Amulet of Doom by Bruce Coville Page A

better. Even though I’d never seen anything like that in action, I’ve spent enough time in the ancient parts of the world to know what can happen. There are strange stories—things we would call primitive nonsense—that crop up over and over, linger in the mind, have touches that just don’t want to let you explain them away. I should have known better than to fool around with this thing after Eldred died.”
    â€œEldred Cooley?” asked Kyle.
    â€œYes,” said Zenobia with a scowl. “If I ever catch up with him, I swear …”
    Marilyn caught her breath as a second form shimmered into sight beside Zenobia. “Don’t!” it said sharply. “Don’t swear to anything, Zenobia. You have no idea how binding an oath is for someone in our condition.”
    Marilyn had seen Zenobia angry before. She had seen her, in the last week, frightened. But she had never seen her quite this surprised.
    â€œEldred Cooley!”
    The figure standing before them was a small, dapper-looking man. He was slightly overweight, slightly balding, and somewhere, Marilyn guessed, slightly over the age of fifty. Or at least, he had been when he died.
    â€œWhat is going on here?” asked Kyle. Marilyn squeezed his hand. He sounded like a little kid who had lost his mother in a department store.
    Nobody answered him. The two ghosts were looking at each other with an expression Marilyn could not decipher, though it seemed to contain elements of respect, anger, and longing in equal measure.
    â€œWell, what are you doing here, Eldred?” asked Zenobia at last.
    â€œThe same thing you are,” answered Cooley. “Trying to make up for past mistakes.”
    Marilyn felt Brick rubbing about her legs. She reached down to pick him up and suddenly felt the hair on the back of her neck begin to rise. She sat up straight, the cat still in her hands, and said, “Danger!”
    Even as the word left her lips, a searing heat burst against her leg. The amulet had blazed into life again.
    Eldred Cooley shouted something in a language that sounded unlike any she had ever heard before. It was too late. Whatever had been started was in motion. There was no stopping it now.
    Marilyn leaped to her feet, dumping Brick to the floor. She fumbled desperately for the amulet and finally drew it from her pocket by its chain. Holding it before her, she looked at it and cried out in horror.
    The amulet was looking back at her. A single eye, round and red, seemed to be staring into her very soul.

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    â€œHELP ME!”
    Despite the horror of it, Marilyn couldn’t tear her own eyes from the gaze of the eye in the amulet. She had a feeling that the amulet had become a bridge of some kind, between her world and this other place, the place from which the eye was looking at her.
    This other place filled her with dread. Something spoke to her through the fiery gaze, spoke without words, lashing into her soul with a message that told of thousands of years of waiting, of sorrow, and of anger.
    Dimly she could hear the others calling her name. She tried to answer, but could not force her lips to form the words. Frustration began to boil within her, causing her chest to feel painfully full, as if there were a balloon swelling inside.
    Once, when she was five or six, Kyle and Geoff had tied her up while they were playing some stupid game. Being unable to move her arms or legs terrified her, and after only a few seconds she had begun to scream.
    She had the same sensation now, only it was worse because there was nothing binding her—nothing but the blazing eye of the amulet. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw the amulet as far from her as possible. She wanted to grab Kyle by the hand and run from this place, fleeing the terror they had found here.
    But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even move her lips to ask for help. Her breathing had become short and shallow, and her throat felt as though