THE GRAY-PAINTED veranda closed in the house on all sides. As Thomas crossed it, back and forth, he felt it separate him and the house from everything beyond it. Many times he walked the veranda, looking for loose or trigger planks. He did find a few creaking boards. Stepping on them hard, pulling at them, jerking at them, he at last decided they concealed nothing.
Whoever old Pluto is, he thought, he sure takes good care of things.
Thomas made his way around the house. He took notice of every window, flower bed and what few bad pieces of siding there were. He missed nothing of what there was to see. There were fifteen windows on the first floor, and five of them were floor to ceiling. He counted six 5-foot window boxes loosely packed with fresh earth and seeded already.
What do you suppose he planted in them? Thomas wondered. He leaned over one of the boxes. He could see shoots of some kind, perhaps summer and autumn blooms, but he didn’t know much about flowers. He tried smelling the soil.
It smells sweet, he thought. Why did he have to do everything!
Thomas would have liked planting the boxes himself, carefully seeding them in evening, when soil seemed most fresh. He would have planted them with hyacinth, maybe, and pale green fern.
He might’ve planted them with poison, that Mr. Pluto, Thomas thought. Just a good-smelling poison. When you leaned over a box to see what was growing, you would get a whiff of it and that would be the end of you!
“Then he could be king,” Thomas said out loud. “That’s what he thinks he’s going to be.”
There were five entrances to the house. There was the front entrance, with the oak door and the steps with the tunnel beneath. There was one on either side of the house and two in the rear. One rear door led to the kitchen. The other looked quite old, was boarded up, and had been replaced by the newer one. Thomas examined the rear of the house more carefully. He had the feeling that there was something odd about it.
He backed away from the house to get a clearer view. Behind him, the land rose to the top of the hill.
There were trees up there—big, ancient trees, dense and wet with rain.
Just trees, he thought. If I climb one, I can see how the house looks from the roof down.
Thomas worked his way up the hill. Closer to the trees, he saw that they were a variety he didn’t know.
“Won’t be able to climb those,” he said eyeing the sharp needles. He looked behind him down the hill and was surprised to find he could see beyond the house to the stream below it. He saw that the house hadn’t been built directly facing the stream, but at an angle to it.
It looks like it faces the stream when you’re standing down there, he thought.
Thomas squatted down to study what lay before him. Then he stretched out on the damp ground with his head propped on his elbow. Slowly he grew calm and tired. After what had happened under the house, he was content to be where he was.
“The house doesn’t look so scary from up here,” he said. “It’s not pretty though, but that flat roof makes it look more graceful.”
Thomas stared a long time at the house and landscape, thinking of nothing in particular. He must have dozed. When at last he started and sat up, his legs were stiff. He got up, and his arms and face were cool.
He felt strange all of a sudden. He looked around him. The trees held darkness; below him, lights were on in the house. It seemed as though night had risen from the earth.
Thomas was ready to start down the hill as fast as he could go, when something rooted him where he was. He must have been hearing the sound for some time.
He couldn’t move now if he tried, for the sound was dreadful, there in the dark trees.
“Ahhh, ahhh. Ahhh, ahhh.”
It came from behind Thomas. The night was still; he could hear the sound clearly. Moving ever so slowly, he turned toward the trees. He listened for a long time, and, standing there, he became hidden by night.
Thomas was afraid, but it wasn’t the first time today he had been afraid.
It’s my birthday, he thought.
Papa, don’t turn out the lights. Please don’t.
He slipped through the trees, so used to walking in woods he could calculate where the pine boughs would touch him and have his hands in position to push them away. He walked on his toes, with one foot in front of the other. Indian scouts had walked that way so they could be ready to run in an instant if they had to.
Thomas followed that steady sound. His eyes darted blindly. Soon he was over the crest of the hill and moving downward on the other side. He didn’t look back. He knew that by now the trees and hill blotted out the lights of the house.
“Papa, just keep them on,” he said to himself. “I don’t need to see them.”
“Ahhh, ahhh,” the thing went.
Thomas was getting closer to it. It was louder; there was something else—a crackling, sighing sound running beneath the ahhhing. The new sound was like dry leaves breaking under foot.
A lot of leaves, Thomas thought. A lot of them breaking together, with a wind coming up to blow them away.
The trees grew thicker. Thomas used his shoulders to get through them. He had the feeling he was moving too fast, and he tried to slow himself down.
You won’t see anything quicker if you hurry than if you don’t. You can’t see anything anyhow.
His heart beat hard. As long as he didn’t allow himself to think what the ahhhing might be, he could keep moving. Holding his mind as blank as possible made him less afraid. Finally he was able to slow himself down, but by then he had made his mistake.
The springy, slippery bed of pine needles Thomas had been walking on was no longer beneath his feet. His shoes clomped loudly before he could silence them.
“Boards!” he said. He was walking on wood. He still couldn’t see anything.
The wood moved. Thomas began to slide. He was standing on a platform of some kind and the thing was rising. With his body off-balance, he had no chance to run.
Thomas slid to the ground in a crouch. He could see light coming from below the platform. The ahhhing had grown loud, with the crackling, sighing, under it, trying to catch it.
Then there was no sound. The light from the platform reflected an eerie red and orange in the trees. There was the smell of smoke. Thomas hugged the earth.
Ever so slowly, two doors in the platform opened. Thomas saw two hands and bright fire, which turned the trees a slippery gold. Out of fire and out of the ground rose a huge head, huge shoulders. Up and up the thing rose, with a head full of hair that was red and yellow with light. The hair hanging mosslike from its jowls bristled and tumbled gold and orange.
“Who’s that? What’s that!” called a harsh, loud voice.
The frightful head looked down. Thomas saw its angry face. The eyes of it caught the firelight and glinted emerald and wet. The eyes of it found Thomas holding on to the earth.
“What demon walks on Pluto’s house!”
“Devvvvil!” Thomas cried out shrilly.
He was breaking through the trees.
Devil!
Branches whipped at him; needles stung him. He fell twice. Once he got turned around, heading toward the fiery light again. He tripped and somersaulted, barely missing a tree. But he picked himself up and ran again toward his own house, up and over the hill. He was sure that the devil waited for him somewhere in the trees ahead.
“I’ve got to run,” he told himself. “It’s the nightmare! It’s just like the dream in the car!”
It seemed to him he was moving ever so slowly. “I’ve got to run and hit it hard!”
When he ran into it, he would hit it with his full force. That way, he would cause it to pause long enough so that he could get around it and away.
But the man or devil, that Pluto, whatever he was, had fooled Thomas. He had not moved fast enough to get in front of Thomas. He caught up with him from behind.
He caught Thomas in mid-stride. Thomas’ legs were still running when Pluto’s arms tightened around his chest and, with ease, swung him into the air.
It happened so suddenly, Thomas had the notion that time had stopped. His mind went blank. Then it began to function almost reluctantly again, as did his struggle to free himself. One endless thought clawed its way into and out of his head: No old man who was lame, who was like any old man anywhere, even if he weren’t lame, could ever catch him from behind. No, nor lift him off the ground and hold onto him.
Devil! Devil!
“Let go! Let me go!” Thomas whispered.
The man, that Pluto, heard Thomas and laughed. It was a mean laugh, like a snarl.
“You rounders,” he said, “think you can come scare me out of my wits! You want to know? I have found it before you, and you ought to see it!”
Something bright exploded inside Thomas. He had no time to put away carefully and remember what Pluto had said. Now he was awake, when a moment ago he had felt inside a dream. He lashed back with his elbows, in a motion that was swift and unexpected. Pluto let out a grunt, and his body sagged just enough for his arms to relax.
Thomas ran free.
That devil was coming also. Thomas could hear him, and he was not running, but striding swiftly through the trees.
Thomas was over the crest of the hill. Below him were lights in the new house. The house was sweet to see. Thomas laughed—it was no better than a cry—and he ran faster once he had cleared the trees.
Thomas burst open the kitchen door, tripped over the threshold and slid across the linoleum on his stomach. He hit the table; dishes crashed to the floor. He lay there, trying to breathe. Someone bounded down the stairs. It was his papa. He heard his mother calling, “What is it? What’s happening?” Somewhere above, the twins let out a tired wail.
Mr. Small was shocked by the scene that greeted him. Thomas lay sprawled half under the kitchen table, with broken dishes around him. There was mud on his trousers and a lone, dirt skid mark across the linoleum. The kitchen-door lock had been pulled completely out of the molding and hung, useless, by one screw. Mr. Small couldn’t think why he had locked the door in the first place, since he knew Thomas would be returning by way of it. But he had, and now he couldn’t imagine what force had pulled out the lock.
Mr. Small kneeled beside Thomas. “Thomas. Son,” he whispered. He didn’t touch the boy, but absently picked away bits of splintered glass from Thomas’ shirt.
Mrs. Small came in and kneeled down. “Who did this?” she said. “Is he bleeding? Thomas! Please get up!”
“Lock.” Thomas managed to say. He tried to keep his voice from trembling.
“It’s … he’s coming … lock.” He was too tired to bother with making sentences. All he wanted his mother to do was lock the back door so Pluto—that devil, whatever he was— wouldn’t be able to get him.
There was the sound of heavy feet on the rear veranda. A loud knock on the door caused it to slowly swing open. And framed by night stood that massive, black and bearded man some souls called Pluto.