The black-eyed girl scowls. “I also said, ‘tomorrow, brother.’”
I push myself to my feet and unearth the courage to ask, voice shaking, “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”
“As I dutifully announced in the house, we are the Lord and Lady of the Manor of Tyburn,” the black-eyed boy states. “‘Why’ does not concern us. Only ‘when.’”
Jeremy stands up next to me and takes hold of my hand.
“Before we go, perhaps there is something else you’d like to say,” the black-eyed girl suggests.
“Or do,” the black-eyed boy says ominously.
“Don’t do anything, Abby,” Jeremy warns. “They have rules. The spiders attacked Mr. Donaldson only after he chased them off the porch.”
I contemplate what Jeremy has said. “Self-defense,” I say. “They’re allowed to protect themselves.”
“And watch what you say,” Jeremy adds. “We don’t know all their rules. You should stop talking to them.”
“This is becoming more difficult by the night, sister,” the black-eyed boy says, frustration mounting in his voice.
“Opportunities present themselves, brother. Opportunities always present themselves. But I’m afraid the opportunities of tonight have expired.” The black-eyed girl looks distantly to the eastern horizon. “It’s time to go.”
“Pity,” the black-eyed boy says.
“The rules are the rules,” the black-eyed girl says once again.
They turn their backs to us in unison and walk off into the dark.
A whirlwind of thoughts spins through my mind.
Should we follow them? Should we yell for help? Should we return home? Should we go back inside the McGoverns’ house?
A thousand questions ring in my head, and not a single answer surfaces in my stunned mind.
“What do we do?” I ask Jeremy, surprising myself by deferring to my brother for maybe the first time in my life.
He’s on the edge of tears, but he’s still contained, still holding it together.
Shaking his head, he says, “Nothing. Let them go.”
“What about the McGoverns?”
Jeremy shows me wide eyes. “I’m not going back in there, Abby. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see what happened to them.”
A feeling of dread and despair overcomes me when I suddenly realize our predicament. “They’ll think we did it, Jeremy.”
“What?”
“The McGoverns. The police will think we did it.”
Jeremy shakes his head and drums his fingertips against his palms. “Why would they think that? We’ll tell them what happened.”
“How many times have the police been to our house this week to listen to stories about two kids terrorizing us in the middle of the night, but they never see any kids? The only two kids the police have ever seen are you and me. Tell them what happened? They’ll believe us just like they believed Spencer’s mom,” I say grimly, reminding him that at this very moment Spencer’s mother sits in a padded room in a psychiatric hospital.
Jeremy covers his face with his hands and says through the hollow of his palms, “What are we going to do, Abby?”
The clouds from early evening have blown away, and the moon and stars wash the yard in silver light. I look across the starlit landscape for the black-eyed kids, fearing I’ll see their shadows moving between houses or through yards, but they’re gone, as invisible as the wind itself.
Remembering the black-eyed girl’s parting words and feeling confident their rules won’t allow them to come back tonight, I return to the bedroom window. Getting as close as I can while avoiding the rose bush’s thorns, I cup my hands around my mouth and yell into the house, “Mrs. McGovern? Dooley?”
A dog, distant somewhere in the night, barks in response.
I begin to walk to the front of the house. “We have to check on the McGoverns.”
“I’m not going back inside.”
“Fine. You can wait here for the black-eyed kids to return,” I say, using terrible means to convince Jeremy to come along.
Pouting, he follows me around the house to the moonlit front porch where we find the door tightly closed. I look left and right, up and down the vacant, dead-of-night street. We’re alone, completely and entirely alone.
Swallowing hard, I grab the brass doorknob and turn. It’s unlocked. Pushing the door open only a couple of inches, I discover, like Jeremy, I’m not wanting to see what’s inside. There are still lights on within the house, and their yellow-orange glow trickles out onto the front porch.
I call through the gap in the door, “Mrs. McGovern? Dooley? Are you OK?”
No one responds, so I push the door open another foot. I feel Jeremy’s fist bunch up on the sleeve of my coat. He’s shaking, and so am I. Edging in slowly, I call again, “Mrs. McGovern?”
“What do you see, Abby?” Jeremy whispers from behind.
I place one foot inside the house. When I look around the edge of the door, I am unable to inhale. I go numb at the sight of the McGoverns’ remains sprawled on the floor. They bathe in puddles of red, surrounded by walls dripping the same. I step back and pull the front door closed.
I shake my head.
Jeremy’s glistening eyes and parted lips tell me no further explanation is needed nor wanted. Still clutching my coat, he asks the same question we’ve been volleying back and forth for the last ten minutes. “What do we do?”
If we’re going to make it through this, we need food and money and some kind of shelter. Earlier in the day, I made what I thought was a terrible mistake, but forgetting my backpack in the cemetery may just be the mistake which saves our lives.
“We have to go back to the cemetery,” I say.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I HANG UP on the 911 operator after giving her the McGoverns’ address. If there was even a remote chance one or both of the McGoverns were still alive, they now have a chance to survive…but I know from the sight of their bodies there’s little chance of that.
“We have to go,” I say to Jeremy. “The police will be driving by soon.”
We stand at a timeworn pay phone outside the convenience store near the bus stop for route 32, the same stop I caught the bus at twice yesterday. Not a single window is lit in the nearby apartment building; it is a black void against the otherwise star-filled sky. No one is in the area except for the attendant inside the gas station, and I don’t think even he noticed us standing outside the building making the free 911 call.
Only three police officers knew we were staying at the McGoverns: Breckinridge, Coolidge, and Gordon. If their shifts are over, it will take hours for someone to actually realize we are missing. If they’re on duty, they’ll recognize the name and address and be looking for us in minutes.
“The cemetery is ten or twelve miles away,” Jeremy says. “The buses don’t start running until five. How long will it take to walk there?”
According to the flashing electronic marquee below the gas prices, it is forty-one degrees Fahrenheit, eggs are on sale, and the time is one-thirteen in the morning.
“We’ll be there by the time the buses start running, or close to it, depending how often we stop to rest. We’ll have to stay off the main roads and walk the neighborhoods to avoid the police.”
Jeremy hugs himself, trying to retain his body heat. The only thing his coat is warming is a kitchen chair in the McGoverns’ house—about ten feet away from their cold, shredded bodies.
I slip off my coat and shove it into his arms. “Put this on.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got a sweatshirt,” I say, pulling up my hood.
Jeremy squeezes into my coat. It is an extremely snug fit. He’s not even able to zip it, but it will still provide more warmth than he would have without it. After he has it on, he pulls the hood up over his head.
“Try not to rip it,” I say. Not that it really matters. It was probably handed down twice before it even reached the thrift shop.
At
the sudden sound of distant sirens, we dash away from the bright lights of the gas station toward the relative quiet of the apartment building. Standing near the building’s parking lot, in the tall shadows between a row of evergreens and parked cars, we watch the red and blue strobes of police cars, paramedics, and ambulances scream by. At least ten emergency vehicles pass before the road is once again deserted, and the sirens fade away as quickly as they arrived.
In the relative quiet which follows, Jeremy asks, “When will we be able to go back home?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Even if we were able to convince the police we had nothing to do with what happened to the McGoverns, we now know the black-eyed kids are after us, you and me. That means we’re a danger to grandma and anyone else who’s around us. The black-eyed kids proved that two nights in a row.”
“Do you think Spencer will still help us?”
I shrug. “I think he’s a long shot, but he’s our only chance. The good news is the only two things that can help us now are both in the cemetery. My backpack and Spencer. There’s enough food in my backpack to get us through one day, at least, and I have money hidden inside, too, though it’s not much.”
“Like I said yesterday, what if someone took it?”
“I doubt anyone took it,” I say. “It’s probably still by the tree I set it down by. Now, come on, let’s get moving before the police start spreading out.”
Under the cover of night, we journey across treacherous Mount Herod in the direction of Chokecherry Bluff Cemetery. We dodge and circle around the neighborhoods with the worst reputations. With our hoods drawn up and our icy hands stuffed into our pockets, we walk sidewalks, trails, alleys, and backyards, our paranoid eyes forever scanning for the black-eyed kids.
Not seeing them but always discussing them, we decide our best chance for survival is learning their rules. Over the hours-long walk, we review what both the legend and our own experiences over the past week have taught us.
One. Their weapons of choice are sickle-shaped knives Jeremy says might date back one thousand years.
Two. They arrive only in the middle of the night, which might suggest they are either adverse to sunlight, daytime in general, or simply prefer the anonymity darkness offers. Regardless, it seems we’re safe in daylight.
Three. They haunt remote areas and neighborhoods, again preferring anonymity.
Four. They supposedly prey on children, but the past two nights we witnessed them dispatch adults with ease.
Five. They have no power unless invited into a home—or at least some kind of enclosed dwelling. We know this to be true because they complained aloud about “the rules” which wouldn’t allow them to lay a hand on us in the McGovern’s backyard.
On the surface, this rule appears to present the easiest solution to the problem: never invite them in. But their relentless, ceaseless visits and bewitching, siren-like pleas make the concept of locking them out easier said than done. I almost let them in myself after all. Even if we vowed never to open the doors again, we’d eventually and collectively be driven mad by their merciless harassment.
Six. They may defend themselves when threatened. We learned this the hard way when Mr. Donaldson ran them off the porch and pursued them out onto the sidewalk. Jeremy also pointed out that Grandma never posed a direct threat to the black-eyed kids, and she suffered spider bites only when she flew to Mr. Donaldson’s aid. Her bites were also very few relative to the mess they made out of Mr. Donaldson.
Seven. They appear to have at least some dominion over the darker side of nature. This, too, became evident during the spider attack.
Eight. They are supernatural. It turns out Jeremy also caught a glimpse of the boy running along the ceiling in the McGoverns’ hallway. This is the most difficult to comprehend, and the sight of the boy on the ceiling was so surreal I’d have eventually written it off as hysteric delusion had Jeremy not said he saw the same thing.
“We know more than we thought,” Jeremy says as we eventually crest the hill on Chokecherry Bluff Lane.
“We know only enough to keep us alive one more day,” I say bitterly.
We stop at the cemetery gate. The 10-foot high gate looms over us, its wrought iron pickets tipped with spear-like finials. Both sides of the immense structure have been swung shut and appear to be latched and locked at the center. Behind the gate are silhouetted blotches of trees, gravestones, and buildings. We can hear the rush of the fountain which lies halfway up the drive leading in, and in the far distance, between the rocking branches of the skeletal remains of trees ravaged of their leaves by fall, we can see the dim security lighting around the main office we visited earlier.
I wrap my hand around one of the pickets and give a tug and a push.
“Hoping they forgot to lock it?” Jeremy says.
“I don’t know what I’m hoping for,” I admit.
“We probably wouldn’t be able to move it even if it weren’t locked. It’s huge.”
I look at the finial spears topping the fence. “If we try to go over the top, George could find us hanging up there like shish kabobs when the sun comes up.”
Something suddenly occurs to me.
“Check my coat pocket,” I say.
“What?”
“My right coat pocket. Check it.”
With the sleeves of my coat straining at the seams, Jeremy reaches into the pocket and pulls out the folded cemetery map I stuffed into it hours ago.
“Almost forgot about that,” I say as Jeremy unfolds it and holds it open, tipping it into the moonlight. Its corners flap in the night wind. I tap on the right side of the map. “There’s a second gate. Tyburn Gate, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. It overlooks the bluff on New Tyburn Road. The map says it’s closed.”
“But it’s older. Maybe a hundred years older or more. Maybe it’s not as tall. Maybe it’s not locked. Maybe it’s not topped with...spears.” I motion to the top of the main gate.
Jeremy sighs and rubs his belly. “I don’t know how much more I can walk, Abby. I’m starving.”
“There’s food in my backpack if we can get in the cemetery,” I say. I shudder when a gust of wind casts a billowing chill over me. “And then we can find somewhere to warm up and get out of this wind.”
Jeremy watches me shiver. He examines my coat but doesn’t offer to return it. Guiltily, Jeremy says, “OK, let’s go.”
We find New Tyburn Road nearly half a mile down the lane after the curb and sidewalk have long disappeared. The old dirt road sits at a 90-degree angle to the lane. Based on the faded, wind-swept tire ruts, it’s not been traveled on recently.
A vehicle gate blocks the road a few feet in. The gate is a simple waist-high wooden barricade mounted on posts and padlocked on one end. A sign attached to it says PRIVATE DRIVE—CEMETERY MAINTENANCE VEHICLES ONLY. We walk around it through the tall tan grass lining the road. Once around it, we return to the center of the lonely dirt road and scratch our way east toward Tyburn Gate.
To our left runs a thicket of low-branched chokecherry trees. Though mostly bare, the remaining leaves and skinny branches rattle faintly in the wind with a sound similar to that of falling rain. Beyond the trees flashes the iron cemetery fence, as tall as ever. To our right is a wide unending field, which fades into the black distance like a flat void, an endless sea of knee-high grass. As far as I know, nowhere else in Mount Herod does such a comfortless and lonesome expanse exist.
After many minutes of walking, the sound of the wind in the trees becomes drowned out by a similar but more rhythmic pulse. I soon realize it’s no longer the trees I hear but the waves of Lake Michigan lapping against a nearby shoreline. The road bends left, and directly ahead of us lies a low steel guardrail. Above it stretches the infinite dome of space filled only by the twinkle of silver stars and the wide brush stroke of the Milky Way.
Jeremy and I step up to the railing and peer over the edge. The grass runs a few feet beyond the rail, but then the s
od breaks off like the edge of a puzzle piece. The earth drops several feet at that point, suddenly and steeply. The grass turns to sand, and a one hundred foot bluff, jagged and rolling, descends into the water of the great Lake Michigan.
“Michigami,” Jeremy says.
“What?”
“‘The Great Waters.’ It’s what the Indians called Lake Michigan.” He pauses, looks around, then adds, “Someone died here.”
I wince at the chilling sound of his voice. “How do you know?”
Very seriously, he says, “The guardrail. See, it’s only in this one spot on the curve. It doesn’t continue down the road in either direction. That means someone missed the turn and went down the bluff. That’s when they put up a guardrail, I bet.”
“Just because it’s here doesn’t mean someone went over the edge.”
“Look. The rail is dented. It’s been hit since it’s been up. Do you really think that dent is the first time someone missed the curve? For sure, somebody went over the edge here, and no one could survive a fall down that bluff.”
“Shut up,” I say, returning to the road. “You’re creeping me out.”
The truth is I respect his intelligence. His analytics are superior to anyone’s—at least anyone I’ve ever known. And we’re going to need every ounce of intelligence and analytics he has, because minutes later, we’re standing at the dead end of New Tyburn Road, face-to-face with Tyburn Gate.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I EXAMINE THE battered old gate. Its two narrow arches are only about six feet tall, but they are made of iron, and, like the main gate, they have pointed finials at the top of their pickets. Once again, we’re not climbing over.
The arches are, however, rickety on their hinges, which are set into stone pillars on either side. The gate is held shut in the center by a chain and padlock, nothing near as modern as the latch on the main gate. I can part the center six inches just by rocking the gate, but it’s certainly not enough for us to squeeze through.
Jeremy gasps when a cold blast of wind blows in from the lake.
Curse of the Black-Eyed Kids (Mount Herod Legends Book 2) Page 14