Amanda Lester and the Red Spider Rumpus

by Paula Berinstein

  “No,” she yelled back. “We have to turn this thing off.”

  “It’s too dangerous to go down when it’s moving,” he said, and reached for her hand.

  There was a jolt and Amanda lost her footing for a moment.

  “Up,” said Nick. “Before you fall.”

  “No. I have to go down.”

  “Amanda, come on.” He reached for her again, but she was already on her way down.

  She could barely see, but she had to get out that door and find the control. She could hear him following her down, see his light making eerie patterns on the wall. Then there came another jolt and she was thrown off, all the way to the bottom.

  Despite his misgivings Nick followed Amanda down, but within seconds the tower jumped. He grabbed for a rung and made it, but the thing sped up and juddered as if it were having a fit, and he found that he was trapped. Every time he tried to descend he was almost thrown off the ladder, so he tried to go up but it was the same. The movement was too violent for him to go anywhere.

  “Amanda,” he yelled, but there was no reply.

  He was worried sick. Had she been thrown to the bottom? Perhaps she was lying there dead. He had to make it down to her. He wondered if he could rappel, perhaps carom off the sides and break his fall. He certainly couldn’t climb down the normal way, not with this spasming going on.

  “Amanda!”

  Nothing. He hadn’t heard a clunk so maybe she was all right, although it was so loud he probably wouldn’t have heard a supernova, if you could actually hear one.

  His head was hurting so badly and his ears pounding so hard he thought he might pass out. The machine was lurching like Frankenstein’s monster, shaking like a naked man in a blizzard, and all he could do was will himself to hold on.

  He pretended the rung was Amanda and he was holding her, holding the beautiful girl he’d dreamed about since the day he’d first seen her, holding her so tight, holding her as if his life depended on it, feeling the warmth of her sweet, sweet lips, her silken hair, crushing her to him, just loving her, loving her. He thought about what it was like to kiss her that first time. He’d waited so long, and then when it had come it was like salvation, he had needed it so much, needed her so much, he needed her so much.

  And he found that when he pictured her, her warm brown eyes, her dazzling smile, imagined his arms around her and hers around him, her fingers stroking his hair, he could hold on, hold on, hold on, maybe forever . . . .

  At last Amanda managed to get through the opening in the bottom of the leg. The fall hadn’t been too bad. She hadn’t been far up when the jolt had come and had managed to absorb most of the energy of her fall by bending her knees. Her ankles hurt though. And her ears. Oh, how her ears ached.

  Blixus was waiting for her but he made no move. He was looking at something behind her. She whirled around and saw that the machine was gyrating. Blixus was laughing, taunting her, enjoying her panic.

  Then Holmes appeared out of nowhere and Blixus yelled, “Your girlfriend’s boyfriend is stuck in there.” Holmes stopped and looked as if he didn’t know which way to turn.

  Amanda shrieked and ran back toward the robot, which was rampaging like Godzilla. She could feel Blixus behind her, and then all of a sudden he was gone. She turned around to see him and Hugh run off. And then she saw someone bearing down on them: Jeffrey Lestrade!

  Amanda couldn’t believe her eyes. What was her cousin was doing at the movie studio? She screamed for him to help Nick but he yelled, “He’s getting what he deserves, the delinquent.” Then all of sudden Jeffrey stopped dead in his tracks, swatted his arm, and said, “Who am I kidding? I’ll never catch those two. I’m getting too old for this.”

  Another spider! If the situation hadn’t been so serious Amanda would have loved to ask him some questions right then and there, but Nick was stuck inside the robot, being thrown about, and might even be dead by now!

  Amanda had no idea where the controls were. They might be remote, or they might be built into the structure. The latter was her only hope, so she ran toward the thing, her eyes searching for something, anything, she might pull, push, or press. The tower was moving so wildly that she could barely see, let alone catch on. Her only chance was to grab at it each time they hit the ground, but each time she missed.

  She wanted to scream. She was sure Nick was being battered to death in there. She hoped he had managed to brace himself, but with the thing flailing around like that she didn’t hold out much hope.

  Finally after what seemed like a lifetime she caught sight of a small switch on the robot’s left foot and threw herself at it. It was hard to press and she had to try several times. At last with a lot of shuddering and sighing the robot slowed down, then stopped. She opened the door and ran inside. Nick was lying at the bottom of the ladder holding his ears. He was black and blue from top to bottom, his whole body shaking, with dozens of huge red spider bites on him. He looked ten times worse than when Taffeta had attacked him at Dandy Castle.

  Amanda ran to him. “Nick. Nick!” No answer. She felt for a pulse. He was warm and his pulse was racing. She flung her arms around him, clasped him tight, and kissed him all over. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Holmes watching them through the little door, a look of pure terror on his face.

  “Can you stand?” she said.

  “Mf,” said Nick.

  “Come on. I’ll help you.”

  She pulled him to her and somehow he got to his feet, still holding his ears. She kissed him again, guided him out of the robot, and said, “Come on. Let’s go home.”

  When Nick finally stopped holding his head it became obvious that he couldn’t hear a word Amanda was saying, even when she spoke into his ear. Her own ears had settled, although it still felt as if there were cotton in them.

  It was an awkward train ride back to Windermere so late at night, Amanda and the two boys she loved, one of them leaning against her, the other sitting as far away as he could get. Where Blixus had gone no one knew. But one thing was certain: Nick had failed to complete the third labor. He did not qualify to be admitted to Legatum.

  26

  RAMON’S ACCUSATION

  Nick didn’t say much after they came back. He just spoke when necessary and held Amanda whenever he could. There was a lot of whispering from the other students, but she was used to that. They all thought she was nuts anyway, and most of them hated Nick. Attempting to spare Holmes’s feelings, though, she made sure they spent their time together in private. It was bad enough that she’d hurt him, but to do so publicly would be cruel. Still he sometimes saw them together, and the pain in his eyes made her heart ache.

  Nick’s hearing had not returned. Dr. Wing pronounced his ossicular chain damaged and expressed uncertainty as to whether he’d get his hearing back fully, a little, or not at all. Ever stoic, Nick took the prognosis without comment, but Amanda was worried sick, and not just because of his ears. What would become of him now that he would have to leave Legatum? She had no idea and he refused to talk about it.

  There was good news, however: Thrillkill was alive and mostly well. It seemed that as part of his detective training he’d learned how to roll out of a car, and after Waltz had pushed him out of the van he’d thrown himself across the road before any vehicles had come along. Then, unhurt except for a bruise or two, he’d phoned Professor Buck to come collect him and had returned to the school.

  When Andalusia Sweetgum and her husband, Ezra Staylittle, came to Legatum to get Editta, the girl had refused to go. Her allegiance was to Blixus now, she said, and she belonged with him. Not knowing what to do, Editta’s parents had turned to Thrillkill—the same parents who were suing him. He had been gracious, though, and suggested that perhaps a psychologist experienced in deprogramming might help, and they had agreed to try that.

  But before they could get a name out of him Editta had run off. Try as they might the detectives couldn’t find her, and everyone concluded that Blixus had somehow whiske
d her away to yet another hiding place. This time, though, Andalusia hadn’t blamed Thrillkill. She claimed it was Nick’s fault for encouraging her daughter in the first place and threatened to kill him using voodoo, at which point security escorted her and her husband off the property.

  Back at Legatum for the first time in months, David insisted that Nick was not his brother. He shook his fist, vowed to kill anyone who said it was true, and almost attacked the larger boy, until Gordon pulled him away and locked him in a supply closet to cool down. When he finally emerged he phoned his mother and asked if it was true. Caught off guard Celerie said, “Good grief, no, darling. Who’s been filling your head full of lies?”

  “They’re saying it all over the school,” David said.

  “That Thrillkill,” said his mother. “He really seems to have lost his mind in the earthquake. He wasn’t like that before, you know.”

  “Make them stop, Mother,” he said.

  “Just come home, David. I’ll find you another school—a good one this time.”

  “But I want to be a detective like Dad. My dad. Not Nick’s. He isn’t really Nick’s dad, is he?”

  “You will be a detective. Just come home and we’ll sort it all out, sweetheart. And no, he isn’t really Nick’s dad. That’s just a mistake.”

  But David wasn’t convinced.

  “You’re not my brother,” he yelled at Nick when he saw him in the hall.

  “What’s he saying?” Nick said to Amanda.

  She scribbled “He says you’re not his brother” on a piece of paper.

  Nick turned to David. “I know you won’t believe this, but I intend to be a good one. You’ll see.”

  “Bah,” said David. “Once a criminal always a criminal. And you’re not my brother.”

  “He’s trying to be nice,” Gordon told him. Amanda wanted to kiss him.

  David rounded on him. “You deserted me.”

  Gordon’s face fell. He didn’t seem to know what to say.

  “You all think you’re so great,” said David. “Well, I think you’re a bunch of nothings. The only one around here who knows anything is Ivy, and she’s stuck up. You’re all a pack of jerks.”

  “Simon’s not a jerk,” said Gordon.

  “Yes he is,” said David. “I’ve never liked him.”

  “Just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean he’s a jerk,” said Gordon. Now Amanda wanted to hug him. The boy really had matured.

  “Yes it does,” said David. “You all think you know so much. And you all think you’re so great. You say, ‘My dad is a wonderful detective,’ ‘My mum solved the Mossmouth case.’ You’re nothing but a bunch of braggarts. Big deal.”

  It was obvious that David was hurting. His dad had not only been murdered, but had turned out not to be perfect. David himself had turned out not to be the flawless person he thought he was, and he was grieving over the loss of both, his image of himself and his father. Amanda felt terrible but had no idea what to do. Maybe in time he’d come to accept Nick. If he did he’d have a wonderful brother. If not, then both boys would miss out.

  David turned and trudged down the hall toward the boys’ dorm. His mother would be arriving soon to take him home. Amanda just hoped she and Nick would have a chance to say goodbye.

  The number of Nick’s enemies swelled. With his failure to complete the third labor, students and teachers alike started to clamor for his removal and even suggested that he be arrested. But something even worse happened, and it involved Ramon.

  While Amanda was gone Ramon had conducted more ghost hunting experiments, and he was claiming the ghost had told him Nick had The Detective’s Bible. The spirit, he said, was none other than Lovelace Earful, who as it turned out, had been killed by Professor Moriarty. This sounded completely farfetched until Ramon described exactly how Nick had retrieved the Bible and what he’d done with it in a very convincing way.

  Nick, he said, had returned to the quarry after the crystal fight, and using a fishing rod had probed the watery pit and retrieved the book. He had given it to Blixus, who had had it all this time. The Moriartys had kept the rod and reel in their car because after all, they owned a fishing boat. While the book was underwater, a couple of pages had come loose and floated to the top, where the peacocks had seen and grabbed them. To Amanda’s chagrin this scenario seemed possible, although she didn’t believe for a moment that things had actually happened that way. But Professor Feeney did, and while adamantly denying that she believed in ghosts or anything they had to say, she demanded to interrogate Nick yet again.

  The problem was that Ramon had got some of his facts right. It turned out that Professor Moriarty had killed Lovelace Earful, and right in the chapel too, as the boy had claimed. The official story was that Earful had died of a heart attack. Only the detectives and Professor Moriarty had known the truth. Was it possible that someone had blabbed and Ramon had come by the information through the grapevine?

  While the facts surrounding Earful’s death might have become known through leaks or just plain gossip, there was no way Ramon should have known about the coded words in the Bible. Whether he had hacked Holmes’s computer or phone (unlikely), spied on him and the kids talking about the Bible (possible but not probable), or riffled through Thrillkill’s papers (cheeky) they didn’t know, but most of the kids and all the teachers were convinced he’d come by the knowledge illicitly. Some even wanted to get a spider to bite him and make him tell the truth. Whatever he’d done or however he’d done it, everyone agreed that it had nothing to do with ghosts, and Thrillkill announced that he’d be conducting a full inquiry.

  But Amanda wasn’t about to wait. She’d had quite enough of Ramon Splunk and decided to take matters into her own hands. The nerve of him pointing fingers at Nick. She was going to find out everything she could about the ghostly boy and get to the bottom of his nonsense once and for all.

  She decided to start with the official Legatum directory. Everyone was listed—all the students and teachers as well as the staff. When she, Ivy, and Amphora had first come to Legatum they’d spent hours going over the blurbs, gossiping about this person and that. Of course most of it was made up because Legatum didn’t actually tell you much about anyone, everything being so secret and all. In fact, Amanda’s listing was about three sentences long and Amphora’s only two. Still, it was a place to start.

  The write-up said that Ramon was descended from the Splunks of Colchester. Apparently someone named Splunk had been a psychic detective of local repute in the 1960s. But when Amanda searched the archives for the period in which he supposedly operated, all she found was that he had helped the police solve one burglary case. Surely Thrillkill wouldn’t have let the boy in based on that.

  But then by reading some very old records she found that there had been another Splunk further back—Micajah, to be exact—who had been a colleague of Lovelace Earful’s in the 1880s. It seemed that the two men had been at school together and had worked as a team. That had gone on for some years and then stopped abruptly. No reason was given.

  “Aha,” thought Amanda. “There’s something weird going on here.” And she came up with a theory.

  What if the two men had had a falling out, but not before Micajah had learned a number of Earful’s secrets? And what if that falling out had become a feud, and then a vendetta?

  Suppose the two men had ended up bitter rivals. And suppose Splunk had tried to use Earful’s secrets against him. None of the records Amanda had found indicated that Earful had suffered in any way—no arrests or scandals—but that didn’t mean Splunk hadn’t tried to ruin him.

  What if Splunk, frustrated beyond belief at his failure to get back at his rival, had passed Earful’s secrets on to his children and they had warred against Earful’s children? Was it possible the feud had gone on for generations? Wouldn’t Thrillkill have turned Ramon away if that were the case? Surely he would have deemed him a disruptive influence.

  But what if, as the years went by, the fa
milies had forgotten about the past until Ramon unearthed the whole sad story in an attic somewhere? He was just the sort of weirdo to get all excited and decide to avenge his great-great-whatever. Perhaps he thought Earful’s ghost really did haunt Legatum and had been trying to raise it to exact revenge on the man who had hurt his ancestor.

  It was a crazy idea and Amanda was almost embarrassed to have come up with it. It did, however, explain how Ramon knew that Moriarty had killed Earful, and it explained why he was so obsessed with the ghost. But it didn’t explain why he had accused Nick of stealing the Bible.

  The problem was that his scenario was actually plausible. You could have got a fishing line in the pit. All you would have had to do was find an opening between the boulders, cast the line, and probed. Nick would have had hours to try.

  But he didn’t and she knew it. So what was Ramon’s problem? If he hated Earful that much, he might even be glad that Professor Moriarty had killed him, and if Nick was a Moriarty, he should thank him too by extension. It didn’t make sense.

  What else did she know about the Splunk family? Just because they were anti-Earful didn’t necessarily make them pro-Moriarty. What were those cases Earful and Splunk had worked on together? They had to have involved Moriarty, or why would the criminal have killed Earful? Something must have happened way back then, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.

  There would be Legatum secrets about it for sure. But without access to them there was no way to mine them. She knew who could though: Taffeta. If she could get hold of that metadata and those secrets, she might be able to find the answer and clear Nick.

  27

  THE INTERROGATION

  Professor Feeney wanted to investigate Ramon’s charge, so she hauled Nick into her office and interrogated him for hours. Amanda had to know what was going on so she listened outside the door. Most of the time the teacher would speak her questions, but Amanda could tell he couldn’t always read her lips and she was writing some of them too.