Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “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.

  But the grave right next to him has a flat marker in the same stone as the FATHER shrine, but all it says is MOTHER.

  There isn’t even a name.

  “Nice,” I say with a snort.

  Casey compares the two. “Yeah, that’s a little skewed, huh?”

  “Unbelievable.”

  We walk along some more and then Casey asks, “So what would you want on your tombstone?”

  I laugh. “Oh, you’re asking the hard questions now.” And I’m thinking about it as we make our way around a big cement angel, but then I see something on the ground ahead of us and stop short. “Is that … ?”

  My eyes are kind of bugged out and Casey laughs and says, “Yes, Sherlock, that’s a hoe.”

  We move toward it, but before I can say anything about how Dusty Mike would not just leave his hoe lying on the ground like that, Casey yanks me behind a big granite grave marker and puts a finger against his lips. “Shhhh!”

  And that’s when I hear it, too.

  Voices.

  Dusty Mike’s hoe is ahead of us and on the left. The voices are coming from in front of us and to the right. And even though I can’t see anyone yet, I recognize one of the voices.

  “The Borschman,” Casey whispers with a grin.

  We see
him come into view about fifty feet to the right of the Sunset Crypt, and even though he’s avoiding the hill the crypt is on, he’s huffing and puffing like mad. “That’s Gordon the Shovel Man with him, but I have no idea who that third guy is,” I whisper back.

  “Ricky the Rake Man?” Casey teases.

  I grin at him. “Very funny.”

  But as they keep walking up the rise, I start to get worried because they’re getting closer and closer to us. “Where are they going?”

  I tuck farther behind the tombstone so I’ve barely got an eyeball wrapped around the right side of it, and Casey does the same with an eyeball wrapped around the left. But we have our backpacks and our skateboards and keeping all of it hidden is making things really crowded.

  And then the third guy points and says, “There it is,” and that’s when I finally notice that in front of us and a little to our right is a pushed-over tombstone.

  It’s not lying flat like a fallen domino.

  It’s more half over, like an uprooted tree.

  In a flash things go from a kind of fun Hide-and-Spy to a heart-pounding Get-Found-and-Die because I know that if we’re spotted this close to that pushed-over tombstone we’ll never be able to convince them we didn’t do it.

  “This may not look like much to you,” Gordon’s telling Officer Borsch, but we’ve got to take the whole thing out, level the location, get cement up here, and reset it.”

  “It’s a ton of work,” the third guy says.

  Gordon nods. “Teddy knows. He reset the ones from the first round and they weren’t nearly this size.”

  It flashes through my mind that Teddy’s a good name for the guy, because with his short brown beard and bushy hair he looks kind of like a bear.

  Plus he’s wearing hiking boots and jeans like he belongs in the great outdoors.

  Anyway, Teddy says, “I’m dreading this one.”

  Officer Borsch walks around it, taking pictures and kind of analyzing the situation as he asks, “You say the first tombstones were pushed over a week ago Thursday?”

  Gordon hesitates, then shakes his head. “It wasn’t last Thursday—that was the day before Halloween. And it wasn’t the Thursday before that. It was the Thursday before that.”

  “So two weeks ago Thursday?”

  “Whatever you want to call it.” He thinks a minute. “It was the sixteenth.”

  “And which direction did the kids come through that first time? Was the gate open, do you know? Or did they climb the fence?”

  “Again, Courtney’s the one to ask. I only got here at the tail end of things.”

  “Both times?”

  He nods. “I didn’t see the kids the first time, but I sure saw the headstones the next morning. And I sure saw them on Halloween.”

  “Could this one have been done at the same time and you just didn’t notice it until now?”

  Gordon shakes his head. “Look at the dirt. Dark and fresh.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “In my experience, it’s better to keep these things quiet. Reporting it, having it in the paper or on the TV, just makes the situation worse. It gives kids ideas. Pretty soon I’ve got copycats causing me more work.”

  Teddy chimes in with, “But now they’ve been through twice, and it’d be nice to stop them from coming again.”

  Gordon nods. “Exactly.”

  Officer Borsch puts his camera in a pocket and makes some quick notes on a pad, then asks, “When will Courtney be back?”

  “Not until tomorrow. We give her flexible hours because she’s got a kid, and being a single mom’s not easy.”

  “Right,” the Borschman grunts. He turns to Teddy. “Did you witness any of this?”

  “I wasn’t here those nights. Just found the tombstones knocked over.”

  Officer Borsch nods, then asks Gordon, “So what can you tell me about Ofelia Ortega’s grave?”

  “Who?”

  “Ofelia Ortega. It was reported that her grave was dug up.”

  There’s a moment of silence and then Gordon says, “Your source on this must be Michael Poe and I’m sorry, but Mike Poe is a nutcase.” Then he adds, “A disgruntled nutcase now that we’ve let him go.”

  “Why was he fired?”

  Gordon shakes his head. “He was scaring off visitors. He worked here a long time, and I was used to him, but the newer staff?”

  Teddy Bear kind of huffs and says, “He weirded me out big-time.”

  “But it was Courtney, especially. He would appear out of nowhere and scare the hell out of her. I had several talks with him because she’s organizing our records and I can’t afford to lose her, but he lives in a different dimension.”

  “How long has she worked here?”

  “Six months. Maybe it was having a woman around, I don’t know. She said he would talk in riddles around her. Almost like incantations.”

  “Like spells?”

  “Well, I never heard them, but he wouldn’t dare pull that stuff with me around. Teddy heard, though.”

  Teddy Bear nods. “Yeah. It was weird stuff. Didn’t make any sense but was majorly creepy. The guy’s definitely not right.”

  “He’s a Luddite, too,” Gordon says, “so it’s not like I was getting a lot of help out of him, anyway.”

  “A Luddite?” Officer Borsch asks.

  “You know—a guy who doesn’t believe in progress? He wouldn’t touch any of the equipment. He wouldn’t use the backhoe to dig graves, couldn’t even get him to use a Weedwacker. Said he could do it all with a hoe and a shovel.”

  Now, while Officer Borsch is soaking this in, I hear grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff, grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff way off in the distance.

  Just like I had on Halloween.

  “Did you hear that?” I mouth to Casey.

  He looks at me like, Hear what? but I drop it because Officer Borsch is talking again. “Do you mind showing me the grave, anyway?” he asks Gordon. “I promised I’d at least take a look.”

  Gordon scuffs at the ground with his shoe. “I’d have to go through the records and see where it is. Why don’t you come back tomorrow and ask Courtney to look it up for you.” Then he adds, “But when it comes to wild tales about graves being robbed, you might want to consider the source … and the motive. We do know how to run this place without Mike Poe, regardless of what he may like to think.”

  “Uh, it’s getting kind of late,” Teddy says. “Do you want me to start on that grave, or wait for tomorrow?”

  “Burial’s not until Thursday so tomorrow morning’s fine,” Gordon tells him. “Why don’t you just call it a day?” Then he says to Officer Borsch, “Hey, I appreciate your coming out. I hope you track down those kids. Courtney thinks it’s the same bunch. They were in costume on Halloween so all I can tell you is that there were five or six of ’em and they looked like they were somewhere between thirteen and sixteen. But Courtney’ll be able to do better than that.”

  So the three of them go back in the direction of the office, and the second they’re far enough away, Casey says, “What time is it?”

  Not having a cell phone, I do wear a watch. “Quarter to five,” I tell him.

  “I’ve got to get home!”

  “You want to go out the back gate?”

  “The one we came through on Halloween?”

  I nod. “It’ll be a lot faster, and there’s no way I want to risk Officer Borsch seeing us.”

  He’s all for that, but when we get to the gate I can tell he’s worrying about us being spotted together. “You go first,” he says.

  “You’re the one in a hurry. It’s fine. I’ll just wait right here for a few minutes before I leave.”

  “There’s no way.” He nudges his nose across the street. “You remember how Hoe Man Mike said he lived right across the street? Well, I’m not leaving you in here or anywhere near here alone.” He grabs my skateboard and backpack. “Go through and I’ll hand you your stuff.”

  I grin at him as I squeeze
through. “Hoe Man Mike?”

  He grins back. “Guess you’re rubbing off on me.” Then he kisses me through the gate and says, “Meet me tomorrow at Sassypants Station?”

  I laugh. “Sassypants Station?”

  He grins and passes me my things. “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be there!”

  So I hurry across Stowell, and I’m trucking along through neighborhoods, trying to get home as quick as possible, when I spot a little girl with her mother coming toward me on the sidewalk. They’re about half a block away, but what gives them away is the mountain of fur walking beside them.

  “Elyssa!” I call with a wave.

  “Sammy!” she squeals, and starts running.

  It’s a good thing her mother’s holding the leash, because their sheepdog, Winnie, is yanking hard to chase after Elyssa.

  When we meet up, I give Elyssa a hug and say, “Hi, Mrs. Keltner!” then sink my hands into the woolly monster’s fur and give her a tousle. “Wow,” I laugh. “She’s gotten so big!”

  Mrs. Keltner groans. “Don’t I know! And she’s not even a year.” She gives me a one-armed hug, too, and says, “How have you been? It’s been a while.”

  I nod. “Fine.” Then I tell her, “I’ve actually thought about you guys a lot lately.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve … I’ve run into Mike Poe a couple of times.”

  Mrs. Keltner’s eyes light up. “How is he? The last few times we’ve been there he hasn’t come out to see us.”

  I look down. “He doesn’t work there anymore.” “What? Why not? Is he all right?”

  I shrug. “From what I understand, he got fired.”

  “Fired?” She blinks like mad. “Why?”

  “Apparently he was making people uncomfortable.”

  “Mike was?” Elyssa asks. “But he’s the graveyard’s guardian angel.” She looks up at her mother. “Right, Mom?”

  Mrs. Keltner strokes her daughter’s hair. “That’s right, sweetheart.”

  Elyssa looks at her all wide-eyed. “You can’t fire a guardian angel … can you, Mom?”

  Mrs. Keltner and I both just stare at her a second, and then Mrs. Keltner wraps an arm around her and says, “No. No, you can’t.”

  I smile at Elyssa and tell her, “When I saw him, he said he still goes there to watch over things, even though he’s not officially working there.”