The Nightmarys - By Dan Poblocki Page 0,55

a stampede of large animals were approaching. As one of the girls peeked in at him, Timothy slammed the door shut. He held the knob as the building shuddered and then settled into silence.

Even though he was terrified to open the door, the absolute darkness inside the small space soon became unbearable. Slowly, with his good hand, he turned the knob. A slice of light appeared. The hallway was empty. Abigail’s voice rang in his memory: They’ll kill you … because I’m terrified that they will. Could these horrors actually kill, or were the cursed only in danger from themselves, like Stuart, who’d inhaled the pool water? Timothy realized that the Nightmarys had never touched him. Sure, his hand hurt, but that was because he’d actually hit the window. That part had been real; he knew the Nightmarys were not.

Abigail had been wrong; they could beat these things, if they could beat their fear.

Through the railing, Timothy glanced into the foyer below. Something slammed the front door, and he froze. After a few seconds of silence, he knew he was alone. He pulled the closet door open and rushed onto the landing. He raced down the stairs. Bursting onto the front porch, he glanced down the street. Except for the waning daylight, everything looked as it had when they’d first arrived. Totally normal.

Abigail was gone, just like the old man had predicted. But how had she disappeared?

She hadn’t, Timothy reasoned. Abigail had been inside the mob of girls. The Nightmarys must have surrounded her and ushered her down the stairs right past him. They weren’t coming for him; they were leaving with her. But to where?

The place where your end will come, the old man had said.

The temple of the Chaos Tribe. Timothy finally understood. Jack had meant for Abigail to be the next Delia! The battery. The soul-charge for the incomplete corpse of the Daughter of Chaos.

39.

By the time Timothy reached the next corner, he felt faint. His hand hurt when he swung his arm. But he had to find Abigail. The thought of what might be happening to her at that moment nearly drove him mad.

Sure, he could ask a neighbor to call the police, but he felt that would only waste time. Besides, how could he possibly explain everything that was happening without someone locking him in a straitjacket?

Down the hill, he ran faster than ever toward his house. By the time he reached his front yard, he had to stop and catch his breath. Seconds later, something down the street captured his attention. Near the mouth of the Dragon Stairs on Edgehill Road, a girl stood perfectly still. However, as Timothy squinted into the fading daylight, the figure briefly blurred, like smudged pencil, before solidifying again.

With his lungs on fire, Timothy slowly crossed in front of his house to get a better view. When the girl waved, taunting him, strands of cobweb dangled from her arm. She disappeared down the Dragon Stairs. As he struggled to run after her, he realized she might be leading him away from where he needed to be. But if the Nightmarys traveled in a pack, maybe this single phantom would lead him to the rest of the group … and Abigail.

Crossing Edgehill Road, he called Abigail’s name again. No answer. As he quickly approached the Dragon Stairs, he realized that the painting of the Chinese dragon, whose swirling eyes usually greeted him at this point in the road, was gone. Someone had whitewashed the staircase’s wooden walls. But the painting had been there when he’d followed Abigail up the hill from the campus.

Timothy cautiously crossed the sidewalk and peered into the mouth of the tunnel. As far as he could see, until the stairwell’s first zigzag turn, the walls were bare, as if the graffiti had never existed. He touched the white wall. It was dry.

The girl had led him here. Why? He turned around, glancing up the street toward his house. Was Abigail somewhere back up the hill?

In the woods, on the other side of the wall, a tree branch snapped. When it hit the ground with a loud thud, Timothy jumped. Then he froze. He suddenly had a terrible feeling that he knew what had happened to the Chinese dragon painting. And worse, he realized why the phantom girl had lured him here.

With a lump in his throat, Timothy stepped away from the mouth of the tunnel. Peering around the wall into the woods, he saw something large