House of Shadows - André Norton with Phyllis Miller: 1984House of Shadows
André Norton
with Phyllis Miller
1984
 



A 3S digital back-up edition 2.0 
click for scan notes and proofing history



Contents
|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|



For Jenna, Julie and Janel



Chapter 1
 



^ » 
Digby’s gotta have more room! You’re kicking him on purpose!” Tucker rammed a 
bony elbow into Susan’s ribs. He knew just how to make it hurt.
There was no room to get away. Her head ached and her stomach had felt queer 
ever since they had had hamburgers and she had said “Everything,” which meant 
gobs of mayonnaise, onion rings, dill pickle and— No! She tried not to remember 
and wished she could get the lingering taste out of her mouth.
“Shut up!” Mike ordered—in a low and determined whisper. “Stop being silly, 
Tuck. You know Susan can’t kick an imaginary dog.”
“Digby isn’t ‘imaginary’!” Tucker’s voice grew louder. “You said—all of you—I’d 
get Digby for my birthday. And my birthday was Wednesday—so there! Digby’s here 
and Susan’s got to remember that.” He turned his head to scowl at his older 
sister, his elbow ready for another sharp jab.
Susan scowled back. Tucker’s imagination was sometimes just a little too much 
for anyone, even Dad or Mother, to handle. Because he had been promised a puppy— 
before they knew that they had to move—to Tucker the puppy was here, and it 
might be so for weeks. She swallowed a sigh and tried not to think of living 
with an invisible Digby.
Just now she only wanted to get out of this car, away from Tucker, from all the 
family. Mostly away from the unhappiness that rode with all of them for what 
seemed endless miles and miles—slept with them overnight in the motels and made 
lumps in her throat past which it was so hard to push food.
“You keep quiet back there. Your mother has a headache!” Dad’s voice, cracking 
through the air, had all the sharpness it had carried for days now. Sometimes 
that even made Tucker listen. Now it hurt Susan’s ears. She clapped both her 
hands tightly over her stomach and shut her eyes. She—she was going to be sick 
again! That was the worst misery of all.
“Susan’s sick!” Trust Tucker to read the signs and give her away. “Better 
stop—she looks bad. She might throw up all over Digby.”
Mother’s head turned slowly. There was a frown of pain between her eyes, and 
Susan, who had tried to wither Tucker with a look, saw it. One of mother’s bad 
headaches! If they were home she could lie down and use an ice pack to make her 
feel better. Susan gulped. This was maybe her fault—part of it anyway. She had 
been carsick twice and… She clapped both hands to her mouth hastily as the car 
slowed, drawing to the side of the interstate highway.
Mother jerked open the door and Susan somehow got out. Mostly fell, she thought, 
as her knees hit hard into gravel. She lost the hamburger and a lot more, her 
misery of body for a minute driving out the other misery in her mind. Mother did 
not hold her head this time. Dad, muttering under his breath, came with a roll 
of paper towels in one hand.
Susan was limp with misery as she took a handful of ruffled up paper to wipe her 
sweating face.
“Better?” Dad did not sound quite so sharp now.
Susan drew a deep breath and nodded. “All right now,” she said, holding Dad’s 
hand as he pulled her up, leaning against him until she was sure that her feet 
and legs were going to work properly.
“How about you, Pat?” Dad lifted Susan into the station wagon, but he was 
watching Mother who had both hands to her face, covering her eyes, her head 
resting against the high part of the car seat.
“I’ll do,” she answered. Her voice sounded as if it came from a long distance 
away.
Dad got into the car and pulled out the map stuck in one of the sun visors, 
shaking it out wide.
“What was that last sign, Mike?”
“Funny word—something like Onadila…”
“Hmm—” Dad ran his finger along the map. “All right, we’re nearly there then. 
Just hold on, Pat.”
He was watching Mother very closely as he folded the map. Susan, weak and 
shaken, knew that he was worried. She wondered if anything was ever going to be 
comfortable again. Right now she did not see how it could be.
This had all started back home in Florida, at the Cape, about two months ago. It 
seemed such a long, long time since the day Dad came home with bad news. The 
space mission had been washed out because the government did not have any money 
to try more experiments. All Dad’s department had been given what Mike called 
“pink slips,” though Susan had never seen Dad holding one. What it did mean was 
that they must change their whole way of life and things would be a lot harder. 
Susan quickly learned not to ask questions. Mother simply kept telling her that 
nothing could be decided yet.
The whole last part of the summer had been spoiled. There were no trips to 
Seaworld or Disney. Then Francie and Karin went to visit their aunt in Carolina 
and Susan did not even have anyone to go around with. Mike would not talk most 
of the time— stayed in his room and read or said he was reading. Mike wanted to 
be a space pilot and thought about nothing else. But if there were not going to 
be any more missions— then how could he?
Tucker was the one who did not worry. All he thought about for weeks (and talked 
about until they were nearly crazy) was the puppy he had been promised for his 
sixth birthday. He had really blown up when Dad told him at last there was not 
going to be any puppy, because they were moving— North where there was no place 
for a dog.
They were going to stay with Great-Aunt Hendrika—a person who had never been 
more than a name at the bottom of a birthday or Christmas card as far as Susan 
knew. Of course, the cards had always included a crisp five dollar bill, and at 
Christmas there had come a big fancy box of cookies and candy. But she was not 
real as far as the three younger Whelans were concerned. The main point was that 
they—she, Mike, and Tucker—were going to live with Great-Aunt Hendrika in some 
kind of a funny old house way up in New York State for nobody knew how long.
Dad and Mother (and this was the strangest of all) were going back to school. At 
least Mom was. Dad was going to teach and write a book. But Mother wanted her 
degree so she could get a special job. They were not going to stay at Great-Aunt 
Hendrika’s, but were going on to a college where they would live until they 
could make what Mother and Dad kept saying were “other arrangements.”
The only thing Susan knew about Great-Aunt Hendrika, beside the fact that she 
had offered them a place to stay, was that she had cats. She had said that in 
her letter and that her cats did not like dogs. So there was no puppy. Except 
that Tucker, as usual, refused to accept what he did not like—and so Digby came 
along. But cats could not dislike an invisible puppy, so that ought to be all 
right.
Susan closed her eyes and tried to forget her uneasy stomach. If they could only 
get there—so she could be by herself where it was quiet and she did not have to 
listen to Tucker, did not even have to think or worry for a while—that was all 
she wanted.
Mike hardly spoke at all. The first day they had started packing, he had gone 
out with a big box into which he had crowded all his space models—and he had 
come back empty-handed. Mike was not someone you could ask questions, so Susan 
was left to wonder what had become of the collection he had made so carefully 
and hung up in his room. Maybe he had given them away. All he had packed to send 
with their belongings were his books.
She wondered what kind of a school they would be going to this fall. Great-Aunt 
Hendrika lived in a small town, that much Dad had said. What kind of schools did 
they have in New York State? Would there be some girls like Francie and Karin? 
No— she did not want to know new people. It was always hard for Susan to meet 
strangers. Maybe the space program would start again and they could all go home. 
Things did happen like that sometimes—good things.
They turned off the interstate into a side road, and, when that curled around, 
they turned again. There were bushes growing around old, tumbled-down stone 
walls, and Susan caught sight of a dark metal sign with raised lettering, firmly 
fixed to a rock nearly as tall as the station wagon. But they swept past before 
she could read any of the words on it.
“Candiaga,” Dad spoke for the first time since they had left the interstate.
The car came down a dip in the road and there were houses at last. Most of them 
were set well back and had fences or walls between them and the road. The car 
traveled along a brick-paved street now. The houses and buildings were partly 
hidden by a lot of trees and more bushes. Some people working in their yards 
looked up as the station wagon went by. Everyone had sweaters on—it was a lot 
cooler here.
Dad slowed down to turn away from some stores and a gas station. This street was 
even narrower. Then it seemed they were heading out into the country again as 
the wall of a cemetery slid by. One more turn— this time through an opening in a 
fence which was painted white. The tires of the car crunched on gravel as Dad 
slowed to a stop before a house.
Susan sat and stared at the queerest house she had ever seen. It looked—weird. 
That was the only word for it—a favorite of Francie’s—simply weird.
The main part was stone and was two stories high, fronted by a long porch that 
ran the full length of the building. To the right stood a tower, like a piece 
from a castle that had been stuck on here in an absent-minded way. Because it 
certainly did not seem a proper part of the rest of the house at all.
The edge of the porch roof was trimmed with what looked like wooden lace, and 
there was latticework at either end up which grew vines. Around the windows 
Susan could see pointed casings with bits of trimming too.
Curtains were pulled firmly over the windows so no one could see inside the 
house; it did not want people. That thought came into Susan’s head in a queer 
way. It was as if the house had locked its own doors and windows so that no one 
could come inside.
Tucker flopped across Mike to stare out. Now he said firmly: “I want to go home. 
Digby don’t like this house. We want to go home!”
Mike clapped one hand over his brother’s mouth, held him when Tucker started to 
fight. Leaning down, the older boy repeated his earlier order: “Shut up!”
Susan swallowed twice. For once she agreed entirely with Tucker, something which 
very seldom happened. She did not like this house either. And she wanted nothing 
more than to start driving back to their own home—their real home.
The wide door under the shadow of the porch roof opened and a woman came out. 
She was as tall as Dad and wore dark brown slacks and a sweater of the same 
color, with a green shirt collar showing above the sweater.
Certainly she was not Susan’s idea of a great aunt. Maybe she was someone else 
who lived with Great Aunt Hendrika, because her hair wasn’t even gray. It was 
black, and she did not have an old lady’s face. There was no softness about the 
chin, nor were there even many wrinkles. She walked fast, as if she knew just 
where she was going and why. Now she held out a hand to shake Dad’s as he 
climbed out to meet her.
There was no kissing—even though this turned out to be Great-Aunt Hendrika after 
all. She shook hands with them instead— even with Tucker, who appeared so 
subdued by her briskness that he extended a sticky paw. And she spoke as quickly 
and emphatically as she walked. The Whelans were simply taken over, marched 
inside, parceled out among some bedrooms, before Susan really understood what 
was going on.
“She’s like Commander Harris.” Mike ventured on a single sentence as he trudged 
upstairs, lugging two canvas carryalls, Susan bumping behind him with another, 
as well as a plastic bag filled with to-be-washed laundry.
Mike was right—Great-Aunt Hendrika was exactly like the commander, and they were 
soldiers being marched around. Moments later Susan stood in the middle of the 
room into which she had been directed and looked about her, bewildered, unhappy, 
feeling the misery rising inside again.
This was not in the least like her room at home. There was a wooden bed with 
very high ends—dark and carved. Across it, instead of her cheerful Holly Hobby 
spread, was a cover of dull, faded-looking blue. There were strips of rag carpet 
crossing bare flooring—one by the bed, one before a bureau that had a marble top 
and a mirror so high it nearly touched the ceiling. Was Great-Aunt Hendrika poor 
even though she lived in this great big house? All these ugly old pieces of 
furniture and just those two little pieces of woven rags for the floor—that 
looked poor to Susan.
The walls were covered with paper on which were big flowers. They were 
faded-looking, too—blue blossoms with tangled vines holding them up. There were 
four pictures, one exactly in the center of each wall. One was of a basket with 
a big blue bow on its handle and a fat, white, long-furred kitten lying in it. 
Another was of little girls wearing long dresses, dancing around in a circle. 
The other two—one between the windows and one by the bureau were too dim for her 
to see from where she stood.
To one side of the bed was another piece of furniture with a marble top and a 
lamp on it. There was also something else. Four books were set up stiffly 
between two polished stones that kept them from falling over.
In another corner was a fourth piece of furniture, a big cupboard which was not 
built in as a real cupboard ought to be—but which stood by itself. She studied 
its double doors unhappily—it looked like the sort of place in which something 
might hide.
Susan kicked aside the bag of laundry and made herself go over and pull open the 
cupboard door. Of course it was empty. There was only a rod across with hangers 
on it. She opened the other side to find shelves and a couple of drawers. Her 
nose wrinkled.
There was a queer smell. Was it bug spray, the kind they had used at home? No, 
this smelled more like Mother’s bath powder— sharp but rather nice. Susan ran a 
hand along one of the shelves and brushed against a dried-up stem that still had 
bits of purplish flowers sticking to it. The smell came from that. But who would 
want to put dead flowers in a cupboard?
“Sue…”
Tucker had edged around the door from the hall. His face was still dirty. He had 
twisted sticky hands in the front of his T-shirt until it was what Mother called 
a disgrace. Now he came over to catch at Susan’s sleeve.
“Sue, do we have to stay here?” There was such urgency in his voice that she was 
surprised. Tucker’s normal reactions to things he did not like could be and 
usually were very loud and clear. Now he spoke almost in a whisper and kept 
looking around, as if he thought someone might be listening —someone he did not 
want to notice him.
“Yes—for a while.”
Tucker ran his tongue across his lips. He had not loosened his hold on Susan.
“I don’t like it here. It—it’s scary!”
“It’s just old. I guess Great-Aunt Hendrika’s too poor or something to fix it up 
right.” Susan kicked at the edge of the nearest rag runner.
“I—” For the first time Susan could remember Tucker seemed to have lost his 
voice. Then he jerked at her arm. “You come—please, Sue!”
Tucker certainly was changed. What in the world had happened to him? Susan was 
so amazed she actually allowed herself to be drawn across the hall—to the room 
to which Tucker had been assigned.
It was like hers and yet there was a difference. The bed did not have a high 
head and foot, but four stubby posts instead, and it was lower to the floor. 
There was a bureau and another large, dark cupboard. But there was also a small 
table near the window and a wooden chair of a size to fit Tucker. The paper on 
the walls could not be seen except in small patches for it had been pasted over 
with all kinds of cut-out pictures, bewildering to look at because there were so 
many of them—all colors, sizes and shapes, and all old. Some were yellowish and 
so faded you could hardly make them out.
In the middle of the table stood a train. It was old, too, made of wood not 
metal. The cars were hardly more than solid blocks mounted on small bent wheels; 
the engine had only part of a smokestack. It was like a train Susan had seen 
pictured in a history book.
Tucker simply stood in the middle of the room, no longer looking at Susan, but 
turning his head slowly while he viewed the mass of pictures on the wall.
“Well!” They both jumped at the sound of Mike’s voice, which appeared to come 
out of the air. A moment later he was with them.
“Comic books yet!” He waved at the picture-covered walls. “Somebody sure spent a 
lot of time in here, didn’t they?”
“But it’s all old—it couldn’t have been Great-Aunt Hendrika.” Susan had had a 
wild idea, for only a moment or two, that all this had been done to amuse 
Tucker. But it could not be true—these were old, old pictures.
“No,” Mike answered. “This is a real old house, the family has owned it for a 
long time.”
“How long?” Tucker wiped his hand across his mouth again, appearing more his 
usual bouncy self.
“About two hundred years,” Mike said.
“There isn’t anything that old!” Tucker was his usual self.
“Up North here there is. This house was built before the Revolutionary War—when 
all this country was just a wilderness full of Indians—”
“Then why did anyone want to come way out here and build a house?” Susan asked.
“I don’t know. Dad talked about it once when he got some papers to sign.”
“But it looks so queer. Did they use that tower for a lookout place when there 
were Indians?” For the first time Susan could see a reason for the odd shape of 
the house.
“No. The tower and all the part behind it must have been added later. People 
living here might have built on bits from time to time.”
“Like Francie’s swimming pool.” Susan thought of the only thing she had ever 
seen added to an already-built house.
“No swimming pools here,” Mike said. “But there could have been families with 
more children. Then they would have built more rooms. This must have been a 
child’s room for a long time. Mine’s different.”
Tucker was already at the door. “Digby and I want to see. Come on, Mike, show 
us.”
They went down a short space of hall, but not through the door Mike had left 
open— for a very good reason. The space there was well occupied. Green eyes 
surveyed them with a vast lack of interest. Those eyes were set in a wide black 
furred head, part of which now split in a yawn, to display very pointed white 
teeth.
This was the largest cat Susan had ever seen. He must weigh pounds and pounds. 
Now he rose and stretched his forefeet well out before turning his head toward 
the room he had guarded and uttering a very odd sound, which was more squeak 
than a mew.
From the room came a second cat. This one was long and slim, smaller than the 
black. The eyes in a dark brown Siamese mask were brilliantly blue and just as 
cool when turned on the children.
“Sic ’em, Digby!” Tucker pushed past Susan. “Go and get ’em, boy!”
Perhaps being invisible also made Digby cautious. He certainly did not reveal 
his presence. The cats eyed the Whelans for another long, blinkless moment, then 
turned to pace in a dignified way toward the stairs.
Tucker snorted. “They’re afraid,” he said defiantly. “Those old cats. They knew 
Digby would chew ’em right up. So he will if he sees them coming back. What was 
that one doing in your room, Mike? You don’t want any old cat hanging around 
here!”
Mike pushed wide the door and they entered a room not unlike Susan’s. Except the 
pictures on the wall did not display a half-sleepy kitten or girls dancing. 
Instead there was one over the bed showing a river with a paddle-wheeled 
steamboat plowing through the water, while two of the others were of soldiers. 
One showed a troop wearing three-cornered hats, led by a mounted officer on a 
white horse. The other was of a building with thick walls from which protruded 
the mouths of cannons—woolly smoke half hiding some of them. On the ground 
below, men with long-barreled guns advanced at the urging of several 
sword-waving officers.
“More history.” Mike waved at the pictures. “I guess we are not going to get 
away from it here.”
“What’s that?” Tucker pointed to an object hung by itself, though it was 
certainly not a picture. It looked like a curved horn held up by dusty colored 
straps as thin as shoelaces.
“A powder horn.”
“Powder horn?” Tucker was completely at a loss. “What kind of powder and why did 
they keep it in a horn? And why is it here?”
“Powder for the old guns,” Mike told him. “They didn’t have bullets like we do 
now. They had to pour powder down into the gun before it would fire. That’s the 
kind they used when they fought Indians. I guess they did it right around here.”
To Susan’s surprise Tucker was backing slowly away, his eyes on that hanging 
horn. There was an odd look on his face. Tucker… why… Tucker looked frightened!
“I want to go home—this is a—I want to go home!” His voice scaled up. Susan 
braced herself. Tucker was about to have one of his screaming fits.
“Tucker!”
Dad came into the room and his hands closed on Tucker’s slightly hunched 
shoulders. “You need cleaning up. Then we are going to have supper. And you are 
to be quiet. Mother’s gotten asleep and she’s not to be awakened.”
There were times when Tucker could be stopped. Susan drew a deep sigh of relief. 
This must be one of them. He had shut his mouth, and he had not struggled when 
Dad took him out.
Mike shrugged as he glanced again at the powder horn. “Wonder what it was like 
living back then?”
Again Susan was surprised. Mike lived mostly in the future. This was the first 
time she had ever heard him wonder about the past.



Chapter 2
 



« ^ » 
Susan stretched out in the bed, her eyes firmly closed. As long as she did so 
she could believe she was back in her own room. Only she ached all over from 
holding so still… and listening… It was the listening that was the worst. 
Because there were sounds she could not identify. Creaks—and once a rushing 
rattle, as if something were running right over the ceiling above her, so that 
she gasped, and her heart beat so fast she felt very strange.
She could not stay here, she could not! When Mother and Dad left tomorrow she 
would ask to go, too. Surely they could all live in a motel—or somewhere. They 
must!
Her eyes, squinted so tightly shut, began to hurt. At last she opened them 
slowly. There was a patch of moonlight on the wall.
It spread across that silly kitten in its basket. Susan sat up in bed to 
deliberately stick out her tongue at the kitten.
She was not afraid—she was not! Only, though she had been so tired when she 
trailed upstairs that she thought she’d go right to sleep, the minute she 
crawled into this bed she was wide awake as if it were morning, time to get up 
again.
Old houses—this ugly old house—that was the trouble. Firmly Susan plumped 
herself down on her pillows. Dad and Mother would not make them stay here, 
though the way Great-Aunt Hendrika talked she had everything all settled. Just 
as if none of the Whelans had anything to say about what they were going to do. 
Great-Aunt Hendrika was certainly used to running things.
All that talk at supper about history—how this house was the oldest one in the 
valley. That it had been built by some great-great-great who married an Indian 
princess—or at least a chief’s daughter. And that the land on which it stood was 
hers and the house too. Then came a war—that was the Revolution—and there had 
been a lot of trouble here—a big fight with the Indians. Great-Aunt Hendrika had 
given them a funny look, her lips tight together, when she discovered that none 
of them knew about the house and the people who had lived there —as if the 
Whelans were really stupid.
Susan pulled the sheet about her shoulders. Funny, all of a sudden it was cold. 
There was a blanket over the bottom of the bed, should she unfold that? But 
whoever had heard of sleeping under a blanket at the beginning of September? 
Maybe she should get up and close the window. However, somehow she would rather 
not get out of bed at all.
She shut her eyes, she was going to go to sleep and forget all about staying 
here. Perhaps you only needed to be firm (like Great-Aunt Hendrika) because 
Susan did go to sleep. Only to wake, to find herself sitting up in bed once 
more, her hands holding the sheet in a tight twist.
She had— No, it was gone. Though she strained to hear, there was no sound now. 
Nor could she remember her dream, just that it was a nasty one. She was so 
afraid that she tried to keep awake, but now she could not.
Something was watching her. Susan knew that before she opened her eyes. When she 
did, it was to see the Siamese cat seated at the foot of her bed, its tail tip 
curled neatly over its paws, its blue eyes fixed upon her. There was 
daylight—though it must be early. Perhaps it was all right to get up. She wanted 
to talk to Mike and see what he thought about asking Dad and Mother if they all 
could go along—not stay here.
Scrambling out of the wide bed Susan faced one of those other pictures on the 
wall. This did not look like a real picture and Susan’s attention was caught 
enough to make her go closer and stand on tiptoe. It was a queer thing with 
trees and birds, an alphabet and numbers, one to zero. There was a cat and some 
birds which were too big for the trees among which they had been scattered. 
Right at the bottom, in what seemed much brighter colors—red and black mixed 
together—was a name, “Emily Kimble,” and below that some numbers— all in 
black—“1840.”
“Susan—” Mother stood in the doorway. She smiled as she looked about. “My, what 
an exciting room, dear. This is a perfect period piece. I envy you—”
“Mother,” Susan began uncertainly. What Mother was saying was something Susan 
could not understand at all. She knew Mother liked old things, that she used to 
keep magazines with pictures of old houses and the things in them. But how could 
anyone like this—this place? “Mother, can’t we go, too—up to the college? We 
could stay at a motel… and…”
“Susan”—Mother’s smile was not so wide now, that little line was coming back 
between her eyes—“I know that this is a big change for all of you. But it is a 
wonderful opportunity, too. You see Daddy’s mother never cared much for family 
history, and Daddy was never here before. This is a chance for you to learn 
about your—let us say your roots. You remember the TV play we saw and you talked 
about in school? Everyone has roots, but many of us never have the chance to 
learn much about them. You will here. This house is nearly a museum—except it is 
not shut up away from people. The same family whose ancestors built it are still 
living here. And they are using old things—not just setting them away in 
cupboards and on shelves somewhere. Great-Aunt Hendrika writes books about 
history and the things that have happened in this region. She can tell you so 
much. And it is very, very good of her to ask you children to stay here until we 
can get settled.
“You know that we shall find a house when we can and then be together again. But 
for now Daddy and I will be in Utica and you here. We cannot afford to live in a 
motel—and besides you would find it very dull. While to live here is going to be 
exciting.”
Mother was talking faster and faster, as she sometimes did when she became 
nervous. Susan dared not even sigh. There was absolutely no hope of driving away 
today. She swallowed twice, and the cat yawned widely.
“This will be like a vacation—like Francie’s in Carolina,” Mother added. Then 
her voice became a little sharper. “Really, Susan, you must not bother your 
father, he has a hard time ahead. And we are very lucky, very, very lucky.”
The lump in Susan’s throat had swelled so large now that she could not even 
squeeze out words. She nodded as Mother went to look at that queer picture on 
the wall with its “Emily Kimble,” as if that were suddenly very important.
“A needlework sampler, Susan—and so well preserved. Emily Kimble… 1840… and 
look—” Mother tapped the glass over that queer mixture of trees, birds, alphabet 
and numbers with one forefinger. “Here is her age—eleven. Why, she was just as 
old as you when she sewed this, Susan. What beautiful work! I don’t think anyone 
could do as well today, even if they were twice Emily’s age.”
“Why…” Susan tried wildly to find something to ask which would not bring back 
Mother’s headache. “Why does it say ‘Kimble’? I thought Great-Aunt’s name was 
Kuydall, and you just said that the same family always lived here.”
“Maybe Emily made this when she was a little girl and then married into the 
Kuydall family and brought it with her,” Mother suggested. “You can ask and find 
out—”
“Mommie!” That shriek could only come from one throat—Tucker’s. And he was 
certainly well into one of his fierce times. Mother was through the doorway at 
once. Susan was still scrambling into her jeans so it was a minute before she 
could run barefooted after her.
“Mommie!” Tucker was standing in the middle of the room. He had pulled off the 
top of his pajamas and his face was red, his fists were waving in the air. In 
the middle of his bed sat the big black cat staring at him.
Before Mrs. Whelan could stop him, he hurled himself at the table to grab at the 
wooden train. It came apart as he snatched it up, leaving Tucker holding a 
single car, a solid block of wood. This he threw straight at the cat.
Susan could not see how he had missed. But, luckily, the block skimmed past the 
cat to thump into a pillow. With long practice Mother caught Tucker’s shoulders 
and, though he wriggled and flailed out, she held on.
“Digby—”
To the complete surprise of both Susan and her mother the fight suddenly went 
out of Tucker. Instead he crumpled back against his mother, holding on to her 
now.
“Tucky…” Mother sat down on the edge of the bed, her arms around Tucker who was 
crying. Not as if he were angry, but rather as if he had been badly hurt. 
“Tucky, what in the world happened?”
Susan was crowded away from the door as Mike came up behind her.
“He—Digby—the Indians—Digby’s dead. He’s all stiff with blood—and he’s dead!” 
Tucker wailed. Susan shivered. He made it sound so real she half expected to see 
on the floor, or perhaps on the bed itself, the body of a small dog.
“Tucky, look at me!” Mother pried loose Tucker’s tight hold, got her hand under 
his chin to force his head up. His eyes were squeezed tight shut, tears on his 
cheeks. “Tucky!” Mother’s tone was even sharper. “Open your eyes!”
Again to Susan’s wonder Tucker did as he was told. He stared up at Mother whose 
face was now close to his.
“Now, Tucky, where is Digby?” She spoke slowly, but with that tone that meant 
she would have an answer.
“He’s dead—the Indian—he killed him! Right there!” Tucker pointed over Mother’s 
shoulder. The large black cat stood up, paying no attention to the two who 
shared the bed with him, moved to one side, and jumped to the floor. But Tucker 
might not have seen that at all—he was still pointing to where the cat had been.
Mike twitched at the pillow Tucker had wadded up during his sleep and shook it. 
The wood train car Tucker had thrown rolled onto the floor.
“There’s no Indian, Tucky. You had a bad dream. This stuff”—Mike waved a hand at 
the picture-covered wall—“is enough to make anyone dream. Digby’s just asleep. 
Call him. Now!”
Tucker turned his head away. “He’s all dead. The Indian hit him. Now he’s gone 
and he’ll never come back. He’ll go with them—”
Susan was completely bewildered. “Who’s them?” she asked. A dead invisible Digby 
and an Indian? Tucker’s imagination was working overtime now.
Tucker smeared a hand across his face. “Just them,” he said, and his mouth set. 
She knew the signs. Nobody was going to learn anything more from Tucker.
Now he pulled away from Mother, turned his back on her and the bed. For a wonder 
he was no longer red in the face and ready to roar.
“With them,” he repeated. Then nodded his head vigorously up and down. “They 
want him and he likes them—he likes—Carl…”
Susan longed to ask, “Carl who?” Then she saw her mother making a sign with one 
hand. If Tucker’s usual absorption in make-believe could be switched in another 
direction all the better. It would seem as far as Tucker was concerned the scene 
was now over. He padded across to pick up the plastic bag holding his toothbrush 
and wash-cloth as if moments earlier he had not been storming about.
Mike moved to the wall examining the pictures at about the height Tucker would 
easily view them.
“No Indians,” he muttered. “Here’s a couple of dogs—but there’re certainly no 
Indians. Where did Tuck get that idea?”
Mother was pushing Tucker in front of her toward the bathroom down the hall, 
fresh clothes for him over her arm. She frowned at Mike in warning as they 
disappeared together.
Susan looked at the bed again. Tucky had made her almost see what he claimed was 
there—that nasty thing! She picked up the train car to set it back on the table.
“Mike, do you like this house?”
He shrugged. “It’s a queer place. And it’s sure a lot different from 1925 Palms 
Acre. But we’re stuck with it, Susan. And we’ve got to keep our mouths shut. Dad 
and Mom have enough to worry about. We can stick it out for a while, anyhow.”
He ran his hand along the pictured wall. “Wonder who stuck all this stuff up and 
why. Where did they ever get such a lot of pictures anyway? I suppose out of old 
magazines.”
“Why did Tucky think up that awful thing about Digby? He never did anything like 
that before,” Susan said.
Mike threw out his hands—just as Dad always did when he was faced with some 
question he could not answer. “Why does Tuck do anything? He sees an elephant in 
the backyard for a week—remember last summer?—and wants to get hay. Pulled up 
near all the grass to feed it, didn’t he? Then there was that flying thing that 
lived in the garage. How long did that last? I’ll admit he never killed one off 
before. They just disappeared when he thought up something new. We were talking 
Indians some yesterday. I think sometimes Tuck hears more and remembers part of 
it—the wrong way— than we give him credit for doing.”
Susan sometimes tried to forget Tucky’s imagination. It was very difficult to 
live with, though mostly it was just annoying, as Digby had been. Being told all 
the time that one was stepping on, or sitting upon, or not being pleasant to an 
invisible could be very tiring. When Dr. Ramish had given Tucker those tests a 
couple of years ago he had said that he would eventually learn the difference 
between real things and what he imagined. All their friends back at the Cape had 
accepted Tucker’s way of seeing things. Sometimes they even got interested 
enough to ask just what new invisible had moved in with the Whelans. Susan once 
had an idea Tucky could write books if someone would just put down what he 
said—he could be so real about it all. She had tried to keep a notebook about 
the thing in the garage. That had been really spooky, because Tucky had never 
come right out and described it—he just talked about it in a way that had made 
Susan rather glad she could not see it.
Still, never before had Tucker ever said one of his “ ’maginaries,” as he called 
them, was dead. She didn’t like that.
She thought about Digby through breakfast, but forgot afterwards because Mother 
and Dad were leaving. They unpacked a lot from the back of the station wagon, 
leaving cartons and boxes on the front porch and in the downstairs hall. Then 
they drove off and Susan (though to think of riding at all made her stomach 
unhappy) wanted to be in the back seat.
Great-Aunt Hendrika, who had not been at breakfast, came out to say goodby. She 
had announced last night that her day was very different from that of other 
people, but she was used to it, and she intended to continue so. They did not 
have to suit their hours to hers, but she would expect them to keep to a 
schedule which she would discuss with them later. Both Dad and Mother had agreed 
readily for Mike, Susan and Tucker— with a couple of very speaking looks, though 
such might be lost on Tucker.
Great-Aunt Hendrika and Tucker, Susan decided after she had watched the station 
wagon disappear, were somewhat alike. They both spoke as if they were right and 
what they expected of people was going to be done. Mother said Great-Aunt 
Hendrika wrote books—so perhaps she imagined just like Tucker, though Susan was 
sure she did not bring invisibles to live with her.
“Well now.” Great-Aunt Hendrika broke into Susan’s thought. Mike was pushing a 
couple of cartons around on the porch as if he thought he ought to do something 
with them, but did not know quite what. Mike often had fits of being helpful—but 
at intervals only. Tucker was squatting down at the edge of the gravel drive to 
look at a small plant.
“You’ve got a big green worm here,” he announced.
“I am not at all surprised,” Great-Aunt Hendrika answered. “There are brown, 
yellow, black and green worms—as well as a few of the ordinary red ones—always 
visiting—usually on plants I want most to have saved. Come on, Tucker, I have a 
few things to say, and I want open and listening ears.
“First, Mrs. Kingsley and her niece, Eloise Purdy, run this house. I may own it— 
they run it. They have their own rooms out in the carriage house, which was made 
into a cottage when I took over fifteen years ago. You are to listen to them 
when they want anything done to help in the house. I suppose you can make your 
own beds—Mike, Susan? There is the important matter of neatness—also some 
chores, about which Mrs. Kingsley will tell you. Jim Baines runs the garden—if 
he needs help he’ll tell you.
“I get up very early in the morning—I do not expect that from you. Also I retire 
at an early hour. My work hours are in the morning. I can only be interrupted 
for dire emergencies—none of which have ever arisen so far.”
“What’s a dire ’mergency?” Tucker was paying attention, which was more than he 
did sometimes. Susan thought that Great-Aunt Hendrika had really gotten through 
to him.
“The house burning down, a tornado, or something of the sort.” Great-Aunt 
Hendrika treated Tucker’s comment with complete seriousness. “I work in the 
newer wing of the house—sleep there, too.
“School started last week, but since the length of your stay here is uncertain I 
have made arrangements as I do not believe in changing patterns too often. For 
twenty years I taught school.” As if she did not see them, she suddenly glanced 
at the house. “It was only when I came here to live that, as you might say, I 
retired. My certificate is still in good order and I can set lessons that will 
pass muster for a while. Therefore”—she made a gesture at the door—“we shall see 
that you are not going to miss lessons and fall behind.”
Mike straightened up from the cartons. The faint frown on his face had become a 
scowl. Susan guessed what was the matter. Mike wanted to be sure, very sure of 
good grades—he wanted to go to the Air Force Academy or maybe one of the 
universities where there were space studies. If you did not go to any regular 
school, how could you hope to make the right grades for a scholarship? And he 
would have to have one now.
If he planned to offer any objections, he was not given a chance, for Tucker had 
moved up the single wide step to the porch to face Great-Aunt Hendrika, standing 
with his legs a little apart, his head back so he could look into her face. 
Great-Aunt was a tall person and her stiffness of back made her seem even 
taller.
“You look like her,” he said as Great-Aunt paused for breath, “only she—” He 
shook his head, looking puzzled. “You don’t have the funny thing she carried, 
the face with the crooked old mouth.”
Susan took a small half-step forward. Tucker was at it again. Luckily he was not 
talking about Indians and a dead Digby. What was he going to bring into 
invisible life now?
“A face with a crooked mouth?” Great-Aunt Hendrika repeated slowly, staring down 
at Tucker, her face very stiff and odd-looking. “Now just where did you see 
that, young man?”
For the first time Tucker did not seem eager to share one of his flights of 
imagination. Instead he backed away a little, almost as if he were afraid. Then 
he shook his head violently.
“I—I’m not going to tell. It’s a secret—a big secret!”
Great-Aunt Hendrika’s odd, stiff look did not disappear. Instead she spoke, not 
as if she were answering Tucker, but thinking aloud. “A big secret… yes, perhaps 
it is… or was. Now”—she blinked and was the same 
Commander-in-charge-of-the-troops she had been before Tucker had broken into her 
orders-of-the-day. “It has become plainer through the recent years, I am sorry 
to say, that the art of reading, and that of writing, appear to be vanishing 
from the public schools. I have received a number of letters from time to 
time—from those old enough to know better—which are misspelled, ill-informed, 
and whose writers know nothing of simple rules of grammar—such as the proper 
sentence. The place to begin is the library. Shall we adjourn there?”
She was already at the door. Mike, still scowling, moved away from the cartons, 
while Susan grabbed at Tucker’s hand. Tucker would have been in first grade this 
fall. He could not even read. If Great-Aunt Hendrika thought she could get 
Tucker to do anything he did not want to—well maybe they would see a fight as 
bad as if some Indians did come at them. Luckily, at this minute Tucker appeared 
willing to go along, not even dragging his already sticky hand out of Susan’s 
hold.
They entered a square room on the same side of the center hall as the big dining 
room, but at the front of the house. One wall was broken by a fireplace so large 
that Susan thought all three of the Whelans could go and stand inside of it. On 
either side of that big black mouth were seats like park benches, only they had 
dark red cushions and high solid backs. There was a big desk at the far end of 
the room and a number of chairs scattered around, while the curtains at the long 
windows were also red and pulled back to let in as much light as possible. There 
were lamps here and there.
There were two tables—long narrow ones —topped by glass cases. They were display 
cases, with things lying inside to be seen, not touched.
However, the main part of the room was the books. Susan had never seen so many 
except in a public library. And even the library never showed on its shelves 
such old books with dusty-looking backs. Great-Aunt Hendrika waved one hand 
toward the nearest of the shelf-covered walls.
“The raw material of education,” she said. “For a number of years this manor was 
a summer home only. And for most of those years one of the forms of 
entertainment was reading—to oneself or aloud for a family to enjoy. Books were 
bought and brought here for evenings, for rainy days, for information and 
pleasure. This section”—she stabbed one finger at some low shelves where there 
was a long row of big red books, looking all alike, with gold lettering on them, 
and some smaller ones—“belonged to the children. But you are free to go hunting 
in any section you want to. You don’t know what you may be able to find. It may 
be quite surprising, even in this day and age.” She was looking at Mike, who 
stood with his hands in his pockets carefully not looking, Susan was sure, at 
any shelf at all.
“I shall require regular hours to be spent here, making yourselves aware of what 
can be found by those willing to look.” She turned to the big desk. “Over there 
you will find paper, pencils, and elbow room. You are to give me regular reports 
on your discoveries—for one week. At the end of that time I shall have finished 
my revision and be free. I shall also gain from your reports some idea of how we 
must then proceed.”
Tucker pulled loose from Susan’s hold. He might have been attentive to 
Great-Aunt Hendrika when they came in. Now he was again his own person and had 
gone to one of the glass-topped tables. Displaying his complete lack of 
attention, he demanded: “What are all those beads doing here?”
Susan expected Great-Aunt Hendrika to try to settle Tucker, as people usually 
did when he refused to pay attention. Instead she gave him an answer: “Those are 
to be read also, Tucker.”
He stared at her as if startled that anyone might be able to match him in wild 
statements. “How do you read beads?” he asked. For the first time Great-Aunt 
Hendrika displayed a small tight smile. “Suppose you learn, Tucker. An excellent 
way to begin. Who reads beads—and why? If you can answer that by the end of this 
week—well, I think that you will have made a quite acceptable beginning at 
expanding your education.”



Chapter 3
 



« ^ » 
As if Great-Aunt Hendrika considered that she had fully explained everything, 
she went swiftly out of the library, leaving Tucker still staring after her. 
Susan and Mike moved closer to the glass case to see what he had discovered.
There were different-colored beads there, right enough, sewn into wide strips, 
making stiff patterns with their colors.
“What did she mean really? You can’t read beads!” Susan asked Mike.
“Indian stuff,” he answered.
Susan glanced hurriedly at Tucker—no more Indians, please! Luckily he had 
wandered away from the case to make a slow exploration around the room, one hand 
flipping along backs of old books.
“Tucker can’t read…” Susan felt helpless. “He—if she makes him stay in here 
he’ll do something awful and we won’t be able to stop him.”
“Then she’ll learn.” Mike did not appear to care. Nor did he, to Susan’s 
surprise, seem to want to look at any of the books.
They were old and there was a funny smell in the room, as if the books were 
dead. She wrinkled her nose. She did want her question answered. How did one 
read beads? The answer must be here somewhere. She studied the wall cases. The 
filled shelves reached well above her head. Even standing on tiptoes she could 
not reach the top books. How did one go about finding things? She looked 
appealingly to Mike, who had gone to the nearest window and was staring out, his 
head turned firmly away and his shoulders set as stiff as Great-Aunt’s.
Tucker completed his trip around the room and returned to hunker down before the 
section Great-Aunt had said contained children’s reading. Now he asked: “Where’s 
the TV? This is Saturday. It’s time for Space Raiders—nearly.”
Tucker might not yet wear a watch but, oddly enough, when he said it was time 
for this or that he was usually right.
“TV… maybe there isn’t any—” Susan suddenly realized that there had been no set 
turned on to hear news last night, nor sound of any evening program.
“That’s silly.” Tucker got up to march determinedly toward the door. 
“Everybody’s got a TV. I want to see Space Raiders!”
Susan trailed after him. To control Tucker was beyond her powers, but she still 
felt responsible for what he might do. He crossed the hall, pushed open the 
opposite door. They looked into another big room, but the corner of this one had 
been cut by part of the tower and that curved section was bright with sun. 
Shelves were in all the windows and held plants with flowers, or long, lacy 
ferns. A woman stood by the shelves using a watering pot, holding it in one hand 
while she picked off a yellowish leaf with the other.
“My, my, you’re not doing too well,” she said as Tucker and Susan reached the 
middle of the room. “A mite too much, or is it too little? We’ll just have to 
wait and see. Now, look at calendula over here—see— that’s the way to stand up.”
Susan realized that the lady was talking to the plants, that she probably had 
not seen them yet. She was shorter than Great-Aunt Hendrika and her hair was not 
exactly white. It looked bluish. It was done up in waves and had a comb stuck in 
the back. Her face was round and she had a short nose turned up at the tip. She 
was dressed in a wide skirted dress with a ruffled hem, made of bright purple 
calico, and a ruffled blouse of white with purple flowers. Her glasses had very 
large lenses, which looked odd, as if her eyes should have matched by being 
twice as big as they really were.
“That’s all,” she was saying. “There will be a mite of plant food all around 
tomorrow. And mind you take in all the sun you can. Sun’s what you need at this 
time of year—”
“You’re talking to the plants,” Tucker said.
The woman actually gave a little jump as she looked around.
“My goodness.” She set down the watering pot. “You certainly are Kuydalls—walk 
just like Indians. Or the way they always said Indians walked—so nobody could 
hear them.”
“We’re Whelans.” Susan hastened to correct that. “I’m Susan and this is Tucker.”
“And I am Mrs. Kingsley. There’s another of you…” She looked inquiringly beyond 
Susan and Tucker.
“Yes, Mike.”
“Why do you talk to them?” Tucker pointed to the plants.
“Because they’re alive and they need to be noticed,” Mrs. Kingsley answered. 
“How would you like it if day after day, when you were living right in the same 
house, no one ever spoke to you at all?”
Tucker looked from the plants to her and then back again. “Do they answer?” he 
asked with open interest.
“They do in their way—by growing stronger, blooming more. Where is that brother 
of yours? There is some settling in to be done. All those things in the hall and 
on the porch, we have to find places for them.”
The children forgot the library as they carried some cartons up to their 
bedrooms and put others in an empty room farther down the same hall, which was 
for storage.
They did not have to do it all alone. Mrs. Kingsley produced a big apron, which 
covered most of her ruffly dress, and she called from the back of the house a 
girl who wore the same kind of dress—except hers was bright red, and her apron 
blue.
Mrs. Kingsley called her Eloise, but Eloise apparently had no wish to know the 
Whelans. She carried things upstairs as if she would rather throw them instead, 
stamping on every step, and she never spoke to the children. She was older, of 
course, she must be in high school, or maybe even going to college—and she 
looked cross whenever Susan happened to glance in her direction.
Mrs. Kingsley came tripping in as Susan brought up the last of the boxes in 
which her own things had been packed.
“It certainly needs neating up in here,” she announced. “Now—” She opened the 
door of the big wardrobe to run her hand along the line of empty hangers. “If 
you do not have enough of these—tell me so. The drawers are ready, too.” She 
went to the bureau pulling open one drawer after another. “Fold and put away. 
Your mother gave me the laundry bag. We will run the clothes through on Monday 
and hang them out—nothing like good clean air for drying. If you get right to 
work, Susan, you can put everything neat before lunch.”
Such was the command in her voice that Susan was already unpacking before the 
door quite closed. She put effort into hanging up and smoothing out, too. 
Somehow she was very sure there would be an inspection of her efforts later and 
they had best meet with approval.
She was setting her school shoes straight in the bottom of the wardrobe and 
wondering if they were ever going to be school shoes again when Mike looked in.
“I’m to store the cartons in the storeroom,” he told her and for the first time 
he grinned. “Great-Aunt’s the Commander all right—but we’ve got the Sergeant on 
our tails as well.” He stacked up the boxes Susan had emptied.
“Did you do your room?” she asked.
“Did it! That sourpuss of an Eloise looked at me and said she wasn’t going—she 
had no time to wait on people. I can take a slight hint like that. What about 
Tucker?”
Susan sighed and got up from her knees. “I guess it’s probably up to us. Nobody 
else will.”
Mike nodded. “Nobody else better—not unless they want Tuck to explode. You know 
how he is.”
Tucker was a very “that is mine, keep your hands off” person. Susan wondered 
dismally if they could even persuade him to let them deal with the muddle that 
must now be stacked in his room.
She stopped short in her surprise when she pulled open the door. There were 
cartons, yes, but they were empty and Tucker was just pushing shut the bottom 
drawer of the bureau.
“Tucky—”
He scowled at her. “I did it. It’s all put away just like she said it had to 
be.” He was between Susan and the now-shut drawer, and she knew better than to 
try to investigate just how things had been put away. “These empty ones”—he 
kicked at the nearest carton—“are to go back in that other room, she said that 
too.” And, wonder of wonders, Tucker actually piled one on top of another, took 
a firm grip on what he held, and started for the door.
Susan scuttled out of his way. As he passed her he looked back over one 
shoulder:
“Did you hear ’bout us?”
“What about us?” Susan traveled along to ask, since Tucker showed no sign of 
halting.
“We’re cursed—”
“We’re what?” Mike demanded, as if completely shaken out of his own thoughts. 
“What do you mean?”
“That old Eloise—she said it. We’re cursed.” He disappeared into the storeroom 
with his load, leaving his brother and sister.
“She never talked to me at all,” Susan said.
“I got about one sentence about not causing trouble,” Mike returned. “What in 
the world did Tucker do this time?”
Though they cornered their brother and demanded to learn more, he only repeated 
that Eloise said they were cursed and that was that. Nor, he denied vigorously, 
had he done or said anything to make the sullen girl say such a thing.
Lunch was served in the old kitchen and Great-Aunt Hendrika did not appear. The 
room was large, with a fireplace so big Susan thought it might be a small room 
if someone wanted to add a door with a bit of wall on either side. There was a 
door—high up on one side—and when she dared to ask about that Mrs. Kingsley said 
it was the old oven, once used to do all the baking.
At one end of the room stood a very modern-looking stove, which she said 
Great-Aunt Hendrika had bought just two years ago. And there were walls of 
cupboards, as well as a big piece of furniture that looked like the dresser in 
Susan’s room, but had shelves instead of a mirror on top. Those shelves were 
crowded with dishes. There was a bowl shaped like a head of cabbage, all green 
and shiny; a jug that was a cow, her mouth open for the milk to come pouring 
forth; plates with pictures on them. Too much to really see all at once—just 
like the pictures pasted up in Tucker’s room.
“Where’s the TV?” Tucker laid down half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“TV?” To Susan’s surprise Eloise, seated at the other end of the table as if to 
make sure of being as far from the newcomers as possible, answered. “There’s no 
TV. Miss Kuydall don’t allow one in the house.”
Tucker actually looked shocked. “I want to see Dr. Coffin. He’s on Saturdays—” 
His lower lip pushed out. “Everybody has a TV. There’s got to be one!”
“Well, there isn’t, not here.” It was plain that being able to pass along that 
information pleased Eloise.
Susan prepared herself for an outbreak from Tucker. At the same time she thought 
regretfully of the afternoon movie.
Mike ate on silently. He had finished his sandwiches and was busy with a large 
section of pie. Mrs. Kingsley was drinking a second cup of coffee. She looked 
over it straight at Tucker.
“There’s a job waiting, young man. Come next Friday we have to deliver jars to 
the church for the big canning bee. In case you don’t know about such things, 
the farmers hereabouts donate extra fruit and garden truck to the Ladies’ Aid, 
and we put them up for the winter. Good for church suppers and for any folk down 
on their luck. The church is glad to get all the extra jars they can, so this 
afternoon we’ll cull them out down cellar.”
Eloise slammed down her glass of cider. Coke was something else not to be found 
in Great-Aunt Hendrika’s house.
“It’s—” she was beginning in a very angry voice when Mrs. Kingsley interrupted 
her.
“It’s part of your job. You go up and change into jeans before you begin it, 
too. Lucky we’ve got us some helpers here.
“That fruit cellar hasn’t had a good turn out in years. Like as not we’re going 
to find some things back in corners that the Kimbles left. Good thing to get it 
done once and for all.”
Susan dared to ask a question as she remembered the picture sampler on her 
bedroom wall.
“I thought the Kuydalls always lived here. Who were the Kimbles?”
Mrs. Kingsley paused. For a moment Susan thought there was an odd look on her 
face, almost as if she had said something she was sorry for.
“Kuydalls built the manor.” She spoke sharply, scraping the plates as if she 
were annoyed. “But they didn’t always live here. One of the Kuydall girls 
married a Kimble. Later the Kuydalls came back. They had lived in New York City 
for a long time— never were farmers—had something to do with a bank. They just 
visited here in summer.”
Eloise stood up putting her own plates together with a clatter.
“And wished they hadn’t,” she said.
Mrs. Kingsley turned so quickly to face her niece that the ties of her big apron 
caught with a jerk on a drawer handle.
“That’s enough of that, young lady!”
Eloise looked as if she wanted to answer back, then shrugged and walked out of 
the kitchen, her full skirt twitching like a cat’s tail.
Cat. Susan was suddenly aware that the two cats were in the kitchen too. Having 
left polished plates, they had moved to sit in front of a door at the other end 
of the room, a door that was very solid-looking with large iron hinges.
Tucker, who had not carried on his demand for TV, slid off his chair and went to 
that door also. Now he looked around.
“Do we have to go down?”
“Down?’ Susan was puzzled. Down where? What did Tucker mean—down? How could one 
go down—into the ground?
“Fruit closet’s in the cellar, yes,”—Mrs. Kingsley was rinsing plates. “Not like 
the old days though. Miss Kuydall had new lighting put in just last year.”
Cellar—Susan had heard of them, but she had never seen one back home. How had 
Tucker known about it?
He had backed away from the door, bumping into the big black cat that spit and 
struck out. Mrs. Kingsley shook her head at the cat.
“None of that, Josiah! They fancy going to the cellar—seems like they think they 
can hunt down there. We’ll have to be sure we get them up again when we’re 
through. Now”—she surveyed the children—“you all look as if what you have on 
will wash. This will be a good dusty job before we’re done. As I said, a lot of 
the jars have been on the shelves a mighty long time. From before Miss Kuydall 
came here, when old Mrs. Elsie was still alive. She believed in canning. Though 
why she put up so much when there were so few here to eat it, goodness only 
knows.
“Most of the jars of preserves must have gone to sugar long ago, and the 
vegetables might make a person sick they’re so old. Jim will dump it all in the 
compost pit back by the shed and cover it up, come Monday. Have to wash out the 
jars after that.”
She tied a towel over her waves of hair, then rolled up the sleeves of her 
dress. “Baskets down there waiting to be loaded.” She threw open the door. The 
cats streaked past her. She reached inside to feel along the wall and pressed a 
button. What had been a dark and shadowy place was now lighted so she could lead 
the way down a flight of stone stairs guarded by wood railings.
There was a damp smell that Susan disliked. She did not want to help in this 
particular chore. Only Mike was right, Mrs. Kingsely was very much the Sergeant 
and they were a squad being pressed into service.
Mike came behind her, Tucker between them. Her smaller brother caught Susan’s 
hand and squeezed it. There were lights enough. Also they could see slits of 
windows, very narrow and very high up, with bars across them. To one side were 
big stone tubs, and standing at the end of one, a thing Susan recognized, from a 
postcard Mother had once bought at a restored village museum, as a large pump.
Ahead was a hall with wooden walls, from which whitewash flaked off. Mrs. 
Kingsley pulled open a door that scraped across the floor. Again she reached 
inside to turn on a light. They came to a windowless room which, like the 
library, was walled with shelves. Susan could not have believed there were so 
many glass jars and big crocks anywhere. All were arranged in neat rows—and some 
of those rows were double and triple, so that the outer jars perched on the very 
edge.
Mrs. Kingsley had brought several clean but ragged cloths and now she began to 
flick one across the front of the jars. Their labels were brownish and the 
markings on most of them were very faded so Mrs. Kingsley had to pick them up to 
read them.
“Baskets in the storage room across the hall,” she said. “Get them, please.”
Mike went first and then Susan, Tucker still holding her in a grip that really 
hurt now. She tried to pry her fingers loose, but he did not even look at 
her—just held on as if he could not let go even if he wanted to. The other room 
was dark, and Mike had trouble finding the light switch. Tucker gave a sudden 
jerk, dragging Susan back.
“No!”
His face was not flushed as it was when he was angry—rather he looked scared.
“Not in there!” Before Susan could find out what was the matter, he at last 
loosed his hold on her and was running, back to the steps, out of the cellar. 
She did not try to follow him—though she would have liked to.
There was a chill down here, something like that chill she had felt in the 
middle of the night, and she shivered. The smell of dust or old stone and wood, 
or whatever it was, was strong. She tried not to breathe in too deeply.
Mike dragged at a pile of baskets—big ones like those in which oranges were 
shipped at Christmas time.
“Let the kid go,” he said. “This—this is a place—” He paused as if he could not 
find the right words.
“I don’t like it,” Susan said, keeping her voice low. “Mike, I don’t like this 
house. I don’t want to stay here.”
He shook his head. “We’ve got to—until Mom and Dad get settled. Don’t give Tuck 
any ideas, he has enough of his own. Can you drag these over?”
Susan dragged, pulling a pile of baskets back to where Mrs. Kingsley was talking 
to herself. Or rather she was reading aloud the labels of jars, pushing some 
jars to one side and some to another:
“Plum, 1970—Cherry, 1969—Peach, 1950 —Elderberry and apple, 1940. 1940! Just 
load these in, child. And all those crocks. Those must have been pickles. I 
wonder what’s in them now—would rather not know. Jim will have a fine mess 
dealing with these.”
They did not have to carry any filled baskets up through the house Susan 
discovered. There was a side opening into the cellar—big flaps of door that 
folded back—so it was easier, two of them to a basket, to lug them up that way. 
Mrs. Kingsley was finding more and more containers over which she shook her 
head. Eloise had appeared and was helping to carry, but Susan began to wonder if 
they would have to clear out everything. When at last, blackened with dust and 
with aching backs, they brought out the last basket, Mrs. Kingsley declared that 
the fruit cellar was now in passable order.
Susan and Mike were dismissed to clean themselves up. Mrs. Kingsley had not 
seemed to notice that Tucker was not with them. However, during all that time of 
packing, pulling, and lifting, Susan’s mind was not at ease over what the 
youngest Whelan might be doing. She suspected that Mike had the same worry from 
comments he made when he paused to rest.
Tucker was not in his room where Susan looked at once when she went upstairs. 
She passed the news to Mike at the door of the bathroom as she ducked in to 
wash. Sometimes Mike had a better chance of handling Tucker, and she was so 
tired that even her fear of what her brother might be doing did not matter so 
much.
It was not until she found Mike missing too that she hurried downstairs. The 
library door was open just a little and she heard voices. At least they did not 
sound as if there was a fight going on and she ducked in quickly.
Tucker was there all right, sitting on the floor by those children’s books. But 
the one he had spread out flat on the faded red and gold of the carpet was a 
much larger one than any she remembered having seen, even on the bottom shelves 
among the tall books.
“There is the face—” Tucker stabbed the right-hand page with a fingertip. “She 
had it. I saw it. Only she looked all different. But the face—it is just like 
the one!”
Susan moved up behind the boys. Mike was kneeling beside Tucker, leaning over 
the book, but Susan could see a colored picture on the page Tucker pointed to. 
The colors were not bright—rather pale, in fact, as if they had been put on the 
paper a long time ago. There was no printing, only writing. That was also very 
faded, brown instead of black.
The face Tucker had discovered was not a pleasant one. Nor was it a real face. 
It looked as if it had been carved out of wood, with feathers stuck on top of 
the head instead of hair. There was hair too—coarse and strange, caught up in a 
knob above the forehead. The eyes were big and outlined with white, then red, 
and there were black lines down the cheeks with some dots on the chin. The mouth 
was lopsided—dropping farther down on one side than the other. As for the rest, 
the color of the face was a dull brown like garden earth.
Susan did not like the look of it at all. “What is it?” she asked.
“False Face,” Mike said. “A secret society of the Mohawks—old Indian stuff.”
Tucker slapped his hand palm down on the painting. “She had it… and…” He pushed 
back from the book. “I don’t want to see it—take it away!”
“Where did you find it?” Mike closed the book, but still held it.
Tucker shook his head. “I looked—I knew —and I looked.” Then he shut his mouth 
firmly.
Mike juggled the book across his knee. “Maybe you found more than you know, 
Tuck,” he said slowly. “I want a better look at this.”
He got up and laid the big book on the desk.
“What is it?” Susan asked for the second time.
“Sort of a diary, I think. Somebody who lived here and knew about Indians.” He 
grinned. “Maybe just the sort of thing the G.-A.—the Great-Aunt—wants us to hunt 
for. If it is, we can surprise her with how quickly we’ve caught on.”
Tucker shook his head. “I don’t want to see that again!” he stated with all his 
old firmness.



Chapter 4
 



« ^ » 
Great-Aunt Hendrika did appear for breakfast the next morning. They ate, not in 
the kitchen, but in the dining room which, in spite of sun outside, seemed dark 
in corners where pieces of heavy old furniture crouched. As she added a 
half-spoonful of jam to toast she studied the Whelans critically.
Susan suddenly remembered that she had given her hair only a quick comb through. 
She had been too busy making sure that Tucker had a clean face and hands—it 
being her day to do that. She and Mike, as Mother had them promise before she 
left, were to divide that duty between them.
“Church at ten—Mr. Reever’s second Sunday,” Great-Aunt Hendrika announced. “A 
dress, not jeans, Susan—and proper shirts…” Now she looked at Mike.
“Tucker…” Susan began. She could not think of Tucker sitting through a church 
service speechless and quiet. He went to Sunday school at home, but that was 
different because he was in the class Mother taught so he usually behaved.
“Short service.” Great-Aunt Hendrika reached for her coffee cup. “No reason why 
a boy his age can’t stay through it. How did you come out in the library 
yesterday?”
“We were helping Mrs. Kingsley—in the cellar mostly,” Mike answered for them 
all. “There were a lot of jars of old preserves she wanted taken out to be 
dumped. Then we had unpacking—”
Great-Aunt Hendrika set down her coffee cup with a thump. “The church canning 
bee! Martha…” Mrs. Kingsley had just come in from the kitchen. “I’d forgotten 
about it.”
“Well, Miss Hendrika, those old jars should have been cleared out long ago. 
Things there for nearly thirty years, some of ’em. We stacked them all outside 
and Jim can see to the dumping. Take a lot of washing up though—and there are 
stoneware crocks— those we’d better keep.”
Great-Aunt Hendrika settled back a little in her chair. “You give me an idea, 
Martha. Those crocks ought to have some value. They are Early American, and 
that’s what people are looking for. We’ll certainly never use them all.”
Mrs. Kingsley nodded as she sat down and pulled the napkin off the basket she 
had carried in. It was full of blueberry muffins, which she offered first to 
Mike. “You mean you could put ’em in the sale of your cousin’s things, Miss 
Hendrika. Yes, you could. I’ll just pass a word to Sam about it this morning. 
After all it is an auction of Kimble-Kuydall things.”
Great-Aunt Hendrika turned her coffee cup around and around on its saucer, 
staring down at it in an odd way as if she did not really see it at all.
“I always thought Hester would change her mind. Seemed unfair she would never 
come here to call, nor take much of what Aunt Elsie left. Goodness knows, I 
talked to her enough about it. Until she really put me off that one time.” Now 
she looked cross.
“I think she always remembered Grover. She took it hard when he died.”
“Yes, and I wasn’t here.” Great-Aunt Hendrika straightened up stiffly again. “I 
had no choice in that matter. Jobs were hard to get and I could not take time 
off just two months after I was hired.”
“Now, she never held that against you, you know that, Miss Hendrika. It was just 
that she had to handle things, and it got too much for her with Mrs. Elsie 
taking on the way she did and all. It was really hard on the old lady. Her 
remembering so well about Richard, Tod, and James. Her mother never forgot and 
was always talking about them right up to her dying day. I remember my mother 
saying that. She was just a little girl herself but everyone talked—”
“They always do!” Great-Aunt Hendrika’s voice was very sharp. Mrs. Kingsley’s 
face got pink, and she was suddenly busy with her bacon and scrambled eggs.
Eloise had not come to breakfast. She had gone into town the evening before and 
was staying over at a friend’s house. But the cats were present, sitting 
together, each with a plate before it. Great-Aunt Hendrika pushed her chair back 
a little and took a dish with scraps of egg and some bits of buttered toast on 
it, stooping to divide that into equal portions. “Manners, Josiah— Erasmus…”
They waited with dignity until she was through, and then sampled what she 
offered. Great-Aunt Hendrika continued to watch them eat.
“Sunday morning treat,” she said as if explaining, though she did not look 
around at the Whelans. “Now”—she did glance across the table—“if you are 
finished…” She looked down at the watch on her wrist. “We have time for some 
talk. I had a good day yesterday—got through more of my revision than I had 
hoped. So you did not get to the library? No matter.” She nodded. “You have an 
hour or so to look around this morning. Let’s see what can be done.”
They trailed behind her into that darkish room. Great-Aunt Hendrika threw a 
light switch, and this time there was a chance to see the rows of books better. 
She stopped before the section she had shown them the day before and pointed to 
the row of red and gold books.
“St. Nicholas Magazine—bound. That was a real treat. Dip into it and see for 
yourself. Do you know”—she stood with her head a little on one side—“this 
collection could represent a history of sorts in itself—what the children of 
this country read for over a hundred years. What Katy Did.” She pulled out a 
book with a worn cover, then shoved it back again. “Granny’s Wonderful Chair.” 
That looked even duller on the outside, but she flipped it open and peered at 
the flyleaf. “To Emily from Papa, Christmas 1869.
“Henty, now—I remember when Orrin started on Henty. Under Drake’s Flag. By Pyke 
and Dike. Coffin—The Boys of ’76 … And here’s Hildegarde and Margaret Montford 
and The Peterkin Papers…” Her voice sounded excited. “We always were book people 
and somehow the favorites ended up here, brought along when the Washington 
Square house was finally closed.”
“Please…” Now that Great-Aunt Hendrika had paused Susan dared to explain what 
she had not had a chance to do earlier. “Tucker can’t read. He’s just been to 
kindergarten—”
“Any child,” Great-Aunt Hendrika announced firmly, “can read if made interested 
enough, and he has normal intelligence. I am sure that Tucker has that.” She 
looked to where he was standing eyeing the shelves with none of his usual 
frowns, but rather as if he expected something interesting to happen.
“What do you want to read about, Tucker?” Great-Aunt Hendrika asked.
“Indians,” he answered without any hesitation. “Indians—the ones who were here.” 
He jabbed one finger into the air as if pointing to someone really present.
Invisible Indians! Susan swallowed nervously. Oh, please not any more invisible 
Indians!
Great-Aunt Hendrika nodded. “Good enough!” She hunted along the shelves before 
her and pulled out two books. One was larger and, though its spine, which had 
faced the room, was dull and faded, there was a bright picture of an Indian on 
the cover. The other, smaller book had the picture of a boy and girl stamped on 
the binding.
Susan could read the title of that: The Indian Twins.
“Now see what you can make out of these— No”—she shook her head at Susan— “let 
him make discoveries for himself. I taught myself to read when I was four. I’m 
sure that Kuydalls have not changed so much in all these years that they can’t 
learn for themselves.
“Now, you, Susan—what do you want to start on?”
To say “I don’t know” was something she simply could not do—not with Great-Aunt 
Hendrika looking at her that way and after hearing her talk about how Kuydalls 
knew so much. Only she was not a Kuydall—no matter what Grandma’s name had been! 
She made a choice without any real thought, just to have a book in her hands—one 
of those Great-Aunt Hendrika had referred to as the St. Nicholases—
“And you—?” It was Mike’s turn. He had no hesitation at all.
“I found something yesterday—its over on the desk.” He pointed to the book 
Tucker had discovered, that had the ugly mask in it.
Great-Aunt Hendrika went to look. There was an expression of surprise on her 
face when she glanced up at Mike.
“Jacobus Kuydall’s diary!” She frowned, then she shook her head. But Susan 
thought she was not shaking it at Mike.
“I did say anything here was for reading. And of course it is!” Her voice was 
firmer, almost as if she was making a promise— though to whom Susan did not 
understand. “You are certainly woefully lacking in a knowledge of family 
history. It is time you learned some. Very well, you have an hour.” She looked 
at her watch again. “Then you must get dressed for church. We’ll take the field 
walk so you’ll get to see some more history—part of the past that belongs to you 
whether you are interested or not!”
Susan looked around for Tucker. He was no longer by the shelves. The table with 
the beads… No, he was not there either. In fact, Tucker had found an excellent 
place on a wide window seat, where he was hunched over, actually looking into 
the largest of the books, completely absorbed.
She found the large volume she had picked by chance was awkward to hold, and so 
she shared the desk with Mike—he on one side and she on the other—leafing 
through her choice to marvel at the queer clothes worn by the people in the 
illustrations: there were a lot of those. Great-Aunt Hendrika, perhaps 
considering her duty well done—at least for the hour she had mentioned—left 
them.
Mike made a queer noise, something between a snort and a laugh, which pulled 
Susan away from a story that had attracted her because of the title: “Lady 
Jane.”
“Didn’t the G.-A.,” he looked across the flattened-out book he had opened, “say 
that one of the things we should learn was spelling?”
“Why?”
“Because the guy that wrote this was about the world’s worst speller—or else 
they had a different kind of English in his day,” Mike commented. “But he’s got 
a lot to say. He lived here back in 1769—at least that’s when he started writing 
this. And his mother was an Indian—an Oneida—an important person, too. Seems the 
women owned the land then. His father was from New York— another Jacobus 
Kuydall—who got a big grant, about this whole valley, but that was just what the 
colonists said. The Indians didn’t argue, not until he moved in and made a deal 
with them. He married this princess or whatever they called her, and he set up a 
big trading post. Then he brought settlers in—some Scottish people. They were 
angry about what had happened in the old country and wanted to get out—didn’t 
like their new king. And there were some Dutch, too—and even a couple of Swedes.
“This first Jacobus brought men from New York to build him this house—or part of 
it—and everyone thought it was great—like he was a king here. They used to hold 
big ceremonies with the Indians outside. He sent his two sons to England later 
on. The one who wrote this liked that, but his brother didn’t. He was homesick, 
I guess. Jacobus talks about reading Latin—though he couldn’t spell English 
straight. Has some Indian words mixed in too.
“His brother was Hendrik, and they don’t seem to have been very good friends. 
When they got back from England, Jacobus hung around with some English who lived 
not far from here. But Hendrik was mad at the way the English were giving orders 
all over the place and that made more trouble between the brothers.
“This part of New York State was called ‘the west’ then ’cause people hadn’t 
pioneered too far yet, and they didn’t even know how big the whole country was. 
I’ve looked it up in another book—during the Revolution, Washington was always 
said to fight ‘in the east,’ and this place was considered way off the map, ‘in 
the west.’ Anybody who went to fight with Washington in the regular army was ‘in 
the east.’
“Anyway Jacobus stayed here in the west and ran things at home. He was his 
father’s favorite. But Hendrik was the oldest, and in those days the eldest son 
inherited everything by law.”
Susan looked around the room slowly. Seventeen sixty-nine seemed a very long 
time ago. Was this already a library then? And had some of the same dark books 
been up on the shelves ever since?
“Children!” Mrs. Kingsley stood in the doorway. “Time to get ready for church.”
Susan shut her book as did Mike, but Tucker might not have heard at all. When 
they both went over to the window seat they found him gazing at a picture of an 
Indian crouched behind a bush, watching a wall made of pointed logs, over the 
top of which showed the unmistakable coonskin cap of a frontiersman.
“Tucker—we’ve got to go.” When he did not move Susan laid her hand, palm flat, 
over the picture.
“That was what they did—only it was morning—real early…” Tucker said slowly, 
without raising his head. “They snuck up— and then there was shooting and 
screaming —and—”
He gave his head a small shake. When he did seem to see Mike and Susan, he 
looked frightened. “They ran—and ran—and then it was all dark because the man 
put them—”
Again he shook his head and slammed the book shut. “I don’t know the rest!”
Mike picked up both books. “No more Indians, Tuck. Just forget about Indians. 
There aren’t any left around here anymore. You’ve been imagining—”
Tucker’s lower lip protruded. “They were bad—only the man—he was badder—and he 
wasn’t an Indian! I don’t want to remember any more.”
“You don’t have to,” Susan was quick to assure him. “Come on, Tucker, we have to 
get ready for church.”
He seemed willing enough and didn’t protest when she got out his best slacks and 
a clean shirt and laid his jacket on the bed. He even let her run a comb through 
his upstanding thatch of hair.
Susan hoped they looked what she had once heard Lena back home call 
“respectable” when they met Great-Aunt Hendrika and Mrs. Kingsley in the lower 
hall. Great-Aunt was wearing a gray suit and hat and a frilly blouse. There was 
a pin on one lapel of her jacket, a big black leopard, only his spots were set 
with small sparkling stones. Mrs. Kingsley also had on a suit and hat, but they 
both lacked the frills that she wore in the house.
They walked down the gravel drive out into the road, but turned off into a side 
path as Great-Aunt Hendrika unlatched a gate that led them into the cemetery. A 
walk led straight across that toward the white church, but beside it stood a big 
block of stone quite tall, a plate of brownish-looking metal fastened to one 
side. Great-Aunt Hendrika stopped in front of it.
“In a few weeks,” she told them, “it will be the two hundredth anniversary of 
the massacre. This was put up in 1880—the hundredth one. See there—” She pointed 
a gloved hand to some names on the metal plate.
“Johanna Kuydall, Carolus Kuydall, Florian Kuydall—” They were strange names and 
Susan found herself reading them aloud. There were a lot of other names, about 
twenty of them, but those three were at the top of the list.
“What happened?” Mike wanted to know.
Great-Aunt Hendrika looked—Susan could only think of one word—hard. As if her 
face were now a mask like the horrid one in the book Mike had found. “It was a 
very terrible thing,” she said. “A man brought the enemy to raid his own 
friends—his own family. They burned the houses, killed—even his own blood. His 
name…” She hesitated and then went on. “… was Jacobus Kuydall. And he had a 
brother Hendrik, who was serving with Washington. Many of the families in the 
valley were divided, but Jacobus was the only one who brought death to his own 
people. There still are stories about him. You may even hear some of them. 
People in these small towns do remember— even today. Hendrik Kuydall made 
himself a beggar after the war trying to help those who survived that massacre. 
Still some of them hated and blamed him, because he had not been here to defend 
them. The Kuydalls did not live here for a long time afterward because of that. 
People are planning another ceremony on the two hundredth anniversary now. 
Still, Kuydall money set up this stone—and those three names at the top were 
Hendrik’s children—”
The church bell began to ring, startling them. Susan took Tucker’s hand, for he 
did not move on with the others, rather stood staring at the stone. This was too 
much, she thought. If Tucker did not stop hearing about Indians and killing—she 
wished she dared tell Great-Aunt Hendrika so. Maybe Mother and Dad would find a 
house soon so they could get away from here.
Susan had seen some movies about war and read some books. It always happened 
somewhere else to other people, having nothing at all to do with the Whelans… 
The Whelans! That was it! They were not Kuydalls, no matter what Great-Aunt 
Hendrika said. They were Whelans, who had nothing at all to do with anything 
that had happened here two hundred years ago.
Church was all right. They sang some of the hymns Susan knew, and the minister 
had a nice smile. He came up to the big pew after the service to speak to 
Great-Aunt and Mrs. Kingsley about getting ready for the church canning bee and 
how pleased they were about all those extra jars and the apples Great-Aunt was 
contributing to make into sauce.
Tucker pulled at Susan’s hand, jerking her impatiently toward the door, so she 
thought it best to get him out. Mike followed. There were some boys his age and 
a couple of girls near them. One of them smiled and Susan was so flustered she 
did not smile back in time. No one spoke to them.
They were outside walking slowly, waiting for Great-Aunt Hendrika and Mrs. 
Kingsley to catch up, when Eloise came by. There was another girl with her and 
two boys— big ones. One had a school sweater, which had a bright letter, white 
on red, under his jacket. The girl with Eloise looked at the Whelans with a 
round-eyed stare, as if there was something queer about them, while the boy in 
the sweater whispered to her and then laughed in a loud way Susan did not like. 
Mike didn’t either—she saw him turn red.
“Ghosts set to get you, kid?” the big boy demanded of Mike. “Better get your 
running shoes on, maybe you can beat the rap this time. Heard it yet?” He began 
to chant: “A curse on thee, who Jacobus’ blood be.” He laughed again, and the 
other boy joined in, even though the strange girl pulled at his sleeve, her face 
redder than just the cold could make it.
Eloise snapped out of one corner of her mouth, “Shut up, Lew! If my aunt hears 
you…”
He laughed again. “Yeah? What’s she going to do? She don’t own me—and she sure 
can’t shut up the town. Folks have been talking already. Three kids—Kuydalls— 
and you know what they say happened before where three of them got together 
here.”
“What happened?” Mike took a step closer to the big boy. Mike was tall for his 
age, but he had to look up to see the boy’s face. “Suppose you tell us.”
“That’s just it, kid. Nobody knows. It’s the curse.” He made his voice go deep. 
“Go and look over there—” He nodded toward the cemetery. “There are a lot of 
funny stories about the Kuydalls.”
“We aren’t Kuydalls,” Mike answered with the same words Susan had thought 
earlier. “And what about a curse? That’s something out of a comic book—”
“Come on, Lew.” That was the other boy. “Here comes Mrs. Kingsley. She’ll skin 
you alive if she hears you sound off—”
Lew glanced past the Whelans to the church, then laughed and shrugged. “I 
haven’t said anything that isn’t known. Coming, Eloise?”
“No, I’ve got to get home. My aunt’ll see to that. Thanks, Laura, I had a swell 
time. See you all.” She was plainly eager to have the three move on.
Mike was not satisfied. “What’s this curse business?” he demanded of her. “You 
told Tucker about it—now tell us.”
“Just an old story—doesn’t mean anything,” she said hurriedly. “Oh, Aunt Martha, 
Mrs. Whittman wants you to call her— something about baking extra cookies. The 
Ladies’ Aid didn’t get promise of enough.” She walked with Mrs. Kingsley, and 
Mike was forced to step aside, joining Susan and Tucker as Great-Aunt Hendrika 
came along more slowly, talking to another lady. Once more Susan heard, 
“Auction—come early …”
She was glad they did not go back through the cemetery, but took a longer way 
along the road. Tucker kept picking up leaves— early fallen from some of the 
trees but already bright-colored. There was a crispness in the air. Susan pulled 
her jacket more tightly about her.
“What do you suppose they meant?” she asked Mike.
“I don’t know but I am sure going to find out,” he answered with determination. 
“From what the G.-A. said, Jacobus and Hendrik split over the revolution and 
Jacobus brought an Indian raiding party down while his brother was off fighting 
in the east. I guess that would make anyone mad enough to curse him. But what 
it’s got to do with us—that we’ve got to find out.”
Tucker joined them, his hands full of leaves. “What makes them red and yellow?” 
he asked, and Susan was so thankful that he did not mention Indians or other 
horrors that she admitted freely she did not know, but perhaps Great-Aunt 
Hendrika did. Tucker shot a glance over one shoulder to where she stood, still 
talking to the lady, then lost interest in leaves as a squirrel ran along the 
wall, popped into a hole, and was gone.
“I sure wish I had a good old dog—”
“Digby,” Susan said before she thought, and then was horrified at what she had 
done.
Tucker looked scornful. “Digby’s gone. He’s with them.”
Oh no, Susan thought, not that again. “Wait until we get to Utica,” she told him 
hurriedly. “We’ll have a house there and you can get a dog—”
“Yes. Not here.” He shook his head. “They might get him, too. Look—Mike—a jet!”
He pointed skyward. There was indeed a tail of white across the sky marking the 
path of the plane too high for them to see. A jet in the air, and two hundred 
years ago Indians coming out of the woods in the early morning to kill— In the 
early morning? Now why had she thought that? She had not heard Great-Aunt 
Hendrika say so. No, it had been Tucker, when he looked at the picture in the 
book. Yet the idea of an attack in the early morning seemed so plain that she 
was somehow certain it could be true. No more Indians! No more Kuydall curses!
Great-Aunt Hendrika caught up with them at last and Susan, frantically hunting a 
subject as far from her thoughts as possible, asked about the auction of her 
cousin Hester’s things.
It was to be quite an event she learned. In the first place it was also in a way 
a Kuydall affair. Great-Aunt’s cousin had been a Kuydall—Hester Kuydall—and she 
and Great-Aunt Hendrika had inherited the rights to the big house, to be shared 
equally. Only Hester did not like living in it, because one of her brothers had 
died there and she herself had been very ill when visiting it. Later, her own 
young son had died at the manor suddenly. Cousin Hester had lived in another 
house on the other side of town. Now she was dead, too, and all the things in 
her house were going to be sold at auction. The money would go to the church. 
Many of the things she had owned were old—antiques— and they expected quite a 
crowd to turn up, especially with good weather. The Ladies’ Aid was going to 
sell lunches and it was a big occasion for the town.
“We’ll go,” Great-Aunt Hendrika said, as if promising a treat. “There may be 
something your mother might fancy for her new home. I know she is interested in 
old things. And she has a birthday in November, hasn’t she? You might think of 
looking around for a present there, Susan. I can remember some quite nice bits 
of glass and china—not so old that they would attract dealers, but pretty. And 
of course they are family things, too.”



Chapter 5
 



« ^ » 
Luckily Tucker appeared to forget Indians during the next two days. In the 
library he had found several books with queer old pictures. There was one called 
Cheerful Cats, another about Brownies. Ignoring the printing he followed the 
adventures of these quietly as Susan and Mike dipped into their new way of 
school. Mike was taking notes as he read, but Susan, who had never particularly 
enjoyed reading, traced the Lady Jane story through two volumes of the St. 
Nicholas and then tackled What Katy Did.
On Tuesday morning they were again joined by Great-Aunt Hendrika at breakfast 
and told they were to attend the auction. The whole household, except for 
Erasmus and Josiah, was to go. Great-Aunt Hendrika considered this a part of 
Kuydall history and necessary to their education.
“Not many of the old families are left,” she said as she helped Mrs. Kingsley 
pack a big cardboard box with layers of cookies and cupcakes each in a sandwich 
bag. “The last of the McGregors—old Amos—died two years ago. There are still 
Vandusters and Grahams…” She shook her head. “Not much in the valley to hold our 
young people. They’ve been leaving now for a generation or more. They come back 
sometimes for a summer visit, and that’s it. Houses are sold to summer people. 
Thank goodness there are a few round about who appreciate old things and are 
willing to preserve them. But the new families aren’t native stock—”
Mrs. Kingsley sniffed. “Fancy horses and a swimming pool—and that tennis court 
they put in at the McGregor house. Wanting to nose into village business, too. 
We can do without most of ’em.”
Great-Aunt Hendrika shook her head. “That’s just it, Martha, we can’t. At least, 
if they do take an interest, we won’t have some kind of a housing project going 
up— like ugly mushrooms overnight. Those Allens who took over the McGregor house 
have done an excellent restoration job and they are proud of the place—put it in 
better order than it has been in for fifty years or more. I hope that Hester’s 
home is as well cared for by these Hendersons. It needs a roof job badly. She 
just would not bother about the house the past year or so. Said as how it would 
outlast her and that was all that was necessary. Of course it isn’t a Kuydall 
house—but it was built in 1800 and the Cannons brought in an architect from New 
York then to plan it.”
They drove along the road on which the manor stood, heading into open country. 
There was other traffic. Great-Aunt Hendrika tooted her horn and waved at 
several cars, which signaled back. It was only eight in the morning, but it was 
going to be a good day. Susan settled in her corner seat and, sure they did not 
have a long drive before them, felt a little excited.
They turned into a field of parked cars. Great-Aunt Hendrika helped Mrs. 
Kingsley take out the big cardboard boxes of freshly baked things, while Eloise 
carried a lidded pot filled with three pies set in layers.
“Go on.” Great-Aunt shooed the children ahead. “Look around. The things are all 
numbered and you can see what will come up for auction when the sale begins. 
Lucky this is a good day, they can bring most of the stuff out in the yard where 
people can see it better.”
“A lot of folks have been seeing.” Mrs. Kingsley sounded snappish. “People came 
out from town last Thursday and Friday just to poke around. Most of them just 
plain curious. Well, now, there’s Sarah Bates, she has most things right under 
her hand—”
The food, Great-Aunt, Mrs. Kingsley and Eloise went in one direction, as the 
Whelans stood together looking around.
“It must be like a garage sale,” Susan ventured. They had had one of their own 
two weeks before they had moved.
“Bigger,” Mike commented. “Look at all the furniture!” He pointed to the front 
of the house at chairs, tables, sofas, beds which had been taken apart, 
cupboards, and some things so large and heavy Susan wondered how they had ever 
been carried out of the plain red brick house. People were prowling round among 
the furniture, turning chairs up to examine their legs, squatting down to look 
at the undersides of tables. Others sat around waiting for the show to begin. 
There were big cartons piled with books, dishes, and all kinds of odds and ends 
lined up along the edge of the porch.
Nobody spoke to the Whelans, and they were hesitant about venturing into the 
area where all the things were piled up and waiting. But what Great-Aunt 
Hendrika had said about finding something for Mother’s birthday flashed into 
Susan’s mind.
“Hey—look there, Tuck. What do you think of that?” Mike pointed to the gathering 
of furniture. Standing, dusty and dim of paint, between a table and two chairs 
was a pony. No, Susan took a second look. It was a wooden horse, with a carved, 
curly mane. There was a wooden saddle on its back, faintly streaked with faded 
red and gold paint, and from its half open mouth hung tattered ends of reins.
“It’s from a merry-go-round.” Susan hurried after the boys as Tucker, taking one 
look, started running. However, when she got close enough she saw that it was 
mounted on rockers, its hoofs—three of them—planted firmly in those supports. A 
fourth foot, a hind one, had been broken off and the rocker there was also 
cracked.
Tucker caught at the horn of the saddle and was making an effort to scramble up. 
The horse tottered and would have fallen against the table.
“You kids—cut it out! Get away from there!” A young man bore down upon them, 
swinging one arm to warn them off.
“We’re sorry,” Susan said hurriedly. “Tucker never saw a horse like that 
before—”
“Well, see he keeps his hands off it. That’s a special item.”
“Does it cost a lot?” Mike was restraining Tucker with difficulty.
“You can just bet it will, kid. Not many of those left. Two of the dealers have 
it marked special in their catalogues. One of them said he could get a thousand 
or more for it from some collector.”
Mike whistled and took a firmer hold on Tucker. “Nothing doing,” he told his 
brother. “Look, there’s a barn. Let’s go and see what’s there.”
Tucker’s face was turning red and Susan did not see what she or Mike could do if 
he really lost his temper.
“There’s a dog!” Mike pointed to a small brown and white puppy playing in the 
trampled grass. Tucker swung away at once from the battered rocking horse. Then 
he was off, Mike fast behind him.
Susan lingered to ask a question of the big young man who seemed to know so much 
about things.
“Is everything going to be so expensive?”
He grinned at her. “Thinking to pick yourself up a bargain or two, sister? You 
look over there…” He gestured at the cartons piled on the porch. “Some of them 
won’t even be put up for bidding. Harve says they came out of the attic where 
the church ladies packed ’em. They’re like grab bags— the ladies thought that 
was a good idea. All the dealers will be after the big stuff—china and glass 
mostly; they don’t want that kind of thing. Who knows, you might find yourself a 
real treasure.”
She could not be sure whether he was making fun of her or not, and just then 
someone yelled, “Hal!” and he went off. Susan moved toward the cartons he had 
pointed out.
They looked awfully dusty and dirty. Some had old books in them. She lifted the 
lid of one carton and saw a box filled with pieces of material cut in 
squares—patches. Maybe someone had once started to make a quilt and then never 
finished it. The pieces were trimmed. Pieces of lace or braid, sometimes both, 
had been cut out and sewn across one corner of each piece. They were not all 
calico, like Mother’s friend Mrs. Platt used to make the quilts she worked on. 
Some looked like dusty velvet or wool. Susan picked up the top ones, only to 
discover that they had been fastened together by pieces of faded tape so they 
made a string of squares. She did not want to take them all out, but she 
wondered about them.
There was a second box beneath the one with patches. It had once been painted by 
someone to look like wood, and it was badly broken across the top. Stuffed along 
the edge, to fill up the rest of the carton, were loose printed pages, all 
yellowed and spotted. And at one corner was something wrapped up in a piece of 
frayed cloth. Susan poked a finger all the way through the cloth trying to see 
what was inside. It looked like a little tree made of china, with several 
branches. A couple of them were painted with flowers and a butterfly. It was 
strange—and unusual. She did not know what it really was, but suddenly Susan 
wanted it. She squatted down to read black markings on the outside of the box.
“Church fund, grab bag. Two dollars.”
Maybe the tree thing was broken. And who would want the pieces of the quilt or 
whatever they were. But two dollars for a grab bag. She did not know what was in 
the box painted to look like wood either. Susan had never taken a chance like 
this— but it might be fun.
“Found something interesting? Oh, you’re Susan Whelan, aren’t you?”
Susan nearly lost her balance, sitting on her heels the way she was, as she 
looked up with a start.
“I’m Mrs. Reevers, we met at church. But I think you were meeting so many people 
there you might not remember.” The lady looked a little like Mother, her hair 
covered with a scarf, a windbreaker on, and a smiling face. Susan did not 
remember her, but she smiled back. Mrs. Reevers was more like someone from home 
than anybody she had met so far.
“Yes, I’m Susan. This grab bag box—how do you buy it?”
“You pay me.” Mrs. Reevers laughed. “This is my part of the auction. The money 
will go into a special church fund we want to raise for young people’s programs. 
Maybe the kind you would enjoy.”
Susan fumbled in the front of her jacket to get her wallet. She counted out four 
quarters left from her last allowance and then ten dimes that she had shaken out 
of her piggy bank before she packed it. “I’m going to buy this.” She laid one 
hand on the box. Then she smiled. “Maybe I’m going to be lucky!”
Mrs. Reevers smiled back. “Do you know, I have a feeling that you are! I do know 
that there are some surprises packed away in most of these. There was so much up 
in the attic, and the ladies who sorted it all out finally thought that there 
was just too much to bother with, so they pushed as much as they could in each 
box and left it to be priced. Thank you, Susan.” She dropped the money in a bag 
she had. “Let me know if you got a surprise.”
“Oh, I will!” Susan picked up the box. It was rather heavy. She wondered what 
could be in the bottom of it as she carried it carefully to the car and put it 
on the floor in the back. Then she went off to hunt Mike and Tucker, finding 
them playing with the puppy and talking to two boys.
Susan drifted on to where the church ladies were putting out paper plates, 
getting ready to sell lunch to any who had not brought their own. The auction 
was beginning. For a while Susan listened to it. The man who was selling the 
things talked so fast and so loud he was hard to understand— and there were some 
people in the front row who looked quite dressed up and who bid on the 
furniture. Perhaps they were dealers. The rocking horse, to her surprise, did 
bring in seven hundred dollars—even though it was broken.
She cornered Mike later on to explain about the grab bags and after a while saw 
him poking around the ones with books in them. Then everyone took time out—Susan 
thought that the man who was doing the talking certainly needed that—and had 
lunch. There were sandwiches and milk and lots of different kinds of cookies, 
pie pieces and slices of cakes, which they ate picnic fashion.
Shortly after lunch Great-Aunt Hendrika and Mrs. Kingsley packed up, saying it 
was time to go home. Great-Aunt Hendrika shook her head as she climbed into the 
car.
“I don’t know how all those dealers got wind of the sale. Good for the church, 
yes. But they outbid the rest of us. I wanted that sewing table. Mama used to 
have that up in her room when I was little—but three hundred dollars!”
“They weren’t so free with their money when it came to the kitchen stuff.” Mrs. 
Kingsley was quite triumphant. “Got me that rolling pin that presses out 
Christmas cookies. I always fancied that.” She patted the wooden roller with its 
deeply indented patterns. “Next Christmas I’ll try Ettie’s recipe and see just 
how good it works. What’s all this?”
She had opened the car door and there sat Susan’s carton—another beside it with 
some books on top.
“Grab bag boxes,” Susan said quickly. “This one’s mine. I guess the other is 
Mike’s. Mrs. Reevers said they were full of things out of the attic.”
Mrs. Kingsley sniffed. “Trash mainly, I suppose. Where are those brothers of 
yours?”
“They’re coming.” Great-Aunt Hendrika had been waving and now the boys were 
running from the barn. “Let’s get out of here before we are caught in a jam. The 
sale went quicker than they thought it would. Look at them loading up those 
vans. Well, it made plenty for the church and that is what Hester wanted.”
“That’s a good dog,” Tucker said. “His name’s Butch and he lives with Johnny. 
He’s a dog to go hunting with. Johnny’s going to train him to hunt.”
“Dogs,” Great-Aunt Hendrika said as she got behind the wheel of the car, “are 
all right—in their proper place. Which is not in a house! Where’s Eloise?”
“She said as how she was staying on for a little while—wants to help Mrs. 
Reevers— she and Laura. Seems that Susan here was not the only one to fancy 
those grab boxes and they are having a pretty good sale of them. Guess people 
are always ready to take a chance on finding a treasure. Even though they end up 
mostly with trash. The Prestons will drop her off by four.”
Susan carried her box inside when they got home. Getting it upstairs was another 
matter, for it was awkward to handle. Also Tucker was talking more and more 
about a dog, until she was certain that if Digby did not return, they were going 
to have another invisible puppy in his place sooner or later.
She heard Mike trying to interest Tucker in what might be in his own grab box, 
only to be asked scornfully who wanted a lot of old dirty books.
They had just reached the upper hall when Susan tripped and went down on her 
knees, trying hard not to drop the box. Some of the loose pages that had been 
put in for packing fell out, and the top box, with the squares of cloth, lost 
its cover so that the patches trailed along the carpet.
“Great-Grandma Lutie’s dress string!” Great-Aunt Hendrika had followed them 
upstairs. Now she stooped to pick up the squares, stretching out a string that 
was quite long.
“There’s Grandma McAdams’ wedding dress—and her infare dress which was almost as 
important then. It was the dress you wore to church the first Sunday after your 
wedding. And this is a piece of the dress she had on when Grandpa Kuydall 
proposed…”
To Susan’s surprise Great-Aunt Hendrika sat down on the floor to examine each 
patch in turn. She was smiling, and now and again she nodded as if she had met a 
friend she remembered.
“How we loved this,” she said. “Mama used to get it out if we had to stay in bed 
with a cold, then she would tell us the story of each one. Why, some of these 
dresses must go back to Lucy Kimble’s time—far more than a hundred years ago. 
She was the one who began it, I believe. She was a beautiful dressmaker, and 
every time she made a dress that was to be worn for some special occasion, she 
took a piece of the material, sewed the trimming across it and kept it. Then 
Great-Grandma Lutie and Grandma added to it in their day, too. It is a history 
in itself. I had forgotten all about it. But I haven’t forgotten the stories—not 
when I see this again!”
She began to fold it up, square against square, and handed it back to Susan.
“This is certainly rightfully yours, Susan— since you are the eldest daughter in 
your generation! In fact the only one—” For a moment she lost her smile and sat 
staring down at her hands, which now rested on her knees. Then she glanced up 
again.
“What other luck did you have, Susan?”
The wadded papers, which had held the box tightly packed, had all been pulled 
out, for Susan was eager to see the little piece of china in the corner. She 
unwrapped the old piece of cloth, which pulled apart easily in her fingers, to 
discover this really was like a small tree—a thick stem for trunk, then four 
branches each upheld in a different direction. The base was a round plate like a 
saucer from a doll tea set, and, though the china was very dusty and dirty, you 
could see more flowers and butterflies painted on it. What it might be still 
puzzled Susan.
“A ring tree!” Great-Aunt Hendrika said. “You never saw one before, Susan? These 
were meant to be put on the dressing table to hang up rings you were not 
wearing.” She touched the tip of one branch. “I don’t remember seeing this, but 
it is pretty.”
“Mom could hang her watch on that.” Mike had returned from his own room into 
which he had carried his grab box. “Bet she’d like it, Sue. It’s old, isn’t it?” 
he asked.
“Old and perhaps a good piece, too.”
There was only one other thing in the carton, the other box painted to look like 
wood. This was so broken that Susan was afraid it would come apart in her hands 
as she lifted it out. Great-Aunt Hendrika leaned forward a little and Susan 
heard her gasp.
She looked up and saw Great-Aunt reaching out as if to take the box from her, 
but she did not actually touch it. Her smile was quite gone and she looked odd, 
almost as if she were afraid or sick.
“So… Hester kept those after all. At least they were gone from here.” Great-Aunt 
Hendrika got up and stood, still looking down at the box. “No, that is all just 
superstition!” She spoke very firmly and harshly. “There is nothing in such 
silly stories— nothing.” But she was no longer the person who had been so 
pleased at finding the dress patches. Now she turned abruptly and went down the 
hallway in the direction of her own room in the added-on wing, leaving Susan 
sitting surprised, the broken box in her hands. Mike stared after his 
great-aunt, but Tucker took no notice. He had been quietly putting together the 
crumpled, yellow sheets that had been jammed in to fill up the carton. Though it 
was certainly not Tucker’s way to help clean anything up.
“What’s in that box?” Mike swung back to his sister.
She lifted off the broken cover, almost afraid to do so. There was such a 
strange feeling inside her—as if she were about to let out what should be 
carefully kept in a cage. She found herself looking down at a piece of stout 
cardboard, which she carefully raised. It was not as badly damaged as the box. 
Below it was a mass of color— surprisingly bright color—in contrast to the dark 
and faded box.
“Paper dolls,” Susan said, wonderingly. She and Francie had had some last summer 
—a whole wedding party set. But these— she did not want to touch them—not with 
dirty hands. These were not just printed on paper. Instead, their faces were 
painted and—yes—there were wisps of real hair glued to their heads! They were 
like pictures of people—real people.
“Paper dolls!” Mike gave one scornful look and lost interest. “What is there 
about a bunch of paper dolls to set the G.-A. off that way?
Susan wanted to unpack them all. She’d wash her hands, then lay them out on her 
bed where she could really see them. They were so unusual. When she looked down 
at the faces of the three lying on top, a girl and two boys, it was as if she 
saw old snapshots of real people.
“They’re different.” Susan picked up the box carefully. She would have to find 
something better to keep them in. A long time ago someone had painted this box 
to look like a big wooden chest, but it was almost completely broken now and 
useless.
“Indians…”
Tucker’s comment certainly had nothing to do with what she held. He had stopped 
piling up the brittle old pieces of paper to look closely at one he had just 
straightened out. On it was a picture, crudely drawn in pen and ink by someone 
who was not much of an artist. But it was an Indian right enough. And he had his 
hand twisted in the hair of a woman who was on her knees, her mouth wide open as 
if she were screaming for help.
“ ‘Dastardly murder…’ ” Mike pulled that sheet of paper away from Tucker. It 
tore so he had to hold it together with both hands. “ ‘The Murders in Candiaga 
Valley’; ‘Death of Mary MacRae’; ‘The Curse of the Kuydalls as spoken by one of 
the victims…’ ” he read. “Tucker, let’s see that stuff!”
He knelt and started sorting out the pile of papers Tucker had gathered 
together. “Say, these are all parts of a book—all about the massacre here!” He 
was reading a sentence here and there as he sorted. “Let me have them, Tucker.”
Susan gathered up her own things—the ring tree, the dress pieces, and the box of 
dolls.
“No more Indians,” she said. “If you get Tucky started off again, it is all your 
fault, Mike. I won’t have anything to do with it.”
Oddly enough Tucker did not appear to be too excited this time. Instead he was 
sitting cross-legged, much as Great-Aunt Hendrika had done earlier, watching 
Mike sort out the pieces of paper into piles.
Susan carried her armload into her bedroom, went to wash thoroughly, and came 
back to examine those interesting paper dolls. Mike had bundled up one package 
of the crumpled leaves. Tucker waited until he had finished, then reached for 
those his brother had discarded.
“You don’t want those dirty old things,” Susan said quickly.
Tucker looked up at her. “Might,” he replied, gathering them very close to his 
chest.
Before she could argue it out with him he marched into his room and actually 
slammed the door behind him.
“Mike—don’t let him—” she was beginning, but her older brother did not appear to 
be listening to her at all.
“This is a story—all about the Kuydalls and the valley massacre,” he said 
excitedly. “There is something about the curse, too. This was written later—must 
have been about the time when they put up that stone in the cemetery.” He 
clutched his share of papers as tightly as Tucker had done.
Susan shook her head determinedly. “I don’t want to hear any more about it and I 
don’t think you should talk about such things before Tucky either! It’s 
upsetting!” Why did she feel suddenly so cold? Why did she want to snatch those 
papers from Mike and tear them into little bits? She did not know. Only she 
wished to forget all about the Kuydalls and the valley, Indians and such things 
that were not part of this real world now at all.



Chapter 6
 



« ^ » 
There were, Susan discovered when she laid the dolls out carefully on her bed, 
four sets, each quite different from the others. Those on top were made of heavy 
cardboard that had been carefully painted, while their faces seemed to have been 
cut from old photographs, tinted and pasted onto the bodies, with bits of real 
hair glued in place. There were three of them and the clothes they wore, while 
unusual to Susan, were not so very strange.
Under a second sheet of cardboard lay three more dolls. These also had faces 
that could have come from photographs but much older ones. The dresses for the 
girl, the clothes for the boys, reminded Susan of pictures from the older copies 
of the St. Nicholas magazines. There were frills, flounces and ruffles on the 
girl’s dresses, and her hair was in bangs across her forehead, falling into 
curls on her shoulders.
The third set of dolls was even more strange. They had been made of what Susan 
believed must be many thicknesses of stout paper glued together. The boys wore 
very odd-looking clothing and the girl—her dresses were so full that they stuck 
out on all sides and she wore some kind of pants underneath that came down to 
her ankles. Her hair was parted in the middle and drawn back to her ears over 
which it hung in bunches of short curls. The faces of these three had not been 
clipped from old photos but were very delicately drawn in ink and then painted.
The fourth set—the last—was three children again. These dolls had no extra 
clothing to be put on and taken off. They were already dressed. Susan believed 
they were made of thin skin stretched over a wooden base and then painted with 
care. Their faces were so faded and smudged by time that it was very hard to see 
any features at all, and one could only judge by the clothing, also painted on, 
whether they were boy or girl. The girl wore a long dress that hid all but small 
humps that might be the toes of slippers. Over that she had a full apron, and 
around her shoulders a kind of shawl or scarf knotted in front, its end left to 
dangle. Most of her hair had been pulled up under a puffy cap. The boys had 
pants that came only to their knees. Below those they wore long stockings and 
square-toed shoes. Their shirts had small ruffles down the front, and their 
coats must once have been blue. Their hair was long—tied back at the nape of 
their neck, as Susan could see when she turned them over, for they were as 
finished on the back as on the front.
Somehow she did not like to touch this last set. Perhaps it was the feel of the 
leatherlike stuff that covered their bodies, perhaps it was because she could 
not see their faces clearly—as if they were in hiding. Hiding? Susan shook her 
head, as she put them hurriedly to one side. What had made her think of that?
The set with painted faces she studied more closely. There were two dresses for 
the girl made of small scraps of lace paper and some thin silk, which split a 
little when she touched it. One of the boys had a kilt and a jacket to wear—and 
then what looked almost like a girl’s dress, with trousers gathered in tightly 
at the ankles. The other, taller one had long white trousers and a black short 
coat and a soldier-suit in blue. Susan looked carefully at their faces. They 
were not made to be pretty. The older boy had a scallop of hair down over his 
forehead which made him look rather cross. She could almost imagine that he was 
preparing to stick his tongue out at someone. The girl’s small mouth was rather 
squeezed together and her nose gave the impression of turning up at the end.
It was when Susan turned them over to see if they also were finished on the back 
as well as on the front that she noticed very small writing, faded and brown. 
She took them nearer the window to try and make out what it said.
Even the writing was different, curly yet quite plain to read when she got the 
full light on it.
“ ‘Emily, Jethro, Orrin.’ ” She read the names aloud. Jethro was the taller boy 
doll.
Emily! Susan’s attention went from the doll she held to the picture her mother 
had called a sampler. Was that—had this doll belonged once to Emily Kimble?
She returned the three to the bed and took up the next set, with their 
photograph faces and wisps of hair. There was certainly no mistaking that they 
had been meant to resemble real people. Quickly Susan turned them over. Yes, 
writing here also—a little darker and bolder.
“Richard”—that was the bigger boy; “Tod”—the younger one; “Bessie”—the girl.
Their clothing was fastened together with loops of thread. Bessie’s dress had 
bows, pleats, and pieces of lace. For Richard, there was a suit like a 
soldier—an odd-looking soldier. Tod had a jacket and long trousers and a 
tasseled cap for his head.
Then came the newest set of dolls. These too had names: “Hester, James, and 
Orrin,” Susan read. Hester’s long hair could be covered by two big-brimmed hats, 
and the waistline of her dresses was set low. The dresses were also covered with 
lace—some of paper, some tiny bits of very fine real material, and tissue paper. 
James’s trousers were short and tight fitting and his coat looser. There was a 
second suit with a khaki-colored coat, a wide brimmed hat and pants tucked into 
boots. Orrin had a sailor suit with a straw hat and another with a pair of the 
same tight-looking trousers that his brother wore.
Though she had pushed away the first three stiff dolls, Susan had not felt the 
same queer desire to get the rest out of sight so quickly. They had been real 
people once—in a way, that is. At least they had been made to look like real 
people. And they had lived a long time ago, of that she was sure. Susan wanted 
to know more about them. Who had made them all with such care and kept them? She 
was sure that they had not all been made at the same time. The dresses of the 
second set were so fragile she was afraid to touch them. That set must be very 
old.
“Emily, Jethro, Orrin,” she recited the names again. “Richard, Bessie, and Tod, 
and Hester, James, Orrin—”
Hester! That was the name of the lady who had died—out of whose attic the doll 
box had come. Was she this Hester? Susan stared down at the family of dolls. 
Hester certainly was not a very pretty girl. Her fringe of hair was not in 
careful curls and her nose looked too big for her thin face. She was not 
smiling. In fact—Susan surveyed the entire collection of paper people 
quickly—none of them were smiling, nor did they look happy. James lay beside 
Hester, his face very thin and his eyes big and rather sleepy-looking. Susan 
thought that he looked ill.
Why would anyone want to make paper dolls like real people?
“Why?” She asked that aloud. “Why were you made, Emily, Jethro, Orrin One, 
Richard, Bessie, Tod, Hester, James and Orrin Two?”
“Orrin Two what?” Mike had come to the door she had left a little open.
“Orrin Two—him.” Susan pointed to the second doll. “They all have their names on 
the back. And they are awfully old, I think— these—they have faces from 
photographs… And they’ve real hair pasted on. They’re made to look like real 
people who lived once.”
Suddenly Susan had a strange feeling of uneasiness. No use sticking them back in 
the same box. It was too broken to handle. But she did not want to look at them 
any longer.
She circled around Mike, who had come to the side of the bed and was bending 
over to get a closer look at those faces she had indicated. In her bottom bureau 
drawer was a box holding her best blouse, the one she had not worn yet. Susan 
slid it out, still wrapped in tissue paper, and brought its white container back 
to the bed.
The wooden ones first. She had a strange feeling that she must put them back in 
the same order in which they had lain for so many years. As she reached for 
them, Mike moved closer.
“What are those? They look a lot different.”
“Some more dolls—but they have their clothes on tight. And… and… they’re ugly.” 
She hurried to settle them in the blouse box and cover them over. Then one by 
one she returned the three other families into storage in the proper order. For 
families she was sure they were—brothers and sisters.
“Queer looking lot,” Mike commented. “Hey—I’ve seen a uniform like that!” He was 
pointing to the one worn by the James of the last family. “That’s like what the 
cavalry wore—in the First World War. Before they stopped riding horses and went 
into tanks and things.”
“When did they do that?” Susan wanted to know. It might give her some idea of 
how old that family was.
“I don’t know, but I’ll look it up. Anyway what do a lot of old dolls matter? 
Listen, Susan—I found out about the curse! It’s a real spooky story.”
Susan put the cover on the box and shut it in her drawer. She rubbed her hands 
up and down the sides of her jeans. Ever since she had handled the oldest dolls 
she had felt dirty. As if she wanted to scrub with a lot of soap and very hot 
water.
“What’s spooky?”
“Those torn-up sheets of paper—well, they were part of a book—a paperback. 
Funny, I didn’t know there were paperbacks way back then. But somebody named 
Kimble wrote it and it was published in 1880. Just when they were having that 
big hundred year thing about the massacre, which the G.-A. was talking about. 
When they put that monument up and all. Anyway this Kimble made a real scary 
story of it.
“Seems like it wasn’t all Indians who came raiding into the valley… In fact, one 
of the Indian chiefs pulled his men out when he found what the Tories were going 
to do. He said that the people here had always been friends to the Indians. So 
they used blue-eyed Indians for most of the raid—with some others who were not 
part of the regular tribe.”
“Blue-eyed Indians?”
“That’s what they called whites who dressed up and painted themselves like 
Indians. They were the worst kind according to this Kimble guy and they really 
were killers—wild men. Well, you remember there were two brothers, Jacobus and 
Hendrik Kuydall. Hendrik had inherited this house when their father died. He was 
the one who took the Revolutionary side and was with Washington in the east. His 
wife and his three children had been living in the east too, but he sent them 
back here to live. Hendrik and Jacobus were part Indian because their mother was 
an Oneida. It’s in that old diary. Hendrik was sure that, because of his Indian 
blood and the fact that he had always lived in peace with the Indians and this 
valley was off the main trail for raiders, everything would be safe here for his 
family.
“His wife—her name was Betje—she knew a lot about helping sick people. That 
night there was a woman down in the village who was having a baby and was in 
difficulties, so they sent for Mrs. Kuydall to come and help. She left the three 
children, Johanna, Carolus, and Florian, with two servants and went. No one had 
any idea that there was going to be any attack.
“But Jacobus was mad—I mean really out of his head. The war had been going 
against the Tories in this part of the country, and he had always been 
jealous—or so this Kimble said—of his brother Hendrik. He thought this house 
should have been his. So he decided to loot the manor and get some money and 
stuff he was sure was hidden here, then beat it up to Canada.
“Also he wanted to make a big name with the British and maybe get a good deal in 
the north if he came back with a lot of booty and captives. So he planned the 
raid. Only, the Indians weren’t ready to back him up. By that time he was 
willing to take anyone who would help him, and he apparently didn’t care about 
what might happen to anyone here.
“From what the people could discover afterwards, he and his gang sneaked up at 
night and attacked in the early morning. Mrs. Kuydall was on her way home and 
saw enough to make her take to the woods to try to get to her house the back 
way. She crawled into a hollow log to hide when the raiders came close, then got 
stuck and couldn’t get out till later. They really gave it to the valley—killed 
people and looted and burned. Jacobus and some others came straight to this 
house. He killed the servants—or some of his gang did—and the children 
disappeared. They were kidnapped —going to be used for ransom everyone thought. 
But, when Hendrik came home and tried to find out what had happened to them and 
Jacobus later, there was just no news at all. Everybody believed the Indians—or 
Jacobus’s gang—really killed them because they couldn’t keep up. Raiders used to 
do that to people.
“The people in the village found out about Jacobus and the fact that he wanted 
the loot from the manor and had done all the killing to get it. There was one 
woman who lost her two children, and she was hurt so bad that she was ill a long 
time. Maybe she went mad or something. She was supposed to have the evil eye, so 
she made up that rhyme about Kuydall and said that children who shared Jacobus’s 
blood would always have trouble hanging over them—that they might die when they 
were the same age as the children she’d lost.
“Hendrik had another son and daughter later. His wife wouldn’t live in this 
house so they moved to New York. The daughter married a man named Kimble, and 
later her son took over this house. Then back in 1840 one of the Kimbles had 
three children. People had sort of forgotten what the woman had predicted by 
then. But one of the children, the youngest, took a fever and raved about an 
ugly thing chasing him. That made people remember the old story. He died soon 
and so did his sister Emily, while the older boy was sick for a long time. The 
Kimbles went back to New York with the Kuydalls and only came here in 
summertime. Because the curse was only supposed to happen at the same time of 
year as the raid.”
Susan had settled down on the edge of the bed to listen. Mike was right—this was 
a spooky story and he was telling it to sound like one of those movies that they 
were not allowed to go to—the horror ones.
“This woman who did the cursing was part Indian, too. She was supposed to belong 
to False Faces. They were a secret society. Everybody wore these big masks and 
no one knew who anyone was.”
“Like that picture in the diary!”
Mike nodded. “Yes, what I read about it there says that Jacobus was interested 
in a lot of the old Indian beliefs. I don’t know whether he ever got in with the 
False Faces. But he had seen some of the masks and that one in the book was one 
he drew.”
“So that’s the curse…” Susan said slowly. “But there were a lot of illnesses in 
those days and people died from them…”
“Yes. Only once you get a spooky story started, it sticks. The Kimble who wrote 
this book finished with the celebration coming up in 1880, saying that Kuydalls 
were going to set up the marker in the cemetery. The Kimbles were coming with 
the Kuydalls for the ceremony.”
“Emily and Orrin and Jethro—and those older dolls,” said Susan slowly. “Maybe 
the oldest ones of all were the Kuydalls who disappeared. And Emily and Orrin 
died. But there are two more families in the box, Mike. There’s Richard and 
Bessie and Tod, then Hester, James and another Orrin. What happened to them?”
“They must have come later. There’s nothing about them in the book. But maybe we 
can find out. Maybe Jacobus wasn’t the only one to keep a diary,” Mike 
suggested. “Only how did the dolls get over to that other house?”
“This Hester—the one who died and left everything to the church,” Susan said, 
“she was a cousin of Great-Aunt’s, and she had a thing about this house. 
Great-Aunt wanted her to come back and live here but she wouldn’t. Though if she 
was one of the family—”
“Sure that fits. You heard what G.-A. said about that sewing table, which 
belonged to her mother and turned up at the sale—the one she would have liked to 
have had. Things out of this house must have been taken to that one. We can find 
out a lot more by looking—”
Susan pleated the coverlet of the bed between her fingers.
“Do we really want to, Mike?”
“Why not?” he demanded in open surprise.
“Well, like you said, it’s spooky. And if Tucker hears any of this—you know what 
can happen.”
“We keep our mouths shut. I’ll tell you what—you can help look in the library 
too, and in such a way that Tuck won’t know what you are doing.”
“How?”
“By doing just what you’ve been doing— going through those children’s books. I 
noticed a lot of them have writing in the front saying birthday present to so 
and so—with a date—or Christmas to so and so with a date. You can find out those 
dates and the names that match and then— There’s the Bible!”
“What Bible?”
“That big book in a box all to itself on the small shelf behind the door. I 
looked in the box Sunday and saw it. It’s awfully old, has metal hinges. Also 
it’s printed in Dutch— anyway, in some different language—part Latin, I think. 
Anyway they used to have sections in old Bibles where they put down when all the 
family were born, and when they got married, and when they died. If we find out 
some names and dates, we can look them up in that.”
What Mike said made sense. Susan did not really want to try it, but she had no 
excuse. Once Mike got on the trail of something he followed it to the end. Other 
people in school might groan and moan over having to do a paper and look up a 
lot of things in the library—Mike went at it as if it were a puzzle game, and 
the harder it was the better he liked it.
After all, her part of looking in the fronts of books to see who they had 
belonged to was easy enough, something that would not get Tucker too interested 
or excited. She was certainly willing to do that much. In fact, it would be 
interesting. Now that she had the paper dolls, those long ago people seemed 
real, and it would be fun to see what kinds of books Emily, Bessie, and Hester 
had enjoyed the most.
They were summoned to supper, not in the kitchen as usual, but in the dining 
room where Great-Aunt Hendrika sat at the head of the table and there was an 
array of glass, china, and silver, such as Susan had seen only at dinner 
parties—times when the younger Whelans had eaten in the breakfast corner of the 
kitchen at home. Tucker squirmed in his chair, looking at the fine tablecloth, 
the number of forks, spoons, and the tall glass before him with an interest 
Susan mistrusted.
“Cousin Hester,” Great-Aunt Hendrika began after Mrs. Kingsley had set a vast 
soup tureen before her and she was quickly and efficiently filling soup plates 
from its contents, “never used the Kuydall china. I have decided that it is best 
to enjoy beautiful things. This is another part of education, to learn how to 
cherish and enjoy the possessions of one’s own family. We shall have at least 
one meal a week to do so.”
She had set the ladle down and put out one hand to touch the thin stem of the 
water goblet before her, when a tremendous crack of thunder sounded from 
directly overhead.
Tucker’s spoon slipped from his fingers to splash into the plate, sending a thin 
shower of soup onto the old linen. Susan gave a gasping cry as the lights 
abruptly went out.
“Stay right where you are!” Great-Aunt Hendrika’s voice commanded. “This happens 
from time to time.” There was a flicker of light, as if she had a lighter all 
ready, and it was touched to the nearest of the centerpiece candles. From that 
one, the spark advanced to the second, the third, and finally the fourth. Their 
light made a soft glow in the dark room, while outside the windows lightning 
flashed fiercely.
So they ate by candlelight and Susan tried very hard not to turn her head to 
peer into the dark corners of the room. She cowered every time the thunder 
rolled hard or the lightning crackled.
“Let us hope,” Great-Aunt Hendrika said, “that the current will be restored 
speedily. Though goodness knows we have candles enough, and there are the 
battery lamps for the bedrooms. We do not trust candles there.”
The lights did not come on again before they finished dinner. Even if they had 
wanted to go delving in the library tonight, it was no use now. Susan wondered 
just how many stains were gathering around Tucker’s place at the table. Perhaps 
it was just as well that Great-Aunt and Mrs. Kingsley could not see the results 
of this attempt to dine elegantly. At least so far as the youngest Whelan was 
concerned. She, herself, was so conscious of spilling something that she was 
almost afraid to take a full mouthful, or attempt to eat anything near the edge 
of the china plates.
The storm was furious. Mrs. Kingsley remarked that they were lucky it had held 
off long enough for the auction. She and Great-Aunt carried on an animated 
discussion about the buyers and the probable sum the church might expect while 
the three Whelans applied themselves wholly to eating.
It was Mrs. Kingsley who at last marshalled them into line at the foot of the 
stairs, handing Mike two of the round-footed, battery-run storm lamps, and Susan 
one which, when switched on, gave far more light than the candles had. Tucker 
was instructed not to “play with” the one intended for his room. The order would 
normally have brought an instant protest from him. But perhaps the storm and the 
darkness had a dampening effect, since he remained silent.
They went up the stairs and Mike obediently set one of his lamps on the bureau 
in Tucker’s room, while Susan carried her own. In spite of the advantages of 
this light over the candles she was not happy and went once to both windows to 
pull down the shades against the storm.
She had shucked her T-shirt and jeans and had her robe wrapped around her when 
she looked up into the dusky mirror. Even in daylight the old glass had always 
been faintly murky, as if it were dirty though she knew that couldn’t be true in 
any house over which Mrs. Kingsley had control. Tonight, in spite of the battery 
lamp, the upper right hand corner appeared even more dusky than usual. She was 
turning away, having no desire to see her own face peering back at her, when 
there was a movement in the glass.
Susan backed away from the bureau. Silly—nothing could flutter like that! Of 
course, maybe some draft had found its way in around a window to stir the edge 
of a curtain. She had not seen an oval outline of a great face with a lopsided 
mouth and blind holes for eyes! Mike with his spooky stories—
“Susie!” The call came between two rolls of thunder so she heard it. Tucker! She 
turned hurriedly away from the mirror to throw open her door. There was a path 
of light coming from his room. He had the door wide open, so that, as she 
hurried across into that picture-walled place, she had no trouble seeing Tucker 
himself. He huddled on the foot of the bed, staring at the far wall, and she had 
never known such a look on his face before. She had seen Tucker in a hot rage of 
anger, and in disappointment, and sometimes in full enjoyment. This was Tucker 
afraid—deathly afraid.
“Tucky!” She followed the direction of his stare. There was only the wall with 
its mass of pictures. Where he stared was a garden scene with a small boy and a 
puppy apparently having a tug of war over a stick. The little boy was wearing 
clothes that looked much like those on one of the paper doll boys, but there was 
nothing in the least alarming about him.
“Susie…” As Susan came closer, Tucker made a lunge that carried his small body 
hard against hers. She caught him in her arms, staggering a little as his weight 
nearly sent her backwards to the floor. “Susie—I want to go home! I don’t want 
to go with— them—not ever!”
Though she did not know what he meant, Susan understood that Tucker needed her, 
needed reassurance more than anything else.
“You don’t have to go anywhere, Tucky. Unless—” A sudden thought of what might 
be comforting crossed her mind. This room was big and the storm very loud, not a 
time to be alone. “—unless you want to come in with me?”
Tucker burrowed his head tighter against her shoulder. His voice was very 
muffled.
“Please, Susie, oh, please!”
She pulled him with her, stopping only to catch up his lamp, and brought him out 
into the hall. Tucker hung onto her with both hands, refusing to let go, so that 
she closed his door with a definite kick and led the way back to her room under 
the roar of the rain and thunder.



Chapter 7
 



« ^ » 
Tucker curled up in Susan’s bed, his eyes closed. She believed he was keeping 
them squeezed shut. Susan had never seen her small and very determined brother 
so subdued before. As he had crawled into bed his eyes—wide open—had been big 
and staring, looking from one corner of her room to the other quickly, as if 
watching threatening shadows.
It was not easy for Susan herself to get to sleep. The storm seemed to go on 
forever, as she squirmed around in the portion of the bed Tucker left free, 
trying to make herself comfortable.
At last the thunder rumbled farther away. There were no more lightning flashes. 
Susan slipped out of bed to raise the shades at both windows—even though that 
did not give much light.
Back in bed again, she found herself listening. Not for thunder anymore, rather 
for sounds within the house itself. Somehow the darkness changed things in a way 
she had never been aware of back home. This house was so old, there had been so 
many people here, there had been—
Susan pressed her hands tightly together. NO! She was not going to think about 
that family curse—she was not! Besides, that was a Kuydall story, it had nothing 
to do with the Whelans. She wanted to get up that very minute and dump the whole 
box of paper dolls out of the window, never think of them again. Instead she 
found herself saying, in a hissing whisper: “Johanna, Carolus, Florian, Jethro, 
Emily, Orrin, Richard, Bessie, Tod, Hester, James, and Orrin!” When she shut her 
eyes against the gloom of the room she could see all those paper faces. Even, 
this time, the faces of the three earliest ones, which had been so faded that 
before she could not make them out clearly.
Johanna had a round face, with a small, up-turned nose, her eyes were round, 
too— and her mouth was open. There was… Johanna was screaming!
Susan turned her head back and forth on the pillow, trying hard to shut that 
picture out of her mind—of Johanna’s mouth opened to scream. Carolus was 
standing with his arms up—in his hands a queer gun so heavy that it took both 
hands to hold it steady and even then it wobbled. His mouth was tight shut, but 
his eyes were frightened—he was trying hard not to cry out. And little 
Florian—he had backed up against a rough stone wall. How she was seeing all this 
Susan could not have said—yet it was plain to her and she could not switch those 
faces off like the TV when it scared her. Florian crouched down a little, his 
body so stiff with fear he could not move at all…
NO!
“Susie!” That call broke the picture. She felt Tucker’s small arms tightly 
around her as she sat up in bed!
“They came—Susie—they came!” Tucker’s voice was harsh with fear! “They’re going 
to get us—they want us!”
Susan held Tucker as close as she could. “They’re nothing but dolls,” she said 
out of her dream, if that horrible picture had been a dream. “I saw them—they’re 
nothing but dolls, Tucky! There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Only she was finding 
it very hard indeed to say that. Had bringing the dolls back here to this house 
made her dream? And—how had Tucker known what she was dreaming? For by this time 
she was sure she had to be sure, it was only a dream. Could two people have the 
same dream?
“They never went away.” Tucker paid no attention to what she said. “They just 
wait and wait and wait…” His voice trailed off. He was crying—not loud and 
demandingly as Tucker usually cried when he was hurt and wanted attention, but 
rather as if he was lost in a terrible dream of his own and had no hope of 
escaping from it.
“Tucker”—Susan drew a deep breath— “what are you talking about? Did you have a 
bad dream?”
“They—they went into the dark place and they waited—and no one came. Now they 
want to come out. They want to be helped.” He gulped and sniffled between words.
“Tucker.” She tried to make her voice as firm as she could. “Tell me—who are 
they?”
He jerked in her hold, loosed his own clutch on her, fought against her grip on 
him. She was forced by the sudden fury of his struggle to let him go.
“I want to go home!” Now his voice held the old familiar demanding note. “I want 
to go home. I hate this place!”
“Sue, Tuck—what are you two doing? Trying to yell down the house?” Light showed 
from the hall as Mike sent the door flying open, standing there with one of the 
storm lamps in his hand.
“What’s Tuck doing over here? And how come you let out that scream, Susan? You’d 
think something was after you! What’s going on?
“Tucky was afraid,” Susan answered. “I brought him in here because he was 
afraid.”
“Then he passed it on to you? Because one of those yips I heard certainly came 
out of you, Sue.”
“I had a bad dream. And Tucky had one too.
Tucker withdrew to the other side of the bed. His lower lip protruded a little 
as he scowled at both of them.
“Not a bad dream! They came—they were right here!”
Susan saw Mike’s mouth open, and she knew very well the question he was about to 
ask—one she did not want to hear, nor to have Tucker answer.
She shook her head at Mike and he give a slight nod. The many “dreams” of the 
past, which Tucker could summon up at will, were only too well known to both of 
them. Mike should be as eager as she not to get Tucker started on another “ 
’maginary.”
“But they went away, didn’t they?” Mike asked matter-of-factly, as if some 
persons had passed him in the hall.
For a very long moment Tucker did not answer, and Susan felt a chill. She did 
not want these new inhabitants of Tucker’s imagination to move in. There was 
fear, which there had never been before when Tucker announced that this or that 
had taken up living with the Whelans. Perhaps because, in the very ordinary 
house back at the Cape, the “—’maginaries” had been so impossible one could 
shrug them off, humoring Tucky. But here—here… She shivered.
“They don’t go away—not all the way,” Tucker said. “They have to wait. But they 
do that mostly in their own place.”
“That isn’t this room!” Mike held the storm lamp a little higher, chasing 
shadows back to the far corners.
“No.” To Susan’s relief Tucker agreed. He also slipped down under the covers.
“Suppose you come in with me, Tuck. My bed’s bigger than Susan’s, and I promise 
you that I won’t have any bad dreams—”
Susan was about to be sharp. Was Mike hinting she had put Tucker up to this? All 
right—let him take Tucky then.
She watched them out of the room without any protest. Suddenly she was very 
sleepy—just as if she had swallowed those pills Mother had to use for bad 
headaches, which made her sleepy. She just hoped she would not dream again.
The morning sun was steady through her windows when she awoke again. Beyond her 
half-open door she could hear Tucker and Mike—at least the murmur of their 
voices from the bathroom. She pulled herself out of bed and went about the 
business of getting dressed—face and teeth to be cleaned as soon as the boys 
left the bathroom. It was her morning to see that Tucker’s bed was made—since he 
was excused because of age from that particular chore, but not from keeping 
things tidy. Either Mike or she would inspect his room before they went 
downstairs. So she went over to Tucky’s room now. It was plain that he had not 
returned to his own bed for sleep. The covers were turned down but no sheets had 
been twisted into untidy ropes, nor had the pillows slid far over to one side or 
the other. It took her very little time to smooth it up for the day.
Then Tucker himself pounded in at his usual morning speed and she saw that Mike 
had combed his hair and seen that his T-shirt was not on back to front, which 
sometimes happened when Tucker, to whom clothes meant nothing, was thinking 
about something else.
“Hiya!” he greeted Susan. There was nothing remaining of that other Tucker—the 
one who had been so frightened the night before. Perhaps it had just been the 
storm, she decided. “Mike and me—we’re going over to Johnny Fletcher’s maybe 
tomorrow and see that good old dog.”
Susan gave a sigh of relief and was even willing to listen to an endless tale 
concerning that “good old dog” when she came out of the bathroom, as Tucker 
again erupted from Mike’s room, attaching himself to her, talking at near the 
top of his voice as she made her own bed, and, as Mrs. Kingsley put it, 
“neatened up” her room. He continued to talk all the way downstairs and into the 
kitchen.
“Miss Hendrika,” Mrs. Kingsley announced as she put down bowls of oatmeal with a 
sprinkling of brown sugar across the top and brought out a basket of hot 
muffins, “said that you are to work in the library this morning. And you’re to 
be good and sure you leave things in their right places. There’s a gentleman 
coming to dinner tonight. He’s real important, has something to do with a big 
library down state—one that buys the books Miss Hendrika writes. He wants to see 
some of the real old books that have always been in this house. So be sure you 
don’t leave anything out of place where it can’t be found.”
Having delivered this order, she left them to eat and went on to deal with the 
wash. The current must have come on again in the night for they could hear the 
chug of the machine working away in what had once been called a summer kitchen. 
Though why there should be two kitchens in a house was a mystery to Susan. 
Surely the one they were in now was big enough to serve a family much larger 
than the Whelans and Great-Aunt—and Mrs. Kingsley, as well as Eloise.
Susan usually did not dawdle over breakfast, but today she chased bits of 
oatmeal around her bowl and made her second muffin last as long as she could by 
what was known to the Whelans as “mouse bites.” She was very sure that Mike 
would not be turned from his purpose of continuing to trace down the “curse” by 
any uneasiness she might feel—nor any report of a bad dream in which paper dolls 
had come to life.
Tucker scowled. “Don’t want to look at any old books!”
Before Susan or Mike could raise a hand to stop him, he had deliberately flipped 
a bit of oatmeal from a spoon straight at Josiah. The sticky stuff struck the 
big cat’s chest and he jumped back from his dignified seat on the rag rug in 
front of the old fireplace. Luckily Mrs. Kingsley had her back turned, and a 
moment later Mike held his brother’s wrist in a tight grip and pulled the spoon 
away from him.
Susan feared that Tucker might now enliven life by a tantrum. His bouncy feeling 
in early morning sometimes got out of control. Mike kept hold of his wrist and, 
when he got up, jerked his brother with him. For some reason Tucker did not at 
once return the attack by kicking out at Mike’s shins. They got safely out of 
the kitchen and along to the library with no outbreak on Tucker’s part. But he 
still looked angry and his face was beginning to flush in warning.
“See here,” Mike said, once the door had closed behind them. Susan was looking 
around apprehensively at the glass cases and even the books. Tucker was prone to 
throw things when really aroused. “We are going to have a hunt, Tucker.”
Susan bit her lip. Surely Mike was not going to break his promise and bring in 
the story of the curse again! He must not give Tucker any ideas!
“What kind of a hunt?”
Once inside the library Mike had loosed his hold and Tucker was free. He was not 
scowling anymore, instead he watched Mike very closely, an odd look on his face.
“A hunt to learn things.” At least Mike was not coming right out and saying what 
Susan hoped he would not mention. “You want to go over to Johnny’s, don’t you?”
Tucker nodded.
“Well, you’re not going if the G.-A. says no. She said there’re rules here, and 
we’ve got to stick to them. The more we can show that we are doing that, the 
more pleased she’s going to be. Then when we say we want to go to the Fletchers, 
she’ll say—sure, go ahead. It works that way, Tucker, you have to learn that. 
You do what someone wants—they do what you want. It balances off, like those 
scales we saw at the auction. You put too much in one side and it goes down and 
won’t straighten up until you even it off. Understand?”
Susan wondered just how far such reasoning would get with Tucker. Sometimes in 
the past it had worked. She crossed her fingers hoping that it would now.
“What things are we going to hunt? How can you hunt to learn?”
Tucker stood with his hands behind him, an obstinate look still on his face. 
“What…” He looked about now as if to find something that would provide a 
question Mike could not answer. “What about those?” He jerked a thumb at the 
beaded strips in the nearest case. “She said those were for reading—how do you 
read them?”
“We can find out. In fact, I’ve already found out a little. You go, Tuck, and 
look at those belts—that’s what they called them— belts. Pick out one you want 
to know about and we’ll find out what it means and surprise the G.-A. right out 
of her chair tonight, maybe when this guy who knows so much will be here. How’s 
that?”
Tucker actually looked impressed, turning at once to the case. Over his head 
Mike nodded at Susan and she understood that he had not forgotten their own 
project. Reluctantly, even more so since her dream, she went over to the section 
of children’s books.
She had discovered Sunday that they were not in the same order as the books she 
had used in the school library—even though they were arranged in A’s, B’s, C’s 
and so on by the authors’ names. Instead, there was a short row of very old and 
dim-colored ones first. Then came two rows and a half of larger and less 
battered-looking ones, again running in an A B C pattern before a third section 
that filled three whole shelves, spreading into a fourth section that again 
spilled over onto another shelf. The big books on the wide bottom shelf seemed 
to be a mixture, along with the St. Nicholases, arranged in no real order at 
all.
Might as well start with the oldest books on the top shelf. Susan picked out a 
fat one. Any title on its back had long since worn away, and some loose pages 
tried to escape. She had to fit their brittle-edged bits back into the bindings 
again, afraid that the whole book might crumble into nothing in her hands.
The Fairchild Family. She looked at the title page first; then, very carefully, 
she turned to the inside of the cover. Yes, she saw something written there. She 
took it to the nearest window and held the book close to her eyes. The writing 
was all curly, as it had been on the backs of the dolls whose names she had 
first read, and part of it was the same:
“For Jethro, Emily, and Orrin from Mama. May they enjoy this book as much as I 
did when dear Grandmother first read it to me, 1849.”
Eighteen forty-nine, Susan must remember that. As she returned the book to the 
shelf, she stopped by the desk to get one of the tablets Great-Aunt Hendrika had 
earlier called to their attention. Susan wrote down the three names and the 
date. Of course nothing had been said about it being a birthday or Christmas 
gift, but perhaps Mike could figure it out when he got a chance. As she looked 
up, she saw that he and Tucker were still by the case. Mike had pencil and 
paper, too, and was copying a design from the belt onto the paper.
Now she picked a book from the second row: The Story of a Bad Boy. This was a 
taller one and the pages, though yellowed, did not seem as ready to fall out 
when she turned to the front.
“To Richard on his tenth birthday, 1878, from his sister, Bessie. Happy Birthday 
to a dear brother.”
Susan scribbled those two names and that date—a birthday date—good. Mike could 
work back ten years from that easily enough, she thought.
The longest row of all was now before her. She dropped her hand onto a book with 
a red jacket, pulled it out, and turned to the front.
Horsemen of the Plains. The writing inside was a lot bolder and blacker.
“Merry Christmas, James. This is a bully story. Your friend, Ted—1914.”
All right—she had three dates for Mike. Maybe she should make doubly sure and 
see if she could find some more birthday books. Susan was just considering the 
last row, trying to guess from their covers which might be birthday books when 
she heard Tucker’s raised voice.
“Then he would just say ‘Red belt,’ and that could mean that they were going to 
fight?”
He was running fingers, probably still sticky from breakfast, along the front of 
the case, watching Mike, who was tall enough to look down into the case, not 
just through the side.
“Seems that was the way of it, Tuck. One lot of Indians—a tribe—would send a 
messenger with a lot of belts. He’d hold one up and make a long speech. 
Sometimes it was one about the past—how brave his people had been or something 
like that. Then they would all do a lot of talking back and forth before he’d 
bring out the belt with the real message—a red one for war, a white one for 
peace.”
“How do you know?” Tucker demanded.
“I’ve been reading more of that old diary book ever since I found it, and it has 
a lot of stuff in it if you just keep reading. Jacobus Kuydall lived with the 
Indians for a while —he wrote a lot about them. But even he couldn’t tell what 
all of these meant.” Mike waved a hand over the lid of the case. “Some of the 
belts were very old, and people used them to remember what had happened a long, 
long time earlier. So after the tribes broke apart and the Indians who knew 
these stories died, no one was left to read the belts. These were used when the 
Revolutionary War came—you know—George Washington and all that…
“The Americans—they wanted the Indians not to fight on either side. They sent 
messengers with belts to talk about it with the Indians. There was an Englishman 
called Sir William Johnson—the Kuydalls knew him. He’d built a big house 
something like this one, and he was the man who talked with the Indians at the 
order of King George. He didn’t want the Indians to fight either. But he was an 
old man and he wasn’t very well. It was a hot day when all the Indian chiefs and 
their best warriors came to see him. They say that he talked most of the day and 
tried to keep the peace. And then it was just too much for him. He died that 
night.
“The men he had with him—they didn’t believe in his way at all. So they told the 
Indians not to believe anything the Americans said—that they were lying and only 
trying to get rid of the Indians and take their land. The Indians—most of them— 
believed that, so they promised to fight for the British. Only one tribe, the 
Oneidas, would not agree. They tried to stay neutral, although some of their 
warriors later fought with the Americans…”
Susan had become so interested that she had joined the boys by the case of 
belts. Now as Mike paused for breath she said:
“The Kuydalls were part Oneida—”
“Yes. And some people said that it was Hendrik Kuydall who kept that tribe from 
going over to the English. That was what made his brother Jacobus and his father 
so mad at him when he went east to fight. Because they wanted the tribe to help 
the king. Both of them believed that the Americans did not have a chance, and 
that, when the king won, everyone who had fought against him would lose his land 
and even be put in jail or maybe hanged.
“So the Tories—those are the men who wanted to fight for the king—went up 
farther north and a lot of the Indians went with them. Then they started raiding 
down the valleys again—trying to take back the land. It was a bad time.”
“ ’Cause of the blue-eyed ones,” Tucker said, to the complete surprise of his 
brother. “They were the worst ever, ’cause they were white men who dressed like 
Indians and did bad things, so the Indians would be blamed.”
“Tucker,” Susan demanded without thinking, “where did you hear about them?”
Tucker could not have read the torn-up book Mike had found as packing in her 
grab bag box. And Mike would not have told him.
“They were here,” Tucker said shortly, then whirled away from both of them, 
heading for one of the windows. “Let’s go out,” he said, his voice a little 
shrill. “I’m tired of all this old stuff. And I don’t like them…”
Mike looked at Susan and she could see that he was as surprised by that outburst 
as she was. Mike had certainly chosen the wrong thing to explain to Tucker. She 
supposed that somehow he had become so interested in it himself that he had 
forgotten a little about what had happened last night. Or perhaps, after Tucker 
had gone to sleep with Mike, he had not mentioned his reason for being afraid.
Mike had a pencil and paper, some of it already scribbled over with notes. He 
was also copying a design from one of the belts. Now he looked at the watch Dad 
had given him on his last birthday, nodded and shoved his handful of penciled 
sheets into a desk drawer.
“Okay, Tuck. You coming, Sue?”
The outdoors looked clear and clean after last night’s storm, far removed from 
that feeling of old, old things that clung so tightly to the house. Yes, she was 
ready. She put her own paper with its names and dates on top of Mike’s. If he 
wanted to he could use that later. Right now she rather wished they could forget 
all the past Kuydalls and Kimbles of this too-old house. They were just Whelans 
and it meant nothing to them.
She saw that Tucker had a sweater, which he objected to, and then she got her 
own.
Mike came out of his room. Under his arm he carried that big book from the 
library— the one that was the diary of Jacobus Kuydall. So he’d been studying 
the old diary in his room. No wonder he knew so much, Susan thought.
“Got to put this back, might just be something the G.-A. wants to trot out to 
show her tame professor or librarian, or whatever he is tonight.”
“You had better stop calling her the G.-A.,” Susan commented. “Someday you’ll 
forget and do it to her face.”
“D’you know—she might even like it.” He grinned at her as he went down the 
stairs nearly two at a time, disappearing into the library to restore the diary. 
She wondered that he had dared take it away from there. Why Mike was so caught 
up in reading that old book she couldn’t understand. It certainly was a long way 
from space ships and lunar probes, the things he had always read and talked 
about before. Maybe this house had changed him. She gave a small shiver. There 
were so many things she did not even want to think about.
Susan stopped in the lower hall, having sent Tucker on ahead, banging the door 
behind him. She looked into a dim old mirror hanging on the wall there. All the 
mirrors in this house were dim. They made people look misty, as if there were a 
fog floating around through the house.
Had she changed? No, she thought she looked the same. Her brown hair was, as 
Mother called it, “feathered,” fitting itself neatly to her head. Her skin was 
very brown, though that would probably fade, she thought, with no hot Florida 
sun and beach to go to. She had a mouth that was a little too big and dark eyes 
and a nose a fraction too long. But she was still the very same Susan Whelan who 
had once lived in the south and now was not quite sure where she would live in 
the future. She only hoped it would not be here—for long.



Chapter 8
 



« ^ » 
They were to have dinner in the dining room tonight—because Great-Aunt 
Hendrika’s friend was coming. Susan was surprised and also concerned, because of 
Tucker, that they were going to share the event. It meant dressing up in Sunday 
clothes and remembering proper manners. Yet it appeared that Great-Aunt was 
determined for them to meet her guest and be “family,” as if they were really 
Kuydalls. She had summoned them all in the afternoon to impress that upon them.
“Dr. Ferguson is one of the leading authorities on the history of this state. He 
is particularly interested in tracing some unusual material hinted at in the 
Voorman letters presented to the university only last year. The Voorman family 
is gone, old Captain Henry was the last, but he had the good sense to see that 
the family papers went to the university. So many people take no interest at 
all, and really priceless material is thrown out like trash!” She flushed when 
she said that. “I’ll never forgive Hester for what she did in burning Hendrik’s 
letters—and a Kimble diary, too! No, that is wrong of me! She never really 
understood the importance of that diary. And after her brother James’s death 
when they were children, she developed such a strange aversion to everything 
connected with this house. It was really an obsession for a while. Then Grover—”
“Who was Grover?” It was Tucker who asked that—though Susan thought that 
Great-Aunt Hendrika had not really been talking to them but rather thinking 
aloud when she mentioned that name.
“Grover was Hester’s son. He visited here in 19… 1932.” Great-Aunt Hendrika 
frowned. “He had had the flu pretty badly and Mrs. Elsie Kuydall invited him for 
a visit. Hester had to go to Texas with her husband. That was a hard time—not 
much money and Henry Kimble had lost his job and the trip to Texas was to see 
about a new one. He got it, too. Later they moved down there. But Grover was not 
as well as the doctors thought—he took a fresh cold and died here—” She ended 
abruptly. “Hester really hated this house after that, and when it was left 
jointly to us she would never come back at all. Just more silly superstition—of 
course! Now”—her tone became brisk—“you will be prompt for dinner. And I would 
advise you to listen. We are going to discuss some interesting things about 
local matters. Dr. Ferguson has agreed to take over the arrangements for the 
memorial service at the two hundredth anniversary of the raid. We shall dine at 
six—”
She made one of her abrupt swings down the hall, heading toward that other 
section of the house. Mike shrugged.
However, Susan was thinking of only part of what she had heard. James—who had 
died here. Could that be the James paper doll? And Hester, the girl in that 
family. What had happened to Orrin? She shivered. No, she really did not want to 
know. But at least there was no paper doll with the name Grover on its back. She 
was glad about that.
Tucker had gone into his room, but Mike stopped Susan. “Did you get those 
dates?”
“I got some. One is a birthday. The rest—I don’t know whether they will mean 
anything or not.”
Mike nodded toward Tucker’s room. “Keep an eye on Tuck. I’m going down to see 
what I can find out.”
He had left before she could protest. She looked in upon Tucker to find him 
sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the picture-covered wall with a look 
of concentration on his face, almost as if he were watching TV. A house without 
TV simply bewildered Tucker. Susan had had a very queer thought that if there 
had been a TV in this particular house, it might have carried scenes she would 
not have wanted to see. Like a story Karen had told her—a scary one—about a 
little girl who saw bad things come right off a screen.
“It’s a story…” Tucker startled his sister out of her thoughts. He was tracing 
with one finger on the wall at the level of his eyes.
Not about Indians, Susan hoped. She knelt to look. The pictures here must have 
been shielded from the full rays of the sun, for they were less faded, and they 
had been put on with care and arranged in a line. There was a small boy wearing 
short pants and a loose shirt, who was having trouble with a kite. In the first 
picture he was carrying it under his arm (it was such a large one that its tail 
dragged on the ground) up on a hill. The second showed him running down the 
hill, the string in his hand, the kite now up in the sky. In the third, the kite 
was caught in the branches of a tree and there were some birds flying about in 
an excited way as if frightened. In the fourth, the boy was climbing the tree to 
get the kite down again. A dog appeared and was pulling at the loose kite string 
that dangled in the air.
The final picture showed the boy, with his head down, a torn kite in his hands, 
and the dog jumping about still with one end of the string in its mouth.
“He had to take it home and get it mended,” Tucker said. “I bet his daddy could 
do that. It would be fun to have one of those—” He stabbed a finger straight 
into the kite. “How come we never had one?”
“I don’t know,” Susan admitted. Her attention slid away from the disastrous 
adventure of the kite to another set of pictures immediately above. Here there 
seemed to be another story—there was a girl and boy wearing very colorful 
clothes walking hand and hand into a woods. The girl had a basket in her other 
hand and the boy a branch of tree with all the leaves stripped off. Then they 
were on a path among the trees.
There was something very odd about those trees. When Susan looked closely they 
appeared to arrange themselves into faces—not nice faces at all. She blinked and 
blinked, and still the faces became more and more clear. In the third picture 
the two children had reached an open place in the wood where there was a strange 
little house. She studied that with even greater attention. A gingerbread house?
The children—Hansel and Gretel? Susan remembered the puppet show they had done 
at school three years ago. Could be. But all those faces in the tree leaves? She 
examined them again. There was something familiar about them. First they looked 
a lot alike, even though they were in different places and made up of different 
kinds of leaves and branches. Susan shook her head determinedly. No. That could 
not be true! This was not the face she thought she had seen in the mirror last 
night, repeated over and over again! Was she getting like Tucky— seeing things 
that were not there and never could be?
Still later she was very glad—while she dressed in her new plaid dress and 
brushed her hair, trying to give it just the right swirl Mother had shown 
her—that the electric lights were working today. Outside it was getting dark. 
The mirror was no different from what it had been when she had inspected it that 
morning. She finished quickly to go back and make sure of Tucker, only to find 
Mike vigorously brushing his brother’s hair.
“And don’t open your mouth—” he was saying.
“Then I can’t eat and I’m hungry.” Tucker grinned and made a face at his 
brother. “I’ve got to open my mouth to eat.”
“But not to talk. Remember—we want to even our side of the balance. You upset 
that and there won’t be a visit to the Fletchers!”
“All right.” Only Tucker was making another face, looking cross-eyed at his own 
nose, inserting fingers into each corner of his mouth to spread that wider.
“Aaachochee!” That sounded more like a sneeze than a word, but he had the 
attention of both Mike and Susan.
“What do you mean by that?” Mike wanted to know.
“Oh, she’s the big one that dances with the two drums.” Tucker was certainly not 
making sense. “There’s the girl with all the cherries hanging on her like a 
dress—then Aaachochee. Only she can be mean when she wants to be—real mean!”
Susan signaled frantically to Mike. No more questions! They did not want to get 
Tucker started off on one of his flights of imagination right before they were 
to make a good impression on Great-Aunt’s important Dr. Ferguson. Her brother 
was now staring at Tucker with a very queer look on his face, as if that babble 
had meant something to Mike.
She wanted very much to get Mike alone. Not only to ask about the results of his 
last visit to the library and whether the dates she had managed to find were of 
any help or must she try again, but because she realized that he had understood 
something about this Aaachochee-girl and also the one with cherries. There were 
far too many mysteries, and Susan felt she was being caught up in them as if she 
had blundered into a big, sticky, ugly spider web.
Only there was no time to ask. It was well known to both older Whelans that, no 
matter how Tucker might be reduced to order with clean face and hands, to leave 
him alone in that condition meant he would not remain so. Resolutely Susan took 
over while Mike went to finish his own preparations for a company dinner.
She was very tempted to ask Tucker a few questions herself, as they went 
downstairs, but knew the danger in trying that. So she chose the boring subject 
of the Fletchers’ dog, which engaged him immediately, and tried to listen as he 
told her all the fine points about that animal and how he was going to get a dog 
just like him—as soon as he could show this canine marvel to Dad and find a 
similar puppy.
The library door was open. She heard voices inside and, without thinking, towed 
Tucker along.
All the lights were on and Great-Aunt Hendrika, wearing a full skirted dress 
which was almost sweeping the floor, her hair caught up in the back with a wide 
comb set with dark red stones, stood beside the same table of “belts" where Mike 
had earlier lectured them. Now the top had been raised and a man was reaching in 
to run his fingers along one of the exhibits.
“—fully authenticated,” Great-Aunt said.
“But, of course! What treasures, Miss Kuydall! Even the Smithsonian cannot equal 
this! And all a part of your family history. You have records—ah, that is so 
fortunate. The tragedy is that some priceless things are simply tossed into the 
rubbish when our older families die out. I have heard of the most wanton 
destruction—enough to make any historian cringe. As you doubtless have 
yourself.”
Great-Aunt Hendrika’s smile had vanished. She gave a sharp nod.
“You will then think about offering your house as one of the exhibits? A house 
tour here…” He raised his head to glance around the library, “… that would be an 
additional feature of interest, to many. There is Harnshaw—you know his life of 
Walter Butler—and Dr. Riberson, who has recently given a definitive lecture on 
the stand of the Six Nations during the war. With the present rising concern 
about racial roots, authentic Indian material is even more important. The 
Kuydalls themselves have Indian blood, do they not?”
“An Oneida ancestress in the direct line,” Great-Aunt Hendrika answered him, but 
with no smile. She wore instead the shadow of a frown between her eyes. As if he 
were speaking about something she would rather not mention. Then, determined to 
bring it all into the open, she said abruptly: “I think you must also have heard 
that the Kuydalls were for a long time held in horror in this valley. Mistakenly 
for Hendrik, who was entirely innocent. But he and his descendents lived away 
from this house for nearly a century on that account.”
“But my dear Miss Kuydall, that is a very old story. There are certainly no 
Tories now and the raids down these valleys are all just a matter of history. 
Even that so-called devil, Walter Butler, has found apologists among impartial 
historians and biographers these days. Your family being so divided in 
allegiance during the Revolution is no different from a number that I can list 
without even having to delve into records. Also, is it not true that those who 
participated in the raid here made the Kuydalls themselves suffer as much as 
nearly all the other valley people? The monument over in the church yard is 
witness to that. There is no shame attached in the least to your own branch of 
the family. Colonel Hendrik Kuydall was not responsible for his brother who, by 
all accounts, must have been demented. Was he not a man so trusted by Washington 
himself that he was offered a post in the new government once the General became 
President?”
“There were other things…” Great-Aunt Hendrika turned away from the case, having 
lowered the lid and turned a small key in the lock to one side. “I do not give 
any credence to superstition, Doctor, but a most unfortunate tale has clung to 
this house— and our family—ever since that raid. You have heard doubtless of 
haunted houses? It is the fashion now to write books and plays with as many 
horrors as the authors can cram in. A haunted house here—I would not like to 
have that story public property. I do not want to look out in the lane to see 
cars cruising slowly by while their occupants stare up at the windows here in 
search of some monstrous face.”
“Monstrous face?” Dr. Ferguson looked bewildered. “But—”
“You have heard of the False Faces of the Long House?”
“Naturally. A secret society which, toward the end of the Iroquois era, is said 
to have become corrupt and used by certain sadists to further a quite bloody 
series of ceremonies. Though originally it was harmless and had something to do 
with fertility or harvest rites, I believe. There was a girl chosen to be the 
Cherry Maid, who led them in some of their ceremonies. But—”
“What had the False Faces to do with Kuydall affairs?” Great-Aunt Hendrika 
completed his unfinished question. “In the old days people would have told you 
that that secret society had quite a lot to do with us. No one knew its members. 
They appeared only masked, except for the Cherry Maid who was not really one of 
their fellowship. They were all considered to be sorcerers. Their drummers were 
said to be able to drum up either evil or good after blood was spilled and 
proper sacrifices made. As you yourself said, they became quite evil toward the 
end of their time. And they had a hand in Kuydall fortunes—according to family 
tradition. But that is another matter, and one I have no intention of 
explaining.
“As for a tour through the house—” She hesitated. “I would want to consider—”
“Even if you decided, as you have every right to do, against that, I trust, Miss 
Kuydall, that you will allow our committee a chance to visit and to explore.”
“Explore?” Great-Aunt Hendrika looked surprised. “Explore where?”
It was Doctor Ferguson’s turn to hesitate before he answered. He had a thick mat 
of gray hair covering his head and now he ran one hand through it and then 
scratched the neatly trimmed beard.
“This house is unique. Thomson wants to make a study of its architecture if you 
will allow. It was erected in the wilderness in the days when the usual shelter 
was the crudest of cabins or lean-tos. The plans for this house are closer to 
European design than they are to the city houses and estates of the coastal 
colonies. In fact, he would greatly like your permission to write a monograph on 
the subject. Perhaps you could also consider that…”
Susan had been too polite (or believed that she was being) to call attention to 
Tucker or herself. It was Tucker who broke into the conversation between the 
shaggy-headed man who spoke so quickly and so excitedly and Great-Aunt Hendrika. 
Susan had loosened her grip on him and he was out of reach before she could 
move, walking boldly up to Dr. Ferguson, placing his hand palm flat against the 
glass side of the Indian belt case, looking up at the man as he did so.
“These are books,” he said. “Mike said that one”—he curled a finger to point— 
“meant they were going to fight in a war. But they didn’t choose right. So they 
all had to go away when it was over. Only they didn’t come here—” He was shaking 
his head. “They said ‘no,’ ’cause the people here were friends. It was those 
others…” He looked the same way he always did when he was trying to make someone 
else understand a thing he believed. “… they had blue-eyes—only they didn’t—that 
was just a name which meant that they were bad men dressed up like Indians. And 
they were the ones—” He stopped short, his gaze shifting from the 
surprised-looking face of Dr. Ferguson to the case itself, as if he were trying 
to find a hiding place.
“Please…” Susan had hurried forward. “He’s talking about the diary and the 
torn-up book. Mike was telling him a story about the belts and he gets things 
mixed-up at times. But it was in the book—the torn one from the grab box—all 
about how Jacobus Kuydall came back to rob the house and that the Indians 
wouldn’t come. Only some other white men who wanted loot and dressed like them.”
“Torn-up book—grab box!” Great-Aunt Hendrika broke in to Susan’s flurry of 
explanation. “What are you talking about, Susan?”
“The grab box I bought at the sale—with the dress patches—and”—she was a little 
hesitant as she added—“the paper dolls in it. You remember, Great-Aunt Hendrika. 
Somebody had torn up an old book and stuffed the pages in to pack the box 
tightly. Mike sorted out the pages and found a story about the raid—”
“Miss Kuydall!” Dr. Ferguson’s voice sounded even more loud and excited. “Can it 
possibly be that this child is speaking of the Kimble pamphlet? If she is, such 
a discovery is priceless, priceless—”
“Mike has it?” Great-Aunt did not answer him, rather she asked Susan.
“Yes. He put it together. There were a lot of loose pages—really part of two 
books. But he put one together.”
“Tucker”—Great-Aunt Hendrika turned to the boy—“will you run up and see if your 
brother is coming, and tell him to bring with him this paper book.”
“The Kimble book—even if it is in loose pages—but all there… unbelievable! Where 
did this come from, young lady? What is this grab box you keep mentioning?”
Before Susan could answer Great-Aunt Hendrika did it for her.
“My cousin, Hester Kuydall Kimble, died two months ago. She lived in the old 
Collins house. Since she had no direct heirs save me, and I was well endowed as 
she knew, she left the major part of her estate to the church. Some of the 
ladies cleaned out the attic and made up these cartons to be sold as grab 
boxes—with the contents unknown. Susan invested in one—”
“Papers—were there other papers?”
Great-Aunt Hendrika wore her Commander face. “I regret to say that Hester did 
not see the value of anything to do with family history. She had the misfortune 
to lose her son when he was just a boy and was staying here. And her elder 
brother had died under this same roof when she was a child. She took a violent 
dislike to the house, really to anything that had to do with the past. It was 
only in her later years that she moved back to the valley, but she never came to 
this house, nor did she encourage any reference to earlier days.
“When my Aunt Elsie Sayer Kuydall died, Hester refused even to share in the 
estate. But some things were sent to her because they were especially mentioned 
in the will. I believe that she simply put them in the attic. If she had any 
other family papers, she carefully destroyed them before her death. I know of 
some that were so handled. We found nothing at all except a few concerning her 
own immediate family—”
“Yet the Kimble pamphlet… out of the attic…”
“We are not yet sure that is what it is,” Great-Aunt Hendrika cautioned. “If 
so—I am surprised that Hester kept that.”
Susan was not quite sure but she thought that when Great-Aunt Hendrika said 
“that” her voice had changed. Just then Mike came in, carrying the yellowed 
sheets, the edges curled or tattered.
“Come here, come here!” Dr. Ferguson called as if he did not see Mike at all, 
only what he was carrying. Already he had a hand out as if to snatch at the 
bundle of brittle paper. Then he gave a little laugh.
“Miss Kuydall—what you must think of me. I fear we all let our enthusiasms run 
away with us. I believe you are Michael Whelan, yes, and so a Kuydall, too, of 
another branch. If what you are holding there is what I suspect, you and your 
sister have indeed made a major discovery, one that will mean a great deal to 
our whole program. We have heard of the Kimble pamphlet. A very mutilated 
portion of it was found some years ago in an old desk being moved up in Utica. 
You see there was a legal battle over the publication of this piece of work.
“The Kasper Kimble who wrote it had a great dislike for the Kuydalls, even 
though they were distant cousins. It had been over a hundred years since the 
incidents he wrote about had occurred. Still, in some families, old feuds die 
hard. Apparently Kasper wanted to make his relatives squirm for some reason or 
another. Thus he wrote up the valley raid in the worst possible light, bringing 
back into common talk old hatreds and scandals of that time.
“Thadeus Kuydall bought up all the copies he could find, as well as taking the 
case to law as libel. He did not get far with that. However, the printer was 
frightened enough to sell him all the copies he had ready for sale. The plan had 
been to market it during the hundredth anniversary ceremonies of the valley 
massacre. So Kimble’s plan to embarrass the Kuydalls failed and people forgot 
about it. But hints reached us through old diaries and letters that he made 
statements in it which had been purposefully suppressed by the family in later 
years, and that there was a whole different tale to be told if one discovered 
the full truth of the matter.
“Now…” Once more he reached out as if to take the pages from Mike, and then 
shook his head slowly as if he must warn himself, looking beyond to Great-Aunt 
Hendrika. “I think that the final decision is up to you, Miss Kuydall. Your 
ancestor worked hard to suppress this. If it is the full text of the Kimble 
pamphlet, your niece and nephew here discovered it. So it remains a Kuydall 
decision as to what should be done with such a find.” Yet he looked so eagerly 
at the papers Mike had that Susan half-expected something to happen as it did in 
magic stories—that the papers would pull themselves out from between Mike’s 
fingers on their own and fly straight across to Dr. Ferguson.
Instead Great-Aunt Hendrika held out her hand and Mike surrendered the pages to 
her.
“This, too,” she said slowly, “is something I must really think about.”



Chapter 9
 



« ^ » 
Susan half-expected Dr. Fergusen to ask again about the booklet, which 
Great-Aunt Hendrika put away in one of the drawers of the desk, one she 
unlocked—and locked again—with another small key such as she had used on the 
belt case. Instead he talked of other things through dinner, telling stories of 
his travels to locate material about the valley history. Some of his discoveries 
had been really exciting, though Susan would never have believed, before her own 
adventures here, that a search for old letters, or very badly-treated books and 
papers, could be a treasure hunt.
To her relief Tucker was quiet, eating his way through the meal without spilling 
anything. He also, as Mike had warned, kept his mouth shut when it came to 
talking. In fact he was so quiet that, after a while, Susan grew uneasy.
Tucker thinking, and she believed he was thinking, was to be watched. Another “ 
’maginary” might suddenly be added to their company. However, perhaps it was the 
Fletcher puppy that made him concentrate on his plate rather than the company.
After a while Dr. Ferguson began discussing with Great-Aunt Hendrika people who 
could be depended upon to serve on this committee or that—and whether they 
should try to expand the program this year. Susan blinked. She was not used to 
going to bed early, and she was well past the age of taking naps in the 
afternoon, but tonight she felt sleepy, and when she swallowed the water from 
her glass, or some of the blueberry pudding, her throat was scratchy, as if she 
had been talking a long time, or else was starting a cold.
At last they were excused, while Great-Aunt Hendrika and Dr. Ferguson returned 
to the library for coffee. Then Tucker roused from whatever daydream had held 
him during most of the meal.
“I want to see the Muppets,” he announced.
“You know there’s no TV,” Mike answered tiredly as one who had said the same 
thing many times over.
“Why?” demanded Tucker.
“Because Great-Aunt Hendrika doesn’t want one. You know that. So why keep on 
asking?”
Susan remembered the unpleasant idea that had occurred to her earlier—that 
perhaps TV in this house might be something very different.
“You’ve got a TV,” she said.
“Huh?” Mike and Tucker stared at her.
“A different kind of one. You know, Tucker —-you were watching it this 
afternoon—right on the wall of your room—the boy with the kite and the dog?”
To Susan’s relief Tucker nodded and made for the stairs.
“Got a TV—my own TV,” he said tramping hard on each step as he went, as if to 
impress that fact on anyone listening. Susan followed swiftly waiting for Mike. 
If the wall pictures could appease Tucker into thinking he did have a TV—that 
would solve one problem. At least he would not go banging into the library, 
demanding that the Muppets be shown on a screen that did not exist.
Mike followed them into Tucker’s room while Susan switched on the lights. There 
was a lamp on the small table by the window, another on the bureau top. However, 
Tucker was already digging into a drawer to pull out the oversize flashlight 
that had been in his Christmas stocking, and which, for a while, had been one of 
his favorite possessions.
Now he squatted down on his heels—not in front of the boy and the kite story, 
which had drawn his attention that afternoon, but farther into the corner. What 
he beamed the light upon seemed at first to Susan to be part of a circus, and 
then she believed it was more like a visit to Disneyland.
A plump brown bear stood on its hind legs, not just standing but roller-skating, 
looking smug as if it thought it was very smart to be able to do such a trick. 
Beyond it were two monkeys wearing bright red jackets and small round hats. Each 
of them held a cord at the other end of which walked fat white ducks. Their 
wings were up, their bills wide open. They could be prisoners yelling for help.
Next came a camel with a big cat riding on its back as might a person. A big 
pink bow showed at the cat’s neck, and in one paw it held a silly little pink 
umbrella. Beyond that was a huge mushroom. At least it was huge next to the 
little girl who stood by it, her hands linked behind her back, her head 
stretched up so she could see what sat curled on the mushroom—a very large green 
caterpillar, who wore a cap with tassels bobbing over one of its bulging eyes 
and held, in one of its many front feet, something on a cord, from the end of 
which came a small trail of smoke.
Tucker having settled himself at ease before this display glanced over his 
shoulder to his sister.
“What are they all doing?” he asked. Then waited as if he fully expected her to 
know a story that combined these queer animal people. Susan dropped down and 
gave a small gulp. Tucker was the one with the imagination. She had many times 
wondered how he could tell his tales and make them so real. She… oh, she had 
sometimes made up things to act out with Karen and Francie, but she never tried 
to equal Tucker.
“You know.”
Tucker shook his head. “You don’t know what the Muppets will do—not until you 
see them do it. These are Muppets—new Muppets—you said so. So… what do they do? 
Where did the bear get those roller skates and—”
“He bought them—just this afternoon.” Mike knelt behind Susan. “He’s practiced a 
lot on ones that belong to his brother, but it’s his birthday. He got money and 
so he bought his own. He thinks he is going to be a champion skater.”
Tucker looked from the bear to Mike and back again. “Will he be a champion?”
“If he practices hard enough,” his brother replied firmly. “Those monkeys—they 
are bad. They have kidnapped the ducks, but they’d better watch out because when 
the bear catches up to them he’ll make them let the ducks loose. Then the 
monkeys will have to run to get away.”
“And the cat—she’s in Egypt,” Susan was suddenly inspired. “Remember those 
pictures Mrs. Robinson brought to show us. They went to Egypt last year and rode 
on camels to see the pyramids. Oh, and—the cat is hunting the temple where all 
the cats once lived. She wants to see where they were so famous in the old 
days.” More of Mrs. Robinson’s travel memories came flooding back. “It is very 
hot in the sun there. That is why she has that umbrella. But she thinks she is 
stylish, so she doesn’t carry a regular umbrella but a pink one instead. And she 
wears a big ribbon bow. She is sure that everyone is noticing her!”
“And…” Now Tucker moved the light a fraction directing it on the caterpillar.
“That’s Alice!” Susan was glad to meet a familiar friend, one she did know 
something about. “She’s in Wonderland. There she drank something that made her 
very small— now she’s asking that caterpillar how she can grow large again.”
“Does he know?”
“Yes.” Susan remembered this even better than Mrs. Robinson’s Egyptian 
adventures. She had read Alice in Wonderland earlier that summer after her foot 
got infected when she stepped on something sharp on the beach. She had had to 
stay in bed a whole week. “She breaks off part of the mushroom and eats it; then 
she grows to her right size again! She has a whole lot of other adventures, 
too!”
Tucker studied the caterpillar and Alice. Then he gave a firm nod. “New Muppets. 
My own TV.”
Susan leaned forward. There was another series of pictures above the animals 
Tucker had selected. Here were tiny men riding on grasshoppers, holding out 
spears that looked as if they might be made from pieces of grass. They were 
heading straight at each other as if they might be going to fight. Above them, 
in a bush with flowers and leaves, were tiny ladies, wearing dresses made from 
flower petals, who had long hair floating down their backs.
“And…” She pointed, fascinated by the ladies and the grasshopper riders. They 
must have a story too.
Tucker’s hand swung up, pushing hers away.
“My TV!” he exploded. “Mine!”
Mike’s hand was on Susan’s shoulder. “All right—leave him to it. By the looks of 
this room”—she glanced up to see her brother looking from wall to wall—“he has 
enough to keep him looking for some time. Come on, we’ll let him do his own 
storytelling.”
Susan remembered Mike’s quick trip to the library. She was willing enough to 
leave Tucker to his “New Muppets” and follow Mike to his room. He had spread out 
on the bed some note sheets and Susan settled down beside him.
“They were there, those names and dates in that old Bible. I didn’t get a chance 
to check them all, but listen to this.” Mike picked up the table sheet nearest 
to him and began to read:
“Carolus Kuydall 1767
Johanna Kuydall 1769
Florian Kuydall 1774
“And after that was something in maybe Dutch. I couldn’t read it—but the date 
was 1780.”
Susan did some counting in her head. “Thev were eleven, thirteen, and six—just 
like us!”
“Yes, and that raid came in 1780. So I suppose that other stuff I couldn’t read 
was about that. All right, here comes the next:
“Jethro Kimble 1838-1851
Emily Kimble 1840-1851
Orrin Kimble 1845-1865, killed serving his country.”
“Two of them—thirteen and eleven— Jethro and Emily—but not Orrin,” Susan said 
slowly.
“No, he was killed in the Civil War. Next:
“Richard Kimble 1867-1880
Bessie Kimble 1869-1914
Tod Kimble 1873-1880”
“Not Bessie, but the other two—that was a hundred years after the raid.”
“I got the last one, too,” Mike went on.
“James 1903-1916
Hester 1907—There was no other date for her.
“She was the one who just died and nobody’s put it in yet—that’s what I think.
“Orrin 1912-1942—he was killed in World War II.”
“Grover?”
“Didn’t have time to look him up. But that’s the way it read.” Mike smoothed out 
his paper.
“The first three—these are the ones no one knows what happened to. They’re 
supposed to have been killed when they were being taken north for ransom. Then 
Jethro and Emily—they died together in 1851—just those dates. It doesn’t tell 
why or how. In 1880 two more died—but not Bessie. And just one—James—in 1916. It 
really doesn’t explain very much.”
“Except that they all died here—or—near here,” Susan said.
“Coincidence.” Mike folded the paper. “That’s all it is. This pamphlet, which 
that Kimble wrote, was what blew it all up into the curse business.”
Susan was thinking of the dolls hidden at the bottom of her drawer. There was 
something—those families—always three—some with their faces made from parts of 
old photographs. Why had they been made in the first place?
“Tucker—” Susan began and then stopped. Tucky said a lot of things, but how much 
came from his “ ’maginary” dreams and how much not, who could tell? Except she 
kept remembering what he had said about— they—waiting. She looked at the paper 
Mike had folded, half-expecting him to throw it into the wastebasket. Instead he 
tucked it into the front of the paper pad he had been using. Susan did not want 
to ask him why he was keeping it. She grabbed her own scribbled sheet and balled 
it up. Perhaps Dr. Ferguson would be interested in the paper dolls as a part of 
history. She thought about getting rid of them and it made her feel better. Yes, 
give them to him. He must still be here—she had not heard his car drive off and 
he must have a lot to talk over with Great-Aunt Hendrika.
“Sure.” She got up. “It doesn’t mean anything!” Eagerly she accepted Mike’s 
words, wanted to believe them true. It was only in this house that she thought 
about such things anyway. Back home—back home nobody ever worried about old 
things. And Mike— she looked at the row of books sitting on top of his bureau 
now. They were very dusty, the wording on their backs dulled so she could hardly 
make it out. Yet he had lined them up there as if he needed them. All his space 
books were in a topheavy pile on the floor.
“Did you get those out of your grab box?” Susan suddenly realized that she had 
never asked Mike what success he had had with his choice. She had been too 
interested in her own finds.
“Yes.” He walked over and ran his hand along the old bindings. “There’s a 
history of New York—and it ends in 1880! Here’s a book about the building of the 
Erie Canal. There’s another about the early settlers. Then these…” He pulled the 
last two out of line and flipped them open so that Susan could see pages that 
were covered, not with printing, but curlicued handwriting like what was in the 
big diary book that had caught Mike’s attention from the first. “These are a 
couple more journals. This one’s not too exciting. Seems to be from a 
store—buying this and selling that. But the other one was kept by a doctor, I 
think. Say…” He began to ruffle pages. “The date’s right. There might just be 
something about the Kimbles —it says 1850 in the beginning—”
Susan was already at the door. “I don’t want to know!” She did not look at Mike 
as she pushed into the hall. No, she did not want to know what happened to Emily 
who had made the sampler picture still hanging on the wall, or to Jethro. They 
had nothing at all to do with her.
Back in her own bedroom, she sat down in the rocking chair to stare at the lower 
dresser drawer. For some reason she put both her hands between her knees and 
squeezed those tightly together. She did not want to look—to take out that box 
and look. Still another part of her did. She was being pulled one way and then 
another inside.
At last, against her will, Susan got up, opened the drawer, slid out the box and 
took it to the bed. She felt so queer inside that she kept swallowing, just as 
she did when car-riding too long, and the same shaming sickness was in her 
middle.
Her hands opened the box—bringing out James, Hester, Orrin. No, those were not 
the ones she wanted. Nor were Richard, Bessie, and Tod—Bessie and Hester… Was 
Hester truly the old, old lady who had just died? She tried not to pick up the 
next piece of cardboard; she did not want to see Jethro and Emily. Orrin somehow 
did not matter. He was one of the lucky one— Lucky ones? Susan shook her head as 
if to clear away some thought she hated. What did she mean by “lucky one”? Was 
there some difference in people—those people the dolls were meant to 
represent—so that the curse worked only against them? That was a queer idea 
which stuck in Susan’s head. Tucky—he was different. She shivered. Had Jethro 
and Emily been like him?
They were real, far too real—with their faces, which were not just made-up doll 
ones, but faces that must have once looked into the dim mirrors in this very 
house. Only maybe then the mirrors had been brighter. She slid Orrin back and 
put Emily and Jethro together before her. This had been Emily’s own room once, 
Susan was sure of that. She shivered. To live in a house where so many, many 
people had come and gone—people about whom there were queer stories—it was 
frightening.
Her hand hovered now above the last cardboard divider in the box. Those 
others—the three faceless ones. Those… yes, she would certainly give them to Dr. 
Ferguson. And she was not going to look at them! Nothing could make her do it!
Hastily she replaced the dolls. She would give him these tonight, send Emily out 
of this room so Susan could forget her. To-morrow she might even take down 
Emily’s sampler and put it away. She did not want to remember Emily at all.
Susan had them repacked in the box and was down the hall at the top of the 
stairs when she saw Dr. Ferguson standing by the front door saying good night to 
Great-Aunt Hendrika. Before she could call out, he was gone, leaving her holding 
the box, still wanting to be rid of it and all it held.
Slowly she returned to her room. From Tucker’s room came the murmur of voices. 
It was Mike’s turn to oversee bedtime for the youngest Whelan. Susan closed her 
door and rammed the box back in the drawer, slamming it shut. She looked around. 
There were those books on the top of the stand, she had inspected them days 
earlier. Like the ones on the shelves downstairs, she had found them strange. 
Now she picked up the one at the end of the line.
Almost fearfully, she opened it to the front page. Yes, there was a name there: 
“Hester Kuydall.” The Princess and Curdie. There was a picture opposite the 
title page of a lady wearing a flowing dress of green, with a green jeweled 
crown on her head and, facing her, a boy and a man. Hester’s book. Susan was not 
afraid of Hester’s book.
She got ready for bed quickly, adjusted her lamp for reading. Luckily Great-Aunt 
Hendrika had never given any orders that books could not be enjoyed in bed. Then 
she opened the book.
“ ‘Curdie was the son of Peter a miner’…” Good! Nothing to do with old houses, 
curses, or Indians, blue-eyed or otherwise. Susan determined to get into 
Curdie’s world where she was sure such things had never been known.
She grew sleepy at last, but she had been thoroughly lost in the story. Paper 
dolls were far from her mind as she switched off her lamp and settled down. No 
storm tonight. Instead a full moon shone into the room, driving shadows back 
into the corners.
Susan suddenly pressed her hands to her middle. She was afraid. There was 
something in this room, something—someone— someones. She could not see them, but 
they were there. With them came this fear that made her sick and dizzy. She must 
get away. Not from them—no. They were as afraid as she was—she knew that they 
wanted her to be safe with them—to be away from what was coming… It was dark, 
and bad—very bad!
They were shadows. Still within the shadow, parts of them were visible—faces and 
hands. Susan was not sure of the faces, but the hands reached out for hers, to 
help her, to take her where it would be safe. She was so afraid!
“Come!” She was not sure that she really heard that voice. Had someone actually 
called her? Or was it somehow just in her head? Susan could not tell what was 
happening to her. But the fear was making her sick, and those hands were 
reaching for her. They would touch her soon; then she would have to go with 
them. She must go with them. That was the only way to be safe!
“Susan!”
She was swaying back and forth. Had the hands caught hold of her? Were they 
pulling her out of bed—to go with them?
“Susan!”
The sharpness of that voice broke her dream. There were no shadows waiting. The 
light in the room was no longer moonlight. The hands on her shoulders were 
Mike’s, shaking her vigorously.
“Wake up!” It was not Mike’s everyday voice ordering her to do that, but one 
that kept the fear alive in her. “Tucker’s gone!”
“Gone?” Susan had been so caught in her fearful dream that she was still in a 
fog. “Tucker?”
“Yes, Tucker!” Mike sounded angry. “What’s the matter with you? I couldn’t get 
you to wake up. Come on—we’ve got to find him!”
Susan was shaking so she could hardly slide out of bed and get her robe, 
huddling it about her shoulders as she stuck her feet into her bedraggled old 
scuffs. The bare floor beyond the carpet strips was cold. In fact the whole room 
was so chilly that she shook and shook.
“Where could he go?” She had a hard time thinking, as if her mind was all mixed 
up. Almost she expected to see hands still reaching for her.
“I think he went downstairs somewhere,” Mike answered. “I heard that step near 
the bottom creak. But by the time I looked there was no one there. Remember when 
he used to walk in his sleep? Before they took him to Dr. Ramish back home?”
“Yes.” Susan was finally alert enough to understand. “He can’t get outside, can 
he?”
“I don’t think so. Those doors have bolts on them—mostly too high for him to 
reach. Come on!”
“Great-Aunt—Mrs. Kingsley—” Susan scrambled after him. Mike had not turned on 
the hall lights. He had Tucker’s big flash in his hand instead and was sending 
its beam toward the head of the stairs.
“Mrs. Kingsley’s clear across the yard— remember?” he snapped at her. “And 
Great-Aunt is in the other wing. Come on—we’re wasting time!”
They plunged down the stairs. Mike paused at each room to shine the light in a 
big circle about it, the drawing room with its plant room opening off it in the 
tower, the library, the dining room. At last they headed on into the big 
kitchen.
Susan caught at Mike’s sleeve, so that the light from the torch danced in a 
flighty pattern across the huge room. The door to the cellar stood wide open, 
something Susan knew was not right. Mrs. Kingsley always kept it closed and put 
the heavy bar across it.
Just before that open door crouched both Josiah and Erasmus. The ears of the 
cats were flattened against their skulls, while the ridge hair along their 
spines stood up, and their tails, fully bushed, swung back and forth. Though 
Josiah’s mouth was open, he made no sound. A continuous growl came from Erasmus. 
They might almost be warning something off, as they stared downward into what 
was complete darkness.
“But… Tucky would not go there!” Susan protested. Tucker, after he had left the 
cellar the first day, when they had helped clear out the old storeroom, had 
always pretended that even the door to the stairs did not exist. Susan had seen 
him circle out and around so that when he came to the breakfast table he would 
not have to even go near it. Tucker would not have ventured into that place in 
the dark of the night. There was no sign of light below.
It was Erasmus who, with a last growl, flowed, belly down, onto the dark of the 
stairs they could not see. Josiah, after another silent protest—or 
challenge—followed. Mike shook his head.
“He must have gone there.”
“I don’t believe it!” Still Susan was with Mike as he crossed the room to shine 
the light downstairs. The rank, musty smell seemed stronger and nastier. Now the 
light caught the cats’ eyes so that four glittering balls were upturned in the 
direction of the children before they disappeared.
“Tuck—” Susan had gotten out only part of the call when Mike caught her fiercely 
by the arm. “Don’t wake him if he’s down there!” he ordered.
She gulped as she remembered. Tucker had been steered back to bed before, led 
back without waking at all. What if he was shaken out of sleep, to find himself 
in a place of which he was frightened?
Mike started down the stairs and Susan followed. That sick feeling that had been 
a part of her dream was again rising in her. She swallowed and swallowed, 
holding on to the stair rail so tightly her nails dug into the old wood.



Chapter 10
 



« ^ » 
It was so cold. Dimly Susan realized the cold was inside her. She had to force 
herself to take one step and then another. This was not part of the dream of the 
reaching hands. No—she was awake. Still, she was caught by the same fear. She 
grabbed at a fold of Mike’s robe, held onto it, breathing in gasps.
The door to the fruit closet was closed, but the one to the dank and 
bad-smelling room where Mike and Susan had gone for baskets was open. Josiah 
crouched there, his tail switching, a low growl coming from his throat. There 
was no sign of Erasmus.
There was another sound as well, a pounding, and, through that, a whispering, so 
low Susan could not make out the words. Mike shoved past Josiah, who spat and 
aimed a fast-striking paw at him. Mike yelped as his pajama leg tore.
Susan loosed her hold on her brother. She had always been just a little afraid 
of both the large cats. This time she was more afraid of what was closing about 
them, of what waited around them. If she closed her eyes, if Mike left her—what 
would she see—or feel!
There were still piles of baskets fitted into one another, cartons pushed 
against one wall. To the right Mike’s circle of light caught and held Tucker in 
its full beam.
The younger boy was on his knees, his fists pounding against the stone wall. His 
eyes were closed, but his mouth was open and from him came that whispering, not 
words—rather a whining sound.
Mike thrust the torch toward Susan and she took it, trying to keep it centered 
on Tucker. Back and forth behind the small boy paced Erasmus, his ears 
flattened, his back arched, his tail puffed, lips pulled back to show his teeth, 
though he was not growling. He did not seem angry with Tucker. At least he did 
not strike out at the little boy as Josiah had done at Mike, rather he was 
watching the wall against which Tucker was pounding.
Mike drew a deep breath and stooped to put his hands on Tucker’s shoulders. The 
smaller boy twisted, fighting against that hold. His crying changed into words 
at last:
“Out… out… out…!” The three words became a scream. Then, so suddenly that he 
almost slipped out of Mike’s hold entirely, he went limp. Mike fell to his 
knees, pulled down by Tucker’s weight.
Tucker’s hands, bruised, with spots of blood on the knuckles, lay limp and 
unmoving. His mouth was slack, drooling at the corner. His eyes remained tightly 
closed and he showed no sign of being aware of where he was or that Mike now 
held him. Susan stood over them, beaming the torch downward. That terrible 
choking in her throat grew worse. She raised her other hand and pulled at the 
collar of her robe.
“He’s still asleep. We have to get him back,” Mike said.
Could they, Susan wondered? Mike was strong, but Tucker was no lightweight and 
there were those steep stairs.
“Take the torch, brace it to shine down the stairs— No, what’s the matter with 
me? Just turn on those lights Mrs. Kingsley used. It may take us both to get him 
up.”
It was as if she had to wade through something thick, anchoring her feet fast. 
Gasping and fighting against what she could not see but that tried to hold her, 
Susan went, hating to take the flashlight, to leave Mike and Tucker together in 
that awful place, but knowing she must have light herself to find the switch.
The frightening heaviness about her did not lift. She had to pull herself up 
step by step to where she could push the switch. Light came—making her blink. 
The steps were bare, there was nothing on the floor.
Whatever had tried to hold her was gone with the dark. Josiah no longer sat in 
the open doorway to the basket room, nor did he show any signs of anger when she 
passed him outside it.
There was light in the basket room, too. Mike had somehow gotten Tucker across 
his shoulder as Susan had seen people being carried away from fires on TV. She 
hurried to help so that when they started back up the stairs she was behind, her 
hands out to steady Tucker’s body where she could to take the strain off Mike.
Back in the kitchen she hurried once more to turn on lights while Mike lowered 
his brother into the rocking chair Mrs. Kingsley kept by the window. Tucker 
moved his head against the pillowed back and moaned.
Susan hurried to tear loose a handful of paper towels, held them under the cold 
water tap and then returned and patted the backs of Tucker’s hands. They were 
bloody, and the skin was torn. He must have beat hard upon the old stones for 
some time.
“First aid kit…” Mike took the torch from the pocket of Susan’s robe to 
disappear toward the front of the house. She wanted to bar the cellar door—but 
the cats had not followed them up yet, and she was sure that she dared not leave 
them shut down there.
Gently she brushed back Tucker’s hair. His face was so hot! He continued to moan 
as if something hurt him—maybe his hands, and perhaps she had been too quick to 
try to wash them. Or maybe Tucker was sick!
Susan sat back on her heels, twisting the wet towels until they were a soggy 
mess and the whole front of her robe and nightgown were wet, clear through to 
her skin. Tucker—sick—like Emily, and James, and…
Mother—Dad! She wanted them! She wanted to be home again safe. There must be a 
doctor—Great-Aunt Hendrika would know. Thoughts sped through her head very fast, 
none staying long enough to be any help.
“Here!” Mike nearly skidded on the well-scrubbed floor of the kitchen, the first 
aid kit in his hands. He had the lid up and was busy bringing out bandages while 
Susan, whose fingers shook, dropped her wads of wet paper and tore open the 
packets he found. Tucker’s eyes opened and he cried out.
“No! That hurts!”
He tried to pull away from Mike, but Susan held fast to one hand while her 
brother made a good job of covering up the raw and bleeding skin. Tucker freed 
the hand that Susan held and hit her hard with it.
“It hurts!” he cried looking straight at the two of them as if he did not really 
see them, Susan thought. She could not even be sure that Tucker was truly awake.
“Michael, Susan! Just what is going on here!”
Great-Aunt Hendrika came into the kitchen staring at the three of them in open 
amazement.
“Tucky—he walked in his sleep,” Susan answered as she caught at Tucker’s other 
hand, holding it fast for Mike to bandage. “He used to do this—a long time ago.”
Tucker twisted and began to really fight, kicking out at his brother and sister, 
squirming as if to get out of the chair. Susan had to give her full attention to 
holding him, so Mike could finish bandaging the other fist. “What happened to 
his hands? Here, Susan, let me hold him. How in the world did he get those nasty 
bruises? Falling?”
“He was down in the cellar.” Mike made tight the last strip of tape. “We found 
him hitting the wall there—in the dark…”
Great-Aunt Hendrika knelt by Tucker, tried to hold him still.
“Tucker! Why he’s burning up—fever…” Her voice sounded queer. She was staring at 
Tucker as if she saw something just as frightening as those shadows in Susan’s 
horrible dream. “Come on—we must get him to bed. Call Dr. Phillips…”
As she loosed her hold and Mike drew away to close up the aid kit, Tucker moved. 
He wriggled free and, though Susan made a hurried grab, he passed her, heading 
again for the open cellar door. It was only when Mike threw himself forward to 
catch his brother around the waist, holding him, in spite of Tucker’s kicks and 
frantic struggles for freedom, that he was stopped from bolting back into the 
dark.
His face was very red now, and he was making funny noises that sounded like the 
deep growls of Josiah. Susan was convinced that this was not just Tucker in one 
of his tempers, that he did not really know what he was doing. There was 
something very wrong with her brother, a part of all the wrongness that had 
closed about her in the dream.
There was a streak of black and then of particolored fur up the stairs, as the 
cats at last erupted into the kitchen. Susan ran past Tucker, still fighting 
frantically in Mike’s arms, to slam the door. She grabbed at the bar and dropped 
it into place. She had a feeling that she had shut out only a part of what was 
wrong, that a darkness still shadowed them all.
Mike could not try to carry Tucker while he was fighting. It took Great-Aunt 
Hendrika and Mike together to force the small boy away from the cellar door. He 
was on his feet now, seeming to have strength beyond what any one person could 
control. But they got him back down the hall and pulled him upstairs step by 
step. Tucker fought all the way. Twice he actually leaned over and bit at Mike’s 
hands. Susan’s early fears were swallowed up in a terrible new one. She had 
never seen Tucker act this crazy in all his tempers.
Somehow they got him into the upper hall, though now he threw himself down as a 
limp weight. Mike and Great-Aunt Hendrika had to lift him between them, while he 
continually moaned and then shrieked.
“Out—out of the dark!” Yet Susan had run ahead to turn on every light and the 
dark was gone.
When they at last got him back in his room Tucker gave a last scream. Susan 
shrank against the wall. As he cried out, his body stiffened. When they lifted 
him onto the bed he lay there unmoving. Only his eyes were open, staring up at 
the ceiling.
“Susan.” Great-Aunt Hendrika’s voice trembled, her face looked very pale and for 
the first time really old. “Go and get Mrs. Kingsley. Turn on the outside 
lights—the switch is by the back door. There is a bell right under the switch. 
Press that and keep on pressing it until you see the lights go on in the 
carriage house. She will come as soon as she can. That is our agreed upon signal 
for help. Then—go to my room and get the small directory by my phone…”
Susan sped out of the door, glad—and rather ashamed for being glad at the same 
time—that she did not have to watch Tucker now. She hated to go back to the 
kitchen, but she ran to find the switch and then the bell below, planting her 
thumb fast upon it.
Would those lights she had been told to watch for never answer? At last there 
was a bright burst from the carriage house window. She flew upstairs and into 
the other wing of the house. Great-Aunt Hendrika had left a light on in her 
bedroom so it was easy to find the silk-covered notebook beside her phone. 
Grabbing it up, Susan started back.
Mrs. Kingsley was coming up the stairs, a plaid robe showing beneath the hem of 
her usual black coat.
“What’s the matter?”
“Tucky’s—Tucky’s sick!” Susan answered, as she ran down the hall. There were no 
sounds from her brother’s room, no more screams—none of the strange moaning. As 
she burst in she saw that he was still stretched stiff on the bed, a quilt over 
him. Mike stood staring at Tucker’s set face.
Notebook in hand Susan joined her brother. “Mike—he’s never been like this 
before,” she said. “Why—?”
“I don’t know!” he snapped, never taking his eyes from Tucker. “We’ve got to 
call Dad and Mom…”
Susan swallowed twice, her throat hurt, and that feeling of not being able to 
breathe fully was back. Mike—Mike was afraid!
Great-Aunt Hendrika had her hand on Tucker’s forehead as Mrs. Kingsley came in.
“The thermometer, Martha. I will try to get Walter Phillips. This is one time 
when a house call is necessary.”
“Mom and Dad—” Mike raised his voice. “We have to call them!”
Great-Aunt Hendrika did not look in their direction but she nodded.
“We shall. But we’ll get Walter first, middle of the night or no middle of the 
night.” Her face was set. “Can you watch him until Mrs. Kingsley gets back?”
“Yes.” Mike’s jaw shot forward a little, as if he wanted to take care of Tucky 
by himself. Susan only hoped that Tucky would not again become fighting mad and 
try to get away.
They could hear Great-Aunt Hendrika on her way down the stairs toward the hall 
phone.
“Mike, what is the matter—please…” Susan reached out her hand to him.
Before he could answer Tucker moved for the first time since they had put him on 
his bed. He raised his bandaged hands to his face and began to cry. Not with the 
angry gasps he used when he was hurt or wanted something—but like someone who 
was alone and very frightened.
At that same moment Susan felt a sick swirling as if the room—the 
light—everything—was whirling around and around. She was caught up in a fear so 
great that she was not Susan Whelan anymore. There was no safe place, only a 
dreadful dark holding her forever and ever…
There was a hand in hers and then she reached to find another. She had closed 
her eyes because the sickness made her so weak she could not stand. She was 
sitting—partly lying—and she was holding two hands, one smaller and one larger. 
The hands were real, holding off the terrible dark and the fear. Yet there was 
no comfort from them—only still she must hold them.
“Carolus, Florry…” Names and hands, those matched. They were all in the dark 
together. There would never be any light anymore… “Carolus! Florry!” Her fear 
was icy cold and she was being swallowed by the dark—“No!” There was something 
else— something that fought the dark, that made her force her eyes open.
She was partly on a bed, and there was light here. “Florry?”
No—this was Tucker! His face had turned toward hers and his eyes were on her.
“Hanny?” He spoke in a voice hardly above a whisper. “We got out—we did, Hanny!”
“Tucker! Susan!”
Susan did not want to answer—though why Tucker should call her by that strange 
name she could not understand. She held one of his bandaged hands and her other 
arm was stretched across his body so that her fingers gripped, with a hold tight 
enough to be painful, Mike’s fist.
Mike looked at her with the same strange fear that had been in his face earlier 
when he had watched Tucker.
“Tucker!” he said urgently. “Tucker!”
Tucker’s head swung away from Susan to look toward Mike. Susan loosed her hold 
on the older boy’s hand. That awful feeling of the dark and being swallowed up 
was gone. She was no longer dizzy. But some of the strangeness of those moments 
still held her.
“Carl… we got out!” came Tucker’s half whisper. Susan sensed that he, too, had 
been caught in the same terrible dark. Only why did he call Mike by that other 
name?
A small frown began to show on Tucker’s face. He closed his eyes and then opened 
them again, slowly.
“You—you are different—” he said, almost in a complaining tone. “You have 
another face—only it ain’t a painted one. Take it off—please, Carl, take it 
off!” His words grew more hurried as he lifted himself a little, waving one of 
his bandaged hands toward his brother’s face as if to dislodge a mask which 
certainly was not there.
“Tucker…” Mike gently pushed him flat again. “Listen—you are Tucker—I’m Mike— 
and that is Susan.” He nodded to her across his brother’s body.
“Tucker, Mike, Susan—” Tucker repeated those names first as if he did not know 
them at all, and then a second time. “I’m Tucker—I am!” There was more force 
than a half-whisper in that cry. “I’m not there— I’m not there!”
Susan sighed, weak with relief. This was Tucky, the Tucky she had known and who 
had somehow been lost. Had he also been caught in that same dreadful place of 
dark that had come out of a dream to torment her?
“You’re Tucker,” she said, “I am Susan, and that is Mike. We’re all together. 
Oh, Tucky—I’m so glad!”
“They’re together, too.” Tucker’s face clouded over again. “Only—I can’t just 
remember—and I should—I should—!” He pounded his free fist on the bed. “Make me 
remember, please, Susan, make me remember!”
“Susan, Mike, please come away from your brother. I want to take his 
temperature.” Mrs. Kingsley had shed the coat she had worn earlier. Now she was 
waving a thermometer in one hand. “Open your mouth— there—under the tongue… 
Now.” She had taken Tucker’s wrist out of Susan’s hold, neatly elbowing Susan 
away from her perch on the bed.
Susan had half-expected her brother to resist. In the past, Tucky had never 
taken well to being sick. However, he lay quiet, the end of the thermometer 
pointing up from between his lips, the frown back on his forehead. She sensed 
that Tucker was trying somehow to remember. And she was sure that would be the 
worst thing in the world for him. But given Tucker’s usual determination she did 
not know how he could be stopped.
Dr. Phillips appeared some fifteen minutes later, and shooing out everyone but 
Mrs. Kingsley (whom he greeted as if she were a trusted assistant), he took over 
and eventually stated that Tucker was to do no more remembering that night.
He fronted Great-Aunt Hendrika, Mike and Susan in Susan’s room across the hall. 
He looked at the three of them as if he did not know quite how to begin.
“How is he, doctor?” Great-Aunt Hendrika demanded.
“There is a low degree of fever. But my guess is that the boy has had some kind 
of shock. I understand that he has sleepwalked before?” He looked to Mike.
“Yes, after the accident. You see he was going to nursery school about two years 
ago and there was a car smash. Tucky wasn’t hurt more than getting his arm 
bruised and a bump on his head. He was in the hospital about a week however, 
because the doctor said there might be concussion. But the x-rays were okay. He 
slept a lot afterwards and once in a while he sleepwalked. But then he went to 
Dr. Ramish and it gradually stopped. The doctor said it would.”
“I see. Now what happened tonight? It is very apparent this boy has had a very 
bad experience…”
Susan and Mike locked eyes. The truth sounded (at least Susan thought it would) 
completely crazy. Yet they could not tell it any differently. However, because 
of her dream—that dream which seemed so much a part of it—she would let Mike 
tell it.
“Tucker—well, Tucker has a very vivid imagination. And he found out some stories 
about this house…”
The doctor glanced at Great-Aunt Hendrika. She was frowning.
“The funny thing is that he hates the cellar and will not go down there at all. 
Tonight he went to sleep all right. But Susan and I, we’ve been taking turns 
checking on him because he has had a couple of nightmares. I was reading and 
then I thought I’d better see how he was doing…”
At least, Susan thought gratefully, Mike was not going to bring in her 
nightmare.
“He was gone. So I thought maybe he was sleepwalking again. I got Susan and a 
flashlight and we went to look for him. It was queer, because Tucker doesn’t 
like the house and I couldn’t believe he’d go roaming around by himself.”
With straightforward detail Mike told all the story—of their finding the cellar 
door open, of going down to find Tucker beating on the wall of the storage room 
and of how they got him up to the kitchen where Great-Aunt Hendrika found them.
“That’s how he got those cuts on his hands. I know some first aid and I fixed 
them up. Then we brought him up to his room—”
“He came with you—he was awake by then?”
“He seemed awake, but he was fighting to get back to the cellar,” Mike admitted. 
“It must have been some kind of a dream.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Just ‘out—out—’ ” Mike continued truthfully. But he did not mention the names 
Tucker had called them, or that bit about him supposedly wearing a mask.
“Where are the boy’s parents?” Dr. Phillips asked.
“In Utica; I intend to call them.”
“Perhaps it would be well. Physically, except for those bruised hands, he’s in 
good shape. But I would certainly recommend some sort of counseling. He is 
plainly coming out of a state of fear of some sort, and with his history, this 
is a matter that must be taken care of. There is a slight degree of fever—but no 
cause I can see for that—it may be entirely emotional. I would advise that he 
not be left alone. Mrs. Kingsley has had excellent training—let her look after 
him for a while. And by all means keep an eye on him.
“At the present he appears completely awake and aware of where he is—but…” He 
shook his head, “There is always reason behind such manifestations as this 
sleepwalking. You”—he turned to Mike and there was a harder note in his 
voice—“haven’t been telling him any stories that would excite him, have you?”
Mike flushed and Susan was hot with indignation. “Mike doesn’t do things like 
that! We know about Tucker. He has always imagined things and he didn’t want to 
come here at all. Ever since he’s been here he’s been making up things!”
The doctor shrugged and Great-Aunt Hendrika made a little motion with her head. 
He nodded and they went out together. After a moment or two Mike and Susan could 
hear the murmur of voices from the lower hall.



Chapter 11
 



« ^ » 
Mike, those names he said —Hanny Carl—” Susan steadied one hand on the tall foot 
of the old bed. “And wanting out.” She sucked in a deep breath before she went 
on: “Mike, there was a dark place and I was holding on to someone, too— two 
different someones—and we couldn’t get out!”
She fully expected Mike to tell her she had been dreaming, or else imagining 
things just the way Tucker did. Instead he stood there frowning—though she did 
not believe that he was mad at her for what she had said.
“Why did he pound on that wall?” Mike asked slowly, not expecting any answer 
from her, she was sure. “Carl—Hanny—” He repeated the names. Then he thudded one 
fist against the footboard of the bed with the same force Tucker had used in 
beating against the old stones below. “What’s the matter with—with all of us?”
Susan swallowed, ran her tongue tip across her lower lip as she often did when 
she was in a car and trying not to think of being sick. Because she felt now the 
same old churning in her stomach.
“They—they were here. They wanted me—me—they were so afraid—” She was talking a 
little wildly. Again it seemed that, though the light was now on in her room, 
those shadows were gathering right behind Mike, between her brother and the 
door, and that very soon hands would reach out beckoning, perhaps even 
pulling—Mike? Her?
“Who?” Mike demanded sharply.
Susan shook her head. “I thought it was all a dream. Maybe—maybe it wasn’t after 
all. Maybe…”
Certainly it was against her will that her head turned—just as if someone had 
put two hands, one on either side, above her ears to force her eyes toward the 
bureau. In spite of her struggle not to move she took one step and then another 
in that direction.
Mike did nothing to stop her. She suddenly was not even aware he was there 
except as a shadow not nearly as important as the other presences now growing 
stronger all the time. They had called Tucker. Susan had a flash of 
understanding as she stooped to draw open the bottom drawer. Now they were using 
her—in a different way.
She took out the box of paper dolls and brought it back to the tumbled covers on 
the bed. With one hand she smoothed the covers as she opened the box with the 
other. Hurry—hurry… She upended the box, using none of the care she had when she 
had unpacked her find.
Dresses, dolls fluttered down. They fell so oddly—not all together in one 
pile—but rather as if something in the air sorted them out even as they fell, 
the top ones now on the bottom.
James, his serious face uppermost, James —as if Mike’s voice repeated his 
discovery from the old Bible—1903-1916. He lay to one side, while Hester and 
Orrin Two fluttered away with their clothes to a little distance.
Then came Richard and Tod—right on top of James. But Bessie—she made a side 
landing apart from her brothers.
Jethro and Emily, somehow Susan was not in the least surprised to see them join 
Richard, Tod, and James. While Orrin the First went down on the growing pile of 
clothes and seemingly discarded dolls. It was the first pile that was the 
important one. Those others did not matter. Jethro and Emily, both dying in 
1851.
The last piece of dividing cardboard stuck. Susan had to use her fingernails to 
loosen it in the box. She did not want to, she did not want in the least to see 
Johanna, Carolus, and Florian. Yet she had no control over her fingers picking 
hastily at the obstruction, freeing the three last dolls, the faceless ones. 
They landed across Jethro and Emily, their heavier and slightly larger bodies 
covering most of that pile of dolls.
Susan threw the box from her and stood staring at the dolls. There—there were 
faces coming. No! She was not going to look—she wouldn’t! However, just as that 
force she had not understood had made her bring out the box, so now she could 
neither turn away her head nor close her eyes.
“Johanna, Carolus, Florian—” She heard herself repeat the names aloud as if she 
were calling them. No, she mustn’t do that! That was what had happened 
before—always it had happened before! There had been Emily and Jethro, and then 
Richard and Tod, and James… and maybe even others, who had not been afterwards 
remembered by dolls.
“I—I won’t—” Susan’s mouth felt stiff and queer as she forced out those words. 
“I won’t—and—” She grew more frightened, though she also felt angry as well. 
“Tucky —he won’t either! You can’t make him. He isn’t going to go with you! He 
isn’t!”
She knew as well as if she had read it in that diary Mike had found or in the 
torn-up pamphlet, what had happened to Tucker, what they were trying to make 
happen to her. They wanted—out! They called, but when someone tried to help 
them—then— then… Susan cringed away from the bed.
No, it was not going to happen to Tucky! Nor her, nor Mike!
“Susan!”
There was a hurting hold on both her shoulders, her head flopped back and forth. 
Then came a sharp slap across her face which made her gasp with pain. She saw 
Mike between her and the bed on which lay the dolls—those dolls who could 
call—and call—
“Susan, what is the matter?”
Her mouth worked, she could feel it shaping words, but somehow she could not 
hear herself saying them. Then she made a great effort and produced a small 
croak of sound which at last might be heard.
“It’s them.” She raised her arm with great effort, and though Mike was now 
between her and the bed, she pointed in the direction of the dolls. “It’s 
Johanna, and Carolus and Florian. They call—they want—Tucky— Tucky—maybe me! 
They called James, and Richard, and Tod, and Emily and Jethro, and they died, 
all of them. Now they want— But they aren’t going to get Tucky!”
She gave a sudden twist with all her strength and broke away from Mike. Though 
she loathed those three top dolls, Susan snatched them up. Break them—tear them— 
get rid of them! That was all she could think of.
Only, when she tried to snap their bodies, it was like trying to break a piece 
of iron. Burn them then! She looked around wildly. There was no fire on the big 
hearths of the downstairs fireplaces—but there might be matches, there was 
always the kitchen…
Dolls grasped tightly in both her hands, for she had a feeling that they might 
even now somehow get away from her, Susan burst through the door of her room. 
Down to the library where there was a fireplace and perhaps matches—or into the 
kitchen. She must do this—now! Then Tucky would be safe—safe as all the others 
had not been.
“Susan!” Mike caught at her arm. She did not even turn her head to look at him.
“Got to burn them!” she cried out as she pulled free and ran down the hall.
There was someone coming up the stairs— she was only dimly aware that Great-Aunt 
Hendrika had appeared. But there was also a startled cry from behind. A moment 
later a small, compact body thudded so hard against her that she was unbalanced 
and slammed face down before she reached the head of the stairs.
Hands caught painfully at her hair, pulling, then beating on her shoulders.
“No! No! No!” Tucky’s voice.
The dolls had been under her in a tight hold. To Susan it seemed that they were 
no longer flat. They were rounding, fighting against her. She gasped and tried 
to hold on. If they got away—then—she did not know what might happen but it 
would be something terrible. The fear that had been a part of her all this night 
was like a big black cloud—and she could not hold on much longer to those things 
turning and struggling under her.
“Susan—Tucker! Martha, come and help me!
The pounding on her back had stopped. But Susan could not hold any longer. She 
could not keep them—burn them—they were too strong. She knew she was crying, and 
she was cold, so terribly cold, as if the things she held were bits of ice, able 
to send out waves of chill striking all the way through her.
Her hands ached, numb with cold, with the pain that came of trying to keep her 
fingers curved about the three bits of wood and ancient paper as they fought for 
freedom.
It was growing darker. The light in the hall dimmed. They drew strength from the 
dark. She—could—not—hold…
There was nothing in her hands. But at the top of the stair now, as she tried to 
pull herself up, three figures crouched. Susan could sense what they felt, knew 
exactly what they knew. There was no way she could escape what was coming. It 
was as if she were being pulled into the middle of those three.
No! She was Susan—she was not Johanna —she was Susan! As she had tried to hold 
to the dolls, so she now held with all her strength to that. Susan—Susan—Susan…
There came a sharp snap, as if she had broken a tight piece of string. She was 
no longer being pulled into Johanna. Though she still could feel the fear of 
that other one who had been a doll without a face and now was something 
else—something that had no place in Susan’s world at all.
Fear—something terrible going to happen. Susan could not stop it. But now she 
was an onlooker, not a part of it. Someone was coming up the stairs very fast, 
taking two steps at a time. The boy who was Carolus had moved a little away from 
the other two, stepping between them and whoever came. Though the hallway was 
dark in one way—still Susan could see clearly all three of those others. They 
grew brighter and more visible with every breath she drew.
Carolus had a gun—a strange-looking gun with a long barrel. It was so heavy 
that, even when he used both hands to raise it, it wobbled back and forth. And 
Susan knew that he was unable to hold it steady, though his need to use it 
struck through the clouds of fear to touch her.
There was a man at the top of the stairs. He wore a green coat—but below that 
breeches of leather with fringes along the sides. His head was bare and his hair 
was long and had been tied back with a piece of black ribbon. His face was very 
brown, the cheekbones standing out sharply as if he had been hungry for a long 
time. Straight across his face and on the bridge of his high beaked nose was a 
slash of yellow paint.
His mouth opened and his lips moved. Susan knew that he was saying something of 
importance to the three children he faced. All at once his hand shot out and 
caught the heavy gun away from Carolus, taking it very easily from the boy.
Whatever he was telling them seemed to make the feeling of fear ease a little, 
Johanna grasped Florian’s hand, nodded, and then pulled at Carolus’s sleeve, 
even though he held back, staring at the man as if he did not believe him.
Then—very faint and far away (as if it came through years of time—not just up 
from the lower part of the house) Susan heard a blast of noise. That made the 
man look behind him quickly, then catch Carolus by his shoulder, swing him 
around to push him down the stairs, beckoning the other two to follow.
Down they went—and Susan was going too, though she was so intent, so drawn by 
what she watched that she was not even aware of walking, of descending the 
stairs. They passed through the lower hall.
The sense of fear was mixed with a need for haste—something must be done and 
very quickly. Once more Susan heard, very distantly, screams and shouts. They 
came into the kitchen. She had a misty view of the great fireplace with a fire 
burning in it—of changes here. Still everything was so strange and shadowy she 
could not get a clear view of anything but the four figures she accompanied—the 
man with his green coat, turning his head now and then to show the painted slash 
across his face, to make sure that the three children were following him.
The great door to the cellar way was a little open. He pulled it back, snatching 
up from the floor a candle enclosed in a box that had holes in its sides so that 
light came through. Holding it in front of him, he started down the stairs.
Susan wanted nothing so much as to stay where she was, in that misty-cornered 
kitchen where the walls were half-hidden in a fog. Only the others drew her on. 
The lantern light gave very little help. She had a smaller fear beneath the 
greater one of tripping and falling to the stone floor underneath. But somehow 
she made it down. The lower hall with its doors opening into the storage 
rooms—it was no longer here— she could see that much even in so poor a light. 
Things like huge barrels were lined up against one wall, great chests of wood, 
other boxes. The man in the green coat turned to the right. He came to a rough 
wall of stone, showing no windows or any opening. Setting his lantern down on 
the top of a barrel, laying beside it the big gun he had taken from Carolus, he 
faced the wall, began to run his hands up and down over it. What he was hunting 
Susan could not guess.
The fear that had struck so sharply in the upper hallway was back. She was 
partly Johanna—a very small part—and the dark— what this man would do—made her 
stiff inside with terror. Something happened to the wall. There was an opening, 
dark and even more frightening, where moments earlier there had been just solid 
stone.
The man grabbed up the lantern and the pistol. Turning to Carolus he held out 
both to the boy who took them as if he did not want to, but knew that he must. 
It was Carolus who waved to his brother and sister, standing hand and hand, 
urging them on into the hole while he held high the lantern.
For a very long moment Johanna did not move. Susan was a part of her fear of the 
dark—of this place she did not know and that she hated to enter. Then she 
glanced down at Florian, and drawing the younger boy closer to her full skirt, 
she went on, Carolus following them, still holding high his lantern.
Once more the man in green faced the wall, placed his hands high against it on 
either side of the hole. For a second time Susan could not see just what had 
happened, she only was sure that the hole had closed. And once it closed, he was 
gone also. Dark—thick, black and horrible—held her, and she screamed, the very 
force of that cry rasping her sore throat painfully.
Dark—she was caught in the dark—forever and ever—and ever… !
“Mike! Tucky!” She found breath enough past the heavy weight of the dark 
pressing in upon her to call their names.
“Susan! Mike! Tucker!”
Who was that? At least she was not alone here!
“Please—please… !” Her voice began high in a near scream, dwindled to a whimper.
There was light flooding about Susan, dazing and dazzling her so that for a 
moment, she was blinded by it and had to blink and blink. She was back—in that 
room where they had found Tucky beating on the wall— the wall that had once had 
a door and was now sealed.
Susan felt so weak she feared she was going to fall, then Mike was 
there—standing right beside her. And—and there was Tucky, facing the wall.
“Miss Hendrika, you all right? What in the world’s going on down here?” came 
Mrs. Kingsley’s voice from a distance.
Susan turned her head a fraction. There was Great-Aunt Hendrika standing just 
within the storeroom door. Her hands were pressed against her cheeks, her face 
was very pale, her eyes were wide. Just like Tucky, she stared at the wall. And 
Susan realized that perhaps all of them had seen— might even have felt—what she 
herself had seen and felt.
“In there.” Tucker pointed with one of his bandaged hands. “They have waited so 
long—right in there.”
“All right, Tuck.” Mike moved forward and caught his brother, drawing Tucker’s 
small pajama-clad body close to him. Then, shedding his own robe, he wrapped it 
around Tucker. “We know now.”
Though Tucky made no attempt to pull free of his brother, he continued to look 
to the wall another long moment before he turned his head up to Mike.
“They want out.”
Mike nodded. “We’ll get them, Tucky, as soon as we can, we’ll get them.”
Susan shook her head slowly. Even now she could not believe that she was not 
caught up in a nightmare—that she was not dreaming all this. The pressing-down 
fear was gone, leaving her feeling very queer and limp—as she had after she had 
had the flu last year.
“Children…” Great-Aunt Hendrika’s voice had certainly lost all its 
commander-of-the-base power. She sounded like Susan felt—weak and shaky. 
“Children…” she began again.
But she could not find the right words. Mike drew Tucker back from that solid 
wall.
“You saw it, too,” he said to her, not asking a question, just stating a fact.
Great-Aunt Hendrika made a queer sound. Then she spoke clearly again and with 
some of her old forcefulness. “I saw—yes, I saw. Come.”
She swept forward and caught up Tucky. Carrying him, held tight against her, she 
sidled out of the storage-room sidewise, her attention still on that wall. 
Tucker did not fight her, instead he had relaxed in her arms, now rested his 
head against her shoulder. Susan stumbled after them, Mike catching up, his arm 
flung about his sister’s shoulders, giving her warmth and support she had never 
wanted so much in her whole life before.
Mrs. Kingsley was halfway down the cellar stairs.
“What in—” She began a question. Then something in Great-Aunt Hendrika’s face 
silenced her. Instead she turned and went up quickly, letting them past before 
she switched out the light, closed the door, setting the crossbar in place once 
more.
Great-Aunt Hendrika got as far as the rocking chair and dropped into it, Tucky 
still in her arms. He looked as if he were asleep, his eyes were closed, and he 
was breathing evenly.
“A hot drink…” Great-Aunt looked to Mrs. Kingsley. “I think we can all well do 
with that, Martha. This has been— Oh, I refuse to think about it now. I don’t 
know what to believe—after tonight I simply do not know.”
Mrs. Kingsley handed Mike the old crocheted afghan, which lay on one of the 
fireplace settles, and he wrapped it around him in place of the robe Tucky wore. 
Mrs. Kingsley put a kettle on the stove, set out mugs, then rummaged in the 
cupboard for a jar from which she measured what looked like tea into a big pot. 
She also got out the honey jar.
“Best mixture for nerves—honey—need that for shock.” She might be talking to 
herself. “Drink this good and hot, then perhaps the whole lot of you won’t come 
down with colds. I don’t know what’s been happening—but it seems mighty 
upsetting whatever.” She paused a moment, as she went toward the kettle—which 
was beginning to make boiling noises, to look at the cellar door.
“To tell the truth—I never did fancy going down in that place. Never said it 
before but I do now. There’s something mighty unhealthy down there. Never does 
to give into nerves and I never have, but—” She shrugged, took the tea kettle 
off the stove and poured the water into the waiting pot.
“Give it a good minute or two. Then you’ll all drink it down!” There was a 
sergeant’s emphasis in her voice. “I would like to know, though, how that young 
one got past me. One minute he was safe in his bed and I thought he’d gone off 
to sleep, the next I was looking at an empty bed. And when I went hunting him, 
all of you had gone—just as if you had disappeared into thin air. Like one of 
those old stories…”
Great-Aunt Hendrika straightened a little. Some color had returned to her face, 
and she looked more like herself.
“Stories? What have you heard, Martha?”
When Mrs. Kingsley did not answer at once, she spoke more sharply: “I want to 
know. Oh, you need not mind saying anything in front of the children—not after 
tonight. I think perhaps they know more than a great many who have lived under 
this roof in the past had even begun to guess.”
Mrs. Kingsley produced a small strainer and poured the tea through it into the 
waiting mugs.
“You know yourself, Miss Hendrika, that there are some folks about as would not 
stay a night under this roof for a farm, as my father used to say. There’s 
always been a cloud over this house (though I will admit that in the new wing 
one doesn’t feel it) ever since that day of blood. I’m a sensible woman and have 
been all my days. Never took to imagining things even when I was as small as 
that tad you’re holding now. But there are feelings sometimes—and I must be well 
shook out of myself to admit that much.
“It’s always the children, though, it acted upon. Not those who are full grown. 
Not all children either. Maybe those affected the most had a drop more of the 
old blood somehow. You need only do a little thinking back yourself, Miss 
Hendrika. I remember when Grover died and your Cousin Hester vowed she’d never 
set foot under this roof again. He was found down in the cellar, and he went 
into a real high fever. Said some strange things then. Finally he got away from 
that nurse they brought from the city and fell—down those cellar steps. He was 
so weak they judged he missed a step and just tumbled.
“There were others, too—”
“Jethro and Emily, Richard and Tod, and James…” Susan said slowly. Once more, 
like a shadow quickly gone, she felt a touch of fear chill within her.
Now Mrs. Kingsley swung around, the tea dripping from the strainer into the 
sink, to stare at the girl.
“Where—where did you hear tell of them?” she asked.
“They were in the Bible. And they are the dolls, too. Jethro and Emily died in 
1851, and Richard and Tod in 1880, and James— he was after. But Betsy and the 
two Orrins and Hester—they didn’t die—until much later. Mike looked it up. Only 
all of them are the dolls—all of them! Just like Johanna, and Carolus and 
Florian—who were the first ones—the real ones!” Why they were any more real than 
the others Susan could not have explained, she was only sure that they were.
“The dolls,” Great-Aunt Hendrika said. “Yes, the dolls. But why didn’t Hester 
destroy them when she hated the family custom so? She always swore that she 
would. I remember she would not even look at them when Aunt Bess made them for 
Christmas and gave them to her—the set with her own self among them, added to 
the old ones. And—” She shook her head. “I am not going to make any guesses, I 
can’t. This goes beyond guessing, and I want to talk to someone who can 
understand.
“Tucker”—her voice was a little more brisk—“do you think you can drink a little 
of this?”
She had braced him up and was holding the mug Mrs. Kingsley had given her to his 
lips. His eyes opened slowly and he obediently accepted a sip. Susan held 
another mug between her hands and so did Mike. The darkish liquid tasted a 
little like peppermint and was sweet. As it went down Susan’s throat, she began 
to feel warm inside and oddly, as if something very heavy she had been carrying 
for a long time had been taken away from her, leaving her free and very sleepy. 
If she could just get to bed, Susan thought, she was going to sleep and sleep 
and sleep—and never dream again.



Chapter 12
 



« ^ » 
There were flaring lights on all over the house and for that Susan was very 
glad. She came back up those stairs, down which Johanna, Carolus, Florian, and 
the painted man had gone, to stumble into her own room where more lights 
banished all shadows. Even so, she made a detour so that she could not even look 
sidewise into the misty mirror. On the bed was the box she had emptied so 
hastily—and the two piles of dolls.
There also lay the three which she had taken up, wanting to burn—to destroy 
them. There were faces on them now. She could see them. But, though she put out 
her hand very slowly to touch them, there was nothing frightening about them 
now. All that fear was gone. These were only paper—old paper cut into patterns, 
pasted and glued together. They were just dolls. Swiftly she repacked them layer 
by layer in the box, pressed the lid tightly down. Then rummaging in her school 
case she found a roll of tape and sealed the box around and around—finally 
pushing it into the bottom of the big wardrobe.
Susan snapped the light switch and made for bed, half throwing herself beneath 
the covers, pulling them tightly up around her shoulders, for she was shivering, 
but the cold was no longer inside her. She thumped her head determinedly back on 
her pillow and closed her eyes. Though in her was still a small touch of fear. 
Was she going to dream—about them?
“Sue! Sue!”
At first that call sounded faint and far away. Then came a pounding—a pounding 
on a wall that would not open again? Susan’s eyes snapped open as a sharp thrust 
of fear ran through her. The room was not dark. Bright sun shone across the bed, 
touched the walls. Also she felt—Susan shook her head. She could not have 
explained just how she felt—just that for the first time since she had come into 
this room it was only that—a plain room—with strange old furniture—but still a 
place in which people— just ordinary people like Mike, and Tucky, Mother and 
Dad, and Susan—had lived and been happy and sometimes sad. There were no shadows 
now in the corners. They no longer had the right to be there!
“Sue!” Again that pounding. That was certainly Mike’s voice from the hallway. 
She slid swiftly out of bed. It must be late—there was so much sun in the room. 
And she felt hungry, as if the time for breakfast was well past.
“I’m here.” She opened the door. Her brother was dressed and frowning a little.
“You sure can sleep! The G.-A. sent me up to see what was the matter.”
“What time is it?”
Mike did not even look at his watch. From below stairs, carrying all the way up 
to them, came the bong of the big hall clock. Ten strokes! Susan was more than a 
little surprised. Ten? She had slept that late?
“Tucky?”
“Eating up half the muffins,” Mike reported. “If you want any you had better get 
a move on. Mrs. Kingsley’s pretty flustered this morning and we’re having a 
mixed-up lot of things to eat.”
“Great-Aunt Hendrika?” Susan was more than a little surprised at Tucker’s quick 
recovery. Though he did have a habit of bouncing back from colds, and he had 
been the first one to get through the chicken pox they had all had at one time. 
Once he made up his mind that he was well Tucky just was.
“She made some phone calls—and then she went out,” Mike reported. “I think she’s 
gone now to see Mr. Reevers down at the church. That Dr. Ferguson, she called 
him first, asked him to come back.”
“I’ll hurry,” Susan promised as Mike went on to his room, coming back, as she 
passed him in the hall on the way to the bathroom, with the big brown diary book 
under his arm.
Dressing was a sketchy business, which Susan did in a hurry. She didn’t use her 
hairbrush, or look in the mirror. Not because she was afraid of that misty old 
glass any longer, but because she was hungry, and from what Mike had said there 
was something unusual awaiting them all.
Mrs. Kingsley was at the sink, washing the plates and cups with such clatter 
that Susan wondered whether most of them would come out lacking a handle or 
chipped along the edge.
“Serve yourself,” she said as Susan came to the table. Tucker sat on the kitchen 
stool, running his tongue upward to lick off the smear of mingled jam and milk 
on his upper lip. Susan stared. Last night might never have been, except for the 
now somewhat grimy looking bandages around her brother’s hands.
She scraped the last of the oatmeal out of the pot on the stove into a bowl, and 
then helpfully carried the pot to the waiting-to-be-washed pile. There was brown 
sugar in its own dish, and this she sifted over her cereal, watching Tucker. He 
met her eyes with an odd sidewise glance of his own, as if he did not want to 
talk, and crammed another muffin into his mouth.
Susan ate slowly, but somehow she was no longer so hungry. Inside, she felt the 
old familiar tightness growing in her stomach. Up above in her bedroom, she had 
felt free and light. Down here—Susan made herself look deliberately across the 
width of the table to the barred cellar door—down here something else was going 
to happen!
She stopped eating, no longer hungry. It even made her queasy to see Tucker 
munching away. In fact, it made her uneasy to watch Tucker at all. It was as if 
he knew something that was not only exciting but dreadfully frightening, and 
that he thought about it all the time. Sooner or later he was going to tell 
Susan what she did not want in the least to hear.
“That all you going to eat, child?” Mrs. Kingsley saw Susan folding up her 
napkin.
“I—I don’t feel very hungry. Just don’t want any more, thank you.”
Mrs. Kingsley shook her head. “All right then, run along with you. Miss Hendrika 
has some errands. She won’t be back for a while.”
Run where—to the library? What about Tucker? He had finished the last of the 
muffins with what Susan considered unsightly gorging, but had made no move to 
get down from his stool perch and go to wash as he had always been sternly 
ordered to do. It would seem that Mrs. Kingsley expected him to stay where he 
was. Slowly Susan cleaned up after herself and then went down the hall to the 
library.
Mike was there, on the window seat where Tucky had sat earlier, the diary of 
Jacobus Kuydall spread open on one knee. He was squinting down at the dim 
writing on one page when Susan marched over to him.
“Mike—what is going to happen?” She pressed one hand hard to settle her unhappy 
stomach. She was not horribly afraid as she had been last night, but there was 
still the knowledge that ahead of them lay trouble of some sort. “Tucky doesn’t 
seem sick this morning.”
“No.” Mike’s answer was a putting-off one, but Susan refused to allow that to 
matter.
“Did Great-Aunt Hendrika call Mother and Dad?”
“I don’t think so. She had other things to think about, I guess.” Mike sounded 
angry.
“Should we, if she did forget?” Susan persisted.
“Later—maybe…” He suddenly turned the book around so that Susan could see for 
herself a very much faded colored picture that took up one whole page.
“That’s—that’s Great-Aunt Hendrika— and—and…” Susan was startled.
The woman in the picture stood very stiffly, wearing a strange brown dress that 
was fringed and had a patterning of beads on the shoulders and around the neck. 
Strings of what looked to be the teeth or claws of animals formed two necklaces 
and her hair was in two long braids framing her strong-featured face. In her 
hand she held against her body, as if it were a shield, a painted mask with the 
mouth drawn down to one side, the eyes very large and outlined heavily with 
black. Across the nose of the carved face ran a broad band of yellow like the 
one Susan had seen on the face of the green-coated man. Only he had been real 
—no mask or picture.
Beside the woman was a man. The upper part of his body was bare except for a 
necklace of claws, very long claws, and on his chest was painted a queer-looking 
bird, its wings outstretched. The bird had been painted in red and blue, and 
there were two small blue stripes on the man’s chin, and a yellow line starting 
between his eyes and running up his hairline.
His head was very strange, shaved bare over his ears up to near the top of his 
skull. There an upstanding spiky growth of hair ran from front to back. On his 
legs he wore tightly fitting, fringed breeches, and there were moccasins on his 
feet. One of his hands had been drawn as if reaching out for the mask the woman 
held. Susan had an idea that she did not intend to give it to him.
“Who are they?”
“This one”—Mike pointed a finger at the woman—“is someone called Strong Woman. 
She—well, I suppose maybe you’d call her a witch. Anyway, they all believed she 
could give you good luck or bad, whichever she thought you deserved. And this—I 
think it might just be Jacobus, only it doesn’t say so…” He indicated the man. 
“He wanted a lot of power and he thought he might get it through her. Only she 
did not favor him much. This tells about a ceremony of some sort, but ends by 
saying that fortune was not favorable.”
“If he had more hair and a green coat…” Susan ventured.
“Yes—Jacobus, the renegade.” Mike closed the book. “This”—he held up the old 
volume —“doesn’t go far enough. It ends right after the big meeting of the Six 
Nations where Sir William Johnson tried to keep the tribes neutral.”
Susan was remembering what Mike had told Tucker.
“He was the one who died.”
Mike nodded. “He died. Then others won out and the Nations joined the British. 
That was the start of it all.”
“Jacobus…” Susan moved farther into the sun patch by the window. Somehow she 
wanted it around her now. “Was it Jacobus?” she asked in a low voice. “That man 
we saw?”
Mike dropped the book on the desk with a distinct bang.
“Was it anything?” he demanded. “People don’t see things that happened two 
hundred years ago—”
“How do you know?” Susan demanded. “How do you know what any of us could see or 
not see? You and Dad—don’t you remember how you talked that time about how there 
was a lot of our brains we didn’t use at all—that no one could understand why or 
what that part was even intended to do? So there are people who can do things 
that are strange and queer, and frightening. Why, even in the space program, 
they were thinking of trying to see if people were telepathic and could send 
messages that way. I heard Dad talking about it with Dr. Stangley and Colonel 
Pitts right at our own table back home.
“And Tucky—you know that Tucky tested clear off some of those old charts that 
Dr. Ramish had and how excited the doctor was about that. Maybe Tucky is one of 
those who has a chance to use part of his closed-off mind—maybe it was Tucky’s 
coming here that started it all for us.” She was guessing, but it seemed to her 
that there was something true about this guessing.
Mike ran his hand along the edge of the desk, almost as if he were wiping the 
feel of the book from it. Then he turned around, his back to her, his shoulders 
hunched a little. Susan felt the excitement in her growing—and this time it did 
not make her feel sick.
“Something important is going to happen.” She spoke her main thought out loud.
Mike stood very still, his hand stopping in midsweep. Then he turned to face her 
again.
“Yes.” He answered as if he did not want to say the word at all but had to.
“Did Great-Aunt say—” Susan began.
“She didn’t say anything to me. And she closed the door to the hall when she 
phoned from downstairs. We’ll just have to wait.”
How long, Susan wondered to herself. There was a queer shut-in expression on 
Mike’s face. There were always times, though not too many of them, when he would 
not talk about things. There was no use her prodding and poking to find out what 
or why.
Susan went over to the bookshelf and ran her fingers along the backs of the 
books. The ones on the first shelf—Emily had maybe read those—or Jethro. Then 
came those that Richard and Tod had held. And James’s… They had all been real 
once— not just names, and paper dolls, but real people like Mike, and her, and 
Tucker. Just as the others had been real—Johanna, Carolus, Florian. There were 
no books here with those names written in them—maybe there were no books for 
children way back in those days. She fingered a book on the second shelf, pulled 
it out and marched over to the window seat with it in hand.
Granny’s Wonderful Chair. Susan had refused to look for the name of an owner in 
the front. Now she began doggedly to read. It was the only way she could think 
of to try and forget or subdue her feelings of something ahead—something that 
was—no, she was through being frightened! She would not be frightened!
They had lunch promptly at twelve. Tucker had seemingly spent the morning in the 
kitchen. When they were called by Mrs. Kingsley, he was, of all things, seated 
in the rocking chair, while squeezed in beside him was Josiah who opened his 
eyes lazily as Mike and Susan entered. Tucker had one hand deep in the thick fur 
of the cat’s back and was in the midst of a story about last Halloween when 
Jimmy Smithers back home had carved out a real pumpkin and put a black kitten 
inside until his mother caught him at it. It was as if the Tucker they had known 
since they came to the Kuydall house had never existed at all.
“Gingerbread!” he greeted his sister and brother. “And I got the lickin’ of the 
bowl. Uhmmm!”
In spite of her unease Susan managed a better lunch, but they were still at the 
table when they heard a car come into the side yard. A moment or two later 
Great-Aunt Hendrika came through the back door, bringing with her not only Mr. 
but Mrs. Reevers.
“Any calls?” she asked abruptly before they were fairly inside.
“He’ll be here at two, Miss Hendrika, called his friend long distance, and those 
two will drive up—him and some other man. Didn’t catch the name of that one. Jim 
went over to the Evers’ to get help—so that’s all arranged for. I got things 
ready in the dining room, you folks just go on in. Eloise”— her mouth turned 
down at the corners in marked disapproval—“she has taken a headache—or so she 
says.”
Susan watched Great-Aunt Hendrika and the Reevers go on down the hall. The fact 
that they were not sharing any lunch with the Whelans must mean that they were 
talking over something. She knew the signs. Mrs. Reevers, however, did stop for 
a moment beside Tucker’s chair and ask him how he felt, to be answered by a wide 
grin and some indistinct words impolitely uttered around a full mouthful of 
gingerbread.
At two there were indeed more arrivals. The library had been off limits, the 
Whelans judged, when the Reevers and Great-Aunt Hendrika had withdrawn there 
after lunch and closed the door. So they had gone outside into the crisp air and 
wandered around, Tucker kicking up the drifts of leaves the wind was bringing 
down. Jim was not working at the compost pile. Instead he had brought out two 
heavy bars of metal, a couple of spades, and a big pickaxe, setting them up 
against the side of what had once been the barn. There was another man standing 
there watching, but when the Whelans would have joined them, Jim told them, in a 
not-to-be-contradicted voice, to run along.
Dr. Ferguson came, with him two other men who went directly to the front door of 
the house. It was only minutes later when Mrs. Kingsley opened the back door and 
waved to the children, beckoning them in.
The library seemed full of people when the three went in to join Great-Aunt 
Hendrika, who was sitting behind the desk, with Dr. Ferguson on one side and Mr. 
Reevers on the other.
“Susan, will you go and get the dolls?” Great-Aunt Hendrika’s voice was calm and 
as forceful as ever. Susan found it easy to obey, leaving to fetch the taped-up 
box she had hidden.
When she returned, they were not looking toward the door as if they expected 
her, rather they were all watching Tucker and he was talking.
“They waited—and waited…” He held up both bandaged hands balled into fists as if 
he were again pounding on the wall. “ ’Cause they were hiding when the bad men 
were in the house. Just like they were told—”
“And who told them, Tucker?” asked the strange man Dr. Ferguson had brought 
along (one of them—the other—seemed to have disappeared. At least he was not in 
the room now).
“The man—the man who showed them the place to wait.” Tucker shook his head. 
“He—he was a bad one, but he thought they would be safe there.”
“How do you know that?” The same quiet voice asked the question as Susan came 
forward and laid the box of dolls on the desk top.
“I just know.” There was a shade of stubbornness on Tucker’s face. “They 
believed him. But he never came—he promised but he never came!” He shook his 
head violently from side to side.
Dr. Ferguson spoke then to Great-Aunt Hendrika. “Was there any family tradition 
of any such a place? I have heard of hiding holes in case of attack.”
“None in our traditions or records,” she repeated firmly. “Of course, Jacobus 
was here when his father died, and his brother was not. There was not much 
sympathy between the father, old Jacobus, and Hendrik at the time, because 
Hendrik was serving with Washington’s army in the East. Such a secret might have 
been shared only with the son the father favored.”
Tucker sat swinging his feet, watching the people on the other side of the desk 
with bright interest. Maybe he was going to add some “ ’maginings” now, but he 
did not say anything.
It was to Susan that the man who asked the questions now turned.
“These are the dolls?” He put out his hand toward the box she pushed closer with 
a good shove. Let him open it up. Even though she did not fear them anymore, 
somehow she did not want to handle them again. He peeled off the tape she had 
used and then brought them out, arranging them on the top of the desk, 
discarding their clothing but looking closely at each doll—turning it over to 
read the name on the back, bringing out a small magnifying glass to study the 
faces.
“Undoubtedly these must have been painted from life—and quite skillfully,” he 
said of Jethro, Emily, and the first Orrin, “while these are from photographs. 
They were intended to resemble real children. Who made them?”
For a second or two Susan thought that Great-Aunt Hendrika was not going to 
answer, then she did in a low voice.
“By tradition, Jethro, Emily and Orrin were by their mother. She had some talent 
as a painter of miniatures, it is said. They were made in imitation of the first 
three Kimbles. The others—” She shook her head. “I do not honestly know—except 
it had become a family tradition somehow. Those, however—” She indicated the 
three of wood and skin. “There is a story about them, which is another family 
tradition. Mistress Hughes is said to have made them.”
“Ah—” That came from Dr. Ferguson, almost like a sigh. He reached down to take 
from a briefcase beside his chair a bundle of printed sheets held together in a 
clear plastic sack. “Mistress Hughes! Also known as Strong Woman—the famous 
Oneida witch!”
Great-Aunt’s head came up sharply. “She was no more a witch than I am. A healer, 
yes. She was with Betje Kuydall when the raid started, but it was her house that 
was attacked first, although she was not there, any more than Betje was here. 
They were both with a woman having a difficult birth. Margaret Hughes was part 
Oneida, yes, and they believed she had powers. The Indians did not touch her. 
But the renegades killed her son and her daughter. Some said that Jacobus 
ordered it because she had crossed him in some way, even though she was close 
kin through his mother. Something to do with the power he always craved and 
wanted to seize here.
“Yes, the story of the curse started then. Margaret Hughes turned against all 
the Kuydalls. After the raid she went away—nor was she heard of again, though 
Hendrik searched for her as well as for his children. It is all in that—” She 
waved one hand to the packet of loose pages Dr. Ferguson held.
Susan glanced down at the three first dolls. Yes, even as had been true this 
morning, the faces were now plain. At least she could see them and they were the 
same faces the shadowy people had worn.
Having arranged the dolls to his liking, the man gazed once more at Susan.
“Tell me,” he said, “what happened last night?”
She twisted her hands in the belt that held up her jeans. No, she did not want 
to remember—even though it was all past now. Only something was making her. Just 
as last night something had made her follow those four, who had been shadows and 
then became people, down the stairs and through the house.
Taking a deep breath, Susan began—with her dream and the hands reaching out to 
her—with Tucker’s sleepwalking and their visit to the cellar—and finally with 
the need to destroy the dolls and how that had taken her into the hall. So, as 
she talked, she watched the man in green come up the stairs again. Once she had 
started, she could not have stopped talking even if she had been allowed to. Her 
words came faster and faster, as if she were seeing it all over again. Except 
that the fear was now dulled and she could push it aside. When she finished, the 
man turned to Mike.
From Mike came another version of the same adventure. Only Mike added more 
details, how he had pulled Tucker off his sister when she had taken the dolls to 
destroy them and had fallen in the hall, and of his own sight of the four they 
followed, three of whom had vanished into the wall slit.
“Miss Kuydall—” Now the man with the quiet, almost gentle voice spoke to their 
great aunt.
“Dr. Winston, I can only repeat what I have said earlier. I have never believed 
in such things. Oh, I have read many accounts of so-called haunted houses, 
everyone does at one time or another, I am sure. I have always slept in the 
portion of the house that was added about 1840, and I have never seen or heard 
of anything out of the ordinary —until last night. My cousin Hester—she hated 
this house, and it is true that one of her brothers, as a young boy, died here. 
He had been ill and was sent here to convalesce. Then her son Grover… he had a 
bad case of the flu and was found dead at the bottom of the cellar 
stairs—supposed to have wandered in his fever. Hester came to believe firmly in 
what is termed the ‘curse.’
“But what my great niece and nephew— and Tucker—have told you, though Tucker’s 
reactions were the strongest, is essentially true for last night. I, too, saw 
exactly what they did. I—what can I believe now—?” She turned her head a little 
and looked to Mr. Reevers. “Did we actually witness something that happened? Or 
was it a mass hallucination of some type? If so, what induced it among the four 
of us? Mrs. Kingsley saw nothing. Also she was oddly unaware that Tucker had 
even left his bed until we were all downstairs. Was it because we were Kuydalls 
by blood that only we were so affected?”
“There is no answer I can give you,” Mr. Reevers said slowly. “There are many 
theories—yes… Perhaps Dr. Winston can offer one or two—”
“Many theories indeed. One is that a deeply emotional happening makes a print of 
itself, just as a camera takes a picture, upon the area in which that action 
occurred. People who are sensitive to the emotion can pick up sights, sounds, 
even a reenactment of the action if the conditions are right.
“Also it is well known that children attract certain forces we do not 
understand, for all our probing. The poltergeist phenomenon is often associated 
with some young person of the disturbed household. From past events here”—he 
glanced down once more at the paper dolls—“it would appear that children 
inheriting the Kuydall blood— some of them—were sensitive to a strange 
influence. You have said that in two cases this came after the child had been 
seriously ill. Many times psychic powers are awakened by illness. I can give you 
no real answer. Though I do believe that you saw—all of you”—he stared the 
longest at Tucker— “did see exactly what you have reported. And that it has a 
meaning—which should be investigated.”



Chapter 13
 



« ^ 
The third man, the stranger who had driven in with Dr. Ferguson, had come in 
while Dr. Winston was speaking. Great-Aunt Hendrika spoke directly to him in her 
old “commander” voice.
“Well, Mr. Standish?”
“There is no outward sign of any kind,” he returned. “However, I would say that 
the wall there is unusually thick, even though our measurements have had to be 
mostly by guess. Without any clues the only answer is to try and take out some 
of the stones—at the right place. But to discover that— ”
Tucker slid off his chair and went directly to the stranger.
“You want to let them out! I’ll show you—I know!” The words seemed to explode 
out of him. He turned and made for the door of the library, passing Susan and 
Mike before they could grab him. All the others were startled for a moment, 
simply watching him go. But Susan, though she had herself not the slightest wish 
to return to that bad-smelling place underground, hurried after him. Mike was 
only a step or two behind. And she thought, from the sounds she heard, that all 
the others were following.
They passed through the kitchen, where there was no sign of Mrs. Kingsley. Just 
as they had been before, the two big cats were seated in front of the barred 
cellar door, staring at it as if the silent demand they seemed to be making 
would at last open it.
Tucker reached up to jerk at the bar. It moved but he did not have strength 
enough to lift it. Mike pushed his brother aside to slide it out, dropping it to 
the floor with a thud. Susan pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. She 
was not going to be sick. She could not be—not now.
The door opened and Mike caught Tucker, holding him by a handful of T-shirt 
between his shoulders, until he found the light switch. But the two cats had not 
waited for that. They vanished down the stairs together, so quickly Susan hardly 
saw their disappearing tail tips.
With the light on, and the steps clear before them, Mike loosed his hold on 
Tucker. He had to, for the smaller boy had swung halfway round to pound his 
brother’s mid-section with his bandaged hands. Tucker’s face was bright red. He 
was plainly building up a burst of real temper and a steep stairs was no place 
for any struggle.
As the cats had done. Tucker shot down the stairs so fast Susan was afraid he 
would lose his footing and fall. She had to keep one hand on the rail beside her 
because she once more felt that queer floating that had hit her last night. Mike 
was a little ahead as they both saw Tucker head straight for the storeroom where 
they had found him earlier.
He was back at the wall when they squeezed through the door together. On either 
side of him sat one of the cats, watching the wall with the same eager attention 
with which they had watched the closed door above. Then the others came 
in—Great-Aunt Hendrika, the Reevers, Dr. Ferguson, Dr. Winston, and Mr. 
Standish, who seemed to know about walls. There were two others following him, 
Jim and another man in workclothes.
Tucker paid no attention to the people crowding into the room behind him. He had 
gone very close to the wall, standing on tiptoe, stretching his hands well over 
his head. Then he moved slowly along from right to left, though as far as Susan 
could see he did not touch any of the rough stones. He stopped short, to pat the 
wall.
“Here! Right here!” His voice was high and excited, though he did not turn to 
face any of those behind him in the storeroom.
“The outer wall.” That was Great-Aunt Hendrika. “But there is nothing there. You 
can see—nothing!”
Susan thought she sounded as if she wanted to believe that was true, even 
though, deep inside her, she knew that it was not.
“Let me see, son.” Mr. Standish moved quickly up beside Tucker, pushing past 
Susan and Mike. Josiah snarled and spat at him, but grudgingly moved aside. 
Though there was a light hanging from a cord in the ceiling, Mr. Standish held a 
big camper’s torch and now centered its full beam on the old stones.
Flakes of old whitewash showed here and there, but mostly the gray of the stone 
was dark and damp looking. He moved very close, Tucker standing aside as if 
willing to yield place to him. He pushed a fingertip here and there, as if 
picking at the mortar between the old stones.
“No evidence that I can see…” he began.
Tucker uttered a yell of real anger, such as Susan and Mike had heard only too 
many times before in their lives. He shoved against the man’s leg and strained 
up on his toes to pound one fist against the stone, crying out in pain at it.
“In there!” he nearly screamed and ended by kicking at the stones.
“All right, all right.” Mr. Standish kept the torch on the wall. “Don’t get 
yourself so heated up about it, son.” He looked at the others. “It is up to you, 
Miss Kuydall. Do we try it?”
Great-Aunt Hendrika’s face, in the dimmer light of the storeroom, looked queer. 
Her eyes, behind the lenses of her glasses, seemed as large as they did last 
night and her lips were very tight together. Susan watched her. Did Great-Aunt 
Hendrika feel a little as Susan did now—afraid and sick? Then those tight lips 
moved.
“It must be done.” Great-Aunt Hendrika’s voice was low and hoarse. She also made 
a small gesture with her hand.
They all crowded back against the rough wooden walls, pushing for room among the 
piles of baskets and crates. Even Tucker and the cats moved aside to give more 
space to Jim and the other man who were carrying a pick and a big iron bar.
However, it was Mr. Standish who took a piece of chalk from his pocket and, 
after a moment of studying the wall, marked a narrow strip up and down between 
certain stones. He stood a little to one side, as Jim brought the pickaxe down.
They might have expected to have a long hard job. At least they had come 
prepared for that. But at the second blow, a grating noise echoed through the 
room. Jim and his coworker jumped back to escape the fall of a whole section of 
stones. Though they appeared separate, they had all been fastened to a piece of 
wood that broke apart as it hit the cellar floor.
Susan gave a small gasp and reached out. She was glad to meet Mike’s hand, even 
if he grabbed her fingers so tightly it was painful. A dank, evil smell, far 
worse than the one that had always been in the cellar, came from the hole 
beyond. Jim and his helper moved to one side as Mr. Standish stepped forward to 
flash the torch beyond.
Susan’s mouth felt dry and with the churning in her stomach… No, she would not 
throw up, she was determined about that. Mr. Standish stooped a little, swinging 
the light downward. Then he backed out. He turned around and his face looked 
nearly as odd as Great-Aunt Hendrika’s had earlier.
It was Dr. Ferguson who spoke first:
“Is there anything there, Standish?”
“Yes, there is.”
“Oh… !” The broken cry came from Great-Aunt Hendrika. Susan saw Mrs. Reevers 
catch her aunt’s hand and hold it comfortingly between both of hers. But it was 
Mr. Reevers who moved forward to speak with authority.
“Please, Miss Kuydall—you—Marjory—the children—must go. We shall do everything 
that is necessary here. There is no reason—”
“So long, so very long…” Great-Aunt Hendrika’s voice was hardly above a whisper. 
“Right here and so long…”
Mrs. Reevers had her arm around Great-Aunt Hendrika’s shoulders. Great-Aunt 
Hendrika’s mouth puckered up. She looked really ill. Susan edged away from the 
hole and was glad that Mike continued to hold her hand. It was Tucker who really 
surprised them.
He paid no attention to the hole in the wall, but came directly to stand before 
Great-Aunt Hendrika, looking up at her soberly.
“They are gone. They waited—but they don’t have to wait anymore. They’ve gone— 
truly. And—and—they only wanted to be free, to go.”
She looked down into Tucker’s earnest face turned up to hers. Then she gently 
loosened Mrs. Reevers’s hold and stooped to catch Tucker up in a tight embrace. 
He did not try to free himself as he ordinarily would. Instead, he was smiling.
“It’s all right, they’ve gone now,” he repeated.
“Yes.” She turned, Mrs. Reevers behind her and, still carrying Tucker, went out 
of the storeroom, Susan and Mike behind. Whatever lay beyond that wall hole no 
longer mattered. What had been there—even if it was, as Dr. Weston said, only 
the remains of a terrible fear—that was gone, too.
They were gathered once more in the library, Tucker still sitting on Great-Aunt 
Hendrika’s lap, but none of them talking very much, when Dr. Ferguson and Mr. 
Reevers returned. The men hesitated, as if they did not know just how to say 
what they wanted to.
“We’ll bury them by the monument—and with a service,” Great-Aunt Hendrika said. 
Though she still held Tucker gently, much of her old command had returned.
Mr. Reevers nodded. “Of course,” he echoed her. “But there is something else you 
should know. Those children were not alone. I think that perhaps the true story 
is quite different from the evil one that has always been accepted. Perhaps 
there was a special need to let everyone know that.”
Dr. Ferguson took up the story now. “There was another door now rotted through, 
beyond that inner space. It gave on a passageway that had collapsed. Between the 
door and that fall of earth was—well, I think it could only have been Jacobus. 
And he had been coming in from the other side—to set the children free. There 
were indications that he had been badly wounded. Perhaps he used his last 
strength to try and reach the children, just as he had hidden them from the 
raiders. He was not—”
“Perhaps,” Great-Aunt Hendrika said slowly, “he was mad when he planned the raid 
and sanity returned to him too late. What must have been his burden then!”
“At least,” Mr. Reevers said slowly, “they are all at peace now. Even if we do 
not know the full story and never will, the truth seems plain. We can guess—or 
hope—many things. But I do honestly believe that what we are about to do now 
will bring the old fear and horror to an end. There is too much evil in this 
unfortunate world. To be able to lay some shadows that linger is, in a way, a 
small reaching from the dark to the light. They shall be at peace, which is our 
promised heritage.”
Susan did not know why she did it, but she went swiftly to the desk top where 
the dolls Dr. Weston had been examining were lying. With care she repacked them 
just as they had once lain in the box that had fallen apart, Johanna, Carolus, 
and Florian first— then all the others in the proper order. She set the lid 
firmly on the box before she went to Mr. Reevers, who was by the door, talking 
in a low voice to Dr. Ferguson.
“Please,” she dared to interrupt and they both looked at her. “Please, bury 
these, too. They were a part of it. Let them be—” She thought of what he had 
just said—“Let them all be at peace—Jethro and Emily, and the rest—all the 
rest!”
He did not seem to think that she was foolish, or that the dolls had no 
importance. He took the box from her very gently.
“Yes, I believe you are right, Susan. It all needs to be set to rest now. This 
house has all shadows, large and small, lifted from it. These shall indeed be at 
peace also.”
It had been a long day and a queer one, Susan thought that night. She knew that 
there were still some plans in which she and Mike and Tucker would also play a 
part. Because, after all, they had been drawn into it from the beginning. There 
would be a new grave in the cemetery—right by the monument—one that would 
contain three who had been together—waiting and waiting for so very long.
There would be a second unmarked grave, too, with old troubles and hatred 
forgotten, on the other side of that standing stone, because a man who had 
planned a great act of evil had, in the end, tried to save those he believed he 
hated.
There would be in that single grave a white box. Susan turned her head on her 
pillow and saw that moonlight touched the sampler, so faded it could hardly be 
read. Jethro and Emily, Richard and Tod, James— and perhaps Grover. They had all 
tried—and it had not been their fault that they had not succeeded. Tucker was 
different. Perhaps he was the only one whom those who waited could reach. And 
they had had to wait so long for him!
Maybe their counting of time was different. Susan gave a little sigh—she hoped 
it was different. Yes, she hoped that, to them, the wait had not seemed so long.
There was a thump on her bed which startled her, and then she felt paws kneading 
the hand she had half stretched out toward the moonlit wall. Erasmus crouched 
there, purring so loudly that she could hear him. Then he turned around and 
settled down, his head pillowed on her hand, and little by little the purring 
faded away.
Susan’s eyes closed. The shadows were finally gone and they would never be back. 
It was all finished and finished right—just as any story should be, any good 
story. The Kuydall house was queer and different, but it could be a real home. 
Susan wondered sleepily why she had thought of that. Then she was truly asleep 
and there were no dreams at all waiting for her now.
—«»—«»—«»—
[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[A Proofpack-3S release — v2, html]
[January 20, 2007]