Worn, dusky velvet curtains that matched the armchair draped over each window, cloaking the afternoon in night. The creature in front of Vita’s chair was none other than the doll Vita had seen through the window.
The doll was nowhere near as charming up close as she had been at a distance.
There were black cracks on her apple cheeks and along her jaws, and a large patch on the right side of the doll’s head was bald. Bits of crumbling porcelain had broken away from the doll’s bald spot and mingled into her chestnut brown locks. Her ruffled pink dress was stained and tattered.
The doll raised her cold porcelain hand to pet Vita’s cheek. “Oh well done, Peebles. You’ve found our fourth contestant.” The doll’s voice matched her scent—bubblegum sweet with something foul underneath.
Cheers rose all throughout the hall. Leering monsters crowded between dusty gothic furniture and an ancient, scarred grand piano with crumbling keys. A few of the whooping creatures were small like Peebles. Other monsters were at least Vita’s size and many were much, much larger.
Behind the rotting doll stood two mechanical-looking monsters. One looked like a child-sized version of a silver, old-fashioned car. The monster’s eyes were blazing red headlights and his smiling mouth was the car’s grille. Long white fangs hung out of the car’s mouth all the way down to his fender.
The other monster was silver as well, but looked more like a robot. He grinned with a mouth full of pointy metal teeth. He had propellers made of sharp blades for eyes, and the propellers spun constantly at a dizzying pace. His two arms were sets of hedge-clippers.
“Peebles,” the doll barked, “go to the Mess Hall and make sure everything is prepared for our honored guest.”
Peebles, who stood on top of the cushioned piano bench, bowed his head. “Yes, Miss Fironella.” He hopped up onto the piano’s exposed strings, creating a disturbing clang. From there he moved to the arched doorway across from the front entrance and disappeared through it.
While Fironella’s back was still turned, the robot monster stepped closer to Vita. His rigid, forklike legs stilted each step he took, making his movements jerky.
“It’s real nice to meet you, baby doll,” he said. Something about his voice tugged at the pit of Vita’s stomach and made it feel as though snakes were writhing inside. “Name’s Ruckles.” Ruckles pointed to the fanged car. “This here’s my associate, Skrillus. He don’t talk much but I promise he’s as pleased to meet you as I am.”
The car remained silent but he rolled closer as well. His engine sputtered and his scarlet headlights shone into Vita’s eyes.
Ruckles extended one hedge-clipper arm toward her. “Wanna shake hands?” He slammed the clippers open and shut inches from Vita’s nose.
She gasped and sank as far as she could into the armchair. The robot laughed at Vita’s fright, and the sound of it was even more unnerving than his voice had promised.
“Melina!” she yelled once more, and wondered why her friend wouldn’t appear.
Fironella turned back to Vita and smiled. The age and decay that plagued the rest of her face had left her teeth alone—they were white and flawless. “I see you’ve met my assistants,” she said, gesturing toward Ruckles and Skrillus. They both moved away from the armchair but kept their alarming eyes set on Vita.
Fironella rested her hand on Skrillus’ hood and cocked her head to the side, curls bouncing. One violet eye remained wide open while the other half-closed in a disconcerting wink. “I’m Fironella, headmonstress of Moorhouse, and am quite the busy bee. These two help to make sure the contestants in our world-building contest are trying their hardest to win.”
Vita swallowed hard. “Peebles said this place was a school…”
“Oh, but it is a school, dear. We work hard to motivate our students here at Moorhouse, you see, and nothing works quite like a bit of friendly competition. Don’t tell me the teachers at your old school didn’t offer prizes in your classes from time to time?”
Vita thought of the gift certificate to Ample Hills she’d won for reading the most books in her class just a week before. She loved books but she knew she wouldn’t have read quite so many of them had the prospect of free ice cream not been sitting there at the end of the school year.
“Wh—what’s the prize?” Vita asked, trembling at the freakish doll’s closeness.
Fironella giggled and it was somehow sweet and spine crawling all at once. “We’ll tell you all about that at the feast that awaits in the Mess Hall.”
Vita looked in longing toward the front doors. Melina had been right—this place was beyond creepy. Peebles looked downright cuddly next to Ruckles and Skrillus, and Fironella was perhaps the most unsettling monster of all. If she was the one in charge around here, Vita had no interest in staying a moment longer. She’d seen her bit of magic. Now she just wanted to get out of here before her father started to worry.
Fironella squealed, making the first noise that befitted her dainty appearance, when a flash of peach and lavender streaked past her.
Melina hopped up and curved protectively around Vita’s neck. “Sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner, love,” she whispered in Vita’s ear, making the girl shiver in shock. “There are so many of those … things in here.”
“Ah, there’s the pretty kitty,” Fironella said, moving to pet Melina’s head. Melina hissed at the doll and bared her teeth. “Not very friendly, is she?” Fironella asked with a pout.
But Vita couldn’t say anything. She just sat in silence, dumbfounded.
Melina curled around so she could look Vita in the eyes. “Are you all right?” she asked, her yellow-green eyes full of concern.
“I … you’re…” Vita choked on her words. “You’re real.”
Perhaps that was overstating things a bit. In truth Melina looked more like a ghost or a hologram—Vita could look through Melina’s face and see Fironella and the other monsters behind her.
But still, this was the first time Vita had seen any version of Melina with her eyes rather than her mind. That was why Melina’s voice had sounded strange when Vita had called for Melina before—because Vita had been able to hear her.
Vita looked up at Fironella in wonder and the doll’s grin widened. “She’s not quite real,” Fironella corrected. “But she could be.”
“What do you mean?” Vita asked.
Fironella spread her arms. “This is the North Wing of Moorhouse—the wing which nudges into the human world. But in the South Wing,” she gestured toward the doorway Peebles had disappeared through, “she will be nearly as real as you.”
In that moment Vita forgot the terror of a few moments before—now she could barely even see the frightening monsters around her. All she could think of was ghostly Melina around her neck, and how beyond that darkened doorway Melina would become a real friend—just like Vita had always wanted.
“You really think you can trust anything these creatures say?” Melina said in her ear.
“I can hear you, Melina,” she replied in wonder. “With my ears!”
Fironella laid her cold hand on Vita’s arm, ignoring Melina’s growled protestations. Over the doll’s shoulder Vita could see dozens of monsters smiling at her. “Come, see for yourself,” the headmonstress said.
The doll was strong for being two feet shorter than Vita, and nearly wrenched the girl’s arm out of its socket when she pulled her up from the armchair. The monsters crowded around them and Vita felt herself being directed toward the doorway by the tide of creatures that filled the front hall. Fironella pulled Vita along, Melina still around Vita’s neck, while Ruckles and Skrillus followed behind.
Melina mewled and flicked her large eyes in the direction of the front entrance. “We could try to make a run for it,” she said.
“Look at them,” Vita whispered back, glancing back at Ruckles and Skrillus. “Ruckles could kill someone with his eyes, Melina. With his eyes. And there are about a million monsters like him in here.”
Melina remai
ned silent but glared at Vita so intensely that the girl almost wished the caterpillar would go back to being invisible.
In the lamplight Vita could see the walls of the diamond-shaped hall were covered in very old, deep blue wallpaper. A few red roses on the peeling paper gave some hint to how lovely this room had once been. A dark wooden banister stood in the corner across from the velvet armchair and led up a spiral staircase.
The surrounding monsters gazed at Vita with red and black eyes, ran sharp talons over her long white-blonde hair, and sniffed at her like overeager dogs. “She smells like the human world,” a lady with odd, slanted eyelids and bugs crawling around on her head instead of hair called jubilantly as Vita passed.
Several monsters tried to pet Melina as well but were rebuffed by growls and hisses.
Sandwiched between two crowds of monsters, Fironella led Vita through the arched doorway and down a long, narrow hallway. At the other end Fironella moved through the monsters in front of Vita and pulled a brass key on a chain from under her dress to unlock the door. Beneath the hum of the monsters’ chatter Vita could hear the murmur of a bouncing melody on the other side.
She looked back toward the archway but all she could see were a sea of grinning monsters led by Ruckles and Skrillus. She watched the robot’s propeller eyes spin for a moment and sighed. Perhaps Melina was right—they could have tried to make a run for it out in the front hall.
Now there was no turning back.
CHAPTER FOUR
WELCOME FEAST
The group poured into the Mess Hall, which was even dimmer than the hallway or the front hall. Vita’s stomach fluttered when she felt a weight around her shoulders. She looked over at Melina’s head and found that while it was still somewhat ghostly, it was much more substantial than before.
This time Melina met Vita’s eyes with wonder. “I can feel you now, just a bit,” Melina whispered, her anger forgotten in her discovery.
Vita patted Melina’s head. It was so odd—she could feel something beneath her fingers but not the softness of fur or Melina’s warmth. Vita’s friend was more real yet not entirely so.
Melina cuddled closer to Vita and the girl tried to focus on the vague feel of her rather than the very real monsters that surrounded them.
Rusting candelabras filled with black candles lined each long wooden table and provided the room’s only light. The triangular hall’s three walls were made of cement and there were no windows.
What brightened the room more than the candles’ meager light was the music. The banging piano tune reminded Vita of the ragtime music she’d once heard in a Broadway show and its cheerful melody helped dispel some of her unease. She searched for its source and spotted an old-fashioned gramophone at the back of the cafeteria. That explained the music’s tinny tone; it sounded like an old recording on a scratchy record.
The monsters from the front hall filed into their seats on the wooden benches at each table. Peebles stood on top of the table to Vita’s left. Another monster sat in front of Peebles and was one of the most human-looking creatures in the room. He had the face of a boy of in middle school, maybe a year or two younger. He was pale, even paler than Vita. The boy wore black overalls, a red collared shirt, and a denim jacket. Vita couldn’t tell if he had hair under his black newsboy cap. The only odd thing about him aside from his too-pale skin were three sets of black dotted lines that ran vertically up his face from his chin to under the brim of his cap.
The boy met Vita’s eyes and she found them unsettling as well—they were a light, shocking blue.
He looked back down at the table and tied Peebles’ shoelaces with extraordinarily long, thin fingers.
Fironella led Vita and Melina down the center aisle. The surrounding tables shrunk in size, as the triangular hall demanded, until they reached two small tables set for only four each.
The left-hand table was empty while a single very large monster sat at the table on the right. He seemed a bit like a bear, or a yeti from one of Vita’s beloved fantasy novels, but his fluffy fur was pinkish red in color instead of brown or white. Two floppy ears sprouted out of the top of his head and tusk-like fangs poked out of the sides of his mouth.
He blinked his heavy-lidded, orange-flecked hazel eyes at her. “Well, hello there, Vita,” he said in a low, buttery voice. “I’m glad you were able to join us.”
Fironella sat beside the furry monster and Ruckles pulled the chair across from her away from the table. He sat in the chair with his fork legs straight out, and with a creak his legs rolled up beneath his box-like frame. He grabbed hold of the edge of the table with his hedge clipper arms and pulled his seat closer, adding new nicks to an already extensive collection on the edge of the wooden tabletop.
Skrillus shone his headlight eyes on the remaining chair and revved his engine. Then he sped toward the table and crashed into the chair at an angle so it bounced against the cement wall. Skrillus then took the chair’s former place at the table.
Vita looked back and forth between the two tables—one full and one empty. The empty table had a large circular scar in the center of its oak top and there wasn’t a single chair that didn’t have grayish stuffing seeping out of its deep green cushion.
“What are you waiting for?” Fironella snapped, her mouth full of cupcake. Five more sat on her plate, pink and white swirled icing with a cherry on top of each. “Sit down! Feast and celebrate!”
With another look around, Vita sat on the least damaged of the four chairs at the empty table. Melina hopped off Vita’s shoulders onto the table across from her. The caterpillar’s long body took up the length of the table. Vita supposed it was a good thing there was no one else at this table—Melina barely left any room.
“Aren’t you going to tell me more about the classes at this school?” Vita called over to Fironella. Already there was only one cupcake left on her plate. “Or what the contest is all about?”
“Bless your heart, dear,” Fironella said. She turned to Vita and the movement caused a sudden shift of her independent eyelids. Pink frosting was smeared around her bow mouth. “But I don’t like to be bothered while I’m eating.”
Fironella’s gaze returned to her food and she didn’t give Vita another glance. The other monsters ignored Vita as well. Ruckles used one hedge-clipper arm to eat what appeared to be a steak and bacon sandwich and the other to throw hamburgers into Skrillus’s open mouth.
Vita’s stomach growled. It felt like it had been days rather than hours since lunch at school.
A monster slithered up to her table on countless tentacle legs. He had deep blue, slimy-looking skin that spread thin over his bald head. He had the same eyes Vita had noticed on many other Drozlinians—big black pits she felt herself falling into whenever she made eye contact. He wore a white bowtie around his neck and a tall, matching chef’s hat on his head.
“I am Fidoreekio, head chef,” he announced. “Have you decided on your order, madam?”
Vita looked around for a menu but found only rust-stained forks, spoons, and knives on the table. Fidoreekio didn’t appear to be holding a menu, though it was hard to tell what might have been hiding underneath all those tentacles. “Um, what all do you have?”
“Madam may have whatever she pleases.”
She raised her eyebrows. What could she pick? Was this some sort of test? She still wasn’t quite sure what children even learned at this school. Or where the other children were—if there in fact were any at all.
“Strawberry soup,” Melina said in a reluctant sigh. “If we’re stuck here, we may as well eat,” she replied to Vita’s questioning stare. “I’m starving.”
“You can make that?” Vita asked Fidoreekio. Strawberry soup was a Whirlyton delicacy and one Vita had always been sad didn’t exist in the real world.
“As I said, madam may have whatever she wishes,” the chef replied with a hint of exasperation in his voice.
“Okay, I’ll have that too then,” Vita said in a rush. “And a chocolate
ice cream soda.”
Melina looked up at Vita and wrinkled her nose. “But you get those all the time.”
“It’s my favorite.”
“Very well,” Fidoreekio said and walked away on his many, many legs.
Vita’s eyes followed him back toward the topmost point of the triangular hall, where the walls became so narrow it seemed they could hardly contain the midnight blue monster. Fidoreekio had his back turned and spoke to someone Vita couldn’t see.
Then the tentacle monster turned back toward Vita holding a tray filled with dozens of candied and caramel apples. She hoped one of those apples might be for her but Fidoreekio passed right by her table.
While Fidoreekio delivered the tray of apples to a monster with the face of an angry dog two tables away, Vita looked back beyond the gramophone and a bureau of dishes. She saw a wooden order window embedded right into the point of the triangular hall. A ball of some gray, muddy substance sat on the counter beyond the glass on an orange tray like the one Fidoreekio had been carrying.
A skinny boy a year or two younger than Vita stood behind the counter. He had curly, reddish-brown hair and wore bulky glasses with pale brown frames. Vita didn’t think he was a monster, but she couldn’t see his legs. It was quite possible he had those of an enormous spider, or perhaps a swarm of bees where his legs should have been.
The boy held his hands up in the air theatrically above the mound of gray sludge. The muddy substance morphed into the shape of a circular Tupperware container with progressively smaller ones stacked on top of it, like a dissembled Russian nesting doll, or a wedding cake.
He pointed his finger at the top of the sculpture in a swirling motion and as he did the gray swirled away in alternating layers of brown and tan. Vita realized it wasn’t a cake at all—it was a chocolate fountain, or perhaps a chocolate and peanut butter fountain.
The boy rolled another wad of the substance into a ball and pounded it flat. Soon a plate of chopped bananas and cookies stood beside the fountain.
Vita and the Monsters of Moorhouse Page 3
