Took by Mary Downing Hahn Read Free Book Online

to summon him back from the dead. His bones put themselves together and rose up on their hind feet. His skull jumped on top of the bones, and off he danced. On the way to the sneaking, thieving rascal’s house, he got some claws from a dead bear, some teeth from a dead panther, and a tail from a dead raccoon.”
    Mr. O’Neill paused to look at his watch. “It’s later than I thought. Guess I’ll have to make a long story a mite shorter. The hog killed that lying, thieving rascal—tore him clean apart with the panther’s teeth and ate him up. Then he dug his grave with the bear’s claws and brushed the ground smooth with the raccoon’s tail. He left that lying, thieving rascal’s bones up there in the rocks all by himself. Folks round here say you can still hear him howling and moaning and screaming when the wind blows just right.”
    Even though I knew it was just a story, one I’d heard around a campfire at Boy Scout camp, Mr. O’Neill had a way of making it sound real. The dark woods and the lonely road and the wind swaying the treetops added a lot to the telling, or maybe it was because I was already half terrified, but the old man definitely had a knack for scaring people.
    Trying to hide my fear, I asked him what happened to the hog.
    â€œWell, he dressed himself in that lying, thieving rascal’s overalls and went home to Old Auntie, raccoon tail and all.”
    He paused a moment. “From then on, he became known as Bloody Bones. There’s not a child in this valley who’s not scared of him.”
    â€œIt’s just an old story kids tell,” I muttered, but my heart beat a little harder than normal at the idea of Bloody Bones. Suppose he was what I’d heard and smelled. What if he was just about to pounce on me when Mr. O’Neill came along and saved my life?
    â€œAnd I tell you Bloody Bones still roams the woods,” Mr. O’Neill said. “He got a liking for human flesh when he ate that lying, thieving rascal.”
    â€œOh, sure.” I tried hard not to look past the headlights into the unknowable dark surrounding the car. If Bloody Bones hid in the trees, I didn’t want to see him.
    â€œDon’t you
Oh, sure
me, son.” Mr. O’Neill looked hard at me. “To this day, people have a way of disappearing in these woods.”
    He leaned across me and opened the door. “You mind getting out here? I’m a little late for an appointment in town. Or would you rather I drive you all the way home?”
    I sat in the brightly lit car. The headlights faded into the night a few feet up the driveway. The woods were dark, and the wind was blowing through treetops as bare as bones. Who knew what was out there?
    â€œI walked pretty far today,” I said in a low voice. “And I’m really tired. Would you mind driving me to the house?”
    Mr. O’Neill chuckled and said he’d be glad to, seeing as how I was too tired to walk up the driveway. I could almost hear quotation marks around
tired
.
    When the car stopped at the end of the driveway, I saw my sister looking out the window at us. She held Little Erica up so she could see, too.
    â€œThat your little sister?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    â€œShe’s a pretty little thing,” he said. “Take good care of her, son. Don’t let her go wandering off like . . .” His voice trailed off.
    â€œLike Selene?”
    â€œOh, you heard that story, did you?”
    â€œFrom Brody Mason.”
    Mr. O’Neill sighed. “He’s a sad case, that boy. His mama died a few months back, and he and his daddy are having a hard time. No telling what he’ll tell you, but in the case of Selene, it’s the honest-to-God truth.”
    â€œDid she really disappear?”
    â€œYes, she did. No one found her. No one knows what happened to her.” He paused a moment. “Lord, that was fifty years