Henry shook his head. “I told you, I live by the hospital.”

“But before that, was this your house?”

“Before that I lived in the asylum.”

“The asylum?”

“Till I was seventeen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-three. They sent me there when I was twelve. I only escaped six years ago. They called it the crazy house.”

“Were you—” She almost asked if he was crazy. “Why did you live there?”

“I burned a building. Many buildings. A peddler cheated me and I snuck into his yard and set his crates afire. It burned to the ground—an entire building. I was a very dangerous boy. I burned up a picture of Jesus Christ. I hit a boy on the head with a brick, and blood came out his ear. Once I pushed a baby down the stairs. I killed a man, too, but nobody knew about that. And I threw hot ashes on a little girl. She went into the hospital, my father had to pay for it.”

Pin stared at him, repulsed yet also fascinated. “Why’d you do all that?”

“I just hated babies.” He shook his head in remorse. “Not now. Now I love and protect them. My little sister disappeared when I was four.”

Pin’s neck went cold. “Your sister? What happened?”

“Nobody told me.”

“What about your father?”

“Father, bother.” Henry cut across the lawn toward the house. “He made good pancakes. I cut a teacher with a knife, her arms and face, what a place. They put me in the home for boys. Awful noise. People did bad things. I watched the snow…”

He threw an invisible snowball. “Blizzards. People froze standing up. I saw a cyclone pick up a barn with cows in it. There were cows hanging in the trees. You had to climb to get milk.”

“That’s not true.”

“Who said it was?”

“Where was your mother?”

“Dead. Dead in bed. My sister murdered her. I went to an outside school until Dr. Stegman sent me to the asylum. A big tunnel where we walked in the winter, under the snow. That was where the people froze to death, in the fields by the asylum. They turned to icicles. Men put them in their mouths and sucked on them. Five years I kept running away. Finally I escaped.”

Pin rubbed her arms, trying to dispel the chill that had overcome her at the words My little sister disappeared when I was four. In the near dark, Henry looked younger and tougher than he had back at Riverview. Twenty-three wasn’t so old, really. She would have felt safer with someone older. She looked up at the dark house and trees in front of them. She would have felt safer if she hadn’t come at all.

Chapter 52

Chapter 52