Harrison Squared

by Daryl Gregory

  Waughm snorted.

  I’m not sure what happened in the next few seconds. I didn’t “black out.” I didn’t go unconscious. But neither was I in my own head. One moment I was in my chair, across the room from Waughm. The next I was up, one hand gripping his neck, pressing him against the wall.

  It was a scrawny neck. One hand was plenty.

  “Mr. Harrison!” Montooth said.

  Waughm’s mouth hung open. He squeaked like a balloon leaking air.

  Hands seized my shoulders. I released my grip on Mr. Waughm, and he stumbled sideways into the wall. A glass-framed certificate hit the floor with a crash.

  It was Aunt Sel who’d grabbed me. She looked scared, and it was that expression that seemed to suck the rage out of me. “You’d better go outside,” she said.

  Montooth had stepped around the desk. He was looking at me, but he wasn’t upset, or angry. He almost seemed amused. “Ms. Harrison, could I talk to Harrison alone for a moment?”

  I stormed toward the exit, moving stiffly. I pushed through the door and nearly knocked over Miss Pearl, who’d obviously been eavesdropping. “What did you do?” she asked. She seemed delighted.

  I couldn’t answer her. What had I done? My stomach felt cold. I’d really thought I could keep control. I walked out into the atrium, and Montooth followed me.

  I wheeled on him. “I know, I know, I’m kicked out.”

  “I really don’t have any choice but to suspend you now,” Montooth said. “But between you and me, I’ve wanted to strangle Floyd quite a few times.” He gestured toward the bench that sat beside the office door. “Can we talk frankly for a moment? Off the record.”

  The atrium was empty—class was still in session. Mr. Montooth sat and folded his long legs. After a moment I decided it was all right to sit beside him.

  “I grew up in Dunnsmouth,” he said. “My father was the pastor of the church, and he ran this school before me. You want to talk about strict.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t easy growing up as the pastor’s son.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “But I will say this for him—he valued education. So unlike most of the people I grew up with, I left Dunnsmouth. I went to college, then graduate school. I saw the world, traveled, saw how other people lived. And it didn’t take me long to figure out how … conservative Dunnsmouth was.”

  I would have said “insane,” but let it pass. “You came back, though,” I said.

  He nodded. “When my father died, I felt I had no choice. So, I became a teacher here, and then its principal. I try to do a good job. I try to lead Voluntary like my father did, and do the right things. But I know that some people in town take our traditions seriously. Very seriously.”

  “Is that a threat?” I said.

  “What?” He seemed genuinely shocked. “No, of course not. It’s just … I want you to be careful, Harrison. For as long as you’re here, whether you decide to stay in school or work at home. Because people like, well, Mr. Waughm, they may look odd, even a bit laughable. But they can be dangerous. I’d like you to steer clear of him.”

  “That’s kind of hard,” I said. “He’s my teacher.”

  “Yes, well. Perhaps after your suspension is over, if you really want to stay in school, then we’ll find you a study hall for that period. Meanwhile…” He took a breath and rose to his feet. “Keep your head down, Harrison. Can you try?”

  “Head down. Right.”

  He looked toward the office door. “I suppose now I need to calm down Mr. Waughm.” He laughed to himself, then held out his hands and made a choking noise. “Aaagh! Aaagh!” He laughed again, and went inside.

  “Harrison.”

  It was Lydia. She walked toward me from the other side of the atrium, holding her books to her chest. I couldn’t imagine how she’d managed to get out of class.

  “I heard you were in the office,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not very convincing,” she said.

  “I’m also not good at keeping my head down.”

  “Montooth told you that?”

  I thought for a moment. “You should stay home tonight,” I said. “Your uncle’s going to be getting a call.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Shake the tree,” I said.

  Aunt Sel came out of the office looking exasperated, but then she saw who I was talking to and put on a smile. “So good to see you again, Lydia.”

  “Hello, Ms. Harrison.”

  “Please, just Selena. It’s been an exciting morning. Mr. Worm’s in quite a state, and Principal Manteeth is putting his foot down. So you know what that means, Harrison.”

  “We’re off to the mall?”

  “I’ll call Saleem.”

  * * *

  That night I found myself sitting on a damp log, just inside the tree line on the north end of Dunnsmouth Bay, with a pair of binoculars pressed to my face. I could hear the whisper of surf just thirty feet from me, but looking east I saw nothing but a wall of solid black, ocean and sky slamming together to seal off the town. Somewhere up there, beyond the cloud layer, there had to be the moon and stars, but no light reached the surface. The closest thing to a star was a yellow light to the southeast, bobbing low on the horizon. It was the naked bulb that hung above the door to Chilly Bob’s bait shack, out at the end of the pier.

  My focus was on the buildings closer to shore, west of me. One building in particular. I stood up, walked to another set of trees to get a different angle. Checked the time on my phone. After thirty seconds I walked back to the log, checked the time again, and raised the binocs. I wasn’t really cold, thanks to one of Aunt Sel’s credit cards, but I was nervous.

  I’d told Aunt Sel that I was going to see a friend, and allowed her to jump to the conclusion that it was Lydia. It wasn’t that far of a leap; as far as Aunt Sel knew, Lydia was my only friend in town. Little did she know that I wasn’t even sure Lydia liked me. She was so grim, so serious, it was like trying to cozy up to Batman.

  Aunt Sel was worried about me, I knew. During the trip up to Uxton she didn’t try to pester me, but I could see her watching me, trying to decide what to say. I didn’t contribute much. I watched the trees scroll by the car window while she bantered with Saleem. Once we were in the mall it was easier to talk about nothing. Aunt Sel wanted nothing for herself, and so most of our conversations consisted of her holding up some article of clothing and saying, “What about this?” and me shaking my head.

  For lunch, Aunt Sel refused to consider the food court (“Because all the food has been found guilty”), and led us to a Mexican restaurant attached to the mall, where she could order a margarita. While we waited for our meals we snacked on tortilla chips and checked our phones. It was a little stunning to have cell coverage again. Alerts and updates from my social apps hit like an avalanche. All that trivia and pocket drama, in-jokes I was now too outside to get, “hilarious” videos and new memes … and friend pics. So many pictures of my friends. They were holding on to each other, clowning around, pouting into the camera.

  After a few minutes I closed all those apps without responding to anyone’s posts. I’d been dying to talk to my friends, but now that I could do it, I didn’t know what to say. How could I explain what had happened in the past ten days? I was in a different world now.

  I decided to check in on the four friends who’d last seen my mother alive: Howard and Edgar, Steve and Pete. I was able to log in to Mom’s NOAA account because Mom, despite my repeated advice, used the same password for everything: “Harrison2.” Kind of hard for me to forget.

  Howard and Edgar, the buoys she’d deployed on the first day, were still functioning and pinging the servers with their GPS coordinates, every hour. The same with Steve, the first buoy she’d deployed on day two. None of them had uploaded any sonar images of large moving objects, though, so M. hamiltoni, AKA the colossal squid, was still going incognito.

  Of the fourth
buoy, Pete, there were no recent entries. Had she failed to get him in the water? I scrolled back through the logs until I reached the day of the attack, and there it was: a single entry for Pete. On startup, the buoy had sent its GPS location as well as initial status data. By the next hour it had gone silent.

  Aunt Sel noticed my expression. “You want to talk about what happened in the principal’s office?” Oh. She thought I was still upset about my little Hulk-out. And it’s true, it had come as a surprise to me.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I’ve had so much therapy I’m sure I’m licensed in something by now. I’ve recently become an expert in anger issues.”

  Ah. She was still worried about my outburst. “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I know I’m not making this easier. You dropped everything to come out here, and … well, I know it can’t go on forever. When you have to go back, just tell me.”

  “Harrison, you did me a favor. If I was back in the city I’d be facing charges for manslaughter right now, after accidentally knocking my lying boyfriend off the balcony of his Manhattan penthouse.”

  “Whoa. Did he cheat on you?”

  “I found out he was sleeping with his wife.”

  “Ouch.”

  “C’est la vie. Unfortunately, he was also the owner of my boutique. I held one last fire sale—well, street sale. Kind of a street fire sale.”

  “You weren’t kidding about the anger stuff.”

  “I’ve learned to look for silver linings. For example.” She opened her purse and placed an onyx credit card on the table. “His parting gift to me.”

  I picked it up. I didn’t know a credit card could be heavy. “That was nice of him.”

  “Harrison, you’re adorable.”

  “You mean he doesn’t know that—? Oh.”

  “I want you to do me a favor, H2. Help me get through this difficult moment in my life, while simultaneously sticking it to the man. A very particular man.” She reached across the table and touched my arm. “Will you do that for me?”

  I looked down at the table. I was pretty sure this was the most illegal thing I’d ever participated in, if you didn’t count assault and battery on a school administrator. Big Day for Me.

  “Well,” I said. “There are a couple of things I could probably pick up while we’re here.”

  Which was how I came to be wearing a rain-resistant parka stuffed with some kind of synthetic material that made geese envious, and watching J. Ruck’s Marine Engineering through a pair of Bushnell “H2O” waterproof binoculars. Oh, and breaking the law again.

  There was not much light near the Ruck building: a streetlamp over the parking lot, a light over a side door. The only windows, by the front office, were dark. I checked my phone again.

  Lub had been inside for fifteen minutes. And for maybe the hundredth time in those fifteen minutes I thought, the Scrimshander is in there.

  Lub and I had talked about the possibility. But neither of us thought that the creature could be guarding the Albatross twenty-four hours a day. Lub said he’d be in and out of the building in five minutes, tops.

  I walked to the other set of trees and raised the binoculars again, this time focusing on the front office. Was that a light flashing inside? Or a reflection on the windows of something outside?

  “Hi there,” a voice said in my ear. I jumped sideways, then banged into a tree.

  Lub made that weird coughing sound that passed for laughter.

  “Don’t do that!” I said. Then: “Are you okay? What took you so long? Did you do it?”

  “It turned out they had the water gate locked,” Lub said. His skin was still wet, but he didn’t seem to be cold. He was still carrying the plastic bag that we’d packed with a butane grill lighter and the can of lighter fluid. “That slowed me down for a bit. But as for the rest—mission accomplished, Hari-San.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

  “Well, the alarms are going crazy in there,” he said. “It’s sure to be only a matter of time before—here we go.”

  Headlights plunged down the hill from town. A delivery van—Ruck’s van—jerked to a stop in the parking lot. A man—I assumed J. Ruck himself—ran to the side door and started fiddling with keys.

  I lifted the binoculars. “You made sure nobody was in there, right?” I asked. I had visions of the place exploding like a movie set. “No pets either?”

  “Don’t worry, Hari-San.” This was his new hi-larious nickname for me. I really regretted giving him the Japanese manga. “I checked all the rooms; then I set the fire near the Albatross. Plenty of oil and rags in that place. It turns out I’m really good at starting fires! Who knew?”

  Below, Ruck had gone inside.

  “Does Dunnsmouth have a fire department?” I asked. “A volunteer one, maybe?”

  “Never seen one,” Lub said. We watched the building for several minutes. Then several more.

  Lub said, “What’d you call this plan again?”

  “Shaking the tree.”

  “I never really understood that expression.”

  “Stirring the pot, then.”

  “That just seems like a good thing to do, cooking-wise,” he said.

  “Kicking the hornet’s nest,” I said. “Rattling the cages. Teasing the tiger.”

  “Now you’re just making things up.”

  “It just means that—wait.” Another set of headlights appeared. This time they belonged to a pickup truck that shot down the hill even faster than Ruck’s van had. It swung into the parking lot outside the marine garage and squealed to a stop. The man who jumped out of the cab was big and bearded. He ran to the door Ruck had left open and went inside.

  “That’s him,” I said. “Micah Palwick.”

  “Now I get it—shake the tree until the nuts fall out. What now?”

  “Now we wait for Lydia to contact us.”

  “Us?” Lub asked. “Finally!”

  “I mean me. I am not introducing you.” I put away the binoculars. “Besides, you said you had to stay hidden.”

  We walked back to my house, taking the long way through the trees to avoid being seen on the street by Uncle Micah when he came back—or by anyone else. At my back porch I shook hands with Lub. The skin of his palm was surprisingly soft.

  “Thanks for doing this,” I said. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

  “You’re going to tell Lydia that you did all this by yourself, aren’t you? Even though I’m the one who snuck in and risked everything.”

  “It wasn’t that hard.”

  “I’m practically a superhero! She should know this.”

  “Superheroes wear masks—they don’t try to get credit for everything they do.”

  “Aquaman doesn’t wear a mask.”

  “Lub, I hate to break this to you, but no one cares about Aquaman.”

  “Wow. Hurtful. My only human friend, and he’s anti-amphibian.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Amphibiphobic,” he said. “You’re an amphobe.”

  “Go home, Lub.”

  * * *

  The phone call came less than an hour later. “Get here,” Lydia said. “Now.”

  I pulled on my new coat and told Aunt Sel that I was going to Lydia’s, and she gave me a knowing smile. “Bundle up, dearie. That’s what a proper parental substitute would say, right?”

  “You’re doing a really good impersonation,” I told her.

  I practically ran up the hill. Lydia’s house was well lit—and quiet. If Uncle Micah was in a panic like I hoped, it hadn’t spread to the rest of the household. I knocked at the front door, and after a minute it was opened by a thin woman with a pinched face. Her hair was pulled back, and she grimaced at me as if I’d dropped a dead cat on her doorstep. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Harrison. I go to school with Lydia.”

  “So?”

  Behind her I could see the living room and the pair of hospital beds. The man and wom
an looked the same as they had before: mouths open, faces pointed at the ceiling. Unconscious.

  Lydia suddenly appeared. “It’s okay, Aunt Bee. I told you, I have a study group tonight.”

  “You can’t take off! Micah’s already run off! Who’s going to take care of them?”

  “I’ve already fed them, and they’re ready for bed. Just turn out the lights when you go up.” She pushed past her aunt.

  “Get back here!” Aunt Bee said.

  “It’s for school,” Lydia said. “I won’t be long.” She marched toward the road, and I followed. When I glanced back, her aunt slammed the door.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Did Micah call anyone?”

  “He came back here, looking mad,” Lydia said. She was holding a flashlight, but she didn’t turn it on. “He stomped around for a bit; then he got on the phone.”

  “I knew it! Who did he call? You were listening, right?”

  She gave me a withering look. Of course she had been.

  “Who was it?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

  “You’re so smart—guess.”

  “Just tell us already,” a voice said.

  Lydia screamed. A short scream, more like a bark really. But surprisingly loud.

  A figure stepped out of the trees and waved a big hand. “Hi there.”

  Lydia stepped back. “Harrison, run! It’s a—”

  “It is a he,” Lub said.

  “He’s a Dweller of the Deep!” she said.

  “I can’t believe this. Your girlfriend is an amphobe too,” Lub said.

  “I’m not a—what?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” I said.

  “Get back,” Lydia commanded Lub.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Lydia, this is Lub. He’s a friend.”

  This took her some time to process. Then she came to a conclusion. “That makes no sense.”

  “Right?” Lub said. “We come from two different worlds.”

  “I thought you were extinct,” Lydia said.

  “I’m just shy,” Lub said.

  “Do you really live out in the bay?” she asked. Her fear had turned to curiosity. “Do you live for centuries? How long have you—?”