Watch Hollow

by Gregory Funaro

  On the surface, it appeared to be just a giant version of the kind of cuckoo mechanism they had seen a hundred times in the shop, complete with a scissor armature and an extension arm that pushed the cuckoo bird through the door. But like the animals that fit into the holes around the clock face, the cuckoo bird was missing, too.

  “And yet, there’s no winding mechanism,” Mr. Tinker muttered, scratching his head. Oliver understood. If there was no winding mechanism, no wheels and springs and gears to make the clock tick, then what did?

  “It must have something to do with the pipes,” said Mr. Tinker. That was the thing that had befuddled them from the start: pipes inside a clock—all of which zigzagged from one of the walls to a central iron sphere about the size of a basketball. The sphere itself appeared to be part of the pendulum mechanism.

  Oliver ducked under and around the pipes to the place where they had been bolted to the wall. It was made entirely of dark wood. “Where do you think they go, Pop?” Oliver asked—knock, knock, knock. The wall felt solid, like knocking on a tree.

  Mr. Tinker shrugged, and as he began examining the pendulum, Oliver squeezed around the pipes to the rear of the clock face—the bricks for which, unlike the outside of the clock, had been left in their natural color. Black.

  Oliver turned on his watch-flashlight and studied the rear of the clock face more closely. There were twelve pipe couplings around the perimeter, one on the back of each niche, and between them, the faint outline of where the pipes had once connected the animals in a circle. At the bottom of the circle, on the back of the six hole, there was a coupling with a third opening for a pipe extending out toward the machinery.

  Oliver moved back to the iron sphere, and sure enough found another coupling that could have, at one time, received the pipe from the six hole. This coupling had been capped, however, and a new coupling had been welded to the opposite side of the sphere, out of which four zigzagging pipes had been haphazardly bolted to the wooden wall.

  “Hey, Pop. I think the guy before us rerouted all these pipes into the wall here. Looks like they originally connected to the back of the clock face.”

  Oliver’s father nodded absently and then leaned all his weight against the pendulum rod. It wouldn’t budge. “Come help me with this, Ollie. I think this thing is jammed.”

  Oliver joined him, and they pushed with all their might. The space was cramped, with barely enough room for the two of them, but then Oliver felt the rod give slightly.

  “Now pull!” said his father. They did, and the rod gave a little the other way. Gears squeaked, and then Oliver heard a low groan, like the sound of straining tree limbs, coming from deep within the walls.

  Oliver and his father let go of the rod and listened. Had the groan come from inside the walls or outside? Oliver couldn’t tell now. The window was open, but the groaning had stopped.

  Red-faced and dizzy, Mr. Tinker leaned against the pendulum rod for support. Oliver hitched in his breath, and his heart began to hammer.

  “You o-kay, Pop?” he said, voice cracking, and his father waved him away.

  “Ollie, I’m fine. Just a little light-headed—”

  “Did you bring your high blood pressure medicine? You need to sit down?”

  Oliver’s father smiled. “I’m fine. Like anyone else, I just need to remember to breathe when I exert myself. That’s why I got light-headed.”

  “Yeah, but you did take your medicine, right?”

  “Ollie, listen,” said his father, holding him by the shoulders. “Nothing is going to happen to me, you understand? I’m not going anywhere.”

  Embarrassed, Oliver dropped his eyes to the floor. In the first few months after he’d lost his mother, Oliver worried a lot about losing his father, too—so much so that he had to start seeing a counselor because he didn’t want to be away from him at school. The counselor didn’t help, but working with his father in the clock shop did. Oliver didn’t worry now nearly as much as he used to. But still, at times like these, what with his father’s high blood pressure and all . . .

  “Your mother would be proud of you,” he said, gazing down at Oliver fondly. “The man you’re becoming, the way you’ve taken on so much responsibility for the family—” Mr. Tinker’s voice was tight with emotion. He cleared his throat and smiled. “Anyhow, I’m one thing you don’t need to worry about, okay? Remember what I told you.” He mussed Oliver’s hair. “All that worrying is a vicious cycle.”

  Oliver smiled and nodded.

  “All right, let’s get that generator going,” said Mr. Tinker. “I need more light to see how the timing module connects to the pendulum.”

  Oliver bounded down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door to the generator—which, for safety’s sake, his father had set a few yards away from the house on the path leading to the woods.

  Oliver disconnected the power cords they had been using the day before (his father always did this first so nothing would blow up) and then checked the generator’s tank. It was almost dry, so he tromped through the grass toward the carriage house, where the gas cans were stored. He was about halfway there when he noticed that something about the carriage house looked different. Oliver stopped.

  The branches. There were more of them now.

  Yesterday, on the right side of the carriage house, he could see about a third of the wall. But now it was almost entirely covered, and a few of the branches had even curled around into the doorway as if they meant to pull the carriage house apart.

  Trees don’t grow that fast, Oliver told himself, so he decided that the branches had probably just shifted during the night. After all, it had been a bit windy—a spooky, moaning kind of windy that had made the back of his neck prickle.

  Oliver swallowed hard and hurried into the carriage house. In addition to the gas cans, there was some scrap wood and black stones, a couple of wooden ladders, and some rusty old gardening tools. Oliver grabbed the nearest gas can and ran back to the generator. He filled the tank, closed the generator’s choke, and was about to grab the pull chain when someone whispered:

  “What do you seek?”

  Oliver whirled to find a boy standing at the mouth of the tunnel in the woods. He was pale, with black hair and eyes, and was dressed in dark clothes that reminded Oliver of the old-fashioned hunting outfits people wore in the movies. The boy wore boots, too, and a tweed cap like the one Mr. Quigley had on the day before. He appeared to be the same age as Oliver, but it was hard to tell. Even in the early-morning sun, the edge of the woods was all shadow.

  Oliver pushed up his glasses and blinked at the boy blankly.

  “I said, good morning,” the boy said, smiling. Oliver was certain that the boy had said something else, but now he couldn’t remember.

  “Good morning,” Oliver said warily.

  “My name is Teddy. What’s yours?”

  “Oliver.”

  “Well, that’s a twist, isn’t it?” Teddy said, chuckling, but again, Oliver only blinked. “You’ve never heard of Oliver Twist? As in the story by Charles Dickens?” Oliver nodded vaguely, and Teddy frowned. “Let me guess, you’re the son of the new clocksmith Mr. Quigley hired, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, you know Mr. Quig-ley?” Oliver cleared his throat, embarrassed. Stupid voice cracking.

  “I should say so,” Teddy said. “Mr. Quigley fired my father. He used to be the caretaker here before that old devil bought the place. Even tried to fix that clock for him.”

  “Oh, so your father was the previous clocksmith?”

  Teddy nodded and smiled bitterly. “And your father is the current one.”

  Oliver thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something about this Teddy kid that was off. He sounded British, like Mr. Quigley. But even stranger, he seemed both hostile and friendly at the same time.

  “Anyhow, we live in the old caretaker’s cottage,” Teddy said, jerking his thumb behind him. “Only a couple hundred
yards into the woods and not too far from Hollow Pond. Good fishing there, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

  Oliver wasn’t sure if he was into fishing or not. He’d never been.

  “I didn’t know there was a pond around here,” he said, moving closer, but he couldn’t see much past Teddy in the gloom.

  “There are a couple of creeks, too,” Teddy said, looking left and right. “They branch off on either side of the pond and then link up on the western side of the property. Not too far from the bridge you crossed to get here. The Shadow Woods sit in the middle of it all, surrounded by water on all sides, like a big wedge of pie—although the Shadow Woods aren’t that big. Only a hundred acres or so.”

  “Shadow Woods?” Oliver said, and Teddy looked up at the branches.

  “Self-explanatory, I should think. Legend has it these woods are magical.” Teddy narrowed his eyes and smiled mischievously. “Matter of fact, Blackford House is built from shadow wood. So, I suppose that makes it magical, too.”

  “Yeah, right,” Oliver said, chuckling. Teddy’s smile dropped, and his eyes grew sad. A soft, moaning breeze rustled the leaves on the path behind him, and Oliver caught a whiff of something rotten and garbagy.

  “We mock what we don’t understand, Oliver Tinker,” Teddy said quietly.

  “How did you know my last name?” Oliver asked, his heart suddenly beating very fast, and then his father called, “Hey, forest ranger!”

  Startled, Oliver spun around and spied his father’s head poking out of the mechanical room window about halfway up the side of house. A long power cord extended down from the window to the generator. Oliver’s father jiggled it.

  “What’s taking you so long? he asked.

  “Sorry, I’m com-ing!” Oliver called, and his father ducked his head inside again. Oliver turned back to Teddy to say goodbye, but the boy had vanished.

  Oliver stepped to the edge of the woods, where the flagstones ended and the leaf-strewn, tunnel-like path began. The garbagy smell was gone, and as Oliver’s eyes probed the darkness, he could see no sign of Teddy anywhere.

  But there was something on the ground where the boy had been standing.

  Oliver bent down and picked it up.

  It was a large black acorn.

  Seven

  The Crow Takes Notice

  Bar-rumpa—bar-rumpa—bar-rumpa-num—rumpa-num-rumpa-num!

  The longest day of Lucy Tinker’s life began with the sound of the generator startling her awake.

  She immediately felt for Torsten, who was still lying wooden beside her. The little dog could only come alive after midnight, he’d told her, and then turned back into a statue at sunrise. So why hadn’t he come alive again after Oliver went back to sleep? Or, for that matter, after she did?

  Maybe Oliver had scared Torsten so much that he didn’t want to risk waking him up again. Torsten had been scared enough already, especially of the open window. And then there was all that other stuff he’d been going on about: Meridian and the hiding spot and getting snatched? It didn’t make sense.

  Then again, that’s the way dreams usually were. They didn’t make sense.

  “But it wasn’t a dream,” Lucy muttered, gazing into Torsten’s shiny black eyes. Dreams were fuzzy and far away the next morning, and by the time you brushed your teeth you’d practically forgotten all about them. Unless they were superweird or scary. True, the encounter with Torsten was superweird—and maybe a little scary—but still . . .

  Lucy swung her feet onto the floor, rubbed the sand from her eyes, then checked Oliver’s compass-watch on the nightstand. 9:47—which meant she had just over fourteen hours before Torsten would come alive again. Lucy groaned impatiently. She had so much to ask the little dog, but also so much to tell him.

  And then an idea occurred to her.

  “If you can hear me, maybe Meridian can, too,” Lucy said—that is, if the cat hadn’t gone back to the hiding spot. Either way, there would be no talking to them here in the bedroom with the generator going. Lucy could hardly hear herself think.

  Lucy snatched a T-shirt and shorts from the dresser, changed and washed in the bathroom, and then brought Torsten out with her into the kitchen, where she unlatched the broom closet and peeked inside. Meridian’s eyes twinkled back at her in the dim shaft of light from the door, and Lucy exhaled with relief. The cat was still on the shelf where she’d left her, but Lucy noticed some sawdust and what looked like claw marks on the inside bottom of the door. Could it be that the cat had tried to get out during the night and return to the hiding spot?

  Lucy carefully took down Meridian from the shelf and, tucking her under one arm and Torsten under the other, grabbed an open box of Froot Loops from the counter with her teeth and hurried into the library. She set the animals down on the window seat, turned a big leather armchair to face them, and then closed the library’s sliding pocket doors. The generator now was only a low drone in the distance.

  Lucy sat down across from the animals with her box of Froot Loops and popped a couple into her mouth. I’m the only Froot Loop here, she thought, talking like a crazy person to wooden animals. But that’s exactly what Lucy did. She started talking.

  “Hello, Meridian,” Lucy said. “My name is Lucy Tinker. Er—nice to meet you.”

  The cat stared back at her hatefully with its shiny black eyes and its snarling fanged mouth. Lucy gulped. Her heart was suddenly beating very fast; and when she popped some more Froot Loops into her mouth, they tasted so dry and cardboardy that she could barely swallow them.

  “Er—anyway,” Lucy began again, “my father, Charles Tinker, was hired by Mr. Quigley to fix the clock here. Torsten thinks I’m the new caretaker, but I don’t know what that means. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to take care of both of you while we’re here this summer. My brother’s name is Oliver, by the way. He’s a good kid. All of us are. Good, I mean.”

  Lucy wasn’t sure if her mind was playing tricks on her, but Meridian’s eyes seemed narrower—more suspicious now than hateful—and one corner of her mouth was higher than the other, so that her snarl looked more like a sneer.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Lucy said. “We mean you no harm. I didn’t know about the open-window rule, but I do now. Torsten told me. It was my fault that he didn’t return to the hiding spot, so don’t be angry with him. And don’t be angry with me for putting you in that broom closet. I didn’t know that you came alive and that you belonged in the clock and—”

  Lucy stopped. There was still so much that she didn’t know. Torsten had been afraid of something, but what?

  As if in answer to her question, a large crow suddenly swooped down in front of the library windows. Startled, Lucy sent the box of Froot Loops flying. The big black bird hovered there for a moment, studying the wooden animals closely, and then without warning seemed to try to snatch them through the glass.

  Lucy shrieked and scooped up the animals, shielding them with her body in the chair as the crow’s talons went thump-scratch-thump against the windowpanes.

  “Get away from them!” Lucy cried, and the crow backed away, beating its wings and training its black eyes on Lucy for a moment. And then with a loud “Caw!” the big black bird flew off—its cries quickly fading beneath the distant drone of the generator.

  Lucy sat there frozen with her heart hammering and the wooden animals clutched to her chest. They were shivering. Or was Lucy just imagining it because she was shivering?

  “It’s all right, he’s gone.” Lucy gently set the animals on the chair and, moving to the window seat, gazed out at the woods. There was no sign of the crow anywhere—only the trees, black and twisted, looming beyond the overgrown grass.

  “He’s the one you’re afraid of, isn’t he?” Lucy asked, turning back to the animals. “That’s why open windows are against the rules. That’s why you were worried about getting snatched, Torsten. The crow. How many of you has he taken? And how many of you are left?”

  The animals stared bac
k at Lucy silently—Meridian’s stone eyes hateful and glaring; Torsten’s eyes sad and afraid. And now there was a crow, a real crow thrown into the mix. But why was it taking the animals?

  Lucy slipped off the window seat and—crunch!—stepped barefooted on some Froot Loops she’d dropped on the floor. “Blech!” she said, brushing the crumbs off the bottoms of her feet; but Lucy didn’t have much of an appetite left anyway. The animals, on the other hand, hadn’t eaten in days. That’s how they got caught in the library in the first place, Torsten had said. He’d been looking for something to eat when Meridian tried to drag him back into their hiding spot.

  “Their hiding spot,” Lucy muttered, looking around. It had to be in here somewhere—or at least close by.

  Lucy brushed off the rest of the crumbs from her feet, scooped what she could back into the box, and then tossed the whole thing into a nearby wastebasket. She would need to sweep the rest, but what was she going to do with Meridian and Torsten all day? She must hide them somewhere safe until midnight, Lucy thought, at which time she would give them some food from the pantry and ask them questions.

  Lucy carried the animals back to the broom closet, where she hid them on a shelf behind some old boxes of lightbulbs. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “I’ll come back for you at midnight with some food.” Then Lucy grabbed a dustpan and brush and headed back to the library.

  She had just finished sweeping up the rest of the cereal crumbs when she noticed a leather book on the floor near the chemistry table. Must have fallen off during the chaos, Lucy thought, although she didn’t remember seeing it before.

  Lucy thumbed through the book and quickly discovered it was an old journal belonging to someone named Roger Blackford. It was filled mostly with boring notes about scientific experiments, complete with formulas and mathematical equations that Lucy couldn’t begin to understand. But there was one entry toward the end of the journal that did manage to grab her attention.