Gabe clasped his hands in his lap and said, “I just don’t want to play games with him anymore. With anyone.”
They sat quietly for a moment, then Mazzy stood and stepped toward the school’s door. Looking back, she said, “That’s too bad. I feel lucky that I’m still allowed.”
GABE STAYED QUIETLY TO HIMSELF until the last bell rang. Then, as usual, he climbed aboard the bus home. Of everything that had happened that day, he couldn’t get the argument with Mazzy out of his head. He tried to imagine what she’d gone through to call herself an explorer. What kind of beasts had she escaped? Gabe especially wondered if she was right about Seth, about the three of them being similar, and whether or not that made his former friend worth all this trouble.
When the bus pulled away from the curb at the base of Temple House’s long driveway, Gabe stood at the roadside, unsure which direction to go. Up led home. And down wrapped around the wooded hill toward the Hoppers’ house.
Mazzy was right about one thing. There was more to the story. And right now, Seth was probably the only one who knew what it was.
Gabe turned away from his grandmother’s driveway just as someone ducked behind the trunk of a wide oak on the corner. Stories of the shadowy figure that had been following kids home from school leapt into his brain, but Gabe forced himself to pause. “I can see you,” he called out.
A moment later, the figure, who was neither large nor shadowy, peeked out from behind the trunk. Seth. Of course. Gabe kept his distance, unsure of what Seth might do. Had Mr. Drover been in touch yet? Did Seth know that Gabe had told on him?
“Sorry,” said Seth. He sounded calmer than Gabe had expected. And even though his eyes were bloodshot and his skin was pale, he did look happy to see Gabe. “I was waiting for the bus, but I didn’t want you to run if you saw me. Can we talk?”
Gabe pursed his lips, unwilling to share that he’d been about to head down to Seth’s house anyway.
Perched on Seth’s tightly made bed, Gabe kept his muscles tense in case Seth gave him a reason to run. He wished he’d thought to tell his parents where he’d gone. Would it be weird to pull out his cell phone right now?
Seth closed the door. “I don’t really have anything to offer you. My mom hasn’t gone to the store in a while.”
“It’s fine,” said Gabe. “I’m not hungry.” Looking up at Seth’s drawn face, he suddenly wondered when he had last eaten. “How is she?”
“Oh, you know…”
But Gabe didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine. Neither boy said a word for several seconds. Then, of course, they both spoke at once.
“Mazzy told me to come—”
“I’m sorry that—”
They paused, and in that moment, Gabe went on. “You’re sorry that what?”
Seth blinked. “I’m sorry about…a lot of things. But mostly, I’m sorry that I ever met you.” Gabe felt his face flush, but Seth held up his hands. “That came out wrong. I just mean…you’d have been better off. Lots of people would be.”
“Don’t—”
“It’s true. It’s like my family is cursed or something.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know—so much I have to tell you.”
Gabe waited, frightened that if he spoke, the walls would collapse and he’d wake up from a dream, never knowing the answers.
Seth sighed. “Principal Drover called my mom this morning. He told her what happened at the bake sale yesterday.”
“You didn’t already know?” The words came out before he could stop himself.
“He said that they found footprints leading to your locker,” Seth went on. “That they found firecrackers.”
“M-80s,” Gabe corrected.
Seth nodded, his skull heavy with guilt. “He said you told him I got them from another student. That I put them in your locker. But I didn’t. I would never do that.”
“But you’d do other things?” Gabe tried cautiously.
“I wasn’t at the bake sale. Or anywhere else you guys think I’ve been. But that didn’t stop Drover from suspending me for the rest of the week.”
“Wow,” said Gabe, shocked that the principal had taken his own word over Seth’s.
“But I haven’t done anything to any of you. Really, Gabe. I promise. The same things are happening to me. I’ve seen that shadowy figure. I’ve tripped strange traps in my yard.”
Seth stood and went to the window. He unlatched the lock and lifted the sash. Cold air rushed into the room. “I wanted to show you this.”
“Show me what?” Gabe asked, standing and shivering.
“Last Friday night,” Seth said, “just after I turned off my lamp and got into bed, I heard a noise outside. It sounded like something big stomping through the dead leaves near the woods. The noise scared me. Not sure why. There are animals out here all the time—deer, dogs, sometimes even coyotes. But this time, I could feel something watching me. Even through the wall. Like it was hungry.” He wrapped his arms around his rib cage.
“After a while, I couldn’t hear it moving around anymore. I went to the window and drew back the curtain. Almost immediately, something hit the outside wall. The glass rattled. I crouched down. Two more times, it came. Wham. Wham. Right outside.” Seth glanced out into the yard. “I scrambled back to my bed. Got under the covers. My mom had taken something to help her sleep, so I knew I couldn’t wake her up. I lay there most of the night, staring at the ceiling, hoping that the noise wouldn’t come again. I peeked out here this morning. And I found these.” Seth waved Gabe forward.
Together they leaned out the window. Moisture swirled in the cool breeze. Night was approaching quickly, but there was still enough light left to see by. Three small protuberances that looked like broken twigs stuck out of the frame inches below the sill. Gabe reached out and touched the knobby, shattered wood tips. “What are they?” he whispered.
“Arrows. Old. Whittled by hand. I tried to pull them out, but they’d been lodged in so forcefully, the best I could do was break them off. So you see…you guys aren’t the only ones being hunted.”
Gabe didn’t know what to believe. He remembered what Mazzy had said earlier that day: You might be the only one able to talk some sense into him.
“Is there anything else I don’t know?” he asked. Seth closed his eyes and nodded. “Then tell me now, Seth. Please…just tell me the truth.”
“I LIED ABOUT THE BOY in the bathroom,” Seth began, “the one who I said sold me those M-80s. There was no boy. I just went in there because Slayhool seemed like a cooler place than where I actually got them. I’m sorry.” Gabe crossed his arms, waiting for a straight answer. “They belonged to my brother.”
“David gave them to you?”
“Not exactly. I took them from his bedroom this past summer. He’d hidden them in his dresser. I’m not sure where he got them, but I guess that doesn’t really matter. He used them to play the Hunter’s game. In fact, the little bombs were how David introduced me to the Hunter in the first place.”
One afternoon a few years earlier, when David was still around, Seth was in his bedroom reading when he heard a blast outside so loud it rattled the house. Looking out the window, Seth thought he noticed someone moving up the hill between the dense expanse of trees. Slipping his shoes on, he snuck outside.
In the woods, he heard voices. He followed them until he found his brother crouched in front of one of the old stone walls, whispering to himself as he struggled with a pack of matches.
When David turned to find Seth approaching from down the hill, he groaned. Piles of explosives lay on the ground. Seth was quite adept with a match, having had a short stint as an altar boy the year prior. He managed quickly to get a flame from the flint. David was so impressed that he forgot to tell him to throw the hissing object over the wall. As sparks slowly ate at the fuse, he knocked the M80 out of Seth’s hand. It fell to the ground between them. David pushed Seth back just as the explosi
ve erupted with a deafening crack, knocking David against the stone wall with such force that the largest rock tumbled from the top and fell to the other side. When he stood and lifted his shirt, a bruise had already started to form. He begged Seth not to say a word to their mother, and Seth, sensing opportunity, granted his brother’s wish but only on the condition that David tell him what he’d been doing out here and whom he’d been talking to. Reluctantly, David agreed. It had been a game of imagination, enchantments, and monsters, set in a magical world. A world in which a boy could believe that he was strong. Powerful. Beloved. A world that was different in every way from the one where people thought of the Hoppers as a group of backwoods weirdos.
Seth insisted on joining the game. To his surprise, David agreed. Happily.
The brothers were separated in age by five years, and though they’d always been civil, they’d never been especially close. Their father’s purchase of a horse years earlier had been the catalyst that had first made them realize each other. The horse had become the brothers’ shared responsibility. A second binding had occurred when their father had walked out. The third was when their mother crumbled, and the fourth, almost an afterthought, was when she sold the mare to pay a pile of bills.
None of these events had been a particularly positive experience. But then, there was the game. A game that belonged only to them, an escape from what had come before. Older brothers were supposed to be strong, knowledgeable, just out of reach. When David had decided to let him in, Seth finally understood that his older brother lived as lonely a life as his own. Oddly, this became the strongest binding of all.
The first order of business was for Seth to invent a character, to choose a new name and a new personality. Wraithen of Haliath was born. For the rest of the summer, the brothers fought the Hunter, rescuing captured children from his clutches. In the game, they invented ways to master their abilities. David explained that being “Robber” Princes came with the responsibility to constantly “level up.” The way they did this was to steal magical objects from secret places. David had created a map. Many of these talismans were hidden in an abandoned “castle” across the forest of Howler’s Notch.
The first night that David led Seth up to Temple House, Seth had no idea what his brother had planned. When the two approached Mrs. Ashe’s backdoor, Seth began to understand. By the time David had worked the lock open, Seth was too nervous to say anything, fearing that the reclusive owner of the house might awaken and find them. Silently, Seth followed David into the dark house. Moving through the shadows, he wondered how David had discovered the nerve to break in. Surely this was not his first time in the house.
David disappeared through a nearby doorway. Inside, Seth discovered what looked like some sort of library. A bright moon threw blue light onto the floor. It reflected up at the odd objects and books packed onto the shelves. Seth barely had time to look around before he saw David snatch something small off a nearby mantelpiece and shove it in his pocket. He nodded for Seth to take something too. Without thought, Seth grabbed the nearest knickknack, a carved turquoise scarab, and clutched it in his palm all the way home.
By the time September rolled in, they had little time to continue playing. David was finding freshman year at Slade High School to be profoundly difficult. He frequently withdrew into his bedroom and ignored Seth’s requests to venture together into the world of Howler’s Notch. Seth worried that the progress they’d made over the summer would be lost. He missed playing the game, but more, he missed his brother.
Whenever they did play, David seemed distracted. By January, David flat-out refused to play with Seth at all. Seth didn’t believe him when he said it was because of the cold temperature outdoors.
One night, after a month of Seth’s pestering, David finally agreed to talk about what was on his mind. He explained that the game was dangerous, much more than Seth could ever understand. Seth pressed him further, wondering if it was something he’d done. “I know you won’t believe me,” his brother answered, his expression flat and humorless. “You might even laugh, but I don’t care. We can’t do this anymore.” Seth waited as David paused for a long time. “The Hunter is real. And he wants us dead.”
David was right. Seth laughed. He laughed until he cried.
“THE HUNTER IS REAL?” Gabe asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that,” said Seth. “He believed that somehow he’d raised something up from the woods behind my house. Behind your house too.”
“But that’s crazy.” Right? he wondered.
“I thought so too. My brother was definitely acting crazy. He grew more and more paranoid. He told my mom that he was sure someone was following him home from school. She thought he meant that kids were picking on him. She tried to get help from the school, from the guidance counselors, but David refused to talk to anyone about what was really bothering him. Eventually, he started asking my mom if we could move. Begging her. He said he couldn’t live here anymore.”
“That’s…really scary.”
“It’s why, when he disappeared that summer, the police concluded that he’d run away, that he’d located my dad and went off to be with him. I think David was scared that if me or Mom knew where he was, the Hunter would find him.”
Gabe sat on the edge of the mattress, unaware that his jaw was hanging open until his tongue felt gritty against the top of his mouth. “Do you think that’s what happened to him?” he managed to say.
“I wanted more than anything to believe that David just left,” said Seth. “And I did believe. Mostly. For a while, it seemed like the only explanation. Then you moved in up the hill.”
Gabe flinched. “What do I have to do with any of this?”
“Well, when David went away, I’d stopped playing the Hunter’s game. But, when you mentioned losing all your video games and comics and everything in the fire, I thought you might be interested to join in. Even after you came up with that ridiculous name for yourself. For your kingdom. Meatpie? Chicken Guts?” Seth smiled sadly. “I didn’t even mind. I missed my brother, and I wanted to play again.”
That last sentence was like a punch to Gabe’s stomach. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a sibling. He thought of Miri, safe with his family just up the hill. What would his parents do if she disappeared—not merely died, which would have been a nightmare in itself, but just went poof! Gone! There was something much more horrific in not knowing when or if you’d ever be reunited. At least a death was final. No coming back from that.
“After you and I started playing the game again, strange things started happening,” Seth said. “Even before school began again, I knew people blamed me for what happened at Felicia’s pool party.” Seth trembled. “If I’d denied it, no one would have listened.” His voice shook as he went on. “I’m really sorry I showed up at your house that night and said that stuff about the Hunter coming for you. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was upset. It was like, in that moment, I wished for bad things to happen. I never thought the wish would come true.”
“You believe in wishes?” Gabe asked.
“I don’t know what to believe. But I’m starting to wonder if David was right to run away. Maybe there is something out there in the woods. Something evil. Something that does want us dead.”
Gabe’s throat gurgled reflexively. “The Hunter?”
Seth nodded slightly, as if embarrassed to admit it.
“If something is hunting us,” said Gabe, “how do we stop it?”
“I guess we start by warning your friends.”
Gabe felt warm. He knew what Felicia’s response would be. For a moment, he wondered which was scarier—the threat of the Hunter or of spending life as Puppet Boy. At this point, it seemed as though there was no escape from either.
LATER, GABE LAY IN BED trying desperately to turn off his brain.
Seth had seemed truly frightened about the Hunter’s next attack. In all the storytelling, Gabe had forgotten to mention how angry
Felicia was, and after Seth’s warning to all of them, it felt like an especially selfish mistake.
A floorboard squeaked. Gabe opened his eyes and saw only darkness. But he knew he was not alone. He felt someone watching him. Gabe listened to the quiet, too frightened to move.
Wind whistled at the window. The wooden frame creaked. It sounded like the noise that had roused him. Maybe what he’d heard had been outside.
His imagination was getting the better of him. He let out a loud sigh, determined to put the fear away. He pulled his blanket up to his chin and closed his eyes again, hoping that this time, he’d get to sleep. A moment later, someone ripped the comforter away.
Gabe screamed. He didn’t even have time to grab at the blanket before it slipped over the foot of his bed. Scrambling up the mattress, he pressed himself against the headboard.
The shadows were a clotted blur. Silence coated the room. Dressed only in a T-shirt and shorts, Gabe shivered at the sudden cold. Seth’s tale flashed through his mind. David’s alleged statement blared like a siren. The Hunter is real. And he wants us dead.
A guttural rumble came from somewhere near the end of the bed. Pins stabbed at Gabe’s cold skin. As the sound continued, growing louder, Gabe realized it was laughter. He’d heard it before, echoing from inside the Milton suit.
The floor squeaked again. The thing at the end of his bed was coming closer. Gabe couldn’t catch his breath to call out for his parents. He bit at his lip hard, hoping this was a nightmare from which he could awaken, but his mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood, and he knew this was no dream.
Panicked, he swung out at the shadows, but met only emptiness. He readied himself to leap out of bed and dash for the door. But he imagined black claws darting from hidden places, splitting both the fabric of his shirt and his thin skin underneath. He could only cover his mouth and hold his breath, hoping the monster was as blind as he was.
The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe Page 11