Helens-of-Troy (40 page)

“Now?” Helena said, shocked. “Now you
decide to read people’s minds?”

“Not people’s,” Helen said. “Yours. You
are not people. You are my mother. You are an entirely different
sub-genre. I had this argument with Ellie a few days
ago.”

Helena folded her arms across her chest
and looked disapprovingly at her daughter.

“Don’t try to block me out,” Helen
warned. “It’s too late for that. I want to know all about the
vampire. So you can tell me, or…”

“Or what, Helen?”

“Or I’ll break down that wall you’re
trying to put up and discover all kinds of secrets about you that I
probably don’t really want to know.”

“Is anyone else in here freezing?”
Helena asked, ignoring her for the moment. She’d rather get into it
with Helen at home later, without other people’s children listening
to the whole conversation.

She walked around the bed to the open
window, and was about to close it when something drew her attention
away from that thought. She noticed a tiny footprint on the
windowsill. She looked down at the ground hoping for a clue as to
where the vampire had taken Stan, but there were too many
footprints already in the snow to tell for sure. “Let’s get
downstairs, start a fire and think this thing through,” she said to
them.

She had never been in Betty’s house
before, and doubted she ever would again. “Shame,” she thought to
herself. The pictures on the walls, and the collection of antiques
she was discovering throughout the house, gave Helena a whole new
sense of Betty. A Betty she might actually get to like, should she
have the chance. “Not going to happen,” she sighed.

“What’s that, Mother?” Helen asked,
following the three others down to the Lachey’s living room. “You
know, we could just turn up the heat.”

“That’s strange,” Helena commented,
noticing something peculiar in the otherwise orderly room. “Why is
there ash on Betty’s Persian rug?” She bent down, took a little of
the soot into the palm of her hand and sniffed. “Hmm, white oak. I
have a heck of a time with the hardwoods. I usually opt for spruce.
She must get Ryan to split it for her.”

The fresh trail of soot led directly
into the fireplace. Helena felt the grate. It was cold. “Weird.
This mess looks fresh, like it’s just been blown out of the
chimney.”“Maybe it’s the wind,” Jacey offered. “It’s kind of nasty
out there.”

“Do you want me to grab the vacuum and
clean it up?” Tom asked. “Betty will freak, and…well… maybe Betty
doesn’t really need to freak out again right now.”

“Tom, find me a flashlight, will you?”
Helena asked. “I want to look up the flue.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “Stan has
flashlights all over the house.” He opened up the drawer on the
coffee table and took one out. “Would you like me to check it out
for you, Mrs. LaRose? I’m looking kind of shabby now
anyway.”

“Okay, Tom,” she said apprehensively.
Tom had a point, the vampire had left him rather rumpled, and her
turtleneck was brand new. No sense wrecking a perfectly good
sweater, she reckoned.

Tom sunk to the floor and leaned on the
base of the fireplace. He turned on the flashlight and contorted
his body into a position that allowed him to look up inside the
chimney. “I think there’s something stuck up there,” he said. “I
can’t see any daylight.”

“Maybe it’s just really dirty,” Helen
offered.

“No,” Tom said. “Betty had it swept out
at the beginning of the month. I remember her coming into the
hardware store looking for a self-cleaning log. My dad said she was
better off to have it professionally done for insurance purposes.
The chimney sweep came on a Saturday, the day after the Trojans
beat the Argonauts. Ryan told me the guy woke him up by walking on
the roof.”

“I guess we can rule neglect out,”
Helena agreed. “I wonder what the problem is?”

“Maybe a raccoon’s in there,” Tom said.
“I hear something whimpering.” He shoved his head as far as he
could into the brick structure to take a better look.

Like the whispering walls of St. Paul’s
Cathedral, the soft cries coming from the animal caught in the
brick and mortar stack worked their way down to Tom. “I think it’s
talking to me,” he said bewilderedly. “I could have sworn it called
my name.”

“Oh, no…” Helena said, clamping her
hand over her mouth.

“My head, my head…” Helen cried. “It’s
starting again.” She pressed her hands to her skull. Her forehead
began to wrinkle.

“Helen, do you see what I think you
see?” Helena asked. She feared now that the reason she had not seen
extra footprints in the snow was because the vampire had not gone
to the ground. He had gone up.

“Yes, I do.” Helen squeaked, jumping up
and down nervously on the spot. “Oh my God, call the fire
department.”

“We can’t call the fire department,”
Helena said calmly.

“What’s wrong?” Jacey asked. “Do you
want me to call the police?”

“No! No police,” the LaRoses cried. It
was not going to be good if the Dayton’s answered the
call.

“Tom, come out from there,” Helena
instructed. “Let me talk to him.”

Tom didn’t move.

“Helen, keep focused,” she demanded.
“Jacey, help me pull Tom out of there. He’s fainted
again.”

Helena crouched down and grabbed one of
Tom’s legs, indicating to Jacey that she should do the same with
the other. They pulled hard, moving Tom’s limp body out from inside
the hearth as fast as they could.

“Why would Tom faint again?” Jacey
asked. “I thought he was okay now. If it’s just a stupid raccoon…”
Then it dawned on her. “Stan,” she whispered. “He’s in the
chimney?”

The LaRoses looked at her gravely and
nodded.

“I’m afraid so,” Helena
admitted.

“We have to call Roy,” Helen
insisted.

“We can’t call Roy either,” Helena
said. “This is something we’re going to have to handle ourselves.”
She raised the finger of her left hand to her lips and tapped
gently upon them. “Think, Helena, think. How on earth do we get
Stan out of this alive?” There was no simple answer. “So help me,
Hannah,” she said under her breath, “when I get my hands on that
undead little beggar, he’s going to wish he was dead.” She turned
and pulled a crocheted afghan from the sofa. “And no, I was not
talking about little Stan.”

“Where are you going?”Helen asked her.
She could see the determination in her mother’s pursed
lips.

“I’m going up on the roof,” Helena
answered.

“You can’t go up on the roof,” Helen
protested “You’ll kill yourself.”

“No such luck,” Helena reasoned.
“Jacey, go throw some water on Tom’s face. I need him to find me
some rope. He seems to know where everything is in this house.
Helen, go back to my basement and get me my rock climbing shoes. I
keep them under the stairs.”

“You have rock climbing shoes?” Jacey
asked in wonderment. “I didn’t know Jimmy Choo made
those.”

“He doesn’t, “Helena said. “But he
never spent a god-forsaken honeymoon in the Himalayas with Helen’s
father.”

Less than five minutes later, the four
regrouped themselves back on the driveway. Helen, Jacey and the now
revived Tom watched in wonder as Helena took the rope Tom had found
and began to form a lariat. She quickly tied a honda knot, leaving
enough room in the loop to go over the top of the
chimney.

“Where were you and Dad when you
learned that?” Helen asked. She had never seen Helena pull this
particular trick out of her sleeve before.

“Mexico,” Helena answered. “And I
wasn’t with your father, I was with Jesse James.”

“Whoa,” Tom said. “I didn’t know you
went in for tattooed guys. Ryan’ll be stoked.”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the
same Jesse James,” Helen said.

Helena began her windup. The first
attempt landed short of the target, but luckily fell back to the
ground without snagging on anything else. Her second effort was
better, but only caught the corner of the chimney. “Third time’s
the charm,” she said, swinging harder and aiming higher than the
two previous attempts. This time the rope landed over the stack.
“Voila!” she said, pleased with herself.

“I am in awe,” Tom admitted.

“Wish me luck,” she said, tying the
crocheted afghan around her neck. She pulled the rope taught and
began to climb, the blanket flowing down her back like a
cape.

“I’m beginning to see what Ryan sees in
your mother,” Tom said, perhaps inappropriately.

“What?” Helen asked.

“She’s Batman.”

“Batgirl,” Jacey corrected
him.

As Helena swung her leg over the side
of the eaves, she collided with the drainpipe. Already heavily
laden with wet soggy leaves, it didn’t take much for it to give
way. It came crashing to the ground, missing Jacey’s head by about
an inch.

“Kerpow!” Tom said, looking at the
damage. “Good thing my dad has them in stock this time of
year.”

“Sorry!” Helena yelled. “Foot
slipped.”

“Mother, please be careful,” Helen
begged.

Helena pulled herself the rest of the
way onto the roof, where the wet snow and the slope of the timbers
made her every move all the more perilous. She stood up cautiously.
“Tom, the guy who did the chimney cleaning for Betty, will he do
the eaves as well? My own don’t look any better from up
here.”

“Mother, pay attention please!” Helen
begged.

Helena had almost reached the chimney
when she hit a patch of ice and began to slide backward from the
slope. “Uh-oh,” she exclaimed, hanging onto the rope for dear life.
“I should have tied a safety.”

Helen and the teenagers watched
breathlessly as Helena came within inches of the end of the roof
and then stopped.

“Mother! You are out of your
ever-loving mind. Get back down here and let me call
Roy.”

Helena knew that was not an option. Roy
was going to have his hands full dealing with the Daytons when this
was all over. He didn’t need to have to explain to the taxpayers of
Troy how little Stan Lachey, while his brother was in jail and his
mother was in the hospital, got stuck in a chimney on the first
winter storm of the year. She pulled herself back up onto her feet
and moved very slowly back towards the stack.

“Stan,” she said, when she was close
enough that she thought he might hear her. “Stan, it’s Helena. I’m
here.”

Much to her surprise, a tiny hand poked
its way out of the chimney. Helena heaved a sigh of relief. He was
still alive. “Stan, listen to me. I’m going to get you out of
there, but I need you to stay really still. Wave your hand if you
understand.”

There was no motion.

“It’s okay to move your hand if you
can, Stan” she corrected. “I didn’t mean you had to stay that
still.”

She saw his palm move from left to
right and back again.

Tom looked up at the activity on the
roof. “What’s she going to do now?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Helen
admitted.

Jacey cocked her head. “It looks like
she’s going to karate chop the chimney.”

“That would just be stupid,” Helen
said.

“I think she’s right,” Tom offered.
“She’s sizing it up, like you would a stack of planks. Look, she’s
turning her hand to the grain of the brick. She’s done this
before.”

On the roof, Helena took a huge breath.
She knew she had calculate just how much force it would take to
smash the bricks yet leave Stan unscathed. She could do it, she
knew, but it had been a few years since she had to summon this kind
of strength from her forearm, and she needed to prepare mentally
for it. She wasn’t just fighting the technical engineering of the
contractors who had built the house in the late sixties. She was
also fighting a force of the undead. That took extra prep
time.

“Hi-yaaaa!” she screamed, raising her
left arm to chest level and plowing through the clay mass like it
was a bale of hay.

“Look out!” Helen screamed, as pieces
of the structure began to fall to the ground.

“She is just…” Tom searched for the
words. “Totally bitchin’.”

Enough of the bricks had fallen away
from the side of the chimney for Helena to be able to reach for the
child. “Stan,” Helena said, looking him directly in the eye, “you
are a star. I need you to just stay calm for a few minutes more.”
She lifted his body from the confines of the chimney. He was
amazingly warm. The tightness of his body to the chimney walls had
acted as an insulator while he was stuck inside them.

She draped the afghan around both of
their bodies and pulled him closer. She wanted to keep him from
going into shock now that he was free. “Bet you never thought you’d
be doing this today, did you Stan?” she said, trying to break the
tension. She reached for the rope. It might have been a good way
for her to get up on the roof, but it wasn’t the easiest way for
them to get off it.