The Second Evil (9 page)

“Well, I have to stay with Sean till my parents get back,” Corky replied. “But, yeah, sure. I'll be over in half an hour or so.”

“Okay,” Kimmy said. “We can talk then. We can talk all night if you want. I'll even help you study for that science test you have to make up.”

“Thanks, Kimmy,” Corky said with genuine gratitude. She hung up, feeling a little cheered.

“The game's over. You lost,” Sean announced as she returned to his room.

“It's okay. I would've lost anyway,” she told him, thinking about Kimmy. “Want to play another game till Mom and Dad get home?”

He shook his head. “No, I'm going to play against the machine. It's more fun.”

“Oh, thanks a bunch!” Corky cried sarcastically. Then she heard the front door slam downstairs. Her parents were back.

A few minutes later she was in the car, her science text and binder on the seat beside her. She backed the car down the driveway and headed toward Kimmy's house.

It was a cold, clear night. An enormous orange moon hung low in the charcoal sky.

It doesn't look real, Corky thought. It looks like a moon in a science-fiction movie. Everything seemed sharper and brighter than it should have been. As she made her way down Fear Street, Corky felt as if she could see every blade of grass, every leaf, in sharper-than-life focus.

She followed the curve of the road, and the Fear Street cemetery came into view on her left. Her headlights swept over it, bringing a row of jagged tombstones into focus.

“Oh!” Corky cried out when she saw someone moving among the graves.

She slowed the car, her eyes on the moving figure. The orange balloon of a moon floated low over the scene. Corky stared hard, startled by the clarity. There were no shadows.

Who is it? she wondered. Who is there?

And then she recognized her.

Sarah Beth Plummer.

Without realizing it, Corky had stopped the car in the center of Fear Street. Puzzled, she rolled down her window to see even more clearly.

Sarah Beth was huddled low, moving slowly between
the pale gravestones. She was wearing a long black cape that swirled behind her shoulders even though there was no wind.

What is she doing? Corky asked herself. Sarah Beth had told Chip and Corky that she had finished her work in the cemetery.

So why was she there among the old graves tonight?

Her eyes on the dark caped figure, Corky lifted her foot from the brake, and the car began to glide slowly forward. As it moved, Corky realized that Sarah Beth wasn't alone.

Another dark figure stood very close beside her, one hand resting on a tall gravestone.

With a gasp of surprise, Corky stopped the car again. In the surprisingly bright light from the low-hanging moon, it was easy to recognize the other figure.

Jon Daly.

Jon Daly and Sarah Beth Plummer. Together. In the Fear Street cemetery.

“What's going on here?” Corky asked in a whisper, her eyes locked on the two figures, so sharp and clear despite the darkness of the night.

Sarah Beth gestured with her hands. Jon stood as still as the gravestone he leaned against. Then Sarah Beth pointed to the ground.

What were they saying? What were they doing?

Staring hard, Corky recognized the stone Jon was leaning against. It was Sarah Fear's grave marker.

As Corky continued to watch, Sarah Beth suddenly pulled off her black cape and draped it over a marble monument. Then she began to twirl, raising her arms above her head, performing a slow, graceful dance.

As Sarah Beth danced, Jon still leaned against the
gravestone, not speaking, his strange, nearly colorless eyes staring at Sarah Beth.

What is going on? Corky wondered.

With a shudder of fear, she removed her foot from the brake, slammed it down hard on the gas pedal, and roared away.

Here Is the Evil!

“W
e'll have to do this on the honor system,” Mr. Adams said, winking at Corky as he handed her the exam.

Seated on a tall metal stool, Corky leaned forward over the lab table and took the exam from the teacher. “What do you mean?” she asked, studying his face.

Mr. Adams was young, in his mid-twenties, but his dark brown hair was already graying at the sides, and his mustache, which rested over his top lip like one of the bushy caterpillars they had studied in biology, was also sprinkled with gray. He had friendly brown eyes, a nice smile, and usually dressed in jeans and oversize sweaters. He was a tough teacher, demanding, but well liked.

“I have to go pick up my car at the service garage,” he told her. “I should be back in twenty minutes, half
an hour at the most.” He lifted his down jacket off a chair.

Corky glanced quickly at the test. Six essay questions. No real surprises. “I'll try not to cheat
too
much while you're gone,” she joked.

Mr. Adams chuckled. He pulled the bulky jacket on over his sweater. “Those frogs are noisy, aren't they?” he asked, pointing to the big frog case on the shelf against the wall. Six or eight frogs were croaking throatily. “Whoever told them they could sing?”

“They'll keep me company,” Corky replied, watching the creatures hopping around behind the glass. “How long do I have for the exam?”

“It shouldn't take more than an hour,” he said. “It's way too easy.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, laughing.

He gave her a quick wave, pointed to the paper as if to say, “Get to work,” and hurried out of the lab.

The room grew silent except for the rhythmic croaking of the frogs. Corky turned her eyes to the windows that ran along the wall to her right. Shards of December sunlight slanted into the room through the Venetian blinds, falling onto the large tropical fish tank in the corner. Beside it stood a human skeleton, hunched on its stand, its shoulders slumped forward, its knees bent, as if it were weary.

Shelves beside the skeleton held large specimen jars filled with insects, plant specimens, and all kinds of animal parts. Corky made a disgusted face, remembering the cow eyeball Mr. Adams had shown them earlier that afternoon. It was so enormous, so
blobby.

She glanced up at the clock. A little past threethirty. Cheerleading practice would be starting in the gym. She tapped her pencil rapidly on the tabletop,
thinking about her long conversation with Kimmy the night before.

Then, scolding herself for wasting time, she lowered her eyes to the exam and read the first question. “Good,” she said out loud, seeing that it was about osmosis. She had studied osmosis well; she knew everything there was to know about it.

She scooted the stool closer to the counter. Then she wrote the number 1 at the top of the page.

“Hey!” she cried out, startled, as the door to the room slammed shut.

Had Mr. Adams returned already? She spun around to see.

No one there.

Someone out in the corridor must have closed it.

She glanced up at the clock. Three thirty-five.

“I'm wasting time,” she said and began to write.

The singing of the frogs seemed to grow louder. Glancing up with a sigh, Corky saw that the frogs were all hopping around wildly in their glass case, splashing each other, grappling onto one another's backs.

“Thanks for the help, guys,” she said dryly, rolling her eyes. “What's your problem, anyway?”

She returned her attention to the test paper.

Then the Venetian blinds all slammed shut at once. The clatter made Corky drop her pencil. It fell to the floor and rolled under the table.

“Hey!”

The room was much darker without the sunlight.

Corky slid off the stool and dropped to her knees to retrieve her pencil.

When she stood up, the overhead lights flickered off.

“What?”

Corky blinked. Total darkness now.

The frogs sang louder. Corky covered her ears with her hands.

“What's going on? Is someone here?”

The singing of the frogs was the only reply.

She stood, uncertain, leaning against the tall lab table. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the dim light. “Is there a blackout?” she wondered out loud.

Then she heard an unfamiliar
pop-pop-pop.
It took her a while to realize it was the sound of the glass lids popping off the specimen jars.

She saw the lids fly up to the ceiling, then crash back to the floor, the glass shattering, flying across the floor.

The contents of the jars floated up. Hundreds of dead flies rose up from one jar and darkened the air. Dozens of caterpillars followed them, floating silently in formation like a flock of birds.

The croaking became deafening.

As she stared in disbelief, Corky realized that the frogs were free. Their glass case had also shattered. About two dozen of them were leaping over the countertops, scrabbling toward her.

“Help!” Corky managed to yell.

She gasped as something large and soft plopped onto the counter in front of her, splashed her, spread stickily over her test paper.

The cow eyeball.

It stared up at her as if watching her!

The frogs were on her countertop too, leaping over one another, climbing onto the disgusting eyeball, crying out their excitement.

The Venetian blinds began to clatter noisily, open-shut, open-shut, flying out into the room as if blown by the wind even though all the windows were closed.
Sunlight flashed on and off, as fast as Corky could blink.

I have to get out of here, she told herself.

She brushed a croaking frog off her shoulder. Another one leapt at her face. The cow eyeball rose up, plopped down again, then rose up as if trying to fly.

With a disgusted cry, Corky ducked as the wet eyeball flew at her face. It floated over her head. She could feel it spray her hair. Then she heard it land with a sickening plop on the floor.

She had started running to the door when something at the front of the room caught her eye. The skeleton. It was no longer hunched over. It was standing straight, straining to free itself from its pedestal.

Corky grabbed the doorknob and pulled. The door wouldn't budge.

“Help!”

She gasped as the room filled with a foul odor that invaded her nostrils, choked her throat. So sour.

Sour as death.

She tried the door again. “Help me! Is anyone out there?”

Silence.

“Please! Help me!”

And then over the clatter of the flying Venetian blinds and the mad croaking of the frogs, she heard a disgusting crack. So dry. The sound of cracking bones. And, looking to the front of the room, Corky saw one bony hand break off the skeleton.

She watched, frozen in horror, as the hand, its fingers coiling and uncoiling as if limbering up, floated up over the countertops.

The now handless skeleton continued to strain against its stand, attempting to free itself.

The bony hand flew toward Corky as if shot from a gun.

Corky tried to cry out, tried to duck. But the hand zoomed in on her, flew over the wildly hopping frogs, over the quivering eyeball, through the curtain of dead insects that choked the air.

The hand slammed into her, grabbed her by the throat. The force of the collision sent her sprawling against the door.

“Help me! Somebody!” she shrieked in a voice she no longer recognized.

And then the fingers tightened around her throat. The cold, bony hand squeezed tighter, tighter.

Tighter. Until she could no longer breathe.