“It happened again. I thought you know. About five years after we graduated some kid took a swan dive out of the tower-- splat. And then again, last year. To tell you the truth, I don't think Adam was the first, either. One of my uncles attended here back in the forties, and he told me that three or four kids fell out of the tower. 1938, 1941 and 1942-- something like that. What they were saying back then was that there was a curse on the tower. If you believe it that stuff-- personally I think it's a load of horse manure. But the story goes, way back in the 20's, some nun hanged herself up there. That was why they took the bell down. Ever since then the tower was considered an evil place. They even tried sealing the door, but after that the school and the church, across the street, started to suffered a streak of bad luck-- really weird things started happening. Parishioners started dropping dead during Mass. The rectory burned to the ground, and a couple priests got toasted. My personal favorite, though-- and this supposedly appeared in the papers-- the school was hit by a small meteorite. Can you believe that? The thing was about the size of a football, and it went through the roof all the way to the basement. It sliced through three class rooms on the way, and a nun and six or seven kids got killed. Anyway, somewhere along the line, they decided that whatever evil was locked up in the tower didn't like it very much. So they actually unsealed the door, and guess what? The streak of bad luck ended. A little while later, the first kid fell off the tower. Kids have been falling every so often ever since-- almost like the tower was taking a sacrifice now and then.
“Ah, it's all a load of crap,” he said, and waved his pudgy hand in a dismissive way.
“I don't understand this,” Alicia said, then, having intently listen to Bill speak. “If all this happened before, why where they so hard on Ted after this Adam kid got killed?”
“Oh, that's simple,” Bill piped, stuffing his damp handkerchief back in his pocket. “Ted here survived.”
“I don't get it,” she said.
“You have to understand how these people thought. If they really believed the bell tower was an evil place, then evil let Ted escape. It was the same as giving Ted the ole thumbs up. The way they probably looked at it was that he was touched by evil-- some such nonsense…. I think I'll grab a drink,” he said then, rising slowly, his folding chair squeaking relief.
After Bill had walked away, Alicia leaned in close to Ted.
“I think we should leave,” she suggested.
“Absolutely not-- not now,” Ted said. As he'd listened Bill tell the story, his resentment grew at having been singled out in such a way, at what people were still saying and thinking of him. He had always felt penitent after Adam died-- because that was the way he'd been made to feel, not because he deserved it. “No,” he said stubbornly. “If I leave now, it would be like running. I can't let them all have the satisfaction.”
“But all this talk about evil,” Alicia protested, and there was a hint of awe in her voice.
Ted stared at her, surprised. “Don't tell me you buy into all that?”
“Things like that really do happen-- curses and evil places,” she said, her eyes large and spooked.
Ted was amazed. Alicia, he believed, was about the most level-headed person he knew. “I never knew you were superstitious.”
“Well, I'm not,” she said, “but, you know, when I was little my grandmother used to tell me stories.”
“What?-- fairy tales?”
“They all sounded pretty real to me. They were all about things that actually happened to real people, things so scary nobody wanted to talk abut it.”
“Then who told your grandmother?” he asked.
“Oh, you know what I mean. Don't make fun of me now,” she warned. “This is all serious stuff.”
“Serious?” he snort. “You know what it really is? You know how things like this start? Something unfortunate happens, and there is no explanation for it. People need to understand why bad things happen. If there's no logical reason, then they put it off on back luck or hexes. The nuns who used to run this school-- most of them were old, some where from the old country. They believed that evil was hiding under every rock. Now, I'm not saying evil doesn't exist-- it does-- but some people believe too much. They start seeing things that aren't there. It's very easy for something like that to start here, in this place, with the people who used to run it. The spook stories get established, and then they're handed down and passed off a true history. It's ridiculous, when you stop to think of it with a clear mind. They were all accidents-- that's all. Over the years there were probably hundreds of times when kids slipped up into the bell tower, and absolutely nothing happened, and nobody was the wiser. They got away with it. Then there's a handful of times when an accident occurs, and those are the only times people know for sure that some kid sneaked up there. So it seems to them like every time I kid sneaks up there, they die. Simple, right?”
