Zeuglodon by James P. Blaylock Page B

same things that she was seeing in her head.”
    The antenna was run up through the roof of the radio shed, which meant that Uncle Hedge was in there talking on his ham radio, which he calls “the Smithfield.” I don’t know why. The radio shed is built out of old lumber that Uncle Hedge and Mr. Vegeley got out of a barn that was being torn apart down in Little River. It’s got many windows that they bought at yard sales and such, and some old painted metal signs nailed to it. One sign says “Penguin Ice, Fort Bragg,” and there’s another one that’s a Humpty Dumpty with a crown on his head.
    The radio looks nothing like a ham, really. It’s very large, and most of the inside of the shed is taken up by the apparatus, which has about a thousand dials and lights and glass tubes that glow green and remind you of a deep tidepool on a sunny day. The whole thing makes bleeping and whistling sounds when the radio is warming up.
    We went straight inside, where Uncle Hedge was listening hard to the radio speaker, and of course we waited for whoever it was to finish talking even though we were in a sweat to tell him about the appearance of the Creeper. “The fate of the Sleeper hangs in the balance…” the radio voice was saying, but then it suddenly fell silent. There was a burst of static followed by the sound of rickety old music for a moment before there was silence again. “For Pete’s sake!” Uncle Hedge said, twisting a dial. It seemed like a good point to interrupt.
    “The Creeper was in a boat in the Sea Cove just now,” Perry told him.
    “He turned around like he was going back out again,” I said.
    “North or south?” Uncle Hedge asked, getting up out of his chair.
    “We don’t know,” I said. “We didn’t wait to see.”
    “Just as well,” he said. “Where’s Lala?”
    “In the house with Brendan,” Perry told him.
    And right then a figure appeared outside the window, trying to peer in, and I nearly jumped out of my wits. But it wasn’t the Creeper; it was Ms Peckworthy, which was just as bad.
    Uncle Hedge went to the door and looked out, saying, “So you’ve come to beard us in our den, Ms Peckworthy?”
    “Well,” she said, all flustery. “I didn’t intend…” But peeping in at the window is one of the impolitest things there is, and if you peep you obviously intend to do it, so she was tongue tied, and besides that she was cramming something into her handbag—her notebook and pen. Uncle Hedge invited her to step in, and her eyes bugged out when she saw the radio, because who would have an enormous radio like that if he wasn’t up to immense secret schemes? The radio speaker chose that moment to start up again, and the same weird voice said, “The Sleeper grows restless on his bed beneath the Earth,” and then again it fell silent. Ms Peckworthy stood there blinking, as if the voice had made her forget where she was, and maybe even who she was.
    She recollected herself and asked Uncle Hedge, “Who was that odd creature?”
    “Which odd creature would that be?” Uncle Hedge asked politely.
    “The tiny blond girl. She very nearly knocked me down going through the back gate just now. She dropped her carpetbag, and when I picked it up she didn’t bother to thank me, but snatched it away and bolted down the path. I find that sort of behavior insufferable. Is she another one of yours?”
    “We have her on loan,” Uncle Hedge said. And then he looked at Perry and me and nodded toward the house, and I could see that he was worried about Lala even though he was still smiling. We ducked past Ms Peckworthy and ran in through the kitchen door, nearly tripping over Hasbro, who turned around and ran on ahead of us, as if he’d been coming to find us and now here we were. We followed him through the kitchen, and the first thing that we saw was that the Mermaid’s box was open and the hand was sticking out—empty, with the fingers curled shut. Someone had taken the key.
    We shouted