The Trespassers (3 page)

That part of the story was mostly new, but Neely was really sure about the next part because she’d heard her dad say so. “But Harold Hutchinson the First loved Halcyon the best of all his houses, and as long as he was alive all his family, and a lot of relatives and friends, too, came here every year and stayed all through the summer.”

“But why did they stop coming?”

“Well, Dad says it was partly because they weren’t so rich anymore. Dad says after the first Harold died, Harold the Second was better at spending money than at making it. So maybe they just couldn’t afford to come anymore. But that’s just part of it. The other part of it was”—Neely paused and widened her eyes—“the other part was because the Hutchinsons were star-crossed.”

“T
ELL ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE
star-crossed,” Grub said.

Neely had to stop to think for a moment. But then she remembered where she’d heard it—about the Hutchinsons being star-crossed. It had been Greta Peale who called them that. Greta Peale, an old lady who had lived on the coast all her life, was one of the Bradfords’ nearest neighbors and once, a long time ago, Neely had overheard Greta telling her mom about the star-crossed Hutchinsons.

“A long time ago,” she told Grub, “I heard Greta telling Mom how the Hutchinsons were star-crossed and that was why all these terrible things happened at Halcyon House. I asked Mom about it afterward and she said it was nonsense. She said it was just more of Greta’s gossip.”

“What does star-crossed mean?” Grub asked.

Neely nodded. “I looked it up. The dictionary said ill-fated and, like, cursed. It said, like star-crossed people had a curse on them.”

“What kind of curses happen when you’re star-crossed?”

Neely wasn’t sure. Greta and Mom had lowered their voices when they noticed Neely was listening. But she had heard a little bit and she’d guessed some more. “Oh, like horrible accidents, like car accidents and drownings. And people getting sick and dying,” she told Grub. “And there was this little girl who died in the house. So after a while most of the Hutchinsons quit coming to Halcyon. But they couldn’t just sell it because the first Harold had it put in his will that Halcyon could never be sold, no matter what.”

“I know,” Grub said impatiently. “I know all that stuff about the will. You told me that before.”

Neely shook her head slowly. Grub could be so exasperating. “I know you know it, but you asked. Why did you ask if you didn’t want me to tell you?”

Grub looked surprised. “Because I thought you might tell some new parts.”

“But I don’t know any other parts. That’s it. That’s all I ever heard about it.”

“I know. But sometimes you put in some new things. I mean besides what you heard.”

Neely knew what he meant, of course. Like the part about Harold Hutchinson the First being the richest man in the world. What Grub meant was he liked it when she thought up exciting new details. She was considering one or two more when Grub asked, “That little girl who died. Why did she die?”

Neely looked at him quickly, fearing the worst. But this time Grub didn’t seem to be in a “why death” mood. At least not yet.

“I mean,” Grub said, “what made her die? Was it some terrible disease like diphtheria? I read about diphtheria in—”

“I know,” Neely said. “You read about it in the encyclopedia.” They grinned at each other. “I don’t know what she... Neely stopped. “Well, actually,” she went on more slowly—and much more dramatically. “Nobody ever really knew. It was like she...suddenly disappeared. Or at least that was what people said. One day...well, one minute she was right there, playing in her room and then suddenly she was gone. And no one ever saw her again.”

Grub nodded slowly, his eyes as blank and unfocused as a sleepwalker’s. Neely watched him, grinning inwardly. “Suddenly she was gone,” he said dreamily, “and no one ever saw her again.” He looked around the rose garden and then on up to the second-story windows. He stared at the windows for a while before he turned back to Neely. “I think that was her room,” he said. “That little window there at the end, but after that terrible day no one ever saw her—”

But at that moment the dreamy smile faded and Grub’s face stiffened. Following his gaze, Neely saw a gray squirrel running across the weed-choked lawn. “It’s the mother,” Grub said, and then went on whispering so softly that she couldn’t quite hear. But she could guess. From the expression on Grub’s face she could guess that he was telling himself that this squirrel was the heartbroken mother of the dead baby.

The squirrel seemed to be scouting around at the edge of what had once been lawn as if it were looking for something. Grub stared at it for a long time.

“She’s looking for her baby,” he whispered finally in a quivering voice, “but she’ll never see him again.”

“Grub,” Neely said firmly, “she—or he probably—is looking for acorns. Forget it. Besides, I haven’t finished telling you about the girl who disappeared.” She glanced around, looking frantically for inspiration, and her eyes fell on the corner window above the veranda. “What I wanted to tell you was that you guessed right. That was her room, right up there on the end, and...

That was when she noticed something very interesting. “And you know what?” she went on. “I’ll bet we could go up there and peek right in her window and see what her room looked like.”

What Neely had noticed was that the upstairs windows, with their open shutters, could easily be reached from the veranda roof. By standing on the roof you could...She’d gotten that far in her reasoning when she noticed that it was already working—Grub seemed to have stopped mourning over the grief-stricken mother squirrel and was staring at the upstairs window. “But how do we get up there on the veranda?” he asked.

Neely looked around and almost immediately found the answer. At the end of the veranda the trunk of the old wisteria vine, thick and heavy as a man’s arm, curled and curved its way upward around the corner pillar. “The vine,” she told Grub. “We climb right up the vine—just like Mowgli.”

Grub nodded. “Or Tarzan. We climb up the vine like Tarzan.” He got up off the bench and started toward the house so quickly that Neely had to run to catch up.

The climb was easy. The lower part of the vine was as simple to climb as a ladder. The only problem was near the top where the branches were thinner and tended to bend a little under Neely’s weight. But by careful placing of her hands and feet she managed to slither her way up over the eaves. And right behind her Grub, who was much lighter, came up as quick and easy as a monkey. And then they were both standing on the thick old roof shingles looking down to where Lion sat staring up at them with a puzzled look on his big saggy-jawed face.

Grub giggled, and Neely, congratulating herself on her successful sky-is-falling cure, began to make her way over the slippery moss-covered shingles toward the corner window. She had reached the window and was kneeling in front of it, trying to peer through the dirty glass, when she heard Grub say, “Look, Neely. It’s not closed. The window isn’t all the way closed.”

A
T FIRST THE WINDOW REFUSED TO BUDGE IT SEEMED TO
be jammed in place as firmly as if the wood of window and frame had grown together. Neely pulled and tugged without any success at all, until she thought of pounding on the frame with the heel of her shoe to jar it free. After that she began to make some slow progress. When the opening was nearly wide enough to squeeze through, she sat back on her heels and looked at Grub.

“Maybe we shouldn’t... she started to say, and stopped. And to be honest, she probably didn’t mean it. To be absolutely honest, at that very minute, probably nothing short of the arrival of a half dozen police cars with screeching sirens could have stopped her from crawling through that window into Halcyon House. Particularly after she noticed the expression on Grub’s face. He looked excited, and even more important, positively cheerful. Not a trace of sky-is-falling syndrome. So that decided it. Neely put her head and arms through the opening, reached down and touched the floor. Walking her hands forward, she pulled and wiggled until she landed in a heap—and got quickly to her feet.

The large room was dim and shadowy. The fog-faded light, entering through two dirt-encrusted windows, seemed to be almost totally absorbed by the dark wood paneling of the surrounding walls. As her eyes became accustomed to the semidarkness Neely was able to see a fancy dressing table, a marble-topped dresser, and a large old-fashioned bed shaped like a sleigh. The sleek dark wood of the bed’s head and foot gleamed elegantly even through a thick layer of dust. Near a small fireplace there were two upholstered chairs, draped with sheets. The air smelled old and dead. Neely’s shoulders lifted in a sharp shiver.

“Look,” she heard Grub say. “Here’s some of her clothing.”

Neely’s breath caught in a quick gasp. She turned quickly but Grub was nowhere in sight. Then she noticed an open closet door and there he was bending over a large pile of what seemed to be old, faded rags. Dust flew as he lifted a ruffled blouse yellowed with age.

“Don’t,” Neely said sharply. “Don’t touch it.” She took the blouse away, pulled Grub out of the closet, and closed the door. He moved on around the room, humming softly to himself, examining each piece of furniture closely before moving on to the next. Neely particularly noticed the humming because it was something Grub always did when he was feeling especially good. Near the door he stopped to try the old-fashioned light switch that turned from side to side. Nothing happened. The chandelier, as well as the fancy wall lamps shaped like torches, stayed dark. “I guess it’s broken,” he said.

“Or turned off,” Neely said. “The electricity is probably turned off.”

He nodded and went on exploring and Neely went on watching him. He looked excited, she decided, but not frightened. Grub didn’t seem to be at all frightened. Neely was still standing motionless in the center of the room when he came back to her and looked up into her face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Neely said. “I guess I just feel strange about being here.”

Grub’s eyes were untroubled, clear and wide. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Because we’d be in trouble if we were caught in here, I guess. What if Reuben came back early for some reason and came in and caught us?” She looked around uneasily before she went on. “But it’s not just Reuben. It’s like maybe...something else doesn’t want us to be here.”

Grubb nodded slowly. Then he turned to look around the room, his head cocked as if he were listening. At last he turned back to Neely. “It’s all right,” he said. “I think it’s all right. Come on. I want to see everything.” He headed toward the door.

“Wait.” Neely grabbed his arm and pulled him back and together they moved slowly forward.

The door was of dark wood like the paneling. Large and heavy, it had a central panel deeply carved in what seemed to be a native design, perhaps Indian or Eskimo. The doorknob, bronze colored and intricately etched, felt heavy and solid under her hand. Neely turned it slowly and, still grasping Grub’s arm, stepped out into a dim hallway. For a long moment she stood very still listening.

“Neely?” Grub whispered.

“Shhh,” she said.

“What is it? What do you hear?”

Neely shook her head. She didn’t know what she was listening for, or why she felt so certain that she could hear it if she listened hard enough. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just feel like someone might be here.”

S
HE HADN’T MEANT TO SAY IT. SHE HADN’T MEANT TO SAY
out loud what she had been thinking and feeling—that someone or something else might be in the house with them. It seemed that saying it might make it true, or at least a lot more frightening. But somehow it had slipped out.

“Umm,” Grub said. He cocked his head again and listened and then looked up and down the hall before he nodded slowly. “Come on, Neely,” he said. “Let’s look.”

There was a rug on the floor, a long runner with an Indian pattern of triangles and diamonds and zigzag lines. The walls were wood paneled halfway up and above the paneling there was a heavy fabric that looked and felt like tightly woven reeds. The smooth hardwood floor on each side of the rug was covered with dust. A thin smooth layer of grayish powder.

“Someone’s been here,” Neely whispered. “Not too long ago. I mean, there’s dust but not like it would be if no one had been here for twenty or thirty years.” She stopped and ran her finger along the ledge at the top of the paneling. “See?”

“Maybe it’s Reuben,” Grub said. “Maybe Reuben comes in and cleans.”

Neely nodded. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Probably Reuben did come in to clean. The idea that someone had been taking care of the house, that it hadn’t been sitting empty and alone for all those years, was somehow a little bit comforting. Taking Grub’s hand, she moved on down the hall.

The other bedrooms on the second floor were also furnished with heavy old-fashioned furniture. Some had beds with high wooden headboards and marble-topped dressers while others were less formal with brass beds and white wicker chairs. Some of the rooms had small things in them, too—pictures on the walls, clocks, vases, hand mirrors, crystal jars and bottles—but others were empty except for a few big pieces of furniture. There were several large bath-rooms with old-fashioned claw-foot tubs, pull-chain toilets, and pedestal basins.

As they went from room to room Neely gradually began to feel a little better—more excited instead of scared. She couldn’t help feeling thrilled over all the beautiful old rooms with their paneled walls and lead-paned windows. So many rooms full of such beautiful things.

But once or twice the quick pulse of fear came again like a faint faraway warning when she first stepped into a new room. And with the fear the strong feeling that there were sounds around her that she could hear if only she could listen hard enough.

At the south end of the hall Grub discovered a locked door. As he twisted the knob back and forth and then tried to peek through the keyhole Neely began to feel it again, a strange uneasy tension that made a tingle at the back of her neck and a tight stretched feeling across her face.