S.O.S.

by J. Fallenstein

  I have to do something—anything—to show Dad that I’m not useless.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Mom says from the kitchen. She uncovers the frosted carrot cake and then waves a hand over the cupcakes and pies on the table behind her.

  “Man, it feels good to be home.” Dad sits at the small table.

  As they eat, his dad talks haltingly about the strange dreams he had in the hospital. “There was a fire—but on the kayak. Must have been a side effect from the medicine,” he says. He smiles weakly at Tyrell, but it isn’t like it used to be. It’s like he’s disappointed.

  Tyrell avoids Dad’s gaze and gulps down his milk. His dreams have been weird too, but he isn’t taking any medicine.

  His mom makes the awful chamomile tea, and they sit in the kitchen, listening to the wind howl through the old stone walls of the cottage. “Once I get my energy back we’ll finish that attic,” his dad says, brushing crumbs from his shirt. He nods at Tyrell.

  “Tyrell, maybe you should sleep down here on the couch tonight,” his mom says.

  “Um.” Tyrell glances at the couch. “I don’t think I need to, Mom.” If I stay downstairs, I won’t be able to see the signal.

  “We just can’t have you getting cold,” his mom warns. “It’s going to get down to freezing.”

  “But it’s not cold up there,” Tyrell insists.

  His dad sits up. “If we leave the door open at the bottom of the stairs, the heat should get upstairs,” he says.

  “Great!” Tyrell hops up before his mom can intervene. “Glad you’re home, Dad. I gotta get some homework done before bed.” He heads up the narrow stairs.

  Downstairs the TV plays and then the dishes clink in the sink as his mom washes them. If Dad doesn’t get better—all better—I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again.

  Just after eleven o’clock the light snaps off at the bottom of the steps. Tyrell lies on his bed, propped up so he can see the factory, and waits. At exactly midnight the yellow light throbs: three short, three long, and three short. Someone has to be up there. A short in the wiring would just make a random flash.

  Silently, Tyrell gets into his snow pants and jacket. I have the keys, so I can get up there and find out who’s inside. It won’t take long. And if I don’t go now, the person could freeze to death, and then Dad won’t be the only one hurt because I didn’t do anything. He puts a small flashlight into his coat pocket, where it clinks against the key ring.

  Slowly he opens the creaking shed door and rolls his bike back. As he glides down the lane, a glow comes from behind the parted curtains on the main floor of the Schneider mansion. Someone is in there, watching.

  He pedals through the weeds, his heart racing. Is it Miss Schneider?

  The blustery wind chafes his cheeks and howls through the warped and cracked boards of the narrow footbridge. A snowstorm is coming. He tucks his head as he rumbles over the creek.

  Tiny snowflakes hit his face like pinpricks as he parks his bike and walks up to the front doors. He tugs the key ring from his pocket and tries each key.

  None of the keys fit. He drops the lock, and it clangs against the iron handle. The signal glows above.

  He steps back. “Hey!” he calls. “Who’s up there? It’s gonna freeze tonight—let me help you!”

  The light flashes again. He has to get to them before it’s too late.

  “Hey!” Tyrell shouts as he runs to the back of the building. Before he knows it, he is climbing the big gray pipe. He kicks the rest of the glass out of the second-floor window frame and balances for a second before lunging into the dark building.

  He takes out the flashlight and turns it on. The room is large and empty except for some litter and old beer bottles. Probably from those trespassers from the 1970s, he thinks. In the corner, an old wooden chair sits next to a dusty metal file cabinet. The entire room is lined with shelves, empty except for cobwebs.

  In another corner a metal staircase hangs precariously from the ceiling. The bottom half of the steps is missing, as if the staircase was ripped apart. There’s no way to get up there.

  “Hello? Do you need help?” he yells up the broken staircase. No answer. He has to get up to the third floor, to where the 1928 fire was.

  Chapter 8

  The heavy file cabinet screeches as Tyrell moves it under the stairs. He steps up on top of it, but the staircase’s bottom step and scrolled metal railing are still inches above his reach. He gets down and sets the chair on top of the cabinet. The legs fit over the top, but just barely. If the chair tips he could easily fall.

  Carefully he steps onto the cabinet and then the wobbly chair seat. His hands grip the cold, wrought-iron railing of the staircase, and he pulls himself up onto the steps. The metal whines and creaks as he takes one step, then another, then another, until finally he is on the wooden planks of the third floor.

  The thin flashlight beam reveals a room with two long tables. A broken chair lies near a big, black wood-burning stove with a corroded copper stovepipe. The room smells faintly of smoke. At the far end of the room is a warped wooden door covered with peeling green paint.

  If the fire only partially destroyed the third floor, then that door must lead to where the fire was. Its edges glow with yellow light as the signal flashes. Someone is in there!

  Tyrell’s shoes crunch over decades of grit and dust as he slowly approaches the door.

  “Hello?” he calls tentatively. “I’m here to help you.” The wind howls through the roof slates. Something skitters in the rafters above. A sick feeling fills him. Something happened here. Something isn’t right.

  He grabs the metal doorknob. “Who’s there?” he asks as he turns the knob. But it’s locked. He pulls the iron key ring from his pocket. The keys jingle as he tries the first antique key. It slides in, and when he turns it the door opens.

  The room is barely bigger than a bathroom. A charred smell fills his nose as he peers in from the doorway, and he sneezes. The corner and far wall are burned black; near the wall some of the planks of the wood floor are burned all the way through.

  “Hello?” he calls again, his voice barely a whisper. The room is empty, but he feels a presence, as if someone were just here or is still here, hiding.

  But how? The room was locked from the outside. The single window is sooty and black; the discolored paint on the metal bars over it has cracked and bubbled with heat. An old sewing machine and a lamp, both scorched, sit on a blackened metal desk. The lamp’s bulb flashes the code for S.O.S.

  Is it just a short?

  This is definitely the room that burned in 1928. Tyrell steps inside, onto a charred floor beam. The door creaks closed behind him, and he spins. The back of the door is splintered and scratched with deep gouges, as if someone attacked it with a knife.

  “Hey!” He pulls the door back open, but no one is there. Something chitters in the darkness. The door creaks on its hinges.

  “Who’s here?” he calls over the sound of his pounding heart.

  Whooooo, the wind echoes.

  The hairs on his neck rise. Someone is in the factory—watching, waiting. He can sense their eyes watching him and practically feel their breath.

  “Show yourself.” He turns to face the small burned-out room, shining his flashlight into each of the corners.

  The switch on the light moves, and the bulb flashes before going dark. His eyes stop on an old domed chest on the floor. It is locked with a small brass padlock. It is the only thing in the room that is not charred.

  “Who are you?” Tyrell whispers.

  The light goes on, and the reflection of a young woman—the same girl who was in his room—appears in the window. She is sitting at the desk, sewing by candlelight. Behind her stands a man whose face is menacing and angry but somehow familiar.

  The man lifts a key. That reflection fades as the lamp goes out, and when it flashes again an orange glow has appeared in a barrel behind the girl. With each flash of the bulb, the flames grow.


  When the light flashes again, it shows the girl at the door, pounding on it. The light goes out and the reflection vanishes.

  “What do you want?” he cries out to the empty room.

  But only the moaning wind answers in the dark: Fair shh loss ennn. In the next flash the girl is standing, her eyes wide and wild. The scissors glint in the orange, flickering light of flames as she turns to Tyrell and raises them.

  The woman with the scissors!

  Tyrell lunges for the door, but his foot slips off the charred beam and he falls between the floorboards. He grunts with pain as he catches the beam on his way down. His flashlight rolls across the boards and stops next to the chest.

  Reeling, he sucks in some air. “Help!” he groans, kicking his legs, trying to pull himself back up.

  He still grips the iron key ring, but his hands are slick.

  A wail rises from the deep within the corner blackness, and as it crescendos it sounds like a young girl crying, crying.

  His fingers slip from the wood, and he drops into the darkness below.

  Chapter 9

  Tyrell’s ankle screams in pain when he hits the floor below, and the key ring jingles somewhere in the blackness as it crashes to the ground. He glances up at the hole in the ceiling. Is she still there? Will she come after me?

  Tyrell stands and limps past the stacked cabinet and chair to the open, moonlit window. He slides down the pipe to the ground and bolts around the building—right into a police officer.

  “Got him!” the officer shouts. She grabs his coat and pulls him to the front of the factory. He squints in the light that glares from the squad car parked across the footbridge at the end of the narrow lane.

  “Legs apart,” she says as she pats him down.

  “Tyrell?” His mom hurries down the lane past the squad car. The bottom of her red nightgown drags along the snow-dusted boards of the footbridge. She stops, open-mouthed, a few steps from him.

  “Anyone else up there with you?” the officer asks Tyrell as she lets go of his coat.

  His jaw clamps shut at her question.

  “Well?” the officer asks, crossing her arms.

  “Ah—I mean, no. Just me,” he says.

  “One perp, unarmed, simple trespassing,” the officer says into her small shoulder radio. She nods and waves to her partner in the squad car.

  “What were you doing?” his mom questions.

  “Vandalism?” the officer pushes.

  “No.” Tyrell can’t stop trembling, and his voice shakes. “I was just up on the third floor.” He points to the window.

  The partner gets out of the squad car. “I’ll secure the premises,” he says. He looks like a football player. He strides to the front doors of the factory, opens the padlock with a key, and then turns on a huge black flashlight as he goes in.

  The first officer turns and looks Tyrell in the eye. “So why were you up there?” She stands almost at attention in her blue uniform as she writes in a small white notebook.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Tyrell says. A shiver shakes him as the image of the woman with the scissors flashes in his mind. “But that light—” He motions to the third-floor window where the yellow light came from. But the window is dark.

  “You saw a light?” the officer asks.

  “Yes.” Tyrell’s jaw is shaking and it’s hard to form the words. “There was an S.O.S. signal. It came from up there. I went to check it out.”

  “Oh, Ty.” His mom looks as if she’s going to cry. “He just got over hypothermia,” she explains weakly to the officer. “He’s been having these ideas.” Her eyes fill with tears. “We thought he was okay, but maybe there was some cognitive damage.”

  “Mom, I’m not hallucinating,” Tyrell insists. His heart pounds, and his voice catches in his throat. He turns back to the window, but it’s still dark. “I know what I saw. There’s a girl up there. She has these scissors and she’s trying to—”

  “Oh no.” The officer rolls her eyes and holds up her hand. “Not that old story again.”

  “She’s there,” Tyrell cries. “I saw her reflection.”

  The officer’s pen stops.

  “Her reflection?” his mom asks.

  He nods. “There was a fire. At first she was trying to get out. And then she turned.”

  “All clear,” the other officer’s voice comes through the radio.

  “Tyrell, I think this civics report has really gotten to you,” his mom says.

  “But I saw her!”

  His mom puts her arm around his shoulder and pulls him close. “I know you think you saw someone, but the officer just said there’s no one up there.”

  “Maybe it’s her ghost then,” Tyrell practically shouts. “I saw her!”

  The shoulder radio emits a burst of static, and then the man’s voice comes through. “Looks like he climbed on a desk and chair to get up to the third floor.”

  “Any vandalism?” the first officer asks into the small radio.

  “Not that I can tell,” comes the reply.

  A light comes on at the back of the Schneider mansion, and a door opens. A petite woman in a long white gown emerges. The snow swirls around her as she walks haltingly across the snow-covered lawn toward them. She appears to be floating.

  “What in tarnation is going on?” she says, her voice shrill and agitated.

  “Is that—” Tyrell’s mom starts.

  “We’ve got the situation under control,” the first officer says. “My partner is securing the premises now.”

  The old woman stomps right up to the officer and wags her bony finger in her face. “That’s my factory. I have a right to know what the devil is going on.” Tyrell can see that the white dress isn’t a wedding gown—more like a nightdress.

  The officer straightens. “Well, Mrs. Schneider, we had a trespasser, and we caught him.”

  “It’s Miss. Miss Schneider,” Tyrell says quietly.

  The old woman’s face crinkles into an obliging smile. “Miss Schneider is correct. Been my name since 1922. Now, who broke in and why?”

  Mom looks to Tyrell to respond, and the officer’s pen stops.

  “I did, ma’am,” Tyrell says. “But I didn’t really break in. I had a key.”

  “By yourself? Why go in there?” Miss Schneider leans forward, her wrinkled face inches from Tyrell’s.

  “Because I thought I saw someone up there who . . . needed help.”

  “Well, isn’t that peculiar?” Miss Schneider says. “Why did you think that?”

  “I saw a light,” Tyrell explains.

  “What in the world is going on?” His mom shakes her head and shivers.

  “Would you like to press charges, Miss Schneider?” the officer asks.

  The other officer emerges from the factory, dusting himself off. He closes the padlock and brings the key to Miss Schneider. “All clear up there,” he says.

  Miss Schneider takes the key and then studies Tyrell’s face with her piercing, pale blue eyes. “What say I talk to the boy first?” She motions to her mansion. “Can I call you in an hour or two if I decide to press charges?” She totters slightly in her furry white slippers as she turns to face the officers.

  “But I didn’t do anything.” Tyrell’s heart thumps. Would she really make me go with her? Am I going to be charged with trespassing if I don’t—or maybe even if I do?

  “You’re lucky all of this commotion didn’t wake Dad,” his mom says. “This would just about kill him, you breaking and entering.”

  “I didn’t break in, I just entered!” Tyrell counters. “Because of the light.”

  “Because of the light,” Miss Schneider echoes.

  The officer pulls a business card from her front pocket. “Here’s my contact information. My shift ends at six in the morning, so call before then and we can get this all settled.” She hands the card to Miss Schneider.

  “Come along, then,” Miss Schneider says and motions for Tyrell to follow her back to th
e mansion.

  His mom shrugs, raising her eyebrows and motioning for him to go. “I’m heading to bed,” she says. “Hopefully Dad’s still asleep.” She storms back up the lane to their cottage.

  Except for a light at the end of a dark hallway, the Schneider mansion is dark inside. Tyrell follows Miss Schneider down the passage to a warmly lit room.

  A lamp with a deep red silk shade and long, silky tassels sits on a small, round, wooden table between two high-backed, burgundy velvet chairs. The yellow satin curtains are drawn tight.

  Tyrell’s heart thuds. No one can see inside. And no one can hear me if I scream.. . . . Okay, maybe that’s overdramatic. They walk over a black-and-white marble floor and step onto a rich but worn rug. She motions for him to sit down in the chair to the left. A low fire crackles in a massive pink tile fireplace. A sleek black cat meows and jumps into Miss Schneider’s lap just as she eases down into the other chair. At least there is a phone on the table, though it’s probably older than I am.

  “Now,” Miss Schneider says as her wrinkled hands pat the arms of the chair. “Tell me what happened.” She sets the officer’s business card on the table.

  Shadows dance on the walls. Above the fireplace hangs a huge painted portrait of a young woman bedecked with jewels and dressed in a flowing peach gown. Tyrell’s eyes flit from the portrait to Miss Schneider.

  “Is that you?” He nods to the portrait.

  “Yes. Many years ago. It was painted a week before my wedding.”

  “But I thought—”

  “It was the very day Leroy was shot. I was sitting for the painter while he lay dying in the woods.” She looks down and strokes the cat. “I knew I’d never find another Leroy. And I wouldn’t settle for second best.” Her pale blue eyes fix on Tyrell’s. “But I digress. You’re here not to hear my stories but to explain why you broke into my factory.”

  Tyrell clears his throat. A shiver, like a prickly electric charge, runs through his chest and arms. She probably won’t believe him. “Like I said, it was the light.”