The Order of Odd-Fish (14 page)

Ian sat quite still, staring at a different spot on the tapestry—at a woman, far out on the edge. The gray waves of murderous fire were rolling straight at her. The woman had just started to turn around, her surprised face caught in the moment before she, too, was killed.

“They say the entire history of Eldritch City is supposed to be in this tapestry,” said Ian. “Some people say you can even find yourself, if you search enough. Or your friends. Or…”

Jo swallowed. She didn’t need him to tell her who the woman was. She recognized his wistful eyes, his blond hair, his slightly crooked nose. The image of Ian’s mother jerked past them, and Jo felt the world shrinking around her, drawing in closer, so tight she couldn’t move.

“Dame Myra gave us a lecture once,” said Ian. “Said the tapestry’s alive, kind of—made out of a special moss that’s always growing, so the pictures are always shifting. It’s true. Sometimes my mother is smiling. Other times she just looks tired. Today…she just looks far away.”

“Ian,” said Jo nervously, “why are you showing me this?”

Ian stared at her with sudden intensity. “Jo, what do you think of the Hazelwoods?”

Jo’s heart lurched. “Aunt Lily only told me about them this morning.” She cautiously added: “It, um…it sounded to me like they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or…”

Ian’s lip curled.

“What are you getting at, Ian?”

“I know that Nora wants you to help her find the Ichthala. I think she’s crazy. But if this Ichthala nonsense turns out to be true…if you do find out who she is, or
what
she is, if you find out where the Ichthala’s hiding…I want you to tell me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to kill her.”

Jo’s skin felt like cold jelly. Ian looked at her with strangely brutal eyes. She wanted to push him away, get out of the room, out of Eldritch City—the whole town was insane, Aunt Lily was right: they would murder her if they knew who she was. “I’ll do what I can,” she whispered.

Ian smiled, and his teeth seemed sharper than Jo remembered. “I knew there was something about you I liked.”

Jo stood up, tearing herself away.

“Where are you going?” said Ian, startled.

“Back upstairs,” said Jo. “They’re probably missing us.”

“But Jo, don’t you—” began Ian. Then he stopped, for a part of the tapestry scrolled into view that stunned them both.

A great hole had been hacked in the tapestry. Shreds of moss dangled from the hole, revealing a gray brick wall behind. Jo and Ian stared as the hole emerged from the corner and began circling the room, strangely menacing. Slashing through the gorgeous fertility of the tapestry, it looked not like a mere hole, but as if reality itself had been torn open.

“That wasn’t there before,” breathed Ian.

The hole steadily inched along, almost unbearably slowly. Then it passed over a wooden door on the other side of the tapestry—twelve feet off the ground, and closed—and marched on.

“What’s that?” said Jo, but Ian had already leaped up and grabbed the wheel. The machinery groaned as he forced the tapestry to a halt; then he cranked the wheel backward, winding the tapestry in reverse, until the hole moved back over the door.

“I never knew there was a door behind there,” whispered Ian.

“Let’s go in!” said Jo.

“No, Jo. We have to tell the knights.”

“But I want to see what’s behind that door,” said Jo, and she only half heard Ian’s reply. She was staring transfixed at the tapestry, at the scene around the hole. The scene was dark and swallowed up in decoration, but once Jo saw it, it burned into her eyes.

It was a circle of twelve women in blue cloaks and blue veils, standing around the hole, pointing toward the door.

The Silent Sisters. Jo knew she should be afraid, but something pulled her toward it. Aunt Lily had told her almost nothing about the Silent Sisters. It almost seemed as though she was holding something back. And now here they were, ringed around a door, inviting her…where?

“Let’s go tell Sir Oliver,” said Ian.

“But Ian,” said Jo quickly. “It won’t hurt to just peek.”

Ian frowned. “How would we even get up there?”

“I don’t know, let’s see…You could stand on the couch, I guess, and then I could get up on your shoulders and—oh, come
on,
Ian! Are you scared or something?”

Ian seemed about to protest, but his eyes hardened. “I’m not scared.”

In guilty silence Jo helped Ian push the couch under the door. She knew she shouldn’t have said that, but she couldn’t help it; now the easy friendliness from before felt strained. Without a word Ian got up on the couch and Jo climbed onto his shoulders. She reached for the doorknob—at first she could just barely brush her fingers over it, but then she got a grip and turned it. The door opened slightly. Jo grabbed the threshold and pulled herself up into darkness.

“What do you see?” said Ian.

The passage was almost entirely dark, twisting upward in an odd way. Jo rose to her feet, every bit of her quickened and trembling. “It goes on a bit. I’m going to see what’s up there….”

“Be careful.”

Jo edged forward and upward, excited. The passage was cramped and dark and low, but there was something unnerving about the weird angles of the beams, something disorienting about the slope of the floor. Jo could barely see her hands, feeling her way upward almost blindly, until the passage contracted into a little hole, almost too small to get through. She couldn’t see anything beyond it.

“Hey, Jo!” said Ian, far away now.

Jo stopped, tingling with danger. If something happened to her up here…She suddenly felt very afraid. The darkness pressed in on her on all sides, and her buzzing confidence curdled in her stomach. “Okay, okay, I’m coming back,” she said shakily, and began to edge back down. But a last spasm of curiosity made her stop—and in a reckless rush she clambered up, squeezing through the hole.

She was in a dark room full of motionless people. She couldn’t see anyone’s face. The people were absolutely still and silent, some sitting on chairs and sofas, a few standing or leaning on tables. But even in the darkness, Jo almost started to recognize their faces. She crept up to one of them, so close that her nose was only inches away.

Suddenly she knew who it was—a very familiar face with a wicked yellow grin.

“Aunt Lily?” whispered Jo.

Aunt Lily’s head popped off, screeching with laughter. Jo stumbled back in shock, crashing into something like Colonel Korsakov, who grabbed her roughly, bulging and melting out of his uniform like a great hairy pudding. She punched, kicked to get free, but she was crushed between Aunt Lily and Colonel Korsakov, writhing and clutching each other, tearing each other’s bodies apart. Jo tried to scream but her throat locked up, she couldn’t even breathe.

The knights of the Odd-Fish jerked and jiggled all around her, closing in, their mouths hanging open, their eyes hollow. A leering Sir Oliver grabbed Jo, his bony fingers all over her like spastic tarantulas. She broke free, pushing against Dame Myra, whose body collapsed like cottage cheese, and when Jo squirmed the other way she found an eyeless Dame Delia that seemed about to bite off her face. The knights were falling to pieces all around her, the floor strewn with a mishmash of arms and legs and torsos, and Jo was pulled into a mixed-up pile of Sir Alasdair, Sir Festus, and Sir Oort, their limbs twitching wildly. She squeezed her eyes tight, and finally she found she could scream, and she screamed and screamed.

Jo didn’t know how long it was until someone came banging into the room. She opened her eyes and saw
two
Sir Olivers—a ghastly life-size doll, which had already fallen to pieces on the floor, and the real one, who was looking around the room in unsteady shock.

Aunt Lily came running right after him and stopped, with the same look of confused horror; then she dashed over to Jo, gathering her up in her arms. Jo couldn’t stop shaking.

“What happened here, Oliver?” whispered Aunt Lily.

Sir Oliver said, as Jo kept trembling, “It seems the Belgian Prankster left us a little surprise.”

Jo had a hard time falling asleep that night.

After she found the secret room, all cleaning had stopped. The knights gathered for a closed-door meeting, without the squires, that lasted for hours. The dolls of the Odd-Fish knights were taken into the meeting for examination.

But Jo couldn’t get them out of her mind. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the evil yellow grin on Aunt Lily’s face, felt herself trapped and suffocated between her and the grinding, groping Colonel Korsakov. The dolls had been vicious caricatures, made with a merciless accuracy by someone who knew the Odd-Fish not only in physical detail but also with a bitter emotional intimacy.

Jo didn’t see the knights again before she went to bed, except for when one or two of them took a break for a smoke. Their faces showed them to be the opposite of the happy, laughing knights they had been only hours ago. She tried to eavesdrop, but they seemed guarded in their words; they obviously did not want to panic the squires. But Jo remembered what Aunt Lily had said that morning:

“The Belgian Prankster may have something terrible planned.”

Later that night, Jo woke up—and immediately knew there was someone else in her room.

She froze in her bed. A scratching noise was coming from below the floor. In her bedside mirror, Jo saw a floorboard wriggle loose, and gray hands place it aside.

Then a low, raspy voice: “Jo.”

She didn’t move. Something crept out of the hole—she couldn’t tell what. Something was moving toward her bed. She tensed. A shadow loomed up around her.

Jo spun around, ready to scream—

“Are you awake?” whispered Ian.

“I am now,” said Jo, her heart beating wildly. “Why are you in my room, Ian?”

“Shhh. Follow me. Squires’ meeting.”

Ian lowered himself back under the floorboards. Jo reluctantly sat up, her head fuzzy, still muddled as to whether she was dreaming or awake; finally she rolled out of her sheets and followed Ian under the floor into a narrow crawl space. She reached up and replaced the floorboards. The moon shone weakly on her empty bed.

It was a tight, blind, prickly squeeze through the crawl spaces of the lodge. Exposed nails and splintered beams threatened from all sides, stabbing and scratching her in the dark; in some places the wood sagged, nearly collapsing under her weight. She felt like a tiny germ secretly swimming through the veins of a vast, mysterious body. The only sound was Ian, scraping quietly ahead, whispering “Go left” or “Careful here.” Everything smelled of rotting wood, old mothballs, and decades of dust.

At last she followed Ian down a crumbling chimney, wedging her trembling feet and fingers in between bricks—and finally she crawled out of a hearth and into a room.

The room had no doors and no windows: the only exit was back up the chimney. It was black and gloomy, caked with dust, and raggedly furnished with bare mattresses, a low table piled with bric-a-brac, and heaps of mildewed garbage. Dirty dishes lay scattered around, cobwebs clogged the corners, and a silver chandelier hung over all, flickering with black, dripping candles.

Albert and Daphne were huddled together on a mattress, talking in low whispers, Phil was half asleep on some pillows, and Maurice was fiddling with a battered metal movie projector. Nora sat by herself, clutching a film canister; she beckoned Jo and Ian to sit with her in a pile of pillows. Everything was hushed and tense, but Jo hoped that whatever was going to happen would be quick. She ached to be back in bed.

Dugan sat at an ornate desk, looking at everyone solemnly. “Everyone’s here,” he whispered, and tapped the desk with a gavel. “Let’s bring this meeting to order. Albert, drinks.”

Albert Blatch-Budgins produced a twisty amber bottle, opened it, and took a gulp. The bottle was passed from squire to squire, each drinking in silence. When Jo’s turn came, she nervously sipped, and a smooth scorching juice rushed down her throat, bitter and fruity. It was all she could do not to cough it up. She passed the bottle on, and it finally rounded back to Dugan.

Dugan took a final pull and capped the bottle. “Down to business. First off—Jo, welcome to the Odd-Fish. I admit some of us had doubts about you, but not anymore. Catching the nangnang and finding those dolls of the knights…not bad for your first day.”

“Thank you,” murmured Jo. She dimly realized she was being complimented, but the soft pillows and fiery drink only made her want to fall back asleep.

Dugan nodded. “Next point of business. We hear that Sir Nils—”

“We’re not supposed to call him Sir Nils anymore,” said Maurice. “Sir Oliver said his knighthood has been revoked. Now he’s just the Belgian Prankster.”

“Thanks, Maurice. The Belgian Prankster…well, whatever you call him, it’s obvious the knights are keeping something from us. So I asked Albert and Daphne to spy on the knights’ meeting tonight.”

A dull ache pounded behind Jo’s eyes. She didn’t want to hear about the Belgian Prankster, she didn’t want to know any more—she buried herself in the pillows and felt foggy and thick.