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

  “It’s his desk,” I tell Grandma. “His computer desk is blocking the door.”

  “What in the name of Sam Hill is his desk doing in front of the door?”

  Grandma, despite her age and fragility, thrusts herself into the door palms first, and we make a substantial gain because of it. I’m able to slip into the room up to my shoulder, but of all things, it’s my head that prevents me from going any farther.

  I am, however, able to slip in a leg, and I now have the door jam behind me for leverage. “One more push.”

  Grandma slips in closer to me, essentially pinning me between the door and wall, and presses her hands against the door. I brace my back against the jam, place my palms against the door, and push as hard as I can. Together, and with proper leverage, Grandma and I push the door open the length of my arms.

  I enter Jeremy’s pitch-black bedroom and grope for the light switch. The overhead fixture chases away the darkness only to reveal a surreal scene.

  A twin-sized mattress leans against the wall, covering the window, and the box spring stands on end against the mattress. Jeremy’s computer monitor and desk lamp are set neatly on the floor where his desk once was. The metal bed frame has been detached from the headboard and dragged into the middle of the room. The blankets and sheets once covering the bed are now heaped in the center of the frame. Jeremy’s stockinged foot protrudes from beneath the heap.

  Grandma, heading for the bed frame, pushes me aside. “Oh, my! Oh, my!” she cries.

  I help her pull the sheets and blankets from the heap. “What’s happened? What’s happened?” she continues to cry.

  We uncover Jeremy. He lies on his back and his eyes are closed as if he’s still asleep. But his lips are moving.

  “Jeremy,” Grandma cries. “Jeremy can you hear me?” She kneels next to him and takes him by the shoulders.

  I fix my eyes on his quivering lips. An all too familiar, terrifying sound fills the room, and it’s coming from my little brother.

  Kneeling down next to him, I discover the source of the whispers that have haunted me since the moment the children first arrived. In a hushed breath, Jeremy utters something indiscernible.

  I lean in and hold my ear inches away from his lips. I am so close I can feel his breath on my face. His words crawl under my skin.

  “What’s he saying, Abigail?” Grandma asks.

  I sit up and look into my Grandma’s worried eyes, where deep cracked crow’s feet pull at the edges. I hesitate to tell her, but her confused, innocent expression begs for the truth, so I say, “‘Darkest, blackest eyes.’”

  She looks down at him. “What does that mean?”

  The fact that it’s my brother who’s been the source of these chilling whispers these past nights both frightens and frustrates me. I am more baffled now than ever before.

  Has he known since the very first night the children were coming? What kind of prophetic nightmare has been haunting him, and what is the reason he’s either not recalled this dream or refused to mention it to me?

  A part of me wonders if Jeremy’s been the victim of an elaborate, vicious prank inspired by none other than Tommy Wexler himself. Maybe a pack of bullies has been filling his head with these ideas for months, chipping away at his confidence, abusing his fears, and implanting ideas in his head until the little creeps actually found the time to visit our home and turn the joke into something that’s become very real for Jeremy. Now, with the police car patrolling the neighborhood, they’ve backed off, but it’s too late for my little brother.

  Grandma can’t wake him. My infuriation with the whole situation finally manifests itself in the most inappropriate manner possible. With one fierce swoop, I slap Jeremy across his face as hard as I can.

  Grandma scolds me. “Abigail!”

  Jeremy ceases whispering, wakes up, and clutches his cheek.

  “Jeremy,” Grandma says, “are you all right?”

  My brother’s eyes dart around the room. They eventually land on me and begin to focus.

  “Say something,” I insist.

  “Did they come?” he asks.

  With the realization that he’s fine, I sigh and sit back on my heels. Gazing about the room, I ask him, “Did you do all this with the furniture?”

  He sits up and looks at Grandma. Groggily, he says, “Oh, hi, Grandma.”

  “Hello, Jeremy,” Grandma says, placing a hand over her heart. She repeats my question. “What’s happened to your room, Jeremy? Did you do this?”

  Jeremy lowers his chin to his chest. Ashamed, he nods.

  Grandma raises her fingertips to her mouth. It looks like she’s about to cry. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  He doesn’t answer, but I know why he did it. “He barricaded himself.”

  My grandmother looks down her nose at Jeremy accusingly. “Is that true?”

  Jeremy nods, and Grandma quickly regains her composure. “I see. You did this so those naughty children couldn’t get you?”

  He nods again.

  “I see,” she says again, her eyes drifting to the mattress and box spring leaning against the window.

  Grandma shifts her weight and struggles to stand. I jump to my feet to help her. Once standing, she places her hands on her hips and considers the computer desk behind the door.

  “Tell me something,” she says. “Was it part of your plan to intentionally lock your sister and me outside your bedroom so the little devils would be too sleepy to kick your door down after eating us both?”

  Grandma’s mocking accusation stuns Jeremy. He sits wide-eyed and slack-jawed, speechless.

  Grandma shakes her head. “You scared us half to death, mister! Part of me thinks you deserved Abby’s slap. Straighten this up and get dressed. You’re both still going to school.” As she turns to exit the room, she launches one last stone in Jeremy’s direction. “And, no, they didn’t come last night. Enough of this foolishness.”

  With Grandma gone, Jeremy stands, wrestles his feet out of the tangled blankets on the floor, and stomps over to his dresser, the only piece of furniture that must’ve been too heavy for him to move.

  “Shut up, Abby,” he says preemptively. “Don’t even say anything.”

  While it certainly is a great opportunity for a verbal bashing, I’ve something far more important on my mind. “You were talking in your sleep. What were you dreaming?”

  He dismisses my question while rummaging through his dresser drawer. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? It was two minutes ago.”

  Looking foolish with a pair of socks and underwear balled up in his fists, he turns to me with wide-open arms. “I don’t remember, Abby. Maybe if you wouldn’t have slapped me.”

  Fine. Whatever.

  I fold my arms defensively and try to refocus him. “Come on, now. Do you remember what you were saying?”

  He walks to his closet and slides open the pocket door. “No.”

  “Would you like to know?”

  Empty clothes hanger in hand, he turns to study me. With inflections of suspicion, curiosity, and even fear, he asks, “What was I saying?”

  “You said, ‘darkest, blackest eyes.’”

  Jeremy stares blankly.

  I step closer to him. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  Swallowing hard, he shakes his head.

  “Here’s the kicker. You’ve been talking in your sleep since the very first night they showed up. In fact, you were talking in your sleep the very moment before they first showed up. This morning, it seems you were in some sort of broken record mode—probably mumbling all night long. So, maybe you should think a little harder about what you’ve been dreaming and how those words found their way into your dreams.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what you’ve been saying in your sleep the last few nights, but if it’s been the same thing you were saying two minutes ago, you knew who was coming to our doorstep before any of us. How would
you know that?”

  Jeremy’s eyes glisten in the overhead light. “I don’t know.”

  “What have you and Tommy Wexler been talking about? What’s going on at school, and who’s been putting these ideas in your head?”

  Jeremy drops his arms to his sides. “No one, Abby, no one. I’ve been going through this just like you. I went to bed on Saturday night, just like every night my whole life, just like you. I didn’t know they were coming, just like you. When I saw the boy’s eyes—just like you—I remembered the story of the black-eyed kids, and I remembered that Tommy knew more about it than anyone. So I IMed him Sunday to find out what he knew, and that’s when he told me about the cemetery boy. Tommy said he could help us find him if we wanted to talk to him.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him.”

  “I do. Abby, you saw that boy’s eyes too. You keep treating me like I’m crazy, but you’re the one denying it all. Why can’t you ask for help? Why are you so worried about what people think? It’s not ding dong ditch. It’s not my friends. It’s not a prank. It’s real, Abby, and maybe they didn’t come back last night, but they will come back.”

  I can’t make sense of any of it. I clasp my hands over the top of my head and close my eyes, trying to construct a theory that unifies it all. Jeremy’s right, I did see the boy’s eyes myself, but I’ve been chalking it up to an illusion or a trick, which it still could very well be. But now it seems my little brother foresaw all this in his sleep, perhaps in dreams or some kind of trance. That’s pretty much inexplicable, and I don’t know what to think about it. Logic and common sense defies it all.

  Then there’s the real-life murders that started the urban legend of the black-eyed kids. If there’s a hint of truth behind it, Jeremy’s right, we could be in danger. For the first time, I consider hearing more about this cemetery boy. Not that I want to meet him, but maybe it makes sense to at least hear what Tommy Wexler has to say about it all.

  “Just get dressed,” I tell Jeremy as if I’ve dismissed everything he said. I leave his bedroom, closing the door behind me.

  I won’t tell Jeremy I’m considering a consultation with Tommy. He’d run with it, and by the end of the day, despicable Tommy would be sitting in my family room, showing off his grotesque, ear-to-ear grin beneath his ridiculous militant buzz cut, jabbering on about the black-eyed kids and the cemetery boy, probably making no sense at all. I don’t need that. Instead, I’m going to let things play out on their own until I can come up with a better plan. After all, the doorbell never rang last night, and this problem may already be solved.

  To my relief, everything proceeds normally the rest of the day, even at school. With my first full night’s sleep since Saturday, I find my concentration has picked up again, and I’ve stopped nodding off in my classes. My mind even finds its way back to routine thoughts for most of the day. My grades and I may actually survive this ordeal after all.

  It’s not until Jeremy and I approach our house after school that things go a bit sideways.

  A familiar vehicle sits in the driveway, but it’s not Grandma’s. The old minivan belongs to Harold Donaldson, Grandma’s boss and friend from the hardware store.

  I believe Mr. Donaldson, a widower, is sweet on my grandmother, a thought which is both charming and revolting. They are about the same age, though Mr. Donaldson may actually be a few years younger. He is, for all practical purposes, the ‘man’ in Grandma’s life. Although, for her that means nothing more than having one additional person to dish out chores to. This is confirmed when we get inside and find Mr. Donaldson standing on a step ladder in the hallway, working on the light fixture.

  “Hello, kids,” he says when he sees us.

  “Hi, Mr. Donaldson,” I say.

  Jeremy says nothing. After dropping his backpack in the family room, he slips past the ladder, seizes a bag of vanilla cookies from the kitchen cupboard, and takes a seat at the table.

  Grandma stands with me in the foyer. “How is he doing?” she asks.

  “Fine,” I say. “I think he’s over it.”

  “How was school, mister?” Grandma calls to Jeremy.

  “Fine,” he answers, and we hear the snap of a vanilla cookie as he bites into it.

  “He’ll be fine,” I reassure Grandma.

  Grandma nods then motions to Harold. “Harold already fixed the porch light.”

  Mr. Donaldson sports thick white hair above his flush round face. He’s clean shaven and barrel-chested, and he’s missing his entire pinky and half his ring finger from his left hand. He’s a nice man but carries too much bravado in his strut; I’ve always seen this as his way of flirting with Grandma, and I think it’s what puts me off about him. His voice naturally booms when he talks, as if he’s trying to project it through a brick wall. All this together makes each of Mr. Donaldson’s appearances somewhat of a spectacle.

  The big man aims his screwdriver past Grandma and me toward the front door. “All the electrical was burned up on the front porch. I had to snip about eight inches of wire off and replace the whole fixture. Ain’t that right, Rosie?”

  “Yes,” Grandma says. “And I said I’d pay you back for that fixture. Now don’t you let me forget.”

  Mr. Donaldson descends the ladder. “I said that fixture was on me.”

  “Oh, Harold!” Grandma slaps her thigh and chuckles uncomfortably. “That’s just not right.”

  “Now, Rosie, I don’t want to hear another word about it.” When he reaches the base of the ladder, Mr. Donaldson points his screwdriver at the ceiling. “By the way, this fixture is fine. All it needed was a new bulb.”

  “Harold, thank you so much.” Grandma says.

  “My pleasure, Rosie.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Donaldson,” I say as I make my way past him to the kitchen.

  “Yeah, thanks, Mr. Donaldson,” Jeremy calls from the table, his mouth chock-full of cookies.

  “You kids are most welcome.”

  Grandma follows me to the kitchen while Mr. Donaldson folds up his step ladder and returns his tools to his toolbox.

  Snatching a vanilla cookie from the box on the table, I drop into the chair across from Jeremy.

  “Harold, won’t you stay for supper?” Grandma says, pulling a box of bread crumbs from the cupboard. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s joined us. In fact, Mr. Donaldson joins us for supper at least twice a month.

  Making his way into the kitchen, he says, “You know, I just might. That would give me a chance to hear a bit more about these hooligans that have been harassing you.”

  Jeremy and I stop chewing.

  For as much energy as I’ve spent trying to keep Jeremy quiet about all of this, it seems fate has decided this rumor would be best spread across Mount Herod by my beloved grandmother—not my thirteen-year-old brother.

  The other night, Grandma told Officers Coolidge and Gordon she mentioned our late-night visitors to Mr. Donaldson after church on Sunday, but she added that he quickly dismissed it. That can only mean she brought it up again and finally hooked his interest. All of this occurs now that our doorbell hasn’t rung in more than thirty-six hours.

  “Harold helped me put your bedroom back in order today, Jeremy,” Grandma says, peering over her glasses. “I certainly couldn’t move all that furniture myself.”

  We abandoned his room in shambles when we left for school. The clock wasn’t in our favor to straighten it at the time, and now it appears Grandma presented a honey-do list to Mr. Donaldson while she cashiered at the hardware store today. It follows that Mr. Donaldson is now as informed about the past week’s late-night events as anyone living in the house.

  Mr. Donaldson sits down at the kitchen table with us. He says to Jeremy, “They’re scaring the dickens out of you, huh?”

  Jeremy looks at me. It’s awkward because it must appear to Mr. Donaldson as though my brother is asking permission to speak, which quite honestly he is. No response in the world will make this situation any less clumsy, so I simply sho
w my brother a reassuring smile.

  Jeremy looks back at Mr. Donaldson and shrugs one shoulder, at which point Mr. Donaldson progresses through a verbal list of questions similar to those asked by Coolidge and Gordon, and the whole topic, quite frankly, has become tiring.

  “It’s important we keep our wits about us,” Grandma says, no doubt aiming the comment in Jeremy’s direction. “Though they are a frightening pair of children.”

  “I’ve heard my share of strange stories in Mount Herod, but two rotten kids ringing a doorbell in the middle of the night sounds like simple horseplay to me,” Mr. Donaldson says. “Rosie told me they’re all dressed up like they’re going to a funeral. What do you call them these days—emus?”

  Jeremy’s eyes brighten and he giggles. “That’s a flightless Australian bird, Dromaius novaehollandiae.”

  It strikes me funny as well, though far less scientifically, and I snicker despite my best effort not to. I’m picturing two ostrich-like birds dressed for a funeral, standing on our front porch, pecking at our doorbell while they squawk about the cold.

  I think it’s the first time either Jeremy or I have seen humor in any of this, and it feels good despite the fact it’s at the expense of Mr. Donaldson, who is smiling but also blushing.

  Jeremy corrects Mr. Donaldson. “Emos,” he says, but his mood suddenly turns solemn. “They’re not dressed like that at all. They’re dressed in old parish school uniforms like someone might’ve seen in England a hundred years ago.”

  I cringe when Mr. Donaldson’s smile fades. “Come again?”

  I want to shut this down before it gets out of control. My brother already seems to be teetering on the edge of insanity. If he launches into the black-eyed kids legend, Mr. Donaldson’s the type that might insist Grandma take Jeremy to Saint Thomas Psychiatric Hospital for an exam. I kick Jeremy’s shin beneath the table. He flinches, shoots me a crinkled, annoyed expression, and distracts himself with another bite of a cookie.

  Mr. Donaldson, his hands folded atop the table, watches Jeremy with concern.

  “We’re all just tired,” I say. “Last night’s the best night of sleep we had in days.”