Meadowview Acres (22 page)

She smiled, and thought how strange it was that she could feel such happiness in the midst of all the challenges they were facing.

“Just try and stop me,” she said.

CHAPTER 25

Bug

I
t had seemed silly for Shasta to drive Bug home after talking to Eli and Hunter. After all, she just lived next door. Nevertheless, the girls had gotten into Shasta’s truck and backed out of the Massey’s driveway. Shasta pulled up in front of Bug’s house next door and parked.

“Are you okay, Bug?” She asked. The day had been long and filled with all kinds of information that people usually didn’t hear. She was worried about how all of it was affecting Bug.

Bug was looking past Shasta to her house. “I’m fine. I need to tell my dad, though. He’ll know what to do, and I’ll feel better once he knows.”

“Okay, then. I’ll talk to you soon. If you need me tonight, I’ll be at the Jackson’s.” She leaned over and gave her little friend a hug. “Try not to worry. We’ll sort all of this out.”

Bug hugged her back. She loved Shasta. To Bug, Shasta represented security, strength and acceptance. She could tell her anything and know that Shasta would not only listen, but not judge, ridicule or tease her. That in itself was remarkable, but it was also out of love. They had become as close as sisters.

Bug jumped from Shasta’s truck and walked up her driveway. She could smell dinner cooking as she stepped into the kitchen.
Spaghetti? No, baked ravioli, super yummy!
Bug’s tummy rumbled as she closed the side door.

Her mother was taking the bread out of the oven. She smiled at her and said, “Hi, Sweetie! Did you have a good day with Shasta?”

Bug put her bag down on the kitchen counter and sat down on one of the stools. “Yeah, we had a productive day.”

“Well what did you girls get into today? The library, a little shopping?” Ann Hamilton cut the hot bread into slices and started to spread butter on them.

“We actually did some research on some curses and how they may still be affecting people today. Where’s Dad?”

Mrs. Hamilton got the parmesan cheese from the fridge and started to sprinkle the hot, buttered slices of bread. “I think he’s in the living room watching the news. I was about to call him for dinner. Why don’t you go wash up and get him for me. I’ll set the table.”

“Okay.” Bug slid from the high stool and walked to the bathroom to wash her hands. She was trying to figure out just how to start the conversation with her dad. She decided not to do it before dinner. There was no use wasting a good meal, like baked ravioli, with bad news. She would wait until afterward.

She wiped her hands dry and went in search of her father. Mark was indeed in the living room watching the news. His serious face was glued to the reporter who was speaking about the latest catastrophic weather event – another earthquake. The poor people were still rebuilding from the last one.

He noticed her standing beside his chair and said, “Hey, Sweetie! How’s my girl?”

Bug bent down and hugged her father around his neck. She felt better already. Everything would be alright. She felt like he would make everything better because that’s what dad’s do.

“I’m fine. Mom says to come eat now.”

Jumping up from his chair and turning off the TV, he said, “Good, I’m about to waste away. I’m starving! Did you have a good day?”

“Yes, I did. But I need to ask you about something. Can we have a talk after dinner?”

Mark was used to his daughter’s curiosity. She regularly asked him about current events or documentaries that she had watched. The request was nothing new. After the events of last week, he had been expecting it. He had a feeling that she was a little shaken about the recent events. To have known one person who passed away was hard enough, but she had known all three of those people. He put an arm around her tiny shoulder as they walked down the hall to the kitchen. “Sure, right after we eat.”

Dinner was as great as Bug had predicted. Soon all three of their plates were clean and none of them had left room for dessert.

“Wonderfully tasty as usual, Ann,” Mark complimented. Rubbing his belly, he turned to Bug and said, “Let’s go work off this meal with a good discussion.” He winked at his wife, and let her know that Bug had requested this conversation. She picked up on it and said, “Don’t worry about clearing the table, Bug. I’ll do it tonight. You go on and talk to Dad.”

Bug left the table and followed her father down the hall back to the living room. She chose the overstuffed loveseat with the ottoman and Mark plopped down beside her. That was their talking spot. They always ended up there when Bug had questions that needed answering. Mark would stretch his long legs out on the ottoman and Bug would stretch her short legs atop her father’s lap. Once they were cozy, Mark waited for Bug to start.

He was expecting her to ask questions about Heather and Hansen, so he was surprised when she said, “You know how knowledge is power? Well, sometimes it can be scary, too.” She unexpectedly started to cry.

Alarmed, Mr. Hamilton scooted closer to Bug and folded her up into his arms. Ann had obviously heard because Mark saw her head pop around the doorframe. She had a look of concern on her face. He mouthed, “She’s okay,” to his wife and let Bug cry it out. There were many times that Mark Hamilton had worried about his daughter – the first day of every school year, or meeting new people. She had always been a little quirky, but he and Ann thought it to be endearing. From what he witnessed of other people reacting to her, they seemed to feel the same way. For the most part, she was accepted as she was, but not at school, however. She was just so much smarter than kids her own age. The middle school principal and the school counselor had recommended that she skip a grade, but he and Ann had felt that she was not mature enough. She was a young girl with a brilliant mind.

As she nestled closer and the tears quieted, he wondered what could have her so upset. What did she mean that knowledge can be scary? He was used to her signature line of, “Knowledge is Power.” A day didn’t go by that he didn’t hear her say the phrase at least a couple of times. That and the word “super”. Just tonight at dinner she had said how “super yummy” the ravioli had been. He smiled to himself and squeezed her a little tighter, as he waited for her to be able to talk.

Finally, her dark, little head rose up, and she looked at him. “You know,” she sniffled, “Crying is the body’s natural way of releasing tension.”

He smiled at her. “I know. Now start at the beginning.”

So she did. She started way back at the Hot Dog Hut when Hansen had caused her to fall out of the booth and bloody her nose. She could tell that made her dad mad, but what could he do now? Hansen was dead.

Next she recounted the night she followed Eli and Hunter into the woods, and they had found Mr. Jackson. Her dad wasn’t happy about that, either, but he didn’t interrupt. He had been so worried about her that night after Deputy Clay had brought her home. She also told him about the box the boys had brought home with them.

Then, she told him about watching Hansen die. He knew about this, of course, because she had called him when it was happening, and he had come straight home. They had learned of Heather together later on that day.

She came to the day of the funerals. To Bug, that’s when it all started. Sitting in the puffy chair in the foyer of Peaceful Hearts, she had started to put things together. She told her dad of the feeling she’d had that the deaths were somehow connected. She started to tell him the commonalities of the deaths and their circumstances. As she spoke, the newspaperman in Mark Hamilton perked up. He could see her line of thinking and was intrigued.

“So then I told Shasta. At first she didn’t believe me, but she was curious enough to help me research.”

“Don’t tell me,” Mark interjected. “That’s why you two spent so much time at the newspaper on Saturday. Mrs. Walton called to tell me that you and Shasta had been there for quite a while. I told her no worries. Is that what the two of you were doing?”

“Yes, but we didn’t make a mess; we put everything back where we found it. We made four copies and I left forty cents on the copier with a note for Mrs. Shelbourne. But, Dad! We found something. We found a connection.” She was excited about the mystery; her fear and stress forgotten. “Way back in nineteen sixty-eight, a series of deaths occurred that are very similar to the ones that just happened. They were from Glovercroft to Hallston. They happened all in one twenty-four hour period and we were able to trace them all back to one man.” Here she jumped off the loveseat and ran from the room.

Mark waited and tried to absorb the information that his twelve year old had just presented him with.

Bug jogged back into the room with her bag and sat back down. She opened her bag and pulled out what Mark recognized as some photocopies of articles from his newspaper. Handing them to him one at a time, she started with the vagrant on the outskirts of Hallston.

“This one was a thief who tried to rob the man.” She handed him another. “This was Gerald Bell. He came into contact with the man at the bus station.” She handed him the next. “This lady was at a bus stop in Glovercroft with him.” Finally, she showed him the last clipping. “And this Donny guy helped him with his luggage at the docks.” She waited a couple of minutes for her dad to skim through the articles.

“Okay, I see that there could be a connection with how these people died and the ways that our three people died. But who is this man and how did he cause their deaths?” Mark was still intrigued, but he couldn’t see how those deaths from so long ago could have anything to do with what had happened in Meadowview Acres.

“The man had just disembarked from a ship. The ship had lost seventeen people to a strange virus on their journey. This man is the key. Shasta and I found this article next.” She handed him the article on Professor Preston Monroe.

Mark’s eyes narrowed as he read the article. Still trying to find the connection, he said, “What had this professor been working on?”

Bug smiled. He was following the same logic that they had. She handed him the last photocopy. It had the excerpt from his book,
The Curse of the Varuupian Tribe and its Ties to Our Culture
.

Bug watched as understanding registered on her dad’s face. “So what you believe is that this curse is somehow at play here?”

“Dad, I watched Hansen take the rock out of Hunter’s backpack. The backpack with the rock in it had been in Heather’s kitchen just minutes before. And the rock had been dug up by Mr. Jackson at the construction site. When I was around the metal box that Hunter had, I was really sick, so were he and Eli. Even the deputy was. But I haven’t told you the rest.”

Mark looked at his daughter and steeled himself for what was to come.

“Shasta and I went to Shale this morning and talked to Professor Monroe in person.”

Mark Hamilton’s eyes flew wide open. “You? And Shasta? You went to Shale? Bug, you should have told me. If you wanted to talk to this man, I should have taken you. That wasn’t safe. You should know better!” Even while admonishing her, he was too curious to be angry. “Well, what did he say?”

Bug recited almost word for word the story that Professor Monroe had told her and Shasta that morning. Mark listened in silence as all the pieces fell into place. When she finished, he said, “That is some story! And you say he’s blind now? And has been since the night he buried the box with the artifact?”

Bug nodded. “So there’s more. When we came home this afternoon, we met with the boys. They do have the box with the rock and they showed us the envelope that the Professor had put inside. It had two hundred dollars in cash, a map showing the island of Shaali and an explanation of what the rock is, and what it’s capable of doing. The only thing not in there is what to
do
about it. We don’t know how to get rid of it.”

She stopped there and watched as her father got up from the loveseat and started to pace the room. She could hear him mumbling to himself.

“Okay, so we’ve got the artifact that’s cursed. No one needs to be around it. Need to tell Sheriff Buchanon ASAP. Boys are okay, Bug’s alright, anyone else touch it? No, okay.” She heard him mumble some more but couldn’t really make out what he was saying. Finally he stopped and said, “I need to talk to this professor. I’ll go first thing in the morning. He’ll be the one to tell us how to rid ourselves of the thing.”

He crossed the room, took her by her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “Buggie, I’m really proud of you for piecing all of this together, but you took some risks here, you know? You and Shasta should not have gone to Shale without me or another adult. That professor could have been a crazy person. You could have been in danger. Now, from now on, you don’t go anywhere near the boys or that box. If you see it, you go the opposite direction. Do you hear me?”

She nodded her head and promised that she would stay away. “What are you going to do?”

“First thing in the morning, I’m calling Sheriff Buchanon. I’ll take him to Shale with me and tell him the story on the way. Together, maybe we can get some information out of this guy. Where did you say the rock is now?”

“Well, Hunter and Eli are going to ask their chemistry teacher, Mr. Just, if there is any way to disintegrate rock. They’re going to see if they can dissolve it and the curse along with it. Right now, it’s either in Hunter’s shed out back or Eli’s trunk.”

Mark thought that over for a moment. “Mr. Just. Phillip Just. Yeah, I know him. I had to talk to him a few months ago for some facts about an article we were running. Real smart guy. Okay, we’ll let that stand for now. But as soon as the sheriff and I get back from Shale tomorrow, we’ll have an answer.”

“Thanks, Dad. I feel better now that you know. I was super stressed out.” She went to him and put her spindly little arms around his middle. He hugged her back, still amazed at the brain inside of her small head.

“You go to bed now, Bug. You’ve had a rough week. I have to go to the office and sign off on tomorrow’s paper before they send it to print. I’ll see you first thing.” He squeezed her one last time and kissed the top of her black hair. “I love you, Baby.”