The House of Dies Drear Read Free

But Thomas kept most of his carvings for himself. He had a whole box of figures tied up in the trailer attached to the car. He intended placing them on counters and mantles all over the new house.
    Thomas could sit in front of his brothers, carving an image out of pine, and they would jump and roll all around him. When the carving was finished, the twin for whom it was made would grab it and crawl off with it. Thomas never need say, and never once were the twins wrong in knowing what carving was for which boy.
    They were fine brothers, Thomas knew.
    If the new house is haunted, he thought, the twins will tell me!

Chapter 2
    THE SEDAN HEADED through the Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and then out of North Carolina. Thomas had seen a sign and knew exactly when they entered Virginia.
    “That’s done with,” he said to himself.
    If Mr. Small noticed they had left their home state, he gave no hint. Mrs. Small slept or at least kept her eyes closed. The twins awoke, and Mr. Small told Thomas to give them their lunch. Soon the boys were subdued, staring out the windows and eating, looking far below at the bank upon bank of mist nestled in the deep valleys of the Blue Ridge.
    Thomas was thinking about the new house in Ohio. The house was a relic with secret passages and rooms. In Civil War times it had been one of the houses on the Underground Railroad system, which was a resting and hiding place for slaves fleeing through the North to Canada. Such houses had been secretly called “stations.”
    When Thomas’ father read about the station house for rent in Ohio, he had written to the foundation that owned it for a full report. For years he had hoped to explore and possibly live in a house on the Underground Railroad. Now was his chance. But not until he saw the report did he find out how important the Ohio station had been. Those who ran the house in Ohio had an even greater task than the care and concealment of running slaves. They actually encouraged the slaves to let themselves be caught and returned to slavery!
    Thomas hadn’t believed slaves went willingly back into slavery until his father had explained it to him.
    “If you’ll recall your history, Thomas, you’ll remember that the incredible history of the Underground Railroad actually began in Canada,” his father had told him. Slaves who had reached Canada in the very early 1800s and established settlements there returned by the thousands to this country in order to free others. They came back for their families; they became secret “conductors” on the Underground Railroad system. And they returned to bondage hoping to free masses of slaves.
    “But slaves continued to flee by whatever means,” Mr. Small had said, “with or without help. Upon reaching the Railroad, they might hide in our house in Ohio, where they would rest for as little as a week. Some of them were given rather large sums of money and returned again to slavery.”
    “What would slaves need with money?” Thomas had wanted to know.
    “Even a fleeing slave needs maneuvering money,” his father had said. “He would need food and shelter and the best and safest way for him to get it was to buy it from freed Negroes.”
    “But the slaves connected with the house in Ohio were going back into slavery,” Thomas had said.
    “Yes,” said Mr. Small. “And after they were caught and went back, they passed the hidden money on to other slaves, who would attempt to escape.”
    Still Thomas couldn’t believe slaves could successfully hide money on themselves without having it found.
    Some slaves did have their money found and taken away, his father said. It was dangerous work they were involved in. But others managed to return to bondage with the money still in their possession.
    “Remember,” his father had told him, “the slaves we’re talking about weren’t ordinary folks out for a peaceful stroll. Many had run for their lives for weeks from the Deep South. They had no