The Dark Stairs R/I by Betsy Byars Page B

use.”
    â€œBack there.”
    â€œThen let’s go up that way. You need to face this with me.”
    At that moment, Herculeah knew that even though the Moloch had not killed his mother, even though he had spent years in an asylum for something he had not done, ten years ago the Moloch had come back here, to this room where she was standing, and had killed his father.
    Her eyes darted around the room, taking in the huge carved chest at the foot of the bed: that was big enough to hold a body. But the police had probably checked that. And the huge armoire: that could hold four or five bodies....
    She needed to think. She reached into her pocket and took out her glasses. She fastened the slim gold hooks behind her ears. From the street below came another shrill whistle, but Herculeah did not turn around.
    She was beginning to get a feeling about what had happened in this room. The Moloch had come to the house—this was his first escape from the asylum. It was probably night. He had gotten the key from over the basement door and unlocked the door to the side porch.
    He had come into the darkened living room and into the hallway. He had avoided the marble stairs, even though marble stairs don’t give you away by creaking. He had come up the back stairs, down the hall, into this room.
    Had he spoken?
    Herculeah thought he had, because he had been waiting for this moment for years, dreaming of it, hoping for it. “I tried to kill you once, and this time I am not going to fail.”
    Then he had crossed the room. The old man would have come awake by then, perhaps fumbled for the light beside his bed. The Moloch had taken the old man out of the bed, carried him as easily as if he were a doll, and flung him down the stairs. Then he had gone down the back stairs, out of the house. Like a child, reversing his steps, he had put the key back in its hiding place. The next day he was back at the asylum.
    But if it had happened that way, the body should have been found at the bottom of the stairs, and the body had never been found. Where was it?
    Herculeah broke off her thoughts. She whipped off her glasses. Her mother’s voice was in the upstairs hall now.
    â€œThat front room, where the door is open, that was your father’s room?” she asked.
    â€œYes.”
    Herculeah looked around frantically. The door to the dressing room was open. She moved quickly toward it. She slipped inside and flattened herself behind the door.
    â€œYou last saw your father here,” her mother asked, “in this room?” They were now at the door to the bedroom.
    Herculeah felt air on her face. The dressing room window was broken, and dead leaves had blown in through the opening and lay on the tiled floor. The crow had probably gotten in that way.
    â€œI last saw Father at the bottom of the stairs,” the Moloch said.
    â€œThe marble stairs?” her mother said.
    â€œ No.”
    â€œThe back stairs?”
    â€œNo.”
    Herculeah shoved herself further against the wall, and suddenly she felt herself falling backward. It was as if the wall had collapsed. She struggled to keep her balance.
    â€œDown the dark stairs,” the Moloch said.
    Herculeah caught herself, but she hung for a moment on the edge of darkness. It was like a bottomless, dark pit, and from this pit came a smell so terrible she felt she would faint.
    She gripped the banister. She was at the head of some stairs—a small, private staircase probably used only by one man. She lowered herself to the steps. The door swung shut behind her.
    Frozen with shock and growing horror, she could not move for a moment.
    She choked. The smell caused tears to pour down her cheeks. Although it was too dark to see, she knew there was a body at the bottom of the stairs.
    Then Herculeah did something she had never done before in her life. Herculeah screamed.

23
    THE INVESTIGATION
    â€œI came as soon as I could,” Meat told everybody in the