The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street Read online

  24

  I HAVE TO GET OUT of here. It’s the only thought in my head right now. I let out a primal scream as I shake off the cold flesh still gripping my palm. If the crying and the footprints and the fingers in my hand were Inez, we’re in trouble. Not just trouble . . . danger. Whirling back toward the glass box, I notice that Nina has moved closer to the path we followed here and is frozen in place. Her shoes are sinking into the muddy ground and one hand is plastered across her mouth.

  “Nina?” I call.

  Nothing.

  She’s angled toward Inez Clarke’s glass box, and as my eyes finally find it in the whiteout, I gasp.

  Even with the curtain of rain clouding my vision, I can see that the box is one hundred percent, completely empty. I stare at the white space where the sculpture was, terrified. The kind eyes and full cheeks are gone. The wavy hair and tiny half-smile . . . gone. The entire sculpture of Inez Clarke is just. Gone.

  The warning from the woman at the front office comes back to me. The statue vanishes during lightning storms.

  A burst of crackles fills my ears and I shudder. She’s scared of the lightning. Inez is scared of the lightning and is hiding in this cemetery. My entire body shakes with the thought. I know it doesn’t make sense and that my brain is telling me I’m losing it, but right now . . . none of that matters.

  “Run!” I screech into the nothing of rain and leaves and howling wind.

  Andrew grabs my elbow and tugs me to his side. His hand wraps around mine, his fingers gripping mine urgently. We’re sprinting now, racing as fast as we can down the waterlogged path. My mind is spinning. This can’t be happening. Inez Clarke’s statue did not just vanish in front of our eyes.

  “It was empty! Empty!” I yell at him. I can’t tell if he hears me over the roar of the storm surrounding us. The wind picks up even more and wet leaves slap my face. Rain hits my body so hard it feels like it’s holding me back, trying to keep me in the cemetery.

  “This isn’t right!” Andrew shouts over the thunder. Lightning flashes nearby and a sharp crack sends a tree limb toppling to the ground.

  The crackling seems to weave in and out of the gravestones, following me. “We’ve got to get back west—toward the entrance!”

  West. West. West. I know east now, but in this rain I can’t remember where that is, either. It’s too dark and we’ve run in too many circles. Fumbling in my pocket, I try to find my compass but come up empty.

  I turn back to see if Nina knows where we are or how far the gate is, but she’s not behind us. I tug back on Andrew, fear winding into a tight coil in my belly. “Where is Nina?”

  Panic spreads on his face. “What? She was just here!”

  She was just here. Like, five seconds ago. I search the tangle of headstones as fast as I can, hoping for a glimpse of her blue coat. It isn’t there.

  “Nina! Niiiinaaaaaaaa!” I scream as loudly as I can, but my voice is no match for the storm roaring around us.

  “Nina!” Andrew bellows with me. His blond hair is matted against his forehead. Water runs in rivers down his cheeks and drips off his chin. He wipes it out of his eyes and points to something up ahead. “Tessa, I see the gate! It’s up there!”

  I shake my head, tears forming in my eyes. I don’t want to head for the gate without Nina, but I don’t want to get stuck in the cemetery, either. Turning back to look for her one last time, I’m met with the biggest, most terrifying lightning bolt I’ve ever seen. It streaks down from the sky, illuminating everything around us for a split second—the frenzy of leaves, the bone-colored headstones, the sinister mausoleums.

  But no Nina.

  I swivel my head from side to side, then turn a full circle just to be sure. She’s gone. Nina is just . . . gone.

  25

  STANDING OUTSIDE THE CEMETERY GATES, I have to remind myself to breathe. By the time we got back to the entrance, the rain had slowed down to a trickle. The wind died down, too. But Nina . . . Nina was still missing.

  Andrew releases my hand and I pull it up into my sleeve quickly. I didn’t have time to think about it in the cemetery, about him holding my hand like that, but now I can’t help it. It was nice.

  He fishes his cell phone out of his pocket and starts pressing buttons.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Texting Richie. I don’t have Nina’s phone number.”

  “How do you not have that? You’ve been in school together for years, right?” I ask, panicked. We need to find Nina. My heart slams around in my chest as I think about the bolt of lightning and how she just . . . vanished. Vanished like Inez’s statue. Vanished like my mom’s watercolors. My stomach rolls.

  “I didn’t need Nina’s phone number before you came along, Tessa!” Andrew snaps. He takes a shaky breath and then looks at me. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m just worried.” He leans back and glances through the entrance again. “I’ve been friends with Richie since first grade. But his sister? I didn’t really know her until now.”

  “Well, number or no number, we have to go look for her,” I say, pulling away from his side. “We can’t leave her in there alone.”

  “Too late,” Andrew says, his face darkening like the storm that just swept through.

  A man in navy blue mechanic’s coveralls pulls up in a golf cart. Instead of golf clubs in the back of the cart, he has buckets and a strange collection of yard-work supplies. I watch in horror as he begins dragging the heavy iron gate closed.

  “Wait!” I yell, racing toward him. “The sign says the cemetery stays open until three today!”

  “Not in inclement weather. Any time we have to clear the paths of tree limbs or debris, we close the gates.”

  Close the gates? He can’t do that. Not until Nina is out. “But our friend is still in there!”

  The man looks puzzled. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. Our grounds are searched carefully every time we lock up. You two were the last to exit.”

  “No. Our friend was in there with us! She’s about this tall.” I hold my hand up to my chin. “And she’s twelve.”

  “Sorry, sweetheart. But she’s not in there. We got seven grounds keepers that all run a different route through the cemetery, and at the end my job is to lock up. It’s empty in there.” He finishes pulling the gate shut and slides a giant lock into place.

  I drop my face into my hands and try not to be sick. Bile is bubbling up into my throat.

  The golf cart rumbles back to life and I look up to see the man staring at me. His weathered face softens. “Hey. It’s okay. Your friend is probably just playing a prank on you two. It wouldn’t be the first time in this place.”

  I want to tell him how un-Nina that would be, but I keep my mouth clamped shut. It doesn’t matter what the golf cart man thinks. I know the truth. Something happened to Nina in that cemetery, and I’ve got to find her!

  The golf cart sputters away, leaving Andrew and me alone. I sink down onto the ground and lean against the wall, not even caring that rainwater is soaking into my jeans.

  “Got it!” Andrew tilts his phone down for me to see. It’s a text from Richie with Nina’s number. Andrew dials the number quickly, then presses the phone to his ear. I don’t even have to ask if she answers; his face gives it away.

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  Andrew shakes his head. “Me neither. It went straight to her voice mail. I don’t know what to do now.”

  A ripple of thunder rattles my teeth, and the memory of what we just saw sends fear pulsing through me. “Andrew, that glass box was empty. And Nina disappeared with a flash of lightning. Do you think the ghost did something to her?”

  “No. I don’t believe in that, Florida. I know you’ve had some weird stuff going on in your house, but I don’t believe for a second that it’s a real ghost.” He pauses, staring down at his phone as if begging it to ring. “There has to be a rational explanation.”

  I’m surprised by his answer. I’m even more surprised t
hat he would agree to come here if he didn’t believe in ghosts. Why would he give up soccer and all his other buddies to help me figure this out day after day?

  I shake off my surprise and the zillions of questions I want to ask him to focus on one. The most important one. “Then who . . . or what . . . is doing all this? How do you explain what just happened in that cemetery? The crying and the footprints? Nina?”

  Andrew shrugs. “I can’t answer that yet. But I think there is an explanation. We just need to be patient and find it.”

  I take one last look through the iron gates at the graveyard. Pressing my face against the cold metal, I scour every patch of headstones that I can see. There’s nothing in there that looks like Nina. Nothing alive at all.

  26

  ANDREW’S PHONE BUZZES JUST AS we climb off our bikes. He turns it faceup to read the message, then exhales loudly. “Nina is okay. Apparently she freaked out when the lightning struck and took another path back to the entrance.”

  I’m relieved, but angry. “And she didn’t think to tell us?”

  “Guess not,” Andrew says, tucking his phone back in his pocket. He lifts off his helmet, revealing mussed, damp hair on top, but completely dry hair in the front. Everything that hung out of his helmet sticks up like a peacock’s feathers. “We can’t really be mad at her for doing the same thing we did, though.”

  He’s right. When I saw that the glass box was empty, I took off. So did Andrew. I can’t blame Nina for running in the other direction. At that point, we all just wanted out. “So we know where Nina is. But what about the footprints?”

  Andrew sighs. “You have to admit that maybe it’s possible they were already there and we overlooked them. We were looking at the statue, not down at the ground. Right?”

  “And the crying?” I continue, panic pulsing in me as I remember the soft wailing that seemed to come from every direction.

  “It could have been the wind. You live in the Windy City now, Tess. Sometimes the wind sounds like whistling, sometimes like howling . . . maybe today it sounded like crying.” He runs his open palms over his face like he’s tired. “Ugh. The one thing I can’t explain away is that glass box. I don’t know how the statue disappeared like that, but we’re going to find out, Florida.”

  I pause, then take two steps up my front walk. It’s now or never. “O-kay. This is it.”

  Andrew stops in his tracks and looks up at the windows of my house. “You’re lucky. My condo building is huge and there’s always someone moving in or out. I can’t keep them all straight. A private house like this would be so much better.”

  “Thanks,” I answer, pulling the necklace out from under my hoodie. It’s the same kind of chain that you’d put a dog tag on, but mine holds my house key. I hated taking off my locket, but wearing both only worked for one day. Too many tangles. With my luck, the second I took this key off the necklace, I’d probably lose it.

  “Welcome to the Halloween House.” I try to pull off a laugh but sound more like a dying goat.

  He snorts and punches me gently in the upper arm. “It’s not that bad, and I don’t scare easily. Nina, either. Richie, on the other hand . . .”

  Wait, Richie and Nina are coming?

  Andrew catches my confusion and frowns. “It’s okay that I invited them over, right? Richie was worried about his sister, and obviously we have a lot to figure out. I thought four brains would be better than two.”

  “Yeah, totally. It’s great. My parents will be happy to meet you guys, anyway,” I say, wilting on the inside. My father will probably break out his violin and ask us to do some kind of weird, folksy sing-along. And Mom—well, who knows? She could be on one of her painting binges where we don’t see her for hours at a time, or maybe she’ll encourage my friends to let her read tea leaves or something crazy.

  Back home my friends were used to Mom and Dad. If they did something insane—like insist that we all hold hands and meditate like they did the last time Rachel slept over—it wasn’t a shock. But here no one knows how different they are yet. How different we are. Even though I’m glad Andrew is here, I kinda wish he wouldn’t find out.

  * * *

  The house smells like pizza when Andrew and I walk in. Warmth seeps into my clothes as I take off my jacket, heating my chilled skin. As much as I hate this place, those radiator thingies sure can be nice.

  “Wow,” Andrew says, looking around. His eyes land on the paintings in our living room and he smiles. “Did you make those?”

  “Nope. I only work in pastels. My mom is a painter, though. Those are hers.”

  He slips off his wet shoes and walks over to one—my favorite. It’s a heron standing in shallow water with a fiery Florida sunset behind it. “This is really good. Your mom is amazing. She painted back in Orlando, then?”

  “Fort Myers,” I correct him. I’ve only been to Orlando twice and it was to celebrate Halloween with Mickey Mouse. Unless you count snack bars and flying carpet rides, there wasn’t anything there to paint. “Yeah, that’s a scene from a beach that was right by our house. We used to go there all the time.”

  Andrew must sense the sadness in my tone, because he abandons the painting. Jonah’s toys are spread all over the floor like a garage sale exploded in our living room. Fortunately, Reno isn’t part of it.

  “Tessa! Hey, sweetie, where have you been?” Dad appears in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Something red is splattered all over the front of his shirt. He stops when he sees Andrew. “Ah! Well, hello there! You must be a friend of Tessa’s.”

  “I’m Andrew. Nice to meet you.” Andrew reaches out to shake my dad’s hand. I’ve never seen a kid do this before, and I almost laugh.

  “Andrew is in my homeroom and we have a couple of classes together.”

  “Fantastic!” Dad says. “So glad you’re here. Make yourself at home.”

  “Um . . . Dad? What is that?” I point a finger toward his shirt. Bringing someone here for the first time is hard enough without Dad walking around looking like a crime-scene photo.

  “Pizza sauce. It’s Woodward pizza day and you made it just in time!” He does a little dance and his hair bounces around on the top of his head, making me laugh despite my nerves. “Nothing better than homemade pizza for lunch!”

  Pizza day is something we did back in Fort Myers a lot. Every weekend, actually. We’d roll out our own dough and make individual pizzas, adding whatever toppings we wanted. It’s how I learned that pepperoni and green olives were totally meant to be together. Like pastels and paper.

  “Honey, your mom and Jonah walked to the grocery store to get some last-minute toppings for the hot fudge sundaes we’re putting together for dessert, but with the storms and all, I’m going to drive to pick them up.”

  Plan ruined. I can’t be here alone with Andrew. The ghost will do something if we’re the only ones here.

  “It’s hardly raining at all now, Dad. And what about us?” I sound whiny, but I can’t help it. I’m scared.

  “What about you? In two short months, you’ll be thirteen, Tessa. We trust you!” He says this with a giant smile as if it’s supposed to please me. It does not.

  Andrew mouths “free-range” to me and I fight back a laugh. Maybe my parents are part of some new, hip movement here in Chicago and they just don’t know it yet.

  “Oh, Tessa!” Dad suddenly whirls around, a broad smile on his face. “Internet got hooked up today!”

  I stare at him, excited and disappointed at the same time. I’m finally free to e-mail Rachel any time I want—to tell her all about Chicago and this ghost—but Andrew is here. Plus, Nina and Richie aren’t far away. I’ll message her later . . . after we figure out what Inez is after. She’ll understand.

  My father slips on a jacket and grabs his keys from the table. “Be right back, guys. Pizzas just came out of the oven, but don’t try to cut them yet. They need to cool.”

  The door slams behind him and I shudder as the giant dead bolt slides back
into place. We’re alone in here now. Alone with Inez. Or the ghost of Inez. Or Amos. Whatever.

  “What was that all about?” Andrew strips off his wet jacket and hangs it on the hook just inside the door.

  “Nothing,” I say quickly.

  Andrew plops down on the couch and kicks out his feet. “Then why did you want your dad to stay here so bad?”

  I look at the paintings. The uneven wood floor. The loose brick in the wall I still haven’t told him about. Anywhere but at Andrew. “I’m afraid. Afraid for us to be here alone with her.”

  “Who? The ghost?”

  Nodding, I look toward the stairwell. “It started the day after we moved in. Mom heard noises, but they were coming from my room. Jonah heard them, too. Again, my room. Then his doll showed up—in my room. Twice! I think she’s trying to reach me.”

  I leave out the part about the drawings I found in the wall. I’m pretty sure they’re proof of what I’m saying, but I’m not ready to share that theory just yet. Telling Andrew and Nina might get the clues figured out faster than if I do it on my own, but a little voice in my head keeps telling me that isn’t what Inez wants. That she left the drawings for me to find, and that she wants me to figure them out. I hope I’m not making a mistake by keeping them a secret.

  Andrew scratches his head. “Not gonna lie, I feel a little better knowing you weren’t acting like a weirdo because of me.” He grins that lopsided grin of his and I can’t help but smile back. “Maybe we need to start by finding out the connection between her and you,” Andrew adds. “Why the ghost is trying to reach you, specifically.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts,” I tease.

  He grins and shrugs. “I guess I’m on the fence about it.”

  “Ask Nina how far away she is. We might need her.” Nina has more knowledge about Inez than she wants to admit. And right now, I think she’s my best shot at unraveling this mess. “Oh! And tell her to bring the book! If we’re going to figure out who’s buried there and why they’re haunting me, we’re going to need it.”