Chapter 3: His Brother's Keeper

"He's as weak as a new born chick," remarked one of the women who worked at the orphanage over the pale and solemn lump that was baby Tom Riddle Jr. "But did you see the way he smiled when Martha nearly dropped him?" she asked her younger, frightened companion. "He looked at her darkly, as if he knew she was afraid, and cackled -- can you believe it? Cackled like some evil old person three times his age!"

The woman beside her shivered and nodded, shrinking away as the tiny child's cold eyes shifted to her face. "I can believe it, ma'am. He looked at Mary so just the other day when she'd seen him strike another child. We still don't know how he'd gotten that knife from the kitchen, but it came within an inch of slicing Baby Alice in halves."

The two women peered at Baby Tom in mingled curiosity and fear, and the younger one, who held his bottle of formula, offered it now with a shaking hand.

"Don't let him see you shake so, Lisa," muttered the older woman out of the side of her mouth. "Our fear gives him his power. Watch and learn -- " and she took the bottle from Lisa's fumbling grasp and offered it with a confident thrustto the child.

Baby Tom watched the woman warily and did not move, but as she continued to hold the bottle out to his pudgy hands, his black eyes bore unblinkingly into hers. They were cold eyes for a baby, as dark as swirling pools of blackness between the stars and underlined with a disturbingly intelligent fire.

Lisa gave a low moan and trembled, backing behind her older companion. "He's doin' the stare, miss! Mrs. Racket -- he's doin' the stare again!" she cried, twisting her bony fingers anxiously.

"Hush, Lisa!" Mrs. Racket snapped out of the corner of her mouth, her own blue eyes staring hard into the child's. "Take it! Take it, you little brat!" she hissed under her breath.

It seemed immediately upon Mrs. Racket's words, the most extraordinary series of events happened. Months and even years later, every employee at the orphanage will argue how it came about, but what happened was this: the bottle of warm formula exploded in Mrs. Racket's hand, creating not only a pool in the woman's large bossom, but a great pool on the floor. Lisa gave a terrible scream and lept like a cat into the air. She came down against her shocked and rigid companion, and the two women went into a sort of mad dance as they scurried to keep from slipping in the mess of spilt formula. Mrs. Racket's flailing arms smacked a nearby lamp, which fell from its small stand and shattered in the spilt formula. As Baby Tom gurgled happily, Lisa's eyes fell on the lamp's cord in the nearby socket on the wall.

"Mrs. Racket -- ! Look out!" she screeched, seeing the blue sparks that shot along the cord there.

Mrs. Racket caught her balance at last against a flailing, sputtering Lisa, and the two women had half a second to watch the blue sparks speed up the lamp's cord before they were electrocuted. In the light of their frying bodies, Baby Tom shrieked with laughter and clapped his hands until both women laid dead in the pool of spilt formula, the lamp plug sparking and their bodies blackened and burnt.

Tom Riddle Jr.'s life in the orphange was surrounded by these strange and gruesome incidents. It was common knowledge that everyone found him particularily evil without restraint or reason -- and yet he was so charming and polite at the same time! Had he been outright vindictive, it would have been easier to suspect and even to understand him. But his gentlemanly airs won with unease the respect, if not the love, of all surrounding him. And even those who feared him most could not help but remark with frank admiration how charming that little Tom Riddle was.

"No one is born evil, Pastor," argued Mrs. Dean, the head woman at the orphanage.

Tom Jr. listened darkly outside of the door, his thin lips pressed angrily together and his black eyes hard. Mrs. Dean was speaking about him to Pastor Givings for the umpteenth time, complaining that he was possessed and all such nonsense, that he needed to be examined by doctors and sent to a home. The pastor was very weary of these conversations and had made it his business ever since his first meeting with young Tom to stay as far from the orphanage as he could.

" . . . people act wicked because they're made that way," Mrs. Dean was saying, and Tom could hear her pacing the room with her fat, heavy feet. "People are usually mean because they're hurting inside. But what reason have we given this boy to be unkind to us? We've done nothing -- nothing, I tell you! -- but be kind to him! And yet still he plagues us with -- with these dark occurances! Why, the other day little Tracy Peters offered him some of her milk at lunch time -- heaven knows why when the boy's such a foul little demon -- and then later . . ." she lowered her voice and continued in an astonished whisper, "later we found her favorite kitten's head in -- well . . . you get the idea. . . ."

Tom heard Pastor Givings stirr uncomfortably, then heard the rustle ofthe old man'srobes as he rose from his chair, "I fully appreciate your concern for this boy, Mrs. Dean, but as pastor of this precinct -- and pastor alone -- there really isn't much I can do!"

"There is!" Mrs. Dean cried quickly. "You can take this boy off our hands! Lord knows no person in their right mind would adopt him -- why not take him to the monastery? Let him grow up there in peace, and leave us in peace as well?"

Pastor Givings gave a low weary groan.

"See what you've done!" Tom hissed, frowning, it seemed, at thin air.

A moment later, a gust of wind swept his hair and there stood before Tom the very duplicate of himself. The only difference between Tom and this new boy was this other Tom was not solid and full of color and life, but pale and silvery and insubstantial.

"What we've done," corrected the pale and silvery Tom. "I didn't capture that kitten on my own, you know."

"I only did it because you pestered me so," Tom snapped, frowning. "Tracy was mindless and naive -- we could have used her. But you scared her off!"

The silvery Tom smiled slowly, an evil grin. "Why do you bother lying to me, Tom?" he taunted, floating on the spot. "You didn't want to hurt Tracy's kitten because you liked her. You still like her. You can't hide your secrets from me -- I know what goes on in that dark little mind of yours."

Tom scowled, "You were jealous! That's why you did it!"

The grin fell from the silvery Tom's lips and he glowered at Tom, floating sullenly on the spot, "I saw the way you looked at her. You looked as if you liked her and wanted to make her your pet -- a sort of mindless companion." He shook his head and his dark silvery hair shifted, "I'm your only companion, Tom. You only have me. Me! Don't I always look after you, Tom?"

Tom turned away. "I can look after myself. You aren't my keeper!" he snarled, starting for his bedroom.

"We were destined to be great princes," the silvery Tom said loudly before his living, breathing counterpart could stalk off. "You and I. And I will yet see that dream fulfilled. You don't remember what happened that night -- of course you don't -- the night that old witch murdered me in our mother's womb. But I remember every moment of it. I remember the twisting pain, the agony, the helplessness. . . ." His voice rose to an angry growl, and Tom turned to him again, his hands shoved in his pockets. "That old witch spoke of our fate, Tom, yours and mine. Together, we shall be dark princes -- the darkest princes of all time!"

Tom merely watched his silvery companion shrewdly, his black emotionless eyes narrowed, his entire body still. It was the stare that the women at the orphange were so frightened of, the caluculating, evil, heart-stopping stare.

"You will delve no lies from me, Brother," the silvery Tom whispered, hovering on the spot. "I only speak the truth."

"And am I truly to be a dark prince then?" Tom whispered and then burst suddenly, "TELL THE TRUTH!"

His silvery counterpart did not flinch, but smiled slowly again and said, "We are to be dark princes, Tom. We."

"You?" spat Tom, his lip curling. "You're dead. Dead people are weak, helpless, nothing."

The silvery Tom gave an identical sneer, his pale eyes firing with the same blue flame his mother's colorless eyes had once possessed.

"If I am indeed a dark prince," continued Tom, smiling nastily, "then you, as a dead person, are under me. You will obey me properly, like any faithful doppelganger should!" He went on, his voice rising, "AND DO ALL THAT I TELL YOU TO DO AND NOT TO DO!"

The silvery Tom snarled and disappeared in a whirl of fierce wind that whipped again at Tom's black hair, and Tom looked around to see Mrs. Dean and Pastor Givings standing, appalled, in the doorway.

"You see that?" hissed Mrs. Dean to the pastor out of the corner of her mouth. "Most unnatural -- really shocking." Then she added loudly to Tom, "What are you doing here, boy?"

"I could hear you, old woman," Tom sneered. "Just because I'm a kid dosen't mean I'm deaf!" He glowered at her, his hands thrust in his pockets, and then stared at Pastor Givings, "And what are you doing here, old man? I thought you'd shriveled up and died by now!"

The two adults merely stared at him with their mouths open. Until now, Tom had always been the most polite, the most charming, the most outwardly sweet and intelligent of boys (though his background was somewhat shady), and he had remained a great enigma to the adults at the orphange who could have sworn he had been there when little Kevin fell off that swing . . . But now Tom was being downright impertinent, and it was even more of a shock than hearing him scream at no one.

Tom breathed deeply and said accusingly, "I heard you! You want to send me away!"

"Tom . . ." began Mrs. Dean anxiously while Pastor Givings nervously polished his glasses on his flared sleeve.

"NO!" Tom bellowed. "Don't feed me your lies! I'm sick of being passed back and forth -- doesn't anyone want me?" and he fled from their presence and to his tiny, barren bedroom.