CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A Dead Man’s Chest

Cole breathed. “What just happened?”

Kitty’s blue whistle glinted in the moonlight next to Feathertop’s remains. I picked it up. “When Feathertop blew my whistle, he summoned my sister. After that, I have no idea.”

“What is all this trash?” Cole nudged the pumpkin with the toe of his shoe. It made a disgusting squelching noise.

“Careful with that!” said Rigby. He bent over the pile of stuff and rummaged through it with gingerly distaste, picking out an old clay pipe and a broom that looked a lot like mine.

“What happened to Feathertop?” said Cole. “How could a person turn into all this?”

“Feathertop wasn’t a person, exactly,” said Elizabeth. “He was a satiric literary construction, a sort of Pygmalion variant.”

“A what?”

“It’s a Greek myth about a sculptor who brings his statue to life. This is one of Hawthorne’s versions. He was kind of obsessed with the myth. Did you ever read his story ‘Feathertop’?”

We shook our heads.

“It’s like a snarky twist on Pygmalion. A witch builds a scarecrow out of a pumpkin, some old clothes, and her broom. She likes him so much she decides to bring him to life, so she gives him her pipe to smoke.”

“That pipe?” I asked, pointing to Rigby’s hand.

“Yes. It’s the jewel of my collection,” said Rigby.

“The pipe has demonic powers,” said Elizabeth. “Whoever controls it can summon a fiend to light it with an infernal ember and keep it filled with diabolical tobacco.”

We all looked at Rigby. “You smoke diabolical tobacco lit by hellfire? I guess that explains your challenged ethics,” I said.

It was hard to tell in the moonlight, but I thought Rigby looked offended. “Oh, like you don’t fly around on diabolical broomsticks? Anyway, I don’t smoke it myself,” he said. “I made my scarecrow smoke it. And there’s nothing wrong with my ethics. You’re the one who’s stealing from me.”

“Whatever,” said Cole. “How does the pipe turn a scarecrow into a creep?”

Elizabeth said, “In the Hawthorne story, the smoke turns the scarecrow into a dandy—the kind of guy who wears expensive clothes and tries to worm his way into high society. He gets his name from the feather in his hat. But whenever the tobacco runs out, Feathertop has to summon the demon to refill it and light it, and if the demon’s not quick enough, he starts to change back into a scarecrow.”

I had seen Feathertop start to change, I realized, that time his pipe went out at the flea market. “So what happened here? Did the pipe somehow go out?” I asked.

“No. I showed him my mirror. It reflected his true self. He’s so vain, whenever he sees his true form, he throws down the pipe in despair and turns back into a scarecrow.”

“Which is a total pain, thank you very much,” said Rigby. “Where am I going to get another pumpkin on this forsaken island?”

“Seriously, Jonathan? You threaten to strand us on a desert island, you sic your creature on us, and then you complain when I disable him?” Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“Hey, your creature attacked first.”

I said, “I keep telling you, that’s my sister! She’s nobody’s creature!” I wondered where Kitty had gone and when I would see her again. I was way too freaked out by her new, fierce vividness to summon her now, though.

“Well, she drove off my seagulls, and it’s going to take forever to find them, and who knows where my ship is by now,” said Rigby. “Can you give me a lift back? Just drop me at any annex port along the railroad line.”

“You’re kidding! Why shouldn’t we leave you here, like you were going to do to us?” asked Andre.

“You won’t do that. I know you and Elizabeth,” said Rigby. “You’re far too nice.”

I said, “Even if we take you back, we’re keeping the treasure.”

“No, you’re not. The treasure’s mine,” said Rigby.

“Bye, then,” I said, grabbing a corner of the chest. “Come on, Cole, help me get this thing onto the Ariel.”

“Okay, okay, we’ll split the treasure,” said Rigby. “Half for me, half for you two. You know it’s my island!”

Cole and I looked at each other. After all, Rigby had a point. “A third for each of us,” I said.

“Done,” said Rigby. “That looks heavy. Let me give you a hand.”

• • •

Back on the Ariel, Cole and I wanted to dump the corpses overboard, but Rigby argued that they were a valuable part of his collection and would be perfectly usable once he’d reassembled his seagulls. We agreed to let him pile the corpses in the Dutch trader’s rowboat and tow it behind us.

I regretted the decision as soon as we started sailing. In a sailboat, the wind generally comes more or less from behind. We spent the whole trip holding our noses.

To my surprise, Jonathan Rigby turned out to be a great sailing companion. He taught Cole and me how to tie seventeen different kinds of knots, kept us entertained with sea shanties, and knew the names of all the different kinds of seaweed.

“You’re kind of fun for a monster,” I said when he showed me how to attract flying fish by threading little bits of parrot fruit on a string—and how to drop them gently back in the water before they suffocated.

“I’m not a monster myself. I just collect them,” he told me.

The trip home seemed to take far less time than the trip out. Maybe it was the prevailing winds or the ocean currents, maybe just the pattern of daytime and nighttime. Or maybe there was some kink in the geography, and the way back actually was shorter than the way out. Whatever the reason, the Flint compass brought us back to our port of origin in what felt like no time at all.

• • •

Even after we landed, the reek of the corpses clung to our clothes and hair. “No offense, Spooky, but you stink,” said Cole. “Stinky Spooky.”

I made a face at him. “Very mature. You’re not exactly a bouquet of roses yourself, you know.”

Back onshore, Jonathan’s acquisitive, competitive streak came roaring back. He wanted to buy my whistle, my Hawthorne broom, my compass. To his credit, though, he didn’t threaten to drown me or strand me when I said no. He just argued. “What do you need the compass for? You already found the treasure.”

We’d borrowed a wheelbarrow from one of the warehouses down by the docks and were taking turns pushing it up the brick streets. It rattled so hard I kept biting my tongue.

“That’s assuming this is the treasure. We don’t actually know what’s in this chest. How are we going to get it open?” I said.

“You mean you don’t have the key?” Jonathan sounded pleased.

“I don’t know if there even is one. It’s not mentioned in the book, and the ghosts didn’t say anything about it, either.”

“I bet Doc can help,” said Andre. “We’ve got all kinds of keys in our collection.”

We reached the station just as our train was pulling in. “Quick! It’s bad luck to miss a spectral train,” said Elizabeth, starting to run.

I pushed the wheelbarrow after them as hard as I could. “How did the train know we were coming?” I panted.

“Spectral trains are like that,” said Andre, scrambling aboard.

We barely had time to pull the doors shut behind us before the train belched smoke and clattered into motion.

Jonathan Rigby spent the whole ride staring out the window looking green.

“You okay?” Andre asked. “You think you’re going to throw up? The washroom’s that way.”

“How come you collect ships if you get motion sickness?” Cole asked.

Jonathan sniffed at them. “The problem’s not my stomach, thanks for your kind concern. It’s your collection.” He waved his hand at the window. “I can’t believe you snagged the House of Usher. That should be mine!” He whipped his head around to watch the castle disappear behind a hill. I thought he looked less about to throw up than about to breathe fire. But when he turned around again, the scene up ahead didn’t seem to make him feel any better. “Oh! Is that Bly? How on earth did you get your claws on Bly?” He actually gnashed his teeth.

It was a relief when we pulled into Lost Penn Station, where Dr. Rust was waiting for us with Griffin. Andre tilted the chest down the train steps.

“Oh, good—you found it!” said the librarian.

“Ruff,” agreed the dog.

“Doc, do you know if we have the key to this chest?” asked Elizabeth.

“I’m pretty sure we don’t.”

“Can you think of anything else we could use to open it, then?”

“Hm . . . let me think. The Golden Key won’t work—it’s in the wrong genre. . . . The Key to All Mythologies is just a big, useless joke. . . . We have tons of skeleton keys, but they always lead to such bad puns. . . . Oh! I know. What about Leo’s multifunctional tool?”

“Great idea,” said Andre. “He upstairs?”

“No, down here, testing some ectoplasmic trackers he’s been working on. I passed him a little while ago on Eldritch Street, on the Lowest East Side. He’s probably still there.”

“Is it far?” I asked. My arms were aching from pushing that chest around.

“Yes and no. It depends how you go. You could take the haunted hansom from ‘Consequences’—that might be easier. You and Cole, take the chest with you. The rest of us can meet you on Eldritch Street.”

“What’s ‘Consequences’?”

“A Willa Cather story. It’s one of those ones where the ghost is really the—”

“Doc! Spoiler alert!” interrupted Andre.

“Right. Sorry. Anyway, the hansom should be able to take you to the Lowest East Side.”

Andre helped us lug the chest to a row of weird-looking vehicles waiting outside the station. The haunted hansom was a small horse carriage drawn by a bony gray horse. The driver wore a red flannel scarf and a broken hat, which he tipped to Elizabeth with the handle of his switch. “Eldritch Street, right away!” he said, and we rattled off through a strangely swirling streetscape.

“This is kind of creepy,” whispered Cole.

“Creepier than everything else?”

“No, but still.”

I secretly agreed and was fighting the impulse to reach out for Cole’s hand when we clattered into a broad street crowded with ghostly pushcarts. Blurred phantoms leaned out of upper windows of tenements howling, “Moiiiiishe! Miiiiiiickeeeeeey!! Saaaaaaalvatooooooore!!! HOWWWWWIEEEEEE!!! Ya forgot yer MITTTTTTTENNNNS!!”

Our cabbie pulled on the reins, the bony horse shuddered to a stop, and we stepped out, lugging the chest after us. Apparently either Elizabeth had already paid him or haunted cabbies don’t expect tips, because before we could get our bearings, he had clicked his tongue at the old gray horse and vanished into the swirl.

• • •

A guy had been bending over one of the ghostly pushcarts, waving an instrument through it. The instrument consisted of a wand attached by a red cord to a metal box covered with dials and buttons and switches; as it passed through the pushcart, it let out a burst of beeps.

He straightened up at the sound of our carriage and looked at us. He had a long face, with a curl of dark brown hair falling into his warm brown eyes. He seemed around college age, medium height and neatly built, as if an engineer had taken some trouble to get him right.

“Hello! You look real,” he said, pushing the curl out of his eyes.

“Thanks. You do too,” I said.

“Hang on, let me just check.” He adjusted some knobs on his machine, then waved the wand over my head. It beeped again. I jumped back.

He waved it in Cole’s face. It beeped again. “Hey!” objected Cole.

“Schist, that’s strange!” said the guy. “You’re both definitely real, but I’m getting a positive reading for ectoplasm. You’re not partially disembodied, are you?” He poked Cole in the chest with the wand.

“Seriously, quit it!” said Cole.

“No disembodiment, your chest seems solid,” said the guy. “You’re not off lying in a coma somewhere, are you? Or fractionally dead?”

“Of course not! But you will be, if you don’t quit poking me with that thing.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right, that was rude of me. It’s just such an anomalous reading—I can’t understand it.”

“Our ancestors are fictional,” I said. “Some of them, anyway. Could that explain it?”

“Fascinating. Yes, maybe. Do you have a few minutes? I would love to get you into the lab and run some tests.”

Suddenly the sky went dark. The air swirled with bats, their high-pitched, skittery pips and clicks weaving confusingly among the howls of the phantom tenement tenants. I ducked instinctively and put my arms over my head.

When I straightened up, the bats were gone, but Dr. Rust, Elizabeth, Andre, and Griffin were standing on the sidewalk. Cousin Hepzibah was there too, sitting very upright in an antique wheelchair, the kind made of oak with a caned back and seat and big wooden wheels. Andre was pushing it. Jonathan Rigby arrived seconds later, riding his Hawthorne broom.

“Oh, good. You’ve met already,” said Dr. Rust.

“We haven’t, actually,” said the young man. “Friends of yours, Doc?”

“Sukie O’Dare and Cole Farley,” said Dr. Rust. “Friends of the repository. They have a favor to ask you. Sukie and Cole, this is Leo Novikov. Leo’s doing great things in literary-material mechanics.”

“Oh, I just like to mess around with spare parts,” said the young man modestly. “What’s the favor?”

Andre pointed to our treasure chest. “You think you can get that open?”

“I don’t see why not. It isn’t cursed, is it?”

“Not that we know of.”

Leo nodded, frowning. He walked around the chest, leaning over to inspect the locks, then adjusted some dials on the machine and waved the wand in a complicated pattern. Nothing beeped. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

He pulled what looked like a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and opened one of the tools. It looked like a teeny, tiny hand. He inserted it into the first lock, frowning with concentration. After a few seconds, the lock popped open. “It seems pretty straightforward, just a little phantasmic resistance. And some rust,” he said, moving on to the next lock.

When the locks were all open, he stood back. We all looked at each other, holding our breath. I wished I could summon Windy and Phinny. I was sure they would want to see this.

After a minute, Jonathan Rigby cleared his throat and offered, “Sukie, Cole—will you do the honors?”

Cole and I stepped forward and each grabbed an end of the lid.

“Here goes nothing,” said Cole. “One, two, three!”

Together, hearts pounding, we lifted the lid.

The chest was empty.