Fiendish Deeds (4 page)

“What’s an artist’s contraption?”

“An artist’s
conception
—a painting of how it might look when it’s done. But it’s completely imaginary, and doesn’t mean a thing. I doubt very much it will actually include monorail service or somewhere to park your flying car, for example.

“What I want to know is where are they going to put it. Because if I have to wake up every morning looking out over some pathetic theme park for prissy little princesses, I am gonna puke.”

Byron didn’t bother speculating, but instead began staring out the window, lost in a dream. He was like that a lot lately, Joy noticed, like a sleepwalker dressed in a pair of brown corduroy pajama bottoms.

Joy, on the other hand, felt like she was in her usual waking nightmare, culminating with Miss Keener making her stay after class—for a
word
.

“You do bring these things on yourself, Joy,” Miss Keener had lectured her. “I had only asked for a simple book report. And although I do appreciate that you enjoy doing extra research, in future just stick to the story, please. This isn’t the first time you’ve taken up class time with your overactive imagination, you know.”

Joy had stood staring blankly over Miss Keener’s shoulder to avoid her enormous unblinking eyes, when the poster on the wall behind her came into sharp focus.

“But I thought imagination was more important than knowledge,” Joy had suddenly protested, looking up at the crazy-haired man sticking his tongue out at her.

Miss Keener had just sighed wearily. “I’m afraid you have that backward, dear. Now go on, or you’ll miss your bus.”

Joy had slunk out without another word.

Although tempting, she’d decided not to point out that Miss Keener was no Einstein.

T
he sky was an ominous flint-gray that Saturday morning as the siblings left their house.

Joy wore a tweed suit with matching coat belted tight at the waist, and a purple turtleneck. A wide-brimmed brown felt hat with a leather cord pulled tight under her chin and a pair of oxblood leather boots completed her look.

She called it her adventuring ensemble.

“Don’t you feel that running around in a dead person’s clothes is a bit odd for a girl of almost twelve?” Joy had once overheard her mother ask her father. From her position on the landing, she couldn’t make out the muffled reply. “No, I’m not saying it’s your fault, sweetness,” her mother answered, “but yes, it’s true that if you’d cleared out the basement as promised, she would’ve never gotten into all of those creepy old things….”

Joy had snuck back upstairs, fuming. What business was it of theirs anyway? But she wasn’t particularly worried—the likelihood of her father clearing out the basement was about as great as his building a zeppelin port on the roof.

Nevertheless, the mere thought gave her a shiver. It was one of Joy’s greatest delights, raking through the dusty boxes down there. The forgotten possessions and mysterious artifacts—it was like exhuming the dead without all the noxious gas and maggots! Rifling through them, the strange old objects seemed to hum with some sort of quiet energy transmuted by their long-lost owners—as if waiting to be seized up and put to purpose again.

Joy was only too happy to oblige.

PROPERTY OF MS. MELODY HUXLEY,
said the yellowed label on the trunk where Joy had found the suit, coat, and boots. Inside she’d uncovered more clothes and curios, as well a locked diary that she’d tried for hours to pick unsuccessfully. And while she supposed she could have sawn through the leather clasp, somehow it just didn’t feel right to open it without a suitable display of finesse.

In addition, there were four albums thick with photos of the house’s former owner, a petite woman whom Joy found beautiful with her fine features, boyish hair, and crooked smile. She was often pictured in the very same tweed suit Joy now wore. So otherworldly and cool was Ms. Huxley that Joy even forgave her apparently insatiable lust for blood, as demonstrated by her posing in photo after photo grinning with a shotgun above piles of dead birds, winking in a pith helmet among slaughtered predators, and giving the thumbs-up in front of a black roadster as she lashed a deer with a lolling tongue to the hood. It was also a different age, Joy reminded herself—one before the advent of plastic wrap and Styrofoam and the practice of packaging everything up into less distasteful portions.

So, her disconcerting penchant for blowing away all creatures feathered and furry aside, Joy saw an inspiring woman in Ms. Huxley’s fading likenesses—a woman full of conviction and confidence, whether firing an arrow or hoisting a cocktail, eyes ever twinkling with mischievousness. A woman to whom life was not simply about fulfilling the expectations of others, but about defining oneself without fear or compromise.

Unfortunately, her once luxurious suit and coat now gave off a serious whiff of mold and mothballs, only slightly masked by the fragrant hat of another owner, which Joy had recovered from a nearby cedar chest. She’d looked a bit ridiculous in the sequined cloche she pulled from Ms. Huxley’s trunk, after all, and doubted she could have gotten away with Ms. Huxley’s pith helmet, which was a bit too tight anyway. The felt hat was a bit too big, not to mention meant for a man, but it looked like serious business with its crocodile-skin band.

Byron, on the other hand, wore his usual fall outfit: a navy peacoat over a gray cable sweater, with brown corduroys that instead of pooling around his ankles were today stuffed uncomfortably into a pair of rubber boots, which were full of crumbs of dried mud.

As they reached the end of the path, a knobby green head poked out from a leather shoulder bag at Joy’s side. With school in session, Fizz was spending a lot more time in his aquarium—Joy thought he could use some fresh Spooking air. “No, Fizz, it’s too far to hop,” she told him, stroking his smooth, clammy throat. “You can go on your leash when we reach the bog.”

“The bog?” asked Byron in surprise, not expecting such an epic hike. “What for?”

“I’m looking for mushrooms. Giant ones, specifically of the deadly poisonous variety.”

“How come?”

“Monday is Teacher Appreciation Day, and I was thinking of making a nice quiche for Miss Keener.”

Byron went white.

“It was just a joke, sheesh.” Joy laughed, looking at his face. “No, last night I was reading over an E. A. Peugeot story, ‘The Bawl of the Bog Fiend’—”

“It’s not the story with the glass slippers and the pumpkin, is it?”

“Not ‘ball,’ Byron. And that isn’t a Peugeot story—it’s Cinderella!” Joy shivered with disgust. “I said ‘bawl,’ with a w—it’s an old-fashioned word for ‘cry.’ Now I forgot what I was saying!”

“Sorry.”

“Oh yeah, so I was reading it again and noticed a very interesting detail I’d missed. In this story, Dr. Ingram is investigating a rash of gruesome killings around a bog near the town. It all starts when a rich local begins trying to drain the bog so he can build a pig farm there, because apparently even back then, you could never have enough bacon. But then, one of his workers disturbs something ancient and incredibly grouchy.”

“What?” asked Byron as they reached the end of Ravenwood Avenue and turned onto Spooking Boulevard.

“I’ll get to that. The point is that when Dr. Ingram and his assistant venture in—Dickson is his assistant’s name this time—they soon come across something. ‘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.’
Or something like that.

“Anyway, just as they are going in for a closer look, Dickson falls down a hole and gets one of those really gross broken legs where the bone sticks out. Dr. Ingram begs him to be quiet, as the creature, he says, is attracted to sounds of distress! But it was no use! Because Dickson had in fact fallen right into
the fetid den of the bog fiend
!”

“He fell into what?”

“The fetid den of the bog fiend.”

Byron looked at her blankly.

“The creature’s stinky lair, basically,” she said.

“What the heck is a bog fiend anyway?”

As they passed the towering homes of Weredale Avenue and Gravesend Lane, Joy explained how the bog fiend was a horrible-smelling creature with hooked claws, long tusks, and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. Other than that, its exact appearance had never been credibly established owing to its incredible speed. Peugeot described the creature as large enough to snatch a horse from a passing carriage, and ill-mannered enough to vomit bloody entrails in the exact spot where a fleeing Dr. Ingram would later trip and face-plant. Further details were sketchy at best.

“Okay, so another horrible monster,” said Byron, showing less amazement than Joy felt the retelling deserved. “But what do mushrooms have to do with it?”

“Hello, are you even listening? What did Dr. Ingram just stumble across before finding the lair of the bog fiend? Something hooded and edible that lives in a bog! Which means mushrooms, of course. Except these babies are huge and poisonous.”

Byron made a face. “But you said they smelled sweet, which mushrooms don’t.”

“They do too, if you sauté them!” snapped Joy. “Don’t get all picky on my theory. The point is, if we just look for the same giant poisonous mushrooms, we’ll have a good shot at locating the entrance of
the fetid den of the
—”

“Whoa, wait a sec,” interrupted Byron. “Are you telling me you really think there are such things as bog fiends?”

Which was a fair question.

Joy had encountered similar doubt from her mother one morning after Joy had again heard something big shuffling across the yard in the night. She had raced to the window and this time caught sight of something crashing through the hedges, heading toward the cemetery.

“It was probably just a raccoon,” Mrs. Wells had said dismissively.

“No way, it was bigger,” Joy had replied. “Plus it had a shiny black back, like it was covered in leathery skin or something.”

Mr. Wells had put down his newspaper. “Now, if a creature like that was running around Spooking, don’t you think we’d already have proof?” he pointed out.

Proof. Her father always insisted on it. In order to be true, something must always be proved, he held. Otherwise, it was considered false until further notice. Case closed.

But so far, Joy had had little luck in that department. And proof was overrated anyway, she’d decided. For instance, she could never prove to her parents that Winsome Elementary was an awful place, and as such, the source of her life’s misery. Nonsense, they said. They had seen with their own eyes how new and clean the school was, and full of happy children. They’d shaken hands with smiling teachers brimming with enthusiasm, and had read the weekly school newsletters about all of the terrific things going on. All proof that it was a fine school to anyone reasonable.

But as Joy grew older, she often found that what seemed “reasonable” to everyone else seemed completely insane to her. And that’s exactly how Darlington seemed—insane. But it just wasn’t something she could explain to her parents. It wasn’t something that could be measured or captured or documented in any way. There could never be any proof.

And so, no, she couldn’t prove there really was a monster in the yard either. And yes, she did admit to herself it did seem a little coincidental that on the very night after staying up late reading about just such a creature that one came snuffling under her window.

But so what? Did the intrepid Dr. Ingram, recurrent hero of
The Compleat and Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot
, need proof before leaping clear of the snapping jaws of some awful monster? Or wait for peer approval before throwing a bundle of dynamite into the portal to some hellish underworld?

“Joy!” repeated Byron. “Are there really such things as bog fiends?”

“I hope so,” she muttered.

Joy and Byron walked on, past the spiked walls of the cemetery. Fizz had settled down, busily sniffing the earthy scents of autumn. A raven suddenly called out, and Fizz’s head disappeared into the safety of Joy’s satchel. At last they arrived at the top of the winding road.

It was difficult to walk at a comfortable pace down such a steep incline, so they found themselves running most of the way, until their feet began stinging on impact. They arrived at the bottom, legs burning and out of breath, and rested by the road for a few minutes before continuing on.

The woods were still and no longer buzzing with insects, thanks to the onset of cooler weather. With the leaves all fallen, Joy and Byron weren’t sure where the living trees stopped and the dead ones of the bog began. Which was dangerous, as lakes of foul water hid under layers of peat moss that looked thick enough to stand on, but most certainly were not, as Byron had once proved, sinking with a sploosh up to his armpits.

Joy had been quick to yank him out that day. The water was full of bloodsucking leeches, she knew, having often marveled as their tapered black shapes boiled under the surface like pasta in some dark satanic pot. Byron, drenched and shivering, had whimpered quietly as Joy examined his chunky legs and pale torso, but luckily, not a single leech had managed to latch onto his flesh. They were probably upset about missing an awesome meal like Byron’s goose-pimply butt, Joy had teased as she let go of the elastic on his underwear with a snap.

This time, Byron wasn’t taking any chances, prodding ahead of himself with a long stick. Joy kicked herself for forgetting the aquarium net again. A leech would make a pretty cool pet, she thought. But what would she feed it? Would it be happy sucking on something a bit fleshy like a peach? She wasn’t sure. Anyway, Fizz would probably just bark at it all day.

Joy let Fizz out, and he hopped happily after them on his leash. Leaves crunched underfoot as they marched into the bog. Moss carpeted the bog in blood red, and an eerie mist swirled in the distance.

Suddenly there came a wailing, high-pitched and blood-curdling. Their two heads spun in opposite directions.

Joy signaled her brother and began scrambling up a mossy hummock, Fizz skidding behind her. Byron crawled quickly after, heart pounding. He caught up with her crouched at the top behind a rotted tree stump.

Peering down, they saw something below, squatting in a clearing. It had wild hair and a black body, wrapped up in what looked like a tarantula’s web, and was digging furiously at the base of a tree. Joy turned and held a finger to her lips. She then went to reel in Fizz, finding an empty collar on the end of his leash. The little slimy brat had slipped out again, she realized.

The creature’s voice rose steadily, becoming more shrill by the second, like a squawking bird with a serious grudge against a squeaky chew toy. It was the most horrible sound he had ever heard, thought Byron, clamping his hands over his ears.

Joy then spotted Fizz, hopping down toward the clearing. Staying low, she quickly crawled out after him. He stopped, sitting up on his hind legs. Joy reached for him, just as his yellow throat ballooned. It was too late. Fizz began barking. Loudly.