Hangman's Curse (11 page)

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

T
he 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.

Elisha put her hand against the wall to steady herself and quickly scanned the room in every direction. Elijah did the same. The beams from their headlamps flew around the room like frantic comets, searching every corner, penetrating every shadow. Neither had to say a word. Each knew the other felt the same fear.

But nothing emerged from the black shadows. Nothing stirred or leaped or screamed. Elisha felt the tips of the candles. They were still warm. Only minutes ago, they'd been burning.

But now, as near as they could tell, they were alone in the room.

With hands still trembling and with constant, furtive glances over his shoulder, Elijah lifted the camera and began taking pictures of the violent artwork, the hanging bats, the chains, and the altar. The flash was as brilliant as lightning in this dark place, burning the images onto Elisha's retinas. When she closed her eyes and looked away, the images were still before her in reversed colors, floating ghostlike in a sea of black, haunting her. It was time to report.

“Mom, Dad—” She had to clear her throat, steady her voice, and start again. “We've found some kind of ritual chamber.” She went on to describe it and then added, “And the name Abel Frye is written backward on the wall above the altar.” She looked up and described what she saw in the beam of her headlamp. “There's a large heating duct running across the ceiling, and it looks like several large sections of pipe and conduit. I guess that explains how the sound of their voices was carried upstairs into the hallway.”

Nate responded, “Any clues as to who these people are?”

She searched around the room as she spoke. “Nothing so far, no articles of clothing or anything like that. The footprints belong to kids, though. That's pretty obvious.” She forced herself to look at the artwork again. What Ian Snyder had in his notebook was horrible enough. This was far worse. “From what I see on the walls, we're, uh, we're dealing with some pretty sick people.”

Outside, standing in the hole in the dark, Nate looked up at Tom Gessner and Mr. Loman, who were listening to every word. “Looks like you were right, Mr. Gessner.”

Gessner's head sank toward his chest. He was not at all happy to hear that. “Any suggestions?”

Nate spoke into his radio. “Leave everything just the way it is—and do what you can to erase your footprints.”

“Okay,” Elisha answered. “We're coming out.”

Nate looked up at Mr. Gessner and Mr. Loman. “The best way to find out what these people are doing is to observe them doing it, so we'll do our best to pretend we were never here. In the meantime, Mr. Loman, we'd better have another look at Shawna Miller's locker.”

The symbol of the hanging man was there, recently etched.

Mr. Loman was flabbergasted. “We
checked
all these lockers!”

“Just after school let out for the day,” Nate recalled.

“But the building remained open for a while, right?” Gessner asked.

“Sure,” said Mr. Loman. “I don't lock up until about six. Guess whoever did this had time enough while we weren't looking.”

“But we could be in great shape here,” said Nate, studying the symbol closely. “We've got a locker with a freshly placed hex and a chance to check it out before the victim opens it.”

Sarah cautioned, “Meaning we could encounter a booby trap.”

“Better us than the victim. At least we're prepared for one.”

Mr. Loman had already turned on the lights in the hall where Shawna's locker was located, and Elijah and Elisha added the beams from their headlamps to illuminate the locker. Sarah put on some thick leather gloves while Mr. Loman gently dialed the combination, then, slowly, cautiously, she opened the locker. She checked all around the edges of the opening for any trip wires, devices, intrusions. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. One by one, she removed the contents, looking for any sign of tampering. Everything looked normal.

“Well,” she said, “I guess there's nothing left to do but have a talk with Shawna in the morning. I don't want to go through her personal things without her being here.”

“I don't either,” said Nate. “Let's stow the gear and go home. We'll just have to get here early in the morning and have a word with Shawna before she opens this locker.”

“You opened my locker?”
Shawna Miller, a tall, slender blonde in a cheerleader's outfit, was upset enough just finding Mr. Loman, Tom Gessner, and Sarah waiting by her locker. When they tried to tell her why they'd opened it, she would hardly let them get a word in. “This is
my
locker! It's
my
life! It's
my
privacy!”