Alistair Grim's Odd Aquaticum (6 page)

“You can count on me, sir,” I said, trying to be brave, and Lord Dreary nodded reluctantly.

“Very well, then,” Father said. “Prepare the Odditorium for landing, Grubb.” I gaped at him as if to say,
Now?
But he just winked and motioned for me to take my seat at the organ. And with a deep breath, I did.

I began to play slowly—a simple tune that Father had taught me to unfold the Odditorium’s spider leg–like buttresses and activate its vertical thrusters. I’d only been playing for less than a month, but Father said I was a chip off the old block. And as the massive mechanical limbs groaned loudly under my command, Lord Dreary patted me on the back and said:

“You’re a regular prodigy, Grubb Grim.” I didn’t know what the word
prodigy
meant, but it sounded good, so I changed my tune to make the legs crawl in midair.

“Show-off,” Father said with a chuckle. “Nevertheless, I better take over from here. We don’t want you growing up too fast.”

Father took my place at the organ, played a quick flourish, and we began to descend. Gazing out over the balcony, I could hardly believe my eyes. Father meant to land the Odditorium directly over the hell mouth.

Lord Dreary and I watched in awe as the Odditorium’s legs touched down in a perfect ring around the outermost stones. Father flicked on the energy shield, sealing off the balcony in a sweeping halo of blue, and the three of us hurried through the library and into the parlor, where Father summoned the lift. As we waited, I gazed up at the portrait of Elizabeth O’Grady above the hearth. How many hours had I passed studying it since my arrival? So many that, when I closed my eyes, I could still see every curl of my mother’s hair beneath her hat—every stone in her necklace, every twist in her flowing black gown. And yet, now that I’d seen her in the Black Mirror, for the first time her expression in the portrait struck me as frightened—her eyes brimming with some terrible secret that drove her away from Alistair Grim.

The lift arrived, startling me from my thoughts, and we all dropped down to the floor below and dashed into the Odditorium’s main gallery, where Father led us through a dizzying maze of magical objects—giant statues, piles of armor, cauldrons, goblets, and brooms—as well as towers of wooden crates, the tops of which vanished among the shadows near the ceiling. Many of the crates had been recently opened, their fantastical contents spilling out onto the floor in haphazard heaps of wonder.

It was in one of these heaps that Father began searching through a wide assortment of chests, some of which were gilded and adorned with precious jewels. Finally, he settled on an old wooden box about the size of a breadbasket. Compared to all the other boxes, it wasn’t much to look at. Then again, if there was one thing I’d learned in my time at Alistair Grim’s, it was that the most powerful Odditoria were most often things that, on the surface at least, appeared to be ordinary.

“You’re going to catch a demon with that box, aren’t you?” Lord Dreary said as we followed Father to the gallery’s main door.

“An excellent deduction, old friend,” Father replied. “And so it should come as no surprise to you that this box is called just that: a demon catcher. Used for centuries by sorcerers to rid themselves of evil spirits and whatnot.”

“The operative word being
rid
, Alistair!”

“Well, either way, let’s just hope it works.”

Lord Dreary gasped. “You mean you’ve never tried it?”

Father shrugged and unbolted the door, and the three of us spilled out onto the reception hall’s upper landing. A curved staircase stretched down from either side of the landing to the floor below; and as we descended the stairs on the left, I was distracted for a moment by the life-size portrait of Father on the lower wall between the two staircases. It showed him holding a bright blue orb of animus, but I knew the portrait doubled as a secret panel that hid the entrance to the engine room behind it.

A loud clanking sound echoed through the chamber. And had I not been so preoccupied with Father’s portrait, I might have seen the secret button he’d pressed to activate the large, chain-wrapped winch that was now rising up from the floor. I’d seen winches like it before at the coal mines back home, but still, my eyes grew wide in amazement. Was there no end to the secrets hidden within these walls?

Father pressed a button next to the front door and it slid open. Outside, I could see the Odditorium’s front steps silhouetted against the soft red glow of the searchlight reflecting up from below.

“The winch connects to an emergency escape ladder at the base of the front steps,” Father said, cranking away. “Once we’re safely on the ground, Lord Dreary, you’ll crank the ladder back up and close the front door. The Odditorium’s magic paint should repel any evil spirits that may try to sneak on board, but better safe than sorry.”

Lord Dreary’s face dropped with fear, but Father just smiled at him and exited through the front door with the demon catcher tucked snugly under his arm.

“Come along then, Grubb,” he called from the bottom of the steps.

“You mean I’m going with you, sir?” I asked in amazement.

“Of course,” Father said as he disappeared down the escape ladder. “Dangerous as it may be, this
is
your first quest for Odditoria.”

My heart began to hammer—in all the excitement, it never once occurred to me that I would actually be
accompanying
Father on his demon quest—but as I slowly made my way to the door, I remembered that Mack was still in my pocket.

“Better safe than sorry, sir,” I said, echoing Father’s words, and I handed Mack to Lord Dreary. It was common knowledge now that Mack was forbidden to go outside. Unlike the Odditorium, Mack’s animus was not protected by magic paint, which meant the doom dogs—vicious shadow hounds charged with fetching escaped spirits back to the Land of the Dead—would come after him.

“I don’t like this business one bit, lad,” Lord Dreary said with his hands on my shoulders. “Promise me you’ll take care?”

“I promise, sir.”

“We haven’t got all night!”
Father called, unseen from below, and I bounded down the front steps to meet him.

Although the Odditorium’s spider legs had landed outside the circle of stones, the Odditorium itself was still suspended a good ten yards off the ground directly above its center. I slid down the metal escape ladder, and as soon as my feet hit the grass, Father called up to Lord Dreary and the escape ladder folded back into the front steps. Next, we heard the front door slide shut above us and all was deathly silent. I shivered.

“It’s good that you’re afraid,” Father said, reading my thoughts. “Fear keeps the senses sharp. And in time you’ll learn to channel that fear into something sharper.”

“If you say so, sir,” I said, and we sat down upon one of the fallen stones. The wind hissed eerily through the grass and a crow cawed far off in the distance. My heart skipped a beat. Crows never caw at night, I thought—not to mention that Prince Nightshade had an entire flock of them trained to track doom dogs. What if the prince was watching us now?

I closed my eyes and tried to push the idea from my mind.

“Are you happy here, son?” Father asked, and I glanced around, confused. Who could be happy in such a dreadful place? “At the Odditorium,” Father added. “With
me
.”

“But of course, sir. I haven’t been this happy since before Mrs. Smears died.”

“You still miss her, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said—then added quickly, “But not nearly as much as I did before I come to live with you, sir.”

Father smiled, but I could see in his eyes that he’d grown sad. He often looked that way when I talked about my life with the Smearses. It was more than pity. Alistair Grim felt guilty about all the time lost between us, and nothing I ever said seemed to make it better for him. But still, I always tried.

“You know,” Father said, changing the subject, “when I was your age, one of my favorite things to do was fish. You ever been? Fishing?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. A delightful experience, really—the silence, the anticipation. Much like this, in a way. One of our grooms—this was at the old manor house, of course—he taught me how to catch the big ones. Showed me a secret spot and used to lend me his pole when my father was away. He thought fishing an idle pastime, my father. A waste of mental energy, he called it. But still, I always wished he would join me. Magic is much more fun when you’ve got someone to share it with, don’t you think? And to be sure, there was nothing quite so magical to me back then as fishing. The mystery lurking there unseen beneath the water, the excitement of that first nibble on your line.”

Father squinted up at the Odditorium. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” he said. “In spite of all the Odditoria I’ve collected over the years, deep down I’ve always known there’s more magic in things like that—simple things, like a lad with his fishing pole—than anything up there.”

Father seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then, as if remembering my presence, he abruptly cleared his throat and said, “I suppose what I’m trying to say is, when all this is over—and I promise you, one day it will be—well…I’d like to take you. Fishing, that is. Would you like to go, Grubb?”

“I should like that very much, sir,” I said, and as if by magic, all my fear seemed to vanish in an instant.

Father sighed with relief and raked his fingers through his hair. “So it’s settled, then,” he said. “And please forgive my lack of eloquence on the subject. All this father business is still quite new to me.”

“I understand, sir. All this son business is new to me too.”

Father chuckled and checked his watch. “All right, then. Time to cast our line.”

And just like that my fear returned in a rush. We stood up on the stone and Father slipped a small bottle of white powder from his coat pocket.

“As with most evil spirits,” he said, handing me the bottle, “your standard demon will only manifest itself in visible form if sufficiently provoked. The itching powder in this bottle should annoy them enough to do just that.”

“Itching powder, sir?”

“Upon my command, you’re to fling some down there at the opening of the hell mouth. I’ll take care of the rest with the demon catcher.”

“But I don’t see any opening, sir. Just the grass and a patch of dirt.”

“Evil most often enters our world unseen to the naked eye. You may feel a sudden drop in temperature, and may perhaps hear a ringing in your ears, but I’m afraid that’s the only warning you’ll get that the hell mouth has opened.”

I swallowed hard, and Father produced from the demon catcher a pair of necklaces, each of which held a large milky-green stone. Father slipped one of the necklaces around my neck, and then the other around his own.

“Now take heed, lad,” he said. “The warding stones on these necklaces should protect us from demonic possession. However, in the unlikely event one of us does become possessed, the other is to knock him squarely on the head with the demon catcher. That should set things right again. Understand?”

“You mean, a demon can actually get inside a bloke’s body?”

“Unfortunately, yes. And if that happens, believe me, a thump on the noggin will be the least of your worries.”

Summoning my courage, I took a deep breath and stiffened my spine.

“That’s a good lad,” Father said. “Now uncork that bottle and get ready to toss the itching powder at the hell mouth upon my command.”

Father minded his watch as I stared unblinkingly at the ground. “Nibble, nibble,” he whispered finally, and a cold, moaning breeze wove its way among the stones. At the same time, my ears began to ring so loudly that I could barely hear Father when he said,
“Now!”

I flung a dash of itching powder at the desired spot, and a low, inhuman whine began rising up all around us.

“What’s happening?” I cried. If the hell mouth had opened, I certainly couldn’t tell by looking at the ground.

“There,” Father said, and a handful of demons materialized in the grass at the base of the stone. Their pint-size bodies were entirely black, but their eyes and the insides of their black-fanged mouths blazed with orange fire as they squirmed about, frantically scratching themselves all over.

Suddenly, one of the demons cried,
“It’s the boy what done this!”
Upon which the whole lot of them turned their orange eyes on me. After all, I was the one standing there with the bottle of itching powder.

The demons howled with rage and flew up at me in a single mass—their hideous, snarling faces hovering just inches away from my own. My entire body froze—and I tried in vain to scream—but then the demons caught sight of the amulet about my neck, and they shrank back in terror.

“The stone!”
they cried as one, and in a great, sweeping
whoosh
flew off shrieking into the night.

Before the last of them could escape, however, Father opened his box and shouted,
“Demonicus expugno!”
A giant skeleton hand sprang forth from the box and snatched one of the demons from the air. The inky black spirit howled in anguish, and then the skeleton hand withdrew again into the box with the demon in its clutches.