The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (14 page)

Mr. Tibbalt raised a finger and pointed through the walls of his house toward Nine Silldie Place.

“Teddy came back one day,” he whispered. “I remember. I hardly recognized him, but I didn’t say anything. Life went on. But Vivian never came back.”

“But how did you figure out that it was Mrs. Cavendish?”
said Victoria. Talking seemed really impolite, what with Mr. Tibbalt’s tremendous old-man tears pooling at his eyes, but she had to stay focused.
Just like at school
, Victoria, she reminded herself.
Just like at school with all those idiots trying to distract you.

“I never forgot Vivian,” said Mr. Tibbalt, but he wasn’t speaking to Victoria anymore. He was speaking to himself, or maybe to the photos in his lap. “How could I? But everyone else could. And it kept happening, year after year, and no one noticed. I would have been one of them, I think—happy to let children come and go, happy to ignore the fact that they were coming back different or not coming back at all. But Vivian was always there in the back of my mind, not letting me forget.

“And one day I went to the Home, just to see. I went inside. I thought I would find some house of horrors. But all I found was an orphanage, a nice lady, happy children playing games. I saw what she wanted me to see.”

“But it’s not normal like that, it’s awful, it’s much bigger than it looks, and there’s something really creepy about it,” said Victoria.

“Yes,” Mr. Tibbalt said, wiping his eyes. “Mrs. Cavendish sends me nightmares about it, I think. She knew I wouldn’t let go of my questions—let go of Vivian—unless I thought
I was crazy. And I did, and I do. And here I am, caught forever. I know what really happened, and yet . . . and yet it’s so hard to think about it. It’s like there’s something weaving around in there, confusing my memories into knots.” Mr. Tibbalt tapped his temple and waved his arm at the filthy house. “And I won’t ever be able to clean all of this—never.”

“Well,” said Victoria after several moments during which she seriously questioned her sanity because of what she was about to do, “Mrs. Cavendish doesn’t know
everything
.”

“She doesn’t?” Mr. Tibbalt said, stroking Vivian’s picture with one trembling finger.

“No. For example, she doesn’t know that I’m not afraid of her, that I’m still thinking quite clearly, thank you, and that I won’t let her do this to people.” Victoria set down the fireplace poker and headed toward the front door. “It’s completely illegal.”

Mr. Tibbalt’s hand stopped her from grabbing the front door latch.

“You don’t understand, Victoria,” he said. “No one will help you.”

“But my father’s a very important lawyer—”

“That doesn’t matter. He won’t help you. Neither of them will.” Mr. Tibbalt’s eyelids lowered a bit, like he was
too tired to keep them open much longer. “She goes for the parents, those closest to you. She
does
things to them, gets them all wrapped up, makes them forget and ignore what’s happening. They can’t help it. And no one else will want to step in and help them. They’ll be too afraid to get involved. They’ll be too afraid it might happen to them next. Just like me.”

“Professor Alban was helping,” Victoria said, her shoulders squaring with Academy pride. “He was at the library with me. He knew something was wrong, and
he
wasn’t afraid.”

“Oh, yes? And where is Professor Alban now?”

Victoria paused. “He’s . . . gone.”

Mr. Tibbalt’s eyes narrowed. He nodded in grim triumph. “There you have it.”

“But why didn’t she take me? And, really, why doesn’t she take
you
? Why only
some
people and not others?”

“She takes whoever is useful to her, and of what use am I to her?” Mr. Tibbalt laughed. “I’m old, I’m frightened, I don’t even step outside my gate. She’s gutted me, this
town
has gutted me. I’m a shell. I’m not dangerous. You, though . . .” Mr. Tibbalt rubbed his stubbly mouth. “She said you were like her. She said she liked you, which I very much doubt. She doesn’t like many people, I wouldn’t think. But she did
say
it, and that could be something, couldn’t it? That could be something, indeed.”

“Something . . . like what?” Victoria frowned. “I’m not like her. I don’t steal people.”

Mr. Tibbalt watched her, saying nothing.

The silence made Victoria bristle. “Well, I
don’t
.”

“Let me ask you something, Victoria.” Mr. Tibbalt leaned forward. “What scares you the most?”

“Failure,” Victoria said. She did not even have to think about it. “I’m the best. I’m
always
the best. I have to be.”

“And what could keep you from being the best?”

Victoria paused. “Jill. Jill Hennessey, at the Academy.”

“And why is that?”

“Because she gets good grades too. She’s smart and studies a lot, and—” A chill raced up Victoria’s arms. “She’s like me. Other people aren’t smart enough, don’t study hard enough, I can beat them, easy, but not Jill. She’s too . . . like me. But I don’t like Jill. I pretend to, but I really don’t. I want her to fail all her classes, I want her to fall on her stupid face, I want her to . . . stay out of my way. . . .”

“You might say this Jill is dangerous, then,” Mr. Tibbalt said. “She could keep you from accomplishing your goals.”

Could I be dangerous to Mrs. Cavendish?
Victoria thought. “Mrs. Cavendish said she liked me,” she said slowly, “but
maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe she’s only pretending?”

Mr. Tibbalt settled back into his chair and made a
hmm
sound in his throat.

“Well, I’m not going to just sit around like you did,” said Victoria, stalking outside. She did not want to think about Jill or if she, Victoria, was like or not like Mrs. Cavendish. It was late; she had wasted enough time here, and Lawrence could be screaming and crawling with bugs somewhere, right this very minute. The thought made her slam the front door open in fury. “I
hate
when things don’t make sense or get all mixed up. I’ll
make
them make sense.”

Mr. Tibbalt hobbled after her, using the poker to hobble down the steps. “This isn’t school, Victoria.”

“Oh, don’t act like you know me.”

“I suppose I don’t, do I? Not like Lawrence, anyhow, eh?”

Victoria stopped at the gate.

“If you know what’s good for him, you’ll just go home and do as you’re told,” said Mr. Tibbalt. Gallagher paced in nervous circles in front of him. “Maybe it’s not too late for Lawrence. Vivian went after Teddy, and he came back wrong, and she was gone forever. Is that what you want?”

“Well, no offense, Mr. Tibbalt,” said Victoria, opening the gate, “but Vivian wasn’t top of her class, was she?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Thank you for your time,” Victoria said briskly, slamming the gate shut behind her. Once it was closed, the wind wailed and snapped at her skin. It tried to push her down the street, toward the Home, but Victoria put her head down and fought it. Getting through her own gate and up the walk toward her front porch was the hardest of all.

“Stop it,” Victoria scolded the wind, although she could hardly speak past it. The storm was so cold that Victoria’s skin pricked into painful chills. She kept hearing things in the flower gardens and whirled around, ready to fling her book bag at whatever roaches or gardeners lurked in the shrubberies—but she saw only wet black branches and bright autumn flowers coming apart in the storm.

“Oh, they’re all going to jail, every last one of them, once Father gets ahold of them,” Victoria growled, tugging at the door latch. It wouldn’t budge. She put in her house key, and it wouldn’t turn. She pounded on the door—

—and something pounded back.

Victoria jumped away.

Bang.

That one almost knocked Victoria’s teeth loose. She turned and ran, hoping that maybe the back door would be unlocked and she could get in and grab her parents before it was too late.

Surely Mrs. Cavendish hadn’t gotten them. Surely they wouldn’t be all roachy and weird like Mr. Waxman and Professor Carroll and the Prewitts and—and
everyone
, except for Mr. Tibbalt, who didn’t have anything left for Mrs. Cavendish to snatch. No, they wouldn’t let anything happen to their daughter.

Would they?

She had to climb over the stone wall into the backyard because the gate wouldn’t open. The fall skinned her knees and tore her stockings, but she kept going because
something
was right at her heels, something cold and dark and clicking, scratching at her ankles.

The back door didn’t budge, not when Victoria tugged and kicked at the latch, not when she threw her whole body against it.

She turned and pressed herself back against the stained glass. As she tried to catch her breath, her eyes darting around into her mother’s rose gardens, she felt hot pinches on her arms, hands, and legs.

Victoria had felt those pinches before. Before she even decided to look down, she knew what she would see—gleaming wings, black beetle eyes, sharp feelers, ten little feet digging into her skin.

“Mother?” she whispered. She squinched her eyes shut,
imagining the door swinging open to reveal her parents, and her father would pat her on the back for being brave, and her mother would call the police, and everything would be fine. “Father? Where are you?”

She gulped and looked down.

The roaches were everywhere.

She tried to count all of them, glinting on the porch and on her shoes and hands, clicking their tiny black eyes, waving their feelers and wings.

Pretend it’s a test, Victoria
, she told herself.
You need an A. Count.

One, two, three, seven? She managed only that much before all those hundreds of legs tugged at her stomach and hands and feet, like they were trying to smash her into a little ball. Black wings flitted over her eyes, sucking away the sounds of the storm. They swarmed over her, covering her head to toe, until she almost couldn’t breathe. She was falling, down, down . . .

She was flying, or no—she was being dragged, past wet rocks—or was it a black ocean?—or was it a starless sky? The roaches roiled all around her, between her fingers and legs and across her face, tugging her on with their stinging pincers. They were underground, Victoria realized, perhaps in a tunnel. She smelled mud and rock and stink, and the
air was cold. She wanted to cover her ears to block out the buggy clicks and hisses coming from everywhere, but she couldn’t move her arms. Tiny legs crawled all over her and beneath her, sweeping her along, pinching and pulling her skin like hundreds of burrowing hooks. Mud and grime got in her mouth, filled up her nose and ears. She coughed and choked and tried to claw for air, but she was too covered in bugs to move her arms.

Everything stopped.

Victoria blinked and blinked again, and nothing changed. When she closed her eyes, darkness; when she opened them, darkness. When she allowed herself to breathe past the buggy pinches she realized the roaches were gone. There was no more pain, and her arms and legs were normal again.

But she was alone, and the floor was cold. She wouldn’t let herself cry, not yet.

“Pull yourself together,” she said, but her voice sounded so shaky and unlike herself that it scared her. Mud clung to her lips, and her throat tasted like dirt.

“Hello?” she said, wiping her mouth. The floor beneath her was damp stone. She crawled around to get her bearings, patting the floor as she went. Before she could move much, she bumped into a wall, and then another one at the other side. When she tried to stand up, she hit her head. There
wasn’t even room to push herself fully up onto her hands and knees. She had to crawl around like one of the bugs that had brought her here.

Victoria shrank into a corner. Scuttling noises sounded from somewhere—
everywhere
—or was she imagining things? Was she dead? Was this a coffin? A nightmare?

She hoped it was a nightmare. She pulled her legs up to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut, which made her tears fall, but she was too afraid to be angry with herself.

Over and over, she whispered, “Wake up, Victoria. Wake up.”

FOR A FEW SECONDS
—
OR WAS IT WEEKS
—
Victoria lay in the corner of this low, damp room. It was too dark, and she was too frightened, to measure time. She couldn’t sleep or move.

She started to think that the walls, which she couldn’t see in the dark, were moving.

Wild thoughts began forming in her head. Was she floating, or was she in fact lying on a cold floor? Was the dark really dark, or was it roaches mashed into a film covering her eyes? Was she upside down? Inside out?

Things itched and scratched her. She swatted bugs that weren’t there and realized the things scratching her were her own fingernails raking her skin raw.

She heard a dripping noise and began tapping her tongue against her teeth in time with the drips.

Drip.

Drip.

Her mouth felt drier with each tiny splash.