Mothman's Curse (12 page)

“I—I choose…” She met William's eyes, then looked away. “I choose him. Kill him.”

William's eyes filled. “Elsie…”

She would not look at William, so he turned to face Edgar, unflinching. “Yes. It should be me. Please, allow her to live, Edgar. Fear compels her. There is unselfishness in her heart. I know there is.”

“We will see,” Edgar said, and pulled the trigger.

*   *   *

I gasped, throat raw, lungs heaving. I found myself curled in a ball on the dirty floor of the Cave, Fox kneeling next to me, his face stark, shaking my arm and begging, “Please, Josie, wake up, please,
please
.”

I sat up, trembling, my skin icy. I scooted back into the corner and hid my face in my hands.

Fox swiped a sleeve across his eyes and blinked at me. “Josie? Are you in there?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“You want me to get Aunt Barb?” He looked like a little boy, face ghost-pale and tear-streaked. Like the day we put Momma in the ground.

He hadn't cried since, not about anything, not even the day he broke three toes when he dropped a cast iron doorstop on them. Nothing had cracked that perfect facade.

Until now.

I sniffed. “No.” I sat up a little straighter and wiped my face with both hands. “I'm okay, Fox. I'm okay.”

“Where did you go, Josie? You were out of it for, like, five minutes. I finally took the pin off you, hoping it would wake you up.” He pointed to a corner of the Cave where the pin lay gleaming in the dust.

I tried to stop shaking, to make my voice less wobbly, as I explained about Edgar and Elsie, trying not to leave out a single detail. Then we sat side by side against the wall, the heavy silence broken only by the patter of rain on the roof.

“So this Edgar … you think he's Mothman?” Fox said.

“Yes. Probably. I saw him making the pin. He must have given it to Elsie after he killed William. I'm guessing that's how the curse started. I think there was more I was supposed to see, but it got cut short.” We looked over at the pin.

He scowled and crossed his arms. “You're not putting it on again.”

“Fox, there's still so much we don't know. That might be the only way to get the answers.”

“No. I won't let you. You looked dead, Josie. You understand? Just forget it. We'll think of something else.”

I let my head thump against the wall, too exhausted to argue. I missed Dad. I missed Momma. I wished I'd never heard of Mothman or John Goodrich or their stupid, ugly pin. But none of this was going to go away on its own. Gathering up my resolve, I lunged across the floor on hands and knees, closed my hand around the pin, and shoved it through a thick fold of my hoodie.

“Josie!” Fox shouted, standing over me, green eyes flashing, angrier than I'd ever seen him.

I glared back, defiant. We waited, the seconds ticking by, but nothing happened. We gave it another minute just to be sure. Finally, he sighed and held out a hand to help me up. I reached to take it—

—and saw the ghost of John Goodrich standing behind Fox's shoulder.

 

9

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
”
I couldn't manage anything more intelligent. It was all just too much.

Fox ducked, looking right and left trying to glimpse the threat. “What? What is it?”

“It's
him
,” I hissed. I fought the urge to hide under the table.

“Mothman?” He stared all around. “I don't see him.”

“Goodrich. He's
right there
!” I pointed. The figure didn't move or speak. Mostly it just looked at me, forlorn, edges muted and smudged as he'd been in the Polaroids, still all in black and white. He wore the same dreadful suit and glasses, too-long hair parted and combed neatly to either side, huge sideburns hugging half his face.

“Why can you see him and I can't?” Fox's gaze fell on the moth pin. Before I could stop him, he grabbed the pin and clipped it to his own shirt. His eyes darted here and there but didn't settle on any one spot. “I still can't see him. Can you?”

“Not anymore,” I snapped. I stood and snatched the pin back. Maybe it only worked for the person who was cursed. I took a deep breath. I'd never know unless I tried.

Sure enough, as soon as I put it on, Goodrich reappeared. He was two feet in front of me, lips moving, though no sound came out.

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. “He's trying to say something.”

Fox fixed his gaze on me. “What is it?”

“I don't know! I've never played charades with a dead person before!”

Fox leaned in close and whispered, “I think he's here to help, Josie.”

I thought about what Eva had said about John Goodrich when he was alive, that he was a good man. Plus his ghost wasn't doing anything scary or destructive at the moment. He was just standing there.

Maybe it was time to take a leap of faith.

“Just try, okay?” Fox said.

I nodded. “Mr. Goodrich?” I squeaked. My voice failed. I swallowed and tried again. “I—I can't understand you.”

The man's lips moved even faster. His hands joined in, stretched toward me in a desperate plea. He took a step forward. I took a step back and ran into the door, the knob digging into the small of my back.

“What kind of a curse is this, anyway?” I ranted. “How am I supposed to fix anything if I can't even hear him?”

Fox gave me a push away from the door. “Take it easy, Josie. We don't want to scare the nice ghost away with all the shouting. Take your time. Try yes-or-no questions. Then he can just nod or shake his head.”

“Okay.” I cleared my scratchy throat. “Mr. Goodrich, in the storeroom you kept saying ‘Save them.' Is something bad going to happen? Is there going to be a disaster?”

He gave a vigorous nod.

“How soon?”

He pointed to his wrist, like someone tapping their watch when they wanted you to hurry.

“Today?”

John shook his head.

“Tomorrow?”

Another head shake.

I clenched my fists and turned to Fox. “John and Nora had years, and they still didn't stop the landslide. How are we supposed to—” I broke off, the answer coming to me in a flash of clarity. “The paper from the safe. Remember? It said ‘Save them' and had a group of numbers. Maybe it
is
a date. Do you remember what the numbers were?

Fox closed his eyes. “Zero three two three two … zero one five.”

It took me a few seconds to work it out. “March twenty-third? But that's this Monday!”

“Less than a week away,” Fox said.

“Is it Monday, John?” I asked. “Are we supposed to stop a disaster this coming Monday?”

Goodrich nodded.

“Where? What are we supposed to stop?”

His silent monologue started up again, much faster than I could ever hope to translate.

I sighed and slumped down at the table. “This is hopeless.”

Fox glanced around for a solution. “Maybe he could write down his answers or something.”

“Great. I'll just get him some ghostly paper and an invisible pen and he can get right on that.”

Fox rummaged in the cardboard box where we kept odds and ends and came up with a pen and a dog-eared notebook. “Remember the storeroom? He was controlling solid objects, making them float. Maybe he can do it with smaller objects, too, like Marcus's statue. It can't hurt to try.” He placed the pen and paper on the table and backed away, gaze shifting around the room. “Mr. Goodrich, where is the disaster supposed to happen?”

John stepped to the table. Instead of reaching for the pen, he lowered his head and closed his eyes, as if concentrating. The pen skidded and jumped a few times, and after several tries John was able to “lift” the pen to the paper, seemingly by thought alone.

We waited, but try after try, he produced only splotchy scribbles on the blank page. John looked as frustrated as we felt. His lips were moving faster than ever.

“What about something bigger, less precise?” I seized the box and started digging. I held up a piece of blue sidewalk chalk like a trophy. “The wall!” I blurted. “Use this on the wall. Would that work?”

John stepped forward again. His eyes fell closed. The chalk lifted straight up out of my hand and into the air and flew toward the wall, where it collided so hard it crumbled into powder.

“Okay, it's okay, we have more,” I babbled. Before I could go digging for more chalk another piece floated up and out of the box, this time ending in a gentle kiss to the wall. Fox and I stood wide-eyed as halting strokes of the chalk formed shaky letters across the planks of the Cave.

SAVE THEM. SAVE THEM.

“Yes, we know,” I said.
“Where?”

FIELD HOUSE.

“Field House,” Fox echoed. “There's, uh—the field house at Turner High School for track and football practice.”

John shook his head and held his arms out to his sides, as far apart as they would go.

“Bigger?” I said. He nodded. “There's the one on the OU campus.” The new building was a joint project between the city and the university. It hosted community events and some sporting events, too. It wasn't as big as the Convocation Center, where the Bobcats played basketball, but it could still hold thousands of people.

“So which one is it?” Fox said.

But I knew by the hollow pit in my stomach it was the one on campus, even before Goodrich pointed at me.

“The one at OU,” I told Fox. He drew in a breath, his eyes wide.

“John,” I said, “were
you
supposed to stop this disaster?”

He nodded.

“But you died before it happened. So … you're still cursed?”

He hesitated, then nodded again.

“He says yes,” I told Fox.

“Is there any way to break the curse for good?” I said.

He ignored me. The chalk started up again. The same phrases appeared, messier this time.

SAVE THEM

FIELD HOUSE

SAVE THEM

MARCH 23

John's face twisted as if in pain. His image flickered. The chalk fell and shattered.

“What's going on?” Fox said.

“He's losing control for some reason.” John's lips were moving double time. I had no hope of following along. Suddenly he flinched and disappeared. The room began to glow red.

“Josie, what's happening?” Fox demanded.

“He's gone!”

A piece of red chalk rose and began writing, picking up speed, moving across the wall so fast it was a blur of motion and color. More pieces, all of them red, rose from the box to join the first, creating a tangle of scrawled messages filling every free surface. The writing was harsh and ugly, like ragged graffiti.

At last the chalk, worn down to stubs, was flung to the floor. We turned a slow circle, reading the same few phrases again and again:

THEY WILL ALL DIE

YOU CANNOT STOP IT

YOU WILL DIE WITH THEM

And the most chilling of all, the one that made my vision swim and turned my knees to jelly:

JOSIE FLETCHER,

YOU ARE MINE MINE MINE

*   *   *

We stumbled back to the house, soggy and shaken.

Mason met us at the door, bouncing on his toes, tripping over his words, eyes alight. The shock of normal hit me hard after such an upsetting afternoon. “Fox! Josie! Want to see what I'm making?”

He clutched the clock radio Fox had scrounged for him from the storeroom. A tangle of wires trailed out the back. An old flip phone was attached to the top with duct tape.

“That's great, kiddo,” I said, trying to muster a smile.

“It's not done yet. Don't you want to know what it does?”

Fox ruffled his hair. “Maybe later, okay?”