Mystery of Drear House

by Virginia Hamilton

  Great-grandmother Jeffers would take all the items that were special to her, such as the framed photographs she had kept for more than half a century. And she took her senior’s walker, as she called it, which was a three-sided lightweight aluminum support. She used it to lean on when she had to.

  Thomas and his papa worked fast and hard, going in and out of the house, back and forth. It was a strenuous exercise. I’m not any little kid, not anymore, Thomas thought. It felt good to be big and strong.

  Then, all at once, they were finished. Thomas brushed his hands off. “That’s all,” he said.

  Great-grandmother Jeffers nodded. “That’s all that I’m taking,” she said.

  “It about filled the U-haul up, too,” Thomas said.

  She crossed the room and opened the door. She stood there, waiting for Thomas and Mr. Small to go out of the house. She meant to close the door herself on all that had been. She stood there, so tiny in her old cabin. And yet she was made large by this last moment’s recollection of a lifetime.

  5

  “SEE” THOMAS SAID, EXCITEDLY. “It just goes up and up. Very high up. Straight up.”

  It was dark out by the time they got home. They’d had a long and pleasant ride. Thomas talked all the way, telling Great-grandmother everything.

  She had fallen asleep once, just a light dozing. She didn’t think she had missed much. Darrow people with river names. The mother, an invalid. She’d heard that much. She recognized no division among peoples; no enemies. Problems were solved through clear understanding. This one felt one way; that one, another. It was the way with folks. No need to take sides.

  “Well, what do you think?” Thomas asked her.

  “About what?” she said back, teasing him. She knew what he meant. She chuckled and patted his knee. The car headlights gave them a fine view as they climbed the snow-covered driveway up to the house.

  “Thomas, it’s a grand old house,” she said, finally, as they took her by the arms and gently helped her from the car.

  Thomas grinned. “Wait until you see everything,” he told her, guiding her to the porch. “These veranda steps have the tunnel to the kitchen under them.”

  “So these are the ones,” she said, and watched her feet as she climbed up.

  The front door swung open. There stood Mrs. Small and the twins.

  Great-grandmother Jeffers hollered when she saw her granddaughter-in-law. “Goodness! Goodness! Martha, it’s been too long.”

  “Oh, Grandmother Rhetty!” Martha Small said. They hugged and kissed, laughing and nearly crying. Great-grandmother Jeffers patted her granddaughter-in-law as she patted everyone whom she loved.

  Billy and Buster peeked around Mrs. Small with solemn eyes.

  “Hello, babies!” Great-grandmother Jeffers exclaimed, bending low to hug the boys. “Which one is which one?” she said, not expecting an answer. The twins backed away from her, and she followed, right into the large entranceway.

  “Look at us, standing here with the door wide open,” Martha Small said. “Brrr! It’s turning cold.”

  “Turnin’ cold,” the boys said in unison.

  Great-grandmother studied them, amused. “Do they do that?” she asked. “Say the same thing at the same time?”

  “They do it a lot,” Thomas said.

  “Don’t you remember your grandma?” Great-grandmother Jeffers said to the boys. “The piney woods and my cabin? Remember how you loved my cotton patch? Hmm? Boys will be boys!”

  It was Billy who first grinned from ear to ear. “Boys be boys!” he and his brother said.

  Great-grandmother Jeffers opened her pocketbook and rummaged around in it until she found the ball of cotton she had brought in a silk handkerchief. She carried it as a good-luck charm.

  It was Buster who reached for it and crushed its softness against his cheek. His eyes lit up. Both boys giggled. Quickly they came into Great-grandmother Jeffers’s outstretched arms. “Gray-grahma!” they exclaimed, snuggling in.

  “Yes, indeedy,” she said, “and big as life! You remember me.”

  They remembered.

  It took time getting her coat off, getting her situated in the parlor, getting her warmed up and relaxed after such a long, stiffening ride. Great-grandmother Jeffers smoothed her hair back and looked around the long room at the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Who’s going to clean such windows? Is that why you wanted me here?” she said.

  They all laughed at that.

  After a while they went into the kitchen.

  “I knew I smelled fresh paint,” Thomas said. “Look at that!”

  The kitchen was painted the warmest yellow. “Looks just like spring!” Great-grandmother Jeffers said, beaming.

  “I did it,” Martha Small said proudly. “Mr. Pluto mixed the paint for me and set up my ladder.”

  “Bet you could get a good hourly wage for work like this, if you wanted,” Mr. Small said, joking.

  “I bet I could, too.” She joked back.

  They eased in around the kitchen table as Thomas set it for the supper his mama had prepared. Mr. Small served their plates from the stove and counter. The twins had already eaten, Martha said. But they enjoyed being at the table, climbing down and playing around, accepting hugs from their great-grandmother.

  It took time to eat, to sip tea, and there was pie for dessert.

  Time to catch up and to hear about the things that could not be spoken of over the telephone. Great-grandmother propped her arm on the table, resting her chin in her palm. “I want to see you-know-what-it’s-called,” she said. She meant the cavern of treasure. “I want to see everything, but best not to speak about that.” She looked all around. “Do the little fellows know about you-know-what-it’s-called?” she asked.

  The twins were at once alert, knowing they were being talked about. Walter Small shook his head. “That’s another thing. They’re growing the way kids do.”

  There was a pause. “We keep them here around the house,” Martha said. “But they will get away from you. I’m going to find a play school for them.”

  “Not to change the subject,” Great-grandmother said, “but which is the wall in this kitchen that rises?”

  Walter Small got up from the table and went over to a cabinet across from them. Beneath the cabinet was a panel that housed the machinery for the moving wall. He fiddled with the controls, picked up an object from one of the cabinet drawers, and added it to the mechanism. At once the kitchen wall silently slid up. The twins held on to Great-grandmother Jeffers on either side. The three of them stared. Before them was the black, gaping tunnel opening that led around to the front steps. Thomas found himself clutching the table edge.

  Great-grandmother Jeffers leaned forward. She found the opening quite extraordinary. A tunnel of ages, she thought. Used by slaves, fugitives.

  The dank air at the tunnel entrance seemed unsettled. She held her head cocked to one side as though she were listening to something.

  “What is it, Grandmother Rhetty?” softly asked Thomas’s mama.

  Great-grandmother Jeffers shook her head. “Must’ve been nothing,” she said. “There’s sure nothing there.”

  “I’ve never liked that escape route,” Mrs. Small said. “Never liked a wall that could slide up and down.” Lightly she touched each twin on the head. Just then Billy disengaged himself from Great-grandmother and walked over to the cabinet with the panel. He began to fiddle with it.

  “Hey! Don’t touch that, Billy,” Walter Small said. “Now, you’re not to touch this panel, you hear?”

  Great dark eyes shifted from his father to his brother Buster. Buster left Great-grandmother’s side and toddled over to Billy to put a comforting arm around his brother.

  “Look at that,” Great-grandmother said, chuckling. “They are as cute as they can be!”

  “Oh, they’re cute all right,” Martha said. “Cute into everything.”

  “Well, you have me now. They won’t get by me,” said Great-grandmother. “It�
��s something, though. Big rooms. Moving walls and steps … What else moves around here besides them and you folks?” She laughed.

  “The mirror in the front hall has a tunnel behind it,” Thomas said.

  “Well, you know, I just barely noticed that mirror out the corner of my eye as we came in,” Great-grandmother said. “So, the kitchen, the steps, and that mirror as you come in,” Great-grandmother said. “Any more secret—” She stopped herself, at once knowing that she should not have asked.

  Martha cleared her throat while Walter busied himself at the counter with the panel. The wall came sliding down.

  “Papa …” Thomas began to speak.

  “Now, Thomas,” Mrs. Small said.

  “Papa? There are more secret places?”

  “I talk too much,” Great-grandmother murmured.

  Mr. Small sighed. “I suppose there are more secret tunnels and things,” he admitted. “I haven’t had the time to go checking, what with my job at the college and inventorying the you-know-what. I never had the complete plans of this house. I don’t know if a complete set of drawings exists.”

  “You mean, there are other ways in here we don’t know about?” asked Thomas. “I thought you knew everything about this house.” I thought you were taking care of things, was what he really was thinking.

  “You never know everything about a house this old,” his papa answered.

  “How are we going to sleep at night—” Thomas broke off. He knew he would have a hard time sleeping from now on. “I don’t see how we’re going to live, with strangers wandering in and out of our house,” he muttered. All at once he felt letdown, anxious.

  “We’ll just have to secure the periphery,” his father said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Thomas said glumly.

  “Your papa means,” Great-grandmother told him, “that if you take care of what is going on on the outside, you don’t need worry about anything coming or going on on the inside.”

  “That’s right,” his papa said. “We took care of the Darrows. I don’t think it’s likely they’ll bother us again.”

  Thomas stared at his father. Would the Darrows have learned their lesson? And would the great treasure-house stay secure? He wasn’t at all sure.

  Great-grandmother Jeffers yawned. “Ooh! Now I know it’s not that late,” she said, smiling all around.

  “You must be tired,” Martha said. “Here, let’s get you settled in your room. I put you next to Thomas, a little farther down on the opposite side of the hall from Billy and Buster.”

  “Anyplace will do me just fine,” Great-grandmother said. “Please, don’t fuss about me. I don’t want to cost anything extra.”

  They all went to her room with her, surrounding her going up the wide old staircase.

  “A fine house,” she murmured. She laughed her high, mountain laugh.

  Thomas couldn’t get over the sweet sound of it.

  6

  THEY SAY DARK, GHOSTY things walk haunted houses. Deep in the night, when the weather falls, the creeps come out and walk about the old Drear house, so the townsfolk say. They are half joking, but the children are quick to believe. Yet this night the house was quiet within its hidden places. Martha and Walter, the twins never awoke. Thomas slept. In her sleep Great-grandmother Jeffers rubbed her hands together, smoothed them, pressed them, until a dull aching faded. She awoke long enough to think: Barometer going down, my arthritis. Snow is not finished yet.

  Outside, the wind rose, building a blizzard from out of the darkness. It soon raged against the house. Drear house shuddered but stood its ground. The night was blinded snow-white. Animals dug deep for safety.

  Blasting wind swept the fields clean. Snow drifted four feet high against fences and treelines. But this storm couldn’t last. It came and went in an hour, a preview of the hard winter to come. The night settled down in a snow light, bright as day. Huge, silent flakes came down abundantly. The little animals sniffed the air and crept about.

  Thomas had burrowed deep beneath his covers. He awoke the instant the blizzard hit. He felt the house tremble and lift itself. He listened as the harsh drone of the wind filled his brain. He got up to look out of the window, and he was still half asleep. The windows were frosted over. He could see little. The wind roar filled every space inside him. He got back in bed. The place he had been beneath his covers was still warm. He burrowed again, a little animal himself. He had no thought of tunnels, intruders, or sliding walls. He was gone to sleep. No specter, no shadow of stealth invaded the Drear house this night.

  Nothing so certain could be said of the cave on the other side of the hill from the Drear house, where Mr. Pluto lived.

  Pluto underground. It was a large cave, one wall of which was false, but no one would ever guess that it was. Behind the false wall was the secret entryway down to the great cavern of treasure deep within the hillside.

  Mr. Pluto had enjoyed the day, helping Mrs. Small with her kitchen painting. He went in and out of the house for her, fetching paint from the shed in a corner of the backyard—turpentine, paint thinner. Women always thought that paint came in small portions, a pint or two high, was his smug opinion. Women never saw a full can. His late wife never had. He had given her half a can of paint to work with long ago, the way he had done for Mrs. Small today. He enjoyed mixing the paint for the womenfolk.

  And those little boy twins—they were two pistols! Calling him Mist Blue-doe, Mist Blue-doe, it sounded like. He had watched out for them while Mrs. Small carried on with her kitchen painting. He bundled them in their snowsuits and took them outside. Gave them brushes to paint the shed. He’d gone back to help Mrs. Small. And by the time he remembered to check on the boys, they had painted their snowsuits, their faces, and their hair. They had rolled in the yellow. Well, a good thing Mrs. Small used water-based paint. It wasn’t hard to clean up the boys and launder their suits. And he’d gotten them all clean, all fixed up. Had their snowsuits washed and dried in the big new washer and dryer the Smalls had got. Mrs. Small said he could even bring his own clothes over for the washer. But he preferred the clothesline right inside his cave. His wife and he long ago had hung the clothes in the cave in winter.

  And hurrying out to the shed some more for Mrs. Small. Mixing or pouring more paint. Dry walls do take the paint!

  Later he sat down at the kitchen table and had soup with the boys. Mrs. Small stopped her work. “That’s a good time to stop,” she had said, “soup time.” And she had heated up the homemade soup. She had given the bowls over to Buster to set up the table. And the whole time Billy watched, holding on to Mr. Pluto’s knee. The first taste of the thick vegetable soup had made him shiver, it was so good.

  It was a fine afternoon in the Drear house, Pluto thought on the way home. Halfway up to the hilltop, where there were woods, he thought to turn around.

  He didn’t know why he turned, but maybe he had heard something. And there were the little fellows— Buster, first, with Billy coming on fast behind him. They had sneaked out of the house, without one sweater on between them. They looked as full of mischief as when they had painted themselves.

  His heart had gone cold. For behind the boys someone had been stalking, like some stealthy beast of prey. He’d almost seen who it was, too. Almost, but not quite. Well, he was not as quick as once. His eyesight was not as good. The little boys had no idea someone was there. By the time he’d turned, whoever it was was already gliding away off the path, fading away in the trees. Pluto stood his ground, listening to the air, it must’ve seemed to the little boys.

  “What am I going to do with you boys?” he said finally, easily setting the pace back toward the house. They held on to his big, leathery hands.

  Pluto took them clear back inside, into the kitchen. He knew the back door should stay locked. Neither he nor Martha Small had locked it. Mrs. Small had been upstairs but on her way down.

  “Stay put a minute,” he had warned the boys, “just until I get away from here, and I
won’t tell on you.”

  They understood. Billy and Buster had stood holding hands. He had spoken softly to them. “Now, don’t you ever run off again, you hear? Or I’ll have to tell your mama.” And he left them there, hating to leave them, but he had his own business to attend to.

  He had been halfway home the second time. At the top of the hill where the woods began, he thought about the someone who had been following. He’d eyed each side of the woods along his way but saw only trees. It wasn’t the boys someone was stalking. Someone is spying on me, he’d told himself at the time. Waiting for him to let down his guard.

  At eveningtime Little Miss Bee had come by to go into the great cavern with him. It was the name he had given Petsy Darrow. Long before the Small family moved here, he and the child had shared his secret. It was a dangerous business, keeping such great wealth. But Little Miss Bee was a child of trust. Trust the child never to be seen slipping away from home! He and she would sit down among the treasures like granddaughter and grandfather. And after, he would lead her most of the way home; she would slip inside the house again, unseen and unheard.

  “Best we not visit at night,” he told her lately, sensing something troubled, unsettled about her. “Best you stay close to home in the evenings, Miss Bee.”

  And she had said, “See you tomorrow then.”

  “Remember,” he’d warned her as she left never to tell the secret.

  “I always remember” she whispered, and left him.

  Pluto underground in the blizzard night, dreaming his dream. It was not a nightmare. The dreaming did not terrify him after the first shock. Seeing the dead. Dreaming his dream of old. He did not wake from it in a cold sweat.

  Dies Eddington Drear came to stand at the foot of his bed. He told Pluto whether he was close to finding the treasure.

  But why keep dreaming this dream? Pluto would think when he awoke. I have found the treasure. Mr. Small, he taken care that the treasure is safe. But maybe it’s not so safe. Something going on. Somebody got their eye on me. Following. Little Miss Bee, so unsettled.