The Nightmarys - By Dan Poblocki Page 0,43

plot of The Clue of the Incomplete Corpse. “Such as?”

“Such as the ability to control fear,” said Abigail.

“And … how would they appease this goddess?” he asked, though he felt like he already knew the answer.

“The sect built temples at the locations of great natural ‘chaos.’ Waterfalls. Chasms. Caves. Volcanoes. The tribe would place a corpse inside the temple. A chip of the tribe’s sacred metal was inserted into a tooth socket of the corpse. This metal ‘tooth’ infused the corpse with a connection to the spirit of the goddess. Then a ritual was performed to ‘charge’ the tooth. A person, often an enemy of the tribe, was locked in the temple with the corpse as a sacrifice. Supposedly, at the full moon, the corpse rose, all vampirelike, and drained the life essence of her victim. With the goddess satisfied and the metal charged, the corpse would again fall into slumber.”

“So Delia was the … sacrifice?” said Timothy, feeling sick. “The battery?”

Abigail nodded again. “Once the tooth was charged, the cult would remove the jawbone from the goddess corpse. From here on, the story pretty much mirrors what we read about my great-uncle’s book. Whoever holds the jawbone controls the Daughter of Chaos’s power.”

“The fear thing?”

“Right.”

“The placard at the museum said you needed to grasp the jawbone and speak the victim’s name, and then the soul’s charge inside the metal tooth would place a curse on the victim. The user could control the victim by psychically manipulating what they were afraid of.” Timothy paused. “So what did Doctor Crazy plan on using it for?”

Abigail took a deep breath. “Revenge.”

“On who?”

“The people he blamed for his son’s death. Nazis? I don’t know. He never really said.”

Timothy glanced around the room. Certain objects were now filled with new meaning: the photographs, the flags, even the baseball-card collection. “So the jawbone was a weapon.”

“Delia, he claimed, was his first experiment. Hesselius never revealed where he’d taken her. Once he realized that people thought he was totally insane, he never spoke about the ancient sect again. At least not publicly. Then, a few years later, he was gone.”

“So that’s that?” asked Timothy. “The end?”

Abigail raised her hands, gesturing to the room. “Obviously not.”

“You mean …?”

“What you said on the bus last night, Timothy … You were right. All of this … everything that has happened … It all makes sense. Someone has that jawbone and has been using it against us.”

“Why?” said Timothy. “What did we do?”

Abigail closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Timothy stood up, “But, Abigail, if the jawbone is a weapon, then we have our defense.” He wandered to the back of the chair, trying to sort out the situation. She stared at him quizzically. “Your Nightmarys. Stuart’s monster. All of it. Fear. It’s not real.”

“We don’t know that,” said Abigail. “It all seems pretty real!”

Timothy paused to think. “Well, what do we know? Stuart ended up in the hospital. Mr. Crane called me about the specimen jars. You nearly followed those girls out into the rain…. Maybe it doesn’t matter what’s real. Maybe all that matters is what we believe? The jawbone controls fear. And fear controls us.”

“Yes!” Abigail said. “If my grandmother hadn’t shown up at the elevators when she did last night, I’d be in big trouble right about now. It’s not the Nightmarys who want me to follow them. It’s someone else. If the jawbone gives the user the ability to read minds, he’s controlling my fear of them to get me where he wants me.”

“Where would that be?” said Timothy.

Abigail shook her head. “My grandmother said Hesselius wrote her a letter from his cell, promising that someday, she would pay for telling on him.”

“Pay how?”

A cold draft swept past them. The floor creaked slightly. Timothy and Abigail both spun. The plastic tarp outside made a crinkling sound. A tall silhouette stood framed in the opening. Timothy felt the room start to spin. He clutched the back of the leather chair, as Abigail leapt to her feet. A deep voice said, “What are you doing in here?”

33.

“We were—” Timothy began, but the man interrupted with a wave of his hand.

“Save it.” He stepped inside. His dark hair and beard were salted with white. He wore black jeans, an untucked dress shirt, and a dark blazer. “Wendy told me she gave a couple of visitor passes to some middle-school students earlier this morning. I didn’t see anyone downstairs who fit that description, so I thought