The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe (21 page)

“YOU HAVE THE BOOK?” Seth asked, trailing Gabe and Mazzy into the lobby.

“In my bag,” said Gabe. They stood at the end of a long line. “Should we try to find a place inside the gym? It’ll probably be dark. Maybe private. Quiet even?”

Mazzy nodded. “We can sneak off if we need to.”

The hallways off the lobby grew dark as the sun went down. Accordion gates stretched across their wide entrances, blocking access to the rest of the school. Classes here must have ended early in preparation for this haunting, Gabe thought.

“Can’t we just talk out here?” Seth asked. The line was packed closely. Despite the white noise that filled the lobby, someone could listen in, so Gabe shook his head. He recognized several teachers from the middle school. It was a good thing Seth had come in costume, or he’d have been noticed immediately.

Creepy music and sound effects were being piped out of the intercom speakers overhead. Volunteers dressed as zombies greeted everyone, alternately scaring and delighting the youngest visitors. More and more people crowded into the lobby, until finally, the last of them were forced outside onto the patio.

When the gymnasium doors finally opened, the crowd raised a cheer. Easing forward, Gabe glanced over his shoulder to see if they were being watched, but there were so many people, it was impossible to tell.

Minutes later, they were inside. Moans and groans filled the darkness and every few seconds screams erupted and echoed up into the cavernous ceiling. It turned out that the gym wasn’t such a good place to chat after all.

They’d traversed several twists and turns of the dark makeshift maze, before Mazzy located a gap in some plastic sheeting and motioned for the boys to follow her through. On the other side, they pressed up against the gymnasium wall. A light from a nearby exit sign guided them forward down a narrow path. At the door, when Mazzy pushed the handle, Gabe expected an alarm to sound, but it swung open without even a squeak. On the other side, at the end of a dark hallway, another red exit sign glowed.

“Where are we going?” Seth whispered.

“Away from all the people,” Mazzy answered.

“Keep moving,” said Gabe. “I’m sure we’ll find a good spot.”

Mazzy pushed open another door, and a blast of cool air escaped another darkened space. The group flinched at the aroma of stale milk. She whispered hello, and received a tinny echo in response. Reaching around the doorway, she felt for a light switch.

Fluorescent light strobed and rung out a barely audible hum. Metal surfaces gleamed all around. Countertops, cutting boards, a griddle, food trays were tucked cleanly inside the glass casings of the serving line. On a wall above a large sink, a steel rack held several utensils—spoons, spatulas, skewers, knives—of all shapes and sizes. In a far corner, the baritone drone of refrigerator motors added discordant harmony to the tone emitting from the lights.

“Nice,” said Gabe, following Mazzy inside.

“I think this is as private as we’re gonna get,” said Seth, accidentally bumping his wooden sword against the stainless steel countertop. It rang out with a
Brrrng!

Mazzy rushed back to the door and closed it quietly, hoping to trap the noise inside. “Yeah,” she said, “but we still have to be quiet.”

“If anyone asks, we’ll just say we got lost,” said Seth, pulling off his centurion helmet.

They sat on the floor between two food prep stations. Gabe unzipped his backpack and removed his grandmother’s book. He laid it on the floor, then opened to the page he’d marked with a white note card the night before.

HE WAITED FOR HIS PARTNERS to notice the passage. When they glanced up at him, they looked as confused as he’d expected.
“Ghosts?”
said Mazzy and Seth at the same time.

“A revenant, specifically,” said Gabe, nodding at the page open between them. “A vengeful, angry spirit. The walking dead. Humans, or even animals, who have risen from the grave.” He waited for them to take a peek. “Vampires are a type of revenant. Zombies too. But most people who believe in this stuff say that they’re ghosts. They can take different forms. They have the ability to move objects. They can talk or cry or wail—basically scare the stuffing out of people. Some even say they can kill.”

“Kill?” Mazzy echoed.

Wide-eyed, Seth asked, “How does that relate to…us?”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” said Gabe. “But yesterday, after reading late into the night, I couldn’t get this entry on ghosts off of my mind.” He pointed at his grandmother’s illustration: a young girl standing in the doorway of a ruined building. The girl was dressed in what looked like a white hospital uniform. A strange light seemed to swirl around her thin, transparent body, coiling up from her toes to the top of her head. Her face was all shadow, but her eyes managed to reach out from within the page, clutch your throat, squeeze. It was classic Elyse Ashe.

“I know it’s hard to believe that any of these myths and legends are real,” said Gabe. “According to this book, they come from our primal fears. Parents pass them to children.” Like a virus, he thought, remembering Seth’s earlier words. “And that’s how the
ideas survived. Ghost stories are everywhere. Every town has at least one legend. An abandoned house. A sprawling hospital. An ancient graveyard. For some reason, people are much more willing to accept the existence of spirits than of monsters.”

Mazzy nodded. “In my church, I’ve heard the priest talk about Lazarus rising from the grave, and because it’s in the Bible, nobody even blinks. I’m sure they’d never call him a ghost, but still…Same species, right?”

“All of the strange occurrences fit,” said Gabe. “The voices, the stolen objects, the mysterious traps, the growlings, the nighttime visitations, the shadows and figures that we’ve all seen following us home from school. A small group of people would be challenged to pull it all off”—Gabe stared down at the glowing girl on the page—“but if we were dealing with a spirit…a very angry spirit…”

“A revenant,” Mazzy corrected.

Gabe nodded. “Well then, that’s a different story.”

“But whose spirit is it?” asked Mazzy.

Seth whispered a name so quietly, the others barely heard him. He looked up and repeated himself, louder this time. “Mason Arngrim. My cousin.”

SETH PEERED UP FROM THE BOOK, licked his lips, and glanced back and forth between Gabe and Mazzy, nodding with certainty. “It’s him. Mason. After everything Gabe said last night, I know he’s been here.” He clutched his middle. “I can feel it.”

“So Seth’s cousin is haunting the entire town of Slade?” Mazzy asked, skeptically. “He’s masquerading as a character from his stories?” She raised an eyebrow. “Mason is the one who stole Mr. Ashe’s puppet?”

Gabe remembered the night Milton disappeared, recalling how close he’d come to reaching up and trying to pull the puppet’s head off. What would he have found inside?

“And Mason set up the trap in the woods behind the school,” Mazzy went on, “and shot arrows at Seth’s bedroom window. If all this is true, wouldn’t he need a reason? Unless Mason was just a psycho. In life and now in death.”

“From what my grandmother said about him, he didn’t sound like a ‘psycho.’ Disturbed, yes. But insane?” Gabe bit his lip. “He’d been through a lot. Maybe he reached a breaking point on the night his aunt accused him of killing that rooster, but I don’t think Mason was beyond reason.”

“True,” said Mazzy. “But as far as we know, he simply ran off that night, took a bus right out of town.”

“My grandmother believed he never left Slade.”

“This isn’t about Mason being crazy,” Seth interrupted. “It’s about him being lonely.”

“I don’t think we’re dealing with a friendly ghost situation here, Seth.” Mazzy patted his knee, not unkindly.

“He’s trying to hurt people,” Gabe added.

“But for us, it started as a game,” Seth said. “And games are meant to be played.” They were quiet for a moment, considering. “David introduced me to Howler’s Notch. And I invited Gabe. But where did David find out about it? From this book?” He reached out and flipped to the page where the Hunter glared up at them with his flaming eyes. “Or did he learn the story from somewhere else? Some
thing
else? The afternoon David told me about the Hunter, I heard him talking to someone in the woods. Remember? What if it was Mason? Like, what if Mason’s ghost was pretending to be the Hunter?”

Silence. The refrigerator’s motor hummed.

“We were playing the game with a ghost,” Gabe said finally. He felt numb. “The whole time. With a ghost. A
revenant
.”

“I told you those woods were weird,” said Seth.

“But didn’t you guys hang out there all summer without any…incidents?” Mazzy asked. “The scary things only started later.”

“Yeah,” said Gabe. “They started after Seth told me the Hunter would come for me.” Seth blushed. He opened his mouth to object, but Gabe went on. “All in the past now,” he said. Not exactly true, he thought, but it’d be better to stick together at this point.

Mazzy scrunched up her forehead. “Could Mason, as the Hunter, have taken a cue from Seth that night? After you guys had the fight, he
really
came for Gabe?”

Gabe shook his head, as an idea came to him. “We stopped playing the game that night. I know I did. Seth too. Right?” Seth nodded. “And David wasn’t around to keep up his part. If Mason had been playing with us as the Hunter, who was left to participate?”

“No one,” said Seth.

“That’s it, then, isn’t it?” said Mazzy. “Mason never stopped playing the game. The Hunter is still hunting. Only his target is no longer just the two Robber Princes. He’s been searching all of Slade for another participant.”

Gabe closed his eyes, trying to process these possibilities. “It’s like he’s been trying to lure us back. Everything he’s done recently has been bigger, scarier, more dangerous. It’s like he’s setting a trap.”

“So, do we play?” Seth asked. “To keep him happy?”

“And what if we don’t?” Mazzy asked. “What if we leave it alone? Ignore what’s going on? If it’s only the spirit of Mason Arngrim, what could he do next?”

“He’s already done a lot,” said Gabe. “We shouldn’t underestimate him.”

“There’s really no question. Is there?” Seth stood, grabbing his wooden sword from his belt, and shouted out, “I, Wraithen of Haliath, do challenge Mason Arngrim, the Hunter of Howler’s Notch, to battle here in Slade High School! Reveal yourself finally to be the villain we know you are!”

Mazzy stood too, her mouth open in shock. Seth slipped away, racing down the aisle toward the kitchen sink. He swung his wooden sword around wildly. His centurion helmet lay on the floor at Gabe’s feet.

“Seth, come on.” Gabe climbed wearily to his feet, unsure how he’d subdue him if it came to that. “I really don’t feel like being arrested.”

A squeal echoed through the room. Hinges turned. The trio froze. Gabe turned to find someone standing in the doorway, a shadow surrounded by shadow.