The Barrens House Read online

  He walked toward the room cautiously, eyeing the closed hatch above his head in the hallway as he passed. As he approached the threshold of the room, he could no longer see curtains moving, and as he stepped inside, the room was still.

  Danny looked around. The room was of average size, with dull yellow walls. His parents had said it would be guest room. There were four large windows, two on the wall opposite the door and two facing into the backyard. The graveyard, Danny thought.

  He checked each window and found them closed. Odd, he thought, but it is an old house. It’s probably just drafty. A single light bulb hung from a wire in the center of the ceiling. It somehow made the room look emptier, more desolate. Danny shivered.

  As he left the room, Danny turned the light off and closed the door. He felt foolish for being so frightened. It’s just an old house, he thought. It just takes some getting used to. But as he reached up to pull the cord and open the hatch to his bedroom, he shuddered.

  The hatch was already open.

  CHAPTER 3

  Before Danny could react to his shock at finding the hatch open, his dad dropped down from the ladder. Danny jumped in surprise.

  “Whoa, sorry there. Didn’t mean to scare you,” his dad said.

  Danny’s heart was racing. “Yeah, I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” he said. His dad nodded to the door behind him.

  “You want to see the new guest room?”

  Danny shook his head. “Nah, I just came out. I went in there to turn the light off. It’s kind of drafty.” His dad frowned.

  “The light?” He looked puzzled. “I didn’t think this room was even wired yet.” He moved past Danny and opened the door. He flipped the light switch up and down a few times. Nothing happened. “Hmm,” he said. “That’s what I thought.” He turned to Danny. “Didn’t you say the light was on in here?”

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “I just turned it off. Didn’t you see me in there when you went up to my room?”

  “How could I have seen you, Danny,” his dad said. “You had the door closed. And why’d you leave the window open? Of course the room is going to be drafty if you leave the windows open.” He crossed the room and firmly closed the window opposite the door.

  Danny froze. The door closed? The window open? He was sure he hadn’t closed the door until he had left the room, and he was sure he’d checked to make sure all the windows were closed. Hadn’t he?

  “But …” Danny faltered. “But I …”

  “No buts, Danny,” his dad said. “Now I know it’s been a long day for you, it’s been a long day for all of us, but it’s time to start acting your age.” He ushered Danny back into the hallway and closed the door behind them. “You’re almost a teenager.”

  He looked Danny in the eye. “And you’ve grown up so fast,” he said. He clapped Danny on the back and moved toward his bedroom down the hall. “Goodnight Champ,” he said. “Oh, and I put a flashlight on your nightstand. I’m not sure how reliable the wiring in this place is just yet.” He gestured to the guest room. “Know what I mean? Goodnight.”

  As Danny’s father departed, Danny thought he could hear the sound of wind blowing in the guest room behind him. He fought the urge to turn around and instead clambered up the ladder to his bedroom. Then he pulled up the ladder and shut the hatch.

  Danny put on his pajamas and crawled into bed, but after several minutes of tossing and turning he was still wide awake. After what had happened in the guest room downstairs, he couldn’t help wondering if what Brenna had said about the house being haunted was true, or whether she had said it just to scare him.

  With every gust of wind the old house creaked, and it seemed to Danny that at any moment his room might collapse like a dilapidated tree. As he looked around the room, he tried not to look at the windows. He had always hated looking out windows in the dark, was always afraid he would see something terrifying in the night. Now he had a room full of windows.

  I’ll have to get some curtains, he thought. But the thought only kept the odd occurrence in the guest room center stage in his mind, and after a while he finally got out of bed and pulled his dresser over the hatch in the floor. If the house was haunted, he thought, a dresser wouldn’t keep a ghost from getting into his bedroom. But it was better than nothing.

  Suddenly there was a loud, crunching thud from outside the windows facing the back of the house. Danny started. It seemed like he had constantly been on edge since they arrived at the house that afternoon. It was probably just a tree branch, he thought. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep unless he investigated.

  He grabbed the flashlight his father had left and walked slowly to a window at the back of the room. He peered cautiously outside.

  Everything was in shadow. He could see the tops of trees silhouetted in the night sky, making ghostly motions as they waved back and forth in the stiff breeze. If it hadn’t been windy before, it was certainly windy now. He reluctantly looked down toward the graveyard, where he could see lighter shades where old gravestones dotted the blackened landscape. He shivered.

  He turned on the flashlight and pointed it outside. He shone it on the graveyard wall, the gate, the arch, the gargoyle. But something was wrong. The gargoyle was no longer there. Danny had flashed the light over the arch of the graveyard gates in haste, but now he returned the light to the spot where the gargoyle had rested just hours before, and held it on the spot. The empty spot. Someone had stolen the gargoyle! That must have been the thud he heard outside.

  He quickly flashed the light on the ground around the graveyard gates and walls, hoping to see some sign of intrusion. There was nothing. He shone the light on the gates once more. Were they open?

  Danny couldn’t tell whether the gates were partially open or not. They looked like they might be, but from Danny’s angle so far away and in the darkness he couldn’t be sure. It occurred to him that to whoever was out there, the light from his window would be a sure sign someone was watching them. He clicked off the flashlight.

  Danny waited and watched for what felt like an hour, until he was so tired he could no longer keep his eyes from closing. He dragged himself across the room and back into bed. Wherever the gargoyle was, it could wait until morning.

  That night he had a strange dream. In it he was standing in the guest room, but it wasn’t the guest room as he had seen it. It wasn’t empty. Instead, it was neatly furnished as a little girl’s room. There were light pink pillows and blankets with small white flowers covering a child’s white, four-post bed. Dolls and dollhouses lined the walls, and in the back of the room, staring silently out at the graveyard, was a young girl.

  The girl had long, light brown hair with a light pink ribbon tied in it. She was holding a small doll and standing with her back to Danny. For some reason he felt an urgency to go to her, to speak with her, but as he crossed the room and reached for her Brenna suddenly stepped between them.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, her eyes black and burning like a dark fire. “What are you doing?”

  “Danny! Danny, what are you doing?” Danny woke with a start to his mom shaking his shoulder. He was wet with sweat. “Danny, are you okay? You were mumbling something, reaching out. Did you have a bad dream? It took me forever to wake you.” She looked concerned.

  Danny looked around, collecting himself. “I’m … I’m fine,” he stammered. But he wasn’t so sure. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d just gotten back from a long jog. “It was just a bad dream.”

  Danny realized his dresser was back against the wall, where it had been before he had placed it over the hatch the night before.

  “Hey,” he said to his mom. “How did you get in here?”

  His mom was carrying a stack of folded towels into his bathroom. She looked at him oddly. “I came up the ladder,” she said. “How else?”

  “But, the dresser …” Danny began. Had he moved it back before he had gone to sleep? He had been so tired at the time, and now he couldn’t remember.<
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  “Hmm?” his mom said. She was stacking the towels in a cupboard now. “What about the dresser?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” Danny said. “Never mind.” Then he remembered the missing gargoyle. “Somebody stole the gargoyle!” he shouted, jumping out of bed and running to the window.

  “Somebody stole the what?” His mom set the remaining towels on the bathroom counter and crossed the room to join Danny at the window.

  “The gargoyle,” Danny said again. “Somebody took it. Last night I couldn’t sleep and I heard this thud outside so I got up and …”

  “Which gargoyle?” his mom cut him off. He had been talking so excitedly he hadn’t looked outside yet.

  “What do you mean which gargoyle?” Danny said. “There was only the one, it was …” His voice trailed off as he looked down toward the graveyard. “It was …”

  “Right there?” his mom said, pointing down at the gargoyle, now settled exactly where it had been on the arch when Danny had been outside the night before. “Danny, are you feeling okay?” His mom reached out and put her hand on Danny’s forehead. “You don’t feel like you have a fever.”

  Danny wrenched himself away from her. “I don’t have a fever,” he said. “I feel fine except for this stupid house!”

  “Daniel Johnson,” his mom said, crossing her arms. She always called him by his full name when he was about to cross the line. “You do not take that tone with me, do you understand?”

  “But mom,” he said, “I know what I saw!”

  “And I know what I see. I see a spoiled little boy who isn’t grown up enough to give his new home a chance.” His mom looked hurt as she walked back to the hatch and began climbing down the ladder. From the bottom she called, “You’re not the only one who had to leave your home you know.”

  Danny knew that despite being excited about the move, his parents were stressed out about it as well. In an ideal situation, they wouldn’t have wanted to leave, either. The move was necessary, and they were trying to make the best of it. He, on the other hand, was only complaining.

  But what about what he had seen? He looked out the window at the gargoyle again. There it sat, the same as yesterday. It had the same folded, bony wings, the same grotesque face with the same sharp-toothed grin. It had the same thick snout and the same cold eyes. And it had the same muscular arms and legs with the same dangerous looking claws. But what was that?

  Danny gasped as he saw that the statue’s hands and feet were covered with thick, dark mud, as if it had been walking on all fours.

  CHAPTER 4

  Danny stepped down off the porch, breathing heavily, and stopped before the graveyard gates, staring up at the mud caked to the gargoyle’s hands and feet. He had thrown on a T-shirt and a pair of old jeans and had raced down the ladder, then the stairs, then through the kitchen and finally into the backyard.

  Yes, the mud was there all right. And it was still moist. Danny could tell by how dark it was. He thought about reaching up to touch it, thought about shaking the gargoyle slightly to see if it was loose. He looked back at the house to make sure his parents weren’t watching, then took a deep breath and began climbing one of the gates.

  Even halfway up the gate, as far as was climbable, Danny would have had trouble reaching the gargoyle. It sat at the very crest of the arch, the highest point on the graveyard walls. He climbed as far as was possible and stretched as far as he could, reaching for the gargoyle’s base. Almost there, he thought, almost.

  “Hey!” A loud voice suddenly pierced the silence, and Danny’s concentration.

  “Whoa!” he cried, falling from the gate.

  “Well, I guess you’re not afraid of it anymore at least.” It was Brenna. She nodded at the gargoyle and laughed, then extended a hand and helped Danny up. He brushed the dirt off his jeans.

  “I never was afraid of it,” he said, looking up at the statue. “I just thought it was weird.”

  “It’s just a statue,” Brenna said. “And you scare pretty easily for someone who’s not afraid of something.”

  “Yeah, well if I had the habit of appearing out of thin air and yelling behind your back when you least expected it, I bet you’d scare pretty easy, too,” he said.

  “Hmm,” Brenna said, smiling. “I suppose you have a point.” They stood for a moment, looking through the gates and into the graveyard. Finally Brenna spoke. “You want to go explore?” She nodded at the graveyard.

  “Uh…”

  “Unless, that is, you’re afraid,” Brenna said, opening the gate slightly and slowly stepping through.

  Danny looked up at the gargoyle, then past Brenna, into the graveyard. He pushed the gate open fully and stormed past her, shivering as he passed beneath the arch and the statue.

  “I am not afraid,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  They walked slowly through rows of granite tombstones and marble monuments. Most of them were very old, and many were broken or nearly covered over with moss or grass. The ground was uneven, and weeds grew in thick patches throughout the grounds.

  “Wow,” Danny said. “This place sure hasn’t been kept up very well.”

  Brenna nodded, looking ahead as she walked. She obviously knew her way around. “It hasn’t been used for years and years,” she said. “Not since I was a kid.”

  Danny laughed. “You still are a kid,” he said. Brenna just smiled and kept walking.

  They walked in silence for a long time. Finally they reached the back wall and Danny looked back toward the house. He could just see the top of the roof over the slope of the graveyard, could barely make out the top of his bedroom windows.

  “This is a big graveyard,” he said. He felt like they’d gone on a wilderness hike. “What’s that over there?”

  Danny had noticed an old wooden grave marker sticking up out of the grass. It was stuck in the ground in the far corner of the graveyard, at the bottom of a sharp slope, hidden from view. There were no other headstones around it. “Is that a grave?” he asked, staring at it as if hypnotized.

  When there was no answer, Danny looked up to find Brenna had disappeared. “Brenna?” he called. “Hey! Brenna!” There was no answer. He began to walk toward the wooden grave marker, but as he neared it the ground below began to soften.

  Danny lifted a foot and inspected his shoe. It was caked with mud. Just like the gargoyle. His heart began beating heavily in his chest. He looked around for footprints, anything. Any kind of evidence that might prove what he knew to be impossible: that the gargoyle had somehow been here.

  He found nothing.

  This is ridiculous, he thought. Here I am in the middle of a graveyard, searching the ground for a statue’s footprints. He shook his head. I’m really losing it, he thought. As he looked up he saw the wooden grave marker and approached it slowly. There were faded words written on it in script that was nearly illegible. Danny bent and brushed the dirt from the marker, straining his eyes.

  “Corinna Barrens,” he read. “1892 – 1900.”

  “She was only eight.”

  Danny jumped.

  “Geez, Brenna, you’ve got to stop doing that!” Danny turned, but Brenna wasn’t laughing. She was staring at the grave marker intensely. She looked very sad.

  “Brenna? Brenna, are you okay?”

  Brenna shook her head quickly, as if breaking out of a trance. She smiled widely. “Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s just sad, that’s all.” She turned toward the house. “I should probably get back though, my mom’s probably wondering where I went off to.”

  Danny rose. “Yeah, I should probably get home, too.” They stared at each other briefly. She’s so pretty, Danny thought, staring into her big, blue eyes. Despite her smile, he still thought she had a kind of sadness in her eyes. Still, he thought, I could stare into those eyes forever.

  Suddenly she reached out and punched him in the shoulder, breaking the spell of silence. “Ow,” he said, rubbing the wound. “Why’d you do that?”

&n
bsp; “You’re it!” she yelled, running toward the house. “Last one to the gargoyle is a rotten egg!”

  Danny smiled and took off after her.

  When they reached the gargoyle, they stopped, both breathing hard and sweating.

  “Well,” said Brenna. “See ya later, rotten egg.” She saluted and then took off again through the trees.

  “Bye!” Danny blurted between frantic gasps of air. “See you!” I’m such a dork, he thought. See you? Geez. He stood for a moment catching his breath, then looking up he saw the gargoyle just above him, its cold dark eyes staring down. He shivered and went into the house.

  Danny’s mom was at the sink washing up the dishes from breakfast. “There he is,” she said. “The man of the house. Were you hanging out with that girl again? What’s her name?”

  “Brenna,” Danny said, still breathing hard. He grabbed a glass from the dish strainer and filled it with tap water.

  “Hey, don’t dirty the dishes, I just washed that glass,” his mom said. Danny finished his drink and handed the glass back to his mom. “Brenna what?” she said. “Does she live around here?”

  “I don’t know her last name,” Danny said, sitting down on a box. “But she lives the next house over.” He nodded the direction of the woods through which Brenna always came and went, then noticing a plate of cold pancakes on the counter he rose and picked one up. “Are these still okay to eat?” he asked.

  His mom had finished the dishes. She unplugged the sink’s drain and the water made a slurping sound as it was sucked down into the pipes. She dried her hands on a dish towel. “They won’t kill you,” she said. “But they would’ve been better if you’d had them hot.” She looked at him accusingly.

  “I know, I know,” Danny said apologetically. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a baby about everything.” He thought about Brenna. He was beginning to think he liked her. Not just that he liked her, but that he liked her liked her. “I think I’m feeling better about things now,” he said.