The Dark Stairs R/I

by Byars, Betsy

  “Can I help you?” the clerk asked.

  “What?”

  “Can I help you find a card?”

  “Oh!” He looked around and realized where he was. “Oh, one of these things. A card.”

  “Yes.” The clerk was looking at him strangely.

  Meat picked up a Valentine card shaped like a box of candy and raised it so that it shielded his face. With his heart pounding even harder, he moved to the window. He peered over the heart. The Moloch was out of sight.

  “Are you looking for something for Valentine’s Day?” the clerk asked.

  Meat did not care for clerks who tried to sell him things, particularly when he merely needed something to hide behind momentarily. “Not really.”

  “That’s one of our Scratch ’n’ Sniff cards. If you scratch it, you can smell chocolate.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Meat handed the card to the clerk.

  “That’ll be—” She turned the card over to check the price. “Two dollars and thirty-five cents,” she said. When she looked up, Meat was gone.

  20

  BLACK WINGS AT THE WINDOW

  It was dusk when Herculeah turned the corner onto Antique Row. She drew in a deep breath as she caught sight of Dead Oaks.

  The house was dark. The bare trees stood in the overgrown yard like sentries. The wind began to blow, and the limbs rattled. Herculeah wished she had worn a jacket.

  Herculeah paused and leaned against the window of Hidden Treasures. She regarded the house. There was no sign that anyone was inside.

  She made a quick decision. I’m going to get the key—if it’s where I think it is—and I’m going to unlock the door. But I am not going inside. I’m going to unlock the door, yell, “Mom, are you in there?” and if she doesn’t answer, I’m going home.

  Herculeah pulled herself away from the storefront and crossed the street.

  She went around the house, up the alley, as she and Meat had done the night before. She stopped at the gate.

  Again there was nothing to indicate anyone had come this way. Beyond was the basement door, still half open from her assault. She pushed open the gate and moved into the yard.

  At the door to the basement she paused. She felt an unease come over her. She remembered those terrible moments when she had been trapped inside.

  She glanced over her shoulder. No one was in sight.

  Taking a deep breath, Herculeah reached up as she had seen the Moloch do. It was fortunate that she was tall and could reach above the doorway.

  Her fingers found a loose brick, and she removed it. She dropped it behind her with a soft thud. Then, amid the crumbling mortar, she found the key.

  For a moment she held it in her hand, looking at it. It was an old key, not one of those modern, sculptured ones. A skeleton key, she thought it was called. The thought caused her to shiver.

  Clutching the key in her hand, she walked to the side of the house. She hoped this key was to the side door so she wouldn’t have to go to the front. She would be seen there.

  She walked up the side steps. The concrete had begun to crumble. She crossed the porch and put the key in the lock. She turned.

  She heard a click, but the door wouldn’t open. It seemed to be swollen shut.

  She put her shoulder to it. She shoved with all her might. Then again and again. On the fourth try, the door opened, and her forward drive carried Herculeah into the house.

  She had not intended to come inside, but now she already was.

  “Mom,” she called. “Mom, are you in here?”

  There was no answer.

  Herculeah was standing in a room as big as the lobby of an old hotel. Her voice seemed to echo through the empty rooms.

  There were Persian carpets so thick with dust she could not make out the pattern. Tapestries hung on the walls, and the huge furniture—too big, it seemed for ordinary people—gave Herculeah the feeling she had suddenly become smaller.

  She moved a few steps forward to the hallway. She looked up at the wide marble stairs that led to the upper floor of the house.

  “Mom?”

  She hesitated. She didn’t want to go up the stairs, but something drew her forward.

  She started up slowly, almost unwillingly, pulling herself along by the banister.

  She heard a rustling noise upstairs.

  “Hello,” she called.

  No answer.

  “Is anybody up there?”

  I’m just going to take one quick look around, she told herself, and then get out of here. Meat was right. This place is spooky.

  And yet she felt a quickening of excitement. She loved moments like this, when she was on the brink of discovery.

  At the top of the stairs, she paused. All the doors were closed, and yet she moved instinctively toward the large carved doorway at the front of the hall.

  She opened the door and peered inside. This must have been old man Crewell’s bedroom. His bed was in the center of a huge, dark rug. Every color was dimmed by the dust.

  She moved to the window.

  Suddenly something swooped down at Herculeah’s head from the shadows by the closet. She ducked and covered her head with her arms.

  Her hair seemed to have gone wild and reached out as if to trap whatever was there. In horror, Herculeah drew her hair closer to her head.

  Frantically she turned this way and that, and then she bent double and crouched beside the huge carved bed. Her nose, against the heavy spread, inhaled the dust of years.

  She heard the desperate flapping of wings. She peered up through her arms. She saw a mass of black feathers.

  “It’s a bird,” she said aloud. As the creature came to rest, she could see it clearly. “It’s a crow!”

  She felt weak with relief.

  “A crow has somehow gotten in here.”

  The ordinary nature of the bird made it even better news.

  She straightened, and sagged weakly against one of the bed’s carved posts.

  “A crow!”

  She was overcome with relief. She walked to the window and unlocked it. She tried to pull it up. The window, like everything else in this house, hadn’t been used in years and wouldn’t work. It might as well have been nailed shut.

  She began to pull at the window. Her hands were clammy and she dried them on her shirt. The years of hardened paint started to yield.

  After one more pull, the paint gave way. She thrust the window up and turned to face the crow.

  “It’s open now. Come on, crow. Nice crow. See the open window?”

  She began to move toward the dresser. “You want to be outside, don’t you? You want to be out in the great big world, don’t you?”

  The crow watched her. Its head was cocked to one side. It paused, and then flapped toward the window. It stopped on the sill.

  “That’s right,” Herculeah said. “Look at that great big wonderful world. Go on! Fly!”

  The crow’s head bobbed. Then its wings spread and flapped. Herculeah could feel the dusty wind from the sill.

  Then the crow lifted its wings, sailed out the window, and swooped across the street.

  Herculeah leaned out the window, bracing her elbows on the dusty sill.

  “Bye,” she said.

  Her face grew thoughtful. The bird had to have gotten in somewhere—a chimney, maybe a door left open. She decided to look.

  She paused with her elbows on the sill, and she noticed three things:1. The crow had disappeared.

  2. The afternoon air felt wonderfully fresh as she inhaled.And

  3. The Moloch was on the sidewalk below, making his way steadily toward the alley ... and toward Dead Oaks and her.

  21

  SOMEBODY’S UPSTAIRS

  Herculeah started for the bedroom door. She ran down the hall to the head of the stairs. She had gone down five steps when she heard the Moloch’s voice.

  “Mrs. Jones?”

  He sounded as if he was at the door to the side por
ch. Herculeah paused with one hand on the banister. For all his slowness, he was already at the door!

  “Mrs. Jones?”

  This time he sounded as if he was in the living room.

  Quietly Herculeah began to back up the five steps. She turned and glanced down the hall. All the doors on the hall were closed except the one to the front bedroom. She couldn’t risk opening a door.

  Herculeah went back inside. She didn’t close the door, because she feared the noise would betray her presence.

  She stepped quickly to the window. She looked out. The porch roof was there, and for a moment she considered climbing out on it.

  She paused and listened. The Moloch’s steps had stopped at the foot of the marble stairway. He was not coming up.

  “Mrs. Jones?” he called again. There was something almost like dread in his voice now. “I know somebody’s up there.”

  Herculeah leaned against the marble windowsill and waited. Her eyes moved to a portrait over the old fire-place. She had not noticed it before.

  Like everything in the house, it was covered with a layer of dust, but Herculeah could make out the figures of a mother and her son, the child as tall as the mother.

  Herculeah moved closer, drawn by something she couldn’t explain. Even through the dust, she saw the features of the young boy. She drew in a breath. It was the Moloch.

  It wasn’t just the size of the boy, it was a certain furtive look in the eyes, the straight mouth that seemed never to have smiled, the hands that hung down as if too heavy to be of any real use.

  Herculeah was still staring up at the picture when she heard her mother’s voice in the hallway below.

  “Mr. Crewell!”

  Herculeah started, and then sank against the bed with relief. Instantly she straightened. She didn’t want her mother to know she was here. She had to hide.

  The window—she would climb out the window. She stopped and shook her head. Her mother would come into the room and slam down the window, and Herculeah would be out on the roof for the rest of her life.

  She would have to find some other place. But she wanted to hear the conversation in the hallway below first.

  “I thought you were upstairs,” the Moloch said.

  “No, I just arrived.”

  “Somebody’s upstairs.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “Somebody’s upstairs.”

  “Are you talking about your father?”

  Silence.

  “I learned this morning,” her mother said, “that the reason you were at Bromwell was because you had something to do with your mother’s death. Is that correct? Do you remember?”

  Silence.

  “Your mother died as a result of a fall on the stairs.”

  In the silence that followed, Herculeah could imagine her mother and the Moloch looking up those long marble stairs together.

  “Your father claimed you pushed her.”

  Then the Moloch spoke. His voice was no longer the deep, frightening voice of a man, but a childlike sing-song. “I didn’t. I never would. I loved my mother. She was taking me on a trip.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Far away. It was a secret. We couldn’t tell anybody.”

  “Not even your father?”

  “Especially not Father.”

  “And then what?”

  “It was night. We got to the head of the stairs. We looked down and Father was in the hallway. He wasn’t supposed to be there. He came home early.”

  “And then?”

  “Then my mother said, ‘Go to your room, Willie.’ That’s what she called me. And I always did what she said. I went in my room, but I waited at the door. I knew something bad was going to happen.”

  “And?” her mother prompted.

  “I heard Father saying things to my mother, bad things, and my mother answered, but I couldn’t hear what she said. She had a soft voice. Then I heard a scream, a terrible scream.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes, and the scream went on and on. I knew she was falling down the steps. I ran out and my mother was lying right there. She didn’t move.”

  “What did your father do?”

  “Father pointed his finger at me and screamed, ‘You killed her. You killed your mother.’

  “I was ten years old, but I was as big and strong as a man, and something snapped in me. I said, ‘I did not. I did not kill her.’ And I started toward him. I was saying that I hated him and was going to kill him, and I would have. I would have picked him up and thrown him down the stairs, but the servants came out and overcame me.”

  In the pause that followed, Herculeah heard her mother say quietly, “And your father?”

  “Father was like a madman. He kept screaming, ‘He killed her. He killed her. He killed his mother. He tried to kill me.’”

  There was another silence. Then the Moloch said in a voice so low Herculeah had to move forward to hear him.

  “And that’s how I came to spend my life in Bromwell Asylum for the Criminally Insane.”

  22

  THE DARK STAIRS

  Herculeah heard a shrill whistle from outside. She moved to the open window and glanced out.

  Through the dead limbs of the oak tree, she could see Meat across the street. She leaned out and made a shooing motion to get him to go away.

  He put one hand behind his ear as if to hear better. She waved him away again. She mouthed the words, “Go away!”

  Meat pantomimed the fact that the Moloch was in the house.

  Herculeah nodded.

  Meat pantomimed the fact that her mother was in there too.

  Herculeah would have nodded again, but she heard her mother’s voice in the hall below say, “Let’s go up there.”

  “Up the stairs? No.”

  “Why? If we are ever going to find your father’s body, if you are ever going to put your mind at rest, we have to.”

  “Maybe he’s not dead. I heard somebody up there. Maybe I dreamed he was dead. If it’s him, he’ll say more bad things.”

  “It’s not him.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come with me. I need your help.”

  “No.”

  “Your father is dead, isn’t he?”

  “He should be.”

  “Then he can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Silence.

  “The stairs bother you, don’t they? Because of what happened to your mother. Are there other stairs in the house? A lot of these big old houses had stairs for the servants to use.”

  “Back there.”

  “Then let’s go up that way. You need to face this with me.”

  At that moment, Herculeah knew that even though the Moloch had not killed his mother, even though he had spent years in an asylum for something he had not done, ten years ago the Moloch had come back here, to this room where she was standing, and had killed his father.

  Her eyes darted around the room, taking in the huge carved chest at the foot of the bed: that was big enough to hold a body. But the police had probably checked that. And the huge armoire: that could hold four or five bodies....

  She needed to think. She reached into her pocket and took out her glasses. She fastened the slim gold hooks behind her ears. From the street below came another shrill whistle, but Herculeah did not turn around.

  She was beginning to get a feeling about what had happened in this room. The Moloch had come to the house—this was his first escape from the asylum. It was probably night. He had gotten the key from over the basement door and unlocked the door to the side porch.

  He had come into the darkened living room and into the hallway. He had avoided the marble stairs, even though marble stairs don’t give you away by creaking. He had come up the back stairs, down the hall, into this room.

  Had he spoken?

  Herculeah thought he had, because he had been waiting for this moment for years, dreaming of it, hoping for it. “I tried to kill you once, and this time
I am not going to fail.”

  Then he had crossed the room. The old man would have come awake by then, perhaps fumbled for the light beside his bed. The Moloch had taken the old man out of the bed, carried him as easily as if he were a doll, and flung him down the stairs. Then he had gone down the back stairs, out of the house. Like a child, reversing his steps, he had put the key back in its hiding place. The next day he was back at the asylum.

  But if it had happened that way, the body should have been found at the bottom of the stairs, and the body had never been found. Where was it?

  Herculeah broke off her thoughts. She whipped off her glasses. Her mother’s voice was in the upstairs hall now.

  “That front room, where the door is open, that was your father’s room?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Herculeah looked around frantically. The door to the dressing room was open. She moved quickly toward it. She slipped inside and flattened herself behind the door.

  “You last saw your father here,” her mother asked, “in this room?” They were now at the door to the bedroom.

  Herculeah felt air on her face. The dressing room window was broken, and dead leaves had blown in through the opening and lay on the tiled floor. The crow had probably gotten in that way.

  “I last saw Father at the bottom of the stairs,” the Moloch said.

  “The marble stairs?” her mother said.

  “ No.”

  “The back stairs?”

  “No.”

  Herculeah shoved herself further against the wall, and suddenly she felt herself falling backward. It was as if the wall had collapsed. She struggled to keep her balance.

  “Down the dark stairs,” the Moloch said.

  Herculeah caught herself, but she hung for a moment on the edge of darkness. It was like a bottomless, dark pit, and from this pit came a smell so terrible she felt she would faint.

  She gripped the banister. She was at the head of some stairs—a small, private staircase probably used only by one man. She lowered herself to the steps. The door swung shut behind her.

  Frozen with shock and growing horror, she could not move for a moment.

  She choked. The smell caused tears to pour down her cheeks. Although it was too dark to see, she knew there was a body at the bottom of the stairs.