The Orphan of Awkward Falls (23 page)

Squatting next to a Dumpster behind the Wily Walleye Restaurant, gnawing a discarded fish head, Fetid Stenchley pondered his situation. In the piercing arctic wind, he pulled the shag carpet remnant he had found tighter around his shoulders and the paper bag on his head lower. Somehow, he thought, his beautiful plan had gone wrong. He had expected that he and the Master would be enjoying a posh new life as celebrity father and son by now. But that had not happened. He didn’t even know where his master was now. He had not seen him since being chased from the laboratory.

He crunched another walleye head, slurping the slippery eyeballs out with his lips, and decided that he should find the professor. That seemed like a good idea. And maybe along the way he could murder something fresh for the grumbling Cynthia. It would have to be a creature weak enough for him to overpower with his soft new body, of course. He wondered what that might be. A cat? No, the claws would be a problem. Maybe a mouse. That was better.
They were small, not much meat on their bones, but they were weak. Surely he could manage to murder one of those.

And maybe he could scrounge up a chocolate something or other to go along with it. Since the transformation operation, the madman had found himself fishing candy wrappers and ice cream tubs out of trash cans for any smear of the brown substance that still clung to them. He suddenly couldn’t imagine a raw meal without it.

The old Stenchley would have galloped off right then into the freezing night without a thought for comfort had he still inhabited his tough killer’s body. But now, with his soft, round belly full of walleye heads and potato scraps, as well as a large female python, he found he really just wanted to curl up somewhere cozy and nap for a while.

He burrowed deep into the layers of greasy newspapers, plastic trash bags, and pungent odds and ends of refuse and got comfortable in the warm core of the garbage. In minutes he was dreaming the macabre dreams of a lunatic killer and snoring like a polar bear.

On the long, long list of places one would not like to find oneself after being darted with moose tranquilizer, the inside of a tiny, dark, windowless, locked steel cell would be very near the top. Unfortunately, this is just where Thaddeus was when he regained consciousness. He tried to move but found it almost impossible, because of the straitjacket he was encased in. Also, he didn’t have his glasses, which made the situation not only dire, but blurry as well.

“Help!” he called. “Where am I?”

Silence.

“HEEEELLP!” More silence.

Thaddeus tried to recall just how he had gotten here, wherever “here” was. He remembered being in the laboratory and having his clothes stolen by Stenchley, who had somehow made himself look like Thaddeus. He remembered chasing Stenchley out of the lab on all fours, seeing Josephine in the street outside, trying to call to her, seeing a policeman aiming a weapon at him, then blackness.

Thankfully, the nausea he had felt in the lab seemed to have passed, though he was anything but comfortable now. His mouth was parched, and he was intensely hungry. Before he could think about it, he found himself picking up a fat centipede from the floor with his teeth and munching it. It was the stinging kind, he noticed, just before devouring it, and his brain told him it should have been disgusting, yet somehow it wasn’t. In fact, it was good, and he immediately wanted another. He saw a small trough of water jutting out from the wall in the corner and waddled over to it.

Leaning over carefully, he could touch his lips to the liquid. With his arms pinned inside the straitjacket, he had no choice but to lap the water up the way Felix did. After drinking his fill, he watched the ripples on the surface as they smoothed and saw something that made him gasp. In the dim light of the cell, he was just able to see his reflection in the water. Even without glasses, he could tell it was the wrong face.

His mind reeled at the horrible thought of such a nightmare. Thaddeus paced the cell and yelled for help again, louder than before, more desperately than before. Even though he had no rational hope of being rescued, he continued to call out to anyone, even those who had put him here. Yelling turned into howling, howling into a hoarse wail. But his cries did not penetrate the gray walls surrounding him. The merciless cell swallowed every sound.

He rolled on the floor, twisting, biting, and jerking to try to escape the straitjacket, but could not loosen the bindings even the
tiniest bit. He tried scraping the canvas against the rough stone walls, but the material was too tough to tear. Spots danced in front of his eyes from the effort.

Finally, fatigue caused his panic to quell a bit and his rational mind regained some small measure of control. Logic began to offer possible answers for what was going on. He knew that he now looked like Stenchley and that Stenchley looked like him. Even Josephine and Felix had failed to recognize him when he ran out of the lab in pursuit of Stenchley. The police had obviously arrested him because he appeared to be the escaped murderer, which meant that he was now either in a jail cell, or…no. Not that other place. He couldn’t be there.

He had to find a way out.

With his hands bound inside the straitjacket, he used his bare feet to search the dark cell for cracks in the wall or hidden panels. Hibble Manor had several secret passages he liked to use as shortcuts, and he thought maybe this place might have one too. A catch might be hidden somewhere that would release the lock. He ran his bare foot over the cell’s iron door, feeling for openings or levers, but found none. The cell was sealed as tight as a tomb.

He did discover something of interest near the bottom of the door, however. His toes felt three raised letters embossed in the steel, like the Braille text in books for blind people. It was too dark for his weak eyes to see the letters, but his toes were able to read them one at a time: A. D. I. With Thaddeus’s broad vocabulary, he was able to imagine
many things the letters
ADI
might stand for, such as Absolutely Dreadful Igloo, or Amusingly Droll Iguana, but he knew better.

His heart sank like a stone in a well. He was inside the Asylum for the Dangerously Insane.

All of Thaddeus’s yelling had been pointless. Even if someone came to see about him, nothing would change. No one would look at him and see an innocent boy. They would see Fetid Stenchley, notorious murderer.

He sat down on the hard, damp floor and moaned.

Thaddeus had never known real despair before. His emotions had always ranged between “not bad” and “pretty good” with occasional dips and spikes to “fairly gloomy” and “reasonably agreeable.” There had been moments of anxiety, of course, when he had caught sight of the man in the black suit lurking around the edges of the estate, and he did worry about being sent to the orphanage. But what he experienced now was much worse. His stomach seemed to be made of cement; his eyes leaked streams of tears; his chin quivered uncontrollably.

Worst of all, he was alone. He had never realized how much he valued the company of Norman and Felix until now. If his two friends had been here, he had no doubt they could find a way out. With Felix’s ingenuity and Norman’s strength, they would be free in no time. But they were not here.

That nosy girl, Josephine, had been the start of all this. If only she had minded her own business, and stayed on her side of the
fence, perhaps none of this would have happened. Before her rude intrusion into Hibble Manor, his life had been peaceful and predictable. Then she had barged into his world and turned it upside down. After spending just two evenings with her, he had lost everything that mattered most to him. His parents no longer existed, his “grandfather” was nothing of the sort—he had very likely been mad, and possibly evil to boot—his faithful robot was demolished, his freedom had been taken away, and there were now serious doubts as to whether Thaddeus himself was even fully human.

It was all her fault.

Thaddeus should have been angry. He should have wanted to yell loud, insulting things at her, have Norman tie her up and lock her in the closet again. Part of him was, and did.

But mostly he wished she were there. He had no earthly idea why, and was supremely annoyed by the fact, but he knew it was true. He missed her, which made him feel even worse.
Botheration!

He cried harder.

If ever there had ever been a moment when Thaddeus needed a break, this was it. Having been saddled with the hideous body of a murderer and wrongly tossed into an asylum packed with real murderers, a stroke of good luck just then would have been very welcome.

And one came. The problem was, it seemed an awful lot like bad luck at first.

The debilitating sickness he had felt earlier came back in full force. His head began to throb, his stomach gurgled, and his skin
itched. He didn’t know if it was possible for veins to hurt, but if it was, his did.
What is happening to me now?
he wondered.
What more must I endure? Am I dying?
He was almost relieved to think the end might be near.

But Thaddeus was not dying. The good news, which he could not have known, was that the cellular army of his immune system had just launched a massive counterattack all over his body against the madman’s tiny invaders.

A new battle was in full swing in locations like his nose, his skin, his hump, certain organs, and other places. Strategic skirmishes were being won. The boy’s own forces were routing entire regiments of foreign cells. The result was that many body parts which an hour or two earlier had been very Stenchley-ish were being restored to their original Thaddeus-like state.

Thaddeus was starting to look like himself again.

But the sound of footsteps outside the door signaled the end of his brief run of good luck. Keys jangled, heavy hinges screeched, and the cell door opened. There loomed five wide, thick-armed orderlies in white tunics, surgical masks, and black rubber gloves.

“Hello, Mr. Stenchley,” said the orderly in front. The man’s voice was unexpectedly soft, but his muscles looked as if they were dying to rip their way out of his tunic and begin breaking things. “So glad you are safely back with us again. You’ve been a very naughty fellow!”

Thaddeus tried to speak. He wanted to say, “I’m not Stenchley, I’m Thaddeus Hibble! I don’t belong here!” but the battle going on
inside his body had turned his tongue into a petrified log, allowing only a hoarse squeak to come out.

The man said, “We’re here to escort you to the Treatment Chamber. Of course, since you’ve fallen behind, we’ll be giving you two per day to catch up. Won’t that be fun?” The men chuckled as they reached for him.

The Treatment Chamber was kept at a nippy 46 degrees Fahrenheit. The frigid temperature was perfect for the delicate circuitry of the room’s controls, ideal for the generator motor, optimum for maintaining the viscosity of the volatile chemicals in the tall glass reservoirs of the dehydration unit, but most uncomfortable for Thaddeus or any other human dressed only in his underwear.

As the boy lay shivering, strapped tightly to the table, the cell war inside his body gave him the itchy sensation of ants crawling just under his skin. His head felt hot and cold simultaneously, and his eyeballs danced, each to a different tune. He groaned desperately and tried to free his hands for scratching.

“Help me!” he tried to say. “I’m itching!” but his swollen tongue still would not cooperate and only got in the way when he spoke.

The masked technicians working busily around Thaddeus to prepare the machinery for the Treatment paid the mumbling patient
little attention. This was their last procedure of the day and they were in a hurry to go to the Sauerkraut Appreciation Day parade. Besides, their job was only to set things up for the surgeons who would do the actual procedure, not to interact with the subject. If the technicians had taken a moment to examine the wriggling patient, they would have noticed something very strange. Parts of the subject’s body were transforming. His skin rippled, blotches of pale pink blooming here and there on his leathery hide. His face contorted; his features shifted. The hump on his back had begun shrinking like a punctured beach ball.

Even as they hurriedly draped a splatter cloth over Thaddeus’s face, the technicians did not notice that he was a bit young for an insane murderer. When they had connected all the cables and hoses, brought the enormous rumbling, sparking electrical generator up to speed, the men filed out of the chilly chamber, speculating excitedly about who would be chosen as this year’s Sauerkraut Queen.

Now alone, Thaddeus wondered what awful thing would happen next. He had heard the technicians mention that surgeons would be there shortly. Apparently, he was going to receive a treatment of some kind, whatever that was. He hoped it wouldn’t be painful, but the ominous machinery all around him led him to expect otherwise.

The surgeons bustled into the Treatment Chamber, their stiffly starched white coats swishing with static electricity and their rubber soled shoes squeaking on the cold floor. In their surgical masks, scrub hats, goggles, and gloves, the doctors were impossible to tell apart, except by size. There were two tall ones, a short one, and a round one. One of the tall ones shone a light into Thaddeus’s eyes and ears, while another measured the boy’s head with a pair of calipers.