Watch Hollow

by Gregory Funaro

  “‘19 April, 1908,’” Lucy read. “‘Although Abigail and I promised each other never to speak of our son again, in the interest of our alchemy, on this, the anniversary of his death, I am compelled to document what has happened. For the last year, the paintings of our son have been slowly turning black. Abigail, still grief stricken, refuses to take them down or even talk about it. However, I am certain that nothing in our collective knowledge could account for such a phenomenon. I intend to make some adjustments to the clock to determine if our son’s demise has affected the balance, and yet I suspect the house itself is to blame—for some time now it has been becoming more sentient. Should I determine the cause, I shall document it here. If not, I shall honor my promise to Abigail and never speak of our son again. —RB.’”

  “RB stands for Roger Blackford,” Lucy muttered, thumbing through the rest of the journal. More formulas and notes on experiments—but nothing about the paintings or the Blackfords’ son.

  Just then, the sound of a car horn startled Lucy from her thoughts, and she tossed the journal on the chemistry table. Lucy ran into the parlor and gazed out the window. It was Mr. Quigley. The old man stood beside his car at the end of the driveway, peeking out from underneath an umbrella. Lucy frowned. She had only been kidding the day before when she said the house had thrown that brick at Mr. Quigley’s car. But now, after reading that journal . . .

  Lucy swiveled her eyes up to the painting above the hearth. The man and the woman were Roger and Abigail Blackford. And the black smudge in Abigail’s arms was their son. Something bad must have happened to him. And not only that, Roger Blackford thought the house itself was to blame for damaging the paintings.

  Honk, honk, honk!

  Mr. Quigley was reaching through his car window, Lucy saw, so she dashed into the foyer and called for her father. He and Oliver emerged from the clock a second later, and then everyone hurried outside. The headlight on Mr. Quigley’s car was still broken, Lucy noticed, but no one mentioned it.

  Mr. Quigley smiled out from under his umbrella and, adjusting the bandage on his head, shot a nervous glance up at the house. “Forgive the umbrella,” he said. “But my head felt a little too sore today for a hat. Doctor’s orders. Don’t want to get too much sun.”

  “How did you hurt your head, Mr. Quigley?” Lucy asked.

  “Er—well—” he stammered. “I bumped it getting into my car. Always been a bit clumsy, I’m afraid.” Mr. Quigley chuckled and coughed into his handkerchief. “Add a summer cold into the mix and— Well, anyhow, I trust your first evening here in Watch Hollow was a pleasant one?”

  “Very pleasant, thank you, yes,” said Mr. Tinker. “But you weren’t kidding about that clock. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Mr. Quigley smiled. “The former clocksmith made great strides in directing the energy from the shadow wood, the magnetic current from which, when transferred through the pendulum, provides electricity for the house. I’m no engineer, of course, but if I recall correctly, it was the pendulum mechanism that was giving him the trouble.”

  “See, I told you that was the problem, Ollie,” said Mr. Tinker, and Lucy noticed for the first time that her brother looked uneasy. “Seems to me the most sensible solution is to outfit the clock with a winding mechanism to get that pendulum moving. Then it will conduct the magnetic energy from the—er—what did you call it? Shadow wood?”

  Mr. Quigley chuckled and waved his hand dismissively.

  “The Shadow Woods are what the locals call the forest here—which, incidentally, came with the property when I bought it. The house and its clock were built over a hundred years ago from these trees. A family by the name of Blackford.”

  Lucy’s heart skipped a beat. So Roger and Abigail Blackford were the original builders of the house.

  “In any event,” Mr. Quigley went on, “I acquired the house from a distant relative of the Blackfords in England. It had been abandoned for decades, ever since Abigail Blackford died in the early nineteen eighties. She was over a hundred years old, mind you. Since that time, the house had been looked after by a management company hired by the gentleman from whom I bought it. And yet no one can tell me exactly when the clock stopped and why.”

  “Well, Mr. Quigley, the clock certainly is a marvel of technical wizardry—”

  “It looks like those pipes used to connect to the back of the clock face,” Oliver said, interrupting his father. “Do you think maybe that’s why it isn’t working?”

  Mr. Quigley smiled nervously. “Er—no—” he stammered, peeking up at the house again from under his umbrella. “I’m afraid that was something the previous clocksmith tried. He rerouted the pipes into the clock face and— Well, let’s just say the effect was disastrous. He almost blew up the entire house. Which is why, once he reconnected the pipes to the shadow wood, I had to dismiss him.”

  “What about the animals?” Lucy asked, and everyone looked at her as if she had three heads. Lucy blushed. “Well—er—I mean, obviously there used to be animals in the clock instead of numbers. I was just wondering what happened to them.”

  “I honestly don’t know,” said Mr. Quigley. “However, you needn’t worry about replacing them. Merely decorative elements, I assure you, and unimportant to the clock’s power. Which reminds me”—Mr. Quigley reached through the car window and popped the trunk—“I brought you some more gas for that generator of yours.”

  “Perfect, we were running low. Ollie, bring those cans into the carriage house, will you? And you can shut the generator off, too. We’ll be breaking for lunch soon.”

  Lucy thought her brother looked disappointed now. He pushed up his glasses and, with a nod, fetched the gas cans from Mr. Quigley’s trunk and disappeared with them around the house.

  “Well then, I’m happy to see things are going smoothly,” said Mr. Quigley, and then he turned his eyes on Lucy. “And you, Miss Lucy, how have you been passing your time so far in your summer abode?”

  There was something about the way Mr. Quigley was looking at her that made Lucy uneasy—almost as if the old man knew she had been spending her morning talking to wooden animals and reading Roger Blackford’s journal. And yet, out here in the sunlight, the idea that a house could have magical animals that came alive at midnight seemed crazy. Maybe she was letting her imagination run away with her; maybe she had only dreamed about Torsten after all. Either way, she wasn’t ready to talk about it.

  Lucy stuffed her hands in her pockets and, with a shrug, looked away.

  “Lucy here has always been able to keep herself occupied,” said her father, and then the generator was heard sputtering to a stop out back. “That reminds me—er—why don’t you run along now and see what Oliver is up to, Lucy. I need to speak to Mr. Quigley about some business. You guys can get some playtime in before lunch.”

  Lucy said goodbye to Mr. Quigley and ran around to the back of the house, her eyes darting up at the trees in search of the crow. She did not see the big black bird anywhere, but found Oliver standing at the edge of the woods where the tunnel was. He flicked her a halfhearted wave and Lucy joined him—the two of them just standing there in silence, gazing into the woods as a soft breeze whispered through the branches.

  “I met the son of the former clocksmith this morning,” Oliver said finally. “He was actually the caretaker of the place until Mr. Quigley fired him. The father, I mean.”

  “Caretaker?” Lucy said, her heart suddenly beating fast. That’s what Torsten had called her. The new caretaker.

  “Yeah,” Oliver said, his voice cracking. “They live in a cottage a couple hundred yards into the woods, Teddy said. That’s the kid’s name. Being that Mr. Quigley owns these woods, I guess he’s allowing them to stay on until Teddy’s father finds another job or something.”

  Lucy didn’t reply and began fiddling with her braid. Her mind was spinning now. Caretaker?

  “That’s nice of Mr. Quigley, don’t you think? I mean, the guy almost blew up his house, he said.”


  Lucy shrugged. She didn’t know where Oliver was going with this and began struggling with whether to tell him about Torsten and the crow. Oliver would want to see for himself, but the crow was nowhere to be found, and the wooden animals wouldn’t come alive again until midnight. However, given the way Torsten reacted to Oliver the night before, they might not come alive at all when he was around—or at least, not until they knew they could trust him. And even though Torsten thought Lucy was the new caretaker, who knew what Meridian thought? Lucy hoped that she had won her over earlier in the library, but she wouldn’t know for sure until midnight.

  “You know what I mean?” Oliver asked.

  “Huh—what?” Lucy said, blinking back at him. She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard a word he’d said. Oliver sighed.

  “It’s not a normal clock is all I’m saying. Just like the Shadow Woods are not normal woods.”

  Lucy shivered and folded her arms. She did not like that name. Shadow Woods.

  “I was thinking about asking Teddy’s father what went wrong,” Oliver said, cracking, and he cleared his throat and thrust his hands into his pockets.

  “The guy that almost blew up the house? He’d be the last person I’d ask.”

  “You don’t understand, Lucy. From what I can tell, it makes sense that Teddy’s father would’ve tried to reroute those pipes into the clock face.”

  “Well, I think it’s a dumb idea.” Lucy jerked her chin at the tunnel. “And I think it’s even a dumber idea to go looking for this Teddy kid’s father in there. Shadow Woods. Can you think of a creepier name? Maybe Death Woods, but still—promise me you won’t ever go in there, okay? I don’t like these woods at all.”

  Oliver smiled. “They can’t be that bad if Teddy and his father live in them. Teddy even said there’s a pond in there that has great fishing.”

  “We don’t fish.”

  Oliver chuckled and rubbed his brow, thinking. “Okay, maybe it is a dumb idea,” he said, and Lucy noticed that he’d smeared black stuff all over his forehead. Lucy pointed it out, and Oliver, confused, checked his hands and then his pockets. He scooped what looked like a clump of ash out of one of them.

  “What the—?” he said, smelling his fingers. “I found an acorn earlier and put it in my pocket. I must have crushed it or something when I was working in the clock.”

  Oliver tried dusting his hands off together, but it only made matters worse, and soon both of his hands were completely black.

  “Great, now it’s starting to itch, too,” he said, scratching at the pimples on his forehead, and Lucy giggled.

  “You’re such a spaz,” she said. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Lucy took her brother’s wrist and was about to lead him back toward the house when the sight of the clock room window stopped her in her tracks. It was open.

  “What’s the matter?” Oliver asked, but Lucy didn’t know how to tell him about the no-open-windows rule without telling him about the animals.

  “We should close that window,” she muttered, her heart beating fast.

  “Then how are we going to run the power cords up into the clock?” Oliver asked, scratching his forehead again. “What’s the big deal anyway? It’s not like there are any bugs around here. I haven’t even heard a cricket since we arrived.”

  Lucy frowned. No, there weren’t any crickets, she thought.

  But there was a crow.

  Eight

  Who is the Garr?

  While her brother washed off the remains of the acorn dust, Lucy peeked in on the animals in the broom closet. They were still there, tucked safely behind the box of lightbulbs where she’d left them. Lucy then ran up into the mechanical room and tried to shut the window. The window swung on a hinge like a ship’s porthole and would not close completely with the power cord in the way.

  Lucy groaned. The mechanical room door had been left open when Mr. Quigley showed up, so it was impossible to tell if the crow had flown inside and was hiding in another part of the house. Then again, the power cord had been dangling from the open window all night, so if the crow had wanted to get in, it could have done so at any time.

  But the crow may not have known that Torsten and Meridian had come out of their hiding spot, Lucy told herself. And now that it did . . .

  Lucy sighed. Here she was acting as if all these things were true when she still wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t been dreaming. And was the crow really after the animals? Maybe it just looked that way. After all, birds flew into windows all the time in the city; why should it be any different out here in the boonies of Rhode Island? Still, Lucy thought it best to make sure the mechanical room door was always shut when her father and brother weren’t working in there. That way, if the crow got in, at least it would be trapped, and everyone would know about it.

  All this weighed heavily on Lucy’s mind in the kitchen during lunch, but when her father asked her what was wrong, Lucy decided to hold off telling him about the crow. It was too complicated to try to explain, and she already felt stupid enough for butting in about the clock earlier with Mr. Quigley.

  “What does sentient mean?” she asked instead, and her father raised a curious eyebrow. “I came across it in one of the books in the library.”

  “Glad to see you’re getting some summer reading done for once,” said Mr. Tinker with a mouth full of tuna fish sandwich. “And sentient means something is able to feel or sense things.”

  “It can also mean something is alive,” Oliver said irritably, scratching at his forehead and hands.

  Lucy’s heart began to beat very fast. Did Roger Blackford think his house was alive? But that was impossible. There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for why the painting over the hearth had turned black. Then again, if wooden animals could come alive here, then maybe the house itself could, too.

  “What about alchemy?” Lucy asked, glancing around the kitchen uneasily, and her father and Oliver exchanged a look as if to say, What the heck has this kid been reading?

  “Alchemy is just an old-fashioned name for chemistry, I think,” said Mr. Tinker, polishing off the last of his sandwich. “You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to conclude that a chemist used to live here, what with all that stuff in the library.”

  After lunch, Lucy searched the house for the crow while the others went back to work in the clock. Lucy was thankful that the doors to both the attic and the cellar were still dead-bolted from the outside. The attic was the creepiest room in the house, she thought. But, then again, she hadn’t been down to the cellar yet.

  Lucy began with the bedrooms upstairs, peeking under the beds, into the closets, and beneath the sheets that covered the furniture and even the paintings on the walls. Clearly, when Mr. Quigley bought the house, he bought everything, including the former residents’ clothing, which still hung moth-eaten and mildewed in the armoires.

  The last bedroom Lucy searched had once belonged to a little boy. Lucy knew this because, under the sheets, she found a rocking horse, a model train, some tin soldiers, a wooden drum, and other toys—all of them faded or rusty or falling apart, and much older than anything Lucy had ever seen in her father’s shop.

  However, there was something else: a gilded painting that had fallen off the wall. Lucy had come across some other paintings upstairs during her search, but none like this one. It was on the floor, lying facedown on top of its sheet, as if both had fallen off the wall many years ago.

  Lucy stood the painting upright against the wall, sending billows of dust across a shaft of sunlight that was streaming in through the window. The painting was a portrait of a young boy dressed in a black suit and a high-collared shirt. A blue sky and a rolling field with horses made up the background, but where the boy’s face should have been, there was only a large, smoky black smudge.

  The back of Lucy’s neck prickled. The room had belonged to the Blackfords’ son—the boy in the journal who had died, the infant Abigail Blackford
had been holding in the painting above the fireplace until something turned it black. Oliver thought the painting had been damaged in a fire, but now Lucy knew better.

  “‘Our beloved son, Edgar,’” she read out loud from a brass plate at the bottom of the frame. “So that’s your name,” Lucy whispered. “Edgar Blackford. But what happened to you?”

  Suddenly, the painting fell over with a thud!

  Lucy shrieked and jumped back, nearly tumbled over the sheet-covered rocking horse, and then scrambled out into the hallway, where, for the briefest of moments, she thought she saw the wall sconces flicker red.

  “Lucy, is that you?” her father called.

  Heart pounding and breathless, Lucy ran over to the railing at the top of the stairs, where she found her father gazing up at her from the landing below. He was holding a wrench, and his face was all sweaty and covered in grease. He looked irritated.

  “What are you doing? You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “I—er—I was just exploring. I bumped into something and scared myself is all.”

  Lucy’s father rolled his eyes and sighed. “Lucy, please. Everything in this house belongs to Mr. Quigley. You shouldn’t be messing around with his stuff, you understand? What if you break something?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lucy’s father smiled and his eyes softened. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry, kid. I know it must be a bit boring for you around here. Tell you what. Once Ollie and I get a handle on this pendulum, how about the three of us make a day of it at the beach? We haven’t been since your mother—”

  Lucy’s father stopped and, swallowing hard, averted his eyes. Lucy understood. He didn’t like talking about her mother—at least not with Lucy. Oliver’s theory was, because they were so much alike, it was too painful. Lucy believed him. Oliver understood people in ways that Lucy didn’t.