The Headless Cupid Read online

  “From me?” David said.

  “Sure. That time when you were doing the not-touching-metal ordeal. And you waited until everyone looked away and then you dumped your dinner in your lap.”

  A new idea occurred to David. “Hey,” he said. “How about the seance? The rapping and everything. Was that—what I mean is—did you do that too?”

  For a minute Amanda only looked at David through narrowed eyes, but then she shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. “I did it. I’ll bet you’d never guess how.”

  “Well,” David said. “I guess I haven’t yet, anyway.”

  “With my toe,” Amanda said.

  “With your toe!”

  “Uh-huh. I read about a poltergeist haunting that finally turned out to be a fake, only no one guessed for a long time. They found out these two girls had been doing it all—and they did the rapping noises with their toes. So, since I’d never really been a medium yet, and I wasn’t sure I could do it, I planned the toe business just in case no real spirits showed up. So you kids wouldn’t be disappointed.”

  “But how’d you make such a loud noise with just your toe?”

  “Well, the book didn’t tell exactly how the two girls did it, so I worked out a way of my own. I found a big heavy metal ring—something off a car engine—that just fit around my big toe. And I practiced till I could rap really hard with it. Then when I wanted to rap at the seance I just slipped my foot out of the slipper and rapped with the ring. It worked fine except my toe got swollen and I almost couldn’t get it off. I had a sore toe for two days afterwards.”

  “Oh yeah,” David said, remembering how Amanda had been limping around for a while. “But how about the thing in the closet.”

  “Oh that was easy. I made a red paper shade for the light bulb. You know how the light is in that closet—it’s one of those old fashioned ones that hang down from a cord. Well, I tied a long string onto the chain that turns it on and I brought the string down under the Indian rug, so that it came out right under my chair. Then I tied a button onto the end of it so I could get hold of it and pull it with my toes.”

  “But what about the head with the eyes?”

  “I cut that out of cardboard and hung it on the inside of the curtain so that you couldn’t see it till the light came on behind it.”

  “Wow!” David said. “Could I see how you did it?”

  “Sure,” Amanda said. “Right now?” She started to get up, looking almost the way Janie did when you admired something clever she’d done.

  “Okay, in a minute. But there’s another question I wanted to ask first.”

  “What?” Amanda said, sitting back down.

  “Well, what I wanted to ask was—well, I guess it was—why? I mean, why did you do it?”

  Amanda stared at the ground again. She glanced up at David several times before she said anything. The first time she looked up, David thought she was going to be angry, but by the next time she seemed to have changed her mind.

  Finally she said, “I don’t know. Not anymore. Part of the time I thought it was to get them to move out of this house because I didn’t want to live way out here in the country and have to go to some crummy hick school with a lot of squares who’d probably hate a person like me. I thought if I scared everybody enough we’d have to move. But I guess that wasn’t all the reason. I guess the most important reason was—to get even.”

  “To get even?” David asked. “What were you getting even for?”

  “For everything. I was getting even with everybody for everything.”

  From the way Amanda said “everything” you could tell she thought she had a lot to get even for. After a while David asked, “Did you tell Molly about you being the poltergeist, I mean, up until last night? Is that what you were talking to her about?”

  Amanda nodded. “Yes. I told her about that and a whole lot of other stuff. We must have talked about three or four hours.”

  “What did she say about all the things you did? What is she going to do about the smashed philodendron and everything?” David asked.

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t either, at least, not yet. We didn’t have time to decide anything much, but we found out a lot of things.” Amanda leaned over and picked up a twig and began tracing patterns in the dusty ground. “I found out some things,” she said.

  “I know one thing I’d like to find out,” David said. “I’d like to find out where that cupid’s head came from.”

  Amanda looked at him quickly. “Me too,” she said.

  “Well, what do you think?” David asked. “Do you think it’s the real poltergeist come back?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think so?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the one who’s supposed to know all about the supernatural and everything.”

  Amanda sighed and shook her head and kept shaking it for a long time. Finally she said, “I don’t know. I just wish your dad were here. How long till he comes home?”

  That really surprised David, because he thought he knew how Amanda felt about his dad. And he never would have guessed that even an army of poltergeists would make her glad to see Dad come home. He was about to say so when the back door opened and Janie came out with the twins right behind her.

  David gave Amanda a significant look to remind her that the kids didn’t know about last night and weren’t supposed to find out. Amanda nodded, but at the same time she gave David a cold look that said she didn’t need advice from him. Then she put her chin on her knees and sank into a gloomy silence.

  Not knowing anything about all the trouble and worry of the night before, the kids were full of their usual early morning energy and enthusiasm. In fact they seemed to be more full of enthusiasm than usual. They bounced around the back porch, giggling and chattering and trying to get attention. They even began to get on David’s nerves, and considering the frame of mind Amanda seemed to be in, he was sure they were getting on hers. When Esther got behind Amanda on the stairs and started to climb on her back for another piggyback ride, David winced, waiting for Amanda to explode and start yelling.

  To his surprise, instead of yelling, Amanda took hold of Esther’s legs to hold her on and galloped off across the yard, with Esther giggling and squealing on her back and Janie and Blair running along behind.

  That really surprised David, and he was even more surprised that afternoon when he walked into his room and found Blair sitting in the middle of the floor playing with Amanda’s crow. Blair was feeding the crow little bits of cookie. David noticed the crow’s cage was sitting open on the window seat.

  “Hey,” David said, “does Amanda know you have Rolor in here?”

  “Amanda knows,” Blair said. “Amanda gave him to me.”

  David was positive that that was what Blair said, but he found it hard to believe.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Blair said. “And she gave the bumpy lizard to Janie and Tesser.”

  “Wow.”

  “The snake is for you.”

  “Wow,” David said again.

  He sat down on the floor by Blair and took a piece of cookie to see if the crow would eat out of his hand, too. The crow turned his head and looked suspiciously at David with one round yellow eye, but after a while he hopped closer and accepted the food.

  David was helping Blair move Rolor’s cage to a better place on the table in the corner when he noticed a big purple bruise on Blair’s leg just below the knee.

  “Hey, how’d you do that?” he asked.

  “I did that, too,” Blair said. “And that, too.” He showed David another bruise on his ankle and a smaller one on his elbow. “The stairs did it,” Blair said. “When I fell down with the box.” He tipped his head to one side and looked thoughtful for a moment before he said, “Where is that box, David? Did you see that box?”

  David was beginning to get an excited feeling. “Box?” he said. “What box, Blair? Was it a wooden box with a cupid’s head and a bunch of rocks in it?”
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  Blair nodded. “Last night,” he said. “The box fell down the stairs with me. But it’s gone now. Did you see that box, David?”

  Chapter Twenty

  IT TOOK A LOT OF TIME AND PATIENCE AND DOZENS OF QUESTIONS BEFORE David finally got the whole story. As soon as he began to understand what Blair was talking about, he got very excited and impatient. And Blair always got more silent than usual the minute you got impatient with him.

  Blair had almost quit trying to say anything, when he suddenly got up and ran to the window seat. David was starting to yell at him to come back and start talking, when he realized that Blair was trying to show him something. The window seat was where Blair kept all his toys, and David couldn’t see what it could have to do with what they were talking about—until he looked inside. The back wall of the window seat had come loose and was leaning forward on top of Blair’s toys, and behind it there was a dark and dusty hole. The hole was several inches wide, reaching from where the back wall of the window seat had been to the outer wall of the house. It was empty except for a lot of musty smelling dust. David remembered that smell from the night before.

  “Is this where you found it? he asked. “Is this where you found the box with the cupid’s head?”

  It all began to come clear. Blair hadn’t been sleepy last night because of his long nap, and after Amanda put him to bed he had gotten up and played with his toys. And somehow he had bumped the inside wall of the window seat and knocked it loose. And that was when he found the box.

  “And you started down the stairs with it and fell?” David asked, and Blair agreed, nodding hard. “And then what? Where did you go then? You weren’t there when we came to see what happened.”

  “I was scared,” Blair said. “My leg hurt and somebody was yelling and I hid in my bed and waited for you. And you didn’t come. And then it was morning.”

  So that explained it. Amanda’s screaming had frightened Blair, and he’d gone back to bed. And he’d stayed there until he went to sleep. As soon as David had it all figured out, his first thought was to tell everybody. Amanda first, and then Molly and everybody. He’s actually started out the door when Blair called him back.

  “What is it?” he asked impatiently. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Could I see it,” Blair said. “Could I see the box?”

  “The box isn’t here,” David said. “Ingrid put it somewhere but—” All of a sudden David remembered about the cupid’s head, and he went over to his dresser and took it out. He sat down by Blair, and they looked at it together.

  The head was just like the other ones on the banisters, except that under the coating of dust its wooden cheeks and curls looked a little shinier and less worn. Just like the other cupids, it had fat round cheeks and a small smiling mouth. At the bottom of the head, where it had been cut off, the wood was rough and jagged and unfinished, not smoothed down and varnished like the neck from which it had come.

  Holding the head in his hands, David began to think about how it might have been cut off—and who had done it. And who had hidden it in the box behind the window seat wall, more than seventy years before. He supposed it was the poltergeist who had hid it—the famous Westerly poltergeist—and that only left one mystery. Had the famous Westerly poltergeist been a real ghost or had it only been the two Westerly sisters pretending to be one, in order to scare people—or get even—or something.

  Sitting there, holding the cupid’s head, David began to realize that he was feeling a little disappointed. Disappointed that there might not ever have been a real poltergeist. He knew, too, that the kids would feel the same way. And it was funny, but he didn’t think that, at this point, Amanda would be the least bit disappointed. It seemed strange that Amanda, who was so crazy about such things, didn’t seem to like the supernatural nearly so much when it really started happening. And the kids, who didn’t know a thing about the occult world, seemed, on the whole, to enjoy it.

  David let Blair play with the head, while he stretched out on the floor and did some serious thinking. Amanda had certainly changed since she started thinking there was a real poltergeist around. Would she change back if she knew there hadn’t really been one? David wondered about that for a while and about some other things, and by the time he got up, he’d completely changed his mind about what he was going to do. He explained about the poltergeist and Amanda to Blair very carefully.

  “Look, Blair,” he said finally. “Let’s not tell Amanda or anybody about your finding the box and falling down stairs with it. Let’s not tell anybody anything about it at all. At least for a while. Maybe someday we’ll tell them all about it. But first I want to wait a while. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Blair said. His smile almost turned into a laugh, and he jumped up and down a little. “Okay, let’s don’t.”

  David wondered if Blair was so pleased because he liked having a secret with just David, or because he liked not having to do all that talking and explaining. Or maybe it was because he had the same kind of feeling that David was having, about it being better to let Amanda go on believing in the poltergeist for a while. If that was it, it was amazing because David wasn’t too sure he understood the feeling himself. But there was no use asking Blair what he was thinking—and besides, with Blair, thinking didn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with understanding, anyway.

  So David and Blair kept quiet and things went on about the same around the Westerly house. Amanda spent a lot of time with the kids or with Molly, and, after a day or two, Ingrid got tired of trying to solve the mystery and went back to the city.

  Then, late in August, David’s dad came back from the mountains. He came home tired and dirty and very glad to see everyone. And everyone was very glad to see him. Of course, they all told him about the poltergeist and what it had done, and of course he had to hear about Amanda and what she had done, too. In fact, Dad and Amanda had a long private talk about it not long after he came home. David never could get Amanda to tell him what they’d said to each other, but it must not have been too bad—because afterwards Amanda began to talk to Dad a little, even in public.

  The only thing that Dad didn’t find out was that Blair had been the one who had found the box and dumped it down the stairs. David couldn’t tell him that, because he’d be sure to tell Molly and Molly would tell Amanda, and David still felt it wasn’t time for her to know. Not yet.

  So Dad had to go on wondering about that, along with everybody else, except David and Blair. Everyone talked about it and wondered about it, but Amanda seemed to wonder about it more than anybody. But not too long after Dad came home, Amanda stopped having to have somebody go with her everytime she went upstairs after dark. And as time went by and nothing else strange happened, she seemed to be wondering less and less.

  Then one day something happened that made David, himself, start to wonder again. Dad had been home for nearly a week and the excitement had settled down enough so that David could do some things he’d been planning. One of those things was to put the long missing head back on the cupid. It took him most of one morning to get ready.

  First, he had to sand the varnish off the neck edge, and then he filed and sanded the head edge down to match. Then he borrowed some very strong furniture glue from Molly. He was sitting on the landing smearing the glue on both surfaces, when Blair started down the stairs. He was carrying David’s basketball.

  “Hey, where are you going with that?” David said.

  “Outside,” Blair said. “To play. Okay?”

  “Well, okay,” David said. “Just be sure to bring it back when you’re through.”

  But Blair didn’t go on down the stairs right away. As soon as he noticed what David was doing, he sat down on the landing to watch. David was blowing on the glue to make it hurry up and get tacky.

  After a while Blair said, “She’ll like that.”

  “Who? The cupid? It’s supposed to be a he.”

  “No. Not the cupid. The girl who told me.”

  “The girl
who told you what?”

  “To get the head out. She told me where to look. She wanted the cupid to have it back. I think she did.”

  David stopped blowing on the head. “What are you talking about, Blair? What girl told you where the head was?” He was getting so excited that he was almost yelling and, of course, that was a mistake. Blair began to get his worried silent look.

  “That girl—” he got out finally, “—who lived here.”

  “You mean a girl who used to live here a long time ago?”

  Blair nodded.

  “You mean a ghost girl?” David was trying not to, but he was shrieking a little.

  After a long time Blair nodded again, very slowly. “I think,” he said. Just then the basketball dropped out of his hands and rolled down the stairs, and Blair went after it.

  David started to run after him, but when he stood up he found that he’d absentmindedly put the cupid’s head down in his lap. By the time he got it unstuck from his pants, Blair was out the front door. David frantically stuck the head onto the cupid and ran outdoors and around the house. He finally found Blair bouncing the ball in the driveway. But Blair absolutely refused to talk about it anymore. When David asked him, he only said he didn’t remember.

  Blair went right on not remembering, so David had to go on wondering. He went on wondering about it for a long time, particularly every time he went up the stairs and looked at that cupid with its head on—a little bit crooked.

  is the author of The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm, all Newbery Honor Books, and most recently, The Treasures of Weatherby, The Bronze Pen, and William S. and the Great Escape. She was nominated for an Edgar Award for her book The Unseen, which was a School Library Journal Best Book and a Parents’ Choice Silver Honor winner. Zilpha lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit her at zksnyder.com.

  Jacket design by Michael McCartney