The House of Dies Drear

by Virginia Hamilton

  “Father, you’re ill,” Mayhew said.

  “Let’s get him out of the heat of this place,” Mr. Small said. He helped Pluto up the ramp and out of the cavern.

  In the cave, Mr. Pluto lay down heavily upon his bed.

  “Ahh,” he said, “I am tired tonight.”

  “You stay right here until I get back from taking Pesty home,” Mayhew said to him. Pesty still rode on Mayhew’s shoulders.

  “Oh, son, I’ll be all right,” said Pluto. “I feel so much better just having Mr. Small know about the cavern. You see, he is a historical man, an educated man. He will know what to do with it all, Mayhew.”

  “Don’t worry anymore about it,” said Mr. Small. “Your son and I will take care of things.”

  Outside they slipped through the trees on the hill.

  “It was them that did it to the kitchen,” said Pesty to Mayhew.

  “Which ones?” he asked her. “River Lewis, too?”

  “No, not him,” said Pesty. “After he seen Mr. Small at church, he told them to leave off. But they wouldn’t listen. They was afraid that because he was a historical man, he would find the treasure before them. They think to scare Mrs. Small so she’d want to move into town. But not Macky.”

  “No? Macky wouldn’t do it?” asked Mayhew.

  “No,” she said. “Macky, he told them he was tired and then he said to them that he was going to make a friend out of Mr. Thomas. He got slapped down for it, too.”

  Thomas was pleased to hear that Mac Darrow liked him. He was almost sorry the boy had got slapped for wanting to be friends.

  But maybe it serves him right, Thomas thought. He did let me fall in the hole under the front steps.

  He thought to himself that maybe Mac Darrow had a bicycle. If he did, they could ride around and have dogs bark at their wheels. He sure hoped Mac Darrow had a bicycle.

  “So it was just the three of them,” said Mayhew. “Wilbur and Russell and River Ross. They should be ashamed of themselves, acting like vandals on Halloween.”

  “You have any ideas on how to handle them?” asked Mr. Small.

  “Call the police,” said Thomas. “Just call the law and have them put away!”

  Mayhew laughed to himself. “That would give me great pleasure,” he said, “but taking care of them is easier than that. If their level is that of overgrown boys making mischief, then that is the way we’ll have to treat them.”

  “How so?” asked Mr. Small.

  “Let me get Pesty home,” Mayhew said.

  “I want to hear!” cried Pesty. “I want to know what’s to happen!”

  “You’ll be in on it, good girl,” Mayhew said. “Right now, it’s time to run you home.” He began to trot through the trees. Then he stopped and called back to Mr. Small, “You folks going to be up awhile?”

  “I expect we’ll clean up the kitchen,” Mr. Small called back. “I’m much too wound up to sleep.”

  “Then I’ll come by for awhile,” Mayhew said. “I’ll help you with the kitchen if you want.”

  “That’s kind of you,” said Mr. Small. “But hadn’t you better get back to your father?”

  “I won’t stay long with you,” said Mayhew. His voice was farther off. He was moving again. “I want to give you an idea of what I have in mind for the Darrow boys.”

  “Will you need our help?” called Thomas.

  “Yes,” Mayhew called back. “We’re about to become a company of actors!”

  Chapter 16

  “THOMAS, YOU AND your mother are staring at me again,” said Mayhew Skinner. He did not look up at them. “Mr. Small, why do you suppose they keep on staring at me?”

  “They’ve never seen anyone like you,” Mr. Small said. “Anyway, neither one of them ever looks twice at anything they don’t like.”

  “Well, my goodness!” said Mayhew. “I wonder what kind of a ‘thing’ I am.”

  Mrs. Small had to smile. So did Thomas. They looked shyly at Mayhew. Here Mrs. Small had known him for only a couple of hours, and he seemed like a close friend.

  Thomas couldn’t keep his eyes off him. He wanted to know what kind of person became an actor. And how it was an actor used makeup and played different parts.

  They were all in the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Small, Thomas and Mayhew. It was one-thirty in the morning, and none of them felt actually tired. Mrs. Small and Thomas sat at the kitchen table. Only Mr. Small and Mayhew worked with the fury with which they’d started. Thomas was scraping the hardened paste off a chair, and Mrs. Small was wringing a hot, wet dish towel onto the tabletop.

  Mayhew had organized them into two teams. They were to use hot water to loosen the caked flour and juice. Once it was loosened, it wasn’t difficult to scrape and wipe it off the kitchen. Mayhew had the floor done already. Mr. Small had cleaned the whole sink, the refrigerator and the stove. Mrs. Small and Thomas had done less because they had to watch Mayhew and they had to listen to what he was saying. He hadn’t stopped talking since he’d come back from taking Pesty home. He still had a good part of the false beard hanging from his face. He had put the wig back on his head.

  Looking at him covered with perspiration and dirt from all the mess, Mrs. Small couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  “Mayhew, why won’t you take off your jacket—it’ll be filthy! That wig must be terribly hot. Take a break, both of you, before you get sick.”

  “Listen to Mother,” said Mayhew to Mr. Small. “There she goes, trying to change me already. Why do they always try to change us?”

  “Because we’re so perfect, naturally,” said Mr. Small.

  “That’s right,” said Mayhew. “No, they can’t stand perfection, can they?”

  “Both of you are just devilish,” said Mrs. Small. Then she became serious suddenly. “Mayhew, how soon do you intend to leave here? Won’t you stay awhile before going back to the city?”

  Mayhew looked at her fondly and then turned away from her before he began to joke with her again. “There she goes,” he said, “If I stay here one day too long, she’ll have me enrolled in that college before I know what hit me.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “Have you ever been to college, Mayhew? You might like it. I hear they have a fine drama department at the college.”

  Mr. Small laughed. “I suspect college drama would be like child’s play to Mayhew,” he said. “The only training he needs is good steady work.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Mayhew. “I’m up for a good part in a road company in another month.”

  “Then you’ll stay here at least that long?” Thomas wanted to know. “You’ll stay here for a month more?”

  Mayhew smiled. “I’ll have to stay for awhile,” he said. “We’ve got to get things straightened out here.” He turned to Mr. Small. “I’ll have to see what’s to be done with my father.”

  Mr. Small stopped his work and sat down at the table on the chair Thomas had just finished cleaning. “Mayhew, take a break,” he said. “Thomas, get him a chair from the parlor.”

  When Thomas came back with the chair, Mayhew sat down. Mrs. Small remembered she had half a jar of instant coffee packed somewhere in a carton. After a short search she found it. Quickly she made the coffee and they all drank it from paper cups, all that was left to drink from in the house.

  They sipped the coffee, and Mayhew started talking again. “We have to decide a number of things,” he said to Mr. Small. Mr. Small nodded. “But first we have to find out just how sick my father is,” Mayhew said.

  “He’s an old man now,” said Mrs. Small.

  “Yes, but if he can get well,” Mayhew said, “I mean, if there’s nothing more wrong with him than fatigue and mental anguish—Lord, that’s enough for an old man, surely! I have to get him to a doctor. Better yet, to a hospital and let them give him the once-over.”

  “Will he go to a hospital?” asked Mr. Small.

  Mayhew was silent for a moment. “He’s like all old people around here,” he said. �
��Take them to a hospital, even mention that they have to go, and they’re ready to lie down and die.”

  “Why is that?” asked Thomas. “Why would they be afraid of a place that can help them?”

  “Understand,” said Mayhew, “my father comes out of a time when people didn’t have doctors. When there were no hospitals even halfway close-by. There weren’t clinics. The only medicine people had they made themselves from alcohol and tree bark, roots and herb plants. And it was good enough. I don’t remember him ever being sick, or my mother either. This is the first time in his life he can’t take care of himself. It’s killing him, knowing he has to depend on someone else.”

  Like Great-grandmother Jeffers, Thomas thought. She couldn’t bear the sight of the traveling nurse who once tried to give her a hypodermic of penicillin. Great-grandmother had chased the woman out of the house, Thomas recalled, and had warned her not to come back soon.

  How long has it been since we’ve been gone from there—two days? Just two days we’ve been here? It seems like a year.

  “But you will have to get him to go,” Mrs. Small was saying, speaking of Mr. Pluto. “If only to get him away from here so he can rest.”

  “Well, I have a plan,” said Mayhew. “I’m chock full of plans.” He laughed. “I’m going to tell him we’ve got to make the Darrow boys think he’s so sick, he has to go into the hospital. Then they will make their move to find the treasure. It’s not really a lie. Once they see him leave, they’ll be over here under cover of darkness before you have time to blink.

  “I’m going to call Carr as soon as it’s morning,” Mayhew said. “He’ll have to make arrangements to put Father in the hospital.” He glanced around at them sitting there. “You folks are going to have to do for Father, because no one can know that I’m here.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Thomas.

  “Everything,” said Mayhew. “I’m going to hole up in that treasure house of old Mr. Drear’s until it’s time to come out. First off, we will make a show of getting Father to a hospital. We could take him by car, but I think we’ll call an ambulance. Then, Thomas, you and Pesty will let it be known he is in the hospital for a week or so … or at least until tomorrow, depending on what’s wrong with him.”

  “I get it!” said Thomas. “You want them to think they’ve got to move tonight, I mean the night that’s coming, because they can’t be sure Mr. Pluto will be in the hospital more than twenty-four hours.”

  “Right,” said Mayhew. “I want to get the Darrows over here fast, before they have time to think too much about it. And I’m going to have Pesty let them know Father became very excited, making himself sick over something Mr. Small found belonging to old Dies Drear.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Small said pensively. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing? Shouldn’t we just call the police on them, have the law reprimand them good, and leave it at that?”

  Mayhew glanced at Mr. Small, and Mr. Small nodded ever so slightly. “Martha, there’s more to it,” Mr. Small said. “There are things you don’t know about … let Mayhew do it his way.”

  Thomas was about to ask what it was they didn’t know about. So was Mrs. Small. But Mayhew turned away from them in that sad, alone way he had. In the last couple of hours, Mrs. Small had seen him do this many times, as though there was something weighing heavily upon him. Whatever it was, she knew it was not her business to speak of it.

  Thomas understood this too. There was some secret, he imagined, that involved Mr. Pluto, Mayhew and the Darrows. His father knew about it.

  How was it his father always knew more than everybody else, he wondered. Mayhew couldn’t have told him anything more than what he had told all of them, because they’d been together, all of them, from the time Mayhew returned from taking Pesty home.

  So then, Thomas thought, it’s something Papa has figured out from what has already happened. I’ll have to wait to find out, if I’m ever to find out.

  “It won’t be easy getting Father to go to the hospital,” said Mayhew, “but I think Mr. Small and I can convince him. We’ll make excitement out of it. We’ll tell him we can’t work the stage magic on the Darrows until he is gone.”

  “Whatever you plan on doing,” Mr. Small said, “please don’t use this house to do it in. I don’t want the Darrows here or near my little boys.”

  “No, of course not,” said Mayhew. “You needn’t worry about them getting in here anymore. There’s only one way they could have got in to do their work on this kitchen. Why is it Father never told you about that hall mirror?”

  “What?” said Mr. Small.

  “You mean the mirror right out there beside the parlor door?” said Thomas.

  “There’s a tunnel behind it,” Mayhew said.

  “How is that possible?” asked Mr. Small. “The mirror hangs between the parlor door and the front door.”

  Mayhew explained that the parlor wall was a false wall, about a foot and a half short of the outer wall of the house.

  “The corridor between the false wall and the outer wall leads down to the tunnel,” Mayhew explained. “That tunnel is parallel to, and to the right of, the tunnel under the front steps.”

  “Are the two tunnels connected?” Thomas wanted to know.

  “I believe they are,” Mayhew said. “At least they used to be. The tunnel behind the mirror has several branches, while the one beneath the steps connects only with the kitchen, for the purpose of hasty concealment. The mirror tunnel goes under the stream at the foot of this property, onto the Darrow property and the Carr property. I would guess a long time ago, nature started the tunnel. But then men, probably slaves helping Dies Drear, expanded it to the two properties, where there were farmers friendly to runaway slaves.”

  Thomas shivered. To think he had slept in that parlor because he thought it would be safer than his room upstairs! He could have been carried off by them and hidden in the tunnel!

  “My goodness!” said Mrs. Small. “That handsome mirror … and all the time …” she couldn’t finish the thought. She, too, shivered as with a chill.

  “Yes, and you’d better remove the mechanism,” said Mayhew. “It’s at the base of the mirror—here I’ll show you, Mr. Small, because if your twin boys like to crawl around, they might find it and easily get into the tunnel.”

  They all went with Mayhew to the hall. There he kneeled down and felt around the bottom frame of the mirror. “Here it is,” he said. Mr. Small bent down to get a close look. Then Mayhew released a lever, and the mirror swung gently out.

  In front of them was a dark, narrow corridor, which slanted steeply down below the foundation of the house. Thomas could clearly hear running water.

  “Whoever came here last night most surely removed his shoes,” said Mr. Small. Squeezing himself sideways, he made his way down the corridor and peered into the tunnel.

  “He had to,” said Mayhew, “else your carpet would have been soaking wet.

  “This tunnel is never dry,” he said. “There have been several cave-ins below the stream, and I would suggest you not allow Thomas ever to walk around in here.”

  He closed the mirror, and he and Mr. Small worked on the mechanism until they had removed it.

  “That’s a relief,” said Mrs. Small. “Goodness knows, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look into that mirror without feeling a bit strange.”

  They returned to the kitchen but Mayhew declined to sit down. “I’d best be going now,” he said. “You folks ought to get to bed, get as much sleep as you can.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Small.

  “I’ll come back here early,” Mayhew said, “dressed like my father, in case anyone is watching. I’ll do business with Carr from here and then I’m going into hiding.”

  “But what is it we are going to do with the Darrows?” Thomas asked. “When will we begin our show?”

  “Once we get Father in the hospital, we’ll have the whole day to get ready for them. You’re going to do
some shopping for me, Thomas. Mr. Small, you might have to take him to Columbus. It’s the only city close-by that I know has a theater supplies store large enough to have what we are going to need.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” said Mr. Small.

  “Do I get to wear a costume?” Thomas wanted to know.

  “I’m afraid you’ll be wearing mostly rags and chains, Thomas,” said Mayhew. “I’m sorry to say slaves were never very keen dressers.” He grinned.

  Thomas was awfully disappointed. “Not even a false face?” he asked Mayhew.

  “Oh sure, you can have a false face and a false head of hair, if you like,” Mayhew said.

  Thomas felt better and he smiled.

  “What do I get to wear?” asked Mr. Small.

  “You’re going to look swell,” laughed Mayhew. “I’ve got you all set for a black fire-and-brimstone suit and shoulder-length, gray-blond hair.”

  “I can hardly wait,” said Mr. Small smiling.

  Mrs. Small looked a bit peeved, but she didn’t say anything. Mayhew, noticing her expression, winked at Mr. Small.

  “Now what is it, Mother? Are you feeling left out?”

  Mrs. Small wouldn’t say anything.

  “You want to be an actor, too?” Mayhew said.

  Mrs. Small’s face lit up. They all burst out laughing.

  “I’ll have to get one of the Carr girls to look after your little boys,” Mayhew told her. “Will that be all right?”

  “Oh, that will be fine!” said Mrs. Small breathlessly. “What … I mean … who do I play?”

  “Well, there’s nothing that says one of those slave ghosts couldn’t have been a woman!”

  “Oh no, really!” said Mr. Small.

  Mrs. Small covered her face and giggled into her hands.

  “You can’t do that,” Thomas said. “Old Dies Drear wouldn’t have sent a woman back into slavery.”

  “Sure he would have,” said Mayhew.

  “And he probably did, too,” said Mr. Small. “Many times women slaves could pretend they were house servants out on an errand, when actually they were running away.”