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Excerpt from The Secret Life of Owen Skye, a novel for children by Alan Cumyn

The basement was the darkest, scariest part of that old farmhouse. There was no door to it from inside. You had to go outside to the old, creaky double doors of the coal chute. And there were no lights. It smelled of mold, and water dripping down limestone, and in the corners there were snakes, and rats, and worse.

"I'll go," Owen said weakly. It was the thought of the fire that made him say it. What if he did nothing brave and important to make up for causing this disaster?

"We'll all go," Andy insisted.

Outside, the rain was slashing down harder than ever. Owen's Indian Brave flashlight worked for only a few seconds in the moisture, then went dark. The boys carried on anyway. They went in through the coal chute, sliding down on the seats of their trousers. It was so black and cold and creepy that Owen could hardly breathe.

“Shhh!”Andy said, and they froze in the darkness.

“What is it?” Leonard asked. He started crying before Andy could answer.

“It’s nothing. Just the wind.” But the way Andy said it made it sound like it could be the Bog Man.

The Bog Man had been stealing cattle all that summer. At night he came out of the bog by the Ridge Road and slimed across the fields making slow gurgling noises. Then he chose the weakest of the cows—a calf preferably, but he was strong enough to bring down a bull—and squeezed it by the neck with his long Bog Man fingers, injecting poison through his fingernails until the cow’s bones were soup. Finally he would sink his terrible teeth into the base of the skull and drink out the animal, brain first, leaving only a shriveled sack of cowhide in the morning.

If the Bog Man got you there was no escape. It was better to just hold your breath and hope that he ate you quickly.

Leonard turned and ran up the coal chute screaming. Owen tried to turn and run, but his feet wouldn’t move. Then Andy took a few more steps into the gloom.

“Andy—be careful!” Owen said. There was a gurgling noise then. It sounded like it was coming from the blackness underneath the work bench.

Andy didn’t say anything, which was exactly what happened when the Bog Man got you. Those long Bog Man fingers choked the words right out of you. Owen wondered whether he should try to save his big brother or run away and save himself.

Horace had told them that if you stand up to bullies they’ll run away—most of the time. So Owen wondered if maybe the Bog Man was like a bully, and if he jumped on top of him then maybe the Bog Man would be so surprised he’d let go of Andy for a moment and forget about injecting the poison.

But Owen also knew the Bog Man was mostly made of bog, which was something you sank into like quicksand and never got out of. The more you struggled the worse it got. You sank and sank until your legs were covered, then your waist. If you held up your hands to keep them free, that just made you sink faster—right into the Bog Man.

“Andy?” Owen said, but there was more silence and he knew he should run, because now the Bog Man knew where he was. Owen turned around but everything was black. He couldn’t remember which way he’d come in. He heard more gurgling and tried to think what to do...

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