The Grave Winner

by Lindsey Loucks

  I shook my head, but that’s all the explanation I could give because the door to the library burst open. It was Callum. Thoughts of Tram kept me from thinking about Callum, but the same pain from Friday night crashed down on top of me. I wanted to look away from him, but my stupid curiosity didn’t let me.

  “What’s up, Ms. Hansen?” he called. Then he took a seat on my other side. He looked more disheveled than normal, like he’d slept in his torn t-shirt and jeans for a few days. His brown eyes seemed darker while he gazed at me. Maybe it was because of the dark circles underneath them. The cut on his bottom lip blazed crimson. “Jo, will you leave us alone for a minute?”

  Jo sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “No chance. And if you say something dumb, I will eat you.”

  Callum sighed and rested his forearms on the table. “Leigh, I messed up.”

  “You think?” Jo mumbled.

  “If you’re going to stay here, then shut up.” His jaw tightened as he scowled at his sister. When he turned to me again, his expression lost some of its harshness. “I’m sorry for saying everything was your fault. It wasn’t.”

  I tried to keep my face still and indifferent. But he’d poked splinters into my heart after making me start to like him, and it was hard to act indifferent about that. “Okay.”

  He dropped his gaze to the table. “Okay.” After a heavy sigh, he grabbed some rubber nuggets off Jo’s tray and took a bite. “Who’s that Tram guy?”

  “He’s…” I glanced at Jo, who crammed three carrots into her mouth. “He’s no one.”

  “You two know each other. I can tell.” Callum narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like him.”

  “U don eben know m,” Jo said, still chewing.

  “I don’t need to. I know I won’t like him.” Callum looked at me, as though he wanted me to say something else about Tram. When I didn’t, he drummed his fingers on the table, then stood. “It sucks about that cop.”

  Jo nodded. I picked at the corner of my napkin. He had no idea how much it sucked.

  Callum walked toward the door. “See you, Ms. Hansen.” Then he disappeared.

  I grimaced at the mess of food on my tray and tried not to think about Callum Monroe.

  On my walk home from the bus stop, Mom, Callum, and Tram surfaced the most in the raging river of my brain. If Mom was here, I would tell her about all of this drama. She would know the perfect thing to say to make me feel better.

  Jo had dashed home already to call Miguel and made me swear I would call her later. At least her romantic drama starred just one boy.

  Other thoughts swirled in my brain, too. Probably the most annoying one was how much the bump on my wrist itched. Did I get bit by a spider or something?

  The wind whipped my hair around my head and made it nearly impossible to see my house key in my backpack. Ponytails had to have been invented by a Kansan. I guess I wasn’t a true Kansan, though, because I never had a ponytail holder on me.

  After I forced open the screen door and used it to block the wind, I could finally see. I let my backpack fall to the porch just as my keys slipped from my fingers. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Call it a sixth sense or whatever, but I knew without even looking that someone was watching me. Then the pungent odor of rotten hamburger overwhelmed my nose. I opened my mouth so I could breathe. Whispers swirled around me, pressing in from behind.

  I spun around and gasped.

  It was Sarah. She stood by the side of the road next to the mailbox. A few strands of white hair fluttered around her thin face. Some of the skin on her black lips dangled loose in ragged patches. Her mouth sagged open under sad eyes. She wore baggy jeans and a gray t-shirt that hung from her skeletal body and parachuted outward with the wind.

  She pointed at me and shook her head back and forth. I didn’t know what that meant, but I gripped the handle of the screen door tighter as if it was a shield. She pressed her pinky and thumb together and held up three fingers. The cut on her wrist still blazed red. Her eyes shifted away from me and scanned every brick and window of my house, as if she was memorizing it.

  But this was my territory, and her curiosity in it churned my stomach. Why was she here? All I could do was stare. My heavy breaths clouded the glass on the screen door. Her gaze settled on me before it swept over my house again. Then she started up the sidewalk toward me.

  I lunged for my keys and fumbled for the right one. My feet couldn’t carry me into the house fast enough. Once inside, I locked and bolted the door. Clean air filled my nose. I kicked my boots off and crawled to the couch to peer out the window. Sarah was walking away from the house, her shoulders drooped.

  Air whooshed from my lungs. What the hell was that all about? I gripped the back of a couch cushion until she disappeared around the corner.

  My gaze fell to where Sarah had stood. Even though she’d been in the street for most of her visit, the grass around the mailbox was black. Shit. How was I going to explain that?

  Something moved behind me. Scuttling over paper. Lots of scuttling. I turned.

  Dozens of large house spiders scurried across the piano, the sheets of music on top, and over the bumps and ridges of the curved seed pods. Mom smiled at me from inside her lilac picture frame near the back of the piano. Spiders ran across her face and in and out of the metal flowery loops.

  I squeezed my hands into fists. Had Sarah brought the spiders with her? Did they slip off her papery skin when she came back from the dead?

  I darted for the nearest boot and smashed it down.

  Darby hogged my bed again last night, but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t sleep. The bite on my arm itched like crazy, so I’d finally slapped a band aid over it, hoping that would prevent me from ripping my skin off. On top of that and everything else, I couldn’t reach Tram to tell him about Sarah’s visit. I’d touched every tree on the street that morning, but he never came.

  “Dad,” I said when he dragged himself into the kitchen in a t-shirt and boxers, “both my bike tires are flat.”

  His forehead wrinkled over half-open, blood shot eyes. “Both of them?”

  “Yeah, and everyone else’s bike, too. I tried to air the tires up, but they’re all completely flat.” Even Jo’s bike tires. I’d found that out during my morning quest to reach Tram.

  Dad filled the coffee pot with water. “Well, we’ll have to get you new inner tubes.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can I take your car?”

  Dad just looked at me, and that was enough of an answer. “Where do you want to go this early in the morning?”

  I took one last swig of carbonated breakfast and watched a spider crawl under the dishwasher. “Just places.”

  “Hmm.” He shoveled some coffee into a filter, placed it into the machine, and flipped the switch. “Do these places involve Callum Monroe?”

  My eyes widened. “Huh?”

  Dad sagged against the counter and crossed his arms, the coffee pot gurgling behind him. “I overheard you on your phone with Jo last night. You kept asking if Callum was there yet.”

  My lungs stopped working, and I commanded them to pull in more air. “You were listening?”

  “No, but every time I walked by your bedroom, you were asking about Callum.” Dad tilted his head, studying me, a trace of a smile on his mouth. It looked sort of out of place under his sleepy eyes. “I like Callum. He’s a good kid.”

  Great. Dad thought I had the hots for Callum, when really I just wanted the guy’s car to take me to Tram. When I wasn’t asking about Callum, I told Jo about Sarah’s visit, but left off the part about her obsession with Three. The less Jo knew about that, the better. Ditto with Dad. I would have to close my door when I talked to Jo from now on.

  Darby wandered into the kitchen and rubbed her arms. “Dad, can we please stay somewhere else tonight? I feel all creepy-crawly.”

  “That’s a great idea. How about a motel?” I said, hope lifting me t
o the balls of my feet.

  “But the exterminator will be here tomorrow morning.” Dad checked to see if the coffee was about done brewing, but it continued to gurgle. “Besides, they’re just house spiders.”

  Darby’s sleepy face fell into a pout.

  I scratched the air over my band aid as if that would help the itch. “But they’re the bitey kind. You don’t want Darby to get bit, do you?”

  Dad sighed. “Well, maybe I could call Mrs. Gonzalez and have you stay with Maria tonight.”

  Darby’s grin split open her pout. “On a school night?”

  “Just this once,” Dad said.

  I high-fived Darby and swept her up into a hug that made her legs dangle over the floor. She shrieked, and I laughed. If she wasn’t here, she would be one less thing for me to worry about.

  “How about you, Leigh? Do you want to stay at Jo’s tonight?” Dad asked.

  I put Darby down and watched her run down the hallway while I pretend-scratched my bite. “The spiders have already made me their dinner, so I might as well stay here.” I didn’t add that worry about the spiders gnawed at my gut. And that I didn’t want to see Callum.

  “You’re the only one who’s been bitten, but you don’t have any spiders in your room,” Dad said, pouring himself some coffee. “Speaking of strange, do you know anything about the black grass around the mailbox?”

  Another spider skittered across the floor behind him.

  “Nope,” I said and smashed the spider with my breakfast can.

  After school, Jo got off at our bus stop without me. The old man bus driver couldn’t remember where everyone lived, so I was sure he wouldn’t say anything to me about not getting off where I should’ve. If he did, he would call me Nick like he did everyone, boy or girl. Then I would say that I, Nick, had moved to a different part of town.

  The bus rolled forward, and as it did, I searched the street for any sign of Sarah. But there wasn’t any except the patch of black around my mailbox.

  Darby had packed her overnight bag as soon as Dad hung up the phone with Mrs. Gonzalez that morning. She wouldn’t be home until tomorrow.

  I vibrated my lips together with an exhale as we passed my empty house. Some junior high kids turned in their seats and gave me weird looks. I supposed they wondered what was up with the black grass. They turned right back around when I gave them a you’d-be-prettier-with-my-fist-smashed-in-your-face glare.

  Senile Bus Driver Man drove through town at a pet rock’s pace. But Krapper wasn’t big, and he eventually pulled to a stop at the north side of town. I got off the bus before he could call me Nick.

  The walk to the graveyard wasn’t too far from the bus stop. A strong wind pushed me in the wrong direction, but the puffs of clouds that smudged the brilliant blue sky became my heroes. If they could stay strong in the wind, so could I.

  Just as I turned the corner around the video store, the Heartland Cemetery gates appeared farther down the street. I ran and didn’t stop.

  Near Mom’s grave, I collapsed against a tree and whispered, “I need you, Tram” into its solid roughness.

  While I waited for him, I sat next to Mom’s headstone and caught my breath. A fresh wreath of leaves rested there. He’d been here, but where was he? Even though I knew he hadn’t left the cards, I searched for one anyway. It was there beneath the leaves, like always.

  I miss you.

  Who would write that? And why couldn’t it have been from Tram? He should’ve been here by now. Was something wrong? Had he gone somewhere? I needed to talk to him. Now. He needed to know about Sarah’s visit and the spiders.

  Chewing the inside of my cheek, I touched Mom’s picture on her headstone. I love you, Mom.

  After I kissed the cool marble, I stood and walked toward the Trinity. My fingers grazed the bark of every tree on the way. At the base of the oak, Tram’s tree drawing had been wiped clean. I wrapped my arms halfway around the trunk and kissed it.

  “Tram?” I called, looking up the length of the tree into the canopy of fluttering green.

  The wind slid across the leaves in response. Disappointment and fear shifted in my stomach on my way out of the graveyard.

  The long journey home went by unnoticed. A dark cloud of anxiety followed me and forced all kinds of unpleasant thoughts into my head. The note. Tram missing. Sarah showing up at my house. Did Sarah see something I didn’t? If so, what was I supposed to do about it? Tram knew all about this stuff, but where was he?

  I took my boots off inside my silent home while my eyes darted everywhere at once. The spiders must’ve been napping because I didn’t see any, at least not in the living room. When I stepped into the hallway, I gasped. Hundreds of large spiders crawled on the carpet, the walls, over the family pictures, a giant sea of shifting, squirming black. With my boots covering my hands like boxing gloves, I punched and smashed as many as I could. A few of the creepy little shits were quick enough to scuttle away.

  Spider bits stuck to the wall and carpet. I would need to clean this mess up. But first, I went into my room to continue my killing spree.

  It felt good to have a problem that could easily be squished. The riot girrrl posters on my walls didn’t stir with movement. Carpet lay somewhere under all my clothes and books, but it didn’t shift either. I even shook out my crumpled melted doll head shirt to see if any spiders hid within its wrinkles. Nothing. Tossing it back on the floor, I headed to Darby’s room.

  My heart stopped beating when I opened her door. Hundreds of spiders covered her desk. They crawled in and out of the drawers and on top of each other, pulsating with their collective movement. My heart racing, I shot forward and crushed everything on top of the desk, including Darby’s box of crayons. Many of the spiders scrambled away from my mad pounding, but they didn’t get far. I opened the drawers and smacked the bottoms of them to force out the rest.

  A drawing inside the middle drawer froze me to the core. I let my boots drop from my hands as I reached for it. There were maybe twenty drawings in a stack. While I leafed through each one, a shiver shook my body.

  Every page had a crayon drawing of Mom’s headstone colored in Darby’s precise hand. The pictures showed Mom climbing out of her grave. First one hand, then two, followed by Mom’s head, and finally the rest of her body. Darby had drawn her covered in mud and standing by her grave, smiling.

  A sound escaped from my mouth, a mix of a sob and a scream. I couldn’t look at the rest of the pictures.

  A bit of red smudged the top of the stack. Darby’s blood. From her paper cut. I shoved the drawings back into the desk drawer.

  My stomach tossed. I thought I was going to be sick. With my hand over my mouth, I got out of there.

  Tears blurred my vision as I breathed through my fingers in the hallway. I blinked them away to see more spiders crawling in and out underneath Dad’s closed bedroom door.

  I willed myself to breathe and not throw up while I opened the door to his room. Most of the spiders crawled all over Dad’s nightstand. I’d left my boots in Darby’s room, but my curiosity shoved me forward without them.

  Dad’s book, the one he’d been reading upside down, writhed with spidery movement. I tipped the nightstand over just enough to knock the book to the floor, and the spiders scurried away. The quarter tucked inside the page he’d left off popped out and rolled under the bed. I bent to pick up the book and stared at the cover. David’s Illusion of Breakfast by John Class. His review last summer made it sound like it wasn’t one he would read again.

  I opened the book to the first page, and the dust jacket fell to the floor. The book’s hard cover felt old and frayed around the edges. Threads stuck out from its binding, but Dad bought this book brand new.

  Flipping the book closed, the silver letters on the black cover told me everything I needed to know.

  Resurrection: Dark Magic to Bring Back the Ones You Love.

  “In fifteen years, I’ve never seen a spider infestation this bad,” the exterminator said,
pushing his glasses up on his nose. Sweat greased his pudgy face. “But the spray should kill ‘em in no time.”

  Dad stuck his hand out. “Thanks so much, Herman. We really appreciate it.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.” Herman shook Dad’s hand and opened the front door. “I’ll send you the bill.”

  “Please do.” Dad shut the door behind him and sighed. “I guess I better get to work. You’ll be okay here by yourself?”

  I couldn’t look Dad in the eye, not after I’d seen the book he was reading. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Feel better.” Dad kissed me on top of my head and left through the back door.

  As soon as the garage closed, I swept through the house to look for spiders. I wasn’t sick. Not physically. But there was no way I was going to school if my house and family were being watched. That had to be the reason for the spiders and Sarah’s visit. Because Tram was still MIA, I would protect everything important on my own. But it sure would help if I knew where he was.

  There were fewer spiders already. The family photos in the hallway no longer dripped with them. The ones on Darby’s desk shriveled into their legs as if to duck the spray. I averted my eyes from the ugly middle drawer. A gun to my head wouldn’t make me open it again. Two spiders dragged their pale bodies across the fake book cover in Dad’s bedroom. Mine was spider-free.

  While I shook out the quilt from over the recliner, the breeze it created ruffled the piano music on top. Some drifted to the floor, and I bent to pick them up. “Blitzkrieg Bop” lay on top. I knew without looking the rest were Ramones’ songs, too. They were Mom’s absolute favorite band. She knew everything about them. Eyes brimming, I threw the quilt over the piano so no nearly dead spiders could crawl on top of it.

  Mom used to give me daily personality tests in the form of What Would You Do If questions. What would you do if an intruder broke into the house? What would you do if he had a gun? What would you do if you thought you were being followed? I would answer honestly, and she would offer suggestions if needed. Once, I asked her why these What If questions always involved someone who wanted to hurt me.