The Wikkeling Read online

  She recalled Gary’s claim that he’d seen someone standing next to her at the onset of her headache that day. She, too, had sensed someone. Rather than “House Sickness,” it felt to Henrietta like “Outside Sickness,” as if something was waiting for them out there.

  She surveyed her small room, its bland white walls, bed, and desk. She always complained about the place, but in fact, she felt safe here. She returned to her homework for a few moments, typing out “I will tread water until help arrives,” and “It is never too early to buy life insurance.”

  On the other side of the wall, her parents had begun arguing.

  The voices stopped eventually, and her mother entered, looking careworn. “Don’t forget we’re going to your grandmother’s tomorrow,” she said. “Set your alarm.”

  “I will.”

  “And wear your dress shoes.”

  “I will.” Her uncomfortable black plastic dress shoes were already set out by the bedside table.

  “Put your pajamas on, brush your teeth, and go to bed,” said her mother. Henrietta wouldn’t get tucked in tonight.

  “Is the BedCam fixed?” said Henrietta, motioning toward the wall where the black BedCam she used to have had been replaced by a new gray one. Her mother frowned.

  “They tried three different models, and all of them had the same problem. We’ll get it straightened out. Now, pack up your homework.” Her mother disappeared into the hallway, and through the wall Henrietta heard her enter the bedroom again.

  Henrietta was named after her grandmother, who was nicknamed Henrie. Henrietta didn’t see Grandmother Henrie often, and when she did, the visit was generally short and awkward. Henrietta had always wondered how she ended up with her grandmother’s name, because her mother and her grandmother didn’t get along very well. If you didn’t like your mother, would you name your daughter after her? It made Henrietta wonder if things had been different before she was born.

  After thinking on these matters for a few moments, Henrietta’s attention drifted back to her textbook. She gazed down at the addition problem she’d been preparing to work out.

  It looked . . . strange.

  One of the numbers had become a small, perfectly round, red dot.

  Henrietta reached out and touched it. It was wet. A little of it came off on her finger. She sniffed it, and the rich smell reminded her of when she skinned her knee once.

  It was blood.

  She wiped her finger on her pants and checked to see if she was getting a bloody nose, which she wasn’t. She stared at the drop. It must have come from somewhere.

  She looked up. Above her, emblazoned brightly upon the dingy white ceiling, was a shiny red spot.

  Slowly and carefully, Henrietta climbed onto her desk. The drip was seeping through the ceiling along a thin, almost invisible seam. Past the leak, Henrietta followed the seam and saw that it formed a three foot by three foot square. It was a trapdoor.

  She visualized her house. She’d never thought about it before, but the pitched roof meant that there was a space, an attic, right over her room. Her first thought was to go to her parents and tell them, but she didn’t move. Her mind was racing, and the conclusion to which it sped was that she would not go to them. She stepped down from her desk.

  She would look into this herself, right now. From her nightstand, she plucked the flashlight she was supposed to use if there was ever a power outage. Then she climbed back onto the desk.

  She pressed gently on the door, and the seam became a dark crack as it tilted upward. She tried to shine her flashlight into the space, but the angle was wrong and her head wasn’t high enough to see. She let the door back down, climbed off the desk again, and sat on the edge of her bed. Her heart raced.

  It might seem a bit odd that Henrietta, who had been raised to pay such careful attention to safety and the making of sensible decisions, would do something as decidedly unsafe and incautious as investigate something like this alone. It seemed odd to Henrietta, too, and she tried for a moment to convince herself to tell her parents, but she continued to sit, unmoving. She was discovering something about herself that she’d not known before. She was discovering that she was an intensely curious person.

  After a few moments she stood, picked up her chair, and placed it quietly on top of her desk. Then she climbed on, balancing precariously, and crouched against the ceiling. She put one hand against the door, knitted her eyebrows, counted to three . . . and stood up.

  The attic was larger than she’d imagined. A bank of tall windows to the left admitted the pale light of a greenish full moon, lighting what seemed to be a little living room immediately before her containing a low coffee table with a glass top, a sofa upholstered with a faded flower print, a small end table with a hardcover dictionary placed atop, and two wicker chairs. Behind this stood many tall, full bookcases, which largely blocked the view further into the attic, but Henrietta could see the space stretching back behind them into the shadows, moonbeams glancing upon many obscure, still shapes. Overhead, the peaked rafters diminished into the darkness.

  Henrietta was so overwhelmed by it all that for a moment she scarcely noticed what lay immediately before her. When her gaze finally dropped down, she gasped and lunged back against the edge of the door, wobbling uncertainly on the chair atop her desk.

  An enormous gray cat lay there, in a puddle of blood.

  Ms. Span’s voice popped into Henrietta’s head instantly, warning her about the risk of bodily fluids, infection, tetanus, dust mites, rabid animals, and falling from heights. But Henrietta didn’t budge.

  The cat seemed unconscious. Additionally, it wasn’t really a cat. It was twice as large as an ordinary housecat. One of its hind legs was splayed out behind its body, as long and thin as a stilt, like nothing Henrietta had ever seen.

  She hoisted herself the rest of the way into the attic, keeping a safe distance. The cat’s tall ears twitched, and it opened its eyes, which shone in the moonlight an incandescent emerald green with wide, black pupils.

  “Hello,” Henrietta whispered breathlessly.

  The cat didn’t make any threatening moves. Henrietta turned on her flashlight. Her eyes were drawn to a patch of wet, matted fur on the cat’s hindquarter, where blood pulsed out, thick and slow. She thought back to Physical Safety period at school. This was an arterial wound.

  “APPLY DIRECT PRESSURE TO ARTERIAL WOUNDS FOR FIVE MINUTES,” she whispered to herself. “Please don’t scratch me, kitty.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone to mark the five-minute interval, but the screen was blank. She shook it, but nothing changed. She removed her sweater, wrapped it around her hand and forearm for protection, and pressed on the gash. The cat’s breathing quickened, but to Henrietta’s relief it didn’t lash out.

  She counted out the full five minutes, then slowly removed her hand. Under the matted gray hair, the bleeding seemed to have slowed.

  “I’m going to get some things to help you,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  She descended carefully back into her room and tiptoed out into the hallway. As she passed the master bedroom, her mother’s voice rang out. “Henrietta? Is that you?”

  “Um . . . going to the bathroom.”

  “Then straight to bed.”

  “Yes, Mom.” When she reached the bathroom, she debated what to take from the medicine cabinet. Veterinary science wasn’t emphasized at school beyond “INJURED ANIMALS ARE DANGEROUS.” But Henrietta did recall an old television show she’d watched once, in which a boy helped an injured horse, shaving the hair from the wound and bandaging it. Henrietta selected one of her father’s safety razors, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a package of sterile gauze pads, a tube of antibacterial ointment, and a roll of medical tape.

  She headed back along the hallway, but as she passed her parents’ bedroom, her mother’s voice stopped her again.

  “Henrietta,” it said curtly.

  “Yes?” said Henrietta, pausing in the hall, trying not t
o drop any of her supplies.

  “You forgot to flush.”

  “Oh, right!” She quickly returned to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and headed toward her room again.

  “Straight to bed now,” said her mother’s voice. “And don’t forget to set your alarm.”

  “I won’t forget!” said Henrietta, hurrying past.

  It was strange to enter her bedroom and see the dark square hole in her ceiling. Two minutes away from it had nearly convinced her it wasn’t real. Once again, she entered the greenish glow of the moonlit attic.

  The cat remained as she had left it, watching her with its enormous green eyes. Once Henrietta was inside this time, she shut the attic door behind her.

  She laid out her supplies in front of the cat. “I’m going to try to help you with these,” she said. Hesitantly, she began. She put her hands gently on the cat, and examined the wound. It was tough to see through the fur, and she began to shave carefully. The cat shivered as the blade touched its skin, but Henrietta successfully cleared the wound. It was small, but there was no telling how deep. It looked like a stab. Thick, dark blood pulsed out slowly.

  Henrietta applied hydrogen peroxide and antibacterial ointment, and covered the wound with a piece of gauze, which she affixed with medical tape. The cat’s tense breathing slowed as she finished.

  “I hope it’s okay,” she whispered. “I have to go. I’ll come back tomorrow if I can.”

  She took one last glance around the attic. The angled walls of exposed rafters glowed in the moonlight, and deep in the space, beyond the bookshelves, stretched a fascinating maze of dim sights: stacked furniture, sealed trunks, towers of boxes.

  Reluctantly, she lowered herself into her room and pulled the trapdoor closed. It sealed up as perfectly as ever, leaving only the dot of blood at the edge, which Henrietta wiped away with the arm of her sweater.

  In bed, she stared at the ceiling and imagined the animal that was right above her, sitting in the moonlit shadows of the most mysterious place she’d ever seen. And suddenly something occurred to her: when she was in the attic, no one had known she was there. She had been alone.

  Sunset

  Chirp. The sound came from her cell phone. She’d overslept! When she answered the call, her mother’s voice sounded simultaneously over the speaker and through the house from the kitchen. “Henrietta!”

  “Sorry!” said Henrietta.

  “Hurry up!”

  “I’m hurrying.” Henrietta rushed into the hallway to find her mother already there. She gasped when she saw her daughter.

  “Sweetie!” She reached out and took Henrietta’s hand, which was covered in rust-red dried blood. She’d forgotten to wash it off.

  She jerked back. “I . . . cut myself,” she said. “Picking glass out of my shoe.”

  “We have to clean it,” said her mother, “and bandage it. Let me—”

  “I’ll do it after I shower. We’re late.” Henrietta slipped past her mother and closed the door on her. She stepped into the shower, trying to gather her thoughts. Trapdoor. Cat. She looked at the red-brown flakes on her hand. She had really done all of that. “Make it quick!” said her mother from outside—she was already in the bad mood that always possessed her when they visited Henrietta’s grandmother and Al. Henrietta’s mother had never liked Al for some reason that Henrietta couldn’t fathom. To Henrietta, he just seemed like a nice old man, but her mother had been enraged when he and Grandmother Henrie had married two years ago, and since then Henrietta barely ever saw them.

  After her shower, Henrietta found her clothes laid out: a long-sleeved shirt printed with yellow leaves, dark green pants, and her dreaded black plastic formal shoes. She threw everything on, and only remembered at the last moment the cut she’d lied about. She went to the medicine cabinet and wrapped a bandage around her thumb.

  Because visits to her grandmother’s often involved her sitting in a corner somewhere with nothing to do, she grabbed her textbook from her desk as she walked out, hoping she might study a little. She glanced regretfully up at the trapdoor as she left, wishing in vain for a moment to rush up there and check on the cat.

  When Henrie and Al married two years ago, they’d moved together to Sunset Estates, a retirement community far out in the Addition, which was an hour’s drive out across the endless traffic jam. Along the way they passed Henrietta’s school. Henrietta looked at the long, low buildings and wished she was there, which was something she’d never wished before. But she had two friends now, and an amazing story to tell them when she saw them next.

  “TURN LEFT AT THE INTERSECTION,” suggested the friendly voice of the car’s computer. Henrietta’s father entered the turn lane.

  “What are you smiling about back there?” he said, unexpectedly. Henrietta’s eyes snapped into focus. He was watching her in the rearview mirror.

  “Nothing,” she said. She was a bit shy of her father, partly because she didn’t see much of him. He often worked late during the week, and sometimes even on the weekend.

  “Are you dreaming about a boy?” he asked impishly, raising one eyebrow to show he wasn’t completely serious. But he wasn’t completely unserious either.

  “No,” said Henrietta. She wrinkled her nose as if to say, yuck.

  “Leave her alone, Tom,” said her mother.

  “We’re just joking,” said her father.

  “It’s embarrassing her.”

  “No it isn’t.” Her father’s voice lost its levity. Just then, his cell phone rang. Henrietta’s father’s cell phone was a small, flat oval resembling a polished stone. No one else had anything like it, but her father’s employer, TinCan TeleComm, always gave him the latest models early. TinCan was a new company that had formed recently when two other companies merged. Her father’s job, as far as Henrietta understood it, was to help the new company communicate with itself. He’d tried once or twice to explain further, with limited success. At the moment, he listened to his polished egg, and then spouted off a string of information Henrietta could scarcely interpret.

  “If I.T. can’t keep Skipping-Stone’s PS for UPC, Marketing just has more time, so it doesn’t matter. Right.”

  “TURN LEFT AT THE NEXT INTERSECTION,” said the car’s computer. “WHILE YOU DRIVE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR SOME ADVERTISEMENTS FOR PRODUCTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU?”

  “Not right now,” said Henrietta’s mother.

  “I.T. thinks that’s important, but it isn’t,” said Henrietta’s father. “Tell them it doesn’t matter.” This was often what her father said on business calls. Telling people what didn’t matter, Henrietta thought, seemed to matter.

  The phone conversation continued, as did the directions from the car’s computer, until the sign for Sunset Estates appeared:

  Sunset Estates

  DINNER 5P BINGO 7P

  The car turned into the mazelike complex, composed of single-level row houses with tan vinyl exteriors. Each house was identical to the next, resulting in a pattern as they drove: Garage, porch, front door. Garage, porch, front door. Traffic was considerably less here—it was one of the only places in the Addition where cars were sparse, because it was a dead end.

  Henrietta’s father concluded his conversation, returned his phone to his pocket, and looked at Henrietta again in the rearview mirror. “Now, about that boyfriend,” he said, smiling.

  “His name’s Gary,” said Henrietta, suddenly curious to see what such an admission would bring about.

  “Who?” said her mother, turning around and gripping the headrest of her seat with one hand. She had painted her fingernails for the birthday party, and they shone bright pink.

  “I knew it!” said her father, triumphantly. He banged one hand on the steering wheel, as if to affix his astuteness there for display.

  “He’s my friend, not my boyfriend,” said Henrietta. “He’s the best student in our class, actually.”

  “The highest rank?” said her mother. “That boy Gary?”

  �
��Yes.”

  “That’s wonderful, Henrietta! Maybe he could help you on your homework. It’s good to make good friends.”

  “And you never know, love could blossom,” her father jibed.

  “Stop it,” said her mother, still not amused.

  “ARRIVING AT ZERO FIVE, ZERO SEVEN, SIX THREE TWO,” said the computer.

  “Zero five, zero seven, six three two,” said Henrietta to herself, for no particular reason. If you repeat it a few times, you’ll remember it, she reflected. Just like the composition sentences at school that stuck in her head, or certain Honk Ads she heard over and over.

  Henrietta’s father parked, and they exited the car. Henrietta tucked her textbook under one arm and they approached the front door of a home that looked like all the rest, except for its unique address: 0507-632. Henrietta’s dress shoes pinched, and she walked strangely, trying to find a way to proceed that didn’t hurt too much.

  Henrietta’s father rang the bell, commencing a computer-generated rendition of “Jingle Bells,” and the door opened. There stood Al, a smile lighting his old face. Al was a stooped gentleman, skinny as a stick, wearing black slacks and a green cardigan. Behind him, Henrietta could see and hear the party—guests talking and laughing, holding drinks, sitting or standing. All of them were old.

  “Hello, kids!” said Al boisterously, his old voice crackling. “I saw you through the window. It’s been too long!” He briskly shook Henrietta’s father’s hand, saying, “Young Tom!” He hugged Henrietta’s mother. “Good to see you, Aline.” Then he looked down at Henrietta.

  “Henrietta! What occupies your thoughts these days?”

  “Oh,” said Henrietta, thrown off guard by a real question. Al seemed to sense her discomfort.

  “Do you accept hugs or handshakes, young lady?” he asked.