Towering (9 page)
Authors: Alex Flinn
Maybe I was crazy.
But if I was, I might as well find out.
Even though it was after two in the morning, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the wind outside. It howled like a lost soul. I wished I’d brought my television from home. Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I turned it on and it lulled me into a coma. I could go downstairs and watch. Maybe Mrs. Greenwood was even up, watching
Star Trek
. Instead, I watched the digital clock turn from 2:21 to 2:22. Tyler and Nikki had had a superstition about praying at 11:11 at night. I didn’t know about 2:22.
2:23.
2:24.
I heard something downstairs, a key in the lock. I swam through the swampy waters of what had almost been sleep. Who was here? What was that sound? But it couldn’t be a key in the lock. There was no one here but me and the old lady, and she’d probably been asleep for hours. I glanced at the clock. 2:49. I’d been asleep, likely dreaming.
Now that I had slept, I couldn’t go back. It was like I’d slept a full night.
I felt something hard under my head. The diary. It had been days since I’d read it. I was lucky Mrs. Greenwood hadn’t noticed it. Though I’d told her I would do my own laundry, she insisted she’d do it and informed me that the beds were changed Monday.
It was Monday today.
I didn’t know why I didn’t want Mrs. Greenwood to know about Danielle’s diary. Originally, it was because of the way she’d scared me that first night. Now, it was because I didn’t want to remind her, as if she needed reminding. Or, maybe, I didn’t want to give her hope when there was none. Still, I wanted to finish the diary. In these early lonely days, Danielle had become something like a friend.
Too bad she was probably a dead one.
I didn’t hear any footsteps in the hallway, nothing but the wind. The door had been my imagination. Of course it had. My imagination trying to persuade me I wasn’t all alone, when I was. Giving up on sleep, I turned on the light and, once again, opened the diary.
He’s gone! I’m sure of it! He’s gone, and the world has ended. Ended!
Every day for a week, he came to me, and it was wonderful. We made love among the trees by the lake, and I saw visions I had never seen before. I used to think this place was ugly, gray, dead. With Zach, it was beautiful.
But now, he is gone. I have walked Ginger out to the road every day this week, and I’ve returned, having gained nothing but exercise. Has he left town? Or worse, has he died? Been hit by a car? Gotten sick?
Or has he merely decided he doesn’t like me anymore?
At night, I have been plagued by the strangest dreams, dreams in which colors have sounds and something chases me across the sky with spidery, flaming legs. I ran away from it, but also, toward something. Was it Zach? Before I could reach the end, I would wake, sweating, unable to scream.
I began to make plans to sneak away, to concoct a ruse to go to the Red Fox Inn.
And then, yesterday, I did.
Mom has been sick for several days. It’s only a cough, but from the way she acts, you’d think she was near death. We are running low on groceries. Earlier in the week, I offered to go shop, but she said it was unnecessary. She’d be better soon. But now, it’s been several days. We’re out of milk and almost out of bread. I told Mom this.
“We can get milk from Mrs. McNeill,” she said, “and I can make bread.” And then, a cough racked her body, doubling her up and making her hack grotesquely for over a minute.
When she finished, I said, “I wouldn’t eat any bread you made. I could get the plague. Besides, you should rest.”
“I’ve been in bed these three days, and it hasn’t helped. I can’t sleep for all this coughing.”
“Some medicine, maybe. Maybe Dr. Fine . . .” I stopped. I didn’t want her to go to the doctor because, then, she’d come to town with me. “I could call Dr. Fine and describe your symptoms. Then, he could phone something in.”
“He wouldn’t. Dr. Fine isn’t helpful unless there’s a check involved. He’ll want me to go there, and I’m too sick to go out.”
Could she be any more difficult?
“Oh!” I remembered the nighttime cold medicine I had in my bottom dresser drawer. Some kids at school said they took it to get high, but when I did, it only made me want to sleep forever and ever. Nothing like whatever I took with Zach. But if Mom took the cold meds, I could go out or do anything I wanted. “I just remembered I have this really good cough medicine. I’ll get it for you.”
“Nothing will help.”
“Try this.”
I measured the green fluid into the plastic dose cup, filling it a bit higher than necessary, but only a bit. I didn’t want to kill her, only to assure she slept a good four or five hours. I brought it to her, walking carefully so as not to spill it.
“Disgusting color,” she said, appraising it. “It must be effective.”
“Let’s hope so. But it tastes really bad.” I wanted to warn her. It would suck if she did a spit take and didn’t ingest it. “Maybe hold your nose.”
“It’s okay. I have no sense of taste today.” She raised the cup and drank it all the way down. Yes! “It burns a bit.”
“Why don’t you go lie down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea?”
Amazingly, she agreed to that. I took my time, making the tea, and when I went upstairs, she was already asleep, snoring, the phlegm rattling as it gushed in and out of her nose. Gross.
“Here’s your tea, Mom.” I said it soft, so as not to wake her. Nothing. Her purse was on the dresser. I reached inside, quiet as I could, keeping an eye on her the whole time my hands searched for her car keys. She had a keychain with an old photo of me in a Lucite frame. One side was cracked, and I felt the scratchy, thick edge. I pulled up on it.
A slight tinkling noise. In her bed, Mom stirred, but she didn’t sit upright and accuse me of stealing from her. That was good. I was just being paranoid. I left the tea on her nightstand.
The car didn’t want to start at first, but finally, it turned over. I had at least three hours, maybe more. I decided to go to the store first so I wouldn’t forget and also, because Zach might not be at work early.
There was a grocery store in Gatskill. No one knew me there. Slakkill is so small that, one summer, when Emily and I got jobs bagging groceries, Mr. Gates, the manager, told us to follow anyone who wasn’t from around here. We knew who bought cigarettes without permission, and we knew who bought condoms. Soon, everyone else knew too.
So I went to the grocery store and bought milk and bread and something else.
Then, I went to the Red Fox Inn.
It was a seedy-looking place with dirty windows and a parking lot that was either dirt with patches of grass or grass with patches of dirt. Even though it was only four, there were already cars outside, and I guessed they’d probably been there a while. The rusty doorknob stuck when I tugged it, but finally, it gave way. I was in a dark room that smelled of old beer. My shoes stuck to the floor. I made my way to the bar.
“Hey, girlie.” The bartender smiled, showing an incomplete set of teeth. “Aren’t you a little young to be in here?”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Drinking age is twenty-one. But I’ll play along. What can I get you?”
“Nothing.” My eyes were barely adjusted to the darkness, and I squinted at him. “I’m looking for Zach. A guy named Zach who works here?” As I said it, I felt a sudden uncertainty. What if he didn’t work here after all?
But he said, “I know who Zach is. You and me both are looking for him.”
“What do you mean?” But I knew. He was gone.
“He’s gone,” the guy echoed. “Disappeared. One day, he said he’d done what he came here to do. The next night, he didn’t show up at work. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but he was bringing the ladies in. Girls like you, they came to stare at him, and the men came to stare at them.”
I barely heard this because my blood was pounding, pulsing in my ears like the feedback of an electric guitar. Once, when I was little, my mother took me to the beach, Fire Island, way far away from here. I remember being surprised at how the ocean attacked me, so unlike the peaceful lakes I knew. I just stood there, and it took me down to the sandy floor, so rough against my cheek. That was how I felt, and through it, I could hear the bartender’s words: “He said he’d done what he came here to do.”
What he came here to do.
What did that mean?
“So what’s your name, little girl?” the old man said.
“Me, um, Danielle. If Zach comes back, can you tell him to call me? Or find me? It’s really important.”
The old man didn’t answer for a moment. I looked up at him and saw that his eyes had taken on a sort of fixed look, a little scary. Then, they latched onto me. “Danielle? Wouldn’t be Danielle Greenwood, would it?” He reached out his hand toward me. It was old and gnarled.
I backed away. “I have to go.” How did he know my name? Maybe from Zach?
He took a step closer, his hand brushing my wrist, almost grasping it. “Wait! I may see him. I’ll give him a message.”
I pulled my hand away. “No! That’s okay!”
And I ran.
I am still trying to understand as I sit here, writing in my journal, waiting. But I don’t need to wait. I know what I’ll find out.
And I know he is gone.
Is it a dream if you’re not even sure you’re asleep?
Lately, I’ve been having these dreams, strange dreams. Or maybe, they’re fantasies. In my dreams, there is a man. He comes to my window because the door is locked, and he says, “I’m going to steal you away.”
But even in my dreams, I know I cannot go with him. At first, I thought it was because of Mama, because she would be alone and miss me. But one day, I realized that wasn’t the reason at all. In fact, I am meant to leave Mama. But first, there was something else I had to do, something so important that only I could do it.
I liked that thought. There is nothing like sitting alone in a tower all day to make a person feel worthless, depressed. Often, I’ve thought that nothing in the world would change if I did not get up in the morning, if I didn’t get dressed.
I told Mama this and, not surprisingly, she disagreed. I was important to her, she said. She loved me and would miss me if I was gone.
But how much did that matter, really?
Perhaps the dreams were something I made up myself, to make me feel better. But I didn’t think so.
I did not waste time, wondering what it was I must do. I knew that, eventually, I would find the answer. Just like I found the answer to the other question that had been troubling my mind—the question of how my rescuer would be able to reach my window, so high in the air.
In my vision, at first I only saw his face. It was a handsome one, dark hair and eyes the color of the evergreen trees outside my window.
But something lurked in those eyes too, something troubling, as if some tragedy had befallen him, a sorrow he could never quite forget.
Like what happened to my mother.
At first, I merely saw his face, his hands on the window ledge. Then, his whole body as he swung himself through the window. Only I could not see what he swung on.
Until, one day, I told my dream self to look down. I approached the window, looking not just at the man, who had, up until then, fascinated me, but at the mechanics of his being there.
And it was then that I saw how he had come to my window. He had not flown, but almost. Almost. He had climbed on a rope. I knew without asking that the rope had been one of my own tying.
I knew for two reasons.
First, the rope was tied to an iron bench by my window, an object firmly in my control.
Second, the rope was woven from silken strands of yellow. It was woven from my hair.
This may seem insane. How can hair be woven into rope, a rope long enough to cascade to the ground from such a height, a rope long as the trunks of ancient trees?
My hair has always grown quickly, so quickly that it must be cut once a week, just to stay at a length where it doesn’t trip me. But, lately, it has been growing even more quickly.
Mama usually cuts my hair on Sunday. She allows it to grow to my waist, no farther.
