The Collectors #2

by Jacqueline West

  “Quick!” Pebble commanded, whirling away. “. . . the stairs!”

  The pale splotch of her dress bounded up a wide wooden staircase. Van chased after it. He’d just reached the second step when a flash of metal streaked across his eyes.

  The battle-ax smashed into the staircase. Wooden steps splintered. Shards flew and fell. Van staggered backward. The suit of armor hoisted its ax and brought it down again, obliterating the next stair.

  It wasn’t aiming at Van at all.

  It was destroying the stairs.

  Trapping Pebble above, and Van below.

  Across the growing chasm, Van could see Pebble fling out her arms toward him, her open mouth shouting something he couldn’t hear.

  Van took one more backward step. Then he burst forward, leaping as high and as hard as he could. His feet wheeled over the missing stairs. Air rushed against his skin as the battle-ax swung behind him, its edge grazing the sole of one shoe.

  He landed, off-balance and gasping, on the upper steps.

  Pebble grabbed him with both hands. She hauled him to the top of the flight, not stopping to glance back until they were safe behind the banister of the upper hall. There, they both peered down into the huge chamber.

  The suit of armor was still hacking at the staircase. If they needed to escape the house now, they would have to find some other way.

  “He’s using wishes,” Van panted. “Mr. Falborg. To stop us.”

  “. . . keep us away,” he thought he heard Pebble answer over another creak and smash. “Musty old house.”

  We must be getting close.

  “Where do you think he is?” Van called as Pebble led the way into a hall lined with closed doors.

  Her answer was lost in the pound of running feet.

  “She says she has to get something,’” Barnavelt explained, turning around to face Van. “Hey! Van! Where have you been?”

  Pebble threw open the door at the very end of the hall. Van slipped through after her. Enough moonlight filtered through the lace-curtained windows to reveal that they’d entered an ordinary bedroom.

  An ordinary, very prissy, bedroom.

  A canopy bed stood in its center, piled with a mound of china dolls. Van spotted a matching dresser and vanity, and a shelf lined with dancing porcelain girls in skirts that looked like upside-down tulips.

  “Is this your room?” he asked wonderingly.

  Pebble’s head was buried in the closet. She whipped around, dragging something dark and lumpy out with her. “It’s Mabel’s room,” she said.

  She shook out the lumpy object. It was a coat—the same dingy, too large, full-of-pockets coat that Pebble had worn when Van first spotted her beside the fountain in the park. It was the coat that Pebble—the old Pebble, the real Pebble—had always worn.

  She pulled it on, looking more like she was sinking into a warm bubble bath than into a lumpy piece of wool. The white sundress disappeared beneath it. Pebble stood up straighter. Her eyes glinted like pennies at the bottom of a fountain.

  “That’s better,” she murmured.

  “Much better,” agreed Barnavelt, rubbing his head against its dingy collar.

  Pebble patted the coat’s many pockets, as if checking for objects she already knew would be there. From one of the large inner pockets, she pulled out a flashlight and clicked it on.

  “There,” she said, tilting the flashlight so that Van could see her mouth. Her eyes glittered in its beam. “Now we find my uncle.”

  They ran back along the corridor. Pebble’s stride was straighter and stronger than before, which made Van’s straighter and stronger too. They charged along, the flashlight’s beam slicing the dark ahead of them, until Pebble veered into the hallway crammed with kites.

  Pebble muttered something under her breath.

  “What did she say?” Van asked.

  “A rude word,” whispered Barnavelt, awed.

  “Why?”

  “She said she didn’t mean to take this route, but—”

  A bird-shaped kite dove from the ceiling.

  Barnavelt broke off with a squeak. The kite flew at Pebble, its string unraveling behind it. Pebble ducked, but the kite ducked with her, circling, its string forming a tightening loop around her limbs.

  Before she could break free, another kite swooped down. Then a dozen. Then more.

  Three paper kites whipped past Van’s neck. He threw up his hands protectively, and the kites’ edges slashed burning trails across his palms. Tangling strings and kite tails wrapped around him. The harder he fought, the harder the kites whirled, more and more of them joining the bright cyclone that spun around him. Rope burns and paper cuts crisscrossed his arms.

  “Pebble!” he called.

  But there was no answer that he could catch—just the flash of her light hitting the floor, its beam streaking across the walls before going still.

  Van squinted through the whirling kites.

  A few steps away, Pebble writhed in a tornado of kites, her body wrapped like a bug in spiders’ thread. Barnavelt ran frenziedly back and forth across her shoulders.

  “Barnavelt!” Van yelled, wriggling one hand through the strings that tightened around his neck. “Use your teeth!”

  “I already tried!” the squirrel shouted back. “Kites don’t care if you bite them!”

  Van slapped two kites aside with his freed hand. “Use your teeth on the strings!”

  “Oh!” Barnavelt dove toward Pebble’s neck. With three rapid bites, he gnawed through the mass of strings.

  Pebble thrust her arms upward. Fibers popped as she pushed and thrashed, shoving the knots down to her ankles. Barnavelt lunged from her shoulders to Van’s, biting at his strings until Van was free too. Kicking off the heaps of thread, the three of them pelted to the end of the hall, Pebble snatching up the flashlight as they ran.

  They skidded through a heavy door. Van slammed it shut behind them, following Pebble’s light down yet another corridor. Pebble shouted something over her shoulder—something with the words “safe” and “fast” tangled in it. But Van suspected that they wouldn’t be safe anywhere.

  Mr. Falborg wasn’t just using wishes to keep them away. Intentionally or accidentally, his wishes were trying to hurt them. Or to stop them for good.

  They ran past a ballroom with a parquet floor gleaming like black ice, and a high-ceilinged gallery of paintings that shone like oil slicks in the moonlight. They passed dim rooms with open doors, where shadow boxes full of trinkets glittered softly. In one room, Van caught sight of a case filled with what looked like superhero figurines. He halted for a split second, one foot wanting to step inside and look closer, the other trying to carry him onward. With a stumble, he turned back to the hallway.

  But the glow of Pebble’s flashlight had disappeared.

  “Pebble?” he called. “Barnavelt?”

  Ahead of him, the hallway bent to the right. Van followed it, jogging into a corridor so dark that he couldn’t make out the walls or floor. There were no windows. And there was no beam of light. He reached for the wall and found the wood of a closed door instead. Next to it was another door, and another, and another, all of them shut.

  “Pebble?” he called again.

  There was no reply.

  Van’s heart tripped.

  If Pebble had just run ahead of him down the hallway, he would have caught sight of the flashlight somewhere in the distance. But it had vanished. Pebble must have stepped through one of these doors. But which one?

  Van fumbled for the knob of the nearest door.

  The room inside was like a library—but vinyl records, not books, stuffed its floor-to-ceiling shelves. Tall, narrow windows let in enough light to assure him that no one was there. Van groped along the hall to the next doorway. Inside, rows of tiny glass windows winked back at him. Dollhouses, Van realized. Dozens of them. Through their open sides, he peeped into miniature dining rooms and kitchens, at tables set with dime-sized plates and silverware no longer than
a staple. They reminded him of his own model stage. For a moment, Van pictured Mr. Falborg carefully arranging these miniatures, decorating the tiny, cozy rooms that no one else would ever touch or see.

  I’m not like that, Van told himself. He thought of the leaf in amber that he’d passed to Peter, and the twinkly marble he’d given Pebble to keep. I’m not. Still, a sad, sick feeling followed him onward, down the hall.

  The third room held a collection of seashells, but no Pebble. The fourth had racks of antique medicine bottles, but no Pebble. More than once, Van groped for a light switch, remembering too late that the switches wouldn’t help. Hans and Gerda had obviously decided to leave the power off and let them stumble around in the dark. Knowing that there would be no light if he needed it—he didn’t even know where to search for a flashlight or a match—made the sick feeling worse. His breath came in tight, high wheezes. Every shift in the air made him jump.

  He was just edging back into the hall when he heard a sound.

  Van stopped, listening.

  He couldn’t tell where it had come from or what it had said, but it sounded like a voice.

  Pulling his courage tight around himself, he hurried forward.

  The voice spoke again. Van turned his head, trying to catch it. It was a voice. It was calling something. Something that sounded like “. . . Here!”

  “Hello?” Van called back.

  “Here!” the voice yelled again.

  He must have been drawing closer, because the voice seemed clearer now. And it definitely sounded like Pebble.

  Van grasped the knob of the last door in the hall.

  “Pebble?” he called into the opening doorway.

  “Over here!”

  The room beyond the door was dark and cavernous. Van could feel its size in the stillness of the air. Faint moonlight outlined the edges of its thick velvet curtains. As he inched inside, hands extended in front of him, his fingers struck the edges of hard wooden surfaces, scattered bits of furniture filling the floor.

  “Mabel,” called a gentle voice.

  Van froze.

  This voice was too deep to be Pebble’s. It couldn’t have belonged to Hans or Gerda—they were still trapped downstairs, as far as he knew. There was only one other person in this vast house that the voice could belong to.

  Van squinted into the darkness. He couldn’t make out where Mr. Falborg stood. But the voice had to have come from within this room.

  He wasn’t going to face Mr. Falborg in the dark. With a burst of panic, Van raced across the room, bumping tables and shelves as he ran. He ripped the velvet curtains aside.

  Blue light filled the room.

  Mr. Falborg wasn’t there.

  Panting, Van scanned his surroundings. The room where he stood was large, but so cluttered that it was hard to feel its space at all. Every inch was crammed with strange wooden contraptions, some of them small enough to fit in a palm, others as large as a wedding cake, and some larger still—the size of wardrobes or grandfather clocks. Wires and cogs and other odd brass parts gleamed in the moonlight.

  This was Mr. Falborg’s music box collection.

  On the table nearest Van was something that looked like a huge metal morning glory. Its stem sprouted from a wooden box. As Van watched, a cylinder on the box began to spin.

  “Mabel,” called Mr. Falborg’s voice. “Mabel. Mabel.”

  Van grabbed the spinning cylinder. The voice stopped. Stillness filled the room.

  Relief, and then a fresh wave of worry, swept through Van. Was this all a trick? What was going on?

  “Over here!” called Pebble’s voice from somewhere in the darkness.

  Van’s heart lifted. But with only one hearing aid, it was harder than ever to tell where the voice had come from.

  “Pebble?” he shouted back.

  He scanned the jumbled furniture. Was Pebble hidden behind a shelf? Was she trapped in a big wooden cabinet? Where else could she be?

  From close by, Mr. Falborg’s voice spoke again.

  “Mabel . . .”

  Van whipped around. The machine had turned itself back on. As Van stared, its cylinder spun faster and faster, the name smearing into a chant. “Mabel. Mabelmabelmabel . . .”

  Before Van could grab the cylinder, another sound stopped him. It was a loud, clanging, tinny sound—the sound of a very old music box playing a waltz. A machine to Van’s left clicked into motion, its black disk spinning, and a soprano’s voice pealed through the room. There was a blast of what might have been trumpets. Van thought he caught the blare of organ pipes. Then, one after another, every music box in the room burst to life.

  Disks whirled. Keys clacked. Noise thickened in the air, leaving nothing for Van to breathe. He stumbled toward the door, feeling like he was balanced on a high ledge, with rain and wind battering him from every side.

  A banging, thumping sound joined the storm. Van couldn’t tell where it came from, whether it was one of the machines or something else entirely. But it was forceful enough that he could feel it shaking the floor.

  He tried to focus on that feeling. But the music blared louder. The thumping came faster. Noise crammed his head until his skull ached.

  Van stumbled to the doorway. He was about to plunge back into the dark hallway, leaving the noise behind, when he heard the scream.

  Its frequency snagged Van like a line of razor wire. It was too clear and sharp to have come from a machine. This was the sound of something in pain. Something real. Something that reached straight inside of him.

  Van rushed back into the room.

  He tugged handles out of cranks. He slammed the lids of tinkling music boxes. He shoved one jangling contraption to the floor, where it smashed to splinters.

  But he’d already lost the scream. The noise had knocked him off course.

  “Over here!” called Pebble’s voice.

  The recording of Pebble’s voice.

  How hadn’t he noticed before? The voice wasn’t real. It had never been real. It was only another trick.

  Furious now, Van crashed through a row of tall cabinets, lunging into a corner where another metal morning glory sat on a velvet-draped table. A vinyl record spun beneath it.

  “Over—” said Pebble.

  Van ripped the record from under the needle. Pebble’s voice slurred and vanished. He hurled the record across the room, where it hit the wall and shattered.

  Van stood, breathing hard, using the scraps of all his senses. He ignored the spinning disks and moving keys, all the things that didn’t matter. He waited. And then, just below him, in the shadows where the moonlight couldn’t reach, his eyes caught a tiny twitch. The twitch of something alive.

  Van dropped to his knees. He swept his palms across the floor. His hand struck something that moved. He patted cautiously at its edges, squinting through the dimness. It didn’t feel like a music box. It had a flat wooden base with metal parts bolted to it, and when Van touched its side, he found a row of sharp, jagged teeth.

  It was a rattrap. A large one.

  And pinned between its jagged teeth and its metal arm, blood dulling his silvery fur, was Barnavelt.

  The squirrel had followed Pebble’s voice too.

  19

  Trapped

  Van’s heart slid into his stomach.

  “Barnavelt.” He leaned close. “Can you hear me?”

  For once, the squirrel kept silent.

  As gently as he could, Van tugged the trap across the floor, into a beam of moonlight.

  Barnavelt’s eyes were closed. Shivers shook his body. The trap’s metal teeth had caught him on one side, at the top of a rear leg. A gleaming black trail of blood marked the trap’s path across the floor.

  Van’s heart and stomach plummeted toward his shoes. He patted desperately at the metal rod, but he couldn’t find a button to release it. He couldn’t risk prying it open only to have it spring shut again. He was so focused on the trap that for a while he couldn’t hear the voice shouting his name
.

  “VAN!” the voice bellowed. “VAN!”

  Van listened. This voice wasn’t a recording. It wasn’t even coming from inside this room.

  As the last few music boxes wound to a stop, he heard it again.

  “VAN!” it screamed. “VAN, GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

  Pebble.

  Like he was lifting a piece of blown glass, Van settled the trapped squirrel against his chest. Warm splotches of blood seeped through the front of his dress shirt.

  The thumping sound grew clearer as he hurried out into the hall. Pebble’s yells grew clearer too.

  “VAN! GET ME OUT!”

  The door across the hall shivered in its frame.

  Van grabbed the knob and wrenched it sideways. The door flew open.

  “. . . didn’t even . . . shut and locked behind me!” Pebble shouted, bursting out into the hall. “I’ve been shouting and shouting, and—”

  Her eyes flicked to the object pressed to Van’s chest. Something terrible passed over her face. “What . . .”

  “Barnavelt,” Van managed. “In a rattrap.”

  Pebble dragged them into a room lined with tall windows. Shelves crammed with antique toys stood all around them, motionless animals and untouched dolls staring blankly down.

  Van set Barnavelt on the floor before the windows. The only sound Barnavelt made was a tiny, breathy whimper, so thin that Van could barely hear it.

  “. . . Hold the sides?” asked Pebble, in a voice that sounded like she had swallowed something sharp.

  Van steadied the trap with both hands. Delicately, Pebble wormed her fingers under the metal bar and pried it back.

  Barnavelt didn’t move. Even his shivering had stopped.

  Pebble lifted him from the trap’s metal teeth. His body lay limp in her hands, small droplets dribbling from his back paw.

  Pebble cradled Barnavelt to her chest. She bowed her head, enclosing him between her arm and chin, as though he might slip away. She mumbled something. The only words Van caught were Uncle Ivor. The look on her face told him everything else.

  Van wanted to comfort her, even if he didn’t believe his own words. “Maybe Mr. Falborg didn’t try to hurt him. Maybe it was an accident. A wish gone wrong.”