Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 27

HE SUDDEN CHANGE IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE cafeteria told Angel that her cousin had finally come in. Yet it wasn’t anything she could really put her finger on, it wasn’t that the temperature changed, or a cold draft swept through, or even that the hum of conversation changed. No, it was something subtler.

A creepy feeling that made her skin tingle.

A sense of apprehension, as if some unseen threat was lurking close by.

“Here they come,” Seth said sourly, glancing toward the food line where Zack, Chad Jackson, and Jared Woods were grabbing whatever food was left as Mrs. Carelli began clearing out the steam table. “Just as I was starting to think we might actually make it through lunch hour without even seeing them.”

Angel didn’t have to turn around to feel them looking at her, and seeing the puzzled expression on Seth’s face, her odd feeling of foreboding grew stronger. “They’re doing something, aren’t they?”

Seth’s brow furrowed. “They keep looking over here — at least Chad Jackson does. And he’s got this weird look on his face, like he’s trying not to laugh. And every time he starts to lose it, Zack’s punching at him.”

“What about Jared?”

“He looks like he just puked his brains out. I mean, his face is all pasty and he looks sick.”

Her curiosity overcoming her apprehension, Angel turned to get a look at the three boys, all of whom quickly turned away from her.

Her feeling of apprehension deepened. “How come they looked away when I turned around?” she asked.

Seth shrugged. “How should I know? Maybe they’re embarrassed that you caught them talking about you.”

Angel and Seth stared at each other for a couple of seconds, and then the absurdity of what Seth had said got the better of both of them and they began giggling. “And maybe Chad’s going to invite me on a date, and maybe Heather Dunne’s going to ask you to the Sadie Hawkins Dance.”

“And maybe pigs really can fly!” Seth added. “Okay, so what’s going on?”

Angel shrugged. “I don’t know. But the weird thing is, I felt something when they first came in. I mean, I didn’t even see them, or hear them, or anything, but just before you looked up, I felt something.”

“Felt something like what?”

“I don’t know,” Angel said again. “It’s just a weird feeling — like something bad’s going to happen.”

“That’s not weird,” Seth said. “That’s just reality. It sucks, but what are we supposed to do about it?”

Angel shrugged, and as Zack and his friends threaded their way toward their regular table, they went back to their lunch. “You want to go over to the old churchyard after school and see if we can find a grave for Forbearance Wynton?”

Angel cocked her head. “Why would there be one? If they burned her as a witch, they wouldn’t bury her in the churchyard, would they?”

Seth rolled his eyes. “So if we find her grave, we know they didn’t think she was a witch, right? At least we’ll know more than we do so far.”

“Okay,” Angel said. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

Angel glanced at Zack and his friends, who seemed to have forgotten about her. Yet she still had that strange feeling that something was wrong, that something was going to happen. She let out the breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding in a long sigh. “Nothing, I guess. I’ll meet you after school.”

The bell ending lunch hour rang a few minutes later, and as she picked up her backpack, Angel glanced one last time at her cousin.

This time, their eyes met.

And she saw a dark, cruel glint, as if he knew something.

But what?

As his eyes remained fixed on her, and the strange feeling of apprehension gripped her once again, Angel turned away and hurried out of the cafeteria.

The day wore on, and by the time the last bell rang, Angel was beginning to wonder if she’d just been imagining things in the cafeteria. But when she came to the second floor landing and started toward her locker, she knew that she hadn’t.

Zack and his friends were clumped around Zack’s locker, and though he tried not to be as obvious as he’d been in the cafeteria, Chad Jackson kept glancing at her as she started down the hall toward her own locker.

And she was certain Zack was trying not to laugh.

As she drew closer to her locker, the strange feeling of apprehension grew stronger.

Her locker!

Had they done something to it?

She remembered last year, when someone sprayed paint through the vents of her locker back in Eastbury.

Her step slowed.

Maybe she shouldn’t even open it, she thought. The only thing inside was the heavy history book she didn’t want to lug around all afternoon, and since Mr. McDowell hadn’t given them homework tonight, she didn’t need to take it home.

She glanced back at Zack, Chad, and Jared.

Jared was gone.

But Zack and Chad had been watching her. And they’d done something — she could tell by their postures and expressions, with Chad trying too hard to look innocent.

Making up her mind, she turned away from her locker, hurried back down the stairs, and left the school by the front door. Seth was waiting for her. “I think they did something to my locker,” she said as they started down the steps and across the lawn. They walked toward the cemetery behind the Congregational church, and Angel told him how they had stood around, eyeing her as if hiding a secret, when she’d gone to her locker.

“What are you going to do?” Seth asked. “You have to open it sometime.”

“I know,” Angel said. “I just didn’t want to open it with them standing right there. I just didn’t—” Her words caught as a lump rose in her throat.

“How about we go back after we look in the cemetery?” Seth said. “They’ll be gone by then, and whatever they did, we’ll clean it up. Okay?”

Angel nodded, still struggling to control the sob in her throat. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? What had she ever done to them?

And what had they done to her locker?

Ten minutes later they were standing at the gate to the old cemetery that was all but hidden behind the Congregational church. An enormous tree loomed in the exact center of it. Nearly bare of leaves now, its branches were silhouetted against the sky, its trunk was absolutely straight, and its canopy was almost perfectly round.

Angel stared at it for several long seconds. “How do they keep it looking like that?” she finally asked.

Seth grinned at her. “They don’t — it just grows that way. It’s supposed to be the tree the town was named for.”

“But trees don’t grow that way.”

“That one does,” Seth said. “Come on — the oldest part of the cemetery’s over there.”

He started toward a far corner of the graveyard, beyond which was a small stone chapel with an abandoned look that made Angel feel almost sorry for it. “What’s that?”

“It’s supposed to be the first church built when the town was founded. They’re always talking about making it into a museum but they never do.”

As they drew closer to the old chapel, the shiny granite headstones near the gate gave way to more weathered stones, and when they came to the area directly behind the ancient stone church — which couldn’t have seated more than a hundred people, even if they were packed inside — the headstones were so weathered that whatever inscriptions had been chiseled into them were barely legible.

“Let’s start here,” Seth said, stooping down to try to make out the name on a stone that was leaning at a precarious angle and was missing one corner.

Even the once jagged break had long ago been worn smooth by the centuries of harsh New England weather that had all but eroded it away.

Seth squinted at the inscription. “ ‘Jabez Conant,’ ” he read. “Wow! He died in 1672!”

Angel crouched down in front of the next headstone. “ ‘Abigail Conant,’ ” she read. “ ‘Wife of Jabez.’ ”

“When did she die?”

Angel reached out and brushed some moss away. “It looks like 1661. Or maybe 1667.”

They moved on down the row, reading all the inscriptions they could, then started up the next one. Most of the stones were too worn to be completely legible, though, and even most of those they could read were so faint they weren’t sure they were reading them right.

Halfway up the third row, they found an area neatly bordered by a rectangle of granite blocks that were about four inches wide and three feet long. In several of them, holes had been bored that showed signs of rust. “I bet there used to be a fence mounted in the stones,” Seth said. “But it’s so old the whole thing rusted away.” Within the rectangular plot bordered by the granite footings, which was about twenty feet long and almost as wide, there were at least two dozen headstones, one of which was much bigger than the others.

Even from the path in front of the plot, both Seth and Angel could read the name engraved on the largest stone: THE REVEREND PERCIVAL WYNTON PARSONS.

“The guy who wrote the book,” Seth breathed. “The one about the witches.”

Spread around the large headstone were many smaller ones; they found grave markers for the minister’s wife, his son, two of his grandsons, and his father, along with the stones marking the graves of the men’s wives, and at least a dozen infant children, some of whom had been buried without names.

Three of the women who had married into the Parsons family and were buried in its plot — by far the largest in the cemetery — had been named Wynton.

“I bet there’s a Wynton plot too,” Seth said when they’d deciphered the inscriptions of as many of the stones as they could.

Five minutes later they found it.

It was near the northern edge of the graveyard, and, like the Parsons plot, was surrounded by granite blocks with the same holes bored in them that might too have once supported a wrought-iron fence.

They searched the headstones, brushing away the moss that covered most of the inscriptions, and were almost ready to give up when they noticed one more stone.

It was set apart from the rest of the grave markers, and as Seth and Angel gazed at it, they both got the eerie feeling that they’d found what they were looking for.

They moved closer, crouched down, and tried to read the inscription. Though the granite was deeply pitted, and whatever decorative carving may once have adorned it had long since eroded away, the name was just readable: JOSIAH WYNTON.

Beneath the name was the date the man had been born and the date he died.

He’d been just a little past forty when he died in 1694.

Beneath the dates were two more lines. Angel and Seth looked at them for a long time, neither of them saying a word.

The first line read: “Husband of Margaret.”

The second line read: “Father of Forbearance.”

But the space around Josiah Wynton’s grave — the space where his wife and daughter would have been buried — was empty.

Indeed, after Josiah, no other person had ever been buried in the plot.

They found the rest of the Wyntons, what few there were, in another plot, on the opposite side of the graveyard.

As they left the graveyard and started back toward the school, neither Angel nor Seth said anything at all.

The steps in front of the school were deserted by the time they got back from the graveyard, and when they went through the front door, the downstairs corridor was empty. They started up the stairs to the second floor, but when they got to the landing where the stairs turned, Angel stopped.

“Maybe we should just go home,” she said, the memory of Zack’s smirk still fresh in her mind.

Seth shook his head. “You’ll just have to open it Monday morning. And you better believe that Zack and Chad and Jared will all be there, waiting to see what happens when you do.”

Angel took a deep breath, knowing he was right. Whatever Zack was up to, it was better to face it now, with no one there except Seth. She started up the rest of the stairs.

The second floor corridor was as empty as the first, and as they walked the twenty yards to Angel’s locker, their footsteps echoed off its walls with a hollowness that matched the feeling in Angel’s belly. When they were finally standing in front of the locker, she stared at the lock for nearly a full minute.

How did they get in?

How did they know the combination?

Maybe they didn’t!

Maybe it was nothing — maybe they were just trying to freak her out.

Clinging to that faint hope, she began working the combination, and a moment later lifted the handle of the locker.

She swung it open.

And saw Houdini lying on top of the thick history text that lay on the floor of her locker.

Except that he wasn’t actually lying on it at all.

Rather, his broken body was sprawled across it. He was on his back, his legs splayed out at strange angles, and his eyes, wide open, were staring at her.

Except they weren’t staring — their light had faded away, leaving only the cold empty look of death.

Blood was caked around his ears and the corners of his mouth.

Angel stared at Houdini’s broken corpse, barely able to believe what she was seeing.

How could they have done it?

What had Houdini ever done to them?

A sob rose in her throat, and Angel tried to choke it back but failed. As a second sob gripped her, followed by a wracking moan, Seth moved around her so he could see inside the locker too.

“Oh, Jeez,” he whispered.

Angel turned away from the locker and buried her head on his shoulder. Seth, his eyes fastened on the dead eyes of the cat almost as if he was mesmerized by them, put his arms around her and patted her gently as her sobs began to build. He felt Angel stiffen in his arms a moment before she pulled away from him. Her face was streaked with tears, but she reached into her backpack, found a handkerchief, and wiped them away.

“Let’s bury him,” she said, her eyes fixed on Seth’s.

Seth frowned. He’d buried a hamster when he was six, but now he was fifteen.

As if reading his mind, Angel said, “I’m not talking about holding some kind of dumb funeral for him. I just want to take him somewhere and bury him — somewhere nobody will ever find him. Then I’m going to act like nothing happened at all.”

“But tomorrow morning—”

“Zack will be waiting for me to open my locker, just like he was this afternoon,” Angel said. “Only there won’t be anything in it.”

Suddenly Seth understood. “And if you don’t let on we found him today—”

Angel glanced into the locker again, and another sob rose in her throat. “Let’s just do it, okay?” she asked, her voice trembling as she struggled not to start crying again. “If we talk about it…” Her voice trailed off.

Seth could read her emotions from the tremor in her voice and the pain in her eyes. “I’ll put him in my backpack,” he said.

As Angel struggled to control her roiling emotions, Seth transferred the contents of his backpack to Angel’s, and then, placing himself between Angel and the locker, gently lifted Houdini’s broken body out and slipped it into the pack.

“Come on,” he said softly. “I know exactly the place where no one will ever find him, and I know where we can get a shovel.”

They’d paused only once more before leaving the village, when Angel insisted on picking some flowers from one of the gardens in the old cemetery. “It just seems like he should have them,” she’d explained. “I mean—” She’d faltered, then shrugged helplessly. “It just seems right, that’s all.”

The yellow aster and three red chrysanthemums were still clutched in her hand, and Angel thought they might wilt before they got back to the little cabin where she knew Seth was taking them. Indeed, it seemed to her that the path they had set out on almost half an hour ago had completely disappeared, and now nothing around her looked familiar. Seth hadn’t slowed down even when the trail disappeared, and even though she’d been able to keep up so far, she was starting to feel out of breath.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” she finally asked.

To her relief, Seth stopped and turned around. “It’s only about five more minutes,” he said.

“But nothing looks anything like it did the day before yesterday when we followed—” Her voice choked when she tried to say Houdini’s name, and despite her silent vow that she wasn’t going to cry, her eyes blurred with tears. She wiped them away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and sniffled to clear her nose.

“It’s okay,” Seth said, his brown eyes reflecting the pain she was feeling almost as if he were feeling it himself. “Nobody’s around except me. If you want to cry—”

“I don’t want to cry,” Angel interrupted, a little too quickly. “I just asked if you were sure you know where we are.”

“I’m sure,” Seth insisted. “I’ve been coming out here forever, and I’ve never gotten lost yet.” He pointed off toward what Angel was pretty sure was the east. “The bluff’s over that way — in a couple more minutes you’ll be able to see it.” He turned away and started walking again, either following a trail Angel couldn’t see or knowing his way so well he didn’t need any path at all. Taking a deep breath, she followed, silently counting the passing seconds just to see if he was telling her the truth.

She’d counted the 110th second when suddenly, through the trees ahead, the face of the bluff appeared. Seth turned back to her, grinning. “See? Here we are.” He pointed off to the right. “The cabin’s down that way.” A few minutes later they climbed over the berm of rubble that hid the cabin from anyone who might happen to run across the small clearing between it and the forest, and Angel gazed down at the strange structure that was so well hidden in the face of the bluff that it was still almost invisible.

“I still can’t believe no one knows it’s here but us,” she said.

“We wouldn’t know if Houdini hadn’t showed it to us.” Seth clambered down the steep face of the berm, leaned the rusty shovel they’d taken from his mother’s potting shed against the door of the cabin, and swung his backpack off his shoulders, setting it gently on the ground.

They took turns digging a grave for the cat, making it deep enough so no wild animal would be tempted to dig the creature’s corpse up and eat it, and when they were finally satisfied, Seth gently laid Houdini on the grave’s bottom. Then Angel knelt down and carefully laid the three red chrysanthemums on the cat’s body, their stems together so they formed a bouquet. She added a thin layer of earth over the chrysanthemums, then laid the yellow aster so its bloom was resting on Houdini’s head. “So you’ll always have a patch of sunlight,” she whispered. Picking up the shovel, she quickly began filling the hole in, tamping down the dirt as best she could. When she was finished, there was still a mound of leftover earth, and she used the shovel to spread it around, mixing it with the fallen leaves and shattered rock that covered the rest of the thin strip of earth between the base of the berm and the wall of the cabin. By the time she was finished, the spot where Houdini was buried looked no different than anyplace else.

Seth hefted a large slab of loose granite from the berm and set it above the grave. “Nobody but us would ever even notice it,” he said. “But at least we’ll know where he is.”

Angel’s eyes met his. “And we don’t say anything to anybody.”

Seth nodded.

Angel’s eyes shifted to the cabin. “You want to try something?”

Her tone made Seth’s pulse quicken. “What?”

Angel licked nervously at her lower lip. “I was thinking — what if we tried out one of the recipes, and something really happened?”

Seth looked at her uncertainly. “Like what?” he asked, his voice reflecting the uneasiness he was feeling.

Angel shrugged. “I don’t know.” She hesitated, then: “But wouldn’t it be neat if we could actually do something to Zack and his friends?”

The beginnings of a grin played around the corners of Seth’s mouth. “You mean like a hex, or a curse, or something?”

“What are you laughing about?” Angel challenged. “Last night you were the one who was talking about how many people believe in stuff like that.”

Seth’s grin faded as he gazed at Angel. “All right,” he said after several seconds had gone by and the challenge in her eyes didn’t fade. “Let’s try it.”

They went into the tiny chamber, leaving the door open. Seth lifted the rough wooden bar that held the single shutter covering the window closed, and swung it open. As light and air flooded through the opening, they looked around.

Nothing had changed, yet somehow the little room felt different to Angel.

It felt oddly empty, as if something were missing.

Yet as she gazed around, everything appeared to be exactly as it had been when they first found the cabin.

The kettle still hung from the pothook in the fireplace.

A thick layer of dust still covered everything.

And yet…

Then she knew. It was Houdini that was missing. Once again she had to struggle against the tears that threatened to overwhelm her, and when she spoke, her voice caught on the terrible lump that had risen in her throat.

“I hope it is real,” she said, crouching down to pull the loose stone from the fireplace and reaching deep into the recess behind it. Taking the book from its hiding place, she stood up and moved to the counter that ran along the longest wall. “I hope—” she began as she set the book down, but her words died on her lips as the book fell open and she saw the single word at the top of the page:

Beneath the single word were two brief verses:

Angel and Seth read the two verses over and over again. Finally, Seth asked, “How come it opened to this one?”

“Houdini,” Angel breathed, her voice breaking as the memory of the cat’s body lying broken and twisted at the bottom of the grave rose up in her mind. “I just — I can’t—” At last the tears she’d been struggling to control since they’d opened her locker overflowed, and a wracking sob seized her. “Why did they do it?” she cried. “Why—” Another sob choked off her words, but the little she’d said was enough for Seth to understand exactly how much pain she was feeling.

“Let’s try it,” he said. “Let’s see if we can figure out what we’re supposed to do.”

Angel struggled against yet another sob, forced it down, and again wiped her tears away with her sleeve. Her eyes focused on the first line. “ ‘Lover’s blood…’ ” she whispered, then looked at Seth. “What does it mean?”

“I think it has to mean your blood,” he replied, his voice barely louder than hers. “I mean, you loved Houdini, right?” Angel nodded, and Seth went outside, picked up his backpack, and brought it in. He fished around in the front pocket of the pack and produced a small Swiss Army knife. “Think you can do it?”

“H-How much do you think it means?” Angel stammered, staring at the knife but making no move to take it from Seth.

“It doesn’t say.”

“It has to,” Angel said. “Recipes always tell you how much you need.” Wiping the last vestiges of her tears away, she turned back to the book, but this time opened it at the front. The first page bore nothing but the title.

The second page listed all the recipes the book contained.

On the third page there was a poem that bore no title:

She read the verse twice more, then gave the book to Seth. “It looks like all we need is a drop.”

Seth read the verse through, then turned the pages until the book was once more open to the recipe. “Put some water in the kettle while I build a fire.”

While Seth began stacking kindling and wood on the hearth, Angel took the large iron kettle off the pothook and dipped it into the deep stone basin that was still full of crystal clear water, the steady dripping from the roof seemingly unchanged since the last time they were here. It took only about a quarter of the contents of the basin to make the kettle half full.

“What if someone sees the smoke?” Angel asked as Seth struck a match and held it to the kindling. The bone-dry wood ignited in an instant, flames leaping from one piece to another until the whole pile was ablaze. It took only a few seconds. As if to answer Angel’s question, there was a flash of brilliant white light and a clap of thunder so loud the floor trembled beneath their feet.

A second later a pounding rain began to fall.

“Nobody will see anything through this,” Seth said, staring out at the downpour that had materialized so suddenly.

“How are we even going to get home?” Angel asked.

“Maybe it’ll quit as fast as it started.” Seth hung the kettle back on the pothook and was about to swing it over the fire when Angel stopped him.

“I have to put the blood in.” Picking up Seth’s pocketknife, she moved close to the kettle, opened one of the blades, and held it against the forefinger of her right hand. Biting her lower lip so hard it hurt, she steeled her nerves, then jabbed the point of the knife into her finger. Handing the knife to Seth, she held her wounded forefinger over the kettle and squeezed it hard.

Two or three drops of blood fell into the water and instantly vanished.

“Do you think it’s enough?” she asked, watching as the water seemed to swallow up her blood without a trace.

Seth shrugged. “How should I know?” His gaze shifted to the open door and the downpour outside. “Think you have to get the dirt from Houdini’s grave, or can I?”

Angel’s brows knit. “I probably better.” She moved to the door and peered out. The sky — crystal clear when they’d arrived only a little while ago — was leaden now, and the clouds seemed to be getting darker even as she watched. Certain that the rain was only going to get worse, she darted out the door, snatched up a pinch of muck from the spot marked by the stone Seth had laid over Houdini’s grave, and ducked back inside.

Surprisingly, though it was pouring outside, she’d barely gotten wet.

She went back to the kettle and dipped her fingers in. The fire was blazing under it, and the water had already turned warm. Rinsing her fingers clean of the dirt from Houdini’s grave, she wiped them dry on her sweatpants and looked at Seth, who was once more studying the book. “Now what do we do?”

“Let it boil, I guess. But what about this other thing? What’s ‘blur of grief’?”

Angel figured it out immediately. “My tears,” she breathed. “Every time I think about Houdini, I get all—” Her voice broke once again, and almost as if in response to her words, her eyes blurred with tears. She moved quickly back to the kettle, swung it out of the fireplace, leaned over it, and thought once more of what her cousin had done to her pet.

Half a dozen tears dripped into the kettle.

Angel swung it back over the fire.

“That’s all it says,” Seth said softly. “Now we wait.”