“This is where it could all be different for you, Alexander,” Winterbottom said. “This could be your Hollywood ending, your happily-ever-after. You could leave this room right this instant, shut the door forever, and decide that one life is life enough, and that you will live it your own way. You could say, ‘Alexander Baddenfield, the last of the Baddenfields, is no more. He is instead Alexander Not-So-Baddenfield, who hopes to become Alexander Goodenfield, if not one day Alexander Very-Bestenfield.’ The Baddenfield curse isn’t about dying, but the horrible mess you Baddenfields have made of living. All you have to do, Alexander,” Winterbottom said, and took the boy’s gaunt face in his hands, “is say, I will change, unlock yourself from this house, and go out and live your one life.”
Alexander Baddenfield listened to everything that was said by Winterbottom, the only friend he had ever had. He thought it over, and said, “You’ve watched too many movies.”
But Winterbottom didn’t flinch or back down. “If you don’t change, Alexander Baddenfield, I swear to you that I will pack my bags right now, walk out of this house, and leave you forever.”
“You won’t leave,” Alexander said. Not out of spite, or out of meanness, or as a dare, but because he knew it to be true.
“You are wrong, Alexander. You think you’re not, but you are.”
“You won’t leave,” Alexander said. “You can’t. You are a Winterbottom, and I am a Baddenfield, and that’s that.”
“Well, that’s not that for me, not anymore.” Winterbottom wished he had a hat to put on, because putting on a hat in a huff would have made his exit more emphatic, or at least an overcoat through which to angrily stick his arms, but as he had neither, he simply stomped out. He quickly threw some clothes into a suitcase, grabbed his toothbrush, and marched down the stairs.
The drawbridge hummed as it lowered over the moat, that last stretch of canal from Dutch New Amsterdam, and revealed to Winterbottom the perfect New York autumn day, the kind that those Indians who sold their island for $24 in knickknacks must have dreamed about for years after they left. It had been so many weeks since he’d seen the sun, there in boarded-up Baddenfield Castle, that Winterbottom had forgotten what a beautiful day was like.
Or had he never allowed himself to notice them in the first place? So terrified of losing the last of the Baddenfields had Winterbottom been that he had smothered the boy. Otherwise, Alexander would not have been so desperate to test the limits he had set, or returned to them so ferociously. Winterbottom could only blame himself for what had happened, and his greatest fear being nearly realized—Alexander’s final death—wasn’t even the worst part. It was that the boy could no longer face it. Alexander, whose bravery had been his single good quality, no longer had even that.
With slumped shoulders, Winterbottom walked back inside Baddenfield Castle without even having set foot on the drawbridge.
The final end came quickly for Alexander.
By the time it did, his bubble of self-pity and worry had turned into a literal bubble. Having realized that the old castle itself was surely killing him with lead paint, asbestos, and black mold, Alexander had ordered his room to be sealed in plastic. Winterbottom was the only person allowed in, and even then only after he had gone through the antibacterial shower that Alexander had gotten from Dr. Kranstenenif in exchange for back rent. His only other companion was his cat.
“Shaddenfrood, you dumb animal, don’t you know how fragile life is? How easy it is to die? It hardly even takes trying,” Alexander said. “You have all of one measly life left, and yet you lie there, purring—actually purring!—without a thought that one wrong turn and it’s the end!”
All too soon, Alexander developed a sniffle that never got any better. His eyes began to get itchy and water, the sniffle expanded into a cold, and he became ill. All the doctors he had earlier visited now paid him house calls—the second-best doctor in the world, the third-best, the fourth-best, and so on—but none of them could say what was wrong with the boy.
When he felt the first shadowy chill of death that he had felt eight times before, Alexander abandoned his last shred of pride and had Winterbottom call the first-best doctor in the world.
Dr. Sorrow examined the boy, and reexamined him just to make sure his diagnosis was correct. He then put his stethoscope back in his bag and shook his head. “Alexander, you poor, wretched boy,” he said. “By shutting yourself off from the world and all the natural things that keep us healthy, you have developed the most acute case of felis domesticitis I have ever seen.”
“Felis . . . domestic . . . itis . . . ?” Alexander said weakly. “What is it?”
“An allergy to the common house cat,” Dr. Sorrow replied.
Winterbottom stifled a sob; Alexander closed his eyes and nodded.
The doctor showed himself out, while Winterbottom whisked up the cat to remove him.
“No,” Alexander said. “It’s too late.”
“But maybe it isn’t.”
“If there’s one person who knows when it’s too late, it’s me. Just one thing, Winterbottom,” Alexander said, and it took all the energy he had left just to ask the question. “What is your first name?”
“Why, it’s Winter, of course,” he said, taken aback. “My name is Winter Bottom the Eighteenth.”
Alexander smiled and maybe even laughed. If he did, it was with the final breath he ever took, for the last of the Baddenfields was dead.
Forever.
A quietly weeping Winterbottom picked the boy’s body up in his arms and lifted it off the bed. Alexander was as light as a feather. Was it possible that there was one life left in him? Maybe he really hadn’t drowned in the Hudson. Winterbottom gently shook the boy, hoping that he would spring back to life and say something horribly obnoxious. He didn’t.
As Winterbottom left the room with the body, Shaddenfrood jumped onto Alexander’s bed and curled up in the faint hollow that his master had left. The spot was still warm, and it felt lovely. Shaddenfrood purred.
THE END
Well, that sure was a sappy ending! I can’t believe I went out like such a wimp. What was I so worried about anyway? Being dead is cool. Mad cool.
Alexander kept telling himself that, but he didn’t know what being dead for good was really like. The only other time he had really been dead—dead dead—was that first time, when he’d died on the operating table and watched Kranstenenif operate on him from above. This time he saw Winterbottom carry out his dead body and Shaddenfrood leap up on his bed. That made him smile. Shaddenfrood was a Baddenfield. But so were most cats.
The thing was, he just kept watching the same boring thing—his bedroom. It occurred to Alexander that maybe this was all there was after death: your spirit watching over the spot where you died for the rest of eternity. He should’ve died the last time somewhere more interesting. Like the bullring.
Just as Alexander was getting really bored, a change came over him. He began to feel something. Could he be coming back to life? Had he somehow miscounted?
But it wasn’t his old body he was feeling. It was his spirit, and it was getting heavier. It began to sink.
Down through the floor of his room.
Down through the basement of Baddenfield Castle.
Down through the subway.
Down.
Down.
Down.
And although he was probably just imagining it, he couldn’t shake the feeling that things were beginning to get just the teensiest bit warm.
* This story is actually true. (Maybe.)
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The Nine Lives of Alexander Baddenfield Page 8