Dead Letter (6 page)

The setting sun gave one last bit of light to the old dining room. She could see where corner cupboards had once stood. Out the window she saw a long flow of brown lawn, a forgotten garden, and in the stand of elm trees, a long, low building—a stable, perhaps.

The kitchen had been stripped of appliances and cupboards. Loose wires hung from the walls. She looked into a pantry that still had its shelves and smelled of spices.

As she moved from one empty room to another, she realized there was not a room here where a person could be held prisoner.

She opened a door just off the pantry and peered inside. This door had once led to the cellar, but the cellar itself was missing. The house had been moved from its foundation.

She went into the hall and glanced over her shoulder again, unable to shake the impression that someone knew she was in the house. Slowly taking the steps one by one, she went to the second floor.

There were six bedrooms and four baths, all as empty as the rooms downstairs. Faded wallpaper showed flowers and plaids, and in a small back room, a parade of tattered wooden soldiers.

But all of the rooms had windows. Herculeah remembered the note had said there were none where the woman was held prisoner. The woman couldn't tell night from day.

Also, there was something about this house ... Herculeah couldn't explain it, but she had the impression that the house had been safe and secure, a place where happy lives had been lived.

Of course she would never know about the cellar.

Herculeah saw a door at the end of the hall and opened it. A musty smell filled her nostrils.

The attic.

She felt a chill of dread, something she had not felt before, not even as she peered down into the missing cellar. She tried to shake off her fear.

Why is everybody afraid of attics? she asked herself. It's just another room.

And: If you don't go up, you'll always wonder if it was the woman's prison.

And: Look how dusty the stairs are. There's nobody up there.

And: It's going to be dark soon, and it'll be worse then.

Another chill went up her spine. Someone walking on my grave. That was just an old expression, she reminded herself. Nothing to it.

She started up the stairs.

Unbidden, the words of an old camp song came into her mind. To pick up her spirits she began to sing to herself.

They wrap you
up
in a
big
white sheet.

She moved slowly. The air was stifling, probably the same air that had been here for fifty years. It could not be healthy to breathe fifty-year-old air. Get on with it, she told herself.

Drop you down about fifty feet.

She wished Meat were with her. He could have stayed hidden in the trees and given one of his famous whistles if anyone appeared.

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl
out ...

But Meat was back at home. “Where you ought to be,” she heard her mother's voice say.

“Oh, Mom,” she answered.

This song was definitely not picking up her spirits.

Gripping the handrail, she took the stairs in twos. Yet even before she got to the top, she knew ‘this could not have been a prison. There was too much light. Wide windows were at either end of the empty room.

She walked toward one of the windows. The floor beneath her feet was littered with dead flies and bees, the attic's only prisoners. She glanced out the window.

Not a car, not a person was in sight.

So why, Herculeah thought uneasily, do I have the feeling someone is out there? That someone knows I'm here?

The coat, she thought. Could it be the coat? She folded her arms around the front of the coat, drawing it closer about her. Had Meat been right? Had someone recognized the coat?

What if someone saw me from a distance and thought I was ... She couldn't finish the sentence. She didn't know. Still, she shivered beneath the heavy coat. More footsteps on my grave. She forced a smile. Heavy traffic this afternoon.

She glanced one last time out the window. This time her eyes narrowed. She thought she saw a movement through the trees.

Maybe it was only a lengthening shadow, maybe it was her imagination, but the thought made Herculeah say, “I'm getting out of here.”

She stepped back and then, in the final rays of the sun, she saw it.

It wasn't her imagination.

Her hair began to frizzle.

There was a car just beyond the trees.

And it was black.

Herculeah ran down the attic steps. Her heart raced. She flew across the hall and down the main stairway.

At the bottom of the stairs, she paused. She glanced out the window to see if the car was still there.

It was.

She ran into the kitchen. She remembered a back door there. She yanked at the doorknob. It came off in her hand. She flung it across the room.

A window—a window—it would have to be a window.

The window over the kitchen sink was broken, the glass jagged. Herculeah thrust the window up, leaped sidesaddle onto the sill, and threw her legs over.

She paused to look around the outside, checking each bush, each tree, anything large enough to conceal a man. After all, whoever was following her could have left the car. He could be anywhere.

The sun had gone down behind the trees, leaving the sky the color of pale mustard. The chilly afternoon breeze had now become a cold wind. A flock of crows flew overhead, cawing.

Herculeah glanced down at her coat—electric blue, the woman at Hidden Treasures had said. It would be easily spotted. She took off the coat, folded it so that the lining was outside, the brilliant blue concealed. She rolled it into a bundle and stuck it under her arm. In one quick motion she jumped to the ground and ran, zigzagging for the shelter of the trees.

She paused there for a moment, considering her chances. She could make her way through the trees, but sooner or later she would have to come out on Elm Street. She remembered where the car had been and felt that if she could come out of the trees behind it, she could make a dash to Main Street before the driver could get the car turned around.

Jogging through the trees, her hair blowing behind her, she could hear the traffic on Main Street. She slowed as she came to Elm. She peered around the trees. There was no car in sight.

“It's gone,” she said.

She was ashamed of the fact that she suddenly felt weak with relief.

She didn't want to linger. She picked a spot where the mound of dirt was lowest, climbed over, hopped the trench, and stepped onto the roadway. She brushed off her jeans, unfolded her coat, and put it on. She was loping toward Main Street when she heard it.

A car engine.

She glanced back. The car had been hidden in the trees. Now it roared out, tires squealing, coming straight at her.

Herculeah was in the worst possible place. Perhaps the driver had been waiting for that. Beside her, the mound of dirt was too high to jump over, the trench too narrow to fit in. There was no room to get out of the car's way. She glanced back again.

The car was twenty yards away.

It was gaining speed.

Herculeah had always heard that when you thought you were going to die, your whole life passed before your eyes. What passed before Herculeah's eyes was a fast-approaching bumper—it was less than ten yards away now—and the thought that she was not going to die by a black car.

She threw herself up the bank. Her feet slipped on the loose earth. She went down on her knees. She glanced at the car.

It was five yards away now.

Using all her strength, Herculeah pushed herself up the mound of earth and threw herself over the top. The car sped past, swerving on the very spot where she had stood only seconds ago. She could smell the sickening scent of exhaust.

She took deep breaths. She was relieved, but at the same time—

She lifted her head. She heard the car back up, the squeal of brakes. The car stopped. There was a whir as the window rolled down.

Herculeah waited. Her heart began to pound in her throat.

She knew the driver of the car was just on the other side of the ditch, listening, waiting for her to reappear. If she did, he would come at her again. And this time, she might not be quick enough to get away.

She ran beside the mound of earth, toward the sound of the traffic, eyes fixed on her goal, breath held. She stayed in a crouch, keeping her head well below the top of the mounds of red earth.

And then she heard the noise, the persistent whir of the engine. The car was moving too.

It moved at her pace, always just a stone's throw away. It was as if the driver could see through the pile of dirt and knew exactly where she was.

Herculeah kept moving. Her throat was dry. The blood pounded in her ears.

She came to what had once been a driveway. Now it was just an open space.

When she crossed that space, Herculeah knew she would be vulnerable. If the driver did know where she was, he would anticipate her movements. He could swerve into the driveway, and—“and I'd be history,” she said.

She took a deep breath, another, and then with a burst of speed that surprised even herself, Herculeah ran across the open space and into the shelter of the elm trees.

Panting with exertion and fear, but shielded by the trees—he couldn't get her here—she glanced at the car. With a screeching of tires, the car roared by and disappeared in a cloud of reddish dust.

It really was gone this time.

Keeping to the edge of the trees, Herculeah ran toward Main. As she rounded the bend, she could see the lights ahead, the cars, the people moving and shopping. She hurried to be one of them.

As she walked, she bent and began to brush off her coat. “And I was going to take such good care of this coat,” she said.

Herculeah came to Main Street. When she crossed she looked both ways, the way her mother had taught her to when she was a child.

Then Herculeah turned for home.

But she had the terrible feeling she would see that black car again.

“You're filthy, Herculeah! Where on earth have you been?”

“Oh hi, Mom.”

“Look at yourself.”

Herculeah glanced in the hall mirror. “Oh, no. I don't care about myself,” she said. “Look at my coat. This is my new coat! I love this coat. It's ruined.”

“I've got a brush. I'll have a go at it.”

“Thanks.”

“But where have you been?”

“I was checking out some construction over on ...” She made a quick decision to leave off the name of the street. “On the other side of Main Street. That's where I was.”

“I thought you'd outgrown digging in the dirt.”

“Oh, Mom.”

“See, that's where Tarot got his ‘Oh, Mom's' from.”

Her mother left the room and returned with a brush. “Take it off,” she told Herculeah. Herculeah shrugged out of the coat.

“What happened? Did you fall?” With long, sure strokes, Herculeah's mother brushed the coat. “It's coming out. See?” She paused to look at Herculeah. “So did you? Fall?”

“Mom, it was very strange. I was on my way home. The street I was on ...” again she was careful not to give the name, “is very narrow. They've dug ditches for pipes and haven't filled them in. The dirt's in huge piles, some of it out in the street.

“So I was walking along and I heard a car behind me. I looked around. It was a black car. No lights. No big deal—it was just sunset. And then the car started coming at me—right at me. So I scrambled up the pile of dirt, slipped, and fell down on my knees—that's where those two circles of dirt came from. Then I threw myself over the top. That's where the rest of the dirt came from.”

Her mother had stopped now, the brush suspended over Herculeah's coat. “Do you think the driver did it on purpose?”

“Why would he?” Herculeah asked evasively.

“You tell me.”

“It was dark. It's possible he didn't see me.”

“Did you get the license number?”

“Not hardly. I was on my face in the dirt when it passed.”

Herculeah decided not to mention that the car had tried to stay with her and that she had to make a frantic dash for safety.

“Anyway, it's over. I'm unharmed. I'm safe. I learned my lesson.”

She grinned at her mother. Her mother didn't grin back. “I wish I could believe that.”

“Believe it. Oh, I've got to hurry. Dad's picking me up, remember?”

Her mother was still watching as Herculeah started up the stairs.

“Oh, Herculeah—”

“Mom, I have learned my lesson, all right?”

“Meat stopped by and left something for you. He said it was important.” Mrs. Jones picked up a folded sheet of paper from the hall table and handed it to Herculeah.

Herculeah unfolded it. “It looks like a Xerox of some sort of note.” She felt a quickening of interest because it might have something to do with the coat.

“Yes, that's what Meat said. He was just back from the Copy Cat.”

“I wonder if this has anything to do with ...” She broke off with a brief glance at her mother and sat down on the stairs. She read it and the paper sagged to her lap as if it were too heavy to hold.

“Oh, Mom, you know what this is?”

“No, what?”

“Oh, Mom.”

“Well, tell me.”