My Friends Are Dead People (2 page)

I wasn’t sure what to tell her, but I chose
to tell the truth. “It’s for the pain.”

“
What pain?”

“
What if I run into that
man and he hurts me? I don’t want to be in pain.”

“
Jess, stop it. I’m tired.
That man hasn’t shown up since you were six, and you said all he
did back then was take your school I.D. card, right? That's what
you told me.”

“
I know. What if I
forgot
a small detail
and he actually wanted to hurt me or kidnap me?”

“
Jess, you don't forget.
Neither of us do.”

“
I know. But they never
found him, Oz.”

“
No more, Jess. I’m
grounding you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out an
orange envelope. It looked old, with corners faded and bent and
dust embedded along the edges. “You see this? It’s very special to
me.”

She moved away from the window without
another word and walked along the front of the house. I could not
believe that she was blackmailing me with some envelope. I stuck my
head out of the window and called out after her.

“
Are you going to tell me
what it is?” She didn’t answer. I ran out of my room and met her in
the kitchen. “Oz, what’s inside that envelope?”

“
Jess, when you show me
that you’re ready, I’ll tell you.” She dropped the envelope into a
safety box, locked it, and placed it in the cupboard that always
had a padlock fastened to it.

“
Can you give me a clue?
Oz, please! Pretty please! Why do you always have to do this to me?
This is not normal for a parent. Tell me what’s inside.”

“
Someday.”

“
Someday? I can’t wait
that long.”

“
I have to punish you
somehow, Jess.
And
I want my jacket back.”

“
What? No.”

“
Yes.”

“
But . . . uhmm . . . it’s
at Katie’s. I left it there – I let her have – borrow it for
school.”

“
Jess, you know what that
jacket means to me. I gave the jacket to you, not Katie.” Oz paused
for a second and then said, “Please go to bed.”

I went into my bedroom and flopped on my
bed, thinking I was done for. I had to find her jacket. Katie would
never lie to Oz about something so serious. I got right back up and
re-packed my backpack with my new arsenal of tools and weapons and
once more tightened the straps. I peeked out of the window just in
case, eyeing light fog outside, then stepped over the windowsill
and hurried across the wet grass. Duma was already moving down the
sidewalk, glowering at his surroundings.

“
Duma, wait up! Where are
you—” Duma stuck his head into a patch of mud. “Stop messing
around!” I scolded him quietly. I ran over and picked him up. “Why
must you make everything so difficult? We’re searching for Oz’s
jacket! Not rodents! Okay? Look, if you stay with me, I’ll make you
lots and lots of coffee when we get back.”

Both of us hurried stiffly through the
chilly fog, which was thickening before our eyes, so we could only
see twenty feet in front of us. There was no way we could find the
jacket in this weather.

“
L-let’s g-go home,” I
trembled. Duma was up ahead, staring into the wall of fog. “We can
look for it to-tomorrow–”

My voiced croaked. Something touched my
leg.

“
Who are you?” said a
woman sitting cross-legged on a grassless dirt lawn. She slowly
picked herself up. She was short, chubby, dirty and smelled like
eggs. She was wearing three or four layers of clothes.

“
Duma!” I
shouted.

“
No, no, don’t shout,” she
ordered, snatching my arm. “There’s nothing down that block. Hey,
you want to see something scary? I know you boys like scary
stuff.”

I shook my head.

“
What you doing out here
at this hour if you ain’t looking for adventure?”

“
I’m–”

“
Is that a black cat? And
it’s almost Halloween. That’s bad luck for the both of us.” The
woman shuffled away, disappearing into the swirling fog. “Come
here,” I heard her say somewhere further down the street. “Come on,
boy. . . . You want to see magic?”

As soon as she uttered
that one word,
magic
, I forgot all my fears. What did she mean by
magic
?
Did she mean
real
magic? I caught up to her and waited at her side,
keeping a five-foot gap between us.

“
It’s almost time,” she
huffed, raising her eyes to the hazy night sky. “Wind’s still. Many
clouds. Round moon. And the fog’s creeping all over. Yes, the fog
is here, and so will
they
be
. Two minutes from now. Just over
there.”

The woman waddled through the damp mist to a
red house at the corner. The front porch was lined with a dozen of
jack-o’-lanterns, none carved even remotely scary. I kept close to
the woman and followed her to a window off to the right of the
porch. We peered in through the wet glass. The living room was to
the right and had a few couches, a dim lamp and a crackling
fireplace. The kitchen was to the left, but it was too dark to see
into. I turned back to the street, where Duma was eyeing a cawing
crow perched on a telephone pole.

“
What you see here, you’ll
never forget,” said the woman in a hushed voice. “Stay quiet now. A
world you’ve never known will be revealed to you. The tale is no
tale at all.”

“
What tale?” I
asked.

“
Fifteen seconds,”
announced the woman, holding a pocket watch in her hand.

I could hardly stand the suspense. I didn’t
know what to expect, but I somehow knew I was meant to be
there.

“
Ten, nine, eight,” the
woman counted. I started counting with her in my head. “. . .
seven, six, five, four, three, two . . .”

The wind howled, and the air swiftly changed
from cold to warm, then back to cold. A few dogs barked frantically
blocks away, and the crow flew off the telephone pole, but I heard
nothing unusual until …

A doleful wolf’s howl broke the silence of
the house, carrying on until it reached an eerie high pitch. I
pressed my face into the wet windowpane, desperately trying to get
a better peek into the living room, where the howling was coming
from. A hall light flickered on as a tall elderly woman, as dark as
the night sky and as old as a great-great-grandma, came into
view.

“
Charles, what did I tell
you?” she grumbled sleepily at someone hidden from view in the far
corner of the room. “
I told you
not to do that when you come in. You’d better
hope you didn’t wake your grandnephews.” Her tone softened a bit.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you, but I’m still your
mother.”

There was a deep animal grunt in response. I
crept over to the left side of the window, but still could not get
a clear view of the far corner of the living room. I moved down a
little further as heavy footsteps boomed across the wooden floor,
getting closer. . . . I stepped back from the window as a hairy
brown creature with lanky arms trudged across the creaky
floorboards. I only got a quick glance at the creature, but it was
just long enough to see that it was too tall for this house and had
to stoop and hang its head to avoid hitting the ceiling.

“
You see,” whispered the
woman beside me. “No one believes me. But you do now.”

Time passed, and the house fell silent
again. I could not think of one thing it could have been.

“
What was that?” I
whispered back breathlessly, still peering through the now
fogged-up window. “Was that a costume?”

“
No, no,” said the woman.
“Can you not see right? I’ve been coming to this house for years.
Same time – twelve – it appears. No one's in the room at first,
then –
poof!
–
there you have him–”

“
But what is–”

“
A
werewolf.
”

I turned to her in disbelief. There was no
way that thing was a mythical creature. No way.

I heard the old mother’s voice in the
kitchen along with a second voice. It was a low rumbling growl, as
if that of an irate bear.

“
I am going to be out
late,” said the creature.

“
Charles, you know you
can’t send a kid to that monster.”

“
We already had this
discussion. Only a child can kill Himalaya. You should also know
that a menala was murdered yesterday, along with another
human.”

“
What menala?” said the
mother quietly, sounding sad. “Dili?”

“
Yes.”

“
How?”

“
I don’t know because the
menala was immediately taken to the shores of the Promulgated
Samhain Fellowship. . . .”

I could not understand anything they were
saying. They might as well have been speaking a foreign language.
Thankfully, my new acquaintance was keen to fill me in. She said
Himalaya was an evil creature that was a suspect in the murder of
innocent humans and a threat to the world of the dead. As dreaded
as Himalaya was, there was another creature, named Jack, who was
the real problem. She believed that Jack was the one responsible
for the deaths, not Himalaya. And that was why the werewolf’s
mother had jack-o'-lanterns outside; Jack was scared of them.

“
Are there enough lanterns
on the front porch?” I heard the creature say.

“
You think
it
killed the
human?”

“
I believe she had the
mark that points to
him
.”

“
Oh, my sweet patches. I
better put out more pumpkins, just to be safe.”

“
Mother, I have only a few
days left to live. I need you to pass all that I know to Forlin
before the Dark Hours – I have found the human kid.”

“
What? Charles, you’re not
taking a child to that thing!”

“
It’s done. He’s been
chosen. He’s wearing pajamas and–”

“
Who?”

“
And soccer shoes,” he
finished.

“
Soccer shoes?
Kids don't play soccer this late. I bet you my
good socks they don't.”

“
It doesn’t matter. I can
see the boy through your dirty wall as we speak. He’s peering
inside your living room, straining to overhear our
conversation.”

I jerked back away from
the window, zapped by the sudden realization that it was me
—
I
was wearing
pajamas and soccer shoes. Before I could form my next thought,
something yanked me backward into another dimension of swirling
light and chilling cries. Next thing I knew, I was standing in the
middle of the yellow kitchen before the old mother and her hairy
beast of a son.

“
What in Halloween are you
doing, Charles?” the mother scowled at the monster, who was even
taller and more frightening up close. “Take this poor boy out of
here. Look at him. He's shaking. Go, child. Run home.”

I was too scared to run home, and even if I
was not, I would not be able to. The werewolf had a firm grip on my
backpack. He used his other paw to dig through it. He pulled out
everything, staring at each item, much like Oz had done. He looked
deeply confused when he took out the bottle of aspirin.

“
No, he'll stay with me,”
he said firmly, placing the bottle back into my backpack. “I don’t
have much time. This child will have to do. He can easily be taught
to be brave.”

“
Charles
, you'd better let this boy
go.”

The creature ignored her plea and shot one
of his hairy arms over my head. “How old are you, child?” he asked,
leaning down to my level. His black eyes had the reflection of the
moon in them. “Judging by your height, I’d say you are in middle
school. Are you in eighth grade?” His eyes opened wide. “Are you
thirteen?”

His mother stepped between us, but the
werewolf brushed her aside like a feather and straightened out to
his full height, slightly tilting his head under the ceiling and
looking more terrifying than anything I could have dreamt of.

I started to hyperventilate. I grabbed my
stomach and closed my eyes.

“
If you want to live,
you’re going to have to give me what I want. You are thirteen.
Otherwise, you would have said you weren't.
Is this your father?
Open your
eyes.
”

The beast held out a picture of a
clean-shaven man with short brown hair. It wasn't my father. It was
the man who stole my school I.D. card when I was six.

“
This is
very
important.
Was
this your father?”
He showed me the picture again. “Speak, child! Or your limbs will
be torn off and you will be murdered most savagely. A man more evil
than Satan is coming for you.”

“
How dare you,” snarled
the mother, punching her son in the arm, which did nothing but make
him snarl back at her. “How dare you terrorize this poor kid.
You’re scaring the Jassum out of him.”

Dismembered? Murdered? Oh, my God, I was
going to die.

“
Charles, I’m warning you
this one last time: you stop this craziness right now."