The Collectors

by Jacqueline West

  20

  They’re Coming

  “WHY on earth did you DO that?” Ingrid Markson was shouting. “Couldn’t you hear me calling you?”

  “I wasn’t wearing my hearing aids,” said Van, who still wasn’t. But shut inside a tiny, brightly lit hospital room, he had no trouble understanding his mother at all.

  “Why did you leave the apartment in the first place?” Her voice made the walls ring. “Why, in the name of everything that makes sense, would you go running out of the house into the city alone in the middle of the NIGHT?”

  Van knew opera singers were supposed to be able to shatter champagne glasses with their voices. He’d never seen his mother do this, but he was pretty sure he saw the glass in the door tremble.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t know?” his mother repeated. “You’re not even going to tell me a story about a stray cat or dog or some other creature you saw out the window?”

  Van glanced at the windowpane. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see a squirrel or bird or other creature staring in at him through the blinds, watching his every move.

  “I think,” he began, “maybe I was having a bad dream.”

  “Oh, Giovanni!” His mother’s head flopped dramatically back onto the hospital bed. Except for the bulky white cast covering one leg, she would have looked like she was playing a tragic opera scene. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Van again. A painful lump swelled in his throat. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  He wanted to throw himself onto her bed and let her wrap him up in a big, lily-scented hug, but he wasn’t sure if that would hurt her even more, or if she was too angry to hug him anyway. So he stayed where he was.

  A nurse and a doctor bustled in. The bumpy blur of their voices filled the room. Van rubbed his sore eye. He was suddenly exhausted, slumping there in an armchair, in his pajamas, wrapped in a blue hospital blanket. Lemmy’s shoebox rested in his lap, hidden by the blanket’s folds. Everyone had been too worried about his mother to notice it. Van pulled the blanket tighter.

  In a twisted, terrible sense, his wish had worked. His mother couldn’t take a job in Italy now. But the way that the wish had come true . . .

  Van shuddered.

  It was just a broken leg. His mother would be all right. It could have been worse. When Van imagined how much worse, he felt like he might throw up. He clamped his hands around Lemmy’s box. He wouldn’t make another wish for a very long time.

  Maybe ever.

  The blanket started to warm him at last. Van’s head drooped. His eyes were halfway shut when the door swung open yet again.

  Charles and Peter Grey strode into the hospital room.

  Mr. Grey wore a long trench coat over a pair of slacks. Peter was dressed in his pajamas: dark gray pants and a matching thermal shirt. Cool pajamas. Not like the plaid ones Van was wearing. Van pulled his legs out of sight.

  His mother’s face brightened. One hand flew to her hair. She straightened her shoulders. “Oh, Charles,” Van heard her voice through the fog. “. . . So sweet of you . . .”

  “Well . . . sibling . . . alone . . . ,” Mr. Grey’s voice murmured back.

  Peter’s eyes moved around the room. They landed on Van like the smash of an ice-cold water balloon. Van’s chest squeezed.

  He made a little wish that he knew wouldn’t come true. He wished that Peter could know what he was thinking; that just by looking at him, Peter would see that none of this was what Van wanted.

  Peter’s chilly eyes flicked away again.

  The doctors and nurse talked, and Van’s mother talked, and Mr. Grey talked, their voices filling the room with noisy fog. Minutes later, Ingrid Markson was settled into a wheelchair, and the whole group squeezed out the door into the hall.

  A van and driver waited outside the hospital lobby doors. Some orderlies helped Mr. Grey fold Van’s mother and the wheelchair into the middle of the van. Peter climbed into the back. Mr. Grey took the front passenger seat.

  “Climb in, Giovanni,” called his mother’s voice from inside, as though she’d already said this more times than she wanted to.

  Van squeezed inside next to his mother. Somebody slammed the door after him, and they all rolled away through the nearly dawn darkness.

  His mother and Mr. Grey spoke, but Van didn’t even try to follow. He held Lemmy’s box tight and leaned his head against the window. The hum of the motor and the vibration of the glass erased everything around him. He let his eyes slide shut.

  When the van rolled to a stop some time later, Van sat back, blinking. He gazed through the window.

  This wasn’t the right building. This wasn’t the right street. This was a block of stuffy stone houses. And the one right before them was Peter’s stuffy stone house.

  “Why are we here?” Van asked, realizing from the way that Mr. Grey turned to frown at him that he had already been speaking.

  “Mother . . . elephant . . . someone to . . . aisle . . . ,” said Mr. Grey.

  Van stared at his mother’s face.

  “Charles and Peter are so incredibly kind, they’re letting us stay with them for a while,” she said clearly. And pointedly.

  “But—”

  “Just until I can get around with crutches. Isn’t that kind of them, Giovanni?” Her stare was like a shove.

  “Yes,” said Van.

  The driver of the van helped Mr. Grey hoist Van’s mother out of her seat and back into the wheelchair. They boosted her up the steps to the front door. Peter and Van followed. Van clutched Lemmy’s box. Peter glared straight ahead, not looking at anyone.

  Once they were shut inside the big stone house, words began to swim through the fog.

  “Emma, the nanny, go to your apartment . . . things . . . tomorrow . . . ,” Mr. Grey was saying. “List . . . exactly . . . chew on . . . to bring back.”

  “Really, Charles,” said Van’s mother. “This is too much.”

  Mr. Grey reached down and took her hand. “It’s nothing.”

  Van saw Peter’s face tighten.

  “For now . . . comfortable as we can. Ingrid . . . bed for you downstairs . . . sitting room. Giovanni, you . . . RED GUEST ROOM. Peter . . . shoot ache him there.”

  Without speaking, Peter turned and stalked up the curving staircase. He didn’t glance back, not even when they reached the upper hall.

  They stopped at the third door on the right.

  “Here,” mumbled Peter.

  He shoved the door open. Inside was a guest room with red walls, one big window, and a gray-blanketed bed.

  Peter started to walk away.

  “Wait, Peter,” Van called. “I’m sorry. I mean—I didn’t want this to happen. I wanted the opposite of this to happen.”

  Peter glared at the floor. His mouth moved, letting out words Van couldn’t catch.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Van went on, in what he hoped was a loud, but not too loud, whisper. “I don’t want my mother to be here. I don’t want this.”

  Peter’s eyes snapped up. He stared at Van for a second. Then he said, very clearly, “But it’s your fault.”

  Van couldn’t argue with that.

  He stood in the guest-room doorway, clenching Lemmy’s box in both arms, as Peter stalked into his own room and slammed the door.

  Sleeping in a strange bed, no matter how soft and pillowy and well blanketed that bed is, and no matter how exhausted you are, is never as easy as sleeping in your own. And Van’s body buzzed with so many furies and fears that he could barely hold still.

  His mother’s scream as she lay in the street. Mr. Grey’s hand on his mother’s shoulder. Peter’s ice-water eyes. Van tucked Lemmy’s box under the blanket beside him. Then he untucked it again and lifted the lid for a peek.

  Lemmy was sleeping sweetly, wrapped up in its own misty arms.

  Van felt a tiny bit better.

  They might be in a strange house, but the people he cared about wo
uld be all right. His mother’s leg would heal. The Wish Eater would be safe in its shoebox, loved and watched over by Van—at least, until it got hungry again. But he would think about that problem later.

  He tucked the box back in.

  The blankets on the guest room bed smelled like lavender sachets. The sheets grew warmer and softer as Van’s weight settled into them. He shut his eyes. Silence and lavender grayness surrounded him.

  He couldn’t hear the tapping at the guest-room window.

  He couldn’t hear it growing louder and faster as whatever was tapping tapped harder.

  He couldn’t hear the shush of the window sliding open. The feet hitting the carpet. Padding toward his bed.

  He only knew that something had gotten inside when it landed on his chest.

  Van shot up, barely stifling a scream.

  A squirrel was clutching his pajama collar. Van looked past Barnavelt, into Pebble’s pale, panicked face.

  “They’re coming,” she whispered.

  21

  Hold on Tight

  VAN wormed back against the headboard.

  “What?” he gasped. “Who’s coming?”

  Pebble’s face was gray in the predawn light. Van could catch only one of her words, but that word was enough. “Razor.”

  Van’s skin prickled. “Why?”

  Pebble gave her head an impatient shake. “Because. They know.”

  “They know what?”

  “About the Eater,” Pebble practically growled. “Somebody . . .” Her lips moved faster, and Van lost the thread of the words.

  “What did she say?” he asked Barnavelt.

  “She says, ‘Somebody saw you because you made a wish in a public park with an Eater right beside you, you moron.’” Barnavelt tilted his head. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “What are they going to do?” Van asked.

  Pebble said something else fast and forcefully.

  “She says, ‘They’re going to put it where it belongs,’” squeaked Barnavelt. “Hey, what happened to your spaceship sheets?”

  “Are they going to put it in the Hold?” Van’s throat was tight. “Will they hurt it?”

  Pebble paused. Van thought he heard her say “no” or “don’t know.” He hugged Lemmy’s box tighter, hoping the creature couldn’t hear.

  “What should I do?” he whispered.

  “Nothing,” said Pebble firmly. “Just give it to them.”

  Barnavelt nodded in agreement. “Just give it to them,” he echoed. “That will be the very best thing for everybody. Well—almost everybody.”

  Van tried to picture himself handing Lemmy over to Razor, with his scarred face and his gleaming hooks, and his mind switched off like an unplugged TV. He couldn’t do it. Not even in his imagination. There was no way he could place tiny, trusting Lemmy in the Collectors’ hands.

  “If you think I should just let them take it,” said Van, “then why are you warning me?”

  “Because.” Pebble leaned very close to him, her face intent. She grabbed his hand. Van had the feeling that, for once, Pebble wasn’t about to drag him somewhere—she was just holding on tight. “Don’t try to fight them. Please. You could get hurt. And I don’t want . . . I don’t want that.” Her eyes flicked to the window. “Better go.”

  “Wait!” Van scrambled to his knees, still holding the box. “When are they coming?”

  Pebble shrugged. “Soon,” Van thought she said, though it might have been “noon” or “two.” She threw a leg over the sill. “Barnavelt.”

  The squirrel stopped nosing the blankets. “Oh! Hi, Van!” he exclaimed. “Fancy meeting you here! What a small world!”

  “Barnavelt!” said Pebble.

  The squirrel leaped to her shoulder. “Pebble!” he squeaked. “So good to see you! It’s been ages!”

  Pebble gave Van a last look before disappearing over the windowsill. “Just . . . be safe,” she said.

  Be safe. Or “be brave.” Or “face it.” Van wasn’t sure which.

  Then he was left alone, crouched in the middle of the guest-room bed, holding tight to the little cardboard box.

  He peeped inside.

  Lemmy was still asleep. As the box opened, the creature turned over. It gave Van a sleepy smile.

  That smile landed on Van like one last drop of water in a sink about to overflow.

  Certainty flooded through him. So what if he got hurt? There was no way he could let Razor take his defenseless little friend. No way at all.

  Van kicked his legs out of bed. With Lemmy’s box under one arm, he grabbed the pillows and the soft gray blanket.

  The guest room closet was empty except for a white bathrobe and an extra set of sheets. Van shoved these aside. He spread half the blanket on the floor, arranged the pillows, crawled inside, and shut the closet door behind him.

  No one was going to sneak up on him here.

  With his body curled protectively around Lemmy’s box, Van lay down. He honed his senses, feeling the soft vibration of water pipes in the floor, watching the thread of moonlight beneath the door, smelling the dusty lavender of the blanket. After minutes, or hours, he finally fell asleep.

  There was light slipping under the closet door.

  It was brighter than the peachy glow of morning, so Van knew he had been sleeping for a while. Or that someone had turned on the light in the room outside.

  A shadow flickered across the strip of light.

  Van froze. Without his hearing aids, he couldn’t catch any sounds from beyond the door. But someone was there. Someone tall. Moving slowly.

  Van held his breath, and Lemmy’s box, as hard as he could.

  The light in the gap disappeared, blocked by someone’s body—or by the edges of a long, dark coat. The shadow halted there. Waiting. Listening.

  Van’s heart banged like a marble in an empty tin can.

  He pressed himself into the closet’s corner, trying to hide behind a hanging bathrobe. The closet door inched open.

  Desperately, he shoved Lemmy’s box out of sight behind his back.

  Daylight poured in. Van squinted up at the silhouette in the doorway.

  It was Emma, the nanny.

  “Well, hello,” he saw her say. “. . . who . . . ride?”

  “Yes,” Van gasped. “I’m all right.”

  “How . . . breakfast?”

  “Oh,” said Van, wishing both that his heart wasn’t pounding so hard and that he wasn’t crouching at the bottom of someone else’s guest-room closet. “Sure.”

  Van kept Lemmy’s box in his lap as he ate a bowl of cereal in the Greys’ kitchen, and afterward, he left it within reach while he changed into a borrowed set of Peter’s too-large clothes. He brought it along when he and Emma went to the apartment to fetch a few important things, including Van’s hearing aids. He held it during the taxi ride back to the Greys’, and while he and Emma played a game of Scrabble with his mother, and while Peter came down the stairs, glared into the living room at the three of them, and then stomped back up to his own room.

  He even kept the box in his lap when they all sat down together at the dinner table.

  Mr. Grey gave him a funny look before finally asking, “What’s in the box, Giovanni?”

  “Just . . . part of my collection,” said Van.

  “Nobody wants to steal your stupid collection,” muttered Peter.

  “Peter,” said Mr. Grey.

  “What?” Peter frowned at his father. “He probably couldn’t even hear me.”

  “I could hear you,” said Van quietly.

  But nobody seemed to hear him.

  After dinner, Peter charged back up to his room. Emma cleared plates, and Mr. Grey and Van’s mother lingered at the table, finishing their desserts and telling stories about opera friends. Van slunk away. He carried Lemmy’s box upstairs to the guest bathroom. He peeked under the lid, just to be sure—Lemmy was drowsing peacefully—and arranged the box on the counter before taking out his hearing aids, undressing, and climbing i
nto the shower.

  Van had washed in hundreds of apartments and hotels, and it didn’t take him too long to figure out how to turn on the Greys’ fancy shower nozzle. Under the spray of warm water, Pebble’s warning started to rinse away. Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe no one was coming after all. Or maybe it had just been a trick to scare him—something to make him hand Lemmy over, or reveal Mr. Falborg’s secrets.

  He would just have to be smart, and careful, and not let them see that he was afraid.

  He wasn’t afraid.

  Dun da dun DUN, dun da dun . . .

  Van hummed to himself under the hiss of water. He closed his eyes and scrubbed his face. A patch of darkness fluttered over the shower curtain.

  Van’s eyes flew open. Soap stung them, but he didn’t blink.

  “Hello?” he whispered.

  If there was an answer, Van couldn’t hear it.

  He waited. There were no more shadows.

  Van counted to thirty, never blinking, not even when droplets splashed into his eyes.

  Nothing.

  Finally Van let his body relax. He turned back to the showerhead, scrubbing the soap away and picking up the shampoo.

  Dun da dun DUN . . .

  Another shadow slid over the curtain. The fabric gave an almost imperceptible ripple. From the corner of one bleary eye, Van thought he saw a patch of darkness receding, like a spill pouring backward into a bottle.

  He grabbed the shower curtain and whipped it aside, hoping—too late to do anything about it—that Peter or Mr. Gray or Emma wouldn’t be standing there, staring back at him.

  But the bathroom was empty. His hearing aids sat, undisturbed, by the sink. Lemmy’s box was safely shut.

  Van took a deep breath. It had been his imagination. Again.

  He finished showering as speedily as he could. Then he dried off with one of the Greys’ cushy towels, wriggled into his least-embarrassing stripy pajamas, and put on his slippers.

  He padded down the hall to the red room with Lemmy’s box securely in his arms.

  Once the door was shut behind him, he pulled the shades, checked the corners, and sat down in the middle of the bed.

  He lifted the lid.

  The box was empty.