From Bad to Cursed (26 page)

I sat back and sighed. “But if Tashi’s really—gone, then who’s going to manage the energy?”

Farrin turned away. “That does complicate things. But we have no reason to believe that we can’t keep the book in a safe place and continue to benefit from Aralt’s generosity.”

“Not send it to a new group of girls?” I asked. “Then…no one else would die.”

“I suppose not,” Farrin said. “We couldn’t risk sending the book out without Tashiana. Does that make it easier for you?”

“No,” I said, trying to sound more sure than I was.

“Anyway, the simple fact is, you have no options other than
Tugann Sibh
. You’re incredibly lucky that such a simple solution exists. You would be wise not to question it.”

“If I weren’t one of Aralt’s girls,” I said, “would I still have won the contest?”

She didn’t look up from her work. “But you
are
one of Aralt’s girls.”

“But if I
weren’t
.”

She finished clipping the print over the air vent and turned to me. “Alexis, with your camera, you can change the world. You can affect the way people think. You can fight wars and end them. You can make heroes and destroy them. You can shine a light on injustice. It’s not just doctors who make a difference.”

I thought about that—finding something I cared about and bringing out passion in other people. For a treacherous moment, I was filled with a lustrous feeling of power.

“But I don’t—I mean, I
do
want to achieve things. But not because of some magical ring. Not because someone died for it.”

“Aralt isn’t a genie in a bottle. I’ve worked hard, very hard, to get where I am. And you will have to work hard too. But when you do the work, you will see the results. That’s all.”

I was starting to get a headache.

She came toward me and grabbed my hands. “This is your destiny, Alexis.
Embrace it
.”

“No.” I backed away. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“
I’m sorry
is not an option.” Her fingers were still wrapped around my own. “You don’t have a choice.”

“I do,” I said. “We could just not do anything. Or we could get rid of the book.”

In the dark, with the red light behind her, her eye sockets were shadows. Her hair was a mass of blackness outlined by a red halo. “Now don’t go doing anything foolish.”

I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to back away. “No, I mean, give it back to you.”

She relaxed. “You’re so
smart
,” she said, twisting the word derisively. “Why don’t you go home and research the South McBride River incident?”

She followed me out through the workroom, though in a way it felt like I was being chased out. As she held the door open, she looked down her nose at me.

“You have a responsibility, Alexis. Remember that.”

I ran out to the parking lot, huffing and puffing painfully by the time I got to Mom’s car.

Stuck beneath the windshield wiper, flapping in the wind, was a parking ticket.

I drove straight to the library.

In the summer of 1987, a group of sixteen high school girls in the town of South McBride River, Virginia, were all struck with a debilitating mental illness. The most accepted theory was that the girls had somehow stirred up some toxic sludge from the bottom of a local lake, exposing them to a previously unknown bacterium. The infection shut down their brain functions and left them all comatose. One by one, they died.

There were entire websites devoted to it, most of them set up by conspiracy theorists, who pinned it on everything from aliens to a deliberate government effort. One man had somehow gotten hold of the girls’ school records, showing that every one of them, even the most mediocre students, had finished the school year with straight A’s. He went on to say that, in the depths of their madness, several of them carved the word
ARALT
into their bodies. This, he claimed, was an acronym for the U.S. government’s top-secret “Advanced Research in Atomic and Laser Technology” department.

So the door to Aralt, once opened, must be closed again or you’ll be driven insane, and then your brain will turn to useless mush.

I sat back against the hard wood of the library chair, feeling this new information like a twenty-pound weight on my chest.

We had to read that spell. One of us had to die…or we’d all die anyway.

I
WENT STRAIGHT HOME
, got in bed, and stared at the ceiling. I didn’t answer my phone. I lied to my parents about feeling sick, and I ignored Kasey when she tried to talk to me. Finally, teary-eyed with hurt, she got the idea and left me alone.

Tashi was dead.

We were all bound to an incredibly selfish and angry spirit.

And the only way to fix it was for someone else to die.

I kept feeling this weird urge to just act normal, to pull the covers up to my chin and try to get some sleep. Wake up and have everything be fine. Just an ordinary day.

That is never going to happen
, I told myself.
You are never going to have another normal day. Unless you find some way to stop this, you will never be normal again.

* * *

The orange glow of the sodium halide streetlights mixed with the shadows of tree branches on my wall.

I ran through everything I could remember about the book, about Aralt, about Tashi. Especially Tashi. That night I’d been there, she’d been afraid. Why? Had it been Lydia at the door? Why had she pushed me into the garage?

I need to show you,
she’d said.

Show me that Aralt was evil?

Because she’d known someone was going to die? But women had been dying for more than a century for Aralt. There had to be a hundred and fifty signatures on those pages. What was different now? What had changed?

And I kept repeating her last words to me:
Try again.

Elspeth had said so too. Try again.

But try
what
again?

The Ouija board?

I got up and reached under my bed, where I’d hidden it. I sat on the floor and set the board up in a patch of bright orange light.

“Tashi?” I whispered. “Can you hear me? I’m sorry you died. I need your help.…I don’t understand what it was that you wanted me to try.”

No response.

“Elspeth?” I whispered. Then, helplessly, “Anyone?”

The pointer gave a quick jerk, startling me. I pulled my hands off and watched it move. It seemed to swing, more than wobble—great sweeping motions, full of purpose, like a pendulum.

I-A-M-H-E-R-E

“Elspeth?” I asked.

But I knew it wasn’t Elspeth.

Slowly, I reached down, intending to upturn the board, breaking the connection, and fold it up before any more words came out.

But as my hands got closer, the planchette stood perfectly still.

Was he gone?

I
slooooowly
lowered my fingers toward the pointer.

Just before I touched it, it bubbled up with inky black goo.

I tried to grab my hand away, but I was too late—

In a fraction of a second, it exploded into a sheet of black that stretched to cover my whole body like a cocoon. I opened my mouth to scream, and it poured in through my lips, silencing me. It was as sticky and impenetrable as a giant spiderweb. I tried to pound against it with my fists, but with every move I made, it squeezed and constricted me more. As it thickened over my eyes and my ears, I lost my balance and fell sideways onto the carpet.

Within a minute, my whole world was contained in a shrinking womb of black webbing. I could breathe, but I couldn’t hear my own breath. I couldn’t see or move.

I lost track of how long I lay there, driven into a frenzy of fear but bound as tightly as a straitjacketed mental patient. I knew I was sobbing, and I could feel the vibrations of moaning in my throat, but all sound was silenced by the impassible shroud.

There was no such thing as time, or light, or movement.

Only darkness as endless as death.

Finally, mercifully, I lost consciousness.

I awoke—how much later?—on the floor. My whole body shook as the memory pounced on me. Had I dreamed it? The Ouija board was on the carpet by the window. My fingernails had dug bright red half-moons in my palms. The wounds stung in the open air.

And I was thirsty. God, I’d never been so thirsty.

There was a cup of water on my nightstand. I downed it in one long swig. That did nothing to soothe my parched throat, so I went to the kitchen and filled and emptied the cup twice more.

I was unsteady on my feet, like I’d had too much cold medicine. I had to lean against the counter to keep my balance.

Then I went to the bathroom and washed my hands, noting how filthy my fingernails were. I found the nailbrush under the sink and scrubbed until the tips of my fingers were pink and almost raw. At first, dark red liquid—my own blood, from my torn-up palms—ran from them. But then the water ran clear, and there were
still
black crescents under my nails. They wouldn’t come clean.

I flipped on the light and studied myself. Aside from my palms and my fingernails, there was no evidence that I’d just been attacked.

I leaned toward the mirror and opened my mouth.

The sight made me stagger backward into the wall behind me.

The whole inside of my mouth was charcoal black, as dark as the inside of the cocoon. My teeth, my tongue, my gums…as far down my throat as I could see—black.

Collecting myself, I leaned in closer and noticed a gray overlay covering the whites and irises of my eyes, as thin as a pair of sheer black panty hose. I blinked a few times, but couldn’t feel it—thank God.

I wasn’t in pain. Actually, considering everything I’d just been through, I felt pretty okay.

I turned off the bathroom light and went back to the kitchen, filling my cup again. I left it on the counter so I could come back and get it. The energy seemed to be draining out of me. The thought of climbing back into my bed filled me with a sense of almost giddy anticipation.

To stretch out and feel the smooth, soft sheets against my arms, the coolness of the pillowcase against my face—to sink into a sweet, sumptuous sleep—

But not yet. There would be time for that later.

First, I had to kill my sleeping family.

I
PULLED A CARVING KNIFE
out of the block and grabbed the hand towel from the refrigerator door. I thought with regret that the bloodstains would probably ruin the little white towel.

I’ll buy a new one, I thought. With my own money.

Aralt’s approval coursed through me like a cool breeze.

Parents first. My dizziness intensified as I made my way down the hall. I knocked into the wall on one side, then wobbled too far in the other direction and hit the other side, too.

But I made it. I put my hand on my parents’ doorknob and turned it so slowly, so quietly.

Kasey had tried to kill our mother this way last year, but only got as far as the hallway.

Amateur
.

My parents were snuggled together in the center of the bed. The light from the window fell across them in a triangle of blue. They looked so peaceful, so content. It was nice that they’d been able to pull together when the family needed it most. Some couples would fall apart, but they just got stronger. It had really made things easier for me and Kasey.

Dad slept closer to the door. Better to start with him. Then Mom would be trapped.

Kasey I’d save for last, because let’s face it—she wasn’t going to be a problem.

As I looked for an angle that would let me make a quick, deadly impact into my father’s throat, I thought, I hope Kasey appreciates everything they’ve done for us.

I lifted the knife in the air and hesitated.

Where was the towel? I must have dropped it in the hallway.

Without it, I wouldn’t be able to wipe the knife clean when I was through. I would have to carry a bloody, dripping knife to Kasey’s room and then all the way back to the kitchen, ruining the carpet in the bedrooms and maybe even the grout between the tiles in the hall.

I found the towel on the ground just under the family portrait.

As I went to stand up, I felt a tiny point of pressure on my back.

“Don’t move,” Kasey whispered.

I stayed bent over.

“Drop the knife,” she said.

“
Excuse
me, I’m using it,” I said.

She swallowed hard. “For what?”

“Mom and Dad. You.”

The pressure on my back increased. “
Drop it
, Alexis.”

Drop it?
Like I was a bad dog running around with a sock in my mouth.

“How long will this take?” I asked, setting the knife on the floor. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“Get in the bathroom,” she said.

The faster I indulged her, the faster it would be over with. So I walked into the bathroom. She followed, kicking the knife toward the end of the hallway and flipping on the bathroom light.

“What’s this all about, Kasey?” I asked, turning around. At the sight of my face, she gasped, and the point of the fireplace poker she was holding wavered in her hands. I realized a second too late that I’d missed a chance to grab it and smash it into the side of her head.

“What’s happening to you?” she whispered.

I glanced in the mirror. The darkness had begun to spread from my mouth and eyes. It leached out inky puddles with thin tendrils of black snaking out in delicate feathery patterns.

What’s happening to me?
What was she talking about?

“So you have a pointy stick,” I said. “Big deal. Get out of my way.”

She shook her head.

The poker had a sharp point at the very tip and another piece of hooked metal that curled out to the side and ended in another point.

“What are you going to do?” I sneered. When I spoke, I could taste the sourness of the black coating in my mouth. “Poke me?”

“I’ll hit you, Lexi.” Her face was stony. “As hard I have to.”

Whatever. I was really not in the mood.

“Can’t we talk about this in the morning?” I asked.
After I kill you?

“No.” Her eyes hardened. “Get your toothbrush.”

“What?”

“Pick up your toothbrush,” she said, careful not to let the poker dip a second time, “and stick it down your throat.”

“Kasey—” I said, and suddenly the sharp tip of the poker was touching the soft part of my stomach.

“Do it,”
she said.

“Ugh, fine,” I said, picking up the toothbrush. “You’re sick, you know that?”

“Get in the tub,” she said.

Cocking one eyebrow, I lifted one foot and then the other and stood in the tub. “Happy?”

She waited.

I stuck the toothbrush into my throat. Instantly, I gagged and doubled over.

“Do it again,” she said.

“God, Kasey,” I cried. What was the point of this? Stabbing people was one thing. But making them barf—that was just disturbing.

But I did it again, and suddenly I was overcome by a tsunami of nausea, dropping to my knees in the bathtub, vomiting up mouthful after mouthful of bitter black liquid.

It got in my nose and stuck in my throat and made me feel like I was choking.

But the less of it that was inside me, the more I wanted to keep throwing up—forever, if necessary. I was crying and gasping and retching, my arms covered in the remnants of the black goo, and then it hit me—how close I’d come to killing my family.

That and the memory of being trapped inside the black cocoon crashed through my body and left me a shaking, sobbing wreck.

After watching me for a minute, Kasey set her poker on the counter and came to the edge of the tub.

“Lexi?” she whispered.

I retched again, overcome by another wave of nausea, and rested my head on the filthy surface of the bathtub.

I couldn’t speak. I could hardly breathe. My nose stung, and my throat felt like it was wallpapered in fire.

“Shh,” she said, gently rubbing my back. “It’s okay.”

“Did I…” I paused to gag and spit out another mouthful of black fluid. “Did I hurt anyone?”

“No,” she said. “We’re fine.”

When the nausea subsided, I started shaking.

“Come on, Lexi,” she said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I couldn’t believe how calm she was. She raised me to my feet and helped me undress. She ran a hot shower and sat on the lid of the toilet seat while I rinsed off. When I got out, she was waiting with a towel and a fresh pair of pajamas.

I brushed my teeth for what felt like ten minutes. When I was done, the toothbrush was black. Kasey dropped it in the trash can.

Then we stood looking at each other.

“I guess we’re even,” I said.

She frowned. “I haven’t been keeping score.”

So this was it. This was the train off the rails. I shuddered to think of what might be happening in the houses of Sunshine Club girls across Surrey. I consoled myself with the idea that the goo and I went way back; that our relationship was somehow a step ahead of everyone else’s.

But Farrin was right. We had no choice. This had to end.

I reached a shaky hand down and opened the drawer, pulling out a tinted lip gloss and rolling it over my raisin-dry lips.

Kasey passed a comb through my hair, dabbing the ends with a towel to keep the water from soaking through my pajama top.

“You need some rest,” she said, separating my hair into three sections and weaving them into a simple braid.

“You have to lock me up,” I said. “In a closet or something. Someplace I can’t get to anyone. Someplace safe.”

“You’ll be safe,” she said, but in the mirror I saw her chest shudder with an intake of breath.

“Where?” I whispered. The world was huge and dangerous, full of people I could hurt without a second thought.

She wiped the wet comb on a towel and stuck it back in the drawer, then put her hands on my shoulders and met my eyes in the mirror. “With me.”

I looked at the dimples in her cheeks from the determined clench of her jaw.

If I could get the fireplace poker, I thought, I could make those dimples a lot deeper.

Oh, God
. I ran past her to my bedroom, where I pulled on a pair of jeans and zipped my jacket over my pajama top.

Kasey knocked lightly and pushed the door open a few inches. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to go.”

Her mournful eyes looked up at me, and she hugged herself tightly. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll try to send you a message.”

“What do I tell Mom and Dad?”

“Make something up,” I said. I was afraid to stay an instant longer than I had to.

Kasey followed me to the foyer and locked the dead-bolt behind me, as I’d told her to.

I crossed the street and climbed to the top of the jungle gym, where I took out my phone and called Megan.

Her tires crunched on the cheap asphalt as she parked. This road would be dust in five years. She pushed open the passenger door for me and watched me fasten my seat belt.

“So what happened?” she asked.

I didn’t want to say it out loud.

“That bad, huh?” She headed back to the main road.

“Please help me,” I said. “I need to go somewhere safe.”

Suddenly everything caught up with me and I started to cry. It was a full-on ugly cry—dark, stinging tears pouring down my cheeks, my mouth open in a wide, hiccupping wail, snot welling up in my nose.

Megan dug through her purse, pulled out a packet of tissues, and drove.

Through all of it—all of the meetings, the glamour, the stuff with Carter, Tashi’s death—what I’d really needed was someone to talk to. A best friend.
My
best friend.

“Megan,” I said, “everything is falling apart.”

“Shh,” she said, patting me on the shoulder.

“No, you don’t understand,” I said. And then I told her everything—thinking I’d had Aralt fooled, finding myself caught anyway. Tashi’s weird disappearance. Farrin’s threats.
Tugann Sibh.
Winning the contest, even though I didn’t deserve it.

Everything but Kasey.

I was so busy talking that she pulled into Lydia’s driveway before I noticed which direction we were headed.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“You’ll be safe here,” Megan said. “Lydia’s parents aren’t home.”

She saw me looking warily up at the foil-covered window, with light leaking around its edges.

“It’s not like I could take you to my house, Lex,” she said. “Grandma would have us both committed.”

True.

Lydia let us in, speaking in soft, soothing tones, and even brought me a cup of tea. We sat on the couch for a minute until my nerves got the better of me and I had to stand up and walk around. I could feel their eyes on me like I was a loaded gun. And, after all, wasn’t I?

The walls of the living room were hung with random family photos. It looked like they’d just put whatever picture was handy on whatever nail happened to be in the wall. The scale was off, the frames didn’t match.

I leaned in closer to see a picture of eighth-grade Lydia—pre-goth—grinning and leaning against an older woman. It was some kind of church social or some-thing—they both wore goofy straw hats and name tags.

HI, MY NAME IS: LYDIA
!

HI, MY NAME IS: ELSPETH!

I stared at the photo for what felt like a very, very long time, until my vision seemed to swim.

“Lex?” Megan asked. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Why don’t you come sit down?” Lydia asked, gliding to my side. She took my teacup and led me back to the couch.

Don’t trust me,
Elspeth had said.

“Who is that?” I asked, and my tongue was fuzzy. My words came out dull.

Lydia glanced up at the picture. In my head, the image echoed:

HEAD TURN/GLANCE, HEAD TURN/GLANCE, HEAD TURN/GLANCE

“That’s my grandmother,” she said, her voice vibrating in my head like she was talking into a fan. “She died in May.”

GRANDMOTHER/DIED IN MAY, GRAND
MOTHER/DIED IN MAY

Megan appeared above me, her hand under my chin. “Hello in there?” she asked. Then she turned away. “Yeah, she’s gone. How long will it last?”

DON’T TRUST ME/DON’T TRUST ME/DON’T TRUST ME

No.

The world went dark like the curtain being lowered on a stage.

DON’T TRUST MEGAN.