Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary (10 page)

I pull back the lace curtain of one of the windows to see if I can spot the cabin, and the cloth feels brittle, like if I pressed too hard, it would crumble in my hand. The fire truck floodlights are gone, and I can't see much through the fog, so I move over to the other window and there's Dallas out on the driveway with Kevin, and it looks like they're arguing. I try pulling up the window a little so that maybe I can hear what they're saying, but the thing's swollen shut and won't budge.

Then Dallas puts his hands up, shakes his head, and walks off, so I let the curtain down and get busy looking for the diary.

It's on the nightstand, all right, and I would've picked it right up and run downstairs if this framed photo of Kevin hadn't distracted me. In the picture a much younger Kevin is standing beside a truck loaded with grapes, and his face is bursting with happiness. I stared at it for a minute and couldn't help wondering—how long
had
it been since the Huntleys had had a good harvest?

I made myself put the picture down and pick up the diary. The cover was dark brown leather and the pages were thick. Heavy parchment thick. And except for a few blotches here and there, the writing was beautiful— curvy and flowing—not at all the kind of penmanship I was expecting from Moustache Mary.

The first page read simply:
Journal of Mary Rose Huntley
. I turned the page and the journal began:

I wanted to read more, but made myself stop. I fanned through the diary once, listening to the pages crinkle against each other, then turned out the light and hurried back downstairs.

“Lucinda?” She was almost asleep when I sat down beside her on the couch. “Here you go. Here's the diary.”

She smiled at me and whispered, “Thank you.”

“I read the first page—I hope you don't mind.”

“Not at all.”

“It's…it's
amazing
. I didn't want to put it down.”

She put the book in the crook of her arm like a teddy bear. “You can borrow the copy, if you'd like.”

“The copy?”

“Kevin thinks this one should be zip-locked away somewhere. He made me a photocopy years ago. The words are all there, but I still prefer this one. Her spirit's in it.” She motions across the room with her eyes. “Go on. The copy's on the bookshelf, right over there. See it? By the Bible.”

Lucinda's words were slurring, and I could tell that she was fighting to keep her eyes open. So I found the copy of Mary's journal, and we whispered our good-byes, telling her again how sorry we were for what had happened. She nodded and then said, “Can you visit tomorrow? I'd like…,” but she fell asleep before she could finish.

We tiptoed out of there and found Kevin on the porch, brooding. The band of sweat around his hat seemed to have crept up another half inch, and even in the cool, foggy air, he looked sweaty and dusty from head to toe.

He takes one look at us and says, “She sleeping?” When we nod, he lets out a sigh. “Best thing for her.”

I held up the diary. “She said I could borrow this?”

“Go ahead,” he says, and dismisses us with a wave.

As we're going down the steps, I look back at him and ask, “So what are you going to do?”

He shakes his head. “I'll discuss that with her in the morning.”

Marissa tugs on my sleeve and whispers, “Let's go,” so we hurried through the darkness to get our bikes.

We steered clear of the ruins because even from a distance the place gave us the creeps. But when we neared the fence, I got shivers anyway because the fence wasn't closed the way we'd left it. It was gaping open.

Dot whispers what we were all thinking: “Someone's been through here!”

Marissa says, “Can we please just get
out
of here?” but then Dot grabs my arm and says, “Look!” and points in the direction of the ruins.

At first, I say, “What?” but then I see it, faintly, through the fog—not a beam of light, more just a glow. Marissa says, “What
is
that?” and Holly offers, “Maybe it's just someone with a flashlight out there.”

But the more we watch it, the less it looks like someone walking or searching with a flashlight, and the more it looks like something none of us want to say.

Holly says, “Oh, come on. It can't be.”

Marissa whispers, “Why not?” and Dot adds, “Yeah, why not?”

Holly says, “Well, for one thing, a ghost wouldn't have to open this fence. A ghost would float right through it.”

“Yeah, and you know how things look weird in the fog,” I say. “And they sound weird, too.”

So we all agree that it can't be a ghost. But we don't all agree that we should go check out what it
is
. Marissa says, “Sammy, no!”

“Marissa, there are four of us. What could possibly happen?”

Holly says, “I'm game,” and Dot says, “Me, too,” but when we look at Marissa, she just stands there, doing the McKenze dance. So I say, “You can stay here and guard the bikes if you want…”

“By
myself ?
”

I shrug. “If you want.”

“Oh, all right,” she groans. “I'll come with you.”

So we sneak back toward the cabin, and while we're walking, we're whispering, “Do you see it?” “There it is!” “Look, it moved!” and stuff like that. Then, when we get to Showdown Rock, we hide behind it and just kind of hold our breath.

Now you've got to understand—whatever this is, I know it's not the ghost of Moustache Mary, Holly knows it's not the ghost of Moustache Mary, and so do Dot and Marissa. Well, at least Dot. But when you're standing in a place where someone's been shot dead and you're looking through the fog at something moving in the air, it's easy to become a believer.

And we're all completely petrified behind this rock when we hear a noise. A crunchy noise. A shuffly noise. A noise like someone—or some
thing
—walking through leaves.

Marissa whispers, “Do you hear that!?”

We all nod.

“What
is
that?”

Holly whispers, “It's not chains rattling, that's for sure.”

I say, “Shhh. It's getting closer.”

One look at Marissa and I know that, as much as she's trying to fight it, there's a scream working its way out of her body, and when it surfaces, houses all over Sisquane will be missing their windows. I cup my hand over her mouth and whisper, “Marissa, it's okay. Really, it's okay!”

But that sound is getting louder, and now, besides the crunch and shuffle, there's a low, guttural breathing sound. And it's not coming from miles away—it's right on the other side of Showdown Rock.

So we're all huddled up with our eyes as big as Frisbees, trying not to lose it, when what phantom being appears from around the rock?

One very dark, very big…pig.

It could've been a mouse. At that point it didn't matter. We screamed. I choked on mine, but Marissa's went straight through flesh and bone, and Holly and Dot rounded out the sound with some really shrill harmonics.

Penny didn't care. She just wagged her curly little tail and nudged around my feet like she was hunting for truffles. And after we got over the fact that we'd been sniffed out by a pig, we looked back at the cabin and knew—the ghost was gone.

We stood behind Showdown Rock for another few minutes, waiting for it to reappear, but it never did. Finally, Marissa says, “Can we
please
go now?”

Penny keeps rooting around, sniffing and snorting her way back toward the ruins. I say, “Why don't we follow Penny?”

Marissa rolls her eyes. “Oh, great. Now we've got a pig for a tour guide.” Now it's not like Marissa to be sarcastic when she's scared. But she wasn't biting her nails or doing the McKenze dance, she was standing there with her hands on her hips.

So I laugh and say, “Boy, that scream did you a lot of good, didn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

I just laugh again and say, “Yeah, we've got a pig for a tour guide. Come on!”

Penny leads us over to the cabin, all right, and proceeds to nudge her nose through the ashes and chunks of timber while we circle the place. And it strikes me again how bad it smells and how
small
the place was. And all of a sudden I'm full of questions. Like, How do you raise a family in a place like this? How long did they live there? When did the other house get built? But mostly I kept coming back to: What's going to happen now? Would Kevin bulldoze the rest of it down? It did seem wrong. Very wrong. And what about Mary's old grave? Maybe her bones weren't there, but it did feel like her spirit still was.

And I found myself standing beside the ruins kind of overwhelmed by what had been. By the people who had built the place and lived their lives there. By the fact that they had done it day by day, with no electricity or running water, no trash collection or sewers, and all of a sudden I
felt like a wimp, living at Grams' with a toilet and a refrigerator and a television.

And standing there by the ashes, I started feeling very strange—like something bigger than my thoughts was flowing through me—something I couldn't describe or touch, but could definitely
feel
. And it didn't give me the creeps as it tingled down my spine; I didn't want to scream or run, I just wanted to stand there and let it wash over me. Wash through me. It was like now I understood what this place meant—not just in my head, but in my heart.

Then I got goosed. By a pig, of course. And after I was done jumping, I turned around and said, “Stop that! Don't you
ever
do that again!”

So what's Penny do? She flips her tail and nudges me
again
.

“I said stop that!”

She takes this to mean, Nudge me harder.

I take a few steps back from her and say, “Quit it!”

Well, she scoots me along, step by step, until I'm away from the ruins and near the ravine. And when she's got me by the edge, she tries nudging me right over.

“Stop that, you crazy pig! What are you
doing?
”

Holly, Dot, and Marissa are following along, just cracking up while that stupid pig chases me in a circle, trying to get me to go into the ravine. And it's not that it's
that
steep—I just don't feel like being run down the hill by a pig. So I plant myself and say, “No! I'm not going! You hear me? I'm not some corn cob you can roll around. Stop it!”

She snorts at me, then goes in herself. And halfway down she turns back and oinks. Full-on oinks.

Holly says, “What is she
doing?
”

“I have no idea.”

We're all standing on the edge, watching this harebrained hog oink her head off, when I notice something. I lean over a little and point. “What is that?”

They all look, too. “What?”

“Right next to Penny. It looks kind of red.”

“Where?”

It's half buried under some leaves, but I can see the corner of something shiny poking through. “Right there!” I scoot down the hill, and when I get beside Penny, I reach over and say, “What is that, girl? What have you found?”

Before I can touch it, she flips it up with her snout, and there, sitting in the leaves right in front of me, is a can.

A shiny new gas can.

For once I tried to be smart. I nudged the can with my foot, but I didn't touch it. And when I got down on my knees to sniff the thing, Marissa calls, “What are you doing? Sammy, what
is
that?”

“It's a gas can!”

Holly comes scooting down the hill. “A
gas
can?”

“Yeah, and I can smell gas on it.”

Dot scoots down the hill after her. “You look like Penny, sniffing that thing!”

Marissa eases herself down the hill, too, and when we're all standing around the can, she says, “Are you going to take it to Officer Borsch?”

“No. For once I'm not even going to
touch
it. I don't want to mess up any fingerprints. C'mon. Let's go to the house and see if we can use the phone.”

So we climb out of the ravine, then move a big white rock in a straight line up from the can to mark the spot. We call, “Penny! C'mon, girl!” and she trots alongside as we hurry back to the house. She follows us to the door, but then abandons us to eat vegetable parts from a giant metal dish over by her muddy bedding on the far end of the porch.

We try the bell, but no one comes. We try it again, only
this time I put my ear up to the door and listen for the sound. I can't hear anything, so I say, “Maybe it's broken.”

So we knock. First kind of quietly, but since Lucinda's sedated and I'm sure Kevin's going to want to know about the gas can, it doesn't take long for us to start pounding.

The place is pretty dark. There's a light shining through the curtains of the kitchen, and one glowing from down the hall, but other than that, the house looks desolate.

Now none of us could imagine Kevin leaving or falling asleep so soon after what had happened, so we started banging again, only this time we also called out, “Kevin! Hey, Mr. Huntley! Please! Open the door!”

He didn't open the door, though. And no lights turned on or off. And we couldn't hear a thing from inside, only Penny, scarfing up scraps from her bowl.

Dot says, “Maybe he took a sedative, too. He seemed pretty upset.”