The League of Beastly Dreadfuls Book 1, page 8
“Still,” Prim said, “we don’t know everything about that beastly girl. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”
Tears scorched Anastasia’s eyes. Dreary little thing? Beastly? That’s how her aunties really saw her? Anastasia was not, as you will remember, particularly fond of her aunties, but it was nonetheless hurtful to consider that Prim and Prude might dislike her. And did they really think she would forget her dead parents and orphaned guinea pig just because they gave her a stupid piece of jewelry?
Anastasia removed the silver bell from her ear and gazed at it, wondering whether the speaking tube could transmit things other than sound. Well, perhaps she would find out. She applied the bell to the seat of her pants. She grimaced.
After a moment, she returned the bell to her ear.
“Good Lord, Prudence, what is that ghastly odor?” Prim gasped.
“Primrose, was that you?”
“Certainly not!”
Retching noises jangled down the speaking tube.
Anastasia dropped the silver funnel and did a little jig right there in the kitchen, delighted at the success of her smellophone experiment. Beastly girl, indeed!
Rebellion swelling her almost-eleven-year-old heart, she climbed back into the dumbwaiter and pulled the door shut and rode down, down, down, all the way to the very bottom of the shaft, where she thumped to a stop.
She pushed the doors open into a dark hallway. Something trembled deep in Anastasia’s core—something almost like a premonition of doom—as she hopped from the dumbwaiter into the darkness, clutching her candlestick.
She was in the Forbidden Basement.
13
The Ring of Mirrors
HER GALOSHES SQUEAKED like frightened mice against the tiled floors. The doors lining the hallway were very, very tall, and every single one had a little barred window near its top. Anastasia stood on her tippy-toes but, being an average height for an almost-eleven-year-old, remained many inches too short to see through the grimy glass.
She took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Waffle crumbs!”
The walls were upholstered from floor to ceiling in plushy fabric, like a couch or armchair. The floor was padded, too. After a few wobbly steps, Anastasia jumped up and down, hoping the cushioned floor would prove as springy as her little mattress back in the McCrumpet house. Her galoshes just sank into the padding, puffing up clouds of dust.
The other doors opened into similar padded cells. Anastasia peeked into all of them, and then she came to the end of the hallway, to a door without a window at its top. A plaque bolted to the heavy wood read: TREATMENT ROOM: CURES AND PUNISHMENTS.
Punishments? It gave Anastasia the heebie-jeebies, but she tested the knob and found that it twisted easily.
Her gaze hiccuped from shelves jumbled with glass bottles to the walls spangled with hungry-looking knives and saws and drills and needles. As would be the instinct of any sensible person, Anastasia wanted to sprint howling from this bizarre torture chamber. However, as she remembered from Francie Dewdrop’s experiences, forbidden rooms often yielded the crème de la crème of clues. So she steeled her will and inched forward to plunder the first of many drawers lining the counter beneath the shelves.
Inside lay an enormous magnet of the variety you may have seen in cartoons: a red U with metal tips. Anastasia nabbed the magnet at its bend and aimed the ends at a pair of small scissors dangling from the collection of fearsome surgical equipment. Th-WHACK-clink! The scissors leapt from the wall and attached themselves to the magnet like a leech. Anastasia regarded the powerful magnet in admiration, then returned both it and the scissors to their respective places.
The other drawers yawned open like empty mouths, and the cabinets beneath the counter were bare as those of Old Mother Hubbard, with one surprising exception. When Anastasia tugged the handle of the very last cupboard, it vomited forth a cascade of mangy teddy bears and limp-limbed dolls and fraying jump ropes and all sorts of other toys. Anastasia sorted through the mess in great puzzlement. Why would there be a toy cabinet in this frightening room?
Some of the toys were very old, and others quite new—in fact, there was a Francie Dewdrop title published about two years earlier, Mystery #63: The Clue in the Hidden Room. Anastasia hugged it to her chest, remembering the day back in third grade when Miss Apple had waved her into the library with a smile. “I saved this especially for you,” the good librarian said, “so that you could be the first at Mooselick Elementary to read it.”
Anastasia flipped the cover. “Property of Lucy P.,” she read, studying the bubbly cursive looping across the title page. “Well, Lucy P., I hope you don’t mind if I borrow this.” She shoved the book into her satchel, giddy with the anticipation of perusing a Francie Dewdrop by candlelight in Room Eleven that night.
Had Lucy P. lived in St. Agony’s? Anastasia wondered how long the ancient nuthouse had been in her aunties’ possession. They had never mentioned exactly when they’d become the proud owners of an authentically creepy Victorian asylum.
Leaning against the cabinet to squish the toys back inside, she spotted a door at the rear of the Treatment Room. She nipped through to another gloomy corridor. The doorknobs lining the darkness winked like bulbous eyes in the flicker from her candle. Anastasia paused by the first door on the left.
OFFICE OF DR. JASPER GRUNGEWHIFF
(THAT IS TO SAY:
ROOM FOR DIAGNOSING PSYCHOPATHIC MURDERERS,
DILLY ARSONISTS, LOONY PICKPOCKETS,
AND OTHER CRIMINAL FRUITCAKES)
A sturdy bolt glinted on the jamb. Why would there be a bolt on the outside of Dr. Grungewhiff’s office?
Ding bling ting ting bing.
Was that music coming from the depths of Dr. Grungewhiff’s lair? Anastasia plastered her ear to the door. Bling ting tinkle tinkle bling. She took a deep breath, then slid the rod back and gumshoed into the office.
Flames sputtered at the tops of dozens of candelabra scattered across the floor, throwing peculiar shadows over the walls. A ring of silver mirrors lay on the moldering carpet, and in the center of the circle lay a heap of clothing and a set of bellows. Beside the bellows glittered a small crystal box trimmed in gold.
Ding ting plinkle dinkle. A quirked crank whirred in the box’s side. Tinkle…ding…bling The crank slowed, then stopped. So did the music.
“Hello?” Anastasia whispered. “Is anyone here?”
But the room was completely empty.
How was it possible? She had just come through the only entry, and it had been locked from the outside. And why were candles lit down here? Was this, perhaps, the Gardener’s room? She hopped over the moat of mirrors and stooped to peer through the box’s glass flanks at its gilded guts. She twirled the crank. Ding ting dinkle…
It was, Anastasia realized with a shock, the ghostly melody.
Plink.
Two brown lace-up shoes lay on their sides near the jumble of clothing. She inserted her pinkie finger into the crisscross of laces, lifted one brogue to her nostrils, and sniffed.
“It smells,” she whispered, “like boys’ feet.”
Swamped with shivers, she dropped the shoe and staggered out of the circle of mirrors. Her stomach twisted. Maybe it was another premonition of doom (they were getting quite frequent, these premonitions!), or maybe it was all the Happy Forest Maple Syrup she had gobbled in the kitchen. Either way, she let loose with a ripping flabbergaster.
“Teeheeheeheehee!”
Anastasia gasped. “Who’s there?” She leapt to the door and scanned the corridor. It was empty.
She let out a shaky breath. Perhaps there was a speaking tube somewhere in the basement and one of her aunties’ giggles had jangled down from the Watchtower. Anastasia slunk back into the mirrored room. Her gaze drifted from the cobwebs clogging the corners to her shadows twitching on the walls. They all bowed in unison as she crouched to retrieve her candlestick.
All except one.
One shadow remained standing upright.
A big lump formed in Anastasia’s throat. Was it a stain on the wallpaper? A child-shaped stain? She crept forward and touched the shadowy figure with the very tip of her index finger.
“Teeheehee!” The dark form slithered from beneath her hand and darted across the wall.
Anastasia recoiled, tripping over her galoshes.
“Wait!” cried a little voice. “Wait! Please! Don’t go!”
You can imagine some of the concerns that flooded Anastasia’s cranium. Was St. Agony’s Asylum driving her as barmy as one of its insane Victorian inmates? Was she imagining voices, or had the shadow actually spoken? Was the thing on the wall a ghost?
“Don’t leave yet,” piped the little voice. “We haven’t even met properly.”
14
Pink Footprints
EVEN THOUGH ANASTASIA’S head twizzled with all variety of frightful fancies as she hurdled from the chamber, she had the wits to slam the door shut and latch it. Then she fled the Forbidden Basement, heaving herself back up the dumbwaiter shaft as fast as her arms would haul her. She tore through the asylum higgledy-piggledy-willy-nilly, all the way back to Room Eleven.
Panting, she leaned against the doorjamb, staring down at her reflection blurred in the mirror bolted to the carpet. Did she look crazy? Could one tell just by looking? She squinched her eyes shut and conjured up a phantasm of the Gardener. He seemed loopy from the first glance. Of course, anyone who went around with a birdcage on his head would.
She blinked and refocused her eyes. Something was written in the dust fuzzing the mirror’s blotchy cheek.
Anastasia squatted and dug in her pocket for a match. Her candle had wheezed out in her mad dash, and she fumbled to light it again. She peered at the letters gleaming against the grime.
NEED TO TALK ROOM 38 DANGER
Anastasia uncorked her memory, and a faraway murmur rustled her mind’s ear: We need to talk. The Gardener! He must have traced this mysterious message. Her aunties certainly hadn’t crouched here to send her a secret warning. Danger? But wasn’t the Gardener dangerous himself? He was a lunatic biter!
Lunatic biter. That’s what her aunties had told her. And her aunties had called her a beast and a dreadful girl and all sorts of things. If they thought that about a perfectly pleasant almost-eleven-year-old, maybe they had fudged their tales about the Gardener, too.
DANGER. The letters wiggled and twitched in the candlelight like silvery centipedes. Did the Gardener, perhaps, know about the ghost in the basement? Her thoughts unspooled to the day she had seen him creeping around the hallway, flattened against the walls as though he didn’t want to be seen. Maybe he was frightened of something. A prickle tiptoed up Anastasia’s spine, and she slowly swiveled her head over her shoulder.
Prim was standing behind her. Something long and sharp glinted in her raised hand. Even though Prim was a teeny tiny old lady, she looked huge from where Anastasia hunkered among the dust bunnies. Her mouth was slightly open, and her pointy metal teeth glistened in the gloom.
“Oh!” Anastasia cried. “I didn’t hear you, Auntie!”
Prim lurched, and the thing in her hand fell to the floor with a harmless tinkle. It was, Anastasia saw, just a knitting needle.
“Now look what you made me do,” Prim chided, stooping to pick it up. “Ouch! My poor knees!” She slipped the needle into her coat pocket. “You shouldn’t be playing on the floor. Haven’t you noticed all the poison ivy creeping around this place?”
Anastasia fumbled to cover the cryptic mirror memo. “There isn’t any ivy growing in here, Auntie.”
“The last thing we need is a rashy orphan on our hands,” Prim went on. “Speaking of rashes, what are those spots on your neck?” She plucked at Anastasia’s collar, inspecting the silver chain of Granny McCrumpet’s necklace for just a second before snatching her hand away.
“Like I keep telling you,” Anastasia said, “I’m just freckly.”
“Well, poison ivy or not, you shouldn’t be lollygagging, dear. You’re supposed to be helping your frail-hearted aunties with the housework,” Prim said. “But no gardening today. It’s too wet.”
“I saw the Gardener outside,” Anastasia said. “He was digging a hole in the garden. A big hole.”
Prim fumbled in her purse. “It’s for a rosebush,” she said. “Prude and I so love our roses.”
“I thought the Gardener had delicate lungs,” Anastasia persisted.
“Where are my heart pills?” Prim mumbled. “I must have left them up in the tower.” Her umbrella thumped as she wandered away.
How different Prim had looked looming in the hallway, metal dentures twinkling so strangely in the candlelight! It had almost seemed as if the old woman was baring her teeth. Anastasia shivered, marveling at the effects of St. Agony’s Asylum on her nerves.
But her gaze hopscotched back to the message in the dust. DANGER. She wasn’t imagining that. Room Thirty-Eight. Did she dare visit the Gardener? She longed for someone to talk to. She couldn’t ask her aunties about the ghost in the cellar, because they would just say it was a product of her overactive imagination. And then they would scold her for exploring the Forbidden Basement.
Perhaps they would even lock her into her room.
Anastasia smeared her palm across the mirror, then tottered to her feet and beelined to the stairwell. DANGER. Her pulse thudded as she vaulted the steps. DANGER. She burst into the hallway, the urge to bolt twitching her galoshes from pussyfooting to cantering. DANGER. From cantering to dashing. DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!
She wheezed to a halt, realizing that she had gotten all muddled up in the hallways. A draft of icy air rattled down the corridor and gnawed at her bones. Was she in the wintry North Wing, where frostbite ravaged the toes of orphans? As Anastasia whirled to turn back, her candlelight snagged on something small and metallic glittering on the floor. She knelt.
It was a key, and inscribed in silvery loops on its head was a number, 13.
“Miss Viola’s key!” Anastasia whispered.
She scrutinized the carpet. Dust veiled the rose-splotched runner, but the pink showed through in a set of footprints twisting down a crooked hallway.
Anastasia pulled out her magnifying glass, squinting through it at the crimson tracks as she trailed them into the gloom. She was so focused on the view through the magical lens, in fact, that she smacked right into the wall at the end of the corridor. She toppled backward, rubbing her scalp. A dead end. Had there even been any doors along the way? She hadn’t noticed. She scurried back up the passageway and confirmed: there wasn’t a single doorway lining its walls. She returned to the cul-de-sac and peered at the peeling green wallpaper, perplexed.
It was a hallway to nowhere.
And yet—someone had just been there. The footprints were recent. St. Agony’s was so grubby that she could spend an entire afternoon sweeping grime off the floor and awaken the following morning to find a new blanket of dust in its place, like snow that had fallen overnight. These tracks, she mused, must have been made that morning, or perhaps sometime after lunch. She lowered her candle, puddling light over the pink footprints. They seemed to walk right into the wall.
Anastasia stared at the not-door. She stared at it until she started to see faces in the botanical wallpaper print. Your imagination may have veneered similar faces over patterned wallpaper in your own home, or perhaps you have watched clouds in the sky transform into fluffy bunnies before your fanciful gaze. Anastasia giggled. The faces looked a bit like Prim and Prude: one skinny face (a pointy thistle); one round face (a squashed cabbage); one skinny face; one round face; one round face; one round face—
“Wait a minute,” Anastasia whispered. She raised the magnifying glass to the cluster of printed cabbages. The wallpaper lumped and buckled, just a little. She could just make out a seam where someone had patched the paper. It blended almost perfectly with the rest of the wall, but whoever gummed it up should have planted a thistle instead of another cabbage.
Of course, all the wallpaper in the house was torn and tattered and rotting away. But why, Anastasia wondered, had someone bothered to fix this wall, in a hallway that led to nowhere?
Crooking her thumb and forefinger, she peeled back the square of paper.
And there, like a little yawning golden mouth, gleamed a keyhole.
15
Peppermints
THE SILVER KEY said click. The tumblers tumbled.
Anastasia sidled into the room and shut the door behind her, her gaze swiveling from the crackling fireplace to two plump chairs angled by a coffee table. On the coffee table was a big silver tray set with tea things and, Anastasia saw (and smelled), sweets.
Her hunger yanked her across the plush rugs. There were two china cups on two china saucers. There was a tall teapot with steam curling from its nose. There was a little bowl of sugar cubes. There were pots for jam and other tasty treats. But best of all, there were plates heaped with frosted cakes and rolls dotted with raisins and sandwiches cut into triangles.
After weeks and weeks of Mystery Lumps and the occasional moth, Anastasia did not stop to consider that perhaps one should not eat the forbidden cakes of secret rooms. She plunked down her candlestick and grabbed one of the cakes—piping hot; it must have just come out of the oven—and it was in her belly before she even had a chance to taste it. She took another cake, savoring the warmth seeping through her palms. She nibbled it as she strolled around Room Thirteen.
So this lovely little parlor had been Miss Viola’s stomping grounds one hundred years earlier. It was, Anastasia thought, a very pleasant, very pretty room. The wood furniture gleamed with lemon-scented polish. On every shining surface of every tabletop and mantelpiece and shelf were photographs in frilly silver frames. She wondered why her aunties did not spend their days in this cozy nook instead of the drafty tower where they spied on red-ringed kookaburras and wimble-banded long-beaks. Room Thirteen offered a fine view of the woods. Of course, Prim and Prude had said there was no Room Thirteen in the asylum. Was it possible that they didn’t know about the hidden parlor? No, she thought. They just wanted to keep this room to themselves. Maybe they thought she would break something.
