Fiendish Deeds Read Free Page A

backhoe roared to life.
    Now, standing in the graveyard, he looked up at the statue—the Avenging Angel—drenched and dark, its cheeks streaming with tears as it wound up to smite him with its heavy sword.
    The man looked away. To the left, he spotted a small polished granite stone standing out of place among the ancient markers. There it was, the name he sought, chiseled simply.
    LUDWIG ZWEIG
    He wrote it carefully in a little leather notebook, the streaming umbrella resting unsteadily on his head.
    CHERISHED HUSBAND, it said underneath.
    The old woman, he remembered.
    He felt a flash of anger. He had had enough of this game playing. Well, one down, he thought, one to go. He turned to leave.
    Another headstone caught his attention.
    VERONIQUE PHIPPS
    Here she was, finally, alone for eternity. He gasped.
    “Your father,” she’d cried down the phone. “He’s gone, Octavio, and this time it’s for good!”
    He stood there, watching raindrops bounce off the headstone, ashamed of himself. A failure, that’s what he was, a failure of a son. He couldn’t have saved her from being alone in the grave, but maybe he could have made her a little less lonely at the end of her poor life.
    His father, however, no one could have saved. Not from his cursed blood.
    The same blood that coursed through his own veins, he knew. At the thought, he felt a tingling feeling in his fingertips. He raised one hand in front of his face and stared hard. It looked solid enough, he thought. Probably just numbness from gripping the umbrella too tightly.
    But he had to get out of there—the place wasn’t good for his nerves. He weaved without sympathy through the gray markers of other long-lost loved ones until he arrived back at the cemetery gates.
    The black car started up angrily and then spun out toward the road. There was a sudden blast of a horn, terrifyingly close. The tires screeched as he hit the brakes.
    His head slammed against the steering wheel, hard enough to honk back at the bright yellow blur roaring by. It was a school bus, full of children, their round faces pressed up against the windows above him. He swore, rubbing the swelling egg above his eyebrow, as the bus careened down toward Darlington.
    How he hated this hill, he raged to himself as he drove off.

    Every day, the children of Spooking rode the bus past the cemetery, down the hill to school in Darlington. And every day, they received the same rousing welcome.
    “THE GHOULS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND. THE GHOULS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND, ALL OVER TOWN!”
    It was a tradition Joy had endured since her first day at Winsome Elementary. Six years later, it showed no signs of abating. With an evil hiss the bus would come to a stop, pitching the kids of Spooking forward in their seats as pudgy fists pounded the windows and fat faces bobbed up screaming. The door would then fold open violently.
    “OFF!”
    Burdened by school bags and lunch boxes, the Spookys would then march straight through the wall of taunts and abuse into school. There, hopelessly outnumbered, they did their best not to draw any more attention to themselves than necessary.
    And so it had gone that morning as Joy sat down at her desk—an old wooden one, carved and chipped over countless semesters, with a little round hole at the top right where a bottle of ink used to go. A desk that was riddled with secrets, Joy decided, as she spent long afternoons deciphering the puzzle of scribbles on its surface. For instance, did Edith really love Ezra? Or was it just some cruel torment? Perhaps the answer lay in that illegible blob of smudged marker….
    The others’ desks in the class were new, each with steel legs and a Formica top that had an almost supernatural ability to destroy the tip of any pen foolish enough to mark on it. Exactly how her old desk had ended up there among them was a mystery. But she was fond of it, even grateful that it had been forced on her the