frightened him badly-had they fallen through into some even weirder and more dangerous place this time?-but then he realized why: the mirror wasn’t in the library anymore, so the Yrarbil was no longer on the other side of it. Instead he was in the mirror world’s version of Mrs. Needle’s office.
He crawled back to the washstand mirror and waved his flashlight before it so that Steve could see it on the other side. “I’m okay, Steve,” he said, though he doubted his friend could hear him. “Come on!” A few seconds later Steve Carrillo tumbled through the mirror’s surface and crashed to the floor like a punctured parade float, backpack crooked and cup and canteen clattering.
“Let’s go find Grace,” Tyler said. “Maybe we can get back and get out before the lights come back on.”
Steve shuddered. “Not me, dude. I don’t need another visit to Spooktown. I’ll wait right here.”
Tyler shook his head. “Not a good idea. We don’t know enough about how this place works-we might never find each other again. You better come with me.”
“Crud.” Steve said it with real feeling.
The corridor was empty outside Mrs. Needle’s mirror-rooms, but that didn’t make Tyler feel much better. The real pictures on the real wall in this part of the house were creepy enough; the pictures in this mirror-version were even more bizarre, photos of deserted, crumbling houses and ruined stone towers, fading images of people in clothing from times and places Tyler couldn’t even guess at, places and things he’d never seen and never wanted to.
“Yecch!” said Steve, peering into one dusty frame as they passed. “Does that woman have some kind of giant grasshopper? She’s holding it like a baby…!”
“Don’t look at that stuff. Just keep moving.” Tyler was straining every nerve to listen. He was hoping that the ragged thing that haunted the library didn’t come down to this end of the house-the Bandersnatch, Grace had called it, a name from the Alice in Wonderland books-but who knew what other nasty things might be crawling around in this ugly reflection of Ordinary Farm? He certainly didn’t want to meet a mirror-dragon or a mirror-manticore.
Tyler could see the garden from the windows in the passage. That didn’t look like a place he ever wanted to visit, either. It was a stormy evening in the real world, but here there was only the bleak, depressing calm of a late winter afternoon, a tiny trace of silvery light still to be seen in the dark gray sky. The nearest part of the garden was a courtyard and lawn surrounded by a stone wall, empty but for a large black bird with a long thin beak and long thin legs that hopped slowly from place to place, hunting for something in the matted grass beside a ruined sundial. Beyond the walls stretched the rest of the garden, so overgrown and untended that it seemed more like a ghostly forest.
Way too easy for something to sneak up on you around here, Tyler thought.
“So where are we going?” Steve Carrillo was trying to sound calm but he wasn’t entirely succeeding. “Do you even know?”
“I’ve been thinking. The other time I was here Grace was hanging around the library, like you-but so was that Bandersnatch, that creepy thing that tried to get us.”
Steve looked a little sick. “Oh, God. I remember that.”
“But Grace is a real person. She has to eat, and I didn’t see anything like food in the library place, so I figure we should check the kitchen instead.”
“Great, Jenkins. If we had a map.”
“Well, there are signs, and since everything’s kind of backward here, just keep your eyes open for one that says, ‘Nehctik.’ ”
Steve made a face. “Neck Tick? What’s that, a room full of giant bloodsucking ticks?”
“It’s ‘kitchen’ backward, you doorknob. Remember ‘Yrarbil’ and ‘Rallec’?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
They found the stairs. The carpet was so old that it had been worn down to the wood in the middle of each step. Tyler held up his hand for silence and led Steve Carrillo downward until they had gone two stories and were somewhere near what Tyler felt should be the kitchen. He led Steve down the hall until he saw a large double door, then cautiously pushed it open and peered inside.
It was the kitchen, but it took Tyler a few moments to be certain: the ceiling was several times higher than in the real kitchen, so that the room seemed almost like some kind of silo or tower, the looming walls covered with shelves that mounted up far above their heads, so high they could only be reached by teetery ladders.
Tyler saw movement and let the door fall shut a little farther, narrowing the crack through which he and Steve were peering. Several small shapes were scuttling about the room, strange creatures with big eyes, not much face, and arms like long twigs, as if instead of Pema and Azinza and Sarah the mirror-kitchen was staffed by huge pale beetles in old-fashioned dresses and bonnets.
“Oh, man, what are those?” whispered Steve. He sounded like he was getting ready to bolt.
“Sshhh!” Tyler whispered back. “Doesn’t matter. We’re just waiting.” It seemed to be near supper time-the little workers darted busily from place to place, skittering up and down the ladders to fetch ingredients, tending a huge boiling pot that seemed larger than the ancient wood-burning stove on which it sat, stopping only to argue with each other in voices like the swish and rattle of crumpled paper. Despite their clothes the kitchen creatures seemed as alien as crabs scuttling across the bottom of the sea. After a moment Tyler decided he didn’t want to watch them any longer than he had to, and let the door fall silently closed.
“We’re just waiting,” he told Steve again. “Find a comfortable spot.”
It took almost an hour to finish the preparations, but at last all the kitchen creatures, nearly a dozen in all, trooped off to serve the meal, a chittering parade weighed down with bowls and trays as it made its way out of the kitchen by the far door. Some of the meals they carried were still moving, rattling the crockery as they tried to escape. One of the main courses, a mouselike creature with a tail ten times its own length, caused a huge fuss when it leaped off its tray and ran up the sleeve of one of the beetle-workers. When the shrieking was over, the meal recaptured, and trays and crockery picked up again, the remaining cooks filed out of the room, leaving the Nehctik silent and empty.
“Finally!” said Steven Carrillo. “My legs are killing me from sitting like this! Can we go back in now?”
Tyler shook his head. “Not yet. Just stay there.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.” Tyler held his fingers to his lips. “Remember, everybody’s got to eat.”
Something stepped into the corridor behind them, filling the low hallway with cold, sighing like a windstorm. To Tyler’s immense relief it turned away after a few moments and moved off in the opposite direction, rasping and scraping like a metal fireplace screen dragged across the wooden floor. Steve Carrillo flinched and trembled but stayed silent. Tyler was proud of him-he had been very close to running away himself.
“Yeah, everybody’s got to eat, Jenkins,” Steve said in a shaky voice when the noise had finally died away. “But I bet some of these things would be happy to eat us. ”
Chapter 37
Lucinda felt like a rag doll that had lost its stuffing. Kingaree had terrified her, the thing that had grabbed Kingaree had terrified her, too, and it had all left her as weak as when she had been suffering from the greenhouse fever.
In fact, she was beginning think the fever had come back: her head seemed swollen, too big and too heavy, and there were moments when the rumbling thunder and wailing winds of the storm sounded like voices calling to her.
She did her best to concentrate on just putting one foot in front of the other as she walked back to the house. She didn’t even know what she was going to do when she got there. She couldn’t hear them at this moment, but Stillman and his men might still be running around shooting at things. Lucinda knew she should have a plan, or at least a goal, but at the moment it was all she could do just to keep moving.
As she reached the broad, curving driveway she saw a man’s shape appear in the front doorway; after a moment’s swaying hesitation, the figure went clumsily across the porch and down the stairs, then past the Snake
