Dark Waters, page 2
Brian hesitated. Then Ollie said clearly, “That’s mine, Ms. Battersby. I dropped it. School project.”
“Well, great,” said his mom. “Glad I could find it before it got wet.”
She held it out. Ollie glanced at her watch, as though for guidance. But her watch didn’t do anything, and Ollie marched over and took the black piece of paper from his mother’s hand.
“Hm,” said his mom, frowning at all three of them. Brian supposed they still looked a little freaked, from the darkness and the scratching footsteps. “Are you okay? Probably hungry, huh? Go get washed up. I’ll set the table.”
They went into the washroom. The second the door closed, Coco said, “Ollie, what’s that?”
Ollie was eyeing the thing in her hand with puzzlement. “A piece of paper. Look, someone charcoaled this side. That’s why it’s black.” She held up a black-smudged hand to demonstrate.
“What about the other side?” said Coco.
Slowly, Ollie turned it over. The back of the paper wasn’t charcoaled. There were a few words written instead, in delicate, old-fashioned cursive.
bell, it said. Then, dog saturn day flower moon.
And then, Consider yourselves warned.—S.
One shiver chased another up Brian’s spine.
“Who is it from?” whispered Coco. They looked at each other. “Is it—is it him?” Her voice went shrill. When they first met him, the smiling man had called himself Seth, and he had seemed nice. He wasn’t, though. Not at all. Coco’s finger traced the spidery cursive S.
Another knock broke the silence of the bathroom. All three of them stiffened, glancing instinctively at the bathroom mirror. But nothing moved in the mirror but them. The knock had come from the front door. Again? But the lights were on.
Brian felt the hair rise on his arms.
The front door creaked. They all held their breath. And then a chorus of adult voices—“So glad you could make it, come in, come in . . .”
They relaxed a little. “It must be your parents,” said Brian. “Dinner party time.”
Ollie was still considering the smudged black paper, turning it over in her fingers. “What do you think this means?”
“It’s a riddle,” said Coco. “And I guess a warning, like it says.” People often underestimated Coco. She was very small, and her eyes were pale blue and watery. She cried a lot. She was possibly the bravest person Brian knew. “The smiling man likes games and riddles,” she added. Coco would know. She’d played him at chess once, with Brian’s life as the prize. “Any guesses?”
They shook their heads. Brian frowned. There was something tickling the back of his brain. Something about bells. Bells and dogs and spots. Black spots? But it slipped away before he could grasp it.
Coco said, “Maybe our parents would know?”
The other two looked at each other. Their parents didn’t know anything about the smiling man.
Brian silently ran over a speech in his head. One he’d thought out a million times since that fall. Since the three of them—and their entire sixth grade—had disappeared into a foggy forest.
Hey, Mom and Dad. Remember when our whole class vanished for two days and then reappeared? When no one remembered what happened to us?
But me and Ollie and Coco lied. We remember what happened—
“No,” Ollie broke in fiercely. “We can’t tell them. It’s too dangerous. The smiling man messes with adults too. If our parents believe us, if they help us, it might put them in danger, and we are not”—here she stopped to glare around at her friends—“putting my dad in danger. Or anyone’s parents.”
“They’d want to know,” Coco pointed out. “If we were in danger. They’d want to help.”
“If they even believe us,” retorted Ollie, “how would it go? ‘Hey, Dad, you know that there’s this other world lurking behind mist and behind mirrors? A ghost world? Well, there’s someone out there who wants to trap us there, behind the mist, forever. Got any advice?’ ” There was a brittle, fearful edge on her voice. Ollie had lost her mother in a plane crash; Brian was pretty sure that for Ollie the thought of losing her dad too was scarier than any ghost world.
Coco said, “We don’t have to tell them where the riddle is from. Or tell them why we want advice. We could just say it’s a school project. I mean, it wouldn’t even be a stretch. They’ve seen our books about ghosts everywhere . . .” She trailed off. She was still carrying her current book, her place carefully marked. It was only one of the millions they seemed to have read since the winter. In not one of them was there a single clue about how to beat the smiling man.
“Not even then,” said Ollie. “What if they help us without knowing and that’s enough to put the smiling man onto them? We’d be cowards to tell them. Asking for help, putting them in danger, just to make ourselves feel better.”
“But I don’t want to be brave,” said Coco. “I want everything to be all right again. What if we can’t fix it by ourselves?”
“Nothing will be all right if they get hurt,” returned Ollie hotly. “Do you want lights going out and things scratching at our parents’ windows? What if our parents disappear?”
“We can fix it by ourselves,” broke in Brian. “I know we can. Eventually. We just have to keep looking.”
Neither girl said anything.
“We can,” he repeated, a little angrily. The last time they fought the smiling man, Brian hadn’t helped much. Coco and Ollie had outsmarted the bad guy, but Brian hadn’t even been there. He’d been trapped in a lodge that had become a strange, vast hall of doors, none of which led where he expected them to. The endless doors had kept him away from his friends until it was all over. It hadn’t been his fault, it had been the smiling man’s trick, but still. The memory didn’t feel good. Actually, more than a few of his daydreams since then had been of him, Brian, swooping in at the last second and singlehandedly saving Ollie and Coco.
After all, why not? He was smart and brave and strong. His parents were proud of him for a reason. He was strong enough to keep his parents safe, and to keep the girls safe too.
“Ollie’s right,” he said to Coco. “I don’t think we should tell anyone.”
When he took the paper from Ollie, the black circle left sooty smudges on the tips of his fingers.
“I think we should,” said Coco. “It’s all a game, remember? He’s probably expecting us not to tell anyone. We need to do something he won’t expect.” Coco was shy and Coco was gentle, but in the last six months, she’d gotten a lot better at standing up for herself. “We’re not getting anywhere with books. Guys, what just happened? The paper is a warning? A warning about what? We don’t know what he’s planning! We—maybe we can’t do this on our own.”
Ollie had her mouth open on a reply, but a bellow from the great room interrupted. Ollie’s dad, who had an enormous, cheerful voice, was calling, “Hey, you three mice! Are you asleep in there? If you want dinner, now’s the time. Pizza’s getting cold!”
“Um,” said Brian, sidetracked.
“Come on,” said Ollie. “I’m starving.”
Coco scowled. She had taken the black circle, was holding it between her hands. “I still think we should tell them,” she said to Ollie’s back.
“I don’t,” said Ollie, heading decisively for the door.
Coco looked at Brian. “We might not have that much time left,” she said. “We need help, Brian.”
“Yeah,” said Brian. “I do know that. But, Coco, what if—what if telling them just means he nabs them instead of us?”
Coco bit her lip. The two of them exchanged grim looks. They were passing through the great room by then, and Brian turned, half reluctantly, to look at the mirror that Ollie had covered up, the second they were alone.
“I can’t think, otherwise,” Ollie had told them, shuddering. “Sometimes, with mirrors, I imagine—I’m almost sure I see—things moving in there. At night. I keep thinking, if I go too close, it’ll pull me in.”
How much more of this can we take? Brian wondered.
He followed Coco, clattering, to dinner.
2
BRIAN’S PARENTS AND Ollie’s dad, Roger Adler, were standing around the island of the big, echoing kitchen that produced all the meals for the lodge. The adults had steaming mugs of something spicy-smelling in their hands. They all turned around as the kids walked in. Brian almost stopped in his tracks, because just for a second, the three adults looked at them with identical worried expressions.
“Hey, guys! Zelda’s working late,” said Mr. Adler, smiling. Zelda was Coco’s mom. Just like that, all three worried expressions were gone. Brian wondered if he’d imagined them. Ollie’s dad was wearing a tangerine-colored flannel shirt. He had the same eyes as Ollie: big and dark and kind. “She says to start eating without us,” Mr. Adler added.
“Good,” said Brian’s dad. “You all must be hungry.”
They sat around the kitchen table and helped themselves to pizza. There was pineapple and bacon for Brian’s dad and for Ollie. There was three-cheese for Brian and Coco. All vegetable for Brian’s mom, who liked broccoli on pizza, and a squash-and-mushroom-and-rabbit one for Ollie’s dad, who always got the weirdest pizza on principle.
“Amazing,” said Mr. Adler, chewing. “We need to hit White Rock Pizza more often. What do you think, kids? Hope you didn’t drink too much hot chocolate.”
“We didn’t,” said Coco, swallowing before she answered. Coco was very polite. “The pizza is yummy.” She was still frowning, her eyes downcast. Probably thinking of the smiling man. Or that black circle.
Black circle . . . Why did that ring a bell? Black circle, black spot . . . which had something to do with . . . bells?
No, gone again.
Brian, eating and thinking, felt his mom’s gaze, like an itch on his forehead. He wondered what she was worried about. It couldn’t be about him, could it? He’d tried so hard not to worry his parents.
But what if they’d noticed something anyway?
Or had they seen something? Driving up? A cold clutch of fear hit his stomach. What if they’d seen whatever was outside? What if it came back that night and scratched on their window?
“Okay,” said Ollie’s dad. “New joke: what did the fisherman say to the magician?”
Mr. Adler loved awful jokes. Brian’s dad frowned with concentration. Everyone else at the table groaned. The dads had a shared interest in bad jokes. They were a terrible influence on each other.
“Don’t know,” said Brian’s dad. “What?”
“Pick a cod, any cod,” said Mr. Adler happily. They both laughed.
Brian’s mom sighed.
“All right,” said Brian’s dad. “I’ve got one. What did one ocean say to the other?”
“Ooh,” said Ollie’s dad. “Lemme think . . .”
Brian sighed. “They just waved,” he said.
“Oh, of course they did!” said Ollie’s dad, with delight.
“So,” said Brian’s mom, breaking in. “Ollie, I hear you are a great softball player.”
Ollie swallowed her bite. “I was,” she said. “Or, am, I guess? I didn’t join the team this spring.”
Ollie had thought about joining, Brian knew. She’d quit softball after her mom died but had been slowly getting back into her old hobbies. She and Coco played chess sometimes after school. But sports had seemed a little silly when they were desperately researching how to save themselves from a monster. Brian had just finished the worst hockey season of his life. It was hard to play hockey when you were scared all the time. And now they had this black circle with the riddle on one side. A warning, if S was to be believed.
What do we do?
A knock boomed against the front door. All three kids jumped. Brian saw his mother’s eyes narrow. He tried not to look nervous. “Hello?” called a voice from the entryway. There was a thump of someone pulling off boots, and then Coco’s mom came in, fair hair sticking to her face with the wet outside. “Wild night, huh? Hi, sweetie,” to Coco. “Hey, everyone.” She kissed the top of Coco’s head and took a seat to a chorus of hellos. Since Ollie, Brian, and Coco had become friends, their parents had too.
“Have some pie, Zel,” said Mr. Adler. Coco’s mom passed a plate.
“Hi, Mom,” said Coco, swallowing.
Coco’s mom started on her pizza. She was a reporter for the Evansburg Independent. Her hair, neatly braided, was blonder than Coco’s, and she wore a woolly sweater instead of a flannel shirt. Her nose was freckled, her expression serious. “This is fantastic. Now, I need an honest opinion here. What do you all think about boats?”
“Huh?” they all said.
“I like boats,” said Brian, after a pause, relieved to talk about something not related to himself and the girls. Maybe it would stop his mom from looking worried. “I’ve been in canoes a lot, and I sailed last time we went to see my cousins in Kingston.” Brian had been born in Jamaica; his family moved to East Evansburg when he was a toddler.
“I’ve canoed a lot too,” chimed in Ollie. “No sailing, though.”
“Why do you ask?” asked Brian’s dad. “I used to sail all the time as a boy.” His expression went far away for a second, and Brian figured he knew what his dad was remembering: all those trips to Kingston, when Vermont was dark and icy cold. He wished he was there now, but they’d already gone for a week in February. Somehow, terrible mysteries didn’t seem like they could get ahold of you under the warm sun, in the middle of sun-bright water.
“Oh, that must have been lovely,” said Coco’s mom to Brian’s dad. “I’m not thinking of anything that remarkable, though—take a look at this.”
She pulled a brochure from her bag and handed it around.
Brian examined it. On the front was a drawing of a bright green creature that looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a dragon. It was swimming, with a big toothy smile.
Over this picture were the words
MEET CHAMP: THE LEGENDARY MONSTER OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
Brian snorted. Champ was the Vermont Loch Ness monster. There were lots of Vermont restaurants and car washes called Champ’s. Ollie peered over his shoulder. “I met Champ at a baseball game when I was five years old,” she said. “He was furry and green and wore a striped jersey.” Champ was, among other things, the mascot of Vermont’s minor league team.
“Well,” said Coco’s mom. “If you open the brochure, there’s this guy, Dane Dimmonds—he owns a boat named Cassandra on Lake Champlain. Sails out of Burlington. He has a business called Champ Tours. Takes out tourists, tells people the history of the lake, points out places that are associated with legends of the Abenaki. And places where people have reported Champ sightings. Supposedly. Anyway. I’m going to do an article for the paper about Mr. Dimmonds. I’ll spend a day on the Cassandra, take his tour, and write about it. But the boat’s pretty big—I thought we could all go. Roger?” This was to Ollie’s dad. “Make a day of it. What do you think, kids? Win? Amelia?”
“Yes, for sure,” said Mr. Adler. “This weekend?”
Ms. Zintner nodded.
“I don’t think we have anything else going on,” said Mr. Adler. “Ollie?”
“Yeah!” said Ollie. “Sounds fun.” She eyed the black, streaming windows. “I mean, if it gets warmer and stops raining.”
“For sure,” said Ms. Zintner, and shivered too. “But the forecast is good this weekend.” She smiled at Ollie, and Ollie smiled back, a little uncertainly. Ollie’s dad and Coco’s mom liked each other. They like liked each other. Ollie hadn’t been okay with that at first, but she was trying really hard. So was Ms. Zintner. Sometimes they tried so hard that it was awkward. But at least they were trying.
Brian was delighted, imagining a day of open water and bright sun. Where nothing could get at them, nothing could knock on a locked door and scratch and leave creepy paper behind. A day of fun. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had fun. But he looked at his own parents and found them exchanging glances. “I’m sorry,” said Brian’s dad. “We have plans this weekend.”
Brian stared. He didn’t know about any plans. And he really wanted to go sailing.
“I didn’t know we had plans,” he said.
“We have to uncover the shrubs,” said his mother very firmly. “And weed the garden beds. Summer season will be here before you know it. And your grades are slipping. You need to stay home and study.”
Brian bit his tongue. It wasn’t like his grades were bad. Neither were Ollie’s and Coco’s. But grades were another thing that all three of them had let slip that winter. Brian didn’t want to stay home and study. He wanted to go sailing.
“I’ll study extra hard the day after—” began Brian, but even as he said it, he knew that it was no good.
“We’ll talk about it, don’t worry,” said his mother in the voice that meant no, and took a very decided bite of her pizza.
The conversation turned to a different topic, and Brian was left with Ollie and Coco shooting him sympathetic looks over the table.
3
COCO KEPT THE black circle. “I have some ideas,” she said, holding it by the corner as though she didn’t want to touch it. Even after the girls left and the circle was gone, Brian could still almost see it, floating in front of his eyes like a sunspot. Sun—he wanted to be out in the sun, on open water, where nothing could get him, or scare him, or snatch him.
“But why can’t I go sailing?” Brian asked his parents. “It’s not like I’m failing school. It’s not even like my grades are bad! B’s aren’t bad.”
