The Haunting of Hounds Hollow

by Jeffrey Salane

  Meow-rrrr-ow-rrrRRREOW! The new sound sent chills down Lucas’s spine. It wasn’t Lucky’s calm mew—it was the call his cat made when he was scared.

  Lucas darted down the hall, but the door he’d seen drifted away from him. The walls stretched into the distance, like holding a mirror up to a mirror; the hallway was never-ending. Lucas closed his eyes tight. “It’s fine, this place is normal. You’re just not used to big houses,” he whispered to himself.

  Lucky’s cries grew louder, and when Lucas opened his eyes, the door was suddenly in front of him. With each high-pitched whine, Lucas felt his heart pounding in his chest. “Lucky?” he whispered as he reached for the half-open door, but it slammed shut.

  MRRREOWWWW-HISSSSSSSSSS.

  The hiss cut off sharply and Lucas jumped back. The only thought in his head was run, but he stood his ground. If Lucky was trapped, Lucas was going to get his cat out. He reached for the knob, turned it, then slowly opened the door.

  The room was a study. Lucas’s eyes flicked from corner to corner, searching for Lucky’s white-tipped tail or glowing green eyes. “Lucky? It’s me.”

  Lucas rubbed his fingers together and clicked his tongue three times, just like when he’d give the cat treats to eat at home, but Lucky stayed hidden.

  Shelves lined one of the walls. They were crammed with books. Lucky loved to squeeze onto shelves, so Lucas checked there first.

  He ran his finger along the spines out of habit. For as long as he could remember, whenever he was near books on shelves, he felt the strange urge to touch them in this way. When he pulled his hand back, his finger had turned a dull gray from dust. The book collection was so old that most of the spines didn’t even have titles written on them.

  Suddenly something brushed against his leg. Lucas flinched backward and looked down, but nothing was there.

  An old rolltop desk sat in the corner of the room with its pull-down shell closed like a balled-up armadillo hiding from danger.

  “Lucky?” Lucas wandered over to look at the photographs on the wall.

  Each one had a forest in the background, with people on horseback dressed up in fancy clothes with guns. The riders were surrounded by packs of dogs sniffing the ground for a scent. Lucas noticed writing on one of the photos, scribbled in the corner near the ornately carved frame. Hounds Hollow Foxhunt, 1899.

  Beside the picture was an open window. Lucas watched for any movement in the room, but everything was still. He walked to the window and looked outside. A tree branch stretched from the nearest tree like a gnarled arm reaching for the house. At the edge of the branch, a squirrel stood on its hind legs, staring at Lucas.

  “Did you brush against me?” he asked the squirrel. “Listen. You stay in your house and I’ll stay in mine, okay?”

  The squirrel squiggled up its whiskers, then turned and flicked its tail.

  Lucas tried to shut the window down before the squirrel could get back in, but it wouldn’t budge. Dad was not going to like a wide-open window where rodents could crawl in whenever they want. He made a note to tell his father about it later.

  The squirrel, curious, inched closer.

  “No,” Lucas said sternly. “Remember our deal. You stay out there.”

  Then, with a crack, another creature sprang from the shadows and pounced on the squirrel with sharp claws and a heavy hiss. His own cat, Lucky, had pinned the squirrel to the floor and stood above it letting out a bloodcurdling hiss that Lucas had never heard before.

  “Jeez, Lucky! Don’t hurt it!” Lucas gasped as he snatched his cat off the trapped animal.

  The squirrel’s fluffy tail thrashed back and forth as it escaped to the tree and leapt from branch to branch. Lucky clawed out of Lucas’s arms and landed in cat battle mode. His back was arched and his teeth clicked loudly, challenging the volume of cicadas outside.

  Lucas had never seen his cat become a bloodthirsty hunter before. If Lucas hadn’t stopped him, Lucky would have totally eaten that poor squirrel. What was crazier was how quickly and easily Lucky shrugged off the brutal attack. One second, Lucky was bristling with claws ready to slash; the next second he leapt gracefully onto the rolltop desk and purred for Lucas to come over. Then the cat casually licked his paws and nuzzled against Lucas’s hand as if nothing crazy had just happened.

  Lucas scooped up Lucky, and the cat curled in his arms like a baby. “C’mon, you psycho. Let’s get out of here before that squirrel comes back with reinforcements.”

  As he held the cat, Lucas had a sudden urge to see what was hidden in the rolltop desk. He tried to lift the retractable top. It was locked. The tiny keyhole at the base of the desk stared back at Lucas. He traced it with his finger.

  “I think we’ve found my inheritance,” Lucas told Lucky as he started to pull the key out from around his neck.

  Suddenly Lucky hissed again and climbed frantically over Lucas’s shoulders, scratching to get out of his arms. The cat pounced to the floor and faced the doorway with a full and angry screech that gave Lucas a serious case of goose bumps.

  He turned around to see the mysterious boy from earlier. Only he wasn’t in a mirror this time. He was standing in the doorway. The boy’s face was blurry and ashen and he wore a dull gray suit. It was like the kid had stepped out of the old foxhunting photos from a hundred years ago.

  The boy stood still and slowly lifted his hand toward Lucas, but Lucky was not about to let anything happen to his master.

  Hiss-Hiss-HISS!

  At the cat’s warning, the gray boy took off running. Lucky scrambled after him.

  “Hey!” Lucas yelled, confused. “Wait, no, Lucky! Come back!”

  Darting into the hall, Lucas could see the boy racing away. He was fast, but Lucky was fast, too.

  Lucas didn’t know what else to do, so he chased after them. The lights in the house flickered, but they didn’t turn off this time. Lucas kept his eyes trained on the boy. The kid’s suit made him look like a tiny businessman, but he might as well have been wearing a tracksuit. This kid was like lightning.

  As Lucas ran, he couldn’t believe what he was doing. Was he chasing a stranger in his own house, or was he chasing Lucky to make sure the cat didn’t get hurt? Or to make sure the cat didn’t hurt the stranger? Either way, doubt crept in on him. He wondered what people in chases do when they reach the end of the chase. Maybe he was going to find out today.

  The floor started to slope upward, like he was running uphill. His legs began to burn, but he couldn’t stop now, he’d come too far. At the top of the hall, Lucas rounded another turn just in time to see one of the doors slam shut. Lucky was caught completely off guard as the cat blew by the door and slid into a wall, leaving long scratch marks in the wood floor.

  It took all of Lucas’s energy to not fly past the door, too. How had the kid outmaneuvered a cat?!

  Lucas huffed as he banged on the door. “I … I know you’re in there. Just come out and I won’t call the police.”

  Lucas had no idea what he was saying. Call the police? He was nowhere near a phone, and there was some strange kid hiding out in a room in Lucas’s mysterious and comically large house. How was he going to call the police? It made sense at the time, though, and sounded threatening enough that it might get the kid to open up.

  Lucas waited and stared at the closed door. The brass knob had a bone shape etched into it similar to the door that opened to a brick wall earlier. The bone wasn’t ornate or beautiful like a decoration; it was scratched into place, quick and ugly, like initials in a tree. Lucas pounded on the door again, but there was no answer.

  “If you’re not coming out, then I’m coming in,” Lucas warned.

  He turned the knob and the door thrust open, pulling him violently inside. There wasn’t a kid behind this door. There wasn’t even a room. Lucas was facing the outside of the house, with nothing but air and trees around him. He peered over the threshold and looked down to the ground some thirty feet below.

  Still clutching the doorknob, Luc
as tumbled forward and lost his balance. He tried to pull back, but the door was being forced open like a spring-loaded trap. Lucas fell; he was going to hit the ground—and hit it hard. But at that moment, a blistering heat lit up behind him. It scorched like fire. Something caught hold of his shirt and lifted Lucas back to the hallway floor.

  Startled, he tried to catch his breath and looked around for whoever had just saved his life, but no one was there.

  A minute later, footsteps clumped and the same man in the green hard hat from that morning shuffled toward Lucas. “I’ve found the boy,” the man announced into his phone, his voice a dry monotone. When he reached Lucas, he didn’t say a word.

  “I’m okay,” Lucas said as he slowly rotated his right shoulder. His arm felt like it had nearly been ripped off. “Did you see the kid?”

  “What?” the worker asked, almost in a daze. “Another kid? I was only looking for one.”

  “He ran.” Lucas nodded to the open door. “He ran through there.”

  The worker looked at Lucas, then looked at the open door. Slowly, the man crawled over and peaked at the ground outside. “Anyone who goes through this door would be splat down there,” the worker said. “I don’t see any splat.”

  The worker’s phone erupted in muffled screams as the man clicked it over to the speakerphone. “Yeah, he was by that third-floor trapdoor.”

  “How did he find the trapdoor already?” the voice over the phone said. It sounded a lot like Eartha. “Reset it and bring him back down before his parents flip out.”

  “Stay here,” the worker said as he pulled the door shut. Then he looked at Lucas with almost dead eyes. “You must be careful. This place is dangerous.”

  “Yeah,” said Lucas. “I just didn’t expect that.”

  “That is why they call it a trap,” said the worker as he helped Lucas up. “You are not supposed to expect it. You should stay downstairs. Your parents are worried.”

  The worker smelled like leather and sweat, but his hands were ice-cold. Lucas waved him off as if to show that he was okay, but he wasn’t. As he went over to scoop up Lucky, he knew his parents were going to be mad. Not about the door, or his almost (for lack of a better term) splatting. They’d be mad because he’d wandered so far away.

  Eartha placed a bag of ice over Lucas’s shoulder as he sat on the same couch he tripped over the night before. His mother sat next to him while his father paced around the small cottage den.

  “Second-story doors that lead to nowhere, workers around every corner, that giant key ring alone,” Dad sputtered in frustration. “What in the dickens is going on here?!”

  “It was the third story, Dad,” said Lucas.

  “You are not helping, young man,” Mom snapped. “Ms. Dobbs, I mean, Eartha, what can you tell us about this place?”

  Eartha shuffled over to a heavily cushioned red chair with frayed edges that traced an outline of the old woman. She’d probably sat in that same chair for years now. “I told you that you could use a groundskeeper. Good thing I’m here. This property has been in the Sweetwater family for four generations. Y’all will be the fifth. It started as a horse farm.”

  “Respectfully,” Dad interrupted, “horses don’t explain anything about this place. Please skip ahead a few years and tell us why this mansion is built like a fun house.”

  Eartha nodded. “I understand your concern, Mr. Trainer, but I assure you, that house is safe. It’s also just a little … quirky. See, after the horse farm, the Sweetwater family started adding on to the house. I asked Silas himself about it when I first came to work here. I said, ‘Silas, y’all got all these workers building and building and building, but ain’t got no one but you living in that old house. What gives?’ And that’s when he told me about the fire.”

  “There was a fire?” asked Lucas. The burn on his shoulder flared under the ice. He didn’t mention anything to his parents about someone grabbing him before he fell through the door. He didn’t tell them about the boy he saw, either. Not that they gave him much of a chance to talk. It was tight hugs followed by lectures about how dangerous it was to wander off. Sometimes he thought that might be the worst part about his sickness—that his parents treated him like a toddler who needed constant surveillance.

  “Oh mercy, yes, there was a fire,” said Eartha. “A mighty fire that swallowed up most of the house. Burned it to a crisp.”

  Dad’s mouth dropped open. “You mean to tell me that this house is new construction?”

  Eartha shook her head in a slow, kind manner. “Yes and no. Silas was just a young boy back then. It’s a miracle the family escaped with their lives. They decided to build it back. Only this time, Silas told me, they never stopped building. First they built this cottage we’re sitting in right now. They lived here while the house was reconstructed. They added new levels and additions to the old foundation. They added new houses in different styles, and then they connected all them houses. By the time Silas took over the project, he’d become obsessed with building.”

  “Obsessed?” asked Mom. “But why?”

  “Because ever since they kept hammers swinging, saws sawing, and new walls going up on the house …” Eartha paused and both of Lucas’s parents leaned forward. He saw her smile with big yellow teeth like a fisherman with a nibble on the hook. “Ever since then, nothing bad ever happened again.”

  Lucas considered what his family had done up to this point to protect him. The doctors, the bills, the tests, the medicine, and now the move. “Families do that,” he said quietly. “They do the strangest things to keep each other safe.”

  His mom patted his leg. “Yes. Yes, we do.”

  “And now what?” asked Dad. “We’re just supposed to take up Silas’s obsession? We can’t afford to keep people working on this house for the rest of our lives. Heck, we can’t afford to pay them another week.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry ’bout that,” said Eartha. “The work’s paid for. Silas made sure of that.”

  “Whoa, how rich was he?” asked Lucas.

  “Not so much rich as dedicated,” corrected Eartha. “He really believed that building the house brought him good luck. He was a superstitious man if I ever saw one.”

  The room went quiet and the cicadas’ chirp-clicks took over. Lucas’s father was leaning on the couch. Lucas could feel his dad’s hands gripping and releasing the pillow behind him like a stress ball. His dad was not the best-equipped person to handle these kinds of situations. When life handed him lemons, he usually threw a grown-up tantrum. His mom, on the other hand, at least tried to make lemonade.

  “So the workers will keep working,” she said, forcing an understanding tone in her voice. “We were in the house today and couldn’t even hear them. I think as long as we live in the front original structure, we’ll be fine.”

  “Holly,” Dad said, “can we talk about this out back?”

  As his parents left the room, the ice on Lucas’s shoulder had turned to cold water in a ziplock bag. He felt it slush around as he tried to avoid listening to their not-so-quiet discussion outside.

  Eartha stared coolly at him from her chair. “Need more ice?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Lucas. “But I can get it, thanks.” He stood up to go the kitchen, when there was a knock at the front door. Lucas paused next to it and looked at Eartha.

  “I ain’t gettin’ up outta this chair when a perfectly good young man is standing right by the door,” she said. “Besides, it’s not for me.”

  “How do you know?” asked Lucas.

  “It never is” was all she said.

  Lucas went to peer through the peephole and realized the door didn’t have one. His cheeks went flush. Eartha was watching and Lucas must have seemed like he had no idea how to use a door. With a deep breath, Lucas opened it.

  Bess Armstrong was wearing jeans that had been cut at the knees, a black T-shirt, and a backward baseball hat.

  “You coming out to play or what?”

  “Play?” ask
ed Lucas. “Did we have plans or something?”

  “Yes.” Bess nodded once. “Yes, we did. Well, not to play, but at least to hang out. You still got my basketball?”

  “Sure, it’s in the car,” said Lucas. “You need it back?”

  “Nah, not now,” she said. Then she went stone quiet.

  Lucas didn’t know what to do, so he stepped outside. “Hey, Ms. Dobbs, will you tell my parents I’m just out here?”

  “Em-hmmm,” the old woman said from her chair.

  As he shut the door behind him, Bess pulled the water bag off his shoulder. “Is this a new fashion thing that kids in the city wear?”

  The question caught Lucas off guard and he laughed. “Oh yeah, definitely. But you can only wear one bag of water because if you wear two, then people think you’re a real freak.”

  Bess smiled and Lucas felt warm all over, which was probably just from the sun. At least that’s what he kept telling himself.

  “How’d you get here?” he asked.

  “Walked,” said Bess.

  “Wow, that’s a long walk,” said Lucas.

  “Not really.”

  Lucas waited for her to say something more, but he was getting the sense that this girl was not a talker unless there was something that needed to be said. And sure, the last thing he wanted the night before was to hang out with her, but after this morning’s weirdness, he was happy to be around another kid. Well, a normal, regular kid who wasn’t hiding in his house, spying on him, and then disappearing.

  “Let me see your back,” said Bess. She lightly but insistently twirled him around. “Wow! Did you get a sunburn already, city boy?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, trying to see what she saw.

  “Stop squirming,” she said softly. “You can’t look at your own back without a mirror. Necks don’t work that way.”

  He instantly stopped and felt like an idiot, but Bess didn’t seem to care. She picked at the back of his shirt gingerly and poked her fingers through four small rips below his collar that hadn’t been there that morning.

  “You oughta take better care of your clothes,” she said. “Do city kids always cut up their shirts, or do you wanna tell me what happened?”