by Dan Poblocki
Unable to see, Timothy tentatively reached out. Something pushed by him. He shouted and slammed himself against the nearest locker, flailing his arms for protection. After a few seconds, Timothy realized he was alone. He slowed his breathing, trying to calm down. I’m safe now, he told himself. Safe.
A moment later, the locker room appeared again. The lights were normal. The man was gone. Timothy stood at the end of the row where his own locker had been. Behind him, the yellow light from the shower room bled onto the concrete floor.
Timothy needed to get out of there. Beyond the showers, the crooked hallway revealed the way to the pool. But even that seemed too far away. Timothy turned and dashed around the corner, toward the gymnasium’s lobby.
Once there, Timothy was flooded with relief. As several passing students stared at him, he realized he must look like a crazy person, standing there dripping in his wet bathing suit, eyes wild, out of breath. He didn’t care.
Seconds later, from the direction of the pool, Timothy heard the sound of screaming.
13.
Timothy rushed past several of the college students who had wandered toward the pool entrance. Underneath the diving platforms, a group of people stood at the edge of the pool, raising a commotion. One of his teammates, a younger girl, was crying. In the water, the rest of the swim team held on to the lane lines. They had all stopped swimming and were paying attention to what was happening in the deep end.
Suddenly, Thom burst through the surface of the water from below. He was wearing all his clothes. He was holding someone in his arms. He kicked toward the edge of the pool, calling out for everyone to give him room. By the time Thom had reached the side, Timothy had managed to make his way through the crowd. That was when he realized who Thom was struggling to pull out of the water.
Stuart.
He was unconscious. His skin was a strange bluish color. Thom managed to lay Stuart out flat. He leaned toward Stuart’s face, feeling for breath. After a couple seconds, Thom began pressing on Stuart’s chest with both hands.
“What happened?” Timothy asked an older boy standing beside him.
“Not sure,” said the boy. “The kid was down really deep. Thom thought he was fooling around, you know? He kept calling to him, but he wouldn’t come up. So Thom jumped in.”
The coach breathed into Stuart’s mouth, then lifted his head. “Someone call an ambulance!” he shouted. He continued pressing on Stuart’s chest. “And his parents!”
Timothy felt the same way he had in the locker room, when the rows of lockers seemed to have rearranged themselves. Lost. Was this really happening? Maybe this was all a dream—a nightmare like the one he’d had the night before about his brother. He closed his eyes and told himself to wake up. But when he opened his eyes, nothing changed.
Just then, Stuart shuddered. He coughed huge, wet, choking breaths. Timothy hugged himself.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, he thought to no one in particular.
THE HAUNTING OF ABIGAIL TREMENS
INTERLUDE
WAL-MART SUPERCENTER—VERO BEACH, FLORIDA
“Just let me know if you need a different size,” said the salesgirl.
“I will,” said the older woman, slipping into the dressing room and closing the door behind her.
Emma Huppert had needed a new bathing suit for years but hadn’t wanted to shop for one until she’d lost a little weight. At her age, she found it harder than ever. Though finally this year, Emma had managed to stick with her resolution.
Emma adjusted the strap and examined herself in the mirror. The floral pattern was flattering, and the skirt that flirted out at the waist hid the parts that needed to be hidden. “Perfect,” Emma whispered to herself. She lived so close to the beach but hadn’t been in the water for at least a decade. This would be a nice change. Something to do other than play bingo all day with the rest of the white-haired ladies in the retirement community.
The doorknob rattled, and Emma jumped. “There’s someone in here!” she called over the door. She waited for an apology, but none came. “Rude,” she whispered.
She and Bill had left Massachusetts almost twenty years ago, but Florida never really felt like home. So many tourists always passing through. So many seasonal friends who came and went.
Emma often had to force herself to remember New Starkham. This bathing suit was her way of trying to get some of that feeling back, if only to swim in the same ocean she had when she’d been young. Not that all memories of her hometown were pleasant.
The doorknob rattled again, harder this time, as if someone was frantically trying to enter the dressing room. Emma nearly fell against the wall. “There is someone in here!” she called again, growing angry.
Probably just teenagers playing pranks, she imagined, catching her breath. Well, the bathing suit fit, so Emma decided to hurry up and let the pranksters tease someone else. When she bent down to pick up her blouse, someone slapped the door so hard that Emma yelped, leapt upright, and clutched her shirt to her chest. The slap came again and again and again. She could see under the door, but no one was standing outside.
Now Emma was frightened. She knew it wasn’t the salesgirl doing this to her. She was almost certain that whoever was assaulting the door was no prankster either. For the past few weeks, she’d been seeing things she should not have been seeing. She’d managed to dismiss the other incidents as exhaustion, but this was not something she could ignore. She was trapped in a tiny room, wearing a bathing suit that did not yet belong to her. And outside was … well … No, that was impossible. There was no such thing as ghosts.
Emma reached for the doorknob. Grasping it, she turned her wrist slowly, then pulled the door open. Peeking out, she saw no one, so she swung the door wide.
But then, standing in the opposite cubicle, Emma noticed the girl. Her wet black hair was plastered to her dirty face, her brown skin pulled taut over her cheekbones. She wore the same stars-and-stripes dress she’d been wearing the last time Emma had seen her … nearly sixty years ago. “Delia,” Emma croaked. Her sister.
The girl leapt across the aisle, arms raised, and Emma stumbled backward. “It was your fault!” screamed the girl. “You weren’t watching. You weren’t watching. You weren’t watching!”
Emma hit the mirror behind her and covered her face. “I’m sorry!” she cried, sliding down the wall until she’d managed to curl herself into a ball on the carpet. “I’m so sorry, Delia! Please!” She felt someone grab at her shoulder. Emma slapped the hand away, then glanced up, expecting Delia to lean in at her with a mouthful of broken teeth.
Instead, the salesgirl stood over her, wearing a shocked expression. “Is everything all right, ma’am?”
Emma didn’t know what to do. Lifting her eyes, she peered at the aisle outside the dressing room. No one else was there. She shook her head and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Everything is fine,” Emma said, standing sturdily. She brushed herself off. “The bathing suit fits perfectly. I’ll take it.” The salesgirl nodded and stepped out of the cubicle.
Then a voice whispered from the adjacent dressing room, the same voice she’d been hearing for several weeks now, whenever she thought of her sister. It said, Your fault …
“Wait!” Emma grabbed the salesgirl’s arm. The girl looked worried. “Can you do me a favor?” Emma asked. “Just … stand outside the door? Make sure no one tries to come in?”
The salesgirl simply stared back, as if Emma had lost her mind.
14.
The morning after swim practice, the clouds had broken, and bits of blue shone through the gray. After he got off the bus, Timothy went directly to the school library. There were only ten minutes before the first bell, but there was something he needed to do. He plopped himself down at an empty computer, logged on to the Internet, and did a search of the name Ogden Kentwall.
The first few pages of results didn’t produce any exact matches—a few “Ogden”s, several “Kentwall”s, but nothing else. Just
when Timothy was about to give up and head to his locker, he finally came across a Web site for an independent bookstore, called The Enigmatic Manuscript, located in the northwest corner of the state. The Web site listed several other Zelda Kite Mysteries and a brief biography of the author, which had been written by the owner of the store, a woman named Frances May.
“Ogden Kentwall is actually a pseudonym for a man whose real name was Hieronymus Kindred,” wrote Frances, “a lawyer from Boston, who allegedly based the character of Zelda Kite on his teenaged niece. Kindred’s foray into children’s literature was short-lived, due to the series’ never really catching on. His three titles that survive, however, have a strange, subtle charm, and I would not be surprised if someday they are rediscovered by young audiences. I have one copy of each, available for purchase through this site …”
As Timothy read the short blurb, he began to feel a chill. Hieronymus Kindred? Why did the name sound familiar? Before he had a chance to think about it, the first bell rang. Timothy quickly logged off the computer, snatched his bag from the desk, and headed toward homeroom.
By the time Timothy made it to Mr. Crane’s third-period class, the school was buzzing about Stuart. Timothy hadn’t said anything about what had happened the night before, yet everyone was looking at him strangely, expectant, as if he might know something more. He sat down and tried not to look at the empty chair to his left.
Before Mr. Crane came through the door, Brian Friedman and Randy Weiss had mentioned Stuart’s name. Timothy wouldn’t have listened to them, except that he knew Randy’s mother was a nurse in New Starkham Hospital’s emergency room.
“I overheard my parents last night,” Randy began. “Supposedly, when they brought Stuart in, he was talking really weird.”
“Weird how?” said Brian.
“I think I heard my mom say he thought”—Randy paused—“well … some sort of … monster tried to drown him.”
“Maybe you heard her wrong.”
“Yeah … maybe. I don’t think she wanted me listening. So did you start the history project yet?”
Timothy held his face in his hands. Something strange was going on here. Randy’s story was an echo of Stuart’s claims from the side of the pool last night.
Out of the corner of his eye, Timothy noticed Abigail slinking down the aisle toward her desk in the back of the classroom. Her eyes were puffy. She looked as though she hadn’t slept at all the night before either.
Moments later, Mr. Crane entered. He too looked strange. His button-down shirt was a little wrinkled and his swollen eyes looked worried and anxious, like he wanted the period to be over as quickly as possible.
Mr. Crane began the class by asking the students which artifact from the museum each pair had chosen for their project. Timothy listened as his classmates rattled off their answers. Distracted, Mr. Crane kept glancing at the shelves where the glass specimen jars sat.
Suddenly, Timothy realized something. Mr. Crane had been in the basement of the museum too, just after Timothy had seen the golden idols stare at him. If Timothy had seen some strange things the night before, and Abigail looked like she hadn’t slept as well, maybe something had happened to all of them down there? Something that was keeping them up at night. Making them see things. Just like Stuart.
Timothy heard Abigail call out their chosen artifact from the back of the room. “The Edge of Doom painting,” she said. Mr. Crane half-smiled and moved on to Kimberly Mitchell. But Timothy kept looking at Abigail. Her grandmother had been in the basement with them as well. He wondered if she had been seeing things since then too.
The old woman had a strange name, didn’t she? What was it again? It had been stuck in Timothy’s brain all night long, but now he couldn’t seem to grasp it. “Z” something. Zelda?
No. Not Zelda.
Zilpha.
Zilpha Kindred.
Timothy felt a jolt rush through his body, and he dropped his pencil on the floor. Scrambling to pick it up again, he only kicked it farther into the aisle.
Kindred, he thought. Her last name is Kindred, like the author of The Clue of the Incomplete Corpse.
Obviously, here was the connection. But what did it mean? Could Abigail’s grandmother possibly have something to do with what had happened at the museum yesterday morning and at the gymnasium last night?
“Okay,” said Mr. Crane. “We’ve had enough fun for now.” The class collectively groaned. “Please open your textbooks to chapter seven.” On the board, he wrote Pre-Colonial America.
Timothy tore a piece of paper from his notebook. He quickly jotted a note, folded it up, and turned toward Abigail. He dropped the folded paper on the floor and swiftly kicked it in Abigail’s direction.
Before she had a chance to lean over and pick it up, Mr. Crane said, “Mr. July, would you please bring that to the front of the class?”
As Timothy stood up, his stomach felt like it was filled with a big chunk of ice. Abigail bent over and picked up the note. With a surprising look of pity, she handed it to him.
Mr. Crane folded his arms across his chest. “Well?”
Reluctantly, Timothy stepped forward to the large desk in front of the long green chalkboard. “What has come over you these past couple days?” the teacher whispered.
Timothy could feel the eyes of his class whispering across his back. “Dunno,” he mumbled.
“Go on, then.” Mr. Crane nodded at the note in Timothy’s hand. “Let’s hear it.”
Timothy knew he could just make something up, but if Mr. Crane saw the writing from over his shoulder, everything would be worse, because then the class would know he’d been lying. “Abigail, I really need to talk to you about your grandmother.”
“Ah-ah-ah, Mr. July,” said Mr. Crane. “Slow down. We couldn’t hear you. Again, please.”
Red-faced, Timothy read the note again, this time so everyone could hear. “Abigail, I really need to talk to you about your grandmother.”
The laughter was immediate and overwhelming.
Mr. Crane said, “I’ve got a little project for you. Meet me after school, Mr. July. No later than five minutes past the last bell. Right here.” He glanced nervously at the shelves again. “Now, class, chapter seven …”
Ashamed, Timothy slipped into his seat. Seconds later, from the corner of the room, he could feel Abigail Tremens looking at him. He couldn’t bring himself to look back.
15.
Timothy sleepwalked through the rest of the day. He was standing at his locker, just after the last bell had rung, wondering what project Mr. Crane had in mind for his detention, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped and spun around, embarrassed.
Abigail was standing behind him. “Sorry about what happened with that note,” she said. “I wasn’t quick enough.”
“S’okay,” said Timothy. “I only came up with the idea to eat it after I’d read it in front of the whole stupid class.”
To his surprise, Abigail laughed. “Oh my God, I would’ve paid to see you do that.”
Timothy shrugged. “Next time, then.”
She laughed again, but a second later, her face quickly changed. “So … um … what was that about my grandmother?” She drew her eyebrows close together and somehow managed to repossess that ability to look inside him.
“I—I…,” Timothy stammered, trying to finish his sentence. “I’m going to be late.”
“Late for what?”
“For my detention with Mr. Crane.”
“We could talk after your detention. I’m staying in my grandmother’s apartment for a while. You could, like, come over if you want?”
“I could do that. Sure.”
“Good,” said Abigail. “I could actually use your help with something.”
“Really? With what?”
She shook her head. “It’s sort of complicated.”
On a scrap of paper, Abigail quickly wrote down her grandmother’s address and handed it to him.
Mr. Crane was wa
iting for Timothy, leaning against the chalkboard, staring at the side wall. He barely glanced at Timothy as he came through the door. “You’re late,” he said.
“Sorry,” Timothy answered. His teacher continued to stare at the shelves on the side of the room. The specimen jars rested there, silent and unassuming as always. “Uh, Mr. Crane,” Timothy said, “what do you want me to do?”
Mr. Crane finally turned to look at him, pulled away from the sight of the specimens, as if from a dream. “I …” He cleared his throat. “I need you to take those jars out of here.”
Timothy flinched. “Where do you want me to take them?”
“I don’t care,” said Mr. Crane. “They don’t belong in this classroom. I don’t know why they’ve lasted as long as they have.” He pointed out the window. “Take them outside to the Dumpster,” he said, slipping into his corduroy jacket. He clutched his leather briefcase under his arm. “Just close the door when you’re done.”
“Wait a second,” said Timothy. “You’re leaving?”
Mr. Crane wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, Timothy. I haven’t been feeling well. I trust you’ll be fine alone.” He headed toward the door.
Before his teacher slipped away entirely, Timothy looked at the specimen jars one more time. “Mr. Crane?” he said.
The teacher stopped in the doorway, but he didn’t turn around. “Yes, Timothy?” he answered stiffly.
“Why do you really want to get rid of the jars?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why now?”
Mr. Crane turned around. His eyes were wide with some sort of secret. “Why now? I told you, they do not belong here.”
Timothy remembered the black eyeball he’d seen two days ago, staring at him through the dusty glass. Staring or dead—it had been impossible to tell the difference at the time.
