Gabe glanced up. The lights from the trucks splashed sporadic color out into the forest. Firefighters continued to blast water at the barn, soaking the remaining wood and the surrounding grass to keep the dwindling flames from spreading. Glen and Dolores were still huddled at the back of the ambulance, flanked by Elyse, leaning over Miri. No one seemed to notice that he and Seth were sitting on the porch steps. If they were going to disappear, they needed to do it now. “Where do we start?” Gabe asked, standing, clutching his side. “Mason’s body could be anywhere.”
Seth climbed to his feet too. “That map you made of Slade. The red spiral ended in one particular spot.” He nodded at the darkness behind the house, toward the slope that led to Temple House at the top of the hill.
“The woods?” Gabe said. “But that still leaves us with a few dozen acres to search.”
Seth rose onto his toes, peering toward the barn.
“What is it?” Gabe asked. “You see something?”
“I have an idea.” Seth stepped forward onto the driveway. He waved for Gabe to follow him.
Gabe’s body ached in places he hadn’t realized he’d been hurt. His lungs felt as though they’d shrunk by fifty percent. As he rushed to keep up, Gabe glanced back toward the ambulance. His family would never understand what he’d told Seth; even Elyse seemed too frightened now to fight. Shadows pulsed across the lawn, similar to the shifting shape that had been chasing him all night. He quickly decided that it would be a bigger mistake to stick around here. “What are we looking for?” Gabe asked, struggling to catch his breath.
“You said you saw a boy in the barn.”
“Yeah, but I also smacked my head pretty hard when I jumped down from the hayloft.”
“What if there was someone else with you?” Seth asked. They wandered around the corner of the barn, cut off from view of the fire trucks. As they approached the broken door where Gabe had escaped the fire, he slowed his pace. “Someone besides you and Miri. And Mason. He was approaching you, but then the Hunter emerged from the smoke and attacked him?”
“I think so, but—”
Seth stopped walking and held up his hands. “After everything you’ve seen tonight,” he said, “after everything that’s happened, you still don’t believe?”
Gabe blinked. On any other evening, this would have been a laughably dramatic gesture. Here, now, mere steps away from the burning barn, Seth appeared almost regal. A Robber Prince. A hot wind rushed from the building. Gabe felt suddenly faint. He shook his head. “Of course I believe,” he whispered.
“I don’t think that other boy was trying to hurt you,” Seth went on. “He gave you the tool to get out of there: the stone you used to smash the door. He saved your life.”
Splinters of wood were scattered across the dirt. The stone lay among them. It was pale and flat. Something about it was strangely familiar. Gabe crossed his arms, nervous to step closer.
“This is it,” said Seth. The breeze blew his hair back from his forehead. He crouched down, rubbed his fingers over its surface. “Am I right?” He glanced up at Gabe.
Gabe bit his lip. Nodded.
“What if the boy wasn’t only trying to save your life?” Seth smiled wanly. “What if, at the same time, he was trying to give you a clue?”
“A clue to what?”
“Where have we seen stones like this before?”
Despite the heat, Gabe felt a chill. He understood. Seth glanced toward the dark woods in the distance, to the place they’d once called Howler’s Notch. Inside the notch, an altar stood. Someone had piled up stones like the one in the dirt beside the barn, an altar that Wraithen had believed contained the Hunter’s power. Beneath the stones, there’d been a hollow spot. When Meatpie nearly uncovered it over a month ago, a voice had told him to stop before he’d been able to dig, had called out Don’t with a voice similar to the one that had spoken to Gabe in the barn earlier that night.
“I’m not Mason,” Gabe whispered, remembering, stepping closer to Seth. “So who was it? Who helped me?”
Seth’s eyes darted back and forth as he thought. “I have no idea,” he said after a few seconds. Gabe shivered. He turned to the woods, too frightened to ask Seth why he looked like he’d just told a lie.
AWAY FROM THE FIRE, the night air was biting. Already coated in sweat, Gabe’s body sprouted goose bumps from the chill. Every few seconds, a red or blue flash from the trucks lit up his warm exhalations, which hung momentarily in the air before fading away.
The boys had already walked far up the horse trail, stumbling over rocks and tripping into ruts, before they thought of flashlights; too late. They continued on, careful of the pitfalls, until they turned off the path and into the forest. Seth led the way, moving through the brush swiftly, trampling dead leaves and pushing past prickly foliage. Gabe followed, sure that even to blink was to let his guard down. Every shadow, every sound, every breeze was the Hunter chasing them. He kept imagining a great, dark silhouette creeping into the kitchen, lifting Miri from her high chair, carrying her down the hill and into the barn. He and Seth were not dealing with “a bump in the night,” “go back to bed,” “you’re hearing things, silly.” This was not the wind, not the furnace, not an injured bird, not a nervous dog. The Hunter was as real as David Hopper had insisted, and the stakes of the game were unimaginably high.
They splashed through a shallow brook. A few steps more, and they were there. Above the shrunken reach of the deformed tree, the forest canopy opened, creating a dome of cold starlight. A million silver pinpoints glistened there. Last year, the sight may have taken Gabe’s breath away. Now, however, he simply struggled to breathe.
The boys stood together by the pile of stones. Without a word, Seth grabbed a flat, round rock from the top of the so-called altar and tossed it to the ground. It slid to a halt a few feet down the slope. Gabe tried to do the same, but his hands were shaking so much, he managed only to loosen the structure. Stones rolled noisily to the base of the cairn. Gabe looked up, wide-eyed, but Seth shrugged. “Might as well get on with it,” he whispered, pushing at the stack as Gabe had accidentally done, the catalyst for another miniature avalanche. “Faster this way,” Seth added.
It took about ten minutes to spread the pile out onto the hillock. When the boys had nearly uncovered the altar’s base, Gabe slowed, remembering the last time he’d been here. He had a better idea now of what was below. Together, the boys knelt down and cleared away the last few stones. Underneath, they discovered a couple rotting planks of wood. The boys glanced at each other in surprise. Seth reached out for one plank, Gabe for the other.
At Gabe’s touch, numerous insects scattered across the board—some raced onto his hand. Pressing his lips together to contain his disgust, he threw the piece of wood as hard as he could. It rustled through low leaves in the distance. Gabe shook himself off, brushed at his jacket, imagining hundreds of tiny claws clutching at the insides of his clothes. Seth was doing the same. Gabe almost laughed at how ridiculous they both looked, but he managed to hold that inside too.
In the dim starlight, the boys saw what lay beneath the boards. The roots of the crooked tree had formed a type of netting, which had held up the planks and the stones. Below these roots was a deep indentation, beyond which lay pitch blackness. A musty smell rose up from the hole. It was raw earth. Decay. Moisture and rot. Gabe felt himself start to gag, but then he began to breathe through his mouth instead of his nose, which helped.
“What is this place?” Seth asked.
“The grave?” said Gabe.
“But it goes deep.” He picked up a pebble from the rubble of the altar. “Listen.” Seth dropped it into the depression. The pebble tumbled between the roots, then disappeared into the darkness. Seconds later, a pip echoed up at them. The stone had found the bottom. “I think this hole might be a well.”
“A well?” Gabe leaned back. “Like, for water?”
“It’s possible, though it’s probably dried up now,” said Seth. �
�My dad told me that a hundred years ago, before the trees took over, this was all farmland. That’s what all those stone walls are for—they divided up the properties.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Gabe asked. An echo rose up from the chasm, and he suddenly felt like a fool. Dangerous? said his voice. Dangerous? Dangerous? “Leaving a well like this out in the middle of nowhere?”
“My thought exactly.” Seth stared into the emptiness. “If this hole is what we were looking for, then you-know-who is all the way at the bottom.”
“You think he fell in? That night with the rooster?”
“If so, we need to figure out a way to get him out.”
“No way,” said Gabe, shaking his head. “This isn’t just a grave.” A knot had formed in his chest. “We’ve got to get help.”
Seth stood up. “You’re right,” he said slowly, his voice teasing. “Why don’t you go ask the fire brigade to stop what they’re doing and come out here to recover a fifty-year-old skeleton at the bottom of an abandoned pit?”
“We’re completely unprepared! I wouldn’t know how to do this even in broad daylight.”
“I say we start by clearing away these roots.”
“Why didn’t we bring shovels?”
“They were in the barn,” said Seth. He sighed and added, more seriously, “Mason almost killed you tonight. And Miri too. If we leave here right now, he’s free to try again. We don’t have time to argue. Or to find help. And if we go back for shovels, anyone might stop us, keep us from coming back here. Don’t you get it?”
“I’m sorry,” said Gabe. “I’m just…scared.”
“I am too. I really am. But tonight, I think we’ve both proven that we’re more than just scared. Tonight, we’ve learned how to be brave.” Here was Wraithen again. Spine straight. Chin tilted toward the sky. His words were cheesy, but the sentiment was comforting. “And not just brave in a game. Brave where it really counts. In here.”
Gabe wasn’t sure where in here was, exactly. But he understood that the Robber Princes’ bravery now belonged to Seth, and if that gave him the strength to survive, then who cared how crazy he sounded? Heck, I’ll be Meatpie now if it gets me home, Gabe thought. He shook his head in disbelief, knelt forward, and peered into the crevice.
Though the tangled system was fairly solid, the boys were able to pluck away some of the roots from one side of the hole, revealing enough space for a body to fit through. Even better, a few of the thickest roots looked like they might go deep enough to act as a ladder of sorts. “So?” Seth perched on the opposite side of the opening. He glanced down. “Who’s the lucky one? You or me?” When Gabe’s silence stretched on, Seth added. “One of us has to stay up here. Keep a lookout. Right?” But Gabe could not, in fact, speak.
In the space behind Seth, where the dim silhouette of tree trunks and branches should have been, there was only a wall of darkness rushing closer, solidifying into the shape of a tall, wide body. A pair of blue eyes wavered in the air like flame. Gabe stumbled backward as Seth glanced up to see what was the matter. The darkness seemed to swoop forward. And that’s when Seth slipped. Or was pushed. With a brief and strangely quiet yelp, he disappeared through the broken net of roots and into the rift, but Gabe was the one who screamed. Over the echo of his own voice, he thought he heard a familiar laughter. With a crushing panic, Gabe realized that they’d both fallen for another of the Hunter’s traps.
“SETH!” GABE CRIED OUT, then glanced around the clearing. It was now still, but the quiet was no comfort. A whimpering sound rose up from the hole. Gabe lay flat on his stomach and scrambled farther forward, peeking over the edge of the well.
Several feet down, Seth clung to a stringy root. The thin strand was slowly pulling out from the dirt. Struggling to stay near the rim, Seth placed one hand in front of the other, gripping another root. His feet scrabbled against the dirt for a foothold. Stones and clumps of earth fell from the wall and rattled into the maw.
“Seth,” Gabe said as evenly as he could. “Calm down and listen to me. We’re going to get you out of there, but you need to relax. Okay?”
“Okay,” Seth muttered, his teeth chattering. He shook his head and said it again, this time, louder, as if to himself. “Okay.”
“Now give me your hand.” Gabe extended his arm. Seth let go of the first root, and the second loosened from the dirt. He slid farther into the hole.
“I-I can’t,” Seth said, once he’d stopped swinging. “Maybe…Maybe I should just go on down.”
“No,” said Gabe, speaking quickly. “He’s here. Going down there is what he wanted. He pushed you.”
“I fell,” Seth insisted.
“Something snuck up behind you,” Gabe went on. It wasn’t reassuring, but Seth needed to understand. “The stone in the barn wasn’t a clue, it was a lure. We’re right where he wants us. If we go down there, he’ll bury us with him.”
“Wh-why would he do that?” Seth said, panting.
“So he has someone to keep playing the game with him!” An instant later, the words rang back at him, each time sounding more and more like the answer the boys had been trying to uncover all along. “There’s no time to argue. We’ve gotta get you out. Give me your hand!”
Seth yowled as he pulled himself back toward the mouth of the well. He kept his eyes on Gabe’s, as if Gabe could send him strength. Inch by inch he climbed, wincing and groaning, but making enough progress so that eventually, their fingers made contact. Then their palms. Finally, Gabe wrapped his hand around Seth’s wrist. Starlight illuminated Seth’s face, as he peered into the space up beyond Gabe. Reflected in his friend’s eyes, Gabe saw movement. “Watch out!” Seth shouted. “Behind you!”
Too late. Gabe felt himself sliding forward. His chest scraped against the rough rocks. In his struggle to halt his descent, his jacket tore. His skin became slick with sweat or blood. He lost his grip, and Seth fell, swallowed by the dark. A new howl battered his eardrums. Only after a few seconds did Gabe realize the sound was coming from his own mouth.
Someone stood above him, but he couldn’t see who or what it was. Something sharp pressed into his back—talons, claws, fingernails—and squeezed. Gabe tried to shout again, this time for help, but he couldn’t catch his breath.
He twisted, fighting to turn over, to face the thing that had decided that his life was a prize to be won. The thing had other plans. It pushed Gabe toward the mouth of the well. The hole seemed to expand. The roots brushed at his face. Swinging his arms out, Gabe reached for something to hold on to. There was only weightlessness—a rushing black, which was followed by the certainty that, in a moment, the game would be over. He’d lost.
GABE OPENED HIS EYES. Walls of darkness surrounded him. He rolled over. Sat up and flinched. His head rung with a dull pain. It felt as though every bone hurt. Tasting blood, he knew he’d bitten the tip of his tongue.
Leaning forward, he stirred up a foul smell of rot from a thick layer of dead leaves. Water trickled nearby. Pieces of dirt and stone rained down from above, spattering his face as he looked up, trying to see how far down he’d fallen, but above, he found only a ceiling of shadow.
“Seth,” Gabe whispered. No answer. He listened for movement. His lungs clenched. His skin went numb. The ground seemed to tilt. He clutched at his scalp, trying to steady himself. They’d both fallen into the hole under the altar. No. They’d been pushed. So where the heck was Seth?
Gabe knelt, feeling for wall. The space down here seemed larger than it should have been. But maybe the earth had crumbled away, like in a sinkhole. “Hey!” he cried out. “Anyone up there?” His voice bounced, its clarity like a shock. Gabe stumbled forward and finally made contact with the edge of the cavern—a wall of stone and dirt covered with spongy mosses and fleshy fungi. Or at least that’s what Gabe hoped it was.
A slithering sound came from several feet away.
Gabe froze. “Seth?”
“Shh,” said a voice.
“Wh-who are you?�
�� Gabe spoke louder this time, trying to sound brave.
“Shh,” the voice repeated. “He’ll hear you.” The voice sounded familiar, and very close.
“Seth, is that you?” Gabe went on. “I don’t—” Icy fingers covered his mouth. Gabe yelped, but pressed his lips shut. The other person pushed him to the wall, positioned Gabe’s back against it, then pressed into the space beside him. The hand’s clammy skin emitted a scented mixture of sweat and, strangely, dried fruit, which reminded Gabe of the inside of Seth’s house. He reached up, trying to tug the hand away from his face, but the fingers only clenched more tightly around his jaw.
Heavy feet squished into the mud and muck somewhere just ahead of them. Something was being dragged across the ground. The sound of brittle sticks clattered like toneless wind chimes. Bones? Then a growl tumbled through the darkness. Gabe held his breath, grateful for the stranger’s warning. He listened as the footsteps retreated, echoing as if down a tunnel. Just how big was this hole in the ground?
The hand let go, but Gabe did not move. When the sounds were finally gone, the dark rushed in from all sides. He stepped away from the wall, but felt blind, exposed on all sides, so he came back again, too stunned to speak.
“You hit your head pretty hard,” said the voice. Male. Maybe around Gabe’s age. “It took a while to get through to you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Gabe as politely as he could, “but I don’t—”
The boy’s nervous chuckling interrupted him. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I must have freaked the stuffing out of you.” The boy paused, became serious. “But you’re not safe here. He’s looking for you, and he’ll be back soon. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Who’s looking for me?”
“Mason,” said the boy. “Well…the Hunter. But I refuse to call him that anymore, even though it makes him mad. Really mad.”
The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe Page 19