“Do you guys live next to the cemetery?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear the answer.
Remi looked down at his feet.
“Yes,” Monique answered. “We do.”
“Is that why you never invite me to your house?” I asked Remi.
A shrill wail from the graveyard cut off his answer.
“Who’s screaming?” Monique asked.
The track field that separated us from the cemetery seemed to shrink before my eyes like a collapsing telescope.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I want to find out.”
She shushed me. “Listen.”
Out of the darkness a girl screamed. Laughter floated out from the cemetery, over the chain-link fence and across the track field toward us. I wished I was home in bed under my covers. I inched closer to Remi.
“Maybe we should leave them alone,” I suggested.
“Are you two scared?” Monique asked.
Remi pushed me away. “No. Marty’s the one who’s trying to hide behind me.”
“You’re the one who’s shaking,” I said.
“What’s that? I can’t hear you. Your knees are knocking too loudly.”
“You’re scared too,” I accused.
“I’m rubber, you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you,” Remi said.
“You’re a big chicken.”
“Boing. Right back at you. Bwock, Bwock,” Remi clucked.
I’d have to remember Remi’s neat trick the next time someone insulted me.
“You two are goofs,” Monique sighed.
“We’re rubber, you’re glue,” I said. “Boing!”
Remi nodded approval.
Monique whispered. “If you two knew who’s in the cemetery, you wouldn’t be playing stupid games.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Who’s there?” Remi leaned forward.
“Is it someone we know?”
Monique shook her head. “It’s no one you want to know.”
My stomach twisted into a pretzel, but Remi shrugged, unafraid.
He confronted his sister: “You’re lying. You don’t know who’s in the graveyard. You don’t even — ”
Low moans cut him off. Now the cemetery sounded like a restaurant full of cows that ate way too much off the buffet table.
“You guys ever hear of The Curse of Bouvier Cemetery?” she asked.
I shook my head and scanned Remi’s puzzled face for a clue. He shrugged.
“Do you want to hear it?” she asked.
I was pretty sure she meant to tell us the story whether we wanted to hear it or not. The way she asked reminded me of how my grade three teacher, Mrs. Connor, used to ask Eric Johnson if he “wanted” to re-do his homework, or how my mom asked if I “wanted” to take out the garbage. Why did they even bother asking?
Sure enough, Monique launched into her tale before Remi and I could say a thing: “When I started grade seven at Vanier, there was a gang that ruled the school — the Gangstas. These guys were serious trouble and they knew it. They skipped classes. They stuffed nerds in lockers. They clogged toilets with pages from textbooks. They even lipped off the principal.”
“What’s ‘lipped off’ mean?” I asked.
“They talked back to him,” she said.
“Why did they do that?” he asked.
“Because they felt like it. They did anything they wanted. They drank beer. They threw parties on the roof of the school. They stole the wheels off cars.”
“Couldn’t anyone stop them?” Remi asked.
She shook her head. “Everyone was afraid. The Gangstas held grudges. I heard that a grade twelve girl told them to stop being jerks and the next year, she never came back to school.”
“Maybe she graduated,” I suggested.
Monique shook her head. “She was supposed to come back and finish math and chemistry. Rumour is that the Gangstas made her disappear for what she said to them.”
“Are they still around?” Remi asked.
She silently looked toward the cemetery.
I asked, “What happened to them?”
“One night they went too far.” Her voice grew soft. “They stole a car and went for a joy ride, down the road over there.”
She pointed to the old highway which ran alongside the track field and past the cemetery.
She continued, almost whispering: “It was raining that night, and the road was slippery. They were going too fast and the car skidded off the road and into the cemetery. It rolled twenty-three times and landed in the middle of the graveyard. The Gangstas died. People say that the Gangstas were thrown out of the car so hard that their bodies went right into the ground, so when it came time to bury them, the undertakers just had to cover up the holes with dirt.”
“What happened after that?” Remi squeaked. If there was a chair there, he’d be sitting on the edge of it.
“Weird noises started to come from the graveyard. The sound of moaning, laughing, and sometimes a scream. People said it was the Gangstas.”
“But they were dead,” I said. “Did they become ghosts?”
She said nothing.
Remi scoffed. “You’re making this up. Someone must have checked out the cemetery and found something.”
“A policeman did, but he never came back. He disappeared like the grade twelve girl. The police sent twenty men to the cemetery to look for the cop, but all they found was his chewed-up shoe. They say the Gangstas ate him, from head . . . to foot.”
“Ghosts can’t eat people,” I said.
“I didn’t say they were ghosts,” Monique said. “The Gangstas became zombies. The undead. The creatures that feed on human flesh. They’re going to eat your feet if you’re not careful.”
She advanced toward Remi and me.
He laughed. “You’re just saying that to scare us.”
“They’re coming to get yo-o-o-u, Remi,” she moaned.
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
Monique continued, “The graveyard ghouls are going to eat your toes first, then your foot and — ”
I didn’t hear anything else she said. Ghouls! My entire body went numb as the truth plopped in front of me like a pop quiz. The dead were rising from their graves to paint graffiti.