Moonlight Secrets (10 page)

No way. I didn't want to believe it was Candy.

But
what else
could I believe?

I took a long sip of beer. I wanted to get trashed tonight. Maybe it would calm me down. Maybe for just a few minutes I could stop being afraid of every sound, every movement around me. Afraid of my own body.

Jamie and Lewis sat at a booth near the back, and I saw Candy at a back table talking with two girls from Waynesbridge. She had her back to me, so she couldn't give me her usual evil eye.

I looked up and saw Galen walk in. He had a blue Cubs cap pulled sideways over his coppery hair. He wore baggy jeans under a faded red and gray Beastie Boys T-shirt.

“Hey, guys. Whassup?” he shouted. Just about everyone in the bar turned to look at him. “I've got it!” he called. “Nate—dude! I know why these things are happening to you! I mean, it's unbelievable. You're not going to
believe
what I found out.”

Whoa.

What did Galen find out? My heart started to pound like crazy.

Galen started past the bar, but Ryland raised a hand. He dropped the towel he was using to wipe beer glasses. “Hey, Galen—aren't you forgetting something?”

Galen stared at Ryland for a moment. “Oh. Yeah.”

He backed up to the brass plaque of Simon and Angelica Fear on the wall. “Nate, wait till you hear what I found,” he shouted. “We're going to need all the good luck we can get!”

He lowered his head to the plaque and kissed it, just above Angelica Fear's forehead. It was a very long kiss.

I leaned forward over the table and watched as Galen kept his lips pressed to the plaque. Why was he taking so long?

Was he trying to be funny, showing off what a great kisser he was?

No. It didn't take long to see that it was no joke.

Galen started to squirm. He pulled back. But his lips . . .

. . . His lips stayed stuck to the plaque.

He let out a muffled shout. It took me a while to realize he was calling for help.

Galen had both hands pressed against the
wall and was pushing back. But his mouth didn't move off the plaque.

His face turned bright red. His Cubs cap fell off and dropped to the floor.

His cries grew louder. He twisted his head up and down and from side to side. He pushed off the wall with both hands.

It grew really quiet in the bar. Shark and I jumped to our feet. We went running to the front.

Ryland hurried out from behind the bar. He had his hand on Galen's shoulder. “Calm, calm,” he kept repeating.

Sweat poured down Galen's face. He shouted something, but I couldn't understand him. He tugged back again—and cried out in pain. I could see that his lips were stuck tight to the plaque.

“I don't get it,” Ryland said, scratching his spiky hair. “This is totally weird. This can't be happening.”

My heart was pounding. I wanted to help—but
how
?

“Do you have any grease or anything?” Shark asked.

Ryland stared back at him.

Galen let out another shrill cry of pain. He kept trying to tell us something. But his mouth was stuck tight.

Ryland turned to the bar. “I'm going to call the fire department,” he said. “Maybe they can deal with this. I—”

“No—wait!” Shark said. He grabbed Ryland by the shoulder. “If you call them, we'll all be busted. They'll report us. Our parents will find out we've been sneaking out.”

Galen's cries were weaker now. His face had gone pale. His hair glistened with sweat.

“Try some butter,” I said, finally finding my voice. “You've got butter, right?”

Ryland hesitated. Then he moved to a small refrigerator under the bar. He bent down and started fumbling around inside it.

Galen whimpered in pain. I turned to him. “We'll get you off that thing,” I said. “Just stay calm, okay? Don't move. Just wait.”

Galen mumbled a reply, but again I couldn't understand.

“Weird,” Ryland was muttering. “Too weird.” He brought over a half stick of butter.

Shark took it from him and started to smear it on the plaque. Galen let out a scream
when the stick of butter bumped his lips.

Shark carefully, gently applied the butter, smearing it over the brass. Lowering it to Galen's mouth. Spreading it all around Galen's lips.

“If this doesn't work, I'm dialing 911,” Ryland said. He shook his head. “I don't get this. I just don't.”

The butter had softened and oozed over Shark's fingers. He took a step back. “Nate, try to move Galen's head,” he instructed me. “Very gently. Give it a try.”

My hands started shaking as I raised them. I placed them carefully on the sides of Galen's head. Then slowly . . . carefully . . . I tried to slide his mouth over the buttery surface.

But no. No . . .

His mouth wouldn't move.

Galen uttered a sharp cry of pain.

I gasped and jerked my hands away. I staggered back, startled by his cry.

And to my surprise, Galen staggered back with me.

We both toppled backward into the bar.

Yes!

He was free!

Galen was free. The butter had worked.

I started to open my mouth in a cheer of victory.

But then I raised my eyes to the wall. To the plaque . . .

And I saw . . .

I saw a piece of Galen's tongue—and both of his lips—
still stuck to the plaque.

Ryland got Galen to the
emergency room at Shadyside General. The rest of us all scurried home. Galen was definitely busted. Now his parents would know about him sneaking out to Nights. But we knew he wouldn't rat out the rest of us.

Of course, all that didn't matter much to Galen. The poor guy was totally messed up. He needed surgery and spent a couple of weeks in the hospital.

I tried calling him there. A woman picked up the phone. Maybe it was a nurse or maybe it was his mom. She said Galen had a lot of stitches and couldn't talk very well.

I kept picturing that red chunk of tongue stuck to the brass plaque like a piece of raw hamburger. And the two thin, cut lips. And
each time I thought about it I felt sick, like I was going to hurl my guts out.

I had to force that picture from my mind. But then I kept thinking about what Galen had said when he walked into the bar.

He said he'd found out why things were happening to me. He said he knew the truth.

My mind kept spinning with ideas. What had Galen found out?

Did someone try to keep him from telling?

If only he could talk. I had to know what he'd learned. I had to hear it before . . . before something else happened to me.

* * *

A couple of weeks after Galen had been hospitalized, Shark and I were walking to my house. A car horn made me jump.

We turned to see Jamie pull up in her blue Corolla. Lewis sat beside her. They both called out, “Hi!”

“Hey, what's up?” I called.

“Galen is home,” Jamie said. “He got home last night. His mom said he can have visitors.”

“Have you seen him?” I asked.

“Yeah. Lewis and I just came from there,” Jamie replied.

“How is he?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He's all stitched up. But he can talk pretty well. He's going to need plastic surgery.”

A car honked behind Jamie. She gave us a wave and drove on.

“Let's go see him,” Shark said.

We turned and walked to Galen's house. He lives in a tiny white brick house about two blocks from Fear Street Acres.

He has three sisters. He says the house is so small that he's always bumping into one of them. He says he comes to Nights for the peace and quiet.

Galen's mother was just leaving when Shark and I walked up the drive. She opened the front door for us and said Galen would be really glad to see us.

Two of his sisters were in the living room playing a Super Mario game on the TV. We found Galen in his tiny bedroom in the back of the house. He sat up in bed when he saw us.

“Hey, whassup?” He put down the copy of
Sports Illustrated
he'd been reading. He kinda lisped. He said “whatthup” instead of “whassup.”

Shark and I tried to find a place to sit in
the little room. It was the size of a closet. No kidding. It probably
was
a closet.

“How's it going, Galen?” Shark asked.

I couldn't stop staring at his mouth. It was totally swollen and covered with black stitches. He had little pieces of black thread poking out of his skin.

“Not bad,” he said. “I won't be kissing any girls for a while.” He lisped all the s's.

Shark and I both laughed. You know. Awkward, forced laughter.

But Galen didn't laugh. He suddenly got real serious. “I . . . found out something. Something totally weird. But . . . I know what's going on. It's Candy. It's all Candy.”

“Huh?” I stared at Galen. “Excuse me? Are you sure?”

Galen nodded. “Candy did this to me to keep me from talking. I know it. I tried to warn you about her, Nate, that night at the bar.”

I pulled the little wooden chair from Galen's desk closer. Shark sat on the edge of the bed. He kept rolling up the copy of
Sports Illustrated
and then unrolling it.

“
Candy
made your mouth stick to the plaque?” Shark asked.

Galen nodded. “I found out the truth,” he said. He cringed. I think it was painful to talk with those swollen lips. “And I know it's for real, man. All the weird things that have been going down . . . Candy did them all.”

I rolled my eyes. “Galen, how many painkillers did they give you at the hospital?”

Again, he didn't laugh. “It's true. Listen to me.” He climbed off the bed and started shuffling through some papers on his desk.

“I found this Web site,” he said. “It's about legends and stories from the early days of Shadyside.”

Galen studied one of the pages. “It's about Fear Street. All about how terrifying things happened there. And about the Fear family and how weird and evil they were.”

He handed me a sheet of paper. It had a black-and-white drawing of a young woman on it.

“Check it out. Know who that is?” Galen tapped his finger on the woman's face. “Angelica Fear,” he said. “She was some kinda witch, remember? We learned about her ages ago.”

Shark grabbed the drawing from me and studied it. “Yeah. It's Angelica Fear. So what?”

“Check out what she's wearing,” Galen said. He cringed again and raised a hand to his swollen mouth.

Shark and I both gazed at the drawing. I recognized it before Shark. “Candy's pendant!” I exclaimed.

Shark squinted at it. “Yeah. It's that same pendant Candy wears all the time. Angelica Fear is wearing it.”

“The Web site has a whole page about it,” Galen said. He shoved more pages into my hands. “Check it out, man. It's called an amulet. It's totally evil. The amulet has evil powers. It can be used to cast spells on people and stuff like that.”

Shark and I gazed at the drawing.

“The article says it's silver with sapphire jewels on it. And look at the words on the back of the amulet,” Galen said. “
Dominatio per malum.
It's Latin. My mom told me what it means.
Power through evil.
”

My mind was whirring. I remembered Candy sitting in Nights with her hand wrapped around that pendant. And I remembered that big, evil grin on her face.

“Get it?” Galen demanded. “Candy has
Angelica Fear's amulet. And she's using it against us.”

“The cockroaches . . .” Shark muttered, staring down at the drawing of the amulet. “The blood from your ears . . .”

“My car!” I said. “Shark—that's why my car went flying into the river.”

Shark leapt to his feet. “She . . . she really did try to
kill
us!”

A chill ran down my back.

I didn't want to believe it. But here was the proof.

Candy was evil. Candy wanted to kill me.

I scanned the pages from the Web site. It was all there. Angelica Fear had used the power of the amulet to destroy her enemies . . . destroy them in ugly, painful ways.

I turned to Shark, the papers trembling in my hand. “Shark, what are we going to do?” I asked in a whisper.

Shark's eyes narrowed. “We're going to get that amulet,” he said softly.

“Candy said her parents were
going away,” Shark said. “Remember? She was inviting kids to come over and party?”

“But no one wanted to party with her,” I told Nikki. “Shark and I went by her house around nine, and there was no one there. We saw her through the window, sitting in her living room by herself.”

It was a little after three in the morning, and we were at Nights. Nikki, Shark, Lewis, and I huddled at the back booth sipping beers, making a plan.

“So why didn't you go see her?” Lewis asked. “You had your perfect chance.”

“No way,” Shark said, spinning his beer bottle between his hands. “We have to take her by surprise.”

“Shark's right,” I said. “We can't just ask her for the amulet and expect she'll give it to us.”

“She'll turn us into frogs or something,” Shark said. He meant it as a joke, but it didn't seem too funny.

Nikki suddenly looked frightened. “Shut up! You're just going to break into her house and steal the amulet?”

“That's the plan,” Shark said.

“Maybe we can do it without even waking her up,” I said. I felt a sudden chill of fear. “I mean, she's dangerous. No joke. She's evil.”

Lewis rolled his eyes. “I think you're crazy.”

Shark tilted his head and gazed at him. “Why?”

“I think you should call the police,” Lewis said. “Explain to them what Candy has been doing.”