthouse and up the evil eel’s left nostril. Her left eye glowed green and her right eye was glowing pale orange.

  “Swishy fishy eel,” she mumbled.

  Although he denied it later, that’s when Mark totally squealed.

  CHAPTER 16

  SWISHY FISHY SMACKDOWN

  I jumped down from the ladder and only just managed to grab Pradeep before he leaped in and got himself zombified too!

  Sami was staring deep into the eyes of the evil eel. Her face suddenly looked very sad. The eel lowered his head and she went over and patted him behind his gills.

  Then Sami turned to Frankie. “Don’t be mean to Zarky,” she said, and wagged her finger at him.