The Orphan of Awkward Falls (15 page)

“You can’t possibly be…one of them,” Josephine said, stubbornly denying what logic told her was true. She looked back and forth from the boy to the inhuman likenesses floating in the tubes. Each one bore the imprint of a faint number on its body.

Thaddeus was in a daze, tears dribbling down his chubby cheeks. “It is not only possible, it is true. Those pathetic creatures are my brothers, my only true family. I see now that I am nothing more than a growth, an elaborate fungus whose mother was only a bunch of cells in a petri dish!”

Josephine felt tears of her own begin to wet her eyes. “Why did your grandfather do this?”

The boy shook his head. “What grandfather? That’s what Sally Twittington refused to tell us, don’t you see? I am no more the grandson of Celsius Hibble than Norman is, than any one of these test tube monsters are. These things may possess my features, but they are not copies of me. We are all copies of him.”

“But you’re still you!” she said. “Nothing’s really changed.”

“Blather!” he said. “Everything has changed! I am alone. I have no parents. There won’t be any coming-home party now, or feast, or Candyland tournaments. I am hardly even human.”

“Don’t say that! You’re at least as human as anybody else I know, Thaddeus. And you’re not alone as long as I’m around, I promise.”

The boy looked at her, his pink chubby face blotchy from tears. He nodded and wiped a drop of snot onto his sleeve. In the tiniest voice possible he said, “I wanted Mother and Father to come back.”

There was nothing Josephine could say to that. Being parentless was too big a problem to fix with words. She tried to imagine how she would feel if her mother and father were gone, if they had never even existed. As much as her parents annoyed her sometimes, a world without them in it was too terrible to contemplate. The thought made her suddenly miss them.

“We’re getting out of here now, Thaddeus.” She took his hands and pulled him to his feet. “This place is evil. Let’s see if there’s a door somewhere.”

She tugged him along as she snaked her way through the forest of glowing columns. She tried not to look at the terrible things inside them as they hurried past, but it wasn’t easy. At the end of a row they came to a wall of solid rock. They turned and tried a different direction and wound up at another dead end. The sharp sound of broken glass crunching underfoot made them both stop in their
tracks. Someone else was in the room with them, but it was hard to tell what direction the sound had come from. Together they held their breath, waiting for the next footfall, but it did not come. They kept waiting for what felt like a long time but heard nothing more except the quiet bubbling of the tubes.

Tentatively, Josephine took another step and looked past a column down the next row. Nothing. She looked back at Thaddeus and shrugged.

“It could have been a rat,” he whispered. Fear seemed to have brought the boy back to something like normal. “Felix has found some very large ones in th—”

Thaddeus’s eyes widened and his mouth formed a silent O as he pointed over Josephine’s shoulder. She spun around and screamed as a tall man in a ragged suit reached for her with hands that looked like talons. In the blue darkness, she could tell that parts of the man’s maniacally smiling face were missing as he moaned and lunged at her. His hands were as light as papier-mâché when Josephine knocked them away. She and Thaddeus turned and ran blindly.

They dodged in and out of the rows of columns, not daring to look back until they emerged into the open lab. They saw a door across the room and started to make a run for it when it began to open. The first thing that entered the room was someone’s bare foot dripping with snow. When Josephine saw the hideous man the foot was attached to, her heart almost stopped.

The snow had finally begun to numb Fetid Stenchley’s chemical burns, allowing him to think of something other than the scalding pain in his face and chest. It occurred to him that he should probably get back inside the lab and look after his master before any other accidents happened. The newly restored professor’s body was still in a fragile state. The stitching around his organs could be easily torn, resulting in leaks, not to mention the fact that a stumbling corpse might knock off an arm or leg if it happened to run into something.

The hunchback pulled himself from the snowbank and staggered back to the lab’s hidden entrance. He made his way through the dark passageway and down the stairs to the lab. He opened the door expecting to see his master, but found a pair of intruders instead. One of them was a girl, who screamed when she saw him. The other was a Friend. Even from where Stenchley stood, the madman’s nose told him this Friend was definitely alive.

The sound of screams could always be relied upon to arouse Cynthia’s curiosity. Inside the murderer’s hump, the python uncoiled and slithered out for a look. Her wide, flat head made its way into Stenchley’s mouth and peeked out through his ammonia-fried lips. The snake was incensed. The sight of another of the hated white-haired creatures sent her into a writhing fit.
Kill it!
she hissed.
Kill them both!

Stenchley felt the familiar rush of blood to his head, blinding him to all but the desire to kill. He became a ravenous beast and dropped onto all fours. He bounded across the lab toward the two intruders, oblivious to the broken glass underfoot.

“Run, Thaddeus!” he heard the girl shout.

But the pair were far too slow to elude a predator like Stenchley. He pounced on the Friend, knocking it to the floor. He pinned its flailing arms with his knees and sat on his victim’s chest.

“Stop!” it shrieked. “You’re hurting me!”

“Get off him!” the girl yelled, hitting the hunchback with a flurry of little punches. “Leave him alone!”

Stenchley laughed. He got his hands around the boy’s chubby throat and began to choke the life out of him.

“I should have done this the first time I seen you,” the madman growled. “And I would have if it weren’t for that bleedin’ tin man buttin’ in. Once the Master made you, he forgot all about me, didn’t he? Only wanted to be with his pretty little Friend, didn’t he? He treated me like a dog after you came. I had to kill him for it. There
weren’t no other way, see? Now it’s time for you to pay for all them years I spent in that cell, and there ain’t no robot to stop me!”

The murderer drooled as he watched the Friend’s eyes bulge with fear, the pale thing struggling in vain to breathe. Cynthia’s scaly head slid out of the killer’s mouth and touched noses with her victim, staring into its eyes, waiting to savor the moment of its death.Then a lightning bolt of pain made Stenchley’s world go black.

The killer found himself on his back, looking up at the ceiling. His ears were ringing, and his head pounded with pain. He realized the girl must have hit him on the head with something as he was about to finish off the Friend. His crossed eyes saw two of her now looming over him, each one wearing an angry look and wielding a Louisville Slugger–sized pipe. Both girls reared back to hit him again, this time as if they were swinging for the fence.

Stenchley’s hand shot out and slapped the girl’s ankle, dropping her to the floor. The pipe went clanging off to the side. Stenchley, still groggy from the blow, began to crawl toward the pipe. The girl dove for it ahead of him, and he cuffed her on the head so hard that she went sliding across the floor and landed against the wall. The girl lay unconscious, slumped over like a rag doll.

Stenchley could easily have finished her off at that point, but Cynthia wanted the white-haired thing to die first. The Friend lay on the floor, coughing and gasping for air, rubbing the red finger marks on its throat. It tried to scramble away when it saw Stenchley coming, but was too weak and slow.

The madman grabbed a fistful of its white hair and pulled its head close to his own scarred face. The smell of its live flesh, so unlike the pickled one he had broken out of the tube earlier, filled his nostrils and made him salivate. This was the one he’d come for.

Like most prey just before the kill, the Friend was frozen with fear. It looked as if it wanted to speak, but was too busy hyper- ventilating to manage it.

Let’s have a taste now—we’re famished!
groaned Cynthia, her forked tongue whipping at the thing’s cheek, sensing its texture, its temperature, its life.

Normally, the grimy cannibal would have obeyed the python’s commands instantly and devoured his prey without a thought. But this time Stenchley hesitated. The sight of the Friend’s white hair, so similar to that which topped his master’s head, and its eyes, absolutely identical in color to the blue of the professor’s, gave him pause. Even its nose had the same shape, the same wart on the left nostril, the same single white hair protruding from it like a drooping antenna. It was almost as if he were looking at a young version of the professor himself.

He wondered what it must be like to inhabit a body that so closely resembled the professor’s. For Stenchley, it would have been paradise, since he couldn’t imagine anyone more perfect than his master. How fine it would be to walk down the street and have all those who looked your way see the brilliant, regal Celsius T. Hibble, instead of stooped, grotesque Fetid Stenchley. More than anything, the killer longed to know that feeling.

This urge caused a fuzzy splotch of an idea to begin to grow like mold under a kitchen sink in the madman’s bruised brain. Stenchley tucked the squirming thing under his arm and carried it over to the operating gurney.

“Let me go, you fiend!” it yelped. “Help! Norman! I need you immediately! Josephine! Felix! HELP!”

Stenchley only grinned.

Perhaps it was his recent success at bringing back the professor that had stirred his imagination, or maybe it was simply that he was back home again. However it came about, he decided he should not eat the Friend just yet. In a flash of inspiration, Fetid Stenchley decided he should become the Friend instead.

Cynthia, hungrily twisting inside Stenchley’s hump, did not like the idea of skipping easy meals.
Kill it now, fool! While it’s alive and helpless!

When the madman ignored her, he felt the python slither into his chest cavity. He was suddenly in excruciating pain as the snake’s coils found some vital organ or other and began to squeeze. Stenchley fell to his knees and cried out, but made no move to destroy the Friend. The pain inside him became so intense, he began to lose consciousness. For all the hunchback knew, the snake might kill him if he continued to deny her, but he refused to give in this time. The idea that Stenchley could become a Friend himself was so enticing, so perfect. No amount of suffering could change his mind.

At the last possible moment, when death seemed imminent, he felt the powerful grip of the serpent’s coils begin to relax. Her furious voice whispered in his head:
Hear me now. When this foolishness is finished, I will have the female. Do not resist me again, or I will show you no mercy.

Stenchley was sure she meant it.

If only I had my javelin!
Thaddeus thought, as he struggled to get away from the madman.

The boy now found his arms and legs strapped tight to the gurney. Thick leather straps across his chest and forehead left him able to move only his fingers and eyes. He shivered with dread at the helpless reality of his predicament. He could hear the mad killer scurrying around the lab, muttering to himself, gathering tools, and priming various machinery.

Thaddeus had recognized Fetid Stenchley the moment he saw him. There had been no mistaking that deformed figure he knew so well from photographs. But the pictures failed utterly to convey the raw animal menace the madman possessed in real life. It seemed almost a stretch to call Stenchley a man at all.

The real Fetid Stenchley was smaller than Thaddeus had pictured him. In Thaddeus’s mind, the life of the great Celsius T. Hibble could have been taken only by an equally great villain. The
truth was that the professor had been murdered by an ugly little hyena of a man.

“What do you intend to do with me, you monster? I demand to know!” Thaddeus said, with as much authority as he could muster.

With his head immobilized, Thaddeus’s eyes could follow Stenchley’s movements only when the hunchback was directly in front of him. The boy soon had the horrifying realization that Stenchley was preparing to perform some sort of operation and Thaddeus was the unfortunate subject.

The crazed killer paid no attention to the boy, seemingly involved in a conversation with himself. Thaddeus could not see what the madman was doing, but could hear him clearly.

“There, there, Master. Drink this,” Stenchley said. Thaddeus then heard what sounded like a dog lapping up water from a bowl.

Stenchley’s footsteps moved toward him again, but there was another set of footsteps as well. These dragged more than walked. Who was with Stenchley?

“Ms. Crav—er, Josephine?” Thaddeus called hopefully. “Is that you?” There was no reply. He hadn’t heard a sound from the girl since Stenchley had knocked her away.

In a second, Stenchley was at his side again, the killer’s burned and distorted face gazing down at the boy.

“Looky what I have here, Master,” said Stenchley proudly. “It’s one of the Friends! Ain’t it pretty?”

Who was he talking to?

Then Thaddeus saw. A tall, unspeakably hideous figure loomed over the table. It was the man he and Josephine had encountered in the rows of cylinders. Or what had once been a man. Now the thing was little more than a ghoulish conglomeration of rotted remains that clearly belonged in a coffin. The corpse moaned quietly and cast its milky blue eyes down at Thaddeus. It appeared to smile at the boy, but Thaddeus realized this was only an illusion caused by its lack of lips.

It was the sight of the thing’s white hair that triggered the boy’s first inkling of recognition. Thaddeus’s stomach turned as he realized what, and who, he was looking at.

“G-Grandfather!” he gasped. He found he could refer to him no other way, even though he knew the real truth. “Is it really you?”

Thaddeus could hardly have expected the thing to respond with more than a grunt, since it lacked a tongue or lips. He was filled with wonder and horror at the same time. Here was his lifelong idol, or at least what was left of him, standing close enough to touch. In Thaddeus’s dreams, this moment had always been a happy one, a boy and his grandfather reunited at last. Never could he have imagined this, a mindless corpse drooling over the clone it had concocted from a test tube.

Despite the utter wrongness of the situation, Thaddeus felt a sense of awe just the same. These were the remains of the man who had constructed the house he called home, who had designed and built Norman. This zombie was Thaddeus’s own creator.

The boy’s eyes blazed at Stenchley. “It was you who dug up the grave!” he yelled. “What have you done to Grandfather?”

Stenchley only giggled, then brought out an electric razor and began mowing off clumps of Thaddeus’s cottony hair. He seemed to regard Thaddeus as no more than a gibbering lab rat.

The killer whistled as he worked.

“Stop it, you beast!” the boy demanded. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I assure you you’ll never get away with it!” Thaddeus tried to jerk his head away, but the straps were too tight.

When the job was done, he was left with a nubbly buzz cut. Stenchley, grinning stupidly, then took the razor to his own head and scraped off its greasy strands.

Thaddeus lost sight of the hunchback for a moment, but could hear him rummaging around behind the gurney. Then Stenchley returned, holding two bulbous copper helmets with colored electrical leads dangling like dreadlocks from the sides and top. He smeared a cold gel onto the boy’s scalp and shoved one of the helmets onto Thaddeus’s head. Stenchley jerked the helmet’s strap tight under Thaddeus’s chin and began sorting out the leads, plugging the ends from one helmet into the jacks of the other.

Next, the madman pulled the boy’s shirt open and placed a wide suction cup over his belly button. Tubes protruding from the top of the cup ran down like spaghetti in several directions.

Stenchley then reappeared with a large hypodermic needle in
his filthy hands. Thaddeus panicked at the thought of the crazed killer jabbing him with the syringe.

“Get away from me with that!” The boy’s round face flushed bright red with rage as he tried mightily to pull free of the gurney’s straps. “Norman will come for me shortly, and you’ll pay for this. He’s a robot, and he’s very large! He will squash you with ease! NORMAN!” Thaddeus was certain his faithful servant would respond to his summons, just as the robot had every time the boy had ever beckoned. “I need you at ONCE, Norman!”

Stenchley was entirely focused on his task and paid no attention to the boy’s cries. He gave the syringe a thump and squirted out a stream of liquid.

Thaddeus cried out when he felt the needle enter his shoulder with a sharp sting. The thick solution burned as it seeped into the fatty tissue. Thaddeus’s ears began to ring faintly, and the burn in his shoulder became a tingling warmth that flowed over his body. He guessed correctly that the injection was some sort of anesthesia and that he would soon lose consciousness. He could not bear to think of what was going to happen next.

As the narcotic slowly took effect, Thaddeus gazed up at the dead professor’s horrible face. He wondered if any part of Celsius Hibble’s once great mind still resided inside the moldy ghoul who now hovered over him. The thing’s eyes, so similar to the ones Thaddeus saw in the mirror every day, seemed to focus on his own blue eyes. Had some remnant of memory somehow survived ten
years in the grave? Was it only Thaddeus’s woozy imagination, or did the corpse have some tiny idea that the boy strapped down before it was its own creation?

As if he heard Thaddeus’s thoughts, the dead man raised a hand and softly stroked the boy’s cheek. The stiff dried fingers with their bones protruding from husks of skin felt like chicken claws against Thaddeus’s delicate face.

The last thing Thaddeus was aware of before he blacked out was the professor’s index finger, as it broke off like a rotten twig.