Four Hoboken Stories by Daniel Pinkwater

Author:Daniel Pinkwater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

In the morning the sun came up looking like a red-hot penny. You could tell it was going to be another scorching day, the kind where you can fry an egg on the sidewalk. I stepped out the front door, intending to maybe do some exploring, and the heat smacked me in the face. I stepped back into the house. My parents were getting ready to go to work in air-conditioned offices in New York City, across the river. I was on my own.

I thought it might be a good idea to rummage around in the basement some more. The fan had been a good find, and it looked as though there was a lot more interesting stuff piled up in the dark corners. Also it would be cool down there—anyway, cooler.

There were two naked lightbulbs that hung down on their wires. You turned them on by pulling a string. Until you got to the first lightbulb, you had to make your way by the light that shone down the basement steps. It was a little scary and a little dangerous.

As I got to the bottom of the steps, and before I pulled the string on the first light, I thought I saw a dim blue-green glow coming from way back where it was darkest.

I stood and looked, opening my eyes as wide as I could. What could be making that light? When I turned the light on, I couldn’t see it, and when I turned it off again, there it was. I tried to memorize the location and moved toward it, turning the lights on as I went.

I had to climb over some stuff—rusty bed-springs, broken furniture, things like that. Then I found the source of the greenish glow. There was a brick removed from the wall, up near the ceiling and way back in the basement. I stood on a little wooden barrel and was able to see that the brick behind had been removed, and the brick behind that, all the way through the wall and into the basement of the building next door. Obviously a pipe or something had once run between the buildings.

There was a light on in the other basement, and I could hear muffled voices and music. I don’t know why I did this, but I put my mouth to the hole and hooted like an owl. “Whooo! Whooo!” The voices stopped.

“Whooo! Whooo!” The music stopped.

I thought I heard whispering.

Then I heard a voice come through the hole. “Is there somebody there?”

“I am Edmund Dantes,” I said. “I have been unjustly imprisoned by my enemies.” I got this from a Classics Comic of my father’s—he saved them from his childhood and he lets me read them. This one was The Count of Monte Cristo. I’d like to read the actual book someday.

“I am the Abbe Faria,” the voice said. “A priest, also unjustly imprisoned in the Chateau d’If.”

That was incredible! The Abbe Faria is another character in the story. “How’d you know what I was talking about?” I asked into the hole.

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