The House of Dies Drear

by Virginia Hamilton

  “I thought sure them Darrows would just walk in and clean this place out if they knew how sick I was. They would find that sliding wall the way I found it, oh, years, years ago … What would it mean to them that slaves walked here, lived here peaceful, content no one was sure to find them? Here they were taught, the slaves were … yes, taught all the tricks and ruses old Mr. Drear could think up for them. And the good Jesus in heaven, he sure could think them up … the books tell it all! And they were taught the cross reading. They were taught …” he gazed around the cavern, “what wonder there is when men are free to see.

  “It was all right when I was strong,” Pluto went on. “They were always halfways scared of me. Their grandaddy, he was a boy with me. He was River Swift Darrow. He always said his grandaddy was a Mohegan by the name of River Thames. River Thames was supposed to have come down with Dies Drear from up East. And River Swift always said whatever was hidden when we hunted that house was his by legacy. I never said nothing when he said that, because I knew whatever it was was mine. I knew it. How did I know?”

  Mr. Pluto laughed silently.

  “Because what I hunted I couldn’t put a name to. I couldn’t have told you what it was I hunted, except it was inside of me. And I knew that house would bring it out of me and show it to me.

  “River Swift, he hunted treasure. Sure that’s all he knew to be legacy. But he was afraid of it, of that house,” said Pluto. “So was his son and his son’s son. He was scared to death, because the spirits knew he was evil and knew his sons was evil. But I wasn’t afraid.

  “No, not I,” Pluto continued. “I grew to love that house. I got so I could walk it blind. All the tunnels. All the caves. But they was afraid, those Darrows. So the years passed, and they were afraid of me.

  “I meant not to trick you, sir,” Pluto said. His voice rasped, making a dried-up sound all about the room.

  “It was just that if they were to ever know I be sick, they’d walk in out of the open. They wouldn’t be halfways afraid of me being the devil at night.

  “I see you are a historical man, an educated man,” Pluto went on. He looked around him as though it was difficult for him to remember where he was. “I had no chance for education, but I do know hard thought in another. I am so sorry we had to fool you.”

  Mr. Small heaved a deep sigh. He could make little sense out of what Pluto was talking about. He had so many questions, there was so much he needed to know. Gently he started to probe.

  “Mr. Skinner, sir,” he said. “I know you’re tired, but just a little longer. Try to think about what I’m going to say. Can you tell me … is this the last unknown cavern? Is this the last uncharted hiding place?”

  For a moment Pluto stared at Mr. Small and, then, looked beyond him. He bowed his head on his arms on the table. “We shouldn’t have fooled you like that,” he whispered. “It wasn’t a proper thing to do. No. No. We had no right. No business!”

  Pesty stood up straight, alert, also looking beyond Mr. Small and Thomas.

  “Then again, as a historical man, perhaps you are not so all-fired proper,” said a fierce, withering voice.

  Mr. Small stood stock-still. Thomas couldn’t have moved if he’d tried. It was River Lewis Darrow, it had to be. He must have followed them, waiting all this time.

  Ambush, Thomas thought. How many sons with him? How many to handle at the same time?

  “You just might be another branch of that Mohegan bunch, come here to steal from the storehouse and drive an old man half out of his mind!”

  Mr. Small spun around. Thomas turned around ever so slowly. But what he saw was too much for him. The strength seemed to drain from his arms. No longer could his legs hold his weight. Not uttering a sound, he fell to his knees, unable to comprehend the phantasm before them.

  For it was Pluto standing there. It was Pluto, who still sat slumped at his desk mumbling sorrowfully to the air, who, at the same time, stood in front of Mr. Small and Thomas.

  “You!” hissed Mr. Small. “I knew there had to be another one of you!”

  The Pluto who stood, nodded in recognition to Mr. Small. His beard and wild hair were golden in the torchlight. His eyes were wet and emerald green, flecked with gold sparks. He threw back his head and laughed and laughed.

  No, thought Thomas. It wasn’t fair to be a devil, to be able to divide one’s self and have power over human beings. Now he understood everything. Pluto had spun all the tapestries, those carpets, himself. Pluto had blown all the hundreds of bottles, just by multiplying himself until he had enough Plutos to do the job. No wonder he was so worn out.

  “No!” screamed Thomas. So terrified was he that in another minute there might be a thousand Plutos, he began to sob.

  “You devil! You hairy, green-eyed devil!”

  He leaped on this second Pluto. He leaped high, before his father could stop him, catching the man about the neck. He wrapped his legs around the man’s body and twined his fingers in that long, white beard. But Pluto was strong. He shook Thomas off like a lion shaking off ticks.

  Suddenly Thomas flew through the air and hit the floor. By the time he pulled himself up to a sitting position, he was staring at his hands. His hands were gold and orange. His hands were covered with hunks of Pluto’s beard.

  “Get away!” he yelled. “Papa, it’s stuck, it won’t get away … Papa!”

  Mr. Small tried to get hold of Thomas. “Son! Son!” he kept repeating. But Thomas was scooting all over the floor, trying to get away from his hands covered with the white beard. Some of it now seemed to be sprouting on his arms.

  “He’s turning me into a devil. Oh, Papa!” cried Thomas.

  “Thomas Small!” The voice of the second Pluto boomed through the cavern like a hundred rushing voices.

  Abruptly Thomas sat still. He looked up at the strong, powerful Pluto towering above him.

  Ever so slowly, the Pluto raised his hands to his face. He wore the now familiar hide gloves, though only Mr. Small noticed them. The Pluto began to speak, his hands still poised there, near his cheekbones.

  “We wear the mask that grins and lies,

  It hides our cheeks and shades

  our eyes …

  With torn and bleeding hearts we

  smile …

  We wear the mask!”

  With the most delicate motion, he peeled away the corners of his face just below the ear and let it hang in shreds around his mouth.

  Chapter 15

  “THOMAS, DON’T BE AFRAID,” said Mr. Small. “It’s only a false face. Look. Look at it.”

  “It’s stage makeup. You see, Thomas?” said the man. “There’s a half-mask with the beard attached, which fits around my ears. There’s the white wig and a dyed plastic substance that looks like skin. I had to add more beard with paste to make the mask fuller. That’s why it came off in your hand.”

  “You could have got away with just the beard and the hair, you look so much like Pluto anyway,” said Mr. Small. “Why did you bother with such difficult makeup? With the same green eyes, anyone would have been fooled.”

  “Yes, lucky for me my eyes are the same color as his,” the man said. “I really didn’t think you would be easy to convince. If I had to face you in the daytime, I wanted to resemble him as closely as possible. But you were on to me from the first, weren’t you?”

  “You said a few things out of place,” Mr. Small said modestly. “Something about India in a way I’m certain Mr. Pluto wouldn’t have said. And you wore those new, expensive gloves—they were a mistake, you see.”

  The man had to smile. “Yes, the gloves were wrong,” he said. “I know that now. And when I saw you all there in the kitchen that night for the first time, I couldn’t resist a bit of overacting. You were all so stunned, you see. But it was never my plan to terrify your son, then or now. Thomas, are you all right?”

  Thomas had sat unbelieving through the conversation between his father and the man. Slowly he came to his senses. Not looking at the man, h
e rubbed the wetness of tears from his face.

  “I knew no man as old as Mr. Pluto could catch me from behind.”

  “As it was, I had a hard time catching you myself,” said the man.

  Thomas was pleased by this. “Who are you anyway?” he said.

  “I’m Mayhew Skinner. I’m my father’s only son.”

  Thomas slowly shook his head, forcing himself to understand that old Pluto had a son who looked just like him. “But why … why did you have to pretend like that?” he asked.

  Mayhew had been kneeling in front of Thomas. He got up and walked over to the desk where Mr. Pluto now sat holding on to the ledgers. When Mayhew put his strong hands on his father’s shoulders, Pluto looked up at him with all the hope he had left in him in his eyes.

  “How were we to know what type of strangers you folks would be?” asked Mayhew. “My father became quite ill in January. He’s had this running battle with the Darrows for as long as I can remember. But he was always strong, he could take it. I do believe he enjoyed the fight with them, since he alone knew about this cavern. He was certain they would never set foot into his cave, where he lived, as long as he could frighten them by being devilish. And he was right, they never did dare come too close. But when he grew ill, that all changed. He was desperate with the fear they might see how weak and sick he was. And when the foundation told him you folks would be moving in, he was terrified of what the Darrows might do to you.”

  “Then it wasn’t Mr. Pluto who considered we might be an enemy,” said Mr. Small.

  “It was I,” Mayhew said. He smiled grimly to himself.

  “Calling my father the devil,” he said. “As if being lame was a crime. Folks around here have been cruel to him for years—not only the Darrows. At least River Lewis believed he had a reason for his crime. Full of greed, he thought my father stood in the way of his legacy, which he believed was a treasure in gold.” He looked around at the cavern. “I guess it is treasure of a kind.” Sadly he smiled. “But not to my father, not to Drear.

  “But let’s get back to the nice Sunday-moaning church folks who never once cared whether my father lived or died. No, you can have them. They’re the reason I left town. Even when I was small, I always hated them for their stupid ways. I guess I hated you folks before I saw you because I figured you would be no better than the rest.”

  Mr. Small glanced at Thomas, who stared at Mayhew Skinner with something close to awe. Thomas had never heard anyone talk the way Mayhew talked, at least not in front of his father.

  “You shouldn’t hate,” Mr. Small said. “It will destroy you.”

  “That’s a well-meaning lie,” said Mayhew. “Folks have hated other folks for centuries, and the same business is still with us.”

  “Son,” said Mr. Pluto, “please do tell him how it had to be.”

  “Don’t worry, Father, I’m telling him,” said Mayhew.

  “You see, it was Carr who contacted me when my father fell ill,” Mayhew was saying. “I live away from here. I’m an actor. I’ve lived away and worked since a long time ago, when my mother and I left this town for good. We had lived on that Drear property until my mother could no longer stand seeing the house or the town folk who thought we were strange. She loved that cave we lived in though. Odd isn’t it, Mr. Small, that a son and daughter of slaves would find peace in the very sort of cave running slaves hid in?”

  Mayhew didn’t wait for Mr. Small to answer; he went on, his eyes seeming to go back to that long-ago time.

  “You see,” Mayhew said, “we lived on this land not conscious of the reason for our peace with it. We lived with a legacy we weren’t aware we had. And yet we had a nameless knowledge of it, as my father has tried to tell you.

  “We left it finally,” Mayhew said, “but my father wouldn’t leave. I blame him for that. I still blame him for forcing us to leave. He had grown obsessed with the tunnels, with the haunting figure of Dies Drear. He became fanatical about protecting the house and its history, and even its legend. I would say he is like you, Mr. Small, in his taste for what he calls our heritage.”

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Small softly. “We always tend to belittle that heritage in our zeal to be free.”

  “I’ll take freedom any day over all the romantic nonsense about slavery,” said Mayhew.

  “I mean not to glorify it,” said Mr. Small. “I simply want people to know about it. It’s a part of our history, and yet no one tells the truth about it.”

  Uneasily Thomas watched his father and this strange Mayhew. He couldn’t take his eyes off him.

  Uncomfortably Mr. Small and Mayhew Skinner glanced at Thomas. For his sake, they would let their argument go, for another day perhaps. Pesty sat down next to Thomas, as though to say that whatever sides there might be, she would take the one closest to Thomas.

  “But to get on,” said Mayhew, “Carr, the father, called me on the telephone. He said I’d better get back here, that new folks were moving into the big house. He said it looked serious—that you had obtained a job at the college.”

  “Serious in what way?” asked Mr. Small. “He didn’t know about the cavern.”

  “No, of course not,” said Mayhew. “And yet, he knew something … how can I tell you! He knew and respected my father. He knew the Darrows were after something to steal and he knew my father was hiding something from them. When Father became ill, and you folks were to arrive, he was worried. He understood that if my father was keeping something from the Darrows, it had to stay kept from them and possibly you, too.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Small. “So we were suspect even before we arrived.”

  “Carr was afraid Father would have worse trouble if you folks turned out to be like the Darrows. I arrived here about three weeks ago. Then your furniture arrived. Father had made up his mind to trust you folks and decided to unload the furniture and place it in the rooms. I tried to tell him it was none of his affair, that he wasn’t strong enough for it. He wouldn’t listen. He never does. So me and the Carr boys fixed things up a bit.”

  “So then,” said Mr. Small.

  “You have to understand,” said Mayhew, “we had more than one consideration. There was the foundation to think about also. They knew people searched for treasure on this property, but they had no idea why, or that the searchers were all one family. They knew the legend, that the house was supposed to be haunted. But they are sane people. How could they possibly understand the meaning of the legend to my father? To him, Dies Drear lives!”

  “Did you know about this cavern?” asked Mr. Small.

  “No, never,” said Mayhew. “Not until a week ago, when my father decided he was mortal, like all of us, and thought it was time to tell me.”

  “Do you blame me, son?” asked Pluto. Sadly he looked up at Mayhew and Mayhew turned away.

  “All these years,” Mayhew whispered, “all this time, when there was this wealth …”

  “It wasn’t mine to touch, it wasn’t mine!” cried Pluto.

  “You say it is our heritage!” Mayhew’s voice burst around them. “When all these years you’ve struggled and I’ve struggled. Yes, I blame you!”

  “It was ours to hold, to take care of just the way the old man had,” said Pluto. “But not to plunder, no, not to touch!”

  Mayhew laughed without smiling. “How foolish, that history could be more important than men! No, of course not to touch,” he said. “Father, do you have any idea how close you and Drear have become? He collected all this perhaps as a whim and he put it here, again perhaps, to save for slaves a portion of life which had been denied them. And you, Father, still save it, for, like a slave, you are bound to it simply because a troublemaker called Dies Drear says you are!”

  “The man was more than just a troublemaker,” said Mr. Small.

  “To you maybe,” Mayhew said. “To me he was a troublemaker who thought himself a prophet.”

  Mr. Small started to say more, but then seemed to change his mind.

  After a
time Thomas spoke up. “What will you do now?” he asked of Mayhew. “Will you tell the foundation about the treasure? Will you let them take it?”

  Mr. Small waited. Mayhew looked at him, his eyes as cold and clear as glass. Then he looked down at his father.

  “We could talk about it,” said Mr. Small quietly, “if you’ll allow me to become involved in that decision.”

  Mayhew nodded. “It’s late,” he said. “I’d better get Pesty back to the house, or they just might send Macky out looking for her. Pesty, are you ready?”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Then say good night to Father,” Mayhew said.

  Pesty went to old Pluto and threw her arms around his neck.

  “Child!” Pluto whispered happily. “You’ll come tomorrow, and maybe I’ll feel like riding in the buggy. You want to still ride with a poor old soul?”

  “I do!” she said.

  “And remember,” Pluto said, “not a word!” He put his fingers to his lips.

  “No, never a word,” she said. Sleepily she turned to Mayhew and held out her tiny arms to him.

  Mayhew swung her onto his shoulders. “I’ll take you as far as the yard,” he told her. “I don’t dare come closer. If they spy me, they’ll think I’m Father.”

  Mr. Small looked at his watch. “Lord, it’s late,” he said, “and my wife is there, locked in the twins’ room! I forgot all about her! Oh, I hope she didn’t turn brave and venture out to clean up that mess they made in the kitchen.”

  “Something happened?” Mayhew asked. “What brought you all here so unexpectedly in the first place?”

  “We came here, I guess, to accuse your father of trying to run us out of the house,” Mr. Small said. “I was so mad, I didn’t think much about it. I just got over here as fast as I could.” Then he explained what had been done to the kitchen.

  “What a bad thing, a sinful thing!” said Pluto. “They’ll stop at nothing. Nothing!” Trembling he tried to stand and nearly fell. Mr. Small caught him in time and braced him in his arms.