“If he did, he’d be Chief Hayes’s age.”
“Oh! He’s been in suspended animation! Okay, that explains it. Whew, for a minute I was confused.”
I ignored Ariana’s sarcasm. “Just listen to me. One of the voices used fifties slang, and he sounded our age. I know it seems farfetched, but — ”
“You think one of the voices was Reggie’s? He brought Jason down and then hopped back in the hole with two ghost buddies?”
“Jason was desperate to get us George Derbin’s business card. He must have been trying to warn us.”
Ariana didn’t answer.
“You can’t deny what you saw, Ariana! Is my theory any less believable than a crack in the earth that spits out smoke and slime monsters?”
“No, I guess not. Go on.”
“Okay. The voices said they were delivering a message. From whom?”
“The slime monster,” Ariana said dryly.
“Must be. And this thing takes people, roto-roots them from the inside — ”
“Gross, David.”
“Sorry. It wasted no time gobbling up Rick, John, and Jason — but it spares others. It hasn’t touched the Delphic Club members, who hold their meetings practically on top of it. It didn’t do anything to Chief Hayes in 1950, or to you and me. I dove into its hole — and even then it didn’t want me. It gave me back.”
“Because you were too early — that’s what you said it said,” Ariana reminded me. “Maybe it’s going through the whole school in some strange order.”
“The voices want me to find out who they are,” I barged on. “They’re testing me.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, but I have an idea.” I took a deep breath. “In 1950, the same time Reggie disappeared, three other kids showed up dead. Reggie was never found … until now.”
“The thing kept him,” Ariana said.
“And I think it wants to keep me — make me into a fourth … voice.”
“Oh, great. So this is some kind of aptitude test for admission to zombieland? They think you’re stupid enough to want to join them — ”
“I am.”
“What? Stupid?”
“No! Don’t you see? I have to do it. If I find out about them, I might find out about the monster. This whole thing might come together — the earthquake, the murders, everything.”
“I was wrong. You’re not stupid. You’re insane.”
“What’s the alternative? Staying ignorant and letting more people die?”
“You saw your forehead, David. You’re developing a growth, like Chief Hayes. How long before you look like this … ghost of Reggie Borden? What if you and Chief Hayes are turning into zombies?”
“I’m not turning into anything, Ariana. Chief Hayes doesn’t remember exactly what happened to him in the basement. But he escaped, just as I did. He went on to live a long, normal life — and so will I. We were — infected in some way, but obviously not enough.”
“How do you know that? This could transform you slowly, over years. How do we even know Chief Hayes is on our side?”
“Ariana, we can’t get paranoid about this.”
“I can get as paranoid as I want!”
I couldn’t tell whether or not Ariana was crying.
“We can’t bring John and Jason and Rick back,” I said softly. “But we owe them a little effort. If we can figure out why they were chosen, we may be able to predict who’s next.”
Ariana sighed. “Okay. You’re right. I — I shouldn’t be giving you a hard time.”
“So you’ll help me?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ll come over in a few minutes.”
“No. Meet me at the library. I want to look at the town history again. The thing was here in 1950, and it took Reggie. But no one else disappeared that year — ”
“So you think the other two voices were taken at another time, and you want to check, for earthquakes and strange disappearances and murders.”
“You got it.”
“Hey, I didn’t get to be editor in chief for nothing.” Ariana gave a weak laugh. “But here’s what I want to know: Say this thing wakes up every few years, just belches out of the ground, makes everybody’s life miserable, eats people like flies. Then why does it go back to sleep? Does it get too full? Does it have some fatal, weakness?”
“Maybe it’s allergic to females.”
“Ha-ha. Keep it up. I guess you enjoy going to the library alone.”
“Meet you there in ten minutes?”
“Let me call Stephen back. We had this fight before you called. We were supposed to hang out this afternoon, but he called to say he couldn’t make it.”
“How come?”
“Well … that’s what I need to find out. I figured it had something to do with Monique, so I hung up on him.”
My heart started pumping. Now she would get angry at him. “Okay, work it out. I’ll see you in twenty minutes?”
“Make it a half-hour.”
“Twenty-five.”
“David — ”
“Bye.”
Chapter 23
“DAVID, YOU LOOK AWFUL.”
Mrs. Klatsch greeted me with those words as I barged into the library. I did not bother to return the compliment.
Needless to say, on a Saturday morning, the place was not crowded. At the nearest table, I dropped my backpack, which contained a copy of the Voyager, my alphabetical list of the Wetherby High School senior class, my notebook full of clippings, and a pen.
“Oh … yeah, a skit. It’s dye,” I replied. “Bumped my head, too — ”
“David, I’m sorry about your classmates. It must be awful — ”
“Mm-hm.” I tried not to let my impatience show. “Um, may I use the Wetherby history book?”
She looked at me as if I were insane. “Sure, David,” she mumbled, pulling the book out of the stacks behind her desk. “More earthquake research?”
“Sort of,” I replied.
“Well, if I can be of any help …”
“Thanks.” I tried to give as normal-looking a smile as possible. She didn’t seem convinced.
I took the book and placed it next to my other stuff. I’d forgotten to bring a pad of paper, so I turned over my student list and stared at the blank page.
Now what?
I hate blank pages. They make me dizzy. That’s because I stare at them a lot, especially when I have to do papers. I get tired. I get nauseated. I stand up, walk around, and end up at a large electric object, like a refrigerator or TV.
I couldn’t do that now. I picked up my pencil and wrote:
VOICE 1 = BORDEN
Genius. Brilliant. A+. Skip a grade.
What did I think I was doing? I knew nothing.
I looked at my watch, then the door. I hoped Ariana was off the phone by now.
I took a deep breath that ended as a yawn. Mrs. Klatsch glared at me.
Okay, Kallas. Chill. Start at the beginning.
Victims:
ARNOLD CHRISTOPHER
HERMAN … NEXT?
SABOTAGED YEARBOOK POEMS:
LYMAN YOUMANS HEALD
CHASE … WHY?
YEARS:
1994 1950 … ANY OTHERS?
Duh.
Sherlock Holmes was laughing in his grave. Splitting his sides. Choking on his pipe.
I opened Our Town: A Wetherby History from 1634 to the Present to the end. Then I slowly made my. way backward through the years, looking for anything suspicious.
Hot stuff. In 1977, the mayor’s bathroom caught fire. A kid was jailed for wearing long hair to school in 1969. A meteor fell on a car in 1958. The Blizzard of ’44 swallowed a house. Teddy Roosevelt visited in ’03. Zzzzzzz.
When I was into the nineteenth century, I stopped at a drawing. In it, a group of people, blacks and whites, stood by a large hole in the ground. A woman was on a podium, reading from a sheet of paper.
Under the drawing, it said:
Poet Clara Farnham deliver
ing her eulogy to a local hero, April 8, 1862:
A nation riven, rent by strife,
Can deem none of its men more free
Than he who gives a life for life
In service of Equality.
Who scoffs at Fortune, risks disaster,
Pulls from tunnel dark and drear,
His fellow man, once slave to master?
’Tis such a one we honor here.
Let us then, ’ere we depart,
Now consecrate this hallowed site
To him of stout and noble heart,
Beloved neighbor, Jonas Lyte.
I read further. It was the usual stuff, Lyte the abolitionist, Lyte the rescuer of slaves. Then I came to this passage:
Scandal, sabotage, and weather hampered Lyte’s efforts. Several slaves were found dead in the tunnel he had built, along with some of Lyte’s workers. Lyte himself died inside the tunnel when part of it collapsed during a storm. Workers dug for days, but Lyte’s body was not found.
Bingo.
My heart started to pound.
I knew where Lyte had gone. He had built his tunnel in the wrong place. He wanted to help the slaves, but he met ol’ Slimy instead.
And Slimy kept him.
VOICE 2 = JONAS LYTE
Yes. It had to be.
I added the new date to the others:
1994 1950 1862
I began flipping through the book again. Smallpox epidemic, riots, the Revolutionary War, witch-hunts. Deaths galore.
My eyes were crossing. What did this mean? Slimy could have been around the whole time. Maybe it caused the war. Maybe it spread the smallpox. (Was that what I had?)
I slumped back in my seat. A gust of wind came through a window and flipped a page. I slapped my hand down to stop it.
My right index finger had landed on the nose of Annabelle Spicer. Fortunately she didn’t seem to mind.
I took my hand away and looked at the picture that Ariana had banned from the yearbook. It was labeled 1686. Annabelle’s wide eyes stared past me, defiant and innocent. As she burned at the stake, watched by the cackling devil, plumes of smoke rose from what looked like a black cloak on the ground. Her executioners looked on in horror. Some townspeople were falling to their knees. Others, mostly young, were dancing and singing.
I needed some comic relief. I smiled. I read about the witch-hunts, the quotes about “crag-faced hags” and “demented children” and “secret lairs.”
And as I turned the page, my eye caught the smoking black cloak again. I wondered what was in it. Dry ice? Burning rubber?
I glanced toward the clock. Mrs. Klatsch was climbing down a spiral staircase into the library’s storage area below. I had a sudden urge to pull her back. Spiral staircases into basements were making me nervous.
That was when I knew.
I looked at the picture again. My mouth dropped open.
It wasn’t a black cloak.
It was a gash. In the ground.
The third voice was female.
I scribbled Annabelle Spicer’s name.
“Yes!” I cried out.
On a chair to my left, an old man awoke with a start and dropped his newspaper. I wrote:
1994 1950 1862 1686
Was there a pattern?
I was suddenly gripped with acute stomach pain. Waves of nausea.
I was going to have to use math.
And I did. Without a calculator. Sweaty palms and all.
The first two dates were 44 years apart. The next two were 88, and the next 176.
The gaps were shrinking by half.
Half-life.
“And the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone,” I sang to myself as I figured out the remaining gaps. I filled in my time line all the way back to 778 B.C. I felt like continuing back to the Jurassic Era, but I cut it short. Wetherby was settled in 1634, so anything earlier was useless.
The library clock said 11:43. Ariana was late.
But it didn’t matter. I was on a roll.
On a hunch, I turned over the student list and circled the names of the three victims.
Hmmm
I counted the letters in the three victims’ names: 13, 15, 11.
Dead end.
I said the names aloud. I tried rearranging letters.
Then I ripped out each entry, including all three columns: alphabetical number, the name, and method of payment:
11 ARNOLD, RICHARD —
22 CHRISTOPHER, JOHN CASH
44 HERMAN, JASON CK
“Oh my lord . . .”
Slimy kept its patterns simple.
First dates, than student numbers.
All ending in death.
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt as if I’d stuffed a sock into it. As I lifted a page of the list, my hands shook.
The next victim was Lucky Number 88.
Words and numbers floated on the page. I blinked and tried to focus.
Then I saw the name.
88 MAAS, ARIANA CK
Chapter 24
MY EYES SHOT TOWARD the clock.
12:15.
Ariana should have been at the library by now.
Where was she? I had to warn her.
I fumbled around in my pocket for change for the pay phone. I was broke.
I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Klatsch walking up the spiral staircase.
“Mrs. Klatsch,” I said, barely containing my voice. “Can I use your phone for a local call?”
“Qui … et … ly.”
I grabbed the receiver and punched Ariana’s number.
No answer.
Easy, David, I told myself. Keep it together. Think.
She’d said she was going to call Smut, to straighten out their argument. Something unexpected must have happened.
Under Mrs. Klatsch’s disapproving gaze, I tapped Smut’s number on the phone.
“ ’lo?”
“Hi, Lily?” (Lily is Smut’s eleven-year-old sister.)
“Yeah.”
“Can I speak to your brother?”
“He left.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Was anyone with him?” I asked.
“Uh … yeah.”
I wanted to strangle her. “Who?”
“That guy. The yearbook teacher. He picked Stephen up.”
“Mr. DeWaart?”
“I guess.”
“Lily, was Ariana with them?”
“Uh-uh. She called too late.”
“You mean, she called your house after they left?”
“Yeah.”
“And you told her where Smut had gone?”
“Huh? Who’s Smut?”
“No one. Thanks.”
I slammed the receiver down. I stuffed my books and papers into my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and bolted toward the front door.
“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Klatsch called out.
“I’ll tell you later!” I shouted.
I raced out of the library. I knew where Ariana had gone. After she talked to Lily, she panicked. She assumed The Delphic Club was having a meeting — and she went to head them off at the high school.
To warn Smut. To protect him.
Instead, she was walking right into a deathtrap.
My feet pounded the pavement. I could feel the blood rising to my face, gorging behind my eyes. I was furious at Smut, furious at Ariana, and scared out of my mind at what might be happening.
Screeeak!
I was in the street. I saw headlights. I heard a horn. A scream.
Then I felt myself flying. Briefly.
I landed on the sidewalk. Behind me I heard the sound of shattering glass.
“Are you all right?”
A balding man in a tweed jacket was looking at me with a pale expression. Two cars had jumped the curb and hit a light post. One driver was cursing a blue streak.
“Yeah. Fine.”
I was halfway down the bloc
k when I heard police sirens.
The school parking lot was a straight three-block run. Mr. DeWaart’s car was sitting there. Just beyond it, one of the school’s back doors was propped open with a trash can. I ran inside and snaked through the hallways to the backstage door. Yanking it open, I headed for the spiral staircase.
I could hear singing as I started to descend. I had never heard the tune. It was beautiful, but it sent a chill up my spine.
I clattered to the bottom and raced through the open bookcase. I rounded the corners, sped through the grafitti-covered chambers. The mist was swirling, spiraling at my side, seeming to point me in the right direction.
Then, suddenly, I saw them.
The Delphic Club. Singing at the top of their lungs, each member dressed identically in gray, flowing robes. Their arms were linked, and they swayed back and forth to the tune.
I stopped in my tracks. I was in their line of vision, but no one seemed to notice me. Their eyes were glazed. They seemed to be under some spell. What were they doing?
Just beyond them, clouds of smoke spewed upward from the crevice. From their midst emerged a black form, smiling, arms held upward.
I recognized Mr. DeWaart’s face before he saw me. In the dim light, his beard seemed thickly sinister, his face cragged and shadowy. He sang with the swaying group, in a deep baritone.
“Wartface,” I said under my breath.
Mr. DeWaart stopped singing. His eyes betrayed no surprise as he looked at me. “I have always found that nickname puerile.”
“But they’re not warts, are they?”
He smiled. “Not any more than the one on your forehead.”
Suddenly more pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. I stared at Mr. DeWaart, trying to put my mounting anger into words. “You were the one — ”
A scream cut me off. Even in the soupy murk, it was earsplitting.
And it was unmistakably Ariana’s.
“No!” I bellowed.
“Stay here, David,” Mr. DeWaart said with eerie calmness. “You can’t change destiny.”
I ran past him. The smoke enveloped me, smothered me with its chalky sweetness. I pushed through, fighting for breath.
Ariana was shrieking my name.
I followed her voice, groping at the cloud with my arms. “I’m here!”
I saw the crevice, a vague dark line in the whiteness. Ariana was nearby. I flailed blindly in the direction of her voice.