The Slither Sisters

THIRTEEN





Long ago, Dunwich was home to a thriving seaport, full of fishermen, lobstermen, and even whalers. All those industries eventually moved away but the old docks remained, a twisting, splintered maze of wooden planks. By the time Robert and Glenn arrived at the waterfront, the sun was already setting. Seagulls circled the sky, screeching and squalling. There were no other people around so Robert unzipped his backpack and allowed Pip and Squeak to walk behind them.

“This place stinks,” Glenn said.

“Like larval tea,” Robert agreed.

The lighthouse was a skinny five-story tower that reminded Robert of the Rapunzel story. A weathered sign was nailed to the front of the door: PULL ROPE FOR SERVICE.



He looked up. Above his head—and nearly out of reach—was the frayed end of a tattered cord. It extended fifty feet straight up, all the way to the top of the lighthouse.

Robert tugged on the rope and listened.

“Did you hear anything?” he asked.

“Try it again,” Glenn said.

This time, they both listened carefully. It was hard to hear anything over the sounds of the waves crashing against the rocky shores.

“There!” Glenn said, pointing.

Robert looked up. There was a small balcony ringing the top of the lighthouse. A man wearing a scuba mask leaned over its railing.

“Not interested!” he shouted.

Robert looked to Glenn. “Not interested?”

“He thinks we’re selling something. Girl Scout cookies, I don’t know.”

Robert cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Your wife sent us!” but it was too late—Warren had already left the balcony. Between the waves and the screeching seagulls, he hadn’t heard a thing.

They waited outside another few minutes, until it was clear that Warren wasn’t returning to the balcony or coming downstairs to open the door.

“Now what?” Glenn asked.

“I don’t know,” Robert said.

A seagull landed beside them and stamped its feet impatiently. Robert wished he could ask the bird to deliver a message. Then Pip and Squeak came charging over, playfully baring their fangs and chasing the bird away.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

He removed the pink envelope from his backpack and knelt beside Pip and Squeak. “I need you guys to make a delivery.”

His pets never failed to impress him with their intelligence. They seemed capable of understanding virtually everything Robert said. He believed this was because they had twice the brains of an ordinary rat. Pip took the note in his mouth, and Robert raised the rats over his head, holding them steady until they had grasped the rope with their claws.

“That’s it,” he said. “All the way up to the top. Take your time and be careful. Give the note to the man.”

Robert held the rope taut and the rats advanced slowly but steadily, stopping only when a strong wind blew off the ocean and strummed the rope like a guitar string. After another minute or so, the rats reached the summit and disappeared over the railing.

Robert was still looking up at the sky, waiting for Warren to return, when he noticed a tiny object hurtling toward him. Robert leapt aside and a heavy silver key landed in the gravel at his feet. It fit perfectly into the lock of the front door.

“Mission accomplished,” Glenn said.

It was Robert’s first time inside a lighthouse, and he was surprised to see that it consisted almost entirely of a single spiral staircase. It seemed to stretch toward the sky into infinity.

“No wonder he doesn’t want to come down,” Glenn said.

Robert grabbed the handrail and began to climb. Every fifteen steps or so, they passed a small window cut into the side of the building; they could see the waterfront docks getting smaller and smaller. Halfway up, Robert felt winded, but since Glenn was having no trouble following along, he kept his complaints to himself.

At the top of the stairs, they emerged into a small round room with glass walls. It was a mess. Papers, charts, and maps were strewn across the floor; workbenches were cluttered with vials, test tubes, and other lab apparatus.

In the center of the room stood an elderly man dressed in a neoprene wet suit and swim fins. He looked like he had just emerged from the ocean—his hair was wet and water was still dripping down his body—but he was focusing all his attention on Pip and Squeak, offering them slices of fresh apple from his hand.

“Hello,” Robert said. “I’m—”

“I know who you are, I read the note,” Warren said, dismissing introductions with a wave of his hand. “I’m conducting an experiment and I need your help.” He directed the boys to a workbench containing three lemons, a wooden cutting board, and a serrated knife. “Cut these into quarters. Big fat chunks.”

“But Ms. Lavinia wants—”

“Chop, chop, chop,” Warren said. “Hurry, please.”

Robert realized Warren wasn’t going to listen, so he picked up the knife and set to work. Meanwhile, Warren carried over a small glass aquarium about the size of a shoe box. Pacing inside on a bed of blue gravel was a large hermit crab with a magnificent spiral-coiled shell. The hermit crab seemed exceptionally lively, marching in circles around its tank.

“I plucked this fellow straight from the ocean.” Warren opened the lid of the aquarium, then tapped the crab’s shell with the point of his pencil. “Do you see the exoskeleton? Do you hear the tap-tap-tap? Very hard, very brittle, right? That’s calcium carbonate. A very convincing disguise. But look what even a mild acid can do.”

Warren took a lemon wedge and squeezed it over the crab. Tiny plumes of smoke arose from the shell, as if it had somehow been ignited.

“What are you doing?” Glenn asked.

“Don’t worry, the crab doesn’t feel any pain,” Warren assured him. He squeezed the lemon again, squirting more citric acid onto the shell. “He’s not even a real crab.”

More smoke billowed out. The once-brittle shell was dissolving into a mound of quivering, translucent gray goo. It looked like the world’s most disgusting serving of Jell-O.

“You killed it?” Robert asked.

“I exposed it. Watch careful now, see the little arms and legs?”

Robert and Glenn peered into the tank. Within the mound of gray goo, they could just discern a tiny human figure, punching and kicking at the sides, like an insect escaping from its cocoon. The creature was no bigger than a thumb. Its skin had the slimy gray texture of a snail. It had two long flippers for arms but walked on two legs, like a miniature person.

The most dramatic difference was its head. The creature had tiny eyes and nostrils, but its mouth was hidden by a dozen mini tentacles that hung from the bottom of its face like party streamers. As the creature emerged from the goo, slapping away the slime, Robert could hear it droning in a tinny high-pitched voice.

“What is it?” Glenn whispered.

“Cthulhu,” Warren said, pronouncing the word ka-THOO-loo, and then he gestured to the ocean outside the windows. “The shore is full of them. Hundreds, maybe thousands.” He lowered salad tongs into the tank and used them to pinch the cthulhu’s waist. The creature hissed and yelled and frantically waved its flippers.

Warren carried it across the room to a larger aquarium. This one was filled with more cthulhus, at least three dozen of them, sitting and standing and pacing in circles, little convicts in a miniature prison. The sound of their tinny voices crescendoed as Warren raised the lid and deposited the newest arrival inside.

“Where are they coming from?” Glenn asked.



“Your school. The gates. Every day, dozens of these tiny creatures come creeping out.” Warren walked his fingers across a tabletop, mimicking the footsteps of a cthulu. “They’re beneath our shoes, they’re barely visible, we never notice them. But soon, believe me, we will notice. Soon, they’ll grow too big to ignore.”

“We’re trying to help,” Robert explained. “Ms. Lavinia wants me to run for class president. The election is Friday—”

Warren nodded. “I read my wife’s note. But I think she’s mistaken. You boys are too young for this war. You wouldn’t last five minutes in the alternaverse. Tillinghast’s mansion has creatures more horrific than anything you can imagine. Spiders, demons, eyeslime …”

“We know,” Glenn interrupted.

Warren shook his head. “You can’t know until you’ve been there.”

“Right,” Glenn said, “we’ve been there.”

Warren peered at the boys over the top of his glasses. “Wait a second. Are you saying you’ve crossed over? And made it back alive?”

Robert nodded. “A few times.”

“Well, why didn’t Claudine mention that in her letter?” He looked at them with a newfound respect. “You two boys are stronger than you look! This is good, very good!” He stood up and paced around the room, tapping his fingertip to his chin. “The trick, I think, is demonstrating your strength to your classmates—but how? Will you have an opportunity to address the school?”

“The candidate debate is tomorrow morning,” Glenn said. “It’s a mandatory assembly. All the students and teachers will be there.”

“Perfect.” Warren removed a stack of yellow legal pads from his shelf, carried them over to his workbench, and copied a passage onto an index card. “Now I want you to follow these instructions carefully. Wait until your classmates are assembled. And then recite this incantation three times.”

Robert read the card. “K’yaloh f’ah—”

“No, no, stop,” Warren interrupted. “I don’t need my lab destroyed, thank you very much. Save it for tomorrow.”

“Destroyed?” Robert asked. “What’s going to happen?”

“Nothing you can’t handle. Just remember, its beak is worse than its bite.”

“You mean, its bark is worse than its bite?”

“That, too.” Warren gave Pip and Squeak one last scratch behind the ears. “Now run along before it gets dark. And give my wife a message for me. Tell her we’ll be together soon, okay? Sooner than she thinks.”