Hazed

by Franklin W. Dixon

  “We have been informed of the events of last night,” The Voice boomed. “And we will not tolerate them.”

  What? Was The Voice mad that we’d almost drowned? Were Frank and I too bad at swimming to be considered as servants? I didn’t get it.

  The boy directly in front of me—who I was pretty sure was operating The Voice—lifted his arms. “Bring them to us.”

  Huh? Because Frank and I were about three feet away from the guy.

  In a second it became clear that the “us” wasn’t me and Frank. It was Douglas, Keith, and Liam. They were brought into the circle with me and Frank. They had their black robes on, but the hoods were down, making it easy to see their faces. And their hands were tied behind them.

  I didn’t get it.

  “These masters are in shame,” The Voice explained. “Their actions last night were not sanctioned by the group. They acted on their own. They have shamed us all.”

  Douglas looked ready to puke. I would bet money he was thinking about his dad. About how his dad would react to knowing he had done something that the masters—all those future business contacts—hated so much.

  Keith looked mad. Like he couldn’t believe the masters were daring to say this to him.

  And Liam just looked wrung out. He had dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for a year.

  “It is our duty today to determine the fate of our shamed brothers,” The Voice went on. Wes, I realized. Wes was the voice. I recognized the tips of his red Converse sneakers.

  “Frank Hardy. Joe Hardy. You are not yet masters. But you were the victims of these three masters’ crimes,” Wes pronounced. “You must determine their punishment. Whatever you decide is fair will be done without question.”

  16.

  It’s Happening Again

  I glanced at Joe. What were we supposed to do here? If we didn’t ask for any punishment, it would look suspicious. Like maybe we were planning to go to the school administrators—or even the cops.

  But I definitely didn’t want to ask for anything that could go down dangerous, like swimming blindfolded, gagged, with tied-up hands.

  “The blood?” Joe asked me.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I turned toward the masters. “We think they should each drink some of that blood you gave us the first night.”

  “A lot. A whole glass,” Joe added.

  That actually was punishment. The stuff was disgusting. I felt like my stomach needed washing after I drank that one sip.

  “So be it,” The Voice said. I realized The Voice was Wes. Those red sneakers gave him away. He flicked his hand, and one of the masters rushed away and up the cellar stairs.

  Then we all waited for him to come back. Waited and waited and waited. What’s the recipe for the ‘blood,’ I wondered. Does it involve hanging out until chickens lay rotten eggs, or what?

  Finally, the master who’d left returned with a tray holding three of the beaten-up metal chalices. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Diehl had snagged the blender, as usual, and I had to get it back. It had all this gunk in the bottom, as usual. But I didn’t bother to clean it out. More gunk, better blood. Am I right?”

  “Do you have any understanding of the phrase ‘too much information’?” Wes asked. The question sounded ridiculous in the booming Voice of Doom.

  The master with the tray shrugged. “Just thought you’d want to know where I was.”

  Wes picked up one of the chalices. He pressed it into Liam’s hands. “Drink,” he ordered. The Voice sounded a lot better when issuing commands. It didn’t make me feel like giggling.

  “And chug it,” one of the other masters ordered. “I want to see you suck it all down at once.”

  “No spitting out,” someone else added. “You spit it out, you lick it up.”

  Liam nodded, his face serious. Then he swallowed the blood, his throat muscles working as he drank and drank. He grimaced as he finished and wiped his mouth with his arm. “That doesn’t seem like enough. Not after what we did.”

  “Shut up,” Keith told him. “That whole thing was your idea.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to—,” Douglas began.

  “You shut up too,” Keith snapped at Douglas. “You’d be afraid to take a breath on your own if you weren’t more afraid of Daddy.”

  “I just meant that we almost killed those guys. Drinking a glass of nasty isn’t exactly—”

  Liam’s body began to convulse.

  His eyes opened so wide I could see a ring of white all the way around them.

  Then he collapsed, continuing to spasm.

  “It’s happening again!” someone yelled.

  “It’s just like Roy,” someone else shouted. “Look at him!”

  Liam’s body was shuddering. He was staring up at us, but I didn’t think he was seeing anything at all.

  Wes threw off his hood and ripped the voice modifier off his throat. “This time, we have to get help.”

  “No!” Douglas shoved his hood back. “We can’t. We’ll all get suspended. We can deal with this. Someone just start CPR.”

  “Liam is the one who knows it.”

  Joe and I knew CPR too. But I thought Liam needed more help than we could give him. I whirled around and pounded for the stairs.

  “Stop him!” Douglas shouted. “If he gets away, we’re all getting kicked out of school. Or worse. We could all go to jail.”

  I felt someone grab the back of my robe.

  “I got this one, Frank,” Joe cried.

  A second later I heard the sound of a body hitting the ground, accompanied by a surprised “Ooof.”

  “Thanks,” I called.

  “No problem,” Joe answered.

  I was at the stairs now. Taking them three at a time.

  I could hear people coming after me, but I didn’t look back.

  17.

  Poisoned

  Another one of the masters charged at Frank. I was not letting anyone get past me. Liam could die if Frank didn’t get help.

  I lowered my shoulder, aimed at the part of the robe where I figured the knees hit, and hurled myself forward. The master went down, and so did I.

  I shoved myself to my feet. Four other masters were moving toward the stairs. Frank was about halfway up them.

  There were a lot of stairs.

  “You don’t get it,” one of the masters yelled. “This comes out, it’s no college for any of us. Maybe even jail.”

  I scanned the floor. I spotted a chunk of concrete that had broken off the stairs. I snagged it and held it up. “I’m the pitcher on my school’s team. I can throw at eighty-seven miles an hour. Clocked.”

  Big lie. But lying is, like, a requirement of being an ATAC agent.

  “So who wants a piece of this?” I called out.

  That got a moment of hesitation from the masters. I backed up to the stairs and started to climb them, still facing down the masters. Still holding the chunk of concrete.

  As I moved higher, I got a clear view of Liam down on the floor. His body had stopped jerking and heaving—but the stillness was even worse. Was the guy still alive?

  A couple of the other boys were crouched near him. But they didn’t seem to know how to help.

  I reached the midpoint of the staircase, then turned and bolted. Immediately I heard footsteps as some of the masters chased after me. I reached the door first. I pushed through and slammed it behind me.

  Now I just needed a way to keep it closed. It didn’t lock from this side. They were going to be on me in a couple of seconds. Did Frank have time to get help?

  I had no way of knowing. I just had to keep the door shut. That was my only mission right now.

  I checked the hall. Nothing big enough to jam against the door. There was no time to go find something.

  Wait. I had it. It wouldn’t keep the masters down there for long—but maybe for long enough. I whipped off my white robe, then tied one end to the doorknob and the other end to the heating pipes. I stretched the cloth as tigh
t as I could.

  Then I took off. Frank might need me. I raced up the stairs to the first floor of the dorm. The TV lounge was empty—because all the masters were in the cellar. Frank had grabbed the phone that was behind the mail counter.

  “There’s a victim of nicotine poisoning at the Eagle River Academy. Royce Hall. The cellar,” Frank said into the phone, speaking slowly and clearly.

  Nicotine poisoning? Where had my brother gotten that?

  Did he think there had been poison in the fake blood? Liam’s reaction to it made it likely. But why had Frank zeroed in on nicotine?

  I knew ingesting nicotine could poison you. Probably give you convulsions. But lots of substances could do that.

  “We have to get up to Diehl’s office,” Frank said as he hung up.

  “Diehl? Do you think he’ll actually do something this time? Wouldn’t it be better to just wait for the EMTs so we get them down to the cellar ASAP?” I asked.

  Frank didn’t answer. He just took off, heading for the stairs.

  I chased after him.

  Then, as we tore up to Diehl’s office, I got it. Nicotine poisoning. Nicotine, as in one of the ingredients in cigarettes. Frank and I had seen a pack of cigarettes on Diehl’s desk. Plus, I suddenly remembered, the blender had been in Diehl’s office. And there had been gunk in the bottom of it that hadn’t been cleaned out before the master had mixed up the blood.

  Frank slammed open the door to Diehl’s office. Diehl jerked his head up from the papers he was grading.

  “We need the first-aid kit,” Frank barked.

  Diehl leaped to his feet and pulled the kit down from the top of the filing cabinet. “What’s happened?”

  Frank ignored him. “Does the kit have concentrated charcoal?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Diehl said.

  Frank grabbed the kit and handed it over to me. “Give some to Liam,” he instructed.

  I got back down to the cellar door in record time. It was open a couple of inches, and a few of the masters were shoving on it.

  “Back off,” I told them. “I have some medicine I need to get to Liam.” I slammed the door shut and started working on the knots. Why’d I have to make them so tight in the first place?

  I got one end free and shoved open the door. The masters on the stairs stepped back as I ran past them.

  I knelt down next to Liam and pulled the concentrated charcoal out of the kit. I quickly read the instructions and got some of the stuff down Liam’s throat.

  “What does that do?” Keith asked.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Douglas said. I had the feeling that Douglas was a lot more worried about himself.

  “It should make him puke up the poison,” I answered.

  “What poison?” Wes cried. “Nobody gave anybody poison.” He whipped his head toward the master who’d been sent to fetch the blood. “You just mixed it up like usual, right?”

  “Yeah. Mayonnaise, Tabasco, those violet candies—”

  “Help me roll him onto his side. We don’t want him to suck back his own vomit,” I said.

  Douglas and Keith had Liam on his side before I could even touch him. Liam’s body began to convulse again, his eyelids twitching. Then he let go a stream of red vomit. I had to remind myself it was only red because of all the food coloring in the phony blood.

  “The EMTs are here,” one of the guys called down the stairs.

  “You called them?” Douglas exclaimed.

  “You want Liam to die?” I shot back.

  The EMTs got to work. Fast. Efficient.

  But were they in time?

  “Is he going to be okay?” I asked.

  “He should be,” one of the EMTs answered. “We’ll do everything we can.”

  Nice.

  18.

  Conspiracy of Silence

  Joe and I watched Mr. Diehl walk out of the dorm, escorted by two police officers. His hands were cuffed behind his back. It made him look kind of like one of the servant boys. I guess that was just because we’d had our hands tied behind us so many times.

  Mr. Diehl turned back to face us—and the other guys who’d gathered to watch the scene, along with Dean McCormack. “It will stop now!” Diehl shouted. “I’ll talk to every reporter. They’ll listen to me, even though no one at this school would. I tried for years until I gave up talking. But now I’ll go on every news show that will have me. It will finally stop!”

  Dean McCormack shook his head as the police helped Diehl into the back of the car. “I never would have picked Geoffrey to be a killer. Never in a thousand years. He’s always seemed the timid type.”

  “Poisoning someone isn’t exactly brave,” Joe said.

  “You’re right,” the dean agreed.

  We watched the cop car drive away in silence. When it was out of sight, Dean McCormack shook his head again. “I don’t even know what he was talking about at the end. When he was saying it would finally stop. What will finally stop?”

  I couldn’t believe how clueless this man was. Even if he didn’t know Mr. Diehl’s personal history, he had to know that Liam had almost been killed down in the cellar in what any bozo could figure out was a hazing ritual.

  “We found a notebook in Mr. Diehl’s office,” Joe began. “At first we thought it was a record he was keeping about hazing activity in the dorm.”

  I saw a couple of the guys exchange nervous looks.

  “But it was about what happened to him and the other boys the year he was a servant, back when he was a student at the academy,” Joe continued. “Those scars on his hands and face? He got those down in the cellar.”

  “Seriously?” Keith burst out.

  “Seriously,” Joe told him.

  “We think Mr. Diehl was willing to kill a couple of kids to stop hazing forever,” I said. “Or maybe he didn’t really think anyone would actually die. Maybe he thought the nicotine would just cause a convulsion, and that would be enough to show outsiders what was happening at the school. Because EMTs would have to be called.”

  Dean McCormack scrubbed his face with his fingers. “This is such a shock. I’m processing everything too slowly. You said Mr. Diehl was willing to kill a couple of kids. So you believe he’s responsible for Roy Duffy’s death, too?”

  I nodded. “We think Roy got a dose of nicotine too. We think Mr. Diehl did it the same way he did tonight. Just unwrapped some cigarettes and dumped them in the bottom of the blender. Probably with some liquid to disguise them. The EMTs said the amount of nicotine in four cigarettes is enough to kill an adult.”

  “I know it’s a powerful toxin,” the dean said. “It’s even used as a pesticide. With Roy’s heart condition, he probably never had a chance of surviving.”

  “I don’t think he did.” Douglas stepped up to the dean. “I was there the night Roy died. He didn’t have a heart attack in his bed. It happened down in the cellar. Almost the same way it did with Liam. We gave him some of this fake blood mixture we use on all the servants. But Roy …”

  Douglas stopped and swallowed hard, then managed to go on. “With Roy … Nothing had ever happened like it did with Roy. We gave him some of the blood to drink. Then he started spasming.”

  “It was freaky,” Keith said, joining Douglas in front of the dean. “I thought he was faking at first. Trying to scare us, the way we always try to scare the servants.”

  “Then he was dead. It happened so fast,” Douglas explained. “Liam did CPR on him—he’d taken a class. But it was too late. Roy was gone.”

  “Why didn’t you boys come to me?” Dean McCormack asked.

  I really wanted to hear the answer to that one.

  “Roy was dead,” Keith said. “We couldn’t bring him back.”

  “We knew if we told you, we’d get expelled,” Wes added. “We all talked about it, and we decided since there wasn’t anything we could do for Roy, we’d save ourselves. We put him in his bed and left him there.”

  ‘We all knew about his heart condition. There were
some things he couldn’t do in PE,” Douglas continued. “We figured that everyone would think he just died of a heart attack. But if we could have done something to save him, we would have.”

  Would they? Some of them, maybe. But would Douglas? He really didn’t want me going to get help for Liam.

  At least Douglas had stepped up now. He’d told the truth. About everything. And that had to count for something.

  “The teens who took part in the hazing have been sentenced to sixty hours of community service each,” the newscaster said.

  Joe, Mom, Dad, Aunt Trudy, and I lounged in our living room. I can’t tell you how psyched Joe was to have TV access again. Even if right now he was watching the news, instead of his beloved Aqua Teen. Like there is anything at all believable about a meatball and some fries solving crimes.

  Joe here. Frank forgot to mention the shake. And that show rocks. Believable, shmelievable. Who cares? It’s a cartoon, Frank! Okay, I’m out.

  The newscaster switched over to a reporter who was talking to Mr. Diehl. Diehl was in prison, waiting for his trial.

  “I never meant for anyone to die,” Mr. Diehl told the reporter. “What happened to Roy was tragic. But I couldn’t let his death stop me from doing what had to be done to stop the hazing.”

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t understand why he didn’t just go to the police from the beginning.”

  “Diehl saw a kid almost have an asthma attack because he was forced to do jumping jacks with a gag in his mouth—and he said nothing,” I answered. “It’s like he had to make the fact that there was hazing come out without actually having a face-to-face confrontation with anyone.”

  “Wimp, wimp, wimp,” Playback called from his living room perch.

  “Exactly,” Joe said. He stood up and wandered into the kitchen.

  On the TV screen, the first newscaster was back, talking about how Mr. Diehl’s case had prompted some talk of putting antihazing legislation on the books.

  “I wonder if laws would help,” I said. “The thing about hazing is that it’s so secret. And it’s gone on forever, so everyone acts like it’s just part of going to school. This guy Douglas we met, his dad was one hundred percent behind the hazing.”