Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls

  Controlled.

  Like, cigarette? What cigarette?

  She doesn’t even bother to grind it out with her boot.

  Without moving my lips, I ask Casey, “She doesn’t know you know she smokes?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  I want to say, You didn’t? Where have you been? but then he says, “And she sure didn’t look like that when she left the house.”

  I kinda shrug. “Uh, neither did you?”

  “Yeah, but she was dressed as Red Riding Hood.”

  “Heather was?” Then under my breath I say, “She’s more like the Big Bad Wolf.”

  “And she told Mom she was going to a party at Tenille’s house.”

  Now, I may not believe in vampires, but all of a sudden there’s another streak of lightning and crack of thunder, and if eyes could flash red, Heather’s did. She marches over and gets right in Casey’s face. “If you narc, you are so dead, you hear me?”

  Billy laughs. “He’s already dead, can’t you see that?”

  Heather ignores him and tries to stare Casey down, but Casey just shakes his head and holds her gaze. “You’re an embarrassment.”

  “No, you’re an embarrassment. You’re a dweeb and you hang out with dweeby losers.”

  Their eyes stay locked for another few seconds, and then Casey steps around her and heads over to Heather’s little pack of friends.

  “Hey!” she calls. “Where are you going?”

  But Casey just keeps on walking, and when he gets to her group, he tells the rocker guys, “She’s thirteen. You got that? Thirteen.”

  Their eyelinered eyes bug out and they look at each other like, Whoa. Then one of them says, “Thanks, man,” and they both glance at Heather like, We are so out of here, and take off.

  “I hate you!” Heather screams in Casey’s face. “Stay out of my business! Stay out of my life!”

  “I’d like to,” he tells her, “but when you see a toxic spill, it’s kind of your duty to try and contain it.”

  “What?” she screeches at him.

  “You’re toxic, Heather. You need, like, caution tape all around you.”

  “Yeah? Well you need caution tape all over your mouth!”

  Casey just rolls his eyes and walks away.

  She grabs him and says, “I’m serious. If you narc, I will kill you!”

  Casey stops and turns to face her. And real calmly he says, “You’ll kill me. Really.”

  Heather goes a little shifty-eyed, then snarls, “Narc and find out.”

  He stares at her a minute, then walks away.

  “Do you want to leave?” I whisper, because I don’t know if he’s mad, or shocked, or embarrassed, or maybe a combination of all of those, but I can tell he’s pretty upset.

  He shakes his head. “No. Come on. Let’s go.”

  So we start toward the haunted house, and as we’re walking along, Billy says, “It must totally bite to have her as a sister,” and does his best vampire look.

  Casey snorts and says, “Well, it definitely sucks.”

  Billy laughs. “Dude, we need to get you some garlic.”

  “And some holy water,” Marissa adds, and then Holly says, “And a silver dagger,” and I throw in, “And a blowtorch.”

  “A blowtorch?” Marissa asks me.

  “Aren’t vampires supposed to be afraid of fire?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she says like she can’t quite believe she forgot this valuable piece of vampire-repelling information. She turns to Casey. “Sammy’s right. No little candle is going to keep her back. You need a blowtorch.”

  “Or maybe just a lock on your door?” I say.

  He laughs. “Now that’s a good idea.”

  So we head up the driveway and the more distance we put between us and Heather, the better things get—which must be a law of physics or something, because no matter where on earth you are, it’s always true.

  Plus, there’s now lots of decorations to distract us. The dirt driveway we’re walking on is horseshoe-shaped—it curves up to the house, then curves back down to the street—and the yard that’s on the inside of the horseshoe has awesome decorations. There are classic, arched-top tombstones, full-sized coffins, and giant spiders dangling in massive webs from the branches of a tree.

  Between the driveway and the yard there’s a white picket fence. It’s not a tidy little white picket fence like you’re used to thinking of. It’s haphazard, with boards nailed on crooked and sideways and upside down. And the KEEP OUT OR DIE signs inside the fence make it pretty clear you’re not supposed to cross the barrier of haphazardness.

  Besides coffins and tombstones and giant dangling spiders, there are also tall metal stakes with skulls wobbling on top of them. They’re like a little army of laughing heads, and something about them is very creepy. I know it’s all fake, but what’s making everything seem alive is that the air is filled with the sounds of torture. Shrieking and creaking and moaning and groaning and demented laughing.

  A shiver goes through me and I mutter, “Why do skulls always look like they’re laughing?”

  “They do, don’t they?” Casey says.

  “Yeah. It’s like it takes dying to finally get the joke.” I look at him. “Which is a weird thought.”

  I didn’t have a chance to think about that weird thought too long, though, because all of a sudden Marissa grabs me. “Did you see that? It moved!”

  “What moved?”

  She points to one of the coffins. “There!”

  Sure enough the lid is creaking back, and after it’s open about six inches, a puff of smoke comes out before the lid settles back down. Then a big R.I.P. tombstone a few feet away from the coffin seems to shiver and the section of ground in front of it starts moving. Like something is pushing, pushing, pushing from underground, trying to escape.

  “Do you see that?” Marissa gasps, squeezing my arm.

  A bone-chilling scream fills the air as a corpse in a noose drops down right in front of us. So of course Marissa lets out a bone-chilling scream of her own, which seems to scare the corpse clear out of its mind because it goes shooting back up, disappearing inside the branches of the tree.

  So there we are, trying to recover from all of that, when an eerie voice behind us says, “Tarry here and you too will DIE!”

  Marissa screams again because the voice is right behind us, breathing down our necks. But when we whip around, we see that it’s just Billy, and he is totally busting up.

  “You brat!” Marissa cries, backhanding him.

  He laughs. “You are so jumpy! Even in a fake graveyard!”

  And yeah, the stuff may be fake, but it’s awesome fake, and as we walk along I say, “I can’t believe someone would do all this and not charge admission.”

  “They don’t charge, and they give out candy,” Billy says. “I heard last year they gave full-sized Snickers.”

  A black cat jumps off the lap of an overstuffed mummy that’s slouched on a chair on the driveway side of the white picket fence. The mummy’s obviously fake, but the cat?

  “Is that real?” Holly asks as we watch it run across our path and disappear around the house.

  I don’t know why, but a little chill runs through me. “It must be.”

  “Great,” Marissa mutters. “A black cat just crossed our path.”

  There’s another flash of lightning and crack of thunder, and the light kind of catches in the mummy’s eyes. I stop walking and look at it a little better. “Wow,” I say, leaning forward. “Those eyes are so—”

  “GHAAAAAAAHHHH!” the mummy cries, jolting at me.

  “AAAAAAAHHHH!” I cry, jumping back.

  The mummy smiles at me. “Gotcha.”

  I try to swallow my heart and act all cool, but the mummy’s right—it got me.

  Got me good.

  Everyone else thinks it’s hilarious, of course, and Billy slaps five on the mummy. “Dude, that was classic! She’s really hard to get, too!”

  Other kids a
re blasting past us, so the mummy gets back in position and we hurry toward the front porch, which is totally decked out with jack-o’-lanterns and spiderwebs and more laughing skulls. The person handing out candy is a classic-looking old witch with a honkin’ nose, warts galore, and long stringy black and gray hair. She holds out a steaming cauldron to us. “Candy, dearie?”

  So Billy sticks in his hand, but immediately yanks it out.

  “You have to pass through me eyeballs for the sweets, dearie,” the witch cackles.

  Billy gives her the biggest smile. “You guys are awesome!” Then he jabs his hand in and comes up with a full-sized Snickers. “Yes!”

  The rest of us do the same, and even though I know they couldn’t be real, passing through the layer of gooshy “eyeballs” is very creepy—so much so that Marissa almost can’t do it.

  When we all have our monster bars of candy, we tell the witch, “Thank you!” and follow the painted wooden arrows that say, ESCAPE THIS WAY and FLEE THEE! and THE ONLY WAY OUT!

  “That was incredible,” Holly says when we’re back on Feere Street. But while the rest of us are going on and on about how cool it was, I notice that Casey’s quiet and kind of looking around.

  “Hey,” I tell him, slipping my hand into his. “There’s nothing you can do about her.”

  He just shakes his head and pulls a face like, Whatever. But as we’re trick-or-treating our way up Feere Street and back to the barricades, I can tell he’s still looking for her.

  That it really bothers him.

  “So what are you going to do?” I finally ask him.

  He shrugs. “Nothing.”

  “You’re not going to tell your mom?”

  “Are you kidding? She’s probably where Heather gets her cigarettes.”

  I bite back And sense of style and instead say, “Your mom smokes?”

  Casey scowls. “Oh, yeah. And you’re right—there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  But even though he’s acting like he’s disgusted and blowing the whole thing off, I can tell he’s worried. We’re almost to the barricades when he frowns and says, “She is headed for some serious trouble.”

  And then, like an omen coming true, we see that there are two police cars parked across the street, and that there’s a cop talking to a girl in shiny black shorts, fishnet stockings, and long black hair.

  “Oh, no!” Casey says, then drops my hand and takes off running.

  It made sense that Casey thought the cop cars had something to do with Heather because a cop was talking to her, but by the time Casey gets up to her, the cop has moved on to someone else.

  I hang back, but I can still hear Casey ask her, “What happened?”

  “Someone shut up the Preacher Man,” Heather says, like she’s in a little bit of shock.

  There’s a small mob of trick-or-treaters gathered, and we can see another cop kneeling beside someone lying on the ground. But all we can really see is the back of the cop and the legs of the body.

  “Someone killed him?” Casey asks.

  She shakes her head. “Beat him up.” And then it’s like the Evil Switch goes click inside her brain. She looks at Casey like she’s just remembered she hates his guts. “See what happens when you try and tell other people how to run their lives?” She turns to Monet and Tenille. “Let’s get out of here.”

  So they take off, and Casey goes, “Whatever,” and we all move in so we can check out what’s going on with the Preacher Man.

  Now, from his, uh, girth, I should probably have recognized the cop who was stooped down by the Preacher Man. But it’s not until an ambulance turns onto the street and the cop stands up that I realize that it’s the Ace of Mace.

  The Bruiser with a Cruiser.

  The Miranda Commanda!

  Yup. It’s the one and only Officer Borsch.

  Actually, he got promoted, so it should be Sergeant Borsch, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make the transition.

  And apparently I’m not the only one having transition problems, because Officer Borsch looks right at me as he starts commanding everyone, “Back up! All of you! Back up!” but he doesn’t seem to recognize me.

  “Hey!” I say to him. “What happened?”

  “What needs to happen,” he says, “is that you back up!” Then he finally recognizes me. “Sammy?” And before I can tell him, Duh, he says, “You look horrible!” Then he adds, “Did you see what happened?”

  “Why would I be asking you what happened if I saw what happened?”

  He stares at me a minute. “Right.” The he rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “This has been some night.” He snorts. “I hate Halloween.”

  I look over at the Preacher Man, who’s sitting on the curb trying to put his broken glasses back together. “Do you have any idea who beat him up?”

  Officer Borsch makes a sucking noise, like he’s trying to vacuum some popcorn ball out of a tooth. “He claims a cop clubbed him with a nightstick and stole his P.A. system.”

  “A cop did?”

  “Yeah. He couldn’t tell me height, weight, age … couldn’t tell me much of anything.”

  I eye my friends as I say, “Do you think it might have been someone in, you know, a cop costume?”

  Officer Borsch vacuums some more. “He also keeps spouting off about the devil, so he may just be a nutcase.”

  “But someone obviously beat him up, right?”

  Officer Borsch sighs. “Maybe he fell? It’s hard to know what to take seriously with someone like this.”

  So he goes back to shooing away trick-or-treaters, and I exchange looks with Casey and Marissa. And I know we’re all thinking the same thing—we have to be. But I’m pretty sure we’re on opposite sides of the what-to-do fence, and I’m feeling trapped in very weird territory.

  Still. I can’t shake the feeling that Danny had something to do with this, so when Holly looks at me, like, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was him, I give her a shrug back, like, I know what you mean.

  Marissa is watching us and pops off with, “I can’t believe you guys are even thinking it was Danny. There’s no way he would do something like that!”

  I raise a zombie eyebrow at her. “Who said anything about Danny?”

  Billy’s just tuning in to what was until right now a silent conversation. “You think it was Danny?”

  I shrug. “Well, apparently Marissa does.”

  “I do not!”

  “Well I wouldn’t be surprised,” Holly says.

  Marissa gives her a hard look. “What did he ever do to you?”

  Holly stares right back. “Totally mess with my friend’s head.”

  “And her heart,” I grumble.

  “That doesn’t mean he beat someone up!” Marissa snaps.

  Casey nods. “She’s right. It doesn’t.”

  So fine. I drop it and so does Holly. And we hang around for a few more minutes, not saying much of anything while the paramedics check out the Preacher Man and clean up some blood on his cheek.

  Finally Marissa asks, “Has anyone else had enough?”

  Holly nods. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Almost ten,” Casey says, looking at his phone.

  “You’re kidding!” I turn his hand and look at the display. “Wow.” And since we were supposed to be back at Hudson’s no later than ten, we hurry out of there, and believe me, none of us says, “Hey, let’s take a shortcut through the graveyard!”

  When we get to Hudson’s house, there are two jack-o’-lanterns still lit up, and my favorite old guy is sitting on his porch.

  “How was it?” he asks as we pound up the steps.

  We all go, “Great!” because what else are we going to say? Uh, we cut through the graveyard and had to pretend like we were coming out of graves because an El Zarape trick-or-treater was being chased by Shovel Man, and we had to escape by catapulting over the Vampire’s car and then ran into Heather—who was in a real bloodsucking mood—before discovering the Preacher Man had be
en clubbed by a cop who we think might be Danny Urbanski?

  Much easier to just say “Great!”

  Anyway, Hudson blows out the jack-o’-lanterns, then holds open the door for us, and after Holly and I call home and get extensions on our curfews, Hudson asks, “Would you like a snack and something to drink? Or are you sick from candy?”

  “We haven’t even had any,” I laugh.

  Hudson laughs, too. “What kind of teenagers are you?”

  “Hungry ones!” Holly says, and she’s right. All of a sudden I’m starving.

  “Time to loot the loot!” Billy cries. “I’m gobblin’ mine up!”

  “Don’t eat too fast,” Casey says, “or you might start coffin.”

  They bump fists and the rest of us groan, then we head for the front room and get down to business.

  Now, I don’t know about you, but the way I check out my Halloween loot is I empty my pillowcase onto the floor. It’s way better than pawing through a sack or a bag to see what you’ve got.

  But before I dump it, I always take a second to stick my face in the sack and take a long, deep whiff. Maybe sour candy mixed with chocolate mixed with peanut butter mixed with bubblegum creates some kind of magic aroma, I don’t know, but nothing in the world smells like a sack full of trick-or-treat candy.

  Nothing.

  And even though none of us say this to the others, we all do the same thing—we sit down on Hudson’s living room floor, take a deep whiff of our sacks, then dump the candy onto the floor in front of us.

  And while I’m tearing into a Reese’s peanut butter cup, I see Billy’s pile. “Oh, right! You got double loot!” I say, pointing at El Zarape’s sack in the middle of his regular candy. I laugh. “You still going to return it?”

  “I would if I could,” Billy says with a grin.

  Casey smirks. “Yeah, right.”

  Now, the El Zarape sack may be quite a bit smaller than a pillowcase, but it’s pretty obvious that ol’ El Zarape had a busy night trick-or-treating because the bag is stuffed.

  “You’re gonna share, right?” Casey asks.

  Billy picks up the sack and starts talking like a pirate. “I may have a scrap or two fer ya, matey! Get yer chum buckets ready!”

  Then he dumps over the bag.

  But what comes rolling out is definitely not candy.