Mystery of Drear House (9 page)

“Maybe so,” Thomas murmured. When we come back, I’ll take a good look, he thought. Funny, to put a door there. But I guess someone did want it to look like a room. Who do you suppose? Do I tell Papa about this?

The tunnel was deeply dark. Thomas’s flashlight was dim in the blackness. He could see Pesty’s back, but he couldn’t see Mrs. Darrow. The tunnel turned and snaked. They had to walk single file. Great-grandmother Jeffers was behind Thomas. He held on to her hand now, leading her. The ceiling was perhaps six feet from the floor, barely high enough for Pesty’s mother.

“You forgot and left that lantern burning back there, Pesty,” Thomas called.

“Didn’t forget,” she said. Her voice seemed to be right next to his ear. Tunnels could do that, could throw back and echo sound. “Turn it off when you go back,” she said. “It has a knob that you just turn and the flame goes out. I’ll let you do that,” she said.

He thought her tone of voice sounded different somehow. “You could burn up that room, leaving the light on,” he told her. “Look, where are we going? Where does this tunnel lead?”

Pesty’s giggle was all tinkly in his ear. “Mr. Thomas, you are so funny! I told you, I got to take my mama home.”

“Oh,” he said. Well, she had told him. Of course, they were going over to the Darrows. He just didn’t want to think about it.

“It’s going to be too far for you, Great-grandmother,” he said.

“Thomas, I’m doing all right,” she said. “I’ve got my coat and hat on, too. It’s not snowing on me in here; it’s not icy either. Long as I have hold of you, I can’t fall. Just keep on. I’ll be fine.”

“Pesty, how much farther?” he said as casually as he could. He didn’t want to disturb Mrs. Darrow there in the darkness.

“You sure are in a hurry.” There came Pesty’s delicate laughter again. “We’ll be there in a little while.”

They walked on. He thought of Mr. Pluto and how it happened he couldn’t take Great-grandmother to see him today.

Then they walked through standing water. “Did you get your feet too wet?” He asked Great-grandmother.

“No, no,” she said. “My feet are just fine.”

In a short time Thomas and Great-grandmother came up behind Pesty and Mrs. Darrow. The tunnel dead-ended. Set in the cave end was a makeshift door made from pieces of wood. Pesty placed the side of her head up against the door. Mrs. Darrow did the same, murmuring a meaningless sound of words.

“Pesty!”

“Shhhh, Mr. Thomas!” Pesty whispered. “We got to listen.”

They listened. And Thomas and Great-grandmother Jeffers stood still in the dark, about to jump out of their skins. Thomas had flicked out the light, for whoever could be on the other side of the door might see it. No telling what surrounded them in the blackness either. Spirits of the dead. The living, maybe, about to drag them off somewhere in the maze of tunnels.

“It’s okay,” finally Pesty said. Her voice remained low. “Come on, Mama.” Mrs. Darrow was humming now to herself. The sound was not unpleasant.

Guess she is happy, Thomas thought. I sure hope she is.

Pesty pushed on the door, and it slid to the right. There was enough light to see that there were clothes hanging.

“The back of a closet,” whispered Great-grandmother Jeffers.

“What?” said Thomas.

“You walk in the closet, and you walk out the closet. That’s it,” Pesty told him. She led her mother inside, pushing the clothing over to make way. Great-grandmother and Thomas followed.

Thomas paused, let Great-grandmother by. His heart thumped in his chest. “Do I close this—this opening?” he asked.

“Yes,” Pesty said.

He closed the back of the closet, sliding it into place with his hands. And he walked through the hanging clothes; then he pushed them into place again. No one would ever know there was a hidden door to a tunnel behind them.

This is the queerest day I’ve ever lived through, and it’s not even over yet. Can you believe what we’re doing? he thought. And that Mrs. Darrow? What would Papa say about her? Ohhhh don’t think.

Pesty led her mother to a brass bed across the room from the closet.

“My mama’s bedroom,” Pesty said, seeing Thomas and Great-grandmother looking wide-eyed all around. The brass bed shone with a pink glow. “Mama stays here most of the time.” She took her mother’s shoes off and helped her under the covers. She arranged the shawl around her. “Me and Macky will walk her some,” Pesty explained, “but not in the wintertime. In the snow time Macky don’t know she walks. She will walk in the tunnels, then, and nobody know about that but me.”

Pesty poured water from a pitcher on the end table into a glass. She gave Mrs. Darrow the pills she’d forgotten. Mrs. Darrow took her pills, drank the water, and at last sank down against her pillows. Pesty washed the stickiness from her mother’s face.

“Where
is
Macky?” Thomas asked. He was happy to be back in a house, even if it was the Darrow house, and out of the forbidding tunnel.

“Couldn’t say,” Pesty said. “Maybe he’s home. Keep your voice down. Don’t want them to know somebody’s here.”

“Who don’t you want to know?” Thomas asked.

“Anybody. Wouldn’t do, if someone’s in the house. How’m I going to explain something like that?” Pesty said. “If you speak low, they think she is just talking with me or to herself.”

“You mean ...” Thomas began.

“She means, nobody knows about that tunnel but her and Mrs. Darrow,” Great-grandmother Jeffers said. “How would she explain our being here when no one saw us come in from the outside? Isn’t that right, Pesty?”

Pesty nodded. She wet a towel in the washbasin. She wiped her own shoes off from the tunnel wet and dirt, then Mrs. Darrow’s. She handed the towel to Thomas. He cleaned off his and Great-grandmother’s shoes.

“Thank you, Thomas,” Great-grandmother Jeffers said. He handed Pesty back the towel; she put it in a hamper next to the stand.

Pesty patted Mrs. Darrow’s pillows. Her mother lay on her back, straight as an arrow, staring at Thomas. Now and then she would nod for no reason that Thomas could see.

“Once upon a time,” Mrs. Darrow said, grinning at him.

“She’s going to tell a story,” he whispered to Pesty.

“She might and she might not,” Pesty said. “Sometimes she will.”

Great-grandmother Jeffers sat in an old easy chair by the head of the bed.

They spoke in quiet voices so that Mrs. Darrow would stay calm and so they would not be overheard. Thomas settled in a straight chair on the other side, toward the foot of the bed. “Macky told me she likes to tell old kinds of stories,” he said.

“Is that so?” said Great-grandmother Jeffers.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “There’s one about an Indian maiden he told.”

Mrs. Darrow sat bolt upright in bed. Her black eyes glared at Thomas.

“Shhh! Mr. Thomas, don’t you say nothing about
that
!” Pesty said.

“What, the Indian maiden?” Thomas asked before he thought.

Mrs. Darrow commenced climbing out of the bed.

“What a pretty shawl! You like that pretty shawl, Mama!” Pesty said in a loud whisper. “Great-grandmother Jeffers, you want it back today?”

“Why, no, dear, you let your mama wear it as long as she wants to. She seems to like it.”

Distracted by talk of the shawl, Mrs. Darrow grabbed hold of it to wrap it more tightly around her. She climbed back into bed.

Thomas was amazed at how fast she could move. What would she have done to him? he wondered. He gazed at her long, thick hair and then, around the room, just so she wouldn’t think he was staring. There was a picture on the wall opposite him. He couldn’t quite make it out.

They say Indian hair is like hers. So there is native ancestry on the mother’s side? he thought. He reminded himself that Darrow men were descended partly from Indians, too. River Ross, River Lewis ... He recalled that it was River Thames said to have come here with Dies Drear. Do you suppose—

“What is your mama’s name?” he asked Pesty, barely moving his lips. Pesty was there in front of him, sitting on the bed, holding her mama’s hand.

Before she could speak, Mrs. Darrow spoke. “I sit with my feet on the right,” she said.

“Mama, come on now,” Pesty said, patting her hand. She glanced around apologetically. “When she’s feeling better, she likes to talk,” she said.

“Call me Eater,” Mrs. Darrow said in a disjointed, detached voice. “Hunters brought back plenty food. I will eat anythin’.” She laughed hugely.

Thomas and Great-grandmother Jeffers were bewildered.

“Mr. Thomas, don’t say nothing,” Pesty said, casually. “She’s telling something, maybe talking about the—” Pesty mouthed the words “Indian maiden.”

“When they were together one time,” Mrs. Darrow murmured, “she told Brave Wolf, ‘If you dare to beat me again, I will fight you. I don’t care if you kill me.’ After that moment he was ever her slave.”

“She’s just talking,” Pesty said happily. “Guess just snatches of stories.”

“From October until June,” Mrs. Darrow murmured, “October till June.” She closed her eyes and appeared to go to sleep.

“She’s in the October-June phase now,” said a voice. “She’s not just talking.”

Thomas jumped up and spun around, almost toppling the chair he had been sitting on. There stood Mac Darrow. How long he had been there Thomas couldn’t say. Macky was like a tall, dark shadow, holding the door open with his shoulder. Now he came up to stand at Thomas’s side. He still had the outdoors about him, and a musty scent, too. He looked dusty. He put a dirt-smeared hand on the back of the chair. “You—you want to sit down?” Thomas asked, and moved out of his way.

Macky sat down. Nodded at his sleeping mama and Pesty. He stood up again, absently, to greet Great-grandmother Jeffers. Pesty told him who Great-grandmother was, that she and Thomas had walked over to visit. Then, looking exhausted, Macky sat down again.

Great-grandmother Jeffers smiled. She regarded Mac Darrow, but she didn’t say anything to him. His hair was gray with dirt and dust. His face, his clothes were damp and soiled. He’s been hunting underground, she realized. What a peculiar family, all the time scurrying in the dark.

They were silent, watching Macky. Thomas felt a keen sympathy for him. Macky looked beaten. Sort of like he’s sick of ... himself, Thomas thought.

Pesty frowned at Thomas and Great-grandmother. Slowly it dawned on him that the frown was a warning: Keep still. Don’t give anything away to Macky. Why? Thomas wondered. He’s on our side, isn’t he? Well, you wouldn’t know it by the way he tricked me in the woods. He’s still a Darrow, and don’t forget it.

There was a long silence. Macky studied his mother’s sleeping face. In sleep she didn’t look at all odd or crazy, Thomas noted. “I got lost,” Macky said abruptly. “Fell into a hole by accident.” Smirking. “Been lost for three hours. Never thought I’d see the light of day.”

“L
OST? WHAT HOLE?”
Pesty said. “You know Daddy says not to go wandering around. That’s how you get lost. Not minding. You not mind, a tunnel will fall in on you one time.”

Pesty surprised Thomas. She seemed to him even more upset than what she said to Macky showed. She walked the tunnels. But then she did know where she was going.

“Are there many tunnels?” asked Great-grandmother.

“I don’t know,” Pesty said. “
I’m
not allowed to play around in them.” She gazed hard, warning, at Thomas and Great-grandmother.

She’s hiding everything from Macky. I don’t like it, Thomas thought. What if he found out? Maybe that’s why he’s been exploring underground. He didn’t fall into a hole. He could’ve gone in the same way Pesty and I did into Pluto’s cave. Maybe he’s the someone got in there, trying to find out something.

Macky ignored Pesty. He was staring at his mama. “If you forget what you’re doing for a minute, you can get lost,” he said with sadness. “If you get scared and panic, you’ll never find your way back.”

Is he talking about himself or his mama? Thomas wondered.

“You want to sit down?” Macky asked Thomas politely.

“No, thank you,” Thomas said, pleased that Macky remembered he was there.

“You must not have panicked down there then, young man,” said Great-grandmother Jeffers, “else you wouldn’t be among us.”

“No, ma’am, I didn’t,” Mac Darrow said. “But when I couldn’t find my way, I thought I’d never get out.” He studied space at the foot of the bed.

“You were lucky,” said Great-grandmother.

Silence, like a storm gathering, surrounded them. Pesty looked doubtfully at Macky; he stared defiantly at the floor.

Mrs. Darrow opened her eyes. Grinning, she greeted her son. “Mac, Macs, Ha-ha. Make tracks. Let’s go hunting. Ha-ha.”

Forlornly Macky smiled. He leaned over, kissed his mama’s cheek. Thomas never would’ve believed big Mac Darrow could do something so tender.

He turned to them and explained. “Mama, talking about travelin’ in the October-June time, like the season is now. Talking about a hundred, hundred fifty years ago. She must’ve heard tales. Just bits and pieces, I guess. If you listen good, you might can figure it. Sometimes I think I know, but then I don’t know.”

“Figure what?” Pesty said suspiciously.

“Figure out the time when the people had to separate each fall, and in winter and spring, too,” Macky said. “They couldn’t all stay in one place and feed everybody and all the horses. So they had to part company. But in the summer the bands got back together for the hunt or maybe to fight an enemy.”

“Your mama is—are you talking about—about Indians?” Thomas said.

“She’ll talk about sitting on the right. That’s the way most of the tribewomen sat, although I don’t know which tribe,” Macky said. “And which must mean some other women sat with their feet on the left, I guess.”

“Oh, shoot. Mama don’t mean nothing by that stuff!” Pesty said.

Said too quickly, it seemed to Great-grandmother Jeffers. She watched Pesty and then Macky and listened intently. It’s all mixed up, but it makes sense, too, she was thinking. Here we have a brother and sister at odds. Each has a piece of some lost puzzle. Pesty knows much. Macky is trying to discover.

“The Indian …” Thomas started to say “maiden” but remembered not to. At the same moment the picture on the wall across from him caught his attention.