Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (5 page)

I throw my hands in the air. “If vampires were real, it would all make sense. But they’re
not.
” I turn to Marissa. “Everything’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about. He wasn’t a vampire. He was just … Well, I don’t know what he was doing there, but he wasn’t a vampire.”

Holly nods. “She’s right, Marissa. He was probably just an undertaker or something.”

I look at Holly. “What
is
an undertaker, anyway? Is that the guy who does the burying?”

Casey shakes his head. “I think the undertaker’s the guy who arranges everything. Like at a mortuary?”

“Then what’s a mortician?” I ask.

Casey shrugs. “I think it’s the same as the undertaker?”

“Okay … so maybe the guy with the car was setting up for a burial?”

Marissa squints at me.
“In the middle of the night?”

I shrug. “Maybe he’s a gravedigger? Maybe it’s one of those sensitive activities. You know—maybe people don’t like to
see
graves being dug? I mean, have
you
ever seen a grave being dug?”

“No! But … but …” She sputters for a minute, then crosses her arms and practically stomps a foot. “I can’t believe you guys dragged me through a graveyard with vampires in it!”

Now, while the rest of us have been trying to talk Marissa
down, Billy’s been slyly maneuvering behind her. He lifts his arms way high, cranks his eyelids wide, and then zooms in with a big, wide chomp to Marissa’s neck.

Marissa’s not shy about screaming. Marissa’s
never
been shy about screaming. But coming face to face with dangling spiders, or bloodied men in monster masks, or snarling, drooling, snapping dogs, or killer gang guys … none of that has
ever
made her scream like Billy’s little chomp on the neck.

“AAAAA​AAAaa​aaaaa​aaaaa​aaaaa​aaah!” she screamed, and then she saw it was Billy and started
pounding
on him. “Don’t you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER do that again!”

Billy was laughing and hiding behind his arms and his dangling candy sack, but Marissa got in some really solid slugs.

“That was just so
mean,
” she says with a pout.

Billy Pratt’s a hugger. He hugs everybody. Guys, girls, teachers, dogs … That’s just the way he is. So when he says, “Billy was a bad, bad boy,” and opens his arms for a hug, of course Marissa lets him hug her.

Only as soon as he gets in close, he attacks her neck again, making loud slurping noises, going, “Aaaah! Blood at last, blood at last” in a Transylvanian accent.

Marissa swats him away, but this time she can’t help laughing.

At this point we’ve pretty much relaxed about the Vampire and are back in Halloween mode. So when Holly says, “So are we going over to that haunted house, or
what?” everyone else goes, Oh, yeah—
that’s
where we were headed, and off we go in search of the haunted house.

Now, when it comes to people in Santa Martina decorating their houses, Halloween is like Christmas. You’ve got the neighborhoods that get way into it with everybody trying to outdo the guy next door, and then you’ve got the neighborhoods where it’s completely dark—nobody does anything.

People at school had been talking about the haunted house on the end of Feere Street for weeks, but since it was quite a ways from Hudson’s, I’d told myself that it was probably not worth going to—that if the goal was to get free candy, we’d be better off racing through neighborhoods where the houses were close together and not too big.

But as we reached the Feere Street cul-de-sac, I changed my mind. For one thing, the road was blocked off and there were big wooden signs on posts with black brushstroke letters reading
BEWARE, DEAD END, ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
, and
FEAR STREET
, so right away you got the feeling that you weren’t just walking down another street. You were
entering
something.

What was sort of messing with the mood, though, was this middle-aged guy standing across the street, shouting into a microphone, his voice blaring through a little speaker. “Jesus said, ‘Have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.’ Turn away! The God of
the Bible is the God of the living, not the God of the dead! Do not celebrate rites dedicated to the dead! Serve the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not he who has blinded them!”

“Man, that’s annoying,” Holly says.

Marissa stares across the street at him. “I can’t believe people still think dressing up for Halloween is serving the devil.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I grumble, and instead of “turning away,” we escape the sermon by going down Feere Street.

Right away I notice that there are no cars anywhere—not in the driveways or parked on the curb—not one. What there
are
lots of are skeletons and tombstones and witches and ghosts.

Purple lights and orange lights and
black
lights.

Dry ice smoking away behind bushes and in cauldrons!

Jack-o’-lanterns and hissing cats and red-eyed mummies!

And spiderwebs.

Spiderwebs
everywhere
.

The farther we go, the darker and creepier it gets. There’s a soundtrack for the whole neighborhood, with eerie creaking and cackling noises and random, heart-stopping screeches. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, because it’s just … everywhere, and getting louder and louder the deeper into the neighborhood we get.

“This is
awesome,
” Marissa whispers, but I notice that she’s latching onto Billy’s arm.

The whole thing
is
awesome. I feel like a stupid tourist
with my jaw dangling and my eyes sweeping around, taking it all in. “It’s even spookier than the real graveyard!”

Marissa shoots me a look. “Not!”

Just then a lightning bolt streaks through the sky in front of us as a loud
crack
shakes the neighborhood.

“Wow!” I gasp, because even though I know it’s a light and sound show, it lights up the house at the end of the street.

The haunted house.

“Did you
see
that?” Billy squeals. “Come on!”

So we don’t even bother to do any trick-or-treating. We just hurry straight down to the end of the cul-de-sac.

Straight to the haunted house.

And, it turns out, straight into another scary heap of trouble.

First I smell the cigarette.

Then I recognize her.

“Oh, brother,” I grumble, which is kinda ironic because I happen to be holding hands
with
her brother.

“What’s wrong?” Casey asks.

When I get nervous, my hands sweat. I hate it, but that’s what they do. And of course seeing Heather always puts me on red alert.

Red alert. Yeah, right. That would be a pretty good pun because that backstabbing, two-faced, conniving witch
has
red hair, but at the moment it isn’t showing. At the moment it’s buried under the layers of a long black wig.

Unlike the rest of her, which isn’t covered by much, let me tell you. She’s wearing shiny black boy shorts over black fishnet stockings, and high-heeled black boots. The shirt—if you can call it that—is low cut
and
high cut, ending above her belly button, and has long black bell-shaped sleeves and a pointy red stand-up collar.

So yeah, she’s trying to be some sort of she-vampire, but really, she looks like she should be dancing on a pole somewhere.

She’s with her wannabe friends, Tenille and Monet, who are trying way too hard to look cool in their vampire capes and three-inch eyelashes, and she’s flirting with two older guys dressed up as rockers—silver chains, boots, spiked hair—you know the type.

Anyway, seeing Heather makes me break out in a cold sweat because, even though she’s had it in for me for over a year, she’s become especially insane toward me since her brother and I got together. And it’s bad enough to have sweaty hands on your own, but when you’re holding hands with someone else?

That’s just
embarrassing
.

So when Casey asks, “What’s wrong?” I slip—or more like
slurp
—my hand out of his and wipe it on my tattered shirt. “Your sister’s here.”

He looks around. “Heather is? Where?”

“Right over there,” I whisper, because she’s only about twenty feet away, standing off to the side of the dirt driveway that leads up to the haunted house.

“Where?”

Just then Marissa and Holly grab me and whisper, “Is that
Heather
?”

“Where?”
Casey asks again, so I nod at the bloodsucker convention and say, “Right
there
. In the fishnets.”

Heather turns her head to blow out cigarette smoke, and when she sees us staring and realizes who we are, she freezes. Then Tenille and Monet see us and their faces immediately go, Uh-oh.

For a second it’s like time stands still. Then, without flinching a muscle, Heather drops her cigarette.

It’s sly.

Controlled.

Like, cigarette? What cigarette?

She doesn’t even bother to grind it out with her boot.

Without moving my lips, I ask Casey, “She doesn’t know you know she smokes?”

“I
didn’t
know.”

I want to say, You didn’t? Where have you been? but then he says, “And she sure didn’t look like that when she left the house.”

I kinda shrug. “Uh, neither did you?”

“Yeah, but she was dressed as Red Riding Hood.”

“
Heather
was?” Then under my breath I say, “She’s more like the Big Bad Wolf.”

“And she told Mom she was going to a party at Tenille’s house.”

Now, I may not believe in vampires, but all of a sudden there’s another streak of lightning and crack of thunder, and if eyes could flash red, Heather’s did. She marches over and gets right in Casey’s face. “If you narc, you are so dead, you hear me?”

Billy laughs. “He’s already dead, can’t you see that?”

Heather ignores him and tries to stare Casey down, but Casey just shakes his head and holds her gaze. “You’re an embarrassment.”

“No,
you’re
an embarrassment. You’re a dweeb and you hang out with dweeby losers.”

Their eyes stay locked for another few seconds, and then Casey steps around her and heads over to Heather’s little pack of friends.

“Hey!” she calls. “Where are you going?”

But Casey just keeps on walking, and when he gets to her group, he tells the rocker guys, “She’s thirteen. You got that? Thirteen.”

Their eyelinered eyes bug out and they look at each other like, Whoa. Then one of them says, “Thanks, man,” and they both glance at Heather like, We are so out of here, and take off.

“I hate you!” Heather screams in Casey’s face. “Stay out of my business! Stay out of my life!”

“I’d like to,” he tells her, “but when you see a toxic spill, it’s kind of your duty to try and contain it.”

“What?” she screeches at him.

“You’re toxic, Heather. You need, like, caution tape all around you.”

“Yeah? Well you need caution tape all over your mouth!”

Casey just rolls his eyes and walks away.

She grabs him and says, “I’m serious. If you narc, I will kill you!”

Casey stops and turns to face her. And real calmly he says, “You’ll kill me. Really.”

Heather goes a little shifty-eyed, then snarls, “Narc and find out.”

He stares at her a minute, then walks away.

“Do you want to leave?” I whisper, because I don’t know if he’s mad, or shocked, or embarrassed, or maybe a combination of all of those, but I can tell he’s pretty upset.

He shakes his head. “No. Come on. Let’s go.”

So we start toward the haunted house, and as we’re
walking along, Billy says, “It must totally
bite
to have her as a sister,” and does his best vampire look.

Casey snorts and says, “Well, it definitely sucks.”

Billy laughs. “Dude, we need to get you some garlic.”

“And some holy water,” Marissa adds, and then Holly says, “And a silver dagger,” and I throw in, “And a blowtorch.”

“A blowtorch?” Marissa asks me.

“Aren’t vampires supposed to be afraid of fire?”

“Oh, yeah,” she says like she can’t quite believe she forgot this valuable piece of vampire-repelling information. She turns to Casey. “Sammy’s right. No little candle is going to keep her back. You need a blowtorch.”

“Or maybe just a lock on your door?” I say.

He laughs. “Now
that’s
a good idea.”

So we head up the driveway and the more distance we put between us and Heather, the better things get—which must be a law of physics or something, because no matter where on earth you are, it’s always true.

Plus, there’s now lots of decorations to distract us. The dirt driveway we’re walking on is horseshoe-shaped—it curves up to the house, then curves back down to the street—and the yard that’s on the inside of the horseshoe has awesome decorations. There are classic, arched-top tombstones, full-sized coffins, and giant spiders dangling in massive webs from the branches of a tree.