Shadowsea

by Peter Bunzl

  “Then we’re here for you,” Lily said soothingly.

  “All right,” Dane agreed. “What do I need to do?”

  “Give me your hands,” Caddy said, sitting down beside him on the bed.

  Dane let go of Spook, placing the tiny white mouse carefully on the eiderdown. It curled up into a ball and watched warily as he held out his long, pale fingers to Caddy.

  Caddy took them and gave a shiver as she clasped his hands tightly in her own. “You’ve such a cold grip!” she exclaimed. “Ice-cold!”

  “I have?” he asked, slightly taken aback.

  “Yes.” Caddy shut her eyes and began to hum softly. Then she commenced muttering strange incantations. Robert remembered some of the words and phrases from her seance at the Theatre of Curiosities last summer.

  Gradually, as she said the weird words, Caddy’s breathing began to slow. Her eyes moved behind their closed lids, and she went into a trance.

  She was silent for a long time before, finally, she spoke afresh…

  “The spirits are here,” she said. “Close by. Offering to show me things…”

  “What do you see?” Dane asked, his voice cracking.

  “Darkness. Ripples of green water. And fish… Lots of fish.”

  Caddy paused. Her brows furrowed as she peered deep into the past.

  “I see the Shadowsea Submarine Base…and your parents, Dane. They’re working in a cabin and you’re with them, sat on the floor playing with Spook beneath the table. You’ve made a cart for him, from old things. You chase him out the door, through winding passageways, past people and pipes and diving suits, until you come to a room full of caged mice.”

  “What happens then?” Dane asked. He was clasping her fingers so tightly that his hands were practically fists. Robert could see the veins around his knuckles, blue beneath the skin.

  “Your aunt steps across your path,” Caddy said. “She’s wearing a white lab coat and goggles. She picks up Spook and breaks his neck.” A single tear crept from the corner of Caddy’s closed eye. “Spook is dead,” she whispered.

  Robert wanted to reach out and touch her shoulder, check that she was all right, but he knew it might break her trance and then they would never know what had happened next.

  He stroked the mouse, who was climbing about on the bedspread. Not dead at all, but perfectly fine and alive, though cold to the touch.

  Caddy took another breath. “Professor Milksop is stepping through a far door at the back of the lab. It’s marked with a picture of an ouroboros snake and the words: Reanimation Lab. Danger! Keep Out!

  “The professor holds the dead Spook in her hands.” Caddy clutched Dane’s fingers tighter in her own. “You follow her, Dane…you follow her through that door…”

  “What’s on the other side?” Dane asked, his words fraught with agitation.

  “Music,” Caddy said. “Strange ghostly opera music, playing from a phonograph. And Miss Buckle, adjusting a machine that looks like an electrical engine. It has a snake stamped into the metal plate on its front.” She paused, her eyes flicking wildly behind her closed lids, as if she was looking around an imaginary room.

  “Your aunt places Spook before the lens of the machine. Then she and Miss Buckle walk to a lead-lined observation booth on the far side of the room. Your aunt’s in that booth now. She flicks a switch on a panel and the machine turns on.” Caddy gasped.

  Whatever she was seeing, Robert realized, it wasn’t good.

  “Crackling blue rays come out of the four lenses on the front of the machine,” she said. “They’re twisting together in a circle, like writhing snakes.” She shivered. “The rays wind their way around Spook, and his body begins to jiggle and dance. Then he totters to his feet, standing up slowly, and opens his eyes.”

  “Stop!” Dane pulled his hands away from her. His eyes glistened with tears. “I can recall the rest now.”

  “You can?” Caddy blinked away her trance and stared at him.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “The lightning. It crackled from the machine and hit me. And I…I died.”

  Nobody spoke.

  That last word seemed to hang in the air, echoing ominously around the room.

  Everyone waited for someone else to speak.

  No one quite knew what to say. The shock of it had stunned each of them to silence.

  Lily stared at Spook, and at Dane. She couldn’t quite believe that both of them had died, and yet here they were, alive as day. Brought back from the dead, just like she had once been. If it had been the case for Spook, it must’ve been the case for Dane too.

  “There’s more…” Caddy blurted. “I see more… The blue bolts of lightning…they burst out of the lab and run wild around the rest of the submarine base. They kill everyone. Your parents too, Dane. I…I’m sorry.”

  “It’s my fault.” Dane was wracked with sobs; he wiped snot from his face. “I opened that door. I couldn’t let my stupid aunt be… I wanted to see what she was up to in that lab of hers, and because of that, because of me, her dumb machine killed everyone on that base. Everyone, including me…including my folks.”

  Robert felt sick. “No,” he said. “It’s not your fault.” He knew what it was like to lose someone and feel that you were to blame. “It was your aunt who did that.”

  “Robert’s right,” Lily said. She was shivering too, from the weight of it. The whole room felt heavy and charged. “Your aunt’s the one to blame for everything that happened down there. It’s her fault for making such a machine in the first place…an engine that deals out life and death.”

  “The thing I can’t understand,” Dane said, “is, if my aunt’s machine could reanimate me and Spook, bring us both back to life, then why didn’t she use it to save everyone? Why didn’t she bring them all back to life, after they’d died in that awful accident? Why?” He twisted wildly towards them, his breathing shallow and desperate.

  “I don’t know,” Caddy said sadly. “But I can look again, if you like.”

  She took his hands anew, only this time she did not shut her eyes – she didn’t need to, as she still had the vision of what had happened to him trapped inside her. A memory so ugly and vivid that she could see it clear as day.

  “Your aunt couldn’t save them,” she said finally. “She moved everyone into the lab to try, but her machine was broken. The Ouroboros Diamond inside it had fractured from all that power flowing through it when it brought you back to life, Dane, and so the machine wouldn’t work on anyone else. To make it work again, your aunt knew she’d need to find an identical stone. So she took you and then fled from the scene of her crime, back up to the surface to look for one.”

  “That must be why she came to this hotel,” Lily said. “Because there was someone here with another one of those diamonds.”

  Quietly, Dane picked up Spook and hugged the mouse to his chest. “Really, I knew all that,” he said. “In my heart of hearts it was still there, I just chose to forget it. To block everything out, because it was too unbearable.”

  “You were right to,” Lily said. “If that’s what you needed to do to feel better.”

  “Just like you’re right to remember it now,” Robert added. “It’s the next step to healing. To recovery.”

  “I suppose.” Dane dried his eyes and stroked Spook, who was nuzzling his palm to comfort him. “Anything else?” he asked Caddy. “Are the spirits telling you anything else about my future? Does it get better?”

  “You want me to look a third time?” Caddy asked, unsure.

  “Yeah.” Dane nodded.

  “I should warn you,” she told him. “The future isn’t always better, or more certain than the past.”

  “Please,” he replied. “You gotta do it…”

  “All right,” she said, her face full of uncertainty. She took his hands for a third and final time and repeated the words to take her into a trance, while her eyes flickered rapidly behind her closed lids.

  As she drifted deeper, a shiver of
panic spread through her, like ripples from a pebble dropped in a becalmed sea. Robert saw the colour drain from her face. Soon her skin was beaded with sweat that plastered her hair to her skull and she struggled for each breath, her body thrashing about like she was drowning. Finally she seemed to reach a place of stillness.

  Then she opened her mouth and spoke to Dane once more, in a deep and raspy voice that sounded nothing like her own:

  “At twelve o’clock on New Year’s Eve, you will wake the dead.”

  Dane choked.

  Lily gasped.

  Robert felt a dry gulp fill the back of his throat.

  Outside the nursery, Malkin barked three times.

  Quickly and quietly, the fox slipped in through the narrow gap in the bedroom door, and stared up at them, his black eyes wide and his ears pinned back with worry. His brush swept about crazily as he spoke in a whispered warning.

  “Someone’s coming!”

  Everyone froze and listened.

  Malkin was right. Footsteps were coming up the hall, fast approaching the suite.

  “Professor Milksop,” Robert whispered. “We have to go.”

  There wasn’t much time left for discussion. Lily spoke in a muted hush, putting her case to Dane. “We want to help you, Dane, but we can’t leave you here with your aunt and Miss Buckle on your own, not after all we’ve discovered. We can get you out. Tell the police that you’re being held prisoner here, but we need your agreement.”

  “No.” Dane shook his head, his eyes glittering with tears. “Not yet. I gotta speak to my aunt first, find out what happened to my parents and all them others from her own mouth. Hear about their…deaths.” That last word came out in a choke. “I gotta talk to Miss Buckle too, persuade her that doing my aunt’s bidding ain’t helping. She’s my nurse, she’s supposed to take care of me.”

  His speech was interrupted by loud cursing and rattling of the key in the main door. The professor was trying to unlock it. The trouble was, Lily had picked the lock so it was already open.

  “I’m sure Miss Buckle will help you, if you ask her, Dane,” Robert whispered quickly. “Mechanicals don’t understand everything humans do, but they always protect them. She’ll be on your side if you explain your situation – that your aunt’s done you wrong and doesn’t have your best interests at heart.”

  Robert’s speech seemed to have sparked an idea in Dane; his eyes glistened with a slim sliver of hope.

  “We’ll come back soon,” Lily whispered to Dane. “Meantime, we’ll try to find out more. Now we have to go, before we’re caught.”

  But it was already too late. Outside, Professor Milksop was stomping about the lounge.

  Lily peered round the edge of the door trying to see what she was doing…

  The professor had found the stilled Miss Buckle. She took a key from her pocket and slowly began to wind the mechanical up again.

  Lily knew it took at least twelve good turns of the key to get a mechanical’s cogs going, and probably more for a mech as vast as Miss Buckle. It wouldn’t give them much time, but perhaps it was enough.

  “Is there another way out of here?” she asked Dane.

  “Over the balcony?” Dane suggested, nodding at the corner of his room. “It’s locked but you probably have the key on that ring there.”

  “Of course!” said Lily. “The balcony! Just like ours!” She pulled back the curtains and there were the same French doors that led to the same modest balcony. Their own balcony stood just beyond the edge of Dane’s, further off along the wall.

  Robert unlocked the French doors with the keys and ushered everyone through. He was last to leave and as he did so, he peeped back worriedly at Dane through the closing door.

  By the time he turned, Lily had already strung Malkin over her shoulders and was climbing over the balcony’s snow-topped balustrade.

  Caddy stood nervously by, watching the pair of them.

  Robert stepped in beside her and surveyed the drop. It was a long way down, at least far enough to break a lot of bones, if not every one of them. And the gap between the two balconies was further than it had seemed at first glance too. Robert estimated it to be about four feet. A metal drainpipe ran down the wall halfway across.

  Lily took a hold of the drainpipe and shook it.

  It didn’t move, fixed solidly to the wall.

  “Surely you’re not thinking to cling onto that?” Robert hissed.

  “Surely she is!” Malkin said.

  “There’s no time!” Lily shifted her feet on the edge of the balustrade, clasped the drainpipe with both hands and swung herself and Malkin across the gap.

  Caddy went next. As she climbed over, she glanced nervously down between her feet.

  Lily seized her hand and pulled her across.

  “Now you, Robert,” Caddy whispered.

  “All right,” Robert muttered. “Give me a second.”

  There had to be another way…

  He peered back through the window, and, at that moment the lights in Dane’s room flicked on. Through the gap in the curtains, Robert saw the shadows of Professor Milksop and Miss Buckle march into the room.

  He held his breath hoping that, from the inside, the half-drawn curtains and the bright reflections of the room in the glass might hide his presence on the balcony.

  “Why are all the doors unlocked?” Professor Milksop demanded of Dane.

  “I-I dunno,” Dane stammered. He wasn’t very convincing.

  “Liar!” Professor Milksop snapped. “Where are the keys?”

  Robert gulped. He’d left the keys in the lock!

  Miss Buckle blinked slowly. “Professor,” she said. “It’s probably my fault. Maybe I forgot them when I wound down?”

  “No,” the professor answered. “Someone took ’em.” She stalked around the room. “Someone’s been here. Who was it? Where are they?” she asked Dane.

  “No one,” Dane replied, but his guilty glance at the balcony gave the game away.

  “Aha!” Professor Milksop strode towards the glass doors, behind which Robert was hidden. “What are these doing here?” She had found the keys. She pulled them from the lock.

  Robert shrunk back from her eyeline. He felt queasy about the climb to come, but he knew there was no other way to escape now without the professor seeing him. He hugged the brick wall and stared over the edge. It was a long way down if he fell. His guts writhed and dropped into the soles of his shoes as the French doors behind him creaked open ominously.

  “Come on, Robert!” Lily and Caddy called hurriedly to him from the balcony on the other side.

  It was now or never.

  Robert climbed over the balustrade and leaped for the drainpipe.

  Its fixings creaked and cracked as he snatched at it. One of the bindings started pulling loose from the wall.

  There was nothing for it…

  He jumped.

  Lily grasped his hand and he pulled himself across the remaining gap, just as the frozen section of drainpipe snapped away and toppled into the street below.

  Robert flopped over their balcony’s balustrade and Lily hauled him to safety.

  “That was close,” she whispered, dusting the snow off his front.

  His pulse was still pounding as Professor Milksop stepped out onto the balcony he’d just left.

  “Good evening!” Lily called over to her casually. “We were just looking at the view.”

  “The stars are incredible at this time of year, don’t you think?” Caddy added.

  Robert couldn’t say anything. He still hadn’t caught his breath. Malkin, too, wisely stayed quiet, pretending to be just an ordinary fox-fur ruff.

  Professor Milksop’s eyes bulged and she gave them a suspicious look. She twisted round and headed back into room one hundred.

  Lily sighed with relief. The professor hadn’t lingered long enough to notice the scuffed snow on her balcony, nor the broken drainpipe.

  Back in their own room and safe and warm once more,
they shook the snow from their shoes and the panic from their limbs and flopped down on their beds, waiting for their pulses to return to normal and their hearts to stop pounding so hard.

  They’d barely recovered before there was a knock at the front door of the suite. Malkin hadn’t even had time to climb down from around Lily’s neck.

  Lily felt sick. Surely this was Miss Buckle and Professor Milksop, come to enquire why Lily, Caddy and Robert had been in their room? She took in Robert and Caddy’s frightened faces. They looked just as worried as she felt.

  “Which one of us should get it?” Caddy whispered.

  “I will,” Robert said.

  “No, I will,” Lily said. “It ought to be me.” She stood and walked uneasily through the living room and down the long dark passage to the room’s front door.

  Her hands shook as she reached out to turn the handle. Fearfully, she inched the door open and peered around its side…

  She let out a sigh of relief.

  It was only Papa and Selena.

  Selena clutched a thick bundle of papers in her gloved hands. “Why,” she declared, when she saw Lily. “You look white as a sheet!”

  “Are you all right?” Papa asked, frowning at his daughter.

  “I…I…” Lily stuttered. Then she snapped, “Why didn’t you use the key?”

  “There’s only one and you have it, you silly sausage! Why are you wearing Malkin around your neck?”

  “It’s my new role as Lily’s fox-fur ruff,” Malkin snarled sarcastically. “Though I don’t think I add much to her ensemble.”

  “We have good news,” Selena announced, brushing past them both.

  “What’s that?” Caddy said. She and Robert had crept out of the bedroom to join everyone.

  “Thanks to John, we’ve renewed our certified documents.” Selena put down her papers and took off her coat. “It means we can stay in America for another six months.”

  “We just have to go and collect the permit tomorrow morning, signed and stamped,” Papa said, taking off his own coat and hanging it along with his hat on the hatstand in the corner.

  “Plus,” Selena added, “we’re looking into what I would have to do if Caddy and I were to stay here permanently. I have a few more forms to fill out in that regard. I must take them back after New Year, but the wheels are in motion…so to speak.” She stared around at everyone. “What do you think? Isn’t it marvellous?”