The Secret of the Missing Grave
David Crossman
Copyright 2010 by David Crossman
Smashwords Edition
Ghosts in the Walls
“The Moses Webster House is haunted,” said Ab. She skipped a stone in the direction of a little squadron of ducks that paddled along undisturbed in the cove. They seemed to sense they had nothing to fear. Abby wasn’t very good at skipping stones, though she practiced every summer under Bean’s expert tutelage.
“Everybody knows that,” said Bean matter-of-factly. “You gotta get lower down, like this,” he added, folding himself at right angles to the earth, “then heave, like this.”
Ab pretended not to watch as the tiny, round-bottomed stone danced across the glassy surface as though it were winged and weightless. The ducks still didn’t fly—she knew they wouldn’t leave their little ones—but they sure scattered in a hurry. The first skips seemed miles apart. The rest got closer as the stone lost its momentum, then finally trickled into a little chatter of numberless splashes. She lost count at twenty-two.
“More wrist, less arm,” Bean instructed. “Like I told you.”
“Who cares?” said Ab. She flipped a wisp of red hair from her face.
“You look weird when you do that,” said Bean.
Ab sank to her knees on the damp vegetation at the water’s edge. She picked up a stick and poked at an empty urchin shell that had probably been a gull’s dinner not long before. “Do what?” she said.
Bean kicked at a nearby chunk of granite and focused his impassive eyes on nothing in particular. “I don’t know,” he said enigmatically.
Ab was a girl this summer; that was the problem. Of course, she’d always been a girl, but he’d always been able to overlook it before. This summer, though, well . . . there wasn’t any way around it. When she left last year, she was just Ab. Now she was thirteen and a girl all over the place. He’d noticed as soon as she got off the boat. When she did things like flipping her hair and tilting her head in that curious way, it just made it worse. That’s what he was thinking, but he couldn’t find the words to make sense of it, and he wouldn’t have said them if he could.
Ab looked at him slyly and flipped her hair intentionally. She knew. She wasn’t sure what exactly, but somewhere inside she knew.
Bean figured it was going to be a long, difficult summer. Already he was halfway wishing it was Labor Day and Ab and her folks were heading back to New York. He feigned an uninterested glance in her general direction.
Halfway wishing.
“You know about a ghost in that house?”
“Sure,” said Bean. He sat down on a piece of sun-bleached driftwood. “I had a friend who lived up there before the Proverbs turned it into a B and B.”
“You mean Dave Johnson?” said Ab. Her memory of the island and its inhabitants went back just as far as Bean’s.
“Yeah,” Bean replied, a little miffed at having lost the exclusive option on that piece of information. Fact was, most of the things worth remembering in his life involved Ab in one way or another. He knew that when she left in the fall, he’d get that feeling like a punctured balloon, same as always. Then the leaves would fall, and snow would cover the island like frosting on a frozen cake. He’d go to school, go skating and sliding, play basketball and baseball, work and have fun like everyone else, but he’d be only half there. The rest would be tucked up inside somewhere, warming its toes beside that little crust of summer in his heart, waiting for Ab to return.
“Well?” said Ab, a little impatiently.
“Well, what?” said Bean, quickly looking up and away.
“What did he say, Davey Johnson? Did he see the ghost?”
“Nope,” Bean replied flatly. He let the word just hang there. He knew that would get her all worked up, and he didn’t much mind if it did. After all, she was getting him worked up, whether she knew it or not.
“But . . . ,” Ab said at last. “Come on, out with it.”
“He used to say he heard things.”
“What kind of things?”
Bean picked a piece of grass and stuck it between his teeth. “I’m not sure I should say.”
“Why not?” Ab demanded indignantly.
“’Cause.”
“’Cause why?”
“Well,” said Bean, “you’re stayin’ there, ain’t you? All summer long. I’d hate to scare you off.”
“Don’t you worry about me, Beanbag,” said Ab, using his full nickname. “I’m not scared of anything.”
“Didn’t say you was, did I?” said Bean calmly. He drew the grass between his thumb and forefinger and let the seeds fall on the breeze. “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“So, what did he hear?” asked Ab, a little less belligerently. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know any more about it, but she wasn’t going “Well,” said Ab, sinking once more to her knees and drawing Bean with her. She bent close to him. “At first I thought it was just somebody bumping around in the room upstairs,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“So? Maybe it was,” Bean reasoned.
Ab shook her head dramatically. “Then I remembered there is no room upstairs, only attic.”
This time when she flicked the hair from her face, Bean didn’t even notice. “Really?” he said breathlessly.
She nodded.
“What’d you do?”
“Very, very slowly,” said Ab, slipping easily into her storytelling mode, “I got out of bed and tiptoed to the door.”
“Did you turn on a light?”
“No,” Ab replied a little sharply. She hated to be interrupted just as she was getting started.
Bean was incredulous. He’d have turned on the light. Especially in that big, drafty old house. “I bet you did.”
“Did not,” Ab protested.
Bean let it pass. “Then what?”
“I opened the door, real quietly,” Ab mimed the action in the air, “and went down the hall.”
“Why down the hall?” said Bean impatiently.
“That’s where the door to the attic is. Do you mind if I finish my story?”
“I wish you would,” Bean retorted. “Just quit leavin’ out stuff.”
Ab rolled her eyes. “Anyway,” she resumed with a touch of long-suffering, “I got to the door and pressed my ear against it. Thump! Bump! Bump!” She issued the sound effects suddenly and sharply so that Bean jumped in his skin.
“They’re not footsteps,” he said, dressing his discomfiture in indignation.
“The footsteps came next,” Ab continued, pleased with the effect her narrative was producing. If she had to live with ghosts, Bean was sure by golly going to know what it felt like. She stamped on the ground. “But they weren’t coming from the attic.”
“Where, then?”
“I couldn’t make that out,” said Ab, lowering her voice further still. “One second they seemed to be coming from the walls, then the ceiling. Every time I thought I’d figured it out, they’d come from somewhere else.”
“Wow,” said Bean unwittingly. He hadn’t meant to sound impressed.
“It was as if I was surrounded by ghosts in heavy shoes.”
Bean was bug eyed. He didn’t talk for a minute. He was too busy digesting what he’d just heard. “How long did the sounds last?” he said finally.
Ab shrugged. “I don’t know. A minute, maybe. I was just going to go call my dad when they stopped.”
For a while Bean pondered in silence. There had to be a rational explanation. That’s what his mother would say. “I bet somebody was just putting luggage away or something,” he declared.
“Who?” said Ab. “There are only six other people in the house, including the Proverbs, and they were all down in the kitchen playing cards. I heard them.”
“Mice, then.”
“Mice? I don’t think so. Elephants maybe.”
“What did they sound like?”
“What do you mean?” said Ab. “They sounded like footsteps.”
“No. I mean, were they walking back and forth, around in circles, jumping up and down . . . ?”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Let me think.” She forced her memory. “I think . . . yes, there was a kind of pattern. Up and down.”
“Up and down?”
“Yeah. From the bottom of the wall to the top of the wall.”
“Dash away, dash away, dash away all,” said Bean automatically.
“Earth to Bean,” said Ab, tapping him on the head.
He ignored her. “Did it sound like more than one person?”
“Or whatever,” said Ab.
Bean allowed for that. “Or whatever. Was there more than one, do you think?”
Ab pondered again. “No,” she said seriously. “I don’t think so. Come to think of it, they weren’t like footsteps at all, really.”
“Oh, great.”
“That’s what I heard,” cried Ab, unable to contain herself any longer. She jumped to her feet. “Breathing and footsteps.”
“You did?” said Bean, nearly choking on his Adam’s apple. He’d only been kidding.
“Yes. When I was in bed last night.”
“What time was it?”
“I don’t know. I went up about nine-thirty or ten, read a little while, then turned out the light.”
Nothing remained of Bean’s pretense. “What happened?”
“Well,” said Ab, sinking once more to her knees and drawing Bean with her. She bent close to him. “At first I thought it was just somebody bumping around in the room upstairs,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “So? Maybe it was,” Bean reasoned.
Ab shook her head dramatically. “Then I remembered there is no room upstairs, only attic.”
This time when she flicked the hair from her face, Bean didn’t even notice.
“Really?” he said breathlessly.
She nodded.
“What’d you do?”
“Very, very slowly,” said Ab, slipping easily into her storytelling mode, “I got out of bed and tiptoed to the door.”
“Did you turn on a light?”
“No,” Ab replied a little sharply. She hated to be interrupted just as she was getting started.
Bean was incredulous. He’d have turned on the light. Especially in that big, drafty old house. “I bet you did.”
“Did not,” Ab protested.
Bean let it pass. “Then what?”
“I opened the door, real quietly,” Ab mimed the action in the air, “and went down the hall.”
“Why down the hall?” said Bean impatiently.
“That’s where the door to the attic is. Do you mind if I finish my story?”
“I wish you would,” Bean retorted. “Just quit leavin’ out stuff.”
Ab rolled her eyes. “Anyway,” she resumed with a touch of long-suffering, “I got to the door and pressed my ear against it. Thump! Bump! Bump!” She issued the sound effects suddenly and sharply so that Bean jumped in his skin.
“They’re not footsteps,” he said, dressing his discomfiture in indignation.
“The footsteps came next,” Ab continued, pleased with the effect her narrative was producing. If she had to live with ghosts, Bean was sure by golly going to know what it felt like. She stamped on the ground. “But they weren’t coming from the attic.”
“Where, then?”
“I couldn’t make that out,” said Ab, lowering her voice further still. “One second they seemed to be coming from the walls, then the ceiling. Every time I thought I’d figured it out, they’d come from somewhere else.”
“Wow,” said Bean unwittingly. He hadn’t meant to sound impressed.
“It was as if I was surrounded by ghosts in heavy shoes.”
Bean was bug eyed. He didn’t talk for a minute. He was too busy digesting what he’d just heard. “How long did the sounds last?” he said finally.
Ab shrugged. “I don’t know. A minute, maybe. I was just going to go call my dad when they stopped.”
For a while Bean pondered in silence. There had to be a rational explanation. That’s what his mother would say. “I bet somebody was just putting luggage away or something,” he declared.
“Who?” said Ab. “There are only six other people in the house, including the Proverbs, and they were all down in the kitchen playing cards. I heard them.”
“Mice, then.”
“Mice? I don’t think so. Elephants maybe.”
“What did they sound like?”
“What do you mean?” said Ab. “They sounded like footsteps.”
“No. I mean, were they walking back and forth, around in circles, jumping up and down . . .?”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Let me think.” She forced her memory. “I think . . . yes, there was a kind of pattern. Up and down.”
“Up and down?”
“Yeah. From the bottom of the wall to the top of the wall.”
“Dash away, dash away, dash away all,” said Bean automatically.
“Earth to Bean,” said Ab, tapping him on the head.
He ignored her. “Did it sound like more than one person?”
“Or whatever,” said Ab.
Bean allowed for that. “Or whatever. Was there more than one, do you think?”
Ab pondered again. “No,” she said seriously. “I don’t think so. Come to think of it, they weren’t like footsteps at all, really.”
“Oh, great.”
“No,” said Ab. “I mean, now that I think about it, they were more like . . . they weren’t as regular as footsteps.”
“More random, you mean?” Bean asked.
“Yeah, random,” said Ab, a little surprised. “That’s what I was going to say, but I didn’t think you’d know what it meant.” Actually, she hadn’t thought of it at all, but it’s the word she would have used, if she had thought of it.
“Thanks a lot.”
“And something else,” Ab recalled suddenly. “There was a kind of metal sound to them.”
“Metal?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t just thud, thud, like this,” she said, stamping her foot on the ground. “It was more as if someone was dragging around one of those big, old cast-iron frying pans Mrs. Proverb has down in the kitchen. They weigh a ton.”
Bean smiled slyly. “Strong mice.”
“Elephants,” said Ab, and they laughed.
“Then I heard the breathing.”
Bean nearly swallowed his tongue. “You did?”
Abby looked at her watch. “Ice cream time.”
They got cones from the little take-out on Main Street. Then they went to the wharf, where they made seats of some wire mesh lobster traps that someone had hauled out for repair. Bean had chocolate ice cream, as always. Ab had cookies ’n’ cream, as always.
“That doesn’t sound like any ghost I ever heard of,” said Bean. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his T-shirt.
Ab was inclined to agree. “Well, whatever it is,” she said, “it’s real. I wasn’t dreaming, and don’t tell me it was my imagination.”
“I won’t,” said Bean. “You don’t have any imagination.”
“Yes, I do!”
Bean shook his head. “Remember that day last summer when we spent an hour out on Lane’s Island playing Creatures in the Clouds?”
Ab tossed the soggy end of her cone to the gulls and wiped her fingers furiously on the remains of her napkin. That was one of the things that bugged her about Bean: When he looked at clouds, he saw dungeons and battles, fiery chariots, and swirling sultans on flying carpets. All she saw, if she tried really hard, were puppies and kittens. What made it doubly bothersome was that he couldn’t seem to concoct a decent ghost from all the ammunition she’d given him.
“I do have an imagination,” she said in self-defense. “It’s just a normal imagination, not a demented one like yours.” She stuffed her dirty napkin down his neck and, with a squeal of laughter, dodged out of his reach as he took a swipe at her.
By the time Bean extracted the damp, sticky wad from beneath his shirt, Ab was halfway up the sidewalk leading to the Moses Webster House. Bean followed, but at the fountain he splashed water on his back and washed his hands. “I’ll get you for that,” he bellowed.
Ab had stopped in the front yard at the wood bench by the big forsythia and was staring at the house. The tower window seemed on fire with the golden rays of the setting sun.
“That was mean,” said Bean, trotting up beside her. “Just wait. One of these days when you least expect it . . .”
Ab was only partly listening. She seemed miles away, lost in thought. “There’s probably a good explanation,” she said, more to herself than to him.
“Sure there is,” Bean agreed quietly, so as not to intrude too sharply on her thoughts.
At that instant both of them caught a subtle motion in the tower window of the Winthrop House next door. A curtain had moved and a face appeared, watching. Neither of them could make it out, but they knew who it was. Abby shuddered visibly. “She gives me the creeps.”
“That’s strange,” said Bean. “I’ve never seen her in the daylight before. I guess she’s not a vampire after all.”
Fool’s Gold
That night Ab read awhile in bed, then lay in the dark listening so hard she could almost feel her ears pulsing. Nothing. A squirrel scurried across the floor above—they often found their way into old houses—and she heard the soft, comforting conversation of her parents as they got ready for bed. She heard the heavy drops of dew that the night collected from the fog as they fell from leaf to leaf in the trees, and she heard the distant foghorn on Puffin Ledge moan its weary warning to the dark. But of ghosts or eerie footsteps or things that go bump in the night, she heard not a whisper—until she was just beginning to drop into sleep.
So clear it made her sit bolt upright in bed, she heard it. Breathing. Deep, sonorous, and sad. And near. She could feel a chill, damp breath on the back of her neck. Behaving as any sensible girl would, she screamed at the top her lungs and dove under the covers.
Reinforcements were not long in coming. Scarcely had the echo of her cry died in the remotest corners of the house when a veritable herd of adults thundered down the narrow hall to her room.
Her father was first through the door. “Ab, what is it? What on earth happened?”
“Abby, are you all right?” said her mother, tossing herself on the bed and cradling
Abby’s head on her breast. “My poor baby. Did you have a nightmare?”
Suddenly Ab wasn’t afraid anymore. Instead she felt embarrassed and a little silly.
“What was it, Tom? Is she okay?” said Mr. Proverb, who was now silhouetted in the doorway, tying his robe around himself.
Mrs. Proverb was right behind him. “If that scream didn’t wake the dead, they’ll sleep ’til Judgment.”
“Oh, great,” said Abby under her breath as the parade of adults continued to pour into her room.
Meanwhile, her mother felt her forehead to see if she had a fever, the same way she had when she was a child. Ab didn’t really object. There was something comforting about it. Of course, she’d never say so.
Ab cast a sheepish glance at Mr. and Mrs. Proverb, who, seeing that she was all right, departed with a sleepy “good-night.”
“What is it, Punkin’?” asked her dad softly.
Good question, thought Ab. “I thought I heard a noise,” she said.
“What kind of noise?”
Ab squirmed a little. She knew that if she told them, they’d say, Oh, that’s only the wind, or probably just the house settling. Still, they’d asked—and she had gotten them out of bed—so she told them.
“Breathing?” said her mother when she’d finished.
“Breathing?” her father echoed. “You mean like this?” He panted rapidly in and out, like an overheated Saint Bernard. Ab giggled.
“No,” she said. “Not like that.”
“It was probably just the wind,” said her mother, patting her on the shoulder. Ab peeked out the window. The willow tree, which swayed in the slightest breeze, was perfectly motionless against the glow of the streetlight.
“Or the house settling,” said her father reassuringly. It was as if they’d rehearsed their parts. He lowered her head to the pillow and tucked the covers up under her chin.
“The only thing you’ve got to be afraid of is what’s up here.” He tapped her on the forehead. “You’ve got too much imagination.”
Not to hear Bean tell it, she thought.
They left the room quietly and closed the door.
Abby was beginning to wonder if they were right. Maybe she had been imagining things. She’d nearly convinced herself of that and was just drifting off to sleep when the slow, metallic thumping began again. It was coming from her closet.
She modified her response this time. She didn’t scream, but she did hide under the covers. It didn’t help; the bumping sound continued. Surely her folks would hear it and come running to her rescue. They didn’t.
Then, as quickly as it started, it stopped. Ab peeked out from under the covers and stared holes into the deep shadows in the corner of the room where the closet door stood partially open. For a long time she waited, the blood throbbing in her ears as she held her breath.
But someone else was breathing. Once again a long, low inward breath, carrying with it a sorrowful sigh, drew a faint rush of air by her ears. Then all was quiet.
“It’s the house,” said Ab as she and Bean ambled down the narrow path to the quarry. The sweet grass slapped at their ankles. Now and then, they spied a wild strawberry and stopped to pick it.
“Well,” Bean replied, “you said it was haunted.”
“No,” Ab replied thoughtfully. “Well, yes—but I don’t feel that it’s something in the house. I mean, it’s the house itself. As if it’s alive.”
Bean, holding an alder branch aside so Ab could pass, made eerie sound effects.
“What if it is alive?” Ab retorted emphatically. “Haven’t you ever felt that a house has a soul, or something?” Bean rolled his eyes. “No, think about it. Sometimes, when you’re sitting in a house, don’t you feel as if you’re being watched, even when there’s nobody’s home?”
“Nobody’s home,” echoed Bean. “You got that right.” He tapped his temple.
Ab pressed on. “Haven’t you ever had that feeling?” She stopped short and put her hands on her hips, as if challenging him to deny it. She knew her Bean.
“I suppose,” Bean admitted grudgingly. “In an old house.”
“Well, you sure would have that feeling at the Moses Webster House.”
True, thought Bean. He would. The Moses Webster House was the biggest on the island. It had a tower in which a solitary window seemed to cast a stern eye over the town that Moses Webster had created. For a number of years, the house had stood empty, slowly falling into disrepair and inviting squirrels, bats, and homeless ghosts through its broken windows. Ever since the Johnsons had moved in and fixed up the place, Bean never looked at the house or thought of it without imagining it as it had been during those lonely, vacant years. The long fingers of the big dead elm tree in the corner of the front yard seemed to point at the tower on moonlit nights as if to say, best ye take the long way home than pass ye too close by.
Passersby automatically crossed to the far side of the road, and even the most hardened skeptic couldn’t help but entertain the notion that, if ghosts did exist, the Moses Webster House would be the perfect place for them.
Bean shuddered.
“I think it’s sad,” said Ab, who had been talking all the while, but Bean hadn’t heard her because he’d been wrapped up in his own thoughts.
“What’s sad?” he said.
“The house,” Ab replied as they arrived at the quarry. “Haven’t you been listening to me?”
“Sure I have,” he asserted in self-defense. Then his conscience caught up with him. “Well,” he added, “I was thinking.” He took off his T-shirt, blue jeans, and shoes, revealing baggy blue and yellow swim trunks from which he seemed to sprout like an undernourished scarecrow. His legs were blindingly white.
“Wow, we’ll have to call you Frosty,” she said, shielding her eyes mockingly.
She undressed to her new pink bathing suit. “What were you thinking about that was so important you couldn’t listen to me?”
Casting a kind of sideways glance at Ab, Bean suddenly felt even more uncomfortable. “About whatever it was you said,” he answered. “Last one in’s a rotten egg.” So saying, he hurled himself off the granite cliff at the cold green water below.
A year ago Ab would have been right behind him. Now, though, she merely sauntered casually to the edge and sat down, dangling her legs and waiting for Bean’s copper-spangled head to bob out of the water. She knew it would eventually, out near the middle of the quarry.
On the surface Bean thrashed around as if he were about to drown, but underwater he was like a fish. He could swim much farther than anyone else, even the older teenagers, who were now sunning themselves on the rough-cut granite slag heap that towered over the other side of the quarry. Even they were impressed, and they threw pebbles to mark the spot where they thought Bean would surface.
This time, though, Bean came straight through his own cloud of bubbles and looked up the smooth-sided cliff at Ab, silhouetted thirty-five feet above against the bright blue sky. “You’re a rotten egg,” he proclaimed loudly, his voice echoing off the cliffs.
| Ab pretended to brush something from her knee as she studied him down the length of her nose. “Don’t be so childish,” she said, sighing. Of course, things would have been different had she been able to beat him into the water.
Nevertheless, Abby’s aloof attitude confused Bean more than ever, and somehow her words hurt him.
“Oh, yeah?” he said, buying time for something clever to come to mind. “Well, what about putting that napkin down my back?” He was paddling awkwardly to keep his skinny body afloat.Ab laughed lightly and tossed her head. “
That was entirely different,” she announced, as if it were. Which it wasn’t.“What about a house that’s alive?”
Bean retorted in his most annoying voice. Flailing away, he swam toward the ledges. Then he pulled himself out and began the long climb—by soggy little handholds and narrow, pebbly ledges—up the familiar cliffs. He was too angry to even notice how cold it was in those pockets of shadow.
‘Now why did I say that?’ thought Abby. It was as if something had suddenly come over her. She didn’t think Bean was childish. She thought he was great. He’d been her best friend since the first summer she came to the island when she was four, and they’d shared a hundred wonderful adventures together.
The summer she was laid up with a broken leg, it was Bean who spent time with her, playing board games and reading books, when she knew he’d rather be out in his boat poking around the shallows. She remembered the times they tramped over Armburst Hill, with its craggy caves and spruce-covered granite ledges that rose high over the village. And the Trolly Pond cliff and its heart-stopping view of all Penobscot Bay.
And to the south, Matinicus and Criehaven, those strange islands that some days seemed to float high above the horizon and other days—even perfectly clear days—couldn’t be seen at all. To the west were the White Islands—spiked nests of evergreen against the backdrop of the rolling blue Camden Hills. Up the bay were North Haven, Islesboro, and Eagle Island and, to the north, Blue Hill and Mount Desert. Ab took a deep breath. She might live in New York City, but her home was Penobscot Island. It always would be.
“Good ol’ Bean,” she said aloud, just above a whisper. What had come over her anyway?“I was just teasing,” she apologized as Bean’s red head poked above the ledge. “You’re right. I’m a rotten egg.”
Bean had been seething as he climbed. He’d been rehearsing what Ab would say, then imagining what he would reply. In fact, he had the whole conversation mapped out in his head, and it wasn’t a very pleasant conversation, at that.
Now this. There was only one thing for him to say. “I didn’t mean that about the house being alive, either.”
Ab smiled. “Well, I admit that it sounds pretty silly in the daylight. But at night . . .”
“I know. Things are different in the dark.”
For a while they forgot about the strange noises. Instead they climbed down to the water and played and splashed and swam and dived in the little corner of the quarry they’d staked out for themselves.
When Bean went to chase a small trout into the emerald depths, Ab sat on a ledge with her legs in the water up to her knees. New York seemed a million miles away. There, all her friends were wearing makeup. Some had started to smoke. Some were dating. Some . . . well, as her dad said, they were thirteen going on thirty, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment.
What would they think if they saw her here, hanging around with Bean? She could almost hear the mocking laughter. What would they think of Bean? They’d be hysterical.
Just then Bean’s head broke the surface in a shower of spray made golden by the sunshine. He gasped and sputtered and made one of his silly faces. She smiled, but there was a trace of sadness to the smile. Those girls would never understand.
Too bad for them.
The sky was an unbelievable blue filled with puffy white clouds. They seemed to drift aimlessly around the heavens as they watched the deep magic of a Maine summer cast its spell on those fortunate enough to share it.
There were a lot of people in the quarry. Little ones in the slippery shallows just off the path shouted, “Look, ma. Watch. Ma!” while their mothers tried to carry on conversations with friends whose own children chirped the same timeless refrain. Boisterous teenagers stretched out on the granite slabs overhanging the Deeps, the cold black canyon that went straight down more than 150 feet. They talked too loudly and played their radios too loudly, and they defied gravity and physics with feats of daring and foolhardiness. They were saying, in their own way, Hey, look at me. Watch. Hey!
On the way home Ab and Bean took their time, poking at tar bubbles in the hot pavement and tossing stones at the windows of the abandoned schoolhouse down by the ball field, which had given way to tall grass and cat-o’-nine-tails.
“They say there’s a tunnel between the Moses Webster House and the Winthrop House,” said Bean offhandedly. He plucked a piece of grass and stuck it between his teeth.
Ab stopped in her tracks. “Who says?”
Bean shrugged. “Everybody knows.”
“Where is it?”
“Nobody’s ever found it.”
“Then how do you know it’s there?”
Bean didn’t know. “Let’s ask my mom. She’s the one who told me.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Carver after a little thought, “I’m not sure where I heard that. It’s just one of those legends you learn growing up on the island.”
“Tell us about it, Mrs. Carver,” Ab pleaded excitedly.
Bean’s mom finished drying the dishes and hung the dishcloth to dry on the metal rack over the oil stove. “I’d love to, but I have to make a blueberry pie for supper tonight.”
“We’ll help,” Ab volunteered.
Bean was less enthusiastic. “We will?”
Ab regarded him with a furrowed brow. “We will.” She smiled up at Mrs. Carver. “And she can tell us while we work.”
Mrs. Carver nodded and held out her hand to Abby. “Deal,” she said. “You guys get the berries out of the pantry. They need to be washed and have the stems taken off. Pick out the white ones and put them aside with the stems.”
Once everything was ready, Mrs. Carver began her story.
“Moses Webster and Isaiah Winthrop were business partners. They owned one of the granite quarries back in the mid-1800s.”
“Which one?” asked Ab.
“I’m not sure,” said Mrs. Carver. “I bet you could find out up at the historical society—Bean, just put in one cup of sugar, okay? I know the recipe says two and a half, but that’s for cultivated berries. These little wild ones are a lot sweeter.
“Anyway, after some hard times, they finally got rich and decided to build the biggest houses on the island, side by side. So they made a friendly wager over who could build the biggest house. They agreed to keep their plans to themselves, and they agreed that a tunnel would connect the houses, so they could get back and forth easily. Especially in winter.
“Well, they hired crews and set to. Construction started on the cellars on the same day, and the tunnel was the first thing finished—Ab, would you get the pie pan for me? Anyway, as I understand it, Moses and Isaiah went off to Boston for the fall and winter. They had houses there, too—apparently there wasn’t enough social life for them on the island in the winter—and when they came back in the spring, the houses were nearly finished.
“That’s when everything started to go wrong. Apparently Moses’s house was bigger in square footage and Isaiah’s was bigger in height, so neither of them would concede that he’d lost the bet. Instead, Moses closed off his end of the tunnel and had another wing added to the back of his house.”
“That’s where my bedroom is,” Ab chimed in.
“Right,” Mrs. Carver agreed. “Isaiah closed off his end of the tunnel, too, and added another six feet to his tower.”
“Did they stay in business together?” asked Bean.
“As a matter of fact, they didn’t. Winthrop sold his shares to Moses Webster and went off and started his own granite company, right here on the island, to compete against his former partner.
“Neither of them ever spoke to the other again, although they lived in those houses, side by side, for the rest of their lives. I seem to remember that their houses in Boston were across the street from each other, too.” Mrs. Carver sighed. “So sad.”
She opened the heavy oven door, tested the temperature, then slid in the pie. “Now, why did you want to know all this? I suppose you want to start looking for the treasure.”
“Treasure?” Ab and Bean replied in concert.
Widow of the Moors
“I thought that’s what this was all about—old Minerva’s treasure,” said Mrs. Carver. She gently shut the oven door and set the wind-up timer on the stovetop.
“We don’t know about any treasure,” said Bean, as he emptied the stems and unripe berries into the garbage pail under the sink.
“Then what’s all this about?”
Bean and Ab exchanged an unsure glance. “Well . . . ,” said Bean tentatively.
Ab jumped in with both feet. “I’ve been hearing sounds in my room.”
“Oh, really?” said Mrs. Carver. She finished washing her hands and turned off the water. “What kind of sounds?”
Abby told the whole story, with occasional additions from Bean whenever he felt that the telling was getting a little too dry.
“Very interesting, Abigail,” Mrs. Carver said. She sat for a while, staring out the window but oblivious to the occasional passerby or the busy summer traffic down on Main Street. “Well, I’ll tell you a little secret,” she said at last. “When I was about your age, the Moses Webster House was empty—that was before the Johnsons moved in—and we’d go in the cellar sometimes to try to find the tunnel. I always felt we were just that close.” She held her thumb and forefinger about a sixteenth of an inch apart. “But we never did find it. Neither has anyone else, as far as I know. If they did, they kept it to themselves, which would be impossible to do on the island.”
“You mean, other people have tried to find the tunnel?” asked Ab.
“Oh, you bet they have. My father. His father. Probably most of the island has taken a crack at it one time or another.” Mrs. Carver bent down toward her listeners. “That’s the kind of thing you do with yourself when you don’t have a movie theater or a video arcade.” She laughed a light, warm, musical laugh that always made Bean smile. He’d never say it out loud, but he thought his mother was the most beautiful person in the world. His dad did, too.
“But what’s the treasure?” Bean asked.
“That’s the interesting part, I think,” said Mrs. Carver dreamily. “It’s romantic.”
Bean rolled his eyes. “Oh, brother.”
“Tell us,” said Ab excitedly.
“Tell her,” Bean suggested.
Mrs. Carver began. “It’s very sad.”
“I think I’ll go clean my room and wash the dog,” said Bean sarcastically.
“I didn’t know you had a dog,” said Ab.
“We don’t,” Mrs. Carver replied, looking at Bean a little sideways. “If you don’t want to listen, you don’t have to. But if you’re going to look for the treasure, you’d better have all the facts, don’t you think?”
Bean sat on the corner of his chair and resolved to listen with just one ear, until things got interesting.
“Well, Moses Webster had a son whose name was Reuben, and Isaiah Winthrop had a daughter, Rebecca.”
“And they fell in love,” said Ab enthusiastically.
“Right the first time,” Mrs. Carver replied with a smile. “And—”
“And their fathers wouldn’t let them see each other,” Ab interrupted. “So they unblocked the tunnel, somehow, and met there in the deepest hours of the night.”
“Don’t you love the way I tell a story?” said Mrs. Carver dryly.
Bean was wondering if Ab maybe had an imagination after all.
“Am I right?” Abby begged eagerly.
“As rain,” said Mrs. Carver.
“The treasure,” Bean reminded her. “Can we get to it?”
“I am getting to it,” his mother replied patiently. “Just a little more romance first.”
Bean flexed his eyebrows, rested an elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, and settled in for the long haul.
“As you might have guessed, Reuben and Rebecca ran away and got married, which made their fathers furious, so they disinherited them.”
“What’s ‘disinherit’ mean?” asked Ab.
Bean piped up excitedly. “That’s when they take a sword and rip open your belly and take your insides out.”
“Ooh, gross,” said Ab.
Mrs. Carver shook her head. “Not quite, Mr. Shakespeare,” she said. “‘Disinherit’ means that they were stricken from the wills.” Ab’s face didn’t register comprehension, so Mrs. Carver explained further. “People write up wills so that when they die, all of their possessions go to the people they choose.”
“Like the melodeon,” said Bean.
“That’s right.” Mrs. Carver turned to Ab. “When Bean’s great-gram Johnson died, she left us her old melodeon.”
“What’s a melodeon?”
“It’s a kind of organ that operates on air,” explained Mrs. Carver. “You push pedals that open and close bellows inside, which pushes air through reeds. I wish it was here, but it’s at my mother’s house.”
“That melodeon’s over two hundred years old, and it’s been around the world three times in an old sailing ship,” Bean added.
“Right,” said Ab condescendingly. “I’m sure it has.” She looked knowingly at Mrs. Carver.
“This time he’s not exaggerating,” said Bean’s mom. “Bean’s great-grandmother’s father was the captain of the Barbara Day, out of Gloucester in the last century. He wanted his family to sail with him, and one of the inducements he used was the melodeon.”
“Did it work?” asked Ab.
“I guess so. They sailed with him ’til Gram J was full grown, at least three times around the world. After that, I’m not sure what happened. But the melodeon’s been passed down through the family ever since. Anyway, where was I?”
“They were disinherited.”
“Right. Reuben made his living at sea for a few years, also out of Gloucester, I think, while Rebecca kept house over in Owls Head where she could see the island. So, like many seamen’s wives, she didn’t see her husband but once or twice a year.
“Nevertheless, they managed to have a daughter, whom they named Minerva. Reuben would send her dolls from the ports he’d visit on his travels around the world. But then, one day, the dolls stopped coming.”
“Shipwreck?” asked Bean.
Mrs. Carver shrugged. “Nobody knows. Reuben was never heard from again.”
“Never?” said Ab.
“Never,” Mrs. Carver replied, shaking her head.
“What happened to Rebecca?” Ab wanted to know.
“Well, she moved back to the island, into the cottage her grandmother had left her over on the creek—the little red one with the white trim where Litty Ames lives now. For a while Rebecca and Minerva seemed to get along fine. Rebecca’s granny had left her some jewelry as well, and they managed to live off that. But Rebecca developed the habit of walking alone out on the moors on Lane’s Island, usually early in the morning, even before the fishermen went out. Nobody knew it then, but that was the beginning of her madness.”
“She went crazy?” said Bean.
“To put it bluntly, yes.” Mrs. Carver replied. “But slowly. At first those few fishermen’s wives who ventured out on the moors early to pick berries while the dew was still on ’em would find Rebecca sitting on Daddy Lane’s Head, humming to herself.”
Ab interrupted. “Daddy Lane’s Head?”
“A little group of rocks that looks like a man’s face if you see it from a certain angle, and use your imagination,” said Mrs. Carver.
“Which Ab doesn’t have,” stated Bean, though with less conviction than he’d have said it not long ago.
“Bean,” Mrs. Carver said sharply, “that’s not nice. And it’s not true. Just because Ab’s imagination isn’t like yours doesn’t mean she hasn’t any. She does. It’s just different.”
Ab stuck out her tongue at Bean, who reciprocated, with a smile.
“Children,” said Mrs. Carver with a note of warning in her voice, “would you like me to finish the story later?”
Abby sat up straight. “No, please! I’m sorry. Go ahead. Bean will behave himself.”
Mrs. Carver cleared her throat in a meaningful way. “Yes. Well, what began as Rebecca’s gentle humming in time became an unearthly moan, punctuated by a chilling wail every now and then. Soon she just pined herself away and died of a broken heart. By that time she’d become sort of a legend. They called her the Widow of the Moors.”
“I don’t think I like this story very much,” said Ab. “Everybody keeps dying. That’s no fair.”
“That’s because it’s not make-believe, Ab,” Mrs. Carver explained gently, with a distant look in her eyes. “It’s real life, and real life isn’t fair.”
“Still . . .”
“Want me to continue?”
Ab hung her head a little. She wasn’t sure she did want to hear the rest. “Does it have a happy ending?”
“You’ll have to judge that for yourself,” said Mrs. Carver. “Besides, I’m not sure it has an ending yet.”
“How can that be?” Bean objected.
“Because it’s real life, and things that happen in real life have an effect on other people, sometimes many years later.”
Ab wasn’t sure she understood, but she wanted to find out. “Okay,” she decided finally. “Carry on.”
Mrs. Carver looked at Bean. “Okay?”
“Heck, sure,” said Bean, with a good deal more confidence than he felt. “I got no problem.”
“All right. Well, both Moses Webster and Isaiah Winthrop were somewhat shaken to their senses; at least that’s the way it seems. Each of them decided to take Minerva, who was no more than two or three at the time, into his home.
“Of course, neither man would simply give in and let the other care for the child. In fact, the whole battle that followed had far less to do with Minerva than with the same foolish pride that had already destroyed their own children.”
“What kind of battle?” said Bean, imagining at least a duel at sunrise.
“A legal battle,” Mrs. Carver explained.
Bean was visibly unimpressed. “Oh,” he replied flatly. Sometimes reality seemed such a waste of time.
“They fought for years. Meanwhile, Minerva shared her time between the two of them—back and forth, back and forth, from season to season across the narrow lane that separated the two great houses. And each grandfather would try to win her affection with money, or dresses, or jewels, all the while berating the other grandfather to her.”
“Berating?” said Ab.
“Talkin’ trash about him,” Bean explained.
Ab looked at Mrs. Carver for verification.
Mrs. Carver nodded. “As a result, by the time Minerva was seventeen she had withdrawn into a world of her own, confining herself to the tower room of whichever house she was in, allowing only her trusted maid, Mary Olson—”
“Like Katie Olson?” Bean interjected.
“Katie’s great-great-grandmother,” Mrs. Carver affirmed with a nod. “Allowing only Mary Olson to serve her. Still, the grandfathers courted her affections with treasures, trinkets, and promises, for which she had no use.”
“She wanted love,” Ab declared.
“I think you’re right, Ab,” agreed Mrs. Carver. “Don’t roll your eyes like that, Bean. They’ll go back into your head and never come out again.”
Bean’s mother continued. “Finally, Mr. Winthrop died. As if to get in the last word, he gave all of his fortune and houses and businesses to his granddaughter.”
“When was that?” asked Ab. Dates helped her keep track of things in her mind.
“Late 1800s,” said Mrs. Carver. “Mr. Webster seemed to take exception to the fact that Isaiah Winthrop had beaten him to the grave, so he followed a few weeks later. Apparently he meant to deal with the situation in the next life. He, too, left his vast fortune in Minerva’s hands.”
“She must have been some rich, huh?” said Bean. “That’s lucky.”
“Oh, she was rich, all right,” said his mother. “But lucky? I’m not so sure.”
Ab cringed. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
Mrs. Carver continued. “Whether from years of habit or a kind of madness, I can’t say, Minerva kept the same schedule she always had, moving back and forth from Moses’s house to Isaiah’s house—spring and fall at Isaiah’s, winter and summer at Moses’s.”
“Weird,” Bean observed grimly.
“Even after she got married?” Ab asked.
“She never got married. And she hardly ever went outdoors, except to cross from one house to the other, as far as I know, though there are stories that she wandered the streets late at night, dressed in black with her face veiled. That would have made her her mother’s daughter, all right. But I don’t think that part of the story holds much water.”
“Double weird,” Bean proclaimed.
“She had a number of servants, but the only one who saw her on a regular basis was Mary Olson. And Miss Minerva still kept herself to the two little tower rooms.”
“Even with two great big houses?” Ab cried in disbelief.
“Mmm. And she’d conduct business from there—through Mary, of course. She never spoke to anyone else directly, not ’til the end. But it seems she had a good head for business. The quarries did well right up until concrete took the place of granite as the building material of choice, just before the Depression. Then she plowed her fortunes into the fish factory, and that was still going strong when I was a little girl.”
“She was still alive then?”
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Carver quickly. “I’m not quite that old. No. She sold the factory toward the end of her life. Closed the quarries and consolidated her fortune.”
“That means she got it all together in one place, doesn’t it?” asked Ab. “Exactly right,” Mrs. Carver replied. “And this is where the story gets really interesting.”
“’Bout time,” Bean grumbled, although he was actually spellbound by the tale.
“I said Minerva kept herself to the tower rooms; that’s not entirely true. A year or two before she closed the quarry, she had two stonecutters come to the Moses Webster House; one was Italian and the other Swedish. There were a lot of Italians and Swedes working the quarries in those days. The odd thing was, these two men moved in, lock, stock, and barrel. The last that was seen of them, about two or three months later, was when Mary Olson took them down to the steamer ferry in Miss Minerva’s best black carriage, pulled by four black horses in mourning.”
“Mourning? What does that mean?”
“They were decked out as they would be for a funeral,” said Bean.“Spooky.”
“That’s not all,” Mrs. Carver continued. “They were both dressed to the nines in top hats and tails of the finest silk. Mind you, these were men who’d probably never felt anything next to their skin but wool and burlap. But be that as it may. They got on the boat, and, according to postcards mailed from Boston about a week later, they were shipping out to the old countries. Then pffft, that was the last that was heard of them.”
“Then what?” Bean inquired a little more breathlessly than he’d meant to.
“Then,” said Mrs. Carver, lowering her voice theatrically, “the strangest thing of all. Packages began arriving from all around the world—day after day, week after week, from China, California, Greece, Italy, Spain, Russia, Persia, Patagonia—everywhere. Literally hundreds of these little bundles over the course of three or four years, all delivered to the docks by ships sailing from the four winds. They were picked up by faithful old Mary Olson and delivered to Miss Minerva in one of her little tower rooms.”
“What was in them?” said Bean, nearly crawling out of his skin.
“Nobody knows.”
“No,” said Bean, “I mean at the end of the story, when she died. Somebody must have gone in and found all those boxes.”
“Oh, they did,” said Mrs. Carver with a little twinkle.
“Then, what was in them?” chorused Bean and Ab.
Mrs. Carver waited a little longer than necessary before she answered. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” said Bean and Ab, looking wide eyed at each other, then at Mrs. Carver.
“Nothing,” she repeated. “Mind you,” she added, opening the oven door, seeing the golden crust, and removing the pie, “there had been something in them. Mary Olson swore to that. Nothing very heavy, but something.”
“Treasure,” Bean said with a sigh.
“Treasure!” Ab echoed.
Mrs. Carver’s head tilted indecisively. “Anyway, about the time the boxes started coming, Mary Olson began hearing footsteps on the stairs in the dead of night. One night she mustered enough courage to go find out who—”
“Or what,” Bean interjected quickly.
“ . . . was walking around that time of night. What do you think she saw?”
“Miss Minerva,” Ab speculated breathlessly.
“None other.”
“What was she doing?” asked Bean.
“Carrying a bundle down to the cellar. Nobody knows what was in it,” Mrs. Carver added quickly in response to the question aborning in Bean’s eyes. “But whatever it was, it was wrapped in blankets, and she was cradling it like a baby in her arms, and singing to it.
“What kind of treasure would she be singing to?” Bean mused aloud.
Mrs. Carver continued without answering. “Mary waited in her room, with the door cracked just far enough to see, until Miss Minerva came creaking up the stairs again, empty handed.”
Mrs. Carver paused for breath. This time she wasn’t interrupted. Bean and Ab were totally mystified, and looked it. She took some little satisfaction at having shocked even Bean to silence for once, however briefly.
She continued. “Whenever a package would come, this went on, night after night. Then came the oddest thing of all.”
Ab didn’t think that anything odder than this was possible.
“As time passed, fewer and fewer packages came until, finally, they stopped altogether. Then, one day, Miss Minerva sent Mary Olson out on an errand. A wild-goose chase, Mary called it. And while Mary was gone, Miss Minerva dismissed the other servants, all of whom found a generous bonus in their pay packets that month. When Mary returned, Miss Minerva was gone, too.
“Gone,” Mrs. Carver repeated. “Without a trace. Nothing else was missing—no clothes, no food, no valuables. Nothing.”
“Where did they find her?” asked Bean with trepidation, as if he had an idea of the answer.
“They never did.” Mrs. Carver stood up and carried the pie to the counter.
“I knew she was going to say that,” commented Bean.“
How do you know all this?” Ab inquired.
“Hearsay, mostly,” said Mrs. Carver. Scent-laden steam curled from the pie as she cut it and the blueberry filling oozed out. “Seems Rebecca had kept a diary, which Minerva took over at some point—so both their stories were there in the same book. I think that’s kind of poetic.”
A quick scan of her listeners’ faces revealed that they didn’t share her sentiment. “All right. Well, that diary constituted pretty much all of Minerva’s reading. Many times she’d have Mary sit in the corner doing her knitting and mending while she read passages out loud. After a while, Mary knew long stretches of the diary by heart. Of course, the rest of the story she could fill in herself.”
“And she told someone else. . . ,” ventured Ab.
“Who told someone else, who told someone else,” said Mrs. Carver. “And the story became part of island legend.”
“I bet she was hiding some kind of treasure in the tunnel,” Bean speculated. “That’s why she had workmen at the house.”
“Of course, that’s what most people deduced,” said Mrs. Carver. “Which is why we used to go looking for the tunnel when I was a kid and the house was empty.”
“Who inherited all her money?” asked Bean, cutting to what he considered the core of the matter. “There wasn’t any,” said Mrs. Carver. “By the time she disappeared, she’d sold all the property. Even the houses were sold, with the new owners agreeing not to take possession until her death, or disappearance.”
Ab was getting frustrated. “But the money had to go somewhere,” she interrupted.
“Well, it turns out she spent it all on whatever was in those boxes. She spent probably hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Maybe it was jewelry,” Ab suggested. “That wouldn’t have been too heavy.”
“Maybe she didn’t bury it in the tunnel. Maybe she left the island and took it with her,” Bean added. Ab picked up on the thread. “Maybe she moved to Europe with all her money and married a duke who was bankrupt but very much in love with her and—”
“Oh, please,” Bean sighed, then asked indignantly, “Why haven’t I ever heard this story?”
Mrs. Carver thought a moment. “You’d never have listened before,” she said softly. “Too much romance.” She sliced three juicy pieces from the warm pie.
“Who found the diary?” Ab asked.
“No one ever has,” Mrs. Carver replied. “All we have to go on is Mary Olson’s word that any of it is true—and she’s been dead over eighty years. Of course, people always felt she knew more than she told, but one thing no one doubted—she was as loyal as the day is long. She’d have done anything for Miss Minerva.”
“But she could have made it all up?” Abby said with alarm, bouncing to her feet.
“Could have,” said Mrs. Carver calmly. “Who wants pie?”
Every Work a Masterpiece
“Here she is,” Bean called from the opposite side of the graveyard. He was pointing at a white marble tombstone that leaned at a precarious angle due to its age and neglect.
Abby ran to his side, careful not to step on any graves along the way. She knelt at Bean’s side and peered through a crust of yellow and brown lichen. “Mary, beloved of Hermann Olson, born October 1, 1843. Died April 19, 1917,” she read aloud.
The sun was rich and dipped in gold, and the air was cool and slightly damp with a recent fog as Bean and Ab sat on the low stone border of the Olson grave. Abby absentmindedly traced the family name that had been embossed on the granite. “I’m going to have a video tombstone,” said Bean, as if that were a sensible thing to say.
Ab looked at him as if he’d just arrived from another dimension. “What are you talking about?”
“Interactive,” Bean added, having had a second or two to think about it. “An infrared trip switch will make a video screen pop out of the ground when someone walks by.” He raised his hands in the air. “And there’ll be an interactive multimedia presentation so they can talk to me and ask me questions and find out how wonderful I am.”
“How wonderful you were,” Ab corrected.
Bean smiled impishly. “I’m flattered you think so.”
Ab turned away and pretended to ignore him, but she couldn’t keep from smiling. “If only we knew what she knew,” said Bean half to himself as he tossed a nod at Mary Olson’s tombstone.
For a few minutes neither of them spoke. In the treetops, crows called loudly to one another across the tiny clearing while the passing day drew long, dark shadows, like blankets, across the ground.
“Funny that no one’s ever found that tunnel,” Ab mused after a while. “I mean, if it really exists.”
“They haven’t looked the right way,” Bean remarked philosophically.
“You mean they haven’t looked in the right place.”
“I doubt that,” Bean replied. “Can’t be that many places to look down there. I think they’re just not looking the right way.”
“I think you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ab stated. Slowly she tilted her head sideways, studying Mary Olson’s tombstone from a different angle. “What’s that?” she said, indicating some engraving barely visible above ground level and disappearing beneath the soil where the stone slanted.
“Writing,” said Bean, pressing down the grass to reveal as much of the lettering as possible. “Lord, rest my . . . something,” he read.
Abby began to dig away the turf with a brittle maple twig, but it kept breaking. “That’s useless,” she said, tossing it aside.
“Hey, wait,” said Bean. “I’ve got an idea.” He jumped to his feet and, bracing himself against the stone on the downhill side, began to push. Nothing happened.
“I don’t think that’ll work,” said Ab. “It’s been here too long. It’s all grown in.”
This was precisely the impetus Bean needed. Summoning all the strength he possessed, he wedged his feet against the low granite border and his back against the gravestone and pushed. This time there was a faint yielding.
“It moved!” Ab cried. Scrambling to her feet, she got a good handhold on the weathered stone and heaved for all she was worth. Slowly, as if a dull old giant was being wakened from his sleep, the stone groaned to a somewhat upright position.
“Quick,” said Bean, nearly out of breath, “get a rock and wedge it underneath.”
“But if I let go—,” Ab began in protest.