The Haunted Serpent Read online

  To Grandma Margaret and

  Grandma Dorie. I miss you.

  STERLING CHILDREN’S BOOKS and the distinctive Sterling Children’s Books logo

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  Text, illustrations, cover art © 2018 Dora M. Mitchell

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

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  ISBN 978-1-4549-2786-0

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  Cover and interior design by Heather Kelly

  Even before he saw the dead guy, Spaulding Meriwether was in a bad mood. His feet were wet, his hands were freezing, and he was all alone in the middle of a dark, foggy forest.

  Worst of all, he was feeling like an idiot. He knew what he was getting into when he came out here. He’d heard kids at school saying there was strange stuff going on in the woods outside town, stuff that sounded to him like it could be part of some kind of creepy secret ritual. So what did he do when he heard all this? Stay far away, like any sensible person? Oh no, not S. S. Meriwether—he had to go investigate.

  Clouds of fat, black flies buzzed up from the grass everywhere he stepped—unusual for late October. Before him, Blackhope Pond lay dark and silent, like an enormous, lidless eye. If anything strange had been going on out here, there was no sign of it now. No burned-out bonfires, no pentacles scratched in the dirt, no candle stubs or broomsticks or whatever people actually used for occult rituals.

  He glanced back at the pond. Then again, anything could be hiding in that inky-black water and he wouldn’t have the least idea. The woods were so thick, every murderer and bear and swamp thing in the neighborhood could be lurking in there and he’d never know.

  So when he spotted the dead guy a few yards away, he wasn’t exactly surprised—it only confirmed how dumb he was. He knew something dangerous was going on. For once, he’d rather not have been right.

  Okay, so maybe it was kind of a leap to assume the man was dead. Especially considering he was standing upright and everything. He was even wearing a suit, gloves, and a rather dapper hat. Just because his suit was ragged and covered with suspicious brown stains, and on second glance the hat was all squashed and lopsided, and his skin was chalky-white and sort of squishy-looking, it didn’t officially mean he was dead. Still, this guy was the closest thing to evidence Spaulding had found, so he slid his research notebook out of his back pocket and jotted a quick note. When he got home, he’d add a sketch of the scene while it was fresh in his mind. Spaulding was very thorough about his research notes.

  Anyway, even if the guy wasn’t dead, there was something funny about wandering the woods in formal attire. Spaulding didn’t want to stick around to find out what he was up to.

  Very slowly, he backed away, placing his feet carefully so he wouldn’t make a sound. He took several steps without so much as snapping a twig. Then the harsh jangle of his cell phone shattered the silence.

  The man’s head jerked up. His hat cast a deep shadow over most of his face, but it almost looked like there was something moving on his neck and jaw—small, white, wriggly somethings—

  Spaulding pushed the thought away. Now was not the time to let his imagination get out of control.

  He grabbed his phone and fumbled to turn it off . . . but it was already off. “Weird,” he muttered as he stuffed the phone back in his pocket to deal with later. A moody cell phone wasn’t exactly tops on the priority list just now.

  The man took a step closer. His face was turned in Spaulding’s direction, but there was still a screen of trees between them—it was possible he hadn’t spotted Spaulding yet. Spaulding headed for his bike as quickly as he could without quite breaking into a run. Behind him, footsteps crunched slowly through the leaves.

  Just how far away had he left his bike, anyway? It seemed like it was taking forever to get back to it. He squinted ahead. There it was, lying near some twisted old tree stumps on the other side of the dirt road that dead-ended at the edge of the pond.

  He started running, his footsteps squelching as he crossed the rutted road. Reaching his bike at last, he hauled it upright, his heart pounding. He turned back toward the road, ready to hop on and go. Only now the man in the suit was standing in the middle of the road. Spaulding would have to pass within arms’ reach of him to get away.

  Spaulding swallowed hard. His knees were quivering too much to swing his leg over his bike. His foot caught on the seat, and his bike clattered to the ground. “Gah!”

  He gave up on getting his shaky legs to cooperate with mounting his bike and just ran, wheeling the bike alongside. Maybe if he ran past at top speed and kept the bike between them . . .

  The man seemed confused. He still wasn’t looking directly at Spaulding, and his head swung slowly from side to side like a dog casting for a scent. But then he suddenly snapped around to face Spaulding fully. There was something off about his movements—they were stiff yet fast, like a badly animated cartoon. And now that he was closer, Spaulding could hear the humming of the cloud of flies that surrounded him.

  In a burst of adrenaline, he jumped onto his bike at a run. His feet hit the pedals, and he tore down the road.

  As he whizzed by, the man lunged toward him. Spaulding swerved wildly and felt an outstretched hand graze his back. He flattened himself over the handlebars. Sharp fingernails scratched at his sweatshirt but didn’t catch hold.

  He rounded a curve in the road. Not far ahead, the smooth asphalt of the highway gleamed. He’d be able to pick up speed once he was on the pavement, if he made it that far.

  From the corner of his eye, Spaulding saw the man in the suit leap forward again. A dank smell washed over him, like rotten things in stagnant water. Something heavy hit the spokes of his back tire with a loud twang. The bike lurched—

  The tire was stuck.

  He was falling. The man had to be right behind him now. Any second, he would feel cold, damp fingers latch on—

  But somehow he kept himself upright. With one great, tearing effort, he ripped his wheel free of whatever had tangled in the spokes and took off again. His tires gripped the highway and he skidded through the turn. Whoever—or whatever—the man in the suit was, he couldn’t keep up with Spaulding now.

  The footsteps slowed and then faded away. When he risked a glance back, the road was empty. He caught a flash of movement in the trees and just saw the man disappearing down a narrow, muddy trail that led into the woods.

  He didn’t want to stop until he got back to the safety of town, and maybe not even then. But there was still something hung up in the spokes—he could hear it catching with every turn of the wheels. Reluctantly, he steered over to the side of the road and dismounted.

  An unrecognizable clump was stuck in the metal wires—something damp and stringy. Gingerly, he picked at the tangle until the mass came away in his hand.

  Shreds of rotten fabric fell away from a cluster of small, splintered bones and sinew. Maybe it was some kind of totem, or someone’s horrible idea of jewelry. But mostly, it looked like . . . fingers.

  When Spaulding got home, the house was dark and quiet. That wasn’t a surprise—his great-aunt Gwendolyn was always in her study working at this time of day. Still, he felt a twinge of disappointment. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to be alone.
/>   He chewed his lip and looked at the closed study door. He wasn’t technically supposed to disturb her when she was working. But he did have a good excuse; he could ask her why she’d called earlier. He tapped on the door and peered in.

  Aunt Gwen didn’t look up from her laptop. Her gray hair was falling out of a bun held with a pen and a pencil, her heavy black-framed glasses were sliding down her nose, and her sweater was buttoned wrong. “Right in the middle of a scene, Spaulding—can it wait?” she asked, not bothering with a greeting.

  “Sorry. I was just wondering why you called.” He held up his cell phone and waggled it at her.

  She yanked the pen free from her bun, which slid further down the side of her head. “Wasn’t me, pet,” she said as she scribbled a note on the stack of papers beside her. “Probably someone from school, right? One of your new friends? Run along now, I’ll catch up with you at dinner.”

  Spaulding frowned. Nobody at school had his number. Nobody at school knew his name, practically. He shut the study door and headed upstairs, scrolling through the call logs on his ancient flip-phone. Aunt Gwen was right—there was no missed call from her. There was no record of a call from anyone.

  In his room, Spaulding pulled out his favorite paranormal encyclopedia and flipped through the dog-eared pages until he found the entry he was looking for:

  He slammed the book shut.

  He was going crazy.

  After all, what had he really seen? Just a pale, smelly, dirty person wearing a squashed hat. With some flies and bugs on him. And yeah, he’d acted a little unusual, but it was a pretty big leap from there to Night of the Living Dead.

  He was probably just some poor homeless guy living out in the woods. Maybe he’d wanted to chase Spaulding away from where he was camping. Maybe he hadn’t chased him at all. What if he’d just been heading in the same direction, aiming for that trail? When Spaulding tore past on his bike like a lunatic, he’d probably just knocked the guy off balance.

  But then there was the Mysterious Object. Where had the fingers come from, if not the man in the suit?

  The answer was, they weren’t fingers, obviously. They’d sure looked like fingers. But they weren’t.

  Anyway, even if the dead were waking, he’d just have to focus on the bright side: this would make an excellent story to tell the kids at school.

  Spaulding awoke with a cold knot of dread in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d been dreaming about, but the vague pictures that appeared when he shut his eyes were full of insects and dead things.

  He walked to the bus stop slowly—it took a long time to peek around every corner and behind every tree. He didn’t spot anyone who appeared undead (except some of the more peculiar townsfolk, who always looked that way), but he did manage to take so long that he almost missed the bus and had to run the last two blocks.

  By the time he got to the bus stop, he was sweaty, out of breath, and his hair was all floppy like he hated. To top it off, he skidded in the gravel on the corner and nearly fell on his face.

  Marietta Bellwood, who lived down the street, sneered at his undignified arrival, then went back to pretending he was invisible. She had been doing that ever since the day he moved into the neighborhood, when he’d gone door-to-door formally introducing himself. He still didn’t know what had gone wrong. He’d even planned his introduction ahead of time to be sure it would convey a tone of casual sophistication.

  “Meriwether—S.S. Meriwether,” he’d said, in a casually sophisticated sort of way, sticking his hand out at her. “But my friends call me Boat.” (This was a lie, but he was determined to establish a nickname for himself right away, before anyone had a chance to come up with something uncool. Like “Spudling,” for example, his accursed family nickname.)

  Marietta had stared at him like he was made of spiders. Then she’d begun ignoring him, which it seemed she planned to continue doing for the rest of their lives.

  Perhaps the introduction had been a miscalculation.

  Spaulding climbed the bus steps and slumped into a seat. As always, no one took the seat next to him. The bus rumbled away from the curb, and he turned to the window to distract himself.

  The scenery didn’t do much to cheer him up. Thedgeroot was an old town, and most of the buildings looked like they hadn’t been painted or modernized since its California Gold Rush heyday. Many of the shops and houses were empty, their windows either boarded up or shuttered, as if to stop anything from getting in—or out.

  Pull it together, Boat, Spaulding thought. (Yeah, the new nickname was aces.)

  But just then, the bus passed the road to Blackhope Pond.

  What if the man in the suit was lurking in the trees again? What if he was out there searching for his lost fingers? (Only they weren’t fingers.)

  Spaulding kept his eyes glued to the turnoff as it flashed by. There was no one there. As he’d expected, of course. He folded his arms and pretended he hadn’t really been looking at all.

  A mile or two farther on, the bus passed a barren field encircled by a chain link fence. In the middle of the field stood a cluster of industrial buildings and towering silos. The gates were chained shut. The windows gaped, the glass broken and jagged like sharp teeth in cavernous mouths. The whole place appeared long abandoned, except for a thread of white vapor that trailed from the smokestacks and bled away into the fog.

  Spaulding craned his neck at the sign as they drove by, puzzling over the strange slogan for the hundredth time:

  Every time he rode the bus, he wondered about that place. He tried to imagine the factory back when the town was young: full of people bustling around, busily imaginating and innovatising—whatever that meant. What had they made there in the old days? And why would the chimneys be smoking now, when everything else about the place looked so forlorn and empty?

  He glanced around to ask one of the other kids, but couldn’t catch anyone’s eye. Marietta was looking over at him, but she whipped a book up in front of her face as soon as he opened his mouth.

  He sighed and reached for his notebook again—the Notes to Self were really piling up lately.

  When the bus pulled up at school, he brightened. If anything could get his mind off his worries, it was school. He’d only started public school a few weeks ago, and it was still new and exciting. Up till now, he and Aunt Gwen had moved so often that it had been easier for him to be homeschooled. But this time she intended to stay put for a while, or so she said, back in the town where she’d grown up. Spaulding figured it was the perfect time to try regular school and make some friends his age, which wasn’t something he’d really done before. His friends had tended to be Aunt Gwen’s writer buddies, or four-legged, or . . . well, that was pretty much it.

  That was all going to change now. School hadn’t been quite as great as he’d imagined so far, but it was bound to get better soon.

  He made his way to his homeroom, doing his best to ignore the cracked bricks and peeling paint all over the building.

  “Ah, Spaulding, my leetle Schnuckiputzi!”

  As he walked into class, Mrs. Welliphaunt, his homeroom teacher, greeted him in her cracked, faintly accented voice. She wore her usual old-fashioned dress with a high collar and long sleeves.

  “Come up here, my dear. Let Mrs. Welliphaunt have a look at you. You look tired, no? You do not sleep well?”

  Hesitantly, Spaulding approached her desk. Mrs. Welliphaunt meant well, he supposed, but she also seemed a little . . . insane. She made him nervous.

  “I’m fine, ma’am. I—”

  Before he could say more, her thin, papery hands shot out and caught his wrist in a tight grip. She pulled him closer, her pale eyes boring into his. Then she flipped his hand over and squinted at his palm, tracing the lines and muttering to herself about signs and dark portents. It was better than having her glaring into his eyes, but only by a little.

  Seconds passed. She didn’t seem to be planning on letting go of his wrist. Ever.<
br />
  “Um, thanks, Mrs. Welliphaunt. I guess I’ll just . . . go . . . sit . . .” He gave his hand a small, polite tug. She ignored it, still fixated on his palm.

  “Short life-line,” she whispered to herself. “Not surprising for a troublemaker, though . . .”

  He gave up on being polite and flat-out wrenched himself free. The old woman’s hands remained outstretched for a moment, then slowly sank to her lap. She watched him back nervously to his desk.

  Well, that was awkward. He wiped his hands on his pants surreptitiously. But that was old ladies for you—always with the cheek-pinching, and the dimple-admiring, and the holding-your-hands-in-a-powerful-grip-while-making-grim-predictions . . .

  He wiped his hands some more.

  You can’t go around getting scared by every little old lady who’s a tiny bit overly friendly, he told himself sternly as he took his seat. In the future, he’d simply make sure not to get within arm’s reach of her.

  A short time later, Spaulding sat in his first-period classroom. So far, he thought, his first few weeks of public school had been highly educational. Just not necessarily in an information-from-a-textbook kind of way.

  And dealing with the teachers wasn’t much easier than the students. Spaulding’s teacher for first period, Mr. Robards, was a perfect example. Mr. Robards taught history. Spaulding loved history. And yet Mr. Robards hardly seemed to appreciate his enthusiasm.

  At the moment, Mr. Robards was droning on about the California Gold Rush and doing his best to suck the life out of a subject that should have been exciting. Spaulding, for one, was thrilled to learn that the countryside around Thedgeroot was riddled with abandoned mines. The other students were not exactly enthralled.

  “Besides the mineshafts, tailings ponds, and other radical reshaping of the land itself,” Mr. Robards said over the sound of mass yawning, “there is another legacy of mining in our county. I am referring, of course, to the toxins in our water system. These toxins include mercury and arsenic, and the effects of this contamination are still—all right, all right! What is it, Mr. Meriwether?”