CHAPTER XXI
DEATH BELLS
"Madge?" Mimi said, putting her arm around her. She was wide awake now."You're shaking like a leaf."
"I--know--it but I can't stop. Every time I close my eyes I hearthem--thump--thump--thump. Oh Mimi it's awful! You don't know unlessyou've heard them."
"What's up?" Betsy whispered. She scrawled over Jill and poked her headbetween theirs. "Am I missing something?"
"Sh--sh--" Mimi said to Betsy, but she had her arm around Madge,patting her shoulder. "Madge--er, Madge doesn't feel well."
"Sumpthin' she et?" Betsy asked with small boy impudence.
"I wouldn't make fun of you! I'd b-b--be ashamed!"
She was sobbing in earnest now.
"I'm sorry, Madge. I was just joking. If there's really something thematter I want to help."
"I wish you'd go back to sleep. I was about to tell Mimi something. Iwon't tell you, because you'd laugh."
There was a thin crescent moon tonight; the stars were shedding morelight than it. The dim light made the figures of the tired girls looklike discarded rag dolls that had been thrown helter-skelter on thejunk pile. Arms and legs tangled. A patchwork of pajamas.
Mimi took it all in at one glance. The pale moon seemed to be casting aghostly spotlight on Madge. She was pale as the young moon and her eyeswere unnaturally bright. Mimi wondered why Madge had to be so differentfrom those healthy, sound sleepers; why she was so tortured with herstrange superstition? Mimi had never heard of anything like it before.She wouldn't hear now unless Madge volunteered. She wouldn't ask or begher to tell. Death bells? The very name made goose bumps up her spine.
"Please, don't you all think I'm queer, but it runs in my family. Mygrandmother always heard them when someone in our family died--I heardthem when _she_ died!"
Suddenly Madge put her hands to her ears and buried her head in Mimi'slap.
"This doesn't make sense to me," Betsy said.
"To me either. But maybe it will."
They were whispering over Madge.
Mimi felt Madge's body grow rigid; heard her voice, hoarse and halfchoked.
"Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty----"
"If she thinks she hears a bell ringing, she's goofy," Betsy whispered.She tapped her forehead as she finished and made a spinning gesturewith her hands.
Madge sat up as suddenly as she had flopped down. She clutched Mimi'swrist on one side and Betsy's on the other.
"They've stopped!" she announced dramatically, but in the same breathadded piteously, "but they'll come back. They always do. Once theystart, I always hear them--until somebody dies."
Betsy was dumbfounded. Mimi was speechless.
"What do they sound like?" Betsy asked, moving closer to Madge. Shewriggled around in front of her and the disturbed look on Madge's faceconvinced her that whatever death bells were, Madge believed in themheart and soul.
"They don't ring. I don't know why they're called bells at all unlessthey started calling them that way back when people used to toll thebell on the tower of the church when someone died. They're mournfullike that but more like a dull thud. When I first used to hear them,before Granny and Mama told me what they were, I thought someone wasunder the floor thumping with the end of a broomstick or tapping with ahammer which had a piece of cloth tied over the hammer head. They gothump, thump, thump, just as regular as that."
Neither Mimi nor Betsy could utter a word by now. Mimi felt that if shemoved as much as an inch things would crack and pop or icy hands wouldseize her from behind. She tried to tell herself this was tommyrot, butlook at Madge. She was holding her head and counting again.
"Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three----"
Then for a terrible minute there was silence; Mimi's heart was thumpingloud enough to be mistaken for death bells.
"I'll never forget the first time I heard them. We were at Granny'sbecause Grandpa was sick. Mother and I were sleeping upstairs in theroom Mother had when she was a girl. We were so tired I couldn't go tosleep. I tried counting sheep but it didn't help. Soon I heard thisdull tapping, so I began to count just for something to do. After Icounted seventy-nine, they ceased. Not another one sounded. Nextmorning Grandpa was dead and he was _seventy-nine years old_!"
"Two years ago at school, I had a headache, so I leaned my head over onmy desk. I had no more than settled down when a thump-thump-thumpingbegan. I shook my head but I could still hear it. They were theclearest I ever heard. Sounded like someone was tapping on your deskwith a ruler. I counted forty-three. That afternoon we had a telegramthat my uncle had been killed in an automobile wreck and he was_forty-three years old_."
"Don't ever count fourteen!" Mimi giggled. She was so scared she wasgetting silly. Ridiculous, all of it, she kept telling herself, butevery time she said ridiculous she believed Madge's story truer andtruer.
"I'd be afraid to make fun of it," Betsy said so seriously Mimi knewshe believed Madge, too.
"I used to not hear them for anyone but my family, but I get more andmore of them all the time. In the last year I have counted them threedifferent times and the next day found in the paper that a person asold as I had counted, was dead. Gee! My head aches."
Mimi's common sense was returning by degrees.
"I'll get you an aspirin and then we'll go to sleep."
She hoped she would. Right now she was more wide awake than ever shehad been since the wild cat screamed at camp.
It took a great deal of nerve for her to tiptoe across the tin roof,climb in the window, and feel her way across the sitting room to thebathroom. She did not dare turn on a light until she reached thebathroom. Click! The light was on and, in some miraculous way, fearfled with the darkness. Mimi was almost herself when she reappeared onthe roof, aspirin in one hand and a glass of water in the other.
Madge's head was in Betsy's lap. She was stroking her forehead with herfinger tips.
"She counted to twenty-nine while you were gone."
Betsy was weak with fright.
Mimi lifted Madge's weary head and gave her the aspirin.
"Now we're going to sleep. Betsy, get over there where you belong. NowMadge, honey, close your eyes and rest."
Mimi began humming softly as Mammy Cissy would. Poor little Madge!Thank goodness Mother Dear never let her believe a lot of old wives'tales. Madge was relaxing.
Finally all on the roof but Mimi were quiet. She could not getcomfortable. She could not turn to cuddle down for fear of waking Madgewho had dozed off against her. Mimi began to cramp from being so longin such an uncomfortable position. She sat up to ease Madge over. Therewas a queer light now.
Had the party lasted all night?
The town clock answered. It boomed out two o'clock. No, it wasn't dawn.What could the light be?
Standing up slowly, Mimi tiptoed to the edge of the porch roof. The tinroof crackled under her bare feet but she went on toward the increasingbrightness. Climbing on the rail and leaning over, she saw.
The kitchen roof was on fire!