House of Echoes: A Novel by Brendan Duffy

Author:Brendan Duffy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2015-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

26

Charlie ran up the steps to his room. It was warm here, yet he trembled.

He had to clean off the blood first, in case Mom checked on him. The blood had looked like mud in the dark, but Hudson knew the difference.

While the Watcher had left Charlie the gifts of many arranged creatures in the forest throughout the summer and fall, it had rarely let itself be seen. But twice Charlie had spied it by the lake from the blind that he’d constructed in the branches above the faerie circle. Both times it had been trying to catch fish with its hands but had been doing it wrong. Charlie knew this because The Book of Secrets had a chapter on all kinds of fishing. He’d left the book by the lake, with a bright maple leaf to mark the page. The book was gone the next morning, but the day after that, Charlie had found it placed in the center of the faerie circle, ringed with the heads of five raccoons.

The game he played with the Watcher had changed over the months. At first it had seemed like a kind of tag, or a treasure hunt, but now it was a game of hide-and-seek, in which they both hid and searched at the same time. Charlie thought the rules to their game had changed, but watching the blood slip down the bathtub drain, he wondered if there had been any rules in the first place.

Charlie ventured into the night only when the moon lit the land. Caught in the wind and its cold light, the fields of the Drop ebbed and flowed like an ocean. Tonight was chillier than his other watches had been. He had worn a coat but no shoes so as to cross the land without a sound.

A family of deer had been drinking at the south end of the lake. They had paid Charlie no mind as he slid into the faerie circle and up the rope ladder that led to the platform from which he watched. As he climbed, he heard coyotes in the distance. He’d heard them many nights, but they never ventured into this part of the forest. This part of the forest had already been claimed.

Once up in his blind, Charlie searched the contours of the lake and saw that the deer were gone. The Drop was different at night. Sometimes he saw bats flutter against the stars and heard the mourning of owls from deep within the woods.

Charlie had learned things about the dark during that long night in his old school’s furnace room. He knew that the dark was not one thing but many. Like layers of fabric stacked upon one another, each with its own texture. The longer he watched, the more these layers fell aside to reveal something more of the world beneath.

A loud crack shattered the silence. Charlie sat up straight; this was new. The first sound was followed by three more. The noises seemed too loud for broken branches.

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