I reached down and pulled out a small pair of black, waterproof binoculars. They may have been tiny, but they had incredible magnification. Holding them up to my eyes, I could make out the windows on the lighthouse.
“Do you see them?” Theo called.
I scanned the water around the island.
“No!” I shouted back.
“Maybe they didn’t go there,” Lu offered.
I hated to think that was possible, because it meant they could be anywhere. But there was another possibility I liked even less. What if the Boggin had already gotten to them? I pushed that thought out of my head and continued my search.
“Scan the shoreline,” I called back to Theo. “Maybe they went up the coast instead.”
Theo turned around, got on his knees for balance, and squinted against the sun to try to catch any sign of them along the mainland we were rapidly leaving behind.
“I don’t see any sails anywhere,” Theo announced.
“They might have dropped them,” I called out. “If the wind is really bad, they’d use the outboard motor.”
“That would make it really hard to see them,” Lu said.
I turned the binoculars back to the mainland, searching for a moving mast. I looked off to our right and then to our left. I spotted a few boats, but they looked to be tied up to moorings. There was no sign of my parents.
“Hey, Marcus,” Lu called out. “Do your parents sail all the way around that island before heading back?”
“Yeah!” I yelled.
“Take a look,” she called out while pointing ahead.
I spun around and looked through the binoculars to see the sails of a small boat that was clearing the lighthouse as it appeared from the back side of the island.
“That’s them!” I shouted with relief. “I can see two people on board. They were behind the island. They’re okay!”
I was never more excited to see my parents. The relief I felt was like having a massive weight taken off my chest.
“I’ll head on a course that’ll cut them off,” Lu yelled. “We should get to them in about five minutes.”
I could breathe again.
“Hey, are you crying?” Lu asked.
My eyes were tearing, for sure.
“No!” I exclaimed. “It’s the wind.”
I sat back in my seat, behind the windshield, and wiped my eyes. Flying along at that speed really did make it windy, but that wasn’t why I was tearing up. Until I saw that my parents were safe, I didn’t realize just how truly terrified I was that something might have happened to them. I may have been crying, but they were tears of total relief.
I raised the binoculars to get another look and saw my father peering back at us with his own binoculars. He recognized me and waved.
I waved back. My feeling of relief was complete.
Plink!
Something bounced off the deck in front of the windshield.
“What was that?” I called out.
“I don’t know,” Lu said. “Something hit us.”
Plink! Plink!
Two more small objects hit the deck and bounced into the water.
“I saw that!” I exclaimed, standing up. “What were they?”
“Hail,” Theo said as he stepped up between us.
“Hail?” I repeated. “Like, ice from the sky? But it’s not even—”
I looked up, and my words caught in my throat.
A huge black cloud had drifted over us.
“Where did that come from?” Lu asked.
“Better question,” Theo said. He pointed off our starboard side and said, “What is that?”
Far in the distance, rolling in from the east, was a wall of fog so thick that it looked like a white curtain.
And it was headed our way.
The sky opened up.
A torrent of hailstones fell from the ominous dark cloud, bouncing off the boat, and us, like Ping-Pong balls. Hard, sharp Ping-Pong balls. Along with it came cold, piercing rain.
“I can’t see anything,” Lu called out with her hand up over her eyes to try to ward off the pelting assault from the sky. “I have to stop.”
She throttled back, and after one last push forward from the wake, the speedboat drifted to a standstill.
The barrage of hailstones didn’t let up, hitting us hard and stinging our skin. I dug under the back bench and pulled out the canvas covering that had protected the boat in the slip. The three of us held it up like a limp umbrella for whatever lame protection it offered against the deluge.
“Where did this come from?” Theo yelled, wide-eyed.
“Guess,” Lu replied. “Did you think we were kidding about the Boggin?”
“The storm is growing,” I declared.
The sky darkened as the storm cloud expanded from within like a blooming flower. A giant, gray killer flower.
I lifted the binoculars and looked toward my parents.
The pelting rain and hail had hit them too. They did the smart thing and quickly lowered their sails. While Dad stowed them below, Mom dropped the propeller of the outboard. It was a small, eight-horsepower engine that was mostly used to get in and out of the marina. It didn’t offer much speed, but it was better than having sails up in a storm. That would be dangerous.
“They’re okay,” I announced. “They’re headed toward us under power, about a half mile away.”
“We can tow them in,” Lu said. “I’ll motor ahead slowly.”
Lu eased the throttle forward, and the propeller kicked in, pushing us gently ahead. The hailstones continued, pounding the canvas covering our heads. The incessant clatter of ice against the fiberglass hull was so loud that I could barely hear our engine.
None of us questioned what was going on or what might happen. All we could do was keep moving.
“Here comes the fog,” Theo announced.
The white mist enveloped us quickly. Oddly, as soon as we were engulfed, the rain and hail stopped. I threw the canvas cover off and looked around to see a whole lot of nothing. The fog didn’t create a complete whiteout, but it obliterated any view of my parents’ boat.
“Do you have an air horn?” I asked Lu.
Lu flipped up her own seat and took out an air horn. I grabbed it, raised it into the air, squeezed the trigger, and let out two sharp, ear-piercing blasts.
“Oww,” Theo wailed, sticking his fingers in his ears. “A little warning, please.”
Ten seconds later my signal was answered by two horn blasts from my parents.
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “We can guide them toward us with the horn. I’ll let out a blast every thirty seconds.”
“We shouldn’t go any faster than this,” Lu said. “I don’t want to miss them. Or hit them.”
“This is good,” I said. “We’ll reach them soon enough and—”
“Whoa, what is that?” Theo exclaimed.
He walked forward to the bow, looking dead ahead.
I joined him but didn’t see a thing.
“All I see is fog,” I said.
“The water,” he said, the tension in his voice growing. “Something’s down there.”
He pointed to a spot roughly twenty yards ahead of us. The water was perfectly calm, with no swells or even a ripple from the wind. But the spot he was pointing to, dead ahead, was bubbling.
“Stop!” I shouted to Lu.
She immediately shifted into neutral, then quickly slipped the engine into reverse. The water from our wake flowed around us, coaxing us forward, but the engine fought back until we were once again at a standstill.
Another foghorn sounded. My parents were asking for directions.
I lifted our horn and gave them a sharp return signal, but my attention was on the water ahead of us.
The bubbling grew more intense.
“That’s not a natural phenomenon,” Theo said.
“It’s her,” I said soberly.
The bubbling water began moving. It started out slow and very small, but
it was plenty dramatic. It was a whirlpool. The water swirled clockwise, creating a funnel-like underwater tornado that quickly grew. And grew.
“Reverse!” I shouted to Lu.
Lu throttled up, and we backed away from the phenomenon.
“I feel the pull,” Lu said. “It’s trying to suck us in.”
“Fight it!” I ordered.
Lu gave the engine more power as the whirlpool continued to grow in size and strength. The movement was so strong that the fog in the air above it began to swirl, creating a strange weather event just for us.
Another sharp horn blast cut through the fog.
I lifted my own horn automatically to respond, but Theo grabbed my arm.
“No,” he warned. “You’re drawing them right to it.”
I turned to Lu and shouted, “Get us outta here!”
Lu didn’t have to be told twice. She instantly spun the wheel hard and accelerated to get away from the spinning water.
“We’re not moving,” she announced. “It’s holding us here.”
“Gun it!” I commanded.
Lu pushed the throttle back. The engine revved and complained, but we didn’t move. We were held in the claws of this swirling monster.
“It’s okay,” I said hopefully. “It’s an illusion. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It only looks real.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Theo said.
“The Boggin has no physical power,” I argued. “It can only create images. We’re looking at shadows.”
“Really?” he said. “Does this look like an illusion to you?”
He held up his arm to show me a slash that ran across his forearm. Blood welled in the deep wound.
“How did that happen?” I asked.
“I got hit by one of the hailstones. If the Boggin created that storm, it wasn’t just an illusion. She has some control over the physical world.”
I thought back to the hammer that the Boggin had lifted off my basement floor and flung at me. The rules of this war were changing.
We both looked toward the churning whirlpool, which was now ten yards wide. It was holding us in its grip. Anything caught in that eddy would be sucked down into the depths. I had no doubt that it was big enough, and powerful enough, to bring us down, along with the sailboat that was growing closer by the second.
Was this how my parents had died?
I stood staring at the swirling menace, not knowing what to do. This was my fault. I had put my family and friends in danger. I should have chucked that key and never gone back to that library, no matter what my biological father wanted. Going to the Library turned out to be a tragic mistake for him. And my mother. And the Swenors. Now the people who raised me were headed for the same fate. All because of a weird library that supposedly helped people in supernatural trouble.
In that moment, I didn’t care about Everett and his library of unfinished stories.
I cared about my parents.
“Stop it!” I screamed, looking up to the gray sky. “You want the key? Come on! Come and get it!”
“What are you doing, Marcus?” Lu said.
“Where are you?” I shouted to nowhere. “Show yourself. Face me!”
“Marcus, look,” Theo said, pointing into the swirling vortex.
A cloud of white mist drifted up from below, moving strangely against the downward spiral of water. It spun in the air and formed a small tornado that moved in the reverse direction of the whirlpool. It wasn’t a natural event. The thing was moving with purpose.
The swirling cloud rose up out of the vortex, then floated toward us.
“Tell me again how none of this is real,” Theo said nervously as he backed toward the stern of the boat.
I stood with my legs apart, facing it. Whatever the Boggin was sending our way, I wasn’t going to back down from it.
The spinning vapor rose up until it was over the bow of the speedboat.
“I can’t get away from it,” Lu announced.
“Good,” I said, standing firm.
The small tornado hovered over the bow as a shadow appeared from within. It grew quickly into a human shape. The vapor blew away, leaving the old woman in the dark-green dress standing on the bow of the boat. Or was she floating?
“Whoa,” Theo exclaimed, and fell back onto the bench seat.
“Well, that just happened,” Lu said, stunned, as she stood close behind me, peering over my shoulder.
“I…I didn’t really believe…” was all Theo managed to say.
Now he did.
“You can end this, child,” the Boggin said in a voice that cut through me like the shrill sound of a knife slicing metal. “Your parents do not have to die.”
“They won’t die!” Lu shouted. “It’s all just shadows.”
The sky opened up again, sending a shower of heavy, sharp hailstones raining down on us. They hit. They stung.
“Ow!” Lu screamed. She was hit directly on her forehead by a chunk of ice, opening up a nasty gash. The impact knocked her backward, and she fell on the bench seat, next to Theo.
Though I was being pummeled, I didn’t move or flinch. I kept my eyes on the Boggin.
The deluge ended abruptly.
“I have grown strong over the millennia,” the Boggin said calmly. “Fear is a powerful weapon that can destroy the strongest of wills.”
“Including yours,” I said defiantly.
The spirit laughed.
“You don’t truly believe that?” she said, scoffing.
“I do,” I said. “You can be frightened.”
“What could I possibly fear?” she said.
I felt like a fisherman who just got the first telltale tug on his line.
“You’re afraid of the Library.”
“That library is nothing more than an annoyance,” she said harshly.
I’d hit a nerve.
The fish had taken the bait.
“Then why do you want to destroy it?”
“Because I’m tired of the constant attempts to contain me.”
“So you are afraid of it!”
“There is nothing I fear!” she shouted, her anger rising.
“I don’t believe you,” I said, taunting her.
I knelt down, pulled the metal vessel out of the backpack, and held it up for her to see.
“You know what this is?” I asked.
It looked as though she stiffened with surprise, ever so slightly.
“You believe the sight of that crude prison is enough to frighten me?”
“No.”
I walked a few steps forward and put the metal box down on the deck directly below where she hovered. I kicked open the lid and stood back.
“But the idea of being trapped in there frightens you,” I said.
She shook her head dismissively. “Child, I have been imprisoned in vessels similar to that one for centuries at a time. There is nothing about it that frightens me.”
“Prove it,” I said. “Go inside.”
She stared down at the box. For that brief moment she seemed to be nothing more than a scared old woman and not the face of everyone’s worst fears.
“I do not need to prove anything to you,” she finally said.
The horn sounded from my parents’ boat. It made me jump in surprise, for it was getting dangerously close to the spinning waters.
I reached around my neck and grasped the leather cord holding the key. I pulled it over my head.
“Whoa, Marcus, are you sure?” Lu cautioned.
I held the key in my fist and said to the Boggin, “I’m doing this to save them, but you have to work for it. Prove to me that you’re not afraid.”
“How could I possibly do that?” she asked, almost giddy. Her excitement over getting her hands on the Paradox key was growing.
“I’m surrendering this key to you,” I said.
I tossed the key into the box. It hit the bottom with a metallic clatter.
“But you have to go get it.” r />
“Oh man,” Lu said, defeated.
The Boggin stared down at the container with a mix of fear and longing. She wanted that key. She needed that key. The Library represented her only challenge on the face of the planet. It was so close.
All she had to do was get it.
Theo and Lu got up and stood behind me. All eyes were on the Boggin, waiting for her to make the next move.
“You think this frightens me?” she said while staring down at the box. “No matter what happens, the final victory will always be mine, for I have something you mortals do not.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Time,” she said. “I have existed for thousands of years, and I will exist for thousands more. If there is one thing I have developed, it is patience. I will always be here, waiting, for I have all the time in the world.”
The old woman spun around and transformed back into vapor. The black shadow melted into white, and the swirling mist descended toward the vessel.
I held my breath.
Lu grasped my arm and squeezed.
The white cloud shrank down and entered the box.
“Do it!” Theo screamed.
I kicked the lid shut and dove to the deck. In my hand was the copper wire. I quickly slid it through the latch and gave it a twist to make sure it wouldn’t fall off.
“Make it tight!” Lu ordered.
I gave it another twist, then stood up and backed toward my friends.
We stood together, staring at the box, waiting for something to happen. Would it bounce? Would it explode? Would the lid flip open, and would the Boggin come flying out like an enraged Tasmanian devil?
“Are you sure that little wire’s strong enough to hold it?” Theo asked nervously.
“It’s not about how strong it is; it’s about what it’s made of. Are you sure it’s copper?”
“Absolutely,” he replied with confidence. “The cable companies use pure copper because it’s a great conductor and—”
The green box lit up. A warm light enveloped it, making it glow.
We all took a surprised step backward.
“She’s burning it open!” Lu exclaimed.
The warm glow grew brighter, lighting up not only the box but the deck around it.
“At least, I thought it was pure copper,” Theo said, his voice quivering.
The light grew so bright that I had to shield my eyes.