My Friends Are Dead People (6 page)

Witch Ridgway

“
Trick – or – treat!” I
yelled again.

At last, the doorknob was being jostled.
Katie and I opened up our pillowcases as an old lady, with matted
brown hair and a fake wart hanging halfway off her neck, opened the
screen door. She wore a plastic witch hat and long stick-on nails.
In the hallway behind her, there was a glass box of candy with no
hinge or lid. It was an unopenable box.

“
You children want to come
in?” she asked and then pointed inside. “Look, it’s
candy.”

She sensed something and looked behind us,
spotting Oz tying Duma to the mailbox. After a moment, she reached
into her pocket and pulled out two apples.

“
Here you go, Jesse. And a
sweet red one for you, Katie.”

We promptly stuffed the apples in our
pillowcases.

“
Hello,” said Oz, making
herself known behind us. “I'm Becky. We live right next
door.”

The hag cocked her head back, giving Oz a
prickly look, and gurgled the mucus in her mouth. All of us stepped
back.

“
Katie, can you check that
apple for me?” said Oz.

Katie took her apple out. Someone had
already taken a big chunk out of it.

“
Oh, dear,” croaked the
hag. “I’m deeply sorry about that. Let me go inside and get
something else.” She turned to Oz. “Such dreadful timing. This is
your first time out, and you see me give a child a half-eaten
apple. How awful. I’ll be right back.”

The hag rubbed the apple with her grubby
sweater, then carefully pocketed it and shuffled back into the
house, pushing her weight down the hallway like a slug.

“
She’s a fast one,” I said
jokingly.

“
Push her, I dare you,”
said Katie.

“
What’s that?” mumbled the
hag, not turning around, already struggling as it was.

Oz cleared her throat. “That’s enough, you
two.”

The hag trudged back a few minutes later,
holding a fogged-up plastic bag, filled with warm carrots and runny
spaghetti, and in a separate bag a crispy brownie.

“
Here you go, child. Now
you listen to me, Oz. You take Katie into your home. It would be
very wise of you.” As she handed me a bag of leftovers, she gurgled
at me.

“
Do you know us?" asked
Oz, stepping in front of Katie and me.

"Yeeees. I am your neighbor."

The hag said nothing else.

"Well, thank you . . .” Oz pushed us along,
her eyes never leaving the creepy old woman.

“
Ridgway.”

“
Thank you, Mrs. Ridgway.
We should be off. Maybe we'll have dinner some . . .”

"Time," finished Mrs. Ridgway. "No. But
we'll talk again in four more years. I will see you then."

The hag watched us leave.

“
Katie, Jess, throw it in
the trash,” said Oz the second we were out of sight. “Apple too,
Jess.”

I was happy to get rid of it. I wasn’t going
to eat fruit or vegetables on Halloween. That must have been the
weirdest lady in the whole world. What didn't make sense was how
did she know so much about us? She knew that I called my mom Oz. No
one knew that, but Katie. I was going to have to investigate that
later on.

Katie and I ran over to the next house. The
door had a paper skeleton taped to it. No matter how many times we
knocked, no one came to the door. The lights were on inside, too.
They just weren’t answering. The same welcome awaited us at all the
rest of the houses on our street.

“
Jess, no one will come
out while Duma is with us,” explained Oz. “Why don’t we drop him
off at Lisa’s. Jess, don’t give me that look. I’ll be back in a
minute. Stay right here.”

I watched glumly as Oz took Duma across the
street. Lisa answered the door right away. She was short and
blonde. That was all you could say about her.

“
Great,” I said as they
chatted their way inside. “Duma doesn’t even like Lisa’s
cat.”

“
Let’s go wait inside,”
said Katie, suspiciously anxious. “Jesse! Come on!”

“
Why are you so . .
.”

I finally knew why. Katie’s old Mexican
friends, Jean and Monica, were approaching us. I had never met the
girls, but Katie had talked about them once. They were older than
us. Jean was seventeen, and her sister was sixteen.

“
Cat, wait up!” said Jean,
who was thin as a stick and wore tomboy clothes. She caught up with
us, breathing heavily. “Hey. I know you said you didn’t wanna see
us again, but it’s been two years and . . . because you wanna be a
perfect little angel now doesn’t mean you gotta freakin' ignore us.
Right, Moni?”

Jean waited for her younger sister to catch
up. Monica was just as skinny, with short black hair streaked
purple. She walked up to us and spat in Katie’s face.

“
You never dropped off my
comb!”

“
Don’t d-do–” I
stuttered.

Monica swiftly pulled out a switchblade and
pressed it to my neck. “Shut up, you dweeb!”

“
What the hell you
doing?!” yelled Katie, pushing Monica in the chest.
“
Don’t touch him!
”

I had never seen Katie like this. She looked
scary. She stepped up an inch away from the blade now pointing at
her face.

"¿por qué? Is he your boyfriend?"

Katie wiped the spit off her face with the
palm of her hand. "No, but he's my best friend."

Jean lowered Monica's blade and pushed me
aside. "Cat, we ain't friends anymore. Leave or there's goin' be a
problem."

"I said don't touch him!"

Jean flicked out her blade. "¿Qué?"

"You know what I said!"

As if suddenly struck by a bolt of fear,
Jean dropped the blade. But it wasn’t because of Katie. There was
an enormous bat-like creature flapping overhead. The creature
landed coolly in front of Jean, putting himself in-between us and
the sisters. He had a long snout, pointy ears, gray skin and wings
like a dragon, and a tree branch for a left arm. A tiny brown
spider crawled up the side of his normal arm and rested on top of
his shoulder.

“
You girls run home now,"
he ordered.

Jean and Monica just stood there staring at
the creature, looking too scared to move. He flared out his giant
wings, which got Monica moving. However, Jean remained. As she was
about to walk backward, his wings curved around her.

“
I decided I’m not going
to let you go anymore. You can stay put.”

Tears streamed down Jean’s cheeks. The
creature never glanced our way, all the while glaring down at Jean
like an angry parent.

“
Go to the fence and stick
your head through it.”

Jean shakily waddled to the fence and poked
her head through a hole in it.

“
Now bark.”

And Jean did. She barked away like a wounded
hound. Under different circumstances, this might have been very
amusing, but now Katie and I looked on in shock.

“
Do you understand you’re
only a kid? Get moving.”

Jean couldn’t stop barking. Either she was
too scared to or couldn’t hear him. This was truly a horrifying
sight. She was crying and barking at the same time. The bat flicked
one of his wings out, and she snapped out of it and staggered off
in the same direction as Monica. And then he began to follow her.
He followed her all the way to the end of the street and even
turned the corner after her.

I didn’t know what to think. Was what we
just saw real? Did this have something to do with the werewolf?

Katie and I sat down on the curb. I hadn't
realized, but my hands were shaking.

“
You think that was a–” I
said, getting cut off by Katie.

“
That was no
costume.”

“
It was like the
movies.”

“
Yeah. Do you believe in
Satan?”

“
That wasn't Satan. Satan
wouldn't have rescued us.”

“
I know. Just wondering if
you believe in that kind of stuff . . . you know, weird
stuff.”

I couldn’t believe we were having this
conversation. I knew ghosts, goblins and warlocks didn’t exist, and
Katie had agreed, too. But what we had just experienced together
seemed so real that I wasn’t sure what to think. Everything that
had happened today felt real.

“
Katie . . .” I
ventured.

“
It wasn’t a costume,
Jesse,” repeated Katie. “It was real. You said so
yourself.”

“
Said what?”

“
You did see a
werewolf–”

Katie shot up off the curb. A short dark boy
wearing striped overalls was staring at us from the middle of the
street. His ears kept fluttering and his skin was oozing black sap.
The boy scratched his black face, casually peeling some of the skin
entirely off.

“
You know where the cemy
is?” said the boy in a very mature manner. “Cemetery?” he
explained.

We stood there speechless, just gaping at
the boy. He rubbed his wet chin, thinking about what to say
next.

“
Lin,” the boy introduced
himself. “My name is Lin. I like your costume, boy. Very original.
You supposed to be a dead boy?”

I managed a nod.

“
The closest cemetery’s
miles from here,” said Katie in a monotone. “But . . . you might be
looking for – there’s an abandoned one somewhere at the bottom of
the hill on Acacia. Is that the one–”

“
Thank you, beautiful,”
chimed Lin with a pleasant smile.

He hurried down the street, appearing to be
running, yet moving slowly. He glanced back, and, after seeing that
we were indeed following him, immediately picked up the pace. Katie
and I kept quiet for a while. After a couple of minutes, we reached
the bottom of Beverly Street and spotted Lin just as he disappeared
into an overgrowth of plants on a dirt crag just below my
house.

CHAPTER SIX

The
GRAVEDIGGERS

I wasn’t sure why we were following the tiny
boy. Perhaps we were hoping for some clue to the recent events. I
couldn’t believe all the bizarre things I had witnessed in one day.
Was this what I had been sheltered from all this time? This had to
be the reason why Oz didn’t let me go out on Halloween. There were
too many weird things going on.

We pushed through the plants, stepped over a
low black fence, and crossed a field of tall grass to a desolate
scene of ancient tombstones and majestic trees, whose bushy tops
veiled the sky like a thick fog. One side of the graveyard had
evenly spaced tombstones, carefully arranged graves and neat piles
of raked leaves, while the opposite side was in total disarray.
That was where we saw Lin standing chatting with a peculiar-looking
man. He was in his early forties, about six feet tall and thin,
with scruffy black hair and dense stubble. The stranger wore a
shabby brown shirt that hung down to his knees and tattered pants.
He was covered in mud and grass head to toe. Despite his ragged
appearance, there was something pleasant about him.

“
What do you think they’re
talking about?” I asked as we hid behind a crumbling
tombstone.

“
Shorty’s telling him
about us,” said Katie. “They’re trying to figure out how they can
chop us up and roast us without getting caught. Or he’s asking him
for growth pills. I think the kid had enough of being called Old
Baby.”

I cracked up out loud and quickly checked
myself. But it was too late. Lin and the man were looking straight
at us.

“
Katie,” I muttered,
slowly backing away. “They’re going to chop us up.
Katie!”

“
Lin disappeared,” mumbled
Katie.

The short boy
was
gone, and the man
was ambling over to us, holding a long shovel over his shoulder,
moving through the dusty part of the graveyard, as if he was taking
a morning stroll.

“
He’s going to bury us
alive,” I said.

The man seemed to be a little over six feet
now that he was only yards away. His eyes were strange: they had a
faint orange ring around the pupils. He had to be a monster. Plus,
there was a large birthmark shaped like a curved hand snaking
around his left arm.

He reached us with a confused look, but
smiled after he studied the dirt and glue on my skin.

“
I thought I buried you
two already,” the man said calmly.

Oh, my God, he thought we were walking
corpses. Now he was going to bury us alive.

“
Come this way, you two,”
he said. “There’s much work to be done.”

The man sauntered back to the middle of the
cemetery. Katie grabbed my arm and whispered sharply, “Jesse, what
you doing? Don’t follow him.”

“
Hurry up, you two,” said
the man, approaching two freshly dug-out holes. “I don’t want to be
here all night.”

I continued walking, obeying the man, and
Katie hurried after me.

“
I can use some extra
hands,” said the man, stopping between the two graves and waiting
for us to catch up. He spotted a shovel next to another hole. “You
can use that one.”

I picked up the bent shovel, surprised to be
taking orders from a total stranger who either was going to make us
dig our own graves or have us work before he buried us.

“
And one more for the
little lady.” The man searched the shaded landscape. The bushy
trees swayed as a gust of wind blew through the graveyard. The wind
blew and sounded, as though a giant was breathing on us. His eyes
stopped on a shovel leaning against a withered root. “You can grab
that one.”