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“Bring me something bigger.”
    â€œWhat’s it for?” he asked.
    She pointed down the driveway at Jack.
    â€œI don’t like the looks of that dog,” she said.
    The boy put his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. “He looks friendly to me. He’s wagging his tail, see?”
    Jack started up the driveway dipping his head, coming to say hello, but as soon as he got within full view, the woman gasped.
    â€œI told you there was something wrong with that dog,” she said. “Look at him—he’s missing a leg. Some wild animal probably chewed it off. What if he’s got rabies?”
    The boy shook his head.
    â€œIf he had rabies, he’d be foaming at the mouth, Mom. Besides he’s wearing a collar. He must belong to somebody around here.”
    â€œWho in their right mind would want a dog like that for a pet? He ought to be put to sleep. Git!” the woman yelled at Jack.
    Jack stopped in his tracks and tilted his head, confused by her unfriendly tone.
    â€œI said git ,” she shouted again.
    When Jack still didn’t move, she picked up a stone and threw it at him, clipping him in the side. He yelped and jumped back. When she bent down to pick up another stone, Jack finally got the message, tucked tail, and slunk back down the driveway.
    â€œThe last thing I need is to get bitten by some rabid hillbilly dog,” the woman grumbled, dropping the stone.
    â€œI told you, Mom. Rabies makes you foam at the mouth,” the boy said. “And then you go crazy and die.”
    â€œThank you, Doctor Doom,” his mother said. She touched her cheek with her fingertips and grimaced. “I need a pain pill and an icepack. Help me get this stuff inside. I think I’m starting to swell again.”
    When the boy didn’t move, his mother got annoyed.
    â€œWhat’s the holdup, Pooch?”
    â€œI was just wondering,” he said. “Do you think it’s true, what that lady at the post office said about the house?”
    The woman waved his question away like she was shooing a fly.
    â€œOf course not. She was just trying to get a rise out of you, Pooch. Fun is hard to come by in a podunk town like this. Can you imagine having to live here year-round? I’d rather die. They don’t even have high-speed internet up here—they use dial-up. Dial-up. Now come on, help me get this stuff inside before I puff up.”
    I’d never heard the word podunk before, but it didn’t take a genius to know that it was an insult. Typical. Flatlanders always thought they were better than everybody else.
    I stayed hidden in the weeds watching until the boy and his mother had lugged the last of their stuff up the stairs and into the house. When they were finished, the boy came back out and sat on the porch by himself for a while. Pooch. Could that really be his name, I wondered? And why had they come to Clydesdale if they thought it was such an awful place? One thing I didn’t have to wonder about, though, was what it was they’d heard down at the post office. Francine, the postmistress, loved to gossip. When she learned where the newcomers were staying, she would have been eager to pass along what everyone in town had been saying for years… the Allen house was haunted.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Muziky-Muziky
    Tracy Allen was the youngest of the three Allen girls. The summer she turned nine, she and her family went on a picnic down at Bonners Lake. Tracy was a good swimmer—she’d earned her deep-water badge at the community pool in Washerville just like her sisters—but that day down at Bonners Lake, she drowned.
    Nobody knows exactly what happened. Maybe she got a cramp, or maybe she dove too deep and hit her head on rock. All anybody could say for sure was that one minute she was there, and the next minute she was gone forever. I was only a baby when Tracy Allen died, so I never knew her, but I’d heard the story