Lucille dramatically struck lines through Simon’s plague list. “That’s better.” She handed it back to Will. “Moses and his staff were only responsible for the blood, the frogs, the gnats, the hailing fire, the locusts, and the three days of darkness.”
Will was puzzled. “Oh, that makes me feel a lot better.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you feel better. We need to find that staff fast. But at least you don’t have to worry about swarms of flies, the livestock dying, or boils. See, things are looking up. Speaking of up…” She jumped, grabbing the trapeze and hoisting her legs over the bar. “I want you to get up here, hang upside down, and swing to those two ropes there.” She dismounted, landing firmly on both feet.
“Sure thing, but I’ve got to send a quick text message before we start.” Will fished his cell phone from his backpack in the corner and punched a text out to Cami:
At my aunt Lucille’s. Where are u guys? Where did Mr. Bobbit go? Let’s talk later.
As Will reached for the trapeze, Aunt Lucille’s doorbell gonged. “That’ll be your mother and father. We can do more of this later. Can you pick up my sparring partner there?” Aunt Lucille pointed to the capsized mannequin and flew out of the ballroom. “Coming, coming…,” she said as she reached the staircase.
Will picked up the dummy, slipped on his red high-tops, and walked over to the small table in the corner. He stared at the cross-shaped key, wreathed by his great-aunt’s gold chain. Puckering his lips, he considered the conversation he and Aunt Lucille had just had. You must be careful with the Book of Prophecy. Once you open it, there is no going back. He started to leave. Then struck by a second thought, he turned back to the table. Will swiped the key and chain, threw them into his backpack, and raced downstairs to join the rest of the Wilders.
Cami rubbed her lower back, which had landed on something sharp in the dark basement of the Karnak Center.
“Are you okay? My arm is killing me,” Simon complained as he withdrew it from beneath Andrew’s torso.
“I’ll survive,” Cami said, “but something jabbed me in the back.”
“Simon, turn on your watch light,” Andrew commanded.
A weak green glow lit up the area where the kids had landed beneath the now-closed trapdoor. Andrew grabbed Simon’s wrist, directing the watch’s beam over the floor. Dull brown objects like pickup sticks were scattered around them. Cami lifted one off the floor.
“They’re bones. Why are bones down here?” Cami asked. Indeed, the broken little bones were in sticky piles on all sides.
A spooked Simon scrambled away from the bone piles, taking their only light source with him.
“As long as you’re running, find a light switch and be quiet,” Andrew told Simon.
Simon ran the green beam over the walls until he came upon a rusted push button switch. When he pressed it, two uncovered lightbulbs flashed to life in the middle of the room.
They were in a dank basement. A few tiny blacked-out windows near the ceiling and an opening to a hallway were the only visible entryways to the room. To the right of the hallway opening, three brown-streaked porcelain tables with attached sinks stood side by side. Rows of rickety wooden shelves jutted out from the wall behind the kids. On them were hundreds of triangular glass bottles, filled with colored liquid, which instantly captured Simon’s attention.
“What is this stuff?” Simon asked, picking up one of the bottles. He brought it to the light and read the stenciled label. “ ‘REGENERATIVE TONIC. EXCLUSIVELY PRODUCED AT THE KARNAK CENTER FOR REGENERATION AND CREATIVE THERAPY. NEW YORK, LONDON, VANCOUVER, MILAN.’ ” He returned the tonic to the shelf, peering at the bottles. “Weird stuff. Wonder what it’s made of. There are no ingredients on the label.”
“I wouldn’t do any taste tests if I were you,” Cami advised. She was on her knees, studying a mound of bones on the floor. She smelled the pile before her, which made her eyes sting. “These are fresh. There’s blood and meat on these bones.” She began to search the corners of the room, looking for who or what might have just finished snacking. “Guys, I don’t like this. Do you see anything that could have eaten recently?”
“I wish I hadn’t eaten recently,” Andrew said, making a disgusted face. He was more concerned with a machine bolted to a metal table in the corner. There were gold metal shavings sprinkled around the table. A handle protruded from the machine’s side. Andrew gave the handle a shove. A panel on the top of the device sprang open, revealing a flat metallic surface pitted with irregular holes.
“This thing’s like a waffle iron, but I don’t think it makes waffles,” Andrew said. The holes were oval shaped—molds for something. Andrew accidentally kicked a dented bucket next to the table, causing a clatter.
He bent over, tilting the bucket to the light. Inside were hundreds of gold animal figures. He pulled a couple out. “They’re little hippos,” he said. “But look at the face. It’s got the snout of a dinosaur or something.” He threw one in the bucket and pocketed the other.
“Now you’re a figurine connoisseur, moron?” Simon started walking toward Andrew. “Let me see one of those things.”
“Shhh.” Cami jumped to her feet, a finger over her mouth. “Listen!”
The boys stopped moving.
“I don’t hear nothin’,” Andrew said.
Then a growl, low and beastly, broke the silence. Simon grabbed Andrew’s arm. Cami clutched Simon. It was some kind of animal, but which kind?
All three friends started searching the dark corners of the room.
Down the hallway, beside the porcelain tables, a key turned in the lock.
“Turn off the lights,” Cami told Simon. “Get behind the shelves.”
Simon punched the light switch off. In the darkness, he stumbled to join Andrew and Cami behind the shelf farthest away from the hall.
Within seconds, light flooded the room. Sarsour, Pothinus Sab’s assistant, waddled into the basement, rolling his long linen sleeves away from his shriveled hands. He toddled between the shelves of tonic, muttering unintelligible things to himself. His gaze swept over the bottles. A clink of glass several rows away made him stop.
The little man walked out to the center of the basement. “Ammit? Is you?” he asked in a choked, sandpapery voice. Sarsour tentatively edged his way toward the last shelf in the corner. “Ammit?”
He drew a hooked knife from his belt and jumped into the space between the wall and the last shelf.
Sarsour caught sight of Cami, Andrew, and Simon pressed into the corner. “What you children doing here?” he angrily screeched, advancing on them.
“We…we fell, sir. We were just visiting. Walked in the front door and fell,” Simon tried to explain.
“It okay.” He slowly advanced on the cornered trio, a half smile on his shriveled face. Raising the cruelly curved knife high above his head, he rasped, “You will not be here long.”
“What you do here?” Sarsour demanded, inching closer. His face looked as if it had been burned and had yet to heal. “Tell me. Tell me.”
“It’s all a misunderstanding,” Cami said. “We heard about Mr. Sab and wanted to see the Karnak Center.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sarsour cawed.
Andrew palmed a pair of tonics off the shelf behind him, which he seriously considered chucking at Sarsour’s wrinkled red face.
“You two get on wall!” the tiny man yelled, pointing the knife at the boys. “Girl, come with me. Come now.”
The kids nervously eyed each other.
“Girl, you come now. Now!” Sarsour threateningly poked the knife in Cami’s direction.
Andrew started to move. “It’s okay,” Cami told him, blocking Andrew’s advance with her arm. “Stay there. I’ll be fine.” Biting her lower lip, she stepped toward the knife-wielder.
Before Cami could take a full step, two rigid hands struck Sarsour at the base of his neck. The little man let out a choked gasp. Before he fell to the floor, the knife was plucked fro
m his tiny hands. Standing behind Sarsour, now holding the little man’s blade, was Mr. Shen.
“This is the second time I have found you where you should not be,” Shen said with a warm smile. “Let’s go. This place of death is not for the young.”
“How did you find us here? Where did you come from?” Simon asked, suddenly emboldened.
“So many questions, Mr. Blabbingdale. I’ve been following you all morning. There is a storage room off that hall in the back. It has a very unsecure window.” Shen eyed the bottles of tonic and then the piles of bones littering the floor. “It is time to leave,” he said with some urgency. “Go, go, go. Down the hall. You all should accompany me to Peniel—to the museum.”
Shen made sure the kids were well on their way. Before following them, he slowly turned his head, peering into the shadowy recesses of the basement. The bone piles troubled him. He clutched the knife defensively, as if expecting something to jump out at him. A brass bowl covered with a curious metal plate, topped by a gold animal figure, aroused his curiosity. He used the knife to pry open the lid. Inside were the bloody entrails of some poor creature, knotted up like deflated snakes. He quickly glanced over his shoulder, certain that something lurked in the gloom.
But rather than explore further, he decided it was more important to protect Will’s friends. He laid the knife atop one of the porcelain mortuary tables and slipped down the hall.
“Deborah, if the children could perfect their gifts without assistance, I wouldn’t even bring it up.” Aunt Lucille had pulled Will’s mother onto the sprawling front porch of her home to make her case. The rest of the family, including Dan, lunched in the kitchen. Flint-colored clouds moved in over the river.
“They need training. You don’t want poor Leo illuminating like a streetlamp every time he gets upset. He has to learn to control it, dear. Otherwise it could get unseemly.” Aunt Lucille stood very close to Deborah, her hands folded.
Deborah pushed strands of her hair behind her ears. Lines of worry showed on her forehead. “Dan won’t go for this. He doesn’t even know about Will’s training. If we start shuttling Leo and Marin in and out of Peniel, he’ll figure it out, Lucille.”
“We don’t have an option here. We can’t let their extraordinary gifts wither.”
“The kids are young. There’ll be time to train them.”
“There may not be.” Aunt Lucille’s blue eyes bore into Deborah. “The Darkness is increasing. That blood in the river was just the beginning. Leo and Marin have special gifts; they deserve a fighting chance to make full use of them. We may need them.”
“I don’t want my children recruited into some secret battle, Lucille.”
“Neither do I. Though, if that is their destiny…” She laid a hand on Deborah’s arm. “Ours is not to question the gift or to determine its final purpose but to protect and perfect it. Help me do that for your children.”
Deborah slightly shook her head, looking back into the front door of the house. “I don’t know how smart this is.”
“If we don’t train them now, they could hurt themselves and possibly others. Is that what you want?” The question hung in the air like a slap in the face.
Aunt Lucille’s glance drifted down to the river. In memory, she saw herself at thirteen, alone in tears behind the house, torched trees and a burning fence surrounding her. She’d been returning home from a friend’s house when something invisible slashed at her from the darkness. In the blind tussle to defend herself, she’d accidentally touched her fingers and thumbs together, forming a perfect triangle. A red-and-white ray exploded from her fingers in every direction. The sudden surge of power drained her energy, and she lost consciousness. Minutes later, she awoke to her mother screaming from the second-floor window of the house. “Sarah Lucille. What have you done? What have you done?” she shouted. One of the huge oaks had been cut away from what was now a blackened stump. The top of a picket fence framing her mother’s vegetable garden smoldered. Little Lucille stared in shock at her glowing hands and wept.
“Okay, fine,” Deborah said softly. “You can train the kids. But Dan can’t know. We’ll do it right after school and only for an hour. No more than an hour.”
Aunt Lucille instantly wrapped Deborah in her arms. “Thank you, Deb. This is the right decision.”
“What is the right decision?” Dan stepped out on the porch. He eyed his aunt warily.
Before Lucille could respond, Deborah cut in. “I’m going to do a piece on a new exhibit at the museum….”
“It’s a wonderful collection of Mary Magdalene relics….” Aunt Lucille followed Deborah’s lead. “We have her actual skull from the Basilica of St. Maximin in France, her tooth from the Met, and a splendid reliquary of her foot from a Roman church. We had the relic itself here for years….”
Dan looked at his wife as if he could read her thoughts. “You told her about Leo, didn’t you?”
“Told me what about Leo?” Lucille deadpanned.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’ve got to train Leo because some dark force is rising.” Dan leaned against the porch banister, his back to the river. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“Surrender was never my strong suit,” Aunt Lucille said, returning Dan’s stare. “You were trained, dear. It didn’t pan out, but we tried….”
Deborah draped an arm around her husband’s neck. “Let’s go inside,” she said.
“I don’t want to go inside.” Dan straightened up. “Aunt Lucille, do not fill the children’s heads with your…exaggerations. There will be no training. It’s empty fantasy.”
“The Bottom Dwellers were fantasies? That bloody river was fantasy?” Aunt Lucille’s voice got shrill. “The Sinestri are rising, Dan. You can close your eyes all you want. I know they are coming.”
Drawn by the raised voices, Will, Leo, and Marin wandered out through one of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows that opened onto the porch.
“The water commissioner testified today that it could have been silt that colored the river. Red silt!” Dan thundered.
“These demons are real—as you well remember. Bartimaeus still has the scars from shielding you, Dan. The beast slashed him horribly. Whether you acknowledge it or not, Son, grave evil and wondrous miracles surround us.”
Will spoke up. “A demon attacked you, Dad? When did that happen?”
Dan seethed, his temples pulsing. He glared at his aunt. “Aunt Lucille is making up stories, kids. She’s good at that, making up stories—”
SPLUT…SPLUT…SPLUT…SPLUT…SPLUT…
Dull splatting noises, like buckets of pudding hitting the wood siding, could be heard all over the house.
Aunt Lucille’s eyes got big as saucers. They swept over the baby-blue floorboards of the porch, where the sound seemed most intense. She rushed over to the open window, pushing the kids back in the house.
“Everybody inside,” she demanded sharply, lowering the window in front of them.
“What is this…a…a…game? What are you playing at now?” Dan trailed Aunt Lucille as she slammed the shutters on the other windows. “Answer me!”
“Deborah, take your husband inside,” Lucille commanded.
SPLUT…SPLUT…SPLUT…
“What is that?” Deborah asked.
“You’ll want to be inside, Deb. Trust me,” Lucille told her. “Go on.”
Deborah relented, but not Dan.
“Once in a while, you should consider a natural explanation for the things that happen. This endless demon talk is scaring the children,” Dan chided Lucille.
She defiantly folded her arms, leaning into Dan’s face. “The children will be fine. It’s the scared adults I’m worried about, dear.” She slowly turned to face the river. Dan frowned, turning his head toward the water as well. He did a double take.
SPLUT…SPLUT…CROOOOAK…SPLUT…SPLUT…CROOOOAK
Out of the river, a slow-motion wave of blackness rolled toward them. As it advanced, Dan realized it w
as not the tide but thousands of slick black frogs hopping over each other toward the house.
“Oh no…Why are they…coming?” Dan stammered.
“Go inside, Dan, and close the door behind you,” Lucille instructed in a steady voice. “Protect the children. The frogs are surrounding the house. Pray they don’t get inside.” The low croaking and the sounds of slimy bodies slamming into the floorboards beneath her feet intensified. “Go ahead—try to convince me this plague has nothing to do with the Staff of Moses.”
Dan didn’t answer her. He scooted inside the house, shutting the door behind him.
Lucille rolled back her sleeves, pressed her forefingers and thumbs together to form a triangle, and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. She abruptly extended her two arms, sending a blinding ray of light toward the riverbank. The beam cut into the bouncing wall of frogs, dissolving every one it touched to a green and red mist.
Elsewhere in Perilous Falls, the black croakers were flopping out of drains and fountains. Any source of water vomited hundreds of sleek ebony frogs.
Children in the Perilous Falls Park squealed when they saw the creatures advancing on the green grass. They raced to the top of play sets, trying to escape the croaking horror closing in on all sides. Helpless parents bounded up slides and embraced their children on plastic bridges to keep them from falling into the roiling black chaos below.
At city hall, screeching brakes and the sound of what she initially thought were cicadas outside caused Mayor Lynch to glance out her corner window. On Main Street, she saw five cars and a bus crash into one another as if they’d hit an ice patch.
“What in the…,” Lynch muttered to herself, reaching for her desk phone. Her index finger poked the keypad. “Heinrich, get Animal Control up here and peek out your window. It looks like somebody covered downtown in asphalt. The grass, the street, everything is covered in…frogs! Black frogs! I’m calling Pothinus Sab. This is madness….” She slammed the phone onto its cradle and dialed Sab.
Pothinus Sab couldn’t hear the ringing. He was on the packed front steps of the Karnak Center welcoming people onto the property.
Will Wilder #2 Page 10
