Chapter 3
I awoke to the smell of fresh paint, and a warm wind coming through the window. Just like I fell asleep. It was relaxing out here, in the middle of nowhere. We had made friends with most of the townspeople, who were very supportive of our restoring the house. I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and looked around. And it was ours, thats what amazed me the most. The house, and everything in it was ours.
"When should we try?"
"How about you be more patient, and let them actually get up and have some breakfast. You know, its not the most used topic these days. Oh hi, youre living in my house, how are you enjoying it? Would you mind digging into history and restoring my honor?"
"Okay
Okay
I guess youre right."
;I looked around the room. The door stood wide open, and to come to think about it, it had been closed when we went to sleep. I pushed the covers off of me and stood beside the bed, then moving through the hall and down the stairs, and into the kitchen. We had stacked the pantry.
"How about a hint? To get them started?"
"Like what?&quo
"Like
this
"
had been standing in the pantry, digging through boxes to find cereal, when the floor beneath me gave out and I started falling.
"That was mean, he could have been hurt, Joshua!"
"Oh please, I fell down those stairs more than once, so dont even start with me.
I screamed, trying to find the ground beneath me. I rolled down a flight of stairs and then finally onto a cement slab. Coughing, I tried to get the air back into my lungs and pulled myself off the ground.
"Where in the hell am I? This wasnt on the floor plans." I said to myself, looking around. Against the wall beside me, a little shelf stood, with a lantern and matches. I stroke a match and lit up the room.
"I repeat, where the hell am I? Just because I dont see you, doesnt mean that you arent here
I know theres two of you." I said. For some reason I wasnt scared. They had been speaking up the entire time we had been here, and I thought I was going crazy until I realized that it was useless to try and get rid of them. Nothing moved, and silence was heard.
"Okay then, fine, Im guessing Im in a basement." I walked as I talked, and found a door on one side of the room. A large set of double doors, locked, with chain and boarded up. I turned around and looked at the room. There was a large table, a dinning room table, with place settings made, ready for company. There were bookcases, with an assortment of books ranging from the alphabet to poetry to history. There was another door, regular size, which led into another room. I didnt wander in there, but stood in the middle of the room and looked around.
"I cant take this!"
"Be patient and see if he can figure it out."
"Well
obviously he cant! I mean, if I fell through the floor into a basement that wasnt original to the house and found a boarded up door in there
I think I would know my history."
I listened to the voices. They rambled on, in heated conversation. I sighed.
"Come on people, Im not the brightest crayon in the box, tell me whats going on. Or at least show me something, otherwise, Im gonna go back to bed and figure it out later. And right now Im willing to figure it out." I said to the air, turning in a complete circle, finally I stopped and stared at the set of double doors again. A voice was heard behind me.
"How well do you know youre history?" the voice said. I turned around and was met by nothing but air.
"I slept through it in school, why?" I asked.
"How useful
ever heard of the slavery of the south?"
"Vaguely I remember it. Something of blacks moving from the south to the north for freedom, using escape routines
underground something or other."
"Well, you did learn something! Very impressive. Youre standing in it."The voice said.
"Standing in what?" I asked, lost.
"The Underground Railroad. A set of escape routes, leading for safe house to safe house, that eventually lead to Canada, where slavery wasnt allowed." It was becoming clear to me now. The double doors, and probably if I looked in one of the other rooms, I would find another set, an exit. There had to be a well down here too, because it was impossible to get water from the well outside without causing suspicion.
"There is an exit somewhere right? Cause they cant leave out the same door, and there has to be a well somewhere, or a river, to get water from, and entrances placed around the house for escapes." I said, remembering US History class.
"You have most of that right, but theres a catch to why youre down here." The voice said.
"I knew there had to be, you were getting impatient." I said and laughed.
"Well, true
only because you fellows are so slow. Have a seat, this may take a while.".
I followed the voice to the large table and sat down at the head of the table. The air thickened and I looked at the seats on either side of me. Forms began to take shape, and soon, there sat two men, one on either side of me. I looked at them closely. One was blonde, and the other brunette, the brunette wore glasses, thin framed, and had thick, untamed hair. The blonde had short cut spikes, and both hairstyles were unheard of for the time period from which they came.
"Care to introduce yourselves?" I asked, looked between them.
The brunette started. "My name is Joshua Scott Chasez, and I own this house. Then the blonde spoke. "My name is James Lance Bass, and I was a slave."
"But youre white." I pointed out.
"Doesnt matter, I was gay."
"Oh, got ya." I said. I looked at them again. "But what does anything have to do with me?" I saw a look pass between them.
"You tell him," Josh said.
"No, you wanted help, you tell him." James said back.
They bickered, and I snapped my head back and forth between them, as responses were called.
"Enough!" I screamed, "Youre giving me a headache!"
"Sorry." They both said and got silent.
"Now are you planning on telling me something, or am I going back to bed?" I asked.
Silence again, I waited, and looked around for a clock, but finally realized that it was useless because there were no electric clocks way back then.
"Ill start," Josh said. He took a breath. "This is hard for me, considering that its the first time its been said, ever." Another pause. "When I was growing up, slavery had begun, I was brought up on the fact that if someone was a slave, they didnt deserve to live. So my father sent me out nightly, to kill any slaves that I found trying to escape. But I couldnt do it." Josh paused again, raising his hand to his mouth, eating at the cuticles around his fingernail. "Id catch up with them, and then have the gun pointed at them, but I was never able to shoot the gun. It felt wrong, and so, I started helping them, one by one, learning of the escape routes, and how to get them to the next stop." Another pause. "I even once got to go to the next stop, I lied to my father and told him I was spending the night at a friends house, and one of the slaves took me to the next stop. That only made me want to help them more. So I kept growing, and finally made enough money on my own to move away, and I built this house, and I built it specifically to help slaves." He stopped chewing on his cuticle and started picking at the dirt under his nails. "Then one night, a group of 6 slaves came through, and two of them were white, well, kind of. So I asked, because I had never had a problem with talking to slaves, they always trusted me. One I found out, was mixed, with a black mother and white father. But because his mother was black, he was considered black. The other one had no reason to be there. He had been thrown out of his town, because of the fact that he preferred men, instead of women company. Then there were the 4 black slaves. One was a very pregnant woman, and her husband, or rather, the father of the baby. Then there were two teenagers that were risking everything." I listened intently as he explained.
"Time passed, and most of the slaves had gone, but two stayed, the two white ones. You see, I had fallen in love with one of them." Josh stopped, and blushed, remembering a memory. I looked at James and found him grinning widely. "And one day, months later, confederates had entered my home, and found the passageway. And we were killed." Josh paused and James picked up where he stopped.
"So, we were killed. Joshua, Justin, and me. And then, for some reason, we woke up in bed the next morning, and thought it had been all a dream. Until the house was sold by Joshuas family and someone moved in. The double doors were sealed off, and boarded up. As if it had never been there. Families came and families went, and all the while, we were stuck here. Stuck with the memories of what had happened." James paused, and picked at the wood splintering from the table. "Thats when the visits began. People were all over the fact that maybe spirits never left, and started tracing houses to find evidence that that was true. And this was the last house they were going to check. And boy were they surprised to find out that we were still here. They freaked, they had proven their theory, and they made a whole lot of money. And people bought the house, wanting to live in a haunted house. All the time becoming depressed when nothing ever happened." He shrugged, and looked at Joshua, who was also watching him. "Well, I mean, we did do stuff, like if there was a kid in the house, we kept them away from the stove, shut cabinet doors so they wouldnt get hurt, and in one case, keep the child occupied while the father beat up and raped the mother." I gasped. "Yes, it surely wasnt pretty. Anyway, Im off track. So finally two guys come along that don't want us, they want the house. Or at least only one of them does in the beginning. Then the other one comes around, and we start thinking that maybe we can set the record straight, restoring Joshuas statue in the community because he helped so many people to freedom. When some slaves died, after we had, they would retrace their footsteps, just to find out what it was actually like. Because when you are on the run, you dont take the time to notice things, like how hard it actually was. So they came back, and they told us of what had happened to them. Theres someone imparticular we want to find." James stopped again.
"When I came here, I came with Shanita, who was nine months pregnant and to give birth, at any time. Well, she did have the child, a little boy, and then once she was able, she left with her husband, continuing on her way to Canada. Joshua helped her to New York, actually buying her a ticket for her and baby on a train and dressed her up like she was from a free state. Taught her to talk, read, and eat like a white person. And she got as far as West Virginia before anyone figured it out that she wasnt free. They took the baby and killed her. And now, we want the find the descendant of the baby. So thats our mission. To make it known that Joshua played a big part in the Underground Railroad, and find the descendant of Shanita and Hogie.
"Wow," I muttered, looking off into space. "How do you suppose that we do that, I mean, are there any records we could start from, so I can take them to the court house or something?" I asked.
Joshua and James looked surprised. "You mean youre going to help us?" Joshua said.
"Yeah, I would, as long as you tell me how to refinish the house, where the files are, and tell me all you know about the Underground Railroad."
Joshua let out a scream of joy and jumped around the room. James put his head on the table and it looked like he was crying.
"Chris?" I heard Joey yell through the house. "Oh, God, where in the hell is he?" I heard footsteps going from room to room, running up and down the stairs.
"Oh, God, I forgot about Joey." I got up from the table, the chair I was sitting in fell to the floor and I ran up the steps into the pantry.
"Joey
" I looked around, and found the front door open.
"Shit!" I screamed. I ran out the front door, forgetting that I was only in my boxers. The car was gone. "Dammit!" I yelled placing my hands on my hips.
"Ill find him, see how far he got." James appeared and then disappeared. Joshua appeared on the other side of me and then turned to me, looking at me.
"What?" I asked.
Joshua raised an eyebrow. Then he looked at the front of the house. He walked over to the front step, he stopped in front of it and looked around it, like he was examining it.
"Come here." He said. I came over to the step and crouched down beside him.
"Take this step off." He said, and stood, crossing his arms.
"What? Are you crazy, its bolted to the house basically, it would take a crane." I said, not even trying to take it off.
"Just trust me, take it off." Joshua stood back, like he was going to get hurt by the fact that the step would come off.
I shook my head and pulled at the step. It didnt budge. I grabbed one of the shovels and pried the bottom step from its attachment from the second step. I heard a crack and pushed harder. The step came off with ease after the crack and I stood back. I threw the shovel down and reached inside. I pulled out dirt for a while and looked up at Joshua.
"Keep going." He said and motioned for me to keep going. My hands were dirty, and I desperately wanted to wash them, then I hit something. Hard.
"Ow!" I exclaimed and pulled my hand out, looking at the blood run down my knuckles.
"Oh, God, you are such a wuss." Joshua got down on his knees and reached into the step. He pulled out a box and then shook his hand.
"See it hurts doesnt it." I joked.
"No, not really, its just that it hurts to materialize like that." Joshua said and shook his hand. "Its like my hand is asleep."
"Oh, okay." I said and picked up of the box. "Damn, whats in this thing? Bricks?" I lugged the box up the other four steps and shook it off. I brought it inside and set it on the dinning room table. Thats when I noticed it was locked.
"And how precisely am I to open it." I asked, shaking my hand, still looking at my bleeding knuckles.
"Well get to that later. Joeys on his way back from town." Joshua said and sat down at the head of the table, rubbing the arms of the chair, smiling.
"I used to sit here, every night at 7, and eat in silence, while Martha came through saying how skinny I was and that she was going to fatten me up sooner or later. Or with the governor talking about making the state free for slaves. I tried, I really did." Joshua stared off into space, and stopped rubbing the arms of the chair. "They pushed me onto the table when they found me and James, dug me so far into it that there are teeth marks on the wood. I banged my head against it, trying to make it a dream, that I had been found out. That everyone that would come through here within the next week would die, because Justin just had to walk through the door at the wrong movement. That I had kissed James in the open." Joshua sighed and lowered his head to his chest. "Sometimes I wish I had never helped to conduct, that I would carry people by wagon, or I would fight the state harder, trying to win over their minds, their hearts. But it was useless, they were too hardheaded to realize that while they sat high and mighty in a court house, there were people running for their lives, trying to make a name for themselves. Anyone that wasnt white was an ignorant person who wasnt considered human enough to stay alive. So kill them all, kill them all and make the land how its supposed to be. Only white folk." Joshua looked up. "I cant stand it, I can still hear the screaming, I can still feel the pain, I can still remember every detail of every face that ever crossed beneath my house. Sure
theyre all dead now, and they all came to thank me, and tried to talk me out of the fact that it wasnt my fault. That
" He stopped and stood. "Im not going into all that right now. Too much, too fast." He gave a small smile, a weak one, and left the room, heading for the stairs, and then started up, then stopped. He looked around and turned back down and walked back toward me. "I forgot that I dont actually live here anymore." He laughed. "I used to rant at anyone who would listen, then go up to my room and read."
Joey pulled up in the driveway. I turned and looked out the window.
"James and I will be around, just call for us when you tell him whats going on, till then, good luck." Joshua put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. He smiled and disappeared and I walked to the front door and onto the porch. Joey stopped the car and jumped out. He raced up the stairs and pulled me to him.
"You scared the life out of me, where were you? I was so worried that youd left me." Joey said.
I returned his embrace. "Leave you? Never, I was here the whole time."
He pulled away. "No you werent. I checked the whole house, every inch. Then I went into town to see if you had gone through or if anyone had seen you."
"You didnt search every inch." I said and looked at the statement on his face. "Joey, we need to talk. Something is going on here, and I think you should know." I took Joeys hand and led him inside, shutting the door behind us and up to the master bedroom. "This may take a while, its a long story." I said and laid on the bed, with Joey beside me.
"Well, get on with it, whats going on?" He asked and snuggled into me. So I told him everything that I had learned. And I mean everything.