The Trespassers Part 1

The Trespa.s.sers.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

To Ben and Yvonne Lee.

and especially to Michael and Jessica.

with lots of love.

Chapter 1.

TOWARD THE END OF CORNELIA BRADFORD'S SIXTH-GRADE year at Carmel Middle School she wrote a very successful report for Mr. Hardcastle's language arts cla.s.s. Mr. Hardcastle liked it a lot. When she got it back it had a large red A at the top of the page and beneath that the words, "Good for you, Neely. Well written and fascinating material. Particularly fascinating to me and to everyone in my core cla.s.s this year." The t.i.tle of her paper was "The Tragic Story of Halcyon House."

She began the report by explaining the origin of the word halcyon. "The word 'halcyon,'" she wrote, "originated in Greek mythology. In those olden days of ancient Greece, halcyons were believed to be seabirds who built their nests on the ocean waves. These beautiful birds were so beloved by the G.o.ds that during their nesting season the G.o.ds stilled the winds and waves so that their nests would not be disturbed. This is why the word 'halcyon' came to mean a time of beautiful peace and tranquility."

In the second paragraph of the report she began to tell about the history of Halcyon House itself. "And so," Neely had written, "in 1910 when Mr. Harold Hutchinson the first, an, extremely wealthy businessman, built his magnificent mansion on the coast a few miles south of Carmel, he called it Halcyon House, because he hoped to find there the peace and beauty that he could not find anywhere else."

She didn't actually go into the fact that, according to rumor, old Harold the first had spent most of his life trampling all over anyone who happened to get in his way and that, along with his millions, he had earned an awful lot of hate and fear and jealousy-and not much peace and tranquility. But she did tell about some of the sad and tragic things that had happened to various members of the Hutchinson family in the years that followed. After admitting that most of the stories were based only on rumor, she told about the guest who had drowned in the swimming pool, the car accidents and serious illnesses-like pneumonia and alcoholism and insanity-that, over the years, had disturbed the tranquility of Halcyon House.

She finished the report by saying, "Now, once again, the Hutchinsons are gone from Halcyon. Harold Hutchinson's dream of the beautiful bird of peace is gone forever, and only a hawk haunts the wind that sweeps down Halcyon Hill."

She thought the ending, which was only slightly borrowed from her father's favorite poet, was especially good, and Mr. Hardcastle seemed to think so too. And he also mentioned that his whole core cla.s.s would find the report particularly interesting, since they had all known a member of the Hutchinson family, if only for a very short time.

Of course, he was referring to Curtis, and of course, Neely hadn't said anything at all about Curtis in her report. She didn't mention Curtis or Monica and she certainly didn't mention some other facts that Mr. Hardcastle might have found particularly fascinating-the true facts about the strange and awful things that had happened at Halcyon House only a few months before.

So, even though "The Tragic Story of Halcyon House" earned a big red A, it certainly wasn't the whole story.

Chapter 2.

IT ALL STARTED ON A MONDAY IN JUNE NOT LONG AFTER the beginning of summer vacation when Neely had just finished fifth grade. During breakfast that morning she noticed that her little brother, Grub (Gregory actually, but Grub to family and friends), was acting peculiarly, not eating anything and staring off into s.p.a.ce with wide, unfocused eyes. She was just beginning to suspect that he was having another attack of what Aaron called Grubbie's sky-is-falling syndrome when Connie Bradford, their mother, looked up from writing on her calendar, and told him to eat his scrambled eggs before they got cold.

"I can't, Mom," he said. "I can't eat them." His mother erased something she'd just written, before she said, "Why not? What's wrong with them? They look perfectly all right to me."

Grub was staring down at the eggs as if he expected them to leap off his plate and attack, like a small yellow version of the Blob. "Cholesterol," he whispered.

"Cholesterol?" Mom asked. "What do you know about cholesterol, Grubbie?" She got up to get some more coffee and came back to her chair. But when Grub just went on silently poking at his eggs, she said, "You know you'll just have to sit there until you finish your breakfast, don't you, dear? So you might as well get started." Then she tucked a strand of her long gray hair behind her ear, and went back to sipping her coffee and scribbling down notes about the things she had to get done that day.

Neely bit her lips, wanting to say, "Look at him, Mom. He's really working himself up again," but she didn't. It wouldn't have done any good. Instead she only said, "Grub, Mom asked you what you know about cholesterol."

Grub sighed and rolled his big, beautiful eyes tragically. "Everything," he said in a mournful tone of voice. "I read all about it in the Times."

He probably had too. Even though Grub was only eight-and-a-half years old he really could-and did-read everything, including the daily newspaper and the Encyclopedia Britannica. A fact which thrilled teachers and other intellectually inclined types like his father, but wasn't all that great really because a lot of what he read just gave him something else to worry about.

Just last week, for instance, he'd been certain that they were all about to be squashed by a falling meteorite, and before that it had been the disappearing rain forests. The rain forests thing had been a really major sky-is-falling attack-the kind that could last for days, and it was beginning to look as if this might be another. Unless something wonderful happened, like...Neely looked around, vaguely hoping for something wonderful to come to mind. Like, for instance, if the weather would just get better. Grub, who had always been strangely affected by the weather, usually was much easier to cheer up when the sun was shining.

But it was a typical June morning on the northern California coast-cold and damp, with a heavy ocean fog that was clearly going to hang on for hours. Not very good weather for moody types like Grub, that was for certain, but on the other hand it was a perfectly good day to stay indoors and read, which was exactly what Neely had been planning to do.

Grub was still staring at his eggs when Neely left the room. There wasn't anything she could do about it, so she put him out of her mind and went looking for the book about Joan of Arc that she'd just started reading the night before.

It was at least half an hour later, and Neely was curled up on the window seat in the living room, alternately reading and daydreaming, when Grub came in. She had just finished an excruciatingly tragic scene, and was busy imagining herself as Joan of Arc, calmly and courageously facing the English judges and then being led away to the stake, when Grub stumbled in and collapsed on the floor.

At first she tried to ignore him, but it wasn't easy. The way his arms and legs were flung out every which way made him look like the victim of some horrible disaster, and every few minutes he let out a long, pitiful sigh. She looked away and tried to bring back that tragic scene in the marketplace in Rouen, but it was no good. At last she gave up, put down her book, and asked Grub if he would like to do something. Like go for a walk, maybe.

Grub groaned again, rolled over on his back and looked at his watch before he said, "Well, all right. I guess I have time for a short walk."

"Time?" Neely asked. "Before what?"

Grub sighed. "Before I have a heart attack."

Neely got up, threw down her book, and yanked Grub to his feet. "Listen, Grubbie," she said. "If you don't shut up about your cholesterol, something's going to get attacked all right, but it won't be your heart. Come on. Let's go." Then she whacked him on his bottom and pulled him toward the door.

A few minutes later, as they were going down the back steps, Neely actually said-word for word-"Okay, which way shall we go? The ocean or the hills?" Which pretty much proved beyond a reasonable doubt that she started out that morning with absolutely no plans concerning Halcyon House. It was Grub who had chosen the hills-by way of the old Hutchinson Road, which, of course, pa.s.sed right by the entrance to the estate-and Halcyon House.

Chapter 3.

AS THEY STARTED UP THE HILL IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT, even though Grub had agreed to the walk, he hadn't agreed to cheer up. They pa.s.sed the Jensens' property, with its great hedge of ancient cypresses, and went on up the steep slope that led to the top of the rise, with Grub trudging along silently, ignoring Neely's attempts to make conversation. After trying out several of his favorite conversational topics-such as his pets, word games, and the meaning of life, Neely more or less gave up and quit trying to get through to him. When they reached the top of the rise she stopped and turned toward the sea.

From there on the crest the land fell away in a long green slope. It leveled a little at the Bradfords' property and the highway beyond, but then it began to slope again. The green plain, covered with chaparral and brightened by splotches of lupine and Indian paintbrush, became steeper as it approached the sharp drop to where the waves crashed and foamed against the great gray rocks. And beyond that the Pacific Ocean stretched out everlastingly to meet and blend with the sky. Sometimes the view from the crest blazed with color-sea-blue, foam-white, and gra.s.s-green-brightened by clumps of red, yellow, and lavender. But today the drifting fog veiled both land and sea, fading everything into an endless dreary gray.

Stopping there on the crest to rest a moment and look down to the sea and listen for its distant roar had always been a part of any visit to the Halcyon Grove. Here, where a sloping boulder offered a thronelike seat, Neely had often stopped to sit, sometimes all by herself, but many other times on her way to the grove with Grub. Mostly just with Grub, but once in a while with their father, who sometimes came with them as far as the rocky throne. He always stopped there to recite poetry and tell stories about the early days on the Big Sur coast when only a few brave pioneer families had homesteaded on what some people called "the edge of the earth."

"Come on, Grub. Let's rest a minute." Neely scooted up onto her usual seat on the boulder. "Look. Look at the hawk. Look how... She stopped, trying to remember a line from one of the Robinson Jeffers poems that Dad always quoted. "How does that poem go? The one about the air being haunted by hawks?"

Grub was usually interested in hawks and poetry, too, but today he only glanced up and then went plodding on. Sighing impatiently, she hurried after him and together they started down into the valley.

Below the crest the pavement ended and the road narrowed to a rutted and potholed lane. John Bradford, Grub and Neely's father, said that years ago the unpaved section was regularly graded and graveled, but that was when the original Harold Hutchinson was still alive and he and his family spent every summer in the mansion. For as long as Neely could remember, however, the road had been, as it was now, a narrow, weed-grown pathway that wound its way down into the heavily wooded valley.

On a bright, clear day Halcyon Grove was an enchanted place, its mysterious green-tinged shadows spangled with filtered sunlight, but today the light was dim and gray, and wisps of ocean fog drifted among the trees in ghostly veils. They walked silently down the steep slope among live oak and madrone trees and then into the deeper forest of redwoods and ponderosa pines that grew along the bed of the creek. Great towering trees that were native to the Monterey coast but which, in this particular place, had actually been planted years ago by gardeners so that the Hutchinsons could have their own private forest.

As they made their way through the dense grove Neely stole a glance now and then in her brother's direction to see if the old familiar magic was working. But today nothing seemed to help. Grub just went mooching along, his face puckered into a pug-nosed mask of tragedy.

For a moment Neely felt angry. Why should it always be her responsibility to cheer Grub up? After all, she was just his sister and only three years older than he was. But somehow it had always been more or less that way. She didn't know why exactly, except that she and Grub were a special case, being what some people called afterthought children and therefore almost like a separate family. After their parents had had Aaron and Julie and Lucinda, almost ten years had gone by before Neely was born, and then three years after that came the final afterthought, Gregory Bradford-or as Aaron called him when they brought him home from the hospital, "the Grub."

So maybe it was just that by the time Grubbie came along no one had the time or energy left to cope with things like his gloom-and-doom attacks. No one except Neely, and from time to time even she ran out of the kind of patience it took to deal with Grub's weird personality.

It did help, of course, that he was so gorgeous. If you're going to be a pain in the neck, it helps to be a beautiful one-though, of course, the opposite is true too. From very personal experience Neely knew that if you're not beautiful you'd better not be a nuisance-not if you know what's good for you.

If, for instance, you happened to inherit a square jaw and straight, no-particular-color hair instead of the fine features, ma.s.ses of dark curls, and enormous long-lashed eyes of the Bradford side of the family, you really needed to work on your other talents. Talents such as poise and personality, which Neely apparently had plenty of, if poise and personality accounted for the fact that her cla.s.smates had elected her cla.s.s president or secretary or treasurer more times than she could remember.

But having to make up for a lack in the appearance department was one problem Grub would never have to deal with. Even today, trudging along with his curly head bent down and a gloomy frown dipping the ends of his eyebrows and the corners of his lips, Grub somehow managed to look disgustingly charming. It really wasn't fair. Neely sighed and looked the other way.

They were climbing again on the far side of the valley where the road wound its way up toward the entrance to the Hutchinson estate, when Neely suddenly realized that Grub wasn't there beside her, nor anywhere on the road behind her-as if he had suddenly faded away into the drifting fog.

Chapter 4.

FOR A MOMENT, LOOKING DOWN THE EMPTY FOG-DIMMED lane, Neely felt a twinge of anxiety, but she had barely started back the way they had come when she noticed a movement in the underbrush. And there, on the ground behind a tall clump of ferns, was Grub. Crouching down on his hands and knees, he seemed to be completely engrossed in something on the ground in front of him.

Good, Neely thought. Grub had always been so fascinated by every kind of living thing that sometimes all it took to cure one of his depressions was an unusual bug, or b.u.t.terfly, or even a particularly gruesome slug. All prepared to make an enthusiastic fuss over whatever it was he'd found-Wow! Look at that! Isn't that the most beautiful...or interesting...or slimiest...or whatever seemed appropriate-she hurried over to squat down beside him-and immediately realized that what Grub had found this time wasn't going to help at all. It was a tiny baby squirrel. A tiny dead baby squirrel. And death had been high on Grub's anxiety list since he was about four years old, when he'd started asking everyone to explain death, and tell him why G.o.d allowed it to happen.

Reaching out with one finger, Grub touched the tiny furry head between its pitiful little sunken eyes and then looked up at Neely.

"Why?" he said in a quavering voice. "Why did it have to die, Neely?"

"Look, Grub." Neely knew she was sounding exasperated but she couldn't help it. The "why death" question was one Grub had pestered her with for so long she'd pretty much run out of answers. "I've told you before, and so have Mom and Dad, that there's just no point in-"

But at that very moment she heard something that made her lose track of what she was saying...the nearby stutter and chug of an approaching car. Crouching down beside Grub she whispered, "Shhh. Get down. It's Reuben."

Peering through the ferns, they watched as a rusty old pickup truck struggled around the curve, weaving from side to side as it bounced in and out of the deep ruts. Inside the cab a slouching figure topped by a floppy old hat was just visible through the dusty window. It was Reuben all right, on his way to the highway on his regular Monday trip to Monterey.

Reuben Flores, who lived in a small cabin behind the main house at Halcyon, had been the watchman and caretaker of the Hutchinson property for as long as Neely could remember. His dog, a very large mastiff called Lion, was, according to rumor, attack trained and a vicious man-killer. Whenever Reuben left Halcyon, which he did every Monday and usually on Sat.u.r.days, too, he turned Lion loose to roam the estate grounds. Which meant that no one-no local kids and not even any nosy tourists-dared so much as set foot on the Hutchinson property. No one dared, that is, except Grub and Neely Bradford, who had been regular visitors to the grounds of Halcyon House for almost two years.

Grub had been only six years old at the time of their first visit to the estate grounds. On that particular day he and Neely had been playing a game in the grove. The game, if Neely remembered correctly, had been based on The Jungle Book, which was one of their favorites that year. Grub, as Mowgli, had run off pretending to be kidnapped by the Bandar Log. But when Neely, playing the part of Bagheera, the black panther, went to the rescue, Grub wasn't in any of their regular hiding places.

She had looked everywhere and was getting a little frantic when she heard a giggle coming from the other side of the huge wrought iron fence that surrounded the estate grounds. And there she had finally found Grub, sitting on the ground in the middle of the Hutchinsons' weed-grown driveway, being enthusiastically s...o...b..red over by the terrible Lion. Lion, it seemed, like almost every other animal Grub had ever met, had fallen in love with him at first sight.

After that amazing discovery they had returned many times to visit Lion-and the grounds of the estate. All they had to do was watch and listen for Reuben's pickup as it chugged past their house, and they would be off, up the hill, down into the grove, and from there into the estate grounds. Then, with Lion trotting happily along beside them, they would explore the weed-grown lawns and gardens, the crumbling tennis court, the grand old stable with its high-domed hayloft, and even walk along the leaf-strewn verandas of the huge house, trying to peek in through the shuttered windows.

Neely was particularly fascinated by the windows. Windows of deserted houses, she had always thought, were like sad, empty eyes, forever weeping invisible tears for the warmth and life they had once known. And the windows of Halcyon House were particularly spellbinding because of all the strange things she had heard about the people who had once lived within its walls.

But it was impossible to see very much through the cracks in the heavy old shutters. So the secrets of Halcyon House remained hidden away. Hidden, that is, until that day. The day of Grub's cholesterol anxiety attack.

Chapter 5.

NEELY WAITED UNTIL REUBEN HAD COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED into the fog before she crawled out from behind the ferns. Standing in the middle of the road, she looked back to where her brother was again staring mournfully at the dead squirrel. "Come on, Grub," she said suddenly. "Let's go." She didn't have to say where.

Grub gave the dead squirrel one last lingering glance, got to his feet, and without a word led the way into the estate grounds. Not, of course, by way of the grand gateway where wrought iron vines twisted up st.u.r.dy pillars and formed themselves into an archway of ornate letters spelling the word Halcyon. Pa.s.sing by the gate, which as always was locked and chained and doubly padlocked, they went on up the slope to where a dense thicket of Scotch broom grew up on both sides of the fence. There, in the midst of the thicket, a socket had rusted out, so one of the iron fence poles could be pushed to one side, leaving a sizable gap. A gap through which Grub had crawled on that first day when he discovered that Lion was really a p.u.s.s.ycat-and through which he, and Neely as well, had crept many times since.

Inside the fence they zigzagged through the weeds, tiptoeing carefully and as lightly as possible to avoid establishing a telltale path to their secret entrance. But once on the driveway they needed only to follow the deep ruts worn by Reuben's pickup. The road rose steeply here as it curved and twisted through a grove of ornamental trees and bushes, ending on the high plateau from which Halcyon House had looked down for more than eighty years...down over the narrow wooded valley that cut through the treeless plain and on out to the endless blue of sea and sky. They had just reached the plateau when Lion emerged from behind the house and bounded out to meet them.

Grub's giggle sounded almost normal when Lion showered him with sloppy kisses, and later when they discovered the tadpoles in the stagnant water of the swimming pool, his behavior certainly seemed to be typical Grubbiness. Squatting at the water's edge, he stared at the bug-eyed black blobs in the slimy green water with the kind of concentration that most kids save for their favorite TV programs. Watching Grub watch the tadpoles, Neely decided the sky-is-falling syndrome was over, at least for the time being, which was a decided relief.

After the tadpoles finally lost their charm, they moved on past Reuben's tiny cottage and Lion's enormous doghouse, and then through the rose garden, to pay a visit to the stable. The beautiful old stable, built in the same ma.s.sive rustic style as the house itself, was one of Neely's favorite places and a visit there was always included when she and Grub visited the grounds of Halcyon.

They entered the stable by the small door set into one of the large double panels that had once opened to accommodate wagons or trucks. Once inside it was necessary to wait for a few moments while their eyes accustomed themselves to the dim light before they could move forward over the dusty inlaid brick floor. Neely loved walking down the central corridor sniffing carefully for the faint faraway odor of hay and horse and imagining beautiful Thoroughbred and Arabian heads sticking out over the doors of the roomy box stalls on either side.

Leaving the stables, they moved on slowly across the weed-grown lawns, pushed their way through the trailing tentacles of vine in the sagging grape arbor, and then came back to rest on a stone bench at the edge of what had once been a rose garden.

The bench faced the south wing of the house, where an ancient wisteria vine coiled around the stone pillars that supported the roof of the veranda. From that angle, facing away from the weed-grown lawns and gardens, the house, seen by itself, still looked grand and imposing. The lower level with its walls and pillars of gray fieldstone looked as if it would last forever, and even the upper floors with their heavy wooden shingles seemed almost untouched by time. It was only the peeling paint on door and window frames and a few sagging shutters that spoiled the illusion. But if Neely squinted her eyes only a little, the house looked almost as magnificent as it must have during its days of glory.

She often thought about those olden days at Halcyon House.

"Dad says there were parties here all the time," she told Grub, "with people going up our road in fancy cars with chauffeurs in uniforms."

Grub's eyes were unfocused. "And carriages with lots of white horses."

Neely laughed. "No, silly. Dad's not that old. And the house isn't that old. Dad says it was built in 1910, and there were already cars by then. And by the time Dad can remember, there were lots of cars."

Grub shrugged. "There were carriages once, with white horses. I read all about it in the encyclopedia."

He hadn't, of course. Anytime Grub wanted to win an argument he claimed to have read about it in the encyclopedia. But Neely didn't ask him if he was telling the truth. She and Grub had always had a kind of silent agreement about certain kinds of questions. The agreement was that they didn't ask questions about whether something was "really true" or not. "Really true" questions were absolutely out. And besides, she rather liked the thought of the horse-drawn carriages herself.

She was still imagining the horses when Grub asked, "Why did they all go away?"

"You know why," Neely said. "Dad told us. And I've told you before. Lots of times."

"I know, but I want to hear it again. I want to hear it now, while I'm looking at the house."

That made sense. Neely was sure she could tell it better while the grand old house was right there in front of her.

"Well," she began. "The first Harold Hutchinson was a very rich man. The richest man in the whole world." She wasn't sure about that last part, but it did make the story more exciting. She could tell that Grub liked it, too, so she added some more.