The Yggyssey (11 page)

"I don't know a lot about that," I said. "But I do know that there is going to be a big hootenanny of some kind in the not-in-New-Jersey Hackensack, and ghosts, who love a good party, are all heading there. How am I doing, Mr. Phantom Bellboy?"

"How did you find all this out?" Billy asked.

"I have my methods."

"What do you two shamans say?" Aaron Finn asked Melvin and Crazy Wig. "Is young Yggdrasil telling us the emmis? Is there a non-New-Jerseyan Hackensack on another plane of existence?"

"Sure," Crazy Wig said. "Been there lots of times."

"Lots of times," Melvin said.

"So the crullers are mine," I said to Neddie and Seamus. "See that you pay up. And I will tell you something else, free and for nothing. I am going to that party."

"We're going with you," Neddie Wentworthstein said.

"To the hootenanny in not-in-New-Jersey Old New Hackensack?" I asked.

"Yes, the hootenanny, or hauntenanny, or walpurgisenanny, or whatever it is. If you're going, we want to go too," Seamus Finn said.

We were sitting on the secret closet stairs to nowhere, drinking Dr. Pedwee's cream soda and sharing a bag of Gypsy Boots's whole-grain cuchifritos.

"If you want to come along, then come along," I said. "But it should be understood—we don't know where we're going, and we don't know what will happen. I don't want any crybabies on this trip."

"You wrong us," Seamus Finn said.

"Didn't I protect civilization from ... um ... something bad?" Neddie Wentworthstein said.

"We think you may have," I said. "It would be more impressive if anyone, including you, remembered it. But, I apologize for the crybaby remark. I can't think of two better companions for a trip into the unknown. You, Seamus, are the son of a movie star famous for swordfights in practically every movie—you must have inherited some of that style."

"And Neddie is a junior shaman of some kind," Seamus said. "That may come in handy. Also, he has a magical talisman."

"Oh, yes, the turtle. You have that with you, Neddie?"

"At all times," Neddie said.

The turtle is a little carved stone one that Melvin the shaman gave Neddie when they first met. It's supposed to be important in some way.

"So what is the plan?" Neddie and Seamus wanted to know.

"Well, we know where we want to go," I said. "Apparently there is some kind of invisible world everybody seems to have known about except us ... Melvin and Crazy Wig, all the ghosts. The part no one seems willing to tell us—anyway, tell us outright—is how to get there. But Chase gave me a strong hint."

"Chase, your ghostly bunny friend?"

"The same. She refuses to tell me where the portal to this other world is, but she suggested I follow her around and see where she goes. I think she means to make a move, and go through some kind of magic doorway that connects this plane of existence with the one that contains Old New Hackensack."

"And when you see where she goes..."

"We'll know how to get in."

We decided to spread out through the hotel and watch for Chase. To signal one another, we had Oscar Mayer Wiener Whistles. Seamus Finn had left his in his room at the military school, but I had two, so loaned him one of mine. These are whistles you get for free when the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile comes around. It is a car shaped like a hot dog, and there is a little person dressed as a chef who hands out the Wiener Whistles. They are shaped like a hot dog too, and make a nice hollow hooting kind of sound. The idea was that if any of us saw Chase, we would toot our Wiener Whistle, and the other two would head for the sound.

"Won't that alert Chase that she is being watched?" Seamus Finn asked.

"If I understood what she said to me, she expects to be watched. She wants to tell me where the secret entrance to the secret world is, but she can't come right out and just say it. Some kind of ghostly rule, I guess. So I am betting she will ignore the whistle and just go about her business. Toot softly, and every few seconds, so the others can find you."

We spread out. Neddie took the upper floors, Seamus took the middle ones, and I took the lower stories of the hotel, the lobby, and the basement. It wasn't long before I heard a faint tooting coming from above. I raced up the stairs. The tooting was getting clearer. I passed the middle floors, with no sign of Seamus Finn, and when I reached the second-to-the-top-floor hallway, both boys were there.

"Where is she?" I asked.

"She was here a minute ago. Now she's disappeared again."

"Spread out again."

We spread out. It would have been much better if we had walkie-talkies or some kind of two-way radios for this. Then I heard tooting from above—it was Seamus this time. I raced up and Neddie raced down. Again, Chase had disappeared by the time we assembled.

There were a few more false alarms, and sightings of Chase scurrying through the corridors only to vanish before we could all converge.

"Chase covers a lot of territory in the course of a day," Seamus Finn said.

"She's a busy bunny," I said.

We were all on the ground floor of the Hermione, in the utility area behind the lobby—I had seen Chase in the vicinity of Mr. Mangabay's room. The door was partly open, and Mr. Mangabay was inside, ironing and listening to anti-Communist hillbilly music.

"Wait! There she is again!" Neddie said.

"She's heading for the old restaurant," I said. We hurried down the corridor after her. Chase went into the former restaurant, now made tidy and set up for Gypsy Boots's health food cookery lessons. We saw Chase make her way into the kitchen and then squeeze through a little door standing ajar at the very back.

"What do we do now, just crowd in after her?" Neddie asked.

"Better let me go in first," I said. "She and I are friends."

I slipped through the partially open door and found myself in a little room not much bigger than a closet. It was fairly dark—I could barely see anything, but I could see I was alone—Chase was not present. The little room was empty, the walls were of tile, and there was a small iron door, over which there was a sign: bomb shelter. I tooted my Wiener Whistle a couple of times, and Neddie and Seamus appeared.

"Where's the bunny?" they asked.

"As you see," I said.

"Could she have opened that iron door? It looks heavy."

"She's a ghost. She could have passed right through it."

"Well, we're not ghosts. Let's see if we can open it."

"Bomb shelter. I know about those. In case of an atomic attack, you come down here and there is food and water—enough to keep you alive until it is time to go outside and see the total ruination of the city, everybody dead, and huge mutant monsters, pets like white mice turned into gigantic killers by the radiation."

"Help me get this thing open," I said. We pulled the iron door open. Another little room, this one was almost totally dark.

"Look! Here's a candle and a box of matches," Seamus Finn said. He lit the candle and we saw a steep flight of iron stairs leading down. We descended. There were iron cots, big cartons marked
SURVIVAL CRACKERS
and
DEHYDRATED SOUP
, and big cans marked
DRINKING WATER
.

"This is spooky," I said. "I can imagine people sitting down here for weeks and months and going nuts."

"And listening to the giant mutant white mice scratching at the door, trying to get in and eat them," Neddie said. "I wonder what this button is for." Set into the wall was a brass plate with a large red button in the middle. under the button were letters that spelled out
DOWN
.

"Don't push..."

Neddie pushed it. The iron door slammed shut, creating a gust of air that blew out the candle. The room began to vibrate and shake. We heard grinding mechanical noises, and had the sensation of sinking.

"...it!" I said.

"No, probably shouldn't have," Neddie said. The grinding noises and vibrating continued, and the feeling of sinking turned into a feeling of falling. You felt it in your stomach.

Seamus Finn was scrambling around, trying to find the candle and strike a match. When he got it lit, everything looked the way it had, except our faces, which looked sick. "You know what this feels like?" Neddie asked.

"Elevator?"

"Yes!"

Just then there was a bump. The falling feeling stopped, and the door popped open. Bright sunlight flooded in. We practically climbed over one another scrambling up the stairs and popping through the popped-open door. Having popped out, we tumbled a foot or two and found ourselves lying on green grass.

"What the heck?" Seamus said.

"We're in some kind of a meadow!" Neddie said. "Look! There goes Chase!" I said. Chase was scampering off in the direction of some bushes. "So we're there?" Seamus asked.

"I don't know. I guess we are."

"So how come there's a sun and sky and clouds and all, if we just descended, as I am assuming we have, into the bowels of the earth?" Neddie asked.

"I always wondered about that when Alice went down the hole after the white rabbit," I said. "You'd think it would be some sort of cave or cavern."

"I wondered that too," Seamus Finn said. "We just did more or less the same thing as Alice, didn't we?"

"pretty much," I said. "only our rabbit is black."

"So the parallel-worlds thing Melvin and Crazy Wig were talking about is right?" Seamus asked.

"This raises some questions about astronomy and physics," Neddie said. "I mean, is the sun shining on us now the same sun we're used to? Is this the same solar system we live in every day? And if the bomb shelter descended like an elevator, into the earth, then aren't we inside the earth? or ... were our senses fooled, and because the button I pushed—"

"We probably should have talked that over before pushing it," Seamus said.

"Agreed," Neddie said. "Anyway, what if because the button was marked 'Down,' when the bomb shelter began to shake around and make noises, we assumed it was descending? What if it was actually taking off like a rocket? What if instead of being inside the earth, we're on some other planet? or, according to the Melvin and Crazy Wig idea, what if there are all these different planes of existence all existing in the same space, and it didn't go anywhere, just shook around and vibrated and made noises, and then we popped out in the same physical place, and the place we're in overlaps the space where the Hermione Hotel stands, but
before we were seeing only that space and now we can see only this other one?"

"Interesting questions," I said. "Here's another one. Do you see the door we just popped out of? Where is the bomb shelter?"

"Hmmm. That
is
interesting," Seamus Finn said. "It's nowhere in sight. There may be a problem getting home. What do we do now?"

"Let's keep following Chase," I said. "She looked as though she knew where she was going."