“A door,” whispered Lawrence. “Well, that’s awfully convenient, isn’t it? What if it’s a trap?”
“It could be,” said Victoria, but then she saw that the handle was a knobby little tree limb, and the hinges were, too. They reminded her of Professor Alban’s dried-up face and arms, and she smiled sadly. “But we can’t turn back now. Come on.”
She reached for the handle. Two beady-eyed roaches fluttered up from the handle and burrowed into the wall. Caroline shrieked.
Just remember the plan, Victoria thought. She turned the handle. The door creaked, like something old and rusted opening its mouth for a yawn. Beyond the threshold stood the gallery.
“Well, at least it put us out in the right place this time,” said Victoria, trying to smile.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be out there with you as soon as I can,” whispered Lawrence, peering over her shoulder. “We’ll cut them all free.”
Victoria nodded, but she was beginning to feel the first hints of panic. “But what if cutting all the puppets loose doesn’t do anything? What if Mrs. Cavendish just gets angrier and we’re all trapped here just the same?”
“We’ll run for it, or else we’ll fight her. We can’t just sit here till we’re all gofers, can we? We’ve got to at least try.” Lawrence squeezed her hand. “It’s a good plan, Vicky. No one else has ever had the guts to try anything like this. No one has ever even had the guts to go outside, like you did.” He squeezed her hand again. He stepped a little closer, and his face got all funny, with a small, wobbly almost-smile.
Victoria looked away, her throat full. If anything were to happen to the others because of her—if anything were to happen to Lawrence . . .
“Your collar’s all messy,” she said, clucking her tongue and refusing to meet his eyes. She fixed it and turned. “Well, let’s go.”
Victoria drew herself up as tall as she could. Then she whispered, “Go!”
Everyone scattered. Some went to the left, some to the right, some up the first staircase around the corner, some up the second. Victoria watched Lawrence till he disappeared down the gallery. Once he was gone, she was alone.
It didn’t feel as nice as it used to.
Victoria balled her fists and crept forward into the gallery. Was it her imagination, or were the gallery walls closing in on her? She paused to listen and look around, holding her breath. Once she focused hard enough, she could feel it—little ripples beneath her bare feet, and a slow, low rumbling from the ceilings, the banisters of the nearby staircases, the hallway behind her. The walls were closing in, and then opening back up and then moving closer again.
Then everything went quiet. Victoria inched toward the nearest wall and raised a finger to poke it.
“Hello?” she whispered. No one and nothing answered. The wall felt normal enough. She waited a little longer and then scolded herself and made herself focus on the plan. Being the one in charge helped her feel more like herself again, like the old Victoria who would never believe that walls could move or mirrors could talk. It was a nice feeling, a familiar, strong feeling, but she didn’t let it come back all the way; walls could move here, and mirrors could talk; she had to be ready for anything.
In the gallery, Victoria heard the other children whooping from upstairs in the classrooms and throughout the hallways. They shattered windows, smashed paintings, and ripped curtains off the walls. A drop of blue fell on Victoria’s foot as she raced through the dark gallery. Jacqueline and Caroline were flinging paint balls down from the Classroom of Art. Two of the new boys stampeded through the dining room, knocking over chairs and screaming as loudly as they could. Hopefully, this would be a good enough distraction, and Victoria could sneak out without anyone stopping her.
But, despite the noise, everything else was quiet. Victoria saw no gofers come out of hiding to attack them, no Mr. Alice with his rake. No Mrs. Cavendish with her smiling fingers. Even the birdies were quiet, Victoria noticed, glancing up at the high, pointed ceilings. Here and there, she saw a nervous flutter of feathers and a shiny black eye, but the birdies stayed put in their painted trees.
But are they painted? Victoria wondered. Above her, the trees waved and rustled as though their branches were real, but they didn’t sound like normal trees. When the leaves brushed against each other, a faint rattling noise, all clicky and sharp, floated down to where Victoria had paused beneath a darkened lamp.
From upstairs, one of the boys let out an earsplitting cheer. A smash of glass followed that, and then, far down the gallery, something dark, thin, and leggy fell from the ceiling.
She ran for the terrace doors, but a dark shape stepped in front of her. She jumped back, too frightened to scream. It was Peter, staring at her with a lean, hard look on his face. He smiled.
“I followed you,” he whispered. He nervously pulled at his sleeves. “I did, I followed you, through the fireplace.”
Victoria opened and closed her mouth, too shocked to speak.
“Mr. Alice,” Peter shouted suddenly. “There are kids out of bed!”
As Victoria burst out onto the terrace, Peter kept yelling for Mr. Alice and ran back into the Home. Victoria could barely hear him, though, her heart was pounding so much.
In the dark gardens, without any lights on, it was hard to find the puppet cottage. Everywhere Victoria turned was a tree or a tangle of bush. The wind pushed her this way and that way, the beginnings of a storm.
From her right came a scratching noise: Skritch skritch.
Victoria spun around and gulped. “You don’t scare me, Mrs. Cavendish.”
The skritch turned to a whine. A wet, whiskered nose poked into the moonlight.
“Gallagher!” Victoria ran to him and put out her hand, but he wasn’t in the mood for kisses. His fur stood up everywhere, and his tail wagged uncertainly. His ears pricked toward what he’d been scratching on—the door of the puppet cottage.
“Oh, what a good doggie,” she said. She scooped Gallagher up into her arms and put her hand on the door latch. Gallagher started growling, which gave Victoria goose bumps. The door stood a little ajar, which made Victoria pause, but then she gritted her teeth and slipped inside. She had to try. She could not give up, not with everyone else crashing around the Home so she could do what she needed to do, not with Lawrence’s birthday so close.
Victoria opened the door and fumbled for a light switch. There wasn’t one, but there was a table, and a lamp and matches. She put Gallagher down and grumbled, “I hate matches. Very imprecise.” It took a while to light because her hands were so shaky, but when it was lit, and she turned around and looked—
—she saw all the people of Belleville hanging from the ceiling, in that same puppet forest from days before. The police chief and his officers, her professors, Mr. Waxman, Dr. Hardwick, Mr. and Mrs. Prewitt . . . and near the center, dangling happily by silver strings, her parents. One bald head, one copper head, two bright smiles.
“Mother,” Victoria whispered. “Father.” She balled her hands into fists and stepped into the grinning, puppet-filled lamplight.
All around her, shining wooden faces stared at her, too many to count.
ICY WIND BLEW IN FROM THE OPEN COTTAGE DOOR AND BIT Victoria’s ankles. She shut the door behind her. There was no lock, not that she could see, anyway.
“She probably never thought anyone would get this far out,” Victoria whispered. She would have felt much better with a lock on the door.
Gallagher started sniffing around. “Yes,” said Victoria. “That’s right. Investigation.” She took a deep breath (it was hard to do) and started searching through the marionettes. It was a thick puppet forest. Some hung from the rafters, tiny as dolls, and some stood or sat around the model Belleville. Curious, Victoria peeked inside the library; yes, there stood Mr. Waxman, at the reference desk. Strings trailed from his hands, legs, and head, ending in a lattice propped up against the miniature library wall. All around her, shining wooden faces stared at her, too many to count. T
hey wore bright smiles, clean and perfect.
“Jill,” whispered Victoria, seeing Jill Hennessey’s shining red hair. “Professor Carroll. Mr. and Mrs. Baker. The Prewitts.” Lawrence’s parents smiled at her, black eyes shining. Victoria stopped just before her parents, who hung from the ceiling. She reached out a hand toward their four dangling feet. Her mother wore glossy red shoes. Maybe if Victoria touched these puppet parents, they would come alive.
She stretched her hand farther, closer, farther still—
A whine from Gallagher interrupted her. She found him in a dusty corner, nosing through dust bunnies. He had found another puppet, a dirty one, all tied up in knotted strings.
“Mr. Tibbalt?” said Victoria. She knelt to clean off his face, but a terrible vision flashed before her eyes—the marionette coming alive, chomping off her fingers with strong wooden teeth. It wasn’t such a ridiculous idea where Mrs. Cavendish was involved.
She knelt and sat back on her feet, looking around at the hundreds and hundreds of dangling puppet feet. From across the room, the Dr. Hardwick puppet grinned at her. Puppets, Victoria thought. Puppets have strings, and the puppetmaster moves the strings.
She swallowed hard. The air was cold and thick and sharp. Mrs. Cavendish was the puppetmaster here. She had tied up the whole town.
As horrifying as it was, a part of her brain approved. It was an efficient plan. Hadn’t Victoria herself always taken over group projects at school, to make sure they were done just so? Uncomfortably, she remembered what Mr. Tibbalt had said: “You like things to be just so, no matter what the cost. So does she. So does everyone around here.”
Victoria clenched her fists and thought about Lawrence never playing music again or Donovan never eating cake again or Jacqueline painting boring pictures. They wouldn’t be better; they would be someone else.
“I’m not like her, I’m not,” she said, and the sound of the words gave her courage. “I’ll never be like her.” She reached for the Mr. Tibbalt puppet and glanced at Gallagher, who sat watching, waiting. “Do you think it’ll bite off my fingers?”
Victoria could have sworn Gallagher raised his doggy eyebrow.
“No, right, of course,” said Victoria, and she wiped the marionette’s face clean. It was Mr. Tibbalt, all right. There was no mistaking him. Whoever made these marionettes was very good. But Mrs. Cavendish had apparently not been able to properly string up Mr. Tibbalt. She had tried; the piles and piles of string proved it. And yet here he was, hidden in the corner.
Victoria smiled, wondering if those dust bunnies carried to Mr. Tibbalt his never-ending nightmares. “She never could get him all the way, could she?”
Gallagher licked Mr. Tibbalt’s frazzled head.
In the corner, cabinets and cubbies stood in a line, with blank marionette heads, buckets of paint, spools of thread—and a long, perfect pair of silver cutting shears. When Victoria caught sight of them, they winked at her in the lamplight.
Victoria did not want to touch those shears; Mrs. Cavendish had tapped them against her red lips; Mrs. Cavendish had held them and used them to work her puppet magic. But Victoria had no choice. She reached for the shears carefully. When her fingers brushed a nearby thread spool, it stung like she had been bitten. She backed away and turned to her parents. Her fingers trembled around the shears’ handles. Each of the two long blades was as long as her arm. They seemed to smile at her. When she flexed her hand as if getting ready to cut, the scraping metal sounded like someone faraway, screaming.
Gallagher’s hair stood up again.
“Well, that’s just unnecessary, don’t you think?” said Victoria through her teeth, almost too frightened to breathe. “A bit dramatic.” Her hair stood up too, along her arms and neck.
She raised the shears to where the strings ended at her mother’s shoulders. A draft from outside, coming in through the cracked walls, made the marionettes twirl slowly. Their smiling mouths were too big, their arms and legs too long.
“If I cut them free,” Victoria whispered, “will it hurt them? It will just ruin her magic, won’t it? They won’t . . . die, will they?”
Gallagher’s ears and tail pricked, but Victoria wasn’t watching. She could see only the sharp blades and her mother’s shining head. If this was how Mrs. Cavendish controlled everyone and made them do what she wanted them to, what would cutting the strings do? Without strings, a puppet isn’t a puppet, Victoria thought. It’s only a doll. What will that do to them?
But there wasn’t time to stand there and think. She raised the shears to the closest string and opened them, ready to cut. Surely her mother, going through her catalogs at home, wouldn’t drop dead once Victoria started cutting the strings?
“No, don’t be silly,” said Victoria, but tears burned her eyes. How dare Mrs. Cavendish make her have to worry about whether or not saving her mother would in fact kill her.
That burst of anger did the trick. Victoria tossed her curls.
“Honestly,” she said. “Focus.” She closed her eyes and made the cut.
With a tiny plunk, her mother’s arm dropped to her side.
Victoria opened one eye. She waited but heard nothing . . . at first.
Then she heard a plop. Something dark fell from the ceiling. She followed the plop down to her feet, where a roach waved its ten legs in the air, flipped over, and scuttled away under the cabinets.
Victoria groaned. “More bugs.” But she raised the shears and cut again—her mother’s other arm, her right leg, her left leg—plop, plop-plop. Three more roaches. The only string left was the big one attached to her mother’s head.
But before Victoria could get to that one, more plops sounded from behind her. More roaches scuttled out from the shadows in mad circles, dropping from the ceiling, the walls—
Gallagher began to yap like he’d never yapped before. They weren’t alone anymore, or maybe they had never been alone.
Victoria had never not wanted to do something so much in her entire life, but she turned around anyway. Out of everything that had happened to her at the Home, this was the absolute worst.
Rearing up out of the shadows of the doorway, so tall that her shoulders hit the ceiling and her head hung low, snakelike—was Mrs. Cavendish.
“I’M VERY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, VICTORIA,” SAID Mrs. Cavendish, her voice sweet and thick. She reached out a long arm that shone as if with scales. “You could have been great, you know. One of the best. A triumph. I thought I could help you, maybe even keep you. Mr. Alice won’t last forever, and you’re so talented, Victoria. So accomplished. So . . . good.”
Victoria stepped back. She couldn’t keep her mouth from dropping in horror. Mrs. Cavendish’s beauty melted away like a snakeskin, and now she looked like a great white roach herself, black tongue flitting out over blood-red lips, her eyes never blinking, her long arms and legs stretching, curling.
“One—one of the best?” Victoria wanted to run, but Mrs. Cavendish blocked the only exit.
Mrs. Cavendish traced her lips with her tongue, gurgling deep in her throat. Her cheeks sharpened, her hair grew even shinier. It was almost too bright to look at.
“Do you want to know what your sickness is, Victoria Wright?” said Mrs. Cavendish. “Do you want to know what’s wrong with you? Why you’re here?”
Victoria tried to look around without being too noticeable. “My sickness?”
Mrs. Cavendish kicked the table by the door, where the lamp had been. “Don’t repeat what I’m saying. I really don’t have the patience, Vicky.”
“Tell me,” said Victoria, shaking. She could throw the shears at Mrs. Cavendish, but they were so long, she didn’t trust herself to throw them right. “What’s wrong with me? Why am I a degenerate?”
Mrs. Cavendish danced back and forth, ready to pounce. “Why, you’re just like her, Vicky.”
Something silver glinted at the corner of Victoria’s eye—the strings holding up her father. “Just like who, Mrs. Cavendish?”
The sl
ithering word was too low for Victoria to hear clearly, but she heard enough. It sounded like “Vivian.”
Victoria had never been more terrified in her entire life—but she had also never been more sure of herself, and that was saying quite a lot, really. Her hand tightened around the shears. “What’s wrong with us, Mrs. Cavendish? With me and Vivian?”
Mrs. Cavendish grinned. It took up more than half her face. “You don’t know when to stay quiet.”
Quickly, Victoria swiped upward with the shears. They sliced through too many strings to count. Distant screams filled the cottage, and a dozen marionettes clomped to the floor. So did a cascade of writhing, plop ping beetles.
Mrs. Cavendish shrieked and fell to her knees, scraping, clawing, trying to gather up the fallen marionette bits into her slithering hands. Victoria scooped Gallagher up in one arm and ran for the door, slashing at whatever strings she could reach. More marionettes fell with loud wooden clatters, and as Victoria dashed into the night, Mrs. Cavendish screeched behind her, “What have you done? What have you done?”
As fast as she could, Victoria ran back through the gardens. The furious wind tossed up brambles and dirt clumps into her path. It was hard keeping her balance, with the long shears in one hand and Gallagher in the other. Even over the wind and trees rattling, Victoria could hear Mrs. Cavendish in the cottage behind her, screaming. The cottage door flew open and broke off, flying away into the night. It raced close by Victoria’s head; she had to duck into some shrubbery to avoid it.
Something long and dark tore through the gardens after her, right on her heels . . .
Something long and dark tore through the gardens after her, right on her heels, panting, gnashing its teeth. It grew closer, closer. Hot, stinking breath hit Victoria’s neck. Someone who sounded like Mrs. Cavendish, but with a lower, growling voice, hissed, “Victoria.” She ran faster, but it was so difficult to see. If she could just get out of the gardens, out of the maze of rosebushes and black, thorny bushes, and—Oh, Victoria thought, What if the gardens are full of dried-up people, like Professor Alban in the Home, like Vivian in the tree? What if they reach up and grab me, keep me here forever? Or at least until Mrs. Cavendish caught up and sliced her into pieces.
The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls Page 21