“How did you get that phone!” said their mother to Hilary. “Give it to me!”
Hilary groaned and passed the device up to her.
“Honey,” said Mrs. Edelman to Emily, “I just don’t know what you were thinking. You’re lucky they didn’t expel you on the spot!”
“It wasn’t my fault!” said Emily, but her mother wasn’t paying attention because she was busy trying to pry her own shoe off. There was a suction-y glorp. “Ugh,” said Mrs. Edelman, and she rolled down the window so she could dump the water out of her shoe.
Emily sat back in her seat, eyes welling up. Her mind was racing. What should she do? Tell her parents? Call her old friends back home? Call the police? Call the media? No, she couldn’t tell anyone—who would believe her? She could prove everything by showing Gorgo to them, but what if they couldn’t see him, just like they hadn’t noticed the magic powers of the Stone? Or worse, what if Gorgo was lying about having to follow her commands and decided to hurt someone?
No. Emily would have to deal with this herself somehow. No one could know about the Stone and its power, ever.
But someone did know about it. Or at least suspected something.
That someone was another student in Emily’s grade. She had been sitting in the front row.
She was quiet, observant, serious. The sort of student of whom other students might say, Oh, right, her. What was her name, again?
Her name was Angela Rodriguez. She was, coincidentally, the person who had altered the yearbook descriptions of Kristy Meyer, but no one else knew that.
And while Angela might be the sort of person other people didn’t notice or take an interest in, she noticed things and took an interest in them. Things like a deep voice emanating from the stone in Emily’s hand, and a tiny spark that had appeared from nowhere and set everything ablaze.
Huh, Angela thought as she stood under the downpour from the sprinkler system. That’s interesting.
The ground under Maligno Sr.’s boots made squelchy, rude noises as he made his way through the fetid swamp, his feet shrouded by the thick yellow vapor that hung low like a noxious blanket. Moonlight peeked through gnarled moss-covered branches overhead. Strange animals and insects added their eerie calls to the ominous digestive sounds of the swamp itself. Maligno, whistling cheerfully, paid them no heed.
He was carrying a large fireplace bellows propped on his shoulder. Every so often he would stop and sniff the air, adjust his course, and continue on his way.
In a clearing up ahead he spotted a lump rising out of the ground-hugging fog, like a small hillock. The smell he had been following—the smell of corruption and decay—grew much more intense.
“Perfect,” he said.
He drew closer until he was standing over the form, the rotting remains of an animal the size of a large horse. It was not a pretty sight and smelled even worse than it looked.
Maligno circled the cadaver until it was between him and the moon, which hung a hand’s width above the tree line. Then he crouched down and peered intently at the carcass—or more precisely, at the space directly above it, aligning his gaze with the moon. Maligno was motionless for several moments, straining to see, because what he was looking for was difficult to detect, even for someone with occult senses as keen as his.
There. Like a subtle, ghostly shadow passing between him and the moon. As he focused his attention on it he could see it better: a form like a giant, repulsive grub hovering over the dead animal, caressing it with innumerable tendrils and feelers as the spectral creature fed on its essence. A carrion shade.
“Hello, lovely,” said Maligno.
Straightening up, he readied the bellows, holding the tip in the spot where he could still faintly see the carrion shade. Then he spread the handles, sucking the shade inside, and popped a small cork into the tip to plug the hole.
Maligno knew full well that the shade, being weightless and immaterial, could never retrieve the Stone. But he also knew that if directed by a very skilled practitioner of the very darkest arts—which Maligno most definitely was—the shade could find the Stone. And once the Stone was found, well, Maligno knew exactly what he’d send to get it. The thought made him smile cruelly.
Whistling contentedly, the bellows once again propped against his shoulder, Maligno started back home.
“Everything okay out there?” said Gorgo.
Emily was lying on her bed, fuming. After they had changed out of their wet clothes and the family had sat down for a late dinner, Hilary had said, “Hey, Dad, you guys better check the batteries in the smoke detectors. Who knows what Emily’s going to get up to.” So Emily had stormed upstairs to her room and slammed the door.
“Hello?” said Gorgo now, his voice emanating from the Stone.
Emily pulled the Stone out of her pocket, where she had automatically stuffed it during all the excitement.
“Be quiet, you,” she said.
“What was all the shouting about?”
“Uh, let’s see . . . maybe it was about you nearly burning down the school, and me getting blamed for it?”
“Goodness,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
“Oh, no, no, don’t you worry about it at all,” Emily said.
“No? Okay, great,” Gorgo said. He seemed genuinely relieved.
“Yes, worry about it! You’ve ruined my life!”
“Listen, uh . . . what’s your name?”
“What do you care?”
“I told you mine. If you want, I can just call you Master. Or Mistress. Or . . . Snack Food.”
“It’s Emily.”
“Lovely name. A little short, but fine. Listen, Emily, I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
“I’m thinking, ‘I’m sitting in my room, my life is ruined, I’m probably losing my mind, and I’m talking to a stone.’”
“Strictly speaking, you’re talking to me. I just happen to be in the Stone.”
“Well, guess what? Now I’m done,” she said, and went to put the Stone in her sock drawer.
As she was burying it under her socks, Gorgo said, “Wait!”
“Gorgo, you have to obey me, right?” said Emily.
“Yes.”
“Then stay in there and don’t talk to me!” she said, and slammed the drawer shut.
Then she showered and brushed her teeth and got into bed and lay awake for a long time before finally falling asleep from sheer exhaustion.
And then woke with a gasp in the middle of the night, heart pounding, bathed in cold sweat, her mind filled with terror.
Because there was something in her room.
Chapter
Five
Emily lay as still as she could, not daring to move, barely daring to breathe.
There was something lurking in the darkness.
She couldn’t hear it or see it, but she could feel it, the sheer foulness of its presence.
It wasn’t Gorgo. She knew that. This was something else. Something far worse.
She was lying on her side. It could be right behind me, she thought, her skin crawling. It could be right there, reaching for me. But she felt paralyzed, unable to move a muscle, unable even to scream.
She could see, very dimly, her dresser across the room. Where her sock drawer was. The drawer she’d put the Stone in. The drawer she had slammed shut.
The drawer was open.
At that moment the clouds parted and a shaft of moonlight drew a distorted silvery rectangle on the dresser and the wall. And she saw it.
Something made of smoke and shadow and horror. Somehow transparent and immaterial, yet there all the same, a blob covered with hideous feelers and antennae that were blindly waving about, some of them now tracing the contours of the dresser. Searching.
The feelers continued to wander insidiously over the surface of the dresser, more and more of them joining in. Then the writhing shadow suddenly froze, quivering with apparent excitement. Emily felt a burst of nausea and vertigo. It had foun
d the Stone. It was touching it. And the room spun and it seemed she was falling into an abyss and she felt she would go mad from fear and then she heard her own voice say, “Awaken!”
The light was blinding, pure, a thousand suns radiating forth from her drawer, the shadow blown away like mist before a gale. In that moment Emily heard a harsh, inhuman screech that she was certain would wake the entire neighborhood.
She turned on the light and leaped from her bed, ran to slam the drawer shut, then ran out of her room, pulling the door shut behind her before sprinting to her parents’ room.
She paused, her hand on the doorknob. She could hear her dad snoring through the closed door. She padded down the hall and checked on Dougie and Hilary. They were both still asleep.
If she said she’d had a bad dream, her parents would scold her for waking them and send her back to her room. If she told them the truth, they’d think she was crazy.
She went downstairs, turned on the living room light, and sat in a chair, shivering. She was still sitting there, eyes wide open, when the sun came up.
I have to get rid of the Stone, thought Emily. I have to. Exhausted, halfway through a day that seemed nearly as nightmarish as the night before had been, she was trudging through the school halls toward her locker, eyes fixed on the floor.
Until yesterday, she had just been the Weird New Girl Who Somehow Had Something Wrong with Her. As of this morning, owing to all the fun at the talent show, she had become the Weird New Girl Who Had Gotten Up On Stage, Panicked, Belched Hugely, Then Tried to Burn Down the School.
If she had been at zero on the social scale before, she was now somewhere deep, deep, deep in the negative range.
All day it had been the same, no matter what classroom Emily was in or where she was in the halls: stares, whispers, pointing fingers, snickering. And burps. Lots and lots of burps. Boys burping on cue as she walked past, then barely smothering giggles. How is it that all boys know how to burp like that? she wondered. Are there secret lessons?
Even the teachers looked at her funnily—the worried, guarded expression teachers wore when they had a particularly troubled and troublesome student in their class. There was a trio of teachers up ahead of her now in the corridor, two women and a man. As soon as they saw Emily, their conversation ceased, and their eyes followed her as she approached and then passed them. When she glanced back from the end of the hallway, they were huddled even closer in an animated conspiratorial conversation. The male teacher spotted her observing them and quickly hushed the others.
It wasn’t me! Emily wanted to scream. It was a demon trapped in this magic Stone I found!
Which, she knew, would have the same effect as trying to drown a fire with a big bucket of gasoline. And she didn’t expect any sympathy if she were to describe the hideous spirit that had appeared in her room last night. She trudged on.
She was not wearing socks. In the morning she had eaten her breakfast in silence while Dougie chattered away and kicked at her legs under the table. After eating, Emily had darted into her room, holding her breath as she grabbed a change of clothes from her dresser. She couldn’t make herself open her sock drawer.
Meaning she had left the Stone in the drawer when she went to school. Which turned out to be one of the most difficult things she had ever done. As if the Stone was calling out to her, whimpering, desperate to go with her. It felt completely wrong to leave it there, as though she were abandoning a puppy alongside a desolate stretch of highway. That, or like a scene in a zombie movie where the hero puts her weapon down for juuuuust a moment so she can take a quick refreshing dip in a lake, and you scream, Don’t do that! Don’t do that!
But Emily still couldn’t even think of touching the Stone, let alone taking it with her.
She felt it calling to her the whole time she was walking to school. Walking to Clearview School was a strategy she had decided on this morning. A quick glance at a map had proved that she could do it in about half an hour, thereby avoiding the environment most toxic and dangerous for the outcast: the school bus. So she walked Dougie to the bus stop and then went her own way.
The town of Clearview was a peaceful, pleasant place, the houses and lawns modest and neatly maintained. But today it felt like enemy territory. The whole way Emily felt as if she was being observed, as if people were snickering at her from their windows as she walked by. The feeling got worse when a dark-haired girl emerged from a house, silently watched her pass, and then started following her. Not just walking behind her: the mysterious girl had seemed intent on catching up to Emily. Emily accelerated.
And then she had arrived at school and been barraged with burps and stares and whispers and hushed giggles.
She was nearing her locker now. An image of last night’s terrifying specter flashed in her mind for the hundredth time, and she tried to block it out. It was the Stone, she knew. The Stone was the problem. She had to get rid of it.
Her locker was close enough to the auditorium that she could see the yellow DO NOT ENTER tape stretching across the doorway and hear the midpitched hum of the blowers the work crew had put in there to try to dry everything out.
“I have to get rid of the Stone,” she said aloud.
“What’s that? Is everything okay, Emily?”
The voice was sugary, cloying, mocking in its false concern. A bowl of honey-covered wasps.
Emily paused, her locker halfway open, and mentally steeled herself for whatever was about to happen.
“What do you want, Kristy,” she said, keeping her gaze fixed on the depths of her locker. She didn’t have to look to know Kristy was right there, her henchmen—henchgirls—arrayed behind her, grinning in anticipation.
“Well,” said Kristy, “I just wanted to say you did a great job last night. You were on fire! Ha ha ha ha!!!”
Kristy and her friends all went stumbling away, too weak with laughter and self-congratulation to walk properly. Grimly shoving books into her locker and taking other ones out, Emily muttered, “That’s not even a good joke. It’s not even funny.”
“No, it isn’t,” said another voice.
This time Emily turned.
It was the dark-haired girl, the mysterious one from this morning. The one who had followed her.
“Hi. My name is Angela,” said the girl. “Angela Rodriguez.”
She stuck out her hand. Emily looked at it. Then she noticed the clusters of other kids lingering casually in the vicinity, hoping for more entertainment. She was aware of a sudden vacuum, the non-sound that results when kids are trying to eavesdrop on a conversation without appearing to do so.
“Can we talk?” Angela said quietly.
Emily looked at Angela’s serious expression. Then she looked at the other kids, noting the sly glances, smirks, furtive murmuring. Everyone was waiting to see what happened next.
In that moment, Emily rapidly performed the sort of complex social calculation that kids are very good at. It went like this: either (a) this Angela was another mean girl like Kristy, and this apparently friendly overture was actually some sort of twisted, cruel ploy; or (b) Angela was an outcast like Emily.
If you’ve ever been an outcast—which, if you’re an interesting person, you probably have—you will understand the following paradox: often the very last thing you want when you’re an outcast is the pity or attention of another outcast.
And so Emily looked at the hand outstretched in friendship and mistakenly saw nothing but danger.
Angela finally dropped her hand. “I want to talk to you,” she said.
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” said Emily, and slammed her locker shut and stalked off.
At dinner, Hilary said, “Here’s a burned piece, Emily. You might like it.”
“Hey, why don’t you burp again?” added Dougie. “BUURRRRP!”
“Dougie!” said their mom, but Emily noticed that both she and their father were fighting to stifle their own laughter.
After dinner Emily sat at
the kitchen table, trying to do her homework. Normally she’d do it in her room, but she didn’t want to go in there, knowing that the Stone—and Gorgo—were waiting for her in her sock drawer.
It was hard to concentrate.
Partially because of the tortured honking and squawking noises that indicated her father was practicing his saxophone.
Partially because of the throbbing in her toe, which she had stubbed when she had knocked over her father’s music stand, which had happened when she was chasing Dougie, which she had done because he kept appearing in the doorway to zing her with rubber bands. And of course she was the one who got yelled at.
Partially because Emily could overhear her sister now on the phone with her friends: “I know! Totally, like, nearly burned it down. I am. So. Embarrassed. To be her sister.”
And partially because her mom kept interrupting her, coming into the room with a tablet computer and saying things such as “Ooh, look at this! Look at the lovely dress she’ll be wearing!” and “Ooh! Emily, don’t you want to see where they’re holding the wedding?”
The wedding. Some cousin. All Emily knew was that the ceremony was tomorrow and it would be several hours of driving to get there.
So those things all made it hard to concentrate. But mostly it was hard because every math problem in front of Emily seemed to go something like, “If Avery needs to buy apples and flour but has only $12, how will she ever get rid of the magic Stone she found that has a demon in it that wants to eat her?”
Instead of math answers, Emily kept scribbling and crossing out things:
Leave Stone in park?
Throw away?
Break with hammer?
Bury?
Flush down toilet?
Emily and the Spellstone Page 4