Mothman's Curse (21 page)

“It was just a hunch. He had forty years and a whole lot of money to track down some of Edgar's old things. Plus John doesn't really seem like the kind of guy who collected bugs. Right, John?”

The look of disgust on John's face backed me up. I turned the shadow box over. A board had been nailed into place as the backing; I would need something to pry it loose. I nabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen and plopped down on the floor beside my brothers. Hope made my pulse pound and my fingers fumble, but at last I was able to slide a scissor blade beneath the wood and lift. The thin wood resisted, resisted, then splintered beneath the force. Tossing the scissors aside, I tore at the board with my bare hands. I could already see a second backing underneath and the telltale corner of a yellowed piece of paper. I grabbed up the scissors again and stabbed through the wood backing over and over, reducing it to kindling.

Mason watched the destruction, nodding his approval.

Finally I was able to slide my hand through the opening and pull the paper free, getting several splinters in the process. This had to be the answer we'd been looking for.

It had to be.

The paper had become brittle with age. With great care, I unfolded it and stared down at the spidery black handwriting there, slashing its way across the page in angry strokes.

It was the same hand that had scrawled
MINE MINE MINE
across the walls of the Cave.

Edgar.

I read hungrily, eagerly, eyes skipping across the words like stones on a pond.

Edgar had copied down the spell he'd used to seal the curse, but there was nothing about reversing or breaking it. When I reached the end, I read it again, then turned it over to make sure there was nothing written on the back. I handed the paper to Fox before grabbing up the shadow box and shaking it. No other pieces of paper fell out. I seized the nearest heavy object within reach—Dad's muddy old work boot—and used it to break the glass, obliterating the moths beneath. When I'd smashed the whole thing to bits, I pawed through the pile of rubble, but there was nothing else.

“Uh, I think it's toast, Josie,” Fox said.

“That's it?” I knelt there amid the mess. What good did it do me to know that Edgar's spell called for graveyard dirt and raven's bones, eye of moth and an outlaw's ashes? “John, did you know this was in here?”

“Yes.”

“Did it help you?”

A wry look replaced his usual sad expression. “No.”

“I need to know more about this spell! How many people want to turn themselves into a half man, half moth who can see future disasters? There's no way he just found this in a book somewhere. He must have had help. There must be more to it! Do you know, John? Did you ever find anything, see anything?”

“No. Edgar kept his secrets well,” he said.

“If Mothman is the only one who knows, then we're finished,” I said. Mason slid closer to me. Fox had his nose buried in the book. “Fox, are you hearing me?”

“Yeah. Just a second.”

Eventually he looked up, marking his place with one finger. “Is it safe to say the pin is
linked
to Mothman? I mean, you've seen visions of his past through it, right?”

“You know I have.”

“And John is still linked to the pin because the curse is still active, and that's how you're able to see him.”

“That sounds about right.”

He handed me the open book. “Have you ever heard of spirit walking?”

I scanned the page. “You mean like an out-of-body experience?”

“Yeah. I don't think it's that different from what you've already done.”

I read a passage out loud: “‘The living and the dead may walk together on the psychic plane when other attempts to communicate fall short. The process requires a magical object or conduit, preferably an object owned by the spirit in life. This creates a link that allows the living subject to see and experience what the spirit has seen.'”

“But John hasn't seen how the curse was created,” I said.

“You're both still linked to Mothman, right?”

We nodded, girl and ghost, though no one could see John but me.

“And you happen to have a piece of paper from the exact event you want to relive. The book calls that an artifact. It can help guide your movements.”

John looked hopeful, even excited.

“You haven't tried this before?” I asked him.

“No.”

“Then what are we waiting for? What do we have to do?”

*   *   *

They sat me down on the couch and surrounded me with pillows. I caught Fox watching me, chewing his lip. “Are you sure about this, Josie?” he said. “How do we know it's safe?”

“We don't, but we're almost out of time.”

Fox and Mason shared a worried glance.

“Please, I have to try. Tell me what to do.”

Fox traced his finger down the page. “The person and the spirit are supposed to touch the conduit at the same time and focus on a destination.”

“That's it?”

“I think so.”

“Don't forget the spell.” Mason handed it to me and I clutched it tight.

“Are you ready, John?”

He moved closer and reached out with one hand. I leaned away out of reflex. I felt the air grow cold at his approach. Our eyes met. I saw doubt and worry in his face as his icy fingers stretched toward my collar.

Fox leapt to his feet even though he couldn't see John. “Josie, I changed my mind, I don't think you should—”

But it was too late.

The moment John “touched” the pin, I was falling, sightless, flailing, so cold I thought I might shatter—

*   *   *

We were standing in John's house in Clark, at the top of the stairs. John still appeared in black and white, as if leached of all color. I looked down at myself to find that I was black and white, too.

“It worked! Am I a ghost?”

“No. Only your consciousness is with me here. What some people call the mind or the soul.”

I smiled at the sound of his voice—his real voice. “I can understand you. You make a lot more sense now.”

“Communicating as a ghost is not as easy as the book led me to believe. There are … obstacles. It is indeed a luxury to have a real conversation with you. It beats writing on walls.”

Tilting my head, I studied his face. “Why do you look like you did forty years ago, instead of what you looked like when you died?”

He crossed his arms. “Do you mean old?”

“Well … yeah.”

“This was my age when I first put on the pin. The day the landslide took my Nora.”

I met his gaze. “I'm so sorry, John.”

His lips thinned. He looked at his shoes. “It was a long time ago.”

He pointed at an envelope that lay at the base of the wall, near his feet. “This is the letter that was meant for your father.”

“I can't believe the answer was here all along and we missed it.”

“Not precisely,” John said. “I only explained the basics about stopping the disaster and gave strict instructions not to touch the pin, just to be safe. I didn't think it would be necessary to address the curse at all. I truly believed I could end it.”

“By taking your own life?”

“Yes. My body was failing. I did not know if I would live until the day of the disaster. Your father is well respected in Athens. I thought people would listen to him. I never intended to curse him, only ask for his help, but as soon as I met him face-to-face I realized what I had to say would be perceived as the ravings of a damaged mind. I thought as a spirit I could not only convince him the danger was real, but also fulfill the sacrifice the curse required once the disaster was averted. I am sorry for what happened to your father, and even more sorry the curse has fallen to you.”

He waved a hand and suddenly we were downstairs, staring out the picture window with a clear view of the ruined mountain.

“Edgar and I had nothing but time, Josie. He had no control over when the next disaster would happen. All we could do was wait. For forty years. There were other, smaller disasters in that time, but after Clark, Mothman got a taste for large-scale loss of life. He waited until something big was on the horizon—the Field House. From the day I was cursed to the day the Field House is under threat—it's the longest stretch of time since the curse began.

“He visited me more and more as the years went by, wanting to pass the time, to educate me about how misunderstood he was. I think by the end he considered us friends. But I hated him—for taking Nora from me, for creating the curse in the first place.”

“How did you communicate? Mothman can't speak, can he?”

“Through the pin. When I wore it, I could hear him in my head, feel what he was feeling. Only rarely at first, but more and more as the years passed. Edgar came and went at his leisure. He showed me glimpses of his life growing up. Other disasters he's witnessed. But I never saw the birth of the curse itself. He kept it from me, guarded it closely. But hopefully that is about to change. Are you ready?”

I nodded. I concentrated as hard as I could on the spell.

Flickers of light and shadow filled my vision and I felt myself falling as John took my hand and said, “Hold on tight.”

*   *   *

Edgar sat across from an old hag, her body bent with age. Her shriveled hands were folded on the table, her face creased and scarred.

“You wish me to fashion a spell for you?”

“I want revenge.” He set the moth pin on the table and pushed it toward her. “And I want this to be the source.” I could
feel
Edgar's desperation, his anger and madness.

“Yes, this will do nicely,” she said, examining the pin, her black eyes shining.

“So you can do it?”

The hag fixed her gaze on him. “You wish to destroy yourself and countless others over a woman? Are you certain she is worth it?”

He slammed his hand on the table. “She is worth nothing. But hurting her and others like her is worth everything to me.”

“What manner of skills do you seek?”

“Foresight. I wish to know when and where disaster will strike.”

“Is that all?”

“I desire a frightening form. An insect, something that will cause people to recoil in fear.”

“Anything else?”

“I want to live forever.”

Her eyes flashed. “You ask a great deal of me.”

“Is it beyond your skill?”

“Hardly.” The hag stood, choosing books from a shelf behind her and tossing them on the table. She spent several minutes paging through each one and choosing jars and glass vessels from around the room that were filled with exotic-looking plants and herbs, powders and potions.

She set a small iron cauldron in the center of the table and began adding ingredients.

“I grant you the form of half man, half moth. Grotesque and fearsome, you will strike terror in the hearts of all who look upon you. The cost is your humanity, your connection with the outside world. Touch anyone or anything, and the curse is broken. You may only observe, never interfere.”

“Agreed.”

She opened the wide plank door and held a lantern out into the darkness. Insects swarmed to the flickering flame. She reached out and snatched a moth from the air, swung the door closed, and crumbled the moth in her hand before dropping it into the cauldron.

“I grant you the gift of foresight, but only as it pertains to future calamities within a hundred miles as the crow flies, north, south, east, and west of this very site. The cost is … your tongue. Agreed?”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

“Whomever you curse with the pin must stop a disaster of your choosing. Every victim must be saved, or the curse continues.”

The hag pushed a quill, a bottle of ink, and a piece of coarse paper across the table toward him. “Write down the words I speak. It is the spell you will read to activate the curse, when you are ready. Be quick; I will not say it twice.”

His eyes shone with vengeful glee as she named ingredients and whispered ominous-sounding phrases. His fingers twitched as he wrote, as if impatient to move things along. “What of my last request to become immortal?”

“Granted—so long as the curse goes unbroken.”

“And the cost?”

She smiled, revealing several gold teeth. “Your soul.”

Using a pair of tongs she lifted a crucible of molten gold from an iron stove and tipped it until a single drop fell into the cauldron. After pounding and mixing the ingredients with a stone pestle, she threw the pin into the cauldron while muttering to herself. A burst of light, a puff of smoke, and she lifted the pin out again with her bare hands and placed it on the table in front of Edgar, where it gleamed in the lantern light.

Edgar's face showed its first trace of fear. “How is it that you, a human, can claim my eternal soul?”