The Orphan of Awkward Falls by Keith Graves

Author:Keith Graves [Graves, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Young Adult, Horror, Childrens
ISBN: 9780811878142
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

If it hadn’t been for an old shipping crate that happened to be perfectly positioned below the grate, Thaddeus and Josephine would surely have been seriously hurt in their fall from the ceiling of the lab. The crate was filled with sawdust, which had kept its contents of glass beakers and test tubes from breaking during shipment years ago. Thaddeus landed first, followed by Josephine, who fell right on top of him. The ample padding on Thaddeus’s plump body cushioned Josephine’s landing and kept her bony knees and elbows from doing anything more than knocking the wind out of the boy.

Josephine crawled to the edge of the crate and hopped to the floor. “Are you all right, Thaddeus?”

Only the top of Thaddeus’s head protruded from the sawdust. Josephine reached into the crate and helped pull him to the surface.

“Goorrgghhh,” he moaned, spitting sawdust. “I can’t see! I’m blind!”

“You’re not blind, silly. You’ve just lost your glasses.” Josephine dug around for a moment and fished them out of the sawdust. “Here they are.”

With a good deal of grunting and gasping, Thaddeus rolled out of the crate and plopped onto the floor. Josephine helped him to his feet and brushed the sawdust out of his hair.

“Egad! I’ve severed an artery!” he gasped frantically, spotting a small red stain on the elbow of his jacket.

Josephine pushed up his sleeve and found a tiny cut. “You’re fine. It’s only a scratch.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “It looks like an awful lot of blood!”

“I’m positive. We’ll put a Band-Aid on it later, I promise.”

When Thaddeus had calmed down a bit, the two began to take note of their surroundings. The room was carved out of bedrock and was bathed in a deep blue light. Ammonia fumes made their eyes sting and their noses burn.

Thaddeus carefully sniffed the air. “The ammonia content of the air appears to be within acceptable tolerances. A good thing, otherwise we’d be dying a horrible death at this moment.”

“That’s a lovely thought, Thaddeus,” Josephine said. “I feel so much better now.”

Once Josephine’s eyes began to adjust to the eerie light, she was astounded by what she saw. Although everything was very dusty, the place looked like the labs her father worked in. Colored lights blinked on a large control console that sat in the center of the room in a kind of raised cockpit. Rows of numbers and letters scrolled across its three computer monitors. Banks of sleek, efficient- looking machinery built into the walls all around the lab hummed and hissed quietly. A spiral staircase led up to a series of catwalks that gave access to controls too high to reach from the floor. It seemed impossible that something like this could exist inside the creaky old mansion. Thaddeus’s grungy little lab was like something out of the Stone Age in comparison.

But the most impressive thing was a group of floor-to-ceiling glass cylinders that took up half the room. Specimens of some kind were floating inside the tubes.

“Wow! What is this place?”

Thaddeus’s mouth hung open as he took it all in.

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