Abarat: Absolute Midnight (16 page)

Chapter 28
Altarpiece

C
ANDY
? M
ALINGO
? A
RE YOU
up there?”

It was a familiar voice that instantly lifted Malingo’s spirits.

“John Mischief? Is that you?” Malingo said.

“Yes—”

“We knew you’d be on one of these ferries sooner or later—” said John Serpent.

“A ferryman told us where to find you—” said John Pluckitt

“And we’re all here!” said John Drowze, eager to share the good news.

As he spoke, the brothers rose up the stairs from the deck below, followed by Two-Toed Tom and—

“Even Geneva!” said John Fillet.

“It’s good to see you all again. But please, keep your voices down. Candy’s still asleep.”

“Should we wake her up?” said a rather heavily armed Geneva.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea right now,” Malingo said.

“Why not?” Two-Toed Tom asked, emerging from behind.

“There’s something weird about the way she’s sleeping,” Malingo said.

“What do you mean?” Geneva said.

“Well, look for yourself. But put your weapons down first.”

“Why?”

“They make such noise.”

“I’d only do this for you,” Geneva said, unbuckling her belt and handing it, with sheathed swords, to Tom. “If anybody but me unsheathes those . . .”

“We wouldn’t think of it,” Mischief said.

“No, no, no, no, no . . .” the brothers all murmured. “We’re just concerned for our Candy.”

“Keep your voices down, please,” Malingo said. “She mustn’t be disturbed. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. She just shouldn’t, I think.”

“Look at the expression on her face,” Geneva murmured. “She’s in pain.”

Malingo nodded.

“Yes. I think she probably is.”

“If she’s having a nightmare, shouldn’t we wake her?” Geneva said. “Look at how troubled she is! How pained!”

“I know,” said Malingo. “I don’t like seeing her like this either. But wherever she is right now, and whatever she’s doing, it’s something important. And I think we’re better leaving her to do it. When she dreams like this she goes to Chickentown to see her mother.”

“She doesn’t seem very happy about it,” Geneva remarked.

The frown on Candy’s face deepened.

“Lordy Lou! She looks terrible,” John Serpent remarked. “Are you sure she isn’t dying?”

“No,” Malingo said after a length of silence, “I’m not.”

Candy counted eleven people, including her father, but not herself, now assembled within the church. They had emerged from the shadows and they could all see her, a feat no doubt made possible by her father’s stolen magic. Candy recognized almost all of their faces, though she could name only a few. One was Norma Lipnik, who had once (a long time ago, in another life) showed Candy the haunted room in the Comfort Tree Hotel. It was she that had told Candy about Henry Murkitt, the ghost of Room Nineteen. Seeking out his legend was what brought Candy, for better and for worse, to the spot where she now stood. Now, Norma was dressed in all her best Sunday clothes. She even gave Candy a smile as though there was nothing remotely odd about seeing Candy’s dreaming presence.

Also among the small group were two of Melissa Quackenbush’s friends. One, she remembered, was called Gail, an overweight woman who always wore an excessive amount of sweet perfume in an attempt (which failed) to mask the unpleasant smell that her body exuded. The other was a woman, named Penelope, who lived a few doors down from them on Followell Street. She knew by sight several of the others too; one was the janitor at her school, though like all the others she didn’t know his name. Each one of them in turn locked eyes with her, unblinking, and smiled—puppet smiles, painted on puppet heads.

“Today is a special occasion. My daughter is here in her dreaming state,” Bill was explaining to the small gathering of his worshipers, “but it should be no more difficult to get what we need out of her in this form as in her real body. Knowledge is shared between the dreamer and the dreamed, after all. They’re still connected. Norma, the curtain please.”

Norma Lipnik offered Candy one last forced smile, then went to do as her minister instructed, drawing aside the milky blue curtain behind the altar. There was a peculiar kind of machine standing nine feet tall, perhaps ten, behind the altar.

“I know what you’re wondering, witch,” said Bill. “You’re thinking: who made that impressive piece of machinery?”

“You’re right,” said Candy, doing her best to fake an appreciative smile. “I mean, who else . . . ? It’s . . . amazing!”

Behind the flattery, she was all panic. This was bad. Very bad. She had no idea what this monstrous machine did, but if it was Kaspar Wolfswinkel’s brain-child—and it certainly wasn’t her father’s, so that only left the wizard who had stolen the hats her father now possessed—then its purpose could not be benign.

“I can’t take all the credit,” Bill said. “I was inspired by this.” He stroked his vest of many colors. “But my mind understood it instantly. You know why?”

Candy shook her head.

“Because you were born for greatness, lord of lords.”

The speaker was a woman whose presence Candy had missed until now. Now, however, she stood up. Her head was bowed, but Candy recognized her immediately: it was her former teacher, Miss Schwartz. Oh, how she had changed. Her hair was no longer scraped back from her face and held hostage behind her head. Instead it fell free, long and shiny, framing her pale face.

“Nicely put, Miss Schwartz,” Bill said.

The woman looked in the direction of Candy’s father, but did not raise her head.

“I’m glad it pleases you, sir,” she said.

Her passivity—her downcast eyes—her pitiful gratitude—were distressing. This wasn’t the Miss Schwartz Candy had despised. Her father had broken her. Broken her and stuck her back together again so that she was fragile and afraid.

“Mr. Thompson, Mr. Elliot, why don’t you prepare my daughter for our little science experiment? And be quick about it. I want this over and done with.”

Chapter 29
Midnight has Wings

A
S
M
ATER
M
OTLEY ASCENDED
the steps of the Great Pyramid at Xuxux, her thoughts turned briefly to her grandson. They had worked for many years devising the plan that was about to come to fruition, and while she’d had no time for sentimentality—it was a spineless, sickly feeling—she couldn’t keep a wave of regret from breaking over her. She’d done her best to warn her grandson about the vicious power of his affections. She’d forced the lesson upon him by sewing up his lips with needle and thread when she’d first heard him use the word
love
; the scars that her handiwork had left were still upon his face the last time she’d seen him, which had been on the deck of her death-ship,
Wormwood
. The scars, however, had failed to inspire contrition in him.

She let the regret have its useless moment, then let it go. Carrion had been a fine coconspirator, but once the taint of love had touched him, he’d become a danger to himself and to their great enterprise. So she was alone as she climbed the steps to the doors of the Great Pyramid.

She paused. This was a great moment. She wanted somebody with her to witness.

“Maratien,” she said quietly.

“I’m here, m’lady,” Maratien said behind her, but nearby.

She couldn’t conceal the unease in her voice. The Old Mother sensed it.

“There’s nothing to fear, child,” she said. “The creatures behind this door—they are the sacbrood—and are all in my service.”

“There are many?”

“Numberless, at least.”

“All in this pyramid?”

“They are in all the pyramids, and below all the pyramids, beneath the Izabella, spreading out and down great distances.” Mater Motley waited for all this to register with the girl. Then she reached into the fold so her dress, its fabric weighed down by captive souls, and brought out a key. It was a strange, restless form. “Here,” she said. “You open the door. See for yourself.”

Tentatively, Maratien accepted the key.

“Take courage, child. There are powers waiting upon you. Look back. See for yourself.”

Maratien glanced over her shoulder. In the short time since they’d stepped off the
Kreyzu
and onto the steps of the pyramid, massive numbers of sea creatures had risen to crowd the surface of the Izabella, many of them giving off luminescence from their scales or shells.

“See how impatient they are?” Mater Motley said, directing Maratien’s attention to the bottom step, where the dozens of monstrous forms were emerging. “You’d better get on with it.”

Maratien needed no further words of encouragement. She returned her gaze to the door, and slid the key into the lock. She didn’t have to do more than that; the key knew its business. It slid out of her fingers and into the lock, disappearing completely.

“Good,” Mater Motley murmured. “Very good.”

There was a noise from within the pyramid now, as the system of counterweights that operated the doors was set in motion. The lock was turning, but so was an entire portion of the door surrounding the lock. And the motion was spreading, forms turning within forms, until the entire triangular door was moving, the design dividing, opening onto the darkness within.

A rank smell came to greet the Old Mother and Maratien, fouler by far than that of excrement or rot, though the worst of both was contained within it. Maratien put her hand up to her face, disgusted by the stench. Mater Motley was indifferent to it.

“How I have waited . . .” she breathed.

The triangular door was completely open now, and from inside, carried on that foul air, was the voices of the sacbrood: clicking, hissing, ticking; its volume steadily rising as news spread from hive to hive that the Hour of Hours had come. Mater Motley reached into the folds of her skirts again, and brought out her slim, black wand. Then quietly instructing Maratien to follow her and stay close, she entered the Pyramid. The only illumination within was the moonlight that had entered with them. It did nothing to define the mysteries of the interior.

“Be ready,” Mater Motley said to Maratien.

Then she lifted the wand above her head and its tip suddenly blazed. It was a tiny source, but it threw off tens, then hundreds, then thousands of beads that flew in all directions, each as bright or brighter than its creator, and each trailing a filament of light that did not diminish, but hung in the air like the threads of a luciferian spider. And as this web of brightness spread, it began to unknit the darkness, and offer Maratien and her guardian a glimpse of what the Pyramid contained. The Old Mother had not remotely prepared the girl for what she now saw.

The sacbrood were everywhere, each its own invention. Were they vast insects, or winged reptiles, or an unholy marriage of both? Some had limbs numbered in the hundreds, and eyes in clusters, like bright black eggs, and bodies that coiled upon themselves like nested snakes. Some were swarming with parasitic creatures whose bodies were in turn leeched upon by bloated mites; some hung in loops from the heights of the Pyramid, their translucent bodies containing jellied spawn; and others skittered over the floor, moving with such speed they left only an impression of their barbed bodies.

But none of these details distracted Mater Motley from the business she had here.

“I know that many of you here have waited years for this Hour,” she said, using that voice that, though it was barely conversational in volume, was somehow heard everywhere.
“The waiting is over
.
Rise, all of you! And give me my Midnight!”

She did not pause for a response from the brood. She simply pointed her black rod at the apex of the Pyramid. One last bend of brightness flew from it, and struck the top of the Pyramid. Unlike those messengers of light she’d previously unleashed, it was, however, instantly extinguished. It had done its work, triggering a mechanism somewhere in the Pyramid’s belly. A profound growl shook the structure, punctuated by something akin to the beating of a vast drum.

“What’s happening?” Maratien said.

“They are being freed to do what they were born to do,” Mater Motley replied. “See?”

She directed the girl’s attention to the spot where she had sent the triggering pulse. Moon-silvered clouds were now visible with a litter of stars between them. The pyramid was opening, its sides no longer touching at the apex, but parting like a three-petaled flower. To move stone walls of such immensity was no easy task, and the blossoming above was slow. But the sacbrood sensed their imminent release.

Waves of agitation passed through their prodigious numbers. A few of those close to the roof fluttered up to the three-pointed aperture and flirted with the moonlight; some even flew up fearlessly into the night. Their escape encouraged other members of the brood that were clinging to the walls lower down the Pyramid to also take flight, so that soon the Pyramid was filled with the clamor of wings.

The shafts of moonlight were broadening as the Pyramid continued to open, but the sight of the sky only caused word to spread into the deeper and deeper hives. The floor of the massive structure, though built by masons who had known how to move blocks of stone the size of mountains, vibrated from the motion of a billion wingbeats, each striking the air with no great violence.

Midnight had arrived.

Chapter 30
Draining the Ghost

T
HE DEVICE THAT
B
ILL QUACKENBUSH
’
S
technicians, Elliot and Thompson, had hooked Candy up to was very obviously not of any parts its builder had available in the Hereafter. The portion secured to the wall behind the altar curtain was a large, messily constructed device made of equipment that had probably been taken from the big pharmacy on Main Street mingled with stuff that might have come from a garage or perhaps from the wreckage of the chicken factory, or both.

At its heart, however, were magical mechanisms that had not, she thought, been found in Chickentown, unless by chance the floodwaters of the Izabella had conveniently brought them here. More likely, Candy thought (no,
feared
) they had been supplied to him by somebody in the Abarat, which meant that trade between the two worlds had begun again. Perhaps it had never been fully eradicated in the first place and all that her father needed to do to find the parts for his machine was ask the right people.

There were two parts of the device that really carried the stamp of Abaratian technology. One was a globe of pulsing power about three feet across—the glass it was made from, full of flaws—that was set at the center of the device. It made the air smell like summer lightning: sweet and metallic. The second piece of Abaratian design was the bizarre mechanism that the globe was set upon. It looked like the innards of an old television, only slightly melted and then given to a family of tiny, white bugs to nest in and that now lived inside the guts of the thing and moved at such speed through the machine that they were blurs.

There was a third piece: a chair.

“Sit,” her father said. “Go on. And before you try any of your tricks, just remember: your mother is back at home, fast asleep. Defenseless. Do you understand me?”

Candy nodded.

“Say it.”

“I understand,” she said quietly as she sat in the chair.

“Sir, may I step outside and take a breath of air?” one of the men said, as Elliot and Thompson each uncoiled lengths of the needle tubing. “I’ve always been a little squeamish around medical things.”

“No, Futterman,” Bill Quackenbush snapped. The nervous man, who Candy only now recognized as the manager of the supermarket on Riley Street, reluctantly obeyed the preacher’s instructions. Bill grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him closer. “You will stay right
there
—”

“Must I? I think—”

“I don’t care what you think. I’m the minister of this church and if you want to stay in the Lord’s good graces then you’d better do as I damn well say!”

Meekly, Futterman remained where he’d been told to stand. All the color had drained from his face, leaving him pasty white. Candy felt sorry for him. He looked so afraid. He seemed to feel her watching him, because his eyes flicked in her direction. Candy desperately wanted to give him some hope. She wanted to throw a thought into his head to say:
It’s going to be all right.
The preacher’s just a bully who found some magic hats. He hasn’t got any real power.

Candy’s concern for him distracted her from her own problems, until at a little nod from her father, Elliot and Thompson, working with well-rehearsed synchronicity, went down on their haunches to either side of the half-melted television with the white bugs in it, and unraveled from either side of it long black and yellow cables. They had at the end of them small discs with lids that the two men cautiously unscrewed.

“Now we just have to get this thing going,” Bill said.

He reached behind Candy and flipped one switch, which started a deep, regretful moan in the machine. Thompson and Elliot knew their cues. They each opened one of Candy’s hands without any need of force, and placed the discs on the palms of either hand.

“The Silter nests are in place, sir. We’re ready.”

Bill flipped two more switches, and Candy felt a creeping sickness climb through her body. The Silter nests broke through the flesh of her translucent palms and began to send fine tentacles up into her hands. She instantly started to feel the hunger of the voracious things called Silters. At once she felt weaker, as though her very life force was draining from her.

“Dad, please . . .” Candy muttered in her sleep.

“Did you hear that?” Malingo said. “She’s talking to her father?”

“Lordy Lou,” said John Moot. “That man’s psychotic.”

“She knows how to deal with him,” said John Fillet.

“Does that sound like somebody who’s dealing with things?” John Serpent said.

“She sounds as if she’s dying,” Geneva said.

“She’s just dreaming,” Mischief said.

“Look at the poor girl,” John Serpent replied. “They’re
tormenting
her. We have to do something!”

“I think he’s right, for once,” Tom said. “She’s obviously in pain.”

The expression on Candy’s face was becoming more and more agitated. Malingo glanced up at the faces of the John Brothers, Tom and Geneva, all looking down at Candy with echoes of her pained expression on their faces.

“You have to wake her,” Geneva said.

“But what’ll happen if we do? She’s never been like this,” Malingo said.

“Oh, Lordy . . .” she murmured. “Now you’ve got me doubting my own instincts.”

“What do you think, Malingo?” Tom said.

“I think . . .” he said softly. Then, drawing a deeper breath, “. . . I think we have no choice but to trust that she knows what she’s doing.”

“Doesn’t look that way,” John Serpent said.

“She’ll be okay,” Malingo said. “I believe in her.”