The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (9 page)

Finally, she reached the Records Room. She slipped in and closed the door. The room was empty, small, cold, and dim. She looked back over her shoulder, through the frosted window of the door. Beyond it, the library shone white.

“Don’t be stupid,” she reminded herself, tugging her raincoat straight. She found a computer in the corner and sat down, refusing to hide behind it like part of her wanted to. She took out her notebook and typed in respectable research topics like “Aborigines” and “the Declaration of Independence” and “zoology.”

“Just in case,” she murmured. “One can’t be too careful.”

Then, looking around once more just to check, she searched for the
Belleville Bulletin
. It was an old newspaper because Belleville was an old town.

Victoria paused, her fingers hovering above the keyboard. She wasn’t really sure what she was looking for, exactly. Usually when she came to the library, it was for an assignment, with a
checklist of items to complete. But this time, it was different; this time, she didn’t quite know what the assignment was.

Think, Victoria
, she scolded herself, and she did, combing over her memories of the last few days:

1  Orphanages that employed strange, bulging-skinned men with rakes.

2  People who smiled so wide and perfect it was like they were ready to pop out of their skins.

3  Roaches with ten legs that stung you.

4  Missing children.

Ah.

Victoria started with the latest issue and searched for missing children. She found a lot of things, sadly, because sometimes the
Bulletin
ran stories from other, bigger newspapers. But she didn’t see anything about Lawrence, Jacqueline Hennessey, or Donovan O’Flaherty. And she found nothing about strange roaches or perfect smiles, except for an advertisement for the Prewitts’ dental practice, which made her shiver and frown and hunch over the keyboard with renewed determination.

She also searched for the Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, and Mrs. Cavendish herself.

“What’s her first name?” Victoria wondered aloud, but she didn’t know. The more she thought about it, the more
she realized how very little she knew about the Cavendish Home. It had been there forever, and yet Victoria couldn’t recall anyone in town ever talking about it, which seemed stranger and stranger the more she thought about it. Orphans were children without parents, and wouldn’t people talk about Belleville parents dying and their children being sent to the Home? Wouldn’t people be shocked and upset, and perhaps visit the children with flowers and candy and condolences? And did these orphans all come from Belleville, or did Mrs. Cavendish bring in children from Grandville and Uptown and the poor towns in between?

Victoria shook her head. She did not know the answers to these questions. She had never even thought to
wonder
these questions before.
And isn’t that odd, Victoria?
she asked herself.
Isn’t it odd that you
wouldn’t
wonder?

What Victoria
did
know, however, was that when she had stood in Mrs. Cavendish’s kitchen, in the warmth of the cooking stew, with the orphans laughing just down the hall, she’d forgotten why she went there in the first place. It was almost like a spell from the fairy stories Victoria had always thought so silly. In that kitchen, Mrs. Cavendish was all Victoria knew—till she found the paper plane that held the message “Help us.”

The
Bulletin
didn’t include many things about the Home,
other than a few blurbs about festivals, tours, and generous donations from Mrs. Cavendish to the library, the Academy, and the hospital.

Victoria frowned. “Well, that’s nice of her,” she said. She remembered Mrs. Cavendish’s pretty face, clean dress, and red lips. The memory made her smile before she could stop herself, only the smile didn’t seem like her own. It felt like someone had hands on her face, forcing her lips gently back.

She searched for a long time and found nothing helpful, even years and years back. Then she went back even farther. Missing children bulletins. Letters to the editor about such-and-such. Advertisements:
THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS IS HOSTING A FIELD DAY FOR ALL AREA CHILDREN THIS SATURDAY, APRIL 14. BEETLE-B-GONE EXTERMINATION OFFERS FREE CONSULTATIONS
.

None of this meant anything. They were random pieces of many different puzzles.

In these old papers, Victoria saw the construction of the Academy, her street, and the streets around it.

The
Bulletin
’s oldest issues were on microfilm. Victoria found the right cabinet on the wall. She thumbed through the tiny pockets of film, took out the first
Bulletin
one, put her hand on one of the microfilm readers to turn it on—

Behind her, the door opened.

The white light of the library illuminated a dark figure.

Victoria reached for her umbrella but couldn’t find it. She had left it beside the computer.

“What do you want?” she said, trying to sound brave.

The door shut. The figure melted into the room’s darkness.

“Miss Wright?” said a voice.

“Professor Alban?” said Victoria. She squinted and saw the frazzled hair. In the computer’s glow, his glasses blinked white.

“Are you—” said Professor Alban. He opened the door a bit, peered outside, shut it, and wedged a chair beneath the doorknob. “Why are you here?”

Victoria backed away. “What are you doing with that chair?”

“They’ve caught on to me, I think. I don’t have much time. This might be the last time I can come here.”

“Who’s they?”

Professor Alban took off his glasses to clean them. Victoria heard the lenses break.

“I don’t really know,” he said. “But people—
things
—have been following me, ever since I started looking around, searching through files at the Academy, town hall, here. At least, I think something’s following me. I can’t be sure.” He wiped his face. “Why are you here, Miss Wright?”

“I’m writing a paper,” said Victoria. She hid the microfilm behind her and wished she had closed the drawer.

“You’re here because of the missing children, aren’t you?” whispered Professor Alban. “I noticed it a few weeks ago. There’s a dozen gone by now. I should have noticed sooner, but I’m only just now getting settled, you know. I’ve only been here a couple of months.”

Victoria felt more afraid than she had since this whole thing began. What, exactly, was Professor Alban trying to say?

She said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and was pleased to hear how crisp and cool her voice sounded.

“Miss Hennessey. Mr. O’Flaherty.” Professor Alban paused. “Mr. Prewitt.”

Lawrence. His name stuck in Victoria’s throat, and an unfamiliar pang ripped through her chest. Professor Alban had included Lawrence’s name with Jacqueline’s and Donovan’s. He’d said it
out loud
. Were they really all gone together somewhere, like Victoria had wondered but never wanted to believe? For the first time in her life, she wished she had been wrong. She didn’t know what to say.

“Yes, I’ve noticed that they’re gone, too,” said Professor Alban, moving to the computer. He leaned over to read the screen. He read. He looked up.

“The Home,” he said. “Mrs. Cavendish’s Home.”

Victoria gritted her teeth. “And?”

“I think I can trust you,” said Professor Alban. “You’ve always been a good student. And I know Mr. Prewitt was your friend.”

“
Is
my friend.”

Professor Alban’s face was bleary and sad in the computer light. “Yes, of course. What do you have behind your back?”

Victoria didn’t move. “Weird things are happening around here.”

“Yes.”

“How do I know you don’t have roaches up your sleeves or something, like Professor Carroll?”

“Roaches?” said Professor Alban. “What do you mean, roaches?”

Victoria tapped her fingers on the microfilm. Professor Alban had always been one of the good ones, one of those professors who actually did things. He made them work.

She decided to trust him and held out the packet. “I was looking at this. The
Belleville Bulletin
.”

Professor Alban sighed. “That’s what I’ve been looking for, every time I come here. Something’s been keeping it from me, though. I look in the right spot, but it isn’t where it should be. I don’t understand it. It’s like someone’s playing a game with me.” He laughed sadly. “You know, sometimes I can hardly remember what I’m looking for anymore. I have
such a hard time remembering what they looked like. Sometimes I forget they were ever there.”

“Lawrence has black hair with a lot of gray hairs, too,” blurted Victoria, clenching her fists. “And he’s got gray eyes, and he hums when he’s happy.”

Professor Alban stared at her. “Yes . . . yes, I remember now . . .”

Victoria heard a scuttling near her, and also farther away in the walls, behind the cabinets, underneath tables. A patch of dark approached her.

She put on a dazzle, lifted her boot, and stomped the dark patch once it was close enough. It squished and crackled, and the stink filled the room. Victoria heard a tiny, furious scream like from a tiny pocket person or from somewhere far away.

The other scuttlings rushed away to the corners of the room and fell silent.

Professor Alban got to his feet. “What was that?”

“One of those roaches. There are lots of them. I’ve seen them all over.” Victoria patrolled the room, glaring into the shadows for more things to stomp. “They’re evil or something, I think. They’ve got ten legs, and they pinch you with them. I saw some under the papers on Professor Carroll’s desk. Well, I saw feelers. But you know. I saw one at Lawrence’s house,
too.” Victoria scraped the bottom of her boot against the floor, but her boot was clean. All the guts and crushed feelers were gone. It was like there had never been a bug at all.

“I don’t know what they mean yet, but they’re
something
,” said Victoria.

“Well,” said Professor Alban. He crossed his arms over himself like he was very small. “I don’t know how much time we’ve got.”

“Is someone going to come after us?”

Professor Alban shrank even farther into his own arms. “I think so.”

“But
who
?”

“I’m not sure. It’s so hard to think.” Professor Alban pulled at his collar. His eyes looked funny. “Shadows. Dark things. I haven’t been sleeping. Eyes in the walls.”

“I was searching the newspapers,” said Victoria slowly, forcing herself to focus.
Eyes in the walls.
Were there eyes in these walls, watching them even now? “I want to learn about the Home. It’s strange, right? I have a bad feeling about it, and I don’t usually have bad feelings about things.”

Professor Alban adjusted his glasses. “How so?”

“Well, there’s Mr. Alice. He’s the gardener. He has weird, twitchy eyes, and his skin is all bulgy and swollen, but the Prewitts and Professor Carroll, they have weird,
still
eyes
now. They don’t even look real, they’re so bright and happy. And Mr. Waxman, too. They’re always smiling really big,
too
big.” She paused to think about that. “I went to the Home, you know. I was looking for Lawrence, and when I went there, it all
looked
nice, and Mrs. Cavendish gave me some candies. But it
felt
weird. You know, that
in the middle
feeling? It’s hard to put into words, but you know something’s off all the same.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Professor Alban. “Go on.”

Victoria began to pace. “And all the missing kids. I wonder if there are others. In Grandville and Uptown. And maybe there have been weird bugs before. And look at this.”

Professor Alban stared at the unfolded paper plane in Victoria’s hand and the scrawled plea for help.

“I took this when I went to the Home yesterday,” Victoria whispered. The air around them seemed suddenly quieter. “Someone wanted me to see this.”

Professor Alban kept looking back at the door. He wiped the sweat from his face.

“We should keep looking,” he said. “Put that away. Please.”

Victoria did, and they kept searching, through one hundred issues of the
Belleville Bulletin
. Sometimes pieces of the
film were blacked out with scribbly marks, burned away, or cut away.

The last issue they looked at was from so long ago that Belleville was little more than Town Square and farms.

Next to an advertisement for A. C. Sherman’s Feed Store was another advertisement, so tiny that Victoria almost missed it.

“Wait,” said Professor Alban, pointing at the reader. The hot yellow light made his tired face look gravely ill. “There.”

A little square said,
NEW RESIDENT BUILDS CHILDREN’S HOME
and
THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
and
CONSTRUCTION
and other things, but black blobs smudged the print. The smears covered almost everything, including the photograph of the Home itself. Victoria could only see the chimneys.

“Is that . . . ?” she said, leaning closer.

At the front of the photograph stood two figures—a woman in a white dress, and a man in dark work clothes. The man carried a rake. The woman stood with hands clasped at her waist. Smudges blocked their faces and most of their bodies, but Victoria could see enough. One familiar bright eye stared back at her from the woman’s face.

Cold ran down Victoria’s arms, but it wasn’t the strange coldness from before. It was the coldness of understanding something awful.

“It looks just like her,” she said, pointing. “Like Mrs. Cavendish. And that’s Mr. Alice. It has to be. But there . . . how is this
possible
 . . . ?”

Victoria pointed at the faded date near the top of the page.

“That’s over a hundred and fifty years ago,” whispered Professor Alban.

“Well, those people in the picture have to be their—their ancestors or something,” said Victoria, backing away from the table. “Maybe her great-great-grandmother. And Mr. Alice, his great-great grandfather. Right?”