The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street Read online

  A dozen different possibilities flash through my brain: toy box, clothes hamper, suitcase. They end with one—a possibility that sends a chill from the base of my spine up to the top of my head: a music box. Could that be it? It’s hard to tell because like in the first drawing, the lines aren’t perfect. They’re crude. Unfinished.

  They’re exactly what they would look like if a six-year-old drew them.

  In an instant, the goose bumps are back. Did Inez draw these? And if she did, what is she trying to tell me with them?

  Flipping the pages over one at a time, I examine the letters scrawled onto the back—I. B. Interesting. Most artists place their mark, or initials, or signature somewhere on their work. These look like initials, and if they are, my mystery just got a lot more confusing, because the last name of the little girl I thought was haunting me doesn’t start with B.

  I roll the drawings back up and retie the twine. My eyes are heavy and my head hurts. Crawling back onto the couch, I take one more look at the wall. Thankfully, the brick hasn’t moved.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I whisper, a yawn taking over. “I promise. I just need a little sleep.” And a lot of time, I think. Based on the clues this ghost is leaving, even the Scooby-Doo gang would be confused.

  22

  IT’S FINALLY SATURDAY. GRAVEYARD DAY. I kept hoping something would change—that Inez would stop haunting me and we wouldn’t even need to come here, but it hasn’t happened. Thursday and Friday were just as bad as every other day since we moved into the house on Shady Street. Maybe even worse.

  Thursday I spent the night searching the house with Mom. We were trying to find her lost watercolors. No luck. The only thing we found was Reno . . . in my room . . . again. Jonah swore he didn’t put him there and I know he’s telling the truth, which only leaves one possibility. Inez. Then last night a gust of wind woke me up. It was so strong that it knocked one of Mom’s paintings off the wall. Fortunately, it landed on the couch and not my head, but yikes.

  Inez is definitely still around. She’s also definitely still unhappy.

  I know I agreed to come here, but now that we’re standing in front of the gates to Graceland Cemetery, I’m having second thoughts.

  “So. I guess it’s go time,” Andrew says, his face tilted upward toward the sky. Black clouds drift lazily across the palette of grays. Low rumbles echo in the distance.

  I laugh to myself. Of course it’s stormy and scary-looking on the day we visit the graveyard. Why wouldn’t it be?

  The gates are thick black wrought iron and they’re wide open. Enormous trees stretch as far as I can see. “Let’s just get this over with.” I groan, pulling my jacket tighter up around my neck. The wind is biting into me today and I don’t want to be outside—here—any longer than we have to be.

  “I think the offices for the cemetery are just to the right,” Nina whispers as we cross through the gates and find ourselves on a narrow paved path.

  “Why are you whispering?” Andrew asks. “It’s not like you’re going to bother any of them.” With this, he sweeps his hand over the gravestones sprawled out in front of us.

  For a moment I can’t breathe. There. Are. So. Many. Huge ones that spiral up to the sky and small ones that are chipped and unmarked. Ones with faces, and ones with entire bodies carved into the stone. Maybe they’re supposed to immortalize someone or make us feel better about death, but all they make me want to do is pee my pants.

  A smile fills out Nina’s pale face. She cinches her dark blue jacket tighter around her neck and nods toward the graves. “Welcome to Graceland, guys.”

  The excitement in her voice is hard to miss. Even with all the hair whipping around in her face, I can see it too. Her hot-cocoa-colored eyes are bright, twinkling like she just stepped through the gates of Disney World. Only this isn’t Disney World. It’s a freaking cemetery and I’ve never been so nervous in my whole life.

  A small brick building sits in the corner, exactly where Nina said it was. It looks newer than all the headstones surrounding it—out of place almost. The door is, of course, locked, and there’s a small buzzer. I push it with shaking hands and wait for the door to unlatch so we can go in. There we find a small, lobby-like room with a couch and two leather armchairs. There are black-and-white pictures framed on the walls, and brochures about choosing Graceland as a final resting place.

  “Can I help you?” A woman’s voice breaks into the quiet and all three of us snap to attention. Nina composes herself first.

  “Yes. We’re here looking for the grave of Inez Clarke.” Her voice trembles just slightly, giving away that even our local graveyard expert is a little afraid. “Can you tell us which direction it is?”

  The woman nods and tucks a pen behind her ear. The tip of it peeks out of her salt-and-pepper hair just enough to look like some kind of weird barrette. She slides open a drawer behind her desk and rifles through it for a moment. Then she ambles over to the counter and sets a sheet of paper down in front of us. It looks like a map, only instead of cities and states, there are numbers.

  “The cemetery is divided up into a series of different paths with street names.” She traces one with her finger, then highlights it in bright pink. I’m surprised they have pink highlighters in graveyard offices. You’d think they’d stick with something uglier.

  “This path is called Main Street. Take that until you hit Graceland Avenue and veer left. That will take you directly to Inez’s grave site.”

  Graceland Avenue in Graceland Cemetery. Interesting.

  “So the person actually buried here is someone by the name of Amos Briggs—is that right? A little boy?” Nina asks, tapping on the number forty-two, which indicates where the statue of Inez Clarke is. She’s getting braver.

  The woman’s eyebrows knit together tightly. She turns and looks through the window, scouring the scene outside for something. “Are you here with a tour group? Because they are required to register in advance with us!” Her tone is sharp now and I’m worried. Maybe we shouldn’t be asking anything at all.

  Andrew steps up to the counter and smiles. He looks so innocent when he does that. “No, ma’am. We’re not here with a ghost tour. We’re here because we’re doing a research project. Inez Clarke is very important to us. Can you help?”

  She studies his face for a moment. The wrinkles in her forehead slowly smooth out and disappear. “If you’re asking me to tell you the truth, I will. I don’t know for sure if Inez Clarke is buried there. I know someone is buried there and the name Amos Briggs is on the plot record. But the statue says ‘Inez.’ ”

  A clap of thunder shakes the building and Nina shrieks. The woman gasps and the lights flicker.

  I close my eyes for a brief moment and try to steady my breathing. The first time the lights flickered on me anywhere, it was in my bathroom at home, and that ended up being one of the most terrifying experience of my life. Then they flickered again—in my room. Why does this keep happening around me?

  “I can also tell you that there have been reports of the statue disappearing.” The woman’s voice drops until she’s nearly whispering. “Grounds keepers for generations have reported that it vanishes during lightning storms.”

  “V-Vanishes?” I stutter. “How is that possible?”

  The woman shrugs, a wicked smile stretching across her wrinkled face. “I don’t know, dear. I’m only telling you what I’ve heard through the grapevine. Apparently, shortly after Inez’s statue showed up in the cemetery, the storms started.”

  Storms. There have been a lot of storms since I moved to Chicago.

  “Terrible storms with the kind of thunder and lightning that rattle your bones,” she continues. Her voice is raspy. Scary.

  “Any other, um, strange things happen around the statue?” I swallow hard, half afraid to hear her answer.

  She nods and the pen behind her ear bobs. “You name it and it’s happened. But the crying . . . the crying is the worst.”

  My ears perk up. “
Crying?”

  “Oh, yes. Sometimes, just before we close the gates, we hear someone crying. It sounds like a girl. A little girl.” She pulls the pen from behind her ear and slowly draws a bright red circle around the location of Inez’s grave. “Maybe even Inez.”

  Nina looks at me nervously. The lights flicker once, twice, three more times before resuming full strength. Please don’t let them go out completely, I think. I can’t handle being stuck in a cemetery office in the pitch black. Especially with this woman.

  “Vanishing statue. Storms. Crying. Got it,” Nina says, digging a pen from her bag and jotting down a note on the side of the graveyard map. “All of that definitely backs up the story that Inez died of a lightning strike. I mean, the haunted part of it makes sense.”

  “Was Amos Briggs listed in the Chicago census at the time? I mean, was he a real person?” Andrew asks.

  I turn to look at him, impressed. I hadn’t thought of it, but he’s brought up a good question.

  “I’m not sure, dear. I’m sorry. I don’t usually answer questions about the older grave sites like Inez’s. I’m more of a liaison to the families that are considering burying their loved ones here now.”

  “Thank you for your time. And for the map,” Nina says, taking my hand and dragging me toward the door.

  We step outside just in time for a gust of wind to hit us, sending the map sailing into the air. Andrew chases after it, raising his fist in victory as he plants a wet heel on it to pin it down.

  Nina peels it off the pavement. “Inez Clarke’s grave is really not that far from where we are now.”

  “No way,” I say, shaking my head violently. “It’s going to start pouring any minute and if we get stuck there during a storm, they might need to start digging a hole for me!”

  Andrew rubs the back of his neck and scans the sky. “If you really don’t want to, it’s okay, but I think we have time.”

  Orange leaves rain down, then plaster themselves to the wet pavement. The partially bare tree limbs rattle against one another in the wind, making me think of bones . . . all the bones tucked down in the soggy earth around us. I hold my breath as another stiff breeze howls across the stretch of headstones, bringing with it the smell of burning wood. A fireplace.

  What I wouldn’t give to be back in Florida right now, where the only rattling sound I ever heard was mangrove trees quaking in the lazy afternoon rain, and the only smell in the air was the brine of the ocean. Fall in Chicago is beautiful and crisp and all those things my parents brag about, but it’s also ghostly. That’s really the only word that can describe the feeling here. Ghostly.

  “Tessa?” Andrew’s voice breaks into my observations. I look up, realizing that he and Nina are staring at me, waiting for a reaction. They look excited . . . hopeful. Me? Not so much. But as scared as I am, walking to Inez’s grave is the least I can do, considering they were willing to come here for me. To help me. I don’t know how I’ll ever pay them back.

  “Ugh. Fine,” I say hesitantly. “But let’s be fast.”

  23

  MAP IN HAND, WE TRUDGE in the direction of Inez’s grave. With the exception of the wind rattling the tree limbs, it’s silent. Yellow and red leaves whip around as if they’re alive, and the air has a bite to it. A chilly and frightening bite.

  A flash of lightning brightens up the sky to the east. I know it’s the east because I’m finally learning which way Lake Michigan is. Well, that and I’ve snuck my compass out of my pocket several times to check. Every time Andrew or Nina looks at me, I put it away, desperate to avoid answering questions like Who carries a compass around with them and Why not just use your phone?

  Nina picks up her pace. Her eyes are glued to the lit screen of her cell phone. “Weather looks bad. Really bad. We can’t have more than twenty minutes before this stuff hits us.” Her sneakers squeak across the slick black pavement as she leads us deeper into the spread of headstones.

  “Twenty minutes?” I ask. “Even if we get to Inez’s grave and back to the entrance, we’ve still got to bike home. We’ll never make it.”

  Nina looks thoughtful. “But we’re so close. We can’t just walk away now.”

  She’s right. Getting stuck in a storm would suck, but being stuck with a ghost in my house would be much, much worse.

  Andrew stops for a moment and I’m going to pull him forward when I see what he’s looking at. It’s a cluster of small, square houses. They’re squat and made of stone and have names etched into them.

  “Mausoleums,” Nina says in a near-whisper. “They’re burial chambers where the dead person is kept in a tomb aboveground.”

  “Like a crypt,” Andrew adds. His hand is tensed tightly around his backpack straps as he stares at the buildings. “I don’t think I like those.”

  Me neither. I look at the accordion gate stretched across a door. Why would they need a gate over it? It’s not like the person is going to wake up and try to get out, right? I let out a nervous laugh. I’m never watching another zombie movie again.

  We take a left at a fork in the path and I try to remember if this is the way the woman highlighted for us. I think so, but the map is in Nina’s pocket. I’ve just gotten a glimpse of a glass box ahead when thunder shakes the ground and a flash of lightning nearly blinds me.

  “That’s her!” I scream, pointing at the box. “That’s Inez!”

  Andrew flicks the hood of his jacket up. “We better do this fast, then, because that is going to be horrible!”

  I scan the sky. It’s black. Andrew is right—as bad as this weather looked on Nina’s phone, it’s even worse in person. It’s also really, really cold. I mean, it didn’t exactly feel tropical before, but it wasn’t frigid like the sprinkles of rain that are hitting me square in the face, either.

  As we creep up to the box, my breath catches in my throat. There’s something about standing in front of Inez that’s overwhelming. Exciting, but scary at the same time. Seeing a grave with an actual image of the person supposedly buried under it is spooky—much spookier than just seeing a stone nameplate and some random words or dates.

  “Wow,” Andrew breathes out. I feel his hand on my arm, probably an attempt to make sure I don’t bolt. “This is incredible.”

  Nina squats down and drags out a notebook, which she perches on her knees. She begins furiously scribbling as my eyes remain fixed on the petite face of the small stone girl in front of us.

  “Inez,” I whisper. “It’s actually you.”

  My eyes begin at the top of her head and move downward, taking note of everything inside the glass box. She has a young face with adorably full cheeks, and her eyes are soft . . . kind. Her wavy hair is pulled back and she’s sitting on what looks like a stone version of a wooden bench, her tiny feet covered by low-heeled slippers. She wears a dress and there’s a locket or necklace of some kind hanging from her neck. The object I saw in her hand in the sketchpad back home is a broom . . . no, an umbrella.

  An umbrella. My mind spins for a moment, thinking about the legend that a lightning strike killed Inez. Is that why the sculpture is holding an umbrella? I shake off the thought.

  “Okay, I think I’ve got it all.” Nina stands up and wipes the drops of rain from her notebook before shoving it in her bag. I’ve been so absorbed with Inez’s statue that I don’t even know what she was doing to begin with.

  “Got what?” Andrew asks, as if he can read my mind.

  “The names and dates of all the graves around Inez’s. See how close they are together?”

  I hadn’t noticed, but Nina is right. There are two smaller gravestones to the left of Inez, and one to the right. They’re clumped into a straight line, each of them so close to the next that they’re almost touching.

  “Only family is buried that way. These other gravestones have to be relatives of whoever is buried here—whether it’s Inez or Amos,” Nina finishes, sighing.

  Andrew’s face crinkles up. “Yeah, but if the cemetery people don’t really even know w
ho’s buried here, they might have buried the wrong family next to them . . . right?”

  Nina nods. “Possibly. We won’t know until we do a little more research, though.”

  I’m considering this when a flash of lightning lights up the dark cemetery. For a moment, Inez’s face is illuminated . . . nearly glowing. I gasp as an enormous clap of thunder immediately follows the lightning, shaking me to my core. Rain begins falling in fat, white sheets.

  “Here we go!” Andrew says, squinting through the rain.

  Nina jogs over under the nearest tree and fumbles with the map. Andrew and I follow, shielding our faces from the icy water as best we can. “I think we came from that way, but I just want to make sure,” Nina says.

  I stare down at the map with her as the storm ramps up around us. Another streak of lightning lights up the sky, and the sound that follows it makes my entire body go cold.

  Crying. It cuts through the rain like a knife and settles into my ears. I bite my tongue to keep from screaming.

  “Are you okay?” Andrew is asking. I can make out the words, but they’re quiet. Distant. He taps my shoulder, then shakes me gently. All I can do is cover my ears as the wailing gets louder.

  It’s Inez. It has to be.

  An unexpected gust of wind whips my coat hood up and over my eyes. It’s exactly like the gust that ruffled my hair and pajamas the night Reno started talking in my room—cold and eerie. I yank the hood off my face. That’s when I see the footprints. They’re shallow and tiny, pressed down around Andrew and me like whoever left the prints was running in circles.

  Daring.

  Taunting.

  Warning.

  Andrew gapes at them in horror. He blinks, then looks at me like I might have an explanation, but I don’t. I haven’t seen anyone else in this cemetery since we got here. Swiveling my head around, I search the headstones. Nothing. I turn to tell Andrew we’re okay, that we must have somehow missed those footprints earlier and it’s all going to be fine, when I feel them—the fingers. Icy, dead fingers sliding into my open palm . . . tugging me deeper into the darkened cemetery.