Fiendish Deeds (16 page)

“That’s great, but I’m not here about the turtles, mayor,” replied Agent Wagner testily. “There has been a development concerning the status of this wetland.”

“A development?” asked the mayor, bemused. A few businesspeople began shuffling uncomfortably around him. “What development?”

“I received a curious call at my office last week,” Agent Wagner said to the crowd hovering above him. “A very curious call indeed. A person—a child possibly—drew my attention to some correspondence sent to our agency concerning this very bog.”

“A child? Sounds like a prank call to me. Kids today!” The mayor chortled. He turned to wave to the little faces pressed up to the windows of the immobilized school bus. “I just usually hang up as soon as they ask if my refrigerator is running.”

“I said
possibly
—I’m not entirely sure who it was,” continued Agent Wagner. “But it is of little consequence. The point is, the caller brought to my attention a local expert by the name of Dr. Ludwig Zweig. Dr. Zweig had recently forwarded to me his research surrounding a rather incredible discovery. Unfortunately, the package was lost in transit for several weeks, during which time the poor old fellow apparently passed away. However, as it happened, the materials found their way into my inbox just before I received the unusual phone call.”

A moan escaped the black car, but no one noticed. They were all hanging on Agent Wagner’s every word.

“Upon hearing the name, I promptly opened the package and read with astonishment about an alleged organism living right here in Spooking Bog—a completely new and undiscovered species, so the research claimed. And having been reminded by this mysterious caller about a development project about to get underway here, I decided to come out and investigate right away.”

“Well, I’m so sorry you wasted your time, Agent,” said the mayor apologetically. “This Zweig character was a well-known eccentric—a kook, if you will. And a bit of a prankster, it seems, much like a child.”

“On the contrary, my time was not wasted at all,” replied Agent Wagner. “Using the precise GPS coordinates Dr. Zweig provided, I was able to follow this brook straight to where it runs off at the very heart of the bog. And there, growing around some foul sinkhole, I encountered a new species of considerable significance.”

“Bravo!” cheered the mayor. “Well then, another adorable creature to relocate. Just point it out and I’ll get my best men on it. Because we want to make sure this project gets off on the right foot!”

“That’s the problem,” answered Wagner. “It’s not a creature at all. It’s a plant, in fact, of the carnivorous variety. Commonly known as a pitcher plant—except this particular species is so big that it can swallow up entire frogs and rats whole. I’m talking about a scientific anomaly that only seems to thrive in this specific bog. In my entire career, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

“Which also means, I’m afraid, that any construction project is out of the question at the moment. I’m recommending that the bog be reclassified as the habitat of an imperiled species, with all protections and exclusions granted under the law.”

The businesspeople began murmuring among themselves.

“But Mr. Wagner, be reasonable,” said the mayor. “If it’s just a few plants we’re talking about, what’s the big deal? Surely we can just pot the suckers and put them in a nice warm solarium somewhere.”

“I must also warn you that from this moment anyone tampering with this site risks fines of up to one million dollars as well as criminal prosecution.”

At this pronouncement, several businesspeople began checking their watches and setting off in the direction of their cars, whistling tunelessly to themselves.

The mayor bared his teeth at Agent Wagner. Then, noticing the video camera pointing at him again, he reshaped his grimace into a stiff grin: “Now, now, Mr. Wagner, there must be some kind of mistake—”

A series of horn blasts from the black wreck interrupted him.

The television camera turned, zooming in on Phipps as he butted his head against the steering wheel. After one final blast, he climbed out of the car, wearing a twisted expression under his horribly swollen brow. After stumbling around for a moment glaring in every direction, he opened his mouth as if to say something—but then hung his head and stood there, the brown brook swirling around his knees as something bobbed up in front of him, looking for all the world like the sickly underbelly of a ragged dead fish.

Except that it had an ace of spades and the words “Live Hard” tattooed on it.

Then someone started screaming.

J
oy hurried down to breakfast. She’d hardly slept, jumping up the moment her alarm went off. She quickly threw on her clothes and ran downstairs, where Byron already sat at the table, eating cereal. Her father, she saw, was just unfolding the morning newspaper.

“Does it say anything about the school bus accident in there?” demanded Joy impatiently. “Does it say anything about FISPA?”

“FISPA?” asked Mr. Wells. “Why in the world would it say anything about them?”

“Um, why not?” answered Joy evasively. The truth was, after the accident yesterday, she’d seen a man in a FISPA hat. It was Field Agent Wagner, she was sure of it, come to investigate the bog fiend! And he’d caused quite a commotion, by all appearances. Although she couldn’t hear what he was saying from inside the bus, the crowd soon began screaming and shrieking—one person even upchucked!

“Oh dear!” her father exclaimed.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Wells.

“Horror Show in Spooking Bog,” he read aloud.

“What does it say?” cried Joy. “What does it say?”

“Apparently they found a piece of an arm right where you had your accident yesterday!”

Joy’s spoon landed in the center of her bowl, sending milk flying everywhere as Byron shot back in his chair, eyes bulging.

Mrs. Wells turned with a glare. “Edward, do you really think you should be reading that out loud to the children?”

“Why, you know how much they love gory stories, Helen.”

“Yes, but perhaps not real ones where they were actually at the scene!”

“Oh yes, I suppose you’re right,” agreed Mr. Wells. “Never mind, children. Go on, eat your cereal.”

“Dad!” cried Joy.

“Your breakfast, Joy,” said Mrs. Wells sternly.

It was no use arguing. Joy’s cereal turned to the consistency of wallpaper glue as she painfully watched her father read the entire story, gasping occasionally at some horrific detail.

“Well, I suppose I’d better head off to work,” said Mr. Wells, tucking the folded newspaper behind the toaster on the counter. “I don’t know if there’ll be any delays at the bottom of the hill, what with the police searching for more body parts and everything.”

“Edward!” cried Mrs. Wells from the sink.

“Oh yes, sorry, dear,” he said. “Good-bye, everyone. Have a nice day.”

“Please finish up, children, or you’ll miss your bus,” said Mrs. Wells sweetly. “Or if you’d like, I can always drive you today if you’re feeling a bit nervous about the bus….”

“We’ll take our chances,” said Joy crankily, pushing her bowl away.

After brushing their teeth and collecting their school bags, they stood at the front door, waiting. A shiny replacement bus pulled up and the children headed out to meet it.

“Wait!” cried Joy. “I forgot something!”

“Hurry!” Mrs. Wells sounded exasperated as Joy ran back into the house. “Byron, ask the bus driver if he minds waiting just one more minute!”

But before Byron’s short legs even made it halfway to the street, Joy had already come flying out the front door after him.

“That was fast,” observed Mrs. Wells as her daughter ran down the path with something hidden in her sling. Then she remembered the newspaper behind the toaster. “Joy Wells!” she called out.

“Bye, Mom!” Joy shouted back, leaping onto the moving bus.

“THE GHOULS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND…”

Oblivious, Joy pushed her way through the laughing throng, digesting what she’d read in the newspaper now safely tucked in the crook of her cast. So that’s what all the screaming had been about—they’d found part of someone’s arm floating in the creek next to the car the bus had hit. It explained why so many policemen came swooping in shortly after, yelling for someone to get the children out of there. Within minutes, a replacement bus arrived and they were driven away from the chaotic scene.

Joy shuddered at the possibility that the limb belonged to poor Madame Portia, but quickly dismissed the thought. While the old woman might have had some sort of professional interest in cards, Joy couldn’t picture her getting an ace of spades tattoo, or picking “Live Hard” as her personal catchphrase. The arm had to have belonged to someone else, she was convinced. The authorities, meanwhile, were sweeping the bog, searching for evidence, the paper said.

On page two, Joy discovered a delightful headline:
FISPA PULLS PLUG ON WATER PARK

So Joy was right—it was Field Agent Wagner she’d spotted in action! With his broad shoulders and strong brow, he’d seemed even more commanding than on the phone—the exception being those ridiculous fishing waders, which were a bit of an unexpected visual. A number of cool-sounding Agent Wagner quotes peppered the article, including one crediting “an anonymous tip” that prompted his investigation.

Still, Joy felt disappointed by his findings. That was it? The amazing secret of Dr. Ludwig Zweig was some big plant that eats rats and frogs? It was kind of interesting, she supposed, with an element of the grotesque, but it just wasn’t doing it for her. Something you could lay low with a weed-whacker wasn’t quite the unstoppable monster she was expecting.

But wait a second, thought Joy. In “The Bawl of the Bog Fiend,” what had Dr. Ingram noted just before poor Dickson fell down that dark hole to his doom?

“A ring of striking specimens, hooded and monstrous, resembling in all but size a genus deadly to anything seeking the source of its sweet scent.”
They weren’t poisonous mushrooms—they were pitcher plants! Giant ones, full of sweet nectar to attract their prey. And where had Dr. Ingram uncovered them? At the entrance to the den of the bog fiend!

As far as anyone knew, the article also said, these ancient plants only survived thanks to the unique ecosystem of this particular bog. Which was even more hard evidence that E. A. Peugeot’s stories were set around Spooking!

Trembling with excitement, Joy shoved the newspaper into her decrepit old desk.

“So, children, how are we today?”

“GREAT, MISS KEENER!” shouted Joy along with everyone.

E
arlier that same morning in a cramped kitchen, a wooden clock ticked noisily against a background of bright sunflower wallpaper.

“What’s wrong, Morris?” asked Mrs. Mealey timidly, sitting at the kitchen table. “You look so cross.”

Morris threw down the newspaper, his face twisted with disgust. “It’s the Misty Mermaid Water Park, Mother!” he cried. “It’s ruined, ruined, ruined!”

“What do you mean, dear?”

“FISPA has completely shut us down!” barked Morris, his mother wincing with fright. “They found some sort of idiotic plant in the bog where the park was to be built, and now they’ve put the entire area under an environmental protection order!” He slammed a fist on the table. “Who cares about a stupid plant? We are talking about the future of Darlington here!”

“What a crying shame!” Mrs. Mealey declared. “Excuse me, sweetheart, but who is
FISPA
?”

“The Federal Imperiled Species Protection Agency, Mother!” cried Morris. “Honestly, what’s the point of subscribing to the newspaper if you don’t keep yourself informed?”

“I get it for
you
, of course,” cooed Mrs. Mealey. “To nourish your gift. You know I don’t like reading it. There’s so much awful news in the world, and I just don’t want to know about it. If it had been up to me, I would have canceled the silly thing as soon as your father vanished.”

“For the twentieth time, Father didn’t
vanish
,” objected Morris. “He took off on us.”

“Stop saying that!” Mrs. Mealey fumbled with her apron strings. “I saw it myself, with my own eyes. But it doesn’t matter—your father is coming back someday, I know it. He told me so, in a dream,” she said. She stared off, as if into some invisible infinite vastness. “His body was all see-through-ish, and he said he just had a little plumbing job on the other side to finish, then they’d let him return to our world….”

Morris sighed—he was so tired of this. “But who are
they
, Mother?”

“The ones that took him, of course,” replied Mrs. Mealey with a nervous laugh. “Now, what were you saying about your water park? Is this something to do with that season pass you won?”

“Mother, to blazes with the season pass!” he exploded. “The whole park is finished!” Seeing his mother now on the verge of tears, Morris took a few deep breaths and managed to calm himself. “And to make matters worse, they pulled somebody’s arm out of the bog, so on top of everything else, it’s now a crime scene as well.”

The color drained from Mrs. Mealey’s face.

“Mother, it wasn’t Father’s arm, unless he had a big tattoo he didn’t tell you about. For heaven’s sake. But it’s what the city administration would call a public relations nightmare.” Morris glanced up. “Would you look at the clock. Aren’t you watching the time, Mother? I’m going to be late for school!”

Mrs. Mealey hurriedly assembled a lunch as Morris gave his teeth a quick brush. He flattened his hair with a thick daub of pomade—his father’s brand, which his mother kept replenishing—and then with a comb gave his hair a careful side parting.

Morris looked at himself in the mirror, adjusting his clip-on bow tie as his hair began struggling free. He sighed. By the time he arrived at school, sputtering and coughing after a three-block run, the part in his hair would be obliterated, as usual.

Byron felt much better. The routine of school, including the habitual abuse, had acted like a kind of Band-Aid over the psychic injuries inflicted on Halloween. He felt like himself again, sitting in the flickering fluorescent light of his class, staring at the strawberry-blond drapery Lucy Primrose tucked casually behind her ear.

Morris arrived late and out of breath, carrying his foul mood like a frayed flag into battle. Byron found himself snickering inwardly as from the depths of Mrs. Whipple’s purse came a muffled electronic version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

“Morris, you’re here! This is an important call,” the teacher said, hustling out of the classroom. “Please watch the class for five minutes.”

Morris dumped his books on his desk and stomped up to the front of the class. “Read quietly!” he barked at them. His head then landed on Mrs. Whipple’s desk with a painful-sounding thump.

Byron chuckled to himself, then turned to gaze at his princess again. He was startled to see that she was looking straight at him, laughing as well. A bolt of terror pierced his heart. What should he do? Then some unknown force formed an
L
out of his thumb and forefinger and coolly raised it to his forehead, which made Lucy giggle.

“I SAID QUIETLY!” shouted Morris.

And Byron’s spirits soared, like a thousand starlings pin-wheeling into an ink blue sky while roman candles exploded above.

“So the answer is? Anyone?”

It was late in the day. Joy sat in Miss Keener’s classroom, yawning as she drew on her cast with a marker. Her plan was to fill in the blank areas with tiny little skulls, but she had a lot of real estate left to cover, seeing as no one was exactly lining up to sign it.

“Joy?”

Nuts—it was even more proof she did still exist.

“I don’t know, Miss Keener,” shrugged Joy.

Miss Keener scrunched up the corner of her mouth. “Louden?”

“I don’t know either, Miss Keener,” Louden answered lamely.

Joy looked over at him.

With everything that had happened in the bog, she had forgotten all about her awkward experience stuck in the laundry room with Louden. She cringed to remember scuttling away like some disgusting beetle whose patio-slab apartment had been unexpectedly upturned. Another face-to-face with the bog fiend sounded more appealing than feeling that way again.

“What is it with this class today?” said Miss Keener. “Did you all eat junk food for lunch or something?”

Louden hadn’t spoken to Joy since Halloween or even turned an eye, black or otherwise, in her direction. That was fine, as far as she was concerned. But then she caught herself suddenly thinking about his tight-fitting skeleton costume, and how he’d reminded her of a lean young racehorse—skinny-limbed and a bit awkward, but already beginning to show the powerful frame that would one day thunder across finish lines.

Blushing at the thought, she turned away, blaming the odd fluttery feeling in her stomach on the hastily swallowed sandwich she’d eaten while leafing through the newspaper again. Her mother was always on her case about chewing her food properly—maybe her mom was right.

Joy put down the marker, bored with drawing skulls. Instead, she slipped a protractor from her desk and began to sneakily gouge the surface of her desk, outlining a small heart on the last unmarked area available. jw, she carefully scratched inside of it.

“Anyone know?” asked Miss Keener.

She drew a plus sign.

“Come on, class, this is going to be on the test…Cassandra?”

Joy finished, then blew the sawdust away from the carved initials. eap—Ethan Alvin Peugeot. Forever. The bell rang, and she stood up with a quiet sigh of relief.

The class began filing out noisily as Joy pushed her chair in. She bent over to search the dark, disorganized interior of her desk compartment for the newspaper, which she thought best to slip back behind the toaster when she got home.

As she stood up, something caught her eye, jammed in the inkwell. She stared suspiciously at the orange shape before curiosity got the better of her, and she stuffed her hand into the sharp-sided hole. Awkwardly, she drew the object out, pinched between her fingertips. It was a little paper bag with a black cat on it, she saw with surprise, filled with candy.

Happy Halloween
, it said.

Joy felt a jolt. Looking up, she caught Louden slinking out of the classroom.

Her face bright red, she slipped the bag into her pocket, then began checking and rechecking the various notebooks she’d packed for homework.

“Joy, you’ll miss your bus home if you don’t go now,” warned Miss Keener finally.

Joy hurried out. Outside, she joined Byron in the line. It was the old Spooking bus this time, its front bumper now hammered roughly back into shape, and coughing out the same familiar blue cloud of fumes. The door remained shut while the driver finished eating a burrito.

Morris M. Mealey drew up to them. “Byron, you fat-headed lunk,” he snapped. “Do you mind clearing the sidewalk? This is a pedestrian throughway, you know!”

Byron began raising the
L
, but his sister jumped in first.

“Don’t talk to my brother that way, you mop-headed little jerk,” she said rather merrily.

“Oh, it’s the gruesome-twosome—I’m so frightened!” mocked Morris. “Out of my way, Spooking freaks, before I report you to Principal Crawley for deliberately impeding my progress.” With a pair of sharp little elbows, he then shoved his way through.

“Hey, Morris,” called Joy after him. “Did you hear? It looks like I won that contest of yours after all.”

Morris whirled like some feral creature whose tail had been set on fire. “What?”

“The Darlington, City of the Future contest,” she repeated. “It looks like they picked my idea over yours in the end, even though I just phoned in my entry a couple of days ago. But I guess they liked it so much that they didn’t care it was late.”

“What are you talking about? What
idea
?”

“You know,” said Joy. “The one about making Spooking Bog the protected home of an imperiled species, instead of building some idiotic water park full of lame mermaids. Pretty good plan, huh?” The bus door suddenly folded open with a bang and Joy gently prodded Byron forward onto the bus. “Anyway,” called Joy, “I’m sure you could trade your season passes for a nice FISPA baseball cap or something.”

The door folded shut behind them. Morris stood quivering with rage on the sidewalk as Joy gave him a cheery little wave from above.

Morris glared at the bus as it pulled away, wishing with all his heart for some sort of supernatural power to will gas tanks into exploding.

Just then, a hand seized the back of his jacket as someone growled: “Mealey.”

Morris squeaked. “Mr. Phipps!” he burst out. But his relief was fleeting—there was something about the man’s face that Morris found incredibly frightening. “What happened to your arm?” he squeaked, noticing the sling.

“Some idiot dropped a house on it. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s take a walk instead.”

“Sure,” answered Morris timidly. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

Phipps slapped his hand heavily on the boy’s shoulder as they began walking away from the school.

“You can help me get to the bottom of something,” replied Phipps, flashing an amiable smile at the crossing guard.

“Anything for the mayor, of course,” said Morris. “Except I don’t live in this direction.”

“No?” said Phipps. “Pity.”