Hangman's Curse Read online

  Which raised the question: Did most high schools in most small towns have a metal detector just inside the front door? Nate had to remove his belt and car keys before the metal detector would let him through without beeping. It was a cruel reminder of a new reality in public schools. Parents all over town still trusted this to be a safe place for their kids to learn and challenge life. Unfortunately— and so hard to face!—this was also a place where bizarre and dangerous things were not supposed to happen, but could.

  To hear Tom Gessner tell it, bizarre and dangerous things were happening all right—things the metal detectors were powerless to prevent.

  Nate got his belt and keys back from the student attendant and entered the main hall, a long, echoing passage with poster-plastered bulletin boards announcing anything and everything in loud, eye-catching colors and a voluminous trophy case proudly displaying the glories and awards of many a winning team over the years. Down the hall in both directions were numbered classroom doors and lockers, lockers, lockers. Beyond that, the start of more halls, more posters, more lockers. A newcomer might get lost in here. The glassed-in school office was right across the hall from the main doors. He went inside, signed in, and got directions to Gessner’s office.

  “Nate Springfield!” Tom Gessner, a young man with close-cropped hair and beard, got up from his desk and offered his hand.

  Nate shook his hand and admired Gessner’s cozy little office. Gessner was new on the faculty this year, but it wasn’t hard to see he was well qualified and experienced. The informal snapshots, funny little gifts from students, mementos from other jobs in other places—not to mention several degrees displayed on the walls—testified to that.

  A uniformed police officer also rose and offered his hand. Gessner introduced him. “Nate Springfield, this is Dan Carrillo, in charge of security.” Carrillo was a shorter man, a bit thin, and nervous, like a tight little terrier. He shook Nate’s hand and muttered hello, but didn’t appear too happy. Gessner continued, “He’s an officer with the Baker police, and this year we have him on campus full time to handle security.” Then he added with a twinkle in his eye, “He came with the metal detectors.”

  “And to serve as liaison between the school and the police department,” Carrillo added boldly. “When you talk to me, you’re talking to the Baker City Police—and they’re talking to you.” That last line came across as a stern reminder.

  Nate noticed Officer Carrillo’s badge, gun, belt radio, night stick, handcuffs, and beeper. He was serious about this. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” Nate said.

  “Maybe.” Officer Carrillo closed the office door as Gessner gestured to an empty chair. “But let’s be clear from the beginning. Mr. Gessner’s the one who called you in—”

  “My pastor had read about you,” Gessner shared proudly.

  Carrillo continued, irritated by the interruption. “But I’m still not convinced you’re needed.”

  “Well, this would be a good time to find that out,” Nate replied, looking in Gessner’s direction.

  Gessner sat in his desk chair and rotated it toward the center of the room, facing Carrillo and Nate. “Well, Mr. Springfield comes with some impressive references from police departments all over the country.” He handed Carrillo a folder crammed with pages of information. “Take a look. He and his associates—his wife and kids, to be exact—have done undercover work, crime-scene reconstruction, sting operations, you name it.”

  Carrillo scanned the papers and scowled. “The Veritas Project? What’s that?”

  “It’s what we are and what we do,” said Nate. “We’re privately funded—”

  “Which means they don’t cost us a cent!” Gessner inserted.

  “—to investigate unusual cases and uncover the Truth, whatever it is.”

  Carrillo read further. “‘Judeo-Christian principles applied to case study.’ . . . Is this religious?”

  Nate chuckled. “No. We just employ a tried-and-true way of looking at things.”

  “And considering what we’re up against,” said Gessner, “their way of looking at things could be exactly what we need.”

  “A way of looking at things?” Carrillo asked, his skepticism obvious.

  “Our country’s having its problems, Officer Carrillo,” Nate explained. “We’ve got drugs, disease, crime, violence, the breakup of the home, and that’s just naming a few. Now, everybody likes to find something or someone to blame, but we’re saying a big part of the reason is that we’ve lost sight of God. When you lose sight of God, you lose sight of what the Truth is. When The Veritas Project investigates a case, we assume up front that the Truth is the Truth, even if it isn’t popular, even if we don’t like it. The Truth is like God: It is what it is, and you can’t change it, and you can’t ignore it.”

  Carrillo nodded to himself. “A philosopher!” He scolded Gessner, “You bring us a philosopher when what we really need is more cops!” He looked at Nate. “No offense, Mr. Springfield, but I don’t see what all this, this touchy-feely, get-to-the-heart stuff has to do with our problem here.”

  “I think it has everything to do with it,” Gessner countered. “But you don’t have to worry about Mr. Springfield’s qualifications. Both he and his wife, Sarah, were with the FBI for several years; he was a county sheriff, and she was a professor of criminology and forensics at the University of Washington. Because they’re independent and privately funded, they can do the kind of investigating the police don’t have the time or the budget to do.”

  Carrillo turned to Nate. “So just what are you going to do that the police and the health department and the medical pros haven’t already done? We’ve checked all the locker rooms, the kitchen, the food in the cafeteria, the candy in the candy machines, the pop in the pop machines, the water, everything. We’ve interviewed all kinds of kids who had any contact with the victims. We’ve done background checks and looked for illegal drugs.”

  “We’ll just take it from there,” Nate answered, “just build on what you’ve started and see what we find.”

  Out on the sidewalk that circled the school, two students wearing yellow grounds-crew badges around their necks pushed a trash can on a cart and looked for litter.

  Elijah pushed the cart and watched as a meter attached to the cartwheels ticked off the school building’s dimensions. “One hundred forty, one hundred forty-five . . .”

  Elisha carried a pointed stick and jabbed at litter wherever she found it—even as she verified the number of classrooms along this side of the building. “Four rooms . . . this one’s a cloakroom and storage . . . and that should be the girls’ rest room. The windows have swing latches, no cranks.”

  Nate pulled a small writing pad from his shirt pocket and leafed through some notes he’d taken. “Now, when Mr. Gessner and I talked on the phone, he told me you’ve had three kids get sick so far . . . Tod Kramer, a junior; Doug Anderson, a senior; and now there’s Jim Boltz, a senior—and all of them are athletes.”

  “We checked those three real close,” Carrillo answered. “None of them had any record of drug abuse. We even considered whether this might be some kind of sabotage of our football team, some kind of hallucinogenic drug slipped into their food or drinks by an opposing school. Baker was hot this year. They were headed for the state championship.”

  “But so far, no evidence of sabotage?”

  “No. The doctors at the hospital haven’t found a thing.”

  Gessner offered, “We’ve pretty much ruled out any kind of disease or contagion. After all, hundreds of students use the same gym facilities every day, but we’ve only had three cases of”—he looked at Carrillo—“Abel Frye syndrome.”

  Carrillo only sneered.

  Nate eyed them curiously. “Abel Frye syndrome?”

  Carrillo shot a glance at Gessner before answering Nate. “Mr. Gessner hasn’t told you about the symptoms?”

  Nate could recall them. “Loss of coordination and muscle strength, severe paranoia, hallucinat
ions, unconsciousness.”

  Gessner added, “All three athletes are still hospitalized, drifting in and out of consciousness. And when they are conscious— they’re out of their minds.”

  “So crazy they have to be tied to their beds,” said Carrillo, “and talking gibberish—except for muttering ‘Abel Frye’ every once in a while.” He sniffed in disgust. “ ‘Abel Frye.’ It’s crazy.”

  Nate asked, “Is that a name?”

  Gessner nodded. “There’s a legend here at Baker—”

  Carrillo moaned and folded his arms. “Oh, boy, here we go!”

  Gessner paused to gather himself. Apparently, what he was about to say wasn’t going to be easy. “It’s why I wanted to find outside help, a third party who would understand. Around here, you don’t talk about this stuff without jeopardizing your job, your reputation . . .”

  Carrillo chuckled and rolled his eyes.

  Gessner pushed on, “You see, I have some thoughts, some suspicions that move into a realm the police—and the school board, and the principal, I might add—are presently unwilling to explore. I can’t be sure of anything at this point. We need more data—”

  “Gessner, would you just spit it out?” Carrillo barked.

  “Mr. Springfield, we have a ghost.”

  Casually, quietly, Sarah Springfield strolled down the hallways of Baker High, pointing her digital camera and snapping pictures of doorways, corners, rows of lockers, windows, display cases, exit doors, stairways. She’d almost finished her first walk-through of the school’s halls and planned two more before leaving.

  After a quick look in both directions, she stepped up to a locker, rested her cheek against the metal door, and gently began turning the knob of the combination lock. Right . . . stop. Left . . . stop. Right . . . right a little more . . .

  Click. The locker opened and she examined the inner structure. Okay. Typical.

  Tom Gessner pulled a rolled-up piece of paper off a shelf. “It’s a belief, a legend, right? Like a school mascot.” He unrolled the paper and displayed a strange painted portrait. “This was painted by a student for last month’s art contest. Meet Abel Frye.”

  The painting showed a gruesome specter, a young man, or maybe a boy, clearly dead and decaying, the head cocked grotesquely against the right shoulder as if the neck were broken, the black, sunken eyes staring with both terror and menace. He wore a shredded, tattered shirt, a golden-eyed hawk sat on his shoulder, and one bony hand was extended as if the thing wanted to reach out from the painting and grab a victim.

  “This painting won first prize,” Gessner explained. “The artist is a girl named Crystal Sparks. She’s one of the students out on the fringe, so to speak, quite possibly involved in witchcraft. This painting was posted on the bulletin board in the main hall for two weeks, and now there are photocopies floating around. Thanks to this painting, we have universal agreement around the school as to what Abel Frye looks like.”

  “And just who is he supposed to be?” Nate asked.

  “According to the legend, this is the ghost of a young man, a student, who hanged himself in the stairwell of the old building clear back in the 1930s.” He pulled a small map from a drawer, a layout of the present building. “Our present school building was built in place of the old one six years ago, and part of the building is sitting where the old building used to be.”

  “The kids have it all figured out,” said Carrillo. “The ghost is still haunting the area where the kid hanged himself.”

  Gessner traced it out on the map. “This rearmost hallway, to be exact, running right alongside the gym. The stairwell of the old building used to be right there.”

  Carrillo mockingly widened his eyes and acted spooky as he said, “They call it the Forbidden Hallway!”

  Gessner admitted, “The more superstitious kids won’t go near that hallway, and since these weird outbreaks, six students have asked for new locker assignments. The point is, for many students at this school, our ghost is more than just a spooky little legend—and he’s getting more ‘real’ all the time. The name cropped up only recently.”

  “So was there ever a real Abel Frye?”

  Carrillo shrugged.

  Gessner shook his head. “There’s no record of an Abel Frye ever attending this school.”

  Nate exhaled thoughtfully, still staring at the painting. “Okay. Keep going.”

  “They call it the Forbidden Hallway! ”

  Elijah and Elisha walked a wide circle around the school grounds, getting familiar with the fences and shrubs that bordered two sides and the line of forest that bordered the rear.

  “It’s not a hard school to sneak up on,” Elisha noted.

  “Or to sneak away from,” Elijah added. He was holding a site plan of the school and grounds. He studied it again, comparing it to what they were seeing. “Dad was right. The building looks a little cockeyed, like somebody forgot something somewhere.”

  “Sightings of the ghost have become more frequent,” Tom Gessner continued. “Several students claim to have seen him, or smelled him, or heard him. We even have some who believe— unless they’re just pretending—that the ghost can bless or curse the football games, so they bring him offerings of candy or cookies the day of each game to make sure we’ll win.”

  “Guess they offered the wrong cookies,” said Carrillo. “The three victims were star players on the team.”

  That was supposed to be funny, but Gessner didn’t laugh. “It might be something like that.”

  “What?”

  “Listen to this.” He looked toward the door, apparently to make sure it was closed and they were talking in private. He actually lowered his voice as he told them, “I spoke with three students just days ago—two girls, both juniors, and one boy, a senior. They were here in the building for an evening play rehearsal—we’re doing The Crucible this year—and they got adventurous. During part of the play when they weren’t required onstage, they sneaked off to that back hallway. It was a dare. They were probably trying to scare each other.”

  Nate nodded. “Sure.”

  “All three heard a voice in that hallway, coming from nowhere, coming from everywhere, and it was speaking a name over and over—the name of our fallen quarterback, Jim Boltz.”

  “It’s a prank,” said Carrillo. “Sure they’re going to hear Jim Boltz’s name. Jim Boltz went nuts hollering the name of the ghost. Everybody in the school knows that.”

  Gessner shot back, “They came to see me the Wednesday before the game in which Jim Boltz was stricken.”

  Nate leaned back, his fingers stroking his face. Carrillo was notably silent.

  Gessner continued, “I know these kids and, sure, they can be silly and impressionable at times, but this time they were sincere, and they were frightened. They heard something and they all corroborate each other.” He looked at Carrillo. “And I’m sure you’ll agree, Jim Boltz being in the hospital is no prank.”

  There was silence in the room. Finally, Carrillo muttered, “This is getting creepy.”

  Sarah strolled through the empty lunchroom, taking note of the food vending machines and the number and kinds of goodies being offered. She poked her head out through the one exit door to see where it went then stepped back from the door, watching to see if it would swing closed and latch by itself. It did. She went into the kitchen, showed her visitor pass to the ladies working there, and started having a friendly chat.

  “Have the three victims offended anybody?” Nate asked. “Do they have enemies?”

  Gessner was visibly impressed. “Ah. You know where I’m going.” He stood. “Gentlemen, I have something to show you— and please, let’s not discuss this where we can be heard.”

  They followed Tom Gessner through the office compound and resource library, down the main hall, and from there down another hall to the far end of the building. They passed by the gym and could hear the sounds of a P.E. class—echoed shouts, the pounding of a basketball, the squeaking of tennis shoes—c
oming from inside. Going past the gym, they rounded a corner and stopped.

  “The Forbidden Hallway,” Gessner said in a near whisper.

  It ran the length of the gym. One wall was a common wall with the gym, lined with lockers. The other was an exterior wall with windows and exit doors. Plenty of light came through the windows and light fixtures in the ceiling. There was absolutely nothing spooky about it.

  Gessner walked down that hall, and Nate and Carrillo followed. Halfway down the hall, he stopped at a particular locker.

  “Jim Boltz’s locker,” he said.

  “Thoroughly searched by myself and the health department,” Carrillo reminded them.

  “But did anyone notice this?” Gessner pointed to a small scratch mark in the upper right corner of the door.

  They examined it closely. Nate put on a pair of glasses for an even closer look.

  “What about it?” Carrillo asked.

  “A hanging man,” said Nate.

  “Exactly,” said Gessner.

  Carrillo had to take a second look. “Well, I’ll be.”

  “I checked the lockers of the other two victims, Tod Kramer and Doug Anderson. They have the same mark, a tiny hanging figure scratched in the paint. The connection with Abel Frye is obvious.”

  “I checked the lockers of the other two victims, Tod Kramer and Doug Anderson. They have the same mark, a tiny hanging figure scratched in the paint. The connection with Abel Frye is obvious.”

  “So,” said Nate, “whether it’s a ghost or not, somebody’s up to something.”

  “Could be a sick prank,” said Carrillo. “Something done after the victims were hit.”

  “Of course,” said Gessner. “But you’ll notice the five-pointed shape, as if derived from a pentagram, a symbol used in witchcraft. These days, witchcraft and satanism among high school students are not uncommon, and from what I hear from the students, they could be happening here.”