The One Safe Place (9 page)

“Who are they?” Devin repeated.

“They’re the Visitors,” Luke said.

Frisker wriggled wildly, jumped out of Kit’s arms and scampered through the doorway. Kit immediately ran after him.

“Visitors?” Devin repeated.

Just then, Malloy came into the gym. He was holding a huge ice-cream cone in each hand. As he trotted along, he gave a slobbering lick first to one cone and then the other, his head turning rapidly from side to side. His tongue hung out, and there was ice cream all over his chin and down his shirt. His eyes were bright, almost feverish.

“Hi, Malloy,” Devin said uncertainly. Luke immediately shoved him in the ribs.

“Don’t look at him!”

“Why not?”

Luke gave him another shove, even harder than before.

“Because we don’t. We don’t look. It’s the Rule.”

“I don’t understand,” Devin said helplessly. “What’s going on?”

Luke’s whole face convulsed in a massive twitch. “Look, Devin, I haven’t been straight with you. There’s stuff I haven’t told you. But I’ve stopped trying to explain things to new kids because they just don’t believe me. They usually have to find out for themselves. You’ll know more when you go to see her.”

“Mrs. Babbage? Does she run the Home?”

“Not Mrs. Babbage. The Administrator. She lives in the tower. Remember the sign when you came in? The Gabriel H. Penn Home for Childhood? Well, she’s Penn’s daughter, and she never lets you forget it.” He drew a deep breath. “Listen, Devin. This isn’t a good place. They do stuff to kids here . . . bad stuff. I hate to have to tell you that. I don’t even like to talk about it.”

“So why don’t you just leave?”

“That’s the thing,” Luke said heavily. “We can’t.”

Eight

DEVIN FOUND KIT IN
her room after supper.

“I don’t like it here,” he said. “Luke told me nobody can leave, but I think we should try.”

Kit was arranging her bed for the night, folding down the quilt carefully and plumping the pillows. She didn’t look at him.

“You were the one who wanted to come. You said we should give it a chance.”

Devin told her about Malloy and the ice cream and what Luke had said to him while she had been chasing Frisker.

“You know what I think?” Kit said, sounding angry. “I think Luke is crazy. I mean, just look at him, the way he twitches all the time. Why should we believe what he says? I didn’t think this place existed, Devin, but it does. And it’s amazing.”

She fell to her knees and pulled a box from under the bed.

“I wasn’t going to show you this, but look.” She took a tiny golden jug from the box. “I took it from the dollhouse,” she said. “Isn’t it the rarest of all raries?” She rummaged further in the box.

“Remember my rule? Steal small and steal big?” Inside the box lay the rest of the dollhouse dinner service, a glittering trove of plates and crystal glasses, each no bigger than a fingernail.

“Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”

The note of longing in her voice was the same as when she had told him about the house in The Meadows.

“Kit, I just know there’s something going on here,” Devin said helplessly. “Something bad for us.”

She looked at him steadily, her eyes fierce amid the starry speckles of her face.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s say you’re right and there’s something bad here. My question is, how bad could it be? Because I can take bad, Devin. I’ve taken it all my life. I’m kind of an expert at it. But today I got fed and I got this dollhouse stuff and best of all, I got Frisker. So what I’m thinking is, if this place really is bad like Luke says and I gotta start taking it again, better here than in the city or anywhere else.”

She looked sad for a moment and very lost. Then she brightened.

“Let’s talk about Frisker,” she said. “I’m going to start teaching him tricks tomorrow. Like sitting and fetching. You lived on a farm, Devin. How do you get dogs to do stuff like that?”

“I never had a dog,” he said. “But I have a horse. I’ve had her forever. She’s so smart and good. I taught her loads of things. I even taught her how to dance! Some evenings, after chores, Granddad would play his guitar and I’d put on shows for him.”

“What did he play?”

“Mostly green stuff,” Devin said, “sometimes blue . . .”

Kit made a face. “You’re crazy,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

It was very late, and the only sounds were the sighing of the moon and the scratch of ivy against the window of Devin’s bedroom. He lay wide-eyed, watching the shadows on the ceiling.

After a while, he got out of bed and went to open the window.

He stood for a long time, inhaling the night air. The grounds of the Home were spread beneath him, the trees pooled in darkness, moonlight glittering on the roof of the carousel. He was too far away to see the wooden horses themselves and wondered if they were still turning around and around with nothing but shadows to ride them. Over to his left loomed the Administrator’s tower, paler than the other buildings, almost luminous in the moonlight.

Devin’s thoughts kept returning to Malloy. How strange he had looked, greedily devouring the ice cream. Luke had told him not to look, but Devin knew Luke had seen Malloy too and had shuddered.

And yet Malloy had been fine at lunchtime. Devin had liked him then, even hoped they’d be friends.

Devin returned to bed with an uneasy mind, and it was a long time before he fell asleep.

It was almost noon when he woke up. Someone was knocking at his door.

A girl appeared.

“I’m the messenger,” she said. She paused, waiting for him to do or say something. She had long brown hair in a center part and fingernails bitten down so far there was hardly any nail left at all. “Oh, yeah, sorry,” she said. “I forgot you’re new. Sorry. I’m Karen. I’m the one they always ask to give the message.”

“Who always asks?”

“Mrs. Babbage or the Administrator. I don’t know why they ask me. I don’t want to do it.”

“What’s the message?”

“Oh sorry, forgot to explain that too. The message is always the same. You have to go see the Administrator. Normally I just turn up and say ‘I’m the messenger’ and everyone knows what I mean.”

“So I have to go to the tower?”

She nodded. “Sorry . . .”

Devin pulled on his jeans and went outside. The birds were still there, swooping to and fro around the tower. He paused at the door, not knowing whether to knock or not. He pushed it gently and it opened.

He’d been expecting to find himself in a large area, with a staircase, perhaps. Instead he was standing in a narrow corridor, more like the hallway of an ordinary house. On one side was a coat rack, on another an umbrella stand and a place for boots. The walls were painted a dull plum color, and a faded rug in the same shade ran all the way from the entrance to a wooden door at the far end of the hall.

Devin went down the corridor and through the wooden door into an even smaller room, barely bigger than a closet. It was perfectly square, without windows or furniture or decoration of any kind.

The door closed behind him.

Next second, the floor shifted beneath his feet and the whole room seemed to tremble. Devin cried out in alarm and reached to steady himself. A band of light appeared. It ran all the way around the room and as he stared, it moved down toward the floor and disappeared. There was a long, low hissing sound, and then the wooden door opened again.

Devin was shocked to see that he was now at the very top of the tower, standing in an enormous circular room. Comfortable armchairs surrounded a fireplace. Pictures hung on the curved walls: scenes of mountains and cows, and a lady in a bonnet sitting in a field. There were little tables crowded with knickknacks, and a beautiful old rug covered the floor. Half the wall on the farther side of the room was devoted to books, all bound in the same dark leather and all exactly the same size. At one side of the room was a gleaming wooden desk, empty except for a big bowl of blue marbles.

A woman sat perched on the front of the desk, staring intently at a piece of paper.

She was dressed in an immaculate white shirt and navy skirt without a single crease or sign of wear. A small key on a silver chain hung around her neck. Her dark hair was all one shape without a strand out of place, and it was very shiny. Her skin was shiny too, pale and polished and perfectly smooth. She looked, Devin thought, as if she were waterproof, as if nothing—not sweat or dirt or tears—could stick to her even for a second.

She raised her head at last and looked at Devin. There was no expression at all on her face.

“Well,” she said. “So Roman has redeemed himself.”

Devin didn’t know what to say. She spoke extremely clearly, her
s
’s particularly sharp, sizzling in the air above her head.

“Sit down.”

He looked around and chose a high-backed chair next to a metal stand with a blanket draped over the top of it.

“You look fairly healthy,” she commented. “Some of Roman’s finds arrive in very poor shape indeed. But you’re too thin. You’re not eating enough.”

“I am . . . it’s just that I didn’t have much before, when I was walking and then when I was in the—”

“Yes,” she said, cutting him off. “You must eat more. Our food is excellent. Nothing synthetic or processed. We did a lot of research before we got it just right.”

“Please . . .” Devin faltered. He looked down. He was squeezing his hands together so tightly it almost hurt. “Please can you explain what I . . . this place . . . ?” His voice trailed off.

“Remarkable,” the Administrator said, ignoring his words. She was studying the piece of paper again. Devin suddenly heard a noise; a scraping, shuffling sound coming from somewhere very close by. He half turned.

“Bye-bye,” someone said in a low, dusty, unhappy voice.

Devin looked around the room, startled. He could see no one apart from the Administrator.

“Bye-bye,” the voice said again, even more wretchedly than before.

The Administrator strode forward and whisked the blanket off the metal stand next to Devin’s chair.

“Be quiet, Darwin!”

A bird huddled on the floor of a cage. It was pale gray all over except for its tail, which was red, and a flash of white around its eye. But its feathers were dull, and there were large bare patches, as if the bird had been pulling them out. It shuffled toward Devin and gave him a sorrowful look.

“This is an African grey parrot,” the Administrator stated. “It is the most intelligent of all the parrots and capable of learning hundreds of words and mimicking almost any sound. It can be taught to count and even to hold simple conversations.” She gave Darwin a long, blank stare. “Unfortunately,” she said, “Darwin fulfills none of these expectations. He refuses to learn anything. He has mastered merely one word.”

The parrot ducked his head as though ashamed. “Bye-bye, bye-bye.”

The Administrator replaced the blanket over the cage. “He deserves to be kept in the dark,” she said. “Perhaps it will encourage him to try a little harder.”

“But why don’t you just let him go?” Devin asked, in distress. “If he’s such a disappointment . . .”

“Because he is a failure,” the Administrator said very sharply. “And I don’t like failure, Devin. He serves as an example of the consequences of disappointing me.”