The House of Dies Drear Read Free Page A

idea how far they had to travel and they were armed with little more than the knowledge that moss grew only on the northern side of trees. Any who managed to get as far as Ohio and the Underground Railroad line had to be pretty brave and strong, and very clever. Most of them were young, with a wonderful, fierce desire to free themselves as well as others. It was the best of these who volunteered to return to slavery. They were hand-picked by Dies Drear himself, the abolitionist who built our house in Ohio. He alone conceived of the daring plan of returning numbers of slaves to the South with sizable amounts of money hidden on them.”
    “He must have been something!” Thomas had said.
    “He was a New Englander,” Mr. Small said, “so independent and eccentric, most Ohio abolitionists thought him crazy. He came from an enormously wealthy family of shipbuilders, and yet his house in Ohio was fairly modest. To give you an idea how odd he was,” said Mr. Small, “his house was overflowing with fine antiques, which he neither took any interest in nor sold for profit. All the furniture remained in great piles, with just enough space to get through from room to room, until the house was plundered and Drear was killed.
    “But when his plan to send slaves back to slavery worked,” said Mr. Small, “there grew among freemen and slaves an enormous respect for him. You know, they never called him by his name, partly because they feared he might be caught, but also because they were in awe of him. They called him Selah. Selah, which is no more than a musical direction to raise the voice. And yet, Selah he was. Selah , a desperate, running slave might sigh, and the name—the man—gave him the strength to go on.”
    Selah. Freedom .
    Thomas sat so quietly in the car with his eyes closed, he appeared to be sleeping. But his mind was full of thoughts about what else his father had told him was in the report from the Ohio foundation. The report went on to say that three slaves whom Dies Drear had hidden for a time were caught in an attempt to reach Canada. In truth, they were headed south again, but because they were captured on the northern side of the Ohio River they were believed to be fleeing to Canada. Their hidden money was discovered. Two of the slaves were killed by the bounty hunters who caught them. That same week, Dies Drear was murdered.
    There had been pages and pages of the report from the foundation. Thomas recalled his father poring over it until very late at night, often jumping up and stalking about the room with obvious excitement. Then his father had made a trip to Ohio. He was gone three weeks, nearly ten days longer than he had intended. While he was gone, Thomas found the report and read it.
    Thomas smiled to himself, his eyes still closed. He had discovered something in the report that his father hadn’t mentioned. There was a legend that came with the house of Dies Drear. The report made light of the legend, but when Thomas read it he was at once frightened and pleased. The legend was that two slave ghosts and the ghost of Dies Drear haunted the house to this very day.
    Right away Thomas had made up his mind that the two ghosts had to be the two slaves killed by bounty hunters. And the two ghosts had then killed Drear in revenge for their own deaths. But if all this were true, Thomas was faced with a problem.
    Why would two slave ghosts haunt a house owned by the man they had murdered, who himself haunted the very same house?
    Deep down, Thomas didn’t believe in ghosts. But when night fell, when he was alone in the dark, he feared he might see one. And if there were haunts in the new house, he wanted to be sure he had everything straight in his mind about them.
    That way they won’t ever scare me, he thought, sitting in the car. That way I’ll know how not to get in their way.
    When Mr. Small returned from his trip to Ohio, he wouldn’t talk to Thomas about the house.
    “Is the house really