The Digging Leviathan

by James P. Blaylock

  “Of course they are,” Latzarel put in, slathering butter and jam across a piece of toast. “Imagination is what it is. Exaggeration.”

  “Look here.” William pointed at something in the journal, which, of course, none of the rest of them could actually see. “Here on the tenth of November. I’ll read it: ‘There were the bones of a child sprouting from the rocks like fan coral, waving in the green water when the waves washed across. It was very lonely and was picked apart by cuttlefish and carried away to build nests of human bones. Only a hand remained, and the fish wouldn’t approach for fear it would clutch at them.’”

  Edward sat open-mouthed. “Where’s a calendar?” he said thickly.

  William pulled his pocket calendar from his wallet.

  “What was the date of the entry?” asked Edward.

  “The tenth.”

  “That’s a Saturday?”

  “No,” said William. “It’s a Wednesday. Saturday’s the thirteenth.”

  Edward pushed himself up from his chair and dashed from the room. “I’ve got to check the tide chart,” he shouted, slamming the kitchen door behind him. Outside in the maze shed, the Len’s Baithouse octopus leered out from the chart on the wall, wearing his foolish cap. Edward walked back into the house.

  “Let me guess,” said Professor Latzarel, poking a scrap of toast in Edward’s direction. “You found the tidepool hand three days after the supposed date of the notation.”

  “I found it wrapped around the skeleton of a fish—a tidepool sculpin from the look of it.” Edward rubbed his forehead. The whole idea of it was preposterous, outlandish. “You don’t suppose, do you …” he began, but Professor Latzarel, a rationalist, cut him off.

  “Of course not. None of us supposes that for a moment. He was careless with dates. More likely, it’s a matter of self-grandeur—making up for obvious inadequacies, or so he would think. He manipulated the dates in a little game with himself—probably persuaded himself too. It’s a simple matter. Entirely a simple matter, like his nasal irrigator.”

  “His nasal irrigator powered an airborne submarine,” Edward pointed out practically.

  William nodded and sipped at his coffee. “I tend to fall in with Edward on this for reasons of my own. But look here, just for the sake of logic. Giles referred to the fish avoiding this thing, this hand, but they very obviously didn’t. Not all of them anyway. The hand got one of them. …”

  “Got one!” Latzarel exploded. ‘That’s the screwiest part of the whole business. Prescience is one thing, but that sort of fabulous prediction is foolishness. It’s a matter of imagination, like I said. And damned peculiar imagination at that.”

  William shook his head slowly. “Not a bit of it. We’ve come too far down the garden path to be frightened off now by an improbable spider. But this business becomes more and more strange, doesn’t it? We’ll agree for the sake of argument that he didn’t go home that Saturday afternoon and simply scribble in his diary alongside a phony date. He’d know, then, that the hand had managed to grab a fish. For what earthly reason would he pretend not to know? No, sir. I’m certain this was written days earlier. But is it a matter of prescience?”

  “It must be,” said Edward, slapping the tabletop.

  “Yes,” said William. “You see why too.”

  “I don’t see a thing but foolery,” said Latzarel. “But explain it to me anyway.”

  “Well suppose it’s not mere prescience,” said William. “It could only mean one thing—that Giles’ forecasts created the thing. That the tidepool hand was a product of his journal.”

  Latzarel started to protest, but Edward leaped in before him. “But it can’t be,” he said. “Obviously. If it were, then the hand wouldn’t have caught a fish. The journal mandates against it. But if it were prescience, then we’d allow him the error. We can’t expect him to have had a vision of the entire future of that pool.”

  “Of course not,” said William, happy that pieces were falling into place. He skimmed the rest of the entry, paused, and looked up. “Also,” he said, “if Giles were responsible for the existence of the hand, then squids would live in houses made of human bones. We can’t have one without the other.”

  “True,” said Edward. “Look at the next page. We’re onto something here.”

  On the next page, Thursday of the same week, was a single, short entry, “It caught its first fish, which was torn apart by crabs.” Following that was a name: “Oscar Pillbug.”

  “Oscar Pillbug?” said Latzarel. ‘This is exceedingly strange. The lad’s demented.”

  “Worse,” said William. “That hashes up the prescience theory.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Edward. “It just allows for the possibility of the other. Of Giles the creator. Of squids in ribcages.”

  “What in the world is Oscar Pillbug?” Latzarel asked.

  “I think he meant Oscar Pallcheck,” said Jim. “He used to make up names like that, but they didn’t do any good. Oscar laughed at them.”

  Latzarel nodded, easily satisfied. “Poor, tortured soul,” he said. “But look here. I don’t think this squid and bones business has any scientific basis. Surely by now someone would have documented the phenomenon. The oceans aren’t utterly unexplored, after all.”

  “No,” said William. “But for my money, squids had no notion of living in skeletons before last November. That’s got to be the case, you see.”

  “Unless Giles is simply prescient,” Edward put in.

  “Of course,” said Latzarel, squinting into his coffee cup.

  William whistled in surprise, pointing at the journal. There on November 13 was the name “Oscar Tarbaby.”

  There was a silence round the table. “Ominous business, isn’t it?” said Edward

  “Disturbing,” said William. “How much do you suppose he’s capable of?”

  “You’re not suggesting,” said Latzarel, “that there’s some connection between this and the Pallcheck boy’s death in the tarpits?”

  William shrugged. “I’m not suggesting anything. The journal suggests a bit, though. Here’s more. ‘The silver wires of anti-gravity devices could be woven into the spokes of bicycle wheels or attached to a car’s exhaust system, having a similar effect in either case on the physical properties of the aether.’ Look how he spells ether here. Where in the world did he come up with that? He must get his data out of Paracelsus.” William paused to dump sugar into his coffee. “‘It could similarly be directed at a human lung, since the effect is one of emanated rays traveling on gaseous molecular structures.’ The boy’s a genius!” cried William. “I’ve got to get this to Fairfax. It alters the sensor utterly.”

  “I can see that it must,” said Edward quickly, fearing that William would sidetrack himself into scientific meditations, “but what does it say about directing an anti-gravity mechanism at someone’s lungs?”

  “Oh, yes,” said William, peering once again at the page and reading. “‘It’s possible that a simple ray would be suitable to levitate a body if carefully directed, and I could throw Oscar Fat-face into the La Brea Tar Pits which is where he crawled out of anyway. I’m going to fix him first, though. He’ll be a sorry, ugly toad.’”

  “That settles it!” cried Edward.

  “How?” asked Latzarel.

  “All of it! Everything’s true. Every fragment of it. And it might be our salvation as easily as our doom.”

  “Of course it might,” William assented, standing up and striding back and forth across the kitchen floor. He opened the refrigerator door and looked inside, poking behind old half heads of lettuce and the remains of loaves of bread until he found a jar of kosher pickles. “Pinion’s a fool. My money on it, He’s got a mechanical mole that might as well be a park bench.” He paused for a moment thinking, and thrust the open pickle jar in the direction of the table. Latzarel waved him away, grimacing at the idea of an early morning pickle. William shoved two fingers into the jar and yanked out another, munching away at the thi
ng heartily, then holding it aloft as a sort of indicator. “If we can find Giles,” he said, “and spirit him out of their reach, then Pinion and Frosticos may as well take a crosstown bus.”

  “A tin wagon,” put in Edward.

  “A motorized footstool,” said William, smiling at his brother-in-law.

  Jim sat through the pickle conversation idly turning the pages of the journal, reading discoveries and inventions: of perpetual motion engines built of ball bearings and spools and empty oatmeal cartons; of anti-matter devices built of mirrors and old vacuum sweepers; of light-speed velocity boosters built of old lampshades, a glass bowl full of pink-tinted water, and a moon garden of charcoal clinkers and bluing. Toward the end of the volume, following a grisly account of the propulsion of Oscar Pallcheck, Jim found a long, hastily written entry. He interrupted his uncle’s musings about Giles’ possible improvement of the diving bell and read: “‘The voyage will be undertaken on March 21, the day of the vernal equinox, and will angle toward the equator at first, slowly righting itself until it achieves essential verticality somewhere under the southwest desert. Eighteen hours will suffice for the journey. The end of it is lost to me in fog. It’s possible that the fog veils Eden like Dr. Pinion says. But I can hear the far off sound of vast explosions and earthquakes, which might as easily be the roaring of the subterranean rivers through the polar openings. Either way, it doesn’t make much difference.’”

  “What doesn’t?” asked Latzarel. “I wish he weren’t so damned weird! He sounds like a science fiction writer, for God’s sake.”

  “He’s referring to the cataclysm,” said William. “Edward, you remember my dream? The death of Giles Peach in the desert? A rain of dinosaurs? Everything blowing to bits?”

  Edward nodded. As much as he hated to admit it, he remembered the account of William’s dream very well. “I’m beginning to fear,” he said at last, poking at broken toast with the end of a fork, “that Giles is responsible for a great deal. Certainly for all the unaccountable phenomena. Maybe even for the merman …”

  “Maybe,” said William, interrupting, “for the hollow Earth itself. It’s possible, you know. It could well be a product of Basil and Giles both. If we take a good look at the psychology of this thing. …”

  “Oh come on,” cried Latzarel, pushed to the edge. “I haven’t been pursuing figments. I won’t have that. You’re both making a mountain out of a molehill here.”

  “I’m afraid,” said William darkly, “that in this business there’s little possibility of exaggeration. “I’m beginning to be convinced that Giles’ meddling is going to crack the earth open like a melon unless we step in. Giles had better not be aboard that digger on the twenty-first.”

  “Back to square one,” said Latzarel, referring to the search for Giles Peach. “Where do we look next?”

  William shrugged. Edward poured himself a last cup of toffee and looked out of the kitchen window. A battered pickup truck rattled into view on the street, pulling up to the curb and scraping along until it came to a rest in front of the house. In the back was a lawnmower, an edger, and an assortment of brooms, rakes, clippers, gunny sacks, and shovels. It was Yamoto, the gardener, come round to attend to the Pembly lawn. Edward’s heart sank like a brick.

  The threatened destruction of the Earth paled, as William, alert to the creaking drop and bang of Yamoto’s tailgate, lost interest in his pickle jar and hurried into the front room.

  He crouched in front of the window, partially hidden by the drape, and peered out at the gardener. There could be little doubt as to his purpose, his motive. He didn’t care a rap about mowing lawns. He wore a pair of voluminous white trousers and a white cloth cap, both of which had been standard issue at the sanitarium several years past. William was almost sure of it. Why else would he wear such ridiculous clothes? He pretended to fiddle with his equipment: dumping gas into the mower, removing the spark plug from the edger and rubbing at it with a little piece of emery paper. William wasn’t fooled. He guessed Yamoto’s apprehension, saw the little glances of unease he cast around, feigning interest in hedges, in crabgrass, in sprinklerheads, but all the time watching, waiting, sniffing the air.

  Clouds seemed to be gathering again. The street, which hadn’t been dry for an hour, was cast into sudden shadow. Distant thunder, faint and thin, almost like the tittering of laughter, blew along the street on the wind. William could just hear it through the cold window glass pressed against his ear. The sound of Edward and Professor Latzarel talking in the kitchen fell away into the murk, and every brittle clink and clank of Yamoto’s activity among the machines stood out clearly like a leafless tree on a barren winter hilltop.

  The gardener yanked on the rope starter, animating the mower, and set off across the lawn, throwing the heavy grass into a steel catcher. He was within an ace of disappearing from view, of vanishing beyond the curve of a hibiscus, when he turned his head sharply, as if having heard something—the scraping of William’s fingernails along the sill, the tapping of his wedding ring against the glass, or the faint rhythmic exhalations of his breathing. Then he was gone.

  “I say,” said Edward, materializing suddenly behind William, “there’s no need to bother with him now. He can’t hurt us, can he? Not as long as you stay out of sight. They’ve probably sent him around to smoke you out.”

  “Of course they have. There’s not a bit of doubt.” William fell abruptly silent, staring out past the drape, ducking back in alarm when Yamoto sped into view, sailing at the rear of his flying mower as if hurrying to finish before the rain began afresh. William knew it was a ruse. Mowing the lawn wasn’t the issue. It had never been the issue. They were afraid of him, of his power. They locked him up in a prison masquerading as a hospital, hired burly guards to watch him, filled him with drugs to keep him docile, and he walked out under their noses. He slipped into the sewers and vanished, puffo, like a magician’s coin, reappearing where he chose, in the doctor’s very cellar, blinking away again in an instant, befuddling a host of pursuers.

  Yamoto was afraid. That explained his peculiar behavior, his agitation. He’d been sent out on a mission against a phantom. William was an adversary whom Frosticos himself had failed to subdue. William would have a bit of fun with him. The worm had turned The proverbial shoe was on the other foot. He reached for the doorknob.

  “Really,” said Edward, touching his shoulder, “leave the man alone. He’ll cut their foolish grass and go along. He does it every week. You’ve got no quarrel with him, not today.”

  William brushed Edward aside. “They’re going to regret meddling with me. Starting now. This is no time to cower. They can smell it. Sniff it out like wolves, like carrion eaters. They feed on it, fear. A man has to act. Dignity is the word here. Self-respect. Damn him and his filthy machine, the scum-sucking pig. I’m going to make him a disappointed fellow. Mark my words.”

  William started to go on, but the look on Edward’s face gave him pause.

  “Think of Jim,” said Edward thickly.

  “I rarely stop thinking of Jim,” said William. “I’m fairly sure he understands me. And besides, I’m not going to go raging out there; I’m only going to make it warm for him, play on his superstitions.”

  A crack of thunder rattled the windows. There was a simultaneous wash of wind-carried rain thrown up under the gabled porch roof as the storm burst out afresh, driving rain and hail along the sidewalk in black showers. Water was running in the gutters almost at once, and Yamoto, his trousers glued to his legs, raced for his track, loading equipment into the back of it and fleeing before the storm, leaving the Pembly lawn half cut.

  “There goes the scoundrel!” cried Edward, suddenly elated at the arrival of the propitious storm. The threat had passed, at least for the moment. Edward prayed silently that it would rain for the rest of the day, for a week. There was more at stake here than William’s liberty. Quite likely far more.

  William looked saddened at Yamoto’s absconding. He hadn’t had a chanc
e at him. He had half a mind to play his hand anyway—to go out and hash up Mrs. Pembly’s begonias, to do a wild dance in the rain in front of her kitchen window—to strike fear into her. But Edward wouldn’t go for it. He could see that. And her car was gone. She wasn’t home anyway. He’d end up dancing in the rain just to play the fool. But he’d fix her somehow. In the night. She’d rue the day she cast her hat into the ring with the evil gardener.

  The whump of a newspaper against the front door burst the bubble of his reverie, and he looked out to see a newspaper boy, hunched over the handlebars of his bicycle, pedaling through the rain in a plastic overcoat.

  “That would be the Times,” said Edward. “Lets have a look at Spekowsky’s column. I’m convinced now that Ashbless drove him off on purpose that night at the Newtonians, then sucked up to him later.” He opened the door, plucked up the paper, and handed it to William, hoping to sidetrack him. William, half attending, opened the paper and thumbed around in it. Professor Latzarel wandered in from the kitchen.

  “There it is,” said Edward. “Page ten. Russ!” he shouted as William handed him the paper. Edward shook it straight, looking over the page. There was an article on a giant bullfrog—Bufo Morinus—that had been sighted chasing a stray dog, and another on new evidence for a tenth planet, which astronomers suggested might conceivably be flat like a disc, completely invisible when viewed from the side—a product of the fourth dimension. Another story, only a third of a column or so, concerned an uncanny discovery by commercial abalone fishermen of an entire latticework reef of human bones off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. It wasn’t known where the bones had come from, but it seemed likely that they’d drifted down on the longshore current into a declivity and had heaped up there into a strange and unlikely graveyard. Some were so utterly covered with polyps and hydras as to be unrecognizable, perhaps prodigiously old. A scattering of Spanish coins was found, leading oceanographers to speculate that among the skeletons lay mariners who’d met their fate on piratical voyages hundreds of years past There was the suspicion that Francis Drake had journeyed farther south than had previously been supposed. But what was baffling was the sheer number of bones—countless millions of them, heaped together in ivory spires in the midst of a forest of kelp. And in among them hovered thousands of squid, as if in a city of their own making.