The Black Tower (2 page)

Herculeah picked up the book. On the cover, embossed in the black leather, was the silhouette of a tower. It was outlined in gold, but it looked as if someone had rubbed their fingers over the gold, as if to erase the whole tower from sight. It gave the book a sinister look. She rubbed her own fingers over the gold, then stopped abruptly.

“Well, let's get on with it.” She opened the book. “Ready, Mr. Hunt?”

Yes.

Inside, the pages were thick and yellow with age. They smelled of mildew and dark passages and old secrets. Herculeah loved it.

Perhaps, she thought, Mr. Hunt had read the book as a boy, and back then it had seemed scary, probably full of family madness and secret passages, and—who knows?—maybe some terror actually had been up in the black tower.

But those things didn't exist in modern times.

They didn't.

She paused.

Or did they?

Herculeah glanced at Mr. Hunt. He was waiting for her to continue. She looked down at the page.

“Where was I? Oh, yes, she's going up the tower steps.” Herculeah smiled. “Actually, this will probably sound foolish to you, Mr. Hunt, but I can understand the girl doing this. I mean, she knows she's not supposed to. She knows there's something up there, something dangerous. But she can't stop herself. That's the way I am. I would do the exact same thing. The only difference would be that at this point my hair would be frizzling. I have radar hair. It gets bigger when I'm in danger. Like this.”

She laughed and fluffed out her hair. Mr. Hunt watched. His bright bird eyes never left her face.

At that moment, her hair actually seemed to be frizzling on its own, as if it were anticipating the day she would climb the tower, the day she—heart racing with fear—not the character in the book, would take those circular stairs.

She patted her hair into place and said, “Oh, here's where we were.” She began to read.

 

 

“I'm coming,” she whispered.

 

 

The door to the bedroom opened behind Herculeah, and, startled, she spun around.

“Your hour's up, Herculeah,” the nurse said.

“Already? I just started. I've hardly read two pages. I got started talking about myself—I do that all the time. Plus I was getting to the good part. The girl in the book was hearing breathing. I've got to find out what's doing that breathing.”

“Sorry. It'll keep. Tomorrow the print will still be right there waiting for you.”

“I know.” Herculeah sighed. “Actually I read a lot of books, and I've learned that authors save important things—things like what's waiting up in the tower, doing that heavy breathing—until the very end. If I know authors, this one will start a flashback just when she gets to the trapdoor. Then, on the last page—finally, finally—we'll find out what was in the tower.”

“You must do a lot of reading.”

“Yes.”

“But we don't want to tire Mr. Hunt.”

“No. Did I tire you, Mr. Hunt?”

Two blinks. No.

“But did I scare you?”

No.

She laughed. “Well, I scared myself.”

Herculeah folded a ribbon into the book to hold her place. She closed the book and set it on the table.

“I'll be back tomorrow to pick up. Remember where we left off? It's getting ready to storm. The girl heard thunder. It'll be a dark and stormy night when anything can happen.” She gave her words a dramatic reading.

He blinked a forceful yes.

“Dramatic things always happen during storms—though it's dramatic enough with something waiting for her at the top of the tower.”

Another forceful yes.

“Do you know what's up there?”

Yes.

“Because you've read the book before?”

“Time,” the nurse reminded her.

“I have to go.” Herculeah smiled at the old man, his face pale against the pillows, his bright bird eyes trying to tell her something, something important.

The nurse said, “Your friend is waiting for you outside.”

“Meat?”

“I think that's his name. I tried to get him to come inside, but he wouldn't.”

“That's Meat.”

Herculeah almost explained that Meat was afraid of this house, that he half believed the ghost stories that surrounded it, believed the stories that the portraits had holes in the eyes so that someone in a secret passage behind the wall could watch your every move.

“Meat ... Herculeah ...” the nurse said. “What wonderful names!”

“Meat got his because there's a lot of him. I got mine because my mom was watching a Hercules movie when she was waiting for me to be born. Mom was kidding around about naming me Hercules if I was a boy. The nurse said, ‘What about if it's a girl?' Mom said, ‘She'll be Herculeah.' I guess I was lucky. The doctor got in the act and said, ‘How about Samson?' He even sang it, ‘Oh, Samson-ya!'” She laughed. “Anyway, everyone who knows me says it suits.”

“I only met you this afternoon,” the nurse said, “but I think it suits you, too.”

As they moved into the hall, Herculeah said, “You know, I can't stop wondering why he chose this book.” She smiled. “Although I'm always looking for the reasons people do things.”

“I wondered about that, too.”

“Really?”

“Because I've had other patients like Mr. Hunt, patients who have been deprived of everything but their minds. And it seems that another sense has been heightened. They seem to know what's ahead, the way an animal can sense a storm.”

“Premonitions.”

“Yes. If Mr. Hunt had some way of knowing there would be trouble in that tower, he would have picked this book. Well, I've got to get back to my patient.”

“Right. I'll see you both tomorrow.”

“Oh, I won't be here,” the nurse said, smiling. “New grandchild. A Miss Wegman is taking over for me. Do you need me to show you the way out?”

“No, I remember the way.”

“Because this house has a lot of halls that don't go anywhere and oddly shaped rooms. It's easy to get lost in here.”

“I won't.”

She started down the stairs. She was lost in thought until she glanced at the painting on the wall. It was a family portrait: old man Hunt—Lionus Hunt, who had built the house—his wife, and the four children. Mr. Shivers Hunt was the oldest of the children. Then there was a younger sister and twin girls.

Herculeah paused, half hoping to see someone peering at her through holes in the old man's eyes.

Oh, well, she told herself, it was too much to hope for.

She was turning to go when something about the twins caught her eye. The twins were dressed alike—in middy blouses—but there was something about the blouse of the smaller twin.

She bent closer. She rubbed her fingers over the painting. The figure of the smaller twin had been damaged in some way. It had been repaired, but not by the same artist who had done the original picture. Strange.

Strange, too, about Mr. Hunt's choosing the book. There was so much she didn't know, so much she would have to find out.

With a shiver of anticipation, she continued down the stairs.

“I thought you were never coming out,” Meat said. He got up from the steps and brushed off the back of his jeans.

Herculeah glanced at her watch. “Five o'clock. Right on time.”

“I thought something had happened to you,” he confessed. “I thought you were never coming out.”

“Oh, Meat, that's silly. Just because you thought you saw me get stabbed that one time, now you think you have to protect me.”

“It's the kind of house where things like that happen,” he explained. “A person goes in and they never come out.”

“You've listened to too many ghost stories.”

“I have never trusted a house that has—well ... that has a face,” he finished in a rush.

“A face?”

“Yeah. That huge door is the mouth, and those windows seem to be eyes looking at us.”

“You know what this reminds me of? The time we went to the amusement park and you wouldn't go in the funhouse because the front was like a clown face, and you were afraid to walk in his mouth.”

“I was not afraid. I just prefer doors that look like doors.” He decided to change the subject. “So, tell me everything.”

“Well,” Herculeah said, “first the nurse and I walked upstairs, and, Meat”—she lowered her voice—“eyes watched me from a portrait every step of the way.”

“Get outta here,” Meat said. He was proud that he hadn't sounded as if he believed her, but then he spoiled it by adding, “They didn't really, did they?”

“No, they didn't.”

Meat said, “Let's go.”

“What's your hurry?”

He glanced up at the house. With the sun setting behind it, the house cast deep shadows over the ground. A dense area of woods circled the house and seemed to be reaching for whoever was unfortunate enough to step off the drive.

Meat's first impression of the place had made him shudder. If he had not been with Herculeah, he would have turned and run for his life, but she had been beside him, giving him the history of the house.

“It was built over a hundred years ago by old Mr. Hunt, Lionus Hunt. See, Meat, Lionus Hunt had been like a field hand on this big estate in England, and when he got over here and struck it rich, he built the exact same house, only he'd never been inside the house so he had to make up the rooms. They're all crazy.”

Meat didn't doubt that.

“And from the first day, Meat, the house was struck by tragedy.”

Meat didn't doubt that, either.

As Meat had gotten closer, he had seen the tower. He had known there would be one. Herculeah had told him that and had said, “Guess what it's called.”

“I can't.”

“Shivers Tower.”

Well, it made him shiver, all right.

“But the tower's been locked up,” she had said, “because there was some terrible tragedy there. My mom claims she doesn't know what the tragedy was, but I'm going to find out. And, Meat, there's supposed to be money hidden somewhere in the house. Old man Hunt didn't trust banks so all the millions and millions are in the walls or the secret room or the tower.”

“Can we change the subject?” Meat asked.

“Yes, but guess what happened today?” Herculeah said as they started for home down the long drive.

“What?”

“When I was reading to Mr. Hunt—”

Something cold seemed to touch Meat's neck, and he glanced over his shoulder. He gasped with fright.

In one of the upstairs windows, a face was framed, a face in a tangle of wild hair. The eyes stared down at him with a look of such wildness that it froze his blood.

He stopped. He couldn't move. He closed his eyes.

“What's wrong?” Herculeah asked. She had continued on a few steps and now turned to look at him.

“A face,” he managed to say.

“What face?”

“In the window.”

As he spoke, he saw the face again in his mind, and he felt the image was there permanently, the way looking at the sun can leave the eye scarred with the image.

“Which window?”

He pointed a trembling finger.

Herculeah shaded her eyes from the setting sun. “I don't see anything.”

He forced himself to look. Of course there was nothing there now.

“It was a face—I don't know how to describe it—an evil face. There was a lot of wild hair—”

“Like mine?” she asked, grinning and fluffing her hair.

Herculeah wouldn't be serious. “No. No! This was hair that hadn't been combed in years—maybe never—and the face, well, it was like, like a bird of prey, and I was the prey. And the fingers were like talons and—”

“You saw the hands, too?”

“No, but those were the kind of terrible hands that would go with the face...”

Herculeah smiled.

“It really isn't amusing,” Meat said.

“I know. I was smiling at myself. It's just that this is the kind of house that makes you think you see things, makes you think you hear things. When I was reading about the girl going up the tower steps, I actually imaged I was the girl and—”

“This wasn't my imagination.”

“All right.” She looked thoughtful. “I think Mr. Hunt does have a couple of sisters. I don't even know if one of them lives in this house, but if she does, maybe that was who you saw.”

“What
I saw is more like it. That face might not even have been human.”