The House on Hoarder Hill

by Mikki Lish

  “We need to somehow get into the attic,” she was saying, when the door to the room swung open.

  “What’s all this?” Mrs. Vilums stood there with her hands on her hips.

  Spencer hurriedly tried to hide the needle under Doug, but it was too late. Mrs. Vilums’s sharp eyes had spotted it, and there was no disguising the sewing kit on Doug’s back. “I hope you weren’t saying you’d try to get into the attic while your grandfather is out.” She stepped into the room. “What exactly do I need to tell him?”

  Hedy’s throat had gone dry. “You don’t need to tell him anything, Mrs. V.”

  “Isn’t that what we do here?” the cook asked tightly. “Blackmail?”

  Hedy hung her head. It was a few long moments before she managed to croak, “I’m sorry about the other day.” She met Mrs. Vilums’s eyes, which was even harder than talking. “We won’t tell Grandpa John about what you told us. Thank you for getting the Woodspies to give back the tooth.”

  Mrs. Vilums’s expression softened. “What of your grandmother?”

  “Well.” Hedy hesitated. “That’s why we need to get into the attic. I think Grandma Rose is somewhere up there. Do you have a key to get in?” As Mrs. Vilums’s face darkened again, Hedy hastened to add, “We promise we won’t tell Grandpa John about your past. It’s just … we need help. Time’s running out.”

  Mrs. Vilums sighed. “I don’t have keys to the locked rooms in this house.”

  “But you’ve been here for ages,” Spencer said. “I thought he trusted you.”

  “Your grandfather seems to have a rule of not trusting anyone.”

  At that moment, Doug interrupted them with a shocked grunt. His tail had disappeared into a knot in the wooden floor. “What’s happening?” he cried.

  “The Woodspies. They’re pulling the needle down!” Spencer exclaimed.

  Mrs. Vilums strode to the knot in the floor and lowered herself to her knees. With a businesslike rap on the wood, she said, “You’re taking too much. Give it back, please.”

  Up bobbed three round Woodspies near Mrs. Vilums’s legs, and they knocked her affectionately. “Yes, all right,” she muttered, patting each one in turn, “now return it, please.”

  The pull on Doug’s tail slackened so that Hedy and Spencer could ease the tail, the thread, and the needle out of the hole in the floor. “Shall I finish this off?” Mrs. Vilums asked the children. They nodded. She expertly made a few more stitches and tied off the thread.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Vilums,” Doug murmured, giving his tail a wag.

  Mrs. Vilums cautiously patted his brown fur, then rose to her feet. “If you two can promise not to try breaking into any other rooms, I’m going to get on with the stew.”

  “We have one more thing to do up here,” Hedy said, thinking of the piano keys, “then we can come down and help you, if you like?”

  “I’d like that.” The woman smiled.

  “She’s not like other grown-ups,” Spencer whispered, staring at her retreating back.

  “No,” Hedy agreed, “but at least she’s on our side this morning.” She began to pack up the sewing kit, which was jogging up and down as the Woodspies played under Doug.

  Spencer took the needle from her and plucked a spool of thread from the small case, placing it and the needle on top of the dark knot in the wooden floor. “Can you guys get us into the attic?” he asked.

  The Woodspies sucked the needle and spool of thread below the floorboards and then disappeared themselves.

  It took Spencer a while to realize the Woodspies had taken the gifts and run. “Well, thanks for nothing!” He glowered at the unmoving floor.

  “It was worth a try,” Hedy said. “Let’s take the piano keys back to Simon.”

  When they knocked on the yellow door, Simon stuck his head through and was overjoyed to see his five missing piano keys in Hedy’s hand. “Mes petits chouchous!” he clucked. “My darlings!”

  “I don’t know how we’re going to get them inside,” Hedy said, for the door remained locked. As they bent on their hands and knees, trying fruitlessly to slide the keys beneath the door, pop, pop, pop!—the Woodspies reappeared. The two bigger ones grabbed a piano key before Hedy and Spencer could stop them, but this time they didn’t disappear with their prize. As though they understood what Hedy had said, they dragged the piano key low enough to slip it inside the room. Moments later, Simon poked his head through the door to report that they had placed the key back on his piano.

  “It is broken, but at least it is back home!” He beamed.

  The smallest Woodspy, however, had been struggling to capture Hedy’s and Spencer’s attention. As the last piano key was returned by the others, it took a run at Spencer’s knees and bumped him hard.

  “Ow! Hey!” Spencer exclaimed.

  The Woodspy knocked Hedy next. She gave it a reprimanding tap with her finger, but now that it was being noticed, the Woodspy whizzed down the hall, and then stopped, waiting.

  “What’s he trying to tell us?” Hedy wondered.

  The Woodspy flowed on, to the door of the attic and up the doorframe. Then they heard the latch pop.

  See? The needle and thread convinced them to help us!” Spencer said smugly. He kept half a step behind Hedy as they tiptoed to the attic door, which was exactly the same color as the walls, as though doing its best to blend in. “You open it.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Hedy muttered.

  The door didn’t creak, thank goodness; Hedy didn’t think she would be able to smother the butterflies in her stomach if it had. Beyond it was another staircase leading up, with feeble light stretching down from the top.

  “I can stand guard here, if you want?” Spencer breathed.

  “You hate standing guard,” Hedy reminded him.

  They climbed the stairs, holding their breath, and twenty steps later found themselves in the attic. The floor was cluttered with rows and islands of stuff. It was like a maze. Large wooden tea chests were inked with place names such as Siam, Delhi, Nepal, and the mannequins in magician stage costume gave the children an uneasy feeling that they were being watched. Hedy could just make out Grandma Rose’s writing on the window, still visible in the dust.

  Spencer clutched her elbow and pointed at the suit of armor standing in the dark corner. “I wish I could try that on!” he breathed.

  “You’re way too short.” Hedy bent down to the Woodspies butting against their heels and tapped the littlest one. “Where to?”

  The Woodspy streaked away between the clutter to the farthest wall. There, it impatiently rolled back and forth around a rack of suits, and the children moved it to one side. They found another door of plain dark wood, and at its center was a single golden hand.

  “It’s like at Mrs. Pal’s!” Spencer said. “Like Samuel!” He took a step forward and said, “Souvenir voo lemon. Remember the hand.”

  Although the golden hand looked just like the ones at the Palisade, this one didn’t give even the tiniest twitch, let alone play any tricks. The door itself appeared immovable.

  “I wonder whose hand this is,” Spencer said to Hedy. “Which dead magician, I mean.”

  “Or is it Grandpa John’s hand?” Hedy bent closer to study it. The size of the hand and the shape of the fingers seemed like his.

  Spencer reached out to grasp the metal hand before Hedy could tell him not to, in case it set off alarms or something. But nothing happened. The golden hand didn’t turn, move, wave, or beckon them. It stayed outstretched and as lifeless as could be.

  “Can you open this door?” Hedy asked the Woodspies. They quavered in the wood, which she guessed was Woodspy for “no.” “Give it a try,” Hedy said encouragingly.

  She heard a light clinking noise and whipped her gaze around. All was still. Paranoid, she thought to herself.

  The middle-sized Woodspy flowed toward the door, but unlike the other doors of the house, it couldn’t get through. It tried again and picked up speed, but it was like a bowling bal
l being rolled against a concrete wall—the Woodspy made a clonk sound and was repelled backward. The others tried, even the small one, but each time they hit the wood of the door or frame they were driven back and away.

  Hedy tried the golden hand too, hoping she might find the trick of opening the door, but she didn’t have any better luck.

  “What’s in there?” Hedy asked the Woodspies. The three of them gathered and then seemed to have an idea. They flowed together to the wood beneath the door and disappeared. Seconds later, a narrow gap, a little less than a hand span in width, appeared beneath the door where the Woodspies sucked the floorboards down. The gap quivered, as though keeping the wood pulled down was a strain for the invisible creatures.

  “You little geniuses,” Hedy said as she and Spencer scooted forward on their knees and put their heads down to look through the opening.

  They gasped.

  On the other side of the door was another, altogether breathtaking room. If a beautiful moonlit wood could be a performance stage and somehow trapped in an attic, this was it. Velvet curtains of rich red hung down, framing what lay beyond: dark tree trunks and woodland undergrowth that looked very real reached up to air that seemed open to the sky, not a closed-in attic at all. Floorboards receded into dirt and grass. Five torches—long sticks with flames burning from their tops like giant matches—stood like sentries surrounding the object at the center of the room. The moon shone its pale light on it all but most brightly upon a long, glimmering box in the middle.

  “The Kaleidos!” Spencer whispered.

  So Grandpa John hadn’t gotten rid of his Kaleidos after all. It was as long as a coffin but much deeper, made entirely of shiny cubes whose surfaces were multifaceted, like brilliantly cut diamonds. They played the soft moonbeams and reddish flames that lit the magic box in unexpected ways, creating peaks and troughs of reflected light and shadow in constant movement.

  “Can you make the hole bigger?” Hedy asked the Woodspies urgently. “So we can get in?”

  The Woodspies zigzagged to swap positions, but they couldn’t widen the gap much more than they had already. When they hauled downward, disappearing from view, the very floor seemed to fend them off. They came popping back upward, unable to maintain the gap, and it closed up to a fine sliver again, impossible to see through.

  “Darn,” Hedy muttered. It was maddening to be so close to the Kaleidos, and surely to Grandma Rose, but unable to reach her.

  That, however, was the least of their problems.

  Behind them was the sound of metal on metal, a sliding shhhhhk that sounded like a sword being drawn and the creaky clank of a metal foot taking a step forward. The children peered behind them, hoping they were mistaken about what was making the noise. They were not.

  The suit of armor that had looked so still in the corner was slowly but surely on the move. Its position was perfect for cutting off escape.

  “Stop,” Hedy tried, her voice shaking. “We’re the Master’s grandchildren.”

  The suit of armor kept clanking toward them. Across the breastplate, a design of snakes was beginning to writhe and blaze as though lit from within.

  “What do we do? Where do we go?” Hedy asked the Woodspies in a whisper. But the creatures trembled on the spot, not guiding the children anymore. At a particularly loud step, the Woodspies gave a wobble and then disappeared under the floorboards completely.

  “Little cowards!” Hedy fumed. As they scrambled to their feet, she calculated the distance to the stairs and the speed with which the suit of armor was moving. The attic suddenly seemed like a labyrinth of boxes and suitcases, but they might just make it. She grabbed Spencer’s hand to begin making their way toward the stairs, but before they had gone three steps, the suit of armor picked up pace too and pointed the sword at them.

  “This way,” Hedy urged her brother, changing course and pushing him behind a stack of helmets. The clutter not only hampered their getaway, it blocked the suit of armor from taking a direct run at them. In a flash of inspiration, Spencer pushed at a tower of suitcases, and they came tumbling down, light but bulky. The suit of armor paused until the suitcases settled, and then started walking again, kicking things out of its way. Hedy followed her brother’s lead and began shoving things in the path of their pursuer—mannequins, lampshades, boxes. The armor didn’t move all that quickly, but it had an implacable air that was terrifying. If they could lead him farther into the attic, they might be able to loop out beyond him and get to the stairs.

  That sword looked wickedly sharp, and it gave the suit of armor alarming reach. Down it swung. As it whooshed past, they stumbled to the right. A rolling lampshade tripped Spencer, and Hedy fell to the ground over his sprawled-out legs. She tried to push herself away and let Spencer get to his feet. Over her shoulder, she could see the suit of armor gathering for another swing at them. The snakes on its armor were thrashing frantically. She grabbed an old khaki helmet spinning on the floor, then rolled over with a yell to face the sword heading down toward her.

  Hedy punched the helmet upward. The blade glanced off its rounded top, jarring her arms with its force.

  A call came from below. “Hedy? Spencer?” Mrs. Vilums ran up the stairs into the attic.

  “Be careful!” Hedy shouted. “The armor!”

  Mrs. Vilums hesitated only a moment before striding toward the armor, momentarily surprising it into a few steps of retreat, opening up a very narrow gap of escape. She waved a desperate hand at the children, signaling for them to make a quick getaway behind her.

  But the armor caught onto the plan. Raising its sword, it sidestepped to prevent Hedy and Spencer from fleeing.

  “No!” cried Mrs. Vilums.

  Before the children realized what was happening, Mrs. Vilums leapt between them and the suit of armor. The sword began its descent. Mrs. Vilums drove her hand up and caught the blade coming down. She was silent as its edge sheared into her hand, but there was agony in her eyes as the sword stopped, slicing not into flesh but into rock. There was no blood—Mrs. Vilums’s hand had turned to black stone.

  The suit of armor wrenched its weapon back and Mrs. Vilums’s stone hand broke away and fell to the ground. Hedy could feel Spencer seizing her arm in disbelief. She clapped a hand over her mouth. But before the armor could attack again, the floor beneath it rolled and dipped, sending it sprawling with a crash. The Woodspies had reappeared.

  “They’re back!” Spencer shouted.

  “For Mrs. Vilums,” Hedy guessed.

  The Woodspies went berserk in the wooden floorboards, making it roil like boiling water. The armor could not get to its feet; it could not even get to its knees. The littlest Woodspy flowed beneath the stone hand stranded on the floor, pushed it to a knot in the wood, and sucked it down out of sight before rejoining the other two Woodspies, which were still causing havoc.

  “Take me to my sisters,” Mrs. Vilums gasped.

  “What? Where?” Hedy asked. “We should call an ambulance!”

  “No!” Mrs. Vilums shook her head violently. “Garden.”

  Hedy and Spencer held her by the elbows, and they hurried as fast as they could away from the attic, where the armor was now clashing and smashing upon the floor. Mrs. Vilums’s arm was turning from flesh to stone with each step.

  “What’s happening to you?” Hedy asked fearfully.

  Spencer stared at the stone elbow in his hand. “Did the sword do this to you?”

  Mrs. Vilums shook her head. “The stone bench at the bottom of the garden,” she panted, grasping for her cloak as they stumbled outside.

  The garden had never seemed so long as it did during that dreadful flight. Stone spread through Mrs. Vilums’s arms to her torso and began to slow her strides. Hedy and Spencer had to drag her the final few yards to the stone bench, where Mrs. Vilums drew the hood of her cloak over her head and stiffly sank down between the two hooded black stone figures at either end of the bench. She nodded her head left and then right. “My sisters. Maja. And
Ewa.”

  So when Mrs. Vilums had said she wanted to be close to her sisters, she had meant this bench all along; this bench, which, Hedy realized, sometimes had two figures and sometimes had three.

  “Are you all right now?” Hedy asked with tears in her eyes. “Is this where you belong? What’s happening?”

  Mrs. Vilums could not move her head anymore. “We were born of stone. I alone was allowed to transform. But I fear I will not wake from this.”

  “What can we do for you?” Spencer cried.

  Dark, hard streaks now spread over Mrs. Vilums’s face. “All unraveling.” Her eyes, wild now, flickered over the children. “Danger here. Get awa—”

  The final traces of Mrs. Vilums’s pale skin vanished. Her entire form sat locked in black stone, indistinguishable from her sisters except for her missing hand.

  Hedy and Spencer knelt on the cold ground at Mrs. Vilums’s feet. Sniffing back tears, they tapped her on the arm, hoping that she would somehow let them know that she was all right. But maybe she wasn’t.

  Danger here. Get away.

  Hedy got to her feet and pulled Spencer up as well, wiping her wet cheeks. “Come on.”

  Spencer stared at the house fearfully as he followed Hedy up the backyard. “Are we … are we trying to get into the secret Kaleidos room?”

  “The Woodspies couldn’t get us in there. Nobody’s destroying things. I almost fell off the roof. Stan was hurt, Doug was hurt, and now Mrs. Vilums … she’s hurt too, and it’s our fault.” Hedy shook her head. “I can’t let you get hurt too.”

  “Grandpa John’s going to be mad when he finds out we set off that armor.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have made Grandma Rose disappear. Mrs. V’s right. We have to get away.”

  “I want to call Mom and Dad,” Spencer said.

  Hedy put her arm around his shoulders. “Me too. But they’d be on a plane by now. It’s Christmas Eve, remember?”