The Wikkeling (21 page)

“It's . . .” said Gary. He didn't need to finish the sentence. Clearly, none of the other children could see it. As they ran past, it occasionally reached out with one long finger and tapped their foreheads.

“It's not grown up yet,” Henrietta murmured.

“It isn't flickering,” said Rose. She was right—it looked strangely solid compared to what Gary and Henrietta had seen the previous day.

“Have you seen it before?” said Gary, turning to Rose.

“My whole life,” said Rose. “It tries to tap me, just like out there. But those kids don't mind.”

“Nobody minds but us,” said Henrietta, “because we're House Sick.”

“What's House Sick?” said Rose.

“Nobody knows,” said Henrietta. As she spoke, though, several ideas began to come together in her mind. “Wait . . .” she said, holding up one hand. She knitted her eyebrows. “We
do
know. It's that thing. I think . . . I think it doesn't like our old houses, because it can't get in!”

“I've seen it in my house,” said Rose, “but you're right. It doesn't like it. It never stays.”

“Maybe it's making us sick so we'll move,” said Henrietta.

“But I did move,” said Gary. “My mom and I left our old house, so why would it attack me on the bus?”

“Because you've been up here in the attic,” said Henrietta. She clenched her hands, feeling like she'd finally grabbed something that had been hovering just beyond her reach. “On the bus it asked us where we went. And then during the Competency Exam, that was the composition question.”

“That was the
Exam question
?” said Gary, aghast. He still needed to take the makeup test. “My mom said it was ‘Why is it dangerous to swim?'”

Henrietta smiled despite herself—it would have been funny, in an awful way, to see Gary's careful cheating method go awry. “It can go almost anywhere—even into computers,” she said. “But not into old houses. Not up here.”

“But
why
?” said Gary, still not satisfied.

Their conversation ended abruptly, however, when something surprising transpired down below. The strange child stopped tapping kids on the forehead. It stepped away from the edge of the giant stump, and looked up—right at Henrietta's house. Right at the three of them looking down.

They stumbled back from the window. “It saw us!” said Gary.

Cautiously, they crawled forward and peeked over the sill. It was still looking, its yellow eyes locked on them. They fled back to the couch.

“But nobody out there
ever
sees us!” said Gary.

“If that version of it knows…” said Henrietta, reluctant to finish the sentence. Filled with trepidation, they approached the trapdoor, and Henrietta cautiously opened it.

There was the chair sitting atop the desk, and the desk on the tan carpet, as always. There was the bedside table, and Henrietta's canary night-light, and the windows with the shades pulled. There was the bed.

And standing next to the bed, feet together, arms at its side, was the creature. It looked frozen, like a photo, and its empty yellow eyes stared up at the three of them. Henrietta dropped the door.

“Oh,
no
,” said Gary.

“Maybe it'll leave,” said Henrietta. “Let's just wait.”

They returned to the couch and sat together.

“Do you think it's gone yet?” said Gary immediately. He reflexively pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at it. “Hey,” he said. “It's . . . well, it's not really working, but it's kind of working.” He showed them the screen, which was lit, and the digital numbers that indicated the time were there, but crawling at a fraction of their normal pace. “Uh oh,” he said, and they all simultaneously reached the same conclusion: When you're up in this attic, where time is frozen, it doesn't matter how long you wait. The thing down below will be there, from your perspective, forever.

“But it arrived after we climbed up,” said Henrietta. “It came later. So time must be passing a little, or just passing for it, or . . .”

“Let's keep waiting,” said Rose.

They sat for another few moments in silence. “We should try to distract ourselves,” said Henrietta. Gary picked up an old deck of cards he'd found some weeks ago, and started laying them out with Rose for Solitaire, a game they'd learned from one of the dusty attic books.

Henrietta picked up
Early Town
from the coffee table. It was still open to the page Mister Lady had been reading, which was an odd-looking, close-up map that showed Boardwalk, the street right outside Henrietta's house. It appeared to be two maps, one laid on top of the other. The bottom map was the one Henrietta had seen before, of the single-lane brick boulevard. The other map, printed on transparent paper and laid atop the first, showed the road Henrietta had grown up with—four lanes with sidewalks.

Henrietta tried to puzzle the pieces together. Was this a map of the future—or what
was
the future, once upon a time?

“Hey,” she said to Gary and Rose, but the moment she spoke, a loud
bang!
sounded from outside. The children started and looked at the windows.

Their view of the enormous trees was obscured by a young man standing outside atop a ladder. He wore a red checked shirt and a blue cotton cap. In one hand he held a hammer, and in the other a two-by-four plank. He looked in but didn't appear to see the children.

“Who is that?” said Gary.

“I don't know . . .” said Henrietta. Then she did know. “It's Al! My grandfather!” But it wasn't the Al she knew. It was Al as he had once been, decades before Henrietta was born—a young man. He lifted the plank and began nailing it to the outside of the house, across the windows.

“What's he doing?” said Gary.

“He's making the house like it is now,” said Henrietta.

“We've got to stop him!” said Gary.

“We can't,” said Henrietta. “He has to do it. The city's about to knock down
the trees and turn the road into more traffic lanes. Look.” She held up
Early Town
so Gary and Rose could see the overlaid maps.

“But that just happened!” said Gary.

“It just happened
again
, you mean. It happened the first time then, and again now,” said Henrietta.

“The same thing all over,” said Gary.

“Do you think Mister Lady left the book open there on purpose?” said Rose. Outside, Al nailed another board on the window, blocking out more light.

The attic began to darken.

“Why's he doing that?” said Gary.

“So the trees don't shatter the windows when they fall,” said Henrietta.

Al disappeared down the ladder for a moment and then returned with more boards. The light diminished further, the shadows deepened, and soon Al's face was no longer visible. The last board was in place, leaving the attic in pitch darkness. They listened to the final strokes of the hammer. Then, silence.

“You guys,” said Gary's voice, strained and a little high-pitched. Henrietta could imagine his eyebrows bunching together.

“What is it?” said Henrietta.

“I'm afraid of the dark. Could we open the trapdoor again, just for a second?” There was a cold tremor in his voice, and Henrietta recognized that he was starting to panic. She recalled his disastrous descent the first time she'd shown him the place.

“Let's all go together,” said Henrietta. She took Gary's and Rose's hands, and they shuffled through the darkness to the trapdoor.

Henrietta pulled it open a crack. The light from the bedroom flooded in, and Gary began a relieved sigh that caught almost immediately in his throat as he looked down. The thing was still waiting below, fixing them with its steady stare. Henrietta slowly closed the door again.

“You know,” Henrietta said, “I remember seeing some candles on one of the bookshelves, once. Did you guys see those?”

“Yeah,” said Gary. “And a box next to them—matches!”

“Remember when we watched a movie about them in class?” said Henrietta. “
Don't Strike Those Matches
. A kid burns his house down.”

“That movie was really good,” breathed Gary.

“You two stay here,” said Henrietta. “I'm going to find them.” She released her friends' hands and felt her way across the floor. She maneuvered behind the coffee table to the base of the nearest bookshelf and slid her hands up the spines of the old books until she reached the top shelf, letting her fingers skim the outlines of the items there. A bronze baby shoe. A glass ashtray. A bookend. And . . . a candelabra, loaded with seven long tapers. She curled her fingers around the metal base. With her other hand, she continued searching until she found the small cardboard box.

She crawled back to the coffee table, set the candelabra on it, and opened the box. Inside it felt like a bunch of sticks. “Do you remember how that kid lit them in the movie?” she said.

“There should be some red stuff on one end,” said Gary, “and you swipe it against the side.”

“I can't see anything,” said Henrietta.

“The bigger end,” said Rose, who dealt with matches frequently in the Library.

She felt inside the box. Each stick had a little bulb on one end. She swiped one against the side of the box. “It didn't work.”

“Feel around on the box,” said Gary. “One side should have a rough strip. I have a couple in my trash collection, and I think they're all the same.”

He was right. Henrietta tried again, and—
Fiss!
The match ignited. She held it to the wick of one of the long candles, which caught easily and glowed with a steady, swelling light. She lit two more candles, and then dropped the match on the floor and stomped it out thoroughly.

“You did it!” said Gary. It was comforting to have a little light, even if their situation was the same as before.

“What now?” said Gary.

“Keep waiting, I guess,” said Henrietta.

“We should sleep soon,” said Rose

Gary rubbed his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I'm almost as tired as I am scared.”

“It does seem pretty late,” said Henrietta.

“We could camp up here,” said Gary, and for the first time in a while there was a hopeful note in his voice. He'd always wanted to camp.

“There are probably blankets somewhere,” said Henrietta.

“In the dresser,” said Rose. Henrietta handed her the candelabra, and Rose led the way back behind the bookcases to an old wooden dresser. Henrietta pulled open the top drawer to reveal a pile of neatly folded blankets. She and Gary scooped up several of them, and they all returned to the main room, where
they made up three little beds on the floor next to the couch.

“I don't think I've ever gone to sleep without brushing my teeth,” said Henrietta. “I hope they don't rot.”

“They won't,” said Gary. “I've done it.”

“Doesn't your mom make you?”

“Sometimes I fake it.” He opened his mouth wide, showing two rows of reasonably clean-looking teeth in the candlelight.

“When I first found Mister Lady up here, I told my mom I was using the bathroom, but I was really getting some bandages,” said Henrietta. The two of them grinned at one another, pleased about their shared history of mischievousness.

“I've lied, too,” said Rose. “To everyone. About everything.” And then, finally, she told the story she had been forbidden to tell.

She told it because she trusted her two friends and because they had trusted her, been kind to her, and helped her. She began with her home, the Library, with its thousands of old books stretching to high ceilings. She told them about the Subscribers who arrived in the dead of night; about elaborate secret knocks; and about thieves who read historical romances, dumpster diving scientists obsessed with narrative poetry, and former telecommunications employees who loved cookbooks. Once she got started, she kept talking until it was all out, and when she finished, Henrietta and Gary were dumbstruck.