by Henry Clark
CHAPTER
10
Compulsive Completist Disorder
The bus was late picking us up the next morning. I wondered if the sinkhole in Breeland Road had gotten bigger and the driver had been forced to make a detour. Without a sofa to sit on, we stood around at our old bus stop. It was just as well, I thought. Underhill House was no longer a place I was willing to turn my back to.
“So now, on top of everything else, there’s a ghost,” said Freak. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. He looked annoyed.
“The house has always looked haunted,” I pointed out.
Fiona, for once, remained silent. She was wearing orange plaid pants and a blue striped blouse. I wondered why Freak and I had never picked up on the color-blindness thing.
“The sofa tessered,” I said conversationally.
“The sofa,” said Freak, “got picked up by Max Schimmelhorn. The one we found in the house got moved by Alf, or somebody in the house we don’t know about.”
“You still don’t believe all this? You saw the ghost.”
“The ghost I have no problem with. People have seen ghosts before. It’s everything else.”
“Then, obviously,” I said, “we have to go to Rodmore.”
Freak shot me a glance. “Why obviously?”
“Because that’s where the proof is. Guernica says there’s a portal in the center of Hellsboro. Rodmore is in the center. The portal is in Rodmore. We find the portal, it proves everything else.”
“That’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had,” said Freak thoughtfully.
“No. The worst idea I ever had was saving my fingernail clippings to use as crescent moons on Halloween cookies. This is much better than that.”
“Eww!” declared Fiona, who had trick-or-treated at my house the year we gave out the cookies.
“Guernica says Edward Disin wants to bring invaders through the portal,” I continued. “Don’t you guys understand? We have to try to stop him! Because of things Disin has done, your sister is gone, Fiona isn’t twins, and I’m an orphan. I say we not only find the portal, but we take pictures of it and show the police. Or those EPA people. We get back at Disin. We stop whatever it is he’s up to!”
Freak kicked a stone across the road. It sailed into a patch of tall grass. Mucus popped out of the grass and went running down the road. Mucus was Stevie Shuck’s cat. He named it when he was five. He thought he was naming it Mew Kiss. The rest of us knew better.
“Yeah,” said Freak. “Portal or no portal, I’d like to nail the guy behind the chemical spill.”
“It’s possible,” Fiona said slowly, “the only reason Alf brought us into this is because he believes he can bring his dead sister back to life. By somehow using me as her new body. I seriously doubt it’s possible, but I don’t want him trying! Edward Disin might be an enemy to all of us, but Alf could be one, too.”
“I got the impression using you is no longer an option,” I said. “Miranda doesn’t want to go through having pimples again. Or something.”
“Riiight,” drawled Freak. “The talking painting you saw can’t get out too easily to buy Clearasil. Uh-huh.”
I started to say something, but he held up his hand. “For the time being,” he said, “we have to be very careful about who we trust. We have to find out as much as we can on our own. But River’s right. We should start by going to Rodmore.”
“We could really use more information about Edward Disin,” Fiona said.
“I got the impression that’s what Alf was leading up to,” said Freak. “We can’t say anything about Indorsia or portals or teleporting sofas at the meeting this afternoon. We have to let Alf talk as if Riv didn’t have his dream and Guernica never spoke to us.”
“I find it a little hard to believe the man’s furniture is doing things behind his back,” said Fiona.
“You should see my father trying to set up lawn chairs,” muttered Freak.
The bus arrived. Since it was only the driver and us, Fiona sat with Freak and me.
“So when are we planning to go to Rodmore?” she asked.
“We?” said Freak, arching his eyebrows.
“I’m going with you. I owe that much to Audrey.”
“But you’re the one who’s always saying it’s sure death to enter Hellsboro. It’s too easy to fall through the crust and roast to death, or inhale fumes and have your lungs explode.”
“You keep coming back,” said Fiona, getting as close to complimenting Freak as she ever did. “You said we have to be careful who we trust. I’m choosing to trust you in this case. You better not disappoint me. When are we going?”
Freak looked flattered. I didn’t see him look that way too often.
“The first cloudy afternoon we get. I don’t want us to be seen by any spies in the sky.”
“Clouds may not be enough to hide you,” said Science Girl. “If there are thermal-imaging cameras up there, they can find you by your body heat.”
“Yeah? Can they find me if the ground is warmer than I am?”
Fiona got a funny look on her face.
“No. You’d be invisible. Anybody would be.”
“So,” I said, to prove I was keeping up, “if you wanted to hide what you were doing from a heat-sensitive camera in the sky, the smartest thing you could do would be to do whatever it was you were doing in the middle of a coal-seam fire.”
“Yes, it would,” Fiona conceded.
“I wonder if they started the fire deliberately?”
“The fire was an accident,” Fiona said. She did not sound entirely sure of herself.
“That’s what we’ve always been told,” I agreed. “That’s what everybody has always believed. What if all that stuff the chemical plant was pumping into the ground for all those years wasn’t just them getting rid of waste? What if the stuff was, like, I don’t know—lighter fluid? And it was being pumped into the ground deliberately to make it easier for them to start the fire?”
“Bravo,” said a small, soft voice that belonged to none of the three of us.
The bus was pulling into its second stop, so the voice might have come from one of the kids waiting outside, but I was pretty sure it didn’t. I could tell from the looks on Freak’s and Fiona’s faces that they had heard it, too. Fiona had only a moment to look mystified, and then she was scrambling six seats back to make it look like she hadn’t been with us.
“Who said ‘bravo’?” asked Freak.
I shrugged. It certainly wasn’t the strangest thing that had happened to us recently. But I added it to the list.
“This is Edward Disin,” said Alf. A photograph of a man appeared in the center of Guernica’s screen.
It was later that afternoon. The three of us were back in the gallery of Underhill House, where Alf had greeted us at the door this time. He had made a great show of closing it behind us. He said he had reason to believe more than one raccoon had gotten in the day before, and there might be at least one still running around the house. They were noisy things. They screamed like banshees. This was as close as he came to mentioning the previous night’s commotion. As we’d followed him to the gallery, I’d kept pivoting on my heel, doing quick 360s, looking for ghostly librarian-lumberjacks.
The photograph on the screen was a head-and-shoulders shot. The man had black hair and a thin mustache.
“At least,” continued Alf, “this is how Edward Disin looked two years ago. He has gotten into the habit of changing his appearance on a periodic basis. He’s the man whose name is on your medical center. He donated—or I should say his company donated—most of the money to build it.”
“His company is Rodmore Chemical?” I asked. Fiona and I were sitting in the two chairs that matched the missing sofa. I wanted to put my feet up. I thought it was a pity the hassock had been lost in a fire. Freak stood behind me with his arms folded and a defiant look on his face.
“No. His company is the much larger company that, at one time, owned Rodmore. His comp
any is the Disin Corporation. You may be more familiar with one of their subsidiaries, Disin Tel. The cell phone people. They also own Agra Nation® Foods.”
I leaned forward, pretended to pull up my sock, and fed a dust bunny to the chair. I had brought dust bunnies from home. I was hoping my aunt wouldn’t miss them.
“The Disin Corporation and its subsidiaries donated every computer and computer peripheral used at your police station, at the public library, and in all the schools, including the scanners and cameras used by the school newspapers.” Alf shook his head disapprovingly.
“This is a bad thing?” I asked.
“This is a very bad thing.”
A second photograph joined the one of Edward Disin. It was an action shot of Morgue MacKenzie making the winning touchdown in the big game against Flanders. It was the missing picture that had caused Fiona to be bathed in shimmering pink Jell-O the previous day.
Fiona jumped up, and I could tell from the look on her face she had forgotten all about impending invasions and the possible enslavement of her neighbors. Her eyes were riveted to the screen.
“It enables the Disin Corporation,” continued Alf, “to wirelessly monitor whatever is done with those computers, open anybody’s e-mail, and censor any photograph taken with those cameras.”
“I saw that picture disappear from the camera!” Fiona announced. She turned an angry face on Alf. “They took it? Why?”
“I suspect they deleted this photo, and three other photos taken around the same time, because of this—”
The picture zoomed in on an area of sky directly over Morgue’s head. What had looked like a bird turned out to be, under magnification, a black helicopter.
“What? They didn’t like the helicopter?”
“That is a stealth helicopter. It is unmarked, rubber-coated, and does not show up on radar. I’m sure the last thing the Disin Corporation wants is for it to be photographed.”
“Whumpa-whumpa,” said Freak under his breath, remembering the sound he had heard coming from Hellsboro. It made me think he might finally be starting to believe in the Disin conspiracy.
“If these people deleted the photographs,” said Fiona, a dangerous edge in her voice, “how is it that you have them?”
“Sometimes Guernica and I get lucky stealing things back from them.” Alf sighed. “Sometimes we don’t.”
“So you’re trying to get this Edward Disin guy,” said Freak, “because his company caused Hellsboro and he’s spying on everybody. What’s that got to do with the zucchini crayon?”
“The crayon is bait to lure Disin away from his untouchable retreat on the other side of the world back here to America, where he can be apprehended and locked up for what I hope will be a very long time. Or, if not a long time, a short time of sufficient duration.”
“He likes crayons?”
“He likes things that complete collections. He has CCD. Compulsive Completist Disorder. It’s an Achilles’ heel I’m hoping will lead to his downfall. Sixteen months ago he flew in and out of New York under an assumed name and a fake passport, was the high bidder at an auction at Christie’s, paid them in cash right there on the spot, and flew home with a near-mint copy of Action Comics number one, for which he paid a little over one million dollars. Action Comics number one being?”
“First appearance of Superman,” I said.
“Correct. Two years ago, he did virtually the same thing for a single rare PEZ dispenser.”
“Why does he travel in disguise?” Fiona inquired.
“Because he’s wanted by the United States government. If he’s ever caught on American soil, he can be tried, convicted, and incarcerated. Currently, he’s only wanted for tax evasion. But getting him behind bars on any pretext would be a step in the right direction.”
“So he’s this, like, billionaire?” asked Freak.
“Several times over. He’s one of the fifteen richest people in the world.”
“So why doesn’t he just hire somebody to come here and buy his comic books and his PEZ dispensers for him?”
“Because that’s not how Compulsive Completist Disorder works. Once the collector’s fever hits you, you have to drop everything you’re doing to pursue the thing you have to collect. The closer you get to obtaining it, the more powerful the compulsion gets. Whether you’re in the middle of eating dinner, or performing brain surgery, or on your honeymoon, or—”
“Conquering the world?” suggested Freak.
Alf shot Freak a glance. “Interesting choice of example. Yes, you would drop even that, until you had acquired whatever the thing was you were after. And you can’t delegate. The fever doesn’t break until you’ve had the satisfaction of acquiring the thing yourself. Two weeks ago, Disin had never even heard of zucchini crayons. Then an admirer sent him a gift—a Victory Garden box missing that one crayon. His need to acquire the zucchini has been growing ever since.”
“The man has an admirer?”
“Or someone pretending to be an admirer,” said Alf, looking modestly down at the floor.
“I’ve never heard of CCD,” said Fiona.
“That’s because Edward Disin is the only person who has it. It was developed in a laboratory as a virus by one of Disin’s opponents. She gave it to herself, then sneezed in his face at a cocktail party.”
“That means two people have it,” said Fiona.
“No. You don’t sneeze in Edward Disin’s face at a cocktail party and live.”
“Couldn’t this enemy have just poisoned him?”
I was surprised Fiona was so quick to accept the idea of Compulsive Completist Disorder. Maybe, like Freak, she was starting to trust Alf a little more.
“Disin has made himself immune to most poisons. He was given CCD to slow him down. Over the past few years, if he hadn’t been distracted by frequent involuntary treasure hunts, the damage he could have done would have been irreversible.”
“But he sent doghats to steal the crayon,” said Fiona. “He didn’t come himself.”
“I now suspect,” replied Alf, “the doghats were sent only to verify the crayon’s authenticity. Not to steal it themselves.”
“There are fake crayons out there?” I don’t know why I sounded shocked.
“Genuine articles are few and far between in this world,” said Alf. “In fact, now that you remind me”—he turned toward Freak—“did you bring the crayon with you?”
Freak had the cigar box with him. He flipped open the lid. Alf reached in and took out the crayon. He held it up to the light. He squinted at it.
“Oh, there, you see? What did I tell you? The color of the wrapper is off, ever so slightly. This crayon is a fake. It’s worthless.”
He snapped the crayon in half and threw it on the desktop.
CHAPTER
11
The Breaking of the Crayon
Are you out of your mind?” yelped Freak. “That was an eleven-thousand-dollar crayon!”
“That was actually a forty-seven-cent crayon,” said Alf. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a thin silver box. I recognized it from old movies as a cigarette case. He popped the lid open and waved the case in front of us, as if offering us the contents.
“Crayon?” he inquired.
Lined up inside the case were half a dozen dark green crayons. They were unused, with uniformly cone-shaped points. They all had paper wrappers labeled ZUCCHINI.
“All fakes,” Alf confirmed. “I had them made up two years ago, before I found the genuine article. It took me two years of searching to find the real thing. I did not wish to leave a trail, so I could not use the Internet. I finally found what may be the last genuine zucchini crayon in existence in a yard sale in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with the help of a private investigator.”
“You hired a private eye to track down a crayon?” Freak said, taking one of the fake crayons from the case and sticking it in his mouth like he was about to start puffing away on it. Alf snapped the case shut.
“
Opal Austin may be the best PI in existence. I highly recommend her. The real crayon is right here.” Alf pulled open the top drawer of the desk and withdrew a slender wooden box. He opened the lid, and there, nestled in a crayon-shaped incision in a slab of gray foam rubber, was yet another zucchini crayon. It looked exactly like all the others.
“At first I was going to try to lure Disin here with one of the fakes. Then I realized he would send a crayon expert on ahead, to determine if it was real or not.”
“A crayon expert?”
“Equipped with a portable wax chromatograph and an analytic ceroscope. He would have known it was a fake within thirty seconds. So I persevered until I found one of the original 1944 Victory Garden crayons. I put one of the fakes in the sofa. I couldn’t risk your accidentally breaking the original, or scribbling with it, or dividing it three ways.”
“Or smoking it,” said Freak, blowing an imaginary smoke ring.
“So you were right, the other day,” Alf continued. “The sofa was my recruiting officer.”
“I noticed it had a dueling scar,” I said.
“Yes, and a bloodstain.” Alf shook his head. “With Halloween coming up, it decided to go out as a pirate. There was no dissuading it.”
“You could have stood at the gate and offered us candy,” said Freak. “That probably would have gotten us in here just as easily.”
“You know it would not have. None of you is that trusting. I would not have been interested in you if you were. If I must have children around me, they should be bright children. You did exactly as I had hoped you would, creating a trail for Edward Disin to follow without making him overly suspicious. The moment you typed the words zucchini crayon into a search engine, you made him aware of your existence. His eye opened and it looked at you. As soon as you posted the auction, you had his full attention. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“So we did well on the test?”
“So well, in fact, that I’d like to offer the three of you a job.”
Alf sat on the edge of the desk and looked at each of us in turn. He seemed thoroughly delighted with himself.
