“I must not’ve closed it all the way when you guys came in,” said Gabe, skipping quickly down the stairs. He shoved against the door as the wind pushed back from the other side.
“Wow,” said Mazzy. “We’re so sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Felicia snapped. “It wasn’t our fault.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” said Gabe, thankful that they were no longer standing in the upstairs hallway. “Why don’t you all go sit down in the living room. Malcolm can put on the next movie. I’ll grab some snacks from the kitchen.”
A few minutes later, carrying a tray of cheeses he’d scrounged from the fridge and crackers from an old box in the pantry, he turned off the hallway light, ready to set the mood for the next flick, though, in fact, the house had already done a fine job of that.
Ingrid yelped when he came through the door. Squished together on the couch, his friends looked terrified.
“Not funny, Gabe,” said Malcolm.
“What’s not funny?”
Mazzy leaned forward. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“About what?” Gabe placed the tray on the coffee table, baffled.
“That sound,” said Felicia. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“What sound?”
But seconds later, he heard it too. A low-down, guttural growl. He turned toward the hallway. The sound came again—a deep, throaty threat. Inhuman. It was coming from the pitch-dark parlor opposite the living room.
Ingrid whined, bringing her knees to her chest. “That sound.”
The floor tilted. Gabe grabbed at the door frame. His fingers began to tingle. Breathe, he told himself. Mazzy appeared beside him. Her slight touch brought blood back to his head, and the room righted. “Was that an animal?” he whispered. “Could it have gotten in when the door blew open?”
“I don’t know.” Mazzy stepped closer to him, their shoulders now pressing together. “Maybe.”
The rest of the group joined them at the doorway.
“Call the police,” Felicia demanded.
Ingrid shushed her as something crashed in the other room. They all screamed and stepped back. Except for Gabe. He planted his feet, straining to peer through the grainy darkness. After a moment, he realized he was channeling Meatpie. His courage was imaginary, but it seemed to work anyway. A vague shape shifted the shadows. His mind filled in the gaps, and the form became vaguely familiar. This was no dog. The intruder was something larger. Much larger.
That familiar thought tickled the back of his skull for the third time in as many hours. The Hunter will come for you…you and your new friends.
An enormous figure stepped toward the light of the living room, a shadow solidifying into something tangible. The group screamed. “What is that?” one of them shouted. The thing bumped into a side table, knocking the piece of furniture over with a crash.
Glancing over his shoulder, Gabe saw his friends cowering by the far wall. The thing in the other room could easily rush the doorway and trap them in here. There was no way out, unless one of them opened a window, and even then, with the meadow sloping steeply at the back of the house, a fall to the ground would be great. Too frightened even to speak, he stumbled backward.
From the parlor, heavy steps creaked across the old floor. A moment later, the living room’s lamplight hit the intruder. A beastly silhouette filled the doorway. Shaggy hair hung from every inch of its wide body. It opened its black mouth in what appeared to be a smile filled with strangely blunt teeth. Ingrid shrieked. “Is that a…costume?” said Malcolm, sounding only slightly more restrained.
The world seemed to spin as Gabe reeled with both confusion and anger. “Not quite.” He cleared his throat and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. “His name is Milton. Milton Monster.”
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” SAID FELICIA, stepping toward Gabe and away from the group. She kept her eyes on the thing in the doorway. “What the heck is a Milton Monster?”
“A puppet.” The word whisked from Gabe’s lips like smoke, uncontainable now that it finally had been released.
“Whose puppet?” Malcolm asked.
“My father’s,” Gabe said. It was over. With his mask removed, Gabe had only moments before he turned back into the loser he’d learned to be.
“But how is it moving around?” Mazzy asked, coming up beside him again. “Is it robotic?”
Her question was like a punch. Gabe snapped his attention back to the doorway. “No,” he said quietly. “It’s not a robot. It’s a suit.” Milton Monster seemed to stare at them. “You wear it. The controls are inside. Hidden levers and hooks and strings.”
“Then who…” Felicia’s voice trailed off.
The puppet’s chest moved slowly as someone inside breathed deeply.
“Seth?” Gabe whispered. “Is that you?” He almost expected the puppet to respond with another animal growl. But it only continued to stare and sway slightly.
“Seth Hopper?” Felicia asked. “No freaking way.” She stomped toward the beast, stopping right in front of it. Milton towered nearly two feet over her. “What do you think you’re doing?” she said, anger shaking her voice. “Freak!”
“Uh,” Gabe tried to speak up, “Felicia…” But she wasn’t listening to anything but the sound of her own voice.
The creature tilted its head, as if in amusement.
“You’re going to regret this,” said Felicia. “Big-time.” She reached up and shoved at the puppet’s chest. She pushed hard, but she only ended up sending herself into a backward stumble. Finding her footing, she looked unsurely back at Milton. “Seth?” she said, her voice a specter of what it had been seconds earlier.
Milton shook its head, long hair flipping back and forth across its broad shoulders. It opened its mouth again. A soft sound escaped this time, barely audible, but still Gabe recognized it. Whoever was inside the suit was laughing at them.
“Felicia,” Mazzy whispered, waving her away from the doorway. Felicia scrambled back to the group by the wall.
“Stop it!” Gabe cried out at the intruder. This was his home. These were his friends. “Get out of here!”
Milton stepped lithely backward and disappeared around the edge of the doorway. For several seconds, the group stood together in the living room, unsure what to do. Then, from the hall, there came a sound of a heavy collapse, as if the intruder had tripped and fallen.
Gabe raced forward into the hall, and found his father’s creation slumped against the wall across from the staircase. He approached slowly, waiting for it to move.
“Don’t get too close,” said Malcolm. “Someone’s still inside that thing.”
But in fact, the suit now lay completely still and silent. “I’m not so sure,” Mazzy said after a few seconds. “If someone’s in there, he’s either unconscious or…”
Felicia shook her head. “Or what? Dead?”
Gabe kicked gently at Milton’s foot. It flopped over, turning completely around. The group gasped. Tentatively, Gabe bent down, and for a moment, he was back in Howler’s Notch or Slayhool or the Kingdom of Chicken Guts, crouching over some villainous beast that was waiting for the perfect moment to claw his leg, sever an artery, clutch him to its chest, guzzle his blood. Chilled, Gabe shook the thought away. This was no fantasy world. This was his grandmother’s house. Edging closer, he poked its leg, but his hand met no resistance. The fabric flattened entirely, until Gabe found himself leaning against the floor itself.
“The suit’s empty,” Gabe said, glancing up at the group.
“How could he have slipped out of it so quickly?” Felicia asked. “That would be impossible.”
“I guess we’re looking at impossible,” said Malcolm.
“What the heck is happening here?” Ingrid said, throwing her hands into the air. Gabe had an answer, but he knew none of them would understand.
MEATPIE WANDERED THE WOODS ALONE. He’d had no official word from Wraithen in days, and he’d begun to worry that somethin
g was wrong.
That morning, however, from his royal bedroom in the stone tower of Castle Chicken Guts, Meatpie thought he’d heard their secret meeting cry: a piercing shriek, like the call of the weeway lizard—WEE! WEE! WAAAAY!—repeated thrice. Of course, the call could simply have come from the scaly pinkish creature itself, but Meatpie knew he must at least explore the possibility that Wraithen needed him.
Several nights prior, the Hunter had made it past the guards and into the castle—an act of aggression so egregious, there had been no protocol arranged to handle it. The beast had done no physical damage, but the psychological ramifications echoed boundlessly across the two kingdoms. No citizen felt safe. Everyone agreed that if the Hunter was not caught, and soon, something horrible, beyond all reckoning, would occur.
Strange, then, that Wraithen should choose this time to disappear.
“Ho, there.” The voice came from inside the foliage just ahead. A thin shade of a body stepped out from behind a thick tree trunk.
“Hello,” said Meatpie, his muscles tense. Wraithen smiled wearily. “Where have you been? I thought you might be dead.”
“As you can see, I’m not.”
“There is much to discuss.”
“Not to worry.” Wraithen stepped forward and reached into his satchel. “I’ve found a solution to all our problems.”
“Have you really?” Meatpie said, unable to control the skepticism clinging to his words.
Wraithen pulled a small black object from his bag and held it up. A stone idol.
Carved to resemble a solemn monk, the object was familiar to Meatpie, but he couldn’t remember why. “That’s your great solution?” he asked, incredulous. “A little man made from obsidian?”
Wraithen studied the figurine for a moment, then glanced at Meatpie with amusement. “Have you no faith?” He reeled his hand back over his shoulder, then whipped the figurine forward. It flew past Meatpie, just missing his head, and landed with a crunch in the brush behind him.
Confused, Meatpie turned, trying to discern where the object had landed. A rock wall wound through the trees several feet away. He stepped forward and scanned the ground beyond the wall.
Something rose up rapidly before him, a shadow expanding, a tall neckless figure with broad shoulders, wearing a filthy leather vest, a quiver of ragged arrows strapped to his back and a rusted blade tied to his belt.
Meatpie was paralyzed with shock. The hulking figure reached out and caught him with massive hands, lifting him from the ground. Meatpie kicked, but only succeeded in knocking a small rock from the wall. The Hunter had pinned Meatpie’s arms to his rib cage.
The thing’s skin was pale blue and stretched so tightly across its enormous skull that in sections it had cracked open and bled. Its wide eyes were entirely onyx and as soulless as a shark’s. The Hunter opened its mouth, revealing blackened teeth. Bloody saliva dripped down its chin. An aroma of rot, of waste, of putrefaction from the bowels of the wood’s deepest cesspool swirled around them.
Seeing the creature up close for the first time, uncloaked and hideous, Meatpie tasted bile at the back of his throat. He felt faint, but he managed to cry out, “Wraithen! Help!”
From behind him came a cruel chortle. Meatpie could not turn to see his friend, but he knew something was very wrong.
“The solution to our problem is right here,” said Wraithen.
The Hunter squeezed Meatpie, pressing breath from his lungs.
“I don’t understand….” he wheezed.
“What’s not to understand?” Wraithen strolled up to the wall and glanced up at Meatpie. He was smiling.
“B-but why?”
Wraithen shook his head, frustrated that he had to explain himself. “Why?” he repeated. “Why should two castles exist side by side when one will suffice? One kingdom ruled by one king. Me.” He gestured to the creature. “And here I’ve found my knight…errant as he is.”
Meatpie tried to shout out with the little breath his lungs could catch. “You can’t do this.”
“Believe it or not, it was his idea.” Wraithen smiled. “With this new agreement, he shall leave the Dark Forest of Howler’s Notch and hold a position in my court. Not as dumb as he looks.” The Hunter grunted as if delighting in Wraithen’s praise, then shook his prey ever harder. “And the cost for his protection, he promised, will be small,” Wraithen added with a cruel grin. He chuckled. “Well, human infants are small. And he only requires a meal two or three times a week—an offering that your people, the citizens of Chicken Guts, would be willing to give, I’m sure. Of course, if he is forced to hunt for his food, he works up quite an appetite.”
“No!” Meatpie strained his head back, unable to move away from his captor. The Hunter opened its mouth wide. Tendons coated with rancid saliva stretched from its top to bottom jaw.
Meatpie didn’t have time to scream before the monster put its sopping lips around his head. A metallic-tasting liquid filled his own mouth and spurted up his nose. He gagged. He struggled to take a breath, but only inhaled more fluid—the monster’s spume. Choking, Meatpie pressed his mouth shut. His body slowly became enveloped by a steaming warmth, from his shoulders to his toes.
He forced his eyes open. They burned. He was blind. Despite his panic, Meatpie understood that where he was headed, he would no longer need to see, to breathe, to hear or feel, or, for that matter, to sense anything at all.
GABE SAT UP IN BED, clutching his blanket to his chest. He struggled to catch his breath as the room solidified around him.
Only a dream…a nightmare. He was used to them, but he had never before dreamt of the Hunter.
Earlier, after he and his friends realized that the Milton suit was in fact empty, that whoever had watched them from the doorway had apparently evaporated into nothingness, they asked the expected questions. What just happened? Have you ever seen it before? Is Temple House…haunted? And after Gabe failed to answer satisfactorily, the group started with different questions—the ones that Gabe had dreaded ever since the fire had brought his family to Temple House. Where did your father get the puppet? What does he do with it? Are there any more like it? Defeated, Gabe told them the truth. He even brought them upstairs when he returned the puppet to his father’s workshop and showed them what was really behind the door. Surrender is freedom, his mind had later translated for him. Giving in had been easier than he’d expected. The group explored the room, acting amazed and wearing expressions of wonder as they pored over Glen’s sketches and models. But Gabe had seen those kinds of looks several years before, in his old town, after Glen had visited Gabe’s school to talk about his job. First comes awe, then come the nicknames and the unending ridicule. Want to know what’s really behind that door, Felicia? Go ahead. Take a peek. Now Gabe could do what he knew best, what he’d learned to do a long time ago. Hide. Fade away. Disappear.
The small black figurine that Wraithen had thrown into the brush during Gabe’s dream came into his head, and he remembered where he’d seen it before. It was the figurine he’d noticed sitting on a shelf in David Hopper’s old bedroom, the one that Gabe had suspected was the missing piece of his grandmother’s collection. For some reason, Gabe’s dreaming mind had conjured it up.
He swung his legs over the edge of his bed. His feet met cold wood as he stumbled toward his bedroom door and out into the hallway.
After he and his friends had carried the heavy puppet back upstairs, Ingrid insisted on calling her sister to come pick her up. Mazzy and Felicia left with her, and when Malcolm asked if he could hitch a ride too, Gabe felt his fears solidify. Malcolm was supposed to have spent the night, but after Milton’s inexplicable appearance, Malcolm had been too scared to hang out, even just until Gabe’s parents came home.
Oh yes, this was most certainly the beginning of the end.
Gabe stepped onto the top stair, and it squeaked slightly. Staring into the dark hallway below, he realized that he might have a more immediate problem than the prospect of losi
ng all his friends. Earlier that evening, someone had entered Temple House—someone who hadn’t been invited.
Fuming, Gabe made his way to the library. For a brief moment, while the group was still together, he’d believed that Seth’s game, the fantasy world and its oversized villain, was becoming a reality.
The Hunter will come for you.
So stupid.
He pushed open the library door and glanced around the room, making sure he was alone. This time, his grandmother’s rocking chair was empty.
Gabe flicked the switch on a nearby table lamp, and the library filled with a dim glow. The light barely reached the bookshelves by the window, but his grandmother’s figurines were visible, huddled together as if planning a secret attack. Gabe slowly came upon them, feeling his lungs tighten with every step. Even from several feet away, he could see that there were five figurines on display.
He blinked several times, certain that sleep had tinkered with his imagination. When he’d come into this room with his friends earlier in the evening, Gabe had seen only four little men standing on the shelf, the same number he’d noticed on the night he found Elyse sitting in the rocking chair. At some point in the past few hours, someone had replaced the missing figurine.
A soft cry came from the hallway. Gabe froze. The sound came again—not a cry, but the squeal of old hinges. Metal rubbing against metal.
With a floaty, almost dizzy sensation, Gabe moved toward the doorway and peeked out into the hall. A gust of chill air slapped his cheek. Several feet away, the door that led outside to the stairs and down to the backyard patio stood open a crack. He pulled the door open all the way and stared into the cold night, searching for movement on the grassy slope, imagining someone dashing toward the woods.
The Hunter will come for you.
Of course, Seth’s threat had been empty, impossible. But was the prospect of Seth Hopper trying desperately to make him believe in the Hunter truly any better? Frightened and angry, Gabe cried out in a harsh whisper, “Seth! Are you there?” The only answer he received was the wind rustling the last of the leaves in the high branches down the hill.
The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe Page 7
