The Orphan of Awkward Falls (4 page)

Members of the surgical team unstrapped him, lifted him off the gurney, and stood him up next to Dr. Herringbone. For a moment, he thought the surgeons were preparing to inflict some new torture, but they just stood there holding his arms. The muscle-bound orderlies with the straitjacket and leather muzzle, standing off to the side, made no move toward him. He felt oddly naked without the jacket’s belts cinched tightly around him.

For the first time in a decade, Fetid Stenchley was outside his cell with no restraints.

Stenchley eyed the audience in the seats above him. They all looked so lovely and plump. He tipped his head back and sniffed the air, his nostrils quivering at the rich scent of so much live flesh.

The hump on Fetid Stenchley’s crooked spine began to throb. It was this deformity, this bowling ball of gristle atop his shoulders, that held the madman’s darkest secret. Stenchley was convinced that a large black python named Cynthia lay coiled inside his hump. The snake had been there for as long as he could remember, whispering in Stenchley’s ear, telling him to do awful things. Cynthia craved blood and flesh, and demanded that he kill for her. The madman had learned long ago that Cynthia was not to be disobeyed.

Stenchley felt the python begin to stir now for the first time in years, uncoiling from a long hibernation brought on by his solitary confinement. The lack of available victims had sent Cynthia into a long, starved sleep. Slowly, her head now slithered up into his throat and peered hungrily out of his open mouth.

The madman’s purple lips curled into a tiny smile.

The mayor smiled back at Stenchley. The man’s face was soft and round, like a pie, and as red as an apple. It was the kind of face a cannibal could love.

“Hello, Mr. Stenchley! We’re all curious to hear your feelings on this whiz-bang new treatment you have received here at the asylum.”

The mad hunchback’s tongue, parched and swollen from the Treatment, lolled out of his mouth.
We’re thirsty, love,
whispered the python.
Get us a drink.

“Water,” he grunted. Someone handed him a paper cup, which he quickly emptied down his throat. He realized everyone was waiting for him to speak.

Pretend to be nice,
Cynthia said.
Fool them.

Stenchley obediently clasped his hands together and held them to his chest. He bowed his greasy head and rolled his bulging eyes up toward the mayor, like an innocent schoolboy.

“The doctors has all been quite kind and gentle with me, sir.” Stenchley said in a nasaly croak. “They has kept me from doing evil and bloody deeds.”

Very good.

“Do you feel that you have been cured, Mr. Stenchley?” asked the mayor.

Yesss.

“Oh, yessir. I assure you I has tasted no creature’s blood since I come here. Other than bugs and wormies, that is.”
We really are getting hungry for something more filling, though.

A ripple of laughter spread through the audience.

“If you were ever to be released from the asylum, what do you think you would do, Mr. Stenchley?” asked the mayor’s wife.

She looks delicious. I’ll bet she’s slow as well.

“Well, missus, I think I would probably get myself something to eat first.”
Exactly.

More laughter.

We don’t like being laughed at!

“No, I mean what would you do with your life?” The chubby woman spoke to him more slowly, as if he were a child. “Would you turn over a new leaf?”

Stenchley was confused. “I don’t rightly know, miss. I ain’t seen no leaves in a long time.”

The audience was now roaring with laughter. Stenchley wondered what was so funny.

That is quite enough!
Cynthia hissed angrily.
Are you going to let them make fun of us like this?

Dr. Herringbone nervously raised his arms to quiet the crowd. “All right, ladies and gentlemen. I think Mr. Stenchley has had enough excitement for one day. Let’s all give him a hand.”

I want more than a hand.

The audience stood, clapping and cheering enthusiastically for the seemingly sweet and harmless murderer.

Dr. Herringbone quickly turned to the surgical team. “Let’s get the patient back into his restraints, gentlemen, immediately.”

I don’t think so.

At the sight of the orderlies approaching him with the straitjacket, its belts and straps dangling like tentacles, Fetid Stenchley’s hump began to burn as if it were filled with molten lava. At that moment a fundamental change occurred inside him. Whereas only a second before he had been a small unattractive criminal with an imaginary snake inside his shoulder, he now became a murderous python named Cynthia. Cynthia was not amused by the idea of being wrapped up like a burrito and returned to that cold little cell for more brain-pulverizing sessions. Dinner was finally being served!

No one was aware of this deadly change, however. Stenchley looked the same as before. It was therefore all the more surprising when he suddenly yelled in a loud, menacing voice, “I AM CYNTHIA! AND I AM HUNGRY!”

The audience began laughing again, but stopped short when Stenchley grabbed the necks of the two surgeons holding his arms and slammed their heads together. The men fell to the stage floor, out cold. With insect quickness, the madman pounced on Dr. Herringbone, pinned him to the floor, and began to bite at his arm.

The orderlies rushed over and tried to pull Stenchley off the doctor, but they were no match for the incensed hunchback. Stenchley turned on them with the wild, Animal Channel fury of a dingo attacking a pair of marmosets.

The terrified audience screamed in unison and stampeded for the exits. The students, being young and fast, were the first ones out the door. Sauerkraut hors d’oeuvres splatted on the floor when the buffet table was overturned by the fleeing doctors, leaving the floors slippery with stringy goo. The orthodontists from Florida beat a hasty retreat, nearly trampling the mayor’s wife on their way out. The poor woman stood frozen, clutching Lulu, and gaping with horror at the carnage taking place on the stage. The mayor tried in vain to lift his hefty spouse and carry her out of the theater, but finally abandoned this strategy and ran for the doors.

Lulu, the hairless Egyptian spaniel, and the mayor’s wife were left completely alone with the snarling creature on the stage below. Stenchley, having whetted his appetite on a rather unsatisfying chunk of the doctor’s arm, now turned his attention to the plump, quivering entrée in the seats above. The manic hunchback bounded on all fours up the aisle and over several rows of seats toward the first lady.

In a daring move that was lucky for the mayor’s wife, but not so much for the dog, Lulu leapt to her mistress’s defense, locking her jaws onto Stenchley’s bulbous nose. The madman swiped and swatted at the dog, which only caused it to dig its teeth deeper.
Howling and disoriented with pain, Stenchley stumbled through the exit doors and out into the lobby with the spaniel firmly attached to his face.

Doors slammed and deadbolts slid into place all around the now-empty lobby, trapping the mad killer. Stenchley looked around desperately for a way out. A tiny shaft of dusky light from the lobby’s lone window gave the room a wan glow, but to a prisoner who had been kept in a dark cell for so long, the light was blinding. Instinct told Stenchley that light meant freedom.

Like a gazelle clearing a rail fence, the wailing hunchback bounded across the hall and launched himself and the lock-jawed Lulu through the glass.

Outside in the asylum’s parking lot, frightened students, orthodontists, and dignitaries had packed the tour bus, which gunned its engine and fishtailed toward the entrance gates. Looking back, the passengers were treated to one last startling scene. They gasped as they saw the crazed madman with a dog dangling from his nose come crashing out of a window in a spray of shattered glass. Stenchley yelped as he slammed to the ground with a bounce, then ran to the nearest wall and clawed his way straight up its face.

The first lady then staggered out into the parking lot, the tear-smeared mascara around her eyes making her look like a two- hundred-pound raccoon. She looked up just in time to see Stenchley and her pet disappear over the asylum wall.

“Lulu!” she whimpered. “Lulu, my cupcake, come back!”

During the time it took Fetid Stenchley to receive the horrible Treatment, inflict numerous nasty wounds on people inside the theater, crash through the window with the First Dog locked on to his nose, and escape from the asylum, the Cravitzes finished unpacking their Volvo. Howard brought in some kindling from outside and lit a fire in the living room fireplace, while Barbara made her famous tofu chili with gluten-free cornbread on the side. They all sat on floor pillows in front of the fire and had dinner by candlelight.

Josephine had planned to give her parents the silent treatment at least through dinner as the first phase of ongoing punishments for ruining her life, but her excitement over the mysterious picture she had found weakened her resolve. She couldn’t resist showing them the photo and the inscription on the back. Howard thought the man’s face looked familiar, but couldn’t recall where he’d seen him before.

“What an interesting-looking couple,” said Barbara. “Haven’t we seen them in an old movie? They must have been sweethearts. I wonder what he wanted forgiveness for?”

Josephine told her parents about her plan to find out who Sally and C were.

“I think that’s a great idea, Jo,” Barbara said. “How can I help?”

“You could let me borrow your laptop for starters.” Josephine was already heading for the kitchen to fetch the computer. This was something her parents would not normally have allowed, but since they were probably feeling guilty about the move to the Arctic Circle, she figured it was worth a shot. “I want to see if I can find anything on the web.”

Howard picked cornbread crumbs from his sweater and flicked them into the fire. “Sorry, dear, we’re not connected yet. The satellite guy is supposed to come out next week.”

Barbara brightened. “We could try the library in town, Josephine. They may have records of the house and its former residents.”

“Good thinking,” said Howard. “Sometimes nothing beats a good old-fashioned library.”

“We’ll go first thing tomorrow morning, Jo, as soon as your father is off to work. Maybe we’ll find a nice yoga studio in the village while we’re there. It’ll be fun!”

Josephine nodded casually, careful not to appear as if she had had forgiven them for their recent transgressions. “Whatever.”

She stared at the old brown photo, biting her pinkie nail. What had started out as a lousy day had ended much better than she had
expected it to. If she had to live in the boonies, she guessed, at least she had the puzzle of the photograph to sink her teeth into until school started. It annoyed her to realize she was actually looking forward to tomorrow.

After dinner, Josephine left her parents discussing wallpaper and climbed the stairs to her new room. She was tired and planned to read herself to sleep. She put on her flannel pajamas (hand-me-downs from Howard) and selected one of the Poe books from the bookshelf. She got comfortable in the window seat and wiped the dust from the cover of
The Raven and Other Poems.

It was late when Josephine finally closed the book and turned off her light. Outside in the foggy darkness, the moon glowed like a flashlight with dying batteries. She watched the black trees as wisps of fog crept slowly through their upper branches. Then the fog thinned slightly and the moon revealed a building next door, just beyond the line of hemlock trees. The structure seemed far too large to be a house, although she could not imagine what else it might be. It had the blocky shape of old courthouses she had seen, and there was a widow’s walk on the roof.

A flickering light, the kind created by a candle, appeared in an upper window of the building, outlining the silhouette of a man. Josephine sat up straight, recognizing a good spying opportunity. She noticed right away that there was something odd about the man,
a curious awkwardness in the way he moved. The candle gave her a quick glimpse of his face just before the building disappeared again behind a thick fog bank. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe she was imagining things, but the face seemed vaguely…inhuman.

She waited and watched intently for another look, but the fog did not reveal the building and its strange inhabitant again.