The Rambling Read online

  That’s when I realized it wasn’t any normal gator. No sir. This gator had one yellow eye right in the center of its forehead. I stared at it long and slow, and it stared right back at me with that forehead eye, like it was reading my mind, like it was telling me some deep dark truth I needed to know for the whole rest of my life. I started to say my prayers right then, oh boy did I, waiting for it to chomp me to bits.

  But the gator lowered into the water until its eye vanished and its back vanished and then it was invisible, hidden deep in the muck. I felt a whoosh of water and then it was gone, disappeared into the swamp. I realized the water could be full of one-eyed gators. The swamp water could be full of anything and I wouldn’t hardly know it. It was one big murky mystery, the swamp was, and it always would be forever.

  I paddled closer, not ten feet from the men now, the fog like swamp’s breath, me nestled deep in it. The moon broke through the clouds and cast a glow down on the men’s faces and I yelped I was so excited.

  It was Cecily Bob and Mr. Hugo crouched there by the fire. It looked like they were cooking a rat. They were looking my way.

  “You hear something, Mr. Hugo?”

  “Aye, sir, I heard something, I did.”

  “One of them big-tusked pigs you think?”

  “Sounded more like a human to me, it did.”

  “A human you say? Could it be the man himself?”

  “If only we were so lucky, Cecily Bob. But something tells me we are not.”

  “Aye,” said Cecily Bob. They peered out into the gloom. “I don’t see nothing. Perhaps it’s passed on.”

  “That would be my wager.”

  “Aye. Our poor luck continues.”

  “Does it ever, Cecily Bob.”

  They looked sad, hunched over like too big gangly vultures around that fire. But if they were there, where was Pop? What happened to him?

  “Do we suppose he drowned then?” said Cecily Bob.

  “That would be my supposition,” said Mr. Hugo.

  Drowned? My daddy drowned? How?

  “I say we tell the truth. That I was rowing and you was sleeping and he was all tied up and he rolled himself right out the boat, that’s what we tell them. He rolled himself right out and splashed into the water.”

  “And what say ye when Boss Authority asks for a body?”

  “We say the swamp swallowed him whole, that’s what we say.”

  It couldn’t be true. Pop couldn’t have died. Not like this. He wouldn’t have drowned, there’s no way. Big tears were rolling hot down my face and I kept both hands over my mouth to keep from crying, to keep from weeping all over everything. I was too late. My daddy was long dead. I was just so durn sad you could have chucked me into the water and let me drown and I wouldn’t hardly have fought you at all.

  “Then what say ye about these ropes we found,” said Mr. Hugo, “cut clean?”

  “Are they not the ropes that bound the old fellow?”

  “Aye, they are.”

  “Then we don’t say nothing.”

  The ropes were cut? They couldn’t find the body? Then maybe Pop wasn’t dead. Maybe he somehow broke free, and he was hiding somewhere in the swamp. I bet he was already making his way back upriver to check on me. I bet he was already scrambling to send word to me that he was good and alive. Or maybe he was sitting pretty somewhere, planning his revenge, plotting his payback to Mr. Hugo and Cecily Bob and even Boss Authority himself.

  Pop wasn’t dead, not a chance, no sirree. Pop was just getting started. I was so happy I could have danced. I could have fallen to my knees and shouted hallelujahs all day.

  I had to get back to the skiff and tell Tally. I kicked soft and quiet as I could through the swamp water and muck, hoping there weren’t any snakes slithering, hoping no weird fanged fishes darted underneath me, hoping I wouldn’t stub my toe on a snappy turtle or kick a catfish spine by accident. I’d seen those suckers stick a man and the wound gets all swoll up and purple and you’re useless for a durn week. That would be just my luck, wouldn’t it? Find out Pop ain’t dead and first thing I do is get skewered by a catfish.

  But I made it safe and sound back to the skiff and I climbed back up in it and Tally untied the rope.

  “Pop escaped!” I said.

  “Shhh!” said Tally. “We’re not quite far enough away yet. They’ll hear you.”

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “But Pop flew the coop! They think he drowned, but I doubt it. I bet he’s somewhere out here in this swamp now, plotting his revenge. Yes sir, I bet my daddy right now is planning how to pay Boss Authority back for what he’s done. I bet he’s watching you and me right now, trying to figure out the best time to hop out and save us, to bring us right where he is. Yessirree, I tell you, my pop ain’t worried about a thing.”

  “Keep it down or we won’t be getting anywhere except dead,” she whispered. “And I’m about durn sick of rowing. You seem healthy now, and I’m ready for a rest.”

  “Fine, fine,” I said, and reached for the oars. But then I felt something weird under my shirt. I looked under the collar, and there they were: three thumb-sized leeches latched onto my skin, sucking my blood, hanging on for dear life.

  That did it. I screamed like a baby.

  I heard a holler back from Mr. Hugo and Cecily Bob’s camp. My yelp had got their attention, and that’s a fact. I could see skinny Cecily Bob holding a lantern high, scanning the swamp for us, Cecily Bob’s and Mr. Hugo’s faces turned my way. They’d seen me, there was no question about that.

  I snatched the oars and started rowing.

  I rowed past cypress knees poking up bald through the muck.

  I rowed past tree stumps and under limbs and dodged snakes dangling like poison fruit. I bumped a dead hollow oak and a funnel of bats burst out from it, high and black and swirling like a tornado in reverse. Tally kept glancing behind us, but I didn’t even need to look. I knew Mr. Hugo and Cecily Bob were gaining ground.

  We came up on a tangle of trees buried deep in the fog and muck. The moss hung curtain thick down to the water.

  “In there!” said Tally, and I tried to angle us through the knees and roots until we were hidden safe behind that moss curtain, in a circle of fat trees, some hollowed out and leering down over us.

  We stayed dead still, Tally holding my hand, the two of us crouched and quiet in the bottom of the boat. The tree swaddled us with its moss, big limbs draped around us like a giant wretched mother’s arms, bony and gaunt, bugs crawling all over them. The water was grayer and murkier here, it swirled in a baby little whirlpool that kept bumping the skiff into the trees. The trees were something else too, the bark carved on by human hands, symbols and scratch marks like how you figure a witch’s spell book looks. Above us dangled bones clacking together like wind chimes, another daisy chain of digit bones, jawless skulls wedged between branches and in the knots of trees, gaping at us, all those empty eye sockets watching.

  “Where are we?” I whispered, and Tally just looked at me, eyes all big and scared.

  Cecily Bob and Mr. Hugo rowed right by us, their lantern light casting us deeper into the shadow of the trees. They passed so close the moss swooshed in their wake. All the time calling, “Here, little boy! Here, little fella! We know where your daddy is, we do. Come on out!”

  How do they know about me? I wondered. Was it because I came chasing after them at Pop’s house? Was it because of how he yelled when they blew my boat up? Did Pop think I was dead?

  They came to the circle of trees where we were hidden.

  “That’s the Creepy’s lair it is,” said Mr. Hugo. “I ain’t going in there.”

  “If that’s where the kid went,” said Cecily Bob, “I reckon him a goner already.”

  “Aye,” said Mr. Hugo. “Not much human left to the fella, is there? Come on, let’s get back to hunting the father.”

  And they rowed themselves away.

  “We did it,” I whispered. “Come on, Tally, let’s get out of here.”

/>   I heard a splash right next to us, on the starboard side. That’s when I realized Tally wasn’t holding my hand anymore.

  The boat was empty except for me.

  “Tally?” I whispered. Then louder, who cares if I got caught. “Tally. Tally! Where are you?”

  “Shhh now, child,” hissed a voice in my ears. I could smell its breath, all ripe and rotted things. “We mustn’t say a word.”

  All those skulls staring down at me, green with grime and mold, jaws gone like they were laughing so hard they just fell off and sloshed into the water. The moon a low glow on the horizon, morning still hours off. My luck, my luck.

  I felt a cold, wet hand grip the back of my neck and yank me, and down, down I plunged into the water as I was dragged under.

  12

  I CAME TO IN A dark cave with one burning torch lodged in a nook in the wall. All around me water dripped in the darkness. I couldn’t see a thing, just the flickers of that one little fire. I yanked the torch from the wall and realized its handle was made of bone. I heard scuttling noises in the ground beneath me, felt my feet crunching on something. I looked down at the halo of light around my feet, and it was bones, human bones, legs and skulls and teeth and fingers. Everywhere I stepped they crunched under my feet.

  “Tally?” I called into the darkness. “Tally, where are you?”

  I bumped something on the ground, something soft. It groaned.

  I bent down and in the torchlight saw it was Tally. She was alive, she was. I tried to drag her up to her feet.

  “Come on now,” I said. “We got to move.”

  “I wouldn’t bother,” rasped a voice out of the darkness. I whirled the torch around, but I couldn’t see anything. The voice echoed throughout the cave, it could have been coming from anywhere. “You mustn’t leave now. You can’t.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, trying to sound all brave. “Watch us.”

  “I can see you quite clearly,” said the voice. I felt its breath right on my ear. “It’s you who cannot see me.”

  I swung the torch behind me and heard a scattering of bones. Laughter bounced along the cave walls.

  “Buddy?” It was Tally, she was getting up. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in a cave,” I said. “Something’s dragged us down here.”

  “The Creepy,” she said.

  “I told you already, there ain’t any such thing as a Creepy,” I said. “Pop said so.”

  I heard something scuttle at my feet. I swung the light toward the sound. A face stared back at me, no more than an inch from mine. Teeth yellow, cracked, and broken, hair scraggled down past its shoulders. In the torchlight its eyes burned black.

  I screamed and dropped the torch. It glowed dimly on the cave floor. I grabbed a hand and it was warm and furry, it was Tally’s, it had to be, she’d gone full spider. At least now we could fight. At least now we stood a chance.

  “Spider-folk?” said the voice. “I thought they’d long died out. I thought they were just a myth.”

  “Think again,” said Tally. “Think about how bad it’ll hurt when I sink my fangs into that scrawny neck of yours.”

  That high wild cackling. “Oh you children are a delight. I haven’t had so much fun in ages. Oh I haven’t spoken with the living in so long.”

  I snatched the torch back up again, burning my palm a little.

  “You stay back,” I said. “I’m warning you. I’ve seen what her poison can do to a body, even a fella like you. Trust me, it ain’t pretty.”

  “You misunderstand, child,” he said. “The living have no fear of me, not at all. It’s the dead I hunger for. And the dead fear no one.”

  He lingered just in the place where the torchlight faded, so I could see him a little. A man, or something like one, his face gray and wrinkled, his body skinny, so thin you could count his ribs, you could see every knot in his bones. His skin seemed sick, waterlogged, like if you ran your hand over his arm it would peal off in patches. He hunched down on all fours, his body shimmery and wet, dressed all in rags.

  “But you’re the Creepy,” said Tally. “I’ve heard stories about you.”

  “If that is the name by which they call me,” he said, “then I suppose the name to be true. Though I had another name once, I did. I still do, sometimes, when I’m asleep. That’s when I have a name, when I’m dreaming, when best I can remember, when I can still believe it to be so.”

  He gestured a bone-skinny arm around the cave walls.

  “This is my home, where I hide,” he said. “It hurts me when folks look upon me, when their eyes fall upon me. It hurts me for them to see. And the light burns me. I come out only when I am called.”

  “And who calls you?” I said.

  “The bodies call me,” he said, his nostrils flaring. “The blood calls me. I can smell the blood, I can feel it when it touches the water, I can feel my heart beat with the dead pulse of it.”

  He scuttled around on all fours, some long gangly insect creature.

  “I am shunned by the living, yes, I am the most lonely of all people, though the living have no fear of me. But the dead welcome me. They call themselves to me. And I minister to them.”

  “How can you minister to a dead body?” said Tally.

  “As vultures minister to the dead, and flies and worms, as all of nature does. I clean them down to bones. I prepare them for the earth. My hands are the last to touch the body, my eyes are the last to see it. That is my blessing and my curse. No one cares about the bodies save I, and I care the most.”

  “The bones everywhere,” I said. “The wind chimes, the skulls. Did you make all those?”

  “Aye,” he said. “They’re mine, all of them.”

  “But why?” I said.

  “Have you seen a burial in the swamp?” he said. “They throw the body down, and it sinks. The mud swallows it whole, that’s what people think. But the bodies bubble up, they do, they float to the surface. Here and there, where no one would think to look. But I find them, I smell them, I can sense the water ripple beneath them. Can’t you feel how lonesome a body is underwater? Can’t you feel how forlorn its bones become? Why not make a beautiful something out of them? Why not give them a voice, make them sing like these wind chimes sing? Why not make them look on and smile, like my skulls do? They’re my art, these dead bodies.”

  “But is it true, all the stories?” whispered Tally. “Do you . . . do you eat them?”

  “The hunger calls to me,” he said, “and I must obey.”

  “Buddy,” whispered Tally. “We need to go, and now.”

  “No, no, children,” said the Creepy. “You misunderstand. I saved you. I saved your lives.” He looked dead into my eyes. “I saved you like your father was unable to save me.”

  My heart thudded hard and loud in my chest. Despite myself I leaned in closer to him and tried to meet his black-eyed stare.

  “You knew my daddy?” I said.

  “Yes, child,” said the Creepy. “I knew him very, very well. Come, sit down. I have a story to tell, and it’s been long since anyone but the bones have heard it.”

  The Creepy beckoned to us in the darkness. Boy, did I not want to follow him anywhere down this dark cave. But what else was I going to do right now? Besides, I wanted to know about my daddy. I wanted to know what Boss Authority wanted with Pop. So I took a deep brave breath and I stepped forward. The torch revealed a few seat-sized rocks amidst the bones. Tally and I sat, wary, ready to spring up and go, ready to take off running the moment things got weird. Or weirder, rather.

  “Strange tidings, a tale of wickedness, it is,” said the Creepy. “A tale of deceit. Your father, Buddy. Yes your father, the deceitfulest of all.”

  “Watch your mouth about my daddy,” I said.

  “Your mouth? Watch your mouth?” he said, cackling. “I would be more afraid of my mouth, and what it could do to your bones. Oh children, I would slurp the marrow from them, I would lap up every drop of your blood. It would fill me, yes it woul
d. I would be satisfied.”

  “I thought you didn’t eat the living?” said Tally.

  “I don’t, I don’t,” said the Creepy. “Oh but just a snap of your neck and you would be mine, and your bones would be mine. It would be so very easy.”

  He growled and spat again.

  “But I won’t do it. No I won’t, I will not, I wouldn’t dare. Because there is still hope, you see? There is always hope. Even for me. Even for the miserablest likes of me.”

  The Creepy grew quiet a moment, thoughtful, as though each word spoken caused him pain. I could tell Tally wanted to leave, but I gripped her hand tight, hoping she understood how important this was to me. Maybe the Creepy could explain to me what happened to Pop. Maybe he could even tell me why Mom had taken me and left in the first place.

  “We were five, yes always there were the five of us,” said the Creepy. “I was your father’s friend. Sinclair, that was my name, do you remember me, child? Do you remember Sinclair in his glory?”

  For the most part I couldn’t recall Pop’s friends from when I was a kid, since he mostly kept me separate from all his and Mom’s business. But I did think I remembered a tall man, with long blond hair. A brave man, and strong, who smiled all the time, who used to toss me in the air and catch me. I was pretty sure his name had been Sinclair. There were others too—a tall witch-woman, a short man—but I remembered Sinclair the best. I remembered him laughing, I remember a great booming laugh, a laugh that made everyone else want to laugh along. But how could this shivering creature before me be the same person?

  “Yes, he remembers me, the boy does. He remembers me well.” And Sinclair smiled a little sadly at that.

  “The five. Myself, your father, Marina—watch her, boy, should you see her, as there be no more powerful witch that walks the earth than Marina dear, not that ever I have seen—Samantha Annie, and little Bobby Felix. Samantha Annie, yes, that’s your mother, child, did you know? Five we were, the best of friends, and never to be separated.”