The Red House Read online

  “You got a nerve, Nath Storm!” she exploded. “Where were you last night when I phoned, the way I said I would?”

  “Working,” said Nath.

  “Working all night long!” gibed Tibby wrathfully.

  “Aw, Tibby,” protested Nath, “where’s the harm? I did chores last night and again this morning. Can’t a guy earn a dollar without you throwing sixteen hundred fits?”

  “Not if it takes all night,” said Tibby, turning away with a swirl.

  After school Nath was torn between wanting to make it up with her and anxiety to see his mother. Tibby had been his girl from the first time she had called hello to him, and there were plenty of fellows ready and willing to take his place, yet when he remembered the chores waiting to be done at Yocum Farm, he decided to go straight home.

  “Look, mom,” he announced. “One of those funny old dollars.”

  Mrs. Storm was only thirty-four, but looked a lot older. Her husband had died when she was seventeen, and with the insurance money she had bought the little store and refurnished the living quarters in the rear. Up to lately, she had made a fair living for herself and Nath, but the war had knocked everything so topsy-turvy that now things were harder to get than to sell.

  “It’s a real dollar just the same,” she said, smoothing out the bill. “Twice as much as the store took in today.”

  “For you,” said Nath, “and I can get you more if you’ll let me. Over to Yocum’s.”

  “I know. Mr. Yocum phoned me twice; the last time to say you wouldn’t be home.”

  “Did, eh?” said Nath with a scowl.

  “Say, Nath, perhaps if you could stay steady over at Yocum’s, it might be a good thing. Because that way I could go off to one of those high-paying war jobs and leave you fixed to finish school.”

  “I don’t know,” said Nath doubtfully; “it calls for thinking. Anyways, I got to beat it now, mom.”

  “Run along,” she said. “But if you don’t turn up tonight, remember I’ll know why.”

  Twenty abandoned roads wander vaguely from the Fries-burg Pike through Oxhead Woods, but only one ends at the Yocum Farm tarn. Nath knew he could find the way by day, but what about coming back after dark? He struck into the road he sought, moss-grown and hollowed out like a trough between banks from which sprang a tangle of laurel and holly. Arriving at a fork in reverse, he stopped to break a bush and bar the wrong way back. He did this several times, but twice he had to retrace his steps to correct a mistake. Abruptly he descended into a region where beeches, oaks and giant gums mingled their boughs high above the lesser growth so thickly that they blotted out the sky. The air turned dank, and a moment later he caught the gleam of water.

  He noticed a strange indentation on the left, a sort of triangular trench that looked as if a plow had been dragged along on its side, only no plow could have passed through such thick cover. The next moment he came to a rotted bridge, jumped a ragged black hole and stopped, halted by a sudden recollection. He faced about and there it was, just as Pete had said—no Red House, but a monster beech whose branches stretched across a pitch-black pool. The sight filled him with rage, and clawing up a clod, he hurled it at the pool. The water made a gulping sound and its widest oily ripple took on the look of a sardonic grin. He felt ashamed and hurried on. With startling suddenness, the narrow path widened into the flat platform at the base of the ramp. He didn’t look for Meg or anybody else; he just went to the barn and got to work. Presently Pete came out with his stool and settled down.

  “Late today,” he remarked.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” said Nath. “I had to go home first, didn’t I?”

  “So you did,” said Pete, “but I’d forgot.”

  Nath gave him a steady look. “I came across Oxhead Woods.”

  “Did ye now?” said Pete blandly. “Sure, sure, that would be quickest—daytimes.”

  “Or any other time,” said Nath with a short laugh.

  “Think so?” said Pete. “Then happen you’d like to try staying to supper again.”

  “Sure would if I’m asked,” said Nath promptly.

  “So be it,’” said Peter, sliding off his stool.

  As he toddled off, Nath had the feeling of having issued a challenge that had been glady accepted. He finished washed and passed into the kitchen, where Meg was seated near a window doing her homework. She seemed pleased to see him, but somehow surprised, as if she hadn’t expected him to stay for supper. In everything except the variety of food, the meal took exactly the course of the evening before. When Lottie left the main house, Pete hitched back his chair and Ellen and Meg went to sit near the fire. But Meg looked worried, as if it distressed her that Nath should make no move to go. He stood with feet slightly straddled, a nervous smile tugging at his lips.

  “Well, Mr. Pete,” he said, “what about it?”

  Pete eyed him up and down unsmilingly. “What about what?”

  “That jumpity house you were telling about,” said Nath. “Was it painted red or did it grow that way?”

  Ellen raised her head and Meg gave a quick gasp. Pete alone showed no sign of surprise, but he was silent so long that Nath began to think he wasn’t going to answer. When he did, his voice had the slithery sound of a snake rustling through grass.

  “No, sir. Where would be the sense in painting Jersey redstone red? When you dig it out, like up to Burden Hill, it’s so soft you can slice it with a knife, but air cures it same as smoke cures ham. The longer redstone stands the harder it turns, wax to the touch, but flint to the pick. That ain’t all. It takes on more than the color of blood. It weds itself block to block and vein to vein. If you was to blow up one of them old stone houses, it would rise in one piece, fall in one piece and stay in one piece. Nor fire nor rust can’t destroy ’em. I’ve known ’em to ring with the birth cries of generations, laugh with the voices of forgotten children and groans of uncounted dead.”

  “And scream,” said Nath. “Don’t forget the screams.”

  Again there was silence, one of those silences that turn doubly heavy for every second they last. Meg’s lips fluttered as if she wanted to cry, but didn’t dare. Ellen swayed backward and forward, her hands tight-locked in her lap. In the fitful light from the fire, Pete seemed not even to breathe. Night, rolling in through the eastern windows, packed the corners with tall shadows that took the shape of thugs itching to club the fire to death. Nath felt proud. He had called the old coot’s bluff and now he could go. Straight across Oxhead Woods.

  “Sit down.” It was a whisper so low that for an instant it gave the illusion of having come from one of the tall shadows. Nath veered slowly, as if his head were being pulled around with strings. Pete’s eyes laid hold of him. How could he ever have thought they were small? They bent his knees. They made him sit down.

  “It was you mentioned screams,” resumed Pete’s whisper. Suddenly he hawked loudly and spat. It was as though he had fired a gun. Meg burst into tears, Ellen uttered a sharp cry and Nath felt sick because here was where he ought to laugh, and he couldn’t. “Enough!” commanded Pete in his natural voice. “You women cease your caterwauling or git to bed and leave us men to talk.”

  Meg choked back her sobs; she was afraid to listen, yet more afraid of missing a word. Ellen straightened and gripped the arms of her chair; nobody was going to get her to move. Nath let the breath out of his aching lungs; he hadn’t known he was holding it. Pete hitched himself forward and doubled his hands over the head of his cane.

  “A Snell built the Red House,” he said, “so far back there ain’t no record. Snells has entered over its threshold and went out through the funeral door at the back since the beginning of local time. But until the coming of Hubert Snell, no question come up as to whether the Snells owned the house or the house owned them. Sounds unreasonable for a house to own a man, yet it ain’t. Everybody can name houses as owns the folks inside. But the Red House went far beyond the likes of that. When it finished soaking up blood, it—”

/>   Ellen stood up, her arms close to her sides and her fists so tight that the knuckles showed whiter than her face. “Pete,” she begged in a rasping voice, “what for? Just to tie this boy to your side? Can’t you hold him with the money instead? Can’t you?”

  “Like I was saying,” continued Pete, as if she hadn’t spoken, “it wa’n’t me made mention of screams, boy; it was you done that. Howsomever, screams didn’t rightly have no place in the stone houses of old, only the Red House. It takes years and years for screams to work their way through veins of stone, but once they settle, they settle good. It begun with this Hubert Snell. I can see him yet. I’m staring at him now. The thatch over his black eyes was so thick no falling rain could hit his face. A darksome thunderhead of a man that used lightning for spit. He had arms like a knotted cedar and a leg like the cedar’s twisted trunk. Hube, they called him, Hube Snell.”

  Ellen’s hands, slipping along the arms of her chair, made a sound like the squeaking of a tiny mouse as her body went back, her head farthest of all. With her eyes closed and her lips barely parted, she looked to be not of this world. For an instant Pete’s gaze swerved to her, a quick look as sudden as a stab. Nath felt guilty; if it hadn’t been for him, all this wouldn’t be happening. He ought to do something to break it up, say something cheerful that would lift Ellen and all of them out, of their trance. But it was Meg who blundered in to save Ellen.

  “Is it Hubert does the screaming, Uncle Pete?” she asked.

  “No,” said Pete, “not Hube, though it’s him the Red House is looking for. There’s no question to it. Hube didn’t own that house; it was it owned him, body and soul. For more’n forty year it’s been searching for Hube, and seems God has ordained it must keep on till it finds him, knowing no rest. That’s why it wanders from here to there, a lost house.”

  Nath was standing; a moment ago he had been sitting, and now he was standing without knowing how or when he had risen. He traded look for look with Pete, thinking he was being bold until he realized that he was doing exactly what Pete had intended him to do. Pete gave a puff, much harder than usual, and it made Meg jump inside without moving.

  “Sure, boy, go out now if you’re amind to,” said Pete, shooting the words like spitballs. “Search the dark places, and not only Oxhead Woods. Search by night, and happen ye meet up with them screams, they’ll mark ye once and forever. Yes, sir. Once heard, wherever found, you can come back to match your growth with mine, adding heft to heftiness, and only you and me will know why the voice that’s raised in anguish can’t be Hubert’s, and never was.”

  He settled into his chair so smoothly that Nath was scarcely aware he had stirred until he saw that Pete’s head was back as far as it would go and his eyes closed. Though he was so ponderous and Ellen so gaunt, the two of them had assumed an incredible sameness that made them twins in essence as well as by date of birth. As for Meg, her eyes looked like horse chestnuts, big ones, but without life. All three seemed fixed as waxworks, people you couldn’t wake if you tried. Nath left them on tiptoe. He moved cautiously through the lean-to and reached the arbor. Clouds obscured the moon, creating a darkness that yielded to his expanding pupils only inch by inch.

  But the stillness was worse than the dark. Even Rumble made no sound, though Nath could see the garnet glow of his open eyes. They seemed to be waiting for something, waiting for Nath to make up his mind, and that’s what he was waiting for himself. All day long he had been planning to stay late at Yocum Farm and then cross boldly through Oxhead Woods. His manner had bragged to Pete and Ellen and Meg that that was what he intended to do. What would they think if he didn’t? Yet he couldn’t start. He tried to reason, reminding himself how old he was, one of the biggest boys in high, almost as big and old as Teller Truman. Would Teller draw back from any woods at night? The heck he would!

  That did it. He started down the ramp, moving carefully, so he wouldn’t slip and make a noise, never stopping to ask why he shouldn’t make all the noise he liked. At the bottom, he had to feel around for the opening into the path that hugged the edge of the tarn, but once in it, there was no chance of getting lost short of the black hole. In spots, the path was firm, but occasionally he would strike a patch as slippery as grease. Alders swiped his face, showering him with dew. Lower down, his knees swished through hummock grass and wild roses that snatched at his levis with sharp little claws. Constantly the water on his left blinked up at him, and moment by moment the foliage overhead grew denser until darkness took on solidity, something you could cut out in blocks like ice. As he rounded a curve, his heart gave a leap and jammed in his throat. Straight ahead rose a ghostly white column and seconds like ages passed before he recognized it for a shadbush in bloom. That was a laugh, wasn’t it? Well then, why not laugh? Because he couldn’t, because he was sneaking along as quiet as though he were trying to crawl up on a deer. How far had he come from the ramp? Half a mile? A mile? No, it couldn’t be because——

  Without warning, something heaved downward from the right. Ripping through greenbrier and honeysuckle, snapping alders like gunfire, something as big and hard as a boulder caromed against his shoulder and sent him headlong into the tarn. The icy water struck like a cleaver, severing reason from mind. Frantic with fright, he scuttled for the shore, climbed the bank and ran. He didn’t need to see, feel or hear, for terror was a sure guide. It drove him back along the path and up the ramp. The big house loomed black with denial, but a gleam of light beckoned from the plank cabin. He plastered himself against its door, and a voice he had never heard tore out of his own throat, “Let me in! Let me in!”

  IV

  LOTTIE opened the door so promptly that Nath would have pitched on his face if she hadn’t thrown out her arm. “Why, you’s all wet!” she exclaimed. “How come, boy? Was you going too fast to make the turn?”

  “N-n-no,” chattered Nath, falling against her.

  “Hush now,” soothed Lottie as she started undoing the buttons of his jacket. “Let’s us get you warm.” She raised her voice. “Lot, come down here! Bring that winter blanket!”

  Nath wasn’t cold, but he was still too stricken to protest or even to notice that he was being stripped by a woman. He scarcely saw Lot emerge from a tiny corner stairway and was only vaguely aware of having a soft blanket envelop him from his neck to his naked feet. Only when he had been propped against pillows on Lottie’s narrow bed could he rightly begin to take notice. There was a double light in the small room—a low glow from the open fire and a gleam from a lamp on the corner of the mantel. On a stand beside the bed lay an open Bible, showing why Lottie had been awake so late. He watched her drape his wet clothes on the backs of a couple of chairs close to the fire.

  “How long d’you think they’ll take to dry?” he managed to ask without stammering.

  “All night,” said Lottie, seating herself in a rocker so low that it lifted her knees level with her breast.

  “Could you fix me up with something, so I could go home?” asked Nath, glancing speculatively at Lot.

  “Where’s home at?” said Lottie.

  “Over to the Friesburg Pike.”

  “Unh-uh,” grunted Lottie with a shake of her head. “Best get yourself good and warm where you be, then Lot can lug you up to Alec’s old room topside the wagon house for the rest of the night. What happened, boy?”

  “It ain’t the cold got me,” said Nath; “just plain skeer. I was going along the path, heading for the broken bridge, when something rushed down the bank too quick to see and knocked me head first into deep water.”

  “Oh-oh!” exclaimed Lottie, with a nervous glance toward the door.

  “ ‘The Lord is thy keeper,’” declaimed Lot suddenly, “‘the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night!’ ”

  He stopped as abruptly as he had begun, and Nath stared at him wonderingly. “I guess that’s right,” he murmured.

  “Want I should read somewhat?” asked Lottie.


  “Sure,” said Nath, “go ahead.”

  She reached for the Bible and, using her slanted knees as a bookrest, she sought out a passage and began to read, “ ‘And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire unfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.’” She peered at Nath anxiously. “It wasn’t anything like that, was it?”

  “Heck, no!” muttered Nath.

  She started reading again, but before he could catch the sense of the words, they trailed off into a singsong and he slept. When he woke, he thought he must be dreaming, until he figured out the slant of the peaked roof. This must be Alec’s room. His eyes traveled over the bed on which he lay, one chair, a washstand, a rough cupboard and a dozen wooden forks for clothes pegs, but his own things were nowhere in sight. A fine fix. Could he tend to the chores wrapped in only a blanket? He spied a pair of discarded overalls and was shaking the dust out of them when a black arm upholding a bundle appeared through the ladder hatch.

  Nath took the bundle, and the arm vanished. Dressing did a queer thing to him; it restored his age. He was mangrown again, old enough to marry Tibby Rinton if he got the notion. Her folks were farmers and needed help worse than tomatoes call for sun. Perhaps it was his taking on work somewhere else that had made her so mad, but at the thought of chores he hurried down to the barn. Pete was nowhere around; he didn’t even bother to come out. It was Meg who appeared just as Nath was finishing. Because it was Saturday, she had put on levis that matched his own, only a lot smaller around the waist. From there down she looked like a boy big enough to give you a tussle, but the minute he raised his eyes to her jersey and shoulder-length hair, she was all girl.

  “Didn’t think you’d hardly come back after last night,” she said, “and I wouldn’t have blamed you, not a bit.”

  He knew she was giving him a chance to lie, to say he had been home. He remembered he was grown, and started to tell her the truth, but stopped; there was something he had to find out first. He walked with her as far as the pump, then hung back. “You go along in,” he said.