Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 26

The Church of the Children of Eden

“CANDY? WE’RE ALMOST THERE.”

Even though Candy had told Malingo not to wake her, she surely couldn’t have meant him to leave her sleeping once they’d arrived. Still, he’d learned to be delicate when he was rousing her from sleep.

There was no great urgency. The ferry had only just sailed into Tazmagor Harbor. It would be several minutes before they docked. Even so, there was an unease among the passengers that was nothing to do with their arrival. Their voices were shrill, their laughter forced. Malingo knew why. There was a mysterious sense of foreboding in the air. Something was coming: something that wasn’t welcome. He had no more idea of the approaching something than the passengers who hurried past him. But it wasn’t good. His stomach was tied in knots, and there was an itch behind his eyes that he first remembered feeling the day his father took him to be sold. He did his best to put the itch and the unease out of his mind so as to concentrate on waking Candy. He put his hand on hers, and shook her gently.

“Come on, Candy. Time to wake up.” There was no response. He shook her again. “Come on,” he said, leaning toward her now. “You’ll have to finish this dream another time. Wake up.”

“I’m just dreaming this,” Candy reminded her father. “I don’t have to listen to you. I can wake up at any time.”

“Well you’d better not, because if you do”—he pointed to Melissa—“she is going to be the one who suffers.”

“Stop it, Bill,” Melissa said.

“Why? Because you think I don’t mean it? I mean it. Ask your daughter.”

“There’s stuff in his head right now he can’t control, Mom,” Candy said. “Somebody stronger might have fought against it. Dad just didn’t want to.”

“You’re going to regret that,” he said.

“Candy? What’s wrong?” Malingo asked her.

The expression on Candy’s sleeping face was no longer calm. A frown furrowed her brow, and the corners of her mouth were turned down.

“You’re starting to scare me,” Malingo said. “Why won’t you wake up? Can you even hear me?”

Did she nod her head? If she did it, was the tiniest of motions.

“Oh, Lordy Lou. What is going on? Please wake up.”

Now it seemed she shook her head, though the motion was as subtle as her nod. So subtle he wasn’t sure she’d moved her head at all.

“Is it that you don’t want to wake up right now?”

And again she nodded. Or at least he thought she did.

“All right . . .” Malingo said, doing his best to sound calm. “If you want to stay asleep, I guess that’s okay. There’s not much I can do about it anyway. You just keep dreaming. I’ll deal with things on this end.”

There was neither a nod nor a shake by way of response. Her face simply became more intensely troubled.

It was strange to be walking the streets of Chickentown again, even stranger to be walking them at her father’s side—though of course she was invisible to everyone but him—and to see people’s responses to him and how his reputation had changed in the time she’d been away. A few people were openly afraid of him. They either crossed over the street to avoid him or hurriedly ducked into stores. But others, seeing him coming, made sure to pay him their respects. Some simply nodded or offered a quick “good afternoon.” But not one of them was able to entirely conceal the unease they felt in his presence. A few of them actually called him Reverend, which Candy knew she’d never get used to. Reverend! Her father, the brutal alcoholic who beat his wife and children: Reverend! Her mother had been right: things had certainly changed in Chickentown.

Once they were off Main Street and there weren’t so many people to see him apparently talking to himself, he said to Candy, “Did you see how much respect I get?”

“Yes, I saw.”

“Surprised you, didn’t it? Didn’t it?”

She wanted to defy him even now. She wanted to tell him that it was all an empty illusion, and she knew it. But then she thought of her mother. The man at her side was capable of doing terrible things, she didn’t doubt it. So she answered him, “Yes. I guess it did surprise me.”

“But what you don’t understand is that these people are frightened. They can smell the freaks: the things that got washed into the streets and left here. And they’re afraid. What I do is take the fear away.”

“How?”

“None of your business. Salvation’s a very private industry. They pay for the privilege, I can tell you that. I don’t take a cent of it. All their contributions go back into the church. And everybody’s glad to give. I’m bringing some comfort and maybe some happiness back into their lives. That’s worth a few dollars of anybody’s money. Here we are. Home sweet home.”

He was talking about a plain, one-story brick building, now painted a garish green, which Candy must have walked past hundreds of times in her life. It had a big bulletin board on the small lawn at the front which bore a single message:

THE CHURCH OF THE CHILDREN OF EDEN

REVEREND WILLIAM QUACKENBUSH

WELCOMES ALL SINNERS IN NEED OF SALVATION

The member of The Sloppy’s crew who found Malingo and Candy still aboard fifteen minutes after the ship had docked, was, much to Malingo’s surprise and relief, another geshrat. Talking to one of his own people made the complicated business of explaining their situation a little easier. It became easier still when the ferryman said, “You’re Malingo, right?”

“Do we know each other?”

“No. I’ve just heard all the stories. My sister, Yambeeni, follows everything you and the girl do as best she can. There’s a lot of rumors. People invent things about you I’m sure, just so they’ve got something new to talk about.”

“I didn’t realize anybody cared.”

“Ha! You’re kidding? You and Candy—is it okay if I call her Candy, or should it be, like, Miss Quackenbush or some-such?”

“No, I’m sure Candy would be fine.”

“I’m Gambittmo, by the way. Bithy, Mo, but usually Gambat. Like Gambittmo the geshrat, only shortened. Gambat Yoot.”

“It’s good to meet you, Gambat.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Could I get your autograph? It’s for my sister? She will flap her fins!”

Gambat demonstrated what was obviously a family trait by flapping his own orange fins, which were uncommonly large.

“Your sister would want my autograph?” Malingo said.

“Are you kidding? Of course. She’s a big fan. I am too, only it’s really the girls who go crazy. She knows all the details. How you saved Miss Quackenbush—sorry I can’t call her Candy, it just doesn’t sound right—from that crazy wizard guy, Wolfswinkel. We went to the house on Ninnyhammer, my sister and me. Saw all the stuff in the story. I mean, you can’t touch anything. It’s all roped off. But there’s the proof. It all happened. Oh, and maybe on the next page just something for me?”

Malingo accepted the notebook and then the pen, which had a small carved and painted copy of the Commexo Kid’s head on the end of it, grinning from ear to ear.

“Sorry about the stupid pen. A passenger left it. I hate the Kid.”

“Yeah?”

“That toothing grin. Like everything’s just dandy.”

“And it isn’t?”

“You ever met one of our people with money? Didn’t think so. We don’t have power, or money, or people to lead us. Why do you think we’re all talking about you?”

Malingo looked up at Gambat, searching his face for a hint of mockery. But he could find none. Candy’s head lolled around as she slept.

“Is Miss Quackenbush okay? Does she need maybe a doctor?”

“No, I don’t think so. She’ll be fine. She’s just tired. What do you want me to write?”

“Oh . . . I don’t know. Anything you like. Her name’s Yambeeni. Y-A-M-B-Two Es-N-I.” While Malingo signed, his new friend chatted on. “Just between us, you two can stay up here for as long as you like. We’re not heading back to Ninnyhammer for five or six hours. We’ve got to clean up the trash the passengers left. Oh, you are the gesher. Look at that! She gets a drawing too?”

“It’s not much, but—”

“You drew that so fast! That’s amazing!” There was a pause. Then he said, “What is it?”

“Just something I see in dreams,” Malingo told him. “It’s a huge baby in a very small boat.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. I just dream it.”

“Well, she’s going to flap so hard she’ll fly. Thank you. That is spaf, gesher, totally spaf.” Grinning a grin that was almost as broad as the Kid’s, he studied the autograph and drawing, and went on his way.

Brief as the exchange had been, it left Malingo with a lot to think about. It was a huge shock to discover that there were members of his beleaguered nation who not only knew of him, but were proud of having him numbered among them. For as long as there’d been books written, the Geshrat nation had been judged to be a lower order of being. They were menials, tradition stated: scrawny, dull-witted creatures without a maker of trinkets, trousers or trouble, in their tribe’s history.

Was it possible that he, who had come to believe over the years that his father’s lack of grief when he sold him had been perfectly understandable? He was a worthless thing that no one, not even his own father, would be sorry to lose. Perhaps he judged himself too harshly, and too soon.

Candy groaned in her sleep, shaking Malingo out of his stupor. What was he doing thinking about himself, when Candy was still lost in slumber? For the first time in this journey at Candy’s side he felt the need of some of the others. Two-Toed Tom, Geneva Peachtree or Finnegan Hob. Someone he could talk this problem through with. Anyone but the John Brothers. They just had too many opinions.

But wishing he had their company wouldn’t make it so. He was on his own, in the silent company of the person who meant more to him than anyone ever had. Suddenly, he was afraid for her.

Bill told Ricky to stay outside the church and keep watch. He then led Candy inside the church which was as unremarkable on the inside as it had been on the outside. The pews were rows of cheap wooden chairs, the altar a table covered with a plain white cloth. There was no cross.

“As you can see,” Bill Quackenbush went on, leading his dreaming daughter down toward the altar, “we don’t go in for anything fancy here. The message is what’s important.”

“And what is the message, Dad?”

“Don’t call me that anymore. There’s nothing between us.”

“Like love, you mean? Because I don’t think you’ve felt that for any of us. Maybe Mom once, before you had us to hit—”

“Enough,” he said, his voice thick with old rage.

They were just a few yards from the altar now, and Candy saw six or seven other people in the darkened corner of the church. Her father had seen them too. That, she thought, was why he wanted to end their conversation.

“I’ve no interest in going over old errors, old sins.”

“Whose errors, Dad? Whose sins?”

She went on, pressing her father in the hope of getting him to really show his temper. Maybe some of the members of his congregation would think twice about their smiling Reverend if they saw the real Bill Quackenbush. The one she knew. The one that was vicious and violent.

Bill stepped in between the folks gathered in the corner, and very quietly said, “You’ve changed. I can feel the stench of your corruption, and it sickens me to my soul. I will do anything in my power to protect the good people who worship here from your perversions and abominations, the filth that you brought from that Other Place—”

“The Abarat, Dad. You can say it.”

“I won’t soil my tongue!”

He wasn’t quiet any longer. His fury echoed off the plain whitewashed walls.

“Listen to yourself, Dad!” Candy said.

“Don’t call me—” He stopped himself, as his rant came to meet him from the far wall of the church. He stopped, and once again dropped his voice. “Clever little witch, aren’t you? You still know how to anger me. But I’m not falling for it.” He took a deep breath. “If you defy me one more time I will make your mother suffer. Do you understand me? Look at me, girl, when I’m talking to you. I want you to know who I really am.”

“The enemy,” Candy said.

Her father smiled.

“Finally we agree on something,” he said. He turned his back on her and called out to his followers. “Is the machinery all warmed up and ready to go?”

“I did it all exactly like you told me to, sir,” one of them said.

“Good. Very good.”