Locked in the Attic by Paul Hutchens

Author:Paul Hutchens [Hutchens, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-57567-768-2
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 1999-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

Now what? It was still hard to keep my mind from acting like a whirlwind.

We were in a black attic in the upstairs of a haunted house. A fugitive with a rifle was also in the house and was already up the stairs. There wasn’t any way we could get out except through the closet in the room where he was.

What if he found Dragonfly’s hat? He’d know we’d been here—or were here—and what would he do to us? He had a rifle, and all we had was a rope, although we did have six times as many muscles as he had, and all of us had had experience using them in a life-or-death fight.

The rain on the roof made it seem safe for us to whisper, now that there were two doors separating us and the man. If he did hear anything, he might think it was only the storm outside. But how could we be sure one of the six of us wouldn’t whisper too loud? One or the other of us might even forget and talk with his out-loud voice, and our hiding place would be found!

Also, one of us had a sensitive nose that was allergic to musty odors, dust, ragweed pollen, and almost everything else that wasn’t fresh air. Any second while we were there in that dark attic, hardly daring to breathe, Dragonfly’s nose might start to tickle, and he would have to sneeze.

The attic had a wild-animal odor as if there were mice around. It reminded me of the mother raccoon and her babies who had once lived here. The chimney at that time had had a big hole in its side, opening into the attic, and she’d used it as a secret door to her hideout.

Right then, while I was thinking about the musty odor in the attic, I could tell that Dragonfly’s nose was smelling it. I heard him take in a trembling breath and knew he was trying hard not to do what I knew he was going to do. And then he did it.

Dragonfly sneezed!

There was sudden deathly silence in the attic and in the room on the other side of the closet. You could have heard a pin drop if it hadn’t been for the rain on the roof. The next minute seemed like an hour while we waited to find out what, if anything, Dragonfly’s smothered sneeze had done in the rifleman’s mind.

Just then Little Jim whispered the craziest idea I’d ever heard. “That was a single-shot rifle, I could tell. Let’s slide the panel open and go storming out and tackle him. He could shoot only one of us, and the rest of us could jump him and tie him up with our rope and—”

Big Jim’s shush was almost louder than Little Jim’s excited suggestion. One thing the little mouse-faced guy had said, though, gave me a spurt of hope. It reminded me that we did have a rope. It could come in handy if we had to get into a knock-down-drag-out fight with the fugitive.

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