That made sense. I got out my own phone and punched numbers.
“Emergency 911 operator, state your emergency,” said a bored voice on the other end.
“A fish ate my friend!” I bellowed.
“Louie, I told you not to call here when you’re drunk.” There was a click, and the line went dead.
I immediately hit redial.
“Emergency 911 operator,” the same voice said with a tired sigh. “State your emergency.”
“I’m not drunk! My friend got eaten by a fish!”
“That can happen when incompatible fish share an aquarium. It’s not an emergency.”
“My friend isn’t a fish, she’s a girl, and a fish ate her and we need help, like boats and ships and divers and helicopters!”
“You said a girl,” the operator said. “You mean a girl fish? A female fish? Still not an emergency.”
“She’s not a fish!”
Trudy placed a call of her own, to federal authorities up the coast in San Francisco.
“Operator, please listen carefully,” she said. “We are reporting an emergency. In the interest of getting the most appropriate assistance dispatched immediately, I will relay the situation as accurately as I can: a gigantic, amphibious fish with arms and legs has swallowed our friend. We need a full-scale rescue effort involving the fire department, the coast guard, and the navy, and we need it now.”
A pause, and then she hung up.
“What’d they say?”
“Fffzzzt mwah mwah fffzzzt,” Trudy reported.
We needed a landline, or somewhere with a better phone signal. Trudy said her place was nearby, so we made an exhausted sprint to her mom’s bookstore.
The shop occupied the corner of a low-slung brick building on Main Street. Unlike the other shops around it, the bricks were scrubbed clean and the sidewalk out in front swept and tidy. Used books with crisp, bright covers were displayed in the window. The place looked pleasant and sunny. It totally didn’t fit in Los Huesos.
“Hi, Mom, this is my friend Thatcher we’re going to hang out upstairs don’t bother about lunch see you later!” Trudy said even before the little bell on the front door stopped jiggling. I caught a blurry glimpse of a surprised woman in a sweater polishing the cash register, and then Trudy was dragging me upstairs to the apartment where she and her mom lived.
It was tiny compared to my house in Phoenix, but after a couple weeks of sharing tight quarters with Griswald, Sinbad, and the shrunken heads, it was nice to be somewhere that felt like a home. The overstuffed sofa and chairs looked worn but comfy, and none of the knickknacks gave me the heebie-jeebies.
Trudy dialed 911 on the landline, but things went the same way they had on the beach—just distorted fuzz. We weren’t surprised.
“The phone company always says it’s because the salt in the air eats through the cables,” Trudy said, putting the receiver back in its cradle. “But I bet it’s the witch’s influence. On to Plan B, then.”
“Which is?”
“Shoal told us to find her father.”
“Right. She said something about Neptune House. And the summer palace. Any idea what she was talking about?”
“Maybe there’s something in one of the books downstairs—”
“Trudles!” Trudy’s mom appeared at the top of the landing. “That’s no way to introduce me to your new friend.”
I liked her right away. She reminded me of my kindergarten teacher, with a pair of glasses hanging around her neck on a string. Within seconds she’d swept me over to the kitchen table, sat me down, put a Coke and a plate of oatmeal cookies in front of me to give my stomach something to do while she made us lunch, and cheerfully assaulted me with questions. Did I like living in Los Huesos? What did my parents do for a living? Was I a fan of squirt guns? What was it like to spend my summer in a museum? Did I know what I wanted to do with my life? Is there a God, and if so, what is His or Her or Its plan for humanity?
“Mom, I’m going to show Thatcher the store while you finish fixing lunch.”
“Oh, splendid. Are you an avid reader, Thatcher?”
“Yes, he is, very avid,” Trudy said, hauling me downstairs.
“She’s friendly,” I said once we were among shelves crammed tight with hundreds of books. “It’s nice of her to make lunch.”
“She’s thrilled I’m hanging out with a real-live human being, even if it’s just you. I haven’t made any friends since we moved. Mom feels guilty about it.”
Trudy was a little unusual, maybe, but not so bad that she shouldn’t be able to make friends.
“Your folks are divorced?” We’d only known each other a day, but since we’d been through so much, I felt comfortable asking rude questions.
Trudy didn’t seem to mind. “Yeah. Long time ago. Dad’s a regional sales manager for a plumbing fixture company. Toilet parts.”
Interesting. I’d been sure her dad would be a cop or an FBI agent or a nosy reporter.
“So, what made you decide to become a superhero-detective?”
She started rooting through a cardboard box full of books on the floor. “I live in a town with hardly any kids and where most of the adults I encounter are cursed carnies from Atlantis. You think I should be playing with Barbies?”
“Put it that way, and I guess being a superhero-detective makes a lot of sense. Does your mom know about all the crazy stuff that goes on here?”
“I tried to tell her once, but remember, until today, I didn’t know much myself. Just that there were weird occurrences and strange people. Anyway, with her bookstore dream, Mom’s in her own little world.”
I thought about my own parents, and how focused they were on their squirt guns, and I understood.
Trudy began sorting through another box. She picked up a skinny little hardcover book and flipped through pages of black-and-white photos. “What about you? What was your life like before you came to Los Huesos and got cursed?”
I tried to imagine what I’d been up to in Phoenix before summer. And what I’d be doing if I’d stayed home. Probably hanging out at the mall and the water park and the miniature golf course and complaining about being bored.
“Right now,” I said, “I am having the most memorable time of my life.”
“Aha! Look!” Trudy handed me the book.
On a crackly, yellowing page was a grainy black-and-white photo of something I could only describe as a palace—a three-story castle made of coral, with concrete waves curling against the walls. Figures of mermaids and giant squid and sharks and a great sailing vessel decorated the entrance. The photo caption said “Neptune House,” which, according to the book, had been a ballroom back in the 1920s, the centerpiece of the Seven Seas Gardens amusement park.
I read on. “It says here it got hit by a bad storm in 1924 and had to be condemned. The rides and stuff on the boardwalk were built afterward, to replace the original amusement park. Then the old park ruins caught fire a few years later, and the Seven Seas site became a gathering place for the ‘destitute and criminal.’”
“Sounds promising, doesn’t it?” Trudy said.
“Yeah. But Shoal said the Flotsam wouldn’t be back at their palace until midnight. It’s easy enough for me to sneak out from Griswald’s—he’s not what I’d call a very guardy guardian—but what about your mom?”
“Maybe the old pillows-under-the-sheets trick and a recording of me snoring …”
“That really works?”
“Sure, especially if I devise a pneumatic bellows system of some kind to simulate breathing …”
“How about we tell her you’re staying over at the museum?” I interrupted before she could make plans to construct a complete Trudy robot. Not that I didn’t believe she could do it, but we were a little pinched for time. “You did say she’s happy you made a friend, even if it’s just me.”
“She’d want to meet Griswald first, to make sure he’s okay.”
“That’s a problem. He’s not okay. Far fro
m it. If he was keeping Skalla’s head in his care, then he’s probably loyal to her.”
“But if that’s true,” Trudy said, “it’s not safe for you to go back. You could become a shrunken head with fish fins for ears, or worse.”
“Yeah. Well. Someone’s got to feed Sinbad.”
“You said the cat’s fat, so I think it’ll be all right. Thatcher, I’m serious, you could be right about Griswald. It’s too risky—”
Griswald chose that moment to come hobbling down the sidewalk, right past the shop window. He was looking down, muttering something to himself, and didn’t see me and Trudy watching him go by.
“We should follow him,” I said. “If he’s a bad guy, we might catch him in the act.”
“In the act of what?”
“Something evil. Or at least nasty.”
Trudy nodded in agreement. She called upstairs: “Mom, can we have our sandwiches to go? Thatcher has to … um …”
“I have to go dust something stinky,” I helpfully provided.
Trudy’s mom came down a moment later with a pair of brown paper bags. She enthusiastically informed us that they were stuffed with apples, carrot sticks, and tuna fish sandwiches. The thought of eating fish made my stomach wiggly, but I thanked her as Trudy rushed us toward the door.
Poking our heads out, we watched Griswald cross the street and duck into a squat building down the block.
We made our way over in an awkward combination of speed and nonchalance. A parking meter maid rode by in his little cart, gave us a stink-eyed scowl, but kept going. A few blocks away, a delivery truck rumbled away from the hardware store. Other than that, the streets were abandoned. Pretty typical for Los Huesos.
Trudy and I paused across from the building Griswald had gone into—the Shipwreck Tavern, his favorite bar. Instead of windows, there were portholes, painted over black. A faded mural facing the street depicted a sinking tall ship, complete with floating wreckage and drowning sailors, their faces frozen in terror at approaching shark fins.
“I’m going in,” Trudy said, jogging across the street.
“It’s a bar, Trudy. Twenty-one and up. You have a fake ID?”
“Oh. Right. Hmm. This will take some subterfuge.”
We circled around behind the Shipwreck to a gravel parking lot. There were no cars, just a lonely trash Dumpster.
“Here’s the plan,” Trudy said. “I’ll scream ‘fire,’ and when someone runs out the back door to see what the fuss is about, we’ll knock them out and then sneak in.”
“Knock them out? You have knockout spray?”
“My science teacher wouldn’t give me the right chemicals, unfortunately. Okay, then, how about we use these.” Out from her backpack came a small brick of firecrackers and a plastic lighter.
“Fourth of July comes early to Los Huesos, I see.”
“These are leftovers from Chinese New Year, actually.”
“Let me guess: we light them and drop ’em in the Dumpster. People come running out, and in all the confusion they don’t notice us sneaking in through the back.” Just in case Trudy missed the completely mocking tone in my voice, I did things with my eyebrows to indicate how dumb I thought her plan was.
Trudy missed the tone of my eyebrows.
“You got it. Hopefully there’s nothing that will catch fire in the Dumpster.”
“Or, we could try that,” I said, pointing. At ground level was a small, dark window. Checking around to make sure no one was watching, I tugged on it. It swung forward on hinges, just an inch. I bent down and heard Griswald’s distinct, gravelly baritone. It was just a rumble; I couldn’t make out actual words.
“I have an idea,” I whispered. “We’ll need string.”
“What kind? I’ve got fishing line, nylon rope, cotton twine, copper wire—”
“I’ll take the fishing line.”
I explained my scheme and, with a disappointed look on her face, Trudy put away her firecrackers and gave me a spool of line, as well as her phone. I think she really would have rather blown something up.
Flipping open her phone, I tied the end of the spool around it. Then, after setting my own phone to silent ringer, I used her phone to dial my number.
“Voilà,” I said. “Instant spy device.”
Holding my own phone to my ear, I lowered hers through the window, just a tiny bit at a time. If Griswald’s murmuring stopped, I would assume he’d noticed her dangling phone, and we’d run away like a couple of rats on fire.
But the murmuring kept on, fuzzy and weak through the phone, until finally I could make out the words.
“… been looking for him for hours now. All down the boardwalk, all through the town, but he’s elusive. No, he’s not alone. He’s found a friend, a girl from town. They were spotted with the princess at the pancake house, but by the time I got there, they’d pulled up anchor.”
My stomach gave a little kick. He was talking about us.
“They’re definitely sticking their noses where they don’t belong. My fault for bringing the boy out here, but when his mother asked if I could watch him for the summer … Well, I couldn’t say no. But I should have. It’s critical we find them. For one thing, they’ve got Skalla’s head.”
He’d called the witch by name. He knew her. He knew what she was. And he knew we had her. My worst fears were being confirmed.
“My plan is— Hey, wait a minute. What’s that?”
“He sees the phone,” I whispered to Trudy.
“Pull it up! Let’s get out of here!”
I almost did. But then Griswald said, “Oh, my mistake. I’d never noticed that urinal there, is all. They’re normally not that shade of green. At least not originally.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that they weren’t talking about the phone and made a mental note to never, ever, ever use the bathroom at the Shipwreck Tavern, even in case of dire bladder emergency.
“Very well, lads,” concluded Griswald. “Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
It sounded like the meeting was breaking up. We could make our escape now, but I was tired of skulking about, and I wanted to find out what Griswald knew about Skalla and Shoal and the Flotsam.
“I’m going down there,” I announced to Trudy.
“What for?”
“To face him.”
“Okay,” Trudy said. “I’m with you.”
After pulling the phone back up through the window, we walked around to the front of the building and barged through the front door. No reason to be sneaky now. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, and then I saw a bar fringed by dry palm fronds, shellacked blowfish, little glass lantern globes, and netting strung with cork floats and plastic hula girl figurines. Farther back, down some stairs and through the open men’s room door, was Griswald, caught in the act of conspiring with his cohorts, who happened to be a flock of seagulls.
They looked at Trudy and me with their blank bird eyes. They pooped. That’s about all they did.
“Ahoy, I found you!” bellowed Griswald triumphantly.
“More like we found you,” Trudy countered. “And now we know whose side you’re on.”
He apparently didn’t have a comeback for that. Instead, he hobbled past us, up the stairs and out the door. He began heading down the street.
“You kids aren’t as clever as you think,” he grumbled as we trailed him. “It’s obvious to anyone who’s paying attention that you’re sculling along coastal waters you have no business getting near.”
We followed him down past the hardware store and post office, aiming toward the beach. “You may think I’m deaf and dumb, sitting in my museum with my scrimshaw and jars of formaldehyde, but I have friends in this town. Watchful friends. Talkative friends.”
“Please tell me you’re not talking about the seagulls.”
“Pretty handy, aren’t they?” Griswald said smugly. “Nobody notices a gull unless it’s trying to take off with your catch. A seagull is the best
lookout a sailor could wish for.” He glowered darkly at us. “And my friends told me what you’ve got in your backpack.”
There was more talk of mutinies and stowaways, none of which seemed to have anything to do with the matter at hand, until we arrived in front of the museum. Griswald pulled on the door. “Hmm. Something’s wrong with this blasted knob …”
“Um. Did you lock it?”
Griswald blinked, then smiled as bright as the rising sun. “Aye, that’s right. That’s why I’m so glad you came out here to visit, Thatcher. Every old captain needs a crew, and you’ve got the makings of a good one. Both of you.”
I didn’t get it. One second he was all Captain Hook, and the next he was Admiral Affable.
“Anyway,” he said, his face growing sober, “the witch isn’t someone you want to play with. I’ve crossed her before. It didn’t go well. It never does.”
He tried the knob again, jiggling it uselessly. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I gave him my spare key.
“Good lad,” he said, unlocking the door.
We went inside with him. For some reason, I wasn’t afraid of Griswald anymore. I felt sorry for him. Besides, this was the guy who used to send me five-dollar bills tucked inside birthday cards with pictures of mermaids on the front. I knew he was odd. But in my heart, I couldn’t believe he was evil.
Trudy got out her notebook and clicked her pen. “What did you mean when you said you’ve crossed the witch?”
“Fought her!” Griswald said. “Did battle, me and my friends. We’re Keepers, you see, watchers of these shores. Everyplace where sea meets land has old-timers like me, pledged to keep nasties at bay. Why do you think more towns aren’t eaten by sea serpents?”
Only a few days ago I would have said because sea serpents weren’t real. But now I realized it would have been a stupid thing to say, and for once I didn’t say the stupid thing.
“But Skalla is different,” Griswald went on. “She’s older and nastier. With or without a body, she’s spiteful. Jealous. Hungry for power. And when you anger her, she punishes you.”
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