Nobody says anything, but somehow each one of us comes to a stop.
“Pete,” I say then, “why on earth would anybody pretend to be paralyzed?”
“People pretend all the time, Jack. Usually to get away from something they’re afraid of.” Without turning from the house, Pete goes on, “I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Madliner’s illness was her protection.”
“Against what?”
“Against Mr. Madliner. Her sickness came along a short while after he did. Lots of people in town like to talk and say he caused it, and maybe that’s so. But I think it became a way to keep him away from her. He hits a lot.”
Will begins to nod. “Yes . . . I could see that. Just like that book I, Claudius.”
I got no idea what Will’s saying, but Frankie does. “I read that one. It’s about the Roman emperor who pretended to be a harmless idiot so nobody would find out how smart he was.”
“Exactly,” Will says. “His uncle was emperor and his family were a pack of murderers who’d kill anyone they saw as a threat to their power. So Claudius pretended to be crazy from the time he was a kid so they wouldn’t hurt him.”
“Did it work?” I ask.
Will shrugs. “Sure, for a little while. Claudius became emperor, as I remember.”
“Then what happened?”
Frankie looks at me. “He spent all those years pretending to be something he wasn’t, so he could survive his family. And in the end, his wife killed him.”
Hours later I’m lying in bed again, staring at that same crack in the ceiling. Nothing moves in the attic now. Not the mouse I heard before. Not the snake that was after him.
Three o’clock. Soul’s midnight, so Will says. Time of night you’re closest to being dead. Pete and Will are snoring in their bunks. God knows how. A few hours ago, us boys were running for our lives through a cemetery.
I roll over and see Frankie on his mattress. Milky moonlight splashes down on him, and he looks like a castaway on a raft.
Ever wake up to gunshots?
“Frankie?”
I know he’s awake, deciding if he wants to answer me or pretend he’s asleep.
“Yeah?”
“Did you really hear that ticking at the tomb?”
Silence.
“Does it matter? I passed the test. Pete said we can go with him and Will to find the airplane wreck. And that’s good material for story writing.”
“That’s true,” I agree. “You passed, all right. I could never have done that, and I’m grateful. But—”
“But you want to know if I heard ticking from Hiltch’s grave.”
“Yes.”
He rolls over on his mattress.
“Good night, Jack.”
Another question I won’t ever get answered.
I roll over and try to let my galloping mind tire itself out. Takes a while, but eventually that old horse slows himself down to a trot, then a walk. A faint scraping again from the attic. I decide it’s my friend the mouse, that he escaped that old black snake after all.
A little while later Mrs. Madliner comes into the room—floats right over the windowsill and hovers above Frankie’s mattress. I realize I’ve fallen asleep because I’m dreaming now. She’s a frightful thing to see, red eyes and white dress that clings to her body, letting me see more of her than I should. Awful as she is, I decide she’s better than those popping machine guns in my other dream—the one about Pete in that jungle. I wait for her to melt away into the dark. She shuts off the moon as she goes, and in that inky dark my tired old horse finally lays down to sleep.
Our kitchen smells like coffee and bacon. Morning sunlight spills through the windowpanes and shines through Frankie’s ears, making them glow bright red as he eats his eggs at the corner of Grandma Elliot’s old table. In that cheery light, the Ticking Tomb and Mrs. Madliner seem like a bad dream, though I know they ain’t.
Will’s buried in his newspaper, reading an article on Senator Kennedy campaigning in California. I catch his eyelids fluttering, and I know he’s fighting sleep. Across from me, Pete’s on his third biscuit, honey dripping from his fingers. Of the four of us boys, only he seems completely awake. At the stove, Ma tells him to get a napkin for the last time. When a big, fat yawn takes hold of me, I decide on a nap after breakfast.
The floorboards creak and a second later Dad strides into the kitchen, looping suspenders over his wide shoulders as he comes in. The kitchen shrinks around him, the whole place somehow smaller now that my father has entered it. He kisses the back of Ma’s head, then crosses to the coffeepot to pour himself a cup of steaming black liquid. Without waiting for it to cool, he lifts it and drinks. Then he says something that makes my hair stand up straight: