Dead Letter by Betsy Byars Read Free Book Online

Herculeah couldn’t explain it, but she had the impression that the house had been safe and secure, a place where happy lives had been lived.
    Of course she would never know about the cellar.
    Herculeah saw a door at the end of the hall and opened it. A musty smell filled her nostrils.
    The attic.
    She felt a chill of dread, something she had not felt before, not even as she peered down into the missing cellar. She tried to shake off her fear.
    Why is everybody afraid of attics? she asked herself. It’s just another room.
    And: If you don’t go up, you’ll always wonder if it was the woman’s prison.
    And: Look how dusty the stairs are. There’s nobody up there.
    And: It’s going to be dark soon, and it’ll be worse then.
    Another chill went up her spine. Someone walking on my grave. That was just an old expression, she reminded herself. Nothing to it.
    She started up the stairs.
    Unbidden, the words of an old camp song came into her mind. To pick up her spirits she began to sing to herself.
    They wrap you up in a big white sheet.
    She moved slowly. The air was stifling, probably the same air that had been here for fifty years. It could not be healthy to breathe fifty-year-old air. Get on with it, she told herself.
    Drop you down about fifty feet.
    She wished Meat were with her. He could have stayed hidden in the trees and given one of his famous whistles if anyone appeared.
    The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out ...
    But Meat was back at home. “Where you ought to be,” she heard her mother’s voice say.
    â€œOh, Mom,” she answered.
    The worms play pinochle on your snout.
    This song was definitely not picking up her spirits.
    Gripping the handrail, she took the stairs in twos. Yet even before she got to the top, she knew ‘this could not have been a prison. There was too much light. Wide windows were at either end of the empty room.
    She walked toward one of the windows. The floor beneath her feet was littered with dead flies and bees, the attic’s only prisoners. She glanced out the window.
    Not a car, not a person was in sight.
    So why, Herculeah thought uneasily, do I have the feeling someone is out there? That someone knows I’m here?
    The coat, she thought. Could it be the coat? She folded her arms around the front of the coat, drawing it closer about her. Had Meat been right? Had someone recognized the coat?
    What if someone saw me from a distance and thought I was ... She couldn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t know. Still, she shivered beneath the heavy coat. More footsteps on my grave. She forced a smile. Heavy traffic this afternoon.
    She glanced one last time out the window. This time her eyes narrowed. She thought she saw a movement through the trees.
    Maybe it was only a lengthening shadow, maybe it was her imagination, but the thought made Herculeah say, “I’m getting out of here.”
    She stepped back and then, in the final rays of the sun, she saw it.
    It wasn’t her imagination.
    Her hair began to frizzle.
    There was a car just beyond the trees.
    And it was black.

13
    DEATH BY BLACK CAR
    Herculeah ran down the attic steps. Her heart raced. She flew across the hall and down the main stairway.
    At the bottom of the stairs, she paused. She glanced out the window to see if the car was still there.
    It was.
    She ran into the kitchen. She remembered a back door there. She yanked at the doorknob. It came off in her hand. She flung it across the room.
    A window—a window—it would have to be a window.
    The window over the kitchen sink was broken, the glass jagged. Herculeah thrust the window up, leaped sidesaddle onto the sill, and threw her legs over.
    She paused to look around the outside, checking each bush, each tree, anything large enough to conceal a man. After all, whoever was following her could have left the car. He could be anywhere.
    The sun had gone down behind the trees, leaving the sky the color of pale