The League of Beastly Dreadfuls Book 1, page 10
Success! Anastasia tumbled forward as the door swung open.
Prude smiled at her. “You’re up early!” she chirped. “But what on earth are you doing down there?”
Anastasia gaped up at the old kidnapper. “I—I’m practicing yoga,” she finally stammered.
“I’ve never understood the benefit of contorting oneself like some kind of demented octopus,” Prude said. “It seems rather unhealthy to me. If you want some good exercise, moppet, there’s plenty of sweeping to be done.” She turned and plodded off.
Anastasia glared at the crumpled safety pin in her palm. She hadn’t picked the lock—Prude had just opened the door with her key! She flung the pin to the floor and followed Prude down to breakfast, her mind percolating with ways to escape St. Agony’s Asylum and get back to Mooselick and—hopefully!—her parents.
After swallowing her last Mystery Lump, Anastasia scooted from the breakfast table. She had a busy morning ahead of her. For one, she needed to borrow something from the Treatment Room. (In this paragraph, the word borrow is a polite way to say pilfer. And pilfer is a quaint synonym for steal.) As you will remember, the Treatment Room contained a delightful assortment of diabolical metal instruments for sawing, poking, stabbing, and pinching. There was also a magnificent magnet tucked into one of the drawers. This magnet, Anastasia reasoned, could be of help in her escape. Can you, alert Reader, guess how?
However, before she ventured down to the Forbidden Basement, Anastasia had important business to conduct on the third floor. She wanted to talk to the Gardener. The prospect made her knees turn to jelly—what if he was still upset about the toe-squishing incident outside Room Twenty-Four? But the Gardener knew something about the danger in the asylum. He had tried to warn her. Perhaps he could reveal more about the Creature, or Prim and Prude.
EEEEEEEoooooooow.
The weird whale-singing melody!
Eeeeee…eeeeEEEEEEeeee…
Anastasia panted at the top of the stairwell. Eeeaaooooo…Her pulse knocked in her throat and wrists as she skedaddled through the shadows toward the ghostly wails, chasing the tune. Eeeeeoooo. Her candlelight wobbled in a mirror screwed into a doorway. Anastasia’s breath whistled through her nostrils. Room Thirty-Eight.
The door was ajar. EeeeeeOOOOOOeeeeee.
Anastasia sidled over the mirror and into the room. The music stopped abruptly.
Tingalingaling.
She whirled around.
Licks of silver gleamed in the darkest corner of the dark little chamber. And then, from this lightless pocket, a gangly figure crept forth. Staring at the saw dangling from the Gardener’s hand, Anastasia worried her visit had been a mistake.
Tingalingaling!
He lifted the blade.
Anastasia plastered herself against the moldering wallpaper, imagining her own epitaph: Here lies Anastasia McCrumpet, average to goodish triangle player, sliced and diced by lunatic Gardener. YOU WILL BE MISSED, PERHAPS.
However, to her great astonishment, the Gardener did not lunge forth to carve her down the middle. He swiped the bedraggled tails of his jacket aside and sat down on a spindly chair. He plucked a violin bow off the floor. He squeezed one end of the saw between his knees and clutched the other with his hand, and closed his eyes.
He swiped the bow across the saw.
Eeeeeeee…oooooooOOoooo…Awoohhhhhoooo…
He curved the blade to produce different pitches, coaxing a peculiar melody from the rusty metal. Anastasia stared at him in sheer wonderment. Now that she knew it wasn’t the chimneys of St. Agony shrieking, or a ghost crying, she thought the sound was simply lovely.
Eeeeeeooooo.
The violin bow dropped by his side.
“That was beautiful,” Anastasia whispered.
“Thank you.” The Gardener looked tremendously pleased. “It’s called ‘Ballad of the Lovelorn Beluga.’ ” The smile fizzled off his lips, and he set his saw and the violin bow on the floor. “But you’re not here to discuss music. You got my warning. It was a giant risk, writing it out like that. Prim or Prude might have seen it. But you ran away when I tried to talk to you. And you threw a book about lobotomies on my toes.” He paused. “I must say, that was rather unfriendly.”
“I’m sorry,” Anastasia said. “I didn’t mean to! I was afraid of you.”
“Afraid?” the Gardener cried. “Of me?”
“I mean,” Anastasia faltered, “you work for them, and—”
“Work for them! You mean Prim and Prude?” the boy said. “You think I’m in on their awful tricks, like some kind of a—a henchman?”
“Not a henchman,” Anastasia protested. “No, I’m sure you’re a very nice gardener, and good at your job—”
“Gardener?” he exclaimed. “I’m not a gardener!”
“Then who are you?” Anastasia gulped. “What are you doing here?”
“My name is Quentin Drybread,” the boy said. “But the question you should really be asking is: what are you doing here? Those two ladies did not invite you here for Christmas jollies. I broke out to warn you the night they brought you here, but Prim chased me off with her poisonous umbrella. You must run for your life, Anastasia McCrumpet.”
Anastasia’s voice stuck in her throat. “I know.”
“I’ll help you,” Quentin said, gripping his birdcage. “I’ll help you leave this vile madhouse.”
“But what about you?” Anastasia asked. “If you hate the asylum so much—”
“I can’t leave.” Quentin slumped back onto the chair. “I can’t leave yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’m…I’m looking for something.”
“Looking for something?” Anastasia echoed. “What?”
“Something they took from me,” he said so quietly that she could barely hear him. “Something important. I can’t leave until I find it.”
That explained his Most Mysterious Behavior. Sort of. Anastasia’s brain whirred. “Is it a pet hamster?”
“No.”
“How about your watch? Is it a nice watch with all kinds of cogs and whirligigs spinning in the face? And,” she added, scrunching her face in thought, “a luminescent dial?”
“No.”
“Those are nice watches,” she said wistfully.
“Yes, they are,” he agreed. “But I do not own one of them. Look, I can’t tell you what it is. It’s—it’s a secret.”
“If you told me, then maybe I could help you find it,” Anastasia offered.
“I doubt it,” the boy said, his pale face miserable. “You’re too little. I bet you’re only ten years old.”
“I am almost eleven,” Anastasia retorted. An idea prickled her mind. “Is it a music box?”
“Music box?” Quentin’s head jerked up, the birdcage bell tinkling. “Did you say music box?”
“I found one,” Anastasia said. “And it plays ‘Ballad of the Lovelorn Beluga.’ ”
Quentin stared at her. “Where is it?”
“Down in the basement,” Anastasia said. “In a room full of mirrors. And there’s a ghost, too.” Her face went pink. “At least, I’m pretty sure it’s a ghost. I thought it was a shadow at first. Whatever it is, it’s…ticklish.”
“Ticklish?” Quentin leapt up. “Take me there!”
“All right,” Anastasia said. “I hope you don’t mind dark, cramped places or creepy Forbidden Basements.”
“I’m rather fond of both,” Quentin replied. “But please, before we go, can you remove that mirror? I—I can’t cross over mirrors.”
“Why not?” Anastasia asked. “Is it some kind of superstition, like walking under a ladder?”
“Er—yes! Something like that. Do you have a screwdriver?”
“No.” Anastasia scrutinized the bolts securing the mirror to the floor. Then she plucked a quarter from her satchel, pressed its edge into the notch at the top of the screw, and twisted. “Righty tighty,” she muttered. “Lefty loosey. I saw my dad do this once, when he put a new license plate on our car.”
“He sounds like a brilliant man,” Quentin said.
“Pretty good at making waffles, too,” Anastasia said, tears stinging her eyes as she wondered whether she’d ever taste a Fred McCrumpet breakfast again. She lefty-looseyed all the screws, and then shoved the mirror aside.
Down in the asylum dungeon, they hurried past the padded cells, through the Treatment Room, and back to Dr. Grungewhiff’s office for diagnosing fruitcakes. Anastasia hesitated by the doorjamb, but Quentin dashed past her into the room. “Where is he?”
Anastasia crept in behind him. The flickering flames from the candelabra sent their shadows dancing around them in a ghostly conga line. “Well, it—he—was right there. But now he’s gone.”
“There!” Quentin muttered. “Up in the corner!”
Sure enough, a shadowy figure twitched against the crumbling plaster near the ceiling.
“Pudding!” the boy called. “It’s me! Come down.”
Anastasia goggled as the child-shape slid down the wallpaper until its shadow feet alighted on the baseboard.
“Anastasia,” Quentin said, “this is—”
“Ahem.” The shadow cleared its throat. “I’m—er—in my birthday suit, you know.”
I’m sure you would expect Anastasia to let out a holler of pure fright at the sound of a talking shadow. At the very least, a premonition of doom might wring her tummy. However, nothing like this happened. At the first mention of birthday suit, Anastasia fled Dr. Grungewhiff’s office and hid in the corridor, squeezing her eyes shut.
“All right, Anastasia,” Quentin called out after a minute. “You can come back in and meet my brother, Ollie.”
18
The Dark Gauntlet
AN ALMOST-ELEVENISH BOY stood next to Quentin, tugging at the collar of his blue sweater, his plump face pink.
“Say!” the boy said. “You’re the girl who tickled me the other day!”
“I—I didn’t mean to,” Anastasia stuttered. “I thought you might be a stain on the wall.”
“A stain on the wall!” the boy cried. “Well, how do you like that? A stain! At least,” he added, “I don’t go around letting off flabbergasters in other people’s rooms.”
“I didn’t know there was anyone else around!” Anastasia yelped.
“Flabbergasters?” Quentin said, eyeing her.
“Never mind that,” Anastasia said hastily.
“Why did you run away?” the boy asked. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“I thought you were a ghost,” Anastasia apologized.
“A ghost!” the boy said. “First a stain, and then a ghost. Shows what you know.”
“Well,” Anastasia said, “what are you, exactly?”
“Quentin and I are—”
“Shhhhh! Ollie, you can’t talk about those things!” Quentin hissed. “You know those are top-secret secrets!”
“That’s right,” Ollie mumbled. “Top-secret. Sorry, Q. Hey, you have a birdcage on your head!” He squinted up at his brother. “It looks quite nice. Very smart.”
“Nice?” Quentin sputtered. “Smart? It’s silver, you pudding!”
“Silver!” Ollie squeaked. “Well, that changes things! Silver! Why on earth are you going around wearing a silver birdcage?”
“It’s not a birdcage! It’s an authentic Victorian head cage for lunatics,” Quentin said. “Don’t you see the collar and the padlock? Those old prunes locked it on me after feeding me drugged tea.”
“Oh,” Ollie said. “Well, Quentin, you shouldn’t have accepted drugged tea in the first place. When the old prunes said, ‘Would you care for a cup of tea with sleeping stuff in it, my boy?’ you should have told them, ‘No, thank you!’ ”
Quentin heaved a mighty sigh. “I didn’t know it was drugged, Ollie.”
“What were you doing drinking tea with Prim and Prude, anyway?”
“I came here looking for you!”
“Right!” Ollie said. “Because I’d been kidnapped! Yes, now it’s all starting to make sense.”
“What about your parents?” Anastasia asked. “Weren’t they searching for Ollie, too?”
Quentin shook his head. “They were out of town. A letter came earlier that week saying that our grandma was sick. I’m sure it was just a trick, but Nanny lives—er—far away and doesn’t have a phone.”
“Mom and Dad left us with the fussy old lady next door,” Ollie complained. “Her furniture is covered in plastic, and she made us look at slides of her trips to Hawaii.”
“And she’s very absentminded,” Quentin said. “When I came home from orchestra practice that afternoon, Mrs. Gullwinch didn’t even realize Ollie was missing. I couldn’t call Mom and Dad, so I went out on my own.”
“How did they get you, Ollie?” Anastasia asked. “They told me they’re my great-aunties.”
“They didn’t pretend to be my aunties,” Ollie said. “Or my uncles, for that matter. They just said they had a lot of sweets at their house.”
“Ollie!” Quentin cried. “You should never take candy from strangers!”
“Well, that’s funny,” Ollie huffed. “Coming from someone who goes around drinking drugged tea.”
“And the first candy they gave you was a peppermint?” Anastasia guessed.
“Right-o!” Ollie said. “How did you know? Golly, you’re a smart one. Anyway, they brought me here and fed me all kinds of cookies and cakes. It was jolly fun for a couple of days.”
“They gave you cake?” Anastasia said. “They’ve never given me cake. In fact, they go into a secret room to eat cake.”
“Perhaps they like me more than you,” Ollie suggested. “I’m pretty likable, don’t you think? Anyway, one night I umbrated in my sleep—”
“Oliver Dante Drybread!” Quentin exclaimed. “You know we can’t talk about that stuff with anyone!”
Ollie squirmed. “But she already knows that we can turn into shadows. That’s what umbrating is,” he explained to Anastasia.
She gasped. “Unbelievable! And—and you umbrate, too, Quentin?”
He shook his head sadly and pointed at the silver cage.
“Silver is bad for us,” Ollie said. “It saps our strength and makes it hard to umbrate. But back at home, Quentin umbrates like a champ. He can even do shadow puppet shows!”
Boys who turn into shadows! If Anastasia hadn’t spent the past days watching frost twinkle into pictures and discovering kidnapping schemes and wondering about ghosts and heart-crunching forest Creatures, the fantastical fact of Quentin and Ollie’s existence might have driven her plain cuckoo. But all the weirdness in St. Agony’s Asylum had limbered up her mind for shocking surprises.
“Anyway,” Ollie went on, “one night I umbrated in my sleep. That happens sometimes, you know. I woke up to see Prim and Prude hovering over me, grinning with those horrible teeth—oh, it was frightening! They whooshed me up into those bellows, and then they squished me out in the middle of this circle of mirrors.” He shivered. “And now they only bring cakes down once each morning.”
“The brutes!” Quentin swore.
“What do mirrors have to do with anything?” Anastasia asked.
“We can’t cross mirrors,” Ollie said. “We have to piggyback on a—um—a normal person. That’s how I escaped the ring of mirrors the other day. I piggybacked on you, Anastasia. But then you ran away and locked the door. Pretty mean, I thought.”
“I already told you, I thought you were a ghost,” Anastasia said. She stared at the looking-glass prison glinting on the floor. That explained all the mirrors scattered around the asylum, including the one crammed up the parlor chimney.
“Poor pudding,” Quentin said, squeezing Ollie into a hug. “Didn’t you hear my music? I wandered all over this asylum, playing ‘Ballad of the Lovelorn Beluga’ on a saw.”
“Now that you mention it, I did hear music!” Ollie said. “But I just thought it was a talented owl!”
“Ollie!” Quentin elbowed him. “I was hoping you’d hear it and call out for me. I’ve been combing this wretched place for two months!”
“Two months? So your parents should be looking for you by now,” Anastasia mused. “And they’ve probably called the police.”
“Probably,” Quentin said. “But I don’t know if they’ll look here. St. Agony’s is pretty far away from Melancholy Falls. This place is in the middle of nowhere, really.”
“How did you even get here?” Anastasia asked. “Did you drive? Can you drive? Maybe we could take the station wagon and get out of here.”
“I’m not old enough to drive,” Quentin said. “I—I came here as a shadow.”
“Shadows can move super fast, and cold doesn’t bother us,” Ollie said. “The only problem is, once you get where you’re going, you need some clothes. Otherwise”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—“you’re stuck walking around in your birthday suit.”
“So that’s why you’re wearing old-timey clothing,” Anastasia said to Quentin. “I thought it was just part of Prim and Prude’s authentic Victorian experience, having their Gardener wear stuff like that.”
“Q’s not a gardener,” Ollie scoffed. “What gave you that idea?”
“Well, because Prim and Prude said so,” Anastasia said. “I know it isn’t true now. But why…” She stared at Quentin. “Why were you digging that hole in the garden?”
Quentin grasped the collar on his cage. “Oh, Anastasia, you were right! I’m no better than a common henchman!”
“I never called you a henchman!” Anastasia protested.
“Prim and Prude threatened to do horrible things to Ollie if I refused to dig that hole,” Quentin said. “It’s for…it’s for you.”
“For me?”
“That’s why I wrote that note to you in the dust. Once they sent me out to start digging, I knew I had to warn you,” Quentin said. “Prim and Prude are horrible! They’re murderers!”
