The Orphan of Awkward Falls (25 page)
Read The Orphan of Awkward Falls Online
Authors: Keith Graves
Tags: #Mystery, #Young Adult, #Horror, #Childrens
When Fetid Stenchley crawled out of his cozy nest in the Dumpster, he found that the sun had risen a good while earlier and had thawed the icy streets nicely since the night’s gale. The madman headed off in what he thought to be the general direction of Hibble Manor with his plan to find the professor still floating around in his mind. The bustling village streets were gaily decorated with banners and flags for the big SAD parade scheduled for later in the day, and the Awkward Falls High Fighting Pike marching band, their tall hats modified to look like cans of sauerkraut, were gathered in the square practicing their rendition of “Wooly Bully.” More than one member of the decoration committee gave Stenchley an odd look as he shuffled along in his carpet wrap and paper bag hat. He did appear to be a child, after all, if a very dirty and fragrant one.
Stenchley turned a corner and strolled into the park in the center of town hoping that a young mouse or rat, preferably an injured one, might present itself. As if by magic, a small furry creature
skittered onto the path directly in front of him. Without the glasses he had left behind in the hotel room, Stenchley couldn’t make out the details of the animal’s features. He fell to the ground, catlike, and readied himself to pounce. When the creature was close enough, the madman snarled and leapt at it. The animal easily sidestepped him at the last second and watched as Stenchley did a face plant into a snowbank.
The madman scrambled to his feet, shaking snow from his hair, and was about to leap at the creature again when he saw that his prey was on a long leash. Heading toward him at the other end of the leash was a heavily bundled elderly woman who was waving at him excitedly. Even if Stenchley had seen her clearly, he would have had no idea who the woman was. She was accompanied by a group of equally senior females all trailing a troop of yipping pets on leashes.
“Yooo-hooo, Mr. Hibble!” she trilled. “ Hello, Mr. Hibble! It is I, Mrs. Gladstone. How nice to see you!”
Her companions followed her over with their animals. Stenchley found himself surrounded by small, yapping, jumping, sniffing creatures that were extremely interested in his pant legs. Many of the beasts seemed to be comprised of mismatched parts. One of them locked its jaws onto the carpet remnant the madman wore and tore it off his shoulders, angrily ripping mouthfuls of shag material from it.
The widow Gladstone waved a hand at the women. “You know the other ladies of the poker club, of course.”
The women all tittered like birds.
“And look! Coco remembers you as well.” Her own animal, the quick, rodentish beast Stenchley had failed to nab, nipped at his trouser seat. “Don’t you, Coco? Yes, you do! This is the young man who made you all better after that nasty old Zamboni squashed you!”
Stenchley backed away from the animals nervously. There were too many of them. His natural fear of dogs made him want to run, but the sight of a mounted policeman down the snowy path ahead kept him nervously in check.
“Will Mr. Norman will be attending the festivities today as well?” The woman appeared to blush beneath her thick makeup. She craned her neck this way and that to see if the robot was nearby.
Stenchley did not bother to answer. The gaggle of beasts had begun to force him backward until he had to turn and run to get away from them. He was finally cornered at the granite base of a large statue. The creatures became increasingly excited, spurred into a frenzy by the fishy Dumpster-stink of his clothes. The ladies were in a tizzy, tugging on the leashes and trying to pull the animals off the white-suited boy.
Stenchley scrambled up the base of the statue and jumped off the other side. Panicked, he ran across the smooth snow that covered the lawn, dodging from tree to tree. The animals, which had pulled free from their masters, were now chasing him freely, their leashes dragging behind them. The madman ducked behind the Tomb of the Unknown Angler, then made a beeline for the black
wrought-iron fence that enclosed the park. Once he made it to the other side, he would be safe.
Stenchley had jumped many fences in his day; tall ones, wide ones, electrified ones. A skilled murderer of some stealth, he was in fact something of a fence-jumping expert. This particular enclosure was nothing special outside of its spike-topped posts. Without really thinking, he knew from experience that he would leap onto the upper section of the fence, then vault over, landing on all fours on the other side. It should be easy.
It was not easy. Again he failed to consider the fact that he was depending on Thaddeus’s soft, plump body to get the job done. His leap was not high enough. His grip was not strong enough. Stenchley flopped against the fence and fell backward into the snow as if he were a very large toddler. He got back up quickly and began climbing hand over hand, inch by inch, up the fence as the relentless animals reached him. Up he went, ever so slowly, the nip of tiny teeth sinking into his calves and thighs repeatedly.
Finally, as he climbed beyond the reach of the beasts, he flung his legs over the top and dropped to the ground on the other side. He lay on his back in the snow, panting, just happy to be away from the crazed pets. When he caught his breath, he hurried toward a large, safe-looking building nearby. The granite front steps were broad, just like those at Hibble Manor, the front door similarly tall and formal. The familiar style of the building, its pointed arches, multiple gables, ornate columns, all reminded him of the mansion as well. When
Stenchley took the brass knocker in his hand and tapped the front door, he almost expected Norman to answer.
Instead, a man, impeccably dressed in a midnight-black suit, opened the door. To Stenchley’s surprise, the man smiled as if he knew him.
“Well, well,” said the man in the black suit. “So you’re not a phantom after all. Come in. You’re just in time for porridge.”
Fetid Stenchley could not guess what the man was talking about, but stepped inside anyway, drawn by the smell of food. The madman’s intuition about the similarities between Hibble Manor and this place had been more accurate than he could have imagined. The two buildings looked alike because they were built by the same architect at almost the same time and were financed by the same man.
Had Stenchley known how to read, and if he had bothered to look up as fate guided him inside, he would have seen above the entrance of the building a row of tarnished brass letters that read
C. T. HIBBLE ORPHANAGE
.
A Formula 1 race car could not have carried the Cravitzes, Thaddeus, and Felix away from the Asylum for the Dangerously Insane fast enough to suit them, much less an elderly station wagon with a top speed of fifty-three miles per hour. Plans were yet to be made about where they were going and the more thorny issue of what they should do with Thaddeus. For the moment, simply being out of the asylum was enough. Everyone, most of all Thaddeus, breathed easier once the gray walls of the monolithic madhouse were out of sight.
He was stationed in the backseat between Josephine and Barbara, with Felix curled on his lap, purring heavily. Peering out from beneath Eggplant’s fuzzy wool, and wrapped snugly in blankets, he had finally stopped shivering. Josephine had still not made up her mind whether the hat was going to be a loan or a gift. She felt somewhat exposed without it, but also unexpectedly liberated. She realized Thaddeus was the first person other than herself ever to wear it.
Every few minutes, Barbara felt his cheeks for fever or took his hand in hers to check his pulse. Josephine was surprised that the normally grumpy boy did not recoil at her mom’s motherly attention. On the contrary, his eyes became almost starry every time Barbara touched him. If she hadn’t known better, Josephine might have thought he was smitten.
“How are you feeling, Thaddeus?” Barbara asked. “Are you warm enough?”
“Quite.” He gazed into her eyes like a puppy hoping for a scratch. “Though I seem to be a bit light-headed. No doubt the result of having missed several meals during my incarceration. Perhaps something chocolate would set me right again.” He paused thoughtfully, then added, “Oddly, I have a craving for raw meat as well.”
A funeral at any time of year is an unpleasant event, even in otherwise pleasant places such as Florida, or Waikiki. Sunny days lose a great deal of their allure when they are spent burying the dead. But a winter funeral in northern Manitoba is especially grim. The weather is so cold and miserable that the ground is frozen solid, requiring the use of heavy machinery just to dig the hole. It is not unusual for mourners themselves to die from exposure, which leads only to more winter funerals, which lead to more deceased mourners, and so on, until it is a wonder that any northern Manitobans are still alive when spring arrives.
Even still, when the notice of Sally Twittington’s death appeared in the
Awkward Falls Chronicle,
the Cravitzes decided to brave the elements in order to pay their respects. Josephine had expected a crowd at the cemetery, but only a handful of mourners besides the Cravitzes and Thaddeus attended the funeral. Sally’s nurse, Olga, was there, as was O. R. MacManus, the librarian, who arrived at the
last minute in a rattling pickup truck that may have been older than she was.
It seemed a shame for so few people to be there to say good-bye,
Josephine thought.
She must have outlived her friends and family.
The graveside funeral began at noon, though the sun was nowhere to be seen. A priest in an orange hunting cap read something in Latin, the freezing wind scattering his words like leaves the second they left his mouth. Josephine shivered as she teetered against the gale, her feet so cold she had to look at them to make sure they were still there. Barbara and Howard were huddled to one side of her, with Thaddeus between them, resembling a stack of inner tubes in his huge new coat.
Josephine was glad Thaddeus had come along despite his fear of being outside the new house he now shared with her family. He still had nightmares about Fetid Stenchley. The madman had not been heard from since the night he had attacked the Cravitzes in the Hook, Line, and Sinker motel. Although the authorities had lowered the threat level all the way down to brown, the boy was sure the killer was still lurking nearby, disguised as Thaddeus himself, just waiting for an opportunity to do something horrible.
But Stenchley wasn’t Thaddeus’s only worry. He was still plagued by the random transformations that caused his features to morph back and forth between Stenchley’s and his own, and he feared a public display. Even on a normal day, Josephine would have had to coax Thaddeus out the door, but today he was especially reluctant. A full moon was due to rise that evening, bringing with it the
possibility of what the family had come to refer to as a “Full Stenchley.” When the previous full moon had appeared, it had triggered a major transformation. On that memorable evening, Thaddeus had suddenly morphed into a near twin of the killer hunchback while grocery shopping. As he, Josephine, and Barbara browsed the aisles of the A&P, a replica of the madman’s ugly hump rose on his shoulder. At the same time, a group of dangerously jagged incisors crowded their way into his mouth, his eyes dilated and bulged, and the backs of his knuckles hit the floor. With a hair-raising howl, he broke for the meat case and belly flopped into a stack of prepackaged hamburger. Luckily, the natural modesty of the other Awkward Fallsian shoppers had caused them to avert their eyes from the ill-behaved child and his family. It was a good thing, since the sight of the boy-turned-cannibal cramming bloody, cellophane-wrapped beef into his mouth could have resulted in someone dialing 911 and getting him sent to the asylum again. They were lucky to have been tossed out of the store with only an admonishment and a large meat bill. For two days afterward,
Sesame Street
reruns and saucers of raw meat were the only things that kept the toothy boy’s snapping jaws at bay.