At this came relief — followed immediately by shame, but the initial response was undeniable. It was a terrible thing to wish for, to abandon your family, or have them abandon you. But she was tired, always tired, and tired of being tired. Conversely there was freedom: no medications, no slogging alongside Kellogg’s manically blazing happiness while inside her glinted something black and mean. Pearl imagined her family as a brick and her life a balloon, the brick squashing and squishing and contorting the balloon, the balloon curling up in little rubbery swells around the sides of the brick, always on the verge of popping.
Pearly! cried Kellogg. Come on!
He was lunging past the balloon man, Elsie-Anne in tow. Pearl caught up at Lost Property. The calliope died, the PA crackled to life, and the guy working the booth struck up a little handheld radio. While Kellogg whispered dictation, out rattled a monotone announcement: Gip Poole, your father is looking for you. . Please come to Lost Property. . Not that you’re property. . Gibbles, Dad’s here. . He loves you. . Champ. . Everything is going to be okay.
OLPERT STOOD across the roundabout from Bay Junction, hiding in the shadows from the couple waiting at the Ferryport. They were that headscarfed woman and her husband, a burly creature of beard and fleece, who lived on the Islet’s southernmost point in a home built from trash scavenged from the beach. They existed without electricity or running water, grew all their food in a solar-powered greenhouse, hosted gatherings at which visitors orbited a bonfire tapping homemade drums. One night Olpert had watched in secret from among the reeds, found the rhythm soporific, fallen asleep, woken up cold and hungry, the bongos still tocking.
This couple, toiling at land’s end with their compost bins and trellised veggies, were worrying: they seemed apocalyptic and crazed, harbingers of some social collapse to which no one else was yet privy. Even so Olpert usually braved a sidemouthed Hi when he bumped into them. But now he hung back, skulking within the shadows while the ferry came chugging into dock and the apron lowered. Only upon the foghorn warning, low and mournful and ghostly, did he race aboard, all the way to the bow.
The engines roared and off they slid toward the Islet. At night the crossing seemed slower and lonelier than it did during the day, a sluggish grumble through the dark. Though tonight Olpert hardly noticed time passing or the lakebreeze batting his face. Starx’s huge domed head kept rearing into his thoughts. And with him came the boy, or not the boy, just that single glazed and horrible eye: You did this to me, Olpert Bailie, you.
He felt gutted. All he wanted was sleep. Even the prospect of being pulled from bed, handcuffed, and escorted back to shore seemed worth it to collapse into his sheets, slip away, and, if only for a few hours, be nothing but not awake. But handcuffed by whom? His uniform precluded him from justice. Or the forces of justice had deemed him just — they’d even abetted his escape.
The water slurped the sides of the boat. Olpert pictured himself in a limp, tired way tipping over the railing — the icy throttle of the water, sucked under, the peace of sinking to the Cove’s dank, cold bottom. He’d never been much of a swimmer, it wouldn’t take much to drown. The engines chugged, the water churned. And just as Olpert was gathering himself to mount the railing the Islet’s lights shone down, the woodsy couple sidled up, and the ferry bumped into port.
OTHER THAN THE milky hump concentrated over Crocker Pond, the fog on the common had almost completely dissipated. The thinning clouds exposed a dull and flat and sparsely starred sky, not the big wet-seeming messy sort of night Gip was used to back home, which suggested other worlds and dreams. This was muddy, the low moon a halved apple afloat in a bucket of muck. It was in the light of this moon that Gip found his knapsack stashed sidestage.
He opened it, riffled through all the junk his dad had packed — and, with a grin, pulled out the Grammar. Yes, he cried. Yes!
Then he climbed into the gazebo. The illustrationist’s trunk sat front and centre where he’d left it, or it’d left him, the lid gaped, locks busted into useless tin crabclaws. Standing upon the ducktape X, Gip examined the trunk: its velvet lining was scuffed and threadbare in parts, but there was no sign of any trapdoor or hatch through which Raven might have slipped away. Such trickery wasn’t how illustrations worked anyway, Gip knew.
Gip tilted the Grammar toward the moonlight and flipped through to the 10th Situation: Abduction. A succession of line drawings presented a figure beside the trunk, brandishing an image, and the second —
The light extinguished. Someone had turned off the moon! No: a hulking figure had appeared stageleft, his torpedo-shaped head concealed a section of sky.
Gip Goode? said a big, round voice. We’ve been looking for you.
Gip Poole, said Gip.
Whatever, said the man. He was dressed strangely — coveralls that sagged at his waist, a tiny shirt that struggled to contain his massive torso — and approached cautiously, saying something about people who had questions for Gip. The moon peeked over the top of the man’s head, illuminating a scrap of paper tucked into a corner of the trunk.
My people just want to know what you know, said the man, plodding across the stage.
Gip hopped into the trunk, took the paper in his hands. Faintly he could make out an image: a drawing of. . furniture?
No, hey, pal — the man’s voice was rushed and panicked — what are you doing?
Gip grabbed the leather thong hanging from the lid and pulled it down. Darkness enclosed him. He could hear the big man charge across the stage, fists banged on the trunk, a voice hollered, Open up, you little knobdiddler! And then it all faded: the trunk’s bottom dropped out, the sides fall away, the lid lifted, and Gip hovered in space, and then through it he was falling.
WITH HIS FACE pressed to the microwave, eyes inside each of the structures he’d puttied around the holes, ducktaped hand on the POWER dial, Sam waited. The kitchen was still. There were no machines, there was nothing. If Sam had ever trunked him, Raven was gone. Only nothing remained. All that was left was to join this nothing. Sam wasn’t frightened: this is just what it was. This was the work. The house was quiet. Upstairs the others were in their beds. But now there was a noise outside — footsteps. Someone was coming up the walk. He’d have to hurry. Okay Adine, said Sam, and sucking in his breath widened his eyes until they ached and cranked the dial as far as it would go and the microwave hummed, and all Sam could see was light.
Sunday
This is life brought to ruin —
Street by dreaming street.
I
N THE KITCHEN tiles lay the man in Olpert’s stolen khakis who’d said his name was Sam, though that was all he’d said. When Olpert had arrived home he’d discovered this Sam staring into the microwave, his face pressed to it, the oven hummed, a smell of burning plastic and something wet and hot filled the air. Olpert said, Hi? and Sam wheeled to face him. His eyes were strange. They seemed to be bubbling. With horror Olpert realized he’d been cooking them: they hissed and sizzled while the microwave whirred and light streamed from twin holes bored in its door.