by Funaro, Greg
The yawning chamber was a bedlam of activity. The furnaces blazed fiercely, bathing the walls in a frenzy of flickering shadow as swarms of giant mechanical wasps buzzed about in every direction. Some hammered and welded, while others crawled along a tangle of pipes that connected the Odditorium’s massive flight sphere to a smaller, glowing sphere in the center of the room. Father’s spirit prison. I could see Lorcan Dalach pounding on the walls inside, his form hazy and green behind a force field of sparkling yellow fairy dust as he struggled to break free. Gwendolyn spun madly in the flight sphere to keep her dust flowing to the spirit prison—but something was wrong. The force field was flickering and flashing as if it would fizzle out at any moment.
“Thank heaven you’ve arrived!” Father cried, rushing over. He took the largest of Nigel’s wrenches and handed it off to a wasp that was buzzing past. The wasp flew up to the engine room’s honeycombed ceiling, where it joined a cluster of other wasps and began tightening a pipe coupling that was leaking great spurts of fairy dust. The problem was clear. If the leak wasn’t mended soon, then the Gallownog would escape.
Father screamed, “Now, Gwendolyn!”
In a flash I saw her change into a monstrous, toothy ball of yellow light—the form in which she gobbled up nasty grown-ups—and then a blinding explosion filled the engine room. When next my eyes cleared, the force field around the prison sphere glowed steady and bright.
Nigel and I sighed with relief. Lorcan was secure.
Father raked back his hair. “Well that was a close one,” he said, and Number One, the queen of the wasps, flew down to him and handed him the coach wrench. Father thanked her and pressed some buttons on a nearby control panel, upon which all the wasps flew up to the ceiling and settled into their combs—their bulbous blue eyes shining down on us like stars.
“I’ve never seen a Gallownog before,” Nigel said, peering cautiously into the prison sphere. Lorcan Dalach had stopped struggling, and sat slumped in a shadowy green heap inside. “I thought he’d be a lot scarier looking, quite frankly.”
“Don’t let his appearance fool you,” Father said. “A Gallownog is one of the spirit realm’s fiercest warriors, and should he escape…Well, I don’t need to tell you how that would throw a wrench in our works.” Father tossed his coach wrench upon a pile of other tools, and a loud clang! echoed through the chamber. I flinched.
“I realize that, sir,” Nigel said. “But if you use this crystal ball to house the Gallownog, which one will you use to house the—”
Remembering my presence, Nigel caught himself and clamped his lips tight.
House the what? I wanted to ask. I knew it had something to do with Father’s secret plan to defeat Prince Nightshade, but I also knew the only way Nigel would ever tell me anything was by a slip of the tongue—which, luckily for me, he was prone to do now and again.
“I appreciate your secrecy on the matter, Nigel,” Father said, winding his pocket watch. “But the witching hour is fast approaching, and so the first phase of my plan will be revealed to Grubb very soon.” Father inspected a massive gauge at the base of the flight sphere, the needle of which read FULL, and then he hollered up to Gwendolyn to stop spinning.
Dizzy, the Yellow Fairy flew out of her dust-filled sphere and shook the cobwebs from her head. According to the gauge, the Odditorium’s flight reserves and its new spirit prison would be charged for quite some time. And as a reward for her hard work, Father tossed Gwendolyn a large chunk of chocolate.
“Oooh!” she cooed, and flew up to her dollhouse (which was hung from the ceiling) and began munching away on the front steps. Father crossed over to the talkback and flicked its switch. “Cleona, darling, any sign of our destination?”
“The coordinates indicate we’re well over the English countryside now,” she replied. “But it’s hard to tell our precise location with all this fog.”
Father rolled his eyes and sighed. “What next?” he muttered. “Very well. Divert all power from the Eye of Mars to charge the searchlight, will you? We’re on our way up now.”
“Uncle,” Cleona said tentatively, “is Lorcan…well, is he all right?”
Father frowned. “You needn’t worry about him,” he said tersely, and flicked off the talkback. Cleona’s question had clearly irritated him. Had he noticed the banshees smiling at each other in the library too?
Father threw a lever on the wall, and the door at the top of the engine room’s stairs slid open. Nigel and I followed him up the stairs and out into the grand reception hall, where we found the Odditorium’s giant birdcage waiting for us. We piled in, traveled up through the reception hall’s ceiling, and then stepped off into the library. The empty birdcage continued upward, disappearing into the garret above, while at the same time Father’s desk slid back over its trapdoor in the floor. The three of us joined Cleona on the balcony—she was right about the fog. It was so thick that I could barely make out my hand in front of my face.
Father pressed some buttons on his pipe organ and a massive beam of bright red light shot out from below the balcony. It seemed to dissolve the fog on contact, cutting through the gloom and forming a sharp circle on the ground below.
“There we are,” Father said. He’d trained the searchlight on a ring of tall, standing stone blocks far off in the distance.
“Cor blimey,” I said. “Is that where we’re headed, sir?”
“But of course,” he said with a smile. “What better place than a hell mouth to catch a demon on All Hallows’ Eve?”
The Odditorium hovered high above the circle of stones. I counted at least two dozen of the massive blocks, some of which were joined together by smaller blocks resting across their tops, while others lay tipped over on their sides in the long grass. The searchlight cast the scene in a sinister red glow, but still it was impossible to see anything beyond the outermost stones. And as Lord Dreary joined Father and me on the balcony, Nigel and Cleona hurried off to make the final preparations for the evening’s adventure.
“A hell mouth, did you say?” Lord Dreary asked as he peered down over the balustrade. A sense of dread hung over the place, as if the very air here was heavy with fear.
“A hell mouth, yes,” Father replied. “Didn’t you ever wonder how Prince Nightshade made his castle fly?”
“What are you talking about?” the old man sputtered—he was as anxious about this hell mouth business as I was.
“I must admit, it took me a while to put it together,” Father said, thinking. “But those thick black clouds surrounding the castle’s foundation are what finally tipped me off. Demon dust, don’t you know, expelled from the castle’s exhaust vents in very much the same manner as the green mixture of fairy dust and animus is expelled from the Odditorium’s.”
Lord Dreary gulped and his eyes grew wide. “Demon dust?” he said. “You mean to tell me that Prince Nightshade uses a demon to fly his castle?”
Father chuckled and shook his head. “One demon could hardly provide him with enough power to fly something of that size. No, I should think the old devil would need at least a hundred of the little rascals to get his castle off the ground.”
“Good heavens!” cried Lord Dreary, and I shivered as I thought back on my imprisonment in Nightshade’s castle. Somewhere in its bowels had been an engine room much like the Odditorium’s, only instead of a flight sphere powered by a fairy, the prince’s engine room had a sphere that contained a hundred demons.
“So that’s why you were building a spirit prison,” I said in disbelief. “You wanted to capture a demon just like Prince Nightshade done!”
“Grammar notwithstanding, you are correct, my young apprentice. The circle of stones down there marks a hell mouth—a supernatural doorway, if you will, through which demons pass into our world. Problem is, the mouth only opens once a year and for a very short period of time.”
“At midnight on All Hallows’ Eve!” cried Lord Dreary.
“Which leaves us precisely thirty minutes,” Father sai
d, checking his watch. Lord Dreary and I exchanged a terrified glance. There was no denying it now. Alistair Grim actually intended to add a demon to his collection of Odditoria!
“But have you gone mad?” asked Lord Dreary. “Why on earth would you want to bring a demon on board the Odditorium?”
“Do not let the relative calm of these past few weeks lull you into a false sense of security, old friend. You know very well that Prince Nightshade is out there plotting his revenge. Thus, if we are going to defeat him, we must go on the offensive and fight fire with fire—or in this case, a demon with a demon.”
“You can count on me, sir,” I said, trying to be brave, and Lord Dreary nodded reluctantly.
“Very well, then,” Father said. “Prepare the Odditorium for landing, Grubb.” I gaped at him as if to say, Now? But he just winked and motioned for me to take my seat at the organ. And with a deep breath, I did.
I began to play slowly—a simple tune that Father had taught me to unfold the Odditorium’s spider leg–like buttresses and activate its vertical thrusters. I’d only been playing for less than a month, but Father said I was a chip off the old block. And as the massive mechanical limbs groaned loudly under my command, Lord Dreary patted me on the back and said:
“You’re a regular prodigy, Grubb Grim.” I didn’t know what the word prodigy meant, but it sounded good, so I changed my tune to make the legs crawl in midair.
“Show-off,” Father said with a chuckle. “Nevertheless, I better take over from here. We don’t want you growing up too fast.”
Father took my place at the organ, played a quick flourish, and we began to descend. Gazing out over the balcony, I could hardly believe my eyes. Father meant to land the Odditorium directly over the hell mouth.
Lord Dreary and I watched in awe as the Odditorium’s legs touched down in a perfect ring around the outermost stones. Father flicked on the energy shield, sealing off the balcony in a sweeping halo of blue, and the three of us hurried through the library and into the parlor, where Father summoned the lift. As we waited, I gazed up at the portrait of Elizabeth O’Grady above the hearth. How many hours had I passed studying it since my arrival? So many that, when I closed my eyes, I could still see every curl of my mother’s hair beneath her hat—every stone in her necklace, every twist in her flowing black gown. And yet, now that I’d seen her in the Black Mirror, for the first time her expression in the portrait struck me as frightened—her eyes brimming with some terrible secret that drove her away from Alistair Grim.
The lift arrived, startling me from my thoughts, and we all dropped down to the floor below and dashed into the Odditorium’s main gallery, where Father led us through a dizzying maze of magical objects—giant statues, piles of armor, cauldrons, goblets, and brooms—as well as towers of wooden crates, the tops of which vanished among the shadows near the ceiling. Many of the crates had been recently opened, their fantastical contents spilling out onto the floor in haphazard heaps of wonder.
It was in one of these heaps that Father began searching through a wide assortment of chests, some of which were gilded and adorned with precious jewels. Finally, he settled on an old wooden box about the size of a breadbasket. Compared to all the other boxes, it wasn’t much to look at. Then again, if there was one thing I’d learned in my time at Alistair Grim’s, it was that the most powerful Odditoria were most often things that, on the surface at least, appeared to be ordinary.
“You’re going to catch a demon with that box, aren’t you?” Lord Dreary said as we followed Father to the gallery’s main door.
“An excellent deduction, old friend,” Father replied. “And so it should come as no surprise to you that this box is called just that: a demon catcher. Used for centuries by sorcerers to rid themselves of evil spirits and whatnot.”
“The operative word being rid, Alistair!”
“Well, either way, let’s just hope it works.”
Lord Dreary gasped. “You mean you’ve never tried it?”
Father shrugged and unbolted the door, and the three of us spilled out onto the reception hall’s upper landing. A curved staircase stretched down from either side of the landing to the floor below; and as we descended the stairs on the left, I was distracted for a moment by the life-size portrait of Father on the lower wall between the two staircases. It showed him holding a bright blue orb of animus, but I knew the portrait doubled as a secret panel that hid the entrance to the engine room behind it.
A loud clanking sound echoed through the chamber. And had I not been so preoccupied with Father’s portrait, I might have seen the secret button he’d pressed to activate the large, chain-wrapped winch that was now rising up from the floor. I’d seen winches like it before at the coal mines back home, but still, my eyes grew wide in amazement. Was there no end to the secrets hidden within these walls?
Father pressed a button next to the front door and it slid open. Outside, I could see the Odditorium’s front steps silhouetted against the soft red glow of the searchlight reflecting up from below.
“The winch connects to an emergency escape ladder at the base of the front steps,” Father said, cranking away. “Once we’re safely on the ground, Lord Dreary, you’ll crank the ladder back up and close the front door. The Odditorium’s magic paint should repel any evil spirits that may try to sneak on board, but better safe than sorry.”
Lord Dreary’s face dropped with fear, but Father just smiled at him and exited through the front door with the demon catcher tucked snugly under his arm.
“Come along then, Grubb,” he called from the bottom of the steps.
“You mean I’m going with you, sir?” I asked in amazement.
“Of course,” Father said as he disappeared down the escape ladder. “Dangerous as it may be, this is your first quest for Odditoria.”
My heart began to hammer—in all the excitement, it never once occurred to me that I would actually be accompanying Father on his demon quest—but as I slowly made my way to the door, I remembered that Mack was still in my pocket.
“Better safe than sorry, sir,” I said, echoing Father’s words, and I handed Mack to Lord Dreary. It was common knowledge now that Mack was forbidden to go outside. Unlike the Odditorium, Mack’s animus was not protected by magic paint, which meant the doom dogs—vicious shadow hounds charged with fetching escaped spirits back to the Land of the Dead—would come after him.
“I don’t like this business one bit, lad,” Lord Dreary said with his hands on my shoulders. “Promise me you’ll take care?”
“I promise, sir.”
“We haven’t got all night!” Father called, unseen from below, and I bounded down the front steps to meet him.
Although the Odditorium’s spider legs had landed outside the circle of stones, the Odditorium itself was still suspended a good ten yards off the ground directly above its center. I slid down the metal escape ladder, and as soon as my feet hit the grass, Father called up to Lord Dreary and the escape ladder folded back into the front steps. Next, we heard the front door slide shut above us and all was deathly silent. I shivered.
“It’s good that you’re afraid,” Father said, reading my thoughts. “Fear keeps the senses sharp. And in time you’ll learn to channel that fear into something sharper.”
“If you say so, sir,” I said, and we sat down upon one of the fallen stones. The wind hissed eerily through the grass and a crow cawed far off in the distance. My heart skipped a beat. Crows never caw at night, I thought—not to mention that Prince Nightshade had an entire flock of them trained to track doom dogs. What if the prince was watching us now?
I closed my eyes and tried to push the idea from my mind.
“Are you happy here, son?” Father asked, and I glanced around, confused. Who could be happy in such a dreadful place? “At the Odditorium,” Father added. “With me.”
“But of course, sir. I haven’t been this happy since before Mrs. Smears died.”
“You still miss her, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I said—then added quickly, “But not nearly as much as I did before I come to live with you, sir.”
Father smiled, but I could see in his eyes that he’d grown sad. He often looked that way when I talked about my life with the Smearses. It was more than pity. Alistair Grim felt guilty about all the time lost between us, and nothing I ever said seemed to make it better for him. But still, I always tried.
“You know,” Father said, changing the subject, “when I was your age, one of my favorite things to do was fish. You ever been? Fishing?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. A delightful experience, really—the silence, the anticipation. Much like this, in a way. One of our grooms—this was at the old manor house, of course—he taught me how to catch the big ones. Showed me a secret spot and used to lend me his pole when my father was away. He thought fishing an idle pastime, my father. A waste of mental energy, he called it. But still, I always wished he would join me. Magic is much more fun when you’ve got someone to share it with, don’t you think? And to be sure, there was nothing quite so magical to me back then as fishing. The mystery lurking there unseen beneath the water, the excitement of that first nibble on your line.”
Father squinted up at the Odditorium. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” he said. “In spite of all the Odditoria I’ve collected over the years, deep down I’ve always known there’s more magic in things like that—simple things, like a lad with his fishing pole—than anything up there.”
Father seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then, as if remembering my presence, he abruptly cleared his throat and said, “I suppose what I’m trying to say is, when all this is over—and I promise you, one day it will be—well…I’d like to take you. Fishing, that is. Would you like to go, Grubb?”
“I should like that very much, sir,” I said, and as if by magic, all my fear seemed to vanish in an instant.
Father sighed with relief and raked his fingers through his hair. “So it’s settled, then,” he said. “And please forgive my lack of eloquence on the subject. All this father business is still quite new to me.”
