by Ken Brosky
“The kids were all missing,” I finished. “The ones who survived the fires. Disappeared.”
Briar nodded solemnly. “It was also found that many of the children in these orphanages had been … er, employed in various industries while living in the orphanages. This was common back then, of course. Children often worked in mines and garment shops and factories.”
“Gross!”
“Yes. Gross.” He scratched his head. “Always creative with your word choice. Did you have any success last night?”
“That and more. But what I need to do now is get to the basement. Something is happening down there. Gawd! Seriously, why do Corrupted love their basements so much?”
“Perhaps they enjoy the nefariously dank smell,” Briar suggested.
I looked at him, unable to contain a chuckle. Pretty soon, we were both laughing.
Chapter 10
In my dream, I found myself once again in the foyer at the stairs. There was a commotion coming from the basement—I could feel it the moment I willed my feet to touch the floor. Children crying out. Another loud roar of something inhuman. I had to see what was down there.
I moved closer.
Suddenly, the door to the basement flew open. The same boy—Alex—came rushing out. He ran down the hall, stopping when he saw me. He turned right, slipping into one of the other rooms. I walked through the dimly lit hall, hoping I might be able to will myself to speak aloud. He could see me. If he could see me, he could communicate with me.
From the doorway to the basement came the sweet-sounding voice from the previous night. “Oh, Alex!” she sang, stepping into the hallways and shutting the door behind her. It was the younger mistress all right. She looked left, then right. “Darling, you have so, so much more work left! Children who don’t meet their quota are boiled for stew, don’t forget!”
She turned toward me, but if she could see me she didn’t tip her hand. She walked past me and I turned, watching her walk up the steps. She hummed a high-pitched, pleasant tune, as if she belonged in a musical.
I turned back to the room Alex had slipped into, feeling myself lift off the ground as I became distracted, forgetting about thinking about my feet on the floor. I grabbed the frame of the doorway before I could float back down the hall, then regained my bearings and walked inside.
It was the living room. The one with the old dark drapes and the old couch. There was a bearskin run sitting on the floor in front of the couch—I hadn’t noticed it before but now I found myself stepping sideways to put space between myself and the bear’s terrifying head, frozen in a look of absolute hunger.
The boy was hiding behind the couch, peering around the edge and watching me walk over. In the delicate silence, I could hear the sound of my feet on the hardwood floor, muffled by my socks.
My socks. Last night, I’d taken off my socks before going to sleep. Tonight, I was wearing socks. Whatever ghostly creature I was, I was probably wearing exactly what I wore to bed.
Which meant the ghost standing before Alex was wearing an old teddy bear t-shirt and Hunger Games pajama bottoms. Oy. Some savior.
Thankfully, he didn’t look too disappointed. He was crouched over, his fingers clutching the couch so tightly his little knuckles had turned white. Above us, the ceiling creaked. A door opened, then slammed shut.
“She’ll come back down,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t fight back. I’m so tired. I think they put something in the porridge.”
Carbs, I thought. They loaded it with carbohydrates so the kids got a quick sugar rush. Then the rush wears off and they crash and go to bed. They start it all over again the next day. No protein or fat in their diets would make them groggy and unable to gain much strength to fight back.
Thank you, health class.
“Are you a ghost?”
I shook my head. I tried to talk again, but my voice was silent.
“Here,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his overalls. He pulled out a small chunk of coal. “Can you grab this?”
I could try. I reached out, but nothing happened.
Think about grabbing it, Alice!
I reached out again, imagining my invisible hand grabbing the coal. It floated in mid-air; the boy smiled.
“Cool.”
I moved the coal to the floor, writing a simple message:
What’s in the basement?
The boy nodded, understanding. “They have us digging for something. Well, they have us and something else digging for something. Some of us sew clothes, too, and the mistresses sell the clothes for money to keep buying more coal. Some of us have to keep the furnaces going. It’s really hot.”
“Why?” I wrote.
The boy shrugged. “Because the creature likes it hot.” He swallowed, taking a shaky breath. “The younger one is named Marleen.”
Marleen! Of course. It made sense: Marleen was the daughter in “The Juniper Tree.”
The sound of heavy shoes pounding on the stairs caused us both to flinch. I dropped the coal. The boy quickly used his hand to wipe away the words, putting the lump of coal back in his pocket.
“Will you save us?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Are you going to do it wearing pajamas?”
I smiled and shook my head.
A look of relief spread across his little face. “The creature …” he started to say, but then his big doe eyes glanced over the couch and a look of terror spread across his face. A pair of long, slender hands reached over and grabbed him by his overalls, pulling him over the couch.
“Come along now, my little darling,” said the sweet-sounding Marleen, tucking him under her arm as if he was a football. I tried to follow and felt my feet lift off the ground. I reached out, trying to grab Alex’s hand. But I was floating now, unable to control myself.
“Let go!” Alex shouted, pounding on her back.
Marleen laughed. “Such a strong little boy! Why, two extra hours shoveling coal will be a walk in the park! And if you collapse, all the better! I’m starving and I haven’t had a good leg of child in years.”
The boy screamed louder. I was falling behind, trailing them in the dim hallway.
“Oh, hush,” said Marleen. “I would never, never do such a thing to you. You remind me too much of my dear brother. It was all my fault, you know. I killed him. From that moment on, it was only a matter of time before Death returned to claim him.” She stifled a sob, reaching for the heavy door near the kitchen. “Oh my dear, dear brother. The guilt tears at me so. I fear it will consume me if we don’t find him again!”
I planted my invisible feet on the carpet and stepped quickly, losing my footing again and again. By the time I reached the door to the basement, it was already shut.
And locked.
“But I’m a ghost,” I said in a mute voice. I thought about moving through the door, closing my eyes as I drifted closer. When I opened them again, I found myself in a dark staircase leading down.
Behind me, the door was still shut.
From farther below came the unmistakable sound of Alex’s cries. I willed my feet to touch the steps and take them two at a time, down one landing and then another, where the wooden steps gave way to stones and the wooden walls of the staircase turned to rock. There was no basement, only another winding staircase leading deeper. The air cooled. The noxious scent of burning coal entered my nostrils.
Alex screamed again. I fought to catch up, tripping on the stone steps in the near-darkness. The only sources of light were three small lanterns hanging from the stone walls, and as I passed the last one I found myself surrounded by darkness, carefully plotting my footsteps on the wet stone floor as my invisible fingers followed the rocky wall. I turned right and suddenly, there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Literally.
I gasped. It was a cavern. A massive cavern with massive iron furnaces on either side with long exhaust pipes crawling up the walls and disappearing into the rocky ceiling. Children lurched from
massive piles of black stuff over to the furnaces with heavy shovels full of coal. With every fresh load of coal, the fires inside each furnace belched in satisfaction. The wet rock walls glistened in the firelight.
More kids sat at tables spread out near the entrance to the tunnel, hunched over stacks of jeans, sewing as furiously as their little fingers would allow. Boys, girls, all of them incredibly young, all of them dirty and disheveled and tired-looking. Their eyes blinked furiously in the hot, dry air. On every pair of jeans was a gold “B.”
“Faster now!” said the older Corrupted woman with the gray hair. She was walking between the rows of tables. “Jeans mean money. And money means coal.”
But for what? I thought. Was it to build the furnaces? How long had it taken to build each one? Why were there so few farther down the cavern?
Five of the boys farther down the cavern, tossing another load of coal into the hot furnaces, and the entire cavern brightened.
There, on the other end of the cavern: a lizard. A massive lizard the size of a truck, clawing madly at the walls, tearing away chunks of rock.
I gasped.
The lizard turned, causing the kids to drop their shovels and run back toward the tables. The lizard had bright brown and black spots, like someone had splattered it with paint. It had a fat tail and a wide, spade-shaped head. Its long red tongue jutted out, tasting the air. One of its black eyelids blinked. More shovels full of coal fed the furnaces along the walls and in the brief moment when the fires grew brighter, I could see the creature’s pupil plain as day. A terrible realization crept over me.
It could see me.
Chapter 11
I woke in a cold sweat, blinking fiercely.
“It saw me,” I whispered. “It saw me.”
Briar, asleep on the floor beside the window, sat up and licked his chops. “What now? What’s going on?”
I looked around. It was still dark. My alarm clock read 11:45. Was it really that early?
“We need to go now,” I said. “The lizard saw me.”
“Lizard …” He blinked a few more times. Then it hit him. He hopped up, his fur poofing out. “Lizard?!”
“They’re going to burn down the house,” I said. “The stepmother and her daughter will move on and they’ll transport the lizard but first they’ll burn the kids. That’s what they do.”
Briar rubbed his chin. “They’re using the children for their own nefarious purposes. Diabolical, to say the least. All right, so how do we get out of here without walking past your parents’ room?”
I went over to my closet, grabbing my pair of fighting shoes and putting on a tight black t-shirt and jeans. “There’s no time to worry about that.”
“But what will they do if they catch you?” Briar asked, tapping his paws nervously together. “Unless you’re willing to abandon this life and embrace your role as the hero, I fear you must be careful not to incur their wrath.”
“We need to save those kids,” I whispered harshly.
A thump at the window caused both of us to jump. Briar ducked low, pressing himself against the wall beside my desk. I leaned down, fully ready to draw a razor-sharp saber in the wall.
But then how would I explain that to my parents? A sword-shaped hole is just the kind of thing my dad would consider “property damage.”
“Best to surprise him,” Briar whispered. “But don’t stab too quick. It might that wonderful Seth fellow.”
I gripped the pen like a knife, pressing myself against the wall and staring up at the window. Someone was climbing up the house. I took a breath and held it. The window opened slowly. OK. Maybe it was Seth. It would be incredibly weird, but the last thing I wanted to do was accidentally stab him. After all, I’d already hit him half a dozen times.
Still … best to be ready. I crouched closer, holding the pen low so that I could stab upward the moment I was sure. No second-guessing. Whatever it was could be just as dangerous as the lizard in my dreams. And what about the stepmother? She had walked as if something had carried her forward at an incredible speed. What other tricks did they have up their sleeves?
“I see something,” Briar whispered. “Oh dear.”
A head popped through the window. The nerves running through my body almost sent my hand upward, but the muscles in my arm clenched, preventing it.
“Ted?!” I whispered. “What are you doing here?”
He crawled through the window and plucked a wet leaf from his red shirt. “I heard from—”
I pressed a finger to my lips.
He lowered his voice. “Sorry. I heard from Chase that you were grounded. I thought I’d stop by and make a booty call.”
There came a distinct scoff from the direction of my desk. Ted turned. “Did you hear that?”
“It’s just the family cat,” I said. “Booty call?”
“Yeah.” He got up and sat at my desk, powering up my laptop. The room was bathed in a soft blue glow. “We’ll just make out and stuff. Is this your friends list?”
“It is.” I turned toward the door, wary. It was locked. My parents were on the other end of the hall. They weren’t exactly light sleepers, but Mom got up to pee pretty much every hour on the hour. If I was on the first floor, tossing Ted out would definitely have been an option.
“Yeah, so your Trish friend is totally crazy,” he said in a low voice. He was pointing and clicking, going through my Facebook page. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all. And I definitely didn’t like him saying stuff about Trish.
“OK. Got it. Listen, I really need to get some sleep. It’s a school night, after all, and …”
He shook his head. “Um, are you aware how many guy friends do you have on here? It’s kinda unsettling.”
“Unsettling?” I repeated. I realized I was still clutching the fountain pen like a knife and put it in my pocket. Not without some hesitation, though.
Ted sighed, spinning in the chair to face me. In the darkness, with just the glow of the computer screen, he looked a lot older. “Look, if we’re going to date, I’d really appreciate it if you defriended some of these guys. You can keep Seth, ‘cause he’s your best friend. But this Briar guy? I mean, he looks thirty years old!”
I didn’t get it at first. Then I peered over his shoulder and saw the profile picture of “Briar.” It really was a thirty-year-old guy. With his shirt off. Looking like a total beefcake rock star. I had to suppress a laugh—Ted was jealous of a rabbit.
“I’m not defriending him,” I said in a low voice, standing up. “He’s my friend.”
Ted shrugged. “Then I don’t think we should see each other.”
“OK.”
He stared at me a moment, then flinched as if I’d thrown something at him in the darkness. “But we’ll break up.”
“Fine.”
“Huh.” He pursed his lips. “That usually works.”
I crossed my arms, glaring at him. I had to fight the urge to raise my voice. “You think you can threaten me to get rid of my friends? Are you insane?”
“Look, it’s just weird for you to have that many guy friends. Especially one this old who’s obviously a body-builder or something.”
“Lower your voice!” I whispered. Oh, I had such an urge to pull him off my chair. I didn’t want him near my computer anymore. I didn’t want him in my room, either. “And I’ll have you know that Briar is one of the nicest friends I’ve ever had.”
Ted shook his head. “OK. So we’re broken up.”
“Good. Great.” I jammed a finger in his direction. “I won’t change my life for you. I won’t change my friends for you. Even if you were Ryan Freaking Gosling, I wouldn’t ditch my friends just to satisfy your jealousy. Got it?”
He seemed taken aback. I guess his plan of propping a ladder against my window and sneaking in for a goodnight kiss wasn’t going all that well. Surprise, surprise.
“Um, this isn’t usually how girls react.”
“Then I pity your previous girlfriends,�
�� I said in a wry tone. “Because no girl should have to ditch their friends just because her boyfriend says so. And I don’t even know if we were even dating, for crying out loud!” I was raising my voice. It was time for him to go. This night had enough complications without Ted. “Go home.”
He walked over to the window, glancing back at me. He looked confused, as if he wasn’t used to not getting his way.
“Go,” I said again. “And leave the ladder.”
He crawled awkwardly through the window, nearly losing his footing in the process.
When he was gone, Briar reappeared on the bed, his legs crossed. “Hmmm … that was the most uncomfortable moment I’ve been a part of in some time. Not since … oh, well, there was that time Juliette was propositioned by a male prostitute. Your boyfriend is a strange one indeed.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. We need to get down to that orphanage.” I paced back and forth beside the window. “Gawd! Ted came by and totally gave us a way out but we have no way to get downtown. I should have just defriended you and asked him to give us a ride.”
Briar’s whiskers twitched. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
We sat in silence for a moment, thinking.
“I could call Seth,” I offered. “But he hardly ever answers his cell phone.”
“Ah-ha!” Briar jumped over to the desk, running a paw over the laptop’s trackpad to turn it back on. “I have an even better idea.”
“What?”
He turned to me, just a hint of a smile on his face. “Let’s call a limo.”
Chapter 12
The limo arrived in just fifteen short minutes. An impossible task, given it came from downtown. But of course Sam Grayle wasn’t supposed to be possible in the first place.
“I hope you’re right about this,” I said to Briar, opening the back door. I immediately halted when I saw the figure sitting on the other side. As if on cue, the clouds along the horizon lit up in a bluish glow.