The "splat" sound was not a result of Nathan's flesh being jettisoned from his skeleton upon impact, but rather his body landing in a patch of mud. Or what he thought was mud. Poor people couldn't afford jelly, so it was probably mud.

He quickly crawled out of the way so that Jamison would not land on him, snapping his spine. There wouldn't be much of a victory in saving the sisters if he became a quadriplegic who required their constant care.

Jamison landed in the mud next to him. "Such a stench!" he declared, sitting up and wiping his face. "Good G.o.d! Who knows how long this mud has been here?"

Nathan and Jamison crawled out of the muck. There was a light glow to the left, so they decided to walk over there instead of in a direction that did not have a light glow, and Nathan pulled aside a ratty curtain.

The room, lit by the candlelight of a very inexpensive candle, was filled with forty or fifty people, even though it seemed to have s.p.a.ce for only twelve. Such a tragic sight! The children in the orphanage had not exactly sparkled with good health, but these people were covered with filth of every sort, their faces hollow, their chests sunken. Bugs crawled over everything and everyone, and Nathan saw that at least three of them had actual weeds growing out of the dirt on their bodies.

"Forgive me," he whispered. "I never meant for this to happen."

Whoever had screamed before, screamed again.

There was a doorway-just the doorway, not the door, since doors were far too expensive-on the other side of the room. Somebody over there needed help, desperately.

"Are any of you Penny or Mary?" Nathan asked, quickly scanning the crowd. He wasn't sure he'd recognize them even if he saw them.

The residents were all too weak to speak or shake their heads, so n.o.body answered. After gazing at each grim face, Nathan decided that none of them belonged to the sisters. "Pardon me," he said to the group. "I have to get to that doorway!"

The condition of these people was a sight that would haunt Nathan for the rest of his days, but from a "gla.s.s is half full" perspective, at least it was easy to push past them. Nathan and Jamison pa.s.sed through the doorway and entered another room, where a deranged looking man with wild hair stood, holding a baseball bat over his head. A woman cowered on the floor, hands shielding her face.

"Stop!" shouted Nathan. "Leave her alone!"

"I'll leave her alone all right," said the man with a snarl. "Leave her alone after I bash her head in!" He chuckled as if this were a terribly witty comment, though it obviously was not.

Nathan wasn't sure what to do. Since the woman had been screaming for a while and there were no visible signs of her having already been struck by the baseball bat, he a.s.sumed that the man was in no rush to complete the job, but would he lollygag for much longer?

Nathan didn't hesitate. He had been beaten so many times in his life, not to mention getting shot and having his arm dunked in boiling oil, that the idea of a baseball bat cracking across his forehead wasn't intimidating. He was so used to injury that he'd even forgotten about the bullet that had nicked his ear, which was something that most little boys would have thought about a great deal.

The crack of the baseball bat across his forehead did hurt when it happened, though. He fell to the ground.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Jamison screamed. "His mind is only seven years old!"

Jamison rushed forward, received his own attention from the bat, and fell to the ground next to Nathan, unconscious.

Nathan crawled over to the man and grabbed his leg. n.o.body would fault him for using his teeth to save an innocent woman, would they? At this point, what did it matter if Officer Danbury wanted to send him to jail again? He opened his mouth wide and chomped down on the man's leg.

Pain shot through his mouth, and two of his loose teeth came free. And with that, all three of the conscious people in the room were screaming.

The man raised his baseball bat, preparing to deliver a blow that Nathan thought might knock his head straight down the center of his body until he was peering through his own navel. Nathan bit him again. This time only one tooth popped out, though the pain was still noteworthy. The man yelped, dropped his baseball bat, and ran back into the room with the dirty withered people.

"Are you okay?" Nathan asked the woman, gently pulling her hands away from her face. She wasn't a woman, really, more like a girl, around Jamison's new age.

She looked familiar.

"Beverly?" he asked.

"Nathan? Is it really you?" Her eyes glistened. "I haven't seen you since I beat you up in school those four different times! I heard you'd gone off to make your fortune!"

"I had, sort of, but not as voluntarily as I would have liked." He tapped Jamison's shoulder. Jamison waved him away and rolled over on his side, gently snoring. Nathan quickly gathered up his teeth and shoved them into his pockets. "How did you end up living in the Poor House? I'd have thought you could punch your way into a good job, easily."

"I volunteer here on weekends. They are too poor to afford water, so I was bringing them a barrel of imitation water when this man came after me and chased me right down into the pit. I'm not as brutal as I once was, Nathan. I'm afraid the years have turned me soft and feminine. I've kissed two boys in the past year alone."

Nathan found himself growing mildly jealous, even though he didn't like Beverly or girls in general.

"Not that I'm helpless and delicate," Beverly a.s.sured him. "I'm just not as well equipped to handle madmen with bats as I once was." She tilted her head to the side as she stared at him. "You look exactly the same except for your missing teeth. How is that possible?"

He told her the story, leaving out the parts that might cast him in a negative light. He wasn't sure why he cared what she thought of him, since she was mean, but though he didn't lie about anything, he did feel compelled to paint himself in a more heroic manner.

"What a tale!" Beverly said. "I'd thought that almost getting hit with the baseball bat was the worst moment of my life, but you've far eclipsed me. Forced to eat spiders? How awful!"

"Penny and Mary, the sisters who cared for me. Do you know where they are?"

"Oh, Nathan, hadn't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"It's most dreadful news indeed!"

"What is it?"

"Oh, I'm not sure I can be the one to tell you!"

"Are they dead?"

"No, not both of them but..."

"Even one of them dead is far too many!"

"Actually, I don't think either of them are dead. But it's worse! Much worse! Of course, it all depends on your point of view. Some would think that it wasn't as bad."

"What happened to them?"

"They were banished."

"Banished? From the Poor House?"

"No, from the entire town, never to return under threat of being buried alive! And not the good kind of buried alive, where you're given a flashlight and reading material, but the horrible kind of buried alive, where you're given a gun with which to end your own life if you're so inclined, but when you press it to your head and work up the courage to pull the trigger you hear only a click and discover that the gun had no bullets, and so you're forced to beat yourself to death with it in order to avoid a slow death by suffocation!"

"What could they have done to deserve such a thing?"

Beverly lowered her eyes. "You won't like the answer."

"Well, I mean, we are talking about them being banished under threat of being buried alive, so I wasn't expecting a good answer." Nathan gasped with horror. "It wasn't my fault, was it?"

"Not in a direct cause/effect fashion, but there was a great deal of anger related to your existence. Officer Danbury had apparently been given a small pouch of coins upon your release from jail, and discovered that they were worthless imitations. He tried to purchase a refreshing treat, and the ice cream vendor told him that the coins were the wrong shade of copper and that the politician depicted on them was facing the wrong way. And the leather pouch that contained the coins was not leather at all, but burlap. He was furious! He was so angry that he lobbied to have Penny and Mary banished from town, and, sadly, he was successful."

"No!" said Nathan, drawing out the vowel for as long as he could.

"Oh, Nathan, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

"If you know where they're currently living, you could share that information with me."

"And if I knew it, I would share it, I promise. But n.o.body knows where they've gone, except for perhaps...perhaps...oh, I dare not even speak the name..."

"Officer Danbury?"

"No."

"Mrs. Calmon, our former schoolteacher?"

"No."

"Then who? Who?"

"None other than Mortus Ranklin!"

"I don't actually know who that is."

"He's a ghastly man. To look into his eyes is to know that all puppies eventually grow old and perish. His scowl could turn the happiest elf into the saddest druid. But he knows things. Dark things. Sinister things. And he might know where Penny and Mary have gone."

"Then I shall speak to him."

"Speak to who?" asked Jamison, rubbing his head and sitting up.

"Mortus Ranklin," said Beverly.

"Oh, h.e.l.l no."

"If he's the only one who can help us, then I will speak to him, no matter what," said Nathan.

Jamison shook his head. "You don't understand. To look into his eyes is to know that the market for freshly born infant noses is alive and well. His scowl could turn the merriest leprechaun into the most despondent sasquatch. That said, he does keep pretty good tabs on the people who were banished from our community, so he'd be an excellent resource."

"If you knew that they were banished, why did you let me come here?" Nathan asked.

"I didn't know they were banished until Beverly said it."

"If you heard Beverly say it, why did you pretend to still be unconscious?"

Jamison fidgeted a bit. "I just...I'm not...look, I spent most of my life thinking I was dying, and thus need not answer for my actions."

"How do we get out of here?" Nathan asked.

"The only way is back up the pit, the way we came," said Beverly. "We'll have to form a human ladder. The residents don't enjoy it, what with their bones being so brittle and all, but they're easy to lift and they don't move around much once they're in place."

After they climbed out of the pit, Nathan said "I thank both of you for your help. I won't ask you to put yourself in any more danger. If you wish not to accompany me on the rest of my journey, I will completely understand."

"I'm with you," said Jamison.

"As am I," said Beverly.

"Is this because you're honoring the bonds we formed as children, or because your town has become overrun by lunatics?"

"A little of both for me," said Jamison.

"I didn't like you until about thirty minutes ago, and I didn't realize that the town was overrun by lunatics until you just said it. I'd a.s.sumed that the man with the baseball bat was an isolated case. I'm very uncomfortable now. So neither option was correct."

"It doesn't matter. Let us go to see Mortus Ranklin!"

TWENTY-THREE.

There were many villains in the world of Fangboy, but his encounter with Mortus Ranklin was so terrifying that it would be irresponsible of any storyteller to share more than brief snippets.

"However dangerous this turns out to be, it can't be worse than what has come before..."

"He lives in there? n.o.body could live in such a place! It is not possible, or even imaginable! It looks just like a..."

"I cannot scream! I cannot scream! Until this very moment I never knew that it was possible for the human body to be so terrified that it couldn't emit a scream sound, but that's exactly the situation I find myself in right now..."

"So much blood...so much blood..."

"To look into his eyes is to know that because babies look so similar, hospitals give the wrong ones to parents at least fifteen percent of the time..."

"Well, it's a relief that we lived through that, but can we live through this...?"

"Through this experience and our mutual terror, we have forged a bond that can never be broken. No matter how far apart our individual destinies take us, we shall always know that we have each other to count on..."

"Help! Help! Help! Help! Help..."

"That's right, Mortus Ranklin, we've beaten you! Now tell me where Penny and Mary have gone, or we'll do that thing again, but even worse..."

With Mortus Ranklin finally defeated, Nathan, Beverly, and Jamison walked toward the edge of town. Ranklin's directions had been vague, but it was a start, and Nathan was determined to walk the earth until he found the sisters.

Beverly looked back at the town where she'd grown up, the town where she'd spent her entire life, the town whose borders she'd never crossed. Could she really leave? Was she truly ready to embark upon this new adventure?

As she looked at Nathan, she felt that, yes, she was ready. But she also felt that it might be wise to at least do some cursory research on the current situation with the town's residents before she fully committed to a course of action.

It turned out that the effect of Dr. Thompson's tainted water was intense but brief, and everybody had recovered, and the apologies were flying fast and furious.

"I always had a crush on you," Beverly told Nathan. "And being reunited after so long stirs up those old feelings. But this is my home, and it is where I must stay."