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Chapter Twenty Six

“CANNONBAAAAALL!” I screamed, sprinting to the edge of the pier and jumping off.

“Henry, wait!” Ethan yelled, frantically trying to get the book he was reading to safety, but of course he was too late. I am a master of many things, all of them amazing and fabulous, but the laws of physics weren't one of them. Now that I had jumped, the only thing I could do was curl up into a ball and let gravity do its thing.

I hit the water with a satisfyingly massive ker-SPLOOSH! The water was just cold enough to be refreshing in the late summer heat, and I let myself sink the dozen or so feet down to the bottom. I sat on the sandy ocean floor for a few seconds, my hair waving in every direction, making me look like some kind of blue octopus. A crab, startled by my sudden appearance in his salty domain, scuttled away. Grinning, I thrust myself back upwards, and my head broke the surface a few seconds later.

“Thank you, Henry,” Ethan grumped, looking forlornly at the soaking wet book sitting in his lap. “Thank you so very much.”

“If you didn’t want to get wet, you shouldn’t have sat in the splash zone!” I laughed, swimming a little farther out and treading water.

The sky was a deep orange. It would be night soon, and I wanted to make the most out of the last few minutes of my time here. I looked out toward shore, where Dad was packing up his portable grill. Mom was lying on her blanket, soaking up the last few rays of sunshine she could get. I don’t know why, since klaons don’t tan so much as we burn like strips of bacon on a griddle, but as long as she was happy, then so was I.

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling again. I had done it. Against all the odds, I had passed Opisthia’s stupid Trials and saved my family. They were all here, all alive, all still with me. Mom. Dad. Grandpa…

I paused. Where was Grandpa Teddy?

I looked around the beach for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. That was funny. I could have sworn he was right there just a minute ago, doing…what had he been doing? Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember. In fact, I realized with growing alarm, I couldn’t remember seeing him here at all.

The sun vanished from the sky, instantly plunging the beach into an unnatural, sinister darkness.

“Henry?” Ethan called.

I tried thinking back further, and realized with a chill that I couldn’t. I remembered the events that had led up to our being here. I’d completed all three Trials, been given the First Hunter’s Hammer, and then traded it to get my family back. At least, that’s what must have happened. How else would we have gotten here? But when I tried to think back to any of it, my mind came up with a big, empty blank.

“Henry?” Ethan called again.

Suddenly, the water felt as if I were swimming just off the coast of Antarctica. The waves stopped, leaving me floating in a body of water as still and smooth as a mirror. I turned around, suddenly convinced that something was watching me, but there was nothing out there.

At least, nothing that I could see.

“Henry!” Ethan called more insistently.

“What?” I asked without turning around again.

“How long ago did you eat?”

I blinked in surprise. It had only been about ten minutes since I’d scarfed down the twenty or so hot dogs Dad had grilled up just for me. The tangy taste of mustard still lingered on my…wait. No, it didn’t.

“You’re supposed to wait at least an hour after eating before you get in the water,” Ethan said. “Otherwise, you might draw—”

His voice abruptly cut off, and I spun around to see what had happened to him.

The pier was empty.

No, the beach was empty.

“Ethan?” I shouted, looking around wildly, but there was no trace of my friend. “Mom? Dad?”

Ethan’s chair and his book still sat on the dock, and Dad’s grill and Mom’s blanket were still over on the beach. Abandoned. I had been abandoned.

“No,” said a cold, unfeeling voice from somewhere nearby. “They were never here to begin with.”

“Who’s there?” I demanded, spinning around in the water again, but there was nobody in sight. Just an endless expanse of black water and even blacker night skies, devoid of stars. “Show yourself!”

“Nobody was ever here except you,” the voice said.

A bubble rose up from below me, popping the moment it reached the surface. As soon as I saw it, mind-numbing horror washed over me, and I realized there was only one place the voice could be coming from.

“And me.”

I looked down and saw a face looking back up at me from the shadowy depths. A face I instantly recognized.

Grandpa Teddy began to swim straight upwards, like a sea monster rising from the aquatic abyss. And as he did, he grew larger…and larger…AND LARGER. It was like the water had inexplicably grown a thousand times deeper, and I had been looking at him from a long ways off until just this moment. In seconds, his white and blue face became all I could see. He opened his mouth, and bubbles big enough for me to fit inside came boiling up to the surface as he let out a deep, gurgling cry.

I didn’t try to escape. There was nowhere to go. Somehow, I knew without having to look that if I turned around, the pier and the beach would be gone as well. All I could do was float there and wait, until…

With a splash the size of a tidal wave, Grandpa Teddy exploded out of the ocean, carrying me with him. I screamed as I slid to the back of his mouth and down his throat. I took one last look up at the night sky just as his jaws slammed shut, and—

“HENRY!”

The warm blanket of sleep was instantly ripped away, leaving me exposed to the cold, uncaring claws of reality once again.

“Huh?” I mumbled drowsily. “Wuhhap’n?”

A deafening BOOM rang through the air, and I was on my feet and reaching for Splatsy in an instant. Panic gripped my chest. Where was I? How had I gotten…

“Henry!”

I spotted Ethan and Jade nearby, holding onto the railing as the floor rose and fell chaotically beneath us, and it all came rushing back to me. How long had I been asleep? The stiffness in my neck told me it had been a little more than a century, but seeing how neither of my friends seemed to have aged a day, I guessed that my internal clock must have been off by a decade or two.

Storm clouds had rolled in while I was napping, casting the Sea Betwixt into a darkness that made telling the time difficult. A bolt of lightning cut across the sky, almost striking the top of the Jiggly Trombone’s mast. Despite the crappy weather, however, I felt good! Better than I had felt in days. My arms and legs didn’t feel like they were on the other end of a remote control with a bad signal anymore, and actually did what I told them to, when I told them to do it. My thoughts came faster, and felt sharper than they had when I’d gone to sleep. And most importantly, the world didn’t feel like it was trying to crush me under a mountain of dog crap and pineapple pizza anymore. Don’t get me wrong, my situation still sucked. Now that I was looking at my problems with freshly rested eyes, though, they didn’t seem quite as insurmountable as they had this morning.

It just goes to show: never underestimate the power of a good nap!

“Hey, guys,” I said with a yawn, rolling my neck to work out the kinks. “How long was I out?”

Ethan turned to look at me, and all my good feelings died in an instant when I saw the look in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He pointed out into the distance. “You’d better get ready. I think we’re here.”

Turning, I followed his gaze out across the Sea Betwixt, and a pit formed in my stomach. Just like Opisthia had promised, a gigantic pillar jutted up out of the ocean in front of us. It was made of bright white stone that made it easy to spot even in the darkness, and was covered in elaborate carvings in every shape and pattern imaginable. And when I say it was gigantic, I mean freaking enormous! I thought back to the skyscraper Ethan, Jade and I had been playing BnB on top of during Lobstrodamus—had that really only been three days ago?—but even the tallest tower in Lobstropolis would have looked like a toothpick compared to the mind bending size of this pillar.

“That’s going to take forever to climb,” Jade said. Her voice sounded numb, and I got the feeling that despite having lived for thousands of years, she had never seen anything quite like this. Good for her. Even old ladies deserve to learn something new now and then.

“Well,” I said, putting my hands on my hips, “at least it isn't raining!”

Thunder boomed again, and ice cold rain began to pour from the sky. All three of us were soaked to the bone in just a few seconds.

Ethan gave me a flat look. “Henry, why would you do that?”

“Because my life might be a cruel joke, but at least I can choose my own punchline!”

With that, I turned and sprinted back to where Captain Kook was still steering the boat, his eyes open wide even though there was rainwater spilling them from his greasy hair.

“I hope you're ready for some action, Captain!” I yelled.

“Bite the head off a lizard and name it Veronica!” he shouted back.

I grinned, drawing Splatsy with a dramatic flourish. “Only if you marinate your underpants in jalapenos overnight!”

The captain’s eyes swiveled around to look at me. “What on God's green earth are you babbling about, lass?”

I turned and pointed. “Just get us as close to that pillar as possible!”

“Carburetors!” he agreed, giving the wheel a good spin. I'm not sure what that was supposed to accomplish since we were already heading straight for the pillar, but the Jiggly Trombone did a quick donut that I'm pretty sure broke the laws of physics before surging toward the gleaming white spire like he’d just floored the gas pedal.

With the ship practically skipping across the waves, I rushed back over to Ethan and Jade.

“What's the plan, Henry?” Jade asked, pulling up her jacket’s hood to keep her hair from whipping around in the wind.

“Get to the pillar, get to the top, and get the caramel macchiato out of here!” I answered, climbing up to balance on top of the ship’s pointy front bit.

“I feel like your plan is missing a couple key steps,” Ethan said. “Also, get down from there before we have to fish you out of the ocean!”

“No,” I argued, clenching my free hand into a fist so tight that it would have been called white-knuckled if my skin wasn't always as pale as freshly bathed beluga.

“No what?” asked Ethan. “No you won't come down, or no your plan isn't missing any pieces?”

“Both!” I said, spinning around to face them with a crazed smile. “What else is there to plan for? All we have to do is climb that stupid thing and get the key, and we're home free!”

“You're forgetting about Daggum,” Jade reminded me. “He's supposed to be guarding the pillar, remember?”

I shrugged. “Maybe he's taking the day off. I'm not going to just stand around and wait for him to—”

“Something's out there!” Ethan yelled, pointing. He rushed to the side of the ship, gripping the rail and leaning over the edge for a better look. “It's coming this way!”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don't know, but—”

Before he could finish, a jet of water burst into the air a few yards away from the ship

“LOOK OUT!” Ethan yelled.

Almost too late, I spotted the shadow plummeting out of the cloudy sky, coming straight for me. Quickly charging my shoes with magic, I launched myself out of the way, doing an awesome flip and landing between Ethan and Jade just as the whatever-it-was crashed down onto the pointy bit I had just been standing on. All I was able to see was a dark green blur, and then it was gone, disappearing back into the water with a splash that was almost as tall as the mast. The pointy bit had been broken clean off the front of the boat.

“What the hell was that?” Ethan demanded, drawing his spellhammer.

I rushed over to the edge of the ship and looked down, but either the whatever-it-was had already skedaddled, or the water was too choppy for me to see it below the surface.

“If I had three guesses,” I said, “all of them would be that that was Daggum’s way of introducing himself.”

“Henry,” Jade said, a worried look on her face, “I don’t think—”

I never got the chance to find out what she didn’t think, because the green thing came rocketing out of the water again a moment later. It arched through the air before plummeting back down, landing right next to us hard enough to make the entire boat wobble chaotically.

“Holy spicy California roll!” I exclaimed, leaping backwards a split second before a huge, scaly fist shattered the wooden floor where I had just been standing.

This thing was huge! As it rose to its full eight and a half foot height, lightning flashed to illuminate its hulking form. Its torso was flabby and bloated, covered with scales the color of seasick emeralds, and it sagged and flabbed in ways I really don’t want to have to describe. Its arms and legs were rippled with rock-hard muscles, though, and it was wearing a bright yellow speedo that could only be described as disturbingly tight. Its face looked like someone had popped the head off a doll and superglued a piranha in its place. It stared at us, slack-jawed, with unblinking black eyes that made it look like it was completely baffled by everything in front of it. And on top of its head was…

I had to pause to do a double take.

It was wearing a trucker’s cap. It was ragged and faded with age, use, and constant exposure to saltwater, but it was still unmistakable. The word “BEER” was stitched onto the front in red letters.

“WUUUDDIIIIINNNN,” it roared in a deep, gurgly voice, “TARNAAATIOOON?”

“Daggum the Y’alldritch Horror,” I said, raising Splatsy into a battle stance. “Huh. Suddenly the name makes a lot more sense.”

NEXT CHAPTER 1/7/26