The House of the Scorpion

by Nancy Farmer

  “This is worse,” Tom said. “Remember that Halloween when you thought the chupacabras was outside and Matt put chicken guts in your bed?”

  “I did not! It was you!” cried Matt.

  “You put your hand right in it,” said Tom, ignoring Matt, “and screamed your head off.”

  “That was so evil,” María said.

  “I didn’t do it!” protested Matt.

  “Well, this is worse,” gloated Tom. “I don’t know if you have the—pardon the expression—guts for it.”

  “She doesn’t,” said Matt.

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” María got a mulish look in her eyes and Matt’s heart sank. He knew Tom was up to something foul, but he hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

  “Come on. He’s only trying to start trouble.” Matt tried to grab María’s hand, but she yanked her arm away.

  “Listen.” Tom opened the door leading from the waiting room to the rest of the hospital. Matt’s stomach hit rock bottom. He had bad memories of some of those rooms.

  Tom’s face glowed with joy. It was then, Matt had discovered, he was most dangerous. As Tam Lin said, if you didn’t know Tom well, you’d think he was an angel bringing you the keys to the pearly gates.

  In the distance they heard a mewling sound. It went on for a moment, stopped, and began again.

  “Is that a cat?” said María.

  If it is, it isn’t yowling for milk, Matt thought. There was a level of terror and despair in that sound that made the hair stand up on his neck. This time he did grab María’s hand.

  “They’re doing experiments on cats!” María cried suddenly. “Oh, please! You’ve got to help me rescue them!”

  “We’d better ask permission first,” said Matt. He was deeply unwilling to go beyond that door.

  “No one’s going to give us permission,” María stormed. “Don’t you see? Adults don’t see anything wrong with those experiments. We have to take the cats away—Dada will help me—and the doctors won’t even know where they’ve gone.”

  “They’ll only get more.” Matt felt cold as he listened to the sound going on and on.

  “That’s the dodge people always use! Don’t help anyone. They’ll only find more Illegals to enslave or poor people to starve or—or cats to torture.” María was working herself into a state. Matt despaired of getting her to listen to reason.

  “Look, we should ask your dada first—” he began.

  “I won’t listen to that cat suffer one more instant! Are you with me or not? If not, I’m going by myself!”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Tom.

  That decided Matt. There was no way he was letting Tom take María by herself to see whatever horror he had stashed away.

  María strode down the hall, but she slowed the closer they got to the cries. Matt still held her hand. It was cold and sweaty, or maybe his hand was. The sound wasn’t exactly like a cat. It wasn’t like anything Matt had heard before, but there was no mistaking the anguish in it. Sometimes it rose almost to a shriek and then faded, as though whatever was making the noise was exhausted.

  They arrived at the door. It was closed, and cravenly, Matt hoped it was locked.

  It wasn’t.

  Tom threw it open. Matt could hardly register what lay on the bed before them. It rolled its eyes and thrashed helplessly in the straps that restrained it. Its mouth opened in a horrible O when it saw the children, and it screamed louder than Matt thought possible. It screamed until it ran out of air, then it wheezed until it didn’t have the strength to do that anymore, and then it lay there panting and gasping.

  “It’s a boy,” whispered María.

  It was. Only at first Matt thought it was some kind of beast, so alien and terrible was its face. It had doughy, unhealthy skin and red hair that stuck up in bristles. It seemed never to have been in the sun, and its hands were twisted like claws above the straps that held it down. It was dressed in green hospital pajamas, but these had been befouled by its terror. Worst of all was the terrible energy that rolled through the trapped body. The creature never stopped moving. It was as though invisible snakes were rippling beneath the skin and forcing its arms and legs to move in a ceaseless bid for freedom.

  “It’s not a boy,” Tom said scornfully. “It’s a clone.”

  Matt felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach. He’d never seen another clone. He’d only felt the weight of hatred humans had for such things. He hadn’t understood it because, after all, clones were like dogs and cats, and humans loved them. If he’d thought about it at all, he had assumed he was a pet, only a very intelligent one.

  Matt became aware that María no longer held his hand. She’d shrunk against Tom, and he had his arm around her. The creature—clone—had regained its energy and was screaming again. Something about the children terrified it, or perhaps it was terrified all the time. Its tongue protruded from its mouth and drooled saliva down its chin.

  “Whose—?” whispered María.

  “MacGregor’s. He’s a real wreck—his liver’s all eaten up with alcohol,” said Tom in a casual, chatty way. “Mom says he looks like something the Grim Reaper forgot to pick up.”

  Mom, thought Matt. Felicia.

  “Are they going to—?” said María.

  “Tonight,” Tom said.

  “I can’t bear to look at him!” wailed María. “I don’t want to think about it!” Tom pulled her away, and Matt knew he was enjoying every minute of this.

  “Shall I leave you two alone together?” Tom inquired from the doorway.

  Matt had trouble tearing his eyes away from the thing on the bed. There was no way he could be the same sort of being as that creature. It wasn’t possible! The creature opened its mouth to make another horrible scream, and Matt suddenly knew who it looked like.

  It resembled MacGregor, of course, because it was his clone, but MacGregor was an adult with differences that made it hard to see the connection. It was a lot closer to—close enough to show a kinship with—“It looks like you,” Matt said to Tom.

  “You wish! You wish!” yelled Tom, dropping his cheerful grin.

  “Look, María. It has the same red hair and ears.”

  But she refused to look up. “Take me out of here,” she moaned with her face buried in Tom’s shirt.

  “I’m not like that thing!” shouted Matt. “Use your eyes!”

  He tried to pull her from Tom, and she shrieked, “Don’t touch me! I don’t want to think about it!”

  Matt was beside himself with frustration. “You wanted to come down here to rescue a cat. Well, look at this! It needs rescuing!”

  “No, no, no,” whimpered María. She was in a state of utter panic. “Take me away!” she wailed.

  Tom hurried her down the hall. He glanced back with a look of savage triumph, and Matt had to clench his teeth very hard to keep from running after them and pounding Tom to within an inch of his life. It wouldn’t do María any good. It wouldn’t do Matt any good either, except to convince her he really was a beast.

  Their footsteps died away. Matt stood for a moment in the hallway, listening to the mewling of the thing on the bed. Then he closed the door and followed them.

  13

  THE LOTUS POND

  Matt had to talk to someone. He had to do something to keep from howling like a dog at the horror of it all. He wasn’t a clone! He couldn’t be! Somehow, somewhere a mistake had been made. Words he’d overheard from the doctor came back to him: Clones go to pieces when they get older. Was that going to happen to him? Was he going to end up strapped to a bed, screaming until he ran out of air?

  Tam Lin was with El Patrón, and not even Matt was allowed into that heavily guarded part of the house without permission. He ran to the kitchen instead. Celia took one look at his face and hung up her apron. “Finish the soup for me, would you?” she told a junior cook. She took Matt’s hand and said, “Let’s take the afternoon off, chico. The Alacráns can eat their shoes for dinner for all I car
e.”

  Alone of all the servants, Celia could and did insult the Alacráns whenever she felt like it. Not to their faces, of course, but she was less servile in their presence than the others. She, like Matt, was protected by El Patrón.

  Celia said nothing more until they were inside her apartment with the door closed. “Okay. Something bad happened,” she said. “Is María still mad?”

  Matt didn’t know where to begin.

  “If you say you’re sorry, she’ll forgive you,” Celia said. “She’s a good kid.”

  “I did apologize,” Matt managed to say.

  “And she wouldn’t accept it. Well, that happens sometimes. Sometimes we have to grovel to show we really mean it.”

  “That isn’t it.”

  Celia pulled him onto her lap, something she rarely did now that he was older, and held him tightly. Matt’s reserve snapped. He sobbed uncontrollably, clinging to her, terrified she would push him away.

  “Hey, María won’t hold a grudge. You have to make her a list of who she’s mad at, ’cause she doesn’t remember more than half an hour.” Celia rocked Matt back and forth, all the while murmuring comforting words he could hardly take in. All he sensed was the music of her voice, the warmth of her arms, the fact that she was there.

  Finally, he calmed enough to tell her everything that had happened in the hospital.

  For a moment Celia sat perfectly still. She didn’t even breathe. “That . . . little . . . creep,” she said at last.

  Matt looked up anxiously. Her face had turned pale and her eyes stared into the far distance. “Tom is MacGregor’s son, you know,” said Celia. “I shouldn’t tell you these things at your age, but nobody gets a decent childhood in the Alacrán household. They’re all scorpions. Boy, did El Patrón have it right when he picked the name.”

  “How can Tom be MacGregor’s son? Felicia’s married to Mr. Alacrán.”

  Celia laughed bitterly. “Marriage doesn’t mean much to this crowd. Felicia ran off with MacGregor, oh, years ago. I guess she got bored hanging around here. Only it didn’t work out. El Patrón had her brought back—he doesn’t like people taking his possessions—and MacGregor let him do it. Felicia was beginning to bore him.

  “Mr. Alacrán was very, very angry because he didn’t want her back, but El Patrón didn’t care. Mr. Alacrán doesn’t talk to her anymore. He won’t even look at her. She’s a prisoner in this house, and the servants supply her with all the booze she can handle. Which is a lot, let me tell you.”

  “What about Tom?” Matt urged.

  “Tom showed up about six months after she returned.”

  Matt felt slightly better after learning this information. It pleased him that Felicia was in disgrace, but he still had questions. He steeled himself to ask the most important one. “What’s wrong with MacGregor’s clone?”

  Celia looked around nervously. “I’m not supposed to talk to you about this. You weren’t supposed to know about him.”

  “But I do know,” Matt said.

  “Yes. Yes. That’s Tom’s doing. You don’t understand, mi vida. All of us have been warned not to talk about clones. We don’t always know who might be listening.” Again Celia looked around, and Matt remembered what Tam Lin had told him about hidden cameras in the house.

  “If you tell me, it’ll be Tom’s fault,” Matt said.

  “That’s true. I really don’t see how I can avoid explaining after what you’ve seen.”

  “So what’s wrong with MacGregor’s clone?”

  “His . . . brain has been destroyed.”

  Matt sat up straight when he heard that.

  “When clones are born, they’re injected with a kind of drug. It turns them into idiots,” said Celia. She wiped her eyes with her apron.

  “Why?”

  “It’s the law. Don’t ask me why. I can’t tell you.”

  “But I wasn’t injected,” Matt said.

  “El Patrón didn’t want it to happen to you. He’s powerful enough to break the law.”

  Matt was filled with gratitude for the old man who had spared him such a terrible fate. Matt could read and write, climb hills, play music, and do anything a real human might do—all because El Patrón loved him. “Are there any others like me?” he asked.

  “No. You’re the only one,” Celia said.

  The only one! He was unique. He was special. Matt’s heart swelled with pride. If he wasn’t human, he might become something even better. Better than Tom, who was an embarrassment to the family. Then a horrible thought occurred to him. “They won’t—the doctors won’t—inject me later?”

  Celia hugged him again. “No, darling. You’re safe from that. You’re safe for as long as you live.” She was crying, although Matt couldn’t understand why. Perhaps she was afraid because she had said something in front of the hidden cameras.

  Matt felt limp with relief. He was exhausted by all that had happened and he yawned broadly.

  “Take a nap, mi vida,” said Celia. “I’ll bring you something nice from the kitchen later.” She led him to his bedroom, turned on the air conditioner, and closed the curtains.

  Matt stretched out under the sheet and let a delicious sense of ease sweep over him. So much had happened: the disastrous party, the sinister hospital, MacGregor’s clone. Matt felt hurt that María had run from him after seeing the thing on the bed. He would seek her out later and show her that he was completely different.

  As Matt drifted to sleep, he pondered why MacGregor would want a clone when he had a son. It was probably because Tom had been taken away from him by El Patrón. And because Tom was an unnatural little weevil no father would like to have around.

  But then, Matt thought hazily, why replace him with a horribly damaged clone?

  • • •

  María refused to talk to Matt. She hid in her father’s apartment or managed to be with a group of people every time he saw her. But Matt had faith in María’s intelligence. If he could get her alone and explain how he was different from all other clones, she would understand.

  MacGregor was back from his operation. He still looked—as Felicia put it—like something the Grim Reaper forgot to collect, but he was getting better all the time. He and El Patrón sat in adjoining wheelchairs and cackled over old memories—rivals they had destroyed and governments they had overthrown.

  “Got me a new liver,” MacGregor said, patting his stomach, “and went in for a set of kidneys while I was at it.” He gazed at Matt with those bright blue eyes that were so much like Tom’s. Matt thought he was disgusting. He couldn’t wait for the man to go home.

  María would be leaving for boardingschool soon. Matt realized he had to act now. As he watched her across the garden, playing tag at a slow pace because she had Furball in her side bag, the solution came to him. María didn’t have the dog with her all the time. Now and then Senator Mendoza banished him to the bathroom in their apartment. What if Matt stole the animal and sent her a ransom note?

  There was a pump house by the lotus pond. It was concealed by a giant wisteria vine and reasonably cool inside. Matt could hide Furball there. But how could he keep the dog from yapping? Even a spider swinging down on its web sent the animal into hysterics.

  He won’t bark if he’s asleep, Matt thought.

  • • •

  Matt had spent a lot of time in the secret passage behind the music room. He liked to pretend he was a superhero creeping up on his enemies. He’d replaced El Látigo Negro as his hero with Don Segundo Sombra—Sir Second Shadow—an international spy. The Black Whip was for kids, but the Don did adult things like drive race cars and parachute out of jet planes. An even better hero was El Sacerdote Volante, the Flying Priest. The Flying Priest bombarded demons with holy water that ate holes in their scaly hides.

  One of the closets reachable from the secret passage belonged to Felicia. It was full, top to bottom, with liquor. More interesting—and useful now—was a shelf of small bottles with eyedroppers. They contained laudanum. Ma
tt knew all about laudanum, having studied the opium business as part of his regular homework. Laudanum was opium dissolved in alcohol, and it was very strong. Three drops in a glass of fruit juice would knock you out for eight hours. Felicia had enough stored in her closet to knock out an entire city. It explained why she was so dopey all the time.

  Matt waited until he saw her dozing on a lawn chair, and then he hurried through the secret passage and stole one of the small bottles.

  • • •

  The lotus pond was one of a dozen pools of water in the vast gardens of the house. It was deserted in summer because it had little shade. Ibises, with wings clipped to keep them from flying away, stalked through papyrus grass and hunted frogs under the lily pads. It was El Patrón’s idea of an ancient Egyptian garden. The walls enclosing the place were painted with stiff figures of ancient gods.

  Matt pushed aside the wisteria and went into the pump house. It was dark and damp. He made a bed for Furball out of empty sacks and filled a bowl with water.

  He stepped outside and froze. Tom was on his hands and knees at the other end of the garden. His back was turned, and he was absorbed in watching something on the lawn. Matt eased carefully out of the wisteria. He moved quietly through the papyrus to sneak back into the house.

  An ibis rose from the grass. It flapped its mutilated wings and blundered across the pond.

  Tom jumped up. “You! What are you doing here?”

  “Watching you,” Matt said coolly.

  “Well, it’s none of your business! Get back to your part of the house!”

  “All parts of the house are mine,” said Matt. He looked past Tom and saw a frog on the lawn. Its hind legs had been nailed to the ground, and it flopped frantically, trying to escape. “You’re disgusting!” Matt said. He went over and freed the frog’s feet. The creature threw itself into the water.

  “I was only doing a science project,” said Tom.

  “Oh, sure. Even María wouldn’t believe that.”

  Tom’s face flushed with rage, and Matt braced himself for a fight; but just as suddenly the anger drained away, as though it had never been there. Matt shivered. It bothered him when Tom made a lightning shift like that. It was like watching a crocodile submerge in a nature movie. You knew the crocodile was planning an attack, but you didn’t know when.