Chapter 4

Chapter Four IN WHICH There Are Answers, Although Not Necessarily to the Right Questions Jared woke up to the sound of Mallory's screaming. He jumped out of bed and rushed down the hall, past Simon, and into his sister's room. Long pieces of her hair had been knotted to the brass headboard. Her face was red, but the worst part was the strange pattern of bruises that decorated her arms. Their mother was seated on the mattress, her fingers tugging at the knots.

"What happened?" Jared asked. "Just chop it," Mallory sobbed. "Cut it off. I want to get out of this bed! I want out of this house! I hate this place!" "Who did this?" Their mother looked at Jared angrily. "I don't know!" Jared glanced at Simon standing in the doorway, looking puzzled. It must have been the thing in the walls. Their mother's eyes got huge. It was scary. "Jared Grace, I saw you arguing with your sister

last night!" "Mom, I didn't do it. Honest." He was shocked that she thought he would do something like this. He and Mallory were always fighting, but it didn't mean anything. "Get the scissors, Mom!" Mallory yelled. "Both of you. Out. Jared, I will talk to you later." Mrs. Grace turned back to her daughter. Jared left the room, his heart pounding. When he thought about Mallory's knotted hair, he couldn't contain a shiver. "You think that thing did it, don't you?" Simon asked as they entered the bedroom. Jared looked at his brother in dismay. "Don't you?" Simon nodded. "I keep thinking about that poem I found," Jared said. "It's the only clue we have." "How is a stupid poem going to help?" "I don't know." Jared sighed. "You're the smart one. You should be figuring this out

"How come nothing happened to us? Or to Mom?" Jared hadn't even thought about that. "I don't know," he said again. Simon gave him a long look. "Well? What do you think?" Jared asked. Simon started out the door. "I don't know what I think. I'm going to go try and catch some crickets." Jared watched him go and wondered what he could do. Could he really solve anything by himself? Getting dressed, he thought about the poem. "Up and up and up again" was the simplest line, but what did it mean exactly? Up in the house? Up on the roof? Up in a tree? Maybe the poem was just something that an old, dead relative was keeping around—something that wasn't going to help at all. But since Simon was feeding his animals and Mallory was being freed from her bed, he had

nothing better to do than wonder how far "up and up and up again" he needed to go. So, okay. Maybe it wasn't the easiest clue after all. But Jared figured it couldn't hurt to go up, past the second floor, to the attic.

The stairs were worn clean of their paint, and several times the boards he stepped on creaked so dramatically that Jared was afraid they were going to snap from his weight. The attic level was a vast room with a slanted ceiling and a gaping hole in the floor on one end. Through it, he could see down into one of the unusable bedrooms. Old garment bags hung from a clothesline of thin wire stretching across the width of the attic. Birdhouses hung in profusion from the rafters, and a dressmaker's dummy stood alone in a corner, a hat over its knobbed head. And in the center of the room, there was a spiral staircase. Up and up and up again. Jared took the stairs two at a time.