Spotted Dog Last Seen

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

  “What section are you going to study next?” I asked Merrilee.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said, turning away.

  She took off her jacket, laid it on the soggy ground, then plopped down and rested her back against the headstone with the carved butterfly. She opened The Case of the Waylaid Water Gun to where she had inserted a well-worn playing card — the Queen of Spades wearing a hand-drawn pair of glasses — and began to read.

  “How are you going to get out of the quiz this time?” I asked point blank.

  I did nothing to hide my bitterness.

  “You’ll see,” she said dismissively, licking her index finger to flip a page. She didn’t bother to look up.

  “I’m going to head back,” I reported, but Merrilee was already lost in her book, dead set on solving the next secret code.

  I decided to make my way closer to the iron gate where Pascal was still flashing his mirror. I took an inventory of the symbols along the way to test myself. Weeping willow. Skull and crossbones. Crown. Dove. Urn. Skull and crossbones. Trumpet. Angel. Skull and crossbones. Grapevine. Candle. Wreath. Shell.

  Then I came across a carved stone lamb. I froze. I had seen a lamb before, I was sure of it. But I couldn’t think of where. Suddenly, the ground wobbled, and I had to grab a nearby grave marker to steady myself. I tried to call out, but I had no voice. The colors drained around me, and everything turned to black and white. Even the birds stopped singing. What was happening?

  I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  I screamed.

  “Whoa,” Pascal said. “Jumpy or what?”

  Instead of feeling relief, I filled with rage. “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again!”

  Even as I shouted, I knew I was overreacting. I turned away and bent over to take some deep breaths. Merrilee popped up from her hiding spot in the distance to see what was the matter.

  “Sorry,” Pascal said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I’m not scared,” I barked back, probably sounding terrified. “I just don’t like being sneaked up on, that’s all.”

  I glanced at Pascal. He stood holding his stack of books, his knapsack at his feet. I was dead certain he could hear my heart pounding from where he stood, and I thought he was going to make fun of me. I braced for it.

  “Want to quiz each other on symbols before the Brigade gets back?”

  I paused. There wasn’t a trace of meanness in his voice. He really did want to work on our assignment. Maybe he couldn’t hear my pounding heart after all.

  “Sure,” I said, grateful that the colors in the cemetery had returned and that Merrilee had sat back down.

  We found a nearby bench and laid the books on symbolism between us. Pascal started by opening up one of his and pointing to a picture of a headstone, while I told him what I thought the symbol meant. We went back and forth like that until Pascal grew bored and completely changed the subject.

  “They’ve picked the locker for the time capsule,” he announced, as he stretched his arms.

  “Really?” I said.

  The time-capsule program has been going on at Queensview Elementary for even longer than community service duty. Every seven years, someone in grade six gets picked to turn his or her locker into a time capsule at the end of the school year.

  “Whose locker?” I asked.

  “Marcus Papadopoulos’s.”

  Marcus was in my science class, and he recently got top marks for the ant farm project he had made out of old plastic jewel cases, aluminum foil and duct tape. Not a single ant escaped, much to our disappointment.

  “Wonder what he’ll leave in his locker,” I mused.

  “If it were me,” Pascal said, “I’d leave my collection of Phentex slippers.”

  “What kind of slippers?”

  “Phentex. It’s a type of yarn that never ever wears out, believe me. Stronger than tombstone marble, that’s for sure. My grandmother knits me a pair for my birthday every year. I must have a hundred pairs by now.” Pascal closed his book. “What would you leave?”

  I took a minute to answer. It was a tough question. We had been told that time capsules usually contain items such as school supplies, photographs, journals and books. Sometimes clothing is left in them. Or seeds. Or small gadgets. I would want to put in things that said a lot about me, but that I wouldn’t miss. The thing about the school’s time-capsule program is that you don’t get the items back. The locker gets locked and a plaque is placed on it. Then it stays sealed, only to be reopened fifty years later.

  “I might put in a collection of t-shirts with my favorite sayings,” I said, pointing to the one I was wearing about footprints on the moon.

  Pascal was eyeing my t-shirt when something else caught his attention behind me.

  “Here they come,” he warned under his breath.

  I looked. The Brigade had marched their way past the iron gate and were headed straight to our section. We stood.

  “Merrilee!” Pascal called.

  Merrilee got up, saw what was happening and gathered her belongings.

  “Quiz time,” Creelman announced. “Put the books away.”

  “Actually,” Merrilee replied, having just joined the group, “Loyola asked me to remind you that we’ll need to return the books early today. A genealogy tour group is dropping by the library this afternoon to have a look at them. That’s why I stacked mine ready to go near the gate.”

  I gave Merrilee a suspicious look. She had failed to mention any of this to me when we talked about her mystery novel with the handwritten secret code or her inexplicable dislike of butterflies.

  “That’s right, the tour,” Creelman said, his eyebrows crowding together. “I forgot it was scheduled for today.”

  “I could return everyone’s books right now if you like,” Merrilee offered helpfully.

  Did she just give me a wink?

  “Good idea,” Creelman said. “In the meantime, we’ll quiz the rest of the group.”

  The rest of the group? I looked at Pascal, and Pascal looked at me.

  Merrilee collected our books and practically skipped away, whistling a cheerful tune.

  “Follow me,” Creelman ordered, and we did.

  Reluctantly.

  He worked his way from gravestone to gravestone, pointing to various carvings with his cane.

  “What does this mean?” he demanded periodically.

  “Liberty.”

  “Cycle of life.”

  “Eternal sleep.”

  “Passage of time.”

  “End of the family line.”

  “Triumph over death.”

  “Fallen soldier.”

  “Dawn of life.”

  “Victory.”

  “Hope.”

  Hope was my favorite — a winged angel kneeling beside a ship’s anchor.

  And I had to admit that between the two of us, Pascal and I had become pretty good with symbols.

  But Creelman was not the type to hand out gold stars. He barely nodded with each right answer before immediately striding to the next gravestone, determined to trip us up. Finally, Wooster warned Creelman about the time by pointing to his pocket watch. It was getting late.

  “Fine,” Creelman said, glaring at us as if it was our fault.

  We made our way back to the iron gate.

  “See you boys next week,” Creelman said grudgingly.

  The Brigade marched one way down the street. Pascal vamoosed in the opposite direction.

  I lingered at the gate for a few minutes, expecting to see Merrilee pop out of the library any minute, now that the coast was clear.

  Instead, a busload of seniors pulled up to the curb, blocking my view. I watched as they climbed off the bus, while Loyola charged down the library steps to greet them. I could hear her l
aughter even from where I stood.

  I turned back to look at the rows of markers. From this distance, all the symbols we had carefully memorized had disappeared. The gravestones now looked the same, an endless gray sea, patiently marking time. It was only up close that the stones could whisper their stories to anyone who’d listen.

  And then I remembered the grave marker that had given me such a shock — the one with the carved lamb. I scanned the cemetery to see if I could spot its location, but that marker remained hidden among the silent stony crowd.

  What was it about the lamb? What did it mean? Where had I seen it before? My stomach lurched. There could only be one place — the cemetery at Ferndale.

  Ferndale was the nearby town where we had lived when I was little. It was where the accident with the orange rubber ball had happened, the accident that had been giving me nightmares ever since then, the accident that had ended just like all the stories ended at Twillingate Cemetery.

  My mouth went dry.

  Three

  _____

  Mapping Plots

  HERE’S HOW I get by. I bury thoughts I don’t want to deal with deep inside and store them in a place that I pretend looks like my dad’s garage workshop. It’s a real mess in there — half-finished projects abandoned and piled in the corners, workbenches covered in assorted hand tools that rarely make it back to the toolbox, overflowing garbage cans, and bent nails scattered across the floor. But my dad believes that the mess magically disappears whenever he shuts the garage door.

  That’s what I have — a garage door. I just have to remember to keep it shut.

  Only every once in a while, I accidentally leave the door open. When that happens, nothing is hidden.

  Last night, I had the nightmare again. It started and ended the exact same way, no matter how much I wanted to change it.

  I am sitting on the front steps eating a popsicle, checking out a scab on my knee. The cement is warm beneath me. I can smell fresh grass. The lawn has just been cut, and my dad rolls his mower to the backyard. A screen door squeaks, and it is Dennis from the brick house beside us. I wave. He has an orange rubber ball.

  No!

  I’m not going to do this now.

  I pull on the garage door with all my might and it slams shut.

  This time.

  It was Wednesday afternoon again. Another blue-sky day. Merrilee stood waiting by the iron gate in her red plastic bunnies-and-carrots jacket, and as soon as she spotted me, she rifled through her knapsack to show me something.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a book.

  “Hello, Merrilee,” I replied. “I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

  “No time for that,” she said. “Check this out before the Brigade gets here.”

  I read the title of her book. To Catch a Bicycle Thief.

  “Let me guess. There’s a secret code handwritten on the dedication page.”

  “Hurry up and look,” Merrilee said.

  Sure enough, there was a penciled list of seven words in the margin. Same funny letter a’s: tortoise, gargoyle, birdbath, cherub, chimes, fountain, dory.

  “The last mystery book was fantastic. I could hardly put it down. It led me to this title, which looks just as good.”

  I read the blurb on the back cover out loud.

  “‘A book with so many plot twists, you’ll be tied up in knots.’”

  I liked plot twists.

  I opened to chapter 1 and read the first line to her.

  “‘The sun made shadows on the face of the moon that were so deep, they could trip an astronaut.’”

  Trip-able shadows. I liked that, too.

  “Not bad,” I admitted. “Maybe I’ll read it when you’re done.”

  She rifled through her knapsack again and pulled out two more library copies of the same book, just as Pascal joined us.

  “What do you have there?” he asked.

  “Books with the latest code,” said Merrilee.

  “Right. The secret code,” Pascal said. “You still don’t know who’s behind this?”

  “No. But I’m getting closer. Do you want a copy?”

  “To Catch a Bicycle Thief,” Pascal read. Then he flipped to the dedication page that contained the secret code. “Seven words,” he said. “Shouldn’t be that hard.”

  “And there are plot twists,” I added.

  “Okay, why not. I’m in,” Pascal said.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  I put my copy into my knapsack. If I woke up from the nightmare again tonight, at least I would have something interesting to read.

  “Here they come,” I said, having glanced up to see the Brigade parading across the street from the library, with Creelman in the lead.

  As he marched along, Creelman jabbed his cane at a mail truck that had pulled up too close to the crosswalk for his liking.

  “Maybe we’re actually going to fix some gravestones today like the sign-up sheet promised,” Pascal said.

  “Not likely,” I said when I saw who was pulling up the rear. “Wooster’s holding clipboards.”

  “How many more weeks of this?” Pascal lamented.

  “Ten,” Merrilee chirped. “But at least now you’ve got something to read as soon as they leave.”

  “Oh, sure! Reading’s okay for you,” I said. “But have you noticed that Pascal and I keep getting hit with quizzes?”

  “No,” Merrilee said dryly. “I’ve been too busy reading.”

  Then we all clammed up because the Brigade had arrived.

  “Good afternoon,” Creelman said, but I was sure he didn’t mean it. “Ready for Lesson 3?”

  “Are we going to fix gravestones today?” Pascal asked against all odds.

  Why? Why did he do that? Pascal knew there was no chance of repairing today. He could see the clipboards as well as I could. Good grief!

  Creelman didn’t answer. Instead, he marched over to a nearby stone and pointed to it with his cane.

  “Today’s three simple rules,” he announced. “One, you must never repair a grave marker if you don’t know what type of stone it is. Two, you must never repair a grave marker unless you can identify the parts of the stone that you need to repair. Three, you must never repair a grave marker unless you can map out where it is in the cemetery to make a record of what you’ve done.”

  Types, parts, maps. I imagined another deadly long afternoon ahead of me.

  “This,” Creelman said, tapping a nearby stone, “is sandstone. As you can see, it’s reddish brown. Great for carving, but crumbles over time.” He moved to another stone that was much thinner. “This is slate. It’s blue gray, but it’s brittle and can peel in layers. These two types of stones are found in the oldest parts of our cemetery. They came from nearby quarries.”

  “Over there,” he said, waving his cane in the direction of a cluster of whiter stones. “Marble. You already know that marble is soft, so it’s great for sculpture, but erosion takes its toll. Over time, the surface becomes grainy, like sugar. Do you know what that’s called?”

  We shook our heads. Even Pascal.

  “Sugaring. You’ll also find white bronze, which is really a metal called zinc. Those markers never seem to age. Even lichen stays away. And way over there in the north end, past the first hedgerow, are the granites. Granite is speckled and very hard to carve by hand. Nowadays, lasers are used to etch images into the stone. You’ll find granite in the newer parts of the cemetery.”

  I could see the polished pink and black stones in the distance. They were lined up more precisely than the markers in the section we were standing in.

  “Where are the white crosses?” Pascal asked.

  Creelman stared at him.

  “You know, the ones made out of wood, like you see in cowboy movies,” Pascal explained. He held up his two pointer fingers a
nd crossed them, as if he were fending off a vampire.

  Merrilee did not look amused, possibly because vampires ran in her family.

  “This isn’t a pioneer cemetery,” Creelman growled, “but if you’re really interested, go to Ferndale. Their cemetery has a pioneer section close to three hundred years old.”

  Ferndale. I clutched my knapsack. I could not hear their next words because I was struggling to keep my garage door shut.

  “Derek! Are you coming?”

  I snapped to. The Brigade had moved off to another section, Merrilee in tow. Pascal stood halfway between them and me.

  “You okay?” he asked in a voice that told me I looked like death warmed over.

  “Sure,” I lied.

  But my hair was sticking to my forehead. I fished out my water bottle from my knapsack and took a big swig before we rejoined the Brigade.

  “Did you hear that last bit?” Creelman demanded as soon as we caught up.

  “No,” I muttered, feeling foolish and sweating all over again.

  “I said that there are three basic shapes of gravestones. Upright, flat and obelisk.”

  Even as I struggled to pay attention, I glanced around to see if the carved lamb was anywhere near me.

  It wasn’t.

  “Let’s start with the uprights. The main part is called the tablet. The tablets from our oldest stones usually have some kind of curved top that’s meant to look like a door to the other side.”

  Pascal took a step toward one.

  Don’t do it, Pascal, I thought as loudly as I could. Don’t do it!

  But to no surprise, he couldn’t read my mind. He walked around to the back of a nearby upright grave marker, looking for who knows what behind that door. Creelman ignored him. He was getting good at it.

  “The top curved part is called the lunette. These stones also have side pillars, or borders, to frame the door, like you see in churches and temples. At the top of the pillars you’ll see circular finials. The last part is the face of the gravestone. That’s where you’ll find the inscription, the place where the name and dates are recorded.”