Hangman's Curse

by Frank Peretti

  Ian had become quite the topic of conversation around the classrooms and hallways. Those with reason to fear him were finally beginning to fear him, and a new group of outcasts—some weak, some weird, all of them on the fringe—were starting to occupy the lunch stools at Ian’s table. He was both feared and admired, and obviously enjoying it.

  Well, Elijah thought, bravely meeting the eyes looking his way, they’ll just have to go on staring and talking. He spoke to Ian in a quiet voice. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about Marquardt.”

  That got the attention of an earringed, orange-haired sophomore two chairs away and a plain-looking fat kid sitting beside Elijah. They leaned in, chewing their lunches, ready to listen.

  Ian only smiled and took another bite from his sandwich. His mouth was a little full when he said, “How bad do you want it to happen?”

  Elijah studied Ian’s face. This was going to be a delicate balancing act: asking questions, but not too many, and only the kind of questions that Ian would be comfortable answering. “You told me—remember when we were having that big old incident with Leonard Baynes?”

  Ian answered proudly, looking not only at Elijah but at his new followers, “I said Leonard Baynes would be dealt with.” Then he sat quietly, letting what happened to Leonard Baynes speak for itself.

  Elijah asked very hesitantly, “Did you . . . I mean, can you really do that?”

  Ian didn’t seem angry when he said, “Be careful you don’t ask too many questions.”

  Elijah shrank back just a little. “Yeah. Right.”

  But Ian volunteered, “The same thing that happened to Baynes can happen to Marquardt—and Hanley. Don’t ask me how. It just can.”

  Elijah dared to push just a little further. “But what about those other guys? You know, Tod Kramer, and Doug Anderson, and, uh . . .”

  “Jim Boltz.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ian had a wicked glint in his eye. “Like I said, Elijah: You have to take care of yourself. Nobody’s going to do it for you. It’s like—”

  A crash! Screams. Dishes flew off a table. A lunch stool toppled and tumbled along the floor. Every head turned.

  Two rows away a pretty brown-haired girl had leaped to her feet, her hands extended and clawing like a cat as if fending off an attacker, her eyes wild with terror. “No, no, don’t am makin’ badder, I can’t, I can’t!”

  “All right . . . ,” said the orange-haired sophomore.

  The girl lurched backward, tripping and falling into the people seated at a table behind her. They reached out to catch her and she fought them, screaming, kicking, and thrashing as if for her life. She grabbed up a lunch stool and tried to throw it.

  The fat kid beside Elijah looked troubled. “But . . . but that’s Amy! She’s not—”

  Amy’s friends surrounded her, grabbed the stool, tried to subdue her. A teacher came running. Her friends held her by her arms as she fought them, staring straight ahead at something. “No, no, been waving far away, never, no . . .” Then she said something that caught every ear in the place. “No, Abel Frye! No!”

  The girl lurched backward, tripping and falling into the people seated at a table behind her. They reached out to catch her and she fought them, screaming, kicking, and thrashing as if for her life. She grabbed up a lunch stool and tried to throw it.

  A whisper rippled and ricocheted around the room. “Abel Frye!” “It’s the ghost!” “It’s Abel Frye!”

  “Go, Abel!” said Orange Hair.

  Amy screamed all the louder, “Abel, leave me alone!”

  That brought screams of terror from some of the other girls. Some of the kids actually ducked behind their tables as if they could hide from this thing, whatever it was.

  “Ian . . .” The fat kid’s voice sounded pleading.

  Elijah was as captured by the sight as anyone, but then he heard a clamor behind him and looked to see Ian Snyder on his feet, horrified. “No,” Ian was muttering, “no, not her. Not her!”

  Elijah was mystified. “Ian?”

  Ian was looking toward the screaming, struggling girl, now being carried out by her friends and two teachers. “Leave her alone. Stop it!”

  They carried Amy out of the room, but her screams continued to echo down the hallway and into the lunchroom. Every eye was locked on the doorway. Some students couldn’t bear the sound and covered their ears.

  Ian sank into his chair, visibly troubled, his fingers over his mouth.

  The screaming faded with distance, and then a faraway door—probably the nurse’s office—slammed shut.

  Commotion and weird, fearful confusion broke out all across the lunchroom. The kids were looking at each other, hiding behind each other, chattering, whispering, crying. A few smirked and mocked, but only a few. Mrs. Donaldson, the English teacher, moved through the room. “All right, everyone, now just calm down. She’s going to be all right. Just calm down.”

  Suddenly, Sherri Cook, a junior, an attractive red-haired cheerleader, ran down the aisle between the tables and knelt beside Ian, shaking, tears in her eyes. “Ian! Ian, if you’re doing this, please make it stop! Amy’s my friend! She’s a good person; she never hurt anybody!”

  But Ian only sat there looking dumbfounded. This was something Elijah had never seen before: Ian Snyder at a total loss. “I didn’t—”

  Now Mike Hagan came over, a nice guy Elijah knew from English class. “Ian. Let’s talk. We can work this out.”

  Ian got to his feet, Sherri and Mike on either side, still trying to reason with him. He did not look cool, sinister, or defiant. He looked scared.

  Elijah got up as well, not knowing what to say or do.

  “Come on,” said Mike. “Whatever the problem is, we’ll work it out. Just—just call it off.”

  “Please!” said Sherri.

  Everyone in the room was staring at them—even some of the big jocks. Even Shawna Miller.

  Ian turned, pushed his way past Mike and Sherri, and strode —or maybe fled—through the outside exit door.

  The room exploded in fearful, rapid chatter. “He’s doing this?” “Don’t you get it? He controls the ghost!” “Yeah, right!” “Well, she must have done something to make him mad!” “She’s OD’d on something, that’s all.” “I hear the feds are after him.”

  The fat kid and Orange Hair just sat there dumbfounded, but Elijah ran after Ian, flinging the exit door open and dashing through, heeling to a halt on the sidewalk outside and frantically looking all directions. Oh man, which way? Ian could have gone straight across the parking lot. He could have ducked into the woods. He could have disappeared around one of three different corners.

  Whichever direction he chose, he was gone.

  Not wasting a second, not saying a word, Nate ran into the lunchroom and gathered up Amy Warren’s schoolbooks and carry bag. Officer Carrillo wasted no time either, immediately putting up a yellow tape barrier around Amy’s locker. Mr. Loman brought the combination, and Nate and Sarah, thick gloves protecting their hands, opened it. Only one thing inside appeared unusual: a duffel bag, the kind the football players carried. The owner’s name was printed on the side in black marker: Jim Boltz.

  “She’s Jim Boltz’s girlfriend,” Tom Gessner explained. “As near as I’ve been able to gather from their friends, she took the duffel bag off the players’ bench that night when Jim got sick. She was keeping it for him and had no idea we were looking for it.”

  Gessner, Officer Carrillo, Nate, and Sarah were meeting behind closed doors with Ms. Wyrthen. Everyone was feeling the tension, the horror, the helplessness; and tempers were approaching the flash point.

  Officer Carrillo was checking his gun for the umpteenth time, rotating the cylinder, checking every chamber for a bullet.

  “Officer Carrillo,” said Ms. Wyrthen, “I’d feel so much better if you’d put that thing away.”

  “Something’s out there,” he replied, “and whatever it is, it’s going to be sorry it ever ran into me.”
>
  “I think it’s time we considered closing the school down,” Gessner suggested.

  “I’ve already looked into that,” said Ms. Wyrthen. “Unless there’s a real emergency, I can’t suspend classes without a two-thirds approval from the school board.”

  “So?” Carrillo demanded. “Get approval!”

  “Show me an emergency!” she countered. “Give me a fire, an earthquake, asbestos in the ceiling panels. The school board will understand those, but this? What is it? What are we really dealing with? I can’t tell them we’re haunted by a ghost!”

  “But there’s something out there!”

  “Dan . . .” Tom Gessner tried to calm him. “The gun?”

  Carrillo grudgingly holstered his weapon. “Well, at least close off the Forbidden Hallway!”

  Sarah countered, “We don’t have a conclusive pattern to show that hallway has anything to do with this.”

  Carrillo was insulted and all the more angry. “Well what do you have? That’s what I want to know!”

  Ms. Wyrthen turned to Nate and Sarah. “What have you found?”

  Nate reported first. “We cleared Amy’s locker and we have the entire contents sealed up for examination. Our dog sniffed the locker and the contents, and we think he’s found something. We just don’t know what it is.”

  “You don’t know?” Carrillo practically yelled. “Would you mind explaining that?”

  Nate responded calmly, “Max is trained to find illicit drugs or any other scent we can isolate and teach him. The problem is, we have to know what we’re looking for so we can give him the scent to sniff for. Right now, it’s working in reverse: Max is starting to notice a scent that alerts him, but we’ll have to go through a trial-and-error process to identify it.”

  “We’re going to go through all of Amy’s things, down to the smallest item, until we find it,” said Sarah. “But note this as well: We went through Crystal Sparks’ locker and Max found the same scent, whatever it is. We didn’t find anything that would tie her to the victims, just her school things, some outer clothing, and some more of her weird paintings, but Max is finding some kind of connection with his nose.”

  Carrillo growled, “Well, I say we haul in this Snyder kid and this Sparks chick and get it out of them.”

  “But they have rights!” Ms. Wyrthen reminded the officer.

  “I’ll read them their rights!” Carrillo snapped back. Then he pointed his finger in Nate’s face. “But I’ll get results, which is a lot more than we’ve gotten from you!”

  Nate put up his hand to signal for caution. “We’re getting real close to hearing from Ian Snyder, don’t worry. But I’m troubled about something: Amy Warren’s locker doesn’t have a hex scratched on it, that hanging-man symbol.”

  “So what? She got hauled screaming to the hospital, isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s a lot. But it isn’t everything, and I’ll venture it’s not enough to detain Ian Snyder.”

  It was Sarah’s turn. She spoke quietly but quickly. “Consistent with the pattern, we found a soda straw in Jim Boltz’s duffel bag, identical to the other two.”

  That got a visible reaction.

  She continued, “We checked all three straws for fingerprints, but no results. However, they all had two things in common: small deposits of sugar that seem to indicate the straws were once plugged with sugar at both ends, and a chemical that up until now we couldn’t identify.” She unfolded a sheet of paper. “But we just got this fax from an associate at the university. The sugar was saturated with a chemical trade-named Tricanol.”

  “Tricanol?” Officer Carrillo repeated.

  “It’s an additive used in paints, stains, wood preservatives. It’s used widely and it’s widely available.”

  Ms. Wyrthen wrinkled her nose. “Paint?”

  “Does it produce the symptoms we’ve seen?” Gessner asked.

  Sarah sighed and folded the paper. “Afraid not. It can be poisonous in large amounts, but it isn’t hallucinogenic or neurotoxic. All that is to say, it probably has no direct relation to the sickness—but it has to mean something. It’s a clue and we have to track it down.”

  Ms. Wyrthen forced a pleasant, professional smile. “So I would say we’re making progress.” She made a point to look at Carrillo. “Slow, perhaps, but progress nevertheless.”

  “Progress?” said Carrillo. “Some wood preservative is progress?”

  The telephone on Ms. Wyrthen’s desk chirped. “Excuse me. This could be important.” She picked up the phone. “Ms. Wyrthen.”

  “We’ll check the wood shop, first of all,” said Nate.

  “I’ll get the students’ class schedules and we’ll see who’s been through that room lately,” Gessner offered.

  “And maybe we’ll check the greenhouse as well,” Sarah offered. “The shelves in the greenhouse are probably treated with preservative.”

  “Right,” said Nate, “and then . . .” His voice trailed off. He was looking at Ms. Wyrthen.

  Her face was pale as she sank into her chair. The others read her expression and fell silent. She picked up her pen. Her hand was trembling. “Do you have the mother’s name and number?” She listened, and wrote it down. “And the medical examiner? Okay.” She wrote some more. “Okay. I’ll tell the others. Thank you. Call if you get anything else.” She hung up.

  Everyone was waiting.

  Nate asked, “What is it, Ms. Wyrthen?”

  She looked up at them, her face pale and troubled. “That was Dr. Stuart at the hospital. Amy Warren . . . is dead. She passed away in the hospital only minutes ago.”

  Stunned silence. Tom Gessner sank into a chair, resting his head in his hand. Carrillo, red-faced with anger, hooked his thumb through his belt—near his revolver.

  After swallowing the initial shock, Nate looked at Sarah. They were each thinking the same thing.

  “Its properties have changed,” said Sarah. “It’s become more lethal.”

  Nate nodded. “The other victims are still alive after close to two weeks. Amy died within hours.”

  As Ms. Wyrthen picked up the phone to make a call, Carrillo gave Nate a cold, demanding glare. “So what’s next, Springfield? I’d love to hear what your next move is going to be.”

  He thought for only a moment, then nodded resignedly to himself. “Same procedure. Go through Amy’s things, visit her home. But I’ll hand you one thing: Looks like we’ll have to press a little harder for a talk with Ian Snyder.”

  “And another talk with Crystal Sparks,” Sarah offered. “Allegedly, she’s one of the witches, one of Ian Snyder’s friends, and I know she’s holding back plenty.”

  “That won’t be possible,” said Ms. Wyrthen, hanging up the phone, her hand trembling. “I just spoke with the medical examiner. The police have found Crystal Sparks. She was . . . her mother said she went raving mad last night and ran out of the house. That’s why she wasn’t in school today. The police didn’t find her until an hour ago—in Benton Park.”

  “She spent the whole night in Benton Park?” Carrillo asked.

  Ms. Wyrthen looked at them directly. “She died in Benton Park. The medical examiner guesses she’s been dead since last night. We’ve lost her, too.”

  8

  hangman’s

  curse

  The next morning, there had been no closure notice and classes were in session as usual. More than fifty students stayed home anyway. Shawna Miller was staying home with full permission and parental supervision. Other parents were calling the school office and tying up the telephone. Doctors and cops were coming and going. Local newspaper, radio, and television reporters were popping up in front of the school and in the halls, shoving microphones in students’ and teachers’ faces.

  Word was spreading quickly all over the school: Amy Warren was dead. Crystal Sparks was dead. Tod Kramer was near death. Doug Anderson and Jim Boltz were critical. Leonard Baynes was crazy and getting worse.

  As for the mysterious hanging-man sym
bol, everyone knew about it. It was impossible to keep the lockers of the victims off-limits. Plenty of students were checking their own lockers to make sure they weren’t next.

  Rumors were popping up out of nowhere and flying at light speed: The next victim was already chosen and it would be a girl; it would be another guy; it would be a friend of the first three; it would be a teacher. Abel Frye was seen in the Forbidden Hallway; he was seen in the parking lot; he was seen on the roof of the school. Ian Snyder was dead; Ian Snyder had been arrested; Ian Snyder hanged himself. Crystal Sparks hanged herself.

  “Now, please tell me we have an emergency!” Nate protested as he and Sarah met privately with Tom Gessner and Ms. Wyrthen.

  “The school board is ‘undecided,’” Ms. Wyrthen lamented.

  “Undecided?” Tom Gessner marveled.

  “I didn’t hear that,” said Sarah. “I couldn’t have heard that.”

  “Oh, brother.” Gessner wilted at a thought. “It’s the game, isn’t it?”

  Ms. Wyrthen gave a furtive nod. “The championship on Thanksgiving Day. I know at least two board members who have kids on the team and don’t want us to forfeit that game, and we’d definitely forfeit if we closed the school.” She sighed. “They’ve told me to wait until they decide for sure.”

  “And how long will that take?” Nate asked.

  “I’m sure we will have enjoyed our turkey and cranberries before then.” They all deflated with a moan. “We’ll try to cut back on whatever activities we can. The main thing now is to remain calm and keep the students calm, and please, let’s try to put a lid on all this hysteria and all these silly rumors. They’re only making things worse.”

  Nate regathered himself and said, “So, I guess we’d better have that talk with Ian Snyder.”

  “Ian Snyder is missing,” said Ms. Wyrthen.

  “What?”

  “Not good, not good,” said Gessner.

  “Officer Carrillo tried to bring him in for questioning last night—” said Ms. Wyrthen.