The Orphan of Awkward Falls (5 page)

When a mosquito sees a light in the darkness, it is drawn to it by an urge too powerful to resist. Even if the light is a bug zapper, caked with the carcasses of all the mosquito’s electrocuted relatives, the poor insect will still use the last flap of its wings to fly to its death. It simply can’t help it.

Part of Josephine’s brain, though much larger and more complex than a mosquito’s, functioned similarly. If she became curious about something, this part of her brain jumped into the driver’s seat and took control. When Josephine saw the strange person in the window, the reckless-driver part of her brain grabbed the wheel. She was absolutely tingling with curiosity and badly needed to know what she had seen in the fog, to know whether it was real or not.

She pulled on Eggplant and put her sweater on over her pajamas, mumbling to herself the whole time that this was a crazy idea and she really should have her head examined, but she didn’t pause for a second. She eased downstairs as quietly as possible on the
squeaky old staircase. At the door to her parents’ room she paused and considered telling them about the house and the man she had seen, but decided against it when she heard their gentle snoring. Her parents were open-minded about her curious nature, but even they would have nixed the idea of prowling around at this hour in a strange new place.
Let them sleep,
she thought.
I’m just going to have a little look around. No big deal. I’m practically a teenager now, I should be doing things on my own, right? Right.

Josephine stepped out the back door of the kitchen and buttoned her sweater up to her throat against the damp chill of the night air. The fog seemed to swallow up all sounds. She walked toward the line of trees along the edge of the yard and pushed through the evergreen branches. The boughs closed behind her like a door, leaving her standing in pitch-darkness. As she wound her way through the huge black trunks, an owl hoo-hooed softly when she passed under its perch.

The trees ended abruptly at an old stone wall too high to climb. She walked up and down the path beside the wall, but could find no way around it. A low-branched fir tree provided the perfect solution. She scrambled up to the low branch, pulled herself up on top of the wall, then dropped down into the tall weeds on the other side.

She had landed in some kind of formal garden gone to seed. The trees and bushes were arranged in geometric patterns, but they were shaggy and overgrown with weeds and vines. There was a small
cluster of stone pediments to one side that she was startled to find were tombstones. The chipped and cracked grave markers leaned this way and that. Beyond the little cemetery was a hedge maze that led to the house. She stepped into it and made her way down a curving alley formed by the towering hedges on either side until she came to a large crumbling statue of someone on a winged horse. The building, even larger than she had expected, loomed just beyond. She quickly scampered across a weedy lawn, past more crumbling statues and fountains.

Once she was close enough to see it more clearly, Josephine realized the building was indeed a house: a mansion, in fact. The gargantuan, crumbling structure was the gloomiest of gloomy places. Gloom hung over its black, crumbling roof like a cloud. Gloom clung like a fungus to its cracked, vine-strangled walls. The twisted, leafless trees that stood on either side of the massive front door cast gloomy shadows in the moonlight over the house’s façade.

Next to the front door, a window glowed. She tiptoed over, crouching low as she went, and hid behind a rosebush below the sill. Taking a deep breath, Josephine slowly raised her head and looked into the window. The room inside was dimly lit by some unseen light source. Nearest the window was an antique armchair—French, she was sure—with a side table and lamp. A half-finished glass of something sat on the table, along with a fraction of a cookie. Across the room was an empty fireplace flanked by two tattered sofas. Mounds of debris littered a coffee table in the center. The place was a wreck. It
was too dark to see much, but there appeared to be a box of cereal—those disgusting Frosted O’s, she noted—spilled on the floor.

Josephine gasped as something suddenly jumped up on the chair back no more than a foot from her face and looked her right in the eye. Her heart leapt into her throat.

Then she realized what it was.

“Breathe, Josephine,” she told herself. “It’s only a cat.”

The cat and Josephine stared at each other through the window. The cat was a gray tabby with large green eyes. Then Josephine noticed the cat actually had one green eye and one yellow eye. In fact, as she looked more closely, she also saw that only the cat’s head was that of a gray tabby. Its body was black. The tail and its left rear foot were white, with bits of stitching visible between the different sections. And she wasn’t sure, but one of the ears looked like it belonged on a bat instead of a cat.

The strange cat narrowed its eyes at her, then hopped down and disappeared into the darkness. It returned a moment later, followed by a very tall man in a tuxedo. The man looked straight toward the window, as if he knew someone was there. It was the same man she had seen from her room, she was sure. Josephine knew she should have ducked out of sight at that point, but she couldn’t resist keeping one eye in position to get a better look at him. As the figure came closer, Josephine was horrified to realize that it was not a man at all. It was a robot with glowing red eyes and steel pincers sticking out of its sleeves. And it saw her.

Josephine panicked and ran off into the fog the way she had come, dodging statues that now seemed to be watching her. A spotlight suddenly lit up the lawn around the house. Josephine sprinted between the hedges, afraid to look back. She hurdled over the tombstones in the cemetery and made it to the wall, panting for air. She tried to dig her fingers into the cracks between the masonry but could not get a handhold. A sound like the swinging of a rusty gate came from the direction of the house. The robot was coming. Each of its heavy footsteps crunched into the grass with a dull thunk. Josephine ran back and forth, desperately searching for a way over the wall. The robot was close now, coming straight toward her. Finally, she found a tangle of vines that had grown up to the top of the wall. She grabbed the thickest and began to haul herself up, hand over hand. Then, with the grip of a steel vise, the robot grabbed her ankle.

Josephine screamed and kicked at the robot, but he was much too strong. He plucked her down as easily as if she were a grape on a vine and stuffed her into a sack. Josephine continued to fight, clawing at the sack and screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Hey, let me out! Help, somebody!” she yelled, even though she knew her voice was now too muffled to be heard by anyone. The robot ignored her and tied the sack shut. He slung it over his shoulder like a bag of laundry and began trudging back toward the house.

Brilliant, she thought. I could be home in bed sleeping right now, like a normal person. Instead, I’m caught like a rabbit by a robot, for Pete’s sake, probably never to be heard from again. Just brilliant.

She took some consolation in the fact that when her parents woke up in the morning and found her missing they would probably feel guilty for moving here. “Oh, Josephine was right!” they’d say. “We should never have left Wisconsin. If we’d only listened to her!” Of course, Josephine wouldn’t get to enjoy it, being dead or whatever, but that was beside the point.

Josephine finally stopped trying to fight her way out of the sack. It was only a waste of energy, and she might soon need all her strength to escape. She could hear the robot open the front door, step inside, then lock the door again. He dropped his bundle on the floor unceremoniously.

Josephine twisted around inside the sack until she found a small hole she could see through. A few sputtering candles did little to illuminate the room, but she could tell she was in the foyer of the house. The smell of rat droppings permeated even the coarse material of the sack.

The robot’s steel feet clanged past her and out of the room. She heard the rattle of plates and silverware from the next room as the machine man banged about. After a few minutes, the robot clunked back into the room carrying a covered silver tray, which he set on a side table. He untied the sack and dumped Josephine onto the floor. Her immediate instinct was to run, but a quick glance around
showed no clear way out. The door was locked, and the windows looked as if they hadn’t been opened in years, if ever.

As she looked around, she could see that the cavernous foyer, with its enormous dangling chandelier dripping with shards of shattered crystal, its crumbling marble floor, and its gold-framed paintings hanging crookedly on the walls, must have once been breathtaking. A massive staircase, coated with cobwebs and looking as if it might come crashing down at any moment, ascended three stories in a graceful arc. Even in its dangerously decayed state, the staircase made Josephine think of Cinderella. Or maybe Cinderella’s skeleton.

“Good evening, Madame Prisoner,” said the robot. His voice crackled with static, as if it came from an old radio. His red eyes beamed down at her like lasers. “Welcome to Hibble Manor.”

Hydraulics huffed and hissed inside the robot’s mechanical body as he bowed slightly, steel scraping on steel. Now that she could see him up close, she got the impression he could squash her like a bug if he really wanted to. Still, as scary as the robot was, there was something a little goofy about him as well. His ratty tuxedo hung on his steel frame like a cheap Halloween costume. The sleeves and trouser legs were too short for his long limbs, and his clip-on bow tie was crooked. He was like a cross between a waiter and a dump truck.

“I do hope you will not try to escape,” he continued. “Running would be futile, since I am rather speedy and would undoubtedly catch you again. I should warn you that I once won a race with a 1932 Oldsmobile. A red one, as I recall.”

She quickly scanned the room again, hoping she had overlooked a handy exit. Nope, no chance. She was Madame Prisoner for the moment, whether she liked it or not.

The robot kept its eyes on her as if it were waiting for an answer. She nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “You got me. I won’t run.” It felt strange talking to a machine. She wondered if it could tell she was lying.

A dusty cuckoo clock on the wall suddenly came to life. Josephine recognized the clock as a replica of the cathedral at Notre Dame. When its tiny doors swung open, a live mouse wearing a red and gold robe and a tall pointed hat scurried out onto the toy cathedral’s balcony. The mouse looked out at the room and gave a solemn little wave, then took hold of a string that hung down from the belfry and tugged. With each pull, a miniature bell tinkled. When the mouse had rung the bell twelve times, a morsel of cheese dropped down from the tower, which it snatched up greedily. The doors opened again, and the mouse ran back inside with its reward.

The bell-ringing mouse was nothing compared to what came next. A small door hidden in the baseboard near Josephine swung open and out rolled a toy train. On closer examination, Josephine saw that the train’s engine was made from a dented old teakettle fitted with wheels. Tooting and puffing white smoke from its chimney, the engine pulled several cars made from pots and cookie tins.

When the train chugged past Josephine, she did a double take at the sight of two small furry legs attached to the kettle that were furiously pedaling the engine’s wheels like a bicycle. There did not appear to be an animal attached to the legs. The little appendages were part of the engine itself. Also, on the front, where the headlight is usually found on a real train, was an eyeball built into the kettle.

Okay, that’s a real eyeball, she thought. And unless I’m hallucinating, it’s guiding the train around the furniture! What kind of place is this?

The train made a circuit once around the room and stopped at the robot’s feet. He set the silver tray on the train’s tin-pan freight car, then it started up again and rolled across the floor toward a very dark corridor.

“Please follow me, madame,” he said to Josephine as he flicked on a spotlight built into his forehead.

Josephine got to her feet, but was hesitant to follow the robot into the darkness. She could hear things scratching around in there.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To meet the master of the house, of course. It is time for his midnight meal, a perfect opportunity to introduce you.”

She didn’t move.

The robot locked his iron claw pincer onto Josephine’s wrist like a handcuff. “I’m afraid I must insist.”

“Hey! That hurts!” Josephine protested as the robot effortlessly pulled her behind him into the hallway.

“A necessary discomfort, unfortunately,” he said. “But it is for your own good. The closer you follow, the less likely the rats are to bite.”

The bizarre little train rattled and tooted along the dark corridor, leading them deep into the musty heart of the mansion. Like a shackled convict, Josephine stumbled along behind the robot, staying as close on his heels as she could manage. They turned left, right, then left again, at one point rounding a corner and sending a few dozen rats who had been feasting on what looked like a box of jelly doughnuts scurrying for cover. She tried hard to create a mental map in her head of each turn they made. If she was able to get free at some point and make a run for it, she wanted to be able to find her way out of this place.

When the train neared a pair of tall doors in the darkness ahead, an unseen mechanism that sounded as if it were located inside the walls whirred into action and the doors swung open with the screeching moan of old hinges. The robot led Josephine into the room and released her wrist, allowing the blood to begin circulating in her hand again.

This was her chance. As the robot went about the room lighting numerous candelabras, she turned and dashed for the doors. But before she had taken two steps, the doors slammed shut and the clunk of a deadbolt followed. She frantically twisted the knobs anyway, but it was no use.

The robot’s small red eyes beamed at her. She cringed, expecting him to come and grab her again, or something worse, but he did not. The machine man patiently finished lighting the last of the candles and pinched the match out between his steel fingertips.

“I had hoped you wouldn’t try to escape, madame,” he said. “Hibble Manor can be quite treacherous in the dark if one doesn’t know where one is going.”

Josephine jumped as something furry skittered past, brushing her ankles. “Oh! What was that?”

“A rodent of some kind.” The robot’s eyes tracked the animal’s movement along the baseboard. “The larger ones tend to congregate near the doors for some reason.”

Josephine moved quickly toward the middle of the room, praying nothing else would touch her. With dozens of candles now flickering, she could see they were in a once-grand dining room. Shadows danced over an impossibly long table lined with big, fancy chairs that could have passed for thrones. Framed mirrors on the walls created the odd illusion that the room was even larger than it was.

The robot opened a door on one side of the room revealing a stairway that descended into what she guessed was a basement.

“I should warn you, the master is easily perturbed by interruptions, even for meals. When he enters the room, you should be prepared to dodge any objects he may fling,” the robot said as he
brushed off the lapels of his tuxedo jacket and picked flecks of lint off his cummerbund.

“Right…” Josephine was unsure what to make of such a warning. She moved closer to the table, figuring she could duck behind it if she had to.

The robot pulled a velvet cord hanging from the ceiling. A gong sounded from somewhere in the darkness downstairs.

“What do you want?” a voice grumbled.

“Good evening, Master,” the robot called down the stairs. “Your twelve o’clock meal is served, sir.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Norman, just leave it! I’m in the middle of an operation!”

“As you wish, Master. But there is a disturbing matter that requires your attention.”

The voice became more impatient. “What is it?”

“I’m afraid we’ve had an intruder, sir. Naturally, knowing your desire for privacy, I gave chase.”

“An intruder? Drat! Was it the man in the black suit? I told you we should never have filled in the tiger pits, Norman. Perhaps we should install a high-voltage fence.”

“A first-rate idea, sir. In any case, I am happy to report,” the robot said proudly, “that I was able to apprehend the culprit. I am rather speedy, you know, having once outrun an Oldsmo—”

“You caught the intruder, Norman? Excellent work! Ran him off, did you? Tossed him over the wall?”

“Actually, sir, I have the intruder right here.”

“Here?” An angry snort was followed by footsteps stomping up the stairs.

Josephine saw the silhouette of a very short, round man, who arrived at the top of the steps and began yelling up at the huge robot towering over him.

“Norman, you ninny!” he wheezed, out of breath from the climb. “I’ve told you a BILLION times, outsiders are never allowed inside! That’s why they’re outsiders! If we let them inside, they become insiders!”

“Your logic is flawless as always, sir.”

“Well, let’s have a look at the perpetrator, as long as I’m here.”

The little man barged past the robot toward Josephine. As he stepped into the light, her jaw dropped.

“The master” was not a little man at all. He was a boy.