Watch Hollow

by Gregory Funaro

  “Little Eddie? You mean Edgar Blackford?” The animals shifted uncomfortably. “I read about him in Roger Blackford’s journal. He was the son of the people who built this place, right? There’s a painting of him upstairs—it’s burned all black and smudgy—like the painting of the Blackfords in the parlor.”

  “The paintings have been like that ever since he died,” Nessie said. “Eddie was not a very nice boy, after all.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “There are places in this world where magic is real,” Meridian said, her eyes twinkling. “Places where the water, the plants, the earth, even the air is enchanted. Watch Hollow is one of those places. The Blackfords settled here over a century ago because they understood how to use the magic in the sunstone and shadow wood together in perfect balance. We are an example of that balance.”

  “Because your eyes are made of sunstone,” Lucy said, “but your bodies are shadow wood. It’s the magical balance of the two that brings you to life.”

  “Right, but Eddie was im-balanced—oink!” said Reginald. “And for some reason, he couldn’t bear the sight of Fennish Seven whenever he walked past the clock. And so, out of spite, he gouged out one of his eyes. The Blackfords punished him for what he did, but Eddie was so angry that he ran off into the Shadow Woods—oink-oink!”

  “It was then that something happened,” said Meridian. “Edgar tried to use the magic in the Shadow Woods to exact his revenge. However, because he was not an alchemist yet like his parents, his plan backfired, and the boy perished. The paintings have been like that ever since.”

  Lucy’s heart pounded with excitement. “His parents were alchemists?” she asked, and Meridian nodded at the table. “Like chemists, you mean?”

  “Sort of. Alchemy is actually a magical form of chemistry. The goal of alchemy is to purify and perfect the world around us. Alchemists can turn lead into gold and have long searched for the secret of immortality—”

  “That’s why the Blackfords built the clock—oink!” Reginald interjected. “They wanted to make themselves immortal. Obviously, they failed at that—oink-oink!”

  “However,” Meridian went on, “the clock breathed life into the house, which is how it maintained itself for decades at the same time it kept the Shadow Woods at bay—all the while we waited for the new caretaker to arrive.”

  “And now you’re here!” Torsten said, tongue lolling and tail wagging.

  “Well, I’m only here for the summer,” Lucy said. “But I’ll do what I can to protect you before Mr. Quigley takes over. He’ll be the caretaker once the clock is fixed.”

  “Speaking of which,” Meridian said. “Do you know why the lights were red last night when the clock started ticking? And do you know why the clock stopped?”

  Lucy shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know anything about the lights. And I’m afraid I don’t know much about the clock either. I thought maybe Oliver distracted me with his nightmare. You know, because maybe my caretaking was what got the clock ticking again.”

  “Of course it was!” Torsten said. “You are the new caretaker, so you are magical just like we are. We can’t power the clock without Tempus Crow and the rest of the animals. So, whatever those clocksmiths are doing, it’s obviously working. The clock is somehow feeding off your magic.”

  Lucy looked over her shoulder. The library doors were closed, but still, if the clock had started ticking again, she’d be able to hear it—not to mention the lights would be on. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe her caretaking wasn’t what got the clock ticking. After all, wouldn’t her most recent act of kindness toward Fennish have affected it? Unless the pendulum was damaged worse than she thought. Her father and Oliver were banging around up there for a long time after supper.

  “Anyway,” Lucy went on, “the clock is my father and brother’s specialty. I’m not sure how Pop would react if he knew the truth about this place, but Oliver would be cool. He’s really into comics and . . . well, weird stuff like this always happens in comics. Plus, I know he’d want to help. He’s the best, really. Maybe if you told him what you told me, he can figure out a way to get the clock ticking for good.”

  The animals regarded one another nervously.

  “Clearly, the house does not want us to reveal ourselves to outsiders,” Meridian said. “That’s why it showed us the hiding spot—to keep us out of sight and protect us.”

  “That’s right—oink!” Reginald said. “Fennish Seven revealed himself last time by accident, when he was stealing the clocksmith’s food. That old man tried to kill him with a hammer—oink! The house defended him as best it could, then Tempus Crow snatched him. The clocksmith fled soon after that—oink-oink!”

  Nessie the rabbit groaned anxiously. “Can you imagine what would happen should the wrong person learn of our existence?”

  “And then there’s the house itself,” Meridian said. “There is powerful magic here when that clock is working, and should the wrong person get their hands on it—”

  “But Oliver is not the wrong person—”

  “He’s not the caretaker; you are,” Meridian said. “And so, it is your duty not only to protect us, but also to obey the house’s wishes.”

  “I’m sorry, Lucy,” Torsten said. “Meridian’s right. That’s why I went wooden that first night. I knew you were the caretaker the moment you fixed my ear. But your brother—well, he might be a nice boy, but he’s not the caretaker.”

  Lucy frowned and bit her lip. How was she going to keep all this secret for the whole summer?

  “Besides,” Torsten said, “you already knew this deep down, didn’t you? I mean, you haven’t told your brother yet, or your father, have you? That proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re the caretaker. Only the caretaker would know in her heart to protect the magic that lives on here.”

  Lucy sighed. Her earlier reasoning for keeping things secret from Oliver and her father seemed stupid now. She was the caretaker, and that was reason enough.

  “All right,” Lucy said, rising. “You get Fennish back to the hiding spot, and I’ll get him a can of chicken soup. That’s what you give people when they’re sick, so I don’t see why rats should be any different.”

  Lucy moved to the library doors, and Torsten scampered after her. “I’ll help you, Miss Lucy.”

  “It’s still not safe to be roaming about the house, Torsten,” Meridian said. “Being in the library with the doors closed is one thing. But that lantern has been on, and the burner there on the table. Tempus Crow may have seen the light.”

  Torsten chuckled. “You worry too much, Meridian,” he said, pushing open the doors with his nose. “Miss Lucy will protect me, and maybe I can have a look at the clock to see what’s wrong—”

  At that moment, with an ear-splitting “Caw!” Tempus Crow swooped down from the shadows and snatched up Torsten in his claws. Lucy and the animals shrieked. “Got YOU—caw!” the crow exclaimed, and then the little dog was gone, the sound of his howls fading as the giant bird flew with him through the house.

  “Torsten!” Lucy cried, and, in a panic, rushed after him. The lights in the house flickered red, the walls creaked and groaned, and the clock, Lucy registered dimly, began to tick again!

  “Help me, help me, Miss Lucy!” Torsten howled.

  The lights blinked on for a moment longer, and Lucy burst into the foyer just in time to see the shadowy shape of Tempus Crow disappearing into the clock.

  The mechanical room door was still closed.

  But the door for the cuckoo bird was open.

  Eleven

  Lucy Meets the Garr

  “Please, wake up, Fennish!” Lucy cried, setting him down on the window seat.

  The burner and the lantern had been extinguished, but the library was bright with moonlight. Meridian and Nessie stood guard with their ears to the library doors, while Reginald paced nervously back and forth on the hearth. The lights were off again, and the clock had stopped ticking. Everyone was in a panic—To
rsten was gone!

  “Please, Fennish!” Lucy said, on the verge of tears. “Tempus Crow snatched Torsten! We need to find him!”

  The rat’s one eye fluttered open, catching the moonlight. “Water,” he rasped. Lucy knelt and gave him a sip from the coffeepot. “Where am I?”

  Meridian rushed over. “You’re home, old friend,” she said, leaping up onto the window seat. “Miss Lucy here is the new caretaker. She cured you with sunstone cream. But Torsten—”

  “Do you know where Tempus Crow has taken him?” Lucy asked.

  “The Garr,” growled Fennish, trying to rise, and Meridian gently laid her paw on his shoulder.

  “You’re still too weak,” she said, but the rat shook her off and, sitting up, turned his one eye toward the window.

  “He wants our fear,” Fennish said, his voice hoarse. “Fear sows the seed—the Shadow Woods feed on fear—”

  Fennish coughed, and Lucy gave him some more water.

  “What do you mean, Fennish?” Meridian asked.

  “That’s why the Garr is snatching us. The others—they are still in the woods. Fear gives him strength. Their fear makes the Shadow Woods grow!”

  “He’s gone delirious again—oink!” Reginald said, and Meridian held up her paw to silence him.

  “Are you saying the others are still alive?” the cat asked, and Fennish nodded. The animals gasped.

  “The Garr is holding them prisoner,” Fennish said. “He is keeping them alive, stoking their fear until the Shadow Woods consume the house.”

  “We were wrong, then,” Nessie said. “The Garr doesn’t want us dead—he wants us alive and in the Shadow Woods!”

  “But how did you escape?” Meridian asked.

  “I squeezed through the bars of my cage,” the rat said, his one eye narrowing. “And then the Garr chased me.”

  The animals regarded one another nervously.

  “I made it to the river. Just before dawn. And then Tempus Crow snatched me up again. But I bit him in his weak spot—where I wounded him the night he snatched me from the house—and he dropped me in the river. Not even the Garr could touch me there.”

  “That is why the Garr cannot leave the woods,” Nessie said to Lucy. “The same reason he cannot enter the house. The rivers and the lake are filled with sunstones—they surround the Shadow Woods on all sides.”

  “I turned wooden again soon after and spent that first day underwater. Tempus Crow couldn’t find me and eventually gave me up for dead.”

  “But how did you get back inside the house?” Meridian asked.

  “I followed the river to the old stone bridge. There is a hidden tunnel underneath. The house showed it to me one night when I was stealing the clocksmith’s food. I made it back inside, but then . . . Forgive me, I feel faint. . . .”

  “Give him something to eat,” Meridian said, and with trembling hands, Lucy held the bowl of Spam to the rat’s mouth. Fennish nibbled slowly at first and then faster—probably too fast, Lucy thought, but she needed to find out where Tempus Crow had taken Torsten. She had to rescue him and the others! But how? Lucy was on her own. Even if she told Oliver and her father—and even if they believed her—they would never agree to a trip into the Shadow Woods to fight a ten-foot-tall tree man.

  “That’s enough, old friend,” Meridian said, gently nudging the bowl away, and the rat sat back on his hindquarters and licked his chops.

  “I feel much better now, thank you.”

  “Fennish,” Lucy said, forcing herself to keep calm, “do you know where the Garr is keeping Torsten and the other animals?”

  “A giant shelter made of branches deep within the woods. The cages are inside. But Tempus Crow—if he saw me in here, if he tells the Garr I’m alive, he might have to kill the others. Indeed, I fear he may have killed them already. My escape surely has given them hope, and hope is the antidote to fear.”

  Reginald and Nessie moaned in despair.

  “Torsten’s done for—oink! We need to get back to the hiding spot before Tempus Crow comes back—oink-oink!”

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Nessie said, hopping closer. “There’s nothing we can do for the others. And now that Tempus Crow knows we’re in the library, it’s only a matter of time before he finds the hiding spot!”

  “You don’t understand,” said Fennish, slipping onto the floor. “The Garr wants us to hide. The more we fear, the closer the Shadow Woods creep toward the house. The clock is broken—nothing can protect us!”

  “Miss Lucy’s family is here to fix the clock,” Meridian said. “Lucy is the caretaker. She got it ticking again, with love. But our fear must have stopped it. But it is working, Fennish—only the lights are red.”

  Fennish’s one eye narrowed. “Red, you say?”

  “This is no time to worry about the clock!” Lucy cried. “We’ve got to save Torsten and the others!”

  “What?” Nessie cried. “Fennish said the others are probably dead. And Torsten—it’s only a matter of time before the Garr kills him, too.”

  “The Garr wants his fear,” Fennish said. “He will keep him alive long enough to nourish the Shadow Woods. As for the others, we can’t give up on them. There is still hope they are alive.”

  “Which means I have to try to save them,” Lucy said, moving to the door.

  “But, Miss Lucy, that’s suicide,” said Nessie. “At least wait until daybreak. The Garr isn’t around during the day.”

  “We don’t have time to wait. Their lives are in danger.”

  Reginald gasped. “You’re out of your mind. The Garr will just kill you, too—oink-oink!”

  “The Garr can’t cross the river,” Lucy said. “But we need to go now. Time is wasting. Fennish—that hidden tunnel that leads to the bridge—can a human fit inside?”

  The rat nodded.

  “But even if you escape the Garr,” said Nessie, “you’ll still have Tempus Crow to contend with.”

  “The lantern,” Lucy said. “Maybe if we turn it on again it will draw his attention back to the house.”

  “You’d risk your life to save us?” asked Fennish Seven.

  “Well, I am the caretaker, aren’t I?”

  “That you are,” said the rat. “However, you will never find the Garr’s lair on your own. I must go with you.”

  “No, you’re still too weak,” Meridian said. “Just tell me the way and I shall go.”

  “There’s no time to waste getting lost,” said Fennish, moving to the door. “Miss Lucy can carry me if I get too tired.”

  There was a bit more back and forth about what to do and how to do it, but soon the matter was settled, and Lucy and Fennish slipped from the library precisely at one o’clock by Oliver’s watch. Miraculously, he’d slept through the chaos, but still, Lucy thought it best not to waste time or risk waking him by changing out of her nightgown.

  Armed with only a fire poker for protection and with Oliver’s watch to light her way, Lucy grabbed her flip-flops from the foyer and joined Fennish at the massive fireplace in the parlor. The rat pressed three dark stones in the hearth floor with his nose, and with a deep scraping sound, the left inside wall of the fireplace swung open inwardly.

  “Watch your head,” Fennish said, disappearing inside. Lucy turned on the flashlight in Oliver’s watch and thrust her wrist into the cavity, where she spied some stone steps curving down into the darkness. The space was much too cramped for her to stand, so Lucy swung herself in feetfirst, slipped down a few steps on her backside, then pushed the secret door closed behind her and descended to the bottom of the narrow shaft. Fennish was waiting for her at the mouth of the tunnel.

  “It is about three hundred yards to the river,” Fennish said, his one eye twinkling in the light from Oliver’s watch.

  Her heart pounding, Lucy followed Fennish into the tunnel with the poker at her side and Oliver’s watch held out in front of her. The air was thick and musty, and the clopping of her flip-flops was so loud that after a few steps Lucy took
them off. The stone floor was cold and damp, and the watch cast creepy, sweeping shadows on the walls. Lucy’s legs felt as if they weighed a hundred pounds each, but somehow she kept them moving, her eyes never leaving Fennish, whose long, thin tail she could just make out at the edge of her light ahead.

  After about a minute, the rat asked if he could rest, upon which Lucy scooped him up and carried him along with her flip-flips and the poker. His breathing had grown shallow, and she could feel the rat’s heart pounding against her side. The journey to the river was only the length of three football fields, Lucy kept telling herself, but it seemed to take forever, until finally, the tunnel began to narrow sharply.

  “Douse your light,” Fennish said, leaping from her arms. Lucy flicked off Oliver’s watch, and soon she was crawling on her hands and knees, dragging the poker and her flip-flops along the stone floor as quietly as she could. The tunnel narrowed to about three feet in diameter, and then Lucy spied some dim strands of moonlight filtering through an iron grate up ahead.

  “The bridge,” Fennish whispered. He pushed open the grate, which was hinged like the window in the mechanical room, and he disappeared into the night. Lucy squeezed through the opening after him and, sliding down the muddy riverbank on her stomach, splashed into the water under the bridge. Lucy sat up. The water was unexpectedly warm and shallow, rising only to her thighs, but still Lucy shivered in the cool night air, her skin popping at once into gooseflesh under her dampened nightgown.

  “The path to the Garr’s lair is only half a mile that way,” Fennish whispered, jerking his muzzle upstream. “And yet I fear I haven’t the strength to make the journey after all.”

  “Then I will carry you,” Lucy said. She slipped on her flip-flops and scooped up the rat again into her arms.

  Gripping the poker tightly, Lucy ducked out from under the bridge. The babbling, moonlit stream looked like molten silver flowing around the black sunstones.

  “Of course,” Lucy muttered, glancing up at the darkened underside of the bridge. It, too, she now realized, was made of sunstones.