The Dark Stairs R/I (9 page)

Read The Dark Stairs R/I Online

Authors: Betsy Byars

BOOK: The Dark Stairs R/I
7.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“I'll be right back.”
“Supper's in a half hour.”
“I'll be back by then.”
“Pork chops.”
Meat opened the door and ran across the porch. He went down the stairs holding onto the banister like a small child.
He paused to watch for traffic, even though the street was deserted. He felt the need to take good care of himself. Then he crossed the street and moved quickly to the back of Herculeah's house.
His corduroy pants made a rustling sound as his legs brushed together. Meat had always enjoyed this sound, but now it made him nervous, reminding him that he was moving forward into danger.
He stopped in the backyard. The screen door to the house stood open. This made Meat's heart thud in his chest. The Moloch had gone inside. It looked as if he had just pulled the door open like an unruly child. The latch dangled uselessly against the wood.
Meat walked up the back steps. The smell of the Moloch was in the kitchen. Meat felt sick, but he forced himself to go inside.
He walked to the living room. There was a sheet of paper on the desk. Meat looked down at the big, childish printing.
“I will be there, waiting,” he read.
The thought of the Moloch waiting in Dead Oaks made Meat's blood run cold. He was afraid for Herculeah and for Mrs. Jones and, most of all, for himself.
He ran out of the house and down the sidewalk to the corner. He stopped and peered around the side of the insurance building.
The Moloch was almost to the next intersection. He was walking slowly, his shoulders hunched up to meet the brim of his dark hat.
Keeping close to the buildings, Meat moved past the hardware store, the drug store, the dentist that advertised one-day dentures, the card shop ...
The Moloch turned then, without warning, and Meat ducked into the card shop. His heart was pounding.
“Can I help you?” the clerk asked.
“What?”
“Can I help you find a card?”
“Oh!” He looked around and realized where he was. “Oh, one of these things. A card.”
“Yes.” The clerk was looking at him strangely.
Meat picked up a Valentine card shaped like a box of candy and raised it so that it shielded his face. With his heart pounding even harder, he moved to the window. He peered over the heart. The Moloch was out of sight.
“Are you looking for something for Valentine's Day?” the clerk asked.
Meat did not care for clerks who tried to sell him things, particularly when he merely needed something to hide behind momentarily. “Not really.”
“That's one of our Scratch 'n' Sniff cards. If you scratch it, you can smell chocolate.”
“That won't be necessary.”
Meat handed the card to the clerk.
“That'll be—” She turned the card over to check the price. “Two dollars and thirty-five cents,” she said. When she looked up, Meat was gone.
20
BLACK WINGS AT THE WINDOW
It was dusk when Herculeah turned the corner onto Antique Row. She drew in a deep breath as she caught sight of Dead Oaks.
The house was dark. The bare trees stood in the overgrown yard like sentries. The wind began to blow, and the limbs rattled. Herculeah wished she had worn a jacket.
Herculeah paused and leaned against the window of Hidden Treasures. She regarded the house. There was no sign that anyone was inside.
She made a quick decision. I'm going to get the key—if it's where I think it is—and I'm going to unlock the door. But I am not going inside. I'm going to unlock the door, yell, “Mom, are you in there?” and if she doesn't answer, I'm going home.
Herculeah pulled herself away from the storefront and crossed the street.
She went around the house, up the alley, as she and Meat had done the night before. She stopped at the gate.
Again there was nothing to indicate anyone had come this way. Beyond was the basement door, still half open from her assault. She pushed open the gate and moved into the yard.
At the door to the basement she paused. She felt an unease come over her. She remembered those terrible moments when she had been trapped inside.
She glanced over her shoulder. No one was in sight.
Taking a deep breath, Herculeah reached up as she had seen the Moloch do. It was fortunate that she was tall and could reach above the doorway.
Her fingers found a loose brick, and she removed it. She dropped it behind her with a soft thud. Then, amid the crumbling mortar, she found the key.
For a moment she held it in her hand, looking at it. It was an old key, not one of those modern, sculptured ones. A skeleton key, she thought it was called. The thought caused her to shiver.
Clutching the key in her hand, she walked to the side of the house. She hoped this key was to the side door so she wouldn't have to go to the front. She would be seen there.
She walked up the side steps. The concrete had begun to crumble. She crossed the porch and put the key in the lock. She turned.
She heard a click, but the door wouldn't open. It seemed to be swollen shut.
She put her shoulder to it. She shoved with all her might. Then again and again. On the fourth try, the door opened, and her forward drive carried Herculeah into the house.
She had not intended to come inside, but now she already was.
“Mom,” she called. “Mom, are you in here?”
There was no answer.
Herculeah was standing in a room as big as the lobby of an old hotel. Her voice seemed to echo through the empty rooms.
There were Persian carpets so thick with dust she could not make out the pattern. Tapestries hung on the walls, and the huge furniture—too big, it seemed for ordinary people—gave Herculeah the feeling she had suddenly become smaller.
She moved a few steps forward to the hallway. She looked up at the wide marble stairs that led to the upper floor of the house.
“Mom?”
She hesitated. She didn't want to go up the stairs, but something drew her forward.
She started up slowly, almost unwillingly, pulling herself along by the banister.
She heard a rustling noise upstairs.
“Hello,” she called.
No answer.
“Is anybody up there?”
I'm just going to take one quick look around, she told herself, and then get out of here. Meat was right. This place is spooky.
And yet she felt a quickening of excitement. She loved moments like this, when she was on the brink of discovery.
At the top of the stairs, she paused. All the doors were closed, and yet she moved instinctively toward the large carved doorway at the front of the hall.
She opened the door and peered inside. This must have been old man Crewell's bedroom. His bed was in the center of a huge, dark rug. Every color was dimmed by the dust.
She moved to the window.
Suddenly something swooped down at Herculeah's head from the shadows by the closet. She ducked and covered her head with her arms.
Her hair seemed to have gone wild and reached out as if to trap whatever was there. In horror, Herculeah drew her hair closer to her head.
Frantically she turned this way and that, and then she bent double and crouched beside the huge carved bed. Her nose, against the heavy spread, inhaled the dust of years.
She heard the desperate flapping of wings. She peered up through her arms. She saw a mass of black feathers.
“It's a bird,” she said aloud. As the creature came to rest, she could see it clearly. “It's a crow!”
She felt weak with relief.
“A crow has somehow gotten in here.”
The ordinary nature of the bird made it even better news.
She straightened, and sagged weakly against one of the bed's carved posts.
“A crow!”
She was overcome with relief. She walked to the window and unlocked it. She tried to pull it up. The window, like everything else in this house, hadn't been used in years and wouldn't work. It might as well have been nailed shut.
She began to pull at the window. Her hands were clammy and she dried them on her shirt. The years of hardened paint started to yield.
After one more pull, the paint gave way. She thrust the window up and turned to face the crow.
“It's open now. Come on, crow. Nice crow. See the open window?”
She began to move toward the dresser. “You want to be outside, don't you? You want to be out in the great big world, don't you?”
The crow watched her. Its head was cocked to one side. It paused, and then flapped toward the window. It stopped on the sill.
“That's right,” Herculeah said. “Look at that great big wonderful world. Go on! Fly!”
The crow's head bobbed. Then its wings spread and flapped. Herculeah could feel the dusty wind from the sill.
Then the crow lifted its wings, sailed out the window, and swooped across the street.
Herculeah leaned out the window, bracing her elbows on the dusty sill.
“Bye,” she said.
Her face grew thoughtful. The bird had to have gotten in somewhere—a chimney, maybe a door left open. She decided to look.
She paused with her elbows on the sill, and she noticed three things:
1. The crow had disappeared.
2. The afternoon air felt wonderfully fresh as she inhaled.
And
3. The Moloch was on the sidewalk below, making his way steadily toward the alley ... and toward Dead Oaks and her.
21
SOMEBODY'S UPSTAIRS
Herculeah started for the bedroom door. She ran down the hall to the head of the stairs. She had gone down five steps when she heard the Moloch's voice.
“Mrs. Jones?”
He sounded as if he was at the door to the side porch. Herculeah paused with one hand on the banister. For all his slowness, he was already at the door!
“Mrs. Jones?”
This time he sounded as if he was in the living room.
Quietly Herculeah began to back up the five steps. She turned and glanced down the hall. All the doors on the hall were closed except the one to the front bedroom. She couldn't risk opening a door.
Herculeah went back inside. She didn't close the door, because she feared the noise would betray her presence.
She stepped quickly to the window. She looked out. The porch roof was there, and for a moment she considered climbing out on it.
She paused and listened. The Moloch's steps had stopped at the foot of the marble stairway. He was not coming up.
“Mrs. Jones?” he called again. There was something almost like dread in his voice now. “I know somebody's up there.”
Herculeah leaned against the marble windowsill and waited. Her eyes moved to a portrait over the old fire-place. She had not noticed it before.
Like everything in the house, it was covered with a layer of dust, but Herculeah could make out the figures of a mother and her son, the child as tall as the mother.
Herculeah moved closer, drawn by something she couldn't explain. Even through the dust, she saw the features of the young boy. She drew in a breath. It was the Moloch.
It wasn't just the size of the boy, it was a certain furtive look in the eyes, the straight mouth that seemed never to have smiled, the hands that hung down as if too heavy to be of any real use.
Herculeah was still staring up at the picture when she heard her mother's voice in the hallway below.
“Mr. Crewell!”
Herculeah started, and then sank against the bed with relief. Instantly she straightened. She didn't want her mother to know she was here. She had to hide.
The window—she would climb out the window. She stopped and shook her head. Her mother would come into the room and slam down the window, and Herculeah would be out on the roof for the rest of her life.
She would have to find some other place. But she wanted to hear the conversation in the hallway below first.
“I thought you were upstairs,” the Moloch said.
“No, I just arrived.”
“Somebody's upstairs.”
“You're imagining things.”
“Somebody's upstairs.”
“Are you talking about your father?”
Silence.
“I learned this morning,” her mother said, “that the reason you were at Bromwell was because you had something to do with your mother's death. Is that correct? Do you remember?”
Silence.
“Your mother died as a result of a fall on the stairs.”
In the silence that followed, Herculeah could imagine her mother and the Moloch looking up those long marble stairs together.
“Your father claimed you pushed her.”
Then the Moloch spoke. His voice was no longer the deep, frightening voice of a man, but a childlike sing-song. “I didn't. I never would. I loved my mother. She was taking me on a trip.”
“Where?”
“I don't know. Far away. It was a secret. We couldn't tell anybody.”
“Not even your father?”
“Especially not Father.”
“And then what?”
“It was night. We got to the head of the stairs. We looked down and Father was in the hallway. He wasn't supposed to be there. He came home early.”
“And then?”
“Then my mother said, ‘Go to your room, Willie.' That's what she called me. And I always did what she said. I went in my room, but I waited at the door. I knew something bad was going to happen.”
“And?” her mother prompted.
“I heard Father saying things to my mother, bad things, and my mother answered, but I couldn't hear what she said. She had a soft voice. Then I heard a scream, a terrible scream.”

Other books

Kellie's Diary: Decay of Innocence by Thomas Jenner, Angeline Perkins
Brilliant Devices by Adina, Shelley
Bookplate Special by Lorna Barrett