Authors: BETSY BYARS
The Black Tower (5 page)
Then, in a movement so quick that he almost missed it, the stone left the hand. It was on its way toâto him!
Still he could not move. He was like a rabbit frozen in the headlights of an oncoming car.
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, whateverâthat 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.
10
HALF A TRAGEDY
Herculeah lifted her head.
“Did you hear something?”
She glanced at Mr. Hunt. He was staring at the ceiling, eyes open. There was no response.
“I thought I heard a scream.”
Still no response.
Herculeah smiled. “I guess I'm hearing things now.” She lifted the clipping.
“Okay, here goes.” But she paused a moment, listening. She knew she had heard a scream, and the scream had been somehow familiar. Now there was nothing.
“Well, on to the clipping.”
She felt the thrill she always felt when she was on the edge of discovery. Also, there was something about old newspaper clippings that excited her. The writing was more polished back when this piece was written. People respected the news back then and so did the writers who recorded it.
She showed her respect by clearing her throat. She read in a voice that would have won her an audition on prime-time evening news.
A family reunion turned to tragedy Saturday afternoon at the Hunt estate. Twenty-five members of the Hunt family had gathered to celebrate the birthday of Lionus Hunt when a children's game ofhide-and-seek ended in death. According to a family spokesman, the adults were in the dining room when they heard screams. They rushed outside and discovered the body of Eleanor Pitman, the children's governess, at the base of the tower. She had been struck on the head by a stone from the tower. Speculation was that the stone had worked loose over the years. No children were hiding in the tower at the time, as the tower door is always locked. This is the second time tragedy has struck the Hunt tower
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“And that's all there is,” Herculeah said.
She looked closely at the man on the bed. His eyes were bright with intelligence and ... something else Herculeah did not understand. Slyness? Cruelty? Interest?
At any rate, Herculeah was sure he knew far more about the story than the newspaper reporter had.
“Were you there at the party?”
Yes. “Were you part of the game?”
Yes.
“You could tell me what the rest of the clipping said. I know you couldâprobably word for word. But you know what? I can go to the library. I can look this up. I can find the other half of the tragedy andâ”
At that moment Herculeah heard a noise outside in the hallway. It was too soon for the nurse, wasn't it?
She listened. Someone was running in the hallway. The footsteps were light, too soft to be from Nurse Wegman's heavy shoes. The footsteps stopped outside the door.
Herculeah glanced at the man on the bed. She could tell that he recognized the footsteps and knew who waited in the hall.
“Who's there?” Herculeah called.
Then the door to the bedroom opened slowly, creaking on its hinges. Herculeah swirled in her chair.
The face looking at her from the doorway, the face framed in wild hair, was the face of an old womanâsomething out of a Greek tragedy, something out of a nightmare. Excitement burned in the dark eyes. The cheeks were flushed with something like triumph.
Herculeah knew instantly that this was the face Meat had seen at the window the other day. And she knew instantly why it had filled him with dread.
The woman took one step into the room. Her body was small and frail. Her hair flew about her head. Her skeletal arms flapped excitedly at her sides.
“It happened again,” she said. She punctuated her sentence with a nervous giggle.
“What? What's happened again?”
“Death from the tower.”
“What are you talking about? Tell me!”
The woman in the doorway seemed to be smiling, although Herculeah knew this was nothing to smile about. The woman's teeth were dark and as pointed as an animal's. Herculeah's anxiety grew.
Herculeah glanced down at the clipping in her hand. “Are you talking about this?”
She lifted the clipping and showed it to the woman.
The woman shook her head. She had not come here to read a piece of paper. “Again,” she said.
“Today? Now?”
Herculeah tried to calm herself with the thought that her mother said you couldn't rely on this old woman, but it didn't work.
The woman took one quick breath before she explained.
“Death fell from the tower.” Then as if she was saving the best for last, she added, “The body lies in its shadow.”
11
THE BODY IN THE SHADOWS
For a moment Herculeah stared at the old woman, hoping to make sense of the situation. She turned to the man lying so still on the bed, as if he could help her.
She was struck by the fact that their faces were almost identical. Both resembled birds of prey. Their eyes seemed to be looking for something weaker to devour. Her feeling of impending doom heightened.
Then the woman spoke again, her voice rising with excitement. “A body! A body!”
“Whose body?”
“The boy.”
Now Herculeah remembered the scream. There had been something familiar about it.
“Meat! Meat!”
Herculeah leaped to her feet. The book dropped to the floor unnoticed.
In the doorway, the womanâchildlikeâclapped her hands together as if in triumph.
Herculeah ran to the door. The old woman stood there, her hawklike eyes gleaming, her hands clasped together in delight, but Herculeah slipped past her in one quick move.
She ran out into the hall. She crossed quickly to the stairs.
Behind her the old woman let out a squeal of success. Her cackle of delight followed Herculeah down the long stairs.
Nurse Wegman came out of a room down the hall, bringing with her the faint odor of tobacco. “What's wrong?” she asked. “Mr. Hunt?”
“No! Meat!”
She was taking the steps two, three at a time, pulling herself along by the banister. Nurse Wegman was right behind her, matching her speed.
“Your friend?”
“Yes. That old woman said something fell on him from the tower.”
“That old fool.”
“I thought the tower was locked.”
“It is, but there are keys around if you know where to look.”
“She said there was a body.”
Nurse Wegman was fast, but not as fast as Herculeah, in crossing the hallway. It was Herculeah who got to the front door first. She threw it open and burst out into the late afternoon sun. She turned immediately toward the tower and broke into a run.
“In the shadow of the tower,” the old woman had said. Herculeah's eyes scanned the shadows.
“There,” said Nurse Wegman.
She passed Herculeah. Herculeah continued to run, but her pace was slowed by her increasing dread.
Meat lay facedown on the ground. His pale face was pressed into what had once been a lawn. He was not moving. He did not even seem to be breathing.
“Oh, no,” Herculeah sighed.
“I'll turn him over.”
“Maybe you shouldn't move him,” Herculeah began, forgetting she was talking to a nurse.
Nurse Wegman turned him over in a quick, unnurselike way, and Meat's face was turned to the sky. The shadow of the tower lay across his pale cheeks.
“Resuscitation!” Herculeah cried, gaining strength. “Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! Let me! I've had a course. You go call for an ambulance and the police.”
“That will not be necessary.”
“It is necessary. Get out of my way. We've got to save him! Go call for an ambulance!”
But Nurse Wegman's hands were firm on Herculeah's shoulders, and she could not break free.
“Trust me,” Nurse Wegman said, “that will not be necessary.”
12
THE KISS OF DEATH
“What do you mean it's not necessary? What do you mean?”
“Don't get hysterical.”
“But what do you mean?”
“I mean he's not dead.”
These were the most beautiful words Meat had ever heard in his life. He had been lying there wondering about that very thing. He didn't know where he was except that it was somewhere he didn't want to be.
His face had been pressed into grass that had seen better days when he felt himself being turned over. Bits and pieces of memory began to come to him. He had heard Herculeah's voice, so she was here. Also that nurseâwhatever her name wasâand then he remembered hearing Herculeah saying something about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
That had been a sort of fantasy of Meat's. He could not imagine kissing Herculeah, but he could, in a particularly wild dream, imagine something like mouth-to-mouth as an emergency measure. The kiss of death, he thought of it, not unpleasantly.
Then he remembered Nurse Wegman. She had flipped him overâhe thought with her footâand he realized with a real sense of horror that if any lips were going to come in contact with his, they would be Nurse Wegman's.
Meat opened his eyes.
“Hello,” he said.
“He is alive!” Herculeah cried. There was such joy in her voice that, despite all the horror he had endured, his spirits rose like sun breaking through black clouds.
“I think he just fainted,” Nurse Wegman said. “His pulse is normal. I see no injuries. I'll elevate his legs.”
“No, no, I'm all right,” Meat said. He wanted his legs to stay right where they wereâstretched out on the ground. “Just let me lie here for a moment.”
“What happened, Meat? Can you tell us?”
“I was walking toward the tower, just checking things out, and all of a sudden, birds came flying out of the windows, like they'd been startled.”
“Take it easy,” Nurse Wegman advised, as if she was making an effort to be a nurse. “Take deep breaths. Speak slowly.”
“And I saw an armâ”
Now Nurse Wegman stopped sounding like a disinterested nurse. “You saw an arm? An arm in the tower?”
“Well, it was like an armâa skeleton arm. Maybe it was a stick, but it looked like an arm.”
“So someone was in the tower.”
“Yes.”
Herculeah thought of the old woman. She remembered the thin, sticklike arms, fluttering in the air, clapping with delight.
“And then there was something in the handâso it had to be an arm if there was a hand attached.”
“Death fell from the tower,” Herculeah said, remembering the old woman's words. She glanced at Nurse Wegman. “That's what the old woman said it was.”
“It looked like a stone to me,” Meat said.
“Go on,” Nurse Wegman ordered.
“And then she threw the stone, or whatever it was, at me. I wasn't worried at first because I was standing back here. And I knew that nobody could throw a stone that far, especially an old woman.
Nurse Wegman took a deep breath. “I've got to get back to my patient.” She turned quickly, crossed the yard, and disappeared into the house.
“I'm glad she's gone,” Meat said. “I don't think she likes me.”
“She doesn't like anybody. Go on.”
“Only whatever she threw came at me, like, in slow motion. It was as if it were on a radar course or something and I knew it was going to hit me. I knew I was going to die.”
“Why didn't you run?”
“I couldn't.”
“What did you do?”
“I screamed.”
“And then?”
“You know the rest?”
“I don't! And then what?”
“Then I fainted.”
13
FLYING FINISH
“It has to be here somewhere,” Herculeah said.
She was walking up and down in front of the tower. Meat was sitting where he had fallen, watching her.
“Because, Meat, stones do not just disappear.”
“No,” Meat agreed.
Herculeah's sharp eyes went over every inch of the ground. “If it rolled,” she said, more to herself than to Meat, “then it would have ended up here. But”âshe shruggedâ“there's nothing.”
Meat was beginning to feel uneasy. In thinking back to the moment when the stoneâand he had thought it was a stone, then; at any rate, it had been roundâhad appeared, Meat realized he didn't know exactly what he had seen.
“The sun was in my eyes,” he explained.
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