My Friends Are Dead People (5 page)

I didn’t wait for the jack-o'-lantern to
wake up and ran out of the tree, down a sloping root leading me
away from the tree. Finally, I had reached the floor.

“
Oz!” I called out into a
cloud of heavy fog. There wasn't an echo at all. “I’m at the bottom
now! . . .
Oz!
”

I knew she wasn’t coming, but I waited
anyway. After a few minutes, the fog dispersed a little, and I
continued on my journey through a field of weeds and hundreds of
pumpkins of all shapes and sizes. In the thickest part of the
weeds, there was one the size of a car. A huge toothy smile was
carved into it. It almost looked as real as the one in the door. As
I walked around it, I noticed at the far end a green-tinted
scarecrow sitting at the very edge of a block of hay. Its creepily
thin body was mostly hidden by a brown coat and a large black hat.
Something about it was creeping me out, and I didn’t want to be
anywhere near it. I exited the field and hurried up to a
fifteen-foot tall gate surrounding a hilly cemetery. The top was
weaved into:

H a l l o w e e n’s H i l
l

The gate's door was locked with giant
padlocks created to look like a roaring gargoyle. As I leaned
through the iron bars I tripped on something hard. On the ground,
there was a flattened stone. Etched into it was:

I kNoW yOu BeTtEr ThAn YoU dO yOuRsElF

TrUsT mE

cOmE fOrWaRd If YoU dArE

i Am YoUr FrIeNd ThE jAcK-o-MaN

dOn’T lOoK bAcK uNlEsS yOu DoN’t FeAr Me

“
Yeah, right,” I said to
myself. However, I cautiously turned around.

“
BOO!” shouted Katie
excitedly, jumping in the air like a ninja.

“
What – what are you–” I
gasped, stumbling back and landing on my butt.

“
Isn’t this the best? . .
. I can’t believe Oz kept this from you. It’s amazing! Did you see
the large pumpkin? Oz planted it fifteen years ago. What about the
pumpkin in the door? That thing scared me.”

“
She told you about this
place?”

“
Yeah, just now. She said
this used to be a haunted house.”

“
Why didn’t she tell
me?”

“
I don’t know.”

I looked behind Katie, becoming aware of a
steady glow silhouetting her body. More of the strange writing was
carved on the back of the huge jack-o’-lantern.

TrY tO tRiCk Me AnD

i WiLl GiVe YoU a TrEaT yOu WoN’t FoRgEt

TrIcK oR tReAt

YoUr FrIeNd, JaCk

Katie ran over to the gate and read the
words on the stone. “It’s a riddle. Jack was a prankster.”

“
Who’s Jack?”

“
I thought I told you
about him,” she said.

I shook my head.

“
Jack was an Irishman who
liked playing cruel tricks on people. He was denied into Heaven and
Hell seven times. He now lives forever, trying to find a way to get
back at them. A man as evil as him can never die.”

“
Didn’t you say some guy,
Jaculus, might have killed your mother? Is this the same
guy?”

Katie didn’t answer, distracted by something
on the gate. There were two words set far apart from each
other:

t r i c k t r e a
t

“
Trick or treat,” I
read.

“
Jesse, I can read, you
know,” she stated.

“
I know.”

“
We have to
choose.”

Katie must have already
made up her mind because she was running over to the
trick
sign. She pulled
back on the tooth-shaped handle, and the gate screeched open onto a
wooden bridge, built over a cascading stream that ran around the
cemetery.

“
No,
this
is the best,” said Katie,
already climbing on all fours up the hill. “How could someone have
made all this?”

She waited for me to catch up. We both
stopped at a large tombstone.

Aidan Edana
Alroy

Beatrice Ailean
Deri

Caronwyn Aili
Dara

Cameron Aoife
Jenna

Delwen Sean
Gail

Tom
á
s Llyn Jean

Rowena Hagan
Lair

Rossalyn Haley
Leslie

Dallas Gwen
Sheila

Ainsley Elwyn
Ilisa

Fionna Eilwen
M
á
ire

"They're all Irish names," she pointed out.
"I know these names."

"You do?" I asked as I crawled up beside
her. I didn't know any of them.

A stone next to it
had
Colleen
engraved on it. Another Irish name. None of the stones had
dates or inscriptions. Just names.

“
Halloween: the first,”
Katie read from a tombstone at the summit. Not far away on a
separate hillside, there was a broken-down roundhouse made of
pieces of wood and clay. Two large chariot wheels were leaning
against the side of it. Behind it, was a forest of baby sequoia
trees.

I was about to go check out the trees, but I
saw Katie sliding down the other side of the hill to a large
two-story colonial home. Oz was climbing out of a broken window on
the first floor. She was dressed in a silvery floor length robe and
a pointy hat.

“
How do you like the
place?” she asked Katie as I carefully treaded down the
hill.

“
The greatest place
ever.”

“
You have to keep it a
secret.”

“
Okay. Who made all
this?”

“
I don’t know,” she said
just as I arrived. “This place was here before I moved into the
house. But Jess’s father made that house over there, the pumpkin
patch, the graveyard and a few other things.”

“
He really loved
Halloween.”

“
You want to go
inside?”

“
Yeah!”

Katie leaped up the oversized porch steps
and walked up to two massive doors, towering three times her
height.

“
Someone’s excited,”
smiled Oz, watching Katie tug open one of the doors. “Everything
okay, Jess?”

“
Yeah. Well, not really. I
saw this ghost and this breathing pumpkin and . . ."

“
So, do you like it?” She
took a moment to scan the dark hilly landscape, which was growing
foggier and darker.

“
Yeah.”

“
I knew you would like
it.”

“
Why didn’t you ever tell
me?”

“
Why don’t we have a look
inside.”

I really wanted to know, but I said,
“Okay.”

The foyer was huge. Everything was broken
and covered in spider webs. The ruin walls were paved with the same
black bricks and ragged wood seen in the passage above. Giant black
pillars supported a domed ceiling crawling with glowing spiders,
and endless dark hallways sprouted out in all directions. The only
source of light in the main room was a candle chandelier hanging
over a red-carpeted staircase.

“
Oh, yuck,” said Katie at
the top of the staircase, having just ran into spider webs.
“They’re real.”

“
I haven’t been down here
in quite some time,” admitted Oz. “Come down, so we can pick out a
bewitching dress for you.”

Katie ran down, and we followed Oz into a
huge two-story corridor, lined with statues of grim farmers,
standing fifteen or twenty feet tall. Their height wasn't the
scariest thing about them. It was their eyes. They followed us as
we walked by.

“
Oh, yeah I forgot about
these,” said Oz, a bit scared.

“
How did he do this?” I
said quietly, looking up at a statue that glared right back at
me.

“
I never asked. Your
father believed this to be the realm of the second
life.”

“
What?”

“
He was a spiritual man,
Jess. This was a man who believed there was once an Easter bunny.
He didn’t like getting into it that much, so I don’t know a whole
lot about it. Katie, I’ve got a great selection of witch gowns for
you. Oh, wait, watch this.”

Oz picked up a pebble and tossed it by a
statue, and as it flew in the air, the statue’s eyes followed it.
When it landed, the eyes turned back to her.

“
Okay, let’s go,” said Oz
uneasily.

We hurried after her, a bit spooked
ourselves, and entered a stuffy room full of five-foot cauldrons,
gigantic coffins, sticks, brooms, jars and other weird objects.
Grimy glass lanterns hung on what looked to be the ceiling. The
entire room had been tilted once so the ceiling and floor were now
walls and two of the walls were the ceiling and floor. The ground
was covered with bookshelves and doorways that looked more like
endless pits.

“
Sorry about the lights,”
apologized Oz, carefully stepping across the fiction section. “I
haven’t gotten the electricity running yet. Don't worry about the
doors. They'll only send you back to Jess' room. Pick out whatever
you want. The witch gowns and robes are over there.”

Oz pointed to a rack of vintage garments
hovering perfectly above the ground.

“
Hurry along. I don’t want
to be in here after the sun sets. Katie, what time is
it?”

“
Almost four. Jesse, I
brought the glue. But if you want to be a warlock, I–”

“
No, I still want to be a
dead boy,” I said.

“
Good,” she said happily.
She walked over to me and started spreading glue on my face. “Tilt
your head back.”

“
Don’t get it on my
clothes,” I winced. “And don’t put too much dirt on me.”

Oz handed me a pair of giant pants and a
ripped shirt. “I think these should fit.”

Oz, Katie, and I helped
each other get dressed. We soon started a glue fight, smudging glue
all over each other. I had never had so much fun. What I couldn’t
believe was that Oz was joking around with us the entire time. She
was never liked this. Never. When we were done, the three of us
walked into a red room, decorated with portraits of scowling
vampires dressed in red suits. Oz pushed a dial that read:
House Floor
, just as
Duma scurried in after us. This place was so cool.

“
I thought you didn't have
that much money,” said Katie as the floor shook and the room
started going up.

Oz thought about this for a moment as the
room clanked and made a humming sound. “Uhmm . . . Jess’s father
might have been rich.”

Might have been? What did that mean? And he
couldn't be. He was a hotel manager in Hawaii. How could he
possibly be this rich? Was she lying? Even now, Oz didn’t know that
I had figured out that the hotel manager I ran into two years ago
was my father.

One of the walls slid open, and we were back
in the kitchen.

“
What do you use to
collect candy these days?” inquired Oz.

“
Pillowcases,” answered
Katie. “You get more candy that way.”

“
Check the guestroom.
There should be some extra pillowcases in the cabinet.”

Oz waited in the kitchen as we hurried into
the guestroom, running back out seconds later.

“
Come on, Oz!” I said
excitedly as I dashed out of the house with Katie and
Duma.

“
You have Duma’s
leash?”

“
Yes!”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE NIGHT
WATCHER

Oz made us wait for her on the sidewalk
before we could knock on the first door. Not many houses were
decorated, and even those weren’t much to look at. I didn’t think
it would be so quiet on Halloween.

“
Where is everyone?” I
said, my excitement starting to wane.

“
It’s always dead,” said
Katie, unfazed.

“
Oh. Oz, come
on!”

“
Okay, go ahead,” said Oz,
shutting the front gate.

I handed Duma’s leash to Oz, and Katie and I
ran to our first house; our next door neighbors who none of us had
seen before. The pink house didn’t have any decorations, just three
pumpkins and some brooms on the front porch. A mat on the doorstep
bore a friendly message:

WELCOME,
CHILDREN

“
Thanks for the welcome,”
said Katie, wiping her dirty witch boots on it.

I wasn’t sure what to do next. I remembered
kids coming to the door asking if I wanted a trick or treat, and
every time I had said, ‘I don’t want either. Go away!’

“
Give me candy!” I shouted
at a white screen door. “We’re your neighbors! I live two houses
down! We’re thirteen years old and we live with our single
mothers!”

Katie laughed. “You’re supposed to say trick
or treat. And that’s after you knock.”

I knocked hard on the screen door. Bang.
Bang. Bang.

“
Treat!”

“
No,” said Katie, still
laughing. “What are you, five? You have to say both: trick and
treat.”

“
Trick or
treat!”

Still, there was no answer. Katie knocked a
few times, but she got nothing, too. Great, this was fun. I saw a
name painted on the pink wall.