Lightning flashed again.
“Everybody, back!” Ragnar shouted. “Quickly!” He bent and picked up the fence post from where it had fallen short and advanced toward the greenhouse like a knight marching into a dragon’s cave. Lucinda could barely hear him over the thunder and a bizarre whistling noise that was coming now from the thing, but she did as he had said, pulling Colin by his good arm until the boy finally managed to crawl on his own. She turned to look for Tyler and Steve hurrying after her, and saw something behind them she would never forget, although she would wish for the rest of her life that she could.
The charred white and black mass was stretching wider now, its strands quivering with the spores they were about to release, but the truly horrible thing was that was that for a moment she could see something of Gideon’s own face and shape forming itself out of the main body’s moving white surface, as if the fungus had tasted her great-uncle so deeply and so long that it wanted to be him.
A blinding flash of light whitewashed the sky. Ragnar threw the fencepost-spear again and this time it shivered through the air and thumped into the thickest part of the monstrous fungus, the wire trailing like a row of silver sparks. Thunder boomed and boomed again, very close, then the sky exploded in a monstrous flash, so powerful that the ground lurched, knocking her off her feet again. Blue fire crackled and arched where the fence post stuck out of the ground, and white strands curled into blackened threads all around the ruined greenhouse.
The body of the thing, a grotesque and unstable copy of Gideon, swelled and began to grow bigger-for a mad moment Lucinda thought it would pull itself out of the greenhouse wreckage and walk-but then burst into gouts of dripping fire. The monstrous Gideon face twisted in agony or fury, then fell back into bubbly nothingness. Spores poured out but caught fire and disappeared in clouds of burning sparks, popping in the air, vanishing like the falling fireworks at a Fourth of July show. Inky black smoke curled from the melting wreckage and was swept away by the wind.
Lucinda felt a hand on her arm, then one on the other side. It was Tyler and Steve Carrillo lifting her out of the mud.
“We’re alive,” was all she could say. “Alive.”
Tyler nodded, shook his head, then nodded again. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re alive.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she told him. “You guys have to carry Gideon. Ragnar knocked him out, but that thing had him really bad.”
With the boys awkwardly cradling the unconscious Gideon, they all turned their backs on the smoldering greenhouse and began to make their way back across the garden, toward the house. Colin was staggering along under his own power, holding his arm against his chest. Lucinda moved up to offer him some support, but he turned away from her and continued to make his own slow way. Ragnar was carrying Mr. Walkwell. The sight of the old man’s closed eyes and limp form frightened her.
“Is he all right, Ragnar? He’s not… ”
“Simos is alive,” the big man told her. He didn’t look as though he could claim much more himself. “But he is in a bad way.”
“We won, didn’t we?” she asked, but she said it quietly, mostly to herself.
“Oh, one thing, Luce?” Tyler said from behind her, grunting a little as he tried to balance his share of their great-uncle. “If you were going to go and lie down? There’s… there’s kind of someone sleeping in your room.” She turned to look back. Tyler had a funny expression on his face, a little nervous, but also quite proud. “You remember Grace? Gideon’s wife?”
Lucinda had no idea what he was talking about and was so battered and exhausted that she didn’t think she could string two more words together, so she opted for just one.
“Whatever.”
Chapter 41
Steve Carrillo’s parents came to pick him up about noon, and as they pulled up to the front gate in their pick-up and got out they looked as though they hadn’t got any more sleep the previous night than Tyler and Lucinda and the rest of the folk at Ordinary Farm.
“By the time you get done being grounded,” Mr. Carrillo told his son, “you’re going to be ready for the retirement home.”
“It was all my fault, sir,” Tyler said. “It was my idea. Steve was just helping me… ”
“Helping himself to a big punishment,” said Mrs. Carrillo sharply. Behind her, Alma and Carmen, who didn’t know yet what had happened, made mocking faces from the back seat. Tyler gave them an embarrassed wave.
Hector Carrillo turned to Ragnar, whose visible skin was covered with stripes of purple bruises. “And how are you all?” Mr. Carrillo asked. “You said on the telephone that Gideon had a relapse.”
Ragnar nodded. “But he will be well, I think. The crisis has finally passed-for good, this time. He is being tended.”
“You didn’t take him back to the hospital?” said Silvia.
Ragnar shrugged. “He did not wish to go.”
“He still needs to talk to us,” said Hector, and Tyler realized that the man’s anger had not all been directed at his son and Tyler Jenkins.
“This time he will, I promise,” Ragnar said. “Things will change. You have my word on it.” He extended his hand and Hector Carrillo took it. They shook, then Hector asked, “Where’s Simos? He usually comes out to say hello.”
“He… ” Ragnar’s face grew somber, but all he said was, “You must forgive him. He had a difficult night.”
“Hey, Jenkins,” Steve shouted to Tyler from the rear window of his father’s truck. “If you get a chance, come see me before you leave. You don’t have to call first. I mean, it’s not like I’ll be going anywhere… thanks to you…!”
Tyler couldn’t help smiling as they drove off. Steve was a good guy-a real friend. “Is Gideon really going to talk to them about their property? How’s anyone going to make him?”
The Norseman was still looking grim as he opened the gate. The power to the fence was off and had been since the electrical storm. The remaining pair of manticores were safely padlocked in their adobe brick barn. “Things will change around here. They must.”
Only one more day remained until Tyler and Lucinda took the train back home, and Ordinary Farm was as sharply divided as ever, with most of its residents on one side and the Needles on the other. Nothing had been resolved, of course: Gideon no longer seemed to be brainwashed but he had only been conscious for short stretches and had been too tired even to sit up, let alone deal with the weighty matters that needed his attention. Mr. Walkwell was not much better, and was being nursed on the couch in the same room with Gideon, so that Sarah and her helpers could watch over both patients at the same time. Tyler didn’t know what the greenhouse monster had done to him, but Simos Walkwell had only woken up for the first time the previous evening, and still hadn’t said much more than a few words, although Sarah said he seemed better this morning. Interestingly enough, Tyler had also discovered that there were now several gunshot holes in the Snake Parlor walls. Obviously things that night hadn’t only been happening beyond the mirror and out by the greenhouse.
Although nothing permanent could be accomplished until Gideon was back in charge, Ragnar and Sarah had at least managed by sheer stubbornness and threats of force to chase Mrs. Needle away from Gideon’s bedside and the Snake Parlor in general, so the witch had retreated behind the locked door of her part of the house. Colin spent most of his time with her, or at least in his room, which was about what Tyler would have expected.
The previous summer the Jenkins kids might have stayed silent about things and wouldn’t have expected to receive any useful answers even if they had asked questions, but now something had changed, not least of which was how Tyler and Lucinda felt about things. Even if they hadn’t become the heirs to the farm (despite all the chaos of that night, it didn’t seem as though anybody had actually managed to change Gideon’s will) Tyler knew that their great-uncle had at least been planning to do it. The way he figured it, they had a right to know what was going on. And he was pleasantly surprised to find out that Ragnar Lodbrok, at least, seemed to agree.