Mothman's Curse (17 page)

Mitch frowned. “I guess it'll be all right, if you think your aunt and uncle wouldn't mind. I'll try to hurry. Give me twenty minutes and then we'll get you home.”

“Take your time,” I said.

As soon as he was out of sight we grabbed our backpacks and pulled on dark track pants and jackets over our clothes.

The marquee outside the Field House announced that there was a Frank Sinatra tribute concert that night. That explained the hundreds of cars in the parking lot.

We found a quiet corner outside the closed ticket office to talk strategy.

Fox checked his phone. “It's eight twenty. We have less than twenty minutes to get this done. It will be tougher than we thought with all these people around. Are you sure you can do this, Josie?”

A headache had started up behind my right eye, a persistent throb that set my already frazzled nerves on edge. I tried not to let it show. “Yes.”

“It's just that you're not the best at being … sneaky.”

“I'll be fine.”

“Stick to places that are poorly lit.”

My eye twitched.
“I know.”

We split up to cover more ground, after Fox explained three more times how to be stealthy and not get caught. I had to shoo him away before I slapped him.

I felt a little foolish and a lot out of place among the clusters of college kids. They looked so cool and sophisticated and
tall
. I threw my shoulders back to gain an inch or two.

After a few minutes of searching, I spotted a narrow, unlit passage and ducked in. A quick check with my flashlight confirmed that the alley was open at both ends. Good. An instant escape route.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed a can of spray paint, gave it a good shake, checked over both shoulders for witnesses, then quickly spelled out
BEWARE
on the nearest wall.

I crouched down and stilled my breathing, waiting for the sound of approaching voices or footsteps. I wiggled my toes in my shoes to keep my feet from falling asleep, then realized I was wearing hard-soled sneakers. The sound of them slapping on the pavement as I made my escape wouldn't fool anyone. I took off the shoes, tied the laces together, and hung them around my neck. Saving hundreds of people was worth one ruined pair of socks.

Minutes later, I heard female voices coming closer. I slipped the goggles on, thumbed the power switch, and listened for the screams. The voices swelled—then passed right by and faded away.

Strike one.

I shuffled closer to the opening, ears straining for any telltale footsteps, when I heard a gasp and a whispered, “What's that? Caleb, do you see that?”

“Those red lights?” said a male voice. “It's probably an alarm system or something. Come on.”

But the girl still stood, staring into the alley, backlit by a streetlight farther down the walkway, her expression fearful and curious. “Look,” she whispered. “It's staring at us.”

I held painfully still, wondering how long they would stand there.

“Kim.” He tried to grab her arm. Now to add the finishing touch. I screwed my eyes shut and hissed at them.

Kim let out a startled shriek and took off running. “Kim!” Her friend jogged after her. I did a rousing victory dance in my head, careful to stay still on the outside. A minute passed, then two. Suddenly a commotion started up some distance away, shouts and running and a couple of screams.

Fox had been busy, no doubt, doing his job well as usual.

“Hey!”

The voice came from the alley entrance, just feet away. I jumped.

“I see it!”

My stomach jolted as I realized
I
was
it
.

“Get it!”

I ran. Footsteps thundered behind me. My shoes bounced against my collarbones. My jacket billowed out behind me, hopefully concealing the fact that I was shaped like a twelve-year-old girl and not like a towering half man, half moth. Nobody was supposed to actually chase me. My luck had held so far, but I knew as soon as the light from the other end of the alley hit me, I'd be discovered.

Better that than be caught outright, though. I dug deep for one more burst of speed, but stepped on a rock and felt my foot slide sideways and give out beneath me. I pitched forward, landing flat on my face, just as my pursuers closed the distance—

—and ran right past me.

I scrambled to hands and knees and crawled back the way I'd come. Shouts of “Where'd it go? It disappeared!” drifted toward me. I froze, but the voices kept getting farther away.

I took off the goggles. Had it been enough? Should I find a new spot and try again? As I crouched there, indecisive, the moth pin pulsed with an unbearable burst of cold that doubled me over. I cried out, felt myself falling, the gravel and mud of the alleyway digging into my palms. A haze of red light filled my vision, and then I was back in the grassy field with Edgar, William, and Elsie …

*   *   *

“Quickly, now, Elsie. I'm getting bored.”

“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.

He stepped over William's body to the sobbing Elsie. He pulled a gold pin from his pocket and affixed it to her collar.

She shrank from him, but he grabbed her arm in a cruel grip. “William believed you had kindness in you, but I see you for what you truly are. A bug to be collected and examined. Without affection, unworthy of mercy. Nothing more. Care to prove me wrong?

“This pin carries a curse of my own making. In the near future, I have foreseen that a terrible disaster will strike this town. You will be given a chance to prevent it.” His eyes began to glow. “Save
every
victim and the curse is broken, but you will die. Your life for theirs.

“Do nothing and you live, but the victims will die. Their blood will be on your hands, and the curse will continue.
You
must decide who inherits the curse, or I will choose for you. Then the cycle will start again—another town, another disaster. I will provide a date and location. Nothing more.

“Perhaps you will try to stop the disaster and fail. You may die in the attempt, or live a long life of regret in the years to come. Either way, every unlucky fool who carries the curse will be trapped between worlds once they die, their souls doomed to torment. And know this: I will be working against you at every turn, spreading fear, thirsty for souls to join me in my misery. The misery you chose for me when you rejected me, then forced William to die in your place.”

His eyes flared crimson. His shoulders hunched; wings sprouted. Elsie screamed …

 … and so did I, a ragged gasp that tore from my raw, aching throat.

I awoke facedown, lying in a shallow puddle, the taste of gravel on my tongue. My muscles quivered and spasmed.

I rolled over and sat up, trying to make sense of what I'd just seen. To wrap my head around the fact that if I stopped the disaster, the curse had already sentenced me to death.

*   *   *

I drew my legs up and sat hugging my knees. My clothes were soaked through with muddy water, but I couldn't even feel it. The pin pulsed cold in perfect rhythm, a steady source of pain to match my stabbing headache. After a while, it occurred to me to take it off. The gold gleamed unnaturally bright in my palm, like a living thing.

A hand on my elbow made me jump.

But it was just Fox, trying to help me up. “We have to go,” he said.

I couldn't get my arms or legs to work.

Fox grabbed my goggles and stuffed them into his bag. He put my shoes on for me and tied them like I was two years old.

“Josie?” He pulled at my arm. I stood and stumbled after him. He kept glancing at my face; I thought he could tell something was really wrong, but from the way he was hurrying, I guessed we didn't have time to stop and chat.

Students were gathered in groups here and there, their words high-pitched and hurried, buzzing about Mothman sightings. No one noticed us.

We made it back to Mitch's car just as the lights of a university police cruiser flashed, a second cruiser right behind, headed for the Field House.

I slipped out of my wet jacket and into the car. Fox climbed into the backseat beside me. Two minutes later, Mitch returned, his face looking pinched in the glow of the streetlights.

“What's going on?” Fox asked with just the right amount of worry in his voice as Mitch slid behind the wheel. “What's with all the cops?”

“I'm not sure,” Mitch said. Larger groups of students were starting to gather, drawn to the red-and-blue lights like—well, like moths to a flame. Mitch rolled down the window and called to a nearby student. “Hey. Any idea what's happening?”

I waited, only half listening. Fox held his breath beside me.

“It's a Mothman sighting. This is so unreal. I have to call my roommate!”

Mitch rolled up the window. “More of this Mothman business. How can all these people be so gullible?” He glanced at us in the rearview mirror and gasped.

“Josie, you look awful. Are you all right? I shouldn't have left you.”

I knew I was supposed to answer, but I couldn't stop shivering.

“It's been a long day,” Fox said. “She'll feel better once we're home. Right, Josie?”

I managed to nod.

Mitch continued to watch us. Fox zipped up my backpack and placed it on the floor of the car. I was pretty sure a can of spray paint had been sticking out of it. Finally, Mitch put the car in drive and headed for home.

On the way, Fox showed me a few pictures he'd taken with his cell phone to document his handiwork. The messages were scrawled in ragged letters, with phrases like:

Many will perish

Remember Point Pleasant … Remember Clark … Athens is next …

And on the side of the Field House, impossibly huge:

Stay Out Monday

Danger

Death

“Extension pole,” he whispered.

I blinked and nodded.

Aunt Barb had waited up for us, keeping half an eye on the die-hard Mothman followers still camped outside. After Mitch explained about my sudden illness, she fussed and felt my head and offered to make me some peppermint tea. I managed to convince her I was just exhausted and stumbled upstairs to my room.

Fox followed as soon as the coast was clear. “Aunt Barb's gone to bed,” he said. Barb had been sleeping in Dad's room since Dad got hurt, just so she'd be close by. I was grateful she'd already turned in for the night.

“Josie, what happened? What's going on?”

I started to cry—the ugly, blubbery kind of crying with a runny nose and hiccups and shoulder-shaking sobs.

“Josie?”

“I don't want to die, Fox,” I whispered.

“What?”

“The pin—when you took the pin off me in the Cave, the vision about Edgar, it must have ended early. Tonight, in the alley”—I hiccuped—“I saw the rest of it. There really is a curse. If we stop the disaster, I'm gonna die. If we don't, I have to choose the next person to be cursed, and it starts all over again. I knew it. I knew it, deep down, Fox, as soon as I put on the pin. Maybe even before.”

Horror and denial crossed Fox's face before he buried it deep and coaxed the whole story out of me.

“Bottom line,” I said, staring at the pin with glassy eyes, “I can either save myself or a bunch of strangers. Some choice, huh?”

He shook his head. “No. I don't accept those choices. Maybe you misunderstood the vision. There must be a way to break the curse completely so that everyone makes it out alive.”

I sniffed. “I don't think so. It's been a hundred years or more, and no one's managed to do it.”

“You act like you've already given up. Well,
I'm
not giving up, so don't ask me to. You hear me? We'll figure this out.”

“What, me and you? With Dad in the hospital and Aunt Barb stressed out of her mind and a mob of crazed Mothman groupies outside our door? I wish I could believe you. I'm going to die, and there's no way around it.” I brushed at a spot of drying mud on my sleeve and heaved a shuddering sigh. “At least things couldn't possibly get any worse.”

That's when we looked over and saw Mason standing in the doorway.

 

14

Mason's lower lip quivered. His eyes were huge and round. I fumbled for anything I could possibly say to calm him down, but Fox was quicker. He slapped a hand over Mason's mouth, hustled him into the room, and shut the door. I wondered how much he'd heard.