Anything to Me Is Sweeter Than to Cross Shock-Headed Peter

BRIAN HODGE

Concerning the brownstone building where they were housed, it was said that the sun had never once shined on the place in all the days and decades it had stood, and whenever the rain pelted it, it was always Arctic cold. And this was fitting, for it had been a terribly long time since the sun had shined on their lives, if ever the sun had blessed their unhappy countenances at all.

They were not children for sunny days and parks, for paddle boats and picnics. God, no. These were children for hailstorms and the roughest of back alleys, for shipwrecks and for plagues.

They still had their uses, of course. To visit them was to see the future, a destination at the far end of an ill-advised road, and know that all was not too late. To look at them was to know that for most any other child in the world, not nearly so far gone as these, there was time to turn around and mend their wayward ways.

And so, dim and dreary though the place may have been, people found their way there. Eagerly. By the car-full, sometimes even by the busload. Tours ran once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and—all the better for sending a child to bed with fresh nightmares—once in the evening. Pay your admittance to the stern-faced Mr. Crouch at the door, or more likely the even sterner-faced Mrs. Crouch, and the tour began. You could linger as long as you liked, anywhere you wished—sometimes extra minutes were needed to drive a point home for a particularly stubborn or stupid child—although tarrying too long was likely to mean missing part of Mr. Crouch’s helpful comments further along the way.

Peter had been listening to the man’s spiel for such a long time that he figured, should Mr. Crouch take sick, or better yet take a tumble down some creaky stairs and snap his wretched scrawny neck, Peter himself could take over without missing a beat.

He listened now—his ears were exceptionally keen—and hardly a word differed from the time before, and the time before that.

“This sullen little fellow’s name is Caspar,” Mr. Crouch’s voice floated up from below as the tour began with Caspar’s room. “And you’ll not find a more fitting name for the likes of him, because if he keeps up his habits, he’ll waste away to a ghost, just you wait and see.”

“What’s wrong with him?” asked some faceless woman. “He looks acceptable.”

“Decided he was too good for the food he was being served. His poor parents had such a time trying to get a morsel down him, he might as well have bolted his own mouth shut. So what could they do but bring him here, eh? He was a healthy boy once. A plump boy, you might even say. But look at him now.” There was always a pause for drama here. “Show ’em your ribs, boy. Show these nice folks your ribs.”

And here there always arose a gasp.

“Like to try and feed him, would you?” Mr. Crouch asked someone.

“No, no, that . . . I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” the someone demurred.

“Nonsense. Here you go, just try and offer him this. See what it gets you.”

Now there was a clatter and a clang, the door within the door opening, just wide enough to admit something that was too big to fit between the bars. Like, for instance, a bowl.

Peter knew what was to come. Only it didn’t. Not today. It happened like that sometimes.

“Say your line, boy,” growled Mr. Crouch. “Say the line!”

“‘Take that nasty soup away!’” cried Caspar, but his heart wasn’t really in it. It happened like that, too, sometimes.

There was another clang as Mr. Crouch chuckled. “See? Told you. Incorrigible, that one. He’ll be dead within the month, I give him.”

Mr. Crouch had been giving Caspar a month for years.

“Which brings us to Pauline,” said Mr. Crouch, amid a shuffling of feet, then came another great swelling gasp that didn’t even wait for a prompting from the sour old man. “Liked to play with matches, she did. Even the kitties knew better, but not her. And you can see what it’s got her. Looks more like lizard than girl now, what with all the bits the flames took.”

At this point, Mr. Crouch would toss her a matchbox containing a single wooden match, no more than that, lest she get up to old mischief and give everyone much more than they’d bargained for.

“That’s it, dearie,” he would say. “Let’s see that trick of yours.”

A scratch, a pop, and then a hiss. Sometimes another collective gasp, other times a group groan.

“Now, don’t you folks fret none,” Mr. Crouch soothed. “She can’t feel a thing. If that blackened lump of tongue has got any nerve endings left, I’m the king of Siam.”

The herd moved along, as herds always do, clumping up the stairs to the next floor, and as often happened, as they gathered around the next door of the tour, people began to complain that the room must be empty, that they couldn’t see anyone.

“Is that so?” said Mr. Crouch. “Look harder, why don’t you.”

Slowly, slowly, came murmurs of recognition and approval.

“Them three there, they don’t stand out much anymore. Thought it was grand fun to have a mean little laugh at folks with skin, let’s say, a few shades darker than their own. Well, darker than their own used to be.” Mr. Crouch always treated himself to a mean little snicker of his own here. “Dunk these lads in ink, and about all you can make out of ’em now is the whites of their eyes. I expect you could see ’em better if they’d smile, too, but we’re still waiting for that to happen.” He banged on the bars of the door to their room. “Don’t got much to smile about these days, do you, you miserable lot!”

The tour proceeded along the halls and up more stairs, and by now somebody was usually crying, maybe a great number of young visitors taken over by weeping and sobs, and the promises, oh, the promises—Peter had heard every promise a frightened child could make, a thousand times over. Promises to be good, promises to be better. Promises to never do it again, or to remember to do what was expected.

Next there was Philip, a fidgety boy who couldn’t sit still, and banged around his room until he was a mass of bruises almost as dark as the Black Boys, post-ink.

And there was Flying Robert, who’d foolishly gone out with an umbrella during a frightfully windy storm, and was swept away. Even more foolishly, he’d refused to let go of the umbrella, until up up up he’d been carried, aloft among the rooftops, then dumped back to the hard streets when the wind tired of him as surely as his parents had tired of caring for such a feeble-minded lad.

“Bet you good people didn’t know arms and legs could bend that way,” Mr. Crouch, ever helpful, pointed out.

Then came Frederick, liked by nobody, even among the otherwise friendless few beneath the roof of this place where the sun never shined and the rain was always cold. Frederick was mean and cruel, spiteful and vicious, to every living thing on four legs and two. With anyone else, Peter would’ve felt the greatest of pity every time he heard Mr. Crouch turn the dog loose to harass him, and fight for the sausage that the wailing boy never got to eat . . . but with Frederick, Peter made an exception.

At last the tour arrived next door, one room over, almost done.

Here Mr. Crouch turned sly. “Wave to the nice folks, Conrad. That’s it, lad. Give ’em a nice big wave. Both hands, now.”

Coming from next door as they did, the gasps and cries belonged to people now, not a crowd. They came from fathers and mothers, from girls and boys, in voices high and low. There was always at least one tyke screaming by now. Always.

“What happened to him?” some pushy mother begged to know.

“You can’t hold it against babies that they suck their thumbs. But there comes a day when a youngster’s got to give that up. Not for Conrad, though. His parents said they practically had to take a crowbar to pry his hand from his face,” said Mr. Crouch. “In a case this bad, best to remove the temptation altogether.”

Some grim father muttered as if he couldn’t decide whether he admired this or not. “Whoever would do such a thing?”

“Snip-Snap, he’s called. You don’t want a visit from him.”

And then, a most unexpected thing, almost certainly the most unexpected thing that had ever happened here. Up piped the voice of a young girl, betraying no more than honest curiosity: “What kind of scissors did he use?”

“Jenny!” barked a voice, dripping with a mother’s shame and scorn. “What kind of question is that?”

“What?” Jenny sounded plainly ignorant of her crime. “I just wanted to know!”

Mr. Crouch grumped and grumbled the way he did when he seemed to feel he’d lost control. “Sharp ones,” he said, and made a few quick shearing sounds. “That answer your question, you nosy thing?”

“You’ll have to forgive her,” the mother begged. “But she’s paying attention, and that has to be good, right? Most of the time she doesn’t even notice what’s in front of her at all.”

“You don’t say,” mused Mr. Crouch. “I know the type, all right.”

Order was restored, and all was well with the tour again, with just enough tears and blubbering to confirm that points were getting across and lessons being learned, but not so much so that people couldn’t hear what Mr. Crouch had to say next.

“And now we’ve saved the worst for last . . .”

On the other side of the bars, they came into view: a herd of staring eyes and craning necks, knees and shoulders and stamping feet jostling for position, grim-faced grown-ups shoving their progeny forward to look and learn. And though he supposed he should’ve, long ago, Peter had never wholly grown accustomed to the first wave of revulsion that rippled over their faces. It was the same every time—they peered in, then recoiled—and every time, it stung.

“Hard to believe, I know, but that’s a boy there, under all that mess and tangle,” said Mr. Crouch. “Just look at him! Guess he had better things to do than take care of himself so that he was the least bit presentable. Yep, them there are his real fingernails. Got so long by now the grimy things are starting to curl. And if his hair’s ever once met a comb, I don’t know of it. Shock-Headed Peter, we call him. The most slovenly boy that ever was. Even I can barely stomach the sight of him. Anything to me is sweeter than to see Shock-Headed Peter. And don’t get me started on the stink between hosings.”

Through the bars they stared and pointed, and he glared right back at them, and for as much as he hated the place, he couldn’t imagine leaving. Because in all the time he’d been here, and the innumerable visitors who’d filed past his door, not once had he seen a father or a mother who looked like someone he would want to go home with. Even if they’d have him.

“Let’s be moving along, now. Children need their rest. You’ve seen what you’ve seen and I don’t imagine you’ll be forgetting it anytime soon,” Mr. Crouch said as he began to sweep the herd toward the stairs. “But just in case the little ones do, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you responsible folks about the pretty little picture books we’ve got down where you first came in. Guaranteed to bring it all back again. For their own good, of course. Just see my lovely missus about that and she’ll get you fixed right up.”

Peter turned his back on them as they clomped along the scarred wooden floor, to wait until they were gone. More often than not, he wondered how they would react if they knew that the sight of them disgusted him probably every bit as much as the sight of him revolted them.

“Pssst.” A hiss of sound, soft enough to go unnoticed by grown-up ears in the thunder of their ponderous feet. “Psssst.”

He turned and the day changed yet again, for now this was the most unexpected thing that had ever happened here.

No one had ever stopped to talk. Never.

“You don’t scare me,” whispered the curious girl, Jenny, as she peered in, pressed against his door, her fingers curled round the bars. “You don’t scare me at all.”

Then she was swept along with the rest, out of sight and out of hearing. But not out of his thoughts, because he had the feeling that he’d be seeing her again.

And so it was, and so he did. Jenny was back in less than a week.

But this time she was not here to learn. Someone must have decided it was too late for that. Instead, she was now here to teach. She was, same as the rest of them, here to be the horrible example of her very own self. She was here to stay.

Mrs. Crouch brought her up in the middle of the night. The cold, wee hours of darkness were when new arrivals were brought in, and those who were no longer working out taken away. Night, after all, was an informal time, between tours, when room doors were unlocked, and they all had the run of the residence . . . although not the lobby below, and the separate rooms down there they’d never seen, which Mr. and Mrs. Crouch called home.

The only spare rooms Peter knew of were across the hallway from him, and that was where Mrs. Crouch brought her. Because they were free to roam, and because this was an event that did not happen very often, the children from below followed the pair up. Lots of feet on lots of stairs, but still, Mrs. Crouch, her feet as wide as waffles at the end of her elephantine ankles, was the only one who made much noise. They’d all learned to tread quietly here, even Cruel Frederick.

“I would like to introduce you to Jenny,” whinnied Mrs. Crouch, as red-cheeked and stout as her husband was whey-faced and lanky. “Some of you may remember her for her unconscionable interruption of one of last week’s tours. What kind of scissors, indeed! But the most appalling thing of all is that she doesn’t yet appear to recognize that a tragedy has just befallen her. Can you imagine?”

She always had a look of distaste about her, did Mrs. Crouch, as though some invisible prankster were holding a stinky finger beneath her recoiling nose.

She was, however, telling the truth. With neatly combed dark hair and curious dreamer’s eyes, not only was Jenny quite clearly not scared, not of Peter nor of anyone else here, but she looked like a girl who believed she was on a great adventure.

“So I trust that the lot of you will waste no time in setting her straight on the matter,” said Mrs. Crouch, then checked her watch and tut-tutted about the time. “Sleep well, good urchins! Or don’t. It’s all the same!”

With that she was gone, flights of stairs protesting in her formidable wake, until at last they heard the final clang of the great barred door down below and the jangle of keys.

They all gathered around Jenny, this pristine new arrival whose crimes and sins against grown-up sensibilities were in no way obvious.

“What’s wrong with you?” Conrad, whose absence of thumbs marked his misfortune at a glance, was first to ask. “You don’t look wrong.”

“Yeah,” sneered Cruel Frederick, and gave her shoulder a poke. “You don’t belong here. You’re not one of us.”

Jenny frowned at her shoulder, then at Frederick. “Don’t poke me again. If you do,” and here she pointed at Conrad, “you’re going to draw back a hand like his.”

A hush descended over the hall. No one had ever stood up to Frederick. Ever. They’d merely learned to live with his insults and bullying until he tired of them and went away.

“And then where will you be?” Jenny said, not nearly through with him yet. “Just an imitation of Conrad, only not as good. So what use will they have for you then? Because you can’t even make a proper fist anymore.”

Confusion knit itself all through Frederick’s thick and sullen features, until he seemed to realize he had no choice but to wave her off with a grumble and another sneer, and retreat back downstairs to his room.

Unheard-of.

“I don’t know,” Jenny said, returning to Conrad and his query. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t think anything was. I just know what my family thinks is wrong with me.”

Peter found himself crowding closer. They all were. Conrad and Caspar, the Black Boys and Pauline, and even Fidgety Philip had calmed down. All but Flying Robert, who’d never made it up here in the first place, because his poor smashed legs didn’t handle stairs well, or walking in general, for that matter.

“Jenny-with-Her-Head-in-the-Clouds . . . that’s what they’d call me. They only thought I wasn’t ever paying attention.”

“Oh,” said Pauline, solemn and grave. “They don’t like that. They hate that.”

“They never stopped to think if maybe it wasn’t their own fault that the clouds were more interesting than they were.”

Pauline may have looked rather dreamy then. But because she had no eyebrows, it was hard to tell. “Like the flames,” she whispered.

Caspar sucked a gasp past his gaunt cheeks. “You didn’t tell them that, did you?”

“I may have let it slip,” Jenny confessed. “It’s why they brought me here the first time. I don’t know why they thought it would do any good. They told me you were dreadful, but you looked plenty normal to me. I thought you were all brilliant! Well . . . Frederick needs some work. But even he’s not entirely hopeless.”

This was even stranger than her standing up to Frederick. No one had ever spoken to the rest of them this way, either.

“Even you, under all that ratty hair,” she told Peter. “But do tell me you speak. It’ll be so much better living across the hall from someone who speaks.”

“I speak,” Conrad said, more eagerly than he’d perhaps intended.

“And it’s good you do. Because I don’t think you’ll play catch very well.”

If this had come from Frederick it would’ve been horrible, but the way Jenny said it, it just made him laugh. Because it was true. He was an inveterate ball-dropper.

She got settled in then, not a process that took long, pacing her room to get a feel for its limits and bouncing on the bed and sniffing the bar of soap she’d been allotted. The rest drifted away to their rooms because it was night, after all, and they were starting to grow sleepy, and it was good to get away from the place for a while, if only during their dreams.

Peter, though, lingered in her doorway awhile longer.

“One thing,” he said. “When they feed us? Save a little aside, if you would. We all do, except for Frederick. Just don’t let them catch you doing it.” He checked the hallway even though he knew no one could be listening. “It’s for Caspar, right? They only feed him enough to barely keep him going. He’s got to have the look, you know?”

“Consider it done,” Jenny said.

“And . . . you don’t mind coming here?” he said. “You really don’t?”

“Well, I didn’t like ballet and wasn’t much on sports, and I didn’t like being told how and what to sing,” she said. “According to them, I don’t fit in anywhere. So maybe giving it a go here won’t be so bad.”

“Let’s see if you can say that in a month.” Again Peter checked that this was just between them. “You’re not supposed to like it here. Nothing good can come of it if they think you do.”

“Then I’ll work on just the right expressions of misery and woe,” she said. “You know, for a kid who can pick his nose without getting his actual finger anywhere near it, you’re really quite nice.”

Peter had no idea how to answer that, but it sounded like a compliment and he wasn’t used to those.

Before he left for his room, he noticed that she’d wandered over to one wall and tipped her head toward the ceiling. He watched her watch it, expecting something to happen next, only a peculiar long time passed and nothing ever did.

Finally he was forced to ask: “What are you looking at?”

“The stars, of course.”

“But you’ve got no window.”

“They’re still there,” she said.

And now he knew, really knew, why they’d called her Jenny-with-Her-Head-in-the-Clouds, and why they’d feared her. She could see stars where everybody else saw old wallpaper. How were you going to cure that?

And that was why, one morning a couple of weeks later, Peter didn’t know anything was any different about her at first. There had been some bumbling and fumbling in the halls during the night, and the sound of whimpering, but he’d not thought much about them, because as sounds go, they weren’t unusual, not here, and so he’d rolled over and gone back to sleep.

It was early yet, long before the first tour of the day, before breakfast even, and Jenny was late in coming from her room, and when she finally did, she had eyes only for the ceiling. Peter watched her grope her way through the doorway and into the hall, and thought, all right, perhaps she was carrying this head-in-the-clouds business just a little too far.

“What?” he said. “You can’t even look at me to talk to me anymore?” Saying this, yes, but thinking worse, that maybe she’d decided she couldn’t stomach the sight of him either, finally.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“I’m down here. Just drop your nose toward your chin and you’ll find me.”

“Really,” she whispered, and now he heard the distress in her voice. “I can’t.” She wiggled a finger over one shoulder. “It’s back there.”

Peter stepped behind her. Nothing looked any different at a glance, so he used his fingernails to sweep aside the shiny dark fall of her hair—wishing, with a sudden thrill, that his nails were not such talons, and he could feel her hair with his fingers.

His breath caught in his throat for grimmer reasons. “What have they done to you?”

“I don’t know.” Now she sounded impatient with him. “You’re the one who can see it, not me.”

He held her hair aside as he scrutinized. They’d sewn her up where nothing was wrong to begin with. They had yanked her head back so far she could only look straight up, then made sure she stayed that way, with no mobility left at all. A great mass of thick black stitches bunched together the skin at the base of her skull and webbed it to the skin where her neck met her shoulders. It looked excruciatingly uncomfortable, and when he told her what he’d found, she uttered a sob that tore out the heart he wasn’t even sure he had anymore.

He let her hair fall into place again and promised her that he wasn’t leaving her, even though it might look like it for the moment—that he would be back and that if she needed help eating when breakfast came, he would help her do that too.

Then he ran, ran down the stairs, fourth floor to third to second to the landing on the first floor, the point beyond which none of them could venture. Here he was stopped by the greatest barred door of all, not just up-and-down bars like the ones that confined them to their rooms during tour hours, but side-to-side bars as well, so close together that even children couldn’t quite reach through them.

With his nails so long, he couldn’t pull together a true fist, but he made the best one he could and banged on the door, banged and kicked and banged, and hollered a few times on top of that, until a door opened down the hallway and out stormed Mr. Crouch.

“Here, now, here, now!” he shouted. “What’s all this fuss and racket?”

“Why’d you do a thing like that to her?” Peter shouted back, another act unheard-of for such a long time he’d forgotten it could be any other way. “She was already herself when she came here! You didn’t need to do that to her!”

Still wearing a faded purple bathrobe that hung over his pajamas like a sail, Mr. Crouch drew up to the other side of the bars with a squint and a glare, and then a mean little chuckle. “Gone a little sweet on her, have you?”

“It’s not right!” Peter shouted. “It’s not fair!”

“You’ll want to watch yourself, boy. Don’t make me call Snip-Snap on you, eh? You don’t want a visit from him,” Mr. Crouch said in a low voice full of menace and threat. “It’s not just thumbs he likes to snip, so you mind that tongue of yours.”

Peter clamped his mouth shut. He’d never considered such a thing. But backing down felt worse than contemplating the loss of a tongue he hadn’t ever had much need for anyway, because nobody cared what he had to say.

Until now, perhaps.

And he thought it a shame that there was so much hair tumbling down over his forehead and face that Mr. Crouch couldn’t see him smirk.

“What kind of scissors would he use for that?” Peter asked.

Mr. Crouch rumbled with a growl deep in his wattled throat and finished with a weary sigh. “Ain’t you figured out your place yet? All this time, have you not noticed where you stand in the grand scheme, boy? You, the rest of your miserable rabble up there? You don’t know what you are?”

He waited for Peter to think about it.

“You’re what’s left behind when there’s no more hope. When there’s nothing more for your poor parents to do but throw their hands in the air and give up.” He spat the words, each and every one. “Don’t like it? Too bad. You should’ve thought of that before. So now you’re here. Not fair? Not right? I’ll tell you what’s not fair and right. Decent folks not getting their money’s worth when they bring their own young ones here to show them you lot and scare ’em back to rights again.”

Mr. Crouch drew himself up straighter, taller, and looked at Peter down his long nose.

“You’re not boys and girls anymore. You’re just something to look at, and if you need a little adjusting, then so be it. It’s not for no reason.” He rolled his eyes. “Who’s going to learn their lesson from a Jenny-with-Her-Head-in-the-Clouds when she’s not even looking at the silly clouds? When she’s looking right straight at you?”

Peter began to back away from the bars.

“So you keep mouthing off, and we’ll arrange a little visit from Snip-Snap. It’s what we do here. We smooth off the rough edges.” He was very full of himself now, leaning against the bars and leering through. “Let me let you in on a little something. I told you there was no more hope? There can be . . . it just doesn’t happen that way very often. But our Snip-Snap . . . ? He’s proof that an incorrigible boy like yourself has still got a chance to grow up and make something of himself. Even a boy who liked to run with scissors. So you keep that in mind . . . and hold your tongue.”

Tours came and tours went, an endless passage of shuffling feet and pointing fingers and staring eyes, and through it all Peter tried to convince himself that it was not such a bad lot in life. But there was no selling this one anymore. They all seemed to feel it, even Cruel Frederick, who’d rather liked having a captive audience to torment.

There had to be more than this.

Early mornings and late nights, and sometimes during the day if he thought he could get away with it, Peter crept down the stairs to the first floor, as far as he could go, until stopped by the great barred door. Not to bang, nor to kick, nor to holler, but only to look, staring at the door at the opposite end of the hallway.

There was daylight there, and it wasn’t very bright, but still, it spoke of fearless days and open skies. There was rain, too, and it felt cold even from here, but Peter imagined how clean it might feel. There was a street out there, and beyond it, more streets, and beyond them, roads, then fields, and beyond all that . . . well, who rightly knew?

Was it his longing that made the next unexpected thing happen? Or had even sour old Mr. Crouch tired of the game? Not likely, that, but perhaps time had made him careless.

The last tour was not entirely gone yet, the stragglers lingering endlessly in what Mrs. Crouch called the gift shop, buying up picture books and tut-tutting about the sorry state of children today, when Peter, his room door newly opened once more, crept down to stare after them. He’d been there several moments when his gaze dropped, and he could not believe his eyes.

There, on the other side of the door, the great barred door, lay the key.

In his haste to sell more picture books, the careless oaf had missed his pocket.

A chance like this would never come along again.

Peter squatted and reached, but no matter how he twisted and turned and contorted his hand, it wouldn’t fit through the openings, none of them. There were all the same, all too tight, too small, and he nearly squealed with the frustration of it.

Until, frantic, he realized he was going about this all wrong. His nails, his long, hideous fingernails—that was sure to do it.

The longest of them grew from the index finger of his left hand, so he curled the rest back along his palm, then reached through like a wizard with a wand, and no no no no no! It still fell short, the tip of his nail scritch-scratching the tiled floor not half an inch from the key, even as he ground his hand against the door until his knuckles were bloody.

He pulled back his hand in defeat and licked away the blood.

In sorrow, in despair, he trudged back upstairs, and was at the third floor before realizing he’d still been going about this the wrong way, and launched himself to take the rest two steps at a time.

Conrad protested and struggled, as you do when what seems like a crazy boy has seized you to drag you down flight after flight of stairs, and clapped his hand over your mouth to keep you quiet. But it all made sense when they got to the door, the great barred door, and Peter pointed.

The reach through the bars was not nearly as difficult for a boy whose hands were so unencumbered by thumbs.

He waited a week. He waited two.

A thing like this could not be rushed. A thing like this had to be planned. And courage, too, it took, for some matters Peter could only guess at and hope that he was right. As well, Mr. Crouch was on his guard. Undoubtedly he knew he’d lost a key, or more likely blamed the gelatinous Mrs. Crouch for it, yet if he was in any way logical, he had to know he’d lost it on his side of the door. It was bound to turn up eventually, and in any case, there were spares.

In the meantime it was Peter’s secret, his and Conrad’s alone. What the others didn’t know about they couldn’t look suspicious about, and while Mr. Crouch was by nature a suspicious man, there wasn’t much of Peter’s face that he could even see, the smelly hair like another set of bars between them. As for Conrad, well, what did anyone have to fear from a boy without thumbs?

And, in time, Mr. Crouch settled back into being his usual petulant self.

Meaning the time had come.

Peter had chosen to begin in the evening, for that was when the most hours stretched ahead of them before the daily routine began all over again. He returned to his spot at the great barred door and, as never before, banged and kicked and banged some more. Predictable as gravity, out stormed Mr. Crouch, shirttails flying as he stalked toward the door.

“Here, now, what’s all this fuss and—” He stopped short with a glare fit to curdle milk. “You again. Didn’t I warn you, boy?”

“I don’t think there is a Snip-Snap,” Peter said with the greatest confidence. “I think you made him up.”

Mr. Crouch’s eyes narrowed to a wrathful squint. “You keep at it, you flea-bitten little gutter rat, and you’ll find out what’s real and what isn’t.”

There was nothing more to say. Peter lifted both hands before him, grubby knuckles out, and fired both his middle fingers at the ceiling.

Given the length of his nails, the insult cut doubly deep.

In case this next part went badly, he told the others they might want to hide, especially Conrad. For him, the mere sight of Snip-Snap was bound to bring back memories best unstirred. Peter sat on the end of his bed then, and hadn’t long to wait.

There sounded a clang of the door from far below. Next came footsteps, up the stairs, floor after floor. This was someone who did not walk like the other grown-ups. He didn’t clomp, he didn’t shuffle. His pace was measured and full of purpose. It never once varied, like the sound of an enormous clock, ticking away each moment until the moment of reckoning.

His stride took him down the hall, then he filled the doorway and was through it, immensely tall and frightfully thin, his legs in particular, sweeping past each other like . . . well, like scissors. His top hat gave him scarcely an inch of clearance with the ceiling, and his face was all sharp bone and sallow skin, although he didn’t look to be terribly old.

It was the glasses he wore that Peter was glad to see—an odd pair, with brass frames and round lenses, one clear and one dark. Yes, Peter thought as he breathed relief. I knew it.

Snip-Snap studied him a moment, and his hands were elegant as spiders as he peeled open the left side of his frock coat to reveal a gleaming assortment of scissors and shears, all hung just so. He regarded them but a moment, and chose. He clicked the pair in the air, snipsnipsnip.

“A middle finger, it’s to be,” he said. “Mr. Crouch was good enough to allow you to choose which one. He finds them equally offensive.”

Peter offered both hands, splayed wide. “Make it all ten. Just the nails, though.”

Behind the clear lens, Snip-Snap’s eyebrow lifted nearly to the brim of his hat. “The nails?”

“And then my hair. And then another last thing, but one at a time, right?”

Snip-Snap may not have been capable of an entire smile, but he could manage half a one. “You do realize who I am, and why I’m here. Do you not?”

Peter rested his hands in his lap. “Actually, I’ve thought about that quite a lot. You were one of us once, weren’t you? They put you away here, too, didn’t they? For what—because you wouldn’t stop running with scissors? That’s all?”

“Ancient history.”

“Maybe so, but I bet even right this minute you’d still like to have that eye back.”

Snip-Snap lowered the scissors and held his head at a curious tilt.

“I’ll bet it wasn’t even an accident, was it? Oh, everyone kept telling you a thing like that was going to happen, only it never did. Because you kept your feet under you and you never fell. But that made them wrong, and they couldn’t have that, could they? They had to be right, and for that, they had to make it look right.” Peter pointed at the dark lens. “They did that to you, didn’t they? They took your eye.”

Slowly, contemplatively, Snip-Snap slipped the glasses from his head. It was not a pretty sight. True, Peter had no experience with missing eyes, only missing thumbs, but he was expecting that they might have sewn the whole thing shut, stitched the eyelids together like a window shade over the empty socket. Instead, the ruin was still prominent: folds of raw pink over a spongy, dry mass.

Snip-Snap opened his coat again and replaced the first pair of scissors on their little cloth loop. In their place, he took a dull, stained pair that were lesser in every way—a short pair, a child’s first true scissors after graduating from blunt tips.

“I’ve kept this pair all these years,” he said, and gazed at them with his good eye. “It still fits.”

He slipped his heirloom tip-first into the center of what remained of his eye, not an act that appeared to cause him pain. It hurt to watch, though, and Peter’s stomach rolled. When Snip-Snap left them there, content to wear them as in days gone by, Peter forced himself to look.

Snip-Snap leaned forward and down, to make sure Peter missed nothing. “Say the right thing,” he whispered. He urged. “Tell me just the right thing.”

Riddles now? Peter’s confidence sank. He could only speak from the heart, and when he did, for the first time his voice shook. “What did you want to do to them right after they did that to you?” he said. “Whatever it was . . . that’s how all of us are now.”

Snip-Snap drew back to his full imposing height. He crossed his arms for a long moment’s thought, then withdrew the scissors from his eye and, mercifully, put his glasses back on. He opened his coat and exchanged scissors once more.

“Right enough,” he said.

And, for Peter, shock-headed and slovenly no longer, what a strange thing it was to sit on the edge of his bed and watch these bits and pieces of him drop away to the floor. Nail after long, grimy nail; lock after lock of springy, serpentine hair. It was not as welcome a feeling as he’d thought it might be, nor as freeing, for what had they been if not the identity of him, and a shield behind which to hide?

Who would he be without them?

Snip-Snap stepped back to appraise his work and seemed to find it done. “One last thing, you said?”

“Right. Not for me, though.”

Peter led him across the hall to Jenny’s room, where she sat gazing at stars through the ceiling because she had no choice. He patted her on the shoulder, then swept aside her hair, touching it with his fingers now, his fingers and nothing but, to reveal the ugly black thicket of stitches.

“I know you can get through those,” said Peter. “The thing is, can you do it without hurting her?”

“I’m right here, you know,” Jenny huffed. “Don’t stand there talking about me like I’m not.”

Snip-Snap folded at the knees, bracing his hands on his thighs as he levered down for a closer look. He went “Hmmm” a lot. When he stood tall again, he did not appear discouraged. Only resolute.

“This one will cost,” he said.

Peter had been afraid of that.

Although he still got to choose the finger.

A key goes into a lock, the lock goes click, a door creaks open . . . These were such small things to be the end of all that was past and the start of all that was new.

He let the Black Boys through and gave them time to get into position, although it was still night and dark, with only the dimmest of lights burning in the first-floor hallway, where one shadow was likely to be as good as another. Then he shut the door after them.

“Good and loud, and don’t stop,” Peter told Cruel Frederick. “Like you mean it.”

Frederick looked at him with a sneer, but after all this time, he couldn’t help himself. “You don’t have to tell me how to beat on something and make a row.”

Peter stepped aside to let him at it, Frederick banging and kicking and bellowing with such ferocious enthusiasm that surely no greater racket had ever been heard here in this brownstone where the sun never shined and the rain was always cold.

The apartment door flew open and out stormed Mr. Crouch, for the last time.

“See here now, you shock-headed little beast!” he shouted. “If you’re so sick of being attached to those other nine fingers, there’s something we can do about it, there is!” He stopped abruptly when he saw that it was Frederick. “You, now? What’s got into you?”

The Black Boys were on him then, ink-dyed skin out of ink-black shadows, and Mr. Crouch never saw them coming. They swarmed over him and took him to the floor as Peter once more used the key to let Cruel Frederick through this time, so that Frederick could do what he did best.

It was better that the hallway need as little cleaning as possible, so once Mr. Crouch was subdued, they dragged him back into the apartment he shared with his lovely missus, and the dog that had bedeviled Frederick every day of his life. There was more racket and fuss, muffled now, coming as it did from behind closed doors, and this was just as well, for the sounds were unpleasant in the extreme.

It didn’t take long . . . although it still might have taken a good deal longer than was strictly necessary.

Hours later, they were open on time for business as usual, with Peter out front to greet the gloating grown-ups and nervous children who’d come for the morning tour, and Jenny seated in the ticket office window to smile brightly and take their money.

If unexpectedly young, perhaps, Peter still looked the part. Snip-Snap was by trade a tailor, and with a little cutting here and sewing there, it took not much work to fit him with one of Mr. Crouch’s old suits. The feel of it made his skin crawl, not so much the fabric as the history, but he would not have to wear it for long.

“If you’ve paid us a visit before, I’m sure you’ve noticed a change in routine already,” Peter told his audience, taking care to keep his left hand down, and hide the bandage where his littlest finger once was. “It’s only temporary, you’ll be pleased to know. Sometimes even such formidable good folks as my Uncle Eben and Aunt Lizzy can be no match for a dose of ague. No worries, though! You’ll still see what you came for!”

And he was right. He’d overheard it all so many times that as he led them up the stairs, he was able to take over Mr. Crouch’s spiel without missing a beat.

“Now, this sullen fellow’s name is Caspar,” he told them as the tour began on the second floor. “And you’ll not find a more fitting name for the likes of him, because if he keeps up his naughty habits, he’ll waste away to a ghost, just you wait and see.”

“What’s wrong with him?” asked a horse-faced woman. “He doesn’t look sick.”

“Decided he was too good for the food he was being served. His poor parents had such a time trying to get a morsel down him, he might as well have stitched his own face together. So what could they do but bring him here, right? He was a healthy boy once. A plump boy, you might say. But look at him now.” He paused for the usual drama here. “Show ’em your ribs, kid. Show these fine people your ribs.”

When Caspar tugged up his shirt, this time he inspired only confusion.

“Why, he looks positively gorged!” a father protested. “What’s he been into?”

“Whatever it was, we’ll see to it he never has a chance to get into it ever again,” Peter promised . . . leaving unsaid, for the good of all, that Mrs. Crouch hadn’t weighed so little in many, many years.

He unlocked Caspar’s door and flung it open, barging in and bristling with so much umbrage he could scarcely keep a straight face. Caspar was no better, even as Peter grabbed him by the ear and pretended to drag him out into the hall.

“Get a move on, you crumb-snitching cur!” Peter shouted. “Turn your prissy nose up at the fine food we provide, will you, then stuff your face with junk?”

Solemnly, sternly, the good parents made way, and understood. They knew the type, all right. He continued to drag Caspar through the parting crowd, shouting as they went.

“A thing like this, you can’t very well let it go unpunished, can you? How’s our Caspar going to learn, eh?”

A father nodded vigorously and wet his lips. “Make it good. Make it hurt.”

“Oh, I promise you it will, sir. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t invite the young ones along to watch it happen. Watch and learn, we always say.” Peter looked from child’s face to child’s face and beckoned them to follow. “The rest of you can stay right here and we’ll be back in five. Consider it a bonus! You’re getting more for your money today, and who’d argue against that?”

And with the children down the stairs and past the great barred door, Peter locked it behind him, and hurled the key where no one was likely to find it ever again.

They all gathered across the street then, everyone who’d called this hateful place a home, kept for so long on the wrong side of cold bars and staring eyes by crimes so petty he wondered who was not guilty.

To Pauline, Peter gave a box of matches taken from the Crouches’ kitchen, a giant box whose matches she’d been getting one at a time, thrice a day. No one, girl or boy, could’ve been happier to now get them all at once.

“Pretty,” she said, past her blackened lump of tongue, then dashed back into the building without another look behind.

They waited five minutes. They waited ten.

“She’s not coming out again, I don’t think,” Jenny said.

But when he started across the street after Pauline, Jenny caught his arm and shook her head no, sorrowfully no, and while he didn’t like it a bit, she was right. No matter how much you wished to, you could not save everyone from themselves.

Caspar and Fidgety Philip were the first to go, led away by Snip-Snap, who thought it best to leave before the fire grew visible. Philip, who’d only ever needed something to focus his energies on, had ably assisted in resizing the suit for Peter, and as Snip-Snap could always use help at his tailor shop, he offered Philip an apprenticeship. There was no apparent reason why he should have offered Caspar one too. But given the gusto with which the starved boy had partaken of his most recent meal—a prodigious fillet of Crouch—there seemed something a bit monstrous in him now, and so perhaps Snip-Snap, who knew more than a bit about being monstrous himself, thought it bore watching.

The rest? Cruel Frederick and Conrad watched until the flames were showing in the windows, then slipped away as well, together, for even Frederick had to admit that life on one’s own would never be easy for a boy devoid of thumbs. With his arms and legs left twisted by his fall, Flying Robert needed help and always would . . . but the Black Boys had been the ones to bring him down from upstairs, and weren’t giving up on him now, and soon they, too, disappeared with the morning.

At last the smoke and flames were enough to start drawing a crowd, and the children brought for lessons were certainly getting one. They all watched as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing, some wiping their eyes and rubbing their noses, but they got over it, resilient to the core, then even they began to drift away from the scene . . .

Until it was just the two of them left, Peter and Jenny-with-Her-Head-in-the-Clouds, who was looking nowhere near the sky.

“I liked you better the other way,” she said. “You look like anybody else now.”

He understood. “But I don’t feel like anybody else.”

He gazed down the street and beyond it, toward more streets, and beyond those, to the roads leading everywhere but here, and there were so many they could take that it made his head spin.

They could be anything now.

So he would be what the grown-ups had made him.

Or be something better, in spite of it.

Time would tell.