We reentered the Goolz’s home by the back door and exited out the front like we had never left.
“No need to rush, Harold,” Ilona said, trotting beside me. “I’m sure she doesn’t know a thing.”
Mum wasn’t in her garden anymore, and I was silently praying that she hadn’t come over to check on me while we were away.
She stepped out to the porch as the girls and I were crossing the little bridge running between our two properties. She looked terribly concerned, which concerned me terribly.
She cleared her throat loudly, and I braced myself for a storm.
“Would you like to come in for tea?” she asked the Goolz. I sighed, thanking all my angels.
“Told ya,” Ilona whispered, smiling at me. “She’s in the dark. Mission Escape is a success.”
“I baked a cake,” Mum said gravely. She made it sound like a tragedy. “I’d love for you to join us.”
“Wonderful!” Frank Goolz shouted from his porch. “We love cake!” He zoomed toward our house, oblivious to Mum’s pained face and tense posture.
“It’s a cheesecake,” Mum clarified, forcing an awkward smile.
I could already smell the delicious, warm, welcoming aroma wafting out the front door.
“Was that the Farrell twins I saw going into your house?” she asked as we joined her on the porch. “Do you know them?”
“Not really,” Frank Goolz answered, unzipping his leather boots. Mum watched him kick them off and walk through the door like he owned the place.
“Oh, yes, well, make yourself at home,” she said in an artificially light tone.
I glanced at Ilona and tried to telepathically ask her to get her dad under control before he ruined Mum’s desperate attempt at reconciliation.
“They’re really interesting girls,” Suzie said, eyeing the enormous cheesecake cooling by the kitchen window. “They do all kinds of super-fun stuff—like catching snakes in the marsh and storing them in jars once they’re dead!”
Mum looked alarmed, but apparently chose not to comment. “Why did they come to see you?” she said instead, transferring the cake from the counter to the table.
“They wanted to meet a famous writer, that’s all,” I said, deciding I was the most qualified to lie to Mum. “They’re a little different.”
“How so?”
“They’re two but they’re really one. Like they speak as one. They move as one,” Ilona explained. “They’re very…synchronized.”
“Interesting. I didn’t see them leave. I thought they were still in there with you.” Mum put a sharp knife beside the cake on the table.
“They left out the back,” Frank Goolz said, pulling out a chair.
“Oh.”
I could feel another dozen dangerous questions bubbling up in Mum’s mind.
“Yeah, a little different, like I said,” I said loudly, trying to distract Mum from thinking too much about the Goolz’s back door.
“They’re not different at all!” Suzie sat down at the table, right in front of the cake. “They’re super nice. I really like them. And I love cheesecake,” she added pointedly.
“I’m sorry we came empty-handed.” Frank Goolz winked at me. “No sweets. No flowers. Not even a severed foot!” And he laughed.
Mum was at the sink, filling the kettle, which gave Ilona a chance to sit by her dad and elbow him hard on the arm.
“A severed foot?” Mum said with an awkward fake laugh. “You have the strangest sense of humor.”
“Yeah, Dad’s funny like that.” Ilona smiled innocently as Mum came back to the table and started laying out plates, cups, glasses, forks, spoons, a teapot, and a pitcher of homemade lemonade.
“Well,” Mum said, looking around uncomfortably. “I know we got off to a rough start.” She was referring to the Goolz dragging me off on an adventure that had me nearly mauled by dogs, shot by a criminal, and ending face-to-face with a murderous ghost—not that she knew anything about that last part. “I would like to put that in the past and begin by saying that I’m sorry I called you all those bad names.”
“What names?” he asked.
“Well.” She cleared her throat again. “Irresponsible. Reckless. Inconsiderate.”
“Didn’t you call him nuts a couple times too?” Suzie added, looking at me for confirmation.
“I regret those words. I really do. They were insensitive. I was just…so worried about Harold.”
“No worries, Margaret.” Frank Goolz leaned over to tap my shoulder. “Harold’s safe with us now. Right, buddy?”
“Totally!” Ilona and I said at the same time.
“You guys sound just like the twins!” Suzie scoffed.
Mum sighed deeply. I could tell that she had rehearsed this speech while baking her cake. “Can we put all those bad feelings behind us and start anew?”
“Sure,” Frank Goolz said simply, offering her his best smile.
“Good.” She picked up the knife. “I would also like to thank you for building the ramp for Harold. It was a very considerate thing to do and it meant a great deal to him. And to me. So…thank you, Frank. And you are not…nuts. I’m sorry I said that.”
“Okay. Enough with the speech. Cake!” Suzie grabbed a plate and extended half her body over the table to be the first served. “I’d like a really huge slice.”
“Building the ramp was a natural thing to do,” Frank Goolz told her. “Harold is one of us. We realized today that I need to build another one out the back.”
Ilona kicked his leg under the table, but Mum didn’t seem to notice anything suspicious. I think her mind had stopped registering anything after he said that I was one of them. “That’s very kind of you.” She rewarded him with an even larger slice than the one she had given Suzie.
We all ate silently for a while. I kept looking at Mum. Inviting the Goolz, offering neighborly peace, and thanking him hadn’t been easy for her. She was slowly recovering and breathed more calmly with each sip of tea. Soon, she managed to return to small talk.
“So, Frank, Harold told me you used to come here a long time ago, when you were a student.”
Suzie stopped wolfing down her slice of cake. “We don’t talk about that!” She pointed her fork at Mum. “Ever.”
Mum’s eyes opened wide. Her discomfort with the Goolz returned in a flash. “I’m sorry,” she blurted and cut another slice of cake. “I didn’t mean to pry. More cake?” Her voice could climb to a really high pitch when she was nervous.
“Dad doesn’t like to talk about the time before we were born. When it was just him and our mom,” Ilona explained more smoothly than her sister.
“Exactly!” Suzie kept pointing her fork at Mum. “And yes, I will have more cake.”
“Though, it’s true,” Frank Goolz said. “I used to come here with my wife before we were married.” He took a bite of cake and we all watched him chew thoughtfully.
“We used to spend entire summers here, Nathalie and I,” he finally continued. “She loved Bay Harbor.”
Suzie put down her fork. “Mom loved it here?” she asked softly.
“Very much.”
I checked on Ilona. She had also stopped eating her cake and had all her attention on her dad. “What did she love about it?” she asked eagerly.
“Everything. It was her favorite place in the world.” He was the only one still eating. “She always thought we would end up living here. She loved your house, actually.” He smiled at Mum. “She would always point it out when we took walks on the beach. She’d say that someday, this house…your house…would be ours and we would live in it happily ever after.”
He stopped talking. He had finished his cake. There was nothing but the sound of the ocean for a moment. And then a passing seagull called us back to the present.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring back painful memories,” Mum said.
“No, that’s fine. They’re nice memories.” He sat back, picking up his cup of tea. “When I decided to move here
with the girls, I inquired about your house. I was told it wasn’t for sale. Luckily, the one next door was. Close enough.”
I turned to look at their house through the kitchen window. “So, it’s not totally random that we’re neighbors?”
“It’s not random at all, Harold. It was set in motion a long time ago.”
“It sounds like destiny,” Ilona said.
“It doesn’t only sound like destiny. That’s precisely what it is,” Frank Goolz said.
Ilona and I looked at each other. Then, in perfect synchronicity, we got to work on our slices of cake.
Suzie picked up her fork again and pointed it at me this time. “You’re living in our house, Harold!” She took another large bite of cake. “But that’s okay,” she said with her mouth full. “I prefer ours. You can stay in this one.”
“I’m happy that Nathalie’s favorite house is owned by absolutely wonderful people.” Frank Goolz finished his tea in two gulps. “Margaret?”
“Yes?”
“Could I get another piece?”
“Of course!” She sliced it eagerly.
* * *
—
After we finished our cake, we went out to the porch with our lemonade and tea to watch the sun disappear behind the hills, which was Mum’s favorite activity besides gardening.
Everybody was more relaxed, including Mum. Her idea to make peace over cake seemed to have mostly been a success with just a few hiccups, like Suzie menacing her with a fork and yelling at her. And with people like the Goolz, that was more or less acceptable weirdness.
The Goolz were sitting on the swing, Mum was rocking in the rocking chair, and I was by her side. We were all waiting silently for the magical moment when the sky over the sea turned from orange to red. Frank Goolz looked particularly absorbed, and I wondered if he was still lost in memories of his late wife.
He looked away from the ocean and turned to Mum. “Do you know much about the Mallow Marsh Monster?”
Frank Goolz wasn’t reminiscing about his youth after all. He was doing his usual thing: thinking about monsters.
“Oh, sure.” She poured them both more tea. “It’s a local folk story. Everybody here loves talking about the Marsh Monster.”
“Do you think it has something to do with the foot?” Suzie asked her dad.
I widened my eyes at Suzie and Ilona whispered a few harsh words in what sounded like German.
“What foot?” Mum asked, picking up on the secretive vibes. “You already mentioned a severed foot.”
“It’s something for his next book. It’s going to be a…a severed foot story. Right, Dad?” Ilona said quickly.
“Absolutely. And I believe it’s going to be a Mallow Marsh Monster story too.”
“What’s the monster like?” Suzie put down her lemonade and pushed her feet against the coffee table, gently rocking the swing. “Is it like a giant tortoise with a lion head that gobbles people up and spits out their body parts, minus the bones?”
Mum laughed and put down her cup. “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s like a part-human, part-reptile, part-abominable creature that goes around the marsh looking for victims. You can see some old sketches of it at the Heritage Museum here in town.” She tightened the plaid blanket she had thrown over her shoulders and shivered. “Thank God such a creature could only exist in one of your scary books.”
Ilona and I looked at each other.
“Yes. Thank God for that,” Ilona said dryly.
I took out my phone and Googled the monster. The search took me directly to the Bay Harbor Heritage Museum webpage.
“There.” I clicked on a picture and showed them the screen.
It was an old black-and-white photo of a group of Bay Harbor men posing with guns in front of the marsh. All of them had thick mustaches or beards and looked very stern and maybe a little sad.
“Who are those people?” Suzie snatched the phone from me to see the picture better. “Can you find a real picture of the monster?”
“There won’t be a real picture of it.” Mum took the phone from her and looked at the hunters. “You can’t photograph a legend.”
“I can show you some good pictures of the giant tortoise with the lion head. And that was supposed to be a legend too. Only it was in France so they call it le horrible monstre ooh la la,” Suzie said with a perfect French accent.
Mum gave me my phone back, and I scrolled through more pictures. I stopped on a drawing of the monster. It was a horrific humanoid creature with balloon-like red eyes and green skin covered in scales. Its gaping jaws were full of pointed teeth, and its claws looked like long dark knives. In the drawing, it was attacking a group of people, biting one in the neck while the others ran away, arms up in the air. I handed the phone to the Goolz.
“That thing doesn’t look like the Carcassonne Creature at all,” Suzie said, sounding disappointed. “Have you ever dealt with a creature like this one?” she asked her dad. “I mean in one of your books,” she added reluctantly when Ilona kicked her.
“Not until now.”
“That is such a good idea for your next book. Monster stories are fun.” Mum took the phone back to look at the picture. “Oh. This one doesn’t look so fun. You’re going to terrify your readers. Look at those teeth!”
She looked away from the phone and back at the ocean. The last glow was fading, and suddenly it was dark. “Should we call it a night?” She gave me the phone, threw back the plaid blanket, and stood up. “Tomorrow is a school day.”
I tapped the picture on the screen. It linked to a Wikipedia page about the Mallow Marsh Monster. I didn’t want the Goolz to leave. “Mum? Can we invite them for dinner?”
She gave me a surprised look. She had already thrown an impromptu cake party that had been emotionally exhausting for her, and now I was pushing it even further.
“We never have guests. Please, Mum.”
“I guess I could whip up something simple,” she said hesitantly. She picked up some of the glasses and the teapot. I knew she hated to be forced into things, but I knew she wouldn’t want to be rude either. “Well, only if they want to, of course.”
“We’d love to.” Frank Goolz stood up and helped clear the table. “I’ll give you a hand with the cooking.”
“Nothing too spicy,” Suzie said pointedly. “And if there’s any broccoli, I’m out of here.”
Mum shook her head indignantly. Frank Goolz smiled and winked at Suzie, and they disappeared inside.
I waited for them to be out of earshot, then went back to my phone. “The legend says that the monster is actually the daughter of an English settler,” I read.
“What do you mean?” Suzie came closer to look at the screen. “Like she was born this way? Or did a witch curse her?”
“No witches,” I told her. “It says she was bitten by some kind of snake, then transformed into the monster and escaped into the marsh.”
I found another drawing of the Mallow Marsh Monster. In this one, it was attacking a man in the marsh. The poor guy was screaming, holding an old lantern in one hand and something unexpected in the other. “Why is this guy holding a mirror?” I asked and the Goolz girls came closer to see the picture.
“I don’t know,” Ilona said. “Maybe he wanted to show the monster just how damn ugly it was before it ate him alive.”
“The guy got it all mixed up,” Suzie said. “Mirrors are for vampires. For monsters, you need harpoons, fishing nets, and pizzazz.”
“Amen,” Ilona said, and we went inside for dinner.
4
CRYPTOZOOLOGY
FOR
BEGINNERS
Ilona and I were walking home from school, talking about all kinds of things, like monsters and comic books and how unimaginably boring our English teacher, Mrs. Richer, was. But mostly, we were talking about the foot and how gruesome and puzzling it was.
“If it doesn’t belong to Mrs. Farrell, then whose foot is it?” Ilona asked. “And what happened to the bones?
That’s another pickle.”
“And what about the message carved inside that abandoned car? I’ll be back for you.” It made me shiver each time I repeated it. “Creepy.”
We had reached the path alongside the beach. I looked out over the ocean at low tide. The sky was dark gray, and it was hard to make out the line separating the water from the sky.
“I get it,” Ilona said. I realized she was looking at the ocean with me.
“What?” I asked.
“I get why my mom loved this place so much. It’s beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” I repeated, though I had stopped gazing at the ocean and was watching her as she drowned her large dark eyes in it.
We walked silently. I ran a mental slideshow of all the extraordinary things that had entered my life recently. It was a surreal mix: A real ghost. A magic stone. A monster plopping body parts in the dark water of the marsh. And Ilona. Mostly Ilona.
“No way!” she shouted, pulling me out of my loopy dream. We had almost reached our houses. She started running toward an ancient, brownish, beaten-down station wagon parked in front of their yard. “That’s Uncle Jerry’s car!”
“Who’s Uncle Jerry?” I called after her.
She twirled around to face me. “He’s not really our uncle. We just call him that. He’s one of Dad’s best friends. He’s pretty out there.”
“Give me specifics.”
She patted the station wagon as affectionately as Han Solo patting the Millennium Falcon. It was rusted, banged, scratched, and crusted with mud, and the inside was packed with a mess of plastic bags, old tools, and wadded-up garbage.
“Do you have any idea how many monsters we chased in this car?”
“No.”
“Well, plenty.” She smiled fondly. “Uncle Jerry is a cryptozoologist. Do you know what that is?”
“Yeah,” I said. I had seen plenty of cryptozoology videos on YouTube. “It’s like someone who goes around with a night-vision camera, trying to get a good shot of Bigfoot.”
“Pretty much. He’s a monster hunter.” She opened the gate to their yard. “But he likes to see himself as a scientist, even if he doesn’t have a degree to prove it.”
The Mallow Marsh Monster Page 3
