Deep in Langley Bottom the boys come across an old house place:
........“Uh, huh, and you had better watch out, ’cause check out
that spider over by the wall. It’s a durn Black Widow.”
Yeah, it sure was, and as we climbed the stairs to the
second floor it seemed Black Widow spiders were everywhere. I don’t think I
have ever seen so many. Well, we were real careful, and when we reached the
second floor we started going from room to room. They were all empty with the
doors off, except one room at the end of the hall.
I opened the door and peeked in.
“Hey, they left something in this room.” I could see that
the room wasn’t completely empty, and there was something that looked like
furniture in the dim light. John Clayton followed me in, and, sure enough,
there was some stuff that had been left in the room.
“Hey, look at this, a desk and chair. I wonder why they totally
cleaned out the house except for this room?” I wondered aloud.
“Shoot, let’s open the drawers, and see if they’re full of
hundred-dollar bills.” John Clayton said. He kinda skipped over and sat down at
the desk, propped his feet up, and acted as if he was in charge.
“Just a minute, my man. I have your thousand-dollar bonus
right here in my desk drawer.” Yeah, I
was laughing up a storm, and I stuck my hand out to get my fake bonus as John
Clayton pulled the desk drawer open and reached in to get my money.
“Ahaaaaaaa!”
Wow, he jumped straight up, just waving his hand like he’d
shook hands with the Devil, and then I saw it. A little brown lizard was in the
drawer, and it had jumped on his hand when he reached in the drawer. Well, it
was a pretty good laugh, but John Clayton didn’t think it was that hilarious.
“I ain’t openin’ no more desk drawers!” he yelled. He shook
his hand around just to be sure the lizard had hopped off, and came over to
where I was standing.
“Well, the desk and chair are the only things in the room,”
I said. “Let’s go back downstairs and
head for the field behind the house. Heck, we came to look for arrowheads not
rummage through an old house.”
I took one last look
around the room before we left. There were several windows with shades that
were pulled down to where the room was nearly dark, but there was one broken
window where the top part of the glass was open, which let a little light into
the room. We stood there for a few seconds looking around, to be sure the room
was completely empty, except for the desk and chair, like all the other rooms
in the house, but then I noticed a closet that had the top of the door busted
open. It was kinda funny looking ’cause the busted part of the closet door was
the only place in the room where the sun from the broken window pane shinned
through.
“Look at the corner behind you, John Clayton; I wonder
what’s behind that closet door?” John
Clayton was standing about 10 feet from the closet door, and he turned to look
at it.
“Hey, we’ll find out in about two seconds,” he said. And
then he walked across the room toward the door, just as we heard this noise
again.
“Noooooooooooooo.”
Naw, I didn’t think the wind was blowing, and something
deep inside me was causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand straight
up. And right then something just shouted inside my head, Don’t open that door!
John Clayton was almost to the door when I yelled, “Don’t
open that door!”
“Something inside of me just told me to not open that
closet door.”
“That sounds so stupid, Richard. Why shouldn’t I open it?”
“I don’t know. I just have this bad feeling.”
“Do you think there’s anything in this closet?” he
questioned.
“Nope, I’ll bet it’s just like the rest of the house, but
something just tells me not to open it.it.”
“Well, there ain’t nothin’ or nobody tellin’ me not to open it, so I’m gonna check it
out.”
That was about a second before he yanked the closet door
open.
“Ahasaaaaa! Oh,
my God!”
At first I didn’t know what was happening, because
everything was just a blur with some things just filling the air, and then John
Clayton let out another scream, “Ahhhhhhhh!
Something is tangled up in my hair!”
About that time, I noticed the room was just full of some
flying things, and from the looks of it there were hundreds. Yeah, I figured it
out pretty fast.
“Bats!” I yelled. “The closet is a bat roost, and you have
one in your hair!” I yelled.
Well, John Clayton finally got the bat out of his hair, and
the rest of the bats flew out through the broken window. Uh, huh, that scared
the do-waddle out of us, but after we calmed down a bit, we finally just
laughed. Okay, maybe I just laughed ’cause John Clayton didn’t think it was
that funny having a bat tangled up in his bushy brown hair.
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