There’s no point hiding now, I thought, and the others seemed to agree. I saw Emma’s glowing-hot fingers reach for the edge of the tarp.
“On three,” she whispered. “Ready?”
“As a racehorse,” Addison growled.
“Wait,” I said, “first, you should know—under the boat, there’s—”
And then the tarp was ripped away, and I never did finish that sentence.
* * *
What happened next happened fast. Addison bit the arm that had torn away the tarp and Emma made a swipe at its surprised owner, grazing the man’s face with scalding fingers. He stumbled back howling and fell into the water. Sharon had been knocked down in the scuffle, and the second man was standing above him with his club raised. Addison leapt at him and grabbed hold of his leg. The man turned to shake off the dog, giving Sharon time to regain his feet and hit him in the stomach. The man doubled over and Sharon disarmed him with a tricky whirl of his staff.
The man decided to quit while he could and leapt back into his boat. Sharon tore away the canvas covering the outboard motor, yanked its ignition cord, and our boat sputtered to life just as a third came speeding out of the murk alongside us. Inside were three more men, one armed with an old-fashioned pistol that was leveled right at Emma.
I shouted at her to get down and tackled her just as it cracked and sent up a puff of white smoke. Then the man pointed it at Sharon, who let go of the throttle and put his hands up. And that would’ve been it for us, I think, had not a throat-full of strange words come gushing up and pouring out of me, loud and sure and foreign to my ears.
Sink their boat! Use your tongues to sink their boat!
In the half second it took everyone to turn and stare at me, the hollow had pushed off from our hull and flung its tongues at the other boat. They fired out of the water, whipped around the lip of its stern, and flipped the boat up and backward in a reverse somersault that launched all three men out.
The boat crashed upside down on two of them.
Sharon might’ve taken the opportunity to hit the throttle and get us out of there, but he stood frozen in shock, his hands still raised.
Which was fine. I wasn’t done yet, anyhow.
That one, I said, looking at the gunman flailing in the water.
It seemed the hollow could hear me underwater because moments after I’d said it the man screamed, looked down, and was sucked under—gone, just like that—and immediately the water where he’d been bloomed red.
“I didn’t say eat him!” I said in English.
“What are you waiting for?” Emma shouted at Sharon. “Go!”
“Right, right,” the boatman stammered. Shaking off his stupor, he lowered his hands and leaned on the throttle. The motor whined and Sharon turned the rudder and spun us in a tight circle, tripping Emma, Addison, and me into a pile. The boat bucked and shot forward, and then we were speeding through whorls of murk, heading back the way we’d come.
Emma looked at me and I looked back, and though it was too loud to hear anything over the motor and the rush of blood in our ears, I thought I could read in her face both fear and exhilaration—a look that said, You, Jacob Portman, are amazing and terrifying. But when she finally spoke, I could make out only one word: Where?
Where, indeed. I’d hoped we could get away from the hollow while it was finishing off the Ditch pirate, but reading my gut now I knew it was still close, trailing behind us, most likely using one of its tongues as a towline.
Close, I mouthed back.
Her eyes brightened and she nodded once, sharply: Good.
I shook my head. Why wasn’t she afraid? Why couldn’t she see how dangerous it was? The hollow had tasted blood, and just left a meal half-finished behind us. Who knew what meanness still boiled inside it? But the way she looked at me. Just that crooked bit of smile gave me a surge, and I felt I could do anything.
We were coming up fast on the bridge and the murk-making peculiar. He was waiting for us, crouching and sighting us down the length of a rifle he’d rested on the bridge’s handrail.
We ducked. I heard two shots. Looking up again, I saw that no one had been hit.
We were going under the bridge. In a moment we’d be out the other side and he’d have another shot at us. I couldn’t let him take it.
I turned and shouted Bridge! in hollowspeak, and the creature seemed to know just what I meant. The two tongues that weren’t holding on to our boat whipped upward, and with a wet slap each one wrapped around the bridge’s flimsy supports. All three tongues unreeled triangularly until they were pulled taut, like elastic stretched to the limit. The hollow was forced up out of the water, tethered between boat and bridge like a starfish.
The boat slowed so quickly, it was like someone had thrown the emergency brake; we were all tossed forward onto the floor. The bridge groaned and rocked, and the peculiar taking aim at us stumbled and dropped his gun. I thought that surely either the bridge would give or the hollow would—it was squealing like a stuck pig, as if it might rip down the middle—but as the peculiar bent to snatch his gun, it seemed the bridge would hold, which meant I’d traded all our momentum and speed for nothing. Now we weren’t even moving targets.
Let go! I screamed at the hollow, this time in its language.
It didn’t—the thing would never leave me of its own accord. So I rushed to the back of the boat and bellied over the stern. There was one of its tongues, knotted around the rudder. Remembering how Emma’s touch had once made a hollow’s tongue release her ankle, I pulled her over and told her to burn the rudder. She did—nearly falling over the side to make the reach—and the hollow squealed and let go.
It was like releasing a slingshot. The hollow flew away and slammed into the bridge with a splintering crash; the whole tottering contraption buckled and went tumbling into the water. At the same time, the back of our boat dropped, and the motor, once again submerged, flung us forward. The sudden acceleration toppled us like bowling pins. Sharon managed to hold on to the rudder, and righting himself, he steered us sharply away from a collision course with the canal wall. We flew down the spine of the Ditch, a black V of water shooting out behind us.
We hunched low should any more bullets fly. We seemed to be out of immediate danger. The vultures were somewhere behind us, and I couldn’t imagine how they’d catch us now.
Panting, Addison said, “That was the same creature we met in the Underground, wasn’t it?”
I realized I’d been holding my breath and so let it out, then nodded. Emma looked at me, waiting for more, but I was still processing, every nerve jangling with the strangeness of what had just happened. This much I knew: this time I’d nearly had him. It was as if, with each encounter, I dove a little deeper into the hollowgast’s nerve center. The words came easier, felt less foreign to my tongue, met less resistance from the hollow. Still, it was like a tiger onto which I’d managed to clap a dog leash. At any moment it might decide to turn and take a bite out of me, or any of us. And yet, for reasons beyond my understanding, it hadn’t.
Maybe, I thought, with another attempt or two, I could really get my hands around it. And then—and then. My God, what a thought.
Then we’d be unstoppable.
I gazed back at the ghost of a bridge, dust and wood pulp spiraling in the air where the structure had stood only moments ago. In the wreckage below, I watched for a limb to break the surface, but there was only a lifeless swirl of trash. I tried to feel for it, but my gut was useless now, wrung out and empty. Then the mud-colored mist closed behind us and painted away the view.
Just when I needed a monster, it had gotten itself killed.
* * *
The boat nodded as Sharon eased the throttle and banked right, through the slowly clearing murk, toward a block of ghastly tenements. They stood at the edge of the water in a vast unbroken wall, resembling not so much houses as the outermost boundary of a maze, scowling and fortresslike, with few points of entry. We drifted along at a crawl,
searching for a way in. It was Emma who finally spotted one, though I had to squint to recognize it as more than just a trick of shadows.
To call it an alley would’ve been exaggerating. It was a slot canyon, narrow as a knife’s edge, a shoulder’s width from wall to wall and fifty times as high, its entrance marked by a moss-shagged ladder screwed flat to the bankside. I could see only a little distance in before the passage hid itself, curving away into sunless dark.
“Where does it go?” I asked.
“Where angels fear to tread,” Sharon replied. “This wasn’t the landing I’d have chosen for you, but our choices are limited now. Are you certain you wouldn’t rather leave the Acre altogether? There’s still time.”
“Quite certain,” Emma and Addison said simultaneously.
Me, I would’ve been happy to debate the matter—but it was too late to turn back now. Get them back or die trying was something I’d said in the past few days. Time to dive in.
“In that case, land ho,” Sharon said dryly. He retrieved the mooring rope from under his seat, tossed it over the ladder, and pulled us toward the bank. “Everyone out, please. Do watch your step. Wait, allow me.”
Sharon climbed the slippery, half-runged ladder with the nimbleness of someone who’d done it many times. Once at the top, he knelt on the bank and reached down to help each of us up in turn. Emma went first, then I handed up a nervous and wiggling Addison, and then, because I was proud and dumb, I climbed the ladder without taking Sharon’s hand and nearly slipped off.
The moment we were all safely on land, Sharon was climbing back down the ladder. He’d left the motor idling.
“Just a minute,” said Emma. “Where are you going?”
“Away from here!” Sharon replied, hopping from the ladder into his boat. “Would you mind tossing down that rope?”
“I will not! You must show us where to go first. We’ve no idea where we are!”
“I don’t do land tours. I’m strictly a boat guide.”
We exchanged looks of disbelief.
“Give us directions, at least!” I implored him.
“Or better yet, a map,” said Addison.
“A map!” Sharon exclaimed, as if this were the silliest thing he’d ever heard. “There are more thief passageways, murder tunnels, and illegal dens in Devil’s Acre than anywhere in the world. The place is unmappable! Now stop being childish and hand me down my rope.”
“Not until you tell us something useful!” Emma said. “The name of someone we can ask for help—who won’t try to sell us to the wights!”
Sharon broke out laughing.
Emma struck a defiant pose. “There must be one.”
Sharon bowed—“You’re speaking to him!”—then climbed the ladder halfway and plucked his rope from Emma’s hands. “Enough of this. Goodbye, children. I’m quite sure I’ll never see you again.”
And with that he stepped into his boat—and right into a puddle of ankle-deep water. He let out a girlish squeal and bent down to look. It seemed the gunshots that missed our heads had drilled a few holes in his hull, and the boat had sprung leaks.
“Look what you’ve done! My boat’s shot all to pieces!”
Emma’s eyes flashed. “What we’ve done?”
Sharon made a quick inspection and concluded the wounds were grave. “I am marooned!” he announced dramatically, then cut the motor, collapsed his long staff to the size of a baton, and climbed the ladder again. “I’m going find a craftsman qualified to repair my dinghy,” he said, breezing past us, “and I won’t have you following me.”
We trailed him single file into the narrow passageway.
“And why not?” Emma shrilled.
“Because you’re cursed! Bad luck!” Sharon waved his arm behind him as if shooing flies. “Begone!”
“What do you mean, begone?” She jogged a few paces and grabbed Sharon by his cloaked elbow. He spun around fast and yanked it away, and I thought for a moment his raised hand was about to strike her. I tensed, ready to leap at him, but his hand just hung there, a warning.
“I’ve run this route more times than I can count, and not once have I been attacked by Ditch pirates. Never have I been forced to abandon cover and use my petrol engine. And never, ever has my boat been damaged. You’re more trouble than you’re worth, plain and simple, and I want nothing more to do with you.”
While he spoke, I glanced past him down the passage. My eyes were still adjusting to the dark, but what I could see was terrifying: winding and mazelike, it was lined with doorless doorways that gaped like missing teeth, and it was alive with sinister sounds—murmurs, scrapes, scurrying steps. Even now I could feel hungry eyes watching us, knives being drawn.
We couldn’t be left here alone. The only thing to do was beg.
“We’ll pay double what we promised,” I said.
“And fix your boat,” Addison chimed in.
“Never mind your bloody pocket change!” Sharon said. “Can’t you see I’m ruined? How can I return to Devil’s Acre? Do you think the vultures will ever let me be, now that my clients have killed two of them?”
“What did you want us to do?” Emma said. “We had to fight back!”
“Don’t be facile. They would never have forced the issue if it wasn’t for … for that …” Sharon looked at me, his voice falling to a whisper. “You might’ve mentioned earlier you were in league with creatures of the night!”
“Umm,” I said awkwardly, “I wouldn’t say ‘in league with,’ exactly …”
“There isn’t much in this world I fear, but as a rule I keep my distance from soul-sucking monsters—and apparently you’ve got one following you like a bloodhound! I suppose it’ll be along any minute?”
“Not likely,” Addison said. “Don’t you recall, some moments ago, when a bridge fell on its head?”
“Only a small one,” Sharon said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a man about a boat.” And with that he hurried away.
Before we could catch up to him he’d rounded a corner, and by the time we reached it he’d disappeared—vanished, perhaps, into one of those tunnels he’d mentioned. We stood turning circles, confounded and afraid.
“I can’t believe he’d just abandon us like this!” I said.
“Neither can I,” Addison replied coolly. “In fact, I don’t think he has—I think he’s negotiating.” The dog cleared his throat, sat up on his hind legs, and addressed the rooftops in a booming voice. “Good sir! We mean to rescue our friends and our ymbrynes, and mark me, we will—and when we do, and they learn how you’ve aided us, they’ll be most grateful.”
He let that ring out for a moment, then went on.
“Never mind compassion! Fie on loyalty! If you’re as intelligent and ambitious a fellow as I think you are, then you’ll recognize an extraordinary opportunity for advancement when you see one. We are indebted to you already, but scrounging coins from children and animals is an awfully modest living compared to what having several ymbrynes in your debt could mean. Perhaps you’d enjoy having a loop all to yourself, your own personal playground with no other peculiars to spoil it! Anytime and anyplace you like: a lush summer isle in an age of abiding peace; some lowly pit in a time of plague. As you prefer.”
“Could they really do that?” I whispered to Emma.
Emma shrugged.
“Imagine the possibilities!” Addison gushed.
His voice echoed away. We waited, listening.
Somewhere two people were arguing.
A hacking cough.
Something heavy was dragged down steps.
“Well, it was a nice speech,” Emma sighed.
“Forget him, then,” I said, peering into the passages that branched away left, right, and straight ahead. “Which way?”
We chose a passage at random—straight on—and started down it. We’d gone only ten paces when we heard a voice say, “I wouldn’t go that way, if I were you. That’s Cannibals’ Alley, and it isn’t just a cute nickname
.”
There was Sharon behind us, hands on his hips like a fitness coach. “My heart must be getting soft in my old age,” he said. “Either that or my head.”
“Does that mean you’ll help us?” said Emma.
A light rain had begun to fall. Sharon looked up, letting a little splash his hidden face. “I know a lawyer here. First I want you to sign a contract laying out what you owe me.”
“Fine, fine,” said Emma. “But you’ll help us?”
“Then I’ve got to see about getting my boat fixed.”
“And then?”
“Then I’ll help you, yes. Though I can’t promise any results, and I want to state at the outset that I think you’re all fools.”
We couldn’t quite bring ourselves to thank him, given what he’d put us through.
“Now stay close, and follow every instruction I give you to the letter. You killed two vultures today, and they’ll be hunting you, mark my words.”
We readily agreed.
“If they catch you, you don’t know me. Never saw me.”
We nodded like bobbleheads.
“And whatever you do, never, never touch so much as a drop of ambrosia, or on my eyes, you’ll never leave this place.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I said, and from their expressions I saw that Emma and Addison were likewise in the dark.
“You’ll find out,” Sharon said ominously, and with a swish of his cloak he turned and plunged into the maze.
Just before a cow is put to the hammer in a modern slaughterhouse, it is prodded through a winding maze. The tight curves and blind corners prevent the animal from seeing more than a short distance ahead, so it doesn’t realize until the last few steps, when the maze abruptly narrows and a metal collar clamps tight around its neck, where the journey has taken it. But as the three of us hurried after Sharon into the heart of Devil’s Acre, I felt sure I knew what was coming, if not when nor how. With each step and each turn, we threaded deeper inside a knot, one I feared we’d never work apart.
The fetid air did not move, its only outlet an uneven crack of sky high above our heads. The bulged and slumping walls were so narrow that we had to go shoulder-first in places, the tight spots greased black by the clothes of those who’d gone before. There was nothing natural here, nothing green, nothing living at all save scurrying vermin and the bloodshot-eyed revenants who lurked behind doorways and under grates in the street, and who surely would’ve jumped at us if not for our towering, black-clad guide. We were chasing Death himself into the pit of Hell.