The Eye of Midnight

by Andrew Brumbach

  “You look a bit bedraggled,” he said, coming back to himself. “Are you hungry? The housekeeper won’t return until tomorrow morning, but I imagine we can rummage up something in the pantry.”

  He led the way into the kitchen, and the cousins sat down at a small table near the window and watched him boil water for tea. They waited in silence for an uncomfortable length of time, but Grandpa’s face was brooding, and he offered no conversation.

  “What’s this?” asked William, pointing to a photograph on the wall of a younger Colonel Battersea and his wife standing atop the Great Pyramid of Giza. “It looks like it was taken in Egypt or something. Were you some sort of professional adventurer? Like Lawrence of Arabia or Richard Halliburton?”

  “Dick Halliburton,” Grandpa scoffed. “Hmmph! Dandified travel writer. No, no, that was hardly my style. I’ve had my share of adventures, all right, but I never sought them out for their own sake.” He stopped and frowned. “Haven’t your parents told you anything about me?”

  “Not really,” William said.

  “No,” muttered Grandpa. “I expect not.”

  “They said you traveled a lot, and that you worked for the British government,” Maxine chimed in.

  “Ah, that much is true. Although your grandmother was an American and we made our home here, I am a British subject. I’ve worn many hats over the years—done some soldiering, some amateur mapmaking, a bit of diplomacy. And I’ve been a great many places, I suppose. Traveled Asia, Africa, and the Continent, spent a time in South America. I ended up in the Levant—or the Near East, as they’re calling it now—and that was where I stayed for the remaining years of my service to the Crown.”

  “And Grandma came along?” asked Maxine. “She followed you to all those places?”

  “Your grandmother traveled with me as often as it was possible, at least until the children—your parents—were born. And there were long stretches when I was home with her as well.”

  Maxine’s thoughts drifted back to the pictures in the basement. “Do you miss her?” she asked.

  Colonel Battersea poured the tea as if he’d never heard the question, then turned and considered his granddaughter carefully.

  “How are things at home, young lady? How is your mother?”

  Maxine was silent for a moment.

  “She coughs,” she said in a hollow voice. “She coughs and she can’t stop, and her face is as white as chalk, and she can hardly breathe. And sometimes when it’s over, there’s blood on the pillow.”

  Grandpa cleared his throat. “Yes, well, we can certainly hope her trip abroad will do her some good, can’t we?” he said, arranging a trio of scones and a dish of clotted cream on a tray. “She’ll be staying at the best hospital in Europe, after all.”

  Maxine’s eyes dropped, and she twiddled with the buttons on her sleeve.

  “So, Grandpa,” said William, breaking the awkward silence, “what exactly did you do for the British government all those years?”

  “Hmmm, what indeed. You aren’t the first person to ask that question, of course. But perhaps I should save a few of my secrets for another day. For the time being, let us just say that I protected His Majesty’s interests wherever I was needed.”

  Grandpa placed the tea tray on the kitchen table and sat down beside the children.

  “And now,” he said, “I want to hear about yourselves. Details, mind you. I’m anxious to know what sort of a hand I’ve been dealt.”

  The cousins squirmed for a moment under his intense gaze, then proceeded to struggle through a fractured account of hobbies and classmates and music lessons while Grandpa listened and nodded at regular intervals.

  “Very interesting, I’m sure,” he said at last. “But tell me, now that you have spent some time together here at Battersea Manor, you must be getting to know each other a bit, eh? I am eager to learn a little of what you have discovered. Above all else, I would like to hear what redeeming qualities you have found in each other—what is it that you most admire?”

  It was an odd question, and the cousins traded uncomfortable glances.

  William pondered for a moment. “Mostly I’d say Maxine is smart. A sharp tack. She’s read all kinds of books, and she’s good at figuring things out.”

  “Ah, intelligence. A fine trait. Yes. And, Maxine, what about William?”

  “I think Will’s very brave,” she said. “I’m a great big chicken, but he’s not afraid of anything.”

  “Bravery, eh? How do you know?”

  Maxine’s immediate thoughts were of the expedition to the basement and William’s insistence on opening the pine box, though mentioning these details to Grandpa would hardly do.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “He’s got a lot of nerve, I guess. He’s already explored just about every dark corner of this house.”

  “I see. Yes, well, you’ve made fair judgments, given that you’ve known each other only a very short time. But I must say, I believe you are both quite wrong. These are not your worthiest attributes. There are greater gifts in heaven and on earth. When the summer is over, perhaps you will have a very different answer.”

  The cousins fidgeted restlessly and tried to vindicate themselves with an intelligent response, but found themselves at a loss for words.

  “Well, that’s enough lecturing for one night, I suppose,” said Grandpa. “Perhaps it is time to turn in. Let me show you to your rooms.”

  In the middle of the night, Maxine woke to the wind moaning outside her window. Her bedroom was on the third floor of the manor, and the treetops groped at the pane. But it was something else that had stirred her from sleep.

  “M!” whispered a voice outside her door.

  “Will? Is that you?”

  “Yeah. Are you awake?”

  “No,” she said.

  The door creaked open, and William slipped through.

  “What are you doing sneaking around in the dark?” asked Maxine.

  “Nothing.” William shrugged. “I just couldn’t sleep. I can’t get my mind off the jinni. When I lay my head on the pillow, I still see those glittering eyes and that grinning mouth.”

  “Just be glad it never came to life,” said Maxine, taking some comfort in the fact that her cousin had not escaped their adventure entirely unscathed.

  “You don’t want to go down and try again, do you?” William asked.

  Maxine sat up in her bed. “In the middle of the night? No thanks. We shouldn’t have been in there in the first place,” she said. “I’m sure Grandpa must have seen us come up through the secret door.”

  “Aw, so what? Don’t you think maybe he wanted us to find the basement? That it was all just part of the test?”

  “What test?” she said. “There is no test.”

  “Oh no? What was the little interrogation in the kitchen all about, then? Grandpa’s trying to measure our character, see what we’re made of.”

  “That’s silly, Will. You’re inventing things.”

  “Maybe. He didn’t exactly welcome us with hugs and kisses, though, did he? One thing’s for sure—he’s not the sort of granddad who sings you to sleep in his rocking chair. He’d rather meet you with blades at dawn, if you know what I mean. Lunge, parry, feint—that’s what it’s like talking to Grandpa.”

  Maxine pondered this, watching the shadows of the tree limbs braid across the moonlit floor, but her thoughts were interrupted by a creak in the hallway outside.

  “Did you hear something?” she whispered, listening carefully. The corridor was quiet now.

  “Must’ve been a hant,” said William. He turned out the lamp on the night table and made a low groaning sound that rose and fell in a tortured wail.

  “Stop that,” said Maxine, groping for him in the dark and tossing a pillow in his direction.

  “I told you this place was haunted,” he said with a wicked chuckle.

  “Let me go to sleep, would you?”

  “All right, I’m leaving.”

  He tip
toed to the door.

  “Good night, Will,” said Maxine.

  “Good night, M,” said William, and the door clicked shut behind him.

  Maxine’s eyes opened to dawn’s pale light seeping through her dormer window. An elusive dream lingered in her mind, but try as she might, she couldn’t bring it back. She crawled from her bed, following a strange urge.

  The house was still, and she padded barefoot down the hallway, past the uneven snores in William’s bedroom. Climbing a flight of stairs at the back of the house, she found herself in an unfamiliar corridor. The rooms here had undoubtedly belonged to the Battersea children once upon a time, wallpapered with faded barnyard animals and circus tents, all empty apart from a few forgotten pieces of shrouded furniture that had been pushed to darkened corners. Pictures and toys and books were gone. An eerie, unnatural witching hung over the space. Maxine began to feel a desperate need to uncover some trace of the living—something that proved her mother had been here once, that she had known this place.

  At the end of the hall Maxine found the nursery. The room was sad and dreary, full of echoes. An empty crib stood against the wall beside a dusty, half-draped wardrobe. She approached the wardrobe uncertainly, as if it were a giant jack-in-the-box, and, pushing aside the dingy sheet, she threw it open. There was nothing inside.

  Sighing, she glanced across the room at a colorfully painted door, and even though every other closet on the floor had been a disappointment, she decided she would check it all the same. The knob yielded to a halfhearted tug, and the door swung wide.

  Maxine let out a gasp.

  Here at last she had discovered the resting place of her mother’s childhood. Small coats and dresses hung neatly above worn black boots. Sagging shelves held dolls and hoops and balls and bats. The air smelled of mothballs and old leather. Maxine burrowed among the hanging garments, feeling them all around her on her arms and face. She pushed through to the cool smoothness of the back wall, then turned around and slid to the floor, where she sat and peered out from behind the clothes.

  The faint toll of church bells echoed somewhere far off, and she listened, sitting perfectly still like the china dolls beside her. She touched the cherub lips of the closest one and wondered where her mother might be now. On the deck of a ship, maybe, taking the sun, recovering her strength and thinking of Maxine.

  Her eye flitted absently around the closet, and something peculiar stirred her from her daydreams: a pair of names had been scratched on the inside of the doorframe.

  Helen and Eddie

  Helen was her mother, and Eddie—that was Will’s father, her uncle Edward.

  Beneath these, she found a strange scrawl:

  Keep the secret, never tell,

  unless you want your throat to swell.

  Her fingers trembled as they traced the words. She pictured her mother and uncle crouched inside the closet, sharing some concealed confidence. She wondered how long the words had rested there in the dark, unread and unspoken, hidden from every human eye until this very moment.

  There was something else. A photograph had been tucked into the baseboard: a faded picture of a teenage boy standing with a suitcase on the front steps of Battersea Manor, and on the back a single letter and a date:

  D—June 1909.

  “Who could this be?” she wondered aloud.

  Downstairs, the old grandfather clock chimed the half hour, calling Maxine back to the present. She yawned and thought of her soft pillow and warm bed, but as she stood to go a battered milliner’s box on the shelf caught her eye. Inside she found a lovely red hat that smelled faintly of perfume, and though it had no tag or monogram, the old felt cloche was pierced by a long hat pin set with a bright ruby—her mother’s birthstone.

  The hat fit perfectly. She tucked the strange photo under the inner band and, clutching her new treasure to her chest, Maxine crept back to her bed.

  Later that morning the cousins stumbled down into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from their eyes. A small, matronly woman stood at the stove stirring a bubbling pot, her steel-gray hair pulled back in a fist-sized bun of formidable tautness and immaculate symmetry. Colonel Battersea was already at the kitchen table, going through a stack of mail.

  “Good morning, William, Maxine,” he said. “Though it seems you’ve managed to sleep most of the morning away. I don’t suppose you drink coffee? No, your parents are more responsible than that, I’ll wager. All the same, it looks like you could use it, eh?”

  William mumbled something incoherent and flumped down at the table.

  “Ah, bad dreams, perhaps. Well, no matter, you’re young and resilient. Mrs. Otto, don’t you have any oatmeal for these children?”

  Mrs. Otto shot him a withering look. “Give me half a moment, won’t you? They’ve only just come down.” She ladled out the oatmeal and slid a bowl in front of each of the cousins while the old colonel opened another letter from the stack in front of him.

  “By the way,” said Maxine offhandedly, tilting a pitcher of milk over her bowl, “a telegram came for you yesterday.”

  Grandpa’s face darkened abruptly, and he pushed aside the post.

  “Is that so,” he said. He slid back his chair and rose to his feet, leaning over her. “And when were you planning to mention this?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Maxine, glancing nervously at William. “Just now, I guess. I kind of forgot about it.”

  “Well?” he said sharply. “Let’s have it, then.”

  Maxine hurried out to the entry hall and returned with the envelope, handing it contritely to her grandfather, who tore it open straightaway and immersed himself in the contents.

  Mrs. Otto cleared the pots from the stove and put them in the sink. “All right, Colonel, I’m off to see my sister, like I told you last week,” she said. “I won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon.”

  Grandpa grunted but didn’t look up from his letter, and Mrs. Otto shook her head at him and untied her apron. “I’ve put the groceries in the pantry and left a smoked ham in the icebox,” she said. “You’ll have to fend for yourselves this evening.” And she marched off with no further farewell, leaving them alone in the kitchen.

  Grandpa turned his back on William and Maxine and reread the telegram, muttering to himself as if the words were all gibberish, but his concentration was broken by the jangling ring of the telephone in the entry hall. Crumpling the telegram and tossing it on the breakfast table, he disappeared from the room.

  “Nice going, M,” said William. “Why didn’t you give him the telegram last night? He doesn’t seem real happy about it.”

  Maxine glared at him through slitted eyes. She raised her spoon, letting her oatmeal slowly dribble back into her bowl, and was about to offer a scathing critique of William’s own significant shortcomings when they heard Grandpa’s startled voice in the hallway.

  “What? Are you sure? But when?”

  The cousins got up and edged close to the doorway and found that if they held their breath and strained their ears, Grandpa’s words were faintly audible.

  “So they are here, then, on our own shores. The long arm grows longer still….

  “No, no, the timing of your call is more than mere coincidence, it seems. I received a second telegram just this morning. It mentioned a courier—I believe a certain package is to be delivered into my possession….

  “That much is difficult to say. The telegram was vague on several points. The time was clear enough, but I’m unsure of the location.”

  His voice dropped, and the cousins could no longer make out the words.

  “What’s Grandpa up to?” whispered William.

  “I don’t know,” answered Maxine, “but it doesn’t exactly sound like he’s retired, does it?”

  “No, not so much,” said William. His eyes darted to the telegram in the middle of the table, and he crept toward it, his hand outstretched.

  “We shouldn’t, Will,” said Maxine. Her voice lacked conviction, though, and she crow
ded close to him and peered over his shoulder as he unwadded the crumpled sheet and smoothed it carefully on the table.

  IMPERIAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED

  “Via Eastern”

  Iskenderun, Turkey

  May 20, 1929

  —— COL H BATTERSEA C/O REG OFF BROOKLYN ——

  THE JACKAL HAS FLUSHED THE FOWL.

  COURIER RUNNING. WHEN THE HARE GROWS FAT

  SEEK THE NEEDLE FIND THE EYE.

  - YUSUF

  “It’s like some kind of riddle,” whispered William. “Does any of that make sense to you?”

  Out in the entry hall, the telephone receiver rattled in its perch.

  “Will, he’s coming back!”

  William crumpled the paper again, dropping it onto the table like a hot biscuit just as Grandpa rounded the corner.

  The colonel’s face was troubled.

  “Something has come up, I’m afraid,” he said. “There’s a matter I must attend to in the city. I’ll be gone for a day or two.”

  “You’re leaving us alone again?” cried Maxine.

  Grandpa rubbed his knuckles. “No, not alone. Your parents would never let me hear the end of that,” he muttered. “You can stay here with Mrs. Otto. Now where has she gotten off to?”

  “She said she was going to her sister’s house, remember? She said she’d be back tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Blast. I can never count on that woman for anything,” fumed Grandpa.

  He looked at the cousins with irritation.

  “I’ll have to take you with me, I suppose. Go get yourselves ready.”

  “What, now?” Maxine blurted out.

  “Yes, now. When else?” he said, checking the weather outside the kitchen window. “Pack your things, and see if you can find an umbrella while you’re at it. We have a train to catch.”

  Upstairs in the colonel’s bedroom, Grandpa and William packed an old leather suitcase, while Maxine searched for an umbrella among the cupboards and chests of the mansion’s upper halls. Umbrellas were in short supply at Battersea Manor, it seemed, and in the end she settled for her mother’s red hat—not exactly what Grandpa had in mind in terms of rain gear, perhaps, but just the thing a sophisticated young lady would wear on a trip into the city. She clapped it on her head and bounded down the stairs.