Moby Clique (12 page)

Blade is in front of me now and Parker’s behind. Hana and Samir and I are in between them to prevent any more fights, although I wouldn’t have minded seeing Blade teach Parker a lesson. Parker, for her part, will not shut up. She’s tired, or her feet hurt, or she doesn’t think we’re going in the right direction. Or she’s thirsty. Or hungry. Or cold. I’m so annoyed by Parker’s running commentary that I don’t even notice when we hit a particularly muddy patch. My right foot sinks into a foot of sludge.

I tug hard to get it out, but Heathcliff is there with strong hands to lift me straight out of the mire and onto relatively drier ground.

“Careful,” he says. For a second, I’m sucked into his dark eyes. “Here, let me take this,” he adds, grabbing my backpack and putting it over his shoulder. My back feels so much better freed of the weight. I smile at him in relief. He returns the smile, and I’m amazed how much different his face looks when he smiles. He’s not quite so dark and brooding, even though he still looks a little bit dangerous. Heathcliff always manages to look dangerous.

“You sure you want to do this?” Heathcliff asks me, eyes now serious. “You know, I could find her for you. You know I’d do that for you.”

I look at him and I know it’s true. At that moment, I’m pretty sure he’d do almost anything I asked of him. That knowledge gives me a little rush.

“I know, but this is something I have to do,” I say. “She’s my sister.”

Heathcliff nods.

The moment between us is broken by the sound of Parker’s voice somewhere behind me.

“This is, like, totally gross,” she whines.

“What? Can’t quite walk in those expensive shoes of yours?” Hana asks her.

“Shut up,” Parker spits. “Agggh. Ryan! Help!” Parker loses both flats in the mud. Ryan slumps his shoulders and turns back to help Parker. Heathcliff, for his part, doesn’t even slow down.

“Maybe you ought to consider Doc Martens,” Blade says as she walks easily past the stuck Parker, clomping through the mud in her lace-up, thick-soled boots. On her way by, she gives Parker a little nudge and sends her buttfirst into the mud. She lands with a squishy sound and nearly sputters with rage. Ryan, however, keeps her from charging Blade and manages to calm her down enough not to fight. I have to hide a smile, though. Parker’s little plaid mini is covered in gray sludge, as are her white leggings. I’ve never seen her look so bad, and I have to admit that I’m enjoying every minute.

“Do you notice something weird about this place?” Hana whispers in my ear as we trudge through the undergrowth.

“You mean aside from the fact that Samir is holding on to my backpack like we’re on a kindergarten field trip?” Blade asks.

“I don’t want to get lost, okay?” Samir says, letting go of Blade’s strap.

“I mean, have you guys seen a squirrel? Or a chipmunk? Or a bird?” Hana asks us. I realize she’s right. I haven’t seen a single animal since we left campus, except for the attack dogs. No birds. No squirrels. Nothing. The only sounds in the forest are the wind in the trees and our footsteps.

A cold wind blows and I shudder suddenly. The creepy mood is broken by the whiney voice of Parker.

“This is disgusting!” Parker shouts, somewhere behind us. “This mud is never going to come out.”

“Looks like homicidal homecoming queens are the only animal species making any noise around here,” Blade says.

“Don’t you think it’s weird? I mean, there should be chipmunks or something,” Hana says. “I’ve never been in woods that are this quiet.”

“Hey, look, there’s a bird, I think,” Samir says, pointing toward a small break in the brush, where I can see a slash of blue. Maybe it is a bird. He pushes through, then jumps ahead of both me and Heathcliff. “Yeah, I think it is…”

He pushes through the brush toward the bright blue feathers, but then freezes in his tracks.

“Aggggh!” Samir backs away from his find. “Not a bird. NOT a bird!” he stutters, backing straight into Heathcliff and stumbling over his feet.

I move closer to see what he’s looking at, and see a bright headdress of blue and yellow feathers. Peering out from beneath it are the two empty eye sockets of a human skull.

Sixteen

The skull has been bleached
white by the sun and is sitting on top of a pole with the elaborate, Indian-like headdress placed on its head. And it’s not alone. There are two others, with smaller head-dresses, posted nearby. They seem to be guarding a small clearing.

“An Indian burial ground,” Blade says, excitement in her voice as she pushes her way past us, walking straight by the skulls. My Goth friend is totally unfazed by skulls. Last year, she used to have a skull candle on her desk. “This is
so
cool,” she exclaims, like a seven-year-old on Christmas morning. “We could
totally
be cursed right now.”

“Only you would think Indian curses are cool,” Hana says.

“Indian burial ground? Are you serious?” Samir asks, suddenly more anxious than usual. “Okay, nothing good ever happens on Indian burial grounds.
Poltergeist
?
Pet Sematary
? Anybody?”

I follow Blade into the clearing with Heathcliff not far behind me.

“Talk about anorexic,” I hear Parker say behind us as she and Ryan see the skulls for the first time.

“Okay, guys? Why are you walking
on
the Indian burial ground?” Samir asks us as we explore. “Why aren’t we running away? Am I the only one who ever watches horror movies? Seriously.”

“Whoa, check this out!” Blade says, walking up to a kind of shrine, which looks a little like a totem poll, except it’s made mostly of skulls.

“Do you know what it means?” Hana asks Blade.

“It means we should get the heck out of here, that’s what it means,” Samir says.

“What are you,
scared
?” Parker sniffs. She walks straight up to the totem shrine and just plucks a skull right off the top of the stack. “Of this?”

It figures that Parker would show no squeamishness when it comes to human bones. Given the rumors about why she got sent to Bard, it’s no wonder that she’s fine with having a Hamlet moment, with a skull in one hand and the other on her hip. She looks like she’s about to deliver a soliloquy.

“Put that down,” Blade tells Parker.

“Who’s going to make me?” she asks. “You?”

“It’s got to be bad luck,” Samir points out.

“I don’t believe in luck,” Parker says, tossing the skull carelessly to the ground. Upon impact, the jaw breaks off. Blade sends her a death stare, but Parker’s already moved on.

“Vandalizing an Indian burial ground, nice move,” Samir says.

“Guys, this burial ground has been here a long while,” Hana says. “It’s more than five hundred years old.”

She points to a stone marker. It’s engraved in Spanish.

“Can you translate?” I ask her.

“Yeah,” she says, and reads aloud.

SACRED GROUND,
CONSECRATED THIS YEAR OF OUR LORD, 1414,
IN HONOR OF THE DEAD WHO WALK AMONG US.

“I thought Columbus didn’t discover America until 1492,” Samir says, scratching his head and staring at the marker.

“More importantly, what do they mean by the ‘dead who walk among us’?” Ryan asks.

I glance at Hana, Blade, and Samir. We know what they mean. Of course, neither Ryan nor Parker know about our famous ghost teachers.

But 1414? That’s a long time before any of the teachers got here, that I know anyway. Interesting. I glance at Hana and can tell she’s thinking the same thing. Most of the ghosts on campus arrived there in the nineteenth century or later, with a few exceptions. But none of them died in the 1400s.

“It’s probably fake,” Parker says, kicking the stone with one toe of her muddy shoe. The girl has no respect for anything, except Prada.

“It’s real enough,” Heathcliff says, speaking for the first time. “This island holds a lot of secrets.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Parker asks, but Heathcliff doesn’t answer. He just falls silent as he stares at the ground.

“Footprints,” he says. “Fresh ones.”

I look where he’s looking and see tracks in the shape of my Steve Madden loafers, the ones that Lindsay stole from me. At least, they’ve got the same heart-shaped sole and the Steve Madden logo on the heel.

“Those are Lindsay’s!” I say. “She’s been all over here.”

“And she’s not the only one,” Hana says, pointing to another set of tracks. These are bigger, and some of them look like bare feet.

Heathcliff kneels down to study them.

“There was a struggle,” he says, pointing to scuff marks in the mud. “I think these men took Lindsay.”

I look down and it seems like Heathcliff is right. Lindsay’s prints disappear right at the edge of the burial ground. And then it’s just the larger footprints from then on.

“Maybe the ghost Indians got her,” Samir says. We all stare at him as if he’s insane. “What? Am I the only one with cable TV? I mean, seriously.”

“Ghosts don’t leave footprints, Samir,” Blade says, as if pointing out the obvious.

“That’s not true. Ms. W does,” Samir says.

“What did you say?” Ryan asks Samir.

“What are you talking about?” Parker chimes in.

Samir quickly backtracks. “Um, nothing. I mean, bad joke.”

“Since when do you ever tell a
good
joke?” Blade pokes Samir in the ribs.

“What happened to my sister? Can you tell?” I turn to Heathcliff. I have a sudden flash of Lindsay being bound and gagged like the student we saw in the woods being carried off by the pirates, or whatever it was we saw last night. A cold chill slinks down my spine. I hope nothing bad has happened to her.

“They got her here,” Heathcliff says, pointing to the mud. “And I think they carried her off in that direction.”

“You think it was the people we saw before?” I ask him. He nods.

“You’re saying she was kidnapped? That’s absurd,” Parker says, appearing between Heathcliff and me. “Who would take a Bard student? Especially out here. This island is deserted.”

“No it isn’t,” I say. “We saw a gang take a Bard student just last night.”

“Even better, they were pirates,” Blade adds.

“Pirates?” Parker echoes, suddenly becoming serious. Instead of scoffing, she seems to actually believe us.

“What do you know?” I ask her, thinking that maybe she’s seen them, too.

“Nothing,” Parker shrugs. “Rumors. Ghost stories.”

“What stories?” I demand. But before Parker can answer, I hear a steady rumble in the distance. At first I think it might be thunder, but it’s got a rhythmic quality, too steady to be thunder.

“Guys? Do you hear that?” Samir asks quietly.

“Hear what?” Parker snaps, but even as the words leave her mouth, her mouth goes slack. She hears it, too.

“Drums,” Hana whispers.

“Awesome,” Blade breathes. “Do you think they’re cannibals?”

“Shut
up,
” Parker hisses, but I can tell she’s scared. Just like the rest of us. It’s hard to keep your composure with the strong, steady beat of drums in the distance. It doesn’t help that the sun is setting. It’ll be dark soon.

“It’s getting dark,” Samir points out, as if we all hadn’t noticed the dwindling daylight.

“Looks like your little detour took longer than it should’ve,” Ryan says. “If we’d headed east, we would’ve been there by now.”

Heathcliff frowns at Ryan. “We would’ve been eaten alive by the dogs first,” he says. “Or worse.”

“What’s the worse?” Samir asks, but seeing the scowl on Heathcliff’s face, backtracks. “Um, never mind. Forget I asked.”

“Ryan, let’s go back,” Parker says. “We can’t afford to break curfew.”

Ryan looks at me and then back at Parker. He seems conflicted.

“But we promised we’d help,” Ryan says.

“Help, not kill ourselves trying.” Parker hugs her arms around herself as if suddenly very cold.

“How much farther, Heathcliff? Can we make it before dark?” I ask.

Heathcliff looks down at the mud and then up at me. He shakes his head. “We’d be better off camping here for the night and waiting until daylight.”

“This is insane,” Ryan says.

“Agreed,” Samir says. “Camping near an Indian burial ground? Doesn’t anyone else think that’s a bad idea?”

“Not to mention the kidnappers are on the loose,” Hana points out. The sun seems to have set in record time and it’s so dark that I can barely make out the expressions on the others’ faces. There’s a pause in conversation and we all listen to the steady beat of the drums in the distance. They go
thud, thud, thud.

“I’m not camping anywhere,” Parker says, her voice high and squeaky. She mentioned ghost stories. Do they have something to do with this? I need to find out what she knows.

“Parker, just tell me what you know. What stories did you hear?”

“Forget it,” she says, brushing me off. “I’m going. I mean it.”

She’s scared. I don’t blame her. The drums are pretty unnerving. She looks over at Ryan. When he doesn’t immediately jump to attention, Parker whirls around and starts off without him. “Fine if you stay, but I’m going.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Heathcliff says.

“Well, I don’t really care what you think,” Parker huffs, and then starts off back the way we came.

“Parker, wait!” Ryan exclaims, bounding after her.

“She’s crazy to try to walk in the dark,” Heathcliff tells me, as he clears off some nearby brush to make the fire. In the distance, the drums abruptly stop.

And then, through the darkness, in the direction Parker ran, comes a high-pitched scream.

Seventeen

Hana, Blade, and I
take off toward the sound of the scream. Heathcliff and Samir lag behind. About fifty feet from the Indian graveyard, we find Ryan peering down into a large hole.

“Careful,” he says, holding his hand up as we approach.

It’s a trap—a big hole that was covered up with leaves and sticks—and down in the muddy depths below is Parker, who is curled up in a ball and holding her ankle.

“I’m going to sue you,” she hisses at us as we lean over to take a look. “My dad will sue this whole damn school for everything it’s worth.”