“DAVID, YOU LOOK AWFUL.”
Mrs. Klatsch greeted me with those words as I barged into the library. I did not bother to return the compliment.
Needless to say, on a Saturday morning, the place was not crowded. At the nearest table, I dropped my backpack, which contained a copy of the Voyager, my alphabetical list of the Wetherby High School senior class, my notebook full of clippings, and a pen.
“Oh … yeah, a skit. It’s dye,” I replied. “Bumped my head, too — ”
“David, I’m sorry about your classmates. It must be awful — ”
“Mm-hm.” I tried not to let my impatience show. “Um, may I use the Wetherby history book?”
She looked at me as if I were insane. “Sure, David,” she mumbled, pulling the book out of the stacks behind her desk. “More earthquake research?”
“Sort of,” I replied.
“Well, if I can be of any help …”
“Thanks.” I tried to give as normal-looking a smile as possible. She didn’t seem convinced.
I took the book and placed it next to my other stuff. I’d forgotten to bring a pad of paper, so I turned over my student list and stared at the blank page.
Now what?
I hate blank pages. They make me dizzy. That’s because I stare at them a lot, especially when I have to do papers. I get tired. I get nauseated. I stand up, walk around, and end up at a large electric object, like a refrigerator or TV.
I couldn’t do that now. I picked up my pencil and wrote:
VOICE 1 = BORDEN
Genius. Brilliant. A+. Skip a grade.
What did I think I was doing? I knew nothing.
I looked at my watch, then the door. I hoped Ariana was off the phone by now.
I took a deep breath that ended as a yawn. Mrs. Klatsch glared at me.
Okay, Kallas. Chill. Start at the beginning.
Victims:
ARNOLD CHRISTOPHER
HERMAN … NEXT?
SABOTAGED YEARBOOK POEMS:
LYMAN YOUMANS HEALD
CHASE … WHY?
YEARS:
1994 1950 … ANY OTHERS?
Duh.
Sherlock Holmes was laughing in his grave. Splitting his sides. Choking on his pipe.
I opened Our Town: A Wetherby History from 1634 to the Present to the end. Then I slowly made my. way backward through the years, looking for anything suspicious.
Hot stuff. In 1977, the mayor’s bathroom caught fire. A kid was jailed for wearing long hair to school in 1969. A meteor fell on a car in 1958. The Blizzard of ’44 swallowed a house. Teddy Roosevelt visited in ’03. Zzzzzzz.
When I was into the nineteenth century, I stopped at a drawing. In it, a group of people, blacks and whites, stood by a large hole in the ground. A woman was on a podium, reading from a sheet of paper.
Under the drawing, it said:
Poet Clara Farnham delivering her eulogy to a local hero, April 8, 1862:
A nation riven, rent by strife,
Can deem none of its men more free
Than he who gives a life for life
In service of Equality.
Who scoffs at Fortune, risks disaster,
Pulls from tunnel dark and drear,
His fellow man, once slave to master?
’Tis such a one we honor here.
Let us then, ’ere we depart,
Now consecrate this hallowed site
To him of stout and noble heart,
Beloved neighbor, Jonas Lyte.
I read further. It was the usual stuff, Lyte the abolitionist, Lyte the rescuer of slaves. Then I came to this passage:
Scandal, sabotage, and weather hampered Lyte’s efforts. Several slaves were found dead in the tunnel he had built, along with some of Lyte’s workers. Lyte himself died inside the tunnel when part of it collapsed during a storm. Workers dug for days, but Lyte’s body was not found.
Bingo.
My heart started to pound.
I knew where Lyte had gone. He had built his tunnel in the wrong place. He wanted to help the slaves, but he met ol’ Slimy instead.
And Slimy kept him.
VOICE 2 = JONAS LYTE
Yes. It had to be.
I added the new date to the others:
1994 1950 1862
I began flipping through the book again. Smallpox epidemic, riots, the Revolutionary War, witch-hunts. Deaths galore.
My eyes were crossing. What did this mean? Slimy could have been around the whole time. Maybe it caused the war. Maybe it spread the smallpox. (Was that what I had?)
I slumped back in my seat. A gust of wind came through a window and flipped a page. I slapped my hand down to stop it.
My right index finger had landed on the nose of Annabelle Spicer. Fortunately she didn’t seem to mind.
I took my hand away and looked at the picture that Ariana had banned from the yearbook. It was labeled 1686. Annabelle’s wide eyes stared past me, defiant and innocent. As she burned at the stake, watched by the cackling devil, plumes of smoke rose from what looked like a black cloak on the ground. Her executioners looked on in horror. Some townspeople were falling to their knees. Others, mostly young, were dancing and singing.
I needed some comic relief. I smiled. I read about the witch-hunts, the quotes about “crag-faced hags” and “demented children” and “secret lairs.”
And as I turned the page, my eye caught the smoking black cloak again. I wondered what was in it. Dry ice? Burning rubber?
I glanced toward the clock. Mrs. Klatsch was climbing down a spiral staircase into the library’s storage area below. I had a sudden urge to pull her back. Spiral staircases into basements were making me nervous.
That was when I knew.
I looked at the picture again. My mouth dropped open.
It wasn’t a black cloak.
It was a gash. In the ground.
The third voice was female.
I scribbled Annabelle Spicer’s name.
“Yes!” I cried out.
On a chair to my left, an old man awoke with a start and dropped his newspaper. I wrote:
1994 1950 1862 1686
Was there a pattern?
I was suddenly gripped with acute stomach pain. Waves of nausea.
I was going to have to use math.
And I did. Without a calculator. Sweaty palms and all.
The first two dates were 44 years apart. The next two were 88, and the next 176.
The gaps were shrinking by half.
Half-life.
“And the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone,” I sang to myself as I figured out the remaining gaps. I filled in my time line all the way back to 778 B.C. I felt like continuing back to the Jurassic Era, but I cut it short. Wetherby was settled in 1634, so anything earlier was useless.
The library clock said 11:43. Ariana was late.
But it didn’t matter. I was on a roll.
On a hunch, I turned over the student list and circled the names of the three victims.
Hmmm
I counted the letters in the three victims’ names: 13, 15, 11.
Dead end.
I said the names aloud. I tried rearranging letters.
Then I ripped out each entry, including all three columns: alphabetical number, the name, and method of payment:
| 11 | ARNOLD, RICHARD | — |
| 22 | CHRISTOPHER, JOHN | CASH |
| 44 | HERMAN, JASON | CK |
“Oh my lord . . .”
Slimy kept its patterns simple.
First dates, than student numbers.
All ending in death.
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt as if I’d stuffed a sock into it. As I lifted a page of the list, my hands shook.
The next victim was Lucky Number 88.
Words and numbers floated on the page. I blinked and tried to focus.
Then I saw the name.
| 88 | MAAS, ARIANA | CK |