Winterhouse

by Ben Guterson

  The two of them began writing furiously, jotting down words and scratching things out and scribbling away. Elizabeth’s mind was flying through possibilities, and within two minutes she found a path connecting the two words and yelled out “Done!” Freddy shouted the same word at the exact same moment. The others at the table had stopped eating and were looking to the two of them with expectation.

  Elizabeth held her sheet up for Freddy to see: ICE, IRE, ARE, ART.

  He held up his in turn: ICE, ACE, ACT, ART.

  They began to laugh, and so did the others at the table.

  “Different words, same result!” Freddy said.

  “Let’s do another one,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll choose.”

  She sat thinking of three-letter words that might lend themselves to the game and began working her way through the alphabet and testing out possibilities in her mind. Before she knew it, she had said the word “log” and was writing it on her page. Freddy closed his eyes again, as though working through another anagram, and then he opened them and said “‘Man’! One, two, three—go!”

  They raced through, a repeat of the first time—and, just as before, they finished at the same moment. Elizabeth held up her page—LOG, BOG, BAG, BAN, MAN—and Freddy held up his, which read: LOG, LAG, LAD, MAD, MAN.

  “Twice in a row!” Elizabeth said.

  “You two are pretty good at that,” a woman at the table said. She was about thirty, brown-haired and slim, and she was holding the hand of the bearded man beside her. “What are your names? Why don’t you try doing them?”

  Freddy’s face brightened as he considered this. “I’m Freddy,” he said, “but that’s too long.”

  Elizabeth was admiring the woman’s blue velveteen blouse. “And I’m Elizabeth,” she said.

  “So why don’t you guys just go with ‘Fred’ and ‘Beth’?” The woman gave her husband a pleased look, as though she’d helped the two kids resolve a dispute. And then she looked back at Freddy and Elizabeth and blurted out, “Ready, set, go!”

  The two of them began writing furiously. Elizabeth saw right away that one way forward from “Fred” was the word “Feed,” although “Fled” or “Free” might have done as well. She decided to go with “Feed,” and pressed onward. From here she tried out several words—“Feet” and “Seed” and “Need,” all while trying to mentally leap ahead one or two or three steps to see how to steer her words in the direction of “Beth.” She had just moved on to “Bees” after going from “Feed” to “Fees,” when Freddy dashed off something with his pen, slapped his paper with an open palm, and called out, “Done!”

  CHAPTER 12

  A VERY UPSETTING ENCOUNTER

  VARY

  WARY

  WARD

  CARD

  “I’m almost done!” she said, and she wrote down her final connecting word and looked up. “I guess you got me,” she said.

  The adults at the table were studying the two pieces of paper on which Freddy and Elizabeth had been writing.

  “Let’s see,” the brown-haired woman said.

  Freddy showed his page: FRED, FEED, SEED, SEES, SETS, BETS, BETH.

  Elizabeth held up hers: FRED, FEED, FEES, BEES, BETS, BETH.

  The woman nodded in admiration. “Well, you finished first,” she said to Freddy. “But she did hers in one less step, so I’d say it’s another tie.”

  “Tie it is!” said the bearded man beside her, and the entire table began to applaud.

  “You’re pretty good at those, I gotta admit,” Freddy said. “Three times we tied.”

  “‘Tied,’” Elizabeth said. “‘Diet.’”

  “Or ‘edit,’” Freddy said. He held both hands above his head as though he’d crossed the finish line of a long race, and the two of them started laughing once more.

  “Hey, you’re still gonna show me around, right?” she said.

  “Let’s finish lunch and I’ll take you outside!”

  * * *

  When they were done eating, Elizabeth rushed back to her room to grab her jacket. She noticed her wardrobe door was ajar, and she opened it to discover the wardrobe had been filled with clothes—skirts, pants, blouses, sweaters, shoes, and more—all in her size, and all hung or folded more crisply and neatly than any clothing she’d ever seen before.

  “Incredible!” she said aloud, and she told herself she would be sure to thank Norbridge for this.

  Over the next few hours, as Elizabeth and Freddy talked about school and where they lived and what they liked to do in their free time, they explored the grounds all around Winterhouse. First they wandered the maze of the enormous Ice Castle that stood between the hotel and the lake, a spread of winding walls and passageways made entirely of ice and compacted snow that reminded Elizabeth of a corn maze her class had once visited on a field trip. Next they watched as a ring of people rushed round and round on the ice rink, and Elizabeth told herself she would work up the nerve in a day or two (or three) to put on some skates herself and give it a try. They walked out onto frozen Lake Luna and threw snowballs as far as they could. They studied the cross-country skiers as they glided away from the little shed beside the lake and headed off onto the groomed trails. And, finally, they checked out plastic toboggans from a stand beside the sledding hill, a bare patch in the spruce trees just beside the road leading to Winterhouse, and spent the last daylight hour of the afternoon going up and down again and again.

  There were several dozen people at the hill, trudging up its fringes, zipping down one of its three runs, laughing and shouting, and—in general—having as good a time as you would expect anyone to have on a crisp winter afternoon when the only thing required to do was race down a smooth, snowy slope at top speed. Elizabeth couldn’t recall when she’d had so much fun.

  “You’re not getting tired, are you?” Freddy said to her as Elizabeth, after bombing down the sledding hill for maybe the twenty-fifth time, stood leaning against her upright toboggan. She would trudge to the top of the incline once again in a moment, but for now she was admiring the enormous golden hotel before her.

  “Just taking a little break,” she said.

  Freddy looked at Winterhouse, too. “You probably can see why I don’t want to leave here,” he said.

  Elizabeth quickly replayed the last twenty-four hours in her mind. “I can’t believe I was on the bus yesterday at this time,” she said. How did I get to come to such an incredible place? she thought.

  “And three more weeks to go!” Freddy said.

  Elizabeth remembered the entranceway to Winter Hall and the family tree that was painted there. “Hey, did you ever notice how so many of the women in Norbridge’s family lived to be exactly one hundred?” she said.

  “Crazy, huh?” Freddy said. “I asked Norbridge about it once. He said it was just a coincidence and probably due to all the clean air up here at Winterhouse.”

  “There’s clean air lots of places,” Elizabeth said. “I guess women are just healthier than men!”

  “Ha!” Freddy said, rolling his eyes. “As if! Although I did look up the numbers once. Do you know what percentage of women live to one hundred?”

  Elizabeth couldn’t say she had ever thought about this, though she had once started a list entitled “People I Have Met Who Are 100 Years Old or Older.” The only name on that list was “Belinda Lockett,” the mother of Drere’s mayor, though Elizabeth had only seen her once, and that was while the white-haired lady had been napping in her wheelchair during an Easter egg hunt.

  “Um, five percent?” Elizabeth said.

  “One point six percent, at least in this country,” Freddy said. He smiled proudly.

  “Do you get all A’s at school?” Elizabeth said.

  “No. A-pluses.” Freddy kept grinning.

  “Me too,” Elizabeth said.

  “Is it a hard school? Mine is.”

  As Elizabeth was considering what to say in return, Freddy pushed up his glasses and pointed to Winterhouse as though the tw
o of them were standing in front of the family tree instead of at the base of the sledding hill. “Hey, we should check out the portrait gallery if you want to learn more about Norbridge’s family,” he said. “You’ll love it. Unless you get creeped out looking at old creepy paintings in an old creepy room.”

  “I think I can handle it,” Elizabeth said.

  * * *

  Elizabeth changed out of her wet clothes back in Room 213 and then left to meet Freddy. As the door clicked closed behind her, Elizabeth looked down the corridor. Just coming around the corner and striding toward her was the man in black.

  “Good afternoon!” the man said, as if they passed each other on the street every day.

  He stood before her, his black shoes gleaming with a deep polish, his coal-colored hair slicked back with glistening precision; there was a twitch at one corner of his lips. Elizabeth couldn’t help thinking the man had been waiting for her to exit her room, and she felt her heart begin to drum, as though she were walking home from school and some strange dog had bounded into her path and begun growling at her. The last thing she wanted to do, however, was let this man know he had flustered her.

  He can’t scare me, she told herself.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, and then she stood looking at him. With his smooth-shaved face, his trim mustache, and the sleek lines of his face, Elizabeth thought he might actually have been nice-looking had his eyes not been so cruel.

  The man smoothed his mustache with a thumb and an index finger. “I believe I saw you on the bus yesterday.”

  “Well … yes,” Elizabeth said, confused. “You said you thought I looked like someone you knew.” Elizabeth was growing more anxious; she was hoping someone else would come down the hall so she could make an escape.

  The man put a palm to his forehead. “That’s it,” he said. “Yes, that’s it. Of course, it’s all coming back to me now. The girl on the bus.” He leaned forward. “The reader,” he said slowly. He narrowed his eyes and took in a deep breath.

  Elizabeth studied the man. “I need to get somewhere, and I’m kind of in a hurry,” she said deliberately. She wanted nothing more than for this man to go away. If he so much as took a step toward her, she decided she would scream.

  He held up both hands as if to indicate he meant no harm. “Oh, I understand completely.” He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and brought out a thin silver case, which he snapped open, and removed a small card that he extended to Elizabeth. “But please,” he said, “do me the favor of accepting this.”

  She hesitated before taking the stiff rectangle of pure white, which looked like this:

  Elizabeth thought the card looked strange, especially the man’s signature in the bottom-right-hand corner. She turned it over; there was a phone number and an address.

  Elizabeth looked up at Marcus Q. Hiems. “Why are you giving me your card?”

  “I am always on the lookout for interesting books,” he said. “It’s clear you’re a reader, and so if you have any titles you’d like to recommend to me, please feel free. I’m always eager to purchase new books for my shop that young people might like.”

  “I don’t know what I can do to help,” she said. What she was thinking was: Why in the world would this man think I would have anything to do with him?

  “My wife and I are here at Winterhouse until the new year, so I’m sure we’ll bump into each other again. If you come across any books in the library here that you think I might find interesting, please do let me know.” He slipped the silver case back into his pocket, and then gave her a tiny salute. “Until then—farewell.”

  He began to turn away but then stopped. “Ah, I nearly forgot,” he said. “Have you had a chance to meet the gentleman who runs this hotel? A Mr. Norbridge Falls?” He smoothed his mustache with his finger and thumb once more.

  “I met him last night,” Elizabeth said. She had no idea why Marcus Q. Hiems was asking her about Norbridge.

  Marcus Q. Hiems began to shake his head gravely. “I would be extremely cautious around that man,” he said. “My wife and I were stunned to discover he was here. You see, he has a very … shady past.”

  “Well, I don’t know about any of that,” Elizabeth said. She was feeling even more uneasy now, but in a way that was different from the agitation she’d felt before Norbridge’s name had come up. Now she was interested to hear more. “I’d be surprised if there was anything shady about him.”

  “He’s a book thief. I know well of his crimes. He’s stolen many, many books from booksellers over the years, and he conceals them in his library. They say sometimes he doesn’t even realize the value of the books he steals, and then he has to find them again so he can sell them and make more money. This is his reputation. Believe me, I had no idea he was hiding out here at Winterhouse.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Marcus Q. Hiems drew himself up tall and took in a deep breath. “You’re a young girl. I’d dislike it very much if anything happened to you here. I’m just alerting you to watch out for … that man.”

  He gave another salute before turning away, and then he strode down the corridor and disappeared around the corner.

  Elizabeth examined the card again and then slipped it into her book.

  Top ten creepiest guy I’ve ever met, she thought, coming up with a new list to add to her notebook. She stood before her door for a full minute to compose herself before heading over to meet Freddy.

  CHAPTER 13

  A GALLERY OF FACES

  RACES

  RACKS

  ROCKS

  LOCKS

  LOOKS

  “I just ran into the strangest man,” Elizabeth told Freddy when she met him in front of Winter Hall. As he led her up a winding staircase and along a narrow corridor, she explained how she’d seen Marcus Q. Hiems and his wife acting oddly on the bus the day before, how they had brought a coffin-like crate of books with them, and then tried to visit the library the night before, and how now Marcus had given her his card and said some hard-to-believe things about Norbridge.

  “I think we ought to tell Norbridge,” Freddy said. “He’ll look into it.”

  Elizabeth stopped abruptly. “Do you think there’s anything to what that man said?” she asked. Freddy stopped walking, too. “He was very strange, that’s for sure,” Elizabeth continued. “But what if what he said about Norbridge is true? It might account for the things we saw him doing—going to the library and poking around and all that.”

  Freddy furrowed his brow and frowned. “I see your point. Still, this is my third time here, and Norbridge has always seemed fine to me. And super nice. Everyone here likes him. I can’t imagine him stealing anything. I think we should just let him handle it.”

  “I agree, he seems really nice,” she said, though she was thinking that just because a person was nice didn’t necessarily mean he couldn’t also be the sort who stole books now and then. She also wondered if maybe Freddy was being just a little too quick to discount unwelcome information about Norbridge. “I just don’t know why that man would have said those things.” She held Marcus Q. Hiems’s card out to Freddy. “Here’s what he gave me.”

  Freddy examined it, front and back. “Why’s his signature so weird?” he asked, and Elizabeth shrugged. Freddy handed the card back to her. “I really think we should at least tell Norbridge that the man acted kind of funny to you.”

  “That sounds like a good plan.”

  They continued walking and passed through a room with dioramas of castles and wintry scenes. They went up another staircase with Winterhouse crests on the walls, stepped through one long hallway and then down an even longer one before coming to a T.

  “We go this way,” Freddy said, pointing to the right.

  Elizabeth paused, looked down the corridor in the opposite direction. “What’s this way?” she said. It was dark, and the hallway seemed not to have any doors along it. There was only a single door far at the end of the corridor,
though it was difficult to make it out in the dim light.

  “There’s a room there that’s locked all the time,” Freddy said. “I’ve never seen anyone go in or out of it.”

  Elizabeth peered at the door. Freddy’s voice seemed very far away, she realized, and she almost felt as though she were all alone in the hallway. She began to walk toward the door, but with only two strides in its direction, the feeling welled up in her and she stopped.

  “What are you doing?” Freddy said softly behind her.

  Elizabeth heard his voice as if from a distance again and was about to answer, but then she looked up to the ceiling just in front of the locked door. A frosted glass shade that covered an unlit lightbulb there wiggled back and forth as though it had been tapped by some unseen hand. It began to rock harder, and then it broke free and plummeted to the maroon carpet below, shattering into a thousand flakes and slivers with a tiny tinkling noise, like ice shifting in a bottle. Elizabeth jumped back, although the pile of broken glass was a good ten feet in front of her.

  “Yikes!” Freddy said. “That would have hit you!”

  She looked to him with wide eyes. She had known something would happen, but this was the first time something like this had occurred, something … dangerous. That was the word in her head as she stared at Freddy.

  “It’s a good thing I wasn’t under it!” she said.

  Freddy pushed up his glasses. “What were you doing, anyway?”

  “I just wanted to see the door.” She looked back at the shattered cover and the door itself, though it still wasn’t clear to her exactly why she had been drawn forward.

  “How did that thing fall right when you were there?” Freddy said, more to himself than to Elizabeth.

  She shook her head, mystified, and then pointed to the door. “Why is it always locked?”

  “They say it used to belong to Norbridge’s sister when she lived here. But I don’t know why it’s locked.” He hesitated. “I think we should get going and tell someone what happened.”

  “He has a sister?” Elizabeth said, uncertain if she recalled this on the family tree.