Hangman's Curse by Frank Peretti

it.”
    â€œWell, of course. The Crucible is a cry for tolerance,” Sondra agreed. “It’s wrong for anyone to impose their morals on others. Very simple.” Then she noticed Elisha smiling as if something was funny. “What?”
    â€œYou just said that something is wrong,” Elisha replied, still smiling.
    Sondra didn’t get it. “So?”
    Elisha explained, “You can’t say it’s wrong to impose your morals on others because, when you tell us something is wrong, you’re imposing your morals on us, and you can’t do that because you just said it’s wrong to do that.”
    â€œWhooaa!” said Karine.
    â€œWell, you know what I meant!” Sondra countered.
    â€œSure, but you see the problem? If the message of The Crucible is that everybody can believe whatever they want, and nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong, then why does the play disturb us? Where’d we ever get the idea that Tituba and John Proctor are the good guys and the Puritans are the bad guys? What makes us think that an injustice has been done or that there’s anything right or wrong about anything in the play if there’s no right or wrong?”
    Sondra stopped to ponder that.
    â€œThat boy’s looking at you!” Karine tittered. Elisha and Sondra started to look. “Don’t look!” They didn’t look.
    â€œYou mean Ian Snyder?” Sondra whispered.
    Karine made a disgusted face. “ Eeugh , don’t make me sick!” She tried to point. “It’s that other guy, that stud with the red hair . . .”
    â€œWho’s Ian Snyder?” Elisha asked.
    â€œYou don’t want to meet him,” said Karine. “He’s really out there somewhere. I think he’s a witch!”
    â€œJust like the Tituba in all of us,” Sondra observed.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œOh, nothing.” For Elisha’s benefit, she deftly pointed him out with her eyes and a barely discernible point of her finger. “Over there, by himself.”
    Elisha looked just long enough to see a thin, bizarre-looking kid sitting alone at the end of a row of tables. He seemed obsessed with the color black. He was dressed in black, had black hair—almost too black, as if he’d dyed it that way—and . . . had he even used something to blacken his lips and eyebrows? “He’s a witch?”
    Karine and Sondra made quick, downward motions with their hands. “Shhh.”
    â€œTime to tell her,” Sondra said to Karine, and Karine nodded.
    Elisha waited.
    â€œYou should know, there are weird things happening around here,” Karine began.
    â€œReady to hear about our ghost?” Sondra asked, and she was serious.
    â€œOh, it’s not news to me,” said petite, gray-haired Mrs. Aimsley, bringing another stack of high school annuals to the table and setting them down with a thud. “We’ve had a ghost in this high school for as long as I can remember.”
    Sarah had set up her own little research center in a corner of the school library, one study table now burdened under stacks of yearbooks and enrollment records. Mrs. Aimsley turned out to be a very good source of information on the school and its traditions. She’d been the Baker High School librarian for the past forty years and had seen and heard just about everything. “So how did the legend start? Is there a true story behind it all?”
    â€œ True story?” Mrs. Aimsley had to laugh. “Well, which true story would you like to hear? There have been several.”
    â€œThe one about Abel Frye,” Sarah said.
    â€œHe went to this school back in the 1930s,” Karine explained, intrigued by her own tale. “And one night he hanged himself in the old school building.”
    Sondra added, “He lost his true love and decided to end it all.”
    â€œAbel Frye. That name is new this year,” said Mrs. Aimsley. She