A moment passed, which felt like an eternity. It was Miss Toadwart who finally broke the silence. “Whaddya mean who goes there?” She chided, mocking Miss Wormwood. “Yer getting jumpy in old age, ye fearful hag. ‘Twas probably the rain or a cat.”

“Aye, the rain or a cat,” Miss Ratworth agreed dimly. She always echoed after Toadwart, Ben realized. Never an original thought, that one.

Ben tried to relax his body but winced from the pain of the fall. He decided to lie there until the caretakers left the office, and then he would quickly climb up the wall and back into the attic before they discovered him. Of all his misadventures, this was perhaps the most daring. To pry on Miss Wormwood, who had always been so secretive and cruel, was unthinkable.

Miss Wormwood grunted. “Alright, alright, back off, will you? It was me the Matron put in charge, innit? And it wasn’t for my good looks! No bad will come from being careful, is all,” she retorted. “Now stop grumbling and bring the boy in. I’m weary from the journey. These old bones aren’t what they used to be, Befanna be my witness.”

Bring the boy in? They were going to go fetch him from the attic! There was no way he would arrive there before they did. Ben could feel his heart pounding in his throat. He calculated his options, though he had none. He decided to make a run for it, noise be damned. Nothing else to do, simple as that. As Ben contemplated his escape, he could hear Miss Ratworth crooning a sinister melody that sent chills down his spine.

“Swelter’d venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first in the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble…”

Ben took a deep breath, preparing to scamper away. Then he heard a loud noise—the office door being closed—followed by a shrill voice that he instantly recognized.

“Y-Yes, ma’am? You called?” Came the high-pitched words.

It was Nut, an amiable, introverted orphan about three years younger than him. That’s who they meant, Ben thought. I’m still in the clear. He let out an inaudible sigh of relief. This was his chance to flee. His feet, however, would not budge. He found himself compelled to stay, reminiscent of earlier that day when he felt drawn to Bierce Square, or compelled to follow the strangers.

What did they want with Nut, though? It’s not like he got adopted, he would’ve heard. Curiosity finally got the best of Ben. He slowly rose into a crouching position under the windowsill. He snooped in just enough that he could see inside the office without being seen himself.

For all his time in St. Dunsany’s this was the first time he peeked inside the chief warden’s office. It amounted to the gravest of infringements under Miss Wormwood’s tyrannical rules. He would never have thought this is what it would look like.

An enormous bookshelf filled with dusty tomes of every shape and color covered the opposite wall. Ben saw elegant leather-bound editions that looked centuries old, pamphlets of brittle palimpsest barely held together by a thread, volumes whose dust jackets’ materials he could not recognize, but they looked to be of dubious origins.

Scattered carelessly here and there amongst the shelves were polished skulls and corvine feathers, intricate dream catchers and heathen figurines. In the other end of the room was a long table filled with the most unfamiliar collection of instruments, phials and alembics he had ever seen, whose contents still bubbled and churned. Next to it lay a cabinet that brimmed with plants, rocks and animal parts; cat paws, dissected frogs, rabbit’s feet and mice’s tails.

In the very center of the office was an enormous cauldron filled with a treacly substance, which Miss Ratworth stirred with a ladle almost her own size. Ben noticed it emanated a verdant incandescence, which Ben had confused with the room’s lighting. Miss Wormwood sat by her personal desk, a weighty piece of furniture. Toadwart stood by the door beside Nut, who twitched nervously as he regarded the unfamiliar territory.

It was then that Ben noticed that their wardens seemed different. Changed. Miss Wormwood and her cohorts had never been exemplars of beauty, but under the greenish hue of the cauldron’s contents, they appeared more than just ugly—downright beastly.

They weren’t wearing hats like they usually did, revealing bald heads with wafts of hair sprouting here and there. Their wrists were unnaturally bent, making their hands look more like claws, and their already hawkish noses like beaks. Every cell in his body told him to run.

“Ah, Mr. Lipsey. Please do come in,” Miss Wormwood motioned a hand at one of the chairs in front of her desk. She looked more like a bird flapping a wing than an actual old lady. Nut looked nervously at Miss Ratworth, who grinned at him as she stirred the cauldron’s noxious contents. Nut remained rigid, paralyzed in fear. “I said to come in, you spoiled brat!” She banged her hand on the desk, startling Nut. Miss Toadwart pushed him onto the chairs. He tentatively took a seat.

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“Am I in trouble, Miss Wormwood? W-Whatever I did, I’m so sorry, please I swear—”

“Hush, child, you’re not in trouble,” she interrupted. Ben could tell she was trying to appear caring, but it seemed so out of place in her that it gave her an uncanny aspect. She leaned in toward him and stroked his hair. Nut shrank back in his chair as much as he could.

“Not in trouble, Mr. Lipsey, not at all. In fact, the opposite is true! Miss Toadwart has brought to my attention that there is a spright young couple that has shown interest in adopting you,” she slunk back in her chair and extended her arms magnanimously. “And they appear to be in quite the hurry to get the paperwork sorted and done with. Well-off and educated, they are. ‘It’s the Alcombes if I’m not mistaken, isn’t that right Miss Toadwart?”

Her fellow warden stepped closer with that awkward gait of hers. She was a hunchback and walked with a limp. The way she rubbed her hands reminded Ben of the misers that figured in the pennies. “Oh yes, it’s the Alcombes alright. They live in one of those big houses up on King Street. They’ve got maids and all!”

“I’m to leave St. Dunsany’s?” Nut asked incredulously. Ben could see a flicker of hope light in his eyes. “W-Why me?”

“Don’t sell yerself short lad,” She paced the room slowly and dramatically, making his way behind Nut. She placed her claw-like hands on his shoulders rather forcefully, and Nut winced in alarm. “All of you foundlings are precious little angels. Aye, flush with life and opportunity you are,” Nut squeaked in pain as she tightened her grip. “Flush with blood and fat, with muscles and sinews…”

Blue saliva fell on Nut’s lap. “Miss Wormwood?” He spun in place as quick as he could, and as soon as he saw her face he squealed in fear, falling to the floor. “M-Miss Wormwood?!”

Ben could not believe what he was seeing. The changes he had noticed upon the caretakers intensified. He could hear the snapping of bones as their bodies contorted into grotesque shapes. Nut crawled backwards away from Miss Wormwood, only to stumble upon Miss Toadwart. Miss Ratworth did not stop stirring the cauldron, laughing a malicious, idiotic cackle as their bodies transformed.

Nut tried to scream, but the sound died in his throat. Terror had utterly consumed him. Miss Toadwart gave him a kick in the back with her now talon-like feet, joining Miss Ratworth’s gleeful cackling. Miss Wormwood brandished a knife she had been hiding behind her back; it was old and rusted, and it seemed as if its edge had gone dull.

“Miss Wormwood? M-Miss Wormwood?” She mimicked mockingly, blue spittle flying from her mouth. “Of course you’re not in trouble, Mr. Lipsey! Why would you be? You go out of your way not to be a nuisance, isn’t that right? Not to be noticed, not to be singled out in any way?” She pressed the tip of the knife against Nut’s lips. “Tut-tut-tut. And yet, that’s precisely why you’re here, Mr. Lipsey.”

Nut’s eyes filled with tears. He looked like a helpless rodent. “But the Alcombes—”

“There’s no Alcombes you muttonhead,” she replied. “Just seasoning the meat before boiling, so to speak.” And with that, in one deft stroke, she slit Nut’s throat. A rush of blood instantly sprayed her face, and before the body hit the floor, she grabbed Nut by his shirt’s collar, and threw him directly into the cauldron. A look of surprise was imprinted upon his lifeless face as he sank into its contents without so much as a splash.

Ben suppressed the urge to scream, and the urge to vomit, for that matter. What was going on? He always knew something was amiss in Dunport-Salem, but the more he saw, the less he understood, and the more dangerous it all seemed. As much danger as he was in prying into an actual murder scene, he had never been this close to unlocking the city’s mysteries. And who would’ve thought that St. Dunsany's would be at the heart of it all?

Feeling a sense of duty toward his fellow orphan, Ben gathered what little courage he possessed (not much, given his bookwormish nature) and persisted in eavesdropping on them.

They were in the throes of a heated argument, debating how to cook Nut. As in an actual meal, Ben realized. Tremendous guardians, he thought glumly. “Jugged child I says. Onions, celery and carrots; eye of newt, tongue of dog and adder’s fork. Delectable,” Miss Toadwart said.

“No, you stupid crone, we’re not having jugged child again. You and your damned stews!” Miss Wormwood berated Miss Toadwart, who shot her a murderous look.

“But it’s so meaty and juicy, so ripe and succulent!” She complained as blue saliva drooled from her mouth. Miss Ratworth paid them no mind, stirring the ladle religiously as she continued her sinister crooning.

“Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab…”

“Shut yer clamp, I can’t hear my own thoughts,” Miss Toadwart reprimanded Miss Ratworth with a shove, causing her to spill some of the cauldron’s contents near the window. Its strong, acrid odor instantly overwhelmed Ben’s nostrils. He could feel the urge to sneeze overtake him. He clasped his nose and mouth as he ducked under the ledge, trying not be noticed. But it was too late. He sneezed, loud and clear. An uncomfortable silence followed.

There was mad cackling all around him. It rose from a soft hum to a devilish crescendo; Ben could hear the wild laughter of the wardens approach him. Heart hammering, temple sweating, Ben curled into a ball in the bush and closed his eyes. Then a steely vise grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him inside the office in one powerful movement.

Green light flooded his vision as he fell face down into the floor, sliding a few meters toward the cauldron. He noticed there was no fire lit beneath it, yet a scorching heat radiated from its contents.

“If it isn’t Benjamin Umber! What a welcome surprise,” Miss Wormwood said with a fake smile that quickly contorted with malicious relish. “You’re supposed to be in the attic, isn’t that right, wretch?” Her hands went behind her back again, and Ben could only surmise what that meant. “I always knew you were an ungrateful imp. Always disobeying the rules, always ignoring the curfew...”

He stood up and ignored her questions, keeping his gaze fixed on her without looking away. Beside Ben, Nut’s hand jutted out of the cauldron like a broken mast. Tears welled in his eyes. The wardens looked even more unnatural up closely, more… Inhuman, he thought, mind reeling. They’re not human. The realization hit him like a hammer, sobering him up.

“Every single time, poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, eh Umber? Going on and on about your conspiracies and your theories, never daring to imagine that the answers that you sought were to be found under this very roof, instead of ambling like a monkey above it.”

Miss Toadwart shook her head. “Told you we should’ve eaten ‘im earlier, nothin’ but trouble, this one. Let’s throw ‘im in the stew and be done with it.”

“Throw ‘im in the stew and be done with it!” Miss Ratworth chorused, clapping her hands.

Should’ve stayed on the attic, Ben thought miserably.