Case File 13 Page 5

  Besides, he was going home in the morning. So it didn’t matter whether he trusted the cat or not. Still, he had a nagging feeling that there was more going on with his aunt than he or his parents knew. As good as it would be to get back home, a part of him wished he had a little more time to snoop around, especially without his parents looking over his shoulder all the time.

  He stuck the note in his pocket and opened the voodoo book, hoping it might have some clues he’d missed before. He tried to pay attention to what he was reading, but it had been a long day and soon his head started to nod. The words swam on the page. His eyes slid closed as the book dropped onto his lap and he began to dream.

  In his dream, he was standing at the edge of a shadowy green swamp. A black cat emerged from the trees and rubbed itself against his legs. “Hello, Nick,” the cat said, swishing its long tail.

  “Who are you?” Nick asked. In real life he’d have been shocked speechless that a cat could talk. But in his dream it seemed perfectly natural. He was more surprised that the cat knew his name.

  “I’m a…friend of the family,” the cat said.

  Nick rubbed sweat off his face. He couldn’t ever remember sweating in a dream before.

  “Was my aunt a voodoo queen?”

  “Oh, yes-s-s-s,” the cat hissed. And now it was no longer a cat at all, but a snake. “Lenore was one of the most powerful voodoo queens.”

  Although sweat still beaded on his arms and face, Nick began to feel cold inside. “She never hurt anyone, did she? She didn’t put a curse on them or…”

  “Did she ever hurt anyone?” the snake asked, wrapping itself around his ankles. “Why, that’s what voodoo queens do. They wrap themselves around you with their powders and their spells, their dolls, and their ceremonies.” Around and around the snake coiled, moving up his body. “They squeeze you until they get exactly what they want.”

  Nick tried to scream, but the snake crushed his lungs so he couldn’t draw in air. All at once, he remembered the gris-gris. He needed an amulet of protection. He raised his hands to his neck, but there was nothing there. The snake opened its mouth wider than he could have imagined, as if it was going to swallow him whole.

  “Help!” he tried to scream. “Someone help me!”

  Nick woke up and something was touching his face. “Ahh!” he yelled, sure he was about to be eaten by a giant snake. But it was only the cat.

  “Man,” Nick said, trying to catch his breath. “You scared the heck out of me.” Purring, the cat curled into his lap and let Nick pet it. The dream had seemed so real, but now that he was awake, he had a hard time remembering exactly what it had been about. “Where have you been hiding all day?” he asked, rubbing the cat’s silky fur.

  “Meow,” the cat said, as if trying to answer him. It gave one last rub against his chest before jumping to the porch and hopping from stair to stair until it was standing on the grass. Nick expected the cat to run off, but it turned to look at him and meowed again.

  “You want me to come with you?” He felt silly talking to a cat, but no one was around to see him, and somehow it felt right—as if the cat could actually understand what he was saying.

  “Meow.” The cat turned and trotted toward the side of the house. Nick looked through the window behind him. The downstairs lights were all off and the upstairs bedroom light, where his parents slept, was on. They must be reading. He wouldn’t go anywhere near the woods, of course, but he wanted to see where the cat was going.

  As Nick walked down the stairs, the cat turned its head to look at him before disappearing around the corner of the house. “Wait up,” Nick called, breaking into a jog.

  Reaching the corner of the house, he saw that the cat was headed toward the backyard. It didn’t bother slowing down for him, as though confident he was following now.

  Where was the cat leading him? Back to the basement? He’d promised his parents he wouldn’t go in there. And whether he wanted to admit it or not, they were probably right. Who knew what all the stuff in those bottles would do? Just breathing in the wrong thing might cause consequences he couldn’t imagine.

  The cat didn’t head for the house, though. It hurried across the backyard at a pace that made Nick have to run to keep up. When it reached the far edge of the lawn, where the overgrown grass met the woods, it glanced at Nick before slipping into the trees.

  “Hey!” he called racing after it. “Don’t go in there. You’ll barely be an appetizer for an alligator.”

  When he reached the spot where the cat had disappeared, he saw it about ten feet into the woods. “Get out of there,” he called, keeping an eye out for anything moving.

  The cat ran a few feet farther, turned, and meowed. Come with me, he could almost hear it saying.

  But he couldn’t. Not with alligators and snakes and who knew what else slithering around in there. And especially not at night.

  “Meow.” The cat paced back and forth, its eyes glowing in the darkness.

  Nick studied the woods. There was something unusual about the spot where the cat kept pacing. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly. To either side the ground was swampy and damp, but where the cat stood meowing at him, it looked dry. And while most of the ground was covered in ferns, bushes, and trees, this area was surprisingly free of plants. It was almost as if someone had cleared it out on purpose. As if it was a…

  “A path,” he whispered. Now that he was looking for it, he could easily see someone had cleared a path through the trees. But who, and to where?

  Trust only the cat, the note had said. Is this what it was talking about? Did someone want him to follow the cat on this path in the woods? Did they think he should see where it led?

  He looked up at the light shining in his parents’ bedroom. They’d freak if they discovered he was gone. Besides, he’d heard that alligator for himself. It would be crazy to go in there.

  But this would probably be his only chance. He knew his parents were going to sell the house, and they were leaving in the morning. If he didn’t follow the path now, he’d never know what lay at the end of it. Didn’t he deserve some fun after giving up his Halloween?

  He looked down at the dirt and spotted a pair of shoe prints leading away from the house. They were slightly smaller than his feet and smooth on the bottom. The kind of footprints an old woman might make if she were wearing slippers. That was what finally decided him. If his aunt Lenore had made this path, how dangerous could it be?

  “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Lead on, cat. Let’s see where this goes.”

  Nick stepped from the grass onto the path and paused. The trees that had looked spooky but cool in the daytime now only looked spooky. Their gnarled trunks gazed down on him like disapproving old men’s faces—angry that he was trespassing. Their hanging moss looked like beards.

  “Trust the cat,” he said to himself. “There’s nothing to be scared of.” He listened for the roar of an alligator, but all he heard were frogs and insects, so he continued on. “Cats have great night vision. If he sees something dangerous out there, he’ll turn back.”

  It sounded good, but as the branches blocked out the moon’s light—leaving him in a tunnel of almost complete darkness—his heart began to pound. In the movies, when the main character headed into the woods, it was exciting. You leaned toward the screen, eager to see what would happen next. Real life was nothing like that. Every time he heard a cracking branch or something slithering through the mud, he froze, sure he was about to become some creature’s meal.

  The cat appeared to have no such worries. It hurried along the trail at a brisk pace, meowing when Nick began to fall behind. Nick learned to watch exactly where the cat went, stepping only where it stepped. Once he veered too far to the left, and his foot slipped into black sucking mud that nearly pulled his shoe from his foot. Another time, he splashed into a pool of murky water and something splashed back in the distance.

  Sometimes the trail was clear, and other times it was so
overgrown he could only tell he was still on it by the fact that the cat was there. What if the cat disappeared? Could he find his way home alone? He stopped still at the thought, wondering if he should turn back now. What had seemed like an adventure before was starting to seem like a really bad idea. He’d seen the headlines— “Boy Lost in Woods.” Was he going to be one of those headlines? Would he ever see his parents again?

  He was about to turn around, despite the cat’s impatient meowing, when something flickered through the woods ahead of him. What was that? It came again—a faint glint of silver appearing momentarily ahead and to his left, before disappearing just as quickly back into the trees. He leaned forward, hands balled into fists at his sides. “Who’s there?”

  Nothing answered.

  “Meow.” The cat stood on its back feet and waved both front paws in the air. The insects, which had paused their chirping and buzzing at the sound of Nick’s voice, started up their night music again.

  “Okay,” Nick said. “But only a few more minutes. If we haven’t found what you want to show me by then, I’m going back.”

  Silently the cat turned and hurried ahead. Nick followed, hoping he wasn’t making a big mistake. A minute later, the trail seemed to end at a slow-flowing stream six feet or so across. “That’s it?” Nick asked. “You brought me all this way to show me a stinky creek?”

  Flicking its tail, the cat bunched its small body and leaped directly at the water. Nick watched, amazed, and waited for the cat to splash in the creek and come bounding back—a wet angry mess. Instead the cat seemed to bounce across the water like a skipping stone, rising and falling until it reached the far bank.

  “How the heck did you do that?” Nick approached the stream. In the glow of what little moonlight could make it through the tree branches overhead, he spotted a flat rock rising just above the surface of the water. Then another, and another. Stepping-stones leading across the stream. “Nice,” he said, nodding his head in approval. Whoever made this trail had gone to a lot of trouble to do it right.

  Holding his hands out for balance, he jumped from rock to rock until he reached the other side. As soon as he was across, he spotted a metal gate, rusty and pitted with age. The cat must have gone through the bars of the gate, because it was nowhere to be seen. Nick placed a hand on the cold iron framework and pushed. The gate swung open with a high-pitched rrrreeeeeeee. A low mist that hadn’t been there on the other side of the gate floated around his legs as he stepped through. Walking between a pair of high bushes, he saw someone looking back at him through the mist.

  “Hello?” he called. The figure didn’t respond. “Who’s there?” Nick took another step forward, his legs trembling. The face was looking right at him, but it didn’t speak or move.

  “Who are you?” Nick said, trying to sound brave. “What are you doing behind Aunt Lenore’s house?” He took another hesitant step before realizing why the figure wasn’t moving. It was a stone statue. A statue of an angel. Looking around, he could see there were more of them as well. And that wasn’t all. Dozens of stone platforms rose out of the mist. What was this place?

  Fifty feet or so to his right he saw what looked like a small stone building. With no trees to block it here, the moon hung big and round in the sky. It was full—a werewolf moon, Angelo would have called it. Its light turned the fog an eerie silver. Nick reached the building, but he still didn’t know what it was. Two steps led up to a door with a pillar on each side. There was something carved into the stone above the door. It was partially covered with dirt and moss. Nick climbed the steps and rubbed the dirt away with the palm of his hand.

  BRAITHWA

  As the last of the dirt fell away, he realized what it said. Braithwaite. His last name. At the same time he understood what this building was—where he was. He tried to step backward, forgetting the step behind him, and fell onto the soggy ground. His breath whistled in and out as if his throat had shrunk to the size of a straw.

  The path he’d followed had led him to a cemetery. The angels and platforms were graves—raised above the ground to keep them above the waterline. And this building poking out of the mist above him was a crypt. A house for the dead. For his dead.

  Something squelched in the ground behind him, and Nick leaped to his feet. “Who’s out there?” he called, trying to see through the fog. Thunder crashed in the clear night sky, and a cold wind whipped through the graveyard, making the mist look like dancing ghosts.

  What sounded like footsteps came from his left, and Nick spun around, nearly falling again.

  “It is time,” a voice whispered out of the darkness.

  Nick gasped. What did the voice mean? Time for what? He looked at his watch. 11:59 and fifty seconds. Ten seconds until midnight on Halloween night. With a full moon overhead. Nine seconds, eight, seven, six. What would happen at midnight? He wanted to run out of the cemetery, but the mist had risen so high he couldn’t tell which way was which.

  Five, four, three. The ground began to glow green under his feet. The green spread from the ground up through the fog. It touched stone and began to race from tomb to tomb like a spreading cancer. Nick’s breath came fast and sharp. It had to be the old woman out there. The voodoo queen. She’d tricked him into coming here, and now she was going to kill him.

  Two, one. The time on his watch changed from 11:59 to 12:00. It was midnight.

  “No!” Nick yelled. He looked around wildly, wondering which way the attack would come from. Someone pushed him in the back, and he fell toward the Braithwaite crypt. As he stumbled forward, the door swung open with a crack like the sound of a mountain tearing itself in two. Plumes of dust spun out of the doorway like miniature tornadoes. Deep inside the pitch-black stone mausoleum, something glimmered.

  Nick stared into the darkness, sure he would see a dead body. Instead, on a white stone pedestal inside lay a glimmering red stone. Nick took a step forward and saw that it looked like a necklace of some kind. A red stone, like a glowing eye in a gold setting attached to a thin gold chain.

  A gris-gris, his brain cried. A protection from dark magic. He ran up the stairs into the crypt. At the entrance something seemed to hold him back for a split second. Then he was through. The stone flared in his hand as he closed his fingers around it, then blinked out.

  Behind him the door of the crypt slammed closed. “Help!” Nick screamed, trapped in the dark. He slammed his fists against the stone door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Let me out!”

  The air in the crypt seemed to be thickening. It was hard to breathe. “Someone open the door.” He felt dizzy, as if he had inhaled some kind of poison gas. “Please…” he gasped. “Open…the…”

  At the last moment he could have sworn he heard someone laughing.

  Then he passed out.

  “Come on, sleepyhead. Rise and shine.”

  Nick peeled his eyes open, wondering for a moment where he was. He turned his head to see his mother standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

  “I thought you were so excited to leave,” she said, cocking her head.

  “I am.” Nick’s voice sounded scratchy, like he was coming down with a cold, and his head felt achy. Just his luck to get sick when it was time to go home. Why couldn’t he have gotten sick before the trip and missed it completely?

  He started to push himself out of bed before seeing his filthy sheets and remembering what had happened the night before. At least, he sort of remembered. He’d followed the cat to the cemetery. There’d been some sort of storm, and then…

  He couldn’t recall what had happened after that. Or how he’d gotten back. There was something about a stone building. The rest was all a blur. Could he have hit his head? Or was he sicker than he thought?

  Mom sniffed. “Take a shower, too. You smell like you’ve been bathing in swamp water.”

  She waited in the hallway, and Nick waved her away. “Close the door. I’m not decent.”

  “Fine, Mr. Modesty. But if you’re not downstairs
in twenty minutes, showered and dressed, I’ll drag you downstairs myself. I want to be ready to go before the movers get here.”

  As soon as she shut the door, Nick jumped out of bed and threw back the blankets. His sheets were covered with dirt and smeared with mud. There were several large clods, and even a worm wriggling sluggishly on the white cotton. What had he done, gone straight from the woods into his bed without cleaning off at all?

  He sniffed his armpits to see what smell his mom was talking about, but he seemed to be congested too. He could barely smell a thing. He pulled the blankets off the bed—at least they were more or less dirt-free—and shook out the sheets before realizing it was a lost cause. He’d have to sneak them into the washing machine before they left, and hope his mother didn’t notice.

  He stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. His skin was pale, and there were circles under his eyes. He peeled off his T-shirt and stared at his reflection. Where had that come from? His fingers gripped the gold chain around his neck and followed it to a red gem that looked way too big to be real. Touching the necklace brought back a memory. Someone had been there in the cemetery with him. They’d shoved him into a crypt and locked the door.

  Had they tried to kill him? Had the amulet saved his life? Could it be a real gris-gris? If so, the voodoo queen who had attacked him might still be around. She might come for him again. Or his parents. Quickly he stepped into the shower. He started to take off the amulet, but if there was a dark magic user after him and his family, maybe it was better to keep it on.

  He stayed under the hot water just long enough to wash away the worst of the mud and dirt from the night before, then toweled himself off and dressed in a rush. He raced down the hall, and was relieved to see his parents packing the last of their clothes into their suitcases.

  “What time did you go to bed last night?” his dad asked, looking Nick up and down. “No offense, but you look like you were attacked by a mountain lion, dragged through the dirt, and then slobbered on for good measure.”