Last Summer Boys(22)

My heart skips a beat.

The gate is closed!

Did Pete close it when we came in? Impossible. Pete went in first. I came in last, and I didn’t shut the gate.

“Pete, the gate’s shut.”

Will snaps his head up. “Fool! What’d you close the gate for?”

“I didn’t!”

“Twenty seconds,” Pete says, softly.

At our feet, Frankie is still as stone. He looks dead.

The hairs on the back of my neck rise and it’s colder now, so much colder than it should be for a June night.

Did someone else shut the gate? I sweep the yard, but it’s just tombstones and shadows and— “I hear it!”

At the sound of Frankie’s voice, I just about jump out of my skin.

“Liar,” Will whispers. “You don’t hear nothing!”

Frankie’s eyes are wide. “I hear ticking!”

Will looks at Pete.

“Thirty seconds,” Pete says.

My body is shaking now, and goose bumps cover me from the back of my neck down to my soggy feet. Frankie is lying on top of Jacob Hiltch’s grave, summoning his witch of a wife.

Or was she already here, waiting for us? Did she close the gate?

“Frankie, come away from there!” I whisper. “You don’t have to do this! We’ll find another way!”

“What’s it sound like?” Will bends over him.

“Super loud! Like a freight train!”

A current of electricity charges down my spine at that. “Pete, call it off!”

Beside me, Pete says softly, “Forty seconds.”

I snap back to the gate. A forest of tombstones blocks our way. We’ll never make it out in time.

The fog’s grown thicker too.

“It’s ticking faster!” Frankie whispers.

“I don’t hear nothing!” Will insists. “You’re making it up!”

Frankie’s face is pale, deathly pale. “It’s beating like a drum!”

“Pete, call it off!” I cry again.

“Fifty seconds.” Pete keeps his eyes on the watch.

Will stares, breathless. “He really hears it.” And now I know Will is scared too.

“Fifty-five seconds.”

My heart pounds. My skin crawls. I feel the urge to turn again to the yard. But I don’t. I can’t. My eyes are locked on the tombstone of Jacob Hiltch and my cousin lying before it.

Pete says softly, “Time.”

The word echoes against ancient headstones, and the four of us hold our breath and listen.

The night around us is silent.

The witch ain’t here.

Frankie stays flat and motionless.

“Frankie,” I whisper, “you did it!”

He don’t move.

Will leans over him. “You hear that? You did it, fool! You can get up now. Unless you like lying on a dead man’s grave.”

But Frankie stays still.

I drop down beside him and lay a hand on his shoulder. When his head turns, he looks at me like he’s just woken up from a deep sleep.

“Is it over?” he asks.

“What you talking about?” Will says. “’Course it’s over!”

“Couldn’t you hear Pete counting out the seconds?” I ask Frankie fearfully.

He sits up slowly. Wet leaves stick to his front. “At first . . . but then all I could hear was that ticking! It just kept getting louder and louder. It wouldn’t stop. And . . .” He pauses.

“And what?” Will asks.

Frankie looks straight into his eyes and says in a slow, deep voice, “I felt it. A drumming under the ground. As if . . . as if Hiltch was alive.”

Will stares.

My knees go weak.

It ain’t possible. Hiltch couldn’t possibly be alive. He’s been deader than a doornail for almost two centuries. But Frankie sits before us in the curling fog, his eyes so wide, and I know he ain’t lying.

Will looks at him hard. His eyes rise to Pete, then dart about the stones. “Let’s get out of here.”

Pete shrugs. “Nicely done, Frankie.” He drops the watch into his pocket. There’s a click and his flashlight’s bright beam spills yellow light over our cousin. Frankie’s shirt clings to his chest and stomach. There are smudges of moldy graveyard dirt all down his front.

“So I passed the test, right?” he asks.

“I’d say so,” Pete says. “And since I’m the final judge, that’s all that counts.”

Frankie looks to me then. Through my fading fear, realization seeps in: Frankie’s passed their test. We are going with my brothers on their expedition.

Pete’s flashlight swings away as he begins back through the headstones. Will follows, hands buried deep in his pockets.

“I don’t think he heard anything,” he mutters. “I think he made it up.”

Frankie stands up and tries to brush some of those leaves off himself.

“Frankie, you did it,” I whisper as we follow them back to the gate. “You did it!”

“Guess so,” he says. “It wasn’t that bad, really.”

It’s incredible. None of us has ever spent a whole minute over Hiltch’s grave. Frankie ain’t only tough. He’s the toughest boy I’ve ever seen. Who would have thought a city boy would have that kind of guts?