Hangman's Curse (24 page)

From above, they could see her standing in the center of the room, one lone, frightened figure in a sea of swirling black, cowering, shaking, a lone beam from her headlamp creating a yellow cone in front of her.

The firemen backed away, chilled by the sight.

“It's going to take a rope from here,” said Al.

“But . . . what are we going to do about the spiders?” asked Larry.

Nate countered, “Just get the rope down there!”

Larry had a rope clipped to his belt. He unclipped it and got ready to toss it down.

Nate called through the doorway, “Elisha! Can you make it to the wall? We're going to throw a rope down.”

She didn't move from where she stood. She was trembling.

“Elisha!”

“Daddy . . . ,” she muttered in a dopey voice, “wha'd you say? I can't hear you.”

“We're losing her,” he whispered. “Lower the rope. I'll go down after her.”

Larry held one end of the rope and tossed the rest through the doorway.

“Look out!” Elijah cried, stomping on some spiders coming through the opening.

Al brandished a can of Raid and saturated the area around the opening, clearing it for the moment.

“Awww!” Spiders were scurrying up the rope toward Larry's hands. In a panic, he let go.

His end of the rope fell through the doorway and into the darkness.

“No! NO!” Nate cried.

Ian backed away to a safe distance—and saw another beam of light moving toward them through the dark maze. “Hey! Somebody's coming!”

“Nate,” came Sarah over the radio. “Tom Gessner and Mr. Harrigan are here with me. They brought Norman.”

Nate was looking at his daughter, surrounded and covered by black spiders, and it took him a moment to check his anger and respond. “I don't suppose Norman has any help he can offer?”

“He knows another way down there. He's on his way right now.”

“It's Norman!” Ian exclaimed as Norman Bloom came through the clutter, wearing his old jacket and carrying a flashlight.

Nate's eyes burned through his face shield. “Young man, do you have any usable suggestions?”

Norman was plainly afraid and intimidated, but he replied, “There's another way down there. I'll get her out.”

“
I
can do that,” said Nate.

Norman stepped forward, his voice trembling but bold. “Sir, you have to let me do it. The spiders won't bother me.”

Everyone stared at him. He had no protective clothing. He was just a skinny kid in jeans, tennis shoes, and an old jacket.

“That's my daughter down there,” Nate seethed.

“They're
my
spiders—sir!”

Nate weighed that for only a moment, then backed off. “All right. But hurry. She's been bitten and she's fading.” Norman turned toward a black void between two fallen concrete slabs, and disappeared as if the void had swallowed him up.

“Can you get us another rope?” Nate asked Larry.

The fireman named Larry turned and headed out immediately.

“Elisha, hang on! Norman's on his way down there.”

“We hope,” said Ian. They looked back at him. “I trusted him, and look where that got me.”

They heard Elisha's faint voice from below. “Daddy . . . I can't stand up . . .”

They shone their lights into the room. The small, orange-clad girl far below was teetering, weakening. Her protective suit was alive with dark little shadows.

Nate couldn't linger another moment. He called into his radio, “Where's that rope?”

“On the way,” came Sarah's voice.

“Look!” said Al. “Will you look at that!”

A dim light appeared in the far corner of the furnace room. There was a metallic grating sound. A piece of fallen furnace duct rumbled aside, and Norman Bloom, a vague shadow in the dark, emerged from a passage behind it. Immediately, the spiders shied away from his feet like a wave receding from the shore, leaving a circle of bare concrete around him. He started inching his way toward the center of the room, toward Elisha. The circle of clear concrete moved along the floor with him, the spiders always maintaining an even distance.

Tom Gessner's voice came over the radio. “Mr. Springfield. Is Norman there? Did he make it through?”

Nate was transfixed by the sight below him. “He's here, Mr. Gessner.”

“Is he of any help?”

Nate continued to watch as Norman kept moving slowly, the bare floor around him resembling a dim spotlight that followed him inch by inch. “He's helping, Mr. Gessner. He's definitely helping.”

Norman kept moving slowly, giving the spiders time to retreat. “Try to keep still, Elisha.” He called to the men above, “Please put out those lights. You're upsetting the spiders.”

“Better do it,” said Nate.

They extinguished their lights, and the nether world under the school fell into eerie, cavelike blackness. Below them, the old furnace room became a deep, soot-black well with only two lights visible: the light in Norman's hand illuminating Elisha, and the light from Elisha's headlamp, the beam wavering, sinking as she continued to weaken. Norman kept moving slowly, steadily, drawing closer to her, the spider-free circle moving with him, until its boundary crossed Elisha's feet.

Elisha began to whimper. She couldn't help it. The whole room seemed to be closing in on her, about to crush her. She felt the floor rocking like a ship in rough weather. She could only breathe in quick, little gasps.

“Hold still,” said Norman. “I'm going to get you out of here.”

She tried to hold still, but her image of Norman was getting fuzzy, unstable, and the closer he got, the more afraid she felt.
It's the poison,
she kept telling herself.
Hold still.
The spiders were reacting to Norman's approach. She could feel them scurrying over her skin, trying to find a way out of her clothing. Two shot out from under her hood and dropped on web lines from her shoulders to the floor. Those on the outside raced down her legs and hurried across the floor, vanishing in the darkness beyond the flashlights.

“Ohhh . . . help me . . .” The room began to move crazily. The ductwork above their heads came alive, pulsing and flexing like huge aluminum pythons.

She was afraid. Afraid!

Don't believe it!
she told herself.
Don't give in!
“I'm not afraid,” she tried to say, but it came out, “I no fear to me.” A hand grabbed her arm and she tried to jerk away. “NO! It's no me in the manner, me nothing nothing!”

“Come this way,” came a voice.

She looked and saw a face. Norman's face? It looked so strange, so dead and white . . .

“Go with him,” came the voice of her father, but even his voice sounded evil.

“ 'sokay, Elisha,” came a slow, garbled voice that could have been her brother's.

“No . . . ,” she cried, and her own voice sounded so slow, so far away . . .

The face before her, once Norman's, wavered, decayed. Now she saw a rotting skull, a broken and crooked neck, a hawk on a bony shoulder.

Abel Frye! He was pulling her into hell!

She lashed out at him, struck at him. Her arms moved slowly, a blur before her eyes. They may have contacted something, she didn't know. She thought she screamed, thought she may have tried pulling away, but everything slowed down, slowed down, faded away, went out of focus . . .

Blackness. Silence. Sleep.

“Elisha!” Nate cried out as he saw his daughter's body go limp. Larry returned with another rope and threw it through the doorway. Nate grabbed it and was about to climb down when Al took hold of his arm.

“Easy,” said the fireman. “He's got her. He's got her.”

Norman held her up, his arms wrapped around her. Her head drooped, her headlamp shone downward. In its beam, they could see spiders dropping from her body, bouncing on the concrete like little raindrops, then scurrying away into the inky blackness.

“Norman,” said Elijah, “what can we do to help?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “Just give me time. I'll get there.”

He held Elisha tightly, slowly walking back to the hidden passage in the corner as the spiders maintained the empty circle around them. Elisha's feet dragged along the floor.

“Mr. Springfield,” came Tom Gessner's voice over the radio, “what's happening?”

Nate could hardly draw a breath to speak. “Norman has Elisha. He's bringing her out.”

“We have paramedics standing by.”

Sarah's voice came over the radio. “Nate, is she all right?”

“She's . . .” He couldn't answer. “Pray, Sarah. Pray.”

Paramedics scrambled down the secret stairway to meet them halfway. Within minutes, they emerged with Elisha's limp, pale body, her protective hood removed and an oxygen mask clamped over her face. Nate, the firefighters, Elijah, and Ian stepped out into the daylight right behind them.

“Algernon!” Sarah cried as the paramedics lowered Elisha onto a stretcher.

Algernon Wheeling quickly examined her face and neck. “Yes, several bites.” He prepared a syringe as they cut away her protective suit. “This is AT490. I would say she needs a double dose. Administer this, please, and quickly.”

A paramedic took the needle and jabbed it into her arm. “Okay, let's get her to the hospital.”

They grabbed up the stretcher and raced to a waiting ambulance, the Springfields and Algernon Wheeling running after.

Norman and Ian went nowhere. Carrillo and another officer had already grabbed them, and now they brandished their handcuffs.

“Wait,” said Mr. Harrigan, stepping in. “This isn't necessary.”

“Put them in our custody,” said Tom Gessner. “We can work something out, get them some counseling . . .”

Carrillo clamped the cuffs on. “Take it up with the judge, fellas. I'm hauling these punks in.”

Tom Gessner put a hand on Carrillo's shoulder. “Then let us ride along. Come on, Dan. Please.”

Carrillo considered the request, eye to eye with Gessner's kind gaze. “Okay, Tom. But we'd better get going before I change my mind.”

“I think she's waking up.”

It was the first sound she recognized as a voice. She'd been listening to garbled sounds for what seemed like hours. She moved and became aware of her body. She could feel her hands brushing across bedsheets, feel the pressure of a pillow against her head.

Then she felt a hand on hers. “Elisha? Wake up, sweetheart.” Mom's voice.

She opened her eyes. They rolled about lazily for a moment, trying to focus on something, and finally, after a few blinks, she recognized her family, standing around her bed. There was Mom, Dad, and Elijah. And there was Professor Wheeling. They were all grinning at her, then grinning at each other, looking so happy they looked silly.

A line from an old movie came to her and she managed to at least mumble it. “Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!”

And they all laughed. She broke into a weak smile herself.

Professor Wheeling straightened up, looking very happy with himself. “Good ol' AT490! Good call, Wheeling, good call!”

Elisha made a puzzled face. “What's he talking about?”

Her dad explained, “The antidote for the spider venom. The medics gave you a double dose, and then the doctors had to give you an additional dose every day for a week, but it worked.”

“Sweetheart,” said Professor Wheeling, “you sustained over fifty bites. That would have been enough venom to kill at least that many people.”

That alarmed her. “Am I all right?”

He was quick to reassure her, “Oh, yes, yes, absolutely! As a matter of fact, your own body has probably begun its own immunity program by now. I would be willing to wager that spider bites will no longer be a problem for you—uh, I wouldn't press my luck, of course . . .”

“Of course!” she said, recalling how it felt to have hundreds of spiders crawling all over her. “But . . . I've been out for a week?”

Her mother nodded, a grim kind of smile on her face. “We almost lost you.”

Oh. There was Dr. Stuart, stepping around her family to get to her. Only now did she become aware that she was in the hospital!

Dr. Stuart took her pulse, then held a light to her eyes. “Look here.” He waved the light back and forth—it made her want to blink—and then he put it in his shirt pocket and smiled. “I would say she's with us again.”

“Praise God!” said Dad.

“Welcome back, sis,” said Elijah.

She vaguely recalled the last thing she could remember—and then regretted remembering it. “I—I saw Abel Frye. He was standing right there in front of me. It was terrible.”

“Now you know what the other kids went through,” said Dr. Stuart. “They'd all heard the rumors and legends about Abel Frye and seen Crystal Sparks' painting of him, just as you did. All it took was the spider's venom to turn the legends into a frightening hallucination, their worst fears brought to life before their eyes.”

“I—I saw Abel Frye.”

“No wonder they were so scared! But . . . it was Norman, wasn't it? He came back to help me.”

They nodded.

“What happened?”

They all looked at Professor Wheeling, so he answered. “Norman had also isolated a male pheromone, one the male uses to mark his territory and warn off other spiders. He applied it to the old jacket he was wearing, and that's how he managed to work around the spiders without being endangered by them— and it's how he managed to get you out of the old furnace room. The spiders all fled from the scent on his jacket.”

“He saved my life.”

“He certainly did,” said Sarah.

“But . . .” Her heart sank. “There are the others. Amy and Crystal . . . the boys . . . What's going to happen to him?”

Nate betrayed a hint of a smile as he said, “Well, Officer Carrillo arrested him and Ian Snyder.”