The Paper Grail

by James P. Blaylock

  “What are you up to?” Mrs. Lamey asked ominously. And then, seeing something in his face, she turned suddenly around, scanning the hillside and then peering into the shadows beneath the trestle. The night was silent and empty, and the only thing that moved was the wind and the ocean. “You have thirty seconds,” she said, looking at her watch. Her voice was pitched too high, as if she were about to come unhinged, to start shrieking.

  “I’ve got it now.” Howard opened the rectangle into a square again and then folded it perpendicular to the first fold. He tucked the corners in, working as accurately as he could to make one of those finger-manipulated Chinese fortune-telling devices, remembering back to the fourth grade. He didn’t dare look at the cliffside again, but he listened hard for telltale sounds. Mrs. Lamey watched his face rather than his hands. He met her eyes once, and her face was filled with suspicion. The corner of her mouth twitched badly, as if it were being yanked by an invisible thread. She looked as if she knew she had been taken, that Jimmers had slipped her another fake, the old fool …

  Howard barely breathed. The paper, delicate from age anyway, had been so overfolded that it was beginning to come apart. A crease line tore along the edge, and quickly he folded it at the tear in order to hide it, folding it over again on top of itself, and then again, abandoning the Chinese fortune-teller. The thing rapidly became a lump of paper, too thick to fold again without turning it into a mere wad. There was nothing to do but unfold it once more and start over, try to brass it out, maybe utter some mumbo jumbo. One way or another, though, the charade was about over.

  The paper tore again as he was unfolding it, through three creases at once this time, leaving it webbed with two-inch-long slits. Quickly, before she saw that it was shredding, he folded it back in half, following no pattern at all, but merely covering up the sad fact that soon it would be worth nothing outside of a hamster cage.

  She looked at her watch. “Seven seconds,” she croaked. She was breathing heavily, as if hyperventilating, her eyes nearly shut with rage, and she pounded his cane into the sand between her feet, thumping out the seconds one after another. This will be it, Howard thought. Better to throw it in her face right now and run. Better to grab the cane and hit her with it, tie her to the trestle, then sneak back up to the motel and beat the truth out of Stoat, find out where Roy and Edith were being held. Bennet was right. They had been fools to play along with Mrs. Lamey this far. She wasn’t going to let them get away with anything.

  “Well!” she said, as if she had just that moment been insulted. She stood up, making her pickle face at him, looking like a withered corpse in the ivory moonlight.

  And just then the air was full of the smell of ozone, and a bolt of lightning and nearly simultaneous crash of thunder slammed out of the sky, illuminating the ocean in a yellow-blue flash. Mrs. Lamey staggered against the driftwood log, going down onto one knee in the sand, and then pushing herself upright, her face stretched in an amazed mask of greed, satisfaction, and surprise.

  “Give it to me!” she shrieked, pulling the still-folded paper out of his hands and shoving him pointlessly on the chest with the cane, as if to get the first blow in just in case he tried to fight her for it.

  “Better unfold it!” Howard shouted, although it didn’t matter a bit what she did with it. It was best to play the fraud out to the end, though. Raising the storm was only the beginning. Roy and Edith were still held prisoner somewhere, and it would have to be Mrs. Lamey who released them.

  She stood gaping at the stars now, ignoring him as if he were an insect that she had already destroyed. Stopping the storm wasn’t conceivable to her. She wanted a storm—a storm to end all storms, a sky full of rainwater that would illustrate her newfound power. That afternoon she had dried out Inglenook Fen; now she would fill it again.

  She still thumped the ground with the cane, as if counting out the seconds, her eyes narrowed, focused on the sky over the ocean. Mindlessly she licked her lips and then pushed out the side of her mouth as if to stop its twitching. Howard could hear her breathe, an almost frantic mewling sound, like a person in the grip of nearly terminal excitement.

  Clouds dropped out of the empty night as if the darkness itself were congealing, and the air between the clouds and the ocean went black with falling rain. The storm clouds tumbled toward land, moving like a roiling black avalanche and seeming to suck ocean water straight up into the air in a hundred spinning twisters. Lightning tore through them, forking down into the electrified ocean as the night was shattered by the sound of peal after peal of thunder.

  Then the ocean flattened and the wind fell off to nothing. The sound of the waves diminished so that between thunder cracks the night was weirdly silent except for the distant hiss of rain that washed across the surface of the sea. The rain was a black wall that surged toward them, obliterating the horizon.

  Mrs. Lamey remained motionless, gripping the worthless sketch in her fist as if it were a treasure map that the wind would tear out of her hands. Howard realized that she thought she was watching a manifestation of her power, seeing it materialize right there in the sky after she had plotted and schemed and dreamed about it for years. She was entranced, hypnotized, and it wasn’t until the ocean began to recede and the first flurry of wind and rain hit them that she regained her senses and started to unfold the paper.

  The tide ran outward in a visible rush of moving water and with a weird sucking sound punctuated by thunder. Submerged rocks seemed almost to leap up out of the ocean, sitting like dark little islands covered in kelp and eelgrass and barnacles with the sea swirling around them, its level falling like water in a draining bathtub.

  Mrs. Lamey tore at the sketch now, trying to flatten it out as the rain engulfed them, the wind tearing at her hair as she turned around and hunkered down against it, a vague look of fear visible on her face. The driving rain hammered at them, achingly cold in the grip of the furious wind. She turned and staggered back toward the log, huddling over like a beached seabird to deflect the wind and rain with her back and clutching her leather satchel in front of her now to protect it.

  Howard shielded his face with his hand, watching the ominous ocean for one last moment before being driven back by the rain and wind. The clouds flew overhead now, lashing rain across the highway and forest, and the wind spun in a vortex, coming from all directions at once. The night was black, and the cliff beyond them was nothing but a sloping shadow. Two figures moved across it, clambering upward, slipping and crawling in an effort to gain the top.

  At first Howard couldn’t tell them apart in the darkness. He didn’t care about that, though, as long as both of them were safe. One of the figures stopped right then, standing straight up and waving furiously down toward him with both arms. It was Jimmers, urging him to follow and gesturing wildly at the ocean.

  Mrs. Lamey was oblivious to everything but the sketch. She wasn’t going anywhere, and clearly didn’t want to. Howard grabbed her with his free hand, towing her by the elbow. She screeched straight into his ear, leaning forward and trying to bite it, twisting away at the same time and swinging the cane at him.

  He grabbed the cane in the air and held on tight, hauling her forward with it. She kicked him hard on his bad knee, flailing away with her pointed-toed shoes like a machine, hitting at his face with her fist, which was closed around the sketch.

  “I’ll kill them!” she screamed. “Leave me! Get out! It’s mine!” She released her grip on the cane, tearing away from him, clearly convinced that it was the sketch he wanted, that he was trying to take it away from her. Clumsily she pawed at her leather satchel, casting him a look that seemed to suggest she could do him serious harm, that she had something inside the satchel she would destroy him with.

  He backed off a step, gesturing at her that he was giving up. He had to calm her down, somehow, if he was going to get her out of there—which he was determined to do, since he still had no idea where his uncle and aunt were being held.

  He looked up t
he hill just then, and in the glow of a lightning flash saw that Jimmers had Sylvia by the arm, endeavoring to pull her to safety. But in the moment that Howard looked, Sylvia yanked herself free, sliding downward across the ice plant on the seat of her pants until she jammed herself to a stop against a rock. She pushed herself to her feet, but then slipped on the wet ice plant and went down again as Jimmers crept back toward her, climbing carefully, holding on to roots and branches and rocks.

  Howard saw Jimmers cup his hands to his mouth to holler at Sylvia, but the rain lashed down in a deafening tumult, and there was no hope of making her hear.

  The wind blew just then in a gust that staggered Howard, as if it were compelling him to move, to act. The force of it spun him half around so that he faced the ocean again. The sandy seabed was visible as far as he could see through the rain-shrouded darkness. The rain drove into his eyes, though, half veiling the strange sight of the empty ocean bottom. He stepped backward, full of sudden fear, abandoning Mrs. Lamey and making for the cliff. He couldn’t have Sylvia coming to his rescue—not now, with the ocean going mad.

  Mrs. Lamey collapsed on her knees on the other side of the driftwood, where she bent down to shelter herself from the wind-driven rain. She was oblivious to Howard, and to Sylvia, too, who wasn’t ten feet behind her now, nearly at the bottom of the cliff. Using the cane to support himself, Howard fought his way up to where Sylvia slipped and hopped down onto the sand, grabbing Howard’s arm and hauling on it, helping to tug him to higher ground. Jimmers joined them, unwilling to abandon them even though it was everything he could do now just to save himself.

  They set out up the cliff, climbing as fast as they could, slipping on the wet rock, hanging on to shrubs and giving each other a hand up. Rocks broke loose and skittered down the hillside behind them, raining down around where Mrs. Lamey still crouched next to the log, the edge of which was partly submerged in the rising floodwaters of the creek.

  Halfway up the hill, Howard turned to look. She was a shadow beyond the curtain of rain, and was straddling the driftwood log now, the leather satchel lying across her back. In the almost continual glow of the lightning, he saw that she was holding the fraudulent sketch in the air as if she were showing it to the storm. “Look,” she seemed to be saying, “I’ve unfolded it. Enough is enough. I’m satisfied.”

  The wind took the fragile paper, though, and tore it to pieces in an instant, so that she was holding two rain-soaked banners that flailed themselves to soggy shreds.

  Far out to sea loomed a shadow even blacker than the darkened sky—a tremendous wall of seawater rushing across the open ocean toward a half mile of empty seabed. Mrs. Lamey saw the wave then, too, and stood up slowly, unbelieving, still clutching little handfuls of worthless rice paper. Turning again toward shore, she hunched forward against the wind, clearly intending to cross Pudding Creek in order to make her way to the path that led back to the motel.

  Shouting at her pointlessly, Howard took a step back down the cliff. She wouldn’t make it to the motel. He watched as she plunged into the deepening water of the creek, nearly up to her waist. As the floodwaters swept her off her feet, she struck out swimming, her hands still balled into fists, but the creek tumbled her forward and she disappeared beneath the surface.

  Mr. Jimmers caught Howard around the waist, hollering in his ear to let Mrs. Lamey go. They had to get to higher ground. They couldn’t save the old woman, not now. Howard knew that Jimmers was right. It was too late for Mrs. Lamey. The fake-sketch idea would accomplish little beyond the old woman’s death.

  Then he saw Mrs. Lamey lurch to the surface, and for a brief moment he thought she might make it. She staggered forward, slogging her way free of the creek at last, but bent over and coughing up water.

  Howard turned around and started back up, pushing Jimmers ahead of him now toward where Sylvia waited, holding out her hand for Jimmers to grab. The slope lessened, and Howard found himself scuttling upward like a crab, clutching handfuls of ice plant to steady himself. Then the slope leveled altogether, and the ice plant ended at a verge of rough gravel. They lunged forward, up onto the train tracks, where they stopped. There was no higher ground.

  The wind dropped then, the rain falling off with it, and in the sudden silence a distant roar filled the night air—not the deluge now, but the wave feeling the ocean bottom, pushing itself skyward, still hundreds of yards out. It rose vertically, a long, glassy, upended plane, the top of it lost in the night.

  Then there was the far-off sound of water pounding into water, heavy and powerful in a long, ceaseless roar as the wave broke in a mountain of white foam, seeming to mirror the clouds overhead, which tore themselves to pieces now and vanished like steam into the sky. Clumps of shooting stars appeared and disappeared past the holes in the clouds, and for a moment it looked to Howard as if the entire universe were revolving overhead like a mill wheel.

  Mrs. Lamey turned at the sound of the wave breaking. She took two steps back toward the creek, then stopped, unsure of herself like a small animal on a highway. She seemed to see her mistake for the first time. The motel was too far away. And as the house-high wall of churning foam drove shoreward, it was clear that the motel was doomed, anyway. The wave would smash right through it.

  Cramming the fragments of the sketch down the front of her dress, she made a wild dash for the log again, running up the edge of the creek toward where it was wide and comparatively shallow. She waded into it, looking back out to sea as the wave rushed shoreward, turning over and over on itself, flattening out in a wide, surging river.

  Wildly she flung herself onto the log, up among the branches, hugging it to herself. The churning wave slammed across the beach, funneling into the creek and smashing thunderously across the face of the cliff. It picked up the big driftwood log as if it were a stick, and went booming beneath the trestle, swirling around the S-curve of the creek bed and blasting up and over the empty highway. In the dwindling lightning flashes they could see the log riding high on the top of the foam in a quickly revolving eddy, driving toward the dark forest. Mrs. Lamey still clung to it as if crucified to its broken-off branches.

  Suddenly the ocean was calm again, and moonlight shone through the scattered clouds. A little flurry of raindrops pelted down, and then there was one last timid lightning bolt that lit up the surface of the sea. In that instant Howard saw what he thought at first was cloud shadow on the ocean. But it was moving too quickly, swarming up toward the creek mouth—schools of fish moving just under the surface. They crowded up and across the inundated beach in the wake of the wave, leaping and splashing in the shallow water.

  “Where are they!” Sylvia shouted.

  “What?” Howard asked, half hypnotized by the sight of the wave and the fish.

  “Are they in the motel?”

  “No!” Howard understood her now. “She moved them out.”

  “How do you know?” Jimmers asked, looking suddenly panicked. “That wave would have knocked the motel to pieces.”

  “I don’t,” Howard said, already moving down the railroad tracks, toward the distant motel. Carefully he stepped from tie to tie, out across the top of the trestle, which seemed to him suddenly to be as narrow as the top of a brick wall. With the road gone and the creek flooded, though, there was no other route. The ocean boiled and churned forty feet below them, and the trestle vibrated at its foundations, the water booming past the pilings.

  A surge of vertigo washed through Howard when he looked down at the moving, moonlit water, and he had to look back up quick, fixing his eyes on what was left of the roofline of the Sea Spray Motel. He tried the trick of imagining that on the other side lay a warm room with a fire and a cup of hot coffee, but he couldn’t manage it. The night was too wild, and it would be impossible for him to cross the trestle without focusing on each dizzying step, balancing himself with his stick.

  He turned his head slowly to look at Sylvia, who followed two ties behind him. Mr. Jimmers was behind her, farther bac
k, though, and crawling on his hands and knees from tie to tie. His face was a mask of fear and concentration. Howard wanted to help, but it would mean having to shift past Sylvia, which was out of the question; they would both go over the side. And what could he do, anyway, to steady the man? Mr. Jimmers would make it right enough—if a train didn’t materialize.

  They waited to let him catch up, and Mr. Jimmers, seeing that he was slowing them down, stood up bravely, waving his arms in front of him in little spirals to keep his balance. He stepped along in a halting crouch, looking down fearfully. Then he stopped and wavered, trying to keep steady, and both Howard and Sylvia turned back to help him.

  “Go back!” Howard shouted past Sylvia, who was busy making Jimmers get down on his hands and knees again. She turned Jimmers around slowly and ponderously, as if he were an elephant in a closet, and without saying anything he set out south again, desperate to get off the trestle and back on solid ground now that his mind was made up. “Go with him,” Howard said to Sylvia. “Take the car and get help.”

  “No!” she shouted back in a tone that was utterly final.

  The two of them waited, watching Jimmers struggle across the final twenty feet of trestle to where it merged with the hill. He stood up solidly and waved them on, then turned and set out along the tracks. Howard set out again, keeping his mind clear, taking it one step at a time.

  Minutes later they stepped off onto firm ground themselves. Howard felt the cold now, exposed to the wind and with his clothes soaked with rain. He wore two shirts and a heavy sweater, but the wind blew straight through them. Sylvia, at least, wore her parka, which would do something to cut the wind. There was nothing to do but ignore the cold, though. With a little hurrying they could be back at Sylvia’s Toyota in twenty minutes, cranking up the heater.