Spotted Dog Last Seen

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

  He cleared his throat to recite.

  “Stranger stop and cast an eye. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you will be. Remember Death and follow me.”

  “Yikes,” I said, shifting in my vinyl seat. It made a grumbling sound.

  “Did I show you the epitaph at the cemetery with all the letters carved upside down?”

  “No,” I said. “Not yet. What happened?”

  “Many early carvers couldn’t read. They just carved whatever was written out for them. That’s why symbols were important. Everyone could read symbols.”

  “Oh. So the stone carver copied out the words with the paper upside down and didn’t notice,” I said.

  Creelman nodded. Then he stopped nodding.

  “This wasn’t my idea,” he said.

  “Pardon me?” I asked.

  “That’s another funny epitaph in the book. It reads, This wasn’t my idea.”

  “That is funny. Famous Last Words sounds like a good book,” I admitted.

  “There’s a copy in the library,” Creelman said.

  “Maybe I’ll sign it out,” I said, and I meant it.

  “Or you can borrow mine,” Creelman offered. His scowl softened.

  That caught me off guard. Was Creelman being nice?

  “Why are you yawning?” he demanded, scowl returning full-force.

  “Am I?” I said, yawning. “I guess I’m tired.”

  “I’m tired, too,” Creelman said. “That’s because I’m old. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I didn’t get a good sleep last night.”

  “Why not?”

  I shifted in my seat again. More grumbling sounds. I didn’t like where this conversation was headed.

  “I had a nightmare,” I admitted.

  Where was the waitress with our food?

  “A nightmare? What about?”

  “A cemetery.”

  “A cemetery!” Creelman scoffed. “Don’t tell me you think there are ghosts, etcetera, at the cemetery!”

  “No! It’s not like that at all,” I insisted.

  “Good. Because there are no ghosts, just so you know.”

  “I know that,” I said. I could feel my cheeks burning.

  “No ghosts. No vampires. No zombies.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “No phantoms. No ghouls. No werewolves.”

  “Right,” I said, but I wondered if he might change his mind after spending more time with Merrilee.

  Creelman scowled at me for a full minute while I stared at the swinging doors to the kitchen, willing the waitress to reappear.

  No luck. I looked back at Creelman.

  “Still. People can be haunted,” he admitted, his face softening again.

  “What do you mean? You just said there are no ghosts.”

  “People can be troubled by past events. They’re haunted because of things not resolved.”

  “Things not resolved?” I repeated.

  “Here we are,” the waitress said, doors swinging in her wake. She set down our beverages, then moved to the next table.

  I took a long drink of chocolate milk through my straw.

  Creelman was wrong. Sure, what happened to Dennis bothered me. It bothered me practically every night. But there was nothing to resolve. I knew perfectly well how that terrible story ended.

  Creelman stirred a big dollop of cream into his coffee and poured in the sugar. He set his spoon down.

  “So, what’s haunting you?” he asked, raising his mug to his mouth.

  I don’t know if it was because of the friendly waitress, or the tasty smells in the cafe, or the fact that I had been caught spying on Creelman, but I felt a confession welling from deep inside. My garage door started to roll open, letting a shaft of sunlight stretch across the unswept cement floor.

  In an unexpected rush of words, I blurted, “There was an accident.”

  “When?” Creelman asked.

  “I was only little,” I answered.

  “What happened?”

  “We were playing. Me and a friend.”

  “Playing?” Creelman repeated.

  “My friend had an orange rubber ball.”

  “I see,” Creelman said. He took a slow sip of coffee.

  And then Creelman disappeared, because in my mind’s eye, I heaved my garage door wide open and light shone into all four corners. Then I found myself back in Ferndale on the lawn at our house with the new trees, a fresh popsicle stick in my pocket and the lawnmower whining in the backyard. I described the scene.

  “It’s hot out. Everyone else is inside. The ball is fun. My friend kicks it to me. I miss. I keep missing. So does he. The ball is going everywhere. It’s tricky.”

  “Where are your parents?” came a voice.

  “Dad’s cutting the lawn in the backyard. The mower is noisy. Mom is inside lying on the couch. Her head hurts because of the heat. She has a bag of ice cubes around her neck.

  “But I have my friend to play with. I like him. He has a big collection of trucks and tractors in his backyard sandbox. They can dig and scoop. Once he let me take his dump truck home to play with, and I filled it with my whole marble collection.

  “Right now, we have the orange rubber ball. I miss again. It rolls under a bush by our front steps. When I crawl underneath to get it, I bump the scab on my knee and it starts bleeding. When I stand, bits of freshly cut grass are sticking to my legs. I pat down my pocket to make sure I still have the popsicle stick. I think about my plastic horses and the corral I am going to build.

  “‘You missed!’ my friend calls out between laughs. ‘You missed! You missed!’

  “‘I can’t see,’ I yell back. ‘The sun’s in the way.’

  “It is so hot out. There is no shade. The sun is coming down, and it is right in my face whenever I look over to where my friend is.

  “‘Kick it,’ he yells. ‘Kick it. It’s my turn.’

  “I put the orange ball down in front of me. The grass smells sweet. I stand back. Then I take a run at the ball and kick it as hard as I can.

  “Bam! Perfect hit! It soars over my lawn and my friend’s lawn, too. It soars over the sidewalk. It soars onto the street.

  “‘I’ll get it!’ he yells. He’s laughing.

  “I look for him, but the sun is still in the way. He turns to chase the ball, and now the sun is in his way, too. And because of the lawnmower, he doesn’t hear the car.

  “My friend runs.

  “Brakes squeal.

  “He flies backwards into the air, his arms reaching out to the car that has just hit him, his legs dangling. He crumples to the ground.

  “I hear sounds of a car door opening.

  “Cries for help.

  “The lawnmower stops.

  “Screen doors creak open along both sides of my street.

  “What is happening?

  “I make myself walk toward the empty car. My legs do not work well. My friend is lying near the curb. His eyes are open, but he is not moving. His head is in a puddle of blood. The puddle spreads. So much blood.

  “Someone pushes me aside as she rushes by.

  “His mom.

  “Then my dad.

  “Now a crowd surrounds my friend.

  “A man I do not know sits all alone on our lawn. He groans as he rocks back and forth, his head in his hands.

  “I hear sirens.

  “‘Derek!’

  “It is my mom.

  “‘I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.’

  “She keeps saying this and she hugs me hard. I cannot move. I cannot breathe. She carries me inside.

  “I throw up. My popsicle is all over my shirt. It sticks to me. She cleans me up, and I tell her that I’m cold. She wraps me in a blanket and l
ays me down on the couch.

  “‘I’m here,’ she tells me again and again, but she is crying.”

  “Two meat loaves,” our waitress chirped, sliding identical plates of meat with gravy, mashed potatoes and peas in front of Creelman and me.

  My living room dissolved and I was back in the cafe.

  Creelman and I ate in silence. When his plate was almost empty, he took a big gulp of coffee, then asked, “Did you go to the funeral?”

  I nodded with my mouth full. I don’t remember much about what happened in the days that followed the accident. But I can still smell the flowers, I can hear the choir music, and I can touch a lamb carved out of stone. In my mind, the stone is always cold, even in the summer.

  I finished my meat loaf and set down my fork. I placed my hands on my lap and was surprised by how steady they were. Normally, I would be shaking or sweating or both, having told the story to the very end. I folded my napkin and glanced at Creelman.

  Creelman had abandoned his meal and was staring intently out the window toward the cemetery, as if he had forgotten that I was even there. He slowly drummed his fingers on the table, balling up a napkin in his other hand.

  “Need a top-up?” the waitress asked when she came by with a pot of coffee.

  Creelman didn’t seem to hear her. He continued to stare in the direction of the cemetery, lost in his own thoughts.

  She hesitated, glanced at me, then filled his cup.

  “Give him a minute,” she said softly to me. “He always comes back.”

  Where does he go, I wanted to ask.

  It was then that I was certain he had a secret, too.

  We sat for several more minutes like that, him staring out the window at the cemetery, me wondering if I would ever get a good night’s sleep again.

  “Do you recall anything else?” Creelman finally asked when the waitress came by with the bill.

  I thought back and quietly poked around my mind’s garage, its door still wide open to passersby. Were there any details left to discover? Then it came to me.

  “I remember going to bed early the night of the accident. It was still light out. I could hear police officers talking to my parents in the living room, but I couldn’t make out their words. The fan in my room blew hot sticky air as I tossed and tossed. And then I woke up in the middle of the night. I crept out of my bedroom and unlocked the front door. It was eerie dark, but still warm. And quiet. I walked across our front yard to the street. Then I walked up and down the street under the burning lampposts that collected moths and hummed.”

  “Why do you think you did that?” Creelman asked.

  “I was looking for my friend. I walked and walked and only stopped when I came across the exact spot where he was hit.”

  “How did you know?”

  “The bloodstain.”

  Creelman rubbed his face and took another drink of coffee.

  I thought back some more.

  “It rained hard the next day, but the bloodstain never went away. Every time I came out of our house, I spotted it, and it froze me in my tracks. I finally said something to my mom, but she told me that she couldn’t see anything. I led her by the hand to the spot. I knelt right beside the stain and pointed. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘It’s right here.’”

  “She just sadly shook her head.

  “‘You’ll be okay’ was all she would say every time I brought it up. After a while, I didn’t talk about the stain, but I wouldn’t go out the front door anymore. I would only go in and out of the house through the back door and down the alley. I never played in the front yard again.”

  “And then what happened?” Creelman asked.

  “We moved away,” I said. “We moved here for a fresh start.”

  Creelman set down his mug. He took his time with his next question.

  “Derek. If you went back there now, to the street where the accident happened, what do you think you’d see?”

  “The bloodstain. It’s still there. I’m sure of it.”

  Six

  _____

  Rubbings

  WHEN I MET PASCAL and Merrilee the next week at the cemetery, I decided that I wouldn’t mention my lunch with Creelman. They would be full of questions, and because Creelman and I talked mostly about the accident, there wasn’t much to report other than that. Besides, my nightmares had become a regular event, and I was really tired of thinking about it.

  “I’ve asked everyone I know about Trevor Tower,” Pascal said as soon as I arrived. “Nobody’s heard of him.”

  “It’s all very strange,” Merrilee agreed, crossing her arms in her red plastic bunnies-and-carrots jacket.

  “A dead end,” I added, enjoying saying it at the cemetery gate.

  “You wish!” Merrilee snapped.

  She had no sense of humor whatsoever, despite the bunnies jacket.

  “Then what’s our next move?” I asked, still not convinced that tracking down a complete stranger and rummaging through his locker filled with secrets — if that’s what the codes in the mystery books meant us to do — was even remotely a good idea.

  Merrilee scanned the cemetery, as if looking for an answer among the silent gravestones.

  “We already know he’s not buried here,” Pascal said.

  “I know that,” Merrilee replied, fixing her gaze in the direction of the new section of the cemetery.

  I looked at Pascal and he looked at me. Is this when Merrilee would finally transform into a zombie or something?

  But no. Merrilee stayed Merrilee.

  “What’s wrong?” Pascal pressed, eyeing her suspiciously and taking a step closer to me.

  “Nothing,” Merrilee said, still staring at the new section with the precisely lined-up granite markers. “Just a feeling.” Her voice trailed off.

  Again, Pascal looked at me and I looked at Pascal. Then I gave him a quick nod, urging him to go ahead and ask.

  “Okay, Merrilee. What’s with all the spooky talk?” he demanded, taking my cue.

  I faced her, too, glad that one of us had finally spoken up.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Spooky talk,” Pascal repeated. He held his hands up and waved them in the air like a hovering ghost.

  “And you actually like being in a cemetery,” I added.

  “You two find me spooky?” she asked, pushing her glasses up on her nose.

  Awkward silence.

  “Do you?”

  “Kind of,” we each muttered, me scuffing at the lumpy ground.

  “Well good. That’s what I was going for,” she said brightly.

  Merrilee set her knapsack down and calmly unzipped it.

  I held my breath, expecting a colony of vampire bats to fly out, but no. She took out a library book instead and sat down with her back against the iron gate, dismissing both of us.

  But I wasn’t about to be dismissed so easily. Not again.

  “What are you reading now?” I asked.

  “Another mystery book.”

  “I thought we’d solved the last mystery book code,” I said, interrupting her some more.

  “We did. But I’ve discovered that I like mystery novels, with or without a code.”

  She paused.

  “Does that also make me spooky?”

  “No,” I admitted, realizing that I wouldn’t mind reading another mystery, just for the challenge of solving it. “Hey. Maybe I should make you a t-shirt that says, If reading’s no fun, you’re doing it wrong.

  “Good one,” she said flatly.

  She opened to where she had inserted her bookmark — the playing card with the Queen of Spades wearing a hand-drawn pair of glasses.

  “Where’d you get the card?” Pascal said, joining me in my game to keep her from her book.

  “I found it in a pape
rback I bought at a used book store. It’s one of my favorite discoveries. I’ve been using it ever since.” She didn’t look up from her book as she spoke, but her attempts to ignore us were futile.

  “Did you draw on the glasses?” I asked pleasantly.

  “No,” she said, pushing up her own pair on her nose. “Someone else did. That’s why I like it so much. It speaks to me.”

  Pascal mouthed the word spooky to me while she turned a page.

  “Aren’t you worried that you’ll forget to take it out when you return the book to the library?” I asked.

  “I might. But I know exactly where it would end up,” she said, refusing to take her eyes off her book.

  “Are you telling us that you can see into the future?” Pascal asked, elbowing me.

  “Sadly, no.”

  “But you just said ...”

  Merrilee cut Pascal off with a heavy sigh. She gave each of us a withering look.

  “It would end up on Loyola’s bulletin board at the library. Haven’t you seen it?”

  Pascal and I shook our heads.

  “She collects things that people have left tucked in library books and has a display of them behind her desk.”

  “What kind of things?” I asked.

  “You’d be surprised what people will use as bookmarks. Lottery tickets, love letters, greeting cards, travel tickets, old photographs, sketches, grocery lists, newspaper clippings, unpublished poetry, pressed four-leaf clovers.”

  “I just fold the corner of the page to mark where I am,” Pascal admitted.

  “Pascal!” I said. “What if everyone did that?”

  “No problem,” he said. “They’d just have to remember to unfold the corner when they’re done. Like I do.”

  I gave up and turned to Merrilee.

  “What’s the most interesting item Loyola has found?” I asked.

  Merrilee sighed again and closed her book. “Her favorite bookmark is a supply list for an expedition to a monastery in India. It’s written with a fountain pen on a type of paper that’s no longer made.”

  “Here comes the Brigade,” Pascal announced.

  Merrilee got to her feet, and we watched as Creelman, flanked by Wooster and Preeble, crossed the street. They made their way directly to the cemetery gate. This time each of them carried a plastic blue bin. They set the lidded bins down in front of us.