Grinning, Macky got to his feet. He seemed to Thomas to tower above him. The grin never touched his large gray eyes flecked with yellow. “You callin’ me a liar?” he said softly. “My mama is too an invalid. But there—look behind you! There’s the Indian girl running!”

Thomas whirled around. “Ahhhh!” escaped him. He held on to the maple, terrified. The fog was rising. Snow, falling. How did it happen that the woods was pale with failing light, gloaming light? Dusk. The fog was ghostly white now. It danced and swayed. He almost thought he saw …

Ohhhh!

He looked to Macky for safety and found only the stillness and mist. He heard laughter—“Ha-ha!”—a ways off. Trees dripped snow fell lightly where Mac Darrow had been. Only Macky’s empty tracks were left.

Where … Macky!

But Mac Darrow had vanished. Thomas scrambled away from the great maple. He tore through the woods. He half believed the Indian maiden was somewhere near. He knew that Macky had been playing with him, but still, his fear rose on the twilight. He almost got turned around. Almost lost his way. They say ghosts walk at dusk. Run!

The crest of the hill had to be right before him. Was it? And the house, just down the hillside. Was it still?

His breath was ragged. He thought surely something was running after him, breathing down his neck. Oh no!

Thomas slipped and fell hard, as his feet slid from under him. He got up painfully on his knees and began crawling like a baby. His hands were fistfuls of snow. In another instant he was on his feet, running. And then he knew. Knew she—it—was there. Reaching, her dead-cold hand about to touch his shoulder. She would grab him and he would have to run until he would never run again. Ghosts were like that. Ghosts were …

He couldn’t stand not knowing. He whirled around. His feet slid, but he kept his balance. There. Just as calm and cool as you please.

It was no Indian maiden. Macky had returned. He had been far enough behind Thomas that when Thomas spun around, there was room for Macky to step aside so they wouldn’t collide.

The sound of Thomas’s ragged breath filled the woods. No, he was out of the woods. He was on the edge of it, over the crest of the hill. His chest was heaving. I’m so dumb! he was thinking. He saw the house down there. Turned warily back to Macky.

Tall Mac Darrow was so still and remote against the trees. In the gloaming he gathered what light there was around him. He was ten feet away, standing with his hands poised on the gun. He cocked his head. “Seen my first rabbit of the day,” he said. “Poor scared rabbit. You run that way, anything’ll catch you.”

“You tricked me!” Thomas managed to whisper.

Macky almost smiled. Just a faint twitching of his mouth as he looked off into the dusk. “You can come over my house anytime you want. I bet you too scared, though.” He glanced once more at Thomas, at his defeat.

Thomas coughed suddenly. He bent double over a painful stitch in his side.

“There was, too, an Indian girl here. Once,” Macky said. Then he turned and walked away through the trees, east.

The hillside below Thomas gathered darkness. The lights went on in the Drear house. He walked down, feeling tired and sick of himself. I acted like a scared rabbit. Scared of a dumb story, he thought. We were just talking together. He was only putting me on. We could’ve hunted trails together! He asked me to come over there, and I had to go and say no. Why did I have to do that? But then he said I could come over anytime.

Maybe his mama is an invalid. Was it that I said she wasn’t? Maybe he just wanted to get even with me for all of us scaring his brothers and his dad.

Friend or foe? I don’t think we’ll ever be friends!

At the backyard Thomas calmed down. He stepped up onto the veranda. The back door was right there. Safety, just in time. For it was night. He felt something rush behind him. Something ghostly blew out of the woods, swept down the hillside to climb the shadowy house of Dies Eddington Drear. Thomas slammed the door in the face of the chill wind before it could catch him.

3

MACKY WAS A HUGE bear that came straight at him, lumbering right over him like a grizzly over a log. Thomas fell flat on his back as Macky’s bear-clawed feet stepped on him.

It was a fleeting dream. Thomas awoke, feeling angry. He was lying facedown, with his nose pressed into the pillow. What … time? he wondered. Oh. Dawn. He saw faint light at the windows. It took him a moment to realize where he was, what day it was.

The easy chair was placed so he wouldn’t have to wake up and see the black opening of the narrow fireplace. He stared at the floor-to-ceiling windows, which were bigger and longer than they needed to be. There’s nothing out there, he thought. Just the day coming.

It’s a school day coming. Which day? Oh, my brain is fuzzy!

He thought of yesterday. Pesty. Macky, at dusk. He closed his eyes. It’s Friday, and I won’t have to go to school. We’re going to get Great-grandmother—what time? Must not be time because Mama would be here if it was, to make sure I’m up.

He closed his eyes, resting. But he couldn’t help thinking about Macky and what had happened in the woods.

Glad it’s light, he thought. Things look different in the light.

It was daylight when his mama came to wake him at six-thirty.

“Thomas. Thomas,” she called softly.

He didn’t open his eyes. He turned his head slightly, so he could put his chin in her palm, as her fingers gently touched his face.

“Come on,” she told him. “You’ve got a long way, you and your papa.”

They left at seven-thirty, after having dragged themselves out of warm beds, washed, dressed, and eaten. They would travel the distance in the family sedan, with the neat red trailer attached for Great-grandmother Jeffers’s belongings. They never disturbed the twins, Thomas’s baby brothers. The twins would sleep on until about eight. They would have two identical fits if they were to see Thomas and their papa going for a ride in the car without them.

“You take care now,” Mr. Small said to Thomas’s mama when they were ready to go.

“Mr. Pluto and I may do some house painting today,” she told them. “I am interested in having my kitchen a little brighter.”

“Be careful using the ladder,” Mr. Small said.

“I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”

“Good,” Mr. Small said.

“You should wait until I get back so I can help,” Thomas told his mama.

“There’ll be plenty paint left for you,” she told him. “Plenty more rooms.”

They left the house of Dies Drear behind. Martha Small waved goodbye from the front veranda. Thomas looked back, waving. Even in the growing morning the Drear house appeared dark and shadowy.

His mama grew smaller. She still waved. Thomas had many impressions. His mama diminishing to doll size as the car sped away. So long, Mama.

The house got smaller, changed to a weathered doll’s mansion from the giant crow house. Goodbye, dreary house. I’m glad to be gone from you today!

The gravel drive wound down and away from the hill. They crossed the old covered bridge and the stream that was so like a moat protecting the house. There was the woods at the top of the hill. Winter trees wore stripes of snow on their trunks and limbs. Zebras, Thomas thought. Winter wild animals.

He wondered if Mac Darrow was up yet, out tracking somewhere among those striped tree animals. Sighing, Thomas sat up straight beside his father as they headed south on the highway, out of town.

It was a long drive, but they would be able to get back home by eight or nine in the evening. Wouldn’t do to stay overnight and leave his mama and his brothers home by themselves.

Anything might happen, Thomas thought. But we scared the Darrows away months ago, and nothing’s happened since. It’s a feeling, though. Papa feels it, too. But it’s been a long while without any trouble. The Darrows stay there on their own farmland most of the time. If you didn’t come into town on market or street fair day or go to church once in a while, you never would see them. Well, now there’s Macky at school, in the woods.