The Mechanical Mind of John Coggin (15 page)

J
OHN AWOKE IN
a coffin. And not any coffin, but a Coggin Family Number Eight Walnut Standard. He'd know that woodgrain anywhere.

Breathe, he told himself. Just breathe.

Breathing would have been a lot easier without the gag in his mouth. Or the putrid odor wafting through the coffin's airholes. Or the nips of midges crawling across his ankles. Or the insufferable sticky heat.

“Not a haunted house tour I'd pay for,” someone grumped.

“Put it down here,” a voice answered.

The coffin landed with a bang, and he heard no more.

When John came to, he was out of the coffin. Out of the coffin and shackled by three feet of heavy chain to the
wall of a cozy dungeon cell.

A cozy and unfurnished dungeon cell, it should be said. Bed, chair, cot—using any of these to escape was out of the question, since they didn't exist. The only additions to the decor were a window with iron bars, a historic chamber pot, and an impenetrable wooden door.

Oh, and a ceiling that was dripping foul-smelling green goo, via his head, onto the floor. Smack dab into a pool of blood.

I'm dying, John thought, running his hands frantically over his body, searching for the fatal wound.

It wasn't until he reached his upper lip that he realized that the jolt from the coffin must also have given him the nosebleed of the century. Half of his shirtfront was covered in a delta of brownish red.

“Ugh,” John said, and was astonished to discover he could hear himself. The gag had been removed.

“Help me!” he shouted. “Somebody help me!”

“I'm coming, I'm coming,” came a faint cry.

Footsteps on the stairs were followed by the sound of a deadbolt being shot back and the jingle of keys. The door creaked open . . .

To once more reveal Leslie the Pig.

A pig that was looking much the worse for wear since the last time John had spoken to him. His cheeks were spotted, his belly sagged, and his eyes were puffy with fatigue.

“Let me go!” John demanded.

“I wish I could do that.”

To his credit, Leslie appeared sincere. He fidgeted from one foot to the other, wiped his brow, shrugged at the bag on his shoulder. But he made no move to release John.

“Did you hear me? Let me go!” John repeated.

Leslie's reply was to reach into the bag and remove something extremely unpleasant.

“I want you to know this was not my idea.”

John stared at the object in dismay. On the top, in letters as large and sinister as he remembered them, was the word

CONTRACT

“You great-aunt says you can't see your sister unless you sign this,” Leslie said, fumbling in the bag for a fountain pen. “She says that family is family and a Coggin born means a coffin made.” John's jailer was doing his best to fake an air of authority. “Until you accept your responsibilities as the heir apparent, she says you have to stay here with me.”

Keeping well out of the range of John's arm, Leslie removed the last sheet of paper from the contract, wrapped the pen within it, and rolled the package across the floor. It hit the tip of John's shoe with a fluttering sigh.

“No! I told her I'd never sign it!” John seized the pen and hurled it at his jailer, wrenching his right arm in the process. The little black spear went rifling over Leslie's head and ricocheted off the stones behind him. “And I meant it!” John picked up the page and shredded it into confetti.

“Look,” whined Leslie, “I don't like this situation any more than you do. I had the perfect plan for this place until you came along and ruined things. I won't have enough money for a golf ball until you agree to do what your great-aunt wants.”

Unnerved by John's reaction, Leslie's remaining bluff and bluster had disappeared. The slightest feint would have been enough to send him shrieking from the room.

“Why don't I let you think about it until tomorrow?” He gathered up the contract papers, tiptoed backward into the hall, and hastily slammed the door.

This left John alone.

He glared at the chamber pot. The chamber pot glared back.

But in his woozy brain, questions were forming. To start with, where was he? Laboriously, John went through the details of the previous conversation. Leslie had mentioned golf balls . . .

That must mean he was in the castle at Howst! Entrapped in the piece of prize real estate that Leslie
never could shut up about. John took a closer look at his surroundings and shrugged. Leslie was going to have a tough time turning this into a resort.

Okay, so he was in Howst. But where was Page? Was she back in Pludgett? Did Great-Aunt Beauregard really have her penned up in the workshop?

No, John suddenly realized, Page was with Boz! Boz would have seen him being captured. Boz would have rescued his sister and taken her back to Miss Doyle. This was simply a trick to make him sign his life away. Page was safe. Boz was safe.

And I have Colonel Joe's jackknife!
With giddy triumph, John dug in his hand into his left pocket.

And came up empty. He tried the right. Empty.

Nuts! Leslie must have thoroughly searched him while he was unconscious. Unless John could wait for his fingernails to grow three inches long, picking the locks of his shackles was going to be impossible.

Breathe, just breathe. Nursing his sore right shoulder, John leaned back against the wall and repeated this mantra over and over to himself.

He repeated it so long he fell asleep.

Only to wake stiffer than a board, and twice as ravenous. In the white afternoon heat, he saw that a slice of bread and a couple of wizened apples had been tossed on the floor. Mindlessly, he wolfed them down.

And still the chamber pot glowered at him. This time,
he observed, it had acquired a bright new signature sheet as a companion.

For three hours, John stared at the piece of paper and contemplated alternatives. Until the moment came when he realized he was well and truly stuck.

It was then that he started to cry.

“Pssst . . . comrade.”

John scanned the room. The voice was human, but there was nothing in the cell bar a discontented black beetle.

“Who's there?”

“No time for knock-knock jokes, my dear boy. We're facing an exponential crisis.”

“Boz?”

“The one and only.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I've come to rescue you.”

John's laugh was loud enough to send the beetle scuttling into the ceiling cracks. “You're here to rescue
me
?”

“Indeed! Though I admit that the tactical execution left something to be desired.”

“You were captured.”

“Afraid so.” Boz's voice was bizarrely cheerful. “Trussed and trundled as soon as I attempted admission through the back entrance of this fortification. I had expected the great Leslie, but not the additional security guards. Last thing I remember was an impressive display of knuckles
heading straight for my superior orbital fissure. Or, in more prosaic terms, a fist in the eye.”

“I'm surprised you're not dead.”

“For an interim, I thought I was. Until it occurred to me that the waiting room of the afterlife would be more suitably furnished—antimacassars, to say the very least.”

“Boz!”

“Yes?”

“I'm glad you're not dead.”

“Why, thank you.”

“But where are you?”

Boz coughed. “I appear to be ensconced in a stone cell, decorated in a minimalist style with a charming view of a sewage outflow pipe. Much like yourself, I imagine.”

John looked at the ceiling. There he noticed one thing he had neglected to spot on his initial examination—a small vent high up in the corner of the interior wall.

“You're next door!”

“Am I? Remarkably civil of them to let us share a suite.”

John smiled. Despite all that had happened, it was comforting to hear Boz's voice and picture him, unbowed and unbroken, sitting with his squashed face on the opposite side of the wall.

Until he realized that Boz was there. And not with his sister. “Boz. Where's Page?”

There was an uneasy silence.

“Ah.”

John waited, but there was nothing after that. “Boz . . . ,” he said threateningly.

Boz sighed. “Alas, my deepest regrets, but she is currently incarcerated in Pludgett with your Great-Aunt Beauregard.”

“What?” John stood up, forgot that he was shackled by his ankles, and was yanked backward into the wall.

“I'm sorry to be the bearer of mercurial tidings, my dear boy, but it's true. As I lay lying near the tracks, I overheard her being berated in the carriage of the Pludgett express.”

“Why didn't you stop the train? Create a diversion? Kidnap her back?”

Boz sighed again. “Don't think I didn't contemplate one of your death-defying feats. Only it did occur to me that I was not the best person to be assuming the reins of command.”

“So you left her?”

“Well, relative cause and all that. In any case, I thought I'd better consult you before effecting a reunion. So instead I hitched a ride on the caboose, disembarked when Leslie did, and sniffed the scent of your captor to his lair. Do you realize, Jack Sprat, that we are currently entombed in a rather remarkable railway baron's folly?”

John could have torn apart the stones with his bare
hands. “You followed Leslie because you were afraid of Great-Aunt Beauregard and what she might do to you!”

Boz sighed a third time. “I suppose, if one were to examine the subconscious underpinnings of my primordial unconscious, then yes, that might be the honest-to-goodness truth.”

“You're such a coward!”

“I'm afraid I am. We live in a cold, cruel world, and I, for one, find no reason to risk my delicate parts. Now I do not suggest that this is a commendable trait. Far from it. Your propensity to risk life and limb for your sister makes you a much more admirable—and, may I say, dashingly adventurous—character but sooey generis, as Leslie might say.

“No, it is my job to remain your humble scion, the poncho to your umbrella, the citrus to your tonic, the nitrogen to your manure—”

“Boz!”

“Yes?”

“I get it!”

Funnily enough, John did. He could smack his head against the wall all he wanted, but Boz was Boz, and would be forevermore. You can't change your friends any more than you can hold back the tide. There was little John could do but accept the situation for what it was.

Which was pretty grim. John could still see no avenue
of escape, and now he was being forced to imagine what Great-Aunt Beauregard might be doing to Page. Even at this moment, his sister could be painting the lips of a ninety-year-old corpse. It was enough to depress a hyena.

And himself. Exhausted, worried, and sick to death of thinking, he lay down and fell back to sleep.

He woke a few hours later, numb below the waist and slick with perspiration. A monotonous hum was reverberating in his right ear.

“Boz!”

“Yes, my dear boy?”

“Shut up!”

“Oh, I do beg your pardon. I had no idea it was fortissimo. I shall endeavor to be a piano.”

John wiped his forehead with the edge of his sleeve and closed his eyes again. Less than a minute later, Boz coughed.

“I hate to be a perennial periwinkle, but would you, by any happy chance, care to know what I was thinking about?”

“No.”

Either Boz didn't hear this, or he chose to ignore John altogether.

“While I have been lying here contemplating existence, the anemic atoms of my anorexic self have been instructing my interior that it would like a soupçon of sustenance.”

“You're hungry,” John said.

“Bang on the boutonniere. And do you know what the particles of my particulars are craving?”

“No.”

“Well, now,” Boz snuffled. “At this precise moment I am thinking of Maria's blueberry muffins.”

John couldn't help it. He moaned and rolled over onto his stomach to try to squelch his hunger pangs. “Can we talk about something else?”

“But of course. First course? Primi? Secondi?

“I mean something besides food.”

“I'm sorry, old chap, but at this pie-cise gâteau-ment, I can't seem to think of anything else.”

“Then can you keep your cakes to yourself?”

“Certainly,” Boz said, amiably enough. The hum started up again.

“Boz!”

“Sorry. Simply attempting to meditate into a higher astral plain. Wait a moment, wait one precious nanosecond, I have it! I know what prisoners are supposed to do in purgatory when they are starving and sleep deprived. Are you ready for my inspired suggestion?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then go ahead,” John said, wincing at the barrage that was to come.

“Tell me a story.”

“A story? Not now!”

“My dear boy, if not now, when? Seize the carp, John. Seize the carp.”

John sighed and rolled over onto his back, just in time for a large, lukewarm glob of goo to go
SPLAT
in his left eye.

“I can't feel my legs,” he said.

“Pah!” Boz bellowed. “That's no way to begin a story!”

John reached up to wipe the muck from his eye, and a bolt of pain cracked through his right arm.

“Why don't you tell one?” he groaned.

This time it was Boz who sighed. “Now, now, you know I have neither the facility nor—let's face it—the faculties; nutty as a maggot-infested fruitcake. No, I am merely a player that frets and struts his hour upon two arthritic limbs. You, on the other hand, are incurably optimistic and still breathing. The perfect job description for a storyteller.”

John looked up through the bars of his window. The sun was setting, casting a steamy glow over the door of the cell. He could feel his sweat mixing with the dried blood on his shirt and returning it to liquid.