Zeuglodon

For Kathy, Perry, and Krysta Rodriguez,

Secret Members of the Guild of St. George

And, as ever, for Viki, John, and Danny

I’m happy to thank a number of people who read this book in its early stages and made sensible and encouraging suggestions or lent me needed inspiration: Paul Buchanan, Heather Buchanan, John Blaylock, Lew Shiner, Tim Powers, Karen Fowler, and our old friends Sue and Barry Watts of the St. John’s Lodge in Bowness-on-Windermere, England.

I first began writing
Zeuglodon
as a sort of illustration for the students in my Origins and Sources of Fiction class at the Orange County High School of the Arts, so they’re largely to blame for its existence. By now they’ve all gone out to make their way in the wide world, but perhaps the stuff of this book (if they ever run across it) will call up pleasant memories.

Finally, in the writing of this novel I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to a number of luminous books (and the authors who wrote them), many of which books my mother encouraged me to read at an impressionable age, thus sealing my fate as a certain sort of writer:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
,
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
,
The Mysterious Island
,
At the Earth’s Core
,
Pellucidar
,
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
,
Huckleberry Finn
, Edith Nesbit’s
The Treasure Seekers
, and the seafaring novels of Howard Pease.   

“We shall pick up an existence by its frogs. If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte.

One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.”

Charles Fort

Lo!

How it all started was like this. Brendan, Perry, and I were taking Hasbro for a walk one foggy morning last spring, because Brendan claimed he saw a mermaid on the rocks at Lighthouse Beach. He had said things like this before, telling us one time how he had seen a gigantic octopus tentacle come up out of the kelp, and then another time a pterodactyl eating fish on the rocks. The pterodactyl had turned out to be a big pelican, which was better than the octopus, which turned out to be a figment.

Brendan was hanging onto the leash and Hasbro was pulling him along toward Mrs. Hoover’s house. Hasbro is part bulldog, you see, and he’s very strong, and there’s no holding him back if he’s anxious to be walking. He’s kind of fat, too, although Uncle Hedge says he’s actually just portly, which is a pleasant way of saying fat, and there’s no reason not to be polite around dogs as well as around people. I could see Mrs. Hoover working in her front garden, in among the roses. She’s our neighbor three doors down, and a very nice neighbor, too, as you’ll see. There was a woman talking to her, a tall, thin woman, who looked sort of picklish and who was writing in a notebook. We didn’t know it then, but the woman was Ms Henrietta Peckworthy, who is a member of a very troublesome do-gooder society. Ms Peckworthy was about to become our nemesis, our soon-to-be-sworn-enemy.

What happened was that Hasbro spotted Mrs. Hoover’s Persian cat, whose name is Pete and whose face is entirely flat. Hasbro followed Pete along the edge of the bushes toward the Hoover backyard, pulling Brendan with him. Pete started running, and when Hasbro tried to chase him he yanked Brendan over onto his face in the wet grass and got away into the fog, which was very thick now. Perry ran after Hasbro, and I bent over to help Brendan up. It was just then, when both of us were hidden by fog and bushes, that I overheard Ms Peckworthy talking.

“No rules at all is what they tell me,” she said to Mrs. Hoover. “A steady diet of doughnuts and ice cream. Up at all hours and roaming the bluffs and beaches. I understand that the small boy tumbled down the side of the cliff and broke his arm.”

“That would be Brendan,” Mrs. Hoover said. “Boys will be boys.”

“I daresay they will, if they’re allowed to be. And that poor little girl with no mother to look after her. A perfect little tomboy. Her aunt is
very
worried about her. Toliver Hedgepeth might mean well enough, but he’s an eccentric of the first water, and he’s no kind of parent for three impressionable children.”

That was me, the “perfect little tomboy.” And John Toliver Hedgepeth is our Uncle Hedge. Who is the aunt that’s so very worried about us, you ask?—Aunt Ricketts, who lives in Los Angeles and shoves her nose into everyone else’s business, because it’s a very long nose. We’re not fond of Aunt Ricketts.

“And the small boy will no doubt fail in school this year,” Ms Peckworthy was saying. “No doubt at all.”

I saw that Brendan was boiling mad now, because there really was
some
doubt, although not a lot. Ms Peckworthy was obviously a treacherous informer and spy, and that’s the thing that Brendan hates most in the world.

Perry was coming back with Hasbro now, and I motioned for him to keep hidden, and so he ducked down and crawled toward us across the lawn, hanging onto Hasbro’s leash with his teeth. Unlike Brendan, Hasbro was in a very happy frame of mind, and his head, which is large, was bobbing from side to side, like one of those dashboard dogs with his head on a spring. I was afraid that he was going to start barking, which he often does when he’s happy. So I shook my head at him and gave him a hard look.

“Mrs. Ricketts intends only to do what’s right for the children,” Ms Peckworthy was saying now. “She would hate to bring Social Services into the matter, but there’s the children’s welfare to think about. I fully intend to take them back to Los Angeles when I return south at the end of the week. I’ll leave my card with you.”

“That’s as may be,” Mrs. Hoover said boldly, “but I don’t care a rap about your Mrs. Ricketts and what she wants. I’ve never heard of the woman.”

Ms Peckworthy started up again. I don’t know what-all she said, because I was thinking about that last terrible thing: “…take them back to Los Angeles.” If she had said that the world was going to explode at the end of the week it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad. Without my having a chance to stop him, Brendan stood up, put his thumbs in his ears, and waggled his fingers at her while sticking his tongue out and squinching up his eyes. He often does this to show contempt.

Ms Peckworthy was apparently astonished to see him, popping up out of nowhere like this, looming through the fog and making faces. I stood up, too, and Ms Peckworthy stepped backward and put up her hands as if we were going to leap over the bushes and attack her. Before I could say anything useful, Pete the cat appeared on the lawn behind her, having come all the way around the house. Hasbro made a dash at Pete straight through the bushes, and Ms Peckworthy stepped back onto his leash, which was coming along like a snake. Somehow she fell over backward and said, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Mrs. Hoover went to help her and so did Perry, except that Ms Peckworthy shouted, “Assassin!” and wouldn’t let Perry near her but acted as if he meant to harm her.

She crawled to her feet, picked up the little notebook, shook it at us, and walked off very quickly without saying another word, looking back over her shoulder with her pickle face. She got into her tiny red car and drove away. So ended the first awful appearance of Henrietta Peckworthy.

That wasn’t the end of anything else, though, not by a long sea mile, as our old friend Captain Sodbury would say. Brendan wanted to get down to Lighthouse Beach in order to find his mermaid before the fog got any thicker, and so we forgot about Ms Peckworthy, said goodbye to Mrs. Hoover, and pursued our course along the bluffs, with me minding Hasbro now. The sea path runs right along the edge of the cliffs, with the ocean breaking on the rocks two hundred feet below, and it can be dangerous in the fog, especially with the cliffs all crumbly after last winter’s rain. Brendan hurried on ahead, but I shouted at him to slow down, because the fog was getting heavier all the time. And sure enough, very soon the fog closed behind him like a gray curtain, so thick that we couldn’t tell right from left except for the sound of the ocean away below us and the grumble of trucks out on the Coast Road.

After a moment the fog swirled on the sea breeze, clearing just a little, and we spotted Brendan up ahead, standing still at the end of a dirt road that comes down from the highway. He wasn’t alone. There was a car parked there, turned around and facing back out. A man stood beside it. The car door was open, and the motor was running. Steam was coming up from the exhaust pipes, mingling with the fog, and you could see the taillights glowing red like the eyes of a deep-sea fish. There was no license plate on the car. It was then, at the worst time ever, that I realized I’d forgotten my evidence camera. I
never
forget my evidence camera, but now I had, and there was no going back for it.

“Krikey,” Perry said in a low voice, “I believe it’s the legendary Lord Wheyface the Creeper.” He pointed with his walking stick, a piece of driftwood that he had found on the beach and dubbed “the Melmoth Walker,” which made no more sense than calling the stranger “Lord Wheyface the Creeper.” That’s Perry’s brainy way of being funny. Some people find it obscure.

The man was very pale, almost the color of the fog, and he was tall, with long scraggly black hair and a hooked nose. He wore a worn out velvet trench coat with gold buttons, like a gypsy or a pirate would wear, and a pair of heavy black boots and tight-fitting black gloves. He had the look of someone who was from someplace else, and a not very pleasant place, either. He waved at us in a way that was meant to look friendly, but there was nothing friendly about him, especially his smile, which must have been surprised to find itself on his face because it didn’t seem to want to stay there.

“I’ve lost my little dog,” he said in a wheedling voice when we came closer. He looked around at the empty bluffs, shaking his head sadly. “His name is…Bucket.”

“Bucket?” Perry said. “What kind of dog?”

“A Shih Tzu,” he said, pronouncing it wrong, although I won’t say how. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Bucket!” out toward the ocean, shaking his head sadly. “Bucky-boy!”

“It’s pronounced ‘
shid
-zoo,’” Perry told him.

“Of course it is, the poor little thing. She’s no bigger than that.” He held his hands together now, indicating that the dog was maybe the size of a tuna can. “You’ve got a dog yourself,” the Creeper said, gesturing at Hasbro. “You understand how sad I feel. I thought maybe the four of us could find little Bucket easier than I could by myself, alone in all this fog.” He waved roundabout himself at the empty bluffs.

“The four of us?” Perry asked him shrewdly. “How did you know how many of us there were? Some of us were hidden in the fog until just a moment ago. You must have thought there was only one of us and not four.”

“I could hear your footsteps,” he said. “I counted them and divided by two.”

“Except that we have ten legs,” Perry said shrewdly, “because one of us is a dog. You must have thought there were
five
of us.”

“I’ll tell you what I
thought
,” the Creeper said, sounding very nasty all of a sudden. Then he tried to smile again, but his smile was rickety, like a broken thing. “Smart lad,” he said. “You remind me of myself, when I was your age. A ready answer for….
Oh my heavens what’s that!
”

We all looked in the direction he pointed, and in that instant he leapt forward and snatched at Brendan, who shouted and sort of back-pedaled, falling over a rock, which was lucky, because the Creeper would have had him for sure instead of empty air. Hasbro sprang forward, and I let go of the leash, and in two seconds Hasbro had gotten hold of the Creeper’s boot with his teeth. The Creeper edged toward Brendan again, hauling Hasbro with him and shouting, “Get off! Get off!”

Perry ran past me, raising the Melmoth Walker over his head with both hands and slamming it down on the Creeper’s shoulder hard enough to snap the stick in two. The Creeper reeled backward, clutching at his shoulder, with Hasbro still clamped onto his boot.

“You filthy little…!” he started to say, and he moved menacingly toward Perry now, dragging Hasbro like a ball and chain. Perry raised the broken-off piece of stick and stepped back a pace, just as Brendan sprang to his feet and ran for it, darting past the Creeper and straight down the path toward home, shouting for Uncle Hedge.

“Run!” Perry hollered, and I did, and so did Perry. We ran as fast as we could while Hasbro held onto the Creeper’s boot long enough for us to get away. Then Hasbro let loose and tore out after us, still barking, and passing us like a meteor. Through the fog I saw Mrs. Hoover’s back fence looming ahead, and I thought we were safe, but when I looked back again the Creeper was running hard, scary close. But his heavy coat billowed out behind him, slowing him down like a parachute, and his boots were real clompers. I heard a grunt and an unpleasant shout, and I looked back again to see that he had fallen flat. He got up, looked in our direction, and turned around, limping back toward his car in a hurry. In about ten seconds Uncle Hedge appeared, just in time to get a good look at the man’s back before the fog rolled in again, hiding the bluffs and the Creeper and the Creeper’s car.

When we came in through the kitchen door, Uncle Hedge dialed the police in Fort Bragg, talking to his friend Captain Smith, who knew a little bit about Uncle Hedge and his “work” with the Guild of St. George, which I’ll tell you about later. We met him twenty minutes later at the end of the road back out on the bluffs, although now there was nothing of the Creeper left to see except tire tracks. Of course we described him as best we could, but none of us could tell Captain Smith about his car, except that it was old and green, and in the fog it was hard to say whether it wasn’t maybe more gray than green or the other way around. It had no license plate, of course, so we told him that much, but Captain Smith said, “He’ll have put it back on by now,” meaning that the Creeper had taken if off on purpose, so that didn’t help much either. What
would
have helped? It would have helped if I had brought my camera. But I didn’t, and it was nothing but spilt milk under the bridge.

Captain Smith took a picture of the tire tracks and boot prints, but there wasn’t much else to do. He told us that it was unlikely we would see the Creeper again, because he was a conspicuous stranger, and now it wasn’t safe for him in Caspar, not lurking around dressed like that. And anyway, he told us, we were “a tough crowd,” and had probably put the fear into him. Then he gave us a lecture about talking to strangers. The story of the little dog was a lie, which of course we had known all along, and so we were fools to listen to it for even a moment.

“Run first,” Captain Smith told us, “and ask questions later.”

By now the fog was so heavy that the air was wet, and none of us were in the mood to go on down to the beach to look for Brendan’s mermaid, even if Uncle Hedge had let us, which he didn’t. He said it was a good day for staying inside while he tried to sort things out.

“We need to have a confab,” Uncle Hedge told us when we were back in the kitchen eating a bowl of Weetabix with bananas. He looked very grim, which isn’t usual for him, and so when he
is
grim you pay attention. “There’s more to this Creeper fellow than meets the eye,” he said. “I want you to give him a wide berth. Keep your eyes peeled for the man, and if you see him again, try to make sure he doesn’t see you. Call me or call Captain Smith. He won’t try to trick you next time. He’ll strike, and quickly, too.”

“Who is he?” Brendan asked.

Uncle Hedge sat there silently for a moment, poking at his soggy Weetabix with a spoon, before saying, “I’ve seen him once before, and heard of him a couple of times, but there’s a great deal about him that I don’t know. I’ve got my suspicions. But even if I
did
know what he was up to, that wouldn’t protect us from him. We’ll have to use our wits for that. Confronting the man out on the bluffs today was witless. I’ll tell you that straight out. You’ve got to use your heads for something besides hat racks.”