The House of Dies Drear (8 page)

“Horses?” said Thomas. “Papa, horses?” He was on his feet, forgetting his fear of Pluto. He thought of Pesty and that Darrow boy, and the black horse they had with them.

“Mr. Pluto has three horses, son,” said Mr. Small. “I told you he uses two at a time for the buggy he gets around in. At night, he keeps them in the cave on the other side of the hill from here. The black has simple fever, which is odd, isn’t it, Mr. Pluto, in a horse of such dark color? I thought simple fever hit horses with lighter coats, such as the whites and grays.”

“Yes … well.” Mr. Pluto thought for awhile. He seemed to struggle with his memory, and Thomas watched him. Indeed they all watched him, as though he were not just strange, someone they’d only heard of, but a man beyond their knowledge.

“If it was just a heat problem,” Mr. Pluto began, “say heat like they have in India, it wouldn’t have hurt the black. It wasn’t the heat though, it was nervous shock.”

“I had no idea nervousness could act on a horse’s heat centers,” Mr. Small said. He had taken another step forward, and Pluto became agitated.

“Not nervousness,” Pluto said. He squeezed his gloved hands together. “Nervous shock. Nervous shock! By haunted things nothing living should have the unhappiness to see!”

At once Thomas had a vision of night and Mr. Pluto’s black horse grazing the hillside. A specter floated slowly nearer, until it was beside the horse. The horse lifted his head, standing there for a second before falling with a thud to the ground.

“Papa, ghosts!” Thomas whispered. “He’s talking about ghosts!”

Mr. Small looked sternly at Thomas; after that Thomas stayed quiet. Then Mr. Small looked hard at Pluto. At that moment, Thomas saw the faintest trace of amusement on Pluto’s face. His father didn’t seem to notice it.

“You have a sick quarter horse on your hands,” said Mr. Small. “This is a lonely stretch of country. I’m sure the town boys like fooling around along the stream. Thomas, didn’t you tell us you met two children out here today? One of them was a little girl called Pesty. She was riding a black horse, Mr. Pluto, and I believe she left the impression the horse belonged to you.”

They all stood still in the room, with the quiet slowly closing in on them. Mr. Small’s meaning had been clear to Mrs. Small and clear to Thomas. But if he had meant to startle Mr. Pluto with his knowledge of an unhobbled, seemingly well horse, he had been mistaken.

When Pluto started speaking, he didn’t even bother to lift his voice above that hostile silence; he seemed not to consider that Mr. Small had raised the possibility he might be lying. Now he kept his eyes on Mr. Small’s feet moving steadily forward.

“That Pesty!” Mr. Pluto said, fondly it seemed to Thomas. “She can do more with a wild animal than any small child should be able to do with anything!”

“You mean to say a child could unhobble a full-grown quarter horse suffering from simple fever?” Mr. Small’s voice was angry now.

“No,” said Mr. Pluto quietly. “No, I mean to say that Pesty can ride that black anytime. Anytime at all, as long as it’s day. But once night hits, that horse has the fever of nervous shock. And I have to hobble him so he won’t burst his heart with running.”

“You’re not talking sense, man!” said Mr. Small. He was well on Pluto now and with a few more steps, he would be able to see whatever it was he was obviously looking for.

“Sense!” The word hissed around them, stopping Mr. Small’s forward movement. There was a twisted smile on Pluto’s face. Thomas still couldn’t see that face as well as he had when the firelight had played on it.

“Sense,” Pluto said again, less in anger than with sadness.

He looked gently at Mrs. Small. He looked at Mr. Small with that odd trace of amusement on his face. He stared vacantly at Thomas, then up at the ceiling. And he spoke in a kind of chant that sounded old and worn, like history.

“When hoot owl screeching, westward flies,

Gauge the sun …

Look to Dies,

And Run.”

Mr. Small stepped forward. Pluto moved into the frame of the gaping door. Like fluid, the tall figure of him flowed out and was the same as darkness. Thomas didn’t even hear his feet on the veranda. But he was gone, leaving them free for awhile of whatever it was had possessed them.

Chapter 8

“IT WILL JUST HAVE
to hold until morning. I can get into town then and buy a new lock … maybe two or three locks, the way things look here. India! Can you beat it? That’s the puzzle!”

Mr. Small was speaking to himself. He wasn’t aware that Mrs. Small and Thomas listened to him, so intent was he on his work at the kitchen door. He had been working on the door for the past ten minutes. He had looked out once, right after Mr. Pluto had disappeared into darkness, and then had spent a few minutes trying to slam the door shut. But without the spring lock, the door wouldn’t stay closed. He had taken two dinner knives and slid them in the groove of the doorframe. One knife he placed by the lock and the other just below the doorknob. He then slid the latch in place.

“No. No,” Mr. Small muttered to himself. “Something else. Something different. Was it about the head? No, that was all right … perhaps the neck. The shoulders? If I could have just realized the difference when I shook his hand! If I could put my finger on it …
that’s
what it was. The gloves! He’s trying to conceal his hands. He might have burned himself badly. I’ve told him the kind of work he does is too hard for a man his age. And being the superstitious man he is, he will be afraid to see a doctor. He will suffer with pain as best he knows how, because a doctor has supernatural power the same as a ghost!”

Thomas and Mrs. Small listened. They understood that something had to be haunting Mr. Pluto. Whatever it was, part of it had taken hold of Mr. Small. Although he was finished with the door, he still stood before it, talking to it as if it were alive.

“Good Lord!” he was saying, “the man is history! He doesn’t have to leave this land, that other side of the hill. And yet he is running just as hard as the slaves had to run, as if he were one! He stays here, colliding with the past on the one hand and the present on the other. But does he mean to run to the one and away from the other? Or run to both and pull them together? Here he stays … now why! Why does he stay?”

Finally Mr. Small sat down glumly at the kitchen table, with one hand cupped over his mouth. Thomas, after taking in the large, lopsided kitchen, sat down beside him.

Mrs. Small busied herself by cleaning off the table and sweeping up all the broken dishes. She didn’t utter a word to Thomas or his father. When she had finished, she deposited all the trash in an empty carton as quietly as she could.

“I think I could do with more coffee,” Mr. Small said finally. His voice no longer held that feverish, crazy sound, Thomas noticed.

If he goes around talking to some more doors, Thomas thought, I’m just going to have Mama take him to a hospital.

“It’s still good and hot,” Mrs. Small said. “Thomas, will you have your coffee black, too?”

Thomas was so surprised he couldn’t think of anything to say. His mother never allowed him black coffee. What small amount of coffee she would permit him to have came only at Christmas or Thanksgiving, and then it was mostly cream and sugar with a dash of cinnamon.

“Oh, I know,” Mrs. Small said to him, “but you know you’d dearly love to have it strong and black, the way your papa does. And since you’re sitting here … well, it’s your birthday.”

She poured two full cups of black coffee, placing one cup in front of Thomas and one in front of Mr. Small. She then poured a half cup for herself and sat down between them.

The smell of coffee filled the room. It flooded Thomas’ mind with kitchen and coffee memories of long ago.

Mr. Small raised his cup. “Happy birthday, Thomas,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” Mrs. Small said, “happy birthday!”

So it was that Thomas had his first full cup of bittersweet, black, black coffee. He felt so good sitting there in the new kitchen, in the new house, with his mother and father. He felt as though he were at the center of whatever would happen next. Talk would happen next. He could tell that by his mother’s excited face and his father’s solemn one. They would talk things out the way they always had. Late at night, he’d often heard them in the kitchen talking things out, with that pure, hot smell of coffee filtering up to his room.

“Mama,” Thomas said after awhile. He had taken a few sips of coffee. “… do you think now you are here and have seen everything that you’ll ever want to go back home?”

Mrs. Small sat very still. Thomas thought she looked tired. He knew he was tired—all of them were. But he had to know right now how she felt about staying in the new house. And he knew none of them wanted to think about Mr. Pluto just yet.

“No, Thomas,” said Mrs. Small, “I don’t think so. Your father and I have moved around quite a bit, it’s true. We travelled this whole country in a camper we made ourselves.”

“Looking … looking,” Mr. Small said quietly.

“We finally settled in North Carolina,” said Mrs. Small, “and we stayed there a good long while. But it was never right for us. No. No, never go back.”

“And you won’t be afraid of Mr. Pluto?” Thomas couldn’t help asking.

“Thomas!” Mr. Small spoke sharply. “Nobody talking about ghosts and chanting verse is going to scare us out of this house. Nobody is going to take it away from us.”

“Do you think he will try?” Thomas said.

His father was silent. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, but said nothing.

“Well,” said Mrs. Small, as though to answer Thomas and clear their thinking at the same time. She looked searchingly at Mr. Small.

“Mr. Pluto
is
the strangest man, isn’t he? I mean, you never ever told me he was such a huge man and such an odd-acting man.”

“Well, he didn’t seem …” began Mr. Small, “I mean to say, he wasn’t at all …”

For the second time this night, Thomas watched his father become rigid, his face controlled by an instant spasm. Mr. Small rose swiftly from the table.

“We won’t talk anymore about Pluto tonight,” he said.

“But, Papa,” Thomas protested, “we just got going on him.”

“Tomorrow is Sunday, Thomas,” Mr. Small said sternly.

Mrs. Small sucked in her breath. “Sunday,” she said. “My goodness, how in the world did I forget! I don’t have our clothes unpacked!” She looked worried. “I can’t remember where I put my hatboxes!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” said Mr. Small. “There will be plenty of time for your hat-box search in the morning if we all get to bed now. Thomas, you go ahead. Your room is at the end of the hall, on the right side as you go down the hall. Get your pajamas out of the suitcase, and your towel, too. Don’t forget your toothbrush.”

“It’s going to be Sunday all right,” Thomas said. “We’ll probably meet just everybody!”

“I don’t doubt that,” said Mr. Small.

“I did want to see the house tonight though,” Thomas said. He looked around at the lopsided kitchen. “I can tell straight off this room is smaller than it should be.”

“That’s because you’ve had time to see the house from the outside,” Mr. Small said.

“Let me see if I can figure it out,” said Thomas.

“I want you to go to bed. Here,” his father said, “I’ll show you myself to save time.”

On either side of the kitchen door there were sliding panels, which vanished into the wall at Mr. Small’s touch. Within were arched cubicles, large enough for a man stooping to hide.

“Why, I wouldn’t have imagined!” said Mrs. Small.

“That’s great!” Thomas said. “Boy, I wouldn’t have thought they were there either.”

“A very temporary measure,” Mr. Small said. “Slaves might be hidden in these walls for a short time, until the trapdoor could be raised so they could escape through the tunnel.”

“Old Dies Drear thought of everything,” said Thomas, clearly impressed.

“Now go upstairs,” Mr. Small said. “The twins have the room across from yours, so be quiet. We’ll be up shortly.”

“Papa, you won’t be able to get locks tomorrow,” Thomas said, “because it’s going to be Sunday.”

“Maybe I can find out where a locksmith lives,” Mr. Small answered. “I did forget for a minute that it would be Sunday. You go on up. Good night.”

Thomas went up to his room, treading softly down the carpeted hallway. The hall was not well lighted, and the ceiling was very high. There were closed, varnished doors on either side. Tall and dark, they didn’t seem at all friendly.

Why do I have to be so far away from the stairs? Thomas wondered. I’ll never be able to hear a sound back here!

He stopped long enough to find out if he could hear his mother and father talking. The silence made him feel he was smothering.

“That proves it,” he said. “You wouldn’t be able to hear anything coming
or
going. You’d just be a sitting duck!”

He thought of looking in all the rooms before going into his own bedroom. And he did march up to one door about halfway down the hall. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to turn the knob.

“Better wait until tomorrow,” he told himself and backed away from the door.

At his own door, at the end of the hall, he held on tightly to the doorknob but didn’t turn it. It was a brass knob. It felt cold. He looked across the hall, seeing the twins’ room. Their door was open, and a yellow nightlight shone through the darkness.

Gathering his courage, Thomas opened the door to his room and was at once blinded by bright light. There was a clear, glass globe suspended by a chain from the ceiling. The room was larger than he could have hoped, with a narrow fireplace to his left at the far end. There were two long windows across from him; his bed was placed between them, facing the door. There were smaller garret windows on each side of the fireplace. Directly in front of the fireplace was a large, old-fashioned captain’s chair. It was a ghostly chair, with its back to the room; it faced the bare, charred insides of the cold hearth. Thomas had the awful notion that someone he couldn’t see was sitting in it.

“Hello,” he said. “Who do you think you are?”