The Red House. George Agnew Chamberlain
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 yourself 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