CHAPTER XXI
DO DREAMS COME TRUE?
Nickie was clinging to him and making funny little noises deep in his throat. Skippy let him cling, for he was shaking from head to foot himself and he blinked his eyes in the darkness.
“You seen him—you seen—” Skippy stammered, frightened at the sound of his own voice.
“I don’t know what I seen,” Nickie said, his words scarcely audible because of his chattering teeth. “I—that scream—you heard that, hah?”
“Sure, and I seen him look terrible. Lissen!” Mechanically, they put out their hands to feel for the window and pressed close to it oblivious of the fresh downpour of rain which swept in upon them, drenching them to the skin. The gale screamed its hardest, the lantern creaked in Nickie’s shaking hand like some spectral voice out of the night, but that was the only sound to reach their listening ears.
“Timmy!” Skippy called suddenly. “Timmy—answer!”
“You hurt, Timmy?” Nickie’s query was pathetic.
A tense silence seemed to beat upon their ears and for a while they had difficulty in even listening to the noises of the storm. Their eagerness to hear Timmy’s thin voice had plunged them into a temporary oblivion from which they recovered with a start.
“You believe in spooks?” Nickie asked in a whisper.
“Nope.” Skippy gulped. “Why?”