Vita and the Monsters of Moorhouse

by Jillian Karger

  “Why’d you make it so old?” Peebles asked. He hopped around the floor gingerly, likely afraid of the debris that might pierce through his thin purple tennis shoes. “You’d think you woulda imagined something brand new.”

  “Rose bushes don’t grow in new buildings,” Vita replied, a little defensively. “And neither do vines. Old buildings are so much more fun.”

  “But where are you going to sleep?” Dotted-Line Jack asked.

  Vita shrugged. “Probably out in the meadow again. The flowers were comfy enough.”

  “What if it rains?”

  “It never rains in Whirlyton.”

  A crack of thunder rang through the castle’s wall. Vita rushed to the window and for the first time, fat raindrops began to fall over the trees of Nayera Jungle. Soon rain was pounding against the roof and leaking through its many holes. Vita and her friends hopped back and forth, trying to avoid getting wet.

  In the light of Posh’s hardhat Vita could see Dotted-Line Jack giving her an “I told you so” smirk.

  Vita wasn’t sure she had much world-building left in her. She knew she would need a rest soon, and she obviously wouldn’t be doing it outside. So whatever she built now had to be something good.

  “Harper!” she called. “Could you build a column like the ones in the forest in the center of this hall? But much, much thicker?” She extended her arms as wide as she would to hug the gray bear around his middle. “Like, THIS wide.”

  “Coming right up, Vita,” he replied. “Gimme some light, Birdbrain!”

  Once the column was built and Vita had an image in mind, she clenched her hands into fists and pushed at the image as hard as she could. The column grew taller and taller until it almost reached the castle’s high ceiling. Rich burgundy bark sprouted up from the ground and swallowed up the brown-gray of the Base. The thick tree’s roots grabbed a hold of the marble floors and the sound of rocks breaking filled the hall. The tree squashed some of the flowers that grew through the cracks in the floor but the survivors curled around its roots like eager friends.

  Branches stretched out then up from the sides and back of the trunk but not the front, as if making space for a giant to sit. The leaves on those branches were deep purple, pink, and peachy orange. Instead of a giant, the hunk of Base that remained on the shelf that the branches created became a perfect little white tree house with a gray shingled roof. There were windows on either side of the blue door and a third directly above it.

  Vita sank to her knees, exhausted. She put her aching head in her hands and shivered when a cold hand touched her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” Dotted-Line Jack apologized. “Again. Maybe I should apologize for that ‘think big’ advice, too. I didn’t realize you’d take it so much to heart.”

  Vita rubbed her eyes and blinked at him a few times. “’M okay,” she said in a huge yawn, making him laugh.

  “I love the tree house,” he said. The ghost boy observed the cracked walls around them, the vines hanging from the ceiling, and the staircases that led to nothing but empty rooms with patchy floors and ceilings. “Are you going to fix up any of the rooms for your friends?” he asked after a moment.

  “Well, Melina will stay in the tree house with me. I think everyone else will be happier back in the jungle.”

  He looked around once more and shrugged. “As long as you won’t be lonely.”

  “Now that’s what I like to see!” Peebles exclaimed from a few feet away. “You had a problem and you solved it without any time to waste.” He hopped up to Vita with a wide smile on his little green face. “I very much look forward to what we’ll be seeing from you, Miss Vita Lawrence.”

  Vita tried to thank him but all that came out was a second yawn.

  “You go on up to bed, Vita,” Dotted-Line Jack said. “I’ll just tell your next teachers to check over the interior of the tree house for us.” He grinned at her and leaned forward. “Peebles is right, you know. You’re a natural.”

  The two monsters led a drowsy Vita over to Pish. Melina hopped up onto his back and curled around Vita like some kind of long, cuddly seatbelt. Vita waved her hand limply at Peebles and Dotted-Line Jack as they left and Pish flew her and Melina up to the front door of Vita’s new tree house. Pish let her and Melina out on the small flight of cement steps that extended down from the tree house’s front door then flew back down to follow the others back to Nayera Jungle.

  Vita climbed the steps, turned the silver knob, took a few steps into the room, and barely had time to admire the oak four-poster bed—one like she had always wanted—before she fell stomach-first onto it. The girl was asleep before she even hit the sea green sheets.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE VISIT

  Vita ran alongside a set of train tracks as fast as she could. She passed an outdoor platform and the gravel ground became smooth pavement as she approached a cluster of rusty red brick buildings. The train tracks wove through the buildings, and residences that didn’t look so different from the brownstones back in Brooklyn. Bright blue and gold trains whizzed across the tracks and spewed gray smoke.

  A bespectacled mouse in a conductor’s hat stood at the front of one train and waved at Vita through the window as she passed. Vita raced through alleys and across train platforms until she reached Central Railstown Station, a large ivory building with vaulted ceilings and enormous windows. Gophers, bears, and squirrels with suitcases rushed in and out of the station’s revolving doors, convinced there wasn’t a moment to waste.

  Around the right wall of the station was the patio of the train station’s café. A set of railroad tracks ran just a foot away from the edge of the patio and a gold train sped by the diners every fifteen minutes or so. Round wooden tables dotted the patio and Vita found Pish standing beside a table of three ferrets, all of which wore black turtlenecks.

  “Right now we’re riding the train and just really trying to find ourselves, you know?” the female ferret was explaining to Pish as Vita approached. The other two ferrets nodded as they picked at a plate of croissants. The female ferret tossed half a croissant into Pish’s widened beak.

  “Not really,” Pish replied, his mouth full and his tone friendly. “Hey, V!” he exclaimed with a spray of crumbs when he noticed her. “Sorry to leave you alone out there. M’lina and I were feeling a bit peckish and didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Where were you sleeping?” the lady ferret asked Vita. “Inside a coal stove?”

  The girl brushed her hand against her ruined pale blue gown, pointlessly. She didn’t even want to think what her face looked like. Still, there was no time to fix it now. “In a pile of soot near the train tracks,” she mumbled. She’d fallen asleep in the midst of building once again.

  “She’s like me,” Pish told the others proudly. “She can sleep anywhere. So what’s up, V? Need a ride?”

  “Yep, back to the—” The doorbell rang for the sixth time since Vita woke up and interrupted her. She heard a growl at her feet.

  “Make it stop,” Melina’s sleep-laden voice moaned. The girl looked down and found her friend curled up under the table.

  Before Vita knew it the caterpillar was wrapped around her shoulders. The girl felt guilty for leaving her friend on the ground for so long without any trees to climb nearby while she’d slept. “It’s the doorbell,” Vita told her as she scratched under the caterpillar’s chin. “The other kids must be here.”

  She’d invited Rosie and Grover to her Dream Chamber on an impulsive whim when she’d run into them in the Mess Hall. She hadn’t seen either of their Dream Chambers yet, but she had a standing invitation to Rosie’s and Grover said he would let Vita into his Chamber once he saw Vita’s. He’d said it was about fairness, but the rule seemed pretty silly to Vita.

  “Unless it’s monsters here to teach your next lesson,” Melina pointed out with a yawn.

  The idea sent shivers down Vita’s spine. She’d enjoyed working with Dotted-Line Jack and Peebles, and Grover’s teacher Eerla—an
enormously overweight lady monster with sea green scales—had seemed nice, but they were some of the least frightening monsters of the bunch.

  After she, Melina, and Pish bid the ferrets farewell, Vita spent the entire ten-minute ride back to the entrance worried which teachers she might be paired up with next. She looked down at the spotty plains of her Whirlyton-in-progress from Pish’s back and frowned at how many patches of Base she’d missed. How she wished she hadn’t fallen asleep in the middle of building!

  So she breathed a sigh of relief when she opened the door to her Dream Chamber and found Rosie, Jasmine, Grover, and Rafe hanging out in the hallway. Vita even felt a little grateful to Melina for making her think monsters were at the door—it had helped distract Vita from how nervous she was to share her infant world with her new classmates.

  Rosie danced to a jig Vita could dimly hear through the walls of the Mess Hall, and Jasmine did the same though she danced on air rather than the floor. Rafe held his silver arm out and skinny Grover hung from it like it was a rung on a set of monkey bars.

  Vita’s smile slipped away, however, when her eyes landed upon an unexpected guest leaning against the wall across from her.

  “What took you so long?” Wile asked her. He surveyed her ashy face and dress. “Did you set yourself on fire?” He grinned wide as if the idea delighted him. It was the first time Vita had ever seen the boy smile, and it was over the idea of Vita setting herself on fire.

  “I don’t remember inviting you,” she said. She winced a little at how snotty she sounded but then she remembered what Wile had said about her arrival at Moorhouse being a punishment to him and the other kids.

  His grin dissolved and he crossed his arms across his chest. “I’m only here ’cause Rosie asked.”

  Rosie approached them, Jasmine fluttering around her, and put her hands up in a sign of surrender. “It’s my fault—I know I shouldn’t have invited Coyote without your permission. But he’s helped me with my own world-building so much, I thought he might be able to give you some advice.”

  Vita couldn’t imagine Wile helping anyone do anything, least of all herself. “But I haven’t seen your Dream Chamber yet.”

  “You haven’t seen Rosie’s or Grove’s either,” Wile replied.

  Vita looked up into Wile’s nearly black eyes, her hands clenched into fists. “Yes, but I think they’ll actually show me their Chambers.”

  “And you think I won’t?”

  “Will you?”

  At this Wile clenched his own hands into fists as well but said nothing.

  Vita peered at Rosie out of the corner of her eye. Was it possible she and Wile were in cahoots of some sort so they could steal Vita’s ideas?

  She probed her temples. World-building was tiring enough without worrying at every turn if the other kids were plotting against her. She glanced back at Brickingham Manor and Nayera Jungle—places that previously hadn’t existed anywhere but in her mind. In that moment she decided that she was proud of her creations, and confident their quality wasn’t going to decrease no matter who saw them.

  “Fine, everyone come in,” she said in a groan and walked out of the doorway to make space for the other children to enter.

  Vita took in a sharp breath when Jasmine and Rafe seemed to disappear as soon as they crossed the threshold into her Dream Chamber. Then she found they hadn’t really vanished, but they’d become even more transparent and insubstantial than before.

  Rosie noticed Vita looking. “The same thing’ll happen to Melina in our Chambers,” she explained.

  Rosie, Grover, and their respective transparent imaginary friends looked around the Dream Chamber in wonder. Wile, conversely, simply glared at Vita as he walked inside and didn’t seem at all grateful for what she thought had been a very generous invitation, considering he’d as much as said he didn’t plan to return it. For a moment Vita thought she heard the doorbell again—lovely, melodious tones against the light breeze that rushed by—but no one else seemed to notice anything amiss.

  “Look at the trees,” Jasmine observed to Rosie.

  “I know, it makes me wish I had my pastels with me,” the little girl replied. She looked over Vita. “This place looks almost like a painting. Do you paint too? Maybe we could do it together sometime!”

  Vita frowned and shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not?” Rosie asked. “It’s so much fun.”

  Vita looked down at the ground, kicking at the dirt. “I just don’t.” She hoped Rosie wouldn’t ask her any more about it—art wasn’t her favorite topic to discuss.

  Luckily at that moment Rosie noticed Pish, beamed, and waved a tiny hand at him. “Hi there! I’m Rosie and this is my best friend, Jasmine.”

  Pish looked down at the little girl. “Hello! I’m Pish.”

  Rafe pointed out Brickingham Manor to Grover. “Doesn’t it remind you of Elysian?” he asked.

  Vita peered at the bespectacled boy, worried he’d think she’d somehow copied something from his model even though she had never seen it. He did have that rule after all. But Grover just smiled and agreed with Rafe.

  “Only Elysian isn’t crumbling to pieces,” Wile butted in. “Or at least it wasn’t last time I saw it,” he added with a cruel grin at Grover.

  The boy’s freckled cheeks reddened and he looked down at the grass.

  Vita narrowed her eyes at Wile. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he was the reason for Grover’s dumb rule—Wile had probably visited Grover’s Dream Chamber and never returned the invitation, convincing the timid boy he couldn’t trust the other students.

  “I think it’s neat that the castle’s old,” Rosie said. “New buildings are perfect, and perfect is boring.”

  Even if Rosie had been as nasty as Wile from the start, this comment alone would have won Vita over. “Thanks, Rosie,” she said. “It’s called Brickingham Manor.”

  The Supply Closet door opened and Harper and Posh emerged. After Harper added two barrels of Base to the small tower of them by the door, he and Posh approached them. Rosie squealed at the sight of Harper and jumped up to hug him around one of his enormous legs.

  Jasmine flew upward so she could speak to the gray bear face to face. “Sorry, Rosie gets excited easily.”

  “So do you!” Rosie called, still clinging to Harper’s leg.

  Harper chuckled and patted Rosie on the head. “That’s all right, darlin’.” He winked at Vita. “Reminds me of when you were younger.”

  While Jasmine, Rosie, and Harper got acquainted, Vita noticed Posh studying Rosie with sadness in his eyes. Did Rosie remind him not of a younger Vita, but a younger Jen? Something in Rosie’s boundless enthusiasm reminded Vita of Jen at that age, back in the days before she ever would’ve suggested they stop playing Whirlyton.

  “Would you like to take a look inside Brickingham?” Pish asked the others.

  “Could we?” Rosie asked, excited.

  So they made their way over to the ancient castle. Inside Rosie, Jasmine, Grover, and Rafe all exclaimed in delight at the overgrown flowers and carved banisters, and especially at the tree and accompanying treehouse Vita had built in the center of the castle’s great hall. A thick tree with rich burgundy bark grew straight up through the marble floor. The tree’s leaves were deep purple, pink, and peachy orange. On a shelf formed by branches was a perfect little white treehouse with a gray shingled roof. There were windows on either side of the blue door and a third directly above it.

  Wile remained silent, his hands behind his back. Then he stopped beside one of the thinner vines in front of the treehouse, grabbed a hold of it, and pulled. A hole in the roof appeared and bits of plaster crumbled down.

  “Wile!” Rosie exclaimed in admonishment. She may have been the youngest in the group but Vita was beginning to realize these lost boys needed a mother, and Rosie had been forced into the role.

  “Sorry,” he said in the brief, clipped way no one ever means, “I was just wondering how you get up and down fr
om the treehouse. Does your pigeon take you?”

  Vita pointed up at the purple zip lines that ran from each of Brickingham’s towers to the four corners of the treehouse. “I take one of those if Pish isn’t around.”

  “Why didn’t you make a ladder?” Grover asked.

  “A ladder wouldn’t be anywhere near enough fun,” Vita replied.

  Rosie smiled her bright, infectious smile. “Oooh, can we try?”

  “Yeah…” Vita replied, hesitantly. “It’s just, we should probably split up and use different staircases. And we have to go fast.” She winced, her ears anticipating more complaints about how old and terrible her beloved castle was.

  But Rosie giggled and Jasmine threw Vita one of her feline grins. “Sounds great!” Jasmine said.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Grover said, wringing his hands. “You can fly.”

  “My brother and I will swoop in if one of you falls,” Pish said. “Won’t we, brother?” he asked with a punch to his brother’s shoulder.

  Posh rubbed his shoulder with the end of his wing. “I’ll keep an eye on your staircase,” Posh told Grover. “With Pish nearby your chances of getting injured actually increase rather than decrease.”

  With Melina around her neck and Rosie, Grover, and Wile in the remaining corners of the great hall, Vita counted down from three. At “one,” the students raced up their respective staircases. Vita’s began to fall apart when she was only halfway up and she had to grab a hold of the edge of the balcony floor. She hoisted herself up and Melina scrambled off her to make her climb up a little easier.

  Vita took a deep breath and looked back down at the ground floor. A pile of crumbled white stone and powder was all that remained of the spiral staircase she’d climbed, but she’d made it. To her relief, the other three children had also reached their towers unscathed. In fact, Vita’s was the only staircase to fall apart completely, though both Wile’s and Rosie’s were missing a few steps.