Herculeah Jones Tarot Says Beware (2 page)

“Madame Rosa, all I'm interested in right now is my English grade.”

“I do see a letter—perhaps it stands for a grade. We can never be sure.”

“What is the letter?”

Herculeah really did not believe in palm readings and crystal balls, yet for some reason, she felt an excitement. It was like being part of a soap opera.

“It is—” She paused. “I must look more closely.”

“What letter, Madame Rosa? I'm getting serious about this.”

“We cannot rush the future.” Madame Rosa had bent closer. “Ah, it is becoming clearer, clearer. It is an A. See?”

With one finger Madame Rosa drew a capital A on Herculeah's palm. Then she deftly slipped the bills on the open hand and closed Herculeah's fingers around them.

“That wasn't fair,” Herculeah had said.

As she stood in the living room, she realized that was the last time she had seen Madame Rosa. She had stood right here between the parrot stand and the huge old buffet that held pictures of Madame Rosa's relatives. “All dead but one—no, I forget to count myself,” she had once said. “All dead but two.”

Again Herculeah felt a chill, and she pulled on her sweater. “Madame Rosa?” Where could she be?

She glanced in the small parlor where Madame Rosa gave her readings. The round table in the center of the room was draped with a black cloth, and a large, gold-edged book lay open upon it. The heavy curtains were drawn in this room, too.

Herculeah moved back through the living room and into the hall. Her feeling of unease grew. The house had never been so silent, so filled with dread.

“Madame Rosa?”

She walked back into the kitchen. She smelled something burning and she went to the stove. A pot of some kind of liquid had boiled away. Perhaps, she thought, Madame Rosa had been disturbed in the middle of cooking something. Perhaps she had rushed out, leaving the front door open and... Herculeah's thoughts trailed off.

She turned off the burner and shifted the pot. She opened the door to the backyard and peered out. There was no one in sight.

She moved through the hall, checking the rooms on either side as she went—the downstairs bedroom, the library, the sunroom, the bathroom. All were empty.

She paused at the foot of the stairs. Again she called, “Madame Rosa?”

She glanced at the coatrack beside the door. Madame Rosa's long, black cloak hung there. Madame Rosa never went out without that cloak. Even in the summer, she wore it slung back over her shoulders. Madame Rosa had not gone out of this house.

A shiver of fear ran up Herculeah's spine. She wrapped her arms about herself.

She put her foot on the first step.

In the living room Tarot had warmed up and regained his strength. “Beware! Beware!” he screeched. “Beware” was the parrot's only word.

Herculeah had always thought this was comical. She liked it when she passed the house and Tarot screeched his warning out the window. She would pause to listen. “Beware! Beware!”

She knew that all the neighbors did not feel the same way. Some of them had complained to the police about the noise. And unsuspecting strangers walked faster when they passed by, as if they took the warning seriously.

Now it didn't seem comical at all.

Gripping the banister tightly, Herculeah started up the stairs.

Herculeah stopped at the head of the staircase. She could see her reflection in the long mirror at the end of the hall. Her hair was so frizzled that she seemed to have been electrified.

She pulled her hair back into a ponytail with her hands.

“Quit doing that. I am not in danger,” she told her hair. She hoped it was true.

She breathed deeply to calm herself. “Madame Rosa?” Her voice seemed small, lost in the huge hall.

She had never been upstairs in this house before. There was a musty smell, as if the upstairs rooms had not been used in a long time. Herculeah moved down the worn carpet, opening the doors one by one.

She saw undusted objects, beds that had not been slept in for years, toilet bowls orange and dry, faded rugs. Maybe people had once occupied these rooms, but they had left nothing of themselves behind.

She paused at the front window and looked at the street below. She saw her friend Meat crossing the street to the opposite sidewalk. Meat was one of the people who crossed to avoid Tarot's cries of “Beware.”

She tried to open the window to call to him. But the window had not been opened in years. She rapped on the glass. Meat kept walking.

The night before, she and Meat had talked on the phone about their English assignment. “Have you done yours yet, Meat? The assignment where we have to tell who we are in at least fifty words or more. I can't seem to get started.”

“Write about how you got your name.”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Or your radar hair.”

“Maybe. What are you going to write?”

Meat said, “I've already started, ‘My name is Meat, and I'm fat, obese, chunky overweight, a lard-butt, a tubbo, el blimpo—Only I'm not sure I'll be able to think of, let's see, thirty-four more words for fat.”

Herculeah knew that Meat frequently said things like this so that she would tell him she never thought of him as fat—which she didn't.

This time she said, “You're getting taller. And, Meat, if you get tall enough, you'll be just right.”

“How tall do I have to get?” he asked. “Ten feet? Twenty?”

“How tall was your dad?”

“You know I haven't seen him since I was five.”

“Was he tall then?”

“I was five years old, Herculeah. All adults were tall.”

“Ask your mom how tall your dad was. Surely she'll tell you that much.”

“She goes out of the room when I even mention his name.”

“Meat, you have a right to know. I looked at you through my glasses one time”—Herculeah had thick granny glasses that turned the world into a pleasant blur and allowed her to “fog out,” as she called it—“and I saw you as six feet, four inches tall.”

Herculeah smiled a little, remembering the conversation. She turned away from the window. At that moment she heard a noise downstairs. A footstep? The smile froze on her face.

“Madame Rosa?” It was barely a whisper.

There was no answer.

Her heart began to pound. There was someone else in the house.

“Beware! Beware!” the parrot screeched below. The parrot never said that to Madame Rosa, only when he saw a stranger. And if Tarot could see the stranger from the living room, whoever it was had to be close to the staircase.

She glanced around her. Here, at the far end of the hall, she was trapped. If someone came up the stairs, the only place she could go was into one of the musty bedrooms. Then she would really be trapped.

At the other end of the hall, her mirror image reflected her fear.

She heard another footstep in the hall below. It was louder. The stranger was coming closer.

Herculeah waited. She tried to swallow, but her throat had gone dry.

If the footsteps started up the stairs, she decided, she would... Would what? What?

She looked around. On the hall table, there was a huge iron candlestick. Melted wax crusted the sides. Herculeah picked it up and tested it. It was hard and long, like a twisted iron baseball bat. It would have to do.

There were no sounds from below now, but Herculeah's heart was pounding in her ears so hard that she wasn't sure she would be able to hear anything. Someone could be halfway up the stairs by now.

She peered over the banister. There was no one on the stairs. That did not bring her any real relief. The person could be just out of sight—in the hallway.

Holding the candlestick in both hands, ready to strike, she moved to the head of the stairs.

She could see no one in the hall below. “Is there anybody down there?”

She went down one step. The old stair creaked under her weight. Another step. Another.

Now she could see that the front door was open in the entrance hall. She paused.

Hadn't she closed that door when she came in? She wasn't sure. She thought she remembered shoving it shut with her shoulder, but maybe not. The whole episode was beginning to take on the confusion of a dream—no, she corrected herself, a nightmare.

She would take the rest of the steps in a rush, she decided. And if anybody was stupid enough to try and stop her, she would swing the candlestick like Dave Justice. Then she would get out the door as fast as she could and run for her life.

She rushed down the stairs, her lips pulled back in a grimace of intensity, her hair flying out wildly behind her, the candlestick pulled back to strike.

At the bottom of the steps, she stopped. The hall was empty.

Herculeah looked around, puzzled.

“I wonder if that noise could have been the parrot,” Herculeah said to herself. “Tarot could have gotten off the perch and flown into something.” Her head lifted with sudden thought. “If that bird got out again...”

She went into the living room. The parrot was there, on his perch. “Beware! Beware!” he cried, ruffling his feathers.

Herculeah was still clutching the candlestick. She set it down on a table and flexed her fingers.

“Beware!”

“Don't worry. That is exactly what I'm going to do. I am definitely going to beware.” Herculeah wasn't sure whether she was talking to calm the parrot—or herself. “I'm going to call my mom. She's a private investigator. Or maybe I should call my dad—he's a police lieutenant. But he wouldn't take this seriously. He thinks I have way too much imagination. Now, where's the phone?”

The phone was on the buffet, half hidden by the family pictures. All the photographs were old and faded. There were no color shots of babies sitting on Santa's lap or being hugged by the Easter Bunny.

The pictures were in disarray now. Some of them had fallen and lay facedown. Herculeah dialed her home number. She began to straighten the pictures as she waited for her mother to pick up.

She looked into the old faces. Here was a young one—Madame Rosa as a girl. Herculeah looked at the pretty girl in the peasant blouse and full skirt. Amazing how much she looked like herself as an adult. That's what a big nose would do for you, Herculeah thought. Cheeks and eyes could change with age, but a nose...

And here was Madame Rosa with her sister. Herculeah had once asked if they were twins.

And somewhere there was a picture of Madame Rosa with a child. Herculeah had meant to ask if he was her son. She had a hard time imagining Madame Rosa as a mother.

Herculeah searched for that picture as she replaced the others. It didn't seem to be there.

On the fourth ring, the phone was answered by her mother's recorded voice, and Herculeah put down the picture she was holding. She sighed with disappointment.

“This is Mim Jones. I can't take your call right now, but you can leave a message at the beep, and I'll get back to you.”

At the beep, Herculeah said, “Mom, it's me. I thought you'd be home by now. Well, I hoped so. I'm down at Madame Rosa's and, Mom, she's missing. I noticed that her front door was open and her parrot was outside—which was very strange. And her cloak's here. You know she never goes out without that.

“As soon as you get home, Mom, please come down here. I'm going to sit out on the porch and wait. I'm scared to stay in the house by myself. I can't exactly explain why, but, Mom, I just know something is terribly, terribly wrong. Please come!”

She hung up the phone and turned. She now stood at the arch that led to what Madame Rosa called her parlor.

The room was round and stuck off the side of the house. It held only the black-covered table and two chairs:

Herculeah noticed now that one of the chairs—the velvet chair that Madame Rosa always sat in—had been overturned. She went into the room to put it back where it belonged.

The chair was heavy. It was an old carved chair with a dark-red velvet seat and back. The arms of the chair were carved in the shape of lion's claws. Madame Rosa had rubbed her hands over these claws so often that the finish had been worn away.

Herculeah picked up the chair and set it beside the table. She brushed her own fingers over the smooth wood, thinking of Madame Rosa's hands.

She turned to go. Glancing down, she saw something sticking out from under the black cloth that was draped over the table.

She drew in a ragged breath. She felt suddenly dizzy, and she steadied herself with one hand on the table. She stayed like that, frozen with dread. Her heart began to pound.

It was a foot, a black, booted foot—a small one. The frayed shoelaces were tied neatly at the ankle.

Madame Rosa wore boots like this.

A feeling of nausea washed over Herculeah like a wave. She could barely stand. Her knees began to tremble. She sank down into Madame Rosa's chair. She swallowed, but something in her throat wouldn't go down.

She reached out one unsteady hand and drew back the worn velvet cloth. She gasped.

Madame Rosa lay crumpled under the table, curled on her side. One hand was flung out as if offering something to someone. The other was curved at her chest.

Her long hair had come loose from the golden combs that usually held it and hung over her face. Herculeah was glad she couldn't see Madame Rosa's expression, whatever it might be.

Herculeah's eyes drifted downward. One of Madame Rosa's hands, the fingers curved at her chest, circled the blade of a knife.