Trolley to Yesterday (4 page)

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

The winds of March blew hard, and the boys had to lean forward and struggle sometimes as they made their way to school. Toward the end of the month Haggstrum College let out for spring vacation, and the professor went to visit his friend Dr. Charles Coote, who taught at the University of New Hampshire. Johnny was relieved because he knew that the old man was not going on a trip to Constantinople—at least, not right away. But now that his house was empty, a plan began to form inside Fergie's restless brain. One evening when he and Johnny were walking home from the movies, Fergie started to talk about his clever idea: Wouldn't it be great if the two of them could get into the professor's house and take the Time Trolley for a little jaunt? Fergie didn't want to go very far, just to Topsfield. They could visit it back in the horse-and-buggy days and spend an evening wandering around the town. Then they could zip back to Duston Heights. There was no reason the professor would ever have to know what they had done.

When Fergie had finished outlining his plan, Johnny stared at him in disbelief. He was so flabbergasted that it took him a while to find his voice. "Fergie," he said at last, "we don't know how to run that trolley. What if we get stuck back there in eighteen-something? What'll we do, go find our great-grandfathers and say, 'Excuse us, but we're due to be born in about fifty years, and we wonder if you could help us'? Come on, Fergie! Your plan is just as nutty as the one the professor dreamed up."

Fergie waved his hand scornfully. "Aaah, Dixon, you're a worrywart! You'd never have any fun if it wasn't for me. Look, all we're gonna do is zip back to the time hole in the upstairs story of that old house. The professor told me about the place. It's called the Parson Somebody house, an' it's three hundred years old an' it's a museum. Nobody lives there. We can just arrive at night an'—"

"Hey, wait just a minute!" said Johnny, interrupting. "The place is a museum
now,
but how about fifty years ago? Maybe the place'll be swarming with people. What'll we do then?"

"Punt!" said Fergie, grinning. "Dixon, I wouldn't worry: If there's people in the house, they'll be asleep, an' we can just tiptoe on downstairs an' out the front door. Wear your tennis shoes."

The two walked on a little farther in silence. Then Johnny spoke up again. "I went into the professor's house once when he wasn't there, and I felt bad about doing it. It made me feel like a louse."

Fergie gave Johnny a shifty sidelong glance. "You've got a key to his front door. He gave you a key the other day after you complained to him about how you left your notebook in his house an' you couldn't get it."

"Yes, he gave me a key," said Johnny, frowning stubbornly, "but that's not the point. The point is—"

Fergie cut him off. "The point is you're scared an' you're making up reasons not to go. Come on, admit it!"

"I'm
not
scared," muttered Johnny through his teeth. "I'll go anywhere you go. Only—"

"Great!" said Fergie, slapping him on the back. "So how about tomorrow night?"

As the two walked on, Fergie kept wheedling and arguing. Gradually Johnny's resistance began to weaken. To tell the truth, he wanted very much to take a quick, safe* trip in the Time Trolley while the professor was gone. Finally he gave in. Yes, he said, he would meet Fergie on the professor's porch tomorrow night at fifteen minutes before midnight. But they had to be very careful, and they couldn't stay very long in Topsfield, and they couldn't get into any kind of trouble. Fergie promised that it would be a problem-free trip. It would be a breeze, an absolute breeze.

On the following night, as a cold wind whistled through the bare trees on Fillmore Street, two figures crouched in the dark shadows on the professor's front porch. Both of them were wearing parkas and gloves, because they had decided to visit Topsfield in the winter. Fergie held his flashlight, but he had not turned it on yet, and he stood fidgeting impatiently as Johnny fumbled with the door key. Finally he found the hole, and the door rattled open. The two boys disappeared into the dark front hall and shut the door quietly behind them. Fergie clicked on the flashlight in his hand, and the two of them made their way down the hall to the kitchen, which led to the cellar. As he laid his hand on the cold knob of the cellar door, Johnny paused and turned to Fergie.

"Are you sure you wanta do this?" he asked in a quavering voice.

"Yeah, I'm sure!" said Fergie firmly. "Go ahead, open it."

The boys walked down the cellar stairs. When they got to the brick passageway, they felt around on the wall until they found the switch that turned on the lights in the subway tunnel. The trolley car looked like some large, expensive toy. Without a word Fergie walked to the car and trotted up the steps. Johnny swallowed hard, but after a brief pause he followed.

Fergie was seated at the control panel. He had turned on the lights inside the car, and he munched a Clark bar calmly as he set the various dials: The PLACE dial read TOPSFIELD, and the other dials twelve midnight, December 5, 1896. With quiet self-assurance he moved the lever that started the trolley's motor. As the dials glowed and the machine hummed, Fergie turned to Johnny and grinned.

"See? It's as easy as pie! Grab a seat, John baby, 'cause we are goin' on a ride! Hang on to your bridgework, everybody!"

Johnny sank down onto one of the wicker-covered seats, and he gripped a nickel-plated handle. The lights grew dim and yellowish, and the air in the car wavered and rippled. With a hiccupy lurch the car went forward. Faster and faster it sped, and endless stone walls rushed past the windows. At last the car slowed to a stop. Johnny sat dead still in his seat, and he still clung with a death grip to the safety handle. He knew they were there, but he did not want to get up and go out.

"Well, kid, we made it!" said Fergie cheerfully. He tried hard to sound carefree, but his voice was unnaturally high, and it trembled just a bit. After a quick glance at Johnny, he reached under the seat and pulled out the cigar box. When he opened it, he heaved a sigh of relief : The tamper was there.

"Okay, John baby!" said Fergie as he jumped up. "I got the magic whoopyjigger, so let's go see what's up in good old Topsfield." He paused by the side door of the trolley and glanced again at Johnny. "Hey, what's the matter? You look sick."

Johnny was sick. His face was pale, and his stomach was churning. He felt as if he was about to make a parachute jump with a lace doily for a parachute. But he gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand up. With unsteady steps he moved toward the door.

"Okay," he muttered, setting his jaw grimly. "Do your stuff!"

Fergie raised his hand and pulled the wooden handle. The doors hissed open, and they saw... only darkness.

Johnny peered anxiously over Fergie's shoulder. "Is... is something wrong?" he asked nervously. "Shouldn't we be... in a room or something?"

Fergie shook his head. "The prof never told us
exactly
where the time hole would be," he said. "Maybe we're in a room without any windows. Let's see."

Fergie flicked on his flashlight, and he raised the tamper. When it touched the invisible veil, the air shimmered, and Fergie stepped forward. Then, suddenly, he tripped and went sprawling. They were in a deep, narrow closet, and the floor was covered with firewood.

As he fell, Fergie's hands hit the closet door, and it flew open. Quickly he scrambled to his feet and staggered out into the room, which lay bathed in moonlight. It was a bedroom, and the boys could see the shadowy forms of a dresser, a washstand, and a four-poster bed. Curtains hung down from the side of the bed that was nearest them, and as they watched in horror, a hand twitched the curtains aside and a loud, masculine voice rang out:
 

"Who's there?"

Fergie thought quickly. He had managed to hang on to the flashlight, and now he raised it and held it up under his chin, so that it bathed his face in a ghastly pallor. In a deep, sepulchral voice he moaned: "
I
am a restless spirit, doomed to walk the earth at the mid of night! Beware!''

With a loud curse the man in the bed swung himself up into a sitting position. He pushed the curtains farther back and lurched to his feet. The boys saw a tall, barefooted figure in a long white nightgown and a tasseled white cap.

"Spirits, my grandmother!''
the man roared angrily.
"You are a snot-nosed boy, and a burglar besides! How the devil did you get in here?"

Fergie stood dead still; he really didn't know what to do at this point. Behind him Johnny cowered in the doorway of the firewood closet. Noiselessly he dropped to his knees and began to crawl around past Fergie's legs. So far, in the pale light, the man hadn't seen him. As the man started to yell even more loudly at Fergie, Johnny threw himself, rolling like a barrel, at the man's legs. He went down like a bowling pin, sprawled headlong across Johnny's body. In a flash Johnny was on his feet and running for the narrow staircase opening in the far corner of the room. Fergie was right behind him. Quickly they clattered down the steps and began struggling with the heavy iron bolt that held the front door shut. The bolt resisted at first, but finally it slid back, and the two boys raced out into the cold winter night.

They ran down a shoveled path, turned, and staggered off the road into deep snow. A screen of tall fir trees hid them as they made their way across the village common. Finally, out of breath, they stopped by the corner of a two-story building with a row of flat white Grecian columns in the front.

"I... don't think... I can go... any farther," Johnny panted. "Is... is he following us?"

Fergie paused until he had his breath back. "I dunno," he said as he peered out across the moonlit common. "Hey, that was a real good rolling block you gave him. Way to go!"

Johnny smiled weakly. He had never thought that he was capable of doing a thing like that, but somehow he had managed to. As he crouched in the deep snow, he began to feel very daring and adventurous. He was about to say something when he felt Fergie grab his arm.

"Hey, look!" he whispered. "There he is!"

Sure enough a tall man in a nightgown was making his way out into the middle of the snowy common. The boys could see him pretty well in the moonlight, and they noticed that he had long sideburns and a handlebar mustache. In one hand he carried something that looked like a one-handled rolling pin. Johnny had seen a weapon like it in his grandparents' attic. It was called a life preserver, and it was weighted with a piece of lead. You could split a person's skull with a thing like that.

"All right, you boys!" yelled the man as he glared about fiercely. "I'm going to talk to the police about you in the morning! Your parents ought to be ashamed of themselves!"

Finally, after shouting a few more unpleasant remarks, the man left. When they were sure he was gone, the boys pulled themselves to their feet.

"What did he mean about our parents?" asked Johnny, brushing snow off himself. "He can't know who we are, can he?"

Fergie waved his hand scornfully. "Aah, he was just bluffin'! He was try in' to scare us. We'll wait till he goes back to sleep, an' then ..."

Fergie's voice trailed away. Johnny looked at him suddenly. A vague fear was growing in his mind. "Fergie," he asked timidly, "is—is something wrong?"

"Oh, not much, John baby," muttered Fergie. "Not very much! I just lost the magic pipe tamper, that's all!"

Johnny turned pale. Without the tamper they were stuck forever in 1896. This was awful, as bad as anything he could have imagined. "Oh my gosh!" Johnny gasped. "That's
terrible!
How did you lose it?"

Fergie hung his head. "I don't know," he said sullenly. "I think I must've dropped it when I fell over those logs in the closet. So it's in there, or else out on the bedroom floor somewhere. Don't worry, we'll find it."

Johnny looked at Fergie in despair. "Don't worry?" he said. "Don't
worry?
Good God, Fergie! First you tell me that the house'll be empty because it's just a museum, and now you tell me that you've lost the tamper, only we shouldn't feel bad because you'll get it back for us real quick! Am I supposed to be happy because we're gonna turn into old men and orphans in this crummy place?"

Fergie turned to Johnny, and in the moonlight his face looked strained. His lower lip began to tremble, and tears filled his eyes. "I... I didn't mean for it to happen," he said in a quivery voice. "I'll fix things up. It'll be all right."

Johnny's angry mood vanished. He had never seen Fergie in a weepy state before. Usually his friend was a stiff-upper-lip, tough-guy sort. Johnny just couldn't stay mad at him. Together they would figure out what to do.

Fergie clenched his fists and pulled himself together with a sigh. "We're gonna have to wait till that crab with the face lace goes to sleep. Then we'll sneak up to his bedroom and find the tamper. It's gotta be in the closet or on the floor in the room
someplace.''

There was such a sound of grim determination in Fergie's voice that Johnny felt comforted. Somehow he felt they would win out. But for the time being there was nothing for them to do but stand in the snow and wait. A freezing wind began to blow, and they both shuddered, even though they were wearing their winter coats. The corner of the building shielded them a little, but not much. The snow on the broad common sparkled in the moonlight, and a horse carriage came rattling down the road near them. The driver was hidden by the black leather hood of the carriage, and the two oil lamps mounted on the dashboard cast a wavering faint yellow light. Who was it? A doctor out on a late-night sick call? Someone up to no good? Johnny and Fergie would never know. The carriage disappeared up the road, and the moonlit silence returned. Across the way the clock in a church steeple tolled one—they had been here in 1896 for an hour.

Johnny took off his gloves and stuffed them into his coat pocket. He flexed his stiff and reddened hands. "When do you think we can go back? he asked anxiously.