The Red House Read online

  “Nath,” she whispered, “I’m in a terrible fix. Pete Yocum made me promise to bring you out to the farm this afternoon, and I just don’t know what to say.”

  He slanted laughing eyes down at her. “You’ve said it all before you begin,” he told her. “How long would it take?”

  “Not so awful long,” she said eagerly. “If you went out on the bus with me, afterwards you could cut across Oxhead Woods and get home right quick.”

  “Sure,” said Nath. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess I can make it.”

  In the bus they sat side by side, and as they went up the lane together, she couldn’t keep from thinking how different it was from walking with Teller. She spied Pete sitting on his stool in the open wagon shed, overseeing Lot grind feed.

  “Here’s another boy, Pete,” she said, “a nicer one. His name’s Johannath Storm, but everybody calls him Nath.”

  “Howdy,” said Pete. “You ain’t son to the widow that has the bitty crossroads store over to the Friesburg Pike, is you?”

  “That’s right,” said Nath.

  “I need a body to help me out with the evening chores,” said Pete humbly. “You know what they be, good as me, and all I can pay is fifty cents a day.”

  Nath hesitated and might have refused if he hadn’t chanced to glance at Meg. Her lips were half parted and the hope in her eyes changed her face so completely that it was like looking at somebody he didn’t know.

  “All right, Mr. Pete,” he said. “I guess I’ll take the job, for a while anyways.”

  Pete didn’t attempt to hide his pleasure. “Well, now; that’s right good news,” he said softly. “Could you start today?”

  “Sure,” said Nath. “Just show me the lay of the place.”

  With an alacrity that made Nath gasp, Pete got off the stool, hung it on one arm like a bangle and headed for the barn. Meg went to the house to freshen up, and though Nath didn’t need a lot of showing, Pete wouldn’t leave him. He didn’t say much, he just watched, and the longer he watched the deeper seemed his absorption with some fascinating project that made him think hard enough to raise a sweat. He had his cane gripped between his knees and was toying with a horseshoe, a big one. Nath wished he would go away. How could he work when his brain was teetering between thinking Pete was funny, yet perhaps he wasn’t? Then Pete seized the horseshoe by the tips, straightened the cold iron into a rod, tossed it aside and spat at it languidly.

  Nath felt his face turn white; now he knew whether Pete was funny or not. He didn’t look at him any more; he worked hard, and presently he could murmur, “I guess that’s all of it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pete, “and you done right good.” His hand started for his hip pocket, but stopped halfway. “You earned a bite of supper to boot. Come along in the house and set.”

  Because Yocum Farm had the allure of a walled castle that everybody knew about but few had entered, Nath was tempted. Besides, he wanted to have another look at Meg. It was queer how you could see a kid around at school for a couple of years and then discover she was somebody you didn’t know at all. “I’d like to,” he said, “but I can’t. I guess my mother’s wondering already where I’m at.”

  “That needn’t worry ye,” said Pete, leading the way toward the house. “I’ll phone Mis’ Storm soon as I git inside.” He stopped at a pump at the end of an arbor that fused into the broad eaves of a lean-to whose roof swept upward to meet the clapboarded siding of the house. “Have yourself a wash; here’s soap and I’ll send out a towel.”

  Nath laid his jacket aside, stripped to the waist and stood laughing at Rumble, who was living up to his name; crouched on his belly, he looked and sounded like a maneless, grumbling lion. A broad grass-grown driveway broke sharply on the left into a steep-curving ramp, and at its foot, so unexpectedly close that it gave Nath a start, glistened the waters of the Yocum Farm tarn. Meg came running out with a towel.

  “Better come over to meet Rumble before you wash,” she said. Rumble hurled himself to the end of his chain, yelping and trying to jump on her. She pushed in his face with her open palm. “Shut up, you! Shut up! . . . Come on, Nath.”

  Nath crossed over and laid his hand on Rumble’s head. The dog quivered, snuffling for the telltale scent of fear, but there was none, and without warning he rose and lapped Nath’s face from ear to ear.

  “Gee!” gasped Nath. “Half of me is washed already!” Meg laughed. She worked the pump while he sloshed the hay dust out of his hair and off his arms. “Some pond,” he continued, with a nod toward the tarn. He tucked in his shirt and put on his jacket. “Deep?”

  “You bet,” said Meg. “But you’ll find a path to the right that hugs the water all the way round until it meets the road through Oxhead Woods. Let’s go in, Nath; it’s getting sort of cold.”

  At Yocum Farm any meal was an event, but supper especially so. Heavy food was passed at midday, but along toward evening either Ellen or Lottie would get to fidgeting around the range, and, first thing you knew, delectable odors would start drifting through the house. Leek-and-potato soup has a fine smell to it, so have roasting spareribs, but perfume is the word for popovers. After perhaps only an apple and a piece of cake for lunch, Meg’s mouth would get to watering so she couldn’t speak without sputtering. But tonight topped all the suppers she could remember, with Nath so filled with wonderment that his eyes worked harder than his jaws.

  Since the age of ten, he had hired out occasionally and seen a sight of farmhouses, but never any like this. An aura of abundance with Pete as its hub embraced the generous-sized logs alight in the big fireplace, and all the furniture was ponderous. Even the built-in corner cupboard was twice as big as ordinary, and Lottie, waiting on table, added an exotic note. She was imperturbable and strange, and gave him a sense of having invaded a foreign land. On the surface, everything seemed tranquil, yet he was troubled by a shadow. He happened to glance at Pete’s pudgy little hands, and the shadow took on the form of a horseshoe slowly straightening.

  “What’s the matter, Nath?” asked Ellen with a smile. “Can’t you eat?”

  He colored and dug in, making up for lost time so fast that he finished as soon as Meg. At home he would have helped with the dishes, and it made him nervous just to sit around while one person did all the work. He felt he ought to go, but Pete hadn’t paid him yet, and it seemed cheap to ask for a measly fifty cents. The sun had set, and as darkness billowed in from the eastern windows over the tarn, Lottie finished her work and left. Pete backed his chair well away from the table, and Ellen and Meg went to sit near the fire. Nath rose and stood uncertainly.

  “Come take a seat, Nath,” said Meg.

  Perhaps she was wondering why he was hanging around, not knowing he hadn’t received his pay. In the dimming light she seemed unlike any girl at all, a shadowy substance strangely illumined from within. He glanced at Pete and promptly forgot Meg. Sitting enthroned in his big chair at the outermost edge of the fire’s glow, Pete appeared to be in the process of enlarging, as if he could make his great bulk swell out at will like a toad. That wasn’t all. His gaze had an intensity that gave Nath the creeps. He decided he wouldn’t bother about the fifty cents, and turned to go.

  “Guess I better not,” he said: “it’s getting late.”

  Pete gave a labored puff, not his usual quick explosion. “Which way was you aiming to go, boy?” he asked.

  “Why,” said Nath, puzzled, “through Oxhead Woods, to save all of three miles.”

  “I wouldn’t attempt it if I was you,” said Pete, “no, sir. Shortest ain’t always the quickest by a long shot.”

  Nath stood frowning, trying to figure what the old goat was driving at. What did it matter, anyway? “Guess that’s right,” he agreed. “Well, good night and thanks for the supper.”

  “Reckon you’ve never heard tell of the jumpity Red House,” said Pete.

  Nath stopped again. “What kind of house?” he asked.

  “Jumpity,” repeated Pete. “Set yours
elf down and I’ll tell ye.”

  Ellen cast Pete a curious glance. “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” she said. “Let the boy go.”

  “Set,” urged Pete softly, as though she hadn’t spoken. “Later, you’ll be right thankful I told ye the tale.”

  Nath sank tentatively on the edge of a chair. “All right,” he said, “if it ain’t too long.”

  “Forty-nine year ago,” said Pete, “the Red House stood at the fork of Deep Tun in the depths of the Barrens, where it sprung from the soil a hundred year afore that. But it don’t stand there no more.”

  “Well,” said Nath, half rising, “I guess you’d better finish it tomorrow, Mr. Pete. I guess perhaps I’d better get going.”

  “Funny thing about that house,” continued Pete, his eyes reaching out from the gloom as strong as two hands to push Nath back into his chair. “Lots of folks has seen it since it moved from where it was, the only house on record that has ever traveled up and down and across by night, looking for a man.”

  “But that’s plumb crazy!” exclaimed Nath impatiently.

  “Sounds so,” admitted Pete. “But it wa’n’t no big house and it’s been seen in five places in the last forty-eight year to the certain knowledge of God-fearing men. Always by night and in some darksome hollow. Far apart as Frog Ocean or the sump that feeds into Millington Creek.” He cleared his throat so sharply it gave everybody a scare, and spat toward the fireplace. “The house itself ain’t much, but the screams that comes out of it, once heard, they anchors a man inside his flesh, piling the flesh on year by year.”

  Nath laughed out loud, more of a bark than a laugh. “Is that what happened to you, Mr. Pete?”

  Across the semidarkness, Pete’s little eyes broadened into a glare. “Yes, sir,” he said, “it was.”

  A moment ago he had seemed funny, trying to make a scare out of growing fat. But now? What about the horseshoe? Had that been funny? Perhaps just flesh could become a prison stronger than walls of stone, and if Pete’s bulk lay heavier on his soul than cross and crown of thorns, why shouldn’t he pick on weight as the scariest curse of all?

  “Shame on you, Pete,” said Ellen, suddenly breaking into the silence. “Let the boy run along home.”

  “Why would I?” asked Pete sharply. “What have I got ag’in’ Nath? So be he’ll promise to go back by the County Road, well and good. But not through Oxhead Woods.”

  “Aw, why not?” said Nath, wondering to find his mouth dry.

  “Because that’s where it happened to me,” said Pete, “no further from here than the middle of Oxhead Woods. Perhaps it’s there again, perhaps it ain’t. But if it is, the sound you’ll hear will lay weight to your bones all the years of your life. Want I should tell you when and where to look?”

  Nath glanced uneasily at Miss Ellen, hoping she might say something that would show up Pete for a fraud and shatter this foolish tensity with a cackle of laughter. But to his dismay, though she held no needles, Ellen’s fingers were working as if she were knitting fast.

  “Go ahead,” said Nath loudly. “Tell me where to look.”

  “It would be after you pass the far end of the tarn,” said Pete quietly, “the place where the bridge is broke and you have to jump across the black hole that once was the start of a raceway. Off to your right. There’s a beech there so big it could shelter a flock of small houses easy as a hen covers her brood. It reaches over dark water, and the time I seen the Red House, it was floating on water thirty feet deep. Naturally, I knew the house wa’n’t real, but the screams that comes out of it, they was real.”

  “Shut up, you old fool!” cried Ellen hoarsely. “Shut up!”

  Nath went to the lean-to door, pulled it open boldly and started to slam it behind him, but he ended by closing it softly. He heard Meg call to him please to come back, but he kept on going, feeling his way through the dark. Outside, the moon was up, bathing the whole of Yocum Farm with mellow light. He turned to the left, but stopped at the pump where he had washed. The ramp seemed changed, as if it broke off short at the point where the moonlight ceased. Beyond was a pit of darkness, miles of darkness. He ordered his feet to get going, but they wouldn’t. He saw Rumble sitting on his haunches and heard his tail swish, inviting friendship. He tried to whistle, and it frightened him to find he couldn’t.

  He knew he was acting like as big a fool as that yarning old man Yocum, but knowing didn’t help. All the knowing in the world couldn’t moisten his cracking lips or force his feet down the ramp. He turned the other way and found himself standing in the open where his eyes could sweep the circle of woods that enclosed Yocum Farm. Some of them were familiar, yet tonight they formed a forbidding, unbroken barrier around the lake of moonlight. Even the lane that tunneled through the stretch of growth between the drawgate and the County Road now seemed sealed with a plug of darkness.

  Like letting a stubborn mule have his way, he gave up telling his feet where to go. They led him past the silent plank cabin and along to the wide entrance of the wagon shed. A gleam drew him, a gleam as golden as the rising sun. It came from a pile of last year’s corn in one of the corncribs. He raised the sliding door of the crib, netted with strong rat wire, crawled inside and let the door fall behind him. He snuggled backward into the heap of corn for warmth, his aching legs sprawled wide. It wasn’t only his legs that ached; it was the whole of him and above all else his heart. He had shrunk from manhood back into a little boy afraid of the dark. He was a coward. Tonight, only he knew it. Tomorrow Pete, Meg and the whole world would know.

  Inside the house, Meg hadn’t moved except to stare in unbelief at Ellen, down on her knees and with her face buried in her hands. Meg shuddered. This wasn’t like Pete’s ordinary bad times; it was worse, because it pushed her out and left her alone. Pete wasn’t here, nor Ellen; she was alone with two people she didn’t know. She saw Pete heave out of his chair and go to the telephone.

  “Mis’ Storm?” he said presently in his friendliest voice. “This be Pete Yocum again. Your boy et so much supper he’s tuckered out and won’t be home afore school-out tomorrer.”

  He hung up, and as he faced about, Meg found her tongue. “That’s wicked,” she said hoarsely. “Perhaps you did scare Nath into going the long way. But he’s started, hasn’t he? He’ll get home hours from now and frighten his mother most to death.”

  “One fool at a time is enough,” said Pete pleasantly. “Git ye off to bed, and Ellen too.”

  III

  AT SUNRISE Pete went poking around in search of Nath. First he stopped at the plank cabin, but the boy wasn’t there. He told Lot he could forget the home chores from now on, and ordered him to get to plowing. Leaving the cabin, he started for the barn, and it wasn’t by accident that he caught sight of Nath in the corncrib, because Pete never saw anything by accident. Nath had been so cold that he had slept only by fits and starts, and his eyes were wide open.

  “Hello,” he said sheepishly.

  “How’d ye come to get in there?” asked Pete, full of concern. “Somebody chase ye?”

  “Only you,” said Nath boldly. “You scared the hell out of me all right.”

  “Well, now,” said Pete, “I’m sorry, Nath, and I don’t understand it. Seems like the truth oughtn’t never to scare nobody, boy or man.”

  Nath stood up, shook himself and gave Pete a long look. “The truth!” he muttered. “You and your jumpity house!”

  “Eh? How’s that now?”

  “Aw, nothing,” said Nath.

  “Come along then; let’s git them chores done afore breakfast.”

  Nath wondered if he was going to be rooked for double duty on single pay or perhaps no pay at all, but he didn’t say anything—not yet. He worked fast, but couldn’t keep from studying Pete at every chance. Perched on his stool, Pete seemed wrapped in the benign innocence of an oversized baby.

  “Come here, boy,” he said, the minute the work was done.

  Squirming like a huge grub, he managed to extract a wallet
from his hip pocket and took out an ancient dollar bill more than seven inches long and over three inches wide. “Here you be,” he continued, “fifty cents for last night and fifty more for this morning. Come along in and feed.”

  Nath didn’t follow at once; instead, he stood looking at Pete’s receding back. There was nothing babyish about the old devil now. Why hadn’t he handed over fifty cents last night? Had he planned the whole crazy show yesterday when he was thinking hard enough to raise a sweat? Nath felt so sore at being played for a dope that when he went inside to breakfast, he wasn’t even embarrassed, and nobody else seemed to be either. Only Meg looked uneasy, her eyes resting solemnly on Pete. It made her angry to think he had known Nath wouldn’t go home, angry and a little frightened. When she and Nath started off to school, their silence lasted well into the tunneled lane.

  “Meg,” said Nath, “does Pete often talk so crazy as last night?”

  “No,” said Meg. “I never heard such storying before from him or anybody else.”

  “Me neither,” said Nath. He laughed and then frowned. “I was good and scared.”

  “So was I,” said Meg. “When he got through, I wouldn’t have stepped outside for anything, not for anything.”

  “Well,” said Nath, “you notice I didn’t get so far myself.” Then he added, “But I will tonight.”

  They boarded the bus, and when it reached the school, Tibby Rinton was waiting. Nobody could belittle her beauty, with hair rising like an orange flame from the whitest skin you ever saw. But it wasn’t white this morning and, since she never used rouge, only anger could account for the color in her cheeks. She didn’t move; she just waited until they came near.