Always October (2 page)

So I sat down beside him.

Jake lifted his head, glanced at me, then put his head back down. He continued crying, only a bit softer. Finally he stopped, sat up straight, wiped his face, and whispered, “Thanks.”

That was all he said before he got up and walked away.

Even so, things were different after that, and we both knew it.

It started slowly. Jake and I walk to school and the fastest route for both of us is the dirt road through the center of the cemetery. Afternoons I started waiting for him at the cemetery gate. He didn't seem to mind, and pretty soon we started walking home together directly from school. We got teased, of course … the usual “Oooh, Jacob loves Lily!” kind of crap, but it wasn't too bad.

After we had been doing this for about a week, Jacob said out of the blue, “Why does your grandfather hate me?”

“He doesn't hate you!”

“Then how come he yells at me whenever he sees me in the cemetery?”

I frowned. “Okay, I guess he does
act
like he hates you. I don't know why.” To change the subject, I turned to something I had been wanting to get off my chest. “Um … about that ‘marry you' thing in second grade. That must have been pretty embarrassing. I'm sorry.”

Jake smiled. “Yeh, I got teased about it a lot. Now I get teased about other stuff, by everyone
but
you. So I guess we're even.”

Relief!

After that things were easier between us, especially when we discovered that we both like monster movies and horror stories. We started to swap books. One day he made my head explode by handing me a stack of novels by Arthur Doolittle.

“He's my favorite writer!” I cried. “I've always thought it was cool that you had the same last name.”

“Of course I have the same last name. He was my grandfather!”

I went a little spazzo then, but Jake shrugged like it was no big deal.

“What happened to him, anyway?” I asked. “I've never been able to find out why he wrote so many great books and then just stopped.”

Jake frowned. “Neither has anyone else. Arthur disappeared—”

“You call him Arthur?”

Jake's face hardened. “He just took off on the family about twenty-five years before I was born. I never met him, and I sure don't think of him as ‘Grampa'—not after he abandoned my dad that way.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He shrugged again. “Family legend says he had been acting crazy for a few years. Then one day he was just … gone. Supposedly he left a note, but I've never seen it.”

After a while we started a book club and made a hideout in one of the mausoleums, which are these cool stone buildings in the rich people's part of the cemetery. They store the bodies above ground (in coffins, of course) instead of burying them.

We cleaned up inside, then made a library, both of us donating books and comics. The real gems came from Jacob, because his grandfather not only wrote horror stories and novels, he also collected them. Jacob didn't bring any hardcovers, but he contributed several paperbacks, including my all-time favorite Arthur Doolittle book,
A World Made of Midnight
. This was the story where he first described the monster world that he called Always October. It was also the book that made him famous. Most of the books he wrote afterward featured Always October in some way, but
Midnight
was always my favorite. I had read it about a dozen times.

Because the air in mausoleums tends to be damp, we kept the books sealed in plastic bags to protect them. Also, Jacob created a file card system to make sure that we knew exactly what we had.

When I asked him why he was so organized, he blushed and said, “Makes me feel safer.”

I thought about it, and figured I understood.

After that day we talked about more personal stuff. We're almost through sixth grade now, and pretty much best friends.

The day Little Dumpling arrived, Jake and I were in the mausoleum-clubhouse talking about the biggest problems in our lives. At that moment it was Jacob's third-quarter report card.

“You got an
F
in math?” I asked, staring at the horrible grade in amazement. “How did you manage that? You're brilliant at math!”

He shrugged. “Brilliant at math, not so brilliant at homework.”

I knew that the real problem was he spent so much time trying to get his papers perfect that he rarely managed to finish them.

I looked at him sternly. “This is serious, Jacob. I don't want to have to do seventh grade without you!”

“Ouch!”

“Sorry, but that's where things are heading. I would take it as a personal favor if you would at least
try
to pass.”

“I
am
trying! I just …”

His words trailed off, and his eyes grew wide.

I didn't have to ask why. I had heard it too.

L
ily is such a brat! She knew if she stopped there, I wouldn't be able to resist picking up the story. But she's right. We really should get this written down before my first transformation.

So—what we heard just then was something scratching at the back wall of the mausoleum. Lily's eyes bugged when she caught the sound. I suppose mine did too, because it was super weird. To begin with, that wall is thick. Even if someone
was
scratching on it from the outside, we shouldn't have been able to hear it inside. Secondly, though we weren't hurting anything, we knew we weren't supposed to be in there. So the idea of getting caught was scary.

My fingers were counting off against my thumb, but I decided I should do the guy thing of being brave. So I shrugged and said, “Probably just a branch moving in the wind.”

“There
aren't
any branches back there,” Lily pointed out. “No trees or bushes at all. It's just lawn.”

Still trying to be brave, I said, “Should I go see what's doing it?”

She thought for a minute. I knew she was thinking because she was chewing the end of her right braid. Lily has long black hair that she keeps in two braids. The right one is her thinking braid. She saves the left one for when she's angry. When she starts chewing
that
one, I get nervous. Finally she said, “We'd better hide. It could be my grandfather. It would
not
be good for him to find us here.”

I nodded, and we scooted into the retreats we had worked out when we'd first made the place our clubhouse: a pair of spots on opposite sides of the building, each behind a low platform that held a coffin. When we had chosen the hidey-holes, they had been dusty and filled with cobwebs, and I had kind of freaked about how filthy they were. But after we cleaned them out, they weren't too bad.

Lily told me once that when she was in her hiding spot she would lie on her back, fold her arms over her chest, and pretend she was a corpse. I suppose when your best friend is the gravedigger's granddaughter and her nickname is “Weird Lily,” you have to expect such things.

As for me, I preferred to crouch in a position that would let me leap up and run. The problem with this was that my knees would begin to hurt after a few minutes. Fortunately, the scratching stopped before my legs got too sore.

Lifting my head so I could see over the coffin, I called softly, “I think it's okay.”

Lily popped up on her side of the room and glanced toward the back wall. Her eyes grew wide. Without saying a thing, she pointed.

I saw it at once: a circle on the wall, about a foot wide, that seemed to be glowing. It was dim, and you had to look twice to be sure it was really there. Even so, it was pretty freaky.

“Maybe just a shiny spot on the stone that we never noticed before?” I ventured, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice.

“I don't think so,” said Lily. She stepped from behind the coffin, went to the wall, and pressed her hand against it. Without turning, she motioned for me to join her. “Does this feel warm?” she whispered.

I touched the spot. It didn't feel that warm to me, but to be sure I walked to the east wall and pressed my hand against that one. Definitely cooler! I returned to the back wall and tried again. Lily shook her head. “It's gone now.”

“Are you playing with my mind?” I demanded.

I still hadn't forgotten the time she had convinced me that some nights she slept in the mausoleum.

“No mind games!” she said, pulling the ends of her braids so that they crossed over her heart—her way of saying she is being totally honest. “I'm just trying to figure out what's going on. Let's go look from the other side.”

Lily went first, in case it
had
been her grandfather. After she had checked, she gave the all-clear signal and I followed her to the back of the mausoleum. The outside wall was blank and unmarked.

I knelt to study the grass. “No sign of it being stepped on,” I said.

Lily shook her head. “Okay, that was really strange.”

“Which probably means you liked it!”

She grinned. “Of course!” Then her face grew solemn again. “Even so, I want to know what was doing it.”

My reply was interrupted by a rumble of thunder. I glanced up. The sky had gotten dark. “I'd better get going. The storm is going to hit soon, and Mom will be mad if I come in wet.”

“The real storm is going to be over that report card,” said Lily.

I shuddered. The thought of showing my mom that
F
was far more frightening than hanging out in a mausoleum with Weird Lily Carker and hearing mysterious scratchings on the back wall.

As it turned out, Mom didn't get angry. That would have been unpleasant, but better than what actually happened, which was that she started to cry. Not wailing sobs or anything. She just sat and stared at the report card until tears rolled down her cheeks.

I really,
really
wished she would just yell at me and get it over with.

Finally she put the card on the table—we were in the kitchen—and left the room. I sat where I was, feeling like a steaming pile of dog poo. Or, more precisely, what a steaming pile of dog poo would feel like if it also felt miserable and frightened.

After a while I sighed and started up the back stairs. Front or back, going upstairs takes some time, since I have to touch three important spots along the wall to do it. I can't explain why this is. It's just that ever since Dad went off on a caving expedition and never came back, I have to do certain things. If I skip them, my gut gets tight and I feel sick and scared. The only way to make the feeling go away is to go back and start over again.

The upstairs hall is lined with portraits of my ancestors, including a painting of Tia LaMontagne, my sort-of grandmother. Tia had been married to Arthur Doolittle for a few years, then mysteriously disappeared. That's why I call her my sort-of grandmother: though she was married to my grandfather, she's not my father's mother.

Tia was a painter, and the second floor of the tower used to be her studio. It's a guest room now, though we haven't had any guests since Dad disappeared. A door in that room leads to the third level of the tower, which is where my grandfather had his writing office. I'd never been up there. It's locked, and according to my father, his mother threw away the key after Arthur abandoned them.

Tia was far and away the most beautiful of my relatives, but in such an odd way that the picture gave me the creeps. Even so, sometimes I would stop and stare at it. Unlike the other portraits, this was set outdoors. Dressed in a black gown, Tia sits in front of a large tree, her legs folded to the side. The ground is covered with brilliantly colored leaves, hidden in places by strands of mist. Tia's hair, redder than the most scarlet of the leaves, tumbles over her shoulders like a river of flame, reaching nearly to her waist. Her right hand, lifted to shoulder level, points toward the enormous full moon that floats over her right shoulder. Her left hand rests in her lap, thumb and little finger folded under.

Three details make the picture particularly strange. First, it's set in the cemetery; behind her are tombstones and a mausoleum.