Mothman's Curse (13 page)

Aunt Barb poked her head out of the kitchen, cheeks flushed, her red hair sticking up every which way. “Just in time for dinner. Fox, plates and silverware, please. Josie, you've got drinks. Wash up first. Have you done something different with your hair? How was the library? Homework all done? Your brother's been quite the handful. I'd keep a close eye on your cell phones if I were you.”

I felt a twinge of guilt for lying about what we'd been up to, but I also felt glad that Aunt Barb didn't know what we'd gotten ourselves into. She had enough to worry about. And so did we.

*   *   *

It was the longest dinner in history. I choked down food I didn't feel like eating, pretended to be interested in conversations that didn't matter. I didn't dare look at Fox for fear of collapsing in a fit of tears.

After clearing the table, I ran out to the storeroom and grabbed the books and shadow box I'd stashed. Then, while Aunt Barb settled on the couch with her knitting and Uncle Bill watched
Law & Order
reruns, Fox and I tried to lock ourselves in Dad's study, hoping to do some research on the curse. Mason had other ideas, though. Using his outside voice he demanded to know if we'd seen any more floating objects and if the ghost in our house planned to stick around for a while.

We hurried him into the study and shut the door.

“Shh, Mason, that's a secret, remember?” Fox said.

“I know,” Mason said. I searched his face for signs of how he was coping with everything. After the chaos in his room Sunday night, on top of Dad getting hurt, I wondered if he was having nightmares. I'd been too distracted to even ask.

He didn't look scared, though. Just curious. My heart swelled with pride for the little goofball.

We told him the basics: Yes, there was a ghost, but it wanted our help and wouldn't hurt us and didn't plan on staying long.

“What kind of help?” Mason said, his expression eager.

“Um,” I said, looking to Fox. “He can't find his way to heaven. If we help him save some people, we think he can finally move on.”

“Maybe he can say hello to Momma when he gets there.”

Tears burned my eyes. I kissed the side of Mason's head. “Maybe so.”

We talked about Momma being in heaven all the time. None of us could bear to think that she wasn't
anywhere
anymore. Now that I knew ghosts were real, that there was an
after
, I felt hopeful I would see her again someday.

It was the one bright spot in this whole jumbled-up mess.

Mason settled himself on the rug to work on his “invention.”

Fox and I started with the journals. Our eyes met in surprise when the very first one fell open to an ink drawing of a man with leathery wings and beady red eyes. With an unsteady hand, I skimmed page after page of sketches: some of a human figure in flight, wings outstretched, others of a tall, too-thin creature, all shadows and angles, a fusion of moth and man. Some were bare-chested; others wore tattered robes. Some of the wings looked brittle, others thick and tough. Many sketches had dimensions of height and wingspan labeled in number of feet. I flipped to find a signature inside the front cover of the journal:
J. Goodrich
.

Fox took the book and held it close to his face, nose wrinkling, mouth ajar. I nudged him to let him know I couldn't see. He lowered the journal and together we read paragraphs of notes about Point Pleasant, with eyewitness accounts of Mothman sightings, dates and times and locations, all in the same small, neat handwriting. Halfway through the book, the focus switched to Clark. Sightings were less frequent, eyewitnesses reluctant to talk.
Why so many sightings in Point Pleasant?
I wondered. And if he liked to show up where the next disaster was due to strike, why hadn't other people seen him in Athens?

“All these sightings,” I said. “Do you think he's actually causing the disasters?”

“Don't know,” he murmured, engrossed in his reading. “Makes sense, though.”

I rested my chin in my hand, lost in thought.

On the last page of the book, a single phrase jumped out at me:
I must save my Nora.
I frowned. Save her from what? The landslide? Hadn't they been working together to stop it?

It made me feel fragile, like bad things would find you no matter how careful you were. But I knew we had to move on. As interesting as the journal was, it didn't provide much help. We still had little clue what we were supposed to stop, or how, or what would happen if we didn't except that people would likely die.

And we were running out of time.

I set the journal aside.

Fox used his phone to look up Monday's event schedule for the Field House while I fired up Dad's laptop.

Though I didn't have Fox's people skills, I did know a thing or two about computers.

I started by checking theater costume sites for clothing styles like the ones I'd seen in my vision. The nearest I could pin it down was sometime in the late 1800s.

I looked for records of Edgars, Elsies, and Williams in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia from the 1880s onward, but without last names or a specific town it was all but impossible, until I added the word
murder
. Within minutes I pulled up a scanned newspaper article from Ravenswood, West Virginia, in July 1879, reporting the death of William Bennett by gunshot wound. The weapon was fired by longtime friend Edgar Tripp, who disappeared without a trace. William was survived by his fianc
é
e, Elsie Archer.

It was real. All of it. I shuddered, thinking again of my vision and the look in Edgar's eyes when he'd pulled that trigger.

At least now we had a place to start.

Finally we decided to call it a night. Mason had fallen asleep on the rug, clutching his roll of duct tape. I shook him awake and sent him off to bed.

Fox and I didn't talk much. We said good-night to Aunt Barb and Uncle Bill before plodding upstairs, knowing we were in over our heads.

I carted the journals and shadow box up to my room and set them on my desk. I was afraid to keep the pin too close or too far away, so I settled for placing it on my bedside table, as far away as possible from Momma's picture.

Climbing into bed, I realized I had school the next day. I sighed. It seemed like such a waste of time.

I wanted to call Dad, but Aunt Barb had said he was resting, trying to get better. Tomorrow I would remind her about her promise that we could go see him. But tonight … I knew he had his cell phone with him. He was probably asleep. I sent him a text anyway:

Hi Dad. How r u?

I waited ten minutes with no response. Maybe he had his phone turned off. Maybe he wasn't allowed to use it in the hospital. I stared at the screen, willing it to light up.

Finally my text alert pinged. I grabbed the phone.

Hi Josie Bug

How r u? Miss you.

Wanted 2 come c u today.

Miss you too. Tired. Bored.

When do u come home?

Few more days

Need anything?

Cheeseburger?

I would if I could

We texted back and forth for a few more minutes before saying good-night. I held the phone tightly, wanting desperately to hug him for real.

I stared at the shadow box on my desk. Was it John's? Was it just a coincidence that he collected bugs, or did the fascination start after he found out about the curse?

Either way, the thing was creepy as sin. The moths looked like they could crawl out from under the glass at any moment and start flying at me with their scratchy brown wings. I tried setting a stack of papers on top of it so I wouldn't have to look at it. Every few minutes I glanced over at it anyway. It was just as hideous every single time.

Finally I tumbled out of bed. I grabbed the shadow box, hurried into the hall, and stuffed it deep down into a clothes hamper.

I switched off my light and burrowed down under the covers. As I drifted off to sleep, the phrase from John's journal haunted me:
I must save my Nora.

Did John know she would die in the landslide? Why wasn't he with her?

Why couldn't he save her?

 

10

When I opened my eyes the next morning, the pin was the first thing I saw. The picture of Momma was the second. She smiled at me like she always did, with laughing eyes and rosy cheeks and a kind face. I sat up in a panic. I'd forgotten to kiss her picture good night. I hadn't missed a morning or evening since she died. It felt like a betrayal, and a bad omen besides. I picked up the photo and kissed it twice for good measure.

Fox barged in around six forty-five and tossed the shadow box on my bed. “Aunt Barb found this in the hamper. You might want to put it somewhere safe.”

I made a face. “Thanks.”

“Don't worry,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I think it's creepy, too. I would have done the same thing.”

We begged to skip school again so we could visit Dad. Aunt Barb was having none of it.

“But we haven't seen him since Monday,” Fox said.

“You've missed too many days already.”

“But next week is spring break!” I said. “It's not like we're doing anything important in class this week anyway.”

She stood firm. “After school,” she said, and the conversation was over.

School dragged by, minute by agonizing minute. Three of my teachers caught me staring out the window. They were sympathetic, but I could feel the other kids' eyes on me, curious. I didn't want the attention or the sympathy. I just wanted to be with Dad.

*   *   *

I gladly left it all behind when Aunt Barb picked me up at the end of the day. We drove from the middle school to the grade school to grab the boys, then made our way to the hospital. I insisted we stop on the way to get Dad a cheeseburger.

But Dad's room was quiet and dark when we got there. His face was too pale, his body too still, tucked under a scratchy blanket that made me itch just looking at it. A nurse was writing something on a chart at the foot of his bed.

Aunt Barb whispered for us to wait in the hall. She talked with the nurse for a couple of minutes while we stood there watching, afraid to meet one another's eyes. A fretful silence settled over us, the scene not so different from our last few visits with Momma.

Finally Aunt Barb returned. She led us to a bank of chairs at the end of the hall. “Your daddy's had an allergic reaction to his antibiotics, so they've had to change his medication.”

We blinked back at her.

“He's running a fever. They think it's better if we try again tomorrow.”

Tears brimmed in Mason's eyes. Fox's face went all still, like that day at the Goodrich house when Dad fell. The cheeseburger sat cooling in its paper bag, a grease stain spreading along the bottom.

Aunt Barb slipped one arm around Mason, the other around Fox. “Come on. No more frowns. Let's get some ice cream at the cafeteria. By tomorrow your dad will be fussing and trying to bribe the nurses to let him leave.”

I caught Mason watching me closely, so I pasted on a phony smile and tickled the back of his neck. “Bet I can eat more ice cream than you,” I told him.

“Can not!”

“Can so!”

I thought Fox might refuse to play along, but he wasn't about to be upstaged. “I get all the sprinkles,” he said, fast-walking ahead of Mason.

“Fox!” Mason shouted, doubling his steps to keep up.

I glanced at Aunt Barb. She reached out to squeeze my hand. “You're a good girl, Josie Fletcher.” I felt my cheeks grow warm. “I'd say something to Fox,” she whispered, “but his head's big enough already, don't you think?”

I laughed. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like.

*   *   *

“So there's a quilt show at the Field House during the day on Monday, and the state high school basketball championship game that night,” Fox said. “That means a ton of people.”

My worry rose another notch. “That complicates things.”

After our disappointing visit to the hospital, Fox and I had retreated to the Cave to work on what we'd started calling our Disaster Avoidance Plan.

I began spreading across the table a stack of papers that I'd printed out the day before, taping them down one by one.

“What are those?” Fox said.

“Blueprints for the Field House.”

“Where did you get them?”

I shrugged. “You'd be surprised what you can find online.”

“Huh.”

“So,” I said, standing back to study the blueprints. “How do we keep all those people away?”

“We call in an anonymous tip, get them to evacuate the building. But it has to be credible,” Fox said.

“Could we say there's a bomb?”

“That might do it, although if they trace it back to us we'd be in massive amounts of trouble. Even making a threat is like a federal crime or something.”