Mr. Tinker cleared his throat and began again. “Er—anyway—I’m sure Mr. Quigley won’t mind if we have a little fun. Maybe in a couple of days? I need to run to the hardware store tomorrow for some parts. Your brother and I are going to build a custom winding mechanism.”
Lucy smiled and nodded. A trip to the beach sounded wonderful, and all at once Lucy wasn’t so scared anymore. She had let all that stuff about the house being sentient and burning the paintings get to her. She had knocked the painting over by accident. Lucy was sure of it now.
“Hey, Pop, the pendulum moved!” Oliver called, and Mr. Tinker disappeared inside the mechanical room. Lucy hurried down to the landing and stood in the doorway. Her father and brother were by the pendulum, examining it.
“Are you sure?” asked Mr. Tinker. “It looks in the same spot to me.”
“I swear,” Oliver said. “Right after Lucy shrieked, I saw it swing a whole foot out of the corner of my eye— Look!”
Mr. Tinker pushed hard on the pendulum arm. It wouldn’t budge. “Well, it sure is stuck again now.”
“I’m telling you, Pop, it moved. Maybe not a whole foot, but it moved!”
“All right,” Mr. Tinker said with a sigh. “Slide that ladder over here so I can have another look at that anchor and escape wheel.”
As the others went back to work on the clock, Lucy bounded down the stairs and finished searching for the crow on the first floor. No sign of it anywhere. She checked on the animals in the broom closet again and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the library.
Lucy began with a closer read through the journal, and when she found nothing more about Edgar Blackford and the house being sentient, she moved on to the rest of the shelves. There were all sorts of books, most of which were about scientific things such as geology and plants and other stuff that Lucy thought was boring. Other books had titles that sounded interesting—Great Expectations, The Count of Monte Cristo, War and Peace—but the way they were written was too complicated and old-fashioned, so she just looked at the pictures. Soon, Lucy got bored with those, too, and turned her attention to the bottles and jars. Some had labels with chemical symbols and words that Lucy didn’t understand, while others were either empty or had no labels at all.
Then Lucy came upon something called sunstone cream—which, according to the label on the jar, was for counteracting the effects of shadow wood. The jar was very dusty, and the contents were grayish and goopy and smelled even worse than the wood glue. Oliver had been complaining at lunch that his hands and forehead were still itching from the acorn. And so, later, over dinner, Lucy suggested that he try rubbing some of the sunstone cream on his skin. Her father quickly nixed the idea.
“Who knows how long that stuff has been lying around,” he said, munching away on some canned ravioli that Oliver had heated up. “Besides, it’s probably just snake oil. You couldn’t trust medicine back then the way you can now.”
Lucy didn’t know what her father meant by snake oil, but he said that if Oliver’s skin was still itchy in the morning, they would pick up some calamine lotion on their way back from the hardware store.
The Tinkers spent the rest of that second evening in Watch Hollow playing games again at the kitchen table. Tonight, however, it seemed to take much longer. Lucy wasn’t nearly as scared of the shadows as she’d been the night before, but a couple of times her heart nearly stopped when she thought she saw the black shape of the crow fluttering among them. It was only her eyes playing tricks on her.
The family went to bed around ten o’clock, but Oliver took forever to fall asleep because his hands and forehead were so itchy. Lucy felt as if she might explode with anticipation when finally, just after eleven thirty according to Oliver’s watch on the nightstand, she heard him begin to snore.
Lucy, wearing only a sleeveless nightgown, slipped out of their bedroom and padded silently into the darkened kitchen, where she filled a bowl with tuna fish for Meridian and another with Spam for Torsten. Lucy had been planning this for hours and brought the bowls into the library, which was so bright with moonlight, she did not need a lantern to see. Lucy set the bowls on the hearth, quickly fetched Torsten and Meridian from the broom closet, and then set them on the hearth, too. She slid the library doors closed and then sat down in one of the chairs and waited. And waited.
“It has to be close to midnight now,” Lucy muttered, glancing out one of the windows. The large swath of moonlit grass between the house and the Shadow Woods looked like a sea of rolling silver waves in the breeze. But when Lucy turned back to the animals, Meridian was gone.
Lucy gasped and tried to stand, but then something snatched her by her braid and yanked her back into the chair. Lucy shrieked and, despite her terror, realized dimly what had happened. Meridian had come alive and climbed up the back of her chair when Lucy wasn’t looking. And now the cat was holding Lucy down with her claws to her throat.
“Never let your guard down, girl!” Meridian whispered in Lucy’s ear.
Lucy squealed in panic and grabbed at Meridian’s paws, but the cat, hissing loudly, pressed her claws deeper into Lucy’s neck. Lucy winced at the pain.
“Careful or you’ll cut yourself,” Meridian droned.
“Meridian, no!” Torsten shouted, leaping up onto Lucy’s lap.
“Shut up, Torsten!” Meridian snapped. “We have ourselves a prisoner now.” She jerked Lucy violently in the chair. “Tell us, who is the Garr and how do we defeat him?”
“Miss Lucy doesn’t serve the Garr!” Torsten cried. “She’s the new caretaker. You saw how she protected us today!”
The Garr? Lucy wondered, heart pounding and mind racing. Who is the Garr?
Meridian chuckled menacingly. “You’re too stupid for your own good, Torsten. This is a trick to have us lead her to the others. We are the house’s last defense. This girl and her family are spies!”
Torsten frowned and wrinkled his brow. Clearly, he hadn’t thought about that.
“We’re not spies,” Lucy said, breathless with fright. “And I’ve never heard of any Garr. I—I was just trying to help you!”
Meridian snickered. “You must think us idiots, girl. Putting on your little caretaker act? You’re good, I’ll give you that. But you can’t fool me. I will protect Blackford House until my dying breath!”
“Please!” Lucy said, on the verge of tears. “I swear, I don’t know what’s going on. Mr. Quigley hired my father to fix the clock!”
Meridian growled. “There’s that name again. Quigley. Who is Mr. Quigley?”
“He owns the house now. He bought it a few months ago and hired my father to fix the clock. It generates the electricity—the clock, I mean—and, well, he won’t move in until it’s working.”
“That makes sense, Meridian,” Torsten said. “That man who was here before, he was working on the clock, too. Maybe this Mr. Quigley and the Tinkers are here to help restore the balance. Maybe the bad time is finally over!”
Lucy felt Meridian’s grip relax.
“The house is weak, Torsten,” the cat said. “All of us are weak. The balance is off, and the Garr will stop at nothing until the house is his. This is just another one of his tricks. He wants us to lead this girl to the others.”
“I swear to you, I’ve never heard of this Garr,” Lucy cried.
“What if she’s telling the truth, Meridian?” Torsten asked. “What if Miss Lucy is the caretaker the house has been waiting for all these years? And if she’s not”—Torsten’s stomach growled—”well, how much longer can we go on this way?”
A few tense seconds passed in which Lucy could feel Meridian’s heart beating against her neck, and then the cat released her. Lucy exhaled with relief, and when she looked again, Meridian was by the hearth. That cat had moved quickly and without a sound. She jerked her muzzle at the bowls of food.
“Eat some,” Meridian said, her eyes twinkling in the moonlight, and Lucy stared back at her, confused. “If it’s safe for you, it’s safe for us.”
Lucy understood. She’d seen a movie once where this king always had a servant taste his food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. Lucy slipped onto the floor and stuffed some tuna fish and Spam into her mouth at the same time. It tasted awful, but she got it down, and in the next moment, Torsten and Meridian buried their faces in their bowls.
Lucy’s heart twisted as she watched them eat. The animals were starving. Torsten lapped away obliviously at his Spam, while Meridian kept her eyes on Lucy the entire time she devoured her tuna. In less than a minute they were both finished.
“Boy, oh boy,” Torsten said, licking his chops. “That was the best meal I’ve ever had. I can’t thank you enough, Miss Lucy. What do you say, Meridian? Would a servant of the Garr give us a meal like that?”
Meridian sat back on her hindquarters and licked her claws.
“We shall see,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “We shall see.”
“Who is the Garr?” Lucy asked.
“We don’t know,” Torsten said. “Tempus Crow was the first to utter his name.”
“Tempus Crow? Is he the crow I saw today?”
Torsten bowed his head solemnly. “He was once wooden and part of the clock like us. But then he turned traitor and joined with the Garr, who made him a real crow. He is alive both day and night now.”
“You expect us to believe you don’t know this, girl?” Meridian asked.
Lucy nodded, and the cat sniffed cynically.
“Tempus Crow was the first to go,” Torsten went on, ignoring her. “‘The Garr!’ we heard him cry on the night we came alive, and then he flew out of the clock and into the Shadow Woods. After that, the balance was lost. Tempus Crow was the cuckoo bird, after all. He cawed the time.”
“So that’s what you meant when you said you hadn’t come alive until recently?”
“It’s hard to explain, but we’ve always been alive up here,” Torsten said, patting the top of his head. “In our natural state, our minds are at one with the clock. There is no sense of past or future, only the present, even though our bodies are wooden. It’s quite pleasant, really. But then something happened—the arrival of the Garr, Meridian thinks—after which the clock stopped and we started coming alive in a different way after midnight. That’s when Tempus Crow began snatching us and—”
“I don’t understand. Why is Tempus Crow snatching you?”
“The Garr cannot enter the house. I’ve never seen him, but Meridian has, watching the house at night from the edge of the Shadow Woods. That’s where he lives—a dark and twisted tree man, ten feet tall, with branches for arms and eyes like burning coals. He only comes out at night, though. Isn’t that right, Meridian?”
The cat gulped and glanced nervously at the window. From Lucy’s position on the floor, she could not see the Shadow Woods, but she imagined the creature Torsten had described standing amid the trees and watching the house as they spoke. Lucy shivered.
“Why can’t the Garr enter the house?” she asked.
“The Garr is a creature of the Shadow Woods, and the Shadow Woods cannot get too close to the house either because of the stone here. Sunstone it’s called.”
“Sunstone”—Lucy pointed at the jars on the bookshelf—“you mean, the same stuff that cream is made from?”
“That’s right,” Torsten said. “The house is built from both shadow wood and sunstone. The Garr doesn’t like sunstone. Tempus Crow, however, can come and go as he pleases because he was once part of the clock like us. And each time one of us disappears, the Shadow Woods get closer. It’s only Meridian and myself and—”
Meridian hissed, and Torsten stopped himself. “Er—anyhow,” the dog continued, “when we’re gone, the house will belong to the Garr forever. At least, that’s what Meridian thinks.” Torsten turned to her. “Did I tell it right?”
“You’ve told too much, I think,” Meridian said quietly. Lucy was about to ask who else was left in the house but then thought better of it. The cat was still very suspicious of her, and that was her biggest fear: that this Garr, whoever he was, was using Lucy to find the hiding spot—and whoever else was hiding there.
“Why would snatching you from the house affect the Shadow Woods?” Lucy asked instead. “I mean, what does one have to do with the other?”
“In the good times,” Torsten said, “everything here worked in perfect harmony. Our places in the clock kept it ticking, and the Shadow Woods stayed put. The Shadow Woods doesn’t like the light in the house. But then the clock stopped, the light went out, and the Shadow Woods began to creep closer.”
“And yet, there is much more to this house than its clock,” Meridian said. “Everything here was designed to work together in perfect balance—sunstone and shadow wood, light and dark, day and night. For in such balance there is potent magic.”
“That’s how we powered the clock,” Torsten said. “Our eyes are made of sunstones, but our bodies are made of shadow wood. And even though the clock has stopped, our magic remains within these walls. Our magic is the only thing keeping the house alive.”
Torsten’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, and he smiled.
“So the house is sentient,” Lucy muttered, and the animals regarded her quizzically. “I learned that word from reading Roger Blackford’s journal.” Lucy jerked her chin at it on the chemistry table. “Roger Blackford believed the house was alive.”
“Oh, it is,” said Torsten. “But not the way you are alive, Miss Lucy. Or even us, for that matter. The clock is the heart of the house, and even though the clock has stopped, because we animals are part of it, our magic, our presence here, is still too much for the Shadow Woods. We are hope, the only things keeping the house alive now—at least, before you arrived. After all, the caretaker is magical, too.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Lucy said, “but there’s nothing magical about me. I’m just a normal kid. Well . . . mostly normal.”
“You’re wrong,” Torsten said. “There’s magic in you, powerful magic that will get the clock ticking again. I just know it. You’re the caretaker, after all, and the caretaker must be magical.”
“I say we take the girl at her word,” Meridian said sarcastically. “The clock is still broken, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“That’s not her fault,” Torsten protested. “The clock is probably weak, just like the rest of the house. None of us has dared go up there since Tempus Crow started snatching us but— Well, this Quigley fellow must be good, then. Same for the Tinkers if they’re trying to fix the clock. What with most of us gone now, they would have to find a different way of powering it.”
“Mr. Quigley fired the last clocksmith because he almost blew up the house,” Lucy said. “The pendulum is the problem, he thinks, and my father and brother are going to build a winding mechanism to get it swinging again.”
“There, you see, Meridian?” Torsten said. “These people don’t serve the Garr. The Garr would never want the clock fixed. The clock—the clock is light. But most of all, the clock is balance. It keeps the Shadow Woods at bay, so maybe the bad time is over. Which means Lucy Tinker here is the caretaker.”
Meridian, unconvinced, just rolled her eyes and sighed.
Lucy felt her cheeks go hot. Despite what Torsten thought, she couldn’t be the caretaker. There was nothing magical about her, not to mention she didn’t know the first thing about taking care of houses. She’d never even lived in one, and certainly had never imagined that such a place as Blackford House could ever exist outside of fairy tales. A magical house with a clock powered by wooden animals that generated light? A magical house that was built near, actually built from, a scary place called the Shadow Woods? And finally, a magical house with a creature named the Garr who wanted it for himself?
“The other animals must be starving, too,” Lucy said suddenly. “You don’t have to tell me where they’re hiding, but we need to get them some food.”
Torsten and Meridian looked at each other warily.
“Just t
ell me how much you need, and then you can bring it to them—”
At that moment, a low, cranking sound came from somewhere deep within the walls. The lights flickered bloodred, and then the faint but unmistakable sound of a clock ticking, slow and steady, began echoing through the house.
“The clock!” Torsten cried.
Lucy and the animals dashed from the library, through the parlor, and into the foyer, where the crystal chandelier was flashing. The ticking was louder out here, and Lucy gazed up at the clock. She could see light under the mechanical room door, and in the cracks between the cuckoo door, too.
“I told you, Meridian!” Torsten cried. “Miss Lucy is the new caretaker! Her magic has started the clock ticking again!”
“But the lights are red,” Meridian muttered, glancing around.
And then the ticking of the clock was shattered by a scream.
Nine
Oliver’s Head, Inside and Out
In his dream, Oliver was visiting his mother’s grave. An enormous crow with acorns for eyes sat watching him from atop a headstone a few feet away.
“Good BOY—caw!” the crow said—throatily, and oddly stressing boy—and Oliver set down a bouquet of flowers in the overgrown grass.
“I miss you so much, Mom,” Oliver whispered. He looked for the crow again, and instead spied his mother coming toward him among the headstones. She was dressed in a luminous white gown, and she looked healthy. Oliver’s heart soared, and they embraced. His mother was soft and warm but smelled vaguely of leaves.
“I am very proud of you,” she said, smiling down at him. Her eyes were radiant and yet far away, as if she were almost too tall for Oliver to see. “You are the man of the house now.”
“You mean the house here in Watch Hollow?” Oliver asked, and his mother nodded.
“This is where we all belong,” she said, and in the next moment, her face shriveled and turned black. Her eyes sank back into their sockets, and her skin flaked off in a whirlwind of ashes, revealing a grinning white skull underneath.
Watch Hollow Page 7
