Hangman's Curse Read online

  “She’s . . .” He couldn’t answer. “Pray, Sarah. Pray.”

  Paramedics scrambled down the secret stairway to meet them halfway. Within minutes, they emerged with Elisha’s limp, pale body, her protective hood removed and an oxygen mask clamped over her face. Nate, the firefighters, Elijah, and Ian stepped out into the daylight right behind them.

  “Algernon!” Sarah cried as the paramedics lowered Elisha onto a stretcher.

  Algernon Wheeling quickly examined her face and neck. “Yes, several bites.” He prepared a syringe as they cut away her protective suit. “This is AT490. I would say she needs a double dose. Administer this, please, and quickly.”

  A paramedic took the needle and jabbed it into her arm. “Okay, let’s get her to the hospital.”

  They grabbed up the stretcher and raced to a waiting ambulance, the Springfields and Algernon Wheeling running after.

  Norman and Ian went nowhere. Carrillo and another officer had already grabbed them, and now they brandished their handcuffs.

  “Wait,” said Mr. Harrigan, stepping in. “This isn’t necessary.”

  “Put them in our custody,” said Tom Gessner. “We can work something out, get them some counseling . . .”

  Carrillo clamped the cuffs on. “Take it up with the judge, fellas. I’m hauling these punks in.”

  Tom Gessner put a hand on Carrillo’s shoulder. “Then let us ride along. Come on, Dan. Please.”

  Carrillo considered the request, eye to eye with Gessner’s kind gaze. “Okay, Tom. But we’d better get going before I change my mind.”

  “I think she’s waking up.”

  It was the first sound she recognized as a voice. She’d been listening to garbled sounds for what seemed like hours. She moved and became aware of her body. She could feel her hands brushing across bedsheets, feel the pressure of a pillow against her head.

  Then she felt a hand on hers. “Elisha? Wake up, sweetheart.” Mom’s voice.

  She opened her eyes. They rolled about lazily for a moment, trying to focus on something, and finally, after a few blinks, she recognized her family, standing around her bed. There was Mom, Dad, and Elijah. And there was Professor Wheeling. They were all grinning at her, then grinning at each other, looking so happy they looked silly.

  A line from an old movie came to her and she managed to at least mumble it. “Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!”

  And they all laughed. She broke into a weak smile herself.

  Professor Wheeling straightened up, looking very happy with himself. “Good ol’ AT490! Good call, Wheeling, good call!”

  Elisha made a puzzled face. “What’s he talking about?”

  Her dad explained, “The antidote for the spider venom. The medics gave you a double dose, and then the doctors had to give you an additional dose every day for a week, but it worked.”

  “Sweetheart,” said Professor Wheeling, “you sustained over fifty bites. That would have been enough venom to kill at least that many people.”

  That alarmed her. “Am I all right?”

  He was quick to reassure her, “Oh, yes, yes, absolutely! As a matter of fact, your own body has probably begun its own immunity program by now. I would be willing to wager that spider bites will no longer be a problem for you—uh, I wouldn’t press my luck, of course . . .”

  “Of course!” she said, recalling how it felt to have hundreds of spiders crawling all over her. “But . . . I’ve been out for a week?”

  Her mother nodded, a grim kind of smile on her face. “We almost lost you.”

  Oh. There was Dr. Stuart, stepping around her family to get to her. Only now did she become aware that she was in the hospital!

  Dr. Stuart took her pulse, then held a light to her eyes. “Look here.” He waved the light back and forth—it made her want to blink—and then he put it in his shirt pocket and smiled. “I would say she’s with us again.”

  “Praise God!” said Dad.

  “Welcome back, sis,” said Elijah.

  She vaguely recalled the last thing she could remember—and then regretted remembering it. “I—I saw Abel Frye. He was standing right there in front of me. It was terrible.”

  “Now you know what the other kids went through,” said Dr. Stuart. “They’d all heard the rumors and legends about Abel Frye and seen Crystal Sparks’ painting of him, just as you did. All it took was the spider’s venom to turn the legends into a frightening hallucination, their worst fears brought to life before their eyes.”

  “I—I saw Abel Frye.”

  “No wonder they were so scared! But . . . it was Norman, wasn’t it? He came back to help me.”

  They nodded.

  “What happened?”

  They all looked at Professor Wheeling, so he answered. “Norman had also isolated a male pheromone, one the male uses to mark his territory and warn off other spiders. He applied it to the old jacket he was wearing, and that’s how he managed to work around the spiders without being endangered by them— and it’s how he managed to get you out of the old furnace room. The spiders all fled from the scent on his jacket.”

  “He saved my life.”

  “He certainly did,” said Sarah.

  “But . . .” Her heart sank. “There are the others. Amy and Crystal . . . the boys . . . What’s going to happen to him?”

  Nate betrayed a hint of a smile as he said, “Well, Officer Carrillo arrested him and Ian Snyder.”

  “They’re going to go to prison, aren’t they?”

  Nate gave a half nod. “That’s a real possibility. Some pretty terrible things have happened. Most of it was Norman’s doing, but Ian could be charged as an accessory.”

  She looked away for a moment, feeling a wave of sadness. “I feel sorry for them. I mean, I’m not trying to say they’re innocent, but if people only knew what they’ve been through!”

  “I know Ian has a story to tell,” said Elijah.

  “And so does Norman! They just need someone to listen.”

  “Well,” said Nate, “there is one ray of hope. Mr. Gessner and Mr. Harrigan went to the judge and told him about a particular mentor program that seems to be working quite well in Montague, Oregon.”

  That brought a smile to her face. “You’re kidding! You told them about that?”

  Her dad nodded. “I made some calls. The police department and prosecutor’s office in Montague sent some of their people up to help the town of Baker set up a similar program here—with Norman and Ian being the first participants. Ms. Wyrthen’s all for it, the parents are asking for help, and Tom Gessner and Mr. Harrigan have volunteered to be mentors.”

  “That’s great!”

  Nate was still cautious. “We’ll see. It’s all probationary, and the judge has drawn some pretty tight boundaries.”

  “Ian will make it work,” said Elijah. “He just needs to see that there’s some love somewhere in this world, somebody willing to be a friend. I’m going to stick by him, that’s for sure.”

  “Same goes for Norman,” said Elisha.

  “And with Gessner and Harrigan on board, it does look promising,” Sarah replied.

  “So,” Elisha wondered, “did you ever find out what happened to Amy and Crystal? Was I right?”

  “Very good theory,” Professor Wheeling told her. “We found a concentrated nest of brown wolf hybrids just next to that shaft you explored, and both Amy and Crystal had female pheromone on the clothing in their lockers—and that could have come from scented dollar bills. Amy probably got hers from Jim Boltz. Crystal got hers from—well, who knows? Dollar bills circulate around, from person to person. The scent was all over the school by the time you went down that shaft. Amy and Crystal were only the first ones to be bitten by hybrids. There would have been hundreds more if the spiders hadn’t been stopped.”

  Elisha’s gaze fell. “So, it’s kind of a good ending, I guess. But it’s hard to feel happy about anything. No one should have died. It just didn’t have to happen.”

  “
Oh, but there’s still one consolation,” said Sarah. “There are some students—now on their way to a full recovery—who have a whole new perspective on harassing others.”

  Her eyes brightened. “The, the other guys? Jim Boltz, and Doug Anderson, and . . .”

  “They’re going to make it.”

  “I am so glad!”

  “So all the news isn’t bad.”

  “But what about Shawna Miller and Blake Hornsby? Why didn’t they get sick?”

  “Call it luck, or call it providence. Norman put the wrong spider in Blake’s locker, so he was never bitten. As for Shawna, well, the witches put the hex symbol on her locker, but we still got there before Norman did. She’s been a much nicer girl now that she realizes how close she came to being a victim.”

  Elijah said, “You ought to see the high school. They’re fumigating the whole thing. Ms. Wyrthen and Mr. Loman are even helping supervise.”

  “Then it should go very efficiently.” They all laughed at that. “Dad? Have you written your report to Mr. Morgan yet?”

  He smiled at her. “I was waiting to hear your comments. What would you like to say?” He took out his pocket recorder and clicked it on.

  “Well . . .” She thought for a moment. “This may sound kind of strange, but the first thing I want to do is tell Susie Peterson I’m sorry I teased her at Bible camp last summer.” Emotion she didn’t expect rose within her and her eyes filled with tears. “And I’m sorry I didn’t let Ingrid what’s-her-name play with me in the second grade. I’m sorry for anybody I’ve ever hurt.”

  That made Elijah think of someone. “I need to apologize to Shawn McLindon. I made fun of his guitar playing, but really, he’s a lot better than I am.”

  Elisha continued, “People are precious, and sometimes we forget that. They’re precious because God made them, and they need friends, they need love. Jesus never teased or hurt anyone, but He loved everybody, even the little and dumb and fat and ugly and weird, and, well, if we all lived like that, then maybe terrible things like we’ve just seen wouldn’t happen.” She feebly wiped a tear from her eye. “And, I guess that’s it.”

  “. . . the doctors tell us it could take another week for the poison to completely purge from her system. After that, Elisha should recover the full use of her limbs and be able to walk again. So we wait at her bedside, prayers of thanksgiving ever on our lips for our brave daughter, and deep gratitude in our hearts for the commitment and heroism of Dr. Algernon Wheeling, Dr. Stuart, and the fine staff at Baker General Hospital.”

  Sitting before his computer aboard the Holy Roller, parked in the hospital parking lot not far from Elisha’s window, Nate Springfield completed his report to Mr. Morgan.

  “As we close this investigation, we are sternly warned that the Truth behind the Facts runs far deeper than the commission of the crime itself, the bizarre weapons used, and even the motive. There is a vital lesson to be learned here, a Truth our society must not lose sight of, and that is the sanctity of every human life and the dignity of every individual. Increasingly, in a world that seeks to establish its own knowledge and values without God, we find our concept of humanity—real, genuine, human humanity—falling through the cracks. If, as our children are so often taught, we are nothing but a cosmic accident that arose for no reason out of primordial slime, and that the stronger among us are necessarily the better among us, then where does love fit in, or kindness to those in need, or simply going out of our way to lend a hand to a fellow human being? Where will we find heroes who are willing to risk their own comfort and safety, even their very lives, for those who are weaker than they? How do we know there is such a thing as human dignity, or even the simple right to walk through a school hallway without being shoved, beaten, teased, or harassed?

  “Metal detectors may keep weapons out of the schools, and security officers can maintain at least a surface tranquillity, but these will not keep out the pain, anger, and loneliness that cause a child to bring a weapon to school in the first place. Unless our children are regularly and emphatically taught respect for themselves and one another and provided with a firm and lasting reason for such respect—I suggest, of course, a biblical, godly reason: We are all made in the image of God and are each precious in His sight, regardless of how we look, or what we can do—we have not learned from the incident in Baker, Washington.

  “From her hospital bed, my daughter, Elisha, summed it up very well, and her words are worth repeating: ‘People are precious, and sometimes we forget that . . .’”

  In his office in Washington, D.C., Mr. Morgan read the words aloud to his secretary, Consuela, the moment Nate Springfield’s final draft came over the fax machine. “‘They’re precious because God made them, and they need friends, they need love. Jesus never teased or hurt anyone, but He loved everybody, even the little and dumb and fat and ugly and weird, and if we all lived like that, then maybe terrible things like we’ve just seen wouldn’t happen.’”

  Consuela wiped a tear from her eye. “If only . . .”

  Mr. Morgan nodded. “If only.” He eyed the report again and smiled proudly. “I think I’ll take it to the President myself.” With a pleased chuckle, he gave the pages a proud tap of his hand. “Veritas!” he declared and went into his office to get his coat.

  Don’t miss the second book in the

  Veritas Project series!

  The VERITAS PROJECT has a new assignment: To find the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of two runaways. But doing so will mean entering a place where gravity is turned upside down, time runs backward, and nightmares are real.