Free The Pigman's Legacy (The Sequel to The Pigman) by Paul Zindel

windows. There was an old-fashioned telescope planted right at the foot of the window. Lorraine and I went over to try the thing out immediately, but there wasn't a crack wide enough in the shutters, which had been nailed shut from outside.
    “This room is creepy,” Lorraine said.
    “Why do you say that?” I asked.
    “I don't know,” she said. “I think it's because I get the feeling no woman ever lived here. I get the feeling there was never a woman in any part of the house.”
    “Did some ghost tell you?” I asked.
    “No,” she said. “The house is too rugged. There's nothing feminine. Nothing soft and delicate. There's something frightening about it. I just don't think a woman would put up with all the wood and dinosaurs.”
    “If you plan on having an anxiety attack,” I told her, “I wish you'd save it awhile.”
    Lorraine let go of my hand and walked closer to the bed. She touched one of the huge posts, which practically stabbed its way through the ceiling. “I feel like I'm standing in a mausoleum,” Lorraine said. “That's what this is.”
    “Come on.”
    “I mean it, John. This place is some kind of shrine to all the Colonel's achievements. There's nothing really lovely here.” She moved the flashlight to a corner of the room. A glass cabinet sparkled and we hurried to it. It was a store display case with several medals of honor lying on black-velvet backgrounds. It looked like a ten-year supply of graduation honors, tons of awards from all over the world honoring Colonel Parker Glenville. I opened a huge wooden thing that must have been a closet of some sort because it was filled with old uniforms.
    “The Colonel must have been a tall, thin man,” Lorraine said, her eyes sizing up the clothes. “Look at the jackets. They could fit you.”
    I grunted and took her hand to get her out of there. We moved back into the hall and were just about to enter the front section when Lorraine let out another scream. This time it was a full-blown model of the IGUANODON, according to the plaque hanging right beneath its open mouth. It looked like a cross between a turtle and a lizard. Its glassy stare was the kind of thing nightmares are made of.
    We moved forward into the front room. It was filled with a lot of packed boxes and several trunks of varying shapes and sizes. I kicked a few of the trunks lightly with my foot, but they each gave back a hollow ring. Then Lorraine flashed her light onto a black one with leatherette covering. I gave it a kick, and there was no doubt that this one was packed full. I stooped down and started to flip open the locks. Lifting the top, I was sure it was the trunk Gus wanted. I started rummaging through it.
    “John, what are you doing?”
    “Just checking.”
    “John, we have no right.”
    Right on top was a long yellow tassel, the type an officer would wear on his shoulder. It looked like Gus wanted to take a memento of the Colonel with him, which was nice, I figured. There was a big pile of clothes underneath that looked like they could use a few years in a General Electric washing machine. Then there was a box of weird-looking tools—points and curves and angles. I figured they must have been some of the tools of the Colonel's trade, and I supposed there was no harm in Gus sucking them up too. After all, the Colonel was no longer going to use them, and it was probably better that an old friend got them. Next to them was a ratty wooden cigar box that contained a bunch of old silver dollars. They all had dates like 1883 and 1867 on them. I think that about this point I had to admit that Gus was getting into the area of what could be called theft.
    “John, you can't let Gus take some of those things. Those are the kinds of things that belong in the Colonel's estate, and I'm sure courts and lawyers and all kinds of people like that would put us in reform school if we helped Gus steal them!”
    Just then a cold weird wind began to blow in the room. There were no windows