The Headless Cupid

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Janie frowned fiercely, but she nodded. “Okay. But the very next time we have a seance, it’s my turn.”

  That night after the kids were in bed, David got comfortable with an interesting book to wait for Molly to go to bed. He didn’t dare go to sleep himself for fear he wouldn’t wake up in time. He took off his shoes and put on his pajama tops, in case Molly came in to say goodnight, and then he got into bed and started to read. Across the room in the other bed, Blair, who was as good at sleeping as Esther was at eating, was already very sound asleep.

  David’s book was one he had borrowed from Amanda. It was called Stories of the Supernatural, and it was all about ghosts who came back to avenge a wrong or to tell their terrible story to somebody. The longer David read, the more real the people and places in the stories became, and the easier it was for him to picture just exactly what everything looked and sounded like. In between each story he got up and went to the door to listen, but he could still hear the television going or Molly moving around downstairs. He was just finishing a story about a dead man who came back to haunt his old home in the shape of a horrible red-eyed dog, when he heard Molly’s footsteps coming upstairs.

  He was almost sure it was Molly. At least he couldn’t make out any clicking toenail sound like there was in the dog story. But even so, David sat straight up in bed for a long time before he could bring himself to tiptoe to the door and look out. When he finally did, he could see the crack of light under Molly’s door, so the footsteps had been hers all right.

  David went back to bed, then, to wait for Molly to get to sleep; but he didn’t read anymore, and he didn’t have any trouble staying awake, either. He sat right in the middle of his bed, listening and thinking about the things he’d read. His ears had a stretched feeling and his eyes felt dry and bulgy by the time he heard the creak of Amanda’s door. A moment later he heard a soft tap on his own.

  Amanda stuck her head in and nodded. She was wearing her ceremonial robes, or at least part of them. When David got to the door, he noticed that she had on everything except the black stockings and high-button shoes. Instead she was wearing a pair of old floppy slippers.

  Amanda noticed him looking and said, “The shoes are too noisy. You and the kids wear slippers, too.”

  “Should we wear the rest of our ceremonial robes?” David asked.

  “Your ceremonial robes!” Amanda said. “Forget it!” But then she added, “Only the medium has to wear anything special at a seance. The rest of you can come as you are.”

  Amanda shuffled softly back to her room, and David got Blair up and sat him on the side of the bed. David had tried once or twice before to awaken Blair during the night, and he knew it wasn’t easy; but he felt sure he could do it if he tried hard enough. Blair tipped over a couple of times, but after David shook him fairly hard, his eyes opened wide and stayed that way. David left him there and scooted down the hall to the girls’ room. Janie and Esther woke up quite easily; but by the time David had hurried them back down the hall, Blair had tipped over again and was sound asleep. Finally David had Janie hold one side of Blair up, while he held the other, and they started for Amanda’s room.

  The room was completely dark except for the light of one small candle. David could barely see that the card table, covered by a blanket, stood in the center of the room with five chairs arranged around.

  “Shh!” Amanda said as she let them in. She closed the door behind them and started giving orders. “You sit there, David. Stay away from that crow, Tesser. Janie you—”

  “Not Janie,” Janie interrupted. “My name is Calla.”

  “No,” Amanda said. “That’s only when you are practicing magic. Tonight you’re just part of a seance. You don’t have to be supernatural to do that. Janie, you—” she stopped, staring at Blair. “What’s the matter with him?”

  Blair was standing up, with David and Janie supporting him, but his eyes had gone shut again. David shook him and blew in his face, and his eyes got wide and stary again.

  “Nothing’s wrong with him,” David said. “He’s just not awake yet.”

  Amanda sighed. “Well, put him in the armchair so he won’t fall over,” she said. “And let’s get going before my mother wakes up and comes snooping around.”

  As soon as everyone was at the table, Amanda started the same strange music she had played during the initiation, only very softly this time. Then she moved the candle to the center of the table. It was a small black candle, and it made a strong smell and very little light. Amanda took her place across from David. She had everyone spread out his hands on the table so that his thumbs touched and his little fingers touched the person’s next to him.

  David had to help Blair get his fingers arranged, and as soon as they were in place in front of him, Blair started leaning forward. His eyes were still wide open but very blank looking, and every few minutes David had to reach over and straighten him back up.

  “Now,” Amanda said, “I want you all to concentrate on the candle. Stare at the candle and try to keep from thinking of anything at all. I will go into a trance and when I have contacted a spirit, it will let us know that it is here.”

  “Wait,” David said. “Don’t we get to ask to talk to special spirits? Don’t we get to say who we want to talk to?”

  “Well, you do at some seances. I mean some mediums do it that way. But since I’m just starting, I thought I’d better just take whoever I can get. After I’ve had more practice, we’ll try calling up special people. Who’d you want to talk to, anyway?”

  “Well,” David said, but then he didn’t say anything more. His mind was too busy with some things he’d never let himself think through before. He’d known in a way, without admitting it even to himself, whom he was hoping to talk to. And he’d also known, or should have, what Amanda would say about it. After all, she’d already said plenty about blabbing too much to living parents, and she probably wouldn’t feel any differently about talking to one who was dead.

  David started to shake his head and say, “forget it,” when he saw it was too late. Amanda was staring at him with a knowing expression on her face.

  “Ooh, I get it,” she said, raising her eyebrows and twisting her lip. “I get it.”

  “No you don’t!” David said. “Forget it! Just forget it!”

  “Okay,” Amanda said, looking surprised. “Okay. Cool off. If people get uptight, it ruins the whole atmosphere for the seance. You have to be very relaxed and concentrate on thinking of absolutely nothing while I go into my trance.”

  “I’m not uptight!” David hissed in an angry whisper. He reached over and shoved his hand under Blair’s face, which was almost down to the table again, and pushed him roughly back to a sitting position. Blair looked blankly at David and then smiled his Christmas card smile. After a minute David smiled back. After all, Blair couldn’t help being sleepy and he certainly couldn’t help the way Amanda acted. David put his hand on top of Blair’s head and turned his face towards the candle.

  “Just look hard at the candle, Blair,” he said, “and concentrate.”

  “Just concentrate,” Janie said. “Like this. See, Blair, this is how you concentrate.” Janie was sitting very straight, staring at the candle. Her big eyes were round as circles and a little bit crossed.

  Esther leaned over to see what Janie was doing. Then she said, “Like this? Look at me, Janie. Is this right?”

  Janie glanced at Esther. “No,” she said. “Your eyes aren’t big enough. Make your eyes very big, like this.”

  “Will you be still!” Amanda hissed. She took hold of her head on each side as if she were about to pull out two handfuls of braid. “Those kids,” she said accusingly to David. “Those kids are driving me crazy!”

  But David was still mad enough at her that he wasn’t about to feel guilty about what the kids were doing. Instead, he had to struggle to hold back a smile. But to his surprise, Janie apologized.

  “We’re sorry. We’ll be quiet,” Janie said. It was o
bvious that Janie was very enthusiastic about the seance, because she hardly ever said she was sorry about anything.

  Amanda got up and started the record over because they already wasted such a lot of it, and then she came back and began to go into her trance. She leaned back in her chair with her face turned upward and her eyes closed. After a while she began to breathe very hard.

  David stared at the candle and listened to the shrill monotonous music—and waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for. He wasn’t angry any longer, or scared as he’d been back in his room, or hopeful. He really wasn’t expecting much of anything. And for a long time nothing happened. Esther had several squirming fits; Janie sneezed and took her hand out of the circle to scratch her nose; and David had to take his hand out twice to keep Blair from collapsing on the table. He was beginning to feel a little sleepy himself when suddenly the table was jarred by a loud thump.

  David jumped. Janie and Esther were sitting very still and wide-eyed, and even Blair seemed to be awake. The rap had been sharp and hard as if someone had hit the wood of the table with something metal, like a small hammer. David looked at every-body’s hands. He was sure that none of them had moved from the circle.

  Amanda was still sitting very still with her face turned upwards and her eyes closed. David wondered if she could have made the noise with her feet, but then he remembered the soft bedroom slippers. He was still wondering, when the rap came again. Two raps this time, close together.

  “Who is there?” Amanda said in a strange hollow voice.

  Rap!

  “Are you a spirit?” Amanda asked.

  Rap! The sound came again.

  “Does one rap mean ‘yes’ and two mean ‘no’?”

  Rap!

  David had to swallow hard before he could ask, “Are you the spirit of someone we know?”

  Rap! Rap!

  Then Esther asked, “Are you going to hurt us?”

  Rap! Rap!

  “That means no,” Janie said. “It’s not going to hurt us, Tesser.”

  “Are you coming here because you want to tell us something?” David asked.

  Rap!

  “Have you been here, to this house before?” Amanda asked.

  Rap!

  David leaned forward suddenly, staring at the spot in the middle of the table where the noise seemed to be coming from. “Are you the ghost that was here before? The poltergeist?”

  There was a long pause, and then a very loud, Rap!

  David choked, as if a breath on its way out had suddenly gone back instead. It wasn’t really serious choking, but enough to make him cough.

  Over his own coughing, he could hear Janie asking frantically, “What’s a poltergeist? What’s a poltergeist, David? What’s a poltergeist, Amanda?”

  “What’s a who?” Esther said. “What is it, David?”

  David was still coughing, and Amanda was still in her trance, but even in her trance she was frowning. David finally managed to stop coughing long enough to say, “Shhh! Shut up!”

  Janie and Esther shut up, but it was too late. The ghost apparently had been chased away. David asked several more questions, but there were no more rapping noises. Amanda was still in her trance, eyes shut and breathing very hard. Now and then she moved, squirming around in her chair.

  From somewhere behind Amanda there was suddenly a faint clicking noise, and a dim light appeared. It seemed to be coming from inside the closet, shining dimly through the curtain and the long strands of beads that Amanda had hung in front of the closet door. In the center of the faint glow of light, a dark shape emerged. It was indistinct but definitely human shaped—a round head with two long glowing eyes above a neck and shoulders. David blinked his eyes and shook his head, but the figure stayed just the same.

  Janie gave a little wail, and Esther began to catch her breath the way she always did before she began to cry. Then everything started happening at once. David lifted Esther out of her chair and started to the door with her, with Janie running right behind him. He put them outside the door and started back for Blair when he noticed that the light in the closet had disappeared. There was only Amanda, still sitting in her chair with her hands on the table and her eyes closed. The only light in the room was, again, the tiny flame from the black candle; but that was enough to let David see that all four of the other chairs were empty. Blair was nowhere to be seen.

  For one horrible second David actually had some crazy idea that whatever it was they had seen in the glow from the closet had carried Blair off; but then he noticed a movement on the floor beside Blair’s chair. There he was, all right, on his hands and knees, with just the back end of him sticking out from under the blanket that covered the table.

  David grabbed Blair by the seat of his pajamas and pulled him out. Until he saw Blair’s face he thought that Blair had been hiding, ostrich style, from the thing in the closet; but then he changed his mind, because Blair didn’t look the least bit frightened. So he’d probably slept through the whole thing and finally tipped all the way out of his chair. But the fall—or something—had awakened him, because David didn’t have to hold him up while he walked him out to where Janie and Esther were still huddled together in the hall. David sent all three of them to wait in his room. Then he went back in to Amanda.

  She was still sitting just as he had left her. David looked uneasily at the closet door. He went around the table to a place where he could see Amanda and the door at the same time.

  “Amanda,” he said. “Wake up.”

  Amanda moaned and rocked her head back and forth.

  “Amanda,” David said again, more loudly.

  Her eyes opened slowly, and she looked around blank-eyed, as if she didn’t know where she was.

  “Where am I?” she said. “What happened?”

  “The seance,” David said. “Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember the rapping?”

  Amanda shook her head. She stared right at David, open-eyed and innocent looking.

  “You talked to it,” David said.

  “That must have been my contact talking. I don’t remember.”

  “It made knocking noises. And we—we saw it. At least we saw something. In the closet.”

  Amanda turned around and looked at the closet door. Then she turned back to David.

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AFTER DAVID GOT THE KIDS BACK IN BED AND WARNED THEM AGAIN NOT to talk about the seance, especially to Molly, he went back to Amanda’s room. Amanda wanted him to tell her everything about what had happened after she went into her trance. David told her everything he could remember.

  For the first few minutes, David kept getting the feeling he was making a fool of himself. After all if you looked at it in a reasonable scientific way, the way his father would probably look at it, it seemed pretty likely that Amanda hadn’t really been in a trance at all—and that she knew perfectly well what had happened. In fact, she’d probably planned and arranged the whole thing herself. David couldn’t figure out how; but he did know, from experience, how tricky Amanda could be. However, Amanda did look extremely innocent when she asked about what had happened, and she seemed genuinely surprised and excited to hear that the spirit had rapped “yes” when David had asked it if it were the poltergeist.

  David didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to think, but—as far as feeling was concerned, he couldn’t help feeling that something supernatural had been present, right there in Amanda’s room.

  The next day, out under the oak tree in the back yard, he talked about it again with the little kids. Janie was still trying to get David to explain what a poltergeist was, when Amanda came out of the house onto the back porch. When she saw David and the kids, she started across the yard towards them. She came slowly and seemed to be limping a little on her right foot.

  “What’s wrong with your foot?” David asked when she got close enough.

  “I stubbed my toe on the door,”
Amanda said.

  “Amanda,” Janie interrupted, “what’s a poltergeist, and when was it here before?”

  Amanda told her all about it: what a poltergeist was and how there had been a famous one at Westerly House.

  “And it came back again last night?” Janie asked. “Is it going to haunt the house again?”

  “Well,” Amanda said, “I don’t know. But David said it rapped yes when he asked if it were the same poltergeist.”

  “Will it throw rocks and break things, like Amanda said?” Esther asked David. “Molly won’t let it.”

  “No,” David said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Molly won’t let it!” Amanda snorted in her most sarcastic voice. “If it wants to it will, and Molly won’t be able to do a thing about it. Nobody can tell a poltergeist what it has to do.”

  Blair hadn’t said anything. He was probably listening because he listened a lot more than most people thought he did, but he seemed to be busy playing with a bluebird feather that he’d found under the tree. After everybody else had said everything they could think of about the seance and what happened there, David asked Blair a question.

  “Did you hear the ghost rapping, Blair?”

  Blair looked up from trying to push the feather through a buttonhole on his shirt. “Ghost rapping?” he asked. “No. I heard it talking.”

  “What are you talking about?” Amanda said. “Everybody else heard it rapping.”

  “You must have been having a dream,” David said. “You were asleep most of the time.”

  “What did it say, Blair?” Janie asked. “What did it say to you?”

  “It said it wasn’t rapping. It said—” Blair stopped and looked up at Amanda and then at David. “It said—about Amanda.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Amanda said. “He’s making that up.”

  “What did it say about Amanda?” Janie asked.

  “Shut up!” Amanda yelled at Janie. “He’s making that up.”