The Curse (Seacliff High Mystery Book 2) (5 page)

“Couldn’t hurt,” Devon agreed. “But if Spyder was as afraid for V as the man let on I’d say the running-away scenario makes a lot of sense.”

“But why take all the stuff? Why not just deliver it, then take off? Or, for that matter, why volunteer to deliver the stuff in the first place? Something just doesn’t fit.”

“Maybe we should talk to his brother,” Devon suggested. “We could try to find him after school tomorrow.”

“We don’t even know what he looks like, or what his schedule is,” Alyson pointed out.

“We’ll have Mac pull it up on the school records,” Devon said.

“I think Mac has a brother in seventh grade,” Alyson remembered. “Maybe he knows Spyder’s brother. We should ask her this afternoon.”

“Good idea.” Devon parked the Expedition in front of the high school gym, where the gang was supposed to meet at four thirty. “We have about a half hour to kill. Do you want to get a soda or something?”

“Sure. Let’s just go over to the sandwich shop across the street. We can sit out front and wait for the others.”

Mac, Caleb, Trevor, and Eli showed up within minutes of one another. Devon and Alyson filled the others in on their visit to the occult shop, leaving out the part about the shopkeeper’s strange prophecy for Alyson.

“Didn’t you tell me you have a brother in middle school?” Alyson asked Mac.

“Yeah, the little dork’s in seventh grade.”

“Do you think he might know Spyder’s brother Stretch?”

“Maybe. I’ll call him to ask.”

While Mac called her brother from her cell the others ordered their own beverages.

“He knows him,” Mac said, her hand over the cell mouthpiece. “Do you want me to set up a meeting?”

“Yeah, for tomorrow after school. We could go over to the middle school as soon as we get out.”

Mac talked to her brother for a few more minutes before hanging up. “Stretch is on the basketball team and has practice after school, so my brother said to meet him in the gym.”

“Perfect,” Alyson exclaimed. “That way we won’t have to worry about missing him.”

“Maybe we should go out to the barn and look around some more. We might find other clues as to what might have happened to Spyder and V,” Mac suggested.

Eli looked out the window. “It’ll be dark soon, and besides, I have a ton of homework. We’ll have to go tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Alyson said, “what’s everyone’s schedule tomorrow?”

“Eli and I have football until four thirty,” Trevor volunteered.

“And we were going to meet my brother at the middle school,” Mac said.

“I really need to work on the decorations,” Caleb added. “I want to take everything out there on Thursday afternoon so we’ll have all day Friday to set up. Tomorrow’s already Wednesday. I’m running out of time.”

“Mac, Devon, and I will meet with Spyder’s brother while you’re at football, then we’ll all meet to go out to the barn,” Alyson said.

They all headed home for dinner and to catch up on their much-neglected homework.

They met in the drama department to help with the decorations again during lunch period the next day. It looked like Caleb had rounded up quite a few more helpers; the room that was being used for prop creation was packed. It seemed most of them had embraced the mood of the holiday. There were quite a few orange and black sweatshirts in the crowd, and someone had brought in a recording of “Monster Mash” that was playing on a loop in the background.

“Where’s Caleb?” Alyson asked a petite blond girl with long braids cascading down her back.

“He’s in the woodshop having a coronary,” she replied. “Several of us went out to the barn after school yesterday to start setting up the decorations you guys delivered on Monday, but they were all missing.”

“Missing?” Alyson asked. “What do you mean?”

“Gone without a trace. Every last tombstone, ghost, and goblin.”

“But what could have happened to them? Who could have taken them? And why?”

“Don’t ask me. The place looked perfectly normal and perfectly empty. We broke the news to Caleb this morning and he’s been hyperventilating ever since. He really takes this decoration stuff seriously. I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said and walked away.

“Wow. That really adds a twist to the whole missing-friends mystery.” Mac walked up behind Alyson and stood next to her shocked friend. “What if Spyder and V did deliver the stuff to the barn before taking off and someone stole it?”

“Makes sense,” Trevor agreed.

“Seems like maybe the cops were right after all,” Eli joined in. “Maybe they did just take off.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Alyson still sounded doubtful.

“I guess you heard.” Caleb had walked into the room to join them.

“Sorry, bro.” Trevor placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Guess you’re really short decorations now.”

“You have no idea.” Caleb sat down on a stool next to one of the large worktables and rested his head in his hands, massaging his temples rhythmically, as if trying to keep it from exploding. “I have to tell you, I don’t know if this event is going to happen. I was behind anyway, thanks to all the time I’d been spending at the museum, then an entire truckload of props goes missing, now this. I’d planned to take the remainder of the stuff out to the barn tomorrow night, but I don’t know if I’ll have everything ready by then.”

“Even if you can get everything ready, aren’t you worried about someone stealing all the stuff if you take it out tomorrow afternoon?” Devon asked.

“I am, but there’s so much to do on Friday that if we don’t take it out Thursday we’ll never be ready in time. I’m thinking about staying the night out there to keep an eye on everything.”

“Alone?” Alyson asked. “After everything that’s happened? Sounds dangerous.”

“I asked around, but so far I haven’t had any volunteers from the drama department to stay with me. Everyone is fine with skipping school on Friday to help with the actual setup, but no one wants to stay over. I don’t suppose any of you are up for a sleepover?” Caleb asked hopefully.

“I’m in,” Devon volunteered. “Sounds like fun. Spending the night in a haunted house two days before Halloween.”

“It’s a barn, not a house,” Eli reminded him. “And we have no reason to believe it’s haunted. I’m in too. Dad’s still out of town, so he won’t care.”

“I’ll come too,” Alyson volunteered, “and I’ll bring Tucker. He seems to be pretty helpful when it comes to dealing with the big bad guys.”

“I doubt my mom would let me stay overnight in a deserted barn.” Mac was staring at a piece of paper in front of her, as if hoping it contained the answer to an unasked question. “Maybe if I told her I was staying at Alyson’s. It’d be just a tiny lie.”

“Well, if everyone else is going, I’m in.” Trevor completed the set.

“Thanks, everyone.” Caleb sighed in relief. “I can’t tell you how much I didn’t want to stay out there alone.”

“Let’s get marshmallows and graham crackers and make s’mores,” Mac suggested. “We could build a big bonfire—outside of course. We could roast marshmallows and maybe roast hot dogs for dinner. It’ll be like camping.”

“Does everyone have a sleeping bag?” Caleb asked.

“Actually, I don’t,” Alyson realized.

“Didn’t your family ever go camping when you lived in Minnesota?” Mac asked. “I hear there’s great camping there.”

“No, we weren’t much for camping.”

“You can use my dad’s,” Devon offered.

“Great; we have a plan, then.” Caleb smiled. “We’ll go over the specifics tomorrow at lunch. We’ll need to get started loading everything right after school. Can we use the cargo area of your Expedition?” he asked Devon.

“Fine with me, but you might be better off renting a truck. We could get everything in one load. We could load up, take it all out to the barn, and then I could go back into town to return the truck and pick up Eli and Trevor after practice. We’ll have all our camping stuff beside the decorations.”

“And we’ll need food,” Trevor reminded them.

“I’ll get the food,” Alyson volunteered. “I’m sure my mom will help out.”

“You have the coolest mom,” Mac observed. “There’s no way my mom would help me get food together so I could go camping with a bunch of boys in an abandoned barn.”

“Yeah, she’s the best.”

“Anything else we can do?” Trevor asked.

“Probably, but at the moment I’m too scattered to even know what needs to be done. I’ve got the art and drama departments working at replacing as many of the missing decorations as possible.” Caleb looked around uncertainly. “Even though all the evidence is pointing to Spyder and V taking off like everyone else thinks, I’m still not totally convinced that’s the case. Something still doesn’t fit, but I can’t really put my finger on it.”

“We have a meeting set up to talk to Spyder’s little brother this afternoon,” Mac told him. “I was thinking about canceling it after we heard about the second set of missing decorations, but we can go ahead and keep it if you’d like. Maybe Spyder said something to his brother about taking off. It would be nice to know for sure.”

“That’d be great.” Caleb got up and headed toward the door. “Let me know what you find out. “I’ll either be in the art room or the woodshop all afternoon.”

After school Alyson, Mac, and Devon headed over to the middle school, which looked much like the high school, only older and more run-down.

“This used to be the high school,” Mac explained. “They built the new high school on the cliff about thirty years ago and turned this into a middle school. The gym’s the grayish-looking building to the left.”

Basketball practice was in full swing, so they took seats on the bleachers with Mac’s brother Kyle.

“So what do you want with Stretch anyway?” he asked.

“His brother is missing,” Alyson began. “And we’re trying to help a friend of his track him down. We thought Stretch might be able to tell us something that would help us out.”

“Stretch is the short guy bringing the ball up the court now,” Kyle said.

“Really? With a name like Stretch, I thought he’d be tall,” Alyson observed.

“Naw, he’s the shortest guy on the team. He got his name because he always manages to stretch himself enough to steal the ball or make a basket. He’s one of the best shooters on the team.”

Kyle wasn’t exaggerating about Stretch’s ability to somehow elongate himself to make the play. He
was
one of the best players on the team. After the coach called an end to practice Kyle called Stretch over to meet them.

“They want to ask you some stuff about your brother,” Kyle explained after introducing everyone.

“You a cop?” he asked Devon.

“No, just a friend. A friend of a friend, actually. Spyder’s friend Caleb doesn’t necessarily agree with the police’s assessment that Spyder ran away.”

Stretch looked them over for a minute, as if deciding whether or not to trust them.

“Spyder didn’t run away,” he said. “We stick together. He wouldn’t leave me. You see, our parents are kind of . . . self-involved. They really don’t have time for me and Spyder. So we sort of take care of each other.”

“Did he say anything at all to you about going away?” Alyson asked.

“No. He was going to take me to the batting cages, and then to a movie on Saturday night, but he never came home.”

“Do your parents think he ran away?” Devon asked.

“Yeah. They don’t really get him. He’s the way he is because of them, you know. They never even see us. We could tell them we were going to rob a bank, then burn down city hall, and they’d probably say ‘okay, have fun.’ It’s like they know we’re there, but we always seem to be just below their cognitive radar.”

“Wow,” Alyson observed. “You have quite a lot of insight for a seventh grader. And cognitive. Where’d you learn a word like that?”

“My mom’s a psychologist. Just because she doesn’t see me doesn’t mean I don’t see her. Sometimes I just sit and listen to her talk to patients and she doesn’t even notice. So what about Spyder? Can you find him?”

“Honestly, we’re not sure. We think he was trying to protect a friend of his who was in trouble,” Alyson explained. “Does that make sense to you?”

Stretch hesitated. “Maybe. But I still think he would have said something to me if he were going to take off. We’re really close.”

“Is anything missing from his room?” Mac asked. “Clothes? Toothbrush? Money?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

“Would it be okay if we looked around his room?” Alyson asked. “For clues that might help us find him?”

“Sure; you can follow me home.”

“I can give you a ride,” Devon volunteered.

“I have my bike.”

“No problem. I have an Expedition; it’ll fit in the back.”

They dropped Kyle off on the way and then followed Stretch’s directions to a huge modern house in the newest part of town. Cutter’s Cove was a working man’s town and most people lived in small, boxy houses. With the arrival of telecommuting, a new breed of resident had come to live in Cutter’s Cove, although they were employed in cities like Portland and even Seattle.

“Nice house,” Mac complimented.

“It’s okay. I liked our old one better. It wasn’t so stuffy. You guys can come in,” he offered after getting his bike out of the back of Devon’s SUV.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Alyson asked cautiously. “I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset your parents.”

“Don’t worry. No one’s home. No one’s ever home.”

Alyson, Devon, and Mac followed Stretch into a very nicely and expensively furnished living room.

“Spyder’s room’s up here.” Stretch jogged up an elaborate spiral staircase.

“The house looks like a museum,” Mac whispered as she followed him up the stairs. “Not a speck of dust in sight. And where’s all the stuff? You know, shoes, schoolbooks, abandoned mail. My house has
stuff
in it. This house looks like no one actually lives here.”

“I know what you mean,” Alyson agreed.

“This is his room.” Stretch opened a door on the right that had
keep out
and
enter at your own risk
posters plastered all over it.

The room was as unlike the rest of the house as it was possible to be. The walls were painted black and covered with sketches and paintings depicting death, deformed bodies, and satanic icons. The bed was unmade and the floor was littered with discarded black T-shirts and jeans.

“I know it looks kind of creepy,” Stretch said, holding up a decapitated Yoda statue. “But in spite of my brother’s choice in art, he’s really a good guy. I think he just does all this to freak our parents out. To get their attention.”

Mac walked into the bathroom attached to the bedroom and looked around. “This his toothbrush?” she asked, pointing toward a black-handled electric model.

“Yeah, it’s his.” Spyder opened the medicine cabinet. “His shaving stuff is here too. I doubt he’d leave without it.”

Mac pocketed the toothbrush, then walked back into the bedroom to join the others, who were shifting through the items on the dresser and bedside nightstand.

“There’s nothing here to indicate that he was planning on taking off,” Devon admitted. “There’s a note here with movie times for last weekend, just like Stretch said.”

Alyson looked at her watch. “It’s almost four thirty. We should get going.” She turned toward Stretch. “Thanks for showing us around. I’m not sure we can do anything to find Spyder and V, but we’ll keep our eyes and ears open and let you know the minute we hear anything.”

They let themselves out and headed toward the SUV.

“This whole thing is getting more and more complicated.” Alyson climbed into the front passenger seat next to Devon. “On one hand, all the evidence points toward the fact that Spyder and V simply took off. On the other, if you were planning to take off why would you make specific plans for the weekend, and why wouldn’t you take some of your stuff? It doesn’t make sense.”