The Black Tower

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Authors: BETSY BYARS

BOOK: The Black Tower
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Table of Contents
 
DANGER FROM ABOVE!
The stone fell with surprising slowness. Meat imagined that this was because his heart had sped up a thousand times. He'd read about this. A person's whole life really could pass before his eyes when the heart sped up a thousand times.
The limbs of the trees around him were moved by a sudden gust of wind. Leaves rustled, branches cracked. The wind was so sudden it seemed unearthly, like the woman in the tower.
If the stone tried to go this way or that way, the wind would correct it and send it ... to him!
Then the stone seemed to flutter as if it had suddenly sprouted wings. That would not have surprised Meat. Nothing would ever surprise him again. Wind, wings, whatever—that stone was going where it was intended to go.
Whoever had thrown the stone was shouting something, but Meat couldn't make it out.
A cry cut through the late afternoon air, drowning out all other sound.
Meat knew that cry even though he had never heard anything like it before. It was the cry of someone about to die.
And it had come from his throat.
BOOKS BY BETSY BYARS
The Herculeah Jones Mysteries:
The Dark Stairs
Tarot Says Beware
Dead Letter
Death's Door
Disappearing Acts
King of Murder
The Black Tower
 
The Bingo Brown books:
Bingo Brown, Gypsy Lover
Bingo Brown and the Language of Love
Bingo Brown's Guide to Romance
The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown
 
Other titles:
After the Goat Man
The Cartoonist
The Computer Nut
Cracker Jackson
The Cybil War
The 18
th
Emergency
The Glory Girl
The House of Wings
Keeper of the Doves
McMummy
The Midnight Fox
The Summer of the Swans
Trouble River
The TV Kid
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
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Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
 
Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
 
First published in the United States of America by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006
This Sleuth edition published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007
 
 
Copyright © Betsy Byars, 2006
All rights reserved
 
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Byars, Betsy Cromer.
The black tower / by Betsy Byars. p. cm.—(A Herculeah Jones mystery)
Summary: Herculeah Jones gets involved in another dangerous mystery when she goes to visit old Mr. Shivers Hunt, resident of the forbidding Hunt House.
eISBN : 978-1-101-00703-7
[1. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.B9836Bit 2006 [Fic)—dc22 2005033317
 
 
 
Set in Minion
 
 
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

http://us.penguingroup.com

1
THE TERROR IN BLACK TOWER
Slowly she climbed the circular stairs in the tower, drawn against her will to what waited at the top.
Halfway there, she paused. She heard the sound of the tower door close below her. Had it been a hand that closed
it? She looked down. The thought that she might be trapped made her dizzy.
She touched the wall to steady herself. There was an eerie coldness to the stones beneath her hand.
She lifted her head. She listened.
She heard nothing, but she knew someone was up there, waiting for her.
And whoever it was knew she was coming.
Slowly she took another step and another. Higher ... higher. With each step, her fear grew until it seemed to swirl around her like a cape that held no warmth.
Herculeah stopped reading and let the book fall to her lap. “Are you positive this is the book you want me to read?” she asked.
The old man on the bed blinked his eyes once. That meant “yes.”
“Well, I'm getting spooked,” Herculeah said. “Particularly because this house, your house, has a tower attached to it. It's exactly like this one, isn't it?”
One blink. Yes.
“Have you ever been up there?”
Yes.
“What's up there? Oh, I forgot. You can't answer that kind of question. Only yes or no. Is there a room up there?”
Yes.
“Does the tower have circular stairs?”
Yes.
“That was stupid of me. I guess all towers do. Either that or they have a ladder.”
Herculeah glanced out the window. She could see the tower now. It rose, black and forbidding, part of the house and yet somehow separate. Halfway up the tower there were windows. They were slits so deep in the stone that no daylight could come through.
Herculeah paused in thought. Her hands tightened on the book in her lap. The silence continued.
Herculeah had come here to read to Mr. Hunt. Her mother, a private detective, had asked her to do this. Mr. Hunt was, or had been, one of her mother's clients.
“Why was he a client?” Herculeah had asked, instantly curious. “What did he want you to do?”
“That doesn't concern you.”
Herculeah had leaned forward, more interested than ever. “What did he want you to find? That's what all old people want you to do—find someone or something from their past.”
Her mother's wry smile made Herculeah think she had hit the mark.
“So what could it have been?” she went on thoughtfully. “What could have happened? Murder? Was it a murder?” Her gray eyes lit up. “It was murder, wasn't it?”
“Whatever it was happened a long time ago.”
“So it was murder.”
Her mother lifted one hand to silence her. “If you're going to play detective—”
“Mom, I don't
play
detective. I have solved six murders.” She began to count them on her fingers. “Mr. Crewell, Madame Rosa...”
Her mom sighed, and Herculeah discontinued her list. “Oh, all right, what do you want me to do?”
“Just read to him for an hour or so. The man is lonely. He can't move at all since his stroke. He can only blink his eyes—one blink for yes, two for no.”
“How awful! Sure, I'll do it. Actually, I enjoy reading to people. What kind of book would an old man like? Something about old horses, old airplanes, or”—she grinned—“old women? I'll take a bunch of books so he'll have a choice. First thing tomorrow I'll go to the library and load up with books.”
“Oh, there's a huge library at the house. You won't need to take anything.”
“A huge library? This old man has a huge library in his house?”
Her mom hesitated a moment before she answered. “Have you ever heard of Shivers Hunt?”
“Mom! Not
the
Shivers Hunt!”
“There couldn't be but one.”
“Mom, you mean I'd actually get to go inside Haunt House?”
“What?”
“Haunt House. That's what all the kids call it. And, Mom, nobody has ever been inside it. I cannot believe that I'm going to Haunt House.”
“Well, you aren't going unless you stop calling it that.”
“Right! Hunt House!”
“I won't let you go unless you promise you won't do anything to upset Mr. Hunt.”
“I won‘t, I won't! I promise! But I can't help being excited. I, Herculeah Jones, am going inside”—she swallowed the word—“Hunt House.”
But when Herculeah got there, she hadn't been taken to the library to choose a book as she had expected. The nurse took her straight up the stairs to Mr. Hunt's bedroom. The book had already been chosen for her. It was waiting on the table by the old man's bed.
Herculeah picked up the book. She read the title aloud.
“The Terror in Black Tower.
This is what I'm supposed to read?” she asked the nurse.
“Yes, Herculeah. When I told Mr. Hunt that you were coming to read to him, I asked if there was any particular book he'd like. He blinked yes. I must have carried a hundred books up from the library before he finally saw this one and gave a very definite yes.”

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