Chapter 18 #4
Waverly cut off her thoughts as Titus stepped toward her. In the confined space of the bell tower, she could feel him—feel his presence more than him—and it was close, overwhelming.
The air between them grew thick, the scent of his sandalwood intoxicating.
His glass-blue eyes latched on to hers. “Waverly,” he said, his voice taking on a hint of hoarseness.
She leaned toward him instinctively. “Yes?”
Titus’s eyes narrowed with emotion. He leaned toward her. He reached out and touched her hair, then pulled back his hand, holding it up so she could see it. “You’ve a spiderweb in your hair.”
Waverly
In an interview shortly before her death in 1950:
There were some things I didn’t know to be important about my uncle’s behavior leading up to his murder.
Yes, we had met the night of the gunshot in the bell tower.
But as I’ve mentioned before, I’d seen him other nights too.
I hadn’t put the puzzle pieces together because, aside from the secret I was already aware of and was harboring in my own silent vault of loyalties, I didn’t know there were more puzzles to be solved.
But I will admit there was something about Uncle Leopold that bothered me from the moment I arrived at Traeger Hall.
I always thought it was the unpredictability of his moods that I abhorred.
But there were times like the night I saw him in the hallway outside the library, only a few months after I’d arrived at Traeger Hall.
I had slipped through the house to retrieve a glass of milk to help me sleep.
On this particular night, he stood in front of a painting, his face drawn into a scowl.
I must have made a sound because he turned, and his expression softened briefly and then hardened. He grabbed another small painting that rested on the floor against the wall. He carried it into the library and out of view from my eyes.
“Go get your milk,” he advised. He didn’t sound angry or even intimidating.
This was the contemplative side of Uncle Leopold that confused me the most, when it seemed as if he were trying to understand something, calculating, and yet it was subtle.
Instead of demanding anything, he became impulsive, forceful.
When I didn’t move, Uncle Leopold turned to face me and crossed his arms. He studied me for a long moment before he stated, “You were not part of the equation.”
At first, I assumed he meant he didn’t like my presence in Traeger Hall. But then he added, “What to do about you?” As if I needed to be disposed of.
“Please,” I heard myself plead shamelessly, “leave me alone.” It was one of the first and only times I dared to give Uncle Leopold instruction.
“I shall,” he grumbled. His deep voice made my insides quake. “I have already said my time here will be cut short. Will you ring the bell, I wonder?”
The hall clock ticked and filled the air with its rhythmic keeping of time. I couldn’t answer my uncle.
“Will you?” He pursued an answer. Uncle Leopold came no closer. He merely stood by the painting on the wall and stared at me.
“Will I what?” My voice quivered, already forgetting what he’d asked because of the sheer intimidation of his person.
“Ring the bell?” Uncle Leopold asked again.
“Yes, of course.” I told him what he wanted to hear. “I will ring the bell.”
Then he surprised me. In fact, he terrified me. He crossed the space between us and ran his finger down the side of my face. I could feel the coldness of his skin, the scratch of his fingernail. He bent, his breath wafting over my face, the smell of stale coffee gagging me.
He pressed his mouth to my ear and whispered four words, and I’ve never forgotten them.
I didn’t forget them the night of his death; I haven’t forgotten them now.
I never told anyone this the night of his death either, even after we were all trying to ascertain what had happened.
Because it was a puzzle piece. A piece that made no sense.
“Don’t ring the bell,” he’d told me.
His words befuddled me, but before I could regain my senses and my composure to clarify, he’d pulled away and strode from the hallway into the library. He shut the door behind him.
Don’t ring the bell? I questioned his command even as my body trembled from the fright of his presence.
But hadn’t he built the bell to call for help not if, but when, someone came to slay him?
To give me instructions to ignore the bell was to give me instructions to let him die.
And until now, everything Uncle Leopold did was to ensure that he lived on.
In fact, the Uncle Leopold I knew would prefer to live forever and never be forgotten.
This was the first time I questioned if Uncle Leopold was not suffering from some malady we had not yet been made aware of.
There were places for minds like his. The ones who did not know up from down.
The ones who screamed to live and then begged to die.
It was a “place for the insane,” and they called it an “institution.”