“Sofur thu svid thitt,” he sang. “Svartur i augum.”
We started to back away. “We can’t,” I said, the words coming slow and thick. “We . . . have to . . .”
“Best show in town!” the mermaid said, wobbling toward us on her tail.
“Far i fulan pytt,” sang the bear-man. “Fullan af draugum.”
“What’s happening to me?” Bronwyn said dreamily. “My head feels like candy floss.”
“Mine too,” said Millard. And when his voice came suddenly out of the air, the mermaid and the bear and the two clowns all jumped, then looked at us with a new kind of hunger. If there had been any doubt as to our peculiarness before, Millard erased it.
Somehow, we made ourselves run—pushing and pulling one another, stumbling through the field—and though they didn’t try to stop us physically, with their hands and their bodies, getting away felt like an almost impossible task, like breaking free from a hundred giant spiderwebs. Once we made it to the gate, those webs seemed to break, and our speech and our wits returned to us.
We fumbled the car doors open. I started the engine. We shot away, the tires spitting an arc of dirt.
“Who were those awful peculiars?” asked Bronwyn. “And what were they doing to us?”
“It felt like they were trying to crawl inside my brain,” said Enoch. “Ugh, I can’t shake the feeling.”
“They must have been why Abe marked the map with a skull and crossbones,” Emma said. “See?” She held up the Mel-O-Dee map that Abe had annotated and showed the others.
“If this place is dangerous, why did H send us here?” Bronwyn asked.
“Maybe it’s a test,” said Millard.
“I’m sure it is,” I said. “The question is, did we pass? Or was that just the beginning?”
As if on cue, I glanced at my rearview mirror to see a police car coming up fast behind us.
“Cops!” I said. “Everyone act normal.”
“Do you think they know about Millard stealing from that store?” asked Bronwyn.
“No way,” I said. “That was too far back.”
Still, it was clear they were following us. They rode my bumper so hard I thought they might tap it. Then the road widened into a passing lane, and they poured on the speed and pulled up alongside us. But they didn’t turn on their siren or their roller lights. They didn’t shout over the loudspeaker for me to pull over. They just stayed even, the driver’s elbow out his window, real casual, and stared.
“What do they want?” Bronwyn said.
“Nothing good,” said Emma.
The other strange thing about these cops was their patrol car. It was old. Thirty, maybe forty years old. They didn’t make them like that anymore, I pointed out. Hadn’t for a long time.
“Maybe they can’t afford new ones,” Bronwyn said.
“Maybe,” I replied.
The cops braked and fell back. I could see the driver speaking into a CB radio as he receded in my mirror. Then they made a sharp turn, off onto some dirt road, and were out of view.
“That was so strange,” I said.
“Let’s get out of here before they come back,” said Enoch. “Portman, quit driving like my nan and stomp that rightmost pedal.”
“Good idea,” I said, and sped up. But a few miles later, the engine developed an alarming rattle and a red light flashed on the dashboard.
“Oh, what the hell,” I muttered.
“Could be simple to fix,” Enoch said. “But I won’t know until I have a look.”