The House Where Nobody Lived

by Brad Strickland

  Lewis could think of no good objection to that, so he muttered a halfhearted agreement. And there matters rested for a couple of days. Lewis kept thinking that somehow things might right themselves, but no such luck. At night he had flashes of bad dreams, feeling his face freezing hard as stone and his eyes staring blindly. And at times he had nightmares of a savage-looking warrior, spear in hand, about to thrust into his chest and—what? Steal his soul?

  At any rate, nothing changed. David remained as miserable as ever, and so bright and early on Saturday morning, Uncle Jonathan and Lewis drove over to the Hawaii House to deliver the insulation. The Kellers had finished unpacking, but Lewis saw that they had not moved any of the ship models and other bric-a-brac from the tall living room shelves.

  The room gave Lewis the creeps, and he suggested that he and David go outside and toss a football around. Lewis wasn’t any good at even so simple a game, but he would rather face a whole football field of tackles than stay inside the Hawaii House.

  They didn’t talk very much. David listlessly threw the ball in long, lazy loops that should have been easy for anyone to catch. More often than not, though, the ball slipped through Lewis’s fingers and bounced crazily off the ground.

  Lewis wasn’t much better at throwing the ball. He had never gained the knack of putting just the right spin on it, so his passes were wobbly, short, and inaccurate. They were playing in the backyard, which was still covered mostly with hay and with a sparse growth of grass sticking out here and there, like a few hairs combed hopefully across a bald man’s head. They could hear Uncle Jonathan and David’s dad creeping around under the house, tacking the insulation to the floor joists and ripping off big lengths of tape to bind it around standing pipes and drains.

  At last the two men came edging out of the low door in the lattice that surrounded the crawl space, and Uncle Jonathan put both hands in the small of his back as he arched his spine. “Oh, it feels good to stand up without conking my noggin,” he said. “Well, Ernest, we had just enough to cover everything. Now you’re all set, unless we have a week of thirty-below temperatures, and we don’t get very many of those.”

  Lewis was ready to go right then, but Mr. Keller insisted that everyone had to have lunch. Mrs. Keller had cooked a big pot of spaghetti with meatballs. It tasted wonderful, but Lewis was getting that old flip-floppy feeling in his stomach again.

  “Maybe this will keep the pipes from rattling and banging at night,” Mrs. Keller said with a wan smile. Like her son, she had dark smudges under her eyes, as if she were not sleeping well.

  “Sounds like a Western movie late every evening,” Mr. Keller agreed, serving himself another few meatballs. “I’m hoping that by the end of next month I can get the upstairs bedrooms in shape and we can all move in there. Maybe that will put us far enough away so the rattling doesn’t bother us.”

  Jonathan munched a meatball and then asked, “What do you mean, it sounds like a Western movie?”

  “Like drums,” replied Mr. Keller. “Doesn’t it, Evelyn?”

  His wife shivered and nodded. “Just like the drums of Apaches, or maybe of South Sea islanders.”

  Lewis had a mouthful of spaghetti that he couldn’t force down. His heart seemed to have scrambled up into his throat.

  “Bum-bad-a-bum, bum-bad-a-bum,” chanted Mr. Keller, holding both hands to his temples. “Enough to drive you crazy.”

  Jonathan looked keenly at him. “So you’re not actually using the original main bedrooms?” he asked.

  “Heavens, no,” said Mrs. Keller. “They’re much nicer than the ones we’re sleeping in—well, they would be, if they were all painted and fixed up, anyway, and if the warped floorboards were taken out and replaced. We’re using smaller rooms that were built as the old servants’ bedrooms. When we get the upstairs floor in shape, we’re all going to move up there, and I’m going to make the room where Ernest and I sleep a sewing room, and David’s bedroom will be Ernest’s office.”

  “Indeed,” said Uncle Jonathan. “And how soon do you hope to move?”

  “By the end of next month, or by the first week of November, anyway,” Mrs. Keller said. “More meatballs, Jonathan?”

  Later, as they drove back to town, Jonathan sighed. “You know, when Mrs. Keller talked about moving upstairs to sleep, I felt just exactly as though a goose had walked across my grave.”

  “Were you scared?” asked Lewis.

  Uncle Jonathan grimaced, making his red beard bristle. “No,” he said slowly. “But I had the strong sense that bad magic was at work. I’d bet dollars to dumplings that when the Kellers change bedrooms—if they do—this mysterious whatzis is going to burst out and cause big problems. Lewis, we might as well face it. We’re going to have to pull out all the stops to learn just what the trouble is and how to fix it. We only have until the last day of next month.”

  Lewis gazed out the window at the tree-lined tunnel that was High Street. Overhead, all the leaves had turned, so they were driving beneath a glorious scarlet, orange, and yellow canopy.

  Dully, trying to hold in his fear, Lewis whispered, “Until Halloween.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ROSE RITA’S GRAMPA ALBERT Galway lived on a quiet street not far from the center of town. Quiet, that is, except for the Galway house itself, because Grampa Galway loved to tinker and build things, and dozens of his fanciful and odd miniature windmills crowded his small front yard. As the wind vanes spun, they operated cranks and gears that made two tiny men in a rowboat paddle as if they were fleeing from the clacking mouth of a sperm whale. On another windmill, a cyclist with legs twice the length of his body pedaled an old-fashioned bicycle with a tiny little rear wheel and an enormous front wheel. Another one featured a determined farmer who wielded a wooden axe and tried to chop off a turkey’s head—except at the last moment the turkey pulled his head away.

  All of this made a clattering, squeaking, flapping racket that one neighbor compared to a bushel of apples rolling down the tin roof of an old barn. However, Grampa Galway was a friendly and skillful man, always ready to do a good turn for a neighbor, and the people in his neighborhood forgave him for all the noise, or at least they put up with it.

  When Rose Rita and Lewis called on Grampa Galway on the last day of September, he greeted them warmly, found seats for them in his cramped but neatly kept living room, and he brewed himself an oversized cup of strong brown tea, with hot cocoa for Lewis and Rose Rita. “It’s a pleasure to see you again,” Grampa Galway said, beaming at his visitors. “What can I do for you today?”

  Rose Rita had prepared a story. “Maybe nothing, Grampa,” she said, “but we wanted to try anyway. Lewis and I are sort of doing a research project on the superstitions and ghost stories of Hawaii, and we can’t find much in the library. We thought maybe you might be able to help us out.”

  “Hm!” exclaimed Grampa Galway. He was not a large man, and though he was in his eighties, his movements were quick as a cricket’s. “Well, I’ve visited the islands more than a few times, if that helps. I’ve been to Pearl Harbor, near Honolulu in Oahu, and I’ve spent a few weeks on Maui and a little more on the big island of Hawaii itself. I’ve seen Mauna Loa spouting red-hot lava at midnight, and I’ve seen some beautiful deep green valleys with silver waterfalls at their heads. And I’ve watched the native women dance the hula-hula, which is not the funny kind of dance the television comics make it out to be, but a performance of mystery and beauty.”

  Lewis took a gulp of his hot cocoa. “That’s great,” he said. “But do you know anything about what the Hawaiians believe about hauntings and ghosts and things like that?”

  “Well, some,” said Grampa Galway slowly. “I won’t say I’m any kind of expert, though. What do you need to know, kids?”

  “Anything to do with curses,” replied Rose Rita. “And especially anything that might involve mysterious ghostly armies marching along through the night, and drums.”

  “And volcanoes,” put in Lewis.

 
; Mr. Galway sat bent forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. “Well, now. That sounds mighty mysterious. I’ll tell you some of the stories I’ve heard, and then you can see if they’ll help you any with your research.”

  He folded his arms and dropped his chin down onto his chest and sat in a thoughtful posture for a few moments. Then he asked, “Do you know anything about Pele?”

  Lewis shook his head, but Rose Rita piped up: “She was the goddess of volcanoes in Hawaiian mythology, wasn’t she?”

  “Bingo,” said her grandfather, beaming. He held up a long, bony finger. “Except I don’t know if I would say was. She is supposed to live in the crater of Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes on earth, but she loves to travel. She’s the goddess of fire and destruction. The old Hawaiians called her, let me see if I can remember it . . .” He frowned for a moment and then said slowly, “Wahine ai honua. The woman who devours the land.”

  Rose Rita had whipped out her notepad, and she asked her grandfather to spell out the phrase. She copied it down and said, “She sounds dangerous.”

  “You could say that. There’s a highway on Honolulu where the darndest things happen, or so they tell me. Pele sends a ghostly dog that chases cars. It comes closer and closer and grows until it’s as big as the car it’s chasing—and people who see it go insane and run their cars off a cliff. Or sometimes a motorist will see a woman in a sarong—that’s a kind of tropical dress, silky and colorful—standing beside the road. She never looks the same way to any two people. Sometimes she’s a gorgeous young woman with black or even blond hair. Other times she’s a wrinkled, bent-over old lady. Anyway, it’s always Pele. And if a driver stops to pick her up, it’s because Pele is unhappy with him. She rides along for a spell and usually gives the driver a warning to mend his ways.”

  Lewis squirmed. None of that seemed to fit what had happened, and he started to say something, but Rose Rita shot him a quick look of warning, so he settled back to listen.

  Grampa Galway ran a hand over his bald head and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Now, this is where you might think I’m a little off my rocker, because this happened to someone I knew, a buddy of mine when I was in the navy. Mind, this could all just be a yarn of his, but I don’t think so, somehow. He borrowed somebody’s old jalopy and was driving around trying to buy souvenirs from the Hawaiians, very cheap. He planned to resell them to his ship-mates for a profit, you see. Well, anyway, he picked up a woman beside that highway one night. She was an old woman, that time, with a round face about as wrinkled as a walnut. As she climbs into the passenger seat, my friend, he says, ‘Hey, Grandma, do you or any of your people have some trinkets you want to sell? Yankee dollar for them!’

  “Well, sir, she says to him, ‘Give me a cigarette. ’ See, this was back when lots of the islanders smoked, and they were always after sailors for cigs. My buddy passed her a cigarette and said, ‘There’s some matches in—’ and then he looked at her and just about drove off the road.”

  “Why?” croaked Lewis, his throat dry despite the cocoa.

  Grampa Galway held his hand up, flat, with his palm toward his face. “Because she was holding up her hand like this, and the palm of it burned red-hot, and she used that as a lighter, pushing the cigarette tip against her skin. A second later, the whole car filled up with smoke, so thick that my buddy had to pull over to the side of the road and bail out. He thought the car had spontaneously combusted. He ran around and opened the passenger door to rescue the old lady. Trouble was, no old lady was there. Nobody was there. Pele had just vanished away, like smoke herself.”

  “W-was he okay?” asked Lewis in a small voice.

  “Hard to say,” replied Grampa Galway, a distant look on his face. “Car wouldn’t start. He had to spend all night out there, and when other vehicles zipped past, it was like the drivers couldn’t even see him. Come daylight, he hiked a long way back, and after five miles or so, he met a Hawaiian man who was just standing beside the road. Man says, ‘Pele does not like those who take away what belongs on her island, or those who cheat her sons and daughters. ’ My buddy finally caught a lift and came straight back to the ship and refused to get off again. That was the end of his souvenir business.”

  “That’s interesting,” murmured Rose Rita as she made a note in her pad, although Lewis thought it was horrible. He could imagine a hulking, gray-haired old woman lurching toward him in the night, her hands clenched into claws, reaching for him and bursting into fire as she came close.

  “Is—is Pele still worshipped as a goddess?” asked Lewis.

  “Who knows?” asked Grampa Galway. “Most of the Hawaiians I talked to seemed to think of her more as a kind of guardian spirit, the soul of the volcano, so to speak. Don’t get me wrong. They don’t all fear her or think she is evil. Just the opposite, in fact. Many of them look on her as a kind of supernatural grandmother, you might say, a being who protects and looks after them. They say she’s very jealous, though. You don’t dare take even a lump of volcanic rock from Hawaii, because if you do, Pele will punish you sooner or later.”

  “What about the other thing?” asked Rose Rita. “The whatchamacallits, the drum-beating ghosts?”

  “Night Marchers,” said Grampa Galway promptly. “Huaka’i Po, I’ve heard them called.” He spelled out the words for Rose Rita, then continued: “They’re the spirits of great warriors. They usually patrol an area, like the Wai Lua Valley. They march when the moon and the sea and the stars are just right, and, being ghostly, they can pass right through solid walls. They say sometimes you can see them—they kind of glow with their own inner light—but sometimes they’re just dim shapes that vanish away when you try to look toward them.”

  “They’re not dangerous, are they?” asked Lewis anxiously.

  Grampa Galway glanced at him and hesitated for a moment before answering. “Dangerous, Lewis? I don’t know how to answer that, exactly. I know this much: When the Hawaiians build their houses, it’s very important for them to know where the Night Marchers habitually walk. You see, if a house is accidentally built across one of the Night Marchers’ trails, it won’t even faze them. They’ll just come trooping along with their spears and shields and all, as if the house wasn’t even there. But there is one big danger.”

  “And what is that?” asked Rose Rita.

  Grampa Galway looked uncomfortable. “I don’t want to give you kids the willies or anything. This is just superstition, you understand. Anyway, they say that if the builder of the house has placed his bed in the way of the Night Marchers, when they come through, the sleeper’s soul is yanked right out of his body. In the morning, the shell of the person is lying there in bed, unharmed but dead. And his soul—well, his soul is forced to travel with the Night Marchers forever until the end of time.”

  CHAPTER 13

  THE ANCIENT HAWAIIANS DID not celebrate Halloween, ”insisted Uncle Jonathan as he and Lewis sat alone in the parlor of the house at 100 High Street. “So don’t let that prey on your mind.”

  It was a blustery Sunday evening, and the next day was the last Monday in October. Lewis had felt a rising dread since their talk with Grampa Galway. He and Rose Rita had told Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann the whole story, and since then they had been concentrating on trying to learn more about Pele and the Night Marchers—but without much luck.

  Lewis felt a growing fear of what might soon happen. “Next week is when the Kellers are going to move upstairs,” he said. “What if that’s where the Night Marchers go? Maybe David will be in the very same room where Princess Makalani died. And it’s the time when regular ghosts and goblins are supposed to walk too, so something awful might happen.”

  Jonathan nodded. “I know, Lewis. But we have at least a little time yet, and now Florence knows what to research, so don’t lose your head. Hum! I wish I could figure out a way to get into that place and give it a really good going-over.”

  In the weeks since their talk with Gramp
a Galway, Lewis had asked David about ghostly armies, but he had only frightened his friend. Rose Rita said she knew what was going on. “Pele brings the army to reclaim important stuff that was taken away from her island,” she had argued. “What could be more important than a princess?”

  “But the princess died years and years ago!” Lewis had insisted.

  “Maybe,” Rose Rita had suggested, “her spirit is still here!”

  But Uncle Jonathan thought that Abediah Chadwick might have taken something else, some idol or relic, that Pele wanted. Now he insisted, “There must be something still left in the house that’s causing all this uproar. If we could remove the whatever-it-is, maybe destroy it, we might lift the curse.”

  “I don’t want you to go in there again!” said Lewis wildly. He had a morbid fear of his uncle dying and leaving him alone in the world. What would he do then? He had few other relatives, and he didn’t like any of them enough to want to go live with them. Even worse, his life would be one continual agony if he believed that his uncle’s soul had been snatched by a ghostly parade and forced to join their eternal march.

  “I’ll be careful, whatever I do,” replied his uncle reassuringly. At that moment the old grandfather clock off in the study whirred and gonged ten times, making a sound like a trunk full of tin plates falling solemnly and slowly down a flight of stairs, and Uncle Jonathan looked startled. He pulled out his pocket watch and double-checked the time. “Ten o’clock, and tomorrow is a school day! You’d better turn in, Lewis. And don’t worry. I promise I won’t lose my head and do anything silly.”

  Lewis usually loved his room. It had its own fireplace, where on chilly nights glowing embers made a sort of night-light, warm and friendly. Lewis had always liked his big, old-fashioned bed, with its head-board and footboard made of dark wood carved to resemble the battlements of a castle, and he had the luxury of shelf after shelf of old books to choose as bedtime reading.