If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late (6 page)

M
ax-Ernest had an itch. It was under his toe.

The second toe — counting from the outside — of his left foot, to be exact. And Max-Ernest was always exact.

No, wait, that was wrong.

The itch was under his middle toe. Yes, the middle toe. That was it.

Max Ernest tried to wiggle the toe without wiggling the others. But before he’d managed a proper wiggle, the itch had, oh no! moved under his fourth —

No, darn it. It had moved again. Up this time. To the top of his big toe. No, to the top of his foot. It was, Max-Ernest had no choice but to admit now, a
traveling
itch.

The very worst kind.

His brain instructed his hand to scratch his foot — but for some reason he couldn’t move. His hand was stuck behind his back.

He opened his eyes. The room was dark, but even so he could tell he wasn’t in either of his two bedrooms. The smell was different.

Sort of a musty, dusty smell. But also salty. Like the sea.

Where was he?

“Max-Ernest,” Cass whispered. “Are you awake?”

Oh, he thought, relieved. He must have slept over at Cass’s. But, then, why would her room feel
like it was — swaying?

“What time is it?” he answered. “I have this really bad itch. It feels like a bug is crawling up my leg. Or maybe I have a rash. Or eczema. But I don’t usually get eczema on my foot, so —”

“Shh! Forget eczema! Have you forgotten that we’re stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean and they’re going to feed us to —”

“Hey, we’re tied up!”

“Duh! And stop moving, it hurts my hands!”

“Sorry.” Now that he was thinking about it, Max-Ernest realized his hands hurt as well. In fact, his whole body hurt. He wasn’t sure what was worse — the pain or the itching.

“So what do you think we should do?” asked Cass.

“Me? You’re always the one with the escape plans.”

“Well, I don’t have one now. And my backpack is over there in the corner. I can’t reach any of my supplies.”

“So we’re just going to die?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

They sat for a moment in scared silence.

Then Max-Ernest had an idea —

“I told you, stop moving!”

“I know — I’m just checking for slack. I’ve been reading this book by Houdini and —”

“Houdini?”

“Yeah, Harry Houdini, the escape artist. Most famous magician of all time.”

“I know who he is!”

“Well, he says the mistake people make when they tie someone up is that they use too much rope. Then there’s always slack. See —”

He tugged on the rope to show her.

“Now, take your shoes off —”

“What? How?”

“You know, push them off with your feet. It’ll be easier to get out of the ropes. Houdini always took his shoes off before trying one of his escapes.”

“I can’t believe you’re trying a Houdini act,” muttered Cass, but she pushed her shoes off just as he instructed. A little, just a little, impressed.

Max-Ernest explained that in his escape acts Houdini never used magic or illusions; he used strength — and a few tricks like swelling up his chest in a special way. Usually, Houdini could escape faster than the time it took to tie him up.

It took Max-Ernest much longer than it would have taken Houdini — twenty-seven minutes. For one thing, he wasn’t a trained escape artist. For another, Cass kept counterwriggling his wriggles. Until finally, he told her to keep still.

Just as the rope was beginning to loosen —

Footsteps.

Quickly, they retied themselves and pretended to be asleep.

A deckhand shone a flashlight at them from the doorway — then, thankfully, he walked away.

Eventually, the rope dropped to the floor. Breathing heavily, they staggered to their feet.

“We did it. How ’bout that?” Max-Ernest whispered.

“
You
did it. How ’bout
that
?” said Cass. “Guess those magic books weren’t such a waste of time, after all.” She smiled in the dark.

Max-Ernest smiled back. It wasn’t often that Cass admitted she was wrong.

Cass picked up her backpack and started gathering all the survivalist supplies that had been left strewn across the floor.

When her hand found her flashlight, she immediately turned it on.

The room, they saw now, was some kind of cargo hold. Around them sat piles of what looked like plundered treasure — as if they were in a pirate ship, after all.

Here an archaeologist might have been able to reconstruct the history of the Midnight Sun:

There were Egyptian statuettes with the heads of jackals and large Greek vases decorated with scenes of battle. Medieval helmets and suits of armor. Gothic paintings and crystal goblets.

Along one wall sat the remnants of a sixteenth-century laboratory: old test tubes and decanters, weights and scales. And along the opposite wall sat remnants of an eighteenth-century
library
: old maps and globes, and stacks of books of all shapes and sizes.

Many of the books were charred around the edges — as if they’d been pulled out of a fire. And, indeed, they had — the fire at the Midnight Sun Spa. The fire that Cass and Max-Ernest themselves had set while rescuing their classmate Benjamin Blake.

“We should get out of here — while it’s still dark outside,” said Cass.

“I know — just give me some light for a second.”

Max-Ernest held a large leather-bound volume in his hands. Emerald green and embossed in gold, it was entitled
The Dictionary of Alchemy.

As Cass trained the flashlight on the pages, he flipped through them until he found the entry he was looking for.

“Look —”

Homunculus

TO MOST PEOPLE, A HOMUNCULUS IS JUST A SMALL MAN OR DWARF. BUT TO AN ALCHEMIST, THE WORD HAS A SPECIAL MEANING: A MAN-MADE MAN.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND LATER, MANY ALCHEMISTS BELIEVED THAT — IF THEY ONLY FOUND THE RIGHT RECIPE — THEY COULD CREATE A MINIATURE HUMAN BEING IN A BOTTLE. A FEW NOTORIOUS ALCHEMISTS EVEN CLAIMED TO HAVE SUCCEEDED.

REPORTS VARIED AS TO WHAT INGREDIENTS WORKED BEST. BUT IT WAS COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD THAT THE BOTTLE HAD TO BE BURIED IN MUD OR DUNG FOR THE HOMUNCULUS TO GROW. . . .

Our two friends stared, dumbfounded, at the page in front of them.

No doubt they were startled to read about a miniature man grown in a bottle. But it wasn’t only the
definition
of the word that shocked them; it was also the
illustration
that accompanied the definition:

It was just a black-and-white drawing small enough to fit on a box of matches. Nonetheless, they could see the same bulging eyes and floppy ears, the same big nose and little body.

There was no mistaking it: the homunculus looked just like Cass’s sock-monster.

“Have you seen this before?” whispered Max- Ernest.

“No — I swear.”

“Then how come —?”

“I don’t know — I don’t understand.”

It was true — she’d never even heard of a homunculus before. She was just as surprised as he was.

Cass replayed her dreams in her head: how was it possible?

She shivered as the eerie graveyard tune came back to her unbidden.

Then, suddenly: voices.

Cass turned off her flashlight.

“Are you so certain we must catch the homunculus? There’s no other way?”

Dr. L.

He sounded so close — it was if they were in the same room.

Cass and Max-Ernest crouched behind a large trunk, hardly daring to breathe.

“Yes, I’m certain! Am I ever not?”
Ms. Mauvais responded shrilly.

“Where are they?” Max-Ernest whispered in Cass’s ear.

Cass clamped her hand over his mouth. He nodded, pushing her hand off:
I get the message.

“You were certain that thing would help us find him — the Sound Prism. And has it?”

“No one else knows where the grave is!”
said Ms. Mauvais, ignoring the question.
“The homunculus is the key.”

They couldn’t be in here, Cass thought. There’d been no footsteps. No door opening. And yet —

“What about those kids?”

Max-Ernest gestured in the darkness to the trunk in front of them: Dr. L’s voice seemed to be coming from inside!

The both put their ears up against it.

“What about them?!”
Ms. Mauvais hissed. Her voice also seemed to come from inside the trunk. “
They obviously know nothing. . . .”

Shaking, Cass turned her flashlight back on. If they were seen, it would all be over. But she had to know.

No. They were alone. She and Max-Ernest both exhaled, relieved.

The trunk was dark and heavy-looking and long enough to hold, well, a lot of things.

“Go on,” Max-Ernest, whispered. “Open it.”

“No, you —” said Cass, uncharacteristically reticent.

Max-Ernest shook his head vigorously.

Cass shrugged — and sprang the latches.

I’m not sure what they expected to find inside the trunk — Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais lying like vampires in a coffin? — but what they saw was:

Nothing. Nobody.

Just a ball sitting on a blanket. Or that’s what it looked like to them. You would have recognized it as something else.

(And while I’m on the subject, will you please congratulate me for writing about the Sound Prism, not to mention Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais, without even blinking? I think I’ve acted quite courageously, thank you very much.)

The voices continued, louder:

“At least they won’t trouble us again . . . right, my darling doctor?”

A cruel laugh.
“Let’s make sure of it.”

Cass looked behind the trunk — there wasn’t a mouse, let alone an evil doctor or a scarily ageless woman.

“You think there’s some kind of ventilation system that carries their voices?” she asked.

“Highly unlikely. This a boat, not an office building. And I don’t see any vents. Or even any windows. Unless —”

“It has to be the ball,” said Cass, leaning in closer to look at it.

“You mean, like, it’s some kind of eavesdropping device? Like a baby monitor? Or a walkie-talkie? But that doesn’t really make sense — it doesn’t even look like it has a battery. It just looks like a bunch of straws bundled together —”

Cass picked up the ball and illuminated it with her flashlight; it was strange and beautiful and unlike anything she’d ever seen.

“
I
think it looks like it comes from the sea.”

“Like it was part of a tropical reef or something? I guess I can see that,” said Max-Ernest. “With hundreds of tiny fish darting in and out of those tiny holes.”

Cass held the ball to her ear and started turning it in her hand. Sure enough, all kinds of sounds immediately flooded her senses: Max-Ernest breathing next to her. The lapping of water against the sides of the boat. Even a whale call far out in the sea.

It was like spinning a radio dial and hearing different frequencies come in and out of range.

Was the ball really an eavesdropping device? It seemed too beautiful for such a criminal purpose.

“Listen to this —” She held it up to Max- Ernest’s ear.

“What? Is it supposed to sound like the ocean? Only conch shells do that. It comes from the way air passes through — oh wait, wow!”

“I’m taking it with us,” said Cass, pulling it away from him.

“But that’s stealing!”

“So what. They kidnapped us. They’re murderers. For all we know, we’re saving somebody’s life by taking it.”

“Hm, I don’t know if that makes any sense,” said Max-Ernest, but he made no move to stop her.

They tiptoed out of the cargo hold and crept cautiously up the stairs to the stateroom level. There they walked down a long narrow hallway with a thick white carpet and gleaming mahogany walls lit by small yellow lamps.

As they passed a row of closed doors, Cass held the purloined ball to her ear, listening to the snoring of the crew. Silently, she gave Max-Ernest the OK sign.

The hall ended in a luxurious living room, furnished entirely in white and built in a circle around a glossy black floor.

Glancing down at her reflection, Cass remembered an awful moment at the Midnight Sun Spa. She’d been looking in the mirror when Ms. Mauvais had crept up on her and commented cruelly on her ears, guessing correctly that Cass’s mother’s ears were much prettier.

Where, then, Cass wondered fleetingly now, did she get hers? From the father she’d never met?

Max-Ernest grabbed her arm, snapping her out of her reverie: beneath them, a long, undulating jellyfish was briefly illuminated, swimming under the ship’s hull. The floor was glass.

A loud gurgling startled them. The jellyfish?

“I think somebody just went to the bathroom,” Cass whispered, listening with the ball to the sound of a toilet flushing.

They waited a moment, tense. There were footsteps — but they faded away. Nobody appeared.

Still on tiptoe, they headed for the spiral staircase that led up to the deck.

It was a clear, starry night. The anchored boat swayed gently.

They scanned the horizon — there was no land in sight, nor a single other ship. Cass turned the ball around in her hand but it didn’t pick up anything beyond the cry of seagulls and the crashing of waves.

“My backpack floats — and it’s waterproof,” whispered Cass as she carefully placed the ball inside it. “You think we can survive out there until help comes? I have some trail mix —”

“You want me to go in the water? Did you forget I can’t swim!? Plus, what about dehydration? And hypothermia! And that jellyfish!”

“OK, so then what, Houdini?”

“Don’t you think there’s a life raft or something?”

As quietly as they could, they walked the length of the vessel, looking for a raft.

They stopped at the captain’s deck where, as if turned by an invisible hand, a steering wheel rotated back and forth in time with the rocking of the ship.

Behind them, a light went on —

Ms. Mauvais was visible in silhouette. “Who’s out there? Romi? Montana?”

Cass and Max-Ernest inched into the shadows. Then stood frozen for what seemed like forever but was really less than a minute — until the light went out.