by Chris Mould
Sam smiled away to himself as he warmed up the stove and began to conjure food from his kitchen.
Anger stirred in the forest. Harsh exchanges broke the eerie silence of the woods. “Assemble the Stone Circle,” growled Jarvis. “Bring yourselves to the reckoning. Some of you will pay for this.”
In a short while the tavern was busy again, and in the way that Sam had always loved in the past: with children’s voices and the sound of small feet parading up and down the stairs.
For the first time in a long time Pip didn’t dream of his parents, of the faceless figures of his mother and father that jostled him in his sleep. Instead, he dreamed of the hollow. But it wasn’t the same hollow. It was a peaceful one, without a forest, or dark corners where strange things lurked or preyed. And in the dream he sat at the fire, cozy and warm, and Sam was there and Frankie and Toad. They talked and laughed and told dark tales into the early hours, and they were scared but it was a good scared, not a bad one. A safe and warm scared.
He had not slept like that in such a long time.
The old place was filthy. Derelict, you might call it. No one had been here for some time. It was not the safest of buildings in the hollow, and repairs would have to be made if it was to be habitable. The plaster was cracked and damp in places, and the river came too high up the brickwork. So far in fact that if you looked out from the window you might think you were looking out from the inside of a boat as the water washed up against the sides.
Stonework and debris had fallen from the attic, tumbling down the chimney and dropping inside the hearth.
A hand reached in and searched through the junk. A wooden box, a pile of old books and papers, and the soot-covered remains of an old cloth sack.
Amongst the odds and ends in the sack, the hand found a small wooden figure of a soldier from the civil war. It dusted him down until his scuffed black boots shone again and his jacket was red once more. Apart from the flaking paint and the bent feather in his hat, he looked as smart as could be.
And for now he sat in silence on the mantelpiece, with his eyes fixed on the doorway so that he could see who came and went. He knew full well that when the moment was right and he had something to say he would go ahead and let out his secrets. Secrets of the children from Hangman’s Hollow.
Chris Mould went to art school at the age of sixteen. During this time, he did various jobs, from delivering papers to cleaning and cooking in a kitchen. He loves his work and likes to write and draw the kind of books that he would have liked to have on his shelf as a boy. He is married with two children and lives in Yorkshire, England.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Chris Mould
978-1-4804-2839-3
Published in 2013 by Albert Whitman & Company
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This 2013 edition distributed by Open Road Integrated Media
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