Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

“Come on, we got to get him inside,” Swatty said, and he took hold of Bony again.

I didn't want to. It was bad enough to be on the porch of a haunted house or anywhere near it, but the thunder and lightning and rain and wind and everything made all things kind of different than on other days. It wasn't like real; it was like dreams. It was like the end of the world, when you don't think what you do but just do it; and so I took hold of Bony and helped.

We got Bony to the front door and into the hall of the house. In there it was so black we couldn't see except when the lightning flashed, and then we couldn't see much. The rain was blowing in at the door and running down the hall. The old house shook and trembled. A brick or something rolled down the roof and thumped on the porch roof.

We got Bony into a dry corner of the hall and let him sit on the floor and Swatty tried to feel Bony's leg to see if it was broken or what, and while he was doing that there came a big crash and the rain stopped coming in at the front door. It was the porch roof. It had blown down the rest of the way, shutting up the door and shutting us in. But we didn't know then that we were shut in. We were just frightened by the noise. We thought maybe the house had been struck by lightning.

Well, after that it was darker in the house than ever. We didn't get the light from the lightning through the door any more, and we only got it through the cracks between the boards at the windows. We just stood there, me and Swatty, and Bony on the floor, and listened to the storm and the water swashing against the house and to the old house creaking and grating, and Bony moaned over his ankle and cried because of everything. I was just plain scared. I just stood and got more and more scared. I tried to listen whether the creaking and grating was the house or ghosts, and I listened so hard my ears seemed to reach out. I didn't dare to breathe. Pretty soon I was too scared for any use. I said, “Swatty!”

“What?” he answered back.

“I'm scared,” I said.

Well, then Bony began to beller loud.

“Aw, shut up!” Swatty told him. “I'm scared, too, ain't I? Feel my wrist,” he says to me, “it's all goose flesh, ain't it? That's how scared I am, but it don't do any good to beller about it.”

So we just stayed there. Bony held on to Swatty's ankle with one hand and I sort of edged over so I was close to Swatty, and we just waited, because that was all there was to do. So after a while the storm let up. It rained a little yet, but the thunder and lightning stopped. The wind blew some, but not so much. It was pretty dark in the house. We knew it must be getting toward night.