Chapter 5: A Dark and Stormy Night
"Thanks dad, bye!" Cas dragged his suitcase up the steps of Number 7, East 77th street, the household of the Gaunts, and rang the doorbell. Not two seconds later, John answered the door, grinning.
"Hi, Cas!" he said. The Gaunts' cat, Monty, came to the door, meowing his hello at the newcomer. John shoved Monty roughly back inside with his foot, in order to prevent escape. "Come in, Holly's upstairs with Phil." Cas dragged his suitcase into the enormous front hall, containing Mr. Gaunt's impressive collection of artwork. Cas noticed Holly's brand-new cherry red suitcases and matching messenger bag, and set his own, old, enormous brown suitcase beside them.
"Where's Mark?" Cas asked, nodding to a large, black, and battered suitcase that rested behind Holly's bag. John made a face.
"He's talking to my dad." he said, as though that explained everything. Cas's eyebrows popped up in surprise.
"What about?" Cas queried curiously.
"Art. They're talking about all the art we have here. And how great it is." John made another face. "I can't stand living in an art gallery. At least, that's what it feels like sometimes. You know what I mean?" Cas just laughed. He had been to the Gaunt house before, to attend a dinner party that John and Philippa had invited him and Holly to. In point of fact, he rather liked the works of art that were scattered tastefully around the house. This was partially because he had won the game of 'hidden objects' Holly had challenged Cas and the twins to then. Cas looked at the nearest painting, a still life with a bowl of peaches, and remembered how he had noticed that the tablecloth underneath the silver bowl was maroon, and not simply purple or red. His musings were interrupted by the appearance of Holly and Philippa, seemingly racing each other down the stairs. Philippa reached the bottom first, jumping the last step and skidding to a stop a few feet away from where Cas and John were standing.
"I win!" she declared triumphantly. Then she noticed Cas, and Monty, who by now had come over to rub himself against Philippa's shins, meowing in the hope that he might get some food. Philippa ignored the animal and politely said hello to Cas, still panting from her sprint down the stairs.
"So, I take it you won. Care to tell us what you won at?" John had raised his eyebrows at his twin sister. Philippa smiled sarcastically at him.
"We were racing to see who could run down three flights of stairs the fastest. And that just so happened to be me."
"Only by a hair's breadth," teased Holly, who was a good sport about such things, and glad that Philippa had won the race, especially since Holly had won the game of chess they had played after only half an hour of playing.
Philippa laughed. "Well, now we're all here, we should get going, shouldn't we? John, what happened to Mark?" Before John could answer, Mark and Mr. Gaunt came into the room, both laughing. Holly rolled her eyes in exasperation. Sometimes it seemed as though once he got started, Mark wouldn't shut up until the cows came home. Not that these cows ever did.
"Mark! Hurry up!" Holly scolded her brother. Mark shot her a look and said goodbye to Mr. Gaunt.
"Thanks again for paying for this trip of ours. You really do have no idea how much it means to Holly and me." Mark was saying.
Mr. Gaunt waved his hand dismissively, as if to say money meant nothing to him. "You kids go and have fun in London, and tell Nimrod that I said hello."
Outside, two yellow cabs pulled up in front of Number 7.
"The taxis are here, dad." Philippa informed her father after she glanced out the front window. Mr. Gaunt checked his watch.
"They're right on time. Come along then, everyone. Time to leave for the airport."
Twenty minutes later, the two taxi drivers had expertly navigated their cabs through the evening New York rush hour and stopped off at the airport, where John, Philippa, Holly, Cas, and Mark exited. John and Philippa led the group to board British Airways flight #2565, bound for London.
"Here, kiddo." Mark took out a blue plastic pillbox with Holly's claustrophobia medicine in it. Mark extracted one of the shiny silver pills and plunked it onto Holly's outstretched palm. Without pausing to look at it, Holly swallowed the pill. Immediately, a warm feeling spread from her throat to the rest of her body, making her feel as though she could have been trapped inside a matchbox and she wouldn't have minded. "Dr. Murphy gave us enough for the whole summer. You're supposed to take one every four hours, so don't forget to remind me."
On the plane, Holly sat next to Cas, who was breathing very heavily, trying not to panic.
"What's wrong?" she asked him, feeling perfectly calm
"It's awfully small in here," Cas said, eyes wide with panic. "And does that flight attendant have to close the door?" Holly looked at her friend, a sort of new understanding spreading across her face.
"Are you claustrophobic, too?" she asked Cas. Cas nodded, and then, seeming to remember something, he reached into his pocket, to pull out a blue plastic pillbox, identical to the one containing Holly's medicine. He took out a silver pill and swallowed it, immediately becoming calmer.
"I almost forgot I had these," he explained. "Dr. Murphy gave me a whole bunch. Silly me." Cas shrugged, and Holly punched him gently on the shoulder, laughing.
For awhile, Holly and Cas watched a few westerns they had been meaning to watch (Cas was absolutely without mercy when it came to teasing Holly about her immense liking for Clint Eastwood) and after that, Holly convinced Cas that they ought to read for a bit. Holly was just reading Edgar Allan Poe's poem Eldorado, which was in her collection of "Great American Poetry" for some reason, but it was Holly's favorite poem, when she fell fast asleep, the words of Eldorado seemingly echoing in her head.
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
After dreaming the events of the poem, and a few commercials, Holly woke up suddenly to find that it was very dark indeed. Almost black. Holly felt very claustrophobic, so she felt her way across the aisle to wake her brother up.
"Mark? Mark! Wake up, I need my medicine." Holly saw Mark stir and heard him grunt.
"Here, take it." He muttered, and handed her the pillbox. Holly took it and fished out a pill, which she swallowed. A fork of lightning flashed across the sky, and something shook the plane so that Holly almost fell over. The flight attendant, a young woman from London who did not enjoy flying at all, but worked as a flight attendant because it paid her bills, helped Holly up.
"Are you all right?" the flight attendant asked Holly, a perceptible tremor in her voice. The storm was beginning to get rough, and that was never fun. "I hate flying, myself. But it's this work that helps pay the bill, so I don't mind terribly. But I do wish that this storm would end. It's nerve-wracking enough to be flying miles above the ocean in a big metal canister without the added fear of being knocked out of the sky!" Part of the reason that the flight attendant was talking was because, somehow, the sound of her own voice made her feel better. Almost as if she were on terra firma, chatting with one of her friends at a cafe. Holly nodded politely at the woman, feeling rather sorry for her. It would be nice if the storm cleared up. Holly sat back down and tucked her medicine into her pocket, after which she fell asleep thinking how nice it was that even though this woman hated flying, she still did her job without wavering. A nice woman like that deserved something good to happen to her.
It seemed like only seconds later when Cas was shaking her awake. Holly yawned and rubbed her eyes.
"Wake up, Hol, we're almost in London!" Cas prodded Holly again, and Holly waved his hand away blearily.
"What happened to the storm?" she murmured, yawning again.
"What storm?" Holly looked out of the window on the other side of Cas, and it was true. There was no storm, and the sun was already high up in the sky.
"How about that?" Holly said. "A little while ago, it was storming like the dickens, and now, it's as clear as clear can be."
"Whatevs, Hol. Oh, look, we're landing!" They were indeed, landing, and the flashing sign that told everyone to fasten their seatbelts began to blink.
"Look out London, here we come!" Holly grinned at her best friend, and Cas grinned back.