Hangman's Curse Read online

  “All right,” he said, leaping upon the scene, “what’s going on here?”

  “We had a little collision,” said Elijah. “Everybody’s okay.”

  Carrillo looked at the kids’ faces around the room. Most were expressing agreement, eyebrows cocked as if to say, “Yep, that’s what it was,” but some were smiling and snickering with a secret amusement, enough to make him suspicious.

  “Well, okay,” he said. “Clean it all up. And you watch yourself, Snyder!” He looked around the room. “And the rest of you get back to your lunch! You’ve only got five minutes!”

  He began circling the room like a cop on a beat, in charge, eyes mean and wary.

  Elijah handed the last of the scattered papers to Elisha, who then handed them to Ian Snyder. It gave Elisha a chance to see what Elijah had found: bizarre drawings of demons and occult symbols, poetry about blood and rituals, pages on witchcraft and spells downloaded from the Internet. Neither showed any reaction, but both saw it all.

  “Anyway,” Elijah said, extending his hand once again to Ian Snyder, “the name’s Elijah.”

  Ian Snyder finished stashing everything back in his notebook, then shook Elijah’s hand, the strange, animal look never leaving his eyes. “Ian Snyder—and thank you, but I fight my own battles.”

  Elijah shrugged. “Well, sorry, but I was raised to be there when a fellow human being needs help.”

  For the first time, the hint of a smile appeared at the corners of Snyder’s mouth. “Leonard Baynes will be dealt with. Don’t worry about that.”

  The bell rang and the great and instant exodus began. Elijah felt several friendly slaps on the back from students he didn’t yet know. Snyder grabbed up his books and turned to leave. “But thanks anyway,” he said over his shoulder.

  Snyder was wearing a sleeveless shirt, and something on his shoulder caught Elijah’s eye. Snyder had a tattoo.

  A tattoo of an angel.

  In a quiet, neutral location—an RV park on the edge of town— the Springfields reviewed the day over dinner in the Holy Roller, a forty-foot motor home that served as home, office, and mobile crime lab.

  Sarah examined the soda straw through the plastic bag, then opened the plastic bag and sniffed it for any odor. “You’re right. There’s a strange smell, kind of musty.”

  “Like an old basement or something,” Nate commented.

  “Yes, exactly.” She sealed the bag again and set it aside. “The fact that the straw was buried under an athlete’s laundry won’t make the odor any easier to isolate.”

  Nate looked across the table at Elijah. “But we may have isolated the ‘angel,’ am I right?”

  Since Elijah’s mouth was full, Elisha spoke. “Ian Snyder has a reputation as a witch, and according to what we found in his books and papers today, hoo boy, he’s into a lot of weird stuff.”

  Nate nodded. “He has a reputation around that school. Mr. Gessner and Officer Carrillo brought up his name yesterday.”

  “But here’s the connection: The girls I talked to think he controls the ghost. Somehow he can get the ghost of Abel Frye to do his bidding.”

  Sarah recalled Jim Boltz’s eerie cry, “The angel and Abel Frye.”

  “Sure. Exactly.”

  Elijah swallowed and spoke up. “He told me that Leonard Baynes—that’s the bully we tangled with—‘would be dealt with,’ whatever that means.”

  “It means we’d better keep an eye on Leonard Baynes,” said Nate. “But looking back on all this, we need to know if Snyder had anything against the first three victims.”

  “He did,” said Elisha. “Sondra and Karine told me that all three of them used to pick on Snyder just as Baynes did today, and now . . .”

  “Hold on,” said Sarah. “This sounds like it’s common knowledge among the student body.”

  Elisha shrugged. “It’s no secret, that’s for sure.”

  Sarah was astonished. “All this is happening right under the noses of the faculty, and they don’t know about it?”

  “They know about it,” said Nate. “So I’m beginning to see what’s frustrating Tom Gessner and bewildering the principal, Ms. Wyrthen. The school has metal detectors, a security officer, all the external, crime-stopping stuff, but who cares if some of the students are getting tormented and harassed? Sure, evil still gets through the doors, but at least there are no guns around.”

  “Nate . . .”

  Nate forced the anger from his mind and took a moment to exhale his temper. “Anyway . . . It looks to me like Tom Gessner’s theory is holding up. The victims have an enemy, maybe several enemies. But I’m not so sure about this witchcraft angle! It’s too obvious, too easy—not to mention it’s a touch unbelievable.”

  “And how do you prove a thing like witchcraft?” Elijah added.

  “What’s to prove?” said Sarah. “So far, all this talk about Abel Frye and witches could be nothing more than a silly craze that feeds on itself. I couldn’t find any solid information anywhere on anyone named Abel Frye. Where’d the name come from? How do we know the kids didn’t just make it up?”

  “Mom,” Elijah protested, “those guys in the hospital were saying his name!”

  “So? They could be caught up in the same hysteria as all the others and blaming Abel Frye when the real blame lies somewhere else.”

  “That’s where I’m going,” Nate concurred. “You already have a ghost legend in place, and now there’s Crystal Sparks’ painting of the ghost that all the kids had to have seen.”

  “So I don’t think we’ve found the truth yet. It’s still hidden somewhere.”

  “It could be in that haunted hallway,” Elisha offered. “I finally got the story from Jamie after the Leonard Baynes thing blew over. I’d really like to check out that hallway at night.”

  Nate asked, “And what do you expect to find?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever Jamie, Cindy, and Andy thought was a ghost.”

  Elijah checked his watch. “It could be there right now.”

  Nate thought a moment. “You’re going to stay in that hallway, you understand? Don’t wander into any rooms or closets or tight places where you don’t have a clear safety zone around you.”

  Sarah concurred. “And take radios with you in case you need some help.”

  Nate looked at his watch. “I’ll call Mr. Loman and see if he’ll let you in.”

  Elijah and Elisha jumped up from the table, ready to go.

  Late at night, with the lights out and no daylight coming through the windows, it became a cold, echoing, forbidding place where strange little sounds emerged out of the night silence and patches of light fell on walls, floor, and objects for no particular reason and with no discernible source.

  “Take your homework!” Sarah advised firmly. “You are in school, remember! Oh—” She hurried into the lab at the back of the motor home and brought back a small but highly sophisticated digital recorder. “If you hear anything, I want to hear it, too.”

  During the day, Baker High School’s back hallway was nothing more than a passage between the gym and the outside, a way to get from one place to another.

  Late at night, with the lights out and no daylight coming through the windows, it became a cold, echoing, forbidding place where strange little sounds emerged out of the night silence and patches of light fell on walls, floor, and objects for no particular reason and with no discernible source. Elijah and Elisha were camped out near what used to be Jim Boltz’s locker, studying by the light of small work lamps they wore on their heads. They had to leave the hallway dark because that was how it was “that night.” How long they would have to wait was an open question, but they’d brought sleeping bags just in case.

  Elijah glanced at his watch and spoke in a near whisper. “Nine-fifteen.”

  Elisha extinguished her light and looked up and down the dark hallway. “Jamie said they heard the ghost about nine o’clock.”

  “Where?”

  She nodded toward Jim Boltz’s locke
r. “Right about here.”

  Elijah raised his head, directing his work lamp upward where it illumined the little hanging man scratched on the locker door. “Well . . . so far he’s been pretty quiet.”

  His backpack was beside him. He reached into it and took out the digital recorder their mother had sent with them. “What do you think?”

  She shrugged, a dark silhouette against a gray patch of light upon the floor. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

  Elijah consulted a piece of paper Mr. Loman had given them when he let them in: the combination to Jim Boltz’s locker. He stood, dialed the combination, and opened the locker door. Then, with double-backed tape, he fastened the little recorder to the inside of the locker’s air vent. He clicked it on, and a tiny red light appeared. “Okay, we’re rolling.” He closed the door and spun the lock.

  The recorder was a highly sensitive device that could record continuously for twenty-four hours. Even if no “ghost” made a sound that night, they still had a backup, an electronic ear listening around the clock. The plan was to replace the memory card with a blank one each day, and then review each day’s recording. Maybe, just maybe, they would record something unusual.

  Elijah rested his back against the locker and went back to his studies. Elisha clicked her light on again and did the same.

  “So what do you think of your humanities class?” she asked.

  Elijah had to chuckle. “Mr. Carlson keeps shooting himself in the foot.”

  She cocked her head and gave him a testing look. “Elijah. You aren’t being difficult, are you?”

  He raised his eyebrows innocently. “What? He was telling us there’s no right or wrong, and I just asked him if that statement was right or wrong, that’s all.”

  She laughed. “You’re going to get us kicked out of here.”

  “Ohhh?” he asked with mock indignity. “So how are things going in biology?”

  “It’s all coming back to me. I think Mom made it more interesting, but Mr. Harrigan’s really nice . . .” She looked toward the ceiling. “And I hope he stays that way tomorrow. We have to discuss this chapter on evolution.” She opened her biology textbook and showed him a page.

  He whistled in amazement. “The Miller experiment? That’s still in the textbooks?”

  “And the Ernst Haeckel embryos . . .”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  She showed him the pages to prove it. “And the whale that evolved from a cow.”

  Elijah saw the diagrams and the paragraphs and had to chuckle. “What are you going to do?”

  “Well . . . Mr. Harrigan seems like a nice man. Maybe I can talk to him in private.”

  “Yeah. Good idea.”

  She looked up and down the hall. “I’m getting sleepy.”

  They closed their textbooks and clicked off their lights, then sat in the dark and the silence. Occasionally, they could hear the low, distant roar of a car passing on the road outside and see the dim reflection of its headlights moving along the wall. A tiny, living thing was moving behind the lockers somewhere. They could hear the faint scratching of its toenails. The furnace kicked on and the sound of moving air filled the hallway. With some imagination they could hear a voice in that wind, even imagine a melody.

  But until ten o’clock, when they finally wriggled into their sleeping bags, there were no unusual sounds, no voices, no ghost.

  When Mr. Loman awoke them early the next morning, they felt disappointed and even a little foolish.

  A little irritable, too. Besides coming up empty on their “ghost-hunting,” they’d gone without adequate sleep, which made them both a touch less patient in their classes.

  Mr. Harrigan was a younger man, quite good-looking and mild-mannered, and Elisha did not want a confrontation with him. But when he sat on the edge of his desk and told the class, “All right, let’s open up the book to chapter four and discuss evolution,” she just knew she’d have to say something.

  Especially when Mr. Harrigan asked for it. “First thing I’d like to ask is, Did anyone have any trouble with this chapter? Did anything bother you about it?”

  Elisha raised her hand, but so did another girl toward the back.

  Mr. Harrigan called on the other girl. “Yes, Tracy.”

  Tracy looked puzzled. “Mr. Harrigan, if whales evolved from four-legged animals, isn’t that like evolution going backward? I mean, at the beginning of the chapter it says that all life began in the sea and then crawled up on the land, but now they’re saying that an animal turned into a whale and crawled back into the ocean.”

  Mr. Harrigan just raised an eyebrow. “Well? The book says it happened. And what about the bones near the whale’s tail? The book says those bones used to be a pelvis when the whale had legs.”

  Tracy shrugged. “Well, I just don’t get it, that’s all.”

  Elisha shot her hand up again.

  Mr. Harrigan smiled, amused at her impatience. “Go ahead.”

  “The bones near the whale’s tail aren’t the remains of a pelvis! They have to do with the reproductive organs.”

  Mr. Harrigan raised that eyebrow again. “But the book says those bones used to be a pelvis when the whale was a four-legged animal.”

  Elisha paged through the chapter. “Then why doesn’t the book show us the fossil of an animal with fins, or a whale with legs? And Tracy’s right: Evolution is supposed to mean that something is getting better, gaining something like legs, not losing them.”

  Mr. Harrigan kept smiling as if amused. “Looks like you had a little trouble with this chapter.”

  Well, he did open the door, she thought. Elisha jumped through it. “I had a lot of trouble with this chapter!” She flipped to a page so fast she almost tore it. “Like this whole thing about the embryos of different animals all looking the same, so that’s supposed to prove they all had a common ancestor, and even human embryos having gill slits as if they’re somehow related to fish—that’s a fraud! Ernst Haeckel created these phony drawings clear back in the 1860s, and his university found the whole thing to be a fraud in 1874! This is a bald-faced lie!”

  Mr. Harrigan looked alarmed. “A lie, Miss Springfield?”

  The whole class was looking at her, but she didn’t care. “Yes, Mr. Harrigan. A lie. Just like this other part that says the Miller experiment created life in the laboratory. Miller did no such thing. He zapped some gases—what were they?” She read from the text. “‘Methane, ammonia, water vapor, and hydrogen.’ He zapped them with electricity to simulate lightning and tried to get them to form amino acids.”

  “Well, they did form amino acids, didn’t they?”

  Elisha strained her brain to remember the details. “A few amino acids don’t make a protein!” She used to know a lot more about this, but now she was drawing a blank and it was very frustrating.

  Mr. Harrigan chuckled. “I guess you did have trouble with this chapter!”

  A fellow across the room raised his hand.

  “Yes, Eric.”

  The whole class was looking at her, but she didn’t care.

  Eric’s response had a snide tone. “I think she just needs to read a little better. Getting back to the whales . . .” He read from the text, “‘The whales have a vestigial pelvis, just like humans have a vestigial tail.’”

  A few kids chuckled. Not Elisha. She was crabby to begin with, but that really set her off. “A tail!? You think humans used to have tails?”

  Eric looked incredulous that anyone would question such an idea. “I can read!” He pointed at the text in front of him. “It says right here that we don’t need those bones at the base of our spine. They’re just left over from when we were monkeys.”

  She turned in her desk and glared at him. “Those bones support the muscles that keep you from pooping in your pants, in case you didn’t know! But if you think you don’t need yours . . .” She groped in her handbag and pulled out her wallet. “I will gladly pay for you to have yours removed!”

  Th
e whole class fell apart with laughter.

  “All right, all right,” Mr. Harrigan cautioned, but even he was laughing.

  Suddenly a voice piped up from the rear of the classroom. “If I may volunteer something?”

  Mr. Harrigan seemed glad for the help. “Yeah, go ahead, Norman.”

  Norman Bloom, a thin, pimple-faced kid with thick glasses and obvious brainpower, was Mr. Harrigan’s T.A., his teaching assistant. Most of the T.A.s at Baker were students a grade or two ahead of the class in which they assisted. He’d been arranging plants on the shelves in the back, but now he was thumbing through the class textbook. “Getting back to the Miller experiment, that girl up front . . .”

  “Elisha,” she told him.

  “Elisha is right about the Miller experiment. The book says Miller created life in the laboratory, but all he really created was a bunch of problems. The experiment produced a few amino acids, but it mostly produced tar and carboxylic acid, and those are poisonous to life. He left oxygen out of the mix because oxygen would have broken down the amino acids, but there was oxygen on the earth when life was supposed to have formed. Even if there was no oxygen, then there couldn’t have been any ozone layer, so the UV rays from the sun would have killed every living cell anyway. He had to isolate the amino acids artificially to keep them from breaking apart again, and anyway, they never would have bonded to each other to start forming a protein because they would have bonded to the tar or the carboxylic acid first.” He shook his head. “The experiment was a flop. It didn’t prove anything.”

  The class sat in dumb silence. This Norman was one bright kid. They looked at Mr. Harrigan to see what he would say.

  “Norman,” he finally answered, “you and Elisha are absolutely right.”

  The kids in the class stared at each other. Was their biology teacher actually saying—

  “The people who wrote this textbook are either sorely misinformed, or they are dishonest.”

  There was stunned silence. Elisha gave Norman a thumbs-up and he returned it.

  “You mean,” said Tracy, weakly turning the pages, “it isn’t true?”

  Eric piped up, “Mr. Harrigan, you’re not supposed to teach religion in school.”