The Rambling

by Jimmy Cajoleas

I heard what sounded like a stampede down the hall, folks screaming and hollering war shrieks, Parsnit players fleeing and Boss Authority’s men hunting them down.

  “Ta-ta, Arabella,” said Drusilla Fey. “Don’t forget, I gave you a chance.”

  And then she was gone. I don’t know how I knew it, but it was true. It was like I could feel her leave, she was so powerful the air couldn’t relax until she left the room. Miss Arabella swept her dress back and we were sitting on our stools again. I don’t know how she did it, except for magic.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “We were lucky,” she said. “Come quickly, children.”

  Miss Arabella grabbed my hand and I grabbed Tally’s and we took off running down the stairs of the head, past the eyes and the little nook of the nose and around the earlobes until we were at the bottom, the wide-open mouth, the concierge’s front desk. Miss Arabella stopped right where she was and yanked my hand tight. It was like a current was zapped through us, and both me and Tally were frozen stiff right on the spot. I couldn’t hardly have flapped my eyelids if I wanted.

  The concierge’s desk had been flipped over, tossed on its side, and where the secret door had been now stood a huge hole in the wall. The concierge stood in the back of the room, holding something in a big glass jar.

  And in front of him stood a short, squat man with a back slightly hunched, his arms thick with hair and tattoos, his right hand squiggled all over in symbols that looked obscure and magic, his left hand a giant chunk of metal. A ponytail that swished back and forth on its own like a dog’s tail dangled down his back. I knew him, somehow, I knew him in my heart, I knew him from stories told. There he stood before me.

  Boss Authority.

  “You shall not have him,” said the concierge. “It is neither fair nor good. In fact, it is exceedingly indecent. No, I simply will not allow it.”

  “Little fella,” said Boss Authority. “I don’t think you got much choice in the matter.” He took two steps toward the man, the buckles on his boots going clink clank with every step. “Come on, now. Let me see him.” Boss Authority held out that iron hand. The pointer finger whisked a here, here movement. “Let me see what’s left of old Baudelaire Quatro.”

  It was like you see with magic magnets sometimes, the way they pull metal toward them. The glass jar began to draw slowly toward Boss Authority. You could tell the concierge was mystified, fighting it as best he could, but he could not hold his arms back.

  I saw what was in the jar. It was a man’s head, shaved bald and beardless, with a slightly hooked nose and bright beaming blue eyes. It was the exact head of the building we were in. It was Baudelaire Quatro’s head. The eyes blinked twice, and the mouth stretched open in horror. The head in the jar was very much alive, it was. The head in the jar was screaming for its dear life.

  I felt Miss Arabella’s hand tense up and I heard the slightest whisper escape her lips. She was doing magic. The concierge’s eyes blinked aware and he yanked the head in the jar back to himself. He set it down on the ground and squatted himself down, rolled his sleeves up, and lifted his dukes. He was ready for a fight.

  Boss Authority whirled around. Miss Arabella’s hand went ice-cold. Boss Authority’s left eye was deep brown and rimmed with yellow and orange, his right eye a blank white swirl. His nose was knobby and cruel, his face a mask of scars and tattoos and magic carvings into his skin. He had a weeping lady tattooed on his cheek, washing her hair in her own tears, and an hourglass on his neck with all the sand in the top part, none dripping down, like time would never run out on him, not ever.

  He saw me. Boss Authority saw me, and it was like I could hear his voice whispering in my ears, I could feel him in the thud of my heart. Boss Authority knew me, he knew just who I was. He could hear the very thoughts jumbling around in my head. Boss Authority knew I was Davey Boy’s son.

  I thought he would come for me then. I thought he would walk clink clank across the floor and grab me by my cheeks and snap my neck right then and there.

  But the concierge was changing. His arms got plumper and his belly dropped and his hands went clawlike and his nose became a snout, two big tusks jolting out from under his lip. He hunkered down, a great warthog beast on all fours in the hall, growling in fury.

  Boss Authority whipped back around. “All right little fella,” he said to the concierge, and spat on the fine red carpet. “Have it your way.”

  Above us we heard Drusilla Fey’s cackling and the screams of folks as they tumbled down the staircase. Miss Arabella yanked my hand and we were running then, out the front door mouth past Boss Authority’s men and onto the pier. Rain beat down hard on us, lightning ripping glowing gashes in the gray clouds. Baudelaire Quatro’s Place was a wreck. The giant wooden head was on fire at the top, flames leaping high like some kind of hellish crown, and someone had busted both eyes out. Folks were leaping out of holes in the cheeks, not even bothering to untie their boats, just swimming off into the swamp for dear life. Boss Authority’s men were after them, low-down pirate-looking folks all scraggly and desperate, nothing but hate and glee in their eyes. Something had changed in the swamp, it had. Boss Authority was out for blood.

  Miss Arabella followed us to our skiff. We untied it and hopped inside. Already rainwater was filling it up at the bottom, and I got busy bailing with my hands. Tally looked up at Miss Arabella, standing there on the dock.

  “So can you help me?” said Tally. “Please.”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “There isn’t any time. It would take me many days to prepare a cure, and I fear there aren’t many days left for me if I linger here any longer.”

  “But where are you going?” said Tally.

  Miss Arabella’s face was long and worn and thin, grief stretching her skin so tight it could have been a mask.

  “Far, far away, to the deep north forests. I’ll be safe there. Goodbye, children. Follow the narrow path, right through those trees over there, and don’t you dare turn off to the right or left. Your skiff’s small enough to squeeze through, and if Boss Authority’s chasing anybody, it’ll be the big boats. Make for Marina’s Place, if you can. She’ll give you refuge.”

  “Please,” said Tally. “Can’t you do anything for me?”

  “If I’m able, I’ll return and bring you a hex, honey. That I promise.” She nodded to me. “And good luck finding your daddy.”

  Miss Arabella stepped off the boat and onto the wind-lashed water, walking the same as if it were dry land. Rain pelted down on all of us but it just seemed to miss her entirely, like she wasn’t touched by it. Miss Arabella walked into the trees and vanished. I knew right then that neither me nor Tally would ever see her again.

  Tally was heartbroken, I could tell, and I wanted to comfort her, I wanted to throw my arms around her and hug her and tell her that it would be okay, that I thought she was great just the way she was, that we’d work this out somehow, together. But then I heard Drusilla Fey’s cackle ripple across the water and I heard the screams of the Parsnit folk and I knew there wasn’t time for comfort, not now, not yet.

  So I rowed fast as I could away from the lagoon through the path, between two twirling cypresses and back into the wild tangled darkness of the swamp.

  14

  SOMEHOW WE GOT AWAY. I figured Miss Arabella cast a hex on our boat, because a big fog rose up around us, like we were traveling in a cloud. But I knew folks were after us, they were, Boss Authority’s men. We were right to float the narrow path through the waters, the one Miss Arabella bid us take. The rain lashed at us in cold prickles. Here and there we saw flickers, lanterns and torches burning through the darkness, lighting the air through the trees and tangle vines and rain. We heard hollers, men screeching commands at one another, cackling out like demons. The hunt was on, Boss Authority was making his move. I only hoped Pop was okay, wherever he was. I hoped Pop was hunting us too.

  That made me wonder though. Why hadn’t Pop found me yet? Didn’t he know I was out lookin
g for him?

  The skinny path through the trees had widened now, but it was still boatless except for us, everyone else escaped down other ways. We were lost and afraid. A giant cypress keeled over not ten feet from us, just like God himself had given it a yank, its roots writhing up out of the swamp water like some tentacled horror beast come slithering up to swallow us. I was scared. I thought we were gonna die.

  A bright high sound cut through the storm, lovely and silvery amid the thunder rumbles, like it was the sound of the moon and stars themselves coming out.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Hush,” said Tally.

  It was singing, a man’s voice calling out a hymn of mourning. It spooked me, drifting out in the rain and storm like that. An old building loomed ahead of us, crooked-roofed and half-sunk in the muck. It had a tall spire on the top in a cross shape. The windows that weren’t busted were multicolored, and candlelight shone out from them in strange warbles. The singing was coming from inside, an old sweet song, sad as could be. You could just barely make it out over the rain and wind and thunder.

  “Is that a church?” said Tally.

  “I think so. But who would build a church this far down in the swamp?”

  “Bunch of crazy folks,” said Tally. “We ought to keep going. We ought not to stop here.”

  We rowed by the church, the rain battering our boat, water rising in inches on the bottom. I stopped a second, shielding my eyes from the rain. I wanted a good look at it. I wanted to see inside. The church was burnt, yes, and the walls had been blackened and crumbled, and the whole thing looked like it could fall in on itself at any moment. But something seemed familiar about it to me, a memory long blurred and faded, just a scrap left in my mind. I had seen this church before.

  I peered inside and saw an old man in priest robes singing, banging away on a warped piano. He was bald with a long gray beard down to his chest. A small dog swam down the aisle to the altar with his tongue out. He headed toward the priest, howling along to the song. The priest laughed, bent down, and petted the dog. He seemed to be crying, the priest did, and he went back to singing loud and sweet and sad, of strength in the trying times, of the happiness of the days to come. I guess I mean that he was singing about hope, which is maybe the best and saddest thing of all.

  I don’t know, it got to me.

  “Are you okay?” hollered Tally over the wind and rain. “You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

  The priest looked up and saw us. He hopped off the piano bench and scrambled down the aisle, water up past his knees. He leaned out the door of the half-sunk church and called to us.

  “Ahoy!” he said. “Two strays out in the rain. You’re two little kitties got lost, ain’t ye?”

  His eyes were wide and loony in the lightning-light. His grin was too wide, his teeth crooked and awkward. This wasn’t right. We needed to leave, and now.

  “Folks after you?” he said. “I seen their fires, I seen their lights. Looking for you, aren’t they? Who else would they be looking for except two little stray kittens lost out in the rain?”

  “I ain’t any kitten,” I said.

  “Me neither,” said Tally.

  “Hmm,” said the priest. He rubbed his chin, all thoughtful. “Yes, yes, maybe that’s the wrong word. It could be no disgrace to you, of course, though the felines might take offense, truth be told. Nothing stronger than a stray cat, and that’s a fact. Nothing scrappier, nothing better at surviving. I’ve seen snow and rain and hail fall on a litter of kitties, and I’ve seen them crawl back meowing for food come spring, come summer. I’ve seen hurricanes blow houses away, but the stray kittens are fine, they’re always fine. So if it’s the word ‘kitten’ that’s set you against me, well, I would say the mistake is yours, children.”

  The priest tilted his head all crooked at me, same way a bird does, and blinked twice. I squinted back at him, the rain battering my face.

  “Well, come in out of the rain,” he said. “Though the rain does get through this roof indeed, but only in little droplets, sprinkles, like a blessing. A holy blessing, every raindrop is. They have names, they do, each one. God names them, and he knows them, before they splash into the great pool of things and become a part of greater water. Even then he knows their names. Just as he knows yours. Do you know God’s name, children?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” whispered Tally. “This guy’s nuts.”

  I nodded at her.

  “So long, mister,” I said.

  But we heard voices then, hollers above the thunder, and on the far side of a thicket of cypresses and dry land came the glow of lanterns. A search party. Out hunting for us.

  “Go if you must,” said the priest. “Go and I bless you. But know this, kitty-children. There is always refuge for you in the church! Yes, in my church! Where the water rises”—he pointed down to the flood that was long past his knees—“and the love always rains down from above.”

  He reached his arms out long and wild, the sleeves rolling down over his skinny bare scarred arms, his fingers outstretched, like he was trying to wrap his arms around the whole building.

  More hollers from the fog and rain. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared to trust this man, this crazy bearded old fella in his burnt-down sunk-down ruined church, but I was more scared of being caught by Boss Authority’s men. It didn’t feel like there was a right thing to do. Then I remembered something from a conversation Mom and Pop had a long time ago, something about water and love being the two strongest things there were. I guess I’m saying there was something about this priest that I liked.

  “Be quick children,” said the priest. “Hurry.”

  We rowed the skiff inside the church and the priest pulled it down the aisle, splashing all the way. He pulled it right to the altar, a tall podium of stone and wood that had a sun and a moon painted on it. “Out, out!” he said. We hopped into the water. Then he pushed the boat through a hole in the back wall of the church. I started to say something but he shushed me with one long finger to his lips. The priest leaned in close and whispered in my ear. “She won’t get far. It’s all tangles and brambles behind there. It’s just the spot for her to hide, don’t you worry. Now for the children. Where shall the children be hid?”

  He looked up above us, to the church rafters. Moss hung down from them, creeper vines dangled snakelike and there were birds too, a row of mournful brown owls like tiny silent monks gathered together to pray over us.

  “Up, up!” said the priest.

  The church wall was torn and chinked, with footholds aplenty, so long as you could see them. Tally made short work up to the rafters, her being part spider and a better climber than me besides. I had a tougher time. I kept falling off, splashing myself back in the water. The priest had to stand on a pew and grab me by the waist and boost me up. Tally pulled me the rest of the way. We crouched together on a crossbeam, praying like crazy it wouldn’t crack or snap or fall. I was wet and scared, shivering in the swamp heat. But the owls weren’t shaking, no sir. The owls looked on at us like they weren’t surprised one bit, like they’d been waiting here for us to show up their whole lives. I almost wanted to stick my hand out and introduce myself, see if they’d shake it. But I didn’t have time, because right then a skiff approached the doorway to the church, and I heard two familiar awful voices cutting through the rain and wind.

  A tall skinny figure hunched over holding a lantern, and a squat thick pumpkin-shaped fella sat next to him. I felt like I knew the both of them well by then, ever since they busted in and wrecked my perfect night with Pop. I never quite seemed to be able to escape them, Cecily Bob and Mr. Hugo. They rowed right up to the church and stepped out into the flooded aisles. Cecily Bob tied the boat to one of the pews while Mr. Hugo peered up at the priest.

  “Seen any children pass this way?” asked Mr. Hugo.

  “Eh?” said the priest, cupping his ear. “I beg your pardon, sirs, but my hearing’s near gone at this point. Could ye speak
up a little?”

  “Have you seen any children or not?” hollered Mr. Hugo.

  “Children? In a night like this?” said the priest. “What kind of children would be wandering about on such a night? Terrible parents, those children must have. The poor dears! Let us now say a prayer for them, that they pass safely through this storm.”

  The priest bowed his head and began to pray, a long ambling please Lord we beseech thee type of thing you could bet would last an hour at least.

  “Come on now, none of that,” said Mr. Hugo. “There’ll be no praying now. We’re trying to ask you a question.”

  “Then I shall pray in my heart, silently, so as not to distract you,” said the priest. “Your questions, sirs?”

  “What about your old pal Davey Boy Pennington? You seen him?” said Cecily Bob.

  Wait, did the priest know Pop? How? I had never known Pop to be much of a churchgoer, though Mom loved church, even if it turned out she was a witch. Seemed like every time I learned something new about my folks the more questions I had. I guess that was the way of the world. Every time you get an answer to something you’re wondering about, it just leads to more and more wondering. Maybe nothing ever truly gets answered. Maybe that’s all life is, just wondering and wandering and hoping, maybe getting a thing or two right now and then.

  “Davey Boy? My friend?” The priest bowed. “You do me honor sir. But nay, no Davey Boys here. Not a sighting, not a hide nor hair. Only stray cats here and there. Felines and owls. Snakes. Seen several snakes. They slither past the pulpit, yes. They be slithering past your ankles right now.”

  Mr. Hugo glanced down in a panic at the water rising around his knees. I heard Tally cover her mouth and snicker.

  Cecily Bob drew out a knife, that same long one he pulled on my daddy. Cecily Bob poked at the priest with it. The priest giggled a little, like the knife tickled.

  “I remember when you weren’t stark raving mad,” said Cecily Bob. “Do you remember that, priest? Do you remember a church full of the pious and holy?” He laughed, the sound slapping across the wet water room.