The League of Beastly Dreadfuls Book 1, page 3
Anastasia accepted the heavy candlestick and brandished it through the gloom. Furniture draped with sheets loomed around them.
“This is the Great Hall,” Prude said, matches sizzling between her fingertips as she lit the tapers of a tarnished candelabrum. “Isn’t it beautiful? Think of all the Victorian criminals who gallivanted beneath these historic ceilings!”
Gawking upward, Anastasia could just make out the shadowy shapes of chandeliers cocooned in cobwebs.
“This way, child.” The candelabrum’s glow bobbled deeper into the asylum.
“Why are we using candles?” Anastasia asked. “Did the storm knock out the power?”
“We’re using candles,” Prude replied, “because St. Agony’s doesn’t have electricity.”
“It’s more authentic that way!” declared Prim.
“Authentically what?” Anastasia mumbled, eyeballing the cobwebby head of some dead furry thing bolted to the wall. “Authentically creepy?”
“There’s only one thing that runs on electricity here,” Prude said, “and that’s the fence that goes all around the estate.”
“Buzzing with ten thousand volts,” Prim said. “If you touched it, you’d frizzle to a crisp!”
“A crisp?” Anastasia gasped. “But why— Ouch!”
BRZZZING!
“Careful!” Prim called. “Mind the harpsichord!”
The aunties veered toward a burly wooden banister and began the long climb upstairs. Anastasia gazed up the stairwell. A pink-patterned carpet runner spooled down the steps like a monstrous spotty tongue.
“Come along, moppet!” Prim coaxed.
A row of portraits lined the green wall, their canvases so caked with dust that Anastasia could barely detect the ghostly outlines of painted figures. Her skin prickled as she tiptoed past this sinister gallery and up to her aunties.
“Whew,” Prude wheezed at the top step. “I have to rest a minute.” She plonked her candelabrum on the newel post and pulled a plastic bottle out of her pocket. She shook two tiny white tablets onto her palm. “Heart medicine,” she panted.
“Oh, what frail old ladies are we,” Prim lamented, leaning on the handle of her umbrella as though it were a cane. “Anastasia, don’t be surprised if your auntie Prude and I don’t even make it through the night.”
“Little old ladies often die in the middle of the night, you know,” Prude added.
Anastasia was horrified. What if she found her aunties dead the next morning, lying stiff on the dusty floor like two little hamsters someone had forgotten to feed?
“Yes,” Prude said, scarfing the tablets and pocketing the bottle. “The life of a little old lady is precarious indeed. Death lurking around every corner.”
They started down a hallway so long that Anastasia would have needed a telescope to glimpse its end. They walked past door after door after door. Each door had a little metal number screwed onto it, and Anastasia announced the numbers as they passed. “Twenty-nine…twenty-eight…twenty-seven…,” she counted…fifteen…fourteen…twelve…Hey!” she exclaimed. “What happened to thirteen?”
“Lots of old places don’t have a thirteenth room.” Prim shrugged. “Superstition. Unlucky thirteen, you know.”
“Here we are, number eleven!” Prude said. She pulled an enormous key ring from her purse. “This is where you’ll sleep tonight, Anastasia. You lucky little girl! What fun! It will be just like staying in a hotel!”
Anastasia stared doubtfully at the chain looped from the jamb to the edge of the door. “Really?”
“Oh, yes,” Prim chirped. “In fact, we think St. Agony’s would make a delightful bed-and-breakfast! So quaint! So charming!”
“So authentic,” Anastasia added, looking down at the mirror gleaming on the carpet like a bizarre welcome mat.
The lock clunked, and Prude slid aside the chain. “Now be a Nice Little Girl and scoot right to bed,” she said. “And don’t be scared by any noises you might hear.”
“Noises?” Anastasia echoed.
“You know,” Prude said, “creaking or footsteps. This is a very old house, and sometimes old houses make funny noises.”
“Sometimes, the house makes a cute noise kind of like a man screaming in anguish,” Prim said cheerfully. “But it’s just St. Agony’s, settling into its foundations!”
“After a while, you get used to it,” Prude said. “Yes, it gets to where you like what perhaps sounds like fingernails scratching at a locked door but is really just an old building groaning.”
“And rasping,” added Prim.
“And squealing. But,” Prude went on, “you probably won’t hear a thing. These walls are nice and thick, and Room Eleven is cozy as can be. You’ll be snug as a bug in a rug once you’re locked—”
“Tucked,” Prim said quickly.
“Yes, yes, I meant tucked inside.”
The two old ladies beamed at her. Anastasia’s gaze yo-yoed between their sweet faces. “But,” she said, and hesitated. There were so many buts, she couldn’t decide which one to bring up first.
“No buts,” Prim said. “It’s bedtime for Nice Little Girls.”
Anastasia planted her feet in the doorway, loath to go into the dark room. “But what about my good-night story?” she asked. “And I don’t have pajamas.”
“Now, now, no more excuses,” said Prude. “Beddy-bye time, young lady.”
“But I don’t have a toothbrush,” Anastasia stalled.
“That’s all right,” said Prim. “Neither have we. And our teeth are just fine, aren’t they, Prude?”
Both little old ladies grinned at her, curling their lips up from their pale pink gums and showing their teeth for the first time that day. Anastasia gasped and took a step backward. She was so shocked by the aunties’ teeth that she actually took two steps backward, right into Room Eleven.
“Sweet dreams,” whispered Prim, before the door slammed shut and the key moaned in the lock.
5
The Child-Shaped Hollow
THE METAL CHAIN clattered through its track on the other side, and Anastasia leapt forward to grab the knob. She tried to twist it, but it didn’t budge.
Reader, there are greeting cards for many occasions. There are cards for birthdays. There are Hanukkah and Christmas cards, and soppy pink Valentines trimmed in lace, and “Get Well Soon” cards. There are even “Thank You for Pet-Sitting” cards. However, as of the printing of this book, no card manufacturer has ever marketed a “Congratulations on Your Very First Premonition of Doom!” card. Nor can you easily find a “Sorry You’re Frightened out of Your Gourd Because You’re Locked in a Former Lunatic Asylum in the Middle of Nowhere on the Day Your Parents Were Mangled in a Freak Vacuuming Accident” card. It’s a shame, because a card like one of these would have been perfect for Anastasia at this dreary point in our story.
Holding her breath, she pirouetted to face Room Eleven. A narrow cot on a spindly metal frame cowered against one wall. The mattress, quilted in cobwebs and dust, sagged in the middle where someone—someone about Anastasia’s size—had once lain. Anastasia could even make out the faint impression of a head and arms and legs. It reminded her of snow angels, but in a creepy way.
A behemoth wardrobe hulked against one wall, grim and sturdy as the Monobrow. Anastasia tiptoed closer and bravely flung the doors open. She heaved a sigh of relief. The only thing lurking in the wardrobe was a bunch of musty fur coats, just like the ones Prim and Prude had been wearing all day.
EeeeeeeOOOOOO!
Anastasia leapt straight into the air, her candlestick crashing to the floor. What in blue blazes was that?
EeeeoooooOOOO!
Goose bumps sprang up over Anastasia’s freckled epidermis. Was it someone crying? It didn’t sound human. It sounded, actually, rather like the whale calls Miss Apple had played for the fifth graders at Mooselick Elementary during their library unit on marine biology. Miss Apple was a real science enthusiast.
OOOoooooooo…ooo. The wails grew softer and softer until they faded away completely. It must have been, Anastasia thought, the wind wuthering at the walls of St. Agony’s Asylum. But her legs wobbled as she stood up.
She retrieved her candlestick and shoved the coats to one side, revealing a gray lump cuddled in the wardrobe’s dark belly. She stooped to pull it out.
“A stuffed bunny?”
She slowly turned it over, squishing the sagging cloth body between her fingers. Had, one hundred years earlier, a criminally insane child imprisoned the bunny in the wardrobe? The rabbit’s dirty tail clung to its knit bottom by a single thread, and one of its button eyes was missing. Anastasia thought with a pang of her bunny slippers at home, kicked aside in the scramble to get dressed for school that morning. She wondered whether Muffy had revenge-pooped in one of them or, perhaps, in both.
“Well, Mr. Bunster, it looks like we’re roommates for the night,” Anastasia informed the rabbit, plopping him down on the forlorn mattress. Her tummy mumbled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten since her disastrous breakfast hours earlier. She hunkered on the floor and dug her peanut butter sandwich out of her satchel. It was mashed after all the excitement of the day, but Anastasia was too hungry to care. She gobbled it down in three bites, and then rummaged through the trick-or-treating booty jumbling her tote. Dozens of sour watermelon taffy nuggets rustled amongst candy bar wrappers, but for reasons we shall discuss later in this story, Anastasia had sworn off sour watermelon taffy for life.
Why hadn’t her aunties given her dinner? Or at least a bedtime snack? And why, for that matter, had they locked her into a spooky room? So far, Anastasia was not exactly thrilled with Primrose and Prudence. No wonder her parents had never mentioned them. Mr. McCrumpet was probably happy to pretend they didn’t exist.
Besides, anybody would be glad to forget those awful teeth.
Anastasia shivered. Why did Prim and Prude have metal teeth? Were they some kind of weird dentures? They looked so sharp.
“The better to eat you with, my dear,” she muttered to Mr. Bunster.
The candle had burned down to a stump. It would soon fizzle out. Anastasia decided to inspect the one remaining pocket of gloom in Room Eleven while she still had a smidgen of candlelight—just in case.
“If you don’t mind,” she told the stuffed rabbit, “I’m going to check under the bed.” She peeked below the rusted springs. Candlelight glinted off something squatting against the baseboard, and Anastasia stretched her arm into the darkness. Dust twitched her nose into a colossal sneeze. Her fingers closed around a porcelain handle, and with quite a ruckus of clinking and clunking, she dragged forth what proved to be a whopping great teacup.
She blinked at it. The cup was enormous. Who in the world would use such a huge mug? It was just the right size for an elephant tea party. Actually, Anastasia mused, it looked rather like a—
“Chamber pot!”
Chamber pots, in case you don’t know, are big bowls used as toilets in places that do not enjoy the luxury of modern plumbing. Anastasia had seen a chamber pot at the Mooselick Museum of Plumbing and had quivered at the grim idea of ever hovering over one and trying to do as nature intended. “How authentic,” she grumbled.
It was a fitting end to a perfectly poopy day.
“Anastasia! Nice Little Girls sit up straight at the breakfast table!”
Anastasia slouched valiantly against her hard wooden chair. She didn’t care one whit about being a Nice Little Girl. She had spent a terrible night trembling in the child-shaped hollow of the rotten mattress in Room Eleven. She had woken with a cobweb gumming up her left nostril.
And she had, despite all her heroic efforts to the contrary, actually used the chamber pot.
She tried to put this horror out of her mind as she prodded the colorless glop in her bowl. “What is this, exactly?”
“Mystery Lumps,” chirped Prim. “Isn’t that fun?”
“Fun?” Anastasia echoed.
“Everyone enjoys a good mystery!” Prude said.
Anastasia lifted her spoon to her nose and sniffed. “It smells,” she mused, “like wet socks.”
“Anastasia!” Prim looked scandalized.
“I’m trying to solve the mystery!” Anastasia tilted her spoon, watching the Mystery Lump slither back into her bowl.
Although it smelled like wet socks, her breakfast wasn’t even the creepiest element in the dining room at St. Agony’s Asylum. That distinction went to the shabby animal trophies mounted high on the moldy walls. Anastasia wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you feel weird with all these decapitated heads watching you eat?”
“Not at all,” Prude said. “They’re adorable! We’ve even named our little menagerie. That one,” she said, pointing at a wolf glowering overhead, “is Beauregard.”
“Prude named it that,” Prim said. “After the wooer in one of her romance novels.”
Prude’s face turned pink. “Anyway, Anastasia,” she said, “don’t you like animals?”
“I love animals,” Anastasia said. “That’s why I don’t like this dining room.”
Prude narrowed her eyes. “This is a fine old room. Think of all the people who dined at this table before us, enjoying their puddings and plum puffs.”
“The authentic Victorian history!” Prim rhapsodized. “Did you know, Anastasia, that the inmates of this asylum dressed for dinner every night?”
“They wore tuxedos with tails and evening dresses and gloves up to their armpits,” sighed Prude. “I’ve seen photographs. There was one particularly handsome arsonist. Sideburns to rival those of a gorilla. Rather dashing.”
“Barmy and criminal they may have been, but they had good table manners,” Prim declared. “Now sit up straight and eat your Lumps.”
Anastasia fell silent, shivering. The dining room at St. Agony’s Asylum was as cold and clammy as an octopus hug. It was so cold, in fact, that her aunties were wearing their fur coats, dragging their furry sleeves through their repulsive breakfasts. Chill seeped into the worn soles of Anastasia’s sneakers.
She shivered even harder. “I heard a strange noise last night, Aunties.”
“Oh, really?” Prim said, stirring her tea. “And what is it, exactly, that you think you heard?”
“It sounded like this.” Anastasia rounded her mouth and let out her most mournful “Oooooooooo.”
“Don’t do that!” Prude cried. “You sound like a wolf!”
“We told you not to mind any peculiar noises you might hear,” Prim said. “I’m sure it was just the wind. Can’t you hear it coming down the chimneys?”
“Or perhaps you heard our poodles howling,” Prude suggested. “They go absolutely wild if their dinner is even five minutes late. The poor dears were famished by the time we got home last night.”
“You have poodles?” Anastasia squinched her eyes to peer through the rain blurring the window. Fuzzy animal shapes galloped amongst the enormous bushes clustering the field of mud. Beyond this morass jutted the iron fence, and behind the fence loomed a forest of spiked trees.
Prude also looked out the window. “The Dread Woods,” she said slowly.
“Not a nice place,” Prim whispered.
“We don’t go there,” Prude said.
“Why not?” Anastasia asked.
Her aunties exchanged a nervous look. Then Prude said, “Please pass the pickles, Prim.”
Mystery Lumps was the main dish on the breakfast table, but there was also a jar of pickles floating in yellow-green brine. Anastasia watched as Prude fished one out. CHOMP! CLANK! CLUNK!
“Why are your teeth like that?” Anastasia blurted.
Prude swallowed. “Like what?” She delicately licked the brine from her fingertips.
“Metal,” Anastasia said.
“So you’ve noticed our teeth,” Prim said. “Well, dear, as you get older you’ll lose your teeth, too.”
“We couldn’t afford nice pearly dentures,” Prude sniffled.
“Certainly not after purchasing this asylum fitted with fanciful locks,” Prim said.
They both looked so dejected that Anastasia felt guilty for bringing it up. She quickly changed the subject. “Speaking of locks,” she said, “why did you lock me into my room last night?”
“Safety,” Prim said. “We didn’t want you to go wandering, dear. This is an old and unpredictable house.”
“You could fall through a weak floorboard and break your leg, or step on a nail and perish from lockjaw,” Prude said. “That’s why most of the asylum is completely sealed off.”
“And the basement,” Prim added, “is absolutely forbidden.”
“And do promise us you won’t venture into the North Wing,” Prude said. “It’s also off-limits. Very cold, you understand. You could get frostbite!”
“Don’t worry,” Anastasia said. “I’m not going to wander off before we leave. How far is it to the hospital? Will we be there before lunch?”
“Your parents need to rest, dear,” Prude replied. “Now yummy up those Lumps.”
“And then perhaps we’ll go outside to play,” Prim said. “Won’t that be nice?”
“But what about Mom and Dad?” Anastasia said. “You still haven’t told me exactly what happened to them.”
“Not a very pleasant subject for the breakfast table,” Prim said.
“Maybe we’ll discuss it tomorrow,” Prude said.
“Tomorrow!” Anastasia said. “Aren’t we going to St. Shirley’s today?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Prude said. “Maybe on Thursday.”
“Or Friday,” Prim said.
“Friday!” Anastasia exclaimed. “We might be here until Friday?”
“Anastasia, finish your Mystery Lumps,” Prude said. “You can’t have a good day if you don’t eat a good breakfast.”
“But this isn’t a good breakfast!” Anastasia cried. “And I’m not going to have a good day, anyway! My parents are in the hospital, for crumbs’ sake!”
Her aunties stared at her in stunned silence. Then Prim dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “My dear child,” she said. “We were trying to spare your feelings.”
