Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (10 page)

Holly just blinks at it. “It’s just a regular house?”

I shake my head. “I can’t believe they did all that for one night.”

“You girls are up early,” a man calls from under the tree where he’s collecting the spears and skulls and putting them in a coffin. He’s got a puffy black ponytail and is wearing a tool belt, jeans, and a T-shirt. And even though it’s still nippy out, he’s sweating.

“I can’t believe you’re tearing this down already,” I tell him.

“Hey, yesterday was Halloween,” he says as he wipes his brow. “Today is All Saints’ Day. And I’ve got a deal with my lovely wife—she helps me indulge in my obsession
with Halloween, and I make it all disappear the next day.” He snickers. “And then she drags me to church to pray for the souls of the dearly departed.”

I give him a little squint. “You’re serious?”

He shrugs and grins and gets back to work. “Call it a compromise of cultures. She’s from Mexico, I’m from Hollywood. We’ve been married nearly twenty years, so I guess you’d say we respect each other’s beliefs.”

I’m still having a little trouble wrapping my head around this, so I say, “And you believe … ?”

He laughs. “That Halloween’s the most righteous holiday ever!”

“But not that you’re worshipping the dead or the devil or … or whatever?”

“No! It’s just fun. It has nothing to do with worshipping anything.”

Then Holly asks, “So … were you an actor?”

He shakes his head. “Set builder.” He nods at the façades stacked up against the house. “Loved the work, hated the biz.”

We watch him take down two more spears, and then I tell him, “We were here last night.”

He grins. “I figured that.”

“The mummy totally got me.”

He seems to get a big kick out of that. “You’re not alone, believe me.”

“So … are these Hollywood props? I mean, some of them are really realistic. Like those skulls? Those are great.”

He picks one up and jostles it in his hand like he’s
trying to guess its weight. “Love these babies. They’re the best money can buy.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure,” he says, and walks it over.

Holly and I take turns admiring it, and when we hand it back, I tell him, “It’s really nice that you do all this. We had a great time last night. It was amazing.”

“Why, thank you. I appreciate that.”

“I’d worry about people stealing stuff if I were you. I mean, that’s a really cool skull. I know a lot of kids who’d want to snag it.”

“Nah. Most kids are good.” He grins again and says, “The werewolf only had to come out twice last night, and that was for littering.” Then he goes, “Ghrrraaaaarghhhh,” and jumps at us with one hand up like a claw and the other shaking the skull.

I back up with a laugh. “Anyway, thanks for everything!”

“See you in church!” he calls as we head down the driveway, then snickers like it’s the silliest joke ever.

But the instant we’re back on the street I turn to Holly and I can tell she’s thinking the same thing I am, and there’s absolutely nothing funny about it.

We have to find Billy!

We would have gone straight to Billy’s house but we didn’t know where he lived or even what his phone number was. Casey did, but to add to the ridiculousness of the situation, we didn’t have a cell phone or any money in our pockets to use a pay phone to call Casey and ask him.

I
did
know where Casey lived, though, and although that used to be a ways out of town with his dad, it’s now in town with his mother and sister.

A bad situation on all counts except one: We could walk there, no problem.

And I guess because I was so intent on getting to Casey’s quick, I didn’t even think that we were going to walk past the graveyard, but suddenly there we were.

“Want to take a shortcut?” Holly joked.

I smirked at her. “Very funny.”

I didn’t really want to go past it, but unless we were going to backtrack, there was no avoiding it. “They say people always return to the scene of the crime, you know.”

“Are you talking about us?”

I laugh. “Well, here we are!”

And the truth is, I did feel kinda guilty. About more than sneaking into the graveyard or bending some dilapidated car’s windshield wiper.

It was those skulls.

I didn’t even
have
them, but I was still dying to get rid of them.

Then Holly says, “Looks like someone’s getting buried today,” and nods across the street.

Through the gate where we’d scrambled over the Deli Mobile, we can see a pickup truck parked near a big green canopy and a couple of people putting out chairs.

Holly shivers a little. “The whole thing is awful, don’t you think?”

“Getting buried?”

She nods. “I’m with Marissa—I get claustrophobic just thinking about it.”

“They used to install little bells, did you know that? So if you were buried alive, you could pull on a cord and ring a bell. Or a flag would go up. Something like that.”

Holly shivers again, and this time it’s a big one. “Can you imagine?”

Then I see that the people in the graveyard are picking something off the ground.

Planks.

Long wooden planks.

I find myself crossing the street to get a closer look.

“What are you doing?” Holly asks, chasing after me.

It comes out all breathy when I say, “Those must be the boards we ran over last night.”

“You think?” We watch the men move the planks a few
feet to each side, leaving an opening in the earth. “So we ran over …”

She looks at me all bug-eyed, so I finish for her. “An open grave.”

We let this sink in a minute, and finally Holly says, “What if those boards hadn’t been there?”

“We’d have fallen in and killed ourselves?”

“Wow,” she says, staring into the graveyard.

I force a laugh. “Either that or
Marissa
would have killed us!”

We watch as the workers put a couple of cross braces widthwise over the grave, then cover the hole with a big piece of AstroTurf.

“Why the fake grass?” Holly asks.

“Maybe so people don’t have to see inside the hole during the service?”

“Yeah, I guess the less you have to think about it, the better.”

“No kidding.” I grab her. “Let’s get out of here.”

So we hurry away from the graveyard toward the sanity of regular neighborhoods.

Which just goes to show you how relative things can be.

After all, we were heading for the Acostas’ house.

Home of Heather the Horrible.

Now, there was no way I was going to ring the Acostas’ doorbell. Aside from not wanting to wake the Wicked Monster, I didn’t want to wake her mother.

Candi Acosta is just like Heather, only scarier. Imagine being in a horror movie, fighting off a giant hairy arachnid
mutant with all your might, not sure you’ll ever be able to land your harpoon in a place that’ll keep it from killing you. It’s closing in on you with its rancid breath and fangs dripping with blood … and then in walks another hairy arachnid mutant that’s ten times bigger than the first one.

That’s pretty much what it feels like when Candi Acosta comes to her daughter’s defense. And since chances were two out of three that a hairy arachnid mutant would answer the door, I was not
about
to knock or ring the bell.

What I did have going for me was that I’d infiltrated Heather’s house during a costume party last Halloween and knew which room was hers. I also knew that her mother’s bedroom was at the back end of the house, which left me with a pretty good hunch that Casey’s room was the first window on the right side of the walkway.

“Ready?” Holly whispers after we’d stood on the sidewalk for a minute.

“Let’s do it.”

So we tippy-toe up and I do a gentle
ratta-tat-tat
on the window.

Nothing happens.

“Try again,” Holly whispers after we’ve spent a whole minute stupidly staring at the curtain.

So I ratta-tat-tat again.

Still nothing.

So I ratta-tat-tat a little
harder
, and this time the curtain lifts.

Trouble is, the person looking out at us is not Casey.

It’s the vicious little arachnid mutant monster.

I duck quick, but it’s too late. Heather sees me and
instantly goes from half-asleep to full-on rage. She cusses at us through the glass, then fumbles to open her window so the whole neighborhood can hear her tirade.

Well, I’m not about to wait around for
that
, so I grab Holly and ditch it over to the window that
used
to be Heather’s room, thinking that if Heather’s sleeping in the first room, then Casey’s got to be in Heather’s old room.

We get around the house quick and right away I rap on the window loud and fast.

The curtain flies up, only instead of seeing Casey, I’m face to face with Heather again!

I jump back and cry, “Aaaah!” because it feels like there are
two
Heathers in there and something about that totally freaks me out.

She wrestles the window up about six inches and hisses, “Go away! You’re trespassing! If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the cops!”

Now, she’s not screeching like she was when she yelled at me through her window. It
feels
like she’s yelling, but it’s really just a whisper, so I know she’s trying to get rid of us without waking up Casey, who must be in that room still sleeping. So I just call past her, “Casey! We need your help finding Billy!”

Slam
, the window comes down and the curtain drops. And before I can pound on it or call anything through the glass, a
tornado
hits. I swear. The curtain twists and flops, goes up and down, twists some more. The top of a head bobs up, then drops back down. There’s more flailing at the curtain like someone’s
drowning
in there. And then finally the curtain goes still.

Holly and I just stare at it, then each other, then back at the curtain.

Nothing.

Then all of a sudden the curtain pops open and we’re face to face with the world’s goofiest grin.

Holly and I go,
“Billy?”

His hair’s sticking out all over the place, and he lifts the window, saying, “Sammy-keyesta and the Hollister! Tryin’ to wake the dead!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Had me a sleepover!”

Heather’s voice is in the background yelling, “I don’t care what you say! Mom says she can’t come in! Those are the rules! If you don’t like it,
leave.
” There’s a short silence and then she yells, “Why would I stay out of your room when your loser girlfriend beats down the window of mine?”

Billy looks over his shoulder, then whispers. “I’d ditch it if I were you. It took both of us to get her out of here and I think she’s coming back.”

“Look, we don’t want to come in, but we really need to talk to you!”

He looks over his shoulder again. “I don’t think now’s a good time.”

“Can you and Casey meet us somewhere? Like Hudson’s?”

“When?”

“As soon as you can get there. It’s important.”

“Okeydokey,” he says.

“Oh, and bring the … bring Grim and Reaper.”

“My buddies!”

“Be sure to bring them, okay?”

“Okeydokey!”

I shake my head a little. “Are you always this cheerful in the morning?”

“Always!” He gives me a goofy grin. “Except when I’m not!”

“Get to Hudson’s as quick as you can, okay? And tell Casey I’m sorry. I had no idea Heather had switched rooms.”

Then we hustle out of there before Heather can sic Candi on us.

I never feel bad about just dropping in at Hudson’s. It’s sort of a home away from home. At least his porch is. It’s big and airy and a great place to hang out.

But, really, it’s Hudson that makes his porch a little harbor in the storm of life. He always takes the time to listen, and he treats me like I’m a friend, not some pesky kid.

I think Hudson’s porch is also
Hudson’s
favorite place to be because he spends a lot of time there with his boots kicked up on the rail. Usually he’s reading the paper or a book, but sometimes he’s just watching the world go by.

I like that Hudson still gets a real paper. Maybe it’s the big sweep of newsprint as he switches pages. Or the fact that he can pull a section out and hand it to me. It’s very … Zen—like we’re sharing a moment of enlightenment.

Although he usually reads the news while I snag the funnies.

Anyway, it didn’t surprise me to find Hudson on the
porch reading the paper. What
did
surprise me was how he was dressed.

“Wow, Hudson. Nice boots.”

He lowers the paper and grins at me. “My Sunday best.”

I eye Holly, then look back at him. “But … it’s Saturday, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says, putting the paper aside. “But it’s All Saints’ Day, and I’m taking your grandmother to church.”

“You are?” I go up the steps. “What is that, anyway?”

“All Saints’ Day?”

“Yeah. The guy who did the haunted house said his wife’s dragging him to church for All Saints’ Day, too.”

Hudson picks up the paper again. “Are you referring to the haunted house on Feere Street? Did you go there last night?”