Vita and the Monsters of Moorhouse

by Jillian Karger

  The girl glanced over at Wile through the corner of her eye on the way back, desperate to ask more questions about Jeff, about why the monsters had failed to mention they’d already found their fourth contestant once before, and he’d mysteriously disappeared. But the sad slope of Wile’s shoulders held her tongue—the boy had shared enough of his Jeff memories for one day.

  “Wile,” she said when they were nearing the sea that ran across Lumaria’s northern border, “Rosie mentioned your ‘music thing’ once, and I’ve always wondered what it was. She wasn’t just talking about the music in here, was she?”

  He shook his head. He pulled a lump of Base from his pocket, held it in both hands, and closed his eyes. The surrounding music changed instantly, moving from a banjo tune to something sprightlier with lots of flutes and horns. A violin entered as well and just as the tune hit a crescendo, Wile opened his hands. Dozens of white doves emerged—more than Vita ever could have expected—and up into the air above the boat. They formed into a V and flew on the air over music that somehow sounded just how they looked.

  “How did you make so many with so little Base?” Melina asked while the girl still gazed above at the birds.

  “I just think of the music,” he replied. “Some part of my mind I don’t know about does everything else.”

  Soon they were at the boathouse then walking across the beach to the entrance. Wile opened the door and all the light, fuzzy feelings the musical doves had given Vita evaporated. Fironella stood on the other side of the doorway with Ruckles and Skrillus flanking her. Ruckles snapped a hedge clipper arm at Vita in a wave and she shuddered.

  Wile’s eyes hardened at the sight of the monsters. “Here for another inspection already, Fi?”

  “It’s Miss Fironella and you know that, boy,” the doll snapped. “But alas, no. It’s this one we’ve come for,” she said, and turned toward Vita. “You haven’t had any inspections with Mazkin yet, have you, dear?”

  Vita would have expected Fironella to already know something like that, but then the doll monster and Mazkin didn’t strike her as the most communicative of colleagues. “N-no,” she answered after a hard swallow. She’d been hoping that when she did have one of these “inspections” her classmates kept mentioning, it would be with Mazkin.

  “Ah, fresh meat!” Ruckles whooped behind her, while ever-silent Skrillus revved his engine.

  Vita trembled again and only stopped when Wile grabbed her hand and pulled her into a hug. “Bye, Vita,” he said loudly. “Thanks for visiting.” He held her closer and whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, I’ll stop by after, I promise.”

  Fironella narrowed her eyes at the two children after they broke apart. Or rather she narrowed her eye—the left one was already closed. “Always nice to see you children making friends,” she said, her tone implying just the opposite. “Now come along, dear.”

  The girl looked back at Wile one last time and his reassuring smile gave her the courage to follow the monsters out. That courage had almost entirely drained away, however, by the time they reached the entrance to her Dream Chamber on the other side of the Mess Hall. She’d just learned the student who’d had her Dream Chamber before her had disappeared under mysterious circumstances—circumstances that almost certainly had something to do with the monsters that taught at Moorhouse.

  And yet here Vita was, about to shut herself up behind a locked door with the three most terrifying monsters in the school.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE INSPECTION

  Vita closed her eyes and tried to focus, but all she could hear was screeEEECH … screeEEECH … screeEEECH… screeEEECH… The sound filled her ears then tried to needle its way into her mind like a worm, and try as she might she couldn’t keep it out.

  “What’s the hold-up?” Fironella barked.

  The girl’s eyes opened and she turned and frowned down at the doll monster. The dusty, decaying state of Fironella’s dress and skin was even more obvious against the lavender and daisy white of Gossamer Fields and beneath Whirlyton’s golden afternoon sun. “Sorry, Miss Fironella, but…” Vita trailed off and her gaze shifted to the miniature silver car behind the headmonstress.

  Skrillus shone his scarlet headlights at her and she watched his windshield wipers scrape back and forth, back and forth, across his bone-dry windshield. He’d turned his wipers on as soon as he and the other monsters had entered Vita’s Dream Chamber, despite the fact that it never rained in Whirlyton.

  “I’m sorry,” Fironella told Vita, her tone patronizing, “is my friend here distracting you?”

  Vita nodded. “I just can’t concentrate.”

  “Oh, you can’t concentrate,” the doll monster repeated, her voice rising even higher. “Poor baby. Well, I hate to break it to you, but you need to learn how to build with distractions. Do you think Drozlin is going to just sit still and let you change it without a fight?”

  “What do you mean?” the girl asked.

  “I mean GET BACK TO BUILDING, DEAR,” Fironella answered. There was nothing girlish about her voice now—it was a booming roar. That it came from a tiny, rotting doll rather than a bona fide Bogeyman only made it more frightening. Melina dug her claws into Vita’s neck and the girl could feel the caterpillar’s peach fur stand up on end.

  Vita turned away from Fironella, Ruckles, and Skrillus and back toward the wide expanse of Base before her. It stretched from the western border of Gossamer Fields all the way over to the dark wooden western wall. Upon entering the Dream Chamber, Fironella had surveyed Brickingham Manor and Nayera Jungle with pursed lips, then asked how many borders Vita had reached in her building.

  “Borders … you mean walls?” she had replied. “Uh, none but the northern wall.”

  At this Fironella’s bow lips had pursed ever further.

  And now here they were, with Vita stuck trying to build from the edge of Gossamer fields to the western wall—across miles and miles—and all with her least favorite headmonster and her two rusty metal assistants watching. Vita closed her eyes again and did her best to ignore Skrillus’ infernal creaks. She imagined the meadow stretching wider and wider, yawning and rolling over the black and white checkered floor, until it ran up against the wall. In her mind’s eye she saw the green and purple butterflies that emerged from the centers of the violets and daisies as they bloomed. She could never entirely ignore the screeEEECH … screeEEECH… and was relieved when she felt the images in her head push outward as they always did when her attempts at world-building worked.

  However, the girl was not at all pleased by what she saw when she opened her eyes. Beneath her feet the grass was green and lush. The grass a few inches from her feet where Base had so recently been was green and lush too, but Vita knew her foot would sink if she tried to step onto it. It was a painting of a meadow, and a cartoonish one at that. The flowers had the circular centers and uniform petals of the doodles that adorned Vita’s notebook pages. The butterflies attempted to fly but had little success with lopsided, paint-laden wings.

  Fironella paced back and forth on her stubby little legs and surveyed Vita’s work. “So,” she said after a few minutes of silence, “I told you to build more and you chose to make your meadow three times the size.” One violet doll eye rolled up to look at Vita. The other remained on the soupy meadow before them. “A tip, my dear. When I tell you I want more, I don’t mean I want an amateurish version of what you’ve already done.” Fironella shook her head and tsked and her chestnut curls bounced.

  “I’m sorry—I was nervous,” Vita explained. She folded her hands behind her back so the headmonstress wouldn’t see them shaking.

  “Breathe, love, breathe,” Melina said into the girl’s ear.

  “Do you maybe want to inspect something I’ve already finished?” Vita managed to squeak. “I’ve done a bunch of stuff beyond the northern wall, you’ll see, and it’s much better than this.”

  “It had better be,” the headmonstress said. “You lead the way with that
bird of yours.”

  Harper stepped forward from where he’d been standing in the meadow with Pish, Posh, and Posh’s fleet of green jays. Spiral was still off on one of his reconnaissance missions. “I’ll follow on foot, Vita,” the gray bear said. “Keep an eye on these … things.”

  Fironella whipped around to face him. “You should learn some respect, bear.” She marched over to Skrillus, who stood spewing gray smoke all over Vita’s flowers. The doll hopped up onto the miniature car’s hood and sat down with her legs crossed. Ruckles, regardless of his rigid fork legs, followed on foot as well. Posh and half his Base Distribution fleet followed behind Vita, Melina, and Pish while the other half remained in the meadow to replace the sludgy western portion with Base.

  Vita and the others had only made it a third of the way to Railstown when she looked down at the meadow below and cried out in alarm. As Skrillus sped across Gossamer Fields—the original portion that had never been anything but lovely—he left two black tracks in his midst. His tires were burning the flowers black left and right.

  “Pish, take me back down,” Vita demanded. Once on the ground the girl ran to catch up with Skrillus. “You have to stop!” she exclaimed while running alongside the car. “You’re ruining the meadow!”

  Down here she could see Ruckles wreaking his own brand of havoc several paces back. His pronged legs tore up clumps of grass and dirt everywhere he walked, and he used his hedge-clipper arms to chop up the blue, green, and purple flowers into teensy bits. Vita was horrified to find Ruckles seemed to enjoy chopping up the wobbly butterflies just as much as he did the violets and daisies.

  Skrillus made a quick U-turn to face Vita and she stopped short to keep from running right into him. Fironella smoothed her lacy, moth-eaten skirt over her stubby legs and giggled at Vita. “Oh, my dear girl. My friends can do much, much worse than that.” Fironella grabbed hold of Skrillus’s hood and the car monster turned back around in the direction of Railstown. He revved his engine and took off at a speed twice as fast as before.

  “Vita, the train!” Melina exclaimed.

  Vita’s hand went to her mouth when she noticed the blue train edging around the bend at the western edge of Railstown. The Western Line was a favorite in Railstown, thanks to the beautiful views it offered of Gossamer Fields. It was particularly popular with families with young children.

  And Skrillus was headed straight for it.

  The girl saw the crash in flashes as she ran toward it. The train sped up, its conductor most likely having noticed the fanged car speeding in the train’s direction. But it wasn’t going fast enough.

  In another flash Vita saw Fironella sailing in the air above the train, her skirt fanning out like a parachute against the wind. The girl focused on running faster and making sure she didn’t drop Melina in the process, so she heard the crash rather than saw it—a great, unnatural clang.

  Vita arrived at the edge of Railstown to find the blue train’s last car had swerved off the tracks and lay on its side beside the train platform. Thankfully the train had stopped as soon as the last car veered off the tracks and the other cars appeared to be all right. The conductor was already beside the fallen car, trying to wrench the doors open.

  Fironella stood on the train platform a short distance away. The platform was otherwise deserted—all the finely dressed gophers, squirrels, and mice were over trying to help the passengers out of the fallen car. Vita marched over to the headmonstress. She was still shaking but it was no longer in fear; it was rage. “Why—how could you let him do that?”

  The doll cocked her head to the side and sent her independent eyes fluttering. “You need to learn how to deal with a little conflict, my dear. It can’t be perfect all the time.”

  “But I thought you were supposed to be help—”

  The girl was cut off by a yowl to their right. The conductor, along with a burly gopher and a squirrel who had abandoned his suit jacket, had managed to help a mouse woman out of the overturned railcar. The woman looked more or less fine though her white suit was tattered. That, and the woman couldn’t seem to stop screaming.

  Vita moved toward her and found the mouse woman was screaming the names, “Jimmy! Emily!” over and over.

  Vita looked up and saw Harper had caught up to them. The gray bear waved the Railstown citizens aside, picked up the railcar, and set it right. Now the girl could see two mouse children on the floor of the compartment. The boy was crying and his arm was bent at an awkward angle. The girl had a cut across her cheek and didn’t appear to be conscious. The lady mouse ran into the railcar before anyone had a chance to take her children out of it and hugged them both to her. The girl still didn’t wake up.

  After a moment of silence the mouse woman turned a venomous glare on Vita. “How could you let this happen?”

  “I…” she began, walking toward the railcar. “We’ll get you a doctor.”

  “And where are you going to find a doctor?” the woman snapped. She hadn’t come out of the accident unscathed after all—up close Vita could see that beneath her pillbox hat, the mouse woman had a large greenish bruise on her forehead. She smoothed her son’s hair and cooed at him but he continued to cry. “Everyone works the train or rides it in Railstown. There aren’t any doctors.”

  “Vita, where did the monsters go?” Melina whispered to the girl.

  She looked back toward the platform, but Fironella had vanished. She found no sign of Skrillus either. And who knew what Ruckles was doing—Vita had lost sight of him back in the meadow.

  She needed to help this mouse woman and her children, go after Fironella and Skrillus, and backtrack to figure out where Ruckles had gone. And she needed to do all those of things right this instant. The girl put her head in her hands, at a loss for what to do.

  Her head popped back up when she heard screams coming from her left. It came from the patio of a café in the strip of buildings beyond the train platform. The café’s sign announced the café’s name in two ways—it said “The Railcar” in blinking white letters and was also shaped like a railcar. Or, at least, that was what the sign had done until it had broken apart from the red brick building and fell to the patio floor with a spark and a crackle.

  She gasped and her mind went back to that day at Rosie’s soda fountain; the sudden spiderweb cracks in the windows, the relentless spinning of the barstools. Wile had said Rosie herself had done all that because she got sad. Had Vita knocked down that sign? The surrounding train commuters and workers seemed to think so. They glared at Vita through narrowed eyes, their lips curling in disgust.

  She started when the caterpillar around her neck began to speak. First Melina looked upward to address Pish, Posh, and Posh’s green jays, who hovered above in an enormous V at the edge of Railstown awaiting instructions. In her panic Vita had forgotten Posh and half his fleet had been following behind. She had forgotten even Pish in the madness of the crash. “Posh,” Melina told the green jay up above, “send a messenger to the half of your fleet still at Gossamer, and have them search for Ruckles. Then you should lead the others in search of Fironella and Skrillus. Fironella should be riding on Skrillus’s hood; I doubt the doll’s much for walking, not with those stubby legs. Before you go leave a few barrels of Base, some birds, and Vita, Harper, and I will set things right here.”

  Posh flew to the ground, unloaded the three barrels on his back in front of Vita, and gave a curt nod. Five green jays landed behind him. “Aye-aye, Melina. I’ll send a messenger as soon as we find them.” He returned to the air and four groups of birds fanned out north, south, east, and west while one lone green jay went back northwest toward Gossamer Fields.

  Vita noticed that Harper had already shaped clumps of Base into three columns. She looked between him and Melina. “Thank you both.”

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and a moment later a bespectacled beaver, a rat, and a gopher stood where the Base had been. They all wore the same dark blue uniforms with gold buttons as the railway worker
s, but there were little red crosses on each of their hats. They also all wore stethoscopes around their necks. The beaver gave Vita a firm handshake. “Dr. Archibald Jenkins, lead physician of the Railway Medical Squad.”

  The girl pointed the doctors toward the train platform where the Railstown citizens had lain the mouse girl. She wore a frilly pink dress and pearls that matched her mother’s. The little mouse boy wore a sailor outfit and sat on the bench beside his mother, cradling his broken arm to his chest. He had stopped crying but still took hicuppy breaths every so often. He’d run out of tears, not feelings.

  Vita was about to create a Railstown hospital where a park had once been when she saw a green jay flying toward them from the east against the setting sun. The bird saluted when she reached the Base-covered park ground. “Admiral Alira, at your service, Miss Vita,” the green jay said. “We’ve found the doll and those sick friends of hers, and you had better come right away.”

  Pish followed Alira into the air with Vita and Melina on his back. They flew over Nayera Jungle, three-fourths-finished Landora, and a pumpkin patch Vita hadn’t yet gotten around to naming. She realized they were headed toward Bringlesberg by the scent of wood smoke on the air. During the day the citizens of Bringlesberg tended to the vegetable fields and apple orchards that lay beyond the Autumn Fire Forest, and at night they relaxed by building bonfires outside their cabins and along the Classon River and roasting marshmallows. Usually from above Bringlesberg looked not unlike Rosie’s bushes of light-up fairies—mostly dark with a sprinkling of fireflies.

  Now all Vita could see was fire.

  At first she couldn’t make out anything but a huge, engulfing flame that seemed to cover the entire village. She soon found these were in fact several smaller fires, and pigs, cows, chickens, and turkeys ran about screaming and begging for help, trying to put out the bonfires that had spread into a village-wide nightmare. There were a few large glops of Base lying here and there amongst all the flames, signs of Posh and his fleet’s attempts to defend the village.