The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe Read online

  This book is dedicated to the memory of

  John Bellairs and Edward Gorey,

  my lifelong literary inspirations.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Never: In the Dark Forest of Howler’s Notch

  Now: A House of Brick

  Now: The Library at Night

  Now: The Lost Figurine

  Never: The Altar of the Crooked Tree

  Now: A House of Sticks

  Now: New Kids

  Now: Party Crash

  Never: The Shadow Market

  Now: Luck of the Second Lunch

  Now: Riding Home

  Never: The Art of Spellbinding

  Now: The Monster

  Now: Repairs

  Now: Tater Tots & Tactical Maneuvers

  Now: Game Over

  Part Two

  Now: The Babysitters

  Now: The Visitors

  Now: Will Come for You

  Now: Puppet Boy

  Never: Betrayal and the Beast

  Now: The Black Figurine

  Now: Missing Milton

  Now: The Interrogation

  Now: Falling Down

  Now: Monday’s Dread

  Now: Rats in Cages

  Now: Offense, Defense

  Now: Tales of the Hunter

  Now: Coming Clean

  Now: Death by Chocolate

  Now: Tables Turned

  Now: The Culprit

  Now: The Bus Stop

  Now: The World According to Seth

  Now: Shock and Awe

  Now: Laughing in the Dark

  Now: An Epidemic of Monsters

  Now: The Target

  Now: Secrets of Olmstead and Ashe

  Now: In Between

  Now: A Bedtime Story

  Before: Meeting Mason

  Before: A Portrait of the Witch Queen

  Before: The Birth of a Monster

  Now: In a Different Light

  Now: The Black Books

  Part Three

  Now: Secret Meeting

  Now: No Such Thing

  Now: The Haunted Gymnasium

  Now: Leaving the Labyrinth

  Now: The Ghosts of Slade

  Now: The New Game

  Now: A Different Kind of Beast

  Never & Now: Prey

  Never & Now: Can’t Run

  Never & Now: Can’t Hide

  Never & Now: The Meaning of Success

  Never & Now: The Main Ingredient in Hunter’s Stew

  Never & Now: Beasts of Shadow, Beasts of Light

  Before & Never & Now: Houses of Fire

  Before & Never & Now: Straw & Sticks & Stones

  Before & Never & Now: Undefeated

  Never & Before & Now: Hollow Ground

  Before & Never & Now: Darkness Below

  Never & Before & Now: Beneath the Crooked Tree

  Before: Mason’s Trap

  Never: Instructions

  Now: Bodies at Rest

  Now: From Below

  After: Dead Boys

  After: In Memory Of …

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  THE TWO ROBBER PRINCES FOLLOWED the trail of blood deeper into the thicket. Ahead, in the shadow of towering trees, the child’s cries grew faint. A pale violet mist seeped from the damp earth as the late hour secreted daylight away.

  The boys knew that in the coming night, the small splashes of red at their feet would blend entirely with the leaf-plastered ground. If the child ceased her panicked wailing, they would lose not only her, but also the monster—a hulking sort of man whom the people of the two kingdoms referred to as the Hunter. He had stolen the girl from her parents’ cabin, where the forest met the plains of Haliath.

  “Hurry,” whispered Prince Wraithen, dashing forth, careful to avoid each stone and dip.

  But Prince Meatpie continued to lag behind. Distracted.

  Wraithen turned to find Meatpie tucking his cell phone discreetly into his jacket pocket. “What are you doing?” said Wraithen with a forced calm, trying, as if it were possible, to keep his face from burning red with fury.

  Prince Wraithen, of the kingdom Haliath, refused to call Prince Meatpie by his chosen name. He’d told his partner several times that he thought it was impossibly stupid. Wraithen also claimed that Meatpie’s home, Castle Chicken Guts, sitting atop the slope of green meadow on the opposite side of the forest, might also benefit from a different nomenclature. Wraithen knew it was not his place to make such a suggestion—these were ancient lands with rich histories, and he was not a god but a mere Robber Prince. Still…

  Meatpie of the Kingdom Chicken Guts? he’d asked when first they met. Really? That’s what you’re going with?

  “Just checking the time,” said Meatpie. “It’s getting late. My parents—”

  “Forget time,” interrupted Wraithen. “The Hunter will not take hiatus from his offense simply because the sun has begun to set. And neither should we. The girl is in danger. Come.”

  Meatpie sighed, but jogged forward. The two scoured the ground, trying to find further evidence of the trail. Meatpie was about ready to give up when Wraithen pointed ahead and cried out, “There!”

  In a small clearing, upon a barren square of earth, thick blood glistened red through the mist and the dimming light. A good and bad sign, both. The boys dashed forward.

  The Dark Forest of Howler’s Notch was a no-man’s-land, populated with rogues and outsiders who found neither solace nor support in the peaceable domains of the nobles. The villains among them sought sustenance by stealing from farmers and families, mostly crops and livestock, but the worst of the folk—the mutated humanoid-beast they were currently tracking—found pleasure in taking human young, boiling them up for stew, and after the meal, as if in a mock gesture of good will, returning the bones to the family for burial.

  At the age of twelve, the princes had become ordained Robbers—a long-standing tradition of the two kingdoms. Their job was to steal back what had been stolen from the people, and they had trained for this purpose since birth. Their parents, allied kings and queens, believed that this noble role would prepare them to become great rulers, inheritors of future thrones.

  Following the trail past the clearing, the boys came upon an ancient wall, the stones of which were encased in leathery lichens and feather-soft mosses. The trail of blood appeared to stop here. Long ago, someone had built the seemingly endless barrier for reasons still mysterious. This waist-high wall was only one of many that had been raised like jagged scribble-marks across a map of the wooded hillside. People whispered rumors that the stones were magicked.

  The princes paused, listening carefully to the forest for a clue. Crickets sang and pheasants fluttered between low branches. The wind scattered dry leaves across the ground. But that one sound they needed to hear—the cry of the injured babe—had gone silent.

  “Fiend!” Wraithen shouted.

  “Look,” Meatpie whispered. He nodded at a patch of ground a stone’s throw beyond the wall. A pale arm wiggled out from underneath a shallow pile of leaves. Wraithen moved toward the wall, but Meatpie grabbed his friend’s shoulder. “Wait.”

  Wraithen spun, his eyes wild. “The child is there! We must save her.”

  Meatpie raised an eyebrow. “Umm. Duh? Trap.”

  Wraithen’s confidence crumpled. “Really? You think?”

  Meatpie answered by glancing around the small clearing. “He must be watching.”

  Wraithen sighed. “We can’t just leave her there. She’s hurt. We can worry later what the beast is up to.”

  “Okay,” Me
atpie said uncertainly.

  The Robber Princes ran at the wall, placed their hands on the topmost stones, leapt up and over, then landed silently on the other side. The pale arm was a few feet away now. Wraithen rushed forward and gently lifted a small figure from the ground. Blonde hair and blue eyes sparkled in the indigo light. Delicate fingers pressed into the prince’s neck. She seemed uninjured. She stayed quiet, as if she knew that any sound might bring back the thing that had snatched her from her crib.

  Meatpie’s mouth dropped open and he shook his head. “That is so creepy, Seth. Did you really plant a doll out here for us to find?”

  Wraithen spun on his friend, disappointment filling his eyes. “My name is Wraithen! And no. I didn’t plant her. The Hunter stole her from—” He turned toward the wall. “He’s here!”

  Meatpie glanced over his shoulder. At first he saw nothing, but then he forced himself to recognize a large shadow rising from the ground near the mossy boulders. The night had come up quickly, so the Hunter’s features were difficult to discern. The silhouette stood nearly seven feet tall. Its broad shoulders made its small, neckless head appear to melt into its torso. When it reached for them, the boys ducked away from enormous hands that looked strong enough to crush a throat with a simple reflexive clutch.

  The Robber Princes raced alongside the wall, back down the hill toward the child’s home in Haliath. Wraithen cradled the girl inside his coat. A great rushing sound came up behind them as the Hunter gave chase. “You were right,” Wraithen said, his voice shaking with every footfall. “It was a trap. What is the worth of a stew made from a single child when he can have the two of us as well?”

  “Shut up and run!” Meatpie cried. He could feel the presence of the Hunter coming closer, could hear the rattle of quiver arrows in its pack, the jostle of the sharpened machete tucked into its belt. A warmth caressed the back of his neck. The monster’s breath. Gooseflesh puckered Meatpie’s skin. The Hunter was upon them.

  In the distance back up the hill, a voice called to them.

  “Gabriel! Dinner!”

  “Shoot,” said Prince Meatpie—who was not actually a prince at all, but a boy named Gabe. Gabriel Ashe. He stumbled and slowed. The trees seemed to shrink. The light grew slightly brighter. His companion kept running. “Seth!” Gabe said. “Stop! It’s my mom.”

  Ahead, Prince Wraithen—also an ordinary boy, whose name was Seth Hopper—skidded to a halt. His shoulders seemed to deflate, and he turned. The eyes of the baby doll in his arms rolled into its head as if in disgust.

  “Shoot,” said Seth. “Just when things were getting good.”

  The woods were not actually enchanted nor filled with villains. This tree-covered slope was, in fact, an ordinary forest in a small town in eastern Massachusetts. Gabe’s family, the Ashes, had only moved there several weeks earlier. They were staying with his grandmother in her big house up the hill. “We can keep going tomorrow,” he suggested, feeling bad for ruining the game. “Pick up everything right here.”

  “It won’t be the same.”

  “Gabriel!”

  “Coming!” Gabe shouted. Seth looked crushed. “I’m free in the morning. I’ll give you a call. Promise.”

  “You’re not around in the afternoon?”

  Gabe felt his cheeks flush. His other new friend, Mazzy Lerman, had asked him not to mention the pool party to Seth. “I-I’m busy,” he stammered.

  “Oh.” For a moment, Seth looked confused, hurt even. But then he sighed and gave a slight smile. “Okay.”

  “You can find your way home?” The shadows had deepened, tinting the landscape indigo.

  “Just down the hill.” But Seth didn’t move. He only clutched the doll tighter. The thing was bald, dirty, and naked—nothing like the golden babe Gabe had imagined during the game.

  “Gabriel! Now!”

  Gabe rolled his eyes and Seth turned to go. “Hey!” Gabe called. Seth paused, glanced over his shoulder. “You really didn’t plant that doll out here for us to find during the game?”

  Seth smiled fully now. “I really didn’t.”

  “That’s so bizarre,” said Gabe, shaking his head. “We were pretending to look for a missing kid, and we actually ended up sort of finding one.”

  “These woods are weird,” said Seth, holding the doll up above his head. “You’ll see.”

  THE TRAIL OPENED onto an upwardly sloping meadow. Gabe continued on, listening to the chirping of frogs and the wind through the trees.

  His grandmother’s house was a brick building, over a hundred years old, that sat at the crest of the hill. It had been built by Gabe’s great-great-great-grandfather Mordecai Temple. The gabled roof rose sharply from the walls like the bent wings of blackbirds, the many pieces of dark slate overlapping like armored feathers. A white wooden extension grew from the right side of the house—two stories high and full of windows. Those rooms contained art supplies and canvases, and had a view that overlooked the town. The sky was almost entirely dark. At this hour, it was a disappointing sign; summer was packing her bags and getting ready to go.

  Gabe recognized the tall, trim silhouette standing halfway up the meadow. It was his mother, Dolores. Her dark brown hair lifted in the breeze. Her skin was several shades lighter than the shadows and a touch more olive-toned than Gabe’s, who’d inherited some of his father’s European paleness. “It’s almost eight, young man,” she said, her accent barely detectable. Since she’d moved to New England for college, her Spanish had taken on hints of Bostonian.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabe answered, running now to meet her. “We got stuck in our game.”

  She wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “And what game is this?”

  “Just something Seth came up with a few days ago. We’re princes who’ve formed a sort of special-ops task force.” He blushed as the words came from his mouth. It suddenly sounded so childish. “Today we were looking for a cannibalistic baby snatcher called the Hunter.”

  Dolores shivered dramatically. “I don’t like that. Creepy.”

  “You’d rather have me sit inside and stare at the wall all day?” Gabe asked with a teasing smile.

  “It’s not my fault that your father’s mother doesn’t have a cable connection—”

  “Or the Internet—”

  “Or the Internet,” Dolores conceded. “But I didn’t have the Internet when I was your age. Do you know what I used to do when I was little?”

  Gabe sighed. “Eighth grade is not little.”

  “You’ve got a few days left before school starts,” she went on. “Until then, you’re little. Do you know what I used to do?”

  “No. What did you used to do?”

  “I would read books. You’ve heard of those, right?”

  Gabe laughed, his voice echoing out into the calm of the evening. “Nice try.”

  She sniffed, disappointed. “You promised: just one book before the end of summer.” And quickly, glossing over how Gabe’s books had been lost in the fire, his mother went on, “You know your grandmother has a whole library.” They came closer to the house. Light glowed from the dining room window, spilling out onto the grass below. Silhouettes moved behind the sheer curtains—Glen, Gabe’s dad, and Elyse, his grandmother. Gabe’s baby sister, Miriam, was most likely perched in her high chair, sucking on Cheerios and smearing banana on her face. “She’d be happy to lend you a book. Especially the ones she illustrated the covers for.” Dolores climbed the few stairs up to the house’s rear patio. “She’s a pretty famous artist, you know.”

  “I know, I know. That’s what everyone in this town keeps telling me. Famous. Just like Dad.”

  Dolores was quiet for a few seconds, and Gabe immediately regretted bringing up his father’s work. Like the books Gabe had owned, his father’s workshop had been destroyed. She cleared her throat, dispelling bad thoughts. “Like mother, like son, I suppose,” she chirped as she reached for the screen door.

  Elyse wouldn’t allow Gabe to sit at her dinner table
until he’d scrubbed his arms all the way up to his elbows. He didn’t blame her—he’d been crawling through the forest floor all afternoon. “Were you in those woods again?” she asked him before he’d had a chance to pull out his chair. She squinted at him intently from her place at the head of the table, her eyes like X-rays. His father sat beside her, fiddling with his cloth napkin.

  As far back as Gabe could remember, his grandmother had dressed in dark colors, even before her husband passed away. She still dyed her hair a shimmering raven color. Gabe had never seen her without bright red lips and high-arched eyebrows, with a cat’s-eye wick of black that lifted off from the edge of her eyelid.

  Gabe felt his face flush without even knowing why. No going into the woods behind the house? Was this a new decree? “It’s really pretty out there,” he said, hoping that his nonchalance would put a cap on the subject. “You should walk with me some time.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said with a small shudder, as if someone had splattered something disgusting onto her nose and she was trying to shake it off.