The Garden of Darkness

The room was filled with naked dolls. And gazing at them were hundreds and hundreds of small eyes. Some of the dolls with porcelain heads had fallen on the floor and smashed open like vandalized Halloween pumpkins. In places, there were dolls altogether without eyes, as if a rapacious crow had plucked them out. It was a flesh-colored wall embedded with a thousand sightless blue eyes.

Jem, Ramah and Dante automatically looked at Clare.

“Maybe you should go back,” said Jem.

“No,” said Clare.

“They all have blue eyes,” said Ramah.

“All the children in those pictures we found had blue eyes, too,” said Jem. “Remember? I remember I noticed because—because I noticed.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” said Clare uneasily.

“It does,” said Jem. “I think it means that, for some reason, Master is obsessed with blue-eyed children. But none of those children in the photographs had eyes that were a really deep blue.” He lifted his gaze and looked her in the face. “Not blue and dark as the wine dark sea. Not like yours, Clare.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE





PEST





DARK AS THE wine dark sea.

It was true that her eyes were very blue—a strange deep blue. People noticed; Mirri had noticed that first day.

“I don’t understand,” said Clare. “What do you think the Master does? Collect children with blue eyes?”

“Even that angel upstairs had blue eyes,” said Jem. “And those dolls. Keeping those dolls around just isn’t normal.”

“Master liked Eliza’s blue eyes,” Dante said. “But she disappeared. We’re not supposed to mention her name anymore. Master likes his blue-eyed children best, though—he talks about their recessive genes.”

“But what does he have in mind?” asked Clare.

“It’s a cult,” said Ramah. “People in cults don’t think analytically. Not in a way that’s easy to follow. Usually any logic there is circles back to who’s got power.”

“You know a lot about it,” said Dante.

“Yes,” said Ramah.

They moved out of the doll room into the hallway. Yellow light spilled out into the darkness from under a far door, and they could see a shadow moving back and forth, back and forth.

“I’m scared,” said Dante.

“That makes sense,” said Ramah.

The movement stopped. Jem took Clare’s hand.

“It knows we’re here,” he said.

“Why did you have to say ‘it’?” whispered Dante.

The door opened, and light poured into the hallway.

A figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. The man was big, much bigger and taller than any of them, although Clare realized that they weren’t used to adults anymore. She had guessed, on the night in the woods, that he was fifty or so, and she saw that she had probably been right. But she hadn’t noticed then that his face had smile lines around his eyes and mouth. It was a soft face, gentle and inviting.

“It’s Master,” said Dante, with relief and anxiety mixed in his voice.

“It’s you,” said Clare to the man, and Jem and Ramah and Dante looked at her, startled.

“It would have been less complicated if you had come with me then,” said the Master to Clare.

Clare couldn’t think how it could possibly have been simpler if she had left in the night with the Master, but then the pain in her head had spread to her neck, and she couldn’t think very well. She only knew that the Master was the adult, and she didn’t have to be responsible anymore. This was the moment she had been waiting for since she had watched her father and stepmother die. The Master would care for them all; he would give them the cure; they would go home. It would be as he had said: everything would be all right.

But she had discovered in all her time with the others, and even before, that things happen. That just when it seems that you’re sitting safely beside the great road, you find that you’re actually smack in the middle, where the traffic is.

The Master stepped aside to let them into the room.

“Jem,” she murmured.

“Clare?”

“I don’t feel so good.”

The room that the Master led them into was one of light and shadow. Hurricane lanterns illuminated high ceilings and walls filled with niches. Everywhere they looked there were paintings and statues and tapestries. A large painting with four children in it dominated the room.

“It’s not hard to collect art anymore,” said the Master, as they looked around wonderingly.

“This is beautiful,” said Ramah.

“Clare needs to sit down,” said Jem.

“You should all sit down,” said the Master. “And tell me why you’re down here.”

“We were exploring,” said Dante. “We weren’t prowling. They wanted to explore. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went with them.”

Ramah cast Dante a look of utter contempt.

“We passed the room full of dolls,” said Jem. “We didn’t like them.” The Master laughed.

“I found them when I first came to Haven,” he said. “Which is what I call this place. I should get rid of them. I suspect they were a child’s toys.”

All the ‘I’s strung together in his sentences annoyed Clare, but she was finding it hard to focus.

“This wasn’t always your home?” she asked.