Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (30 page)

Pound
someone.

So when Marissa says, “Don’t you think we should call the cops?” I say, “Yeah, I think we should.”

Trouble is, the only one of us who has a phone is Billy, and when we turn to him, he goes all crinkly-faced. “It’s in my charger!”

I look around at all of them and take a deep breath. “I guess we’ll have to use the office phone.”

Then I huddle them up and tell them what I’m thinking.

Casey takes one last look at Ted through the binoculars. “He’s moving a plank over … he’s getting inside …”

“A
grave
?” Marissa whispers. “How will he get out?”

“Apparently he has experience,” Casey says, putting away the binoculars. “At least we know where he is, but we’d better hurry. I have a feeling this won’t take him very long.”

I figured the van would be hidden between the buildings, and I had a pretty good hunch Courtney wouldn’t be in it. If her job was to keep an eye out for unexpected company, she’d be watching from the office, where she could see the road in both directions.

Besides, the floodlight had been switched off, and that seemed like something that would be done from inside the office.

Now, since Holly and I have a hoe, two skateboards,
and
a bat, I give my skateboard to Billy, who’s got nothing but jittery nerves. “If you hold it like this,” I tell him, grabbing it by the axles like a shield, “it’ll protect you.” Then I switch to holding it like a bat. “Like this, and it’ll do some serious damage.”

“Against a gun?” he eeks.

There’s not much I can say to that, so I just hand Marissa my softball bat. Marissa may be skittery, but she’s a slugger on the softball field, and if anything needs slamming with a bat, Marissa’s the one you want holding it.

Which leaves Casey with his skateboard, Holly with hers, and me with Dusty Mike’s hoe.

“Ready?”

Billy answers by putting a hand out. “Zombies to the rescue?” he says in a shaky voice. And even though I’m sure it’s too late to actually
rescue
anyone, we all put our hands on his. “Zombies to the rescue.”

Then we slip through the darkness between tombstones and trees until we get down to the breezeway. “There it is,” I whisper, pointing out the van, which is parked facing us.

My heart’s slamming in my chest as we sneak across the breezeway. It’s dark, so we can’t see if anyone’s sitting in the van, and even though I
think
Killer Courtney is in the office, I don’t know that. But the horn doesn’t honk and the car doesn’t zoom off or anything as we approach, and when we’re near enough, we can see that there’s nobody in the driver’s seat.

We can also see that the lock buttons are up.

I take a deep breath, grab the slider handle, and pull.

The interior lights come blazing on and inside is … nothing.

No backseats.

No body.

Nothing
.

It’s just a big empty van.

“Close it!” Marissa whispers, but right before I do, I see the curve of a smooth black piece of metal on the floor between the front two seats. It looks vaguely familiar but I can’t place it until I lean forward and see the keys. “Look,” I gasp, grabbing it off the floor. “Dusty Mike’s keys!”

“Close the door!” Marissa whispers, and she’s sounding really frantic.

So I close the door, and now I’m
mad
because now I’ve got proof—Courtney
is
a liar.

And a killer.

I slip the key ring over my hand like a bracelet, pick up the hoe like a bat, and head for the break room door. Dusty Mike is dead because of these creeps, and it’s making me so mad I can barely think.

“Where are you going?” Marissa whispers, then she sees the look on my face and backs out of my way.

“She’s stormin’ the castle,” Casey says, “Let’s go.”

The break room door’s locked, but it kicks in easy.

The back door to the office does, too.

And then all of a sudden, there we are, face to bug-eyed face with Killer Courtney.

She makes a break for the front door, but she’s barely got it open when Casey slams it closed with a foot. And when she starts punching the buttons on her cell phone, I give it an up-cut with the hoe handle and send it flying. “Where is he?”

She backs away from us into the corner, and starts hurling random stuff at us. Books, boxes, work boots … anything she can get her hands on.

But the skateboards work great as blockers, and while
Billy, Casey, and Holly are knocking things down I manage to get in and jab Courtney in the stomach with the hoe handle and shove her against a stack of boxes.

“Where is he!”

She grabs the hoe and tries to push it aside. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

I lean in harder and jiggle the keys on my wrist. “Oh, really?”

She obviously hadn’t seen the keys before, because all of a sudden she goes completely quiet, and her face loses its color. Still, I’m in a bad spot and I know it, because without a body, what proof do I have?

A ring of keys?

I try not to let her see my doubt. “I know you’re going to bury him tonight,” I tell her. “I know Teddy Boy’s in the grave now, digging it a little deeper so you can slip Mike in before tomorrow’s burial.”

“You’re those brats from Halloween,” she gasps. “I’ll have you arrested!” Then she twists to the side and dives for the desk phone.

But Marissa’s all over that, bringing down the softball bat like an anvil.

Which totally smashes the phone.

We all look at Marissa like, Whoa! And she cringes back. “Sorry.”

“Find her cell phone,” I tell Billy. “And call the police.” Then I turn to Courtney and say, “This is your last chance. Where’s Mike?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she warbles.

“Fine. You saw what she did to the phone? I’m happy
to do that to you with this.” I flip the hoe so the blade is now facing her. “Recognize this?” Her face twitches, so I say, “Yeah, I thought so. Mike was a good person. He looked out for the people here. And
you
”—I swing the hoe and send her flower vase smashing against the wall—“are nothing but a lowlife”—I swing the hoe again, sending her pencil jar flying—
“killer.”

“I didn’t kill anybody!” she quivers.

“They why do you have his keys? Why were they—” And then, just like that, it hits me.

I’d walked right by Dusty Mike.

I’d been doing it for
days
.

“He’s in the crypt?” I gasp.

Her face says it all.

“Oh my God!” I blink at her. “You just shoved him in there and left him to die?”

“I had nothing to do with it!”

Billy’s found the phone and has dialed 911. “Yes, hello, right. We have a situation here? There’s crazy people burying people at the graveyard?”

“Billy!” we all snap.

“Sorry! Sorry!” He hands the phone to Holly. “You do it!”

So Holly takes the phone out to the break room while Courtney looks at me and whimpers, “Ted’s going to be back any minute.”

“Sit down!” I tell her and she actually does. Then while Casey goes to the front window and Billy goes out to the breezeway to stand guard, I yank the pull-ropes out of the window blinds and Marissa and I tie Courtney’s hands
and feet to the chair. Then for good measure I take a dirty old sock that had fallen out of a work boot she’d thrown at us and stuff it into her mouth. “Suck on that, angel killer.”

“Nothing yet,” Casey says from behind his binoculars. “If we get over there quick, maybe we could trap him inside until the cops get here.”

“Like stand on the planks?” I ask.

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Hey!” Billy calls through the break room. “There’s a golf cart with keys in the ignition.”

Casey and I look at each other. “Let’s go!”

Holly’s still trying to explain things to the emergency operator as the five of us pile onto the golf cart. And I guess I was distracted by what she was saying or else I would have said that somebody,
anybody
besides Billy should drive. But since I was distracted, and since Marissa called, “Shotgun!” somehow Billy got the wheel.

And he drove just like you’d expect Billy Pratt to drive. We about fell off to the left, about fell off to the right, got whiplashed and bounced around, and the whole time poor Holly’s pleading with the emergency operator to take her seriously.

Billy did get us there quick, though, and just in time, too, ’cause Ted’s half out of the grave when we roll up. And since none of us exactly wanted to
touch
him, Billy just guns it, driving the cart right at him.

“What the hell!” Ted shouts as he falls back in, and we all pile off quick and move the boards so they close off the grave.

“Hey!” he shouts through the planks. “What are you doing! Let me out!”

“That’s what Michael Poe’s been crying for the last three days!” I shout back at him.

One of the boards starts to move so we all jump on top, which makes him squeal like a stuck pig and threaten to kill us.

“Can you guys stand on the boards until the cops get here?” I ask them. “I need to go open the crypt.”

“I’ll go with you,” Casey says.

“I’ll stay and walk the plank!” Billy cries.

“We should probably stay, too,” Holly says to Marissa.

So we start to take off, but just then a cell phone rings.

It’s not the
grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff, grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff
ringtone. It’s musical bells.

Courtney’s phone.

Holly grins at the caller ID and slides it open. “Ted?”

“Those brats from Halloween have me trapped in the grave!”

“What do you want me to do?” Holly asks sweetly.

“Run them over! Get me out of here!”

“Not likely,” Holly singsongs. “See, I’m tied up in the office with a dirty sock in my mouth. Oh, and those brats have my phone. Which they used to call the police.”

He lights off some really ripe language, then beats the planks with his shovel. But there’s no way he’ll get out with the three of them standing on the boards.

“You guys got this?” Casey asks.

“Oh, yeah,” Billy says, “I’m a master at walking the plank!”

So Casey and I hop in the golf cart and go flying across the graveyard and get as close as we can to the Sunset Crypt. Then we race up the hill to the front of it and stand on the shiny black threshold.

DISTURB NOT THE SLEEP OF DEATH
.

There’s a locked metal gate in front of a door that looks like it’s made out of black marble. I try each key in the gate lock and it’s the skeleton key that turns it.

The gate creaks open, and then I fumble through the keys again until I find the one that unlocks the door.

Casey holds me back. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

“I know,” I tell him, and all of a sudden I’m a mess. I can’t breathe, my heart’s galloping around, and my eyes are stinging with tears. “I wish I’d figured it out earlier.”

“Maybe we should wait for the police?”

I shake my head and pull the flashlight out of my pocket, then we move inside and start down the marble steps.

The air goes from cool to cold pretty quickly, and as we make our way down I see that the walls are made up of rectangles.

And that the rectangles have beautiful brass plaques on them.

“So people are buried right in the walls?”

Casey nods. “I think those are the actual crypts.”

“Like coffins?”

He nods.

We keep going down, step by step, and discover that there are places to sit. Little alcoves. Little benches. And
marble stands with statues. I also notice puddles of wax. Like candles burned completely down.

“Mike?” I call, even though I know it’s hopeless. No one could survive in here for three days. “Mike?”

We come to the floor of the crypt. I flash the light around and see that it’s just a little rectangular room with brass plaques from floor to ceiling.

And then I notice a blanket in a corner. It looks like nothing
but
a blanket, but when we get closer, I see a tuft of black hair sticking out. “Is that him?” I whisper, because I can’t believe there’s really a
person
inside.

Casey kneels down and moves the blanket, and my eyes flood with tears, because, yes, it’s Dusty Mike.

A pack of matches falls out of his hand as Casey pulls on the blanket.

It’s almost like he’s handing them to me, saying, Here—I can’t use these anymore. But through my haze of tears something hits me.

“He’s not stiff.”

It barely comes out a whisper.

“What?” Casey asks.

“He’s not stiff,” I say louder. “His hand opened up!”

Casey realizes what I mean and puts his fingers on Dusty Mike’s neck.

I hold my breath and wait until I can’t stand it anymore. “Anything?”

His head bobs up and down. Just a little at first and then harder. “Yes! It’s really faint, but there’s a pulse.”

“Let’s get him out of here!”

But as I swoop down to grab his feet, the light shines on the two plaques he’d been curled up next to.

LANDON M. POE
.

ANNA BELLE POE
.

“Oh my God,” I whimper as my eyes flood with tears. “Everyone thought he was a nutcase—he was just having lunch with his parents.”