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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781491708002 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | iUniverse, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 11/11/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 364 |
| File size: | 475 KB |
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THE LORDS OF HANRAHAN
By DARRELL TOOKER
iUniverse, LLC
Copyright © 2013 Darrell TookerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-0798-2
CHAPTER 1
Laura was probably fourteen or fifteen years old when she first went to the old McPherson place that summer. It was Michael's idea. He and Bobby had been there and told the girls how they had found a window unlocked and what a neat place it was inside. She remembered the first time she saw it; she thought it was creepy, but they convinced her and Louise Merchle to go with them. She had heard about the old house but didn't believe any of the stories going around about it being haunted. That was just some gossip and probably started by someone who wanted to keep kids away from the empty house. Just because old man McPherson hung himself there several years ago didn't mean it was haunted. However, she never really had the courage to go out there, either, but that was about to change.
The old house was a couple of miles out of the town of Framingham, Connecticut, toward the old mill and over the covered bridge. Several generations of McPhersons had lived in that house over the years. It's a big wooden two-story structure built on a large lot on a dirt lane off Fort McKinley Road. It sits back off the street a ways and has an iron picket fence all around the grounds. There are a few large oak trees in the yard, a couple of gravestones off to the left of the house, and a broken sidewalk that leads through an open gate and up to the front porch. There's a second sidewalk that leads around the right side of the house to a set of wooden cellar doors. No one has lived there for several years, and it was for sale for so long, they finally took the For Sale sign down.
When the McPhersons built this place in the early 1900s, it was in the country, but as the town grew bigger, the house became closer and closer to town. Lots of folks think the house is spooky, and some actually think it's haunted.
Old man McPherson was the last one to live there, a widower of several years. He lived by himself except for a housekeeper that came two or three days a week. He was kind of a recluse, so people rarely ever saw him. On occasion, he could be seen sitting on the front porch smoking a cigar or a pipe. His housekeeper did all the shopping for him and took him to medical appointments, as needed. One night in late autumn, he hung himself. The housekeeper found him the next morning in his upstairs bedroom. He was ninety-three years old. The house has been closed up since that time except for a few kids nosing around.
Early one June morning, Michael and Bobby convinced her and Louise to go with them, so they all met at Laura's place, hopped on their bikes, and headed out of town toward the old McPherson place. It was a couple of miles out of town. They rode down Oak Street past the fire station and then east on Fort McKinley Road. They made good time, and before they knew it, they were at the turn to the old house. The road didn't have a name; at least, there was no signpost at the intersection.
When they turned the corner and the old house came into view, Laura stopped her bike and stared at its majestic loneliness. The old house must have had many memories and probably many personal stories of those who lived there. All inhabitants have been gone for many years. Nothing remains now but an old frame house and its many secrets.
"Michael Parks, I don't think we ought to go messin' around here," she yelled, trying to obtain a retreat.
"What's the matter? You babes scared?" Michael yelled back.
"Yeah, ya scared or somethin'?" chimed in Bobby Walters as he skidded his bike to a halt next to Michael's. He did everything Michael did ... at least he tried.
He and Michael had been friends for about as long as she could remember, and they were always together. Michael was one of those boys who wasn't afraid of much and would do almost anything on a dare, if it would impress one of the other boys. They all looked up to him, but mostly from a distance. He wasn't a bad kid—just kind of a know-it-all, at times, but not enough to get on your nerves. Michael was Bobby's best friend and worshipped the ground he walked on.
"Come on, Laura," called Michael. "Show us what you babes are made of." He turned his bike and headed toward the house with Bobby right behind him.
When they turned onto the street, the old house seemed to beckon them onward, as if it wanted the company.
It looked creepy and all alone, thought Laura. Maybe it needed company to keep its spirits up.
Louise rode around her and said, "Come on, let's go," and headed up the street and into the driveway, which ended in a circular dirt path in front of a large front porch. The shades in the house's upper windows were brown and warped, probably from the sun's rays shining on them all these years. The front porch was as long as the house was wide, and its roof was held up by four large posts about eight to ten inches square. There was a three-foot railing all the way around it except where the wooden steps led up to the front door. An area off to the right was where cars used to be parked by an old unpainted wooden garage. The grass around the house looked like it hadn't been cut in years. It was tall and folded over like she'd imagined prairie grass would be.
She stopped behind Louise in front of the porch steps. Michael and Bobby had already dropped their bikes in the grass and were over to the right side of the house, beside what looked to be a storm cellar, trying to pry up a nearby window. Bobby was standing on one of the wooden cellar doors trying to lift up the huge window. Once he got the window up, Michael put a stick under it to hold it up, and then they crawled through and disappeared.
"Come on, Laura," called Bobby as he stuck his head back out the window, motioning the girls his way, and then he disappeared again into the house.
"I'm not going in there, Louise," Laura stated with firm convictions. "Are you?"
"Not on your life," she said strongly too. "But that won't keep me from checking it out on the outside." She dropped her bike and ran up the porch steps and pulled on the door handle. It was obviously key-locked.
Laura dropped her bike and ran up on the porch to join Louise. She heard rapping sounds on window glass, and when she turned around, she saw Michael and Bobby looking out the right porch window, laughing at them. Louise went over and talked to the boys through the glass.
"They said there's no key in the front door," said Louise, looking at an old sofa sitting on the left side of the porch. "And the windows were nailed shut too. They said it's a good place to smoke weed."
"Nobody's smoking anything," yelled Laura. "So, are they coming out?"
"No, they're going to go down into the basement and look for dead bodies," Louise added. "It would serve them right if they found one."
"It sure would," agreed Laura.
"You know, this sofa smells really bad. Why would anyone leave a sofa outside like this?" pondered Louise. She was running her hands over the top of the sofa, as if she had some question deep in the back of her mind.
"Wonder how long it's been out here?" questioned Laura. "The Connecticut weather hasn't been good for it. I'm surprised it's still holding its shape."
She wondered how many people had sat there over the years and what they had talked about. Maybe some had smoked cigars or cigarettes or even a pipe while they conversed with each other. There appeared to be some cigarette burns in several places.
"I don't know," said Louise. "And another thing, why didn't they sell this old place off or something? Do you think there are still some relatives of old man McPherson still alive?"
"Daddy said old man McPherson killed himself in 1987, and I don't think anyone has lived here since."
The girls were trying to imagine what it must have been like to live in an old house like this one.
"Well, I don't know," said Louise. "It would seem to me that life would be awfully stuffy."
"Like The Addams Family?" Laura chuckled.
"No. Not that kind of stuffiness. I mean like having to sit at a long table at dinnertime and having servants wait on you and ..." She never finished her sentence. Laura waited for her to go on, but she didn't offer any more reasons for her stuffy-type feelings. She just stared off into the distance as if she was in a trance. Then suddenly, out of the blue, she announced, "I'm going in!"
She glanced at Laura's look of surprise. There was deadly silence for a few seconds, which seemed like minutes to Laura. She remained in a shock-like position with her mouth wide open and her eyes dazed, in disbelief.
"You're what?"
"I'm going in!" Louise repeated with more conviction this time.
"What? Are you crazy? Don't do this," pleaded Laura. "You're not serious, are you?"
"Yes, I am. I thought about it just now while we were talking, and I've decided I'm going to do it. What about you?" She looked at Laura. Another long pause, as if she was groping for the right words or the right thought or the right excuse.
"I'm not sure, Louise, but I don't want to be left out here alone." She was trying to reason with her conscience about her decision. Then she repeated, "Just don't leave me out here by myself." Laura looked a little frightened—well, maybe a lot frightened.
"Come on." She grabbed Laura by the arm. "We'll go in, and if you don't like it, I'll come right back out with you."
The look on Laura's face was worth a thousand words.
She noticed her lower lip was quivering just a little when she said, "Oh, God! I can't believe I'm going to do this. Louise Merchle, you stay right next to me, you hear?"
Louise answered with a strong, resounding affirmative, but deep down inside she was just as scared as Laura. They went down the front porch steps and around the side of the house to where the open window stood. They could hear the boys talking inside the house, and finally, after getting their attention, the boys came to the window and helped the girls climb in.
"We were in the library," stated Bobby. "Some of those old volumes are really interesting."
The inside of the house looked much larger to Laura than she had imagined it would, as viewed from the outside. It was not very wide but quite a distance from the front to the back. Bobby grabbed her arm and led her through a door to the right into a room that was filled with books from floor to ceiling in some places. There was even a ladder with wheels leaning against the stacks, like you see in bookstores in the mall.
"How many sets of encyclopedias did this family need?" asked Louise, while she surveyed one wall covered with the oversized volumes. "Look at this. The latest copyright date is 1965." She appeared to be less emotional now and much calmer. She was very interested in the encyclopedias for some reason. Laura figured that must be why she always got As in history and geography.
"Think about all the history that's missing here." Louise kept her train of thought. "Just think. There's not much in here about the Vietnam War, Nixon's administration, Watergate, Carter's term, and all the other presidents right up through Obama are like nonexistent. That's so cool."
"Check one out and see if President Kennedy's assassination is in there. It was in '63, right?" Michael asked. Laura appeared pleased that Michael could pull that little tidbit of information out of his hat.
There were books on all four walls, arranged neatly in rows, hidden knowledge enclosed in their volumes. Laura was awestruck with their presence. In the middle of the room was a rectangular table with four wooden chairs, two on either side, and a large book on the far end, probably a Webster's dictionary. Against the east wall was a rolltop desk with a matching wooden chair on rollers, the kind of desk her grandfather had in his study at his home in Woodstock. The room appeared charming and full of life, as though this was the room where heavy reading and serious planning took place. She wondered if the children used this room for their homework and studies; that is, if children ever lived in this house.
Laura left the other three in the library and walked out into the foyer. At least, she thought it was a foyer. The room was about six feet wide and ran the entire width of the house, except for a closet at the far end. There were two other doors leading from this room, one across from the front door and one at the other end of the foyer just this side of the closet. The room at the far end appeared to Laura to be a sitting room of some sort. As she entered the room it gave her a homey feeling. It was furnished with a couch, two soft chairs, two tall floor lamps, and a crudely hand-carved coffee table, all sitting on a musty old dark brown braided rug. A fireplace occupied the west wall, but it didn't look like it had been used recently.
The middle room, the one across from the front door, probably handled most of the family activities. As Laura entered the room, she felt a strange coolness that she hadn't felt before, like her whole body got goose bumps all at once. The room was larger than the sitting room or the library and extended farther into the house. It still gave off vibes of extreme loneliness, as though it had been forgotten over the years. Entering into this house was like stepping back into time, not just five years but several years. All the furniture was several decades old and in a state of disrepair. The room had hardwood floors with furniture placed in the center of the room. There were no rugs. Two torn and tattered sitting chairs were at opposite ends of a wooden coffee stand, and scuff marks were on the floor beside the stand where a sofa used to sit. It's probably the old sofa that's out on the porch. The west wall had several shelves with odds and ends adorning them and a couple of trophies. Toward the end of that wall sat a large glassed-in gun case housing three or four shotguns or rifles—Laura couldn't tell which—and two handguns. Sitting against the rear wall was an antique china hutch with a few plates and cups still on the top half. It sat just to the left of a door that led to a large eat-in kitchen. To the right of the door sat a wooden trunk about two feet high and four feet long, and to its right was the beginning of a staircase that turned to the right and disappeared up over the east wall. A closet was tucked neatly under the staircase, and at the end of the wall sat a magnificent antique upright piano. Pictures were centered on the top of the piano, one a family photo of four people—two adults and two young children. She wiped the photo on the right knee of her jeans to get the dust off so she could get a better look.
"Play us some music, baby," said Michael, standing right behind her.
She let out this bloodcurdling scream that could be heard halfway to town and jumped at least three feet in the air.
"Oh, my God, Michael, you scared the bee-Jesus out of me."
She felt her pulse rate soaring to at least 150 beats per minute, and her knees felt like jelly. But she didn't drop the picture. As she placed the picture back on top of the piano, she saw every hair on her arm standing at attention.
"Don't you ever do that to me again. Being in this old house is bad enough, let alone sneaking up behind me." She turned in time to see Bobby and Louise running through the door from the foyer.
"What's going on in here?" Bobby looked at her questioningly. "We heard a scream and thought you'd seen a mouse or something."
"No, it's this stupid idiot here you call a friend who snuck up behind me and scared the liver out of me when I least expected it."
"You know," said Louise, "I think we've been in here long enough for one day. I think we should go. Don't you, Laura?"
"Aw, come on, Louise. We've only been in here for twenty or thirty minutes," insisted Michael. Although it did seem much longer than that to Laura, and she could tell Louise wasn't at all that happy about being there either.
"That's right," added Bobby. "We haven't even been to the basement yet."
"I'm not going to the basement," protested Louise. "I'm not going anywhere near the basement. You guys can go down there when you're by yourselves. Besides, I thought you guys had already gone down there."
"Nah, not yet. We were too busy up here in the library," said Bobby.
"In the meantime, I'm going to sit right here in this chair till you're ready to leave this room." She wiped the dust off the seat of the chair and sat down. Then she wiped the dust off the near end of the coffee table and propped her feet up on it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE LORDS OF HANRAHAN by DARRELL TOOKER. Copyright © 2013 Darrell Tooker. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Chapter 1, 1,
Chapter 2, 15,
Chapter 3, 31,
Chapter 4, 47,
Chapter 5, 57,
Chapter 6, 72,
Chapter 7, 80,
Chapter 8, 98,
Chapter 9, 110,
Chapter 10, 129,
Chapter 11, 148,
Chapter 12, 165,
Chapter 13, 179,
Chapter 14, 191,
Chapter 15, 201,
Chapter 16, 215,
Chapter 17, 222,
Chapter 18, 233,
Chapter 19, 249,
Chapter 20, 258,
Chapter 21, 272,
Chapter 22, 288,
Chapter 23, 293,
Chapter 24, 316,
Chapter 25, 327,
Chapter 26, 336,