Curse of the Spider King Read online

  “Blue girl.”

  “Now she has pink hair.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  When she’d climbed the stairs to the second flight, Kat looked out of the gum-wad-speckled window to the teeming lot in front of the school and then to the glittering city beyond.

  4

  Manifest Destiny

  THE AMERICAN history test packet glared up at Kat from the desktop. What a screw-up, she thought. I could have studied with Mom and had Starbucks to boot. She signed her name on the top and nervously flipped the pages, looking at the questions and assessing her complete lack of knowledge. This is a disaster.

  She tapped her pencil on the desk and looked nonchalantly around the room; everyone was already leaping into the first question. She looked back to her test, took a breath, and read the first question again:

  1.) Define the term Manifest Destiny and give one example in American history.

  Kat felt a wave of anxiety spread through her chest. Manifest what? She tried to break the question down. Manifest means something like obvious or easy to see, right? And destiny was like some great big mission or a goal you were meant to reach . . . right? She decided to skip it and come back later, a technique she remembered hearing her teacher talk about for taking tests like this.

  2.) List two ways that the transcontinental railroad affected the economy.

  You’ve got to be kidding me, Kat thought. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Someone definitely needed to turn up the air conditioner. Kat ran her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath. Question three? She could only skip so many before she’d be out of questions.

  She looked out the window to her right and watched the palm leaves stir above the playground. The cloudless blue sky normally brought her some peace, reminding her of the sea, but not today. This test and her fam—Huh? There was a man leaning against one of the slender palms. He wore one of those Indiana Jones hats, but gray, more like a detective. He had a long gray detective-coat, too, and dark sunglasses that hid most of his face. It wasn’t unusual for the police to have a presence at the school. But the way he just stood there, leaning against the tree and staring. If Kat didn’t know any better, she’d think he was looking right up at her.

  Kat caught her breath. Her heartbeat stuttered. She looked down at her test, then up at her teacher, Mr. Wallace, as he paced the front of the room. She tried to breathe, but found she could inhale just short breaths. The fringes of her vision grayed out. Kat turned side to side. No one else noticed. They were focused on their tests, oblivious. Kat turned back to the window once more.

  The man—there just moments ago—was gone.

  Heat and cold fought for her shoulders and arms, and her chest tightened. But there was something else, too, a new emotion, something like anxiety but more potent . . . a panicky sensation of fearful anticipation. But anticipation of what?

  Kat couldn’t shake the mounting drama in her heart. Something was happening. And somehow she knew it wasn’t the test. And who was that man? Did she imagine him?

  Something was very wrong.

  The first thing she thought was heart attack. But at thirteen? She had most of the symptoms she’d learned about in health class. But Kat never touched red meat and avoided fast food like the plague. Maybe it was the poly, some new symptom the docs didn’t know about. She gripped the desk and felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. Mr. Wallace finally looked in her direction.

  “You okay?” he mouthed from up front.

  Kat nodded and looked back down to her test. Her hands were trembling. Why did she lie to Mr. Wallace? Why not tell him she needed a break? A restroom pass? Anything! Kat closed her eyes and tried to keep from being overwhelmed. Her head was swirling. Focus! She tapped her foot, trying to give herself something to think about other than the mounting sensations that were overpowering her body. Focus!

  “Miss Simonson”—a hand touched her shoulder—“are you all right?”

  All at once she was composed. The panic was gone. Kat looked up to Mr. Wallace standing beside her. “Yes, Mr. Wallace,” she said, blinking a few times. “Everything is fine.”

  “I know my tests inspire dread and apprehension, but you didn’t look so good,” he said. “I thought—”

  “No, I’m fine, really. Just thinking about my next answer.” She watched Mr. Wallace’s eyes glance at her blank test sheet and then back to Kat.

  “You mean your first answer.”

  “Ha.” She laughed nervously. “Yeah, that one.” She turned back to her test and waited for Mr. Wallace to walk back to his desk. That was close, she thought. But then wondered, What was close? I’m not hiding anything. I thought I was going to die—

  Manifest Destiny was the policy of U.S. territorial expansion beginning in the 1840s. It was the belief that the settlers had the right to take possession of land and resist anyone who threatened them, including the Native Americans. One example was the massacre at Wounded Knee with the U.S. 7th Cavalry’s complete disregard for the welfare and land ownership of the Lakota Sioux.

  Kat flinched and looked over her shoulder. She couldn’t believe it. Someone had just whispered that answer to her. Who? No one looked back. All eyes were riveted to test papers. Well, except for Sean Pinkerton in the corner. He was staring at something on the classroom wall and moving his head like a bobblehead doll. No, Kat thought, he wouldn’t know the answer anyway.

  Someone had given her the answer. Maybe a secret admirer? Her face flushed. She looked around again. Except for Sean, they were all still working. Maybe it had come from inside, some repressed memory from watching the History Channel while half asleep. It had been like earlier when her mom dropped her at school—sounding more inside her head than an audible voice. Besides, Kat didn’t think anyone in class liked her enough to give her an answer.

  She looked back at her test, and a different sort of fear gripped her. She reviewed the answer in her mind and thought about writing it down. Perhaps it was her own answer after all; perhaps it was her brain just communicating an answer in a time of extreme need. She had talked to herself before, right? This was just like that . . . but not at all.

  Kat muttered under her breath and doodled something in the margin. The answer sure sounded like a good one. But was it hers? She glanced up at the clock. Five minutes had already gone by, and the only thing she’d written on her paper was her name and the doodles on the side. She could feel Mr. Wallace’s eyes on her. She had to put something down. She took a deep breath and then put her pencil to the paper and started writing.

  Done.

  One down, nine to go.

  She read the second question again and drew a blank as before. But a moment later another voice, this time clearly male, spoke in her head:

  The transcontinental railroad provided new jobs for immigrant workers, specifically Irish and Chinese foreigners seeking to create a new life. It also provided a fast means of transporting raw materials from one part of the country to the other, which perpetuated capitalism by starting new small businesses.

  Kat stared at her desk. What was going on here? She put her pencil down and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. I’m going crazy, was all she could think. She glanced to her left and her right to see if anyone else had heard what she did. But no one seemed the least bit distracted. She could hear the tip-tap of their pencils.

  “This is madness,” she whispered to herself. Then Kat picked up her pencil and wrote down the answer she’d heard.

  Kat again doodled as she glanced at the third question. No sooner had she finished reading it when another voice spoke an answer into her head. Only this time she could have sworn it was the voice of Erin Freeburg. Kat looked forward and to the left where Erin was busy scribbling away on her test. Then she looked up at Mr. Wallace. There was no way Erin could have spoken to Kat that loud without Mr. Wallace noticing.

  Kat chewed lightly on her pencil. Maybe it was some kind of subconscious recall. Maybe Mr. Wallace had spoken about these things, and maybe Erin had said that answer aloud in class. That would explain the familiar voices. It was just some bizarre recall of what her classmates had said in class. That was it. That had to be it.

  Kat had a troubling thought: What if she wasn’t listening to her own mind? But just as fast she shot down the idea, citing it as something you’d see on the SyFy Channel, not something that happens in real life.

  She filled in question three. In fact, Kat wrote down the answers that she heard for the next seven questions until the test was done. She flipped through the booklet and checked her work. She stood up to hand in her book but stopped, staring at the design she’d doodled on the front page. She flipped to the second page. She’d scribbled the same thing on that page, too. In fact, Kat had drawn the same image on every page of the test. It was a peculiar thing: curvy, shaded . . . kind of like a circle with tiny lines branching out from the inside and spiraling around decoratively. An even smaller circle adorned the top.

  Kat shrugged. It was strange, but not as strange as the other events of the morning. She looked at the class, most of whom were still working, and realized she’d finished as fast as Molly McMillan, easily the smartest girl in the seventh grade. When Kat met Molly at Mr. Wallace’s desk to deliver her test at the same time, Molly seemed indignant.

  “Just because we finished at the same time doesn’t mean you aced it,” Molly said with a sneer and then turned abruptly away.

  Mr. Wallace looked up, surprise spreading across his face. “Why, Miss Simonson, finished already?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wallace,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “I think I did pretty well on this one.”

  “Really?” He stretched the pronunciation. “I must admit, I had concerns. You looked ill.”

  Kat blushed. “Just a little bit of test anxiety, but I calmed down.”

  “You sure you don’t want to review your answers? Just to double-check?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks though.”

  Mr. Wallace smiled and took the test from her. Kat walked back to her desk and sat down, playing with her hair. She looked at the clock on the wall and watched the second hand click by. More and more students turned in their papers until the last student returned to his desk and Mr. Wallace declared that the test was over.

  “You have two minutes to chat before next period,” he announced. “And Miss Simonson?”

  Kat looked up.

  “Can I see you for a moment?”

  The whole class whoa-ohed her, guessing that Kat was in big trouble. Kat blushed and went forward. Mr. Wallace silenced the class with his famous “move and I’ll vaporize you” look while Kat waited nervously at the side of his desk.

  He turned sideways and said, “It seems you were accurate in your self-appraisal. You did quite well, Kat.”

  “Really?” Kat asked, perhaps a bit too surprised. “I mean, I thought I’d gotten most of it right, but that one on continentalism—whew! I’m sure I messed something up on—”

  “No, Miss Simonson,” he interrupted. “As far as I can tell, you didn’t miss a point. Granted, I’ll take a closer look later tonight when I grade the rest, but it sure looks good.”

  All Kat could say inside was And?

  “Anyways, I just wanted to let you know I am very impressed, Miss Simonson. This is a welcome change for you. I hope it continues.”

  “Thanks,” Kat said. “It’s coming more natural to me,” was all she could think to say.

  “Well, hard work does pay off.”

  “Yeah, it sure does,” Kat said, now feeling incredibly guilty for passively lying. But they were her answers. Right?

  Mr. Wallace was a sharp guy. He might suspect something. If he did, what would he do about it? Kat hardly slept that night, and dreaded the ride into the school the following morning.

  5

  Red Dusk

  TOMMY SAT on the edge of his bed in a narrow cone of golden lamplight, the book Mrs. Galdarro had given him early in the evening on his lap. The rest of his bedroom lay cloaked in shadow. He could hear his mom downstairs, talking to his dad. “I think it’s wonderful that Tommy’s taken such an interest in reading,” she said.

  “That librarian is something else,” Mr. Bowman replied.

  Tommy glanced at the clock—9:30. On most nights, he’d be in snoozeville by now. But tonight he just couldn’t fall asleep. He wanted to read. He slid his hand across the smooth surface of the book’s cover, letting his fingers ride up on its gilded trim and down around the binding. Wait. Before he opened it, he stood up and parted the curtains of his window. The streetlight was bright and yellow behind the now bare crab apple tree in his front yard. Tommy half expected to see a black sports car parked there, but there wasn’t one.

  Tommy dropped back to his bed and opened the book. A detailed sketch emblazoned the first page. Cool artwork, he thought. Tommy studied the sketch of a partially collapsed stone wall, and beyond it a white pedestal upon which a cobweb-shrouded book lay. There were shelves behind it, shelves full of other books and artifacts that Tommy did not recognize. And perched on the arm of a statue was a huge bird of prey, like a falcon but much, much larger.

  Tommy carefully turned past the art and came to a kind of table of contents. There were page numbers, but rather than chapter titles, this book seemed to be divided in sections and subsections by some kind of date. And the dates descended on the page from top to bottom.

  9680 Founding of Allyra

  8015 Golden Age of Elves

  7252 Construction of Berinfell

  5807 The Nemic Wars

  4297 Alliance with the Saer

  4021 The Bloodless War

  3927 Invasion of the Taladrim

  3811 The Gwar Revolution

  3108 Age of Peace

  2222 The Fall of Berinfell

  2220 The Age of Hiding

  Beneath each of these main headings, in smaller script, was at least one subheading. There, Tommy found what he was looking for: Red Dusk. Given Mrs. Galdarro’s warnings, Tommy reasoned that it had to be the most exciting chapter. Of course, she’d said not to read it at night. But come on . . . how bad could it be? Tommy flipped through the pages until he arrived at page 277.

  Cool! The text was in the same calligraphy as the table of contents. It almost looked handwritten. Tommy touched the ornate first letter . . . and something went terribly wrong.

  The lights dimmed. The temperature dropped twenty degrees. And the door blew shut, sending the curtains fluttering. Something on the page poked Tommy’s finger. With a yelp, Tommy jerked back his hand and let the book fall open to the floor. He watched as a dark twig emerged from the book. No, it wasn’t a twig. It was the beginnings of a large tree, rising now as if the pages were a bed of soil, and centuries of growth were happening right before Tommy’s eyes. Red light began to shine out, surging around the trunk of the still-growing tree as if a setting sun hid somewhere in the pages. Tommy’s room filled with the smell of leaves and grass wet with dew.

  Tommy shrank back to his headboard as the tree continued its ascension. Its narrow trunk thickened, and broad boughs strewn with foliage rose up and penetrated the ceiling of Tommy’s bedroom. But rather than cracking the painted drywall and bursting beams of lumber, the tree pushed up the ceiling as if it were a huge tent canvas. Soon there was nothing but night sky, stars, and a red glow to the east.

  More trees spread upward, followed by great grassy hills, and then . . . magnificent castle towers! From the towers, small flag-adorned turrets rose that soon grew beyond the confines of the room. Trees dotted the landscape from near to over the far hills. The castle towers were part of a magnificent fortress that sprawled to the edge of a massive, distant forest. Tommy could see no more of his room. His bed was gone, and now he sat on lush grass with his back against the trunk of a dark tree. But there were other things waiting to escape the pages.

  At first Tommy thought he was watching yet another tree branch emerge from the book, but it was not. A black limb with barbs and a claw came up, grasping until more of its segments became visible. Tommy rolled onto his side and ducked behind the tree just as the first giant spider broke free from the pages. There were more to come. Many more. And on their backs rode creatures Tommy had never seen before: brutish, gray-skinned beasts wearing armor on their barrel chests, thick shoulders, and short, stocky legs. These creatures were armed with all manner of weapons and held the reins of their arachnid steeds in huge, meaty fists.

  Tommy had seen enough. Remembering Mrs. Galdarro’s warning, he dove for the book, slamming it shut.

  Whoosh!

  It was gone. Once more, Tommy was sitting alone on his bed. He was breathing heavily. Curious, he crept out of his room to the foot of the stair. “Mom, Dad? Did you hear anything strange just now?”

  “Strange?” Mr. Bowman asked. “An ambulance went by.”

  “No,” Tommy said. “Stranger than that?”

  “Not a thing, Tommy,” his mother said. “Are you all right? You sound upset.”

  “I’m fine,” Tommy replied. Then more to himself, “I think.” Scratching his head, he wandered back into his room and stared at the book. He hadn’t imagined it all. No way. But there was only one way to find out for sure.

  Tommy opened the book, turned to page 277, and once more put his finger to the text. Again, the entire environment in his room changed as a living world surged up from the pages of the book. Faster and faster—forests, hills, stone walls, and creatures—gushed up like an eruption. Three giant spiders, each one as big as a truck, burst above ground and came right at the hill where Tommy stood. This time Tommy couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. Their burly riders driving them hard, the massive, black eight-legged beasts came upon Tommy. His field of vision filled with hairy mandibles, pincerlike jaws, and eyes—so many blank, staring eyes.

  Tommy screamed as the creatures drove their legs deep into the soil, the sounds of armor clanking above him. Tommy covered his head and rolled sideways, screaming louder. As they passed, Tommy dared a peek from between his arms and slowly let down his guard. I’m not dead, he thought, feeling around to confirm that all of his limbs were still whole and in place. I’m not even hurt. . . . It never even touched me. Even with all those eyes, the spiders hadn’t seen him. In fact, they had passed right through him. Tommy turned the page and touched the script. At last, he understood. The History of Berinfell was unlike any other book on Earth. It was a living history . . . and Tommy was right in the middle of it.