Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

by Claire Legrand

  The roaches scattered, racing into the next rooms and up into Mrs. Cavendish’s clothes, out of sight, flapping their wings in furious confusion.

  The Home moved.

  IT WASN’T MUCH. IT WAS LIKE WHEN A TRAIN PASSES nearby and the ground rumbles. It moved with a distant sigh.

  Victoria paused in her humming, her skin warm with shock. This time, she wasn’t the only one who had heard it; this was no imagined passage in the dark, no imagined wild ride through the Home that she could convince herself was a nightmare. This was in the middle of the day; everyone was around her, and everyone heard the same, groaning thing and felt the same, shifting floor. She had hummed, and Lawrence had pounded hard on those silent keys, and the Home had moved. But why, and how? And what did this mean?

  The others looked around in confusion. Little Caroline blurted out, “What was that?”

  From somewhere in all the dark twists of rooms around them, something groaned, creaked, whined. At the doors, the gofers muttered excited gibberish and stomped their feet on the ground. The window closest to them cracked. The ceiling rained down bits of dust and paint.

  Mrs. Cavendish snapped out of her frozen, wide-eyed trance. “Silence!”

  The gofers fell to the ground and hid behind their hands if they had them, whimpering.

  Stalking forward, Mrs. Cavendish whipped the switch across Lawrence’s face so hard that it flew out of her grip. Her face had bright red splotches. Her eyes gleamed. She glared at Victoria, snatched up the switch, and whipped Lawrence again, terribly beautiful in her rage. Her eyes were blue fire, sharp like dagger points.

  “What,” she snapped, “have we discussed about singing, children?”

  No one said anything; they were too busy looking around curiously for whatever those strange noises had been.

  Mrs. Cavendish cracked her switch through the air. Even Mr. Alice jumped.

  “I said, what have we discussed about singing? Or talking too loudly, or making any unnecessary noise whatsoever?”

  Immediately, a chorus of frightened voices said:

  No one wants to hear you sing,

  Or talk or scream or anything.

  To Victoria’s surprise, she found herself reciting the rhyme along with everyone else. She didn’t really know the words, but there she was, saying them. It was like someone else was moving her mouth and making her voice sound.

  That was just it, Victoria realized, with only a little surprise: she had started to feel like she wasn’t Victoria at all, these days. She had become a nobody and a nothing, tugged here and there, made to do things, like a toy. The only time she hadn’t felt that way was just now, humming a piece of music she was too tired to remember the name of. But the more she thought about this, the heavier she felt; all that was too much for one stupid nobody to think about.

  “Oh, well,” she said, sighing later, lying down in her cot. “There’s nothing to do about it.”

  That night, Victoria’s dreams were full of strange rumblings that came in waves, and the waves were made up of antennae, pincers, and fluttering wings. She awoke after the fifth one of these dreams and sat straight up in bed.

  The rumblings weren’t just in her dreams. They were real. The Home was shifting like it was built on water. It happened only every now and then, and subtly, but Victoria saw little ash clouds puff up from the hearth. Yes, it was moving all right.

  But why was the Home moving so much, and all of a sudden? Questions began forming in Victoria’s mind. Like a rusted old clock struggling to turn its gears again, Victoria began to think. She folded her sheet down and sat cross-legged as she listened for the next rumble.

  When it happened, she got out of bed. It took every last bit of her effort. She felt as though she were waking from a long, heavy sleep. She went to Jacqueline’s bed. It was easy to find her, even though there was only a sliver of moon that night, because Jacqueline had the shiniest hair and was crying over her hurt hand.

  “Jacqueline,” Victoria said slowly. It was so hard to move her lips, she had to feel them to make sure there weren’t stitches there sewing them shut. She put a hand out to pat Jacqueline’s shoulder; moving her arm was nearly impossible, the air around her heavy and sticky. She shook her head. Wake up, Victoria, she thought. There’s no time to feel sorry for yourself anymore.

  “What do you want?” said Jacqueline. “Leave me alone. I’m a degenerate, don’t you know? You don’t want to be seen around people like me, Victoria. Not you, not Mrs. Cavendish’s favorite.”

  Victoria bristled. “I’m not her favorite.”

  “Yes, you are. Shut up. Go to bed.”

  “But . . . do you feel that?”

  “Feel what?”

  “Listen.” Victoria sat on the bed. It took so long for it to happen, Victoria thought Jacqueline would kick her off the bed with impatience, but finally—

  A faint rumble sounded deep beneath them, from within the walls. At the far end of the room, Gabby rocked back and forth in her pillows with her hands over her ears. “Not again,” she moaned. “Go away, go away.”

  “What is that?” said Jacqueline.

  They waited for a long time, but it didn’t happen again. The Home had gone silent.

  It was still so hard to think. Victoria kept shaking her head to clear it, which made her dizzy. She looked around the room at all the lost, frightened girls tossing in their nightmares, and at the ones who slept peacefully because they would be going home soon. Mrs. Cavendish had taught them how to be different, had frightened them into being exactly what a Belleville girl should be.

  “No one’s coming for us,” said Victoria.

  “You’re just now figuring that out?” said Jacqueline, sniffling.

  “We’re all alone,” Victoria continued, slowly. It helped, to say it aloud, to accept it.

  “You know, that really isn’t making me feel any better.”

  “So, we can’t depend on our parents or the police or anyone,” said Victoria, “but maybe we can do it ourselves.”

  It felt like putting together the last pieces of a fuzzy riddle. Victoria caught the moonlight glinting off the nameplate over her bed: VICTORIA. It reminded her of her favorite street sign near the Academy: VICTORY. Her heart raced as though she had just laid her hands on the freshly copied pages of a new exam. She grinned. Jacqueline stared at her.

  “You really have lost it,” said Jacqueline. “Just like Lawrence said.”

  “Never mind,” said Victoria. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” whispered Jacqueline, but Victoria had already marched to the fireplace and begun to crawl. When she reached the dead end, the brick wall at the back of the fireplace, she put her fingertips to the wall and only felt a little bit silly when she started to hum. Her voice sounded loud in the dark, and she wondered for a moment if she would wake Mrs. Cavendish and bring her to the dorm in a fury, whipping and hitting with her switch.

  But Victoria kept humming anyway, the Rachmaninoff again, and she whispered, “Hello? Are you there?” although she didn’t know to whom she was whispering. Those voices, she thought, whoever they are.

  Finally, the wall gave way, slowly, creaking awfully like a rusted hinge. The same dark passage appeared, shifting and tilting into place amid a wave of black walls and black ceiling and black, cold, dank air.

  Victoria smiled and began to crawl. I don’t quite know what I’m doing, she thought, but I’m starting to figure it out. Angry clicks and hisses roiled at the edges of her ears, as though things were trying to burrow into her through the walls, but the passage remained empty.

  “Hurry,” the ghostly, echo-y voices whispered. “Hurry now.”

  Victoria was afraid but pushed that aside. The heavy sleepiness that had covered her mind for the past few days fell away more and more. She was beginning to formulate a plan, and there were few things she liked better than formulating plans. After crawling for a few long minutes, the angry buzzing growing angrier and louder, little feat
hery things biting and brushing at her ankles, Victoria came out into the boys’ dorm. She went straight for Lawrence’s cot and shook him awake.

  “Go away, Vicky,” he said.

  “No. Did you hear those rumbles?”

  “I said—”

  “I know what you said, and I’m not going anywhere,” said Victoria. The words came easier now. “Look, the Home was rumbling just now. I heard it, and so did Jacqueline. It was just like at your coaching, when I started humming. And I’ve heard it before, too. The first night, when Mrs. Cavendish showed me around, we were out in the gardens, and there was this weird groaning noise, like a monster, and it came from the Home, and Mrs. Cavendish didn’t seem to like it. But I don’t know what that means. And I did fall down the fireplace that night. The Home moved me around to all these rooms. I know it sounds stupid, but it did happen. It happened just now; it happened earlier today, in the piano room. Remember? You were drumming away on the keyboard, and I was humming, and the Home moved, and then Mrs. Cavendish told us to be quiet. Well, so I did the same thing just now; I sang, I hummed, and the passage reappeared, and that’s how I got here.”

  Lawrence sat up. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “It’ll happen again. Just wait. Sometimes it takes a few minutes.”

  “You’re trying to tell me,” Lawrence said, frowning, “that the Home likes music?”

  Victoria frowned. “Maybe. It certainly seems to. But maybe it’s not just music. All that pounding you did on the piano wasn’t really music. Maybe it just likes noise. It is really quiet in this place most of the time.”

  “You make it sound like the Home is alive, like Donovan said. I thought you didn’t believe that. I’m not sure I believe that.”

  “Look,” said Victoria. She was growing impatient. The whispering, echo-y voices had said, “Hurry. Hurry now.” This was not hurrying. “I don’t understand it either, but I’m going to find out, and you can either come with me, which is why I came to get you, or you can sit here and not believe me, and then what if I find a way out? What if I can’t come back and get you?”

  Lawrence shook his head, his face pale, dark circles beneath his eyes. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Well, I don’t either. Just come with me—we’ll figure it out. Trust me.”

  “Why should I? You’re just like Mr. Alice. You sit back and watch her hurt people, and you don’t even care.”

  Victoria felt like Lawrence had slapped her. “I’ve just been upset.”

  “It’s not like you’re the only one who’s upset.”

  Victoria drew herself up into as grand a dazzle as she could muster. “For your information, she had me in the hanger for days, and I saw my parents. I yelled for them, but they didn’t hear me. Or maybe they did, but they didn’t listen, and then they left.” She paused. “They’re planning to adopt one of the children here. They’re planning to replace me. And whoever it is won’t remember me, and neither will they. I’ll just . . .” She paused. “I’ll be an orphan.”

  Lawrence said, “Oh,” and fiddled with his sleeves.

  “Yes, well.” Victoria sniffed.

  “I’m sorry, Vicky.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Really, I am.” He patted her hand.

  “All right, well, thanks.”

  “That was me that day, beating on the window to get your attention,” said Lawrence. “When you came the second time? And the first time, in the kitchen, the paper airplane—that was me, too.”

  “I’m sorry it took me so long,” said Victoria quietly.

  Lawrence smiled. “But you’re here. I knew you would come. I knew it.” He rubbed his hands together and winced from the sting of all the bug bites. “So, what’s the plan, then?”

  “I want to investigate this place,” said Victoria, “and figure out what’s behind all this—the bugs, the Home, why it moves like there’s an earthquake and shifts and pops hallways out of nowhere, all of it.”

  “I wonder why I’ve never noticed it doing things like this before,” Lawrence said, wrinkling his forehead to think.

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’re not paying good enough attention.”

  Lawrence glared at her. “Maybe I’ve been really scared.”

  “Maybe. But it is moving, and I want to find out why.”

  “Easy enough,” said Lawrence, jumping to the floor. It was like old times—Victoria coming up with some grand studying plan for end-of-term exams, and Lawrence going along with it because that’s what friends do, and he hadn’t any others. “What’s the plan?”

  Victoria wanted to hug him but restrained herself. “Well, I don’t know. We’ll just start exploring, I guess. Maybe if you’re with me, you’ll be able to get through the fireplace too.”

  “And then what? If we figure everything out, then what do we do?”

  “We get out,” Victoria said firmly. “We escape.”

  “And the other kids?”

  Victoria’s chest twisted a little. “If there’s time, we’ll come back and get them. But only if there’s time.” Victoria gave Lawrence a stern look before he could say anything. “Look, this is my plan, all right?”

  “But we’ll try our very best to come back and get them, won’t we?”

  “Yes, we’ll try. Our very, absolute best. I swear on my academic report.”

  Lawrence snorted. “I should be surprised you said that, but I’m really, really not.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know. That’s what’s so funny.”

  Victoria flashed a dazzle at him, and he coughed and cleared his throat and choked back his laughter. “All right, so what about Mrs. Cavendish?”

  “What about her?”

  “We’ll just escape and leave her here to keep doing what she’s doing? For all we know, she could snatch us right back the moment we step through the gate.”

  Victoria frowned. The truth was, she had no idea what to do about Mrs. Cavendish. She got the feeling that getting rid of her would not be easy. “I really don’t know. But maybe if we explore long enough, we’ll find something to help us.”

  Lawrence looked at her skeptically.

  Victoria raised one imperious eyebrow. “Unless you’ve got a better idea?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Well, then.”

  “But where do we start looking?” Lawrence asked.

  “I’m not sure. . . ,” said Victoria, but then she saw a lingering bit of dirt on Lawrence’s neck, where Mr. Alice had pressed his rake earlier that day. “Actually, I do know. Let’s go to the gardens.”

  “Outside?” Lawrence whistled. “You’re crazier than I thought. Those gardens give me the creeps.”

  Frowning and thinking furiously, Victoria led him to the fireplace. “When she showed me the gardens, she called them her pride and joy. But what’s the point of them? We never go outside except for coaching. And Mr. Alice is always working in the gardens, right? Why does he spend so much time there? It doesn’t make sense, unless it’s something important. Yes. We start there.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” said a voice from behind them. They whirled to see Peter standing at the ends of the beds, straight and tall, leaning to the side because he was still stiff from his coaching the other day. He managed a small smile, though. But it wasn’t his. “Not a good idea.”

  “Thanks very much for the advice,” said Victoria, feeling quite herself again by this point and in no mood for creepy boys. She pushed Lawrence toward the hearth, ignoring Peter and the uncomfortable feeling the look in his eyes had left in her belly, and started to crawl into the shadows of the fireplace.

  After a few crawl-steps, she took a deep breath and looked back at Lawrence. “Well?”

  “But it’s after lights-out,” said Lawrence, eyeing the fireplace uneasily. “People have—”

  “Yes, yes, they’ve snuck out before bed and never come back. I know. But I did it the other night, and I’m just fine, aren’t I?”
/>   “But . . . outside?”

  “It could be our only chance to find out what’s really going on and how to get out, don’t you think?”

  Lawrence sighed, crouched down, and crawled in beside her. Together, they peeked down the passage, which had remained in place since Victoria crawled through. It was too dark to see much beyond the first few feet.

  “Um. Hello?” Victoria whispered. “I’m, er, I’m back. And Lawrence is with me.”

  Lawrence stared at her as though she had sprouted a second head.

  Victoria ignored him and began to hum, trying not to burn up of embarrassment. Her scratchy, wobbly voice bounced down the passage and was swallowed up in a sudden rolling wave of clicks and wings. Lawrence hid his face, but Victoria gritted her teeth and dazzled the darkness till her eyes felt like they would pop out of her skull.

  “Hurry,” the voices whispered. When Lawrence heard them, he yelped. Victoria clapped a hand over his mouth.

  “Hello? We’re, er . . . we’re trying to get outside.” Victoria paused. Any moment now, they would be swarmed upon and eaten alive. She fought not to scream. “To the gardens?”

  The walls expanded and contracted, twisting and shifting. Steps formed in front of them, leading down and down. A few tiny black shapes tumbled down them, popping out of the walls, their legs waving uselessly through the air. The ceiling rumbled with wings and black eyes.

  “Hurry,” the voices repeated. “Angry. So angry.”

  Lawrence shrank closer to Victoria, grabbing her hand.

  “Vicky, I’ve got an awful feeling about this,” he whispered.

  “Me too,” said Victoria, but she pulled on his hand anyway, to help him to his feet, held her head high, and, holding tight to Lawrence’s sweating fingers, started downstairs into the dark.

  “I DON’T LIKE THIS,” LAWRENCE SAID AS THEY FELT their way down the winding staircase. The floor was slippery, and they had to hold on to the walls to keep from sliding all the way down. “What’s in here with us?”

  “You know what it is,” Victoria whispered. Wings brushed past her neck, getting tangled in her hair. She batted them away, her throat twisting into a tight, sick feeling. There weren’t too many of them—yet.