Their mother usually had better things to do than worry about what her children were up to, but she did insist the family look respectable when they went to mass on Sundays: their good clothes pressed, their shoes polished, their hair just so, with the girl’s in ribbons and the boy’s slicked back. After Nanny smacked her hand for doodling a strange chimera on the back of the church bulletin describing the order of the morning’s worship service, the girl defiantly began drawing vaguely religious figures—Christ on the cross, looking monstrous; John the Baptist washing the feet of an ogre; Saint Theresa holding a demon-like baby.
Her mother, who had been absorbed in the liturgical music, glanced at what her daughter was doing, screeched, and ripped up the bulletin. The priest stumbled over his words, and many in the congregation murmured, craned their necks, and stared.
“Wicked child,”her mother had said in a fierce whisper.“That is the Devil’s work. You are never to draw again, do you hear me? I fear for your soul.”
The girl shivered now, remembering, but remained defiant. Wicked or not, she would draw. Shewould.
And one day she would draw whatever she wanted.
“Look,” said the boy. “Here’s a recipe for curing chaw…Chole…”
The girl glanced at the journal. “Cholera.”
“Oh,” said the boy. “What’s cholera?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but it used to kill a lot of people,” said the girl, itching to get her hands on the journal but pretending she did not much care. If her brother knew she wanted it, he would hold on to it. Better to let him lose interest on his own; then she could nab it, and he would be none the wiser.
“Let’s check out the rest of the house,” the girl said, gesturing toward the wooden stairs.
“I don’t know if we should. Nanny said we shouldn’t even be here.”
“Stay down here if you want. I mean, if you’re a scaredy-cat.”
“I’m not a scaredy-cat!” he protested. “But it’s creepy.”
“I’m going up. Stay here if you want, or come with me. Your choice.”
He made a twisty motion with his mouth. The girl knew the gesture well; he did it when he did not want to follow her lead but would anyway. Her brother was naturally more cautious than she, but he would never leave her to explore on her own. As she mounted the wooden stairs leading to a door, she heard, with satisfaction, his footfall on the steps behind her.
At the top of the stairs, she grasped the door’s old brass knob. It turned in her hand, but the door would not open.
“Is it locked?” the boy asked.
“Something’s blocking it, I think. Let’s both try.”
Sister and brother put their shoulders to the door and pushed as hard as they could, but the door would not budge.
After a few moments, they gave up and went back down to the basement.
“Let’s go down to the beach to see the sea lions,” said the boy. “It’s more fun.”
“I’m going to find another way in.”
“But why?”
“Because this will be my house one day,” she said with an air of finality.
“Why do you want an icky old house like this? When we grow up, I’ll buy us a nice new one to live in together, just the two of us.”
“It doesn’t work that way, you know,” she said.
“I don’t see why not. We’re different from everybody else. We have our own language. We have our owneverything.”
The girl shook her head and tried to ignore him. He said things like this more and more lately.
As she looked around, imagining what the “mad scientist” had been working on, she repressed a shiver. The basement was fascinating, but also seemed…she searched for the word she had just learned in literature class: “malevolent.”
At that moment the dismal old laboratory seemed to come to glittering life before her eyes. She could hear the walls whispering to her, imagined flames flickering below the beakers, liquids bubbling through the coiled pipes, and the aroma of freshly crushed leaves wafting up from the huge marble mortar and pestle. Despite her misgivings, she wanted to linger here, to explore the rest of the home at her leisure, to decipher that journal…to learn the mysteries of the Perles Mansion.
