Button Hill (2 page)

That evening Aunt Primrose served a sticky scalloped-potato casserole. Dekker tried feeding a forkful to Ranger when no one was looking, but the dog only gave him an apologetic look before skulking away. Aunt Primrose droned on about all the people in the town who had died or moved away over the last twenty years.

When Aunt Primrose excused herself to prepare dessert, Dekker whispered to his mother, “Mom, can I leave the table for a minute? I don't feel so good.”

“You're not fooling anyone, Dekker. Don't make me come looking for you.”

“Don't you trust me?” He gave his mother his most innocent look and slithered away from the table. In the hall, the light from long, thin windows too high up to see through made strange shapes on the walls, and the worn wooden floors creaked with every step he took.

He passed a sewing room and a stuffy room Aunt Prim called a sitting room and soon found himself back at the basement stairs. Without thinking about it, he crept down to the dank cellar. He pulled back the sheet that covered the clock and peered into the open front. The clockwork seemed to be made of fine pieces of bone. Dekker moved in so close he was almost touching it with his nose.
Those bones can't be human—they're too small.

He climbed up on a wooden crate to get a better look at the skull in the middle of the open clock face. The metal disk that encircled the black skull was sharp and bit into his finger when he ran it along the edge. The skull grinned back at him, its eye sockets dark and hollow. On impulse, Dekker put his fingers inside the sockets and twisted. The gears inside the clock shuddered, and the skull turned halfway around, its jaw clacking open and shut. It ticked three beats, four, and then the gears ground together as they came to a halt. The temperature in the cellar seemed to drop, and Dekker shivered. The skull leered at him, upside down now. All the hair on the back of Dekker's neck stood up. He backed away and climbed quickly out of the basement.

As Dekker passed the back door on his way to the dining room, someone spoke. “So you escaped from dinner.” He jumped and felt his cheeks flush. A pale girl with coal-black hair stood just outside the screen door to the backyard. She was shorter than he was. In her small hands she held a pie. She studied him with ice-blue eyes. “Whatever dinner was, it sure smells…special.”

“Are you looking for my aunt?” asked Dekker. He opened the door in what he hoped was a totally casual way.

She shook her head. “My dad sent me over with this for you. I hate command performances, so I hung out in the garden until I could deliver it without seeing Old Lady Prim.”

“I didn't see the backyard yet. We had to unpack all afternoon.”

The girl shrugged. “Vegetables, yawn. Wicked flowers though. Some sheds. If you need to get away, there are lots of places to disappear.”

“How did you know I wanted to get away from my aunt?”

She snorted. “Everyone in Button Hill tries to avoid her.
So
bossy. Dad made me come so he wouldn't have to. Hates mixing business with pleasure. He owes me big time for this. Here.” She passed him the pie, then tucked her long hair back behind her ears. “I'm talking too much, aren't I?”

“It's cool. I'm Dekker. So my aunt, like, works with your dad? I didn't know she had a real job.”

The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Sort of. He works at the cemetery. She helps every time there's a funeral. You're the first new people to come here in ages. Most move out or, you know, move on. I'm Harper, by the way. Well…you should probably get back to dinner before she notices you're gone.”

He groaned. “I hate this place already.”

Harper leaned closer, and the smell of her hair reminded Dekker of apples. “It's pretty boring on the surface, but once you know your way around, you might find some things to keep you busy.” She turned to go. “Next time I see you, I'll show you something fun.” She pulled her dark hair into a ponytail as she moved into the backyard. Dekker watched her until she disappeared around the corner of the house.

Back in the dining room, Aunt Primrose stopped her conversation with Riley and gave Dekker a withering look. “Dekker, I'm so glad you have decided to grace us with your presence once more,” she said.

“Umm, someone dropped off this pie,” he said, putting it on the sideboard.

“Oh, who was that?” asked his mother.

“I don't know—some girl.”

“Oooh, a girl,” said Riley.

Dekker ignored his sister and looked at Aunt Primrose. “She said her dad knows you from the cemetery.”

Aunt Primrose raised an eyebrow. “I'm surprised Harper is running errands for her father. I didn't think she could be bothered. She's not the sort you should be associating with.”

“I wasn't associating. I just answered the door.”

“I think it's great you met someone from town,” said his mother.

An insincere smile split Aunt Primrose's face, revealing her crooked teeth. “Timing is everything, as they say. And since you didn't have time to help prepare dinner, you're just in time to do the dishes.”

“But I did help. I delivered a pie and peeled a potato.”

Riley burst out laughing.

Dekker glared and pointed at his sister. “What about her?”

“She set the table, so you shall clean up.”

“But that's a girl's job,” he said.

His mother gasped. “Dekker! Don't be ridiculous!”

Aunt Primrose calmly returned Dekker's stare until he looked away. “In my house, children are expected to do as they are asked. And if chores of a more physical nature are what you require, I'm sure that can be arranged.”

Riley made a face at him. Dekker glowered down at his plate but didn't say anything. He would get Riley back later.

Dekker had been shocked when his mother told him they were moving out here for the summer. He dimly remembered visiting Aunt Primrose's acreage on the edge of Button Hill several years back. Just before school had ended a few weeks ago, he'd eavesdropped on a phone conversation his mother was having with Aunt Primrose.

“
Why not hire a nanny
?” Aunt Primrose had asked.

“
I can't afford that, Aunt Prim. It would be way too expensive
.”

“
Two months is a long time, Stella. Does it have to be the summer? I'm quite busy in July. Perhaps they could stay with friends…
”

“
I need you then because school is out. All my friends work. My classes run all summer, and I'll have to work night shifts too. I need to finish this degree. The only way I can do it is if I'm on my own
.”

“
Can't you trust him to care for his sister? He's old enough
.” His mother had just sighed in response. “
As I recall, Stella, the boy has atrocious manners. I don't know if I can help
.”

“
I don't need you to fix them. I just need you to look after them—in the
regular
way—until I'm done school. Do you think you can do that?
”

Dekker had been surprised by the scorn in Aunt Primrose's voice. “
You think you're raising them to reach their potential? They could be so much more—or the girl could, at least. You know it, and you won't admit it.
”

His mother had sighed again. “
They're not to be part of your world, Aunt Prim. I wish you could just enjoy their company. They're good kids, you know
.”

Aunt Primrose had spoken so quietly that Dekker had to hold his breath to hear. “
The clock has been still for so long, I fear my world no longer exists…Very well. They can come, but only for the summer. And I shall do my best.
”

“
That's all I ask
.”

The first night in the old house, Dekker dreamed he could hear the wheels of the old clock clicking inside his head:
tick, tock, tick, tock.
In his dream, he stood at the base of a hill, at the foot of a rough-hewn stone bridge that that ran across a gorge. The gorge was dark, and he could not see what lay beyond. A full moon flooded the sky just above the horizon. The stars were out, but something was different about the way they shone, as if their light had frozen.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick.

Dekker heard heavy footsteps running behind him. He was filled with a sense of dread he couldn't explain. The clock began to toll the hour.
Bong
. He staggered as the vibrations shook him from side to side.
Bong
. The footsteps got louder, and now he heard a shout and ragged breathing.
Bong.

He whirled to face the pounding footsteps.
Bong
. The runner made an impossible leap over Dekker's head, and was lit up by the moon for an instant, and then landed heavily on the bridge.
Bong
.

Dekker turned back toward the bridge and something slammed into his back, knocking him to one side. He stumbled to his feet, ready to defend himself, but the girl who had run into him had already stopped at the edge of the bridge.

“Harper?”

Harper shook her head in disbelief. “He lied to me. I can't believe he took it.”

“Took what?”

She turned to face him, but her eyes were out of focus, as if she didn't really see him. “My music box. There.”

Dekker looked where she was pointing, across the bridge. The shadow had disappeared into the dark on the other side, where the moonlight didn't reach. He shivered, and this time it wasn't just from the chill in the air. He saw that her cheek was bleeding.
Bong.
The clock echoed across the gorge. “Can you hear that?” he asked.

“It's a Nightclock. I didn't know any of those worked anymore.”

“It's in my aunt's cellar.”

Harper nodded. “When I was little I lived with my mom. There was a big one in the city square.” She leaned against his shoulder as he stepped toward her. “That Cobb. I never should have listened to him.” Her skin was like ice, and the sweet apple smell of her hair was different somehow, as if the apples had started to rot.

Dekker tried to imagine why someone would keep a clock made to look like bones, but he couldn't think of anything that made sense. “Where—where does your mom live?” he asked.

Harper took a step toward the bridge and pointed. “Over there, in Nightside, beyond the dark. Something happened to her when I was little, and I had to go live with my dad. Cobb said he had a message from her, but he tricked me into giving him my music box and now he's gone.”

“Why does it matter? It's just a music box,” said Dekker, and immediately wished he hadn't.

Harper whispered, “Because she gave it to me. I used to think it was better, living in Dayside with my dad.”

Dekker's few memories of his own father surfaced unbidden: the scratch of his whiskers, the smell of his old leather jacket. He had died when Dekker was so young that these snatches of memory were all that remained. “You must miss your mom,” he said. She nodded, and Dekker pulled her back from the bridge. Something about the situation felt very wrong. “We should leave,” he said. Harper said nothing, but with great effort put one arm around his shoulder and stumbled along beside him up the hill.

The climb was very hard. A wind dragged against their arms and legs as they trudged toward the top. A lump grew in Dekker's throat when he thought about what might happen if they just stopped, if they let the wind push them back down to the bottom and into the gorge. He tried not to think about what Harper had said about her mother, and what it meant to live on the other side of that bridge, beyond the darkness. He kept moving his feet one in front of the other until the wind dropped, and the dream faded into gray.

In the morning when Dekker awoke, he was exhausted.

Two

“Okay, this is it. I won't see you until the weekend,” Dekker's mom said while they ate breakfast on Monday morning. She stuffed some papers into her bag at the kitchen table. “I want you to finish putting away your clothes and toys while I'm gone. And don't forget to feed Ranger.”

Riley stuck out her bottom lip. “Why can't I come?”

“Go ahead—I don't want to babysit you anyway.” Dekker looked pleadingly at his mom as Riley started to sniffle. “I told you we shouldn't have come out here. She's going to be a worse pain than ever.”

His mom zipped her bag shut and grabbed a piece of toast. “We've been through this already, Dekker. You're still too young to be on your own. I'm only going to be at our house to sleep. Once my classes are over, I'll be here more. Or we'll be back home. Or something.” She sighed. “Dekker, take those earbuds out so I know you're listening.”

“Simmer, Mom. I heard you. But I don't want to stay with Riley or be watched by Aunt Primrose. I want to check out the town, see if there are any other kids around here.”

“You needn't worry, Stella,” said Aunt Primrose as she entered the room. “I shall be glad to chaperone.”