The boys crouched beside a side entrance to Hollywood Forever Cemetery. They’d taken an AutoTaxi from the observatory and arrived at Los Angeles’ most famous celebrity graveyard just in time to see Bald Guy and Beard Dude slip through the service gate that someone must have left unlocked for them.
‘Dude, this place creeps me out,’ Andy admitted under his breath.
Dylan shook his head. ‘Staking out the observatory is one thing, but creeping into a graveyard at night?’
‘If this is the way we get the scoop then it’s what we have to do,’ replied Andy, trying to sound brave. ‘Come on.’
Dylan inhaled deeply and followed his friend through the side gate.
They walked carefully, slow and quiet, as they prowled the rows of graves, scanning the gloom for a sign of Bald Guy and Beard Dude. Rustling noises seemed to chase them between the tombstones and they stopped every few steps to check they weren’t being followed.
An unearthly cry pierced the gloom.
‘What’s that?’ hissed Dylan. It sounded not of this world, like some supernatural creature.
Ahead of them, a bush rustled. The boys tensed.
A peacock strutted into the moonlight.
‘It’s just a bird,’ said Andy, voice quaking. ‘Don’t be such a scaredy—’
He jumped back, almost knocking Dylan into a monument to Toto from The Wizard of Oz.
‘What?’ Dylan hissed.
‘That statue,’ Andy said, pointing ahead with a shaking hand at a sculpture of a dead rock star. ‘I thought it moved!’
‘Just a trick of the shadows and the moon,’ Dylan reassured them both. ‘We need to chill.’
‘Agreed,’ Andy said. ‘It’s not like vampires or werewolves are real.’
‘Vampires, werewolves—you had to say that?’ Dylan replied with a gulp.
‘Let’s just worry about the human bad guys,’ Andy whispered, eyes flitting around the headstones and crypts, ‘who could be anywhere … lying in wait.’
‘Not helping, mate,’ Dylan said in a small voice.
‘Come on,’ Andy urged. ‘We gotta do this.’
The boys crept forward again. Shadows played over marble monuments and in the eerie stillness even the soft crunches of their footsteps seemed to echo around the graveyard.
A laugh—definitely human—made both boys duck. Heart pounding, Andy peeked around a headstone.
‘Is it them?’ murmured Dylan.
Andy nodded and crouched tighter, Dylan huddled close beside him. They glanced cautiously around the dusty granite grave marker. Bald Guy and Beard Dude were mucking around at the base of a tombstone topped by a massive marble angel. Beardie posed in the same prayerful position as the statue, while Baldie snapped a photo. Both laughed as they checked the result on the screen.
‘These guys are hardcore,’ muttered Andy. ‘They don’t seem freaked out by the cemetery at all.’
Andy snuck forward, hoping to get into a better position so he could film them on his InfiniFone.
Before he could line up the shot, Bald Guy turned and seemed to look right at them! ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Quit goofing off. I thought I heard something.’
Beard Dude looked around as the boys tried to melt into the shadows at the base of the headstone.
‘Nah,’ the crim said after a minute. ‘You’re imagining things. There’s no-one here. But let’s get on with it. I don’t fancy being busted in here.’
As Andy and Dylan peered around from their hiding spot, the men checked the vases of a few graves.
‘Aha!’ Beard Dude said, standing up with an envelope.
His partner moved in. They checked the contents, the boys seeing something green in the low light, and traded fist bumps.
Suddenly, the men were cutting across the rows of stone markers.
‘They’re headed our way,’ hissed Dylan. ‘Hide!’
But as he scurried to take cover, his shoulder nudged a pedestal holding the plaster bust of a famous actor. Time seemed to slow as it teetered and then …
Wide-eyed, Dylan looked from the shattered statue to Andy’s horrified face. ‘Sorry,’ he mouthed.
But it was too late.
‘There is someone here!’ Beard Dude said. ‘They just smashed something over there!’
The boys looked at each other in panic. Footsteps crunched across the pebble path.
‘Go?’ whispered Dylan.
Andy nodded.
Together, they sprang up.
‘Hey!’ Beard Dude shouted. ‘What’re you doing?’
Andy and Dylan ran for it. Legs pumping, they bolted past gravestones and palm trees. When they risked a look over their shoulders, they saw the two men racing up the footpath after them.
‘We’ve gotta lose them!’ Andy swerved away, rushing low along a row of headstones. Dylan ran doubled over behind him.
They could hear footsteps crunching relentlessly towards them. None of the monuments provided much cover now the bad guys knew they were there.
But when Andy saw a mini earthmover next to a taped-off area, he had an idea so crazy it might just work.
‘Follow me,’ he panted. ‘Do what I do.’
Keeping low, they ran towards the machine. Ahead of them, a rectangle of tape stuck to plastic poles surrounded a freshly dug grave that yawned like a black hole.
‘In!’ Andy said, ducking under the tape and dropping into the darkness.
A second later, Dylan landed beside him in the soft ground. ‘This,’ he hissed disbelieving, ‘this was your plan?’
‘Ssssh!’
The sky overhead was a moonlit rectangle. Worms wriggled and tumbled from the cut dirt walls. Dylan had never been so scared in his life. He had just followed his friend into an open grave! They’d done most of the work for the bad guys. All they had to do was crank up that earthmover and pile dirt on top of them. He couldn’t believe he might shortly be buried alive.
‘I’ve got these if we need them,’ Andy whispered, pulling two black bars connected by a length of silver chain from his backpack. ‘Nunchaku.’
‘You know how to use them?’ Dylan asked.
Andy nodded. ‘Me and Dad do loads of martial arts.’
Dylan was about to question if they’d be any good for digging their way out of the grave, when they heard footsteps coming closer across the gravel path above.
‘Check that out,’ one of the men said, close enough that they could hear his raspy breathing. ‘It’s an open grave.’
Dylan ducked down, making himself as small as he could, while Andy tensed, nunchaku at the ready.