The Shrunken Head

by Lauren Oliver

  Then Thomas laughed.

  “Seems like good luck to me,” he said.

  Max finished her eggs and then—much to Pippa’s disgust—took the plate and licked it. “I’m pooped,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

  But just then Pippa heard a noise from outside the kitchen: footsteps, descending from the first floor. “Shhh,” she said, at the same moment Sam said, “There’s someone coming.”

  All of them froze. Pippa’s breath turned to ice in her throat. Please, she thought, please let it not be Mrs. Cobble. Or even worse, Miss Fitch. They were not supposed to be up, and they were certainly not supposed to be in the kitchen. But the footsteps kept going.

  Thomas started to move toward the door.

  “No, Thomas. Not yet,” Pippa whispered. But he had already cracked the door and peered into the hall.

  “It’s all right,” he said, withdrawing his head. “It was just Potts, and he’s gone.”

  The four of them—Pippa, Thomas, Sam, and Max—snuck upstairs together, with Thomas scouting by shimmying through the vents that connected the floors, then returning to report the coast was clear. By the time they arrived in the attic, they were near breathless with laughter and only just managed to restrain themselves. But then Sam bumped into Danny’s bed and the dwarf sat up with a roar, flailing his arms, shouting murder, and they dissolved into laughter again.

  It was only two or three minutes from the kitchen to the attic—and yet it was the first time, Pippa thought, as she slipped into the clean white sheets of her cot, that she had ever felt as if she had real friends.

  But just before she fell asleep she felt that sudden thrill of alarm that she hadn’t been able to express or explain, and she remembered what Sam said: The curse will fall on us next.

  Thomas was awakened on Tuesday morning by a blood-curdling scream. He sat up, his heart rocketing into his throat. It was not yet light outside; the sky was a mottled gray, like an old man’s complexion. All around the crowded attic space, the residents of Dumfrey’s Dime Museum came awake, yanked into consciousness by that terrible scream.

  “What is it?” Lights clicked on in various corners of the attic.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Of course I heard that, you dolt. I may be a dwarf, but I’m not deaf.”

  “You’re not a dwarf, either, so just stop pretending.”

  “Sounded like someone had his head cut off,” Quinn and Caroline said at the same time. Then, again simultaneously: “Jinx.” And: “Stop copying me!”

  Sam’s words of the night before came back to Thomas in a rush: The curse will fall on us next. Without bothering to get changed from his pajamas, he kicked aside the vent in the floor and squeezed himself into it, just as Sam sat up, blinking and rubbing his eyes, saying, “What’s all the noise?”

  Thomas didn’t answer. He shimmied down the vent, using his back and feet for leverage, going as fast as he could. The scream sounded again, so loud it sent a tremor through the vent, making his teeth vibrate. He had traveled the museum’s walls, pipes, ducts, and vents for almost his whole life, and knew every twist and drip and screw and knob. He knew the way voices and whispers carried through the walls, could map the entirety of the museum in his mind, and now he knew instinctively that the scream had come from the ground floor.

  He tumbled out in a far corner of the Hall of Worldwide Wonders and landed beside the display case that held an aboriginal boomerang, a Bolivian bow and arrow, and a bamboo blowgun from Borneo. Quickly righting himself, he sprinted toward the source of the noise. Now the scream had transformed into a kind of anguished sobbing.

  As he rounded the corner he saw Dumfrey, collapsed, partially propped up in the wide lap of Mrs. Cobble, who was vigorously fanning his face.

  “There, there,” she was saying. “It’ll be all right.”

  “It won’t be all right!” Mr. Dumfrey wailed. “Gone! Gone! It’s gone! We’re ruined!”

  Spotting Thomas, Mrs. Cobble said, “What are you doing, Thomas? Go and get some water for Mr. Dumfrey.”

  Thomas started to obey, but Mr. Dumfrey’s thunderous shout stopped him. “No!” He struggled to sit up. “Ring the police! Tell them they must come immediately! Tell them my head has been stolen!”

  For the first time, Thomas noticed the glass case that housed the shrunken head had been shattered. And in the place where the head should have been was simply an empty, smudged wooden shelf.

  Thomas’s heart went from his throat to the bottom of his stomach in less than a second.

  “Go ahead, Thomas,” Mrs. Cobble said, pushing her frizzled hair back from her forehead with the inside of a wrist. “You can use the phone in the office.”

  Thomas was almost at the vent when he heard Dumfrey hollering after him.

  “Forget the water!” he yelled. “Bring the whiskey!”

  By the time the police arrived, all the residents of the museum had heard about the theft and assembled in the lobby. Betty had not yet had time to comb her beard, which extended in a wild tangle halfway to her waist. Monsieur Cabillaud was still wearing his nightcap, which Miss Fitch had sewed for him from a child’s stocking. And Goldini had accidentally grabbed the wrong hat from his nightstand, so a rabbit was now sniffing around his boots.

  Two policemen had responded to the call. Standing next to each other, they looked very much like the number ten. The first was tall and extremely thin. His skin seemed far too plentiful for his skeleton and pooled under his eyes and chin. The second man was short and as round and stretched and shiny as an inflated balloon. His name tag identified him as Sergeant Schroeder.

  As Dumfrey stepped forward and began vigorously shaking his hand, Sergeant Schroeder looked Mr. Dumfrey up and down carefully. The more he saw, the harder he frowned. By the time he had taken in Mr. Dumfrey’s curled genie slippers, made of red felt and embroidered with elephants, he was scowling.

  “All right, then,” he said, extricating his hand from Mr. Dumfrey’s grip. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  The tall one, Officer Gilhooley, produced a notepad and stood with his pencil poised over the paper.

  “We’ve been pilfered—pilloried—pillaged!” Mr. Dumfrey said, with a dramatic flourish of his handkerchief.

  “What’s pillars got to do with it?” Officer Gilhooley said, and scratched his head with his pencil.

  “He means, sir, that it was stolen,” Pippa spoke up. Mr. Dumfrey looked at her gratefully, while Max rolled her eyes, no doubt at Pippa’s use of the word sir.

  “Yes, yes, exactly,” Mr. Dumfrey said eagerly. “A theft. A most disgusting, deviant, deranged—”

  “And what was—er—stolen?” Sergeant Schroeder asked hastily, cutting Mr. Dumfrey off before he could go on another rant.

  Suddenly overcome, Mr. Dumfrey blotted his eyes. “My head!” he wailed. “My precious, perfect, irreplaceable head!”

  This time both police officers stared at him openmouthed.

  “He means, sir—” Pippa began.

  Max interrupted her. “It was a shriveled, ugly thing. Like an apple stuck in pickle juice. It was just there.” She pointed to the empty case, which was visible from the lobby.

  “I see.” The two officers exchanged a look. Sergeant Schroeder hooked both his thumbs into his belt. “And was this—er—this head very valuable?”

  “Valuable?” Mr. Dumfrey burst out. “My dear sirs—the head was invaluable. Mind you, we have many wonderful things in the museum. Many,” he quickly emphasized. “There is the mermaid from the Pacific Ocean . . . and the sarcophagus of a pharaoh . . . and the wings of an authentic fairy captured only last year in an English garden. Perhaps you’d like a tour . . . ? Our fees are very reasonable.” Behind Mr. Dumfrey, Miss Fitch coughed. “But no, of course not. This is no time for a tour. You’re on duty! My point is, gentlemen, simply that the shrunken head was the crown jewel of our exhibit.”

  Thomas thought it was a pretty good speech, even if Dumfrey was laying it on thic
k. But Officer Gilhooley just stared at Mr. Dumfrey blankly. “So . . . ,” he said. “Let me get this straight. Is it valuable or invaluable?”

  Dumfrey drew himself up and puffed out his chest like a pigeon. “Its value is inestimable.”

  This time, Sergeant Schroeder spoke. He jabbed a sausagelike finger at Dumfrey’s chest. “So you can’t estimate how valuable it is?”

  Dumfrey turned red. “It’s incredibly valuable! Stupendously valuable! Stupidly valuable! Its value cannot be described!”

  Suddenly, Dumfrey collapsed, as though the words, leaving him, had left in their place a huge hole. He staggered backward, and Smalls stepped forward to support him.

  Sergeant Schroeder spread his hands. “Let’s just say one thousand dollars. Fair?” Dumfrey nodded weakly, and Officer Gilhooley made a scribble on his notepad. “Any idea, Mr. Dumbfin, how the perpetuator got it?”

  “I locked the front doors myself at nine last night,” Mr. Dumfrey said with as much dignity as he could, considering one of Smalls’s massive arms, big as a gorilla’s, was still wrapped around his belly. “I was alerted this morning by Mr. Potts, the janitor, that they were unlocked.”

  Sergeant Schroeder signaled to Officer Gilhooley, who walked to the front doors and squatted so he was eye level with the door handles.

  “No sign of a forced entry,” Officer Gilhooley said at last, straightening up.

  Sergeant Schroeder sighed. “And who was the last man to see the—ahem—head in its rightful place?”

  There was a shuffling from the back, and Potts pushed his way forward. As usual, he wore a dirty cap pulled low over his eyes, and his jaw moved back and forth, back and forth, as though he were chewing on something invisible.

  “That’d be me, sir,” he said in his gruff voice.

  “And who are you?” Sergeant Schroeder asked.

  “Potts is the name,” he said. “I’m the janitor here. Did my final sweep of the place at ten o’clock, just like normal, afore I gone to bed in the basement. Weren’t nothing unusual then.”

  “And you heard nothing in the middle of the night?” Sergeant Schroeder pressed. “No sounds of breaking glass? No footsteps?”

  It might have been Thomas’s imagination, but he thought that Potts smirked. “I always take a little nightcap afore bed, sir, if you catch my drift. If a dozen angels came down and danced around like chorus girls, I wouldn’t have heard nothing.”

  Thomas’s eyes met Pippa’s across the crowd, and then Sam’s. Max was frowning. He knew what all of them were thinking: Potts had been awake, and much later than 9:00 p.m. In fact, he’d been out of bed. So why wouldn’t he say so now?

  There was a short silence. Sergeant Schroeder coughed and nodded to Officer Gilhooley, who discreetly replaced the notepad in his pocket.

  “Here’s the thing, Mr. Dumbfort,” he began.

  Mr. Dumfrey had recovered sufficiently to correct him. “Dumfrey.”

  “Dumfrey. Right. ’Course.” Sergeant Schroeder exchanged a small smile with Officer Gilhooley, as though they were sharing a private joke. “I’m sure this, er, head means a lot to you.”

  “Not just to me,” Dumfrey said. “To the world! To civilization at large! To the public! The great, the hungry—”

  Sergeant Schroeder raised a fleshy hand, cutting him off. “Be that as it may,” he said with great emphasis, “you gotta be realistic. We had three homicides on my beat this week alone. Yesterday, a fisherman turned up a body wearing a pair of cement slippers. We got five muggings, a home break-in, twenty-two incidents of pickpocketing, four lost cats, twelve barroom brawls, and ninety-one incidents of aggression toward the law. Not to mention someone breaking into Mario’s Deli on Forty-Eighth Street and stealing a whole crate of Genoa salami. The city’s full of sneaks and crooks and thieves and scammers. Do you catch my drift, Mr. Dumpty?”

  This time, Mr. Dumfrey didn’t bother to correct him. “I’m not sure I do,” he said coldly.

  Sergeant Schroeder’s eyes glittered like small dirt-colored marbles in the pink flesh of his face. “All right, I’ll say it plainer. The police, Mr. Dumpling, have much more important things to do than to look for your head.”

  And with a curt nod, he spun around on one of his polished heels and began trotting toward the door. Officer Gilhooley loped after him obediently, pausing just as he was passing through the door.

  “Sorry for your loss,” he said in practically a whisper.

  “Gilhooley!” Sergeant Schroeder’s voice bellowed from outside. And quickly, with a small start of surprise, Officer Gilhooley shut the door.

  No one said a word. Even the museum, usually so full of drips and creaks and groans, seemed to be holding its breath. Thomas felt that the silence was more awful than anything. It was as though they were all standing in a tomb.

  It was Mr. Dumfrey who spoke first. “Ruined,” he said. “We’re ruined.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be all right, Mr. D.,” Sam said quietly, and others immediately piped up with their support.

  “Ugly thing,” croaked Andrew, with an emphatic rap of his cane.

  Phoebe nodded vigorously, her many chins nodding with her. “Hideous!”

  “Gave me the chills,” admitted Hugo. Danny reached up to pat the elephant man’s hand sympathetically.

  “We’ll do fine without it!” Caroline said.

  Quinn stepped quickly in front of her. “We’ll be perfect,” she amended, batting her white eyelashes and smirking at her sister.

  “Always have before,” said Goldini.

  “Cheer up, Mr. Dumfrey,” Betty said sweetly.

  “It’s no use!” Mr. Dumfrey raised his hand and the room abruptly fell into quiet once again. He removed his glasses and swiped moisture from under his eyes. When he replaced his glasses, Thomas thought he had never looked more serious. “I wasn’t planning to deliver the news this way. I was hoping never to deliver the news at all. But there is no avoiding it.”

  Mr. Dumfrey’s voice wavered. “You might as well know. The museum is broke. The head was our last chance at paying our debts and keeping the doors open. Now, I fear, we are sunk.”

  Max wasted no time after Dumfrey’s announcement.

  The museum was a sinking ship. And she, Max, was a rat.

  “What are you doing?”

  Max spun around, clutching her rucksack, and saw Pippa standing in their little makeshift room, hands on her hips, glaring. Despite the fact that Pippa was, in Max’s opinion, a miserable little squeak, she had a glare that was frightening.

  It was her eyes, and the fact that she could see through things—into things. When she glared, Max felt like a hole was being burned straight through her forehead. At first, Max had thought it was only a trick—that Pippa was half a fraud, like Goldini and the almost-dwarf. But she knew better now.

  “What’s it look like I’m doing?” she mumbled, turning around and continuing to stuff her belongings in her rucksack. Now the burning hole was in the back of her neck and was far more tolerable. “You heard what he said. We’re sunk. Finished. Kaput. Done for.”

  Pippa ripped the rucksack out of Max’s hands with surprising force.

  “Hey . . . ,” Max started to protest, but Pippa grabbed her arm so tightly she was startled into silence.

  “We’re not sunk,” she said fiercely. She practically dragged Max out of the attic and into the hallway, then up a steep flight of dusty stairs that led, Max knew, to the unused loft.

  Max tried to shake off Pippa’s grip and couldn’t. “Let go of me.”

  “Stop your moaning,” Pippa said. At the top of the stairs, she opened the door and pushed Max roughly inside.

  The loft was a small room, hardly bigger than a bathroom, and packed nearly from top to bottom with crates, bundles of moth-eaten clothing, and bits of dusty equipment. Thomas was sitting high up on a teetering stack of wooden boxes, his head practically banging against the single skylight, which let in a small quantity of sickly white light. Sam had cleared a spa
ce for himself on the floor and looked like an elephant pretending to belong in a dollhouse.

  “All right.” Pippa had entered behind Max; she closed the door and leaned against it. “Now that we’re all here, we can begin.”

  “Begin what?” Max said crossly, rubbing her arm where Pippa had been gripping it.

  Pippa rolled her eyes. “To plan, of course,” she said. “If we’re going to find that stupid head and save the museum, we’ll need to have a plan.”

  “If we’re going to do what?” Max squawked.

  Pippa narrowed her eyes. “Is there something wrong with your ears?”

  “Is there something wrong with your brain?” Max fired back.

  “Pippa,” Sam broke in quietly, “you heard what the cops said. The city’s crawling with thieves. It could have been anyone.”

  “There are forty thousand unsolved thefts in New York City every year,” Thomas pointed out. Max really wished he would stop spouting off about probabilities and statistics and boring numbers that made her head spin. The problem was all the reading he did. A nasty habit.

  “It wasn’t just anyone,” Pippa insisted. “It was someone who knew about the head and knew its value.” She ticked off the list on her fingers. “It was someone who knew how to get in without forcing the lock—so someone with a key or someone who was already inside.”

  “Mr. Dumfrey might have forgotten to lock up last night,” Thomas said.

  Pippa shook her head. “He’s too careful for that.” She inhaled deeply. “I’ll tell you what I think,” she said. Her eyes were glittering, as they did when she was onstage. “I think Potts did it.”

  “Potts?” Sam wrinkled his nose. When he did, a smattering of freckles wrinkled, too.

  “He hasn’t got the brains,” Thomas said scornfully.

  Pippa shook her head. “What was he doing up past midnight?”