Doll Bones Part 12

He watched as the librarian locked the break-room door. Then he followed her through the library to an office on the third floor, where there was a small desk, piled with more review copies of books and papers, scattered with pens. A folding chair with a padded seat rested in front of it and a cloth chair on wheels behind it.

"Have a seat," she said, sitting down behind the desk. She picked up the phone and handed it over to him. "You dial the number, but I need to talk to your parents. I'll tell them where you are, and then I'll hand you the phone. I'll go outside to give you some privacy unless you want me to stay here, okay?"

He nodded.

He reminded himself that he wouldn't care if they were upset. He was still mad about what his dad had done and how little his mother had cared. If he kept that in the front of his thoughts, then nothing they could say would bother him. He just wouldn't care.

He wiped his hands against his jeans and hoped it was true. He dialed and handed the phone over.

The librarian took the receiver and started explaining how she'd found Zach sleeping on the couch in the Carnegie Public Library in East Liverpoola"yes, East Liverpool, Ohioa"and yes, he was fine, he had two friends with him, and they were fine too. She gave the address of the library and some abbreviated directions.

Then she held out the phone to him.

Zach took it and brought it slowly to his ear as Miss Katherine went out the door, closing it softly behind her. "Mom?" Zach said.

"It's me," said his father. "You all right?"

Zach's heart sped. "Yeah, like she said. I'm fine."

"I never meant to make you feel like you had to run away," Zach's dad said softly. As soon as his father had picked up, Zach had expected a lot of shouting and the phone getting slammed in its cradle. But his father didn't sound angry. Zach wasn't sure why, but more than anything else, his dad sounded scared.

"That's not what I was doing," he said. "I was on a quest. I was going to come back when I was finished." Once Zach said the words, he knew they were true. He would have gone back. He'd just needed a little break.

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, as though his father was not quite sure how to respond. "So, this quest," he said finally, tentatively. "Are you done with it now?"

"Not yet," said Zach. "I thought I was, buta"I don't think that I am."

"We're going to get in the car, and we're going to be there in two and a half hours. Do you think you'll be finished then?"

"I don't know."

"Your mother's been real worried. You want to talk to her?"

Zach wanted to tell her that everything was okay, that he was fine, but he didn't want to hear her voice and realize how much he'd upset her. "No," he said after a moment. "See you when you get here."

His father gave a heavy sigh. "You know I don't understand you."

"You don't have to." Zach just wanted the conversation over, before either of them said something awful.

"I want to," his father said.

Zach snorted.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "I'm not good at this kind of thing, but even though I don't always get things and your mother tells me I don't know how to talk, I wanted to tell you that I've been thinking about what I did with those toys ever since it happened. It was a mean thing to do. I grew up mean, and I don't want you to have to grow up mean too."

Zach was silent. He'd never heard his father talk that way before.

"When I saw you with those figures, I pictured you getting ha.s.sled at school. I thought you needed to be tougher. But I've been thinking that protecting somebody by hurting them before someone else gets the chance isn't the kind of protecting that anybody wants."

"Yeah," Zach said. It was all he could bring himself to say. He had no idea his father thought about anything like this. All the anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling as fragile as one of those paper-thin china cups.

"So I'll see you soon," his father told him. "Good luck with the quest." He said the word as though it was a strange, unfamiliar shape in his mouth, but he said it.

"Bye, Dad," said Zach, and hung up the phone.

He sat there for a long moment, breathing hard. Something had shifted, something seismic, and he needed to be still long enough to have it settle inside of him. Then he stood up and went out the door.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

MISS KATHERINE WAS SHELVING A FEW BOOKS NEARBY and put them back on the cart when he emerged from the office. Her pink hair was as bright as the synthetic mane of a plastic horse.

"Everything okay?" she asked him.

"They're coming," Zach said, trying to put the strangeness of his father's words behind him. "Did you see Poppy's doll?"

She shook her head. "I walked by the table where you left all those maps, but there was nothing else there. Do you want to take a look yourself?"

Zach nodded and followed her to the couches. He noticed her shoes for the first time, bright yellow with bows. She didn't look like any librarian he'd ever seen before. In fact, she didn't look like any adult he'd met before.

Zach looked under the sofa the girls had slept on and then under the one where he'd fallen asleepa"after all, the last time he'd woken up, the doll was resting right next to his head. He knelt down with a shudder at the thought of her lying directly underneath where he'd slept, as though she might reach up her tiny porcelain hands and drag him down through the couch cushions. She wasn't there, though.

The Queen wasn't under the table, either. She wasn't in any of the chairs, nor anywhere obvious on the rug. She wasn't anywhere he could see.

He didn't feel her either, didn't sense the gaze of her dull eyes watching him from some corner of the room, the way he had when she was in the cabinet in Poppy's living room.

While he searched, Miss Katherine started gathering up the books and maps Poppy had left on the table the night before.

"What was it that you kids were trying to find?" the librarian asked, frowning at him. He could tell that Miss Katherine didn't know what to make of the story about the doll. He wasn't sure that she even believed there was a doll. If not, he wondered what she thought he was looking for.

He shrugged. "Nothing."

"It looks like someone was doing research on a cemetery near here," said Miss Katherine gently. "Spring Grove? I saw a few pieces of copy paper with directions drawn on them and scratched out. What's in Spring Grove Cemetery? You can tell me, Zach. I promise that I'll try to understand."

"Have you ever heard a story, a ghost story, about a girl who jumped off her roof ?" He hesitated, pressing the front of his sneaker against one of the legs of the table. He wanted to trust her, but he knew he couldn't trust her too mucha"she'd never believe him if he told her everything. "Like under mysterious circ.u.mstances? Maybe one named Eleanor Kerchner."

Miss Katherine shook her head. "The only Kerchner I can think of was a fancy workera"a very well-known potter locally. We even have a display of his work downstairs, courtesy of the museum. There was a grisly story about him, but I don't know about any Eleanor Kerchner."

That felt a little too real, there being a potter with a grisly story.

"Downstairs?" Zach took a few steps across the library floor before Miss Katherine cleared her throat.

"I don't think so," Miss Katherine said. "I let you look around, but enough's enough. Come on."

Zach remembered the wall of fragile-looking vases he'd seen in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He'd run past them, not really looking at them, and now he was itching to know what he'd missed. He had to get down there. He had to. His heart started to pound with renewed hope. Maybe there was a secret therea"a secret that might not help them to finish the quest but would prove that it was a real one. A real quest for a real ghost.

He concentrated on that as the librarian led him back to the break room and opened the door with the key sticking out of the lock. Inside, the girls were sitting at opposite ends of the table wearing near-identical expressions of worry.

"I am going to call the director back," Miss Katherine said, with a bright smile that might have been forced. "Let her know that everything's been resolved. Then we'll figure out some lunch for you kids. It's almost noon."

"Thank you," Alice said quietly.

"Thank you," Poppy and Zach echoed automatically.

The librarian went out, and Zach waited until he heard the turn of the key in the lock. Then he put both his hands palm down on the table, like he was going to give a speech.

"Okay," he said, looking from one friend to the other. "We need a plan. We need to break out of this room before the librarian comes back."

Alice stood up, looking a little confused, but hopeful. "How?"

"It doesn't matter," Poppy said, staying seated. "We don't have the Queen anymore. Even if we get out of herea"and I have no idea how we could do thata"we can't finish the quest without her."

"We'll find her," said Zach. "I looked around where we were sleeping, and she wasn't there, but that doesn't mean anything. We can find her. We can do this. Are you sure you didn't bring her with you anywhere else? Anywhere?"

Poppy shook her head. It seemed to Zach that giving them that speech about all the stuff she hated had drained away the part of her that had driven her this far. Or maybe it was losing the Queen. Either way, Poppy looked more defeated than he'd ever seen her. "No. When I sat down on the couch, she was with me. I was worried about rolling over on her, since she's so fragile, so I put her on the floor and hung my hand down to keep touching her. I would have known if someone moved her."

"Creepy," Alice said. "What is it with you and the Queen? You're always holding her and touching her. Don't you find the whole she-was-made-from-human-bones thing even a little bit, like, scary?"

Poppy gave her a look.

"I don't mean it like that," said Alice. "Not like you're being weird. Are you sure she's not doing something to you? Making you act like what she wants?"

"Oh, so now you believe in the possibility of a ghost," Poppy sneered.

"We'll find the Queen," Zach insisted, interrupting before they started fighting again. "Just as soon as we figure a way out of this room. Which we will. In just a second an idea is going to come to me, and it's going to be a good one." He leaned against the wall, folding his arms and trying to concentrate. They could tell Miss Katherine they had to go to use the bathrooma"all of them at the same timea"and then sneak out the window. The only problem was that Miss Katherine probably wouldn't let them all use the bathroom at once. Well, that and the fact that the windows in the bas.e.m.e.nt were really far up the wall; they'd had to drop down during the climb in. And just one more problema"he wasn't sure there was a window in the girls' bathroom.

Alice stared up at the ceiling. Then she stepped onto one of the folding chairs, and from there onto the table.

"What are you doing?" Poppy asked.

Alice went up on her toes and shoved at one of the ceiling tiles. It moved over, showing the metal grid that suspended it. Beyond was only darkness, like the gap left by a missing tooth. "I have an idea," she said. "Look at how low the ceiling is in here. And look at the doora"it's different from the others; the k.n.o.b is really shiny."

"So?" Zach said, walking over and frowning at what she was doing.

"Everything else in the building is old, but in here everything's new. This was built recently. I bet the drop ceiling hides an older, high ceiling, and there might be some venting or something to crawl through in the new wall."

"You're really going to go up there?" Zach asked.

"Brace the table and I will," Alice said. "It'll be just like climbing the monkey bars on the playground back in elementary."

Zach stared at her in awed amazement. "Do you even think this will work?" he asked.

She looked back at him. "It works in the movies." She jumped, caught the metal supports, and pulled herself up into the dark as though she was in gym cla.s.s.

"Even if you get to the other side," called Poppy, "the door's still locked."

Zach started grinning. "No. Miss Katherine leaves the key in it. If she can get to the other side, she really can open the door. We're getting out of here."

"Ow," Alice said from above them, m.u.f.fled by the tiles still in place. "I can't see the vent."

"Maybe there isn't one," Poppy said. "Come back down."

They heard a metallic clang and a sharp yelp, then more clanging. Zach hoped against hope that Miss Katherine's office was soundproof. Then the clanging stopped and there was a solid sound, like a body hitting the floor.

Poppy looked at Zach, a kind of wild hope in her eyes. He grinned at her.

Then the door opened, Alice standing on the other side and breathing heavily. "Come on," she said. "Quick."

"Okay," said Zach. "Here's the plan. We all go look for the Queen. I'll take the bas.e.m.e.nt. Poppy, you retrace your steps. Alice, you take the stacks on this level. We all meet up on the side of the librarya"the one that's close to the street. Okay?"

"What if we don't find her?" Alice asked.

"We have to find her," Poppy said.

"Since we're split up, we're not going to know who finds what, so we just have to cover as much ground as we can and then meet up." Miss Katherine might be back soon. She could have gone out for the promised lunch, but that still didn't give them much extra time. They had to be quick. "See you guys in ten."

Poppy nodded and started toward the couches. Alice saluted and headed for the stacks.

Zach walked down the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt. He felt a little bit guilty knowing he had a reason for deciding to look for the Queen in the bas.e.m.e.nta"a reason that only sort of had to do with finding her. He wanted to read about the Kerchner guy who'd made the pottery. He wanted to know if he was really some relative of Eleanor's.

The bas.e.m.e.nt was quiet, the only sound coming from the wind blowing through the window they'd left open. It was dark in the hallway, and he could see why he hadn't noticed the display: the lights in the case were off. He felt along the wall until he found the switch and flicked it.

Suddenly the cabinet sprang to bright life. The pieces inside were made of some porcelain so thin that it was practically translucent and shaped into the most fantastical forms. There were teapots corded with garlands of tiny perfect flowers; egg cups shaped with a filigree netting in the quatrefoil pattern of old church windows, all of it in shining gold; and vases with intricately shaped arms, their bodies painted with a delicate pattern of cherry blossoms. All the pieces seemed to glow from within, so thin and fine was the bone china from which they were made.

They were just like the pieces in Zach's dream of Eleanor, except that these were perfect.

And there was a plaque in the center with a black-and-white picture of a stern-looking man standing near the river. It read: Despite the successes of American potteries in East Liverpool at the turn of the century, they were still considered no match for their European cousins. Patriotism and ambition pushed Wilkinson-Clark China to make something unique, a new porcelain so fine that it would secure the place of their company as not just equal to, but better than any the world over. They wanted to make art.

Orchid Ware was the result of a collaboration between two men: Philip Dowling and Lukas Kerchner. Dowling was a pottery technician and a specialist in clay chemistry. He had considerable experience and was able to come up with the process that allowed Wilkinson-Clark to create a porcelain that was very thin but also possessed sufficient structural integrity for commercial production. Part of what made the porcelain so solid was the high percentage of bone ash from cattle bones that were degelatinized and then calcinated at very hot temperatures.

Kerchner was the artist. Rumored to be difficult to work with and often found shouting at underlings or accusing them of spying on him, he was also a genius, able to coax beauty from clay. His steady hand, wild imagination, and myriad influencesa"Art Nouveau, Moorish, Persian, and Indian, as well as the English and German pottery of his childhooda"helped him make Orchid Ware objects that were wholly different and altogether finer than any porcelain produced in East Liverpool before. Kerchner became obsessive, working around the clock and refusing to allow the sale of any piece that was less than perfect.

Orchid Ware took off immediately. Highlighted at the World's Fair in Chicago, it won numerous awards and stunned the international ceramics community. Immediately there was demand among the discerning ladies of the day. Even the First Lady commissioned a piece. But despite the flood of orders, Orchid Ware turned out not to be profitable to produce. Each individual piece took too much time to complete, and many were destroyed in kilns built to fire much st.u.r.dier ceramics. Others broke during shipping. For every piece that survived, fifteen were either broken or deemed too imperfect to be salable. But despite the drain Orchid Ware was on the company's finances, Wilkinson-Clark's pride forced them to continue producing it, even at a loss.

Then tragedy struck. Lukas Kerchner's daughter went missing in the early autumn of 1895. Quickly, though, sympathy turned to terror when blood and hair were discovered in his office in the factory and on a leather ap.r.o.n belonging to him. It was hypothesized that he had murdered his daughter and used the method of calcinating cattle bone to dispose of her body. This was backed up by the accounts of his late wife's sister, who had been a caretaker to the daughter, and who reported Lukas Kerchner coming home in an unhinged state of mind and locking her in one of the rooms in their large Victorian home. When she escaped from the room, he and his daughter were already missing.

Lukas Kerchner denied murdering his daughter, but gave no explanation for the evidence found in his work s.p.a.ce, nor an account of his daughter's whereabouts, saying only, "I am not her killer, but I am the one who has given her new life." Further questioning caused him to break down, screaming and weeping and insisting that his daughter "was like an angel who fell to Earth" and was "his most perfect creation." He was convicted of murder and sentenced to execution.

After his conviction, the production of Orchid Ware ceased. All told, pieces were made for less than three years, but are still avidly collected today and are very valuable. Every few years, rumors surface of fantastical pieces made by Lukas Kerchner at the height of his madnessa"samovars, a working porcelain clock, and even a jointed dolla"although given the fragile nature of Orchid Ware, these rumors are unlikely to prove true. Still, the mystique of Orchid Ware persists and will probably persist for many years to come.

This collection is on loan from a private collector.