The Wikkeling Page 16

  Henrietta had always heard that cats were dangerous, but when she befriended Mister Lady she’d somewhat forgotten those warnings. Now she saw that they could be dangerous indeed when the situation called for it.

  The Wikkeling cast about, trapped between the cats. Its face was bleeding profusely, a clear liquid like corn syrup. With one long finger, it stabbed out at the cats as they closed in.

  “Look at its legs,” said Al. At first, Henrietta wasn’t sure what he meant, but then she saw that the Wikkeling’s legs had stopped flickering. The yellow fabric of its pants was cracking at the folds, like clay.

  The Wikkeling began to sweat as it turned upstairs and down, desperately seeking escape, and its face shone in the fluorescent lights. Soon its clothing was wet as well, as if slicked in mud.

  “It’s getting younger,” said Henrietta. Except for its long hands and fingers, which dangled enormously, the Wikkeling was no longer full-grown. Even as she watched, its stature shrank until it appeared as she’d seen it through the attic windows: a monstrous child.

  Next to Henrietta, Rose stirred and sat up. Henrietta held her hand, and together they watched the awful reduction of their tormentor. The child Wikkeling’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged, just the flickering light in the back of its throat. It looked terrified, desperate.

  “What’s it saying?” said Henrietta.

  “I can’t hear,” said Al.

  Whatever it was, the Wikkeling repeated it over and over. As it continued to shrink, its features dislodged from their positions on its face. Its mouth drifted up onto its cheek, and its teeth dribbled down its neck. The rest of its body lost cohesion and spread out over the stairs, mixing with its clothes into a yellow soup. In mere moments, only a lumpy puddle remained, with a pair of eyes sinking into it. Then, nothing.

  The wild housecats stepped toward one another and sat together on the now empty stair. Mister Lady licked the ear of the tabby and straightened his fur fussily with one paw.

  Rose went to Gary. His hands, which had been balled in tight fists, loosened. His eyes opened. “What happened?” he gasped, sitting up quickly.

  “The Wikkeling evaporated,” said Rose.

  Henrietta turned toward the cats to thank them, but saw only the flick of a gray tail at the edge of the cat door as Mister Lady disappeared after her friend. It was as if they’d stopped by on their way to another engagement—which may indeed have been the case.

  Then a knock sounded from upstairs, and a cheerful rendition of “Jingle Bells” began.

  “Someone’s here,” said Al.

  Lots of someones, in fact: Henrietta’s parents, Rose’s parents, Gary’s mother, ten police officers, two police dogs, and five firefighters were crowded on the porch, waiting for some explanations.

  Explanations

  The children realized that an honest account of their experiences wouldn’t be well-received, so they chimed in on an improvised medley of conflicting fabrications (each confirmed by a bemused but willing Al), and the following story emerged:

  Henrietta, Gary, and Rose had wanted to borrow some books from Al. Because Henrietta was grounded, they decided to sneak out her bedroom window. They caught a public bus, but accidentally boarded the wrong one and also accidently dropped their phones while trying to call for help. Humiliated and phoneless, they’d ended up at Sunset Estates just as Al was sawing through his wall to . . . deal with . . . an electrical problem.

  Of the crowd assembled at Al’s door, the firefighters were the first to leave, since there was no fire. The police officers departed next, since there was no crime.

  Rose’s parents followed, with Rose in tow. They were upset at her, but they knew there was more to the story and that Rose would tell them the details once they’d returned to the Library.

  Ms. Span and Gary made their exit. Gary would be grounded for a week. Unlike Rose, he would not be explaining the real story to his mother. To her, the truth would sound more like a lie than the lies did. There was one thing Gary did want to come clean about, however. As he sat next to his mother while she drove them home, he clenched his hands, collecting his courage. “Mom, I have to tell you something.”

  “Are you going to explain why you smell like a garbage pile?” his mother said, turning to eye his pockets as she spoke. “You haven’t been collecting again, have you? You know I’ve expressly forbidden it.”

  “Oh,” Gary said, putting his hands around his waist. “I think I sat in something.” In fact, his pockets were bulging with some amazing pieces he’d discovered during the garbage truck ride, which he could hardly wait to catalog.

  “You’ll scrub the seat when you get home, and shower after that,” said her mother briskly.

  “Mom, what I wanted to say is . . .” Gary cleared his throat. “I had a secret. I’ve been keeping it a long time, but it isn’t a secret anymore. So I want to tell you.”

  “Oh,” said Ms. Span, and her face showed some concern.

  “I can’t . . . I mean, I couldn’t . . . read.”

  “What?” she said. “Don’t joke, Gary. Of course you can read.”

  “I can now,” said Gary, “but not until this year. I used to cheat. But I’m learning—Henrietta and Rose have been helping me.”

  “Henrietta has been helping you?” said Ms. Span, aghast.

  Gary insisted on his story, and somehow—through exhaustion, relief, or too much worry in one day—his mother finally believed him. “Beginning tomorrow, you and I are going to have supervised study sessions after dinner,” she said crisply.

  “Okay,” said Gary happily, flicking a bit of eggshell from the leg of his pants and onto the pristine car floor.

  After Gary and his mother left, a long, awkward silence ensued between Henrietta, her parents, and Al.

  “Mom,” said Henrietta. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sweetie,” her mother sighed. She looked worn-out and sad. “That was a terrible, dangerous thing to do. I have no idea what you were thinking. But I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “You’re still grounded, though,” said her father. Then he almost smiled. He gathered Henrietta in for a hug, but just as quickly released her, waving a hand in front of his face. “You smell awful,” he said.

  Henrietta’s mother sniffed the air. “That’s coming from you?”

  Henrietta shrugged.

  Then Al spoke up, looking uncomfortable. “Aline,” he said, “we need to talk.”

  Henrietta’s mother tensed up. She folded her arms across her chest and looked impatient. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.

  Al’s face clouded with doubt. “Aline,” he said slowly, “you and your parents meant the world to me. They were all I lived for.” He paused, took a deep breath and let it out and then continued. “But that world . . . well, it’s passing away. I hope it isn’t too late. I want things to change. I want . . .” He struggled for words for a moment. “I want to be your father, Aline. For as long as I have left. If you’ll have me.”

  Another long silence fell on the room.

  Aline looked at her husband, and then at Henrietta. She closed her eyes, and her face relaxed. Then she stood, crossed the room to Al, and hugged him. As her arms closed around his old shoulders, a grieving sob suddenly escaped her. Al’s eyes reddened, and his old, wrinkled face grimaced, which is the only expression you can make when you’re feeling too many emotions at once.

  The Memorial

  The memorial service for Grandmother Henrie was held at the Sunset Estates community center. Henrietta dressed in her nicest pants and wore her uncomfortable dress shoes.

  Al and Henrie’s elderly friends were there, and they were all terribly nice, and terribly sad—they were often attending funerals these days. During the service, Al stood next to Henrietta and her parents, and it felt strange and new to all of them to be a family.

  After the service, everyone gathered at Al’s house. For the first time in Henrietta’s memory, she and her parents stayed un
til the very end. They didn’t look for an excuse to leave early, and they didn’t stand awkwardly and act like they wanted to be elsewhere. Henrietta’s father was unexpectedly charming, and her mother was a whiz at learning people’s names.

  Near the end of the evening, when the remaining guests were chatting in the living room, Henrietta approached Al in the kitchen.

  “Grandpa?” she said. Al turned from the counter and smiled as he saw her.

  “It’s nice to hear you call me that,” he said.

  “I was wondering if you’d start a book club with me. We aren’t using books at school anymore, but I thought we could read some, with my friends. When we aren’t grounded anymore.”

  “I’d like that very much,” said Al.

  Henrietta and her parents were the last guests to depart, and they helped Al clean up. As they said their good-byes on the front porch, Aline and Al hugged silently. Henrietta heard a sound coming from up the street and turned just in time to see the garbage truck pull through the parking lot. She smiled, even though the sight also made her a little nauseous.

  On the drive home, they reflected on the responsibilities that awaited them the next morning. Henrietta would return to school, and her father and mother both had work to do. Of course, life wouldn’t be quite so regular as it once was. “Henrietta,” said her mother, “there’s something I should have mentioned.”

  Henrietta was thinking about how wonderful it would be to take off her horrid, too tight shoes when she got home. Her feet throbbed. “What is it?” she asked.

  “We found out last week that the city wants us to move. Our house is going to be demolished. It’s good news, actually. We can go anywhere. I know you’ve never liked that old place. It made you sick.”

  “It didn’t make me sick, actually,” said Henrietta, but she stopped herself quickly from explaining further—the story would be far too strange for her parents to accept.

  Her mother continued: “We’ll move someplace new. A fancy house like Ms. Span’s.”

  “I want to stay in our house,” said Henrietta, firmly. “Can we tell them we don’t want to leave?”

  “I’m afraid their minds are made up, Henrietta,” said her father.

  “Could we find another old house, then?” said Henrietta.

  Her mother looked over at her father, and they shared a puzzled glance. Their daughter was quite an inexplicable creature. Just then, Henrietta’s father’s cell phone rang, and he hooked it to his ear by a little ear clip.

  “Tom here,” he said. “Yes, I—what? I’m sorry, say that again. Elton, am I hearing you right?” Tom frowned. “Elton, I’m going to have to call you back. I’m spending some time with my family right now.” He disconnected and returned the phone to his pocket.

  “What is it, Tom?” said Aline.

  “Just work,” said Tom.

  “But what?” said Henrietta.

  “Tough to explain,” he said. This was what he always said, and Henrietta pushed a little further.

  “Try,” she said insistently.

  “Well, there’s a program called the System Manager. It connects other programs together, you could say. It makes them run efficiently. Anyway, it crashed yesterday, and we’ve been trying to repair it. Now I just heard that apparently it has deleted itself.”

  “Deleted?” said Aline.

  “That’s what I’ve been told. Needless to say, I’ll be going in early tomorrow. But I’m not going to worry about it now.”

  Henrietta leaned back in her seat and looked out the window at the other lanes of traffic and the buildings that walled the street, shining in the strong glow of the streetlights. She thought about Al’s How To book. If she did have to move, she thought, the first thing she’d do in the new house would be to build a beautiful cat hall with a painted lintel that read ALL CATS WELCOME across the top.

  The Attic Books

  Gary and Henrietta were grounded for a week. In Henrietta’s case, this involved having no friends over, supervised homework sessions after school, and no personal use of her brand new Skipping-Stone Phone.

  It wasn’t so bad, though. Henrietta’s mother was quite supportive of her efforts to improve her schoolwork, and sitting with her after dinner to complete compositions and math problems was kind of fun. Henrietta hadn’t known that her mother was a whiz at math, and she even talked about her own accounting work a little bit, using examples from her job to illustrate some of the problems Henrietta had to work.

  But Henrietta immensely missed going into the attic with Gary and Rose. Although they spent time together at school, they couldn’t really relax there, Henrietta especially, since she was AT RISK.

  Henrietta hadn’t been back to the attic since the three of them escaped through the cat hall. Now that the BedCam was working again, and her parents were watching her every move, she hadn’t had even a second alone—a deplorable situation, since she’d come to depend on the solitude of the attic to give her time to think about things.

  When the day finally dawned that signaled the end of Henrietta’s punishment, she awakened not to the sound of her alarm, but to the sound of her phone ringing. She reached out groggily and checked the screen, brightening immediately when she saw the name.

  “Grandpa!” she said as she answered.

  “Hello, Henrietta,” said Al. “Remember how you said you wanted to start a book club? How about tonight?”

  Henrietta beamed. “I want to! But I have to ask—”

  “I asked already,” said Al. “In fact, your friend Rose’s mother suggested we meet at their house. I’ve arranged to pick up you and Gary, if you’re interested.”

  “Yes!” Henrietta shouted.

  School was a blur of typing practices and advice about Halloween (a topic that would continue to wax for weeks in anticipation of the dreaded holiday, including cautionary movies about Jack-O’-Lantern disasters, poison candy, and dangerous strangers). Henrietta worried over all of the Practice Tests because the next Competency Exam could spell the end of her scholastic career.

  Soon enough though, the day ended, and Henrietta, Gary, and Rose headed home on the bus. Henrietta quizzed Rose about what her house was like, only to find her mysterious, evasive, and more than a little amused. When the bus arrived at Rose’s stop, Rose smiled as she disembarked, saying, “See you later!”

  Henrietta ate a distracted dinner in front of the TV with her parents, fielding a few questions about school and apologizing for a mistype she’d made on a composition when she had written “affect” instead of “effect.” Nonetheless, her parents seemed pleased with her progress.

  When the evening news began, a knock sounded at the side door. Henrietta jumped up from the couch.

  “Have a good time,” said her mother.

  “I will!” said Henrietta. She exited to the kitchen, opened the door, and hugged her grandfather.

  They walked to the car and Henrietta opened the rear passenger door to find Gary already inside, waggling his eyebrows delightedly.

  The car crawled through traffic toward Rose’s house, Al following the lead of the car’s computer. As they drove, they heard an ad about a kind of ice that stayed cold even in ovens. Imagine: a broiled milkshake.

  “NOW ARRIVING AT YOUR DESTINATION,” said the computer. “TURN LEFT, AND PARK IN THE DRIVEWAY. THESE INSTRUCTIONS BROUGHT TO YOU BY EARHELPERS. WITH EARHELPERS—,” Al turned off the engine, and they all stepped onto the driveway, Al holding a few books in one hand that he’d brought for the meeting.

  Before them stood an enormous mansion. But its size wasn’t the most impressive thing about it. Rather, it was the look of the place. It resembled the old houses Henrietta and Gary had seen through the attic windows, but much, much bigger. The roof wasn’t one roof, but many small roofs, sloping down multiple planes and along gables. A turret rose from the middle that appeared constructed from a single old tree trunk.

  “It’s hu-uge,” said Gary, extending the word because “huge” wasn’t quite huge
enough.

  A grand staircase led to a pair of immense double doors, where Al knocked with his free hand. A latch clicked on the other side, and the heavy wood creaked on old hinges. They all took a step back, a little nervous about the imposing place, but their nerves quieted when Rose peeked out, smiling.

  “Come in!” she said.

  They entered a gigantic sitting room that contained two warmly burning fireplaces, a variety of upholstered chairs scattered in groups, reading desks, and even a study carrel along one wall. At the center of the room stood a long table covered with old maps. Every wall in the place was clothed in bookshelves, which reached to the ceiling far overhead. As the three looked around, awestruck, Rose’s parents approached to greet them.

  “I’m Sigrid,” said Rose’s mother. “And I’m Sid,” said Rose’s father. “It’s nice to meet you all officially. Things were a bit rushed the other night.”

  “It’s nice to meet you both,” said Al.

  “Me, too,” said Gary.

  “When Rose told us you were starting a book club,” said Sigrid, “it seemed sensible to have it here, since we call this house the Library. And as you can see, that’s what it is.”

  “But it didn’t used to be,” said Al.

  “Hm?” said Sid.

  “This . . . was . . . .” Al trailed off. He seemed lost in a memory, and he turned in a slow circle, taking everything in. Then he strode to a far corner of the room where two bookcases connected. He knelt and began pulling books from the bottom shelf and peering into the shadows. He laughed. “I can’t believe it!” he said.

  Everyone joined him, kneeling and looking at the little shadowed spot he indicated. There, clumsily carved into the wood of the shelf, were three words. ALBERT WUS HERE