IT WAS A DARK AND WINDSWEPT NIGHT, and Alexander was in one of his sulks. He slouched along the country road with a railroad lantern in the crook of his arm and took long strides, trying to outdistance me. Our shadows were long on the road in the light of the bobbing lantern. His only conversation was grunts.
By and by we came along past Leverette’s Woods, where the wind was thrashing the treetops. “The entrance to Lovers’ Lane is right around here somewheres,” I pointed out.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Alexander said. “You won’t get me into any Lovers’ Lane. We’ll go around by the pasture.” So we were soon waist-high in unmown grass, proceeding across the pasture Indian file. I had a job to keep up. Alexander wouldn’t have minded giving me the slip.
He slowed when the sloping roof of the old Leverette place loomed ahead of us. Then he dropped down in the weeds so quick I nearly fell over him.
“I tripped over a stone,” he said, though I didn’t see one.
“We better keep moving,” I said. “It’s cold, and besides, you’re going to set the grass afire with that lantern if you’re not careful.”
“Nag, nag, nag,” said Alexander. “I twisted my ankle.”
Across the moon an owl flew with some small creature in its claws. The lightning rods on the roof of the old house pointed like daggers at the black sky. From beyond the place came the sighing of a wind pump turning in the breeze. I smelled rain in the air and sensed a storm.
I heard something else then, I swear I did. Clear on the night air, it was a peculiar pyong, pyong, pyong with the occasional beep. Coming and going, it sent some strange signal.
But I couldn’t place it. It was nothing I knew or quite earthly. From the corner of my eye I checked Alexander to see if he’d heard it, too. But it was dark in the weeds, and the lantern seemed to burn lower.
“I think my ankle’s swelling. My sock feels tight.”
“You’d better give that ankle some exercise,” I said, starting up. But as I took my next step toward the house, I froze in my tracks.
All of the many windows in the old abandoned Leverette place were like dead eyes. Except for a window upstairs beneath the drooping drainpipe. From a single room came a dim blue light, flickering, pulsing.
Pyong, I heard distantly. Pyong, pyong, beep. A sudden wind went through me, or something did. The racing clouds cleared the moon, and I saw something on the roof among the lightning rods. It was some strange arrangement of rods and sticks stuck up on a small pole. But it faded while I watched.
Then, just for an instant, the whole place glowed. From every window in the house white light poured, throwing pale shapes on the untended yard.
It was electric light, but of course, the old Leverette place had never been wired for electricity. Old Man Leverette doesn’t even have electricity in his residence in Bluff City. I blinked, and the house went black again. Maybe a little blue sparked from the upstairs window again, then utter darkness.
I settled back in the weeds beside Alexander. He was bent low, examining his ankle. Or hiding his eyes. I decided to wait until he’d gathered what courage he had.
The old wind pump sighed again. Dry leaves scudded out in swirls from the woods. Just to liven up Alexander a little, I spoke the following lines in a spooky voice, right in his ear:
“’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. . . .”
All of Alexander’s hair seemed to stand up on his head. Even his beanie quivered. “Would you shut up with that kind of talk. Where’d you get it anyhow?”
“It’s Hamlet,” I explained, “Act Three. Don’t you ever read the blackboard?”
“This isn’t English class,” he snapped, “so cut it out. It’s getting late, and I’d better be getting—”
“You’re right,” I said fast. “We’d better conduct our investigation. We wouldn’t want midnight to find us in that place.”
I jumped up and headed for the house, as brave as possible under the circumstances. Alexander had no choice but to follow. Thunder rolled out of the distance, following a lightning flash.
At the top of a flight of wooden steps the porch was in deep shadow. Dead autumn leaves crunched beneath our boots, and Alexander tried to take charge. He held the lantern aloft at the front door. Over it a sign had recently been tacked up. It was orange cardboard with squiggly black letters that read:
REPENT WHAT’S PAST;
AVOID WHAT IS TO COME
“Tess and Bess did that sign for the entrance,” Alexander explained. “It’s a nice, scary motto.”
“It’s from Hamlet,” I said, “also Act Three.” We stepped inside, Alexander politely letting me go first.
In the front hall the lantern threw red light across curling wallpaper and up a long stairway. “Here’s where we’ll collect the admission fees,” Alexander said in a breaking voice. “We’ll have a couple jack-o’-lanterns around for light. The cobwebs are real.”
I touched his sleeve to quiet him. We stood in that shadowy place while I listened to the house. If I started Vibrating and picking up messages with my inner ear and my special Powers, I wanted to be close to the front door. But I heard nothing except the wind in the eaves and a spatter of rain in the gutters. Far off, a loose shutter clapped against the house.
“Quit listening,” Alexander muttered. “You’re just asking for trouble.”
Never a step ahead of me, he gave us a tour. The dining room was bare except for trash and an old-fashioned gasolier fixture hanging down from the ceiling.
“Harriet Hochhuth is going to hang in that china closet over there. We’re going to string her up with wires as an artificial corpse.”
Alexander scooted through a door, taking the lantern and leaving me in darkness. “This here’s the kitchen,” he hollered. I skipped on into the so-called kitchen, which was a filthy mess.
“We’re going to stretch Champ Ferguson out on this drainboard,” Alexander explained, “and disguise him as a monster, which we’re sewing together from spare parts found in a graveyard. There’ll be a big bucket of grape juice for blood. That’s one of my own crackerjack ideas.
“And over there”—Alexander pointed—“are the stairs to the cellar, where we’re setting up the deadman’s dungeon and model torture chamber.” He turned his back on the black cellar stairs, making it clear he wasn’t going down there tonight.
“Where am I to tell my fortunes?” I asked. “I wouldn’t mind a well-aired spot. This kitchen smells like a bear’s breath.”
“You’ll be upstairs in one of the bedrooms,” Alexander said in an offhand way. “We don’t have time to wander around up there.”
He was more than ready to leave right then.
“Listen, Alexander,” I said, “we’ve come out here to give this house a thorough investigation. We aren’t going to learn a thing with a quick look around a couple of rooms.”
He sulked.
“It’s all right if you’re afraid to go upstairs with me,” I said. “I understand.”
I had him there. He wasn’t about to hang around down here all by his lonesome. His imagination was already working overtime.
We were in the dining room again as Alexander edged toward the front door. He knew he was going to have to go upstairs with me, but he was putting it off. Setting the lantern on the floor, he reached down to rub his so-called twisted ankle.
Suddenly, right behind him, I saw a small wink of light, bright in the lantern glow. I’d like to have turned to stone. My mouth fell open. Alexander happened to notice my bugging eyes.
Slowly, slowly he turned to look behind himself, his face as white as this page. The brass knob on the china closet door was winking in the light and turning.
My boots seemed nailed to the floor, and Alexander began to sway. Still the knob kept turning, all by itself.
Squeaking on its hinges, the door opened upon the blackness of a tomb within. Peering from inside was a frightful sight, a face not quite human in the flickering lantern flame. It appeared to be an ungrinning skull.
“Oh, I will be a good boy for the rest of my life,” Alexander moaned, “if only this isn’t happening!”
He sagged, but he couldn’t run any more than I could. The ghastly little face looked up into Alexander’s tear-filled eyes. The terrible little mouth drooled. It was Roderick.
He stepped out of the china closet in his small pair of bib overalls.
“What say, Roderick?” I greeted him, though my mouth was dry. Roderick looked us over but said nothing.
“Who,” moaned Alexander, “who in the—”
But the kitchen door banged open then, sending a shudder through the house. Footsteps stalked, and another fearful apparition appeared in the dining room door. Alexander’s head swiveled toward this new horror. He grabbed his throat.
Daisy-Rae marched in. “There you are, you little rascal!” She was wearing a feed sack nightgown and a nightcap of faded flannelette. Sweeping Alexander aside, she made a grab for Roderick and hooked him by the ear.
“Ain’t I told you time and agin not to slip off? It’s a-way past your bedtime!”
Alexander’s eyes were like saucers, and in truth, Daisy-Rae in her night togs is a sight. He managed to stand clear of her flailing elbows as she nearly shook Roderick loose from his ear.
“Who,” Alexander moaned again, “who in the—”
“Hey there, Blossom,” Daisy-Rae said, nodding her wan face at me.
“Hey there, Daisy-Rae,” I replied.
“Be glad you ain’t got any little brothers,” she said. “They are a continual worry. It’s my own fault. I had no more sense than to tell Roderick here that you and yore Alexander was coming over tonight to check over this place for haunts. Naturally the little scamp had to spy on you. You know how he is.” Roderick’s neck seemed permanently bent, but she never turned him loose.
Out of the room she marched, quick as she’d come. Roderick scampered by her side, trying to keep up with his ear. The back door banged behind them as off they went to their chicken coop home.
After a long pause Alexander spoke. “Don’t tell me. I don’t even want to know.”
Delay it though he would, it was time to explore upstairs. The thought of those throbbing blue lights in the upper window skated past my mind. But I planted a firm foot on the stairs, keeping Alexander by me. Thunder crashed above the attic. Lantern light wobbled on the treads as we climbed up through the house. The things that live in walls skittered, seeming to warn one another. Cobwebs swept our beanies and caressed our ears.
Where the stairs curved at the top, I dropped back a little just to see how far ahead of me Alexander would go. The ceiling had fallen up there, so he crunched along a step or two over broken plaster, holding his lantern high.
Alexander opened the first door he came to and banged it shut again. Making a strangled sound, he took flight and shot into the next room he saw. After a moment he spoke in a hollow voice. “Now here is a good room for your fortune-telling, Blossom. Yes, this will do very well.”
I was standing in the upstairs hall. Even without the lantern I could still see. My gaze fell to the door Alexander had opened and closed so quick. There was a line of light under it, bright across the dusty hall floor.
It glowed like daylight but whiter. To save my soul I couldn’t walk past that door. I looked back down the curving stairs into blackness.
“Get in here, Blossom!” Alexander called out from a far room. “Don’t go near that door! You hear me? There’s something there. I don’t know what, but . . . something.”
I hardly heard him. Everything faded except for the light beneath the mystery door. All by itself my hand reached for the knob.