Corner of the Housetop: Buried Secrets (15 page)

Despite the warmth of the house, the bed he'd helped put together was heaped with blankets, the topmost being a poorly-sewn patchwork quilt of many mismatching materials. It seemed very out of place in the clean, organized house Mrs. Worthington kept.

"No," Derek answered softly. "It's me, Derek."

"Derek," she repeated in a hushed voice.

Leaning the ladder against the wall, he moved into the room a couple steps. "I could get him for you. He's just down stairs."

"No," Catherine said, rocking her head from side to side slowly. "Thank you, but no."

Her voice was hollow and withered, barely audible from across the small room. She was paler than Derek had ever seen her, her face shiny with perspiration.

"Are you too hot?"

"Chilled, actually," she answered with a shaky smile, her white lips trembling.

Worry gripped Derek. Had she been this bad all along? How could he have not noticed?
I suppose she only went outside on her better days,
he mused. "Are you sure you don't want me to get someone?"

"No, I'm fine. Just sleepy." Sighing as if it had taken all her energy to say those few words, Catherine slowly closed her eyes, her head sinking farther into her pillow. "Ever so sleepy," she whispered.

Debating whether or not he really should get Jonathan, or at least
someone
, Derek decided against it. Catherine knew if she wanted to see anyone or not, and people walking needlessly around her room would just keep her awake; a bad thing when she obviously was in desperate need of rest.

Closing the door silently, Derek continued up the hall with careful steps, the ladder tucked close to his body so he would be sure not to hit anything with it and make noise on accident.

When he got to Beth's room, he knocked on the door lightly. After a moment of silence, he went in.

The room wasn't much different from how it was when he lived in it. It was still small, with the same straw mattress and little table. The only real changes were the curtains which Beth must have added herself and the standing cupboard. Beth obviously hadn't gone too much out of her way to make herself at home. Aside from the curtains, the room was as bare as it had been before. With a pang of remorse, Derek noticed that the cupboard was blocking his secret store box.

On the small stand there was a stub of a beeswax candle with a blackened wick sticking out of it sitting in a candleholder. He was suddenly struck by the fact that he'd left his lamp in the stables. Wishing he had something a little bigger to take up with him, he opened the drawer, hoping Beth kept her matches where he had. Taking one out of her little box, he struck it and lit the wick.

It isn't much, but
, he reasoned,
it's better than nothing.

Sighing heavily, he looked at the camouflaged door.
Up to the attic,
he thought.

The attic was the worst place Derek could imagine in the whole world. The stairs up to the attic were narrow and steep, with open spaces on both sides. Spiders' webs clung to each step and were strung across the gap from the edge of the stairs to the wall.

The attic itself was either very hot or very cold. If it was warm outside, the air was still and stale tasting. If it was cold, there was a howling draft that blew the sheets and dust all through the room.

Its smell of dust and mildew was thick enough to choke someone if they just thought of it. The floor boards creaked even when no one was walking on them and there was about a foot of open space along the front wall that dropped into the dark crawl space below.

As for wildlife, there were fat, ugly, spiders in the summer and vicious, red squirrels in the winter. There were no windows and the dark shadows seemed to absorb any light a candle or lamp might have given off. All bringing a light into the attic did was make the patches of blackness shift a little.

In the massive room there were piles of boxes and old trunks full of clothes. Moth-eaten dresses hung against the walls and torn furniture covered with white sheets was stacked every few feet. Shelves of dusty books and broken, cobweb-covered knick-knacks were pushed against the far wall.

Derek had been well-acquainted with the attic from a very young age. Shortly after Mr. Worthington died, Mrs. Worthington discovered that locking Derek away in the dark was a very effective punishment. He would spend days at a time curled up at the bottom of the stairs, huddled as close to the attic door as he could make himself, just waiting for someone to let him out.

Now, standing in front of the open door, holding Beth's small candle and looking up into the darkness, Derek felt his throat tightening as the hot smell of rot and old fabric wafted down to him.

Using the small table to prop the door open thought technically it stayed open completely on its own, he was taking no chances of it accidentally closing he held the ladder in front of him and started the long, steep climb to the attic.

As he got to the top of the stairs, Derek heard a low humming noise from the far corner. He lifted his candle to get a better look. Up by the ceiling was a large, gray mass with several hornets swarming around it.

"Oh, wonderful," he muttered.

Were it smaller, he would have just brought it down and drowned it in a bucket of water. However, with the size of the nest and the number of hornets flying around and crawling on it, he didn't dare get that close with just his knife and unprotected arms.

Leaving the ladder by the top of the stairs, he went back down to Beth's room. Blowing out the candle and leaving it on her table, he walked quietly down the servant stairs and out through the side door. The best thing to do would be to get one of the burlap sacks to tie the nest up in and then take outside and burn it.

As he went by, Gabriel was sitting on the porch, a book open in his lap. "What did Mother want you to do?"

"Get rid of a hornets' nest in the attic."

"Are you finished?"

"No. The thing is so big, if all the bugs got together and flew up at the same time they could probably carry the whole house away. Beth had to have noticed them coming out of the crawl before now," he added in annoyance.

"Maybe she just didn't say anything because they didn't bother her."

Scowling, Derek replied, "How nice for her," before continuing across the lawn.

In less than five minutes he'd climbed up to the loft, gotten several burlap bags and lengths of twine, then returned to the house. This time, however, he had his oil lamp with him. The more light, the better. After double-checking that the table propping the door open wasn't going to move by any means, Derek climbed back up into the darkness.

He looped a length of twine around the top of one of the bags, weaving it between the threads of the material every few inches until he'd fashioned a sort of large, draw-string purse.

"All right." He pulled the gloves on quickly then set the ladder up under the nest. Taking the bag, he stepped up, careful to move slowly so he didn't startle the hornets.

He remembered the first time Mrs. Worthington told him to get rid of a hive that was under the awning. Several bee stings and a few falls off the ladder later, he'd been sitting in the kitchen with Beth slathering a thick, white paste all over his arms, chest, and back.

The hive had been taken down and burned, however, and as that was all Mrs. Worthington cared about, she was in a good mood.

A little older and little wiser, Derek was careful to keep his footing as he held the top of the bag open as wide as he could, lifting it slowly around the hive. When he got it to the ceiling, he pulled the strings quickly, securing the bag around the nest. The few hornets he'd caught mid-flight were buzzing loudly.

Keeping his arms away from the sides of the bag, he jumped down and got another bag and piece of twine. After slipping the second bag over the first and tying it more tightly around the top, he took the knife out of his back pocket and cut the nest away from the ceiling, letting the weight of the falling mass pull the drawstring on the bag the rest of the way closed.

Caught off-balance by the sudden weight, Derek dropped the bag and slipped off the ladder. In a desperate attempt to catch himself, he reached his hand out to grab the top of a tall chest of drawers that stood close beside him. He got his fingers on the top, but something on it slid under his hand, sending him crashing to the ground, followed closely by several objects that bounced and broke as they skittered across the floor. Derek strained to hear if anyone was coming to see what the noise was over the frenzied racket the hornets in the sack were making as a thick cloud of dust gently floated down around him.

Sitting up just in time to see the chest of drawers tipping dangerously towards him, he moved as it fell over on its side, sending up another cloud of dust. The hornets in the bag buzzed furiously while the ones he hadn't managed to scoop up in the bag lighted on the stub of nest that was still clinging to the ceiling.

Derek groaned in pain, rubbing his side.
That could have been me
, he thought, looking at the toppled-over chest of drawers. He sighed with relief, then waited quietly for a moment for someone to come storming up the stairs, yelling for him to get out of the house.

There was no sound except the humming of the hornets.

Finally moving, his back and legs aching terribly, Derek looked at the chest of drawers. "There is no way I can pick that up," he muttered, getting to his feet with a wince. Shaking his head, he picked up the third bag and dropped the first two in it, tying it closed with the last piece of twine. He felt secure in the thought that it would be impossible for a hornet to sting him through three, thick layers of burlap.

He started towards the door, lamp and bag in hand, when he stopped. If he went down now, he'd just have to come back up to clean the mess he'd made. He figured he might as well do it all while he was right there.

Setting the bag down, Derek used the side of his foot to scoot as much of the broken pieces of dishes and glasses into a pile in the corner as he could. He set several books on the shelf against the wall then went back for the large picture his hand had slipped on in the first place.

"It's all your fault," he told it in annoyance, lifting it off the floor.

Turning it over, expecting to see an old family picture or an out-dated portrait of Jonathan, Derek was startled to see a girl with dark eyes, long, brown curls, and very handsome features staring out of the frame at him.

Perhaps somewhere around his own age, she had a glint in her eye that suggested confidence, independence, and almost defiance. Most of her hair was pulled out of her face with a pink ribbon. Her dress was light green with mint trim and a lot of lace and ruffles. Her hands were folded in her lap complacently; but it was a gesture that didn't seem to match the spirit in her eyes. The curves of her face were gentle despite the stern line her lips were set in. The loose textures and soft lines flowed all the way from the girl's curly hair to the laces on her white boots. In their own way, her independence and strength made her even more beautiful that Catherine.

Derek brought the painting closer to the light, studying it. It was dusty and its frame was cracked probably from the fall. There was a small tear in the canvass near the bottom by the girl's left foot and another on the very edge at the top. It didn't look nearly as well taken care of as the other paintings Mrs. Worthington had in the attic, which were covered in white cloth or brown packing paper. This one had been left out in the open, on the very top of the tallest pile of junk in the room.

"What were you doing up there?" he asked her, leaning it up against the chest of drawers. "All alone. It must be terrible. I know what it's like to be stuck here in the dark by yourself."

With the painting more in the light, Derek noticed something written at the bottom, just above the edge of the frame. He studied it for a moment, recognizing each of the letters but unable to say what they might mean.

The humming from the bag was fading but the hornets that were still hovering above him were becoming more and more restless.