And Moe? “No real plans yet. This publisher, Fred Burton, has big ideas, wants me to travel all over America to do what he calls ‘promotions.’ He’s even thinking of sending me to Hollywood, of all places, to meet a couple of producers who might want to turn my book into a movie. Hey, Annie, do you think Papa would actually watch it?”

The thought of their father sitting in a movie theater, munching popcorn and watching his son’s name on screen, sent them both into gales of laughter. And on that joyful note, the two had finally said goodnight and gone to bed.

Now, in the darkness, Annie breathed deeply and sighed with contentment. Whatever the future would bring, right now she had her brother near her.

She turned onto her side, hoping to catch a few more hours of sleep. She was just drifting off when a huge clap of thunder seemed to shake the entire hotel. It was followed not, as she’d expected, by the silence of night but, instead, by a terrible cracking sound, a frightening blend of breaking wood and glass.

And by the terrifying noise of high-pitched screams.

Q

uadratic equation. Polynomials. Logarithms. Basic algebra, simple stuff.

So why can’t Artie figure them out?

Outside, on the Levine family’s quiet Boro Park street, the weather was rough. Inside, although the radiators kept the temperature warm and pleasant, the atmosphere between the two young men sitting at the dining room table was also growing stormy.

Mutty Levine sighed, rolled his eyes, and managed to keep the frustration and sarcasm out of his voice as he once again tried to explain the math terms to his brother Artie, who was facing a major test in his Brooklyn College night class.

His brother. His brother? As Artie stared glumly at the textbook in front of him, Mutty mulled over their unusual relationship. Artie Klein had been four years old and Mutty hadn’t even been born when Artie and his sister, Malka, were taken in by Yeruchum Freed and his family. The children were distant relatives whose mother had died in the London Blitz and whose father, a soldier in the British army, was killed by a Nazi bullet.

His brother? Mommy certainly thought so, treating Artie and Malka with the same love and caring she showed her other children. She’d cooled Artie’s forehead with wet washcloths when he’d had the measles, just like she’d done for Mutty during his bout with chicken pox. There were cookies and milk and interested questions about their day when they came back from yeshivah.

And Dad? When Artie and Mutty were young, Dad was always available on Sundays to throw a baseball or take everyone rowing in Prospect Park. But somehow, even before Mutty was bar mitzvah he noticed some kind of coolness between Dad and Artie. No fighting: Artie was too gentle and Dad too good-natured for that. It was just that… while Mutty loved schmoozing with Dad, hearing Dad’s war stories or sharing his own school triumphs or even learning Mishnayos on Shabbos afternoons, Artie never seemed to join them. Sometimes Mutty wondered whether Artie wished he wasn’t part of this family. Lately especially, he seemed to prefer hanging out in his room, trying to figure out songs on the guitar Dad had bought him for his 20th birthday.

A bolt of lightning lit up the room, its powerful light crashing through the curtains and bathing the room in a pale, almost eerie white glow. The thunder that followed rocked the chandelier.

But the harshest noise came from Artie, as he slammed the textbook shut.

“Enough! I will never, ever understand this!” And he hurled the book to the floor and raced up the stairs.

The sound of his door slamming made a sullen and bitter harmony with the next clap of thunder.

T

he screams — shrieks, really, shrill, breathy sounds growing more and more high-pitched with each passing second — overpowered the babble of voices in the hotel as well as the rumbles of thunder outside. Casting a hurried look at the children who somehow were sleeping quietly through all the chaos, Annie grabbed a robe and raced into the hallway. She made her way through a few boarders who’d been awakened by the crash, with everyone speaking frantically and no one listening to the others, and raced up the stairs to the building’s top story, where the bone-chilling screams seemed to be coming from.

She met her father, also running up the stairs. Papa, it seemed, had also realized that the strange sounds were coming from the top floor. “I think it must be the Boidem Room,” he told Annie, as she ran past him.

In the 1950s, when the Freed Hotel had been flooded with religious Holocaust survivors looking for a place where they could rebuild their shattered lives, there was a desperate need for more space. Yeruchum had renovated the fourth floor, turning the attic and “boidem” into two small guest rooms. Over the years, though, as the survivors remarried and found jobs and the hotel had emptied out, what everyone called the “Boidem Room” generally stayed unoccupied.

So who would be up there, screaming?

Of course! Marjorie!

The Boidem Room was, Annie realized as she pounded up the stairs, the perfect place for Papa to put a redheaded, chattering, completely secular girl who so obviously did not fit into the Freed Hotel.

Still wondering why Papa had clearly wanted this girl to stay, Annie pushed open the door.

E

ven in the darkness, Annie could see wood and glass and roof tiles everywhere. At first the room seemed empty, but, following the sound of the shrieks, which had grown softer and was now punctuated by tears, she found Marjorie cowering under the bed.

Gesturing to her father, who’d just walked in, to leave them alone, Annie gently touched Marjorie on the shoulder. The confident, prattling, fun-loving girl had disappeared; in her place a wailing, terrified child.

“Marjorie, are you hurt?”

The shrieks faded out. The girl was trying to say something, between sobs and hiccups. “I thought… I thought… I was so afraid that—”

Annie kept her voice deliberately calm and cool. “What were you afraid of, Marjorie?”

The sobbing stopped and Marjorie pulled herself out from under the bed. She sat herself cross-legged on the floor, wiping her eyes, and looked around her, at the shards of wood, bricks, and glass.

“Nothing. I wasn’t afraid of anything.”

And — totally unexpectedly — she burst out laughing. “I feel like such a jerk.”

“You’re not a ‘jerk,’ Marjorie. You’re a perfectly normal girl who had a really bad scare when the roof of her room came falling in.”

Annie shivered and pulled her robe more closely around her. She couldn’t say she was completely shocked. After all, Abe had warned Pappa when he’d done the renovations that the contractor he’d chosen was a shady character, clearly not using the best materials. But Papa, stubborn as always, had told him this was the only one he could afford. Of course, as always, Abe — her husband, so generous with money — had offered to help financially; and of course, as always, Papa — so proud and unwilling to take a loan he could not repay — had thanked him and refused. And now, under the pressure of gale-force winds and rainfall, the roof had given way.

Annie looked carefully at the girl. There were no marks of cuts or bruises; she seemed unhurt, though her giggles had a slightly hysterical edge.

From outside the door came Yeruchum’s voice, concerned. “Annie, is she all right? Do you need any help?”

“I’m fine,” Marjorie shouted. “Just enjoying the air conditioning. And,” she added, “the swimming pool.”

Annie suddenly realized that the floor, and Marjorie herself, were wet, soaked by the rain coming in through the cracked roof. “See if you can find a dry robe,” she said, “and let’s get you into another room, where you can relax.”

By the time Marjorie had rescued her suitcase and pulled a robe over her pajamas, the crowd on the stairs and in the hallway had thinned. Annie explained the situation to her father and the other boarders.

“Marjorie will need a place to sleep until tomorrow morning,” Annie said, her arm around the girl.

“Unless you want to give me a houseboat or a raft.” Marjorie giggled, her composure apparently restored.

A woman’s heavily accented voice spoke. “The girl can stay with me. Since Mrs. Frankel left, there’s an extra bed.”

As Annie returned to her own bed — the children, thankfully and almost miraculously still asleep — she reviewed the events of the night. Her thoughts fell on Marjorie, the girl’s tears, terror, and slightly hysterical giggles. Yes, anyone would be frightened by the noise of shattering glass and wood, but there was something unusual about Marjorie’s reaction. Hers was a terror that seemed to come from some deep place in her very being.

Right before she fell into a weary slumber, the thought passed through her mind: What, exactly, was Marjorie so afraid of?

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 847)