Harrison Squared (26 page)

“
Who
doesn't permit you?”

He pursed his lips. “I'm afraid I can't say. I mean this literally: I cannot say who, or what, has done this. I can only say there are certain restrictions on my waveform: a set of boundary conditions that—”

“
Stop!
”

The professor recoiled. “There's no call for anger.”

And I was angry. Something churned in my head—a wild animal bashing against a cage. My right leg burned.

I took a step back, trying to calm myself. “Okay, you're saying there are rules you can't break. But you don't know why.”

“As I said, free will is a tricky—”

“Are you a man of science, or not?”

The professor looked affronted. “Of course I am. Even though I'm immaterial, that doesn't mean I lack substance.”

“
Then tell me where my mother is!
”

Professor Freytag opened his mouth. His form abruptly blurred, and he began to sink into the floor, shuddering like a heat wave on a desert highway. His arms flew out to his sides, and he began to vibrate, faster and faster. His body began twist into the ground. His shins vanished, then his knees.

They're reeling him in, I thought. Keeping him from me.

I didn't know who “they” were. I wasn't thinking at all. I jumped forward, arms wide, to stop him before he disappeared.

Then the entire room began to vibrate—or else I was vibrating with the professor, falling into his frequency. My arms were wrapped around his chest, heaving him up. I could feel his scratchy wool sweater, smell the years of tobacco smoke in its fibers.

Then, just as suddenly, he turned to vapor again. I fell through him, onto the floor. When I looked up, he was standing above me, both feet on the ground.

“Well,
that
was interesting,” he said, sounding stunned. “What did you do?”

“It wasn't me,” I said.

“Oh my boy, it most certainly was. You commanded me to speak, and now … I'm speaking, aren't I? I can even say…” His eyes widened in delight. “
Scrimshander.
There. I've named the beast himself.”

I got to my feet. The professor said, “Quick, Harrison. Before it wears off. What do you want to know?”

*   *   *

“The Scrimshander is an ancient creature,” the professor told me. “According to oral histories I was able to record when I … when I resided in a body, it was a simple messenger, ferrying messages between the human Intercessor and the Dwellers. But over time he became something else. A weapon.”

“I've seen his knife,” I said.

“More than that, my boy. What this creature does is prevent his victims' waveforms from dissipating. By some process I do not understand, their essences are frozen, as definitively as the portraits in his scrimshaw.”

“What are you saying—he traps their souls?”

“Speaking unscientifically, yes. They become his possessions. They cannot act against him, forevermore. The most they can do is talk in the abstract about him—or perhaps point out a book or two that might be of interest.”

“I'm so sorry, Professor. When did he—” I was going to say “murder you,” but that seemed harsh. “How long ago did you run into him?”

“What time is it now?”

“About eleven-thirty in the morning.”

“Then it was about ten hours ago,” he said.

“Uh…”

“Why are you looking at me like that? Oh. It's not September seventh, is it?”

“No.”

“Or 1932.”

“Not even close.”

“Hmm.” He looked glum. Then he straightened his shoulders. “Let's consider that a benefit, shall we? In a way, this is a kind of time travel.” His eyes widened. “Have we put a man on Mars?”

“Not yet. Professor, I need you to concentrate. Any day now, the Scrimshander's going to take my mother out to meet the Dwellers. For some reason they need her to raise Urgaleth—”

“The Mover Between Worlds!”

“That's the one.”

“My mentor, Professor Armitage, first ran across mentions of this Urgaleth, but the texts were always incomplete. It was the rumor of a complete set of scriptures that first brought me to Dunnsmouth. I heard of the town from—”

“Professor. My mom. I need to find the Scrimshander's cave before they sacrifice her to Urgaleth.”

“My boy, they aren't going to sacrifice her,” he said. “The Mover comes whenever the stars are right, regardless of whatever human they toss on to the water. No, they probably need her to be the host, though why they're using a grown woman—”

“The host of what?”

“Oh! Is she pregnant?”

“No, of course she's not pregnant.”

“Because the scriptures refer to choosing a child, as young as possible. Someone without much of a defined personality, you know, and what's more undefined than a fetus, eh? My theory, which I'd once hoped to publish before I perished, is that every visitor from the Other Side needs to take on earthly form in order to persist on this plane—an empty vessel to act as a kind of, say,
diving suit
to allow it to walk around here.”

“Professor,
what
visitor?”

“Hmm, what would be the phrase in English…?” He held up a finger. “In Armitage's notes he used the Latin phrase ‘
sanguinem gubernator
,' which I thought a trifle dramatic, but that's Armitage for you.”

“Blood pilot,” I said.

“Ooh, you speak Latin?”

“Enough languages that are close to it,” I said. “Okay. Do they need my mother at the same time as they're summoning Urgaleth?”

“Most likely,” he said. “The Scrim—” He cleared his throat. “The Scrim—”

“What is it?” I asked. What could a ghost choke on—ectoplasmic phlegm?

“The, uh,
folk artist
,” the professor said.

And then I understood. The rules were kicking in again. “What about him, Professor?”

“He will want the host to be very close by when Urgaleth comes,” the professor said. “You'd better hurry, my boy. I seem to be losing my ability to—” He opened his mouth, then shut it.

“Quick then,” I said. “Do you know where the Scrimshander's cave is?”

He shook his head.

I said, “Do you mean you don't know, or you can't tell me?”

He looked at me with a pained expression.

“Okay,” I said. “Just talk in the abstract. Where might the home of such a creature be, in theory?”

A grin appeared on his face. Then he cleared his throat again. “In
theory
he would stay close to his possessions.” He looked me in the eye. “And vice versa.”

“Thank you, Professor Freytag.” I started for the door, then turned. “Someday, I don't know how, I'll make this up to you.”

That afternoon, I was waiting outside the school when Lydia walked out.

She saw something in my face. Raised an eyebrow.

“I know where the Scrimshander's cave is,” I said.

*   *   *

“Under the
library
?” Lub said.

“You can quit saying that now,” I said. We were in the alley outside the school. Lydia unlocked the kitchen door, and we slipped inside. We were getting to be old pros at this.

“But why would they do that?” Lub said. “Go to all that trouble to hide in a school, right under the biggest number of people in Dunnsmouth?”

“You're thinking about this backward,” Lydia said. She clicked on her flashlight. “The caves are older than the school—and it was a temple before it was a school. They chose the site
because
of the caves—especially the main cavern.”

“And it's worked till now,” I said. “He's been hiding down here for over a hundred years.”

In the Involuntary meeting room in Lydia's house, we'd gone over the maps of the school. There were no official floor plans to the building, but the students had made their own. As far as they knew, there were no rooms of any kind below the library. The only basement rooms at all were the locker rooms, Coach Shug's office, and the pool cavern.

Lydia led us down a hallway that I hadn't noticed on the Involuntary maps. From the inside it looked awfully similar to the outer loop I'd been in twice before, but this was obviously a different hallway, because it ended in a big oak door painted red. The door was unlocked, and opened onto the staircase that led down to the pool.

“That's odd,” Lydia said. “All the hall lights are on.”

“Is someone here?” I whispered.

We stood for a moment, listening. The only sound was the faint hoot of air rising up the staircase. Lydia shrugged. “Might as well keep going.”

We went down the stairs. The lights were on here, too. We went through the girls' locker room (dark, thankfully), but didn't step out to the arena because a) the entire place was lit up, and b) someone, maybe a few someones, was splashing and laughing like it was a pool party. A deep male voice and a higher female voice echoed in the large space, but we couldn't make out their words.

We hid in the locker room for another minute, but the sounds never died down. Finally I said, “I'll go look.” So of course both of them decided to follow me. We got down on all fours and crawled out of the locker room. As quickly as we could we ducked behind the stone rows. I took a breath, then slowly lifted my head above the bench.

Down in the pool, Coach Shug and Nurse Mandi were … frolicking? Mandi pushed down on the coach's big white shoulders, and he allowed himself to be dunked. Her laughter ricocheted off the walls.

“Do they know that a giant toad woman lives in there?” Lub asked.

“Or the Scrimshander,” I said.

“He must not,” Lydia said. “Or else he knows that they never come unannounced.”

We ducked down and crawled back to the locker room. Lydia kept her flashlight off. Our only light was the glow from pool lamps coming through the open doorway.

“Were they naked?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“I don't want to know,” Lydia said.

“
I
don't see what the big deal is,” Lub said.

“Of course you don't,” she said.

“So how long do we wait here?” I said.

“I say we take our time,” Lub said. “I never liked this plan in the first place. I'm supposed to go into that water, alone, and look for a tunnel that might lead to either a sea troll or a knife-wielding mass murderer.”

“Or both,” Lydia said.

“I don't see how we have any choice,” I said seriously. “My mom could be somewhere down there.”

“And you are the only one with gills,” Lydia said.

I said, “With great power—”

“Comes great gullibility,” Lub said.

Out in the pool, the laughter had stopped. I couldn't hear either of their voices. Then the glow through the open doorway dimmed, then dimmed again; the mercury lights in the arena were being shut off, one by one. Then we were in the dark.

“Should I check out there?” I asked. “I don't want to … interrupt anything.”

“Don't rush it,” Lydia said.

We sat in the dark for another minute, and then we felt our way out to the arena. We couldn't hear Coach Shug or Nurse Mandi. Lydia turned on her flashlight—and I held my breath. No one yelled at us. Finally we walked down to the pool.

Lub stood at the edge with his big webbed feet hanging off the side.

Lydia touched his shoulder and pointed back the way we'd come. “The library is in that direction.”

“Right,” he said. His gills opened, closed. “No problem.”

“You don't have to do this,” I said.

“It's okay,” he said. “I can always swim away, right? Nobody's faster than me in the water.”

“Good luck,” Lydia whispered.

Lub slipped into the water, feet first. Then a moment later he bobbed to the surface. “If I don't come back, donate my books to the library.”

I started to answer, and then a row of lights lit up above us.

“Hey!” a deep voice shouted. “Who's down there!”

“Go!” I said.

Lub saluted, then vanished.

19

The creature's face loomed out of the haze of white and hovered within inches of her. His eyes narrowed, studying her. His lips parted. He looked like a man in love.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Almost finished.” And then, at the periphery of her vision, his hand appeared out of the ice-white mist, and the tip of the knife caressed her again.

She felt no pain. She felt almost nothing now but the cold of the rock floor against her back. She longed to close her eyes, but she feared that her eyes were already closed. There was only the white, and the creature, and the knife.

The creature talked to her as he worked. “‘Hurry,' she said. ‘We need that body.' But does she understand me? Does she understand my work?” He touched her with the knife. “Art cannot be rushed.”

Sometime later he sat back. His eyes roved her face. Then he nodded, and his eyes glistened with some emotion. “There,” he said. “Yes.”

The world tilted, and suddenly she was looking down at the creature. He smiled up at her with his sharp teeth. Regarding her with approval. Was she floating? No. He seemed to be holding her in the air with one hand. And at his feet lay something impossible:

Her own body, sprawled on the cave floor.

She could feel the rocky floor against her spine, the heat-leaching cold of that surface. But she was also above it, in his hands, feeling nothing.

“One last step,” the creature said.

He set her on the floor, beside her body. Now she was staring up at the roof of the cave, and at the cave walls with their rows of shelves. The gallery of faces stared down at her. The man with the thick glasses. The dark-haired couple with wide eyes. The sailors and children and families. All of them vivid, almost moving but not quite. All of them so sad. She could hear them whispering to her.