Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  “He is on the circuit. There is much to be done.”

  “And you and he can do it, but not her. I forbid it.”

  “Mom, stop—”

  “Quiet, Elizabeth.”

  “No, I won’t be quiet,” I said, speaking in a way I had never spoken to her before. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not even here. I’ve been left out of enough already.” I pointed at the portrait of Daniel Webster staring down at us from the wall. “This is my history.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “I only told her the truth,” said my grandfather.

  “That ancient fable about Daniel Webster and Mr. Scratch? You are doing her no favors, Ebenezer.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said.

  “Better than you might realize.”

  “But this is part of me, don’t you see?”

  “No, it is not part of you,” said my mother. “I will not allow it to be a part of you. You and I will talk about this later. But for now, Ebenezer, know that my daughter won’t be back. Her connection with your operation is severed. For good. And you tell Eli that I insist on speaking to him immediately.”

  “As you wish, Melinda,” said my grandfather. “I never could stop you from doing what you chose, no matter how much trouble it caused you.”

  “Let’s go, Elizabeth.”

  “Mom, this isn’t—”

  “Elizabeth!”

  “Go on, Elizabeth,” said my grandfather. “Go with your mother. As she would be sure to tell you, the Websters have always believed that nothing is more important than family.”

  My mother turned and stalked out. Before I followed, I ran to my grandfather and gave him a great, tight hug. I could feel his fragile bones beneath my arms.

  “Stay strong,” he said. “Stay a Webster.”

  I followed my mother out of my grandfather’s office and into the waiting room. Every eye followed the two of us, my mother storming ahead and me trailing meekly behind. I looked at Barnabas on his high clerk’s chair and he raised a single eyebrow in response. The giant in the brown suit I had seen leaving the office on my first visit was sitting in the waiting chairs. He shook his head at me and muttered, “Nothin’ to be done.” Sitting beside the giant, Sandy, wearing a blue dress this time, raised a hairy hand in support. I tried to smile back.

  When I passed Avis at her desk, the secretary said, “See you soon, dearie. See you soon.”

  “No you won’t,” said my mother on her way out the door.

  The car ride home was cold and silent. My mother stared through the windshield as if searching for her superhero archenemy on the horizon. I wrapped my arms around my knees, let my hair fall over my face, and withdrew into myself like a turtle hiding in her shell.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” my mother finally asked.

  I had nothing to say, at least not to her in her warrior mode, and not now with my emotions so raw.

  “You had a doctor’s appointment today,” said my mother. “When I called Natalie’s, her mother knew nothing of any plans. Then I thought of that Henry Harrison, and wondered if maybe you had gone there again. In the course of my conversation with Mrs. Harrison, she threw off a light comment about the house’s ghost. And suddenly, all your legal questions at the dinner table made horrible sense. How could you have lied to me like that?”

  Sometimes your only choices are to say everything or say nothing. Wondering about who had actually done all the lying in our pasts, and afraid of what I might blurt out through my anger, I decided to say nothing.

  “You turn insolent and silent whenever you feel bad about yourself,” said my mother, “so that might be a good sign. We can talk this over with your father if he ever shows his face. But as of now, you are not to go back to that office, do you understand?”

  Oh, I understood all right. I began to mentally graph the facts my mother had never told me about myself, about my grandfather, about my father, about my heritage. There was a line shooting up and to the right in my graph—a line that arose from the point where the x-axis, the years of my life, and y-axis, my destiny as a Webster, met. The point of origin. I sensed something missing right there, at the origin, something that might explain everything, but that my mother was still keeping from me.

  As I thought all this through, I remained silent as a stone. My silence spread to my mother, who stopped talking, too. By the end of the car ride there were no words between us, only anger and resentment as thick as smoke. How pleasant. Before we stopped in the driveway, my door was open and I was out of the car, heading for the house.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” my mother called out. “You’re grounded.”

  Right, as if that could hold me back.

  “I’m out,” I told Henry and Natalie the next day.

  There was the usual cafeteria gawking at Henry Harrison sitting at a table with two seventh graders, but not as much as before. The middle school lunchroom adapts faster than the flu. There were even other eighth graders scattered around tables with sixth and seventh graders, as if Henry had somehow, by sitting with us, started an epidemic.

  “Out of what?” said Henry.

  “I’m out of your case against the ghost of Beatrice Long.”

  “Forget it, Webster. You can’t be out.”

  “But out I am,” I said. “I’m grounded.”

  “Is that all?” His eyes calmed as he calculated. For someone like Henry Harrison, a swimming star with total sway over his folks, a grounding was a temporary thing that could be dodged with a smile and plea. “No biggie. What happened? Did you get an A-minus in math?”

  “I think my mom would have preferred me being sent to remedial Geometry than finding me in my father’s law office.”

  “How’d she find you there?” Natalie asked.

  “Your mother didn’t know we were supposed to be studying together.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry about that.” Natalie shrugged. “But she never knows where I am. If I told her something, that would have made her suspicious.”

  “And it didn’t help that Henry’s mother started blabbing to my mother about ghosts.”

  “She’s become a bit obsessed,” said Henry with a nod.

  “And my mother always knows everything anyway,” I said.

  “She does, doesn’t she?” said Natalie. “It’s freaky. Remember that time we ran to the mall one Saturday morning without permission and found her there waiting for us?”

  “I remember.”

  “And that time that—”

  “You can’t quit on us, Webster,” said Henry. “What about Beatrice? She needs our help.”

  “So help her. She’s your ghost, deal with it. But make sure you deal with it,” I added, remembering the thing the ghost had said after I stuck a stake in her heart: Save me, save him.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he whined. He looked like his lollipop had just been stolen.

  The lollipop face annoyed me. Henry dragged me into this and now he wanted to sit back and let me do all the work. I’d seen it before, in all the chuckleheads assigned to my math workgroup who spent the sessions punching each other in the shoulder while I did the problem sets. There are always kids who let other kids do the work while they get the credit. Enough of that.

  “Figure it out,” I snapped. “I’ve noticed you’re very good at getting other people to carry your laundry for you, Henry Harrison. Maybe it’s time you start carrying it for yourself.”

  “A little harsh there, Webster, don’t you think?”

  Just then Charlie Frayden approached the table. “I have your Coke, Mr. Harrison, sir,” he said, bending low as he held out a red can of soda perched on a napkin. “Just like you asked.”

  “Thank you, Charlie,” said Henry, taking the soda as if being served cans of Coke was as natural as breathing.

  “And there’s some change.”

  “Keep it,” said Henry.

  “Thank you much, sir,” said Charlie as he backed away. “T
hat’s very kind of you, sir.”

  I looked at Charlie, then back at Henry as he popped the top of the can and took a long swallow.

  “You’re ridiculous,” I said.

  “How do you know the Fraydens?” Natalie asked.

  “I saw you guys sitting with Charlie and his brother,” said Henry, “and so I said hello to them in the hall. They seem nice.”

  “You’re talking about the Fraydens?” said Natalie.

  “Sure. And you know, one thing led to another.”

  “And now Charlie’s buying sodas for you,” I said.

  “They’re trying to get me to join debate club,” said Henry. “Actually, you should join, Webster. You’d be good at it.”

  “I bet Charlie told you to say that,” I said.

  “True,” he said before taking another sip.

  “Don’t worry about being grounded, Lizzie,” said Natalie. “You can climb out onto the tree by your window, scurry down, and you’ll be free as a bird.”

  “But that’s just it, I don’t want to be free,” I said.

  I had thought about it all night, wondering what I was really searching for in this whole ghostly episode. And when I realized the answer was my father, I grew angry. Why should I have to search for my father? Why wasn’t he searching for me? Maybe it was time to make myself easy to find. So I decided that I would accept my grounding. I would go to school and come straight home and stay up in my room until it was time to go to school again. And that would be my life until my father came and rescued me. Was that childish? Why, yes it was, thank you.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said, “until I talk with my father.”

  “I can’t do this without you, Webster.”

  “Sure you can. Natalie knows where my father’s office is. She can take you there to get set up for the trial.”

  “If you insist,” said Natalie, a little cat smile breaking out on her lips. “We can take the train this afternoon, or Monday if that’s better. And there’s the best gelato shop right at—”

  “And once you get there, Barnabas will tell you what to do,” I said. “And my father will show up and try the case. You don’t need me anymore.”

  Henry thought about it for a moment, his face turning glum. “Maybe I’ll just forget about it.”

  I leaned toward him, lowered my voice. “Is that what you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve been having second thoughts.”

  “You like it when she shows.”

  “Sort of.”

  “And you’ll miss her when she’s gone.”

  “Maybe, yeah.”

  “But you said she was sad and needs your help. How is not helping her helping her?”

  “I don’t know. Stop it. What are you, a lawyer now?”

  “Only by blood,” I said, before leaning back.

  “Charlie’s right, you should be in debate club,” said Henry. “And you’re right, too. I do want her to stay. I don’t know why, but I do. And I also know I need her to go. But most of all I just want to help her. I want her to be happy, like her happiness is the most important thing in my life. What is that all about? What is happening to me?”

  I looked at Natalie, my eyes wide, and she had the same expression as she looked back at me. Something had gotten into Henry and we both sensed what it was.

  “This whole haunted-by-a-ghost thing is too much for me,” he said. “Every moment I feel like I’m on the edge of puking. You can’t abandon me in my time of need, Webster.”

  I felt the urge to help rise in my gut, but then the image of Charlie Frayden hand-delivering that soda—as if it was just too much for Henry Harrison to walk twelve steps to the machine and slide in the quarters on his own—pushed it down again.

  “Sure I can,” I said, “and I have. You’re on your own, Henry. But you don’t have a choice anymore. My grandfather said now that the case has been started, if you just let it go, then for the rest of your life that ghost will own you.”

  “Can this get any worse?” he whined.

  “Yes, actually,” I said. “So stop complaining about your upset tummy and get going. You’ll need a deed for your property and some sod from your land to try the case. Good luck, I’ll be rooting for you.”

  And that was it, the end. Story’s over, folks. Put down the book, kill a few video werewolves, binge-watch a series or two, move along, there’s nothing more to see here.

  Because I was finished with the whole ghost-of-Beatrice-Long thing. Let Natalie flirt with Henry while he flirted with his ghost. I was out.

  I stayed in that night, and the rest of the weekend. And I didn’t eat lunch with Natalie or Henry on the following Monday, either. I could see them sitting next to each other, their heads leaning close, talking quietly, but I sat at a different table with the Fraydens. I kept my chin down and my hair over my eyes while I swirled the gunk on my plate and listened to tales of the debate team’s tragedies and triumphs. Joy. And when I came home I ate a silent dinner with the Scalis before running up to my room and doing my homework and then losing myself in a copy of Vampire Knight.

  I hadn’t spoken to my mother since she had plucked me from the offices of Webster & Son. I was in silent mode. But, really, what was there to say? All I intended to do was wait for my father to tell me how delighted he was to see me. Wait for my father to tell me all the secrets he had kept from me. Wait for my father to swoop me into his arms and tell me how much he loved me. Wait for my father, my father, wait.

  Yeah, it hit me soon enough that I would be waiting a long time. Fine. I resigned myself to being like this for however long it took. Middle school, high school, old-age home, whatever.

  And then I had another dream.

  I am coiled in a crevice beneath the huge gray rock, and I am hungry. So hungry I would eat my foot if I had one.

  The last meal that slid down my throat is no more than a pile of fur sitting in a puddle in a corner of my burrow and there has been nothing but spiders since, and so I am hungry. There will be food deeper within the woods, somewhere beyond the V-shaped tree, but the pain in my long copper body keeps me close to my rock. I have wounds that still fester, bones that are snapped, and the yellow dog that attacked me is still out there somewhere. Every movement now is a struggle and so I lie here, curled and broken and hungry. So hungry.

  And then, in a flick of my tongue, I pick up the scent of a bird. Something close. I lick the air as if the smell itself could satisfy my hunger. Slowly, quietly, I unfurl from my coil and slither painfully forward.

  When I reach the mouth of my hole beneath the rock, the scent coats my tongue. Delicious and full of bird stink. I peek out, slowly. There is a nest built against the side of the rock. The nest is silver, and woven so lightly I can see the eggs inside, small and baby blue. I prefer something live and squirming—a tender little bird would be perfect—but my hunger is calling out to me. I look up for a parent bird protecting its nest, but there is nothing overhead, nothing on either side. A parent will return if I don’t move quickly. Something whispers caution about the silver nest, but the bird scent is so fresh and my hunger shouts. There is a hole up one of the sides of the nest. I lift my head above the ground, dart into the hole, and hiss.

  When I finally pull all of my injured body inside, I nuzzle one of the eggs with my nose and then open my jaws wide, wider, wider still. The delicious egg slips into my throat. And then the next. And then the next. When my jaws are closed again, I turn to go back through the hole, but my body with the eggs inside is too thick and so I begin to crush the eggs with—

  Slam!

  My head spins and I see the yellow dog. He bangs his muzzle against the nest and bangs it again before growling and showing his teeth. I jerk back painfully into the nest and hiss a warning at him as he slams the nest once more. I can feel my heart beat like a drum, but I am safe within the nest. The dog snarls, but I am safe. I want to laugh but all that comes out is a hiss.

  Then, beside the dog, appear
the legs of two humans.

  I raise my head and see the boy, the familiar boy, large and with a flat nose. The boy lifts up the nest and shakes it, sending my injured body sliding this way, sliding that way. The other person, whose face I can’t see, places a hand under the cage and gently rubs at my belly. I hiss at the boy, and just as I spin to take a bite out of the hand gently rubbing my belly—

  Something tore me from my sleep.

  I lay there in my bed, my heart racing, my throat full. Once again, I’d had a dream that was more vivid than a dream.

  Then I heard it, the thing that had woken me from the nightmare. A tap-tap. I thought of ignoring it—the last thing I wanted to deal with right now was some flat-faced demon knocking on my window. But when it came again, I sat up and took a look.

  Natalie, sitting on the tree branch outside my window, tapping a fingernail onto the glass.

  I scampered to the window and flung it open. “What are you doing?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Now?”

  “Oh yes,” said Natalie. “Right now.”

  When we were sitting face-to-face and cross-legged on my bed, with the lights low and our voices lower, Natalie got right down to it.

  “I went to your father’s office today.”

  “With Henry?”

  “Henry couldn’t decide whether to go or not. Ever since that kiss he’s become boneless, like a filleted fish. Our handsome Henry Harrison has become a sautéed trout. It’s like he’s wiping sliced almonds from his eyes. It’s embarrassing.”

  “So you went alone?”

  “Somebody had to. Am I crazy to think that he might be sick in love with Beatrice’s ghost?”

  “No.”

  “All that ‘I just want to help her.’ And all that ‘Her happiness is the most important thing in my life.’ I don’t know, it’s like so, so…”

  “Pathetic?”

  “Inspiring.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Think about it, Lizzie. There he was, the jock of Willing Middle School West, cruising around like he owned the world. I mean, what wouldn’t I have given for a smile from him. But then he gets sick in love and now he cares about a ghost more than he cares about himself. It makes all that stuff that mattered before seem like so much fluff.”