Story Time (3 page)

"Like where?"

"I never know. It could be, like, Korea, Japan, Thailand." She added, "I haven't heard back in a while." Kate pointed to the photo. "I look totally like my father." Then she frowned and looked at the door. "I don't look a thing like June."

Dinner was spaghetti, meatballs, and garlic bread. June sat silently among the children as they talked. The conversation, inevitably, turned to the Whittaker Magnet School.

"My grandmother used to work there," Molly said, "back when it was only a library. She still goes to County Commission meetings at the Whittaker Building."

June looked up.

Molly went on, "I don't know if you've heard the stories, but lots of people say the Whittaker Building is haunted."

June looked back down.

"The building itself has a bloody history," George said. "Lots of people have died there."

Kate turned to June. "So you want me to leave Lincoln, where all my friends are and where I'm set to star in
Peter Pan,
to go and be killed in a haunted library? Is that the plan?"

June swallowed hard and answered, "No, Kate, that is not the plan. But as far as that play goes, you're not certain to get the lead part. It could go to someone else. Right, Molly?"

Kate snorted. "Who? No one else will even audition for the lead. Everybody knows I'm perfect for Peter Pan."

Molly mumbled, "LoriBeth Sommers will."

"LoriBeth Sommers! Please, I'm trying to eat. She can't dance. She can't act. All she can do is stand next to the flagpole and sing the national anthem. So what? She hits her one high note; then all the guys yell, 'Play ball!'"

If Kate expected enthusiastic agreement from George and Molly, she did not get it. Instead, George informed the group, "I learned this, too: The Whittaker Magnet School is ranked number one in the United States in standardized testing."

Kate reached over and pinched his cheek. "Great. Have fun there. Alone. I will be at Lincoln Middle School."

Molly asked, "Have you ever seen the place?"

"No," Kate said, but then turned to June. "Have I?"

June seemed offended. "Of course you have. Many times. I used to take you there when you were little."

She was offended further when Kate replied, "Oh? Was that back when you took me places?"

"That's not fair, Kate. I drive you everywhere you want to go."

"Okay. Let's be fair." Kate leaned forward. "Take me there now. I want to see this haunted building."

"It's-it's Sunday night, Kate. I'm sure it's not open."

At that moment, a familiar vibration began in the floors and walls, three times as strong as before, as all six members of the Tri-County Cloggers started practice.

Kate offered a compromise. "Let's just drive over and look at it from the outside. If I ever went there, I must have been two years old. I sure don't remember."

Molly was enthusiastic about the idea. "It's cool looking. Like Frankenstein's castle."

"Do you mean Baron von Frankenstein?" George asked. "Or Frankenstein's monster?"

"Uh, the monster."

"Frankenstein's monster didn't have a castle. He lived in a shack in the woods. With a blind guy."

"He did? What, was he like his guide dog?"

"No. He was his friend. The blind guy didn't know the monster looked like a monster."

"Uncle George!" Kate snapped. "Does it really matter?"

George backed off. "No. I guess not."

"The point is that Molly thinks it looks like a scary castle, okay?"

"Okay."

June stood up. She steadied herself with both hands on the table, then stammered, "How about if we make ice-cream sundaes and sit on the front porch for a change? The clogging won't sound so loud there."

Kate stretched her neck, trying to make eye contact. "We're leaving the house, June. That's what normal people do. They leave their houses and they do things."

June exhaled. "Then I have to go to the bathroom." She hurried out of the kitchen.

"Maybe this is a bad idea," Molly whispered. "If you really want to go, my grandmother could drive us there tomorrow."

"No. June can drive us there now. There is no reason why she can't." Then, in a sudden moment of reflection, she turned to her uncle. "Is there, Uncle George?"

George swallowed a final bite of garlic bread. "There may be. June may suffer from a mild form of agoraphobia. That's from the Greek. Literally, it means 'fear of the marketplace.' It means you are terrified to go out in public."

"If my hair looked that bad," Kate muttered, "I'd be afraid to go out in public, too."

June emerged from the bathroom, pale and sweating.

Kate told her, "Okay. We don't have to go, June, if you're not up to it."

"Nonsense. You kids want to go, so we're going."

George scrutinized her face. "Are you sure, June?"

"I'm positive."

"It's okay if you're afraid to go. Lots of people are afraid of movie monsters, and ghost stories, and haunted buildings."

June opened the door and started out. "I'm not afraid. I just had to go to the bathroom."

George continued. "But, really, there are no such things as monsters, and ghosts, and haunted buildings."

June laughed, a queer, brittle laugh. She said, "I know that. Everybody knows that. Anybody who doesn't know that is crazy."

June clung to the steering wheel of her Geo Metro like she was lashed to a boat wheel in a storm. George sat in the front seat, occasionally flashing a worried sideways glance at his sister, while the girls gossiped in whispers in the back.

As they approached downtown, George noticed a billboard and called out, "Hey, Kate! Look. It's the guy from the aquatic park!"

Kate looked out at the billboard. It showed a heavyset man holding up his thumb beneath the message: "
Now your family
can live in the #1 school district in America! Reserve your homesite in Bud Wright's Ivy League Estates today!"

"He's talking about the Whittaker School District," George said. "Do you know that home values near the Whittaker Magnet School have tripled in the past five years?"

Kate replied, "Like I care."

The little car rounded a bend and struggled up a steep hill to its destination.

Kate and George were both taken aback by their first sight of the Whittaker Building. It was a truly massive stone structure—eight stories high and a full city block wide. It dominated the puny buildings around it like a fearsome giant.

June started to pull over, but Kate urged her along. "Keep going, June. We want to get a close look at this place!"

"Can't we see it from here?"

"No, we can't. Drive right up to it."

June silently obeyed.

Kate pressed her face against the window and stared up. "I think it looks creepy. Like Dracula's castle." She directed a withering glance at her uncle. "Shut up."

"Dracula
did
have a castle," George assured her. "Of course, his name wasn't really Dracula."

"Shut up."

"It was Count Vlad."

The little car crept closer as George continued. "They may as well make a horror movie about this place, so many people have died here."

"How many?" Kate asked.

"Dozens. Going back almost a hundred years. In all kinds of ways, too: electrocuted in the basement, run over at the loading dock, dismembered by power saws. More people have died in that building than in the state penitentiary at Milton, where they keep the electric chair."

"Sounds like a real nice place to go to school."

The building had a large drop-off area in front, curving off the main street like a crescent moon. Kate directed June to turn into the drive and pull over.

A large poster dominated the entranceway. It showed a girl and a boy above the caption, "Story Time at the Whittaker Library Changed Our Lives!" The girl was seated. She wore a frilly white dress and had her hair done up in long blond ringlets. The boy was standing. He was short and skinny, dressed in tan slacks, a blue blazer, and a purple-and-yellow striped tie.

Kate leaned out of the car window and stared at the poster with distaste. "They can't be serious. Is this a joke?" She was soon distracted, though, by a bright red flash from high above. A light was emanating from a room at the top of the building. Kate strained forward to see. She cried out, "Look! Somebody's up there! Maybe this is the haunted part."

George and Molly leaned out to see, too.

A windowpane on the eighth floor was glowing an eerie, pulsating red. Intermittently, a shower of hot sparks bounced off the glass.

Kate whispered, "What's going on up there?"

"It looks like the spray from a power saw," George said. "Someone must be sawing metal."

"At this hour?"

They watched the flickering window, puzzling over it silently, until a shadowy figure appeared. Kate saw it first and screamed. George and Molly screamed right after. The figure—thin, black, and tall—seemed to be staring down at them.

"What is that?" Kate cried. "A woman?"

George could not speak, but Molly answered, "Yeah. A crazy woman. Maybe, like, a power-saw killer!"

The figure vanished as rapidly as it had appeared, leaving the three children staring at the darkened window for another half minute.

"Okay," Kate finally announced. "I think we've seen enough of Uncle George's dream school."

June didn't respond, but she did manage to get the car turned around and moving back toward home.

They drove for several minutes in silence until the pull of the Whittaker Building finally faded away. By the time they got back to the house, Kate and Molly were once again laughing and joking. They called Lisette and carried on a merry three-way conversation about hot guys at Lincoln. But Kate's merry thoughts kept getting interrupted by dark ones. Kate ignored the thoughts as best she could, but they kept beeping into her head like messages from a shadowy caller, phoning with a singular purpose from a darkened upstairs room.

On Tuesday, at 10:30
A.M
., June and the children climbed into the Geo Metro and followed Ma and Pa's VW camper downtown. Kate was sullen, George was nervous, and June was as terrified as she had been two nights before.

They pulled into a parking space on the River Road. June locked the car, took a deep breath, and followed Kate and George up the steep hill to the Whittaker Building.

No one spoke until George spotted an inscription over the glass double doors. "Hey! I didn't see that the other night. It's in Latin.
Id pen—
"

Kate cut him off angrily. "This can't be happening. This is a nightmare, right? We'll wake up in an hour and get ready to go to Lincoln."

Ma and Pa stood waiting outside the entrance. Kate's anger quickly turned to mortification when, upon seeing them, her grandparents broke into a sidewalk clogging routine. Kate hissed, "Ma! Pa! Cut it out! People can
see
you out here."

Her grandparents whooped and laughed, but they did stop clogging.

Then Kate, George, Ma, Pa, and June entered through the glass doors. They walked past a tile mosaic full of fiery colors and scenes of a small, bearded man writhing in agony. The mosaic was followed by two portraits of men with large heads. Brass nameplates identified them as
CORNELL WHITTAKER I
and
CORNELL WHITTAKER
ii. The plate below a third, smaller portrait identified its subject as
DR. J. KENDALL AUSTIN.

The entranceway opened onto a cavernous lobby. Kate looked up into a vast center space, at the top of which was an ornately painted ceiling depicting scenes from American history. The ceiling had a ragged square hole cut into its center, through which unpainted plywood boards protruded. Ringing the empty expanse were seven floors of metal shelves filled with books.

Kate turned her attention back to the lobby. It was filled with bookshelves and display tables. A series of small, functional offices ran along the wall to her right. The lobby was illuminated by four chandeliers that plunged on steel chains all the way from the ceiling eight flights above to the second-floor landing.

Aside from the entranceway behind her, Kate noted six means of escape—an elevator in each corner and two stairwells, centered on the walls to her left and right. Then she became aware of other children milling around her and of her own family arriving at a desk designated
NEW STUDENT REGISTRATION.

Behind that desk sat a fearsome-looking woman. A mink stole barely stretched across her broad shoulders, and within her large head, her jaws seemed to be continually grinding. A turban of thick blond hair added nearly a foot to her height. Her face bore a strong resemblance to the portraits of Cornell Whittaker I and II. Next to her, in a white dress, sat a blond girl with the same harsh features.

George whispered, "That's the girl on the poster."

The woman addressed George in a deep voice. "Congratulations on your selection to the Whittaker Magnet School. I am Cornelia Whittaker-Austin. Yes, I am one of
the
Whittakers. Do you have your official letter of acceptance?"

Ma pulled out the letter, waved it in the air, and whooped mightily.

Cornelia Whittaker-Austin hissed, "Keep your voice down! This is a library! You are to conduct yourself with dignity within its walls!"

Ma froze in midwhoop. "Sorry."

Pa added, "We're real sorry, ma'am."

Cornelia Whittaker-Austin took the letter and demanded, "Have you made an appointment for your personal assessment with Dr. Austin?" Ma just stared at her dully, so she answered for her. "No? May I ask why not? You were clearly directed to do so in your letter."

"Well, Georgie's the genius in our family. Not us."

Cornelia pushed back her chair, planted her elbows on the table, and stood up. George watched her rise, and rise, and rise until she blocked everything behind her from view. Then, seemingly from nowhere, she turned on a bright smile. "You are in luck! We have an opening later, after Dr. Austin returns from Washington, D.C. You may come here at eight o'clock"