by Lynne Jonell
“Do you want to talk to bats?” Gussie sat straight up, wide awake again. “I know where they live.”
“Where?”
“In the belfry at St. George’s!”
Emmy gasped. How could she have forgotten? Her father had told the story of ringing the bells at the church over and over, but she hadn’t remembered the most important part. The bats would fly out of the belfry when the bells rang!
Gussie ran to the front door and turned the knob with both her hands. “Come on, Melly, let’s go show them. I always wanted to climb up to the belfry, and they never would let us!”
“Hey, wait!” said Joe. “You heard what Officer Crumlett said—”
Melly giggled behind her hand. “He can’t tell me what to do. I was his mother’s third-grade teacher!”
“But you can’t climb a belfry in the middle of the night!” Ana moved to block their way. “It’s too dangerous!”
“That just makes it more fun!” cried Gussie, grabbing Melly’s hand. Laughing, the two little girls dodged Ana’s outstretched hands, dashed down the steps, and disappeared into the dark.
23
EMMY AND JOE caught up with the little aunts at the heavy wooden door of the church.
“We’re faster!” crowed Melly.
“Yeah, well, we were watching out for Officer Crumlett,” muttered Joe, trying the door. “Come on, it’s locked. Let’s go home.”
Gussie shook her head. “I played the organ here for thirty years. I ought to know where the spare key is by now!” She ran past a corner of the building and out of sight.
Emmy, who was bent over with a stitch in her side, slowly straightened and looked around her. A restless breeze curled around the stone church, and all was dark, shifting shadow, but there was enough light from a thin moon to show the churchyard with its row upon row of gravestones.
She shivered. “Ana’s right—it will be dangerous, climbing in the dark.”
Melly looked up at her. “But if we try to climb in the daytime, somebody might tell us not to. And then we’ll never get to talk to the bats.” She paused. “Why didn’t Ana come, too?”
“Because the police are really looking for her. If Officer Crumlett sees us tonight, we’ll just be in trouble. But if he sees Ana, he’ll take her away to live with people who don’t want her.”
“Oh. I remember now.” Melly twined her legs around each other and sucked on a strand of her hair. “I don’t have a mama and papa anymore, either.”
Emmy looked helplessly at the little girl, unsure of what to say. Aunt Melly’s parents had been dead for a long time, and Emmy assumed she had gotten used to it—but the five-year-old Melly wanted her mom and dad just like any other kindergartner.
A creaking sound made Emmy startle. The great church door swung open a foot, and Gussie’s small face appeared in the gap. “Come on!”
Their footsteps echoed loudly in the dark, still church. Faint light from moon and stars filtered in through tall, arched windows and fell in long stripes on the stairs to the choir loft. The organ pipes gleamed coldly as three shadows moved past, following the sound of Gussie’s voice ahead.
“Ow!” Emmy banged her shin on something she couldn’t see. “Gussie must really know her way around,” she muttered.
“Joe!” called Gussie, from far above. “I can’t push open the first trapdoor!”
“Coming,” Joe called back. “Melly, let Emmy come behind you. That way she can grab you if you fall.”
Emmy groped for the next rung of the ladder, hoping it was true. How could she catch someone she couldn’t see? “Hang on tight, Melly.”
“What?” Melly stopped and took a step down.
“And don’t step on my hand,” said Emmy through her teeth.
There was a sound of something heavy scraping above and grunting from Joe. A thin, pale light filtered through the trapdoor and was blocked by the children’s bodies as they went through one by one.
Emmy moved upward. She hauled herself past the trapdoor and tumbled onto the floor of a square room with pale starlight coming through a narrow window, only to see Melly’s shadowed legs already moving up the next ladder.
“How many ladders are there?” Emmy called, but the answer was indistinct. Hand over hand, rung after rung, she crawled up another long ladder and then another, until at last Melly paused above her.
“Why is everybody stopping?” Melly’s childish voice sounded high and excited.
“There’s another trapdoor—and it’s heavy.” Joe’s words drifted downward and echoed in the vast immensity of the attic spaces. Something flew past Emmy swiftly in the dark, and she gripped the ladder more tightly, strangling a cry. If the little aunts weren’t scared—and they didn’t seem to be, they seemed to think it was all a big adventure—then Emmy wasn’t about to show any fear. All the same, it was good that it was too dark to see much. If she happened to look down, she wouldn’t see how far she had to fall.
Emmy looked up at a scraping, sliding sound and a last grunt of effort from Joe. Moonlight streamed in from the open trapdoor, lighting the arms and faces of the four children on the ladder beneath. Joe stepped up and pushed his head and shoulders through. “Whoa,” he said at once. “This is serious.”
“What?” Emmy called. Her hands were cramping.
Joe stepped carefully down two rungs, standing side by side with Gussie on the ladder. “It opens onto the roof,” he said, leaning over. “And it’s a loooong way down.”
“I want to look!” Gussie cried.
“It’s dangerous,” Joe said. “Just poke your head through. You’ll see.”
Joe bent down as Gussie climbed past him, and spoke to Emmy. “I don’t think the little girls should go on the roof. There’s nothing to stop them from rolling right off.”
“If it opens onto the roof,” said Emmy, puzzled, “where’s the belfry part?”
“There’s a side door into the bell tower,” said Joe. “You have to crawl along the roof a little ways and then go through—Hey! Gussie! Come back!”
Too late, Joe reached for the little girl’s feet, but they disappeared through the square hole as Emmy watched in growing dismay.
“Don’t worry, I’m not afraid! It’s fun!” Gussie’s voice came faintly through the square hole, accompanied by a scrabbling sound on the roof above. There was a creaking sound and a sudden slam, and Emmy’s heart jolted.
Joe must have jumped, too, or Melly moved up and bumped him, for his feet slipped off the rungs. He dangled from the side of the ladder and for a moment the moonlight etched his frantically scrabbling legs. Emmy’s throat was so thick with fear it felt like cement. And then Joe wedged a knee between the rungs at last, and Emmy was just about to breathe again when the light from the moon was suddenly blocked. Melly scrambled up the rungs past Joe and through the trapdoor. “I’m coming, Gussie!”
“Melly! No!” Emmy cried, but the little girl was already on the roof.
Joe got his feet back on the rungs and looked down at Emmy. “I’m going after them,” he said, breathing hard. The moonlight was blocked yet a third time; then Joe’s feet kicked briefly in the square space and he was gone.
Emmy had very little interest in climbing along a roof in the middle of the night, but she had even less interest in hanging on a ladder all alone in the dark attic of a church. Besides, Joe would probably need her. Melly and Gussie were as take-charge as any grown-ups, but as reckless as little kids, and it was a dangerous combination. And anyway, wasn’t this what they had been trying to do for days now? Find the bats and find Sissy?
Emmy pulled herself gingerly out of the trapdoor, gripping the edges with both hands. She sat with care on the roof, one leg on either side of the peaked ridge, and looked down.
She felt a lightness in her stomach and a quiver at the base of her spine. It was a very long way down. The gravestones in the churchyard glimmered like teeth in the moon’s light, and Emmy’s mouth went dry. If she lost her balance she would land in the grav
eyard—which would be about right, because she would be dead.
All right, so it had been a mistake to look down. She looked up at the moon, saw a winged shadow dart across it, and followed with her eye as it swooped down and into the open slats of the belfry ahead. Just below the slatted windows of the lower belfry was a square wooden door, and it banged again as Joe went through.
If Joe could do it, so could she. Emmy scooted forward, inch by inch, her palms pressing hard on the split-wood shingles. She reached for the white wooden door, pulled it open, and went through headfirst.
Naturally there was another ladder. She knocked against it in the dark and got a splinter under her thumbnail. She stumbled, reached blindly for a rung, and found instead a rope that sank with her as she grasped it. High above, a deep, sweet tone sounded.
Childish giggles came from overhead, and a shadowy head popped down from the trapdoor. “Stop ringing the bell, Emmy, and come up here!” said Joe. “The bats won’t talk!”
A musty odor filled Emmy’s nostrils as she poked her head up into a room already crowded with three children and a looming dark mass that she took to be the bell. She put a hand out to steady herself and felt its cold, pitted iron sway slightly beneath her hand.
A muted light from the high slatted windows lay in stripes across Joe’s face. He was speaking to something small and furry, and as the creature spoke in return, Emmy could see a faint gleam of fangs.
“I don’t know nothin’,” said a squeaky voice that somehow still managed to sound tough. “We got clients, we got a business, and the business don’t include talkin’.”
Emmy sat on the edge of the trapdoor and braced herself with one foot. “But I thought you were postal bats.”
The bat bristled. “Who wants ta know?”
“I’m Emmy Addison. I’m here visiting family—Gussie, here, and Melly, over there—”
“Family? I understand family. Look here.” The bat fluttered behind Emmy, who turned and saw another ladder—of course there was another ladder, she should have known—and up through yet another trapdoor.
Emmy followed. The musty smell grew stronger and began to take on an odor of gerbils, or sweaty socks. She poked her head through the trapdoor and breathed shallowly through her mouth.
“See? The famiglia! Mamas, babies, all safe, and soon the babies will learn to fly! And me, Rocco, I guard them!”
Emmy felt a soft rustling in the air and all around her a sense of something breathing. The fine hairs lifted on her neck, and slowly she backed down the ladder.
Rocco followed, still talking. “Me and the boys—and the girls who ain’t mamas—we’re the postal bats. But we keep the business in the family, see? We don’t blab about our clients, see? You want information, you gotta talk to the boss.”
“Where’s the boss, then?” Joe asked.
“And who is the boss?” Emmy added.
Rocco gave a whistle of surprise. “Everybody knows Manlio’s the boss bat. You must be from out of town.”
“But where is he?” Joe repeated.
Rocco shrugged. “He’s out on business. I’m not sayin’ where. I’ll send one of the boys to find him.”
Emmy leaned against the wooden slats and looked down at the narrow strip of churchyard that she could see. The view was cheerless, gray and black, with here and there a cold glint of moonlight on an iron railing.
The little aunts were getting tired, too. Emmy could see their lumpy shapes on either side of Joe, and one of them yawned audibly.
“I know how to wake us up,” said the other, and a shadowy leg stretched out to nudge the bell wheel. The bell bonged once, loud in the small space, and again before Joe stilled the clapper. “Hush! You don’t want to wake the neighbors, do you?”
“I don’t want to stay here,” said Gussie suddenly. “I want my own bed.”
Joe shifted his position and gathered the girls in close. “Lean on me and go to sleep,” he said. “It won’t be long.”
There was a soft smacking sound, as if one had given him a good-night kiss. “I always wanted a big brother,” said Gussie sleepily, and nestled beneath his arm.
Emmy sighed. She wasn’t excited about staying in the belfry, either, but they had to find out where Sissy was. Who knew what trouble she was in?
The sound of the bell had ceased, but another thin sound went on and on, almost like a voice—no, it was a voice, and it was coming from outside, far below.
“Listen!” Emmy said softly, and put an ear to the slats.
“It sounds like Ana,” whispered Joe after a moment. “But I can’t understand the words.”
“She shouldn’t be outside,” said Emmy, alarmed. “Not with the police looking for her. And what’s she making noise for?”
“You’d better find out,” said Joe. “I’d go, but Gussie and Melly are asleep.”
Emmy winced. All those ladders, alone and in the dark … “Okay,” she said, sounding braver than she felt.
It was a relief to breathe fresh air after the stale, musty odor of bats. Emmy was determined not to look down this time, but once on the roof she realized that she could call quietly to Ana if she crawled just a little way around the side of the belfry.
“Come … down!” Ana’s voice was high and thin and urgent, with an edge of hysteria.
“What’s wrong?” Emmy called back softly.
“All … come down … now!” Ana’s shadowy form ducked as a car’s headlights moved slowly down the street.
Emmy wriggled backward to the trapdoor on the ridgepole. They couldn’t keep this up. Someone would call the police on them. She’d have to go all the way down and see what was the matter.
Hours later—well, it seemed like hours—Emmy stepped off the last rung, groped her way past the choir loft, and moved cautiously down the broad staircase to the entryway below. Ana was waiting for her just inside the heavy front door.
“This had better be good,” said Emmy. “You wouldn’t believe how many ladders I had to climb. And I think I swallowed about seven spiders, with all the cobwebs that hit my face.”
“Where are the rest of them?” Ana’s voice was urgent. “Where are Melly and Gussie?”
Emmy looked at her in surprise. “Up in the belfry with Joe. He just got them to sleep.”
“They have to come down! Right now!”
“But we’re waiting for Manlio to come back—”
“I don’t care!” Ana’s voice was panicked. “We have to go up! We have to get them!” She started for the staircase, stumbling in the dark. “I’ll go up by myself if I have to!”
“You’ll never find it without me along,” said Emmy. “It’s way too dark.”
“I have a penlight,” said Ana grimly, switching it on. “Come on.”
“But I still don’t understand why—”
Ana stopped suddenly and pointed the penlight at a bulge in her pocket. “Look. Now do you understand?”
“Hey! Get that light out of my eyes!” said Raston, poking his head out. “What is this? The Spanish Inquisition?”
Emmy gasped. “Ratty! You’re not a baby anymore! Did Ratmom do something to reverse it?”
“Nope, it just wore off all by itself.” Raston turned his head from side to side. “Now, where are those bats?”
Emmy clapped her hands in delight. “Now we don’t have to worry about the aunts staying little forever! It will wear off for them, too—”
Emmy stopped. She looked up at the choir loft and the arched ceiling above.
“Now do you get it?” Ana demanded.
Emmy moved uneasily. “Well, if it wears off, we can just give them some more of Ratmom’s tears, right?”
“Ratmom’s gone.” Ana started for the ladder.
Emmy followed. “You mean you can’t find her? Maybe she’s sleeping somewhere besides the dollhouse—”
“I mean she’s gone. She left a note and everything. She said she was heading to Rodent City on the train. She said that Ratty hadn’t been able to
find Sissy here, and so maybe the bats had taken Sissy back to Rodent City. And she said she was not too fat and slow to hunt for her daughter.”
Raston popped his head out again as Ana climbed. “I didn’t want her to go away. I just wanted her to get in shape!”
“Oh, no … oh, no …”
“Hurry,” said Ana.
Up ladders, through trapdoors, up still more ladders, and out onto the roof—it was windier than before, and brisk gusts of air plucked at Emmy’s clothes, but she hardly noticed the long drop, this time—then the squeeze through the square wooden door to fall at the foot of yet another ladder. Up and up, rung after rung …
There was a sound of rasping breathing and a muffled moan. Emmy took the penlight from Ana and shone it slowly around the lower belfry.
The beam of light was narrow. But it was enough to illuminate the sleeping forms of the aunts, now long and spindly.
Joe’s arms were around their frail, elderly shoulders. Something wet glistened on his cheekbone and dropped into darkness. “Gussie’s dying,” he said, very low.
“How are we ever going to get them both down?” whispered Ana.
24
THE WIND PICKED UP, shearing through the slats of the belfry. Emmy’s skin prickled beneath her thin cotton shirt with something more than cold as she looked at her great-aunts. What to do?
“We could ring the bell,” said Joe. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Somebody would come, if we rang it loud and long enough. And then they’d get the fire truck and put a ladder up to the belfry and break a window and carry Gussie and Melly down. But we’d never be able to explain, not in a million years. And they’d find Ana.”
Ana smoothed a hand over Gussie’s ankle. “I don’t have to be here when they come. I could hide.”
“But then where would you go afterward?” Joe turned his head, and dim light outlined his cheek. “If Gussie and Melly have to be rescued from the belfry, they’re going to be put in a nursing home—or something. People are going to think they’re crazy or can’t take care of themselves. So they sure won’t be able to take care of you.”
Ana put her chin on her knees. “I could become a rat. Rodent City isn’t a bad place to live. I’d get used to it, after a while.”