The Trespassers (4 page)

“Don’t do that, Grub,” she said.

“But it’s locked. Why do you suppose it’s locked, Neely?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s something valuable in there. Maybe jewelry or bottles of expensive old wine.”

Grub shook his head and tried again to look through the keyhole.

“Stop it, Grub,” Neely said sharply.

“Why?” he said. “Why not?”

“Because... She didn’t know “why not” exactly, except that it made her feel uneasy. “Because it’s none of your business.”

Grub was still staring at the door. “But maybe that’s where the secret is,” he said.

“What secret?”

“The secret about the girl who disappeared.”

Neely smiled. “You mean, you think she’s in there. Her bones or something. She disappeared a long time ago. Like before Dad was born even.” It was a ridiculous idea, and Neely didn’t even want to imagine about it.

Grub shrugged. “Not her bones. Just something about her secret, maybe.”

Neely grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

In the center portion of the long hall a staircase led up to the third floor and down to the first. The stairs to the first floor were very wide with a great solid banister almost a foot across. The stairway ended in a grand entryway facing some ornate double doors, which Neely immediately recognized. She’d seen the massive entry doors many times before—from the outside.

In the downstairs rooms the bottom sections of the tall windows were shuttered, so the only light came in through small arched upper panes. A dim light, but enough to see that the living room was very long and grand with a beamed ceiling, an enormous fireplace, huge leather couches and chairs, and lots of other bulky-looking pieces of furniture.

There were paintings on the walls, too, seascapes and still lifes, and over the mantel a large painting of a stern-faced old man wearing an old-fashioned suit and a shirt with a high stiff collar.

In a corner near the windows there was a potted tree that reached almost to the ceiling. Its limbs were dry and bare and the floor beneath it was covered with dead leaves. Grub stared at the tree, his forehead puckering.

“I guess Reuben doesn’t come in here very often,” Neely said. “At least, not often enough for that poor tree.”

“Could we water it?” Grub asked.

“It wouldn’t do any good. It’s been dead too long,” Neely said—and bit her tongue.
Dead
wasn’t a good word to use around Grub, not even about a tree. But this time his mind seemed to be busy elsewhere.

After the living room they explored the dining room, kitchen, and a lot of small rooms—pantries, storage rooms, and what seemed to be several small bedrooms, probably for servants. The pantries were empty except for mouse droppings and long ribbons of spiderweb that draped down from shelf to shelf.

In the enormous kitchen the appliances were large and grand and very old-fashioned. Grub kept opening cupboards and closets even though Neely told him not to. There were dishes and pots and pans in some of the cupboards, as if people had gone away planning to come back very soon, and for some reason had never returned.

When they’d finished exploring the north wing of the house they went back through the entryway and into a large game room. Two beautiful game tables of inlaid wood sat near the windows, and in the center of the room a huge stained glass chandelier hung down over a pool table with bulging carved legs and pockets with golden tassels.

Beyond the game room there was a library with comfortable chairs and couches and lots of bookshelves that went clear up to the ceiling. Most of the shelves were still filled with books—old, dusty books with dark, discolored bindings.

Over the fireplace in the library there was another large oil painting, this time of a group of people—a family, probably. A handsome man with a mustache and slicked-down dark hair and a sad-looking woman wearing a pearl necklace and a dark dress with a long, tight skirt. There were also three children in the picture. Two half-grown boys and a pretty little girl with a big ribbon in her long curly hair. Grub studied the picture for so long that Neely finally had to pull him away.

A
FTER THE LIBRARY NEELY LED THE WAY BACK TO THE
second floor and headed for the room with the open window. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s go home.” But Grub didn’t want to leave.

“We haven’t been up there yet,” he said, pointing to the flight of stairs that led up to the third floor.

Neely stopped, staring up at where, in the dim light of a stained glass skylight, the stairs turned and disappeared from view. She felt torn. One half of her wanted very much to see the whole house while they were there—all of it—but on the other hand...

The weird feeling of dread had almost gone away while they were in the library, but now, as they climbed the stairs, she could feel it oozing out from the dark corners of her mind. Oozing out and spreading like the strange tinted shadows that fell down across the stairwell from the stained glass skylight—yellow shadows and green ones, and one dull red blot that splashed across the landing like an old faded stain. She stopped and stood stiffly, staring at the red blot—and then suddenly turned back. Back down the stairs toward the room with the open window and the clean, fresh air of the outdoors. But by then Grub was almost to the top of the stairs and when she called him he didn’t stop. So she turned again and followed him up the stairs.

The landing at the top of the stairs opened into one huge room, a kind of ballroom. An enormous open space with slanted ceilings, dormer windows, and a smooth hardwood floor. Along the walls were couches and chairs and on one side of the room there was a player piano and on the other an old-fashioned hand-cranked phonograph. Grub turned the handle and then took a record from the cabinet and put it on the turntable.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I won’t hurt it. I know how. The man at the discovery museum showed me how to work one just like it.”

He lifted the arm and lowered the needle carefully onto the edge of the record. It was piano music, tinny and jazzy-sounding. When it was over Grub wanted to play some others, but Neely was feeling more and more anxious.

“We’d better go,” she said. “Reuben really might come back early.”

It wasn’t likely. On Mondays Reuben always stayed all day when he went into town. But there was always the possibility that he could change his routine. And besides, they’d been in the house for a long time.
And
Neely’s urge to leave—to walk swiftly downstairs—perhaps even to run—was getting stronger and stronger.

“Okay,” Grub said. “I just want to look at the drums. There on the stage. Come on.”

At the far end of the room there was what certainly did look like a small stage. Probably a bandstand, Neely thought, where the musicians sat for the grand dances Dad talked about. While Grub, humming again, examined a decrepit old set of drums, Neely stood on the bandstand imagining the long narrow floor crowded with dancers, the women in long velvet or satin dresses and the men in fancy tuxedos. And the band—a big one with lots of blaring trumpets and wailing saxophones. Still imagining the band, she turned and, for the first time, noticed the view from the window.

The window was long and low and had a wide sill. The lower half of the glass pane was protected by two strong metal bars, but above the bars nothing obstructed a view that went on forever. Here, just beyond the northern end of the house, the plateau ended in a steep, rocky cliff. Far below lay the treeless plain and even farther away to the northeast the dim blue line where the ocean met the sky. It was a beautiful scene—the sloping green plain splashed with yellow and red, and farther away the blue-green sea spangled with sunlight.

“Look, Grub.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the drums. “Look. The sun’s come out. And look at the view.”

For a moment Grub looked, but then he suddenly stepped back, pushing himself away from Neely and the windowsill. At the edge of the stage he turned back, frowning.

“What’s the matter?” Neely asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t like looking down there.”

Neely looked out the window again, seeing this time not the distant view to the plain and the sea, but what could be seen if you looked straight down. Straight down the three stories of Halcyon House and then the long steep drop of the plateau wall. She shivered, and then turned back to look at Grub.

“It’s all right,” she said. “See the bars. No one could possibly fall out.”

“Umm.” Grub nodded, but his forehead was still wrinkled. He turned away and started walking down the long room. Halfway to the door he turned back and said over his shoulder, “Let’s go now, Neely. Let’s go home.”

W
HEN NEELY CLIMBED OUT ONTO THE VERANDA ROOF AND
shut the window behind her it was with a definite feeling of relief. The kind of jittery mixture of relief and satisfaction that you feel when you’re being unbuckled from a really terrifying carnival ride. Exactly the kind of “I’m glad I did it—but
never
again” reaction she’d had when she climbed out of the loop-the-loop at the fairgrounds.

But on the way home the jittery feeling gradually faded and was replaced by a pleasant excitement as she conjured up memory pictures of everything she had seen. All the great old rooms came back vividly—and with each scene she imagined interesting additions.

In the dining room she added to the memory of paneled walls and elegant furniture the image of an old man seated at the end of the table. An old man with a stern face and a great bush of gray hair. And other diners, men and women in beautiful clothing and among them a lovely slender woman and three children.

In her imagined scene the boys, dressed in grown-up-looking suits like the ones they were wearing in the portrait, were acting like kids, poking each other and grinning—probably about the silly things the grown-ups were saying. They had looked that way in the picture, as she recalled, a little bit devilish with their long sleek faces and tilted eyebrows. And then there was the little girl in her lacy dress and huge hair ribbon, looking very beautiful with her masses of curly hair and huge solemn eyes.

She kept playing around with the imagined scenes the rest of the day, even while she was sweeping the porches and helping Mom weed the garden. Grub helped with the weeding, too, for a little while, humming softly to himself as he worked. That is, until he found a tomato worm and went off to take it to a safe place where it wouldn’t have to be squashed. After he’d gone Mom mentioned the humming.

“Well,” she said, “I must say your hike to the grove was a grand success, Neely. I thought we were in for a bad case of blues this time. Cholesterol blues.”

“Yes,” Neely agreed. “Grub likes to hike.” Which was certainly true, as far as it went.

That night in bed the half-remembered, half-imagined pictures came back even more vividly. But then as she began to drift toward sleep the pictures faded and left behind a puzzling question.

It was a double question. Part of it was about why she had felt so uneasy in Halcyon House, and the other part was why Grub hadn’t. At least, he hadn’t except for that moment near the window—which was probably just because he’d never liked high places. Why did she, Neely Bradford, who was seldom frightened of anything, feel almost terrified at times? And why was little old Grub, who was afraid of almost everything unless it had fur or feathers, so much at ease? She was wondering sleepily if it would be the same next time when suddenly she came wide awake. Next time. But of course there wasn’t going to be a next time.

There wouldn’t be any next time because it was too dangerous. Dangerous, she felt certain, in a lot of ways—some of which she couldn’t really put into words. But the one danger that was easy to explain was Reuben. Reuben might just happen to come home early, or she and Grub might have left footprints or some other clue that would warn him—and so he might come back early on purpose to catch the intruder.

She imagined the capture, with the sour-faced old man springing out at them from behind a door and then dragging them away to the police station in his pickup truck.

And then the scene in the station in which she would try desperately to explain that they were not really guilty of breaking and entering because climbing in the window at Halcyon House had been entirely unpremeditated and had only happened because of Grub’s cholesterol anxiety attack.

“I, Cornelia Emily Bradford, plead not guilty,” she would say. “We both plead not guilty. Because we didn’t mean to, and we’re sorry, and we won’t ever do it again.”

She meant it too. That night when Neely imagined herself promising never again to set foot inside Halcyon House, she really meant what she said.

A
FTER THAT FIRST VISIT TO HALCYON HOUSE EVERYTHING
returned to normal. Summer vacation normal, that is—peaceful and quiet and more or less boring. On Tuesday Grub started spending most of his time in the chicken shed because his banty hen was hatching some baby chicks. The chicks were something to see, all right—cocky little fluff balls hardly bigger than bumblebees. And Grub, sitting there cross-legged on the floor in a baby-chick trance, was something to see too. Since there wasn’t much going on anywhere else, Neely went out now and then to check on the action in the chicken shed, such as it was.

On Wednesday things got a little more exciting. Neely talked Dad into letting her ride into Carmel with him when he went to work at the motel. While Dad took over for the Martins (Sam and Betty Martin were the managers of Dad’s motel in Carmel), Neely spent the day with her friend, Mimi Page. She and Mimi went to the beach and to Harrison Library, and she came home that night with a slight sunburn and a bunch of library books. Staggering into the house carrying a huge load of new library books was always a good feeling.

That evening she sat on the front steps and read until it got too dark and then watched the sunset over the ocean and thought first about the day with Mimi and then about Halcyon House.

She would have loved to tell Mimi about going inside the old mansion—Mimi, who loved mysterious things, would have absolutely freaked. But, of course, she didn’t tell. A long time ago when she and Grub first began going onto the grounds at Halcyon they’d solemnly promised each other that they would
never
tell anyone. And not telling was even more important now that they’d actually been inside the house.