“You’re crazy!” Mateo shouted. “You can’t just march down there!”
Carl had already scrambled partway down the ridge.
“Carl!” yelled Mateo.
Kristy tapped his arm. “Maybe you should stop shouting,” she said. “They might hear you.”
Mateo looked at her. “We have to stop him before they get him too.”
“I don’t think it’s working,” said Kristy.
“Should we go after him?” he asked.
“And then what?” asked Kristy.
Mateo hated feeling so helpless, but Carl had forged his own fate. Like a renegade, not like a team player. Carl is putting us all at risk! Mateo’s thoughts shouted. How does he think he can just walk into the valley, into the middle of eight killer spirits, and save Priya? Is he planning on asking them nicely? Pretty please and thank you, with sugar on top? It seemed like a suicide mission.
Carl stumbled on some loose rocks as the hill became steeper. He barely maintained his footing, but the spirits ignored his clumsy approach.
“He’s going to fall,” said Kristy. “He’s moving too fast.”
“Any idea what he’s going to do once he gets down there?” asked Mateo.
Kristy shrugged. “No clue.”
“I hope he has some kind of plan,” said Mateo.
“Don’t count on it,” she said.
Carl stumbled again, and this time he fell. Hard. Kristy and Mateo gasped as Carl screamed and rolled down the loose gravel hill, turning a couple of rough somersaults before landing in a heap at the bottom of an embankment. “Augh!” he screamed again and reached for his ankle.
“I knew it,” said Kristy. She turned to Mateo. “Now what?”
“We help him.” Mateo walked back toward the edge of the cliff. “What else?”
“Hold on!” Kristy ran up to him. “Look!”
Mateo stopped and looked into the valley. The spirits were frozen, no longer oblivious to the intruder in their midst. They must have heard Carl, and now each and every one of them was looking in his direction.
“Carl!” Mateo yelled. “Get out of there!”
“Carl!” screamed Kristy.
Carl didn’t need their warnings. He had already seen the spirits—and now they were moving straight toward him.
“I can’t watch!” said Kristy.
“Get down,” said Mateo. They both went to the ground, lying on their stomachs. No need to risk being seen themselves. They kept their eyes on Carl. “I feel like we should do something.”
“What can we do?” said Kristy.
The eight spirits darted over to Carl. He scratched and clawed his way a few feet up the cliff, but with his injured ankle, it was no use. “Mateo! Help!”
“This is horrible,” said Mateo. “I need to help him.” He tried getting up, but Kristy pulled him back down.
“You go down there and the same thing that happened to Priya, the same thing that’s about to happen to Carl, will happen to you,” she said. “You’re smarter than that.”
“But how can you just—” Another noise interrupted Mateo’s question, the same awful moaning they had heard when the spirit entered Priya’s body. A white spirit hovered above Carl, now lying slack on the ground, and then morphed into a long plume of smoke and buried itself in Carl’s body.