by Peter Nelson
Jordan stopped swimming. He stared up and across the water as Gusto threw off his trench coat. A blinding light shot out—twinkling and sparkling from his body in every direction. It was dizzying to stare at, and yet Jordan couldn’t look away. He was wearing Nessie’s Hydro-Hide. It had been fashioned into a tight-fitting body suit, like a second skin.
Gusto posed for a moment, grinning down at the glass-bottom boat. “Well? You still won’t show yourself and spare your friends, Grimsley? Very well. Because of your cowardice, they’ll suffer your fate, as well.”
“NO!” Jordan’s cry from the water went unheard as Gusto suddenly leaped into the air, twenty, thirty, forty feet, then—SPLASH!—hit the water like a comet crashing into the Earth. His body of light plunged deep into the cove. The water around the submarine and the S.S. Peek-A-Boo immediately began to swirl. Round and round, faster and faster, it formed a giant whirlpool. Both the submarine and the glass-bottom boat were pulled into a crazy circle, drawing closer to the center.
Jordan was also swept up and could hear the cries onboard the Peek-A-Boo. They were not the cries of children. They were the moans of elderly people.
FLOOOOOOSSSHHHH!
The descending whirlpool suddenly reversed course, acting like a massive water cannon. It blasted a solid funnel of water straight up into the air. The glass-bottom boat was nearly upended by the huge spout. Jordan was tossed and tumbled by the sudden blast. Dancing high atop the gushing geyser, in his sparkling Hydro-Hide suit, was Señor Areck Gusto, looking like a fallen angel.
31
“NOW WILL YOU SHOW YOURSELF, GEORGE GRIMSLEY?”
Gusto’s voice bellowed across Lost Man’s Cove from his watery perch as the S.S. Peek-A-Boo floated silently below. Gusto saw his submarine had been tipped onto its side from the deluge, and was beginning to sink. The scales on his Hydro-Hide flickered and shimmered, and he leaped into the air. The moment he broke contact with the spout, it collapsed, cascading to the surface. Gusto dived alongside it, racing the falling water back into the bay.
SPLOOOSH! As soon as he plunged into the cove, a large wave rose up like a great liquid fist, lifting the submarine high above the waterline and crashing it back down. Now upright, the sub bobbed in its own wake for a moment. Gusto appeared from inside again, slamming open the hatch as before, and stepping out onto the deck. He was carrying something large in his arms.
Squeeeeeee! The tiny Nessie’s soft, new skin looked slick and raw in the moonlight. She seemed dangerously vulnerable without her scales, especially in the clutches of such a powerful kidnapper. Gusto lifted her above his head and addressed them again.
“I offer you one last chance, George Grimsley! Come and sacrifice yourself in the Hall of the Chupacabra! I trust your old and feeble memory can still guide you there. If you do not come and lay yourself at my feet before the next full moon, your cowardice will cost you that which you have vowed to protect!”
Squeeeeeee!
“No!” Jordan yelled out. “I’m here! I’m the one you want!” His cries went unheard, drowned out by Gusto’s booming bellow:
“CANNONBALL!”
With Nessie in his arms, Gusto leaped from his perch and plunged into the water. For a moment everything was calm. Suddenly, a strong undertow pulled out to sea, as if Gusto was dragging the water away with him. Jordan had seen this before. He knew what came next.
“Get down! Take cover!” He looked back at the shoreline. The water was quickly drawing out to sea, just like Loch Ness, pulling him, the sub, and the glass-bottom boat out with it. He looked back toward the horizon. A massive mountain of water was rearing up at the entrance to Lost Man’s Cove. It rose higher and higher above them. Just as it was about to topple, Jordan dived as deep as he could under the surface of the water.
KERRRRRSPLOOOOOSSSSHHH! The avalanche of water crashed down, tossing all three vessels like they were toys. It violently pounded the shore, demolishing the crypto-zoo, uprooting its cypress stilts, and flooding the coastline.
Jordan was tossed around underwater like a sock monkey in a washing machine. When he finally came up for air, it took him a moment to get his bearings. He spotted the S.S. Peek-A-Boo on shore, upended in the flooded inland area of the swamp. The glass-bottom boat leaned awkwardly on its side against a thick cypress tree.
Jordan swam, then waded, straight toward it. The boat’s see-through floor faced him like a large glass wall. He feared the worst, until he saw some shadows moving through the muddy glass. The figures were huddled together, some helping others. The thick, muck-covered glass seemed to distort their features: their bodies appeared more hunched, their bellies thicker, their faces sagging. Of course, Jordan knew this was no distortion.
A hulking, black shape suddenly stepped up behind them. Bernard’s thick arms pushed the boat toward Jordan, off the tree. SPLASH! The S.S. Peek-A-Boo hit the shallow floodwater, soaking Jordan and revealing the shockingly transformed Keeper crew.
Not one of them appeared younger than eighty. Many were bald or balding, and the ones who weren’t had heads of gray, thinning hair. They stood hunched over in wet, undersized clothing, and stared at Jordan with wrinkled, saggy faces. He stared back, feeling as bad as he’d ever felt.
He opened his mouth to say something, but was suddenly interrupted by a loud, whirring motor. The fan boat drifted across the shallow floodwaters up to the S.S. Peek-A-Boo. Eldon scanned the sad, old faces. But rather than show sympathy, he was very businesslike, like a true troop leader after a fiercely lost battle.
“Is everyone accounted for?” he asked Bernard. “Anyone hurt?”
“It’s a miracle, but we all made it,” Bernard said. “A few bumps and bruises, but everyone’s in good shape. Relatively speaking.”
“Okay, then let’s figure our next move,” Eldon said. “We’ve got to get out of this area. There was a Chupacabra sighting the other night—”
The elderly people gasped as they scanned the trees and shadows. Eldon did his best to calm them down. “I’m sure he’s not in the area after the drubbing Bernard gave him, but we can’t be too safe. Bernard, I need you to get everyone back to the base immediately.” He looked at their sad and frightened faces. “I know this is scary and painful. The aftereffects of the Puddle of Ripeness aren’t pleasant, but I promise you the worst is over. When you get back to base, Bernard will give you each a full dose of elixir, but no more. Your bodies are older now. You have to ease back into this. It will take some time, but we’ll get you all young again.”
Bernard began helping the elderly back onto the S.S. Peek-A-Boo as Eldon checked the fuel on the fan boat. Jordan waded over to him but before he could speak, Eldon hollered over his head. “Bernard, I have enough gas to make it up the coast. I’m going to take it as far as I can, then find some way to head north.”
“North?” Bernard asked. “Where are you going?”
“To get us some backup. We’re gonna need muscle, as well as airpower.”
“Oh, no. Not those two . . . ,” Bernard said.
“I’ve never asked anything of them before. But then, we’ve never been in a situation like this before. Harvey Quisling did the unthinkable—giving Nessie the elixir could’ve killed her. I don’t know what the effect will be, or how much time we have. We have to move fast and find her.”
Jordan waded toward the fan boat. “Where is Quisling? Did you find him?”
Eldon answered Jordan without looking him in the eye. “He was tied to the outside of the building. I released him just in time. But when the floodwaters hit, I couldn’t hold on to him. He was swept away. I don’t know if he survived or not.”
Jordan had a horrible feeling in his stomach. “What can I do? Bernard’s got the others. I could come with you.”
Eldon looked at him with an expression that seemed genuinely surprised. “You’ve done enough, Jordan. I think it’d be best if you went back to your family.” He climbed into the captain’s chair and revved the engine. He zoomed off, leaving Jordan fee
ling worse than he did even a minute ago.
He looked up sadly and found Bernard’s big, friendly face. The Skunk Ape nodded toward the boat, and Jordan sloshed over and climbed aboard. He sat down, ignoring the angry glares. Some refused to look at him. Others stared off with shocked or sad looks in their eyes. But not one of them spoke.
As Bernard began to push the boat through the shallow waters of the flooded swamp toward their home beneath the lemon tree, Jordan shut his eyes and tried not to cry.
“How’s your head feel, dearie?”
Jordan popped open his eyes. He’d fallen asleep, but only for a minute. Cypress trees and swamp plants were drifting by as they floated through the inner swamp. He heard a rhythmic sloshing behind him, Bernard wading through the flooded Okeeyuckachokee as he pushed them along. Sitting beside Jordan was a very old woman. She took his hand and smiled at him. She turned his hand so it was palm up. Then she suddenly poked it with a sharp stick.
“Ow!”
She put her other hand on Jordan’s forehead. “No nerve damage; vital signs seem normal. I was worried with your recent concussion, and then being thrashed underwater . . . well, anyway, you seem fine.”
She stood with some effort and turned to shuffle away, stopping when she heard Jordan utter her name. “Doris?” The old woman turned back and he looked her in the eye. “It is you,” he said, his eyes tearing up. “I—I’m so sorry.”
Doris sat down beside him again and took his hand. “It’s okay, dearie,” she said. “I’m just glad everyone’s alive, and still together. That’s all that matters.”
Jordan didn’t feel any better. He kept thinking about Eldon. “You’ve known Eldon for a long time. Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?”
“I suppose if he could forgive me, he can forgive anyone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say, when we first met, I wasn’t very nice to him.” She gestured toward the others on the boat. “To any of them. And I got what I had comin’ to me. I would’ve throttled him that night, if I’d gotten my hands on him. Instead, I fell through those cellar stairs to what should’ve been a well-deserved, proper drowning. But after all the horrible things I’d done, he dived right in after me. And everyone thinks I’m the weird one.”
“You’re the caretaker! Eldon told me he never saw you again!”
“Well, in a way, I suppose that’s true. That was the last time anyone saw this wrinkly old prune of a face. ’Til tonight, anyway. I swallowed a lot of water when I got sucked under that house and flushed beneath that swamp. And when I popped out the other side, well, let’s just say the near-death experience took years off my life.”
“The Fountain of Youth.”
“When Eldon found me, he didn’t just see that I’d gotten younger on the outside. He recognized something good in me, on the inside. He saved me that night, but not by diving in after me. He saved me by forgiving me, and offering me a second chance.”
The old, gray, balding heads began to turn around to listen to the two of them. Doris looked up at them. “Truth is,” she said, “he saved all of us.”
32
SLLLUUURRP! As the sunrise began to paint the morning sky pink overhead, the loud, draining sound was the first clue that something wasn’t right. That, and how the waters were getting shallower as the S.S. Peek-A-Boo began picking up speed.
Bernard was suddenly working harder pulling on the boat he’d been pushing all night. He dug in his feet, but the boat began drifting faster, as if being pulled by some invisible force toward the great lemon tree.
A moment later, they were faced with a horrible sight. The lemon tree was gone. Where the massive trunk once stood was now a gigantic sinkhole, draining the entire swamp. The floodwaters that began with Gusto’s big exit had drained to this spot, and were rapidly swirling to form a wide whirlpool, as if someone had pulled the lemon tree out of the ground like a plug in the bottom of a bathtub. What was even worse to consider was where all that water was draining.
“HOLD ON, EVERYONE!” Bernard yelled from outside the rear of the boat. He clutched the back rail as they got caught up in the churning rapids and rounded the outer rim of the massive suckhole. The Skunk Ape looked around frantically for something to grab on to. He knew the swamp like the fur on the front of his hand—where every tree, vine, and shrub should be—but everything he knew had been submerged, swept away, or sucked down the sinkhole.
Each time they rounded the swirling spiral, they picked up speed and drew closer to the deadly center. It was impossible to imagine the destruction all of that water was doing below, and there was no time for Jordan to mourn the loss of Grampa Grimsley’s creation and the artifacts it held. They were out of control and about to be flushed into a swirling vortex—something had to be done.
Jordan jumped onto the back of his seat and leaped from the boat, grabbing a vine hanging from the high branch of a cypress tree on the edge of the whirlpool. The other passengers, assuming he was abandoning them to save himself, began yelling very unpleasant things, calling him all sorts of inappropriate names.
Jordan swung overhead, examining the tree holding his vine. He yelled down to Bernard, who had climbed up onto the back of the boat. “Bernard! Up here! Grab the vine!”
Bernard shook his head. “No! A captain always goes down with his ship!”
Captain? Bernard was choosing the worst time ever to pull rank on him, while failing to see the genius of Jordan’s plan. The boat sped around the whirlpool again, dipping closer to the center. He had one shot at this—by the next go-round, Bernard would be out of reach. Moving quickly, Jordan tied the end of the vine into a lasso, thankful that he paid attention to Eldon’s handiwork on their bunny-balloon ride. As the S.S. Peek-A-Boo came around, Jordan hurled the vine lasso straight at the cryptid’s burly neck. SPROING! It caught him around his thick, furry mane, and Bernard instinctively grabbed the vine above him to keep from choking as he was lifted off the deck.
As the boat made its final pass before it would be sucked down the center of the drain hole, Bernard’s massive weight and crazed flailing began to pull on the tree trunk. It leaned inward with a loud CREEEEEAAAAAK. . . . Then it fell. “TIMBER!” Jordan shouted.
KER-SPLASH! The tall tree fell across the center of the whirlpool, forming a bridge as its top reached the other side. WHUMP! The boat came around and slammed against the tree, jammed by the force of the water. Beneath the boat, Jordan and Bernard hung from the vine, dangling over the gaping mouth of the sinkhole. Jordan was above Bernard, and could see Doris helping the others off the boat, across the tree-trunk bridge and onto safe land.
Jordan climbed up the vine and reached the trunk just as the last of them stepped to safety. He heard another loud CREEEEAAAAAK! The glass-bottom boat was beginning to crack from the force of the water pushing it against the tree trunk. He jumped out of the way just as the boat broke in half and slipped under the tree, disappearing down the hole. Bernard swung out on the vine just in time to miss getting slammed by the S.S. Peek-A-Boo. Then he began trying to pull himself up the fraying vine.
“C’mon, Bernard!” Jordan cried out. “You can do it!” Jordan lay flat on the tree trunk, pulling on the vine with all his might. As Bernard got closer, Jordan stretched out his arm as far as he could. Bernard raised his paw toward Jordan’s hand. They reached closer . . . closer . . . SNAP!
The vine gave way. Bernard dropped, swallowed up by the vortex. He was gone.
“Nooooooooo!” Jordan screamed. He stared into the abyss where his friend had disappeared. He couldn’t believe it. CREEEAAAAAK! The tree shifted as it started to give way, snapping him out of his trance. Through tear-filled eyes he saw Doris and the others yelling from the edge of the whirlpool, frantically waving at him to cross. Glancing down once more into the swirling crater that took his friend, Jordan forced himself to stand. He ran across the trunk and dived onto the marshy swamp floor, just as the base of the tree slipped into the whirlpool.
Jordan sat at the edge and stared at the center of the whirlpool for a long time, watching the water slow to a gentle, circular current. It finally stopped, leaving his grandfather’s underground lair filled to the brim, forming a calm, tranquil pool where the great lemon tree once stood. For Jordan, it was a sad but peaceful resting place for his dear friend, Bernard.
After a while, Doris sat down next to him. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, dearie,” she said softly. “He was a great friend. To all of us.”
“I was his Creature Keeper while Eldon was away. He was my responsibility.”
“The two of you saved us. Wherever he is, he’s happy we’re all still here.”
Jordan turned. Standing behind him, soaking and shivering, were the fifty elderly survivors of the tragic sinking of the S.S. Peek-A-Boo. Many of them were crying softly, and Jordan realized he wasn’t the only one who would miss Bernard. He also realized that sitting there feeling sorry for himself was just the opposite of what his giant, smelly friend would do.
He stood up. “C’mon, everyone. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Doris asked.
“You’re going home.”
Mr. and Mrs. Grimsley stood arm in arm in the front hall, admiring the refinished wooden staircase, the freshly painted hallway, and the completely made-over living room. “I have to hand it to us, Betsy,” Mr. Grimsley said. “In just a little over one short week, we transformed a run-down, beat-up, abandoned fixer-upper into a beautiful home. We really tackled this challenge . . . together.”
Mrs. Grimsley grinned at her husband. “It’s more beautiful than I ever could’ve imagined,” she said. “Now all it needs are visitors, to come and enjoy the fruits of our labor!”
Ding-dong! The newly installed, two-toned harmonious door chime in the key of G major soothingly alerted them that someone was at the door. They opened it, together.
