The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons (20 page)

“Lucy! Down to the cellar!
Lucy!
”

Marni's shouts accompanied the next wave that shattered what remained of the beautiful leaded-glass windows. Water surged across the room and about my ankles.

I turned, ran toward Marni, and the two of us fled, hand in hand, toward the cellar door.

It wasn't until we approached the precipice of the cellar stairs that I wondered why in heaven's name we were rushing to
lower
ground as the water was rising.

I passed through the doorway, Marni in front of me on the stairs, pulling me down …

down …

down …

As the water rose, knee deep, I heard a cavernous, haunting aria that could only be one thing: the siren's song. The tone wrapped around
me, and my soul surrendered to its call.

I began making my way calmly, deliberately, down the cellar stairs and into the dank darkness below.

I
stopped on the first landing, my heart racing. I was vaguely aware of all of them at the bottom of the stairs, urging me to continue down into the cellar. Surprisingly, it was only Marni who let me be, searching me with her sea-green eyes, serene and calm in the face of the crisis.

The voices of my aunt and uncle, the judge, and the Brute mingled with the shrieking of the wind to produce a cacophony that raised the hair on the back of my neck. It seemed that the judge, upon seeing the intensity of the storm, and its threat to the house, had decided to retrieve his bag of money.

Once again the house shuddered and bucked. Marni and I were thrown backward against the wall of the stairwell. A crash upstairs on the main floor was immediately followed by a huge sloshing that traveled from the back of the house to the front. The motion of the water rocked the house, top to bottom. The entire structure tilted forward as the tumult rushed along the upstairs hall. Marni and I were tossed, face-first, against the side of the stairwell and, as the wave receded, back again. When the house settled, it leaned precariously backward, the angle of the floor beneath our feet on a great slant.

That was when I realized the house might not withstand the battery of the storm. The others stood below at the foot of the stairs, beckoning with hands and voices. I watched their anguished expressions in a kind of slow-moving, silent dream. Addie and Walter fought their way toward us to pull us to safety, but the floor shook violently, making their ascent impossible.

Water seeped through the ceiling beams, spilling onto my head, back, and legs. Salt stung my eyes. My soaked clothing hung weightily, dragging me down, encumbering my limbs.

The cold embrace of the water and the bizarre rocking of the house transported me back aboard
the sloop with Mother and Father. I shut my eyes tightly, but this could not block the memory of the gray water overtaking Father, swallowing up Mother. Still, I followed Marni down. Water surged past us in a vicious cascade. Down to the next step. And the next. I looked back.

Above us in the cellarway was the Brute, clinging to the doorframe. Water splashed about him, holding him captive. His eyes rolled and flashed. He cried out, reaching for me. “Save me! Somebody save me!”

I recoiled. Turned abruptly. Hesitated. The wind and water roared. Below me my friends gestured wildly. So certain did they seem of their safety, so blindly confident in Marni's authority, that I took a step down, then another.

“Help! Help me, for God's sake!”

The Brute reached out with one hand, grasped the doorframe with the other, water crashing around him.

Marni, two steps below me, turned. “Lucy! Give me your hand!”

A collective cry went up as the stairwell began to vibrate. A number of steps tore away. The buckling of the staircase caused a giant rupture, the step separating Marni and me now a gaping hole. Marni was thrown down as the next several
steps collapsed like dominoes.

“Jump!” shouted Walter. “Jump! We can catch you!”

I stared into the black space beneath the stairs. The hungry, churning hole would swallow me up.

“Lucy, love, please,” Addie shouted, her voice shaking with the vibration of the house. “Miss Marni said we'd be safe here, and I believe 'er! Jump, why don't ye—'tisn't that far! Save yourself, love!”

And still I could not move.

And then, the voice behind me … “You there … m-missy! Y-you can help me!” The Brute reached toward me. “I'll get ya down those stairs if ya just lend me a hand! Come
on
now, missy!
Now
I say!”

His eyes shone feverishly. He clenched and unclenched his fist.

Maybe he
could
help me cross the divide. All he'd need was a sturdy yank to pitch him into the stairwell and out of the torrents in the treacherous hallway above.

“Don't risk it, Lucy!” shouted Walter. “He isn't worth it!”

I shook the notion out of my head. Look what had happened to Father trying to help the man, and for what? I inched toward the black hole. Ventured a look down. Perhaps I could clear it.

The house shuddered, tilted even farther back, then forward again. I was nearly lying against the wall of the stairwell, the wall pitched to where the floor had been just moments before.

“Straight to
hell
with the lot of you!” screamed the Brute. “Can't a single
one
of ya help me?” He sputtered, flailed, water crashing past him. “Walter, you good-for-nothing little cuss, what about you? Get your arse up here, boy! That much you owe me!”

“No, Walter,” Annie howled. “Don't …
please
!” Walter wavered at the edge of the precipice of the stairs, looking desperately between his sister, his father, and me.

A feeling of utter dread came over me. I finally understood Father's terrible dilemma out there on the sloop that day. I forced the voices of my friends and the voice of reason out of my head—in fact, pushed all logical thought aside.

I pulled myself upright and slowly, torturously, dragged myself up to what was left of the perilously tipped staircase, one slippery step at a time. I ignored the insistent cries of my friends. Only Marni remained silent. Her eyes followed me, negotiating each step.

The Brute fought to hang on. His eyes filled with a savage glint. He might panic, overtake me,
sending us careening down the hallway and out the door into the torrents outside.

Another wave crashed on the floor above, and a surge of water exploded past, cresting over us. I shook the water from my eyes, shamefully hoping the wave had overtaken him, thus relieving me of my terrible responsibility.

But no, as the water receded I spied him, seven or eight steps up, gasping for air and shaking the water from his mane of wild black hair.

I forced my feet forward, upward, one step, two, a small rest … three steps, four, five … a deep breath and a prayer … six steps. He reached out, and I leaned against the wall, catching my breath. I had no plan other than to anchor myself against the stairwell and grab him. It was not about strength, but faith. He had strength. I willed myself to have faith.

One more step and I could touch him. I could still turn back. No one could fault a person for saving herself, after all.

There was a sudden jolt. A tremendous roar. Screaming upstairs.

I heaved myself up, took hold of his arm.

At that moment glitter began twinkling about my hands, his arms, winding round and round, encircling us like a sparkling cocoon. In the same
instant, the massive wave crested, sucking the two of us up into the hall. The colorful mist rendered the Brute immobile and nearly weightless, enabling me to grasp him beneath the chin and tow him through the churning water.

I saw everything in vivid detail—the judge being washed, lifeless, out the front door, the Brute and I carried by the receding wave back along the hallway.

My aunt and uncle fought against the pitch of the floor and the rushing water, struggling toward the window. Uncle Victor slithered ahead like an eel. Behind him my aunt splashed on her hands and knees.

“Grab hold of us!” I shouted. “We need to go down to the cellar!” I finally knew the grim truth: the house would be washed away. But then, at least we could try to swim, couldn't we? It was that or risk being killed when the house collapsed. I reached for Aunt Margaret, but Victor continued to scramble and slide toward the window.

“Victor!” Aunt Margaret screamed, her mouth agape at the sight of the sparkling mist surrounding us. “Lucy says go downstairs! Victor!”

He ignored her, concentrating instead on pulling himself out the window toward his imagined escape.

“Aunt Margaret,” I screamed, “take my hand!” She clung to the window frame, gawking at the dazzling aura that held the Brute docile as we bobbed along the hallway canal. She looked frantically between her husband, who already had one foot out the window, and my outstretched palm.

“Victor!” she screamed.
“Victor!”

He threw his other leg out of the window and perched on the frame, no doubt contemplating the whirlpool below. Once more Aunt Margaret grabbed for him, but he roughly shoved her away. “Let
go
of me, Margaret!” he shouted with an angry spray of spit. “Do you want to drag us
both
down? Better for
one
of us to escape than the two of us drowning!” He licked his thin lips, took a deep breath, pushed her hard with both hands. Without so much as a backward glance, he continued across the windowsill.

Margaret threw herself toward him, grabbed hold of his topcoat. The two of them teetered on the window ledge.

At that very moment the glittering cloud surrounding the Brute and me exploded into a million colors. It spread like wildfire in every direction, along the floors and walls, into every nook and cranny. There was a tinkling sound
at first, as the cloud touched the house and was absorbed by it. Gradually, the sound deepened and grew into an earsplitting, creaking noise. From my pocket poured the music of Father's flute, filling the air in a frenzy of sparkling glissandos. It was the sound of transformation, of walls and floors and windows shifting and changing into something very different from what they'd been before. The mist enveloped the velvety papered walls, turning them, from floor to ceiling, into panels of teakwood. The ornate pressed-tin ceilings compressed into sheets of sturdy oak planking. Out front the ship's bell clanged wildly as the house rocked violently forward and back, forward and back, continuing its spectacular conversion.

The back wall of the house glittered and pulsed, stretching itself out into a kind of wedge shape. The window through which my uncle was climbing, my aunt clinging to his back, began to shrink around them. I gaped at the center staircase, glowing and vibrating, straightening itself into a long wooden ladder; the ornately carved post that stood in the center twirled and drilled its way through the floor and on into the cellar.

There was another mighty lurch as the house shifted again. It tipped forward, sending the Brute and me hurtling toward the front door. What
used to be the wall had become a slippery slope. Somehow, I managed to maintain my hold on him.

Then another tidal wave. The force ripped the house from its foundation. It heaved and rolled. We slid along the slick surface beneath us, past the cellar doorframe. I caught a glimpse of Marni and the others, flung against the basement walls. All the while the house creaked, and groaned, and piteously sighed.

I instinctively grabbed hold of the door casing and somehow managed to pull the two of us through. The Brute was still groggy and of no help whatever, the sparkling mist rendering him useless and, thankfully, weightless. Miraculously, I was able to plant my feet on something solid and, when I looked about, discovered I was standing on what had been the cellar ceiling.

Marni and the others huddled nearby, gazing upward. My eyes followed those of my loved ones, up, up along the cellar wall.

I gasped.

Above us, the portion of the house that had been thrust from its foundation stood exposed and uncovered like a giant box without a lid, nothing above it but the night sky, the steeply pitched roof beneath the waves. The creaking sound continued as the rain slowed and the bright white moonlight
illuminated the scene.

The stone-and-mud cellar walls were fairly glowing, groaning as each stone expanded, mutating into aged timber. The center pole of the hallway staircase sprouted and grew, reaching for the stars. What was left of Mother's elegant dining room curtains swirled up around the center stair post, billowing in the sea air. I rushed to the edge of the wall and looked out over the water below us.

My inverted house bobbed along in the sea, the pitched roof and peak below the water's surface like the keel of a ship. The front of the house, where the porch had been, was curling into an overhanging bow that jutted forward to a sharp point. I peered over the rail of the deck (for that's what the cellar ceiling and walls had become) and gazed at the outer walls. Small strips of pale yellow paint and a bit of gingerbread trim were the last remaining vestiges of my beloved house. The long rectangular windows were shrinking into round portholes, the squared-off corners of the house straightening and softly bulging like the hull of a ship.