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

by Corey J. Popp

  Sideways glances, awkward stares, and behind-the-back whispers followed Spencer everywhere, especially the school hallways. He became a social outcast, friendless, teased, even feared. Hoping to bring Spencer some emotional relief, his uncle ultimately pulled him out of the Mount Herod public school system and sent him to the privately-run Saint Thomas High School.

  And that’s when Spencer’s story took a bizarre twist.

  “About two years ago, while visiting Mom at Saint Thomas, my uncle left my mother and me alone for some personal time. I’m not allowed to be out of his sight, but he gives us space and privacy each time to talk about private things. That’s when she secretly told me she had recently had an unscheduled session with a new psychiatrist, a particular priest, who, unlike all the others, believed in the black-eyed kids. He told her the key to the puzzle lie in Chokecherry Bluff Cemetery. There wasn’t anything she could do locked up in the hospital, so she asked me to research the cemetery so we could clear her name and get her out of the hospital. She said my uncle was too pragmatic and would dismiss her request as just another delusion, so she asked for my help instead.”

  When Spencer said this, my first thought was Katrina could not be trusted and her request probably was delusional. Maybe this mysterious priest didn’t even exist. Now, here she was sending her own son on a crazy, wild goose chase out into Mount Herod.

  But it turns out Saint Thomas High School shares its library system with the university of the same name, and young Spencer Hawkins suddenly had over two centuries of historic Mount Herod records at his disposal including letters, newspaper articles, diaries, photographs, travel documents, and biographies. No single source to all his understanding existed. To his knowledge, no other person had ever aligned the texts in such a way with such an open mind.

  “The history of the city is very dark,” Spencer said. “I began to visit the cemetery to learn more. I didn’t learn much during my first couple visits, but then the cemetery posted a job for part-time groundskeeping help. It was an excuse to spend more time here and get paid. With my uncle’s permission and help, I got the job, but it was George who helped me find the former location of the Tyburn Tree.”

  “Does George know the real reason why you’re here?” I asked.

  “No. When I asked him where the cemetery’s Tyburn Tree had been, I’m sure he assumed I was just curious. He’s a third generation groundskeeper here, so he knows the layout of the cemetery like the back of his hand. He told me where to find the clearing. The first time I stepped into it, I saw the stone, and I remembered what I read about Oswulf’s Stone being in Tyburn, and that’s when I started going back through the records and putting together all the pieces.”

  “Did you ever tell your uncle what you learned?”

  “No way,” Spencer said. “The risk is too high. If he and the doctors knew Mom was influencing me from the psychiatric hospital, I’d never be allowed to see her again. They’d probably confine her and send me to even more counseling than they have already.”

  “‘More than they have?’”

  “I still see a grief counselor sometimes. I go every other month or so. Whenever I need to talk to somebody other than Uncle Carl.”

  Having spent some time with a counselor myself, that moment with Spencer was perhaps the first hint of a connection I’d ever felt with anyone my own age. It was strangely comforting.

  “I admit, Oswulf’s Stone landing in Mount Herod is an odd stretch of the imagination,” Spencer said, returning to the topic, “but I’ve seen and read the minutes from the common council meeting that placed Oswulf’s Stone in the cemetery. As I said before, the council had no idea what it was, and the minutes actually refer to it as ‘Herod’s Obelisk,’ which is what the cemetery staff still call it today. I also saw the cargo manifest for the Herodion III, the Great Lakes schooner that brought Oswulf’s Stone to Mount Herod in 1870. The manifest lists one item vaguely as a ‘sandstone sculpture.’ The timing is perfect, and the place of origin is ‘Europe’, which is suspiciously broad, don’t you think?”

  “But it’s not as definite as you made it sound back at the stone,” I said, a bit accusingly. “You don’t know for sure the ‘sandstone sculpture’ was Herod’s Obelisk, which means you can’t know for sure Herod’s Obelisk is Oswulf’s Stone. We could be talking about three completely different objects.”

  Spencer paused before saying, “That’s why it was done the way it was. Solomon Herod stole a four-thousand-year-old monolith from England and needed to cover it up. And for what it’s worth, according to the ship’s log, the Herodion III left port in Quebec with a crew of eleven but arrived in Mount Herod with a crew of just three.”

  I shivered.

  “What happened to the rest of the crew?” Jeremy asked softly, as if speaking quietly could hide the fear in his voice.

  “I need the captain’s journal to know for sure, but that’s one document I never found. The point is, if Oswulf’s Stone was the source of paranormal activity around London, it followed the stone right onto the boat.”

  “OK, you’re right, it’s all very sketchy,” I admitted. “So, let’s assume the monolith in the cemetery is Oswulf’s Stone and the black-eyed kids are here to…” I can barely say the word, “kill…Jeremy and me because we pose some kind of threat to it in the far-off, distant future or whatever. Where do we go from here? What do we do about it?”

  “About a year ago, I came across a translation of an Old English poem called Edgar. Someone anonymously donated it to the Saint Thomas library in the 1900s in the form of a manuscript called The Edgar Manuscript.”

  “Is it a Tyburn poem?” Jeremy asked.

  “No, it’s what is known as a medieval epic poem, like Beowulf, if you’ve ever heard of it.”

  “I have,” Jeremy said. “Beowulf defeats a monster named Grendel that was terrorizing a king.”

  “The names Beowulf and Oswulf sound suspiciously alike,” I said, realizing just how neatly everything was aligning.

  Spencer nodded and smiled. “Both names are Anglo-Saxon. Scholars estimate Beowulf was written in the Middle Ages around 800 A.D. The author is unknown, but experts believe he was probably a monk due to religious references in the poem and the fact monks were one of the few literate people back then. The Edgar Manuscript has similarities to Beowulf and tells the story of a cursed stone and a boy. Sound familiar? I believe the author of Beowulf and the author of Edgar are one and the same, but all I have is a translated manuscript, not the original—though it may prove helpful to us.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  Spencer stopped walking and locked his gray eyes on mine. “The poem tells how to defeat the children with eyes of midnight, the entities you and I call the black-eyed kids.”

  An electric bolt of exhilaration shot up my spine, and I lost my composure. I grabbed Spencer’s shoulders as my heels came up off the ground. “Spencer, I need to see that poem!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AS I SIT on the workbench in the shed, waiting for Spencer to return, the minutes drag at half speed. I lie down on the wooden surface and curl up, drawing my knees to my ribs. I doze for a little while, but it is a restless sleep pocked with weird dreams and two or three foggy awakenings.

  At last I open my eyes to the thump of metal and a blurry scene. Jeremy sits on the lawn tractor with his back to me, examining the controls, entertaining himself. At least he’s no longer picking his nose. The sound I heard must have been him either getting on the tractor or toying with the controls.

  I don’t feel rested, and I have lost my sense of time. I’m not wearing a watch, and there’s no clock in the shed. I have no idea how long Spencer’s been gone, nor the time of day, but I’m guessing it’s now well into the afternoon.

  I detect the sound of pea gravel crunching under shoes. A shadow touches the hazy window of the maintenance door. Someone’s coming up the service driveway.

  “Jeremy,” I say under my breath, sitting up.

&n
bsp; He turns to me. I nod towards the door. The shadow grows larger and the footsteps grow louder.

  “Do you think it’s Spencer?” he asks.

  “Spencer told us George is in Chicago. It has to be Spencer.”

  The silhouette encompasses the whole window now. It dips out of view briefly then returns. From the door comes the metallic sound of a key sliding into the lock.

  Jeremy drums his fingertips on his palms. “Other people work here,” he says. “Other people probably have keys.”

  The door begins to open, and due either to irrational fear or nerves tipped past the point of shattering, we both panic.

  “Hide!” Jeremy hisses, and we dive behind the lawn tractor’s enormous canvas leaf bagger.

  The door opens and closes followed by a few seconds of silence.

  From the front of the shed, I hear Spencer’s voice. “You guys still here or what?”

  With distrust still lingering, I peek around the bagger to make sure he’s alone. Not only is he alone, but under his right arm he carries a rolled-up blue sleeping bag. In his right hand he holds a bungee cord encircling a similarly rolled green sleeping bag. His left arm cradles a brown paper shopping bag, and in the same hand, hooked around his fingers, is a white plastic shopping bag.

  I stand, making myself visible. “We’re still here.” I walk around the lawn tractor to help him with the bags.

  “We weren’t sure it was you,” Jeremy says, circling around the tractor with me.

  “No one else has a key. Just me and George,” Spencer says, handing the shopping bags to me while passing the sleeping bags to Jeremy. “Well, and the general manager, but he has no reason to come out here.”

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Almost two.”

  I take the shopping bags to the workbench, where I begin emptying them. In the brown paper bag I find two loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter, an eight-pack of bottled water, a plastic butter knife, a bunch of bananas, and an assortment of a dozen oatmeal, granola, and protein bars. In the white bag, I find two toothbrushes, toothpaste, two rolls of toilet paper, and a stick of men’s deodorant—Arctic Intensity scent, whatever that smells like.

  Spencer sees me examining the deodorant. “Maybe use that sooner rather than later,” he says, grinning. “Just sayin’.”

  I don’t see the humor. I jam the items back in the plastic bag and push it aside.

  Jeremy unrolls one of the sleeping bags onto the concrete floor, revealing two pullover sweatshirts which were rolled up inside. Both look to be men’s XL and they’re branded with the Saint Thomas High School sports team, the Knights. One is hooded. They’ll be warm.

  “There’s extra blankets rolled in the other sleeping bag,” Spencer says. “They’re small, but they’ll help.”

  It turns out Spencer Hawkins is a pretty thoughtful guy.

  “Where did you get all this?” I ask.

  “Mostly from home. My uncle won’t miss it. The food is from the grocery store. It’s fresh.”

  Jeremy abandons the sleeping bags, moves to the workbench, and tears into the bread and peanut butter. “Do you want a sandwich, Abby?”

  “Yes,” I say, re-examining Spencer from the corners of my eyes. His hand rests on a leather messenger bag at his hip, something I hadn’t noticed when he first entered the shed. Two large silver buckles hold the bag closed. Its wide brown strap is draped over his right shoulder.

  “What’s in there?” I ask.

  Spencer looks down at the bag. “The Edgar Manuscript.”

  “The medieval epic poem?” Jeremy asks.

  “Yes, the medieval epic poem.”

  We say nothing for several seconds, each of us presumably waiting for the other to take the initiative. Truly, we’re three teenagers who have no idea what we’re doing much less what we should do next. We are making up everything as we go, and we’re not very good at it. Finally, I say, “Well, let’s see it.”

  I expect Spencer to show me some type of leather-bound, antique-looking, deckle-edged book. Instead, he pulls out a one-quarter inch thick, double-sided packet of 8 1/2 x 11 copy paper fastened together in the upper left corner by an industrial staple.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  Spencer looks at me stupidly. “It’s The Edgar Manuscript. I just said so.”

  “This looks like it’s from 800 A.D. about as much as I do,” I say sharply.

  Spencer scowls. “I told you, I don’t have the original. All I found was a translation from the 1700s, and it belongs to the Saint Thomas library. I copied this from the translation so I’d have my own copy. The original Old English copy was probably destroyed in the same fire that damaged Beowulf—”

  I interrupt. “Enough with the history lessons. Let me see it.”

  “Please and thank you?” Spencer says.

  I roll my eyes, jerk the packet of papers from him, and inspect the cover sheet. Jeremy marches up next to me, munching a peanut butter sandwich. He hands me a sandwich of my own and peers over my shoulder.

  “Hey, don’t get it full of peanut butter,” Spencer warns.

  “Why not?” I tease. “It’s not like it’s the original.”

  I take a bite of my sandwich as I read the title page.

  THE ĒADGĀR MANUSCRIPT

  AS TRANSLATED BY

  DR. LAURENCE STODDARD

  1728 ANNO DOMINI

  The pages are bent into a well-formed crease near the staple, so the cover sheet folds over easily with just my pinky finger. I read the first line of the ‘epic poem’ then stare at the page as if it were blank, for it might as well be.

  My mouth, still full of partially-chewed sandwich, drops open. I look at Spencer, astonished and frustrated. “This is gibberish.”

  “Let me see,” Jeremy says, and I let him take the manuscript.

  “It’s unreadable.” I turn away, take another massive bite of my peanut butter sandwich, and pull myself up onto the lawn tractor. I flop down into the padded seat, a little too pouty for even my own taste, but I’m just so irritated.

  “Abby,” Spencer says, “There’s no reason to get upset.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Jeremy says, flipping pages with his pinky finger, sandwich crumbs tumbling everywhere. Spencer reaches over and brushes the crumbs from the pages even as Jeremy fumbles through the manuscript.

  “I told you it’s a translation from medieval Old English to 1700s British English,” Spencer says to me. “It’s going to be a little rough to read.”

  “Rough? What’s a ‘boy-child’?” I say, recalling one of the many bizarre hyphenated words I laid my eyes on.

  “Old English poems aren’t like the poems we’re used to,” Spencer says. “They don’t rhyme. They rely on a rhythm of syll—”

  “It doesn’t matter. If you and Jeremy understand it, fine.”

  “Quit acting so annoyed, Abby,” Jeremy scolds. I shoot him a look, but he deflects it with a shake of his head, and his rapidly-maturing individuality once again makes an appearance, even if it is ill-timed.

  “Just skip to the part about the black-eyed kids,” I tell him.

  “The passages are scattered throughout,” Spencer says. “Essentially, you have to kill them by trapping them in daylight.”

  “Wait—” I say.

  Jeremy looks up from the poem. “Like vampires?”

  Spencer scoffs and pushes his stocking cap away from his forehead. “There’s no such thing as vampires, Coop.”

  “Wait,” I say, again. “Nobody’s killing anyone. There has to be another way.”

  “Not according to this,” Spencer says. “Black-eyed kids come forward whenever Oswulf’s Stone summons them. The Edgar Manuscript suggests they are entities who manifest themselves into material bodies, physical bodies which can and have been dispatched in the past.”

  “Dispatched?” I mock. “You mean murdered?” I can’t in any way comprehend the thought of murder, regardless of the circumstances. Certainly, if someone else m
ust do the murdering, so be it, but I have no capacity to lay waste to anyone—person, animal, or otherwise. “No, I can’t do that. And you won’t either, Jeremy.”

  Spencer shakes his head. “Abby, it might be the only way—”

  “No,” I say again. “We’re not killing anyone.”

  “Abby, it’s them or us,” Jeremy says. “Look what they’ve already done to Grandma, Mr. Donaldson, and the McGoverns.” Jeremy blinks at Spencer with sympathetic eyes. “Look what they’ve done to Spencer.”

  “I don’t take it lightly, Abby,” Spencer says, “but we may not have a choice.”

  “You’re prepared to kill someone?” I say, disappointed in who Spencer is turning out to be.

  “Some-thing. According to The Edgar Manuscript, they’re not children. They’re not even people. They’re entities, phantoms masquerading as children.”

  Jeremy, once again flipping pages, says, “It’s not like we have to drive stakes through their hearts.”

  Spencer raises his eyebrows and cocks his head to the side. “Funny you should mention that…”

  Repulsed by the thought, I say, “You have to be kidding me.”

  “We have to drive stakes through their hearts?” Jeremy says again, this time in the form of a question.

  “Not such a great idea anymore, is it?” I say smugly.

  “It’s not the stakes that kill them,” Spencer says.

  “Whatever you’re going to say next, I don’t want to hear it,” I warn.

  But Spencer goes on anyway. “The black-eyed kids’ appearance as children is a deception. Darkness, which covers all lies, is the only thing allowing them to exist. Faced with the truth which light exposes, they have no choice but to abandon their lie.” Spencer motions to the manuscript Jeremy holds. “In The Edgar Manuscript, a boy named Edgar stakes the children with eyes of midnight to the ground until the sun comes up, allowing daylight itself to destroy them.”