The Headless Cupid

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Everyone was looking at Blair. He leaned over and held out the blue feather to Amanda. “You can have my feather,” he said. Then he wouldn’t say anything else for a long time.

  It wasn’t long after lunch, that same day, that the rocks started. David was in the kitchen with Molly, and Blair was there, too. David was talking to Molly when Esther came in from the hall limping and whimpering.

  “What’s the matter, Esther?” Molly asked.

  “I stepped on a rock,” Esther said.

  She sat down on the floor and held up her foot, and there was a little red spot on the heel. Molly kissed it to make it well and told Esther that the skin wasn’t broken and it would quit hurting in a minute.

  “You must have stepped on it pretty hard,” she said.

  “I ran on it,” Esther said. “In the hall.”

  “In the hall,” David said. “What’s a rock doing—” He stopped right in the middle of the sentence and went down the hall looking at the floor. Near the foot of the stairs he found a roundish pebble with one sharp edge. He picked it up and went on walking. In the living room he found another about the same size lying near the piano, and there were two more in the dining room. He took them back into the kitchen.

  “Look,” he said. “I found all these in the house. Did you bring them in, Blair?”

  Blair shook his head, and Esther said she hadn’t either. Molly took the rocks and looked at them thoughtfully.

  “That’s strange,” she said. “I found some pebbles just outside my bedroom door this morning. Somebody must be playing with rocks.”

  David didn’t say anything, but he suddenly had a crawling feeling on the back of his neck. He went looking for Janie to ask her if she’d been bringing rocks into the house, but he knew before he asked that she was going to say no.

  Amanda was in her room again, but David knocked on the door and told her he had to talk to her.

  When she saw the rocks, she looked excited but she only said, “The kids could have brought them in.”

  “No,” David said. “I asked them, and they said they didn’t.”

  “They could have been lying.”

  “Huh-uh. Esther doesn’t lie, and Janie wouldn’t lie about this. Janie only lies when she’s telling a story.”

  “How about Blair? He wouldn’t know whether he was lying or not.”

  That made David a little mad. “He would too,” he said. “Blair knows a lot. He just knows different things from most people.”

  Amanda snorted. “Okay,” she said. “Have it your way. Who do you think put them there?”

  David only looked at her—significantly.

  “The poltergeist?” Amanda asked.

  “I—I thought about it,” David admitted.

  Amanda shrugged. “Well, if it was, we’ll know soon enough.”

  “Why? How do you know that?”

  “I mean—if it was the poltergeist, it will probably do something else pretty soon. It wouldn’t just put a few rocks in the house and then stop.”

  David hadn’t thought of it just that way, but he did after that. When the rock came flying into the kitchen that evening after dinner, it was almost as if he were expecting it.

  The little kids had gone to bed; Amanda was in her room; and David was at the kitchen table looking through a big art book of Molly’s. Amanda had washed the dishes before she went upstairs, but Molly was wiping off the counters and scrubbing the sink. Everything was very quiet when the rock flew into the room, bounced under the table and rolled out the other side. David looked out into the hall, but he almost knew there wouldn’t be anyone there. Molly didn’t know it, though. She picked up the rock, went to the kitchen door and looked up and down the hall.

  “That’s strange,” she said. “Where do you suppose this came from?”

  David only shook his head because he’d promised he wouldn’t say anything to Molly. He had a feeling that she was going to find out anyway, before too long. But he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

  He was right about Molly finding out. The rocks kept coming. One came rattling down the hall and ended up against the front door, and at least three more came in through the kitchen door. Three at once clattered across the dining room, and Molly showed David a handful that had come through an open window of the sunroom that she used for a studio. David saw some of the rocks fall, or fly, and the kids saw some, and Molly saw several. In fact, one of the rocks that came in her studio window hit her on the arm.

  On the second day after the rocks started, Amanda showed David a large pebble that she said had fallen in her room, while she was sitting right there, on her bed. She said it had been almost as if the rock had fallen straight down from the ceiling. But except for that one rock, David didn’t know of any that were thrown when Amanda was around. He wondered about that.

  It was on the third or fourth day of the rock trouble that Molly called everyone into the living room for a serious talk. Of course she’d questioned all the kids before, but this time it was almost as if she were begging them to please tell her if they knew anything about the rocks. As soon as Molly started asking, all three of the little kids looked at David, and he knew they were asking if they could say anything about the poltergeist. David looked at Amanda.

  Molly gave a nervous little laugh and said. “If it’s not one of you kids playing some sort of a game, I’m almost beginning to think we’re being haunted by one of those ghosts that throw things and make noises. What are they called?”

  Molly was looking at Amanda, but Janie answered. “Poltergeists,” she said. “They’re called poltergeists.”

  “That’s it,” Molly said. “How did you happen to know about poltergeists, Janie?”

  “Oh, I know an awful lot for my age,” Janie said.

  Molly laughed; but then she said that whether it was poltergeists or people playing games, it was beginning to make her very nervous and if it didn’t stop pretty soon she was going to ask Mr. Ballard, the real estate man, to come over and take a look around.

  That worried David. As soon as he had a chance, he talked to Amanda about it.

  “We’ve got to keep her from talking to Mr. Ballard,” he said.

  “Why?” Amanda said.

  “Because, he’s almost sure to know about the Westerly poltergeist.”

  “So what?” Amanda said.

  David stared at her. “You said not to let her know about the house being haunted. You were the one who said we absolutely weren’t to tell her.”

  “I said,” Amanda said, “that we shouldn’t tell her. We can’t help what Mr. Ballard does.”

  “But you said she’d be scared to death if she found out.”

  Amanda shrugged. “So what?” she said.

  That night David thought for a long time about the way Amanda had said, “So what?” It was beginning to seem as if she really wanted Molly to find out that the house was haunted. All Amanda didn’t want was for Molly to find out that the kids already knew about it. After he thought about it, David could believe that that was what Amanda really wanted, and that made him almost ready to believe worse things of Amanda. Except that he couldn’t figure out how she was doing it.

  He started looking for Amanda right after a rock fell. One time he found her in her room; another time she was walking toward the house from the garage, and when he asked, she said she’d been in the loft reading for a long time. But David went on having suspicions about Amanda and the rocks, until the day the milk pitcher got smashed.

  They were all sitting around the dinner table at the time, Amanda and the four Stanley kids and Molly. During the whole meal everyone had seemed a little nervous and jumpy. David was thinking about the rocks, and he guessed everyone else was too, because they all seemed quiet and alert, like a bunch of birds keeping watch for danger even while they were eating.

  Then, as if to make everything more nerve-wracking, the plumbing started having one of its noisy spells. The plumbing at the Westerly house was as old as e
verything else, and it kept having spells of what Molly called indigestion. The spells started with gurgles and went on to strange thumps and burping noises coming from different places in the pipes, especially from the water heater in the corner of the kitchen.

  That evening the water heater had just given a particularly long loud gurgle that made everyone laugh, when there was a crash right in the middle of the table. David turned back from looking at the water heater in time to see a rock still rolling on the table and the milk still spreading from the broken milk pitcher.

  Molly gasped and jumped up to go for the sponge and mop, and everyone else just sat there staring at the rock. Molly mopped up the milk looking frightened and angry at the same time.

  “This has got to stop!” she said in a shaky voice. David wondered if she were talking to the family—or to the poltergeist. Nobody else said anything at all, not even Janie.

  David thought about that while he was putting the kids to bed that night—how they all seemed to be doing less and less talking. He guessed he knew why, but he didn’t like to think about it. Thinking about it gave him a crawly feeling on the back of his neck. There was something uncomfortable in having to wonder who else was in earshot when you were talking to people in your own house. David knew that that was what everyone was wondering because it was what he was wondering himself, now that a rock had fallen when Amanda was right there before his eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THAT SAME NIGHT, THE NIGHT THE ROCK SMASHED THE MILK PITCHER ON the kitchen table, everyone in the house was awakened in the middle of the night by a terrible crashing clatter. The noise went on crashing and thudding for what seemed like a very long time. David had time to sit straight up in bed, then duck back down under the covers, then start to peek back out again and reach for the light switch, before the last thud died away into silence.

  The moment David finally found the light switch, he knew he hadn’t imagined how long and loud the noise had been, because it had even awakened Blair.

  Blair was sitting up in bed, and when the light went on he rubbed his eyes sleepily and said, “Noise. Was that a noise, David?”

  “I’ll say that was,” David said. He put one leg out of bed and was just about to go look out the door, when the door flew open and Molly shot into the room. Her bathrobe was halfway on, her hair was every which-way, and her feet were bare.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, and then she turned and ran out of the room before David had time to answer. David got to the door in time to see her running into Janie and Esther’s room. The door of Amanda’s room was open, and the light was on, so Molly had probably already checked to see if Amanda was all right. A couple of minutes later Molly came back down the hall with Janie and Esther running behind her. When she saw David in the door to his room, with Blair peeking out from behind him, she stopped and tried to smile.

  “Well,” she said. “What do you suppose that was, an earthquake?”

  “I don’t think so,” David said. “I didn’t feel anything shake, anyway. But I sure heard it.”

  “I heard it, too,” Janie said.

  “Me too,” Esther said. “I heard it, too. Did you hear it, Blair?”

  Janie grabbed David’s arm and whispered loudly towards his ear, “It was the poltergeist, wasn’t it, David? Wasn’t it the poltergeist?”

  “Shut up, Janie,” David whispered back. In a louder voice he said, “It sounded to me as if it came from the stairs.”

  “I know,” Molly nodded. “I think so, too.” She put her arms around Janie and Esther and hugged them up against her. Then she turned slowly towards the end of the hall where the stairs began. Watching her, David saw that her face was puckered around the eyes. “The sound must have come from the stairs,” she said.

  Just then Amanda came out of her room. She had on the old shirt of her father’s that she always used for a nightgown, and her eyes were squinty as if she were still half asleep.

  “What was it?” she asked.

  Everyone shook his head.

  “It seemed to come from the stairs,” Molly said, and started walking in that direction again with all the kids right behind her.

  When Molly switched on the light at the top of the stairs, everyone gasped. Starting almost at the top, all the way down to the landing, and on down to the downstairs hall, the stairs were covered with dirt, broken chunks of pottery and occasional shredded pieces of split-leaf philodendron.

  “Ohhh!” Molly said. “My poor plant.”

  Molly had had the split-leaf philodendron for a long time. It had outgrown its planter a long time before when Dad and Molly were still just going together, and Dad had brought home the huge pottery planter from a field trip to Mexico. By the time Dad and Molly had gotten married, the plant had grown to be almost as tall as Dad. When they moved into the Westerly house, the only empty spot Molly could find that was big enough for it was in the bay window at the end of the upstairs hall, near the top of the stairway. David had helped Dad carry the heavy planter up the stairs, and all the way up Dad had grumbled in a joking way about “why couldn’t Molly have found a good place for such a heavy thing at the bottom of the stairs.” It was at the bottom of the stairs now, all right. At least most of the main stem was, along with a scatter of dirt and a couple of big chunks of the pottery planter.

  “How—” Molly began. “How on earth—” Her hands were in a shaky cup around the bottom of her face, but David could see her eyes, and they looked as if she might be going to cry.

  Esther pushed past David and started down the stairs, picking up pieces of pottery and broken leaves. Everyone else just stood there silently watching her. They watched her stop, when her hands were full, and come back up the stairs, carefully putting one foot and then the other on each stair. At the top of the stairs she made a neat little pile of the pieces and started down for more.

  Then Molly finally took her hands away from her mouth and said, “Tesser darling, not now. We’ll clean it up in the morning. Let’s all just forget it for now and go back to bed.”

  Molly held out her hand to Esther, and Esther took it, but she looked back over her shoulder uneasily at the mess on the stairs. Messes always worried Esther, no matter who made them.

  As David started back to his room, he heard Molly asking Amanda if she’d like to spend the rest of the night with her, instead of alone in her own room. David left the door open and listened to hear what Amanda said. He couldn’t hear all of it, but he got enough to know that Amanda said she didn’t want to, and that not everybody was terrified by anything the least bit supernatural.

  Then he heard Janie say, “We’ll stay with you, Molly. May Tesser and I stay in your room with you tonight? We want to, don’t we, Tesser?” So David closed the door and went to bed.

  David stayed awake for a long time listening and waiting, but nothing else happened, and finally he went to sleep. When he woke up the next morning, Molly was already up and she must have been up for some time, because the remains of the philodendron were entirely gone.

  Everything was very strange and tense at breakfast that morning. Of course, everyone was thinking about the poltergeist and the plant, and at first the kids started to talk about it, but Molly begged them not to. Her face looked pale and tired, and she seemed very nervous and jumpy. After the little kids had finished and gone outside to play, David asked her if she had called Mr. Ballard.

  Molly nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I did. But he wasn’t exactly helpful. He told me he had heard that at one time, years ago, there were rumors about Westerly House being haunted. But that was very long ago, and there has been absolutely no trouble for years or he wouldn’t have accepted the responsibility of finding a buyer for the house. He made it clear that he isn’t a superstitious person, himself, and that he thinks I am just imagining things because I’m nervous about my husband being away.”

  “Huh!” David said. “I guess he’d say we all just imagined about what happened last night.”

&nbs
p; “I tried to tell him about it,” Molly said. “But he just said that probably one of the children had done it and was afraid to confess.”

  “Well, if he means the little kids, he’s crazy,” David said. “For one thing they couldn’t. It was too heavy. And for another, if any one of them had done it, I’d know it.”

  “I know,” Molly said. “I don’t think you children did it. Not any of you.”

  As she said that, Molly’s chin started wiggling as if she were going to cry, and she turned away so David and Amanda couldn’t see her face and hurried out of the room.

  David looked at Amanda. “What do you think?” he asked. “About her, I mean? Is she going to crack up, or something.”

  Amanda shrugged. “I don’t see what she’s so scared about. Poltergeists don’t ever really hurt anyone. At least not that I’ve ever heard of. Oh, I read about one that stuck people with pins and pinched them, but nothing really serious. There was one I read about that haunted a house in England for about three years that—” And Amanda started to tell a long story about a particular poltergeist and what it did. But David didn’t listen too carefully because he was thinking about the thing she’d said about three years. He was wondering how anyone could stand a poltergeist for that long. He was pretty sure he couldn’t, and the way things were going he didn’t see how Molly was going to stand it even for the nine more days before Dad was due to come home.

  Except for a few pebbles that Janie found scattered around the dining room, nothing happened during that day. Amanda spent most of the day in her room, as usual, and the kids played outdoors on the lawn and under the oak tree. Molly didn’t do much painting. Instead she gardened some and sat in the lawn chair holding a book but not reading it much. Dinner came and went without any trouble.

  After dinner Molly let the little kids stay up later than usual, and about ten o’clock everyone went to bed at once. Esther and Janie spent the night again in Molly’s room.

  Blair went to sleep right away as usual, but David was beginning to think he was never going to go to sleep when he suddenly found himself waking up with the feeling that he’d been asleep for a long time. He also had the feeling that he’d been awakened by something in particular, but just for a second he didn’t know what it had been. He lay perfectly still trying to reach back into his sleep and remember what had awakened him—and then it came back. Something had touched his shoulder.