by Dan Poblocki
Dash clenched his fists and then turned as Poppy began to read, her voice shaking with anger and hurt.
July 10, 1937. Yesterday, the children were laid down in the Larkspur mausoleum. Gage, Sybil, Eliza, James, and Orion. Rest in peace, children …
POPPY GLANCED UP from the notebook, swallowing back emotion. “Those were the names of the first orphans. The ones who drowned … and who tried to drown us while Cyrus swam to shore.”
Short-haired Azumi sat beside her. “What a monster.” Marcus and the other Azumi sat down a little farther away. Dash continued to wander around the rest of the room, still shaking with anger.
“This next one jumps ahead a few months,” said Poppy, continuing on. “October 1, 1937. Bad memories are returning. Lately, I’ve seen the shadowy thing that haunted my childhood dreams lurking around the grounds. When I try to look at it straight on, it disappears. What does it want from me? I must do something before these thoughts drive me mad.”
“Too late,” Marcus added.
“I saw it this morning,” whispered short-haired Azumi. “Remember? The thing that was chasing Poppy and Marcus across the meadow. It looked like … Well, I don’t have words to describe it.”
“I have words to describe it,” said long-haired Azumi, crossing her arms. “Because I was the one who saw it this morning.”
“Let’s not start this again,” said Poppy, glancing toward Dash, who was looking at a painting hanging in a far corner of the room. “Please. If you want us to trust either of you, just stop it.”
“Sorry,” said long-haired Azumi, slouching. Short-haired Azumi sighed, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off her twin.
“There’s more here,” said Poppy. “A lot more.”
“Tick-tock,” Dash called out, glancing over his shoulder. “Come on, we need to find the next solution and get out!”
Poppy pressed her lips and then went on. “December 31, 1937. To my surprise, my maid, Rhona, brought me the most bizarre gift this afternoon: a page, written in my mother’s hand, with a recipe of some unnamed tincture, which, it seems, is meant to ward off ‘the presence of evil.’”
Poppy looked up. “Now, this is weird,” she said, forcing her voice in Dash’s direction. She continued to read. “The main ingredient is a flower called larkspur, a poisonous plant that grows in the western states, where my father spent his youth. I have decided to write to Aunt Emily and see if she might procure some blossoms in the coming spring.”
“I don’t like this story,” said the short-haired Azumi, scooting closer toward Poppy as if to protect herself from encroaching shadows.
“I don’t either,” said Dash. “Yes, it’s weird. But so is everything in this house.”
“May 31, 1938,” Poppy read. “The recipe worked! Something inside me has changed, and I feel like new. Like my father’s Five-Sided Man, I now ascend when once I fell.” She looked up again. “Five-Sided Man? What’s a Five-Sided Man?” She shook her head. “Why should I give up my dream of helping the unfortunate? I shall reopen the orphanage. I shall find new children. Better children. Larkspur will be reborn! The house will help me. We shall do this together.”
“Better children?” said one of the Azumis. “What does that even mean?”
“I’m not sure,” said Poppy. “But it doesn’t sound good.” She went on. “January 7, 1939. Plans: 1. Seek out similar five. (Types: the Bookish Girl, the Musical Prodigy, the Sleepwalker, the Charismatic Boy, the Mute.) 2. Teach them my new ‘method,’ so that they understand what is to come and how they shall help me. 3. Find masks for them. 4. Keep them from sleep. 5. Reveal their phobias. 6. Deny them reward. 7. Discover boiling points. 8. Force them into PSYCHIC BREAKS.”
“He was the one who had a psychic break,” said Marcus, trembling.
“What did you do, Cyrus?” Poppy continued to stare at the pages as if hypnotized.
“Five-Sided Man,” said Dash, from the edge of the room. “Five-Sided Man! Hey, check out this painting. Looks like it might be a clue to another of Cyrus’s puzzles.”
The painting hung on the wall opposite from the ladder that Marcus had tried to climb, in a five-sided wooden frame. In its center, a man in an old-fashioned tuxedo was falling through an indigo sky, his head pointed toward the bottom of the frame, his legs together and his arms lifted slightly away from his body, palms facing up. His expression was peaceful, as if he was resigned to plummet into infinity.
Poppy glared at Dash. “If we hadn’t read the notebook, we wouldn’t have realized he was important.”
“Well, if I’d sat down and listened to your story,” said Dash, “we wouldn’t have even found the painting.”
“Guys, this isn’t a competition,” said short-haired Azumi. “You know that, right?”
Poppy squinted back at the journal. “Like my father’s Five-Sided Man, I now ascend when once I fell,” she read. She looked at the painting. “Well, it looks like he’s falling here.”
“So maybe we need to make him ascend,” said Marcus.
“How are we supposed to do that?” asked long-haired Azumi. “Paint a new painting?”
“It’s easier than that,” said Poppy, optimism creeping back into her voice. “Cyrus’s puzzles all seem to center around opposites. Hope and fear. Falling and ascension.” She grasped the frame and began to turn it. Something inside the wall began to shiver, the sound of a crank clicking slowly echoing from within. The others watched as the man on the canvas was turned over, his head pointed up instead of down. This simple change in perspective made it seem like he was no longer plummeting into darkness, but rising into the heavens.
“Whoa,” said Dash.
Something rattled behind them. Looking up, the group watched as the hatch at the top of the ladder swung open with a bang. The darkness behind it seemed to inhale slightly as if trying to catch a whiff of them.
“Hello?” Poppy called out. But of course no one answered.
POPPY HURRIEDLY GATHERED each of the Specials’ treasures and Cyrus’s journal into her pink messenger bag—if the Specials turned up again, she’d be ready with the exact thing each of them needed to be set free of Larkspur.
The next floor was windowless and very dark. Dozens of picture frames with blank canvas were propped at the base of the walls, leaning against one another. Glancing around, Poppy noticed a curved metal staircase hugging the circular wall. A small wooden cupboard sat just underneath it. At the top of the steps, an opening revealed a slice of evening sky and a few twinkling stars. Her heart began to pound. The way out!
When she reached the top of the staircase, the horizon stretched all around her, and she realized how very high up she was. Except for a pitched wooden roof overhead, the top of the tower was open to the elements, the sky like an infinite indigo canvas with a smear of lighter blue to the west where the sun had set. A couple of the large picture frames leaned against the stone railing that enclosed the wide platform. The wind whipped Poppy’s hair, and the world began to tilt. To stop herself from toppling over, Poppy grabbed on to the railing. Leaning forward, she saw Larkspur’s roofline a couple of stories below—a series of sharp edges and spires and gables and glass. Catching her breath, she turned back toward the stairs to find that the rest of the group had caught up. The view entranced them all. The early evening light kept everyone in pale shadow. Their faces were like masks.
“I knew we should have gone to the greenhouse to find my sister,” said short-haired Azumi. “You guys really want to climb down out here?”
“N-no,” said Poppy, flustered.
“What was that?” Azumi went quiet. “I thought I heard something.”
“Something?”
“A creak. Hinges. Like a door opening.” She pointed at the stairwell. “Down there.”
The group listened as the steps squealed under the weight of someone approaching.
“This is a dead end,” whispered long-haired Azumi. “The Specials wanted us to come up here!” She shook her head, rubbing at he
r chin as if she could erase the red mark that the other Azumi had given her during the tussle downstairs, and then rushed to the closest railing. “There’s no way down.”
“We’re prepared for them now,” said Poppy, patting her bag and planting her feet.
Squeeeeeee … The stairs shook and rattled, and a shadowed head rose from the stairwell opening. Dash flicked his phone’s light toward the silhouette. A very old man dressed in a ratty suit and dark jacket stared back. He had a sharp chin and prominent brow, sunken cheeks and thin lips, and electric eyes. Electric eye. Half of his face appeared to have been burned, covered by a great scar. His wild hair had turned white.
“Cyrus,” Poppy whispered, her voice a mouse squeak as he swept toward them.
He focused his gaze on her, and his eye glinted with satisfaction. “P-Poppy,” he croaked, his hand twitching as it pointed at her, “you’ve found your way to m-m-me.”
“EVERYBODY … GET BACK!” Marcus shouted, holding out his arms to shield his companions. “We don’t know what he’s capable of.”
To their surprise, the old man laughed. His spine twisted momentarily before straightening again, and he muttered quickly, as if he were trying to block out voices in his head. After a moment, he replied softly, “D-do I look capable of anything anymore?”
He was practically a walking skeleton. Skin sagged from his face as if he were an ancient creature—maybe the oldest man Poppy had ever seen—a frail, fragile, broken thing. Then the letter from her mother flashed into Poppy’s head, like a paper cut across her brain.
“Stop lying to us,” Marcus said. But Cyrus stepped toward the group.
Dash yelled, “Don’t you move!”
Cyrus lifted his palms. “I know what you all must think of me,” he replied. “But I am the only one who knows the way out of this house. And I promise you, I want to help.”
“If you know the way out of this house,” asked Marcus, “then why are you still here?”
“Oh, I can’t leave. I would if I could. But it won’t let me.”
Poppy shivered. “What won’t let you?”
Cyrus squinted, his neck twitching, jerking his skull briefly back and forth. “Y-you already know the answer to that.”
Was this what the “first orphans” had meant to do? wondered Marcus. Send them all into the tower to meet Cyrus? Had they been on his side the whole time? Had he managed to twist them too?
“I cannot tell you that I am a good man,” said Cyrus, “for I am not. I have d-done things—horrid things—things I’d n-never imagined … But you don’t understand that I was under the influence of something far stronger than me.”
“You’re lying!” Marcus cried out again. “Everything you’ve done, you’ve done because you’re—you’re evil!”
“Oh, how I w-wish it were that simple,” Cyrus answered, his eyes growing dark with memory.
We have a job to do, thinks Dylan. We have a job to do. A job to do.
The cat girl finally places three jars on the table, and the cupboard splits in two.
He climbs through the tower, following the masked kids, sensing the others who’ve come before them. There will be a battle. Soon. A job to do …
Voices echo from above. The old man. He’s talking with a different group. Telling them what to do. Giving them their own jobs …
The pain has finally gone away. Dylan is tempted to think about the past, about a brother—does he have a brother?—but he’s learned to not do that anymore. He’s the Trickster. He is the Trickster. Who else would he be? The mask feels tight, and it itches, but he knows now that there’s nothing he can do about that. The others had been right. Best to not fight. Best not to—
The cat girl raises a hand, stopping them at the bottom of the next ladder. Listen, she whispers.
Dylan chuckles, thinking that it’s funny how her voice came from inside his own head.
Listen …
“IT TOOK YEARS of searching,” said Cyrus, “but then, it seemed like I found the new five all at once. M-most of them weren’t even orphans. But that didn’t matter to me. The creature told me that the new children should be similar to the first ones. So I found a way to get them here.”
Poppy interrupted, “What do you mean, the creature?”
Cyrus focused his eye on her, and she cringed away from him. “It’s the … intelligence that rules this place. Everything you’ve seen. Everything you’ve heard. The m-messages, the letters, the articles, the photographs. I had n-nothing to do with any of it.”
Words from the horrible letter sliced through Poppy’s mind. Never loved the child … Don’t let her find me, ever … “You mean, my mother never said those things?”
“The newspaper wasn’t real?” asked Dash.
Cyrus shook his head.
“I want to believe you,” said short-haired Azumi, hands folded, as if trying to look polite. “But after everything we’ve seen”—she glanced at the other Azumi—“how can you expect us to?”
But part of Poppy did believe him.
Cyrus paused for a moment, his breath hitching as if something was choking him. “T-the creature wants to feed on you. On your energy, on your fear. You will keep it alive for the next dozen or so years, until it can lure another five children. It’s a pattern I’ve watched helplessly for decades. It twists your memories and plays with your weaknesses, causing what I once referred to as a psychic break.” His voice wobbled. “W-what I did to those kids … Somehow, I thought I was doing g-good! H-helping them overcome whatever was holding them back!”
Cyrus covered his face and sobbed, his shoulders heaving.
“This is insane,” said long-haired Azumi, grabbing Marcus’s wrist. “How can we believe anything he’s saying?”
“She’s right,” said Marcus. “There’s no way of knowing the truth.”
But Poppy kept her eyes on Cyrus. “Just … let me think.”
“It doesn’t add up,” said Dash. “I think we should—”
“What about my sister?” asked short-haired Azumi. “She’s waiting for us in the greenhouse.”
Long-haired Azumi spat out, “Yeah, like we’re ever going to find our way back—”
“I can prove myself,” said Cyrus. “Y-you all have questions, do you not? L-little things that haven’t added up over the p-past hours. In the elevator, did you not notice that only four of the five Special children appeared from the darkness to attack you? Where was the other one? The g-girl in the chimpanzee mask?”
The group looked at one another, the idea blooming in their heads at once.
“One of you is not who you claim to be,” Cyrus went on. He reached for the long-haired Azumi, who was still rubbing at her chin. She leapt away, and Marcus jumped in front of her. “Don’t go near her!” he shouted at Cyrus, eyes wild.
But before anyone else could move to protect her, Azumi thrust her fist into Cyrus’s chest. He flew backward, stumbling toward the railing as Azumi turned toward the group and smiled, proud of herself.
There was a scrabbling sound as the Specials climbed up to the top of the tower at last.
EMERGING FROM THE stairwell, a girl in a gray uniform and a cat mask stepped toward the group, followed by two more masked figures. Or was it three? Cyrus shouted out as two of the masked children grabbed him, holding him still.
“Azumi?” Marcus whimpered. “How … how did you do that?”
She stared at him, but only continued to smile.
Everyone watched as long-haired Azumi’s eyes seemed to grow and the sides of her mouth began to droop in an exaggerated frown. The girl hitched a breath as a patch of skin crumbled away from her chin, revealing something hard and dark underneath.
Fighting nausea, Poppy covered her mouth. Marcus leaned against the railing, his mind reeling, horrified by the girl’s sudden transformation.
Soon, the gray patch had spread across the girl’s face. Her skin cracked, like broken papier-mâché, and then began to rain to the floor in small clumps. The
breeze whipped pieces of it away, off the roof.
A glass vial filled with a dark liquid dropped to the floor with a clink.
“Esme,” whispered Poppy. A girl in a chimp mask glared back at them.
Marcus moaned as if someone had just punched him in the stomach.
“I was telling you the truth, Marcus,” said Azumi—the real Azumi—wiping away angry tears. “She was the one who lied.”
Poppy stammered, unable to form thoughts. There was something she had to do … Her bag! Shaking, she dug through the items from the filing cabinet. Her hand brushed against hard candies, the soft leather football, and the spine of a spiral notebook. Esme’s notebook. “Azumi!” Poppy cried, pulling the notebook from the bag. “Catch!” And then she threw the book across the landing.
Azumi caught it, clapping it between her palms and holding it away from herself awkwardly. “What do I do with it?” she asked.
Cyrus let out a yelp as the Specials dragged him along the railing. Poppy stepped forward, reaching out to him as if she could help, but Matilda jumped out and swiped at her. Irving climbed onto Cyrus’s back, swinging the chains that joined his ankles up around the old man’s torso. Cyrus grunted, struggling to stand upright as Aloysius shoved at his chest again and again.
Esme threw back her head and laughed. Then she lunged at Marcus. He dodged her and then cried out, “Poppy! Help!” To his shock, Poppy rushed toward Cyrus instead. “Poppy!” Esme clutched his jacket.
Poppy grasped at Aloysius’s rabbit mask, but he shook her off. She fell back and Aloysius landed a blow that doubled Cyrus over. Irving fell to the floor.
Furious, Marcus yanked himself out of Esme’s grip and rolled closer to the corner where Azumi stood, frozen.
