The Haunted Serpent Read online

  Spaulding stopped frantically waving his hand. “Are we going to talk about red mercury, Mr. Robards?” he asked. “I’ve always found it fascinating.”

  A few desks over, Katrina Waverly, the most popular girl in the sixth grade, gave a loud snort. Katrina was in most of his classes, and besides him, she was the only kid who ever voluntarily answered questions. She’d even answered some stuff he didn’t know.

  “Red mercury is folklore, not history,” Katrina said.

  Spaulding leaned over his desk to see her. “You’ve heard of it? Most people haven’t.”

  She sniffed and tossed her long, brown hair over her shoulder. “Duh.”

  “Well, anyway,” he said, turning back to Mr. Robards, “not everyone thinks it’s folklore. And folklore is an aspect of history. And it’s interesting.”

  Mr. Robards pinched the bridge of his nose. “Very well, Mr. Meriwether. Red mercury is an imaginary substance, which is imagined to be created in some sort of mysterious alchemical process from real mercury—the toxic chemical we are actually discussing here today. May we move on?”

  “Yes, sir,” Spaulding muttered, slouching in his seat.

  Katrina snickered.

  That was the moment he decided to stop talking in school. He told himself that keeping quiet and observing without interfering was a valuable skill in the researcher’s arsenal. He was certainly becoming an expert at that.

  At lunchtime, Spaulding wandered the cafeteria, wondering where to sit. He recognized most of the kids, but no one had been exactly friendly yet. He was reluctant to go up to someone and just strike up a conversation. Which was weird, because he’d never in his life hesitated to talk before.

  He stopped to make a note of it: 12:10 p.m. Observing changes in own behavior, possibly resulting from exposure to middle school environment.

  Nearby, Marietta sat at a table with Katrina and the rest of the sixth-grade popular girls. Spaulding slid into a seat at the table next to theirs. Marietta was bound to thaw out eventually, and then she could help him get to be friends with Katrina, too.

  “Did you guys hear there was another big bonfire out by Blackhope Pond last night?” Katrina said loudly. “Oh, that’s right, you wouldn’t have, since, like, the police aren’t telling anyone and my dad is practically the only person in town who knows about it and all.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder while giving a no-big-deal kind of shrug.

  Kenny Lin, a seventh-grader whom Spaulding had already pegged as another one of the populars, sat at the next table with a gang of the sporty kids. He tossed a soggy French fry onto Katrina’s tray and gave her his usual wide, friendly grin. “Whatcha guys talking about?”

  “Oh, hiii, Kenny!” Katrina said, batting her eyes rather ridiculously as if pretending she hadn’t known he was there. “I was just telling everyone about a top-secret police investigation, that’s all.”

  “Whoa.” Kenny scratched his head, mouth hanging open.

  “I know, it’s crazy!” Katrina said. “Daddy talked to a guy whose house is out in the woods who’s asked the police to investigate but they aren’t doing anything and he’s totally going to sue if his house gets burned down and Daddy’s gonna represent him.”

  “Whoa,” Kenny said again, mouth still agape. He stuffed in another fry and managed to chew while continuing to look dumbstruck.

  Spaulding scowled at him behind his back. Apparently, around here a person didn’t have to be insightful to be popular.

  A skinny, pale, blonde girl named Grace Beely, who was sitting next to Katrina, chimed in next. Grace always drifted along in Katrina’s wake and tended to say “Yeah” after everything Katrina said.

  “Yeah,” Grace said now, right on cue. Spaulding rolled his eyes. “And I heard it’s all because of the old factory. My mom told me never to go near it—she says it’s a haven for juvenile delinquents. She says Mr. Von Slecht needs to take responsibility and have it torn down.”

  Marietta sniffed and folded her arms. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Mr. Von Slecht is very responsible. If there was a problem with the factory, he’d take care of it. There aren’t any juvenile delinquents sneaking in there.”

  Spaulding perked up. Here was a perfect opening for him to gather information while also impressing everyone with his firsthand observations. He cleared his throat. “I think something funny might be going on at the factory,” he said. “I saw smoke coming out of the chimneys this morning.” Ha—that ought to get their attention. He flipped open his notebook and pretended to be very busy with important note-taking.

  Instantly, every head in the group swiveled toward his table and every pair of eyes fixed on him. Okay, maybe too much attention.

  “Oh, whoa,” Kenny said. “You know, they say that place is haunted.” Solemnly, he held out a fry. “I’m Kenny.”

  Spaulding looked at the fry. It was squashed and greasy, and the fingers holding it appeared to be freshly licked. He took it anyway. “I’m S.S. Meriwether. My friends call me Boat.”

  Kenny wrinkled his nose. “Boat?” he asked around the ketchup packet he was now sucking on. “What kind of a nickname is that?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” Spaulding said, leaning in. “It’s derived from the SS Meriwether Lewis, famed United States liberty ship in World War—”

  Katrina yawned loudly. “Weren’t you supposed to be telling us about how you saw smoke coming from the factory?” she asked. “Not that you actually saw anything of the kind. It’s abandoned, obviously.”

  “Yeah,” Grace said. “Slecht-Tech is out of business, duh.”

  “Slecht-Tech is not out of business,” Marietta snapped. She seemed to take this Slecht-Tech stuff personally. Spaulding made a note of it (after setting the limp fry aside and wiping his fingers thoroughly).

  Katrina glared at her. “Oh my God, Mar, who cares? That’s not the point.”

  “Well, my dad happens to work for them,” Marietta said. “I just don’t like people saying stuff about it that isn’t true, that’s all.”

  Spaulding kept scribbling notes. This was great—a source of inside information about the factory, right under his nose! Maybe he could get to the bottom of all the weird stuff going on, right here and now at lunch. That would really knock everybody’s socks off. “I’m sure I saw smoke. Maybe you’re wrong about the place being abandoned.”

  Marietta shook her head firmly, curls shaking. “No, it’s empty. They don’t manufacture anything anymore—they have a fancy corporate office in town where they do computer stuff. That’s where my dad works.”

  “Well, maybe somebody broke in.”

  “Juvenile delinquents,” Grace said, eyes wide.

  Marietta rolled her eyes. “There are electronic locks, a huge fence, and the windows are boarded up. No one broke in.”

  “I told you guys, it’s haunted,” Kenny said. “I bet you it was, like, ghost smoke from the old days when the machines were still running.”

  “Ghost smoke?” Katrina eyed Kenny with a funny look on her face, but didn’t say anything else. Spaulding had a feeling if anyone but Kenny had come up with the idea she’d have had plenty to say.

  “Um . . . okay. Ghost smoke.” Spaulding pretended to write it down. “I’ll keep that in mind. Anyway, I saw something else weird, too. I heard you all talking about strange occurrences near Blackhope Pond before, so I went out there to investigate.”

  Katrina smiled and propped her chin on her hand. “Oh, this should be good. What’d you see?”

  “There was this guy out there, right? Just standing there in the middle of the woods. Wearing a suit.”

  “So, basically he was weird because he was dressed inappropriately for the setting.” Katrina shot a significant look at Spaulding’s own sweater vest and tie.

  Spaulding felt a blush prickling over his face. “It wasn’t only that. He chased me. Kind of. I think. And his hand—he grabbed my bike, and—and there were these bones . . .”

  She sniffed and looked away, c
learly unimpressed.

  He hesitated. Should he tell her his theory? She’d think he was crazy. But as it stood now, she thought he’d been scared of some normal guy. If he told her what he suspected, maybe she’d be super impressed that he’d faced the living dead! How would he know if he didn’t try?

  “I think . . . I think he was dead,” he said. “Well, undead.” He grabbed the abandoned fry, shoved it in his mouth, and tried to chew in a relaxed-looking way.

  There was an instant of stunned silence.

  Then, as one, the whole group burst into hysterical laughter. The teacher on lunch duty shot them a dirty look. Only Kenny and Marietta were silent—Marietta because she was busy leaning as far away from Spaulding as she could without tumbling out of her seat; Kenny because his mouth was so far open it looked like his brain might be in danger of falling out.

  “Oh my God,” Katrina gasped. “You’re serious!”

  “I know it sounds strange,” Spaulding said. “I just don’t know how else to explain it. Actually, since you know the most about what’s been happening in the woods, I thought maybe you—I mean, do you think the bonfires could be connected? Maybe someone’s doing black magic? Or, um . . .”

  Spaulding wasn’t quite sure what the expression on Katrina’s face meant, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t the look of someone about to give helpful information.

  She cleared her throat, the corners of her mouth twitching. “You’re saying you believe in magic?”

  “More like witchcraft.” The words were out before he could stop them. “I mean, I don’t believe in it! I just research it.” He shook his notebook at her, as proof of the seriousness of his work. But everyone was laughing too much to notice.

  Katrina turned to Marietta. “You live near him, right? Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

  Marietta picked at her fingernails and shrugged.

  Luckily, the bell rang at that moment, saving him from further humiliation. With a toss of her hair, Katrina picked up her lunch tray and made her way out of the cafeteria. The rest of her gang trotted obediently after her.

  Kenny hesitated as if he was about to say something, but then his friends yelled for him to catch up, and he hurried away.

  Only Marietta remained, fiddling with the garbage on her tray. Spaulding was still packing up his leftovers when he heard her whisper.

  “Psst. Hey, you.”

  Spaulding glanced around. No one else was nearby. He raised his eyebrows at her.

  She rolled her eyes. “Duh, you, obviously. Spaulding, or whatever.”

  “Boat,” he corrected.

  “I am not calling you Boat. And that’s exactly the type of thing I want to talk to you about.”

  “Huh? My name?”

  “That’s not your name,” she snapped, flattening her juice box so forcefully it squirted him. “You can’t just decide you’re going to be called that. Your name is your name.”

  He wiped some grape juice from his forehead. “Lots of people have nicknames.”

  “Yeah, cool people have nicknames that other people give them. That’s not my point anyway.” She rubbed a hand over her face and took a deep breath. “Just listen for a second, would you? I’m trying to tell you something.”

  He waited.

  She stuffed the squashed juice box into the recycling bin, avoiding his eye. “I’m sorry if I’ve been mean to you. You seem nice and everything—that’s why I decided to talk to you. I’m gonna tell you something, okay? But you can’t tell anybody else.”

  He nodded. “I’m good at keeping secrets. And I don’t have anyone to tell.”

  “Okay, so last year, in fifth grade? I was kind of a dork. Nobody liked me. Katrina picked on me. It sucked. Then, over the summer, we had swim team together and we got to be friends. And I figured out how to not act like such a doof. Now she’s nice to me, and so’s everybody else.”

  He frowned. “I’m happy for you and all, but why are you telling me?”

  “I’m telling you to help you out.” She slammed her tray onto the stack of other empty trays with a bang. “You can’t just go around acting how you want, calling yourself what you want, talking crazy stuff about the rise of the living dead . . .”

  “Oh.” He scratched his head. “I can’t?”

  “No! You know how people always tell you ‘just be yourself’? That’s terrible advice. You won’t survive middle school that way. Trust me. And now”—she held up a hand before he could reply—“we’re done. That is the end of our one-time-only conversation.”

  Spaulding scowled. Maybe she was trying to help, but couldn’t she be a little nicer about it? “It’s not like I have a disease you’re going to catch, Marietta.”

  “Oh, yes, you do.” She gave him a half-pitying look over her shoulder as she headed for the doors. “Weird is totally transmissible by contact with the infected. Or that’s what everyone else thinks, anyway, which amounts to the same thing.”

  With that, she was gone, and Spaulding was left alone in the cafeteria, staring at the doors swinging in her wake. He thought for a moment, then took out his notebook.

  As usual, Spaulding walked home from the bus stop by himself. Marietta hurried up the street ahead of him the whole way, acting as though she didn’t know he was there.

  She turned off at an old Victorian two houses down from his. Like most houses in Thedgeroot, it was shabby on the outside. But a cheery glow shone from the windows, and smoke rose from the chimney. Someone was waiting for her. Probably her mom, with a batch of freshly baked cookies. That was what happened on TV commercials, anyway.

  Spaulding kept walking, kicking irritably at sodden leaves plastered to the sidewalk.

  At his house, the windows were dark, like they always were. Aunt Gwendolyn was no doubt in her study, plotting an untraceable jewel theft or an escape from a high-security mental ward or something. Personally, Spaulding thought her mystery novels were embarrassingly unrealistic, but somehow they were very popular.

  Inside, he dumped his backpack on the floor and slammed the door so hard the stained-glass panel rattled. For a second he worried it would shatter, but then he shrugged. What difference would it make? It was already cracked.

  He glared at the threadbare carpet as he kicked off his shoes. Stupid, rundown old house. Stupid, rundown, creepy old town.

  “Spaulding?” Aunt Gwendolyn’s voice floated to him from the far end of the dark-paneled hallway.

  “Yes, Aunt Gwen?” he yelled.

  “Nothing, just saying hello. You sounded like you were trying to bring the house down around our ears, so I thought perhaps you needed some acknowledgment.”

  “I’m fine.” He wasn’t ready to tell her that the school experiment had been a dismal failure. He knew she’d let him make his own decision, and she wouldn’t criticize, but he didn’t feel up to admitting it had been a mistake.

  “Glad to hear it, dear. Heat up some of that leftover soup for your dinner, will you? Don’t make one of your awful sandwiches.”

  Aunt Gwen had a well-established (and completely irrational) hatred for his favorite snack, potato-chip-and-jelly sandwiches. Although she left him to fend for himself in the kitchen most of the time, she expected him to make something with the healthy ingredients she brought home. He had to buy potato chips and white bread out of his own pocket money.

  He pretended he hadn’t heard and headed for the kitchen, where he did, in fact, fix himself a p.c.-and-j. Then he and his delicious creation went upstairs to his thinking spot on the roof of the side porch.

  He laid out his sandwich, his schoolbooks, and a freshly sharpened pencil, and then cracked his knuckles. All set for some serious homework-doing. (Not that he had any real homework—he’d finished it on the bus. He was just setting himself work to keep his mind sharp.)

  But he couldn’t focus. Thoughts of school kept intruding—especially thoughts involving Katrina. He’d been so sure telling her about his paranormal research would impress her. What was he doing wrong
? Why couldn’t he seem to make friends?

  Maybe Marietta was right and the problem was him—just him, being himself. How could he ever fix that?

  He certainly couldn’t ask Aunt Gwen for help; she was as hopeless socially as he was. He could call his parents . . . ha! Right. Advice on real-world situations was not exactly their specialty.

  Sometimes having paranormal investigators for parents was the pits.

  In fact, it was their fault he was having these problems at all. If they just did something normal for a living, they’d never have sent him to live with Aunt Gwen, and he’d have gone to public school his whole life, and he’d have all the friends he could possibly want.

  As it was, their line of work wasn’t good for anything but embarrassing Spaulding. They weren’t even that great at it. So they had a TV show. Big deal. It wasn’t like they’d proven the existence of ghosts or demons or anything worthwhile.

  With a sigh, he tossed his pencil down. He wasn’t in the mood for homework anymore.

  He slid farther down the roof and pulled up his collar, staring out at the weedy side yard and the abandoned house next door. It was an ugly view, but it suited his mood. That house was the neighborhood eyesore. Sunburned paint, piles of junk on the porch, gigantic snake on the roof, missing shingles—

  Wait a second. He snapped bolt upright, throwing off his hood. Was he seeing things?

  He scooted forward. A gnarled ash tree grew close beside the porch, and it was hard to get a look with its branches in the way. That was probably what he’d seen, come to think of it—just a really, thick, twisty branch that kind of looked like . . .

  A snake.

  Make that a boa constrictor. It had to be ten feet long, probably more, and it looked as thick around as Spaulding’s leg. It was coiled up, fast asleep in a patch of late-afternoon sunlight on the shingles.