CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
TEASER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO AVAILABLE
COPYRIGHT
“MY HOMETOWN”
by Spencer Kassimir
My name is Spencer Kassimir and I live in a town called Highgrave.
If you lived in Highgrave, you’d know how it got its name. You see, an old graveyard stands high on the hill that overlooks the whole town.
You can see the graveyard from just about anywhere. From Main Street. From my classroom. I can even see it from my bedroom window.
If you live in Highgrave, you can’t escape the graveyard.
Even the sunniest days aren’t really sunny here. Highgrave Hill casts a deep shadow over the roads, the buildings, the treetops down below.
On clear days, you can look up and see the old gravestones on top of the hill. They gleam like crooked teeth in the tall green grass.
At night, when a moon hangs low over the hill, the graveyard becomes a frightening place. An eerie gray mist clings to the hill. And the gravestones appear to float free.
Yes. The old tombstones seem to float by themselves. To float over the shimmering mist. To float over the town. Over my house at the bottom of Highgrave Hill.
I guess that’s why I have the nightmares….
* * *
I cleared my throat and lowered the pages of my essay to my side. Reading a paper in front of the whole class makes me really nervous.
My throat felt as dry as sandpaper. And my hands were so wet, they smeared the ink on the pages.
“Very good writing,” Mrs. Webster said, nodding. She had her hands clasped tightly on her desk. “Good description, Spencer. Don’t you agree, class?”
A few kids muttered yes. My friend Audra Rusinas smiled and flashed me a thumbs-up. Behind her, Frank Foreman yawned really loudly. That caused his pal Buddy Tanner to burst out laughing. A few other kids laughed, too.
Mrs. Webster narrowed her eyes at Frank. Then she turned back to me. “Go on. Read the rest, Spencer.”
I glanced up at the big clock, above the chalkboard behind her. “Are you sure there’s time?”
The next part of the paper was kind of personal, kind of embarrassing. I knew it would probably give Frank and Buddy a good laugh.
Like the last paper I had to read to the class. I wrote about the only thing in the world that terrifies me — spiders.
Frank and Buddy never let me forget that paper. After I read it, I found a spider in my desk every morning for a month!
“Read until the bell,” Mrs. Webster insisted.
I cleared my throat again and started reading….
* * *
Some nights I dream about the graveyard ghouls. Everyone in my family dreams about them.
One night, my eight-year-old brother, Jason, woke up screaming. “They’re coming to get me! They’re coming to get me!” It took a long time to convince Jason it was just a dream.
My little brother and sister, Remy and Charlotte, also have nightmares about the graveyard ghouls.
And I dream that the ghouls rise up from their old graves and float down the hill. They float into the foggy mist on the side of the hill and wait there. Hiding. Waiting for innocent victims to come by.
And then the ghouls swarm around their victims. Sweep around them, wispy as the fog. And pull them up … up into the old graves at the top of the hill.
Everyone in Highgrave knows about —
* * *
“Very good!” Mrs. Webster interrupted. She clapped her hands enthusiastically. “Very good writing, Spencer!”
Audra shot me a big smile. Behind her, Frank and Buddy were giggling about something. They slapped each other a high five.
“Do you think you might want to be a writer when you grow up?” Mrs. Webster asked me.
I could feel my face turn hot. “I … I don’t know,” I stammered. “Maybe.”
“Maybe.” I heard Frank mimic me in a high, shrill voice. Buddy burst out laughing again.
“Frank, would you like to read your paper next?” Mrs. Webster demanded.
Frank’s mouth dropped open. “Well … it isn’t quite finished.”
Mrs. Webster leaned over her desk. “What is your essay about?” she asked.
Frank hesitated. Then he finally replied, “I’m not sure.”
The whole class broke up laughing. Frank tried to keep a straight face, but he laughed, too.
Mrs. Webster shook her head. “I don’t think it’s funny,” she murmured. She turned back to me. “Finish reading your piece, Spencer. Maybe you will inspire Frank.”
Frank let out a loud groan.
Mrs. Webster ignored him and motioned for me to read.
Why can’t I be cool like Frank and Buddy? I asked myself.
They are total goofs. They never do any work at all. They spend the whole day laughing and talking and messing around.
And everyone likes them. Everyone thinks they are the coolest guys in school.
I want to be cool, too. I want to make kids laugh. I don’t want to be standing up here, having the teacher tell me what a goody-goody I am. Asking me in front of everybody if I want to be a writer.
How totally uncool can you be?
I glanced at Frank. Even though he sat toward the back of the room, I could see him clearly. His head towered over all the others.
Frank is a big, strong, muscular guy.
I’m short and kind of scrawny and I wear glasses.
That’s what I am, I thought, a scrawny goody-goody.
I could feel my face growing hot again. I raised the pages in front of my face and continued reading….
* * *
Everyone in Highgrave knows about the graveyard ghouls. Some kids told me about them on the day my family moved here.
They said that the dead people buried in the Highgrave graveyard can’t rest. They can’t rest because the graveyard is up too high.
The dead have become restless, angry ghouls. Rotting and decayed, they climb out of their graves. They cannot sleep. They can only pace the graveyard and look down on the houses below.
At night, their howls and moans float over the town. If you look really closely, you can see the ghouls. You can see them shuffling through the fog that rolls low over the hill.
And if you go up there at night, the ghouls —
* * *
The bell rang.
Books slammed shut. Kids cheered.
“Thank you, Spencer. Sorry we couldn’t finish. But that was excellent.” Mrs. Webster jumped to her feet. “Okay, everyone. That’s all for today.” She had to shout over the loud voices and scraping chairs.
“But Spencer has given me a really good idea,” Mrs. Webster called out.
The room grew quieter.
“Tomorrow, pack a lunch and wear your hiking boots,” Mrs. Webster instructed. “Tomorrow, we will all climb up to the graveyard.”
“Huh? Why?” someone called out.
The teacher’s eyes flashed. “To summon the ghouls,” she replied.
“What is metamorphosis?” Jason asked.
Dad squinted across the dinner table at him. “Excuse me?”
“What is metamorphosis?” my brother repeated.
Next to him, Remy and Charlotte were poking each other with string beans, having a very wimpy sword fight. Mom was standing across the kitchen, talking on the phone.
I shoved a forkful of mashed potatoes into my mouth — and screamed in pain. “Hot! Too hot!”
Dad reached into the cardboard bucket for another chicken leg. “Metamorphosis? Where did you hear that word, Jason?”
Jason scratched his curly brown hair. He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Well, it means change,” Dad explained. “Changing from one thing to another.”
“You mean like changing your clothes?” Jason asked.
“Remy! Charlotte! Stop playing with your food,” Mom called from across the room.
“No,” Dad replied, waving the chicken leg in front of him. “Like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. That’s metamorphosis.”
“Oh,” Jason replied.
“Why did you ask about it?” Dad wondered.
Jason shrugged again. “Beats me.”
“He probably heard the word in a cartoon,” I suggested.
Jason kicked me hard under the table.
“Ow!” I cried out. “Why did you do that?”
“Just felt like it,” he replied.
Remy and Charlotte thought that was funny. They both laughed and then started poking each other with string beans again.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Mom screamed. “String beans are not weapons!”
“Wouldn’t it be cool if Duke could change into something else?” Jason asked. He bent down to pet Duke, our black cat. “Maybe Duke could change into a butterfly. That would be metamorphosis, right, Dad?”
Dad didn’t get a chance to answer. Remy and Charlotte had dropped their string beans. Now they were tossing handfuls of mashed potatoes at each other.
Dinner can be difficult in my house.
Sometimes you have to duck a lot.
After dinner, Mom and Dad hurried off to a parents’ meeting at school. They left me in charge of the three kids. I sat them down in front of the TV and put on a cartoon. A long one.
Then I went up to my room. I tried to call Audra, but the line was busy.
Audra invited me to a dance at the place where she takes dance lessons. I hate to dance. In fact, I never dance. Not even by myself in my room.
So I planned to call and tell her I broke my leg or something. No way I’d go to a dance with a bunch of kids who really knew how to dance!
I tried her number again. No answer.
Sighing, I sat on the edge of my bed and stared out the window. It was a cold November night. Gusts of wind rattled the windowpane.
I gazed out at Highgrave Hill. Silvery moonlight made the hill shimmer. All the way up the steep slope, bare, scraggly trees poked up like skeletons.
I pressed my face against the window glass to see to the top of the hill. And I gasped.
Lights!
Flickering flashes of light. Tiny, but so bright they lit up the old tombstones.
My mouth dropped open as I watched the lights, darting, blinking, floating over the graves.
Like ghostly fireflies.
And then the lights faded behind a curtain of fog. The fog shimmered up, over the dark grass, over the bent, scraggly trees. Covering the hill, covering the old graveyard.
And I heard a horrifying moan. Through the windowpane, I heard a long, low moan floating from the hill.
Human and animal at the same time.
So cold. So sad.
So near …
The next morning, a raw, damp morning, we all followed Mrs. Webster to the hill.
I lifted my eyes to the sky. No puffy white clouds. No bright patches of blue. No sun. Just a solid slab of gray that stretched as far as I could see.
An icy wind blew down from the hill. The scraggly trees shivered. Their bare limbs waved at us, as if trying to warn us away.
“Listen up, explorers of the past,” Mrs. Webster called, gathering us in a circle around her. “Let’s see what the old gravestones reveal about our town’s history.”
I shifted the backpack on my shoulders. I couldn’t find my backpack this morning, so I had to borrow Jason’s. It was a babyish backpack, bright purple and way too small for me.
Jason loved it. I knew he’d be really angry if he knew I borrowed it. I planned to get it back home before Jason missed it.
I heard someone hurrying up behind me. But I couldn’t move out of the way fast enough. “Cool backpack!” I heard Frank exclaim.
He tugged it down hard with both hands — and I stumbled back into a group of girls.
Frank and Buddy laughed. Some other kids laughed, too.
“Is that a toddler’s backpack?” Frank demanded.
“It’s called My First Backpack!” Buddy declared.
More laughter.
Ha-ha.
Ignoring them, I pulled my baseball cap down on my forehead and started to climb the hill, taking long, fast strides.
“Hey — what’s your rush?” Audra trotted up beside me. She pointed to the graveyard. “Take your time. They’re not going anywhere.”
I slowed down. “Hey, how’s it going?” I asked. I tried to turn so she couldn’t see the babyish purple backpack.
I usually don’t care what people think of me. But I care what Audra thinks.
I really like her. She’s smart and funny, and she’s the prettiest girl in Highgrave Middle School.
Audra has long black hair and beautiful olive skin. But the most amazing thing about her are her eyes. They’re light green, flecked with gold.
I always try to act cool around her. That’s one reason I won’t go to that dance with her. If I did, she’d see what a klutz I am!
“I’m hurrying because I can’t wait to check out the graveyard,” I lied.
“It’s cold up here,” Audra said as we reached the broken wooden gate that led into the graveyard. She zipped up her purple satin jacket.
“It’s not so bad,” I said. I wanted Audra to think I was rugged. So I unzipped my jacket.
I stepped past the gate — and saw a spider dangling from the fence.
“Hey!” I cried out. I couldn’t help it. I’m terrified of spiders.
I kept my eyes on the spider as I walked by it. I wasn’t watching where I was going. I stumbled over a broken fence picket — and fell onto a low gravestone.
“Are you okay?” Audra asked.
I let her help me up. “I told you I couldn’t wait to check out the graves!” I joked.
Mrs. Webster began passing out long sheets of tracing paper and chunks of charcoal. “Collect as many gravestone rubbings as you can,” she instructed. “When we get back to class, we’ll read them and see what the old tombstones tell us.”
“Oooooh! I’m a ghoul! I’m a graveyard ghoul!” In the next row of graves, Frank staggered around, pretending to haunt a group of girls.
They laughed and wrapped him up in tracing paper.
The girls all think Frank is so cute! Yuck.
“Let’s start here,” I told Audra.
We held out our papers and charcoal and started rubbing. The wind began to blow harder. It whipped fall leaves from the trees. They whirled in the strong current, then settled at our feet.
Another gust of wind swept dry dirt into my eyes, my nose, my throat. I started to cough.
“William Swift.” Audra read the tombstone. “Died on the hanging tree. 1852.”
“Do you think he was a murderer or something?” I took a giant step back from the stone.
“He must have been a bad dude,” Audra replied thoughtfully.
“Let’s find some other stones to rub,” I told Audra. I gathered up my supplies and started to wander through the gravestones.
The sky darkened. The air grew colder. I zipped my jacket back up. I
shifted the little backpack again and continued to move through the tilted, broken old stones.
I stopped when I found a big grave with a double gravestone.
“Oswald Manse. 1770 to 1785. Martin Manse. 1772 to 1785,” I read to myself. “Together in life. Together in death.”
They were buried under the same stone, I realized. I read the writing again. Oswald Manse was fifteen when he died. Martin was thirteen. They must have been brothers, I realized.
Poor Oswald and Martin Manse. They were so young when they died. I bet they were nice kids. Definitely not murderers who died on the hanging tree! There was some more writing at the bottom of the stone, but I didn’t read it.
Beneath the writing, I saw a picture of a bird etched into the granite. It looked like a crow.
I stared at the bird. Audra will like this grave, I thought. She’ll want to do a rubbing of it.
Where was Audra, anyway?
I glanced around the graveyard. Kids were scattered everywhere, bending over the graves, struggling with their tracings.
I found Audra with Frank. They were wandering between rows of crooked tombstones, trying to decide which ones to work on next.
“Hey, Audra, check this one out.” I grabbed her arm and tugged her to the spot.
“Whoooooah!” I stumbled again.
I grabbed for Audra to keep myself from falling.
Missed.
And tumbled forward — onto the double tombstone!
The stone creaked and groaned as I fell over it.
It toppled over, making a heavy THUD as it landed on its back in the dirt.
And I heard a small cry.
The sound sent a shiver down my back.
“Huh? Was that you?” I asked Audra.
She stared down at me. “Excuse me?”
“Wasn’t that you? I heard a cry. Wasn’t that you?” I repeated.
“No. It wasn’t me.” Audra shook her head.
“Did you hear it?” I asked.
“Nope.”
Did I imagine it? I climbed to my feet and straightened my baseball cap. Then I brushed dirt off the front of my jacket and jeans.
I turned to see Audra staring down at the stone. “Whoa. Spencer, do you see what it says at the bottom?”
I squinted at the small writing engraved under the crow: DISTURB OUR REST AT YOUR OWN PERIL.
Another shiver ran down my back.
Disturb their rest?
Did I just disturb their rest?