by Dan Poblocki
“It must be really difficult for her, though, dealing with that,” said Cassidy, thinking of some of her neighbors back in the city, the ones she’d visited with Levi Stanton. “It’s made me feel a little sick whenever I’ve heard someone in this town calling Ursula a nutso-freakazoid.”
“I don’t think Ursula had OCD,” said Ping. “Either way, Whitechapel didn’t treat her very kindly.”
“She didn’t treat Whitechapel very kindly,” said Joey quietly.
“She was a victim,” said Ping. “Whether it was a disease or just her personality. She carried a whole lot. Don’t you think?”
“And I doubt Ursula had medicine to help her,” said Hal. “She was alone and helpless and scared.”
“Okay, so Ursula’s a martyr.” Joey threw his hands into the air. “But right now, we’re missing the point. Our problems are all about her house.”
“I think so too,” said Cassidy. “It’s the house. The house is doing bad things.”
“It’s the vortex,” Ping corrected. “The house just happens to sit on top of it. Moved there by Owen Chase years ago, so he could build his estates.”
“So, Ursula … and her uncle Aidan before her,” said Cassidy, trying to work it out in her head as she spoke, “might have learned that to remove anything that had been … claimed by this vortex was a bad idea.”
“Bad how?” Joey asked.
The air conditioner clicked off. The house settled into stillness.
“Something came for me,” said Hal. “Something dark. And old. It manipulated that mannequin. It growled this primal-sounding noise. It made me see things, hear things. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Moriarty or Mr. Chase experienced something similar before they … you know … died.”
“So if it wasn’t Aidan and it wasn’t Ursula,” Ping said, “maybe something else is inside the house. Inside the vortex.”
“Maybe the vortex itself is alive,” Hal answered. “Maybe it’s … intelligent. Greedy. It wanted back what we’d taken from it.”
“If it couldn’t have the mannequin,” said Ping, “it tried to take you.”
The group was silent for a moment. “The dead,” whispered Cassidy. “If we’re right about the vortex, maybe somehow it got its claws into the bodies and brought them back in place of what they’d stolen.”
“That’s why Ursula hoarded,” said Ping. “She knew how it worked. If you take something from the house, you die. It could be why Ursula, or maybe her uncle, had carved the map into the floor. One less piece of paper that had a chance to get out into the world. She or he could sort out that hypothesis safely.”
“That all works,” said Cassidy, “except that Owen Chase gave his mother-in-law, Mrs. Moriarty, the mirror she said Ursula begged her to return. Moriarty never set foot inside that place, and she didn’t take anything. I think how it works is like this: If you possess what belonged to the house, or the vortex, you die.”
Hal nodded, his eyes wide, excited. “Then, the vortex-thing reaches out and brings you back to replace what it lost.”
“You mean, your corpse,” said Joey, grimacing. “Your walking, rotting corpse …”
“Ursula kept that basement door padlocked for a reason,” said Ping, slowly, quietly. “Maybe she’d seen it for herself, who knows how many times.”
Joey flinched. “You mean, she’d been living with who knows how many zombies in her basement? Right up the street from all of us?”
“So the ghost that people have been talking about,” Cassidy added, “is different from the zombie-thing I saw walking up the street. Ursula’s spirit hasn’t been trying to hurt people. She’s been warning people. Telling them to bring back whatever they took from the house.”
“That makes sense,” said Ping. “I mean, if any of this makes sense, then that does too.”
“Wait,” said Hal, looking pale, “does bringing the object back to the house break the curse? Am I safe now?”
Ping pressed her lips together. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
“And what about us?” Joey asked. “Since we were in the house, are we safe anymore? Or have we been claimed? Cursed? Does the vortex-thing think it owns us?”
“We have to do something,” said Ping. “We have to tell someone what’s going on.”
“Who’ll believe us?” Joey asked. “Not my parents, that’s for sure.”
“But they’ll have to believe us when we show them what we’ve seen.”
Cassidy cleared her throat. “But how can we bring anyone back to that house, knowing what we know now? If the four of us have been cursed, or claimed, simply by stepping inside the place, we can’t allow that to happen to anyone else.”
“What about the cleanup crew?” Ping suggested. “The Dumpster men. They’ve been inside the Chambers house. Maybe they’ve seen things too. Maybe they can help us.”
“But how do we track them down?” Joey asked. “We don’t even know the name of the company.”
“Let’s look it up,” Hal said, getting up from the rocking chair and heading to a small desk in the corner of the room where a Mac console sat, its sleep light glowing from its glossy white front. He tapped the space key, and the screen came alive.
The talk of curses sparked something in Cassidy’s memory, and she slipped her backpack off her shoulders. As the others continued to confer, she pulled her notebook out and flipped through the pages. Moments later, she discovered what she was looking for.
Different cultures all over the world have histories of curses in their folklore. In fact, there are several different words for curses, even here in the United States. Jinx. Hex. The Evil Eye.
A curse is something that happens to you, a streak of bad luck, a sort of supernatural force. Some people believe that humans can place a curse on a person they wish to harm. Others believe that a place can be cursed — simply going to that place will bring you bad luck. And others believe that objects themselves can carry powerful curses: To touch one of these objects may spell your doom.
Most say that cursing someone involves a ritual and removing a curse, a different ritual.
Some curses seem relatively silly and harmless, like when the Red Sox couldn’t seem to win the World Series for all those years because of something that supposedly happened a long time ago to Babe Ruth. And yet other curses can kill you.
One of the most famous curse legends I’ve read about comes from Hawaii. It’s the classic “don’t take something from this place or you’ll be sorry” hex, kind of like the ones with the mummies and the archaeologists and the pharaoh tombs in Egypt.
The story goes that in Hawaii, it’s bad luck to remove lava rock from the island. That to do so makes the goddess Pele angry. If you’re on vacation there and you take a rock home as a souvenir, all sorts of calamities will befall you. They say Pele can reach across the ocean and make you pay for taking what belongs to her. The only way to appease the goddess is to return the rock to the island from where you took it —
CASSIDY STOPPED READING. “You guys, I think I found something.”
The others had left her alone on the couch and had gathered around Hal’s computer, presumably to look for the name of the company that had cleaned up Ursula’s property. Ping glanced over her shoulder. “What is it, Cassidy?”
Cassidy stood, realizing that she was holding her book out in the open for everyone to see. She’d never shown it to anyone, not since Levi Stanton had given it to her. “I — I’ve got this notebook,” she said. The boys turned to look at her too, obviously sensing something strange in her voice. “I collect information about … well, about bad things. And I remembered an entry I wrote about curses. I think you should hear it.”
“Go on,” said Joey.
Cassidy was surprised. She’d always assumed that people would make fun of her for it. But she shook off her surprise and read the entry aloud. “At this point,” she added, “I think it’s too late to get all the stuff back. The movers will only be more clueless and scared than
we are. So instead of searching for the guys who emptied out Ursula’s house, we need to look up everything we can about curses. And how to break them.”
Hal wiped sweat from his top lip. “I think that’s a great idea.”
Cassidy slipped her notebook back into her bag, then joined the group at the computer desk by the window. “We might have to dig deeper than Wikipedia, but I’m not sure how.”
“I bet there’s a lot to read about curses in my magazines back home,” said Ping.
At the computer, Hal opened the browser and began to type something into a search engine. “Let me try.”
From the corner of her eye, Cassidy saw movement outside, in the Nances’ backyard. At first, she thought nothing of it. Branches swaying in the hot breeze. But after a moment, something clicked, told her to turn, to look closer.
Owen Chase was coming through the woods toward the house, stumbling stiffly along, his face pale and bloated, pulling branches and vines roughly out of his way. He was trailed by several tall shadowy figures and a smaller, dog-shaped one, all moving in a similar fashion, rigid, jerking, stuttered, but determined.
CASSIDY CRIED OUT. The group jumped. She pointed at the glass. “They followed us!”
“Who followed us?” Joey shrieked.
“Followed us from where?” Hal whispered.
“Whoa,” Ping said. The group gathered beside her at the window. For several seconds, they stared in silent horror, watching as the pale things that had chased them up Ursula’s basement stairs pushed through the last barrier of brush and shadow and stepped onto the Nances’ patchy lawn.
A humming sound vibrated the air. It tingled Cassidy’s skin, tried to lull her heartbeat. In her head, she heard a deep voice whispering a slow chant. If it had been words, it would have sounded something like Wait … Wait … Wait …
Five dead creatures paused and stared up at the house, as if they understood they were being observed. Lucky hung back in the shadows, but Owen Chase, in a shredded black suit and tie, stood beside his mother-in-law, Millie Moriarty, who wore a light-blue floral dress and one purple high-heeled shoe. Her other foot was bare. Her knobby toes had been painted pink. Each figure was dressed in what must have been their finest clothing — whatever their families had decided to bury them in.
Another man, if one could call him that, wavered on sticklike legs beside Millie. His clothes once may have been a nice shirt and pair of slacks but, after years in the dark underground, had become rags. His exposed skin was shriveled, vacuum-sealed to his bones. His jaw hung open, his lips pulled back to expose what were left of his brown teeth. His hair was long and gray and wet, plastered to his skull and neck, dangling down to his shoulders. As Ursula Chambers stumbled onto the grass beside him, wearing her burgundy funeral gown, Cassidy whispered, “It’s Aidan. Ursula’s uncle. He’s been down there with them too. Probably ever since he died. The house … No … The thing in the house, the vortex-thing, brought him back. That’s why he looks so …”
“Dead,” Joey whispered, his voice toneless, empty.
“Dead-alive,” said Hal.
“That Ursula is not the Ursula from my dream last night,” said Cassidy. “She’s not the Ursula who’s been warning people to return the things they took. This is the Ursula who belongs to the house.”
“Why are they here?” Ping asked.
“Why do you think?” Joey said.
Ping swallowed — an audible gulp. No answer required. She stepped away from the window, pulling Cassidy and the others back as well.
“Obviously they know where we are,” said Hal. “The house, or the thing in the house, sent them.” He sniffed. “They’re its sentinels. Its guardians.”
“Why would the house need guardians?” said Ping. “Unless it thinks of us as a threat?”
“It might.” Hal bit his lip. “Or maybe it just wants to own us too. They’re here to make sure that happens.”
“We have to go,” Cassidy interrupted, waving the group toward the foyer.
“Where to?” Joey asked. “They’ll find us. You know they will.”
“My car’s gone,” said Hal. “Obviously.”
“Then maybe we should stay put,” said Ping.
“We don’t have time to argue,” Joey said, pushing past Cassidy to the front door. “They’re out there.” He pointed to the back of the house. He turned the knob, and the door opened a crack. “And they’ll want to get in here. So that means we leave now. Walk, run, unicycle, I don’t care. We just —”
Ping screamed as a large, furry shape leapt upon Joey, shoving him backward into the Nances’ foyer.
THE DOG’S GROWLS ECHOED off the high ceiling and mixed with the commotion of their panicked voices. It had pinned Joey to the floor. Once, a couple years ago, Cassidy had witnessed a similar scene, one in which Lucky’s kisses left Joey’s face covered in slobber and everyone involved was laughing. Now, Cassidy watched white teeth descend on her friend, the dog’s jaw opened wider than seemed possible, its black lips raised in a snarl.
Without thinking, Cassidy smashed its exposed torso with her backpack, knocking the creature off balance. Joey curled into a ball. For a moment, she felt nauseated. This thing used to be her friend’s pet.
It shook its large head. Its fur was matted with dirt and dried blood, and it stank like a festering wound. Its cloudy eyes locked onto her own, then it leapt at her. Cassidy threw herself to the side. What used to be Lucky collided with the wall behind her, leaving a large dent in the plaster, before tumbling to the tiled floor.
“Go!” she screamed. “All of you! Run!”
Ping and Hal grabbed Joey under their arms, lifting him to his feet, then dragged him quickly out the front door. Cassidy was on their heels as she heard the dog’s claws scrabbling against the floor behind her. She didn’t look back as she pulled the door shut. A second later, the door quaked. The group scrambled down the front steps.
The dog howled from just inside, a sound unlike anything any of them had ever heard. It seemed to rattle the ground, the grass, the molecules of the air. For a moment, Cassidy was certain that it was not the dog that they were hearing, but something else. Something deep in the ground at the top of the hill — that intelligent something that Hal had mentioned earlier.
Ping didn’t wait for the sound to stop before lifting Joey’s head to examine his face and neck. “Did he bite you?”
“I — I don’t think so,” said Joey. He brought up his hands, covered his face. His shoulders hitched. It took the others a moment to understand that he was crying, and only a moment after that, he forced himself to stop, wiping ferociously at his suddenly hard-set eyes. Cassidy thought she heard him mumble “Lucky,” quickly, quietly, the way you say “Amen” at the end of a prayer when you have nothing left to say, when it’s all over.
But it wasn’t over.
The dead clamored through several squat holly bushes at the corner of the Nances’ house, tearing through the shrubbery, their arms outstretched, their mouths open in silent stupor.
CASSIDY RAN TOWARD THE STREET and didn’t look back. The lawn was soft beneath her sneakers. She wished it were snarled with rocks and vines so that the creatures pursuing her might trip and fall.
The group dashed out into the middle of the intersection where Hal’s street met Joey’s. To their surprise, Ping’s mother was in her minivan, slowing at the stop sign on the corner. When she spotted them, Mrs. Yu’s mouth dropped open, and she slammed on the brakes.
“Come on.” Ping waved the others forward, barreling toward her mother.
Mrs. Yu watched in astonishment as her daughter and her friends, along with a beat-up teenager, piled into her vehicle.
“Drive, Mom! Drive!” Ping screamed, leaning forward, peering down the street from which they’d come. It now appeared to be empty, as if the dead had hidden themselves in the holly.
“Okay! Okay!” shouted Ping’s mother, signaling to the right and slowly pressing her foot against the gas pedal. “Calm
down!” She turned onto Hal’s street and eased toward the main gate. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” Ping said, panting. The others sat in the backseat, their faces pressed against the windows. “Nothing wrong. We just wanted to see you.”
“Really. You wanted to see me.” Mrs. Yu sighed, as if this were all part of a normal day. “Well, here I am. I’m heading to a meeting at the college. I’ll let you off on the corner.”
“No!” Cassidy, Joey, and Hal shouted at once. Mrs. Yu swerved the wheel as she passed by Hal’s house.
She started to pull over. From the backseat, Cassidy read the gauge. Mrs. Yu was driving under five miles per hour. “You guys, I cannot —”
“Take us with you,” Ping said, purposely calming her tone. She glanced in the rearview mirror at the side of the car. “We’ll leave you alone. Hang out on the quad.” She lowered her voice. “I promised them,” she said, in a please-don’t-embarrass-me manner.
“Oh, so you promised them,” Mrs. Yu said sarcastically. She stopped the car entirely, shifting into park. “Well, next time, you might want to check with me first, young lady. And also? Not a good idea to leap out in front of cars in the middle of intersections. Are you trying to get yourselves killed?”
“We didn’t want to miss you!” Ping tried.
“I almost didn’t miss you!”
Cassidy turned around and peered out the back window. The dead were hiding. She imagined them crouched in the bushes or waiting just around the corner of the house. Jaws hanging askew. Black liquid dripping from swollen tongues. Cassidy turned back to Mrs. Yu. What would happen if she told her what was going on? Would Mrs. Yu get out of the car? Go searching for the creatures? And if she found them, what then?
“We’re really sorry,” Cassidy said, trying to control the tremor in her voice. “It’s just, you know, I’m only visiting from the city for a short while. So Ping thought it would be fun for me to see where the big kids go to school. Something to look forward to.” She blinked. What if the dead suddenly sprang out and rushed the car, pounding and scratching against the windows with clammy hands? Then Mrs. Yu would have no doubt. They’d drive off to safety, but soon the adults would enter the Chambers house to search for a solution. And the curse would spread even further. “But never mind. It’s okay. We’ll just get out here.” Cassidy forced herself still to keep from shaking. She sensed that the others were trying to do the same.