Watch Hollow

by Gregory Funaro

  Oliver leaned against a tree to catch his breath. The smell of garbage here was nauseating, but now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he could see the structure was at the intersection of three tunnels—one of which was behind him. The second tunnel was little more than a gaping black hole among the trees, but at the end of the third, Oliver spied a swatch of daylight. And was that the river he heard, too?

  Oliver instinctively made a break for it—when from out of the shadows, Teddy appeared on the path in front of him. Oliver shrieked—This can’t be happening, his mind told him—but before he could run, Teddy waved his hand, and a pair of branches reached down and seized Oliver by the arms. He struggled and screamed for help, but the branches were as strong as iron bars.

  “Tempus Crow tells me everything is almost ready,” Teddy said, coming closer as the big black bird landed on his shoulder. “Another of your nightmares should’ve gotten the clock ticking again. After all, there is no fear as powerful, no fear as pure as a child’s nightmare.”

  Oliver, heart pounding and head spinning, could only stand there in frozen terror as Teddy came closer. What was happening? What was Teddy talking about? This had to be a nightmare—a nightmare from which, at any moment now, he would wake up in his room at Blackford House.

  Wake up, Oliver, wake up!

  “But the acorns didn’t work,” Teddy went on. “How odd. Just a little dust on the skin is usually more than enough to provoke the worst of nightmares. Perhaps the love in the house is stronger than I thought—the sunstone, more powerful. Your sister has certainly proven herself powerful, what with her love for those clock animals. Those pesky, rotten clock animals.”

  Teddy’s eyes flashed red. Oliver’s only thought again was to run. But Oliver couldn’t run—the Shadow Woods had him trapped.

  “HELP! HELP!” Oliver cried.

  “No one can hear you scream in the Shadow Woods,” Teddy said, only inches away now. “But your family will hear you scream tonight—in the house, when the acorn gives you your final and most terrifying nightmare. The clock will start ticking again, and the Shadow Woods will carry me home. After all, fear is always stronger in the end.”

  Teddy smiled, and despite his terror, Oliver somehow understood. The clock was a perpetual motion clock. The shadow wood in the house reacted to the atmospheric changes caused by fear. The sunstone in the clock face was the counterbalance—a counterbalance to the animal statues, which were made from shadow wood. The sunstone cream worked the same way: it balanced out the acorn dust. That was why he didn’t have any nightmares last night—which meant Oliver had been right all along. The pipes were supposed to connect to the animals in the clock face. The clock face was made of sunstone, and the animals were shadow wood batteries!

  All this flashed through Oliver’s terrified mind in a millisecond, along with the dawning realization that the whole story about Teddy’s father nearly blowing up the house had been a lie. Teddy had no father, and there was no caretaker’s cottage out here either—only this strange dwelling in which there lived a horrible boy and his crow.

  “Who are you?” Oliver asked weakly.

  Teddy held the acorn closer, and it burst apart into a teeming tangle of twisting black roots. Oliver made to scream, but then the acorn leaped from Teddy’s hand and clamped over Oliver’s mouth like an octopus seizing its prey. There was a brief, mind-shattering moment of unimaginable horror in which Oliver’s muffled cries were choked off by the acorn slithering down his throat. And then, mercifully, the darkness dragged him under, and Oliver Tinker knew nothing more.

  Thirteen

  The Nightmare Begins

  Knock-knock-knock!

  Lucy’s eyes snapped open.

  “Rise and shine, slacker,” her father called from the parlor. “It’s lunchtime.”

  Lucy sat up and blinked around the library. Sleep had come to her in what felt like a long, dreamless jump, and now it was almost noon. She was still wearing Oliver’s watch, and Torsten was still tucked beside her in the chair.

  Lucy shivered and swiveled her eyes out the window. There was a monster living less than thirty yards away from her in the Shadow Woods. A ten-foot-tall tree man with eyes like fire and a glowing mouth full of fangs. The Garr. He was more terrifying than Lucy could have ever imagined—and boy had she made him angry.

  Lucy pulled Torsten close. The Garr would have killed them all if not for the sunstone in the river. There was comfort in knowing that there was sunstone in the house, too—that should keep the Garr away—but was it right to keep all this secret, especially from Oliver, who had become friends with a kid who lived in the Shadow Woods? Was Lucy endangering everyone by not telling them the truth about this place?

  Lucy sighed and rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since they arrived, and it was getting hard to think straight. At least the animals were all safe now, she told herself, eyeing the bookcase near the fireplace. Lucy had been right all along. The hiding spot was behind the bookcase.

  Lucy swung her legs out of the chair and winced. Her lower back ached, her knees were sore from crawling in the tunnel, and her toes stung from tromping through the brush along the riverbank in her flip-flops. Lucy and the animals had made it to the stone bridge and safely back into the house long before sunrise—and with no sign of Tempus Crow, thank you very much. Lucy had whacked him silly with the fire poker, after all—but was he dead or just injured?

  And then there was Fennish, the real hero, who had nearly died from exhaustion. And after reuniting the animals in the library, Lucy nursed him back to health again with a dab of sunstone cream and more food and water. Lucy fed the rest of the animals, too; and when it was clear that Fennish would pull through—at about four o’clock, by Oliver’s watch—everyone returned to the hiding spot. Except for Torsten. He was still so terrified, he refused to leave Lucy’s side. Meridian allowed him to remain there only if Lucy swore never to let him leave her sight. And with that, Lucy and the little dog had fallen asleep in the chair.

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered in Torsten’s wooden ear. “Everything is going to be all right.”

  Lucy looked down at her nightgown and frowned. It was all sooty and gray from the secret passage in the fireplace. In fact, sitting there in the sunlight, everything from the night before seemed sooty and gray, close and yet far away—like the Shadow Woods outside the window. And on top of it all, Lucy was starving.

  Lucy tucked Torsten under her arm and hurried through the house into the kitchen, where she found her father washing his hands at the sink. His back was to her, so he didn’t notice what a mess she was.

  “I guess Ollie’s snoring kept you awake last night, huh?” he said, chuckling. Oliver didn’t even acknowledge her. He was sitting at the table, his eyes fixed on the pizza box in front of him.

  Lucy muttered a reply, darted into her bedroom for some clothes, and then dashed across the hallway into the bathroom, where she threw a towel over Torsten for privacy and showered. The cold water made her feel better for once. Lucy quickly dressed and braided her hair, then tucked Torsten under her arm and hurried back out into the kitchen.

  The others had already started on the pizza—pepperoni and mushrooms, Lucy’s favorite—so she set the statue of Torsten on the counter and joined them at the table. Her father barely noticed—he was more concerned with Oliver.

  “You sure you don’t want any pizza, Ollie?” he said, and Oliver shook his head. He looked tired, and his color was pale. Mr. Tinker felt his forehead. “You don’t have a fever or anything.”

  “What’s going on?” Lucy asked, digging into her pizza.

  “Ollie’s got a stomachache. Poor kid said he felt dizzy after I left and spent the whole morning sitting on the porch. I found him there when I got home. Must’ve eaten something that disagreed with him—unless you’ve been messing with those acorns again. Don’t tell me you ate one or something, Ollie.”

  Mr. Tinker chuckled, but Oliver didn’t think it
was funny. He furrowed his brow as if trying to remember something, then pushed up his glasses and shook his head.

  “I’ll be fine. I’m just not hungry.”

  “Well, you take it easy today,” said Mr. Tinker, munching away. “The pendulum is oiled and ready to go. I’ve just got to figure out a way to modify it so the winding mechanism doesn’t throw off the electromagnetic current.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucy asked, and her father raised his eyebrow.

  “Since when are you interested in clocks?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Just bored I guess,” she lied—Lucy really wanted to know what was going on so Torsten could hear, too. “I thought the pendulum was the problem. Isn’t it rusted or something?”

  Mr. Tinker chuckled. “Well, sort of. Ollie and I think the electromagnetic balance is off within the clock, which means the pendulum is . . . well, frozen. Think of it as a giant magnet holding it in place. So, Ollie and I are going to build a custom winding mechanism that . . . well, you remember that time the truck’s battery died and that guy gave me a jump start?” Lucy nodded. “The winding mechanism will work like that. It will jump-start the clock, which will generate enough electromagnetic current from the shadow wood to keep the clock ticking. Does that make sense?”

  “I think so,” Lucy said. “Why can’t you just, you know, start the pendulum yourself or something? That would start the magic—I mean, er—the magnetic current from the shadow wood, right?”

  “The magnetic force holding it in place is too strong. You’d need six football players up there to get it swinging. Not to mention, what do you do if the clock stops again? You need a winding mechanism with enough torque to get things started, then to act as a fail-safe in case the clock stops.” Mr. Tinker chewed on his pizza. “Matter of fact, if the clock had been built with a winding mechanism in the first place, Mr. Quigley wouldn’t be in this mess. He could just turn a crank and, bingo, the clock would start again. There’s no such thing as a true perpetual motion clock.”

  There was that term again—perpetual motion—but Lucy got the gist of what her father was saying. And hopefully Torsten had gotten the gist of it, too. The pendulum wasn’t rusted or broken or anything; it was just frozen and needed a jump start to get the magic flowing through the pipes—a jump start from either her caretaking or the winding mechanism. Let her father call it electromagnetic current or whatever. Lucy knew the truth, and that was all that mattered. She winked at Torsten.

  “You know, I really wish you’d stop messing around with Mr. Quigley’s stuff,” said her father, following her gaze. “What happens if you break that stupid dog statue?”

  Lucy felt caught, and her cheeks grew hot. “Er—I just like him is all. He makes sleeping here not so scary.”

  “Oh yeah? And is that what you were trying to do to Ollie and me? Scare us this morning when we went up into the clock?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That goofy rat with the eye patch,” said Lucy’s father, and her stomach dropped. “Very funny hanging him from the pipes like that. But I’m telling you, stop messing around with Mr. Quigley’s statues. And you stay out of the clock, too. Ollie and I have got enough on our hands without you breaking something.”

  Lucy glanced across the table at Oliver, who just sat there as if in a daze, and then back at Torsten. It was clear to her what had happened. For some reason, Fennish had gone up into the clock after returning to the hiding spot. But how? And why would he risk his life all over again by turning wooden in the clock—just a few feet away from the window through which Tempus Crow had been entering the house? After all, no one knew for sure what had happened to him!

  Lucy’s heart was pounding with panic, but she forced a chuckle that sounded fake even to her. “Okay, okay, if you can’t take a joke. You’re right, I shouldn’t have been messing around in the clock. Where is the rat statue now? I’ll put him back where he belongs. Same with Torsten.”

  “What?” her father asked, and Lucy, caught again, felt her cheeks go even hotter.

  “Er—that’s what I named the dog. Torsten.”

  Lucy’s father chuckled. “For a minute I thought you said torsion. Which is pretty funny. A torsion pendulum is what’s normally used in a perpetual motion clock, right, Ollie?”

  Oliver smiled vaguely, as if he were only half paying attention, and turned his eyes toward the window. Lucy could tell something was bothering him, but she had bigger fish to fry: Fennish had gone up into the clock last night after their adventure in the Shadow Woods, and Lucy needed to figure out why.

  “Er—where’d you put the rat, Pop?” she asked, scooping up Torsten. Her father jerked his chin at the dining room, and Lucy hurried inside. She found Fennish on the table. His body was contorted as if he had turned wooden in the middle of a jumping jack, and his face was twisted and tense with strain.

  “What the heck were you doing in the clock?” Lucy whispered, but the statue’s expression remained the same. Lucy sighed and picked him up. “All right, I’ll wait until midnight to find out. Meantime, let’s get you both back into the library.”

  As Lucy turned to leave with Fennish and Torsten, she noticed something strange in the painting of Blackford House over the buffet: the faint, almost ghostlike outlines of three figures standing on the front steps. There was also the outline of a figure in the horse-drawn carriage driver’s seat. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed them before, but after what she’d learned about the paintings of Edgar Blackford . . .

  The back of Lucy’s neck prickled, and she hurried into the library, where she placed Torsten and Fennish on the hearth and plopped down again in the big leather armchair.

  And that is where Lucy sat for most of day, reading books and staring out at the Shadow Woods. The only time she left the library was just before supper, when she saw Oliver walk past the big windows for the tenth time. He’d been circling the house for more than twenty minutes wearing a pained expression, as if he were lost.

  Lucy tucked Torsten and Fennish under her arms and slipped out onto the porch, where she waited for Oliver to come around again. And when he did, Lucy stopped him and asked what he was doing.

  “I’m retracing my steps,” he said, looking around, and Lucy blinked at him, confused. She thought his color looked better, but he seemed antsy, and his voice sounded weak. “This morning, before my stomach started bothering me, I remember waving to Pop from the porch as he drove off, and then I went around back to check the carriage house and—”

  Oliver broke off in thought. Many years later, looking back, Lucy would wonder if things might have turned out differently if only she’d asked Oliver why he had checked the carriage house. At the time, Lucy had been spending so much time inside tending to the animals, she had no idea how far the Shadow Woods had advanced in only a few days. However, in that moment, eager as she was to get back to the library, Lucy assumed Oliver had gone into the carriage house for the gas cans. And so, she just stood there, waiting for him to go on.

  “I think I must’ve gotten dizzy in the carriage house or something,” he said finally. “Next thing I remember, I was on the porch again. But it couldn’t have been for as long as Pop said”—Oliver wrinkled his brow, trying to remember—“or at least, it doesn’t seem that long, looking back.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Ollie?” Lucy asked.

  Oliver nodded, pushed up his glasses, and set off again around the house. And once she was back inside, Lucy watched him make another ten laps past the library windows before their father called them for a supper of canned franks and beans.

  Lucy ate in the library, saying that she just couldn’t tear herself away from this book called Great Expectations. She used the same excuse to bail on another game of Monopoly. Her father was so thrilled that she was reading, he didn’t even argue.

  Around nine o’clock, while the others were still playing in the kitchen, Lucy brought the statues with her upstairs while she made sure that the mechanical room door
was shut. She also climbed the ladder and secured the cuckoo door with an old shoelace she’d found—just in case Tempus Crow was still around.

  It was after ten when the children settled into their beds, and they lay there for a long time in silence—Oliver staring up at the ceiling, and Lucy, with the statues by her side, staring at Oliver. She had managed to sneak Torsten and Fennish into the room while her father was in the bathroom, and Oliver didn’t even ask about them. He’d been acting very strange all night.

  “You sure you’re doing okay?” Lucy asked—she could see in the moonlight that his eyes were open.

  “I miss Mom,” he said quietly, and Lucy’s heart squeezed. Oliver always knew how to comfort Lucy when the missing became too much for her, but Lucy never knew what to say when things were the other way around.

  “I know, me too” was all she came up with.

  A heavy silence hung over the bedroom, and then Oliver whispered, “I’m afraid to go to sleep.”

  Lucy’s skin broke out into gooseflesh and her heart began to beat very fast. Not tonight, she thought on one level. She needed Oliver to fall asleep. It was almost ten thirty, and she had to prepare the animals’ food before they came alive. Plus, she wanted to know why Fennish went up into the clock.

  “Why are you afraid?” Lucy asked, and Oliver exhaled tensely.

  “Never mind,” he said, rolling over on his side. “Just get some sleep.”

  The next hour and a half were agony as Lucy watched Oliver toss and turn until, just before midnight, he finally fell asleep. There was no time to prepare the animals’ food, so Lucy slipped from her bedroom with the statues and hurried with them into the library. Torsten and Fennish came alive a few seconds later, their wooden bodies transforming into flesh and fur in Lucy’s arms.