The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

by Claire Legrand

  “Oh, great, I didn’t even think about that.”

  Victoria brushed out some roach wings from her hair. She wanted to scream and run, and her skin crawled, but she made herself go slowly. If they fell and hurt themselves, this would all be for nothing.

  “Hurry, please,” the voices urged, sliding down the stairs alongside them, girls’ voices and boys’ voices and grown-up voices, but Victoria couldn’t even be too sure of that. The voices were all tangled up in one another, scratchy and sad.

  “What is that?” Lawrence asked. His teeth were chattering.

  “I don’t know,” said Victoria. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to, either.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the last step shoved them forward, and a wall whooshed up behind them. A pair of angry beetles plopped out onto their backs, wiggled their legs around to plop right side up, and scurried away. The staircase was gone.

  “That’s not good,” Lawrence whispered. He felt around the wall to find the opening, but it had disappeared completely. “Where are we?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Victoria.

  The floor beneath them moved, rippling down a long hallway that stretched from left to right on either side of them. In the darkness, the red walls and carpet were black as mud. Ten skittering legs, a million times over, raced away from them into the shadows. Through the high, narrow windows overhead, a little bit of moonlight glowed, illuminating smiling, golden metal faces on the walls—garish lips, wagging tongues, long hands beckoning them closer.

  Victoria and Lawrence froze.

  “Do you want to go back?” whispered Lawrence.

  Yes, Victoria wanted to say. But she swallowed hard and said, “Absolutely not. Do you?”

  Lawrence glanced at her. “Er. No. Not like I’d know how to go back anyway. We’re stuck.”

  They slipped through a gap in those smiling, slobbering faces, down a narrow staircase they’d never seen before. Long, skinny emerald snakes formed the banisters. It was just wide enough that they could go down together, hand in hand. Victoria squeezed Lawrence’s fingers so hard, she thought she might break them. He squeezed them right back.

  They followed the steps down for ages. At the bottom, they passed through a curtain of beads that looked suspiciously like teeth, into the gallery on the first floor.

  “Finally,” said Lawrence, sighing with relief. “The gallery. We know where that is, at least. Now where do we go?”

  Victoria didn’t have time to say she didn’t know, because a sudden stink washed over them from above. Gray feathers fell to their feet and dissolved into thin air.

  “Get down!” Victoria fell to the floor and pulled Lawrence along with her. One of the huge painted birds from the ceiling just missed them, swooping down with its sharp, ivory hands outstretched.

  “It’s coming back!” said Lawrence, yanking Victoria to her feet. They ran for the center of the Home, but the gallery was suddenly much larger than it had been before. The faster they ran, the larger it became. More birds dropped from the ceiling like bats. Beaks snapped at the hems of their pajamas. A clawed finger scraped Victoria’s hair. She looked back to see a black tongue and razor-sharp feathers swiping at her.

  “In here!”

  They had reached the room with the broken pianos, and Lawrence dragged Victoria after him through the door, which was shrinking. Victoria had barely pulled her foot through before it snapped shut. Huge thuds and shrieks sounded from the other side as the birds flew into the wall.

  “I—will never—look at birds the same way—again,” panted Lawrence as they hurried through the piano room. “Did you see the way they chomped with those teeth?”

  “Shush,” Victoria said, putting out a hand to stop him. They had reached the hall of mirrors Mrs. Cavendish had led Victoria through on the way to the hanger.

  “We don’t want to go this way,” said Victoria, but when she turned to leave, Lawrence stayed put. “Lawrence, come on, this goes down to the hanger.”

  But Lawrence didn’t move. He was staring at something in the mirrors and started to walk toward the nearest one.

  “What are you doing?” said Victoria, squinting at the mirror to see what, precisely, was so fascinating. She saw only Lawrence’s reflection waving him forward.

  “Come on,” the reflection said, winking. “It’s safer this way.”

  “Oh, I’m sure.” Victoria grabbed Lawrence’s arm, but he threw her back, and she stumbled.

  “What do you think you’re—?” Victoria stopped. Lawrence’s reflection was changing. He was growing taller, thinner. His hair grew into a brown, roiling sea, his face grew red lips, and his fingernails shone as they waved Lawrence forward, closer, closer. . . .

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Victoria said to the Mrs. Cavendish reflection. She ran up to Lawrence and slapped him hard across the face. He blinked and staggered back, and as the dozens of Mrs. Cavendishes in the mirrors howled with rage, Victoria pulled Lawrence back through the pianos, into dark rooms they’d never seen before.

  Lawrence put his hand to his cheek. “That really hurt, you know.”

  “Well, next time, don’t go looking into strange mirrors, how about that?” Victoria snapped.

  “Wait—”

  “I mean, really. Haven’t you been here long enough to know not to trust—”

  Lawrence clapped his hand over Victoria’s mouth. “Vicky, look.”

  In front of them, through a doorway that looked like it led toward the terrace and outside, peered several gofers. Their eyes—and each of them had only one of those—were as yellow and round as the butterscotch candies Mrs. Cavendish kept in her kitchen. They chewed on their lips. They dripped drool onto the carpet. They waited.

  “Lawrence,” Victoria whispered. She couldn’t stop staring at the gofers’ yellow eyes. “Do you think . . . ? Their eyes . . . and those candies she keeps in the kitchen . . . they look the same.”

  Lawrence gulped. “That’s not possible . . . right?”

  “No, you’re right, surely not.” Victoria wasn’t so sure, though. It made an awful, horrible lot of sense. Mrs. Cavendish hated the gofers. They were her slaves. Would she really go so far as to pluck out their eyes, though?

  “I ate two of those candies,” Victoria said. She leaned hard against Lawrence to catch her breath, her palms sweating.

  “I did, too,” Lawrence said, grimly. “When I woke up in the parlor, there were some on the floor. I was so hungry, I couldn’t help it!”

  Victoria somehow resisted the urge to scrape her tongue raw with her fingernails.

  “Do you think we can go past them?” asked Lawrence.

  “We can try,” said Victoria. She wasn’t sure she believed that, but what else could they do? Carefully, they crept toward the door. The closer they got, the quieter the gofers became.

  Victoria tiptoed through them, holding Lawrence tightly by the hand. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. Several unblinking yellow eyes followed them, but the gofers did not move or make a single sound.

  Lawrence sighed, as they cleared the room. “Well, they give me the creeps, but at least they didn’t—ow!”

  Lawrence fell to the floor.

  “Lawrence?” Victoria gasped, but then something pulled her down—a gofer, its brown, bony hands clutching her feet. Another gopher had Lawrence, and both of them were being dragged back to where the other gofers stood, waiting, bouncing up and down.

  “Greedle,” they muttered, “greedle, greedle,” and smacked their toothless mouths.

  “Stop it!” Victoria reached back and hit her gofer’s ears, but it wouldn’t let go. Beside her, Lawrence scrabbled at the rug, trying to pull himself away. His gofer bent over and started gnawing on Lawrence’s foot.

  Victoria flushed with rage. “Get away from him!”

  “It’s eating me,” Lawrence cried, clawing at the wall in a panic.

  Victoria’s gofer grumbled something and started rolling up her pant leg. Y
ellow drool dripped onto her foot, but as the gofer bent over, its shoulder gleamed. Victoria narrowed her eyes and saw an oozing scab—a wound from Mrs. Cavendish, perhaps.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” said Victoria. She twisted back with all her strength and pounded her fist against the gofer’s shoulder.

  It yelped and jumped away toward the others. Victoria jumped to her feet and kicked Lawrence’s gofer, aiming for the scabs on his back.

  “Greedle,” it said mournfully, and hopped away clutching its backside.

  “Come on, come on,” said Victoria, helping Lawrence to his feet. Together, they staggered out toward the terrace, the gofers whining in a heap behind them.

  “Are they locked?” asked Lawrence, pointing at the terrace doors.

  “If they are, we’ll just have to break them down,” Victoria said, but when she tried the handle, it turned at once, and they were outside. Lawrence fell against the door, panting.

  Victoria wiped the drool from her leg. “How’s your foot?”

  “It’s okay,” Lawrence said, pale and sweating. He gave her a weak smile. “At least they don’t have teeth. You all right?”

  “Yes. But those gofers won’t be if they come near me again. Ugly, stupid things.”

  “What do you think they are, exactly? And how did Mrs. Cavendish get them?”

  “I don’t know,” said Victoria, although she had a bad feeling about those gofers. A very bad feeling. When she peered back through the terrace doors, the yellow eyes were gone.

  They stood for a minute to get their bearings and catch their breath. The fingernail moonlight was enough to make out what Victoria remembered from that first night: winding, well-kept gardens; a mess of overgrown tree and wild bushes in the corner; the two tiny cottages.

  “Come on,” Victoria said. “Let’s go look around.”

  “What are we looking for?” whispered Lawrence as they crept through the crooked twists and turns of shrubs and giant, reeking flowers.

  “I don’t really know. There has to be something out here, though. Something important. Why else would there be these giant gardens? I can’t think Mr. Alice likes to garden just for a hobby, you know.”

  As they crept on tiptoe through the gardens, an awful rotting smell started to sting their noses. It was worse than the stink of the ceiling birds. It came from one of the cottages, back where the grounds and gardens changed into thick trees and briar patches. Rusty piles of tools and equipment littered the ground.

  “What’s in there?” said Lawrence, bringing his collar up over his nose.

  Victoria thought she might be sick. “I don’t want to know. But we have to check.”

  They tiptoed through the tangle of growth at the edge of the gardens until they reached the stinking cottage. Grime and dirt covered the windows, but Victoria rubbed her palm against the glass until she cleared away a spot. Together, she and Lawrence peered through. Silver things glinted in what little moonlight there was—knives, saws, curved blades, scythes, hooks hanging from the ceiling.

  Tiny biting things hit Victoria’s neck. She swatted at them and realized that the air was full of flies.

  “What . . . what do you think that’s all about?” Lawrence whispered.

  Only then did Victoria realize how close they had pressed together to look through the window; their cheeks had touched, so close that she could hear Lawrence’s noisy, nervous gulp.

  She stepped away, hurriedly, brushing flies from her pajamas. “I don’t know, but we won’t go in there unless we absolutely have to. Agreed?”

  Lawrence grabbed for her hand once more. “Agreed.”

  Victoria bit back an irritated comment and allowed him to hold on. They headed back into the maze of the gardens. The shrubberies seemed to crawl. Victoria ignored them, pushing past thorns and brambles and suspiciously roachlike leaves, concentrating not on them but on the pinching grip of Lawrence’s fingers. Hmm, she thought. I suppose this is actually somewhat useful. She didn’t so much mind holding his hand from that moment on.

  “Look.” Lawrence pointed at the second cottage, a little ahead of them. “There’s a light on in that one.”

  Amber light shone through the windows. It moved, like someone was carrying a lamp around. Lawrence pulled away, but Victoria tightened her grip on his hand and moved toward the cottage. “We have to see,” she whispered to him, and he set his mouth in a determined line and nodded.

  At the window, they crouched and peeked inside. Victoria made sure to keep her cheek in its own proper place this time. In the cottage, a pair of lamps on a pair of tables provided the light, but that was not the first thing Victoria and Lawrence noticed. The first thing they noticed was that the cottage was filled with puppets—hanging from the ceilings, tacked up on walls, sitting propped up on tables and chairs, covering every last bit of flat surface.

  “What . . . ?” Lawrence murmured.

  Victoria narrowed her eyes, trying to count the puppets, but there were too many of them. They were the kind with strings; “marionettes” was the word, and they dangled by their strings from the ceilings, swaying a little bit from side to side. At the ends of the strings were wooden lattices. That’s where the puppetmaster would control them, Victoria knew.

  Lawrence realized it first; he pressed a shaky finger against the glass. “It’s them,” he whispered. “Look. They’re puppets. They’re all puppets.”

  It was true; inside the cottage stood a model of Belleville. Victoria saw it all—the tiny red Academy, the library, Town Square, the pretty neighborhoods with their green hedges and black gates, Lawrence’s house . . . and my house, Victoria noticed, getting a hard knot in her throat. And everywhere, dotting the town, placed here and there as though they were simply walking around running errands, stood puppet Bellevillians.

  “My parents,” came Lawrence’s strangled voice. “They’re right over there.”

  Victoria saw them—perfect likenesses of Mr. and Mrs. Prewitt, with shining, hard, wooden faces, and shining, hard, wooden smiles. Their dead puppet’s eyes stared wide and unblinking.

  “It’s everyone,” Victoria said grimly. There was Dr. Hardwick, standing on the steps of the puppet Academy. There were Mr. and Mrs. Everett hanging from the ceiling. Their heads turned as they spun slowly from their strings.

  A horrible thought pierced Victoria’s heart. Mother, she thought. Father. She searched through the forest of puppets for a bald head, for a bright, penny-colored head. . . .

  In the corner of the cottage, someone moved.

  Lawrence cried out. Victoria moved quickly and clapped her hand over his mouth again, but she could not even be angry with him, because there, walking out from the corner with a puppet in one hand and shining silver cutting shears in the other, came Mrs. Cavendish.

  “What’s she doing?” Lawrence asked. His lips scraped Victoria’s hand when he spoke, and she pressed down on his mouth harder.

  “Quiet,” she hissed. Wonderful, she thought. Lawrence slobber.

  Together, they watched Mrs. Cavendish working, for that was surely what it was—she moved here and there, arranging a puppet over there in the corner, and tying that one back up to the ceiling. Every now and then, Mrs. Cavendish would put the tip of the silver shears to her mouth, tapping her blood-red lips with the blade. Then she would smile a horrible smile of white, gleaming teeth and resume working—tying strings here, retying them there, settling this puppet in Town Square just so, rearranging all the puppets everywhere in Belleville to her delight.

  Victoria’s mind whirled around and around with one desperate thought: What does this mean?

  For some reason, this thought decided to manifest itself as a sneeze. Victoria sneezed a large one.

  Lawrence stared at her in horror.

  Inside the cottage, Mrs. Cavendish froze. She opened the blades in her hand. She began to turn.

  Immediately, Victoria and Lawrence hurried back into the gardens. They reached the darkest place—the overgrown co
rner in the Home’s shadow.

  “Why did you sneeze?” Lawrence whispered frantically.

  “It’s not like I meant to,” said Victoria. She kept looking back over her shoulder at the lit-up cottage, but Mrs. Cavendish remained inside, the windows still lit up. They waited a few more minutes, watching the cottage, hardly able to breathe. Lawrence grabbed Victoria’s hand again, and she didn’t even mind. In fact, she was glad of it. In fact, she found herself shrinking toward him without really planning to.

  “What was she doing?” Lawrence said at last. “All those puppets . . . and they were all real people! They were people we know, people from town!”

  “Playing with her dolls? I don’t know! How am I supposed to know what she was doing?” said Victoria, licking her dry lips. If she let go of Lawrence’s sweating hand, she would surely start to cry. Or worse, scream. She took a step back.

  Crack. Something beneath Victoria’s foot broke.

  “Ow,” she said, pulling her foot away. Something made of glass shone back at her. She picked it up.

  “Eyeglasses?” said Lawrence.

  “I know these,” whispered Victoria. She bent over and started scraping through the dirt.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute—agh!”

  Victoria leapt back from the gnarled hand she had just uncovered in the leaves.

  Lawrence caught her before she could fall. Together, they followed the arm up into the wall of the Home, where a familiar face gaped out at them from the mess of brick, tree roots, and climbing vine.

  “Professor Alban?” said Lawrence. Victoria was too busy trying to wipe hand slime off her skin to say anything much just then.

  Somehow—impossibly—Professor Alban had grown into the Home. He was part of the Home, slumped on the ground and tangled up in brick and mortar. His skin looked like tree bark and mud. When he blinked, his eyelids creaked and groaned. Flakes of brick snapped off and floated to the ground.

  “Mrmph,” said Professor Alban.

  Victoria regained herself somewhat. “I found your eyeglasses, professor,” she said, holding up the limp, broken frames.