Read Online Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales by Mark O'Donnell - Free Book Online Page A

as if she had just awakened into an intense and unconvincing fiction. “The—! The—!” she began, and fell senseless to the floor.
    “Gee, that’s not much to go on,” said Bitty gravely. “So many things begin with ‘the.’ ” She knelt to examine her unkempt relation.
    “There may not be anything to worry about,” offered Anodyne faintly. “She does this every night, and sometimes she doesn’t get up till morning.”
    “Yes, but this is early afternoon,” Bitty pointed out sternly. “Aunt Addle wouldn’t abuse her only house-dress this way.” She felt for a pulse, and her own face paled to a cleanser-colored white. “I—I’m sorry, Anodyne,” she announced finally. “Aunt Addle is … unconscious!”
    Anodyne’s eyes widened, twin burnt cookies of terror. “Unconscious! What does that mean?” Again, Anodyne tended to be a few measures behind the rest of the band.
    “Unconscious is like being asleep—and not even knowing it!” Bitty explained. Silence fell over them like a dust cover.
    Then, just as suddenly, they were interrupted by an ominous clicking sound from the porch. “Bitty!” breathed Anodyne. “Someone—or
something
—is on the front porch! This is scary times six!”
    Bitty opened the thick windowless wooden door. There stood a handsome young man in a pristine lab coat, scanning the mission furniture with a Geiger counter.
    “I’m sorry if I startled you,” he smiled. “I was driving by and noticed a gum wrapper on your porch. I took the liberty of putting it in your trash can, but I thought I should check your radiation levels while I was at it. I hope you don’t mind. I’m Blaine Salvage.”
    Anodyne sighed with relief. “Of course, Doctor Salvage! Bitty, Doctor Salvage is in the teen-surgery ward at Las Perdidas Hospital. He helped me outwith that little problem of mine in
The Mystery of the Co-Ed Dormitory.
This is my cousin, Bitty Borax. She was the one who saved the governor’s dog from those blackmailers.”
    “I certainly read about that, Miss Borax,” the doctor grinned. “You’re beautifully groomed. Will you marry me?”
    Bitty tastefully deflected his question. “Nice to meet you, Doctor.” A pause followed through which a symbolic train could have been driven.
    “I’ll see to this old lady,” Doctor Salvage offered. “She’s dead, I take it?” He stepped inside.
    “Oh, no, just unconscious, thanks!” Bitty answered.
    The doctor lifted Aunt Addle into his arms and carried her out of the room. “I’ll just take her into the kitchen. If you like, I can perform an autopsy. Can I fix either of you a sandwich while I’m in there?”
    “No thanks!” Bitty replied. “I never eat. But you might make one for Anodyne—she’s supposed to stay fifteen pounds heavier than me at all times. But again, Doctor, Aunt Addle isn’t dead.”
    “I’m surprised,” he called from the kitchen. “She got her hands awfully dirty at the old cavern!”
    “Isn’t he strong?” chirped Anodyne secretively. “He must lift a lot of heavy syringes!”
    Bitty was preoccupied, however. “How did he know Aunt Addle was at the old cavern?”
    “Well, maybe he’s a sleuth like you, and knows all the acid sludge in these parts by type.”
    Before they could resolve their curiosity, though, a sound of lumbering footsteps echoed from the cellar, ghostly clunks ascending the steps to the vestibule.With a disdainful clatter, a large, sinister man in a frayed dressing gown appeared, carrying several old-looking hatboxes.
    “Mister Packaday, you startled us!” gasped Anodyne. “We thought you’d be in town at the Carnal Nugget, getting inspiration.”
    Pilsener Packaday was a houseguest of the Borax family, a dissolute but assured writer from the East who had once saved Uncle Fleck in a beanery collapse. He was supposedly on a writer’s retreat, but several times Bitty had seen him furtively descend to the wine cellar when he said he was going out to scan the