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"Are you peeking?" E it

The boat his pole from the water, he uncapped the handle to expose a short blade, then held it out to sever the boys’ rope as we drifted by The dog splashed into the water and paddled gratefully away, and howling with rage, the boys began to inoring the apple core hed, turned, and calh so that the boys could see him, but I couldn’t

Whatever they sawfroe, one so fast he tripped and fell into the fetid water Chuckling to hiain

"What’s happened?" Emma said, alarmed "What was that?"

"A Devil’s Acre welcome," replied Sharon "Now, if you care to see where we are, you ive you your gold coin’s worth of tour-guiding with the tie of the tarp down to our chins, and both Eht, and Addison, judging from his wrinkled his nose, at the s all around us

"You get used to it," Sharon said, reading ripped my hand and moaned, "Oh, it’s awful …"

And it was Now that I could see it with both eyes, the place looked eveninto es, some no wider than a board, crisscrossed the canal like a cat’s cradle, and its stinking banks were heaped with trash and crawling with spectral forh it The only colors were shades of black, yellow, and green, the flag of filth and decay, but black most of all Black stained every surface, smeared every face, and striped the air in columns that rose from chimneys all around us--and, more ominously, from the smokestacks of factories in the distance, which announced themselves on the minute with industrial booms, deep and primal like war drums, so powerful they shook everyyet unbroken

"This, friends, is Devil’s Acre," Sharon began, his slithering voice just loud enough for us to hear "Actual population seven thousand two hundred and six, official population zero The city fathers, in their wisdo body of water in whose current we’re currently drifting is called Fever Ditch, and the factory waste, night soil, and animal carcasses which flow perpetually into it are the source not only of its bewitching odor but also of disease outbreaks so regular you could set your watch to them and so spectacular that this entire area has been dubbed ‘the Capital of Cholera’

"And yet …" He raised a black-draped ar a bucket into the water "For many of these unfortunate souls, it serves as both sewer and spring"

"She isn’t going to drink that!" Emma said, horrified

"In a few days, once the heavy particles settle, she’ll skim the clearest liquid from the top"