A Mischief of Mermaids

by Suzanne Harper

  He stopped long enough to give her a gloating look, then added, “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Poppy snapped. “It makes me think that people are seeing what they want to see.”

  “That can’t be right,” said Mr. Malone. “Why, you ask?” (Poppy didn’t bother pointing out that she hadn’t.) He leaned forward and said triumphantly, “Because most people don’t want to see aliens. They’re too afraid!”

  “That’s true,” said Mrs. Malone. “Which is ridiculous, really, when you think of how much we could learn from any creatures who have the technology to zip over to Earth from who knows how many light-years away!”

  Poppy took a deep breath. “Have you ever thought you might be looking in the wrong place?” she asked carefully.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . . well, what if the strange creatures aren’t zipping around over our heads in little spacecraft? What if they’re a little closer to home? Maybe even”—she pointed at the lake—“down there?”

  “You didn’t buy all that guff that Oliver was dishing out about lake monsters, did you?” scoffed Mr. Malone.

  Poppy blushed. “I don’t believe anything anybody says without seeing the evidence,” she said stiffly. “Especially not anything that Professor Asquith says. He’s only interested in TV ratings.”

  “Ha! Quite right, too!” said Mr. Malone. “You see, Lucille, even a young girl like Poppy can see through Oliver’s never-ending quest for fame.”

  “Now, dear,” said Mrs. Malone, sounding a trifle annoyed. “There’s no need to be rude about poor Oliver. I admit, he can be quite imaginative, but he has had his successes.”

  “Only because the viewing public has no taste.” Mr. Malone’s mood had swung, as it usually did when Oliver Asquith was praised, from delight to utter gloom. “No taste and absolutely no understanding of the field of paranormal investigation. I blame our education system. What are kids taught in school these days? To answer multiple-choice questions and march in lockstep down the halls of academe! There’s absolutely no attention being paid to clear thinking. Why, I remember when I was young—”

  Poppy tried to get the conversation back on track before Mr. Malone started talking about the rigors of first grade, and how he’d mastered multiplication and long division by his eighth birthday.

  “Anyway, I wasn’t talking about a lake monster,” she interrupted. “There are other aquatic creatures, you know. I mean, what if you thought you saw, say—”

  “Did someone see the monster?” Rolly was half asleep, but he got up from the deck chair and staggered toward them, his fishing pole clutched tightly in his hands. “Where is it?”

  “Shh, shh, go back to sleep,” said Mrs. Malone soothingly. “There’s nothing to see, nothing going on at all.”

  Rolly stopped in his tracks and watched as Mr. Malone started the engine.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To another part of the lake,” said Mrs. Malone. “Now why don’t you lie down and think some happy thoughts, and before you know it you’ll be in dreamland!”

  Poppy shook her head, but said nothing. Her mother had been suggesting this ever since Rolly was one month old. It had never worked, for two reasons. One was that Rolly had decided, apparently on the day he was born, that he couldn’t waste any time sleeping because he had too much to do in his life.

  The second reason Mrs. Malone’s strategy was useless, of course, was that Rolly didn’t think happy thoughts. Cunning thoughts, yes. Obsessive thoughts, certainly. Stubborn thoughts, without a doubt. But happy thoughts? No.

  “I don’t want to nod off,” he said. “I don’t want to go to dreamland. I don’t want to sleep at all, not ever!”

  “You have made that abundantly clear over the years,” said Mr. Malone through gritted teeth. “I don’t suppose you’d try counting sheep?”

  Rolly gave him a black look. “I don’t like sheep.”

  “Well, try counting lake monsters, then,” Mr. Malone snapped.

  “Now there’s a brainstorm!” Mrs. Malone said brightly. “In fact, why don’t you just close your eyes for a few minutes. You don’t have to actually sleep. You just need to rest for a few minutes and the best way to do that is with your eyes closed.”

  Rolly thought this over, as if testing the idea for a trap, but finally nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll rest. As long as I don’t have to sleep.” He fell back on the deck chair, screwed his eyes closed, and crossed his arms belligerently, as if daring sleep to overtake him.

  For several minutes, everyone worked in silence, scarcely daring to breathe. And then, the most delightful sound interrupted the quiet of the night. It was a deep buzzing that sounded like a hive of irritated bees. It was the sound of Rolly snoring.

  “Finally!” Mr. Malone said.

  “Shh.” Mrs. Malone held up a warning hand. “Quietly, quietly! We don’t want him to wake up. . . .”

  Everyone tiptoed to the far side of the boat, where Mrs. Malone returned to the matter of the photos.

  “It can’t be just a coincidence,” she insisted. “Ten of the last fifteen sightings in this area have involved three sets of moving lights, all shaped like triangles—”

  “Maybe they were plane lights,” said Poppy, adding helpfully, “You know, those lights on the wings and the tail? The ones that keep planes from running into one another? Have you ever noticed how they look like a triangle?”

  Mrs. Malone ignored this. “Witnesses said that the lights moved at a tremendous rate of speed. Faster than any plane they’d ever seen. One minute the lights were over there”—she waved toward the eastern shore—“and the next minute—whoosh!—they had shot across to the other side of the lake and then disappeared!”

  “I think I heard a story like that once,” said Henry, interested. “But it happened a long time ago. One of my friends at school said his grandfather saw the lights when he was a kid.”

  “Oh, the sightings have been going on for years,” said Mrs. Malone. She pushed her glasses up her nose, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “I’ve been doing some research online. There are stories about UFO sightings in the local newspapers dating back to the eighteen hundreds. In fact, five of the top twenty cities around the world that have reported UFOs are right here in Texas! And Austin is number six on the list! Some people say—”

  “Uh-huh,” said Will. “So, are we going to get something to eat? Because Henry and I are starving.”

  “There’s fruit in the fridge,” Mrs. Malone said. “Oh, and some granola bars! That will help boost our energy and keep us going! All night, if need be!”

  “Fruit! Granola bars!” Will said in disgust. “I thought Dad was going to make spaghetti.”

  “With meatballs,” added Poppy, who had been looking forward to them all day.

  “Change in plans,” said Mr. Malone briskly. “We’ll have it tomorrow. But tonight—we are on the hunt!”

  Poppy and Will exchanged exasperated looks. They knew from bitter experience that it was not a good sign when one of their parents said, “We are on the hunt!” It meant they were caught up in an enthusiasm so overwhelming that it overpowered the need for food, sleep, or bathing. Poppy still remembered the weeklong Bigfoot stakeout on a West Texas ranch. Every night, each Malone had been dowsed with skunk oil meant to mask their human smell, directed to a tree, and told to climb to the highest branch possible. It had taken weeks for the stink to wear off and, in the end, all they saw were several herds of deer and a disgruntled javelina pig.

  Mr. Malone grabbed a navigational map from the table. “We are paranormal investigators!” he finished, snapping it open with a flourish. “When we see a mysterious light in the sky, we don’t lollygag about!”

  “No, sir!” said Henry.

  Will glared at him and shook his head. But Henry didn’t know the secret signs and signals that Will and Poppy had developed to silently communicate with each other. He didn’t know that Will was trying
to say, “Be quiet! Don’t encourage them!” And even if he had known . . .

  Poppy was watching Henry closely. His eyes were sparkling, his cheeks were flushed, and he was bouncing on his toes. With a sinking heart, she spotted the telltale signs of a newly hatched paranormal fanatic.

  She sidled up to him. “Don’t get too excited,” she warned him. “Most UFO sightings are weather balloons, you know. Or military aircraft. Or the planet Venus.”

  Henry shrugged this off. “Most of them are,” he agreed. “But what if this one isn’t? What if it’s the real thing?”

  Poppy rolled her eyes.

  “Oh no,” Will groaned. “You’ve gone to the dark side.”

  “That’s the spirit!” said Mr. Malone, clapping Henry on the back. “Come on, why don’t you help me chart our course. Now, the light was seen heading south by southwest—”

  He pointed helpfully into the darkness. “Mrs. Malone followed it across the sky with our AlienScope.”

  “What’s that?”

  Mr. Malone nodded toward Poppy. “Ask our scientist,” he said genially. “She invented it.”

  Henry turned to Poppy. “You did?” he asked in surprise. “But if you don’t believe in aliens—”

  “I don’t!” said Poppy, annoyed. “But I like inventing stuff. And anyway”—she shrugged, embarrassed—“it was Mother’s Day.”

  Mrs. Malone smiled fondly at Poppy. “So sweet,” she said.

  Henry picked up the AlienScope to take a closer look. “It looks pretty cool,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “How did you make it?”

  Poppy tried to look modest, but a small, pleased smiled lifted one corner of her mouth. “I just took a radar detector gun and added a few hacks,” she said. “My theory is that, if UFOs really existed, they might emit some kind of electromagnetic waves. That could explain why witnesses often report that their car engines stalled when they saw a UFO, for example. The tricky part was figuring out how to tell the difference between natural electromagnetic forces and those that might have been created by an alien spacecraft. It was an interesting problem and I was stuck a couple of times, but then one day I happened to find a book at the library and—”

  “The AlienScope was created,” Will said briskly. “Patent pending. When are we going to eat?”

  “Grab an apple,” suggested Mrs. Malone as she pointed her AlienScope at the sky. “That will tide you over. Emerson, do you want me to weigh anchor?”

  “Yes, we’ve got it now,” said Mr. Malone. “I’m setting a course for ten degrees south by thirty degrees southwest. Full speed ahead!”

  Chapter

  SEVEN

  “Of course, when I said ‘full speed ahead,’ I didn’t mean ‘full speed into the closest sandbar and please try to hit a tree while you’re at it,’” said Mr. Malone. He gave a little chuckle. “I’m afraid my family takes everything I say a bit too literally.”

  “Uh-huh.” Officer Dan Deetline of the Austin Police Department jotted down a few notes.

  The other Malones were standing by the railing, leaning over the water to inspect the bow of the houseboat. It had been crunched by a startling collision with a sandbank. An old oak tree, hard as iron, had stood on the bank, half submerged in water. Now it seemed to be clutching the front of the houseboat in its branches.

  The officer glanced up from his notebook and gave Mr. Malone a stern look. “What I don’t get is why you were saying ‘full speed ahead’ in the first place. It was too dark to see anything, and these houseboats aren’t exactly made for racing. What was so all-fired important you had to get over to this side of the lake so quick?”

  “Well, you see, my son Will was at the helm,” Mr. Malone began, then he chuckled again.

  Poppy recognized this chuckle. It was the one her father always used when confronted by Authority.

  This happened rather often in the course of a paranormal investigation. A highway patrolman wanted to know why he was driving ninety miles an hour on West Virginia mountain roads (he was pursuing Moth Man). A security guard wanted to know why he was trying to enter an office building after midnight (he hoped to capture the ghostly whispers of an accountant who loved his job so much he kept working—forty years after he’d died). And a police officer wanted to know why he was trespassing on a farmer’s land (he was so focused on his pursuit of a zombie that was rumored to be roaming about the woods that he hadn’t even seen the “Keep Out!” signs).

  The chuckle was supposed to sound amused, carefree, lighthearted. It was the chuckle of a man who couldn’t imagine why he was being questioned by Authority.

  Poppy had never seen The Chuckle work. She searched Officer Deetline’s face to see if her father might do better with it tonight.

  But Officer Deetline’s expression was stony.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “So you’re saying this is your son’s fault?”

  “Er, well,” Mr. Malone began, flustered.

  “Oh, sure, it was all my fault,” Will said hotly. “This whole shipwreck was my mistake. Just like it was my mistake when you pointed at that light in the sky and yelled that the aliens would get away if I didn’t open up the throttle—”

  Officer Deetline’s expression didn’t change, but Poppy thought that she saw one eyebrow move up ever so slightly. “Aliens?”

  “Yes, we were chasing a UFO,” Mr. Malone said. He turned to Will and added testily, “And I remember quite well what I said. Naturally, I assumed that you were capable of using good old fashioned common sense.”

  “And I’m sure I was in the wrong when I followed your orders to make a sharp turn to starboard so that Mom could get a better angle with the AlienScope,” Will finished heatedly. “It’s all clear to me now. We wouldn’t be about to sink to the bottom of the lake and die horrible drowning deaths if it weren’t for me and the way I actually listen to what you say and then do it!”

  “Now, now,” said Mrs. Malone in what was clearly meant to be a soothing voice. “I just checked out the cabin. There is a tiny, tiny leak, but the water’s not coming in terribly fast. I doubt we’ll sink, will we, Officer?”

  Officer Deetline’s eyebrows lowered (Poppy assumed that he did this to relax a bit; they certainly couldn’t go any higher). “Probably not. You weren’t moving that fast. But you’re going to have to be towed to the dock. And before that happens, I’ll need to take some photos for the police report. . . .”

  The officer stepped off the houseboat deck and onto his police launch, then maneuvered closer to the area of the houseboat that had sustained the most damage. As soon as he was out of earshot, Mr. Malone glowered at Poppy and said, “I told you not to call them. Now we’re going to lose at least a day of our investigation.”

  “You have to report an accident immediately. It’s the law,” countered Poppy. “Plus, we need a police report so that the insurance company will pay for the repairs. Plus, we couldn’t get off the sandbar by ourselves. Plus—”

  “All right, Poppy, I think we’ve got the point,” said Mr. Malone.

  “I don’t imagine it will take long to do such a minor repair,” Mrs. Malone said soothingly. “I’m sure we’ll be back on the hunt before you know it. . . .”

  “I can’t believe it!” Mr. Malone stood on the dock, his hands on his hips, and stared at the houseboat in disgust. “Three whole days lost! And for what? A tiny crack!”

  The boat mechanic, who had just finished the list of everything he had to fix, shook his head gloomily.

  “You got a hole in your hull,” he said. “That’s not a good thing for a boat to have.”

  “It’s a crack, not a hole, and you can barely see it!” protested Mr. Malone. “It’s not as if the boat flooded, you know. It just got a bit damp.”

  “Now, dear,” Mrs. Malone said. “Safety comes first. And this will give us time to analyze our initial findings. We’ve already got at least ten hours of film to sort through. If you look at it the right way, being in dry dock for a while is really a blessing in di
sguise!”

  Poppy, Will, and Franny exchanged looks of alarm. They did not consider this a blessing of any sort, disguised or otherwise. They knew very well that ten hours of video could take three days to analyze. Mr. Malone always insisted on stopping the tape every few seconds to stare at the screen, looking for anomalies. And Mrs. Malone had a theory that watching tape in reverse revealed hidden clues, which meant that not only did she rewind constantly, but she did so in slow motion.

  “Ashley asked me to stay on their boat for a few nights,” Franny said quickly. “It turns out that a lot of her friends have seen strange lights out at the lake, too. She’s been texting them all afternoon. I thought I could take a laptop with me and tape their stories for our files. . . .”

  “That’s a brilliant idea!” Mrs. Malone said, beaming. “You see, Emerson? This little setback will actually give us an opportunity to do background research that we would have had to do anyway.”

  “Turncoat!” Will hissed. “Traitor!”

  Franny tossed her blond curls and cast a superior smile at Will. “You’re not the only one who can think fast,” she said sweetly.

  “Henry and I could hike along the shore,” Will said quickly. “You know, look for signs that spaceships have landed. Scorched earth, mysterious crop circles in the underbrush, that sort of thing.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Poppy. “I could bring the Geiger counter and take readings—”

  “Isn’t it wonderful how the children are willing to pitch in and help, Emerson?” said Mrs. Malone.

  “I notice no one is volunteering to sit at home and analyze film,” grumbled Mr. Malone.

  “There’s a trailhead right over there by that road,” Henry said to Will, pointing. “We could start there and hike all the way to the boat club. I did that last year with my dad.”

  “Excellent,” said Will. “Let me get my compass.” He began searching through his duffel bag.