Lantean Sands, Part II
by Rudi Dornemann

Johnny Nemo swore as Dean and I worked to wedge our fingers into the little gator's mouth. The curse words were thick with z's and q's. It hit me then that Johnny Nemo was Lantean, probably even grew up in the old country.

"Catch her," he said, coming back to English just as we pried the reptile off his hand. It snapped at Dean, who dropped it. The gator whip-walked toward Ray's room. Dean hesitated a moment between going after the alligator and chasing Shirlene. I was already jumping from the poolside wall to the little island, knocking Shirlene's stool over.

"I'll catch her," I said, and I was through the door. It was dark, just a sputtering flicker coming from the bare-bulb overhead. A hallway, walls and floors unpainted plywood that boomed as I fell forward. My feet were tangled up in the sequined spandex of the discarded mermaid tail. Behind me, I could hear shrieks, surprised French exclamations, more Lantean curses and Johnny Nemo yelling: "Bring her to the beach out front!"

Three strides and a sharp corner and I was in a behind-the-scenes break room--little sink and counter both cluttered with unwashed mugs; white vinyl couch with tape X's to hold the stuffing in; coffee table covered with crumpled bowling mags and Popular Mechanics, well-read but unrumpled Cosmo's and an even neater stack of National Geographics with covers that looked like they'd been left out in the rain. The air had the sour-burnt smell of perpetually simmering coffee.

Shirlene was there. She'd pulled a muumuu on over her mermaid costume and was wrestling a box of cigarettes out of the pocket of a green velvet jacket that was hanging on the coat rack.

"What did you do?" I said.

She looked up at me.

"You don't have the first idea what's going on here, do you? The spirit tide? The great return? All that Lantean black-magic mumbo-jumbo?" She fumbled a Jade Arcade souvenir lighter out of a pocket on the other side of that jacket. "He's just using you for muscle, isn't he? You and your brother and Slim—and you'll probably be the first ones who get taken down the deep road." She was trying to light a cigarette and her hands were shaking so much she couldn't get the lighter flame and the end of the Kool in the same place at the same time.

"Here," I said. She tossed me the lighter. We got it to work on the second try.

"Why don't you tell me?" I said.

"If I didn't know you," she said, taking a long pull on her cigarette, "I'd think that sounded pretty tough."

The percolator made shlup-shlup sounds on the counter.

"Have a seat," she said. "This is going to take a while."

I sat, sinking deep into an overstuffed sunset orange vinyl chair.

"On second thought—" she grabbed her coat from the rack—"my shift's pretty much over. Let's go."

I stood.

"You understand," she said, "once I say my piece, you're going to have to make some choices, and they aren't necessarily going to be easy ones."

I nodded, and she led me out into the green-tinted light of the Jade Arcade's upstairs lobby.

"We used to work together, me and John, back in the days when the Arcade was a working casino. Up there." She gestured toward the upper floor balconies, where we could see waitresses gliding back and forth. "John dealt blackjack, mostly, and ran high-stakes poker in the back room once or twice a month. The whole town was different then, more alive, full of action, high rollers coming up from the city even into the fall, and the Arcade was the heart of it all. There was a ritzy hotel next door, over where the mini-golf is now, and a five-star French-chef restaurant. It was different."

We pushed out against the weekend crowd, emerged into the blinding and untinted blaze of late afternoon.

"Walk a lady to her car?" she said.

Beyond the crowd and the sea-colored glass in the far walls, I could see the Dean and Johnny Nemo, hands in their pockets, hats slanted down against the glare, waiting on the sand. At this distance, I couldn't tell which of them was which.

"Sure," I said. I hoped Dean and Johnny couldn't see back into the green-shadowed depths of the Arcade, or I'd have a lot of explaining to do, but I wanted to hear what Shirlene had to say.

Shirlene took my arm, playing like this was some old-time promenade.

"My gig was fortunes—mostly—and I was the magician's assistant for two shows nightly, getting sawed in half, handing the maestro his hat full of doves or whatever. That's what he had us all call him, 'maestro.' Creepy old English guy—The Astounding Sheldrake. Tux always smelled like formaldehyde, like he'd picked it up second hand from some mortuary.

"John was always hanging around backstage after the shows, trying to pal around with the old man, hoping to learn a few sleight-of-hand moves he could use at the tables. But then it was more. There were rumors that the old man's creepiness went deeper than the smell of his tux and the way he looked at you like he was seeing right through you. Rumors said he'd been mixed in some seriously occult activities back in the old country. Secret societies. Unspeakable rituals. Real magic, dark magic—arcane, devil-dealing necromantic stuff. John found that half a bottle of pricey sherry would loosen Sheldrake up, get him talking about the old days. John took to it like a duck to water, and he used to corner me when I was on break from my fortune-telling booth, tell me stories of all the weird mystical crap he was learning.

"At first I thought he just had the hots for me, and that's what was behind all the attention. And—who knows?—I guess I was quite a looker back in those days, maybe that did have something to do with it. But he eventually came to the point: he wanted me to tell his fortune, use the cards, palm-reading, tea leaves, everything. Even wanted me to try out this Lantean sand-scrying thing he said his grandmother used to do. So I gave it a shot. I mean, I figured, what did I have to lose? I was flattered by all the attention, and curious about the sand-scrying thing, and, have I mentioned, John was pretty good-looking himself back then. So, like I said, I gave it a try."

We'd reached her car, a turquoise 1964 Coupe Deville, with fins in the back and a hood ornament like a medal for some old-time duke, but there was no stopping her story now.

"It didn't take much interpretation on my part. All the oracles came up the same: he was calling up powers that shouldn't be named, let alone summoned. His future was looking bad, bad, bad. The cards showed me combinations I'd never seen before and never want to see again, thank you very much. That Lantean sand-scrying gave us the image of a death's head, winking. It wasn't like I needed to look that one up in a reference book to figure out what it meant. All in all, there was a loud-and-clear message that John would be better off forgetting the whole magic thing, moving inland, and getting a job selling carpet or something.

"Of course he didn't listen. Just figured this meant he was tapping into something big, and got all jazzed at the powers he was going to be calling up. Got mad at me for trying to stand between him and his destiny. Said Sheldrake had told him about an ancient Lantean prophecy, how the spirits of the drowned empire could come back to take over living bodies and live again. He meant the empire that ended when the first part of Lantis was destroyed. The capital before all those years they were ruled over by the Phoenicians, way back before the Greeks amounted to anything, and the Egyptians had barely figured out how to write their own names.

"He kept saying that he was the one, and it was his destiny to ring the forgotten bell. He had a chunk of metal he used to carry with him as a sort of good luck charm, an old relic he called the bell."

Shirlene took another puff on her cigarette. She must not have seen the look that I knew was all over my face: we'd seen the bell in her trailer, right on the shelf between the reproduction clay figure of a bull and a tile with a dolphin design. I remembered it because it was the one Lantean souvenir that didn't look valuable or interesting. And I knew we'd told Johnny Nemo all about it.

"I would have just thought he was crazy," continued Shirlene, "if it hadn't been for all the spooky messages I was getting out of the fortune-telling. But even the tea-leaves were spelling out some kind of big evil in the works, and I always had to wrestle to get the leaves to tell me anything, so the fact that those little squidgy patterns were being reasonably straight-forward was a warning in itself."

Shirlene shifted her sunglasses up onto the top of her head, and gave me a look like she was going to give me a warning, but she just went on:

"So I made like I was going along with him.'Sure,' I say, 'when the day comes I'll be your high-priestess, whatever you want...' And, soon as he was gone, I went to Sheldrake and told him the whole thing.

"The old magician had a fit; he was furious, throwing things around his dressing room. There was an electric-like heat around him; my skin kind of tingled and stung when I was standing there in the same room with him. I could tell I didn't want to be around when he and John had it out. So I left--left the Arcade, left town, didn't give any notice, didn't collect my last week's pay. Caught the next bus south and didn't come back again for twelve or thirteen years.

"But eventually I did come back. Hardly recognized the town. No more casino; no high-rollers. It was all about families, summer vacations, souvenirs and two-bit tacky sideshows. I worked at this and that, waitressed mainly, and ran a gypsy-style fortune telling tent for a couple summers, up near where the T-Shirt Extravaganza is these days. Wound up here at Wellingtons. John was around, but we've done a good job of avoiding each other. Other than today, we haven't talked, and I've never found out what did happen between him and old man Sheldrake."

She fished her keys out of her purse.

"That's it?" I said.

"That's it."

"Then you don't know what this is all about? Don't know who's been passing information on to some other outfit?"

"Is that what John's been telling you boys? Hunh--I was wondering how he talked you all into tailing me the other week."

I could feel my ears getting hot.

"No, I expect he's up to his old tricks. And I mean that literally."

"Black magic? Raising dead Lantean ghosts out of the ocean? C'mon Shirlene..."

She swung the car door open.

"If you don't want to believe it--" she got into the driver's seat "--don't."

I had to hop up onto the curb to keep from getting hit when she pulled out. A couple of ten-year old boys--twins, I think--gave me dirty looks when they had to step around me and nearly lost the top scoops off their precarious triple-decker cones.

Wellington's World was closed when I got back. No sign of Dean or the boss on the beach or hanging around any of the doors, so I made my way up the shore to our counting room.

Johnny Nemo was there, along with Neptune Slim.

"Where's Dean?" I said.

"Errand," said Johnny Nemo. "Where's the mermaid?"

"She got away." I was a little embarrassed I hadn't come up with a better lie.

"Hunh," said Johnny Nemo. "Old woman like her, outrunning a healthy young fellow like yourself."

"I almost had her," I said, "but once she got into the crowd, I couldn't just grab her. All the kids around, and the families, and here she is looking like somebody's grandma. So I followed her and kept waiting for the right moment, when she'd be out of view for a second, or at least I could talk to her without other people hearing."

"And what were you going to say?"

"I don't know," I said, and I was telling the truth there. "That she should come back to the Arcade, that you had some more questions for her, that we were sorry we spooked her, didn't mean to do that, we just had some questions..."

Johnny Nemo was watching the coin that was appearing and disappearing out of his left hand, but I doubted he was buying this. From the expression on his face, Slim certainly wasn't.

"Pete," Johnny said, "my disappointment knows no bounds. You go on home, and you don't talk to anyone. Not your brother, not your long-suffering Ma. You're like one of those monks with a vow of silence. Go."

"Johnny..." I said.

"Silence. Vow of friggin' silence, got it? We'll see you in the morning."

So I walked home, not even whistling to myself, just thinking things through, trying to work out how much of Shirlene's story was legit. The more I thought, the more depressed I got—she must have been the snitch, otherwise why make up such a wild story? Johnny Nemo had been right about her. And Shirlene had been right that I'd have to make a choice—it seemed like maybe I'd already made that choice without even meaning to—and from Johnny N.'s reaction, it was clear he didn't think I'd chosen his side.

I wondered, though, if they really did have some kind of history, working together in the Jade Arcade. There was something in her voice that said there'd been something between them once, something as over and long gone as the Arcade's golden days. That got me to thinking about what it must have been like in those days—the nights with the glass dome lit up like a jewel, and the crowds in their tuxes and beaded gowns, movie stars and tycoons and even a few European aristocrats. There were big bands playing right out on the beach and yachts moored just off shore. As strange and wonderful in its own way as the old empire days in Lantis had been.

When I got home, mom knew from the look on my face not to ask. I thought I'd at least have to write down "can't talk" on a piece of paper so she'd know what was going on, but she just set down a plate of American chop suey and green beans and let me be.

Dean came back in late, wouldn't say where he'd been, or what Johnny had had him doing, and of course I couldn't ask. Dean was still up, watching a late movie, when I went to bed. He didn't say a word to me all evening. I don't know if that was another order from Johnny Nemo, or just that Dean was mad at me for screwing up.

Breakfast was just as silent, just as tense, and we made it to Terranno's with five or ten minutes to spare. Dean handled the coffee and donut ordering; I was grateful, since that got around me calling attention to my not being able to talk. When Dean and Slim decided they'd go out and let me be the one to stay back at the drugstore, that was fine, too.

About halfway through the morning, Slim came back.

"Let's take a walk," he said.

I followed him out. It was a hot day, but windy and starting to cloud up. Weather reports had been talking about a hurricane that would probably die out before it reach us, but might still give us a bit of rain. Slim took me around to the park just past Beller's Light.

It's probably the quietest place in town, all sand and crab-grass and a few pine trees. There's a bluff where the waves are eating away at the park, and a couple of seagull-stained picnic tables. Not much of a tourist destination; the two of us were the only ones in sight.

"You've got to trust me here," said Neptune Slim.

I looked at him.

"You can talk," he said. "Johnny says the silence thing is all done."

"Good," I said. "I was starting to feel like the rest of my life was going to be one big game of charades."

"It's not all good news; he still thinks you're—how's he put it?—'being less than entirely truthful with us and himself.'"

I shrugged.

"Don't get me wrong," said Slim. "I figure you've got reasons—and probably good ones—if you are holding back some information."

Slim looked out at the surf smacking the base of the next headland up the shore.

"So," he said. "You trust me?"

"That depends... You going to hit me?"

He nodded, slow and solemn. "It's what I have to do. Orders of Mr. N." He was rearranging the rings on his right hand. "And it's better for me to do it than Dean. He's gotten a little... intense... the last couple days."

I stared at the top of the nearest picnic table, and tried to decode the carved initials while Slim flexed his hands. I could hear the rings clicking against each other.

"Sorry kid, but Johnny Nemo'll know if I don't."

"Yeah, I know. It's what you have to do." I couldn't look him in the eye. "I know."

"If I've got to hit you, though, you might as well get some good out of it. I've got the stones in what they call the phoenix configuration. I've only done this once before—it's supposed to haul your energy up onto a higher plane."

"Great," I said. If Shirlene was right about what Johnny was up to, and Johnny found out that I knew, it wasn't going to matter where my energy had ascended to. The split lip Slim was about to give me wasn't more than a fraction of what I had coming.

Slim shuffled his feet into a boxer's stance, stretched out his arm to check that he had the distance right. An inch from my face, the jewels on Slim's fingers caught the light and flickered like tongues of colored flame.

"So," he said. "Trust me?"

"Yeah, Slim, sure, whatev--"

He clocked me, then, right in the middle of the word, and a star exploded in my left eye, like I'd just smashed my head into a wall of light.

"Uh," I said, "Ah. Uh." I held my head in my hands and danced a little half-crouched-over dance of pain. I was thinking I should be letting loose an absolutely blood-curdling string of curses, but my mouth had become completely disconnected from language. My skull ached with a throbbing vibration and my ears buzzed like the feedback when you get a microphone too close to a speaker.

"C'mon," said Slim once I could stand straight again, "I'll give you a lift down to the Sands. See if Marie'll fix you a raw steak. You'll still probably have a shiner, but at least it won't swell shut." He studied my face for a moment. "Probably."

I don't remember anything about the ride, except that Slim was fiddling with the radio the whole way, jumping from station to on the radio, singing along to whatever he found, squeaking his voice up to the high notes in "Love is Like Oxygen," bringing it down for "House of the Rising Sun," punching the channel-change button right in the middle of one of the long "aaaah's" in the refrain of "Afternoon Delight."

"Sorry, kid," he said, as we pulled up next to the dumpster at the back of the Lantean Sands' parking lot.

Marie fussed over me like a long-lost grandmother, wouldn't even take the money Neptune Slim kept trying to hand her.

"Who's did this to you? Who's did this to you?"

I wouldn't say. "Some guy. Down on the beach."

"Well," she said, looking at me as if she knew I was holding back. "You remember, and you tell us, and we don't serve them anymore." She folded her arms across her chest. "Not even the coffee in the morning."

I just stood leaning against the wall between the fire extinguisher and the back door, pressing the slimy meat against my eye, sweating in the heat, smelling fish and garlic and the hot oil from the fryers, listening to the dishwashers telling more and more elaborate tales about women they'd been with. If I relaxed too much, my knees started shaking, so I tried to stand straight even though I mostly wanted to just lie down and sleep. Bernadette came by, and didn't say anything, just frowned as she wiped the beef-blood off my cheek with a wet paper towel and stuffed a couple dry ones in my collar so that my shirt wouldn't get stained if the blood kept leaking down my face.

"Thanks," I mumbled, and she gave me a look that made me feel like a kid who'd been caught skipping out of Sunday school.

I did not feel enlightened. I didn't feel hungry either, in spite of it being nearly lunchtime. My skull was vibrating like a gong and the skin around my eye was tight with swelling. Dean came in and headed for our usual booth. I ditched the raw steak, with more thanks to Marie, and joined him.

"How's it going?" he said, as if it weren't the first thing he'd said to me in nearly twenty-four hours.

"OK" I said.

I ordered a side of fries and gravy. When Slim showed up and I didn't have to work at the conversation anymore, I just sat back and listened to Dean and Slim and felt my heartbeat thudding in my skull. Not much news. Quiet day; a lot of tourists seemed to be staying away, at least until the storm either came through or missed us. Some discussion of whether this meant the season was starting to wind down already, or if things would pick up again for next week and Labor Day. None of us had seen Johnny Nemo.

My vision was starting to blur. It reminded me of when the colors start to come apart on a TV and the people split into a red ghost, a blue ghost and a green ghost, all three moving in sync. The only thing in the Sands that wasn't splitting into color shadows was the soap opera on the TV up by the ceiling behind the lunch counter. Down in the real world, all the staff and patrons glowed, the silverware and coffee pots had turned a deep red like smoldering coals and the dessert case shimmered with a pulsing iridescent haze.

When he noticed me wincing, Slim passed me a couple aspirins. I washed them down with a mouthful of ice water so cold that, for a moment, I had yet another pain ringing in my head. When Dean got up to use the Men's, I told Slim what I was seeing.

"That's the early stages," he said. "You're seeing what the Egyptians used to call the Ba and the Ka, one's like your inner soul, and one's like your active soul—I forget which is which."

"But I'm seeing three of them," I said.

He took a sip of his coffee. "Hey, I'm no expert," he said, and shrugged in unison with his red ghost, his blue ghost and his violet ghost.

Dean came back, and we split the bill. I threw in a few bucks extra as thanks for the steak.

We all figured it was best if I kept hanging out at Terranno's; with the shiner, I looked like a bit of a rough customer, so I wasn't real well-suited to the more public job of going up the street from shop to shop. I was hoping Johnny wouldn't drop by with any messages. I wasn't ready to see him yet, and I wasn't looking forward to the evening stroll along the beach.

I lost myself in reading the trashy magazines in the back, trying to remember which ones Slim had said had good stories this month. That day, they all seemed better to me. Not like they were better written or anything—I could still guess the endings to most of them before I was halfway through, but the pictures they brought up in my mind were more vivid, like the dreams that you can't quite shake for the rest of the day. And the pictures on the cover seemed more real, too. The barbarian women and the dinosaur-headed aliens and even the robots, they all seemed more alive—every time I looked away, I almost thought I saw them moving in the corner of my eye.

It was about four o'clock when old man Terranno called over to me that I had a phone call. That almost never happened—I knew it had to be Johnny Nemo and it had to be something big.

I was half right.

It was Slim, and he was out of breath. "Something's going on," he said. "Something weird."

I looked around the pharmacy. A bald man in a wrinkled dress shirt was up at the front register counting out nickels and pennies for a paper, and Denise the day clerk was snapping her gum while she waited. A girl in a T-shirt from Camp Somewhere-Or-Other was slowly spinning her way through the postcard racks. Terranno himself was scowling at me from inside his glassed-in room. They were all still blurry and multicolored, but that was just me.

"It's all like usual here," I said. "What's going on?"

"Everybody's just acting freaky. People on the street—it's like they're in a play or something. And Jay Grimble at the Sunglass Shanty just started talking, out of nowhere, in some messed up version of Lantean that I've never heard before."

"OK" I said. "That is weird." The bald guy shuffled by with his paper. "Did you want me to try to get word to Johnny N.? Is this something he should know about?" As soon as I said it, I thought of Shirlene, and I wondered if Johnny Nemo didn't already about it—if he wasn't the one person who knew exactly what was going on.

"Naw," said Slim. "I thought you might be able to see something about what's going on. Why don't you head on down to the arcade and see what you see." I could hear, even over the phone, that he was worried.

"What?"

"Probably nothing," he said. "But Johnny N. picked up your brother about fifteen or twenty minutes before this all started happening. And Dean had that attitude like he was in on some big secret."

"Right," I said. I knew what he was talking about: Dean tended to sulk when he was left out of something, and to gloat when he knew something you didn't.

"So I'll meet you," said Slim, "at Ray's tube in half an hour?"

"Yeah. That sounds like a plan."

"Cool," he said, and hung up.

For the first block, everything was normal. When it changed, I couldn't say what exactly what was different; it was like I was pressing forward into thicker air, and I started to notice that some people's ghost images no longer matched their real bodies. The overlapping auras looked like drawings out of history book pictures of old time Lantis, with robes and sandals and the occasional mask of beaten gold and everything.

At first it was just a tourist here or a shop clerk there, standing frozen in the middle of the street, like the spirit hadn't completely gained control of their body yet. Then I saw a middle-aged guy in Bermuda shorts with dark socks pulled up nearly to his knees and a comb-over flapping behind him as he sprinted along with every intention of vaulting the hood ornament of an oncoming Oldsmobile. The driver, fortunately, hadn't been possessed, and he swerved, slamming on his brakes. The balding, reincarnated Lantean, however, had years of experience in the sacred arenas and leapt easily up to the hood and then the vinyl roof of the Olds.

I was still a couple blocks from the Arcade, so I started walking faster. Things were rapidly getting weirder and weirder. I saw a woman in a pink-striped shorts and blouse ensemble borne down the boardwalk on a litter improvised from a couple postcard racks and a metal folding chair. I knew her: the serpent priestess. The procession wasn't moving all that fast. A mob of children was busy strewing her path with T-Shirts looted from the Extravaganza—next best thing to palm fronds. The roller-skating waitresses from the Seaview Room were out on Jade Arcade's terraces, singing of longing and eventual joys. It took everything I had not to go run right up to them.

I'm guessing it was the lingering effect of Slim's punch that kept me clear of possessing spirits. Even so, it was infectious and all too familiar, this resurrection-festival. I could hear the panpipes shrilling in my ears and feel the tug in my leg muscles to join in the parade march. My zoot suit, of all things, helped keep me grounded—the ride of the padded jacket on my shoulders, the tightness of my tie at my throat, the brim of my hat always roofing over my field of vision. I buttoned all six buttons on my jacket, put my hands in my pockets and whistled as I walked, mentally replaying every gangster movie I'd ever seen. Anything to keep my mind out of the mystical past.

Not everyone had been taken over by spirits. Terrified families huddled on the corners, flinching at every bull-dancer who cartwheeled over a parked Pinto. Mobs of tourists had barricaded themselves in the ice cream shop, only to have three of their number break out in the New Moon chant of the Mother Goddess. The rest of them were possessed before they could unstack the wall of chairs they'd built in front of the door.

The serpent priestess's entourage came up from behind me while I was looking in the shop windows. They marched by double-time. Under the ghost-images of feathered robes, it was mostly guys from other gangs, but old man Terranno was bringing up the rear. Squinting left-eyed, I could see he wore the aura of a Lantean high priest. Looking ordinary-wise, I could see his white pharmacist's coat billowing out behind him like a cape and that his scepter was only a paper cone of cotton candy. Whatever he looked like, he was intoning the seventh hymn of power and there was an ozone uneasiness in the air like a thunderstorm approaching.

I ducked into the Jade Arcade. No sign of Neptune Slim; no sign of anyone. The place was abandoned, empty, and the underwater green light made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I hurried down the fiberglass fake cave hallway and found Wellington's World dark, lit only by the baleful glow of the exit signs. There was a quiet sound, like the sobs of someone who's worn out with too much crying, and another voice, a man's, whispering urgent, Lantean reassurances. The voices got louder the further in I went. When I got to the mummy room, I realized that whatever was making the sound was in there with me. I had a book of matches in my pocket—a freebie from the Sands. It took three before I found them—the janitor, possessed by the soul of a sandal-maker, was trying to help his wife to sit up. His wife had taken possession of the mummy's body, however, and she didn't have muscle tissue enough to do more than whimper. His eyes were desperate with an urgency that transcended time. All I could do was shake out my match when it burned down to my fingertips, and stumble on towards Shirlene's pool.

She wasn't there. I used up the rest of my matches making sure, and even risked calling her name once or twice, before moving on to the Manta-Boy's room.

Ray floated, dozing, in his illuminated tube. I tapped on the glass.

"I need to find Shirlene," I said. "Do you know where she's at?"

He shook his head. I turned away, then realized what I'd seen: no aura blurring around Ray. In my new vision, he glowed, but the radiance was contained within his own skin. It might have been some trick that his tube of water was doing to the light, or it might be that all his stories about being an exiled prince of lost Lantis were true after all. I decided to take a chance:

"What do you know about ringing the forgotten bell?"

He wrote in big letters: "DON'T," and began to scribble furiously, his words curving around the inside of the glass. "You cannot—should not—would be very very bad. Sea would be made to rise and the spirits to come back. BAD."

"Too late," I said. "Johnny Nemo rang the bell this morning. There's a storm coming and ghosts are taking people over. It's a madhouse up there."

Ray seemed to draw into himself, then he glowed all the more brightly.

He wrote in clear block letters: "Let me out of this."

"How?"

"Upstairs. Pull me out."

"Where?"

"Stairs over there." He pointed toward the mermaid pool.

I waded through the pool and opened the door to the hallway. I hadn't seen it when I'd been chasing Shirlene, but about halfway back to the break room there was a door-sized rectangle where the paint was glossy black rather than the light-eating flat black of the rest of the walls. I pushed; it opened. There was a little room like a closet and a ladder leaning against the wall. The humid air smelled like sea water, so I climbed up, and came out into a white room. The lights were on here, full blast, and with the square porcelain tiles on the floor and walls and even the ceiling, it was like being inside a diagram in a math book. There were a couple metal buckets in one corner, dented gray metal with flakes of bright paint, like they'd been bought second-hand from a traveling circus. One of the buckets was full of fish; the others had slimy puddles as if they used to have fish in them. The only other thing in the room was the hole in the middle of the floor. The water was all dark. When I leaned over to look down, Ray's head popped up.

"Hi," he said in a squeaky, wheezy voice.

"How do I get you out?"

"Hand," he said.

There was nothing to hold onto, so I braced my feet on the tile as best I could and reached out.

Ray ducked into the water again, and was gone for a long moment. The muscles in the back of my calves started to cramp.

He leapt up out of the water like a dolphin, and knocked me over. He was smaller than I thought he'd be—the glass tube and the water must have worked like a magnifying glass. Out here, he was the size of a twelve-year old, but with muscles like a body-builder's in his arms and shoulders.

My shoes skidded on the wet tile as I tried to stand. Ray flopped onto his belly and started inch-worming toward the door.

"Sea," he said. "The sea. The water. Home. Warn. Get help."

"Right," I said. "Whatever. If you can stop this, I'm with you."

"I can." He gulped air. "Can stop."

I slid over to a dry patch of floor. "Hop up on my back," I said. "You don't look like you're all that great at walking."

He was fish cold, and wet, but not all the heavy. He wrapped his arms around my neck and I could feel the membranes of his wings pressing on my shoulders.

"Gah," I said. "Let me breathe." My younger cousins did the same thing when I gave them piggy-back rides; I shifted Ray's weight so that I wasn't strangled. "Hang on. I'll try to go the short way."

We backed carefully down the stairs and I carried Ray through the dark hallway—he could see better in the dark than I could, and alerted me before I walked into any walls—and the equally dark break room—where he didn't think to warn me about the coffee table that I whacked my shins on. I pushed out the door that I expected to take us into the Jade Arcade's lobby, and found that the familiar sea-green light now illuminated strange new architecture.

Columns wide as tree-trunks rose through the various balcony levels where roller-skating acolytes revived old rituals in the service of even older gods and devotees with tinted sunglasses and zinc-creamed noses fashioned altars out of souvenir snow globes and skee-ball prize plush toys. Possessed children ran their hands over the windows, molding the green panes into geometric lace.

"This is different," I said.

"The Great Temple of the Snake Mother," squeak-whispered Ray.

"Is that what it is?" Neptune Slim stepped out from behind a column.

"Johnny Nemo did this," I said. "Everybody's being taken over by ancient Lantean ghosts."

"Ah," said Slim, and I thought for a moment I'd managed to say something he hadn't expected. "What was it—did he blow the Conch of Souls? Restring the Theran Harp?"

"Rang the Forgotten Bell," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "That'd do it."

We edged along a line of potted plastic palms. Even though this didn't do much to hide us, everyone was too busy with their mystical doings to notice us; just strolling across the wide-open expanse of the Jade Arcade's main lobby, though, seemed like pushing our luck too far. When we reached the last palm, we had to pause: Mary Lou from the T-shirt shop was painting a frieze in melted ice cream colors across the sand-textured concrete. We watched as a design of dolphins and octopi coalesced out of peppermint pinks, sherbet oranges, chocolate browns and pistachio greens.

I tapped Neptune Slim on the shoulder. "Ray says he can fix things, if we can get him to the ocean."

"Yes," said Ray. "Can get help."

"It's good to have a plan," said Slim. "But it's a pretty hopeless one. The ancient Lanteans seem to be gathering in front of an idol out front. There's more of them all the time."

Mary Lou applied the last vanilla accents to the final dolphin's flank, and began hauling her soggy cardboard tubs up the ramp to the second level.

We picked our way over the sticky frieze, and when we reached the door, Slim motioned us ahead.

"I'm going to try to find Johnny Nemo," he said. "You know Dean's with him?"

"No." I'd been hoping Dean wasn't involved; if anyone was likely to wind up on the wrong side of the apocalypse, it was him.

"Keep an eye out," said Slim, and was gone before I could see his face to know whether or not he was making a joke.

Ray and I spun out the revolving door and nearly stepped into a crowd of anointed brethren who were kneeling on the sand. Miniature lightning crackled from their fingertips as they kneaded sand into glass—rough, grainy glass, but glass nonetheless. Apparently, foretelling the future wasn't the only things Lanteans could do with sand. They were sculpting a god with a bull's head and a fish's tail, an effigy ten feet tall, while a crowd of tourists swayed in a chanting trance. I gave the whole mob wide berth and headed us toward the water.

Two steps, and my shoes were full of sand. Ray was getting heavier. He hissed as we came out of the shadow of the arcade and light hit us; even the cloudy sky was brighter than half-light of Wellington's World.

"Hurry," he said. His voice was more wheeze and less squeak.

"Take my hat," I said, and he did. "I'll try to get you to the water as quick as I can, but I don't want to attract too much attention."

Nobody seemed to see us as I stumbled toward the waterline. At least, nobody stopped us. Children danced a complicated dance in a long, winding, and suspiciously snake-like line. A dozen women wailed ritual mourning for the death of the sun that was sinking somewhere behind the clouds. Glen the bumper boat guy was sculpting priest masks out of tin-foil, etching every beard-curl with a careful thumbnail. A trio of priestesses carried armloads of Jade Arcade drapes down to the water for some purpose I couldn't guess, and I fell in behind them.

As soon as I stepped onto the cool, packed, wet sand where the tide had retreated, Dean jogged past us, stopped, and turned. The ocean was still thirty or forty yards off, and he was standing right in front of us, arms stretched out to welcome us or to block our progress.

"With everything going on," he said, "do you really think this is such a good time to take a swim?"

I looked, and saw that Dean's soul was still his own. He crossed his arms and stood like a bouncer. Rain spattered down around us for two seconds then stopped. Ray sighed. Dean didn't flinch.

"Give me a hand," I said. "We've got to get Ray to the water so he can get..." I wasn't sure what.

"Whoa," said Dean. "Johnny N.'s got a plan, and that isn't part of it."

"Yeah, but Johnny Nemo's insane," I said. "Give me a hand."

"You just don't understand the plan," said Dean. "We'll be Princes of the Isles! You and me—the right-hand men of the magician-king! The Lord of Mazes will smile upon us! It'll be great! Trust me!"

I was just considering whether I'd have a better chance trying to dash past him on the right or the left, when I heard Johnny Nemo's voice behind me: "It's too late, Pete. The bell can't be un-rung."

I felt Ray rising from my shoulders, and turned to see that Johnny N. was hoisting him up —one arm around the Manta-Boy's skinny waist, the other locked on the back of his neck. Ray kicked and unsuccessfully tried to twist around to bite Johnny. I grabbed Ray's arms and was pulling back when Dean swept my feet out from under me. I landed on the sand with a wet smack. Johnny N. hauled a kicking Ray off like a temperamental child, and by the time I had struggled to my feet, they were halfway to the Jade Arcade.

Dean grabbed my arm.

"He's right," he said. "It is too late."

"You had something to do with this." I meant to ask that as a question, but it didn't come out that way and I realized, as I heard my own voice, that I knew what had happened: Dean had rung the bell.

He didn't look so cocky anymore. "I didn't know what it was. He had me do a bunch of stuff, all random, like put this one shell in this cup, and pour something that looked like blood on a picture of a bull. And then he had me use a little silver stick to hit this piece of metal that he had me take from Shirlene's place..." He let go of my arm

"You idiot," I said, although I didn't know if I wouldn't have done the same thing, if I hadn't known. The not-knowing was what gave the bell its power. Which is why Johnny had to get us to find it, and had to get Dean to ring it. That guy Sheldrake, astounding or not, hadn't really undone the bell's power.

"We've got a chance, though. The whole world's going to change, but we've got a chance to rule, right alongside Johnny Nemo. It'll be a better world. The world that should have been, we can get it back—things will be like they would have been if the old empire hadn't been drowned all those ages ago..."

The way he was talking, I knew he was quoting Johnny N.

"Have you seen Ma since this all started?"

His self-assurance evaporated again. "Yeah. She's O.K."

Johnny Nemo handed Ray to a pair of priests, who wrestled him in the Jade Arcade's mirror-glass doors and out of sight.

"What exactly do you mean by 'O.K.'?"

Dean looked at the sand he was scuffing up with the toes of his wingtips. "Second acolyte to the Chief Priestess of the Evening Shrine of the Serpent Mother."

"Dean!"

"It's a good position," he muttered. "A lot of organizing, a lot of making sure all the arrangements for the rituals get made correctly. I'm sure she's happy."

I walked away and he didn't try to stop me. Glen had finished one of his masks and was presenting it to a pot-bellied, farmer-tanned priest. Children danced by, carrying the tight-twisted, sea-water soaked drapes over their heads. The sky rumbled.

Johnny Nemo knelt before the translucent snake belly of the fish-tailed, bull-headed idol and began chanting in a voice that wasn't shouting, it was just loud, louder than I expected to coming from a human throat unaided by a sound system with multi-thousand watt speakers. He was calling something in very old, very formal Lantean. I thought I heard the words for "great one" and "labyrinth." Flames flickered in the hazy glass depths of the statue—leaf green, honey gold, sea blue and blood scarlet. Then the thing moved.

It stretched its arms and tossed its head. It thrashed its tail and rippled forward on its belly. I closed one eye and then the other, but it was still there no matter what.

"This is bad," I said.

"The Lord of Mazes!" I turned around to see Dean down on one knee, bowing forward with his arms out and forearms up in a gesture that mirrored the up-curve of a bull's horns. Out in the ocean, a storm swell rose—first a hill, then a mountain of water—and just stood there, forty feet tall, ready to roll forward and wash the whole town away.

The bull god thrashed forward through the sand. Anyone in his path scrambled clear, then fell forward in a bow. Johnny Nemo followed the Lord of Mazes at a distance that was either respectful or simply prudent, given the size of the god's tail and how vigorously it was slashing through the air. Behind Johnny N. came the chanting crowd—there was Mr. Terranno and his pack of gangster-priests; there was the janitor-cobbler propping up his mummy-wife; there were whole families of fish-belly pale tourists, hot dog vendors, beach-goers, and quarter-a-try ring-toss hawkers. Bernadette and the rest of the Lantean Sands waitstaff waved fronds of plastic palm. Ma shepherded the younger acolytes along—not easy, since their roller skates foundered in the sand. It looked like the whole town. Johnny Nemo was grinning a kingly, paternal grin.

I grabbed Dean's arm before he could join the throng, and the procession drew even with us.

The bull god approached and the standing sea rose higher. He howled, and the world howled with him. A new Jade Arcade, this one made of light, rose from the glass and girder shell of the old one. Every tourist, souvenir-seller, and roller skating waitress chanted his name, chanted his name, chanted his name. The crowd's voice surged like choppy waves slapping against the seawall. I might have been chanting too; although I couldn't hear my voice, my mouth was moving. I clenched my jaw shut. The wall of suspended water trembled against whatever magic held it up, light glistened and sparkled over its surface, and the whole mass quivered like jelly every time a wave flowed under it.

Then I noticed someone blocking the glass god's path: Neptune Slim. His banana yellow zoot suit stood out against the green-gray of the spectral sea; his crystal-studded fists were cocked in a boxer's pose; his jacket and pants were wet with the waves that were rising already as high as his knees. Slim settled his hat tighter on his head, thumbed the brim, and sloshed forward a step.

The air was still thick with chanting, but I knew my own voice was the one that was laughing.

The god had seen Neptune Slim.

Slim unbuttoned his jacket with slow deliberation. Twenty feet away, the bull god paused to coil back on his glass tail. Slim loosened his tie loose and pried his collar open, then resumed his boxer's stance. Under the storm-dark light, the stones in Slim's rings flickered like the flames in the god's core.

Slim looked up at the behemoth. From the expression on his face, he'd always expected to face down a monster some day—like one of his pulp stories was coming true, and he was the hero. He nodded.

I wondered what arrangement of rings Slim used to do battle with a god.

The Lord of Mazes advanced, snorting clouds of phosphorescent mist, leaving an undulating trench in the sand behind him. He lowered his horns at this opponent who was barely a third his height. I wasn't sure if he'd skewer Slim with his horns, tear him apart by hand, or just roll right over him.

Slim wasn't preparing to fight, but to leap. When the next wave sucked back, he ran forward, two long strides, and jumped into the air, higher up than I would have thought he could go. When he'd just about reached the top of his arc, he was level with the Maze-Lord's face. He reached out and gripped the horns on either side of the immense head, and then hoisted himself up.

For a long moment he hung suspended above the bull's head, doing a handstand, one jeweled hand on each of the up-curved horns. Energy flared in a diamond-shaped constellation: Slim's hands to the right and left, his head between and above, the god's between and below. And the Lord of Mazes, bellowing, enraged, crumbled to sand.

Slim twisted as he fell, landed with his shoulder and back smacking the side of the heap of sand. From the grunt as he hit and the groan as he rolled, he'd broken his collarbone, if not his neck.

The chanting halted in mid-syllable; I saw the crowd's ghosts waver, flicker like a TV with bad reception.

I yelled over to Johnny Nemo. "Any more tricks, Mr. king of magicians?"

"Of course," he said. A snub-nosed pistol appeared in his hand. "There are other rituals. Bloodier rituals. Magics more dread and ancient. More robust incarnations to be summoned." He pointed the gun at Ma. "And you boys are going to assist me."

Ma and the rest were swaying in time as they softly sang a hymn of evening. The new, more radiant Jade Arcade temple glowed green-white while thunder rolled somewhere over the ocean and a cold breeze whipped sand against my face.

Johnny Nemo grinned. "A new world is coming," he said, and cocked the pistol.

"We should help him," said Dean.

I didn't say anything.

"It won't be so bad," said Dean. "And if we don't, he might hurt Ma."

His auras trembled and blurred before resolving into the silhouette of a captain of the king's guard.

"Dean," I said.

"Wha--" He shook off the ghost.

"It's OK. Let go," said Johnny N. "Abandon the new and take back the old. I don't need you to be yourself anymore, Dean. You know too much."

Dean's souls went vague and misty. The blue one blinked in and out of the guard captain—fedora giving way to plumed helmet, my brother's face melting into features as harsh and stoic as an ancient statue's.

"Hang on," I said. "Concentrate."

Johnny Nemo laughed. "He'll be back—the Lord of Mazes. He'll find a way out of the spirit realm. That's what he does. He always finds a way back. I'll ring the bell, and he'll find the way. You should join us while you've got the chance. Both of you."

It seemed to be my only option, other than getting shot. I didn't see any way to interrupt Johnny Nemo's plans. I didn't have Neptune Slim's mystical gifts or his courage, Ray was probably lashed down to a hot-dog-cart-turned altar somewhere in the Arcade, and the next wave of the rising tide soaked my feet. Dean was still teetering on the edge of possession, his souls strobing back and forth between faces; it was like watching the wheels spin by on a slot machine and knowing that, sooner or later, the three faces would match, and my brother wouldn't be my brother anymore.

Johnny N. was still going on: "He'll rise again in the place between earth and sea because we'll call him and we'll build him. I am a king, and I have hundreds of subjects—soon I'll have thousands."

I opened my mouth to say, "O.K." but some movement on the far side of the ex-god sand hill caught my eye. It was Shirlene, pedaling a bike along the sand, almost standing up as she worked to force the pedals down. Ray was riding on the back of the green sparkle-plastic banana seat. They were barely moving fast enough to stay upright, and every time the rear wheel shuddered around it threw up a plume of sand.

I fixed my eyes on Johnny Nemo, hoping he hadn't noticed that I'd noticed something over his shoulder.

"I'm not one of your subjects," I said.

All I needed to do was keep the old con-man distracted for another minute or so. "But tell me more about this new empire," I said. "Maybe you're right."

I figured once he got to talking, he wouldn't notice anything. I forgot how well he knew me.

"What are you up to?"

"Nothing."

"I can see it in your face."

I snuck a look in the direction where Neptune Slim was lying. A trio of sub-priestesses was fanning him with empty take-out pizza boxes; I recognized one of them from my junior-year math class.

Johnny Nemo followed my gaze. "Slim won't be getting up anytime soon. As a bull-jumper he's due some honor, so he won't die as painfully as a heretic traitor should."

The bike hit a patch of soft sand and almost tottered over, but Shirlene grimaced and forced her right foot down and they lurched forward again. Ray, who'd spread out his arms for better balance, almost toppled off the back. Reflectors glittered on the spokes, streamers dangled from the end of the handlebars, and the bike crawled ahead.

Johnny Nemo looked back to me. "But that's not it. I know you. Better than you know yourself, probably. You're up to something, but it won't work. You're soft. You may have some scheme, but you can't stop me. Even if you could, you wouldn't have the...

Shirlene ching-chinged the bike's bell and I looked up just as she hit the surf.

Johnny Nemo turned in time to see the bike flung up by the next wave, and Ray, sleek and fast as a dolphin, arcing up out of the water. Shirlene was thrashing; I hoped she knew how to swim.

Johnny N. spat out something curselike and arcane. Lightning split the sky in a dozen places, but it was too late—Ray had just disappeared into the side of the water-mountain. A ripple-door closed after him.

The wind picked up and it started to rain.

Johnny Nemo looked at me like he couldn't decide what kind of violence he should visit on me, a bullet or a blast of lightning.

While I'd been distracted by trying distract Johnny N., I'd lost Dean—his souls were all Lantean now. At a nod from Johnny Nemo, he pinned my arms behind me.

Icy rain pelted down on us. Johnny Nemo eased the pistol's hammer back into place, and tucked the gun into back in his jacket pocket.

"Too bad about your brother," he said. "When fish-boy comes back, I'm sure he'll be able to fix up the others. But Dean knew what was happening. That makes all the difference in the world."

Johnny Nemo began to back away. "I've got tricks." His face crumpled up in what I thought was rage, but he laughed. "Yeah, I've got more tricks."

The first few Lantean-ghost-possessed tourists stepped into the water. The rest of the crowd shuffled close behind them, their faces slack and empty. The ocean drew them like a homing instinct.

Johnny N.'s laugh broke off with something like a sob, and he sprinted away down the beach.

Out in the waves, Shirlene was still thrashing and sputtering.

"Dean," I said. "C'mon, Dean. It's over."

He kept my wrists pinned. Rainwater ran down my arms and hands; I shivered nonstop.

"Do you think Ma's really going to be happy as an acolyte?"

No response; no loosening of his grip.

"Shirlene's drowning, Dean."

For an instant, the pressure on my arms faltered.

"If one of us doesn't help her," I said, "she's going to drown."

I pulled free. One of Dean's souls, the red one, was his own again. The other two were still the guard, but their edges were getting hazy.

Tourists and people we knew were still shambling by us to join the crowd standing in the surf. Mr. Terranno stepped on my feet as he passed and Bernadette bumped me from behind, her face blank as a mask.

I grabbed Dean by the lapels and threw him into the water. A wave caught him and rolled him in the sand, and when he got up, he was cursing and he had seaweed across his face, but he was Dean again.

I splashed past him. "Shirlene! Now! Come on!"

I have no idea if he understood, but he waded after me as I pushed through a clump of humming acolytes—Ma might have been one of them—and dove toward where I'd last seen Shirlene.

When I came up for air, I was glad for the torrential freezing rain—it washed the stinging saltwater out of my eyes. I couldn't see anyone. A wave broke over my head and I coughed and gasped, treading water in my waterlogged and increasingly heavy suit. The cold of the water made it hard to get a full breath, and my mouth was all salt.

Dean's voice was behind me: "I've got her."

He'd just gotten her far enough in that she could get her feet under her again. They huddled together in the shoulder-deep water, just on the edge of the slack-faced crowd whose Lantean ghosts hung over them like heat mirages.

My suit was still too heavy. I kicked off my shoes, and tried to shrug out of my jacket but had to give that up since all I was managing to do was to tilt my face further down into the water. I choked on the next wave and the one after that hit before I'd gotten any air. I flapped my arms and beat my legs without finding the surface. I was getting colder, and slower. The world underwater was as green as the inside of the Jade Arcade. I heard the murmur of far-off voices, the hooting of underwater horns.

Hands grabbed me by the jacket shoulders and hauled me up. I spit and gasped, salt-sting blazing up my nose and down my throat. Someone was pulling me toward the shore and the waiting crowd. I twisted my head around, expecting to see Ray, but it was Dean.

"That's it," said Shirlene when we reached her. "Calm now. Take a good breath." As the waves came in, she bobbed like a mermaid.

I looked out at the empty, rain-beaten sea. The wall of standing water towered over us. In its depths, I thought I saw a shimmering of light.

"They're coming," I said, and wound up with another mouthful of seawater, which brought on another round of coughing and spitting.

"I've got you," said Dean.

Over the wind, I could hear a sound like whale song or a chorus of far-off voices. All the ancient Lantean ghost-auras dimmed for a second, and the crowd began to shamble forward again, like they were going to swim out into the sea. I was freezing; I had to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from rattling and I was shivering so hard I shook. I concentrated on watching as the wavering glimmers in the water grew stronger, nearer.

I was just thinking that I could probably see those lights just as well from up on the shore when Ray came back out of the wall of water. He wasn't alone; there were a dozen manta-people with him, men and women, old and young, all of them carrying spheres of glass-lace.

Ray bobbed up to me. "We take the old spirits away," he squeaked.

"Thanks," I said. I had too many questions to figure out which one to ask. "Where?" was all that I managed to get out of my mouth.

"We send them on the deep road home," said Ray. "Back where they should be."

One of the manta-people chirped at Ray, an older guy with gray hair and deep-creased wing membranes. His grandfather, maybe? It seemed he was calling Ray back to the task of rolling the glowing spheres over the faces of the possessed. The Manta-Boy took one from a younger-looking woman—his sister maybe? or girlfriend?—and ran it over the forehead of Miss Willard a/k/a Madame Mystico. The orbs glowed brighter and brighter as in the Manta people's hands as they soaked up the Lantean auras; they were little cages, soul-traps.

All around me, the formerly possessed were coming back to themselves, realizing that they were standing fully dressed in the ocean in the middle of a rainstorm. Someone was shouting, but most were just standing there, blinking like they'd just woken up. Dean was leading Ma back to shore. A big wave came in and soaked me to the armpits; it caught a few of the shorter children by surprise, and they squawked and spit the salt water.

"Everybody back on the beach!" I yelled, bouncing up as high as the next wave would take me. "Out of the water! Now! If someone's having trouble, help them. If you need help, give a shout. Otherwise, keep quiet." The crowd obediently turned and began slogging ashore. I don't know if they thought I was some kind of lifeguard or if Johnny Nemo's magic left them susceptible to anyone's instructions; as long as they didn't drown, I didn't care why they obeyed. Dean waded back out and helped me coach, cajole and carry the last of the stragglers up onto the sand.

My soul-vision was starting to fade, but I could see that everyone was back to being entirely their modern selves. Old man Terranno was spreading his soaked lab coat like a blanket over a pair of girls who looked like they were no more than five, and probably twins. The janitor from Wellington's World was weeping uncontrollably and, from the look on his face, without any idea why. The mummy lay, oozing and legless, beside him on the sand. Ma was yelling at Dean; Dean kept starting his explanation over and over, but she kept interrupting him. I didn't think I could help any, so I guided Marie from the Sands back onshore.

I saw Johnny Nemo, tiny in the distance, still running. He was past Twin Lights, well beyond the far side of our old territory. He'd ditched his coat, and I could see the black lines of his suspenders against the back of his white shirt. Then a gust of rain and mist came between us, and when the wind slackened again and I could see, he was gone.

Some of the crowd had remembered they were firefighters, paramedics or nurses. Bernadette and the short-order chef from the Sands took a few of the roller skate waitresses and ran back to the radiant wreck that had been the Jade Arcade, saying they were going to see if they could get the kitchen running to get some coffee brewed or soup heated—anything to ward off hypothermia. The paramedics followed with the worst-chilled, the kids and the elderly. Everything was getting organized again. They didn't seem to need me anymore, and I was OK with that.

A nurse was checking Neptune Slim's pupils. "He doesn't look too bad," she said, "but I wouldn't want to move him without a back board. There should be one over at the lifeguard station." I trotted off to find it.

Wrestling the board back against the wind wasn't easy, and would have been nearly impossible if Dean hadn't found me given me a hand.

"Mom's OK?" I asked.

"She's helping Marie and Bernadette in the Seaview Room. They're getting people in out of the storm. She doesn't remember anything."

When we got back to Neptune Slim, we found Shirlene and Ray standing over him.

"That woman went to get some of those paramedic fellows to move him," said Shirlene. "Seemed to know what she was doing." She was still a bit bent over, but wasn't wincing in pain any longer. Ray supported her under one arm.

"Are you OK?"

"Sure, sure," she said. "I'm tougher than I look. Could use a cigarette, though."

"If I had one, it'd be a little hard to light." I rang water out of my fedora; there was no way it would ever have its old shape again. I put it back on.

The sky was lightening up a little, but the rain poured down unchecked. Behind the new glow, electric lights flickered on inside the Arcade.

"Thanks for the thing with the souls." I said to Ray. It was strange seeing him among other Manta-People; it made him seem more ordinary somehow. That, and the fact that he was shivering almost as much as I was. "I guess you'll be going home now."

"What?" said Ray. "Going? No—this now is our home."

Ray's people were continuing to emerge from the wall of water. In twos and threes, they hauled baskets and nets of their possessions up onto the beach; a few of the waterlogged tourists and shopkeepers were helping them ashore.

"The bell can't be unrung," I said.

I regretted saying it as soon as the words were out of my mouth: Dean looked defeated, (as if he realized how much chaos and destruction he'd caused.) I couldn't leave him like that—after I bore some of the blame myself, and Johnny Nemo was more at fault than either of us—but before I could think of what to say, Shirlene put in with:

"That's not a bad thing. I won't have to travel so far to see Lantis now."

"Yeah," said Dean after a moment. "We get a new Lantis, and get to keep our old lives as well."

Ray nodded. "Much better, yes."

At that point, none of us could think of anything further to say and silence stretched out between us. We watched the last of the Manta-People coming up out of the water, a family with three kids who seemed a bit unsteady on their feet. Ray whistle-spoke some kind of greeting as they passed and they chattered politely back. It seemed we were in for a complicated, interesting future.

The ridge of standing water dwindled as fast as it had risen, until a couple big waves came along and erased it completely. We just stood there for a couple minutes, and it might have been any storm soaking us, the end of any day.

When it didn't seem like anyone else was going to break the silence, I spoke up. "Why are we still hanging around out here?"

As if on cue, Dean, Shirlene and Ray shrugged in unison.

I turned and trudged up the slope of wet sand, with my brother, the mermaid and the Manta-Boy beside me, the four of us pushing forward through wind and drizzle toward the glow of the Arcade.

The End

Story copyright Rudi Dornemann, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com