Van pelted down the staircase after it.
The air grew colder. The smoky, spicy scent grew stronger. The darkness coming from below seemed to rise up around him, swirling over his skin as lightly as mist.
The next archway gaped ahead of him like a waiting mouth. In the stones above the arch were the words THE CALENDAR. Van darted inside.
The room he entered was busier than the one above. It was as large as the Atlas, with the same arched ceiling and stone walls, but it was filled with bookshelves: rows and rows and rows of them. Dark-coated people bustled between the shelves, taking books down, putting them back. To Van, it looked a lot more like a library than a calendar—but as he crept between two shelves, he noticed that all the books were the same. Every single one of them was a large, plain volume bound in black leather. They would have been completely identical, except for the delicate markings on their spines. Van skimmed the nearest row. May 11—Da. May 11—Dal. May 11—De.
Van was just about to grab one of the books when a pale, puffy flash snagged his eye. He peered through the shelves.
The girl with the squirrel was hurrying up the next aisle.
Van scurried sideways, keeping her in view. Yes, it was definitely her, with the mossy eyes and sloppy ponytail. The girl strode toward the far end of the room, where a man sat behind a huge wooden desk. Van scuttled after her, peeping out around the edge of a shelf.
The man at the huge desk had long, iron-gray hair and delicate features. He spoke. The girl answered. The man bent to scribble something in one of the big black books, and Van caught sight of a tiny, sleeping bat dangling upside down from the man’s right earlobe. The girl said something else—Van thought he heard the words ray or wait and birthday or worthy—and the man said something like very good, and the girl whirled around and darted away.
Van turned to follow her, but a line of people in long black coats had begun to fill the room. He ducked and dodged to stay out of sight. By the time he reached the archway, the girl had raced down to the next flight of stairs.
Van paused on the landing.
It was cold and dark already. Deeper down, it could only be worse. Van clenched his hands. What would SuperVan do?
SuperVan would go on. He would streak straight down those steps and never stop until he’d learned all there was to learn, and given all the help there was to give.
Van went on too.
The air grew colder and colder. The darkness thickened, pasting itself to his face like mud.
Van didn’t like the dark. Because he couldn’t hear everything there was to hear, he liked seeing all there was to see. And he often saw things that other people didn’t. Usually this balanced things out. But in darkness, he felt unsafe and small, like SuperVan stripped of all his powers.
And there were things here, in the dark. He could feel them. Small black shapes—birds or bats or something else—flitted and skittered around him. Once, he was sure he felt a wing brush the side of his neck, and a moment later, something with long, thin legs seemed to be crawling over his hair. But when he swatted at it with one hand, there was nothing there.
At first, when the sound began, Van thought his imagination was playing another trick on him. But the sound grew louder and louder until it couldn’t possibly be only inside his mind.
It was a huge, rumbling, horrible sound. It was a roar. A howl. It made the walls shiver. Van could feel the sound thrumming into the soles of his feet. He couldn’t tell what was making it, but whatever it was seemed to be far, far below.
His entire body—toes, knees, spine, stomach—all wanted to turn around and bolt back up the staircase, away from that sound and the cold and the dark. But Van held on to the banister. He took deep breaths. He had nearly steadied himself enough to take another step when, from ahead of him, there came a blast of silvery light.
Van squinted. Another archway stood before him. It was twice as wide and twice as tall as the openings above. And over the arch were two words that made Van’s skin prickle from head to toe.
THE COLLECTION.
Van flew down the rest of the steps and through the archway. The blast of silvery light was already dimming—because, as Van saw, it came through a pair of massive wooden doors, which were quickly swinging shut. And disappearing between those doors was a silhouette.
The silhouette of a girl with a squirrel on her shoulder.
Without giving his brain the chance to think twice, Van raced after her, straight through the closing double doors.
8
The Collection
BEYOND the doors was the largest chamber yet.
It was so large that it made the other chambers look tiny. It was larger than any cathedral or concert hall Van had ever seen. Its stone floor dwindled away into the distance like a narrowing carpet. Its walls were so high that they seemed to lean inward. Its ceiling, instead of being arched stone like the others, was a mosaic of glass shards, which let in a wash of silvery light. Its size and its light, shot through with the smells of metal and spice and smoke, were dizzying.
Van forced his eyes to focus. The towering walls were filled with shelves: rows and rows and rows of shelves, rising all the way up to the ceiling. Ladders and scaffolds and spiraling iron staircases chased the shelves upward, metal rungs twisting and crisscrossing like spiders’ threads. People in dark coats bustled up and down the ladders. More people filled the floor below, scribbling in ledgers, making notes on string-tied paper tags, knotting or pasting labels onto glass bottles of all sizes, shapes, and colors.
Because that was what filled the shelves.
Bottles.
Green and turquoise and indigo bottles. Bottles that sparkled. Bottles that were thick with dust. Bottles as large as milk jugs; bottles small enough to fit inside a closed mouth. Their glitter was dazzling. But Van couldn’t make out what was sealed inside.
And there wasn’t time to get closer. The girl with the squirrel was rushing toward the center of the room.
Van hurried after her, ducking for cover behind stairs and ladders. None of the dark-coated people seemed to notice him. As Van watched from behind a spiral staircase, the girl made her way toward a high podium, where a spectacled man the size and shape of an emperor penguin was scribbling in a massive book.
The girl stopped at the podium. The little man nodded. The girl passed something small and soft and silvery to a dark-coated woman at a table to the right. The woman slipped the silvery thing into a blue glass bottle. A man beside her tied a tag to the bottle’s neck. A third person, a woman with what looked like an opossum draped around her collar, grabbed the bottle and hurried toward the back of the massive room.
Van scurried sideways, keeping the bottle in sight. He skirted a mound of tarnished pennies that covered a patch of the stone floor, and a pile of what looked like small, shattered bones, and watched as the woman set the bottle on a low shelf. Van waited until she had hurried away again. Then he lunged.
The bottles on the shelf before him were small, about the size of his hand. Some were tinted with color, some were icily clear; some were spotless, and some were muffled with blankets of dust. The emerald-green bottles were shaped like mason jars, and each of them held something that glowed like a small golden coal. The tag dangling from one green bottle read, in faded black ink, Elizabeth O’Connell. August 12, 1900. Perseid meteor shower. Even through the thick layer of dust, Van could see the golden coal glowing inside.
But Van was looking for a different bottle.
And there it was. On the edge of the shelf just in front of him stood a small, sparkling, indigo-blue bottle. A silver wisp spun gently inside.
Van read its paper tag. Then he read it again, making sure the words and numbers were still there.
Peter Grey. April 8. Twelfth birthday.
Van’s memory replayed the last moments of the party. The spaceship cake. Peter blowing out the candles. The squirrel with the silvery wisp in its teeth.
Van stretched his fingers toward the b
ottle, and the silvery wisp spun faster.
It was like the raised arm of the spaceman buried in the park. It was like every other forgotten, ignored little object that Van had found and saved. It was waiting for him.
With such small motions that only someone watching closely would notice them at all, Van grabbed the bottle and slipped it into his pocket, along with the miniature china squirrel.
The weight of a hand landed on Van’s shoulder.
“What are you doing?” said a voice in his ear.
Van whirled to the right.
No one was there.
No one but a silvery, tufty-tailed squirrel, who was perched on Van’s shoulder, watching him with bright eyes.
“What?” Van whispered.
The squirrel blinked. “What?”
“Did you just say, ‘What are you doing’?”
“Maybe. Probably.” The squirrel’s eyes coasted past Van’s face and landed on a sparkling bottle. “Ooh, blue! Blue’s my favorite color. And green. And brown. And pink. And blue. Ooh, look! Blue!”
Van held his breath. His whole body trembled. He wasn’t sure which thing was more impossible—that the squirrel had just talked to him, or that he had heard it speak so clearly that its voice seemed to come from inside his own head.
“Am I imagining this?” Van kept his voice to a whisper. “Like I imagined hearing the squirrel in my pocket?”
The squirrel on his shoulder looked surprised. “You have a squirrel in your pocket?”
“I—”
“Which one? Cornelius? He’s small. Or Elizabetta? Or Barnavelt? Wait. No. I’m Barnavelt. Is it Cornelius?”
“Are you . . . ,” breathed Van. “Are you actually talking?”
“I’m not talking. You’re listening.” The squirrel cocked his head. His tiny nose quivered. “Do you smell popcorn?”
“What?”
“Maybe somebody wished for popcorn. I love popcorn.” The squirrel’s eyes focused on Van again. “Hey! What are you doing with that bottle?”
Van put a telltale hand over his pocket. “What bottle?”
“The one in your pocket. With Cornelius.”
“Oh. I . . .” Van stammered. “It belongs to a friend of mine. Kind of. I’m just keeping it safe for him.”
“But Pebble said—” The squirrel’s body stiffened. “Hawk!” he screamed, lunging inside Van’s collar.
Van glanced up. A broad-winged bird coasted over them, its shadow dimming the rows of bright glass.
The squirrel waited until the hawk was out of sight. “I don’t like hawks,” he whispered, inching back out onto Van’s shoulder. Then his body stiffened again. “Hey! Pebble!”
Van spun around, ready to duck from any little rocks that were flying in their direction.
Behind him stood the girl with the ponytail.
Her mouth hung open. Her mossy penny eyes were wide.
“Pebble!” the squirrel gushed. “It’s so good to see you! It’s been ages!”
Pebble didn’t answer. She just stared at Van. Van stared back. They stared at each other for so long that Barnavelt grew distracted and started loudly grooming his paws.
“What are you doing here?” Pebble finally asked.
“What are you doing here?” Van blurted, at the very same second. “What are all of you doing here? Why are you collecting old pennies and smoke from birthday candles?”
Pebble’s eyes grew even wider. Over her shoulder, Van spotted a man at the podium pulling a handful of coins out of his pocket. As he raised the coins one by one, a round, glimmering light emerged between the man’s fingertips, as though it had come from within the coin itself. There was a greenish flicker as the man passed the tiny lights to another man, who slipped each one into a pale blue bottle and sealed the top with a cork. Then the first man tossed the coins onto the pile and strode away.
“I’m pretty sure I smell popcorn,” said a small voice in Van’s ear. “Does anyone else smell popcorn?”
“No, Barnavelt,” said Pebble and Van at the same time.
Pebble’s eyebrows shot up. Van sucked in a breath. Before he could move or speak or even think of what to ask next, Pebble’s hand lashed out and grabbed his arm.
“You need to get out of here right now,” she growled. Then, still holding tight to Van’s arm, she shot toward the double doors.
“Why?” Van asked as Pebble dragged him toward the doorway, Barnavelt still clinging to his shoulder. “Why can’t I be here?”
“Because someone could see you,” Pebble hissed. “I can’t believe they haven’t already.”
“What would happen if they saw me?”
“I don’t know.” Pebble yanked him through the doors, into the dark of the staircase. “But it would be bad.”
Van stumbled up the steps behind her. “Would they hurt me?”
Pebble paused in a way that made Van’s stomach twist. Then she climbed faster, mumbling something he couldn’t hear.
“Yeah! Come on!” cheered the squirrel on Van’s shoulder. “Giddyup!”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Van, which was almost not a lie. The thought of the bottle in his pocket made his stomach twist again. “I just looked.”
“That’s bad enough!” said Pebble, her voice echoing in the dimness. “. . . Supposed to see any of this!”
“Why not? What are you . . .”
But the rest of Van’s words were lost in a rising roar.
The same terrible sound he’d heard before came crashing up from below, filling the darkness and the inside of Van’s head until everything rang. The steps beneath his feet began to shake. Van ripped his arm out of Pebble’s grasp and grabbed the stone banister. It was trembling too. Van squeezed his eyes shut and held on tight.
Finally, with smaller and smaller tremors, the sound died away. The chilly air went still.
Van pried his hands off the banister. He looked up at Pebble, standing just beside him. “What was that?”
Pebble blinked. “What was what?”
“That sound.”
“What sound?”
“You have to have heard it. That sound. That huge, roaring, howling sound!”
Van looked from Pebble to Barnavelt. The squirrel stared back at him. Then it took a flying leap toward Pebble’s shoulder.
“I think it’s coming from below us.” Van craned over the banister. Darkness fell away beneath him, endless and empty. “Are we above a train tunnel or something? Or is there some giant animal down there?”
Pebble’s voice sounded funnily strained. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That sound,” said Van, exasperated now. “I felt it. I—”
He whirled back toward Pebble.
But it wasn’t just Pebble anymore.
A knot of people in long, dark coats surrounded them.
Someone grabbed his arm. Van glanced up, straight into the eyes of a large black bird.
The bird was perched on the shoulder of a big man with dark eyes and long black hair. The man wore a coat covered with straps and hooks and small leather bags. Just below his collarbone, a vicious-looking knife gleamed in a sheath.
He lifted Van by two handfuls of his shirt.
“Little boy.” The man’s voice was deep and hard. “You have made a serious mistake.”
9
A Serious Mistake
VAN had never climbed stairs so quickly.
Of course, he wasn’t really climbing them now. Several hands were locked around his arms, and several other hands grasped his collar, and all the hands hauled him up the steps, across the next landing, and into the Calendar, with its big black books. Van caught a last flash of Pebble and Barnavelt before the crowd closed around him. He tried to think of something to say, something that would fix everything, but words scrambled out of his reach like the pigeons scuttling out of their way.
The crowd dragged him to the center of the big stone chamber. Everyone was speaking at once. Van heard something like ord
inary boy and someone shouting couldn’t find his way and the big man with the raven on his shoulder snarling something about including or intruding, danger or dagger. The crowd grew even thicker, and the noise of the arguing voices grew louder, and Van felt himself sinking down into a tarry, sticky blackness where there was nothing to hold on to anymore.
He closed his eyes. The voices faded.
Van started to hum to himself. It was a little tune without words that he had made up years ago. He thought of it as SuperVan’s theme. Now he hummed it just loudly enough that it filled the inside of his own head.
Dun da-dun DUNNN . . . dun da-dunnn . . .
The plugged-out voices shouted at one other. Van felt something with paws and whiskers sniffing at his cheek, and something smooth and furry rubbing at his shins, and then a sudden bump on his shoulder as two grown-ups started shoving at each other.
“Enough!” boomed a voice.
Someone grabbed him by the shirt once more.
Van opened his eyes. The big man’s face loomed in front of him. The raven on his shoulder twitched its wings.
“No more discussion!” the man shouted over the crowd. “I’m taking him down to the Hold!”
“Loosen your grip, Jack,” said a deep, clear voice.
The crowd hushed. Van, dangling from the big man’s fists, couldn’t see where the voice was coming from, but in the silence, he could hear every one of its words.
“He must weigh all of fifty pounds,” the deep, calm voice went on.
“Fifty-seven,” squeaked Van.
“Fifty-seven pounds,” the deep voice repeated. “Do you really think he’s going to break free?”
“Freee!” the raven squalled. “Seeee!”
“He sees us,” said the man called Jack. “He got down here without any of us noticing him. What is he?”
“I don’t know,” said the deep, clear voice. “Why don’t we let him tell us? Now, loosen your grip, Jack.”
Very, very slowly, Van felt himself being lowered back to the floor. Jack’s fists released his shirt. Van staggered backward, disoriented by the swirl of voices and bodies, and took his first good look around.
The Collectors Page 4
