“That we know of,” Ms. W adds.
“Frankenstein was responsible, or so legend has it,” Coach H adds.
“So Blake would’ve know about the church, because he was here before 1847,” Hana says.
“That’s right,” Ms. W says, nodding.
“What are we waiting for?” I ask.
“Wait, we’re going to go into the woods now?” Samir asks. “Do I need to remind you people that it’s dark out. And there’s a tiger on the loose?”
“Don’t be such a sissy,” Hana says, poking Samir in the ribs.
“Maybe Samir’s right,” Ms. W says. “Maybe it isn’t right for you children to come along.”
“Hey,” I say, “we rescued you, remember? You can’t let us sit this one out.”
Reluctantly, Ms. W and Coach H agree.
Twenty-eight
We make it down the path to the boathouse, which is nearly dark, except for the subtle glow surrounding Ms. W and Coach H. As ghosts, apparently, they can glow when they feel like it, which is one of the many odd side effects of being dead.
“Have you guys ever thought of going to a rave? You guys are like walking glow sticks,” Samir says.
“Raves? Who goes to raves anymore?” I ask Samir.
“I’m just saying, these guys would be popular on the DJ circuit,” Samir says.
“As if you even know what a DJ circuit is,” Hana scoffs.
“What’s a DJ?” Coach H asks us, looking puzzled. Naturally, one of the downsides of being dead is that you’re not exactly up to speed on current events. It’s like being lame and clueless for eternity.
“Shhhhhh,” Ms. Woolf warns as we get closer to the boathouse. The boathouse is dark, but as Ms. Woolf steps forward, the glow surrounding her sheds light on the horseshoe-shaped tree and the giant boulder, and in between them, what’s left of the foundation of the old chapel.
Behind us, on the path, comes the distinctive low growl of the tiger.
“Um, guys, I hate to be a stickler for detail, but did we decide just how we’re going to stop that tiger?” Samir asks.
“Not exactly,” Hana says.
“That’s what I thought,” Samir sighs.
“Look for a drawing of a tiger,” Ms. W says. “That’s where Blake gets his power.”
“You mean, like this one?” Heathcliff says, whipping out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. It’s one of Blake’s drawings of a tiger. He must have swiped it from the church.
“You are a genius,” I say, so relieved that I reach up and give him a kiss on the cheek. Temporarily taken aback, Heathcliff flushes slightly. I doubt there is anything cuter than a bad boy who blushes. “I told you he was on our side,” I tell Ms. W and Coach H, who don’t quite seem convinced yet.
“So that’s why you found pieces of a tiger drawing around campus,” Hana says. “It must be Blake’s way of turning himself back into a human again.”
“But does he rip them up himself? And where does he carry them? In his tiger purse?” Samir asks.
“Technicalities,” Hana says, waving her hand.
Another growl comes from the forest and I can tell the tiger is coming closer. I glance at the woods. I still can’t see him, though.
“Not to be a downer, but we don’t actually know if this works, do we?” Samir asks us, his eyes flitting back and forth between us and Ms. W and Coach H.
“No, but do you have any better ideas?” I ask him.
Suddenly I see a flash of orange and black in the woods to the left.
“He’s there,” I hiss, pointing.
“No, he’s over there,” Hana shouts, pointing in the other direction. We walk a little closer to the river. The glow from Ms. W casts a shadow on the water.
“Um, don’t mind me, but I’m just going to go stand by the river. Cats don’t like water, right?” Once he gets to the banks of the river, however, Samir stops short. “Um, guys,” Samir says, in an unsure voice, “something’s not right here.”
That’s when I notice that there’s a red tint to the water.
“Blood,” Hana hisses. “Blake has turned the river to blood. Just like in the Bible.”
“He what?” Samir shouts, leaping away from the river’s edge.
Before we can ponder this new development, a bright light appears above our heads. It’s an angel. A real one. Unlike Blake’s imaginary friend, this one we can see. He has great white wings and is wearing a white tunic and gold braided belt.
The angel doesn’t speak, but it opens up an old scroll, and right before our eyes there’s a bright ripple of light and the river starts to boil.
“That can’t be good,” I say.
Ms. W and Coach H seem to glow a bit brighter, shining their light on the bubbling river, and that’s when I see a horse head rear up from the bloody water.
“Okay, I am so running away now,” Samir says.
“Not so fast,” Hana counters, grabbing Samir’s arm.
As we watch, the horse becomes whole, and on its back there’s a rider with a long cloak and a scythe that looks very much like Death. Death is followed by three more horses, each one looking like something straight out of a Tim Burton movie. One is just a skeleton holding bundles of what look like dried, shriveled cornstalks. One is all sickly and ill. And the last, most gruesome one is some kind of bloodied warrior, who is carrying the severed heads of some unfortunate souls.
“The four horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Heathcliff says. “War, famine, pestilence, and death.” We all look at him, shocked. “I have been to church,” he adds. “Believe it or not.”
Heathcliff is full of surprises. The boy barely speaks, and when he does, he elaborates on Bible verse.
“We can’t let them come ashore,” Coach H says. “They’ll destroy the island, or more…”
“And just how are we supposed to stop them?” Samir asks.
But Ms. W and Coach H spring to action. They levitate in the air, spinning in and near the horsemen. They swoop down on them like giant birds, attacking them from all sides. It’s only a temporary solution, though. They won’t be able to hold them off forever.
“I don’t suppose there’s a magical Bible in the vault?” I ask Hana.
“Drawings,” Hana says. “Blake has to have them somewhere. These are his creations.”
“Arrrrggggggggh,” shouts Samir, as the Pestilence horseman leans over and touches his sleeve. After just this one touch, Samir falls to the ground as if shot, his eyes closed and his breathing shallow. Red dots appear on his face. It’s like instant plague.
“The boathouse!” I say, remembering that Blake kept drawings there. “We have to get Blake’s drawings.”
“You both go, I’ll stay with Samir,” Hana says, taking off her Bard blazer and folding it up as a pillow that she puts under his head.
Inside the boathouse seems deserted. It’s dark, except for the light spilling in from the angel outside, sending odd shadows along the floor. It’s like trying to find your way by the light of a fireworks show. Heathcliff looks around and seems to almost sniff the air, as if trying to track Blake by scent. Whatever he smells or doesn’t smell, he seems to be satisfied. Together we climb the stairs, and at the top of the landing, Heathcliff turns to me and puts his finger to his lips to tell me to be quiet. Then he silently turns the knob of the office door. The door swings open with a slight creaking sound, and inside I’m surprised to see Blake’s tiger sitting there, quietly, facing the door as if it were waiting for us. Its paw rests protectively on top of a stack of drawings.
“Blake,” Heathcliff says. “Stop what you’re doing. Now.”
The tiger, however, just stares blankly at Heathcliff. It stretches its other paw out, lengthening its back and showing us its full dimensions. It’s about the size of a couch.
“I warned you,” Heathcliff says, whipping out the tiger drawing.
The tiger sits up and sniffs the air. Then it growls. Blake doesn’t like the fact that Heathcliff has one of its drawings, that
’s for sure. Heathcliff begins to rip up the drawing, and that’s when the tiger yelps, and then bright white cracks start to appear in its fur. The tiger is literally breaking apart.
“It’s working,” I cry, amazed.
Before it fades completely, the tiger kicks up the stack of drawings, sending some of them in our direction, but a few more, including some of the horsemen, fly out the open window and down to the dirt ground below. Drawings of tigers flitter to our feet. Before I can pick the pages up, another tiger leaps in through the window. It’s followed by a second and a third. What the…? There’s more than one? So which one is Blake?
“Get out of here,” Heathcliff hisses at me as he scoops to pick up some of the tiger drawings.
“But —”
“Go get the horsemen drawings,” he tells me. “Save Samir.” It’s a command, not a request.
Reluctantly I leave Heathcliff, flying down the stairs and running outside. I see that Coach H and Ms. W are still trying to contain the horsemen, without much luck. In fact, there are only three of them. One is missing.
Hana and Samir are hiding behind a nearby boulder. Samir is getting worse by the second. The pink spots on his face have turned into red welts, and even in the dim light I can tell he’s in a great deal of pain.
I run over to the place where the drawings fell. I drop to my knees to pick them up, and as I grab three of them and reach for a fourth, the paper is suddenly pinned to the ground by a horse’s hoof. That’s when I glance up and see myself staring at the Death horseman, complete with black hood and scythe. I’m temporarily paralyzed, and all I can do is watch, helplessly, as he leans over and touches my shoulder with one bony finger.
Twenty-nine
I squeeze my eyes shut and prepare for the worst. This is it — the end. I saw what happened to Samir. One touch from Pestilence and he came down with the plague. I’m sure Death is even more efficient.
Am I going to see my life flash before my eyes? Or will I see a big bright light? Or — heaven forbid — am I going to find myself stuck at Bard — as a ghost student — for all eternity? I’m really hoping that God has other plans for me. If I have to be stuck in purgatory, please make it on some tropical island somewhere. Maybe something like Lost, only without the “others” and with more cute young guys. Like Ryan. Or Heathcliff.
And that’s when I realize that a good ten seconds have gone by and I’m not dead. I open my eyes and glance up. Yes, Death is standing above me. Yes, he touched me. But I’m unaffected. I didn’t die. I don’t even feel sick.
“Nice try,” I tell Death, who smells, well, a lot like roadkill. Quickly I snatch up his drawing and rip it to pieces. His face and arms are suddenly beginning to crack, each wrinkle filled with bright light brimming up from beneath, as if he’s going to explode. Instead he just falls to torn pieces that glow briefly on the ground before they turn to ash. I dispatch the other horsemen just as easily, and Ms. W and Coach H seem surprised for a moment, and then see the pieces of the drawings in my hand and give me nods of approval. After Pestilence is destroyed, Samir comes to with a groggy moan.
“God, what happened? I have the worst hangover ever.” He groans, holding his head as if he’s afraid it might fall apart.
“You almost died, you big idiot,” Hana cries, and then throws her arms around Samir in a hug so tight that Samir can’t breathe. When she realizes what she’s doing, she drops her arms, and instead winds up and gives Samir a hard punch in the shoulder.
“Ow! What was that for? I nearly died.” Samir groans again.
“Exactly! You almost died and left me, you jerk,” Hana says.
“Why didn’t Death kill me?” I ask Ms. W, who approaches and puts her arm around me.
She studies me for a second. “You’re different from Samir,” she says. “You have roots in both this world and the fictional one. So he didn’t have the same power over you.”
Wow. Finally a perk of having a great-great-great grandmother who’s a fictional character.
“Where’s Blake?” Coach H asks me, shaking off droplets of water from the river, which has turned back, thankfully, to a normal water color.
Just then, we hear a crashing sound coming from the boathouse. I’d completely forgotten about Heathcliff.
I’m the first to scramble up the stairs, although Coach H and Ms. W don’t bother with them (they simply float straight up through the floor of the boathouse office). Inside I see Heathcliff cornered by Blake — not Blake the tiger, but Blake as his normal self. Blake has opened the locket and has the tiny remaining corner of Wuthering Heights out, and is holding it precariously between two fingers. Heathcliff is temporarily frozen, not sure whether to leap on him or stay put.
“Stay back! All of you,” shouts Blake. He seems to have a kind of wild look in his eye.
“Blake, you have to stop what you’re doing,” Ms. W says in her most calm voice. “No good will come of it.”
Coach H tries to work his way to the other side of Blake, but Blake whirls. “I said back,” he shouts, waving the piece of paper in front of him. I’m surprised Ms. W and Coach H don’t just sweep forward. It’s not like they would mind if Heathcliff is sent back to Wuthering Heights.
“This is not part of God’s plan,” Blake mumbles to himself. “This place is an abomination.”
“What place? Bard?” I ask him. If I can keep him talking then he won’t destroy the paper.
“Obviously,” he says. “I was a faithful servant of God. I do not deserve to be stuck in limbo. I ought to be in heaven with my darling wife. Heaven was promised to me by Gabriele! Limbo is for sinners. Dante’s sinners. And the very nature of this place is a sacrilege. That church is an insult to God. I spent my life working in the glory of the Lord. All my poetry and artistry dedicated to His great power.”
Okay, he’s clearly gone off the deep end.
“But you yourself know that God’s will can’t be known,” Ms. W says. “Your tiger represents the unknowable and often contradictory nature of God. He didn’t just create the peaceful lamb. He also created the fierce killer, the tiger. It proves you can’t really understand God’s motives.”
“Yes, but…”
“And if God is truly mysterious, then He could have created a place like this. To test people like you, and people like us.”
Blake is temporarily calmed by this new thought. He lowers his arms, as if trying to process this new information.
“But…Gabriele told me,” he says, looking up to a space above our heads.
“Did you actually see Gabriele?” Coach H asks.
“No, but I heard her,” Blake says. “She spoke to me.”
“She? I thought Gabriele was a man,” Hana says.
“Emily,” Ms. W hisses under her breath to Coach H.
Does she mean Emily Brontë? The ghost who just last semester tried to free all her fictional characters, nearly destroying our dimension as we know it. Could she have survived the destruction of her book? Then again, Heathcliff is here because part of one page survived. Maybe Emily is, too, only she’s invisible to most of us. Or chooses to be.
“Did you know about this? Is Emily still with us?” Coach H thunders at Heathcliff, but Heathcliff looks just as surprised as the rest of us.
“She’s the stalker,” I cry, struck by a sudden thought. “What if it was Emily Brontë wearing the sweatshirt and running around campus causing mischief? Heathcliff was tied up, but Emily — as a ghost — could have taken nearly any form she wanted. That would explain why the Hooded Sweatshirt Stalker didn’t have a face. Maybe Emily had enough power in this plane to fill out clothes, but not much else.”
“Emily?” Blake echoes. “Emily Brontë?”
“We think you’ve been misled,” Ms. W says softly. “We think the angel you thought was Gabriele might have been the voice of Emily Brontë. She’s wanted to destroy this campus and she used you as her pawn. She’s the one who told you what you wanted to hear.”
Blake slumps for
ward, the piece of Wuthering Heights and my locket slipping from his grasp. Coach H sweeps forward, picking up both items. Ms. W puts her arm around Blake, who seems to be crying.
“I think the danger’s over,” Ms. W tells us.
“But what about Emily?” I ask. “She’s still on the loose.”
“She clearly needs help to do any damage, or she wouldn’t have involved Blake,” Ms. W says. “There’s nothing we can do now but tell Headmaster B about what’s transpired.”
“That means show’s over, folks,” Coach H tells us.
Thirty
“I missed the horsemen of the Apocalypse?” cries Blade when I find her in our room the next day and fill her in on the near ending of the world she just missed. “Oh my God, I am going to die.”
As I suspected, my Goth roomie is very sorry to have missed Death and Pestilence.
“Where were you anyway?” Hana asks her, standing in our doorway and eyeing Blade’s Satan poster.
“Duh — with Number Thirty-one,” she says. “We were having sex in his room.”
“Um, and just how did you get away from the Guardians? How did you avoid the room sweeps?” I couldn’t get two minutes alone with Ryan, and here is my roomie doing the dirty with Number Thirty-one.
“I have my ways,” Blade says. “Like an invisibility spell.”
“Does your ‘invisibility spell’ have anything to do with hiding in Number Thirty-one’s closet?”
“It might,” Blade says.
“So you didn’t see the tiger?” Hana asks, disbelieving.
“Nope,” Blade says, shaking her head.
“God, you missed everything,” Hana says. “So much for your psychic Wiccan witch powers.” Hana nods toward Blade’s witch graduation diploma on her wall.
“I’m not psychic,” Blade says. “If I had ESP, then I would’ve known Number Thirty-one is a waste of time because he has a pecker the size of a…” Blade holds up her pinkie finger.
“Ew,” Hana and I both say at once.
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