Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (13 page)

And that’s when I see Little Miss Nosy Bob standing in the middle of the double French doors, tugging on her
mother with one hand and pointing at me with the other. I let out an “Uh-oh,” and Casey asks, “You know her?”

“Nope.”

He looks her over. “I’m guessing her name’s Trouble.”

Luckily Trouble’s mother is talking to the Oversized Eggplant and not focusing on her daughter, and since there’s a side door, I whisper, “This way!”

So we duck through the side door and escape.

And we wind up in a weird closet-like area with three
other
doors.

“Now what?” Casey asks.

Billy goes into announcer mode. “Behind door number one we have an old man in a coffin. Behind door number two?”

“I think it’s the office,” I say, trying to get my bearings.

“That leaves door number three or door number four. Samantha Keyes, what is your destiny?”

I can hear Little Miss Nosy Bob out in the other room, whining, “There! They went in there!” and I know that if I don’t move quick, my destiny is to be busted.

So I toss a mental coin and go through door number three.

It was definitely not my lucky day.

We find ourselves inside a sort of industrial alcove. There’s a stainless-steel counter and sink to our right, cabinets on our left, and the floor is just cement.

It’s not a dead end, though. There’s a wide opening past the cabinets, and from the amount of light coming into the alcove, it seems like it must go to a much bigger room—one I’m hoping will lead us outside.

I can hear an odd kind of whirring, ticking, running-water sound coming from around the corner. It’s like someone’s taking a shower with a metronome going. I also notice a smell. It’s not super strong or anything, but it does remind me of … I’m not sure what.

Then we peek around the corner.

I choke down an “Aaah!” and right away I know what the smell reminds me of.

Biology class.

Only here, instead of frogs, there’s a human body.

Actually, there are two bodies—a dead one, and an
alive
one working on the dead one.

The alive guy is faced mostly away from us, and he’s wearing lots of clothes—blue scrubs that tie in back over a
regular shirt and slacks, latex gloves, a hairnet, and a surgical mask.

The dead guy, on the other hand, is face up and wearing
no
clothes.

Well, except for a little white towel across his groin.

The dead guy’s on a big steel tray on a wheeled stand near a sink, and the whirring-ticking-shower sound seems to be coming from a machine on a counter near the sink. It looks like a cross between a big stainless-steel blender and a glass cooking pot. It has knobs and a gauge on the base, and the glass part is about half full of a pinkish orange liquid. There’s also a long rubber tube that goes from the base, across the counter, and up to the neck of the dead guy.

“Can we
please
go back and try door number four?” I whisper, because I’ve seen more than enough. Besides, I don’t know how we’ll ever make it past the scrubs guy to the door on the other side of the room without being seen.

Billy and Casey are all for that, but just as we’re turning to go, the door we’d come through starts to open.

Casey grabs me by the hand and hauls me around the corner and inside the corpse room, and out of reflex I grab Billy by the wrist and bungee him along. The next thing I know, Casey’s pulled us through the partial opening of a big steel door and is shutting us inside.

It’s cold inside this big steel closet.

And dark.

And the room feels like it’s
purring
.

Casey hadn’t closed the door all the way, and now he
starts inching it back open so we can see what’s happening out in the room. The sliver of light that comes in through the crack makes it so we can see around us, too, and what I discover is that this closet is deep.

And has shelves.

Long, wide shelves that are stacked floor to ceiling on both sides, leaving an aisle down the middle.

Shelves that are almost all full.

“Are those
bodies
?” I whisper to Billy. I mean, they may be wrapped up, but from the shape and size, what else could they be?

“I’m not feelin’ too good,” he whispers back.

So I lean forward and whisper to Casey, “I think we’d rather be busted than stay in here!”

But Casey doesn’t even answer me, and since he’s watching and listening so intently to what’s going on outside, I do what he’s doing.

Through the crack I can see a woman with blond hair talking with the guy in scrubs, and I can barely hear her as she asks him, “So nobody came through here?”

He shakes his head.

She starts to leave, then asks, “How is it going with Mr. Orwell?”

Scrubs pulls down his mask to speak. “Another half hour, forty-five minutes. I’ll have him ready in plenty of time.”

Casey and I give each other bug eyes, because there’s no mistaking those teeth. “The Vampire!” we mouth at each other.

“The Vampire?” Billy asks.

I turn to Billy. “He’s the guy in scrubs!”

Billy ducks down between us so he can peek out, too, and we all listen as the Vampire asks the lady, “Did they deliver the suit?”

“I have it up front,” she tells him. And it looks like she’s really leaving this time, only at the last minute she does a double take.

Right at us.

Suddenly she’s moving fast.

Right at us!

We all duck back and move between the shelves, but she doesn’t yank open the door and go, “Ah-ha!”

She does something worse.

She shoves it closed.

So there we are in the pitch black in a giant refrigerator surrounded by corpses when Billy whimpers, “Mom-my!”

Now, my diva mother would be of zero help in this situation, but I totally get what he means. I’m feeling panicked and claustrophobic, and I’m starting to shiver.

“We’re not trapped,” Casey whispers. “There’s a release knob.”

I knew he was talking about the big, flat disk on the inside of the door, but that wasn’t the point. “How are we going to know when to open it?” I ask him through the pitch black. “We can’t stay in here for forty-five minutes—we’ll freeze to death!”

“Let’s give it five minutes and then just go for it.”

“Mom-my,” Billy whimpers.

“Knock it off, Billy!” I tell him.

“Can I hug you?” he asks.

“Oh, good grief.”

But I can tell he’s actually serious, so I grope around until I find him, then give him a mondo hug. “Better?” I ask him after a minute.

“
Sí, sí
, Sammy-keyesta,” he says, but it’s quiet. Like he really is completely creeped out and scared.

“Look,” I tell him. “Remember how cool you thought it was to have Grim and Reaper? Just pretend that—”

“This isn’t helping, Sammy-keyesta.”

“Sorry.” I think a minute and then say, “So a fake dead body that
looks
like a real dead body is cool, but a real dead body is …”

“Creepy.”

“Huh. I wonder why that is.”

“Because one’s real and one’s fake!”

“So just pretend they’re fake.”

“But they’re not fake!” he whimpers. “They’re real, and I want out of here!”

“Got it.” I turn to where I think Casey is and say, “I don’t care if it hasn’t been five minutes, and I don’t care if we get caught. We’re bustin’ out of here.”

So I grope around until I find the flat knob, and after turning it doesn’t do anything, I push on it and
click
, the door unlatches.

The Vampire’s back to working on the dead guy, and really, at this point, I don’t care if he sees us.

That doesn’t mean I wave a big red flag or anything. But after we’ve snuck out of the corpse cooler, I lead the guys toward the back door, tiptoeing past an emergency eyewash
system, past a big trash can marked
HAZARDOUS
, past a mop in a pail, and a closet with bottles marked
POISON
.

The machine’s still ticking and whirring, and maybe that makes it so the Vampire can’t hear us, but in another few seconds, he’s sure going to
see
us.

And then, like a miracle, he turns away from us to adjust the machine.

I abandon the tiptoeing and practically dive for the door, and when I open it, I discover a minivan and a hearse in a carport, and past them … daylight!

I make a break for it, with Casey and Billy right behind me. We run for blocks and blocks without stopping, and when we finally do check to see if we’re being followed, we only gulp in about six breaths and then we run, run,
run
all the way to Hudson’s house.

I collapse on the lawn, and then just lay there, gulping in air.

Billy and Casey bend over with their hands on their knees, and finally Billy pants out, “I am never … ever … going to be able to … sleep … again.”

I look at Casey. “I can’t believe you … dragged us into a … corpse cooler!”

“I didn’t know what it was!” Casey pants back. “It was open, we were stuck …”

“Not just … because of the … cooler …,” Billy pants. “Because of … that
guy.
”

“The Vampire?” I ask.

Billy nods. “His eyes.”

I sit up and face him. “His eyes?” And then it hits me. “You looked back?”

Casey goes a little bug-eyed. “So he saw your face?”

Billy nods. “That dude’s got wicked scary eyes.”

I collapse on the lawn again. “Oh, man.”

This was not good.

Not good at all.

We hadn’t been at Hudson’s even five minutes when Casey’s phone went off. I actually like when Casey’s phone rings ’cause his ringtone is the riff from “Waiting for Rain to Fall” by Darren Cole and the Troublemakers, which is “our” song, and he always gives me a little grin when he answers.

But not this time.

This time it was his mom calling, demanding that he come home right away.

Billy went with him, and since I obviously wasn’t welcome at the Acostas’ house, I got left behind at Hudson’s. “Don’t let that boy drag you through parlors of any kind,” I called to Billy, and then hollered, “Thanks for the deadly date!” to Casey.

“You know I’m
mortified
about it,” Casey calls back. “
Buried
in regret!”

“Don’t believe him!” Billy shouts, “He took you there because he’s
fatally
attracted to you!”

“
Terminally
so!” Casey shouts. Then he adds, “How else could I have survived such a
grave undertaking
?”

“At least he didn’t take you to a fancy restaurant and
stiff
the waiter!”

Casey laughs. “Or run off and join the Peace
Corpse
!”

“Oh, that was bad!” I shout after him. “That was terrible.”

So I’m laughing as I watch them go, but the minute they’re out of sight I feel really … alone.

And kinda scared.

Not that the Vampire’s going to find me and kill me or anything. It’s more like an invisible weight. Like something is trying to crush me from the inside out.

I drag myself up to Hudson’s porch and even though I’m pretty sure he’s not home, I knock on the door, and then try the handle.

Locked up tight.

I really don’t want to go home, but Marissa’s house feels like it’s way too far to walk to right now, and since Holly’s working and Dot lives clear out in Sisquane and I don’t have a phone to
call
anybody, I make like Hudson and sit on the porch with my feet kicked up on the rail.

I watch the world go by for a little while, but there’s a whole lot of nothing going on, so I finally pick up the newspaper and look at the “Halloween Horrors” article.

Trouble is, the article reminds me of Danny, which of course reminds me of this awful secret I have from Casey, and pretty soon my brain’s all muddled and stormy and doomy.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but I must have been in the depths of Doomsville when Hudson clomped
up the side steps, because I jerked and spazzed and jolted all at once.

He laughs. “Didn’t you see me drive up?”

I scratch my head and sit up. “Uh … I must’ve been napping?”

“Napping?” He comes over and sits down in the chair beside me. “Have you been here the whole time I was gone? Didn’t your friends show up?”