Summer of Night (52 page)
"May I help you?" repeated the voice.
"Uh, yeah," said Dale, feeling how dry his mouth was, "Mr. Ashley-Montague?" As soon as he said it he wanted to kick himself.
"Mr. Ashley-Montague is busy," said the voice. "Do you gentlemen have business here, or shall I call for the police?"
Dale's heart skipped a beat at the threat, but part of his mind noted: Wherever this guy is, he can see all of us.
"Uh, no," said Dale, not knowing what he was saying no to. "I mean, we do have business with Mr. Ashley-Montague."
"Please state that business," said the black box. The black-iron gate was so tall and wide that it seemed impossible that it could ever be opened.
Dale looked into the car as if asking Harlen for help. Jim was sitting with the pistol in his hand but below the level of the back of the seat, presumably out of sight of the camera or periscope or whatever the voice was using. Jesus, what if the cops do come?
Congden leaned out of the car and shouted toward the speaker box, "Hey, tell 'em that these motherfuckers are aimin' a gun at my fuckin' car, hey? Tell 'em that!"
Dale stepped closer to the speaker, trying to put his body between Congden and the microphone. He didn't know if the box had heard; the British voice did not come again.
Everything-the gate, woods, hill, lawn, gunmetal sky- everything seemed to be waiting for Dale to speak. He wondered why in hell he hadn't rehearsed this during the crazy drive down here.
"Tell Mr… ah… tell him that I'm here because of the Borgia Bell," said Dale. "Tell him it's very urgent that I speak to him."
"Just a moment," said the voice. Dale blinked sweat out of his eyes and thought of the scene in the Wizard of Oz movie where the guy at the doof to the Emerald City, the guy who was really the Wizard unless they were just using the same actor to save money… where the guy made Dorothy and her friends wait after all their dangerous travels to get there.
"Mr. Ashley-Montague is busy," the voice said finally. "He does not wish to be disturbed. Good day."
Dale rubbed his nose. No one had ever said "Good day' to him before. It was a day of firsts. "Hey!" he cried, banging on the speaker box to get its attention. "Tell him it's important! Tell him we've got to see him! Tell him we've come a long way and…"
The box remained silent. The gate remained sealed. No one and nothing moved between the gate and the mansion.
Dale stepped back and looked up and down the high brick wall that separated the estate grounds from Grand View Drive. It might be possible to get up and over it if Harlen gave him a lift, but Dale had images of fierce German shepherds and Doberman pinschers ranging the grounds, of men hi the trees with shotguns, of the cops showing up and finding Harlen with the pistol…
Jesus, Mom thinks I'm playing ball or at Mike's, and she'll get a call from the Peoria police department saying that I'm under arrest for breaking and entering, carrying a concealed weapon, and attempted kidnapping. No, he realized, Harlen would get the carrying-a-concealed-weapon charge.
Dale grabbed the speaker and put his face almost against the microphone grid, shouting, not even knowing if the thing had been switched off or if the listener at the other end had gone about his duties in the Emerald City. "Listen to me, goddammit!" he shouted. "Tell Mr. Ashley-Montague that I know all about the Borgia Bell, and about the colored guy they hung from it, and about the kids that got killed… kids back then and kids right now. Tell him… tell him that my friend's dead because of his grandfather's fucking bell and…oh, shit.” Dale ran out of steam and sat down on the hot pavement.
The box did not speak again, but there was an electrical humming, a mechanical click, and the wide gate began to open.
It wasn't George Sanders who let Dale in; the silent and thin-faced little man looked more like Mr. Taylor, Digger's dad, Elm Haven's undertaker.
Harlen stayed in the car. It was obvious that if both of the boys went in, Congden'd be out of there like a rifle shot, probably taking the gate with him if he had to. The promise of the other $12.50 wasn't enough to keep him from leaving them… or from killing them if he got a chance. Only the literal presence of the.38 aimed at the figurative head of his '57 Chevy kept him in line, and that was getting shakier by the moment.
"Go on in," said Harlen through thin lips. "But don't take high tea or settle in for supper. Find out what you need to know and get the fuck out."
Dale had nodded and scrambled out of the car. Congden was threatening to go in-and call the police, but Harlen said, "Go right ahead. I've got eighteen more cartridges in my pocket. We'll see how much we can make this heap look like a Swiss cheese before the cops get here. Then I'll tell 'em that you abducted us. Dale and me haven't been in County Juvenile Detention like somebody I can mention…"
Congden had lit another cigarette, settled against the doorframe, and glared at Harlen as if he were imagining precisely what revenge he was going to take. "Move it," Harlen had added unnecessarily.
Dale followed the guy he assumed was a butler through a bunch of rooms, each of which as large as the entire first floor of the Stewart house. Then the dark-suited guy opened a tall door and waved Dale into a room that had to be the mansion's library or study: mahogany-paneled walls and endless built-in shelves rose twelve feet to a mezzanine catwalk, brass railings, then more mahogany and more shelves with books rising to a ceiling lost in rough wood rafters. There were slidable ladders along the base of the lower bookcases and on the mezzanine itself. On the east side of the room, about thirty paces from where Dale had entered, there was a giant wall of windows spilling sunlight over the big desk where Mr. Ashley-Montague sat. The millionaire looked very little behind that desk, and the man's narrow shoulders, gray suit, glasses, and bow tie did nothing to make him seem bigger. He did not rise as Dale approached. "What do you want?" Dale took a breath. Now that he was here, inside, he felt no fear and very little nervousness. "I told you what 1 want. Something killed my friend and I think it has to do with the bell your grandfather bought for the school."
"That's nonsense," snapped Mr. Ashley-Montague. "That bell was a mere curiosity-a piece of Italian junk that my grandfather was persuaded to believe had some historical significance. And as I told one of your little friends, the bell was destroyed more than forty years ago."
Dale shook his head. "We know better," he said, although he knew nothing of the kind. "It's still there. It's still affecting people the way it did the Borgias. And that 'little friend' you're talking about was Duane McBride, and he's dead. Just like the kids who got killed sixty years ago. Just like the Negro your grandfather helped hang there."
Dale heard his own voice, strong, clipped, sure-sounding, and it was as distant as a movie soundtrack. Part of his mind was enjoying the view out the wide windows: the Illinois River gleaming wide and gray between tree-covered bluffs, a railroad line far below, a glimpse of Highway 29 winding south toward Peoria.
"I know nothing about these things," said Denrtis Ashley-Montague, rearranging folders on his desk. "I'm sorry about your friend's accident. I read about it in the newspapers, of course."
"It wasn't an accident," said Dale. "Some guys that've been around that bell too long killed him. And there are other things… things that come out at night…"
The thin man stood up behind his desk. His glasses were round, horn-rimmed, and they reminded Dale of some silent movie comedian's. Some guy who was always hanging from buildings.
"What things?" Mr. Ashley-Montague's voice was almost a whisper. It seemed lost in the huge room.
Dale shrugged. He knew that he shouldn't be revealing so much, but he didn't know any other way to show this guy that they really did know that something was going on. At that second Dale imagined a secret panel in the book-lined wall opening, Van Syke and Dr. Roon sliding softly through the opening behind him, and behind them, other things lurching forward in the shadows.
Dale resisted the impulse to look over his shoulder. If he didn't come out, he wondered if Harlen would leave without him. I would.
"Things like a dead soldier showing up," said Dale. "A guy named William Campbell Phillips, to be precise. A thing like a dead teacher coming back. And other things… things in the ground."
It sounded nuts even to Dale. He was glad he'd stopped before he started babbling about the shadow that had run from the closet to hide under his brother's bed. He had a sudden thought. I haven't seen these things. I'm taking Mike's and Harlen's word for this stuff. All I've seen is some holes in the ground. Jesus Christ, this guy's going to call the local asylum and they're going to put me in a rubber room before Mom even knows I'm late for supper. That made sense, but Dale didn't believe it for a second. He believed Mike. He believed Duane's notebooks. He believed his friends.
Mr. Ashley-Montague seemed almost to collapse into his high-backed chair. "My God, my God," he whispered and leaned forward as if he were going to bury his face in his hands. Instead, he removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief from his suit pocket. "What do you want?" he asked.
Dale resisted the impulse to let out a deep breath." "I want to know what's going on," he said. "I want the books that the county historian… Dr. Priestmann… wrote. Anything that you can tell me about the bell or what it's doing. And most of all…" Dale did let the breath out. "Most of all I want to know how we can stop this thing."
The latticework on the west side of the bandstand carved the afternoon light into a discrete set of diamonds that crept across the dark soil toward Mike and Mink Harper as the old man alternated between long swigs of the champagne, bouts of moody silence, and longer bouts of slurred narrative.
"It was that cold winter right after the new year begun… new century begun too… an' I was just a little shaver, no older'n you are now. How old are you? Twelve? No… eleven? Yeah, that's about how old I was when they hung the nigger.
"I wasn't in school no more. Most of us didn't stay in no longer than we had to… learn to read as much as we needed, sign our names, be able to cipher a bit… that's all a man needed to know in them days. My daddy, he needed all us boys on the farm to work. So's I'd already left my schoolin' behind when they hung the nigger there…
"Kids was disappearin' that year. The little Campbell girl got all the attention,"cause they found her body and her family was rich and all, but there was four or five more who didn't come home from chores that winter. I remember me a little Polack kid named Strbnsky, his daddy'd worked on the railroad work gang'd come through town an' stayed, Stefan was his name… well, Stefan and me'd been hangin' around the saloon lookin' for our daddies a few weeks before Christmas, an' I got mine and took him home in the back of the wagon my brother Ben an' me drove in, but Stefan, he didn't get home. Nobody seen him after that. I remember the last time I seen him, trudgin' across the drifts on old Main Street in his patched knickers and haulin' that bucket he used to carry his old lady's beer home in… Somethin' got Stefan, just like it got the Myers twins and whatshisname, that little 428 spic kid who lived out where the dump is now… but it was the Campbell girl who got all the attention, her bein' the doctor's niece and all.
"So when the Campbell girl's cousin, little Billy Phillips, come into the saloon… not Carl's, Carl's wasn't built yet… was that big building where the goddamn dry goods is now… anyway, when that snotnose little Billy Phillips comes in out of the cold one evenin' saying that there was a nigger down by the tracks who had his sister's petticoat in his duffel, well, hell, that place emptied out in about thirty seconds… me too, I remember runnin' to keep up with my old man's big strides… and there was Mr. Ashley sittin' out in front in that fancy buggy of his, a shotgun acrost his lap-same gun he used to kill hisself a few years later-sittin' there just like he was waitin' for all of us.
" "Come on, boys," he yelled. "Justice got to be done."
"And that whole crowd of men sorta shouted and roared the way mobs do… mobs don't got any more sense than a hound after a bitch in heat, boy… and then we was all off, our breaths puffin' out in the late afternoon light that was all golden sort of… even the horses' breath, I remember that now, Mr. Ashley's team of black mares and some of the men's teams… and slicker'n snot on grease we was out north of town, where the old railroad cut useta be up beyond the taller' factory, and the nigger looked up once from where he was crouched over a fire cookin' fatback, and then the men was all over him. A couple of his nigger friends was there-they never went nowhere alone in those days and wasn't allowed in town after dark, of course-but his friends, they didn't put up no fight, they just slunk away like dogs that know there's a beatin' comin'.
"The nigger had this big old bedroll, and the men tore through it, and sure enough… there was that little Campbell girl's petticoat, all covered with dried blood and… and other stuff, boy. You'll know what I mean someday.
"So they dragged him down to the schoolhouse, that bein' sort of the center of everything in them days. We had our town meetin's in the schoolhouse, and the votin' come election time, and all sorts of bazaars and every sort of truck imaginable. So they dragged the nigger there… I remember standin' outside while the bell was being rung to tell every body to come quick, that somethin' important was happenin'. An' I remember standin' out in the snow exchangin' snowballs with Lester Collins and Merriweather Whittaker and Coony Day singer's daddy… whatever his name was… and a whole bunch a other boys who'd come on down with their daddies. But by and by it got dark for real… and cold… that winter was colder'n a crib full of witch's tits, the whole goddamn town was cut off, you know, sorta sealed off by the icy roads and drifts. Couldna even got to Oak Hill that winter, damn roads was so bad. Train got through, but not every day. Not for weeks that time of year, what with the drifts north of town where the cut was and the railroad havin' no snowplows up this way and all. So we was on our own.
"When we got cold we went in and the trial… they called it a trial… was almost over. Couldna took no more than an hour. There wasn't no real judge… Judge Ashley retired young and was a bit crazy… but they called it a trial anyhow. Mr. Ashley, he looked the part. I remember standin' up there with the other boys on the mezzanine where the books used to be, looking down on the center hall where all the men was crowded in, and marvelin' at how Judge Ashley looked so handsome, what with his expensive gray suit and silk cravat and that silk top hat he wore everywhere. "Course he didn't have the top hat on when he was judgin'… I remember seein' the lamplight sort of glowin' on his white hair and wonderin' how a man that young could look so wise…
"Anyway, Billy Phillips was just finishin' tellin' how he was walkin' home when the nigger tried to catch him… said he run after him sayin' he was goin' to kill him an' eat 'im the way he done the girl… and Billy, God that kid was the biggest liar I ever knowed… little shit useta play hooky back when I was still in school and then come creepin' in an' say he was helpin' his sick momma-Old Lady Phillips was always sick and dyin' of somethin'-said he was sick when we all knowed that he was out screwin' around or fishin' or somethin'. Anyway, Billy says he got away from the nigger, but he went back and spied on the nigger's camp and saw him take out the little Campbell girl's petticoat-she was Billy's cousin, did I tell you that?-take out her petticoat and sort of touch it there around that campfire. He says then he run into town and told the men at the saloon.
"Another guy, coulda been Clement Day singer come to think of it… that was his name, Clement… he said that he seen the nigger hangin' around Dr. Campbell's house before Christmas,"bout the time the little girl up and disappears. Said he hadn't remembered it before, but now it come back to him and he was sure the nigger was hangin' around real suspicious like. After Clement, some of the other folks remember the nigger lurkin' around there too.
"So Judge Ashley banged his big old Colt pistol like a whatchamacallit… a gavel… and he says "Do you got anything to say for your own self?" to the nigger, but the nigger just glares at everybody out of his yellowy eyes and didn't say nothing. "Course his usual fat lips was all swole up fatter 'cause some of the men'd found cause to beat on him, but I think that nigger coulda spoke if he'd wanted to. I guess he didn't want to.
"So Judge Ashley… we was all thinkin' of him as a real judge again by then… he pounds his Colt on the table they dragged out into the hall there, and he says, "You're guilty, by God, and I hereby sentence you to hang by the neck until you're dead and may God have mercy on your soul." An' then that mob of men just sorta stood there for a minute until finally the Judge shouted somethin' and old Carl Doubbet, he laid hands on the nigger, and pretty soon there were a couple dozen of the men draggin' that nigger down past the little kids' classrooms, and then up the big stairway under the stain glass, and then up where us boys was watchin'… dragged that nigger past me so close I coulda reached out and touched those fat lips that were turnin' all purple… and then us kids followed as they dragged him up the stairs where the high-school level was… that was where Carl or Clement or one of the men stuck the black hood on him… and then they drug him up those last steps, the ones that aren't out in the open anymore, where they put that wall in, you know… and they took him out on that little catwalk that ran around the inside of the belfry.
"You can't see it no more… I've helped Karl Van Syke and Miller before him clean that place for forty years, so I know what I'm talkin' about… you can't see it no more, but it useta be that the belfry had that little catwalk around the inside and you could see down all the way to the first floor, like three rings of balconies goin' right up to that big old bell that Mr. Ashley brung back from Europe. Anyway, we was all standin' around these balconies, the first floor filled with men… and some womenfolk too, I remember seeing Sally Moon's mommy Emma there with her weak-kneed little husband Orville, both their faces just gleamin' they was so happy and excited… everyone starin' up at Judge Ashley and the few others standing around that nigger up there in the belfry.
"I remember thinkin' that they was gonna scare the nigger real bad… put that rope around his scrawny black neck and scare him so bad that he'd just have to start talkin', start tellin' the truth… but that ain't what they did. No sir, what they did was, Judge Ashley borrowed a knife from one of the men there, it coulda been Cecil Whittaker's, and he cut that damned bell rope that hung down all the way to the first floor. I remember leanin' over that high-school-level balcony and starin' down as that rope just sort of folded up and come crashin' down, folks jostlin' to get out of its way and then fillin' back in the space, their faces lookin' up past me at the nigger again. And then Judge Ashley did a strange thing.
"I shoulda figured it when he cut the rope, but I didn't. They was fiddlin' with that nigger's hood, and I figured Now they're gonna take it off an' scare him, say they're gonna throw him over to the crowd or somethiri… but they didn't. What they done was take that short end of the bell rope and tie it around the nigger's neck, the hood still on him, and Judge Ashley nods to the men up there with him and somehow they got that nigger up on that little railing that went around the inside of the belfry… and then, boy, there was this damn pause… I couldn't hear nothin' of the crowd. Musta been three hundred people there, but you couldn't hear nothin' of the usual snufflin' or scrapin' or mumblin' or even breathin' that you get from a crowd that size. Just silence. Every man, woman, and child-'cludin' me-starin' up three floors at that nigger teeterin' there on the edge of that balcony, his face hid by that damn black hood, his hands tied behind his back, nothin' holdin' him there except a couple men's hands on his arms.
"And then someone-I 'spect it was Judge Ashley, though I didn't see too clear 'cause it was dark in that belfry and I was watchin' the nigger, just like everybody else-then somebody shoved him off.
"Nigger kicked, of course. The fall wasn't far enough that it'd break his neck like a real hangin'. He kicked like a royal sonofabitch, swinging from one side of the open stairwell to t'other, kickin' his black ass off and makin' wild chokin' sounds under his hood. I could hear him real good. His feet was just a few feet from my head ever' time he swung over to our side of the high school balcony. I remember that nigger lost one shoe and the other had a hole in it that his big toe was stickin' out of, even as he was kickin'. I remember too that Coony Daysinger reached out and sorta tried to touch the nigger while he was swingin' and kickin'… not to stop him from swingin' or pull him in or anything like that, just touch him, sorta like you would somethin' at the sideshow if they'd let you… but just then we see the nigger piss his pants… swear to God, you could see his raggedy pants gettin' dark with the stain as it was runnin' down his leg and then the folks down on the first floor was makin' noise all right, and shovin' to get out of the way. And then the nigger quit kickin' and just swung silent-like, so Coony, he pulled back his hand an' none of the rest of us tried it neither.
"You know the strange thing, boy? When that nigger went off the ledge, the big ol' bell started ringin', which makes sense. And it kept on ringin' when the nigger was swingin' and kickin' and chokin', which nobody took no notice of 'cause all his bobbin' up and down on the end of the rope woulda made any bell ring like a sonbitch… but you know the strange part, boy? Some of us hung around, so to speak,"till after they cut that nigger down and took his body out to the dump or somewhere to get rid of… and that goddamn bell kept ringin'. I think the fuckin' thing rang all that night and off an' on the next day, like that nigger was still swingin' from it. Somebody said that the hangin' musta messed up the bell's balance or somethin'. But it was a strange sound… I swear to you… ridin' outa town that night with the Old Man, smelling the cold air and the snow and the Old Man's whiskey and the sound of the horses' hooves on the ice and frozen dirt underneath, Elm Haven nothin' but dark trees and cold chimney smoke glowin' in the moonlight behind us… and that damn bell still ringin' its ass off.
"Say, you got another bottle of this fine champagne, boy? This one's one dead soldier."
"So you see," Mr. Dennis Ashley-Montague was saying," 'your so-called legend of the Borgia Bell is as fake as the so-called authenticity certificates which caused my grandfather to buy it in the first place. There is no legend… only an old, poorly cast bell sold to a gullible Illinois traveler."
"Uh-huh," said Dale. Mr. Ashley-Montague had been talking for several minutes, the sunlight from the diamond-paned window behind him lying rich and heavy across the massive oak desk and creating a corona of light around his thinning hair. "Well, I guess I don't believe you," saidDale.
The millionaire scowled and folded his arms, obviously not used to being called a liar by an eleven-year-old. One pale eyebrow arched. "Oh? And what do you believe, young man? That this bell is causing all sorts of supernatural events? Aren't you a bit old for that?"
