always been intense, but even when they’d fought, horribly, she’d never appeared to be so … self-righteous.
“I know,” said Timothy. “I came back up here to smash that thing. If you don’t believe me, then do it yourself.” Timothy held out the hammer to Abigail. She took another step toward him but ignored his offering.
“Gramma’s the only one I can trust with this. She’s the one who should destroy it.”
“But … how do I know that you’re strong enough to resist what it wants?” Timothy asked.
Abigail stepped toward him, her mouth pulled up in a strange smile.
He suddenly understood what was happening here. His skin went ice cold. “Abigail, I think you should go,” he whispered. He tried to step past her toward his bedroom. “Go do whatever you need to do.”
She blocked his way. “No,” she spat. She would not let him pass. In fact, she reached behind her and shut his bedroom door. “You’re coming with me.”
“Abigail …” He didn’t know what to think anymore. All he knew was that he needed to get into his bedroom. He had to check under his pillow. The jawbone was still lying there, hiding from him, and was not in fact in Abigail’s fist.
Abigail shouted, then raised her hand as if to strike him. Timothy cringed against the banister, then stumbled backward toward his parents’ bedroom. Abigail didn’t look like herself anymore. Her black hair had grown past her shoulders and had begun to show white. Long strands of it had caught on her face, a soiled veil. Her sweatshirt began to separate, falling into tatters of string toward the floor, looking like dirty pieces of lacy cobweb.
Behind her, Timothy’s bedroom door burst open. Timothy gasped. Girls now crowded at the entry as if trying to catch a glimpse of what was about to happen. The Nightmarys had returned. The upstairs was suddenly filled with their singsong chatter. They watched as Abigail continued her slow approach. Some of the girls scratched at the wooden doorframe with their long fingernails, as if trying to sharpen them.
Abigail’s scream had turned into a siren wail, so loud, Timothy felt as if his eardrums might burst. She came closer and closer. The hammer slipped out of Timothy’s hand as he turned around and dashed toward his parents’ bedroom.
Once inside, he slammed the door shut and locked it. He stared at the dark wood, listening to the scrambling, scratching noises that were coming from the other side, out in the hallway.
Abigail was not here. She was probably at home, in bed. What was happening now was caused by the curse. The jawbone was trying to protect itself. Timothy knew it would do anything to survive—make him see whatever scared him most. And right now, that was losing his friend, having her turn against him.
Again, Abigail’s statement popped into his head: I know they’ll kill you … because I’m terrified that they will. Before, Timothy had believed that wasn’t possible, that the curse had merely created illusions, that the only real danger he’d been in was from himself. But now, if this was to be a battle for survival, Timothy wondered if the jawbone might try to raise the stakes a bit.
Little tricks, he remembered. Zilpha’s advice. If the Nightmarys were what the jawbone had sent to stop him, then he needed to find a way to beat the Nightmarys once and for all.
The door rattled. Screeching, the creatures on the other side sounded like they might just be able to tear it down.
Timothy glanced around for something, anything, that might stop them. But when he turned toward the darkest corner of the room near his parents’ closet, he noticed a tall patch of cobweb. A dark shape shifted behind it. The Nightmarys were finding another way in.
Before he could think to stop himself, Timothy leapt at the web. He tore the patch away from the ceiling and the walls. It came away as easily as the spiderwebs that he and Stuart sometimes found stretched across their front porches. Timothy’s arms were now covered with a strange sticky substance, but he quickly brushed most of it off. The long strands fell to the floor in a dingy lump. The dark shifting shape that had been forming behind the web faded away into shadow, then disappeared altogether. Timothy spun but stumbled against the closet door when he saw another patch of web appear across the bedroom next to his parents’ bed.
Turning toward the closet, Timothy grappled with the