Chapter 4 Chapter Three Wonders under the Moon

This is a real adventure.Tom came out of the room in his slipper pajamas.He decided not to wear a coat because it was summer after all.He walked out of the room and closed the door softly to prevent the wind from blowing the door shut and making a sound.As he came out of the apartment door, Tom took off a slipper and stuck it in the crack of the door, leaving the door ajar.The lights on the landing and in the hallway on the second floor were all extinguished, for all the occupants of the apartment building had gone to sleep, including Mrs. Bartholomew.Only a slant of moonlight streamed in from the long window above the stairs.Tom walked down the stairs in the dark and into the hall.

At this time, he encountered a problem.It was not difficult to find the great clock, it was a long, thin black shape, but Tom could not see the face of it.If he could open the glass door on the clock face and reach out and feel where the hour hand was, he would know what time it was.Tom felt first on one side of the bell door, and then on the other, but the door would not open, and he could not put his hand in.He remembered that he had pried the bell door open with his fingers the day he first arrived, but it did not open.The door of the pendulum and the door of the clock face must have been locked.

"Quick! Quick!" The building seemed to be urging in a low voice beside him. "An hour is almost gone... almost gone..." Tom left the grand clock to feel for the light switch.Where is the switch?His fingers fumbled around the wall, but he couldn't find it.What he needed now was light, and the only visible light in the hall was the moonlight slanting in through the window by the stairs, shining brightly on the wall near the window. Tom studied the moonlight, and an idea flashed through his mind.According to the direction of the moonlight shining into the house, he judged that the moonlight was shining on the back of the building at the moment.great!If the back door is opened, the moonlight can shine into the hall, and maybe the clock face of the big clock can be seen clearly with the help of the moonlight.

Tom went to the back door.He never saw anyone open the back door, and his uncle and aunt always used the front door.They said it was inconvenient to go out to the street through the back door, because they had to go through the back yard, which was just a narrow brick field with a few garbage cans, where the tenants on the ground floor parked their cars and covered it with a roof. Layer rain cloth. Tom never had a chance to go through the back door, so he didn't know if it was locked or not at night.If it was locked, the key was elsewhere... However, he found that the door had no lock, only a latch.He unlatched and turned the doorknob slowly so as not to make a sound.

"Quick!" The building urged in his ear again.The clock standing in the middle of the hall also made a "tick, tick" sound anxiously. Tom opened the back door and let the moonlight in.The moonlight poured down on the floor of the hall, like the faint morning light, illuminating the hall, and the things in the hall could be seen clearly.But Tom didn't turn immediately to look at the hands of the clock, but took a step forward and came to the stone steps in front of the door. The scene outside the door made him stunned, and then he couldn't help but feel angry, wow!They lied to me, lied to me!They said, "Tom, the backyard is no fun," and dismissed it as just a small yard with some litter boxes and nothing to see.

Nothing to see... Ah, there is a lot to see here, a large lawn with some flower beds in the middle, a tall fir tree, on both sides of the lawn, and a few more Lush and low-hanging yew.On the right side of the garden is a flower house about the size of a real house; there is a winding path leading to the thick bushes at the four corners of the lawn. Tom stepped forward involuntarily, held his breath in wonder, and sighed deeply.He planned to sneak here the next day during the day.Uncle and aunt kept it from him and kept him from knowing that there was such a good place.No one can stop me now, I want to run on the grass and jump on the flower beds; I want to go to the flower house and look carefully; I want to go to every gazebo in the garden and every path under the yew tree; I would climb up the trees, and climb from tree to tree in that thick, criss-crossing branch.If they came to call me, I would be as silent and motionless as a bird, hiding in a leafy tree so that they could not find me.

The beauty and clarity of the garden before him fascinated Tom.Nearby are the stubby needles of the yew, and in the distance there are crescent-shaped flower beds around the lawn, in which are planted hyacinths whose petals roll back.Tom remembered, however, that he had promised ten hours of sleep.Promises should be kept.So, he reluctantly left the garden and went back to the building to check the time of the big needle. When he came in through the back door, he was still thinking about the scenery outside the building.Perhaps it was for this reason that he didn't immediately notice the change in the hall, his eyes told him that there were some dark shadows in the hall, and the floor he stepped on with his bare feet felt different...

Fortunately, the big clock was still there, and it would tell Tom the exact time honestly.It may be twelve o'clock or one o'clock now, and there will be no more than one hour in between, and there will be no thirteen o'clock. But Tom did not look at the clock, his attention was attracted by something else: a door on the ground floor near the front door opened, and a maid came limping out.Tom had only seen maids in pictures before, and now he knew she was a maid by her white apron, white hat, white cuffs, and black stockings.She had paper, kindling wood, and a box of matches. All this Tom saw in a split second, and he realized that he should hide at once, but he couldn't find a place to hide.Anyway, if she wants to find out, why not take the initiative to say hello and explain.The maid came closer and closer, and Tom saw that she was only a teenage girl, so he was not afraid of her at all.He coughed to get her attention first, so as not to surprise her by his sudden appearance.However, she didn't seem to hear it, and continued to move forward.Tom came up to her and she looked at him, through him, as if he didn't exist.Tom's heart was pounding, and he didn't understand why.At this time, Nu Shi had come to him.

"Ah!" cried Tom dissatisfied, but the maid paid no heed.She walked past Tom to the door of a rear room on the ground floor, and without ringing or keying the lock, she turned the handle and went in. Tom stood there alone, dumbfounded.At this time, his sensory organs told him that there was something even stranger than meeting the maid just now: Tom was standing barefoot on the cold stone floor, and now the stone became warm and soft. Looking down, he found that he was Standing on a tiger-skin rug.There are other styles of rugs in the hall. He looked around, then looked at the hall, and found that the hall had changed.The laundry boxes, milk bottles, travel posters, etc. are all gone.The walls of the hall are decorated with various things: there is a slim Gothic barometer, a fan made of peacock feathers, a large battle engraving (with hussars, horses and bullets). Kong Banban's Battle Banner), and many other paintings.In the hall, there is a big gong to announce the meal, and a gong hammer made of soft leather is hung beside it; there is a large umbrella stand, on which are placed umbrellas, walking sticks, a parasol, an air gun and some Something like fishing gear; a row of shelves against the wall, each as high as a dining table.This row of shelves is all made of oak, only the one in the center of the hall near the big clock is made of white marble, on which are displayed bird and animal specimens, and inside the cold glass box is a scene of blood splattering: An owl is holding a mouse in its claws A ferret is looking up at the sky after killing a rabbit; in the glass case in the middle, a red fox is sneaking around with a chick in its mouth wanted to escape.

Of all the things in the hall, Tom knew only one, and that was the great clock.He walked forward, not to check the time, but to touch it with his hand to confirm whether this thing was familiar to him. Just as he was about to touch the clock, he suddenly heard someone breathing softly behind him. It turned out that the maid had returned from the same way.For some reason, her voice seemed not as loud as before.Tom heard her say faintly, "I've got a fire in the living room." She walked toward the door through which Tom had seen her come out, and Tom kept his eyes on her.He was surprised to find that the maid came to the door, touched the door handle with her hand and disappeared.In other words, she didn't walk in through the door, but disappeared gradually.

When Tom was watching the maid with all his attention, he still felt that everything around him was changing quietly.He glanced back sharply and saw that the furniture, rugs, and paintings in the hall were slowly disappearing.These things were not removed, but gradually disappeared in place.After watching the red fox, when he looked back, the barometer was still on the wall, but it seemed to be painted on the wall, and the wall could be seen through it; after a while, the fox disappeared without a trace, and there were no other taxidermy animals up.Tom turned around quickly and found that the barometer was gone too. A few seconds later, the entire hall was the same as when he first arrived.Tom stood dazed.A gust of cold wind from behind jolted him awake. The garden door was still open, which he had opened anyway, and he should have closed it and gone back to bed. He looked into the garden for a long time reluctantly before closing the door.He silently promised the lawn, trees and greenhouse: "I want to come back!" After going upstairs and back to bed, Tom calmly analyzed what he had just seen in the hall. Was it a dream?There is also a possibility that it is haunted. It may be that the maids in the ghost hall are dressed up by ghosts.The barometer, the fox, and the owl are also ghosts, and so are many other things.There are not only ghosts but many ghosts in the hall.Ghost... Tom reached out his hand to touch his hair in doubt, and found that his hair hadn't stood up.Moreover, he remembered that when the maid looked at him, he didn't feel cold and creepy. Tom himself was not satisfied with these explanations.He was suddenly bored with it all, that it didn't matter whether there were maids in the hall or not, what mattered was the garden, and that was real.To-morrow he was going into the garden, and his hands seemed to have touched the tree-trunks, and his nose already smelled the hyacinths in the flower-beds around the lawn.He remembered being at home, at Christmas and New Years, smelling the hyacinths his mother planted in pots, and in late spring, thinking about them and falling asleep.