Author: Cullen Bunn
Date: 2011-05-07 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Comics; Young Adult; Fantasy
Description: Crooked Hills is the most haunted town in America. It's just the news that Charlie needs to salvage his forced vacation to the middle of nowhere. If he's got to take a family trip to visit relatives, at least he'll see some ghosts. But the hauntings in Crooked Hills aren't the friendly kind, and soon Charlie, his brother Alex, their cousin Marty, and their new friend Lisa are surrounded by dangers: hellhounds, dead witches, strange dreams— and local bullies. Crooked Hills is far more exciting than Charlie expected, but it's a lot scarier, too… For young fans of Stranger Things and Paper Girls,
Publisher: Outland Entertainment

CROOKED HILLS

Copyright © 2024 Cullen Bunn. All rights reserved.

Originally published as Crooked Hills, 2011, from Earwig Press

New edition published by Outland Entertainment LLC

3119 Gillham Road

Kansas City, MO 64109

Publisher/Creative Director: Jeremy D. Mohler

Editor-in-Chief: Alana Joli Abbott

Senior Editor: Scott Colby

Project Director: Anton Kromoff

ISBN: 978-1-954255-66-1 paperback, 978-1-954255-67-8 ebook

Worldwide Rights

Created in the United States of America

Editor: Alana Joli Abbott

Copy editor: Scott Colby

Proofreader: Em Palladino

Cover Illustration: Aaron Palsmeier

Cover Design: Jeremy D. Mohler

Interior Layout: Jeremy D. Mohler

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or fictitious recreations of actual historical persons. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors unless otherwise specified. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed and bound in the United States.

Visit outlandentertainment.com to see more, or follow us on our Facebook Page facebook.com/outlandentertainment/

CHAPTER ONE

“I bury all your cows!”

I barely heard my little brother, Alex, as the car sped on its way toward…

My doom, I thought.

A cassette churned out a tune from the stereo. One of my mom’s favorite bands—Journey—sang about the lights of some far away city.

Seemed fitting.

We were going on a journey, after all, and anything resembling a city seemed impossibly distant.

“Charlie!” Alex yelled, even more loudly. “Charlie! There’s another graveyard! I bury all your cows!”

For good measure, Alex kicked the back of my seat hard enough to jostle my head.

Eight-year-olds, I thought, must be the most annoying creatures in all the world.

Maybe not all eight-year-olds, but definitely my brother.

“I’m not playing your game, Alex.” I stared out the window. The hills along the right-hand side of the winding road were dotted with dozens of old, leaning tombstones. “And I don’t have any cows for you to bury.”

“Aww,” Alex whined. “C’mon, Charlie.”

I ignored him and watched the road. The graveyard slipped out of sight, replaced by a tangled forest of tall trees and thick brush. Shadows dappled the window and painted the interior of the car in strange, shifting patterns. Up ahead, the road curved, and I couldn’t see what was around the bend.

I eyed the car’s clock again. We’d been on the road all day, and I was getting more and more tired of being cooped up in the car with my mom and little brother. The muscles in my shoulders and the back of my neck ached. Still, I would have gladly suffered through another six hours on the road if my mom would just turn the car around and head back home.

As we drove along, Mom and Alex played a game I was certain Mom made up off the top of her head. Every time they spotted cows grazing alongside the road, they’d count as many of the animals as they could out loud. Mom counted cows on the left, and Alex watched for cows on the right. We passed plenty of pastures, and sometimes they’d both be rattling off numbers so fast it gave me a headache. Whenever they passed a cemetery, the first one to cry out, “I bury all your cows!” caused the other to lose all the cows they’d already counted. A morbid little touch, I thought, and even though I had no interest in playing, I found myself watching for gravestones every now and then.

Not that I’d ever let them know I was even paying attention.

“You have to play, Charlie,” my brother said. “Mom’s not much of a challenge.”

“Hey!” Mom craned her neck to give my brother the evil eye in the rearview mirror. “I thought I was doing pretty well.”

“Mom,” Alex said, “you don’t have any cows, and I’ve got, like, a hundred or something.”

“Well, excuse me for watching the road,” Mom said. “Besides, I’m on the verge of a comeback.”

Alex snorted.

Just then, we passed another cow pasture on the left-hand side of the car, and Mom started counting.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—”

Sure enough, as soon as she started counting, another small cemetery appeared up to the right.

“I bury all your cows!” Alex called out, giggling with delight.

Cows and cemeteries, I thought. That’s almost the only thing we’ve seen for hours! Some vacation this is going to be.

I let out a loud, frustrated sigh, and a storm cloud of anger passed over Mom’s face.

“Charles Ward!” She only called me “Charles” when I’d done something to upset her, and I guess moping and moaning like a death row inmate qualified. “I’ve had just about enough of your sulking for one day.”

She glanced at me, and I looked away.

Needless to say, I was none-too-thrilled with the idea of spending six weeks in the middle of nowhere. Who would want to vacation in Crooked Hills? I almost needed a magnifying glass to pinpoint the town amidst the colorful intersecting lines of the road atlas. It was no more than a tiny speck nestled in the Ozark foothills of Missouri, and I could have happily lived my whole life without ever setting foot there, let alone wasting six whole weeks in the backwoods.

“I know you’re upset,” Mom said, her voice softening, “but you’ve pouted long enough, I think.”

Upset? I thought. That’s the understatement of the year! The century!

How was I supposed to react to the news I’d be leaving my neighborhood, my house, and all my friends to spend the entire summer with an aunt and uncle I barely remembered?

I didn’t want to take the trip—no way, no how—but I understood why Mom needed some time away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Ever since the accident, Mom hated Chicago more with each passing day. You could see it in her eyes, this far away, restless look, like she was supposed to be somewhere else. It was only a matter of time before she decided to pack everything up and get away for a little while.

Mom hadn’t seen her only sister since my dad’s funeral a few months earlier. I didn’t blame Mom for wanting to visit. I just couldn’t understand why she wanted to stay so long. A week, two at most, would have been plenty, if you asked me.

Newsflash: nobody asked me.

I had thought about asking if I could stay with one of my friends for the summer. I was sure Taylor or Doug, or maybe even Stewart, who would have been my very last choice, would be happy to have me as a houseguest. But I knew Mom would never go for it, because she wanted the family to spend some time in the country together. Like it or not, I was stuck. I felt like the unluckiest kid on Earth.

So a little moping was justified, I’d say.

“There will be plenty to do,” Mom continued, still trying to encourage me. “You won’t be bored, I promise. What about your cousin Marty? Won’t it be nice to see him? The two of you will have a lot of fun.”

I had seen my cousin at the funeral, but we really hadn’t spoken to each other.

“What will we have in common?” I asked.

“You aren’t even trying to see the bright side. If you give it a chance, you might surprise yourself and actually have fun.”

“Doubtful,” I muttered.

How could anyone have fun in such a small town? Did they have a Blockbuster? A place to rent videos? A place where I could buy comics? A movie theater? Did they even have running water? Would I have to use a cramped, smelly outhouse when I needed a bathroom?

On the Saturday before we left, I played baseball with friends, and it might have been the all-time best game of my life. I’m not kidding—I was my team’s hero! I scored several runs, a couple of times with the bases loaded, and caught more than my fair share of pop flies. We sent the other team packing with their heads hung low. The cheers of my teammates only saddened me, though, since that was likely the only game I’d play before school started again. By the time I got home, another all-star would probably take my place on the field.

I wondered what else would change before I returned. Would my friends even remember me when I came back?

I said goodbye to my buddies, promised to call and write, and jokingly warned them not to start a losing streak without me around to carry the team.

Sunday, I gathered the things I wanted to pack for the trip: video games, comic books, horror novels, and—oh, yeah!—clothes. Sorting through my most prized possessions, I wished I could load my entire room into the back of the car. I tried to judge how much stuff I needed to keep me occupied in the Ozarks. I wished I’d thought to buy some new games for my NES. I had packed the entire system and a shoebox full of cartridges, but I’d already beaten all the ones I owned at least a couple of times. I didn’t want to spend almost two months with nothing to do but watch cows chew their cud. Why did I feel like the minutes would pass like decades? Six weeks! Such a long time away from home hardly seemed possible.

Monday morning, bright and early, the alarm clock rang like the cry of a banshee. A banshee, I had learned from one of my books, was a spirit whose wail spelled disaster for anyone who heard it.

That’s how I felt—like I was heading for catastrophe.

Alex and I loaded the luggage into the trunk while Mom made sandwiches and snacks for the road. I dragged over my two big boxes of comics, magazines, and books. Mom said I didn’t need to bring that much, but I insisted. Alex, of course, brought along a mixed assortment of his favorite action figures.

Trunk space dwindled fast, and I had to reposition the suitcases and boxes a few times to make sure everything fit. Mom’s typewriter was the last snug-fitting piece of the puzzle. I wedged it between a couple of suitcases—carefully! Mom was more protective of the typewriter than I was of my comics. I didn’t know why she wanted to bring it along, though, since this was supposed to be a vacation.

With the car packed, we were on our way.

There was no talking Mom out of the trip.

“Tell you what,” Mom said now, as we rounded a curve. “Why don’t you check under your seat? I got you something that might cheer you up. I was going to wait until we got to your aunt and uncle’s place, but I’ll go ahead and give it to you now.”

I’ll admit, she piqued my interest. For a half-second, I wondered if she’d gone ahead and gotten me a couple of the NES games I wanted. That wasn’t much like my Mom, though. My thirteenth birthday was only a couple of months away, and she liked to make me wait for gifts like that.

I leaned forward, reached under the seat, and found a heavy object wrapped in a plastic shopping bag.

Definitely too heavy to be new video games, I thought.

I unwrapped the package, revealing a thick hardback book. The cover featured a spooky-looking, run-down house sitting atop a lonely hill. Ozarks Ghosts and Legends, read the title, written by W.D. Goodwin. I ran my fingers lightly over the raised printing.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Open it up and see for yourself,” Mom said. “I marked a couple of chapters I thought you’d find interesting.”

I cracked open the book and turned my attention to the pages Mom had noted with several neatly cut slips of paper. I flipped to the first marked chapter, and the title nearly jumped off the page.

“Crooked Hills,” it read, “the Most Haunted Town in America.”

CHAPTER TWO

The town of Crooked Hills became more interesting page-by-page.

Haunted houses. Ghostly voices in the dead of night. Spectral shapes flitting through the shadows. Every page was chock-full of blood-curdling stories of spirits, monsters, and macabre happenings. Each tale sent a shiver of fearful delight up my spine. I’ve always been a sucker for spooky stories (especially if they’re supposedly true), and, according to the book, Crooked Hills had more ghosts than any other town in the country!

The first story I read was titled “The Wandering Loverboy of Crooked Hills,” and it told of the spirit of a young man who haunted back roads in search of his lost love. Always seen carrying a bouquet of yellow and red flowers, the ghost flagged down unwary drivers as they drove past. When someone stopped, the young man rushed to the driver’s side, leaning down to gaze through the window, as if expecting to find someone he knew. His smile would droop into a frown, and the flowers, as if aging fifty years in the space of a few seconds, would wilt and turn brown. “You’re not her,” he would mutter through cracked, dry lips as his face wasted away, the skin turning gray and flaky as he changed into a desiccated, horrific apparition.

Pretty gruesome!

Feverishly, I turned the page.

One tale told of the haunted gallows tree. Years ago, criminals were hanged from the branches of the tallest tree in the county. Ugh! I rubbed my neck. What a way to go! Now, on nights when the full moon shone brightly through the branches, the ghosts of the criminals appeared on creaking ropes, swaying back and forth as they proclaimed their innocence in mournful, rasping voices.

Next, I read about a group of evil witches who poisoned local crops and livestock with their magic. Feared by every man, woman, and child in the area, the worst of their number was Maddie Someday. To this day, no one said her name aloud without spitting twice to ward off her ire. A witch of the cruelest variety, Maddie was the sort of vile creature destined to become the subject of campfire ghost stories. Known for kidnapping children in the dead of night, she wore a large ruby ring on the index finger of her right hand. The jewel glinted in the moonlight as the witch wandered the darkest part of the woods. Whenever someone saw the ring winking like a bloody eye in the darkness, they knew to get home quick, unless they wanted to become one of Maddie’s victims.

This was the first time I heard about Maddie Someday…

If only it had been the last.

CHAPTER THREE

The drive to Crooked Hills took several more hours. If not for the book, it might have been one of the most boring trips of my life. I read as many of the local legends as I could, but eventually I started to feel just a little carsick. Reading and riding along twisting roads didn’t go well together. I had to put the book aside for a while. Still, I couldn’t believe we were vacationing in such a haunted place. Maybe the trip wouldn’t be so terribly dull after all. If I got lucky, I might even see a ghost. I got goosebumps just thinking about it.

“Charlie?” Alex shifted restlessly in the back seat. “Don’t you want to play the cow game?”

I turned in my seat to look at my little brother. “You never give up, do you?”

Alex smiled. “Nope.”

I felt a little bad for ignoring Alex for so long, and I’d been acting like a jerk with my mom, too. I reminded myself that I was “the man of the house” when it came to my family now, and I needed to be a little more understanding.

“How many cows have you got now?” I asked my brother.

“A bunch. Something like a hundred and fifty.”

About that time, we passed a roadside billboard advertising a restaurant called Chauncy Burger. The sign featured a happy cartoon character chowing down on a hamburger.

I quickly yelled, “I make hamburgers out of all your cows!”

“Gross!” Alex yelled, but he couldn’t help but laugh.

Signs of modern civilization such as shopping centers and fast food restaurants grew more and more scarce, while stretches of thick, dark woods grew more and more common. We traveled the winding road through farmland and then into hill country, where rocky slopes cast ominous shadows over the highway.

“My ears feel funny,” Alex said.

Mine felt strange, too, like they were stuffed with cotton.

“Crooked Hills is in the foothills of the mountains,” Mom said. “The altitude can cause your ears to pop. You’ll get used to it. Charlie, get some gum out of the glove compartment.”

Chewing a stick of gum helped, even though it was peppermint-flavored—my least favorite—and it also eased my carsickness. Before long, I forgot all about my popping ears and flip-flopping stomach. I spotted a signpost on the side of the road.

WELCOME TO CROOKED HILLS

“We’re here!” Mom piped.

I sat up straight and looked out the window. Maybe I’d spot a ghost or ghoul before we even arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house. I doubted it, though, since it was still daylight, and most spooks and specters only came out at night.

Crooked Hills didn’t look like much of a town to me. In fact, I hardly saw any houses as the car followed the snaking road through tree-covered hills. Tree limbs loomed overhead, casting shadows over us. Eventually, I spotted a few mailboxes along the roadside, and paths cutting through the trees. Every now and again, I glimpsed a house tucked away in the woods, but those looked even more rundown and decrepit than the haunted house on the cover of my book. Paint peeled from the walls like snakeskins, and the roofs sagged as if ready to buckle. I started to worry Mom might pull into the craggy driveway of one of the near-ruined houses and cry, “Welcome to our home away from home!” Luckily, she kept on driving, and I saw a few homes that at least looked fit to live in. Still, I didn’t see any signs of a town.

“There’s a few stores and restaurants up the road,” Mom said, sensing my confusion. “We’ll go into town in a couple of days, after we get settled in a bit.”

She hit the brakes, slowed down, and veered onto a dirt path through the forest. The car jostled and bumped, and pebbles clicked and clattered beneath us. The path curled deep into the woods, but we passed a few cabins, houses, and secluded pastures along the way. Low-hanging branches tapped and scraped across the roof of the car like boney fingers.

The forest opened like a yawning mouth, and we crossed a concrete bridge. I craned my neck to get a good look at the creek below. The shore was covered in a flat bed of round, white stones, and tangles of branches bunched up around the base of the bridge. The water was so clear I could see the rocky creek bottom in most places, but a couple of spots looked dark and deep. A little ways downstream, the flow picked up speed and rushed over some large rocks and around the bend. It wasn’t quite whitewater rapids, but it was close.

On the other side of the creek, the trees once again grew thick, pressing in on both sides, their shadows washing over the rocky stretch of road.

We rounded the bend and followed the path parallel to the twisting band of water. A heavy copse of trees separated us from the creek, but occasionally I caught a glimpse of water glistening from behind the veil of the forest.

“Look up there.” Mom pointed toward the hill.

Alex pressed his hands and face up against the window in the back seat. I looked, too, and saw four deer wandering through the trees. One sported huge antlers. The deer watched as we slowly rode past, then bolted into the brush.

“Wow,” Alex breathed.

Up ahead, a mailbox sprouted out of a tangle of flowering weeds, the name “Widows” printed across the side in reflective, stick-on letters. Widows was my aunt and uncle’s last name. Our long trip was drawing to its conclusion.

To get to the house, we turned down an even narrower path. The car dipped and rocked as we started downhill. At the bottom of the incline, we even had to drive right through a couple of shallow, slow-moving brooks! The water wasn’t very deep, but I imagined the streams flooded the road in heavy rains. We started uphill again, and my aunt and uncle’s house waited for us at the top.

It was a large building, constructed of mismatched gray and white stones. The front of the house faced the forest, but the lawn was freshly mowed, and planters full of bright flowers were placed here and there around the yard. A split-beam fence separated the yard from the woods, keeping the tangled trees at bay.

Mom pulled to a stop behind the house.

A couple of metal bench swings sat in the backyard, along with a picnic table and dozens of bird houses of every shape, size, and color, mounted on tall wooden beams. The backyard butted right up to pastures stretching as far as the eye could see. Much of it was fenced-in, and I saw chickens and goats in the pens and ducks milling around a muddy watering hole. A narrow trail lined with apple trees climbed a hill that filled the horizon. Cattle grazed in the distance.

A covered shed stood off to the side of the yard. In the shed, at least a dozen plump cats prowled around shelves cluttered with tools and a rusty old tractor that looked like it hadn’t been used in years.

Before we even rolled to a complete stop, Aunt Mary came out of the house to meet us. She looked almost exactly like Mom, only a couple of years older, and she smiled so widely it looked like her face was split in half by teeth. Mom got out of the car and gave her a hug.

I turned around in the seat and looked at Alex. He shrugged, and we climbed out of the car to walk up behind Mom and her sister.

When Mom turned toward us, she had tears in her eyes and a big smile on her face that almost rivaled her sister’s. I’m not sure I’d ever seen her so happy, at least not in the last year.

“Boys,” she said, “you remember your Aunt Mary, don’t you?”

“Look how big you are!” Aunt Mary hugged each of us in turn and looked us over from head to toe, almost like she couldn’t believe we were real. “Charlie, you’re growing into a fine young man.”

I felt my cheeks redden. All the attention embarrassed me.

Beside me, Alex drew in a sharp breath. His eyes grew as big as saucers. I followed his terrified gaze and swallowed my chewing gum when I saw what had frightened him.

A man emerged from behind the shed. He was broad-shouldered, and his arms were corded with thick muscles. He wore a pair of dirty overalls and heavy work boots. He didn’t say a word as he stomped our way.

And he held a bloody axe in his hand!

CHAPTER FOUR

Crimson droplets oozed and dripped from the blade, plopping onto the big man’s boots and rolling down the dirt-caked leather to the ground below. His thick fingers flexed on the axe handle. He walked right up to us, each heavy footstep like a peel of thunder, and I thought we were goners for sure.

But instead of whacking us over the heads, the man smiled broadly. It was one of the most welcoming, friendly smiles I’d ever seen—not as wide as Aunt Mary’s, but warm and full of good cheer. I couldn’t help but grin back at him.

“How’re y’all doing?” He looked at my little brother and me. “Y’all look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I was so focused on the bloody axe that I’d failed to recognize the man as my own Uncle Shorty!

He stuck out his hand—the one not holding the axe—and we shook. I could tell he was strong, but he didn’t grasp my fingers so hard it hurt. I tried my best to return a firm handshake. He ruffled Alex’s hair and hugged my mom with one arm around her neck.

Shorty. The name didn’t quite fit. He wasn’t necessarily tall, but he wasn’t short, either, and he looked like he could lift the old rusty tractor all by himself if he ever set his mind to it.

“What on earth are you doing with that?” Mom peered at the gore-covered axe.

Aunt Mary rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, he’s just trying to make a dramatic entrance.”

Mom laughed. “Sounds like the Shorty I remember.”

“I’ll have you know I’m getting supper ready for our guests.” Uncle Shorty winked at her. Then he looked at Alex and me. He smacked the handle of the axe in the palm of his hand. “What do you say, boys? Want to give me a hand?”

When it came to cooking, I couldn’t even make toast without burning it. And I sure didn’t know how Uncle Shorty could be whipping up a meal behind a rickety old shed. Maybe he was barbequing, but I didn’t see or smell smoke. And what was with the axe?

“I’ll help,” I said.

“Me too,” said Alex.

One thing about us Ward brothers—we were curious, sometimes too much for our own good. Mom said we inherited the trait from our dad, and that suited me just fine.

Already chatting away, Mom and Aunt Mary went inside while Alex and I went with our uncle. Behind the shed was the massive stump of a tree that must have been cut down long ago. I knew you could tell how old a tree was by counting rings on the stump. But I wouldn’t have wanted to start counting the rings of this tree. I’d surely lose track. Suffice it to say, it was old—as old as the hills. Numerous cuts crisscrossed the stump, and a little blood spread across the scarred wood. Next to the stump lay dozens of puffy white feathers and a dead chicken. Another chicken—this one alive—clucked at us from a small wooden cage in the shadow of the shed. The bird’s head bobbed this way and that as it watched us.

“What are you going to do?” Alex asked, his eyes growing big and round again.

“Hold this for me, and I’ll show you.” Uncle Shorty offered the axe, but Alex took a step back. I took the axe, careful not to let my fingers touch the drying blood. I knew exactly what was about to happen. I knew my uncle used the ancient tree stump as a chopping block! But I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch. I swallowed hard, even though my mouth was bone dry, and my stomach started feeling queasy again.

Uncle Shorty opened the cage. The chicken squawked and flapped its wings. Feathers flew everywhere. Shorty wrapped one of his large hands around both of the fowl’s legs, hoisting it out and holding it upside down as he carried it to the stump.

He held out his hand for the axe. The late afternoon sun beat down on the back of my neck, and my face felt hot. My muscles felt frozen, though, stone cold. I thought I might lose my lunch.

“Don’t worry.” Uncle Shorty took the axe. “It’ll be quick.”

With one hand, Uncle Shorty held the chicken by the feet and laid it on the stump. The chicken didn’t move much, like it was paralyzed or something. Maybe it accepted its fate. With the other hand, Uncle Shorty hefted the axe above his head. The bloody blade gleamed.

Alex covered his eyes. I did the same—only I peered out from between my fingers. I saw the whole shocking thing from beginning to end.

There was no joy in Uncle Shorty’s face—thank goodness! If I thought for an instant he enjoyed what he was doing, I might have run for my life all the way back to Chicago. Instead, he pressed his lips tightly together, gritting his teeth through a few moments of unpleasantness.

The axe seemed to hover above the chopping block for an eternity. I saw my own reflection in the blade, blurry and twisted and horrified.

The chicken clucked curiously.

The axe fell with a chop!

I flinched.

Uncle Shorty pulled his hands away, leaving the blade of the axe embedded in the wood. The chicken scrambled off the chopping block and ran across the yard—without a head! The decapitated bird ran in circles, wings flapping wildly, until at long last it fell over and lay still.

I’d heard of jumping around like a chicken with its head cut off, but never put much thought into the origins of the expression.

“Gross!” Alex said, even though he had missed most of the event.

“What’s so gross about it?” Uncle Shorty asked. “Don’t you like fried chicken?”

“Yeah, but I never saw anyone kill a chicken before.”

“Well, you didn’t think we breaded and fried them while they were still alive and kicking, did you?”

“Do they always do that?” I asked. “Run around without their heads?”

“Not always,” Shorty said, “but sometimes.”

“But how do they live without their heads?”

“Well, they don’t, not really. The running around is really a sort of involuntary action. The muscles are convulsing, making the chicken flap around and look like its still alive, but it’s not.”

My brother and I both stared at the dead bird, half-expecting it to jump back up and attack us like a headless zombie chicken.

“Now—” Uncle Shorty clapped his hands together in anticipation. “—who wants to help me clean these birds?”

“No, thanks.” I’d had enough of chickens for one day. I figured if I helped pluck and gut the carcasses, I’d lose my appetite forever.

Alex still watched the chicken, as if he feared taking his eyes off it.

“Come on.” I nudged him. “We better unpack.”

We unloaded the car and hauled the luggage into the house. Aunt Mary took a break from her conversation with Mom long enough to show us to our room. Our room. Mom never bothered to tell Alex and me we’d be sharing a room during the vacation. Pretty smart on her part. If my brother and I had known we would be cooped up together, we might have staged a full-scale revolt. Now that we were here, there wasn’t much we could say or do except grit our teeth and bear the close quarters until the vacation drew to a merciful end.

We would be bunking downstairs, right next door to our cousin Marty—who was nowhere to be found. The room itself was kind of plain, with cinderblock walls (Like a prison, I thought) painted light blue and a thin brown carpet over the floor. On each side of the room was a bed, covered in sheets far too heavy for the summer weather. A dresser stood in one corner, and between the beds a small nightstand sat beneath a curtained window. The curtains were drawn open, overlooking the yard, a split-beam fence, and the woods beyond.

We unloaded our clothes into the dresser. I took the top two drawers and Alex took the lower two. I placed my boxes of comics and books at the foot of my bed. Alex painstakingly arranged his action figures across the top of the dresser. I’d also brought my digital clock radio. I plugged it in, placed it on the nightstand, and set the time to match my watch. Playing with the radio dial, though, I discovered I couldn’t pick up any good stations.

We hung our clothes in the tiny closet, Alex taking the right side, and me taking the left. Most of my clothes didn’t really need to be put on hangers. We’d brought mostly t-shirts and shorts, along with a couple of pairs of jeans. But I had a few shirts that wrinkled easily, and I hated ironing. Alex pulled a heavy gray hooded sweatshirt from his suitcase and placed it in the closet.

“It’s the middle of summer,” I said. “When do you think you’ll need a sweatshirt?”

“You never know. It could get cold at night.”

By dinner—supper, I guessed they called it in these parts—I had pretty much gotten over my reluctance to eat fried chicken. Unloading the car and unpacking our bags helped work up an appetite. Everything tasted delicious—better than the chicken I usually got from fast food places. Sure, I felt bad about what had happened to the bird, but I guessed that was just life on the farm. I tried to remember fried chicken and hamburgers and hot dogs—all my favorites—came from somewhere. Alex, on the other hand, only picked at his plate. He ate some of the vegetables but didn’t touch the golden-brown main course. He must have been really shaken if he didn’t feel like eating. I wondered if he’d ever recover or if I now had a vegetarian for a brother.

My cousin Marty joined us for supper. He was my age but stood a little shorter than I did. Skinny as a fence post, he didn’t take after Uncle Shorty in the muscles department. He had shaggy, dark hair and deep blue eyes. He wore a pair of jeans with thick patches on the knees. The patches were so dark blue they were almost black, and they stood out starkly from the rest of the faded denim. I thought he dressed like someone out of the 1950s. When he wasn’t running his mouth excitedly about one thing or another, he looked like he was planning something mischievous. You could see the wheels turning in his head, Mom might say.

“Where were you all day?” Aunt Mary asked him. “We could have used some help around the house, you know, and it would have been nice of you to be here when your aunt and cousins first arrived.”

Marty pursed his lips and tapped his fork lightly against his plate.

“I was out exploring,” he said.

Something about his manner reminded me of a carnival huckster or a circus ringmaster. He was hamming it up, and we were his audience. Aunt Mary had said Uncle Shorty liked to be dramatic, and Marty took after him in that respect.

“And I was looking for the perfect welcome gift for my cousins here.”

“A gift?” Alex perked up. “What gift?”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” Marty said. “It’s a surprise.”

A surprise?

As we ate, Mom and Aunt Mary caught up on old times. They grew up not far from Crooked Hills, and I wondered if they knew anything about all the ghosts supposedly haunting the area. For the most part, they chatted about everyday, ordinary things—people they went to school with, their childhood home, stuff like that.

After dinner, Marty, Alex, and I tried to watch some TV, but the set only picked up three channels, and even those were static-filled. That probably thrilled Mom, who thought I spent too much time in front of the tube anyway. Instead, we hooked up my video game system, and I taught Marty to play a couple of my favorite games. He wasn’t very good at the sports games, but he loved anything involving shooting up monsters. We played for a couple of hours.

Marty didn’t mention the surprise gift again.

I heard a rumbling, growling noise. Alex, sitting a few feet back watching the game, clutched at his tummy.

“Was that your stomach?” I asked.

His growling stomach answered for him.

“No wonder you’re still hungry.” Marty didn’t look away from the TV screen. His thumbs worked furiously at the game controller as he blasted several nasty critters into oblivion. “You hardly touched your supper.”

“He didn’t want to eat chicken,” I said, “because we saw Uncle Shorty lop their heads off.”

“That’s nothing.” Marty paused the game and scooted around to face my brother. “Sometime I’ll tell you about the old Haskins farm.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you right now.” He looked straight at Alex. “I’d hate to scare anybody.”

“I’m not scared!” Alex said.

“All right. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Marty leaned in close and turned his head from left to right to make sure no one else was eavesdropping. “There’s a man by the name of Haskins who owns this chicken farm on the outskirts of town. He was always trying to figure out a way to make a little more money, and he figured folks probably hated chopping the heads off their chickens, so he came up with this idea…”

The light of the TV glowed behind Marty, and sinister shadows painted his face.

“Haskins decided if people hating cutting the heads off chickens so bad, he’d save them the trouble. He started breeding special chickens—chickens without heads!”

“What are you talking about?” I laughed. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard.”

“It’s true!” Marty threw his hand over his heart. “I’ve seen it for myself. Hundreds of chickens, all of them without heads, stumbling around the pen, bumping into each other, walking right into walls, because they can’t see where they’re going.”

Marty couldn’t finish the story without laughing. I thought it was pretty funny too, but Alex just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Finally, Mom came into the room and said, “All right, kids. You’ve had a long day. Why don’t you hit the sack?”

“Aw, Mom,” I groaned. “I thought this was supposed to be a vacation.”

“It is,” she said, “but if you don’t get some rest, you’ll be too cranky to enjoy it.”

To be honest, I felt a little sleepy, but I was having too much fun to go to bed just yet.

“I’m getting drowsy myself.” Marty put his game controller on the floor and exaggerated a yawn. “I should probably get some shut-eye. We’ve got a big day tomorrow, if I’m going to show you around.”

“All right,” I mumbled. I turned the television off.

“I’ll be down directly.” Marty smiled and suppressed a nervous giggle. “I’m gonna…help my mom with the dishes.”

I figured the polite thing to do was to offer to help, even though I had an almost allergic reaction to any kind of household task, but Marty wouldn’t even consider it.

“Naw,” he said. “You’ve got all summer to help me with my chores. I’ll give you a pass tonight.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I didn’t wait around for him to change his mind. Alex and I headed downstairs to our room.

A large plastic bucket sat on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. It looked like it might have once been used to carry paint. Thin streaks of dried yellow paint dribbled down the sides. I couldn’t see inside the bucket, though, because a flat piece of wood completely covered the top. I knew for sure it hadn’t been there earlier.

All of a sudden, something thumped against the underside of the board—from inside the bucket. Thump! Thump!

“There’s something alive in there,” Alex whispered.

Thump! The board trembled as whatever was in the bucket bumped against it. Thump!

What could be in the bucket, I wondered. Frogs? I’d heard of people in the country eating frog legs. Maybe Uncle Shorty had caught a few for supper tomorrow night. If so, would he want my help in yanking their legs off? I didn’t think I was up to the challenge.

Thump! Thump!

The bucket trembled. The board—which looked similar to the wood paneling of the downstairs walls—shifted just a little and popped up and down.

“Whatever’s in there,” I said. “It’s going to knock the whole bucket over.”

Alex nudged me. “Go see what it is.”

Figured. He was too scared to check for himself, but too curious to pass the quivering bucket by without inspection.

He nudged me again. “Go on.”

“All right. Quit shoving.”

I approached the bucket slowly, like a prowling panther creeping up on unsuspecting, plastic, paint-covered prey.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

I kneeled beside the bucket, leaned in close, and pressed my ear against the board. The thumping sound stopped. I heard what sounded like fingers drumming against the plastic, and I imagined a horrible, stunted backwoods mutant squatting within, biding its time until I released it. Then, I didn’t hear anything at all.

Carefully, I lifted the board away from the top of the bucket. I put the piece of wood on the floor, peered inside…and gasped in horror.

Spiders!

Three fat, hairy tarantulas!

Jumping right for my face!

CHAPTER FIVE

The spiders launched into the air, and every detail of their hideous features seemed magnified a thousand times. The twitching, hairy legs. The glistening eyes. The huge reddish fangs. I threw my arms up in front of my face and fell to the floor with a high-pitched cry.

“Aah!”

The fall knocked the wind out of me.

The tarantulas sailed overhead and plopped to the floor behind me. Where were they? Scurrying up my shoes? My legs? I pushed myself up onto my elbows and—thankfully—saw the eight-legged horrors skittering away. My heart raced a mile a minute. I felt as though it might jump right out of my chest at any second, sprout a pair of tiny legs, and run for the door, shrieking, “Every man for himself!” The spiders weren’t really attacking me; they were just trying to make their escape from the confines of the bucket. As crazy as it sounded, they must have been more scared than me.

Could’ve fooled me.

“Surprise!”

Marty stood at the bottom of the stairs, clutching his stomach. His face was red, and tears streamed down his cheeks. He could barely draw a breath he was laughing so hard.

“Are you kidding?” I stood and brushed myself off. “That was your surprise? Spiders? They almost bit my face off!”

Marty shook his head and wiped his eyes. “Tarantulas don’t bite unless they’re really angry.”

“They looked pretty angry to me!”

“They look frightening, but they’re actually pretty shy.” Marty quickly chased the tarantulas into a corner. I thought they might try to crawl under furniture or up the wall to escape. The idea of a trio of tarantulas loose and hiding in the house made my skin creep. But Marty scooped one up in his hands and let it crawl over his forearm to show how tame it was. The spider was about the size of a hamster, although a few minutes earlier I would have said it was even bigger. The bristly fur on the tarantula’s legs brushed against the hair on the back of Marty’s arm. “I wouldn’t have done anything to put you in real danger. I was just trying to give you city folks a little scare is all.”

City folks. Obviously, Marty thought it pretty funny, me being from a place that didn’t have a problem with tarantula infestations. Easy pickings for his backwoods pranks. At first, I felt a little angry, but then I remembered how many times I’d made fun of people from the country, calling them rednecks and hillbillies. At least he made fun of me to my face instead of behind my back.

“Where did you find tarantulas out here?” I asked. I always thought spiders like that only lived in deserts and jungles, lurking in ancient tombs and waiting to sink their fangs into some unsuspecting treasure hunter.

“Oh, they’re all over the place.” The furry brown tarantula scurried over the back of his hand, its pipe-cleaner legs tickling his flesh. Marty turned his arm to avoid dropping the spider. He stroked its back like he was petting a kitten. “Want to hold one?”

“No, thanks.” I took a step back and raised a hand to ward him off. “I’ve been as close to them as I want to be for a while. I had no idea tarantulas lived in this part of the country.”

“Oh, yeah. You should see them during their migration period. They’re all over the place. You’ll see thousands of them crawling out of the brush and herding across the road.”

I couldn’t tell for sure if Marty was exaggerating or not.

One by one, he returned the tarantulas to the bucket, then replaced the board. “I’ll let these go in the morning.”

No sooner had the spiders returned to the bucket than they started jumping against the covering. Thump! Thump! Tapping his index finger against his lip, Marty looked around the room. He placed a pair of heavy work boots—probably Uncle Shorty’s—on top of the board for a little extra weight.

“Just in case,” he said. “My mom will hit the roof if they get loose in the middle of the night.”

Her and me both, I thought.

Another shiver tap-danced along my spine as I thought of spiders crawling all over me as I slept, tickling my eyelashes, exploring my nostrils, crawling in my mouth—

Stop it, I told myself.

“Are there any other kinds of creepy crawlies around here I should know about?” I asked.

“Scorpions, I guess.”

“Scorpions! No way!”

“Yes indeed,” he said. “I’ll show you tomorrow.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a scorpion. They almost creeped me out more than tarantulas. Almost. Even with the spiders safely enclosed in the bucket, I felt a little nervous. If they spooked me so badly, I could only guess how scared Alex might be…

Alex?

He had vanished into thin air!

CHAPTER SIX

Well…Alex hadn’t quite disappeared into thin air.

More precisely, he had vanished beneath the covers of his bed. He must have run for the hills while I was preoccupied with the tarantulas. We found him bundled up and shivering, covered from head to toe in the bed’s quilt like a patchwork ghost.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

He peeked out from a tiny gap.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It was all just a prank. No reason to be scared.”

My brother’s one visible eye darted back and forth as he looked at Marty, then me, then Marty again.

“Sorry I frightened you so bad.” Marty’s voice no longer displayed the showman quality. He sounded sincere, but I got the feeling he could be a pretty good actor when he wanted. “I reckon I just wasn’t thinking.”

Alex opened the peephole a little more and looked at me. “I thought you were toast for sure.”

“Who, me?” I conjured up a little of Marty’s bravado. I puffed out my chest and placed my hands on my hips in a super heroic pose. “It would take more than a few measly spiders to finish me off.”

That cheered Alex up, and he emerged from under the quilt.

Still, I reminded myself to check for spiders beneath the sheets and under the bed before turning in. Putting on a brave face is important when you have a little brother, but you can never be too careful.

Marty squatted down at the foot of the bed to examine the boxes full of my comic books.

“You sure have a bunch of funny books!” he said.

I groaned under my breath. I hated when people called comics “funny books,” but I decided to let it go.

“That’s only a small part of my collection,” I said proudly. “I have a bunch more back home.”

Probably the thing I treasured most in the world was my collection of comic books, movie magazines, and science fiction and horror novels. I couldn’t get enough monsters and ghosts and spooky legends. Mom sometimes said she worried about me rotting my brain with that kind of garbage, but as long as I didn’t give myself nightmares, she didn’t complain—especially not about the comics, magazines, and books. I had shelves stuffed overfull with the works of Bram Stoker and Ray Bradbury, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. My closet barely had room for clothes, what with all the boxed-up comic books. Most of my collection once belonged to my dad. He loved stuff like that even more than me! When he died, his collection became mine, a four-color memorial. Deep down, I knew Mom didn’t nag much about the horror comics and magazines because they were one of the ways I remembered my father.

Dad had passed away several months earlier. Passed away. That’s what grown-ups say when they’re trying to be careful with their words. But sometimes I got so mad thinking about what happened to him, I didn’t want to be careful. I wanted to stomp and shout and scream. He didn’t just “pass away.”

He was murdered.

On the day he was killed, Dad had driven to the hardware store for supplies. He was converting our basement into a family entertainment room, complete with carpeting, wallpaper, a big screen television, and a pool table. I was pretty excited, mostly about the TV and the pool table. I even pitched in now and then, helping hang sheetrock, fetching tools, unrolling and gluing carpeting in place, and lugging around what seemed like an endless supply of heavy building materials. He asked if I wanted to go to the store with him that morning, but I decided to stay home. I’d just started playing a new video game borrowed from one of my friends. I remember thinking how cool the game would look on the big screen when we finally got it.

“All right,” Dad had said, “but I’m going to need your help when I get back.”

That was the last time I saw him.

The police said the other car must have been traveling close to one hundred miles per hour when it sideswiped our station wagon and forced my father off the road. They were really only guessing, though, because the other driver never stopped. Whoever he was (I always just assumed it had been a man), he caused the accident and just kept on driving. The only clues left behind were a flaking streak of crimson paint across the crumpled metal of our car and a few spotty eyewitness reports of a red vehicle speeding away. The police never found the other car or the driver. My dad had become the victim of a hit-and-run.

I cried for days after the accident, but once the last of my tears dried away, I started to feel another emotion stirring in my heart—anger.

“Hey,” Marty said, “are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I said, snapping out of it. “I’m just tired, I guess.”

I loaned Marty a few of my comics—but only after he promised to be extra careful with them. I figured I’d need to fill him in on some of the backstories. Some comics have complicated plots lasting for years and years. That was one of the things I liked best about them.

“I don’t usually read funny books,” Marty said. “I like reading Hardy Boys mysteries. You ever try those?”

I shook my head.

Marty could hardly believe his ears, and he pretty much dragged me to his room. Almost two dozen books stood spine to spine on his windowsill. The blue and yellow covers were beat up and well-worn from repeated readings, and the titles promised all sorts of hair-raising adventures. The Clue of the Broken Blade. The Phantom Freighter. The Secret of Skull Mountain. They sounded pretty interesting to me.

Marty’s room was like a museum dedicated to his exploration of Crooked Hills. His bookcases were packed with all sorts of interesting things—odd-shaped stones marred with the fossilized impressions of insects, old arrowheads, pieces of wood resembling gruesome faces. As a doorstop, he used a quartz-lined geode he swore fell from the sky in a blaze of blue flame. Along the floorboard, lined up side by side like vibrant soldiers, were dozens of small, multi-colored glass bottles—the kind old-time pharmacists filled with medicine.

“Where’d you get all those?”

“Found them,” Marty said. “There’s a couple of spots out in the woods that used to be dumping grounds years and years ago. You can find all sorts of neat things out there.”

“You must know a lot about Crooked Hills,” I said.

“If I don’t know it,” Marty said, “it ain’t worth knowing.”

“My mom bought me this book of ghost stories. It said Crooked Hills was the most haunted town in America.”

“I don’t know if it’s the most haunted town in America, but it’s sure got more than its fair share of ghosts!”

“But…they’re just stories, right?”

Marty winked at me. “What do you think?”

Honestly, I didn’t know how to answer.

Before I went to bed, Marty loaned me one of the Hardy Boys books. The Twisted Claw sounded like something I’d like. I opened the first page but couldn’t concentrate. In the bed across from mine, Alex was already snoring up a storm. I put the book aside and turned off the bedside lamp.

With the lights out, I lay in bed, listening to the cracks and pops of the settling house. Just outside the window, a cricket sang me a lullaby, for all the good it did. I stared up at the ceiling, watching blue-black shadows crawl across the plaster, thinking about all the odd things I’d seen since arriving in Crooked Hills—and it was only the first day!

Somewhere in the distance, I heard the lonely cry of a train whistle and the distant rumble of huge metal wheels against the tracks. The sound of the passing train was soothing in a way, like a distant thunderstorm, one without the fierce lightning and wind. The cricket continued its steady trill.

Finally, my eyes grew heavy and started to flutter. The bellowing train whistle sounded again, even farther away, vanishing into the silence of the night…

Another howl rose out of the darkness, answering the train’s cry. Only, this wasn’t the steam whistle of machinery. This was an animal sound. And it was much, much closer.

The cricket fell silent, and the absence of its song felt empty and—

Unnatural.

I sat up. From my bed, I could look right out the window. Moonlight filtered into the room, casting an eerie glow over the walls and floor, over the beds and my brother’s sleeping form. Outside, the trees were black shapes in the darkness. But something moved just beyond the tree line. A shadow. An animal of some sort, probably a large dog. It moved back and forth through the trees, then stopped. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like it was digging a hole.

I heard the howl again, and the dog turned its head toward me—

I jerked away from the window and retreated across the bed until my back touched the wall. Cowering there, I tugged the covers around me. It took me a second to catch my breath and steady my nerves enough for another gander. When I looked again, the dog was gone.

But I knew no matter how many years I lived, I’d never forget that moment when the dog looked at me, and the moonlight glowed in its eyes.

Pale, human-looking eyes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“A ghostly cry in the dead of night?” Marty scratched his chin as he considered the description of the creature. “Could be any number of beasties from around these parts. Could have been the Ozark Howler, I reckon, but the Howler looks more like a bobcat than a dog. Heck, you might have spotted the Gallywumpus.”

I was pretty sure he was making names up on the spot.

But Marty didn’t laugh or break into a telling smile. He thought for a few seconds, then asked, “Glowing eyes, you say?”

“Not just glowing eyes. These were human eyes—almost, anyway.”

“So maybe you saw a person sneaking through the woods.”

I shook my head. “It was definitely a dog or a wolf or something.”

“No wolves around here. Coyotes, maybe, but not wolves.” Marty squinted at me and pursed his lips. “Are you positive you’re not trying to spook me? You aren’t trying to get me back for the spiders last night, are you?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “This isn’t a prank.”

“So what do you think it was?”

This is your neck of the woods, I thought. You tell me.

But instead, I swallowed my pride and told him what I really believed.

“I think it was a ghost.”

After seeing the strange apparition, I’d spent a good part of the night searching through my ghost book for references to a spectral hound. I didn’t have any luck. Had I discovered a new shade haunting the hills? The spirit of a bloodhound killed in a hunting accident, maybe?

“The ghost of a dog?” Marty shook his head. “Whatever you do, don’t tell my dad.”

“Why not?”

“He’s scared to death of dogs. Doesn’t want anything to do with them. A dog coming back from the dead might be too much for him.”

I found it hard to believe anything scared Shorty, living, dead, or otherwise.

“Didn’t you hear the howling?”

“Nope. I conked out before my head hit the pillow. I didn’t even get the chance to read those funny books you let me borrow.” He must have seen the look of disappointment and concern etched on my face. He thought about it for a moment, then said, “Tell you what, we’ll keep watch tonight. Maybe it will come back.”

That made me feel a little better, and I nodded. “But don’t tell Alex. He gets nervous about things like this.”

I probably shouldn’t have been so quick to exclude my younger brother, but I didn’t dare let him know about the ghostly dog or our plan to keep a lookout for it. You’d have to know Alex to really understand. For starters, he was a bit of a klutz, always tripping and taking nasty spills, always knocking things over. Second, he was a jinx—bad luck followed him around like a lovesick puppy. To make matters worse, he was the kind of kid who jumped at his own shadow, which is to say he was a big scaredy-cat. He couldn’t even watch a scary movie without whining and covering his eyes.

He’d botch any plans for sure.

“We’ll just keep this between you and me,” I told Marty.

“My lips are sealed.” My cousin closed his mouth tight and mimed locking his lips shut and tossing away a key. He brushed his hands together as if sweeping away dust. “Now are you ready for me to show you around?”

“You bet!” I said.

“Good!” Marty beamed. “I just want to get a couple of things.”

We went to his room, and Marty pulled a scruffy-looking backpack from his closet. The bag looked like something off the bargain rack in an Army surplus store. He tossed the backpack on the bed and then started searching through his dresser. When he found something he wanted to bring along, he threw it over his shoulder into a pile on the mattress. By the time he was done, he’d collected a pocketknife, compass, canteen, a pair of flashlights, a few powerful-looking firecrackers, a pair of jeans cut off at the knees, and a half-used pack of matches. He looked over the belongings for a second and nodded.

“You really think we’ll need all this stuff?” I asked.

“Always a good idea to be prepared.” He sounded like a Boy Scout. He started shoving the items into the bag. “Anything you want to bring?”

I snapped my fingers. I’d almost forgotten. I rushed to my room and returned with my book. “I thought we might use it as a reference if we run into anything peculiar.”

“Good idea,” Marty said, adding it to the bag.

As Marty slung the backpack over his shoulder, my little brother stuck his head into the room.

“Where are you guys going?” Alex asked. “Are you going out to explore? Can I come?”

“Sure you can,” Marty said. “But you may want to change into a pair of jeans instead of those shorts. We’re gonna be walking through some pretty thick brush. We can pack your swimming trunks in case we decide to go for a dip in the creek.”

“I’ll be right back!” Alex rushed off. I heard him stub his toe on the doorjamb of our room. “Ow!” he cried.

Klutz!

“I hope we don’t regret bringing him along,” I said.

“If we didn’t,” Marty said, “he’d go straight to our parents, saying we were being mean. Then we’d get stuck here ourselves.”

“I guess.”

“You might want to change clothes, too.” Marty scrunched up his face and scratched at his temple. “Wearing shorts isn’t such a good idea.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “It’s going to be a hundred degrees today. No way am I wearing jeans in that heat.”

“Suit yourself,” Marty said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Almost as an afterthought, he opened the top drawer of his dresser and took out a bottle of fingernail polish remover.

“Are you planning on doing your nails?” I asked. “Why do we need that?”

“You’ll see.”

While Alex changed clothes, Marty and I went to the kitchen and gathered some crackers, peanut butter, bread, and apples. Marty also filled his canteen with Kool-Aid and put some paper cups in the satchel. We packed like we were running away from home!

Wearing a pair of faded jeans and a Spiderman t-shirt, Alex limped into the room. He held a pair of rolled-up swimming trunks, which Marty added to the already stuffed bag.

“We’re off!” Marty said.

But Mom and Aunt Mary stopped us before we got out the door.

“You boys be careful out there,” Mom said. “I don’t want you wandering too far and getting hurt.”

“We won’t,” I promised.

“Don’t worry,” Marty said. “I just want to show them around a little.”

“Well…” Mom looked a little worried. “Just don’t get lost.”

“Never fear.” Marty puffed up proudly. “I know these woods like the back of my hand. With me as their guide, there’s no chance of losing our way.”

Mom smiled. She obviously found Marty’s antics humorous, too. “I’ll keep the search party on standby,” she said.

The three of us stepped outside and started our journey. It wasn’t even 10 o’clock in the morning, but the scorching heat washed over us like a tidal wave. I broke out in a sweat within seconds, and I was glad I’d decided to wear shorts instead of jeans.

We headed across the yard and jumped the split-beam fence. Marty didn’t bother with a footpath as he strode directly into the forest. He traipsed through the weeds and undergrowth, then stopped a few yards out. He leaned over, placing his hands on his knees, then motioned for me to join him. The ground was all torn up. It looked like something large had been burrowing into the earth. Mounds of freshly-turned dirt surrounded the hole, which I guessed to be at least two feet deep.

“What are you guys looking at?” Alex asked, rushing up behind us.

“Nothing,” I said. “A hole or something.”

Marty and I looked at each other, and I glanced back at the house. From this spot, I had a clear view of the bedroom window. This must have been the very spot where I saw the dog the night before. I noticed the grass surrounding the hole was brittle and brown, like it had been cooked in the heat of the sun.

“It sure looks like something was buried here,” Marty said.

“But not anymore.” I kicked at the piles of loose dirt. “Whatever was digging out here, it found what it was looking for.”

“Come on,” Marty said. “We’ve got a lot to see.”

He took off through the brush. I took one last look at the hole. Despite the heat, I felt a chill. I turned my attention toward the sights and adventure my cousin promised, but I couldn’t shake the memory of the dog—or whatever it was—and its human-like eyes.

What could it have been digging for? I wondered.

Birds cried from high branches, and squirrels chattered at us as we passed. We climbed small hills and traversed dried-out riverbeds, hopped across shallow streams on smooth, slippery stepping-stones and carefully pushed through briar patches. The briars were the worst, especially since I wore shorts. The thorny vines scraped and stabbed at my legs, drawing thin lines of blood in a couple of places. I didn’t complain, though, because I didn’t want Marty to say, “I told you so.”

Despite what I’d assumed was just a bunch of big talk, Marty really knew the forest. Even though we’d hiked quite a ways from the house, I didn’t have any worries about getting lost. He never even bothered to check the compass he’d brought.

We happened upon a few big rocks, each about the size of a basketball, and Marty called for us to wait. He searched through the undergrowth and tore a switch from a bush. He approached one of the rocks, knelt beside it, and jabbed the stick underneath a couple of times.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked.

I figured Marty was looking for snakes or something, and poking at them with a stick would only make them angry.

“Help me roll this aside.”

Marty tossed the switch away and pushed on the large rock. I gave him a hand. I could have rolled the rock over all on my own, but I didn’t want to show my cousin up. Together, we moved the stone.

Underneath, the ground was dark and damp. A couple of earthworms slithered in the dirt. In addition, a couple of nasty-looking yellowish creatures crawled around in the moist patch of earth.

Scorpions!

“Be careful,” I said, clutching Marty’s shoulder.

He smiled and shook his head as he pinched the tail of one of the scorpions between his fingers, lifting the tiny, twitching monstrosity into the air.

“Aren’t they poisonous?” I asked.

“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Marty said. “They’re just a little worse than a bee sting, really. I’d rather be stung than get pinched by their claws.”

We examined the scorpions for a couple of minutes. Alex and I never touched them, though. We left that up to Marty. The scorpions didn’t like being manhandled at all, but Marty showed us how to avoid being stung or pinched. When he grew bored with the scorpions, he tossed them into the weeds, and we set off again.

After about ten minutes, my legs started to itch a little. The feeling worsened with every step. By the time we sat down to take a break, my legs itched terribly just below my knees. I almost scratched the skin to the bone.

“You all right?” Alex asked. He was breathing hard from the hike and covered in sweat. Damp patches of perspiration spread out from his underarms.

“I think I must have walked through poison ivy or something.”

Alex recoiled away from me.

“I doubt it’s poison ivy,” Marty said. “I kept a pretty good eye out for the stuff. We passed a couple of patches, but we didn’t get anywhere close enough for you to pick it up. More than likely, it’s chiggers.”

“What are chiggers?” Alex asked. He sounded like he’d just heard about some exotic fatal disease. Of course, he was just overacting, as usual. At least, I hoped so.

“Chiggers are little bugs, even smaller than seed ticks. You can’t even see them. They get on you, and their spit eats away at your skin. That’s what causes the itching.”

“You mean my skin is dissolving?” I asked.

“In spit?” Alex added, his face blanching.

“It’s not enough to hurt you, but it’s gonna itch like the dickens. Put this on the bites.” He scrounged through his backpack and handed me the bottle of fingernail polish remover. “It’ll help.”

He only put the bottle in the bag when he found out I’d be wearing shorts. He never gloated out loud, but the gesture told me I shouldn’t be so thick-skulled in the future. Grumbling under my breath, I poured a little of the liquid in my hand. The pungent smell made my eyes water. I slathered a little on my legs—

“Yowch!”

My legs didn’t itch anymore, but now they burned like I’d poured rubbing alcohol in an open wound.

“Stings a little, I bet,” Marty said.

A little? I felt like my legs were going to melt below the knee.

“Give it a minute and you’ll be fine.”

I stomped and squirmed. I bit my lower lip to keep from screaming. I probably looked like a dancing nutcase.

After a few minutes of excruciating agony, the burning eased up a little. My legs were red and raw, and I smelled like fingernail polish remover, but at least I wasn’t itching so badly.

“See? I told you.” Marty pulled the canteen and cups out of the backpack. “Anyone thirsty?”

The Kool-Aid wasn’t very cold, but it still tasted wonderful going down. I drained my cup in two quick swallows.

Marty put the used cups back in the bag. Then he opened my ghost book, settled back against the trunk of a tree, and casually flipped through the pages. “Does this book say anything about the Bleeding Rock?”

“I didn’t get a chance to read the whole book. What’s the Bleeding Rock?”

He looked off to his right. “It’s a haunted place, not too far from this very spot.”

“H-h-haunted?” Alex asked.

“Yes, sir.” Marty tapped the book’s cover. “Crooked Hills has a ton of ghosts. You can’t go very far without running into some spirit’s stomping ground. We’re pretty close to one right now.”

“Really?” I asked. “Can we go see?”

“If you want,” Marty said. “I was planning on taking you to the creek so we could go for a swim. This would be out of the way.”

“What do you say, Alex? Want to go see?”

He looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun peeking through the trees. Shadows skittered across his face. “I guess it would be all right to go during the daytime.” He was scared—I could tell—but a little curious, too.

“If it’s not too far out of the way,” I said, “I’d like to see. We’ll go for a swim afterwards.”

“Sounds good.” Marty packed up the book, stood up, and slung the backpack over his shoulder. “Follow me. And stay close. My granddaddy always said an unlearned man might get lost for days in the deep places, where the light of day doesn’t even cut through the thick branches.”

Like my cousin promised, the Bleeding Rock wasn’t far. Rising from the center of the clearing, the huge, flat chunk of stone was about the size and shape of a refrigerator lying on its side. All the plant life surrounding the stone was withered and brown, and it crunched beneath our feet. The rock was the color of chalk, except for a rusty-looking stain on top. I placed my hand against the stone. It was dry and cold to the touch.

“Years and years ago,” said Marty, “a woman lived in these parts whom everyone suspected of being a witch. I’m not exactly sure what her real name was, but folks called her Maddie Someday.”

Marty turned his head and spat a couple of times.

Maddie Someday?

“She was in my book,” I said. “She was a witch who destroyed crops and killed livestock.”

“She did worse than that. On certain nights you could hear her voice ring throughout the hills. On those nights, a kid always disappeared.”

“She kidnapped them?” Alex asked.

Marty nodded solemnly.

Alex shivered. “W-w-what did she do with them?”

“No one knows for sure.” Marty smiled. “Some folks say she ate them all up—”

“She was a cannibal!?” I said.

“Some people think so. Others believe she turned them into twisted little goblins to serve her. But each and every one of the kids who vanished was right about our age.”

“Wait a second,” Alex said. “When you say ‘our age,’ do you mean your age?” He pointed at Marty and me hopefully. “Or my age?”

“I reckon she would have taken any of us if she could.”

“Yeah,” I added, “but she’d probably take you first, Alex.”

“You guys are just trying to scare me.” Alex pouted. “There’s no such things as witches and goblins.”

I ignored my brother. If putting on a brave front helped him, fine by me. “What does Maddie Someday—”

“Whenever you say her name,” Marty said, “you should spit, just to keep the spirits happy.”

I didn’t think it would help, but I turned my head and spat.

“Ewww!” Alex said.

“All right. Now what does the witch have to do with this boring old rock?”

“Boring? Boring?” Marty clutched at his chest as if my words caused his heart to ache. “This rock may not look like much right now, but this is the site of one of the bloodiest events in the history of Crooked Hills.”

He paused for a second, holding his breath and looking back and forth between Alex and me, letting the drama build.

“This,” he said, “is where Maddie Someday was murdered!”

Murdered, I thought, and felt another chill.

After spitting, Marty continued his tale with the flair of a natural-born storyteller. “Folks around these parts knew the witch was behind the kidnappings, but they didn’t have any evidence, and the county sheriff wouldn’t do anything about it. So they took the law into their own hands.”

“They killed her?” Alex said.

“They didn’t just kill her.” Marty tipped his face forward so shadows darkened his features. “They chopped her apart.”

“Ugh!” Alex said.

But Marty wasn’t quite done milking the shock value out of the story. He stretched out his arm theatrically and pointed to the stone. “And they did it on this very spot! See how the stone is stained red on top? Her blood marked the stone! That’s why the grass doesn’t grow around here. No plant can feed on a witch’s blood and grow naturally.”

I took an instinctive step away from the Bleeding Rock. I couldn’t help but think of my uncle beheading the chicken on the old tree stump. Had Maddie run around flapping her arms wildly when they butchered her?

“When the gruesome job was done,” Marty said, “they buried what was left of her in six different graves around the county, two for her arms, two for her legs, one for her body, and one for her head. But they say every year on the anniversary of the witch’s death, her body parts crawl through the earth to meet back at this spot, and fresh blood spills out of the stone where she died!”

My mouth felt dry, my tongue swollen like a rolled pair of socks.

“Let’s get out of here,” Alex said.

“I didn’t scare you, did I?” Marty laughed. “All right, all right. Let’s go down to the creek. A good swim will take your minds off all this.”

Marty took off through the woods. He was moving so fast we could hardly keep up with him. He climbed over a huge, fallen tree covered with moss, then leaped down to the other side and out of sight. It looked like he’d climbed the log hundreds of times. I had a little more trouble, but I made it to the top and helped Alex. Stinging sweat dripped into my eyes and stuck my shirt to my back and chest, but I guessed it really didn’t matter since we’d be swimming soon.

Marty waited for us up ahead. He stood at the edge of a gravel road cutting through the forest. I was pretty sure it was the same stretch of road we’d traveled to get to my aunt and uncle’s house, although I saw no recognizable landmarks.

“We can follow the road to the creek.” Marty pointed down the path. “Should be a little easier trek, and it will take us directly to the best swimming spot.”

We walked for what seemed like miles along the curvy road. My legs ached—and they were starting to itch again, although I refused to whine about it—but at least we weren’t running to keep up with Marty any longer. The sun was high overhead, the heat pressing down on me and scorching my arms, face, and neck.

“We’re not far now,” Marty said. “Just around the next bend—”

I heard the roar of the engine before I saw the black sports car. The vehicle—I think it was an old model Firebird—tore around the curve, shooting a cloud of gravel and dust high into the air. The windows were down, and thunderous heavy metal music blared from the stereo. The sun glinted on the windshield, and I couldn’t see the driver’s face. He must have been going at least sixty miles per hour—far too fast for the dirt road. The car shot in our direction, bearing down on Marty!

My cousin froze as the car rocketed forward without any sign of slowing down. Either the driver didn’t see him or didn’t care. The headlights and grille gave the car the appearance of an evil grin. If I didn’t act fast, Marty would be roadkill for sure!

At the last second, I grabbed my cousin by the shoulder and yanked him back. He lost his footing and fell. The car blasted past. A shower of rocks and pebbles whipped over us like a swarm of killer bees. I covered my face and coughed in the cloud of dust and car exhaust.

“Slow down, jerk!” I yelled. I couldn’t help myself, not after what had happened to my father. I couldn’t stand to see someone driving recklessly. Didn’t really matter. No way the driver heard me over the sound of the radio—

The brake lights flared. The back end fishtailed a little. The Firebird skidded to a stop.

Marty scrambled to his feet. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “Oh, no no no.”

The bright white reverse lights flared. The reflection of the surrounding trees undulated on the waxed body of the vehicle. The driver cut the engine. The music died down. Dust settled like powdered bone on the car’s jet-black paint. Waves of heat danced over the hood, warping the air. Beneath the hood, the engine popped and clicked, cooling down after running hot.

The driver’s side door opened, and a young man stepped out.

He wore jeans and a faded and frayed polo shirt. His blond hair was shoulder length, and he had the cruelest eyes I had ever seen. The kind of guy, I thought, who only looks happy when he’s making someone cry uncle. He was at least sixteen—obviously, since he had his license—but I would have guessed he was a little older. He regarded us for a second, tilting his head from side to side, then stomped in our direction. His face was a mask of rage.

“What did you say?” he asked.

Beside me, Marty kept on whispering. “That’s Greg Crewes. Oh, we’re in trouble. Apologize, Charlie. Say you’re sorry.”

But I just couldn’t do that.

“I said you need to slow down,” I snapped at Greg. “You’re going to hurt somebody if you keep driving like an idiot.”

Marty winced like I’d punched him in the stomach.

“An idiot, huh?” Greg continued walking right up to me. “Kid, I don’t know who you are, but you’re in for the beating of your life.”

“We’re dead!” Marty said.

I wanted to run, but I couldn’t make my legs work. They were cemented in place. My only option was to try to talk my way out of this mess.

“We don’t want to fight,” I said, my voice shaky. “We’re not looking for trouble.”

Greg towered over me. He leered, and I saw his yellow teeth. On the left side of his mouth, it looked like extra teeth pushed out of his gums, like he had the beginning of a double row of choppers. He hooked his fingers over the collar of my shirt and drew me close. The cloth started to tear, and I had to stand on my tiptoes.

“Well, whether you want trouble or not,” he said, “you’ve got it. When I’m done with you, you’ll wish you got hit by a car.”

He drew his other arm back. His knuckles cracked as he clenched his hand into a fist pointed right at my face.

This is it, I thought. Lights out!

CHAPTER EIGHT

I squeezed my eyes shut and mentally prepared myself for pain and certain death. I’d never really been punched before, not by someone who wanted to knock my block off. I couldn’t count on much help from Marty or Alex, either. While I couldn’t see them with my eyes closed, I heard Marty whimpering next to me, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if Alex was halfway home already. I felt a shadow pass over my face as Greg’s fist eclipsed the sun.

Something whizzed past my ear. It sounded like a hornet on steroids. Suddenly, Greg released me.

“Ow!” he cried.

My eyes snapped open. Greg Crewes hopped a foot or so away from me, and the hand he was going to use to pummel me into oblivion was now clapped over his right ear. An angry red stain spread across his cheeks, and tears glistened in his eyes.

I heard the hornet sound again, and something struck Greg hard, right between the eyes.

“Ouch!” the bully squeaked. He staggered. Now he covered his forehead with his other hand. The object that had struck him fell to the ground—a rock about the size of a large marble. I glanced over my shoulder but couldn’t see where the projectile had come from.

Greg bellowed with anger. The assault only stunned him for a second or two, and now he was fighting mad. Growling, he charged Marty, Alex, and me. I didn’t know who he planned on ripping apart first.

Another rock zoomed out of the woods, but it missed Greg by a couple of inches. It struck the gravel road with a small puff of dust.

Greg’s arm shot out like a striking serpent. Spinning me around, he locked his arm around my throat, putting me between the unseen attacker and himself. I’d seen this in cop shows before—the criminal using a hostage as a human shield.

Marty couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk.

“Let him go!” Alex shouted, biting back his fear. He scrambled forward, but Greg kicked at him. My brother stumbled, and his foot caught on his untied shoelaces. He had a real problem keeping his sneakers tied. He fell on his rump, and I figured he’d bruised both his tail bone and his pride.

Alex pushed himself up, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.

“Take another step and I’ll wring his neck!” Greg tightened his chokehold on my throat and looked into the tree line. “And whoever you are out there, you fling another stone and you’ll risk hitting him.” He gave me a shake. “Now come on out of there.”

I gasped for air. I gripped his arm and tried to pry it away, but he was just too strong. My legs kicked in the dirt. Any minute now I’d black out.

Another stone flew out of the brush. This time, though, it wasn’t aimed at Greg. It zipped past us. The right-hand side view mirror of Greg’s car exploded into a glittering shower of broken glass.

“Hey!” Greg released me, and I fell forward. The gravel skinned my knees and the palms of my hands, but at least I could breathe.

Another rock flew out of the trees, this time striking the back windshield of the car with a smack!

“Cut it out!” Greg scrambled for his car, digging in his pocket for keys.

Smack! Another rock struck the rear windshield. This time, a spider web fracture spread across the glass.

“You’re dead!” Greg yelled as he jumped into the car. “Dead! You hear me?”

The engine roared to life, and Greg hit the gas, speeding down the road before any more damage could be inflicted on his precious car.

I rubbed my throat. Marty and Alex helped me to my feet.

“You okay?” Alex asked.

“I think so.”

“We got lucky.” Marty watched the road to make sure Greg didn’t come back for us.

I was about to ask him about the bully when another voice called out from the trees.

“Ask me, you were pretty stupid to rile one of the Crewes boys.” A figure stepped out of hiding. “Brave, but stupid.”

A girl about my age emerged from the woods. She had red hair tied back into a long ponytail. Her eyes were green and sparkling. A thick patch of freckles ran across the bridge of her nose. She might have been cute…if she didn’t look like such a tomboy. She wore rolled up jeans that had been patched more times than Marty’s, a dirty pair of sneakers, and a checkered button-up shirt that must have come from the boy’s clothing department. Either that or a hand-me-down from an older brother. She carried a slingshot, but as she approached, she shoved it into her back pocket.

Marty hooted triumphantly and clapped his hands together. “I knew it! I knew it was you!” All signs of the fear he displayed in the face of Greg Crewes were gone.

“Well,” the girl said, “somebody had to rescue the three of you.”

Embarrassed, I looked at my feet, digging the toe of my shoe into the dirt.

“Charlie, Alex,” Marty said as he waved toward the redheaded girl, “I want you to meet Lisa Summers. Lisa, these are my cousins from out of town. They’re staying with my family for a few weeks.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, and I shook her hand.

“I’m glad you came along when you did,” I said, still feeling like a loser for almost getting beat-up. “Thanks for the help.”

“Think nothing of it,” Lisa said. “Greg’s always looking for trouble. He deserves worse than a broken mirror and windshield.”

“Who was that guy?” Alex asked.

“That,” said Marty, “was one-half of the dreaded Crewes brothers. Greg and Hatch Crewes are the worst bullies in the county. They used to go to school with us, until they both got expelled for beating up one of the teachers. They’re meaner than copperhead snakes in a frying pan.”

“Good thing they weren’t together,” Lisa said, “or this would have turned out differently. We might be able to get the better of one of them, but not both.”

“Still, that was pretty smart thinking,” Marty said, tapping his forehead, “shooting at the car. No way was he going to let you shoot out all the windows. That thing is their most prized possession.”

“If you say so.” Lisa brushed past me—she smelled like peppermints—and started searching the road. “But he’ll come looking for us one of these days, and there will be blood in his eyes.”

“You know,” I said, “you broke a mirror. Seven years bad luck.”

“Not for me.” She didn’t look up but continued searching the gravel. “I’m not superstitious.”

What is she looking for? I wondered.

“Hey, Lisa,” Marty said. “I was just taking my cousins down to the creek. You want to come with us?”

“Sure,” she said. “You’ll need someone to look out for you. Just give me a second, okay?”

She paced back and forth, looking down like she was counting rocks.

“There it is!” Lisa said, plucking a single rock from the ground. It was one of the stones she’d beaned Greg with.

“There are rocks all over the place,” I said. “What’s so special about that one?”

Lisa tossed it straight up, then snatched it out of the air again. “This is my lucky rock.”

“I thought you weren’t superstitious,” I said.

She smiled. “When it comes to this rock, it’s not superstition—it’s fact!”

She grabbed a small leather pouch that hung from her belt. As she undid the drawstring, the contents rattled. The bag was full of stones, and she dropped the lucky rock in with the others.

I let the matter drop. After all, the rock had certainly been lucky for me. Without it, I would have been nothing more than a smudge in the dirt.

After walking forever, we passed a familiar-looking path. The Widows’ mailbox stood by the side of the road. If Marty wanted to take us to the creek, it would have been much quicker to follow the road rather than trek through the woods. He must have wanted to show us the Bleeding Rock. Fine by me, but I wondered why he didn’t just say so in the first place. He hadn’t thought I’d be scared, had he?

Lisa unbuttoned her shirt pocket, reached inside, and withdrew a handful of striped peppermints wrapped in plastic. She unwrapped one and popped it in her mouth.

“Want one?” she asked, mumbling with her mouth full. She held out her hand, offering the candy to the three of us. Alex and Marty each took a piece, but I shook my head.

“Don’t like peppermints?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“Lisa likes peppermints better than anyone I know,” Marty interrupted. “Eats them all day long. They keep her hair red.”

“Very funny.” Lisa made a face at him.

Rounding a curve, I saw the concrete bridge we’d crossed the day before. The clear creek water rushed beneath the structure, and branches and leaves and other debris gathered around the sturdy legs. The bank was covered in tiny pebbles that crunched beneath my feet, and the water lapped at the shore.

Marty unslung his backpack and opened it up. He tossed a pair of trunks to my little brother. The swimsuit struck him in the face. Marty started to undress, but Alex’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. He looked from the trunks he held in his hands…to Marty…to Lisa.

“Um,” he said. “We’re not going to change clothes right here, are we?”

Marty tugged his shirt off. “Huh?”

Alex jerked his head toward Lisa.

“Oh.” Marty nodded. “Guess it wouldn’t be polite changing in front of a girl.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Lisa agreed, “if you found some place a little more private.”

Marty and Alex shuffled into the trees and out of sight. Lisa shook her head and raised her eyebrows at me.

“Thought it was too hot for jeans, huh?” She nodded in the direction of my bare legs. “Didn’t Marty warn you about chiggers?”

“I probably wouldn’t have listened,” I grumbled.

“You might want to leave your shoes on,” she said. “Some of the rocks in the creek bed can be awful sharp.”

“Won’t we ruin our shoes?”

“It’s either that or slice up the bottom of your feet.”

Marty and Alex came out of the woods, dressed in their trunks…and shoes. Guess Marty offered my little brother the same piece of advice about jagged rocks. Marty didn’t even slow down as he came barreling out of the trees. He built up speed with every step, splashing into the creek and sending a shower of cold water halfway up the bank.

“Woohoo!”

I pulled my t-shirt off and put it on the shore along with my watch. As I waded into the shallows, minnows rushed away from my feet. It was a lot chillier than I expected. It took my breath away as it splashed up to my shins. It stung against the scratched chigger bites for a couple of seconds, but it still felt great on such a scorcher of a day. As I waded farther out, the water started tugging at me as it flowed beneath the bridge and beyond.

Alex waded in. “Brrr!” he said, wrapping his arms around his body and shivering. His lips were turning blue.

“You’ll get used to it,” Marty said.

Because she wasn’t dressed for swimming, Lisa stayed at the shoreline. She only waded in about ankle deep. The water never even touched the bottoms of her rolled up pants.

Water rushing into my tennis shoes and weighing them down took a little getting used to. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, like I had weights tied to my feet.

Laughing, Marty let himself fall to a seated position with the water rushing up to his neck. I did the same. The jagged rocks poked at me through the seat of my shorts. Marty splashed a handful of water into my face, starting a huge splash fest that lasted five minutes. Alex laughed at us, and Lisa scurried out of the water and away from the blast zone.

How awesome! In the city, we often went to the public pool, but swimming here, we had the entire creek to ourselves. No screaming babies. No prune-faced grannies sneering at you when you splashed too much. No grumpy lifeguards who were more interested in getting a tan than saving lives.

“In a couple of days,” Marty promised, “we’ll bring some inner tubes out and float on the rapids.”

That sounded great. I’d never done—

With a sploosh! Alex vanished. His entire body dropped like a brick beneath the water. He didn’t even have time to scream.

“Alex!” I jumped up. Water dripped from my body in sheets, spilling into the creek all around, sending ripples across the surface. I rushed to where he had been wading when he went under. “Alex!”

“He wandered into a deep pocket!” Lisa cried.

Now that she pointed it out, I noticed I couldn’t see the creek bed before me. Instead, it looked like a shadow covered the area. No telling how deep the hole might be, how far under Alex might have fallen. I didn’t see him anywhere.

I drew in a deep breath. I was a pretty good swimmer. I had passed a CPR and life-saving course and everything. I just never expected to actually need it, especially not to rescue my brother.

Just as I was about to dive into the deep, cold darkness, Alex broke the surface, coughing and sputtering… and laughing. His hair was plastered to his forehead in several pointy wedges, and his eyes were bright and surprised. I hauled him into the shallows. Marty gave me a hand.

“You all right?” Lisa called from the shore.

“I’m okay,” Alex coughed.

I should have known he’d be all right. Like I said, I was a pretty good swimmer, but Alex could backstroke circles around me. He was on a junior swim team back home.

“Something tells me,” Lisa said, “hanging around with the three of you is going to be nothing but trouble. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take care of you.”

Marty and I looked at each other. An unspoken idea passed between us. At the same time, we jumped up and seized Lisa. I grabbed her left wrist, and Marty took her right.

“No!” she shrieked. “Don’t you dare!”

But it was too late for her. In time, Marty and I swung her arms.

“One!” we cried together.

“I mean it!” she yelled.

“Two!”

“You’ll pay for this!” Lisa thrashed against us.

“Three!”

We hurled her into the creek, clothes and all. Water burst into the air and rained down around us. We howled with laughter. Alex clapped his hands and cheered.

Lisa surfaced, her hair matted down in her face. A few individually wrapped peppermints bobbed in the water around her. At first I thought she was going to come out after us. I had the feeling she could probably beat both Marty and me in a fight if she wanted to. But instead, she started laughing too, and splashing water up at us.

We swam for a while longer, and Marty impressed (and soaked) us all by cannonballing off the concrete bridge into one of the deep pockets. I wasn’t quite ready to try the stunt, but it sure looked fun.

After our swim, we collapsed on the bank for a while, letting the sun warm us. I took my shoes off, hoping to let them dry a little more quickly, but it didn’t seem to help much.

I closed my eyes and let my mind wander a bit. After all was said and done, being in Crooked Hills wasn’t so bad. I missed my friends back home, sure, but I enjoyed my cousin’s company and I’d made a new friend in Lisa. And I had to admit, all of the strange occurrences and ghostly happenings of the area excited and intrigued me.

While Marty shared my fascination with the strange, Lisa seemed to think it was a foolish interest. “All the ghost stories are just made up to scare little kids. They aren’t true at all.”

Marty waved toward the red-haired girl as if presenting her to an audience. “Lisa Summers, ladies and gentlemen, the world’s biggest skeptic.”

She rolled her eyes at him and stuck out her tongue. I noticed her tongue was a deep shade of red, much redder than any normal person’s tongue, probably because of all the peppermints she ate.

“What about Maddie Someday?” I asked.

I forgot to spit twice, but Marty did it for me.

“She’s just a myth,” Lisa said.

“But we saw the Bleeding Rock.”

“That’s just a place where high school kids party on the weekends. Somebody told me the town council wanted to encourage the legends to beef up the tourist trade.” She muttered under her breath. “For all the good it did.”

“You want more tourists around?” I asked. “Why would you? I’d think it would ruin everything, all those noisy, pig-headed sightseers.”

“At least it would bring some interesting people around,” she said.

“Oh, how cold!” I feigned withdrawing a dagger from my heart. Maybe some of Marty’s theatrics were rubbing off on me. “My brother and I aren’t interesting enough for you?”

“The jury’s still out.” She wrinkled her freckled nose. “But come on. You guys are from the city. You must be bored to death here.”

“I kind of like it,” Alex said.

“I’ll admit,” I said, “I thought I’d go stir-crazy out here in the country, but I haven’t been bored yet.”

“You haven’t been here all that long, have you?”

“But look at all that’s happened in the short while we’ve been here,” I protested. “I’ve seen a rock where an old witch was killed.”

“Ahem!” Lisa said.

“Okay…where a witch was rumored to be killed. I was almost clobbered by a speed-crazy thug but was rescued by a cagey warrior princess.”

Lisa blushed.

“And,” I continued, “my brother fell into a bottomless underwater pit.”

“It’s not bottomless,” Marty said. “It’s not even all that deep.”

“Seemed pretty deep to me,” Alex mused.

“This is just a little creek, really,” Marty said. “There are some pretty deep ones around here. Some guys with scuba gear came around a few years back, and they dove down in the river hundreds of feet. They said they saw catfish at the bottom almost as big as a man.”

Without even realizing it, I pulled my feet away from the water.

“Yeah.” Lisa had a dreamy look in her eyes. “Those guys were neat.”

“Don’t mind her.” Marty sneered. “She had a crush on one of the divers.”

“I did not!” Lisa said.

Marty snickered.

We relaxed on the shore, letting the sun bake us as we talked. The rest of the afternoon passed at a quiet, peaceful pace. All in all, it was a great day, despite the encounter with Greg Crewes. If I could go back in time and freeze us all in that moment, I would, because what came after was awful.

Just awful.

CHAPTER NINE

“Charlie? You sleeping?”

“Trying to,” I muttered.

Actually, I was pretending to sleep, and obviously botching the job if I couldn’t even fool my little brother.

“I’m not very tired,” Alex said.

Great, I thought. I rolled my eyes, certain he couldn’t see me in the darkness of our room. Until he fell asleep, I couldn’t sneak out undetected. Marty and I planned on catching a glimpse of the spectral dog tonight, and we didn’t need Alex tagging along. Unfortunately, my brother was more talkative than sleepy.

“I had a pretty good time today,” he said, “didn’t you?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“This place might not be so bad after all.”

“We’ll see.”

“I was a little scared today,” Alex said. “The Bleeding Rock…and Greg Crewes…and almost drowning… those things all scared me pretty bad. But I’m glad you were there with me. I knew you wouldn’t let anything bad happen.”

His words stung. I felt awful for being so irritated with him. Here I was, wishing he’d just shut up and pass out, and he goes and says something nice.

Silence rushed in like creek water filling my shoes. I checked the clock on the nightstand. 10:45. Marty and I had agreed to meet at the back door at eleven. I didn’t want to be too late because I halfway suspected Marty might traipse off after the dog without me.

“Try and get some sleep,” I said at last.

“Okay.” Alex pulled the covers up around him. “Good night.”

I waited for another twenty minutes or so, until I heard Alex breathing slow and steady. Asleep at last! I pushed the covers off of me—quietly—and stepped out of bed. I had made a point to wear normal clothes to bed instead of pajamas, so I didn’t need to worry about changing clothes. Barefoot, I tiptoed across the room to the door.

“Where are you going?” Alex asked groggily.

I winced. He was still awake, and now I’d been caught.

“Just going to the bathroom and getting a drink of water,” I said.

He didn’t answer. I figured he had drifted back to dreamland. I released a breath and opened the door slowly so it wouldn’t creak.

Marty’s door was open, and his room was dark and quiet. At first, I thought he was in bed sleeping too, but I realized the shape beneath the blanket was just pillows. The oldest trick in the book, but I wished I’d thought of it. If Alex woke up and found me missing, he’d cause trouble. Too late now. I couldn’t risk sneaking back into the bedroom without waking him. I’d have to take my chances.

Marty waited by the back door. He was dressed and ready to go, and he handed me my still-damp shoes as I joined him.

“What took you so long?” he asked.

“Alex,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Why don’t you want him to come?”

I shook my head. “He’s just a kid. He’d get too scared.”

“He did fine today. Most kids would have been a lot more scared than he was. Maybe he’s braver than you think.”

“Trust me,” I said. “Just when you think he’ll be all right, he gets frightened, and all bets are off. He does okay in the daylight, but I don’t want to know how he’d be in the dark.”

“If you say so.” Marty held up a pair of flashlights. He shook them, and the batteries rattled inside the plastic casing. He tested both of them, aiming the beams at the floor as he flipped the switches on and off a couple of times. He handed me one. “Don’t use these close to the house unless you really need to. I don’t want to risk our folks seeing the light.”

Luckily, the moonlight was bright enough we didn’t need the flashlights. We hid a few yards away from the mysterious hole where I’d glimpsed the dog the night before.

We waited.

The air was cool and damp, and a thin, low-hanging mist oozed between the trees. The mist, Marty promised, would only deepen as the night wore on, growing as thick as pea soup by early morning until the sun burned the fog away.

I noticed several odd, zig-zagging lines trailing across the forest floor, up and down the fence posts, and across the yard. The trails glistened.

“What is that?”

“Haven’t you ever seen a slug trail before?”

“A slug trail? You mean that’s slime where a slug crawled?”

“Pretty disgusting, huh? They come out at night to feed with their tongues—all covered in teeth and slimy.” Marty stuck his tongue out and wagged it back and forth, laughing. “Sometimes they get in the house. Once, I was getting dressed and found a slug waiting in my shoe! Squished it right between my toes.”

Great. Another creepy crawly to worry about out in the woods. Tarantulas. Scorpions. Chiggers. Slugs. What’s next?

We sat in the woods for at least a couple of hours, but the dog didn’t return. My legs started to cramp, and I shifted uncomfortably. I yawned, long and loud.

“Figures,” I muttered. “It’s not going to show up here again.”

“Worth a shot, I reckon.” Marty looked off into the trees. “Dogs have more powerful senses of smell than humans. They can detect smells we don’t even know exist. He might have smelled us.”

“Might have smelled you.” I gave him a shove.

“You ate more beans at supper than I did!” He pushed me back.

Our laughter raced off into the night, echoing through the darkness and bouncing through the hills. I hoped we weren’t being too loud. I didn’t want to wake our parents or Alex. Looking back at the house, though, I didn’t see any lights flaring to life.

“Whether he smelled us or not,” I said, “he sure heard us. Sound really carries out here.”

“Whatever it was, we’ll probably never find it again.” Marty shook his head. “There are miles and miles of forest out here. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

We were about to give up and pack it in when the mournful horn of the train moaned out in the night, rising up like the cry of a sad ghost and fading into nothing.

“Where’s the train coming from?”

“Crooked Hills used to be a rail town, but that dried up before I was even born. Now the train doesn’t even slow down when it passes through. Still comes through twice a day, once around midday and once in the middle of the night.”

In the following silence, another sound answered the train.

The dog’s howl.

It was off in the distance, and the echo made it sound like it came from all directions at once, bouncing through the trees.

“You hear that, right?” I asked my cousin. “I’m not imagining it, am I?”

“I hear it.” Marty stood up and cocked his head, trying to detect the source of the sound. “Sounds like it’s trying to talk back to the train horn.”

“Just like last night,” I said.

The howl faded.

“You know what this means?” Marty’s face brightened as an idea crossed his mind, and I knew what he was thinking before he spoke the words. “If it always answers the train horn, we can track its howl. We might be able to find it.”

“No way.” I shook my head. “We couldn’t possibly pinpoint the sound.”

“You never know. With a little luck, we might be able to—” He snapped his fingers. “Why didn’t I think of it sooner? I know one of the best trackers in the state!”

“You do?” I asked. “Who?”

“You already met her.”

“Lisa?” I asked.

“You bet. She knows these woods even better than I do, and she’s a natural tracker—part bloodhound.”

“You think she’d help us?”

“Sure she would. She’d see it as a challenge. And besides,” Marty said with a wink, “I think she likes you.”

“No, she doesn’t!” I raised my voice a little too much, and the words resounded through the darkness.

“Okay, okay,” Marty said. “You’re probably right. She probably doesn’t like you at all. Heck, she hardly knows you.”

I grumbled under my breath.

“Cheer up,” my cousin said. “By tomorrow night we’ll be on the hunt for your mystery dog.”

But instead of feeling excited, the idea of finding the dog suddenly filled me with a sense of dread.

CHAPTER TEN

I forgot all about the squeaky bedroom door as I crept back into my room. The hinges let out a long, drawn out creeeaaaaaak! I feared I would wake everybody in the entire house, especially my little brother. I didn’t want to face his questions. No way he’d believe I had been getting a drink of water and using the bathroom for three hours. Despite Marty’s jokes, I hadn’t eaten that many beans for supper!

Lucky for me, Alex didn’t awaken. He just rolled over and muttered something I couldn’t make out.

I tiptoed to bed. It didn’t hit me until I crawled beneath the covers, but I was wiped out. My eyes felt heavy, and my arms and legs ached. I sagged into the mattress like a trash bag full of Jell-O. I wasn’t used to staying up so late. Something told me, however, I’d have many late nights to come.

Alex mumbled something again. He looked to be sleeping peacefully for the most part, but every now and then he fidgeted or twitched. The glow of the moon filtering through the window bathed him in a bluish light. I didn’t know he talked in his sleep, but then again, I’d never really shared a room with him.

He said something again, and this time I understood him.

“Someday.”

He was having a dream—or more than likely a nightmare—about the old witch!

I considered waking him up but decided against it. In a couple of minutes he settled down and didn’t say anything else. I watched Alex for a while, waiting for him to say something else about Maddie. He was still and quiet, though. I closed my eyes.

I might have gone right to sleep, except for the screaming.

From outside.

The animals.

Screaming.

The sounds startled me, and I sat bolt upright in bed. The chickens squawked as though a coyote had broken into the henhouse, and the goats shrieked terrible bleating cries. Awful, screeching cat cries added to the maddening racket. I threw the covers aside and climbed out of bed to investigate—

That’s when I noticed Alex was gone. His covers were messy, but he wasn’t in bed. He must’ve heard the sound too, and his curiosity got the best of him. Why didn’t he wake me?

I stepped into the hall. The thin carpet beneath my feet twitched like the hair on a tarantula’s legs, and the moon’s blue light illuminated the passage, even though no windows were nearby.

I tapped lightly on the door to Marty’s bedroom.

“Marty! Wake up! Something’s wrong outside.”

He didn’t answer. I tried the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. The door was locked. I pressed my ear up against the wood and listened. I couldn’t hear a thing.

The awful goat cries from outside grew louder. Forgetting about Marty’s help, I rushed down the hall and out the back door. My shadow, black as midnight and twisted horribly, chased after me.

Wind buffeted me as I stepped outside. Bits of dirt flew in my face, stinging my skin, and I held my hand up to shield my eyes. Clouds of fog drifted across the yard, swirling, taking spectral shapes. In the distance, dark clouds covered the sky, and lightning streaked down to the earth, chased by a peal of thunder. The moon was blanketed by the clouds, and only a few feeble rays of light stretched down to the yard. A storm was brewing, but it wasn’t raining yet.

Another jagged bolt of lightning lit the sky, and in the flash, I could see the animal pens. The goats stood at the edge of the fence, their hourglass-shaped eyes reflective in the sudden flashes of light. They stuck their heads out and cried, their tongues wagging in their mouths.

“B-baaaaa-aa!”

Behind the goats, chickens dashed back and forth in a nervous frenzy. They were supposed to be locked in the henhouse during the night, but someone had obviously let them out. The door to the chicken coop slammed open and closed, the hinges shrieking, the door battered against the frame by the wind.

I didn’t see any sign of my brother.

I rushed to the animal pens and started to undo the gate. I planned on herding the chickens back into the coop before the storm swept across the yard. But as I approached the gate, I noticed something ghastly.

None of the chickens had heads!

They ran back and forth, their wings flapping, like they had just gotten the axe. But they never flopped over and lay dead on the ground. And somehow, they made a wet cackling sound, even though they had no mouths!

I stumbled away from the gate.

No way was I going in there with a flock of undead chickens!

Lightning jumped across the sky, closer now, and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned around and saw an old woman scuttling across the yard. She wore a filthy robe that flapped behind her like bat wings. Her hair was white and stringy, falling into her eyes like a cobweb mask. She carried a baby goat under one arm—and my brother under the other!

“Alex!”

Before I took a step, a mangy yellow dog jumped out of the darkness to block my path. It snarled and barked, drool dripping from its jaws.

Its eyes looked like the eyes of a person.

The old woman leaped into the air and landed on top of the sagging shed. A ruby red ring gleamed from one of her fingers, like fire blazing through blood-slathered glass. She scrabbled across the top, the sagging roof creaking beneath her feet, then jumped into the air again and vanished into the fog. Alex looked back and reached out for me.

“Charlieeeeeeeee,” he cried.

And he was gone.

The dog jumped on me and clamped its slobbery jaws around my throat.

I woke up.

A dream! My heart pounded in my chest, but I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t usually have nightmares, but with everything I’d been thinking about lately—unwanted vacations, annoying little brothers, headless chickens, freaky dogs, and hideous witches—it didn’t surprise me much.

I glanced over at my brother—

But Alex wasn’t in his bed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The moment of uncertainty passed. Although Alex was gone, just as he had been in my nightmare, his bed was neat and tidy. Instead of the ghastly glow of the moon, bright light streamed through the window. I squinted and rubbed my eyes. I looked at the clock and gaped in surprise at the time. 11:00! I never slept that late! Usually, I liked to rise early and squeeze as much out of school-free days as I could.

Thinking of the dream, I shuddered. Despite the warm morning light, I felt cold and shivery, like I’d been walking barefoot through snow on a wintery day. I had heard people usually forget their dreams pretty quickly. I wished that were the case! I had a feeling I’d remember the awful dream about Maddie Someday for as long as I lived.

I touched my fingers to my throat, half expecting to find a ruined mess of chewed, bloody flesh. For a second, I could have sworn I felt slobber from the dog’s jaws on my skin. No, I realized, not slobber, but my own clammy sweat.

All I wanted to do was throw the covers over my head, bundle up, and nap for another couple of hours—without nightmares, of course. I still felt pretty groggy. But I couldn’t stay in bed all day, not if Marty and I were going to talk to Lisa.

I jumped up and straightened the covers quickly. Compared to Alex’s perfectly made bed, mine looked pretty messy, but I didn’t think anyone would notice. I ducked my head into Marty’s room (his door was open) and saw he was already up and about. His bed hadn’t been made at all, so I felt a little better about my rush job.

A quick shower helped wake me up a little, and I spent a few minutes putting aloe lotion on my itching legs. I’d gotten a bit of sun the day before, and my nose and cheeks were bright red. With my luck, my skin would probably peel. I dressed quickly—this time wearing jeans instead of shorts.

Climbing the stairs, I heard a peculiar noise—clickity-click-clickety-clickity—from down the hall. I didn’t see anyone around, so I traced the sound to Mom’s room. The door stood open just a crack, so I knocked lightly and stuck my head in.

Mom lay on her belly in bed, her legs kicking slowly up and down behind her. Her folding travel typewriter lay in front of her, and she typed happily away. Sheets of paper covered the bed. Dressed in jeans and a baggy t-shirt, she looked like a kid doing homework. Looking up, she smiled and said, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“Morning.”

“You must have had a late night.” She smirked at me. “You never sleep in.”

“Huh?” Did she know about me sneaking out with Marty? How could she? I decided to play dumb. “Uh, not really. I…I guess I was still just really tired from the trip.”

“Hey, it’s your vacation.” She sat up. “You get to spend it however you want.”

I wondered if that included sneaking out late at night to hunt down a dog with human eyes.

“If you want to sleep late,” she said, “I’m not going to blame you. That’s what vacations are for.”

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Alex went into town with Mary and Shorty. Marty should be around here somewhere. He said he didn’t want to go without you, but he didn’t want to wake you, either.”

I felt a stab of disappointment. I would have liked to get a look at town too, but I guessed that’s what I got for oversleeping.

“What are you doing?” Craning my neck, I glanced at the paper sticking out of the top of the typewriter. “This is your vacation too, remember? That looks like work to me.”

“Not really,” she answered. “This is a lot more fun.”

“So, what is it?”

She smiled and blushed. Mom blushing! I never thought I would see the day. Now she really did look like a kid.

“If you must know, Mr. Nosy, I’m writing a book—a novel.”

“Really?” I asked. “What’s it about?”

“It’s a love story,” she said. “You wouldn’t like it.”

She was right. I was more into robots, rocket launchers, and radioactive mutants than romance. Still, it was exciting seeing Mom doing something like that. Imagine, in all my years I never knew my mom was a writer at heart.

I could tell she was eager to get back to her book. She kept fidgeting with the keyboard keys without even knowing it.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to work—I mean fun,” I said. “I’m going to go find Marty and see if I can get into some trouble.”

“All right,” she said, but then she paused and looked up at me with her whole attention. “Are you having an okay time?”

“Yeah. It’s not quite as awful as I thought it would be.”

Her bright smile made me happy I’d admitted it. “I’m glad.”

I stopped before I walked out the door. “Mom,” I said. “Good luck. With the book.”

She scrunched up her nose the way she did when she was pleased with something. “Thanks.”

Still a little heavy-eyed and thick-headed, I stumbled around the house in search of my cousin. In the kitchen, I found a plate half-full of frosted cinnamon rolls. Must have been leftovers from breakfast, I figured, and helped myself to one. Even cold, it tasted pretty good, super sweet and sticky. Deciding Marty wasn’t in the house, I headed outside.

The goats, watching from their pens, reminded me of the nightmare, and suddenly I didn’t feel like finishing the roll. I cocked my arm back and hurled it like a sugar-coated baseball into the pen. The chickens took off after it like outfielders chasing a pop fly.

“Nice throw,” Marty said.

I jumped. After a night full of horrible dreams, I didn’t like anyone sneaking up behind me. Marty came out of the shed, a half dozen cats circling his feet.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked him.

“You needed the sleep. We’re probably in for another late night. Besides, I had a bunch of chores to do, and I figured you’d rather sleep than help.”

Couldn’t really argue with him.

“You look pretty worn out yourself,” I told him. “You’ve got dark circles around your eyes.”

“Bad dreams.”

I jumped like someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of my shirt.

“Nightmares?” I asked. “About the witch?”

Marty gulped and nodded. “How did you know?”

“I dreamed about her, too. It was terrible. She kidnapped Alex.”

“In my dream, she was chopped into six separate parts, but spiders crawled all over her, and they were using their webs to stitch her back together. The whole time she was cackling at me.”

His dream sounded even worse than mine.

“I think Alex might have been dreaming about her, too.” I was starting to talk too fast, one word running into the next, the way I did when I was nervous. “When I went back to my room last night, he was talking in his sleep, and I heard him say her name.”

“That’s mighty strange,” he said. “Wonder what it means.”

“Might have something to do with the Bleeding Rock. Her ghost could still be haunting that place. Maybe we’re all having bad dreams because we visited the place where she was killed.”

“You’re the expert on ghosts and such,” Marty said, “so I reckon you’d know more about that sort of thing than I would.”

“But you know all about Maddie and all the other local legends.”

“We make a pretty good team, then.” He walked across the patio and picked up his trusty backpack, already loaded and waiting for him. “You about ready to get moving?”

“Where are we going?”

“I thought we’d hike into town, see if we can find Lisa.”

Lisa was in town? For some reason, I expected to find her in some woodland cabin, what with her being such a tomboy…and a respectable tracker to boot.

“If I had gotten up a little earlier, we could have ridden with your mom and dad.”

“And your brother,” Marty added. “I thought you wanted to leave him out of this.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

As we started down the dirt path, I remembered something.

“Was the dog in your dream, too?” I asked.

“Come to think of it, he was. He was just sort of standing off to the side, watching with these menacing, glowing eyes. I figured I dreamed him up just because we’ve been talking about him.”

“Maybe.” But something gnawed at the back of my mind. “We need to find out if Alex dreamed about the dog, too.”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t know anything about the dog. We never told him. If the dog was in his nightmare, that means it might somehow be connected to the witch.”

“Connected how?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet,” I said, and that seemed to satisfy my cousin. He wasn’t worried about the details. He only wanted to be there when everything came together.

We cut through the woods again, this time heading toward town. We stopped along the way and picked wild blackberries until our fingers were swollen from briar stings and our fingers and tongues were black with berry juice. I grew tired a lot more quickly than Marty, who was used to hiking back and forth all over the county. He was scrawny, but he had more energy than me, for sure! I think he got a little aggravated with all the stops for me to catch my breath.

“You need to toughen up if you’re gonna help me explore these woods,” he said, only half joking.

Back home, I rode my bicycle just about everywhere, but bikes would have been useless in the woods. Even on the back roads, the bike wouldn’t be of much use. The gravel would mire the tires down, and going a few yards would feel like a few miles, no matter how hard you pedaled. Besides, according to Marty, the quickest route was always a straight line, and that meant avoiding the winding roads for the most part and taking shortcuts through the woods.

Soon enough, we emerged from the shade of the trees and came up behind the Crooked Hills High School football field. The school was abandoned for the summer, of course, and we walked right across the field. I could almost hear the cheers from bleachers full of fans on a cool autumn night. Back home, I never really cared for playing football—baseball was my game—but I enjoyed watching my school’s team take the field. The smell of the concession stand. The chanting of the cheerleaders. The ref’s whistle. I imagined in a town as tiny as Crooked Hills, high school football was about as exciting as it got on a Friday night.

The high school itself was a long, red brick building, about half the size of the middle school I attended. The sign out front depicted a golden knight on horseback—the school’s mascot. The sign read, “See you in August, Chargers!”

“So where’s your school?” I asked Marty.

“Right here,” said Marty.

“The high school? What, are you in an advanced class or something? Did you skip a few grades?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What about middle school?”

“Never heard of it.”

At first, I thought he must have been pulling my leg again. “You’ve never heard of middle school?”

“We have an elementary and a high school. Nothing in the middle that I know of.”

I guessed there weren’t enough students for a separate middle school. Students in Crooked Hills went to elementary school until fifth grade, Marty explained, then high school for the rest of their scholastic career. In fact, the elementary was right next door to the high school, so the young kids could ride the same buses as the older kids. Marty, of course, never rode the bus, preferring to trek through the woods to get home every day.

It was hard to imagine that if I lived in Crooked Hills, I’d already be in high school!

I guessed the school setup made a certain Hicksville sense, sort of a step up from the one-room schoolhouses I’d always heard about. It just wasn’t anything like what I was accustomed to. Funny how little differences made me feel like I’d been exiled to an alien world.

We crossed the school’s lawn and started down the paved road. The summer sun baked the blacktop, and I felt the heat rising off of it, hot enough to cook a pizza. Soggy or not, my shoes were lifesavers. Marty’s pace was brisk. He was eager to continue the tour.

Within just a few minutes, I got my first look at downtown Crooked Hills.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Our first stop was the Circle Q Convenience Mart. A metal awning covered much of the Circle Q’s parking lot, giving customers some shade while they pumped gas at one of the rusty looking pumps rising from a concrete island. A man stood nearby, filling his pickup truck’s tank. As we walked by, he nodded and spat out a nasty stream of brown spittle. The tobacco juice bubbled on the pavement. Just outside the shop sat a large, glass-top cooler with a jumping fish painted on the side, right above the words “Live Bait.” I looked through the glass and saw stacks of cardboard buckets. They looked like Chinese take-out containers, only these were full of crickets and grubs and worms. A few stray crickets jumped around the filthy case and clung to the sides.

“That’s nothing,” Marty said. “Fishing’s a big sport in these parts. Almost every store sells night crawlers and such. Heck, even the dress shop has a barrel of worms out back. A buck ninety-nine for twenty-four squirmers.”

“No way,” I said.

Marty just grinned and went through the door. A little bell jingled as we stepped inside.

A row of booths lined one wall. Two men—both white-haired, but one clean shaven and the other sporting a Santa Claus-style beard—sat at one of the tables playing checkers. Refrigerated cases along one wall held cans and bottles of soda. A pair of shelves ran down the center of the room, forming lanes of candy and chips and Slim Jims and mini doughnuts. A glass case by the front counter was filled with fried chicken, potato wedges, and smoked turkey sandwiches, all under the glow of a heat lamp. My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was. I regretted throwing my cinnamon roll to the birds.

The clean-shaven man stood up, leaving his bearded companion to consider his next move in what must have been a very serious game. He took a position behind the cash register and greeted my cousin like he had known him all his life.

“Good to see you, Marty. How’s that daddy of yours doing?”

“Same as always, I reckon,” Marty said.

“Good to hear.” The man pursed his lips and peered at me. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is my cousin, Charlie. He’s come to visit from the city.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, sir,” I said as I browsed the aisles.

“Oh, don’t call me sir,” the man said. “It just don’t fit. Name’s Hap.”

“Let me guess,” I said, “short for Happy …”

“Heck no! Ask anybody around, and they’ll tell you I’m one of the crankiest so-and-sos you’re likely to meet.”

“That’s a fact,” the bearded man added from the booth. He never took his eyes off the checkerboard.

“You be quiet,” Hap called to him. “Nobody asked for your opinion, now did they?”

Marty and I bought a couple of sodas, some bubble gum, and a handful of peppermints for Lisa.

“To help butter her up,” Marty said.

I wanted to try one of the smoked turkey sandwiches, but Marty hissed under his breath and stopped me. He shook his head, short and quick, so Hap couldn’t see. Then he smiled and paid for everything. He wouldn’t let me pitch in.

We said our goodbyes and continued into town, sipping our sodas along the way.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“Trust me,” Marty said. “It’s sort of like living in the wild. Eventually, you learn which berries you can eat and which are poisonous. You live in these parts long enough, and you know better than to eat one of Hap’s sandwiches unless you want to spend all day in the bathroom.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I said.

Unlike the backroads, the streets here were paved, and we marched through knee-high weeds along the side. The road ran parallel to a wide, slow-moving creek. Several people stood on the banks on the other side, casting fishing lines into the muddy water or reeling fat, flopping fish to their doom. A few of them waved when they saw us. Marty waved back.

“I guess everyone around here knows everyone else, huh?”

“I wouldn’t want to live in a place where I didn’t know my neighbors,” Marty said. It sounded like he was quoting something he’d heard someone else say.

We came upon a crossroad sporting what I guessed to be Crooked Hills’s only stoplight. A truck hauling a trailer full of squealing hogs waited at the intersection for the green light, then rolled on, leaving an awful stench in its wake. The light continued to lazily change from green to yellow to red, but no additional traffic came this way. On the other side of the intersection, railroad tracks cut through the pavement. The tracks stretched into the distance in either direction. This must have been where the train passed at night.

Stepping over the tracks, Marty dug in his pocket and pulled out a penny. He carefully placed it on the metal rail.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making a peace offering. Didn’t that book of yours say anything about the railroad crossing?”

“I haven’t read the whole thing,” I said, “but I haven’t seen anything so far.”

“Years and years ago, when the trains came through on an almost hourly basis, a school bus full of kids stalled out on the tracks just as a train rounded the bend.” Marty pointed at the tracks, which curved into the trees not far from where we stood. “The train couldn’t stop in time and plowed right into the bus. A bunch of kids and the driver were all killed. Now, if a car ever stalls on the tracks, some unseen force will push it out of the way. And afterward, tiny fingerprints can be seen on the car’s windshield. It’s good luck to leave pennies on the track when you’re crossing to keep the ghosts happy.”

Once I looked carefully, I saw dozens of pennies—all mashed paper flat by the crushing weight of train wheels—lying in the dirt around the tracks. Just to be safe, I dug a penny out of my own pocket and placed it on the rail, right beside Marty’s. That taken care of, I crossed the tracks. Wind rushed through nearby trees, and the rustling of the leaves sounded like whispered voices.

Beyond the tracks awaited Main Street, Crooked Hills.

A diner, a drugstore, and a sporting goods shop lined the right side of the street, directly opposite a five-and-dime and a greasy-looking hamburger joint. Several stores stretched up the hill for a couple of blocks before giving way to rows of houses.

A little farther up the road, I spotted a movie theater. But before I got too excited, Marty told me it had been closed for years. The windows were boarded up, the glass covered in thick dust. A couple of sun-faded movie posters hung in the windows. I didn’t recognize the advertised movies, though. They must have been new when I was a baby.

“Let me guess,” I said. “The theater’s haunted, too.”

“You bet it is.” Marty nodded vigorously. “Sometimes, late at night, you can see light flickering behind the boarded up windows, and if you listen close you can hear old movies playing.”

I thought I detected the faint smell of buttered popcorn.

“We used to have a drive-in, too,” Marty said, “but it closed up a couple of years back.”

At the very least, I noticed a video store a few doors down. Knowing I could rent a few movies now and then comforted me.

I still didn’t know if Marty was right about every store selling live bait, but at least a couple certainly did—including the hamburger stand! My stomach gave a little kick, thinking of grubs and crickets bought and sold in such close proximity to hamburgers and hotdogs. But Marty assured me the food there was top-notch—edible without worry of food poisoning.

“Maybe we can get a bite to eat, then,” I said.

“Sure, but let’s talk to Lisa first.”

We approached an old-time barber shop. A candy-striped pole rotated red and white next to the door. Marty stopped just outside.

“Need a haircut?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Come on.”

The heavy smell of shaving cream rolled out as we opened the door. Old hunting and fishing magazines covered the seats of a couple of wooden benches in the waiting area. The barber—a tall, skinny man with bright red hair—tended a customer. He used a pair of noisy electric clippers to crop the man’s hair down to stubble.

“Hello, boys.” The barber looked up as he continued to cut a path through his customer’s hair. “Need a trim?”

“Hi, Mr. Summers,” Marty said. “Actually we’re looking for Lisa. Is she around today?”

“Sure.” Mr. Summers nodded toward a door in the back. “She’s in the storeroom. Go on back if you like.”

So Lisa’s dad was the local barber. Funny, the peppermints she ate so many of were the same color as the barber’s pole. Behind Mr. Summers, a large mirror covered the wall so customers could watch the barber as he worked. Next to the cash register and a glass container filled with black plastic combs floating in greenish fluid, a photograph was taped to the mirror. It depicted Lisa and her mom and dad, all smiles and freckles and red hair.

We entered the back room and found Lisa using a big push broom to sweep a massive pile of hair into the corner. I’d seen mounds of raked autumn leaves that couldn’t compare to the sheer volume of loose hair. Where did it all come from? Did they just sweep the clippings into the back room when they finished with a customer? Made sense, although I’d never put much thought into it before.

My nose started to twitch, but I pinched my nostrils to stifle a sneeze. One “achoo!” and we’d be lost in a blinding blizzard of hair clippings.

“What’s with all the hair?” I asked.

Lisa wrinkled her nose in distaste as she looked at the piles of hair. Swept up into the corner, the multi-colored mounds looked like giant calico cats, curled up and snoozing.

“We sell it to wig makers,” she said. “My dad says he makes more money selling hair than he does cutting it.”

I wondered if other barbers sold the hair they clipped. Was someone walking around out there with a wig made of my hair?

“What are you two doing here anyway?” Lisa asked.

Marty and I looked at each other. I raised my eyebrows.

“Go on,” I said. “Ask.”

“We need your help.” With a flourish, Marty presented Lisa with the paper bag full of peppermints.

Lisa looked in the bag, then leaned on the broom handle and eyed us suspiciously. “Help with what?” she asked, looking at me.

I drew in a deep breath before telling her about the train whistle, about the strange howling in the night, and about the dog. I started to mention the dreams, but realized she most likely wouldn’t believe us anyway.

“And you want me to sneak out of my house, risk getting into all sorts of trouble, just to help you find this dog?”

“That pretty much sums it up,” I said.

She considered her options for a moment or two, then said, “Where do you want to meet?”

“You mean you’ll help us?”

“Somebody has to keep you out of trouble,” she said.

“And you think you’ll be able to get out of the house?” I dropped my voice to a whisper, although I doubted Mr. Summers could hear us over the buzz of the clippers. “I mean, without getting caught?”

Marty answered for her.

“Who do you think you’re talking to? Of course she can sneak out without getting caught.” He slung his arm around my neck, grabbed me in a headlock, and rubbed his knuckles roughly against my skull. “I taught her everything she needs to know about sneaking.”

“You wish,” Lisa said. “It’s more like the other way around.”

We agreed to meet that night at the bridge. That was a good halfway point between Lisa’s house and Marty’s. The train usually came through town within a couple of hours after midnight, so we decided to meet at eleven o’clock sharp.

As we left the barber shop, Marty clapped an arm around my shoulder and said, “See? I told you she liked you!”

“Whatever. What makes you think she likes me?”

“Didn’t you see the way she was batting her eyelashes at you?” he asked.

“I didn’t see any such thing—” I felt my ears burning a little and knew they must have been beet red. “—because she didn’t do it.”

“Oh, Charlie!” Marty raised his voice to a shrill pitch, clasped his hands together next to his cheek, and fluttered his eyelids. “I’d be glad to help you, sweetie snookums!”

“Cut it out.” I gave him a shove. Laughing, he pushed me back.

I stumbled right into someone, almost knocking them over.

“Excuse me,” I said, turning.

The old woman I’d bumped swore under her breath. A tall, gangly woman, she glowered at me with a pinched face that looked like she’d just tasted something sour. She wore her hair pulled back into a tight bun, and her plain gray dress had been patched and stitched in several places. She leaned on a bent wooden cane, and in the other hand she carried a heavy bucket full of rich, dark soil and worms. A few worms squirmed on the sidewalk. They must have fallen out when I jostled her. The woman chewed on the inside of her mouth and fixed me with a cruel stare. Her blue eyes were so light they almost looked white.

“Sorry,” I said.

I gingerly plucked the worms off the sidewalk. They wriggled wetly in my fingers as I dropped them into the bucket.

I heard a strange clicking noise and noticed the old woman’s gnarled fingers flexing on the head of her cane. Her fingernails were long and curled and dirty. They looked as though they’d been sharpened into points, and the dirt made them look almost black. A strange, puffy scar covered the back of her hand.

She said nothing, but she watched me as Marty tugged my arm. We walked in the other direction—quickly.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Never mind her,” Marty said. “You want to stay away from her if you can.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name’s Dottie Brewster. She’s crazy. She used to be the school’s sixth grade science teacher, years and years ago, but she left under…strange circumstances.”

“What do you mean, strange?”

“There are all sorts of rumors. After her husband disappeared, people started talking. The official story is he ran off with another woman, but a lot of people believe he didn’t run off at all. They believe she killed him. Some folks say she was into all sorts of awful things. She quit working for the school after she was caught performing some sort of awful experiment in the science lab. The point is, she’s no good—dangerous—and we’re better off avoiding her. You saw her eyes, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, so?”

“My granddad used to say those were witching eyes. When evil burns in a person’s heart and mind, it boils the color right out of their eyes. They can hex you with a look.”

I could tell Marty didn’t like talking about the old woman. That scared me a little, since he seemed to like to talk about anything creepy at length. I looked over my shoulder and saw Mrs. Brewster was still watching the two of us. After a second or two, she shuffled across the road, lugging the bucket full of worms along.

“Why do you think she needs all those worms?”

“Could be any number of reasons, I reckon. Fishing, probably, or farming. Some farmers use worms to help fertilize their crops. Something about enriching the soil. Or maybe—just maybe—she’s using the worms for some sort of horrible tests and research. She lives out in the woods somewhere. Nobody knows where for sure. Nobody wants to know! She could be conducting any number of wild experiments!”

“So Crooked Hills has its own mad scientist.” I chuckled under my breath. “A regular Dr. Brewsterstein.”

We stopped at the hamburger stand and got a bite to eat. I had a hamburger with chili, and Marty got a big container of French fries and fried onions. It took me a minute to get used to the idea of nightcrawlers sold so close to the kitchen, but my hunger overwhelmed my revulsion. The food was delicious, super greasy just the way I like it.

“What now?” Marty asked. “Anything in particular you want to see?”

“Lots, actually. Guess there’s not a library around here, is there? I wouldn’t mind trying to dig up some more information on that dog and Maddie S—” I stopped myself, because I didn’t feel like I could muster enough spit on such a hot day. “—and local witch legends. Might help if we knew for sure what we’re getting into tracking the dog.”

“Good idea.” Marty set off down the street. “Follow me.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I glanced over my shoulder. Even though I no longer saw Mrs. Brewster, I still got the feeling she watched us. I felt the weight of her eyes.

Her witching eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Crooked Hills Library shared a quaint, Victorian-style house with the local Post Office. Except for the hand-painted sign out front, the building looked like any other house on the block, surrounded by a white picket fence and blooming flower gardens. We opened the gate—the hinges squeaked—and walked down the brick walkway. Marty waved to a woman tending the gardens.

“Hi, Mrs. Trilby.”

“Hello there, Martin.” Mrs. Trilby never looked up from her gardening. She wore a floppy hat, and shade covered her face. She drove a sharp hand spade into the earth and rooted up stones and weeds. She must have recognized my cousin’s voice. “I trust you’re behaving yourself this summer.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Marty said, taking the steps to the front door of the library two at a time. “See you around.”

“Good seeing you.” She drove the spade into the earth, rooting up rocks and clods of dirt. “And nice meeting you, Charlie.”

How does she know my name?

“Who was that?” I asked as we entered the library.

“She teaches English at my school. During the summer, she does odd jobs around town, usually something to do with gardening. She’s got a green thumb, I guess. She’s pretty much my favorite teacher, but she’s a little peculiar.”

I was starting to believe everyone in Crooked Hills was a little off-center, Marty included.

“She knew my name.”

“Well, yeah. I introduced you.”

“No, you didn’t. She never even looked at me, but she knew my name.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Marty said. “Word travels pretty fast in such a small town. She probably heard you were visiting from some busybody or another. Either that or—”

“Or what?”

“Well, she claims to come from a long line of fortune tellers. Says she can predict the future. I always figured she just said that stuff to make her students more interested, but you never know.”

A fortune-telling teacher? I doubted it. Marty was probably right. She probably just heard I was visiting and guessed who I was. Nothing magical about that. Why would someone who could predict the future waste their time teaching? I’d be playing the lottery, myself.

The portion of the house dedicated to the Crooked Hills Post Office amounted to little more than a glass-topped display case full of stamp books, a leaning tower of cardboard boxes and unruly envelopes destined for who knew where, and a metal desk bell marked with a handwritten sign reading “ring for service.” Behind the counter, the Postmaster leaned back in his chair, his fingers interlocked above his round belly, his head tilted back, his eyes closed, and his mouth hanging open as he snored. A fat green fly circled around his head, occasionally alighting on his lips. The Postmaster stirred when the fly landed, not waking but smacking his lips like a Venus flytrap snapping at prey.

Marty held his hand over the ringer and looked at me, the sides of his mouth curling devilishly. If he slapped the bell, he’d likely scare the napping Postmaster so bad he’d fall out of his chair.

I shook my head and mouthed, “No.”

Marty pursed his lips as if to say “you’re no fun,” but he moved his hand away from the bell.

I let out a sigh of relief.

The rest of the house was filled with books, stacked along the hallway walls, covering the steps leading upstairs, and piled two or three books deep on the mismatched shelves. A wooden card catalog stood in the corner, but it was also covered in books and looked like it hadn’t been used in decades. I wondered how anyone could find what they were searching for amidst all the clutter.

“This is the library?” I asked. “It looks more like the place where old books go to die.”

But Marty had already vanished, probably slipping through one of the side doors to search for Hardy Boys mysteries in a junky chamber. I continued down the hall into the main room, looking for any sign of books on local legends and true ghost stories. I figured in a town as haunted as Crooked Hills, there had to be plenty of books on the subject.

A large wooden counter—again piled with books—dominated what must have once been the living room. The leaning towers of mismatched paperbacks and hardbacks stretched like curvy columns almost to the ceiling. I couldn’t see behind the counter because the books were stacked so tall and close together.

“May I help you?” said a man’s voice from the other side of the wall of books.

I stopped in my tracks and craned my neck to get a look at the speaker.

One of the tall piles of books slid across the countertop. It looked ready to teeter over and collapse. A man stood behind the counter. He wore a tweed vest (even though it was a little stuffy) and a dark blue bow tie. His face was sweaty and red, and a pair of thick eyeglasses perched upon the bridge of his nose. He was bald on top, but on the sides his hair was thick, curly, and wiry. He looked like a stereotypical librarian, with a little bit of wacky scientist thrown in for good measure.

He looked familiar, too, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen him before.

“May I help you?” he asked again. “Is there something you’re looking for?”

“Superstition and folktales?” I asked, certain the eccentric librarian would have no idea where to look.

He disappeared behind the books for a second and emerged from around the side of the counter.

“Local legends, is it?” He led me to another room. “You’re a man after my own heart.”

He maneuvered through the maze of books, trailing a finger along the spines until he at last came to a stop. Like a magician whipping a cloth from a table without disturbing water glasses, he yanked a thick book from the center of the stack. I couldn’t believe we weren’t crushed beneath an avalanche of paper.

“This one might be to your liking.” He pushed the book into my hands. “I know it’s one of my favorites.”

The book was titled Witches in the Hills, by W. D. Goodwin—the same author who wrote the ghost story book Mom bought for me. Something in my head clicked. I looked at the beaming librarian, then at the book’s byline. I opened the cover to check out the back flap of the dust jacket. The picture of the author smiled back at me—bow tie, thick glasses, wiry hair, bald forehead and all.

“You’re W. D. Goodwin,” I said to the librarian.

“The one and only.” The librarian seemed a little taken aback, and the volume of his voice rose in excitement. He obviously didn’t expect anyone to really recognize him. He shook my hand as I introduced myself. His voice changed in pitch from one word to the next, high and squeaky one second, low and deep the next, stretching some syllables to painful lengths. Maybe he was trying to pull off some exotic accent, but it sounded a little silly. “So, young master Charles, you know my work? You’re a reader? Dare I say, a fan?”

“I have one of your books at home. Ozarks Ghosts and Legends.”

“Oh, yes, one of my earlier works. That’s probably why you didn’t recognize me right away.” He patted his bare forehead. “I had a little more hair up top when I posed for the dust jacket photo.”

“And you work at the library?”

“Can you think of a better place to conduct research?” he asked, waving at all the books. “And the paycheck helps make ends meet between books.”

At least a dozen questions raced through my mind. I wanted to ask Mr. Goodwin about the ghostly dog, about the Bleeding Rock, and about Maddie Someday. But I didn’t want to seem like a gushing fanboy, so I kept the questions to myself…for now.

“Well,” Mr. Goodwin said, “I’ll let you peruse the book. I’ve got work of my own to continue. Working on a new masterpiece myself. If you need anything else, just give a yell.”

With that, the librarian turned and weaved through the canyon of books, returning to the privacy of his desk.

I didn’t see any tables or chairs nearby, so I plopped down on top of a short stack of books and started to read. Mr. Goodwin may not have been much of a librarian, but he could certainly tell a good story. The book drew me in, and I spent the next hour or so reading about spook lights, and mysterious screams in the dead of night, and undead things haunting deserted barns like mausoleums. I didn’t find anything about ghostly dogs, although I found an entry on “fetches and familiars” that froze my heart as solid as an ice cube in the middle of winter.

According to the book, witches summoned spirits in the form of animals—usually cats, bats, or rats, but sometimes birds or goats or even dogs—to do their bidding. Much smarter than the average beast, fetches performed all sorts of tasks: guarding lairs, searching for potion ingredients—even murder.

What if the dog isn’t a ghost at all? I thought. What if it’s a fetch working for a witch?

Maybe even Maddie Someday.

You could recognize a fetch by the brand burned into its fur and skin, marking it as the property of a witch. Once branded, a fetch served the witch until one—or both—died.

I closed the book. I needed to know a little more about fetches, and I figured Mr. Goodwin was the perfect person to ask. Tucking the book under my arm, I went to find the author.

Before I could find Mr. Goodwin, though, Marty jumped out from around a corner. He startled me so badly, I almost dropped the book. His face was flushed, his hair matted to his forehead.

“We’ve got trouble,” he said. “Come on.”

I put the book down and followed him.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s the idea?”

He shushed me. Standing at a window in the front room, he pointed across the street.

“Take a look.”

A black Firebird was parked next to the sidewalk, just in front of an ice cream and soda shop. Two guys sat on the hood of the car. One was Greg Crewes, his arms crossed menacingly, a smoking cigarette hanging from his lips. The other looked to be a couple of years younger, but also a little bigger and meaner. I guessed he was Greg’s brother, Hatch. He drummed his fingers on the hood in time with unheard music. Light glinted on the intersecting jigsaw pattern of the cracked rear windshield and smashed mirror.

“You think they know we’re here?” I asked.

“They look like they’re waiting for someone, don’t they?” Marty looked around. “Think there’s a back door to this place?”

Not a bad idea—

A customer stepped out of the ice cream parlor, and the Crewes boys jumped to their feet.

Of course, I recognized their prey.

Alex.

“Oh, brother,” I muttered.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Alex was too busy concentrating on a double-scoop ice cream cone to notice the Crewes brothers closing in on him.

Greg Crewes stepped toward my little brother and barked something at him. Although I couldn’t hear him, I easily imagined what he was saying.

“Hey, kid! Come here!”

Alex snapped his head up and froze like a deer mesmerized by oncoming headlights. I was surprised he didn’t drop his ice cream. He tilted his head back to look up at Greg and Hatch towering over him.

“We’ve got to get him out of there,” I said.

I hated the idea of facing the Crewes brothers—especially without Lisa’s trusty slingshot as backup. But I couldn’t just let my brother get pounded. If I stepped in now and took the bullies by surprise, maybe Alex wouldn’t get smeared across the pavement like roadkill, and I might get out of the scrape with nothing more than a few broken bones. I knew Marty was terrified of squaring off against even one of the Crewes boys, let alone both of them. To his credit, he barely hesitated before following me outside.

We nearly flew off the front steps, along the flower-lined path, and out the gate of the picket fence.

Hatch swatted Alex’s hand, and the cone fell to the ground, the frozen treat already melting on the hot summer sidewalk. The bullies laughed, Hatch’s bellow deep and rumbling while Greg’s sounded high-pitched and sniveling and evil.

“What’s the matter?” Hatch stepped on one of the ice cream scoops and ground the heel of his scuffed hiking boot against the pavement. Rocky Road oozed out from under his foot. “You gonna cry?”

Alex’s lower lip and chin quivered, but he held the waterworks at bay.

We ran across the street, coming up quick behind Greg and Hatch. I wanted to avoid being seen for as long as possible. As we drew closer, I kept waiting for some brilliant idea to pop into my head, some plan that might guarantee Alex’s rescue without blood being spilt.

I heard Greg ask my brother, “Where are your friends? I’ve got a bone to pick with all three of you.”

Alex stuttered, unable to form a sensible answer.

Of course I was scared, but I couldn’t let my brother get hurt.

“We’re right here.” I tried to make my voice sound deep and fearsome, but I probably sounded more like a chipmunk imitating a gorilla. “Leave him alone.”

The brothers whirled around. Greg curled his lip into a satisfied sneer, and Hatch smacked his fist into his palm like a thug straight out of a cheesy gangster movie. Up close, he looked even larger—a brick wall with a bad temper.

“You punks hiding from me?” Greg asked.

“Just leave him alone,” I said again.

Rage twisted Greg’s face into something monstrous. Hatch looked at his brother, then imitated his expression.

“Are you telling me what to do?” Greg growled. “I don’t take orders from you.”

“Y-yeah. You’re real tough—” I fought to keep my voice from shaking. “—especially when you’re picking on a little kid.”

The words didn’t sound quite right coming from me. It sounded like something Marty would say in any situation except a confrontation with the Crewes boys. Next to me, my cousin visibly trembled. He didn’t so much as bat an eye at tarantulas or ghosts or witches, but Greg and Hatch terrified him. I wondered what had happened between them to scare Marty so. For now, though, I mustered as much bravery as possible, hoping some of it might rub off on Marty—and Alex, for that matter. All I needed was for the both of them to flee in a blind panic, leaving me fending for myself against a pair of fighting-mad rednecks.

I’d never been in a real fight before, especially not with two older kids. I doubted the couple of months of Tae Kwan Do lessons I’d taken at the Y could protect me from the world of hurt awaiting me. Still, I dropped into my best martial arts stance.

While Greg faced us, Hatch moved to stand behind us.

They were trying to box us in.

“Somebody’s going to pay for what you did to my car.” Greg didn’t seem to notice my aggressive posture, but at least he didn’t make fun of it either. “But if you just tell me who it was throwing rocks, I’ll be nice and let the three of you go.”

I wanted to play it tough. I wanted to tell the brothers that, while everyone in Crooked Hills might be scared of them, I wasn’t from around the area. I was from a real city where a couple of backwoods bullies like them wouldn’t last ten seconds. I wanted to tell them that if they ever met a real bully, they’d probably wet their pants. But I felt like my knees might buckle at any second.

So all I said was, “Nothing doing.”

But that was enough to make Greg even more furious. He stepped closer. Instinctively, I backed away, bumping right into Marty.

My muscles tensed. How should I fight a couple of monsters like the Crewes boys? A punch to the nose? A kick to the shin? To the groin? I’d seen enough fights at school to know I’d have a better chance if I kept my distance. If they dog-piled on top of me, I was finished. In my mind, Greg’s footsteps sounded like something from a Godzilla movie. Throom! Throom! The monster approached! Citizens of Tokyo, run for cover!

Greg grabbed me by the shoulder and jerked me closer.

With his other hand, he took the smoldering cigarette from his lips. He breathed out, and smoke washed across my face.

“H-hey…” Marty stammered. “Don’t…”

Greg moved the cigarette closer to my face. I tried to pull away, but he held me tight.

Hatch snorted.

I felt the heat of the cigarette on my skin. I turned my head away. The glowing tip of the cigarette was mere centimeters from touching my face…or even my eye!

A shadow passed over the faces of Greg and Hatch, like the sun had been momentarily eclipsed.

Greg stopped short and released me. He and Hatch exchanged looks. Without another word, they scrambled toward the car. Hatch almost knocked Marty over as he brushed past. Greg cranked the engine and hit the gas before his brother even jumped in. Hatch raced alongside the accelerating Firebird, barely hurling himself into the passenger seat before the tires screeched and the car sped away.

I touched my cheek. I could still feel the heat of the cigarette on my skin. It felt almost like a light sunburn.

“What was that about?” I muttered.

Marty and I looked at each other curiously.

“Mighty proud of you boys,” said a deep voice behind us.

We turned around and saw Uncle Shorty standing behind us. Where had he come from? It was him Greg and Hatch had been afraid of—and who could blame them? Even with his hands shoved in his coverall pockets and his shoulders slumped, he looked pretty intimidating.

“Proud of us?” I asked. “They were ready to rip us apart until you came along.”

“But you stood your ground.”

Uncle Shorty’s pickup was parked around the corner at the feed store. We helped load several bags of animal feed into the back. The bags of corn and seeds made me sneeze. We picked Aunt Mary up from the grocery store down the street. She had a number of paper bags filled with groceries, and we hauled those to the pickup, too. Afterward, Uncle Shorty treated Alex, Marty, and me to ice cream cones. I got black cherry, and Marty chose chocolate. Alex replaced his double scoops of Rocky Road. I was pleased to find a spinning comic book rack inside the ice cream parlor. I browsed through the titles and bought a couple. Even though the comics were a little beat up from the rack, at least my collection could continue to grow.

We rode home in the back of the pickup, with the warm breeze whipping in our hair and bugs occasionally splatting against our faces. The ride was pretty nice, but once we hit the dirt road, the vibrations through the bed of the truck rattled my teeth and numbed my butt.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I told Marty as we bounced along the dirt road.

“Ask away.”

“How come they call your dad Shorty? I mean, that’s not his real name, is it?”

“Might as well be,” Marty said. “His real name’s Martin, like mine. I’m a junior. But everyone knows him as Shorty.”

“But he’s not really short,” Alex said, his mouth smeared with ice cream as he gnawed at the sugar cone.

“Not to you and me,” Marty said, “but you should see his brothers. My dad was the runt of the litter compared to them. The three of them are considered the strongest men in the county. Why, I saw my Uncle Jasper tear a big, thick phonebook apart with his bare hands, just to show off.”

“So what happened to you?” I smiled. “Where are your muscles?”

Marty’s shoulders sagged and his brow furrowed. “I’ll fill out one of these days.”

I’d just been teasing him, but I could tell I hurt his feelings.

Way to go, I thought. He stood by your side against a pair of thugs who scare the living daylights out of him, and you insult him.

When we got home, we helped unload the bags of feed. As we hauled the sacks out of the truck, I asked Alex about his dream.

“You know,” I said, trying my best to be subtle, “you were talking in your sleep last night. Sounded like you were having bad dreams.”

“I did have bad dreams.” The color drained from Alex’s face. “Really bad.”

“Was it about Maddie Someday?” I asked. Behind me, Marty spat.

“I don’t remember much of it,” Alex said, hefting a bag from the truck bed. “But, yeah, I guess it was.”

That much I already knew, of course. “Anything else?” I asked, urging him to continue.

“Nope.”

“Nothing at all?”

“All I remember is the witch chasing me.”

I sighed and let the matter drop. My theory of the dog had been proven wrong.

“Oh, yeah,” Alex added. “There was a dog, too, I think.”

Marty and I looked at each other.

“It had funny eyes,” Alex said.

That changed everything.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“So what you’re telling me is the dog is working for Maddie Someday.”

Marty spat twice and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He left a slug-like trail of slobber over his knuckles.

We sat on the floor in Marty’s room, keeping our voices low. The weak glow of a small reading lamp pushed the shadows away. Looking out the window, I saw a light mist already creeping across the yard, the foggy shapes like living things. Talking about witches, I felt like I was huddled around a campfire telling made-up ghost stories—not getting ready to go outside and face a real one. I won’t even describe all the spitting going on while we talked about the witch. Suffice it to say, I’m surprised the carpet didn’t get soaked.

“It all sort of adds up, you know?”

For a few seconds, Marty looked at me curiously as he turned the idea over in his head. Then he gave up on trying to figure it out and admitted, “I don’t reckon I’m understanding you.”

“According to what I read, witches and warlocks can call upon evil spirits to serve them. They’re called familiars or fetches, and they look like animals.”

“I thought they used black cats.”

“Sure they do, but there’s nothing to stop them from using a dog. You and I both dreamed about Maddie and the dog. That might have been a coincidence. But Alex dreamed about them both, too, and we never mentioned the dog to him. There must be a connection.”

“Fair enough.” Marty nodded. “But Maddie died before my parents were even born. How come her mutt’s still snooping around in the woods? And what’s it doing digging near our house?”

“I haven’t figured that one out yet,” I said.

I should have told Marty I’d be spending the rest of my vacation inside, reading comic books and playing video games, avoiding the Bleeding Rock, avoiding the Crewes boys, and—especially—avoiding the fetch. But I knew I’d never be able to live my cowardice down. Besides, I was plenty curious to see what the dog was up to.

“We better get a move on,” Marty said. “We’re going to be late as it is, and Lisa won’t wait for us forever. Is Alex sleeping?”

“Like a rock,” I promised. “I was worried he’d have trouble sleeping after the nightmares he had last night, but he’s out cold.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

We quietly moved through the house to the back door. I didn’t even want to imagine the trouble we’d get into if we were caught sneaking out. No witch’s curse would be worse.

Getting out the back door without being seen was easy enough, since all the adults slept upstairs and Marty was an expert on opening doors without a peep from even the rustiest of hinges. As we crossed past the stairs, I thought I heard a tap-tap-tap sound from above. Mom typing away at her romance novel? It might have been my imagination. Mom wasn’t much of a night owl.

I felt as though the eyes of every ghost in Crooked Hills watched me. I thought about how black the woods could be at night, and how the cries of birds and possums sounded like the voices of restless spirits echoing in the dark. The shadows seemed deeper, more sinister. I tripped on roots erupting from the earth like the curved back of a dinosaur roiling out of Loch Ness. Mosquitoes and other insects buzzed warnings in my ear. The surrounding trees took on an unfamiliar, foreboding nature, strangers in the darkness. Color slipped away, and blacks and grays painted the forest.

Marty, of course, seemed right at home. He whistled under his breath, but even his tune seemed ominous, sad, and eerie.

Something sticky swept across my face. I spat and brushed the silky strands of a spiderweb out of my eyes and off my lips. Something tickled at my collar. I swatted the back of my neck, but found no spider. Marty looked back at me and smiled.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Peachy.”

I must have wiped imaginary webs from my face a dozen times.

A twig snapped in the darkness behind us.

Someone—something—followed us in the shadows.

Marty’s whistle trailed off into silence. He held still, listening.

I looked over my shoulder. Foggy shapes flitted through the trees like moldering ghosts. A few gauzy spiderwebs crisscrossed between gnarled branches.

The forest grew quiet. Everything felt still. The silence was even creepier than the odd noises. It was unnatural, like the entire forest held its breath in anticipation. My blood, rushing to my head, thundered in my ears like a waterfall.

Maybe I was hearing things. Letting my imagination play tricks on me.

Marty and I shared a wary look.

I took a few steps—

And heard the shuffling in the brush again. Someone or something was definitely trailing us through the trees, taking steps in time with us, holding still when we stopped.

Marty whirled around. A slash of pale moonlight crossed his face. His eyes were wide, his face sweaty.

“What was that?” he asked.

I saw only darkness swelling between the trees. Anyone could be hiding in the shadows. Anything.

The fetch?

I sure hoped not. But if the dog could enter our dreams, maybe it somehow knew we were looking for it. Maybe it was turning the tables on us.

Now the sound grew closer. It sounded like someone running through the woods, feet crunching twigs rapidly, swatting low-hanging branches aside, coming straight at us. Coming closer.

Closer.

My legs tensed, ready to spring into a run that would put an Olympic track star to shame.

The sound stopped, letting silence swallow it whole.

“What is that?” I whispered.

“Probably nothing,” Marty said. “A raccoon or possum.”

“Sounds bigger,” I said, although I really had no way of judging how big it was.

“I’m going to check,” Marty said.

“What?” My voice jumped from a hushed murmur to a shout. “You’re not serious, are you? You can’t wander off like that.”

“It’s probably nothing anyway, but I want to make sure. I can get a lot closer without you making a bunch of noise. I’ll be just fine.”

He sounded like a character from just about every horror movie I’d ever seen—but in all those movies, that character wandered off never to be seen again.

“I won’t go far,” he said, “and I’ll flick my flashlight on and off every couple of seconds, so you’ll see me the whole time.”

“Promise?”

Marty turned the flashlight on, holding it under his chin. The light painted his face in a phantom snarl. “You’re not scared of a little old ghost, are you?”

“Of course not,” I lied.

“I’ll be right back.”

Marty ducked between a pair of thick trees and vanished into the darkness. I heard the soft crackle of his footsteps through the twigs and leaves carpeting the ground and saw the bouncing beam of his flashlight piercing the shadows as he flicked it on for a second or two, then off.

On, then off.

I waited.

The flashlight flared in the darkness. Marty was another dark shape amidst the shadows, hunched over, creeping.

The light flipped off.

On. And now he was even farther away, peering around the trunk of a large oak. I inched after him, just a little. I didn’t want him to get too far away before the light switched—

Off.

I waited.

Come on, I thought. Turn on the light.

With every passing second, my heartbeat quickened.

“Marty?”

I stood glued to the spot for what seemed like forever. I saw no sign of my cousin. Didn’t hear him.

“Marty?” I kept my voice low and steady. “Where are you?”

The darkness, closing in around me, deeper now, refused to answer.

We shouldn’t have split up. What a stupid idea!

“If this is a joke,” I said, “it isn’t funny.”

I hesitated to turn my own flashlight on. If I scanned the beam through the shadows, would I see something awful? Would I see Marty’s body? Mutilated? Or just sitting rigidly, a look of terror on his face, as if he’d been frightened to death?

I pushed the thought from my mind and turned on the flashlight. My hand trembled, and the batteries inside the light rattled like bones. The surrounding fog bounced the glow back at me. I could almost see better without the flashlight.

I opened my mouth to call out again.

Sticks and twigs snapped nearby. Right next to me.

“Marty, is that you?”

Why didn’t he answer me?

Something scrambled through the twigs and weeds, too big to be an animal, snapping tree limbs back, coming right for me, moving quickly.

“Marty?”

No answer.

Whatever the thing in the darkness was—running faster now—it wasn’t my cousin. I saw the bushes shaking as something pushed through.

I didn’t wait around to get a good look. Taking off full speed through the woods, I fumbled with the flashlight, and it fell from my butterfingers. The beam of light spun around, casting a strange, slow-motion strobe effect through the woods. The flashlight must have broken as it hit the ground. I was plunged into darkness. As I ran, tree limbs slapped me in the face. Briars snagged and ripped my clothes. Knotted roots tugged at my feet. Somehow, I managed to keep from screaming.

I might have been heading for the old concrete bridge, but I couldn’t be sure. Who cared as long as I escaped whatever horrible thing chased after me? I imagined the fetch’s hot breath blasting across the back of my neck, its teeth nipping at my heels. I no longer heard it, but I knew—just knew—it was right behind me.

I staggered to a stop, leaning over to catch my breath. I turned in a circle, trying to find a recognizable landmark. But in the dead of night, I saw nothing even remotely familiar.

I was lost.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I remembered what Marty had said.

An unlearned man might get lost for days in the deep places, where the light of day doesn’t even cut through the thick branches.

And, if anything, I felt unlearned.

Even the Bleeding Rock would have been a welcome sight, haunted or not, even if blood fountained from the pores of the stone and phantoms pranced around upon the trampled, withered grass. At least I’d be able to get my bearings. No such luck.

Instead, I stumbled upon a tall tree—or least what was left of a tree. It stood in the middle of a clearing of maybe thirty feet, as if the other trees wanted nothing to do with this old, half-rotted giant. Even now, with all the branches rotted away and the upper boughs decayed to a jagged crown, the trunk must have stood twenty feet tall. The trunk—dotted with numerous gaping knotholes like open sores—was hollow. Empty, I realized, like the cast-off shell of a snail, like the pulpy innards had slithered out in search of an even larger covering of bark and moss.

I shivered.

It was just a tree—on old, dead tree, once massive and proud, but now rotted away from within.

Maybe I can climb it, I thought. It’s a lot taller than any of the others around here. I might be able to get a bird’s eye view of the area, maybe see something—or someone—I recognize.

It would be tough going without branches, but the knotholes would serve as suitable hand and foot holds. I wiped my sweaty palms against my shirt. Standing on my tiptoes, I hooked my fingers over the edge of the first hole. I pulled myself up, my sneakers slipping on the moss-slickened trunk a couple of times before catching hold. A warm sweat broke out across my forehead, and I stretched for the next gaping hole. Some of the bark crumbled beneath my touch as I tested my grip.

My fingertips brushed something.

Something furry.

A hideous, sharp-toothed beast leaped out of the hole, a mass of glowing eyes, snapping jaws, and slashing claws. I jerked my hand away just in time to avoid losing a finger. As I let go of the handhold, I tumbled to the ground. I hadn’t climbed very far, but when I landed my foot buckled beneath me. My ankle twisted in the damp earth, and I cried out in pain.

A possum, needle-toothed and hissing, crawled from the hollow, growling at me.

I clutched my ankle, hoping I hadn’t sprained it—or worse. I didn’t want to look, afraid I’d see a bone as jagged as the old tree’s crown peaking out from my skin. The possum, hanging from its nest, yowled and spat and bared its teeth.

Just stay where you are, I thought.

I was pretty sure possums ate meat, or at least, this particular possum wouldn’t mind taking a bite out of me. A nightmarish image danced through my mind: the possum, along with a horde of squealing young racing over me and picking my bones clean.

I slid my butt along the ground, dragging my leg.

Please don’t be broken.

A terrible screeching and fluttering came from within the tree. The snarling possum looked up, and so did I. My mouth flopped open.

A cloud of flapping, screeching bats surged out of the tree from almost every knothole and fissure in the decaying wood and from the rotting peak, thousands of them, so close together they covered the moon in a fluttering curtain. The bats must have been nesting in the tree, along with the possum and who knew what else.

Forgetting all about my injured leg, I rolled to my feet, threw my hands over my head, and fled like a hapless victim in a vampire movie. I wasn’t worried about having my blood drained—vampire bats weren’t native to Crooked Hills—but bats sometimes carried rabies, or so I’d always heard. Getting rabies meant getting loads of shots, which was much worse than a vampire’s bite in my estimation.

My ankle throbbed as I limped along, but at least it wasn’t broken.

I burst from the tree line and sucked down a big breath of air, as if I’d been drowning in one of the creek’s deep pockets. I lost my footing and stumbled down a slight incline. I rolled down the muddy hillside and sprawled at the bottom. My left leg had gone numb below the knee.

I felt around, my fingers digging in the cold, hard pebbles surrounding me. I lifted my head. The pale banner of the gravel roadway stretched into the darkness to my right and left.

The gravel road.

I stood and kept moving, hoping to follow the road to the bridge, to home, to town. It didn’t matter—anywhere but here! The night mist felt like steam against my skin. My lungs ached with every breath, and I wanted nothing more than to collapse and rest. I dragged my feet in the gravel, clouds of dust puffing up behind me. I rounded the corner—

And saw the bridge.

I couldn’t believe how close I’d been without even realizing it.

I nearly fell over by the time I made it to the bridge. I collapsed against the cool, stony side of the structure, closed my eyes, and tried to catch my breath. I massaged my ankle. The babbling rush of the creek helped to calm me…but only for a moment.

My eyes snapped open.

“Lisa? Marty?”

No answer. The sound of the creek water made me think of the gurgling chitter of—

Goblins.

Even if something had happened to Marty, Lisa should have been here by now, armed with her trusty slingshot and lucky stone, ready to drive the shadows back into hiding. She could have helped me find my cousin.

I was still alone.

Now the flow of the creek below sounded like the static-filled hiss of a dead television screen.

I stood, putting as little weight as possible on my left leg. The feeling was coming back, but now I wished it was numb again. Pain pulsed through my ankle, like the tiny waves lapping at the stony beach, easing up every now and again, then rushing back with a vengeance.

“Hello?” I called into the darkness. I hated to raise my voice, what with the something—possibly the fetch itself—lurking nearby. But what choice did I have?

“Lisa? Marty?”

I looked over the edge of the bridge. Water flowed below, dark and cold. reflecting the light of the stars above, my sweaty, frightened face peering up at me from the creek.

Where are they?

I limped back and forth on the bridge. Bits of loose mortar rasped underfoot and skittered across the concrete. I noticed dozens of cracks spreading through the bridge like veins.

The stabbing pain in my ankle eased a little. After a couple of minutes, I put more weight on it. It didn’t feel nearly as bad as it had earlier.

Maybe they’re trying to scare me, I thought.

Sure, they were waiting for the perfect moment to jump out of the shadows and watch me leap right out of my skin. They’d have a good laugh at my expense. Sounded like something Marty would do, but I couldn’t imagine Lisa going along with something like that.

So if they aren’t trying to scare me, where—

A couple of awful thoughts raced through my mind. What if they’d been kidnapped? The Crewes brothers had sworn revenge. Greg and Hatch might be lurking nearby right now, watching, waiting to spring upon me when I turned my back. I didn’t even want to think about what they might do if they caught Lisa and Marty.

What if something else had happened to them? Something worse…

Here we were, stalking through one of the most haunted areas in the country in the dead of night. We were just asking for trouble, prancing around like bait on a hook for ghosts and witches and werewolves and enough other monsters to fill a class reunion from one of my horror magazines.

Calm down, I told myself. Maybe they’re looking for you. Maybe they’re trying to find out who or what was sneaking through the woods.

But where does that leave me?

All alone on a creepy bridge, that’s where!

All I could do…was wait.

So many awful thoughts raced through my mind. I told myself to remain calm, but my fears and worries drowned out rational thinking.

That’s probably why I didn’t hear someone sneaking up behind me until a hand grasped my shoulder.

“Yeow!” I cried.

If not for the hand gripping my shoulder, I might have jumped over the side of the bridge and into the churning waters below. More than likely, I would have broken my neck, but the risk might have been better than facing whatever ghost or backwoods butcher had hold of me now.

My captor howled with laughter, and I recognized the voice. Marty. His giggling set my blood to boiling. He snickered and pointed at me.

“Jerk!” I said, punching him in the arm. There wasn’t enough meat on his bones, and I’m sure the punch hurt my knuckles more than it hurt him.

He grabbed his bicep and staggered away. He kept laughing, even when he said, “Ow!!”

Lisa stood a few feet behind him, her arms crossed. At least she wasn’t laughing. In fact, she scowled at my cousin.

“I told him not to scare you,” she said.

“It’s all right.” My heartbeat started to slow to a reasonable rate again. Instead of pounding at the speed of a galloping horse, it was closer to a hamster in one of those spinning wheels. I shot Marty a dirty look. “Where were you? I thought something horrible happened to you.”

“Sorry about that.” Marty rubbed his arm. “I figured you’d find your way here, but we got nervous when you didn’t show up, so we decided to go looking for you. When we heard you calling, we double-timed it back.”

And took the opportunity to scare the daylights out of me.

“Did you at least see what was following us?” I asked.

Marty shook his head. “Never got a really good look at him.”

“Him?”

“I’m pretty sure I spotted a person out there, but like I said, I never got a close look. That’s why I turned off the flashlight. I tried to sneak up on him, but he ran off. He was small, though, and—” Marty paused and swallowed. “—and he looked like his skin was gray.”

“Gray?” I asked. “So, what, you saw an alien?”

“I don’t know what it was.” Marty sounded a little irritated by my joke. “All I’m saying is, whatever it is, it’s small and gray and fast.”

“Do you think it was one of Maddie’s goblins?” Lisa said. She smiled and laughed, the rosy glow of her cheeks devoid of color in the moonlight. Gray.

I didn’t find the idea funny at all.

“I figured I should get back.” Marty ignored the talk of a goblin. Either he didn’t care or didn’t want to think about it. “I didn’t see you, though, so I thought you came to the bridge without me.”

“I got turned around,” I admitted. “I’m surprised I found the bridge at all.”

I should have been a lot angrier at my cousin for ditching me, but I was simply too glad not to be alone anymore.

“I’ve been thinking,” Lisa said.

Marty snorted. “That’s a first.”

“Very funny.” She crossed her arms and made a face at him. “Anyway, I doubt we’ll be able to stay hidden from the dog. If it catches our scent, we may blow our chances.”

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“I took this from my dad’s hunting supplies.” Lisa dug a small glass bottle out of her hip pocket. “It’s mainly used for deer hunting, but I think it’ll mask our scent from the dog pretty well, too.”

“What is it?”

She handed me the bottle. Scent-Be-Gone, it read. I uncapped the bottle and smelled the liquid.

“Ugh!” I pinched my nostrils shut and held the bottle at arm’s length. The stench coming from within made my stomach do flips. “That’s awful! What is it?”

“It’s part skunk urine.”

“Urine!” My face contorted into a look of disgust. “We don’t have to drink it, do we?”

“Of course not, silly. You put it on your skin.”

“I know. I was only kidding.”

“Uh-huh.” She winked at me. “Sure.”

Marty sniffed the bottle and jumped, almost spilling it all over himself. He fanned his hand before his nose and spit a couple of times, as if trying to clear an awful taste from his mouth.

“No way am I putting that stuff on me.”

“Fine.” Lisa took the bottle, capped it, and started to put it in her pocket. “If the dog catches our scent, though, we’ll just be wasting our time.”

“But that stuff reeks,” I said. “Won’t the dog smell it?”

“Chances are, it smells more natural than we do. We wouldn’t have to use much either, just a little on our hands and necks should do the trick.”

“All right.” Marty held out his hand to take the bottle. “I’ll try it, but it better work.”

We took turns putting the smelly, slimy liquid on our hands and necks. My eyes watered like I’d been peeling onions. It dawned on me that Lisa might be playing an awful prank on us, tricking us into putting the rancid stuff on just so she could have a good laugh.

“We’ll never be able to sneak back home,” Marty said, “not with this junk all over us.”

He was right, of course. We’d stink up the house and wake everyone as surely as if we’d stuck smelling salts under their noses.

“Have a little faith, why don’t you?” Lisa held up a couple of sealed sandwich bags. Each bag contained a tiny bar of soap and a washcloth. “One for each of us. We can wash up in the creek once we’re done.”

“Good idea.” I nudged Marty. “Some of us could use a bath, anyway.”

We didn’t talk much as we waited for the train. Lisa combed the pebble beach, selecting a couple to add to her arsenal. Marty lay on the wide, flat rail of the bridge, staring up into the sky. If he shifted so much as an inch to the right, he’d plummet over the side and into the creek. I hobbled in a circle, trying to work the kinks out of my sore ankle. If not for the pain—and the terrible odor of the Scent-Be-Gone—I might have gotten sleepy.

The train horn sounded in the darkness, three long blasts echoing in the night. The sound reverberated through the ground, ever so slightly, spreading through the soles of my shoes. Lisa scrambled up the hill, and Marty jumped to his feet.

A second passed, then a minute, without a peep from our mysterious dog.

“So what now?” Lisa asked. “I thought we were supposed to hear this dog of yours or something.”

“Give it a second.”

“Marty Widows, I swear, this better not be another of your pranks. I didn’t break my curfew for a snipe hunt.”

I didn’t know why, but for some reason I took satisfaction in Lisa’s frustration with Marty.

Not a minute later, the dog’s howl echoed through the night.

It sounded close.

“He’s right on top of us!” Marty gasped.

“Not quite.” Lisa cocked her head, listening, even though the howl had trailed into nothingness. “But he’s nearby. Should be easy to track.”

She set off down the road at a trot. Marty and I trailed a couple of yards behind her. We didn’t want to cramp her style once she picked up the dog’s trail. Every once in a while, she paused, listened, and scanned the trees. Then she picked up the pace with renewed vigor.

I was pretty sure I knew where we’d find the fetch. All the clues so far pointed to one spot, but Lisa helped us confirm it when she ducked off the road and crossed into the forest. Even without knowing the area very well, I knew where she was heading.

The Bleeding Rock.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“This is it.” Lisa crouched several yards away from the ancient stone. She spoke in a breathless whisper. “The dog came this way. I saw several trails leading to and from the rock. Looks like the dog’s been coming here every night for a couple of weeks.”

“I told you!” I said. “I knew the dog had something to do with Maddie Someday!”

A thick netting of branches and hanging vines blocked our view of the stone, but I heard a shuffling and a series of quick snorts.

“It’s still up there,” I said.

The three of us crept forward—carefully!—to get a peek. Another couple of steps, and the grass and weeds gave way to dirt and withered runners. If I wanted to turn back, now was my chance. As I took another step, the chance quickly slipped away.

I saw the fetch.

Atop the Bleeding Rock stood the dog, its head tilted back as it sniffed the air. Dirt and frothy spittle matted the fur around its muzzle, eyes, and neck. Its hair rose in nasty tufts, and beneath I saw bloated gray insects—ticks—burrowing into the dog’s skin. On its side, a symbol had been branded through into its flesh, a circle with a line slashed through it, like the symbol for NO. Its eyes looked like those of a normal dog for the most part, deep set and brown, but when a sliver of moonlight swept across the dog’s face, the reflection in its eyes looked more human…and not just human, but creepy, too.

Pale blue.

“Witching eyes,” Marty said. He realized he’d spoken aloud and slapped his hand over his mouth.

The fetch snapped its head around and leaped off the stone on the other side. It crashed through the thistles and thorns on the opposite edge of the clearing and darted through the trees.

“Way to go,” I said. “You scared it off.”

Marty shook his head in frustration.

“Where’s it going now?” he asked.

“Only one way to find out.” Lisa stepped out of hiding and searched the barren ground around the large stone. She was like a character out of a Jack London novel, picking up clues from her surroundings. She stood up, looked into the woods, and scratched her red hair as if trying to figure out a puzzle. “We’ll have to track it.”

“You can do that?” I asked.

She shot me a look that said, I can’t believe you’d even ask such a thing, then plunged through the trees gracefully, ducking under branches and skirting thorn bushes. She moved like someone more comfortable in the wilderness than indoors. She was showing off just a little, daring us to keep pace with her.

For the next fifteen minutes, we followed Lisa as she tracked the dog. She didn’t use a flashlight, and every now and then I lost sight of her completely. One second, she was right in front of me. The next, she pushed through a bank of low, lazy fog and vanished. I rushed to keep up, limping on my bum ankle, my breath catching in my throat whenever I lost track of her. A sticky sweat coated my skin. My chest ached with every breath. Then I spotted her again, her skin pale in the moonlight, her freckles like the spots of a hunting leopard. She glanced back at me, then pulled what looked like a tuft of dog’s hair from a branch.

“Give her some room,” Marty said.

Like that’s gonna be a problem.

When we finally caught up with Lisa, she crouched behind a fallen log. She held a finger to her lips, shushing us. On the other side of the downed tree waited the fetch, busy with whatever strange errand its master had commanded.

Hunched over and pawing at the ground, the fetch rooted through fallen leaves as if looking for a scrap of food. It burrowed in the moist earth, nipping and tugging thick roots between its teeth. It snorted and moved in a circle, sniffing the ground.

As I inched closer, my foot settled on a spindly twig.

Snap!

The dog looked up, sniffed the air, and growled. Its floppy ears perked up. Its hair bristled. Its terrible eyes turned in our direction.

We ducked. The three of us hugged the fallen tree. I saw worm trails winding through the rotting wood. Fat, glossy beetles hid in the bark’s nooks and crannies, their antennae waving at me. A shiver raced along my spine.

The dog shuffled through the leaves, padding closer, sniffing and snorting around the fallen tree.

Lisa clutched the slingshot close to her chest, the way a baby might hold onto a security blanket. Her knuckles were white, she gripped the slingshot so tightly. The weapon wouldn’t be much use to us, not at this range, not if the fetch savagely attacked us, leaping over the tree and tearing at our flesh with its teeth and nails, all the while glaring at us with those awful eyes—

The fetch panted steadily, rapid blasts of hot air growing closer, closer.

I held my breath.

Instead of leaping over the log, the fetch growled a warning, then took off in the other direction, scurrying through the low-hanging brush.

Marty jumped up and crawled over the log.

Lisa and I stayed put, and I hissed for my cousin to wait up. He spun on his heels, annoyed and jumping from foot to foot anxiously, more like someone who needed a bathroom than someone chasing a witch’s familiar. He tossed his hands in the air.

“It’s getting away,” he whined.

“I think we should quit while we’re ahead.” Lisa popped a peppermint into her mouth and rolled it around nervously, the hard candy clicking against her teeth. “It’s getting pretty late.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’d like to know what the dog’s doing just as much as you,” I said, “but I think we should call it a night.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” Marty stuck a finger in his ear, making a show of cleaning it out. “We’ve got him on the run. You can’t seriously want to give up now just because you’re a little chicken.”

“I’m not scared,” I said.

“Whatever you say. Chicken.”

My ears burned. I didn’t like Marty making fun of me, especially not in front of Lisa. If he didn’t take it back—

Lisa jumped up and socked Marty in the shoulder—in the exact same spot I’d punched him earlier. He flinched and recoiled away from her.

“First of all,” Lisa said, “I don’t think we have him on the run at all. I get the feeling he just had more important things to bother with than three kids. Second of all, don’t pretend you’re not scared. I saw the look on your face. You were just as frightened as we were, but all of a sudden you want to act tough.”

Lisa’s argument had knocked some of the wind out of his sails. Marty pursed his lips and looked at me, hoping to find an ally. He raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t look at me.” I admit, standing up to the onslaught of his big, pleading eyes was tough. If I wasn’t so mad, I might have given in. “Nobody here but us chickens.”

“Fine.” Marty thumbed the flashlight’s switch, testing the batteries. “You don’t want to finish what you started, I don’t care. But I’m going after the dog, with or without you.”

“You’ll never be able to track him,” Lisa said, “not without me.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Marty pointed into the trees. “He went that way. It’s a start, at least.”

“Come on, Marty,” I said. “Let’s just go home.”

Marty turned and trudged after the fetch. He pointed the flashlight’s beam into the darkness. He glanced over his shoulder one last time.

I couldn’t just let him traipse off by himself, could I? I might have been angry, but I knew I couldn’t let him go alone.

“He’s so hardheaded,” Lisa said. “He’s going to get hurt.”

“If you want to go home,” I said, “I understand, but I’m going with him.”

“If I leave now,” Lisa said, “the blood of both of you will be on my hands.”

A little jolt of excitement streaked through me as she brushed by, smelling of peppermints.

“Wait up,” I called to Marty.

He kept moving, of course, stubborn old Marty, trying to prove he didn’t need or want our help. He pushed a branch away, letting it swing back, almost swatting Lisa in the face. I heard an angry growl come from Lisa’s throat as she caught him by the shoulder.

“You’re going the wrong way.” She jerked her thumb to the right. “The dog went that way.”

At first, Marty scowled at us, but his scowl gradually turned into a smile.

“I knew you guys wouldn’t let me down.”

“Ten minutes,” Lisa said, stepping past him to pick up the dog’s trail again. “No more. If we don’t find the dog by then, we go home.”

“Fine by me,” Marty said.

But ten minutes turned into fifteen, and fifteen into twenty as Marty urged us to continue the hunt. “Just a few minutes more,” Marty begged every time we were about to give up. “We’ve got to be getting close.” I started to wonder if we’d even make it back home before the break of dawn. We’d gone an awful long way from home.

Lisa must’ve had it up to her ears with tracking the fetch, but she didn’t complain about it. Finally, she held up her hand, signaling for us to stop. We waited until she waved for us to join her. We crouched down next to her. Marty almost pushed through the trees, but he suddenly jumped back, like a killer bee had buzzed a part through his hair.

Just beyond our hiding spot, the woods gave way to a clearing. A small, run down house and a couple of sheds stood between us and a paved road slicing a path through the hills. On the other side of the road, the woods rose wild once again. A gauzy curtain of late night mist crawled out of the trees on the other side of the road, gliding over the pavement and through the yard.

One of the sheds looked brand new, like it was just built, while the rest looked decayed and on the verge of collapse. The new shed’s large double doors were closed, a heavy wooden beam holding them in place.

The fetch sniffed around the building.

“Who lives here?” I asked.

Lisa and Marty looked at each other, and Marty’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed down his fear. He licked his dry lips.

And suddenly…I knew. The answer to my question popped into my head, and I didn’t like it. Only one thing—well, two things, actually—scared Marty so bad.

“Greg and Hatch Crewes,” I said.

“How’d you know?” Marty asked.

“Just a guess.”

I didn’t want to tell him his fear painted his face like clown make-up.

“That’s a pretty lucky guess.” Lisa pointed toward the dog. The fetch padded around the base of the newer shed, sniffing through tall weeds sprouting along the wall. “Want to take a guess about what it’s looking for?”

“Any ideas what’s in there?”

“I reckon that’s where Greg parks his car.” Marty scratched his chin. “Greg thinks of that car as his baby. No way he’d let it sit out in the open, exposed to the elements.”

Pretty good deduction on Marty’s part. Maybe those Hardy Boys books had taught him something.

I scanned the driveway. A beat-up blue and white pickup sat in the drive. Probably their father’s truck. I didn’t see Greg’s car anywhere. It was most likely locked away in the shed.

“Just the truck?” I asked. “What does Mrs. Crewes drive?”

“There is no Mrs. Crewes.” Lisa shook her head. “Not anymore, anyway. She died when Greg and Hatch were real young.”

“Oh.”

The word just popped out of my mouth. Funny, I hadn’t known Mrs. Crewes, and I certainly hated Greg and Hatch, but I felt a little knot of sadness swell in my throat. I felt sorry for them, losing their mom.

“So what’s the dog want with Greg’s car?” Lisa asked.

“Maybe he wants to mark the tires,” I said. I thought the idea was pretty funny, but nobody laughed.

Still sniffing the ground and pawing at the dirt, the dog disappeared behind the shed. Its mangy, wagging tail peeked out from around the side for a second or two, then slipped away. I tried to see where it was going, but the darkness and fog blinded me.

Then Marty did something I never expected. Still hunkered down, he tensed like a coiling spring. He let out a half-growl half-sigh and jumped out of the brush. He jogged across the yard to the shed, dirt puffing under his feet.

“What are you doing?” I hissed, nowhere near loud enough to be heard by anyone but Lisa.

As much as the Crewes boys terrified him, he hated the idea of losing the fetch’s trail again. He might never stop searching unless someone forced him. He’d chase the dog until—

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Lisa said.

He dashed through splashes of shadow and moonlight. He hugged the shed’s wall like a soldier behind enemy lines. He inched along the side of the shed and peered around the corner. He looked back in our direction. I don’t think he could see us, but he shrugged and shook his head. He didn’t see the fetch. He ducked around the corner and vanished into mist and shadow.

As far as I knew, I might never see him again.

“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 into 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!” and 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 and 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. It 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 t-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 around, 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, scurrying 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 fingers 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 Creweses’ 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, listening 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 gladder 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 hadn’t been 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 little 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 tune was in kind of a tug-of-war with hissing static. 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.

I looked out the window, the shadows of trees sliding across the glass. I watched the woods for any sign of the fetch.

“Uncle Shorty,” I said, “can I ask you a question?”

“Sure thing.”

“Why are you afraid of dogs?”

My uncle looked over at me and pursed his lips. “Who told you that?”

I slouched down in my seat. The truck climbed a hill, and we turned onto the paved road leading to downtown Crooked Hills.

“I’m not afraid of dogs,” Shorty said. “Not really. I used to love them.”

“But not anymore?”

“No.” His grip tightened on the steering wheel. “Not anymore.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“When I was a boy, my daddy found this little beagle puppy on the side of the road. Back then, it wasn’t nothing for someone to throw a dog or cat out if they didn’t want anything to do with it. Daddy brought this puppy home and gave it to my brothers and me to take care of. The puppy grew up to be a right fine dog. We named him Petey, after the dog on the Little Rascals. You ever hear of that show?”

I nodded. “It used to play on TV after school. I didn’t really watch it. I was more interested in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.”

“Never heard if it.”

Uncle Shorty stopped at the crossroads and waited for the light to turn green.

“Petey liked to run at night,” Shorty said. “Beagles are natural born hunters, and Petey ran through the woods from dusk till dawn, looking for rabbits and squirrels and birds. Every morning, though, he’d be waiting at our back door, tail wagging, waiting for us to throw him some breakfast scraps. Then one morning, he didn’t come home.”

The pickup rattled over the railroad tracks. Crushed pennies glittered in the afternoon sun.

“I went out in the woods to look for him. I called for him till my throat was raw. When I found him, Petey was dead. He was all torn to shreds. At first, I didn’t know what happened to him, but I looked up and saw a whole pack of dirty, filthy wild dogs stalking me from a nearby hill. There must have been a dozen of them, some small, some large, and they chased me down, barking and growling. One of them caught hold of my arm and tore me up pretty good. I had to get two dozen stitches.”

Shorty held his arm out to me. Nasty-looking scars ran all the way from his wrist to his elbow. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed them before.

“I like to think Petey was trying to run those dogs off when they killed him.” The muscles in my uncle’s jaw popped. “I’ll never forget that dog that bit me, though, yellow and mangy and covered in ticks.”

Sounds like the fetch, I thought. Surely it can’t be the same dog.

“What happened to the dogs?” My voice cracked just a little.

“My daddy and brothers went out in the woods looking for them, but they never saw them again.” He drew in a deep breath. “Ever since, I just haven’t been partial to dogs. Figure I’ll never have another one as good as Petey, anyway.”

We pulled to a stop outside the library. Uncle Shorty let the truck idle as I opened the door and hopped out. He promised to return in about an hour. He winked.

“Try not to get into any scuffles this time.”

“I’ll try.”

The truck rumbled off, and I walked along the flower-lined path to the library.

I almost didn’t see Mrs. Trilby kneeling in the shade of the covered porch. She worked with a decorative wooden planter, pushing dark soil up around the stems of purple flowers. The fortune telling teacher wore a pair of heavy worker’s gloves, a size or two too big for her. Dirt covered her arms up to the elbows. She pulled a couple of wriggling earthworms from a plastic sandwich bag, pinched them between clumsy, gloved fingers, and dropped them into the planter.

“Hi, Mrs. Trilby,” I said.

“Hello, Charlie. How’s your vacation?”

Whether you can tell the future or you’re just a busybody, I thought, you probably already know.

“It’s going just fine.” I eyed the flowers. “What’s with the worms?”

“They help enrich the soil.” She smiled. When she looked up, a strand of dark hair fell out from beneath the floppy hat she wore. She swept it back with a gloved hand, leaving a smear of dirt on her cheek. She had a kind face. “Are you interested in gardening? Or just in worms?”

“Just curious,” I said.

She went back to work, and I stepped through the front door. Tiptoeing past the snoozing Postmaster, I navigated through the maze of books to the main desk. Mr. Goodwin perched upon what looked like a throne of hardbacks. He held a musty-looking book in one hand, examining the spine for defects.

“Ah! Young master Charles!” He looked up and set the book aside. “Come to browse our selection again?”

“I thought I’d take another look at the folklore books, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.” He stood up, and the teetering mound of books beneath him collapsed like a house of cards. He paid no heed to the mess as he passed me. “This way.”

The books were now located in a different part of the house, set off from the disarray of the rest of the collection and displayed neatly on their own shelf. On one of the shelves sat a framed photograph of Mr. Goodwin, along with a placard reading “Local Author W. D. Goodwin. Special Collection.” A padded reading chair stood beside the shelf.

Funny, when I first visited, the books had been hidden under a pile. Now that someone had come looking for the books, Mr. Goodwin’s head was swelling like a balloon. He had set up a special display just for his books. Who was I to burst his bubble? Besides, I didn’t want to get splattered with brains when his swelled head popped.

I thanked him, sat in the chair, and cracked open one of the books.

I scanned the table of contents for any mention of Maddie. I came up empty with the first two books. They focused primarily on ghosts, not witches. But when I opened the copy of Mystery and Lore of the Hillfolk, I turned right to a section on the area’s most feared witch.

“Even as Maddie was put to death,” the book read, “she swore to return from the grave to take revenge against the townsfolk of Crooked Hills. The men and women who accused her took her at her word, for no witch may break a promise once it has crossed her lips. For this reason, they dismembered her, burying her body parts in hidden graves throughout the county.”

I paged through the book, which traced the stories of witches through the years. Even though the coven had been driven away before Maddie died, some twisted souls still returned to the area from time to time, trying to find a way to carry on Maddie’s evil legacy.

More than thirty years ago, a grocer named Silas Kerr thought he heard Maddie speaking to him in his dreams, and he kidnapped a girl to be sacrificed upon the Bleeding Rock. Luckily, Kerr was caught and arrested before he harmed her. They say he screamed Maddie’s name as he was dragged away, crying that his nightmares would never stop until blood was spilled.

And just ten years ago, when pets started vanishing from backyards, the townsfolk blamed it on Maddie. The pets were found, all still alive but nearly starved to death, in the cellar of an abandoned house. The word “Someday” had been written thousands of times upon the concrete walls.

Someday.

Nearby, a floorboard creaked, and a shadow swept across my face. I looked up and saw Mrs. Trilby stalking toward me. She had a blank expression on her face. The kindness had just been sort of wiped away. Her hair hung down before her eyes. The work gloves she still wore were caked with thick dirt.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“Excuse me?” I sat up straight in the chair. “I don’t understand—”

It gave me the willies, the way she looked at me.

“You stay away from that stone,” she said. “Do you hear me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. The Bleeding Rock. I smell it on you. Stay away from it.”

How did she know about the Bleeding Rock? Could she really foretell the future? Either way, she creeped me out.

I started to stand, but she rushed up in front of me and pushed me back into the chair. She clutched at me, and I pushed her hands away. I knocked the gloves from her hands—revealing skeletal claws.

The bones dripped wet earth like rotting flesh.

Worms slithered around her knuckles.

She scraped at my cheeks, my eyes—

I woke up. I jumped from the chair and dropped the book from my lap to the floor. Wiping drool from my chin, I noticed my shirt collar was soaked with it. I must have dozed off for some time.

Picking up the book, I saw the pages had fallen open to a story titled “Dreams of the Bleeding Rock.”

No kidding, I thought.

“Charles?” Mr. Goodwin said. “Are you all right?”

I hadn’t even realized he was standing there.

One second, I was skimming the book for any information on witches. Next thing I knew, Mr. Goodwin is gently shaking my shoulder.

My ears burned. How embarrassing.

“Must have dozed off,” I said.

“So it appears.” Mr. Goodwin’s lips curled in disappointment. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“About what?”

“About the dream.” Mr. Goodwin tapped his chin. “I have an idea what you’re up to, Charles. Don’t worry. I’m not going to get you into trouble. I’d like to help you if I could.”

“How did you know?”

“You were moaning her name in your sleep. You’ve been to the Bleeding Rock, haven’t you?”

I swallowed, nodding.

“Whatever you’re doing with that witch,” Mr. Goodwin said, “you must stop while you’re ahead. I’ve seen too many people get hurt by poking their noses where they don’t belong. She gets under your skin. Into your skull.”

“You mean the dreams?”

“If you keep going back, they may never stop.”

“Do you have the dreams, too?”

“I used to. Many years ago. When I started doing research for my first book, I went into the woods almost every day. I took a metal detector with me, hoping to find that famous ring of Maddie’s.”

“Did the ring give her powers?” I asked. “Like Green Lantern or something?”

Mr. Goodwin looked confused. Obviously, he had no idea who Green Lantern was. “The ring was passed down from generation to generation in Maddie’s family. It was, by all accounts, her most prized possession. It wasn’t the source of her power, but it was a focus for her, making her magic stronger and more terrible. I thought if I could find it, I’d be able to generate a lot of publicity.”

“What did you find?”

“A bunch of loose change, bottle caps, and old buttons. Then the nightmares started. At first, I thought it nothing more than an overactive imagination and a rich diet. Then I realized Maddie was trying to communicate with me. Trying to warn me.”

“How come you didn’t tell that story in any of your books?” I asked.

“I couldn’t.” He shuddered. “It was much too frightening. Now I never go into the woods under any circumstances. And if you’re wise, my young friend, you’ll respect my example.”

Outside, a horn blared. My hour was up. Uncle Shorty was waiting for me.

“I have to go,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Remember what I said,” Mr. Goodwin called after me. “Stay out of those woods. Nothing but madness and death await you if you meddle with Maddie Someday!”

He didn’t spit to ward off misfortune when he said her name.

Madness and death.

Someday.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Against my better judgment—and natural sleep patterns—that night I found myself hiding in the brush near the Bleeding Rock, Marty and Lisa at my side. The moon stared down at us, the shadows giving it the look of a glowering skull. Fog was light, at least so far, but the day’s heat had been sapped from the air. It wasn’t cold, but it was cool, and thinking about Maddie Someday made my skin crawl like an army of frozen ants was marching all over me. I should have caught forty winks before venturing into the woods again, but my mind raced too much for me to sleep. We were plenty early, and I couldn’t stop yawning.

Once again, we had slathered ourselves in Scent-Be-Gone. We looked pretty silly, the three of us hiding in the bushes, each of us pinching our nose shut while we waited to get used to the smell.

“It stinks worse now,” Marty said, “than it did last night.”

With his nose pinched shut, his voice sounded nasal and robotic. I couldn’t help but laugh. Pretty soon, we were all laughing. But when a cracking sound came from the darkness—from somewhere behind us—we fell silent. I released my nose. The stench was the least of my problems.

“Do you think it’s the dog?” I whispered.

“Quiet,” Lisa said.

Another noise resounded through the gloom. This time, it came from somewhere in front of us. Something approached from both directions. The fetch and the goblin? I wondered. I should have asked Mr. Goodwin about the witch’s servants. I took turns watching the Bleeding Rock and glancing over my shoulder.

The fetch appeared in front of us, slinking through the brush on the other side of the Bleeding Rock. The dog circled the chalk gray stone a couple of times, sniffing around the bare ground like a bloodhound trying to pick up a scent.

But if the fetch is over there, I thought, looking over my shoulder, what’s that behind us?

In the distance, the train rattled, the horn blaring, and the dog threw its head back and howled right along with it.

I kept looking behind me. I couldn’t shake the idea that something was sneaking up on us.

“It’s moving,” Lisa said.

I looked up just in time to see the fetch dart into the trees.

“Let’s go,” Marty said.

He was anxious to catch up with the dog, but he let Lisa lead the way. I would have preferred to stick around to find out what was following us, but I wasn’t about to let my friends ditch me. I tried to forget about the goblin…if there was such a thing.

We kept the flashlight off, negotiating the forest by the light of the moon. I wished I hadn’t lost the other light. Marty promised we’d go looking for it sometime soon, before his parents realized it was missing. Of course, that didn’t help me feel any better now, with the shadows pressing in on me.

We tracked the dog quite a ways into the hills. At times, we had to scurry up sheer walls of dirt and rock and mud, using the roots of trees as hand holds. Lisa moved fast, ducking branches, climbing hills, and jumping creeks, with Marty chasing only a few steps behind her. I did my best to keep up. Occasionally we caught glimpses of the fetch—a dark shadow flitting through the trees—but we kept our distance. We didn’t want the dog to see us—or smell us. Luckily, we had Lisa to pick up the trail again whenever we lost sight of the dog.

It took us fifteen minutes to find the fetch again. When we did, we perched on top of a wide hill, looking down as the dog burrowed between the roots of a large, dark tree.

“It’s found something,” Marty said.

The fetch tossed clumps of dirt out from between its hind legs as it dug. Finally, it stopped digging and stuck its nose into the hole. It snorted around a bit, then shoved its snout into the earth and came back up holding something round and caked in dirt.

“Do you see that?” Marty asked.

“What is it?” Lisa asked.

I didn’t answer, but I saw it plain as day.

A human skull.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The skull.

Its empty eye sockets stared at me. Wormy dirt trickled from the yellowed bone. The jaw lolled open in a silent scream. Patches of long, stringy hair trailed down from the decaying flesh. Mud filled the nose cavity.

Clutching the skull in its jaws, the fetch loped along the hill.

We ducked down the other side, hoping the dog wouldn’t see or hear us.

The dog let out a low growl, then tore off through the brush.

“Let’s go,” Marty whispered, “before we lose him again.”

“I’m not so sure we should follow him anymore,” I said. “It just dug up a human skull!”

“I know it was a skull,” Marty said. “All the more reason to find out what’s going on.”

“You realize what’s going on, don’t you?”

Marty’s blank expression told me he didn’t.

The explanation blurted out of my mouth. “The dog’s going out into the woods and digging up all of Maddie Someday’s body parts.”

Marty’s brow wrinkled.

“Why would it be doing that?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t know. Could be Maddie’s ghost is trying to collect all her pieces in one place. Maybe she’s trying to bring herself back to life.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Lisa laughed nervously. “You don’t really think that, do you?”

I nodded.

“Why was it digging near my house?” Marty asked. “Do you think one of Maddie’s parts was buried right outside my front yard?”

“Unless I’m wrong,” I said. “I’m betting one of Maddie Someday’s body parts was buried near Marty’s house, but the dog’s already found it.”

Instead of being frightened, though, Marty grinned. “This, I’ve got to see for myself!” He set off through the trees again.

Lisa looked at me like I’d lost my mind. She took off after my cousin.

Smart, I thought. Real smart.

We followed the fetch deep into the woods. Eventually, we came upon a large clearing. A dilapidated cabin squatted in the center of the patch of bare land. The walls were unpainted, brown and cracked, and creeping vines—no longer green but brittle husks—crawled up the rotting timber. The vines might have been the only thing holding the house together. Candlelight glowed through the windows. Along the side of the building was a set of heavy bulkhead doors leading down into a root cellar.

The trees around the cabin were bent and crooked, leafless but covered in thick patches of moss hanging from the skeletal branches. The wind rushed though the hills, whooshing eerily and rattling the tree limbs. The moon shone through the clouds, a great milky witching eye staring at us. The clouds themselves looked like a blanket of thick fog waiting to settle down on top of us.

Tangles of rusty barbed wire clung to rotting fence posts around the yard. The ground was bare. No grass grew in a wide circle around the shack.

“Whose house is this?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Marty said. “Never been out this way.”

“I think I know whose house this is,” Lisa said. “I think it’s the witch house.”

“No way,” Marty said. “I thought it was torn down.”

“That’s what I always heard too.” Lisa shivered. “But it sure looks like the witch house straight out of all the stories.”

“The witch house?” I asked.

“It’s Maddie’s house,” Marty said. “This is where she lived.”

A gusting wind swept past.

Clenching the skull in its jaws, the fetch approached the cabin’s front porch. It dropped the bones on the ground at the foot of the steps. It barked a couple of times.

After a few minutes, the screen door snapped open and shut, and an old woman hobbled out, using her cane to support the weight her bad leg would not. I recognized her right away.

Dottie Brewster.

Old Brewsterstein herself.

The dog didn’t wag its tail or jump excitedly as the woman approached. It only stared up at her as she descended the half-rotted wood and cinderblock steps.

Mrs. Brewster winced painfully as she knelt and picked up the skull. She hooked her fingers through the eye sockets like she was picking up a bowling ball. As she straightened, she cradled the skull in her arms, the way a mother cradles a baby—like she feared dropping and breaking it. Then she shuffled toward the root cellar, and we ducked down so she couldn’t see us spying.

She staggered down the steps and into darkness. The dog waited at the edge of the steps for the woman to return.

I felt a tickling in my gut, as if a butterfly was loose and fluttering in my stomach.

“What do you think she’s doing down there?” I asked. “What’s she want with Maddie’s old bones?”

“I don’t know,” Marty said. “But it can’t be good.”

Lisa shushed us.

Seconds later, Mrs. Brewster climbed out of the root cellar, empty-handed save for her cane. She ran a withered hand over the dog’s head to acknowledge a job well done. The dog rose and trotted back into the woods on the opposite side of the clearing.

“I want to see what’s down in the cellar,” Marty said.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He wanted to sneak down into the darkness of the cellar to get a look-see at whatever old bones the woman had been storing below.

“No way! You’re as crazy as that old woman is!” I hissed. “It’s too dangerous. You’ll get caught.”

“Don’t you want to know what she’s doing with those old bones?” he asked.

“I’m curious, sure,” I whispered angrily. “But I’m not foolish enough to try to sneak over there. We should wait until daylight…until Mrs. Brewster’s away from the house, don’t you think?”

“Both of you, be quiet!” Lisa ordered.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Listen!”

“I don’t hear anything,” Marty said.

Lisa gave him a dirty look. “That’s because you’re still talking!”

A hush fell over our little group. For a few minutes, I didn’t hear anything other than the shrill cry of insects and the distant hooting of an owl…

Then, a cry for help.

I gasped.

It was definitely a person yelling for help. I couldn’t tell exactly where the sound was coming from—it was too soft to pinpoint—but I could guess.

The cellar.

Mrs. Brewster had someone held prisoner down in the root cellar! There was no telling what the hideous old hag had planned for her prisoner, but it couldn’t be good. I hated to consider the possibilities. She might be subjecting her prisoner to one of her terrible experiments. For all I knew, she might have been planning to chop her hostage into bits to be fed to the fetch!

I felt like I might throw up.

“We have to tell someone,” I said, “our parents or the police…anybody!”

“We can’t just leave!” Marty said. “We’ve got to help!”

“What can we do?” I asked. “We’re just a bunch of kids!”

Hoping for a little support, I looked at Lisa. She just shrugged, as if she was unsure of the right course of action.

“We need to go and get help,” I said.

“What if there isn’t time?” Marty asked. “What if old Brewsterstein is inside sharpening her meat cleaver right this very second?”

“If she is,” I said, “I don’t think we want to get caught once she comes outside.”

I’ll admit, at that moment, I just wanted to hurry home, tell an adult about the prisoner trapped in the root cellar, and forget all about the dog, Dottie Brewster, and Maddie Someday. I would have been a lot happier if I’d have been able to do just that. I might have been curious about whatever she was doing…I might’ve been worried about what she had planned for her prisoner… but it would be smarter just to keep my distance.

But just then, the cries for help grew louder, as if the night air had shifted, carrying them to our ears.

I recognized the voice.

Alex.

My brother was trapped in Mrs. Brewster’s cellar!

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

As much as I wanted to head for safety, I couldn’t just leave my little brother behind.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“We’re going to have to rescue him!” Marty said.

“I know that. But how? What about Mrs. Brewster? What about the fetch?”

“It’s just a dog and an old woman,” Lisa said.

“A witch,” I said.

“All right.” Marty shrugged. “A witch. Nothing we can’t handle. This is Alex we’re talking about. My cousin. Your brother. I’m not letting some old hag take him away from us.”

He was right, of course.

“It’s going to be all right.” Lisa grabbed my hand and squeezed. “We’re going to get him out of there.”

I was surprised Marty didn’t make fun of me right then, batting his eyelashes and making kissing noises. I guessed it was so serious, though, he didn’t feel like poking fun.

The witch house was dead quiet.

We didn’t have time for much of a plan. We had to do something—fast—before Mrs. Brewster came back outside…or the dog came back.

“Lisa,” I said, “you stay here and keep a lookout. Keep your slingshot handy, and if you see anything, yell.”

She nodded encouragingly. “Will do.”

Marty and I stuck close together as we prowled around the house. We didn’t see any sign of Dottie Brewster, but for all we knew, she was watching us from behind one of the filthy windows overlooking the yard. We kept the flashlight extinguished for the time being, relying only on the light of the moon.

As we neared the cellar door, I heard a sad moaning from below.

I leaned down and carefully slid the plank aside. The door was heavy, and I needed Marty’s help to lug it open and set it aside. We struggled to keep it from crashing to the earth.

It was pitch black inside the cellar.

Marty handed me the flashlight. I turned it on and shined the beam into the cellar. I hoped no one could see the light from the house. A rickety set of steps led down into blackness. The staircase looked impossibly deep, each step crooked and bent, tilted at an odd angle. The dirt floor at the bottom looked damp. The air wafting up from below smelled of freshly turned earth.

“Alex!” I called into the darkness. “Alex!”

His voice came from below, small and weak.

“Is that you, Charlie?”

“Come on, Alex!” I called. “We’ve got to get out of here before Mrs. Brewster finds us.”

“I can’t.” He sounded like he was about to cry. “I’m all tied up.”

“We’re going to have to go get him,” I told Marty.

He nodded and set his chin in a look of determination.

I peered back toward the woods. I couldn’t see Lisa in the darkness, but I knew she was there, watching. She’d warn us if anyone or anything came our way. I just hoped nothing waited for us down below.

I had the nightmare image of Dottie Brewster lurking in the darkness, calling to us with Alex’s voice, waiting to lure us down into her clutches.

I started down the stairs. Marty was just a step or two behind.

The steps felt slippery, the wood water-logged and covered in slime, and they sagged and creaked as we descended. I was surprised they supported my weight. I held the railing—actually a long-knotted tree limb set into the wall—for dear life. A spill down the steps would put a quick end to our rescue mission. Large wooden beams supported the earthen walls, and tangled, grasping roots dangled from the ceiling like hideous party streamers. The chamber looked impossibly big, and while some of the walls had been carved out of the earth by hand, other portions of the room looked like a natural cave system.

“There are caves all over the place out here,” Marty said. “Whoever dug out this cellar must have stumbled into one.”

Somewhere, water dripped, plopping steadily to the muddy floor. The flashlight did little to push back the darkness of the cellar, but it helped a little. If the batteries suddenly died, we wouldn’t have been able to see our hands in front of our faces.

“Alex?”

The flashlight’s glow swept across the pasty, frightened face of my little brother. He was huddled in a corner, his wrists tied together, his arms over his head. The rope was looped through a rusty metal ring driven into one of the support beams. His clothes—jeans and his hooded shirt—were ruined, covered in glistening mud. Dirt covered his face, and his tears had cut paths down his cheeks, revealing clean skin.

“Charlie!” he cried.

I rushed to his side. The damp earth tugged at my shoes, trying to drag me down and drown me in the mud. I looked at my feet. Dozens of fat, wriggling earthworms squirmed in the mud.

Earthworms enriched the soil. Made things grow.

What was Mrs. Brewster growing here in the shadows?

I untied Alex’s wrists, and his arms flopped to the floor like dead weights.

“I’m sorry I followed you, Charlie!” Tears and snot from a runny nose dripped down my little brother’s face. “I’m real sorry! I shouldn’t have snuck out of the house to follow you!”

So, Alex had been sneaking out of the house to follow us. It added up. The strange noises in the night. The dirt on the floor. Alex being so tired the day before. We hadn’t been seeing a goblin at all. We had seen my little brother, wearing the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up. He must have been following us when Mrs. Brewster caught and kidnapped him.

“I thought you said he was too scared to come with us,” Marty said. “Guess he wasn’t as much of a scaredycat as you thought, huh?”

This was all my fault. If I hadn’t excluded my little brother, he wouldn’t have sneaked out on his own to follow us…and he wouldn’t have gotten himself captured by a witch!

Suddenly, Alex stopped crying, and he fell dead silent.

“Alex! Are you all right?”

His trembling eyes stared toward the opposite corner.

I followed his gaze.

Marty crept toward a figure squatting in the far corner. Another of Mrs. Brewster’s victims? I followed him with the light. The glow spilled over my cousin’s shoulders and illuminated a form leaning against the wall. Marty recoiled.

A corpse was propped against the wall like an unused doll. The skeletal face leered at us. Worms crawled over the body, oozing around old bones. The same type of twine that had been used to tie Alex’s hands was looped around and around the body, securing the legs in place, and was even stitched through the dried-out meat of the neck to hold the skull upright. Except for the right arm, the corpse was complete.

Maddie Someday.

I forced my eyes away from the witch’s body.

I grabbed Alex’s cheeks and turned his head so he looked me in the eyes.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s just a dead body.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but I needed to get my brother on his feet and moving.

Looking back at me, he said, “No, Charlie. It’s not dead. It…it talks.”

I swallowed back a wave of fear. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

I helped him to his feet.

“Marty,” I said, “let’s go.”

Marty nodded, backing away slowly from the dead body, unable to take his eyes from it. He backed right into the steps, tripped, and almost fell over.

“Careful!” I warned him.

Marty rushed up the steps, two at a time. When he reached the top, he looked back down and waited for us to join him. We had a harder time of it. Alex’s arms and legs were numb and near useless. I pretty much dragged him step by step to the surface. I kept telling myself not to look back, not to look back. As we emerged, Alex managed to stand on his own, as if just being a little farther away from the thing in the cellar strengthened his muscles.

“Think you can walk?” I asked.

He nodded.

Marty didn’t need convincing. He sprinted for the tree line. Alex stumbled a little at first, and I stayed by his side, lugging him along like we were in a three-legged race. We were only half-way across the clearing when my cousin jumped headfirst into the weeds and bushes.

Lisa stood out in the open at the forest’s edge. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and let out a long whistle.

Too loud!

Someone would hear!

She pointed across the clearing with a shaky finger.

Looking over my shoulder, I breathed, “Oh no.”

The fetch crashed out of the tree line. Froth covered its snout, stringy drool spilling from its fangs. The hair along its back bristled. It lowered its head and growled.

“Slowly.” I held Alex by the arm and took a cautious step, then another. “Slowly.”

The fetch started barking, its lips pulled away from its yellowish teeth.

“We’re going to have to run, Alex.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

I looked back again.

The dog charged.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Run!”

Kicking up clouds of dirt from beneath its feet, the dog bore down on Alex. My little brother ran with all his might, his weak legs and arms pumping, but the dog closed in on him.

Marty waved his arms frantically. “Over here!”

Whenever I started to outdistance Alex, I jerked to a stop and waited for him to catch up.

“Come on, Alex! Faster! Don’t look back!”

The dog barked ferociously as it bore down on my brother. Alex had a head start, but the dog closed in on him. Any minute now it would be nipping at his heels, ready to tear his legs off.

Alex veered across the yard and headed my way. His face was flushed and sweat ran into his eyes. He puffed for air, but he didn’t stop running. The dog snapped at his heels, trying to bring him down, but Alex was gaining ground, his fear fueling his strength, pushing him to run faster than he’d ever gone before.

He’s going to make it, I thought.

But his shoestrings did him in.

The mud-slathered shoestrings flapped at his feet, untied as always. His foot descended on one of the whipping strings, pulling it tight. Alex lost his footing and tripped. He took a header onto the ground, tumbling head over foot. One of his shoes flew across the yard.

“Ooph!” he grunted.

He knocked himself out cold.

I stumbled to a stop and ran back for him. Before I got there, the dog snatched Alex’s foot, its yellowed fangs punching through the shoe. The shoestrings dangled out the sides of its mouth. It started to drag him back to the cellar.

The beast’s human-like eyes glowed with fiendish delight.

“Let him go!” I cried. I stomped my feet, trying to scare the cur away.

The dog released Alex long enough to bark and snarl and bare its teeth at me. Instinctively, I jumped back. I grabbed Alex’s hands. The fetch and I played a game of human tug-of-war, but the dog was much stronger than I thought it would be. It whipped its head from side to side, yanking at my brother’s leg.

Alex came to, screaming like a maniac.

I pulled for all I was worth. The muddy shoestring started to slide from the fetch’s lips. The dog tore Alex’s shoe away. For a dreadful second, I thought it had ripped his entire foot off! But my brother’s foot was intact…for now. The fetch flung the shoe around and let it sail off. I took the opportunity to quickly hoist Alex to his feet.

The fetch snapped at Alex’s leg, clamping its teeth around his ankle.

“Owww!” Alex cried.

A rock sailed out of the bushes and struck the dog in the side. Lisa was firing away with her trusty slingshot. The dog didn’t release Alex though. It tightened its grip. If I kept trying to yank him free, the beast’s teeth would dig deeper into his flesh. I had no choice but to let my brother go. I released his hand, and Alex stumbled to the ground again. The dog dragged him along.

I got between the fetch and the cellar and gave it a kick in the side. I didn’t like being mean to dogs, but something told me the fetch wasn’t a natural animal at all. The thing didn’t even yelp. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the dog to let Alex go.

“Look out!” Lisa cried.

I wheeled around—just as a crooked cane swept in the direction of my head. I ducked out of the way. Otherwise, the walking stick would have thumped me right between the eyes. As it was, it clipped my shoulder.

Mrs. Brewster stood over me like a fearsome scarecrow, lips pulled away from her snaggly teeth.

She raised the cane above her head and brought it down. I dodged to the side, turned, and bolted for the trees.

“Get out of there!” Lisa yelled. “Run for it!”

Mrs. Brewster pegged me between the shoulder blades with her cane. The blow knocked the wind out of me, and I crumpled to the ground. She drew the cane back to smack me in the head with it.

Lisa pointed the slingshot at the witch. She fired. The projectile seemed to spin in the air in slow motion. It wasn’t a rock, I realized, but the half-empty bottle of Scent-Be-Gone. The bottle spun end over end before striking the witch right between the eyes, shattering and spilling skunk urine all over her face.

“Reaaghh!” She dropped the cane and clawed at her face. Blood oozed down the valley between her eyes and over her nose.

I jumped to my feet, laughing in triumph as I scooped Mrs. Brewster’s cane off the ground.

Hit me, will you? I thought.

Holding the walking stick in both hands, I raised it over my head and brought it down—hard—over my knee.

“Yowch!” I cried.

The cane didn’t break, but it felt like my leg did. I limped in a circle, trying to walk off the pain. I even leaned on the cane for a bit of support.

“Sic him!” the old woman ordered the dog.

I heard the rapid footsteps of the fetch as it chased after me, growling.

I turned in time to see the fetch leaping at me, its teeth bared, saliva flying from its muzzle. I swung the cane wildly, cracking the dog across the head, sending it sprawling to the ground. No sooner had it hit the ground than it jumped back to its feet. It snarled and prepared to attack again.

I threw the cane at it.

As much as I wanted to help my brother, I’d be no good to him dead. I turned and hightailed it away from the dog.

“Run, Alex!” I yelled.

Hopefully, Alex could get away while Mrs. Brewster was blinded and the fetch pursued me.

Don’t look back! I thought to myself. My blood thundered at my temples. Whatever you do, don’t look back!

I kept moving forward, but staggered a little as I glanced over my shoulder, despite my own instructions. The dog was less than a foot away from me and closing in fast. I saw malice in its glowing, almost human eyes—malice and glee. It wanted to catch me, wanted to rip me to shreds!

Like a bullet, Lisa’s lucky stone zipped out of the shadows. It struck the fetch hard right between its eyes. The dog yelped. It stumbled forward and crashed to the ground, tumbling head over feet in the dirt.

Throwing my hands in front of my face, I crashed through the brush, the tree limbs slapping me.

Alex?

Where’s Alex?

I looked back at the house. Mrs. Brewster had Alex. The old woman leaned over, pinching Alex’s ear between her cruel nails.

“Ow ow ow!” Alex said.

“Get back here!” the old woman cried. “Get back here right now or I’ll skin him alive!” She held one of her clawed hands out in front of Alex’s face. I believed she was ready to use those curling fingernails of hers to peel my little brother like a grape. She had me between a rock and a hard place.

I stepped out of the shadows.

Alex whined and cried, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Come here, child,” the old woman said.

I shook my head. “Let him go first.”

She pinched his ear a little harder. “Owww!” Alex cried.

I took a step closer.

She looked into the woods. “Where are the others?” she said.

“I’m all alone,” I lied. I raised my voice so Marty and Lisa could hear. If they could get away, they could bring back help…if the witch didn’t kill me and Alex both on the spot.

Mrs. Brewster gave Alex’s ear a hard twist. His legs started to buckle. Tears leapt from his eyes.

“Okay! Okay!” I cried. “Just don’t hurt him.”

I looked into the trees.

“Come on out, Lisa.”

She stepped out of the brush, slingshot at the ready and pointed directly at the old woman.

“Drop it!” the woman cackled. Her fingernails flashed in front of Alex’s reddened face.

Reluctantly, Lisa tossed the slingshot to the ground.

“Where’s the other one?” she asked. “Where’s Marty Widows?”

She knew his name! That couldn’t be good!

“He’s not here,” I bluffed.

“Don’t lie to me, child. I saw him with you just two days ago.”

Stay where you are, Marty, I thought. She hasn’t seen you. She doesn’t know for sure you’re here.

“I’m not lying. He didn’t come out with us tonight. He—” I thought for a split second. “He got beat up by one of the Crewes boys.”

The old woman made a tsk tsk tsk sound in her throat and smiled. “That’s what snoopy little boys get when they stick their noses where they don’t belong.”

She believed me!

“Come closer, child,” Mrs. Brewster said. “You’re going to pay dearly for what you’ve done!”

For what we had done? At first, I thought she meant freeing Alex from the cellar.

Then I noticed the fetch.

The dog lay still on the ground.

Between us, Lisa and I must have killed it!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Still pinching my little brother’s ear between her spindly fingers, Mrs. Brewster hobbled over to the unmoving form of the fetch. She nudged it with her toe. No doubt about it, the dog was dead. Just a few feet away from its body was the stone—Lisa’s lucky stone—that had landed the final blow. I wondered how the old woman would react to the death of her beloved pet.

“You children have caused me a great deal of trouble,” she said. With one quick tug, she could rip Alex’s ear right off. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to raise and train a fetch?”

She didn’t really care about the dog as a pet, I realized. She wasn’t sad about its death at all. She was only angry that we’d killed her tool. Maybe the only thing left in her heart was rage.

Her witching eyes flashed.

“Lucky for you,” she continued, “the fetch’s work was already done.”

“But you don’t have all the pieces,” I blurted.

“Aren’t you a smart child?” Mrs. Brewster cackled dryly. “Seems you know more about my work than you ought to.”

I clamped my teeth down on my tongue to keep it from wagging.

“That’s good,” Mrs. Brewster said. “Very good. Because you’re going to help me find the last piece.”

“I’m going to what?”

“The fetch was never able to find the final piece of Maddie’s body,” Mrs. Brewster said. “It had been buried out in the woods at one time, just like the rest, but I think it must have been moved. I don’t know why anyone would want to take her arm from its burial place.”

“Maybe someone else is trying to bring her back from the dead,” I said.

I couldn’t tell if she was angry with that idea or frightened.

“The fetch was failing me, but it was still a useful creature,” Mrs. Brewster said. “Since you killed it, you’re going to take its place.”

She’s going to turn me into a dog!

“W-w-what do you mean take its place?” I stammered.

“I’m offering a simple trade, child,” she said sweetly. “If you ever want to see your little brother alive again, you’ll find the arm and bring it back to me.”

“How are we supposed to find the arm?” Lisa asked.

The woman made the tsk tsk sound again and said, “You should have thought of that before you stuck your nose in my business.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Do we have a deal?”

I knew if I refused, she’d kill Alex—and probably the rest of us—right then and there. I didn’t trust her, but what choice did I have?

“Do you give your word you won’t hurt him?”

Witches were bound to keep their word, I knew, so if I could just get her to promise, I knew Alex would be safe.

She tilted her head and gave me a wicked grin. Some of her teeth were gone. Others were worn down to stubs.

“And if we find the arm for you, you’ll let Alex go?”

“Are you trying to trick me, child? You’re in no position to barter, and you know it. Either you do as I say, or I’ll kill your brother right now and bury him with my dog.”

“All right.” Reluctantly, I nodded. “I’ll do it.”

“Good,” the witch muttered. “Wait right here.”

She dragged Alex to the root cellar doors. He squirmed and struggled. She dug her nails into the flesh of his ear.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

“I’m just putting your brother back somewhere safe and sound until you fulfill your end of the bargain.”

Mrs. Brewster released Alex, and he sprawled back to the ground, clutching at his ear and sniffling. He stood up, and the old witch prodded him with her cane. Crying, he stepped down into the shadows.

“I’ll get you out of there,” I called after him. “I promise.”

“And I’d hurry if I were you.” The woman hobbled toward me now, the end of her cane scraping the earth. “There’s not much in the way of food down there, unless he takes to eating worms.”

She threw the doors closed behind him.

She crossed the yard in three long, quick strides. I blinked, and she was standing in front of me.

She doesn’t need the cane at all, I thought.

Her fingers snaked around the wrist of my right hand and squeezed tight. Her touch was hot. It reminded me of the feel of Greg Crewes’s cigarette so close to my skin. My fingers flexed open. She pulled my arm up. I realized the scars on the back of her hand matched the witch’s brand on the fetch’s side.

“Let him go!” Lisa snapped. She grabbed her slingshot off the ground and took a step.

“Stay back, Lisa Summers.” Mrs. Brewster glared at her and snarled like a wild animal. “I’m not hurting him—”

I relaxed just a bit.

“—much!” Mrs. Brewster laughed, and she dug her claw into my flesh.

As much as it hurt, as bad as I wanted to scream, I bit my lip and kept quiet. I wouldn’t give the old hag the pleasure of hearing me cry out in pain. She scraped her nail across the back of my hand. It couldn’t have possibly burned any worse if she’d pressed a hot poker against my skin. Her nail scratched a circle with a line slashing through it into the back of my hand. It matched the symbol I had seen on the dog’s side and on Mrs. Brewster’s own hand.

She pulled me close and whispered in my ear. Her voice was a rattling hiss. Her breath was a graveyard stink.

“You’re Maddie’s creature now!”

I jerked my hand away and checked the wound. For all the pain, there wasn’t as much blood as I would have thought. The scratches weren’t very deep at all. But it burned fiercely, like hundreds of fire ants chewed at my skin.

“What was that for?” I asked.

She hummed a somber tune as she turned her back on me, walked to the house, and climbed the steps.

“Better hurry, child,” she said.

My eyes narrowed as I watched her. I hated her so much, and it drove me crazy that I couldn’t do anything about it. I hated her for locking my little brother in the slimy root cellar. I hated her for sending me out after the dead witch’s arm. I hated that she planned on bringing Maddie Someday back to life.

I hated that, in more ways than one, I was her fetch now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I felt weary down to the very center of my bones. Even breathing felt like work. All I wanted to do was sleep for a week. But there was no chance of that.

A fetch’s work is never done, I mused.

After Mrs. Brewster re-entered her house, Lisa and I scrambled for the woods. We found Marty where we’d left him, squatting in his hiding spot. He had grabbed a heavy branch to use as a weapon, and he clutched it close. For a few minutes, nobody said anything about what had happened, but Marty and Lisa both wore the same dazed, frightened expressions.

“What are we going to do?” Marty asked at last. “We’ve got to save Alex…right now!”

“The only choice we have is to find the arm.”

“Well, we’d best hurry and start looking.”

“Actually, Marty…you’re not coming with us.”

He almost dropped the branch in surprise. “What? Why not?”

“I need you to go back to the witch house, keep your head low, and keep an eye on Alex. I want to make sure Mrs. Brewster doesn’t do anything to hurt him. Besides, the two of us will be able to sneak around a lot more easily than three. I don’t want you to try anything foolish. Just keep watch until we come back with the arm.”

“You make it sound simple.” Lisa rubbed her hands together nervously. “We don’t even know where to start.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” Lisa asked.

“I think I know where we can find the arm.”

“You do?” Lisa asked.

I nodded.

“What’s the bad news?” Marty asked.

“That’s another reason you need to stay here,” I told my cousin.

“I don’t understand,” Lisa said. “Where’s the arm?”

“The Crewes brothers have it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“Greg and Hatch are mixed up in this, too?” Lisa asked as we trekked through the woods.

“I won’t know for sure,” I said, “until I get into their house and search for the arm.”

“Wait a minute. I must not have heard you right. You’re going to break into their house?”

I shot her a look but didn’t answer.

We slipped through the woods at a brisk pace, and while Lisa knew the way better than me, I stayed right alongside her.

“I still don’t know why you think they have it,” Lisa said.

“The fetch led us straight to their house, remember? Greg chased it off before it could figure a way inside. It must have followed Maddie’s scent trail to their house, so the arm was most likely somewhere around there.”

I didn’t even bother spitting when I said Maddie’s name. Our luck couldn’t get any worse.

I didn’t know why Greg and Hatch Crewes had Maddie’s arm, and I didn’t know how they had found it. I didn’t really care, to tell the truth. All that mattered to me was that they stood in between me and the grisly thing that would save my brother’s life.

From what I gathered, most people in the area didn’t bother locking their doors, and I hoped that was the case with the Crewes brothers. If the door was unlocked, it wouldn’t feel so much like “breaking in.” Maybe Greg and Hatch were bad news, and maybe saving my little brother was a worthy cause, but I didn’t want to think of myself as a common thief.

“What if they’re home?” Lisa asked.

“I hadn’t really planned that far ahead,” I told her.

As luck would have it, no one was home. The house was dark and quiet. The beat-up truck was not in the driveway, and the Firebird wasn’t under the cover of the parking shed. The doors of the shed stood open. We walked right up to the back door.

“They sure do stay out late,” I muttered.

“Look who’s talking,” Lisa said.

“Good point.”

I took a deep breath and gently turned the doorknob. With a click! the door opened, less than an inch.

“All right,” I told Lisa. “You stay out here and keep lookout.”

“You’re going in alone?”

“It makes the most sense. If someone shows up, I’ll need you to let me know. And if I can’t get out of the house fast enough, you can at least hide so we both won’t get caught.”

She nodded.

I opened the door another few inches and shone the flashlight inside.

“The coast is clear,” I said. “Wish me luck.”

“Be careful,” Lisa said.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” I said. “If you see someone coming, let me know and I’ll get out as quick as I can.”

I entered the house.

The back door opened into the kitchen. What a mess! The floor looked like it had never been mopped or swept. Crumbs of food and splashes of spilled liquids covered the tiles, as well as the counters. A stack of dirty dishes teetered in the sink, and a couple of greasy frying pans sat on the stove—leftover, I thought, from this morning’s breakfast.

Now if I was a severed arm, I thought, where would I be?

I half-heartedly checked a few kitchen cabinets, knowing I wouldn’t find Maddie’s arm within. I even looked in the fridge, just in case they were keeping the moldy relic on ice. All I found was decaying leftovers.

I stepped into the dining room. Old newspapers and muscle car magazines covered the table. It didn’t look like they ate many meals together.

The rest of the house was just as filthy. Furniture needed dusting. Carpets needed vacuuming. The almost choking smell of cigarettes clung to the air.

In the living room, the stuffed heads of deer were mounted on the wall, their glassy eyes staring at me as I explored the house. A rack full of hunting rifles dominated one wall. The room gave me the creeps. I didn’t have anything against hunters in general. I just didn’t have the killer instinct.

I searched closets and cabinets but couldn’t find the arm. I looked under couches but discovered only dust bunnies. What had I expected? A withered arm hanging above the mantle with the rest of the dead things?

I tiptoed down the hall. The walls were lined with framed photographs. Most of them were a few years old, and they were all very dusty. Many of them included a woman—Greg and Hatch’s mother, I guessed. I noticed how different the Crewes boys looked in those pictures. They were younger, of course, but they also looked happier. Their faces didn’t have the cruel edge.

The flashlight’s beam scanned across the floor, walls, and furniture as I moved through the house.

The first bedroom I checked belonged to Mr. Crewes. I could tell by the work clothes and work boots scattered throughout the room. It was as cluttered and unclean as the rest of the house. It smelled sour. I didn’t find the arm there.

The next room must have belonged to Greg, because posters of muscle cars—often alongside girls in bikinis—lined the walls. I searched beneath the bed and in the dresser.

Nothing!

So Greg’s room was a bust. Only one more to go.

I opened the door to Hatch’s room. Again, it was cluttered and disorganized. I started to search through the closets and drawers. A pile of dirty laundry covered much of the floor, and I wrinkled my nose as I kicked around in the mire of smelly clothes.

My foot struck something. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I nudged at the shape until a vague outline showed through the sweat-stained shirts and underwear. It was just about the right size. Could this be where they kept Maddie’s arm? As disgusted as I was, I picked up some of the clothes and flicked them away.

Instead of an arm, I uncovered an aluminum baseball bat beneath the clothes. It was a beauty, too, but not what I’d expected.

I heard a noise and turned around.

Beneath the unmade covers on the bed, something moved.

I wasn’t alone in the house after all!

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The bedcovers moved, and I heard a soft snoring. Hatch was home after all—sleeping in the very room I was in! I quickly covered the flashlight with my hand. I’d been making quite a bit of noise already, but now I started to move more slowly, more quietly. He snorted and stirred. For a dreadful second, I feared he might be waking up, and if he caught me in his room he’d kill me for sure.

Slowly…very slowly…I flipped the flashlight’s power button. The snap! seemed deafening. Some moonlight filtered in between the curtains on the bedroom window, but it wasn’t much.

I wrapped my hand around the aluminum baseball bat. I’d need something to defend myself with if he actually woke up.

When I looked up again, a squeak of fear escaped my throat.

Hatch stared right at me.

He had rolled in my direction, and his eyes were wide open.

I looked around the room, checking the exit. Hatch was bigger and faster than me, and he knew the house a lot better than I did. There was no way I’d be able to outrun him. My mind raced, trying to zone in on a possible excuse, but I knew Hatch would never give me the chance.

He stayed still, staring at me. Taking his sweet time as he figured out how to kill me, I guessed. Any second and he’d be out of bed, barreling right at me with the speed and force of a runaway freight train, and he’d—

He snored.

He was still asleep!

Asleep with his eyes open! I’d heard that some people did that. Seeing it in person, I thought it was kind of creepy, like looking at a dead body—only a dead body that snored like a chainsaw.

It didn’t matter, though. I wanted to get out of his room as quickly as possible. Keeping the flashlight covered, I tiptoed backwards. There was no point in searching his room any further. The arm wasn’t there.

My every muscle quivered. I had almost been caught, no doubt about it. That was too close for comfort.

If my brother’s life hadn’t hung in the balance, I would have gotten out of the house as quickly as possible. As it was, I felt like I’d probably searched the rest of the place too quickly. The only room left was the basement, and as I tiptoed down the creaking stairs, my heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest. One wrong move and I might wake Hatch. If he caught me…

Well, I didn’t like to think what he might do.

The musty basement was full of boxes stacked precariously in the corners. An old clothes washer leaked a rivulet of water across the concrete floor, down a rusty drain hole. The drier must not have been working, because clotheslines had been strung back and forth across the room, shirts and jeans and undergarments dangling from the lines like phantoms. I thought for certain I’d find the arm tucked into a corner like a macabre prize.

I didn’t know what the Crewes family had planned for the arm. Maybe they were up to the same foul business as old Mrs. Brewster. Maybe they wanted to bring Maddie back to life in hopes she would bestow them with fame and fortune like some genie from the lamp.

I started back up the creaking stairs. Each step seemed to groan more loudly on the way up. I flinched with each awful creak, certain Hatch would hear and awaken, maybe lock me in the basement until his brother returned so they could rough me up together. My fear almost froze my muscles, and I had to urge myself to keep moving.

“Come on,” I murmured to myself. “Almost there.”

I slipped out the way I came in, finding Lisa waiting for me.

“You took long enough,” she said. “I was almost ready to come in after you.”

“I wanted to search as carefully as possible,” I explained, “and I had to keep pretty quiet. Hatch is in there. Luckily, he was sleeping. He almost woke up, but I think he can sleep through anything!”

“What did you do?” She looked at the aluminum bat I still carried. “Club him to death?”

“Of course not.” I leaned the bat against the porch railing and hopped down the steps. “It was just for protection.”

“Couldn’t find the arm?” she asked.

I shook my head sadly. “If they have it, they’ve hidden it really well.”

“What do we do now?”

“I’m not sure. If we come back empty-handed, Mrs. Brewster will kill Alex…and probably the rest of us, too. Maybe we should just try to rescue him again.”

“Yeah, right.” Lisa rolled her eyes. “That worked out so well for us last time.”

I tried to keep calm.

“You think the arm might be in one of the sheds?” Lisa asked.

“Something like that would be too valuable to keep out in some shed.” I kicked at the dirt. “They must have just hidden it really well.”

“Maybe they don’t know what they have.”

“They’d almost have to know, wouldn’t they? You don’t just find a disembodied arm and think nothing of it, especially with all the legends in the area. Unless…” A new thought dawned in my mind. “Lisa, you’re a genius!” I exclaimed, probably a little too loudly.

“I am?” she asked. A splash of red colored her freckled cheeks.

“They don’t have it in the house,” I said, “because they don’t even know about it!”

“But you said the fetch was searching for it.”

“Right, but it wasn’t concerned with the house, not really, and Greg chased it off before it could figure out how to get into the shed.”

“The shed?”

“The building’s new, right? I think they built it right on top of the spot where the arm was buried.”

I saw the light come on in Lisa’s eyes. We raced to the shed.

The structure was only big enough to hold Greg’s car, but that left a lot of ground to cover in finding the arm. A few tools were propped in the web-shrouded corner. I took a shovel and paced around the room, examining the earthen floor closely.

“What are you looking for?” Lisa asked.

“To be honest, I’m not sure,” I said.

I paced around the room, shining the flashlight across the oil-stained ground.

“Come on, Maddie,” I whispered under my breath. “Give me a sign, will ya?”

I noticed little sprigs of grass and weeds breaking through the soil here and there. It wasn’t much. The vegetation had a hard time growing in the shade. But as I looked around, I noticed one area where the weeds didn’t grow at all. It was a rectangular patch of earth, and the grass surrounding it was dry and brown.

I struck the earth with the shovel.

“I think the arm is here,” I told Lisa. “Play lookout for me again. Yell if you see Hatch come out of the house or Greg driving back.”

The point of the shovel drove into the earth.

I started to dig.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I didn’t know how deep the witch’s arm might be buried, but I dug quickly, throwing clods of dirt behind me. Within minutes, sweat ran down my face in sticky, dirty sheets, streaming into my eyes and burning. I wiped my eyes with the back of my arm but kept at my chore. I didn’t have time to rest. Greg Crewes might be home at any minute, and my little brother’s life depended on me.

Lisa lurked just inside the door, pacing back and forth nervously, dividing her time between watching the house and the road.

After a while, I started to doubt the arm was here after all. I was just about to give up and try to devise another plan when the tip of the shovel grated against something. I dropped the shovel and fell to my knees, scooping dirt out of the hole with my hands.

“I think I’ve found it,” I called to Lisa.

She came away from the door and joined me as I dug handfuls of cool dirt from the hole. The soil jammed under my fingernails and caught in the hairs of my forearm. I wrapped my fingers around something soft and brittle, like termite-eaten timber. I brushed even more dirt away from the shape and saw the outline of the arm—and fingers! I reached in with both hands and pulled Maddie Someday’s withered limb from the ground.

“That’s disgusting!” Lisa said.

Seeing Maddie’s corpse from a distance was one thing, but examining the decaying flesh up close was altogether different. Most of the gray skin had flaked away, and damp soil formed a kind of flesh on the bone. Here and there, I saw what looked like the remains of skin, of muscle, of cartilage. The arm smelled horrible, and I gagged a little when I took a whiff. On the skeletal ring finger clung a mass of dirt. I gently brushed it away with my grimy fingers. As the dirt fell away, a reddish gleam showed through. She was still wearing her infamous ring—the ring children watched for at night. Using a little spit, I cleaned it off as best I could. The large red stone had been etched with the same symbol Mrs. Brewster had scratched into my hand.

Lisa and I looked at each other in disbelief. We were holding the arm of the reviled Maddie Someday. Shortly, we’d be taking it to a woman who intended to bring Maddie back from the dead!

“Let’s get this thing to Mrs. Brewster,” I said.

Lisa nodded. She gathered a few greasy rags from a pile in the corner and tossed them to me.

“Wrap it up in those,” she said. “I don’t even like to look at it.”

After bundling the filthy rags around the arm, I stood up and brushed dirt from my knees. I carried the arm—Lisa didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

Just then, we heard the crunch of gravel beneath tires.

Blinding light flooded the shed.

The Firebird sped toward us, chewing the driveway like candy.

I stepped out in front of Lisa as the car sped forward. It wouldn’t do much good. If I got mashed flat, chances were, she would too.

I held my hand up to block the painful glare of the headlights.

Through the windshield, I saw Greg clutching the steering wheel like a race car driver. His double row of teeth, clenched tight and showing through his sneer, matched the menacing, toothy expression of the car’s grille.

He’s not stopping, I thought.

But the brakes caught hold of the gravel, sending pebbles skittering out from under the car. The Firebird lurched to a halt no more than a foot away from me. I felt heat roll out of the grille and wash over me. My legs felt a little weak. Even though Greg hadn’t squashed us, we were in no less danger. The car filled the shed’s doorway, leaving only a little room to inch past on either side. Greg opened the driver’s side door, effectively cutting off one half of our escape route. I quickly hid the severed arm behind my back.

He climbed from the car, standing up behind the open door.

“What do you think you’re doing in here?” he growled.

“This isn’t as bad as it looks.” As soon as I said it, I realized only guilty people said things like that. “We were just leaving.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Greg said. “Why’s there a hole dug in the middle of the floor? What are you trying to pull? What have you got behind your back?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

“If you’re stealing something, I swear—”

“We’re not stealing anything,” Lisa snapped. “Just leave us alone.”

Greg slammed the door shut and stepped toward me. He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers in a “give me” motion. “What’s behind your back?” he asked again. “Whatever it is, you’re not leaving here with it, at least not alive.”

My legs tensed. As Greg took another menacing step, I scrambled to the other side of the car. Lisa made a break for it. Just when I thought I might escape, Greg dove for me, grabbed me by the elbow, and jerked me back. He almost tore my arm out of the socket.

Lisa quick-drew her slingshot and aimed it at Greg.

“Drop it!” he ordered Lisa. He gave my arm a twist, and I cried out in pain. “Drop it or I’ll rip his arm off.”

Now, that’s funny! I thought.

Well, it might have been funny if my arm didn’t feel like it was about to break.

Lisa grimaced. She still pointed the slingshot at Greg, but her arms trembled.

“I mean it,” he said, twisting my arm again. I squeaked out an “Ouch!” I was surprised I managed to hold onto Maddie’s arm.

Reluctantly, Lisa dropped the slingshot to the dirt.

“Now let’s see what you have there,” Greg said. He yanked the rags away from the arm. His grip on me tightened. “What in the world?”

And then he started gasping for air.

Maddie Someday’s arm moved on its own accord, jerking in spasms as it leapt from my grasp. Its fingers clasped onto Greg’s throat and started to squeeze.

Greg let go of me and tried to tear the skeletal arm away from his throat. The more he fought, though, the tighter the witch’s arm clenched. Greg stumbled and fell back against the hood of his car.

He wheezed. His eyes started to roll back, revealing only the whites. The arm continued to crush his windpipe.

It was going to kill him!

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Part of me wanted to let the clawed hand choke the life out of Greg. From day one, Greg had been nothing but trouble for me and my family and friends. In just a few seconds more, Maddie Someday’s arm would change all that forever. But I couldn’t just sit idly by and watch him die, no matter how awful of a bully he might be.

Greg’s eyes bulged in the sockets and frothy spittle clung to his lips. His face turned dark red, almost purple. He clawed at the disembodied hand as the decaying fingers continued to crush his throat.

“Do something!” Lisa cried.

I grabbed Maddie’s arm and tried to tear it free. I couldn’t believe how strong the mummified limb was. I tugged as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t come off.

“Help!” I cried to Lisa.

Even with Lisa helping me pull at the witch’s arm, I couldn’t free Greg.

Greg Crewes kicked and squirmed. He thrashed about, elbowing me in the chin as he flopped off the hood of the car and fell to the ground. I bit my tongue, tasted blood, and staggered back.

Lisa scrambled after Greg, throwing her body over his to keep him still while she tried to pry the arm off. Up until then, she would barely even look at the arm, but now she wrestled with it. I rushed back to Greg’s side, working my fingers in between Maddie’s digits and his throat. Greg wheezed in a breath, but the dead witch’s fingers tightened like a vice. I barely pulled my hand away before she would’ve mashed my bones to jelly.

“What’s going on here?” I heard someone cry.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw Hatch standing in the doorway. He still looked sleepy, and he wore only a pair of sweatpants. All the noise must have finally awakened him.

“Help us!” I cried.

His eyes grew large when he saw his brother. We must have looked like we were attacking him. Hatch charged.

“Wait—”

He slammed into me with all the force of a football player tackling a practice dummy. He drove me back, off his brother and into the wall. The air left my lungs with a whoof! and I slid down the wall to a seated position.

“Hatch,” Lisa cried. “We’re trying to help him! Please!”

Hatch moved away from me. I groaned. I felt like some of my ribs were cracked.

“Get off him!” Hatch shoved Lisa. She sprawled on her butt to the hard packed earth. Hatch squatted beside his brother, and a look of horror spread across his face. He, too, tried to remove the arm, but couldn’t.

After a couple of minutes, Greg lay still.

I struggled to my feet, clutching at my side. I didn’t think my ribs were broken after all, but they hurt, especially when I took a deep breath. I stepped toward Greg and Hatch. Hatch lay over his brother’s body, as if trying to protect it from the elements. Lisa stood a few feet away, sobbing.

Maddie’s arm lay nearby, as still as it had been when I first unearthed it.

“Is he—” I started to ask, but the words trailed off.

Hatch was crying too, I realized. His face lay on his brother’s chest, and he wept.

He was crying so hard he didn’t notice—

“He’s still breathing,” I said.

Hatch raised his head and looked at his brother. Greg’s chest rose and fell as he took slow, deep breaths. Maddie had only choked him into unconsciousness. Hatch started to shake him, trying to wake him up. I didn’t want to be around when he came to.

I scooped up Maddie’s arm in one hand and grabbed Lisa by the elbow with the other.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Lisa stared at Greg for a second or two.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?” she asked.

What do you care? I thought. He got what he deserved.

I actually had to fight to keep those words from popping out of my mouth. That scared me a little. I wondered if it had something to do with the witch’s mark on my hand.

What I actually said was, “He’s fine, but we have to go if we’re going to save Alex.”

While Hatch was preoccupied with his brother, we took off through the woods, taking the last piece of a dead body jigsaw puzzle back to Mrs. Brewster.

CHAPTER THIRTY

We made pretty good time through the woods, mainly because we had a couple of ticked-off brothers behind us and another brother—mine—in mortal danger in front of us. Lisa took the lead because I still couldn’t find my way around very easily. I wrapped both of my arms around Maddie Someday’s severed limb and clutched it close to my chest. With every step, the hand—the hand that had almost taken Greg Crewes’s life—bounced up and down loosely on the wrist, like it was waving goodbye to someone. The red ring glinted in the moonlight.

Before we reached the witch house, Lisa paused to lean against a tree and catch her breath. Taking a break sounded wonderful, but I wanted to get back as soon as I could and rescue Alex.

“Oh, no,” Lisa said.

“What?”

“I left my slingshot.”

I sighed. The weapon had been left on the shed’s dirt floor. I only hoped we didn’t need the slingshot before we were through with Mrs. Brewster and Maddie Someday.

“Let’s keep moving,” I said.

“You want to go ahead, go on,” Lisa said. “Try not to get lost. I’m resting for a few minutes.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I sat down on a large rock jutting out of the ground. “Are you angry or something?”

“I’m not angry,” she said, “but I don’t think we’ve been thinking this through very clearly.”

“What’s to think about?” I asked. “If we don’t take this arm to Mrs. Brewster, she’s going to kill my little brother.”

“It’s not that simple, and if you’d just stop to think about it, you’d realize that. What do you think you have there?” She nodded toward the arm. “It’s the arm of a witch, a witch who used to hurt people. She used to kidnap children—kids just like us who were never seen again. And Mrs. Brewster’s planning on bringing her back to life. Whether we help her or not, do you think she’s just going to let us walk out of there unharmed?”

I knew where Lisa was heading with her argument. I even agreed with her to a certain degree. But what choice did I have?

“What do you want to do?” I asked. “Let my little brother die?”

“Of course not.” She ran a hand through her sweaty hair. “I want to save him just as much as you do. I’m just not sure if letting Mrs. Brewster bring an evil witch back from the dead is such a good idea. We’d have two evil witches to contend with.”

My shoulders sagged.

“There has to be something we can do.” Lisa placed a hand on my shoulder and offered an apologetic smile. “We’ll figure it out if we put our heads together.”

I looked down at Maddie’s severed arm. Since it had sprung to life in the shed, it hadn’t so much as twitched on its own. The ring on the boney finger twinkled in the darkness. I held my hand up next to the ring, comparing the scratches on the back of my hand to the symbol etched into the blood red stone. Somehow the symbols connected me to Maddie, the same way the symbol connected the dog and Mrs. Brewster to the long-dead witch. There must have been powerful magic connected to the bauble.

I shifted uncomfortably on the rock.

I looked up.

“Give me those slingshot stones of yours.”

Lisa untied the pouch from her belt and tossed it to me.

“Won’t do much good without the slingshot, will they?”

“I think I have an idea,” I said.

“You do?”

“It’s not much of an idea,” I admitted. “It probably won’t work, and chances are it will get us all killed.”

“I like the sound of it already,” Lisa said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

An eerie glow showed from the windows of the witch house, and a light mist seemed to ooze out of the earth itself. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but I started thinking this was the place where all the fog in the county came from. A cold knot formed in my belly, slowly uncoiling like a snake with every step we took.

I didn’t see Marty anywhere. I worried he’d tried something stupid and gotten himself in a whole world of trouble. Leaving him behind probably wasn’t the wisest decision on my part, but I couldn’t do anything about that now. Still, it would have been nice to know where he was and whether he was alive or dead.

“We’re back!” I called. “Mrs. Brewster? We have the arm!”

Walking by my side, Lisa reached out and squeezed my hand for luck. I squeezed back. A weird thought danced through my head. There I was, holding both Lisa’s normal—if somewhat sweaty—hand and Maddie Someday’s gnarled, rotting arm. Still, I didn’t let Lisa’s hand go until the front door of the house opened and old, wrinkled Mrs. Brewster herself hobbled out.

As she limped down the steps, one hand trembled upon her cane and the other snapped open and closed in anticipation.

“I’m impressed, child.” Her voice was high and screechy, and she talked fast, the way I do when excited or scared. “I didn’t expect you to return so quickly. Give it to me.”

I yanked the arm away from her grasp.

“Not so fast,” I said. “First, let my brother go.”

With crooked teeth, Mrs. Brewster chewed nervously at her lower lip. Her dark eyes lingered on Maddie Someday’s arm for a few seconds, then she looked me in the eyes. She was trying to size me up, see if she could somehow get the better of me.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “I can run a lot faster than you can. You so much as look at me wrong, and you’ll never see the arm again.”

“And you’d never see your brother again either. You’re bluffing, child.”

There wasn’t much I could say. She was right, and she’d called me on it.

“Just let me see him.”

“Very well.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll take you to your brother.”

She shuffled to the cellar doors and leaned over to throw them open. She must have been a lot stronger than she looked, because she didn’t need any help. The familiar stink rose from the darkness below.

“After you,” Mrs. Brewster said, motioning toward the door to the dark chamber like the doorman at a high-rise hotel.

I started down the steps with Lisa a step or two behind. As Lisa brushed past Mrs. Brewster, she pointed an accusing finger at the old crone and said, “No tricks.”

Mrs. Brewster rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of it, my dear.”

Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

With Mrs. Brewster behind us, we descended into shadow.

Reaching the bottom, I saw Alex tied to the rusty metal ring once again. His head hung low, like he didn’t have the strength to look up. I dropped Maddie’s arm and dashed to my brother’s side. The knot binding him to the ring was a lot tighter this time, but I managed to tug it loose.

I was so busy helping Alex to his feet I didn’t even notice Mrs. Brewster snatch the arm off the ground. She squealed with delight and held the arm up above her head like a first-prize trophy. She hopped up and down and rushed over to the shadowy, dirty thing crouched in the corner like a still spider awaiting prey.

“Help him out of here,” I told Lisa, passing my brother to her.

“What about you?” she asked, already ushering Alex up the steps. “Aren’t you coming?”

“I’m not done yet,” I said, watching Mrs. Brewster go to work on the witch’s corpse.

The stairs creaked beneath the combined weight of Alex and Lisa as they climbed.

Mrs. Brewster worked like an expert surgeon, stitching up a precious patient after surgery. Her bent fingers worked the leather thread through the decayed, worm-covered flesh of the dead witch. As Mrs. Brewster pierced the flaking skin with the knitting needle and cinched the body parts together, she looked down at the corpse’s fingers.

She whirled around, snarling, “Where is it?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. Glancing to my right, I saw that Lisa and Alex had cleared the cellar doors. “Where’s what?”

“You know what I’m talking about!” Mrs. Brewster loomed closer. “The ring. Where is it?”

“It’s not there?” I asked. “It was there when we dug the arm up. It must have fallen off somewhere in the woods.”

“Listen to me, child.” She lurched toward me. “That ring is very important. Don’t lie to me about it. I’m far more understanding than Maddie will be when she awakens.”

Behind her, something ghastly was happening. The mud and worms and dead flesh seemed to come alive, stitching Maddie’s flesh back together. I saw the corpse twitch, saw the chest rise and fall as the witch took her first breath in a hundred years.

“A-all right,” I said. I untied Lisa’s pouch from my belt. “I have it.”

“Give it to me!” Mrs. Brewster snapped. She snatched the pouch from my hand. “Foolish child! You’ll learn there’s an awful price for playing games with me.”

She tugged the drawstrings, opened the pouch, and dumped the contents into her hand.

She gasped.

I slapped the back of her hand, and the scorpions flew into the air, landing on Mrs. Brewster’s face.

Fighting mad, the critters started to strike her with their stingers, injecting their painful poison into her lip and eyelid.

“Reaarggh!” Mrs. Brewster shrieked, swatting the scorpions from her face and staggering away.

I ran for the stairs, taking the sagging, rotting wooden steps two at a time. I was only a few feet from the top, and once I made it outside we’d lock Mrs. Brewster in the cellar. Six steps away. Four. Two.

A clawed hand snagged my leg. I tripped and fell forward, crashing painfully against the hard edge of the steps.

“No you don’t!” Mrs. Brewster growled.

I’d been caught. The plan had failed.

I was dead meat.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I kicked and squirmed in Mrs. Brewster’s grasp and half-crawled up the steps. She held on tight. I tried to scramble to the top, clawing at the wood. I shook my leg in hopes of loosening her grip, but her fingernails dug through my jeans and into my flesh.

Looking back, I saw awful, swelling blisters on her face where the scorpions had stung her. Frothy spittle flew from her lips. She held onto me with one hand and beat at me with her cane in the other. I tried to push her back, but from my position I had no leverage as she dragged me down the steps.

“Out of the way!”

I heard Marty’s voice loud and clear.

I fell as flat as I could on the steps. Mrs. Brewster looked up just as Marty swung over the edge of the doorway. He held onto the door above with both hands, swinging like a kid on monkey bars. He held his booted feet straight out in front of him like steel-heeled rockets aimed at Mrs. Brewster. His boots struck her square in the face. Mrs. Brewster yelped, released me, and tumbled down the steps.

Still holding onto the door, Marty groaned as he raised himself back out of the stairwell. I scrambled into the night air.

For a second or two, I couldn’t look down into the cellar. I feared I might see Mrs. Brewster crawling like a spider up the steps. Or maybe I’d see her lying twisted and broken on the earthen floor. Finally, I steadied myself and looked down below. Faint moonlight cast its pale glow onto the cellar floor.

What I saw was worse than I imagined.

Mrs. Brewster sat at the bottom of the steps, clutching at her ankle and rocking back and forth. She looked up at me, moonlight spilling across her swollen features.

“My ankle,” she said. “It’s broken. I can’t stand.”

She didn’t see the shadow stretching across the floor behind her, the dark shape of a person lumbering in her direction.

Maddie, I thought.

Now the undead thing was approaching Mrs. Brewster, like a movie vampire stalking its unsuspecting prey.

“Help me, child,” Mrs. Brewster pleaded.

But I couldn’t. With Marty’s help, I swung the storm cellar doors closed, sealing Mrs. Brewster in darkness.

“Don’t leave me down here!” Mrs. Brewster cried, her voice muffled by the darkness. She yelled for us to open the doors, to help her out of the cellar.

Then she started screaming.

And her screams were cut off by horrible slurping sounds.

“Let’s get out of here,” Marty said.

Alex was still pretty shaken up, and Mrs. Brewster’s anguished cries and the sickening noises that followed didn’t help. Not one bit. He leaned on Lisa’s shoulder, and she kept him standing.

“You guys go,” I told them. “I have to stay, at least for a little while.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s all part of the plan,” I said.

“You may not have noticed,” Lisa scolded, “but your plan almost got you killed.”

I just shook my head. “If I don’t stay to see this through, it’s going to be a lot worse.”

“What are you talking about?”

As if in answer to Marty’s question, the cellar doors blew open, shattering the wooden brace to splinters. A figure glided up from the shadows below. She was dressed in the patched gray dress Mrs. Brewster had been wearing. Dark stains soaked the clothes. She was actually sort of pretty—beautiful, in fact—except for the still healing and pink scars around her throat…and the terribly pale color of her eyes.

Witching eyes.

The woman floated out of the stairwell and hovered a few inches off the ground as she looked us over, tilting her head curiously, like a dog that had just seen something it didn’t understand.

My heart slammed in my chest, and my entire body trembled. I was terrified—the way I might have been terrified in the face of a tornado or hurricane or erupting volcano. But I couldn’t run no matter how much I wanted to.

I stepped forward and faced Maddie Someday.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The witch looked down at me. For a second, she peered right into my eyes, and my head started aching. The eerie force of her gaze made my skin crawl, like chiggers and ticks were scurrying over my flesh. Her eyes fell to the symbol scratched upon my hand, and she smiled prettily.

“Who are you?” she said, and her voice was like music from a busted flute—melodic for the most part, but awkward and off-key at times, like she wasn’t used to speaking. “You bear the mark of one of my servants.”

“My name is Charlie Ward.” I used my left hand to cover the marking. “I helped bring you back, but I’m not one of your servants.”

She looked past me at Marty, Lisa, and Alex.

“Have you brought these children to me?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “They’re my friends. They’ve been helping me.”

She eyed them hungrily.

“They aren’t for you,” I said.

“You dare to tell me what I can and can’t have?”

She raised her hand and waved her fingers at me. Suddenly, it was like I didn’t weigh a thing, and I flew across the yard like a rag doll thrown in the middle of a child’s tantrum.

“Charlie!” Alex cried.

I hit the ground hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Trembling, I picked myself up.

Maddie, still hovering an inch or so above the ground, slid toward Lisa, Marty, and Alex.

“Wait!” I cried.

“You are an annoying little boy.” She turned. “I have much to do. What do you want?”

I steadied myself. “This isn’t about what I want,” I said. “This is about what you want.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We have your ring,” I said.

Maddie looked at her bare finger. She screeched in horror, then floated closer.

“That ring has been in my family for centuries, boy.” She opened her hand. Her voice was musical and delightful, but her words were cruel. “I’ll flay you alive if you don’t hand it over.”

I wasn’t even sure what it meant to be “flayed alive,” but I didn’t like the sound of it one bit.

“If you hurt me, my friends will destroy the ring.”

She glared at Lisa, Marty, and Alex. “I can kill them all in the blink of an eye.”

“Not them,” I said. “We have other friends hiding in the woods, and if you lay one hand on us, they’ll smash your ring beneath a stone.”

I hoped I sounded convincing.

“You’re lying,” Maddie snarled.

Uh-oh.

“Can you take that chance?” I asked, hiding the tremble in my voice. “We know the ring is a focus for your power. If you hurt us, it will be destroyed.”

“They wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, yes, they would,” I said. “You’ll never see it again.”

She watched me for a few seconds, then said, “What is it you want?”

Got her!

I fought to remain calm, fought to keep my voice steady.

“If you want the ring, you must give me your word you’ll leave Crooked Hills forever and never seek revenge on me or my friends and family.”

“Ridiculous,” she said. “I can’t promise such a thing.”

“You must not want the ring very badly.”

I turned away.

“All right!” she said.

“All right what?”

She sounded like a kid who had just been scolded as she droned the terms of her promise. “I give my word I will leave Crooked Hills forever.”

“And?” I asked.

“And never seek revenge against you and your friends.”

“Or my family.”

“Very well.”

Lisa coughed into her hand.

“And the same goes for Lisa, too,” I said. “You leave her family alone, too.”

Maddie’s lips curled into a snarl. “Agreed. Now tell me where I can find the ring!”

“We’re going to leave now.”

“You treacherous fool!” She glided toward me. “If you back out on our bargain, my promise means nothing!”

“Ah ah ah!” I shook my finger at her. “Stay where you are if you want your ring back.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Like I said, we’re leaving now.” I grew braver, and my voice was steadier. “We’ll leave the ring at the Bleeding Rock.”

Maddie wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“As long as we do that,” I said, “you have to keep your word, right?”

“Yes.”

The hatred wafted off her like heat from a barbeque grill.

“All right,” I said. “No tricks.”

“No tricks, child. But I warn you…I will find a way…”

With that, she was gone. She seemed to become mist, like the fog that rose throughout Crooked Hills on dark nights. Her cloudy form floated before us, then dissipated.

I looked at Lisa, Marty, and Alex.

We’d won.

Hadn’t we?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“So your plan was to convince her to make a promise?” Marty asked.

“A witch has to keep her promises.” I gently placed her ring—which had been in my pocket all along—on the Bleeding Rock. “She can’t break her word, so we’re safe.”

“But she said something there at the end. She said she’d find a way. What did she mean?”

“She’s bluffing,” I said.

But I didn’t believe it.

I shuddered.

“I hate to rain on your parade,” Lisa said, “but do either of you realize what we’ve done?”

“We saved Alex from getting eaten.” My confidence, though, started to dip just a little. “Why? What are you talking about?”

“We let her go,” Lisa said.

“Not much we could have done to stop her.”

“She was going to eat me.” Alex’s expression was blank, as if he’d just awakened from a nightmare he just couldn’t shake. “She was going to eat me all up. She told me so. Down in the dark.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “We’re safe. She can’t hurt us now. She gave her word.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She can’t hurt us. But she’s free to hurt anyone else, anywhere in the world.”

I could only stare and blink at her. She was right, of course. We’d helped bring the most fiendish witch of all time back to life, and to make matters worse, we’d unleashed her on the world at large.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

We never told our parents what really happened out in the woods. We never mentioned the fetch or Mrs. Brewster or Maddie Someday. Marty worried if we told the truth, they’d lock us up in the nuthouse. I didn’t know if that would happen or not, but I didn’t want to risk it.

For a couple of weeks, I didn’t stray too far from the house. I helped Marty with his chores, played video games, and read my cousin’s complete collection of Hardy Boys books. All things considered, I felt a lot safer stuck on my aunt and uncle’s farm than out and about. Eventually, even the nightmares stopped, and I finally got a few nights of peaceful sleep. Maybe the influence of the Bleeding Rock only lasts for a while…as long as you stay away from it.

I didn’t see much of Lisa for the rest of the summer. She got caught sneaking back home after our misadventure with Mrs. Brewster, and she got grounded until school started again. I only saw her once—when I went to the barber for a trim—but we didn’t talk too much. Her dad had her busily sweeping up the shop. I did, however, notice that she had a new slingshot tucked into her back pocket. I talked to her on the phone a couple of times. The first time she called, she just wanted to make sure we were all right. The second time, she wanted to tell me about a kid our age who vanished in the next town over.

Maybe Maddie had something to do with it. Maybe not.

Thankfully, I didn’t see much of the Crewes brothers, either. Once, while we were helping Aunt Mary shop for groceries, I saw Greg and Hatch lurking in the store’s parking lot. They spotted me too, and their lips curled into cruel sneers, but they never came close.

Eventually, Marty and I grew too restless to stay locked up in the house, and we ventured out into the woods and rolling hills and hollows once again. There was simply too much to see, too many places to explore. After all, the most haunted small town in America is the kind of place that you need to experience first-hand!

As for Alex, he didn’t talk much about Maddie. Either he didn’t remember what happened or he forced himself to forget. The encounter with the witch had scared him pretty bad.

“I’m worried about your brother,” Mom told me one night.

“He’s all right,” I told her. “He’s just in one of those moods.”

“Do you think he likes it here?”

“I think so.”

“And what about you? Do you like it?”

I rolled my eyes. “I guess it hasn’t been as bad as I expected.”

She smiled.

“How’s the book coming?” I asked.

“Well, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been having such a good time writing, I’ve decided I want to focus on that for a while. I don’t think I could stand the idea of going back to work at the paper.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s great.”

“Well, I have to make money until my writing starts to pay the bills. I’ve got quite a bit in savings, but it won’t last forever. So I’ve taken a job at the library. It will be pretty relaxing, and I can even use some of the quiet time to work on my book.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “The library here?”

“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about. How does the idea of moving to Crooked Hills sound?”

If you had asked me a few weeks earlier, I would have never thought I would want to live in Crooked Hills. To be completely honest, I still didn’t know what to think.

“I guess I’m willing to give it a try,” I said.

Later that night, I lay in bed, thinking of the possibilities.

Moving to Crooked Hills meant new friends, a new house, and a new school. Those things scared me a little. But it also meant adventures I would have never had back home. I wondered if I was up for that. Maybe dealing with Maddie Someday had scared the curiosity right out of me.

Nah!

Besides, Marty was here, and I liked hanging out with him.

And I wondered what it would be like going to school with him…and with Lisa.

I felt a giddy little jump in the pit of my stomach.

Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, I thought.

Outside, the train horn sounded in the darkness.

And a dog’s howl followed.…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cullen Bunn is the writer of creator-owned comic books such as THE SIXTH GUN, HARROW COUNTY, BONE PARISH, THE DAMNED, THE EMPTY MAN, REGRESSION, THE GHOUL NEXT DOOR, and BASILISK. He has also written books such as DEADPOOL KILLS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, UNCANNY X-MEN, and ASGARDIANS OF THE GALAXY for Marvel; SINESTRO and LOBO for DC; and SHADOWMAN and PUNK MAMBO for Valiant.

His website is www.cullenbunn.com.

His free weekly newsletter can be found at https://cullenbunn.substack.com.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four
- Chapter Twenty-Five
- Chapter Twenty-Six
- Chapter Twenty-Seven
- Chapter Twenty-Eight
- Chapter Twenty-Nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-One
- Chapter Thirty-Two
- Chapter Thirty-Three
- Chapter Thirty-Four
- Chapter Thirty-Five
- About the Author