The Raven Page 9

  “I think he wanted it to be over,” Fitz told me, holding the ax in one big hand like a man of the woods. “Give him a few days chopping trees and I bet we’ll be back at the trailer. It’ll be like old times. I might even get my old job back at the fly shop.”

  I nodded, smiled weakly, let the words hang in the air. All I could think about was what lay under the ground I stood on.

  “I need to go home,” I said. “It’s late.”

  “Yeah. I should probably follow my dad, make sure everything’s okay.”

  Fitz said something about the clause and shook his head, hardly believing what had happened. But I felt it — we both did. Fitz’s dad knew about the clause. He knew its power over the Crossbones, knew his time really had come and gone. The clause had achieved its cruel duty.

  I walked maybe five minutes toward town as Fitz went the other way, then I stopped and turned back. I wasn’t scared this time as I stood over the grave. I was excited.

  As I started to dig I realized what I was doing, what I’d been doing my whole life.

  I was keeping a secret.

  Wednesday, July 20, 4:03 a.m.

  It took about five minutes to find what I was digging for: a metal box a foot belowground that clanged when my shovel hit. There was a lock — not a very good one — but it didn’t matter. It was a cheap sort of metal with crummy hinges that popped free with one blow from the shovel.

  Inside was another wooden box, shaped like a coffin, only much smaller. It fit in my hand. When I opened the coffin and pointed my flashlight inside, there was a vial like the one I’d already given Fitz. Like the one Sarah was supposed to mail me right after she got it, but missed the deadline for overnight by an hour.

  The black vial Sarah finally did mail that would arrive in Skeleton Creek in a few hours.

  But this vial was different. Inside, white liquid, thick like Elmer’s glue, and on the vial a short poem.

  One part black, three parts white.

  Make the Crossbones fear the night.

  I put the metal box and the small wooden coffin back in the ground and buried them. Then I made my way home with the vial in my pocket, quietly sneaking up the creaking stairs.

  And now I’m sitting here, wide awake when I should be sleeping. I’m waiting for the black vial to arrive, so I can mix it.

  One part black, three parts white.

  And then I’ll use a brush and I’ll paint the pages of the ghost book. And in the ghost book I know what I’ll find.

  Something scary.

  Wednesday, July 20, 8:13 a.m.

  Just got off the phone with Sarah. She’s on her way home. I told her everything. At first she laughed — yeah right, you and me, Crossbones, that’s a good one — but then she fell silent. Like me, I think she’s wondering what that means, if anything.

  I couldn’t keep the white vial a secret from her. I even told her I’d kept it from Fitz.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ve never even met him. Let’s wait and see what the ghost book tells us. No sense spilling the beans to the Raven’s son just yet. Could be a trick.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, but it didn’t really add up. Fitz was a good guy, a friend. All he wanted was a normal life and a normal family. I could hardly begrudge him things like that.

  “I guess this is the end, huh?” I said as we were wrapping things up.

  “Either that,” Sarah ventured, “or the very beginning. I mean, hey, we run the show now, right? Could mean a lot of things.”

  I couldn’t help thinking it meant the three of us would be at war with one another one day.

  I’m starting to wonder if I have trust issues.

  Sarah left off by saying she’d been getting more and more interested in Edgar Allan Poe. The fact that this entire thing led to his tombstone really got her wheels spinning. So, in typical Sarah fashion, she’s working on an Edgar Allan Poe documentary.

  This girl acts more like the Apostle every day.

  Wednesday, July 20, noon

  Mom’s working, dad’s at the shop, I just ran out to grab us some lunch and stopped at the house. There was a small package at the door, as I’d hoped.

  I have the black vial.

  Wednesday, July 20, 6:45 p.m.

  Suspense is killing me! I won’t be able to sneak off to my room until later tonight, probably not until the sun goes down. I would have preferred to open the ghost book when the sun was still up, but that’s not to be.

  The news broke about Henry. Someone blabbed, or maybe it was simply time for the news to get out. Even in a town known for keeping secrets, Henry’s death was a hard one to keep. Sarah is back in Boston, safe and sound, so even if they do question her about where she was on the night the body was found, it won’t matter that much. She’s very good at covering her tracks. And she’s out of danger, so I don’t think anyone is going to dig too deeply into it. Henry was sick and dying. His body had simply lost its ability to carry a soul around. It happens. Especially when you’re walking all over kingdom come, bleeding on the inside.

  In any case, the town is buzzing tonight. The mayor has his underwear in a bunch, and all our neighbors keep stopping by to see what we think. Even Gladys Morgan, who doesn’t get out much, sat on our porch and spent an hour trying to convince my dad to run for office. She kept saying Skeleton Creek was turning into a theme park and it had to stop and Paul McCray was just the guy to do it. My dad kept shaking his head, and my mom couldn’t stop laughing. The idea of her quiet, unassuming husband running anything other than a fly shop, let alone an entire town, made it impossible to keep a straight face.

  Time passes on the porch in Skeleton Creek.

  It’s not as interesting as it sounds.

  Wednesday, July 20, 9:57 p.m.

  Now that it’s after dark, I have a mind to wait until midnight. Things seem more meaningful when one day is turning into the next.

  So I’m waiting.

  Wednesday, July 20, 10:43 p.m.

  I couldn’t do it. Four minutes was all I could stand before I had the ghost book open to the first page. I had a cereal bowl from the kitchen and an old watercolor paintbrush and the two vials.

  At first, things went very badly.

  I did like I was instructed: one part black, three parts white. It made a thick, pasty gray goop, and when I tested it on the corner of the first page, the page began to sizzle. The whole corner of the page was eaten away before my eyes.

  Whatever sort of alchemy or chemistry was going on here, the two substances mixed together were way too potent for paper.

  I sat there for a few minutes all bummed out. My first secret as a Crossbones member was a total dud. It was the watercolor brush that got me thinking.

  Watercolor.

  That kind of paint starts out thick. Add water and you get the result you’re looking for.

  I got a cup of water and poured it into the cereal bowl, mixing the gray goop into a bubbly broth.

  “Corner number two,” I said, feeling like I was talking to the book. “Try not to burst into flames.”

  It didn’t ignite or sizzle like bacon in a frying pan. Instead, the page changed color. It turned a smoky brown, like it was a pancake that had just been perfectly cooked.

  I filled the brush again, and this time, I risked painting the watery Crossbones brew over the first page of the book.

  My breath caught in my throat as the entire page turned toasty brown. But it wasn’t all colored. Some of it remained as it was: paper yellowed with age.

  Words. And not just any words. Words written by the master himself.

  “No way,” I whispered.

  I’d seen his handwriting before. And besides, his name was plain as day.

  There are no words to describe the way I felt when I began reading those words. Don’t get me wrong — millions in gold and a library of lost books are not beneath my interest. But this was something altogether different.

  These were words no one had ever seen before.

&n
bsp; This book — this ghostly book on empty paper — it was filled with Edgar Allan Poe’s words. Words hidden from the world all these years. For a writer, this was the greatest of all priceless treasures.

  Once I calmed down and read further, I began to realize there were two unfathomably important things about the ghost book.

  The first:

  Edgar Allan Poe was a member of the Crossbones. To think that somehow, down through the years, I, too, would end up a Crossbones member — well, it’s just unthinkable. Reading his words as they ran down the first two pages, I felt terribly sorry for him. The Crossbones didn’t let Poe in because they liked him. They let him in because they feared him.

  He goes on to describe a courting period, where a secret society invited him to secret meetings to talk about secret things. But he knew, after a time, how they really felt. They hated him. They wanted to crush him. They wanted to burn his books and shut him up. He was bad for America, bad for the church, bad, bad, bad!

  Deceived and afraid, only a few months shy of his own death, Poe began the ghost book. He left notes and sent letters, toying with the Crossbones.

  And so it was that Edgar Allan Poe made the Crossbones think he’d betrayed their secrets, though what secrets he actually knew are hard to say. Members of the Crossbones are paranoid by nature, and he succeeded (or so he says) in driving them half mad with fear.

  From beyond the grave the book was found, but Poe was nothing if not good at beating the Crossbones at their own game. To one he gave the white vial, to another the black, and a third the ghost book. He whispered to them each — the others can’t be trusted — and soon after that, Edgar Allan Poe was dead.

  The Crossbones, ever wary of the truth in the book, ripped themselves to shreds in its pursuit. If only they’d known the keys were all hidden within their own ranks.

  Life lesson: Don’t mess with masters of words. They’ll always get you in the end.

  The second secret of the ghost book, a secret a thousand times more important than the first, is one I can scarcely bring myself to report.

  Here it is — something remarkable, something grand.

  The ploy against the Crossbones lasted only two pages. The other forty pages were something else.

  It began on the top of the third page.

  And after that? Words. Many of them. I sat in my room and painted them into existence. It wasn’t one long story — no, it was something far greater than that. Page after page of ideas, stories he wanted to tell but didn’t have the time for. Every page in the ghost book was the skeleton of a new story. And the most amazing thing of all — a hundred years later, I was entranced by every idea. Each of them wholly original, each of them ghastly, gothic, mysterious, or fantastic. Strange creatures and characters in places stranger still, the master in his laboratory, building a monster before my eyes.

  Thursday, July 21, 6:30 a.m.

  I’ve decided to keep the ghost book. I know what you’re thinking: That’s a crime. You can’t keep it all to yourself. It belongs to everyone, not just you.

  I suppose you’re right. But I’m still keeping it.

  I’ve been giving a lot of things back to the world lately. I’m just not ready to let this one go. I feel like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. The ghost book is my precious. I wonder if it will make me live a thousand years and move into a cave and eat raw fish for dinner? Somehow I doubt it.

  Hear me out before you judge me.

  Edgar Allan Poe didn’t have a rich family to lean on or a job to fill his bank account. He believed his writing would be enough.

  Poe failed in the end, and part of that failure was his own. No one is saying he didn’t dig at least half his own grave. But the world dug the rest, and the Crossbones used a big shovel. One writer to another, I feel like a secret torch has been passed from a master to an apprentice. I feel like these ideas were handed down to me, like he reached his hand into the world from the great unknown and made this happen. He put the ghost book and the way inside in my hands. I’ll always believe that, no matter what anyone says.

  I’m going to finish what he started.

  Sarah will probably laugh at this, and that’s okay. But I want to hang on to these words for just a little while and try to turn them into what I think he would have wanted. I’m not going to use his words, I’m going to use mine. And I’ve decided something else.

  I’m going to tell Sarah and Fitz about the ghost book.

  The three of us are going to do this together. We’re going to turn the Crossbones on its head. We’re going to make it into something new. This Crossbones will not be about the business of killing ideas and stories and books. In a twist of fate only Poe himself could have orchestrated, the new members of the Crossbones are going to give the world more of his stories, not less.

  I can’t help wondering if a day will come when Fitz is forced to take up the great ax and protect the Crossbones from something I can’t yet see. Or if Sarah will leave secret videos and puzzles for two curious teenagers to find. I wonder if we’ll be at odds with one another somewhere down the line, if we’ll fight for power. I hope that will never happen.

  In our own way — a way only we can understand — I hope we’ll be together always.

  www.sarahfincher.com

  password:

  restinpeace

  Credits

  The Crossbones and The Raven

  CAST:

  The Apostle Eric Rohde

  PRODUCTION TEAM:

  Chris Cresci

  Alex English

  Joseph Long

  Timothy Perry

  Je Salvador

  Sadie Townsend

  Wiley Townsend

  SPECIAL THANKS TO:

  21st Century Dacres LLC / Pete Sikov

  John L. Scott Real Estate / Kenneth Butler

  The City of Walla Walla

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by PC Studio, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  ISBN 978-0-545-24995-9

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  First edition, May 2011

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  E-ISBN 978-0-545-38852-8