Crying Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

the dust. The electricity was working, but many bulbs had burned out and never been replaced. They were bare bulbs; no fixtures, not up here, where the lower classes lived. The light they cast was an ugly light, at once sharp and inadequate, leaving great hollows of shadow in between. That long, narrow, barren hallway with its rows of closed doors was a nasty place. I found myself wondering what might be hidden behind those doors.
    When I finally found a small stairway going up from the fourth floor, I discovered that it led not to the tower but to the cupola. I had almost forgotten there was one, and I scrambled up thestairs with renewed interest. The steps were narrow and steep but quite solid, and the room they led to was a curious place.
    It was small, about ten feet square, and completely empty except for dust. The walls on all four sides were solid glass.
    There wasn’t much to see outside, only the vast, encompassing darkness of the trees that surrounded the house. In the west the sunset spread bars of bright color across the sky, but the vault above was already filled with stars. There was no moon; it had not yet risen. I promised myself that I would come up again during the day. The cupola rose up above the trees like a lighthouse out of a waste of water; the view by daylight must be quite spectacular. Possibly I would be able to see beyond the island, out across the rolling water of the ocean. I wondered, romantically, whether the Captain’s wife had stood here watching for the first sight of his sails. There were widows’ walks in many of the big houses along this coast; this vantage point might have served the same purpose. With sea voyages lasting a year or more, they were lonely times for the wives who stayed behind. Sometimes the vigil never ended, as some woman watched for a sail that had gone down, unseen and without survivors, beneath the stormy waves of another ocean.
    Nice morbid thoughts…I told myself that Iwould have one more try for the tower, and then I would go down the first stairs I found. Mary must be wondering what had become of me.
    Opening a door at random, I found a staircase I hadn’t seen before. There were windows on each landing; I could see a faint glow from the window on the floor below. But there was no glow from above, and when I looked up I saw a solid ceiling. This was the top, the stairs went no higher.
    The moon had risen, but its light was not strong enough to make me want to risk those stairs. I was about to turn back when my hand touched a familiar shape on the wall. It was an electric light switch. I pressed it down, and lights came on. Then I saw the other door, across the landing, and I realized that I had found the tower.
    At first I thought the door was locked. I shoved with my shoulder, and the door gave with a screech of hinges and a puff of air, almost as if the room had been hermetically sealed. The air smelled warm and stale.
    The first thing I saw were the bars on the window.
    They were solid, unrelieved black against the pale silver shine of moonlight, and their shape was repeated in long shadows across the floor. The effect was so startling that I actually fell back a step, my hand still on the doorknob; then I caught myself, with a silent reprimand. No doubt this hadonce been a child’s room. The nursery windows had been barred too. It was a long drop down to the ground.
    Unlike the other rooms, this one had a few sticks of furniture. The object that caught my eye, and confirmed my idea that this had been a nursery, was a rocking horse. It was the biggest one I had ever seen; I could have ridden it myself without having to hunch over. It was a rather ghostly sight in the shadows; perhaps, I thought, the darkness made it seem larger than it was.
    I couldn’t see much more because there were no lights in the room. My fingers explored the whole section of wall next to the door, but failed to find a switch. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I made out a few