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Excerpts

Chapter 1

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were -- I have not seen
As others saw.
-- Edgar Allen Poe

Spooking -- the terrible town on the hideous hill.

A crooked road leads to it from a black buzzing bog, climbing up in sharp, zigzagging turns over dizzying drops...to the summit, where endless headstones appear, vanishing into the distant gloom. Overgrown and askew, they lie broken against their gray neighbors -- trapped in a prison of old sorrows guarded by stone walls and iron spikes.

Beyond this ancient cemetery, the cracked avenues of Spooking begin. Dark and oppressive, lined with huge overhanging maples and oaks. In their shadow, crumbling residences loom, their former glory disfigured by broken shingles and peeling paint. Drafty old mansions, standing impossibly against the onslaught of time -- each sinister and terrible, they flash with menace whenever a storm rolls in.

So might have said someone from Darlington -- the modern, orderly city that sprawled out around Spooking Hill. So they might have said, that is, were the citizens of Darlington typically given to such observation, which they most certainly were not. And why should they be? They had no interest in exploring that creepy old town on the hill, living as they did in such a nice, tidy community; in happy little homes with gleaming roofs and colorful vinyl siding that never peeled. All identical and built in neat little rows, with freshly mowed lawns glittering green under the snicker-snacking of automated sprinkler systems. In Darlington there were no twisted trees, no tangled briar, no choking weeds. And no crow-infested graveyards full of crumbling old bones.

Which was exactly how the Darlings, as they were called, liked it.

But looking out from her curious round room, down at the ever-burning city lights, Joy Wells had a decidedly different view. For instance, did the Darlings ever consider how a wind howling across a drafty gable might make a roaring fire feel cozy? Or how rain pounding the tin roof above made you feel all the more snug tucked up under a thick pile of old blankets?

Joy doubted it. Darlings, in her experience, were no more given to reflection than observation.

True, Spooking was a bit rundown. The looming ornamented houses, no longer fashionable, were mostly left to fall in on themselves these days. The remainder of the town was no better, really. Once a lush landscaped arboretum, the rambling park off the Boulevard had become a neglected mess of tangled woods and cascading ponds dripping brown liquid into each other. The red brick library stood locked and lifeless, its vast collection of books gathering dust inside. The children's playground looked like the wreckage of some old bomber long shot out of the sky. Across from the playground, the high walls of Spooking Asylum blocked not only the view but even the sun most days. The asylum walls continued down toward the center of the town where a few shuttered little shops sat silent and empty.

Then there was the old cemetery, and that was about it.

But to Joy Wells, of Number 9 Ravenwood Avenue, it was everything. She closed her heavy curtains with a heavy sigh.

The house was cold as always and Joy could see her breath as she made her way down the staircase, which swept in wide ovals to the ground floor. She stopped on the landing for a moment, pressing her face to the glass of a small leaded window. Wiping away the fog, she saw with a thrill the outline of the graveyard in the distance, clearly lit under the moonlight. A stiff breeze shook the spidery trees of her street as dead leaves careened through the air and crashed back to earth.

It was a perfect Spooking night out there, all right.

The drawing room was a large round room, directly beneath Joy's bedroom. It was sparsely furnished with two wingback chairs, a small love seat, a pair of bridge lamps, and a worn old Persian rug. Joy noticed the white ash in the stone hearth with disappointment. How could she read down here without a bright roaring fire?

Mr. and Mrs. Wells sat quietly, each in their own small pools of light. Joy's little brother, Byron, lay on the floor in the shadows, engaged in high drama with a couple of action figures. Joy sat down grumpily on the love seat.

"Did you see this bill from the plumber?" Mr. Wells said suddenly, pulling at the point of his trimmed beard. "Look here -- he charges twice my hourly rate! Unbelievable!"

"That's awful, dear," said Mrs. Wells, turning the pages of a thick book.

"It took me six years to become a lawyer. Six years! How long does it take to graduate plumbing school, I wonder?"

"I haven't a clue," said Mrs. Wells. "Except that much of the time is surely spent with one's hand down a toilet."

From the hall came a loud shuddering sound.

"And listen to that -- the pipes are still banging!"

"Yes, dear." Mrs. Wells continued reading, her dark-framed glasses perched impossibly on the end of her nose, and her black hair tightly tied up in a bun. How Joy wished she had hair the same color. Instead of the unfathomable black of her mother, she was stuck with sunny blond, which hung perfectly straight in a cheerful honeyed sheet. It was an outrage.

Still, it suited Mrs. Wells, who was a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Wiskatempic University, a storied college standing on the banks of the north-flowing river of the same name. Like Spooking, the old campus had been swallowed up within the Municipality of Darlington. Despite the loss of its leafy grounds, the school still attracted a few students owing to a notable humanities program. Mrs. Wells specialized in existentialism, a subject she had been delighted to explain to her daughter meant the study of why one exists. The question -- and the noisy pipes -- had kept Joy awake many a night since.

Mr. Wells, on the other hand, was a lawyer with the firm Pennington, Plover, & Freep, a job that left him with too little time to properly match his socks, much less ponder his existence.

But even with two working professionals in their midst, the Wells family was not particularly wealthy, which was how they'd come to live in Spooking. According to Mrs. Wells, it was a frugal decision: Why would anyone buy a tiny little property in Darlington when they could buy an enormous house up in Spooking for the same price? Mr. Wells had countered that the additional expense in renovations and upkeep actually made Spooking twice as expensive in the end. However, in the ensuing debate between two towering intellects, the powers of argumentation of the philosopher proved to be superior to those of the lawyer -- especially since the philosopher involved was the immovable Mrs. Wells.

And so they moved to Spooking with a young Joy and baby Byron in tow. And big it was, their new house, perfect for the epic games of hide-and-seek to come. While Joy stood counting at the hearth in the drawing room, Byron could race down the hall to the white-tiled kitchen that looked like a butcher's shop, or across to the dining room with its long table and enormous chandelier. Or flee upstairs to hide behind the high library drapes or under the overstuffed chairs in the study. Or sneak into one of the bedrooms such as Joy's, at the very top of what on the outside resembled an evil wizard's tower with its steep scaled roof. Or his parents' room, with a huge four-poster bed to slip under, and cavernous wardrobes; or his own, which, although smaller, was cluttered beyond compare, offering many secret spots to squeeze into. He could even climb up to the arched attic that was the happy home to an extended family of pigeons; or, when feeling particularly brave, head down to the cool clamminess of the cellar, crammed full of the belongings of previous owners, stacked up in moldy cardboard boxes and teetering on rickety shelves.

Then there were the guest bedrooms, the pantry, the scullery, and endless closets...So big was the house, that often a whole hour passed before a frustrated Joy announced loudly that she wasn't playing anymore.

Mrs. Wells often bragged that they had all the space a family could ever want, yet were only a short drive from every convenience of the city. Mr. Wells mostly grumbled that he could never find time to fix up the place and could never save up enough to hire professional contractors -- especially since they all seemed to charge extra to work in Spooking.

"Aren't you going to light a fire?" Joy asked finally after her parents ignored her theatrical sighs.

Her parents looked up from their reading, startled.

"Tonight? I shouldn't think so," answered Mr. Wells. "It's warm enough in here," he explained, his words producing vaporous puffs.

"Joy, it is really time for bed," said Mrs. Wells. "And I mean straight to sleep -- no reading tonight. I don't know how you can get a proper rest, sitting up with all those scary stories. They must keep you lying awake all night terrified!"

"No," said Joy defensively. But it wasn't completely true.

The Compleat and Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot had been keeping Joy awake all night -- however, not from terror. In fact, she was mesmerized by the leather-bound volume. For the past month, as the downstairs clock tolled the early-morning hours, Joy delicately turned page after fragile page, poring over each word of every bizarre tale. But then her mother had caught her, when she noticed the light from Joy's bedside lamp leaking under the door to the hall.

The book had come to her by way of the Zott estate. Pennington, Plover, & Freep had given Joy's father the unenviable job of sifting through the dust-covered effects of Ms. Gertrude Zott in search of some sort of will. At over a hundred years old, Ms. Zott was Spooking's most venerable resident. Her final age was unknown, as it turned out that she had in fact died some years before being discovered still upright in her easy chair in a completely mummified state. On her lap sat an unfinished needlepoint of a duck in sunglasses drinking a cocktail at the beach.

For a week Mr. Wells endured both the lingering smell of death and the wheezing asthma brought on by the intense clouds of dust created upon disturbing any article. He then finally stumbled across the old woman's will. It said simply:

"I hereby bequeath my first edition copy of The Compleat and Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot to a spirited young Spooking lady with a taste for mystery, a thirst for adventure, and an eye for the inscrutable.

"The rest of it, including this house and all of my worldly possessions therein, please flatten with one of those giant balls on a chain."

Soon after, in accordance with her wishes, the building and its considerable contents were so destroyed. Mr. Wells promptly gave Joy the book -- which he had recovered from under a pile of celebrity magazines in Ms. Zott's downstairs bathroom -- and considered it a job ready for billing.

Joy, however, was completely bewildered. Why in the world would someone she hardly knew leave her a book? Her father's shrugging and stammering offered little in the way of explanation. But soon she had forgotten her initial suspicions, becoming utterly engrossed in the weird world living within the book's pages -- a curiously familiar world....

"Bedtime, Joy."

"How come Byron gets to stay up?" demanded Joy.

"Byron?" said Mrs. Wells. "Isn't he already in bed?"

"He's right there on the floor in front of you."

Mrs. Wells jumped in her seat. "Byron!" she cried, clutching her chest. "Can't you play less quietly?"

Byron scuttled away, his stocky little body slipping noiselessly under the loveseat where Joy sat.

"Both of you -- kisses and then bed," said Mr. Wells absently as he pored over more bills.

The children kissed their parents and headed upstairs. Byron sprinted ahead. His oversize round head sprouted his mother's dark hair, and his little ears stuck out a bit. Reaching the landing, he headed down the hall to his room. The ancient floor boards groaned and popped whenever anyone walked on them, but under Byron's slippered feet, they made not the slightest creak. He had a talent in that department, and it made him a formidable hide-and-seek opponent. Joy's room was dimly lit blue by the aquarium. As she entered, a large green bullfrog inside suddenly sat up on its hind legs and made a loud sound. Not quite like a dog, but not quite like a frog, either.

"No, Fizz, you've had enough food for today."

Fizz barked again.

"Bad frog!" scolded Joy. "Lie down!"

Fizz ran clumsily in circles, now yelping loudly.

"Oh, all right then!" Joy tossed him a crunchy dog treat in the shape of a bone. "You'll have to eat it in the dark, though," she said, switching off his lamp. Just as well, she thought. Fizz slobbering over a treat until it was soft enough to swallow was not something she wanted to watch. Why couldn't he just eat creepy-crawlies like every other frog?

Joy headed to the bathroom. She brushed her teeth vigorously, watching her mouth froth over in the bathroom mirror. Just like some creature, she thought, insane with hunger for human flesh. She gargled and spat, frowning at herself. Well, she didn't have a particularly mysterious hair color, but she had to admit to feeling somewhat satisfied with her eyes, which shone an eerie gray with tiny flecks of gold.

Back in her room, she quickly put on her pajamas and jumped under icy sheets. With the bedside light on and The Compleat and Collected Works propped up with her knees, she read for the thousandth time the graceful inscription in sepia ink:

"To my beloved -- A."

She closed the book, reached for a postmarked envelope on her bedside table, and dumped its contents on the blanket. Flushing with pride, she read again:

Dear Miss Joy Wells,
We would like to officially confirm receipt of your money order, and welcome you as a member of the Ethan Alvin Peugeot Society.

Please find enclosed our quarterly newsletter, a biography of Mr. Peugeot prepared by the Society, and a limited edition EAP Society mouse pad.

Regards,

Richard Strang
President and Treasurer, EAP Society

At the bottom, written with a leaky pen:

The biography was a booklet made of folded photocopies stapled crookedly together. What it lacked in production values, it made up for in content, Joy thought. She flipped again to the picture of Peugeot -- one of the few that existed, so it said underneath. He sat bent forward in a stuffed chair, posing awkwardly, his hands clasped together on his lap, looking somehow like a bird on an unsteady perch. He wore a dark buttoned-up suit with a tightly knotted scarf and downcast mustache, his oiled black hair curled at the front and parted severely at the side.

He was handsome, Joy decided. Well, sort of. She stared at his sharp features, thrown into dramatic shadow by some unseen lamp. With an uneasy expression, Peugeot stared back -- imparting an eerie feeling that he was actually gazing right out of the photograph itself. His dark eyes seemed to look ever so slightly over her shoulder, at something lurking behind her. It gave her the creeps, a feeling that was most welcome.

"Put the light out now," said the disembodied head of Mrs. Wells in the bedroom doorway, causing Joy to throw down the booklet in fright. "I don't want to hear the bus honking for you tomorrow because you've overslept again."

"Okay, okay," answered Joy, switching off the lamp. "Good night, Mom."

"Good night, dear."

The door clunked shut.

Joy lay in the blackness, listening to the floor boards groan as her mother tramped down the hall. The toilet flushed. She heard her mother talking softly, her father's wheezy cough. Then it was silent again. Except for the wind, that is, and the sound of something scraping against the side of the house.

A branch perhaps? Or something else. Something that wanted in....

She threw off the blankets and crept to the window to peer into the night. It was now stormy outside, the lights of Darlington vanished behind a boiling mist. She scanned the inky darkness along the side of the house -- then spotted the source of the ceaseless scraping. It was only a tree, she confirmed. Oh well.

Tiptoeing across the chilly floor, Joy kicked the rug up against the bottom of the door, then quickly jumped back in bed. She put the light back on and opened the book where the length of red ribbon marked the page she had left off.

"The Terrible Town on the Hideous Hill."

Her favorite story. How much the town reminded her of Spooking!

And whether it was due to the foreknowledge of the horror to come or just her icy feet, Joy shivered deliciously.

Copyright © 2008 by P. J. Bracegirdle