Curse of the Black-Eyed Kids (Mount Herod Legends Book 2)

by Corey J. Popp

  “What are you guys talking about?” I ask.

  Mrs. McGovern shoots me a rancid look and points a long wrinkled finger in my direction. “You hush, missy!”

  Missy? Twice in one day. Really?

  I return to her a look twice as rancid as the one she delivered to me.

  “Mrs. McGovern,” Jeremy says, “that’s not a telescope. It’s an antenna.”

  The potato chip can.

  I hear the legs of Dooley’s chair push against the kitchen’s linoleum floor. Seconds later, he steps into the living room, displaying a sudden interest in a conversation he was content to ignore moments ago. He wears a marinara-splattered white bib and holds a fork on which is twisted a knot of spaghetti.

  “What kind of antenna?” Dooley asks.

  Mrs. McGovern looks at her son, then snips, “Yes, what kind of antenna?”

  Jeremy throws his head back and sighs like a man forced to confess his sin.

  “It’s a Wi-Fi antenna,” he says.

  “A what?” Mrs. McGovern snaps. “What does that mean, Dooley?”

  “He steals our Internet,” Dooley says dryly. Then he abruptly looks puzzled. He says to Jeremy, “How did you guess the password?”

  Jeremy’s tone turns cocky. “I didn’t have to. You’re using encryption that’s, like, a hundred years old. Did you buy your router on an online auction for five bucks or something?”

  Dooley scowls.

  Jeremy shrugs. “I hacked it in seconds.”

  “You little thieves,” Mrs. McGovern hisses. “Dooley, how much has this cost us? What do the Coopers owe us? Should I call the police?”

  Jeremy shakes his head. “I use it less than a half hour a day. Not even every day. I use it for homework. We can’t afford Internet.”

  “Doesn’t one of the dozens of government programs you people leech off society pay for something like that?” Mrs. McGovern says bitterly. “Are you stealing from me twice, once on my taxes and once again with your little antenna?”

  “If you don’t like us, why did you agree to watch us for Grandma?” I ask.

  “I’m not a woman to leave children out in the cold.”

  A regular saint.

  I fold my arms and lean back into the davenport, trying to crawl further inside my coat. As far as I’m concerned, this silly lecture is over.

  Mrs. McGovern straightens herself. “There’ll be no supper for either of you.”

  I wish I had my backpack. It’s full of food and money. I still have my house key, so Jeremy and I could always go back home if we really wanted to. Part of me weighs the option of staying with the McGoverns one more night or returning to Grandma’s house against her own wishes. It’s not an option I consider very long, especially with the black-eyed kids still out there somewhere.

  “Dooley, are you finished eating?” Mrs. McGovern asks.

  Dooley puts the fork in his mouth, chews, swallows. “Yes, I’m all done.”

  Mrs. McGovern looks at Jeremy and me. “Go clean up the kitchen.”

  “For real?” I ask. “You want us to clean up your kitchen after a meal we don’t even get to eat?”

  “Let the punishment fit the crime, young lady. Dooley, I’ll be in my bedroom watching my shows. I’ve had more of these two than I can handle for a lifetime. I’m shipping them back off to Rosie tomorrow. In the meantime, they’re your problem, not mine.”

  With that, Mrs. McGovern disappears down the hall to her bedroom, leaving Jeremy and me alone in the living room in awkward silence with awkward Dooley, who’s still wearing that stupid marinara-splattered bib.

  After an absurd duration of silence, I finally shoot daggers from my eyes at pathetic Dooley McGovern. “Are you really going to make us clean up your kitchen?”

  “I don’t think you have a choice,” he says, shrugging and nodding in the direction of his mother’s bedroom. “But I’ll help.”

  And so he does. Moving at turtle-like speed, the three of us begin to clean up the remnants of the spaghetti dinner Jeremy and I missed. Jeremy has removed his coat and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair, but I refuse to take any action which may indicate I consider this place home, even for one more night.

  There is plenty of leftover spaghetti and marinara, so Jeremy and I defiantly prepare and devour two plates of lukewarm spaghetti while we’re cleaning up. Spineless Dooley pretends not to notice, maybe for our privacy but more than likely for his own defense, yet I can clearly see we captured either his respect or flat out reverence for so blatantly disobeying his mother.

  After the leftovers have been retired to the refrigerator, the dishes are washed, and the kitchen is clean, Dooley stuffs his hands in his pockets and says to Jeremy and me, “Do you want to see what I have in the basement?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE BASEMENT SMELLS of model glue and wet plaster. Scattered across a workbench and the floor lie plastic molds, empty cardboard shipping boxes full of packing peanuts, cans of spray paint, scraps of wood, and rolls of what appear to be green outdoor carpet—and so much more that I can’t identify.

  “I can run seven lines at once,” Dooley says over the whir of his model trains.

  He wears an engineer’s cap and sits on a tall stool in front of a control panel which looks like it could fly a commercial jet. A replica landscape spanning five enormous tables stretches out before us. Lights glow in the windows and doors of miniature buildings. Streetlights line small-scale roads. Dooley has even glued stiff tiny people to the sidewalks, some detailed with grocery bags and leashed pets.

  “I hand paint it all,” Dooley says proudly.

  “Even the tiny people?” I ask, honestly astonished.

  He tips his head as if disappointed by my question. “All of it. See there on the other side of the mountain? It’s fall in that village. I have yellow and orange trees. I set up individual dioramas, and each one is a different scene. See there in the hills? That’s a town from the 1800s. Like an Old West town. I can create whatever I feel like, and I tie all of the dioramas together with the trains. It’s a world free from the constraints of time. The trains are the only constant. They’re timeless.”

  Dooley’s eyes glow with excitement.

  “I’m working on a modern city with skyscrapers,” he adds, pointing to the far table. I keep it all to scale, so the buildings will be huge.”

  This is how Dooley escapes, it occurs to me. These trains, this hobby, they are his stucco home in Southern California.

  Jeremy’s eyes turn as excited as Dooley’s. “Can I drive one of the trains?”

  Dooley appears shocked and must collect himself with countless rapid eye blinks before answering, “No, but you can watch.” Dooley indicates two nearby stools using his elbow because his hands are tied to the operation of the trains.

  There is no school in the morning because it is Friday night, so I am content to sit in the basement until daybreak as long as it means I don’t have to chance another run-in with old Ennis McGovern upstairs. Jeremy and I drag the stools over to the tracks and take a seat overlooking Dooley’s admittedly impressive magnum opus.

  Thirty minutes later, Dooley has the basement flooded with the deafening buzz of all seven trains running at once.

  Jeremy and I have moved around the miniature landscape numerous times, catching different views of the elaborate scene. We mime, mimic, and mock the miniature lives depicted in the dioramas. To Dooley’s dismay, we assign silly names to his towns as well as most of the people walking the streets within them.

  We have Mrs. Lazybones walking down Wetwilly Lane in Nosepick City. Johnny Highwaters visits the post office in Boyhowdy Valley. And, of course, Captain Blindspot pilots his barge, The Sink-or-Swim, a little too close to Getoverit Falls.

  The laughs and giggles eventually pass—we even see Dooley crack a smile or two—and hours later, sometime close to midnight, as I sit snuggled within the warmth of my coat, the roaring white noise of the trains lulls me into a sort of twilight sleep. Even
the periodic raspy bellow of the train horns fade into my dreams. My head bobs beneath the thin shroud between sleep and consciousness.

  But I snap awake when Dooley says, “What’s wrong with your brother?”

  Across the basement, Jeremy sits wide-eyed and trancelike. His lips part and crease and gather and frown while his head lolls and rolls. I jump up and hurry to his side, still confused by my sudden rush to full consciousness. I place my hands on Jeremy’s shoulders and shake him gently, calling his name over the clatter of the trains.

  Abruptly, the overhead lights flash on and off three times.

  Dooley cuts the power to the trains. The basement slips into an eerie quiet. “Yes, mother?” he calls up the stairs.

  At the same time, Jeremy’s awareness returns with a sudden jerk, like a marionette suddenly pulled up by its strings. He looks up at me with milky, dazed eyes.

  “Are you OK?” I ask him.

  “Did I fall asleep?” Jeremy slurs.

  Mrs. McGovern shouts down the basement stairs from the kitchen, “Come up here, please, Dooley.”

  Dooley stands, pulls off his engineer’s cap, and makes his way to the stairs. Standing at the bottom he says, “Are the trains too loud?”

  “I need you,” she calls down again. “Come up here.”

  Reluctantly, shoulders slumped, Dooley stomps up the stairs, leaving Jeremy and I alone in the basement.

  “Come on,” I say, pulling Jeremy to a standing position. “We’re not staying down here alone. Are you feeling OK?”

  “I think so,” Jeremy says, “I fell asleep, I think.”

  His speech is no longer slurred, and he’s more alert now. I steady him with one hand on his back as we climb the steps.

  “Your eyes were wide open,” I tell him. “I don’t think you were sleeping. It looked like you were talking.”

  Or whispering.

  Just as I fully digest what has occurred to me, we emerge from the basement and step into the kitchen.

  I hear Mrs. McGovern say to Dooley, “They say they’ve been in some kind of accident.”

  A bolt of fear shoots through me as everything comes together. The noise of the trains had drowned out all other sounds in the basement, including whispers and doorbells.

  I look to my left, and on the other side of Mrs. McGovern and Dooley stand the two black-eyed kids, their faces pointed toward the living room floor. They’re in the house.

  Jeremy drops a profane word I’ve never heard him say before. His voice trembling, he follows it with, “They followed us here, Abby. Three locks on the front door and that crazy old coot just let them in.”

  Mrs. McGovern and Dooley stare at us wide-eyed and slack-jawed in reaction to Jeremy’s profanity. Behind them, the black-eyed kids raise their heads to fully reveal to us their solid, sunken, soulless black eyes.

  The black-eyed girl reaches behind herself, waist level. The black-eyed boy reaches behind the lapels of his wool coat. When their hands reappear, they are each holding two sickle-shaped knives.

  Twirling the menacing knives like batons, the black-eyed boy says in a voice far too deep for his apparent age, “We are the Lord and Lady of the Manor. Shall we take a ride to Tyburn?”

  Mrs. McGovern and Dooley turn to the sound of the black-eyed boy’s voice. The four knives slice through the air, whistling like whips. I don’t know what becomes of the McGoverns, I just know the fact they’re standing between us and the black-eyed kids buys Jeremy and me precious seconds.

  “Run!” I scream, grabbing Jeremy by the hand and pulling him to the only exit, the hallway to the McGoverns’ bedrooms.

  We run down the unfamiliar hallway, our shoes hammering against the old hardwood floor. Doors flash by on either side of us, some open, some closed—a bathroom, a small linen closet, a bedroom to my left.

  I fixate on a single open doorway straight ahead at the end of the hall. A flickering, dying table lamp lights the room. I can see an unmade bed through the doorway and, on the other side of it, window curtains.

  Bursting into the room, I swing Jeremy in by the hand. I turn to see something impossible and terrifying coming down the hall. Defying gravity, the black-eyed boy runs full throttle along the ceiling, red-smeared silver knives flashing in his fists. The girl gallops behind him on the floor, teeth gritted, staring at me with what look like sightless charcoal eyes.

  I slam the door shut and fumble the lock. “Help me!” I call to Jeremy.

  “Move!” he yells.

  I step out of the way just as he tips over an enormous highboy dresser. I stumble back and watch it land in front of the door with a thunderclap so loud it sounds like the dresser split in two. Its drawers burst open and Mrs. McGovern’s clothing and jewelry spill across the carpet.

  Something like a truck crashes against the door from the other side, shaking the entire wall. The wood frame alongside the doorknob splits, but it does not give. The old heavy door is solid wood and so is the antique dresser. Jeremy bought us some more time, but I have no idea how much.

  “The window,” I say.

  I shortcut the room by running across the top of the bed. The old woman’s mattress is as firm as a rock beneath my shoes, and I swipe the curtains open as soon as my feet hit the floor on the other side. Instantly, Jeremy is at my side, clutching the window latch, twisting at the fat brass lock as it drags against the dry frame.

  We both turn to the door at the sound of another boom. The upper panel bulges and cracks. Pale splinters stab out against the dark stain.

  “Hurry,” I say. “They’re coming through.”

  The brass latch finally gives beneath Jeremy’s strength. Together we push the heavy window up on its tracks. The fluttering curtains wrap themselves around us in the sudden rush of a cold wind.

  “I won’t fit,” Jeremy realizes after sizing up the window.

  Something like an explosion erupts behind us. Four pale hands appear through a splintered seam down the center of the door. The hands begin ripping at the door, pulling away shards of solid wood, literally tearing through the bedroom door.

  “You’ll fit,” I assure him. “One way or another.”

  Jeremy yanks the billowing curtains down. The curtain rod snaps and tumbles away in pieces. He flings the knotted mass onto the bed while I punch out the window screen.

  “Abby, I won’t fit,” Jeremy says again.

  “Just go!” I yell.

  I grab him by his shirt collar and force his head and shoulders through the window.

  It is, in fact, a tight fit, but Jeremy’s going through not by the laws of physics, but by the Law of Abby Cooper’s Determination.

  While Jeremy pulls and claws his way out the window, I push his hips and thighs. The window is our only chance of escape, and if the black-eyed kids get through the door before we’re out, someone will eventually find us both filleted in old Ennis McGovern’s bedroom, me in a puddle on the floor and Jeremy halfway out the window, cut in half at the waist, legs in the bedroom, torso in the yard.

  But Jeremy’s big body finally drops through the window just as the black-eyed kids destroy the remains of the bedroom door, sending dozens of wood fragments into the room. I shield my face with my hands and turn away as sharp thick splinters spray against my shoulders and back.

  When the cloud of debris clears, I take one last glance back toward the doorway before diving out the window. But the black-eyed kids are gone, seemingly abandoning the chase just when they had broken through—unless they’re up the hall preparing to hurdle the dresser lying across the doorway.

  “Abby, hurry!” Jeremy calls from outside.

  I bail out the window head first.

  A large rose bush beneath the window cushions my landing, but the soft landing does nothing to counter the jagged thorns which seize and slash my clothing and flesh.

  If the defenses of nature sting like this, what do the knives of the murdering black-eyed kids feel like?

  I tumble out of the McGoverns’ rose bush an
d roll to a stop next to Jeremy, who’s kneeling on the dew-covered grass. Grabbing him by the arm, I pull myself to a sitting position.

  “Get up and run, Jeremy!”

  He does not move. “Abby, look.”

  I trace his line of sight six feet behind me to the two black-eyed kids standing in the yard. Their forms are silhouetted against the blue-black midnight sky. They tower over us like statues. We’re defenseless, trapped on the ground. By the time we get to our feet, they will slice us to ribbons.

  My heart tries to pound its way out of my chest as if it could somehow break free and save itself, leaving the rest of my body to die in the grass. A cold October gust suddenly blows against my face, and I gasp. I look to the black-eyed kids’ hands for the knives, expecting to see the silver blades flashing in the moonlight, but they have put away their weapons, and their arms hang limp at their sides instead.

  “We could end it here, sister,” the black-eyed boy says.

  “The rules are the rules, brother,” the black-eyed girl replies.

  “Seconds. That’s all we need,” the black-eyed boy says.

  “But the rules are the rules, brother.”

  “This night is another waste,” he says, disgusted.

  “Tomorrow, brother.”

  He replies, “And where will they be tomorrow?” The black-eyed boy cocks his head and directs his next words at Jeremy and me. “Who will we have to kill to get to you next time? Which new door will you hide behind? This one or that one? Somewhere in between? All around?”

  The black-eyed kids’ tones are different than previous nights. They’ve given up the charade of being victims. They make no mention of an accident or being cold or needing help.

  Based on what the black-eyed boy has said, I assume the McGoverns lie dead or gravely injured in the house.

  “What happens now?” I ask boldly, struggling to understand their cryptic conversation. “Are you going to kill us?”

  “They can’t,” Jeremy says with stunning confidence. “We’re no longer in the house they were invited into. ‘Rules are rules,’ like she said.”