Fiendish Deeds (6 page)

“By the way, Madame Portia, how could your husband go diving down there with all those leeches?”

“My dear, leeches are quite unable to chew their way through a scuba suit, try as they might. Ludwig got the occasional one inside his flipper, but other than that, he was fine. In fact, he said there was nothing more delightful than lying on the bottom, looking up at the blue sky through an angry school of the little devils.

“But I must get some plywood to cover it up now. I don’t think I’ll be going for a swim myself any time soon. Oh, you wouldn’t happen to know any licensed divers interested in purchasing a scuba tank and respirator?”

“I don’t think so,” said Joy.

“Well, no matter. I can always put it in the classifieds, although it breaks my heart to do it after what happened. Poor Ludwig drowned, you know, just out front there. One wrong step and—splish!—the world lost one of its last true intellects. If only he’d been wearing his scuba gear at the time!”

Madame Portia became wracked with sobs. The children waited awkwardly, with Joy drawing a blank on anything comforting to say.

“Anyway, don’t mind the rats,” Madame Portia continued finally, wiping her nose with a dingy handkerchief. “They are quite timid, most of the time. They are mainly just interested in getting into the pantry. Speaking of which, I promised you cookies! Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.”

Joy and Byron waited, looking nervously for rodents. The sitting room was jammed with cushioned furniture vomiting its stuffing onto the floor. The curved walls were lined with elaborately built bookshelves. They rose over Joy and Byron like cresting waves, crowded with volumes held in place over their heads with leather straps.

“Our library,” said Madame Portia fondly as she returned, carrying a tray with two glasses of milk, a plate, and a box that said chocolate chunks in letters so faded they were barely legible. “Would you believe it, I am completely out of the gingerbread kind!”

Joy scanned the collection of books.
Freaks of Nature: A Study of Botanical Abnormality. The Wild World of Wood Lice. The Idiot’s Guide to Being Psychic.
“Come, come! Here are the cookies you were clamoring for, children,” Madame Portia said, putting the tray down and pouring out a heap of shattered pieces. Through the corner of his eye, Byron saw a rat bolt across a section of open floor.

“
The Compleat and Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot
!” cried Joy, pulling the book out. It was a modern edition with its corners chewed off, but it was otherwise the exact same book she owned.

“Oh, I picked that up at a garage sale a long time ago,” said Madame Portia. “Is it any good? I’d quite forgotten about it, actually.”

“Oh yes!” Joy was beaming. “It’s my favorite book in the whole world. The author, E. A. Peugeot, was a very famous horror writer who actually lived very near to here, you know.” Joy blushed, thinking how her theory had gone down the last time. “At least
I
think so,” she added with a shrug. “It hasn’t really been proved yet.”

Madame Portia laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. The area has quite a fascinating history, and has been home to more than a few unusual characters, as I know personally. And it’s refreshing to see some Darlington children taking an interest in our local heritage.”

“We don’t live in Darlington,” corrected Joy, her eyes flashing angrily at the suggestion. “We’re from Spooking.”

“Really?” gasped Madame Portia. “Forgive me! It’s been a good many years since I was last up the hill to visit my old home, what with no car and this hip, and before that the old town had been long without youngsters. They all grew up and moved on, you see, instead of staying to raise families of their own. Such a pity!” Madame Portia clasped Byron’s chin in her filthy hands. “But now there’s a new generation of Spooking children, you tell me! How wonderful!”

“
Spooziees
,” murmured Byron, his jaw held painfully shut in her grasp.

“Pardon?”

“Spookys,” repeated Joy. “It’s what they call us down at Winsome Elementary. In Darlington, where we go to school.”

“Bah,” said Madame Portia. “I wouldn’t pay any attention to them,” she purred, smoothing Byron’s hair. “Spooking will still be standing up on that hill when Darlington is but a melted pool of plastic. Cities like that are obscenities upon nature, and nature won’t abide such a thing for long.

“But never mind that. I always look forward to reading a book that comes with such a high recommendation.”

Joy handed her back the copy. “I think you will especially like the story ‘The Bawl of the Bog Fiend.’ And I would actually love to talk to you more about it sometime. But we really should be getting home now.”

“What about your milk and cookies?” asked the old woman.

“I’m afraid the rats already helped themselves to them,” replied Joy.

Madame Portia turned and saw the now empty plate and two rats cheerfully lapping up the last of the milk. “You dirty, dirty things!” she shrieked. The rats shot under the sofa, knocking over one of the glasses and shattering it.

The children said good-bye. Joy promised to return again soon. Madame Portia said they were welcome any time.

They began making their way home. It was starting to rain and Byron’s stomach was growling. He asked Joy if she had brought any food on this expedition.

“Nope, sorry. I forgot.”

Byron asked crankily how come Joy always remembered to bring her various weapons, but always forgot to pack some sandwiches.

“Actually, I didn’t bother bringing a weapon this time,” she said. “No point against a bog fiend.” They retraced their steps back to the road, passing through a patch of ghostly-looking birch trees. “It’s so magical, this place,” she sighed. “I can see why someone would want to live here, although I’m not sure I could handle the rats. At least we’re lucky to live close enough to visit whenever we want.”

“I wonder what it will look like after the bulldozers come.”

“Bulldozers?” Joy stopped. It was raining harder now, heavy drops exploding as they stepped out on the paved road. “What do you mean? What bulldozers?” she said over the noise.

“The bulldozers that are coming to clear the bog so they can start major excommunication,” answered Byron, thinking that didn’t sound exactly right. He shrugged. “And the drainage.”

“Byron, what on earth are you talking about?”

“What they were talking about in the boy’s washroom after assembly. The man with the loud voice, and the other one.”

“The mayor?” asked Joy, alarmed. “You heard him say something about the bog?”

“They came in when I was in the toilet. I heard them talking about how they couldn’t start bulldozing until they got something crazy out of the bog.” Byron’s eyes widened. “Do you think they were talking about your monster maybe?”

Joy’s blood went cold. It suddenly all made sense.

“The Misty Mermaid Water Park!” she exclaimed. “Those Darlington maniacs are going to build it over Spooking Bog! Byron, we’ve got to stop them!”

Just then a car whizzed passed them, screeching to a halt as the sky opened up completely.

“Joy! Byron!” called Mrs. Wells from the open door. The children ran up. “What on earth are you doing out in the rain without your ponchos?” she asked as they climbed in among the groceries. “Please don’t tell me you were in that bog again, Joy Wells….”

“We didn’t go in that far,” answered Joy, her hair now dark and dripping. Byron didn’t comment, having already opened a box of crackers and stuffed his mouth full.

“It’s much too dangerous to go in at all,” said Mrs. Wells crossly. “I thought we’d talked about this already. If you want to play in the woods, we have a perfectly fine park in town.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Now, let’s get you both home before you get pneumonia,” said Mrs. Wells, stomping the gas. The car shot up the crooked road as streams of rainwater rushed down to meet them. “I still can’t believe you forgot your new ponchos on such a day,” she said disapprovingly.

I
t always came in the dead of night. The dreaded visitor. Phipps would wake with a start at its first feathery touch, then feel its crushing weight bearing down on his chest.

It was Death—its relentless approach. At the darkest hour, just when his limbs felt lightest, his eyes would suddenly snap open.

He was going to die.

So what,
he scoffed.
Everyone is going to die.
And it did make him smile to think that in a world so unfair, there was one great equalizer—that it would all vanish one day like a puff of smoke for everyone.

But no, he remembered, dying wasn’t the issue. The issue was vanishing without a trace, having made no mark on the world. Quickly forgotten even by the few who’d known him. He would toss and turn as the room turned a gloomy blue that recalled the many gray dawns he’d spent in Spooking Cemetery.

At which point, he would throw off the covers and stomp to the shower. Then, rinsing soap and fatigue from his stinging eyes, he would begin plotting again. Plotting against fate.

And so the morning had begun again. It was time to pay another visit to the bog, he decided, as he knotted his tie.

Phipps hadn’t been back since that terrible afternoon. He had gone to see the old couple to ask them to be reasonable. He’d intended to tell them that the mayor had authorized a nice check to help with moving expenses. He’d meant to point out that there were many other fetid habitats around where a quaint little hermit couple could live.

But somehow it didn’t go that way.

He’d approached undetected, finding the old man alone, sketching some sad-looking weed against a backdrop of bog water. The old man had been whistling to himself, a tuneless torrent of notes that refused to conform itself to any sort of musical phrase. He’d seemed completely at ease, without a care in the world.

The cacophony had been enough to ignite a flare of anger in Phipps. Why was he even indulging this lunatic? He had tried diplomacy before and it had failed. It was now time to make the old coot squirm on the point of a hook.

“Gottfried Leibniz!” he had called out cheerfully, emerging from the trees.

The old man jumped with fright. His notebook landed with a splash in front of him.

“Oh dear, I made you drop your drawing,” Phipps said, strolling up with a smirk. “I hadn’t meant to startle you. I was just remarking what an interesting name you provided me, even if it was false.”

The old man’s eyes blazed with anger as he retrieved his notebook, which was a complete sodden mess. “What do you want?”

“Oh, I’m just here for a scholarly chat. Did you know who Gottfried Leibniz was? Of course you did, as I can tell you’re an educated man. Living like a pig in a swamp, I might add, but I’m sure you worked long and hard for that privilege.

“I, on the other hand, went to music school,” he continued, “where I also worked hard but unfortunately didn’t learn anything of any use—except how to use a library, that is.

“Which is where I learned that Gottfried Leibniz was a famous German mathematician and philosopher, born in 1646. And of his many observations—most of which I skimmed through yawning—he had one rather interesting belief. Namely that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

“Unfortunately, it didn’t fly with his fellow eggheads. This world, they laughed? With all the war and plague and poverty?

“Yes, said Leibniz. Because God is perfect, and perfect beings like Him wouldn’t get out of bed to make a world unless it was the best they could do. What do you think? Do you believe we live in the best possible world?”

“I most certainly do not,” said the old man. “And I also don’t believe you have the right to come on private property asking such flippant questions, Mr.—what was it again?”

“The name is Phipps. You see, I have nothing to hide by claiming to be Albert Einstein. And I must protest—this is not your property. It is public land, administered by the City of Darlington. Of which I am emissary, as I explained.”

“That is where you are wrong, Einstein. There are three acres that are private property, and have been so for a hundred years before it was inherited by me. It is upon those three acres that my home now stands, as I keep explaining.”

“But since there is no such deed on record at City Hall under the name of Leibniz, which was nothing more than a childish prank on your part, I’m afraid I can’t just take your word for it. Either show me a deed or vacate. This land has been rezoned for development.”

“Development,” the old man had spat. “This bog has developed for a hundred thousand years without your help. Bah, you know nothing. Do you have any idea what kind of ancient specimen dwells here? Living in shadow, untouched by human meddling for untold millennia?”

“Don’t tell me. A rat as big as a dachshund? Or a frog the size of a poodle?”

The old man had laughed. “No, but by coincidence, you just named two mainstays of its diet.” The old man had gazed toward the dark interior of the bog. “No, what lurks within that tangle of fossilized forest there is much more amazing. And once the scientific community learns of it, this bog will take its place among the ecological treasures of this planet. So you can rezone your development right up—”

“Well, I hope you’ve managed to save a couple of those nice little drawings then, because in a matter of a month, we’re flattening everything around here.”

The old man’s eyes had flashed. “You wouldn’t dare….”

“Watch me.”

It had been Phipps’s plan to then turn on his heel and leave the old fool to chew over the apocalypse coming soon to his pathetic mud-hole. Instead he’d found himself going purple as a pair of powerful old hands crushed his windpipe.

But surprised though Phipps had been, he was no stranger to violence. It was an old occupational hazard from the days when making music was a dangerous business, when he’d been kicked, punched, and pelted with bottles more times than he remembered. So despite his shock and dwindling supply of oxygen, he was taking none of it from some liver-spotted little skinhead. He’d punched the old man hard in the stomach, then unleashed a flurry of strikes at the old man’s head.

But there’d been no effect—the old man had held tight. Phipps’s windpipe had by then felt like a toilet paper tube under a truck tire. Then his vision had darkened and his knees had begun buckling.

Suddenly the old man had let go, letting out a horrible rattling gasp. Clutching his chest, he’d stumbled backward, before crashing through the peat moss into the black bog water below.

Phipps had fallen to his knees. He’d struggled to inhale, his throat aflame as if phantom hands were still crushing it. Through the optical fireworks celebrating his near-fatal asphyxiation, Phipps had glimpsed a horrifying sight: a hand, encrusted with leeches, clawing desperately at the sphagnum. Then he’d blacked out, falling face-first into the mud.

By the time he’d regained consciousness, it had been too late. The hand had gone completely still.

Phipps had stood up unsteadily before staggering out of the bog.

Now he returned to the horrible spot. The sphagnum showed no sign of having been disturbed in the slightest, much less swallowing a man alive kicking and screaming. At the end of the path, the old man’s bizarre house sat silently on its stilts.

Phipps approached quietly. As usual, the overgrown house was in total gloom. A single light burned inside, he noticed, tiptoeing up the slippery gangway.

There she was, just a few feet away from where he hung over the rail peeking through the porthole.

She was sitting under a standing lamp. Beyond, shadows scuttled across the carpet. She was reading a book.

Phipps imagined the old woman returning home on that fateful day, with her husband’s heart pills or a few groceries perhaps. Crying out as she spotted the glint of a wedding ring in the sphagnum.

Poor old Portia—the Mysterious and Amazing Madame Portia, as the painted sign over her shop once read. Now just another little old widow filling up her days before oblivion.

She hadn’t even recognized him, or so it had seemed when he came to give her and her new toadlike husband notice to clear off. But then again, it had been twenty-five years since he’d last spoken to her. He had been only sixteen back then. A shy boy, he had been, busy fixing instruments and digging graves.

How exotic she’d seemed to him, he remembered, and beautiful. All the women of Spooking flocked to her candlelit shop for furtive glimpses into their uncertain futures. Even today, he could still remember the cracked tailpiece of the violin he fixed for her. The very one she played not long after while he swung the heavy shovel, installing her first husband—the crazy clock maker—into the cold Spooking earth to tick away the seconds as he turned into dust.

Now here was the Mysterious and Amazing Madame Portia: gray, dirty, and living in a bog.
What a pity
, he thought. Wouldn’t she be so much happier in a nice rest home, reading tea leaves and casting spells over the other wrinkled residents, maybe going for husband number three? How could she go on living alone in this awful place? He sighed, feeling himself fill with uncommon sympathy.

But then Phipps saw what the old woman was reading, and the tiny light of fondness winked out.

It was the infernal work of the accursed Peugeot himself. The famous son, the beloved one, whose vile deed was still being punished a century later. He squinted, making out the familiar title at the top of the bookmarked page: “The Bawl of the Bog Fiend.”

Ah, yes. Wherein a slumbering swamp monster is disturbed by Dr. Ingram and his pathological inability to leave well enough alone; unleashing horror, suffering, and death on the procession of fools who never fail to follow him like a litter of trusting puppies. Nice work, Doctor! The scientific community would owe you a debt of gratitude, were your findings not always disregarded as the hysterical ramblings of someone gone completely insane.

How unbelievable, Phipps thought, that not a single tale ever reached its logical conclusion, with the good doctor having his fat meddling face ripped off. But then what bumbling idiot would take up the cause of luring hapless assistants and innocent townsfolk into yet another snarling maw in the next installment?

Behind him there was a crack, then a crash. Phipps jumped. Just a rotten branch, he told himself. The bog went deathly still again. How could she stay here, he wondered? Reading that creepy schlock?

He knocked on the door.

From inside came the sound of mad scuttling. After a pause, a voice demanded: “Who’s there?”

“The City of Darlington, Madame. No need for alarm.”

The door opened. “You again,” said Madame Portia testily. “And since you are not here to sell me a violin, you must be here to bury me,” she said, folding her arms. “Well, I am not dead yet, as you can see.”

Phipps cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “You remembered me all along?” He smiled. “So my hurt feelings were quite unnecessary.”

“I am not completely away with the fairies, you know,” she replied defensively. “I just didn’t want to bring it up in front of Ludwig. I tried not to reminisce too much about Spooking in his presence, you see, as imagining my previous life with my first husband always put him in a black mood. For all his wonderful qualities, dear Ludwig was quite jealous.”

“I see.”

“But I should say that even in your fancy suit and tie, you still look like the same little boy to me,” she added, sneakily taking a hold of his hand and glancing at his palm.

“I’m flattered, Madame,” said Phipps warmly, despite his secret irritation. “The truth is that the little boy you remember has been around the block a few too many times now.” She suddenly dropped his hand like it was on fire.

“Oh yes, so much experience out there in the great big world, hmm?” she asked, her eyes flashing with pity before turning back to polished stone. “It was just a shame you broke your poor mother’s heart, leaving home like that. For what, awful ear-splitting rock music? Well, that’s the curse of your generation—it’s not what you do with your life, but whether you’ll become famous doing it.”

Phipps chuckled. “What perceptive commentary! Really, you should have a column in the newspaper or something. But that is the least of my curses, as I’m sure you’re aware. Or was it not obvious on my palm?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“But you can be of no help, of course.”

Madame Portia sighed. “The truth is, I’m not that sort of gypsy. Their kind passed on in your great-great-grandfather’s time, taking the secrets of their evil eyes and hexes with them. I can only glimpse the future—I have no power over the past.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it is. If I did, I would have helped your father, believe me. Your mother was one of my best customers! What a lovely woman, she was. She asked for my help too, but it was no use.”

“Perhaps you can try again,” suggested Phipps. “Have a look at a few old books, cards, scrolls—whatever you can find. Then maybe we can come to a happier arrangement about all this,” he said, motioning around him at the bog.

Madame Portia breathed out heavily. “My dear, I am a soothsayer. The burden I carry is telling others what is revealed to me. To forewarn of what is to come. Not to bring comfort or give false hope. I cannot alter fate. I can only counsel others to make peace with fate. This is what I did for your mother and father. And they were at peace.”