The Whistlebrass Horror

By Jack Keely and Briar Lee Mitchell

Maple syrup, madness, and monsters. Welcome to the “go-to destination for every reader who enjoys fast-paced adventure and spooky mystery” (Q.L. Pearce, author of Ghost Hunters).

It’s tough being the new kid in town. In fact, in a town like Whistlebrass, it can be a downright killer.

Halloween is here, but the creatures roaming the night aren’t hunting for candy. One by one, the denizens of Whistlebrass are disappearing, including the kid sister of teen newcomer, Casey Wilde.

Finding her won’t be easy—Casey is up against a suave sociopath, a legion of living shadows, and a reptilian humanoid capable of stealing his life force and crushing him into dust. 

It’s going to be a Halloween you’ll never forget.

Don’t miss the next two books in the series: The Whistlebrass Storm Watcher and The Whistlebrass Clock People!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781618686886

Book preview

Introduction

tmp_428b82329a23677c7be0871bef6c1e70_bgVFe6_html_548d8578.gif he misbegotten town of Whistlebrass is hidden away in a forgotten corner of northern Vermont like a guilty secret or a bloody knife buried under the floorboards.

Whistlebrass was founded in 1790 on a craggy scrap of glacier torn land that both the Iroquois and Abenaki tribes considered cursed. It is ringed by heavily wooded mountains where hungry eyed creatures lie in wait, hoping for unwary hikers to wander off the paths. In September, the trees blaze briefly with color until north winds rip away their dying leaves. There is no blooming spring in Whistlebrass, just a few weeks of mud as the brutal arctic winters melt into muggy storm ravaged summers.

Narrow streets lined with weather beaten stone and shingled houses snake away from a central market square featuring an array of dejected little shops and a church with a tilted steeple. New England lore is rich with witchery, and nearly every sizable town can claim at least one haunted house. In Whistlebrass, it seems harder to find a house that doesn’t have a ghost in the attic, a skeleton in the closet, or residents with bats in their belfries. Whether it is the geographic isolation or simply something rotten at its core that has made this shunned spot a magnet for the supernatural, we do not know. Suffice it to say that Whistlebrass has always been a place of dark deeds and darker dreams. A place of maple syrup, madness, and monsters.

This is a harrowing tale of hauntings and horrors.

A tale that could only have happened in Whistlebrass. 

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CHAPTER 1

Stone Circle

tmp_428b82329a23677c7be0871bef6c1e70_bgVFe6_html_a969b73.gif t had just been a circle of stones near the path by the riverbank. Nothing so special about it really, but it hadn’t been there the day before. He was sure of it. Casey Wilde stepped off the narrow path and picked his way through a tangle of winterberry bushes. He reached the edge of the pattern and studied it thoughtfully.

Dozens of stones had been meticulously arranged to form a spiral inside a circle, three feet in diameter. Speckled rocks formed its outer rim. The stones grew smaller and darker toward the hub where tiny black pebbles formed the inner curves. The stone in the center was a white wedge sparked with lightning bolts of silver. It was four inches long and shaped like a squashed cone. Small grooves radiated from the pointed tip and swirled around to the cone’s flattened end. Casey wondered whether the ridges that circled the stone had occurred naturally or if someone had carved them into it.

He crouched down and leaned in closer. The grooved white and silver stone was definitely the most unique element, but there were also slivers of shiny black coal and burnished beach glass. There were four small red stones that looked like they might be Jasper, and even a few chunks of pyrite, the glittering but worthless mineral known as fool’s gold.

Although the ground was carpeted with dead leaves, not one touched the mysterious mosaic. Casey felt suddenly lightheaded. The spiraling stones began to move, a dark hypnotic whirlpool drawing him closer.

Hey, Casey, what are you looking at? Pearl Wilde, freckled, snub nosed, red headed, and six years old, came crashing through the underbrush.

Casey blinked. The stones were still. Clearly his eyes had been playing tricks. He stepped unsteadily away from the spiral and snatched the collar of his little sister’s jacket. Pearl struggled and tilted her head, red curls glowing in the afternoon sun. She touched one of the stones with the toe of her shoe.

Someone went to a lot of trouble, said Casey. Don’t be a brat and mess it up.

Humph. Pearl wiped a trail of snot from her nose. Wonder who made it.

Pearl reached out a slender hand. That pointy white stone in the middle is pretty.

Casey shook his head. Pearl was like a crow, always picking up odd and shiny things and bringing them back to its nest.

Casey looked toward the river’s edge. On the opposite bank, a long fat snake, glistening and ghostly pale, was pushing its heavy twisting body between the dense reeds that sprouted up through the mud.

Gross.

He glanced around his feet to be certain no other reptiles were lurking nearby, and then guided Pearl back toward the path. A sudden chill that seemed to be more than just the October snap in the air made Casey shiver. Keeping an eye on Pearl hopping around ahead, he forgot the spiral and thought about the homework he had to do. Math and history had been dealt with during study hall. About the only thing left was a report on Edgar Allan Poe. So far, Casey’s first year at Millard Fillmore Middle School wasn’t overly challenging, scholastically. Making friends was the hard part, especially if the other kids tended to regard you as a geek.

Casey felt a growing sense of unease as he walked. His green eyes flicked to the left where the woods crept down to the edge of the path. Partially hidden by the tall dried out weeds, a fat raccoon was waddling along, keeping pace with him. Casey stopped and looked at the raccoon. The raccoon stared back with shrewd black eyes.

Now this is creepy, whispered Casey. You are kind of cute, but you are also kind of big. And aren’t raccoons supposed to come out at night?

He started walking again, and the raccoon did the same. Casey paused and pretended to look over at the riverbank. Then he took a deep breath and started to run as fast as he could without pausing to look back. He caught up with his sister and shouted, Come on, Pearl. It’s a race!

They pounded along the path until they reached an opening in the low fieldstone wall that circled their next door neighbor’s grove of gnarled crabapple trees. Just beyond the orchard was old Mrs. McCurdy’s snug little cottage. The hatchet faced old lady was sitting on a wooden porch swing paring apples and dropping them into a battered tin bowl. She offered a curt nod by way of greeting.

Pearl went tearing toward home, sending fallen leaves flying. Casey sat down on the edge of Mrs. McCurdy’s creaky porch steps. He reached out and stroked the ink black fur of a cat who studied him for a moment with mismatched eyes. The left eye was emerald green and the right one was the yellow of old amber.

Just listen to Carlisle, purring away like a little motorboat. That cat likes you, Casey, and he don’t like most folk, said Mrs. McCurdy. Casey was pretty sure the old lady liked him too, in spite of her reserved Yankee nature.

I saw something kind of weird on the way home. There was a snake down by the river. A big one. Shouldn’t Vermont reptiles like that be hibernating by now? asked Casey, petting the cat distractedly. There was a fat old raccoon too. It was following me along the path.

Maybe it was hungry. Might have wanted a handout. Strange to see one in daylight though. I’ve noticed other animals coming in closer to town quite brazenly. And snakes in late October? That is a might peculiar. But I suppose it’s not unheard of. The trees seem to be full of more birds than usual too. Martins and warblers. Mrs. McCurdy reached for another apple. A spiral of peel curved into her tin bowl and she looked up toward the tree tops. An unkindness of ravens.

Casey looked up quizzically. A what?

That’s an old time name for a flock of ‘em. Heard of a swarm of bees, haven’t you? The old lady adjusted her gold rimmed glasses. There are lots of other terms like that that most folks don’t know. A charm of goldfinches. Even a parliament of owls.

How funny, said Casey, thoughtfully. Mrs. McCurdy was often full of surprising information. But when you stop to think about it, it’s no stranger than saying a school of fish.

Ain’t no bird fancier myself. Bad omens. I wouldn’t even have a picture of a bird in my house. Mrs. McCurdy dropped the last apple into her tin bowl, and wiped her hands on her checked cotton apron. There were two big dark red ones in that elm tree earlier this week. Great flapping things they were. Both carrying little gold stones in their beaks.

Gold stones? Did you happen to notice if they flew down that way? asked Casey, pointing in the direction of the spiral on the riverbank.

Might could of. Now that you mention it, I seem to think that they did.

The old lady pushed herself out of the creaky porch swing and looked up at threatening gray clouds that were beginning to block out the late afternoon sun. An insistent wind had started up, sending tree branches scratching against each other.

Saturday is Halloween, and this weather certainly looks right for witchery, don’t it? Do you and Pearl have your costumes ready?

Pearl is going to go trick or treating, said Casey, and left it at that. He felt that thirteen was a little bit too old to be playing dress up, but was secretly disappointed to be missing out on the weekend’s excitement. He gave Carlisle’s fur a final pat, and headed off toward the elaborate wrought iron gate that opened into the Wilde family’s extensive backyard.

Pearl was spinning around in a tire swing hanging from an ancient sugar maple tree. She had left the gate gaping open and Casey closed it with a clang as he passed through. He trailed his fingers along its rusty iron curls and was reminded of the spiraling stones on the riverbank.

High above, the persistent October wind whistled through the lofty branches of the sugar maple where a murder of crows waited and watched.

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CHAPTER 2

Locked

tmp_428b82329a23677c7be0871bef6c1e70_bgVFe6_html_m55c30230.gif asey’s earliest memories were of iguanas lounging on sun-baked stone. The Wilde family had lived in a crumbling hacienda while Casey’s archaeologist father excavated a Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan jungle. He had tagged along with his dad, exploring ruins in a Costa Rican swamp where alligators swam beneath the narrow catwalks. Along the way, Casey had developed sharp observational skills, a fluency in Spanish, and a love of jalapeño peppers.

For the previous year, a canvas tent had been home while Oliver Wilde worked on a dig in northern New Mexico. When funding for the project dried up, Oliver had left his work in the field and accepted a faculty position at Arcayne College in northern Vermont.

After a childhood in the sun, Casey’s first six months in isolated Whistlebrass had been something of a shock. The sun rarely came out in Whistlebrass. Banks of clouds trapped by a ring of mountains plunged the town into perpetual gloom. Although the mountains were picturesque, canny locals were wary of venturing into them alone. Falling rocks, sudden storms, and hungry bobcats and bears were among the perils that awaited careless climbers. Local folktales told of other creatures, unnamable things that stalked and skulked in the shadows. The mountains were undoubtedly treacherous. In fact, Indian legends said the very land on which the town stood was cursed.

Driven by his insatiable curiosity, Casey spent hours with his camera and sketchbook, exploring narrow cobbled streets and documenting the weather-beaten houses with their steeply peaked roofs and stone chimneys. Behind many of the big houses were carriage barns, and a lot of the locals still maintained horses and buggies. Automobiles were surprisingly rare and frequently ancient. What traffic there was consisted largely of geriatric hulks of rusted steel and pitted chrome that belched clouds of black fumes. Some of the narrow streets that snaked up through the hills were accessible only to pedestrians, and Casey had climbed crumbling concrete staircases past witchy little cottages half hidden behind overgrown gardens. He noticed hex signs painted on walls, and horseshoes, rowan branches, and other good luck charms hung over doorways and hanging in windows. What were the locals afraid of to require quite so many protective talismans?

The Wildes had rented 13 Darkling Lane, an eccentric rambling heap embellished inside and out with stylized symbols cut into the wood. Casey was almost sure that the symbols changed from day to day. He figured that he was imagining it, but planned to make a photographic record of the house sooner or later just to be sure.

As he stepped into the yard, Casey looked up at the kitchen window. The café curtain had been removed, and Oliver Wilde was standing on a ladder with a screwdriver in his hand, doing something to the window frame. His sleeves were rolled up and the tail of his white cotton shirt flapped from beneath his argyle sweater vest. Casey’s mother was holding the ladder steady. Judging by her expression, she was attempting to hold her temper steady as well.

It was unusual for Oliver to be home this early in the day, and he rarely did anything involving carpenter’s tools. And it was obvious that Oliver and Margo Wilde were engaged in an intense conversation. Something was up.

Casey made his way quietly up the steps, and paused outside the screen door to listen.

We are perfectly safe, Margo, Oliver said through gritted teeth as he twisted the last screw securing a lock to the window frame. Look at that. Safe and sound as Fort Knox.

I imagine the Markson family thought their house was safe as well, but they certainly found out differently. Casey’s mother squinted at the window and then swiveled gracefully to face her husband with shoulders squared and arms crossed. That Markson boy is gone, Oliver. Gone! Vanished without a trace, and there was no sign of forced entry. Locked doors didn’t stop whatever it was that came creeping into their house.

Try to stay calm, honey. Oliver’s gray eyes were clouded with concern, but his voice was as measured and reassuring as always. He leaned his lanky frame against the white bead board cabinet. Just try to remember that…

Mommy! Daddy! I’m home! Pearl called out as she galloped up the steps, and ripped the screen door open. The thick spring attached to the frame gave an agonized squeal and then slammed the door shut.

Casey had hoped to glean a little more information before Hurricane Pearl blew in. He sat down on the porch steps and watched a pair of squirrels chase each other across the yard. The screen door opened slowly, its spring barely registering the movement. The wooden steps gave slightly as his father sat down and handed him an oatmeal cookie. Oliver Wilde’s smile crinkled the corners of the kind eyes behind his tortoiseshell glasses, but failed to hide a look of concern that Casey pretended not to notice.

How are you doing, Casey? Are you adjusting to life in Whistlebrass?

Yeah, I kind of miss the desert, but Vermont’s okay. Casey broke off a piece of the oatmeal cookie and chewed it thoughtfully. I like all the spooky old houses, and at least I can stop checking my shoes for scorpions. What about you, Dad? Wouldn’t you rather be back on the dig in New Mexico than teaching classes?

Working with a brilliant archaeologist like Victor Wilberforce was very gratifying. I was disappointed when the grant money fell through and I found out I couldn’t stay on the project. But then the offer from the college materialized.

Oliver shrugged and then leaned back against the stair rail.

Teaching has its rewards, and as far as your mother is concerned, I am sure town life is a step up from the jungle or a tent in the desert.

I guess so, Dad, but Whistlebrass isn’t exactly New York. The people here all dress like it’s 1950 or something, and the whole town seems kind of…well…frozen in time.

I suppose you’re right. Oliver adjusted his glasses and shrugged. It’s pretty isolated here. These are small town people and I guess they are slow to change.

Yeah, right. Kind of like glaciers are slow to move.

Casey glanced at his father out of the corner of his eye. You’re home early today.

I just had some things to do around the house, said Oliver vaguely. His expression grew cloudy and his tone became serious. "By the way, Casey, I hope it’s not too much of a chore walking your sister

Reviews for The Whistlebrass Horror

[melrailey-412132 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this middle grade mystery. It was fun with just a slight bit of scary to it. I would have devoured this as a kid and thought it was terrific. I liked the play with myth and lore in the story. It also didn't play down to children any. It presents the story with it's complications and says you can understand this and do this. I can't wait for my nephew to get old enough to read this series.