Read The Waltons 1 for Free Online

money. He turned the corner at the old Pendleton house, and then, an instant later, all thoughts of money and washing machines fled from his mind.
    It was the sound that first caught his attention—the low, almost imperceptible, vibrating notes of a pipe organ. John-Boy stopped, listening, and then once again his heart leaped into his throat as he found himself staring across the weed-covered yard of the old Pendleton house.
    Was his mind playing tricks on him again? He stared, the dark silhouette of the house barely visible against the gray-black sky.
    The sound came again, this time a chord—a strident, off-key dissonance in a higher register. John-Boy had no doubts now. The sounds were from an organ and they were coming from inside the house. The notes held for a moment, then went silent again.
    John-Boy’s heart pounded. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Nor did he believe an organ could play by itself. For a full minute he stared at the dark shutters, scarcely breathing, waiting, listening intently for the sounds to resume. But now there was only silence.
    Had he been seen? Was someone at the window now, peering out at him from the darkened house? John-Boy’s gaze moved slowly across the shuttered windows of the lower floor, and then to the exposed window above. For another half minute he stared at it, the pale reflection gazing mutely back at him.
    John-Boy slowly licked his dry lips. He glanced over the dark house again, then turned quickly and hurried away.
    A hundred yards up the road he glanced backward without slackening his pace. There was no one in sight. The house looked cold and lonely and deserted now.

III
    “Y ou sure you weren’t havin’ hallucinations, John-Boy?”
    “I heard it, Daddy. There’s somebody in that house. And last night when I was comin’ home I saw a light in one of the upstairs windows. I just saw it for a minute, and I wasn’t too sure, but I know somebody was playin’ the organ there tonight.”
    Grandpa was chuckling, but everyone else at the table was listening in wide-eyed silence.
    “Well,” John said, “I guess we’d better have a look. Dave Pendleton gave me a key and I promised to keep an eye on the place.”
    “I’m scared,” Elizabeth breathed.
    “You finish your supper first, John-Boy,” Olivia said. John-Boy had started his story as soon as he sat down at the table, but he still hadn’t taken a bite.
    “That’s right,” Grandpa laughed. “The worst thing you can do is go after ghosts on an empty stomach.”
    “Oh, hush, old man,” Grandma said. “What do you know about chasin’ ghosts?”
    “Daddy,” John-Boy said with an uneasy laugh, “if there’s a ghost there, I don’t promise but what my feet might run off with me.”
    John nodded. “If there’s a ghost there, my feet will be travelin’ right along besides yours, son.”
    After supper John got his hunting rifle and the whole family watched while he lighted the kerosene lantern and the two of them pulled on their jackets.
    “Maybe you ought to get Ep Bridges to go along with you,” Olivia suggested.
    “I think Grandpa ought to go,” Erin suggested slyly. “He’s not afraid of ghosts.”
    John shook his head. “No, sweetheart, Grandpa might scare ’em all to death.”
    Grandpa grinned, and they left with Olivia cautioning them to be careful.
    The lantern in his father’s hand cast a swinging cone of yellow light that turned the surrounding darkness into an impenetrable black void. From their house the rutted dirt road curved downward and skirted along a row of tall spruce trees until it branched off toward the Pendletons’. In spite of his certainty that there were no such things as ghosts, and that whatever it was inside that house must be explainable in human terms, John-Boy still felt the dryness steadily growing in his throat.
    “What do you think it might be, Daddy?”
    “Don’t know, John-Boy. Lots of people wanderin’ around these days with no jobs and no place to