Crooked Hills

by Cullen Bunn

  “If the dog or the Crewes brothers don’t kill him,” Lisa said, “I will.”

  I skulked out of the brush and with a burst of speed sprinted for the shed.

  “Not you, too!” Lisa said.

  I skidded to a stop like I was sliding to home plate. My back slammed against the wall of the shed. I waited a few seconds to make sure no one heard. I motioned toward Lisa’s hiding spot and waved her over.

  She stepped from the trees, looking both directions like someone crossing a busy street, and ran to my side.

  “You’re nothing but trouble,” she said, catching her breath, “the both of you.”

  Around the corner of the shed, Marty duck-walked to the edge of the building. He hid behind a rusty metal barrel full of trash and leaned around the side. I came up behind him, moving quietly. It looked like the dog had been digging at the edge of the shed, trying to tunnel beneath it. I placed a hand on Marty’s shoulder. He spun around with a cry of “eep!” He almost knocked the smelly garbage barrel over.

  “Are you trying to scare me to death?” he snapped.

  Payback, I thought, grinning.

  “What’s it doing?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. It was sniffing around the house a little. Now it’s just sort of sitting by the back steps.”

  Lisa walked up behind me, slingshot at the ready. She dug a stone from the small leather pouch at her side. She loaded the slingshot. The rubber creaked as she drew the stone back.

  “You don’t think it’s their dog, do you?” she asked.

  Marty’s face scrunched up as he considered the possibility. “I can’t imagine Greg and Hatch taking care of a dog.”

  “Does that flea-bitten mongrel look like anyone is taking care of it?” I pointed toward the steps, but the dog was nowhere to be seen. “Hey! Where’d it go?”

  Marty stuck his head out again and took a quick look. When he looked at us again, his eyes were wide.

  “It was just there a second ago.”

  The fetch could be anywhere—even sneaking up behind us. I drew in a sharp breath and coughed. The reeking odor of the trash barrel was worse than the Scent-Be-Gone.

  “Wait here,” Marty said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Last time he said that, he disappeared.

  He cautiously slid around the barrel—

  The fetch leaped out of the shadows, snarling, baring its fangs. It planted its paws in a fearsome stance. Frothy, mad-dog drool flew from its mouth.

  Marty froze. The fetch stared up at him, waiting for him to make a move—daring him to make a move. The dog’s witching eyes glowed balefully.

  “Step back,” I said, “nice and easy.”

  The fetch rolled its horrible eyes in my direction, then resumed watching my cousin.

  “Nice doggie.” Marty backed away, slowly. He didn’t turn his back on the fetch. “Good dog.”

  The fetch barked, spittle flying from its jowls.

  Marty stumbled, bumping the trash barrel. The barrel tipped over and fell with a crash! The contents—greasy paper plates, old soda cans, wadded up TV dinner boxes—spilled across the yard. Marty landed on his rump and scrambled away, making a path through the garbage.

  The dog leaped for him.

  Lisa let the stone fly. It struck the dog in the side. The fetch yelped and jumped back. Its hair stood on end like the quills of an angry porcupine. It unleashed a series of loud barks.

  The light bulb outside the house’s back door sprang to life, washing the entire yard in a yellowish light. The dog looked away from us and toward the glow. Lisa and I grabbed Marty and tugged him back into the shadows. The door opened, and Greg stepped onto the back porch. He wore a tee-shirt a couple of sizes too small and a pair of pajama bottoms decorated in what looked like colorful sailboats and jumping dolphins. It might have been enough to make me laugh—seeing a tough bully like Greg Crewes wearing a pair of pants that would embarrass a kindergartener—but all the humor drained from the situation as Greg leveled a shotgun in our direction.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  GREG SWUNG THE SHOTGUN, searching for the source of the commotion. His shadow stretched across the yard, long and misshapen. Thankfully, the porch light didn’t quite reach our hiding place, and Greg didn’t see us. The fetch, however, was a sitting duck.

  Greg pulled the trigger.

  A deafening boom echoed through the hills, and the shotgun flashed in the night. Night birds—or possibly bats—screeched from the darkness of the surrounding forest. The blast missed, and the dog jumped, scurried around, unsure of which way to go. Greg fired another shot. He missed the dog again, but the pellets peppered the metal side of the trash barrel. The fetch yelped and jumped, turned and hustled for the trees with its tail tucked between its legs.

  Greg cracked open the shotgun, ejecting the spent, smoking shells. He dug more ammo out of the pocket of his sailboat print PJs. Reloading, he snapped the weapon shut once more.

  Marty rolled from his backside and prepared to run for his life, but I grabbed hold of him before he took off.

  “He doesn’t see us,” I said. “Move around to the other side.”

  The shotgun boomed again.

  The three of us scrambled to the other side, putting the broad side of the shed between us and the shotgun. We raced for the cover of the forest, throwing ourselves through the scrub. The brambles scratched at my face, and I ate a mouthful of soil. I looked back at the house.

  The fetch charged around the side of the shed. It didn’t stop running, but pointed its nose in our direction.

  “It’s coming right at us!” Lisa cried.

  Greg rounded the shed and trained the gun on the dog. Even from our hiding spot, I could see right down the cavernous double barrels of the gun. The spray of the buckshot would rip right through the brush and the three of us alike.

  “Duck!” I cried.

  The fetch charged in our direction as hard as it could go. The shotgun bucked in Greg’s hands. The flash blinded me for a second, and I thought for sure the tiny metal beads would tear right through us, even though we were flat against the ground.

  The earth behind the fetch exploded. The dog picked up the pace and veered off to the left as dirt clods showered down around it like the sky was falling. Greg cracked open the shotgun. I pulled myself to a sprinter’s crouch.

  Another voice—Hatch’s—called from the house.

  “What are you doing?”

  Greg’s answer was quiet, like he was afraid of waking someone up. Like the boom of the shotgun hadn’t taken care of that.

  “That mangy dog’s back again.”

  “Did you get him this time?”

  “Don’t know.”

  A third voice called from inside. A man’s voice. Muffled. Angry. I couldn’t tell what he said, but Greg shrank at the words.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  Another gunshot thundered behind us, but we didn’t look back. By the time we stopped, my lungs ached and I had trouble breathing. I rested against the trunk of a big, mossy tree. Lisa leaned over with both hands on her knees. She looked like she was going to upchuck peppermints. Exhausted, Marty collapsed onto the ground.

  “Do you think Greg saw us?” Marty asked.

  “I don’t think so. It was pretty dark, and he was more worried about the dog. Besides, if he saw us, we wouldn’t have made it out of there.”

  In the distance, another shotgun blast sounded, chased by a half dozen echoes. Lisa flinched.

  “Do you think he got the dog?” Marty asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  In Chicago, someone firing away with a shotgun like that would have been answered by sirens, flashing lights, and a squad of well-armed policemen. Out here in the country, either no one lived close enough to hear Greg’s assault... or no one cared.

  Picking himself up, Marty brushed off his clothing.

  My heartbeat finally started to slow.

  Lisa unwrapped a peppermint with shaky f
ingers and popped it into her mouth.

  “Well,” Marty said. “We can’t say the night was a waste.”

  “Of course not.” I rolled my eyes. “Time dodging bullets is time well spent.”

  “Look at everything we learned,” Marty said.

  “Like what?” Lisa asked.

  I jumped in. “Well, for one thing, we know the dog’s connected to Maddie Someday.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lisa made a disgusted face as Marty mustered up a little spit to ward off the evil spirits. “How do you know?”

  “Why else would the dog have been at the Bleeding Rock? For all we know, Maddie’s ghost is somehow commanding the dog from beyond the grave.”

  “Doesn’t really matter anyway, since the dog’s probably dead now.”

  “We can’t be sure,” Marty said.

  I cupped my hands on either side of my mouth and let out a long howl, like a werewolf out of one of my books.

  “What’re you doing?” Lisa asked.

  “The stress has finally gotten to him.” Marty chuckled nervously. “He’s lost his marbles.”

  Ignoring them, I howled again, a little louder and longer this time. My throat ached from the strain.

  “You better cut that out. Greg hears you, he might think the dog went this way. All we need is for that trigger-happy maniac to come after us.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Listen.”

  Within a couple of minutes, the fetch’s eerie howl answered me.

  “Guess that means it’s still alive,” I said.

  “We still don’t know very much,” Lisa said. “We don’t even know what it was looking for.”

  “We’ll find out tomorrow night,” said Marty.

  Lisa and I looked at him like frogs had just squirmed out of his nostrils.

  “We are following him again,” he said, “aren’t we?”

  I thought about it for a second or two. Every rational thought told me to give up on pursuing the dog. But—

  “I’d be pretty disappointed to come this far for nothing,” I said.

  “That’s the spirit!”

  Marty and I looked at Lisa. She pointed her eyes at the ground and kicked at some twigs. When she looked up, she was shaking her head, either at us or at herself.

  “I don’t suppose I can let you go off by yourselves,” she said.

  As we trudged back to the bridge, we discussed our plan. Tomorrow night, we’d meet at the Bleeding Rock and wait for the fetch to show. Since we didn’t know what time the dog started its evening hunt, we decided to meet a little earlier—if we could somehow sneak out without Alex knowing.

  At the creek, we used Lisa’s soap to rinse the stinking Scent-Be-Gone from our hands, faces, and necks. Without the sun to warm us, I shivered, my teeth chattering. Compared to Marty, Lisa and I had it easy. Marty smelled like he’d been wallowing in the Crewes’s trash barrel. He had to pretty much take a full-blown bath and wash his clothes out, too. By the time he was done, he was shaking like a leaf in the middle of a hurricane.

  Once she was all cleaned up, Lisa parted company with Marty and me.

  “You sure you’ll be okay?” I asked her.

  “I’ll be fine.” She smiled. “Besides, if the two of you walked me home, it would be daylight before you got back to your house.”

  “All right. Well, be careful. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I watched her stride down the path. She looked back and waved just before she turned the corner. Then she was gone.

  “Awww,” Marty said. “Charlie’s worried about his girlfriend.”

  “Shut up!”

  Neither of us could stop yawning on the way home. I was getting so tired, it would have felt nice just to curl up in the weeds and take a nap. Who needed blankets and a pillow? I’d burrow under a sheet of rotting leaves.

  Something cracked in the woods. Weeds snapped and popped as something moved nearby.

  “Something’s out there.”

  Marty nodded.

  “Whatever it is, it’s not following us anymore.” I let go of the breath I’d been holding. “Sounds like it moved off ahead of us.”

  “Might be waiting to ambush us,” Marty said.

  My sigh caught in my throat with a hiccup-like sound. I held real still, listened close to the crunching and snapping. Someone or something ambled through the trees. The fetch? One of Maddie’s mysterious goblins? What a comforting thought! For the rest of the walk home, I jumped at every odd noise, expecting a boogieman to leap out at us at any moment.

  I’d never been more glad to make it back in one piece. In the next few nights, I’d experience new levels of danger and terror—moments when I couldn’t even imagine seeing home again—but right then I couldn’t picture a more harrowing evening. If I wasn’t so worried about getting into trouble for sneaking out, I’d have cheered when we made it back safe and sound.

  I removed my shoes at the back door and managed to stagger into the bedroom without waking Alex. He didn’t even budge. As I plodded across the room, I stepped in a thick patch of damp soil. The floor was covered in dirt—as if the fetch itself had been sneaking around in the bedroom!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, I didn’t sleep well the rest of the night. As soon as my eyes started to flutter closed, some noise startled me awake. Every creak and pop of the house sounded like the fetch creeping into the room. Or maybe a twisted little goblin perched on the headboard, sharp teeth snapping together, warm drool spilling down onto my face. Soft moonlight streamed through the window, reminding me of the fetch’s eyes. I imagined the dog watching me from the foot of the bed, preparing to leap on me and rip out my throat. When I managed more than a couple of minutes of shut-eye, I dreamed of Maddie Someday, crawling out of the earth, her witching eyes blazing, her yellowed teeth chattering, her ruby red ring glinting in the light as fingers clutched at the earth, digging up handfuls of mud and twitching, wriggling things. I couldn’t get a break—asleep or awake, the witch or the fetch haunted me.

  How had the dog managed to sneak into the house? And what was it searching for in our bedroom?

  I threw the covers over my head and tugged them tight around me. Drifting in and out of nightmare-haunted slumber, I waited for daylight.

  I stayed in bed most of the morning, the covers over my head, unable to close my eyes for more than a few minutes, tossing and turning. Alex slept late, too, and when he finally crawled out of bed, he looked as sluggish as I felt.

  “You okay?” I peeked out from beneath the blanket. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get warm. My whole body trembled in the grip of a relentless chill. With my luck, I had caught a cold from sneaking around in the night air. “You don’t look too good.”

  “I’m all right.” Alex yawned.

  “Did you notice anything strange last night?” I sat up in bed. “Anything at all?”

  “Last night?” He wore his patented I’ve-been-up-to-no-good expression for a second or two. “I didn’t see anything. Why?”

  “Look at all the dirt.” I nodded toward the clumps of dark earth covering the floor. “Looks like something tracked it all over the place.”

  “I don’t know where it came from. Why would I?” Alex’s words slurred together, like mine when I was nervous. “I was asleep all night. You were here, too. Didn’t you see anything?”

  I didn’t believe him. I could always tell when he was lying.

  “If there’s something you’re not telling me,” I said, “you might want to spill the beans.”

  “Don’t have any beans to spill.”

  “You saw something, didn’t you? Something came into our room last night.”

  “Can we talk about this later?” He danced from one foot to the other. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

  No use trying to get answers from him. He was hiding something, but I had better things to worry about. I flopped back onto the bed as Alex rushed out of the room and down the hall.

  A li
ttle later, I dragged my butt out of bed. First, I tested out my ankle, moving my foot up and down, stepping gingerly on it. It seemed to feel fine now. I helped Marty with his chores—feeding the animals and collecting eggs from the chicken roosts. We both had dark circles under our bloodshot eyes, and we stumbled around like horror movie zombies. I felt like I could curl up and sleep for hours on the rocky ground, maybe let the sun bake some of the chill out of my bones.

  Alex sat on the back porch with a couple of comics, but he didn’t do much reading. He flipped the pages listlessly, not even bothering to look at the pictures or words. He seemed to be in a daze, slouching in the plastic deck chair, staring off into space.

  More nightmares? I wondered. Why else would he be so tired? He’s certainly getting enough sleep.

  That afternoon, Uncle Shorty drove into town, and I asked if I could tag along.

  “Sure thing,” Shorty said. “I’ll be leaving in about fifteen minutes.”

  “What do you need from town?” Marty asked. “You’re going to visit Lisa aren’t you?” He puckered up and made crude kissing noises.

  “No.” I must have been too worn out to blush. “If you must know, I thought I’d stop in at the library and try to scrounge up some more facts—anything that’ll help us. You want to come?”

  “Nah. I think I’m gonna take a nap before dinner.”

  A nap sounded pretty good, but I needed to try to uncover as much as possible about Maddie Someday. What was her fetch up to? And what could it possibly have to do with the Crewes brothers?

  The ride into town was the first chance I’d had alone with Uncle Shorty. He smelled of sweat from a hard day’s work. Dirt had settled into the wrinkles of his face and hands. He never took his eyes off the bumpy road, but he chatted with me as we rode along.

  “You and Marty look like you’re about to drop,” he said. “I’m not keeping you too busy with chores, am I?”

  “No, sir. We’ve just been staying up late, I guess. You know, talking.”

  “Well, if there’s one thing that boy of mine can do, it’s talk.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Country music played softly on the radio. The entire cab of the truck smelled lightly of animal feed. The leather seats were cracked and taped up, and a spring dug at my backside every time we hit a bump.