The Nightmarys - By Dan Poblocki Page 0,41

of crud.

“Timothy, what’s—?”

“Hold on,” he whispered, leaning closer to the bookcase. He grabbed the frame from the shelf, cleaned the dust from the glass, then noticed three familiar names in the bottom right corner. In order, they were the men who played second, first, and third bases on this team. He gasped.

“Tell me what’s going on,” said Abigail. “What are you looking at?”

Timothy showed her.

“Baseball cards?” she said, skeptically. “So what? According to the articles I found, Dr. Hesselius was a well-known collector of Americana. As a historian, that was one of his special interests.”

Timothy smiled. “Nothing more American than baseball, is there?” he said. “Check out the bottom.” When Abigail read the names, she dropped the papers she’d been holding. As she bent down to retrieve them, Timothy looked closer at the portraits and whispered, “Carlton Quigley. Bucky Jenkins. And Mr. Leroy ‘Two Fingers’ Fromm.”

32.

A few minutes later, they were seated in the dusty leather chairs. Abigail examined the framed collection of baseball cards, then picked at the frame’s backboard, which was held in place by several stubborn nails. Timothy flipped through the articles she had printed. Headlines leapt out at him. Confession! Kidnapping Tragedy! Professor Tied to Evil Cult! On one page, Timothy thought he saw a photograph of Abigail herself, but realized it was a picture of her grandmother. Zilpha Kindred, Hero, read the caption.

Timothy glanced at Abigail, who had managed to pry away one of the frame’s rear prongs. “What are you doing?”

“These cards have secrets,” she said. “Can’t learn them if they’re locked away.”

“Speaking of secrets,” he said, as she continued to pick at another stubborn nail, “what did you find? There’s too much here to go through.” Abigail sighed. Timothy chuckled in disbelief. “You still don’t want to talk? Fine, then I will.”

Timothy told Abigail about seeing Ben the night before. Abigail listened, but she did not seem as astounded as he expected her to be. She hung her head and wouldn’t look at him. Back to her old tricks, he thought, but when she finally began her own story, he changed his mind.

“Last night,” Abigail began, “the Nightmarys came back.”

“Oh,” he whispered. Zilpha hadn’t told him this part.

“I’d been so upset by what had happened earlier—you know … on the bus—that after I lay down on the couch and they showed up, I finally followed them.”

“After everything we’ve been through?” said Timothy. “How? Why?”

Abigail pulled her hair away from her face and leaned back into the chair. “I didn’t plan on it. They wore me down. I felt like I was sleepwalking down the hallway, but I knew I was awake, and I couldn’t stop or even scream. Something inside me actually wanted to follow them, telling me that I deserved whatever happened next.

“Gramma found me at the elevator. I told her everything. I promised her I’d stay out of it, but you know that’s impossible now. I won’t see her get hurt. This morning, I wrote a note that I was going back to New Jersey. I snuck out early so no one could stop me. I came here to the campus. Like I said downstairs, I didn’t want you involved, because I don’t want you to get hurt either. And here we are, together again.”

Silence filled the room.

Finally, Timothy said, “But I’m a part of this now. You know that. I need answers as much as you do.”

“You’re right, Timothy,” said Abigail, smiling weakly. “We are really close to figuring out something huge.”

“Dr. Hesselius is behind all of this.”

Abigail nodded, still pulling at the frame. “But there’s just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

She glanced up. “Dr. Hesselius is dead.” She took the papers from Timothy. Flipping through them, she stopped at an article near the back of the packet. Mad Doc Hangs, read the headline.

“That’s what Zilpha told me. He was executed?”

“No,” said Abigail. “He did it in his cell a few years after the trial. Here, start at the beginning.” She shuffled through the pages again. “We’ve got a nearly complete biography here. The New Starkham Record has snippets of Dr. Hesselius’s career going back to the early nineteen twenties.”

“What does it say?”

“Well, here’s a blurb from when New Starkham’s history department hired him,” said Abigail, perusing the article. “His family was really rich. He played baseball at his Ivy League school. He was a private in the army during World War One. The article goes on, stating his specialties in ancient civilizations, particularly the histories of warfare and engineering, which he