The Gray Hunter's Revenge Read online

  I shrugged. “Yeah, kind of. You got a better idea?”

  Frank sighed. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll stay in the house. But I’m not going to like it.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, grinning. “I’ll like it enough for both of us.”

  Adam had been looking back and forth between us as we bickered like he was watching a tennis match. When he saw that we were done, he fished inside a backpack next to his bed and pulled out an old-fashioned gold key. “Well, here’s the key to the manor,” he said, handing it to me. “Good luck. And hey—” He reached out and grabbed my wrist as I got up to leave. “Be careful in there. I don’t want you guys to end up in a bed here with me. Or worse.”

  I swallowed, a little twinge of fear creeping into my armor of easy confidence. “We’ll be careful,” I said.

  I looked at my watch. It was seven a.m. In about twelve hours, Frank and I would be stepping into the scariest place this side of the Mississippi—alone. What would we find there?

  Or rather . . . what would find us?

  10

  A GHOSTLY MESSAGE

  FRANK

  THERE WAS A BLOODY SUNSET on the horizon when Joe and I once again pulled through the gates of Cliffside Manor. On the air was the scent of burning wood; normally a comforting smell, but it carried with it a bad omen. There was not another house for miles, and this one was empty. If there was a fire, who had set it?

  I pulled my pack from the trunk. It was heavy with gear—flashlights, energy bars, spare batteries, canisters of water—all the necessities for a night spent in a house of unknowns. Joe’s bag was much lighter. I’d watched him pack it. It contained exactly three items: his phone charger, a Coke, and a regulation baseball bat. I had to hand it to Joe: when it came down to business, he always liked to keep it simple.

  Joe pulled out the key Adam had given us and unlocked the front door. It opened with a creak, a sound like the whining growl of a cat about to pounce. We stepped inside the front room. It was murky and full of shadows. Most of the windows were covered in heavy velvet drapes that were probably older than I am. I took out my flashlight and switched it on, shining it around the room. Assorted pieces of furniture and decor sat around, each festooned with a yellow SOLD! label. They must still be waiting for pickup after the sale, I thought.

  Outside, the rumble of distant thunder promised a less-than-quiet evening. I hunched my shoulders and shivered.

  “You okay, bro?” Joe asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said quickly, straightening up. “I’m fine, it’s just really cold in here.” And it was. Sure, I might also be a little freaked out by the prospect of spending the night in this nightmare factory, but it didn’t help that it was practically subzero temperatures in there. Obviously the furnace wasn’t on, and the old place retained heat about as well as a fishing net. “We need to find a room upstairs with a fireplace,” I said, thinking about the smell of smoke from outside. “We’ll freeze in here tonight if we don’t get a fire started. And blankets. We need blankets.”

  “Death by lack of blankets,” Joe mused as we made our way up the staircase. “Yeah, not a good look.”

  On the second floor, we managed to find a smallish bedroom with two twin-size beds and a clean fireplace already set up with logs and kindling. I dropped off my bag on one of the beds and started rooting through it to find some matches. After emptying the entire thing, I tossed it back down in annoyance. “I could have sworn I packed those matchboxes!” I muttered. “Ah, well, I’ll just have to go look for some. There’s probably a bunch in the kitchen. I’ll be right back.”

  “Hey!” Joe protested. “Don’t say that!”

  I stopped in my tracks and turned around. “What?”

  “We are alone in a haunted house, and you just said, ‘I’ll be right back,’ ” Joe answered. “Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie?”

  I blinked.

  Joe rolled his eyes. “When people say that they’ll be right back, then they never come back, man.”

  I stared at my brother for a full minute before saying, “Okay . . . then, I won’t be right back?”

  “God, you’re hopeless,” Joe said, throwing up his hands.

  I shrugged and left the room. What did he want from me, anyway?

  After walking back downstairs, I noticed that a few books had fallen to the floor beside a bookshelf. Unable to stop myself from cleaning up the mess, and I perused their covers while I set them back on the shelf. I had just set the last one back in its place when I heard a strange, tinkling sound coming from somewhere nearby. I was certain it hadn’t been there when we walked in, so what could it be? With the beam of my flashlight lighting the way, I followed the sound down the hallway to Mr. Foxwood’s study. Now that I was closer, I recognized what it was—the song of a music box. Sure enough, when I walked through the door into the study, the first thing I saw was a little child’s music box sitting open on Mr. Foxwood’s writing desk. It was yellowed with age, and the gold paint around its scalloped edges had chipped off in spots. The inside of it was moldering pink velvet, and a slender ballerina perched there, spinning erratically to the sound of the music.

  It would have been pretty if her head wasn’t missing.

  I reached out and slammed the box shut. My hand was shaking as it rested on the lid.

  The room was silent again. I couldn’t decide if that was worse or better than it was with the creepy-sweet music playing.

  One thought kept running through my mind. That music box couldn’t have wound itself. Someone had opened it. Someone was in the house.

  I spun and shone the flashlight around the room until I found a floor lamp and quickly switched it on. It flooded the room with warm yellow light, and I scanned every corner for an intruder. But no one was there.

  I closed my eyes, commanding my wildly beating heart to slow down. Whoever is doing this, I told myself, they’re doing these stunts to throw us off the scent. To scare us. Focus, Frank. Focus on the facts!

  I took several deep breaths and felt a measure of calm return to me. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself staring straight at the reason that I’d come down here in the first place: a box of matches. I stuffed them in my pocket and was about to go back upstairs when I realized that we’d also need some kindling for the fire. Spying a wastebasket next to the writing desk, I knelt down next to it and started pulling out a bunch of crumpled papers. Mostly old bills, from what I could tell, many of them overdue. One of the papers, though, was a letter. Curious, I smoothed it out and saw that it was from Mr. Foxwood’s editor, dated about a month and a half ago. It just looked like a regular message, nothing official. Hadn’t these guys ever heard of e-mail? I wondered. Then I remembered what I’d read about Mr. Foxwood being quirky and old-fashioned, and it made more sense. It was true, I realized. In the whole house I’d never seen evidence of a TV or a computer anywhere. The letter read:

  Dear Nathan,

  I hope this letter finds you well. I’m very interested to see your completed draft of The Haunting of Cliffside Manor—I admit I am a bit confused as to why you’ve refused to share any of the partial manuscript with me, as you have in the past. I know you already feel considerable pressure for this book to sell, given what happened with The Village of Ash, and I am sorry to add to it, but I must tell you that if we don’t get a substantial return on investment with this latest novel, I’m afraid I won’t be able to convince Steve Lane and the rest of the team to renew your contract. The sales of your backlist titles have been declining for more than five years now, and some of those will likely go out of print in the near future. Unfortunately, the Foxwood brand just doesn’t have the power that it used to, and as a company, we’ll have to move on if it doesn’t recover. At any rate, please let me know when you have a draft ready for review.

  I’m doing my best for you, Nathan. I hope you believe that.

  Your friend and editor,

  Michael Hammer

  As I finished reading the letter, I co
uld feel the gears in my head turning, taking in this new information. So not only had Nathan Foxwood’s career been in major decline, as Joe had found out, if this newest book didn’t hit the bestseller list, his decorated, long-lasting career as a novelist would actually be over. That could certainly account for the guy’s unbalanced state of mind prior to his death.

  Suddenly I began to wonder—had this crime begun not after Nathan Foxwood’s death, but before? As Mr. Foxwood’s agent, Peter Huang would have known about the warning letter. He would have known that it would be just as bad for his bottom line as it would have been for Mr. Foxwood’s. He’d said that Nathan was worth more dead than alive, so was it possible that he was desperate enough to make that thought a reality? Or was his death just a convenient happenstance, and Peter took the opportunity to take advantage of it for his own gain? Either way, Peter had motive. And he knew Mr. Foxwood’s books better than anyone—knew the contents of his new novel too, so he would have been able to put together a very convincing Gray Ghost costume if need be.

  There was still the problem of Peter being at the memorial when the figure in the house appeared, but there had to be a way around that. Peter could have paid someone off to do it and then disappear. Anything was possible.

  I had to get back to Joe and let him know. I stuck the letter into my pocket with the matchbox and gathered up the rest of the papers from the wastebasket in my arms for kindling. Standing up, I found myself in front of the old typewriter, where I had first read a portion of Mr. Foxwood’s story at the estate sale. There was still a piece of paper rolled into the typewriter, but right away I could tell it was different from the one I’d seen before. That one had several paragraphs written on it, but this had only a few words. As I read the message written there, my heart, in defiance of my earlier command, started beating rapidly once again.

  GET OUT, HARDY BOYS, it read. WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

  11

  GET OUT

  JOE

  WHILE FRANK WAS WANDERING around downstairs, hopefully not being murdered by poltergeists, I was pacing the cold bedroom, eating my feelings.

  I was on my third energy bar when I realized we had only brought four energy bars, and two of them were supposed to be for Frank. I threw the wrappers in the fireplace and scolded myself for being so jumpy. After all, hadn’t I always thought it would be amazing to be in a big old house like this at night, just like in my favorite Foxwood novel? Aside from my dad being a private detective, part of the reason I’d fallen in love with solving mysteries was because of those books. And now, here I was, living the dream!

  The problem was, a lot of dreams seem great in your head, but in reality—they are actually super terrifying.

  I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. It was bone-chillingly cold in this house. What was taking Frank so long finding those matches? If it had been me going, I probably would have planned some crazy prank to scare him on my way back, but this was Frank we were talking about. Frank’s idea of a crazy prank would be to swap our toothbrushes and see if I noticed.

  Suddenly I began to hear the tapping of raindrops on the roof, slow at first, but then picking up speed, until they became a steady drumbeat above my head. I pulled the gauzy curtain aside and peered out the window at the downpour outside, which had transformed the world into a dark smear of shadows, highlighted every few seconds by a flash of distant lightning. It was a picture-perfect backdrop to one of those nail-biting thrillers I loved so much.

  And then, as if the universe was saying, You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, a crash of thunder was quickly followed by the bedside lamp going out.

  I shuffled over to the lamp and flicked the switch a couple of times, but to no avail. After trying both of the other two lamps in the room and finding them unresponsive, I figured that the storm must have knocked out power to the house.

  “Cool,” I muttered into the gloom. “Cool, cool, cool . . .”

  Be careful what you wish for, I thought grimly. You just might get it.

  I groped around on the floor until I hit on the backpacks. I knew Frank had brought another flashlight along, so I began pulling items out of his bag, feeling around for the cold metal cylinder. As I searched, I heard the creak of the door opening behind me.

  “Oh, Frank,” I said, without turning around. “Good timing. Looks like we lost power. I’m trying to find a flashlight, but of course it’s lost in this mountain of stuff you brought . . . are these books? You brought books to a haunted house? When did you think you’d have time to read on this trip? This bag must weigh a ton. . . .”

  Frank said nothing.

  “Anyway, did you find the matches? You’ve been gone forever. I thought you’d been eaten by the Ghost of Christmas Future or whatever. It’s cold in here. How are we supposed to solve this case if I can’t even feel my fingers?”

  Again, Frank said nothing.

  “Jeez, Frank—is this a backpack or a black hole? I can’t find anything in here. Did you take both flashlights with yo—Oh, my phone, duh! Watching me struggle like this is not funny, Frank.” I turned to peer through the darkness at the open door, expecting to see my brother standing there laughing at me.

  But what I saw instead made me forget all about the phone and flashlight and reach for the baseball bat.

  There in the doorway, illuminated by an otherworldly blue light, was a figure whose face was hidden behind a dark hood. Gripped in his large hands was an ax, its blade glinting in the moonlight.

  “Oh,” I said, stupidly.

  The figure was so still that part of me believed he was just a glow-in-the-dark statue or mannequin that some joker had placed there to freak me out, but then he stepped into the room.

  “Joseph Hardy,” a voice said. It sounded like a whisper but was so loud that it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. “You do not belong here.”

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry as a bone. At the end of the day, I didn’t believe in ghosts any more than Frank did. I mean, maybe in theory, but not in reality—and not like this. But whoever this was, they were doing a heck of a good impression of one. “Who . . . ,” I began, working to get the words out. “Who are you?”

  The figure continued to advance on me, slowly, like a thunderstorm, his voice growing in volume as it came. “I am the one who owns this land. I am vengeance, bloody and unmerciful. I am the hunter, and for your crimes, tonight—you will suffer.”

  After a beat, I said, “Yeah, um . . . I appreciate the offer of, you know, bloody vengeance, but I think this time I’ll pass.”

  “You have no choice,” the voice boomed, and I saw his fingers grip the ax tightly. “First you will suffer, and then you will leave this place. Forever.” And with those words, the Gray Hunter raised the ax above his head and brought it down with a mighty swing.

  My instincts kicking in, I dove backward over the bed behind me, and the blade smashed into the bedpost, splintering it into smithereens. Whether or not the ghost was real, that ax sure was.

  Before the Hunter could yank the ax out from the wood, I leaped to my feet and made a beeline for the door. “Get out!” the voice commanded, still seeming to come from every inch of the house. “Get out!”

  I tore out of the room, and it wasn’t until I was in the hallway that I remembered my bat—still sitting on the floor of the bedroom. I cursed my own foolishness, in allowing panic to keep me from remembering to arm myself. I stole a glance behind me, figuring the Hunter would be giving chase, but the hallway was deserted.

  Somehow, that was worse.

  Scanning the hallway, I grabbed a brass candlestick from a side table and hefted it in my hand. It wasn’t a baseball bat, but it would have to do.

  “I’m not leaving until I find out who you really are!” I said into the silence. I ran down the hallway slowly, I needed to get downstairs and find Frank. My pulse was roaring in my ears, and every time the lightning crashed outside and the hallway lit up with a strobe-like light, I had to grit my teeth to keep
from shouting out loud.

  The darkness was like a stranglehold on my reason, and even the air smelled of sweat and fear. There was a man in the house who wanted me dead—whether or not he was dead himself didn’t seem to matter much anymore.

  I had backed almost to the end of the hallway, where I could take the stairs back down to where Frank had gone, when suddenly a whispering voice spoke. But this time, it wasn’t coming from everywhere at once. No, it was spoken directly into my ear, so close that I could feel a cold breath blow across my cheek.

  It said only one word.

  “Suffer.”

  A moment later I experienced an explosion of pain as something struck me in the back of the head, and everything went black.

  • • •

  When I woke up, my first sensation was delight. Yay! I thought. I’m not dead! (This may seem like a weird thing to be delighted about, but you’d be surprised how many times I’ve had a little mental party about that exact same thing. I should have the local bakery make me a cake every time we finish a case. Congratulations! it would say in yellow icing. You Didn’t Die!)

  But my jubilation was short-lived, because I quickly realized that, along with having a raging headache, I was being dragged by the ankles down a different hallway by a gigantic glowing man.

  “Why . . . ?” I murmured, still groggy from the head bonking. “Why are you doing this?” It was the one big question mark I had about this whole thing. Why would anyone haunt the house of a dead writer?

  “I killed the man who built this house, long ago,” the figure said, his voice unnaturally amplified once again. “People stayed away for a long time. But then they forgot. They forgot me, they forgot that this is my land. And when the new people came, I punished them as well. Now they, too, are gone.”

  The figure stopped in front of a doorway; the room inside was pitch black. With one effortless heave, he tossed me inside. I groaned as my head jerked painfully back and hit the floor. I lifted my head slightly, squinting at the bluish nimbus of light that seemed to surround the Hunter’s whole body. All except his face, which was still completely hidden under his black hood. “I am making sure,” the Hunter said with finality, “that people will not forget again.”