“Or hears one,” Poetry said, emphasizing the word “hears” in his squawky ducklike voice.
“You sound like one yourself,” I said.
We took Jay and Blackie by their collars to keep them from running around and making a noise. Circus held his dad’s black-and-tan dog, and I held Blue Jay. I squatted low, holding onto Jay’s new leather collar with my bare hands.
Talk about it being dark enough to see a ghost! That was the blackest dark I ever saw in my whole life. Not a one of us moved, not even the dogs, although I could feel Blue Jay trembling and knew he was wondering what on earth was going on and why. I could hear different ones of us breathing, but that was all.
I was listening for some sound outside the house, such as the rubbing together of the two elm limbs away up above the roof, but there wasn’t any sound of rubbing because there wasn’t any wind blowing.
I could smell the smoky smell that you always smell after a kerosene lantern has been blown out—the wick always smokes a little. Since my face was close to old Blue Jay’s new leather collar, I could smell that and also Jay himself. For a second I wondered how a dog could smell an animal’s track well enough to follow it at night when he couldn’t see it.
Just then somebody whispered, “Hurry up, ghost, and show yourself. We’ve got to get going home.”
Still not a sound, except the breathing of six boys and two dogs, and only the smell of wick smoke and a leather dog collar and the two dogs and also the kind of old musty smell of the house itself.
And then, all of a sudden, I heard something behind me, behind the wall I was crouched down beside! Blue Jay must have heard it at the same time, because I felt him suddenly get nervous and the hair on his back start to bristle, and I knew there was actually something somewhere making some kind of a noise, and it wasn’t being made by any member of the Sugar Creek Gang.
“Sh!” Big Jim said, shushing us.
But we were already shushed.
Circus whispered in a rough whisper, “Jay! Keep quiet.”
I knew it wasn’t old Blue Jay. It was something behind both of us, and it wasn’t in the room but was on the other side of the wall.
It just didn’t seem possible that I was hearing what I was hearing, and yet I was … no, I wasn’t either, because right that minute the noise stopped, and there was only our own breathing and the deathly silence of that old musty-smelling stone house.
Big Jim’s husky whisper broke the silence with the question, “You guys hear anything?”
Several of us said in the same kind of husky whisper, “Yeah! Something right behind the wall somewhere.”
Little Jim spoke up then, and his voice in the darkness sounded awfully cute as he said, “I heard something scratching on something.’’
And the second he said it, I knew that was what I had heard also, and I said so. I kept listening and straining my eyes in several different directions to see if I could see anything that looked like a ghost is supposed to look, but I couldn’t.
Poetry spoke up from beside or behind me somewhere and said, “It sounded like a rat gnawing on an ear of corn.”
His idea sounded cuckoo. In my mind’s eye I wasn’t seeing anything as small as a mere rat but some great big fierce wild animal of some kind. If it was only a rat, I’d have to change my mind, and I didn’t want to do it. That is one of the hardest things in the world to do anyway, Dad says—to get a person whose mind is already made up to change it.
We listened a while longer and didn’t hear anything, so we turned on our flashlights, lit our lanterns, and disappointedly made our way to the stairs, not having seen any ghost and only having heard something like a rat scratching.
Poetry and I were the last ones to go down the stairs. He stopped me with a tug on my arm and a whisper in my ear. We waited until the gang and the hounds had made their noisy boy-and-dog way downstairs and were walking around down there. Then he whispered and said, “Let’s see if we can see anything. If it’s a ghost, it’s maybe afraid of so many people. It’s probably used to living here all alone, and a lot of noisy boys and dogs scare it— sh! Listen! “
I really listened. Both of us had our lights out, and I was looking all around, but there wasn’t a sight or a sound.
Poetry sighed and started quoting the poem called “The Night Before Christmas,” which somebody had written long ago. This is the way it begins:
’Twas the night before Christmas,
And all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a mouse …
It certainly was disappointing, but as Big Jim had said a while ago, it was time for us all to get going home or our folks would worry about us, as grown-ups do about their boys or girls and can’t help it, the way our old cow always worries about her calf when it’s away from her and she wants to get to where it is and can’t.
Just as Poetry got to the place where he said, “Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse” —just as he said “mouse”—I heard something honest-to-goodness for sure, and I stopped Poetry’s poetry with a quick, snappy shush, adding, “Listen again!”
The sound was a panting and a growling noise at the same time, and I knew that somewhere close to us was a wild animal of some kind.
Our flashlights were still out, and I tell you my dad’s long flash went on again in as quick a hurry as Poetry’s did. We also grabbed hold of each other to be sure we were both there and all right, and we were.
That settled that. There might not be any ghost, but there was something honest-to-goodness for sure in that old stone house, and it wasn’t more than a half-dozen feet from where I was right that minute. And yet I couldn’t see it.
“It sounded like it was in that old wardrobe,” Poetry said. With his light on he wobbled his roly-poly self toward it.
We’d all looked in it a little while before, and it had been empty, but Poetry and I decided to look again. I swished my light all around the bare walls, and there still wasn’t a thing in it except the row of wooden pegs and that one small lonesome little peg that had been just the right height for Little Jim to hang his clothes on.
“Whatever it is, it’s behind the wall somewhere,” Poetry said. “Maybe back in an attic, if there is one.”
Sure, I thought. There ought to be an attic. Nearly every house in the world has an attic of some kind.
I looked with a frowning forehead at that empty wardrobe, at the row of empty wooden pegs, and also at the one small peg all by itself. And suddenly I remembered that Old Tom the Trapper hadn’t had any children to hang clothes on a low peg. Before I knew what I was going to do, I had done it. I grabbed hold of the low-down wooden peg as if it was a handle to something and gave a sharp sideways pull on it. And the whole back wall of that wardrobe moved a little, making a dark crack opening into an attic!
Right away I knew that whole back wall of the wardrobe was a sliding panel and that back in there somewhere was the wild animal we’d heard growling and panting.
“Wait!” Poetry exclaimed behind me. “Don’t slide it open any further, or it’ll jump out and get away—or maybe eat us up!”
I quick shoved hard on the wooden peg, and the sliding door went shut with a bang, sounding exactly like the banging noise I’d heard before when we’d all been outside by the old maple tree.
Boy oh boy! Who or what was back in that dark attic? And what would happen next?
10
As soon as Poetry and I discovered there was an honest-to-goodness-for-sure attic in that old stone house and had slammed the sliding door shut, we must have made a lot of noise-such a clatter that the rest of the gang came scrambling back up to see what was the matter.
It wasn’t easy to keep Blue Jay and Blackie under control, because a dog is like a boy when there is any excitement—he wants to get right into the middle of it. In fact, he wants to be a part of it himself.
Of course, we might need the dogs if there was a very big, fierce wild animal back in tha
t dark attic, but we didn’t want them to make a mad dash inside ahead of us until we could look in with our flashlights and see for ourselves what was there.
“You guys let me have a look in first,” Big Jim ordered. He slid the panel open far enough to shove his flashlight in and take a peek, while the rest of us including the excited dogs stayed back and waited. He flashed his light all around first, then said, “Looks as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. Might as well all go in and see if there are any bones for our poor dogs.”
Dragonfly, who was behind Little Jim who was behind me, heard Big Jim say “bare” and spoke up in a half-scared voice. “If it’s a great big grizzly bear, what’ll we do?”
Pretty soon, after different ones of us had looked in, we all decided that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. Making the dogs stay outside by shutting them in the smaller room, we all stooped down a little and went into the big spooky attic, in the center of which was a large square brick chimney.
If the attic had ever been used for a storeroom, whoever had lived here last had taken everything out except an old-fashioned spool bedstead, an old spinning wheel, some pairs of very old shoes, and some ears of yellow corn, which were scattered around on the floor. There was also a kind of dead smell as if something had died in there, but that was maybe because the attic had been closed up for so long that it had gotten to smell that way, I thought.
“Here are the bones for our poor dogs,” Big Jim said, and when I looked where he had his light focused on the floor not far from the red brick chimney, I saw what looked like the bones and feathers of a dead chicken but nothing that looked like a live wild animal.
“S’pose maybe Old Tom the Trapper kept his chickens up here, and when he died the chickens starved to death?” Little Jim asked in his cute curious voice.
Big Jim was studying the bones and the feathers, and I could see the muscles of his jaw working. “This chicken was alive less than a week ago,” he said seriously, and for the first time he seemed to have a note in his voice that sounded as if he thought there was something really mysterious about things. “See,” he said, holding the bone of a drumstick in one hand and shining his flashlight right on it, “this chicken has been eaten raw. If it had been cooked, there wouldn’t be signs of blood on it.”
“Do g–ghosts eat raw chickens?” Dragonfly asked, which was almost as dumb a question as he’d ever asked.
Little Jim picked up an ear of corn and was studying it. I noticed he was looking at it as though it was as important as some kind of wild-flower and he was going to write a note about it for our teacher.
“See!” he said. “This ear has exactly twenty-two rows of grains around it.”
“What of it?” I said, and so did Dragonfly. We were all more interested in what Big Jim was doing and what he was going to decide. I could hear Blue Jay and Blackie in their room making whimpering noises as if they had been terribly mistreated by not being allowed to come in with us.
Little Jim answered Dragonfly and me by saying, “It’s important. Just like it’s important that all the mayapple flowers have exactly six petals and exactly twice as many stamens in their centers.”
“It’s not important,” Dragonfly answered him crossly. “Not when there’s a ghost or a wild animal been in here—maybe still is here.”
Just then Big Jim, who had walked around to the other side of the chimney, let out a low whistle and said with a hiss, “Come over here, you guys, and have a look at this, will you!”
We scrambled over to him, and I noticed quick as a flash that there was a big hole in the side of the chimney where some bricks were missing. In fact, they were lying scattered around on the board floor. Then I saw what Big Jim had called us to look at—scratches and scratches and still more scratches on the softish red bricks and around the edge of the hole where they had been in the chimney. And also a lot of loose, brownish hair fastened to them.
It was plain as day that some animal had squeezed through that hole. Whatever had been in the attic had probably heard us coming and had gone up that chimney like a scared Santa Claus and had gotten away.
Thinking that, I spoke out loud and said, “Maybe old Santa Claus made a mistake and came down the wrong chimney, and when he tried to get out, he got stuck and burst the hole in the side and some of the fur on his suit came off.”
Nobody seemed to think what I had said was funny, and nobody laughed.
Half disgusted, I flashed my light around at different things such as the bricks on the floor, the chicken bones and feathers, and the ears of corn. Some of the ears had teeth marks on them as if they’d been gnawed on.
Then I quickly shone my light into different dark corners of the attic and almost jumped out of my wits when I saw what I saw. Two very bright, shining fiery eyes were looking at me from away back in a corner where the attic floor and the roof met. In that same second I saw the broad face of some kind of wild animal. It had white whiskers, I noticed, and black cheeks and a black stripe all the way up and down the center of its forehead. Then it ducked down below the end of the floor and disappeared.
“It’s a coon!” I yelled to the gang. “I saw it with my own eyes. A great big coon as big as a grizzly bear!”
Talk about excitement! I still had my flashlight focused on the place where the coon had dropped down into a hole below the ceiling slant at the end of the floor. Not knowing just how the old house had been built, I imagined she had a special hiding place down there on top of the rock siding.
Just that second, up came that big wide head again, and I saw those same two fiery eyes!
Dragonfly saw it, too, and hissed in a scared whisper, “It’s a bear!”
Quick as a flash down went the white-whiskered coon’s face, and there wasn’t a thing left for us to see except the empty corner again.
“What’ll we do?” different ones said to us. I thought about what a terribly big coon it was and how much money it would sell for, so that Circus’s family of nearly all girls could have groceries for another week.
“Let’s shoot her,” Big Jim said. “You guys shine your flashlights into that corner, and the very next time she looks up, I’ll plug her”— which was a very good idea. That is, it would have been if it had worked.
But Mama Coon—or Papa, whichever it was—wouldn’t accommodate us. No matter what we did or how much noise we made, she stayed down where she was.
It was Circus who thought of getting a long stick to see if by poking around a little we could stir her up and make her come out where Big Jim could shoot her. In a minute or so Circus was outdoors and back in again with a long, slender pole. With all the rest of us behind or away off to the side of Big Jim so we wouldn’t be where the gun’s bullet could hit us, Circus took his pole and poked away back where the coon had last been seen.
And then is when it happened. Boy oh boy! Mrs. Coon came out of her hiding place in the fastest second I ever saw, the way our old Mixy cat sometimes dashes wildly out of her hiding place when she’s excited about something. Before any of us could have done anything to stop her, even if we could have moved that fast, she made a dive across the attic floor—a flash of beautiful brown fur, the biggest coon I’d ever seen and certainly big enough to have made all the large tracks we’d seen that summer at the spring. She hurled herself straight toward the chimney right beside which I was standing and made for the opening in the bricks, wiggled her fat, furry body through, and disappeared up the chimney.
A second later we heard a scrambling out on the roof, and I knew she was gone, maybe to a big tree somewhere where there would be another den to hide in.
Even before I had time to be sorry for Circus’s family’s sake that she had gotten away, I felt kind of glad, because any coon that was as smart as that deserved to get away.
Well, it was time to make a fast start for home, or our parents would worry too much about our being out so late, and it was not fair to a boy’s parents for him to make them worry.
Just befor
e we left that attic, we took a final look around at things, and Little Jim picked up a few ears of corn to take home. “For a souvenir,” he explained when Dragonfly asked him what he wanted them for.
“I’ll bet she’s been coming in through that hole in the chimney bringing corn and chickens to her coon children, who maybe have a nest back there somewhere,” Poetry’s ducklike voice squawked.
“Yeah,” Little Jim said, “just like Santa Claus coming down the chimney with toys.”
“But how’d she get up on the roof in the first place?” Dragonfly wanted to know, as, a little later, all of us came out of the cellar doorway into the outdoors and started to go home.
“Easy as falling off a log,” Circus said. “She climbs up that old maple tree, crawls out on that big overhanging limb away up yonder-right where my flashlight is shining this very second—and drops off. Like I said, just as easy as falling off a log. Then she zips up the outside of the chimney, and in she goes.”
And that was that. We all believed it, and away we went toward home, making the dogs stay with us on the two leashes that Circus had brought with him. It would never do for Blue Jay and Blackie to strike the coon’s trail again and have another wild chase through the woods to the maple tree. It’d be the same thing over again.
It was a very excited, very happy, and also very tired gang of boys that scrambled along in the light of our lanterns and flashlights back up the creek to our different homes.
Little Jim, who was walking beside Dragonfly, was arguing with him about something. “Count ’em yourself,” I heard him say to Dragonfly. “There’s just exactly twenty-two on this one and exactly twenty on this one and exactly eighteen on this one.”
I looked over at him, and he had in his hands the three ears of yellow corn that he’d picked up in that old attic.
I listened to Dragonfly ask him again, “What of it?”
And Little Jim said, “It proves that the One who made the flowers and the ears of corn has a special plan—that He never makes twenty-one rows of corn around an ear, or seventeen, or nineteen, but always an even number instead of an odd one.”
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 13-18 Page 29