Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (23 page)

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.”

“Yeah, well, I think my mom’s got some weird issues. It’s like she thinks your mom stole my dad.”

“But your parents were divorced before my mom even met your dad.”

“I know, but I swear my mom’s jealous. You should hear her talk about your mom—she
hates
her. And she’s heard complete poison from Heather about you, so she hated you way before you and I got together. But now it’s
insane.
” He shakes his head. “The stupid thing is, Heather and my mom used to be at each other’s throats all the time, but now they’ve got, like, synchronized claws.”

I let this soak in for a minute. “So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I wish my dad would come back.”

“You think he might?”

He grumbles, “No,” then flicks a little twig and says, “And my mom says if I see you, she’ll kick me out of the house.”

“She’ll kick you out of the house? Where are you supposed to go?”

He gives a halfhearted shrug. “To L.A., I guess.”

“To live with your dad? Would he be okay with that?”

“Not exactly!”

I shake my head and say, “I almost can’t believe this,” because for the past year my biggest worry has been that I’ll get caught living in Grams’ apartment and wind up having to move to L.A. to live with my soap-star mother. And now Casey’s kind of in the same boat, only instead of living with someone rock-solid like Grams and worrying about the rest of the world, it’s the two psychos in his house that are the problem.

He gives me a little smile. “I know. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“You can say that again.” We’re both quiet a minute, and finally I ask, “So … what are we going to do?”

He gives a little shrug. “Spend a lot of time in the graveyard?”

“But—”

“Well, Heather would never look for me here”—he grins—“and you’re pretty good at ditching her.… And my mom works until five, so as long as I’m home by then at least we’ll be able to see each other. Even if it is at the graveyard.”

“I’m sure we can think of someplace else.”

He looks around. “Actually, I’m starting to like it here.” He gives me a little smile. “And I like that you talk to Sassypants. Something about that is very … cool.”

“You hear that, Sassypants?” I call toward the tombstone. “We’re gonna haunt you. Daily!”

Casey digs into his pockets. “Here,” he says, handing me a scrap of paper. “I don’t know how long it’ll be before my mom figures out that she
wants
me to have my phone so she can boss me from the comfort of her office, but this
is the number of a pay phone at school. I could work something out with Billy, where I call his cell and he tells you to call me?”

“So it’s okay that Billy knows?”

He thinks a minute. “As long as Heather doesn’t.”

Now, we probably would have spent a lot more time figuring out a strategy, but Casey points to the new section, where a police car is slowly making its way toward the cemetery office.

“That’s probably the Borschman,” I tell him. “He said he was going to take a police report about those knocked-over tombstones.”

“What did he want to talk to you about after we left?”

I give a little shrug. “Peer pressure.”

His eyebrows go up. “He thinks we’re a bad influence?”

“Wellllll,” I tell him, “you
did
sort of lead us into the graveyard on Halloween, and you
did
suggest we infiltrate a funeral parlor, and those
are
the reasons we got interrogated by a cop in the northwest corner of the south parking structure, second level.”

“Whoa,” he laughs. “I
am
a bad influence!”

I laugh, too, then shrug and say, “I think Officer Borsch just doesn’t want to see me get into trouble.”

Casey thinks a minute, then says, “Is he like a father figure?”

“No!”

But then I think about some of the things he’s said to me.

And how he asked me to be in his wedding.

And I start feeling bad that I’d said no like that.

“Uh … maybe it’s more that I’m like a daughter figure? Which is plenty weird enough. I used to
hate
the guy.”

He laughs. “I can totally see that.”

“But underneath it, he’s a good person.”

We’re quiet a minute, then he asks, “You really don’t know anything about your dad?”

I shrug. “He could be a serial killer for all I know.”

Now, I’d never even
thought
that before, so hearing it come out of my mouth was kind of scary.

Like, wow.

Maybe he was.

“Hey, you want to walk around?” I ask him, because all of a sudden I’m feeling very antsy. “We could spy on the Borschman.”

He grins at me. “You want to lurk around the graveyard and spy on people like that Dusty Mike guy and you call
me
a bad influence?”

I laugh, but the thought of Dusty Mike makes me wonder if he
is
lurking behind a tree again, spying on us. And as we’re walking along I can’t help it—I start checking behind things.

“Are we really going to spy on the Borschman?” Casey asks.

“We don’t have to. I just felt like walking around.”

“Fine by me.”

So we wander around the old section, holding hands and reading tombstones. And as we make our way up the hillside and past the Garden of Repose, I sort of relax and just enjoy being with Casey.

Now, a week ago I would have said that roaming through a graveyard reading tombstones was a weird thing to do, but it’s actually a really nice way to spend time. And it’s interesting. The only times I got a little sad was when we’d find the grave of a baby. Some hadn’t lived long enough to get a name. Just
OUR DARLING BABY
and then a single date. For some it was like every day was precious. The tombstone would have the name and the day the baby died and then something like 3
MO’S
, 28
D’S
.

“Hey, check this out,” Casey says. “Marla ran off with another man, you think?”

So I read the headstone, which had two names—Clarence and Marla, and next to Clarence there are the birth and death dates, but next to Marla there’s just the birth date and the “19” part of the death date. It’s like they had the tombstone made
anticipating
her death, only she decided, Forget that! and found herself another man.

I laugh. “Or maybe she decided she didn’t want to spend eternity with him after all.”

Then we come upon this hulking shrine of a tombstone that says
FATHER
and underneath it the guy’s name, country of origin, city of death, birth date, death date, and then the years, months, and
days
he lived, plus a sentimental epitaph.