Chapter 26

Buried

Corky felt her arms slip off Jennifer’s waist. I’m lost. I’m lost.

As the dirt rained down, she could suddenly hear the terrified cries of the three girls.

Jennifer’s eyes were open wide as the sour wind howled from her mouth. She knew she had won. She knew her evil had triumphed.

First Bobbi. Now me, Corky thought.

Bobbi. Bobbi.

The thought of her sister filled her with renewed anger. With an anguished cry, Corky threw herself onto Jennifer’s back and wrapped her hands around Jennifer’s throat from behind.

Jennifer struggled as Corky tightened her grip, tightened her hands, began to choke Jennifer, choke the evil spirit inside Jennifer’s body, pushing her head down.

The raging stream of foul vapor from Jennifer’s mouth blew into the hole now, into the open grave. Corky could see it, blowing the worms around in the coffin.

“Yes!” she cried aloud, hearing the wind lose its howl, feeling it weaken as it poured into the coffin.

All the evil pouring down into the coffin.

And as Corky continued to choke her, Jennifer felt lighter, lighter. Light as air.

And the wind stopped. Jennifer uttered a feeble groan, and the wind stopped.

“Yes!” Corky cried, not loosening her grip on Jennifer’s throat.

The evil spirit is abandoning her, Corky thought.

She could feel it leaving, could feel Jennifer’s body growing light.

Corky let go.

Jennifer lay facedown in the dirt.

Corky watched as the coffin lid slammed shut, trapping the evil vapor, trapping the evil spirit inside.

The dirt rained down in a dark, thunderous avalanche, filling the hole, re-covering the grave.

Buried. The evil spirit is buried again, Corky thought, gasping in the cool, sweet air, the clean air, letting the fresh night air fill her lungs.

She realized she was still on her knees in the soft dirt.

“Corky—!” Kimmy was screaming.

The three girls were standing right in front of her, peering at the grave in horror. They had seen it all, seen every moment of Corky’s desperate battle. Now they huddled around her.

“Corky—are you okay?” Ronnie cried.

All four of them turned their eyes to Jennifer’s body. Slowly Corky rolled her over so she was face up. “Ohh,” Kimmy groaned.

Ronnie gagged and held on to Debra to keep from sinking to her knees.

As the girls gaped in silent horror, Jennifer’s skin dried and crumpled, flaking off in chunks. Her long hair fell off, strands blowing away in the breeze. Her eyes sank back into her skull, then rotted into dark pits. Her cheerleader costume appeared to grow larger as her flesh decayed underneath it, and her bones appeared.

Before Corky realized what was happening, she felt Kimmy’s arm slide around her shoulders. “It’s okay, Corky,” Kimmy whispered. “You’re okay now. It’s all going to be okay.”

And then they heard a man’s voice calling from the street. “What’s going on here?”

Darting beams from flashlights danced over the ground. The girls looked up into the suspicious faces of two uniformed Shadyside officers.

“What’s going on here? One of the neighbors reported a—”

Both of the young officers gasped in surprise as they saw the body sprawled on the ground beside the four girls, the body draped in a cheerleader’s costume.

“What on earth—?”

“It’s Jennifer,” Corky managed to say from the midst of her confusion. “It’s Jennifer Daly. I followed her here. She—”

“Huh?” Both police directed their lights from the body to Corky’s face. “You followed her here? Are you sure, miss?”

“Yes. I followed her here. She was dancing—”

“You didn’t follow this girl, miss,” the policeman said, eyeing Corky intently. “This girl hasn’t been dancing tonight. Take a good look at the corpse. This girl has been dead for weeks!”

♦ ♦ ♦

Jennifer’s anguished parents, awakened and summoned to the police station, had demanded answers.

But there were no reasonable answers, no logical answers.

Corky’s parents had also arrived, as upset and confused as everyone else. They had waited patiently with their daughter during the hours of questioning, the police asking the same questions again and again, dissatisfied with the answers they received from Corky and the other three girls.

“Fear Street,” one of the policemen had said grimly, shaking his head. “Fear Street . . .”

A few minutes later he allowed them all to go home.

As Corky climbed the stairs to her room, the room she had shared with her sister, she thought of Bobbi.

Bobbi had died because of the evil spirit’s jealousy.

And now Corky was alone. Left alone to remember forever the horrors of this night.

She turned on the light and glanced at the bedside clock. Three o’clock in the morning. Wearily, feeling numb, she tugged off her clothes, letting them fall to the floor, and pulled a nightgown over her head.

“Bobbi—I miss you so much!” she cried out loud.

Trying to force back the sobs that threatened to burst out of her throat, she turned off the light and lowered herself into bed.

Bobbi is gone forever, she told herself miserably.

But so is the evil spirit.

The evil spirit is buried once again, buried in the old grave, locked in the coffin under six feet of dirt where it can’t harm anyone ever again.

She sighed, pulling the covers up to her chin.

“Hey—”

There was something in her bed.

With a startled cry, she reached down, grabbed it, held it tightly.

She clicked on the lamp and stared at it, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light.

It was the maroon and white pennant with Jennifer’s name stitched across the front.

She stared at the pennant, reading the name again and again.

Then it fell from her hand and she started to scream.

THE NIGHTMARES
NEVER END . . .
WHEN YOU VISIT

Next . . .
CHEERLEADERS:
THE SECOND EVIL

Corky Corcoran is trying to put the nightmare of her sister Bobbi’s death behind her. She’s back on the Shadyside cheerleading squad and has become friends with Kimmy, Debra, and Ronnie. But just when everything seems like it’s back to normal for Corky, she hears horrible screams in the gym, notices a very strange young man following her, and thinks she sees her dead sister rise from the grave. And then the murders begin again. . . .

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 496