oh boy, i have to admit i was scared. even hervey didn’t start joking about it, but just listened. away, way off somewhere i could hear something like a voice, but it wasn’t that that we heard above us.
all of a sudden hervey said, “i’m not going to hang around here any longer, you can bet. i don’t like this place. i don’t want to spend the night here. come on, follow your leader, take a chance.”
before i had a chance to grab him he had reached out across the railing into the open space and got hold of the bell rope. it was beyond his reach so he had to sort of jump for it. i guess it was his jumping and his weight both that made the rope go down, but anyway it went down enough to rock the bell sideways.
it was the creaking that made me look up, and then i saw the bell standing that way. it didn’t ring because there wasn’t any tongue in it but just as plain as could be, i could hear a voice in that bell say, “help.” it just sent a kind of a shudder through me to hear it. then the bell swung down again because hervey’s weight on the rope wasn’t enough to hold it up that way. in a few seconds i could hear hervey dropping from the end of the rope to the ground down below, and calling, “follow your leader wherever he goes.”
but just the same none of us moved.
“coming down?” he called. but we didn’t answer him.
“what is it?” bert asked in a whisper.
“you heard it,” i said. “you know as much about it as i do. there’s a spook here.”
“the place is haunted,” pee-wee whispered, all excited.
“let’s go down,” garry said. “i’d rather take a chance on that rope than to stay up here. listen.”
we all listened but the voice above us didn’t call again.
“it’s a spirit in the bell, that’s what it is,” the kid said. “it’s a voice without any body to it—in the bell.”
none of us wanted to stay up there, i guess, but just the same none of us wanted to move. it just seemed as if we couldn’t move.
pretty soon warde said, “wait a minute, let me get hold of that rope.”
he climbed over the old wooden railing and held on with one hand while he reached out with the other one. then, all of a sudden, he was swinging on the rope and as sure as i live, just in that minute the voice above called, “help.”
we just stood there, all trembling. pee-wee’s eyes were starting out of his head.
all of a sudden i heard warde call, “wait till i get down and then come down after me. don’t be scared. there isn’t anything in the bell, it’s some one in the woods. the bell throws the voice down when it’s pulled up sideways. it’s a reflex echo, if you know what that is. come ahead down one at a time. you should worry about spooks.”
we didn’t hear the voice every time one of us swung off on the rope. maybe the voice away off didn’t call just at the right time or maybe not all of us were heavy enough. but once or twice we heard it again. it sounded good and clear. bert came down. he was the last one and he was the heaviest.
now that’s just the way it was—the way i told you. that’s the nearest i ever came to a ghost in my life. when the bell swung up sideways it swung toward the west. warde explained just how it was. so if you don’t believe me you can ask him. there was a voice somewhere that we could hardly hear. but when the bell swung up it caught the voice inside it and when it swung down it threw the voice down; it kind of brought the voice down and dropped it out. and because the bell was hollow and made of metal it made the voice louder and stronger.
that’s the only way i can tell you, but it’s true and echoes like that are called reflex echoes, only i guess nobody heard of a reflex echo exactly like that before. in echoes like that you hear the echo when you can’t really hear the voice. when that bell was hanging the sound waves (that’s what you call them) struck the outside slanting part of the bell and were reflected up. but when the bell swung it caught the sound inside it and just sort of tumbled it out on us.
so if you ever go to old corners you’ll see a sign on that old church that we put there and it says echo chimes. then it tells you just exactly where to go in the woods in order to make an echo like the one that scared us so. maybe you wonder how we found out just where to go in the woods. so that’s what i’m going to tell you in the next chapter. because it was a real voice away off somewhere in the woods that was calling for help. the funny part of it was that we heard the reflex echo but we didn’t hear the voice. i bet you’ll say i’m smart when you read all this but, gee whiz, i guess you’d call it reflex smartness because i got it all from warde hollister.
