Hangman's Curse (14 page)

“In the meantime, we'd better find out everything there is to know about this straw.”

The next day, during biology class, Elisha volunteered to gather up plant cuttings from the other students and put them all in rooting mix back in the supply room—where Norman happened to be working at the time.

He was glad to see her, and eagerly helped her measure out the correct proportions of ingredients for the rooting mix. “Two and half peat moss, two and a half vermiculite, three sand . . .”

“Norman,” she ventured as she scooped out the right amount of sand, “I've been meaning to ask you about all this Abel Frye stuff.”

He sniffed a little chuckle and spoke as he worked. “Abel Frye, the patron saint of the geeks and the nerds, the weird and the weak.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, according to the big legend going around, Abel Frye was a smart kid with plenty of potential, but he was weak and he was different, so the bullies trounced on him. They made his life so miserable that he finally hanged himself. That sort of makes him the patron saint of the nerds, the geeks, the little people: the weak and the weird.” Then he added, “You know, people like me.”

“Norman. You're not weird. You
are
different, but I see that as a quality and not a fault.”

“Aren't you going to tell me I'm not weak?”

That flustered her a little. “Norman . . . everybody's weaker than somebody!”

He sighed, and then he smiled. “And not everybody who's strong is a bully, either. I've tried to keep that in mind. But to answer your question, think about this: Everybody who's gotten sick and gone crazy
was
a bully who picked on Ian Snyder. Jim Boltz and his three friends all used to pick on him, and Leonard Baynes, man, that was obvious. So it's a no-brainer: Ian Snyder's the one to watch.”

She was careful to keep her voice down as she said, “I've heard a lot of kids say he's controlling the ghost.”

That made him laugh, although he tried to laugh quietly. “Well, sure. He wants everyone to think that. It's his way of fighting back—and it's working. I think a lot of victims are starting to look up to him.”

“Victims?”

“Well, other kids who get picked on.”

“Like Crystal Sparks, maybe?”

He thought a moment. “You'll know who she is the moment you see her. She's like an Ian Snyder clone. But that's just it: These other kids think Abel Frye's going to stick up for them, too, and since Ian controls Abel Frye, they start hanging around with him, joining up with the weird outcasts. It's a little group all their own, all of them weird. But this ghost stuff is all hysteria. Some of the kids are so into it that they start thinking they're really seeing and hearing something.”

“So what really happened to the guys in the hospital?”

He thought a moment, quite seriously. “That part's real, but I haven't a clue what's doing it. I just don't think it's a ghost. The kids are all adding that part to it. They're blaming it on Abel Frye—which suits Ian Snyder just fine. Whatever's causing this sickness, he's taking big advantage of it.”

“So is he really a witch?”

Norman was serious when he said, “He and his friends are into some pretty strange things. And if I can be honest, I think your brother better be careful.”

At lunch, Elijah sat down across the table from Ian, a surefire way to draw stares from around the lunchroom.

Ian was impressed. “You've got a lot of nerve sitting here.”

Elijah glanced around. Ian was right. Others in the lunchroom were giving him the curious and judgmental eye. Even his buddies from calculus class were staring at him and talking between themselves in hushed, gossipy tones.

Ian had become quite the topic of conversation around the classrooms and hallways. Those with reason to fear him were finally beginning to fear him, and a new group of outcasts—some weak, some weird, all of them on the fringe—were starting to occupy the lunch stools at Ian's table. He was both feared and admired, and obviously enjoying it.

Well,
Elijah thought, bravely meeting the eyes looking his way,
they'll just have to go on staring and talking.
He spoke to Ian in a quiet voice. “I've been thinking about what you said about Marquardt.”

That got the attention of an earringed, orange-haired sophomore two chairs away and a plain-looking fat kid sitting beside Elijah. They leaned in, chewing their lunches, ready to listen.

Ian only smiled and took another bite from his sandwich. His mouth was a little full when he said, “How bad do you want it to happen?”

Elijah studied Ian's face. This was going to be a delicate balancing act: asking questions, but not too many, and only the kind of questions that Ian would be comfortable answering. “You told me—remember when we were having that big old incident with Leonard Baynes?”

Ian answered proudly, looking not only at Elijah but at his new followers, “I said Leonard Baynes would be dealt with.” Then he sat quietly, letting what happened to Leonard Baynes speak for itself.

Elijah asked very hesitantly, “Did you . . . I mean, can you really do that?”

Ian didn't seem angry when he said, “Be careful you don't ask too many questions.”

Elijah shrank back just a little. “Yeah. Right.”

But Ian volunteered, “The same thing that happened to Baynes can happen to Marquardt—and Hanley. Don't ask me how. It just can.”

Elijah dared to push just a little further. “But what about those other guys? You know, Tod Kramer, and Doug Anderson, and, uh . . .”

“Jim Boltz.”

“Yeah.”

Ian had a wicked glint in his eye. “Like I said, Elijah: You have to take care of yourself. Nobody's going to do it for you. It's like—”

A crash! Screams
. Dishes flew off a table. A lunch stool toppled and tumbled along the floor. Every head turned.

Two rows away a pretty brown-haired girl had leaped to her feet, her hands extended and clawing like a cat as if fending off an attacker, her eyes wild with terror. “No, no, don't am makin' badder, I can't, I can't!”

“All right . . . ,” said the orange-haired sophomore.

The girl lurched backward, tripping and falling into the people seated at a table behind her. They reached out to catch her and she fought them, screaming, kicking, and thrashing as if for her life. She grabbed up a lunch stool and tried to throw it.

The fat kid beside Elijah looked troubled. “But . . . but that's Amy! She's not—”

Amy's friends surrounded her, grabbed the stool, tried to subdue her. A teacher came running. Her friends held her by her arms as she fought them, staring straight ahead at
something
. “No, no, been waving far away, never, no . . .” Then she said something that caught every ear in the place. “No, Abel Frye! No!”

The girl lurched backward, tripping and falling into the people seated at a table behind her. They reached out to catch her and she fought them, screaming, kicking, and thrashing as if for her life. She grabbed up a lunch stool and tried to throw it.

A whisper rippled and ricocheted around the room. “Abel Frye!” “It's the ghost!” “It's Abel Frye!”

“Go, Abel!” said Orange Hair.

Amy screamed all the louder, “Abel, leave me alone!”

That brought screams of terror from some of the other girls. Some of the kids actually ducked behind their tables as if they could hide from this
thing,
whatever it was.

“Ian . . .” The fat kid's voice sounded pleading.

Elijah was as captured by the sight as anyone, but then he heard a clamor behind him and looked to see Ian Snyder on his feet, horrified. “No,” Ian was muttering, “no, not her. Not her!”

Elijah was mystified. “Ian?”

Ian was looking toward the screaming, struggling girl, now being carried out by her friends and two teachers. “Leave her alone.
Stop
it!”

They carried Amy out of the room, but her screams continued to echo down the hallway and into the lunchroom. Every eye was locked on the doorway. Some students couldn't bear the sound and covered their ears.

Ian sank into his chair, visibly troubled, his fingers over his mouth.

The screaming faded with distance, and then a faraway door—probably the nurse's office—slammed shut.

Commotion and weird, fearful confusion broke out all across the lunchroom. The kids were looking at each other, hiding behind each other, chattering, whispering, crying. A few smirked and mocked, but only a few. Mrs. Donaldson, the English teacher, moved through the room. “All right, everyone, now just calm down. She's going to be all right. Just calm down.”

Suddenly, Sherri Cook, a junior, an attractive red-haired cheerleader, ran down the aisle between the tables and knelt beside Ian, shaking, tears in her eyes. “Ian! Ian, if you're doing this, please make it stop! Amy's my friend! She's a good person; she never hurt anybody!”

But Ian only sat there looking dumbfounded. This was something Elijah had never seen before: Ian Snyder at a total loss. “I didn't—”

Now Mike Hagan came over, a nice guy Elijah knew from English class. “Ian. Let's talk. We can work this out.”

Ian got to his feet, Sherri and Mike on either side, still trying to reason with him. He did not look cool, sinister, or defiant. He looked scared.

Elijah got up as well, not knowing what to say or do.

“Come on,” said Mike. “Whatever the problem is, we'll work it out. Just—just call it off.”

“Please!” said Sherri.

Everyone in the room was staring at them—even some of the big jocks. Even Shawna Miller.

Ian turned, pushed his way past Mike and Sherri, and strode —or maybe
fled
—through the outside exit door.

The room exploded in fearful, rapid chatter. “
He's
doing this?” “Don't you get it? He controls the ghost!” “Yeah,
right!”
“Well, she must have done
something
to make him mad!” “She's OD'd on something, that's all.” “I hear the feds are after him.”

The fat kid and Orange Hair just sat there dumbfounded, but Elijah ran after Ian, flinging the exit door open and dashing through, heeling to a halt on the sidewalk outside and frantically looking all directions.
Oh man, which way?
Ian could have gone straight across the parking lot. He could have ducked into the woods. He could have disappeared around one of three different corners.

Whichever direction he chose, he was gone.

Not wasting a second, not saying a word, Nate ran into the lunchroom and gathered up Amy Warren's schoolbooks and carry bag. Officer Carrillo wasted no time either, immediately putting up a yellow tape barrier around Amy's locker. Mr. Loman brought the combination, and Nate and Sarah, thick gloves protecting their hands, opened it. Only one thing inside appeared unusual: a duffel bag, the kind the football players carried. The owner's name was printed on the side in black marker: Jim Boltz.

“She's Jim Boltz's girlfriend,” Tom Gessner explained. “As near as I've been able to gather from their friends, she took the duffel bag off the players' bench that night when Jim got sick. She was keeping it for him and had no idea we were looking for it.”

Gessner, Officer Carrillo, Nate, and Sarah were meeting behind closed doors with Ms. Wyrthen. Everyone was feeling the tension, the horror, the helplessness; and tempers were approaching the flash point.

Officer Carrillo was checking his gun for the umpteenth time, rotating the cylinder, checking every chamber for a bullet.

“Officer Carrillo,” said Ms. Wyrthen, “I'd feel so much better if you'd put that thing away.”

“Something's out there,” he replied, “and whatever it is, it's going to be sorry it ever ran into me.”

“I think it's time we considered closing the school down,” Gessner suggested.

“I've already looked into that,” said Ms. Wyrthen. “Unless there's a real emergency, I can't suspend classes without a two-thirds approval from the school board.”

“So?” Carrillo demanded. “Get approval!”

“Show me an emergency!” she countered. “Give me a fire, an earthquake, asbestos in the ceiling panels. The school board will understand those, but
this?
What is it? What are we really dealing with? I can't tell them we're haunted by a ghost!”

“But there's something out there!”

“Dan . . .” Tom Gessner tried to calm him. “The gun?”

Carrillo grudgingly holstered his weapon. “Well, at least close off the Forbidden Hallway!”

Sarah countered, “We don't have a conclusive pattern to show that hallway has anything to do with this.”

Carrillo was insulted and all the more angry. “Well what
do
you have? That's what I want to know!”

Ms. Wyrthen turned to Nate and Sarah. “What have you found?”

Nate reported first. “We cleared Amy's locker and we have the entire contents sealed up for examination. Our dog sniffed the locker and the contents, and we think he's found something. We just don't know what it is.”

“You don't know?”
Carrillo practically yelled. “Would you mind explaining that?”

Nate responded calmly, “Max is trained to find illicit drugs
or
any other scent we can isolate and teach him. The problem is, we have to know what we're looking for so we can give him the scent to sniff for. Right now, it's working in reverse: Max is starting to notice a scent that alerts him, but we'll have to go through a trial-and-error process to identify it.”

“We're going to go through all of Amy's things, down to the smallest item, until we find it,” said Sarah. “But note this as well: We went through Crystal Sparks' locker and Max found the same scent, whatever it is. We didn't find anything that would tie her to the victims, just her school things, some outer clothing, and some more of her weird paintings, but Max is finding some kind of connection with his nose.”