The Orphan of Awkward Falls (12 page)

As the incredible idea sank in that Thaddeus’s grandfather had somehow stopped aging a very long time ago, Josephine racked her brain for a way to learn the truth. The events had taken place so long ago, everyone who knew what really happened was dead by now.

Or were they? Josephine had an idea. “We could ask Sally.”

“Sally?”

“Twittington. Your grandfather’s fiancée. She’s really old, but she’s still alive, and she lives in town now. The librarian says she’s a recluse, but maybe we could try to talk to her anyway.”

“And how would we do that?” asked Thaddeus.

“The librarian told me where she lives. We could pay her a visit tomorrow.”

The boy frowned. “Tomorrow? I think not. I’ll have Norman bring the Rolls around this minute.”

The antique Rolls Royce sped through icy Awkward Falls, the robot maneuvering the huge car down the frozen streets like a seasoned racecar driver. In his disguise of a plastic nose with glasses and mustache attached, and a bowler hat atop his steel head, Norman would have fooled very few observers into believing he was just another chauffeur. Luckily, observers were almost nonexistent at this late hour during a storm.

“Are we there yet, Norman?” asked Thaddeus, for the fifth time since they had left the house ten minutes earlier. The boy eagerly pressed his face against the window on his side of the car, then switched to the one on Josephine’s side, then back again, as they drove.
This must be one of the few times he’s even been outside the house,
Josephine thought.
He’s as excited as a kid on vacation.

“No, sir,” the robot patiently replied. “However, our destination is now in view.”

The car rolled to a stop, and Norman came around to open the door.

“Do you see anyone about, Norman?” asked Thaddeus. “Any suspicious characters lurking?”

The robot’s head squeaked as it spun slowly, making a complete circle. “I believe the beach is clean, sir.”

Thaddeus sighed. “It’s ‘the coast is clear,’ Norman, not ‘the beach is clean.’ You stay here with the car while we go in.”

“Very well, sir.”

Thaddeus and Josephine ascended the steps to the door of the perfectly preserved Victorian townhouse, and Josephine rang the bell. A woman in a starched white nurse’s uniform opened the door just a crack and asked what they wanted, clearly hoping the answer was nothing.

“Hello, we would like to speak to Sally Twittington, please,” said Josephine, in her sweetest tone.

“It is extremely late, and Ms. Twittington does not take visitors,” the nurse said curtly, and began to close the door.

“Wait!” Josephine decided to take a chance. She took the photo of the professor and Sally she had found in her room out of her pocket and handed it to the nurse. “Please show her this.”

Inside the house, Josephine heard someone speak. “Who is it, Olga?” a tired voice said. “Tell them to go away.”

The nurse closed the door without a word.

“Drat!” grumbled Thaddeus.

“Gee, that went well,” said Josephine. “I guess it was worth a shot.”

They turned and had started down the steps when the door suddenly opened again. “Ms. Twittington will see you,” the nurse said, her tone clearly indicating her disapproval of her employer’s change of policy. “But only for a moment. She is a very sick woman.”

Time had stolen every trace of the beauty that once belonged to Sally Twittington. In the dim light of the sitting room, the frail old woman looked frightening. Her wrinkled face, caked with stage makeup, was as white as chalk, her lips smeared sloppily with red lipstick. She was dressed in a glittery costume that looked like something out of an old jazz musical. A steel tank on wheels stood at her side, and a plastic oxygen mask was strapped over her nose. She gingerly held the photo of herself and the professor in her lap.

When Josephine introduced herself, Sally seemed barely interested, but when Thaddeus appeared she pulled the mask off, straightened in her wheelchair, and gasped.

Sally looked at the boy as if he were a ghost. She stretched a bony, spotted hand toward Thaddeus and beckoned him to come closer.

“Let me look at you, you poor creature,” she finally whispered. She touched his face. “My God. I had hoped to be dead before any of Celsius’s abominations walked the earth.”

“I beg your pardon, madame!” Thaddeus pulled his hand out of the woman’s grasp and stepped back indignantly.

Sally turned to Josephine. “Why are you here? What do you want with me?” The woman’s voice was small and raspy. “Speak quickly. I am due onstage for the third act momentarily.”

Josephine was confused for a moment, then realized the woman imagined she was still an actress. “Ms. Twittington, we just want to
ask you a couple of questions about Professor Hibble, if you don’t mind,” Josephine asked, cheerily, hoping to improve the mood a bit.

“Professor Hibble. I have tried to forget that I was ever involved with the man, if he could be called that after all he did to himself.”

“How dare you speak of Grandfather so irreverently!” Thaddeus stamped his foot indignantly. “I’ll have you know he was a great man!”

Sally looked surprised. “Grandfather, you say? Oh, my. Do you have a name, young man?”

“My name is Thaddeus J. Hibble! The second, actually. I am named after my father.”

The old woman shook her head slowly. “My dear child, Celsius Hibble may have done some great things in his life, long ago. But someday you will find out he was no great man.”

Before Thaddeus could argue, Josephine decided to butt in and get to the matter at hand. “We found out something weird about the professor, Ms. Twittington. We checked some dates, and we think he was incredibly old when he died. It sounds crazy, but he also seems to have stopped aging when he was still pretty young. Do you know anything about that?”

Sally sighed and looked at the old photo. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it in my room, in Twittington House,” Josephine said. “My parents and I live there now.”

Sally raised her chin and began to speak as if she were giving a dramatic soliloquy. “I remember the moment when this picture
was taken. Celsius and I were at a ball the night before we were to marry, and I was happier than I’ve ever been in my life. I was going to be the bride of the famous Celsius Hibble. We danced for hours, drank champagne, and were the toast of the party. By one or two in the morning, I was tired and ready to go home, but Celsius insisted I return to Hibble Manor with him, as he had something important he wanted to share with me.

“When we arrived at the mansion, he led me to a hidden room, a study I had never seen before. Celsius seemed oddly excited, but also quite nervous. He insisted I sit down as he began to babble about cells, and genetic codes, and other scientific gobbledygook I didn’t understand or care about. Finally, he took my hand, just as he had when he proposed. ‘Sally, if we could be together forever, would you want to be?’” he asked.

“‘We will be together forever, my darling,’ I answered. ‘Till death do us part.’ But I saw that was not what he meant.

“‘What if forever really meant forever?’ he asked me. ‘What if I told you we could live for a very long time, longer than anyone ever has, remaining just as we are now, never growing a day older?’

“I thought he was joking at first, but the look on his face was solemn. ‘I lied to you about my birth date,’ he said. ‘The month and day, October seventh, are as I said, but the year was not 1907.’

“‘What year was it, then?’ I asked with trepidation, feeling an odd tingle on the back of my neck as I sensed our conversation was about to take a very odd turn.

“Instead of answering, he handed me a photo of himself standing in front of the Ferris Wheel at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The man in the photo and the man holding my hand were identical. I didn’t understand and thought he must be playing a practical joke on me. I looked more closely at the picture, then again at Celsius. He was not joking.

“Then my fiancé, the man I loved with all my heart and planned to marry in a few hours, told me that he was actually eighty-eight years old.

“It was impossible, and yet the evidence was plain. He begged me to join him, promising that I could become forever young like he was, with a series of injections and a small surgical operation. He said he could perform the procedure then and there.

“I pushed him away and began to weep. The whole business terrified me. I realized I did not know Celsius at all. I ran away as fast as I could and never looked back.”

“And that’s why you called off the wedding,” said Josephine.

The old woman nodded. “Celsius was undoubtedly a genius. Unfortunately, he was willing to become a monster to prove it. I left him and fled to Europe, where I threw myself into acting. The stage became my refuge.”

Thaddeus looked ready to explode with indignation at hearing his grandfather described as a monster. Somehow, he controlled himself long enough to ask, “What about my parents? Did you know them?”

The effort of telling the story seemed to have exhausted the old woman. She put the oxygen mask over her nose again and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, I have no more answers you would want to hear. My advice to you both is to wash your hands of Celsius Hibble, just like I did all those years ago. It is one decision I have never regretted.”

“This is foolery,” said Thaddeus. “My grandfather was one of the top scientists of his time!”

Sally’s milky eyes flashed. “Yes. But he was a dangerous man. If the truth be told, the hunchback probably did the world a favor when he took Celsius’s life.” Sally turned her eyes from the boy. It was becoming harder for her to breathe. “If anything, Stenchley should have done it sooner, before…Celsius did things…that could not be…undone.”

The old woman reached for the oxygen mask and held it to her face. She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair as she breathed in the hissing air. “Fetch the makeup girl, Olga, and alert the director. He must delay the curtain. I need a moment to gather myself.”

“You must leave now,” said the nurse. “Ms. Twittington needs to rest. Good night.” She shooed them back the way they had come and out onto the porch.

The door closed, the deadbolt slamming into place instantly. The porch light switched off, and Josephine and Thaddeus were left standing in the dark.