The Haunting of Hounds Hollow

by Jeffrey Salane

  In the distance, Lucas saw a black iron fence with an unhinged gate that hung open. Beyond that, the castle-like turret roof of Silas’s house peeked through the treetops. Lucas was almost home. But the howling chased him still. He glanced behind him to see if any wolves were on his trail. Nothing was there except the forest, thick and mysterious.

  When Lucas whipped back around, a gray angel had appeared from out of nowhere and stood directly in front of him, arms outstretched. Lucas screamed and gripped his brakes hard, pulling the bike into a skid as he narrowly avoided crashing into the statue.

  “Great,” Lucas mumbled to himself. “Of course Silas had a sculpture garden, too.”

  In his panic, Lucas had ridden in between several statues of angels that now surrounded him in a large circle. They faced one another, frozen in different poses. The angel in front of Lucas was reaching down with its palms open, as if it were ushering him to fly away with her. He wheeled his bike around. Two of the angels were slumped over, as if crying, while the others bowed solemnly or gazed upward with the slightest smile etched onto their stone lips. But every angel statue stood on a pedestal, and chiseled on that pedestal were names.

  Lucas gritted his teeth when he realized what he’d ridden straight into. “Not a sculpture garden. This place is a graveyard!”

  Carefully, he got off the bike and walked it outside the circle. He shivered at the thought of standing on top of his long-gone Sweetwater relatives. Generations of family—at least ten members, judging by the final resting places—were buried six feet beneath him, with the giant tombstones arranged like Stonehenge.

  From outside the circle, the wings of the angels blocked his view. It was designed this way, Lucas thought. Anyone within the circle was part of the family. They could see the statues’ emotions and actions. But anyone outside the circle was left out of this private moment. They were given the coldest of stone shoulders.

  Lucas pushed the bike around the outside of the angels’ circle when he saw a dead patch of grass on the ground. A path of small stones wrapped around it like a border, and while the patch was close to one of the weeping angels, it was definitely not included within the circle of graves. The grass outside the rocks was green and lush, but the grass inside the rocks was yellow and dry. It looked lonely and sad, and suddenly, without knowing why, Lucas wanted to be as far away from that pale grass as possible. He almost wished the howling would start again, just to take his mind off the strange site. Because the patch looked like more than poor yard work … it looked lonely. It looked like death was seeping up through the ground.

  When Lucas reached the house, there was a note from his mother on the front door.

  Hi, hon. Out running errands. Back in a few. Ms. Dobbs is home and workers are everywhere if you need anything. Sandwich stuff in the kitchen, I’m sure you’re hungry. Hope you had a good bike ride. —Mom

  It hadn’t been a good bike ride, not by any stretch of the imagination. Lucas dumped the bike and helmet on the front porch and slipped into the house. He was actually relieved that his mom wasn’t there. Mostly because he had no idea what he was going to tell her about his morning adventure. That he’d almost ridden off the edge of a cliff? That some strange kid had knocked him off the bike to save him? That some strange kid was spying on him? That he’d found a creepy picture? That he scraped his elbows and knees? That he’d found the Sweetwater family’s graveyard? None of it seemed like the correct answer to her inevitable question, How was your bike ride? Lucas breathed easier because he didn’t have to explain any of it to her yet, and his sigh echoed through the huge front parlor.

  That’s when Lucas realized he was basically home alone. He patted the key still hanging around his neck. He hadn’t gone back upstairs since the trapdoor incident, but he was certain that this key would open whatever was hidden in the mysterious rolltop desk. A clock chimed eleven times. It must have come from deep within the house, because Lucas looked around and couldn’t see a clock anywhere. The solemn bell rung soft and distant like the clock itself was whispering. Eleven o’clock in the morning and Lucas had the whole spooky place to himself. But then, louder than the chimes, came the gurgles and grumbles from his stomach. Sandwiches were definitely necessary. His inheritance—whatever it was—would be fine waiting until after lunch.

  The kitchen was a mixture of updated and outdated. Stainless-steel appliances sat next to hand-carved cabinets with decorative twists and patterns chiseled and smoothed out of woodwork. Brass handles lined the rows of drawers under the gleaming granite countertops.

  In the middle of it all, two focal points competed for attention: On one side, there was an antique stove. It was black with brass trim and looked very alien to Lucas. Never in his life had he seen a stove that stood on clawed legs like this one did. The other kitchen oddity was the fireplace built into the wall. It must have been older than the old stove and it totally creeped Lucas out. First of all, hooks still dangled underneath the flue, and when a breeze blew in, the hooks rocked slightly on their hinges, letting out a horrible creak. There was also a black, charred mark at the back of the fireplace. Lucas’s dad said that this was where the family cooked their meals, did their laundry, and maybe even heated water for their baths a long time ago. To Lucas, though, the smudge looked like a witch had been burned at the stake in there. He shuddered at the mental image.

  Lucas walked over to the fridge. Puffs of steam rose out when Lucas opened it. He leaned in and heard the glass bottles clink in the door shelf. The cold air felt amazing against his face. Lucas hadn’t realized how hot it had gotten in the kitchen. He grabbed the turkey and cheese along with mustard, mayo, and bread, then kicked the door shut. Dropping the food on the island in the middle of the room, Lucas found a plate and pulled a knife out of the drawer.

  A bead of sweat dripped down from his nose, plopping on the dark granite countertop. Lucas wiped his forehead across his upper sleeve. He’d ridden and run hard through the forest, but he didn’t realize just how gross he’d gotten. As he reached for a folded towel by the sink to wipe himself off, the package of turkey fell to the floor.

  Plap. The wet sound made him jump. Then he shook his head and leaned down to get it. As soon as he did, a long scraping noise from the top of the island made Lucas cringe. He stood back up to see his plate on the opposite end of the counter, far away from where he’d placed it.

  “That’s not good.” Lucas studied the empty kitchen as he held the turkey slices. “Eartha? Was that you? Did I do something wrong again and you’re trying to teach me a lesson?”

  No one answered.

  Then, suddenly, the cap on the mustard exploded and a stream of yellow sprayed violently into the air. The mayo fell on its side, too, splattering all over the counter. Lucas froze, waiting for the cheese to start boiling or whatever kitchen catastrophe was coming next. But the room went still again.

  He picked the mustard bottle up from a thick yellow puddle and studied it. Instantly it erupted again, spurting even more yellow all over his face and the floor.

  “So that’s what Gale meant about exploding mustard,” he said to the empty room. Lucas grabbed a few paper towels nearby and cleaned his face.

  His stomach whined loudly. Lucas reached for the mustard bottle again, but thought better of it. With a shrug, he scraped the butter knife against the mustard on his shirt, then swiped it across the bread.

  Plap. The cheese smacked against the floor this time.

  “C’mon, world, I just wanna eat!” Lucas sighed as he bent over to pick it up.

  But there was something else on the floor that hadn’t been there a minute ago. Stains. No, not stains, thought Lucas. Paw prints.

  A trail of mustard-yellow paw prints led out of the kitchen and into the living room. Lucas touched the closest mark and it smudged. The trail was fresh.

  “Lucky?” he called, but these paw prints belonged to something bigger than his cat.

  Lucas took a bite of bread, then put it down to follow the s
trange, new tracks. The steps seemed to hover above the dark wood floors, and they didn’t stop or wander. Whatever made the marks knew exactly where it was going.

  The prints led up a flight of stairs Lucas hadn’t seen before. This staircase was thinner than the one in the front of the house, but it was every bit as strange. When he reached the second floor, the staircase kept going up. Only instead of reaching the third floor, they dead-ended at the ceiling. “Why would anyone build a staircase to nowhere?” he asked aloud.

  The paw tracks jumped down from there and onto the second floor. Lucas hopped down, too.

  Thoughts swirled in his head as he hypnotically followed the prints. He had no idea what kind of animal he was trailing. The prints were big, but the stains didn’t seem to land with much force on the floor. Each mark showed four pads at the top with a fifth, larger pad at the bottom. The inside of each pad mark was crisscrossed with dots that came together to look almost like fingerprints.

  As he stepped carefully around the yellow impressions, the silence of the house pressed down on Lucas. Suddenly his stomach growled again and he wished he’d brought at least some bread with him.

  Soon he reached an unfinished wall that must have been new construction. Lucas ran his hand over the pale white drywall that glowed soft like a night-light. Fresh chalk came off on his hands, and Lucas wiped them against his pants. The tracks turned right around a corner, down another hallway. The new construction continued down this way, too. After ten steps forward, they turned right again and down another unfinished hallway. Another ten steps later, the prints turned right again … down a third hallway. After ten more steps, Lucas looped back to the original hallway, where the tracks finally ended.

  “No way,” he whispered. He retraced his steps in a square again, making sure that the animal wasn’t hiding anywhere. Again and again, there was nothing to be seen.

  A scraping sound made Lucas jump. It was urgent and seemed to come from behind the drywall. He put his hand against the hallway and felt a pulse with every scratch, like something was pawing from inside the wall. Frantically, Lucas retraced his steps, looking for a door to let the animal out, but there was no door. The scratching followed him to each wall. Lucas knocked against the wall and the scratching grew more insistent and anxious, moving up and down.

  “Hello?!” Lucas called out. “Anyone? Help! There’s an animal trapped in the walls!”

  A construction worker appeared around another corner. He wore a blue flannel shirt and carried a bucket of plaster with a trowel. His tired eyes stared flatly at Lucas. “You are not supposed to be here.”

  “Yeah, well, neither is the animal trapped in this wall,” said Lucas.

  The worker shook his head. “There’s no animal. Just you. Go back downstairs.”

  Instantly the scratching stopped and the hallway went silent once more.

  “Oh,” Lucas said. He wasn’t sure why, but having the worker there didn’t make him feel any safer. “Okay, I’ll get outta here, but please check that wall. And look out for a stray animal. I followed these paw prints up here, and—”

  “Paw prints?” the worker interrupted.

  “Yeah, tracks. Like, paw prints on the ground.” Lucas pointed down, but the yellow paw prints were gone. Just like the scratching, they’d disappeared.

  “You need to leave,” said the worker. “We have rules in this house. Do not go where you are not supposed to go.”

  “But I swear! There were tracks and a scratching!” Lucas said as he knocked against the wall. “Something’s inside here. Can’t you hear it?”

  “We. Have. Rules. In. This. House.” The worker’s tone grew angry as he dragged himself forward. His movements were irregular, like watching a puppet on a string try to walk. He seemed to float in the light of the hall. “Now get back to your side of the house.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Lucas argued as he retreated the way he came. He needed to tell his parents about this, even if it meant he’d get in trouble. Keeping an eye on the worker, he watched the man dip the trowel in the plaster and begin to smooth the wall with it.

  All signs of the mustard-yellow paw prints on the floor were gone. Looking around, Lucas realized that without the prints, he had no idea how to get back to the kitchen. After a few wrong turns, Lucas found the strange steps that led back downstairs. The island in the kitchen was still a mess, but now his plate was smashed on the floor and the food was strewn about.

  As he bent down to clean up the plate shards, a thump echoed from the other side of the room. Lucas stayed hidden behind the island. “Eartha? Mr. Worker Guy? Any chance that noise was Mom or Dad?”

  Thump. This time Lucas flinched at the sound. It was like a body hitting the floor. Slowly, he peeked over the island. Everything was still. Then the giant box from Gale’s moved on the table, causing Lucas to jump up, too. Lucas and the box stood stone-still, waiting to see which one of them would make the next move.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  The box shifted back and forth on the table like someone was trapped inside. Suddenly the top of the box exploded open, spilling tons of dog food onto the floor. Lucas let out a shriek so high-pitched that it could have cracked every window in the house, but he didn’t care. In that moment, the only thing he cared about was getting out of the house as fast as humanly possible. He bolted for the front door, ripped it open, and stopped in his tracks.

  Bess was on the front porch. Again. “You okay, Lucas? We were coming over and heard some lady screaming inside your house.”

  “No, that was me.” Lucas nodded as he huffed and puffed and pointed at himself. “I’m the screaming lady and before you tell me I’m crazy, let me just say that you’d scream, too, if you saw what I just saw.”

  “What’s going on?” Bess asked. “Should we come inside?”

  Lucas moved from nodding his head to shaking it. “All I wanted was a sandwich and now the box of dog food is alive, the walls are alive, there’s a worker who is totally out to get me, and the mustard paw prints just disappeared—”

  “Did you say mustard paw prints?” A new person was standing off to the side of the porch next to Bess.

  “Yeah, the mustard blew up. It was the kind we got from Gale’s in town, and I guess these mustard bottles had been …” Lucas stopped rambling when he looked at the new kid. It was the horseback boy from the forest who’d knocked him off his bike. “You? What are you doing here?”

  “He’s with me, Lucas.” Bess stepped between them. “We need to talk.”

  Lucas pointed over her shoulder. “Do you have any idea what he did to me, Bess?”

  “I saved your life,” the kid answered. “You’re welcome.”

  Remembering the cliff’s edge, Lucas yelled, “Darn right, you did! Thank you!”

  Bess scrunched up her face as she patted Lucas’s arm back down. “Why are you yelling at Lens if he helped you?”

  “Because I’m really weirded out by everything right now,” Lucas hollered. “And you bring this guy over to my house who was spying on me yesterday, by the way, and he saved my life, but he also royally messed up your bike, by the way, and then I found a graveyard.”

  “Stop,” Bess commanded. Her hair flipped around as she faced the other kid. “Lens? You hurt my bike?”

  “No,” the kid said stubbornly. “I kept him from riding it off the Devil’s Drop.”

  “By tackling me,” snapped Lucas. “That really hurt, by the way.”

  “It would have hurt worse if you’d fallen to your death.”

  Lucas nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point there. Oh, and I found your special forest camera, too, Mr. Lindsay. If that is your real name.”

  “His name is Deshaun,” said Bess. “But everyone calls him Lens.”

  Lens held up another camera that was slung over his shoulder and, with a quick smile, took a picture of Lucas. The bright flash popped and made Lucas wince.

  “Fastest photographer in the South,” Lens bragg
ed over the camera’s mechanical whining. A white square pushed out of the plastic case and Lens gave it a strong shake. “That’s why they call me Lens. Like a camera lens. It’s kind of my thing.”

  Bess rolled her eyes. “That and your last name is Lindsay. You made us all start calling you Linds at first to try and be cool. Then you got into cameras later, so—”

  “Okay, okay,” Lens said with a nervous laugh. “We don’t have to tell the man my life story.” He handed Lucas the picture he’d just taken. “Here.”

  A ghostly image rose from the white center of the photo. Lucas watched as the picture started to develop into full color, then looked down at his shirt. “Awe, man. I forgot about the mustard stain.”

  “Look,” said Bess. “Go change your shirt and show us what’s going on in Silas’s house. You said a worker was out to get you?”

  Lucas stared at Bess. She stood in the doorway like a kid about to jump off a diving board. She was ready to plunge inside.

  “No,” he told her. Then Lucas pulled out the picture he found in the forest. “Not until you tell me the story behind this.”

  Bess closed her eyes and raised a fist to her forehead. “You had one job today,” she said, turning to Lens. “One job! I asked you to get all the pictures.”

  “I thought I did!” Lens said with a shrug. “Apparently, I didn’t.”

  Lucas nodded as the shadowy photo hung between them.

  Bess pushed Lens backward with an angry grunt before she turned to Lucas. “Okay, Lucas Trainer. We’ll tell you what we know, but you’ve got to come with us.” Her voice became suddenly grave. “’Cause you’ll need to see it to believe it.”

  The hedge maze was overgrown. Roots pushed up through the uneven ground and the bushes were wild, with tiny limbs reaching out to scrape Lucas. Still dressed in his dirty shirt, he followed Bess and Lens into the bizarre place he’d seen the night he arrived at Sweetwater Manor. A stone archway entrance was the only part of the maze that had kept its original shape. The hedges hadn’t been trimmed in years; they were pear-shaped in the middle and scraggly at the top. The manicured glory of the maze had become a weed garden and the walking path barely existed.