Dark Hollow by Brian Keene Read Free Book Online Page B

off on a book signing tour, or in New York on business with my publisher. We had keys to each other’s homes, and Tara and I trusted them implicitly.
    It was a nice neighborhood and we had good neighbors. Sure, Merle borrowed movies from me and didn’t return them or sometimes took a joke too far, and Cliff liked to get drunk and then race his Harley up and down the alley, or brag about his wild sexual exploits, and Dale went to work on his yard at the crack of dawn every Saturday, making a lot of noise while the rest of us were still trying to sleep, and Cory had a bad habit of telling people that he knew “Adam Senft the mystery writer” and letting it slip where I lived (Tara and I value our privacy, and a few times people had knocked on our door and asked me to sign books as a result of Cory’s inability to keep his neighbor’s identity a secret). And all of them liked to pick on me at election time, since they were all Republicans and I was a Democrat (except for Cory, who, in the last election, had been hard-pressed to even name either of the candidates or care about the issues). But these were minor things, and despite them, or maybe because of them, I liked my neighbors very much. These days, you’re lucky if you even know the last name of the people who live next door. Maybe you smile and nod when you pass one another, or exchange greetings or small talk, but that’s usually all you do. Our neighbors were also our friends, and I enjoyed living between them. We were a happy little community, there on our corner of Main Street.
    Merle’s laughter tapered off into a sigh. He held up two cans of beer. “Thought you might like one of these.”
    “You thought right.” I accepted a can. It was frosty and wet, and the sound of the tab popping was music to myears. I drained half in one gulp, and then cooled my forehead with the can. “That hits the spot.”
    “Nothing like a cold beer on a warm spring day,” Merle agreed, taking a sip of his own. “And, man, is it warm! Can’t remember when it was this hot, this early. Almost feels like summer.”
    I nodded. “Yeah, it does. I hope it lasts for a while, and doesn’t get chilly again.”
    “Trust me, it’s gonna be a weird spring.” He took another long sip and belched.
    “Is it?” I asked.
    “Sure. The Farmer’s Almanac says so, and it’s never wrong.”
    “You believe that thing, huh?” The Farmer’s Almanac was an annual collection of folklore, crop reports, and farming tips that was quite popular in rural towns like ours.
    “Sure,” Merle said. “We had a windy winter, so that means we’ll have a warm spring. There’ve been all kinds of other signs, too. That clear, white moon we had last week? That’s a sign. The crickets are out early, and cobwebs are showing up in the grass in the mornings. And my rhododendrons.”
    “What about them?” I tried to suppress my disbelieving grin.
    “They’re blooming already, and their leaves are completely open. That’s a sure sign of warm weather.”
    “According to who—the Farmer’s Almanac ?”
    He nodded. “Yeah, that and others. The old-timers know how to tell these things.”
    “By what?” I asked. “Doing powwow?”
    Merle winked at me. “Yep. My grandmother did powwow when I was a kid, and she was never wrong.”
    I knew all about the art of powwow. Central Pennsylvania is a cultural mixing pot, settled primarily by the Germans, English, and Irish. One of the most prominent beliefs among those people was powwowing. It’s sort of a rustic hodgepodge of white and black magic, folklore, and the Bible. They call it hoodoo down South (not to be confused with voodoo), but here it’s known as powwow. Earlier I told you about when my great-grandmother had me eat a poison ivy leaf, and how I’d never contracted poison ivy since. That was an example of minor powwow. I guess it probably sounds like something out of the nineteenth century, but it’s still practiced today in some of the