7.

Through the doorway, Timothy went to the large staircase spiraling into the lower levels of the museum. Pausing briefly to peer over the brass railing, he noticed a quickly moving shadow descending, fluttering against the white marble steps, already one flight down. “Abigail!” he called. Footsteps were coming up close behind him. Timothy hurried toward the top step.

He ran so fast that the stairs seemed to disappear beneath his feet. He descended into the bowels of the building, aware that he’d finally breached the ground level and was now chasing Abigail into the basement. When he ran out of stairs, a darkened hallway stretched before him. The shadows at the far end of the hallway seemed to shiver, or maybe that was just Timothy, cold and winded and wet.

Timothy listened. He could still hear footsteps, but he wasn’t entirely certain whether they were in front of him or above him. He kept going. Halfway down the hall, Timothy noticed movement in a lighted doorway. This room was long and thin with a low ceiling. On the opposite wall was another doorway. A red velvet rope hung across it. A small sign, perched in the center on a silver pole, read: ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES—CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC.

Timothy entered the room. He wandered past small luminescent gold objects, Aztec creations, which were crowded onto the shelves of several display cases. A few small idols with wide, toothy smiles looked ready to laugh … or bite.

Halfway through the room, Timothy heard a sniff. Looking down, he could see Abigail’s foot sticking out from behind one of the cases. “Abigail, are you okay?” he asked.

Her foot disappeared behind the case. She peered at him. Her face was blotchy with tears. Her shirt was still soaking wet, and her hair was a tangled mess. “Hell,” she said. “Just … go away.”

Timothy bent down anyway. “Stuart got me pretty good too,” he said. He pointed at his darkened shirt.

“Wow,” said Abigail. She looked at Timothy and seemed to really see him. Her face changed, and in her fiery eyes, he noticed recognition, as if she had suddenly stumbled upon a mirror. “You’re totally drenched.”

“Freakin’ Stuart Chen.” Timothy chuckled. “He’s the freakin’ fart-slap. Better watch himself at swim practice tonight. His towel might just end up in the pool.”

They stared at each other for several seconds, surrounded by the grinning golden idols, before Timothy felt laughter creeping up from the bottom of his stomach. Before he knew it, they were both giggling. It felt good to laugh. The laughter grew the more he tried to contain it. He tried to be quiet. But soon, it was impossible to stop. Abigail appeared to have the same problem. Her shoulders hitched and quaked, but a few seconds later, as their laughter began to die down, she covered her face in her hands. Now she was crying.

Timothy didn’t know what to do. When he’d come after her, he hadn’t thought about what might happen next. He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Abigail, don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s not worth it. People are just … stupid and mean.”

Through her hands, she said, “It’s your fault.”

It took a few seconds for him to register her statement. “My fault?”

Her voice was muffled through her fingers, but he could hear her say, “If you hadn’t picked me for a partner, this wouldn’t have happened. No one would have noticed me, and everything would have been fine.”

“What do you mean, no one would have noticed you?”

Finally, she took her hands away from her face. Her eyes were red rimmed and swollen. “You don’t understand.”

“Well then, tell me.”

“When no one notices you, stuff like this doesn’t happen.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Timothy could see something moving. It stood beyond the dark door on his left, behind the red velvet rope in front of the administrative offices. When Timothy looked at it straight on, it quickly moved backward into the soupy black shadows. Whatever was there had been watching them for some time. Timothy thought he could hear it whispering something to itself.

“Just … go back to the rest of the class,” said Abigail. If she noticed the shape in the hallway, she didn’t want Timothy to know. “I’ll come find you later. I want to be by myself right now.” She turned away from him, hiding her face again.

Before he could respond, the room seemed to grow darker. At the same time, the light reflecting off the gold pieces in the cases appeared to grow brighter. Timothy stared into the face of a small, ghastly gold skull sitting on the shelf to the left of Abigail’s shoulder.

“I’ll be fine,” he heard Abigail say, as if from far away.

He could not answer her. The rest of the room faded. Soon, only the glowing gold pieces were left. The skull stared at him, its eyes widening like dark whirlpools. When he looked away, to his horror, every other artifact on the shelves was facing him too. The mouths of the idols slowly opened and closed, as if chanting silent prayers.

Timothy covered his mouth and closed his eyes.

Last night’s dream rushed back at him—Ben gasping for breath inside the jar. Timothy let out a whimper and opened his eyes again. The idols continued to stare at him. He was tempted to run, but he couldn’t leave Abigail here alone. Instinctively, he grasped her shoulder and spun her around to demand that they go, when he realized that half-hidden underneath Abigail’s tangled mess of red hair was a horrible skull-like grimace, grinning like the golden idols in the glass cases.

The Abigail-thing simply reached up, touched his cheek with bony fingertips, and forced him to look into the darkness near the administrative offices hallway. “Get out of here,” she whispered. But Timothy couldn’t move.

Lit dimly by the golden idols’ unnatural glow was a tall man. He appeared to be cloaked in a long coat, a brimmed hat perched on his head, shiny black wingtip shoes on his feet. Timothy could not make out any other features, but the sight of these simple few shrank his skin to his bones. The man appeared to be staring at him. However, as Timothy stared back, unable now to turn away or even contemplate what might be happening, he slowly understood that the shadow man was not in fact staring at him, but at something beyond him, behind him, in the doorway on the opposite side of this strange room.

“Abigail?”

The voice seemed to throw the horror world of this room into tumult, and before Timothy could even blink, the shadows had disappeared, the gold idols had become lifeless, and Abigail had become herself again.

She turned toward the voice, which had come from the entry opposite the velvet rope, and this time it was her turn to wear an expression of shock. There stood an old woman.

Her voice wavering, Abigail replied, “Gramma? What are you doing here?”