The Nightmarys

by Dan Poblocki

  When Timothy glanced in the rearview mirror, the smoldering, ruined house shrank with the distance. He quickly approached the intersection at Edgehill Road. The smashed staircase was directly in front of him. If he didn’t brake soon, he’d simply fly over the cliff. Somehow, his foot found its way to the other pedal, and he managed to pause for a moment at the stop sign. With another quick glance up the hill, he saw the creature slithering blindly into the middle of the road, its mouth open wide in frustration, its whiskers whipping wildly.

  If he hadn’t almost peed in his pants, he would have thought that was pretty cool.

  40.

  Timothy drove quickly, steadily. He kept close to the guardrail. His brain was so fried, he couldn’t remember which turn led to his father’s garage, so he went south on Edgehill Road toward the college’s main campus and the Taft Bridge, wiping tears and snot from his upper lip.

  It was getting quite dark out now, so he flipped on the headlights. Finally, the wooded slope on the right was replaced by several small houses. Then Timothy saw the tall, dark silhouette of a building rising beyond the bridge entrance, across from the campus’s main gate—the Mayfair.

  At the bridge intersection, Timothy drove through a stoplight. A few cars honked their horns, and he was shocked back to reality. Now that he was surrounded by traffic, he was terrified that he might smash into someone or something. He took his foot off the gas, and as the hill began to slope upward, the car slowed. More vehicles coming off the bridge honked their horns. Timothy pressed his foot down, and the car jerked forward.

  “Come on,” he said. “Only a little farther.”

  Steadying the wheel, Timothy drove up the center of Shutter Avenue, staying clear of the cars parked on either side of the road. The Mayfair was on his right.

  The street was full. No room for parking. Timothy simply stopped next to a small red sports car, shoved the gearshift into park, and turned off the engine. He grabbed the keys from the ignition. When he opened the driver’s door, a speeding truck wailed its horn as it drove by. Timothy waved an apology and climbed out of the car. Shaking, he stared up at the tall building, then crossed the sidewalk into the main garden.

  Ahead, the spidery iron door swung open. Inside stood the uniformed man Timothy had met earlier that week. The man smiled, but as Timothy limped closer, the man’s expression changed. “You okay, little dude?”

  “I—I need to see Mrs. Kindred.”

  “Sure,” said the doorman. “Just let me give her a call.” He headed toward his desk, but Timothy didn’t wait. He crossed through the large empty lobby toward the elevator bank. “Hey, hold up, kid,” said the doorman. But Timothy had already hit the button. The elevator door immediately opened, so he slipped inside.

  As the car took him swiftly upward, he worried that Jack might be visiting Zilpha’s neighbor, Georgia. Or maybe he had returned for Zilpha herself? Timothy wondered what he’d do if he found an open door, an empty apartment, signs of struggle, or worse….

  Moments later, at the top floor, Timothy had to force himself to step out into the small hallway. To his relief, there was no graffiti, cobwebs, or creepy little girls waiting for him. He crossed quickly to the big black door marked 16B.

  Timothy knocked, quietly at first, then harder as he waited. He began to worry that no one was home. Then deep inside the apartment, he heard the sound of barking. Long fingernails clicked against the wood floor. The little dog, Hepzibah, skittered toward him. She sniffed at the bottom of the door. Finally, the old woman’s voice, shaking and tired, said, “Who’s here, Hep?”

  “It’s me,” Timothy cried. “I need your help!”

  The old woman opened the door, her brow crinkled. She wore the same purple kimono he’d seen her in from the octagonal window on Ash Tree Lane, now with a green silk scarf tied around her head. “Come in,” she said immediately. “Mario said someone was coming up. But I didn’t expect …” She shook her head in disbelief. “What happened to you?”

  Timothy slinked through the doorway, trying not to collapse. “Abigail’s gone. Jack … Johnson Harwood took her. He has the jawbone. He’s cursed me and her, and probably you too. He’s planning on using Abigail to charge the … corpse. We need to find her before it’s too late.”

  Zilpha closed the door behind her. “Calm down, Timothy,” she said forcefully. She led him into the dining room and pulled out a chair. “Sit. Breathe.” She stared at him for a moment. “Johnson Harwood did what? Abigail is where?”

  Timothy sat next to her and tried his best to recount everything that had happened. The book he’d found. The office in the library. The baseball cards. The house on Ash Tree Lane. Mr. Harwood’s confession. The Nightmarys. And finally, the dragon.

  Zilpha was stunned. For several seconds after Timothy finished his story, she opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water, struggling to breathe. “Abigail’s not in New Jersey?”

  Timothy turned emergency-red as he admitted his betrayal. “I spent the entire day with her. We were locked in the attic together when you came to Jack’s house. We shouted and shouted, but Georgia thought it was his television.”

  For a long time, Zilpha held her hand to her mouth, staring at the table. Her eyes flicked back and forth slightly. “I should have known better,” she said finally. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I thought I had settled everything when I destroyed Harwood’s trinket this afternoon. Stupid. I should have realized who I was dealing with this morning when Georgia told me he’d been here at the Mayfair. That he was her boyfriend! Quite a significant coincidence, don’t you think? And I ignored the biggest clue!” She pounded the table with her palms. “He knew I was coming,” Zilpha continued, “and he was prepared. He tricked me. I destroyed the wrong artifact.” She took Timothy’s hand, staring into his eyes. “Abigail is in serious trouble. She is somewhere in New Starkham. We need to figure out where.”

  “But how?” said Timothy.

  “You’ve solved plenty of clues so far. I trust there may be some left to uncover?”

  “I can’t think of any.”

  Zilpha pointed at the desk in the corner of the room. “Grab a pencil and paper. I always find it helpful to make a list.” A few minutes later, Timothy had written out several lists summarizing everything he thought he knew and everything he was unsure of, everything he’d been through and everything he feared was coming.

  Zilpha eyed the list and shook her head. “Can you think of anything else to narrow all this down? Anything at all?”

  From outside, the familiar old foghorn called a lonely cry over the river. The sound struck Timothy as odd. The weather had been clear all day.

  Timothy glanced over his shoulder toward the French doors. Though the sky was now dark, Timothy watched as strange clouds obscured a bright moon coming over the horizon. He rose from his chair and went to the window. From all directions, the weather seemed to be gathering, like a hurricane eye, drawing an ominous target around New Starkham. “Something’s happening,” said Timothy. “Look.”

  Zilpha joined him at the window. “At what?”

  “The clouds. I’ve seen them before, in a painting at the museum this week.” The foghorn cried again.

  “I don’t see any clouds,” said Zilpha.

  Timothy shivered. This must be the curse, coming for him again. “The Edge of Doom,” he said.

  “The edge of what?”

  “That’s the name of the painting. It’s the jawbone. I’m seeing things.” Timothy remembered the image: the pit of fire, the glowing sky.

  “For the past few months, whenever I saw something scary,” said Zilpha, “I tried to figure out some way to get around it. When the ceramic monkey my husband gave me on our fortieth anniversary snarled at me, I smashed him on the floor, then swept up the pieces. That’s how I’ve survived these past months—little tricks. How did you get away from the dragon?”

  “Turpentine,” said Timothy. “I washed out his eyes.”

  �
��Brilliant!” said Zilpha, grabbing his good hand. “You’ve got to find something like that to combat what you’re seeing now.”

  “But what’s coming is really bad,” said Timothy, shaking his head. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be much bigger than the graffiti dragon. Jack is trying to stop us. We’re running out of time.”

  “That’s what he thinks,” said the old woman, twisting the tail of her head wrap around her wrist. “He’s forgotten who he’s dealing with here. He hasn’t stopped me yet.”

  Timothy opened the door and stepped onto the roof deck. “Can I?” he asked Zilpha. She answered by following him. The clouds were getting darker, edging closer, surrounding the city, covering what now appeared to be a full moon. The foghorn cried again. Timothy crossed to the far railing so he could see the river, the bridge, and beyond that, Rhode Island. Something flashed at the river’s edge. The lighthouse was up and running.

  Then it hit him: A light in the darkness.

  In Hesselius’s abandoned office, those words had been written on the mat of the lighthouse photo on the wall. His brother’s motto. This was his order amidst the chaos. In the photo, the lighthouse had been called Hesselius’s Illuminarium. The professor had even designed it. According to the articles Abigail had shown him at the library, the cults had built their temples at the convergence of great chaos. Crossroads. Mountains.

  Rivers?

  “I know where she is!” said Timothy.

  In the elevator, halfway to the ground floor, Zilpha became flustered. “How are we getting there? I don’t think a taxi will drop us off on the edge of a cliff. I wish Georgia didn’t hate me right now, or I’d ask her.”

  “I’ve got a car,” Timothy blurted.

  “Oh, yes,” said Zilpha. “You did mention that, didn’t you?”

  The elevator stopped, the doors slid open. Timothy crossed slowly through the lobby with Zilpha. Mario opened the front door. “Good night, Mrs. Kindred,” he said with a worried look.

  “Thank you, Mario,” she answered with an emphatic smile. “Good night.” In the garden, she changed her tone. “I don’t know about this, Timothy. You shouldn’t be driving at your age, and at my age, my eyes aren’t very good. We cancel each other out.”

  “My dad owns a garage,” he said. “And I made it here by myself. We can make it a little farther together, don’t you think?”

  41.

  Zilpha fussed in her seat as Timothy turned left at the stop sign. He headed toward the bridge. More and more, the atmosphere resembled the painting at the museum. The black clouds now filled the entire sky, spiraling slowly like a whirlpool. Zilpha still didn’t seem to notice. Timothy thought about what she’d said: little tricks would end the fear. But what trick might stop clouds from swirling?

  “Watch out!” cried Zilpha as Timothy came up too quickly at the stoplight. The traffic whizzed past in both directions.

  “Sorry,” said Timothy. “I’m not used to this.”

  “I didn’t mean to snap,” she apologized. “You’re … doing very well.” The light turned green, and Timothy jerked the car forward into the intersection. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Zilpha tightening her seat belt.

  Soon they were traveling alongside other cars, heading west across the river. Timothy maintained his speed, even as his heart raced.

  At the edge of the bridge, Timothy turned the wheel sharply, forcing his mother’s car off the highway onto a small service road. Gravel spun out from under his tires, and Zilpha held tightly on to the door handle. Straining to see better, Timothy leaned forward across the steering wheel. The service road followed the edge of the cliff for several hundred yards before ending abruptly at a guardrail.

  A bright light flashed over the side of the cliff. The lighthouse. Timothy noticed a staircase entrance next to the guardrail. He and Zilpha both slipped outside. Timothy helped the old woman across the rocky path.

  Finally, they came to a barrier fence and a cliffside sign that read, LITTLE HUSKETOMIC LIGHTHOUSE. “In the photo, it was called Hesselius’s Illuminarium,” said Timothy. “Is this the same lighthouse?”

  “They must have taken Hesselius’s name off it after everything that happened,” said Zilpha, holding on to the nearby railing. “A long time ago, people wanted to forget.”

  Leaning over the precipice, Timothy peered at the first step. The staircase descended steeply along the cliff face. Unlike the Dragon Stairs, these steps hugged the bluff in a straight drop, stopping at a wide outcropping that stretched out fifty feet below. From the stairs’ base, a narrow path led to the lighthouse itself—a small white cone of a building, surrounded by squat shrubbery, a glass cage perched at the top, inside which rotated a blinding, iridescent light.

  “Abigail’s down there somewhere,” said Timothy, staring at the dark stairs. The river splashed at the rocks below. He quickly returned to the car; he knew he’d find a couple of flashlights in the trunk. He handed one to Zilpha and kept one for himself. “We’ve got to hurry,” he said, rushing back to the stairs. He took the first few steps, but turned around when he realized Zilpha was not following him.

  “Go ahead,” she said, worried. “I’d only hold you up. If I rush and fall, you’ll have to help me as well as Abigail. Right now, she’s what matters.” Zilpha looked down at him, her face illuminated by another bright, brief turn from the lighthouse. Her brown eyes were liquid. “Please … please be careful. I’ll be right behind you, coming at my own pace. If you need anything … scream.”

  Those were not reassuring words, but he nodded and turned around. Nauseated, he took one more step down the precipice. The dark clouds over the city seemed to change. A dim yellow light appeared in the sky. A hollow rushing sound echoed off the rock.

  Timothy realized he was standing on the actual Edge of Doom. The curse. Dammit. He grasped the wooden railing that was bolted to the rock, trying to steady himself. Something strange was happening to the river. The water, which had been rushing and lapping the shore in white waves, receded, leaving the black rocks to glisten, reflecting the bridge lights from above. The river was sinking, disappearing into a deep abyss that now separated the two shores. A dark chasm had formed beyond the drop at the left of the stairs. Slowly, as if from deep within the earth, another light appeared. Lava, magma, or possibly something living and nameless, began to rise, shaking the ground with the speed of its approach.

  Timothy shoved his body against the cliff, the railing pressing into his lower spine. He repeated the sentence, “This isn’t happening,” over and over, until finally, he heard Zilpha’s voice calling to him from several steps up.

  “Timothy? What’s wrong?”

  “The curse … I can’t.”

  “Fight it,” she demanded. “Fight it like you fought the dragon.”

  How? If this is the Edge of Doom … ? Timothy thought back to the day at the museum when he’d imitated the voice of the robed man on the cliff, when Abigail had thought he was making fun of her. The man in the painting had been chanting a spell or a prayer or something. Maybe Timothy could do the same. He tried to find his voice. “I … Timothy July … master of this … domain … do beseech thee … to leave this place … and return to … wherever the heck you came from.” The ground began to shake. Mammoth red, scaly hands reached up out of the chasm, claws the size of cars grasping at the space just below the Taft Bridge. Fighting back a scream, Timothy clutched at the railing and closed his eyes. Then, angry, he cried as loudly as he could, “IN THE NAME OF CHAOS, GO THE HELL AWAY!”

  Everything went still. Timothy listened to his heart beating in his eardrums. When he opened his eyes, the sky had cleared. The red light was gone. And most important, the claws had disappeared. The water splashed against the rocks, and the stars glittered in the sky. There was no Edge of Doom. This was only the edge of the Little Husketomic.

  But then he noticed the bright light of the full moon higher up in the sky. This was no illusion. He was running out of time.

 
; “It—it worked,” Timothy stammered, glancing over his shoulder at Zilpha. “I’ll be right back.”

  Timothy rushed down the endless stairs, holding on to the railing with his good hand, trying not to slip on the slick boards. He leapt the last two steps onto a gravel path. The sound of the river was deafening, but it was a comfort to hear, as opposed to the horrible rushing sound of the thing that had, moments earlier, been rising from the chasm. As Timothy ran, every few seconds, the path was lit by the light from above, so he was able to quickly follow it to the small clapboard building.

  Standing in front of a shiny black metal door, Timothy caught his breath. Glancing back up the cliff, he saw Zilpha sitting on a stair near the top, inching her way slowly down.

  42.

  Timothy expected the door to be locked, but to his surprise, the knob turned in his hand. He released it, and the door slowly opened a crack. Timothy stared into the musty darkness. From inside the building, a grinding sound grumbled, the whirring of an ancient engine, the light turning on its old axle.

  He kicked the door and it swung open. The whirring sound was louder now. Timothy almost called out Hello? but imagined Jack hiding somewhere inside. He peered into the dark room and soon realized that it was not as dark as it had first seemed.

  The room was a perfect circle. Bolted to the wall, a rickety metal staircase swirled around the circumference of the building, ending at an open hatch in the ceiling twenty feet up. From the hatch, every fifteen seconds, the bright light burst forth, but the rest of the time, a dull phosphorescence spilled into the room, dusting the furniture and equipment with a ghostly glow.

  Timothy looked around. The room reminded him of Hesselius’s abandoned office—filled with antiques, maps, photos of the surrounding landscape—except that someone had obviously recently been here, possibly even worked here on a regular basis. There was a stack of papers on a nearby desk. A computer. A telephone. A tall halogen floor lamp. A modern-looking office chair. Timothy quickly realized he’d seen all there was to see.