Young Whit and the Shroud of Secrecy

by Phil Lollar

  They paused at the door. Steve gave everyone their instructions: “Johnny, walk really slow and wave your arms around like you’re a little crazy. Paul, moan and ‘oooooh’ and stuff. That always sounds spooky. Emmy, when I nod at you, let out a big scream. I’ll do the bat sound effects.” He paused, a wide grin covering his face. “Ready?” They all nodded, except Paul.

  Emmy nudged him. “What’s wrong? You scared?”

  “Not of the house,” Paul moaned. “Of my parents! They don’t have the heart to punish Steve, so they give me an extra dose.” He rubbed the seat of his pants. “I can almost feel it already.”

  “Well, if you’re already feeling the punishment, you might as well do the crime,” Johnny quipped.

  Steve snickered. “You’re my kind of guy,” he said. “Lead on!”

  Johnny nodded and grabbed the handle on the door. He and his companions walked through it into the dark, ramshackle house, unaware of the adventure awaiting them.

  Chapter Eleven

  Inside, the house was cloaked in darkness. Even the light of the gibbous moon refused to enter. The only illumination came from the dimming light of the waving ghost of John Avery Whittaker.

  Johnny’s squinting eyes could make out a few things: old posters from foreign lands on the walls; a broken-down Victrola; a framed piece of needlepoint reading, “All you can take with you is that which was given away”; and a tattered copy of Tom Sawyer on the floor.

  Paul’s haunting moans, along with Steve’s cheeky bat flaps, echoed off the walls and down the halls, creating a melodramatic atmosphere. Johnny had no idea how a ghost should walk. He assumed that if there were such things as ghosts, they wouldn’t have to walk, but he nevertheless did his best imitation.

  It all came to nothing. If somebody actually had shone a light in the house, he or she had either already left or was unimpressed with the kids’ dramatic presentation.

  Steve whispered, “Johnny? Go haunt the upstairs. That’s where you saw the light, right?”

  The idea countered Johnny’s better judgment, but he nodded and slowly shuffled toward the staircase. At the landing, he grabbed the banister and began walking up. At his first step, his waving arm bumped the newel post cap, knocking it off its perch. He deftly snagged it before it clattered to the floor.

  Johnny looked back at the others. Emmy’s hand covered her gaping mouth, and Paul looked as if he might pass out, but Steve shook with silent laughter, his wheelchair swaying softly. Johnny regrouped and slowly walked up the long flight of stairs, each foot soliciting a creak or groan.

  Paul resumed his moaning, which may have come more from his own fear instead of any acting prowess, and Steve added his bat flaps in dramatic intervals. Johnny braced himself for Emmy’s scream and continued climbing.

  He topped the stairs and, as ghostly as he could, wandered down the second-story hall. By the time he reached the end, he had seen no one and nothing except some scattered trash—empty cans, burlap bags, shattered glass, and the like—and the springs of an old wrought iron bed.

  Another, narrower staircase led up to a third floor, where the dormer window had framed the flickering light. Johnny set his foot on the first step, when he heard a loud crash from below, accentuated by Emmy’s piercing scream. But that scream was not a contrived one. Something had happened.

  Johnny raced back through the hall and flew down the stairs to his friends.

  Hitting the bottom step, he looked for the others. Some very authentic groaning came from the adjoining room. He hurried into it.

  “Where are you guys?” Johnny called in a frantic whisper.

  “We’re here,” Emmy responded.

  Johnny moved toward her voice.

  “Ook lout!” Paul shouted.

  But it was too late. Johnny walked straight into a gaping hole in the floorboards, falling into the crawl space below. He landed on something soft. Emmy screamed again, only this time, it sounded more like a bark of pain.

  Through his almost extinguished glow, Johnny saw the others who broke through the floor lying beside him. Steve had somehow remained in his wheelchair. Paul stretched out beside his brother, his eyes wide as saucers.

  The soft thing Johnny landed on was Emmy. “You wanna get off me?” she groaned. “You’re heavier than you look.”

  “Oh! Sorry,” Johnny said, crawling beside Steve. “Are you guys okay? Is anyone hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Steve answered. “Good thing I didn’t fall out of this wheelchair.”

  “Oh no,” Paul groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” Johnny asked. “Are you all right?”

  “No. My pillowcase ripped. My candy spilled everywhere.”

  “Well, I’m not sharing mine with you!” Steve informed him. “Losers weepers.”

  “Can we please go now?” Paul asked.

  “How are we going to get Steve up?” Emmy asked.

  “It’s only about four feet,” Johnny noted. “Paul, you climb up topside. We’ll have to lift Steve out first, and then get the wheelchair out after.”

  It took about five minutes, but they managed to hoist Steve up to Paul, who slid him across the floor to rest against the wall. Then Johnny and Emmy grabbed the chair to hand it up.

  It had gotten wedged between the floorboards and something they couldn’t see behind it. Shaking it back and forth, they eventually dislodged it and handed it up to Paul, who kept mumbling over and over, “Dad’s gonna kill us.”

  Steve disagreed. “Nah, he’ll just kill you. Like you said before, he never punishes me.”

  Emmy grabbed a board to pull herself up, but felt a sharp sting. “Ow!” she yelled.

  “What now?!” Paul asked.

  “I cut my hand on something,” Emmy replied. “I’m bleeding.”

  “You okay?” Johnny asked.

  Emmy scowled. “I’m fine.” She pulled a bow from her hair and wrapped it around the cut. “Did you see anything upstairs?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Not really. Just some trash. I never made it to the third floor.”

  “The scream?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I am a great screamer.” She finished wrapping her wound.

  “I’ll give you a leg up,” Johnny said.

  “Wait a minute . . . my trick-or-treat bag must have fallen in here somewhere.”

  “You don’t wanna lose that,” Steve hollered as Paul helped him into his wheelchair. “I’m not sharing my stash with anyone.”

  Johnny got down on all fours to look for it. Emmy did the same. Johnny thought he could see it behind a few remaining boards. The glow formula had lasted longer than he expected, which was a mercy in their current situation. He moved closer and tossed aside the boards where the wheelchair had gotten caught.

  “Found it!” he said, pulling it out. A few remaining boards fell, but before Johnny could react, Emmy screamed again.

  “Would you stop that?” Johnny snapped. “You’re going to give me a heart attack!” Then he saw the look of horror etched on her face.

  Emmy’s bloody left hand covered her mouth. Her right hand pointed at something. Her eyes were wide with terror as she stammered, “C-c-off-in!”

  Johnny turned. Emmy was right. Directly behind him was a coffin. The end was busted open, likely from the fall of the wheelchair hitting it. And through the eerie green glow of his body, he could see something sticking out from it.

  The bottom of a woman’s boot.

  It would normally take about fifteen minutes to get from Granville House to Johnny and Emmy’s homes.

  They made it in eight.

  And one of those minutes was spent in front of Steve and Paul’s house, arguing over whether they should tell their parents. Johnny thought they should. The others disagreed. McDuff, who caught up with them, whined.

  “If my parents knew I was in that place, they’d tan Paul’s hide,” Steve argued.

  Paul echoed his brother’s assessment.

  Emmy surprised Johnny, saying it di
dn’t matter anyway. That coffin had probably been down there for years. Besides, they didn’t really know whether a body was inside.

  “You saw the boot,” Johnny countered.

  “Yes, a boot, but no foot.”

  “Maybe the person who killed her cut off her legs and fed them to alligators,” Steve suggested.

  Johnny shook his head. “Okay. We won’t tell anyone. I never want to see that thing again.”

  Emmy was surprised. “What? We have to go back,” she protested. “We have to find out what’s inside that coffin.”

  Johnny didn’t want to admit it to his friends, especially on Halloween, but since the day he saw his mother lying in a coffin, he’d had a dire fear of them. An almost irrational fear. In fact, when he saw the coffin in the crawl space, he had leapt out of the hole and raced out of the building quicker than anyone. Fortunately, no one had chided him about it. It had spooked them all pretty badly.

  “I don’t care what you say. I don’t have to see what’s inside any coffin!” Paul said boldly. “I mean, come on. The only thing ever in them is a bed doddy.”

  “Dead body,” Steve corrected.

  “We don’t know that there’s one in that coffin,” Emmy said. “It could be more Confederate treasure.”

  “Didn’t look like treasure to me,” Johnny said.

  “I agree!” Paul said. “I say no!”

  Steve laughed. “You two are worse than a girl.”

  “Excuse me?” Emmy said defensively. “I’ve been saying we should go back!”

  “Right,” Steve said. “Those two are worse than a girl.”

  Johnny could tell that Emmy was put out at the comment, but she held her tongue. He decided to chime in before she changed her mind. “Fine,” he said, “we’ll go.”

  Paul frowned. “I haven’t agreed yet,” he insisted.

  “Yes, you have,” Steve said. “Whether you like it or not.”

  “It’s gonna end in tears,” Paul moaned. “Mine.”

  Tomorrow was Wednesday, a school day, which meant that Saturday would be their first opportunity to return. They agreed they would sneak back and look inside the coffin Saturday night, after their parents had gone to bed. Paul and Steve raced inside their home, while Johnny and Emmy sped toward Magnolia Lane.

  After what they’d just seen, neither Emmy nor Johnny was in the mood to attend a Halloween party. But since Emmy’s family was putting it on, they had no choice.

  They dropped McDuff back at Johnny’s house and then went straight to Emmy’s party. Dozens of people were already there, kids and adults. Johnny knew a few of them and tried to participate, but his heart was still pounding.

  After bobbing for an apple and coming up with a pear, Johnny ducked into a side room to get away from the crowd. He wondered how long that coffin had been there. And why of all places would it even be there? The image of it reappearing in his mind made his skin crawl. He imagined his mother inside that coffin. His heart sank.

  He began to explore every possibility. Perhaps someone had been murdered and hidden away. Perhaps the person hadn’t been murdered at all but had died tragically, and the people left behind couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from their loved one. Perhaps what lay inside wasn’t a body at all. Perhaps, as Emmy had suggested, it was more treasure.

  And then, of course, it might simply be an empty coffin, and the boot had been in the crawl space beside it.

  Johnny grabbed for something to eat from his pillowcase. He felt through the candy in search of a cookie or an apple. His hand fell on a piece of paper, folded into quarters. Curious, he retrieved it from the bag and opened it. He recognized the handwriting instantly.

  I saw yew and the other boys by the river doing something by a fire. After yew all left, a man came from outta nowere. He talked to himself, saying how angry he was that yew had been there. He said that now he’d have to burry someone named Rakia somewheres else.

  Johnny swallowed hard. When he read the final line, he got up, bolted for the back door, and lit out for home.

  The line said: I saw that same man at yer howse tonite asking fer food. Beware.

  Chapter Twelve

  Johnny rushed to the house, hoping against hope that nothing bad had happened. Jumbled thoughts raced through his mind. He knew the note was from the mysterious boy he had seen when setting up his lightning-capture experiment on the water tower when he first came to town. The handwriting on this note was exactly the same as on the note the boy had written then, helping Johnny solve the Confederate gold mystery.

  He still hadn’t met the boy and didn’t know who he was. Johnny had bumped into dozens of kids tonight on the street trick-or-treating, and it could have been any one of them. Who was this boy? Why didn’t he introduce himself? Why was he being so mysterious?

  Johnny stopped when he got to his porch. Maybe the man is still in the house, he thought. That forced him to calm down. He couldn’t help his family if he rushed in and was caught himself.

  He moved to the bay window and peered into the living room. It was deserted, with no signs of a struggle, just a lamp turned on low. He went back to the front door, inched it open, and slipped inside. He made his way carefully to the kitchen. Also empty. Everything was put away neat and clean. Johnny’s heart quickened. Did the man kidnap them? Did he hurt them? Or worse?

  Then he heard it: a sort of scratching and scraping sound coming from down the hallway. He saw the door to the inner sanctum—his father’s study—was open, and a dull light from within it spilled out onto the hallway floor.

  Johnny swallowed hard and crept down the hall toward the study. The scraping and scratching got louder, and he imagined all sorts of awful things that might be making that sound: Fiona scratching the word hobo into the floorboard before breathing her last; McDuff scratching on the side of a coffin his family members were imprisoned in. The gruesome possibilities seemed endless.

  His hands felt clammy, and he began to sweat, causing his bioluminescence potion to smear and run into his eyes. He wiped them, shook his head to clear his thoughts, and tiptoed closer to the study door. He stopped just outside it—the scratching and scraping louder now—braced himself against the wall, and craned his neck to look around the corner.

  “I wondered when you’d get home,” a voice said.

  It was his father. He sat at his desk, hunched over the ancient journal, scrawling some notes on a pad of paper with his fountain pen.

  Johnny exhaled and rushed inside. “Where are Fiona and Charlie?” he asked.

  “In bed, of course. A lot of kids came by tonight. They were exhausted.”

  Harold discreetly slid a folder over the pad he’d been writing on. Johnny noticed, but he was so relieved that he didn’t care at the moment. He collapsed into the leather guest chair. His father looked at him curiously. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Dad, before I left there was a hobo at the door asking for food,” Johnny said.

  “Yes, I was there. I remember. I also remember that you embarrassed him.”

  “The thing is, when I was trick-or-treating, somebody put this note in my bag.” He handed the note to Harold, who read it and handed it back.

  “Poor spelling.”

  “Dad!”

  “Don’t tell me you actually fell for this. I thought you had more sense. It’s obviously a Halloween joke.”

  Johnny knew he had good reason to trust the note, because he was pretty sure who wrote it, but he decided not to reveal that to his father. “Why is it obvious? He could have been dangerous.”

  Harold sighed impatiently. “First off, the gentleman was very nice. Second, I’m disappointed in you, John. To accuse a man because he’s having a rough time financially is terribly prejudiced.”

  “I didn’t accuse him. I was just worried because of the note!”

  “Well, he wasn’t dangerous, and he was very grateful for the food. He even offered to work for it. So toss th
at note into the trash. Paying heed to rumors and slander is a poor use of the mind God gave you.”

  Johnny scowled but didn’t press the issue any further. He also didn’t toss the note but put it in his pocket when Harold looked back at the journal. His father appeared to be out of sorts, which was nothing new, since Harold was often irritable. But he seemed even more so tonight. A change of subject was in order.

  “Find anything interesting?” he asked, nodding toward the journal.

  “Not really,” Harold sighed. “I can’t read most of the languages.”

  “Not even Latin and Greek?”

  “I can read those, but they don’t say anything much more than we already know: ‘pearl of great price’ and ‘long life.’ There must be seven or eight other languages and dialects in here, and I don’t recognize any of them.”

  “You haven’t figured anything out?” Johnny asked.

  Harold pulled off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “No, I’m afraid not,” he said. “But I spoke to my contact overseas about the journal. He was excited about translating it. I’ll mail it off tomorrow.”

  Johnny frowned and nodded.

  “He promised to be cautious and to return it to us as quickly as possible.”

  To us? Johnny thought. You mean, to me. It’s my journal. But aloud he only said, “All right.”

  Harold’s brow furrowed. “Something wrong?”

  “No,” Johnny answered. “I’m tired.”

  “Too much candy,” Harold surmised. He put his glasses back on. “Well, you’d better get to bed, then. It’s school tomorrow, and morning comes early.” He bent back over the journal.

  Johnny considered telling his father about finding the coffin at Granville House but decided, given the state of his father’s mood, to ask a more generic question, the one that had been nagging him since he walked into the room: “What were you writing?”

  Harold didn’t look up. “Just a few notes,” Harold replied, still looking down.

  “About the journal?”

  “Yes, research ideas.”

  “May I see them?”

  Harold looked up. “Not yet. They’re not ready.”