by Henry Clark
INDORSIA MUST NEVER DRAW ATTENTION TO ITSELF.
“I don’t think this is serial-killer stuff,” I added.
“No,” agreed Freak. “It’s more like mad-scientist stuff. I don’t see how that’s much better.”
“Somehow I knew how to open that door,” I pointed out. “Like we were invited in here. I say we meet him.”
“And I say we leave,” said Fiona.
We both looked at Freak. The final vote was his.
“The high bid on the crayon is eleven thousand dollars,” I said.
Freak looked at me narrowly.
“Fine.” He sighed. “Anybody who’s upset because he didn’t get his peanut butter doesn’t sound all that dangerous to me. Let’s go see what’s behind door number two.”
As we slipped out, I turned to close the door, and I thought I heard a tch-tch noise, like someone making a sound of disapproval between his tongue and teeth. I leaned back in. The swinging door reflected a flash of light into the room’s far corner—and I could have sworn the angled reflection looked a little like a floating ax. A woodchopper’s ax with no woodchopper holding it. I dove out of the room and tried to convince myself that Freak was right about my overactive imagination.
I caught up with my friends at the next door. Freak was already knocking loudly on it.
“Come in!” said an equally loud voice from the other side.
We opened the door to a brightly lit kitchen, with a stove and an icebox like the kinds you see in movies that take place when cars were a new invention. A workstation with an ancient sink built into it sat squarely in the room’s center.
On the far side of this island was Alf.
He was kneeling, so the only part of him we could see was his head. His chin was on the countertop. He flashed us a grin as we entered. “Just a sec!” he said, and tilted his head to one side. Pots and pans rattled around in the lower part of the workstation. After a moment he straightened up, holding a lemon squeezer triumphantly in one hand.
“I’m thinking of making lemonade,” he said brightly.
He came around the side of the counter and approached us with his hand outstretched. He shook Freak’s hand, then turned to Fiona and me and did the same. “Of course, if you’re the sensible people I think you are,” he added, “you wouldn’t accept anything to eat or drink from me, so maybe I won’t. If I made lemonade, would you drink it?”
We shook our heads in unison.
“No, quite right. And you were apparently quite hesitant coming down the hall. Possibly looking for trapdoors in the floor. That demonstrates an admirable caution. This is a promising start.” He looked at the lemon squeezer in his hand. “Maybe I’ll make some for myself later.” He put the squeezer down on the counter next to some lemons and a canister marked SUGAR.
Alf was a tall man with sandy-colored hair parted in the middle. Eyes as gray as the shingles on his house sat on either side of a nose that was long and sharp and looked a little like an eagle’s beak. He was wearing a tan tweed suit with a floppy yellow bow tie and a dark green vest with a pocket-watch chain looped across the front of it. He looked like somebody who rode around in a horse and buggy.
“Did you bring the crayon?” he asked.
Freak nodded warily.
“Excellent. We should probably check to see what the current high bid on the auction is. By the way, I’m Alf.” He pointed at me. “And you’re River. And you’re Fiona. And you’re… Freak.” He gazed at Freak for a moment. “That can’t be your real name.”
“Nope,” agreed Freak. Alf continued to stare at Freak, as if he expected Freak to state his real name, but Freak showed no inclination to do so.
Alf started across the kitchen, gesturing that we should follow. He led us through the house, up a marble staircase, and into an art gallery.
At least, it looked like an art gallery to me. Reproductions of famous paintings hung on all four walls. The Mona Lisa smiled at us; a skull-headed guy on a bridge screamed at us; George Washington crossed the Delaware like he was trying to get away from us. Mixed in with the famous stuff were portraits of people I didn’t know. One was a portrait of a beautiful woman wearing medieval armor. She had her helmet off.
Renaissance? I wondered, possibly because I had recently learned to spell the word. I looked more closely and noticed something resembling a modern army tank in the background. I decided the painting might be more recent than I thought.
“This one at the end is called Guernica,” Alf said, indicating a painting so huge that it completely filled the wall at the far end of the room. It showed, in what I thought was a somewhat cartoony style, a bunch of people and barnyard animals experiencing what was obviously a lot of pain and mental anguish. It looked like a panel out of a comic strip that Satan might have found funny.
“It’s by Picasso,” Alf informed us. “For me, it’s always been one of the all-time great works of art.”
Alf strode to the center of the room and waved his hand over a desk. Guernica disappeared. The eBay auction for the zucchini crayon appeared in its place.
“Whoa,” said Freak.
The painting was now a gigantic computer screen. Alf moved his hand slightly in the air above the desk and the image scrolled down to the latest bid. The high bid was still $11,000. Alecto was still in the lead.
“That’s not good,” said Alf quietly.
“This is very high tech,” observed Freak.
“Some of it is not yet commercially available, yes,” Alf agreed.
I studied the desk. It had the same dragon-claw feet as the sofa. Four other pieces of furniture in the room had the same kind of feet. Freak was right. The sofa was part of a set.
“What’s not good?” Fiona asked.
“The fact that GORLAB hasn’t put in a counterbid since this morning. It could mean he’s exploring other means of acquiring the crayon.”
“Like what?”
“Like stealing it. Did you bring it?”
Freak nodded, but otherwise didn’t move a muscle.
“May I see it?” Alf snapped.
Freak slid his hand into the cigar box without opening the lid too far. He withdrew the crayon and held it up.
“What else have you got in there?” Alf nodded at the box.
Freak grudgingly flipped it open.
“Oh,” said Alf. “You found all this between the sofa cushions? You could have told me you had the sock.”
Alf sat down and pulled off his right shoe, revealing a bare foot. He grabbed the sock and started to wiggle into it.
“What should I do with the crayon?” asked Freak, trying not to stare at an adult doing something completely bizarre.
“Put it back in the box. I just wanted to make sure you had it. And the double-six domino? Double-sixes are lucky.” Alf paused mid-sock-wiggle. He grabbed the domino out of the box, looked at Freak, looked at me, nodded slightly, and tucked the domino into my T-shirt pocket. “If I were you, I would carry it with me at all times. It’s lucky, like a four-leaf clover.” He yanked up his newly returned sock and reached for his shoe.
“What about the coin?” asked Freak.
“The coin?” said Alf, as if he were unaware of its existence. He looked back in the box. “Oh, the coin. Yes. That’s lucky, too.” He plucked the coin from the box and handed it to Freak. “That can be your lucky piece. Carry it with you at all times.”
I got the impression Alf was humoring Freak. Freak didn’t seem to notice. He tucked the coin into his pants pocket.
“So, Mr. Alf,” I said, eager to get back to the reason we were there, “you seem to know who the bidders are in the auction.”
“Let’s just say I have strong suspicions.” Alf finished tying his shoe and stood up. “Ah. That feels much better. And it’s just Alf, please.”
He waved his hand over his desk and Guernica reappeared. The painting didn’t glow the way a computer screen would. It looked like a real painting. I wasn’t entirely sure the technology was availabl
e even non-commercially.
“One of the bidders, I am absolutely certain,” said Alf, “is a man named Edward M. Disin.”
“Why is that name familiar?” asked Fiona.
“It’s the name of the place where my aunt works,” I said. “The Edward M. Disin Medical Center.”
“Yes,” agreed Alf. “Disin, and the very powerful company he controls, the Disin Corporation, put up the money to build the center. They’ve also donated cutting-edge computers and electronics to the Cheshire school system, the fire department, and the police.”
“Generous,” I said.
“Perhaps.” Alf pinched the air above his desk. Guernica disappeared again. It was replaced with an aerial view of rolling countryside. Alf wiggled his fingers and the picture zoomed in on a charcoal-gray blotch of land surrounded by vibrant autumn colors.
“Recognize this?” he asked.
“That’s Hellsboro,” Fiona said immediately.
“Yes. Hellsboro. The reason Edward M. Disin is so generous to your little town of Cheshire.”
CHAPTER
07
Doghats
The image is refreshed every three seconds,” Alf informed us. “So you’re seeing this practically in real time. It’s coming off the satellite surveillance net. I’d ask you to sit, but the sofa’s gone walkabout.”
He gestured vaguely at an area directly in front of the desk. I looked down at the carpet and saw four indentations where the sofa’s feet had once rested. I thought the rectangle formed by the indentations seemed remarkably clean. And free of dust bunnies.
“You’ve hacked into the data streams coming from government surveillance satellites?” Fiona asked, turning into what Freak liked to call Science Girl.
“It isn’t hard to do,” Alf admitted. “It helps me keep track of what’s going on in the neighborhood. Here. Look at how close we can get.”
Alf made some more wizardly gestures over his desk. Hellsboro filled the screen. White concrete buildings and enormous storage tanks were visible in Hellsboro’s center.
“Rodmore Chemical,” I said. I felt a little sick saying it. My parents had both worked for Rodmore. Thinking of the place made me think of them. One of the photographs I had of them showed them at the company picnic. A big Rodmore banner was visible over their heads. Some people in town got angry when they heard the name Rodmore. Whenever I heard it, I just got depressed.
Alf magnified the image even more. It was as if we were seeing things only fifty feet or so below us. The cracks in the pavement around the buildings were clearly visible. Broken glass glistened here and there. Suddenly, a blurred canine-looking shape appeared in the right-hand corner of the picture.
“Is that a coyote?” Freak asked.
“Could be,” Alf said dryly. “An unnaturally large coyote. How much do you know about what caused the Hellsboro fire?”
“It’s never been proven,” I said, “but a lot of people think the factory had been dumping some sort of waste chemicals into the soil, and after a while they somehow caused the coal to ignite.”
“Correct,” Alf said. “Here’s an aerial picture of the area before the fire started,” he went on, changing the picture on the screen to one that was much greener. “That’s Rodmore in the center. To the north is most of the town of Cheshire. To the west is the Sunnyside housing development. You can just make out the Underhill place, where we are now, at the extreme left. This was thirteen years ago.”
Alf massaged the air above the desktop, and a transparent pink blob appeared on the screen, centered on the Rodmore factory. “Rodmore starts dumping some sort of chemical substance into the grounds around the factory, and by the end of the first year the underground plume—that’s the word for a spreading spill beneath the surface—the plume extends about this far. Another year and it’s expanded to this”—the pink blob grew—“and by the third year it’s under half the houses in the Sunnyside development.”
Red dots appeared on five of the houses in the photograph. One of the houses was Freak’s. Freak, who had been pacing and showing signs of boredom, suddenly stood very still.
“Whatever else the plume may have been,” said Alf, “it was definitely toxic. The dots represent five incidences of leukemia, all occurring within the space of eighteen months, all within a half mile of one another. Statistically improbable. The dot on that house—”
“Yeah,” said Freak, rather forcefully. “That’s my sister. And she was more than just a dot on some stupid photograph. Why are we talking about this? What has this got to do with the crayon?”
“The crayon,” Alf said, slowly and deliberately, “as improbable as it may sound, could be the key to bringing to justice one of the people responsible for the Rodmore chemical dumping. And, by extension, bringing to light some of the mischief it caused.”
“Mischief?” said Freak, as if the word didn’t come anywhere near describing it.
“Criminal mischief, yes. Crimes, if you prefer.”
“Who are you?” demanded Freak.
Alf stepped around the desk and faced the three of us, the big screen at his back.
“I am someone who has been living in this house ever since its previous owner passed away. I have been keeping my eye on the allegedly abandoned Rodmore Chemical site, monitoring events in the town, and waiting for an opportunity like this to present itself. I cannot undo the damage that has already been done, but I might possibly be able to prevent worse damage from happening in the future.”
“Who do you work for?” I asked.
“I am self-employed.”
“You put the crayon in the sofa,” stated Freak. “And then you put the sofa out front, knowing we would sit on it.”
“I can’t take credit for that. It was mainly the sofa’s idea.”
“And you deliberately say off-the-wall things.” Freak came as close to yelling as he ever did. “And wear only one sock, and dress like you don’t know what century it is, because you’re trying to come across like Willy Wonka, or the Wizard of Oz, or somebody who hangs around with Muppets, because you figure we’re dumb kids and this will somehow charm us and make you our friend!”
Behind Alf the screen reverted to the real-time satellite image of Rodmore Chemical. The unnaturally large coyote was clearly visible. In three-second increments, it walked up the steps of one of the buildings and disappeared inside.
“I thought a few eccentricities might put you at your ease,” said Alf, oblivious to what was going on behind him. The satellite image started to drift west. It left the chemical plant and started moving slowly over Hellsboro, showing the cinder-covered surface. “I thought you might be afraid of a lone man living in a rambling old house. My sister tells me I come across as somewhat intense. I thought throwing in a few odd mannerisms and the random non sequitur might reassure you.”
“You mean, convince us you were harmless?” asked Freak.
“Yes. Did I overdo it?”
The three of us just stared at him.
“Does your sister live here with you?” I asked. I thought I had heard a faint tch-tch while Alf was explaining toxic plumes. Apparently, I was the only one who had heard it.
“No,” Alf said slowly, as if “no” didn’t fully answer the question. “I live here by myself. There’s just me—and you, my three guests.” Alf stretched out his arms, as if he might hug us. “I was hoping to gain your trust or, at the very least, hold your interest.”
“Is that my house?” said Fiona, craning her neck to see past Alf. He turned and looked.
The image showed an L-shaped house with a tan-shingled roof. A swing set in the backyard cast a skeletal shadow on a wading pool’s greenish water. It was unmistakably Fiona’s house—I could tell by the fake wishing well on the front lawn. The image refreshed, and suddenly two large dogs were standing next to the well.
“Oh, dear,” said Alf.
“What are those?” Fiona walked closer to the screen.
“At a guess,” said Alf, “I
’d say they’re supposed to be an Irish setter and a Newfoundland.”
We all moved closer to the screen and squinted at it.
“Supposed to be?” I said.
“What they really are,” Alf explained, “are two men wearing narrow umbrella-like hats, the tops of which have been designed to look like dogs when seen from above. They know that at this hour of the day, in this particular neighborhood, there’s probably nobody around to observe them at street level. But they’re not entirely sure there isn’t someone monitoring the satellite images. So they’re taking the precaution of wearing the hats. This is why I asked you to stay under the trees when you came up to the house. You never know who might be watching.”
During Alf’s speech, the image had refreshed several times. The dogs had moved around each other and progressed to the side of the house.
“That dog just smelled the other dog’s butt!” Fiona declared.
“Yes,” said Alf admiringly. “They’re very professional.”
“What are they doing outside my house?”
“I’m pretty certain they’re about to break in, looking for the zucchini crayon.”
Fiona made a little strangled noise at the back of her throat.
“But the zucchini crayon is here with us,” I said.
“They don’t know that. All they know is the computer that originated the auction is located at the address they’ve come to. It’s perfectly logical for them to assume the crayon is inside the house.”
“We have to call the police!” shouted Fiona. She started rummaging frantically in her bag for her cell phone.
“I’m afraid,” said Alf, loudly and forcefully enough to make her pause, “there will be a considerable delay before you get through to them. This is what comes of accepting gifts of communication equipment from a company like the Disin Corporation. The doghats will have ample time to break in, search the place, and be on their way.”
“What if we call the dogcatcher instead?” suggested Freak, as if he were finding the whole thing a joke.
