Oddity

by Sarah Cannon

  The porch roof is steep, but not too steep for me to manage. I stay low, and creep up the roof to the nearest window. I keep as close to the corner of the window as possible, and slowly ease my masked face up until I can see inside, though my heart is stuttering.

  The first thing I see is glassy puppet eyes.

  I duck just as Whanslaw turns his head fully toward me. I press myself against the wall beneath the sill, trying to make myself tiny, trying to stop shaking. I can hear the clack and sway as Whanslaw approaches the window.

  The noise stops. He’s looking out. I’m sure of it. First I’m terrified he’ll open the window, reach down, and grab me with hard wooden hands. Then I remember my friend waiting down in the garden. Please let Cayden be well hidden.

  I wait for so long that my legs fall asleep. So long that I wonder if that’s where Whanslaw stays all night, at the window, looking out. Maybe they station themselves like that, one puppet at each window. It would explain how they always seem to know everything.

  If it’s true, we’re sunk.

  Finally, finally, I hear the clack and thump of Whanslaw moving away. I should leave, right now. Instead, I slowly, slowly raise my head and peek over the sill.

  I watch as Whanslaw and his puppeteer amble over to an enormous wardrobe on the far side of the room. Whanslaw opens it and, turning, the puppeteer backs inside, and hangs Whanslaw up in front of him like a suit. I stay as low as I can, to avoid Whanslaw’s gaze. The puppeteer reaches out with both hands, grasps the edges of the wardrobe doors, and pulls them shut.

  I almost fall.

  I recognize Whanslaw’s puppeteer.

  It’s Sparky, our old mailman. He was our nemesis for years. Every time I saw him he was either smoking like a chimney or had smoke coming out of his ears. Then again, we did keep putting explosives in the mailbox.

  He was a Sweepstakes winner last year, like Pearl.

  Like Pearl.

  I slide on my belly back down the roof, and slither over the edge onto the trellis without ever glancing up.

  “Did you see him?” I gasp to Cayden. I barely resist hugging him, I’m so glad he didn’t bail.

  “I saw him,” says Cayden. “You’re gonna be surprised to hear that I don’t want to go in there.”

  For once, I totally agree with Cayden, but there’s no question now. I have to.

  Chapter 23

  The Pits

  It’s a scary, whispery while before we find our way inside the house. I guess even evil puppets lock their doors most of the time. Finally, we find a high little rectangular window.… Too high for puppets to reach, which I find reassuring. It folds inward when I push on it. If we stand on one of the wicker chairs on the porch, we can just reach to pull ourselves up and in. I’m even more relieved when I get my head and shoulders through and can see that I’m in a bathroom. After all, what use could puppets have for toilets? Once I’m sitting on the sill, I pull my legs in and drop to the floor as quietly as I can, wincing. Cayden follows, and I make a cradle of my hands so he can step down, making even less noise than me.

  An ear to the door tells me the hall is quiet. We ease our way out. What do I think I’m doing? I know nothing about the layout of this place. Usually I scout this stuff out ahead of time. It’s amazing what you can find if you try. Floor plans, all kinds of things.

  Just because it’s quiet doesn’t mean nothing is lurking, but I don’t see what else we can do but prowl the house looking for clues. If the Greeley’s tunnel does connect to the mansion, I bet it’s down, somewhere. Especially if they use it to sneak people and things back and forth. On the main floors, it’s too easy to make noise or be seen through a window. So I need a door that leads to some kind of basement.

  That worries me more than I like to admit. Cayden and I didn’t see any outdoor exits. We could get cut off and trapped. But I’m beginning to wonder who we might find. So I mouth-breathe my way through the house, trying to get air through my cardboard mask, looking for clues.

  The house seems to be laid out in a circular plan. The hallway leads us to the kitchen, which is empty, and also full of those full-length glass doors facing the yard that we already tried and found locked. It creeps me out that my masked reflection looks like Whanslaw. Beside me, Cayden’s disguised as Kiyo.

  We keep going, and find ourselves in a creepy, old-fashioned parlor, with high-backed chairs and big tasseled lamps. It’s hard to make things out in the faint light, so maybe it’s just my eyes playing tricks on me, but the scale of everything is a little bit off, like it’s slightly too small. Puppet-size. I eye each chair, afraid I’ll find a member of the PC sitting in it, watching us.

  “Where are they all?” Cayden murmurs in my ear. I want to shush him, but S sounds are surprisingly loud, so I just put my finger to my lips and keep going, into a front hallway with a wood floor and a long tapestry runner. The next door leads to a dining room, and that leads back into the kitchen. Hm. I quickly check what little hallway is on the other side of the bathroom. There are three doors. I check them all. One leads to a broom closet. The next, the one at the very end of the hall, opens on the garage. Again, I can’t see much, but I can smell oil, and new-car smell, and hear the faint ticking of a cooling engine. If I’m remembering correctly, it’s at least a three-car garage. The PC likes to do things in style.

  One door left. I try it, and find … a washer and dryer. What on earth? There has to be some door leading down, and now I’m getting annoyed. I head back through the dining room into the front hallway, trusting Cayden to trail along behind me, and cautiously, with a nervous glance up the stairs, ease open the lone door I find there, hoping it won’t creak. I swing the door open wide enough to see inside, sick with dread that there will be a puppeteer in there, reaching out for me with both arms, the light from the upstairs hallway glinting on its sunglasses, pulling me inside to—but there’s nothing inside but coats. Then Cayden touches me on the shoulder, and I have to stifle a scream.

  I punch him.

  “Ow!” he whisper-breathes. “Cut it out!”

  I glare, but I’m secretly impressed he stayed quiet. I punch pretty hard.

  “In here,” he mouths, motioning, and I follow him back into creepy puppet parlor.

  Cayden has pulled the big Oriental rug back. He pulls my hand down and runs it across the wood floor, and I feel seams. One corner, down to a second, a third, and my heart leaps at the fourth.

  “A trapdoor!” I breathe. I feel around some more. “Where’s the latch?”

  “I couldn’t find one, either.”

  “Who puts in a trapdoor they can’t open?”

  “It must open from underneath,” says Cayden. “But it doesn’t look like anyone’s used it in forever. There’s wax in all the seams. Who waxes their floors nowadays?”

  I shake my head. “Okay, so there has to be another way down. But we’ve checked all the doors, so—”

  “So it must be a door we can’t see.”

  We search the edges of the room. I move knickknacks to see if they open doors, which makes me feel like I’m in a cartoon mystery. I hate this part, the desperately-silent-searching-in-the-dark part, because we’re just begging to knock over something fragile and get caught. Cayden comes in handy, though. I’m still goofing with the stuff on the fireplace mantel (and seriously, why do they have a fireplace and a big old-fashioned-looking parlor-type room in New Mexico?) when I hear a soft pop on the other side of the room, and Cayden pulls open a section of wainscoted wall. He peers into the resulting gap, then motions me over.

  It’s a stairwell, and even though I figure it was added after the trapdoor, the steps are broad and shallow, with a dip in the center of each one, as though feet have been passing this way for a long time. I feel for a handrail and don’t find one, but the walls are definitely adobe. I smell it, and it doesn’t have the artificial straight smoothness of poured concrete. Instead, it has that familiar, faintly uneven texture under my hands, like the walls at Raymond’s house.
Why would a big old Victorian house like this be sitting on an adobe basement?

  As we descend, the air around us cools, so fast that the skin on my arms prickles. Going down into the dark not knowing what’s there is unnerving.

  “Let me get my flashlight,” I mutter, digging into my pocket for the tiny LED light I carry.

  “Don’t,” says Cayden. “I’ve never seen a movie where the flashlights didn’t give the heroes away. You might as well shout, ‘Here I am!’”

  He has a point.

  As we fumble our way down the shallow steps, though, another smell pushes its way to the head of the line. Sawdust. It’s usually comforting, the smell of new things being made by someone special who knows how, but right now all I can think about is that puppets are made of wood and I Smell Wood and it’s dark down here. I don’t care what Cayden says, I still wish I could use my flashlight.

  Instead, I fumble my way along the wall. There must be a switch, right?

  Something long and thin snakes its way over my head, like a puppet string. I stifle a shriek and reach up to yank it away from me.

  A bare bulb in the ceiling lights up.

  “Shut that off!” hisses Cayden. I pull the cord a second time, and we’re plunged into darkness again.

  The good news is that the afterimage glaring on my eyeballs is of a hallway, with no one in it.

  The bad news is that there are two dark wood doors on the left-hand side, and another on the right, and we’re going to have to open them, because there’s no place else to go.

  I reach out with one arm, stretching out as far as I can, hoping to touch the new wall before I let go of the old one. I don’t quite make it, but I only have to free-fall in darkness for a second. On the new wall, I quickly find the first door. I press my ear to it, but again hear nothing. No light shines from beneath it.

  I tap Cayden. “My LED light is smaller than the overhead bulb,” I point out. “We have to see.”

  “Yeahhhh.” He sighs. “I guess we do. Just be careful.”

  Easing the door open, I point my light inside. The smell of sawdust is overwhelming. Cayden’s face pokes in beside mine, and we both flinch. We’re in a room full of spare puppet parts. There are arms, legs, even half-finished heads hanging in rows on every wall. In the middle of the room is a large worktable, as clean as an operating table, with a neat row of saws, chisels, and a stack of sandpaper waiting for use. And string. Spools and spools of string. I smell something sharp and oily. Some sort of sealant or finish, I guess. We back out in a hurry, and I pull the door shut.

  My hands are shaking, which means the light is shaking, so of course Cayden can tell. I press the hand with the flashlight against my leg to hold it still. He’s looking down, which means his hair’s in the way, and I can’t see his face.

  After a second, he says, “Ready for the other door?”

  My voice sounds hoarse when I answer. “Yeah.”

  We move down the hallway, and open the last door on the left-hand side.

  It’s dark inside, and quiet, but I could swear I hear breathing. I lift my light.

  The room is instantly familiar in a way that I can’t quite place. It’s round, which I did not expect, and big enough that I can’t make out the far side. The ceiling is made of thick logs, and all around the walls, about halfway up, are arched recesses with barred doors.…

  I’ve got it!

  “It’s a pit house!” I say, forgetting to be quiet. The Pueblo built them, but not around here.… At least, I didn’t think so. After everything I’ve learned about them, it figures the puppets would build a house right on top of one. It’s like spitting in the eye of indigenous people. The barred doors aren’t right, though, and the fire pit in the middle of the floor is way too big and deep. It’s like the puppets paid somebody for a creepiness upgrade. Then I detect motion out of the corner of my eye. I spin. A hand extends from one of the recesses, between the bars. A hand about the same size as mine.

  I’m there so fast I don’t remember going. I reach out to hold the offered hand, and it matches mine perfectly.

  This is the reason why I’ve never looked twice at a Curtis Clone. I’m the only person in Oddity who never needed one. For the first time since she left, I say the word that is on the tip of my tongue every second of every day, the word my family won’t say.

  “Pearl.”

  And she smiles.

  Chapter 24

  Pearl

  Pearl is filthy, and her braids grew out long ago. From the neck up, she looks like the head of a dandelion, only brown. Raymond’s jefa would have a fit if she saw her. But she’s alive. When I get her hands in mine my brain shuts down. Then the flashlight, forgotten between our fingers, shines in my eyes and blinds me. I squint, and she must think I’m about to start in on her, because she says,

  “If you say one word about my hair when you’re wearing that janky mask—”

  Relief floods me. Yes. Let’s argue. That’s where we shine. I never realized until she was gone how miserably lonely it is to argue with yourself when you’re used to arguing with another person.

  “Why didn’t you use your hair to saw through the bars?” I ask. The withering look she gives me makes my heart sing.

  Light flares behind me as Cayden finds another string. I pull my knife, and slide it into the old-fashioned lock on this cage they’ve got my sister in.

  “That’s not Raymond,” Pearl says, looking at Cayden’s long hair.

  I focus on my lock-picking. “Nope. New neighbor.”

  She doesn’t ask why our best friend isn’t there helping us, but for the first time I feel a wash of shame for not offering him the option.

  “How did they get you here from Greeley’s?” I ask, even though I already know.

  “There’s a tunnel in one of the freezers.”

  “I don’t understand the point of keeping you locked up like this!” I say. “Their puppeteers are all upstairs. What are you, the spare?”

  “One of them. All these cells are full of Sweepstakes winners. Turns out the Protection Committee is into renewable energy. Evil’s gone green.”

  She gestures at the pit and then at the other cells, which I now realize are occupied.

  “You’re saying the puppets, like … run on people?”

  “On souls. One of us gets used up, they plug in another one.”

  I don’t like the sound of that. “Used up?”

  “A lady named Mrs. Markham wore out yesterday. Died. Maggie came down here to swap her out. She looked like a corn-husk doll.”

  I shudder.

  “I saw Sparky,” I say.

  Pearl looks at me sharply. “You can see them? The puppeteers?”

  “I can now. I look harder now that I’m suspicious of the puppets.”

  She sighs.

  “I never could, or I wouldn’t have been so excited about the Sweepstakes. It’s some kind of magic, I think. But once you realize, you see through it.”

  We didn’t know any better. But the adults, some of them must’ve learned to see through it. That’s why they run from us when we canvass. They know.

  Do our parents?

  “Why doesn’t anyone DO something?” I ask.

  “The PC is protecting them from worse things,” Pearl says. It’s a hard idea to let go of, even when I’ve seen the truth with my own eyes.

  “Pearl, they’re not. They’ve been faking the Blurmonster attacks. We need to go. Someone needs to tell this town the truth.”

  The lock still won’t give, but I keep trying. I’m not leaving Pearl.

  “How can we take her?” asks Cayden. “The minute anyone sees her, they’ll tell the PC.”

  “We’re twins,” I say. “We’ll take turns going out.”

  Cayden looks over his shoulder. “Hurry, Ada. They’ve got to have an alarm system or something. No one knows we’re here. If we get caught—”

  If we get caught, there’s no cavalry coming.

  My sister reaches for me thr
ough the bars of her cell.

  “Get me out of here, Ada.”

  I’ve never heard my sister’s voice tremble like that before, and it hits me. We’re the cavalry.

  “I’m hurrying,” I say to both of them.

  I jam my knife into the lock on Pearl’s cell hard enough to practically snap the tip, but it still won’t pop open. People in the other cells are starting to mutter demands for help.

  Cayden and I exchange a glance. We can’t really get all these people out of here by ourselves, can we? On the other hand, they’ll make a heck of a lot of noise if we try to leave without them.

  I hesitate, trying to figure out what to do.

  Pearl reaches through the bars to hug me around the neck. I lean against the bars.

  “Give me the knife and I’ll take a turn,” she says. “Maybe I can get it.”

  I start to slide back so I can hand it to her. Her fingers catch in the chain of my locket.

  “How did you get past the puppet on guard?” she asks.

  “Um, what?” asks Cayden.

  At that moment, Maggie, giggling through her shoe-polish mouth, rushes at us from the pit house door, brandishing a butcher knife.

  There’s no time to think, only react. I feel a sharp tug at my neck as we hurl ourselves in opposite directions, Cayden one way, me the other. The knife flashes down through the space where we were. Even now, as Maggie’s attacking us, I’m startled to realize I know the puppeteer holding the controls. She used to work at Crash Diner. She doesn’t even look at me as I run by, though she pivots so that Maggie can chase me with her button eyes twinkling like the blade of the knife.

  Maggie giggles again. It’s a horrible sound, at once friendly and mindless. I need to put something between me and her, or sooner or later she won’t miss. The pit is my only option. I race along the edge.

  The hands that the other prisoners were waving through the bars of their cells are speedily withdrawn. I look over my shoulder to see how close Maggie is, only to find she’s going after easier prey. Cayden likes sports, but he’s short on running-for-our-lives practice, and it shows. I need to refocus Maggie’s attention.