The Dreadful Revenge of Ernest Gallen

by James Lincoln Collier

  I was pushing that thought away when there came that familiar tightening in my chest and the feeling of a small animal moving around inside of me. But this time I wasn’t sorry, because I had a couple of questions to ask it. So I waited.

  “Hello, Gene,” the hollow voice came. “I hope we’re in a better mood than last time.”

  Even though I had some questions I wanted to ask, I didn’t want the voice to get the idea that I was feeling friendly toward it. “I’m never in a good mood when you come.”

  “It hurts me when you say things like that, Eugene. I have feelings, too, you know.”

  “I wish you had nicer feelings toward Grampa and me.”

  “Ah, me,” the specter sighed. “And here I’ve come just to tell you how well you’ve been doing.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I said.

  “This research task you and your little girlfriend have embarked on? I came to tell you that you’re on the right track. Just keep going as you are.”

  I thought for a moment. I didn’t want to attract the voice’s attention to my dad, in case it’d decide to go after him, too. But there didn’t seem to be any way around it. “What’s my dad got to do with all of this?”

  “Ah. And ah again. That is an interesting question, isn’t it?”

  I waited, but it didn’t say anything more. “That’s not an answer; it’s just another question. Is he why you got me into this?”

  “Your dad. Well now. Not a perfect human being. None of us is, of course, but your dad’s imperfections were more apparent than most.”

  “I don’t believe you. You don’t think anyone is any good.”

  “True,” the hollow voice said. “They aren’t. Who can you name who’s any good?”

  “My mom. Grampa. There’s two.”

  “In time you’ll have another view of your grampa, I’m afraid, Gene.”

  “That’s your opinion.” I was beginning to feel pretty sore. “I don’t believe a word you say. Especially about my dad.”

  “Ah well. Just keep on as you’re going, you and your little girlfriend.”

  “She isn’t my girlfriend; she’s just a friend. And whether you like it or not, she has a name. Her name is Sam.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind. Just go on as you are, Gene.”

  “Maybe I won’t!” I shouted. “I don’t have to do everything you tell me.”

  “Just keep going.” And then it was gone.

  I started walking home again, feeling confused and upset the way I always was when I’d got finished talking with the voice. Could it really make me hurt Grampa? How could it? And yet it had kept me from writing that letter for Sonny. What if the voice got me to kill Grampa? Forcing me to ram a knife into him or slug him over the head with a lead pipe? I shuddered and closed my eyes. How could I live with myself after I’d done something like that?

  I was still feeling confused and restless after supper. I tried reading a book for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate. I needed to talk to somebody, so I decided to go over to Sonny’s. “Don’t stay late,” Mom said. “It’s a school night. Have you finished your homework?”

  “We didn’t have any.” I figured I could get up early and do it in the morning.

  By the time I got to Sonny’s it had gotten dark. We sat on the porch on the old car seat and swatted mosquitoes while we talked. Sonny’s mom and his little sisters were inside listening to Amos’n’ Andy on the radio. Every once in a while we could hear them laugh.

  “Sonny, did your dad ever say anything about the old Toffey place up there on Spring Hollow Road?”

  “Spring Hollow Road?”

  “Where I used to live. Grampa owned a nice big house up there. The one on the corner. That was before I knew you.” Sonny was actually a little older than me. He used to be a grade ahead of me, which was why I didn’t know him back then. He’d got left back into our grade, and was mighty lucky he hadn’t been left back more than that.

  “The Toffey place?”

  “Mom used to take me there berry picking. The house was empty, half the windows busted, the porch roof falling in, door wide open. When I was little, that old house scared me. Vacant windows like the eyes of some huge cat getting ready to pounce on me. Scared the pants off of me.”

  “Why’d the Toffey place come up all of a sudden?”

  I looked around to make sure that Sonny’s mom couldn’t hear me. “I’ve been looking in the old Chronicles to see if I could find out anything about Grampa and what happened back then. Alice Samuels is helping me. The old Toffey place keeps popping up.”

  “How popping up?”

  “Some guy bought it back around the time I was two, maybe a little after. He claimed there was oil there.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Sonny said.

  “My dad was in on it.”

  “Well, Yewgene, I don’t know nothing about your dad. You never told me nothing about him.”

  “I don’t know anything about him, Sonny. They won’t tell me anything.”

  “Won’t tell you nothing about him?”

  “Nothing. I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead.”

  “Could be dead, like my dad.” Then he paused. “You know, Gene, I been thinking since Dad walked off of that lumber platform. I don’t get this death stuff. What’s the use of it? I don’t see the need of it. Whose idea was it, anyway?”

  “God’s idea, I guess.”

  “I reckon there’s no arguing with God, but all the same, I wish he hadn’t of thought of it. Seems like an awful waste of people.”

  “Some people say they wouldn’t want to live forever. They say they’d get tired of living.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Sonny said. “People say they’ll be glad to be dead, only not right away. They keep pushing it back until it gets to be forever by itself. As for me, I could do without death.”

  He was sad about his dad being dead, that was clear enough. Missed him, even though he hadn’t been much use. He’d remember the few times they went fishing together, things like that, and forget about all the times he came up short with the money. “At least you had a dad for a while. I never had one at all. Not so’s I can remember.”

  “You have your grampa.”

  “Yeah, he counts for something. Does stuff for me that a lot of dads wouldn’t, I reckon.” I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. “Let’s get back to the old Toffey place. Your dad ever mention it?”

  “Well, now that you bring it up, I remember he did. He talked about it more’n once. Never said much about it, just that it was a good place to keep away from. He didn’t talk about it all the time, but if the subject happened to come up, he’d say, ‘That old Toffey farm’s a good place to keep away from.’” Sonny thought a minute. “I’ll tell you what, Yewgene, let’s you and me go on out there and have a look around.”

  “I’m not going anywhere near that place in the dead of night,” I said. “I’ve got enough problems with spooks as it is.”

  “I didn’t mean tonight, for pete’s sake, Yewgene. I ain’t going nowheres near that place at night, neither. What about tomorrow after school?”

  I wanted to do it, but it scared me. Something had gone on in that house. I knew, and Sonny didn’t. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go on out there. If we don’t feel like going inside we don’t have to.” But I was pretty sure we would.

  I spoke to Sam at lunchtime. “I can’t look at newspapers this afternoon. I’ve got something I have to do with Sonny.”

  “What’s so important?”

  I didn’t want to tell her. She couldn’t resist a mystery and would want to get in on it. She and Sonny weren’t on the same wavelength and were likely to get into a fight. “It’s sort of scary,” I said.

  “I won’t be any more scared than you will,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “The old Toffey place we’ve been reading about in the Chronicle. Sonny says his dad always said it was a good place to stay away from. We decided to see w
hy.”

  “You can’t go out there without me, Gene. I knew about it before Sonny.”

  “Not if his dad used to say it was a good place to stay away from.”

  “Even so, I’m going,” Sam said.

  “You and Sonny aren’t on the same wavelength. You’ll argue over everything.”

  “No, we won’t. I don’t mind Sonny. If only he wouldn’t curse so much.”

  “I’ve heard you curse,” I said.

  “That was by mistake. I don’t chew grass and spit the way Sonny does. His manners aren’t so hot.”

  “Manners aren’t everything,” I said. “If you’re worried about his manners you shouldn’t come with us.”

  “I’m coming,” she said. “It’s just that Sonny isn’t as smart as he ought to be.”

  “What do you mean by that? People can’t ought to be smarter than they are.”

  “Sure they can,” Sam said. “Sonny could be a lot smarter if he wanted to.”

  “Sonny’s smart in his own way,” I said. “You have to know him better.”

  “He isn’t smart enough to keep his shirt tucked in and not chew grass.”

  “What’s wrong with chewing grass? I chew grass sometimes.”

  “All right,” she said. “Spitting.”

  “You have to spit, especially when you’re playing baseball. It’s part of the game, like keeping up a chatter. If you can’t think of a reason to spit, you can always spit into your glove to keep it moist.”

  “Why is your glove supposed to be moist?” she said.

  “Why do you have to argue about everything?” I said. “If you’re going to argue about everything, you shouldn’t come with us.”

  “I wasn’t arguing. It was just a discussion. I’m coming. You can’t stop me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to stop you. I only said that you and Sonny aren’t on the same wavelength.”

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose it isn’t his fault, considering the way he was raised. If only he’d comb his hair and keep his shirt tucked in.”

  I didn’t answer that. She was bound and determined to come with us, even if she wasn’t on the same wavelength as Sonny.

  When I told Sonny that Sam was coming with us he groaned. “She’s more stuck-up than a pin cushion.”

  “Stop groaning about it, Sonny. She isn’t as stuck-up as she pretends. She’s a girl; she likes things neat and tidy.”

  “Too tidy for me,” Sonny said. “I never saw the use of being neat and tidy. If everyone was neat and tidy there wouldn’t be no tennis balls lying around the country club.”

  “You’re just not on the same wavelength as her,” I said.

  “Well, I suppose she can’t help it. It’s the way she was raised.”

  So it was settled that Sam would come with us, as much as anything ever got settled. After school the three of us walked out to Spring Hollow Road. It had clouded over and some wind had come up. It felt like rain. Sonny and Sam were being as polite as could be in order to show that they could be on the same wavelength with each other and prove me wrong. Sam would say, “What did your dad say was wrong with the Toffey place, Sonny? I don’t believe in haunts or anything like that. There isn’t any good evidence for them.” And instead of Sonny saying something sarcastic the way he usually did, like, “You’d believe in ’em fast enough if one was after you,” he would say, “Well, I don’t know, Sam, you might be right about that.” It was unnatural to them both, and I wished they’d quit it, but it was my own fault for telling them they weren’t on the same wavelength with each other. I could see where soon enough they’d be ganging up on me. But I let it go.

  Spring Hollow Road was a good two miles out of town, and it took us a while to walk there, going past a couple of farms and stretches of woods. The sky was getting darker, and we began to wonder if we ought to turn back; but we were almost there and didn’t want to give up now. Finally we came to the corner where Spring Hollow Road turned off from the blacktop road. Grampa’s grand old house was on the corner. I hadn’t seen it for a while. It didn’t look much different. They’d blacktopped the driveway that circled up to the big columns at the doorway, the door was painted green instead of brown-stained, and there was a new Pontiac parked out front, but that was about it. I wondered who lived there now. Was some little kid up there in my room playing with a train set or building a castle with blocks the way I’d done? I didn’t know if I liked that idea, and I pushed it out of my mind. “Remember when I lived here, Sam? Remember jumping rope on that lawn?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “We were pretty little.”

  “Hey,” Sonny said. “I thought we came up here to explore the Toffey house, not stand around remembering old times.”

  We started down Spring Hollow Road. Still a dirt road—no point in paving it. Now I felt some nervousness come on, a light prickling in my stomach. The vacant old house had always scared me, but now that I knew it had some connection to the voice, my dad, Grampa, and Mr. Hawkins walking off into midair, it scared me more than ever. My heart was thumping and my face was sweaty.

  We went on walking, and after a little while we began to come in sight of the old house—dark, vacant eyes—and behind it, sticking up over the roof, a couple of tall spruce trees, green against the gray-black sky. We trudged on a little more, until we were standing in front of it—lawn all grown up with brush, roof sagging down in the middle, chimneys tipped, porch roof fallen down at one end, the roof posts for that part lying across the porch floor.

  “Well, there it is,” Sonny said. “I don’t think I was ever out here before.”

  “Me neither,” Sam said.

  “Didn’t you ever come berry picking with my mom and me, Sam?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I recall. Did you ever go inside, Gene?”

  “No. I was always too scared.”

  For a moment the three of us stood there staring at the old house. We all knew that we had to go in, but none of us was in any hurry to do it.

  “I’ve been in places like this before,” Sonny said. “There was an old shack by the river where some hermit died. Nobody wanted to go in there, but me and Dad went in to see if there was anything worth hooking. Found a nice piece of one-inch rope, a saw, and an ax. There was some clothes there, too, pants and shirts, but Dad wouldn’t touch ’em. Said he wasn’t gonna wear no dead man’s clothes.”

  “We don’t know if anyone died in the Toffey place,” Sam said.

  But I did. Or was pretty sure of it, anyway. “Well, if we’re going in, we better do it before it starts raining.” And in fact, we could hear the rumbling of thunder in the distance.

  We walked through the brush growing in the lawn, and up onto the porch. From here we could stare through the empty windows into the living room. Not much to see—broken glass on the floor, a fireplace with cold ashes still in it, a flight of stairs going up, curtains on one of the windows blowing around a little in the breeze. “Not much to see here,” Sonny said.

  “A lot of times these mysterious old places aren’t so mysterious when you look at them objectively,” Sam said.

  Sonny gave her a look. “My dad said it was a good place to stay away from. I expect there’s something to what he said.”

  “I’m not saying there isn’t, Sonny,” Sam said. “But you have to be objective about it.”

  This was a little more natural: being polite all the time was too much of a strain for them both. “Let’s go in and find out,” I said. I stepped through the door. What with the rain clouds above, it was fairly dark in that living room, but there was enough light to see by. “Nothing here,” I said.

  Through a door at the back of the living room we could see the corner of an old iron stove. “Kitchen,” I said. We went back there. Nothing much there, either—more broken glass, the old stove, old kitchen cabinets with glass windows in them, a coffee mug in the gray stone sink, dust everywhere, a wooden chair with a leg broken off that hadn’t been worth moving when the widow Toffey left
. On the floor there was a scrap of newspaper. I scooped it up.

  “What is it?” Sam said.

  I glanced over it. “It’s about this guy Gallen who was saying that there was oil out here. He was wanted for questioning. It says, ‘Questions have been raised by investors in Gallen’s oil syndicate. The office of the attorney general is investigating and wishes to question Gallen.’ That’s the whole article.”

  “Is there a date on it?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah. October 10, 1925,” I said.

  “Let me see that clipping, Gene.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you. I just want to see the typeface.” I handed her the clipping. “It’s not from the Chronicle. That’s not our typeface. A St. Louis paper, maybe. Or Chicago. Maybe even Kansas City.”

  “We looked through the Chronicle for that year,” I said. “It’s funny your dad didn’t run a story on it.”

  “There’s probably an explanation,” Sam said. “Otherwise my dad would have run something.” She looked around. “I guess kids must have been out here breaking windows,” she said.

  “It wasn’t no kids,” Sonny said. “Otherwise there’d be stones around the floor.”

  There came another rumble of thunder. “We’d better finish exploring and get out of here before it starts to rain,” I said. I took the clipping from Sam, folded it, and put it into my back pocket. We trooped out of the kitchen back into the living room, and started up the stairs. At the top there was a little hall with two doors opening off it. Sonny gave one of the doors a kick, and it swung open. We peered in. Nothing except more broken glass. That was all. “Not much mystery so far,” Sam said.

  There came a loud crack of thunder. “Let’s get out of here,” Sonny said.

  “There’s one more room,” Sam said.