The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (10 page)

“Old, eh? Gripes, I hauled in most o’ the lumber an’

fittin’s for that house when it was remodeled, me an’ the mules. An’ fought that cussed skinflint Henry Architrave for every penny o’ the freight charges. God, Henry was mean! He was gettin’ married an’ wanted to gussy the place up for his bride, but he didn’t want to pay for the work, no more’n he had to. Meanest bird I ever run acrost.

When his own father died, he begrudged the two copper cent pieces to lay on the old man’s eyes. An’ that’s no lie, Zilla. Henry claimed it was a heathen practice an’ against religion, but what it boiled down to was that he just didn’t want to waste them two cents. How come the Architraves ain’t still livin’ there?”

“Because there aren’t any Architraves left. John was the last. I’m not sure whether he was Henry’s son or his grandson, but anyway he must have been a chip off the old block. John would squeeze a nickel till the beaver bit him.

Anyway, as I said, John was the tail end of the direct line.

His wife was dead before him and they’d never had any children.” Zilla sniffed. “Probably because John never got around to it, if he ran his private life the way he did the water department. Anyway, John left the house to the garden club for us to fix up and turn into a museum in memory of his wife, who’d been one of our presidents. So we did and it’s real nice now. You ought to manifest yourself over there and have a look around once the curator puts your picture on display.”

“I might, at that,” Hiram conceded. “Be somethin’ to do anyways. Say, it’s comin’ back to me about that photograph.

By gorry, I remember it all, clear as a bell. Eliphalet Monk, that was his name. Kept me standin’ in the road while he fiddled around up on a little stepladder with his head inside a red velvet bag stuck onto the back of his camera. Great big wooden box settin’ up on three sticks, you’d o’ thought it would topple over an’ squoosh ‘im, but it didn’t. Don’t s’pose there’s any Monks left around here?”

“Oh yes, it was a Monk who jimmied open that trunk with the paper money in it. Osbert, his name is, he writes Western stories. His wife just had twins a couple of months ago, a boy and a girl. She was a Henbit, you probably remember the Henbits. Osbert’s Aunt Arethusa lives here too, in the old Monk house. She writes romantic novels about dukes and earls.”

“Gripes, don’t neither of ‘em do a lick of honest work?”

“Huh! Osbert and Arethusa each make enough money from their books every year to buy up half of Lobelia County, pretty near.”

“You mean people get paid that good nowadays for lyin’? Mighty Jehu! When I think of all the lies I used to tell for nothin’, I could bust out cryin’ if I had anything left to cry with. But I wasn’t stringin’ you about that gold, Zilla, I swear I wasn’t. If that box ain’t there now, it’s because some bugger went an’ dug it up an’ never told anybody. But I’m bettin’ mine’s still where I left it, irregardless.

Wasn’t nothin’ in the Akashic Record about the gold bein’ took away, an’ they’re usually pretty thorough when it comes to puttin’ in the details.”

“Then why don’t I telephone Osbert and tell him we’d better go see if we can find that other box after he’s finished his supper and helped Dittany put the twins to bed.

Osbert’s real good about helping with the babies, though he’s no great shakes at chores, generally speaking. He means well, but he gets to thinking about mustangs on the mesas and buzzards over the buttes and forgets what he’s holding the hammer for. I don’t suppose you could come along with us, Hiram?”

“I don’t see what’d stop me from tryin’. O’ course I got no more personal interest in that gold, but it does seem a shame for nobody to be gettin’ any good out of it. What I really ought to do is find them bones o’ mine an’ see to it they’re buried decent so’s I can get on with whatever I’m s’posed to be doin’ next.”

“If you don’t care for the accommodations here, you’re under no obligation to stay,” Zilla replied somewhat huffily.

“Now ain’t that just like a woman! I never said I didn’t like it here, did I? But dang it, Zilla, a ha’nt’s got to do what he’s got to do.”

“Seems to me I’ve heard that one before. Sit down, then, before you start thinning out. And try not to fall through the chair this time. Want a doughnut?”

“Oh, say them words again! I sure wouldn’t mind feastin’

my eyes on one, if I can’t do no better. Used to be a woman down Hamilton way that made the best doughnuts I ever throwed a lip over. Jessie, her name was.

Great big redhead with-um-don’t s’pose you was plannin’

to boil up a pot o’ coffee to go with it?”

“I never drink coffee.”

Nevertheless, Zilla went and got the ancestral percolator out of the pantry. “It just happens I bought some a while back when my cousin from Manitoba was here visiting.

Lord knows what it’ll do to you in your present condition.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Hiram settled himself without mishap this time, Zilla suspected he’d been in here practicing while she was off at the garden site. The coffee did smell good perking, she had to admit. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt her to drink half a cupful too, just to fortify herself for what might turn into a hard night’s work.

Having a man, even a not very solid one, sitting across the table did give a person an oddly cozy feeling despite the fact that Hiram was eyeing her plateful of tofu and bean sprout casserole with a mixture of contempt and puzzlement.

Zilla herself was keeping a sharp lookout on that doughnut of Minerva’s. Seeing the coffee gradually evaporate out of Hiram’s cup didn’t faze her much after last night’s camomile tea episode, but watching a big, fluffy raised doughnut slowly deflate like a miniature inner tube with a slow leak was downright uncanny.

Eerier still was the effect this was having on Hiram Jellyby. He’d told her he could feast his eyes on the doughnut, and evidently he was doing exactly that. Zilla hadn’t been particularly aware of the old gaffer’s eyes before now.

Like the rest of him they’d simply been, somehow, there. If she’d been asked what color they were, she’d have said, “I don’t know. Sort of a washed-out blue, I guess.” As the doughnut decreased in size, though, the eyes turned to a more and more intense turquoise color. They seemed to be lighted from within. By the time his coffee cup was empty and the doughnut but a shriveled ring on his plate, they were glowing like a pair of neon lamps.

What was even more remarkable was that the rest of him had begun to fade. Now she could see the back of his chair through his torso, yet those incandescent eyes gleamed on just as brightly, if not more so. Zilla found this somewhat disconcerting.

“Hiram, what’s happening to you?”

“What do you mean, what’s happenin’ to me? I ain’t never felt better in my afterlife. That coffee an’ doughnut sure hit the spot. Made a new ha’nt o’ me, by gorry. Don’t I look it?”

“Well, you certainly look a lot perkier than you did last night. The thing I can’t get over is that the rest of you’s thinning out so fast you look like a wisp of leftover fog, but your eyes are glowing like a pair of bright blue buggy lamps.”

Zilla didn’t see any sense in mentioning automobile headlights. Hiram wouldn’t know what she was talking about, most likely. Anyway, she was so down on internal combustion engines that she didn’t even want to talk about them. Zilla regarded the ozone layer as a personal friend and hated to think what all those noxious emissions were doing to it. She was all set to give the former muleteer a lecture on air pollution when Osbert arrived, shovel in hand, and she had to get up and let him in.

“Hello, Osbert, I figured it was about time you showed up. Park your shovel for a second and come meet Hiram Jellyby. Hiram, this is the Monk boy I was telling you about.”

Seeing nothing but the remains of the tofu and bean sprout casserole, Osbert was momentarily nonplussed.

Hiram spoke first, his voice low and soft as a prairie zephyr. Zilla heard him well enough but Osbert didn’t, which was just as well. What he said was, “This the young squirt who tells lies for a livin’?”

Zilla, naturally, was not pleased. “Hiram, if you expect us to go digging all over Ontario for those bones of yours, you might be well advised to mind your manners.

Speak up so Osbert can hear you, and remember you’re in a civilized house. That’s him across the table, Osbert, those two blue eyeballs.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was looking in the wrong direction.

How do you do, Mr. Jellyby.”

“Hell’s bells, can’t you call me Hiram?” This time the voice came out clear enough. “Your great-great-grandfather took my picture oncet. That practic’ly makes us relatives, don’t it? Yep, I knew Eliphalet Monk well. I used to bring in photography supplies that he ordered sent out from Toronto, me an’ my mules. Split a jar with ‘im now an’ then too, not that Eliphalet was ever much of a drinker.

Kind of a funny gink, took a bath every Saturday night reg’lar as clockwork, even in wintertime, an’ changed ‘is shirt three times a week. You kind o’ favor Eliphalet, you know that, bub? Got that same wool-gatherin’ expression, like a lost sheep on the mountain. Zilla tells me you married one o’ the Henbit girls. Good-looker, is she?”

“I married the only Henbit girl available at the time, actually,” said Osbert. “Dittany’s an only child.”

“Dittany, eh? Now that’s a pretty name I never heard before. Makes me think o’ me an’ my mules singin’ around the campfire, nights when the stars was hangin’ overhead big as baked potaters.”

“Doesn’t it, though?” Osbert agreed. “I thought exactly the same thing the first time I heard it. And Dittany’s as pretty as her name. Prettier. Lots prettier. You must drop over and see our twins next time you’ve got your ectoplasm on, Hiram. They’re going to be three months old in a couple of days, we’ve been thinking we might have a little party for them. Very informal, of course, just animal crackers and cocoa to drink.”

“No whiskey?”

Zilla snorted. “Don’t you dare give that old buzzard whiskey, Osbert Monk. He lit up like a bagful of fireworks after one doughnut and a cup of coffee. Lord knows what a shot of red-eye would do to him. Come on then, we might as well get started. It would have made more sense for Hiram and me to meet you over by the footpath. You’re closer to there than you are to here.”

“I know, but Dittany and I didn’t want you walking in the dark by yourself,” Osbert replied. “We-er-weren’t sure Hiram would be coming with you, and that Peeping Tom’s still hanging around. Ellie Bascom caught a glimpse of him last evening, Dittany says. Ellie claims he tinkled.

She was terribly upset.”

“As Ellie Bascom naturally would be. Huh! One peep at me and that’d be the last he ever peeped, I can tell you.”

This was sheer bravado, Zilla remembered all too well how creepy she’d felt last night when she’d sensed that alien presence outside her own house. Funny, Hiram didn’t make her feel uneasy, even now when there was nothing to be seen of him except those two gleaming blue eyeballs.

It was probably just as well, she thought, that everybody else in town was off to one or another of the evening’s festivities. If they’d happened to meet a neighbor out walking the dog or stretching his legs, Hiram’s optical manifestations might have been rather difficult to explain.

The eyeballs did come in handy, though, once the trio had left Lobelia Falls’s none too abundant supply of streetlights behind them. Though the day had been reasonably salubrious, clouds had come in with the sunset.

By now it was pitch dark, and walking on the dirt path could have been tricky. Osbert had brought along a flashlight but was loath to use it. Somebody running late to an engagement might notice the light bobbing along and spread a rumor that the treasure hunt was back on, with results that could only be conjectured.

As it turned out, however, Hiram’s eyes, though casting no strong beams themselves, somehow managed to provide a kind of auxiliary illumination to each member of the party. They found their way to the spring with no trouble whatever. The water had cleared by now; Zilla dipped in her cupped hands, took a sip, and pronounced it real tasty.

Osbert drank too. Whether Hiram did was debatable.

They saw no appreciable lowering of the water level, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d have had to absorb a whole bucketful to produce any effect on a hole this size and didn’t appear to be trying. Those sapphirine glitters were turning this way and that, surveying the landscape.

After what seemed like a long while, and maybe was, the dead man gave his pronouncement.

“Yup, this is the place, eh. I could feel it in my bones if I knew where they was. Go ahead, Osbert, where you want to dig is right over here where Zilla’s standin’. Move your number nines, woman, an’ let the man work.”

Zilla wasn’t standing for that kind of nonsense. “Huh!

I’d like to see the man who could outwork me. Hand over that shovel, Osbert.”

Hiram was scandalized. “You goin’ to let ‘er, bub?”

“Why not?” said Osbert reasonably. “I found the last box. If Zilla wants a turn, why shouldn’t she have one?

Fair’s fair.”

“By gorry, ol’ Eliphalet’ll never be dead long as you’re alive. I bet you’re just like him, always changin’ your shirt an’ washin’ your neck.”

“Well, not always,” Osbert admitted, “but frequently.

When I was a kid my mother used to make me, and I just drifted into the habit. You know how it is. People do tend to wash more these days, what with indoor plumbing and all those soap commercials on television. In some circles it’s considered more intellectual not to, I understand, but we Western writers aren’t accustomed to thinking of ourselves as intellectuals. I don’t, anyway. My Aunt Arethusa doesn’t think I’m one either. But then I think she’s a featherhead, so it evens out.”

“Gripes, you’re a cheeky young bugger. That’s a fine way to talk about your own female relatives.”

“Oh, it’s not just me. Most people think Aunt Arethusa’s a featherhead. Unless they’ve fallen in love with her, which happens to about forty percent of the men she meets, poor saps.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. My wife calls it the moth and the flame syndrome, they just take one close look and go up in smoke. Want me to spell you awhile, Zilla?”