Watch Hollow

by Gregory Funaro

  “One hundred and twenty thousand dollars,” he muttered to himself. “Just for fixing some dumb clock down in Rhode Island.”

  Unbelievable, Lucy thought. Her father could finally afford that new truck and the MacBook he’d been wanting for the business—not to mention the iPads he’d been promising her and Oliver for years now, too. He might even throw them each a new iPhone if they played their cards right. The rich girls at school always had the latest one. Food stamp freak my fanny!

  “Looks like this Mortimer Quigley is some kind of wealthy philanthropist,” Oliver called from the computer. “I can’t find anything about Blackford House, but Google shows Watch Hollow being out in the boonies near Conn-ect-ticut.”

  Lucy bit her lip and stifled a giggle. Oliver’s voice had been cracking a lot lately—just puberty, Pop had explained—but Lucy suspected the pimples on his chin and forehead had more to do with stress. Oliver had taken their mother’s death harder than anyone—so much so that he had to stay back in fifth grade. And on the rare occasions when he wasn’t working in the shop, his nose was buried in his stupid comic books. He hardly ever hung out with his friends anymore. True, most of them were in middle school now, but still . . .

  “So, what do you think, Pop?” Oliver said, hurrying over, and Mr. Tinker slipped the pouch of gold into a steel box that was hidden beneath the floorboards under his worktable.

  “I think things are finally looking up for the Tinkers,” he said, and Lucy saw that her father’s eyes were misty with tears.

  Impulsively, Lucy threw her arms around his waist, and he hugged her back—awkwardly at first, but then tighter as Oliver joined in. And the three of them just stood there like that, hugging one another for the first time since Mom’s funeral.

  Only this hug was different, Lucy thought; and definitely worth way more than a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

  Two

  Bags and Bigsbys

  The next morning, Oliver sat at the kitchen table, pushing his spoon absently at his cereal as he watched his father comb his hair in their tiny bathroom. The mirror had a crack down the middle, so he had to keep bobbing his head side to side to get a good view—like some redheaded hip-hop dancer, Oliver thought.

  “I shouldn’t be too long, Ollie,” his father called through the open door. “The gold dealer is only two blocks away. He’ll cut me a check, and then I’ll head over to the bank to make my deposit. After that, I’ll take care of the overdue payments on the line of credit. With this twelve thousand, we should be clear until December. Boy, won’t those bigwig bankers be surprised. No bankruptcy for Tinker’s Clock Shop after all!”

  Mr. Tinker chuckled and patted the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, where the pouch of gold had been hidden ever since he’d gotten dressed. Before that, it had been tucked under his pillow. Oliver had heard his father retrieve the pouch from the shop late last night. Must’ve been so excited that he couldn’t sleep a wink.

  Oliver figured this was true because his father’s snoring usually woke him up at least once during the night. If not that, it was Lucy kicking him in the chest. They slept head to toe in a twin bed on one side of the room, while their father slept on a narrow cot on the other side near the stove. The one-room apartment in which they lived was cramped and dark, with only a small window in the bathroom and a door leading to the alley out back.

  When Oliver’s mother was alive, the Tinkers lived in the apartment upstairs. But with all the medical bills and business being so bad these last couple of years . . . well, truth be told, it wasn’t so much that business was bad, but more that Oliver’s father was bad at business. Case in point: he was totally wrong about how long the money from Mr. Quigley would last. Oliver figured through September at the latest, but he didn’t say anything. His father wouldn’t listen anyway; and besides, Oliver couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him so happy.

  Mr. Tinker exited the bathroom and moved to the stove. “Make sure you get Lucy to help you at the Laundromat,” he said, pouring some coffee into a travel mug. “She’s already at the park, I bet—playing soccer before it gets too hot.”

  Oliver gave his father a thumbs-up, and Mr. Tinker slipped out the back door humming cheerfully. Oliver just sat there for a moment listening as the tune trailed off down the alley. Even if he hadn’t lost his bet with Lucy, Oliver still wouldn’t have asked her to help him with the laundry. Let her enjoy her parole, he thought—not to mention she was being a good sport about having to miss out on all the stuff she’d planned for the summer.

  Well, maybe not the whole summer. Oliver couldn’t imagine it would take that long to fix a clock—even a giant clock like the one at Blackford House. What a weird name for a house, Oliver thought. But even weirder was the fact that they’d be living there with no electricity. True, his father was bringing the generator, but it was noisy and even worse on gas than their old pickup truck.

  Oliver gulped down the rest of his cereal, washed and dried his bowl, and then shoved the dirty dish towel into one of two overstuffed laundry bags. They had so much stuff to do before their trip, his father had decided to close the shop on a Saturday for the first time since Mom died.

  Oliver swiveled his eyes to the picture of her atop the single dresser they all shared. Oliver had taken it himself during a family vacation at the beach in Rhode Island when he was eight—the ocean at her back, her hair like frozen black fire in the wind. That was before the chemo. But even in the end, when her hair was short and she weighed less than he did, Oliver thought Eleanor Tinker was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  Tears welled in his eyes, and Oliver snatched an old, tattered issue of Batman from atop the dresser and began to read. All the best superheroes had lost someone they loved when they were kids—Superman and Batman, their parents; Spider-Man, his uncle Ben. Not that Oliver thought he was a superhero, but reading about them sometimes made him feel better when the pain became too much.

  Thankfully, this was one of those times; and after a couple of pages, his grief subsided. Oliver tucked the comic under his arm, bear-hugged the laundry bags to his chest, and then squeezed with them out the back door into the alley. The Laundromat was only a half block away, but the bags were so heavy, and the place was so hot, by the time he’d loaded everything into the washer, beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead.

  Oliver dragged his wrist across his brow and felt the dull ache of a new pimple forming. Going to be a whopper, he could tell, and his stomach twisted anxiously. Great. The more he stressed, the more pimples he got, and the more pimples he got, the more he stressed. A vicious cycle, his father said—like a perpetual motion clock that went on ticking forever.

  Oliver sat down in the breeze from the open door, and over the next hour and a half, read his comic book seven times, pausing once to switch the laundry from the washer into the dryer and then again to fold the clean clothes back into the laundry bags. The Laundromat was oddly deserted for a Saturday, but still, Oliver decided to leave the comic on the table. No doubt there would be some kid coming in later with his mother who hadn’t read it yet.

  Oliver double-knotted the laundry bag cords, heaved the hefty bundles up into his arms, and stepped outside. The late-morning sun was blinding, which is why he didn’t see Betty Bigsby and her Neanderthal brother, Theo, until it was too late.

  “Going somewhere, Stinker?” Theo said, blocking his way, and Oliver gasped.

  Theo Bigsby was the same age as Oliver, but because he’d moved on to middle school last fall with the rest of the kids in Oliver’s class, Oliver hadn’t seen him all year. In the meantime, Theo Bigsby had gotten . . . well . . . bigger. His black hair was gelled up in spikes, and he was dressed in a blue Adidas tracksuit that he wore unzipped over a white wife beater. A thick gold chain hung around his fat neck, and his eyes were slits of anger below his heavy, unibrow-lined forehead.

  “Where’s your sister?” Theo asked through gritted teeth.

  “Waiting in line for fo
od stamps, I bet,” Betty said, peeking out from behind him. She was dressed in jean shorts and a sparkly T-shirt that said Epic! But other than that, she looked like a smaller, curly haired version of her Neanderthal brother.

  “That so, zit-face?” Theo said. “You Stinkers on food stamps now?”

  Oliver swallowed hard. The Bigsbys lived in an old town house six blocks away across the tracks on Broadway—not the richest neighborhood, but rich enough that Theo and Betty thought they were better than kids like the Tinkers. So what the heck were they doing over here on the wrong side of the tracks—and on a Saturday, no less?

  “We’ve been lookin’ for your sister all week,” Theo said, hiking his pants up over his gut, and Betty pulled out her iPhone and started recording. “She jumped Betty here at school. It ain’t fair playin’ like that. Which is why they’re gonna fight again fair and square, and I’m going to record it for my YouTube channel.”

  Oliver’s stomach twisted. He had seen Lucy’s fight with Betty on the last day of school. Betty was the one who started it, calling Lucy a food stamp freak and yanking her braid at recess. But there was no use arguing. Theo was an even bigger tool than his sister—the whole family just a bunch of tools living in one big toolshed.

  “You still ain’t answered my question, zit-face,” Theo said, pushing him. “We got subscribers waiting all week to see this beatdown.”

  “You know, The-o,” Oliver said, his voice cracking, “underage fight videos are a violation of YouTube’s terms of service.” Theo shrugged a whatever and fluffed his spikes with his fingers. “Besides,” Oliver went on, “Lucy’s already paid her dues—been grounded all week. She’s in the shop right now helping out my dad.”

  “Naw, she ain’t,” Theo said. “We already checked. She ain’t at the park neither. So where is she, zits? Or do you wanna be the star of my next video?”

  Theo pushed Oliver again—harder—and Oliver staggered back a step. His heart was hammering now, and his arms were screaming from the weight of the laundry bags. There were some grown-ups milling in and out of the shops, but none of them seemed to notice what was going on. Probably for the best, Oliver figured. Even if someone stuck up for him, Theo would still get in a few good shots before he ran off—not to mention, Oliver would look like a total wuss in Theo’s YouTube video.

  On the other hand, Oliver thought, maybe he should just stand there and take it. Theo wouldn’t post anything if Oliver didn’t fight back—he’d look like too much of a bully, and the whole thing would backfire on him. Then again, Theo was slow, Oliver knew—and so was Betty—and even with the laundry bags, he might be able to outrun them back to the shop. It was only about forty yards or so.

  All this flashed through Oliver’s mind in an instant, but before he could decide what to do, the strangest thing happened.

  A shadow swept across Theo’s face, and then, out of nowhere, an enormous blob of bird poop splattered half his head.

  Oliver and Betty gasped, but it took Theo a couple of seconds to figure out what happened. He wiped off a glob of the poop and smelled it—his mouth hanging open, his unibrow scrunched in confusion as his dull-witted brain struggled to put it together.

  “Ew, gross!” Betty screamed, and Theo squinted up at the sky. Oliver, blinded by the sunlight, followed his gaze just long enough to register the hazy, fluttering shape of a bird perched above them atop the lamppost, and then in the next moment, he was dashing down the sidewalk, blinking floaters from his eyes.

  “Hey, get back here!” Betty cried.

  But Oliver only pumped his legs harder. He was dimly aware of Theo saying, “Turn that camera off!” And then Oliver skidded to a stop in front of the shop. His heart seized in terror—the front door’s security gate was still locked! There was no way he could make it back inside before the Bigsbys caught up with him!

  “You stupid bird!” Theo bellowed, and Oliver whirled. Thankfully, the big tool was still forty yards away in front of the Laundromat, pacing angrily and shaking his fist at the sky. Oliver still couldn’t see the bird clearly because of the sunlight, but Betty was aiming her iPhone at it as if she could.

  “I told you to turn that off!” Theo screamed, and in a fit of rage, he snatched his sister’s phone and hurled it up at the bird. The throw was way off, and the phone sailed across the street and smashed into a flowerpot on one of the fire escapes. Clumps of dirt rained down onto the sidewalk, a man started yelling, and the Bigsbys took off in the opposite direction. Oliver’s direction.

  “This ain’t over, zits!” Theo huffed, his face red and smeared with poop. He tried to push Oliver as he passed, but then Betty crashed into Theo from behind and nearly knocked him over. Theo grumbled some garbled curse words, Betty screamed something about Oliver buying her a new iPhone, and then, mercifully, the Bigsbys disappeared around the corner.

  Oliver dropped the laundry bags and collapsed on top of them in a fit of laughter. If only he could post that on YouTube!

  “Caw!” the bird called, fluttering up off the lamppost and out of sight.

  It was a crow, Oliver realized.

  The biggest crow he had ever seen.

  Three

  Into the Woods

  Gazing out from the backseat of her father’s pickup, it occurred to Lucy that she had been away from the city precisely three times during her eleven years—twice for vacations up in New Hampshire and once to the beach down in Rhode Island just before her mother got sick. Lucy had only been six, but she remembered the trip as if it were yesterday, including the journey itself.

  She remembered an enormous blue bug on the side of the interstate, which she presently found atop the New England Pest Control building while passing through Providence. She also remembered a tall, wooden tower that she and Oliver had climbed. Lucy kept looking for it but after a while gave up, mentioning to Oliver that maybe the tower collapsed or something.

  “That tower was near the beach,” he said, glancing from his comic book to the combo compass-wristwatch-flashlight he always wore. “Watch Hollow is in western Rhode Island; the beach is east.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. Most kids would be using a navigation app on their iPhone or something instead of an old-school compass. But the Tinkers didn’t have a lot of things that most families did. Mr. Tinker still used one of those ancient flip phones—not to mention the pickup truck in which they were driving had come off the assembly line long before navigation systems were even invented. How did people back then survive? Lucy wondered. After all, her father had nearly swerved off the road twice checking the map on the front seat beside him.

  Lucy sighed and trained her eyes out the open window. They had left the interstate about twenty minutes ago, and were out in the boonies somewhere with only woods and the occasional farm flying by. Lucy felt as if they had been driving for days, but it was really only a couple of hours since they’d left home. Still, Lucy didn’t think Rhode Island was big enough to have so many boonies, and as the pickup sputtered past yet another farm, she began to wonder if her father hadn’t gotten them lost.

  Lucy felt a lump rise in the back of her throat—it had been coming and going ever since they had left that morning. Sometimes the lump was the excited kind she got when Ian Whitaker borrowed her pencil at school. And at other times, like now, the lump was the sad, achy kind she got when she missed her mother.

  Lucy swallowed hard, but the lump didn’t go away, so she stuck her head out the window and began counting to see how long she could take the wind in her face. She got all the way up to forty-nine before pulling her head back inside. The lump was gone, but now her ears were ringing, which was why she couldn’t hear what her father said as he turned down a dirt road and plunged them deeper into the woods, rattling the electric generator in the truck bed.

  After a short distance, Lucy had the sense of first going up and then going down. The pickup clattered over a narrow, stone bridge that spanned a rushing, rocky stream, and then the woods suddenly grew so dark that Lucy’s fath
er turned on his headlights. Lucy held her breath—she wasn’t sure why—and just when she felt her lungs were about to explode, the trees fell away and she spied a rambling, jagged-roofed house up ahead. It stood at the end of a curved, dirt driveway that was choked with weeds and overgrown in spots with mounds of unkempt shrubbery.

  “Say hello to Blackford House,” said Mr. Tinker, and Lucy exhaled gratefully.

  Once upon a time, when her mother was alive, Pop would take the family on Sunday drives through the nicer neighborhoods, like where Betty Bigsby lived. Even though Lucy hated Betty, she secretly dreamed of living in a real house like hers. Lucy didn’t want a mansion—just her own bedroom—but never in a million years did she ever think that dream would come true.

  Well, technically it still hadn’t—the Tinkers were only temporary residents at Blackford House, and would be sleeping in the servants’ quarters to boot. But still, Lucy felt the excited lump rise again in her throat. She could at least pretend she was rich for a few weeks. And maybe, when the job was done, they would have enough money to move into a house of their own.

  Living in Blackford House would be good practice, then, Lucy decided. It was three stories tall, with a covered porch and sharp-peaked gables that jutted out on all sides. Atop the highest of these gables was an odd-looking weathervane, and nestled amid the others, Lucy counted four lofty stone chimneys. On one side of the house, two soaring, multipaned windows reflected the late-morning sun like beaten gold, while the other windows loomed cold and black over the property.

  As the truck drew closer, however, Lucy noticed that patches of the house’s shingled siding were curled or missing in places, and many of the shutters had fallen off and now stood leaning against the exterior. Lucy thought they looked like gravestones poking up amid the tall grass around the foundation. Creepy, for sure—but the woods, she decided, were the creepiest of all.