Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls
Page 16
We all wait while he looks around at us, saying nothing.
Finally I flip my hands up and say, “Such as … ?”
“Such as, he and his longtime golfing buddy Gordon Wales—who also happens to be the manager of the cemetery—were driving by the cemetery on Halloween and noticed that the office floodlight was off. They went in to investigate and discovered that the office manager was already there because kids had been spotted causing mischief. The three of them split up to try and catch the culprits, but the kids got away.”
Marissa eeks out, “So he’s not a vampire?”
Officer Borsch pinches his beady eyes closed and takes a deep breath. “No, Marissa. His name is Sharif Baz. His friends call him Shark, not Vampire.”
Billy snorts and grumbles, “I didn’t think sharks had friends—just things they like to bite.”
Officer Borsch gives him an annoyed look.
“Well, dude!” Billy says. “Besides those teeth, he’s got the meanest eyes on anyone I’ve ever seen!”
Talk about shark attacks. Calling Officer Borsch dude was like dangling a cut-up leg in the water. Suddenly it’s like we’re trapped in a tank and Officer Borsch is after blood. His head jerks toward Billy and he snaps, “Maybe that’s because some punk kids battered his classic 1963 Chevy Impala. Maybe those same punk kids showed up at his place of work and compromised his ability to uphold privacy laws. Maybe they’re the ones who’ve been knocking over tombstones at the cemetery.”
“Whoa, wait, what?” I cry. “We didn’t knock over any tombstones!”
He turns his beady eyes on me.
“We didn’t!”
He looks around at the others, slurps on a tooth for a second, then says, “Sometimes when we’re with our friends having fun, we do things we know we shouldn’t. We give in to peer pressure. But it’s still no excuse. Desecrating a grave is a very serious offense.”
All of us say, “We didn’t push over any tombstones!”
“Well, somebody did.”
“Officer Borsch! There are a lot of somebodies in this world besides us!” Then I add, “Maybe it was El Zarape! Maybe he was ticked off because it was taking too long to find Ofelia Ortega’s grave and he needed to dig it up so he could steal her skull.”
First Officer Borsch just stares at me. Then his little eyes pinch down so far that I feel like I’m looking at a big, pasty Borsch-faced pie. Finally he says, “What?”
So I have to go and explain everything about that all over again, and when I’m done, he just shakes his head and says, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean it’s not true,” I tell him like I totally believe it, even though it still sounds crazy to me.
He scratches his temple. “Regardless, the office manager saw a pack of kids running through the graveyard, so it wasn’t this El Zarape character.”
Casey’s phone buzzes, and he shows me the text, which is from his mother: Get home NOW. “I’ve been summoned home,” he says to Officer Borsch. “Can I leave?”
Officer Borsch waves him off. “Yeah, go.”
At this point all of us want out of the tank, so Marissa says, “I really should go, too,” and Billy chimes in with, “Yeah, me too!” while Holly opens her door without even asking.
But since I’m in the middle of the backseat I’m the last one to reach a door, and before I can scramble out, Officer Borsch says, “You got a minute, Sammy?”
“Uh …”
“You want me to wait?” Holly asks, but I just shake my head and tell her, “Thanks for what you did at the mall.” Then I holler at Marissa, who’s walking off with Billy, “You were amazing, McKenze!”
She laughs and waves, and pretty soon it’s just me and the Borschman.
“Want to sit up front?” he asks.
“Nah, I’m good.”
He pulls a little face and says, “My neck might appreciate it.”
“Oh. Well, how about this?” and I slide over to the far side of the backseat.
He lets out a puffy-cheeked sigh. “What I was saying about peer pressure before?”
“What about it?”
“I understand that it’s a powerful force.”
“Wait—you still think we knocked over tombstones?”
One of his shoulders goes up like, yeah, maybe.
“Officer Borsch!”
“Look. It’s what got your friend Danny into trouble, all right?”
“Is that what he said?”
“I didn’t want to say that in front of your friends, especially that boyfriend of yours. But it’s important to me that you get this: Peer pressure can make good people do bad things.”
“Hey, it’s not like Danny—” And then an enormous lightbulb clicks on in my head. “Ohmygod—Heather wasn’t just there afterward? She was part of it?”
“Look, don’t run wild with this. I shouldn’t tell you any of this, all right? My point here is that I understand what peer pressure can drive kids to, and if you pushed over those tombstones, you’ll feel a lot better if you—”
“We didn’t push over any tombstones!”
He studies me. “You swear?”
“Officer Borsch! Yes! I swear!”
He lets out another puffy-cheeked breath. “Well, then, I wonder who did. And I wonder why the cemetery didn’t file a report.”
“Maybe you should ask the office manager. And while you’re at it, ask him to show you Ofelia Ortega’s grave.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know, Sammy. Someone digging up a grave to retrieve a skull? That seems so farfetched.”
I roll my eyes. “So does finding two skulls in a sack. But they came from somewhere. Would you just ask about it when you’re there?” And I don’t know if it’s the billion things that have happened in the last few days numbing my brain or what, but I’ve suddenly just had enough. Plus, I’m starving. So I say, “Look, can I go? I’ve got a mountain of homework and I … I need to get home.”
“Yeah, sure, fine,” he says like he’s got a billion things jumbling up his head.
So I get out and hurry home. I wasn’t really worried about Grams being worried, because I’d asked Hudson to tell her I’d be late as I flew out his door, but I was still glad to see her watching the evening news instead of sitting in the kitchen, eating by herself.
“Hi!” I whisper as I put down my skateboard and backpack. “Dinner smells delicious!”
“I’m glad you’re home.” She waves me into the living room. “There’s still no trace of those three men.”
“Really,” I say über-seriously. “No ransom notes?”
She shakes her head.
“No trail of blood?”
She shakes her head some more.
“No sinkhole on Main Street?”
She turns and looks at me. “You’re making fun of me?”
I plop down beside her on the couch. “Only a little.”
“Hrmph,” she says in her classic Grams way.
“All right, all right. So tell me about them. Maybe they’re all members of the Secret Order of Wife Ditchers?”
She hrmphs again, then says, “Not likely. One’s a wealthy businessman, one’s a suspected drug dealer, and one’s a doctor. There seems to be no connection.”
“Well, have they looked into the SOWD?”
Grams sighs. “Samantha. Honestly. Three men have gone missing and all you can do is joke about it?”
“You’re wasting time worrying about a drug dealer?”
“A suspected drug dealer. Maybe he’s been set up.” She looks at me. “Innocent until proven guilty, remember?”
I sit there with her a minute, then say, “So maybe they’re all part of a drug ring? One bankrolls it, one makes it, and one deals it?”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my very last marble. “You have such a wild imagination.”
“Maybe ’cause I’m starving?”
She laughs and shuts off the TV. “So let’s eat.”
“I should probably get that,” Grams says, standing up. “It might be your mother.”
But it wasn’t my mother.
It was my mother’s boyfriend’s ex’s son.
Well, it was my mother’s boyfriend’s son, too, but since the boyfriend thought it was fine to leave his son in the middle of a psycho minefield at his ex’s house, he didn’t count.
Not as far as I was concerned, anyway.
“Hey, Casey,” I said, after Grams handed off the phone. “Everything okay?”
“Not exactly.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I’ve only got a second. Mom’s confiscating my phone, so don’t call it. I’m deleting your number out of the call history.”
“But why is—”
“Can you meet me tomorrow after school?”
“Sure.”
“But not at the mall. It has to be someplace we won’t run into Heather or any of her friends.”
“How about the library?”
“No. Too public.”
My mind races through some possibilities, but what pops out of my mouth is, “How about the graveyard?”
“Perfect,” he says. “See you there.” Then he gets off the phone.
Grams, of course, wanted to know what was going on at the graveyard, so I ended up telling her the whole Danny-Heather drama after all. It took forever, too, because Grams always wants to know the details of the details.
I did manage to steer clear of El Zarape and the skulls and the other stuff that happened on Halloween—not just because I thought she’d have a total heart attack over it, but also because I had homework to do and I was so worn out from talking about Heather and Danny that I just didn’t want to open that can of worms.
Or, you know, coffin of maggots.
Anyway, I was completely beat by the time I hit the couch, so I should have slept great, but instead my mind spent the whole night trying to escape things. First a squad car’s chasing me with its lights flashing and I can’t figure out why it’s after me until I look down and see that I have a can of Crisco shortening in my hand. Then I hear “Stop, thief!” and there’s TJ pointing at me from outside of Maynard’s Market.
I drop the can and run through streets and alleys trying to escape, and when I finally check behind me, a big laughing skull is after me. It’s lit up like a jack-o’-lantern, and it’s flying toward me so fast that white smoke is streaming out of its sockets.
At first it seems like a demonic head cannonballing through the darkness, but then I see that it’s being carried by someone on horseback.
Someone wearing a black cloak.
Someone with no head.
“Ahhhh!” I cry as the horse thunders closer, and then I realize that the skull is a giant sugar skull, and that the flames inside it are melting the eye sockets and the nose hole. It’s bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, turning black and melting, dripping onto the arm and setting the cloak on fire.
The horse rears back and shakes the rider off and bones from underneath the cloak go flying everywhere. And then somehow I’m on the horse wearing the black cloak carrying my own head.
Sections of sidewalk start flipping up in front of me, turning into tombstones, and we go over them like we’re in a steeplechase. I try to stop the horse, but it’s strong and heavy. Plus it’s hard to stop a horse when you’re carrying your own head.
So it just keeps galloping, its hooves kicking down the sidewalk tombstones, breaking them, cracking them, knocking them flat.
And then I can’t see anything anymore because my head’s turned sideways, buried in the arm of the cloak.
It’s dark.
And it’s hot.
So hot I can’t breathe.
So hot my eyeballs feel like they are going to ignite.
Somewhere in the folds of my mind a voice says, “Good heavens,” and then, with a great big gasp of air, I jolt awake and Grams is standing over the couch holding my cat, Dorito. She shakes her head. “I do not understand how you can sleep with a cat on your face.”
It takes me a few gasps to connect to reality. “What time is it?”
“Time to get up, I’m afraid.”
So I pull myself together, eat a quick breakfast, grab my skateboard, and head for school. The ride over’s kind of creepy, though, because I’m seeing the sections of sidewalk as hidden tombstones, and somewhere in my mind a giant, melting sugar skull is still chasing me.
I was more than a little worried about being at school. Maybe I’m living in the dark ages, without a cell phone or computer, but the rest of the world is text and message crazy and I had no idea what the fallout from the mall showdown was going to be.
Turns out, it was a really quiet day. Maybe that was because Heather was absent, or maybe it was because nothing had actually happened at the mall and most of the school didn’t know or care who Danny Urbanski was, anyway.
The only kinda weird thing that happened was that Tenille came up to us at lunch and said, “Uh, I want you to know I’m not hanging out with Heather anymore.”
It was just Dot, Holly, and me at the table because Marissa and Billy had gone to get something to drink. Dot was all, “Good for you!” but Holly and I weren’t buying it. “Is this another one of your tricks?” I asked.
“No, I’m just done with her.”
“So where is she today?” Holly asks.
Tenille pulls a face. “Her mom took her shopping.”
“Shopping?” I snort. “Poor baby.”
“Yeah, really, huh?” Tenille says, and she grins at me.
Now, if she had wanted to eat lunch with us or if she had started casually asking questions about things Heather would have wanted answers to, I would have known this was just a setup. But after standing there for an awkward minute she says, “Well, I just wanted you to know I’m not the enemy anymore,” and leaves.
So that was the only weird thing that happened. The frustrating thing was that I never got a chance to ask Marissa about Billy, and I really wanted to. I mean, come on. One day she’s crying over Danny, and the next she can’t seem to tear herself away from Billy? Maybe Billy’s liked her for a while, but I’d never heard her say she liked him.
And the truth is, I was a little worried about Billy. He may be a clown on the outside, but on the inside that boy’s a marshmallow and I sure didn’t want him to accidentally get burned.
Or even charred.
But I couldn’t find Marissa before school, and at break and lunch Billy was around. And since the only class I have with her is sixth period and Billy is also in that class, there was never any time. And then after school Marissa took off with Billy without even saying bye or asking what I was doing.
So whatever.
I just gave up and headed for the graveyard.
Our school lets out before the high school does, but since the high school is a lot closer to the cemetery than the junior high is, I didn’t have to wait all that long for Casey to show up.
“Hey,” he says when he sees me, then dumps his skateboard and backpack and gives me a mondo hug.
“So what happened?” I ask when he lets go. “And why did your mom take your phone?”
“Heather happened.” He collects his stuff and looks up and down the street.
“You mean she told your mother a bunch of lies and blamed you for everything?”
He nods. “Pretty much.”
Now, the way he’s looking around is kind of uptight. Guilty, even. And that’s when it hits me. “Your mom said you’re not allowed to see me?”
He pulls a face. “Forbidden is actually the word she used.” He rolls his eyes. “Over and over and over.”
I study him a minute, then grab his hand and drag him through the open gates. “Come on. Sassypants won’t tell.”
/> So we walk up the road and follow it as it curves to the left past the cemetery office. Then we leave the road and cut through the old section to the place we’d had our picnic. I plop down my stuff and say, “Hey, Sassypants, we’re back. Did you like those brownies?” because they’re gone.
Casey grins at me for a minute, then dumps his stuff and sits beside me. “So is this our new spot?”
I shrug and look over at the tombstone. “What do you say, Sassypants? You mind if you’re our new spot?” I wait a minute, then turn to Casey. “She doesn’t seem to mind.”
He smiles and shakes his head. “So what’s this say about us, huh? That our new spot is the graveyard?”
“Um … that we’re not afraid of ghosts?” I laugh. “Your mom and your sister, maybe, but ghosts? Nah.”
He lifts my chin and gives me a kiss and then just grins at me. “You are totally worth it.”
“It?”
“Everything.” He looks out across the graveyard and heaves a sigh. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. They’re crazy. They’re both crazy.”
“So tell me what happened.”
“Well, Heather twisted the whole thing around so she was the victim and you and I destroyed her life. I tried to explain what really happened, but Mom wouldn’t listen and Heather kept yelling and crying and making it sound like I’d come straight out of hell to terrorize her.” He shakes his head. “Mom totally fell for it and started acting just like Heather!”
“Can you talk to your dad?”
“I tried! But he was like, ‘Son, you’ve got to work this out with them. There’s nothing I can do from here,’ and I’m like, ‘Yes there is! You can talk to Mom and tell her she needs to listen to my side!’ and he’s all, ‘I could never get her to listen to me, why do you think I can get her to listen to you?’ ”
“Well, did you tell him what happened? And did you tell him how bad things are with Heather? You know, how she’s really going off the rails?”
“It’s like he didn’t want to hear. Or believe. Or, you know, deal. The last thing he told me was ‘It’s her house, you need to play by her rules.’ ”
I shake my head. “I’ve been telling you—my mom’s a terrible influence.”