Curse of the Black-Eyed Kids (Mount Herod Legends Book 2) Read online

  Stephen Donahue saw the whole thing. His braces sparkle under the classroom’s fluorescent lights while a soundless, mocking laugh spills from his gaping mouth. I’d like to put my fist in it, but I roll my eyes and shake my head instead. He sees me but he doesn’t care. I’m three seats away from him, but I can still hear his puny brain rattling around inside his giant, bulbous head as it bobs atop his bony shoulders.

  Donahue is the type of snot who rings doorbells in the middle of the night, but he looks nothing like the boy from the porch. I wonder if he has a little brother at Lexington. It’s Jeremy’s job to weed him out if he does.

  I realize the absurdity of my thought. No power exists which allows me to find the pranksters by sense or intuition. Donahue has no more to do with this than Mickey Mouse. After only two nights, I’ve already become paranoid, suspicious of every obnoxious juvenile who crosses my path. I wonder with concern how Jeremy is progressing, what kind of conversations he’s had with Tommy Wexler and others, and if our names and reputations have been tarnished yet.

  Hours later, at lunch, I sit between fellow freshmen Mackayla Buchannan and Shannon Jankowski, silently racking my brain on what to do about the children Jeremy calls the black-eyed kids. In the meantime, Mackayla is droning on about a popular guy who doesn’t know she exists while Shannon jokes about Cindy Sethbryer’s homecoming dress, which was weeks ago, so I don’t understand the obsession.

  I’m chewing on something I think is chicken, a mystery meat subsidized in full by the National School Lunch Program. Pride is a bit of an issue for me, or maybe the real issue is shame, but when the government supplies Jeremy and I one free meal per day nine months out of the year, the financial burden of raising us eases a bit for Grandma. In my mind, it’s not something the government does for us so much as we do for Grandma. Therefore, I will swallow the trifecta of pride, shame, and something that tastes like chicken five days a week for the length of the school year.

  The chicken, as bad as it is, is still easier on my stomach than the mundane and senseless conversation I’m trying to tune out around me. So while Shannon and Mackayla talk gibberish, I mull over something I haven’t yet allowed myself to fully consider: the whispers.

  I heard them on both Saturday and Sunday night. Saturday night, while we were standing in the downstairs hall, I asked Jeremy if he heard them, and he said he hadn’t. He has neither asked me for clarification nor brought up my question since, so I’m certain he’s forgotten. The question probably sounded like nonsense to him at the time, so he’s long since dismissed it.

  Still, it’s not like him to overlook or forget details. This is, after all, the same little brother who used to count cards during a game of Go Fish! This is also the same little brother who knows what number I’m dialing on a touch tone phone based on the sound of the touch tones, and who insists data transmission speeds be stated in bits while computer storage be stated in bytes, and who seems to be the only person who understands why it’s so utterly bizarre that light from a distant star dims by “a staggering twenty percent” every seven hundred fifty days. This is my little brother of big details. So, I wonder if he has in fact heard the whispers but is too afraid to tell me.

  I am exceptionally hesitant to mention it again myself, even to him, the one person in all of Mount Herod who would actually believe me. Since Grandma has not mentioned the whispers, I can presume she hasn’t heard them, for her naivety to anything potentially supernatural surely would have resulted in her remarking on something so strange.

  Each time I heard the whispers, they were entirely disembodied. That is, they came from nowhere in particular yet were unquestionably present. My mind is now back-pedaling regarding Jeremy’s ability to hear them, and I’ve already nearly convinced myself the whispers are heard only by me. It’s frustrating. I’m of two minds. For the first time in my life, I’m experiencing fractures of confusion in what is typically an impenetrable dam which retains a reservoir of certainty.

  What could the whispers possibly mean? Are they the actual conspiring whispers of the children somehow echoing into the house on a frequency only I can hear due to biology or physics? Or are they a supernatural alarm from another place, a forewarning specifically sent to me that the children have arrived?

  I allow myself to consider the possibility of anything supernatural only when I turn inward. The absurdity of the paranormal is easily dismissed when verbalized. It’s as if all things unearthly reveal themselves only after the cynical world of the flesh is forced to release its jaded, smothering grip through candid meditation.

  The unexpected sound of the lunch bell rips me from my introspection before I’m able to resolve anything. Almost instantly, we all stand and shamble back to class like adolescent Pavlovian zombies.

  Like my morning classes, my afternoon classes drag, and after the three p.m. dismissal bell finally rings, I walk against a stiff October breeze to the corner to meet Jeremy, wondering with both anticipation and dread as to what he discovered and what he had to say to learn it.

  I see him approaching the corner from half-a-block down. As he draws closer, I see his eyes are red. He’s been crying, and I can only imagine why. I’m concerned as to what happened in Lexington Middle School today, but if I’m honest with myself, I’d admit that I’m more concerned for my reputation than his feelings. Perhaps it’s true what he says. Maybe I am selfish.

  “What happened?” I ask once we are face to face.

  Jeremy reaches behind himself and clasps his hands together below his backpack. He puffs out his cheeks and blows out a gust of air. “Tommy Wexler said—”

  He chokes before he can finish the sentence. It makes me all the more fearful of what has happened despite my best effort to avoid it. I give him more time to complete his sentence, but he doesn’t. He stands before me, leaves swirling at his feet, staring off toward the horizon at the gray fading daylight, sniveling like a three year old.

  I cross my arms. “What did Tommy Wexler say? Tell me.”

  “He said the black-eyed kids carry curved knives called karambits—”

  I don’t need to hear any more. I turn, disgusted, and start to walk home.

  “Abby, wait! I tried...”

  From somewhere behind me, he rambles out some lame excuse as to how he tried to ask about ding dong ditch pranks and how the conversation somehow immediately turned to tales of black-eyed kids. I think I hear Tommy’s name two more times before he shouts, “We’re safe if we don’t invite them in!”

  Yes, I recall that about the black-eyed kids legend now. In fact, as Jeremy trails behind me crying out the specifics, all the details strike a chord.

  “They only arrive in the middle of the night, when the earth is in the sun’s full shadow, when both dusk and dawn lie hours behind and hours ahead.”

  I scowl and increase my pace. Jeremy’s photographic memory has kicked in now. He’s speaking very formally, like he’s reading aloud from a book.

  “They haunt remote homes or unlit streets or old neighborhoods, allowing no witnesses.”

  Yes, everything about the myth conveniently ensures there are no witnesses, no evidence, no way to prove or disprove the terrifying fable. He thinks he’s selling me on the particulars, yet he’s only angering me. I keep walking. He keeps talking.

  “They prey on children, but they’ll kill anyone who gets in their way.”

  I draw my lips tight and shake my head. I can still hear him speaking half a dozen paces behind me. I mean, I hear his noise, but no longer his words.

  Shannon has one younger sister who goes to Lexington. She’s a year behind Jeremy and I’m not sure they’ve ever even met, but she represents at least one way this ugliness will eventually find its way to the high school. A hundred other scenarios, each more likely than the other, exist as well.

  I’m not selfish. No one wants to be an outcast. No one wants to be accused of believing in ghosts or UFOs or Bigfoot or anything else that lies on the fringe of common sense. Now, not o
nly do these rotten kids haunt me at night, they will haunt me all day at school too. In fact, maybe this torture will last for the rest of my life, which according to Jeremy, isn’t that long anyway.

  Thank God for small favors.

  With that thought, I realize my cynicism has been entirely uncorked, and it’s time to stuff it back in the bottle. I look back at Jeremy, who has finally stopped talking. He has fallen farther behind me, so I stop to wait for him.

  When he catches up, I ask, “Are you through?”

  He nods.

  “Come on. Grandma worries when we’re even a couple minutes late.”

  We walk home the rest of the way side by side but once again in silence. Other than one another, our only company this chilly fall afternoon is the shedding trees, which sway hauntingly in the violent gusts blowing out of the cloud-stacked sky. The day looks how I feel, and it brings me down even more.

  Later, Grandma peels and boils potatoes in the kitchen while I watch television and pluck away at homework in the family room. Jeremy, I presume, is upstairs pointing a potato chip can out of his bedroom window at Mrs. McGovern’s house while he IMs Tommy Wexler.

  I am perhaps too hard on Jeremy. In many ways, he fills the job of “man of the house” quite adequately despite his immaturity. Grandma provides our most basic survival needs: food, shelter, clothing, and love, but it’s Jeremy who scrapes together the luxuries that ease a few of the pains of day-to-day life.

  Although we don’t have cable or satellite television, I have access to over a dozen free digital channels because of a small antenna Jeremy found and bought for a dollar at a rummage sale. He installed it in Grandma’s attic and fished a cable down through the walls to the television in the family room.

  When the snow comes, we won’t shovel thanks to a twenty-year-old rebuilt snow blower—Jeremy calls it a single-stage two-stroke—that sits in the front corner of our garage covered with an old army blanket until needed. Neither Grandma nor I know how to start it.

  In addition to blowing out the driveway in the winter, Jeremy mows the lawn in the spring, summer, and fall. He deals with the trash, obsessing over the recycling in particular, carefully clipping every plastic circle with a scissors so that it doesn’t find its way around the neck or body of some innocent bird, reptile, or fish.

  He is sometimes, I think, a paradox—gifted in the highly technical, like computers and science, yet taking great pleasure in the utterly simple and mundane, like comic books and board games.

  Just before I convince myself to go up to his bedroom and apologize for the silent-treatment during the walk home, Grandma steps into the family room, drying her hands with a kitchen towel.

  She says, “Abigail, I meant to tell you and Jeremy I have some wonderful news. Sergeant Breckinridge called me today.”

  “Who?”

  “Sergeant Breckinridge from the Mount Herod police, a very nice man, by the way. He said he’s going to send a patrol car past the house a few times tonight to see if they can catch those nasty children who keep ringing our doorbell.”

  It’s a solution that has come too late. If only we’d have received the call before school, Jeremy would have been far less vulnerable to the seduction of Tommy Wexler’s horror stories. Unfortunately, this monster has two heads now, and it will take everything I have to prevent a third from growing.

  “That’s great news, Grandma,” I say.

  “What’s happening?” Jeremy calls from the top of the stairs.

  Grandma turns back into the foyer and stands in a place where she can see us both. “The police are going to drive past our house tonight to try to catch those naughty kids.”

  I cannot see him, but I hear a hint of doubt in his voice as he softly says, “That’s good.”

  “Well, I certainly think so,” Grandma says. “It’s time to be done with this nonsense.” Then she changes the subject. “Abigail, how’s your homework going? Do you need any help?”

  “I’m good, Grandma.”

  “And Jeremy, what are you up to, mister? Playing computer games? Is your homework done?”

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  “Did you find anything out at school today about our little visitors?”

  He hesitates for just a moment, then says, “No, Grandma.”

  “I see. Well, supper is in an hour,” she says with a delightful smile, and she saunters back toward the kitchen, every movement slow and purposeful.

  I expect Jeremy to come down the stairs, but I hear his footsteps turn back toward his bedroom instead. Seconds later, his door clunks shut, and I don’t see him again until supper.

  After supper, the three of us wash and dry the pots, pans, and dishes by hand, during which I repeat a frequent joke about Jeremy building us a dishwasher, to which Grandma always laughs hysterically and does so again tonight. Jeremy, for his part, ignores my quip, which is unprecedented, so I know he is distracted or depressed or angry—or all three.

  None of us say anything about the children all night. Our conversations, the few we have, are boring and ordinary. Jeremy is so quiet it becomes awkward. At one point, Grandma pulls me aside and worries aloud if he’s dealing with things well. I reply he’s fine and we’re simply witnessing a teenage frump. This satisfies Grandma, at least outwardly, and the evening continues on as if all were normal.

  At bedtime, while Jeremy and I stand on the stairs, Grandma flips the non-functioning porch-light switch a couple times and mumbles to herself. “I’m going to ask Harold to fix this. In the meantime, we’ll see what happens tonight with our little visitors.” She turns to Jeremy and me and looks startled. Pretending she knew we were there the whole time, she says, “Right?”

  I nod as Jeremy says, “Right, Grandma.”

  “Goodnight, kids,” she says. “See you in the morning.” She then thrusts her index finger into the air and adds with a nervous laugh, “And not a minute before!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I WAKE TO a bedroom painted in bright orange shades of curtain-filtered sunlight. I look at the clock on my nightstand. It is six-fifteen in the morning. At first, I wonder if it’s possible my exhaustion caused me to sleep through the doorbell. My second thought is maybe the doorbell never rang.

  I pull back my blankets and roll out of bed. Peeking into the hall, I can hear someone moving around downstairs in the kitchen. I return to my bedroom, pull a hoodie over my pajamas to ward off the morning chill, and go downstairs.

  Standing in the kitchen doorway, I see Grandma dressed for the day, apron on, preparing breakfast. I hug myself to repel another chill, pad into the kitchen, and softly say, “Hi, Grandma.”

  Grandma turns to me and displays a bright smile. “Well, good morning. Now, wasn’t that a much better night’s sleep?”

  Relief pours over me like a warm shower. It’s true, the children did not show up last night. I sigh and release a chuckle. “So much better.”

  Grandma swings out an arm, an invitation to hug, and I accept. She is soft and warm—a sensible, snugly pillow of reassurance. The Mount Herod police sergeant must’ve followed through on his promise, and the patrol car had deterred our loathsome visitors. Maybe the children are gone for good.

  Grandma pats my back. “Go get your brother for breakfast.”

  I climb the staircase two steps at a time and bounce down the hall to Jeremy’s room. His door is shut, so I presume he’s getting dressed. I deliver a light rap with the knuckle of my index finger. “Jeremy, time for breakfast.”

  He doesn’t answer, but I don’t think twice about the silence until I turn to my room to get dressed, for that’s when the sound of the emptiness emanating from Jeremy’s room overwhelms me. There is no life behind his bedroom door.

  I glance down the hall at the bathroom. The door is open and the light is off. He’s not in there, and he certainly wasn’t downstairs with Grandma and me. I edge back to Jeremy’s room. Through the closed door, I call to him again. “Jeremy?”

  Leaning in, I listen for him
to call back, but I hear no response, not even the rustling of covers. “Jeremy?”

  In Grandma’s house, privacy is a luxury not a right. Except for the bathroom, none of the home’s doors have locks. Since little brother’s not answering, he’s forfeited his luxury. I turn the doorknob on the bedroom door and push, but the door budges only a fraction of an inch before striking an object on the other side. Through the tiny crack, I notice his bedroom is as black as midnight, which is impossible because the morning daylight has already saturated every other room in the house.

  Dread and panic descend on me like a dark cloud. Leaning my shoulder into the door and pushing, I call to him again. “Jeremy, what’s going on? Open the door.”

  From the foot of the stairs, Grandma shouts, “Abigail, what’s all the noise up there?”

  I hammer on the door with my fist. “Jeremy, open up! Grandma, come quick! Something’s wrong. I can’t get in Jeremy’s room.”

  I clutch the doorknob with both hands and slam my shoulder into the door. Something on the other side pushes away from the door but only another quarter inch. At this rate, I’m minutes away from the opening being large enough for me to fit through, but I don’t feel like I have that much time. I don’t know what’s happening on the other side of the door, but I can only assume it’s gone on all night.

  Grandma appears by my side, urgently rapping on the upper third of the door. Bewildered, her voice warbling, she asks, “What is happening? Jeremy, you open this door right now, mister!”

  I slam my shoulder into the door again and again and again. Grandma has stopped knocking and is trying to help me shove open the door. Soon the opening is large enough for me to squeeze through an arm, which I wrap around the inside of the door.

  Eyes closed, teeth gritted, with my stockinged feet fumbling for a grip on the hall carpet, I lean my full weight into the door and feel the object blocking the entrance begin to steadily give way. I blindly slip my arm down the inside of the door and discover a wide wooden structure. I recognize it immediately.