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