Zeuglodon Read online

  Halfway up the cliffs, there’s a cave in the rocks. It’s not deep, but if it’s rainy you can get in out of the wind and stay warm and dry, especially with a driftwood fire. You have to have a pail of water standing by in order to put the fire out when you leave. We take turns going down after the water, because it’s hard to carry it back up. Brendan helped Lala climb across the face of the cliff toward the narrow little path to the cave. Unless you’re Hasbro you have to hold on to scrubby bushes and roots that grow from the side of the cliff, and if you’re not careful you might fall, which Brendan did once and broke his arm, as Ms Peckworthy already revealed. Hasbro just kind of dances across, because he’s nimble despite his portliness. Perry says that dogs don’t know anything about falling, and that’s what makes them safe from it, although I don’t know if that’s scientific.

  We started a fire with some of the dry wood that we had stowed there, and it was really jolly sitting and looking out at the ocean, which had calmed down since yesterday’s storm. You might think you would suffocate having a fire in a cave, but the sea wind draws the smoke up the curve of the cave roof and out into the open air, so that you don’t. If it’s a calm day, though, really dead calm and not windy, there’s no point in even trying to have a fire, because it would mean suffocation, which we found out the hard way one time.

  In the summer you can spot whales from up there. You have to watch for their spray but sometimes there’s dozens that go by in an afternoon, and you can see their dark shapes rising up out of the ocean and then disappearing again. There are otters, too, that come into the cove, and sea lions, and one time a sea elephant that was perfectly immense. It’s the kind of place where you can sit for hours, listening to the sound of the waves crashing and the crying of the seagulls and the wind blowing across the cliffs with a kind of shuddery sound.

  After a time we quit staring at the ocean and started talking, although none of us were asking what we were thinking: whether Lala had been at Lighthouse Beach yesterday morning and had peered in at the kitchen window last night. Maybe we didn’t want to hear her lie about it. Lala took her atomizer out of the little bag she carried and spritzed herself on the face and arms. “It keeps my skin moist,” she said, seeing that we were wondering about it.

  “You’ve got very moist skin,” Brendan said, gazing at her, or maybe at her skin.

  Lala smiled at him, and said that she wanted to know more about our adventure with the Creeper, or at least Brendan’s part in it. Then we asked her questions about Peach Manor, which was her home on Lake Windermere. I think she wanted to talk more than she wanted to listen, because once she got started she didn’t stop, and that was fine, because all of it was strange and wonderful.

  “What about old Cardigan Peach?” Perry asked her, Cardigan Peach being her grandfather. “We heard that he was really old. Over a hundred. Uncle Hedge says he was born before the automobile.”

  “Before which automobile?” Brendan asked. “There wasn’t just one, you know.”

  “That’s just a saying,” Perry told him.

  “Like ‘old as Methuselah,’” I said.

  “Or old as hydrogen,” Perry said.

  “He is old,” Lala put in, before Brendan got himself into a state. She took a billfold out of her bag and showed us a picture of a man who looked a little bit like a human toad, his face being amphibious and goggle-eyed. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but that’s what he did look like. He was dressed in a black cape and a little bow tie, and he carried a walking stick. He was standing by a pool of water enclosed by a stone ring, and he was looking down into the water, as if he saw something interesting in the depths. Lala told us about how her father, Giles Peach, was an inventor who had a workshop on the grounds of Peach Manor. Sometimes she didn’t see him for days when he was inventing. He had built an anti-gravity vessel, she said, out of barrel hoops, an electric fan, and a wooden rowboat, with oars that rowed by themselves using a perpetual motion engine. It had floated up into space one night carrying a cargo of his smaller inventions and was by now out rowing among the stars.

  Then she told us about the land at the Earth’s core, where there were still dinosaurs because they had been protected from the great extinctions, and where there were cave people and mer-people, and where nature was still wild and unspoiled because there weren’t any machines or factories or engines. She told us how you could sail into the hollow Earth aboard a hot air balloon by going farther and farther south until the oceans spilled over the edge of a vast hole into the interior seas. Without even knowing it you drifted downward, soon finding yourself inside the Earth instead of outside it, and when the balloon landed you were held to the walls by the centrifugal force of the spinning of the planet. It was just like gravity.

  While Lala talked, rain clouds came in off the ocean, moving very quickly. Waves began to break against the shore one after another, so that the sound of the ocean was in our ears along with the crackling of the fire and the cries of seagulls. It soon began to rain, and the falling rain was like a curtain in front of us, so that we were completely sheltered from the world. There was the smell of new rain in the air, like when rain falls on a dry sidewalk, and there was a strange droning sound, as if hive of bees lived at the back of the cave. Lala’s voice went on and on, very soft and even. It occurred to me that she was wandering somewhere in her own mind, lost in a memory, and was talking to herself.

  And then the strangest thing happened. The rain stopped, the clouds evaporated like steam, and the sky grew clear and sunny. Out over the ocean there appeared an airship that was like an illustration in an old book. It was far away, and yet I could see it quite clearly. It was built of bundles of sticks or bamboo, and had a big whirling propeller that must have been making the beehive sound. The wings were like bat wings, and the tail was more like the tail of a fish than of an airplane. It was humming through the air, moving slowly. Beyond it, hazy and distant, there appeared immensely high dark cliffs, as if an island had risen out of the sea, and the airship was flying above the tall trees of that island, and in the sky around it flew prehistoric birds, turning and gliding. Am I dreaming? I wondered. But I wasn’t.

  After a time, I don’t know how long, a gust of wind blew into the cave and billowed the smoke from the driftwood fire out through the cave mouth, hiding the world outside. When it cleared away again, the airship was gone and the prehistoric island along with it. The rainy, north coast day was as it had been. Brendan and Perry both had a look of astonishment on their faces, just like I must have had, but before anyone said anything about the impossible airship and island, we saw that Lala was pointing out to sea, at a fishing boat that was maybe a quarter mile offshore, turning in toward the cove and coming along straight toward us. Because of the deep water, you can actually bring a boat right in close, and for a moment that looked like what was happening, that he was going to run it right up onto the beach. But then the boat slowed and stopped some distance out, and we could see the man at the wheel. He put a spyglass to his eye and peered straight at us.

  “It’s Wheyface the stinking Creeper!” Perry said, for it was indeed him.

  Lala ducked behind Brendan, who told her that she shouldn’t be afraid, and that we had settled the Creeper’s hash once and would do it again if he showed his ugly face. But of course he was showing his ugly face. We hadn’t settled his hash or anything of the sort.

  “Let’s go,” Perry said, “like Uncle Hedge told us.”

  I didn’t have to be asked twice. The fire had burned down, but I made sure that the embers were out with seawater from the bucket, and then we made our way across the trail and up to the top of the bluffs. The boat was still down there, rising and falling on the swell. Brendan shook his fist and shouted bold things, and Lala told him he was very brave, and then she grabbed his hand and they took off running up the sea path like two lovebirds, and within moments we couldn’t see them. When we looked back out to sea, the Creeper was turning the boat around and heading away.
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  Chapter 8

  Ms Peckworthy and the Smithfield

  “It was Lala doing it,” Perry said to me, as we came through the gate into the backyard. “Had to be—the island, the airship, the whole thing.”

  “Did you notice the humming noise?” I asked.

  “I thought it was a swarm of bees at first.”

  “So did I, but I think it was her. Not that she was humming. I don’t mean that, but she was making it happen. It stopped when she was distracted by the Creeper’s boat. Like it woke her up or something.”

  “Yes,” Perry said. “That’s it exactly. What we saw was mind projection, mass hallucination—the same things that she was seeing in her head.”

  The antenna was run up through the roof of the radio shed, which meant that Uncle Hedge was in there talking on his ham radio, which he calls “the Smithfield.” I don’t know why. The radio shed is built out of old lumber that Uncle Hedge and Mr. Vegeley got out of a barn that was being torn apart down in Little River. It’s got many windows that they bought at yard sales and such, and some old painted metal signs nailed to it. One sign says “Penguin Ice, Fort Bragg,” and there’s another one that’s a Humpty Dumpty with a crown on his head.

  The radio looks nothing like a ham, really. It’s very large, and most of the inside of the shed is taken up by the apparatus, which has about a thousand dials and lights and glass tubes that glow green and remind you of a deep tidepool on a sunny day. The whole thing makes bleeping and whistling sounds when the radio is warming up.

  We went straight inside, where Uncle Hedge was listening hard to the radio speaker, and of course we waited for whoever it was to finish talking even though we were in a sweat to tell him about the appearance of the Creeper. “The fate of the Sleeper hangs in the balance…” the radio voice was saying, but then it suddenly fell silent. There was a burst of static followed by the sound of rickety old music for a moment before there was silence again. “For Pete’s sake!” Uncle Hedge said, twisting a dial. It seemed like a good point to interrupt.

  “The Creeper was in a boat in the Sea Cove just now,” Perry told him.

  “He turned around like he was going back out again,” I said.

  “North or south?” Uncle Hedge asked, getting up out of his chair.

  “We don’t know,” I said. “We didn’t wait to see.”

  “Just as well,” he said. “Where’s Lala?”

  “In the house with Brendan,” Perry told him.

  And right then a figure appeared outside the window, trying to peer in, and I nearly jumped out of my wits. But it wasn’t the Creeper; it was Ms Peckworthy, which was just as bad.

  Uncle Hedge went to the door and looked out, saying, “So you’ve come to beard us in our den, Ms Peckworthy?”

  “Well,” she said, all flustery. “I didn’t intend…” But peeping in at the window is one of the impolitest things there is, and if you peep you obviously intend to do it, so she was tongue tied, and besides that she was cramming something into her handbag—her notebook and pen. Uncle Hedge invited her to step in, and her eyes bugged out when she saw the radio, because who would have an enormous radio like that if he wasn’t up to immense secret schemes? The radio speaker chose that moment to start up again, and the same weird voice said, “The Sleeper grows restless on his bed beneath the Earth,” and then again it fell silent. Ms Peckworthy stood there blinking, as if the voice had made her forget where she was, and maybe even who she was.

  She recollected herself and asked Uncle Hedge, “Who was that odd creature?”

  “Which odd creature would that be?” Uncle Hedge asked politely.

  “The tiny blond girl. She very nearly knocked me down going through the back gate just now. She dropped her carpetbag, and when I picked it up she didn’t bother to thank me, but snatched it away and bolted down the path. I find that sort of behavior insufferable. Is she another one of yours?”

  “We have her on loan,” Uncle Hedge said. And then he looked at Perry and me and nodded toward the house, and I could see that he was worried about Lala even though he was still smiling. We ducked past Ms Peckworthy and ran in through the kitchen door, nearly tripping over Hasbro, who turned around and ran on ahead of us, as if he’d been coming to find us and now here we were. We followed him through the kitchen, and the first thing that we saw was that the Mermaid’s box was open and the hand was sticking out—empty, with the fingers curled shut. Someone had taken the key.

  We shouted Brendan’s name but there was no answer. Hasbro started up the stairs and we followed him, still calling for Brendan, and when we went into Perry and Brendan’s room we saw that the closet door was shut and that a wooden chair with a sweater laid across the top was shoved under the knob, as if the sweater was meant to muffle the sound of the chair knocking against the door. Hasbro put his nose to the door and barked, and we heard a voice from inside telling him to go away. It was Brendan, trapped.

  But when we took the chair away and opened the door, he got mad at us. He didn’t know he was trapped.

  “Who locked you in?” I asked him.

  “No one locked me in,” he said. “Lala and I are playing hide and seek, and I’m hiding in the closet. Now if you’ll kindly leave before you spoil everything…”

  “Lala’s gone off,” Perry said. “Ms Peckworthy saw her on the sea path. She took her suitcase.”

  “Peckworthy’s a scum-pig liar,” Brendan said, getting really furious. (He can say awful things when he’s angry, usually involving pigs, scum, swill, and filth, which he rearranges. When he’s angry with himself it’s worse.) “Lala’s downstairs looking for me,” he said, but I could see doubt in his eyes now.

  “Who put the chair under the door knob?” I asked him.

  “What door knob?”

  “This door knob!” Perry shouted. “Lala sneaked in and slipped it under there! What we want to know is did you take the Mermaid’s key?”

  For a moment he looked surprised and frightened both, and I didn’t blame him. “No,” he said in a small voice. “You’re always accusing me.”

  “Someone’s opened the box,” I said, “and the key’s not there. Nobody’s accusing you. It was Lala who took it.”

  “She played on your affections like Nero played the fiddle,” Perry said, “and Rome burned in the offing.”

  “Stow it, can’t you?” Brendan said, but the truth was obvious, even to him. Lala had taken the key and gone, and she had taken her stuff with her because she wasn’t coming back. She had hoaxed us. We ran back out to the radio shed to report this to Uncle Hedge, just as Ms Peckworthy was leaving. She looked at Brendan as if she thought he was some kind of culprit, but then she saw the terrible Hasbro coming along behind us and she put her back to the wall, just in case she had to fight him off.

  “That animal is a menace,” she said.

  “He’s a pure bred peccadillo,” Uncle Hedge told her, “half peccary and half armadillo,” and then he looked significantly at me, and I shook my head to signify that Lala was gone.

  “Well, I know nothing about dogs,” Ms Peckworthy said. “You mark my words, then, Mr. Hedgepeth—I’m keeping an eye on these children.”

  “An eyeball peeled for the great big shoe, eh? I’m in your debt, Ms Peckworthy, although I’m monstrously busy right now. Allow me to show you to the gate. We’re just going in that direction ourselves.”

  “A big shoe? No doubt that’s meant to be humorous. And, by the way, there’s a particularly shady looking man lurking below the bluffs. I saw him motoring ashore in a small boat—a perfectly awful, treacherous looking character. If these three children were mine, I’d keep them in the house with the doors locked, Mr. Hedgepeth. You mark my words.…”

  But we never learned what words to mark, because all of us, Uncle Hedge included, were running out toward the sea path now and down along the bluffs, and Ms Peckworthy was left talking to the air. We saw the Creeper halfway to the bottom of the trail down the cliff, carrying Lala over his sho
ulder like a sack of grain, holding onto her with one hand as he half-climbed and half-slid down the steep path, kicking rocks loose with the heels of his boots. Her tapestry bag lay on the beach far below, where the Creeper had no doubt thrown it.

  Brendan shouted and scrambled rashly down after him, and the Creeper looked back up at us, lost his footing, and for a moment stood there just barely balanced, waving his free arm like a windmill. I thought he would fall for sure, and Lala with him, but instead he sat down hard and started sliding, still holding onto her, sliding faster and faster until he sort of threw himself to the side and made a wild grab at a heavy root alongside the path.

  Uncle Hedge yelled at Brendan to stop, but Brendan shouted, “I can catch him!” and kept going. Perry followed him down and so did I, because I could see that Brendan wasn’t going to stop, no matter what, and it would have been bad for him to battle the Creeper by himself if he did catch him. Uncle Hedge started down behind us, shouting warnings at us, and when I looked back up at him, I saw Ms Peckworthy above on the sea path, with her mouth gaping open and her eyes wide with astonishment. If she wanted proof that we were “up to something” she had enough now to fill her notebook.

  The Creeper lurched to his feet, still carrying Lala, and he loped down the last twenty feet of trail and straight out onto the sand and rocks where there was a little motorboat moored. Lala was pounding him on the back with her fists and yelling, but he simply ignored her as he dumped her into the boat, picked up her tapestry bag and dumped that in too, and then shoved off, yanking twice on the rope to start the engine, and steering straight out to sea. The fishing boat that we had seen earlier was floating on the swell some distance out. They didn’t have far to go.