The League of Beastly Dreadfuls Book 1, page 4
“Yes,” Prude said. “We wanted to find the best way to break it to you.”
“Break what to me?” Anastasia asked.
“The bad news,” Prude said.
“Awful news,” Prim quavered. “Just awful.”
“What news?” Panic clotted Anastasia’s throat. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, dear,” Prude fretted. She reached under the table and picked up her purse and unclasped the top. “Peppermint? A spoonful of sugar—”
“Just tell me whatever it is you have to say!” Anastasia bellowed.
The peppermint lump fell out of Prude’s hand and thudded to the floor.
“Anastasia,” Prim murmured, “your mommy and daddy are dead.”
6
The Silver Heart
YOU NEVER KNOW how you will react to shocking bad news until you get it. Some people gasp “Oh!” and faint. Some people scream and tear at their hair. And some people go completely quiet. Anastasia belonged to this last category. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“They took a turn for the worse around midnight,” Prude said. “The hospital sent us a telegram this morning. Sorry, dear.”
“Dead?” Anastasia finally managed to whisper.
“Dead as dormice,” Prude said sadly.
“Doornails,” Prim corrected her. “Doornails, Prude. Dead as doornails.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Prude said. “Doornails are never alive to begin with, so how can they be dead? Now, two sweet little dead dormice are terribly poignant.”
“But that isn’t the expression,” Prim protested. “Besides, dormice are so sleepy, I daresay they’re practically half-dead their whole lives.”
“I had a pet dormouse once,” Prude said. “And she was very lively.”
“Nonsense!” Prim said. “That mouse wasn’t your pet. You caught it to feed to Margot.”
“Ah, yes,” Prude agreed. “My beloved boa constrictor. My, how that silly mouse jumped! Which proves my point. Extremely energetic, that mouse.”
“She was trying to escape Margot,” Prim pointed out.
“Well,” Prude said with a smile, “she didn’t.” She glanced over at Anastasia, and the pleasure faded from her round face. “Your parents,” she sighed, “are dead as something very dead indeed.”
“So sad,” Prim said. “You’re an orphan now, of course.”
“Oh, my.” Prude shook her head. “An orphan. Now, that is tragic. Motherless, fatherless…”
“All alone in the world,” Prim piped up.
Anastasia had read about orphans in storybooks. To an almost-eleven-year-old girl with two parents, orphans had been sort of a mythical figure, like unicorns and mermaids. A creature that lived in the pages of a book. And now she was one. An orphan, that is. Not a unicorn. She shook her head, feeling dizzy. Perhaps she would faint, after all.
“Oh, my poor child!” said Prim. “Don’t worry! There’s a silver lining to this woeful storm cloud.”
“That’s right,” Prude chimed in. “Very happy news!”
Can you guess, Reader, what splendid announcement Anastasia’s great-aunties had tucked up their furry sleeves? I can imagine very few revelations that might jazz up a newly orphaned child.
“Anastasia,” Prim said, “you’re going to live here with us!”
That night, locked once more in Room Eleven, motherless, fatherless, and guinea-pig-less, Anastasia lay in the child-shaped hollow and watched shadows slink across the ceiling. Tears twinkled in the corners of her eyes and slid down her cheeks and crept into her ears. From somewhere in the house crooned a noise like EEEEEEEooooooooooaaaa.
Of course, it was just St. Agony’s settling into its foundations, like a lady with a large rump trying to squeeze into her bikini bottoms. Or perhaps it was wind whipping down the chimneys and groaning in the fireplaces. Or it could even have been a lonely owl, trapped in one of the dusty, abandoned rooms.
But Anastasia liked to think the house was crying with her.
They cried together all night.
It was a splendid day for a funeral. The ground squelched with mud, and clouds clotted the sky. Anastasia watched raindrops pimpling the puddles and nodded grimly. Very funereal weather.
It was the day after the aunties’ dreadful announcement. After another breakfast of Mystery Lumps beneath Beauregard’s lupine glare, Anastasia had followed her aunties up a spiraling stairwell to the top of the tallest of all the tall towers jutting from the roof. The tower had floor-to-ceiling windows on each of its eight walls. It would have afforded a lovely view of St. Agony’s grounds, if St. Agony’s grounds had been in any way lovely. Instead the tower overlooked mud and thistle and wonky bushes and a swampy pond that the aunties called a bog.
“Mud and Thistle,” Anastasia whispered.
“What’s that, dearie?” Prim asked.
“Nothing,” Anastasia said. “Just thinking.”
She was thinking of Prim’s dream to someday convert the dreary asylum into a quaint bed-and-breakfast. Anastasia already had plenty of catchy names for it: The Mud ’n’ Thistle. The Chill ’n’ Molder. The Smell ’n’ Shudder Inn.
“Such a peculiar girl,” Prim said as she and Prude settled into two rickety rocking chairs. Prim rummaged in her purse for the lump of pink wool. Her knitting needles began to tick. Prude pulled a pair of binoculars out of her coat and held them over her nose.
“What are those for?” Anastasia asked.
“Bird-watching,” Prude replied. “My little hobby. Last Tuesday I spotted a red-speckled twit! A real triumph!”
Wondering how Prude could possibly see any birds through the drizzle, Anastasia stared down at the blur of sludge and woods surrounding them. The poodles gallivanted among the scruffy topiaries.
“Do your poodles like to play?” she asked hopefully.
Prim chuckled. “Yes,” she said, “but I expect you wouldn’t like to play with them.”
“They’re not really pets, dear,” Prude spoke up. “They’re guard dogs.”
As you may already know, Reader, poodles weren’t bred to wear twinkly collars and lollygag in the teacups of wealthy ladies. Poodles were engineered to hunt and fight. They guarded sheep from wolves, which gives you a sense of how truly fearsome a full-sized poodle may be, even when trimmed and shaved and beribboned.
“Well, maybe I could make friends with them,” Anastasia said. “Do you have any treats? Do you have cheese? My neighbor’s Labradoodle will do tricks for cheese. Dogs love it.”
“Indeed they do,” Prim said. “But cheese gives dogs terrible flatulence. And life, my dear child, is difficult enough without having gassy poodles.”
Anastasia turned away from the window. “When are we going to have the funeral?”
The knitting needles stopped. “Oh, dear,” Prim said.
Prude lowered her binoculars. “Anastasia, funerals are ever so expensive.”
“Oh, our poor moppet.” Prim set aside her knitting and patted her lap. “Come up here with me.”
Anastasia eyed the rocking chair doubtfully, then went over and wedged herself down beside her auntie. Prim slid her arm around Anastasia’s shoulders. The fur sleeve prickled against her ears.
“I’m afraid we don’t have the money for a funeral,” said Prim. “Just one coffin would cost more than we have in our piggy bank.”
“Not to mention the flowers and the cold-cut buffet,” said Prude.
“Cold-cut buffet?” Anastasia repeated.
“You can’t have a funeral without a cold-cut buffet,” Prude said. “Mourners expect salami.”
The itchy sleeve squeezed Anastasia. She started to slide out of the chair, but Prim said, “Now, now, don’t go running off just yet. Your auntie Prude and I have something for you.”
“A gift,” Prude said. She reached into her fur coat and pulled out a little case.
“Go ahead,” Prim said, smiling. “Open your present.”
Coiled in the box, nestled against a square of velvet, lay a tarnished silver chain with a little heart.
“It was your great-grandmother McCrumpet’s,” Prude said. “Our mother’s necklace, that is. We were going to give it to your mother one day, but—well—oh, dear…” She groped for her handkerchief. “We never got the chance.”
“It’s a family heirloom,” Prim snuffled. “Let me fasten it for you.” She plucked the box from Anastasia’s grasp, a flash of silver glinting from her pinkie.
Anastasia’s forehead crinkled. “You have that eyeball ring, too.”
“Oh, yes,” Prim said. “Isn’t it pretty? Now hold still.”
Anastasia trembled as her auntie fumbled with the clip. “Your hands are so cold, Auntie!”
“All old ladies have cold hands,” Prim said. “It’s because our hearts are weak and our blood runs slow and cold as swamp water in winter. There.”
“Don’t you look darling!” Prude exclaimed. “How does it feel?”
“Fine, I guess.” Anastasia peered down at the charm. A tiny red dot winked at its center, like a little bloodshot eye.
“That’s a real ruby,” Prim said.
“Oh,” Anastasia said. “Thank you.” She forced a lopsided smile. Of course, Anastasia didn’t really care about an old necklace. She just wanted to be by herself and think about her parents and Muffy. But she also knew that her aunties were trying to cheer her up, and that she couldn’t disappoint them or they might send her to the orphanage. They had, over breakfast that morning, told her all about what happened in orphanages.
“Don’t lose it,” Prude warned. “It’s very valuable.”
“I won’t.” Anastasia tucked the necklace back into her collar. “You know, funerals don’t have to be fancy,” she said. “When Betty Lou died, we just stood by the compost heap and said some nice things about her.”
“Who in heaven’s name is Betty Lou?” Prim asked.
“Never mind.” Anastasia wriggled out of the rocker and returned to the window. It was, she observed again, a splendid day for a funeral.
7
Leeches
ANASTASIA SOON DISCOVERED that every day at St. Agony’s Asylum was perfect funeral weather. Standing outside one week later, after seven days of rain and fog, she blinked through the twilit mizzle at the moss fuzzing the asylum bog.
“Come on, dearie,” Prim called from beneath her umbrella. “Those leeches aren’t going to stroll up and introduce themselves, you know!”
“All right, all right.” The ground squished as Anastasia sat down to pull off her boots, two old green galoshes she had found in one of the asylum’s innumerable jumbled cupboards. They were about a size too big, but galoshes were better than her worn sneakers for trudging around the soggy asylum and its muddy gardens.
She struggled to her feet (squish! squish!) and shrugged out of her coat, a fur from the wardrobe in Room Eleven. It smelled like a wet Labradoodle (and as you already know, Anastasia disapproved of fur coats), but she needed something warm to wear. The aunties promised they would soon make the trip back to Mooselick to fetch some of her clothes and books, but it seemed the pink station wagon wouldn’t start. In the meantime, Anastasia was stuck wearing her Halloween costume and the odiferous coat. Or, in this particular moment, she was stuck wearing a mildewed Victorian swimming suit she had discovered in a trunk.
“You’re shilly-shallying, dear,” Prim said.
They both stared at the bog.
“Why do I have to catch leeches, again?” Anastasia asked.
“Because they’re worth money,” Prim said. “You know we aunties are poor as church mice. And now that we have to take care of you, we can hardly even pay for our heart medicine. Both Prudence and I have such fragile hearts. You wouldn’t want us to keel over and die, would you? Then you’d have to go to the orphanage after all.”
Anastasia summoned all her gumption and dipped one toe into the slime. She leapt into the air with a shriek. “It’s freezing!”
“Nonsense,” Prim said. “It’s brisk and refreshing. You know, most orphans would be delighted to have a swimming pool right in their own backyard.”
“This isn’t a swimming pool,” Anastasia muttered. “It’s a bog.”
“Stop splitting hairs,” Prim said. “It’s a first-rate bog. I don’t know of a single orphanage with a bog half as fine as this one.” She took a sip of tea from a chipped china cup. The teapot teetered on a nearby tree stump.
Anastasia stepped in with both feet, cringing as mud squidged between her toes. She inched forward. The bog was tooth-rattling cold. Goose bumps sprang up all over her body.
“Hurry,” Prim called. “Chilly weather is very hard on us little old ladies, you know.” She sipped her tea.
Mossy water seeped into the lace trimming Anastasia’s Victorian pantaloons. “What about your Gardener?” she complained. “Why can’t he do this? Where is he, anyway? I haven’t even seen him since the night you whacked him with your umbrella.” Her tummy somersaulted as she thought back to the authentic Victorian birdcage rattling against her car window. Tingalingalingaling. She didn’t particularly crave another meeting with the lunatic Gardener, but she also didn’t want to do all the nasty jobs required to maintain a rambling and ramshackle insane asylum.
“He’s sick in bed. Delicate lungs, you know.” Prim pulled a pickle from her coat pocket and champed into it. “Besides, you could benefit from a little exercise. Children need to frolic.”
“Frolic?” Anastasia grumbled.
“St. Agony’s is a charming asylum, but it isn’t equipped with a gymnasium,” Prim said. “You’ll have to get your frolics from chores. Now wade around, dear. You have to give the leeches a fair chance to bite onto your legs.”
“Will it hurt?”
“I’ve told you already, you won’t feel a thing,” Prim said. “Very courteous biters, leeches are. Unlike the Gardener, whom you’d do best to avoid.”
Bog water oozed up to Anastasia’s waist. She mucked forth, thinking about her father, and about their last funeral together, the morning of the fatal freak vacuuming accident that had changed everything.
By now, all the plants in the abandoned McCrumpet household would certainly be withered into lifeless husks. The bed where Mrs. McCrumpet had spent her days swigging cough syrup lay empty. Muffy had gone to a rodent orphanage, despite Anastasia’s passionate protests. Everything in her life had changed with six little words: “Your mommy and daddy are dead.”
For the first few days, Anastasia had wandered around St. Agony’s in a haze. Part of her was convinced that Prim and Prude were wrong about her parents. It was just a horrible mistake. A hospital mix-up. A typo in the fateful telegram that arrived in the dark hours of the rainiest day of the year. But as the week dragged by and no one arrived on the mirrored stoop of St. Agony’s to whisk Anastasia back to Mooselick, she slowly came to the conclusion that it was true: her parents were gone, and her home was now with her aunties.
She swiveled her eyes to the asylum and went stock-still. Behind the glass of a North Wing window crept a black-clad figure, the silver birdcage atop his shoulders gleaming in the twilight.
“Don’t stop, child,” Prim said. “Keep moving about.”
“But I saw—”
“What?” Prim twisted her head. “There’s nothing there, my dear.”
“But—” Anastasia looked back up to the window. The silhouette was gone.
She sludged deeper into the bog. Why was the Gardener roaming the North Wing? It was off-limits. And wasn’t he supposed to be ailing and abed? She scowled. Perhaps he was just playing sick to dodge his chores.
“Now, the more leeches that latch on to you, the better,” Prim reminded her.
“Why do people buy leeches?” Anastasia asked. “Do they keep them for pets?”
“Of course not!” Prim said. “What kind of goon would love a leech?”
“Then who buys them?”
“Doctors,” Prim replied. “Dr. Lipwig down in the village uses leeches for all sorts of important things. I hear he cured poor Mrs. O’Golly’s gout with leeches. It’s an authentic Victorian practice, you know.”
It’s true: Victorian doctors used to stick bloodsucking leeches on their rich and wretched patients in the hopes of curing their ailments. Why use leeches on rich patients, you may ask, and not poor ones? It may interest you to know that leeches were a luxury item in Victorian times. Butlers and cooks, a carriage with horses, and a nice big jarful of leeches—all part and parcel of the grand Victorian dream.
“Apparently that’s why the founders of St. Agony’s chose this spot for their splendid asylum,” Prim went on. “Plenty of leeches for the taking. A bog like this is a real perk.”
Anastasia slogged along, her gaze twitching to the neglected topiary bushes looming around them. The topiaries had once frolicked through the garden as whimsical animals but had long since swelled into shaggy, amorphous beasts. She glowered at them, and then she glowered at the glinting spikes of the electric fence girdling her aunties’ property. She wondered whether the Gardener ever ventured through the heavy iron gates into the Dread Woods. Prim and Prude certainly didn’t.
“You mustn’t let the woods scare you too terribly, dear,” Prim called.
“I’m not scared of the woods,” Anastasia said, watching fog curl between the black tree trunks. “Are you?”
She couldn’t see her auntie’s eyes behind the clouded lenses of her spectacles, but she thought Prim’s hands trembled. Of course, Prim’s hands always trembled. “Not at all,” Prim said. “We’re very safe here. We have the electric fence, and besides, we have the poodles.” She chuckled as a swarm of snarling wool crashed between the topiaries. “Oh, look! Cookie’s got a squirrel!”
Anastasia cringed and made an addition to her list of bed-and-breakfast names: The Chomp ’n’ Kill. She peered at the fluffy tail dangling from the dog’s jaws. “Does Cookie have metal teeth?”
