The Lost Days (25 page)

Now if we could just get out of the van.

About an hour later

Sandstorm is over. We are all walking around, overjoyed to be out of the van. Also, the sandstorm scoured all the beige off Emma’s building. Belgium, it’s AMAZING! Those old photos I saw were of a plain, reasonably attractive black building, nothing extraordinary at all. But now, what I’m seeing? It’s a different ANIMAL. I mean, it’s actually kind of LIKE an animal. It has scaly texture and ridges and a crazy sort of beak on the roof. Weird curvy pillars, sinister carved plants and animals and ghoulish faces, gargoyles frolicking on the roof and hanging off the corners. And when I say frolicking, I mean I can see them kind of just out the corner of my eye, darting around, and then dashing back to their places when I look. And all in slick, glistening, harder-than-drop-forged-American-steel black rock.

Weird, huh?

I wonder what made it change since the old photos?

At least I’m pretty sure I understand the beigeifying now. If I were Great-Aunt Emma, I’d be pretty anxious to keep this place hidden from certain eyes.

Um, I AM pretty anxious to keep this place hidden from certain eyes, and I don’t have any three-story beige dropcloths handy, either.

There is now nothing left standing in Blackrock except Emma’s building. Therefore, it’s pretty easy to see out to the edge of town, where Professor Ümlaut’s Prophylactery and Revue and
Uncle Attikol’s Deadly Dollhouse are still hanging around, in trailers that are very ready for new post-sandstorm paint jobs.

Showdown time is coming.

Day 29

Am sitting on the bench at the minipark. Have talked to Molly about that code word of hers. She says it was just something my mom said a lot, so when I found Molly in Blandindulle, she naturally said it to me. I guess I had set it up as a sort of failsafe, in case something went terribly wrong, so that my mom would be able to break the amnesia.

Anyway, I sent Molly down into the closet to try entering the code word in the bottom lock. Then left her and Raven at the El Dungeon, which is currently full of construction workers getting coffee and sandwiches before they ditch town. Word is, they are giving up. All their equipment has been wrecked on my crazy black building and in the sandstorm. Attikol doesn’t have the money to keep them here, or the manpower to threaten them all with kneecapping, so that’s that—looks like he is not going to be completing his challenge after all.

Not that he isn’t still a major threat to me. If I don’t get him thoroughly neutralized, he will eventually be back with more money and more construction crews with bigger equipment.

Have been sitting here on the bench pondering all this, plotting my next move, and staring at the ex-tree, which as of yesterday was
the only tree left in Blackrock, but after yesterday’s sandstorm is a lifeless, leafless, barkless, branchless trunk. Was feeling kind of bad that I had to go and destroy the very last tree in Blackrock, but the more I looked at it, the less it looked like an ex-tree at all, and the more it looked like a too-smooth, too-round, human-made, tree-simulating POLE. With a scar near the base, where someone apparently tried (and failed) to cut it down. Its “knothole,” about five feet up, is so clearly a button, I wonder how I ever mistook it for a knothole.

Thought back to Day 6, when I hit that button with a rock, and the letter in the bench flipped over, and my innocent young heart was filled with dreams of glorious secret contraptions all through the town. Man, why couldn’t the locks downstairs work that easily?

Oh wait now.

The light on the middle lock was yellow. Not red.

Maybe I’ve already done something to turn it yellow.

—OK, have given the button another hit with a rock, and maybe—

Hey, I see Molly running up, gotta go

Later-oh this is goooooood stuff!

OK: Molly told me something amazing: She dialed in her code word, and then the dials started turning on their own!!!!!

She and I ran down into the closet right away.

First thing I noticed was that the dials had indeed changed.

Second thing was that the light on the middle lock was green. And the lock was open. Sweet—Looks like the ex-tree button did the trick!

Third thing was that the bottom lock was still locked.

So. I sent Molly back upstairs and I’m at the door right now.

Having some kind of conversation.

With the ghost in the door.

First I dialed “HELLO GREAT-AUNT EMMA.”

And watched in creeped-out amazement as the dials turned on their own to say “WELCOME MY DEAR.”

And the door clicked open.

I think I was expecting to see Great-Aunt Emma. But the room is empty. Of ghosts, I mean. It’s full of shelves and shelves holding jars of blackrock. Jars that have dates on them. Dates that go back CENTURIES. And notebooks. Notebooks full of detailed information on centuries’ worth of experiments.

Experiments involving the black rock.

And behind the shelves, on all the walls, and even on the ceiling, tiny handwriting. I still have MUCH more to read, but here’s what I learned in the past half hour:

1. Hundreds of years ago, my family and Attikol’s were in a bitter feud that had been raging on for decades.
   
2. They were feuding over ownership of the liquid black rock, which both families believed to have amazing and…unusual properties.
   
3. My family had been using it mainly for scientific-experimentation-type purposes, whereas Attikol’s family had been selling it as a cure-all in their traveling medicine show.
   
4. Sometime in the 1620s, my family won the rights to the black rock in an epic game of Primero Calamità, which was a VERY early version of…that’s right. Calamity Poker.
   
5. Attikol’s family stood by the
   outcome of that game for about 200 years.
   
6. But during that time, Attikol’s family legend was getting more and more…fictionalized.
   
7. So by the time Attikol’s great-great-great-grandjerk started up the feud again, he didn’t even know what they had actually been fighting over, 200 years prior.
   
8. And by the time the family Destiny had been handed down to Attikol, the story had been completely mangled. Like a game of Operator played over 400 years. By a bunch of half-wits.
   
9. So Attikol doesn’t know Great-Aunt Emma was his ancestral enemy. He just started coming to Blackrock about 13 years ago because he liked it here. Town officials easily bribed, good audiences for the gun and doll show, great Pötion sales, etc.
   
10. But Great-Aunt Emma had been keeping tabs on him, and when she saw that he was headed to Blackrock, she beigeified the El Dungeon, to disguise it.
    
11. And then made her arrangements to have letters sent to me and Schneider 13 years later.
    
12. And then died.
    
13. And it goes to show just how bright Attikol is, that all these years later, and even with the Moon Child working for him, he still doesn’t have a clue.
    

Pretty great stuff, huh? I may not know my real name, but I’m busting with family pride.

Also, I am now more worried than ever about Attikol seeing Emma’s building without its protective beigeifications.

Also, I have a crazy, possibly desperate idea how to get rid of Attikol once and for all.

Later

Molly had already made friends with all the construction workers at the El Dungeon and was getting antsy, so I took her upstairs with me to pay Schneider a visit at Crazy Vet Hilda’s. The two of them were drinking tea in her kitchen. And being crawled over by 13 or so former alley cats. And having a conversation. It’s beyond me how he can understand her. Clearly a case of hereditary mental oddness.

As soon as we came in she started on the nonsense.