Meadowview Acres (20 page)

Finally they reached the Dipping Station and went in. The place was empty. Evidently, not a lot of people think of ice cream on a cold, rainy day. Shasta’s nerves were fully awake as she looked at her watch. It was almost three o’clock. One hour until they would talk to Hunter and Eli. She wondered, “Where is the rock, now? Where do they keep it?”

The thought was still with her as she ordered two cups of Rocky Road.

CHAPTER 23

Eli & Hunter

H
unter and Eli were sitting in lawn chairs in back of Hunter’s house. It was around three in the afternoon and they were going to meet Shasta and Bug at four. Neither of them was looking forward to meeting with the girls. Eli had told Hunter what Bug had asked him at the funeral home. At the time, it seemed like she had believed his “tool box” answer. They figured that Bug had told Shasta about the box, and that was what the girls wanted to discuss.

Eli had been feeling guilty ever since last Wednesday when Heather had died. He knew it was because of the rock. The Rock of Varuupi, the letter called it. Professor Preston Monroe had brought it back from some island and the thing was cursed. Eli wasn’t one to believe in such things; he was more into the concrete findings of science, but from what he had seen since the box had come into his possession, it was believable.

Heather’s funeral had been brutal for Eli with his dad showing up all heartbroken and his mom in total shock and disbelief. It was all Eli could do to get through that day. Thank goodness for Hunter’s parents. Mr. and Mrs. Massey were like a second family for Eli, and he had felt much steadier with them around. Eli had been happy when his dad left Saturday afternoon. He had given Eli a hug and said, “I’m always here for you, Son. Please remember that.”

Eli hadn’t said anything back to his father, but in his head he was thinking, “Yeah, Dad. You’re always around, aren’t you?”

That had been just yesterday, but Eli felt like it had been weeks ago. He was exhausted – mentally and physically. Hunter was pretty freaked out, too, but Eli could tell that Hunter was trying to act like everything would work out. He was trying to make Eli feel better. Eli knew that he would do the same for Hunter if the situation was reversed.

Hunter tipped back and rocked on the back legs of the lawn chair. “So we have a good idea of what they want to talk about,” he said to Eli. “How much should we tell them?”

“Well,” Eli started. “I don’t think it would be a bad idea to just tell them everything.” He saw Hunter’s eyebrows go up in surprise and continued. “At this point, we know what it is and what it’s capable of. We also know the name of the guy that brought it here and buried it. If we had some allies, especially smart ones like Shasta and Bug, maybe they could help us track this guy down, so we can give him his damn box back.” Eli squinted his eyes together. He had been nursing a nearly continuous headache since Wednesday.

“Jeez, I hadn’t thought of that! That’s a great idea! We could get it off our hands and make it someone else’s problem.” Hunter paused, thinking. “You saw the date on that letter, though. And we don’t know how old the guy was when he wrote it. I wonder if he’s still alive.”

“I wouldn’t worry so much about his age. It’s the curse that makes me wonder if he’s still alive. We don’t even know if the guy made it out of the woods after he buried it.” Eli started to rub his temples.

Both boys were lost in thought when Shasta’s Ranger pulled into the Massey’s driveway.

“Someone’s early,” Hunter said after looking at his watch. It was three forty-two.

They watched as the girls got out of the truck and headed for the side door. They rerouted themselves when they saw the guys in the back yard.

“Hey, guys,” Shasta said. Bug smiled at them both.

“Hey, Shas. Hi Bug,” Hunter said.

Hunter got up from his chair and walked over to the back patio to grab two more chairs. He brought them over and set them up for the girls.

“Is this going to be a private enough spot?” Bug asked. “Our subject matter is pretty sensitive.”

“Hunter’s mom and dad are at my house and his little brother is inside playing video games. We should maybe talk softly, but we’re okay.” Eli wasn’t going to act like he didn’t know why they were there. He was too tired, and his head hurt. He continued by saying, “We know you saw the box with us after we found Mr. Jackson that night. And we know you didn’t buy my story about it being our tool box. So we guess you two are here out of curiosity?”

Shasta was the one who answered. “Actually, we know quite a bit. And we’re here to help, or try to help, if you’ll let us.”

The boys both looked skeptical, so she continued.

“When Bug told me about the box you had found in the woods, I didn’t think that there was a connection to Mr. Jackson, but she did. She didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she was curious. She did a little research on her own about chemicals and things, but nothing really panned out. Then, unfortunately, she saw Hansen die.”

Hunter and Eli wore the same look of surprise on their faces.

“She heard the commotion and yelling, so she looked out the window. She saw Hansen grab your pack, take out the rock and… well, you know. Anyway, when she heard about Heather that same night,” she looked at Eli and said, “Sorry, Eli, but when she heard about Heather that same night, she knew that there was a connection for sure.”

Hunter interjected with, “So you saw Hansen holding the rock, and you knew what it was?” He asked Bug.

“Oh, no!” Bug replied. “I was just super sure at that point that there was something fishy going on. So, I told Shasta and we did some digging at the newspaper. We were looking for old articles about people who had died under strange circumstances in quick succession, and we found a trail.” Bug tried not to sound excited.

“What kind of trail?” Eli, realizing that these two might have even more information than he and Hunter, was more interested. Forgetting his headache for the moment, he said, “Go on.”

Bug looked at Shasta who nodded at her. “Well, we found a string of mysterious deaths that had happened way back in nineteen sixty-eight. The descriptions sounded a lot like what was happening here now. We kept digging and found an article on a man who had gotten off of a boat in Glovercroft. The paper said that there were a lot of deaths on that same boat. We researched the man, and then everything just fell into place.”

Hunter looked at Bug. “Professor…”

She finished for him, “Preston Monroe.”

Eli and Hunter were stunned. It seemed that neither of them could speak, so Shasta did. “Bug and I researched what the professor was working on. When we found out that he was researching the Curse of the Varuupian Rock, we knew we had to talk to him.”

Hunter found his voice. “Talk to him? Talk to him? Are you saying that you actually know where he is? That we can all go talk to him?”

Bug shushed him with a look and a finger to her lips. All four of them looked at the windows of both houses before Shasta continued.

“We talked to him this morning. He lives in Shale. He’s in his mid-seventies now, but he looks much older. He told us all about going to Shaali and finding the rock. He told us about the trip back on the ship and about making his way to Hallston, or back then it was outside of the town limits, and burying the box.” She looked down at her shoes. She was thinking how hard this must be on Eli. “And he told us about all the people that had died along the way.” She stopped talking then and looked at them both.

Hunter and Eli were quietly absorbing everything the girls had said. Shasta and Bug stayed silent, waiting for the questions that they both knew were coming.

Finally, Hunter said, “Eli was thinking that we could take the box with everything in it back to this professor guy if we could find him. Couldn’t we still do that? It was his problem to start with – he should have to fix it.”

“Well, that’s not really possible.” Shasta paused, thinking how to tell them the rest. “Professor Monroe didn’t actually come away from this unscathed. He was cursed, too. He’s blind.”

Eli’s eyes opened wide. “He’s blind? He should be dead! How can he have been around that thing and ended up living so long?” He was feeling very angry with Professor Monroe. It was his fault that this was happening – his fault for bringing the damned thing here in the first place. Eli wished that Professor Monroe had died instead of Heather. He looked away from the group as tears sprang into his eyes.

Shasta could read his thoughts. “I know what you mean, Eli. And he knows that. He knows that he should have died, and I think he sort of wishes he had. Either way, he can’t help us. Even with his sight, he’s just too weak. He said that there was a letter with the rock?”

Hunter leaned forward, reached around and pulled an envelope out of his back pocket. He handed it over to Shasta.

Shasta opened the envelope and took out the money – two hundred cash. Not so much to travel with these days, but back then, it would have been a lot. She handed the money to Bug and pulled out the map. She glanced at it then handed that over to Bug as well. She pulled out the last item and unfolded it.

She read it through twice; her forehead wrinkled in confusion, then handed the letter to Bug. Looking at Hunter first, then Eli, she said, “But, that doesn’t say how to get rid of it. It just says it’s a cursed artifact and shows where it came from on a stupid map. How are we supposed to know what to do to get rid of it?” It was Shasta’s turn to be angry. The whole morning, Professor Monroe never said anything about what to do with the rock, how to dispose of it. What were they supposed to do now?

That’s when Bug spoke up, “Well, we know that Professor Monroe isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, or he wouldn’t have brought that piece of the tomb back from Shaali in the first place. Also, it took him a super long time to figure out that the rock was what killed the captain of his little boat and the crewmen on the ship. I, for one, am glad that he doesn’t suggest how to get rid of it. For all we know we would all end up cursed.”

She looked around at the group, then back at Shasta. “What about what we were talking about on the way back from Shale? Remember? We were going to ask the Shazaam Brothers about a chemical that could disintegrate rock.”

“That’s right,” said Shasta. “We were thinking that if you guys knew of some kind of chemical that would just dissolve the rock; the curse would cease to exist. What do you think?”

Hunter looked at Eli and thought for a moment. Then he said, “That may be a pretty good option. We would need to test some things out, though. And we don’t really have anything stronger than bleach in our kits, but, with some research, we might be able to come up with something.”

“Just,” Eli said.

“Just what?” Hunter asked.

“No, Mr. Just. Mr. Just at school. He has all kinds of stuff in the lab. And he has a ton of knowledge about chemical components. What about taking it to him? He’s really cool, I know he’d help us.”

The time had come for Shasta to finally voice her main fear. “We can’t do that. What if it hurts him? Or worse. We know what that rock can do, we’ve seen it. And it seems to affect different people in different ways. We don’t know what affect it would have on him. Should we really take a chance on someone else’s life?”

Eli and Hunter exchanged a look. Then, Hunter said, “We know how it affects each of us, and you too, Bug. But you’re right, Shasta. No one else should be around it that hasn’t already been exposed. We’ll take it with us to the school and keep it outside when we talk to him. We’ll find out what he suggests and then Eli and I will ultimately be the ones to deal with it.”

“Well, that sounds like a super good plan,” said Bug. “But I’m going to tell my dad about this whole thing. He’ll know what to do if your plan doesn’t work. That way, we’ll have a Plan B.”

Bug then reached down and pulled something out of her bag. It was the book that Professor Monroe had given them. “Read the chapter on the Varuupi. It’ll fill in the gaps from his letter.” She handed the book over to Eli who accepted it and started to flip through the pages.

“Eli?” Shasta said. “Does your mom know about any of this?”

“No,” he replied looking guiltier than before. “I’ll need to tell her soon, but I just can’t yet.”

“You know,” she continued. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened to Heather. There’s no way you could have known what was in that box. It was normal curiosity. If you had even the slightest belief that something in there could hurt your family, you never would have opened it at all. Much less in your own house.”

Shasta was trying to be kind, but her words had a stinging effect on both Eli and Hunter. They both had an idea that the box was responsible for Mr. Jackson’s death and for making them sick, as well. The boys had wanted to open it anyway. Thinking back, they should have taken it deep into the woods and buried it, but they had wanted to see what was inside. Two more people had died because of them. Eli knew that guilt would be with him forever.

They had a plan and all of the information had been shared, so it seemed like a good time to call it quits. Shasta stood up and motioned for Bug.

“Let us know what happens. We’ll help any way that we can, except, I don’t think either of us should get too close to the rock. We know how sick it makes Bug, and who knows what it’ll do to me?”

Bug added, “I’ll tell my dad what’s going on and let you know if he comes up with anything. When will you go to the school to see Mr. Just?”

“I think we should talk to him after school tomorrow. We’ll keep it in Eli’s trunk until then. That way, if he has an idea, we can work in the lab, and he can be on a cell phone nearby or something. That may work.” Hunter looked at Eli to see if he agreed with that plan. Eli nodded and said it sounded good.

“Okay, bye then.” Shasta got her bag from the ground, and Bug followed her to the truck. Shasta was thinking how in the world she was going to explain all of this to Darren and Agnes.

Eli looked at Hunter and said, “I feel a little better. Just the fact that we’ve got a plan and some friends who are going to help makes me feel better.”