“I guess we can go now,” Swatty said, and I was glad of it. We boosted Bony up so he could hobble on one leg between us and we went to the front door. Well, we couldn't get out!
And that wasn't the worst of it; every other way out was boarded up! We went all around the first floor and tried all the windows and the back door and they were all boarded up. We were fastened tight into the Haunted House.
It was pretty bad going into the dark rooms, one after another, not knowing whether something would jump out at you, and I guess me and Bony wouldn't have done it if Swatty hadn't made us. But there wasn't any way out, and that wasn't the worst. There wasn't even a little piece of board to pry the boards off the windows. There, wasn't a loose brick or anything. Nothing but dust, and maybe a couple of pieces of paper.
“What'll we do?” I asked, awfully scared. “Garsh! I don't know!” Swatty said. “We got to get out somehow. We'll starve to death here if we don't. We got to get something to pry off a board from a window.”
Well, there wasn't anything to pry one off with. Not down where we were. So Swatty said, all of a sudden:
“Come on! I'm going to see if there's anything we can get upstairs.”
“Aw, no, Swatty!” I begged. “Don't go up there! I don't want to go up!”
“Well, you don't have to, do you?” he said. “I didn't ask you to. I said I was going.”
So he went alone, and I stayed down with Bony. We were all alone in the dark down there and Swatty went up the stairs. He went up a step at a time and then stopped and listened, and then he went up another step and listened. Pretty soon he got to the top of the stairs and then we heard him going from one room to smother and feeling with his foot for a board or something that would do to pry our way out. Then we didn't hear him for a minute, I guess.
Pretty soon he came to the head of the stairs. He leaned over the balusters.