Victoria House - Part 5 of 9

I heard a door swing and lifted my eyes and hand from the page. I watched Mrs. Tapscott stride across the room to the bottle green door. As she went through, I noticed Mrs. Rabasandratana had joined me. She glared at me for several minutes. As much as I tried to avoid looking directly at her, I couldn’t—for fear of losing track of her. The mental stimulus had already come thick and fast, and I felt close to a meltdown before a series of much shorter vignettes of my imminent death began playing in my mind.

I closed the book, tucked it into my trousers, and struck up the courage to ask if she was okay. Mrs. Rabasandratana stood from her wheelchair and began a painfully slow walk toward me. I could hear her muttering something in a foreign language. I asked again if she was okay before her slow walk turned into a full-on sprint. I gripped the arms of the chair as the muttering became full-on screeching.

I peeled back and closed my eyes, realising I had delayed too long to get out of the chair and flee. Her hands were on top of mine, holding them down. I opened my eyes to find her smiling at me.

“You seen something, boy? Listen… listen… listen, listen. Stupid’a teacher lady, no good. You’re gonna be dinner.”

She released my hands, then, looking like an old woman again, hobbled back to her wheelchair.

I was fast becoming a wreck. Mrs. Tapscott, much to my relief, came through the green door and propped it open with a chair. The residents of Victoria House came pouring into the hall.

Mrs. Tapscott, who at that point showed no signs of panic, explained to me that the doors and windows were locked and the phones disconnected. The members of staff who had been present in the morning had all abandoned the property, leaving Mrs. Tapscott and myself in control of seventy people in varying degrees of distress, each dealing with either a physical or intellectual disability. She smiled softly and said that I needed to show maturity, and asked if I made sandwiches at home.

My mother was paranoid I would burn the house to the ground and so never allowed me anywhere near the kitchen, but a sandwich? Two slices of bread with something spread inside seemed well within my ability. So I simply said, “Yes.”

Rosie volunteered to help me prepare, and we were led toward the bottle green door. On our way through, Rosie asked the piano-slamming man in the purple shirt if he was okay. Eyes closed and arms folded, he remained silent.

I challenged Rosie to a culinary duel. Whoever could make the most sandwiches in the shortest amount of time would win the Mars bar we found in the fridge. Powering ahead, I noticed that she was much more concerned with creating a delicious sandwich than she was with speed—rolling her tongue around her lips in near-unbreakable concentration. I looked at my growing pile of scraggly sarnies and decided that Rosie had the right idea.

We chose three different fillings to try and cater to every resident. I chose strawberry jam. Rosie chose peanut butter with chocolate spread, and her favourite: grated cheese with a chutney preserve.

When we were almost done and our silver platters were piled high, I took the opportunity to question Rosie. She left me hanging on every question until she had meticulously spread and sprinkled the next layer to the very edge of the bread. She wasn’t going to answer until she was good and ready.

The missing girl had been planting flowers by a collection of beds close to Rosie, who was doing the same, when the bearded man came to give Gilly a purple shirt. She mentioned that the bearded man, named Simon, had led Gilly away into Victoria House. Then came second-hand testimony about Gary, the purple-shirt man sat in the hall, who had witnessed a worm—or the long monster—emerge from the ground in the main hall and eat the girl.

When asked why residents were wearing purple shirts and why they couldn’t be spoken to, Rosie suggested that they had been naughty at various points during the day.

I told myself the police could make sense of it, and that I would have to report it to my father as soon as I arrived home. I said to Rosie that we could stop making sandwiches and offered her the Mars bar. As I handed it over, I saw she had made an impressive Star of David with her central pile of sandwiches.

As we re-entered the main hall, I noticed the residents had been separated into two groups. The ones on the right side of the hall were facing away from the windows, while the ones on the left—all wearing purple shirts—were facing toward them.

Perhaps oddly, Mrs. Tapscott said that those wearing purple could eat, but only after the others had already finished. I wondered why she would be enforcing the unnecessary punishments of Simon, confirming in my mind an established link between my teacher and the staff of Victoria House that went beyond arranging the occasional field trip to teach big-mouthed kids a lesson.

I kept my eye on her as Rosie and I, armed with sandwiches, walked the lines between the pensive-looking residents. Behaviourally, they were in stark contrast to the residents in purple shirts, who repeatedly asked to re-attire, claimed to need the toilet despite numerous visits, and overall displayed signs of high anxiety.

With every request one of them made, others would raise their hands and ask exactly the same thing—like a word plague spreading throughout the group in near-synchronous waves. Seemingly, they were desperate to extricate themselves from whatever situation they had perceived themselves to be in.

I surmised that Gary had worked the group up with talk of long monsters. He was with the purple-shirt group of residents, though unlike the others, said nothing and stared through the windows of the hall.