The Bone Flute by Patricia Bow Read Free Book Online Page B

looked like a painting that had come alive: fiery yellow house inside a shell of blue that was nearly black.
    Terence had dropped his jacket somewhere, and you could see his white shirt moving around like half a ghost. He was circling the hollow, stopping every few seconds.
    â€œWhat’s he doing?” Mark whispered.
    â€œHe’s trying all the windows and doors.”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œOf the house.”
    â€œHouse?”
    â€œEnnismor!”
    Terence stopped and looked around. Camrose crouched lower. Then he went back to his circling and pawing. “The ghost house,” she murmured. “That’s what it’s called.”
    â€œYou mean it’s there?”
    â€œIt’s there. Burning. Oh, those poor people.”
    After a moment Mark said, “You actually mean it.”
    â€œThink I’m crazy, right? Well, if I am, Terence is too.”
    â€œWell,” he began cautiously, “you are related … ”
    â€œNo! That’s just it, we’re not!” She whispered what she’d remembered during the game. The phone call from Aunt Alicia, about a year ago. The news that Terence had been hit by a car while he was hitchhiking across Germany. Hit and killed.
    â€œSo, he’s not your cousin. How’d he get that postcard from your father, then?”
    â€œI don’t think he’d have any trouble faking it.”
    â€œHe’s not moving around anymore.”
    The house was fading … gone. “He couldn’t get in.” She drew a sharp breath. “I wonder, is that it?”
    Mark waited patiently.
    â€œIt’s all starting to make a kind of sense,” she whispered. “Gilda’s house, Ennismor. It burned down in 1914. But somehow she hid this—this heirloom, whatever it is, inside the house, and the only way to get it is to go into the house when it comes back, at twilight.”
    â€œI guess that sort of holds together. In a crazy way.”
    â€œAnd Terence knows about the heirloom and he wants it too. It must be something important.”
    â€œKnow what bothers me? If he can see the house, and you can see it, why can’t I see it?”
    Camrose put a warning hand on his arm. Terence was turning around, his eyes glinting faintly as they scanned the spot where Camrose and Mark were hiding. He stood still a moment. Then he walked away up the path toward Grant Street.
    They gave him a couple of minutes, then crawled out into the hollow. The last of the sunset was gone and the full moon was still tangled in the treetops. You could hardly see a thing, even out in the open.
    â€œI think I know how he found out about the house,”
    Camrose said. “Remember when he came up the street last night?”
    â€œHe caught a page of the letter and gave it back to you.”
    â€œAnd maybe he caught the other page too, the one that’s missing, and didn’t give it back. I bet that’s the page that told about the house.”
    â€œBut he didn’t get in.”
    â€œI wonder if there’s a trick to it. Maybe Miranda knows. If I could only find her and—”
    â€œShh!”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThought I heard something.”
    They both held still. It was so quiet you’d think all the birds were asleep, all the bugs dead.
    Then Camrose heard it too. A crackle of dry leaves. Crunch, crunch, pause, crunch. Footsteps, with a peculiar uneven rhythm. A limping rhythm.
    â€œAnimal,” Mark muttered. “Small dog.”
    Nearer now, less stealthy, louder. A dog, maybe, but not a small one. Lame or not, it wasn’t something Camrose wanted to meet face to face.
    They backed away, elbow to elbow, toward the western side of the hollow. A few yards away, branches cracked. “Must be the size of a horse,” Mark whispered.
    â€œMaybe it is a horse.” But somehow she thought not.
    A splintering crash came from the other side of the hollow. They turned and