The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 38

In all the world there was only Colin and the manticore and the flashing sky. The orange eyes stared as it paced toward him. The weird, almost manlike face showed no expression, a pale, wrinkled leather mask with feral jaws agape so that he could see every terrible tooth. As it neared the smell of the thing struck Colin like a blow: instead of trying to run he collapsed like something broken that should never have been forced to stand in the first place. Then the huge shape loomed above him, blocking light and hope, choking him in that terrible, sour smell as he waited for the end…

Then it stepped over him, and rain struck Colin’s face again. Sky. The sky was above him once more. But where was the monster?

For long, long moments he waited, empty as a torn sack, and in the screaming center of his thoughts he wondered if the thing meant to play with him before it killed him, like a cat with a mouse. At last, when nothing but warm rain had touched him for long seconds, he cautiously opened his eyes.

Colin turned his head slowly, mud rolling beneath him, and saw with blinking surprise that the manticore was walking away from him, less like a stalking predator and more like a ship in a strong wind, lurching and swaying as it stepped onto the gravel drive. It turned and took a few steps toward the far end of the house, away from the kitchen, then it slowed, stopped, and began to shiver, a violent shake from tail to head and back again so that the creature seemed to be pulled between two invisible masters, one at each end. It staggered, overbalanced, and then collapsed to the ground where it lay kicking and twitching. Colin did not even consider moving: he lay peering at it through slitted eyes, holding his breath. As he had feared, the creature lurched to its feet again and took a few wobbly steps before finding its balance, but instead of turning toward him it resumed a slow, slightly unsteady march toward the space between the end of the house and the nearest outbuildings. Where was it going? The beast seemed have some terrible duty, something that would carry it forward as long as strength lasted.

As it vanished into the dark and Colin lay gasping, he realized that the tickling he felt on his feet and ankles and legs and wrists and fingers was not mud but what could only be termed a horde of snakes, frogs, worms, and other slithering and hopping things, all following in the path of the limping manticore.

He jumped up and shook the small things from his clothes and backpack. This seemed like a good time to head back to the house, and quickly: his heart had just begun to slow, and in the comparative calm he realized that several other manticores were still unaccounted for.

But what was that human-faced monstrosity doing in this part of the farm? Could the electrical storm have somehow sprung the locks on the manticore cage, or had someone let the things out on purpose, as Colin had once done himself? Could it have been Tyler? The Jenkins brat was always making mischief, but somehow even in his most indignant certainties, Colin Needle couldn’t quite convince himself that Tyler, horrid though he was, would deliberately let loose a killer like that.

When Colin reached the house he locked the front door behind him. The power was still out but his flashlight gave as much light as he needed to see that the house seemed empty. The Snake Parlor next to the entry hall was a shambles and Gideon’s bed there was empty. Smaller pieces of furniture had been thrown around, and Colin also saw what looked suspiciously like spatters of blood on the floor. He felt a sudden chill. What had happened here? Where was Gideon? And more importantly, where was Colin’s mother?

Azinza and Pema and Sarah were locked in the kitchen and wouldn’t come out. Sarah shouted something about shooting and screaming, but refused to open the door, as though Colin wasn’t just as much of a victim as any of the women. He hurried up the stairs toward his mother’s room; to his relief he could hear her voice as he stepped onto the landing, but her words were uglier than anything he’d ever heard from her before.

“The snake! How dare he? I will show him his own beating heart, freshly torn from his chest and still steaming…!”

“Mother?” He stepped into her office. Her desk and the floor around it were littered with papers. “What happened?”

She looked up sharply at his entrance and for a moment just the sight of her face twisted into a grimace of pure rage was enough to make Colin take a step backward, hands raised as though to protect himself from a blow. His mother’s expression froze, then relaxed into something less terrifying. “Colin Needle, where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you! You were supposed to be in your room!” Her eyes widened as she saw his backpack. “Have you been outside? When I told you very, very clearly to stay in the house?” For a moment he thought she might cross the room and strike him, but then she shook her head, her mouth like a tightened string. “Go to your room.”

“Where’s Gideon? What happened?”

“Not now.” She turned back to the papers, rummaging through them frantically, as if the disordered pile was a haystack and she had dropped her last needle into it.

“Mother, stop! Everything’s crazy! One of the manticores has gotten out, and it almost… ” But she was no longer paying attention, as if her only child had suddenly ceased to exist. “What were you shouting about when I came in, Mother? What are you trying to find…?”

“ Not now, Colin,” she snapped.

“You aren’t listening! One of the manticores is out-maybe all of them! We have to find Walkwell! He’s the only one… ”

She turned on him in fury. “You have become a very disobedient child. Go to your room this moment and lock the door. That is an order. ”

Such was the force of her voice and the nature of their long, unequal relationship that a moment later Colin was stumbling out of his mother’s office and headed toward his own bedroom. He pushed through the door and dropped his pack on the floor, then shoved it under the bed with his foot. Whatever happened, he wanted the Continuascope safe. It was bizarre to think how excited he had been feeling only half an hour ago, how optimistic, how triumphant!

Then he saw that his laptop computer was open on his desk.

But Colin Needle never left his laptop open. He hated the thought of the dust that floated through the ancient house, the residue of its moth-eaten carpets and uncleaned rooms, filtering down onto his keyboard. He always closed it. But who had been into his computer, then? And why?

As he stood, still wearing his dripping jacket and muddy clothes, he considered the possible guilt of the Jenkins kids, and even whether old Caesar might have left his laptop that way after some senile attempt to dust it, but he couldn’t forget that earlier in the day his mother had told him to stay inside-several times and very forcefully, in fact. She had said she was worried about the storm, and of course Colin had ignored her, since the place he had planned to go was underground and would be unaffected by even the worst electrical storm. But now that he thought about it, she had been very insistent.

And other than Colin himself (and of course Gideon Goldring, who had been too sick even to talk much, let alone climb the stairs to play with Colin’s laptop) the only regular resident of the farm who knew how to use a computer… was his mother.

No! He couldn’t believe that his mother would have used Colin’s own program to open the manticore cage-it must have been Tyler Jenkins! But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t convince himself. His mother had been preparing for something feverishly all day. Had it been something she wanted to hide? Had she released those murderous beasts to keep Walkwell and the Norseman busy while she saw to her own business, whatever it had been?

And where was Gideon Goldring? Good God, could he be… outside ? Had he worked himself free somehow? Maybe that was Gideon’s blood on the parlor floor, and now he was wandering, confused and dripping blood, out where the manticores were hunting.

Colin hesitated for a moment, then grabbed up his flashlight and headed out into the hallway. He had promised his mother he would lock his door, so he did. From the outside. A few moments later he was downstairs. He took a heavy iron poker from the entry hall fireplace to use as a weapon, but he was praying he wouldn’t have to use it: Colin had no illusions that he could kill a mythical creature as big as a lion with little more than a metal back scratcher.

Despite the heavy winds the storm still hung just above the farm, a lightning-painted darkness, clouds black as ink. Colin stood in the ankle-deep mud and stared down at Lucinda Jenkins, who was wrestling in with what appeared to be a very dirty, very crazy Gideon Goldring. “What are you doing?” Colin demanded.

Lucinda turned her face toward him. “Oh, Colin, help me, please! There’s something in that greenhouse, some… killer fungus! It gets into animals and then… I don’t know, it calls them. Like they’re hypnotized! They come and get tangled up-it even got Mr. Walkwell!” She tried to point; he followed the line of her clumsy gesture and saw a tangled, manlike shape beside the greenhouse, something that looked like a struggling, upright sleeping bag made of faintly glowing white lace. “It’s trying to get Gideon, too-he keeps trying to go to it! It grabbed Mr. Walkwell when he got too close, and I think I can feel it too, now. Oh, Colin, please help! I can feel it pulling at me… ”

He stared at the greenhouse. The whole thing was moving-no, the greenhouse was stationary, but it was covered with pale tendrils and they were moving, thousands of threadlike things waving in the wind like the fronds of a coral reef. Was that what his mother had been searching for so desperately? For a way to kill such a monstrosity? But what could accomplish such a thing except a million gallons of weed killer? They didn’t have anything like that on the farm.

Lightning flashed again, turning everything in the garden either flat black or glaring white. He looked down at the fire iron in his hand. Electrical storm, he suddenly thought. Lightning…

He threw the fire iron away. It spun through the rain and squelched down into the mud, but even as he watched it he suddenly thought of something-something crazy. Something big. Without a word, he turned his back on Gideon and Lucinda and ran toward the farmhouse.

“No! Where are you going?” Lucinda shrieked. “Colin, come back or I’ll hate you forever! I can’t hold him any longer…!

“You have to-just for a minute,” he called back over his shoulder, hurrying his words before the thunder would drown him out again. “I’ll bring back something to tie him with. Just hold on!” Because Colin had an idea.

That’s right, he told himself. I’m going to save Gideon. I’m going to save everybody. Watch Tyler Jenkins try to top that…!

It took long seconds, minutes even, to find the big spool of wire left over from the installation of the electric fence: it had been buried deep in one of the sheds since the previous autumn. With the heavy spool in one hand and an old iron fence post, electrical tape, and a pair of clippers cradled in the other, Colin ran clumsily back across the property toward the house. He stopped beneath the part of the roof with the tallest turret-the one that held the house’s lightning rod-and located the wire that led from the rod, across the roof and down the side of the house until it wrapped at last around a metal water pipe that grounded it to the muddy earth. Colin looked up to make sure no lightning was flickering, then swiftly cut the lightning rod wire near the ground and spliced it to one end of his own wire, trying to make up for his clumsy, wet hands by rapping several layers of black electrical tape around the splice. When he finished he clambered to his feet and hurried around the side of the house toward the garden, unspooling the wire behind him.

He was holding the spool by its plastic handle, but he knew that wouldn’t help him much if a bolt struck the lightning rod now and tried to ground itself down the wire. I’ll be roasted like a Christmas goose, Colin realized, suddenly breathless with terror.

He ran even faster until he had reached the garden and the rows of wind-whipped plants. Lucinda shrieked at him but he did not slow down to help her-if necessary, they could use some of the plastic-coated wire to tie Gideon up once the thing in the greenhouse was dead, but he couldn’t worry about that yet. He dropped the fence post, unspooled another couple of dozen yards of wire, then stripped the insulation from the unused end of the wire and twisted it around one end of the metal post before tying it through a hole in the metal and then taping the whole thing securely. He stood up and hefted the wired post like a javelin. It was fairly well-balanced. The only problem was, Colin knew he couldn’t throw it even half the distance to the greenhouse.

“Don’t worry! This will work!” he shouted, doing his best to ignore Lucinda’s distracting screams-apparently Gideon was on the verge of escape again. The whole scene was so daunting that Colin considered waiting until Ragnar appeared: the huge Viking could easily throw the piece of metal three times the distance Colin could, probably more. But then the glory would then be Ragnar’s and Colin’s own role might even be forgotten. No, something had to done now. There could be no question of waiting for the Norseman.

Colin walked down the ends of the rows toward the greenhouse, carefully letting the wire fall behind him without getting tangled so that when he threw it the fence-post would fly true. Mr. Walkwell had stopped struggling and his still form was only a dozen yards ahead of Colin now. He was almost close enough, almost, but another section of the storm was rolling in and he was holding bare metal in his hand-metal connected to the lightning rod on the house’s tallest point. In a sudden panic he hurried the last few steps toward the spot he had picked out, pulling his arm back, but just as he had almost reached it something snagged his feet and ankles, tumbling him to the ground.

Colin looked down. Strange white strands like kite string had extended-grown?-from the sodden ground and had already begun to twine up his legs with amazing speed. Even as he watched they wrapped around him, tiny strands branching off and growing right through the fabric of his clothes, making his legs prickle and sting…

Thunder boomed again. His heart speeding so fast now he felt faint, Colin realized he was lying on top of what might in moments be a live electrical wire connected to the rage of the heavens themselves. He rolled over and pulled his arm back to toss away the makeshift javelin but something was tightening all along the length of his arm. He was snared by hundreds of pale strings as strong as ivy creepers. He fought, but it was already too late: the fungal strands wrapped his arm tightly just as they had already wrapped the rest of him, and before he could do anything his hand was bound to the naked length of iron.

He couldn’t move. He was tied from foot to shoulder and holding a live electrical conductor in his hand. “No!” he shouted, “I’m stuck! Help me! Someone help me! I don’t want to die…! ”

But Colin Needle’s cries were drowned out as another wave of the storm swept down from the far hills and across the farm, crackling with sparks of new lightning.