The Mysterious Code

possible that
Mrs. Vanderpoel may let you exhibit some of her antiques,” Mrs. Belden said.
“Don’t you remember? Her house is full of them. She’s lived in that one place
for ages. Her parents, and her mother’s parents, too, lived there before her.”
    “I don’t know why I
didn’t think of her,” Trixie said. “Hurry, Bobby; let’s go.”
    Mrs. Vanderpoel’s
home was of yellow brick. The bricks were small, handmade ones, brought over
from Holland by early Dutch settlers. The house, surrounded by trees, was on a
wandering road that led from Glen Road back about a mile through the woods to
the fringe of the game preserve Mr. Wheeler had recently bought.
    “Giddyap, Trixie!”
Bobby called. He imagined she was his trusty black horse carrying his sled over
the snow. Trixie galloped on at his bidding, and, when rosy-cheeked old Mrs.
Vanderpoel opened her back door to her knock, Trixie was too breathless to
speak for a moment.
    “Come in, children,”
Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “There are some oatmeal cookies—I’ve just finished
baking. Sit down here beside Brom, Bobby, and I'll give you a glass of milk.
There, there, Brom, these are the Belden children from Crabapple Farm.”
    An old man sat at
the table, his face almost hidden in a bush of whiskers.
    “Are you Rip Van
Winkle?” Bobby asked as he scrambled into a chair and filled his mouth with a
big cookie.
    The old man laughed
till he shook. “No, sir, Bobby, I’m not,” he said. “I’m not Ichabod Crane,
either,” he added in a firmer voice. Trixie and Mrs. Vanderpoel had gone into
another room. Brom was shy, but not with little boys.
    “I know you’re not
Ichabod Crane,” Bobby said. “He was as thin as a skeleton and you’re—”
    “I’m certainly not
skinny,” the old man said. “My name is Brom—just Brom. There’s another name,
too, but it’s a long Dutch name, and you wouldn’t remember it.”
    “It’s
Vanderheidenbeck,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said to Trixie in a whisper, “He’d close up
like a clam if he knew we were listening. Stay right here with me behind the
door, Trixie. When Brom talks, it is worth listening.”
    “I couldn’t get
skinny,” Brom went on, “the way Mrs. Vanderpoel feeds me. When I get hungry, I
just rap at her door. How’d you find out about Rip Van Winkle, Bobby?”
    “’Cause Sleepyside
isn’t very far from Sleepy Hollow,” Bobby said. “The story’s in all the books.”
    “Is that so?” old
Brom said. “Is that so? I can tell you stories you’ll never find in any books,
Bobby, and they’re all true. The Hudson River Valley and the Catskill Mountains
are full of witches and ghosts and goblins—it just takes a certain kind of eyes
to be able to see them.”
    “Do you have that
land of eyes?” Bobby asked.
    “I do,” old Brom
answered. “Listen—you’ve never heard of No-mah-ka-ta, the witch who fives on
top of the highest mountain in the Catskills, have you?”
    “No, sir,” said
Bobby. “Is she a real witch?”
    “Yes, indeed,” Brom
said. “In the morning she lets the day out of the dark cave where it’s been all
night. At night No-mah-ka-ta puts the day back in the cave, and everything is
black as night.”
    “And the owls come
out,” Bobby said.
    “That they do,
Bobby,” old Brom said. “But when No-mah-ka-ta wants fight in the sky at night,
she hangs out a new moon.”
    “What does she do
with the old ones?” Bobby asked, his eyes as big as saucers.
    “She cuts them up
into stars,” Brom said.
    “She must he a good
witch,” Bobby said.
    “No,” Brom said
thoughtfully. “I’ve seen her when she was good and mad.”
    “You really saw the witch?” Bobby asked.
    “That’s right,” Brom
said. “I’ve seen her right there on top of her mountain spinning clouds and
flinging them to the four winds. Of course, some people would say it was just
the mist I saw, blown by the wind.”
    “I like the wind,”
Bobby said.
    “Yes,” Brom said,
“the soft west wind. But No-mah-ka-ta spins wild winds, too, when she is cross
—black winds that bring rain, rain that floods the earth and sweeps away
houses.”
    “Brom will go on
like that for an hour,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said, “as long as there is a little
child to tell his stories to. What are you looking at, child?”
    “Your wonderful,
wonderful furniture,” Trixie said as Mrs. Vanderpoel led her into the large
family room. “That little melodeon—may I touch it?”
    “You sit right down
and play on