Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls by Wendelin Van Draanen Read Free Book Online

out of there, and believe me, none of us says, “Hey, let’s take a shortcut through the graveyard!”
    When we get to Hudson’s house, there are two jack-o’-lanterns still lit up, and my favorite old guy is sitting on his porch.
    “How was it?” he asks as we pound up the steps.
    We all go, “Great!” because what else are we going to say? Uh, we cut through the graveyard and had to pretend like we were coming out of graves because an El Zarape trick-or-treater was being chased by Shovel Man, and wehad to escape by catapulting over the Vampire’s car and then ran into
Heather
—who was in a real bloodsucking mood—before discovering the Preacher Man had been clubbed by a cop who we think might be Danny Urbanski?
    Much easier to just say “Great!”
    Anyway, Hudson blows out the jack-o’-lanterns, then holds open the door for us, and after Holly and I call home and get extensions on our curfews, Hudson asks, “Would you like a snack and something to drink? Or are you sick from candy?”
    “We haven’t even
had
any,” I laugh.
    Hudson laughs, too. “What kind of teenagers are you?”
    “Hungry ones!” Holly says, and she’s right. All of a sudden I’m starving.
    “Time to loot the loot!” Billy cries. “I’m
gobblin’
mine up!”
    “Don’t eat too fast,” Casey says, “or you might start
coffin.
”
    They bump fists and the rest of us groan, then we head for the front room and get down to business.
    Now, I don’t know about you, but the way I check out my Halloween loot is I empty my pillowcase onto the floor. It’s
way
better than pawing through a sack or a bag to see what you’ve got.
    But before I dump it, I always take a second to stick my face in the sack and take a long, deep whiff. Maybe sour candy mixed with chocolate mixed with peanut butter mixed with bubblegum creates some kind of magic aroma, I don’t know, but nothing in the world smells like a sack full of trick-or-treat candy.
    Nothing.
    And even though none of us
say
this to the others, we all do the same thing—we sit down on Hudson’s living room floor, take a deep whiff of our sacks, then dump the candy onto the floor in front of us.
    And while I’m tearing into a Reese’s peanut butter cup, I see Billy’s pile. “Oh, right! You got double loot!” I say, pointing at El Zarape’s sack in the middle of his regular candy. I laugh. “You still going to return it?”
    “I would if I could,” Billy says with a grin.
    Casey smirks. “Yeah, right.”
    Now, the El Zarape sack may be quite a bit smaller than a pillowcase, but it’s pretty obvious that ol’ El Zarape had a busy night trick-or-treating because the bag is stuffed.
    “You’re gonna share, right?” Casey asks.
    Billy picks up the sack and starts talking like a pirate. “I may have a scrap or two fer ya, matey! Get yer chum buckets ready!”
    Then he dumps over the bag.
    But what comes rolling out is definitely not candy.

What came out of the El Zarape sack were two skulls wrapped in worn blue bandannas. They kinda thump-bumped onto the floor, then rolled right out of their head wraps and just lay there, grinning at us.
    “Whoa!” Billy says with a great big Billy Pratt smile on his face.
    The rest of us just stare until finally Marissa chokes out, “Are those
real
?”
    “Real?” Billy laughs. “No way!”
    “Are you sure?” Marissa says. “Look at those
teeth.
”
    They do have teeth.
    Long yellow and brown teeth.
    A lot are missing, but still. A lot
aren’t
.
    “Are you kidding me?” Billy says, picking them up. “They look just like those skulls at the haunted house.”
    “Did those have teeth?” I ask, because I sure didn’t remember teeth. Not like these teeth, anyway.
    “Sure they did!” Billy says, and then Casey nods like, Yeah, there were teeth.
    “So … maybe this explains why that guy was chasinghim?” Holly says. “Maybe El Zarape stole those skulls from the haunted house?”
    I shake my head. “Those do not look