The House Where Nobody Lived

by Brad Strickland

  As Lewis expected, Uncle Jonathan readily agreed. When Lewis explained David’s problem, Uncle Jonathan clucked in sympathy. “You know, your dad and I had a friend like that when we were kids,” he said. “His name was, let me see . . . Francis. People made fun of him because he stuttered so badly, and Francis was the skinniest, saddest kid you ever laid eyes on. I remember once your dad saw two big kids beating him up. Well, Charlie was three years younger than me, you know, and he was never as big or muscular as I am.” Uncle Jonathan’s eyes twinkled, because in fact he was rather sloppy and lazy, and Lewis’s dad had been the athlete in the family, a star baseball player and a whiz at track. “But Charlie had a lot of spirit for a little guy. Anyway, he waded in, and between them he and Francis decked those two bullies. Francis started to hang around with us, and we got to know him. He was a great kid. We started calling him Frank, and one day Charlie made an amazing discovery. When Frank sang his words instead of talking them, his stutter evaporated! Frank worked on his singing, and you know who he became?”

  “Frank Sinatra?” asked Lewis, naming one of the most famous singers he had ever heard of.

  Uncle Jonathan shook his head. “Well, no. His name is Frank Gartener. But he became the owner of a fabulous restaurant in Chicago, and now he’s so rich that no one cares if he stumbles over his T’s and D’s!”

  Lewis smiled dutifully, but he wasn’t sure that singing would help David. In fact, he wasn’t sure that anything would.

  The next day Lewis asked David if he wanted to come and have lunch at 100 High Street on Saturday. “My uncle can drive me over and we’ll pick you up,” he said. “Come over about eleven, and then Rose Rita and I will show you around downtown.”

  Shyly, David said he would ask his folks if it was all right. And the day after, he said it was, except that Uncle Jonathan didn’t have to drive out to get him. “M-m-my dad h-has to c-come into t-town anyway,” he explained painfully. So they arranged to meet at eleven in front of Heemsoth’s Rexall Drug Store, which was right in the middle of the main street through the center of town.

  When Saturday morning came, Rose Rita showed up bright and early. Uncle Jonathan was out in the front yard, running the lawn mower around under the chestnut tree to make the ground soft, he said, for the fall leaves that would soon be tumbling down. When Lewis and Rose Rita started out to meet David, Uncle Jonathan paused to mop his face with a big red bandanna and beckoned them over. “Listen,” he said, his face shining under his mop of red hair, “maybe it would be best if you two didn’t mention you-know-what to David. We don’t want him to think he’s having lunch with some escapees from the loony bin.”

  Lewis smiled. “We won’t say a word about you or Mrs. Zimmermann knowing magic,” he promised.

  “Or about the Capharnaum County Magicians Society,” added Rose Rita. Oddly enough for such a small area, Capharnaum County and its county seat, New Zebedee, had a big supply of sorcerers, magicians, and wizards, although most people who lived there never even suspected that fact.

  It was a warm day for early September, and they were early, so Lewis and Rose Rita sauntered down High Street. The trees that lined it had spread out at the tops over the years, and now it was a little like walking through a green tunnel. They reached Mansion Street, strolled past Rose Rita’s house, and then continued down to the center of town. A few cars rattled slowly past, but the streets of town seemed lazy and sleepy, as if Labor Day had put everyone into a light doze. The stores still had Back to School displays in the windows, but not many people were shopping that morning.

  At the drugstore, Rose Rita looked at her watch and announced they were eleven minutes and twenty seconds early. “Oh, dry up,” said Lewis in a teasing way. “You just like to show off your wristwatch!”

  The watch had been a birthday present, and Rose Rita was very proud of it. She grinned back at Lewis, then stuck out her tongue. “Think it would be okay to have a soda?”

  “Maybe a small one,” said Lewis.

  They sat at the counter and sipped a couple of small Cokes full of crushed ice until their straws made the rackety sound at the end, and just then a black Chevrolet parked in front of the drugstore and David climbed out of the passenger side. Lewis and Rose Rita hurried out, and David introduced the lanky, balding driver of the car as his dad.

  Mr. Keller had mild blue eyes behind rimless spectacles. He looked like an older version of David, but he didn’t have a stutter. “Hi, Lewis. Hi, Rose Rita,” he said with a weary smile. “My name’s Ernest Keller. I’m glad David has met a couple of friends. My wife and I have got a million things to do to fix up the house we’ve bought, and David, well, he gets bored because we’re too busy to pay much attention to him. Anyway, have him call me when he’s ready to come home, and I’ll pick him up here or come over to your house for him. Okay?”

  Lewis noticed that David blushed furiously when his dad talked about him, and he noticed too that Mr. Keller talked to him instead of to his son. Mr. Keller went into Corrigan’s Hardware, and Lewis, Rose Rita, and David walked back to High Street and up the hill.

  “This is our house,” said Lewis as he lifted the looped shoelace that kept the wrought-iron gate closed. He expected some sort of reaction from David, because the house was pretty spectacular, a three-story stone mansion with a tall turret on the front. But David just nodded politely.

  Mrs. Zimmermann had prepared a hearty meal of roast beef sandwiches, golden yellow potato salad, crispy-tangy cole slaw, and her own gloriously sour and crunchy dill pickles, all of it washed down with fresh, tart lemonade and last but best, a German chocolate cake that made Lewis sigh with anticipation. “It’s supposed to be past picnic season,” she announced, “but I say pooh to that! The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and Jonathan has a perfectly good backyard that is going to waste, so we’re going to rough it.”

  They didn’t, of course. The backyard was very comfortable, and they sat at a folding table and ate and ate until they were all full. Then Uncle Jonathan took out his harmonica. “David, we have found by scientific experimentation that the best way to digest a meal like that is to have a sing-along. Do you bray like a frightened mule? Can you hit a high C? How about a high W? If all the dogs in the neighborhood howl every time you raise your voice—congratulations! You’re just the tenor our little group needs!”

  David was giggling at that. Lewis thought he knew what his uncle was up to, though it was true they often sang their heads off just for fun. Mrs. Zimmermann started a silly song, “The Walloping Window Blind,” and David timidly joined in once he learned the chorus. They went on to other songs like “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More” and a sort of jazzy version of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” Lewis noticed that David hardly stammered or stuttered at all when they were singing.

  When they had sung themselves out, Uncle Jonathan stood up and stretched. “This has been a lot of fun,” he said. “But now I think Rose Rita and Lewis are eager to take you on a personal tour of beautiful downtown New Zebedee. Come back when you’re ready to call it a day, and I’ll be glad to pull my old car out of the garage and run you home, David. I’ll bet you’ve never ridden in a Muggins Simoon before!”

  “Nuh-n-no, sir,” said David happily.

  “Very well, then, I will be happy to be your chauffeur.”

  “O-okay, but it’s s-sort of hard to fuh-find,” replied David, turning pink as he tried to force the words out. “It’s north of t-town, and people call it th-th-the H-Huh-Hawaii House,” said David.

  And at that moment, the memory of his first and only visit to that strange place flooded back into Lewis, and he almost leaped up in alarm. For one freezing second the day turned dark, the air grew thick, and from somewhere, from everywhere, Lewis seemed to hear the sound of ominous drums.

  CHAPTER 5

  JONATHAN BARNAVELT’S 1935 MUGGINS Simoon was an old-fashioned, long black car with running boards, a squared-off roof, and a horn that gave a deep, throaty “Ah-HOOO-gah!” when you
pressed the button. As it rolled through the streets of New Zebedee, people stared at the grand old auto with surprised smiles.

  Usually Lewis liked riding in the antique car, but that afternoon he sat huddled in the backseat, dreading their arrival at David’s home. It was nearly six o’clock, and after the shock of David’s announcing were he lived had more or less passed, Lewis and Rose Rita had spent several hours walking around New Zebedee with David. Just as they were leaving Lewis’s house, Uncle Jonathan had called Lewis aside for a quiet word: “It might be better if you didn’t say anything about, ah, where David and his family live,” he said. “Pass the word to Rose Rita when you have a chance.”

  Lewis did so, and after that, Rose Rita had talked with a kind of forced cheer, rushing her words and smiling too broadly. Lewis had been too apprehensive and depressed to say anything much, and David seemed to catch his uneasy mood. When Rose Rita would explain something, like how an old abandoned opera house lay above some of the stores downtown, he would nod and give a weak smile, but he wouldn’t even try to make a comment or ask a question.

  Just after they returned to 100 High Street, Rose Rita had to leave—her dad didn’t mind her visiting Lewis, because Uncle Jonathan was pretty well off financially and Rose Rita’s dad thought that if people had enough money, they were not weird, only eccentric. On the other hand, Mr. Pottinger considered Mrs. Zimmermann an oddball and didn’t like Rose Rita’s hanging around her. Mr. Pottinger telephoned just before six, and when Mrs. Zimmermann answered at the Barnavelt home, he told her in a quick, impatient voice that it was time for Rose Rita to return home for dinner. “Better hurry,” advised Mrs. Zimmermann. “He sounded a bit gruff.”

  With Rose Rita gone, Uncle Jonathan, Mrs. Zimmermann, and Lewis were left to take David home. Mrs. Zimmermann had hurried over to her house next door for a shawl, she said, but when she came back, she not only wore a thin purple crocheted shawl over her shoulders, but she also carried a tightly furled umbrella. “Never can tell about these sudden September rainstorms,” she remarked brightly. The blue sky was absolutely cloudless and clear, and David looked at Mrs. Zimmermann as if he thought she must be a little crazy.

  Uncle Jonathan got his favorite cane out of the tall blue Willoware vase in the front hall, and then he pulled the old Muggins Simoon out of the garage and around to the front of the house, where they all piled in. David kept giving Lewis quizzical looks, but Lewis wasn’t in the mood to talk. More than that, he was afraid of what might happen when they took David home to the Hawaii House, because Lewis knew what could happen when Mrs. Zimmermann and his uncle armed themselves with their umbrella and cane.

  It took only a few minutes to reach the overgrown lane that led off the highway and into the dark woods. Lewis hadn’t been that way in weeks, and to his surprise the lane had been bulldozed flat. Then truck-loads of gravel had been dumped on it and spread out into a rough, crunching drive. A red and white sign beside the driveway read:

  ANOTHER HAPPY HOME

  SOLD!

  BY BISHOP BARLOW, REALTOR

  Below that was the phone number of Mr. Barlow’s realty company. Though the sun was just sinking low and the westward sky still glowed with salmon pink light, the winding driveway seemed drained and dark, and Lewis felt his insides clench tighter and tighter.

  The old car rounded the last rumbling curve. It slowed as they approached the Hawaii House, looking just as Lewis remembered it, except that the overgrown shrubs and weeds around it had been hacked completely away and the eroded gully that ran along the front of the house had been filled in. Someone must have planted grass seed, because a thick scattering of hay covered the raw earth all around the place and here and there spears of tender green grass had thrust through the yellow straw. With all the brush cut away, Lewis could see that many stout brick pillars supported the house about five feet off the ground. A crisscross wood lattice painted a deep green made it look as though there were a short lower story, but now Lewis could see light leaking through all the way from the backyard. Probably there was nothing beneath the house but a crawl space, unusual in Michigan because that made the place harder to heat in the winters. In front of the house, Mr. Keller’s black Chevrolet was parked close to the steps. Uncle Jonathan pulled up behind it and boomed, “Well, here we are! We’d come in and meet your parents, but—”

  “Thuh-th-thanks,” began David in a small voice.

  “Eh?” said Uncle Jonathan. “You’d like us to meet them? Why, that’s very kind of you! Let’s go!”

  David’s face flamed. Lewis knew that Uncle Jonathan was determined to have a look inside the Hawaii House, but the thought of stepping inside the doorway made Lewis feel sick. Everything about the place, from the dark shadows beneath the surrounding trees to the sickly green of the grass struggling up through the hay, made him sense that some great brooding evil had settled here, and that it wanted something.

  CHAPTER 6

  THEY CLIMBED OUT OF the car and David led the way up the veranda steps. At the top, Uncle Jonathan suddenly took a sort of sideways step, blocking David from opening the door. Jonathan held his cane near the brass ferrule on the bottom end and pointed with the globe, making big, sweeping gestures. “Wonderful construction in these fine old houses! Look how neatly the columns meet the roof way up there! Notice how the balcony over us isn’t even sagging! Hmmm . . . marvelous, marvelous!”

  All the time he ran the globe past and over the wood, staring fixedly at the crystal instead of the things he was pretending to look at. The globe seemed to glow with an icy, winter’s-afternoon kind of light, but it always did that. As far as Lewis could see, Uncle Jonathan didn’t find anything to alarm him. At last he nodded to Mrs. Zimmermann.

  She stepped smartly up to the green front door and rapped on it with her knuckles, three deliberate, slow knocks. They boomed amazingly loud, as though she had pounded on one of those big, cylindrical island drums that Lewis had seen in movies about the South Seas. David looked truly puzzled—he still had his hand stretched out for the doorknob, though Uncle Jonathan had stepped in his way.

  A moment later, a woman with dark circles under her eyes and an untidy nest of mousy brown hair opened the door, her mouth drawn into an O of surprise. “David,” she said, sounding flustered and pushing a drooping strand of her hair back into place. “Oh, my stars, we lost all track of time—hello, I’m Evelyn Keller,” she said to Mrs. Zimmermann.

  “How do you do?” Mrs. Zimmermann asked, her voice warm. “My name is Florence Zimmermann, and this is my neighbor Jonathan Barnavelt and his nephew, Lewis. Why, thank you, we’d love to see your amazing new home.”

  “Uh—yes,” said Mrs. Keller, her tired eyes fluttering as if she were having trouble remembering inviting them all in. But she stepped aside and said, “Um, yes, um, come in, please, and please forgive the mess.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. We know that moving is always a little messy,” said Uncle Jonathan with a broad smile.

  Mrs. Zimmermann stepped not inside the house, but onto the threshold, and very softly and quickly she murmured, “Blessings be on this home.”

  “Wh-what?” asked Mrs. Keller, her voice sounding a lot like her son’s.

  “Just a little welcoming prayer I learned as a girl,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, stepping past her to get inside. “My great-grandmother on my father’s side was a very religious woman, one of the Pennsylvania Moravian Extra-Reformed Protestants, you know, and oh, my, isn’t this a lovely parlor.”

  Like a small piece of driftwood caught in a tide, Lewis had been swept into the Hawaii House along with everyone else. “What are they doing?” David whispered to him, without a trace of his stutter.

  Lewis managed a weak smile. “Just trying to be friendly,” he replied, though he knew that both his uncle and Mrs. Zimmermann were testing the house, trying to detect any strange magic it might hold. Hoping they wouldn’t find anything, he stared around at the high-ceilinged room. The walls soared up and up, and he realized
that although from the outside the house looked as if it had three floors, in fact it could only have two. This one room was as tall as two regular rooms stacked on top of each other. High up, fancy plaster molding ran around the base of the ceiling, cast into pineapple and palm-tree shapes. The tall windows all along the veranda let the afternoon light stream in.

  The other three walls were broken up by a number of very tall, arched built-in shelves, running from the floor almost to the lofty ceiling. Some of these were empty, but some of them were crammed with small objects. Lewis could glimpse wooden ship models, tarnished brass navigating instruments like sextants and dividers and compasses, seashells curiously curved and delicately colored, and a hundred other trinkets and geegaws. A dozen huge cardboard boxes, nearly the size of small trunks, lay scattered about the floor. They had different brand names printed on the sides, like Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Armour Star Canned Hams, and they were all sealed up with brown tape. Lewis supposed they contained dishes and curtains and other stuff that the Kellers had not had time to unpack.

  Mrs. Zimmermann walked the edges of the room, clutching her umbrella, her sharp gaze darting this way and that. “My heavens, look at all this fascinating memorabilia. You must be quite a collector!” she said in a strained, though admiring, tone.

  “Not really,” admitted Mrs. Keller. “Most of this bric-a-brac came with the house. I’m not sure I like it at all. It’s like living in a museum! But my husband says there may be some valuable antiques here, so we haven’t thrown anything out.”

  “Hello!” came a new voice, and David’s dad came into the room. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and streaks of brownish black grease stained his hands and wrists. He clutched a monkey wrench, and what little hair he had frizzed out at the sides.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Keller said. “This is my husband, Ernest. Ernest, this is Mrs. Zimmermann and, uh—”

  “Jonathan Van Olden Barnavelt, at your service!” said Uncle Jonathan. “I would shake your hand, but you’ve been busy!”