Jeremy looks to the floor, blinks heavily, and returns his gaze to me. “And that’s when you heard me recite the poem?”
I nod, knowing that I’ve just confirmed for this frightened newly-teenage boy that he’s somehow directly connected to these strange events in an unexplainable, unimaginable way. “Are you going to be OK?”
He shrugs.
I try to offer him some comfort. “Look, it’s already past two. The police will probably be by at least one more time, so I don’t think we have to worry about the doorbell anymore tonight.”
Without another word, Jeremy fetches the antenna from the window. I get up and power off the computer monitor for him after he tucks the antenna away in his desk drawer. He returns to his window and closes it, takes one last look down the street, and pulls the curtains shut.
He settles into bed as I step into the hallway.
“Abby,” he whispers.
I turn and face the darkness of his room. He’s inside somewhere, swallowed by the night. I look in the direction of his voice. “What?”
“Will you sleep in here tonight?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I WAKE TO the sound of a radio alarm clock. Disoriented at first, I soon realize I’m on Jeremy’s bedroom floor tangled in a wad of pillows and blankets I fetched from my own bed hours earlier. Jeremy rustles somewhere above me in his bed, eventually silencing the alarm. When I open my eyes, I see Grandma standing in the bedroom doorway, hands flat on the front of her thighs.
“Something wrong with your bed, Abigail?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.
“Jeremy had a bad dream,” I say, not exactly lying.
Grandma nods warily, apparently knowing full well it’s entirely out of character for me to care what anyone else in the house is feeling much less dreaming. “Well, that’s two nights in a row with no visitors,” she says. “Maybe our bad dreams are coming to an end. I’ll see you both downstairs for breakfast.”
I sit up after Grandma sidles away. Without warning, Jeremy’s open palm slaps the side of my head from behind. Clutching my stinging head through my knotted hair, I spin around. “What was that for?”
Jeremy’s gross bare feet land next to me on the floor, and he meets my eyes with an ugly grimace. “Thanks for making me sound like a loser.”
He stomps out of the bedroom, his pajama bottoms sagging like a baby’s diaper. “That’s the thanks I get for sleeping on your floor? You’re welcome, jerk! And trust me, you don’t need any help sounding like a loser!”
An hour later, the walk to school for Jeremy and me is mostly silent. Thick black clouds billow over Mount Herod, filtering out the sun, casting the entire landscape in a lifeless October-gray dreariness. My brother and I part ways at Lexington Avenue, where I promise to meet him after school. A brisk breeze blows steadily into my face and through my hair during the remainder of my walk. Droplets of drizzle start to pelt my coat just before I reach the school doors.
It rains the entire morning, which does nothing to lift my mood. I sit through classes, chin cradled in my palm, eyelids drooping, watching raindrops bead on windows and trickle down to the sills like tears. During third period, the Mount Herod skies treat me to a few rumbles of thunder, and I think how nice it would be to be at home curled up in my bed sleeping away this fall day to the patter of rain and gentle rolls of thunder, safe in the knowledge the doorbell never rings in daylight.
During study hall, I reserve a computer workstation and sit amongst the corny wall posters of the computer lab. Sitting in a chair twice as comfortable than the one in Jeremy’s room, using a computer ten times slower than the one in Jeremy’s room, I launch a Web browser.
First, I type Jeremy’s poem into Google and receive zero results, literally. And when I say literally, I mean literally. This confirms the poem exists nowhere outside Jeremy’s subconscious. I move on to “Tyburn gallows,” looking for anything helpful and nothing in particular.
The information I find on Tyburn all relates to a medieval village in England. Once the world’s largest city, London gobbled up Tyburn long ago, so the village no longer even exists, and the Tyburn Tree has been reduced to a sidewalk plaque. The stuff I find is mostly the same stuff Jeremy already told me, so I learn nothing new of any value. Worse yet, not a single Web article points back to Mount Herod.
Next, I find Chokecherry Bluff Cemetery’s website—a useless source of information unless a person is either a graveyard enthusiast or happens to be searching for the location of an ancestor’s headstone. The website mentions Mount Herod’s Tyburn Tree, just as Jeremy alluded to last night, but only in brief passing:
The grounds on which Chokecherry Bluff Cemetery rests was once home to a gallows called the Tyburn Tree, named after a similarly constructed gallows in London, England. The Mount Herod gallows stood for less than 50 years before being torn down in 1815 upon the conclusion of the War of 1812.
Nothing else.
Jeremy’s correct, the omission of any additional information regarding the gallows hints at a shameful history, both for the cemetery and the city. How or why the English gallows were duplicated in Mount Herod remains an absolute mystery. If the Internet doesn’t hold the answer, what or who does?
Still, I wonder if it’s even relevant. The only thing connecting our situation to Tyburn is Jeremy’s poem. I’d never even heard of the gallows prior to this morning. Trying to link Jeremy’s sleep-talking to the old Mount Herod gallows seems like nonsense—or madness. I’m thankful when the dismissal bell relieves me from a now seemingly pointless investigation.
The rest of the rainy school day passes without incident, just the way I like it. I meet Jeremy in the middle of a drizzle after school at Lexington Avenue. Hoods up, dripping wet, we arrive back home by three-thirty. We get dried off, cleaned up, and are sitting down for dinner by five.
Grandma cooked breaded pork chops, mashed potatoes, and green peas. Wisps of white steam rise from the serving bowls, carrying into the air the delicious aroma of home cooking. The sight alone is enough to replace the warmth I lost walking home.
I’ve just filled my mouth with a spoonful of hot, crisp green peas when Grandma taps Jeremy on the back of his hand. “No bad dreams tonight, OK?”
Jeremy, eyebrows raised, nods.
“And you,” Grandma says, pointing her fork in my direction. “Stay in your own room. It’s time things get back to normal around here.”
Jeremy pokes at the peas on his plate, pushing them under a half-eaten mound of mashed potatoes. “Did the sergeant say if the police will drive by again tonight?”
“I haven’t talked to him since he called the other day, but we shouldn’t worry. Just stay in your own beds tonight. It’s all I ask.”
Speaking of not worrying, I don’t want Grandma to know we watched the police car frighten away the kids last night. She’d fret about it all night, and I don’t want her to worry. I’m not concerned Jeremy’s going to slip up and mention what we saw, because he seems to have been frightened into muteness by recent developments, namely the revelation he’s been composing Tyburn poetry in his sleep.
That said, the lack of responses coming from the Jeremy and me to Grandma’s requests is inappropriate. “I’m sorry, Grandma. We won’t do it again.”
Jeremy echoes my apology. “Yeah. Sorry, Grandma.”
“Well, it certainly has been a very long week for everyone, but there’s only two more days until the weekend. Oh, and I remembered today that Halloween is just two weeks from tonight. How fun! What should we dress as?”
Jeremy frowns at me from across the table while Grandma tells of a community-sponsored Halloween party taking place in the Old Downtown district of Mount Herod on Halloween night. She thinks it would be both marvelous and economical if we dressed as three blind mice.
Donning handmade felt mouse ears sewn to a headband while marching blindly through the public streets of Old Downtown would never appeal to me in the first place, but given experiences of late, I find my
feeling of annoyance compounded by the idea of mingling with costumed strangers. By the look on Jeremy’s face, he feels the same.
Grandma, apparently under the assumption the Mount Herod police have brought to a close the unnerving events of the past few nights, appears to draw no association between the disturbing visitors and a holiday dedicated to celebrating all things horrifying. At least in Grandma’s mind, the cruel prank has run its course and the children will not be returning.
Atop the buoyancy of Grandma’s confidence, and despite our recent and growing dislike of anything ghoulish, Jeremy and I eventually lighten up, and throughout the remainder of the evening, in between episodes of television programs and homework, we are able to engage in normal conversations regarding the Halloween party. By bedtime, it’s settled. The three of us will attend the Old Downtown Halloween party dressed as blind mice and rejoice in the festivities of the dying, dead, and undead. All is right in Mount Herod.
But two hours later in the dead of night, I stand alone in the doorway to Jeremy’s room, staring into the shadows, listening to him whisper in his sleep. I cannot discern his exact words from where I’m standing, but based on the rhythm and cadence, it’s the Tyburn poem again.
The doorbell rings.
An icy sensation shoots through me and exits my body by way of fingers and toes. I step away from Jeremy’s doorway and approach the top of the staircase. Trembling, I stare down at the front door, once again wondering what to do next.
The rustling of covers and thumping of floor boards from down the hall indicates Grandma is awake. Somewhere in the darkness behind me, she’s groping for her glasses and drawing her robe from the footboard of her bed.
I recoil upon the stinging sound of bare knuckles on the front door. Moments after the rapping ceases, a delicate young voice calls through the door. “Hello? There’s been a terrible accident. We need help.”
“Abigail,” Grandma says, tying her robe as she approaches me. “Get back in bed and let me handle this.”
“Grandma, don’t answer it,” Jeremy says, slipping out into the hall from his room. “Please, don’t answer it.”
Grandma releases an anxious groan. Tapping at the temples of her crooked glasses, she says, “I’ll call the police again. Just go in my room and wait for me there.”
“I’d rather come with you,” I say.
“Same,” Jeremy says, shuffling forward to join Grandma and me at the top of the stairs.
“Very well. Come along then.”
Amid incessant doorbell chimes and thundering knocks, the three of us make our way to the kitchen, where Grandma places a 911 call. I can hear the handset bursting with static and buzzing from across the room.
“Hello, is anyone there?” Grandma says into the telephone. She slides the phone to her shoulder and says to me, “There’s too much static on the line tonight.”
Jeremy grabs my wrist. “What if we can’t get help, Abby? What if the police don’t come tonight?”
Before I can process his question, Grandma shouts, “Oh, my! Abigail, get the blinds!”
On the far side of the tiny kitchen, with his hands pressed flat against the outside of the window and his head tipped forward so that the stiff brim of his flat cap hides his eyes from us, stands the boy once again. At first, I am petrified, rooted by fear to the floor beneath me, but when he rolls his fingers into a fist and raps on the glass with his knuckles, I dart to the window and pull the blinds closed.
I hear a peculiar crunching from the other side of the wall followed by a scratching sound that climbs the height of the wall and fades away somewhere above me. The entire house falls silent. Just when I become suspicious they may have left, a knock rattles the back door only a few feet from where I stand.
“Please, help us,” the innocent girl calls, and I feel a foreign sense of pity slip over me. “We are so cold and so hungry.”
On the other side of the door stands a girl my age, injured and exposed to the biting October cold. She is perhaps more frightened than me, but somehow finds the courage to return to this home night after night humbly seeking help. She’s chosen this house because of the warmth and security it radiates. She fights not just for her own survival but for that of the boy who is likely her brother. Yet, here we are once again denying entry, denying survival.
Like a vice, Jeremy’s hand closes around mine, which has somehow found its way to the doorknob. “What are you doing, Abby?”
“I’m going to let her in.”
Jeremy shakes his head. “We can never let them in.”
“Abigail, take your brother and get upstairs! Now!” Grandma’s scolding voice rips me away from whatever trance had bound me. I find myself dazed, as if I’ve just woken up.
Jeremy tugs at my arm, drawing me out of the kitchen and into the downstairs hall toward the staircase.
“What about Grandma?” I ask, stumbling behind my brother.
No one answers me.
Jeremy and I scramble up the stairs. When we reach the top step, he turns to me. “I can’t believe you were going to open the door.”
I have only one explanation to offer him, but I don’t dare say it aloud for fear he’ll never trust me again.
I felt sorry for her.
The sound of rapid thumps resonates from the attic above us, and fear pilfers the breath from my lungs. “They’re in the house.”
Jeremy begins to cry. “No. I think that came from the roof.”
“They can’t be on the roof. That doesn’t make any sense.”
The doorbell rings again.
Grandma appears at the foot of the stairs by the grandfather clock. She waves her hand at us, her voice shaking. “Go to my room. Go on!”
“Are the police coming?” Jeremy asks.
“Just go,” Grandma says, ascending the steps.
Jeremy and I flee down the hall to Grandma’s bedroom. Ancient floor boards clunk and creak beneath our feet, sounding as though they may split apart. From behind us, I hear Grandma shout toward the front door, “Go away! To Hell with you!”
When we reach Grandma’s room, Jeremy and I throw ourselves onto the bed, pulling the blankets up to our chins. Tonight feels more horrifying than all the others combined, and it takes all my effort not to burst into tears. Jeremy, of course, already gave up that fight and tears stream down his face like rain on a school window. Behind me, Grandma wobbles into the bedroom, palms flat against her thighs.
Her tone overflows with sadness when she says, “The lines are down. I can’t call out.”
The doorbell rings. Thuds echo from the roof. Clawing sounds scratch the outside walls. A booming knock on the back door seems to rattle every window in the house. The cycle of torment continues for four hours before ceasing without warning or explanation. Two hours later, the dim blue hues of morning appear low on the eastern horizon, and daylight begins to seep in through Grandma’s bedroom window.
None of us slept.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE THREE OF us stand red-eyed on the damp front lawn, staring up at Grandma’s narrow old house. It looks nothing at all like the southwestern stucco home of my dreams. It’s made entirely of brown and gray brick, which I suppose was quite a luxury a century ago when it was built. Two fall-colored crabapple trees stand at either front corner of the home, framing it like a photo. The large family room window sits to the right of the porch. Beneath it, small evergreen shrubs rest in a bed of mulch. Far above us, two second-story windows, the bathroom and Jeremy’s bedroom, sit nestled beneath a sharply-gabled roof. Empty wooden flower boxes, both needing paint, hang from the two window sills. Overall, the house is ordinary. Nothing sets it apart from the other houses on the block. Why two wicked children have chosen to terrorize its inhabitants cannot be determined from where we stand.
Jeremy and I have our backpacks on and are dressed for school. Despite our lack of sleep, and the nauseating terror still affecting our stomachs, Grandma insists we go. After all, nothing’s more importan
t than a child’s education.
“It sounded like they were hitting the house with sticks and rocks, didn’t it?” Grandma asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, and I truly mean it. I have no idea what was going on outside the house last night. I only know I am tired and worn out.
“I will remedy this today,” Grandma promises. “We’ve had our last sleepless night.”
“What are you going to do, Grandma?” Jeremy asks.
“That’s not for you to worry about. Head off to school, and I will take care of everything. There’s nothing more important than a child’s education.”
I know.
We do as we’re told and head off to school, leaving Grandma standing alone in the front yard. Jeremy and I part ways at Lexington Avenue with dull goodbyes and the promise to once again meet after school.
School is torturous. To the amusement of Stephen Donahue, I once again doze off in class, and not just in the one but in two others as well. My eyeballs sting. My eyelids feel swollen. My nose is stuffy. My entire body begs for rest, but the real torment comes from believing no sleep will come tonight despite Grandma’s promise. Sometime after dark, our house will once again fill with the haunted racket of doorbells, knocking, and the siren-like calls for help from the bizarre children.
A growing part of me wants to just open the door and be done with it, to call their miserable bluff and watch them fumble and stumble back into the street with shocked expressions painted on their pale faces. It occurs to me that Grandma must certainly feel the same way. My hunch is confirmed when Jeremy and I arrive home that afternoon to once again find Mr. Donaldson’s car parked in the driveway.
Once more he joins us for supper, and while there’s nothing unusual about that, I notice afterwards he lingers far longer than he ever has previously. Later, when we all seat ourselves in the family room, I spot a duffel bag next to the sofa where Mr. Donaldson and Grandma sit. Grandma, noticing I’ve spotted the bag, proceeds to explain the events that led to Mr. Donaldson’s company tonight.
Curse of the Black-Eyed Kids (Mount Herod Legends Book 2) Page 7