How to Save Your School From Soul Stealing Demons

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16TH
12:13 PM
VANTERBEST HIGH CAFETERIA

The four of us find ourselves sitting in silence at lunch the next day, trying to come up with any ideas about how to get more information on the Adkins family. Is her great grandfather still alive? Is the rest of the family involved, or just him, Kayla, and her grandfather? What about her mom and dad?

And how do the rest of the in-crowd fit into all this? Did Kayla, like her grandfather years before, tell people about the cult and convince them to join? Or is she letting Bozzanath take control of her friends against their will?

I still don't feel much like eating, so I've got my sketchbook open in front of me instead of the lunch Mom packed for me this morning. I know I won't have much energy at practice, but does it matter? My mind will be a million miles away anyway. Circulating the same questions over and over again. I'll be lucky if I get one good pitch in.

Then again, I do need to try. If I blow my first day, Coach might think I'm not cut out for the team and tell me he made a mistake. But if the team is really as desperate for players as it sounds... maybe I don't need to worry so much.

I flip to a blank page in my sketchbook, wracking my brain for something to draw. It helps me think, helps give me a clear head. But it can only do so much, and I haven't thought of anything that might help us learn more about the Adkins family.

With a sigh, I find myself absentmindedly reaching for my pencil. So absentmindedly that I don't realize I'm even doing it until I feel my hand grasping the wood. But it clenches awkwardly, holding the tool in a tight fist and pointing it straight down at the paper. My eyes widen, heart stalling. I'm not doing this.

I try to open my hand, to drop the pencil, but instead my arm shoots down onto the page with a loud thud that has Watts, Renny and Ambrose looking up from their food with raised eyebrows.

"I'm not—" I pause as my hand jerks, moving to draw a shaky circle in the top right corner of the page. "This isn't me! I'm not doing this."

"What—You mean—" Watts stutters, sitting up to view the page.

"I mean I'm not doing this! I can't control it!"

"Is it Bozzanath?" Renny asks, keeping her voice quiet, gaze shooting to Kayla's table.

But they, like the rest of the cafeteria, are oblivious, chattering away like always as my friends watch my body relent to the control of some unknown entity.

"I don't know!" I say, voice straining. I don't know anything other than the fact that I'm not the one controlling my arm. In tightly controlled motions I find myself drawing an eight inside the circle—then a line down the center, and two dashes on the sides. The symbol Miguel left in Watts' notebook, the one that's been carved into the foreheads of all the victims.

Right above that comes a jagged shape, then two smaller ones on either side.

Lines come next, one scalloped horizontal one in the middle of the page, and one dotted one leading from the circle to the bottom of the book, where the pencil leaves a rectangle marked with a sharp V. Next to the dashed line I mark something else—a nine, and a small M.

Then small dashes topped with triangles, filling the blank spaces. Trees. Another line, solid—first it follows the dashes, but then it veers, heading away from the circle and off the page. My arm jerks to the bottom right corner, and leaves two symbols that have my breath catching in my chest.

-M.

"Miguel," I breathe as my hand finally leaves the page. "Miguel!" I call out this time, wordlessly asking for more—more information, more time. Not just time to ask him what all this means, but time where he's here again in some way. Time where I can tell him how sorry I am for being the reason he has to come to me like this, caught somewhere between life and death.