Hangman's Curse Read online

Elijah thought it would be worthwhile at least to make eye contact with Ian. Ian looked back at him, and his eyes were actually friendly.

  Elijah smiled and gave a little nod.

  Ian smiled back and gave Elijah a look that said, “You were good today.”

  Elijah pointed at Ian, then held up two fingers: “You, too.”

  Mr. Carlson looked up from his work and they quit signaling.

  Elisha watched with wonder—and a touch of squeamishness—as Norman draped Floyd the boa constrictor over his shoulders and let Floyd wrap himself around Norman’s arms. “Wow. You, uh, you sure have a way with animals.”

  Norman returned Floyd’s gaze as the snake raised its head and came eye to eye with him. “I saw a guy do this in Africa.”

  Elisha was impressed. “You’ve been to Africa?”

  Norman began easing Floyd back into his terrarium. “My dad spent a year in Kenya for his company—they explore for oil and minerals, things like that. So I got to spend the summer with him. I like Africa. You can meet all the animals you want over there.”

  “That’s wonderful. It really is.”

  Norman glanced at a computer in the corner, the screen glowing with a jungle animals screensaver. “So’s the Internet. Anything you want to know about animals and insects, anywhere in the world, you can find out. I got a recipe for a really great granola for mice off this thing.”

  Elisha looked at her watch. “Well, Elijah ought to be out of the penalty box by now.”

  Norman chuckled. “He actually took on Carlson. You’re brave, you two.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say. “We don’t mean to cause trouble. I guess we just have this thing about the truth.”

  Norman placed some lettuce in Jesse the rabbit’s cage and closed the cage door. “I admire that. We shouldn’t be afraid of the truth—even if it pokes holes in our pet theories.”

  She picked up her books. “It was nice to meet you.”

  He smiled. “The pleasure was mine, really. See you tomorrow.”

  Sarah turned up the volume on the computer’s sound system and hit the play button again. The track played at normal speed. She leaned toward the sound, her eyes closed, and listened. Something was there, barely audible, layered beneath the quiet rush of air through the school’s heating ducts. It sounded like a voice, or maybe voices. It ended. She cued the track back and played it again.

  Aaa . . . Ahhh . . . Aaaa . . . Aaa . . . Ahhh . . . Aaaa . . .

  Like a chant. But was it just something in the rushing air? Was she imagining it?

  The computer had its own equalizer. She clicked the mouse, brought it on-screen, and began adjusting the frequencies, filtering out all the sounds around the sound, bringing it to the forefront.

  Ehhhh . . . Ahhhrrr . . . Aaaaaannn . . .

  Her stomach twisted and she felt a chill. She played it again, studying a graphic sound wave on the computer screen, reducing some of the highs, dropping out the lows, turning up the midrange where the sound was.

  Lehhhh . . . nahhhrrr . . . Baaaannnn . . . sss . . .

  A voice speaking a name over and over.

  The phone rang and she jumped an inch off her chair. Gasping for a few stable breaths, she grabbed the receiver. “Hello.”

  Nate was at the hospital, in the hall just outside the room where the first three victims lay. “Sarah, we have another victim. They just brought him in.”

  “Leonard Baynes?”

  Nate looked through the door into the room where doctors and nurses were holding Leonard Baynes down, trying to sedate him and tie him to the bed. He was screaming, grappling, staring wide-eyed at unseen terrors. “That’s right. It’s . . . it’s terrible. I can’t begin to describe it.” He turned away. He had no doubts that Sarah could hear the screams coming from the room. “Tom Gessner is here. He’s trying to take care of Leonard’s mother.” Just a few yards down the hall, Gessner sat on a couch with Mrs. Baynes, speaking words of comfort and obviously trying to keep her under control. She was almost as frantic as Leonard. Nate asked, “How did you know it was Leonard Baynes?”

  Sarah stared at the computer, half-covering her mouth with her free hand as the sound continued to pulse from the speakers. “A . . . a little ghost told me.”

  Night. The hallway dark. Nerves on edge. So quiet they could monitor the volume and tempo of their own breathing, they could hear their hearts beating in their chests, they could sense the tone of the air within the hallway’s four surfaces, like the ever-present rumble of air in a monstrous culvert.

  Nate stood at the corner of the gym, the entrance to this hallway, peering through night-vision goggles. Through the goggles, the hallway was an eerie world of green shades and shadows, the windows dark, the lockers glaring, the floor mottled with patches of light and shadow.

  Some thirty feet from Nate’s position, his back against the lockers, Mr. Loman stood motionless—except for the steady sweep of his eyes, now wide with foreboding. Farther down, Tom Gessner stood against the windows, listening, just listening. Halfway down, Elijah sat perfectly still in the center of the hall, headphones on his ears, manning a soundboard and recorder. The recorder was already running, making a digital record through four separate microphones positioned in strategic places up and down the hallway.

  At the far end of the hall, silhouetted against the big double exit doors, Sarah waited, watched, and listened, night goggles and headphones making her look like a big insect.

  Just beyond him, Elisha sat with her back against the locker that used to belong to Jim Boltz. This was where the first recording was made. She slept through the first one; she wouldn’t be sleeping this time. She was wearing her head-mounted light, but had it turned off for now.

  At the far end of the hall, silhouetted against the big double exit doors, Sarah waited, watched, and listened, night goggles and headphones making her look like a big insect.

  Nate’s mind kept racing, going over things. They’d emptied Leonard Baynes’ locker immediately, but found nothing—yet— that clarified just what they were dealing with. The locker had been marked, however, with that same cryptic symbol of the little hanging man, the symbol of Abel Frye. With Mr. Loman’s help, they’d checked every other locker in the school for the same symbol, but found nothing. The theory that this might be sabotage of Baker’s football team was in question—Leonard Baynes was no athlete.

  The possibility that Ian Snyder had anything to do with this was practically a no-brainer, but they still needed some kind of direct proof. They needed to know.

  Ten-thirty. Every passing vehicle on the road outside was a nuisance. The sound overpowered everything else, and came through the headphones so loudly that Elijah and Sarah had to momentarily hold the earphones away from their ears.

  No talking. No walking. Whatever it was, they wanted to hear it. They didn’t want it to hear them.

  The furnace kicked on and air began to rush through the heating ducts. Sarah and Elijah winced. Another nuisance noise, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. The building had to be heated. Not a big problem, though; the voices had come through the other night even though the furnace was running.

  Ten-forty. Another vehicle passed. Sarah and Elijah lifted their earphones away. The sound faded; they set the phones back in place.

  Clunk.

  Their eyes opened—wide. What was that?

  Elijah put his hand up to signal the others, using his free hand to press an earphone close to his ear. Every person in the hall froze. Every breath became shallow and silent.

  Elijah and Sarah pressed the earphones against their ears, straining to hear.

  A swishing, a scraping. Movement.

  Mr. Loman clamped his arms in front of him, afraid he would start trembling. He thought he heard something.

  Nate and Sarah carefully scanned the hallway through their goggles, every inch of it, looking for anything strange, any movement at all. So far, nothing.

  Elisha braced herself against the locker and slo
wly moved her head about, sampling every direction for sounds. Come on, Abel.

  Come on.

  Mr. Gessner was standing so still it was easy to forget he was even there.

  Elijah and Sarah heard it first. A faraway moan, low and mournful. Long, drawn-out vowels as if singing . . .

  Ahhhhh . . . naaaaahhhhh . . . Iiillllll . . . Errrr . . .

  Elijah tried to read Mr. Gessner’s face in the dark. He finally moved, if only an inch. He was listening. He could hear it.

  Sssshhhhaahhhhh . . . Naaaaa . . . Mmiiiiillllll . . . Errrrr . . .

  Mr. Loman crossed himself. He was hearing it, too.

  Nate began to move down the hall ever so slowly, listening, scanning. Sarah started moving in from the other direction.

  Elisha wasn’t as frightened as she was astounded. It was the perfect ghostly sound. It seemed to come from everywhere, all around them.

  Nate reached Mr. Loman, who actually grabbed his arm for steadiness, for support.

  There was no mistaking it now. It was a voice, a slow, mournful voice coming from all around them, faint but filling the hall.

  Mr. Gessner began to move away from the windows toward the center of the hallway. Then he knelt down and put his ear to the floor. The way he jerked his head up from the floor and looked at them told them he’d found something.

  Elisha put her ear to the floor. Yes! We’re tracking you down, Abel!

  Mr. Loman put his ear to the wall, then signaled wildly with his hand.

  Nate put his ear to the wall. Yes, there it was.

  And the words were more distinct: Shahhhh . . . nahhhhh . . . mmiiiillllllllerrrr . . .”

  “Shawna Miller,” Gessner whispered.

  “The old building!” Loman whispered to Nate. Nate leaned close. Loman had his full attention. “This hallway is built over the site of the old building, the old basement and foundation. The plumbing runs through there, the heating, everything. That’s what’s carrying the sound up here!”

  Nate tore off his goggles. “How do we get down there?”

  Mr. Loman wagged his head, his eyes wide with wonder and fear. “I—I don’t know. I’ve never been down there. I thought it was all filled in, you know, closed off.”

  Nate signaled Elisha, who tiptoed silently to them, carrying a set of blueprints. Nate unrolled the page he wanted, scanned it under the beam of Elisha’s headlamp, and said, “Okay.” He pointed to a location on the blueprint. “Around the back.”

  Sarah passed her night goggles to Elijah and took charge of the recording, freeing him to go with the others as they stole out of the building through the big exit doors. The exit doors were noisy no matter how careful they tried to be, closing with a heavy thud, the lock rod falling into place with a loud, metallic clank.

  The voice stopped, just like that.

  Better hurry, Sarah thought.

  Nate, Elijah and Elisha, Mr. Gessner, and Mr. Loman hurried around the back of the building, trying to be as quiet as possible as they maneuvered through a maintenance alley and into a fenced-in parking area for Dumpsters, packing crates, scenery from several years of drama productions, and the school’s two maintenance trucks.

  Mr. Loman came to a halt, puffing from the exertion and looking about frantically. “I don’t know,” he said in a hushed, desperate voice. “Like I say, it’s all built over, it’s filled in.”

  Nate looked at the blueprints again. “Easy now, just take it easy. Show me where the new building starts in relation to the old one. Where is this wall right here?”

  Mr. Loman looked at the plans, then waved his hand toward the rear wall of the gymnasium. “This wall runs right along the top of the old one, but”—he pointed at the plans—“that corner isn’t there anymore and this section of the old basement . . . well, I guess they filled it in.”

  “You guess?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Nate was already looking beyond the fence as he thought aloud. “That much crawlspace had to have some ventilation somewhere.”

  Beyond the fence were bushes, young trees, wild growth. He hurried out of the parking area and around to the other side of the fence as the others followed.

  He stopped short, motioned for a halt, then pointed.

  This ground had been tramped on quite regularly. There was a path of compacted earth and sparse grass leading into the bushes.

  Nate led the way, moving slowly, pushing the branches of the young trees aside, pressing ahead through the low growth. They penetrated several yards into the thicket before Nate halted again.

  His flashlight now shone on some old boards. They were uncovered and clean although the surrounding ground was covered with old leaves and twigs. Obviously, they’d been placed there recently. Nate stooped down and pulled a board aside.

  There was a dark space underneath.

  They all pitched in and cleared the boards away. Now they were peering into a narrow hole in the ground, a hand-dug excavation that uncovered a buried concrete wall.

  “The old building came out this far,” whispered Nate. “This is the old basement wall.”

  In the center of the wall was a square opening, an old vent just large enough for a lean-bodied person to crawl through.

  Nate looked at Elijah and Elisha. “No heroics, now.”

  Without another word, Elijah dropped into the hole, exchanging the night goggles for a headlamp he took from his belt. He handed the night goggles up to his father. Elisha dropped into the hole beside him.

  As they both looked through the opening, their headlamps illumined what had once been a basement, now filled with rubble, broken concrete, and dangerous tangles of steel reinforcement rod. They could see gaps and cavities in the debris, large enough for a daring person to pass through. From deep inside the earth came the low rumble of the school’s furnace.

  Elijah took Elisha’s hand, and she reached up and took her father’s hand.

  “Dear Lord,” Nate prayed, “we pray for Your watchcare over us, for safety, and for wisdom. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the kids whispered.

  Elijha crawled through, and Elisha followed.

  They were inside.

  6

  witches and

  bullies

  The air smelled musty, like an old cellar, and dusty, like the pulverized concrete that lay everywhere. In here, the throbbing of the school’s furnace was more than a sound; it was a presence. Space to turn was tight. Standing in here was like being buried alive under an old structure that had fallen in on itself.

  In the beams of their headlamps, a narrow, haphazard path wound through helter-skelter slabs of concrete and disappeared into a bramble of tumbled concrete posts and ceiling-high piles of rubble. Elisha tapped Elijah’s side and pointed toward the floor, now a thick layer of grayish grit and dust. There were footprints in the dust, some of them perfect impressions of popular shoe soles, the brand names readable. The most recent prints were heading the opposite direction—out, in other words.

  “Looks like we missed them,” Elisha whispered.

  Elijah turned toward the opening through which they’d come. Their father was standing just outside. “Somebody just scrambled out of here. We’ve got some footprints,” he reported.

  Their father handed a camera through the opening and Elijah snapped several pictures. As near as they could tell, five people had just come through here.

  By now, Sarah had arrived with two radios with headsets. She passed them down to Nate, who passed them through the vent. Elijah and Elisha clipped the radios to their belts and put on the headsets over their headlamps, an earphone for one ear, a tiny microphone to the side of their mouths. “Hello. Hello,” Elijah said.

  “We read you loud and clear,” came their father’s response.

  Elijah drew a purposeful breath, stowing the camera around his neck. “Okay. Let’s press on.”

  They moved slowly, quietly, around the first corner, observing the footprints, trying hard not to leave too many
of their own. It wasn’t easy. A huge slab of concrete formed a low bridge ahead of them, a real headbanger. They ducked under it and kept going. There were plenty of spiderwebs spanning the openings and gaps to either side, but so far they hadn’t walked into any—another sign that someone had just come through. The darkness was total. The only light was what they’d brought with them.

  After ducking, winding, stooping, and almost crawling through a hazardous maze for several yards, they came to another wall with another opening, this one much larger, the size of a doorway. They stopped.

  “Smell that?” Elisha asked.

  Elijah nodded. A smell of smoke and hot wax, the same odor that fills a room after someone blows out birthday candles. He spoke quietly into his radio, “Mom, Dad, we’ve reached another wall, with an old doorway. I think this will put us under the new school building.”

  “We can smell something,” Elisha reported, “. . . like candles.”

  “Stay in touch,” said Nate.

  They stepped through the doorway into a cavity about twenty feet across. Heaps of broken concrete created a weird, cavelike floor with mounds, dips, towers, and slopes; but they immediately knew they’d arrived. This was it.

  On three sides of the room, at least the uppermost half of the original concrete walls was still visible, providing space for weird artwork and gruesome graffiti—horrible faces, gaping wounds, gushing arteries, drooling, suffering, screaming images in bloody reds and sooty blacks. Black iron chains hung on one wall as if to duplicate a medieval dungeon. Two bats—real, but dead—hung by wires from the ceiling.

  At one end of the room, against a large, bare wall, was a crude altar: a low table with a black pelt—it looked like it came from a cat—spread upon it. At either end of the table, a half-burned candle stood perched atop a brown beer bottle. Upon the pelt was a brass goblet, and next to the goblet a replica of a human skull. On the wall above the table was an all-too-familiar symbol of a hanging man with an inscription painted in bold letters underneath: EYRF LEBA.

  At one end of the room, against a large, bare wall, was a crude altar: a low table with a black pelt—it looked like it came from a cat—spread upon it.