Mouse Hole

By Neil Larkins

Nine year-old Richard is learning-disabled, hampered by a pronounced stutter -- and scared of the spooky old mansion on Sycamore Street, a place he must walk past every day to school. His lively imagination leads him to believe all sorts of weird things about it, including being chased by evil guard dogs that protect the grounds.
But Richard has real problems that beset him. Three years have passed since his military father went off to war and in the last year he and his mother have had to move to a new town. Richard sees his mother's slow breakdown as she tries to cope with the loss of her husband and he does his best to "be a man" and help.
In addition, since moving to this new town Richard hasn't had the time to make any new friends but one. Now that school is out for the summer and that one friend has gone away, he is left alone -- and bored.
Thus the perfect medium in which a young boy's fantasies can soar. And soar they do. Richard overhears his mother and a neighbor talk of a burglary at that old mansion and his imagination leads him to believe he has been accused of the crime. Richard's drive to "clear his good name" causes him to overcome his fear of the massive estate and enter it. While there he's confronted by the police investigator on the case yet allowed to participate. Quite by accident Richard discovers what he believes is a clue in possibly solving the baffling mystery as to who burgled the mansion, and why.
Now Richard's problem is, can he get the lead police investigator -- or anyone -- to believe him?
Along the way to achieving that end, Richard is befriended by an unlikely character, a colorful, cartoon-like old sea captain who wants to teach him a craft: model shipbuilding. Despite his mother's misgivings, Richard is allowed to be tutored by the old fellow and when he is, learns something that seems unrelated to the burglary.
Yet Richard believes the information to be vital...he just can't figure out how. Then one night at home in his bed he puts it all together and "cracks the case," as he terms it.
Now he has a new problem: Can he get the police investigator to believe him and release the old sea captain who has been charged with the crime?
But believed he is, and in the climactic ending another mystery -- what has become of Richard's father -- is solved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neil Larkins
• Release date: May 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458040145

Neil Larkins

A "golden-ager" (whatever that is) now living in Arizona, I was born in Kansas and raised in Colorado. Back in the sixties I tried college but couldn't make a go of it. But college wasn't all bad: it was where I met my first wife, Teresa who gave me a wonderful daughter and thirty-three fascinating and adventuresome years until she succumbed to breast cancer. During those years I worked my butt off as a tradesman 'til I retired. In 2005 I met and married a wonderful lady who is everything to me. No, not much interesting about me, but I hope that you will find my stories compelling and make you want to read more. Thanks.

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MOUSE HOLE

by

Neil Larkins

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY

Neil Larkins on Smashwords

Copyright 2011 by Neil Larkins

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Thank you for purchasing this Smashwords book. This book is copyrighted by the Publisher, Neil Larkins and the edition downloaded is not available for sharing or reproduction in any form or in any part by any means or method without the express written permission of the Publisher. Additional copies are available from Smashwords for purchase.

Cover art insert by Richard M.

Cover Copyright 2011 by Neil Larkins

MOUSE HOLE

Chapter One

The big house on Sycamore Street scared Richard. Nine years-old (Going on t-ten, he'd remind anyone who asked), the place gave him the creeps and he could tell you why. It was exactly like the spooky mansions he saw in old black and white movies on Saturday afternoon TV, places where crazy Dr. Frankenstein and his crazier assistant built monsters. Dracula slept in a coffin in a house like this one and those were populated with ghosts that moaned and skeletons that rattled the chains that took them to their grisly deaths in dank cellar torture rooms.

Despite all that, Richard had his doubts. Certainly the imposing structure looked frightful enough but…well, he wasn't sure this one contained monsters with bolts in their necks or dead people who weren't really dead. After all, he'd never been inside. In fact he'd not as much as stepped onto the property. Never had he been witness to a bloody hand opening a door; neither had he heard creepy organ music emanating from a spider web-draped parlor lit by hundreds of candles dripping wax.

As well, Richard had never seen anything outside the house to hint of possible ghoulish inhabitants within. No black, brooding storm clouds hung over the building's four towers. He'd not seen a single blinding electrical discharge strike even one of the many lightning rods on the roof. (How, though, could he observe any of that? He was always safely at home during storms.)

And in those old movies there were bats, always swarms of the eerie creatures. None of those were seen at this house, though he'd once spotted a jet-black crow wing its croaking way through the massive trees that surrounded the house. But crows could be seen anywhere in town; nothing to be frightened of there.

Richard tried to figure this out, the way most nine year-olds try to answer the questions in life. Perhaps his fears, he reasoned, were not due to the house but rather were generated by the estate's massive concrete wall that encircled the house and its huge estate. He was very familiar with that wall: he walked along it nearly every day on his way to school. The drab, gray enclosure was huge. It towered over Richard at easily twice his height – and it was ugly. Slimy moss slithered down its flanks alongside crooked vines that crept up. It was cracked and split in hundreds of places. Chips of concrete that had flaked off the wall littered the sidewalk and once a chunk even fell on his head. It was a small piece and didn't hurt, but it sure made him jump.

Or maybe it was the great iron gate that spooked Richard. The ornate, rusting portal was as ugly as the wall on which it hung – rusted, bent and also interlaced with vines that resembled bony fingers. He'd peeked through that gate many times as he passed by, though he dared not touch it for fear that it was electrically charged and fry him to a crisp on the spot. He'd seen that in a movie. One thing sure: he never saw it open. That in itself gave rise to all sorts of notions in his young and fertile mind.

Still, all that was not what frightened Richard. The scariest part of the big house on Sycamore Street was not the building itself or the wall or what resided therein. No, he finally decided, it was not ghost, monster or the undead, that Richard truly feared. After all was said and done, it was the mansion owner Richard feared: Old Man Hawkins.

And the reason Old Man Hawkins was to be feared was simple: He hated kids.

And who should know that better than a kid, in this case Richard's best friend, Skuddle. (Perhaps it would be better said that Skuddle was Richard's only friend. But having one friend, even one like Skuddle was better than having none at all.)

Yeah, dude, Old Man Hawkins hates kids, he really does, Skuddle said one day on the playground when the subject had come up. He hates kids so much he eats'em! The boy made the declaration with a smirk and since a smirk was always on his freckled face, it looked to Richard more smirkish than ever.

H-how do you know that, that he eats k-kids? Richard had made the reply while he attempted to control his stutter, the one that everyone made fun of, including his best friend Skuddle. But controlling his tongue wasn't easy, especially when replying to news like that. It was the first time he'd heard the awful thing.

"Everybody knows he eats k-k-k-kids, Skuddle had replied in a mock stutter and with a pompous sneer added to his perpetual smirk. The word stupid" had not been added to the end of Skuddle's statement, but it was there nonetheless. The look on the boy's face and the emphasis on the words told Richard he couldn't be very smart because he didn't know this plain fact.

Yeah, uh…s-sure, I know it, Richard had declared with uplifted chin and a shrug of his thin shoulders. "L-like you s-said, everybody knows it." But Richard hadn't known it at all – and he knew Skuddle knew he didn't.

And now this morning, for more times than he dared to recall, Richard had to once more walk past the scary house on Sycamore Street on his way to school. It was what he'd had to do for the entire year at this new school and couldn't be avoided. Well, it could be if he took Eucalyptus Street instead…but he didn't want to do that. Eucalyptus Street was a longer route, much longer. Since he hadn't planned ahead this morning, taking a route that much longer meant he would be late for school. He'd best not be late today, oh no, not this last day before school was out for the summer.

If only Mama could have driven him this one final time.

She couldn't. His father still had not returned home and these days his mother worked longer hours at her job waiting tables at Joe's Cup O'Mud Café. No time to drive him to school like she'd once done, like before they'd moved to this town.

He would just have to handle the situation as best as possible. He shifted his backpack over to his left shoulder to put it between him and the scary house Old Man Hawkins lived in. As many times as Richard had taken such defensive action he didn't know how the backpack shift would help or if it would help at all. But to him it felt a little better doing it.

The backpack would give him some protection – maybe – just in case Hawkins' big old, nasty dog got loose and came at Richard. Such a dog – which he didn't know for sure but suspected Hawkins must have – would be an evil, ugly and muscular cur. It would be named Beelzebub or something like that and have massive paws with shiny black claws like talons and a giant head with an even more giant jaw lined with dozens of long, yellowed fangs. Richard envisioned ropy slobber dripping from the dog's cavernous mouth as it anticipated the meal it would make of him. It waited every day at an open window for its chance to attack. Then the time would come.

Spying Richard as he walked past the gate the dog begins to growl and snarl fiercely. Suddenly it attacks! Off the window sill Beelzebub bounds, sprints across the expansive lawn and in one mighty leap clears that ten-foot concrete wall like it wasn't even there. He lunges at Richard's soft throat with a heart-stopping roar – just like it happened in those old black and white movies on TV.

How Richard wished he had more protection than a flimsy backpack. He wished he had a gun or a knife or a…yeah, that's it: a magic ring on his finger to zap the bad guys and monsters and nasty dogs. A cartoon hero on Saturday morning TV had one of those. Oh, that would be great! Or maybe he'd have a super-cool laser gun to blast those zombies rushing at him. Pow! Zzzzt! Man, he'd vaporize them all.

But Richard had neither magic ring nor cool laser gun. And so since he didn't, he walked faster and faster as he passed the