Here Lies Linc (23 page)

Mr. Krasny motioned me over to his kitchen table, where six or seven red leather volumes were spread open and scattered across the Formica top. I recognized them from the day he had shown me the bound collection of the
Slovan Americký
in his living room. “I knew Tatínek’s old Czech newspapers would come in handy someday,” Mr. Krasny said. He smoothed his hand fondly across the yellowed pages of one of the volumes. “My sister tried to talk me into donating them to the Czech museum in Cedar Rapids. But I wouldn’t hear of it.”

I went to stand beside him and peer down at the hodgepodge of foreign headlines splattered across the page. “So what did you find?” I asked, hoping he would tell me something interesting to take my mind off my crazy afternoon for a while.

Mr. Krasny poked his knobby finger at one of the newspaper articles, which was only a paragraph long—and then traced a path underneath the words in the headline. “What does that say?” he asked me.

I coughed out a laugh. “Sorry, Mr. Krasny. I speak a little French, but that’s about it. For all I know, this could be Sanskrit.”

He smiled mischievously at me over the top of his glasses. “Take another look.”

I bent down until my nose was a few inches from the paper—close enough to get a good whiff of the dry, dusty pages—and then I tried to pronounce a few of the words.

“Pohovor s … Terezií … Doležalovou.”
I stuttered over the last string of syllables.
“Terezií,”
I repeated, standing up with a jerk. “Is that Theresa? Theresa Dolezal?”

“Bravo,” he said, giving the air a tiny, satisfied punch. I had never seen him so jolly. “The headline says, ‘An Interview with Theresa Dolezal.’ That was her name, remember, before she married the rich rancher out west.”

He had me curious now. I bent down again to check the date on the top of the newspaper page. “This was published in 1880. So this would have been written just a few years after she came to this country. Way before her son Eddie died. So what’s the article say?”

“It’s quite a coincidence,” he started. “I’m sure my
tatínek
wrote this story. He used to do little profiles of the Czechs who had immigrated here. Human-interest stories. It was a way to connect people in the community. He would write about the villages where they came from. And someone would realize, ‘Oh, my wife came from the town next door.’ And, like magic, friendships would form.”

He readjusted his glasses and picked up the red leather
book. “This article says that Theresa came from a village in Bohemia called Strmilov.”

“I remember that name,” I said. “From Eddie’s obituary in the newspaper I found at the historical society.”

Mr. Krasny nodded, and his wrinkles seemed to multiply as he brooded over the newspaper page, following the words again with his finger. “Well, I haven’t been able to figure out every single phrase. But the piece mainly talks about how much Theresa misses her family back in Bohemia. Her father. Her brothers and sisters … 
sourozenci
.… And how she misses her village. But she needed to leave to make a better life for her son.…” Mr. Krasny shook his head in annoyance. “Just a minute,” he said as he set the volume on the table and reached for his Czech-English dictionary.
“Požár,”
he mumbled to himself as he thumbed through the pages. “Why can’t I remember
požár
?”

I crossed my arms restlessly and gnawed my lip.

“Aha!” he finally exclaimed. “
Požár
means ‘fire.’ ” He plunked the dictionary back on the table and hoisted up the book of newspapers again. “So from what I can gather,” he went on, frowning down at the newsprint, “the people in her village had been devastated by a huge fire. They lost their church and the school and more than a hundred houses—”

“Whoa,” I interrupted with a whoosh of breath. “That does it. She really
is
cursed.” Mr. Krasny’s eyebrows rose and he blinked back at me, as if he were trying to decide whether I was serious or not.

I was serious, all right. I sat down hard on one of his
kitchen chairs. “Don’t you see, Mr. Krasny? How unlucky can a person get? She lost two husbands. She lost two sons. Then a rattlesnake bites her and she loses a leg. And now you’re telling me that she lost her village back in Bohemia on top of everything else?

“And what about that epitaph?” I asked with a little flail of my arms. “ ‘Suffering awaits you.’ I know it sounds crazy. But when you put all the pieces together, it sort of starts to make sense. Theresa had a horrible life, so she decided to get her revenge on the world by building a statue and trying to put a curse on it.”

A smile teased at one corner of Mr. Krasny’s lips as he lowered himself into the chair beside me. “Now, Linc,” he said, “you’re a sensible boy. You honestly believe someone could have the power to put a hex on a statue? To doom anyone who crosses its path?”

I thought for a second. Sure, my theory was a bit far-fetched. And sure, I was probably feeling spooked by Halloween coming up and all the unexpected curveballs I’d been thrown that day. But even Mr. Krasny had to admit that Theresa and Bad Luck seemed to go together like fire and brimstone. “I’m not saying Theresa’s curse ever worked,” I backpedaled, trying to sound more reasonable. “There are tons of stories about what’s happened to people who mess with the Black Angel, but I guess I don’t have any proof. It just makes you wonder, that’s all.”

Mr. Krasny gave up on holding back his chuckle. “Well, if I find anything in Tatínek’s newspapers about Theresa’s black magic, I’ll let you know.” He reached out to give my shoulder
a pat, and in a flash I thought of Adeline Raintree—the way she had slid her hand toward me across the table that afternoon. “Really, Mr. Krasny,” I said guiltily, “you don’t have to worry about helping me with my project anymore.” I gestured at the heap of books on the table. “This is so much work.”

“Work?” he fired back. “Nonsense, son. This is the most fun I’ve had in years.” He pushed himself up from the table. “Now you better run along home. Your mother’s probably fit to be tied by now.”

I mustered up a sad smile before I headed out the door. Mr. Krasny was a very wise man.

D
ARTH
V
ADER
, the Grim Reaper, Abraham Lincoln, a princess, a pirate, a couple of hippies from the 1960s—they all started arriving right after sunset the next evening. Until this year, I had always been away from home too on Halloween night. So I had never quite realized how much kids loved trick-or-treating on my street. I guess they thought it was spooky being so close to the graveyard.

I could hear them coming as I sat on the couch in the living room that night, doing my math homework next to C.B. and a big bowl of Dum Dums. They screeched and yelped and ran squealing in herds, moving closer along the sidewalks. By the time they arrived at our dead end, where the shadowy shapes of the tombstones started to materialize in the distance, most kids had worked themselves into a fever of fright. It took C.B. about an hour to calm down, but after that he
barely even twitched his long eyebrows whenever someone new came thudding up the porch steps.

I had almost run out of candy when my old Ho-Ho friends, Sebastian and Vladka, showed up at the door, dressed as ancient Egyptians. “Doth he remember us?” Sebastian asked Vladka as I stood surveying their costumes.

“Yes, I think he doth,” Vladka played along with her old sly smile and soft voice. Her eyes were rimmed in heavy black liner, and she had made a headdress out of glittery gold fabric. She could almost have passed for Cleopatra if it hadn’t been for her Russian accent and the purple high-tops peeking out from under her gown.

Sebastian, on the other hand? Except for the matching headdress, which Vladka must have made for him, he looked about as far from a pharaoh as you could get. “I didn’t know King Tut wore glasses,” I said with a laugh, dropping the last of the Dum Dums into Sebastian’s pillowcase. “And what’s that?” I asked, pointing to the thick yards of ivory material that he had belted around his middle with a bathrobe tie.

Sebastian pushed his glasses up on his nose. “My tunic.”

“His mother’s tablecloth,” Vladka corrected. Her voice slid to a disapproving whisper. “He cut a hole in it, for his head to go through.”

I heard a gasp behind me. It was Lottie, standing in the doorway to the living room. “You didn’t!” she exclaimed as she came over to join us.

“Hello, Professor Landers,” Sebastian said sheepishly.

“It’s good to see you two again.” Lottie beamed. I stood stiffly beside her. She had come out of her office once earlier that evening to ask if I wanted her to take a turn handing out candy.

“No, thanks,” I had said curtly. I could tell she was trying to smooth things over between us. But I wasn’t ready. I hated how she kept blaming Plainview for all the troubles between us. And now she had practically forced me into keeping secrets from her. After what she had threatened, how could I tell her the truth about everything—about stealing the key and getting kicked out of the graveyard and hunting down Dad’s real mother? I might as well book a one-way trip back to the Ho-Hos right now.

Vladka had finally finished giving my mother an update on her latest math competition. “We came to see if Linc wanted to trick-or-treat with us,” she said. “We’re going to one last street. They always have the best candy over on Dover.”

“Great,” Lottie said quickly. “That would be fun, wouldn’t it, Linc?”

“I thought you said you didn’t like me going out on school nights.”

Lottie pursed her lips at my snide crack. “I think we can make an exception for Halloween.”

I shrugged and said, “Don’t you guys think we’re a little too old to be going trick-or-treating?”

Sebastian looked offended. He crossed his arms over his tablecloth tunic. “Oh, is that what they’re saying over at the
junior high?
” he asked with a nasty smirk. “It’s not cool to go trick-or-treating anymore?”

“No, nobody said that.” I hadn’t meant to start a fight.

Sebastian turned to go. “Come on, Vladka,” he said. “I told you he wouldn’t want to come.”

“Wait,” I called. I stepped out onto the porch as they headed down the steps. “I just …” My voice died away. How was I supposed to explain? Halloween felt awful this year. Every time I thought of trick-or-treating, I thought of Fulton Lane—little kids dashing up to the old Raintree house, ringing the doorbell, and running away while Adeline Raintree sat all alone at her dining room table, waiting for the night to be over.

Vladka turned back for a second with her sparkly headdress swinging. “It’s all right, Linc,” she said kindly. Even with all her black liner, I could see the glimmer of hurt in her eyes. “Maybe another time.”

I stood watching them from the porch. “Junior high,” I heard Sebastian sneer again out on the sidewalk. “At least we’re not sitting at home alone on Halloween.”

I glared into the dark. I could have been at a party if I’d wanted. Mellecker had invited me over to his house with Beez and a bunch of other kids. But I had made up some lame excuse not to go. I knew Amy would be there, and supposedly she had thrown a hissy fit when she found out Delaney had been invited to go on the Ransom expedition tomorrow and no one had bothered to include her.

Lottie was still standing in the doorway, looking mystified,
when I finally turned to go back inside. “Why didn’t you want to go?” she asked. “You used to love hanging out with those guys. You used to love Halloween.”

“Too much homework” was all I could manage to say as I pushed the empty candy bowl into her arms.

I
WAITED, SHIVERING
, at the end of my street just outside the cemetery gate. So far my plans had gone even better than I’d expected. The sliver of light under Lottie’s door had turned dark a little earlier than usual, and when I had finally tiptoed downstairs and slipped out the back door near midnight, C.B. hadn’t even bothered to roust himself out of my bed to follow me. But now at least ten minutes had passed, and there was still no sign of the others. Maybe Beez’s older brother had backed out on his promise to provide taxi service and the getaway car for the evening. He’d probably decided it wasn’t worth it, even though Beez had supposedly bribed him with a whole month’s allowance, plus threatened to spill the beans about some wild party his brother had hosted when their parents were out of town.