Harrison Squared (22 page)

“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 woman 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—?”

“Don't we need to get going?” I said.

“Where
are
we going?” Lub asked.

“No,” Lydia said. “No. He can't just …
tag along
.”

“We can trust him,” I said. “He's been helping me. He saved me from the Scrimshander.”

“That's how you got away?” Lydia asked.

“That's right,” Lub said. “I'm like Aquaman.”

“Who?” Lydia asked.

“Told you,” I said to Lub. Then, to Lydia: “Where was Micah going?”

“Waughm told him to come to the church,” she said.

“
Waughm
,” I said. I was suddenly grateful that I'd taken the opportunity to strangle him. “So where's the church?”

“He means the school,” Lydia said. “Same thing, really. It was the only building left standing after the Great September Gale of 1815, so they started using it for everything—church, school, jail, hospital. It still does double duty.”

“That explains so much,” I said.

We followed the curve of the street, and suddenly the school was looking down at us from its pedestal on the rock. The moon had broken through the clouds, casting a hard light on its walls. It was so clearly a temple. How could I not have seen it before?

We didn't go up the front steps. A long black car with tail fins was parked in front of the school. “I saw Montooth get into that car,” I said.

“It's Mr. Waughm's,” Lydia said.

She led us around the side of the building. A row of metal garbage cans were set beside a cement loading dock that looked like it had been wedged into the building's stone. The cans reeked of dead fish.

“Something smells delicious,” Lub said.

“Shhh,” Lydia said. She climbed onto the loading dock and pulled out the necklace of keys. Somehow in the dark she found the one she was looking for and inserted it into the lock of the big metal door. The door opened with a clunk.

“Another key that someone left lying around?” I said.

“Shhh,” Lub said.

*   *   *

We were in the kitchen. Lydia flicked on her flashlight and led us through the dark to the nurse's office, then to a long hallway without doors. Her light followed a stripe that ran down the middle of the floor.

“I've been here before,” I said. “This is the outer loop.”

“What's it outside of?” Lub asked.

“
Quiet,
” Lydia whispered.

We stopped talking, but we weren't silent. Lub's big feet slapped the linoleum:
Whap. Whap. Whap.

Lydia halted. “Would you cut it out?”

“What?” Lub said.

“Clown shoes,” she growled.

The corridor took the final turn I remembered—but we weren't in the atrium. We'd somehow gotten to the far end of the school, where the stone steps led down to the pool. “This way,” Lydia said, and we went down. The light illuminated only a couple steps at a time, but at least Lub was quieter on stone.

“How do you know they're down here?” I asked Lydia, keeping my voice low.

“Waughm said ‘the church.' And this is where the church meets.”

“By the
pool
?”

“Baptists have pools,” Lydia said defensively.

We went into the girls' locker room. I was braced for a sudden upgrade in the facilities—girls' bathrooms were always nicer than the boys'—but as near as I could tell from the peripheral glow of the flashlight it was the same dismal setup as on the other side.

Lydia clicked off the light. “I'll go check it out,” she whispered. “Stay here.”

In the dark I couldn't tell if she'd gone. I slowly became aware of a faint patch of light somewhere ahead of me. And were those voices?

Lub said, “How long are we going to wait?”

“Just hold on,” I said.

After another thirty seconds, he grabbed my arm and said, “The doorway is right over here. Come on.”

He seemed to have no trouble in the dark. He pulled me around another corner and we were in an arched entrance that overlooked the pool amphitheater. Only a couple of the overhead mercury lights were on, casting a yellow glow near the edge of the pool, but most of the space was in shadow.

Someone hissed. It was Lydia, crouched behind a stone row. She gestured for us to get down, and Lub and I crawled over to her.

I could make out figures down by the water. Mr. Waughm, his neck protruding from his suit like a turtle's, paced back and forth at the pool's edge. Sitting in the first row, his back to us, was Micah Palwick. But standing nearby, his arms crossed, was a chubby man whose bald head reflected the light. Chief Bode was part of the Congregation?!

I shouldn't have been surprised. This explained why Bode said that the
Albatross
had been in Ruck's garage for weeks: He was covering for the church. Aunt Sel and I had trusted him because he was a police officer. I wouldn't make that mistake again. Not in Dunnsmouth.

“How damaged is it?” Waughm said. His voice bounced around the big space. It was a terrible place to hold a clandestine meeting. Why wouldn't they do this in Waughm's office?

“It's not good,” Micah said. “It weren't so much the fire. Whoever did this, they knocked a new hole right through the patch Ruck had made in the side of the boat.”

I looked at Lub. “You did that?” I whispered.

“Aquaman,” he said.

Below us, Micah was describing the state of the
Albatross
. “We're back to square one,” he said.

“It's
got
to be the boy,” Waughm said.

“He did know the boat was there,” Bode said.

“But
how
did he know about it?” Waughm said. “That ‘anonymous note' story he gave you? Please.” He looked out at the surface of the pool, then resumed his pacing.

“Plus he somehow broke into Ruck's,” Chief Bode said. “How'd he do that?”

“Ruck said the place was locked tight,” Micah said. He sounded nervous. “You all agreed Ruck could be trusted. It wasn't my decision to—”

“Don't try to weasel out of this,” Waughm said. He stopped in front of Micah. “Someone is helping him. We have a traitor in the Congregation.”

“You can't mean me!” Micah said. “I served the church my whole life.”

“Just as your brother did,” Mr. Waughm said. “Until he didn't.”

Micah jumped up. “I ain't my brother!”

“No,” Bode said. “You ain't half the man he was.”

“You hold on there, Bode,” Micah said. “Badge or no badge, you can't just—”

Something in the water had caught Micah's attention. He tried to take a step back, but the bench was behind him, and he sat down hard.

The surface of the pool was bubbling.

Waughm pointed to Micah. “Now you're in for it.”

Something big was surfacing. The water broke, and then a huge creature, big as an orca, burst onto the surface. Waughm jumped aside, and the massive thing threw itself onto the lip of the pool.

It was a woman. A gigantic woman at least ten feet tall and almost as wide. A gigantic woman with a pile of oil black hair, wearing a floral print muumuu the size of a tent.

“This better be important,” she said.

17

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea.

I didn't scream. I didn't breathe. Brain and body shut down, almost like my blackout this morning in Montooth's office. But this time it wasn't anger that short-circuited me, but the sheer wrongness of what I was seeing. I couldn't process it. The scale of the woman was impossible.

I think Lub and Lydia were as shocked as I was. None of us moved. None of us made a sound. That probably saved us.

Waughm and Bode had dropped to their knees. “O Toadmother,” Waughm said. “Blessed Intercessor, Most High of the Congregation—”

“Yes, yes,” the giant said. “Get up, already.” Her huge head grew out of the top of her dress like a poisonous mushroom, deathly white splotched with red: scarlet lipstick, pink eye shadow, a smear of blush on each cheek like a rash. My phantom leg ached as if it were in a vise.

“Can I say how lovely you look this evening?” Waughm said.

She (
it?
) pushed at her hair, then swung toward Micah. The man had stayed where he'd fallen between the rows. “You get up, too,” she said.

He scrambled to his feet. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—”