Zeuglodon (18 page)

And then the water simply exploded, like a bomb had gone off. “Zeuglodon!” I shouted, as the creature threw itself into the air, its great, angular head rising twenty and then thirty feet, its mouth open, showing rows of triangular teeth. Its black, glittering eye looked small in that enormous head, but must have been the size of a grapefruit.

I snapped a picture at the same time that I was turning to run, and I saw the creature slam back down again, thrashing around toward us. I realized that I was screaming now, as a wall of water washed across the beach, knocking down the driftwood hut and carrying it up into the jungle.

We kept running even though we knew that the zeuglodon was an ocean-going reptile and that we were safe from it. We were angling uphill, running blindly toward a bend in the trail ahead, thinking only about catching up with Lala, with not being left behind, when out from the shadows of the trees stepped the Creeper, grinning a snaggle-toothed grin and holding the elephant rifle in his hands, blocking the path. I heard Perry shout a useless warning, and I stopped cold, but Brendan slammed into my back and we both fell over in a heap. When I scrambled back up to my feet, there was nowhere to run.

“What have we here?” the Creeper asked, as if he was really curious. “It’s the three little scallywags, or I’m a Dutchman!” There was a noise behind us, and I turned to see Dr. Frosticos staring at us, although with no real interest, as if we were a plate of yesterday’s food and he wasn’t hungry. His eyes were simply cold. Compared to him the Creeper seemed to be made of cardboard.

“Hello, pillbug,” the Creeper said to me now in a smarmy voice. “Finally I’ve a chance to thank you for throwing that ring-a-ding to me. Because of that we meet again in this lovely place!”

“Bind them,” Frosticos said in a flat voice. “To the tree there. Be quick about it. The Peach girl has apparently gone on ahead.”

The Creeper set the big rifle against a low tree limb and then drew a coil of rope out of a canvas pack. He made a slip-loop in the end of it, then grabbed Brendan by the shoulder and spun him around, wrenching his hand behind his back and tying his wrists. “You next,” he said to Perry. But he must have seen something in Perry’s face, because he said, “Don’t even
think
about any of your billy-club capers, young bunion. There’s no one to help you here. Your dear old uncle is as dead as a pickled herring. They’ll have him on ice by now, I should think.”

“Liar!” Brendan shouted at him.

The Creeper shook his head sadly. “Quite dead, I’m afraid. He put up a gallant struggle, but in the end his blood was as red as the next man’s, as the quaint old saying goes.”

“Then who’s
that
,” Perry said, pointing farther along the path. The Creeper and Frosticos both looked, and so did I—looked at nothing, because the path was empty—and in that moment who should step silently out from among the trees behind us but Ms Peckworthy, still carrying her umbrella, although it was nothing but ribs and tatters now. Perry had seen her, and she must have given him a sign, although what she thought she was up to I didn’t know.

The Creeper looked back now and saw her. He stood staring for a moment before he started to speak, which was a big mistake, because she very calmly flung the umbrella in his face like a spear at the same moment that she bent forward and snatched up the elephant rifle, which must have weighed nearly as much as she did.

“Poppycock!” she said, hoisting the rifle to her shoulder and looking at the Creeper in a deadly way, as if she’d had enough of him. It dawned on me with a wild gladness that Ms Peckworthy was one of us, and not our nemesis at all. Her arrival last night on the Manchester bus had been one of the worst things in my life, but her arrival here in the middle of the jungle was one of the best.

“Be careful now, my good woman…” the Creeper started to say, and he took a cautious step toward her, waving both hands in front of himself as if trying to reason with her. The rifle went off right then, the explosion so loud that my ears rang. I sprang back, covering my face, and when I opened my eyes I saw that the Creeper had thrown himself to the ground. At first I thought he had been shot, but the rifle was pointed skyward. Ms Peckworthy lowered it again, still glaring at him. Dr. Frosticos stood there like an ice sculpture, staring right through her, simply biding his time.

“My father taught me to shoot when I was a girl,” Ms Peckworthy said, narrowing her eyes. “In the Michigan woods. I never thought I’d put the talent to use.”

In that moment the Creeper lunged forward, snatching at the barrel of the rifle, but Perry stuck his foot out and tripped him, so neatly that it looked like judo or something, and the Creeper sprawled forward in the dirt again as Ms Peckworthy backed off a step.

“You detestable skunks!” she said to both of them. “You oily cretins! You unnatural crocodiles!” She stared down the barrel of the rifle, letting the Creeper writhe in his own slime for a moment. Then to Perry she said, “Untie your brother and then tie these two pieces of human detritus up tightly.” And then to the Creeper: “You! Put your hands together and hold them out in front of you, where the boy can get a rope on them. You too, Doctor, if you
are
a doctor and not a miserable fraud.” She pointed the rifle straight at Frosticos now. She had a wild gleam in her eye, as if she had been waiting for just this moment, and was relishing it.

“You wouldn’t leave us here?” the Creeper said, making his sad face. “Tied up like a Sunday roast? You saw that great bear near the cave!”

“You’d leave the children here, wouldn’t you?…you…you prevaricating gudgeon! When that bear reared up from the rocks, you scuttled off thinking it would eat
me
, and it very nearly did! You two can sit here until doomsday and consider your evil ways as far as I’m concerned, and if a bear bites either of your heads off…too bad for the bear!”

Too much talking
, I thought.
We’re burning daylight
.

What happened next was a surprise. Dr. Frosticos took a long look at the Creeper, shook his head dismissively, and then turned around and walked calmly away down the path like a man who had seen enough and was going back to the hotel, so to speak. In about three seconds he was out of sight. There was nothing to be done. Ms Peckworthy wasn’t going to shoot anyone. Frosticos knew it, and we knew it, and by now the Creeper knew it too. But Perry had already looped the slipknot over the Creeper’s wrists and tightened it, and now Ms Peckworthy made the Creeper sit down beside the tree that he had been going to tie us to. Brendan and Perry looped the rope around and around him, tying half-hitches now and then, yanking the rope tight each time. “More knots,” Ms Peckworthy said. “Make the bear work for his supper!” But the rope was pretty much used up, and the Creeper was tight to the tree.

“Come along, children,” she said. We didn’t discuss it, but went on up the hill in the direction that Lala must have taken, hurrying, because clearly Frosticos would walk straight back into things as soon as we were gone and untie that rope. Tying up the Creeper might buy us five minutes. If Lala were going to succeed, I thought, she’d best already have found her father and gone on her way. She’d been smart enough to ignore distractions, but I hadn’t been.

The trail wound along a steep cliff now, and shortly we came out into a sort of clearing, with dense brush below and a view of the rocky mountainside high above. Without slowing her pace, Ms Peckworthy said, “Stand clear!” and she twirled sideways and let go of the elephant rifle, which spun around and around, sailing out over the cliff and down into the brush, out of sight, where it would lie until forever and rust, and good riddance to it.

We went on, and some minutes later we emerged from the trees again, where we found ourselves at the edge of a stream that was rushing through a narrow little gorge, the water splashing and plunging maybe thirty feet below. There was a footbridge across the stream, the bridge made of jungle vines and broken limbs, the vines tied to tree trunks on either side. The whole thing looked rickety and old.

“That appears to be unsafe,” Ms Peckworthy said, shaking her head doubtfully.

But the word meant nothing, because
not
crossing the bridge, and fast, was unsafer by far. Perry stepped boldly out onto it, and then coaxed Ms Peckworthy across. I followed, and Brendan came last. We started up the trail again double-time, and were fifty feet from the bridge before I realized that Brendan wasn’t behind me. I turned, and there he was, back at the bridge, sawing away at the vines with the Creeper’s knife. I whistled, and he looked up, waved us on, and went back to work. There was no sign of Frosticos and the Creeper, and one side of the bridge already leaned precariously, the vines severed, and so we went on without Brendan, soon coming out of the trees onto a grassy sort of plateau.

The stream we had crossed was bubbling out of a massive tumble of rocks above, pouring down over them in a broad, smoothly-flowing waterfall. It was marshy ground, and Lala’s footprints were easy to see, leading away into the rocks. There were other footprints, too—enormous three-toed prints, and prints that might have been from a giant cat. I snapped pictures, aiming with one hand as we hurried onward.

Within moments we stood at the bottom edge of that tumble of rocks. There was a broad view of the sea below, looking quiet and placid, and of the clearing along the trail where Ms Peckworthy had thrown the elephant rifle. There was no sign of Brendan, but most of the trail was hidden from view, and I knew he wouldn’t waste a moment once the bridge was cut. We paused long enough to gulp water from a clear pool in the rocks—the first water we’d had since last night. I was thirsty as a desert.

I became aware then of the sound of bees, a
lot
of bees, very close by. This time I knew what the sound meant, and I didn’t bother to look for any real bees. We soon discovered that there was an opening behind the waterfall, leading into a cavern very much like our own sea cave, but deeper and darker—so deep and dark that I couldn’t see the back of it. The bee noises were coming from inside the cavern, from somewhere in the darkness, and the air smelled of water on stone because of the mist from the waterfall.

I realized that Ms Peckworthy had grasped my wrist and was holding on tightly. “I can’t see a
thing
in the dark,” she whispered, her voice full of fear. “What is it? What’s that noise? I don’t like bees,
especially
in the dark.”

“It’s not bees,” I said. “It’s the sound of…dreaming.”

“Of
dreaming
?” she whispered. “My land! Will wonders never cease?”

“Not for a while yet,” I told her.

I could see better now, and I made out something that would have been very strange, except that I was half expecting it. Farther back in the cavern, almost lost in the shadows, stood a big four-poster bed. The posts were apparently cut out of tree trunks, with the bed’s four feet carved to look like elephant’s feet. Rays of watery light filtering down through the waterfall shone on them and on the headboard, which appeared to be a crown, like a king would wear. A man in a nightshirt and nightcap lay on the bed, asleep atop a cloud-like mattress that must have been stuffed with mounds of feathers.

It was the Sleeper, Giles Peach, Lala’s inventive father, who had descended into this cave and fallen asleep when the time was right, like a salmon putting away his daily business in the sea and swimming upriver. Lala stood next to him. She held a finger to her lips to keep us quiet. “I’ve been trying to get him to walk without awakening him,” she whispered, “but he’s
very
obstinate.”

I was thinking about other obstinate people, like the Creeper and Frosticos, who at this moment were no doubt moving in our direction. I peered out of the mouth of the cave, and thank goodness I saw Brendan climbing the hill. I waved him on, holding my finger to my lips to keep him from blurting anything out. We
really
needed to be gone into the darkness of the Passage and headed for home. With the bridge down we had a chance, a real chance, and we couldn’t afford to squander it.

Brendan stood in the cave mouth, trying to see in. “I left him at the bridge,” he whispered, breathing hard.

“
Him
?” I asked. “The Creeper?”

“Frosticos. The Creeper wasn’t with him. He came alone.” He shivered, remembering.

He left the Creeper behind
, I thought, realizing the truth. Frosticos didn’t need the Creeper now. The Creeper had been merely convenient, like a piece of tissue when your nose needs blowing, and we had tied the used tissue to a tree trunk with about sixty knots. Now he would be dinner, just as he had feared.

I heard Lala mutter something into her father’s ear now. She waited a moment and then muttered it again. He stirred in his bed and rolled over onto his side, and then, wonder of wonders, he sat up, swiveled around, and with his eyes still closed, set his feet on the ground. He had a pleasant smile on his face, as if his current dreams were good dreams. Hasbro wandered over and sniffed at him.

“Time!” Lala whispered, and she rummaged under the bed and came up with a pair of bedroom slippers, which she slid onto his feet. He stood up then, with his arms held out in front of him, and set out sleepwalking, straight toward the back of the waterfall. Lala took his elbow and very gently turned him around, and they moved deeper into the cave, where I could see the mouth of the Passage clearly now, leading away into the depths of the mountain.