The Book of Bad Things (21 page)

C
ASSIDY
,
J
OEY
,
P
ING, AND
H
AL
found a bank of computers in the center of the room. They pulled up the library catalogue. Ping entered some keywords into the search field — ley lines, vortexes, curses — and soon the group had acquired a short list of books and periodicals that they thought might provide answers to their questions. Ping printed out the results for each of them. To save time, they decided to split up.

Cassidy clutched her paper in one hand and a strap of her backpack in the other. The library was immense, the dark ceiling as high as a cathedral’s. From the front of the space to the back, a dozen aisles led off into the stacks, many of them disappearing into shadow. Dewey decimal system numbers were posted at each corridor, labeled by category, white on black. Cassidy checked the digits on her list and headed purposefully toward the first corresponding aisle.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the others spread out, vanishing into their own corridors. The farther away from the main space she strolled, the faster Cassidy’s heart raced. She suddenly felt very alone. And very afraid. She was tempted to go back and chase after Ping. Why hadn’t they partnered up?

What would she do if she came around a dark corner to find the gaping mouth of Owen Chase waiting for her?

Where was this stupid book?

Cassidy scanned the shelves for the title.
Archaeology and Folklore of the Twentieth Century
.
Sounds snooze-tastic,
Cassidy thought, trying to make herself laugh. It didn’t work. The prospect of flipping through hundreds of pages to find an answer filled her with a sense of dread, which only grew larger when the fluorescent lights over her head began to flicker.

She held her breath, froze all movement.

The lights sputtered, then quickly faded away. Instinctively, Cassidy reached her arms out, gripping opposite shelves. She pressed her lips together. Light from the main room spilled about halfway down the aisle, and an ambient glow came through the spaces between books from the passages on either side of her.

Cassidy stood still, keeping her mind quiet. She would not run away like she had that awful night in New York. Not this time. That was what the vortex-thing would want her to do. She was nobody’s puppet. Mr. Stanton had taught her that years ago.

Listening to the sound of her own breath, she studied the dim titles of the books surrounding her.
It must be here, somewhere,
she thought, fighting against the dark images her brain was producing. Pushing it all away, she ran her fingers along the spines, squinting to read the words through the blanket of encroaching shadow. “Wh-where
are
you?” she stammered.

The floor shuddered. The books trembled. Cassidy thought of the subway at night, passing through her neighborhood. She pulled back, glancing all around. Down the aisle, in the light, people were moving around the main room. No one else seemed to notice the disturbance.

A low growl filled the air, barely audible. The sound vibrated in her stomach, and she recognized it. That familiar humming. The vortex-thing was here. It had found her. Her confidence began to ebb. Cassidy knew if she moved at all now, she’d collapse, or wet herself, or something worse, so she planted her feet. She closed her eyes, and a dizzying flood of strange images spun past the inside of her eyelids — objects she recognized from Ursula’s driveway, in the Dumpsters, scattered on the ground.

Her spine smacked the shelves behind her; she felt faint. When she opened her eyes again, through the space between books, she saw an enormous shadowy shape moving, no,
pulsing
down the next aisle, like a giant black worm, into the darkness away from the main room. As it slid past her, she noticed iridescent scales glistening on its back. She opened her mouth to scream, but all that came out was a silent puff of air.

An angry voice whispered, maybe in her head, maybe aloud,
Bring it back … Bring it back … Bring it back to me …

A
BOOK FELL TO THE GROUND
with a resounding
whap
, jarring Cassidy away from the horrible vision in the adjacent aisle.

She blinked, and the creature was gone. Only the echo of its voice remained.

Bring … it … back …

Cassidy exhaled, feeling her shoulders relax slightly now that the beast had disappeared. Glancing at the floor, she saw a vague impression of a title staring up at her.
Archaeology and Folklore of the Twentieth Century.

As she bent to pick it up, she saw a pair of feet slide into the shadow at her left. She grabbed the book and stood, easing away from whoever was still in the aisle with her. At this point, Cassidy didn’t care how foolish she looked dashing out into the main room like a girl gone mad. But when she recognized the person who had knocked the book to the floor, she stopped and stared in awe.

Ursula was only there for a moment longer, dressed in her colorless jogging suit like the one she’d worn in Cassidy’s dream. A kind and sad smile decorated her face, before she disappeared into the reaches of the dim corridor.

Cassidy found her way back to the corner where the group had agreed to meet. From the looks on Ping’s and Joey’s faces, she hadn’t been the only one who had been visited by the beast. A pile of books lay on the table between them.

When Hal arrived moments later, Cassidy told them all what she’d seen and heard. Ping and Joey shared their own stories, which were almost exactly the same as Cassidy’s. The flickering lights. The humming. The black, snaky worm-thing. The whispering voice.

Hal listened in awe. While looking for the books on his short list, he hadn’t experienced anything of the sort. He wondered aloud if it was because he’d returned the mannequin that morning.

“It’s the thing from the vortex,” said Joey. “The beast found us. It’s gonna send the dead to get us.”

“It said ‘Bring it back,’ ” Cassidy mentioned. “But what? We didn’t take anything from the house.”

“Maybe it’s not talking about an object,” said Ping. “Maybe it’s talking about
us
.”

“Us?” said Cassidy. “What do you mean,
us
?”

“We went into the house. We spent some time standing at the vortex. In the vortex. Maybe what Joey said before is right — this creature thinks it owns us now. We’re the
it
that it’s talking about.”

Cassidy shivered. “What if the creature comes back? What if it tries to take us?”

“If we’re not safe now,” said Hal, “we’re never going to be safe.”

“But you’re safe, Hal. Aren’t you?” Joey asked. “You didn’t see what we saw.”

“I don’t feel safe.”

“I’m not sure it was even here in the first place,” said Ping. “The other night, it sent a vision to Hal. Today, we all shared a vision too, like a daydream. I think it’s only reaching out. Searching for us.”

“And if you don’t return to the house,” said Hal, “it will find a way to bring you back there. Trust me. I’ve seen what it can do.”

“Ursula was trapped in that house,” said Cassidy. “If we go back, we might be trapped too.”

“With a bunch of zombies, apparently,” said Joey.

“Are we willing to risk that?” Hal asked. “Being trapped in order to save our friends? Our families?” The group was quiet for a moment, considering Hal’s question. “I mean, Ursula wasn’t really a hoarder at all, was she? She gave up everything that mattered, everything she cared about, even her reputation, her dignity, to protect people.”

Cassidy thought of Mr. Faros and the lesson about Theseus and the Minotaur. Theseus had chosen to enter the Cretan labyrinth in order to stop King Minos from sacrificing any more young people to the monster. Was Ursula — an eccentric and frail old woman — like Theseus? A true hero? If so, was it possible for Cassidy to be the same?

She understood that they had two options: fight or flight. Both seemed equally as dangerous. Fight and they may succumb to the monster. Flee and the monster would continue to pursue them. But if they stood their ground, at least they had a chance of winning, however small. “
I’m
willing to risk that,” Cassidy said, surprising herself. Her friends heard her, and after a moment, each of them nodded tentatively.

“We should all stay together from now on,” Ping suggested, pulling out a chair and finally sitting down. “I think the …
beast
was able to get into our heads because we went off by ourselves. Maybe it can only reach out to us when we’re alone.”

“Fine,” said Cassidy, also sitting down. “Then let’s do what we came here to do.” She grabbed the book that had minutes earlier caused her so much trouble and opened to the table of contents. “Together.”

E
VERY LITTLE NOISE THAT
echoed through the great space caused everyone at the small table to jump. Now and again, they interrupted their research by reading aloud bits of information that they’d discovered.

One article that Joey found discussed the history of ley lines in England and made a comparison to some long forgotten roads in Vermont.

Cassidy discovered some information about vortexes out in the Southwest, how these particular spots supposedly had healing properties, physical and mental, and that people made pilgrimages to visit these locations.

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to visit our special little spot here in New Jersey,” said Joey. “Not for
healing
anyway.”

Hal read to them from a book about folklore, about how immigrants to North America had brought with them stories of gods and goddesses from the old countries. The author of the book surmised that when some of these old stories had been lost over generations, new gods had sprung up to take their place. “I guess it makes sense,” he said, looking up from the passage. “If we’re dealing with some sort of entity that exists on this continent, like a new god … or a new devil … it would be one that reveres
owning
things. A new religion: selfishness.”

“New god. Old devil,” said Joey. “I just want it to leave us alone. Hasn’t anyone found something that can help us?”

Ping gave a small wave. “I think I might have something here.” She scanned the open book in front of her, swiftly moving her index finger along the page. “I was just looking at a chapter about other dimensions. Wormholes. Portals. Vortexes. It says that ancient cultures knew of special spots,
convergences
it says here, and they often marked them with stone. As a sacred act. All over the world, people have built pyramids, circles of rocks,
henges
.”

“So all we need to do is build a pyramid?” Joey asked, his eyebrow raised.

“No,” said Ping, flustered. She frowned at the page, as if her answer were written in the space between the words. “It wasn’t about what the people built there. What helped them was the
idea
of protecting themselves from big bad things. Things beyond their comprehension. This book says that some people believed that it wasn’t the
huge
efforts of the civilization that did the trick — you know, the pyramids, the circles — but the smaller attempts of the local people, like old rituals and prayers, that acted as a seal of protection against evil.”

“A seal of protection?” Cassidy asked. “That sounds like our answer!”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Joey. “What kind of
small attempt
can we make? I don’t know any old prayers.”

Ping flipped through the next several pages. Her eyes grew wide. “Wow. I think I might have found an answer.” She glanced up from the book. “There’s a supposedly true account here of a place in England, a village called Gingerwich that sat on top of one of the ancient ley lines. Listen to this.”

And Ping told them a story.