For a second Curtis stared back, smiling cockily, his chin jutting forward. But then suddenly he ducked his head and crossed his arms tightly over his chest again as if to hold himself together. Looking up at Neely out of the tops of his eyes, he said, “Yes. Yes, a joke. It was just a joke.”
“Well, it wasn’t funny,” Neely said. “Come on, Grub. Let’s go home.” They were halfway down the drive when Curtis came running after them. “Hey, wait,” he said. “Wait a minute. Could I come with you?”
Chapter 23
“COME WITH US?” NEELY stared at Curtis. “We’re going home.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll just walk with you a little way. Okay?”
“Well, it’s okay with me. Hadn’t you better ask your father?”
“Oh, he won’t notice. He never notices any—” Curtis was saying when suddenly his cocky grin faded. “Look out. Here it comes. Here comes that dog.” Grabbing Grub, he whirled him around and held him like a shield between himself and Lion, who was trotting toward them. Lion growled and broke into a run.
“Stop it. He thinks you’re hurting Grub,” Neely yelled. Jerking Curtis away, she stepped in front of him, spreading her arms. As Lion came to a bouncing, snarling stop Grub threw his arms around the dog’s thick neck.
“It’s okay, Lion,” he said. “Down, Lion. Down.”
It took a while for Grub to convince Lion that Curtis was okay and even longer to convince Curtis that it would be safe to have Lion walk with them. And even after they got under way the fuss went on, with Curtis still trying to get them to take Lion back and tie him up, and Lion still growling softly every time Curtis got too near Grub. They were, in fact, almost to the gate before Lion quit being the only subject of conversation.
But at last Neely was able to ask, “Did you say you were going to live here now, at Halcyon House?”
“Yeah, that’s what”—Curtis interrupted himself to put Neely between himself and Lion— “that’s what I said. My dad decided he wanted to come back here... Another pause while Curtis skittered away from Lion. “So here we are. I didn’t want to come.”
“Back here?” Neely asked. “Has he been here before?”
“Yeah, when he was a little kid.” He shrugged nervously, keeping his eyes on Lion. “He says the place was in a lot better shape then. I guess we’re going to have to fix it up a lot if we decide to stay here for a while.”
They had reached the fence by then and Neely, after a moment’s hesitation, led the way to the secret entrance. After all, it couldn’t matter now. They’d surely not be coming back again. Once outside, with no Lion to worry about, Curtis was easier to talk to.
“You said you didn’t want to come?” she asked.
Curtis shook his head. “Hell, no. I liked it where we were, and besides—”
He stopped as if he’d suddenly decided not to finish what he was saying.
Neely waited a minute before she said, “Yeah, well, that happens I guess. Like my friend Lisa. She had to move to Arizona because her dad got a new job. Is that why your dad came here? A new job, or something?”
“Yeah,” Curtis said. “He’s got a great job in Monterey. In a bank. He’s going to have an important job in the bank. Like the manager or president, or like that.”
Neely nodded. “Yeah, that’s the way it goes. Like with Lisa. But I’ll bet you’ll like it here once you get used to it. I know I’d love to live in a place like Halcyon House.”
“Well, I hate it,” Curtis said. “It’s too run-down and old-fashioned, and too far away from everything. And besides... He stopped for a second to pick up a rock and throw it up in the air. He threw it up and caught it several times before he went on. “And besides...haven’t you heard about Halcyon House being haunted?
“Haunted?” Neely said. “Well, not exactly. Have you?”
“Yeah. Carmen said so. Carmen’s this old woman who works for us. See, she used to be my dad’s nursemaid when he was a little kid and she came here with the family a lot of times way back then, so she knows all about it. She says the servants used to talk about it all the time.”
“Does Carmen still work for you?” Neely asked.
“Sure,” Curtis said. “But she’s not here yet. She’s coming in a day or two. She’s our cook now, and housekeeper. She didn’t want to come here either. Because of the place being haunted. That’s why I thought—” He stopped, and then went on, grinning. “That’s what I thought you were when I heard you talking. Ghosts.”
Neely smiled, remembering the wobbly voice behind the door. “You thought Grub and I were ghosts?” she said.
Up until then Grub had been walking on the other side of the road, not saying anything. Not that there was anything unusual about that. Grub rarely did much talking when strangers were around. But now he came over beside Neely and poked her with his elbow. “Tell him about Monica,” he said.
“No, I don’t think so—” Neely was saying when Curtis said, “Monica? Yeah. I remember Carmen saying something about somebody named Monica. Wasn’t she the kid who died? Here at Halcyon?”
“Tell him,” Grub said.
So Neely did. All about what Greta had said about pneumonia, and how some people thought she had died of something else. And then she went on to tell how there was even a story about how Monica had mysteriously disappeared.
“And the things in the trunk. Tell about that too,” Grub said. “Tell about all the things that were in Monica’s trunk and how people were afraid to touch them anymore after she died.”
So Neely told about that, too, and Curtis seemed very interested. When she finished talking he was quiet for a minute and then he said, “Monica. Yeah. Carmen knows about her. I’m going to ask Carmen to tell me some more about Monica.”
“Yeah,” Neely said. “I’d like to know too. I’d sure like to find out what Carmen knows.”
By that time they’d reached the crest of the hill and Neely stopped to point out their house.
“You live there? In that little old house?” Curtis said, in a scornful tone of voice, as if he thought the picturesque old Bradford house was some kind of a slum. When Neely gave him a cool stare and said yes he grinned and asked, “You got anything good to eat down there?”
Neely was definitely surprised. “Well, sure,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. There’s no food up there. Nothing except this rice and vegetable gunk the old guy, Reuben, was eating. See, he wasn’t expecting us till Sunday. We were going to ride up in the car with Carmen but then we decided to fly and so we got here early.”
“Oh,” Neely said. “That’s probably what he’s doing right now. Buying some food.”
Curtis’s face brightened. “Yeah? You think so?” But then he frowned. “How soon do you think he’ll come back?”
“Well, usually he stays all day. But maybe he’ll come back sooner this time.”
“Yeah, and maybe not. I think I’ll eat at your house,” Curtis said, and started off down the hill.
Grub and Neely looked at each other and rolled their eyes before they hurried to catch up. They were almost to their driveway when Neely heard a familiar sound and looked up to see Reuben’s old blue pickup turning in off Highway One.
“Hey, look. There he is now,” she said. “There’s Reuben.”
“Is that him?” Curtis said. “All right!” Waving his arms over his head, he jumped out into the middle of the road so quickly that Reuben had to slam on his brakes.
The last Neely and Grub saw of Curtis Hutchinson, he was climbing into the passenger seat of the pickup truck. He didn’t even turn around to wave good-bye.
Chapter 24
“WELL,” NEELY SAID WHEN REUBEN’S PICKUP HAD disappeared over the top of the hill. “That is one weird kid. Have you ever seen such a—” She stopped when she realized that Grub was no longer standing beside her. Running after him, she caught up as he trudged blindly up the driveway, his face blank and empty.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s al
l right. We couldn’t have gone up there much after school started anyway. Only on Saturdays and not even then if the weather was bad. We just have to forget about it, that’s all.”
“I’ll never forget about it,” Grub said. “It was so—so fascinating.” (Fascinating had been a favorite word of Neely’s for a long time and Grub had picked it up lately.) “And now everything’s so—tragic.” (Another favorite word of Neely’s.)
Grub’s voice definitely had a gloom-and-doom ring to it. “No, it isn’t,” Neely said quickly. “It’s not as tragic as all that. It’s just something that was great but now it’s over.”
Grub’s sigh almost sounded like a sob. “We didn’t even get to say good-bye,” he said.
Neely thought she knew what he meant. It would have been so much better if they’d only had a little warning—and time to say good-bye—to the nursery and the library and the whole fantastically beautiful old house. And to Monica? Was that what Grub meant? To say good-bye to Monica?
To change the subject she said quickly, “Can you imagine, we went right in the house without knowing they were there, and you went down to get the key, and then we both went down to look at the guns, and nobody saw us and we didn’t see any of them. And we probably walked right by the rooms they were in.” The very thought made her shiver.
Grub nodded. “They were sleeping,” he said.
“You’d think we would have seen something. Like a car in the driveway or—”
“He said they came in a taxi,” Grub said.
“Oh, yeah. He did. But they must have a car. How can they live up there without a car? I guess Reuben could take them shopping, but how would they get to work and things like that?”
Grub only shrugged, so after a moment, Neely said, “They must have a car somewhere. Don’t you think?”
“I guess so.” Grub’s face was still blank and stiff, but at least he was talking. “You can ask him next time we see him.”
“I don’t know,” Neely said. “I doubt if we’ll see him again.”
“I think so,” Grub said.
“What do you mean, you think so?”
Grub nodded slowly. “I think we’ll see him again.”
That night at dinner Neely told her parents about meeting Curtis—without saying exactly where. Without actually saying so, she made it sound as if they had met first in the grove. “This kid was there, and we got started talking and we met his father—and everything. They’re Hutchinsons and they’re going to live at Halcyon for a while,” she said.
Mom and Dad were very amazed and interested and there were lots of questions about what the house looked like inside and what the furnishings were like. Mom loved to hear about things like that, so Neely went room by room telling about the most interesting things like the gorgeous pool table and the inlaid hardwood card tables in the game room.
While she was still telling about the game room, Grub said, “And the gun cupboard. Don’t forget about the gun cupboard.”
Neely gave him a warning frown because of the way Mom felt about having guns around the house, but then she made it all right by quickly explaining that the gun cabinet had unbreakable glass doors and a big padlock. Fortunately Mom was busy wondering if there would be any chance that she might get to see the inside of Halcyon House, now that it was occupied again. Mom had always been interested in all kinds of houses.
It turned out Grub was right about seeing Curtis again. A few days later, around five o’clock in the afternoon, there was a knock on the back door of the Bradfords’ house—and there he was, Curtis Hutchinson in person.
“Hi,” he said, holding out two wrinkled paper bags. He was smiling, but instead of his usual cocky grin, this one was squinty-eyed and nervous, like a dog that doesn’t know whether to expect a pat or a kick. “Hi. I brought you these. You left them up at the house.”
Neely laughed. “Well, thanks, but no thanks. They’re probably pretty rotten by now.”
“Well, actually, I ate the cookies,” Curtis said. “But not the sandwiches. I don’t like tuna. The sandwiches are still in there.”
Neely took the bags to the garbage pail and just a minute later her mother came out to see who had knocked. “Well, who’s this, Neely?” she asked.
“This is Curtis Hutchinson, Mom,” Neely said. “This is my mother, Connie Bradford. I told you about meeting Curtis last Saturday.”
“Well, well. Welcome to Halcyon Hill, Curtis,” Mom said. “It’s nice to know someone will be living in that beautiful old home again.”
“Yeah, for a while at least. The old dump is pretty run-down right now but my dad will have it fixed up before long. You know, get rid of a lot of the old-fashioned junk. Put in new bathrooms and stuff like that. It won’t be too bad once that’s done.”
“No, I suppose not,” Mom said. “Anyway, we’re glad you’re here. Neely says your father came back to Halcyon because he has a job at a bank. I was wondering if it might be where we do our banking.”
“Oh.” Curtis looked startled. “Well, he may not take the bank job after all. He may just rest for a while. He’s been kind of sick lately. Or maybe he’ll just write his book. He’s been working on this great book lately and he practically has it sold already. He’s a great writer. There are a lot of great writers in our family.”
“Why, that’s wonderful,” Mom said. “How exciting.” Her lips were twitching and she was careful not to catch Neely’s eye, as if she were afraid they both might laugh if she did. Neely knew what was funny, of course. Mom always thought it was funny when people did what she called ego-tripping...strutting around and trying to sound important.
After Mom went back in the house Curtis still hung around, walking around the yard and looking at Grub’s chickens and rabbits and turtles. Grub came out, too, and followed them around, but he didn’t say much. Curtis talked a lot. He asked about what school Neely went to and it turned out he would be in the sixth grade too. He also talked about the private school he’d gone to in Beverly Hills and how maybe he’d go to public school this year just for a change, but he didn’t think he’d like it.
“Well, maybe you’ll be in my class then,” Neely said. It was an interesting thought. She wondered what the other kids would make of him. He would not, she decided, be a big hit. Not if he kept on ego-tripping about his rich and famous family and other embarrassing things like that.
“Well, I guess I’d better go,” he said finally. And then to Neely’s surprise, “Why don’t you come too? Up to Halcyon House, I mean.”
“Well, I don’t think we could right now,” Neely said. “We’re going to be having dinner in an hour or two.”
“Oh.” Curtis looked disappointed. “Well, come tomorrow then. Okay? Come up tomorrow.”
It was Grub who said okay first. Poking Neely, who was still speechless with surprise, Grub said, “Okay. Huh, Neely? We can come tomorrow. Can’t we?”
Neely said she guessed they could.
Chapter 25
THERE WERE A COUPLE OF REASONS WHY NEELY DIDN’T really want to go back to Halcyon House. The most important one concerned the nursery, and it felt, she had to admit, a lot like jealousy. Somehow it really hurt to think about what Curtis probably had been doing to the nursery.
Especially to the dollhouse. Not that he was apt to have actually played with it, but she wouldn’t put it past him to ruin things just for the fun of it. She pictured the lovely cherrywood chairs and tables with missing legs, and perhaps even the beautiful doll family with broken heads and torn clothing. She hated even to imagine it.
The other reason was that going back to Halcyon House under the circumstances just might be a little risky. Of course, Curtis had lied to his father before, to protect her and Grub, but what if he got mad at them, or just changed his mind? What if he got them up there and then told his father that he’d been lying and that Grub and Neely were actually trespassers?
On the other side of the argument there was the fact that Grub definitely wanted to go. There
was no doubt about that. Ever since Saturday he’d been, if not in a full fledged gloom-and-doom attack, not very far from it. He’d been spending a lot of time in his room since then, reading or staring out the window. When Neely asked him he always said he was okay, or that he was just sad because it was August. August always made Grub sad because September came next and the start of school. But this time Grub’s depression wasn’t just the usual beginning-of-school blues, because right after Curtis showed up and invited them back to Halcyon he suddenly became a lot more like his normal self.
Neely tried to warn him that it wouldn’t be the same. “The nursery is his now, and he can do anything he wants to with all the stuff in there,” she told him.
“I know,” Grub said. “I know that. I just want to...go there again.”
“Well, okay,” she said. “We’ll go. But remember, it’s going to be very different now.”
The first big difference was that they were able to enter the estate grounds by way of the grand front gate. Curtis had said it would be unlocked and it was. And the next one was that Lion didn’t come running to meet them.
“Let’s go look in his doghouse.” Grub’s face was puckered with worry. “Maybe he’s just asleep.”
Neely was afraid there was more to it man that. Lion had never been too sound asleep to come to meet them before. But she agreed to go look. It felt funny walking right past Reuben’s house on a Thursday. Neely almost expected him to burst out through the front door shouting at them, but he apparently wasn’t at home. Lion was however. When they got to his doghouse, there he was all right, lying at the end of a long chain. When he saw Grub he went into such convulsions of joy he almost tied himself in knots. Grub and Lion were still climbing all over each other when a voice said, “I knew it. I knew that poor animal was harmless if you treated him right.”
The Trespassers Page 8
