Mystery of Drear House

by Virginia Hamilton

  “Don’t cry, Sooky!” Mrs. Darrow said. Her calm, reasonable voice surprised them.

  Thomas wouldn’t say that the expression under the sticky mess on her face was a smile. But her mouth was open, and her teeth were showing; He supposed it was a smile to soothe Pesty.

  “Ha-ha,” Mrs. Darrow said. “Hey? Sooky!”

  “It’s okay, Mama: We’ll be back home in a minute,” Pesty told her.

  “How do we make that wall swing around?” asked Great-grandmother Jeffers.

  “You have to follow us,” Pesty said. She was leading her mother, wrapped in Great-grandmother’s shawl, back to the wall. “You climb on up and stand on the side of the fireplace. Then you push on a place here. …” Thomas watched her push at a section of the mantel. A square of stone seemed to move inward about a quarter of an inch. “Then you just stand still,” Pesty continued. “The wall seem to tilt back some. …” She and her mother stood on the hearth. Slowly the wall swung around, scraping a little as it went. “Mr. Thomas, y’all come on.” They were gone around to the other side.

  “Come on, Thomas,” Great-grandmother Jeffers said, hurrying into her coat. “Now I’m a little old and a bit unsteady, so you must help me up on that hearth.”

  Thomas sighed. “Are you sure you want to do this, Great-grandmother?”

  “It will be all right,” she said firmly.

  Thomas helped her up onto the hearth. She held on to his arm as he reached behind him to press the mantel. It took him a moment to find the right place.

  “Little farther over, I think, Thomas,” Great-grandmother said.

  “Right,” he said. This time he pushed and a mantel stone gave way. The wall, the fireplace, and the hearth where they stood began to move. He hardly dared breathe. What will there be on the other side? he wondered as the two of them went slowly around.

  12

  IT’S TRICKY, HE THOUGHT. Step off the wall around back there, and you don’t know where you are. Shine the flashlight, and there’s the steepest staircase right inside the bedroom wall. Think of it! You go down the stairs below the foundation of the house. It’s so dark, and you guess you’re in a tunnel. It smells earth-musty like a tunnel. Shine the light around. Yes, it’s a tunnel, leading away from the house. And you walk a ways. Hold on to Great-grandmother. Don’t lose her in the dark! It feels like you turn a corner, and then—

  He and Great-grandmother Jeffers had completed all the steps that he’d just gone over in his mind. Putting them in order helped him make sense out of what had come next. Now they followed Pesty and her mother to an unbelievable place. “It’s—it’s a—a—whole decorated room!” Thomas exclaimed, shining his light around. The tunnel had seemed to widen, and in the open space was indeed a room.

  “But it’s different; it’s made to be another time,” Great-grandmother said. “Oh, it’s so pretty!”

  And so it was. The room seemed all dark, carved wood of the bedstead, chiffonier, and side chair. Thomas flicked his light. There was a silken coverlet on the bed. There were end tables with taffeta skirts. On one end table there were bottles, one blue, one green, glowing richly in his light. Seeing them so suddenly, he felt as if they had stumbled upon familiar ground.

  Then Pesty lit a brass oil lantern on one of the tables. Thomas and Great-grandmother Jeffers could well see that the items in the room were of great value. Why would anyone want to put a fine room like this in the middle of a tunnel? Thomas wondered.

  “We’re going on now,” Pesty said. “You can see it all when you come back.”

  “Pesty, you knew about this secret room, too, and you never told me?” Thomas asked.

  “It’s just where my mama will come to sit. Wasn’t nothing to tell. Come on, I got to get her on home before the mens come back from working.”

  The men. Darrow men. “Great-grandmother, I think we should go on back,” Thomas began. “No telling what we …” He didn’t finish.

  Great-grandmother Jeffers had taken him by the hand and led him along as if he were a little child, following Pesty. Pesty opened a door at the other end of the room, just as though she were opening the door leading into the front hallway of the Drear house. Only, with this door, she simply pulled on it. It lurched toward her. Then she took hold of it and pushed it to the side. There were no hinges on it, Thomas realized. He saw a gaping black space where the door had been.

  “Mr. Thomas, when you come back, put the door in place from the inside,” she told him.

  “Don’t you worry, Pesty,” Great-grandmother said. “We’ll take care of it.”

  Now there began more of the tunnel. The room had been just like a wide place in a road, Thomas thought. “Do you feel funny, Great-grandmother?” he asked as softly as he could.

  “Funny about what?” she said.

  “About … being here. Finding the room. Don’t you feel it should be left the way it is, without us getting into it?”

  “Well, Thomas, everywhere you walk, you are walking into it, into history, so to speak,” she said. “Always somebody’s walked before you. Something’s gone on with people before we were thought of. We can’t help that. And here Mrs. Darrow has found comfort in the history of that room, I suspect. It fits her mind, like the twists of the tunnels do.

  “But I understand what you mean, Thomas,” Great-grandmother added. “It makes you feel foolish, walking around underground.” She chuckled. “It makes you want to bust out laughing. Who’d ever think of such a thing? But it makes you feel good, too, down here. Because you feel close to those who ran long ago, like you are tracing the footsteps of fugitives with your own feet.”

  “Maybe so,” Thomas murmured. When we come back, I’ll take a good look, he thought. Funny, to put a door there. But I guess someone did want it to look like a room. Who do you suppose? Do I tell Papa about this?

  The tunnel was deeply dark. Thomas’s flashlight was dim in the blackness. He could see Pesty’s back, but he couldn’t see Mrs. Darrow. The tunnel turned and snaked. They had to walk single file. Great-grandmother Jeffers was behind Thomas. He held on to her hand now, leading her. The ceiling was perhaps six feet from the floor, barely high enough for Pesty’s mother.

  “You forgot and left that lantern burning back there, Pesty,” Thomas called.

  “Didn’t forget,” she said. Her voice seemed to be right next to his ear. Tunnels could do that, could throw back and echo sound. “Turn it off when you go back,” she said. “It has a knob that you just turn and the flame goes out. I’ll let you do that,” she said.

  He thought her tone of voice sounded different somehow. “You could burn up that room, leaving the light on,” he told her. “Look, where are we going? Where does this tunnel lead?”

  Pesty’s giggle was all tinkly in his ear. “Mr. Thomas, you are so funny! I told you, I got to take my mama home.”

  “Oh,” he said. Well, she had told him. Of course, they were going over to the Darrows. He just didn’t want to think about it.

  “It’s going to be too far for you, Great-grandmother,” he said.

  “Thomas, I’m doing all right,” she said. “I’ve got my coat and hat on, too. It’s not snowing on me in here; it’s not icy either. Long as I have hold of you, I can’t fall. Just keep on. I’ll be fine.”

  “Pesty, how much farther?” he said as casually as he could. He didn’t want to disturb Mrs. Darrow there in the darkness.

  “You sure are in a hurry.” There came Pesty’s delicate laughter again. “We’ll be there in a little while.”

  They walked on. He thought of Mr. Pluto and how it happened he couldn’t take Great-grandmother to see him today.

  Then they walked through standing water. “Did you get your feet too wet?” He asked Great-grandmother.

  “No, no,” she said. “My feet are just fine.”

  In a short time Thomas and Great-grandmother came up behind Pesty and Mrs. Darrow. The tunnel dead-ended. Set in the cave end was a makeshift door made from pieces of wood. Pesty placed th
e side of her head up against the door. Mrs. Darrow did the same, murmuring a meaningless sound of words.

  “Pesty!”

  “Shhhh, Mr. Thomas!” Pesty whispered. “We got to listen.”

  They listened. And Thomas and Great-grandmother Jeffers stood still in the dark, about to jump out of their skins. Thomas had flicked out the light, for whoever could be on the other side of the door might see it. No telling what surrounded them in the blackness either. Spirits of the dead. The living, maybe, about to drag them off somewhere in the maze of tunnels.

  “It’s okay,” finally Pesty said. Her voice remained low. “Come on, Mama.” Mrs. Darrow was humming now to herself. The sound was not unpleasant.

  Guess she is happy, Thomas thought. I sure hope she is.

  Pesty pushed on the door, and it slid to the right. There was enough light to see that there were clothes hanging.

  “The back of a closet,” whispered Great-grandmother Jeffers.

  “What?” said Thomas.

  “You walk in the closet, and you walk out the closet. That’s it,” Pesty told him. She led her mother inside, pushing the clothing over to make way. Great-grandmother and Thomas followed.

  Thomas paused, let Great-grandmother by. His heart thumped in his chest. “Do I close this—this opening?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Pesty said.

  He closed the back of the closet, sliding it into place with his hands. And he walked through the hanging clothes; then he pushed them into place again. No one would ever know there was a hidden door to a tunnel behind them.

  This is the queerest day I’ve ever lived through, and it’s not even over yet. Can you believe what we’re doing? he thought. And that Mrs. Darrow? What would Papa say about her? Ohhhh don’t think.

  Pesty led her mother to a brass bed across the room from the closet.

  “My mama’s bedroom,” Pesty said, seeing Thomas and Great-grandmother looking wide-eyed all around. The brass bed shone with a pink glow. “Mama stays here most of the time.” She took her mother’s shoes off and helped her under the covers. She arranged the shawl around her. “Me and Macky will walk her some,” Pesty explained, “but not in the wintertime. In the snow time Macky don’t know she walks. She will walk in the tunnels, then, and nobody know about that but me.”

  Pesty poured water from a pitcher on the end table into a glass. She gave Mrs. Darrow the pills she’d forgotten. Mrs. Darrow took her pills, drank the water, and at last sank down against her pillows. Pesty washed the stickiness from her mother’s face.

  “Where is Macky?” Thomas asked. He was happy to be back in a house, even if it was the Darrow house, and out of the forbidding tunnel.

  “Couldn’t say,” Pesty said. “Maybe he’s home. Keep your voice down. Don’t want them to know somebody’s here.”

  “Who don’t you want to know?” Thomas asked.

  “Anybody. Wouldn’t do, if someone’s in the house. How’m I going to explain something like that?” Pesty said. “If you speak low, they think she is just talking with me or to herself.”

  “You mean ...” Thomas began.

  “She means, nobody knows about that tunnel but her and Mrs. Darrow,” Great-grandmother Jeffers said. “How would she explain our being here when no one saw us come in from the outside? Isn’t that right, Pesty?”

  Pesty nodded. She wet a towel in the washbasin. She wiped her own shoes off from the tunnel wet and dirt, then Mrs. Darrow’s. She handed the towel to Thomas. He cleaned off his and Great-grandmother’s shoes.

  “Thank you, Thomas,” Great-grandmother Jeffers said. He handed Pesty back the towel; she put it in a hamper next to the stand.

  Pesty patted Mrs. Darrow’s pillows. Her mother lay on her back, straight as an arrow, staring at Thomas. Now and then she would nod for no reason that Thomas could see.

  “Once upon a time,” Mrs. Darrow said, grinning at him.

  “She’s going to tell a story,” he whispered to Pesty.

  “She might and she might not,” Pesty said. “Sometimes she will.”

  Great-grandmother Jeffers sat in an old easy chair by the head of the bed.

  They spoke in quiet voices so that Mrs. Darrow would stay calm and so they would not be overheard. Thomas settled in a straight chair on the other side, toward the foot of the bed. “Macky told me she likes to tell old kinds of stories,” he said.

  “Is that so?” said Great-grandmother Jeffers.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “There’s one about an Indian maiden he told.”

  Mrs. Darrow sat bolt upright in bed. Her black eyes glared at Thomas.

  “Shhh! Mr. Thomas, don’t you say nothing about that!” Pesty said.

  “What, the Indian maiden?” Thomas asked before he thought.

  Mrs. Darrow commenced climbing out of the bed.

  “What a pretty shawl! You like that pretty shawl, Mama!” Pesty said in a loud whisper. “Great-grandmother Jeffers, you want it back today?”

  “Why, no, dear, you let your mama wear it as long as she wants to. She seems to like it.”

  Distracted by talk of the shawl, Mrs. Darrow grabbed hold of it to wrap it more tightly around her. She climbed back into bed.

  Thomas was amazed at how fast she could move. What would she have done to him? he wondered. He gazed at her long, thick hair and then, around the room, just so she wouldn’t think he was staring. There was a picture on the wall opposite him. He couldn’t quite make it out.

  They say Indian hair is like hers. So there is native ancestry on the mother’s side? he thought. He reminded himself that Darrow men were descended partly from Indians, too. River Ross, River Lewis ... He recalled that it was River Thames said to have come here with Dies Drear. Do you suppose—

  “What is your mama’s name?” he asked Pesty, barely moving his lips. Pesty was there in front of him, sitting on the bed, holding her mama’s hand.

  Before she could speak, Mrs. Darrow spoke. “I sit with my feet on the right,” she said.

  “Mama, come on now,” Pesty said, patting her hand. She glanced around apologetically. “When she’s feeling better, she likes to talk,” she said.

  “Call me Eater,” Mrs. Darrow said in a disjointed, detached voice. “Hunters brought back plenty food. I will eat anythin’.” She laughed hugely.

  Thomas and Great-grandmother Jeffers were bewildered.

  “Mr. Thomas, don’t say nothing,” Pesty said, casually. “She’s telling something, maybe talking about the—” Pesty mouthed the words “Indian maiden.”

  “When they were together one time,” Mrs. Darrow murmured, “she told Brave Wolf, ‘If you dare to beat me again, I will fight you. I don’t care if you kill me.’ After that moment he was ever her slave.”

  “She’s just talking,” Pesty said happily. “Guess just snatches of stories.”

  “From October until June,” Mrs. Darrow murmured, “October till June.” She closed her eyes and appeared to go to sleep.

  “She’s in the October-June phase now,” said a voice. “She’s not just talking.”

  Thomas jumped up and spun around, almost toppling the chair he had been sitting on. There stood Mac Darrow. How long he had been there Thomas couldn’t say. Macky was like a tall, dark shadow, holding the door open with his shoulder. Now he came up to stand at Thomas’s side. He still had the outdoors about him, and a musty scent, too. He looked dusty. He put a dirt-smeared hand on the back of the chair. “You—you want to sit down?” Thomas asked, and moved out of his way.

  Macky sat down. Nodded at his sleeping mama and Pesty. He stood up again, absently, to greet Great-grandmother Jeffers. Pesty told him who Great-grandmother was, that she and Thomas had walked over to visit. Then, looking exhausted, Macky sat down again.

  Great-grandmother Jeffers smiled. She regarded Mac Darrow, but she didn’t say anything to him. His hair was gray with dirt and dust. His face, his clothes were damp and soiled. He’s been hunting underground, she realized. What a peculiar family, all the time scurrying
in the dark.

  They were silent, watching Macky. Thomas felt a keen sympathy for him. Macky looked beaten. Sort of like he’s sick of ... himself, Thomas thought.

  Pesty frowned at Thomas and Great-grandmother. Slowly it dawned on him that the frown was a warning: Keep still. Don’t give anything away to Macky. Why? Thomas wondered. He’s on our side, isn’t he? Well, you wouldn’t know it by the way he tricked me in the woods. He’s still a Darrow, and don’t forget it.

  There was a long silence. Macky studied his mother’s sleeping face. In sleep she didn’t look at all odd or crazy, Thomas noted. “I got lost,” Macky said abruptly. “Fell into a hole by accident.” Smirking. “Been lost for three hours. Never thought I’d see the light of day.”

  15

  “LOST? WHAT HOLE?” Pesty said. “You know Daddy says not to go wandering around. That’s how you get lost. Not minding. You not mind, a tunnel will fall in on you one time.”

  Pesty surprised Thomas. She seemed to him even more upset than what she said to Macky showed. She walked the tunnels. But then she did know where she was going.

  “Are there many tunnels?” asked Great-grandmother.

  “I don’t know,” Pesty said. “I’m not allowed to play around in them.” She gazed hard, warning, at Thomas and Great-grandmother.

  She’s hiding everything from Macky. I don’t like it, Thomas thought. What if he found out? Maybe that’s why he’s been exploring underground. He didn’t fall into a hole. He could’ve gone in the same way Pesty and I did into Pluto’s cave. Maybe he’s the someone got in there, trying to find out something.

  Macky ignored Pesty. He was staring at his mama. “If you forget what you’re doing for a minute, you can get lost,” he said with sadness. “If you get scared and panic, you’ll never find your way back.”

  Is he talking about himself or his mama? Thomas wondered.

  “You want to sit down?” Macky asked Thomas politely.

  “No, thank you,” Thomas said, pleased that Macky remembered he was there.

  “You must not have panicked down there then, young man,” said Great-grandmother Jeffers, “else you wouldn’t be among us.”