Hangman's Curse (16 page)

Elijah wasn't expecting this kind of answer. “So you didn't, you know, plant anything in their pockets, or in their duffel bags?”

Ian seemed perplexed. “No. I never thought of that.”

And now Elijah had to think for a moment. “Well, Ian, if I may speak freely here . . .”

“Go ahead.”

“How do you even know you're in contact with a ghost? How do you know this isn't all a weird coincidence?”

He smirked a bit. “Some coincidence. I put out curses and people end up in the hospital.”

“Or worse,” Elijah reminded him.

Ian admitted, “Yeah, a lot worse.”

“You've got a strong case, I'll give you that. So how do you know the ghost's name?”

“He told us his name.”

“He talks to you?”

Ian grimaced as if he'd heard a stupid question. “We used a Ouija board.”

Elijah got the picture. “Oh. So he spelled it out.”

“Sure.”

“Ian, how do you know you were really controlling the ghost in the first place? How do you know it wasn't controlling you, just setting you up?”

Ian was silent. He didn't have a comeback for that one.

“I'm not here to preach to you, but yeah, I'm a Christian. I believe in God, and Jesus is my Savior, so let me just give it to you straight: The Bible says a lot about dabbling in witchcraft and messing around with spirits. You never really control the craft or the spirits, Ian. They control you, and they can make a real mess of your life. If there is a spirit involved, I don't think you lost control of it. You never had control in the first place. If you did, we wouldn't be sitting here right now.” Elijah let that sink in, and then added, “And you know what? As long as you carry hatred and revenge in your heart, they're going to go right on controlling you. You're never going to be truly free. There's a better way, Ian.”

Ian didn't appear to need much convincing of that.

Elijah was hoping he could conceal himself in the hasty, between-classes crowd, but Mr. Carlson nabbed him anyway, right out in the middle of the hall. “Well, well, Mr. Springfield! And there you were, telling me there's a right and a wrong. What's your moral judgment on skipping classes?”

Elijah didn't even have time to answer before another voice intervened. “Excuse me, Mr. Carlson.” It was Elijah's dad, dressed like a custodian and looking rather stern. “Am I to understand he skipped your class?”

Carlson gladly reported, “He most certainly did.”

Nate took Elijah's arm with a stern expression on his face. “If you don't mind, I'd like to deal with him first.”

Mr. Carlson seemed to savor the idea that Elijah was in double trouble. “Well, certainly. When you're finished with him, send him my way.”

“Thank you,” said Nate, taking Elijah by the arm. “Come on, son, let's have ourselves a little talk.”

They hurried down the hall, around a corner, and through a door near the school office.

It was a conference room. Sarah and Elisha were already there.

Elijah waited for the door to close behind him, then reported in a hushed, urgent voice, “Ian didn't plant those soda straws. He didn't plant anything. He summoned up the ghost, and he or one of the other witches scratched the symbol on the locker, but that was all.”

Nate, Sarah, and Elisha all exchanged looks.

“What about Amy Warren and Crystal Sparks?” Nate asked.

“He had nothing to do with that. They weren't his enemies, and Crystal Sparks was actually a friend. He says the ghost hit them without being asked to. He's afraid he's lost control.”

Nate concluded, “He was never in control of any ghost in the first place.”

“This is no ghost,” Sarah agreed. “There's a visible, tangible method here. These victims are being set up by human hands.”

“It's just like Norman said,” Elisha ventured. “Ian isn't the cause of this at all. Something else—or some
one
else—is, and he just
thinks
he is.”

“Pretty incredible coincidence, though,” said Sarah.

“Well, how incredible? What's his track record?” Nate asked, pulling out his pen and pad and sitting at the conference table.

“He's taking credit for the first four victims,” said Elijah. “He told the ghost to strike Tod Kramer, Doug Anderson, Jim Boltz, and Leonard Baynes, and they got hit with . . . whatever it is. But he did say there was another one he cursed, but nothing happened.”

“Shawna Miller,” said Sarah.

“No, no, he cursed Shawna Miller, but the curse landed on Amy instead.”

“This is too weird,” Elisha lamented.

“So which curse landed on Crystal?” Sarah asked.

“There wasn't one. That one just happened.”

“Okay, so there's one . . . ‘curse' . . . still floating around that hasn't landed yet?” Nate asked, his pen poised above his paper. “Who's the intended victim?”

“He didn't say who it was.”

Nate set his pen down, his frustration showing. “Elijah, we need to know who that is.”

“I was pushing my luck as it was,” Elijah pleaded.

“It's okay, son,” said Sarah. “You did fine.”

“You did fine,” said Nate apologetically.

“Hey!” Elisha brightened with recollection. “Norman said Jim Boltz and his three friends used to pick on Ian Snyder.
Three
friends.”

Nate leaned back in his chair, digesting that. “So we have a gang of four, but only three got sick.”

Elijah offered, “If all four picked on Ian, then all four would have been on his list.”

“And most likely on the list of the soda-straw planter.” Nate almost jumped out of his chair. “Let's talk to Tom Gessner. He might know who number four is.”

Blake Hornsby was a handsome senior, a letterman, and a surprisingly polite young man. Apparently, he'd already done quite a bit of soul-searching before he got called into Tom Gessner's office. He was close to tears.

“I'm sorry,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “I didn't mean to hurt anybody. It's just that, you know, everybody does it. It's like it's part of going to school, you know? You get razzed when you're a freshman, and then you turn around and razz the freshmen when you're a senior, stuff like that.”

“Did you ever pick on Ian Snyder?” Nate asked him, sitting close, speaking gently. He was still wearing his janitor's coveralls, but he'd revealed to Blake why he and his family were there.

Blake nodded emphatically and confessed, “Oh, yeah. We all did. Every chance we got. We knocked his books out of his hands, we pulled his hair—we were going to cut it off once, but then we thought we'd get in trouble for having a pair of scissors. That can be considered a weapon, you know? We stole his stuff and tossed it around. Broke his watch once.”

Gessner asked, “Blake, did it ever occur to you that you might be hurting a fellow human being?”

He shrugged. “You don't think about it. You're with the other guys, and they go after somebody, and you know, you do the same thing, you have some fun.” Then he added, angry with himself, “But it was stupid. Bunch of guys trying to look tough, I guess, but it was stupid. I can't believe I did it.” He turned to Sarah. “What's going to happen to the guys? I tried to visit them in the hospital, but the doctors wouldn't let me in. They've got the room quarantined.”

Sarah answered, “Tod is comatose. If we don't find out what this is within the next day or so, he'll probably be joining Amy and Crystal.”

Blake couldn't hold back his tears.

Nate asked, “Blake, we need to know who else you and the others have picked on. We have to know the extent of this and who else was involved.”

Blake wiped his eyes. “Nelson Parker.” He chuckled, even through his tears. “He's got acne, you know. He's got it bad!” Tom Gessner wrote the name down. “But we didn't go real hard on the guy, it was just teasing. He never looked like we were killing him or anything.”

“Who else?” Gessner asked.

“There was Crystal.”

“Already got her down.”

“And the rest of the witchy bunch.”

“The witchy bunch?”

“You know, Ian's weird friends.” Blake named three of them, and then remembered, “Oh, and Norman Bloom, too. We call him the rat man.”

Gessner explained to the Springfields, “Norman's a T.A. in Mr. Harrigan's biology class. He takes care of the lab animals.”

Sarah nodded. “Elisha knows him.”

“But we haven't bothered him in a while,” said Blake. “I mean, it got to the point where he was paying us to leave him alone, and that got to be too much.”

Nate locked eyes with Blake. “He
paid
you to leave him alone?”

Blake was ashamed to admit it. “Yeah. He'd give us ten dollars, and we'd ease up for a week.”

It was difficult for Gessner and the Springfields to conceal their disgust. Gessner finally said, “Blake, do you know what extortion is?”

“Uh, I guess so.”

“It's what you and your friends did to Norman, that's what it is.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you plan to give that money back?”

Blake thought a moment, then quickly answered, “Yeah. Every penny.”

“I'm sure you will.” It wasn't an observation. It was an order.

“Who else?” Nate asked.

“Brenda Smith,” Blake answered. “She's ugly.”

Sarah could feel the indignant mother rising in her. “And you felt it was your duty to make that judgment. By now I imagine she's thoroughly convinced of it.”

Blake looked scolded. “I guess I'd better tell her I'm sorry.”

Nate nodded, somewhat sternly. “I think that would be a wise idea.”

Tom Gessner asked, “Who else?”

Blake supplied just two more names and then said, “And, I guess all the freshmen.”

Gessner sighed, clicking his pen closed. “Don't worry about remembering their names. I can get a list.”

“Is that it?” Blake asked.

“One more thing,” said Nate. “We have to search your locker.”

He half shrugged. “I gotta warn you, it's a mess. I haven't cleaned it out all year. But can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I think I've got one of those little hanging-man symbols on the locker door. Is that, you know, for
real?”

Blake had had that symbol on his locker since before Jim Boltz became ill, but he hadn't paid much attention to it. After all, unless you looked at it carefully, it looked like just another scratch, and every locker in the school had plenty of those. Even the Springfields had missed it the first time.

But it was there, all right, just like the others.

Mr. Maxwell's nose picked up a particular scent before they'd even gotten the locker door open, and he began whining, tugging at his leash to get closer. He was so excited that they had to secure his leash to a doorknob across the hall.

“Steady, boy, steady,” said Nate, scratching his ears. “You'll get your chance.”

Nate and Sarah moved quickly and carefully, emptying the contents bit by bit, coat by tennis racket by book by running shoe, into plastic bags on the floor.

Blake stood by and watched, fascinated and a little anxious. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“Whatever we find,” said Nate.

Sarah lifted a wadded-up windbreaker from the floor of the locker, then a gym towel, then some hot-rod magazines, and then she spotted it.

A soda straw.

“Bingo,” she said, picking it up with tweezers. She smelled it herself, then wrinkled her nose. “Max?”

Nate untied Max's leash from the doorknob and brought him over. Max took one sniff of the straw and went crazy, dancing, tugging at the leash, barking, looking at Nate and Sarah as if to say,
That's it! That's it! Can't you smell that?

While Nate secured Max to the doorknob again and gave him a treat—half to reward him and half to quiet him down—Sarah asked Blake, “How long has all this stuff been in the bottom of your locker?”

“Uh, couple weeks, I guess.”

She looked at Nate. “This thing's been buried down there at least that long.”

Nate clicked on his flashlight and illuminated the straw as she examined it. “But what's different about this one? Max didn't alert at the others.”

Sarah glanced up at Blake Hornsby, standing there healthy and normal. “And it didn't seem to work either.” She peered at the straw through a magnifying glass as Nate kept his light on it. “Sugar crystals again. We'll probably find Tricanol, just as before.” Her brow furrowed. “Waaaiiiit a minute.”

She turned the straw and looked in the other end. “Ohhh wow . . .”

“What is it?” Blake asked.

She let Nate look down the end of the straw. He whistled in awe.

“Bag,” she said. “BAG!”

Nate held a plastic bag open and she dropped in the straw. Then she yanked off her surgical gloves and grabbed her cell phone. She strained to remember. “Oh, what's his number, what's his number?”

Nate already had his pocket organizer in hand. “Who're you calling?”

“Algernon Wheeling.”

He raised his eyebrows just a moment, then looked up the number.

She peered at the straw through a magnifying glass as Nate kept his light on it.

9
algernon
wheeling

T
hat afternoon, Nate
and Sarah cleared a large area of the Holy Roller and set out the clothing, books, magazines, shoes, jackets, duffel bags, and anything else that once belonged to the victims. They mixed in some of their own clothes and some they'd bought at the local Goodwill, along with any books, handbags, backpacks, and personal items they could scrounge from the local grade school. Then they brought in Mr. Maxwell to play his favorite game: tracking down a scent in exchange for a biscuit.