Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “Two people, two bodies, two heads?”

  She gasps. “You’re not thinking …?”

  I nod and for some reason I can barely breathe. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  Hudson’s phone call had been from Grams, who’d gotten a call from Meg, who was wondering what had happened to Holly and me.

  Specifically Holly, who was supposed to help out in the shop.

  “What time is it?” Holly asked after Hudson relayed the news.

  “Half past nine.”

  Holly jumped up. “How’d that happen?” Then she beat it down the porch steps, calling, “Come over later! I want to know what happens.”

  I wave and call back, “Okay!”

  The minute she’s gone, Hudson eyes me and says, “What happens with what?”

  I look at him, wondering where I’m going to start with this, only he’s not sitting down, getting comfy, kicking his boots up—he’s just standing there.

  Now, this whole skull thing is not something I can explain with him standing. It’s just not. But even when I say, “Well, it’s kind of a long story,” he doesn’t sit down. So I finally ask, “Uh … what time do you have to pick up Grams for church?”

  He scratches one of his bushy white eyebrows. “I should be leaving now.”

  “Oh. Well, never mind, then.”

  “Why don’t you come along?”

  “I can’t. Billy and Casey are meeting me here.” I look down the street. “They should be here any minute.”

  He takes a deep breath. “Well, I can’t be late.” He gives me a kind of sheepish smile. “It’s taken me a long time to get out of the doghouse.”

  I laugh because it’s so true. Grams would never admit it, but she was pretty sweet on Hudson, and then he went and got love-punched by a phony artiste and messed the whole thing up. “Arrroooo!” I tell him, then shoo him along. “Go!”

  “You sure?”

  I say, “Of course!” because I’m thinking that talking to Hudson won’t change anything—that I really just have to talk Billy into turning the skulls over to Officer Borsch.

  A few minutes later Hudson’s purring down the road in his 1960 sienna rose Cadillac—a car only Hudson Graham could pull off. And then I just sit there.

  And sit there.

  And sit there.

  Well, I fidget and pace and look up and down the sidewalk a gazillion times, but in between all of that I just sit there.

  And then finally Billy and Casey come loping up the walkway.

  I jump up and start to say, What took so long? but then I see that Billy’s arm is all bloody. So instead I say, “What happened?” and then I notice that he doesn’t have the skulls so I say, “Oh, no! How’d they find you?” but then it hits me that the Vampire and Shovel Man must have somehow followed Holly and me to the Acostas’ so I say, “Oh, maaaaan, I’m so sorry. I had no idea they were tailing us!”

  Billy and Casey look at each other, then back at me like, Whoa … what? And finally Casey says, “They?”

  That throws me a little. “Shovel Man and the Vampire?”

  Billy says, “It wasn’t the Vampire or Shovel Man.”

  “Then who?”

  Casey snorts. “Try El Zarape.”

  I look at Billy. “El Zarape did that to you?”

  “Yeah.” Billy scowls. “If he’d have come up and asked, I would’ve just handed Grim and Reapy over. But no, he had to go and pull a switchblade.”

  My eyes bug out at him. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, and you know what? That guy’s older than I thought. He’s like twenty-five or thirty or something.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  “Yes!”

  “Was he wearing a zarape?”

  He gives me a puzzled look. “Are you wearing zombie stuff?”

  “Oh. Good point.”

  “And I told him, ‘Here, have them!’ but he was, like, possessed.”

  “I’m telling you,” Casey says, “he didn’t understand you.”

  “He didn’t speak English?” I ask.

  Billy gives us an exasperated look. “He didn’t speak at all. He just flicked that knife around! So I chucked the knuckleheads at him and dived in some bushes.”

  Casey gives a twinkly little smirk. “Rosebushes.”

  Billy checks out his bloodied arm. “I should have gone up against the knife.”

  I sit down on the porch and hold my head, because I’m having a little trouble fitting all this in with the Vampire and Shovel Man. I mean, why were they all after those skulls? Were they working together?

  But … why would Shovel Man be chasing El Zarape through the graveyard late at night if they were working together?

  Did they have a falling-out?

  Did El Zarape steal the skulls from them?

  Were they the ones making people disappear?

  Finally I look up at Billy and Casey and say, “There was a reason I thought it was the Vampire and Shovel Man.”

  “Yeah?” Casey asks. “What.”

  So I tell them about Holly and me being spotted at the Pup Parlor and how we ditched Shovel Man through the Heavenly only to about clobber Meg with a toilet plunger. And then I explain how we figured out that they were after the skulls, and that Billy was probably in danger. And when I get to the part about going over to the haunted house to check out the skulls over there, Casey asks, “So how’d they compare?”

  “The best-that-money-can-buy fake skulls are lighter and plastickier, and they have seams on the inside.” I look at Billy. “Grim and Reaper were the real deal. Those were actual human skulls.”

  Billy eyes Casey. “Dude, I told you.”

  Casey’s eyebrows go flying. “You told me? I told you.”

  I give them both a squint. “What are you talking about? Last night you both said they were just awesome fakes.”

  Billy heads over to the spigot by the porch and says, “Yeah, but that was before last night.”

  “Last night? What happened last night?”

  He turns the water on and starts washing off his arm. “Casey’s house was possessed.”

  I roll my eyes. “Uh … Heather’s living there?”

  Casey snickers, but Billy’s serious as he rubs off the blood. “There were sounds …,” he says all mysteriously. And since he’s not, you know, elaborating, I ask, “What kind of sounds?”

  “Scratching. And screeching. And rubbing.”

  “Rubbing?”

  He shuts off the water and squeegees his arm with his hand. “Like shuffling footsteps. And the scratching was like someone trying to claw out of a room. Or a coffin.”

  Now, it’s not like I don’t remember the way the air felt when the skulls were out at Hudson’s, but shuffling footsteps? Clawing out of a coffin? I can’t help it—I laugh. “Oh, please. It was just Heather messing with you.”

  “You’re wrong, Sammy-keyesta!” he says, and his eyes are enormous.

  I turn to Casey, but he just gives me a little shrug like, You shoulda been there.

  So after staring back and forth at them for a minute I finally grab the newspaper off the table on Hudson’s porch and hand it over.

  Casey shakes his head when he sees the picture. “That is so fake.”

  “What’s real is the fact that another person in Santa Martina has disappeared. Just poof, nobody knows where he is. That makes a total of three people who have disappeared this month. Well, last month. Three. As in, there were two people missing, and now there’s one more.”

  I wait for them to react to the stunning significance of this, but they don’t say anything.

  So I try again. “As in, two probably dead people plus one more.”

  Casey eyes me like he can’t quite believe what I’m suggesting. “As in, two bodies with two skulls?” he asks.

  “Exactly.”

  They both stare at me a minute and then Billy laughs and says, “You think I’m nuts, Sammy-keyesta? A body doesn’t rot and leave a c
lean-as-a-whistle skull in less than a month! It takes years!”

  “So maybe they burned the bodies! Maybe they dissolved them in acid! Maybe they threw them in the river and let a bunch of barracudas loose!”

  Billy squints at me. “Barracudas?” And Casey says, “What river?”

  “That’s not the point! The point is, there are two people missing and nobody knows where their skulls are!”

  “Or the rest of them,” Casey points out.

  “I know,” I grumble. “But for some reason, Shovel Man, the Vampire, and El Zarape are all after those skulls! And why? You don’t just go carrying people’s heads around! Not unless you’re a sicko murderer!”

  So, okay. I know I’m being a little over the top, but for some reason I can’t let this idea go. I mean, it just seems too coincidental. Two bodies missing, two skulls found—there had to be a connection. But I take a deep breath and say, “Look, the reason Holly and I came over so early was to warn you about Shovel Man and the Vampire being after the skulls and to tell you we thought the skulls were real. I’m sorry I woke up Heather, and I’m sorry you got ambushed by El Zarape. And maybe those skulls don’t have anything to do with the missing people, but what if they do? I really think we should tell the police everything we know.”

  They both just look at me, and I can tell that (a) they don’t think the skulls and the missing people have anything to do with each other, and (b) they’re not too keen on telling all of this to the police.

  “Please? Just go over to the police station with me?”

  Billy scratches the back of his neck. “Is it even open on Saturdays?”

  “Sure. And with everything that happened last night, Officer Borsch’ll be around somewhere.” I shake my head. “I hope so, ’cause I really can’t see explaining this to anyone else.”

  Casey and Billy look at each other and shrug, and Casey says, “Probably a good idea.”

  The Santa Martina police station is smack-dab in the middle of downtown. It’s across the street from the mall, next door to the fire station, around the corner from the library, and really near St. Mary’s Church and the Salvation Army.

  It’s also not far from Hudson’s, so before long we were pounding up the station steps, and once we were inside I went straight to the counter where a receptionist I’d never seen before smiled and asked, “May I help you?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I told her. “We’d like to talk to Officer Borsch. Is he here?”

  “Just a moment,” she says.

  Now, I don’t know how many moments it takes to make ten minutes, but it’s got to be in the billions. And with every moment I waited, I felt more and more antsy.

  Probably because I could tell that Casey and Billy did not want to be there.

  “Sorry!” I kept mouthing over to them.

  “It’s okay,” Casey kept mouthing back, but I could tell—they wanted to leave.

  Finally the receptionist tells me, “Sergeant Borsch isn’t presently at the station but should be arriving momentarily.”

  Well, since momentarily has moment in it, I figured that meant it could take half an hour. Maybe more. So I ask, “When he gets here, could you please let him know that Sammy’s waiting for him out front?”

  “Sammy?” she says, like, Are you sure that’s your name?

  “Right,” I tell her. “Sammy Keyes. Please tell him as soon as he gets here. It’s important.”

  She makes a note of it and nods, and I tell the guys, “Come on,” and hightail it out of there.

  Trouble is, as we’re going down the steps, someone else is coming up.

  Someone who’s totally ticked-off and hostile.

  And also the last person on earth I want to see.

  At first we all just stop moving and stare. Then Officer Borsch tugs on Danny’s arm and says, “Let’s move it, Urbanski,” and continues up the steps.

  “It was you,” Danny spits out at Casey. “You narc’d!”

  Casey squints at him. “About what?” And then he sees the Preacher Man’s speaker and microphone in Officer Borsch’s meaty hand. “It was you?” He shakes his head. “I had nothing to do with you getting caught.”

  Danny’s eyes shoot darts at me. “Then it was your snoop-happy girlfriend!”

  “Shut up!” Casey says, stepping in his way, and I swear he’s gonna push him. “She had nothing to do with this, either!”

  “Move aside,” Officer Borsch barks at Casey as he pulls Danny along by the arm. And as they pass by us Danny snarls, “Narc!” over his shoulder.

  “Wow,” Billy says when they’re gone. “I can’t believe they put him in cuffs.”

  Casey stares after them. “I can’t believe he’s really the one who mugged that guy. And for a cheesy speaker and a microphone?”

  “He’s in handcuffs,” Billy murmurs. “Dippin’ Dots Danny. In handcuffs.”

  I start to say, Dippin’ Dots Danny? but stop myself. I may only know Danny Urbanski as a smooth-talking two-faced jerk, but the nickname paints a completely different picture. A picture that has sunshine.

  And water slides.

  And laughter.

  All of a sudden I feel terrible. Like I made a huge mistake by calling Officer Borsch. I remind myself that Danny beat a guy up, cracked his ribs, stole his stuff, and bragged about it, but in the pit of my stomach I’m sick.

  Sick, and also scared.

  No matter how much sense it made to turn Danny in, if Casey finds out I did it, the pit of his stomach will feel sick, too.

  Toward me.

  “You okay?”

  It’s Casey, and I do know what he asked, but for some reason I just blink at him and go, “Huh?”

  He takes my hand and says, “I know,” which makes me feel even worse because he’s obviously thinking that I’m thinking how terrible it is that Dippin’ Dots Danny is now a bona fide juvenile delinquent, when what I’m really worried about is how to get out of the pickle I’m in. I mean, if I had told Casey about calling Officer Borsch before we’d run into Danny, that would be one thing. But now that Casey had stuck up for me?

  Now that I knew Danny’s nickname?

  All I can think is that if Casey finds out I turned Danny in, he’ll never look at me the same.

  That it’ll be the beginning of The End.

  I kept quiet as we walked along. I wasn’t even sure where we were going, and it didn’t really seem to matter. Billy and Casey talked about Danny, while I frantically tried to sort out what I would not know if I hadn’t called Officer Borsch or eavesdropped from the underbelly of the Urbanskis’ car.

  So while Billy was going on about the handcuffs, I couldn’t jump in and say, Well, gee. He fractured the guy’s ribs—what do you expect? because that was something I only knew because I’d called Officer Borsch.

  And I couldn’t suggest that Nick or Danny’s other two friends knew he’d be pawning the speaker and microphone today so maybe that’s how the police had been tipped off.

  Even saying something about pawning would give me away!

  I felt like I was walking through a minefield of ill-gotten information, and one false word could set off a relationship-crippling explosion.

  So I was quiet.

  Mum.

  Worried.

  Casey kept on holding my hand, and even though we’d walked for blocks, it still wasn’t a lax, easy hold. It was firm. Like he’d let go of part of his past and was latching on to me … but was still feeling a little unsteady.

  “You okay?” he asked again, and the way he said it wasn’t like, Hey, how’s it goin’?

  It was like he could tell something was wrong, and he really cared.

  Which made me feel even worse.

  And made my hand start sweating.

  I pulled away and wiped my hand on my jeans. “Sorry!”

  He laughed. “You think I care?” then held on tight again.

  And that’s when the very thing that had me running scared the night before came to my rescue. “Look!” Bi
lly says, pointing toward the back of the Bosley-Moore Funeral Home, and there’s the Deli-Mustard Car, parked mostly out of view.

  We all just stare for a minute because something about it being there is really … creepy.

  “Good thing Marissa’s not here,” I finally say. “She’d be freaking out about him sucking blood out of dead people.”

  Casey does an exaggerated chin rub. “I thought we decided that vampires don’t drink cold blood.”

  “Apparently they will in a pinch,” Billy says with an oh-so-serious nod.

  I scowl at him. “Like I said, Marissa’s not here.”

  Billy shrugs. “So what do you think he’s doing here?”

  “Uh … maybe he’s a funeral director?”

  It’s weird—the switch from talking about Danny to talking about dead people seems to have lightened the mood. A mischievous look crosses Billy’s face as he says, “So you think he’s a cadaver conductor?” and Casey “So you think he’s a cadaver conductor?” and Casey throws in, “A posthumous priest?” and Billy shoots back, “A deacon of the dead?” which makes Casey cry, “A cardinal of corpses!” and Billy come back with, “A minister of … memorials?”

  “Stop!” I laugh. “I don’t know what funeral directors are. I just heard my grandmother talk about them. I’ve never actually been inside a funeral home.”

  “Parlor, if you please,” Billy says, pointing to the PARLOR AND CHAPEL sign that’s right below the main BOSLEY-MOORE FUNERAL HOME sign.

  “Fine. I’ve never been inside a funeral parlor.”

  Casey eyes the front door, where a steady stream of people are filing in. “We could fix that, you know.”

  I look down at my jeans and thrashed high-tops. “Don’t parlors require, you know, lace gloves and shiny shoes?”

  “There’s a guy in jeans,” Casey says, nodding toward the entrance.

  “Yeah, one.”

  But I am curious. I mean, there are lots of cars parked in the front lot, but it’s not full or anything, so the only reason the Vampire’s car would be parked around back is if he worked there. Or had some, you know, business being there. But even if he was in the mortuary business, that didn’t explain why he was cruising through the cemetery at night in his Deli Mobile, or why he and Shovel Man were stalking us to get those skulls.