Zeuglodon by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online

bed made of pearls and shells. Then suddenly it was me in the underwater bedroom, and my mother was sitting at the foot of my bed, with the waterweeds moving behind her in the current. She spoke to me, and she reached out and took my hand in her hand, and I remember that I was very happy.
    When I tried to say something to her I actually did speak, right out loud, and the sound of my own voice woke me from the dream. I can’t tell you how sad it was waking up and finding her gone, because I don’t quite know how to tell it. The thing about sleep is that people you’ve lost can come back to you in dreams. When you awaken they’ll be gone all over again, but you know that some dark night they’ll return when you really need them to, and you can speak with them again.
    I lay there looking at the darkness, trying to recall the dream before it faded from my mind. By and by I saw a light go on out in the hallway. For a moment it shone like a yellow ribbon beneath the closed door. Then it went out again, leaving things even darker than they had been. I sat up in bed and listened. Hasbro wasn’t barking, so whoever was out there was one of us. I waited for the stair tread to creak halfway down, but it didn’t, which meant it wasn’t Uncle Hedge. It was someone being stealthy. I waited a little longer, listening for him to return, but he didn’t return, and that made me very suspicious indeed, so I climbed out of bed and peeked out into the hallway. The living room downstairs was dark, but I could see that there was a light glowing in the back of the kitchen, probably the pantry lamp, which would just be enough to lighten the breakfast nook, where the kitchen table was. And where the Mermaid was.
    Halfway down the stairs I stepped carefully over the creaky tread and then went on down to the landing, where I stopped and listened again, hearing the ratchety sound of the Mermaid’s box. I sneaked up to the kitchen door, and it was right then, when I bent down and looked in sideways, that I sneezed. Brendan (it was him at the kitchen table) jumped about half a mile into the air and he jammed both hands into the pockets of his pajamas as he spun around and gaped at me.
    He had the very Face of Guilt, like an illustration in a book, and for a moment he made fish lips at me as he tried to speak. The Mermaid’s box was open or nearly open. I could see that the little finger-pieces of wood had been worked away from the sides, but that was all I could make out before he stepped in front of it, looking as if he had just eaten something ghastly.
    “ You better not tell! ” was the first thing he said. (Actually, he says that a little too often, although Perry and I wouldn’t tell on him anyway. We’re not rats.)
    “I won’t,” I said. “But what are you doing?”
    “ Doing ?” he asked. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not doing anything. I just wanted my turn to open it. Perry got to open it. Nobody let him, he just did it. And now when I do it, it’s a big crime.”
    “Nobody said it’s a crime,” I said. “I just asked what you were doing.”
    “And I told you I’m just having a look at the box, but now you’ve spoiled it!” He turned his back on me and started pushing the puzzle part of the box back together again, and the Mermaid turned around once, and the box shut itself up, and in a moment you couldn’t tell anybody had been meddling with it. “ There ,” he said. “I suppose you’re happy that you’ve spoiled it.”
    “I didn’t spoil anything,” I said. “I just saw a light on and came down here.”
    “Well you did spoil it, and you’ll have to live with that.” He walked past me looking very dignified and headed toward the stairs. “Forever and ever ,” he said.
    “I’ll try,” I said to his back. It wasn’t clever. You never think of the really clever things till later. I switched off the light in the pantry and went back up to my bedroom, taking one last look out at the empty