Mystery of Drear House Read online

  “She wants you to button the top button,” River Lewis said, speaking for Mattie. Mattie touched Pesty’s gloved hands. “Says, ‘Don’t get too cold, don’t stay out too long,’” he added.

  “I won’t,” Pesty said, her eyes shining. She took a deep breath of happiness, gave her mama a big hug, and buttoned her top coat button. She gave River Lewis a loving look. And this time he bowed to her just slightly. That small touch of respect spoke through his gruffness. Not only “things” were different. He does care, Thomas couldn’t help thinking.

  “You look so pretty, Pesty,” Mrs. Small said. “That’s a beautiful coat,”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  River Lewis looked stern but proud.

  Outside, it was cold. But it was better than the oppressive, uncomfortable scene inside. “I hope I don’t have to go through that again soon,” Martha Small was to say later.

  “They were trying very hard,” Great-grandmother said, and Walter Small had agreed.

  Thomas and Macky and Pesty walked around the house on the veranda. Thomas shivered. It still snowed. They leaned against the outside wall of the veranda between the long window and the front door. Pesty was in the middle. For a time they didn’t speak. Then, suddenly, Macky said, “Everybody talking to me, talking about how we rich. Shoot. We ain’t rich.” He laughed contemptuously. “We just now gettin’ what everybody else been having.”

  “I … guess that’s true,” Thomas said. “What—what did the foundation give you all? I mean, there are such rumors.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said resentfully. “Everybody lying so.”

  “Because he don’t know what they give Daddy besides a job. Daddy don’t tell nobody,” Pesty said. ,

  “Did they give him some triangles?” Thomas said.

  “I said …” Macky spoke but didn’t finish. He sounded angry.

  “Okay then,” Thomas said. He went tight inside as he said to Macky through his teeth. “It was you in Mr. Pluto’s cave, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it was.” Pesty piped up.

  “I can speak for myself!” Macky said, raising a hand to her.

  “Mr. Pluto said you wasn’t to bother me!” she said, cringing toward Thomas.

  “I’m not touching you. I’m not studying you!” Macky said. He let his hand drop. “Girl! I just can speak for myself.” He hung his head and was silent a long time. “Don’t tell anybody,” he said finally, looking at Thomas.

  “It’s—it’s over now,” Thomas said.

  “I was just hoping …”

  “I know,” Thomas said.

  “But that’s not all,” Macky said. He looked away.

  “What then?” Thomas asked.

  “Mama,” he said. “Worried about her doing something, didn’t know what. Didn’t want you-all Smalls to see her like she was.” He swallowed hard.

  “Lots of people can get sick like her,” Thomas said.

  “Well, I didn’t know you would think that,” Macky said softly.

  “You and Pesty had the same idea,” Thomas said.

  “How’s that?” Macky said.

  “Because your mama was sick and your daddy was mad at you, you wanted to hurry and find treasure maybe to make it all better. That’s why you went ... to Mr. Pluto’s. Pesty wanted the same thing, kind of, because your mama was in the tunnels and in our house. She was afraid we’d see your mama or she’d get hurt, what all. But you didn’t know that there is a tunnel from your house to the underground.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Macky said. “There is?”

  “Mama’s closet opens to a tunnel,” Pesty said. “She love the orphan place and to sit in the parlor room down there. You better come see it before they empty it. Once they empty it, maybe we can fix it up for her a little. Mr. Small never did tell the foundation about that closet opening. You can tell Daddy if you want. Just don’t tell him I knew about it.”

  Macky looked stunned.

  “If you tell your dad about the tunnel from your house to Drear house,” Thomas said, puzzling it out, “well, he can tell the foundation.”

  “And that’ll make Daddy real happy, because of you!” Pesty told him. “And he’ll look real good to the foundation. And everybody will know about everything.”

  Macky nodded. “Thanks!” he said to both of them. He was silent again, looking at his feet, before he said, “Mama shouldn’ta been in the tunnels. It kept her down in an unreal world. I never want to see the place!” He’d seen the orphans’ room and the parlor room on television, and that was enough.

  “Mama likes it down there,” Pesty said.

  “Still,” Macky said, “it must’ve kept her too much in the past.”

  “We should know about the past,” Thomas said, “but we shouldn’t let the past take us over.”

  “You can’t live in it,” Macky said. “We got to try to change Mama’s mind about that.”

  “Man, do things turn around fast!” Thomas said.

  Macky shook his head with the mystery of it all. He walked to the edge of the veranda, stuck his face out, and looked up at the falling snow. It fell into his eyes. “Feels like I’m rising up,” he said.

  Pesty followed and leaned her head out. “Just does feel like I’m uprising, too,” she said.

  “It makes you dizzy,” Thomas said, coming over. He looked up, felt himself lifted into the snowflakes at a dizzying speed.

  “Now what you think you-all doing?” Mr. Pluto said, coming out on the veranda. Nothing on his shoulders but his shirtsleeves. “Brrrr! Come on, they say it’s time for punkun pie and whip cream.”

  “Oh, goody!” Pesty said.

  “Look at it snow!” Mr. Pluto said. “Glad I don’t have to go home this night. Ha! Already home. Home with Mr. Drear, in his house! Ain’t that something?”

  Thomas laughed, clearly seeing the past linked to the present: the Drear house alive with the living; all past struggles and troubles brought to light in the present. He nudged Macky as Pesty and Mr. Pluto went back inside. “Ghosts!” he murmured. They both laughed.

  “You want to hunt tomorrow?” Macky asked him.

  “Will the snow stop?”

  “Might by then,” Macky said. “We’ll have to go farther out, off Drear land. And our land. The foundation folks want no hunting near or on their grounds.”

  “Really?” Thomas said. “We can go as far as you want, after school.”

  “Then, on Saturday, we can hunt all day.” Macky said.

  Thomas felt his heart leap. “Okay!” he said.

  He would follow Macky. Let him find a trail of something. Or let him shoot first, out over a pond somewhere—see how he bagged his birds.

  I’ll bring some sandwiches, Thomas thought. And ice skates! Let him lead. For a while. It’ll be a long winter. Somewhere in it I’ll lead.

  Friends take turns. He grinned like a kid at Macky’s broad back.

  They went inside where it was warm.

  A Biography of Virginia Hamilton

  Virginia Hamilton (1934–2002) was the author of forty-one books for young readers and their older allies, including M.C. Higgins, the Great, which won the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, three of the most prestigious awards in youth literature. Hamilton’s many successful titles earned her numerous other awards, including the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, which honors authors who have made exceptional contributions to children’s literature, the Coretta Scott King Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship, or “Genius Award.”

  Virginia Esther Hamilton was born in 1934 outside the college town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. She was the youngest of five children born to Kenneth James and Etta Belle Perry Hamilton. Her grandfather on her mother’s side, a man named Levi Perry, had been brought to the area as an infant probably through the Underground Railroad shortly before the Civil War. Hamilton grew up amid a large extended family in picturesque farmlands and forests. She loved her home and
would end up spending much of her adult life in the area.

  Hamilton excelled as a student and graduated at the top of her high school class, winning a full scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs. Hamilton transferred to Ohio State University in nearby Columbus, Ohio, in order to study literature and creative writing. In 1958, she moved to New York City in hopes of publishing her fiction. During her early years in New York, she supported herself with jobs as an accountant, a museum receptionist, and even a nightclub singer. She took additional writing courses at the New School for Social Research and continued to meet other writers, including the poet Arnold Adoff, whom she married in 1960. The couple had two children, daughter Leigh in 1963 and son Jaime in 1967. In 1969, the family moved to Yellow Springs and built a new home on the old Perry-Hamilton farm. Here, Virginia and Arnold were able to devote more time to writing books.

  Hamilton’s first published novel, Zeely, was published in 1967. Zeely was an instant success, winning a Nancy Bloch Award and earning recognition as an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book. After returning to Yellow Springs with her young family, Hamilton began to write and publish a book nearly every year. Though most of her writing targeted young adults or children, she experimented in a wide range of styles and genres. Her second book, The House of Dies Drear (1968), is a haunting mystery that won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. The Planet of Junior Brown (1971) and Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1982) rely on elements of fantasy and science fiction. Many of her titles focus on the importance of family, including M.C. Higgins, the Great (1974) and Cousins (1990). Much of Hamilton’s work explores African American history, such as her fictionalized account Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave (1988).

  Hamilton passed away in 2002 after a long battle with breast cancer. She is survived by her husband Arnold Adoff and their two children.

  For further information, please visit Hamilton’s updated and comprehensive website: www.virginiahamilton.com

  A twelve-year-old Hamilton in 1948, when she was in the seventh grade.

  Hamilton at a New York City club while she was a student at Antioch College in the mid-1950s. She often performed as a folk and jazz vocalist in clubs and larger venues.

  Hamilton with her brothers, Buster and Bill, and sisters, Barbara and Nina, around 1954.

  Hamilton’s head shots. The first was taken while she was a teenager in the early 1950s. The second was taken in her New York City apartment in the late 1960s, before she and Adoff built their house in Yellow Springs.

  Hamilton outside of her first New York City apartment, which she shared with Adoff, around 1960. The couple moved to a below-street-level single room on Jane Street and, Adoff says, “thought we were such hot stuff, living in the Village and taking our places in that wonderful and long line of writers banging their heads against the wall . . . but in style.”

  Adoff and Hamilton in Gibraltar in 1960, after a hard day of shopping and climbing the rock seen in the photo. As Adoff recalls, “This was the first time I convinced Virginia to sell everything but the books and leave America forever. It was also our delayed honeymoon. We made our way from Bremen to Paris to Málaga to a residency in Torremolinos, Spain, where we worked on our manuscripts and took side trips. This was one of them.”

  Taken in 1965 in Argelès-plage, France, this photo shows the building where Hamilton and Adoff rented an apartment during what Adoff calls their “second time leaving America forever . . .”

  Hamilton, Jaime, and Leigh at a reception at the Yellow Springs Public Library in 1975 after she received the Newbery Medal.

  Hamilton at the publication party for Jaguarundi. She attended hundreds of conferences and book signings at schools and libraries around the country as each of her books was published.

  Hamilton, Adoff, Leigh, and Jaime at Leigh’s wedding in Berlin in 2001.

  Hamilton on Thanksgiving in 2001. This photo was taken by her niece, Nina Rios, a professional photographer, after Hamilton’s last round of chemotherapy, only a few months before her death.

  All photos © 2011 by the Arnold Adoff Revocable Living Trust. Used by permission. Portrait courtesy of Jimmy Byrge.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1987 by Virginia Hamilton

  cover design by Connie Gabbert

  978-1-4532-3724-3

  This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  EBOOKS BY VIRGINIA HAMILTON

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

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