Cheerleaders: The New Evil (2 page)

The next moment the two were wrestling in the snow, laughing and shouting happily.

It was hard to stay angry at Alex, Corky realized. He was so good-looking, with that great blond hair and
those dark blue eyes that crinkled up when he smiled.
And
he was a real brain.
And
he was the center on the basketball team. A shoo-in for all-state this season. And . . . and . . .

“Hey!” Kimmy's shout interrupted Corky's day-dreams about Alex. The car skidded hard, then slid to a stop at the curb as a large van roared past.

“Did you see how fast that guy was going?” Kimmy complained, watching the van in the rearview mirror. “Is he crazy or what? He was sliding all over the street!” The tires spun as she started the car up again.

“Maybe you should drop me at Corky's,” Hannah shouted after a minute. “I just remembered. My parents are at some meeting. No one will be home.” She turned back to Corky. “What's your mom serving for dinner tonight?”

Corky laughed. “I don't know. But why don't you invite yourself over?”

“Okay. Thanks,” Hannah replied, turning back to the front.

“So I'm driving to your house?” Kimmy called back to Corky. “Hey, I really can't hear a thing. Hannah, could you turn it down a little?”

“What? I can't hear you. The music is too loud!” Hannah joked.

As Hannah leaned forward to turn down the radio, Kimmy let out a frightened cry.

The car swerved.

“Kimmy—what
is
it?” she managed to call out.

The car bolted forward.

“The brakes!” Kimmy squealed.

The car went into a spin. Corky screamed.

The wide tree trunk came up so quickly, covering the windshield in darkness.

A hard jolt tossed Corky against the seat, then forward, hard.

It all happened in an instant. The crunch of metal jarred her ears.

Corky saw Hannah fly forward.

Her head hit the windshield with a sickening
crack.

The glass shattered and broke into tiny pellets. The car bounced.

Corky heard Kimmy gasp as she was thrown against the steering wheel. Then Kimmy's sharp whisper: “No—no—no . . .”

Corky checked on Hannah. Hannah's body. Through the shattered windshield. Her legs dangling down over the dashboard. The top of her body sprawled over the car hood.

“T
he evil is back,” Kimmy murmured, shutting her eyes.

Corky swallowed hard. “Kimmy—no!” she whispered.

Two doctors in green surgical scrubs hurried past, their faces yellow under the harsh fluorescent lights.

The waiting room at Shadyside General blazed with heat, but Corky hadn't removed her down jacket. She sat huddled beside Kimmy on a vinyl couch, tensing every time a doctor or nurse passed, waiting for news about Hannah.

“I could feel it in the car,” Kimmy murmured, her face pale, her chin trembling. “I could feel the evil.” She shuddered.

“Kimmy—stop it,” Corky pleaded. She placed a hand on the sleeve of Kimmy's sweater. “Your brakes gave out. That's all.”

“It was the evil!” Kimmy wailed.

An old man rolled slowly past, bent over in a wheelchair. He gazed over at Kimmy, then continued wheeling himself down a long corridor.

“Kimmy, the brakes froze. That's all,” Corky insisted firmly. “It's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault. We just have to pray that Hannah's going to be okay.”

Kimmy lowered her eyes to the floor. Her crimped black hair had fallen over her forehead, but she made no attempt to brush it away. She clutched her chest where she had hit the steering wheel. But the doctor told her she had no broken ribs.

“The evil—” she whispered.

“The evil is gone,” Corky said sharply. “We drowned it. In the river—remember? It's under the ice now. Buried deep in the frozen river.”

Kimmy didn't reply.

“You can't blame the evil spirit every time something bad happens,” Corky told her friend. “You have to forget about it. Sometimes bad things happen. They can't be helped.”

Corky's words rang hollow in her own ears. She felt the same way that Kimmy did. Whenever anything went wrong, Corky found herself wondering if the evil had returned.

She couldn't forget it. She remembered it every day of her life.

She remembered another Shadyside cheerleader, Jennifer Daly, who had died when the cheerleaders' bus had crashed into the Fear Street Cemetery. An evil spirit awakened from its resting place in a hundred-year-old grave. The evil swarmed into Jennifer, took possession of her body, and brought her back to life.

The spirit used Jennifer's body to perform its evil. It murdered Corky's sister Bobbi. And it murdered others.

After a terrifying struggle, Corky thought she had defeated the evil. Jennifer was buried. But the evil was still loose. It moved on to Kimmy. Then to Corky. It forced them to carry out its vicious acts of terror.

Finally, I drowned it, Corky remembered with a shudder. I freed myself. I drowned the evil. That was the only way to defeat it.

But even though I forced it from my body, I couldn't get rid of the memories of it. They stayed with me. The
fear
stayed with me.

The fear that it might return. The fear that it might take over my mind again, use me again, force me to become evil again.

Corky turned back to Kimmy. Kimmy was hugging her coat tightly. Her eyes watered with tears. Her round cheeks were crimson.

“Kimmy—Hannah will be okay,” Corky assured her. “You just have to keep saying that. Her parents are upstairs with her. They'll come down any minute and tell us she's going to be okay.”

Clutching her coat still tighter, Kimmy stared straight ahead. She didn't seem to hear Corky.

I'm glad Kimmy's parents are on their way, Corky thought, patting her friend's arm. I think maybe Kimmy is in shock or something.

“Debra thinks the evil will come back,” Kimmy murmured, a single teardrop rolling slowly down one cheek.

Debra Kern was the only other girl who knew the whole story of the ancient evil.

“Debra has always been weird,” Corky replied sharply. “A few days after I met her, I found her trying to cast a sleep spell on her dog.”

Kimmy didn't smile. “Debra knows a lot about a lot of weird stuff,” she said in a flat, dead voice.

“You've been spending too much time with Debra,” Corky told her friend. “Reading those dusty old books of hers, studying all that strange stuff. Just because Debra is into that stuff again doesn't mean—”

“I'm really interested in it too,” Kimmy confessed. “After what happened to us . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Corky glanced up as Hannah's parents approached them. Mrs. Miles had Hannah's dark hair and dark eyes. She clung tightly to her husband's arm. Mr. Miles was short and chubby. His gray overcoat came down nearly to the floor. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery.

As they stepped into the waiting room, Corky jumped to her feet and hurried over to them. “How is Hannah?” she cried. “Is she going to be okay?”

Mrs. Miles let out a loud sob.

Down the floor,

Shoot two more!

Down the floor,

Shoot two more!

Go, TIGERS!

Corky leapt into the spread eagle that finished the cheer. She came down awkwardly and twisted her ankle.

Down the row, she watched Debra start her spread eagle late, change her mind midair, and drop back to the ground without completing it.

After the accident, cheerleader practices had been canceled. Now, two days later, everyone was feeling
rusty, Corky, who had just been elected co-captain, realized.

Ms. Closter blew her whistle, a shrill note of disapproval. “Whoa! Just whoa!” she called, raising both hands as she stepped toward the cheerleaders.

The coach was a short, pencil-thin woman of thirty or thirty-five, Corky guessed. She always wore a long white T-shirt that came nearly to her knees over gray leggings. She had a plain, slender face with gray eyes that were somehow always unhappy. She wore a dark blue and gold Notre Dame cap backward over her short brown hair.

“You're cheering like the walking wounded today,” she scolded, tossing her whistle back over her shoulder.

“Let's try it again!” Kimmy shouted. Her round cheeks were bright pink. She had a line of sweat on her top lip even though they had barely begun to practice. “Let's really shout!”

As co-captain with Corky, Kimmy saw it as her job to cheer the others on when their energy was low. That day they all were like lumps in their gray sweats and T-shirts. No energy at all.

“Whoa,” Ms. Closter repeated. Her favorite phrase. “One word, girls.” She cleared her throat. “It's our first practice without Hannah, and we all miss her—right? We all feel bad that she's in the hospital.”

“I talked to her mother this morning before school,” Corky reported.

“And what did she say?” Ms. Closter asked, resting
her hands on her slender waist. “How is Hannah doing?”

“She—she's stable,” Corky replied, glancing at Kimmy. And then she added, “Whatever that means.”

Ms. Closter nodded solemnly. “I hope that means they've stopped the internal bleeding.”

Corky shrugged. “The doctor just said she was stable. Her mother said Hannah's face was really cut up. She needed a lot of stitches. And she broke her collarbone. But she should come through it all okay.”

Debra let out a low sigh. Naomi and Heather shook their heads.

“It could have been worse,” Ms. Closter murmured, fiddling with the string that held her whistle. “She could've broken her neck. In a way, Hannah was lucky.”

“Yeah. Real lucky,” Debra muttered, rolling her eyes.

“I know this sounds a little cold,” Kimmy said, pushing back her dark bangs. “But we have to think about the Holiday Tournament. What are we going to do about replacing Hannah?”

Ms. Closter knitted her brow. “We'll hold tryouts Monday after school. If you know anyone who's interested—”

“But the tournament's just two weeks away!” Heather protested. “How will the new person learn the routines?”

“Practice,” Ms. Closter replied, turning her cap
around to the front. “A lot of practice.” She motioned with both hands. “Okay, everyone. Line up. Spread eagles. Again. This time with some energy. Think light.
Light.
You're light as feathers.”

Naomi sneezed loudly. She rubbed her nose. “I'm allergic to feathers!” she cried.

The girls all laughed. Corky forced a laugh too. But her mind wasn't on practice. She was thinking only about Hannah.

Ms. Closter said Hannah was lucky, Corky thought fretfully. I don't think Hannah would agree.

And if Kimmy is right, if the evil has returned, then
none
of us are lucky.

Kimmy
can't
be right, though, Corky decided.

She took her place at the end of the line. Shaking her head hard, she tried to chase away all scary thoughts.

Across the gym, the door to the boys' locker room swung open. The boys' basketball team came jogging out and began dribbling in wide circles.

Corky waved to Alex, but he didn't see her. He and his best friend, Jay Landers, started passing a basketball rapidly back and forth.

“Same cheer!” Ms. Closter instructed. “Really shout. Make the backboards shatter!”

Ms. Closter's words made Corky gasp. She saw the broken windshield. Hannah's body sprawled over the hood.

The cheer started. Corky came in a beat late. She struggled to catch up.

Down the floor,

Shoot two more!

Down the floor,

Shoot two more!

Go, TIGERS!

Up into her spread eagle now. Her eyes on Alex. Why doesn't he turn around? Corky wondered. Why doesn't he watch?