Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man

  She laughs and says, “No, the people next-door let me use their bathroom.”

  Dot scratches under one of her antennae and whispers, “I don’t get this. I don’t get any of this. Who’s in a real good mood? Are you talking about—” She pumps her skinny little arms like some champion bee wrestler.

  I look at Marissa, and Marissa looks at Dot, and you can practically see a light bulb go on over Marissa’s head. “Oh! No, not—” and then she pumps her arms and kind of squats, and then they both bust up.

  Just then a police officer comes around the corner with the Bush Man, and right away I know what they’re pumping and squatting about. The policeman’s about five-two and has more muscles than you’d need to bench-press a hippo.

  He says to the Bush Man, “This is the room?” The Bush Man nods, so Muscles says, “Can we maybe get some light in here?”

  Before I can stop myself, I say, “He doesn’t have electricity, he doesn’t have a phone, and he doesn’t have a voice—well, not a regular one anyway. He’s had a tracheotomy.”

  The police officer studies the Bush Man for a minute, then navigates all those muscles a little closer to me. “And you are …?”

  Marissa jumps in. “She’s my sister, remember? The one who found him?”

  Dot looks at Marissa and then at me, and you can tell she’s thinking, Your sister?

  Then the reason Marissa has to lie about us being sisters comes walking around the corner. His Supreme Rudeness, Officer Borsch.

  Officer Borsch isn’t real fond of me. It’s a long story, but let’s just say that if he had the choice of winning the lottery or running me over with his squad car, I’d be sprawled out on the pavement.

  And I do my best to steer clear of him, but there I was, standing in Vampire Heaven with my good buddy, Officer Borsch. I was hoping that he wouldn’t recognize me, what with me being green and all, but he takes one look at me and says, “Oh no. Not you again!”

  I give him my best Marsh Monster smile. “Took the words right out of my mouth.”

  Dot’s big brown eyes get even bigger. She whispers, “Sammy!” just like Grams would’ve if she’d been there.

  He ignores me and turns to Muscles. “There’s nothin’ outside—or if there is, you’ll never find it in that mess.” Then he says to the Bush Man, “You gonna be able to answer a few questions, or what?”

  The Bush Man holds up a finger telling him to wait a minute, then goes over to a desk and starts to rummage through it.

  When he comes back, he’s carrying something that looks like a small electric razor. He sits down in his chair, then puts the thing up to his throat and out of him comes, “Please sit down.” It wasn’t a gurgle-growl like before. It was a mechanical kind of buzzing sound. And even though the words came out faster than they had earlier, it was still sort of hard to understand him.

  Officer Borsch sits down, but Muscles eyes the other chair and keeps right on standing. So I sit down. Right next to Officer Borsch.

  He sneers at me and says, “So I get the distinct headache of dealing with you again.”

  The Bush Man pushes the buzzer to his throat and says, “Don’t you talk to her that way!” Then he looks straight at me and smiles. Not the kind of smile where you can see teeth and the person’s eyes sparkle a little. No, more like he’s trying to remember how to do something he hasn’t done in a really long time. The corners of his mouth twitch a little, and his eyes look sad, just for a second—but I can tell, it’s a smile.

  I smile right back at him, because even though he’s the Bush Man, I’m warming up to him.

  He says, “What’s your name? I believe I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

  He wasn’t talking very fast, but there were a lot of s and t sounds missing, and understanding him was taking a little getting used to. “Sammy. Samantha Keyes.”

  He sticks out his hand. “I’m Chauncy LeBard. Call me Chauncy.”

  Well, what the Bush Man is doing with a name like Chauncy is a mystery to me, but just the same, I lean over and shake hands with him. “Hi, Chauncy.”

  Officer Borsch rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah—let’s get on with it.” He flips open his notebook and starts scribbling. And when he’s done taking down Chauncy’s name and address and stuff he says, “Okay, Mr. LeBard, the girls tell me they found you bound and unconscious in that chair. Tell me what happened.”

  Chauncy looks at him and buzzes, “When I answered the door, someone in a skeleton suit forced himself into the house. We struggled for a bit, but then he flung me against the wall. The last thing I remember is the candle flying out of my hand.”

  I ask him, “So you don’t remember him tying you up?”

  He shakes his head.

  “What about the Frankenstein mask?”

  He shrugs and shakes his head again. “A blindfold perhaps?”

  Officer Borsch squints at him and says, “What do you mean by skeleton suit?”

  He wasn’t asking me, but I answered him anyway. “It’s a suit that goes over your whole body—you know, like a Spiderman suit—only with bones that glow in the dark.”

  Officer Borsch gives me a thank-you-very-much-now-keep-your-stupid-mouth-shut smile and says to Chauncy, “How about height, weight, age? Anything else you can tell me about him?”

  Chauncy thinks for a minute. “Five ten … maybe eleven. One-seventy … maybe less. I have no idea about the age.”

  Borsch scribbles some notes, then says, “Did he say anything?”

  “Not one word.”

  Marissa, Dot, and I look at each other. “He did to us!”

  Borsch-head can’t exactly ignore us, but does he turn to me? No. He says to Dot, “What’d he say?”

  Dot blinks a bit because she wasn’t expecting to have to actually talk to Officer Borsch. She squeaks, “ ‘Out of the way …’ ” then clears her throat and says louder, “He said, ‘Out of the way.’ ”

  Officer Borsch frowns and says, “From his voice, can you guess how old he is?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Maybe … eighteen?”

  Officer Borsch just nods and says, “Figures,” like he knew all along that it was some punk kid out causing trouble on Halloween.

  But I’m looking at Marissa, and she’s looking at me, and we’re both pulling faces at each other because we think eighteen’s way off base. But we don’t want to say so, because if we jump up and say, “Eighteen? No way!” we’ll embarrass Dot.

  I guess Dot saw us because she says, “Don’t you think so? Marissa? Sammy?”

  Marissa shrugs. “I was thinking more like twenty-five.”

  I look at her and say, “Twenty-five? He was at least thirty-five.”

  Officer Borsch throws his hands up in the air. “Great. Girls, you’ve been a big help.” Then he rolls his eyes like we’ve got beans for brains.

  All this time Muscles has been standing there, pushing back the cuticles of his fingernails with a thumb, shifting from side to side like he’s on a boat. He looks up from his swaying and says to Chauncy, “Why’d you answer the door? You don’t look set up for trick-or-treaters.”

  Chauncy buzzes back at him, “You’re right. Normally I don’t answer. Mostly it’s kids knocking and running, but this fellow was beating the door so hard and so long I thought it might be important.”

  Officer Borsch asks, “So what’s missing? Your wallet? Anything else?”

  Chauncy nods. “My wallet and a pair of pewter candlesticks.… I don’t know what else. I haven’t had the opportunity to look around.”

  Officer Borsch asks, “Pewter? Isn’t that some kind of tin?” as if Chauncy’d just reported a sack of garbage missing.

  Chauncy shrugs. “Perhaps he thought they were silver.”

  Now Officer Borsch could’ve just nodded or said, Could be, or something like that, but what’s he do? He gives Chauncy this stupid little smile and says, “Perhaps,” like he’s having crumpets and tea instead of taking a police report. And before Chauncy can quite absorb tha
t one of Santa Martina’s finest is making fun of him, Officer Borsch stands up and says to Muscles, “Keith, I think we should take a look-see. Mr. LeBard? Would you mind showing us around?”

  Chauncy stands up, and while Muscles and Officer Borsch are whipping their flashlights off their belts, Chauncy’s looking around like he’s missing something. I realize that he doesn’t have a flashlight, so I hand him mine and say, “Here you go.”

  There’s that smile again, only this time the corners of his mouth go up a bit farther and he gives me a little nod. And I’m about to tag along when Marissa grabs me by one arm and Dot grabs me by the other. They both start whispering a mile a minute, saying how the kids at school are not going to believe it when they hear how we spent Halloween in the Bush House and how we met the Bush Man and saved his life and how I shook the Bush Man’s hand and stuff like that. And they’re going on and on, but pretty soon I’m thinking about something else. I borrow Marissa’s flashlight and go over to the table where Chauncy had been cussing.

  I shine the light across it and, sure enough, there’s dust everywhere. Everywhere except for these two spots where there’s no dust. And I’m standing there thinking that it looks like someone drew two little stop signs right in the middle of the table, when Marissa comes up and says, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m just looking.” I move around the room, checking out the other candleholders, wondering why the Skeleton Man had picked the ones he’d picked and not any of the others.

  Marissa and Dot follow me, asking, “What are you looking for?”

  I tell them, “I don’t really know,” because I don’t. I’m just looking.

  I check out the rest of the candlesticks and then some pens and an old clock on the desk, and I’m just starting to run the light over a bookshelf when Officer Borsch and Muscles come back. They say their good-byes and their if-you-need-anything-give-us-a-calls—like that’s something Chauncy could do without a phone—and then Muscles calls, “C’mon, ladies. Party’s over.”

  So we head out and when we’re by the front door I get my flashlight back and say, “Bye, Chauncy!”

  He mouths, Bye, only this time there’s no smile. Not even a twitch.

  The door closes and pretty soon we’re flashing our lights down the walkway, surrounded by bushes again. When we get to the sidewalk, Officer Borsch says to me, “You keep out of this, you hear?”

  I turn to him and smile. That’s all, I just smile. And what does he do? He grabs my arm, gets right in my face, and sputters. He doesn’t actually say anything—he just sputters. And his face is getting redder and redder, and he looks like he’s about to start snorting and pawing the ground, but then he drops my arm and marches off. Just like that.

  Muscles looks back and forth between us, but then chases after his partner. And while the three of us are standing there in the bush tunnel watching them go, I can’t help thinking about Chauncy and the Skeleton Man and the Frankenstein mask. Why would someone rob the Bush Man, of all people? Who’d go through all that for a wallet and some candlesticks? What was the guy thinking?

  And I don’t have a lot to work with, but my brain’s pretending that I do, so as I’m watching the squad car drive away I get this queasy feeling that I haven’t seen the last of Officer Borsch.

  And he hasn’t seen the last of me.

  FOUR

  Nine-thirty may not seem like much of a curfew to you, but you’ve got to understand—Grams always makes me come in by nine. So being late for a nine-thirty curfew is like crossing Broadway against the light—there’s going to be a whole lot of honking, and no matter which way you turn you’re in trouble.

  I’d taken the fire escape, like I always do when I’m sneaking in for the night. But for once I wasn’t really thinking that Mrs. Graybill might catch me and get me kicked out of the building—in my mind, Mrs. Graybill was already sound asleep. I was thinking that Grams might kick me out before I had a chance to explain things to her.

  So I didn’t even check to see if Mrs. Graybill was still up. I just came barreling down the hallway at a hundred miles an hour. And when I turned the corner and Mrs. Graybill was standing in front of her apartment unlocking the door, well, the first thing I did was choke.

  I don’t know what on. I mean, I wasn’t eating candy or anything. I just choked. So there I am, hacking away, wondering why on earth Mrs. Graybill’s wearing a dress that looks like a honeysuckle hurricane instead of her old pink bathrobe, and my brain can’t seem to come up with a decent lie about why I’m visiting my grandmother at ten o’clock at night with a sack of candy and a face full of green paint.

  When I finally stop hacking, Mrs. Graybill stands there with her fists on her hips. “Rita needs a sugar boost, I suppose?”

  I manage to squeak, “Ha-ha! That’s a good one!” Then I look at her like she’s the one with a green face and warts and say, “I forgot my schoolbooks.” I ring the bell and stare at her like I’ve got all the business in the world being where I am, and when Grams answers the door I say real loud, “Happy Halloween, Mrs. Graybill!” and go inside.

  Now Mrs. Graybill’s not going to just tuck herself in bed. She’s going to hang up her honeysuckle hurricane, put on some thick socks and her old pink bathrobe, and wait. And if I don’t come out of Grams’ apartment in a few minutes, she’s going to sic Mr. Garnucci on Grams and me. Either that or she’ll call the police again, and with my luck Officer Borsch will be the one taking the report.

  So the minute I’m inside, I say, “Grams, I’m sorry I’m late, but there was an emergency,” and then I tell her all about the Bush House and the fire and the mask, and about Chauncy and Officer Borsch.

  The whole time I’m talking she doesn’t say a word. She just sits there staring at me, her eyes getting bigger and bigger, and when I’m all done, she takes a deep breath and says, “How do you get yourself into these things?” Then she says, “Chauncy? LeBard? That sounds like some kind of aristocratic English name.” She turns and mumbles, “Certainly not a name I would’ve pictured for the Bush Man.”

  I shoot forward on the couch. “So you do know something about him!”

  Grams smooths down her skirt. “All I know is gossip, and gossip is poison. Not something I want to spread around.”

  I felt like saying, Tell me! Tell me what you know! but I could tell by the way her chin was pushed forward that she wasn’t about to spoon me any poison. I eyed her and said, “Did you know he’d had a tracheotomy?”

  Her chin drops a little, and her head shakes back and forth.

  “Did you know that he doesn’t have any electricity?”

  She pops her glasses off her nose and rubs them with the hem of her blouse. “No! All I know is that people say he went crazy after his mother died. There. Are you satisfied?” She pops her glasses back on her nose. “I’ve also heard he’s dangerous—and obviously he’s unstable. The fact that you went into that house tonight …” She throws her hands up in the air and says, “Samantha, why did you have to go inside? Why didn’t you just call the fire department?”

  I was about to tell Grams that she would’ve gone in too if she’d seen the fire, only she stands up and says, “And what are we going to do about Daisy? We can’t have you not go back out, but it’s getting so late, and heaven knows when she’ll decide to give up for the night.”

  I look at her kind of doubtful-like. “Do you want me to go over to Marissa’s?”

  “No, no. That’s too far.” She thinks for a minute. “How about Dot? Do you think she would mind?”

  “She’s got a zillion brothers and sisters, and they live in this really skinny house,”

  “A skinny house?”

  “Yeah, and it’s—”

  Grams closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Never mind about her house. I guess that’s out of the question, then?”

  “Yeah. Hey, how about Hudson’s?”

  “Hudson’s?”

  “Sure! He’s got lots of room and a great big couch, and I know
he won’t mind.”

  She thinks about this for a minute, then lets out a big sigh, and off she goes to the kitchen to call. And before you know it, off I go to Hudson’s with a toothbrush and a change of clothes stuffed in my backpack.

  Mrs. Graybill’s watching all right, but I just pretend I don’t know it. I wave bye to Grams and call, “Sorry I forgot my books! See you tomorrow,” and head over to Hudson’s.

  Hudson Graham may be seventy-two, but except for the fact that his hair’s all white and his eyebrows need a good raking, it’s easy to forget he’s that old. He’s nowhere near slowing down. As a matter of fact, with Hudson you get the feeling that he’s just warming up.

  When I got to his house, he was sitting in the dark on the porch, drinking iced tea, thinking. You can always tell when Hudson’s thinking because he props his feet up on the railing, crosses them at the ankles, and taps the edges of his boots together like he’s listening to music. And since his boots were clicking pretty fast, I knew—he was thinking pretty hard.

  He didn’t jump up when he saw me coming up the walkway, either. He just reached over to the pitcher, poured me some iced tea, and said, “Hello, Sammy. Have a seat.”

  What I really wanted to do was take a shower. A nice long, hot shower. I was tired of being the Marsh Monster, I was sick of the smell of hair spray, and I was cold. But I could tell from the way Hudson’s boots were beating each other up that I was going to have to sit there all sticky and green until Hudson had heard the whole story.

  I was expecting him to start right in, asking me what I thought I was doing, going into someone else’s house and all of that, but instead he says, “So, you’ve met Chauncy.”

  That took me by surprise. “How do you know him?”

  Hudson rocks a bit, then shoos a moth that’s fluttering around the brass tip of his boot. “Knew him. Years ago.” He nods over at the chair I’m in and says, “He used to sit right there and argue politics with me.”

  “You’re kidding! How’d you meet him?”

  Hudson chuckles. “I took an evening course at the college—he was the instructor.”