“Oh my gosh. You’ve found it!”
“You hush.”
Paper was tucked in behind the very top of the tile. Pinching it between my first and second fingers, my knuckles scraping the stone of the tower, I tugged. Several sheets folded into quarters came out in my hand. I pushed the tile snugly back into place.
My heart was still drumming wildly. I lowered the pages to Dia. She fell back, leaving me hanging by one hand.
“Oh my gosh!” she said, “I’m sorry!” She tucked the pages into her pocket and reached up to me with both hands. I gave her one foot, locked my palm tightly into hers, then jumped down next to her, breathless.
Dia whipped out the pages and unfolded them, five sheets altogether, yellow and old, clogged with type on both sides.
A lone golf cart moved away down the long drive.
“The last tour is gone,” Dia said. “This is the safest place to be now. Lori won’t find us.”
“Lori?” I said.
“The security guard. With the khakis and long hair.”
I gaped at her. “You remember a guard’s name from two seconds and you can’t remember mine?”
“Read, Scooter. Read.”
We dropped to the floor of the tower, our breaths still heaving, and began to read.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
IV
THE FLYING LADY
By Emerson Beale
Fifteen years of running, fifteen years of staying a step ahead of the Secret Order of Oobarab, had made me tired and wary.
I knew who they were now. Circus folk, friends of Fang, underworld employees, loyal to his madness, his rage. His army of goons and thugs had been after me from the first time I’d ever set eyes on Marnie. They wouldn’t quit.
They must have figured by this time that I wouldn’t quit, either. Marnie had been whisked away to France. Switzerland. Brazil. Hidden for years in clinics, hovered over by surgeons, prodded by spine specialists, priests, shamans, every one of them spending Fang’s money, not every one of them helping her to walk again.
For seven years, I tracked them from the Towers. For seven years hid in the shadows. For seven years resolved never to stop.
Now Marnie was back in Florida, in Fang’s clutches as tightly as ever. With the Towers only a dark memory, they were holed up in that wedding cake of a castle now.
I had to find her. I had to take her away.
Tonight was the night.
I waited in the car park across the road from Ca d’Zan’s pink gatehouse, scanning for any signs of movement. Birds twittered their good-nights. A jittery bat flapped its wings overhead and vanished. Inside the castle, Fang had gathered close his army of sad clowns and asthmatic strongmen, foreign knife throwers, bearded women, and aging rope walkers. In seconds, I would be among them in the heart of the enemy camp.
Across the pavement I ran, through the bushes, and over the estate wall in a bound. I crouched, froze, and listened. No one had heard me. Good. Moving in the shadows, I closed in on the big house. The evil fortress.
A guard slithered silently over the path. I ducked behind a monstrous cluster of banyans. A signboard cautioned against touching their sinewy roots, or you’d hurt the trees. I could sooner believe those roots would whip up and strangle you before it ever got to that. The grounds were nothing short of a jungle, except that this jungle had a trimmed path and the path was dotted with little stone cherubs. One of them was slowly being strangled by those roots as he sang for help. I guess he got too friendly and they weren’t having any. Wishing him luck, I moved on.
Iron glinted in the moonlight near the house. One, two, three flashes of silver followed it. Together, they floated along the inside of the piazza wall and, after a moment or two, disappeared. My anxiety didn’t.
“Oobarab?” I whispered.
“Oobarab,” I answered.
Pulling myself together, I set off toward the caretaker’s house at a quick sprint, hiding flat against it before the guard returned.
I had heard the stories. Of course I had. She’s crippled. She’s dead. She’s married to someone else. She’s in China. Fine. I’d go to China. Only she wasn’t in China. She was right there. Fang had her locked up tight, and I was going to free her. Free her, and take her away.
I dropped below the wall of the surrounding hedge. When the guard returned, he was humming softly to himself. It was the same Cuban tune I’d heard on the radio at that breakfast joint so many years ago. Silently, I thanked the guy. He was like a walking dance band, doing the horn parts and drums and all, serenading Marnie and me with what was probably our song, only he didn’t know it.
Yeah, yeah, never mind, Nick. Focus. Focus.
Ten minutes later, I was standing flat against the big house. Something silver flashed by my head, fell, and clattered to the stones. I dropped to my knees, not hurt, but startled. On the ground near my feet was a long knife — a Turkish throwing dagger. Instinctively, I jumped up and ran. The circus wannabes had the same idea. Gosh, there were a lot of them, and they were suddenly everywhere, as if they had sprung out of the ground, children of the Hydra’s teeth. I tore back into the trees, but they knew that trick. A branch snapped, a heel twisted, I spun quickly and went down like a sack of lead.
When I came to, I was trussed up like a hog awaiting slaughter. Only this time, I wasn’t in a boat. Two beefy giants in oily suits and a hefty silver chain held me down in a thick velvet chair on the wrong side of a big oak desk. The mantle behind it was wide and long enough to land a plane on. At one end sat that parrot, glaring at me before swiveling its tufted head to the doorway. The next thing I knew, Fang was there, fatter and sweatier than ever. When he turned his face to me, it was wrecked, inhuman. A seven-inch scar sliced down from his forehead, across his right eye, and onto his upper lip.
The accident did this to him?
He leaned over the desk at me, his dead eyehole as deep and dark as a coal mine at midnight.
“Maybe it’s something . . . types like you have . . . ,” he said, huffing at me.
“Good looks?” I said.
“Something that just won’t . . . give you a clue,” he said, ignoring that. “Because if you had a clue . . . you’d know that if you talk to her . . . even see her . . . I will stop her treatment. I’ll cut it off, just . . . like that. She’ll never walk again, boy. Soon, she won’t move at all —”
“That’s insane!” I said. “She’s your own daughter! Are you mad?”
His horrible eyeless, lifeless socket seemed to stare at me from its depths. He said nothing. But at that moment, I wouldn’t have heard anything, anyway.
She came swimming past the window as if on wings. She touched down outside and watched the whole scene. Was she floating above the piazza stones? Was she flying? Did she have wings, purple and rose and blue in the twilight?
No. The tears in my eyes were making everything blur. The squeal of her chair brought me out of that trance. Skull Face wheeled her past the room. Tubes all over her. The sound of oxygen spurting, doing her breathing for her.
“Marnie!” I said.
The chair receded. She was gone. Had Marnie seen me? Heard me? I didn’t know.
“Don’t dare speak her name!” Fang bellowed, his vast bulk wobbling. I wasn’t prepared for what came next. He made as if to sit, then came at me, cupped my face with his left hand, and whipped me with his right, hurtling Marnie’s picture from his desk to the floor, shattering it.
When my head whipped back, I saw bodies bouncing high over the piazza. A half dozen costumed acrobats rehearsed on a trampoline.
“You don’t . . . you don’t get it, do you, boy!” said Fang, pulling my face back to his, breathless after all that exertion. “I know all . . . about where you come from. You’re not fit to be with her. You’re a dirt kid, a dirt kid . . . and I’m . . . I’m Florida!” The parrot squawked that last word out as if someone had squeezed its toes in a garlic press.
“Florrrrrdaa!”
I acted as if
that meant nothing to me. As if it didn’t hurt, coming from him. But it did hurt, even coming from him. Not fit to be with her.
“You can’t stop the two of us,” I said.
“Ha!” he snorted. “Her accident twelve . . . years ago stopped the two of you! Besides . . . she was never yours to begin with, and she certainly isn’t now!”
“Fang, you soulless zombie!” I said bluntly, struggling against the cords on my wrists. “You walk, you talk, but you’re a ghost inside, a cold-blooded serpent —”
From deep in his throat came a sound like the roar of a tiger in reverse, or a dragon’s death rattle. “Kaaah! ”
If I could have jumped, I would have. It was an ungodly cry. He heaved forward, thumping his great fat palms on the desktop. “Better,” he screamed, “better — than — actually being dead — kaaah! Which is what you’ll be! Dead! Dead! Dead! Mr. Stimp!” He flopped back into his chair like an avalanche coming to rest.
The tramping of steps came soon enough. Mr. Stimp, the muscle-bound, cannon-toting freak I had escaped at the Towers, came staggering in.
“Is he going to drive me home now?” I asked. “Or just throw me in the general direction?”
“Mr. Stimp,” the fat man said, his huge stomach wobbling inside his jacket, “please arrange for Mr. Falcon to do some . . . traveling.”
One gray tooth, chipped to a V, peeked out from the side of Stimp’s mouth. “I’ll pack him in hish own shuitcashe, ssssshir!”
“A suitcase shaped like a coffin!” said Fang.
They both burst into a good old laugh at that. It was a funny routine, but I didn’t wait for the next joke. I had been fooling with the chain behind my back and now ripped myself from the chair, kicked out at the twin Beef Boys, and swung the chain hard at Mr. Stimp. He hollered and stumbled. Amid the parrot’s squawking and Fang’s shrieks, I dashed from the room.
The strongman swore and came after me, leading with his howitzer. In no time, the whole crew, the deadly Secret Order of circus freaks, was tramping down the mansion hallways after me.
I crashed out through a set of doors, rolling out onto the great piazza under the tower. Evening had fallen orange and blue across the colored stones. I raced down the steps toward the water, thinking to swim for it, when I heard a sudden cry.
“Nick!”
I turned, looked up, and there was Marnie. She was wearing a flowing gown of pastel green. Its skirts fluttered at her bare feet like tail feathers.
She was held up by Mr. Tall and the German like a limp ragdoll just inside the tower railing.
The whirring of blades in the air above us — flack-flack-flack! — was nothing less than Fang’s terrible autogyro. Skullface was driving the thing.
Fang had wobbled out onto the piazza now.
“She’s leaving you — forever!” he crowed.
“You’re mad!” I cried out.
Cursing, I started toward the tower, when Fang shouted again. “Mad, am I? You’ll never learn what happened over the Bay! Never! Kaaaah!”
I ignored that until I heard a splash. Then came the slap of wet feet on the stones behind me. I turned. An alligator was sloshing up the steps from the sea wall. No, make that a dozen alligators, each as large as a yacht. Their jaws grinned horribly in the moonlight. But it wasn’t just a beauty contest. At Fang’s call, they galloped across the stones toward me.
The rest of the Order stood watching, Fang laughing in their center like a demented king, his fat hand signaling the autogyro to descend, its rope ladder swinging wildly above the tower.
They all watched as, inch by slithering inch, the hungry gators approached.
“And now for The Big Show!” Fang bellowed. “Eat, Gators, eat!”
Seeing Marnie up there broke my heart. She was as frail and limp as a marionette, without a power of her own. They were taking her away forever.
My mind flashing back, I remembered words my old pal Harrow had told me once. He said if they worked at all, it was nothing short of a miracle, but I needed a miracle now. Whispering the words, I heard — even above the thrashing of the autogyro’s blades — a distant crumple of tin and wood. And they came.
They came.
Fourteen elephants stampeded across the lawn to the big house. They bellowed and trumpeted at the top of their immense lungs. The night burst into a thousand pieces, then came together again with their great loud song.
The beasts thundered onto the piazza. Trampling across the stones, they sent the alligators diving toward the water.
Fang shrieked loudly to his goons in the tower. “Kaaakkk-ak-ak —”
I had to think fast. Heaving myself to the back of the lead elephant, I stood and jumped at the trampoline.
Yelling, “Marnie!” I dropped fast, then bounced high, hurling myself straight to the tower’s steps. In no more than a half second, I bounded up, slipped my arms around Marnie, and pulled her away from the goons.
“Nicky!” she cried, her arms suddenly alive in mine.
“His hate poisoned you!” I said. “His lies. His madness. He kept you in that chair! But you don’t need it anymore. I’m taking you away. Come with me now!”
The elephants were attacking the thugs now. You should have seen the circus freaks scatter! Where she got the magic, I don’t know, or care, but Marnie leaped from the tower and floated us down hand in hand to the shadowed lawn, the wings of her gown fluttering like a sea breeze through the wild palms.
“That was close,” she said, when we lighted on the ground.
“Not as close as I want to get with you,” I said.
“Aw, shucks, you charmer!” she sang.
“I learned that elephant call from a witch doctor pal of mine,” I said.
“Which doctor?” she said, and her laugh was like the sound of chimes across that flowery evening.
Whistling a call to the lead elephant, I grabbed its trunk and flung myself onto its back, leaned over, and pulled Marnie up to me. She was as light as a feather.
But it wasn’t over yet.
Fang bellowed like a hurt cow. Shots rang out, chinking against the paved path, and a dozen matching daggers whizzed past our heads. Marnie pushed me low, and the blades clattered harmlessly to the grass as we thundered across it. We slid off the beast at the gatehouse and flew across the street to the car park.
I glanced at her face, her hair flying in the breeze, and knew it would never end.
This was it for me. I had freed my Marnie. She was mine. I was hers. Forever. Forever.
The park was empty except for two cars — Fang’s empty chariot (cream-yellow, chromed, washed and waxed, top down) and the crumpled blue sedan I’d seen too many times before. We started for the convertible, then slowed.
“Wait,” I said, sensing a change from behind us. No footsteps, no footsoles echoed on the walks. No thudding on the lawn. The street, quiet.
“But they’re coming —”
“Not anymore,” I breathed. “They’re here.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then it came. Metal squealing horribly as two doors on the blue car flew open at the same time.
“I had to be right, didn’t I?” I whispered.
Marnie held my arm. It was the touch of a love that had held strong for such a long time. The air was alive with love and danger. So were we.
When the closer man got out, the car bounced sudden and high on its shocks, relieved that it no longer had to bear his immense weight. It was a man I hadn’t seen before. He was the size of a house.
“Golly, he’s big,” Marnie said flatly.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “How fast can Daddy’s car go?”
“In my mind, we’re already around the corner,” she said, flying for the cream-colored chariot.
Running right after her, I laughed. “I love that mind!”
And not only her mind.
The giant and his friend evaporated in the distance like a bad dream. We raced the car for hours and hours until morning broke over the Keys at a li
ttle place I’d always loved called Twin Palms. I can’t remember now whether I carried her to the beach or she flew us there, but we didn’t leave for hours.
“I think I’ll stay in your arms forever,” she said when we woke up on the sand.
I smiled at her. “Yeah, you will.”
— July 1959
The story ended there. Two yellow papers were stapled to the last page. They were legal documents, dense and serious and too faint to read in the darkening tower. But there was no more story.
“That’s it?” I said. “Where’s the rest? What happened?”
I turned to Dia. She was smiling. “Unbelievable. So cool. Awesome.”
“What?” I said. “Like all that could really happen? Trained alligators? Elephants? Magic words? He bounced up and grabbed her, and she flew them to the ground? Flew them? None of this could happen!”
She searched my face. “Maybe it couldn’t happen, but it could still happen.”
“What? No,” I said, thinking she had read something I hadn’t. “That’s not the end. It can’t be the end —”
I couldn’t tell if her look then was one of annoyance or of pity. “Goofus,” she said quietly, “it’s what you’ve been thinking all along.”
“I’ve been confused all along!”
“It’s what you’ve been hoping for. Who Nick is.”
“What —?”
Loud popping and rumbling exploded in the air. Peering out of the tower, I think I squealed like a first grader. “Diaaaa —”
Together we watched something the size of a small yacht careening over the tram route, smoking and hissing and growling.
Every inch of the car was dented, and the windshield had a whole alphabet of cracks across it. But I knew right away it was the same car we’d been reading about.
It was the blue sedan.
CHAPTER FORTY
“Wow, full circle,” Dia murmured. “From the first story to the last.”
Full circle. That’s exactly what the car did. Three times. No sooner had it crashed up onto the piazza, than it spun around and around and around across the stones in a doughnut and came to a wobbling, bobbling, screeching, squealing halt.