Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [70]
It’s called hungover, Jack thought. And in Toliver’s mind, it’s called haunted.
And on the subject of haunts or “haints,” where was Levi?
Jack scanned the crowd but couldn’t spot him.
“Happy Halloween, everybody,” Toliver said in a slightly hoarse voice.
He dropped the duffel in front of the locker and grabbed the lock. He bent to inspect the shackle hole and the keyhole, then turned and showed a sickly grin to the crowd.
“Just as I left it—spiked and glued up the wazoo.” If he expected a laugh, he didn’t get it. “I guess the jerk knows when he’s beaten.”
“Too bad NBR didn’t,” a voice called.
More anti-Toliver sentiment. Was he feeling something like what he’d put Weezy through?
“Okay,” he said. “I deserved that. I’d like to apologize for my performance Friday night. I was sick and didn’t realize it until too late.”
“You still don’t look so hot.”
Toliver gave another sickly grin. “Better than I felt Friday night, believe me. I apologize for not taking myself out of the game before it even started. It won’t happen again, I promise.”
This earned a smattering of applause and even some cheers. Jack tightened his fists and closed his eyes. The guy knew how to work a crowd. He was winning them back. Give him more time and he’d have them in the palm of his hand.
“What about the locker?” called another voice. “How are you gonna get in?”
Another smile, a tad more real. He figured he’d won this battle. “Didn’t you ask me that on Friday? Don’t worry—I’ve got it covered.” He squatted and unzipped the duffel. “Time for the grand opening.”
He removed a long-handled bolt cutter and held it up to another round of cheers. With two quick snaps he severed the shackle, and the lock clattered to the floor. Then with a flourish like a magician opening a box to reveal that his vanished assistant has reappeared, he bowed and yanked open the door.
A moment of stunned silence as the crowd saw the inside of the locker, then a chorus of shouts and screams as they pushed and tripped over one another in a rush to get as far as possible from the bloody and partially flattened possum roadkill swinging by its ratlike tail from the top shelf.
Jack remembered wondering as he’d hung the poor dead possum in the locker if maybe he was overdoing it. But this was the swan song of Operation Toliver and he needed a grand finale. Had to go out with such a bang that if Toliver ever mentioned “Easy Weezy” again the words would drown in a sea of memories about spiders and snakes and marbles and “doing the Carson” and roadkill and the Mystery Marauder Carson Toliver could not keep out of his locker.
Toliver’s dramatic bow had moved his line of sight away from the locker. When he noticed the reaction he looked up. And when he saw the possum, he fell backward to land on his butt, where he stayed staring in mute, openmouthed horror at the dead creature above him.
And now Jack stared too because he’d just noticed a pink hair band around the thing’s neck.
Where had that come from?
Then the possum’s tail slipped free and it tumbled to the floor, landing with a sick splat! Jack heard a retch and another splat as a girl near the front blew breakfast.
Yep, he’d overdone it.
He felt bad for her. She wasn’t the target—just the guy she’d been cheering for a second ago.
But Jack couldn’t take his eyes off the hair band. Where had it come from? It hadn’t been there at two A.M. Someone else must have gotten into the locker after him. But how? And who?
He looked around for Levi, and finally found him, but his face was as surprised as those around him. No question, he was seeing the possum for the first time too.
Still on the floor, a wild-eyed Toliver whimpered and scrabbled backward like a crab. When he finally regained his feet he pushed violently through the crowd and ran full tilt down the hall, wailing like the hounds of hell were after him.
2
“Aw, man,” Eddie said, looking a little shaken after Toliver was gone. “This is creepitacious. It’s like supernatural. How’d anyone get past that lock?”
“Maybe they took the door off,