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Authors: Betsy Byars

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BOOK: The Dark Stairs R/I
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Within a week, another sign sprang up down the block. It was not as tasteful:
Madame Rosa
Palmist
Walk-ins Welcome
After that, the signs sprang up nightly, like mushrooms. Bernie Holden: Accounting. Bessie Young-stern : Alterations. Cheri's Cakes. One-Day Dentures. Divorces $35.00.
Herculeah liked it. She felt it gave the street a prosperous look that other residential streets didn't have.
Now she walked quickly until she came to the steps of her house. She stopped abruptly beside her mother's sign. Sitting on the steps, blocking her way, was Meat, a boy who lived across the street.
As soon as Meat saw Herculeah, he put out his arms and took hold of the metal banisters. “Don't go inside,” he said.
“Well, I guess I can chat for a minute,” Herculeah said. She sat on the bottom step and turned toward him. “Guess what, Meat. You know that shop Hidden Treasures? Well, I went in there to try out some binoculars—which I need for helping Mom—and I was just checking them out when I saw my father over at Dead Oaks.”
“What was he doing there?”
“He wouldn't tell me. ‘Nothing major'—that's what he always says.”
“I hate that house,” Meat said. “It gives me the creeps.”
“Me too.”
“My mom saw the old man that lived there one time.”
“Really?”
“My mom was selling Girl Scout cookies and she went up and knocked—she was a little girl then, she might even have been a Brownie—and he came to the door, and he had a walking cane, and he lifted it like he was going to hit her. My mom said his face was terrible, all shriveled and twisted with rage. She had nightmares about it for a long time.”
“If it had been me, I would have hit him over the head with a box of shortbreads.”
“That wouldn't have been very Girl Scout-like.”
“I know. But, anyway, Meat, is my mom home? I want to go back and get the binocs and these glasses that make me think. I might also take another look at Dead Oaks.”
Herculeah got to her feet. She looked at Meat but he didn't move. He shook his head. “Don't go inside.”
Herculeah gave him a puzzled look, sensing that he knew something she didn't.
“What's wrong? Nothing major?” She grinned.
Meat did not smile back. “I really don't think you ought to go inside.”
“Oh, Meat, get out of the way.”
“No.” His thick fingers tightened around the banisters.
Herculeah put her hands on her hips. “Meat,” she said, “I didn't get the name Herculeah because I'm dainty and shy.”
“You don't have to remind me of that.”
“I got the name because I'm big and strong and I live up to my name. Now, move.”
Herculeah had trained as a gymnast before she became too tall for the sport, and she still had agility, strength, and timing. She could have swung out over the railing and landed behind Meat and gone into the house. But something kept her from doing that.
“What's up?” she asked.
“There's a very suspicious-looking man in your house.”
“Oh, is that all! There are always suspicious-looking people in my house. My mom's a private investigator.”
“This one is different.”
“How?”
“I can't explain it.”
“Then get out of my way.”
“This man is different,” Meat said, choosing his words carefully, “because the minute I saw him I got a really bad feeling. He was like something that just—I don't know—that just crawled out from under a rock. I saw him coming down the street and I thought, Where would a creep like that be going? Then he got to your house and he stopped.”
Meat stopped too, and squinted up at her. For a moment Herculeah was startled by the look of real concern in Meat's eyes.
“Go on,” she said.
“Well, the man stopped, and then he looked up and down the street before he went up your steps, as if he didn't want to be seen.”
“All my mom's clients do that.”
“Not like this. I've seen your mom's other clients. And when he got to the top of the steps, he turned and looked right at my house—like he knew I was watching.”
“He probably did. Meat, you stand right in the window.”
“I was behind the curtain this time.”
“The curtain's sheer.”
“I was behind the drapes! Anyway I'm not going to tell you if you're going to pick at every word I say. I'm trying to look out for you. You sure don't know how to look out for yourself.”
“I do too.”
“At the mall that day—when you were on a stakeout for your mom?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I was there the whole time, watching out for you.”
“I saw you.”
“You did not.”
“You were in Wicks and Sticks.”
Meat's face burned with the shame of being caught looking at candles. There was a pause, and then Herculeah said, “Get back to the man you saw.”
Meat continued slowly, “His eyes were burning, and I knew he could see me. It was as if his eyes could see through things like drapes. Then he knocked at your door. Your mom answered. She drew back at the sight of him. I don't think she wanted to let him in, but she did.
“I wanted to go back in my room and check ...” He trailed off.
That morning Meat had noticed that he had a hair on his chest. At first he thought it had fallen from his head, and he tried to brush it off. But it was attached. One dark hair was growing out of his chest. Ever since, he had been checking at regular intervals to see if this hair had been joined by another.
“I was getting ready to check something but I decided to come over here and wait for you—to tell you not to go inside.”
“All right, you told me. Now, Meat, get out of the way!”
Meat stared straight ahead for a moment. He sighed. Even with a hair on his chest, he felt childish and defeated. His shoulders slumped.
“Well,” he said, “don't say I didn't warn you.”
3
THE MAN IN BLACK
Meat got up slowly. There was a lot of Meat, and he had to use the metal rail to pull himself to his feet.
“Thanks,” Herculeah said as she slipped around him.
Meat turned to watch as she ran up the steps. “You'll be sorry,” he said under his breath.
Herculeah looked down at him for a moment, her gray eyes serious. Then she grinned, “You always say that.”
“And you always are.”
“Well, sometimes,” she admitted.
Herculeah paused at the front door. She looked down at Meat. His face was turned away from her. His hands were on his basketball-sized knees.
Then she opened the front door. “Mom!” she called. “Mom, guess what?”
“I'm in here.”
“Mom, I went in that shop on Antique Row to get the binocs”—she spoke with her usual excitement as if she thought her mother were alone—“and I saw these granny glasses and I put them on ...”
She trailed off as she came around the doorway of the living room.
Herculeah's mother used the front two rooms of the house for her work as a private investigator. The living room was the office; the dining room was the conference room.
It was not unusual for Herculeah to come home and find her mom with a client at the dining-room table or seated in front of her desk in the living room.
However, the scene Herculeah came upon in the living room was not usual. Her mother was at her desk. Her hands were stretched out in front of her, gripping a letter opener as if she intended to use it as a weapon.
The client was not seated. He stood facing the desk, his back to Herculeah.
Herculeah drew in her breath at the size of the man. Meat had not mentioned he was huge.
He was more than huge. The man was a giant. His shoulders were hunched forward, as if to make himself less noticeable. At the end of his long, apelike arms were hands in black leather gloves.
The man still wore his overcoat. His hat was pulled down low over his forehead.
Even though Herculeah couldn't see his face, she thought there was something suspicious about the way he deliberately kept it turned away.
I am allowing Meat's fears to get to me, she told herself.
“Oh, I didn't know you had a client,” Herculeah said politely. She was surprised that her voice sounded normal. “I just wanted to tell you about some eyeglasses I tried on. It can wait.”
“If it's important, I can take a break.”
“No.”
Herculeah paused. Did her mother want to, as she put it, take a break? Her mother had never suggested such a thing before. Clients came first with her mom.
The pause lengthened. It was like one of those long pauses in a play, when the audience grows uneasy, not knowing if some actor has forgotten a line. Herculeah was certainly uneasy, and her mother was obviously tense. The man was still facing away from Herculeah, so she didn't know about him.
In that awkward pause, the man turned his head toward Herculeah. It was a slow, deliberate movement that somehow seemed threatening, like something out of a western movie.
The man's hat was black. His overcoat was black. His face turned out to be gray, as if he had never been out in the daylight or-as Meat had said—as if he had just crawled out from under a rock.
And beneath the brim of that black hat, in that gray and colorless face, were eyes that seemed to burn into Herculeah's brain. She felt as if those eyes could read her very thoughts.
She drew in her breath. A shiver of revulsion passed through her and she drew her jacket tighter, overlapping the sides as if for extra warmth.
And with those eyes burning into hers, a thought came unexpectedly to Herculeah: it's the Moloch. She drew in her breath as she remembered.
Hercules vs
the Moloch was the movie her mom had been watching thirteen years ago, the day she was born. In the delivery room, her mother had told the nurse: “I'm thinking about naming this baby Hercules. Hercules Jones.”
“If you do,” the nurse said, “he'll turn out to be real little and the kids will tease him.”
“And if it's a girl, she can be Herculeah.”
“I don't think there is such a name. My little boy and I watched a Hercules movie the other night, and Samson was in it too.”
The doctor said, “That's a thought. You could name her Samsonya.” He broke into a Russian song. “Oh, Samson-ya!”
The nurse said, “I didn't know you could sing, Dr. Woods.”
“I didn't either.” There was a pause while Mrs. Jones bore down. Then the doctor said, “It's a girl!”
Her mother looked at her then and said in a sort-of surprised way: “It is Herculeah! Look how big and strong she is.”
When Herculeah's mom told her that story, she ended with, “And to, this day, I don't know what a Moloch looks like. I never got to see the end of the movie. I just know it's something dark and dreadful.”
And now, standing in her living room was—Herculeah felt this in her bones—the Moloch.
She stared into his burning eyes.
And, she thought, it would take someone with the strength of a Hercules to get rid of him—or a Herculeah.
4
THE UNSPEAKABLE MONSTROID
Herculeah spoke to the Moloch in a voice that surprised her by still being absolutely normal.
“Oh, hi.”
The Moloch cleared his throat. The sound rumbled like indoor thunder, but he didn't actually speak.
His mouth was the only straight line in his creased face. The lines across it made his lips seem to be sewed together.
“Okay, Herculeah, I'll talk to you later.”
“Right.”
Beyond, in the living-room window, Herculeah saw Meat's face rise like a huge worried sun. The Moloch turned his burning eyes in that direction, and Meat's round face—more worried than ever—sank.
As the Moloch saw Meat's face, he slid one gloved hand into his overcoat, the way Herculeah had seen men do on TV shows when reaching for a gun.
“It's just my friend,” she said quickly. “I better go out and see what he wants.”
The Moloch turned back to her and spoke. And as he spoke, his lips pulled back into a terrible grimace. His words came through his teeth, like a ventriloquist's.
“Your friend shouldn't be looking in other people's windows. He could get—” He paused, and the grimace grew more terrible as he finished, “let us say, arrested for things like that.”
Herculeah could smell his breath and she stepped back. It wasn't bad breath—the kind that can be changed by a couple of breath mints. This was two-million-year-old breath. It was as if the air had been inhaled by a Moloch two million years ago and had now been released.
She backed further toward the hall. “I'll tell him.” Then she looked at her mother. “Mom—”
“While you're at it,” the Moloch interrupted, speaking through his teeth again, “tell him not to spy out his window.”
“Mom—”
“Some people take,” he paused as if to give emphasis to the word, “let us say, offense at being spied on. They don't like to be offended. It makes them, let us say—”
Herculeah's mother interrupted. “What were you trying to tell me, Herculeah?”
“Just that I'll be right outside, on the steps, if you need me.”
Herculeah gave the Moloch an I'm-not-afraid-of-you look, turned, and started for the hall. She could feel the Moloch's eyes on her even after she had turned the corner and was out of sight. Maybe those burning eyes could see through things like drapes and walls.
BOOK: The Dark Stairs R/I
5.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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