It comes like a shout, a cry in my mind, a memory of another dream. Smoke and flames everywhere as a man yelled for a woman with this very name.
Jude reaches past me to pick up the second letter, much shorter than the first. He clears his throat and reads it out loud. “Dear Father, I pray you will forgive me and the Lord will still take me. Is it a sin to protect those I love? I know of no other way to stop this curse. Please tell Isaiah everything. Yours most sincerely, Elijah.”
Elijah.
The scorch mark on Jude’s family tree. A man with no record of death, nor a headstone to mark his grave.
Have we just come upon his suicide note?
“To stop this curse?” Jude says, repeating the line. He turns the letter over, like there might be an explanation on the other side. But of course there is none. With a shake of his head, his troubled eyes find mine. “What curse?”
35
POISONED
Isit in the center of Twig’s bed with my stomach in knots, working my way through a bundle of letters dated from 1770 to 1800 while Twig shares an erratic playlist on Spotify. So far, there’s been jazz, grunge, blues, and rock. He keeps looking at me expectantly, like he’s waiting for me to pick up on the punchline, but when Amy Winehouse starts singing after Kurt Cobain, I’m truly stumped.
“They’re all members of the 27 club,” he finally says.
“The what club?”
“Cursedmusicians. Winehouse, Cobain, Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison. All of them died at the age of twenty-seven under mysterious circumstances.”
Ah. I nod wisely.
Ever since last night, when I told Twig aboutElijah’s reference to a curse in his suicide note, my tall friend has been struck with inspiration for an episode. He already has a title picked out—A Chronicle of Curses—and spent a good chunk of Hollow Screen Horror Night recounting the string of eerie coincidences and tragic events that occurred on set duringPoltergeist, a movie believed to have been just as cursed as these poor musicians.
My mouth splits with a yawn.
Lack of sleep is catching up with me. Thankfully, we have a shortened school week ahead of us. In-service tomorrow, which means I get to sleep in on a Monday, along with our very own town holiday on Friday. Normally, I would be giddy. The Phoenix Parade. The Harvest Festival. The Hunter’s Moon Masquerade Ball. A trifecta of pure whimsy. Instead, I can’t kick this bout of anxiety. Perhaps watchingPoltergeistuntil two in the morning wasn’t the smartest idea.
Mrs. Calloway knocks on Twig’s half-opened door and sticks her head inside with a bright smile. She holds up a big bowl of Muddy Buddies, which is one of my favorites. She’s been extra motherly ever since she pulled up my mother’s transcripts, but couldn’t show them to me. She sets the bowl on Twig’s desk and tells us to enjoy.
I drop the stack of letters into the box and flop back onto Twig’s bed. I grab the eyeball off his nightstand—which isn’t really an eyeball, but a stress ball that only looks like an eyeball—and toss it toward the ceiling.
Catch and toss.
Catch and toss.
Four dreams.
Molly Ludwig, hanging from a rope. Rose Vandenberg, dying in The Blitz. Jude’s mother, bleeding out on a delivery table. And a woman named Florence, perishing in the fire.
All women.
All dead.
All involved with Vandenberg men.
Then there’s my mom, and the dream I had about her.
Twig scoops up a cup of the powdered, chocolatey Chex mix. “We could cover King Tut’s tomb. The Hope Diamond.”
“Macbeth,” I offer, recalling the book Jude was reading the first time we met. I give the eyeball another toss. Was it me, or was he noticeably different after yesterday’s discovery? He hasn’t texted or called today—not once. And we’re approaching dinnertime.
“James Dean’s car,” Twig says.
“James Dean had a cursed car?”
