The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox (10 page)

“Oh. Did you win?”

“Heh. God, no.”

“Did you come second?”

“Not even close.”

“Did you lose? Did you come last?”

“I certainly did.”

“You seem awfully happy about it. What was this race?”

“Have you ever heard of the Island of Abasa?”

“No.”

“It's a little rock in the Mediterranean. I mean, literally a rock. It's about two meters wide.”

“Yeah?”

“We had to race across it. Took us four days.”

“That's a long time to go two meters.”

“That's because they shrunk us down to the size of ants.”

“Who did?”

“The Wives of Abasa. There were four of them and they were looking for husbands.”

“I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take an ant four days to cover two meters.”

“It would if they were desperately trying to lose the race.”

“Why did you want to lose the race?” I asked. “Oh. Because the winners got to be the husbands to the Wives of Abasa, right?”

Ed nodded. “Right.”

“No, wait, if they were wives, wouldn't they already have husbands?”

“Technically they were widows.”

“And the old husbands?”

“Funny story, that. The Wives of Abasa are beautiful marble statues, and they live in a beautiful but ancient stone temple in the waters just off the island. One of the temple pillars fell on the four husbands and crushed them to pieces.”

“That's not funny.”

“No? You should have seen the expression on their faces. Anyway, the four wives needed four new husbands, so they held a race for the honor of their cold white hands.”

“If you didn't want to marry one of them, why did you enter the race?”

“Another funny story. I was just driving through Greece, minding my own business, when suddenly this chariot pulls out in front of me.”

“Chariot?”

“Yup. Horses, reins, rider, whip, the whole kit and caboodle. Dressed up in old-style armor the charioteer was, riding hell for leather, pursued by a giant marble ox. Anyway, I veered off the road to avoid hitting the chariot, straight into the charging marble ox who scooped me up in his horns and carried me off to the Isle of Abasa, where I was shrunk to the size of an ant and made to race against four other guys in chariots.”

“So you were in a truck and they were just in chariots, and you still lost?”

“Wasn't easy.”

“Didn't you want to be married to a beautiful marble statue?”

“Wouldn't have lasted. We'd nothing in common.”

For a while we drove on in silence. I didn't mean to drift off, but I did, and slept most of the way into Dublin. I was gently prodded into wakefulness by the voices on Ed's radio talking about weird atmospheric phenomena and strange behavior reported by pet owners. Dogs had stopped barking. Cats had stopped purring. Budgies had stopped singing. Fish had stopped swimming. And turtles refused to come out of their shells. It sounded like a silly season story, the announcer said, until you realized that it wasn't just a few cranks; it was hundreds of cranks, all saying the same thing.

“It's as if the animals are worrying about something,” one of the guests remarked.

“Must be the economy,” someone said, and everyone laughed.

“Maybe it's the weather!” suggested the announcer. Nobody laughed.

“Maybe it is,” someone said. “Have you looked out a window lately? Have you ever seen the sky that color?”

“Well, that's why we have a meteorologist on the panel!” said the announcer. “So how about it? What on earth is up with the weather, and why is the sky yellow?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” replied the meteorologist.

The radio cut out in a haze of static when Ed swerved off the street and down a ramp into an underground garage. It was empty, except for Ed's truck, and dark, except for Ed's torch and an exit light over the door at the far end.

“Right,” Ed said, when we were out on the street. “Let's see if I can remember how to get there from here.”

We found the Weathermen's Club on a quiet, Georgian street a short walk from the center of the city. The row of terraced houses was old and dignified and expensive-looking, except the one with the brass plaque beside the door that read
Weathermen's Club
in big curling letters, and underneath, in smaller letters,
Deliveries Around Back
. The brass was weathered and worn and faded and scratched. It had not been polished for a very long time. The windows were all boarded up. So was the door. The wrought-iron gate in front of the steps was rusted, and down in the basement, behind the railing, there were piles of rubbish and leaves.

I had a key. Dad had given it to me and warned me not to lose it. It would grant me access to the venerable halls of the Weathermen's Club, where I would be treated with the deference and respect due to the Weatherman's son and heir. I hadn't lost the key, but I was beginning to think that I should've brought a hammer and crowbar instead.

“I don't think anyone's at home,” Ed said.

I stood in front of the door with the key in my hand, waiting for a keyhole to magically appear on the warped wooden board nailed across the door frame. There was some sort of notice glued to it, but it was worn and torn and I couldn't work out what it was trying to tell me. I studied the graffiti for a clue or a message or a map. It was all dates and squiggles and love hearts.

“Here,” said Ed, pushing past. “Let me.”

He made a fist, raised his arm, and began pounding on the board.

“Hello? Hello? Anyone home? Hello?”

“Ed, stop,” I said, though not very loudly. This whole thing was leaving me a bit depressed.

Ed kept pounding. And pounding and pounding and pounding. Most people would have given up after the first minute. Without interrupting the hammering, he turned his head and gave me a wink.

“Stop it, Ed,” I said. He stopped.

“Sorry, did you say something?” he asked.

“Stop hitting the door, Ed.”

“Oh. Are you sure? I could keep this up all day. When it comes to magical entrances you have to be persistent. Even if you don't know the magic word, they'll usually let you in if you annoy them enough.”

“It's not magical, Ed. It's just boarded up.”

“Could be a magical board.”

“Yeah, right, Ed. Magical board. Hey, board! Open sesame!”

The board slowly tilted forward. We jumped to either side as it fell onto the steps and slid down to the footpath. Underneath was an old red door, and there was the lock. The key fit and the door opened without any trouble and we went inside.

It was dark, dusty, and cool, and smelled damp and sour and smoky, as if someone had lit a fire not so long ago and burned something nasty. Sunlight slanted in beams through the windows on either side of the door. Sad old shadows rested in every corner. The walls were made of paneled wood and the floor was covered with cheap plastic linoleum that peeled away from the skirting boards. The overhead light fittings had been stripped away and cracks zigzagged along the yellowing plaster in the ceiling.

“Hello?” I called. Nobody answered.

“Come on,” said Ed. “Let's explore.”

He was already walking off down the hallway, trying doors and rapping his knuckles on the wooden panels. I went after him, rapping on any spots I thought he missed.

There wasn't much to see, unless seeing how empty and deserted and run down the place was counted, which I suppose it did. I'd always got the impression that this was a hushed and hallowed place, full of varnished wood and velvet trimmings and wise old men who smoked cigars and drank brandy and looked up with annoyance whenever anyone breathed too loudly. I'd imagined stiffly upright butlers gliding by as though on well-oiled wheels, fires burning and crackling in the grates all the year round, bookshelves filled with ancient volumes of facts and figures lining every room, portraits of valued members looking fierce and bad-tempered, possibly because they were dead, gracing the walls. Well, this place might have looked like that once. Not anymore. Not for a long time.

All the rooms were empty. All the shelves were bare. The paintings had been taken down from their hooks. The trimmings had been stripped. The butlers had rolled themselves away. The wise old men had been carted off having smoked their last cigar and sniffed their last brandy. The Weathermen's Club was an empty shell. There was nobody here to help anyone.

We went upstairs to find more empty rooms, and upstairs again to even more empty rooms. One thing the Weathermen's Club had plenty of was empty rooms. There were cobwebs in every corner, mouse droppings on every floor, mold on all the windows. The building was slipping bit by bit from being vacant to being derelict. It wasn't spooky. It was depressing. That was almost worse.

There were no Shieldsmen here. No clues, no signs, no secrets, no revelations.

“Come on,” I said. “Let's go.”

I locked the door and together we lifted the board back over it. We'd no hammer and nails to secure it, so we left it leaning there, waiting for a stiff breeze or a vandal to come along and knock it down again.

“What's that?” said Ed, pointing at the faded notice on the board.

I peered at it.

“It's all smeared and torn. Let me see. There's a squiggle, a dash, a something, another something … AtmoLab! What's an AtmoLab?”

“AtmoLab?” said Ed. “What's that short for, Atmospheric Laboratory? Probably a club designed to look like a laboratory with soft lighting and smooth jazz on the sound system. Nice.”

“No, no, it's on the notice.
AtmoLab
is the only word I can make out. Is it a clue? Please tell me it's a clue.”

“Even if it isn't, it might be a cool place to hang out for the afternoon,” Ed said. “Hang on.”

He took out an iPhone and began to slide and tap his fingers around the screen. I sat on the step and watched the traffic go by while I waited.

I know I was aware of the birds before I really noticed them. I'd seen them at home, around the house, and along the road all the way up to Dublin, but it was a scary moment when I looked around and finally
really
saw them. Everywhere.

On the houses, they lined the roofs and the gutters, crowded together in uneven rows. Perched on electricity and telephone wires and street lamps, sitting wing to wing. Every now and then one of them would ruffle its feathers or stretch its beak wide without making a sound. Crows, robins, swallows, thrushes, wrens, martens, wagtails. All of those and hundreds more. Every type and species, all crushed together. Jackdaws beside sparrows beside gulls beside finches.

I shivered, remembering that old horror film Mum had let us stay up late to watch one night. The one with the birds, which should have been completely daft, but wasn't. I could feel thousands of black, beady eyes watching me. I thought about what I'd heard on the radio.

We were all caught in this terrible pause in the turning of the Seasons. People didn't understand it yet, but the birds did. They were waiting for the rhythm to start again, or to change, or to end. Had the worms in the ground stopped wriggling? Had rabbits and badgers and foxes and rats and mice all stopped moving and grazing and hunting and eating?

Sitting on the steps outside the derelict Weathermen's Club, I could feel the edge of a great catastrophe creeping toward me. How long would they survive like this? How long before they all simply dropped dead where they sat or stood or lay? And how long would we survive without them? Were we all slowly winding down to a final halt, a stillness and a sleepiness that would leave us standing, empty-minded, empty-eyed on roadsides, in doorways and kitchens, sitting in cars, as though we had been moving all our lives to a beat we couldn't hear, and with that beat gone we could move no more?

Or maybe we wouldn't last that long. What were the Seasons doing right now? Waiting patiently for the Doorways to open? Or getting angry because after millennia, the system had finally failed? And if they got angry enough to decide they didn't need Weathermen anymore, what then? Could something as huge as this really start with something as small as our tiny old Weatherbox and a phone that didn't ring?

“According to this,” Ed said at last, “AtmoLab Inc. is a company involved in the development of technologies to monitor and control atmospheric conditions for agricultural and maritime purposes. Monitor and control, eh? I like the sound of that.”

“Right,” I agreed, “So what's their name doing on the board over the door of the club? Hey, maybe it
is
the club! Maybe they, like, rebranded themselves because they wanted to be young and hip and stuff! Do they have an office anywhere?”

Ed sat beside me on the step and showed me the phone.

“This is their website. There's not much on it—just lots of pretty pictures of sunsets and seascapes. But, look, their headquarters is here in Dublin, down by the canal.”

I looked at the tiny screen and tried to pretend I didn't have a feeling that we were wasting precious time and that Dad had sent me up here to keep me out of the way, to protect his heir in case anything happened to him. Then I saw the name.

“Oh,” I said.

“What?”

“Look. Their CEO.”

“Yeah? What about him?”

“I know that name. Do you know how to get there?”

“Of course. It's not far,” Ed said, taking the phone back and reading the name. “Huh. Never heard of him.”

“Let's go,” I said, striding away from the club. “Come on! Hurry!”

“Er, other way, Neil,” Ed said. “So how come you're so fired up all of a sudden? Is it the CEO?”

I continued walking in what I now hoped was the right direction.

“Hey, Neil!” Ed called after me. “Come on! Who's this Tony Holland fella?”