Even though it was June, the black, twisted trees were almost entirely bare. And not only did they surround the entire property, they also appeared to be slanting, almost shrinking away from the house, as if they were afraid of it.
Lucy gulped, and realized that the lump in her throat was back—only it wasn’t an excited or sad lump anymore; it was a lump of fear.
“Mr. Quigley was supposed to meet us here by now,” said Mr. Tinker, and the truck sputtered to a stop in front of the house. The Tinkers got out and stretched, and Lucy noticed the stone steps leading up to the porch were crumbling in places and covered in moss.
“This place is a dump,” Oliver said, pushing up his glasses, but his father just ignored him and, opening his phone, heaved a heavy sigh.
“I figured as much,” he said, frowning. “Reception is horrible out here, too.”
“Of course,” Oliver muttered. He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets and looked around anxiously.
“Great setting for a horror movie, don’t you think?” Lucy said—she couldn’t resist teasing him. “The mysterious Mr. Quigley invites the unsuspecting Tinker family to stay in his house and then one by one bumps them off to steal their money. Only, the joke is on him. The Tinkers have no money.”
“Shut up, Lucy,” Oliver said, and Lucy giggled. Even though Oliver was two years older, it was really easy to spook him.
“Why don’t you kids look around for a bit,” said Mr. Tinker. He was moving away from them now, his eyes never leaving his phone as he tried to get better reception. “Just don’t wander off. I’ll try calling Mr. Quigley to tell him we’re here.”
Oliver looked apprehensively at Lucy, who promptly grabbed him by the wrist and led him along a weedy, flagstone path around the house. There they found the tall, golden windows that Lucy had seen when they arrived—only now they didn’t look golden at all.
“That’s because the sun was hitting them at a different angle when we drove up,” Oliver remarked. Lucy asked him if they could be solar panels—Maybe the house had electricity after all, she thought—but her brother shook his head. The house was too old, he said, and solar panels were always placed on the roof.
“How old do you think this house is?” Lucy asked, and Oliver shrugged.
“At least a hundred years,” he said, and turned his eyes toward a large swath of windswept grass that stretched out about thirty yards to the woods. Lucy couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about the grass that was just wrong. Same with those creepy trees, Lucy thought as she followed Oliver around to the backyard—where, at the edge of the tree line, stood a dilapidated two-car garage.
“It’s not a garage,” Oliver explained. “It’s an old carriage house. You know, from back in the day when people rode horses.”
The arched double doorways of the carriage house stood open, and half of the structure was covered entirely in branches—Like giant hands, Lucy thought, trying to drag it into the woods.
“Def-initely a hundred years old,” Oliver said, his voice cracking. “And I’ll bet you the property was bigger once, too.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look how those trees are growing. They weren’t like that originally, I’m sure. If you were an arborist, you could go into the woods and figure out which trees were here when the land was cleared and which were not. Then you’d cut down one of the newer ones and count the rings.” Oliver cleared his throat. “Anyway, that would give you a rough idea of how old the place is.”
Lucy shrugged—she was only half listening now—and just stood there looking around anxiously as Oliver sauntered over to the carriage house and peered inside. Lucy didn’t like the carriage house. Its darkened doorways reminded her of the hollow eyes of some monster peering up over the grass, and the branches were its hair. Oliver, on the other hand, didn’t look frightened at all anymore. But that’s how Oliver was. When he got into something—like comics and clocks and carriage houses—he forgot about the things that were bothering him.
But Lucy hadn’t forgotten about what was bothering her. The place was too quiet. Yes, that was it, she realized. It was summer, which meant there should be loads of bugs buzzing and birds singing. But Lucy hadn’t heard even a mosquito since they arrived. There was only the silence, broken now and then by the rustle of the wind in the trees.
As Oliver began poking around the carriage house, out of the corner of her eye, Lucy spied a large crow fluttering high among the branches to her right. She walked along the path to get a better look at it, and came to an area where the path forked off through the grass.
Lucy followed this second path a short distance and then stopped at the edge of the woods. If the crow was still around, she could no longer see it among the dark tangle of shadows overhead—but the path, she realized, kept going into the woods. It was littered with twigs and leaves, and at about twenty yards or so seemed to vanish altogether in the gloom. The branches bent over the top to form a tunnel, and Lucy began to wonder where such a path could possibly lead.
“What do you seek?” someone whispered.
Startled, Lucy whirled around expecting to find Oliver had sneaked up behind her. But her brother was still investigating the carriage house. Lucy could just make out his dim shape inside one of the doorways.
Her heart hammering, Lucy turned back toward the tunnel. A soft breeze moaned through the branches, swirling leaves toward her along the path and blowing back her bangs. Lucy caught the faintest whiff of what smelled like garbage, and then something cold and damp slithered over her foot.
Lucy shrieked and, scrambling backward, tripped and fell on her bottom. At the same time, a thick, knotted tree root bulged up alongside the path near the woods.
“What’s the matt-er?” Oliver asked, rushing over. He helped Lucy to her feet. She was shivering, and the blood was pounding in her ears.
“That root there,” Lucy said, pointing. “It—it touched my foot.”
Oliver approached the root and kicked it. Thump. The root was solid, immovable. Oliver got down on his hands and knees and examined it more closely.
“You probably just got your foot caught,” he said, stuffing his hand underneath, and Lucy saw that the root was raised an inch or two off the ground. But Lucy had been standing still when the root touched her, hadn’t she?
“I swear I saw it move,” Lucy muttered. “After I fell, I mean. And I know it wasn’t there before.”
“It probably just looked like it was moving. A trick of the light.” Oliver stood up and clapped the dirt off his hands. “Still, we shouldn’t go in there,” he added, gazing down the path. “Not alone anyway. And not without a flashlight.”
Oliver clicked his watch-flashlight on and off as Lucy blinked at the root in disbelief. Had it really bulged up from the ground? Or were the shadows playing tricks on her, as Oliver said, and the root had been there all along?
“But there was something else, too,” Lucy said after a moment.
Oliver turned around with his eyebrows raised expectantly over his glasses, and suddenly Lucy felt stupid. Had she really heard a voice, or had she just imagined it? Maybe it was only the wind, whispering in the tunnel instead of moaning like it did before she got her foot caught under the root. Or had the root come first? Lucy wasn’t so sure anymore. Everything now seemed fuzzy in her head.
“Never mind,” she said, brushing the dirt off her buttocks. “But I’m telling you, that root moved.”
“It could’ve been a snake coming out from under the root,” Oliver said. “I don’t think there are any poisonous ones around here, but still, we should be care—”
Oliver stopped and cocked his ear. Lucy heard it, too. A car pulling up out front.
“That must be Mr. Quigley,” Oliver said. “Come on!”
This time, Oliver grabbed Lucy’s wrist and led her around the house, where they found Mr. Quigley getting out of his car. Gone was the snazzy black suit he’d worn in the clock shop. The old man was dress
ed in plaid shorts, a yellow cardigan, and a tweed cap on his bandaged head. He looked as if he’d just stepped off the golf course, Lucy thought—but instead of clubs he carried a large, black ring of skeleton keys.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said, beaming, and he shook hands with Mr. Tinker. “So wonderful to see you all again. I trust your journey was a pleasant one?”
As the adults made small talk about the trip, Lucy noticed that Mr. Quigley seemed nervous, his eyes darting back and forth between the house and her father.
“Anyhow, here are the keys to your summer abode,” the old man said, moving toward the front steps. “I’m afraid I don’t know which goes where. I’ve only owned the house for three months and—”
At that moment, a brick tumbled off the roof and landed on Mr. Quigley’s car, shattering one of the headlights and bouncing off into the dirt. Everyone jumped, but Mr. Quigley was so startled, he broke out into a fit of coughing.
“Oh my goodness! Are you all right, Mr. Quigley?” asked Mr. Tinker, and the old man waved him away with his handkerchief.
“Perfectly fine,” he said, pawing absently at the bandage beneath his cap. “I assure you, the house is in much better shape on the inside, but I do beg you to be careful out here. Especially you children when you’re playing.”
Mr. Tinker raked his fingers through his hair, staring anxiously at Mr. Quigley’s shattered headlight. The old man seemed unconcerned about it, however, and moved around to the driver’s side of his car, eager to leave.
“Well, then, I suppose I should let you get settled. Kitchen is fully stocked, and your bed linens are in the closet outside your quarters. Once you get your generator hooked up, I should think you’ll find the place quite to your liking.”
“Er—well—all right,” stammered Mr. Tinker.
“Wish I could stay longer to show you around,” said Mr. Quigley, looking at his watch. “But I have some pressing business that I must attend to before my trip—which now includes fixing a broken headlight.”
Mr. Quigley chuckled and coughed into his handkerchief, then slipped back into his car, which Lucy realized had been running the entire time.
“I will check in on you in the morning,” he called out the window, “but please feel free to call me should you need anything.”
Mr. Quigley threw the car into reverse, turned, and, kicking up a spray of dirt, disappeared into the woods at the end of the driveway.
“Er—right, then, let’s get moving,” said Mr. Tinker.
As her brother and father unloaded the truck, Lucy just stood there with her arms folded, watching the dust from Mr. Quigley’s car settle as the sound of the engine faded into the silence—that horrible, heavy silence that Lucy already hated with all her heart.
Four
Blackford House
“Well it has to be one of them,” muttered Mr. Tinker, and he slipped another of the skeleton keys into the lock. He’d already tried nearly every one on the large iron ring, but still the front door wouldn’t yield.
“Maybe the house doesn’t want us here,” Lucy said, shifting uncomfortably on her feet. “I bet you that’s how Quigley hurt his head. The house threw a brick at him like it did at his car.”
Oliver swallowed hard and changed his suitcase from one hand to the other. He really wished Lucy would stop saying things like that. The place was creepy enough without her making it worse.
Mr. Tinker rattled the key in the lock, jiggled the doorknob, and then—click—the key turned. “Victory,” he said, sighing with relief. “Remind me to mark this one with some electrical tape, Ollie.”
Oliver nodded, and Mr. Tinker opened the door.
Creeeeeak!
Oliver hung back in the doorway as Lucy and their father stepped into a cavernous, darkened foyer. Rectangles of dim, dusty light filtered in from the rooms on the other side, and Oliver could just make out a wide staircase dissolving up into the gloom at the far end of the foyer.
Mr. Tinker ran his hand along the wall and flipped a switch. Nothing happened.
“You see?” he said, pointing up at the foyer’s large chandelier. Its crystals glinted faintly in the shadows. “That’s why Mr. Quigley needs the clock fixed before he moves in. It generates electricity for the entire house. How ingenious is that?”
Oliver pushed up his glasses, stepped inside, and set down his suitcase. His eyes had adjusted a bit, but with only the daylight streaming in, the foyer was still dim—in part because the walls were paneled three-quarters high in dark wood. To his left, he spied a shadowy parlor filled with antique furniture; to his right, a dining room with a long table. There were a handful of paintings on the walls, and where there was no paneling, the paper was peeled and gray.
“Well, will you look at that,” said Mr. Tinker, gazing up the stairs. Built into the wall on the first landing was an enormous clock face that had to be at least ten feet in diameter. The hands, which were nearly as tall as the children themselves, had stopped at midnight (or noon, depending on your perspective, Oliver thought); and where the numbers should have been were twelve shallow, black holes.
“Let’s have a look at our bread and butter,” said Mr. Tinker, and the children followed him up the stairs to the clock—which was a cuckoo clock, Oliver discovered on closer inspection. There was a two-foot-high door for the cuckoo at the top, and the holes, which were about six inches deep, had been carved to look like animals.
“How cool!” Lucy said, reaching up to touch the hole where the eight should have been. It was shaped like a pig.
“Guess that gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Ate like a pig,’” said Mr. Tinker, chuckling. “Get it? The number eight instead of ate?”
Lucy rolled her eyes, and Oliver stuck his hand into the hole for the five, which was shaped like a turtle. He could feel the curve of the animal’s shell carved in hollow relief along the back of it.
“Anyhow, the detail is extraordinary,” said Mr. Tinker, touching the three hole. It was shaped like a rabbit. The clock face itself was made up of dozens of white-painted bricks that were peeling in places; and Oliver could clearly make out below the cuckoo door, where the twelve should have been, a hole shaped like a cat. There was also a duck for the two and what looked like a rat or a mouse for the seven.
“But why would someone build a clock with holes in it shaped like animals?” Lucy asked.
“Maybe the animals are miss-ing,” Oliver said, and he stood on his tippy-toes to touch the rabbit hole. “These holes remind me of statue niches—you know, like in a church or something. Besides, we’ve seen clocks like this before in the shop, right, Pop? Not this big, I mean, but with animals and stuff instead of numbers?”
Mr. Tinker nodded vaguely and opened a door that led to the clock’s mechanical room. The only source of light inside was a round window in the back wall, but Oliver could see enough of the complex machinery to know this clock was unlike any they had ever come across in the shop. Oliver’s mouth hung open in amazement.
“We’ll need to take a closer look at this after we get the generator going,” said his father. “What do you say we check out the rest of the house?”
The Tinkers climbed up the remainder of the stairs to the second floor, where they found four bedrooms off a dingy, dark-paneled hallway. Most of the furniture was covered in sheets, and the air smelled musty and stale. On the third floor, they found a cluttered attic that was much too dark to investigate, so they climbed back down to the first floor via a narrow servants’ staircase that led to the kitchen.
On one side off the kitchen was the hallway that led to the servants’ wing, and on the other, the door to the dining room. Inside, in addition to the long table he had seen earlier from the foyer, Oliver found a china-filled breakfront and a large buffet with a painting of Blackford House hung on the wall above it.
“Look how beautiful the house used to be,” Lucy said.
Oliver thought the painting had to have been made not long after the house was built. All th
e shutters were attached, the shingles and the chimneys were in perfect condition, and there were flowering gardens everywhere. There was also a horse-drawn carriage parked out front, and a white horse trotting around a field in the distance.
However, the biggest difference, Oliver thought, was the color. In the painting, everything looked bright and sunny. But in real life, even on a lovely summer day like today, Blackford House seemed to exist only in shades of gray.
“You were right, Oliver,” Lucy said. “The property was a lot bigger. I don’t see those creepy woods anywhere.”
From the dining room, Mr. Tinker led the children back across the foyer and into the richly furnished parlor. There were more antiques than Oliver could count, as well as a massive stone fireplace, above which hung another painting—a large, dark portrait of a man and woman that likely had been damaged in a fire.
Oliver figured the painting was from the late 1800s—judging by the people’s clothes. The woman was seated with the man standing behind her. Their skin was gray and their eyes sunken and dark—probably because of the smoke, Oliver concluded. The woman appeared to be holding something—a child, perhaps—but Oliver could not be sure because there was only a large, black smudge in the woman’s arms.
“What a creepy painting,” Lucy muttered, staring up at it. “But it’s kind of sad, too. The whole house, I mean. Don’t you think, Pop?”
Mr. Tinker nodded absently and ran his fingers over an antique lamp that had grabbed his attention. Lucy frowned. Poor kid, Oliver thought. Pop never listened to her.
“I know what you mean, Lucy,” Oliver said, looking around. “It’s like, now that you’ve seen that painting, you can’t help thinking about how the house used to be at the same time you’re looking at it now.”
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