Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
An old woman stood before them. Her face was ravaged – whether from illness, or plain old age, it was hard to tell – but her eyes shone out like diamonds. She wore a housecoat and slippers, and smelled faintly of mothballs. A small nine with a grey muzzle and hazy blind eyes tottered at her heels. Ward wondered if she was a Dolittler.
She said nothing, but stood aside and gestured into a hallway. The boys hung their dripping coats on a coat stand then proceeded down the hall and through another door. Ward stopped and stared at the room beyond.
"Cool huh?" Slops said.
The room was full of books. Shelves bulged. Crates of books were stacked on the floor. A staircase climbed to a mezzanine where even more shelves lurked. Ladders on wheels reached up almost to the ceiling, where the rain drummed gently against a convex skylight. Oil lamps burned in corners, painting the books golden.
The old woman and her nine retreated behind a counter, and Ward soon forgot they were there.
The two boys browsed together at first, but soon went off on their own. The books were shelved in no order tghat Ward could discern. Many pertained to Croakumshire itself: its history and geography, detailing the minutae of small-town life and the politics of forgotten times. Ward could find no mention of the strange high house or the Old Wise Woman though. The origins of the village were murky too. He learned that the area's original inhabitants were called Blefuscans, but they were not described. Croakumshire had been a logging town during the Monarchy, to which it paid fealty, but the saw mill had closed after the Revolution, logging had stopped, and the town had become a village, sinking into poverty and obscurity.
He climbed up to the mezzanine. The rain had petered off so gradually that he wasn't certain when it stopped altogether; now there was only the sound of an occasionally turned page, an oil lamp sputtering in a draft, and the thoughtful tick of the antique tempus that hung on the wall above the counter.
He was running his eyes along a shelf of books devoted to animal husbandry – he took none of these out – when he saw a name he recognised. It was printed in gold on a slim, black, cloth-bound volume, squashed between two fat books about livestock. He pulled it out and turned it over in his hands.
It had been made cheaply. The cloth cover was coming apart, and the spine was damaged. The name that had caught his eye was the author's. Jaggles.
The title of the book was: An Account of an Exploratory Expedition into the Isle of Demons, with Materials Relating to its Adjacent Lands. This seemed so unlike anything Jaggles would say that Ward almost laughed out loud. Jaggles had published a book? The idea was absurd. He wasn't even sure Jaggles could read.
When he opened the book to the title page, however, he saw that the author's name was not George, but Frank Jaggles.
Jaggles was an unusual name. The only relative Ward had ever heard Jaggles mention his father, and only in passing. He knew only that this elder Jaggles had vanished years ago, and that his son despised him. Curious.
"Find something?"
Ward spun around. The ragged old man stood beside him. He was not looking at Ward, but running a finger along the spines as if searching for a particular volume. He wore a misshapen hat. His wild hair and beard concealed his face from Ward's view.
"What do you want?" Ward said, taking a backwards step back and hiding the book behind himeself.
The ragged man turned to him. "To say hello."
Ward's mouth dropped open.
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On the Consumption of Frying Pans, by George Jaggles Esq.
