The Despairing Tribulations of a Doomed Boy

Chapter 21

The creatures crawled out of a gaping wound in the earth, looking like small, stalky gorillas on thick legs. But their faces were almost human and topped with something that could almost be called a hairstyle, if it were hair at all. A group of four grabbed Otto and Amelie without any orders and dragged them into the wound in the earth. Two others picked up Frida's wheelchair carefully and lowered her into the crevice to others who were waiting beneath.

The earth swallowed them, enclosing them into a pitch-black hollow, and closed above them, just out of reach. Three of the dirt creatures were left on the surface, like guards over the prison.

As it became pitch dark, two small dirt creatures standing next to Frida pulled out torches to light the hollow. There were two dirt creatures holding on to Otto's legs to keep him in place. Their heads came up to his hips. Another was holding on to Amelie's hand. They looked like clods of dirt formed into the shape of a gingerbread man. They had no real eyes, but eye shapes were carved into their faces, just like everything else—as if by some magical finger. When they moved, they crumbled and they were cold and wet to the touch. But their grasp was gentle and aside from the initial terror of being hugged by dirt, they were not threatening.

The hollow that had them trapped was as big as Otto's room at HOME, but the light cast by the two torches made deep shadows that obscured the size—making it seem much smaller in some areas and endlessly large in others.

"I don't know what is going on here," Frida said, "But it seems you two do." She nodded at Otto and Amelie.

"It's not my fault!" Otto struggled to contain his frustration. "Pieter is the crazy one! He's responsible for all of this! He wanted to push my nose-button, so I ran away from HOME. And then law-enforcement came after me and everything went nuts and I don't want to go back to HOME! They'll put me in a straitjacket and throw me in isolation and I can't do that! I can't handle that! I don't want to end up like Pieter!" The words broke out of him as if they'd been pushing on his throat.

Amelie choked loudly on a sob, but said nothing. She pulled her hoodie over her eyes and lowered her head to hide her face.

Otto gave her a look of sympathy and tried to move closer to her for comfort, but the dirt creatures were heavy and wouldn't allow him to budge. "Can we get out of here?" Otto asked Frida.

Frida gave them both a long, hard look. "HOME, huh?" Frida said. Her face softened. "So you two are rogues?"

Otto nodded.

"Don't hide your face, dear, it's too pretty to keep hidden," Frida said to Amelie. Amelie lifted her head only a little. Frida sighed. "I suppose Clara Vickers is to blame, then. I told her that it'd end badly. You can't go around stealing people's babies and expect it all to end well."

"You know Nurse Vickers?" Otto asked.

Frida nodded. "Yes, she asked me to help her at one point. Said we'd change the world. Well, I guess that was true. This is certainly a changed world. But in spite of what these little guys may imply," she put her hand on the head of one of the creatures, which lifted its chin to rub her hand like a cat and smiled in a bizarre and crumbly way, "chaos isn't really my thing."

"So..." Otto said after a short pause. He wasn't sure if this meant Frida would help them or turn them in.

"What does your nose-button do?" Frida asked.

Otto let out a long, defeated sigh. He knew that once she heard what his nose-button did, she'd want him put away just like Reinhardt, for the safety of everyone. He dropped his head and shook it. He was caught—trapped in an underground prison—there was no way out of this. "I can't go back to HOME," he said in something just above a whisper, "I can' t."