The Haunting of Hounds Hollow

by Jeffrey Salane

  The pack of dogs around the kids hung their heads and let out low whines.

  “What’s going on?” asked Lens. “Why are they acting like this?”

  “Oh man,” Lucas said under his breath. “I don’t think we were supposed to tell Abel about Shadow.”

  The gray boy clapped his hands and spun happily in a circle. “Is this true? It is, isn’t it! Bess Armstrong is not a liar. Oh, thank you, thank you.”

  Then with another flash-walk, the gray boy disappeared.

  “Where’d he go?” Bess stepped out from the circle.

  “He went to find his dog,” said Lucas. “You shouldn’t have said anything, Bess. I—”

  Bess whipped around. “You what? Had things under control? Look at all these people, Lucas. Look at Gale! Sure she’s not the best person in Hounds Hollow, but she didn’t deserve that. Look at your parents! I mean, he levitated me into the air. Abel’s not a good kid.”

  Lucas ignored her and waved to anyone who was still hiding. “Sorry! The barbecue’s canceled. Go home and lock your doors.”

  The crowd didn’t have to be told twice. They scattered and the sound of cars starting rumbled through the forest.

  “We need to stop this before it happens again.” Lucas looked down at his parents, peacefully lying in the dirt. He didn’t want to think about whether or not they would ever wake up. “We need to find Abel. To do that, we need to find Shadow.”

  “I have an idea where he might be.” Lens knelt down by the dogs and held out his hand. The animals sniffed at it, warming to him. “It’s like in every Disney movie. Dogs always head home.”

  Bess shook her head. “There’s no way that Shadow would go back to Sweetwater Manor. It was a prison, not a home.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the house,” said Lens. “Like I said, dogs always head home.”

  The hedge maze rose tall above Lucas, Bess, and Lens as they marched with the dogs toward the darkening center. A sunny morning had shifted into an overcast afternoon, and the heat became stronger, almost boiling, with every step the kids took.

  “I’ve never seen weather like this in Hounds Hollow,” said Bess. “It’s been hot, but this is like …”

  Lucas caught her eye and nodded. “Like a fire? It means we’re on the right track.”

  The thin rows of the maze opened up into the same small field they’d seen before. The shack was still dark and leaning to the side as if it were made of the same thin skin and brittle bones as Abel.

  All was quiet, except for the warm breeze that swirled around the clearing.

  “So how does this work?” asked Bess.

  Lucas shrugged. The windows in the old shack were open as the faded curtains waved lazily in and out. “Abel?” he called out.

  The front door creaked as the gray boy shuffled outside. “You are good at hide-and-seek. Are you sure you had your eyes closed when I left?”

  As the door slapped shut behind him, Abel pointed to the Hound Pound. “Hi, fellas, have you seen Shadow? I thought he would be here.”

  The dogs stood still as Abel approached, but Lucas stepped in front of them. Abel flash-walked right up to Lucas. The gray boy’s face was different this close. There were pocketed ridges around his cheeks where his skull pressed against the deteriorating flesh, and his eyes sunk deep into his head. “There are other games we can play,” he told Lucas.

  Suddenly a black shadow crashed through the hedges, its dark smudge glittering from the quick movement. Abel fell down at the sight and cowered. It wasn’t his dog, Shadow. It was Silas’s pet, Scout. The beast stalked slowly. His large paws dug into the unkempt field as bristling heat sparked over the beast’s fur.

  The gray boy looked from Scout back to Lucas. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m scared. Lucas, Bess, Deshaun, please.”

  “I think you deserve what you get,” Bess snapped.

  Scout licked his chops and snarled at her. Then, with a twist of his powerful neck, the beast set his eyes on Abel again. As he sniffed the air, his black tail went straight up and his snout pointed directly at the gray boy. The beast had found his prey.

  Before the beast could attack, another giant animal burst into the maze. Shadow and Scout collided, rolling into a ball of snapping and biting. The other dogs howled with rage at the dogfight and paced toward the battle, but Lucas held out his hand and commanded, “Stay!”

  The animals stopped, but they did not back down.

  From his crouched position, Abel covered his ears and rocked back and forth, crying, “Stop them, please! My Shadow’s getting hurt!”

  The beasts swatted with their hind legs and crashed into each other’s chests as their sharp teeth snapped. Watching it, Lucas felt sick to his stomach.

  Bess ran over to Lens. “The cameras! Can you trigger off all of the cameras we set around the shack?”

  “You want pictures of this?” Lens asked. “I’m trying to forget what I’m seeing!”

  “For the flashes, Lens!” hollered Bess.

  “Light doesn’t affect the beast, remember?” Lens pointed out. “It won’t stop him.”

  “Just do it!” cried Bess.

  Lens nodded, then fumbled through his pockets to pull out a device that looked like a walkie-talkie. He pulled up an antenna and clicked a button. Instantly, green lights on each camera glowed to life.

  “Don’t do anything until I say so, okay?” Bess asked.

  “What are you planning, Bess?” Lucas grabbed her arm, but Bess shook his hand away.

  “Just give me your whistle,” she said. “Trust me.”

  He slid the necklace off and handed it to her without another word.

  Everyone watched as Shadow and Scout charged through one of the walls of the old shack. The wooden boards snapped like twigs. When the animals tumbled back out, Scout threw Shadow aside. The husky slammed against the ground, then popped back up. Lucas could see both dogs clearly for the first time. Their dark fur was covered in dirt and dust from the fight. Their skinny ribs rattled as each breathed hard. They were both wearing down.

  As the two dogs paced, waiting for the next strike, Bess jumped between them.

  “What are you doing?!” Lucas blurted out, but Bess ignored him.

  The beasts ignored her, too. Their eyes were locked only on each other. Paw over paw, Shadow and Scout stepped carefully, like warriors sizing each other up, looking for a weakness, or a point of attack.

  “Now!” screamed Bess, and Lens flipped a second button.

  Flashes from the cameras popped, creating a chaos of bright lights from all angles. Shadow bucked like a startled horse and cowered backward. His tail shifted between his legs and his back curled up as the dog snapped at each flash.

  Scout sensed Shadow’s fear and was about to pounce when Bess blew the dog whistle. She was so close to Scout that the loud noise made the beast instinctually sit at attention. Bess stood above the beast and held her hand out. “Stay,” she commanded.

  Behind her, Lens turned off the cameras, but the effect of the lights still had a hold on Shadow. The black husky crouched onto his belly and whimpered. He laid his head on the ground and slid back, trying to hide underneath the bushes at the edge of the maze.

  “You saved my dog!” cheered Abel. He flash-walked to Bess and threw his arms around her in a hug. “Thank you! Thank you!”

  Dakota howled as the air squeezed out of Bess immediately. Her knees buckled and her body went limp. She dropped the dog whistle. Abel let go of Bess and she fell, lifeless. Then the gray boy picked up the whistle and looked at it curiously.

  “No!” screamed Lens. “You are a monster!”

  He marched over to Abel and raised his fist, but Lucas caught his arm from behind.

  “What are you doing?” cried Lens. “This kid is a curse! Let Scout tear him apart and Hounds Hollow will be done with him.”

  Abel cringed at Lens’s words and tripped onto the ground. “He is angry. Why is he angry?”

  “Seriously?!” roared Lens
. “Don’t you see what you’ve done? That’s my best friend lying on the ground turning blue. She was fine before you touched her!”

  “Lens, stop,” Lucas said calmly. “He doesn’t understand.”

  “What?” Lens’s shoulders tensed. “How can you say that? He tried to kill you in the house. Those dogs, they have all been after him. He’s the reason for all of this. Silas knew what he was up to. That’s why he went to the trouble of locking his brother up in that fancy prison. If we let him go, he’s going to hurt more people. We can’t let that happen.”

  Lucas looked back at Bess. Dakota was sitting beside her. The dog licked her upturned hand and whimpered.

  “We were wrong,” said Lucas. “Silas was wrong, too. Abel didn’t want to hurt anyone. He only wanted to be normal.”

  “Normal isn’t going around and killing people,” snapped Lens.

  “He’s sick,” Lucas explained. “He’s sick and he’s scared and all he wants is to be normal. Believe me, I know what that’s like. I know what it’s like for people to be scared of you because you’re different. For people to think that you have some disease that will spread to them or to their kids. Hounds Hollow was so frightened of Abel Sweetwater that they burned down his house with his family inside. Look at him, Lens. He’s our age. He was our age and he died alone. Then he came back alone and the only thing he wanted was his dog. So what did Silas do? He hid Shadow in a windowless, doorless room and trapped Abel separately in the house so they could never escape or be together. Why? Because Silas was scared. Well, I’m through being scared.”

  Lucas walked over and held out his hand to Abel. “Hello. My name is Lucas Trainer. I know where your dog is.”

  The gray boy took his hand and stood up. His skin was freezing compared to the intense heat of the dogs. Lucas felt a coldness bloom from the inside of his body and stumbled for a moment, but fought hard to keep standing. The dead feeling, that was the curse. That was what Bess, his parents, Eartha, Gale, and the others had felt when Abel touched them. But the secret was, it was the same feeling Lucas had lived with for his entire life. Only he never thought about it as death. To him, it was life.

  “You are not scared?” asked Abel.

  “No,” Lucas answered. “Now let me take you to Shadow.”

  As they came closer to where Shadow was hiding, the ground began to shake. Lens cradled Bess as the remaining dogs linked into a circle of fire around them. The dogs started to burn bright and harsh, casting a warmth over Lens and Bess that they’d never felt before.

  Slowly, Bess began to blink. Her fingers squeezed around Lens’s hand. She whispered, “Close your eyes. Don’t look.”

  Lens closed his eyes and hugged his friend tight.

  Lucas and Abel were across the field, calling for Shadow to come out. The husky nervously peeked its snout through the hedge and sniffed the air. Catching Abel’s scent, Shadow crawled forward on his belly with his tail wagging wildly.

  “Hi, Shadow. It’s me, boy.” Abel fell to his knees and threw his arms around the beast. “It’s me. It’s me,” he repeated over and over again as he nuzzled his face into the husky’s deep, black fur.

  Lucas smiled. “You’re home now, Abel. It’s time to rest.”

  Tendrils of fog laced through the forest as a new kind of heat emanated from Abel and Shadow. A crackling sound like fire rose around Lucas, and the rest of the pack behind him began to howl. The sound wasn’t horrible or sad. It was euphoric.

  The fog swarmed around Abel, Shadow, and Lucas, moving faster and faster. Lucas had the sense that he wasn’t even on Earth anymore. He tried to find Lens and Bess, but they were gone. He only saw the pack circle. Each of the dogs had their heads tipped up to the sky, singing out in a language that Lucas couldn’t understand.

  Abel stroked Shadow calmly in the eye of the storm. “Thank you, Lucas Trainer. I can rest now.”

  Then, as soon as it began, it was over, and the silence reached deep inside Lucas, casting him into the darkest night he’d ever known.

  A steady beeping woke Lucas up. He was lying in a field of brightly colored flowers. The beeping kept on, like the alarm on his CPAP machine. Groggily, Lucas reached over to try and shut it off, when he felt a tug on his inner arm. There was a tube coming out of his skin. He grabbed it and pulled.

  “He’s awake!” His mother sat next to him and gently moved his hand away from the IV in his arm. “No, no, Lucas, you need that, honey. It’s me, Mom. You’re in the hospital. Lucas, you’re safe.”

  Lucas let out a strong cough and felt his body shake. He sniffled and studied the room. Blinking machines were all around him, hidden behind a strange garden of plants and flowers. He touched the petals on one particularly large orchid.

  “Oh, these?” It was his father, sitting on his other side. “Well, looks like you’re a popular guy with Hounds Hollow. I think everyone in town sent you flowers. We had to take some home; they wouldn’t allow any more in your room here.”

  Lucas licked his lips. They were chapped and dry. “Bess? Lens?”

  “Right here.” They both stumbled over each other trying to get to Lucas, then hugged him hard. Lucas could hear his parents shift uncomfortably, but they didn’t stop his friends.

  Lucas took their hands and held them weakly. “Is it … ?” he started.

  “It’s over.” Bess smiled and nodded behind her. A man he’d never seen before was sitting next to Bess’s mother. “Lucas, this is my dad.”

  Lucas coughed again. “It’s nice to meet you finally, sir.”

  Bess’s father reached down and patted her mother’s knee. “Lucas, you have no idea how nice it is to meet you.”

  Lucas leaned back, resting his head against the pillow on the bed. “Mom, Dad, could we have the room for a minute?”

  His parents shared a look, then his mother said, “Of course. We’ll be just outside.”

  After the adults left, Lucas shifted himself up and took a deep breath. “Are the dogs … ?”

  Bess nodded. “Gone.”

  “And … Abel?” Lucas struggled to get the name out.

  “He’s gone, too,” said Lens. “And you, I mean, when we found you lying in the dirt. We thought you were …”

  Bess interrupted him and held up a copy of the Hounds Hollow Gazette. “You were right, Lucas. All the missing people, they’re back. You did that.”

  Lucas coughed again, and this time an ugly wad of phlegm caught in his throat. He spit it into a tissue. “Oh, that can’t be good.”

  There was a knock at the door as a doctor walked in. “Actually, that means the body is working properly. Hi, Lucas, I’m Dr. Ward.”

  She checked the chart at the end of his bed, then gave him a smile. He’d seen that same smile a hundred times before. It said, You, son, are still very sick.

  Lucas nodded. “Hi, Dr. Ward. Am I okay?”

  “Let’s call your parents in for this.” As they joined Lucas, Dr. Ward held an X-ray sheet in her hand. She slid the X-ray into a light box. It was strange to Lucas, having his friends peer into his insides. In the image, a gray haze hung over his bones like clouds above the earth. “This X-ray was taken by your last doctor.”

  Then, Dr. Ward slid a second X-ray in. “This is the X-ray we just took.”

  As the doctor moved her finger back and forth between the X-rays, what she said might as well have been in another language. Still, his parents nodded as if they understood, and tears welled in their eyes. Lucas didn’t need to know what the doctor was saying exactly because he could see the difference in the X-rays immediately. The black cloud was smaller. It wasn’t gone, but it didn’t cover as much of his lungs now.

  “What does this mean?” he asked.

  “It means that whatever you’ve been doing, keep it up,” said Dr. Ward.

  Lucas let out another booming cough. It was louder than he’d coughed in a long time. His parents threw their arms around him.

  Then Dr. Ward cleared her throat. “It also means that I’d lik
e to perform a few more tests before you leave. If you don’t mind.”

  “What’s one more test?” Lucas asked with a smile.

  The ride back from the hospital was fast but crowded. Lucas had to share the back seat with so many get-well gifts, he felt like he was delivering for a floral shop. He stared out the window as the trees stood in the forest, watching over him as he returned to Sweetwater Manor. He strained to see beyond the trees, searching for a black movement, and felt his heart jump at the thought of spotting the beast again. But the woods were still and quiet.

  His father turned the car onto the loose gravel driveway, and Lucas could hear the pebbles crunch underneath the tires just like the first time he rode up to the house. The full beauty of Sweetwater Manor presented itself to him.

  Eartha Dobbs stood by the front porch, waving at his return. As soon as they parked, Eartha opened his door and gave Lucas a squeeze that would have cleared an entire bottle of toothpaste. “Boy, I cannot believe you messed with those dogs! I told you they were dangerous! I have half a mind to punish you if you ever, ever, ever do something like that again.”

  “I missed you, too, Eartha,” Lucas mumbled into her shoulder.

  She pulled him back and gave Lucas a wink. “I’m glad you did, though—but don’t never tell no one I said that.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.” He gave her arm another squeeze.

  The cicadas were back, buzzing wildly in the late afternoon. They were so loud that he could practically feel their noise in the air. “I … uh, Mom, Dad. Do you mind if I visit the maze?”

  “Sure, honey, we can go down there,” she said.

  “Thanks, Mom, but can you maybe give me a minute there … alone?” asked Lucas.

  His mom looked to Eartha and his father, then nodded. “Five minutes, then it’s time for dinner. I can’t believe it’s gotten so dark out already. It’ll be night before we know it. Anyway, we’ll be right here if you need us.”

  “I know. Thanks, Mom.” He put his arms around her and his mother bent down to kiss his head.