Ten Days at Federal Hill: Chapter Seventeen

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Chapter Seventeen: Abe Reports

Julia and Carla sat in the alcove bed, waiting until they thought Aunt Velma would be asleep. Frances whiffled and turned in her sleep across the room. Moonlight shone through the window and then dimmed as the night went on. The girls laid out a deck of cards on the bed between then and played concentration. When the house had been silent for a long time and Frances had fallen into deep sleep, Julia and Carla tip-toed slowly through the house and up the stairs to Cecil’s room. He was sitting by the window, watching.

“Cecil!” Carla whispered. “What’re we gonna do about Abe?”

Her brother was silent. He turned to her with a finger on his lips and pointed out the window. The moon shone down on the lady statue, her head glowing an eery white among the boxwoods. The girls crept to the window. Below, two figures walked among the tall shrubs in the box garden far apart from one another, the first figure tall and careful, the second one huddled and following cautiously, creeping from bush to bush.

“That’s Edward,” Julia said softly, pointing to the first figure.

Carla thought she recognized the second figure too, but said nothing. The creature was certainly following Edward, stalking him. She wished she could warn him. Edward disappeared into the woods near the barn; the craven creature sank into darkness as well. The girls sat on Abe’s disheveled bed, and the children began to discuss in low voices what their plan should be. Cecil wanted to return to the Assembly Room that night and examine the corner where Abe disappeared. Julia was adamantly against it; her mother would be certain to hear them – the floors and doors creaked in the old house – and they’d be in more trouble than they already were. Her mother would lock the room, and they’d never get another chance to examine it.

“He’ll come back on his own,” Carla reminded Cecil. “We always did, and hardly any time had passed at home, when we did come back. Let’s just wait.”

Cecil shook his head. “The problem is, Car, we don’t know where he went. If he’s at Lucie’s house, that’s fine. But what if he went to the workhouse? Anything could happen to him there!”

“Shhh!” Julia warned.

Carla pondered this problem. “Well, from Federal Hill, going to the workhouse world seems to happen through the tunnel, right?” Cecil nodded. “So … probably he didn’t go there, since he didn’t use the tunnel.” She was picking at her nails, a sure sign she was nervous. “I think he went to Lucie’s.”

“You hope he went to Lucie’s. There’s a difference.”

All three children were silent. Finally Julia spoke.

“What are we going to do about Edward? We can’t just leave him wandering around in the woods.”

“I don’t know if we can tell him what to do,” Cecil replied. “He’s older than us --”

“Not by much,” Carla interrupted.

“Yeah, but he feels a lot older,” Cecil said. “He’s almost like an adult.”

Julia yawned. She was exhausted. The conversation ended in awkward silence, and Carla longed to lay her head on Abe’s pillow. In the end, they could not agree on a good idea for finding Abe that night, so the girls crept back to their room, and they all went to sleep.

Velma Christopher was used to being the first one awake in the morning, so at 6:00 on Tuesday she was surprised to find Carla and Cecil in the kitchen before her. They looked very groggy.

“Good morning,” she said. She straightened her prickly curlers and tied a scarf snugly at the nape of her neck.

“Good morning, Aunt Velma,” they said together. “We’re really sorry about last night,” Cecil offered.

She smiled. “I understand. It’s quite tempting to play in that room.” Her sparkly eyes peered at them closely, “… especially by moonlight!” She poured water into the kettle. “I know the kids have a hard time resisting.” She sat down across from them at the table. “It’s just that this house doesn’t belong to us, you know. It belongs to Mr. Carter, and we have to take care of it.” As the water began to hiss she laid strips of bacon in a skillet. “He was most particular about the Assembly Room.” She turned and stared down at them over her glasses again. “He said especially that no children should be in there.” She vaguely waved a fork in their direction. “Lots of historical items in there.”

“But,” Carla responded, “Shouldn’t children be exposed to history like that? I mean, getting to see important history first-hand, that’s exciting!” She tried raising her voice in an excited way. “You don’t get it in school. Kind of like a little museum in your own house!” Cecil glared at her. What was she trying to do?

Aunt Velma stood with her back to them, spatula in mid-air. “Hmm,” she said. She tilted her head. “You may have a point, Carla. I’d never thought about it that way.” She slowly stirred biscuit dough, mumbling to herself. “Not alone … adult … documents … hmm.”

Carla gave Cecil the silent signal, and they let their aunt come to her own conclusions. In a few minutes some of the boy cousins came stumbling in for breakfast and they all ate scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, and light, hot biscuits straight from the oven. Julia was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ll take a tray up to Grandmother,” Aunt Velma said. “Unless ….” She looked at Carla.

“Oh! I’d be happy to, Aunt Velma,” Carla volunteered.

Carla carried the tray of steaming food carefully. Turning the doorknob was hard while she balanced the tray on her left hand. Her grandmother’s room was stuffy and dark, and she heard at least two different snores. “Shamrock’s in here,” Carla thought. She crept across the room and found the bedside table, resting the tray there. Her grandmother mumbled, and rather than turn on a lamp, Carla twisted the blinds just a little to let in some faint light from the northern window.

Carla turned around. On the bed were her grandmother, Shamrock, and Abe. He was curled up at the foot of the bed. As Carla stood there, Shamrock began licking his hand. Abe smiled and stretched. He woke and looked around.

“I fell asleep,” he mumbled. His face was confused “Carla! How’d you get here? He looked at his hand. “That dog --” Then he noticed his grandmother. “I’m back home!”

“Shhh!” Carla said. “Come here!” And she led him from the room.

In the hallway she peppered him with questions. “Where did you go? Did you meet anyone? Were you scared? Were there children there?” Abe’s eyes opened wide and he backed away from her. The clatter of dishes and the aroma of warm breakfast biscuits came from below them. For a second Abe expected to feel Boy’s soft fur under his hand, Boy’s eyes speaking to him. His mind was still muddled from sleep. Carla’s questions tumbled in his mind.

“Whoa – What’s up with you?” He looked at her narrowly. “What do you know about it?” He crossed his arms and his famous stubborn look settled into his face. He leaned against the wall. Carla sighed.

“Look, Abe. You’re not the first one in this family to travel somewhere else unexpectedly. Cecil, Connie, and I did it last year, and it was a very scary experience, and we did meet people, and some of them were horrible.” She paused to catch her breath. “We just want to be sure you’re okay.” From the corner of her eye Carla saw Shamrock sniffing Grandmother Julia’s breakfast tray.

“I’m fine,” Abe replied. “I don’t know what happened. But to answer your questions,” and here he numbered them off on his fingers, “I don’t know where I went, I met some animals, I was not scared, and there were no children anywhere.”

Carla could only stare at him. Then he added, “I only met a German shepherd named Boy and saw a whole lot of really old people. But they were sleeping.” This baffled Carla even more. Clearly Abe had not gone to Lucie’s house.

"Where did he go?" she wondered.

At that moment Julia and Cecil ran down the hall. “We heard you talking in the kitchen!” Julia burst out. “Not so loud – the bathroom grate’s right in there!” And she pointed to the bathroom doorway.

“Shh!!” Carla and Cecil said to her together.

Abe rolled his eyes. “Oh, good grief! It was only a dream or something. What’s all the fuss?” He marched down the hall. “I’m hungry. What’s for breakfast?” Abe ran down the stairs, and the other children followed him, whispering.

After more biscuits and bacon, and having stuffed their pockets with snacks, the children resumed their conversation in the Clerk’s Office, where they knew they wouldn’t be overheard. They sat in a circle on the floor. Abe described his experience while nibbling several slices of bacon, and Cecil and Carla struggled to find any details tying his description to Lucie’s house

“Did the house remind you of your house?” Cecil asked.

“No,” Abe said.

“I mean, was it laid out the same?”

“No. It had this massive garden out back, plus a pine forest that went on forever. Plus, it was near the ocean.”

“Well, not the outside then. How about the house itself? Was it like Federal Hill?”

“It had big old porches all the way around the back. We don’t have that.”

Cecil sighed. “Then, without the porches! Would it have been the same shape without the porches?”

“I don’t know,” Abe retorted. “I didn’t see it without its porches!”

Cecil stood up and paced the floor.  He'd always found Abe to be an irritating cousin. “Alright. You went inside. You saw the kitchen. Did you see any other rooms?”

Abe thought. “Yeah. There was a really big room next to the kitchen. And a stairway. I went upstairs too.”

Cecil looked at him. “Okay, think about your house, about the stairway, the kitchen, the upstairs. Are those rooms generally the same in both houses?”

Abe slowly nodded his head. “I hadn’t thought of it before.” He looked up at Cecil. “Yes, they were!”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Cecil said. He looked at Carla.

“Abe, tell us about all the people and animals you met there,” she said. “Tell us as much as you can remember, even just impressions.”

So Abe talked about Boy, about how gentle but awe-inspiring he was, about how helpful the animals in the kitchen were, how the humans were all so old and sleeping so soundly. Then he remembered that Boy had said the sleepers in the house were older than the sleepers on the porch, that the sleepers got younger as they went toward the ocean.

“And the ones on the beach were awake and walking around,” he added. “Boy said they sleep for years after they come to the house. They were all really old and tired, like Grandmother.”

Carla thought about her first visit to Lucie’s house, how different it was from Abe’s experience. “Did you eat anything?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t I say? In the kitchen they were all cooking --”

“Who?” Julia asked. “The animals?”

“Yes, they were! It was amazing. They were cooking for the sleepers.”

“Wait,” Cecil interrupted. “If they’re asleep, how do they eat?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see that part,” Abe said. “But the food was so good.” His face beamed at the memory. “It was honestly the best thing I’ve ever eaten, and mom’s a really good cook.”

Carla and Cecil looked at each other. The food at Lucie’s house was that way too.

“Oh!” Abe blurted out. “I forgot the woman! There was a person there. She kind of blended in. Or maybe I forgot about her because of the food,” he mused. “Anyway, there was a woman in the kitchen. She was really tall.”

Carla leaned toward him. “What did she look like?”

Abe thought. “I don’t know. Tall, nearly as tall as Dad.”

“Brown hair? Brown eyes?”

Abe pondered. “Nooo …. Her hair was … kinda gray or silvery, maybe some yellow in there.” He closed his eyes to remember better. “She had blue eyes,” he said. “Yeah, blue.”

“Hmm,” Carla mused.

“And barefoot,” Abe added. “Her feet were darker brown, like she goes barefoot all the time.”

“Oh!” Carla said. “Did she wear a blue top with a long blue skirt, and a white apron?”

Abe hesitated. “Yeah, she did, now you mention it.” He regarded his cousin. “How’d you know?”

Carla said to Cecil, “Just like Lucie.” He nodded. “I think he went to Lucie’s world, only a different house.” Her eyes sparkled in excitement. “A house for old people instead of ...” and together they said it, “a house for children.”

There was a moment of silence, and Abe wanted to tell Julia about the quilt on the bed, about her name being on it. He wanted to tell about the dog who knew Shamrock. But he hesitated too long.

Julia jumped up. “Okay! Whatever! I don’t see what this has to do with anything! What about Edward? Aren’t we going to look for him? I think he’s more important that this silly dream Abe had last night.”

“It wasn’t a dream!” all the other children said simultaneously.

“Still,” Julia said, “I think Edward’s more important.”

A creak sounded above their heads, and then a voice said, “Thanks. I do appreciate that.”

It was Edward, coming down the stairs. His hair was tousled and he looked weary.

“Did you stay up there all night?” Julia asked.

“Not quite,” Edward replied. “I roamed around a lot.” And he proceeded to tell them of his night’s adventures. He’d explored nearly all of the house, the gardens and woods, all the barns and outbuildings, and inspected the Clerk’s Office.

“I did belly through that little tunnel from that fireplace,” and he pointed to the colossal stack of bricks near them. “It ain’t safe. You make sure none of ya go in there, ya hear?”

“We saw you after midnight, outside in the bushes,” Cecil said. “That other creature was behind you.”

“Yeah, I know. I know her,” Edward said. “I’m tryin’ to get her back to that other place, back into the tunnel.” He shook his head. “Nearly done it too.” He looked at Abe. “And you. I saw you disappear. Saw it through the window.”

“You did?” Carla interrupted.

“Oh yeah.” He eyed Abe. “Saw it clear as day. He walked through a box of blue light.”

“What? Cecil asked.

“Um … like a doorway, and just the edges are blue. But it was a blue light, just fer a second, till he was gone. Then it was black again.”

Cecil and Carla looked at each other. It was Lucie’s world after all.

[Ten Days at Federal Hill, in its entirety, is copyrighted by the author, M.K. Christiansen.]