Kneeknock Rise (3 page)

From the hearth came a low, self-satisfied rumble. Sweetheart was purring.

In the middle of the night Egan was jolted awake by a violent crash of thunder. In the sudden wind, raindrops pelted his window like handfuls of berries. Annabelle, who had been sleeping on the cot at his feet, lifted her head, listened, and began to tremble. With bulging eyes and tail pressed tight between her legs, she slid down and scrabbled under the cot, where she lay panting in the private darkness, bulky and pathetic with dread.

“Come on out, Annabelle,” whispered Egan. “It’s only rain.” But she wouldn’t budge. The rain increased and thunder boomed again. As the rumble ebbed, Egan heard a soft knock at his door and Ada, small and ghostly in a white nightdress, tiptoed into the room. Her red hair, unbraided for the night, was wild about her shoulders and her eyes were saucers of excitement.

“Now you’re going to hear it! Any minute now, Egan. Isn’t it thrilling?” She perched cross-legged on the end of the cot with her nightdress tucked primly under her toes, and cocked her head to listen.

Egan listened, too. “I don’t hear anything but rain and wind,” he whispered.

“It’ll start soon,” she answered. “But don’t be scared. Papa left a candle at the window like always, and a wishbone on the hearth. And Mother hung the onions on the door hinge.”

“What’s all that for?” asked Egan. A flash of lightning glared for an instant and they sat tensely, waiting for the thunder. It came with a roar that seemed to split the sky in two. From under the bed the pace of the dog’s panting quickened.

“I suppose that’s Annabelle under there,” whispered Ada. “She’s a big coward. Now Sweetheart, he’s out somewhere in the storm. He loves it.”

Egan ignored the slur against his friend. “What’re the candle and the wishbone for?” he asked again.

“My goodness, Egan,” sighed Ada. “Don’t you know anything? If you leave a candle in your window, the Megrimum knows you’re safe inside. When it sees the wishbone, it thinks all the food is eaten up and there’s none left to steal. And when it smells the onions on the door hinge…”

Just then, from somewhere high up in the night, a thin, wailing sound came riding down the wind. “That’s it!” hissed Ada. “Listen! There it is. First time in a month!” She hugged her knees and bounced with pleasure. Egan jumped out of bed and ran to the window, pressing his face against the cold glass. The wail dimmed and then began again, deepened to a moan, hollowed, wavered, and was lost in another crash of thunder.

At the window Egan clutched the sill and stared out at the wet, swirling darkness. Leaves and twigs, caught by the wind, hurried up, paused, and were swept away, and the rain chased in rivers down the glass. Once more, from far above, the low moan came faintly to his ears. It rose slowly, threading to a wail again, and held for a long, terrible moment. Egan stood speechless, and Ada, coming to his side, was quiet herself for once. At last the wail drooped, dwindled, died. They waited, staring out into the storm. Suddenly, as lightning lit the darkness for a bright, white instant, they both saw at the same moment a dim shape coming down the rocky side of Kneeknock Rise, just beyond the garden wall. They clutched each other. “Did you see that? What can it be? Hide!
Quick!
” They sprang to the cot, tearing at the quilts, and buried their heads. Thunder, farther off now, muttered briefly and then, through the thinning rain, they heard a tapping at the window. Egan’s heart thumped like a drum as he huddled frozen on the cot. The dreadful tapping came again and then, quite suddenly, Annabelle stopped panting and began to bark. At the same moment, the bedroom door burst open and they heard Aunt Gertrude calling. “Egan! What’s the matter?” Then, a shriek: “Oh, mercy! Anson! There—there at the window!” She screamed once, shrill as a whistle, and fainted into a heap. And Annabelle, emerging from under the cot, stood with her front paws on the windowsill, barking on and on against the glass, which now showed nothing but the empty, drizzling dark.

By breakfast time the news of the family’s terrible nighttime visitor had spread all over Instep, for Ada had hurried to tell a talkative neighbor or two, and any event to do with Kneeknock Rise, however mild or serious, was considered the rightful property of the entire village. The morning air was chilly after the rain, and Aunt Gertrude, limp on a bench at the hearth, beside a crackling fire, held court to a stream of eager visitors. To each she described the thunder and the moans from the top of the Rise (these they had all heard for themselves, but they listened anyway—it was her right, in view of what had happened, to speak for the entire night) and then, as they leaned breathlessly toward her, she tried, faintly but with emotion, to describe what she had seen at the window.

“A kind of a face, it was, but very white, with a wild glow around it. Two eyes, I think—though there may have been three. I don’t recall a nose at all, but the mouth was just a big black hole. Oh, dreadful, dreadful! I can hardly bear to think about it.” The visitors would cluck sympathetically and go away, some nervously, and some rather jealously. Egan heard one woman say to her friends as they left the house, “If Gertrude and Anson had only bought that weathervane I tried to sell them, it never would have happened. Everyone knows that an iron weathercock will crow at times like that and scare the danger away.”

“Nonsense,” said one of the others. “A weathervane’s no good. You have to grow poppies in your dooryard. No demon can stand the sight of poppies.”

“Poppies are all very well when they’re blooming,” said a third. “But the very best thing of all is still a bell. The devil himself will run when you ring a bell. It doesn’t even have to be a very large bell.”

The same kind of discussion went on in the little house all morning. And when Uncle Anson came home from his shop at lunchtime, Aunt Gertrude began on it again.

“For years, Anson, for
years
, mind you, we’ve been careful. Every night the candle, the wishbone, the onions. And in spite of it all, this terrible thing happens!”

“See here now, Gertrude,” said Uncle Anson. “The Megrimum, if it
was
the Megrimum, couldn’t have seen the candle
or
the wishbone from that back window. And he couldn’t have smelled the onions, either.”

“But that’s just it!” cried Aunt Gertrude. “That’s the very thing that makes us out so foolish! Don’t you see? It never occurred to me before, but for all these years we’ve been assuming that if trouble came, it would come politely round to the front of the house—wipe its feet, even—and then knock on the door. The miller’s wife pointed it out, of course. In front of everyone. I’ve never been so embarrassed. And they were right to laugh at us.”

Uncle Anson frowned. “See here, Gertrude,” he said, “I don’t believe for a minute that the Megrimum
did
come down. He’s got his place up there and we have ours down here. I think it was just a stranger coming early to the Fair who thought it would be funny to scare somebody.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Anson. A stranger wanting to scare somebody! I’m sure I never heard of anything so mean. Yes, yes, you must be right. Well, Annabelle was some use after all, wasn’t she, with her barking? That stranger won’t
come
here again.”

Aunt Gertrude sighed with relief and gave Annabelle a large plate of the pancakes she had fixed for lunch. The old dog beamed at the unexpected reward and lay about all afternoon licking her syrupy whiskers contentedly. Just before supper, Egan heard his aunt say to a late-coming villager, “Well, it may have been the Megrimum and it may not. We scared it away, though. It won’t come back soon again, whatever it was. You may be sure of that!”

But later she said to Uncle Anson, “Just the same, I do believe that clock of yours with the feathers and all was bad luck, Anson. Let’s have no more of those feathers in this house again. Ever!”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Uncle Anson.

With nightfall coming on, they gathered close to one another before the fire. There was a special coziness in being together now, after all the uproar of the night before. Uncle Anson smoked his pipe and dreamed into the flames, devising new and daring clocks, while Sweetheart, curled into a furry wad in Ada’s lap, looked the very picture of innocence, a picture which from time to time he spoiled by stretching out a long foreleg and arching the claws wickedly from a taut, spread paw. Annabelle dozed on the hearth, snoring softly, and Egan poked at the fire with a stick, so nearly asleep that he jumped when Aunt Gertrude spoke to him. She was sitting on the bench, sewing, and she held out for his inspection a curious pouch-shaped object of bright, soft cloth.

“There, Egan, what do you think of that?” she asked. “It’s the last of forty sets.”

Egan looked at the object doubtfully. “It’s pretty, Aunt Gertrude. What is it?” he said.

Ada sighed. “You don’t know
anything
, do you, Egan?” she accused.

“Why, it’s to go over the legs of chairs or tables, dear. Couldn’t you tell?” said Aunt Gertrude, peering anxiously at her handiwork. “To keep the floor from getting scratched. Four to a chair, and four to a table, too, of course. I’ve made them for years to sell at the Fair. Mar-no-mores, I call them. They sell very well, too. I’ll send a set home with you for your mother.” She tucked the bit of cloth into her sewing basket. “There! All finished. How about a story before bed, Anson?”