The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

THE DOLDRUMS AND THE HELMSLEY CURSE. Text and illustrations copyright © 2017 by Nicholas Gannon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.harpercollins.co.uk

ISBN 9780008149437 (hardcover)

EPub Edition © October 2017 ISBN 9780008149451

Version: 2017-10-23

To Patrick and Gannon,

and Staple Guns and Dump Trucks

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PROLOGUE: Snowflakes and Rumors

PART ONE: AN ICEBERG IN ROSEWOOD

CHAPTER ONE: Raven Wood

CHAPTER TWO: An Odd Farewell

CHAPTER THREE: Years of Wonder

CHAPTER FOUR: The Center of a Maze

CHAPTER FIVE: The Greenhorn and His Father

CHAPTER SIX: Bite by Bite and Piece by Piece

PART TWO: JUST AND UNJUST DESSERTS

CHAPTER SEVEN: Murder Is Kind of Serious

CHAPTER EIGHT: Crooked Eustace Mullfort

CHAPTER NINE: Concerning Glubs and Misras

CHAPTER TEN: Over the Garden Wall

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Fearing Disappearing

CHAPTER TWELVE: The Budding Botanist

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Good King Oliver

PART THREE: THE STORM

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Helmsley House Disappears

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Into a Poisonous Dream

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A Long Journey Home

About the Author

Credits

About the Publisher

♦ SNOWFLAKES AND RUMORS ♦

The city of Rosewood was humming with rumors. They swirled every which way, across snowy rooftops and down narrow streets.

“How is it possible? It’s been two years!”

They were exchanged in shops along Howling Bloom Street and slurped in Belmont Café.

“Are you saying you think we’ve been duped?”

“What would they have eaten?”

They were laughed about in student rooms at the Willow Academy and gulped in handfuls at DuttonLick’s sweetshop.

“Weren’t there penguins on the iceberg?”

“You think they survived by eating penguins?”

It was a blizzard of rumors. They piled as high as the snow. There were hundreds of answers to one single question:

ROSEWOOD CHRONICLE

HOW DID RALPH AND RACHEL HELMSLEY

SURVIVE STRANDED ATOP AN ICEBERG?

Ralph and Rachel Helmsley were two of the city’s most famed residents—explorers, once presumed dead, soon to return to their tall, skinny house on crooked, narrow Willow Street. And there wasn’t a single person anticipating the explorers’ return home more than their grandson, Archer B. Helmsley.

“Archer’s dangerous. He set tigers loose in a museum just to see if he could outrun them!”

“I heard he can make acorns explode simply by looking at them.”

“No, that’s impossible. But he can turn a flamingo into a glass of pink lemonade when he’s thirsty.”

In truth, Archer couldn’t make acorns explode or turn a flamingo into a glass of pink lemonade. But with the help of two friends and a life raft, Archer had outrun a pack of tigers. It had happened two months ago, during a botched rescue attempt to find his grandparents—who’d been missing from Archer’s life since he was a mere two days old. As a result, for the past two months Archer had been living at Raven Wood Boarding School. His parents had insisted it was for his own good. And to make matters worse, just before he’d boarded the train north, Archer had discovered his grandparents were not only very much still alive—they were also finally coming home.

So Archer had missed the first rumor spread through Rosewood and the first snowflake fall on Willow Street. And he’d missed the countless others that followed. It had been a particularly cold start to winter—the kind of cold where if you wrinkled your nose, it could remain wrinkled forever. The whole of Rosewood had become a white sea, and the snow only got deeper with each passing day.

♦ CLANKING RADIATORS♦

On North Willow Street, in the cellar of house number 376, a boiler was hard at work, forcing steam into pipes that traveled up four stories to a top-floor bedroom, where a radiator was hissing and clanking and Adélaïde Belmont sat at her desk, writing a letter.

… I haven’t seen your grandparents yet.

But everyone in Rosewood is talking about them…

Adélaïde paused and glanced over her shoulder. Her friend and neighbor Oliver Glub stood a few feet from her desk.

“I might be able to sled over to your bedroom soon,” he said, his face pressed to her balcony window.

Adélaïde joined him, both watching as snowflakes piled the secret Willow Street gardens high.

“I’ve never seen so much snow,” Adélaïde said. “Those garden walls are seven feet tall, but I almost can’t tell where one garden ends and the other begins.”

Oliver lived diagonally across those snowy gardens. Next door to him was Helmsley House. Archer’s house. But Archer’s bedroom was dark. And had been ever since the tiger incident.

“Do you think he knows what they’re saying about his grandparents?” Oliver asked.

“I can’t tell,” Adélaïde replied, returning to her desk. “He’s never written about it. And even if we were allowed to tell him, I wouldn’t know which rumor to begin with.”

Oliver didn’t know either. There were new rumors every day. And they were getting worse.

Adélaïde finished her letter, stuffed it into an envelope alongside Oliver’s, and said, “I’m ready.”

♦ THROW CARES AWAY ♦

At the front door, they pulled on their coats and wrapped their scarves. Adélaïde wedged a second scarf into her boot to fill the gap around her wooden leg. They trudged down the front steps and forged the sidewalk snow trenches. The sun was gone and the stars were out and the lampposts lit their way.

“If I didn’t know any better,” Oliver said, helping Adélaïde over a snowbank, “I’d think we actually made it to Antarctica.”

On the corner, they passed a group of carolers.

Hark how the bells, sweet silver bells

All seem to say, “Throw cares away.”

Christmas is here, bringing good cheer.

They turned onto Howling Bloom Street—a winding lane lined with small shops, including a corner café that belonged to Adélaïde’s father. Bundled store owners stood high atop ladders, decking their windows with lights and garlands and festive displays while shoppers gathered to watch.

“Mind your heads!” Mr. Bray of Bray and Ink shouted as Oliver and Adélaïde dashed beneath his ladder. “That’s bad luck!”

When they reached Belmont Café, their faces were red and stiff, but inside, it was crowded and warm, with steaming cups of coffee all around. Adélaïde scanned the overflowing bar. The barman caught her eye and shouted, “TWO HOT CHOCOLATES, ADIE?” Adélaïde nodded and led Oliver through the buzzing café to a table in the corner. Oliver unwrapped his scarf and tilted his head. Adélaïde did the same. A newspaper had been left on the table.

ROSEWOOD CHRONICLE

ICEBERG HOAX!

Another day, another rumor. Rosewood is perfectly drunk with them. And it’s time you all stop drinking. But before you do, we ask that you stretch out your tankards one last time and allow us to refill them. We at the Chronicle have been informed that Ralph and Rachel Helmsley orchestrated their own disappearance. That’s right, the iceberg was nothing more than a hoax!

Where does this information come from? A man whose name, while not as famous as Helmsley’s, might be familiar to some: Herbert P. Birthwhistle—the sitting president of the Society.

“We’re still gathering information,” President Birthwhistle said via telephone from the Scotland Society. “But I can say without hesitation that the iceberg was no accident. We know the Helmsleys got onto an iceberg and that after an exhaustive search, the Helmsleys could not be found. We believe the Helmsleys did not want to be found.”

For those unfamiliar, the Society is an organization of explorers and naturalists headquartered in Barrow’s Bay.

“I hate to speak ill of a fellow explorer,” President Birthwhistle elaborated, “so I will not go into the details, but while president, Ralph Helmsley had made increasingly bizarre decisions. Many of our members suspected the aging explorers had lost their minds. Many believed they were out to destroy our Society. An effort was taken up to unseat Ralph. When faced with this disgrace, the Helmsleys vanished.

“Vanishing in Antarctica has made legends of already-great explorers. I suspect the Helmsleys desired to join their numbers.

“I’m not sure how they survived. I’m not sure why they’re suddenly coming home. But they are. Society members have been alerted. And I felt it my duty to extend a similar warning to the citizens of Rosewood. It’s not with a light heart that I say the Helmsleys are a danger to everyone.”

“This is bad,” Adélaïde said, tearing the article from the paper as her father wove through the crowded café. He set two hot chocolates before them, and they scooped them up to warm their hands.

“It’s good to see you again, Olrich,” Mr. Belmont said.

“His name is Oliver,” Adélaïde replied, grinning.

“That’s nice.”

A rush of cold air shot through the café as a short woman in a flowery coat dashed inside.

“Cold!” the woman cried, slamming the door behind her. “So terribly cold! So terribly cold indeed! Never in my life, never, not once have I experienced a winter so cold! It truly must be a curse! Yes, it’s the Helmsley Curse!”

Many in the café echoed, “The Helmsley Curse!” The Rosewood Chronicle had coined that phrase to explain why the city was plunging into the harshest winter any of its residents could remember.

“The closer the Helmsleys get, the colder it gets,” someone grumbled. “They’re bringing their iceberg home.”

“They should lock down the port. We shouldn’t let them in.”

The woman in the flowery coat bobbed her head in agreement and squeezed in at the bar. “A quadruple! Make it a quadruple! And make it hot!”

“The cold hasn’t been a curse for business,” Mr. Belmont mumbled, and returned to the bar.

Oliver wiped away his chocolate mustache. “I don’t believe in curses,” he whispered.

Adélaïde pointed out that Oliver also had something of a chocolate beard before responding. “I don’t either. But you have to admit that all of this is very strange.”

“My father says the Chronicle is tabloid trash,” Oliver replied, reading the story once more. His father, Mr. Glub, owned a much smaller Rosewood newspaper called the Doldrums Press. “Archer’s grandparents lost their minds? They wanted to vanish?”

“Who would make that up?” Adélaïde asked, swirling a finger through the steam rising from her mug. “Do you really not believe any of it?”

Oliver opened his mouth to respond, but filled it with hot chocolate instead.

♦ THREE HOURS BY TRAIN ♦

“We’d better go,” Oliver said, gulping the last of his hot chocolate. “They’ll be picking up the mail soon.”

Adélaïde and Oliver left the café and crossed Foldink Street. The postbox was buried in the snow. Oliver wiped the door clean and pulled hard to open it. Adélaïde dropped the letter inside.

“How far away is Raven Wood, anyway?” she asked.

“Three hours by train,” he replied.

And by train was exactly how their letter would travel. It was picked up later that evening, sorted at the post office, sent in a dirty bag to Rosewood Station, and tossed into a mail car. The train pushed north through Rosewood, clanked across a bridge spanning the frozen canal, and continued far outside the city. It snaked a rocky shoreline, billowing smoke high above snow-covered pines, till it arrived in the village of Stonewick. The letters were sorted once more and placed into the back of a mail truck. The truck puttered off into a thick pine forest, slid beneath a crooked wrought-iron gate, and entered a clearing where stood, at the edge of a cliff, Raven Wood Boarding School.

CHAPTER

ONE

♦ RAVEN WOOD ♦

Archer couldn’t sleep. He stretched a frozen hand out of bed and fiddled with the radiator knob, but it was no use. Like many things at Raven Wood, the heating was terrible.

Across the room, his roommate, Benjamin Birthwhistle, was snoring loudly.

Keeping his blanket pulled tight about him, Archer tiptoed to his desk and stared out his drafty window. Morning snow was falling onto the ocean waves, breaking against rocks. It wasn’t exactly a cheery view, but Archer liked it. That ragged coastline connected him all the way back to Rosewood.

He grabbed a pen from his desk and put another X on his calendar. “One day left,” he mumbled.

The train for Rosewood would leave tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow he’d be reunited with Oliver and Adélaïde. But would anyone else be waiting for him? Archer’s parents hadn’t spoken to him since he’d left for Raven Wood, which didn’t surprise him. But during his two and half months at the school, he hadn’t heard from his grandparents either. He hadn’t heard a word since they’d sent him a chunk of iceberg in the post. Were they already inside Helmsley House? Archer didn’t know. And not knowing made him anxious.

Behind him, Benjamin stopped snoring. Archer glanced over his shoulder.

“Why are you up so early, Archer?” Benjamin asked, blinking at him sleepily.

“I was too cold. I couldn’t sleep.”

Benjamin stuck his feet out from beneath the blankets. They were twice the size they should have been.

“Your feet are swollen,” Archer said, sitting down at his desk. “Did the spider come back? Did it bite you?”

Benjamin grinned and shook his head.

The night before, the two boys had gone to war against a large spider that had crawled into their room. Archer threw a lamp, three books, and to Benjamin’s horror, a potted plant, but the eight-legged fiend had escaped unharmed.

“They’re just socks,” Benjamin said over a yawn. “I’ve got four pairs on.” He rubbed his long, tousled hair. A leaf fell out. “But I wonder where that spider came from.”

Archer thought it was obvious. Benjamin’s side of the room was filled with plants, and Benjamin’s desk was barely visible beneath them. They were strange plants—plants unlike any he’d seen growing in the Willow Street gardens.

Archer leaned over to poke at one on Benjamin’s desk. “This one looks like it would sprout spiders.”

“Is that my bog weed?” Benjamin asked. “Or the didactus that sprouted yesterday? If it has pink speckled leaves, then it’s pugwort.”

Archer had learned enough during his time as Benjamin’s roommate to know the plant he was pointing to wasn’t any of those. This one had long, spiraling stems covered in bumps, as though something inside was trying to get out.

“Oh,” Benjamin said, stumbling stiffly to his desk. “That’s my Paria glavra. Be careful with that one. It can be a bit hostile.”

“Hostile?” Archer repeated, and quickly withdrew his hand.

Benjamin opened his notebook and inspected the plant more closely. “Like most Parias, the glavras starts off harmless,” he explained. “But eventually it will become dangerous. Deadly, even.”

Archer threw off his blanket and hurried to the corner sink to wash his hands. The last thing he wanted was to die before meeting his grandparents for the first time.

“The thorns haven’t sprouted,” Benjamin called, measuring the bumps with a pen. “The thorns are what you need to watch out for.”

Thorns or not, Archer should have learned by now not to touch plants unless Benjamin said it was safe. He soaped his hands as Benjamin noted growths and observations in his notebook. It was almost like homework. Benjamin had once told him that if he knew what plants could do, he’d understand. But all Archer thought was that, in a funny way, Benjamin’s long, leafy hair and tall, sticklike body made him resemble one of his seedlings.

“I want to go to the mail room after breakfast,” Archer said, drying his hands and shoving his feet into his boots.

“Again?” Benjamin replied, struggling to pull a third sweater over his head. “That’s why you couldn’t sleep, isn’t it? It’s not the cold. It’s your grandparents.”

Benjamin was right. Archer hadn’t slept for the past week.

“Maybe they finally wrote.”

Benjamin sat on his bed to tie his shoelaces, staring as Archer pressed his ear to the door. Not many students attended Raven Wood, but when the few converged in the dusty, dimly lit corridors, they became something of a thundering horde.

“Let’s wait a moment,” Archer said. “You don’t want to get trampled again.”

“That was terrible,” Benjamin replied, laughing. He pulled a collared shirt from his trunk. “Look. The footprint still won’t wash out!”

Raven Wood students were kept to a very tight schedule, and there were steep consequences for being late. Archer was often late, but he never got into trouble.

Benjamin tossed the shirt back into his trunk. “You’re lucky Mr. Churnick likes you.”

♦ FORTUNATE CONSEQUENCES ♦

Mr. Churnick was Raven’s Wood’s head of school, a somewhat crusty and thickset man whose overgrown teeth were often speckled with bits of cheesecake. Mr. Churnick was terribly fond of cheesecake. He was also quite fond of Archer, which was surprising considering his welcome when Archer had first arrived.

“I’m not in the habit of allowing troubled children into my school, Archer Helmsley. But as it is, Raven Wood has fallen on hard times. So against my better judgment, there you sit.”

Archer’s mother hadn’t spared the slightest detail in listing every offense he’d ever committed. It had all been there in Mr. Churnick’s file, from talking to taxidermied animals to the tiger incident.

“Set tigers lose in a museum, did you?” he’d grumbled. “Nearly got hundreds killed! But your antics only claimed one victim. That’s fortunate. Yes, it says here that you seriously damaged one Mrs. Murk—Mrs. Murkley? You took down Mrs. Murkley? But you’re so… and she’s so—you flattened her with A POLAR BEAR!”

Mrs. Murkley was a former Raven Wood instructor who’d ended up becoming Archer’s instructor at the Willow Academy. Archer, Oliver, and Adélaïde hadn’t been sure what had prompted Mrs. Murkley’s departure from Raven Wood, but knowing her to be a brutish terror, they’d all agreed it must have been something bad—maybe as bad as crushing a teacher beneath a polar bear.

“De-tusked the ol’ boar, did you, Archer?” Mr. Churnick had erupted into laughter and nearly fallen off his chair. “Justice has finally been served! By you! But how did I not hear about this sooner? Good news always travels slower than bad news, I suppose.”

Archer hadn’t understood Mr. Churnick’s mirth at the time. And Benjamin had been no help in figuring it out. Benjamin was a temporary boarder. He only came to Raven Wood when his father, a travel guide, went away for long periods. (Benjamin never mentioned anything about his mother. Archer wasn’t sure if he had one.) But eventually Archer pieced together the Murkley tale.

Though the exact details varied from source to source, all accounts followed the same basic premise: a boy named Phillip had fallen four stories from the Raven Wood rooftops and would have died had he not landed in a topiary shaped like a raven. It was quite a scandal. And Mrs. Murkley was at the center of it. Nothing could be proven, but most parents withdrew their children from the institution, leaving Raven Wood on the brink of bankruptcy. And Raven Wood looked it. The halls were filthy. Lights were always going out. The gardens were overgrown. And that’s to say nothing of the food.

♦ BENJAMIN’S LETTER ♦

Archer and Benjamin scurried into the dining hall and took their usual spot in the corner. A miserable server plopped bowls before them with a surprising thud. Archer pried his spoon out and studied the white, clumpy slop.

“The oatmeal’s getting worse,” Benjamin groaned, staring despairingly at his bowl.

“I didn’t think that was possible,” Archer said, licking his spoon and quickly wishing he hadn’t. “Now it tastes like cardboard and glue.”

“And maybe a pound of lard?” Benjamin suggested.

Two large hands gripped Archer’s shoulder.

“Morning, boys.” Mr. Churnick was making his morning rounds. “Goodness, Archer! You’re an ice cube! Sorry about the heating cuts. I’m doing the best I can. Must find ways to save money.” Mr. Churnick leaned over Archer’s shoulder to inspect their bowls. “At least the food has improved a bit.”

“Would you mind if we skipped breakfast?” Archer asked, dropping his spoon into the bowl. “I want to go to the mailroom.”

Mr. Churnick glanced around at the other students and nodded. “Quickly now. Don’t make a show of it.”

“I actually had a question for you, Archer,” Mr. Churnick continued as they made for the mailroom. “It’s about that Willow Academy. What’s your opinion of it?”

Despite the fact that the school had expelled him, Archer had nothing against it. “It was fine before Mrs. Murkley showed up.”

“That’s what I’m curious about, Archer. I was discussing some important business with Mrs. Thimbleton, the head of school, but she wouldn’t explain why she hired that festering oyster after I fired her. The decision was questionable at best, and I was hoping to get an opinion on the school from someone else.”