After the last bell, Gabe called Temple House to remind his family about the fright fest at the high school. After listening to his grandmother’s stern warning to “be careful,” he trekked up the path to the other campus with Mazzy.
The light was low in the sky, the air crisp. The scent of burning leaves drifted on the breeze. Young children dressed in colorful costumes were accompanied by tired-looking parents through the front door of the high school, carrying bags and satchels and jack-o’-lantern-shaped buckets they hoped to later fill up with candy.
Gabe and Mazzy had been sitting on the low wall outside the entrance for several minutes when an odd figure approached them. His thin frame was bulked up by a suit of plastic armor under which he wore a dark sweatshirt and a pair of dirty jeans. A red cape hung from his shoulders and a centurion’s helmet hid his face, a Mohawk of synthetic hair rising from the top of it like a horse’s mane. In his belt was tucked a long wooden sword, painted silver. “I figured if we’re gonna be fighting monsters,” Seth’s slightly muffled voice came from the helmet, “at least one of us should gear up.”
“We’re not fighting monsters,” said Gabe. “We’re just talking about what to do.”
“Same thing at this point,” Seth answered. From inside the helmet, he flashed some teeth. It was the first time Gabe had seen Seth smile in at least a month.
“Okay,” said Mazzy, “but just to be sure, this isn’t part of your game, right?”
Seth glanced at his costume. “This? No way. A Robber Prince would never wear something so obvious.” He knocked the sword against his helmet. “I’m just being cautious in case one of the faculty recognizes me. Don’t want to risk getting sent home, right?”
“I guess that makes sense,” said Gabe, holding back a smile. “Come on. Let’s head inside.”
“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? Something 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.
THE SHADOW SPOKE IN THE VOICE of Felicia Nielsen. “What the heck are you guys talking about in here?”
The girl stepped into the light, wearing a warped smile that, unfortunately, was not part of her Maleficent costume—a long, dark purple dress, a shawl wrapped tightly around her scalp, two twisted black horns rising from her skull. She was the picture of evil—exactly what she’d been going for. She glanced between Gabe and Mazzy. “I trusted you guys. And you were all in it together?”
“In what together?” Mazzy asked.
“Right. Play dumb. The firecracker? The cake? I could have lost a freaking finger!”
Gabe took a deep breath. “You’ve got it wrong, Felicia. We’re only trying to figure out what’s happening here. We want to stop whoever it was that hurt you.”
“Whoever?” Felicia stepped forward, laughing. “You’re kidding, right?” She nodded at Seth, who was now by the sink across the room. “Just a theory, but do you think it could possibly have been the kid with the wooden sword?”
Seth dropped his arm to his side. “It’s a costume,” he said quietly. “It’s Halloween.”
“Every day is Halloween for you,” Felicia answered. “I would have thought you’d have learned by now not to mess with me, Seth.” She nodded at Mazzy and Gabe. “I tried to help you guys understand what you were dealing with here, but you didn’t listen. Gabe, I saw you and Seth leaving Mazzy’s house last night. I didn’t bring it up at lunch today because I wanted to be sure.” He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off. “Whatever you’ve got planned is not happening. You’re not gonna freak out any more of my friends.” She stepped toward the open door behind her. “In fact, when I’m done with you, I doubt you’ll set foot in Slade Middle School again.”
“Would you shut up a second and listen to us?” Mazzy shouted. Felicia flinched, surprised at the outburst.
Something slammed out in the hallway—a locker, a classroom door—reverberating so loudly, Gabe wondered briefly if a piece of the ceiling had collapsed.
Felicia turned toward the darkness beyond the door. “Who’s that?” she cried out, breathless. She must have seen something then, because she staggered against the door frame, her shoulders slack, as if someone had punched her hard in the stomach. She turned around and faced the group. “H-how are you guys doing this?”
“We’re not doing anything,” said Seth, calmly. “We’re standing right here. With you.”
“What do you see?” Mazzy asked Felicia.
Felicia turned reluctantly back toward the hallway. “There’s someone down there,” she said. “Watching.”
Gabe held out his hand and waved her forward into the kitchen. “Get away,” he whispered. A beastly roar erupted from the passage and Felicia fell into the room. She screamed and scrambled across the linoleum on her hands and knees. Gabe’s muscles had turned to cement.
A slithering, sliding sound echoed forth from the darkness. Claws scraping against tile. It was coming closer.
Felicia stood, then slipped and knocked Gabe into action. Glancing around the room, he noti
ced another door, half-hidden beside the refrigerator. Taking Gabe’s silent cue, Seth turned toward the exit. He threw himself into the door, sending it swinging wide open. Gabe waved frantically for Mazzy and Felicia to follow. Scrabbling sounds resounded into the kitchen. Mazzy bent down and picked up the book, then Gabe and Felicia followed her, stumbling into the darkness beyond the new doorway.
THE HALLWAY WAS A TUNNEL of shadow. As the group careened toward what looked like the emptiness of outer space, Gabe remembered his dream in which the Hunter had eaten him alive. He felt that same weightlessness, as if he were falling, floating, waiting for one final crunch.
Ahead, he heard a whump followed by a shout of pain. “Wall!” Seth cried out sharply, then added, “This way. Quick.”
A cacophony exploded from the kitchen behind them. Something large must have passed through the workstation aisle, knocking over utensils, plates, glasses.
Gabe knew his sneakers slapping against the floor was like a trail of crumbs for the Hunter to follow. His only thought was to find light, a place with people around. The high school lobby. Even the gymnasium would do. He wasn’t sure if anything could protect them now, but at least they wouldn’t be sprinting through darkness.
The sound of claws scrabbling on tile erupted from the kitchen door. Something hit the wall of lockers back there, releasing a clang that echoed in all directions. It was coming closer. Fast.
Suspended in the pitch just ahead, another red exit sign glowed. Seth led the way forward, his sword raised, as if he were still pretending to be the hero of the story. He pushed open a pair of double doors, revealing a pinpoint of light at the end of a long hallway—the lobby. The group dashed ahead and didn’t glance back, not even when the doors slammed shut behind them.
Focused on their goal of the lobby in the distance, none of them noticed that the hall was blocked by one of the accordion gates until Mazzy smashed into it at full sprint. Felicia, trying to avoid the same fate, swiveled to the side. But she slipped on the hem of her polyester costume, and her leg extended into Gabe’s path. He flew face-first into Seth. Together, they bounced off the blockade and fell to the floor.
The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe Page 16