The House on Parchment Street

by Patricia A. Mckillip

Bruce grimaced. But he said, “What happened to the gardener?”

  “He’s getting married to Miss Morris.”

  “Miss Morris? At the sweet shop?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s an old lady.”

  “She is forty-three,” Uncle Harold said with dignity. “Remind me to order my coffin at that age. I’ll pay you what I pay the gardener—a pound a week. I had thought of doing it myself, but that side lawn looks too formidable for my old bones.”

  “It looks formidable for mine,” Bruce said. “But I’ll do it. Thanks, Dad.” He rose, finishing his orange juice on the way up. “I’ll work on the hedges this morning; there’s no sense in cutting the grass before it needs it.”

  Carol found him later, after she finished breakfast. He was trimming the hedge by the gate. The wind, high that day, snatched the pieces as they fell from the clippers and rolled them down the walk. He put the clippers down a moment and flexed his fingers.

  “Hello. Where are you going?”

  “I’m taking this pan back to Emily Raison. She gave Aunt Catherine some tea in it the day I heated the stove up, and Aunt Catherine forgot to give it back.” She swung the pan in an arc that flashed silver in the sunlight. “It’s a nice day. Maybe I’ll go for a walk.” The drilling started up suddenly behind the gate, screaming into the silence, and she winced. “It sounds like a dentist’s drill.”

  “Mm. Go across the field, and you can get out of town to the farms.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that.”

  She opened the gate. Two men with drills and a truck stood between her and Emily Raison’s house. She went toward the field to get around them, and when she got to the field—a great circle of green grass sloping gently toward a far road—the wind nudged her in the direction of other fields flowing on and on toward a flat horizon. The drilling grew faint behind her as she walked, until she could barely hear it. She swung the pan aimlessly in circles and smelled the grass, uncut, between her toes. She crossed the road and turned down a quiet highway with blackberry hedges enclosing fields. A fence took the place of the hedges farther down, and she stood on the bottom rail and watched a pair of thick-hooved farm horses cropping beneath the endless sky. In the next field a huge bull stuck his head through the fence and eyed her inscrutably. She circled gingerly around him. She picked a thick handful of buttercup, white Queen Anne’s Lace, blue morning glory streaked with white. The flat midlands ran serene and changeless to the end of the world, and the occasional car that whisked by seemed alien and transitory.

  She came back an hour later and went through the gate before she remembered Emily Raison’s pan. She stood a moment, looking at the hedge, puzzled. The clippers lay on the clippings in the wheelbarrow, and only about five feet of the hedge was trimmed. She looked around, but she did not see Bruce. She went into the street. Uncle Harold’s car was gone. She scratched her head absently a moment, then went over to Emily Raison’s house and saw her in the graveyard weeding graves.

  She opened the gate and went into the graveyard. Miss Emily smiled vaguely at her.

  “Hello, my dear. What lovely buttercups.”

  “How many graves are you going to clean?”

  “Oh, I’m just doing a bit of weeding over Mr. Chapman. He was a good friend of the family when I was a little girl.”

  Carol knelt down beside her. “Homer Chapman. 1861-1920. He’s next door to Elizabeth Greyson.” She picked a straggling piece of moss off Elizabeth Greyson’s stone.

  “Is he, then?” Miss Emily said comfortably.

  “It’s so old…1599-1643…She was buried here over three hundred years ago…three hundred years, and her gravestone is still standing up straight, and the church she was buried beside is still standing…They made things to last in those days.” She stepped across Elizabeth’s grave. “And here’s her husband, Jonathon.”

  “Is he, then?”

  “And they had a child, buried here.” She knelt down again and coaxed a snail off one of the letters. Slugs had left silver trails like glistening tears across the stone. “Thomas, son of Elizabeth and Jonathon Greyson.” She brushed apart the grass and weed in front of the stone. “It says something…‘You are…You are a priest forever, according to the order of Mel—Mel—something. Melchisedech.’ Who is Melchisedech?”

  “I don’t know, my dear. Some of the people here were before my time.”

  “He was 1616 to 1644. 1642 was the Civil War. He was a priest in the middle of the Civil War. I wonder if that’s what killed him. I wonder if he got captured by the Puritans.”

  “Then he should have gone through the priest tunnel,” Miss Emily said. “He would have been safe.”

  “What’s a priest tunnel?”

  “Oh, my dear, they had a nice tunnel between the church and the house so priests could move from one place to another without being caught.” She flung a handful of weed into the wind. Carol stared at her, hugging her knees. She could feel her heart thumping against her knees.

  “Who did? Who had a tunnel?”

  “The people who lived in the house then.” She sat back on her heels and brushed her hands off. “Bless me. I’m all grass-stained.”

  Carol stood up and walked across the graves. She squatted down beside Miss Emily. “What kind of a tunnel? Where does it begin?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody has ever seen it. I heard Mrs. Brewster’s father talk of it. Mrs. Brewster has looked for herself, but she could never find it. So she says it’s only a legend; that there’s no such thing as a priest tunnel. But I say: who began the legend? The people who built the tunnel, that’s who.”

  Carol sat down on the grass. “A tunnel,” she whispered. “A tunnel…Would it go underneath the graveyard?”

  “Oh, it went right under the church. That’s what I’ve heard. Is that my saucepan?”

  “Oh. Yes.” She handed it to Miss Emily. “Aunt Catherine says thanks.” She sat quietly, wind blowing the hair across her face. She laughed suddenly, breathlessly, and brushed it away, feeling her fingers cold against her face. “A tunnel. I wonder if it’s still there.”

  “There’s no knowing that,” Miss Emily said, searching in the earth for the end of a dandelion root. “It may have fallen in.”

  “Maybe. But everything else has lasted.” She stood up. Miss Emily looked up at her.

  “Would you like some milk and a biscuit, my dear?”

  “No thanks. I have to talk to Bruce.” She hoisted herself up on the railing and dropped over, and ran across the street, scarcely seeing the trucks and the drills. She opened the gate. The hedge-clippers were in the wheelbarrow, and Bruce was nowhere to be seen.

  The workers left at four-thirty, and he still had not returned. Uncle Harold and Aunt Catherine drove up shortly afterward. Carol watched them from her window. They parked at the end of the graveyard to avoid the work area, and walked half the block. She saw Uncle Harold stop in mid-sentence when he saw the wheelbarrow, and then she went down to open the door for them.

  “Hello, Carol. Where is Bruce?” he said as he came in.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well. I didn’t realize you would have to stay by yourself all day. We should have taken you with us to see the University.”

  “I didn’t mind. I went for a walk.”

  “Hello,” Bruce said behind them, and they turned. Alexander smiled cheerfully beside him.

  “Hello.”

  Uncle Harold felt for his pipe. His mouth tugged in a smile as he lit it. “Alexander. What have you been doing with yourself?”

  “Being lazy. I came to take a look at Bruce’s bicycle.”

  “You came on foot?”

  “I have a small problem with my back spokes.” His slow, calm voice was changeless. “I thought I should do a bit of walking before I forget how. Tomorrow I might even try running. How’s your article?”

  “I think I may have to finish it in Edinburgh.” He looked at Carol. “How does a couple weeks of camping in Scotland sound to you
?”

  She sat down on the stairs. “Scotland? I don’t—I don’t even know what it’s like.”

  “You’ll like it,” Bruce said. “There are dark green hills, miles of them, with sheep feeding on them, and the ruins of old stone walls running up and down them. It’s beautiful.”

  “It sounds beautiful. I’ve never camped before.”

  “That,” Aunt Catherine said, “is a different proposition entirely. You get up in a faint drizzle in the mornings to drink lukewarm tea, after chasing spiders out of your cold bed—”

  “A little rain never hurt anybody,” Bruce said. He stopped. His eyes flickered to Uncle Harold’s face. “I put the tools away, in case it decides to rain overnight. I didn’t mean to be gone all day.”

  Uncle Harold shook his head surprisedly. “It’s all right.” He took his papers and books into the study.

  Aunt Catherine said, “I suppose I should feed you. Alexander, you’re welcome to supper, if you don’t mind taking a chance.” She went upstairs with her packages. Bruce looked at Carol.

  “What’s the matter? You’re so quiet.”

  “I’ve got an idea.” Her voice shook in spite of herself. She glanced at Alexander, lounging against the banister, and he straightened.

  “Don’t you want me to hear?” he said wistfully. “I like ideas.”

  She looked doubtfully at Bruce, but his eyes were on Alexander’s face. Then he dropped beside her.

  “Go ahead. Just say it.”

  “All right. Emily Raison says they built a tunnel during the Civil War for priests to move from the house to the church without getting caught.”

  “A tunnel…” he breathed.

  “A priest tunnel.”

  He stared at her without seeing her. Then his face broke into a slow grin of pure joy.

  “A tunnel!” he shouted, and clapped his hands over his mouth. Alexander dropped on one knee before them.

  “Oh, please.” His hands were clasped in petition. “Oh, please. I’ve always wanted an underground tunnel. Tell me what’s happening.”

  Bruce stood up, nudging him off-balance. “Get up before Dad hears. Come on—” They followed him into the front yard and sat by the fishpool.

  Bruce said, “Tell me what Emily said.”

  “She said it was a legend, about the tunnel. She said Mrs. Brewster had looked for it, but she couldn’t find it, so she said it didn’t really exist—it was only a story. But Bruce, Edward could have been escaping through the tunnel. And the girl was going to lead him through it. But the man was waiting there for him. I don’t know what happens after that—he might have captured Edward or maybe Edward captured him. But it does explain why they keep walking through the wall, as though there were a door there…or an arch…”

  Bruce drew a deep breath. He stared into the pool, his eyes wide, dark with thought. “And we know exactly where it is.”

  “If it’s still there. If it ever was there.”

  “Something was there, unless they’re just walking through a wall for the fun of it. And if we do find the tunnel or the remains of it, that will be proof of what we’ve seen.”

  “Bruce,” said Alexander. “Bruce, what are you talking about? Who is Edward? Who keeps walking through walls?”

  “The girl in the painting in my Dad’s study,” Bruce said. “And a man with a sword. They keep walking through our cellar wall.”

  Alexander’s mouth opened. It closed slowly, then opened again. His voice came finally, hushed. “You have ghosts in your cellar, and you kept them all to yourself. Of all the rotten, selfish—And now you’ve got a tunnel, too.”

  “Mrs. Brewster has a tunnel. Or she’s going to.”

  “I wanted to tell you,” Carol said. “But you don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Of course I don’t. Who does? I didn’t believe Bruce could draw cow’s, either, or do something as incredibly stupid as diving into a blackberry bush, but I’ve learned, haven’t I? There’s always room for learning. Knowledge is a sacred, never-dying flame, and that’s what Mrs. Brewster is going to breathe if you tear her wall apart—fire and smoke like a dragon. I want to be there when she does. Bruce, if you don’t let me help, I’ll pine away at your doorstep and haunt it.”

  Bruce chuckled. But there was a worried line above his eyes. He dropped his fingers over the pool’s edge and let the goldfish nibble at them. “I think we should,” he said finally. “At any rate, I’m going to.” He moved, and the goldfish started away, filling the pool with ring upon ring of widening ripples. “I don’t think Mrs. Brewster will mind if we’re right. But if we’re wrong, and Dad finds out, and we have to tell him about ghosts he can’t see and tunnels that aren’t there…” He shook his head, lifting his wet hand to rub his eyes. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  Alexander, watching him quietly, shifted on the grass. He picked a tiny blue flower absently and stared at it. “Bruce—”

  There was an odd note in his voice. Bruce looked up. “What?”

  Alexander was silent. He tossed the flower away and smiled his slow, imperturbable smile. There was a trace of color in his face. “Nothing. Are these private ghosts, or can anybody see them?”

  “Dad can’t. And Father Malory can’t. Carol and I can, and I think whoever painted the picture of the girl saw her, and possibly a maid in the house when Mrs. Brewster was young. At any rate, she ran up from the cellar one day and looked at the picture and had hysterics.”

  “Why? The girl looks harmless.”

  “I know, but it’s a bit startling when she walks through the wall.”

  “You didn’t have hysterics, did you, Carol?” Alexander asked.

  “No. I just ran.”

  “I promise I won’t scream.” His eyes crinkled in a smile. “Ghosts. If you’re going to Scotland next week, we’d better get started.”

  “Mm. Tomorrow.”

  “There will be noise from our chisels. What will we do with it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s right under Dad’s study…” He smiled slowly, his eyes glittering a little in the light from the study window. “He won’t hear it. He won’t hear a single tink from our chisels. Because all he’ll be hearing tomorrow and the next day and the day after, is the Middleton Civil Sewage men drilling a hole in Parchment Street.”

  VII

  THEY COULD HEAR THE WHINE OF THE DRILLING FAINT and steady from the cellar the next morning. Overhead they could hear Uncle Harold’s footsteps as he moved across the study. The stones were chilly; the sun was warming the back of the house, and the front lawn lay in shadow. Alexander stared at the solid wall.

  “Where?”

  “Under the window,” Bruce said. He looked at Carol and she nodded.

  “Straight under.”

  Alexander put his hammer and chisel on the table. He ran his fingers along a crack in the mortar, but it was only a few inches long. He whistled softly.

  “It’s no wonder Mrs. Brewster never found it. I say, when she asks you how you knew it was there, what are you going to tell her?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought up a good lie yet.” He steadied his chisel in the crack Alexander had investigated and gave it a solid thump with the hammer. A chip of mortar flew out. “She’d never believe the truth. Are you just going to stand there?”

  “It looks solid. Perhaps I should go borrow some explosives.”

  “We’d have Uncle Harold dropping in on us,” Carol said. She began working on the other end of Bruce’s stone. “Maybe we should just take one out first. Then we can see what’s behind it, and if there’s just dirt, we can put it back.”

  “We can glue it back in,” Alexander said. “Shove over and let me have a corner.”

  “It would look funny,” Bruce said, “just sitting there without any mortar. But better one stone than three. One will take awhile anyway—this one looks about a foot deep.” He lowered his arms a moment, flexing his fingers. His face was speckled with ancient mortar. He stared doubtfully at
the wall.

  “Think of Christopher Columbus discovering America,” Alexander said, his voice breaking with the powerful, rhythmic blows of his hammer. “Think of Marco Polo discovering China. Think of—”

  “Think of my mother coming down to put something in the freezer and discovering us.”

  “Let’s not think,” Carol said.

  When the drilling stopped at noon, they had chipped the mortar as far as they could reach, and their chisels almost disappeared in the crevice that had formed around the stone. The noon bells drifted sweetly across the silence. They dropped their arms and slid to the floor.

  “We’ll have to find something longer,” Bruce said. His bones cracked as he straightened his arms. “Spikes or something. I’ll look in the tool-shed. Your faces are all white. Carol, your hair turned white.”

  “That’s all right,” she said tiredly. “I never liked it red.”

  “Why? It’s a beautiful color. Vermilion, with touches of yellow ochre.”

  She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. “It sounds like a disease.”

  “Red-gold,” Alexander said, yawning. “If you’re going to compliment somebody, you should do it in English.”

  “That wasn’t a compliment. It was just a fact.” He got to his feet and began to brush himself. “Come on. Let’s go find some lunch.”

  Aunt Catherine was making sandwiches in the kitchen when they came in.

  “Hello. What have you been up to?” She gave Carol a sandwich on a plate. Then she frowned puzzledly and brushed lightly at Carol’s hair.

  “We’ve been investigating,” Alexander said.

  “What? A chalk factory?” She opened the kitchen door and called down the hall, “Harold! Lunch!” They heard Uncle Harold’s shout back. She turned and said irritably, “Bruce, will you sit down and give your food a fighting chance?”

  Bruce sat down, chewing. They were silent, staring at their plates as they ate, until Alexander said, “That was good. May I have another?”

  Bruce stood up. “I’ll go to the tool-shed and get what we need.”

  “What are you doing?” Aunt Catherine said as he left. Alexander disposed of a quarter of his sandwich in a bite.