MY EYES SHOT TOWARD the clock.
12:15.
Ariana should have been at the library by now.
Where was she? I had to warn her.
I fumbled around in my pocket for change for the pay phone. I was broke.
I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Klatsch walking up the spiral staircase.
“Mrs. Klatsch,” I said, barely containing my voice. “Can I use your phone for a local call?”
“Qui … et … ly.”
I grabbed the receiver and punched Ariana’s number.
No answer.
Easy, David, I told myself. Keep it together. Think.
She’d said she was going to call Smut, to straighten out their argument. Something unexpected must have happened.
Under Mrs. Klatsch’s disapproving gaze, I tapped Smut’s number on the phone.
“ ’lo?”
“Hi, Lily?” (Lily is Smut’s eleven-year-old sister.)
“Yeah.”
“Can I speak to your brother?”
“He left.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Was anyone with him?” I asked.
“Uh … yeah.”
I wanted to strangle her. “Who?”
“That guy. The yearbook teacher. He picked Stephen up.”
“Mr. DeWaart?”
“I guess.”
“Lily, was Ariana with them?”
“Uh-uh. She called too late.”
“You mean, she called your house after they left?”
“Yeah.”
“And you told her where Smut had gone?”
“Huh? Who’s Smut?”
“No one. Thanks.”
I slammed the receiver down. I stuffed my books and papers into my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and bolted toward the front door.
“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Klatsch called out.
“I’ll tell you later!” I shouted.
I raced out of the library. I knew where Ariana had gone. After she talked to Lily, she panicked. She assumed The Delphic Club was having a meeting — and she went to head them off at the high school.
To warn Smut. To protect him.
Instead, she was walking right into a deathtrap.
My feet pounded the pavement. I could feel the blood rising to my face, gorging behind my eyes. I was furious at Smut, furious at Ariana, and scared out of my mind at what might be happening.
Screeeak!
I was in the street. I saw headlights. I heard a horn. A scream.
Then I felt myself flying. Briefly.
I landed on the sidewalk. Behind me I heard the sound of shattering glass.
“Are you all right?”
A balding man in a tweed jacket was looking at me with a pale expression. Two cars had jumped the curb and hit a light post. One driver was cursing a blue streak.
“Yeah. Fine.”
I was halfway down the block when I heard police sirens.
The school parking lot was a straight three-block run. Mr. DeWaart’s car was sitting there. Just beyond it, one of the school’s back doors was propped open with a trash can. I ran inside and snaked through the hallways to the backstage door. Yanking it open, I headed for the spiral staircase.
I could hear singing as I started to descend. I had never heard the tune. It was beautiful, but it sent a chill up my spine.
I clattered to the bottom and raced through the open bookcase. I rounded the corners, sped through the grafitti-covered chambers. The mist was swirling, spiraling at my side, seeming to point me in the right direction.
Then, suddenly, I saw them.
The Delphic Club. Singing at the top of their lungs, each member dressed identically in gray, flowing robes. Their arms were linked, and they swayed back and forth to the tune.
I stopped in my tracks. I was in their line of vision, but no one seemed to notice me. Their eyes were glazed. They seemed to be under some spell. What were they doing?
Just beyond them, clouds of smoke spewed upward from the crevice. From their midst emerged a black form, smiling, arms held upward.
I recognized Mr. DeWaart’s face before he saw me. In the dim light, his beard seemed thickly sinister, his face cragged and shadowy. He sang with the swaying group, in a deep baritone.
“Wartface,” I said under my breath.
Mr. DeWaart stopped singing. His eyes betrayed no surprise as he looked at me. “I have always found that nickname puerile.”
“But they’re not warts, are they?”
He smiled. “Not any more than the one on your forehead.”
Suddenly more pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. I stared at Mr. DeWaart, trying to put my mounting anger into words. “You were the one — ”
A scream cut me off. Even in the soupy murk, it was earsplitting.
And it was unmistakably Ariana’s.
“No!” I bellowed.
“Stay here, David,” Mr. DeWaart said with eerie calmness. “You can’t change destiny.”
I ran past him. The smoke enveloped me, smothered me with its chalky sweetness. I pushed through, fighting for breath.
Ariana was shrieking my name.
I followed her voice, groping at the cloud with my arms. “I’m here!”
I saw the crevice, a vague dark line in the whiteness. Ariana was nearby. I flailed blindly in the direction of her voice.
Then I touched something.
Cold. Wet. Clammy smooth. And pulsing.
I tried to yank my hand back, but the snake was wrapping itself around my wrist.
I grabbed it with my other hand and pulled. My fingers slipped off, coated with a drippy white ooze.
On the smoke-slickened floor, my feet began sliding toward the hole. I dropped to my knees.
“David! David!” Ariana screamed. “I see you!”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Something was around my chest now. Squeezing, lifting me off the ground. I floated over the crevice. In the eddies of smoke I could see a flickering form. It grew closer, jerking frantically.
“A — ri — ana!” I rasped.
She was clear now, between the cottony puffs. The tentacles had trapped her like a vine around a fence post. Through the maze I could see her eyes, sparked with anger.
Her teeth flashed briefly. With a savage thrust, she buried them in the fleshy skin of the tendril.
White-yellow goop exploded in a fountain. The tendril recoiled from Ariana, ripping itself from her mouth.
What followed was beyond noise. The blast of agonized sound boxed my ears. The tentacle that had wrapped me suddenly loosened. My torso slipped downward, out of its clutches.
I was falling freely, through a sea of writhing tendrils, with nothing below to catch me.
I blacked out, and my blind panic began to splinter and fall away, replaced by a gathering dream.