Pete looks to Will. Even in the dark I can tell he’s impressed. Will scowls.
“All right, Frankie. One whole minute. Starting now.” Pete raises his watch and starts the count.
We wait.
My blood feels like ice water in my veins. My cousin lies before us, his little body beneath a thin veil of fog. The graveyard is so dark, and I turn to the sky, trying to find one of those bright stars for just a little light, but the fog is too thick and the stars are hidden.
“Ten seconds,” Pete says quietly.
That feeling of being watched lays hold of me again and I turn to the gate, and I see now that headstones block our way back to it: thick and black, jutting out of the mist at crooked angles. And there’s something else: the gate is closed.
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.