25.

“What’s wrong?” said Abigail. They were standing at the bus stop, just outside the hospital entrance. The wind had picked up. Thunder rolled across the river. “You haven’t said a word since we said goodbye to Stuart’s mother.” She was right, but Timothy was too busy feeling overwhelmed to notice.

He suddenly felt a surge of indescribable anger. “Hmm, let’s see. What’s wrong?” he echoed Abigail. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that I just realized my best friend has lost his mind, and I’m beginning to feel pretty much the same way.” Timothy wiped his nose. “My brother’s in a coma. My parents won’t talk to me. And—”

“Hey,” Abigail said softly, “you don’t have to snap at me. I’m just asking a question.”

“I’m not snapping,” Timothy continued, knowing that was exactly what he’d been doing. “I’m just … I’m just …” He finally looked at her. She was squinting at him, trying to figure him out, like she always seemed to be doing whenever he caught her looking at him. “I’m sorry.”

They heard an engine shift gears as two bright headlights came around the far corner of the building. Through the wet window, the bus driver looked unhappy to stop. The rest of the bus was empty. They stepped inside and paid the fare.

Sitting together, Abigail looked at Timothy’s reflection in the window. They were transparent, like ghosts. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “We don’t know anything more than we did before.”

“But that’s not true.”

“Okay,” said Abigail, nodding. “What do we know?”

“We know that Stuart blames you for what happened to him.” Timothy watched as Abigail soaked in that information. She looked like she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. “We know that he saw almost exactly what you saw.”

“Which would be?”

“A girl,” said Timothy. “But he thought she was you, not some brats from New Jersey.”

Abigail drew away from him, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So what … he’s scared of me?”

“You could’ve told the thing in the corner to go away.”

“There was nothing there!”

“It would’ve helped! Stuart was terrified of it.” Timothy felt an odd tightening in his chest. He kept thinking back to the conversation he’d had that morning with his brother, or the thing that was pretending to be his brother. “According to the message from the owner of that bookstore, The Clue of the Incomplete Corpse is based on true events. She wrote that in the book there was some sort of object, a bone that gives you the power to control other people’s fears. Right?”

“It’s just a stupid book, Timothy.” Now Abigail started to look nervous, as if Timothy was talking crazy.

“But part of it happened, or at least we’re pretty sure it did.” Abigail blinked and shook her head. Timothy continued, “Someone is screwing with what makes us afraid. Stuart’s claw monster. Mr. Crane and the things in those jars. That phone call and my brother’s injury. I mean, I’ve been having nightmares about Ben for a while, but only when I’m asleep. This is totally different.” Abigail sighed and started to speak, but he cut her off. “Let me finish. I know you said you never wanted to hurt anyone—”

“Timothy!”

“I know you said that, but Stuart obviously made you angry, and you certainly got mad at Mr. Crane in the museum. And me …” Timothy took a deep breath. “You said it yourself that first day I asked to be your partner. You thought I was picking on you. You wanted me to stay away from you.”

“So what?” Now Abigail was fuming.

“So? There you have it. Three reasons to want to get back at the three people, besides you, supposedly, who’ve all of a sudden started seeing some really creepy stuff.”

“We already went over all this,” said Abigail. “Last night when you came over, I told you that the Nightmarys are doing it. They wanted to help me. I never asked them to! They want me to follow them—”

“Right. The Nightmarys. Who just happened to show up at your apartment because they wanted to be your friend. And play games. In the middle of the night.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believed you before I found out about this jawbone thing,” said Timothy, the words pouring from him. “What if someone found it and learned how to use it?”

“You think it’s me?” said Abigail.

Timothy’s skin tingled as he remembered. “The museum.”

“What about it?”

“Remember, just before we found The Edge of Doom? We saw that poster that talked about magic and religion? There was an artifact in the case that was supposed to give one tribe the power to control their victim’s fear. The instructions were printed right there. Hold the thing. Name the victim. Place a curse.”

“A jawbone,” Abigail whispered, turning pale. “But someone had removed it for cleaning.”

“Your grandmother was there that day, she said for inspiration, but what the heck does that mean?”

Abigail’s mouth dropped open. A few seconds later, she managed to say, “Don’t tell me you think Gramma—”

“I have no idea what to think,” Timothy interrupted. The windows were totally fogged with their breath, their reflections gone. They could only stare at each other now.

“Well, you want to know what I think?” Abigail shouted. She didn’t wait for an answer. She stuck out her finger and wrote on the window, carving into the fog in enormous block letters: U-SUCK. Then she pressed the yellow plastic strip that ran vertically up the wall next to the window, ringing the bell for the bus to stop.

A few seconds later, the driver pulled up to the curb and opened the door.

“What are you doing?” Timothy asked.

“I’m walking,” said Abigail, flinging herself out of her seat.

“Yeah, but where are you going?” he called.

She practically ran to the front door. “To disappear.” Timothy scrambled to catch up. Just before she stepped out onto the wet curb, she turned and said, “It’s just a stupid book.” She shook her head, disappointed. “There’s no such thing as a magical jawbone, Timothy. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You … butt-munch.” She started walking up the street, away from the bus.

Timothy didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just let her stomp home alone in the dark, not after everything that had happened, not after knowing all the things that might be out there waiting for her. But then he realized that he had just sort of blamed her for orchestrating the whole thing, which, if true, would make her safe after all.

Stupid stupid stupid! he wanted to scream.

“On or off?” said the driver, rolling his eyes.

“I’m off!” shouted Timothy, leaping onto the curb. The door closed swiftly, and before he could even think, the bus was pulling away into the night, its brake lights blurring red through the mist.

Timothy called out, “Abigail!” He listened for a moment, to see if he could hear her. From the river, the old foghorn wailed. The thunder called again, its voice a low growl. A streetlamp threw a hazy glow across the darkened storefront windows ahead. Timothy thought he could make out the shape of a girl running away from him, her silhouette becoming fainter and fainter as the shadows swallowed her up.