The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street

by Lauren Oliver

  They had to.

  “How will we get in?” Elizabeth whispered.

  “The guard said that Plancke is expecting his publisher today,” Cordelia said. Somewhere in that beautiful prison of stone and marble, a terrible plot had taken root, spreading poisonous ideas about monsters and men. “I say we go along for the ride.”

  Breakfast was a bag of old pretzels, bartered from a baker selling down by the docks for one of Elizabeth’s hairpins, which she no longer needed. It was very cold in the trees, especially when the wind picked up. But the overhanging evergreens kept them nicely concealed.

  Around noon, they heard the rattle of an approaching carriage, and a muffled shout from the guardhouse. Cordelia stood up quickly, trying to stamp the feeling back into her toes. She knew from the size of the coach, and the sleekness of the horses pulling it, that this must be Plancke’s visitor from the publishing house.

  “Come on,” she said, as the driver slowed outside the gates. “Now’s our chance.”

  As the guards busied themselves with the padlock, and heaving open the heavy iron gates, Cordelia, Gregory, and Elizabeth—each of them holding tight to one of the monsters—sprinted the short distance to the carriage and ducked beneath the rear boot just before the driver cracked his whip to urge the horses forward again. Clinging tight to the leather thoroughbraces that girded the underside of the carriage, squeezed together between the enormous hammered wheels, they scuttled forward with the motion of the horses, passing straight through the gates and leaving the guardhouse behind.

  Soon the drive twisted sharply around a stand of thick fir trees, taking them out of view of the guardhouse. At a silent gesture from Cordelia, all three of them released their hold on the thoroughbraces and let the carriage roll on without them up the hill to the main entrance. They ducked into the trees, being careful to avoid the crunchy bits of snow that might betray their presence, scouting for a secondary entrance.

  The shadow of the mansion soon engulfed them, and they were close enough to see the coach release its sole passenger—a plump little man who looked exactly like an overgrown baby, stuffed into a two-small suit and given a cigar for a pacifier.

  Suddenly, Elizabeth hissed in a breath. “That’s him,” she said. “Newton-Plancke. Coming down the stairs.”

  A shiver of dread moved down Cordelia’s spine. Newton-Plancke’s face looked vaguely familiar—she had, she thought, seen him before in the newspapers her father occasionally used for the pixies’ bedding—although from a distance it was difficult to make out more than the impression of a normal man, pulled like a length of taffy into the longest, thinnest person Cordelia had ever seen. His face was long. His nose was long. His mouth was long, and played drooping support to a long mustache and an even longer beard. His neck and arms and fingers were long. His legs, too. She was reminded, as he jogged down the stairs to greet his visitor, of the jointed appendages of a spider.

  Plancke exchanged a few words with the new arrival and disappeared inside. A moment later, Cordelia saw the lights come on in what she assumed was a drawing room. They must have settled down in the part of the estate that served as Plancke’s private residence, because signs at the top of the drive pointed museum visitors to the wing on the opposite side of the building.

  “Let’s see if we can find a way in through the museum,” she said. “That’s where he’ll be showing the monsters, anyway.”

  Luckily, the estate was stippled with trees and greenhouses, miniature follies and fountains, and statues dedicated to the achievements of previous Newton-Planckes (most of them invented, Cordelia was sure), so they had no shortage of hiding places as they made their way across the estate.

  “I didn’t know that Roger Newton-Plancke patented the steam engine,” Elizabeth whispered, as they ducked behind an enormous statue of yet another long and evil-looking ancestor squeezing a miniature train in one triumphant fist.

  “That’s because he didn’t,” Cordelia whispered back. “Any more than Elliot Newton-Plancke invented the sock. Now come on.”

  To their relief, there were no guards posted at the entrance of the museum, although another sign indicated its closure to the public.

  But the doors were, unsurprisingly, locked.

  “What now?” Elizabeth said, with a huff of frustration that flushed her freckles green.

  Cordelia shook her head. The lower windows were barred, and she saw no way up to the upper floors. Icky could climb, of course. . . . But what would he do once he got inside, if he got inside? He would likely follow the smell of food to the kitchens, or get hysterical and knock down some priceless exhibit.

  Gregory was bent double, puzzling over the lock. “This one’s fiddly for picking,” he muttered. “Too bad we don’t have a torch. . . .” Then he straightened up suddenly, eyes flashing. “That’s it. That’s how we get in. We’ll torch the lock. Flimsy bit of metal like that, shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.”

  “But we don’t have a torch,” Elizabeth said testily. “You said so yourself.”

  He gave her a smirk that Elizabeth herself couldn’t have beaten. “True. But we got a dragon.” And he plucked the dragon from Cordelia’s shoulder, gave him a tickle, and neatly ducked the trajectory of fire.

  The lock was melted, and the doors opened within seconds.

  Just like that, Gregory, Cordelia, and Elizabeth were inside Byron Newton-Plancke’s Museum of Natural and Unnatural History.

  Chapter 29

  They stood for a second in the foyer, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dark. An empty welcome desk advertised the price of admission at ten cents.

  “Hall of Prehistoric Evolution, Hall of Biological Curiosities, Hall of Anthropological History . . .” Elizabeth read off the signs that pointed the way to different exhibits that encircled the entrance hall. “Where are we supposed to begin?”

  Cordelia shook her head. Something felt wrong. It was too quiet, too still, too dark. There was no whir of pixie wings, no chatter of excited diggles, no slosh of squelch feet in the muddy water that formed their habitat. Only a cavernous silence that echoed back every footstep and rustle, only louder.

  But perhaps Byron Newton-Plancke had found a way to keep them quiet. . . .

  She didn’t want to think about what else he might have done.

  “We’ll start with Biological Curiosities and search the rooms one by one,” Cordelia said. She knew it would be faster to split up, but she couldn’t bear to be alone in the gloom and silence, with the wet slick of fear moving down her back.

  They passed from exhibit to exhibit, past the skeletal remains of ancient species and the vivid reconstructions of extinct predators glowering from dioramas. Past murky jars of three-eyed fish and dead jellyfish, giant walls of butterflies and insects pinned into place, taxidermy snakes and fossil remnants.

  But no monsters.

  With every passing minute, the knot of anxiety in Cordelia’s stomach grew bigger. Where were the monsters? She was sure they weren’t wrong about Byron Newton-Plancke. She was sure this wasn’t another dead end.

  So where were they?

  When they were satisfied they’d explored every corner of the ground floor, they headed upstairs. By now, Cordelia had lost track of how much time had passed. Ten minutes? Thirty? The shadowed halls seemed to suction not just light, but time. And the longer they stayed, the greater the chances they would be discovered.

  The second-floor landing fanned left and right, into the Hall of Prehistoric Evolution and the Hall of Anthropological History. Between them, a sweeping set of velvet curtains pooled fabric on the floor. Then the fabric rippled slightly and discharged a marble into the open.

  Immediately, Cabal lunged.

  “Cabal, no.” Gregory tried to grab hold of his collar, but Cabal was too fast. The marble skittered beneath the curtains when he walloped it with a paw, and Cabal went under them after it.

  “Cabal!” Gregory leapt forward and swept the curtains apart.

 
Cordelia sucked in a breath. Icky whimpered.

  Cabal was gone—vanished into the dark mouth of a concealed exhibit hall, roped off from visitors with a sign that marked it as Incomplete.

  But the newly painted letters stenciled above the entrance made its purpose clear.

  Hall of Monsters.

  A mounted placard on the wall welcomed visitors to:

  THE WORLD’S FIRST COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL COLLECTION OF MONSTROSITY, TRACING THE EVOLUTION OF MONSTERS FROM THEIR PREHISTORIC ORIGINS TO THE DIVERSITY OF THEIR MODERN FORMS. PLEASE USE CAUTION WHEN APPROACHING LIVE SPECIMENS.

  With a growing sense of horror, Cordelia, Gregory, and Elizabeth moved into the soupy dark of a vast hall, five times the size of any of the others. Cabal was sniffing around the base of a towering mural that dominated the center of the room. Even in the dark, Cordelia recognized the twisted shape of what looked like two inverted trees, side by side, and the neat lettering beneath them. One inscription read The Origin of Species.

  And written beneath, the dark one, the twistier one, the uglier one: The Origin of Monsters.

  It was the only thing in the room—besides the long, skeletal rows of empty iron cages.

  Elizabeth sucked in a deep breath. Gregory whispered a bad word he had only just learned from Captain Wincombe. Cabal began growling.

  “Hush,” Cordelia said. But he only growled louder and made a sudden leap toward the marble he’d been chasing before, which promptly rolled behind one of the cages, shooting into the narrow space that separated it from the wall. Cabal tried to squeeze in after it, but had to settle for swiping with a paw.

  “Be quiet, Cabal,” Cordelia said urgently, as Cabal’s barking became louder and more frenzied.

  “He’s going to get us killed,” Elizabeth said in a shrill, terrified voice.

  “Stop it,” Cordelia said. She dropped to her knees just as Cabal managed to dislodge the cage a few more inches from the wall and disappeared. She reached for him and missed. Instead, her hand came down on something puddled on the floor—something slimy and very cold. She jerked back immediately and saw a long trail of green goo coating her palm. For a moment she simply stared, bewildered.

  She had seen that goo before.

  She had seen it on the floor of her father’s bedroom.

  Time seemed to slow down, and awareness gathered on the edges of Cordelia’s consciousness like waves swelling in the ocean before a storm. Still on her knees, she pivoted the cage out from the wall a little more, so that she too could squeeze behind it.

  Cabal was in a crouch, growling terribly at the marble, with all the fur standing along his spine. Suddenly he turned, whimpering, and fled into the open.

  The marble retreated another few inches into the shadows.

  But not before Cordelia had seen that it was not a marble. Not at all.

  It was an eyeball. A moving eyeball, with a pale blue iris and a pupil as dark as ink.

  Suddenly, it zoomed into the open, missing her by inches, leaving a trail of thick slime behind it.

  Cordelia opened her mouth to scream. But she didn’t need to; Elizabeth screamed for her, then abruptly went silent, even as the dragon started screeching.

  Hands gripped Cordelia’s ankles. She tried to turn. A heavy burlap sack was thrown over her head, and there was a starburst explosion of pain at her temples, then darkness.

  Chapter 30

  “Well, well, well. Cordelia Clay, what a pleasure. I must admit, I’ve been wanting to meet you for quite a long time.”

  Cordelia’s brain felt as if it had been swirled around in a stewpot and then sloshed haphazardly back into her head. She was in one of the exhibit hall’s steel cages. Gregory and Elizabeth had been enclosed in cages of their own; so had Cabal, Icky, and the dragon. The dragon, additionally, had been muzzled, and his wings clipped to the floor by means of small iron rings.

  Cordelia struggled to sit up, moaning at the throbbing pressure in her forehead.

  Up close, Byron Newton-Plancke gave even more the impression of a man made up of old elastic, stretched one too many times. And Cordelia saw, at once, that their cabdriver had been right—there was something wrong with his eyes.

  First of all, he had none.

  Or rather—he had no eyes in his face, just gaping red sockets.

  The eyes in question were on the floor, separated by at least four feet. One of them rolled closer to her cage bars, and she drew back instinctively.

  “Don’t be afraid . . . yet,” Newton-Plancke said. “They can look, but they can never touch.” He laughed at his own joke. The second eye rolled slightly, as if it didn’t find its limitations very funny.

  Then both eyes swiveled in her direction. “Pretty girl,” he said. “Though I don’t see much resemblance to your mother.”

  Cordelia’s heart seemed to freeze in her chest. A terrible feeling slid from her neck to the base of her spine.

  “My mother?” she whispered.

  Newton-Plancke twitched his long, thin lips into a smile. “A smart woman,” he said casually. “Had a promising career ahead of her—at least, until she met your father and became consumed by her ridiculous idea of a single evolutionary tree. I tried many times to point out the error of her thinking. But she was too stubborn. . . .”

  Now Cordelia’s heartbeat punched back on, and she fought against a sudden breathlessness. “You—you knew my mother?”

  “We ran, for a time, in similar circles,” he said. “Her early work showed promise, I admit.” Cordelia remembered, in a flash, what Professor Natter had told her: the group of monster experts and hobbyists was small, and tightly knit. But Cordelia didn’t believe for a second that any group, big or small, would have welcomed Byron Newton-Plancke as a member.

  Probably he had slimed his way in. He clearly had practice.

  “But after she made herself a laughingstock . . .” Newton-Plancke shrugged. “Well, like I said. I tried to warn her. Her ideas were more than absurd. They were dangerous. Just imagine the idea of monsters being normal, of monsters being necessary. It’s a threat to civilized society as we know it! Luckily, there was no danger that she would be believed . . . not after the failure of her first book. It was a sad thing, really, for a woman of such promise. Overnight, no one would touch her, much less her nonsensical theories. . . .”

  In a moment, Cordelia’s fear tightened into hatred. “It was you,” she said. “You were the one who got all her books yanked from the libraries and bookstores. You were the one who got her banned from speaking, from publishing.”

  “Of course,” he said simply, without regret. As Cordelia watched, disgusted, both eyes rolled quickly back to his feet, leaving small, slick trails of green slime behind them. He bent down to retrieve them, then worked them back into his face with a sickening squeaking sound, like a wet finger around the rim of a glass. “What else could I do?”

  Cordelia noticed that he had mispositioned his eyes. His left eye was rolling ever so slightly toward the bridge of his nose. He had monster blood, obviously, and was likely descended from a long-ago line of . . . what? Not goblins, certainly. Trolls, perhaps? But no troll species she could think of came with detachable eyes; many hardly used their eyes at all, and navigated mostly by smell. And she understood, all at once, why Newton-Plancke was on a mission to purge monsters and their descendants from the world.

  It was like her father had always said: Fear is the real monster. It breeds by making monsters, and the monsters make more fear.

  “You’re afraid,” she said, and was pleased to see the words wipe the smirk from Plancke’s face. “You’re terrified you’ll be found out for what you are. For whatever you are.”

  “Quiet,” he snapped, and Cordelia felt sure she was right. Who would possibly suspect him of being a monster, when he had dedicated his life to rooting them out? “Or I’ll have your tongue cut out for dog feed.”

  Cordelia didn’t doubt it. Even though she would have liked to torture and insult him, to see him
squirm, she knew she would only enrage him, and put the others in even more danger. She tucked her tongue firmly behind her teeth so it wouldn’t betray her better judgment.

  Byron Newton-Plancke then pivoted to face Elizabeth. As he scanned her filthy dress and ragged mess of curls, his face twisted into an ugly sneer. “Let me guess,” he said. “Poor little rich girl on a runaway adventure. What happened? Do Mommy and Daddy ignore you? Do they stick you away with the governess and refuse to give you kisses? Are they embarrassed by you?” Even his laugh was stretched thin, a hysterical giggle that soon died in his throat.

  “Shut up,” Elizabeth said. Anger was darkening her cheeks to green. Cordelia wanted to shout a warning. But of course, Elizabeth couldn’t help it.

  It was too late, anyway. Plancke jerked backward when the warts began to pop angrily at her hairline, as if goblins were contagious. “I see,” he said, as his lips curled back over his teeth in a sneer. “Well, no wonder they’re embarrassed. Ugly little brute. Although I suppose it was their fault, for having you in the first place.”

  “Yeah, well, at least she can keep her eyes in her face,” Gregory fired back at him as Elizabeth ducked her head, blinking away tears. Cordelia longed to reach out a hand and comfort her. She knew Plancke might feed that to the dogs, too, and might have risked it anyway. But the cages were too far apart.

  “True,” Plancke said icily, turning now to Gregory. “But she’s the one in the cage, isn’t she? An unfortunate position to be in,” he added, “although perhaps for you it is quite the upgrade from your usual accommodations.” He leaned a little closer and sniffed. Then he drew back with a look of disgust. “Just as I thought. You reek of orphan, you know. A boy no one will miss. Don’t bother to contradict me”—this, as Gregory opened his mouth to protest—“I can smell it on you. The desperation. The sad, cloying desire to be liked. Is that why you volunteered to come with Cordelia on her misadventure?”

  Gregory’s eyes were burning. He lifted his chin. “Cordelia’s my friend,” he said. “She helped me, and so I helped her.”