The only level of Theron Hall not represented in this model is the basement. But it must be here, hidden in the presentation plinth on which the aboveground floors now stand.
As Crispin finishes shrugging off his backpack, the dog whines softly to attract his attention.
At the south end of the thirty-five-foot model, Harley sniffs vigorously at the overhanging surbase of the plinth.
Easing the dog aside, Crispin feels under this lip … and finds the switch.
Motors purr, the structure rises from the base that supports it, and inch by inch the underground level appears. Because ceilings in the basement are at only nine feet, the fully exposed cellar measures twenty-seven inches high in one-quarter scale, and it is presented as a long expanse of poured-in-place concrete.
Crispin hurries to his backpack, removes a claw hammer from a zippered compartment, and goes around to the back — the east — side of the model.
If any of the remaining staff is on the third floor, this is the most dangerous moment of the operation. The foundation concrete through which he needs to break is phony of course, but the top three floors of the model must rest on this, so there will be some sort of structure behind the faux concrete. The noise might not be contained within this room.
He swings the face of the hammer first, caving in a swath of the basement wall, and at once he discovers that the noise he makes here will be dwarfed by the greater noise of the west basement wall of the
He reverses the hammer, using the claw to tear away chunks of the wall. As supports far below in the true house groan and as the floors on every level creak and pop, he exposes the altar room in the model.
In there, a thousand flickering electric lights in a thousand tiny glass holders mimic the candles that he saw on the night that his brother was killed. He is behind the altar, having knocked aside the upside-down crucifix. He reaches into the satanic church, seizes the marble table that serves as an altar, and rips the eighteen-inch miniature from its mounts. He places it on the floor and hammers it twice, until it cracks in pieces.
At that moment, from the hole that he has made in the basement wall of the model, a flock of what he first takes to be immense white moths or butterflies erupts, brushing his face, fluttering around his head. But then he sees that their wings are white dresses or choirboy robes and that they are children, some as small as six inches, the tallest perhaps twelve. There must be twenty of them. Although they appear to be laughing or singing, they make no sound, yet their joy is evident in their exuberant flight, as they soar and swoop and dance in midair.
They do not belong here now that they are freed, and they don’t linger, but quickly fade, vanishing in flight, until only the most recently imprisoned two remain.
Crispin drops the hammer and reaches out to this last pair. For only a moment, they settle upon the palm of his hand. They are his sweet sister and his beloved brother, as ever they looked, only so much smaller.
The dog stands on his hind feet, forepaws against the model plinth, eager to see.
This Mirabell and this Harley in Crispin’s hand have no weight, yet they are the heaviest thing he has ever held.
They should not linger, nor should he want to detain them. He says only, “I love you.”
The pair rise from his upturned palm, and by the grace of their flight and by a sudden golden glow just before they vanish, they seem to return to him the love that he expressed.
Things are still crashing far down in Theron Hall, and the model is trembling and tweaking.
Snatching up the hammer, Crispin hurries around to the front of the model, where the last of the three cats is still on the window seat, peering hopefully out.
After a hesitation, he taps the hammer against one of the little windows, cracking through the stiles and muntins, shattering the tiny panes.
If the cat was once a real cat, reduced to the size of a mouse to serve as an avatar, if it was a standin for a human soul until the soul could be captured, it is not evil. It was as ruthlessly used as Mirabell and Harley were used.
The three-inch cat leaps through the missing window, into the palm of his hand. He holds it low to allow the dog to inspect it, and Harley approves. Crispin puts the tiny cat in a jacket pocket, certain that in this mysterious world, it will be at some point an important and valued companion.
As ominous rumbling rises far below, Crispin takes a can of lighter fluid from his backpack and a butane match from a pocket of his jeans. He squirts the fluid into the ground-floor drawing room from which the cat escaped and lights the dribbled trail with the match. Flames roar at once through the miniature room and into the ground-floor hallway.
He hammers out a couple of windows on the second floor, floods two more rooms with lighter fluid, and sets them afire.
Intuition tells him that he has no more time, that he shouldn’t even hesitate to retrieve his backpack. He has left his deck of cards and all his money with Amity. He doesn’t need to take from Theron Hall anything he brought to it, except the dog.
He holds fast to the hammer, however, in case he needs a weapon, and Harley precedes him from the room into the third-floor hallway.
Smoke. The burning rooms are on the second and ground floors, but smoke has already found its way to the third, thin gray tendrils weaving through the air like malevolent spirits.
Boy and dog run for the south stairs.
They are three-quarters of the way along the corridor when Mr. Mordred explodes from an open doorway with all the suddenness of a joke snake springing from a can. He tears the hammer out of Crispin’s grasp, throws him against a wall, and swings the weapon he has just confiscated. As Crispin ducks, the struck wall booms above his head.
Nothing about the tutor is amusing now. His face is contorted in hatred, his eyes bloodshot. From him issues a continuous stream of curses and a spray of spittle as he the turns the hammer in his hand and swings with the claw end as the weapon. The smooth back curve of the wicked instrument grazes Crispin’s face. No damage. He dodges and twists, but the next assault is a closer thing, the claw snags his jacket, and the denim rips.
As the house fire alarm starts to shriek, the dog leaps onto Mordred’s back, knocking the hulking man off balance, driving him face-first into the floor.
Crispin snatches up the dropped hammer, the dog does a 180-degree spin on Mordred’s back, and they are off for the south stairs once more.
There’s not the pale fire of the moon at the bottom of the stairwell this time, but real fire, bright as the sun, and smoke churning upward. They can’t go all the way down, only as far as the second floor.
Harley leads along this new corridor, where the fire is toward the farther end. They race down one of the curving front staircases to the foyer, though this route is forbidden to children and staff, not to mention dogs.
As he comes off the bottom step, Crispin hears the shot and in the same instant the bullet ringing off the head of the hammer, which falls from his hand.
In the foyer, wearing a black knit suit and red scarf, Nanny Sayo advances with a pistol in both hands. “Piglet,” she says. “You wouldn’t leave without a kiss for Nanny, would you?”
For the first time ever, the dog growls.
“There’s nothing special about you, piglet. Now you’ll be food for worms, just like your sister and brother.”
“You’ve lost,” he says.
She smiles and moves toward him. “You little fool. I’ve bent a hundred like you and broken a hundred more. I look young, but I am older than Jardena.”
Less than an arm’s length away, she halts.
The fire alarm continues to shrill, and smoke begins to slither down the dual staircases.
Crispin stares into the muzzle of the pistol, but then he meets her eyes, which are as beautiful and as magnetic as ever.
“Food for worms … or not. Your choice. But Nanny has so much to teach you, pretty piglet, and you’ll love learning all of it. You’ll find my lessons quite delicious.”
Although thirteen, the boy feels nine again, and in her thrall. He remembers her warm hand on his bare chest
