The Headless Cupid

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  The instant David’s mind said “something touched me” his heart went THUD and his eyes jerked towards his right shoulder—and a solid wall of darkness. He lay perfectly still under the blankets, stiff as a statue and just as motionless, except for his heart, which was beating so loudly that whatever it was, standing there in the darkness beside him, could surely hear it too.

  Then it touched him again, and at the same instant a soft familiar voice said, “David.”

  David had to gulp hard before he could answer. “Blair. What are you doing out of bed?”

  “David,” Blair said. “I’m listening. Are you listening?”

  “What are you talking about?” David said. “Get back to—”

  But Blair shook David’s shoulder again and said, “Shhh!”

  David hushed for a second, and in that second he heard it, too. It was a soft squeaking sound, and it came from another part of the house. David sat up in bed and reached for Blair in the darkness. Blair felt familiar—very small and warm. They sat on the edge of the bed together and listened.

  After a minute they heard the noise again—a soft distant squeak, followed this time by a very soft click. David stood up, and still holding on to Blair, he felt his way toward the bedroom door. David’s groping hand had just found the doorknob when somewhere downstairs there was a loud crash, and then almost immediately, another even louder one.

  David jerked the door open and peered out into the darkness. At the same instant a light appeared at the bottom of the stairs and came bounding up them. Bounding, as if carried by someone who was running, skipping three or four stairs at a time. The beam was small and narrow, but as it reached the top of the stairs, it was enough to let David see that the person carrying the light was small and dressed in white. The light skimmed noiselessly down the hall and disappeared into Amanda’s room.

  The light came on, then, in Molly’s room, and Molly came running out into the hall, halfway into her bathrobe again, the way she’d been the night before. When she had disappeared into Amanda’s room, David turned on his own light and he and Blair started down the hall. They met Molly outside Amanda’s room.

  “Oh, David,” Molly said. “What are we going to do?”

  “Where’s Amanda?” David asked.

  “In bed,” Molly said. “She’s all right. But that awful, awful noise—”

  Molly was terribly frightened. Frightened enough to quit trying to pretend that she wasn’t in front of David and the kids. David suddenly felt angry. He was on the verge of saying something very drastic, when Amanda came out of her room and Janie and Esther came running out of Molly’s, all at the same time. Amanda was blinking her eyes again and looking very sleepy.

  “I—I suppose I’d better go see what it was this time,” Molly said.

  “Me too,” Janie said. “We’ll all go. Won’t we, David?”

  “Sure,” David said. “We’ll all go.” But when everyone started down the stairs, he waited. He waited until they turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, and then he dashed into Amanda’s room. By her bed, on her nightstand, was the little pen-sized flashlight that David had noticed there before. David picked it up for a second, then put it back where it had been and ran out and down the stairs.

  He reached the living room almost as soon as everyone else did, just as they were discovering what had made the noise. A painting had fallen off the wall.

  It was a large oil painting that Molly had done of Janie and the twins. They found it lying on the floor beneath the spot where it had been hanging, but it hadn’t just fallen by itself. They knew it hadn’t as soon as they saw the place near the top where the heavy gilt frame was badly smashed. Near the painting, on the floor, they found the heavy round hunk of rock crystal that Dad kept on his desk to use as a paperweight. The crystal was heavy—and it must have been thrown very hard.

  David kept his mouth tightly closed while he helped Molly pick things up and get the kids back to bed. He kept it closed because he had a feeling that if he started talking he’d say a lot. And before he did that, he wanted a chance to think. He wanted a chance to think some more about Amanda’s flashlight, which had still been warm when he picked it up.

  Chapter Seventeen

  WHEN DAVID FINALLY GOT BACK INTO BED THAT NIGHT, HE FULLY INTENDED to stay awake until he had everything thought out. There was a lot to think over—like why? and how? and maybe most important, what now? But to his surprise, he almost immediately went to sleep.

  That is, he woke up the next morning, surprised to find that he had gone to sleep before he’d decided anything at all. He knew he’d have to get up soon, so he skipped over the why? and how? and concentrated on what now? What was he, David, going to do about the fact that Amanda had been the poltergeist all along?

  The first thing he wondered about was what would happen when everybody knew. What would Molly do, and, most of all, what would Dad do? When Dad found out about everything that had happened, and how frightened everyone had been, what would he do? The Westerly girls had been sent away to boarding school, and no one had even proved that they had anything to do with their poltergeist. Where would they send Amanda? And after she’d been punished and sent away, how would she feel about adults—when she already hated nearly all of them?

  That was about as far as David’s thinking had taken him when Blair woke up and came over to sit on David’s bed. It suddenly occurred to David that Blair would have to be a part of whatever he decided because Blair had been right beside him when Amanda ran up the stairs.

  “Did you see someone run up the stairs last night?” David asked, just to find out how much Blair knew.

  Blair nodded. “Amanda,” he said.

  “Are you going to tell on her?” David asked.

  Blair ran his finger around on the bed following the star shaped pattern of the quilt, but David knew he’d heard and was thinking about it. Finally he smiled at David and shook his head no.

  “We could tell her we know,” David said, “but that we weren’t going to tell anyone else if she stops doing things. She’d probably stop if we did that, but she’d sure be mad at us. And she’d probably keep thinking we were going to tell any day—for years and years. It wouldn’t make her very easy to live with.”

  Blair nodded.

  “The best way would be to make her stop without telling anybody anything. I’ve been thinking about how to do it.”

  “Make her stop,” Blair said. He crawled under the bedspread and then sat up, making a small tepee shape in the middle of the bed. He sat very still under the spread for a long time.

  Finally David asked, “What are you doing under there?”

  “I’m thinking,” Blair said. “I’m making Amanda stop.”

  David laughed and kicked him, and Blair tipped over and crawled out with his curly hair all smashed down on his forehead.

  Molly came in then and told them it was time to get up, so there wasn’t time to come to a decision, at least not right then. But when Amanda came down to breakfast, late as usual, David felt different about her. He watched her look around at everyone, particularly at her mother, as if she were trying to see how much they had been upset by the picture falling the night before. When she looked at David, he did something he hadn’t planned to do—he stared back at her. It was a long straight look—the kind of cool look he’d never been able to get just right before. But what surprised him was it wasn’t really cool at all, because what was really behind it was anger.

  When Molly joined the rest of them at the table, she said that she’d just called up an old friend who was going to come and stay with them for a few days.

  “Who?” Amanda asked. “Not Ingrid, I hope.”

  “Yes, Ingrid,” Molly said. “I know you don’t like her, but she’ll be free for the next three days, and she says she’ll stay even longer and commute to work if I need her. I just think I’ll feel a lot better if there’s another adult in the house with us.”

  When Molly started talk
ing to Janie, David asked Amanda, “Who’s Ingrid?”

  “Just a friend of my mother’s. They used to work together. I don’t like her.”

  “Why not?”

  Amanda shrugged. “She’s a typical adult, nosey and bossy.”

  After breakfast, when Amanda headed for the loft to read, David went with her. He didn’t know why for sure, except that keeping his eyes on her as much as possible might keep her from pulling any more poltergeist tricks. Might, and might not. David hadn’t forgotten how the rock had fallen on the kitchen table when Amanda was right there in front of them, or the mysterious things that happened during the seance, while Amanda’s hands were out on the table the whole time.

  In the loft, Amanda asked David if he and the kids were going to ride into the city with Molly when she went to get Ingrid.

  “I don’t think so,” David said. “The kids don’t like drives much, and besides there wouldn’t be room for all of us and Ingrid.”

  “It’ll take her at least two hours,” Amanda said. “Aren’t you and the kids going to be scared to stay here alone all the time?”

  “Aren’t you?” David asked. He was wondering what kind of poltergeist trick Amanda was planning to get set up while everybody was gone.

  “Me?” she said. “I might be a little nervous, but if you’re used to supernatural manifestations, you don’t worry too much about things like pictures falling off the wall. But the kids will be scared to stay alone, won’t they?”

  David shrugged. “The twins won’t mind. They’re old enough to know that ghosts and things like that are supposed to be scary, but they’re not really old enough to understand why. They won’t be scared unless somebody else is.”

  “How about Janie?”

  “Oh, she’s scared. But she kind of enjoys being scared. The best day Janie ever had was once when she almost got run over by a car. She must have told everybody all about it a thousand times.”

  “And how about you?” Amanda asked. “You don’t seem very scared.” She was watching David closely through narrowed eyes.

  Just a minute before David had been thinking, again, about telling Amanda what he and Blair had seen; but because she seemed about to guess, it was suddenly important not to let her know.

  “I guess I’m getting used to supernatural manifestations, too,” he said. He collapsed in the dusty hay and pretended to be sleepy, but he kept his eyes open enough so that he could watch Amanda from under his eyelashes. She went back to her book, but every now and then she stopped and looked at David strangely, as if she couldn’t quite figure something out.

  Molly didn’t leave for the city until the middle of the afternoon because Ingrid couldn’t be picked up until she was through working. Before she left, Molly talked to David and Amanda for a long time about what they should do. They should all stay together as much as possible, and if anything did happen, they were to try not to frighten Janie and the twins. She told Amanda to put some potatoes on to bake about 5:30, and she and Ingrid would be home in time to make the rest of the dinner.

  Molly looked very tense and worried. As she got into her little car, she tried to smile cheerfully at Amanda and David, but it wasn’t a very successful attempt.

  “It’ll be all right,” David said. “I don’t think we’re going to have any poltergeist trouble today. I just have a feeling.” He didn’t go on and explain that Amanda probably wouldn’t bother to poltergeist when there were only kids around to scare.

  After Molly left, Amanda went to her room and shut herself in, so David took the kids to his room and read them a story. But he was careful to leave his door open and sit where he could see the door to Amanda’s room. Janie was sitting on the arm of the chair, where she always sat so she could read along, Esther was sitting on the floor in front of him, and Blair sat on David’s bed. At least he sat there for a while, and then he curled up there and before long he was sound asleep.

  David’s tongue was beginning to get tired when Amanda came out of her room and came in to see what they were doing. She listened to David read for a while, and then she offered to take a turn. Janie frowned.

  “David reads better than anybody,” she said.

  Amanda gave her an icy look. “Last year,” she said, “I was reading four years above grade level.”

  “David reads five years above,” Janie said.

  “No I don’t, Janie,” David said. “They just like the way I read,” he told Amanda, “with lots of expression. Our Mom used to read to us a lot, and she read with lots of expression, so I learned how.”

  “Not even the library lady reads as good as David,” Esther said.

  “When David reads,” Janie said, “he makes his voice like the music on television. It gets scary in the scary parts, and it tells you when something is about to happen.”

  Amanda snatched the book away from David and began to read. She read with a great deal of expression. After a while Janie and Esther started looking pleased and settled down to listen. Blair went on sleeping on David’s bed.

  Two or three times Janie or Esther interrupted to say that Amanda was a very good reader, and then Amanda went on reading with more expression than ever. Actually, David thought she was overdoing it a bit, but he didn’t say so because it occurred to him that there were worse things she might be overdoing if she weren’t busy reading. But finally he did remind her that it was 5:30 and time to put the potatoes on to bake. Amanda finished the chapter, and they all went down to the kitchen. All except Blair who was still asleep.

  It was a little bit past six when the phone rang. It was Molly. She was calling from a service station about halfway between the city and Steven’s Corners. She sounded a little bit frantic. Something had happened to her car, and she and Ingrid were waiting for it to be fixed.

  “Is everything all right there?” she kept asking.

  “Sure,” David said. “Everything is just fine. Nothing has happened at all. Not even any rocks.”

  “That’s wonderful, David,” Molly said. “Maybe you and Amanda had better fix dinner for yourselves and the kids. We have to have a new water pump for the car, and they didn’t have one the right size. One of the mechanics has gone for one, and he should be back soon. But we may not be home for another hour or so. Will that be all right?”

  Amanda was fairly cheerful about having to cook for the kids. While she and David fried the hamburgers and put the peas on to cook, she kept mentioning how much Janie and Esther had liked her reading.

  When dinner was almost ready, Blair came downstairs looking very sleepy and climbed up into his chair. Dinner was quite unusual that night, partly because the hamburger was a little burnt and the peas were raw, but also because of the way Amanda acted when there were no adults there. She talked and laughed and fought with Janie in a friendly way about whether raw vegetables were better for you than cooked ones. After dinner she offered to help get the kids ready for bed.

  It was a little earlier than their regular bedtime, but Janie and Esther said they wanted to go to bed. Maybe because they were enjoying the novelty of having Amanda pay so much attention to them. Blair said he wasn’t sleepy.

  “No wonder,” David said. “You slept most of the afternoon.”

  Blair watched Amanda riding Esther up the stairs on her back and decided that he’d go to bed, too. When Amanda came back for him, he climbed on her back.

  “I thought you weren’t sleepy?” David said.

  “Maybe I am,” Blair said. “Sometimes I don’t know.”

  The phone rang again while Amanda was still helping Esther take her bath, and David answered it. It was Molly again, and she was still at the service station. The mechanic who had gone after the part for the car had to go to three places before he found one the right size. He’d just gotten back with it, and it would take at least another hour before Molly and Ingrid could get home. Molly asked three times if everything was all right.

  “Everything’s great,” David said. “We finished dinner, and we’r
e putting the kids to bed. There hasn’t been any sign of the poltergeist. I think it may have moved out.”

  Molly laughed a little and said she certainly hoped so and hung up. David went into the parlor and turned on the TV. He sat there staring at it but not really seeing it. He was really thinking about what he had said and wondering if he really believed it. Had Amanda stopped being a poltergeist, or had she only stopped temporarily, because she really wasn’t interested in scaring kids? David was still wondering when Amanda came back downstairs and sat down at the other end of the couch.

  “Wow,” she said. “Those kids are a lot of work. How do you stand it?” But she didn’t sound as if she really thought it was all that bad.

  They’d been sitting there, watching the TV, for about half an hour when Amanda got up and started for the kitchen. She called back to David that she was going for some cookies and did he want some. David said yes, and went back to watching the tube, because he was very interested in a murder that was about to happen. Amanda hadn’t been gone more than a minute when there was a very quiet moment on the TV—while the murderer was climbing silently in a window—and in the middle of the silence, David heard a small but definite noise that seemed to come from the hallway or stairs. He turned off the TV and was standing there listening when something, a whole avalanche of things, started bouncing down the stairs. There were big bumps and thumps like something very heavy, and smaller thumps, and a clattering rumble like hundreds of bouncing rocks. David was still listening to the last of the clatter when from the direction of the kitchen there came a high-pitched scream.

  David started for the stairs, turned and started for the kitchen, and then turned back again towards the stairs. While he was running in circles, he was thinking parts of things like, “What did she do?” and “Why did she do it?” and “What did she throw down the stairs?” and then, “If she threw it, who just screamed in the kitchen?”