Emily The Strange_ The Lost Days Part 24

CONSTRUCTION G GUY:.

Gettin' paid double time to get this building moved one inch to the east, if you can believe that.

M:.

Oh, I believe it. How's it coming?

CG:.

Ain't budgin' a lick, is how it's comin'.

M:.

Really, why's that? You all look pretty strong.

CG:.

Well, see this wall here where the paint is chippin' off? Down where the tractor blade has been workin' at it? That building is made of solid black...I don't even know, gla.s.s or rock or something. Never seen anything so hard. Broke a drop-forged steel blade off that tractor. And that's AMERican steel.

M:.

Aw, that shouldn't stop you for very long.

CG:.

'Fraid so, unless we can get some heavier rigs up on in here.

M:.

Wow. OK, well, you all stay cool now, you hear?

I wished I could stay cool, but all I wanted to do was chain myself to the building to keep them from wrecking it. Well, at least they were stopped for now.

Since we couldn't park at the El Dungeon just yet, we drove on aimlessly. Suddenly there was this awful howling, I mean AWFUL, and the sandstorm slapped us like a big heavy sand-hand out of the sky. Got those windows rolled up fast and stopped the van, since we couldn't see anything but sand out there anymore.

"Uh, sorry, guys. I didn't think it would hit this fast. We might be here a while."

"That's cool, why don't we get some good lines written for Raven?"

I have to say, there is no way I would have come up with the sort of overblown, drama-dripping, soap-operatic lines Molly wrote for Raven. Tell you the truth, they were embarra.s.sing: "Stand up and face me like a man," "What of your professed love for me?" "I gave you a challenge. Tell me, how have you fared?" Ugh!!

But who knows? Maybe all that will be just perfect for him. Hey, he's probably never heard Raven say a complete sentence. He'll be lapping it up!

About an hour later Still in the van, parked in the sandstorm. No sign of it letting up. We are all a little stir-crazy. Cats and Molly are bouncing off the walls. Am trying to distract the cats by tossing bits of wadded-up paper for them to chase, but they are just getting more wound up. I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before one of them needs to use the catbox, which right now is the floor of the van. Am also trying to distract Molly with idle conversation. Pretty torturous for me since she mainly talks about her hundreds of acquaintances and their various dramas. I did find out one interesting thing: Molly says that after she met me, she went back to my house in Blandindulle, where she was indeed staying with my mom, and looked through all the photo alb.u.ms there, and get this, our childhood pictures don't look anything alike! So, chances are-and we both like this idea a lot-in a year or so, we won't even look like each other anymore.

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"It's like we grew together, and soon we'll grow apart," Molly says, very dramatically.

She also tells me that she has been calling Sharon and George regularly these days. "Just to make sure no one's staying in my room." She looks at me and laughs. "No offense."

Man, I have to solve my problems fast and get Molly out of my hair SOONLIKE. Am waiting very impatiently for the sand to clear up.

About two hours later BREAKTHROUGH!!!!! (Finally!) (Finally!) We had all been sitting around in the van for several hours while we waited for the sandstorm to stop. Molly was getting testy, and trying to talk me into sending Raven out into the storm to turn off the generator, which wasn't going to happen. That girl does not take well to boredom. Eventually I had to start giving her a.s.signments. First I tried to get her to write a well-supported descriptive essay on what she did last summer, but she flat-out refused. Then I told her she should talk to Raven for a while, but that made her even crabbier. Finally I told her to look around the van for McFreely's collar and she did give it a shot for about five minutes and then gave up. She informed me she was going crazy and plopped herself down on the backseat of the van nice and hard, which apparently unlatched some sort of latch, causing the seat to spring up violently and pitch Molly face-first onto the floor. When the cats and I got done laughing our cheeks off, I thought to inspect under the seat, which is where I found THE GLORIOUS AMNESIA DEVICES.

Oh lovely. Good old cranky Molly. Good old amnesia devices! I wanted to hug them. Uh, unfortunately there is no RESTORE device. Or maybe it's fortunate, since I really don't know if I would've had the self-control to maintain my amnesia for one more minute. Instead, there's a BACKUP device and a BLOCK device, which has several dials where you can set expiration dates for several different cases of amnesia. (Which gives me ideas. But more on that later.) My own current case of the forgetfulness is going to clear up in two days. Which, according to Molly, is when my mom expects me home.

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Am extremely happy to know there is a solid expiration date on the amnesia.

Now if we could just get out of the van.

About an hour later Sandstorm is over. We are all walking around, overjoyed to be out of the van. Also, the sandstorm scoured all the beige off Emma's building. Belgium, it's AMAZING! Those old photos I saw were of a plain, reasonably attractive black building, nothing extraordinary at all. But now, what I'm seeing? It's a different ANIMAL. I mean, it's actually kind of LIKE an animal. It has scaly texture and ridges and a crazy sort of beak on the roof. Weird curvy pillars, sinister carved plants and animals and ghoulish faces, gargoyles frolicking on the roof and hanging off the corners. And when I say frolicking, I mean I can see them kind of just out the corner of my eye, darting around, and then dashing back to their places when I look. And all in slick, glistening, harder-than-drop-forged-American-steel black rock.

Weird, huh?

I wonder what made it change since the old photos?

At least I'm pretty sure I understand the beigeifying now. If I were Great-Aunt Emma, I'd be pretty anxious to keep this place hidden from certain eyes.

Um, I AM pretty anxious to keep this place hidden from certain eyes, and I don't have any three-story beige dropcloths handy, either.

There is now nothing left standing in Blackrock except Emma's building. Therefore, it's pretty easy to see out to the edge of town, where Professor umlaut's Prophylactery and Revue and Uncle Attikol's Deadly Dollhouse are still hanging around, in trailers that are very ready for new post-sandstorm paint jobs.

Showdown time is coming.

Day 29 Am sitting on the bench at the minipark. Have talked to Molly about that code word of hers. She says it was just something my mom said a lot, so when I found Molly in Blandindulle, she naturally said it to me. I guess I had set it up as a sort of failsafe, in case something went terribly wrong, so that my mom would be able to break the amnesia.

Anyway, I sent Molly down into the closet to try entering the code word in the bottom lock. Then left her and Raven at the El Dungeon, which is currently full of construction workers getting coffee and sandwiches before they ditch town. Word is, they are giving up. All their equipment has been wrecked on my crazy black building and in the sandstorm. Attikol doesn't have the money to keep them here, or the manpower to threaten them all with kneecapping, so that's that-looks like he is not going to be completing his challenge after all.

Not that he isn't still a major threat to me. If I don't get him thoroughly neutralized, he will eventually be back with more money and more construction crews with bigger equipment.

Have been sitting here on the bench pondering all this, plotting my next move, and staring at the ex-tree, which as of yesterday was the only tree left in Blackrock, but after yesterday's sandstorm is a lifeless, leafless, barkless, branchless trunk. Was feeling kind of bad that I had to go and destroy the very last tree in Blackrock, but the more I looked at it, the less it looked like an ex-tree at all, and the more it looked like a too-smooth, too-round, human-made, tree-simulating POLE. With a scar near the base, where someone apparently tried (and failed) to cut it down. Its "knothole," about five feet up, is so clearly a b.u.t.ton, I wonder how I ever mistook it for a knothole.

Thought back to Day 6, when I hit that b.u.t.ton with a rock, and the letter in the bench flipped over, and my innocent young heart was filled with dreams of glorious secret contraptions all through the town. Man, why couldn't the locks downstairs work that easily?

Oh wait now.

The light on the middle lock was yellow. Not red.

Maybe I've already done something to turn it yellow.

-OK, have given the b.u.t.ton another hit with a rock, and maybe- Hey, I see Molly running up, gotta go Later-oh this is goooooood stuff!

OK: Molly told me something amazing: She dialed in her code word, and then the dials started turning on their own!!!!!

She and I ran down into the closet right away.

First thing I noticed was that the dials had indeed changed.

Second thing was that the light on the middle lock was green. And the lock was open. Sweet-Looks like the ex-tree b.u.t.ton did the trick!

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Third thing was that the bottom lock was still locked.

So. I sent Molly back upstairs and I'm at the door right now.

Having some kind of conversation.

With the ghost in the door.

First I dialed "h.e.l.lO GREAT-AUNT EMMA."

And watched in creeped-out amazement as the dials turned on their own to say "WELCOME MY DEAR."

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ME:.

MAY I COME IN.

GREAT-AUNT E EMMA:.

IS YOUR FRIEND GONE.

ME:.

YES.

GAE:.

HOW DID SHE KNOW CODE.

ME:.

FROM MY MOM.