The Game of Sunken Places Read online

  “Yup. Stick the stick into the socket on the motor and the propeller part will be in just the right position.”

  “Brilliant!” Brian commended.

  “Thanks. I’ve had Uncle Max set us up with backpacks and provisions. Sick or well, I don’t care. We don’t have time. No time for hurling. Tomorrow, we’ll be on our way down the underground river.”

  They sat then and talked about what Brian had found that day.

  Brian told him about the house, right down to Jack Stimple telling them Lassie wouldn’t come to their rescue.

  “I don’t know what it means,” Brian concluded, pacing.

  “I know what it means,” Gregory said. “It means that jerk has Lassie tied up somewhere. It means our dear, precious little varmint is—”

  “Will you stop joking?” Brian said. “Would you—I’m sorry. Would you just stop it.”

  “I can’t stop. I can’t stop it,” Gregory said miserably. He lay down and put his arm over his eyes. “I keep on thinking of jokes right now. I’m thinking of them faster and faster. All about Lassie.”

  “We have to do something,” said Brian.

  “I know,” said Gregory. “I know, I know, I know.”

  “We’re in danger!”

  Gregory was stunned. He said, “Hey. You shouted at me.”

  Brian looked down. He said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t think you’ve ever yelled at me.”

  “It’s just—sometimes you get—you know… Sometimes things aren’t funny.”

  Gregory said quietly, “No. Sometimes they aren’t.” The he looked out the window. He said. “What will we do? What will we do, what will we do?”

  Brian said, “I don’t know.”

  And Gregory said, “It’s almost time for dinner.”

  The silence of the dinner hour was filled with the bumpings and muffled rattlings of the wind outside the house. Through the dark panes of the winter garden’s glass, the trees could be seen, flinging from side to side against the incandescent blue night. Occasionally, the wind would whip through some grotto and yowl like an angered cat, and everyone would carefully look up from their food, then look down again as the keening faded away. The tapping of silver against china, the whispers of requests for second helpings, and the burbling of water into goblets were the only sounds to be heard, besides the wind’s angry shrieks and thumps.

  Gregory announced loudly, “Brian found your house today.”

  Uncle Max said, “I don’t believe in speech during the supper hour. It interferes with digestion.”

  Gregory said, “He found your house. Your real house.”

  He let this sink in. Then he added, “The house where Prudence lived in a room downstairs with sunflower wallpaper. ”

  Uncle Max turned to Brian. “Where did you find this…house?”

  Brian answered, low in his seat, “Near the…near the Crooked Steeple.”

  Uncle Max glared at the boy. “Boy. Did you go off the path?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You left the paths?”

  Brian simply nodded, his already pale face turning paler.

  Uncle Max rose darkly, his beak-like nose turning scarlet. “I told you never—NEVER!—to go off the paths, didn’t I?”

  Brian nodded.

  “You FOOL!” shouted Uncle Max.

  Prudence flinched, but then, in a quavering voice, said, “What…why?”

  The man turned to her. “What do you mean?” he snapped.

  “I asked why they can’t go off the paths. I’ve gone off the paths—”

  “Because I said so. IS THAT NOT SUFFICIENT REASON?” He glared around wildly. “AM I NOT MASTER IN THIS HOUSE?” he shouted. “I AM MASTER! IT IS FOR ME TO DICTATE WHAT OTHERS DO! IS THIS UNDERSTOOD?”

  Prudence looked down at her lap and touched her fingers skittishly to her face, a dark blush spreading across her smooth cheeks. Brian bit his lower lip and stared at the candelabra.

  Gregory rose. “I think you owe us an explanation, sir.”

  Uncle Max turned hotly toward his foster-nephew. He hissed, “What?”

  “I think you owe us an explanation. You have obviously brought us here for some purpose, for some strange game, and it’s time we found out the rules. It’s time we found out what we’re playing for.”

  Uncle Max’s eyes were wide and white. His face was scarlet.

  “Our lives have been in danger, sir, as a result of this game. Something has stalked us out in the woods. Jack Stimple tried to kill Brian on the roof that night. If we’re going to play your game, we demand to know the rules.”

  Uncle Max merely stared, incredulous, at his nephew.

  Prudence looked up timidly and said quietly, “Yes. What IS going on?”

  Brian added, “We…we need to understand how and why all of this is here.”

  Uncle Max stared at the floor, whispering silently to himself. Prudence could not bear to look at him, but ducked her head, almost crying.

  Rubbing his mustache, he turned to the wall and quietly said, “All right. You’ll hear about it. In the parlor. Burk—coffee, tea, and dessert in the parlor.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “After we finish our meal.”

  He kept eating in silence. His eyes were almost closed. The others watched him as they ate. He put far too much beef between his lips. His cheeks bulged. He gnawed for a long time and jerked his head as he swallowed.

  It took them ten minutes to finish.

  Uncle Max strolled through the foyer into the parlor, then sat resolutely in one of the wingback chairs by the fire. He wearily caressed his temple with one heavy hand, continually muttering to himself.

  The others shuffled in, looking stiff and nervous. They arranged themselves in various seats around the room. Burk brought in a tray with tea, coffee, and napoleons, which he distributed quietly. The fire popped and snapped in the hearth, while outside the wind battered the slats of the great house.

  Uncle Max looked up. “You want me to explain. Suppose I like that in a boy—enough gumption to stand up for his right to understand. I’ll tell you. It’ll be breaking the Rules, but—” He nodded.

  They waited. Brian was sitting on his hands. Gregory plucked at the fabric of his pants.

  “What do you know?” asked Uncle Max.

  “Not much,” said Brian.

  “Enough,” Gregory said. “Brian and I are playing a game against someone named Jack Stimple, whose real name is Balerond. He’s part of something called the Thusser Hordes. Years ago, there was a big battle.”

  “There was,” Uncle Max confirmed.

  “The Thusser Hordes were fighting some kind of elfin people who live inside the mountains. The game we’re playing, the Game of Sunken Places—it has something to do with that battle.”

  “Indeed,” said Uncle Max.

  “What does it have to do with the battle?”

  “Two parties are betting on the outcome.”

  “Who’s betting?”

  “The Thusser Hordes and the People of the Mound of Norumbega.”

  “Who are they?” asked Brian.

  Uncle Max just blinked at the paneling, looking over the boys’ heads.

  “Who…?” Brian began again, but Uncle Max did not move. Prudence cleared her throat.

  Gregory tried, “And if we win?”

  “Who,” asked Uncle Max, “is ‘we’?” He drank his coffee, then sat back in his chair. He said, “Two spirit-nations are at war. You will decide the conflict. On the one side, there are the People of the Mound of Norumbega, who used to live here. On the other side, the Thusser Hordes, who drove them out.” Uncle Max bowed his head against the headrest of the chair.

  Gregory demanded, “What happens if we lose?”

  “A treaty was struck,” said Uncle Max. “The People of Norumbega were forced into exile. But there is a chance for return. The Game is arranged. Rounds are played. If the Norumbegans win, they will return from their exile. If the Thusse
r Hordes win, they will take possession of the mountain, the Mound of Norumbega.”

  Brian was incredulous. “The fate of this whole spiritnation depends on whether we win or lose?”

  “I would appreciate it if you gave it your one hundred percent.”

  “But if we don’t win,” Brian said, “the People of Norumbega will be exiled forever?”

  Gregory protested, “What kind of people would risk their whole nation on a game? Especially a game played by us?”

  “A spirit-people for whom there is nothing but play,” Max answered. “An enchanted people for whom even their own pain is an entertainment. A people who do not know right and wrong, who breathe an air that is thinner than ours, without the dust and skin of our thick, sublunary atmosphere.”

  “So who are you?” asked Gregory. “Why do you know this?”

  Max considered. “When I was a child,” he said, “which was…” He stopped and he held up a finger. “What was that?” he whispered.

  There was a ticking all around them. A deep, heavy ticking, as if water were dripping on a distant drum and picking up speed, dripping ever faster and faster and louder until it filled the room and was no longer a ticking but—abruptly, there was a tremendous roaring hiss outside, and everyone started up out of their chairs. Darkness shot through the house—the flames were squelched. All around them thundered a great rumbling. Daffodil, in the kitchen, screamed in the darkness. The front door slammed open, and wind and leaves burst through the house. The murky forms of the panicked group ran to and fro.

  Huge, dark wings were beating around the house.

  Over the din, Uncle Max shouted, “IT’S THE THUS-SER HORDES! I’VE TOLD YOU TOO MUCH! GO! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!”

  Gregory and Brian looked at each other, frantic. Brian scrambled to the steps and began to stumble upward, though great suckings and buffetings of wind slammed around him, and darkness and shadows writhed all about. He fell into the nursery and snatched the pinwheel, which slowly turned in the breeze. A doll, knocked by his grab, toppled to the floor and landed sluggishly on its shoulder.

  Brian flew back out onto the landing and began to charge down the steps. From above, on the stairs descending from the game room, countless tiny feet were rattling down the steps, bearing sinuous, strange bodies. Dark things ran and shouted through the house, and lurked in the rooms and the peaked roofs. And all around, outside, one great monstrosity flapped great dark wings.

  Gregory stood by the door, two backpacks slung over his shoulder. Uncle Max ran out of the parlor as Brian landed on the floor, still clutching the propeller. The old man pointed ferociously to the door and ordered, “RUN! GO! GET OUT!”

  “What about Prudence?” Gregory demanded. “What about her?”

  “She’s not going,” said Uncle Max. “She’s safer here. She’s not playing.”

  “Prudence!” shouted Gregory.

  “I’ll hold her here! She is not playing!” Uncle Max insisted. “She will be safe once you leave!”

  The door stood open. The wind howled around. Gregory and Brian ran out into the storm. The wind roared all around them. Within the windows of the house, they saw strange glowing eyes, and saw quick movements leaping across the rooftop, spiked spines against the sky.

  Into the forest they plunged, and around them the leaves were alive with chitterings and calls in the gale, and the trees rocked, and hoarse throats howled, and in the night, countless strange things gibbered.

  Things passed in herds.

  The boys could tell that doors were opened.

  Down a ravine, there was no forest floor.

  They ran past it. There was a hole.

  Brian scrambled to catch up with Gregory.

  Gregory was not waiting for him.

  Something was thrashing in the leaves.

  They reached the Club of Snarth.

  Then, in the trees, there was a calling. Gregory stepped sideways and crouched behind a rhododendron large as a bear. Brian almost ran past him.

  Gregory grabbed his friend—and they both froze.

  Gelt the Winnower swung through the trees above them.

  The boys, in half-squats, did not move—but stared.

  He was like a man in form, though strangely altered, with spikes driven through his limbs; where each spike went in, a thin silver wire snaked out—and the wires whipped and swung through the treetops, prodding and clutching, nudging—some of them hung down through dead branches like tickling winter rains.

  “Don’t move,” whispered Gregory. Carefully, he lifted wet branches and stretched them over their heads.

  The wires glided toward them, tapping across the leaves that lay on the ground.

  Above them, the Winnower gripped treetrops and swung his gaunt head from side to side. His eyes were wide and white, and glistened as they peered through the wood.

  The filaments brushed across saplings and toward Brian’s shoes. His ankles were turned where he crouched. His socks were wet.

  Gregory flinched—a wire was scraping across the branch in his hand. Now another. It flicked the leaves and licked their stems almost tenderly.

  Brian saw two more wires headed toward him, snaking through the air, curling and uncurling.

  And then they heard something else on the path.

  Hoofbeats.

  The filaments lifted. The Winnower crouched in the sky.

  An old black automobile, chrome shining, was being dragged through the forest by a team of white horses.

  Gregory and Brian slithered closer to their rhododendron.

  The car drew up near them. It was heading for the mansion. A passenger door opened, and a man climbed out. In the half-light he looked like Jack Stimple—the dark, ringed eyes, the long, dark coat. He wore a homburg hat and smoked a cigar. But his voice, when he called up to Gelt, was not Jack’s. He spoke in an alien tongue.

  Gelt called back down to him in chirps and twitters.

  The man nodded and stepped back into the car.

  The horses began dragging the car again through the haunted wood.

  Up in the trees, Gelt followed.

  They headed for the house.

  When they were gone, Brian and Gregory rose from the bushes.

  They darted breathlessly into the Dark Wood. The spiky branches sawed around them in the wind.

  Somewhere, there was a sound like jets and geysers.

  And everywhere, things were howling and moving.

  Kalgrash was seated in his cramped, warm library, A Child’s Picture-Book of Giddy Heroes lying open on his lap, when he heard a frantic pounding from upstairs. He slid the heavy volume off his knees and left it open on the cracked leather chair, then bounced up a steep set of steps, through a dank stone hall, and into his kitchen. Someone was thumping violently on the front door.

  The troll plucked a few amulets from where they were sprawled on the table and held them warily forward as he unlocked the door. When it opened, however, he was confronted by no horde of evil spirits but, instead, merely Brian and Gregory, both hunched and shivering in their coats, each clutching an overstuffed pack.

  “Why, hello!” exclaimed the troll. “Ha-HA! Guests at this time of night! Nifty!” He crowed, “Come in, come in, come in! We’ll sit by the fire! We’ll eat some toasted cheese sandwiches! We can play Scrabble. Remember, I can’t read and I’m fond of made-up words with no vowels.”

  Gregory stepped in, and Brian quickly said, “We may be being followed by something.”

  “Oh, dear! And you’re wet, wet, wet! Take off your coats! Sit down by the fire! Let me get you some mulled wine…”

  Brian stepped in and swiftly shut the door behind him.

  Gregory threw back his shoulders, and his tweed coat slumped off down his arms. The boys appeared pale, even in the ruddy light from the woodstove, and their hair hung in thick hummocks. Their feet and lower legs were soaking wet.

  “Dear, dear, dear! What…what happened?” asked the troll, concerned, as he slammed the kettle
down on the woodstove.

  Both started to talk simultaneously; Brian deferred. Gregory explained, “We…we were chased out of Uncle Max’s house. He finally started to tell us about what was going on, and then this huge thing came and surrounded the house. Uncle Max told us to run for our lives and, um, we did. But there were all sorts of strange things in the woods…”

  “We heard all sorts of strange noises,” Brian said, his voice husky and grainy. He dipped his head and forcefully cleared his throat, then continued: “There were these huge things moving around… They were about seven feet tall, with sort of huge humped backs… that’s all we could see. And something was flying overhead.”

  Gregory said, “We saw Gelt the Winnower.”

  Kalgrash turned his head, standing before the stove. “Maximilian Grendle was about to give away the Game?” he asked.

  “Yes,” answered Brian. “He had just started to when this thing attacked.”

  Kalgrash scowled briefly, the thin fingers of one hand lightly resting on the wicker handle of the teapot. “It doesn’t seem likely. To forfeit the Game…dear, dear, dear.”

  Kalgrash peered around, attempting to locate some mugs. “I’m, uh, afraid that all of my cups were smashed by Galagazol the Wide and Impertinent One. You won’t mind using bowls, will you?”

  Both boys said no, and the troll set about rummaging through a pile of rabbit skins and bundles of herbs. “Uh, I guess plates wouldn’t do the trick, would they, no…” he mused. At length, he pulled out a bowl and a cup and carefully filled them with dark mulled wine. “Here, come down to the library. I was just reading A Child’s Picture-Book of Giddy Heroes. Well, um, looking at the pictures, actually. There’s a really keen one of Prince Lorenzi petrified with fear of heights near the Great Gap of Ben-Droobi. You can practically see him shaking on his camel.” The squat troll shuffled down the creaking staircase.

  The tiny library was comfortably warm—there was a small fireplace with a cracked wooden mantel carved to resemble a chorus of runny-nosed imps. Books were stacked haphazardly on crooked shelves between strips of oak paneling. A dark portrait of a troll in a seventeenth-century ruff hung in the shadows above the fireplace. “Sit down,” offered Kalgrash. “Take a seat. There are some blankets there. Wrap up warmly or you’ll both be sick, sick, sick. Retching like it was going out of style.” Suddenly, the troll stopped to consider. “That’s a sort of strange idea, isn’t it, retching like it was going out of style. Imagine if it were in style.”