Free Campbell Wood by Al Sarrantonio

In the cellar. It had been something much like this, and he had chased its source and found nothing. Just broken things, and he remembered two shelves breaking over him. He had darted away.
    But something had been there, though he hadn't found it.
    He glanced back to see that Feeney had been roused to the point where his sloth was overtaken by curiosity. He was sitting just inside the door way. Boris turned his back on him. He resumed his half crouch and moved off toward the rear of the milk crates. He could almost smell something back there now.
    There was a dry crackling sound that started again, stopped again.
    Boris glanced back to see Feeney leaping in a graceful curve up onto the overhead shelf, disappearing over its lip. He turned back to his own business, nosing around the corner of the record carton.
    There was nothing there.
    The sound came once more, and he scrabbled around the crate, hoping to trap it. There was nothing to trap. The thing, whatever it was, must be inside the crate.
    Boris pulled himself up on his hind legs and tried to look down into the box.
    There was a horrible screeching cry from Feeney. A kind of paralysis took hold of Boris, and with it the ancient rule of instinct took command of his body and hurtled him through the attic door in two bounds. Something ragged and ungraceful fell past him as he darted out. He crouched at the bottom of the stairs, staring back at the open door.
    The hair along his back was standing on end.
    No sound came from the attic. Boris waited, still as a statue, his ears straining like two fine-tuned antennae.
    There was absolute stillness in the room above.
    Curiosity, mixed with caution, set in. Mewling low and deep in his throat, ready to bolt in a split second, Boris moved up the steps again.
    The room was silent. With the darkening of day the shadows had deepened even more. No sound came from the crate filled with records.
    Boris mewled again, almost backing away. But something in him pulled him toward the unmoving shape in the center of the room.
    It was Feeney.
    His teeth were bared in a frozen snarl of hatred. A huge sliver of wood stood out from the center of his spoiled belly. He had nearly been bisected by it. Blood and entrails spilled out demurely from the neat wound onto the slatted floor.
    Boris made another sound, deep down in his throat, and circled Feeney, alternately sniffing and pulling away. The body gave off a sickly warmth that was rapidly cooling.
    The remains of light pushing in through the attic window were eclipsed. Boris turned, hissing, in time to see a figure, lithe and dark, moving in the tree outside, silhouetted dimly against the dying light.
    Boris hissed again.
    As the sun dropped, the figure disappeared with it. When Boris leaped up onto the window ledge there was nothing to see but the cold orange disk of the sun sinking rapidly through the trees. A sickle of moon shone high above, a sharp cutout in the chilly, blackening sky.
    Feeney's body vanished into the shadows.
    Boris dropped down to the floor. As he did so a crack came from the shelf high above. Again, instinct took over.
    Boris found himself out of the attic and under the bed in Kaymie's room, growling softly in the coming darkness.

12
     
    S eth said, "I told you I didn't touch it."
    "You must have, no one else would." Kaymie sat cross-legged on the floor, surveying the damage inside her dollhouse. All of the furniture was jumbled around; a few small pieces were broken. She knew Seth was trying to ignore and goad her at the same time.
    "You did do this, I know you did," she spat out, turning on him. She felt like crying.
    "I told you I didn't," he said quietly from the bed. He moved one of his toy soldiers indolently. "I'll leave if you want me to."
    She wanted to hit him. She turned instead back to the miniature house and attempted to put the various little pieces back where they belonged.
    She flicked the tiny secret cupboard closed, realizing suddenly that Seth didn't