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

by Corey J. Popp

  To be sure, Spencer Hawkins, God speed the dawn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I WAKE TO a gust of wind rattling the stained-glass windows, followed by the crash of the church doors.

  I look at Jeremy and Spencer, who have somehow slept through the disturbance, and it causes me to wonder if I’m dreaming. Nearly half of the chandelier’s candles have either blown or burned out since I fell asleep, and the remaining flames reflecting off the chandelier’s glass crystals throw wicked patterns onto the church’s walls and windows.

  Sitting up, I see the wind gust has blown the church doors closed.

  The doors lie in a wedge of thick darkness, just beyond the reach of the chandelier’s quivering candlelight. If I leave the doors closed, the black-eyed kids may come. I stand up and pull a single candle from one of the chandelier’s holders to light my way to the doors.

  I am fifteen years old, well beyond the age of believing in the things which terrify me at this moment. But I live in a new reality, or maybe surreality. Despite my pride, I don’t want to walk to the doors alone.

  “Jeremy?” I say under my breath. He does not stir. “Spencer?” He too lies motionless. “You guys?”

  The church moans beneath another gust of wind.

  I can leave the doors closed until I’m able to wake one of the guys, or I can just walk up the aisle, open the doors, and be done with it. In fact, it may even be a race to see who gets to the doors first—myself or the black-eyed kids. Time is wasting away.

  If you kill enough time, eventually time will kill you, Abby Cooper.

  Maybe it’s just the lingering elements of a forgotten dream, but I feel unsettled, disoriented, and vulnerable. But I remember the brain doesn’t work correctly in the middle of the night. It abandons reason. I should just go back to sleep…if it weren’t for those doors.

  Yet, I wonder if it really was the wind and the slamming of the doors which woke me. No, it feels like something else drew me from sleep just before the wind gust. I was woken up by another noise, something softer, more subtle, but I don’t know what.

  Cowboy up.

  In a rush of sudden resolution, I march up the aisle to the doors, cupping the quivering flame with my left hand so it does not blow out. I arrive in seconds, but as I reach for one of the iron handles, I’m engulfed by terror from a sound I’ve become all too familiar with this week.

  Whispers.

  “Jeremy, no,” I say to myself without looking back into the church. “Please, no.”

  But his whispers continue. They drift up into the vaulted ceiling like candle smoke and reverberate back down into the church, amplified by the historic architecture. Soon, the acoustics of the building have masked the source, and I find myself surrounded by whispers, inundated by their terrifying rhythm. For a moment, they feel as though they are not inside the church but inside my head. I want to scream.

  Darkest, blackest, maddest, saddest—Once caught by Hell’s darkest, blackest eyes, life ends with my maddest, saddest cries.

  When they abruptly cease, I stand in absolute, perfect silence.

  Until…

  From outside the church, barely perceptible, comes three slow, tender raps on the door. A long breath creeps from my lungs, and I find I cannot inhale another. My chin quivers. My feet have grown roots, and I cannot move.

  “Hello?” a girl says softly from the other side. “Is anyone in there?”

  Fright has stolen my voice. My lips only mouth the words, “Go away.”

  “There’s been a terrible accident,” she says. “We are so cold.”

  Spencer theorized they wouldn’t approach a church. ‘Holy ground,’ he called it. He was wrong.

  “We are very frightened out here in the cold and the dark.”

  The pitch of her voice is sweet and innocent, a shining truth within a pool of dark doubt. I don’t know how I ever misunderstood their intentions before, but she and her brother are no danger to us. There is more to these children than all this silly talk of gallows and stones. They are afraid and alone, just like myself and my brother.

  “Please,” she begs. “May we come in?”

  If they remain outside in the cold, they could die. They are orphans dependent on one another, he more dependent on her than she on him. He is her responsibility. If she does not take care of him, who will?

  Perhaps she has saved him once before. I don’t know their story, but I can presume. Perhaps she has held him and fed him and put him to bed when no one else would, at least until the refrigerator was bare of milk, and now she stands in the cold night with him, once again abandoned by a selfish and conceited world.

  Self-appointed kings and queens, rulers of American households, pass them in sedans with not so much as a glance. The people of this world would rather look at the soulless digital screen of a mobile phone than the hurting, hungry eyes of another person, even a child.

  It is not two black-eyed kids who stand on the other side of these doors. Abby and Jeremy Cooper stand outside these doors. Not as themselves, but as the world sees them. Forgotten outcasts. Society’s burden.

  No one cares about them.

  “No one but me,” I say aloud, fastening my left hand upon the cold iron handle. “Of course you may come in,” and I push open the door and take two steps back, allowing them space to enter.

  At that moment, hot wax touches the fingertips of my right hand, and the charm is broken. I scream, and the shriek peals through the church’s acoustics like an alarm bell. The candle lands on the floor at my feet, shattering and bursting into spattered globs of flame across the floor.

  The two black-eyed kids stand on the church steps staring at me, smiling. They no longer make any attempt to hide their black eyes. There is no point, for this game ends tonight.

  Through the open door, I see the rain has ceased, and the clouds have begun to peel away. In the distance, standing upon the knoll I saw for the first time yesterday, is the giant triangular outline of Mount Herod’s own Tyburn gallows, an impossible sight unless I’ve somehow been cast back 200 years.

  Shadows of the dead sway from the three crossbeams in a slow, morbid dance. A dozen executed bodies hang from the horrible structure, including women and children. It’s a wicked illusion cast by the black-eyed kids, I’m certain, but an effective illusion all the same.

  “Abby?” a voice calls from behind me. “What have you done?” Jeremy asks.

  I turn my back to the black-eyed kids and look down the aisle at the shocked, candlelit faces of Jeremy and Spencer. I’ve made a horrible mistake, but there’s no time for apologies. Jeremy and Spencer must find a way out of this church before the black-eyed kids can murder them, and right now, I’m the only thing standing in the way.

  About to be cleaved in half, I have time to say one last thing to my little brother and Spencer: “You guys better run.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “THIS IS HOLY ground!” Spencer calls to the black-eyed kids.

  And this, it seems, buys me priceless seconds.

  Jeremy beckons me with a wave of his hand. “Abby, get out of there!”

  I run to the boys without looking back. Jeremy’s arms are wide open, and I run straight into them, grabbing him, hugging him. He is solid and strong, father-like with fortitude.

  I take a mental inventory of my condition, and—astonishingly—I am fully intact, uninjured, untouched.

  What’s more surprising, however, is the black-eyed kids haven’t pounced. Back in the entryway, they stand silent but unabated just inside the doors, clearly within the holy surroundings of the church. Yet, they do not come any closer. They are frozen, perhaps even confused.

  “Who’s this?” the black-eyed boy asks in his oddly deep, hollow voice.

  “I see him, too,” the black-eyed girl says.

  “We already killed you,” the black-eyed boy says, eyeing Spencer.

  Spencer scowls.

  At some point, perhaps when I screamed, Spencer retrieved an
d now holds an iron candlestick no less than five feet in length. Gripping it with two hands, he points it horizontally out in front of him so the sprawling, spider-legged base is forward, and the tapered top is pinched securely beneath his underarm. It is all that is between them and us.

  “Resurrected?” the black-eyed boy asks, his voice booming into the church’s vaulted ceiling.

  “No,” the black-eyed girl replies. “Simply a twin, no doubt. This is unexpected and unfortunate.”

  The black-eyed boy reaches both hands behind the lapels of his coat. “If this is true, we have unfinished business.”

  The black-eyed girl reaches around to her back with both hands. “No. It’s too late. His time has passed. Rules are rules, brother.”

  “Let him just get in the way then,” the black-eyed boy says, sneering.

  The black-eyed girl cracks a deadly smile. “If he does, then yes, two will fall tonight, brother. And if the girl gets in the way, then three.”

  Their hands reappear holding the knives, the same four deadly blades which carved up the McGoverns barely twenty-four hours ago. The black-eyed girl steps through the opening in the entryway’s railing and walks up the aisle into the church. The black-eyed boy follows her. They stand at the end of the aisle, side by side. The candlelight from the half-lit chandelier casts orange patches upon their historic clothing and haunting faces, but their black eyes reflect no light.

  The black-eyed boy pushes back the brim of his newsboy cap with one of the blades. “As for your holy ground, the girl defiled it the moment she invited us in.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Jeremy.

  “It’s not your fault, Abby,” he says. The ease in which Jeremy forgives me is nearly overwhelming, and I know if anyone must die tonight, it cannot be Jeremy. Recalling how Jeremy and I escaped the McGoverns’ house, I turn to Spencer. “If we can get Jeremy outside, they can’t hurt him.”

  “They’re blocking the only exit,” Spencer says.

  “What about the windows?” I suggest.

  “They’re too high—”

  Our chance to discuss strategy abruptly comes to an end when the black-eyed kids charge up the aisle. I shuffle Jeremy behind me with no idea how to protect him, only that I must try, even if it means biting and clawing until every last drop of blood has spilled from my body.

  The black-eyed girl is nearly upon me when Spencer steps forward and snares her within the knotted iron base of the candlestick. Her arms flail. Her knives clatter to the church floor. The impact drives Spencer back one, two steps, and he uses the momentum to whirl her into the flaming chandelier as though she hangs upon the prongs of a pitchfork.

  The black-eyed girl lodges in the chandelier’s tiers of twisted iron, breaking bones and crushing crystals, screeching like a bird of prey. Barely a step behind her, the black-eyed boy comes in low, swiping past Spencer, who calls out in pain.

  Screaming and flailing like a witch at the stake, the black-eyed girl begins to smolder among the shattered candles and burning wax. Spencer kneels next to the chandelier, a crimson stain upon one of his legs. He’s hurt, but he’s able to drive the iron candlestick through the chandelier’s spiraling fractals, pinning the black-eyed girl into the twisted mass as if it were a cage. The wax is like liquid fire, and soon the black-eyed girl blazes like a torch.

  Entirely composed, the black-eyed boy sheathes one knife behind a lapel and reaches into the flaming chandelier to try to free his sister.

  Suddenly, I see an opportunity. Before her brother can free her, we must raise the chandelier into the rafters with the black-eyed girl trapped within it, suspending her in mid-air far away from us, leaving us three on one with the black-eyed boy. What’s more, she’ll be finished off as soon as the first rays of daylight shine through the towering stained-glass windows in the vaulted apex of the church.

  “The winch!” I call out.

  I lost track of my brother amid the disorder, and I turn to see Jeremy already at the wall with the winch handle in his hands, apparently a step ahead of me with the plan. He starts to turn the winch using a large, slow, deliberate motion, as if stirring a giant pot tipped on its side. First the chandelier rises measurably in inches, then in feet, driven solely by my little brother’s brute strength and mammoth courage.

  Unable to walk due to his injured leg, Spencer has crawled out of the aisle into the relative safety of the pews. The black-eyed girl appears hopelessly bound within the makeshift iron shackles of the chandelier, and the black-eyed boy either won’t let go of his sister or has also become tangled within the iron coils. Jeremy’s next turn of the winch heaves the black-eyed boy completely off the ground.

  The black-eyed boy resists desperately, spinning and tipping the chandelier fiercely, and I worry Jeremy may lose control of the winch. I run to his aid and lay my hands atop his on the winch’s handle. With two of us cranking, the chandelier rises twice as fast now, clattering and clanking its way high up into the rafters.

  “All the way up!” Spencer calls to us. “As high as you can!”

  The higher the chandelier rises, the more effort we must exert, and as it climbs, so does my anxiety that the winch could spin from our hands, sending the whole structure crashing to the floor and freeing the black-eyed kids.

  “Set the brake!” I tell Jeremy.

  Pulling one hand out from under mine, Jeremy reaches across to tip the brake lever into the teeth of the gears, but it lands atop a tooth instead of between. He repeats the action again, but he is unable to lock it in place—it repeatedly lands with failed thuds. “It won’t go, Abby!”

  If we wind backwards, I’m afraid we’ll lose hold and the winch will spin out of control, so I lean forward into the winch, holding my breath, straining. The gear slips forward ever so slightly, and the brake ratchets into place. The weight of the chandelier immediately falls away from my arms and shoulders, transferring instead into the iron winch and brick wall.

  The chandelier creaks above us, swinging slowly like a pendulum. Motionless and silent, the black-eyed girl is still pinned inside. The flames which once completely engulfed her body are slowly dying. The black-eyed boy hangs beneath her by one arm, grunting angrily, struggling to free himself.

  I stare upwards at the strange sight, entranced—even shocked—by our success. Capturing the black-eyed boy with his sister was just plain luck, perhaps even too good to be true. Which means it’s time to go.

  Then I remember Spencer is hurt.

  “Spencer!” I call, and I hurry down the aisle and into the row of pews in which he lays. Jeremy trails two steps behind.

  “He got my leg,” Spencer says, drawing his hand away from his shin and holding up a shimmering, bloody palm.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say to Spencer. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so,” he says.

  “Jeremy, grab an arm,” I say, and I step over Spencer to his other side. I bend down and throw Spencer’s left arm over my shoulder. Jeremy does the same with Spencer’s right arm. “Ready?”

  The three of us stand and shuffle awkwardly out of the pew. As we do, a bizarre scratching sound begins to echo through the church’s vaulted ceiling. The silhouette of the smoking chandelier rocks forcefully. The black-eyed boy, still hanging, rubs the elbow of his pinned arm with his free hand.

  “What’s he doing?” Jeremy asks.

  Confused, I say, “He’s rubbing his arm, I think?” It sounds harmless enough. I’m certain he’s in pain. Perhaps his shoulder is even dislocated, but a sudden, instinctive sense of urgency overcomes me. “We have to go,” I say. “We really have to get out of here.”

  Jeremy and I pull Spencer up the aisle. As we do, Spencer glances back over his shoulder, up into the rafters.

  “He’s not rubbing his arm,” Spencer observes. “He’s cutting it off.”

  It’s only shadows in the rafters, but I now see what Spencer sees, and I hear what he hears—the sawing and chopping motion of the free arm, the sound of cloth
ing and skin ripping amid the clinking of chains and creaking of beams. The sickening crunch of bone.

  Breathless, I say, “Run! God help us! Run!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  NONE OF US look back, but I hear the black-eyed boy drop to the floor with a shriek. I cannot tell whether the shriek is from pain or anger, and it does not matter. Jeremy and I run for the door, dragging Spencer, who is doing his best not to slow us down.

  The church’s open door beckons us. I can see salvation on the other side. Broken storm clouds, patches of stars, and a hazy moon await us. The grounds of the cemetery will save our lives, if only we can get out of this church.

  The stumbling footfalls of the black-eyed boy rush up from behind, and I sense he is upon us. Within seconds, he will reach around Jeremy’s neck and pull that nasty curved blade across his throat.

  We will not make it to the door.

  I shrug Spencer’s arm off my shoulder and whirl around to confront the black-eyed boy. I instantly find myself face-to-face with him, his soulless black eyes staring straight into mine. The hint of a malicious grin draws up one corner of his thin lips before he swipes the knife at Jeremy.

  As Spencer falls back, I step in front of Jeremy, pushing him into the last row of pews. The knife misses Jeremy, slicing instead across my collar bone, just below my neck. The blade is so sharp and the incision is so precise I barely feel it. I clutch my chest, fearful blood will spill from the gash like water. A split-second later, I see the knife coming around again.

  Before the black-eyed boy can follow through with a backhanded slash across my throat, Jeremy reappears and pushes me down and away. As he does so, he delivers a blow to the black-eyed boy’s head with the padlock and chain Spencer set in the back pew when we first entered the church. The black-eyed boy stumbles backwards, off balance.