“See this!” she had roared, holding her right hand before my face. The tip of her index finger had been cut off just in front of the knuckle. The flesh where it had healed over was smooth and shiny.
I nodded and stared. I had long been both frightened and fascinated by the shortened digit.
“Granny Pinchbottom did that! I stuck this finger where it didn’t belong one time too many, even though my mother told me not to. One morning I woke up and . . .”
She had trailed off, shaking the short finger before my eyes by way of warning. I was six at the time, and the story had so terrified me that I stayed away from the sweet jar—and anything else that might possibly fall into the category of “things I shouldn’t touch”—for a week.
After a while Karl noticed my odd behavior. It took him a while to draw the story out of me. When I finally confessed my fear of Granny Pinchbottom he looked angry. “Listen, William,” he said firmly, “there is no Granny Pinchbottom. She’s just a character the old women in the village use to scare children into behaving.”
“Are you sure?”
He had laid one hand on the thick leatherbound book at his side. “I’m sure. When I was little my mother and my aunts terrified me with stories of Granny Pinchbottom. Finally my father got sick of seeing me so frightened and took me aside to tell me the truth.”
I smiled in relief. Karl smiled back—a rare event.
“Not that I would go sticking my finger in the sweet jar if I were you,” he had added. “Who needs to be afraid of Granny Pinchbottom when you have Hulda to keep you in line?” Then he had tugged a strand of my butter-yellow hair and said, “Now scat! I have work to do.”
That was what he always did when he wanted to get rid of me.
• • •
Though I thought about it every day, nearly a week passed before I made another visit to Igor. It was the night noises that finally prompted me to descend the five hundred steps again. They were growing louder, and I was finding it harder and harder to sleep.
It happened the fifth night after I met Igor. The noises were worse than I could ever remember. I pulled my pillow over my head but I could still hear them. To make things worse, I was restless myself. I felt as if there was something I should do. Only I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Finally I pulled aside the curtains that surrounded my bed, climbed out, and began to pace around my room. Moonlight streamed through my window.
I stopped in front of the fireplace. I had always seen it as a way out. Suddenly I realized it was also a way in. That had never mattered when I thought there were only four of us in the castle. But if Igor had been living in the dungeons all these years, it must be possible that other people—or things—lived in the castle, too.
I went to my door. The moans and sighs seemed closer than usual. I began to have an odd feeling that there was some sense underneath them—as if they were not merely sounds, but some word trying desperately to be formed.
That was when I decided to visit Igor. If he had really lived in the castle for as long as he said, maybe he could tell me something about these midnight moans. Slipping into my clothes, I lit a candle. Then I pushed the brick that opened my fireplace and climbed the three flights to the East Tower. Moving the hands of the clock to midnight, I stepped through and began the long journey to the dungeon.
• • •
When I arrived at Igor’s cell, the torch was burning outside the door. But Igor was nowhere to be seen.
It was the middle of the night. Where could he be?
I hesitated for a bit, then entered. I had come too far to just turn and go. Besides, I was tired, and it was going to be a lot harder going back up all those stairs than it had been coming down.
As I looked around the cell the first thing that caught my eye was a crude wooden shelf on which sat a number of oddly shaped objects. When I stepped closer I realized that they were carvings, some made from wood, others from stone. They were rough, not smooth and polished like the strange statues that stood in some of the rooms above. Nonetheless, they were fascinating. At first I thought they were supposed to be animals. Then I realized that though they had some animal-like details—a pig snout here, a toad face there—they represented something else altogether; something strangely human-like.
I became so engrossed in examining the carvings I didn’t realize someone else had entered the room until a creaky voice said, “Put that down, or I’ll turn you into a toad!”
I was so startled that rather than putting the carving down I threw it into the air.
CHAPTER FOUR
“THE MOST DANGEROUS NIGHT”
To my astonishment, the carving didn’t fall. It simply hung in the air before my face.
“Unless you want four legs and a lot of warts, set it down carefully,” said the intruder.
His warning was made particularly chilling by the fact that the carving I had been studying bore a strong resemblance to a toad. I glanced at it again and wondered if it had once been a person. Moving delicately, I returned it to the shelf.
Then I turned around.
The man facing me was even taller than Karl. He wore an old white robe cinched at the waist and leaned on a knobby staff. A few strands of wispy white hair straggled over his forehead, and a thin white beard sprouted from his chin. His nose was long, his eyes a strangely intense blue.
“Who are you?” I asked nervously.
“My name is Ishmael. But don’t call me that.”
“Then what should I call you?”
“Don’t call me anything!” he cried, pounding his stick against the floor. “Who are you? Where is Igor?”
“I don’t know.”
Ishmael looked startled. “You don’t know who you are?”
“No, I don’t know where Igor is. I came to visit him, but he wasn’t here.”
The man’s look turned to one of anger. “What did you do with him?”
“I didn’t do anything with him!”
“Of course he didn’t, you old fool,” cried Ishmael, striking himself on the forehead.
I wondered why he was calling me an old fool until I realized he was talking to himself. Shifting his walking stick to his left hand, he leaned forward and said, “Listen . . . what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Say what my name was.”
“Well, what is it?”
“William.”
“All right, listen, William—I want you to give Igor a message for me.”
“What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“The message!” I snapped, forgetting my fear in my impatience. “What do you want me to tell him?”
“Who?”
“Igor!”
The man looked startled. “Igor? Is he here? That’s who I want to talk to.”
I sighed. “No. He’s not here. That’s why you wanted me to give him a message.”
“Right! Thank you for offering.” He peered from side to side, as if a spy might be lurking in any corner, then leaned his bony frame down so he could look straight into my eyes and whispered, “Tell him the most dangerous night is almost here!”
A shiver tingled down my spine. “What does that mean?”
“Don’t ask. Just give Igor the message!”
Ishmael straightened, slammed the base of his staff against the floor, and shouted a word I couldn’t understand. A flash of light filled the little cell, and he vanished in the center of it. A moment later I heard his voice, as if from a great distance, exclaim, “Wow, that hurt !”
My mouth was hanging open in astonishment—and fear. Clearly a few of the buttons in Ishmael’s brain had come undone. But if he could vanish in a puff of smoke like that, maybe he could really turn someone into a toad, too.
I waved my hand to clear the smoke and hoped Igor would be back soon. Crazy as Ishmael had been, this didn’t seem like the kind of message that could be ignored. I would have
written it down, if not for two problems: I didn’t have anything to write with, and I had no idea whether or not Igor could read. So I had to stay until he returned.
I looked around the cell again. I didn’t feel safe picking up any of the little carvings; Ishmael might decide he had forgotten something, show up in a flash of light, and turn me into a toad for having my hands on them. But the cell didn’t have much else to look at, the only other items being a leather bag in the corner, a stack of unlit torches, a stone table and bench, and a pile of rags that I finally realized must be where Igor slept. It looked uncomfortable, and I felt a little sad to see it.
I plopped down on the stone bench. It didn’t just look uncomfortable, it was uncomfortable. After a few minutes I got up and walked around the cell again. Where was Igor?
I wandered back into the corridor.
No sign of him, no clue as to where he might be.
After a while I lifted the torch from the bracket that held it into the wall and began to walk in the direction Igor had gone the last time I was down here.
I passed several doors. I tried to open the first three, but they were locked. At the fourth I stood on tiptoe and tried to peek through the bars of the tiny window. I was not able to see anything, but for a moment I thought I could hear something moving. I started to call out, then thought better of it.
Suddenly I heard another noise. It wasn’t like the moans upstairs nor the more solid sounds I had heard the last time I was down here. This sound was light, almost tinkling. I walked a bit farther and realized it was made by running water.
Intrigued, I began to walk faster. Soon I reached a place where the floor disappeared in a gap two or three times wider than I was tall. A narrow stone bridge spanned the gap; about ten feet beneath the bridge flowed a dark stream.
A set of stone steps beside the bridge led to the water’s edge. After a moment’s hesitation I walked down them. A narrow, rocky ledge bordered the stream. To my right it led to solid stone wall, from beneath which flowed the stream. To my left—the direction in which the stream was running—was a tunnel. Ledge, stream, and tunnel extended in that direction as far as I could see by the torch’s flickering light.
I dipped my fingers into the water. Cold. I raised a tiny handful to my lips. It tasted fresh and clear. Was this where Igor got his water? I wondered if he used it for his sewer as well. Stretching the torch over the water, I saw sinuous shapes swimming beneath the surface.
I considered following the ledge along the stream for a while but decided to turn back. I didn’t want to miss Igor if he returned.
But when I got back to the cell it was still empty. I was restless and tired, and I wanted to go back upstairs. I felt myself growing sleepy and wished Igor would come back so I could deliver Ishmael’s message. Finally I lay down on the pile of rags. Within moments I was sound asleep.
I was woken by a voice in the corridor growling:
Bop, bop, bop!
Bop them on their top!
Knock them on the head
When they fall down dead
Igor gets his bread!
Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop !
As the voice came closer I realized that what I heard wasn’t growling, it was singing. More specifically, it was Igor singing. I was glad he was back—until I suddenly wondered if he might be angry that I had been in his cell while he was gone.
A surge of panic gripped me. It was too late to run into the corridor and try to pretend that I was just arriving. Desperate, I burrowed under the rags that made up Igor’s bed.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NORTH TOWER
Do you know what it feels like to realize you’ve done something truly stupid? Then you know how I felt about five seconds after Igor entered the room. It was impossible for me to get out of the room without his noticing me. If I had just stood there, he might have been angry, but at least I wouldn’t have looked as if I had something to hide, as if I had been caught snooping.
Suddenly I had an idea. Waiting until Igor turned away from me, I jumped out from the rags and screamed “Boo!” at the top of my lungs.
“Aiieee!” cried Igor. Spinning around, he hit me over the head with the bear. Though the bear was soft, the force of the blow knocked me over.
“William!” cried Igor when he saw that it was me. “What you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you,” I said, pushing myself to a sitting position.
“Why you scare Igor?”
“Because you scared me,” I said, not bothering to add that I had also wanted to draw his attention away from the fact that I was hiding in his bed.
Igor looked puzzled. Then he looked mad, which was pretty frightening. Then he began to laugh. “Good joke on Igor! Igor scare boy. Boy scare Igor! Brave boy to scare Igor.”
The way he said “brave” made me wonder what he would have done if he hadn’t liked the joke.
“Listen, Igor, I have a message for you. Someone named Ishmael—”
“Don’t call him that!”
I paused, then started again. “A strange person asked me to tell you, ‘The most dangerous night is almost here.’ ”
Igor furrowed his brow. “Sound important.”
“What does it mean?”
“Igor not know. Igor should know, but Igor forget. Sometimes things get foggy in Igor’s head.”
“Like the North Tower,” I said.
Igor looked at me with fear in his eyes. “What about North Tower?” he asked nervously.
“Well, it has fog around it all the time, and I can’t figure out what’s inside it. So it’s a lot like your head,” I added, amused at my own cleverness.
“North Tower,” muttered Igor, ignoring my joke. “Igor don’t like North Tower.”
“Why not?” I asked, serious now.
He was silent for so long I began to wonder whether he had heard me. When I looked at him I saw that his eyes had gone funny and far-away-looking, almost as if he were in a trance. I reached out and shook his arm. “Igor! Are you all right?”
He blinked. “William! Don’t you know when someone thinking? Now you made Igor forget.”
He made one of his humpy shrugs. “Something important up there,” he said. “Something very important, and very not good. Igor remember that now. Igor remember that very most long time ago that tower got locked so it would stay locked forever. Something fierce and bad up there. But Igor don’t know what it is. Igor can’t remember.”
He sounded as if he was starting to get angry, so I changed the subject. But his reaction made me more curious than ever about what was in that tower. Which reminded me of my original reason for coming down to visit him. “What about the noises?” I asked. “Do you know what causes them?”
“What noises?”
“The noises I hear at night. They’re like moans, mostly—as if someone is very, very sad. Or a lot of someones. But I can never find them.”
“Could be ghosts,” said Igor, giving his bear a little squeeze.
“Did you ever see a ghost?” I asked.
“Don’t think so. Hard to tell down here.”
“Sometimes the noises keep me from going to sleep,” I said. “That’s why I came to see you tonight. The noises were keeping me awake, and I wanted to ask you about them.”
As I spoke I found myself stifling a yawn.
Igor looked at me for a moment. “Here,” he said at last. “Hold bear. Bear good for sleeping.”
• • •
I woke in my own bed. I was confused at first. How had I gotten there? Then I began to have foggy memories of Igor guiding me up the long stairway from the dungeons. I had been stumbling with exhaustion. Finally Igor had just picked me up. Cradled in his arms, I had collapsed into a deep sleep.
I was wondering how Igor had known where to bring me when I was distracted by something moving under the covers. It was Mervyn. He climbed onto my pillow and stared at me, his whiskers twitching expectantly.
“If you
want breakfast, you’ll have to wait until I get some myself,” I said, tapping him on the head with my finger.
Climbing out of bed, I shook myself out of my clothes, which were fairly filthy after the past night’s adventures. Later I would take them down to the room where Hulda kept the washtubs. She didn’t do laundry very often—once every several weeks at most. But I had plenty of clothes, and if I ran out, I could always find more in one of the abandoned rooms.
“You look tired this morning,” shouted Hulda when I stumbled into the kitchen fifteen minutes later.
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” I said as she scooped up a bowl of porridge and handed it to me.
I took my usual place at the big table in the center of the kitchen and sliced a thick slab from the loaf of dark bread Hulda placed in front of me.
Though it had been years since I had raised the topic of the North Tower with anyone upstairs, Igor’s strange reaction to my mention of it the previous night had made me curious. I decided to try asking Hulda about it.
“Lands’ sakes, William,” she bellowed, wiping her plump hands on her apron and brushing back a wisp of gray hair. “What do you want to ask a question like that for? Anything in this castle that’s locked is probably locked for a reason. My guess is that tower went so long without anyone cleaning it that the Baron decided it was easier to lock the door and forget it than to take care of the mess. After all, the last housekeeper didn’t take care of this place the way I do.”
I resisted an urge to snort. I had been writing my name in the dust in various places around the castle since Karl had first taught me how over six years earlier. As far as I knew, the only signatures that no longer existed were the ones that had been covered by new dust.
Fortunately, Hulda’s cooking was better than her cleaning. Slicing another piece of bread, I ate half and tucked the other half in my shirt to share with Mervyn later. On impulse I cut another slab and slipped that into my shirt as well. Maybe Igor would like it.
After I had taken Mervyn his breakfast I climbed the South Tower. I studied the countryside for a moment. It was brilliant with late October foliage. Next I turned my gaze on the North Tower.