Harrison Squared (25 page)

From up here, though, I could see the whole bay. The sun was going down, lighting up a bank of storm clouds. Two lobster boats where chugging into the bay. I was happy to see the clouds moving in. With no Ashen Light visible, we'd get another day to keep searching.

“Wait up,” I said to Lydia. She looked down at me. For these climbs she wore dark pants and sturdy boots—the only time I'd seen her not in a long black dress. This was Action Lydia. “We shouldn't go any higher,” I said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Lub,” I said. “His place is at the top of this cliff. In an old lighthouse.”

“
Really,
” she said. She sounded peeved that Lub hadn't told her this.

“We don't want to lead the rest of them up there,” I said. “Besides, the cave entrance is supposed to be near the water.”

“Fine.” She began to climb down past me, and in the narrows we were face-to-face, our hips touching. I put out an arm.

“I know you're the leader of the Involuntaries. You may be trying to keep it a secret, but you're really bad at
not
being the leader.”

“That is completely untrue,” she said.

“I'm just trying to say thanks.”

“Then you're really bad at
that
.”

“I'm serious. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't … you. Commanding this secret army.”

“This ‘army' isn't doing much good, is it? Three days and nothing to show for it.” She dropped past me and started down. “All right, people!” she shouted. “Head home. We'll use the phone tree for any news—standard homework code.”

She glanced up at me.

“Yep,” I said. “You're just one of the troops.”

She almost smiled.

*   *   *

The inner circle of the Involuntaries met every night, sometimes only for ten minutes. After three days, everyone was getting frustrated with the lack of progress.

“Waughm's all over the place,” Flora said. She was in charge of following him, and had recruited a team of people to keep him in sight wherever he went in the school. She kept all the surveillance notes in a spiral notebook. “He's up and down the hallways, barely sitting down.”

“He's nervous,” I said.

“Seems like it,” she said. “He also runs errands outside of school, though we keep losing him every time he gets in the car.”

“We know he's visited Bode at least twice,” Garfield said. He had another team following the police chief, but that was mostly accomplished by tracking where his squad car went in town. And all the reports ended more or less at 10
P.M.
, which was the start of curfew.

“Any news about the
Albatross
?” Lydia asked.

“Not much,” Ruth whispered. The girl had practically dropped out of school to watch Ruck's garage. She hung out in the woods by the docks, talking to Isabel. “Micah was there last night for fifteen minutes, but he's been the only visitor. No Scrimshander.”

“And no Waughm or Bode?” Lydia asked.

“
Do not doubt us
,” Isabel said. The doll was sitting two chairs away from Ruth, but I swear her voice came straight out of Isabel's porcelain mouth.

“Nobody's doubting you,” Lydia said to the doll.

“Ruth, have you ever read Newton and Leeb?” I asked. Ruth looked at me blankly. “I think you'd like it. It's a comic strip, about this boy whose best friend is a robot that he thinks is real.”

“
Sounds stupid,
” Isabel said.

“Okay then…,” Garfield said. “Any news from the ‘secret' team?”

“Sorry,” Lydia said. “No leads there.” Lub had told us none of his people had headed out to open water for their regular meeting with the humans—which made sense, considering the
Albatross
hadn't left the garage. He'd tried listening in on the Elders, but he hadn't heard anyone talking about Urgaleth or the Ashen Light.

“We have some good news, though,” I said. “I think we know where this summoning of Urgaleth is supposed to take place. A few days ago I was in Uxton, and I was finally able to get on the Internet and confirm it.”

“You found this on the
Internet
?” Bart said skeptically.

“Not exactly. I used my mom's account to log in to the NOAA servers. See, my mom set out radio buoys that send positioning signals to satellites. Three of them are still working. But one of them only pinged its location once, and then went offline—on the day my mom was attacked.”

“Someone knocked it out?” Garfield said, excited. “It had to be Waughm!”

“I don't know who,” I said. Actually, I had a pretty good idea who'd destroyed the buoy. The Elders probably took it out soon after the
Albatross
crashed my mom's boat. “But this turns out to be a good thing. Disabling the buoy is more suspicious than leaving it in place.”

“You seem pretty confident about a single data point,” Bart said.

“I like a confident man,” Flora said.

“Yeah, well…” I couldn't tell them that I'd confirmed the location with Lub. When I showed him the map of the buoy's former location, he said that it seemed like the place where the Elders were meeting. Then again, Lub thought human maps of the sea were laughably inaccurate. “We still need to find my mom before they take her there.”

“We can't find the Scrimshander's cave,” Bart said. “Dozens and dozens of little cracks in the rock, sure. Lots of tunnels that go nowhere. But no secret lair.”

“We need to narrow down the search area,” I said. “What do we know about him? We should be thinking like my mom. Tracking the subject according to his known habits and habitats.”

“If you run into a Scrimshander expert, let us know,” Bart said.

“Oh,” I said. Then: “
Oh.
”

“What is it?” Lydia asked.

“I need to visit the library.”

“Nobody goes in the library,” she said.

“Yeah, you keep saying that. I'd sneak in at night, but it has to be during the daytime.” I needed to catch Professor Freytag before he went home.

“But you're suspended,” Bart said. “And Waughm's patrolling the hallways like crazy. You'll never get in.”

“Leave it to me,” Flora said.

*   *   *

At 9:52
A.M.
, just as third period was starting, the big double doors of Dunnsmouth Secondary burst open, and the entire population of the school began pouring out, pushed out by the insistent
blat
of the fire alarms.

I strolled across the street toward the crowd. I'd ditched my down jacket and had put on a heavy black wool coat that Bart had lent me. Gar had given me a toboggan hat, which I pulled down to my eyebrows.

Mrs. Velloc appeared at the top of the steps. She stood in the middle of the flow of students, scanning the crowd—for anyone laughing, smiling, or otherwise indicating that they had pulled the fire alarm. I ducked behind a tall student. Then Flora sidled up and looped an arm through mine.

“Nice costume,” she said. “Are you wearing makeup?”

“What? No.”

“Pity.”

Advance word must have gotten out to the students, because almost everyone was wearing a coat and hat. We milled about in the chilly air. I saw tall Bart on the fringes of the crowd, but I couldn't find Lydia or the other Involuntaries. The alarm went on and on.

“Where's the fire department?” I said.

“Oh, they're in Uxton,” Flora said. “They never come for us unless we call and say it's a real fire.”

“I can't believe this whole town hasn't burned down,” I said.

“Again,” she said.

A few minutes later the alarm went silent, and then Principal Montooth and Mr. Waughm came out to wave us back in.

The students began walking up the steps. Montooth and Waughm went back inside, but Mrs. Velloc remained planted by the front door, studying each face that passed. Flora must have sensed me tensing up, because she whispered, “Act two.”

Someone shouted. A boy with black spiky hair stumbled backward and hit the ground. Another boy jumped on top of him, yelling, “She's
my
girlfriend! Mine!”

Mrs. Velloc ran to pull them off each other. Flora and I strolled inside, arm in arm.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Classic love triangle,” Flora said.

Waughm and Miss Pearl stood by the office door, talking to each other. I dropped my head, and Flora steered me to the right, away from them. In a minute we turned a corner, and we were out of sight of the teachers.

“What would have happened if they were stopping people inside the atrium?” I asked.

“Act three. I really wish we could have used it.” She handed me a key. “This is from Lydia, in case the library's locked.”

They'd thought of everything. “Great show,” I told Flora. “Four stars.”

“I think we changed some lives here today,” she said. “Ta!”

I jogged down the hallway ahead of the wave of returning students. The corridor in front of the library was empty when I reached it. The doors were closed, but unlocked.

“Professor Freytag?” I called. The library was dimly lit, as usual. I pulled off the borrowed coat and hat and left them by the front desk. Then I began to walk up and down the aisles, calling the professor's name.

The big table in the back of the room was still covered by the nautical map I'd seen on my second visit, but now there was a newspaper there.
The Uxton Beacon
, from several days ago. The second story on the front page said,
SEARCH FOR SCIENTIST AND AREA MAN CALLED OFF
.

Police say that the search for a man and woman missing at sea since last week has been discontinued. Rosa Harrison, of San Diego, California, and Hallgrim Jonsson, of Dunnsmouth, were in Jonsson's boat somewhere east and north of Dunnsmouth Bay when they lost radio contact. The boat has not been found.

Hal Jonsson's first name was really Hallgrim? That explained something I'd been wondering about.

I went back to the front desk. The surface was dusty, but the big ledger for signing out books was open, with an old-fashioned pencil still in the crease. The last entry was for
Ohio on Two Dollars a Day
, lent to Ishmael Shemp on October 11, 1972. I found a scrap of paper in the pocket of Bart's coat and wrote, “Prof. F, I must see you right away. Please call.” I wrote the phone number of the rental house, then placed the paper in the middle of the desk. I turned toward the door—and there was Professor Freytag.

The man was studying the spines of the books on the shelf nearest the desk, muttering to himself. “No no no,” he said. “Not that one, not that one…”

“Professor!” I said. “I've been looking all over for you!”

He wheeled about, startled. “Who are you?” He blinked at me through those thick glasses. “Wait. You're the science boy. Don't tell me your name.”

“I know, I know, there's power in names,” I said. “But I don't care. It's Harrison Harrison.”

“I really wish you hadn't told me that.”

“You owe me an explanation, Professor.”

“I do?” He seemed upset by the news.

“You gave me the diary of Tobias Glück. You knew what was in there, didn't you? You knew it would tell me about the Scrimshander—
the
Scrimshander.”

The professor raised his hands to his ears. “Please! I'm not permitted to talk about … certain subjects.”

I stalked toward him. “You're going to have to. You have to tell me everything you know about him—starting with where his cave is located.”

The professor strode away from me. “I'm sorry, I really can't help you. I told you, I'm not permitted—”

I reached for his arm—and my hand passed through his body.

I looked at the professor, then at my hand, then back to the professor.

He turned to face me, looking sheepish. “Ah. About that.”

I couldn't speak.

“I should have been prepared for this eventuality,” the professor said. “It's been obvious since you first saw me that you're a sensitive. Tainted by some exposure to the Other Side. The fact that you managed to
see
me as well as hear me shuffling about—well, that hasn't occurred since little Claudia, back in—”

“You're a ghost,” I said.

“Let's not be vulgar. We are men of science. Let us say, rather, that I fit all the criteria for a Sturgean Standing Wave, which is to say, a coherent sympathetic oscillation in the luminiferous aether, although with certain atypical properties.”

“So, a ghost.”

The professor sighed. “Yes.”

This made no sense, but it also made a lot of sense. I'd never seen him touch a physical object. I'd never heard of anyone who'd even seen him. “No wonder nobody goes in the library,” I said.

“It's a sad commentary on the state of modern education,” he said.

“I mean, because it's haunted.”

“Oh, yes! That.”

“Are you trapped here?” I asked.

The professor brightened. “Interesting question! I
am
strangely attracted to this place. I feel that what I'm looking for is close—very close. Furthermore, I don't seem to
want
to leave, which raises the thorny issue of free will. Do I not want to leave because I do not want to, or because I am not capable of
not
wanting to, do you follow?”

“Uh…”

“Let's just agree that I never seem to go anywhere else.”

“Fine,” I said. “I have a real problem. The Scrimshander's kidnapped my mom. I need to know where he's taken her, or where he's going to take her.”

Professor Freytag frowned. “I wish I could help, my boy, but as I mentioned, I'm not permitted to discuss it.”