Free The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton Page A

odd trace of amusement on his face. He stared vacantly at Thomas, then up at the ceiling. And he spoke in a kind of chant that sounded old and worn, like history.
    “When hoot owl screeching, westward flies,
    Gauge the sun …
    Look to Dies,
    And Run.”
    Mr. Small stepped forward. Pluto moved into the frame of the gaping door. Like fluid, the tall figure of him flowed out and was the same as darkness. Thomas didn’t even hear his feet on the veranda. But he was gone, leaving them free for awhile of whatever it was had possessed them.

Chapter 8
    “IT WILL JUST HAVE to hold until morning. I can get into town then and buy a new lock … maybe two or three locks, the way things look here. India! Can you beat it? That’s the puzzle!”
    Mr. Small was speaking to himself. He wasn’t aware that Mrs. Small and Thomas listened to him, so intent was he on his work at the kitchen door. He had been working on the door for the past ten minutes. He had looked out once, right after Mr. Pluto had disappeared into darkness, and then had spent a few minutes trying to slam the door shut. But without the spring lock, the door wouldn’t stay closed. He had taken two dinner knives and slid them in the groove of the doorframe. One knife he placed by the lock and the other just below the doorknob. He then slid the latch in place.
    “No. No,” Mr. Small muttered to himself. “Something else. Something different. Was it about the head? No, that was all right … perhaps the neck. The shoulders? If I could have just realized the difference when I shook his hand! If I could put my finger on it … that’s what it was. The gloves! He’s trying to conceal his hands. He might have burned himself badly. I’ve told him the kind of work he does is too hard for a man his age. And being the superstitious man he is, he will be afraid to see a doctor. He will suffer with pain as best he knows how, because a doctor has supernatural power the same as a ghost!”
    Thomas and Mrs. Small listened. They understood that something had to be haunting Mr. Pluto. Whatever it was, part of it had taken hold of Mr. Small. Although he was finished with the door, he still stood before it, talking to it as if it were alive.
    “Good Lord!” he was saying, “the man is history! He doesn’t have to leave this land, that other side of the hill. And yet he is running just as hard as the slaves had to run, as if he were one! He stays here, colliding with the past on the one hand and the present on the other. But does he mean to run to the one and away from the other? Or run to both and pull them together? Here he stays … now why! Why does he stay?”
    Finally Mr. Small sat down glumly at the kitchen table, with one hand cupped over his mouth. Thomas, after taking in the large, lopsided kitchen, sat down beside him.
    Mrs. Small busied herself by cleaning off the table and sweeping up all the broken dishes. She didn’t utter a word to Thomas or his father. When she had finished, she deposited all the trash in an empty carton as quietly as she could.
    “I think I could do with more coffee,” Mr. Small said finally. His voice no longer held that feverish, crazy sound, Thomas noticed.
    If he goes around talking to some more doors, Thomas thought, I’m just going to have Mama take him to a hospital.
    “It’s still good and hot,” Mrs. Small said. “Thomas, will you have your coffee black, too?”
    Thomas was so surprised he couldn’t think of anything to say. His mother never allowed him black coffee. What small amount of coffee she would permit him to have came only at Christmas or Thanksgiving, and then it was mostly cream and sugar with a dash of cinnamon.
    “Oh, I know,” Mrs. Small said to him, “but you know you’d dearly love to have it strong and black, the way your papa does. And since you’re sitting here … well, it’s your birthday.”
    She poured two full cups of black coffee, placing one cup in front of Thomas and one in front of Mr. Small.