Prisoners in Devil's Bog

  CHAPTER XXI

  DO DREAMS COME TRUE?

  Nickie was clinging to him and making funny little noises deep in histhroat. Skippy let him cling, for he was shaking from head to foothimself and he blinked his eyes in the darkness.

  "You seen _him_--you seen--" Skippy stammered, frightened at the soundof his own voice.

  "I don't know what I seen," Nickie said, his words scarcely audiblebecause of his chattering teeth. "I--that scream--you heard that, hah?"

  "Sure, and I seen him look terrible. Lissen!" Mechanically, they putout their hands to feel for the window and pressed close to itoblivious of the fresh downpour of rain which swept in upon them,drenching them to the skin. The gale screamed its hardest, the lanterncreaked in Nickie's shaking hand like some spectral voice out of thenight, but that was the only sound to reach their listening ears.

  "_Timmy!_" Skippy called suddenly. "Timmy--_answer_!"

  "You hurt, Timmy?" Nickie's query was pathetic.

  A tense silence seemed to beat upon their ears and for a while they haddifficulty in even listening to the noises of the storm. Theireagerness to hear Timmy's thin voice had plunged them into a temporaryoblivion from which they recovered with a start.

  "You believe in spooks?" Nickie asked in a whisper.

  "Nope." Skippy gulped. "Why?"

  "Call once again, hah?"

  Skippy called, loud and long.

  The wind screamed in answer, mockingly.

  "Let's beat it downstairs an' have some light, hah?" After a pause:"You ain't got matches, I s'pose?"

  "Would I be standin' here in the dark?"

  Nickie's throat was full of noises. "We better be careful goin' downthe ladder--say, we didn't leave the lantern in the hall lighted."

  "An' the one in the kitchen too," Skippy reminded him grimly. "Thereain't no light till we get to the kitchen n' find a match."

  Nickie stopped short. "Where's that rope an' that iron handle?" heasked fearfully.

  "I hid 'em under that rubbish by the window just now. So go on. Le'sget down."

  Nickie sighed. "I oughta knowed you wouldn't forget nothin' even at atime like this."

  They groped their way down the ladder and waited for a moment in theupper hall listening to the various sounds throughout the house and thenoise of the storm. They could not see each other and theyinstinctively pressed their bodies close together. Nickie had his handthrough Skippy's arm and clung to it tightly. Then by a mutual impulsethey moved toward the stairway with measured steps, their ears strainedand listening for all that their eyes could not see.

  It was a long and awesome journey to the bottom of the stairway andonce there they had a whispered consultation as to whether to go aroundthrough the rooms to the kitchen or march straight past the cellar doorand so on into the room. Skippy decided on keeping to the hall eventhough it meant passing the door to the dim regions below.

  They had not taken two steps in that direction, when Nickie gave ventto a blood-curdling scream.

  "_What?_" Skippy cried frantically.

  "_My foot!_" Nickie was gasping in the dark. "Sump'n run over my foot!"

  "_A rat!_" Skippy said, disgustedly. "I said to shut that cellar door,Nickie!"

  "Oh my head!" Nickie groaned. "I was scared skinny. Kid, let's run."

  Skippy was human enough to accede and they made the kitchen in onebreath-taking bound.

  Nickie let go his hold on the other's arm. "Whew!" he said nervously."Gimme a match."

  "Yeah, that's what I say," Skippy said, moving noisily about the room."They ain't on this stove--I've felt all over. Say, you lit thatlantern we took up to the attic."

  "Sure, I did. Wha'd I do with them matches?" Nickie asked himselfdesperately.

  It was another day before he found out, and in the interim they haddecided that there was no other room in the house which offered thecomparative peace of their own room. At least they could shutthemselves in there. And that they did, not stopping until they hadpushed their heavy bed tight against the stout oaken door.

  "What we afraid of, huh?" Skippy asked in a small voice. They hadundressed and were in bed.

  "I dunno, kid!" Nickie admitted honestly. "I'm kinda broke up in ahundred pieces like, since that scream."

  "_Timmy's?_"

  "Say, was it sure enough him?"

  "Why, sure--gee whiz, who else...."

  "That's why I ast if you believe'n spooks!"

  "Nickie! Gee whiz, we heard Timmy talkin'--didn't he tell us twas all atrick with Devlin--didn't he say Devlin meant to kill him and...."

  "Yeah, an' ain't that like his dream the other night? Ain't it like hecomes back in his dream an' stands under that big tree? Ain't it all inhis dream how he's tellin' us up at the winder an' warnin' us, whenzip, he sees this arm come out an' pretty soon he feels like he'schokin'? How do we know he ain't kicked off somehow last night an'tonight he comes back from the dead, hah?"

  Frightened as he was, Skippy could not help smiling into the darkness."Say, I thought you was a real tough guy when I first spotted you. An'here you're talkin' bout spooks an' comin' back from the dead likeyou're a regular sissy."

  Nickie did not protest. Something had happened to him and he wasincapable of explaining just what it was. The tough guy, as Skippytermed it, no longer existed, for Nickie had looked upon an evil whichhad shaken him to his very soul. He did not know it then, but the smallsins which were directly responsible for his present predicament hadgone, never to return.

  "I dunno, kid," he said, slowly, "but it's like I'm payin' for doin'what I done an' makin' my aunt cry an' worry after she brought me up. Iknowed it worried her but I kep' on stubborn-like so now I got it good!Long's I live I won't never forget Timmy's scream, whether it was him'rhis spook!"

  "Maybe it was good then that this happened," Skippy said practically."Whether it was Timmy's ghost or not." But after a pause, he added,fearfully: "Gee whiz, Timmy _can't_ be dead!"

  "I think different, kid. I think he is!"

  "But we heard him talk, Nickie. You an' me, we heard it like we heareach other talkin' now, didn't we?"

  "Sure. But ain't it funny, kid, how it's all like it was in that dreamhe told us about?"

  "I'll say it's funny. It's like his dream so much that it gives me thecreeps. Even to the part where he told us how he stood by the evergreentree an' then sudden like when he's warnin' us to beat it, them armsreached out n' grabbed him an' he felt like he was chokin' to death.Gee whiz! If the two of us didn't hear him speak, I'd say there wassump'n spooky about it. We even heard the car!"

  "Sure, we did. An' we see somethin' dark like a guy's arms reach outfrom behind that tree, didn't we?"

  "I couldn't swear I did, Nickie. It chokes me when I think of it.Lissen, you don't think that was really Devlin--that he could reallyki--kill Timmy?"

  "Kid, since I been here, I don't know what's real an' what ain't--see?All I know is I'll go nutty if there's any more goin's on like we seetonight."

  Skippy was of the same mind, but he didn't say so. He would have givenmuch to know just how much was imagination and how much was starkreality. Timmy's empty cot, a vague shadow against the side wall, didmuch to keep these dreadful thoughts in his mind. Through wearyinghours the scream of his dreams and his scream in the clearing seemed toecho mockingly through the storm. Skippy felt exhausted, yet allthrough the long night the question revolved in his mind.

  Was it a dream come true?