Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “It’s going to go out that gate!” Marissa cries. “Come on!”

  I chase after her. “Wait! What if the person driving the car is Shovel Man?”

  They all look at me. “Shovel Man?”

  “You know! The mad guy with the shovel!”

  Billy shoots a fist into the air and goes, “Shovel Man to the rescue!”

  Casey throws Billy a grin. “You will dig him, man.”

  “He will unearth even the deepest plots …”

  “The dirtiest deeds …”

  “He will bury … filthy … fiends!”

  They slap five on each other and laugh, and we just shake our heads. Then Holly says, “Well, if it’s Shovel Man in that car, why was he chasing El Zarape on foot? Why didn’t he drive his car?”

  Marissa’s like a caged animal. “Right! And since there’s a gate about to open over there”—she points ahead of us—“and there’s an angry guy with a shovel and a freaked-out trick-or-treater somewhere over there”—she points behind us—“I say we make a break for it!”

  The gate the car is heading for matches the fencing on top of the stone wall—black iron posts with pointy spears on top—but the cross braces of the gate would make it pretty easy to climb over. So I say, “How about we just wait for him to drive through and then climb the gate?”

  Marissa blinks at me. “Like, after it’s closed?”

  “Yeah. The cross braces are—”

  “No way!” she snaps. “I would get stuck. I always get stuck.” She looks at me in disbelief. “You know I always get stuck!”

  I sigh because she’s right—cross braces or not, I could just see her up on top of the gate, stuck. “Fine,” I grumble. “We’ll make a break for it.”

  So we all wait and watch as the car stops in front of the gate and a thin man with kinda long black hair gets out.

  “See?” Marissa whispers. “It’s a different guy!”

  We hold still for a minute as the guy walks toward the gate, and when we’re sure he’s going to open it, Casey says, “Let’s go!”

  And with that, we charge.

  Casey leads the charge into the new section, with Billy behind him, then me, Holly, and Marissa. We have to dodge fake flowers and little flags sticking out of the built-in vases and also not get tripped up by the empty ones, but it’s still way easier than moving through the old section.

  So we’re flying along when all of a sudden we hit some wooden planks that are just lying in the middle of our path. There are four of them side by side, and they sort of bounce and sag as I run over them, which is bad enough, but then I hear grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff, grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff in the distance, like a pack of dogs is after us, which makes me practically jump out of my skin.

  I look over my shoulder toward the old section, but all I can see is darkness. “Hurry!” I call to Marissa ’cause she’s fallen behind. “I heard dogs!”

  “Dogs?” she and Holly both gasp, then sprint to catch up.

  Now, I guess we’re so busy making a break for it that we forget how we’re dressed. I mean, at that point we’re pretty much used to each other being all gnarly and ugly and shredded, but when the guy opening the gate sees us coming at him, he panics. First he jumps back, then real fast he starts closing the gate again, with him on the outside and his car still on the inside.

  “Wait!” Casey calls.

  But the guy doesn’t wait. He leans into the gate like his life depends on it. And since the car is blocking our way out, and since the gate is going to be totally closed in no time, I shout, “Come on!” to the others, then jump on the car’s trunk, catapult onto the roof, slide down the windshield onto the hood, and jump to freedom.

  Holly’s right behind me, then Casey, then Billy with his two sacks, and finally Marissa. Only when Marissa slides down the windshield, her clothes get stuck on a windshield wiper.

  “Help!” she cries, so I race back. She’s really stuck, though, and I wind up bending the wiper to get her loose.

  I want to tell the guy Sorry! but the look on his face is scary—somewhere between mad and savage. And I can’t exactly offer to pay for the damage because what would I pay with?

  Candy?

  Holly’s already taken off, so Casey grabs my hand and Billy grabs Marissa’s and we ditch it up the street as fast as we can.

  We find Holly waiting for us behind a car about half a block away, and then we tear up to a side street together and hang a right.

  Once we round the corner we slow down a little, because at this point we could scatter and escape pretty easily. But then I see that across the street from us, parked near the corner, is that same silver van that almost ran us over when we were crossing Stowell. I know it’s the same van because right there in the driver’s seat with a phone up to her ear is the ruby-haired lady.

  And there’s no doubt about it—she’s watching us.

  I look back at the cemetery gate and realize that she probably saw the whole thing and that she’s most likely speed-dialing the cops.

  Casey sees her, too, and knows exactly what I’m thinking. “Come on!” he calls to the others and we take off running, zigzagging blocks, going down smaller streets that are away from the main traffic routes.

  “We’re okay!” I finally pant. And after we’re sure we’re not being followed, we hang out between some parked cars and a hedge for a while catching our breath.

  Billy puts El Zarape’s sack inside his pillowcase and says, “I think I dented his roof.”

  I nod. “And I definitely bent his windshield wiper!”

  Marissa pants, “It was old and ugly to begin with. I can’t believe anyone would ever have wanted to buy a deli-mustard car!”

  We were rationalizing, of course, but the car was ugly. It had a big, flat hood and a big, flat trunk and Marissa was right about the color. Plus it had worn, rusty spots on the hood and the trunk.

  “Look,” Casey says, “I don’t know why we’re acting so guilty. It’s not like we really did anything wrong.”

  Marissa drills him with a look. “Ever heard of trespassing?”

  I sling my arm around her and raise an eyebrow at Casey. “Yeah, man. Ever heard of trespassing?” Then I add, “And you know ol’ Ruby Red was calling the cops on us. Why would she do that if we weren’t doing anything wrong?”

  “Ruby Red?” they all say, but they know exactly who I’m talking about.

  Holly shakes her head. “Why was she parked there, anyway?”

  Casey eyes her. “Probably waiting for her busload of kids to come back from trick-or-treating.”

  “My mom hates people who do that,” Billy says. “Once the vans start dropping off kids in our neighborhood, she just closes up shop.”

  “Well, whatever,” Marissa says. “I’m just glad to be out of that stupid graveyard!” She levels an angry look at Billy. “That was the worst shortcut ever.”

  I laugh. “And that’s saying something!”

  Billy gives her his best puppy dog face—which looks totally ridiculous on a zombie. “Sorryyyyy,” he says, then adds, “At least nobody will recognize us if we run into them after tonight.”

  “Well, I’m sure not going to forget them,” Holly mutters, “especially that guy at the gate.”

  “I know, huh?” I say.

  Billy cocks his head a little. “What do you mean?”

  I look at Holly. “His skin?”

  She nods. “And those teeth.”

  Marissa looks back and forth between us. “What do you mean? I was so freaked out from getting stuck on the wiper that I didn’t even look at him.”

  “His skin was really pale,” I tell her.

  Holly nods. “Really pale.”

  “And his teeth were kind of …” I move my fingers around in front of my mouth, then look to Holly for help.

  “Pointy here, and pushed in there,” she says, moving her fingers around, too.

  “Pointy?” Marissa asks. “Like vampire teeth?”

  Holly and I loo
k at each other. Then we both pull a face and say, “Kind of.”

  “Oh my God!” Marissa gasps. “He was a vampire? Oh my God.”

  I roll my eyes. “Oh, Marissa, please. He wasn’t a vampire! There’s no such thing as vampires!”

  “Oh, yeah? Then who was he? And what was he doing there?” She stares at us, her eyes all bugged out. “Seriously! Why else would he be driving around a graveyard in the middle of the night? He’s a vampire!”

  Casey just shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Vampires don’t cruise through graveyards in cars. And if they did, they sure wouldn’t do it in a rust bucket.”

  “That’s exactly what they’d cruise a graveyard in!”

  I’m trying not to laugh at her, but it’s hard. “You don’t think they’d use a hearse?”

  “No! A hearse would totally give them away!” She blinks at me like I’m the dumbest person on the planet. “Besides, bodies in hearses are dead, right? What good would that do him?”

  “How’s that work, anyway?” Holly asks. “Isn’t blood blood? Why does it matter if the person’s alive?”

  I shrug. “They like it warm?”

  Holly’s still trying to make sense of it. “Well, what if the person has just died? It’s still warm, right?”

  I throw my hands in the air. “If vampires were real, it would all make sense. But they’re not.” I turn to Marissa. “Everything’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about. He wasn’t a vampire. He was just … Well, I don’t know what he was doing there, but he wasn’t a vampire.”

  Holly nods. “She’s right, Marissa. He was probably just an undertaker or something.”

  I look at Holly. “What is an undertaker, anyway? Is that the guy who does the burying?”

  Casey shakes his head. “I think the undertaker’s the guy who arranges everything. Like at a mortuary?”

  “Then what’s a mortician?” I ask.

  Casey shrugs. “I think it’s the same as the undertaker?”

  “Okay … so maybe the guy with the car was setting up for a burial?”

  Marissa squints at me. “In the middle of the night?”

  I shrug. “Maybe he’s a gravedigger? Maybe it’s one of those sensitive activities. You know—maybe people don’t like to see graves being dug? I mean, have you ever seen a grave being dug?”

  “No! But … but …” She sputters for a minute, then crosses her arms and practically stomps a foot. “I can’t believe you guys dragged me through a graveyard with vampires in it!”

  Now, while the rest of us have been trying to talk Marissa down, Billy’s been slyly maneuvering behind her. He lifts his arms way high, cranks his eyelids wide, and then zooms in with a big, wide chomp to Marissa’s neck.

  Marissa’s not shy about screaming. Marissa’s never been shy about screaming. But coming face to face with dangling spiders, or bloodied men in monster masks, or snarling, drooling, snapping dogs, or killer gang guys … none of that has ever made her scream like Billy’s little chomp on the neck.

  “AAAAA​AAAaa​aaaaa​aaaaa​aaaaa​aaah!” she screamed, and then she saw it was Billy and started pounding on him. “Don’t you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER do that again!”

  Billy was laughing and hiding behind his arms and his dangling candy sack, but Marissa got in some really solid slugs.

  “That was just so mean,” she says with a pout.

  Billy Pratt’s a hugger. He hugs everybody. Guys, girls, teachers, dogs … That’s just the way he is. So when he says, “Billy was a bad, bad boy,” and opens his arms for a hug, of course Marissa lets him hug her.

  Only as soon as he gets in close, he attacks her neck again, making loud slurping noises, going, “Aaaah! Blood at last, blood at last” in a Transylvanian accent.

  Marissa swats him away, but this time she can’t help laughing.

  At this point we’ve pretty much relaxed about the Vampire and are back in Halloween mode. So when Holly says, “So are we going over to that haunted house, or what?” everyone else goes, Oh, yeah—that’s where we were headed, and off we go in search of the haunted house.

  Now, when it comes to people in Santa Martina decorating their houses, Halloween is like Christmas. You’ve got the neighborhoods that get way into it with everybody trying to outdo the guy next door, and then you’ve got the neighborhoods where it’s completely dark—nobody does anything.

  People at school had been talking about the haunted house on the end of Feere Street for weeks, but since it was quite a ways from Hudson’s, I’d told myself that it was probably not worth going to—that if the goal was to get free candy, we’d be better off racing through neighborhoods where the houses were close together and not too big.

  But as we reached the Feere Street cul-de-sac, I changed my mind. For one thing, the road was blocked off and there were big wooden signs on posts with black brushstroke letters reading BEWARE, DEAD END, ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK, and FEAR STREET, so right away you got the feeling that you weren’t just walking down another street. You were entering something.

  What was sort of messing with the mood, though, was this middle-aged guy standing across the street, shouting into a microphone, his voice blaring through a little speaker. “Jesus said, ‘Have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.’ Turn away! The God of the Bible is the God of the living, not the God of the dead! Do not celebrate rites dedicated to the dead! Serve the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not he who has blinded them!”

  “Man, that’s annoying,” Holly says.

  Marissa stares across the street at him. “I can’t believe people still think dressing up for Halloween is serving the devil.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I grumble, and instead of “turning away,” we escape the sermon by going down Feere Street.

  Right away I notice that there are no cars anywhere—not in the driveways or parked on the curb—not one. What there are lots of are skeletons and tombstones and witches and ghosts.

  Purple lights and orange lights and black lights.

  Dry ice smoking away behind bushes and in cauldrons!

  Jack-o’-lanterns and hissing cats and red-eyed mummies!

  And spiderwebs.

  Spiderwebs everywhere.

  The farther we go, the darker and creepier it gets. There’s a soundtrack for the whole neighborhood, with eerie creaking and cackling noises and random, heart-stopping screeches. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, because it’s just … everywhere, and getting louder and louder the deeper into the neighborhood we get.

  “This is awesome,” Marissa whispers, but I notice that she’s latching onto Billy’s arm.

  The whole thing is awesome. I feel like a stupid tourist with my jaw dangling and my eyes sweeping around, taking it all in. “It’s even spookier than the real graveyard!”

  Marissa shoots me a look. “Not!”

  Just then a lightning bolt streaks through the sky in front of us as a loud crack shakes the neighborhood.

  “Wow!” I gasp, because even though I know it’s a light and sound show, it lights up the house at the end of the street.

  The haunted house.

  “Did you see that?” Billy squeals. “Come on!”

  So we don’t even bother to do any trick-or-treating. We just hurry straight down to the end of the cul-de-sac.

  Straight to the haunted house.

  And, it turns out, straight into another scary heap of trouble.

  First I smell the cigarette.

  Then I recognize her.

  “Oh, brother,” I grumble, which is kinda ironic because I happen to be holding hands with her brother.

  “What’s wrong?” Casey asks.

  When I get nervous, my hands sweat. I hate it, but that’s what they do. And of course seeing Heather always puts me on red alert.

  Red alert. Yeah, right. That w
ould be a pretty good pun because that backstabbing, two-faced, conniving witch has red hair, but at the moment it isn’t showing. At the moment it’s buried under the layers of a long black wig.

  Unlike the rest of her, which isn’t covered by much, let me tell you. She’s wearing shiny black boy shorts over black fishnet stockings, and high-heeled black boots. The shirt—if you can call it that—is low cut and high cut, ending above her belly button, and has long black bell-shaped sleeves and a pointy red stand-up collar.

  So yeah, she’s trying to be some sort of she-vampire, but really, she looks like she should be dancing on a pole somewhere.

  She’s with her wannabe friends, Tenille and Monet, who are trying way too hard to look cool in their vampire capes and three-inch eyelashes, and she’s flirting with two older guys dressed up as rockers—silver chains, boots, spiked hair—you know the type.

  Anyway, seeing Heather makes me break out in a cold sweat because, even though she’s had it in for me for over a year, she’s become especially insane toward me since her brother and I got together. And it’s bad enough to have sweaty hands on your own, but when you’re holding hands with someone else?

  That’s just embarrassing.

  So when Casey asks, “What’s wrong?” I slip—or more like slurp—my hand out of his and wipe it on my tattered shirt. “Your sister’s here.”

  He looks around. “Heather is? Where?”

  “Right over there,” I whisper, because she’s only about twenty feet away, standing off to the side of the dirt driveway that leads up to the haunted house.

  “Where?”

  Just then Marissa and Holly grab me and whisper, “Is that Heather?”

  “Where?” Casey asks again, so I nod at the bloodsucker convention and say, “Right there. In the fishnets.”

  Heather turns her head to blow out cigarette smoke, and when she sees us staring and realizes who we are, she freezes. Then Tenille and Monet see us and their faces immediately go, Uh-oh.

  For a second it’s like time stands still. Then, without flinching a muscle, Heather drops her cigarette.

  It’s sly.