Ashley Bell. Dean Koontz

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       25

      Twelve Years Earlier

       Captain? Are You Up There, Captain?

      WHEN THE LADDER FOLDED OUT OF THE CEILING to the floor of the walk-in closet, Bibi knew that an invitation had been issued, but she hesitated to accept it. In spite of the rigid geometry of the ladder, something about the way it zigzagged downward in segments made her think of a snake.

      As she stared up into the attic, the darkness above retreated, although not entirely, when a string of bare bulbs brightened the upper realm from gable to gable.

      This second invitation failed to encourage her to ascend in search of the captain.

      She had called him Captain because at one time he had been a captain in the United States Marine Corps. He’d had many colorful adventures in times of war and times of peace, and Bibi had enjoyed his stories no matter how often she cajoled him into repeating them. He’d held other jobs after leaving the corps, and he’d been the tenant in the apartment above the garage for five years—until she found him dead in the kitchen, lying in so much blood that he seemed to be afloat.

      Captain was a man of courage and integrity and honor. She had always been safe in his company. He would never have harmed her. He would have died for her.

      If the captain was in the attic, even if he had come back from a place where dead heroes went for eternity, surely she had no reason to fear him. Valiant girls did not discourage—and certainly did not defeat—themselves by abandoning reason and indulging superstition with all its irrational fears.

      “Captain?” she asked again. “Are you up there, Captain?”

      In answer came the sweet ringing of bells. Rather, it was the ringing of a single special bell that sounded like three. The captain had brought it back from Vietnam many years earlier, a souvenir of his days in a wearying and misfought war.

      Beautifully crafted of silver, the size of a wineglass, the bell housed an ingenious mechanism. The three clappers were suspended so that they operated simultaneously and yet didn’t interfere with one another’s arcs. The first clapper struck the waist of the bell. The second summoned sound from the hip of the classically shaped silver, the third from the lip. The three notes were different but complementary, and together they produced a most pleasant musical ringing.

      Before the war, before the gray pall of communism, Vietnam had been a land of enchantment, with unique myths and much exotic lore. By its appealing music, the bell suggested the magical nature of the country’s history. The memory of the elegant shape and glimmer of the silver form, the unison notes—each an octave apart from the one below it—and her profound affection for the man who had owned this bell at last drew Bibi up the ladder.

      Upon his death, Captain had no siblings or children in far-flung places for whom his charming little collection of souvenirs needed to be accounted and forwarded. Nancy said all those items were Bibi’s if she wanted them, and she wanted them very much. The sight of his humble treasures, however, sharpened her grief. Back in November, less than three months earlier, her mother had helped her pack them away for the day when the sting of Captain’s death had been dulled by time.

      Although she mourned him no less than she had on the day that she found his corpse, she entered the attic with a tentative gladness equal to her intense curiosity, which would not be quenched. Particleboard provided a floor, and the raftered space rose high enough for an adult to stand erect everywhere except near the eaves. Upon Bibi’s arrival, the ringing stopped.

      At the periphery of vision, movement caught her attention. She looked up to see what, for an alarming moment, appeared to be lazily billowing smoke, evidence of a smoldering fire. But those fumes were only slivers of mist seeping through the screen that covered the attic vents, as though the ocean of fog outside possessed curiosity about the contents of the houses currently submerged in it.

      Little of the room’s copious contents had been the property of the captain; most belonged to Nancy and Murphy. Bibi had forgotten where in the aisles of stacked boxes the bell and other items had been tucked away.

      Sans bell, in the small soundless exhalations of fog, the silence pooled so deep that Bibi felt as if she were in a cellar rather than an attic. She might have thought that she had imagined the silvery ringing if the ladder and the lights hadn’t been proof of another presence.

      Because the one-inch particleboard had been securely screwed to the joists, rather than nailed, her feet found no creaks in it as she moved along the center line of the attic, looking left and right into the aisles of shelving and free-stacked goods. The captain had provided the labor to replace the old rotting plywood flooring, one of a number of small jobs that he did for free, to prove his value as a tenant, although no one felt it needed to be proved. That was just Captain’s way: always wanting to be useful.

      When she reached the next-to-last aisle at the east end of the attic, Bibi discovered a presence, perhaps the one who for some weeks she had been seeking with both yearning and misgiving. He—or someone—stood at the back of the aisle, ten feet from her, in the shadows past the fall of light.

      The apprehension that she had overcome before, that she felt was unworthy of her, flowered again, a black-petaled fright that severely tested her image of herself. Valiant girl? Or was she just another uncertain and confused kid pretending to be mature and brave, self-deceived by the fake-out she pulled on everyone else?

      “Captain?” she said softly.

      The presence moved toward her, into the light.

      She realized СКАЧАТЬ