Mystery of Drear House (2 page)

“Nope. She’s an invalid,” Macky said. “She stays in bed mostly.”

Thomas tried not to look surprised. He’d never heard of anyone’s mother being an invalid. Maybe if Macky’s mother was eighty years old, she might be one. He would’ve liked to have talked about it right then, but Macky went on.

“My mama likes to tell old-timey stuff,” he said.

“Really?” Thomas said.

“Yeah. Not much else to do when you are lyin’ down, being sick, then gettin’ well over and over.” He sighed. “King beast of the woods is one she tells.”

“One what?” Thomas said.

Macky gazed at him. Serious and burly he was among the trees. He had a smooth, expressionless face. “Just about who in the woods is smartest. It changes,” he said.

“I’ve never heard about anything like that before,” Thomas said.

“It’s old-timey stuff,” Macky repeated. “Mama says, in olden times there was an Indian maiden girl always used to run through here. She had long black braids and a dress made out of buckskin, too.”

Macky crouched down again, a little away from Thomas. He still may have been on Darrow land. But an invisible line was hard to read. Thomas was uneasy without a gun when a Darrow had one.

“Really?” Thomas heard himself saying. “An Indian girl?”

“Well, it’s what Mama says,” Macky said. Then, slyly, he grinned at Thomas. “And the story goes, not one man Indian could catch her. She’d come upon you in here, and like a breeze, she’d blow on by. Time you try to overtake her, she’d be so far ahead couldn’t nobody catch her.”

“She had a head start then,” Thomas said.

Macky pursed his lips. “A young Indian man hid around, watching for her. He saw her and started to race her,” he said. “She looked at him once, and he couldn’t catch her. Others tried, but none ever could catch her.”

“Why couldn’t they?” Thomas asked, getting into the story. “An Indian man was used to running, I bet, and could outrun any woman.”

“You think so? Well, she wasn’t
any
woman. Turns out she was a ghost.”

Thomas caught his breath. The slow grin spreading across Macky’s face didn’t register. A ghost! he thought. Slave ghosts were said to haunt the “crow” house of Dies Drear, but he’d never seen one. Old Pluto said he had, though. Said he’d even seen Mr. Dies Drear himself. Thomas noticed the silence then. He shivered all at once. “That’s a ghost story,” he managed to say.

“Well, might could be it is,” Macky said mockingly. “It’s what Mama told me.”

“Is an invalid someone who is sick all the time?” Thomas asked. He was asking before he knew he would.

“My mama’s not sick so much,” Macky said. “Mainly it’s how she acts sometimes.” He seemed to ponder this. “She gets out of bed once in a great while, but we never know when.”

“You mean, she won’t get up every day?” Thomas said.

“Maybe two, three times a year,” Mac Darrow said. “ ’Casionally every two months or so.”

“Well, that’s really too bad,” Thomas said. He wasn’t sure what to believe.

“Oh, we don’t mind it much,” Macky said. “Me and Pesty walk Mama down along the highway when she gets up. She likes that.”

“That’s right, she took Pesty in. … How could your mother take care of a baby if she was an invalid?”

Mac Darrow smirked. “She’s not invalid all the time. Just sometimes when she lies down for six months.”

“Well, I never heard of anything like that,” Thomas said. “Pesty never once mentioned it.” It finally came to him that Macky might be putting him on just to be important. “Maybe your mother’s not any invalid,” Thomas said.

Grinning, Macky got to his feet. He seemed to Thomas to tower above him. The grin never touched his large gray eyes flecked with yellow. “You callin’ me a liar?” he said softly. “My mama is too an invalid. But there—look behind you! There’s the Indian girl running!”

Thomas whirled around. “Ahhhh!” escaped him. He held on to the maple, terrified. The fog was rising. Snow, falling. How did it happen that the woods was pale with failing light, gloaming light? Dusk. The fog was ghostly white now. It danced and swayed. He almost thought he saw …

Ohhhh!

He looked to Macky for safety and found only the stillness and mist. He heard laughter—“Ha-ha!”—a ways off. Trees dripped snow fell lightly where Mac Darrow had been. Only Macky’s empty tracks were left.

Where … Macky!

But Mac Darrow had vanished. Thomas scrambled away from the great maple. He tore through the woods. He half believed the Indian maiden was somewhere near. He knew that Macky had been playing with him, but still, his fear rose on the twilight. He almost got turned around. Almost lost his way. They say ghosts walk at dusk. Run!

The crest of the hill had to be right before him. Was it? And the house, just down the hillside. Was it still?

His breath was ragged. He thought surely something was running after him, breathing down his neck. Oh no!

Thomas slipped and fell hard, as his feet slid from under him. He got up painfully on his knees and began crawling like a baby. His hands were fistfuls of snow. In another instant he was on his feet, running. And then he knew. Knew she—it—was there. Reaching, her dead-cold hand about to touch his shoulder. She would grab him and he would have to run until he would never run again. Ghosts were like that. Ghosts were …

He couldn’t stand not knowing. He whirled around. His feet slid, but he kept his balance. There. Just as calm and cool as you please.

It was no Indian maiden. Macky had returned. He had been far enough behind Thomas that when Thomas spun around, there was room for Macky to step aside so they wouldn’t collide.

The sound of Thomas’s ragged breath filled the woods. No, he was out of the woods. He was on the edge of it, over the crest of the hill. His chest was heaving. I’m so dumb! he was thinking. He saw the house down there. Turned warily back to Macky.

Tall Mac Darrow was so still and remote against the trees. In the gloaming he gathered what light there was around him. He was ten feet away, standing with his hands poised on the gun. He cocked his head. “Seen my first rabbit of the day,” he said. “Poor scared rabbit. You run that way, anything’ll catch you.”

“You tricked me!” Thomas managed to whisper.

Macky almost smiled. Just a faint twitching of his mouth as he looked off into the dusk. “You can come over my house anytime you want. I bet you too scared, though.” He glanced once more at Thomas, at his defeat.

Thomas coughed suddenly. He bent double over a painful stitch in his side.

“There was, too, an Indian girl here. Once,” Macky said. Then he turned and walked away through the trees, east.

The hillside below Thomas gathered darkness. The lights went on in the Drear house. He walked down, feeling tired and sick of himself. I acted like a scared rabbit. Scared of a dumb story, he thought. We were just talking together. He was only putting me on. We could’ve hunted trails together! He asked me to come over there, and I had to go and say no. Why did I have to do that? But then he said I could come over anytime.

Maybe his mama is an invalid. Was it that I said she wasn’t? Maybe he just wanted to get even with me for all of us scaring his brothers and his dad.

Friend or foe? I don’t think we’ll ever be friends!

At the backyard Thomas calmed down. He stepped up onto the veranda. The back door was right there. Safety, just in time. For it was night. He felt something rush behind him. Something ghostly blew out of the woods, swept down the hillside to climb the shadowy house of Dies Eddington Drear. Thomas slammed the door in the face of the chill wind before it could catch him.

M
ACKY WAS A HUGE
bear that came straight at him, lumbering right over him like a grizzly over a log. Thomas fell flat on his back as Macky’s bear-clawed feet stepped on him.

It was a fleeting dream. Thomas awoke, feeling angry. He was lying facedown, with his nose pressed into the pillow. What … time? he wondered. Oh. Dawn. He saw faint light at the windows. It took him a moment to realize where he was, what day it was.

The easy chair was placed so he wouldn’t have to wake up and see the black opening of the narrow fireplace. He stared at the floor-to-ceiling windows, which were bigger and longer than they needed to be. There’s nothing out there, he thought. Just the day coming.

It’s a school day coming. Which day? Oh, my brain is fuzzy!

He thought of yesterday. Pesty. Macky, at dusk. He closed his eyes. It’s Friday, and I won’t have to go to school. We’re going to get Great-grandmother—what time? Must not be time because Mama would be here if it was, to make sure I’m up.

He closed his eyes, resting. But he couldn’t help thinking about Macky and what had happened in the woods.

Glad it’s light, he thought. Things look different in the light.

It was daylight when his mama came to wake him at six-thirty.

“Thomas. Thomas,” she called softly.

He didn’t open his eyes. He turned his head slightly, so he could put his chin in her palm, as her fingers gently touched his face.

“Come on,” she told him. “You’ve got a long way, you and your papa.”

They left at seven-thirty, after having dragged themselves out of warm beds, washed, dressed, and eaten. They would travel the distance in the family sedan, with the neat red trailer attached for Great-grandmother Jeffers’s belongings. They never disturbed the twins, Thomas’s baby brothers. The twins would sleep on until about eight. They would have two identical fits if they were to see Thomas and their papa going for a ride in the car without them.

“You take care now,” Mr. Small said to Thomas’s mama when they were ready to go.

“Mr. Pluto and I may do some house painting today,” she told them. “I am interested in having my kitchen a little brighter.”

“Be careful using the ladder,” Mr. Small said.

“I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”

“Good,” Mr. Small said.

“You should wait until I get back so I can help,” Thomas told his mama.

“There’ll be plenty paint left for you,” she told him. “Plenty more rooms.”

They left the house of Dies Drear behind. Martha Small waved goodbye from the front veranda. Thomas looked back, waving. Even in the growing morning the Drear house appeared dark and shadowy.

His mama grew smaller. She still waved. Thomas had many impressions. His mama diminishing to doll size as the car sped away. So long, Mama.

The house got smaller, changed to a weathered doll’s mansion from the giant crow house. Goodbye,
dreary
house. I’m glad to be gone from you today!

The gravel drive wound down and away from the hill. They crossed the old covered bridge and the stream that was so like a moat protecting the house. There was the woods at the top of the hill. Winter trees wore stripes of snow on their trunks and limbs. Zebras, Thomas thought. Winter wild animals.

He wondered if Mac Darrow was up yet, out tracking somewhere among those striped tree animals. Sighing, Thomas sat up straight beside his father as they headed south on the highway, out of town.

It was a long drive, but they would be able to get back home by eight or nine in the evening. Wouldn’t do to stay overnight and leave his mama and his brothers home by themselves.

Anything might happen, Thomas thought. But we scared the Darrows away months ago, and nothing’s happened since. It’s a feeling, though. Papa feels it, too. But it’s been a long while without any trouble. The Darrows stay there on their own farmland most of the time. If you didn’t come into town on market or street fair day or go to church once in a while, you never would see them. Well, now there’s Macky at school, in the woods.

But there’s something about the house of Dies Drear, too, Thomas thought. Like, maybe it’s waiting. Like, the time is up. The truce is over.

He shivered. That’s too dumb, he told himself.

“Well, we’re off,” his father said, rousing Thomas from his reverie.

“Good and off,” Thomas said and his father chuckled.

The heater was on. They were dressed in boots and warm jackets, ready for anything. Ready for winter highways and cold mountain highs.

“Can’t wait to see Great-grandmother Jeffers,” Thomas said. “It’s been so long.”

“Too long,” his father agreed.

Great-grandmother Jeffers was his papa’s grandmother. She was the only elderly relative that his father had in North Carolina. Great-grandfather Canada Jeffers had passed away some time ago.

Thomas patted his papa’s shoulder and smiled up at him. Mr. Small grinned, not taking his eyes from the road.

They went south, first to Chillicothe, Ohio, and then on to Portsmouth, where they picked up Highway 52. The high hills made Thomas eager to see the mountains of North Carolina.

Thomas often made figures out of wood, and before leaving home, he had begun a carving. Now he took out the square piece of white pine he was working on and his sharpened pocketknife. Whittling would give him something to do with his hands on the long drive.

His hands moved expertly over the wood. His left hand appeared to feel out the shape he wanted from the pine while the right hand carved it.

Mr. Small glanced around, amazed again at how his son seemed to be working with something soft, like clay. He could shave the wood so quickly.

“Wish I could stop awhile and watch you do that,” he said admiringly.

“It’s not going to be a whole lot,” Thomas said.

“No? What is it to be?” asked his father.

“I’m not sure yet,” Thomas said. Usually he didn’t think about what he was whittling. “But there’re some things on my mind.”

He pictured his mama and his brothers back at the house of Dies Drear. He imagined the Drear house drawing away from the snow-white countryside. He thought about the old abolitionist Dies Drear, who had come from the East to help escaping slaves up from the Ohio River. Drear, moving through the house and outside it. Just vague notions and parts he recalled from the written history the foundation owners had given them about the Drear house and property, the section about the house as a station on the Underground Railroad.

Thomas’s hands never stopped moving over the carving.