The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (10 page)

“Maybe ownership of the Home got passed down through their families,” said Professor Alban, but he didn’t look like he believed that.

Victoria couldn’t stop staring at the two smudged figures.

“If it is them,” she said, not wanting to say it, but knowing she must, “if those people in the picture are
our
Mrs. Cavendish and
our
Mr. Alice . . . how could they still be alive?”

She and Professor Alban stared at each other, the horrible question floating between them.

Bang.

Something slammed into the door. It slammed again and again, louder and louder.

Bang.

Bang.

“They’re coming for me,” said Professor Alban. He grabbed Victoria and shoved her into the corner farthest from the door. “The shadows. The eyes in the wall. They’re coming.”

Victoria rubbed her arms. They hurt where Professor Alban had pinched them. She stared at him as he backed away from the door.

“What do you mean?” she said.

Professor Alban didn’t answer. He backed into a table and fell into a chair that was suddenly too big for him. He looked like a child drowning in grown-up clothes, frightened and shaking.

Victoria moved toward him.

“No,” he whispered. An outstretched hand stopped her. “Hide.
Hide.
”

The only sounds Victoria could hear were the slamming door and her own heartbeat. They began to match up. Her heart
was
the slamming door.

She shrank back into the corner and put her hands over her ears. The slams kept going, rattling the walls, making the white light around the door pop in and out, closer and closer . . .

Darkness shadowed the frosted glass.

Two dark streams of . . . 
something
 . . . slipped through the white light from outside into the Records Room. They disappeared into the shadows of the wall. More dark streams joined them from underneath tables and behind cabinets. The room crawled.

Scuttling sounded from everywhere. Cold seeped in through the white-ringed door, toward Victoria’s toes.

The scuttling grew louder. Victoria peeked through her fingers at her arms. They were bare and whole, but she felt like something was there, scratching her, trying to wind her up into evil knots.

She heard the horrible sound of a very small boy whimpering in terror.

It was Professor Alban.

Victoria dared to look up and saw the dark streams converging on the chair where he sat, sliding around his legs, clicking and swarming and waving their feelers all over him.

The door slammed open at last, into the wall.

Victoria hid her face. She heard heavy, scratching, dragging sounds. Professor Alban started to scream. Victoria pressed her hands to her ears, squeezed her eyes shut, and recited French to occupy her brain.

Crier.
To scream.

Je crie.
I scream.
Tu cries.
You scream.

Il crie.

He screams.

Silence.
Silence. That was the same.

The door closed, and after several minutes, Victoria forced herself to look up.

The cold dark of the Records Room returned. The microfilm reader buzzed its yellow light.

Professor Alban’s chair was empty.

Victoria came out of her corner to investigate. The strange noises and dark, scuttling things were gone, the cabinets closed, the microfilm put away. Victoria tried to open the cabinets but couldn’t.

She grabbed her things and snapped everything closed like she was getting ready for school, like it was any other day.

“I don’t know what I saw,” she said, over and over. “Nothing happened. It’s fine.”

But it wasn’t fine. She had seen and heard something awful, and now Professor Alban was gone.

There was only one thing to do, Victoria realized as she stared at the now-quiet door.

Run.

She lunged for the door and yanked it open. Dashing out into the white, clean library, she realized she was alone.
All the people were gone. She almost began to cry at the thought of being forever locked in a library of black bugs and white lights, but she was running too fast to cry.

She made it to the exit. It wasn’t locked. As she ran out onto the steps, Mr. Waxman, standing alone at the front desk, called out, “Come back soon, Victoria.”

Town Square was just as busy as ever, like nothing at all had happened in the library. The people gleamed and twirled and smiled, everything silver, everything sharp.

Victoria pushed her way into the neighborhoods just beyond Town Square, through streets of grim black gates, hedges shining with rain, clean houses and clean shutters, and every now and then a red warning notice in a yard with grass an inch too tall. She ran all the way to Silldie Place. The cobbled walks were so slick with rain that she could see her reflection in the stone—a pale ghost flying in a raincoat.

She stopped at home only long enough to root through her father’s impeccably ordered shelves in the garage. Someone was calling her name from the kitchen, but she ignored whoever it was, muttering, “Where is it, where
is
it?” until she found it—a can of bug spray.

“Victoria?” It was her mother from just inside, near the kitchen, and for the first time since she was very small, Victoria wanted her mother. She wanted to hide. She wanted to admit
failure. The door leading into the house was so close. If she just reached out a little bit, she could grab the doorknob. . . .

But her grip on the cold metal can kept her from going inside. She could not hide; she had to find Lawrence. The image of her favorite street sign popped into her head:
VICTORY
. Victoria Wright did not admit failure.

Shoving the spray can under her raincoat, she slipped back outside into the damp afternoon, running past Five and Seven on one side and Four, Six, and Eight on the other. She was too frightened to stop, too desperate to understand what she had seen in the library. It wouldn’t happen to Lawrence,
it won’t, it won’t
, she repeated to herself with each step.

Nine Silldie Place: the gray wall, the bright flowerbeds, the dark nameplate. The Home’s gate stood open, and once Victoria ran inside, it closed with a heavy, metallic click.

She wanted to turn back, climb over it, and get away. But she couldn’t forget Professor Alban and all the evil, dark things swarming on him. She couldn’t forget the slamming door, the empty library, the smudged pictures of Mrs. Cavendish and Mr. Alice.

Maybe it wasn’t them, though. Maybe Victoria had gotten a little silly with all this.

But if it
was
them . . .

She had to know. She had to see this place for herself.
Maybe, if she got a good look at the inside, and at Mrs. Cavendish, she would have a better idea of what to do next. It could help her figure out what happened to Professor Alban. She would have to be careful, she would have to sneak around and remain unseen, but if she could manage it, if she could find out more in person about the Home . . .

It could help her find Lawrence before he got snatched away for good too. She didn’t want to imagine hearing Lawrence screaming, but it happened anyway. She imagined him crawling with roaches too and screaming and crying like Professor Alban had, and no matter how hard she tried, Victoria couldn’t get to him.

At the front of the house, wide steps led up to the porch and the front door, but Victoria avoided that and slunk around the right-hand side of the Home, pressing close to the gray brick walls. She slipped a hand under her raincoat and withdrew the spray can.

“Just try and come at me, stupid bugs,” she said. “See what happens if you do.”

Every few steps, Victoria paused to listen for signs of life, but she heard nothing except the wind in the trees, rustling and snapping. Ahead, past the corner of the Home, flower bushes and shrubberies and stone paths stretched across the grounds. Gardens.

I can start there
, Victoria thought.
Maybe someone’s outside to spy on.

She crept forward, paused, crept forward again, and took a step around the corner—

—right into Mr. Alice’s stomach.

“Uh-oh,” he said, smiling down at her. In one hand, he held an enormous shovel with dirt and rot clinging to it.

“I—I—” said Victoria, staggering back. She tried to say something,
anything
, but her throat was too tight for words. A dark movement across the ground caught her eye—a roach, scuttling out from behind Mr. Alice to squeeze into a hole in the brick.

Victoria didn’t think twice. She lunged toward it and pressed down on the spray can’s button. A poison cloud covered the roach—Victoria saw it with her own eyes—and yet the bug only paused and stared at her, clicking its beady black eyes. She sprayed again, and again, and it waved its feelers and did not die.

Victoria lowered her arm. “I don’t understand.”

Mr. Alice knocked the useless spray can away with his shovel. At the movement, the skin along his neck seemed to roll and bulge.

“I want to speak with Mrs. Cavendish,” Victoria said, putting up her chin. She would not act afraid. She would
act as though she had every right to be there, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Now.”

He smiled widely. “Come.”

Mr. Alice put his naked white hand at Victoria’s neck and led her back to the front of the house. Strangely, the door knocker looked different this time, like a pig with a great, gaping snout instead of a rose. Victoria frowned at the knocker hard enough to calm her racing heart and gather her courage. She smoothed her curls.

Remember, you’re Victoria Wright
, she reminded herself. Maybe in her imagination she couldn’t get to Lawrence, but real life was quite another thing; in real life, Victoria Wright always got exactly what she wanted. She tugged her raincoat straight and put on her fiercest dazzle.

Mr. Alice pushed open the door. Something darker than shadows stretched away from him into the Home, forming a hallway with a tiny prick of light at the end. A rush of cold gusted out past Victoria.

“Go on,” Mr. Alice said, gesturing with his shovel. “She has been waiting for you.”

THE HALLWAY WENT ON FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE
days, between closed doors on either side. Victoria wondered if it would ever end.

Mr. Alice led the way. He used his shovel like a walking stick, tapping the end of it into the carpet.
Pat, pat, pat.
Shadows in the carpet clicked and whirred alongside them, too dark and quick for Victoria to see. She stared straight ahead, refusing to think about the roach outside, dripping with poison and very much alive.

Perhaps this was not such a good idea.

She considered making a run for it, but when she looked back over her shoulder toward the front door, she saw nothing but darkness. Surely the door was there, but Victoria had the feeling that if she ran back and tried to find it, she would be lost forever. The hallway would keep twisting around and never let her out.

The hallway went on for what seemed like days, between closed doors on either side.

Ridiculous
, she told herself. The hallway could not have been any longer than a regular hallway. After all, the Home was only so large. She had seen it from outside, plain as anything. It had only had three floors and a normal amount of windows. She was just frightened, that’s all.

Very frightened.

The prick of light in front of them grew larger till it formed a doorway. Mr. Alice stopped and gestured toward it with his arm.

“After you, Victoria Wright,” he said, smiling.

Victoria set her jaw and walked past him into a golden hallway lit with soft lamps in sconces. She was determined not to show any sort of fear at whatever lay on the other side.

But what lay on the other side was impossible.

She didn’t see a kitchen or anything close to normal, like she had the first time.

Instead, a wide gallery stretched to Victoria’s right and left, farther than she could see. The gallery’s walls held balconies and windows. Everything past the first floor was darker, and there were six floors altogether, with shadowed railings and hallways, and curling columns that spilled over the walls like vines. Painted birds covered the ceiling, leering
down at Victoria. There was something odd about them. It took Victoria a long time to figure out that instead of claws for feet, they had long, sharp hands.