The Wikkeling (6 page)

“Is that what I looked like?” whispered Henrietta.

Gary nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it's probably what I looked like, too, when I got them.”

Henrietta felt an ache in her heart. At least when the headache was her own,
it occupied her to control it. Watching someone else suffer was in some ways worse. She felt Gary's hand on hers, and she firmly grasped his fingers and tried to think positive thoughts.

Eventually, Rose stirred. She opened her eyes.

“Hello,” said Henrietta softly.

Rose didn't reply. She appeared disoriented.

“I'm Henrietta.” Henrietta pointed to herself.

“I'm Gary,” said Gary a little too loudly. “We go to school here.”

“We get headaches, too,” said Henrietta. “Like yours.”

“I'm Rose.” The little girl sat up, holding a hand to her head. “I'm all right. It wasn't bad.” She looked back and forth between Henrietta and Gary. “You get them too?”

“Gary used to, and I still do,” said Henrietta. “It's House Sickness.”

“House Sick?” said Rose.

“Do you live in an old house?” Henrietta asked, but Rose didn't answer. She just sat and waited for Henrietta to continue. “Well, um, if you do, sometimes there are poisons that make you sick.”

“We should start a
club
,” said Gary. “We're like superheroes who can get incredible headaches on command!”

“That's a terrible idea,” said Henrietta, laughing.

Rose smiled. “I'll be treasurer,” she said.

From outside, the three heard Ms. Morse's voice: “Hello, Mrs. Soldottir. She has some friends with her.”

Ms. Morse entered the room with Rose's mother, a willowy woman with
straight blond hair and a long, pretty face, whose skin was considerably lighter in shade than her daughter's. She wore old-fashioned gray pants and a white button-up dress shirt. She was a little out of breath, as if she'd just been running.

“Hi, Mom,” said Rose.

“How are you, Rosie?” said her mother, bending and kissing Rose on the forehead.

“I'm okay.”

The two of them hugged.

“Were you two helping her?” her mother asked Gary and Henrietta. Henrietta nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and her voice contained none of the suspicion or curtness that Henrietta would have expected from either of her own parents, had they been addressing a stranger. “The buses are here. You two should hurry.”

H
enrietta sat before her computer that evening, but couldn't concentrate on her homework. There was a lot going on that seemed more important than math. She thought about Gary and Rose, and the headaches they all shared. Until today, she'd felt alone. “House Sickness,” she mumbled to herself, her hands hanging motionless above her keyboard. She didn't feel satisfied with that explanation, and her doubts surprised her—normally, she accepted what she was told, but this just didn't add up. She looked around her room. If it was the house's fault, why did she never get sick here?

She recalled Gary's claim that he'd seen someone standing next to her at the onset of her headache that day. She, too, had sensed someone. Rather than “House Sickness,” it felt to Henrietta like “Outside Sickness,” as if something was waiting for them out there.

She surveyed her small room, its bland white walls, bed, and desk. She always complained about the place, but in fact, she felt safe here. She returned to her homework for a few moments, typing out “I will tread water until help arrives,” and “It is never too early to buy life insurance.”

On the other side of the wall, her parents had begun arguing.

The voices stopped eventually, and her mother entered, looking careworn.
“Don't forget we're going to your grandmother's tomorrow,” she said. “Set your alarm.”

“I will.”

“And wear your dress shoes.”

“I will.” Her uncomfortable black plastic dress shoes were already set out by the bedside table.

“Put your pajamas on, brush your teeth, and go to bed,” said her mother. Henrietta wouldn't get tucked in tonight.

“Is the BedCam fixed?” said Henrietta, motioning toward the wall where the black BedCam she used to have had been replaced by a new gray one. Her mother frowned.

“They tried three different models, and all of them had the same problem. We'll get it straightened out. Now, pack up your homework.” Her mother disappeared into the hallway, and through the wall Henrietta heard her enter the bedroom again.

Henrietta was named after her grandmother, who was nicknamed Henrie. Henrietta didn't see Grandmother Henrie often, and when she did, the visit was generally short and awkward. Henrietta had always wondered how she ended up with her grandmother's name, because her mother and her grandmother didn't get along very well. If you didn't like your mother, would you name your daughter after her? It made Henrietta wonder if things had been different before she was born.

After thinking on these matters for a few moments, Henrietta's attention drifted back to her textbook. She gazed down at the addition problem she'd been preparing to work out.

It looked . . . strange.

One of the numbers had become a small, perfectly round, red dot.

Henrietta reached out and touched it. It was wet. A little of it came off on her finger. She sniffed it, and the rich smell reminded her of when she skinned her knee once.

It was blood.

She wiped her finger on her pants and checked to see if she was getting a bloody nose, which she wasn't. She stared at the drop. It must have come from somewhere.

She looked up. Above her, emblazoned brightly upon the dingy white ceiling, was a shiny red spot.

Slowly and carefully, Henrietta climbed onto her desk. The drip was seeping through the ceiling along a thin, almost invisible seam. Past the leak, Henrietta followed the seam and saw that it formed a three foot by three foot square. It was a trapdoor.

She visualized her house. She'd never thought about it before, but the pitched roof meant that there was a space, an attic, right over her room. Her first thought was to go to her parents and tell them, but she didn't move. Her mind was racing, and the conclusion to which it sped was that she would not go to them. She stepped down from her desk.

She would look into this herself, right now. From her nightstand, she plucked
the flashlight she was supposed to use if there was ever a power outage. Then she climbed back onto the desk.

She pressed gently on the door, and the seam became a dark crack as it tilted upward. She tried to shine her flashlight into the space, but the angle was wrong and her head wasn't high enough to see. She let the door back down, climbed off the desk again, and sat on the edge of her bed. Her heart raced.

It might seem a bit odd that Henrietta, who had been raised to pay such careful attention to safety and the making of sensible decisions, would do something as decidedly unsafe and incautious as investigate something like this alone. It seemed odd to Henrietta, too, and she tried for a moment to convince herself to tell her parents, but she continued to sit, unmoving. She was discovering something about herself that she'd not known before. She was discovering that she was an intensely curious person.

After a few moments she stood, picked up her chair, and placed it quietly on top of her desk. Then she climbed on, balancing precariously, and crouched against the ceiling. She put one hand against the door, knitted her eyebrows, counted to three . . . and stood up.

The attic was larger than she'd imagined. A bank of tall windows to the left admitted the pale light of a greenish full moon, lighting what seemed to be a little living room immediately before her containing a low coffee table with a glass top, a sofa upholstered with a faded flower print, a small end table with a hardcover dictionary placed atop, and two wicker chairs. Behind this stood many tall,
full bookcases, which largely blocked the view further into the attic, but Henrietta could see the space stretching back behind them into the shadows, moonbeams glancing upon many obscure, still shapes. Overhead, the peaked rafters diminished into the darkness.

Henrietta was so overwhelmed by it all that for a moment she scarcely noticed what lay immediately before her. When her gaze finally dropped down, she gasped and lunged back against the edge of the door, wobbling uncertainly on the chair atop her desk.

An enormous gray cat lay there, in a puddle of blood.

Ms. Span's voice popped into Henrietta's head instantly, warning her about the risk of bodily fluids, infection, tetanus, dust mites, rabid animals, and falling from heights. But Henrietta didn't budge.

The cat seemed unconscious. Additionally, it wasn't really a cat. It was twice as large as an ordinary housecat. One of its hind legs was splayed out behind its body, as long and thin as a stilt, like nothing Henrietta had ever seen.

She hoisted herself the rest of the way into the attic, keeping a safe distance. The cat's tall ears twitched, and it opened its eyes, which shone in the moonlight an incandescent emerald green with wide, black pupils.

“Hello,” Henrietta whispered breathlessly.

The cat didn't make any threatening moves. Henrietta turned on her flashlight. Her eyes were drawn to a patch of wet, matted fur on the cat's hindquarter, where blood pulsed out, thick and slow. She thought back to Physical Safety period at school. This was an arterial wound.

“A
PPLY DIRECT PRESSURE TO ARTERIAL WOUNDS FOR FIVE MINUTES
,” she
whispered to herself. “Please don't scratch me, kitty.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone to mark the five-minute interval, but the screen was blank. She shook it, but nothing changed. She removed her sweater, wrapped it around her hand and forearm for protection, and pressed on the gash. The cat's breathing quickened, but to Henrietta's relief it didn't lash out.

She counted out the full five minutes, then slowly removed her hand. Under the matted gray hair, the bleeding seemed to have slowed.

“I'm going to get some things to help you,” she said. “Don't go anywhere.”

She descended carefully back into her room and tiptoed out into the hallway. As she passed the master bedroom, her mother's voice rang out. “Henrietta? Is that you?”