The Peculiar

aloft. It illuminated a circle of ghostly faces, all peering down in fear and wonderment at the battle raging below.

“Ophelia?” Mr. Jelliby shouted up. “Is Ophelia all right?” The hall carpet was alive, too, panthers and wildcats moving fluidly through the weave toward him.

His wife pushed through the huddle of servants, nightgown flaring white in the darkness. “I’m well, Arthur, we all are, but-”

Mr. Jelliby stamped his foot, mashing a red-eyed cat into the writhing stitches of the carpet. “It’s Mr. Lickerish! He’s sent someone. Something to-”

Another cat tore free. He felt it on his leg, a biting pain, as if the threads were sewing themselves into his skin. He clawed at it.

“Arthur, we’re coming,” Ophelia cried. Brahms made a move to descend, but the stairs folded up like an accordion, leaving the poor footman flailing sixteen feet above the floor. The others caught him and pulled him back, shouting in fear.

“Arthur, what’s happening?”

He had to get out. None of the others would be safe until he was gone. And if the front door wouldn’t let him leave, he would find another way. He hobbled down the hallway toward the library and the back garden.

Things were flying at him from all directions now. Nails ripped themselves from the floorboards, plant stands and chairs skittered after him out of the corners. The paintings on the walls let loose their inhabitants, and old men in powdered wigs suddenly attacked, clawing and whispering. A beak-nosed lady grabbed a handful of his hair and wrenched his head against her canvas.

“Did you not see?” she hissed into his ear. “Did you not see that common little maid scratch me with her hairpin? And you did nothing!”

He could smell her painted hand, turpentine and dust, the brushstrokes of her fingers scraping over his face, searching for his eyes. With a yell, he rent her canvas top to bottom and flung himself away from the wall of portraits. An umbrella closed around his leg. He tried to kick it off, staggered into a bust of some king. It spat a lump of marble straight into his eye.

“My nose does not look like that!” the bust cried. Mr. Jelliby backed away, felt the stained-glass door that led into the back garden. His hand found the knob. He rattled it. Locked. Grasping the bust by the neck, he hurled it with all his strength through the door. The door smashed. He leaped through it.

Everything became quiet.

Side tables and teakettles clattered to a halt on the threshold. The bust rolled away into the bushes.

Mr. Jelliby fell to the grass, lungs heaving, half expecting the plants to rise up and devour him, but the garden was silent. No complaining voices. No carnivorous roses or hideous wood spirits. He pushed himself up, the dew and earth cold under his bare feet. And then he heard it. A noise from the knot of rhododendrons that grew in the far corner of the garden. The sound of stone grinding against stone.

Something was moving through the branches. Several things. The leaves began to rustle. A moment later a gargoyle slid out of the shadows, dragging its stone wings behind it. An apple-cheeked elf followed, brandishing a dainty ax. A lunatic grin was fixed across its face. Stone fauns, nymphs, and a great brass frog all emerged from the foliage, each one complaining of its own particular woes.

“There you are,” a Venus whispered, and the voice that came from her throat was eerie and grating. “Why do I not have arms? What sort of imbecile carves a goddess without arms? It is your good luck, I suppose, or I would surely strangle you with them.”

Slowly, steadily, the creatures advanced, feet whispering in the grass. Behind him, in the house, Mr. Jelliby heard the furniture, the tap of wood and marble, and tinny rattling. In a few moments he would be completely surrounded.

Taking a deep breath, he ran straight at the statues. The gargoyle reared, teeth bared. Mr. Jelliby leaped. His foot caught the gargoyle in its mouth and he vaulted over it, through the air and onto the grass beyond. The gargoyle let out a grating roar, but it was too heavy to turn with any speed. Mr. Jelliby struck the garden wall at a run. He began to climb. His toes found a trellis, his hands buried themselves in the ancient ivy, and he scrambled up onto the top.

He turned, looking down into the garden.

They were watching him. After a moment the Venus detached herself from the others and came to the base of the wall. She stared dolefully up at him with flat stone eyes.

“This is your home,” she said. “You will have to come back someday. And when you do, we will kill you for all the wrongs you have done us.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Mr. Jelliby cried. “I didn’t carve you without arms. I didn’t hammer the nails into the floorboards or paint the pictures wrong!” But the Venus wasn’t listening to him. It simply stared, its voice droning on about all the wicked things it was convinced he had done.

Mr. Jelliby swore and dropped down onto the other side of the wall. A narrow alley ran along it, a crooked chasm between the other garden walls. It was deserted. Wrought-iron gates and doors in peeling greens and yellows opened into it at regular intervals. Rain had fallen, and the moon shone down brightly on the slick pavement, turning it into a path of cold silver. Drips of water fell, echoing, from branches and drainpipes.

Mr. Jelliby looked back at his house, dark and waiting behind the garden wall. A lamp bloomed in an upstairs window. Then voices, muffled behind the glass. The police would arrive soon, bells clanging. They wouldn’t find anything. Nothing but a willow bed, slashed portraits, and stabbed tables, all still as could be.

Pulling his dressing gown tightly around him, Mr. Jelliby hurried off into the night.

CHAPTER XIII

Out of the Alley

Bartholomew didn’t wake up because he had never truly gone to sleep. He had felt the coal scuttle slip from his hand, heard it fall and bounce, one long clear note going on and on inside his skull. He had fallen, too. Dull pain had stabbed his arm, and something inside his eyes had gone on, and he was able to see again, blurry and indistinct. The raggedy man stood at the window, a smudge against the light, waving out. Then the window had gone black, and the wings had filled the alley outside. But it had all seemed so far away. It had been as if Bartholomew were curled up, deep inside his stiff and hurting body, and what happened out in the world did not really concern him anymore.

It felt like he lay there for years. He imagined dust settling over him, and Old Crow Alley descending into ruins around him. But eventually he did feel himself drifting up, filling his body like a puddle spreading through a rut. It was bright outside. Sunlight fell through the grimy panes of the kitchen window and stung his eyes. He sat up and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

Hettie is gone. It was a slow, hollow thought. The lady in plum has come and stolen her away, just like the nine others before her. Just like my friend. I wasn’t the one they wanted. I am just a silly little boy who didn’t realize the danger until it was too late, who thought it was all about me, and going to London, and being important. And now Hettie is gone.

Bartholomew pulled himself off the floor with the help of a table leg. His clothes were scaly with ash, but he didn’t notice. He went to his mother’s bed. She was just as he had left her, fast asleep, her breathing regular, peaceful. Sometimes she would smile a little, or snort, or roll over the way she did when she was normally sleeping. Only she wouldn’t wake up.

Bartholomew grasped her shoulder. “Mother?” he wanted to say, but only a cracking sound came from his throat.

In a daze, he wandered out of the flat, listening at the neighbor’s doors as he passed them. All was quiet. No crying children, no footfalls on the bare old boards, not even the smell of turnips. He went upstairs, downstairs, through the whole house, and everywhere it was the same. All he heard were snores now and then, what sounded like the creak of a bedspring. Even the hobgoblin who kept the door to Old Crow Alley was asleep on his little stool, a string of spit glistening on his chin.