“I doesn’t care,” said Tilly stubbornly. “I wants to talk ’bout ’em. Us orphings is supposed to be equals. I heard Mrs. Meeching say so. If you talks ’bout her ma and pa, you has to talk ’bout mine, toot”
Aunt Twice stiffened at the mention of Mrs. Meeching’s name. “When did you want to talk about them, Tilly?”
“Right now!”
“It’s very late,” Aunt Twice said. “Wouldn’t tomorrow night do just as well?”
Tilly thought this over. “Well, long as you doesn’t forget. Hey! Ain’t that Emily’s bag open? She promised as how she’d ’low me to see her pretty things.”
“I’m only taking out my nightdress now, Tilly,” Emily said. She remembered that her tam-o’-shanter was still in Tilly’s apron pocket, where, for all she knew, it had taken up permanent residence. “We can look at them tomorrow. I promise we will.”
There was more thought from Tilly. “Well, long as you promises, I guess ’tis late.”
“Yes, of course it is,” said Aunt Twice quickly. “That’s a sensible girl, Tilly. Now come along, and we’ll go together to our rooms. Good night, Emily!” She closed the door without so much as a backward look.
They never had talked about Mama and Papa, but Emily already had come to accept the way Aunt Twice must behave now, so she was not startled at being left so suddenly. Still, this did not make it any easier to be left alone once again in her cold, stony, silent underground cell. Silent, that is, except for strange scratching sounds overhead. Rats? she wondered. Quickly she threw off her clothes and slipped into her nightdress.
Before she turned down the gaslight, however, she opened her locket to study the photographs inside it. Shadows danced eerily over the tiny figures—Mama, Papa, Aunt Twice, Uncle Twice. Tall, slender Uncle Twice with the golden mustaches and the twinkling blue eyes! As with Mama and Papa, was a photograph all Emily would ever have to remember him by? Shivering, she finally turned down the light, jumped into her cot, and pulled the skimpy coverlet tight up around her face. She hoped she would fall asleep at once, yet no sooner would she close her eyes than terrifying shapes danced across her eyelids, making them fly open.
As she stared into the darkness, questions began again to whirl through her head. She thought of the mountains of delicious food in the locked icebox. Surely, two ladies, even with the most enormous appetites, could not consume so much food. Everything numbered—everything accounted for, so surely nothing would be lightly tossed away either. Who did eat it then?
But the one burning question that returned over and over had to do with Uncle Twice. She was to think of him as dead— why? Could he be the one whose life depended on Aunt Twice serving the dread Mrs. Meeching? Or was the life Aunt Twice so desperately protected one Emily as yet knew nothing about, so she was to think of her uncle as dead because—because he had become as evil as this mansion. Because he was the depraved mind behind all this horror, and not Mrs. Meeching. Well, after all, he had bought Sugar Hill Hall, hadn’t he? Wasn’t he the owner? Emily tried to sweep these ugly thoughts from her mind, but they stuck firm and would not be swept away.
Of one thing, however, she was becoming certain. There were terrible secrets locked up in Sugar Hill Hall, and somehow she had the feeling that the key to all of them lay with Uncle Twice. But where was he? Would she ever find out? Whom could she ask? Not Aunt Twice, she now knew. Her aunt was much too frightened to reveal anything, holding a life in her hands. Tilly then? She probably knew little, and what she did know she would not likely tell Emily. So whatever Emily discovered, she would have to manage on her own.
How she could possibly discover anything, she had no idea. It would take all her strength and wits just to keep from becoming another shadow like the old people. But she would not become one! she told herself fiercely. Nor would she ever let Mrs. Meeching see tears in her eyes. Never!
But all this bravery would have to start tomorrow. Tonight she was a cold, lonely, frightened girl, away from the only home she had ever known. She had lost her mama and papa, and there was nothing to look forward to but grey soup and moldy bread, and odd Tilly for her only friend. The sounds of her tears and sobbing, when they came, were deeply buried in her small, hard pillow, because she had not forgotten, even in all her misery, that the walls had eyes and ears.
FIVE
Kipper
Emily’s favorite ornament on the Christmas tree had always been a pink, blue, and silver cardboard gondola pulled by two white glass swans with silvery spun-glass tails. As a tiny girl, she would often sit and stare at it for minutes on end, forgetting all her new Christmas gifts. That night she dreamed about her swans, but rather than floating amidst a hundred sparkling ornaments and twinkling candles, they drifted alone around a tall, dark, lifeless tree.
All at once, as Emily watched them, they began to plummet to the ground. She reached out for them, but all her fingers closed around was ice-cold air. Sobbing, she crawled toward the tree, trying to gather the tiny bits of glass that had once been the swans, but all she could pick up in her hands was the two spun-glass tails. Then, as she held them, they began to squirm from her fingers, gliding into the dark tree like two small snakes with red ribbons around their tails. Emily began to scream. Then someone was shaking her,
