Read Online The Hollower by Mary Sangiovanni - Free Book Online Page A

hairs on the back of his neck, he reached gingerly into the pocket of a pea-green canvas jacket. Something about the sensation of the fabric on his skin gave him goose bumps, as if he were touching the dead flesh of the man who had once worn it.
    The pocket was empty. He reached into the one on the far side. Empty. One by one, he delved into the pockets of a fur, a winter coat, a couple of spring jackets, and a few windbreakers, but his search turned up nothing. Unless Max had meant for him to be warm in the chill evening wind, there was nothing in that closet for him.
    Dave sighed—a long, slow exhalation of both relief and disappointment. Sally was wrong. She was off. A gear was definitely and most clearly out of whack in her head, probably one of many. And that meant Dave could take back the Hollower as his own problem now, and not include Sally in the mess. She’d had a bad scare, but she could relax. It wasn’t after her.
    Her giggle floated down from the murkiness at the top of the stairs. Dave at first assumed it was a part of his thoughts, a wave in the flood of his relief.
    Then it came again, louder, higher in pitch—more the way she’d giggled as a child than her laugh now. Dave frowned.
    “Hello?” No one answered. “Uh, Gladys? Mrs. Feinstein, the uh, the door was, ah, open so I thought I’d come by to see if you needed—”
    Fresh laughter, a full-force peal of glee from the top of the stairs, cut him off. Sally’s laughter.
    “Sally?” His feet carried him unwillingly back across the hall to the bottom of the stairs. A diminutive silhouette—a woman, maybe, or a child—sat cross-legged at the top of the stairs. The darkness swam thick around it and obscured any feature or detail.
    “Sals?”
    The giggle floated down to him again, a slow, dry chuckle that dropped in pitch to a sinister bass. “
Davey
. . .” It was Sally’s intonation, but overlaid with another, manlier voice. The delicate outline of her hand rose like a shadow puppet on the wall behind her, waving. The waving became a clicking that grew to a metallic chatter and reverberated down the stairwell.
    Dave bolted to the front door, yanked it open, and leaped across the porch and down the stairs in one catapult motion. It was only when he made it to the car, panting, his heart jackhammering in his chest, sweaty palms on the hood to steady him, that he dared look back at the house.
    Against a backdrop already dotted with occasional stars, the ex–Feinstein residence stood quiet.
    The front door was closed.
    “Mister?”
    Dave jumped, whirling around on a boy no more than eleven or twelve years old. The boy’s fair-haired head was cocked to one side, his eyes squinting inquisitively over his freckled cheeks. He scratched at a scabbing scrape along the underside of one skinny forearm.
    “You okay, mister? I saw you boltin’ outta the ol’ Feinstein place like a bat outta heck.”
    “I—I’m fine. Fine. Yes, I’m fine. Thanks.” By degrees, the pounding in Dave’s chest receded. “What are you doing out here?”
    The boy jerked a thumb to the house across the street. “It’s curfew now. Was on my way in. Boy, I’ve never seen a grown-up run so fast.” He cast a wary eye at the upstairs window. “Look like you seen a ghost.”
    “Why do you say that?” Dave snapped.
    The boy shrugged. “Dunno. You know the guy that used to live there? Guy that shot himself?”
    Dave exhaled slowly. “Not well. He was . . . a friend of my sister’s. You know him?”
    “Not well, either. Friend of my mother’s.” The boy hesitated, as if a question hovered on the tip of his tongue, but he seemed to decide against asking it. “Well, I’m sorry all the same. For your sister, I mean. Her loss, and all. He said . . .”
    “What?”
    The boy looked at the upstairs window again. “Said he saw monsters or something.”
    Dave frowned, but said nothing.
    The boy paused a moment before adding, “I dunno. I don’t think a person’s