The House Where Nobody Lived

WHILE THE GALE HOWLED outside, school dragged on. Rose Rita had a study period with David, and since she was one of those people who always did their studying days ahead of time, she didn’t have to work hard to catch up, the way some kids did. She saw with alarm that David looked worse than ever. She had briefly spoken to Lewis just after they both arrived at school, and Lewis had also appeared strained and tense, with red eyes and a drooping, tired expression.

David was ten times worse. His face was as lined as a little old man’s, and his red-rimmed eyes darted back and forth like two animals trapped in shallow, dark caves. Even the bullies were leaving him alone these days—he looked so beat-up that maybe they were afraid they’d get blamed for fighting with him.

The teacher in the study hall had a habit of waiting until the students had begun to read their texts or scribble in their notebooks, then strolling down to the teachers’ lounge for a cup of coffee. As soon as she left, Rose Rita turned around and spoke to David, who sat at the desk behind her: “Are you all right?”

David nodded, but his lower lip quivered, and he blurted, “N-no!” He gasped for air, then jerked his head toward a table in the far back corner of the room, where students sat to work on group projects. He picked up his math book and headed back to the table, and Rose Rita got her own book and followed him. By then nobody was paying much attention, anyway. As soon as the teacher had gone, everyone started talking and joking, just quietly enough so that the next-door teacher wouldn’t hear and come in to scold them.

Under cover of the buzz and rustle of all those conversations, David opened his math book and bent down over it. Rose Rita sat across from him and opened her book too. “What’s up?” she asked in little more than a whisper.

David had to try several times before he could speak. “D-do you buh-believe in guh-ghosts?” he stammered. “B-b-because I, I really do think our h-h-house is huhhaunted.”

Rose Rita felt a pang inside. She remembered some terrifying times—the ghostly figure that Lewis had accidentally summoned once when his uncle gave him a lucky three-cent piece, the terrible haunted opera house where an evil spirit had cast a spell to enslave the world, and other bad memories. “I have to,” she said. “I’ve sort of seen some.”

David’s face contorted as he began to spill out the reasons for his question. He started with Uncle Jonathan’s remark, went on to the things Lewis had hinted at, and wound up with things he had seen and heard. Rose Rita had to listen hard, and sometimes he had to repeat himself. She followed the drift, though.

As Mr. Keller had repaired the floors of the upstairs bedrooms, the sound of the night drums had grown worse. Though not much more than painting remained to be done in the rooms, now Mr. Keller would never spend more than half an hour upstairs. Complaining that the paint fumes were too strong, he would come back down and rest, but as often as not he would decide not to go back up. This was not like David’s father, who always said that you should plan a job so that you could work at it and finish it as soon as possible. David said he thought his father looked scared after these episodes. “H-he h-h-hears things up th-there,” David said urgently.

His mother was losing sleep too, and she and Mr. Keller were having bitter arguments about money late at night. David was beginning to hate going to bed. If he didn’t hear the sounds of his parents’ angry voices, he heard the pounding of those drums.

When the storm blew itself out that afternoon, the autumn leaves lay strewn and soggy on the ground, and the trees reached bare, skeletal fingers up toward the clearing sky. Rose Rita spoke to Lewis, and what she had to say dismayed him.

“You’ll have to,” said Rose Rita urgently. “I certainly can’t go to David’s house for a sleepover. He wants someone else to see and hear these things, just so he’ll know he isn’t losing his mind. The Kellers know they sort of owe you one, because of how your uncle has helped them. If David asks his mom and dad if you can come and spend the night this coming Friday, they’ll say yes. Look, Lewis, you’ve got to get up the nerve for this. I know it’s a lot to ask—”

“You’re not,” insisted Rose Rita. “You have plenty of reason to be afraid. But you know what a hero is? It’s someone who’s afraid and still does what he has to do, that’s all.”

They walked to her house beneath a sky of flying, broken clouds, buffeted by increasingly chilly gusts of wind. It looked as if a real cool spell was moving in, a taste of winter days ahead. Rose Rita knocked on the door, and Mrs. Zimmermann answered it almost at once. She must have been in the parlor already. “My goodness,” she said. “Come in, you two. You look as glum as a gib-cat!”

“To tell the truth, I don’t know!” responded Mrs. Zimmermann with a chuckle. “Shakespeare mentions it in one of his plays—Henry IV, I think. ‘As melancholy as a gib-cat,’ it goes, and though I don’t know what one is, that’s the way you look. Sit down and tell me what the trouble is. More supernatural goings-on at the Hawaii House?”

Mrs. Zimmermann listened solemnly. Then she gave Lewis a keen, knowing glance. “I’d say the decision is up to Lewis, but it may be a good idea. I have spent a lot of time driving to universities and calling people who study folklore and mythology.”

“We tried to research that too,” said Lewis. “But the trouble is, our school library has hardly anything about Hawaii at all, except in the encyclopedias, and the public library just has two travel books.”

“Information is sort of hard to come by,” admitted Mrs. Zimmermann. “However, I have found out a few things that have me caught betwixt and between, as they say down South. Did any of the encyclopedias or books you found mention Kamehameha?”

“It ties in to the Hawaii House, but in a kind of complicated way. Anyhow, Kamehameha was the first king to unite all of the Hawaiian Islands under one rule. He was born at a time when the islands had four different quarreling kings. He became a respected warrior, and during one of his battles, the volcano sacred to Pele erupted and destroyed so many of his enemies that Kamehameha’s army won a great victory. The people decided that meant Pele was on his side.

“Well, to make a long story short, before 1800, Kamehameha became the single king of all the Hawaiian people. The Hawaiians think of him the way we think of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln put together.”

Mrs. Zimmermann laughed. “Heavens, Rose Rita, you get right to the point. Well, the short answer again is this: Makalani was distantly related to Kamehameha. She truly had royal blood in her veins. Now, I think she fell deeply in love with Abediah Chadwick, and I believe he loved her. But I can guess at what must have happened. One of her relatives on the islands resented her running away with an American sailor, even if he was a wealthy man. That relative, whoever he or she was, appealed to Pele.”

“Exactly so,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann. “When people took anything, even a fragment of hardened lava, from Pele’s islands, she saw to it that they had plenty of misery unless they returned it. Now it appears that Pele—or some force, anyway—has sent ghostly warriors to patrol the Hawaii House. They can be dangerous, as you very well know, but one thing they can’t do is to retrieve solid objects. Like all ghosts, they are insubstantial and pass right through ordinary matter, the way we pass through air.”

In a resigned voice, Mrs. Zimmermann said, “I am an expert in magic amulets and talismans, Rose Rita, not a student of the unnatural history of ghosts. I imagine that they separate the spirits of the living from their bodies in some way, and without the spirit, the body perishes. Anyway, if, and it is a big if, we could discover just what the Marching Dead are trying to find or retrieve, we would stand a good chance of being able to help David and his family.”

“Who knows? There may well be, but I haven’t come across any. Oh, I wish there were some foolproof, easy way to put an end to our doubts and our suspicions, but there isn’t. At any rate, we members of the Capharnaum County Magicians Society have sworn not to allow any evil magic to operate in our territory, and—”

Someone pounded on the door, and everyone jumped a foot. Mrs. Zimmermann rose from her armchair, but a moment later the door opened and Uncle Jonathan poked his head in. “I thought you two might be here,” he said to Lewis. “What’s this? A meeting of the Committee to Chase Out Haunts, Ghoulies, and Ghosties without me?”

“Oh, come in, Fat Ears,” said Mrs. Zimmermann tartly. “We were trying to work out a plan to take a peek inside the top floor of the Kellers’ house.”

“You’d be too busy to do any good,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann. “Besides, we have already fouled things up once. No, we have an alternative—but it will mean that Lewis will be the one who must look around.”

Lewis felt as if a chill hand had just clutched him around the neck. Mrs. Zimmermann continued, “Of course, we plan to be close by. I can arrange things so the amulet will give us a warning if anything serious begins to happen. The crystal in my umbrella handle will flash and flare.”

“And we’ll come riding to the rescue,” put in Uncle Jonathan. “Armed to the teeth with protective spells and loaded for bear.”

Rose Rita lowered her gaze and bit her lip. Lewis knew what she must be thinking: She would be brave enough to venture into the house alone. Only a girl couldn’t go on a sleepover at a boy’s house, so she couldn’t do it. None of them could, except for him. Lewis had the sensation, miserable and lonely, of being on the verge of letting them all down.

Uncle Jonathan gave Lewis a quick glance. “Lewis, we can try to figure some other way if you’re not up to this, and we won’t think any the less of you. Tell me, do you want to go through with this plan?”

Lewis was taking deep breaths. “No, I don’t,” he confessed. He couldn’t help remembering how bad David had looked in their classes together, or the story Rose Rita had told about the things he had heard and seen. Lewis knew exactly how David felt, trapped and hopeless. And if he were in David’s place, Lewis knew how badly he would want someone’s help. “I don’t want to,” Lewis continued, “but I think I have to.”

Uncle Jonathan gazed at him for a long, long moment. “Lewis,” he said softly, in a strangely choked voice, “I am so proud of you.”

Despite his fears, Lewis felt his heart swell with warmth and pride. He would risk anything—even anything the Hawaii House could throw at him—for his uncle’s words of praise and admiration.