Story Time (11 page)

She sang with all the longing inside her for Lincoln and her old way of life. Kate would have continued to belt out the song, but Cornelia leaped to her feet.

"That's enough of that! There is no singing in this role. And no dancing! This is completely inappropriate. If it were a singing role, Heidi would have sung, and sung beautifully. The girl is not even reading from my book."

Cornelia looked pointedly at Susan Singer-Wright. Susan shrugged, banged her gavel, and asked the other judges, "Who votes for Heidi to play Orchid the Orca?" All three dutifully raised their hands. "Who votes for the other girl?" No one moved, so Susan stated the obvious. "Heidi wins."

George walked over to Kate, deliberately stepping on Heidi's copy of
Orchid the Orca
along the way. Kate laughed, bowed deeply to the judges, and started out with him. But before they could leave, the new Reading 8 spoke up. "I think Heidi should have an understudy, though. I vote for Kate Peters for that."

Kate looked back at her, stunned.

So did Cornelia. Her jaws ground violently. But then she smiled. "Yes. Why not? What a good idea. All Broadway stars have understudies. Heidi Whittaker Austin should have what all stars have."

Kate made a slight curtsy to acknowledge the news. Then she and George backed out through the door. As soon as they got into the hallway, Kate grabbed George under the elbow, the way Pogo had grabbed her. She whispered, "No talking! I don't want to talk about what just happened. Ever. I just want to show you something. Something secret."

An evening thunderstorm was approaching when Kate and George emerged on the roof. She led him to the mushroom cap and showed him how it bent back on a hinge.

The electricity in the air made the hairs on George's head tingle. He smiled at Kate, very curiously, and then followed her down the iron ladder.

At the bottom, Kate fumbled until she found the green lantern. Only then did she break her silence. "Pogo took me here today."

"Pogo? The mute librarian?"

"Yes. Ever since that business with Whit and the book, it's like she wants to tell me something, but she can't. So she's trying to show me, instead."

"Okay. So what did she show you?"

"A secret room. I think it was built behind one of the Whittakers' offices."

George pictured the building plans from the King's County website. He calculated the distance and direction they had traveled and concluded, "It must be behind Cornell Number Two's."

Kate nodded in the dim light. "That would make sense. Some of his stuff is in there."

She took George's hand in hers and reached forward, whispering, "Behold." They pushed the wall and felt it rotate inward. George gasped. Kate confirmed his thought. "That's right. A secret passage."

George held on tightly to Kate's hand as they slipped into the narrow space behind the bookcase. Kate held up the lantern to let him take in the room and its objects. George turned his head slowly, following the glow of the lantern.

Suddenly, Kate's eyes snapped wide open, and she stifled a scream. George whirled around to see why. He fell back against Kate, horrified, because a black figure was now blocking the secret passage. Then the figure spoke:

"Jack and Jill went up the hill."

"Pogo!" Kate exhaled. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

In a trembling voice, George marveled, "She speaks?"

Kate thought about that. "Sort of."

"Well, can I ask her questions?"

"You can try."

George straightened himself up and asked, "Whose room is this? What is it used for?"

Pogo replied:

"For many a stormy wind shall blow
E'er Jack comes home again."

"I thought so," Kate explained. "You can ask her questions, but her answers won't match them."

Lightning flashed on the roof. It was dimly visible through the rotating door. Pogo took the lantern from Kate and led them around the bookcase into the center of the room.

She held the light high to illuminate a portrait hanging on the left wall. It was a likeness of Cornell Whittaker Number Two, like the one in the lobby, except that he was wearing a black robe and a black floppy hat.

"Why is he dressed like Mickey Mouse in
The Sorcerer's Apprentice?
" George asked.

Pogo didn't answer.

Kate approached the floor-to-ceiling bookcase, rose up on her tiptoes, and pulled out a leather-bound book. "Check this out, Uncle George."

Kate pointed back to the portrait. "It's his. He wrote down everything. All of his weird doings."

George commented, "I wish we could check it out. We could take it home and read it."

Kate looked hopefully at Pogo. "Could we?"

But Pogo, by way of reply, took the book away from Kate, hopped up, and popped it back onto the shelf.

Pogo then moved the lantern to shine on the Holographic Scanner. George bent to look closer at its glass top. He ran his fingers over the bronze plaque and read aloud, "Ashley-Nicole Singer-Wright.' You hear that name a lot around here. She's all over the school's website, too. She invented some type of amazing holographic tape. One piece of it can store more information than all the computers in the Pentagon."

"What good is that in a library?"

"It's extreme overkill for a library. But for the Pentagon, it's cutting-edge technology."

George pressed his fingers down on the glass top. "This must be it. This must be the scanner that she used for her experiments." George leaned over and picked up the electric plug. "I wonder if it still works."

Pogo moved her hand, as if to stop him. She whispered:

"Will you wake him? No, not I,
For if I do, he's sure to cry."

George said, "I'm sorry. What was that one?"

But Pogo would not repeat it.

The lightning flashed again, followed closely by a clap of thunder.

"Uncle George, she seems to want to communicate with us. So why does she keep talking gibberish like that?"

George replied in his knowing voice. "That's not gibberish, Kate. Everything she's said is from Mother Goose. She's speaking in Mother Goose rhymes."

Kate grabbed her own hair and pulled it. "But why?"

"Because of what you said. She's grateful to you. She's trying to warn you about something, in the only way she can."

Pogo turned away with the lantern, leaving them in darkness. They hurried to follow her back through the secret passage. One by one, they took hold of the iron rungs of the ladder and climbed up into the brighter and brighter flashes of lightning.

Once Pogo closed the mushroom cap on the roof, the secret room below should have turned as black as a tomb. But it did not.

Over by the wall, the unplugged Holographic Scanner began to glow red under its glass pane, a hot and frightening red, like the fires of Andrew Carnegie's hell. Then, from deep within, a cloud of wispy white lines rose up and swirled beneath the glass. The lines formed, disintegrated, and then formed again, casting ghostly shadows on the ceiling and walls of the secret room.

After school on Friday, Kate pulled out a set of six photographs and spread them across her bed. They were photos of Charley Peters, her absent father. She examined each one meticulously, asking herself:
What brand of shoes is he wearing? What shirt logo is that? What type of sunglasses is he wearing in that sports car?
She answered herself aloud, "The best. The absolute best"

Kate looked down at the floorboards, as if she had X-ray vision. She looked for June, her invalid mother, rummaging around somewhere for her lost keys. She pronounced her, "The worst. The absolute worst." She scooped up the photos of the dapper Charley Peters and whispered to him, "I don't blame you for leaving. I'd have left her, too."

Kate stacked the photos into a shoe box, slid it under her bed, and went downstairs. She waited silently in the vestibule until June emerged, wearing a faded housedress, with the long-lost keys now clutched in her hand.

June then drove Kate to Molly's for dinner. On the way, Kate halfheartedly asked, "Tell me why I can't sleep over again."

"You need to be at home, Kate, every night. I need to know that you are safe."

"I'll be safe at Molly's. Her grandmother is there."

"But I won't be there, so it's no."

"So this is all about you?"

"Yes, I suppose it is," June admitted.

Kate gave up quicker than usual. She wasn't really interested in making June feel bad tonight. She was much more interested in speaking to Mrs. Brennan.

Molly let Kate in and started upstairs, as if they would hole up in her room as usual. But Kate told her right away, "No. I need to talk to your grandmother tonight about the Whittaker Library. Is that okay with you?"

"Will it be creepy?"

"Very creepy."

"Cool. She's in the kitchen, making dinner."

Upon seeing Kate, Mrs. Brennan set down her stirring spoon and gave her a hug.

Molly said, "Kate actually wants to talk to you tonight, Grandmom."

Mrs. Brennan laughed. "Oh? I'm flattered. Come sit at the table, both of you, while I finish this sauce."

Kate got right to the subject. "Mrs. Brennan, what did you do at the Whittaker Library?"

Mrs. Brennan handed a short stack of plates to Molly. She answered with a tinge of surprise, as if Kate should have known. "I was the director of Library Services for King's County, my dear, for many years."

"And, if I may ask, what do you do now?"

"Of course you may ask. I don't think that's being nosy." Mrs. Brennan shot a withering glance at Molly. "I am the curator of the King's County Historical Society."

"Is that like your old library job?"

"No, dear. Not at all. It's a much smaller job. It's a nonprofit organization. I'm the only paid employee."

Kate bit her Up. "Well, then, if your library job was bigger and you were the boss and everything, why did you leave?"

"That's a long story."

"I would like to hear it. I would like to hear anything that you would like to say about the Whittaker Library."

Mrs. Brennan grew quiet, so Kate did, too.

Once they were seated at the table and eating, though, Mrs. Brennan started talking. "I assume you have met Mrs. Hodges."

Kate gagged involuntarily.

"I see that you have. Well, when I was there, I suspected she was using a razor to cut pages out of the children's books."

Molly laughed. "Why would she do that? Was she, like, into vandalism or something?"

"No, quite the opposite. She believed she was protecting the children from demonic influences."

This sent a shudder down Kate's spine. "Wow. And is there a Mr. Hodges?"

"There was one. He died. Right there in the library."

Kate and Molly both leaned forward. "How?"

Mrs. Brennan leaned forward, too. "No one knows for sure. The coroner claimed that he electrocuted himself."

"But you have doubts?" Kate said.

"Everyone but the coroner had doubts."

"Was this Mr. Hodges a librarian?"

"No, dear, he was a minister, from a church that no one had ever heard of. He was hired to investigate some incidents in the library about ten years ago."

"So the weird things began with him? With Mr. Hodges, about ten years ago?"

"Oh, heavens no! I believe he was brought in, by Cornell Whittaker Number Two, to deal with weird things that were already happening." Mrs. Brennan's voice grew softer, as if drifting into the past. "No, if you really want to know about the origins of it, we have to go back much farther than that."

Kate looked at Molly. "We really want to know about it."

"Then we have to go back to the middle of the nineteenth century, when Cornell Whittaker Number One was a young man. He became very interested in the occult. He became a practicing spiritualist."

Molly giggled. "You mean, like, séances, Ouija boards? All that stuff?"

"Yes. All that stuff."

"He was crazy?"

"Perhaps. But it wasn't considered crazy back then. Did you know that even President Lincoln and his wife held'séances in the White House, trying to contact their dead son?"

Kate and Molly shook their heads.

"Cornell Whittaker Number One was a founding member of the Society for Psychic Research. He raised his son to believe in the society's principles, too. His son took it one step further, though, becoming a bit of a fanatic. Cornell Whittaker Number Two spent a fortune collecting occult books from all over Europe."

"I saw some of them!" Kate said. "He had a lot of creepy books in a huge bookcase. He also had a really old copy of
Mother Goose.
"

Mrs. Brennan nodded. "Indeed, he did. By Perrault, the original compiler of the stories. Yes, I remember when Mr. Whittaker brought that book back from London. Good heavens, that must have been thirty years ago. He was quite proud of it."

"So, you knew this occult, spiritualist guy?"

"Oh, yes."

Kate tried to sound casual. "Did he, like, walk around in wizard robes?"

Mrs. Brennan smiled. "No, dear. He walked around in a business suit." Her smile faded. "And yet, I must say, Cornell Whittaker Number Two was very odd. For one thing, he always smelled like smoke, like fire and brimstone. We knew he smoked up in that office of his, but we could never catch him at it."

They finished eating dinner. While Molly and Kate cleaned up, Mrs. Brennan said, "I have an old scrapbook from my days at the Whittaker Library."

Molly whispered, "She has an old scrapbook from her days
everywhere.
"

"Molly?"

"Sorry."

"Would you like to look through it, Kate?"

Kate nodded so enthusiastically that Mrs. Brennan laughed and hurried off to find it. She returned five minutes later and squeezed into a chair on the girls' side of the table.

Mrs. Brennan opened the rectangular book and spread it before them.

She asked Kate, "Have you met Pogo?"

Kate nodded cautiously, trying to gauge Mrs. Brennan's opinion. "Oh, yes. I've met her. She's very nice."