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

by Corey J. Popp

  I continue, “They are a boy and a girl dressed all in black.”

  Jeremy, quickly catching on and stepping forward, says, “The boy wears a cloth cap with a brim, like an old newsboy’s hat. The girl wears shiny black shoes. They say they’re cold and hungry and there’s been some kind of accident. They try to hypnotize us with their voices. They’re like Sirens.”

  Spencer still looks unimpressed.

  I begin to panic. My mind races. “What proof do you want? Each of them carries two knives with sickle-shaped blades.”

  Spencer shakes his head, turns his back, and walks away. “Everyone knows all of that. I know what you guys talk about at your schools.” Spencer disappears around the corner of the shed. I’ve no doubt he’s heading for a telephone or to get George.

  I contemplate jumping the fence. The chain link gate is much shorter than the wrought-iron fence surrounding the graveyard, and it doesn’t have the spiked finials on top. I don’t know if Jeremy could get over, but just like we got him through Ennis McGovern’s bedroom window, we’d somehow get him over the gate.

  But I’ve no idea where Jeremy and I would go next. We have no food and no money and no relatives or friends to run to. We’re trapped, figuratively and literally.

  From nowhere, something occurs to me. Something I’d nearly forgotten, yet it’s the one thing which could convince Spencer we’re not liars, the one thing which never gets mentioned in schoolyards because no one else knows about it.

  Believing Spencer is still within earshot, I call out, “Darkest, blackest, maddest, saddest! Once caught by Hell’s darkest, blackest eyes, life ends with my maddest, saddest cries!”

  The cemetery hushes. Songbirds which had been singing moments ago suddenly silence themselves. Somewhere in the distance, the metal eyelets on a raised flag clang against a flagpole. A puff of wind stirs up strewn dead leaves and sends them scratching and rustling along the fence.

  “He’s gone,” Jeremy says. “Now what?”

  I turn to Jeremy, but before I have a chance to answer him, a voice booms from behind me.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  I whirl back to the gate to find Spencer has returned.

  “Where did you hear that?” he asks again.

  “Let us out and I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me or I’ll call the cops.”

  “No, you won’t. You know we’re telling the truth now. The poem’s not part of the black-eyed kids legend. No one else knows about it.”

  Spencer eyes Jeremy. “What did you say people call you?”

  “Coop,” Jeremy says shyly.

  “No one really calls him that,” I say with an eye roll.

  “They do, too, Abby! People call me that all the time.”

  Spencer says, “Coop, where did you guys hear the poem?”

  It’s a gutsy move, what Spencer just did—to try to talk around me while I’m standing right here. He doesn’t know how well I’ve trained Jeremy. He doesn’t know about the short leash I’ve fastened to my brother’s collar.

  “Let us out,” Jeremy replies, lockstep.

  I smile at Spencer. Nodding slowly, I say again, “Let us out.”

  “You could be murderers,” Spencer says.

  “Yeah, well, we’re not,” I say with attitude. I realize how foolish it must have sounded and I change my tone to something more sincere before continuing on. “Look, like you, we know the black-eyed kids are real. They’re trying to kill my brother and me, and they’re eliminating anyone who gets in their way. They put my Grandma and her friend in the hospital two nights ago, and last night, they killed my neighbors.” I watch Spencer’s face for any sign of sympathy. In one final effort to coax his trust I admit something I don’t usually admit. “I need help.”

  Spencer studies me for a moment before he shoves his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a key. “The first thing you tell me is where you heard that poem.”

  “Deal,” I say as he slips the key into the padlock and gives it a twist.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE INTERIOR OF the garden shed is gloomy and soaked with the stench of motor oil. A ray of sunshine tries to slice its way in through the maintenance door window, but a hazy film covering the glass diffuses it to a milky cloud. The dreary sunlight reveals only the slow motion, mid-air dance of dust and pollen; the rest of the shed lies in shadows. Despite the fact it’s not heated, I welcome the relative warmth the shed provides, having just spent the cold October night outside.

  “Historians believe Tyburn poetry arose at Newgate Prison in the 13th century,” Spencer says from the seat of the parked lawn tractor we saw George riding yesterday.

  Jeremy and I sit next to each other on a workbench pushed against the back wall of the shed, our feet dangling over the concrete floor. The three of us have been talking for nearly an hour. We told Spencer everything we could remember from the past week, including how Jeremy inexplicably recites the poem in his sleep just before the black-eyed kids arrive. Spencer was fascinated by the spider attack in Grandma’s front yard and the black-eyed boy’s antigravity stunt in the McGoverns’ hallway, but the fact we knew the poem astonished him.

  Exactly how he knows the poem remains a mystery for now. In all the time we have been talking, Spencer revealed no details about the death of his brother or father, and he never brought up his mother. For the moment, I decide it’s best not to pry—but if he doesn’t eventually volunteer the information, he will leave me no choice but to wrench it out.

  What Spencer did tell us was that in the three years since his family’s encounter with the black-eyed kids, he focused his study on the history of Tyburn Village with the hope that something in English lore or history would provide the key to unlocking the mystery of who the black-eyed kids are and what they want.

  “Are they linked, the poem and the black-eyed kids?” I ask.

  “For hundreds of years London’s criminals went to Newgate Prison to await their death sentence. When the day came, they weren’t executed within the city. Instead, they were taken in groups by wagon to the nearby village of Tyburn to be hanged on the gallows.”

  “The Tyburn Tree,” Jeremy says.

  “Medieval drawings show it was huge, a killing machine,” Spencer says.

  “We saw pictures on the Internet,” I say. “Jeremy found out Mount Herod had its own Tyburn Tree right here in the cemetery.”

  Spencer nods. “Most local historians know Mount Herod had a Tyburn Tree, but few give it little thought because it was so long ago. Honestly, hanging people wasn’t all that unusual back then, but the link to Tyburn is a much bigger deal. The history of England’s Tyburn Village goes back thousands of years. In fact, Tyburn Village might have existed before the Egyptians even built the Great Pyramid.”

  “According to who?” Jeremy asks.

  “According to Oswulf,” Spencer says.

  “Who’s Oswulf?” I ask.

  The shed falls eerily quiet as the earth itself seems to shudder. I sense some great someone or something from history has groaned in infuriation, as if unveiled against its will.

  “An ancient monolith stood in the village of Tyburn,” Spencer says, “a crudely carved obelisk that had been given the name Oswulf’s Stone in the Middle Ages. The Tyburn Tree was built within view of it.”

  Jeremy leans forward, deeply interested in what Spencer just said. “I’ve heard of Oswulf’s Stone. It disappeared, didn’t it?”

  This idea strikes me as ridiculous. “How does a monolith disappear?”

  “Monoliths aren’t always as big as the name implies. So, at first, they simply buried it,” Spencer says. “Officially, no one knows why. Twenty years later, they dug it up. Again, officially, no one knows why.”

  “Something tells me you know the unofficial reasons,” I say.

  Spencer shows me a crooked smile. “Sometime in the early Middle Ages, rumors of terrible supernatural events began to spread in and around London. Several mediums…
”

  “Mediums?” The word strikes me oddly.

  “Psychics,” Spencer clarifies. “Seers. Clairvoyants. That kind of thing.”

  “OK,” I say, apprehensively. I’m suddenly concerned just how bizarre this story could turn.

  “Anyway,” Spencer continues, “these mediums attributed Oswulf’s Stone to somehow being the source of it all, but the mediums were accused of practicing witchcraft and put to death—on the Tyburn Tree, of course.

  “What followed was hundreds of years of escalating paranormal activity. It was actually Queen Victoria who finally issued the secret order to bury the stone sometime in the mid 1800s in an attempt to stop the bizarre events. It stayed buried for the duration of the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny, even the entire U.S. Civil War. In the meantime, the paranormal activity continued to escalate in London and the surrounding villages. When the dust of all three wars finally settled, the queen ordered the stone dug up and destroyed. A small group of historians, who thought the stone’s link to the paranormal was nonsense, got wind of the plan and tried to prevent its destruction by publishing an article in an archaeological journal. Within weeks of the article’s publication, Oswulf’s Stone disappeared before it could be destroyed.”

  The information Spencer just unloaded overwhelms me. I have so many questions I barely know where to start. “What kind of supernatural events were happening?”

  “Pretty much every paranormal story that ever came out of Medieval Europe. Hauntings and visitations, the appearance of bizarre animals, mysterious deaths, encounters with odd individuals, extra-sensory perceptions, levitation, human bilocation...but most notable for the three of us is a story which told of mysterious black-eyed children who’d visit doorsteps begging to be let in, after which one or all members of the family were murdered.”

  Jeremy says, “There must be something they want, something they’re after.”

  “Or someone,” Spencer suggests.

  Jeremy and I exchange frightened glances. The twisted story still leaves me with many questions, but one in particular stands at the front of my mind. “What does any of this have to do with Mount Herod? England is halfway around the world from here.”

  “I think it would be better to show you than to tell you,” Spencer says.

  “Where do we need to go?” I ask.

  “To the oldest part of the cemetery.”

  “It’s creepy back there,” Jeremy says.

  Spencer looks at Jeremy curiously.

  “We came in that way last night,” I say, explaining Jeremy’s reaction. “Back by Tyburn Gate.”

  “No one goes back there much anymore. You must have walked the service road along the bluff. Just how far did you guys walk last night?”

  “Too far,” Jeremy says. “But before we go back to Creepsville, can we eat first? I’m starving.”

  Jeremy’s complaint causes me to take a sudden accusatory tone with Spencer. “Hey, I had food in my backpack. I left it by a tree at Cattail Pond yesterday. What did you do with it?”

  “Relax. It’s in my car.”

  I narrow my eyes at Spencer. “I knew you took it.”

  “Would you rather I left it overnight for the raccoons?”

  Jeremy interrupts our petty squabble. “You own a car?”

  Spencer must be older than me by nearly a year if he already has his driver’s license...and a car.

  “It’s actually my uncle’s car, if it matters.”

  “The priest?” Jeremy says.

  I knock Jeremy with my shoulder for revealing the details of what we already know about Spencer.

  Spencer now narrows his eyes at me. “Done your homework on me, have you?”

  “Not me,” I say, motioning to Jeremy with a tip of my head. “He’s the stalker of the family.”

  “Am not,” Jeremy says, pouting.

  Spencer climbs out of the seat of the lawn tractor and heads for the maintenance door. “It’s too bad people don’t talk to me as much as they do about me.” His tone tastes bitter, causing awkwardness in the shed.

  Trying to spring the sudden tension, I say, “You have to admit, it’s a strange story.”

  “I admit it,” he says. Then, looking back at me from the maintenance door, he stabs, “Welcome to the club, by the way. Wait here and I’ll get your backpack.”

  The door slams shut behind him. I bow my head at the realization he’s just confirmed what I wanted to avoid from the very beginning. I am officially a new bud on the Mount Herod grapevine of weirdness.

  Jeremy jumps down from the workbench, causing a puff of his teenage-boy BO to blow into my face. I cup my hand over my mouth and nose. “Oh, Jeremy, you stink!”

  His shoulders drop. “We just spent the whole night walking across Mount Herod and then slept outside. You don’t exactly smell like roses yourself, Abby.”

  Duly noted.

  While we wait for Spencer to return, we sit in our own stink and discuss methods we could use to contact Grandma to let her know we’re alive and unharmed without giving away our location to the police.

  A phone call is too complex. First, we have to find a place to make a call. Calling 911 from the gas station last night was easy. It was a free call from a public phone in the middle of the night, and our faces had not yet been plastered on every TV across Mount Herod. Even if we can get to a phone without being seen, who would we call? We don’t even know if Grandma was released from the hospital yet. If that’s not enough, Jeremy reminds me about caller ID and other call tracking methods including something called triangulation, a technology police can use to zero-in on mobile phone signals, not that we’d even be able to get a hold of a mobile phone. Regardless, a telephone call is out.

  A letter presents similar problems but in different ways. Finding a pencil and paper could be a challenge, but we could probably locate something crude in the shed. It’s the delivery which throws a wrench into the plan. It would take at least a day to get it stamped and delivered, the practicality of which I’m not certain, and the risk of being seen while purchasing stamps and mailing it is high. We could ask Spencer to mail it for us, but Jeremy tells me about yet another tracking method police use called the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, which allegedly photographs and tracks every piece of mail which travels through the postal system. The police could potentially trace our letter to Spencer and subsequently to us.

  Which leads us to the discussion of witnesses. In particular, there are two who concern us greatly: the bus driver and George. Both saw us in or near the cemetery yesterday and could recognize us the second our faces appear on their TVs.

  It’s possible the bus driver may not remember us; he sees hundreds of people a day and every face and stop must blend together by the end of his shift. Still, a pair of lone siblings like us could stand out. Of greater risk than the bus driver is George, who clearly saw and even spoke to us.

  Neither of these people have any reason to believe we would return to the cemetery, but they do present a dangerous trail of bread crumbs for the police. It may take a few hours for the calls to start rolling in to the police station, but remaining in the cemetery for even a few more hours could be a risk we can’t take.

  In the end, we decide it’s safest not to contact Grandma, at least not yet, but George and the other potential witnesses collectively present a problem we have to deal with sooner rather than later. Exactly how to deal with it, we have no idea.

  Fifteen minutes after our conversation ends, Spencer returns with my backpack. I check the food and money. Once I confirm they’re both still there, I ask Spencer about George.

  “George left last night for Chicago,” he says. “He visits his grandchildren once or twice a month down there on the weekends. I doubt George has seen or heard the news yet.”

  “Even so, we’re running out of time,” I say.

  “Yes, and I’m sticking my neck way out to help you.”

  Which no one would do if there wasn’t something in it for t
hemselves. For Jeremy and my own safety, I need to know Spencer’s motivation, so I immediately call him out on it. “You must have something to gain by helping us.”

  “You’d already be in handcuffs if I didn’t,” he confirms. “Like I said, it’s better for me to show you, so just keep your heads covered with your hoods when we leave here. We don’t have many tourists this time of year, but we can’t take a chance someone could recognize you.”

  “You get tourists here?” Jeremy asks.

  “Chokecherry Bluff Cemetery is one of the largest and oldest garden cemeteries in the country,” Spencer says. “And it’s full of neo-Gothic monuments. People come from across the country to see the landscaping and architecture…when it’s warm.”

  This is the only reason I’ve heard so far to be thankful for the cold winds which have been nipping at my skin the last twelve hours.

  Before we leave the shed, Jeremy puts on my torn coat, which I’ve decided is actually now his torn coat. After digging out breakfast for Jeremy and myself, I sling my recovered backpack over my shoulder and the three of us head for the oldest part of the cemetery to see whatever it is Spencer wants us to see. I pull my hood up, both to protect my face and ears from the wind as well as hide my identity from anyone who may spot us on our walk. I make Jeremy do the same.

  While we walk, Jeremy washes down a sleeve of mini donuts with a can of vegetable juice, and I finish off two apples.

  “We’re going to need more food,” I say, tossing the last apple core into a bed of brown pine needles lying under a nearby grove of evergreens.

  When Spencer says nothing, I become more blunt. “Can you bring us more food later?”

  “You mean, like, grocery shop for you?”

  “Well, I’m not asking you to cook up a ham, but yes, if you could bring us some peanut butter and bread so we don’t die out here, that’d be great. At least until we figure out where we’re going to go from here.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose.”

  His reluctance is frustrating, and it leads me back to a question he’s skirted once already.

  “Why are you helping us?” I ask. “And don’t tell me again you need to show us, because we’re already on the way.”