The Screaming Statue

by Lauren Oliver

  But how could Howie know? Mr. Dumfrey had been careful—obsessive, even—about keeping the children’s identities and relationship to Rattigan’s experiments a secret. He claimed to know nothing about how Rattigan had picked his subjects, or where they’d come from to begin with.

  Then Howie said, “But you know Thomas better than I do. Besides, you’re right. I wasn’t there,” and Pippa’s suspicions passed. He was just being a jerk, as usual. She didn’t know what Max saw in Howie, other than his big blue eyes and neat white teeth and the swoop of his dark hair over his right eyebrow.

  Okay, she did know what Max saw in him—but he was still a jerk, pure and simple.

  “Hey, Pip,” Thomas said, when she squeezed through the costume racks and into the space set apart for the infirmary. “What’d you bring me?”

  She grunted a little as she plopped a stack of books down onto the nightstand drawn up to the bed: Brain Busters, Mind Teasers, Miraculous Mind Benders, and The Colossal Book of Puzzlers, Paradoxes, and Impossible Problems, among others.

  “I figured there must be something here you haven’t read,” she said as Thomas began sorting through the pile. “I thought of trying to bring DeathTrap, but I couldn’t find the mummy’s hand.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Dumfrey took it back,” he said casually. He was sitting up in a small cot, supported by several fluffy pillows. He was shirtless, and Pippa saw cotton gauze packed around his wound. Already, he looked much better. Color had returned to his face and he was breathing easily. “He needed it for the Egyptian exhibit. Besides, you really need the rug to play.” DeathTrap was a game of Thomas’s invention. Much like chess, it featured a series of moving parts, all of them capable of jumping, biting, skipping, or grabbing in different ways. “Oh, good. You brought 100 of the World’s Twistiest Teasers. I was hoping you would have. I haven’t read this one yet.”

  Pippa was relieved that at the very least, Thomas’s accident had seemingly made him forget about the tension of the day before. “Listen to this, Pip. What’s white and black and red all over?”

  Before Pippa could respond that she had no idea, there was a rattle, a muffled curse, and a squeak of wheels, and the costume racks jumped apart as Mr. Dumfrey came barreling through them.

  “The newspaper!” he shouted, clutching a newspaper in one fist and a wrapped football-sized bundle in the other.

  Thomas sagged backward. “How did you know?”

  “Know what?” Pippa and Mr. Dumfrey said at the same time.

  “What’s black and white and read all over? Get it?” Thomas said.

  Mr. Dumfrey blinked at him. “My dear boy, are you sure that sword didn’t go straight through your brain? Where’s Miss Fitch? Where’s Lash?”

  Pippa and Thomas exchanged a look. Two mottled spots of color were spreading across Dumfrey’s cheeks, and his eyes were shining like highly polished stones. Pippa wondered whether the fact that he had been forced to reimburse the audience members their money—bringing the grand total of the museum’s earnings for the week to barely over a dollar—had given Mr. Dumfrey a fever.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Dumfrey?” Pippa ventured to ask.

  “My girl, I am more than all right! I’m a genius. I’ve just had a brilliant idea! A spectacular idea! All because of a newspaper.” He smacked a copy of The Daily Screamer onto the foot of Thomas’s bed. It was the morning edition, which Pippa and Thomas had already seen. On the front page was a headline trumpeting WIFE-KILLER TO DIE IN HOT SEAT, above a cartoon rendering of Manfred Richstone, strapped to an electric chair.

  Thomas went pale. “One week,” he muttered, and shoved the paper aside, as if it were a cockroach that had somehow ended up on his coverlet.

  “I don’t get it,” Pippa said to Mr. Dumfrey. “What’s your big idea?”

  Mr. Dumfrey patted Pippa’s shoulder. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said. “A citywide sensation! Manfred Richstone’s execution is our golden goose.”

  “There’s no proof he’s even guilty,” Thomas said. Pippa knew he must be thinking of the missing photograph from Freckles’s studio. She tried to telegraph with her eyes that he should let it go, but he avoided looking at her.

  “Proof? Proof is overrated,” Mr. Dumfrey said, waving a hand. “It’s the appearance of guilt people want, Thomas. And Mr. Richstone has given everyone plenty of that. Illusion and interpretation—that’s what magic is all about! The fact is, seven days from now, our friend Manfred Richstone is scheduled for the chair. Which means we have less than a week—less than one week!—to launch our new exhibit.” He unwrapped the football-sized bundle he had tucked under one arm, and Pippa shrieked.

  It was the wax head—the one Freckles had modeled after Manfred Richstone—looking even more horrible than usual. Its mouth was bubbling with blood and its eyes were rolling to the ceiling, showing only whites.

  “It’s—it’s awful,” Pippa said.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Dumfrey said happily. “I made a few quick adjustments. A splash of paint, a little daub of stage blood. The effect is hideous, don’t you think? The Amazingly Lifelike Replica of the Execution of Wife-Murderer Manfred Richstone! It has a ring to it, doesn’t it? Of course, we’ll need new fliers printed up. Once the news hits the streets, the crowds will be clawing for the doors. It’s a surefire win. As sure as sunshine!” Mr. Dumfrey angled the head from left to right, admiring his handiwork.

  Just then, a tremendous scream—followed by a crash—ripped through the infirmary. Pippa spun around and saw Miss Fitch, clutching her heart, a shattered glass of milk puddled at her feet.

  “Horatio, really.” Besides his old friend Lash, Miss Fitch was the only person at the museum who referred to Dumfrey by his first name. “You nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought Thomas’s head might have rolled right off.”

  Dumfrey spared her barely a glance. “Nonsense, Thomas doesn’t look a thing like Manfred Richstone. He’s a real beaut, isn’t he?” And he gave a satisfied sigh before once again tucking the head carefully in its fabric bundle. “Now, Miss Fitch. You know there’s no use crying over spilled milk.” This, as Miss Fitch had stooped to clean up the ruined glass. “Come. We have business to discuss. We must make immediate preparations for the next exhibit. We need a chair—a big chair, preferably metal—and of course we’ll need wires, and some kind of head strap. And fliers! Dozens of fliers! Hundreds of them! Fliers to paper every lamppost in the city . . .”

  And Mr. Dumfrey sailed out of the room, leaving Pippa with the uncomfortable feeling of being a wave in the wake of a large boat, unable to shake the feeling that they were all hurtling toward disaster.

  It had become harder to take food from the kitchen at night—harder but not impossible. Max just had to be more careful.

  It was almost dawn, four days after the alligator boy had abruptly quit, and two days after Thomas had nearly had a sword planted in his gut. When, the following morning, Danny had discovered two eggs and a pat of butter missing from the pantry, Monsieur Cabillaud had declared a state of emergency and Lash had volunteered to keep watch all night long over the door that led down from the first floor into the kitchen.

  Fortunately, as Max had soon discovered, Lash took periodic sips from a flask hidden in his front pocket—and by five in the morning, was always soundly asleep.

  She moved carefully through the dusty attic, marveling that the cluttered room, which had only a few months ago seemed a dizzying maze of junk, now was as familiar to her as her own reflection. Maybe more so, since Max had never cared to look at herself in the mirror, and deliberately avoided it now. Whenever she saw the long scar that reached from her eyebrow to her right ear, she couldn’t help but think of Rattigan looming over her, clutching a surgical knife, his grin concealed behind a paper mask.

  “What happened there?” Howie had asked her the other day, moving a finger carefully along the tightly sewn scar.

  She had jerked away as though she’d been burned. “Car crash,” she said autom
atically, as she always did. Thankfully, he’d let it drop.

  She moved past the toilet to the spiral staircase, careful to avoid the third and seventh steps from the top, both of which groaned awfully. She didn’t like to steal food from the kitchen but didn’t see that she had much choice. For days, she’d been dying to tell someone about her secret, but Thomas was acting weird, Pippa was being her usual snobby, impossible self, and Sam could suddenly barely look in her direction. And, of course, she couldn’t tell Howie. Just the idea made her feel as if she’d been stuck headfirst into a furnace.

  Howie, with his clean-pressed shirts and his dazzling smile and his easy manners, was the most normal person she had ever met, despite the fact that he could twist his neck like a corkscrew. Next to him, Max felt as if her body were a suit that didn’t fit her very well. She knew that Howie didn’t like Pippa, Sam, or Thomas very much—“impostors,” he called them, and though Max didn’t know what the word meant, she knew it wasn’t a compliment.

  No. Howie wouldn’t understand at all.

  But the need to tell someone—anyone—sat like a weight beneath her heart, thumping dully in her chest.

  She reached the first floor and slid silently in her socked feet through the galleries, ignoring the prickling of the flesh on her arms and the strange sensation that she was being watched. Most areas of the museum didn’t frighten her—not even the Hall of Wax, and the grotesque grinning figures molded from plasticine and wire. But at night, in the darkness, with the vast cool halls filled with shadows, and the exhibits massed behind glass, crouching like misshapen monsters, she couldn’t help but feel a small thrill of alarm.

  She paused just in front of a vast display case filled with Native American relics, including a pair of worn moccasins that Mr. Dumfrey sometimes removed from the exhibit and wore on special occasions, and a small, sharpened spearhead Max was dying to use in her act. She knew that around the corner, Lash would be parked in a rickety chair pulled from the Odditorium, one hand clutching the leather whip that had made him famous, as if prepared to truss up the thief like a Thanksgiving turkey.

  She pressed her ear to the cold glass case and listened. Sure enough, she heard a sound like the distant drag of an ocean wave along a beach—in, out, in, out—and the exhibits rattled very faintly on their shelves. She allowed herself a small smile. Lash was asleep and snoring again.

  She slipped out into the open, listening for the neat sputtering of his breath, and stepped carefully over his legs. The door leading into the kitchen step was already open a crack, and she nudged it wider to admit her and then felt for the banisters in the dark. She eased down the stairs and crossed quickly, by touch, to the icebox. She would take a little cheese and some tuna fish, if there was any. Then back up to the little loft above the attic. She would be in bed before anyone knew she’d been awake. . . .

  Suddenly, a hand clamped onto her shoulder. She stifled a shriek and whipped around.

  “What are you doing here?” It was Thomas, his face ghostly in the moonlight.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered back.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re the one stealing things from the kitchen?”

  It was just like Thomas to have caught her. She was momentarily annoyed by the fact that he always saw the solution to a problem before anyone else. Just as quickly, the urge to confess—to explain—overwhelmed her. But she couldn’t. Not yet. She didn’t know if she could trust him to keep her secret. “Of course not,” she said, tearing away from his grasp. “Don’t be a nutter. I could say the same thing about you. I came down for a drink of water, that’s all.” To prove the point, she moved over to the sink, drew a large glass of water from the faucet, and took a gulp. Thomas was still looking at her as if he didn’t quite believe her. “So?” she said. “What’s your excuse?”

  Thomas scratched his left ear, a sure sign that he was about to lie. “My excuse to what?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” she said, crossing her arms. “It doesn’t fit you.”

  Thomas paused. “Waiting,” he said finally.

  “For what?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try me.”

  “Only if you tell me what you’re really doing down here.”

  They glared at each other. And then, in the silence, Max heard it: a faint tapping on the door that led out into the courtyard, where the garbage bins were kept, as though a single finger were knocking lightly on the wood. Thomas’s face went even paler than before. Max reached instinctively for her pocketknife before remembering that she’d left it upstairs, tucked safely under her pillow.

  “Did you hear that?” she whispered. “I think—I think someone’s out there.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Thomas said, too quickly, his eyes ticking nervously toward the door. Max understood at once. So that’s why Thomas was lurking around in the kitchen—he was waiting for someone, and he didn’t want Max to know it.

  “Then you don’t mind if I take a quick peek around the courtyard,” Max said sweetly.

  “I’ll do it,” Thomas said, but it was too late: Max was already unlatching the door.

  Thomas was protesting, “Leave off, Max, it’s none of your business, you’ve got no right to stick your nose—”

  But he fell silent as the door groaned open.

  The courtyard was empty, still, and silent. The garbage cans glistened in the moonlight. A faint wind stirred a candy wrapper on the street. But other than that, there was no movement anywhere—not a single shadow skating across the pavement, nothing disturbed or out of place.

  Still, weirdly, as Thomas and Max stood in the open doorway, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.

  “See?” Thomas attempted to sound lighthearted, and failed. “Nobody.”

  She shut the door quickly, gladly, shutting out the impression of dark eyes watching from unknown corners. “Admit it,” she said. “You were expecting someone.”

  Thomas sucked in a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, exhaling. “I admit it.”

  “Spill,” Max said.

  Then he told her: about the stack of photographs he’d found at Eckleberger’s apartment, taken before Rachel van der Water became Rachel Richstone and fixed her teeth; about the frame and mysterious missing picture; about his belief that the whole robbery had been staged, and the murder committed, just for that missing photo. He told her, too, about the letter he had written to Mr. Richstone on death row. He was expecting a response tonight; by prearranged signal, Chubby’s messengers should string a pair of black sneakers from the traffic lights on the corner once the letter was in hand.

  Earlier in the day, the sneakers had appeared. And so Thomas was waiting up for a messenger. But no one had come, and it was almost dawn.

  “Now it’s your turn,” he said as soon as he’d finished his story.

  She took a deep breath. She knew she had no choice but to confess to being the thief now; she would have to trust that Thomas would understand once she explained her reasons.

  But before she could speak, there was a loud clatter from the hall. The gentle rhythm of Lash’s snoring stopped abruptly, replaced by a rapid sequence of muttered curses. Max knew at once what had happened: the flask must have fallen from his hand, startling Lash awake.

  They were trapped. There was no way they could get through the hall without passing Lash—then they would both have to give explanations to Mr. Dumfrey.

  Thomas looked just as panicked as Max felt. He moved quickly to the stove and shoved aside a small panel in the wall, revealing a network of pipes and looping wires, then looked at Max questioningly. She shook her head. There was no way she could squeeze into a space so small. Only Thomas was limber enough to treat the air ducts and pipes like his own network of private elevators. Max would get stuck like a piece of spinach between two teeth.

  She waved him instead toward the courtyard door. They would have to go out past the garbage cans and loop
around to the front of the building, then pray they could find a window to jimmy open. At least it was not yet 6 a.m. Even Miss Fitch would not wake for another half an hour.

  Max unlocked the door, praying Lash wouldn’t hear the click of the bolts, then eased the door open. Thomas darted out first, and she followed, exhaling only when she made it into the damp air. Thomas had already reached the street, as though worried Lash might sniff them out if they stayed too close to the museum.

  “Hurry up,” he whispered to Max. A distant streetlamp touched his hair white. The sky was a vivid electric blue, as it always was just before the sun wrestled loose of the horizon. Soon the museum would be bustling.

  Max swung the door closed carefully. As she did, she noticed an envelope stuck to the door with a fine wad of something that looked like putty. She started to call out for Thomas—his letter had arrived after all—when the letters written across the envelope arranged themselves into words and her voice evaporated.

  “Come on, Max. What’re you waiting for?”

  She reached up with a trembling hand and detached the envelope from the door. She wasn’t a great reader—Monsieur Cabillaud had only just taught her—and her eyes scanned over the words once, twice, and again, hoping she’d made a mistake.

  But she hadn’t. The letter was addressed not to Thomas, but to The Unnaturals.

  She crossed the courtyard and moved up the concrete steps on feet that felt as bloated as balloons, passing the letter to Thomas wordlessly. He tore the envelope open with his teeth. The noise sounded overloud, as if even the street was holding its breath.

  The letter contained a single phrase, so simple even Max had no trouble deciphering it.

  SOON, MY CHILDREN.

  Max felt as if she had been filled head to toe with wet concrete. It wasn’t possible. Rattigan was far away—halfway across the country, and, if what the news reports said were true, was likely to be arrested any day. Was this some kind of joke?