Spyhole Secrets Read online

  But the questions about her mother were the worst. After a lot of comments about what a lovely lady Paula Meredith was and how she reminded them of their own dear daughter who lived far away in Massachusetts, Mrs. Tilson said, “We’ve been worrying about your mother, dear. She’s been looking so tired lately. Working such long hours and with all the household duties to handle by herself. I hope you’re doing all you can to help.”

  That did it. The throat-swelling, eye-burning rage flared up like an erupting volcano.

  “Yeah, I try to help her.” Hallie pushed away her pie plate and got to her feet. The Tilsons were staring up at her, looking more than ever like a pair of nervous rabbits. “At least I don’t send her to the store all the time to buy yogurt for me.”

  She was heading for the door when the guilt thing kicked in, mixing up the hard, clean anger and turning it into a miserable, stomach-tightening confusion. She turned back long enough to mumble, “Thanks for the pie,” and then, halfway out the door and halfway crying, she stopped again, this time to choke out, “I’m sorry.” Then she ran down the hall and up the stairs to the third floor. She was still running and crying when she got back home.

  Outside the door to the cell block, Hallie wiped her eyes and clenched her teeth, biting off the urge to sob. It didn’t take long. She’d had a lot of practice at that sort of thing lately. At swallowing sobs and wiping pain and anger off her face. She waited until she thought everything was under control before she went on in.

  On her way to her bedroom she stuck her head through the kitchen door and said, “They said to tell you thanks for the yogurt.” She swallowed hard to clear her throat before she went on, “I had some cherry pie.”

  Still at the kitchen sink, her mother turned her head, “Oh, good for you,” she said. “Annette’s cherry pie is just about…” But by then Hallie was out of earshot, on her way to her bedroom. Closing the door firmly behind her, she sat down on the bed, then got up again to look in the small oval mirror over her dresser. Leaning forward until her face filled the mirror, she checked out her eyes first—red and puffy, and angry too. And not just her eyes. Her whole face looked tight and ugly with anger. Positively ugly.

  Feeling shocked, she reached up to wipe her eyes and run her fingers across her cheeks. Forcing her lips into a phony smile, she tried to remind herself how she used to look. Pretty, people used to say. What a pretty girl, and such a charming one-dimple smile. She smiled a phony, charming smile again and held it until the tears came back. She watched a tear run over the spot where the dimple had been before she flopped down to bury her face in the pillow.

  Lying there, facedown, she reached back for the anger, asking herself, “What gives those people the right to stick their noses into our business? Or the right to tell me what to do?” It worked for a little while.

  One of the things she’d learned since June was that being really mad could crowd out worse stuff. Not always, and not for very long, but quite often anger was better than tears. She’d learned a lot about such things since the Monday morning when her father had started for work a little early on the day of the chain-reaction pileup on the foggy freeway.

  She’d been angry a lot since that day. Angry at God for the fog and for letting her father be one of the drivers who got caught in it. And angry at her mother for fussing at Dad to start early that morning so he wouldn’t have to drive so fast.

  “I worry about you trying to hurry on that crowded freeway,” her mother had said. “Why don’t you try starting a little earlier?” And so he had. Just early enough to be caught in one of the worst freeway disasters that had ever happened.

  Not that she held that against her mother, at least not very much. After all, her mother hadn’t meant it to turn out the way it did. But there were other things. Things like what she’d said when Hallie complained about having to sell their house. Things about some bad investments Dad had made, as if losing their house had been all his fault. And there had been plenty of other things to be angry about.

  She’d hated it when her mother couldn’t find a job anywhere near Bloomfield and had to start looking in places like Irvington. And she’d hated it even more when it turned out they had to move into Warwick Mansion, just because it was cheap and close to her mother’s new job. Into a tiny, ugly—not to mention hot and airless—apartment.

  But the worst thing about Warwick Mansion, of course, was rule number one on the lease contract that her mother had actually signed, even after Hallie had told her she’d rather be homeless than sign a thing like that. Rule number one, the no pets rule, which meant that both Zeus and Thisbe belonged to other people now.

  The trouble with anger, though, as Mom’s busybody friend, Ellen, was always saying, was that it didn’t solve anything and it didn’t last. No matter how hard you tried to hang on, it eventually faded away, leaving you with other feelings that were even worse. “Like guilt, for instance,” Ellen liked to say. “Like guilt for the things you said or did while you were too angry to think straight.”

  “Well, forget that one,” Hallie remembered telling Ellen. “Forget that guilt thing. Why should I feel guilty?”

  The sound of footsteps interrupted her thoughts. Unclenching her jaw and fists, Hallie sat up and rubbed her face hard with both hands. She was sitting cross-legged, leafing through her language arts book, when her mother came in and asked how it was going.

  “All right, I guess,” Hallie said. “I just have to read this chapter and answer some questions about it.”

  “Could I see?” Her mother sat down at the foot of the bed, took the book, and holding Hallie’s place with one finger, flipped through a few pages. When she gave it back she said, “Looks interesting. A lot more interesting than the textbooks we used to have.” She smiled at Hallie—and Hallie smiled back. A small smile, but one she almost meant.

  See, Ellen, Hallie thought, anger does help. Once it burns itself out, you do feel better, at least for a while. But later, when her mother said, “Good night, then. Think I’ll go to bed early. I’m awfully tired,” suddenly it was back again. Anger at her mother for the tiredness in her face and voice. And at the Tilsons for making it seem that it was Hallie’s fault. Anger at everyone and everything.

  Shoving her homework out of the way, she flopped down on the bed and stayed there until the bathroom pipes stopped gurgling and the door to her mother’s bedroom opened and closed. Then she got up, got her slippers out of the closet, and tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen, where a small flashlight was kept under the sink and the key to the attic lay on the shelf over the sink.

  The attic at night wasn’t a whole lot of fun. It was still hot, for one thing, and somehow seemed even more airless than it had during the day. Breathtakingly hot and dark, and more deeply silent than seemed possible or likely. Actually, it was pretty terrifying, or at least it could have been for someone who hadn’t stopped caring what happened to her. At the top of the stairs, Hallie stopped long enough to remember that she didn’t care anymore. To remind herself that she wouldn’t care a bit if a whole parade of ghosts appeared, or even a black-cloaked Dracula with long, bloody fangs.

  Still standing near the stairwell, reminding herself why she didn’t care, she shined the flashlight from side to side and saw—nothing at all. Less than nothing. The heavy darkness seemed to close in on the narrow beam, leaving only a pale slice of murky light that quickly faded to empty blackness. Empty, and yet wasn’t there something? A shape she could almost see, or maybe a sound she couldn’t quite hear.

  With the restless hush pressing ever closer, Hallie moved forward, her heart pounding and her breath coming in sharp, quick gasps. Once, she actually stopped and headed for the stairs. But then, gritting her teeth, she turned back again toward the tower alcove and the secret spyhole.

  When she sat down on the old trunk and leaned forward, her heart was still pounding wildly, and it continued to thunder against her ribs as fear quickly changed to eager anticipation. Forgetting the scary darkness
behind her, she put her eye to the narrow opening.

  The view was even better after dark. With all the lights on in the blue-tinged room across from the spyhole, everything was as clear and distinct as a brightly lit stage ready for some actors to appear and start the first act of a play. A play that would have to be about people who lived in an incredibly ugly fourth-floor apartment full of boring gray-brown furniture and who, like as not, were pretty stuffy and boring themselves. Except, of course, for the girl with the great hair.

  The mysterious girl staring sadly down toward Warwick Avenue had reminded Hallie of the Rapunzel princess. Hallie remembered most of the story. How the prince would come to the prison tower and call for Rapunzel to let down her long hair. But the ending? She wished she could remember how the story ended for the fairy-tale Rapunzel and, even more, she wished she knew more about the real-life, modern one. What was happening in her life, Hallie wondered, that made her look so mournfully out the window for such a long time? What or who was she expecting to see?

  Hallie was staring into the blue-tinged room wondering about the Rapunzel girl when she suddenly noticed something moving. Someone was in the room after all, and must have been there the whole time. Right there all the time, seated, no doubt, just beyond the windowed wall, where only their feet and lower legs were visible from Hallie’s point of view. Dull brown pant legs and dark shoes that blended into the drab colors of the room, so that they only became noticeable when they began to move.

  It was a man, Hallie decided, and judging by the size of his shoes, a big one. Not a kid; not a teenage boy either. Not with those dressy black leather shoes. Who was he, then, and what was he to Rapunzel? Her father? Hallie was considering whether that was the answer when a door swung open and someone rushed into the room. And there she was, Rapunzel herself.

  She was dressed differently now, in a kimono with long flowing sleeves. Most of her heavy curtain of hair was pulled back and tied behind her neck, but a few strands had escaped and fell around her face in silky streamers.

  Hallie stared, mystified and entranced. In the kimono, the girl looked even more like a character from a fairy tale. Her eyes had changed too. Instead of sad and dreamy they now seemed wide and wild, darting here and there as if in fright or anger. Her lips were moving rapidly, as if she was talking fast, or perhaps even yelling. What was she saying? Hallie could only wish desperately for Superman ears, or for the ability to read lips.

  Rapunzel stopped talking then, for only a moment, perhaps listening to something the person in the chair was saying. When she began to talk again, her lips moved just as furiously as before. Then she whirled and ran out of the room.

  Hallie was still staring at the door that had slammed shut behind Rapunzel when it flew open again and she reappeared, dragging something, or someone, behind her. Dragging—a monster! A small monster, not nearly as big as Rapunzel herself, but incredibly evil-looking. It was entirely wrapped in a long black cape, so that the shape of its body was blurred and vague. But its head was … unbelievable.

  Beneath a crest of bristling feathers the head was large, much too large for its small body. On one of its irregular surfaces, a strange collection of features were jumbled together into what looked almost like a face: a long pointed nose, huge bushy eyebrows, and a grinning mouth full of long, sharp teeth. Almost a face, but not quite.

  Pressing her eye to the spyhole and her cheek against the rough paneling, Hallie almost forgot to breathe as the monster and Rapunzel struggled, staggering back and forth across the room. Holding it away from her at arm’s length, she pulled it this way and that while it twisted and turned, striking out at her now and then with spider-thin black arms.

  The battle had been going on for what seemed like a very long time before the person in the chair got to his feet and began to intervene. Now that he was visible, Hallie could see that he was indeed a man: a tall, gray-haired man with a lean, narrow head. As he stood up and stomped across the room, his angular face was contorted by anger. And he, like Rapunzel, was obviously yelling, his mouth working fast and furiously.

  Putting one hand on Rapunzel’s shoulder and the other on the back of the little monster, he moved forward, pushing them both ahead of him. Shoving, struggling, and striking out, the three of them crossed the room and disappeared through a door that seemed to lead to a hallway. The room was empty again. Nothing moved except the wavering blue light.

  Several minutes passed, during which Hallie remained at the spyhole waiting to see more, and wanting—not just wanting, desperately needing—to know more about what she had just seen. But when the man returned at last he was alone, and he stayed only long enough to turn out the lights. The blue-lit room disappeared into darkness, and Hallie returned to the reality of the enclosing tower room and, beyond it, the empty darkness of the Warwick Mansion attic.

  The return trip across the attic was at a faster pace than the arrival, which somehow made it more frightening. Terrifying, actually. Walking fast in the flashlight’s narrow beam, then almost running, she felt she was trying to escape something that was right behind her. Right behind her, and coming closer with every step. Something ghostly white that drifted after her through the darkness, or perhaps a small, shapeless, black-robed form that bounced over the floor.

  When she was finally back in her own bed, Hallie shut her eyes tightly and pulled the covers over her face.

  So that was the end of the weird Tuesday. It was over, a new day would soon begin, and nobody would know about the strange things that had happened the day before. No one but Hallie herself. And for a whole lot of reasons, it was going to have to stay that way.

  Except for the part about Erin and the lie, of course. Hallie cringed, pulling the blankets up farther over her head. The lie. Why had she lied to Erin? And if she had had to lie to keep Erin from seeing the cell block, why hadn’t she picked something to lie about besides Dad?

  Dad. Hallie rocked her head on the pillow with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She wasn’t going to cry. Not anymore. Enough is enough, she told herself. Enough was all through June and July and most of August, when the tears had gone on every night in bed and lots of other times too, whenever something reminded her of what had happened or of how things used to be.

  And in the mornings too, after a night of good dreams in which Dad was still alive and everything was back the way it had been before. Dreams in which she and Dad were playing with Zeus in the backyard or just sitting together, Dad in his leather chair and Hallie on the fat armrest, while they talked about everything from shaggy dog jokes to very private things like the kinds of things you said when you were talking to God. And then the dream would end and the tears would begin.

  There had been lots of tears, up until the time when Zeus and Thisbe had gone off to live with their new owners and nearly everything the Merediths owned had been sold or packed into boxes. That had been in August, and it was not long afterward that Hallie began to work at making anger take the place of tears.

  It usually started with the why questions: Why did it have to happen? And why to Dad? Why had God let Alex Meredith die, when everyone always said what a good person he was, and at the same time all kinds of other people went on living, some of them really bad people…

  It was beginning to work. The angry fire was starting somewhere in her chest and soon it would begin to burn its way to her face, drying up the tears. She knew how to reach out for it now, welcoming it, calling up all the familiar words and phrases. She was well into the process when something, some momentary memory, began to interfere. The crack widened then, enough to allow other vivid bits and pieces to slide through.

  At first it was mostly questions about the Rapunzel girl. Who was she? What was her real name and how old was she? And was there any way to find out? For some strange reason Hallie found herself really wanting to know the answers.

  Not that it mattered, she told herself. Why should a person with all sorts of problems of her own be curious about a teenage strang
er? So what if she had awesome hair and apparently lived with a small, ugly monster?

  But the questions kept coming back. Was Rapunzel still in school, and if so, where did she go? Probably to a high school. Hallie had seen lots of high school kids on Warwick Avenue, particularly around the video game store on the corner of Fifteenth Street. But she’d never seen Rapunzel there, she was sure of that. She would have remembered if she had. Especially the hair. Hair like that would be hard to forget.

  And then there was the monster with a face like some kind of primitive mask…. Wait a minute. It wasn’t until that instant that Hallie realized that she had seen the monster before—at least its head. It was the word mask that had done it. That word brought back a memory of the object that had been on the mantel in the living room the first time she had looked through the spyhole. She was sure there had been a mask there. She remembered thinking that it was the most interesting thing in the whole room. But had it been missing that evening? She didn’t remember.

  Hallie sat straight up in bed, and for a moment she actually considered going back up to the attic to see if the mask was still on the mantel. But the thought of the long trek across the dark attic was definitely discouraging. Besides, the lights in the spyhole room were probably still turned off.

  No, she wouldn’t go back tonight, but next time she’d remember to check on the mask. If there was a next time. And in the meantime she’d just forget about it. Or at least try to.

  Back under the covers, Hallie closed her eyes again and tried to shut her mind to everything. Particularly to everything that had happened that day at school, and on the walk home with Erin, and in the attic’s tower alcove.

  But—was the mask she’d seen on the mantel the kind that could be worn? And if so, how? And whose body could have looked so small and shapeless under a black robe? Hallie was still wondering when her mind began to drift and cloud. And then light was streaming into the room and it was another day.