The Curse of Eelgrass Bog, page 1
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Razorbill,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024
Copyright © 2024 by Mary Averling
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Ebook ISBN 9780593624913
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Cover design by Kaitlin Yang
Design by Alex Campbell, adapted for ebook by Andrew Wheatley
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_145816690_
To Mum,
for encouraging me to dream
from the very beginning.
1
I sneak back into the Unnatural History Museum at exactly two minutes past midnight, carrying a backpack full of bones. No one sees me. The town is half-drowned in fog, the ghostly kind that often creeps inward from Eelgrass Bog, and the watch fires burn low. Even the moon is hidden. I squeeze through a gap in the museum’s hedge, only stopping when my hair snags on a branch.
Kess, a voice hisses from my backpack. Keep moving!
“One second.” I yank my hair free. The hedge is getting wilder and meaner by the day. I need to trim it down before it swallows the footpath entirely.
Are we home now?
“Yes,” I say, “so please hush up.”
The Unnatural History Museum looms in front of me, a tumbledown mess of clapboard and twisted chimneys. Most windows have been covered by ivy, and on windy nights like tonight, I can hear the wood groan. It’s as alive as a building can be—for now. I have a pretty good nose for sniffing out dead things, better than most people, and I can smell the rot in the walls.
The voice in my backpack coughs loudly.
“Yes, yes,” I grumble. “Be patient.”
The front doors are too noisy to use, despite how frequently I’ve oiled them. They’ve had rusted hinges for as long as I can remember, and the doorknobs hang like loose teeth. But this is my home. I know every mouse crack and hidden entrance, including where ivy grows overtop an unlocked window.
I wrench up the sash and roll inside with a flurry of dead leaves. Once the window is shut again, I adjust my round-rimmed glasses and scan the gloom in case Oliver is awake and waiting to ambush me. Somewhere a leaky pipe goes drip, drip. Aside from a couple of spiders scuttling across display cases, everyone—and everything—seems to be asleep. Good. I take a big, relieved breath and instantly regret it.
“It reeks in here,” I say.
Obviously. That would be me.
I wrinkle my nose. “It’s worse than you.”
Oh. The voice sounds disappointed. Guess I have competition.
I tiptoe through the main hall, and my rubber boots creak against the floorboards. I don’t need a lantern. I know exactly where every exhibit is, even in the darkest dark. A chandelier hangs above my head, dripping strings of knucklebones, and behind me, dried kraken tentacles crisscross the wall like Christmas tinsel. I pass mandrakes, tusks, fossils spat from the deepest dredges of Eelgrass Bog. All dust choked and lifeless.
Up a staircase. Underneath a woolly whale skeleton that swims through the air on invisible wires. Around the bog mummy exhibit, because bog mummies are too creepy in the dark even for me. Along the third-floor hallway until I find a broom closet. Once I’m safely inside, door locked and candle lit, I sit on an overturned mop bucket and pull three things from my backpack:
A pair of magnification goggles.
A paper bag full of bones.
A pickled head floating in an oversize mason jar.
Finally, the head says. I was getting dizzy.
Even in an unnatural history museum full of peculiar things, Shrunken Jim is real ugly. Bulbous eyes, warts, and skin the same greenish color as pond water. I know dead things shouldn’t talk—especially not dead things who’ve had their mouths sewn shut for three hundred years—but “should” and “shouldn’t” often get mixed up in Wick’s End. Ever since my parents found him on Eelgrass Bog years ago, he’s become kind of like my best friend.
Go on, Shrunken Jim says eagerly. Look at the bones! Tonight’s the night—I can feel it.
“I think so too,” I say. And I really mean it. Stormy nights always turn up the best bones, and I went closer to Eelgrass Bog than I usually dare. Not quite past the watch fires, but still.
What about that long one? Shrunken Jim says.
I slip the goggles overtop my regular glasses and thumb through dials until the bones come into sharp focus.
“Hmm. It’s from a wing.”
Ooh, perhaps it’s a dragon! Or a vampire bat!
“Vampire bats are natural, silly,” I say, running my fingers along the wing bone. It’s a bit bendy, like a stiff shoelace. I squint extra hard and try to remember Mam’s teachings. She taught me all there is to know about bones, natural and unnatural, but I have the worst memory in Wick’s End. Sometimes it feels as though her lessons are moths that fly away through my ears at night.
So, I have to focus. Focus. Focus.
Carefully, I arrange the bones into a shape. Snarl-toothed skull, pebbly vertebrae, ribs, and femurs, until a skeletal creature starts to form on the floorboards.
Oh dear. Shrunken Jim’s mouth-stitches turn downward. That looks like . . .
“A badger,” I finish, sitting up on the mop bucket. “A common badger.”
What about the wing?
“Hawk, probably. Not from the same animal.” I tug off the goggles and wipe my watery eyes with my sleeve. “I—I was so sure.”
Next time, says Shrunken Jim gently.
A draft blows through, and the walls sag. I want to smile to show that I agree, except the Unnatural History Museum doesn’t have many “next times” left. No matter how grand it once was, no matter how much I love it, the museum is close to curling up and falling apart. It’s lonely. It needs people. Ever since my parents left on their research trip to Antarctica and put my brother, Oliver, in charge, we’ve been collecting plenty of dust and cobwebs and rot, but absolutely zero visitors. We desperately need to bring people back. We need something new.
Something like an undiscovered monster, dug fresh from Eelgrass Bog.
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” I say. “We need to give the storm time to churn up new bones, is all.”
Exactly, Shrunken Jim says, and I think he’s trying to sound confident too. I bet a truly abnormal creature is floating closer to Wick’s End as we speak. Big as a house, eighteen legs, purple bones—
A sudden thud cuts him off. We both go still.
“Hear that?” I whisper. A chill scuttles down my spine like a cold finger. Branches have been pounding the windows all night, but that noise came from inside the museum.
Sounded like a door slamming, Shrunken Jim whispers. Is Awful Ollie awake?
“Oh, vermin,” I curse. Quickly, I cover the badger skeleton and Shrunken Jim with my coat, blow out the candle, and peer into the hallway. It’s dark enough to swallow fireflies whole.
What are you doing? Shrunken Jim hisses. Hide!
“Hush,” I whisper. “It’s okay, I think it was—”
“Are you talking to your pet goblin again?
I shriek and accidentally slam the closet door on my toes, which makes me shriek a second time. “Gah! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
Oliver strikes a match, and light washes down the hallway. His eyes are baggy and angry behind his own wire-framed glasses. We used to look alike, according to just about everyone, except now he’s thinner than a rake and never smiles and forgets to wash his clothes. He reeks of compost, all mildewy and bitter like a dead thing forced back to life.
“It’s after midnight, Kester,” he says, as if I don’t know how to tell the time. “Why are you awake?”
“Um. I wanted a glass of milk.”
“From the broom closet?”
“I—I got lost. It’s dark.”
“No candle?”
“You know me, Ollie.” I shrug as carelessly as I can. “Always unprepared.”
His mouth pinches. “Don’t call me Ollie.”
“Don’t call me Kester.”
We glare at each other. Oliver is fifteen, barely three years older than me, but he acts like he’s the most sensible grown-up who ever existed. We used to get along, mostly. We’d put on puppet shows, catalog snails, and watch storms from the museum rooftop. Once, we bicycled to a traveling fairground together, and he bought a whole bag of caramel corn for us to share. Then Mam and Da left, and he’s been a sour-faced toad ever since.
“Unprepared,” he echoes. “But you remembered to bring your jacket, backpack, and goggles? To get milk?”
I scramble for an excuse. “Maybe I just— Hey!”
Oliver pushes past me and moves my jacket with the tip of his bare toe. Shrunken Jim winces. The badger skull rolls out into the hallway, stopping at my feet.
“Oops,” I say.
Oliver whirls on me, furious. “Where did you get these?”
I think about lying, but he already knows the answer, so I jut out my chin and say, “Eelgrass Bog.”
The museum’s pipes tremble. Oliver’s mouth pinches even tighter.
“How many times do we have to talk about this?” he snaps. “Strange things live on that bog, Kester, and not the sort of strange that fits into a museum. The mud will gobble the meat from your bones, and the witches—”
“Witches?” I say too eagerly.
“Demons. Remember, the watch fires are there for a reason. Go too far and you’ll be eaten alive. And you”—he glares at Shrunken Jim—“should know the dangers better than anyone.”
Shrunken Jim sticks his shriveled tongue through his mouth-stitches.
If Oliver is trying to scare me, he isn’t doing a very good job. I’ve heard all these stories and worse since I was old enough to remember. But Eelgrass Bog is where the bones are, and the nastier the monster I find, the better. Nobody comes to the Unnatural History Museum to see ordinary.
I cross my arms. “I didn’t go past the watch fires.”
“Sometimes the edge is all it takes.” Oliver waves his candlestick at the bones. “Get rid of these. And if you even think about visiting Eelgrass Bog again, I’ll—I’ll put a lock on your bedroom door.”
Go ahead, I want to snap. When Mam and Da come back, he can explain why I’m locked up and the Unnatural History Museum has gone rotten. Actually, there are lots of things I want to say to Oliver. I want to show him how loudly the walls are groaning, the cracks and too-thick ivy, the loneliness stitched up in every floorboard. I want him to notice how the exhibits are choking in dust because nobody else cares enough to clean them. I want him to realize how disappointed Mam and Da will be when they return.
Once, maybe I could’ve spoken to him properly. But there’s no point anymore. He won’t listen to me. No one ever does. I could be a wood louse, for all the difference I manage to make around here.
“Okay,” I say, hating how small my voice sounds.
He pushes up his glasses. “Good night, Kester.”
“Night, Ollie.”
I watch him go. My heart hollow-beats. Then I collect the bones into my backpack, grab Shrunken Jim’s jar, and tiptoe out of the closet into the dark.
2
I sleep for longer than usual. Ordinarily, I’m up at the crack of dawn to begin my chores, but I’ve been extra tired since summer ended. My dreams are full of flowers, of petals in impossibly bright colors and how it might feel to run barefoot through a garden. Not a prickly garden like we’ve got out front. I dream of the kind Mam used to grow, with lush green grass and blossoms, though I can’t remember if she kept roses or tulips. There’s nothing left but weeds now.
I slip out of bed and pull on knitted socks. The fog is thick as butter outside. I can barely see the wooden spines of our neighbors’ rooftops.
Look who’s alive, Shrunken Jim says from his perch on my windowsill. Good dreams?
“The best.” I put on my glasses, tug my fingers through my short brown hair, and fetch an envelope marked Stowell Base, Antarctica from my desk. “Be right back.”
The Unnatural History Museum is waking up too. As I shuffle downstairs, wincing at my sleep-stiff bones, pipes clank, and walls appear to shiver in the drafts. I try to greet as many exhibits as I can. Shrunken Jim might be the only unnatural thing in the museum that talks, but sometimes it feels like the preserved specimens in jars and cabinets are listening too. I guess it helps everything feel less empty, like I’m a little less alone.
The kitchen is the ugliest room in the whole museum. That’s a fact, not just my opinion. It’s a stale, used-tissue sort of old, with peeling yellow cabinets and an ancient fridge that always wails like a startled chicken. My parents aren’t cooks, and Oliver especially isn’t. I can’t remember the last time he set foot in the kitchen or a grocery store. I poke through the cupboards and find nothing but pickled cockles, black bread, and a box of crackers that looks older than me.
“Cockle sandwich it is,” I mutter.
I make two. I start chewing one right away (vinegary but not too bad), and the other I put on a chipped plate and bring to Oliver. On my way, I pick up a copy of the Wick’s End Daily from the front doorway. Pages are scattered over the steps, like someone threw it and ran away in a hurry—as usual.
“Ollie!” I bang on the library door. “Breakfast!”
“Go away!”
“I have your newspaper.”
The door clicks open. Oliver hasn’t bothered to comb his hair, and ink is smudged over his skinny forearms. He looks as though he belongs inside a museum cabinet, the type of exhibit that collects dust in the basement because it’s too shabby for display. He scowls at the sandwich. “Whatever that is, it needs to be burned, not eaten.”
“How can you tell it’s bad if you haven’t tried it?”
“There’s mold on the bread,” Oliver says. He reaches for the newspaper, but I step back.
“Nope,” I say. “You have to promise to eat breakfast if you want the newspaper. Package deal.”
Oliver’s lips thin until they’re practically sewn together like Shrunken Jim’s. “You aren’t Mam, Kester. They left me in charge, not you.”
“Maybe you should make your own sandwiches, then.”
“I’m too busy working.”
“On what?”
“You know what,” he says. “Paperwork. Same as yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.”
I scoff. “Mam and Da never spent all day with paperwork.”
“Perhaps you didn’t pay attention. Not everyone gets to play around digging up rat bones,” he says bitterly. “Running a museum takes practical stuff too. Ledgers, catalogs, lists. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I would if you explained it better.”
Oliver just glowers. “Give me the newspaper, and I’ll eat your moldy abomination. Then go away.”
I hand everything over. “For the record, I’m digging up monster bones. It’s not play. Also, can I have a stamp for my letter? I want to ask Mam and Da when they’re coming home and—”
“I’ll mail it,” Oliver interrupts. He snatches the letter from under my arm and stuffs it into his pocket.
“Fine. Just make sure you mail it soon, and also try to eat your whole breakfast, because Mam said—”
The door slams in my face.
I curl my toes. I really don’t know why I bother. I should let Oliver waste away doing whatever more-important-than-the-rest-of-the-world stuff he does in the library all day. It can’t actually be work. Otherwise he’d have something to show for it. I reckon he just enjoys sitting in the library like my parents always did, pretending to be scholarly and important, pretending to be grown-up. It’s annoying because my parents never locked the library—Da let me sit on his lap with my favorite atlas, the one with sea beasts lurking in the corners, and Mam let me help organize bookshelves in whatever order I wanted. Libraries aren’t tombs, they’d say. No need to keep them quiet and dusty. Sure, I prefer bones to books, but my throat turns itchy if I think too hard about how things have changed since they left. Sometimes, I secretly wish Oliver had left instead of my parents.
