The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox (13 page)

He was about my dad's age. Of course he was. They'd been in the same class at school. Dad had told me all about Tony Holland. Well, not about him being in the country and CEO of AtmoLab—this was new. Dad had assumed he'd vanished to some faraway tax haven in the Caribbean.

Tony Holland finished his muffin, sipped his coffee, wiped his fingers and his lips on a napkin, swung his feet off the desk, and sat forward.

“So,” he said, “you're Maloney's boy, are you? And who's your friend?”

He looked like a jet-setting entrepreneur, but he had the broad, thick accent of a Midlands farmer.

“This is Ed Wharton,” I said. “He's … a tourist.”

“Yeah? That's nice. How's your dad?”

“Fine,” I said.

“I'll bet he is. He must be fair beside himself right now, I'd say. It's weird, you know, but all this time I've been expecting him to come charging through that door with a gang of cops to arrest me and throw me in jail. Now it's too late, and he sends you instead. He's a queer sort of man, your father.”

I looked at Ed, then took a step forward, breathing deeply. “You stole the money,” I said.

Tony Holland's eyebrows shot up. “Of course I stole the money! What else was I going to do? When that woman turns up at me door and tells me I'd better do it or else, I don't wait to see what the ‘or else' is!”

“Woman? Mrs. Fitzgerald? She told you to do it?”

“Of course she did! I'm no thief, but you don't want to cross that woman. Look, John-Joe's a cousin of me dad's, but none of us liked him. We couldn't believe it when she married him. A young one like her and a twisted curse of a yoke like Fitzy? Well, we soon found out. Say a word about her, look at her funny, ask the wrong question and cows'll sicken, money'll be lost, folks'll fall down stairs and break bones. I'm no crook, but I'll be as crooked as a politician's expenses to keep her away from my family.”

“So she threatened you?” I asked.

“Threatened me?” he gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, you could say that she threatened me, all right. I got a lump, you know. Under me arm, here. Big and round and nasty as you please. Went to the doctor and had it tested. Malignant, it was. Well that's me done for, says I. Made my peace with God and got ready as best I could for the long fall. Then one night she comes up to the house, walks in like she owns the place, aye, and everyone in it, and she lays it all out. Her big plan. For me to go work for the Weathermen's Club, strip it bare, then set up a corporation and buy it out. ‘I've news for you,' I tells her. ‘Sounds like you need a con man, not an accountant. Sounds like you need someone who has more than a year to live.' ‘Get it tested again,' she tells me. ‘They'll tell you it's benign, and you'll wake up one morning and it'll be gone, and you'll do as I tell you or it'll come back, and if it comes back, it'll be back to stay. And if you're feeling brave and honorable, then let me tell you I've a set—one for each of your family.' Well, I thinks about it for all of about five seconds before I says to her, ‘You're the boss.'”

“Dear God,” said Ed.

“But,” I said, “the club, afterward—they said Dad had rung them up and told them to give you the job! They heard his voice! They blamed him!”

“Good God, lad, don't you think she can do voices over the phone? She could do the flippin' Pope if she wanted to, to the Pope's mother and the Pope in the same room as his old mum, and the poor woman still wouldn't be sure which was which!” He was flushed and angry, and his eyes were haunted, but full of fierce energy.

“Don't think,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “Don't think for a second I won't put my family before yours. Don't think for a second I'll go against her now. You run on home and pack up your things and move out and never look back, and that'll be the end of it! You hear me? I want this over and I want it done and I want my life back.”

The poor guy was weeping now, big tears flowing down his cheeks. I wondered how long he'd been keeping this pent up inside him, waiting for my dad to burst in so he could confess it all. In the end I'd do just as well as my dad, I supposed.

“So you bankrupted the club, is that right?” said Ed.

“Took every penny,” Holland confirmed with a nod and a sniff and a touch of professional pride. He wiped his face dry. “Sold off every treasure in their vaults, ransacked every bank account, shifted it all offshore. Never touched a penny myself.”

He slapped the desk with an open palm. “Not a penny went into me own pocket. Blood money, it was! Cursed!”

“And all the members left or died?”

“Retired in disgrace, living out their lives in old folk's homes. I'm sorry for them. I'm not proud of it. But I did what had to be done.”

“So what is AtmoLab, then?” Ed asked.

Holland leaned back in his chair and looked up at Ed and licked his lips. “It's the club,” he said. “It's the club—its charter, its assets and responsibilities, all wrapped in a new corporate identity. That's what AtmoLab is. We own it all. We own the bed and breakfast and we own the phone box, and today we're going down and we're taking possession.”

“For her,” I said, sick to my stomach.

“Aye, I'll be handing the whole lot over to her. She can do what she likes with it. I'll be out. I'll be free and clear.”

“You can't do this!” I wailed.

He wasn't crying now. He glared at me as if I were a whole new species of fool that had just crawled up out of his carpet.

“It's done,” he said. “It's all over and there'll be no going back and no stopping her, so just get out before you get hurt.”

“You don't understand!” I tried.

“I understand better than you!” he roared. “You think we don't know all about the Weathermen down our way? We knew all about the old well, and your blasted grandfather who let all this happen! We know more than we want to about the Seasons coming and going! So let it happen. Who cares if it's Maloneys or Fitzgeralds in charge? It's all the same! It'll be a lot safer in her hands than it would be in yours, that's for sure!”

“But the Shieldsmen—”

“That's enough! Get out, now, go on. Go home and pack your things and be safe, far away from the likes of her and from all of this.”

“We'll go,” said Ed, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I was just wondering—you say you own the phone box?”

Holland waved a hand dismissively. “It's complicated. Technically, the State owns it, and it's protected as a heritage site, but we have a sort of leasehold over it to run it and maintain it.”

“And the phone line?”

Holland looked up at him sharply. “Yeah,” he said. “We own the line, too. You would not believe the amount of time and money and influence we spent gaining ownership of that line, but we got it.”

“Recently?”

“Yes. This summer.”

“And did you leave the line connected?”

“No,” he said. “No, we disconnected it prior to upgrading. Back in July, it was.”

“You disconnected the Weatherbox?” My voice was a high-pitched shriek. “That's why it won't ring!”

He sat back in his chair and stared at me defiantly. “Yes. She told me to, so I did it.”

“Can you reconnect it? Can you?” I asked.

“If I wanted.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“Then do it! Do it before something awful happens!”

“If I do, something awful
will
happen—to me and my family. You don't want something awful to happen to you and yours? Leave. You and your family leave. I won't say it again. I won't tell you to get out again, either.”

“Come on,” Ed said, and he guided me out of the office and let the door swing shut behind us. I had to lean on the wall for a moment. I felt weak and hot and then weak and cold.

“You OK?” asked Ed.

“No,” I said miserably, “I'm not.”

Ed pressed the button to summon the elevator. An arrow went red and numbers began to slide up the display beside the door. I felt the skin on the back of my neck begin to prickle. I looked up at the ceiling, then down at the floor. The doors slid open.

“Wait,” I said. “Wait!”

I put my hands out to block Ed from getting in.

“What is it?”

“There's something … There's something…”

Down in the far left corner of the elevator there was a shadow. With the fluorescent light on overhead and nothing at all to cast it, there should have been no shadow—and yet there was. Coiled like a snake ready to strike. And there was a tiny flash, like an ember flaring in the ashes of a dead fire.

“Can you see it?” I asked.

“See what?” said Ed

The doors slid shut.

“Let's take the stairs,” I said. “And let's hurry.”

“Are you sure?”

“No,” I said. “Let's do it anyway.”

We went back down the corridor, past Tony Holland's door, and found the stairs and headed down. I felt like an idiot. I was spooked and upset and seeing things.

We had reached the second landing when we heard something on the stairs above. We froze and looked up, but couldn't see anything or anyone. We held our breath. Except for the roar of the air conditioner, the stairwell was silent.

All the hairs on my arm were standing up.

“Run,” I said.

We ran. Down the third flight, around and down, and into a wall of air that was so warm it was almost hot. The stairwell went dark as the lights above either went out or were blocked by something big and thick and heavy. The hot air and the cold mingled, the hot air going up, the cool air coming down.

“Hurry!” I gasped. The word was snatched from my lips by a sudden gust of wind. Cobwebs and papers and balls of dust were floating around us like eerie alien fish in some strange unearthly current.

I glanced back and saw a shape on the landing above. It stood like a human, with arms and legs as thin as sticks all drawn in jagged lines. There was an inhuman face with wicked, angry eyes and a grinning mouth that opened wider and wider. A torrent of mist and rain poured through it.

It was an elemental. In a building. Making weather.

Fat drops stung my face. More and more rain was lashed down at us by the driving wind, soaking us completely.

“Come on,” said Ed. “I hate getting wet.”

Sheltering as best I could under Ed the walking umbrella, I moved away from the wall, grabbed the handrail, and began to pull myself down the second-to-last flight of stairs.

Gallons of foaming water came rushing down the stairs. Soon, the flow was up to our knees and still rising.

How were they, how was
it
, doing this? It'd need hot air and cold air and lots and lots of water. And yet it didn't seem to be in any danger of running out. Water kept rising on the steps, and more and more was falling in sheets and curtains from the flights above, down through the open core of the stairwell.

And then I realized that it was the air conditioning! Of course an office block like this had air conditioning, and air conditioners are machines for heating and cooling air and moving that air around. There would also be water: for the cafeteria, for cleaning, for the toilets. That's what the elemental was working with. It could probably tap the mains supply for the whole city! It might have been draining the flippin' canal outside, for all I knew.

So it had energy, hot and cold air, and water. Lots and lots of water. Some of that water might be from the toilets. Gah.

“Oh, no,” I said. “Look at that.”

The last flight was nearly swamped, and the water was halfway up the door to the lobby. The sound of running water echoed in the narrow walls and up and down the stairwell. Somewhere an alarm was ringing. Something started to laugh, and a white wave poured down on us. We just about had the chance to scream before we were swept off our feet.

Oh,
I thought.
Drowning. I know how to do this. I've had practice.

Then I was thrown and tossed, twisted and turned. I went up and down, up and down. I saw bubbles, millions of tiny little bubbles, most of them coming out of me, and mostly I just felt cold.

Down there, everything was calm. I saw the stairs and the door and a pair of kicking legs. I shook my head, the last few bubbles bursting from my mouth. I forced my arms and legs to move and tried to work out which way was up. I knew it should have been obvious but somehow it wasn't. My limbs felt weak and feeble, and my chest felt as though someone was parking a car on top of it. A strong hand grabbed me by the hair and pulled. It was much more painful than the car. I broke the surface, gasped, spat, and roared. The hand let go.

“Gaaaah!” I said. “Gaaaaaah!”

“All right?” yelled Ed in my ear. “Stay up this time!”

“Gaahahahaaaa!” I said, moving my arms and legs in a desperate struggle to stay afloat.
I should probably kick off my shoes,
I thought.

“Now, hang on!” he yelled. “Be with you in a minute!”

He took a deep breath and dived.

I pushed my face back below the surface and saw the stairs and the door. There was Ed, both hands on the door handle, both feet against the jamb. The door crept open an inch, and then another.

The water in the stairwell began to turn, sweeping me around, sucking me down like the whirlpool in a bath. My wail of fear cut off as I went under one final time. Ed was holding the door open against the weight of the water, fighting the pressure. It was rushing past him and through the door at terrific speed. I hit the door sideways and got stuck, the flow of the water trying to break me in two. Ed took hold of my leg and pulled me down and pushed me like a postman shoving a package into a tiny letterbox. The water carried me through, scraping me against the edges of the doorway, and I was spat out onto the floor of the AtmoLab lobby.