Free Always October by Bruce Coville

then added gloomily, “assuming I live through the night.”
    â€œI’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
    I meant that very sincerely. I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t tell him that , though. It was a little too mushy.
    I also didn’t tell him that I really did intend to sleep in the mausoleum … or at least stake the place out for a while. I was sure it was connected with what was happening at his house, and I hoped I could gather some useful information. An hour or so after I had supposedly gone to bed for the night, I slipped into my jeans and flannel shirt, crawled through my window, and headed for the mausoleum.
    The full moon was enormous, silvering the dew that already coated the ground.
    I could hear the howling in the distance.
    About halfway to the mausoleum I heard something else: a roaring and shouting from the direction of the main gate. Turning, I saw an enormous creature racing in my direction!
    I know every tombstone in that cemetery, so it was easy for me to get a sense of the creature’s height, and let me tell you, he was BIG.
    Only he wasn’t the one doing the shouting. That was coming from another enormous creature who was chasing him .
    Look, I like weird stuff as much as the next person. More, actually. But I’m not crazy, and I knew the best thing for me at that moment was to get out of the way. But where? Were the creatures I had already spotted the only ones here, or had the whole cemetery been invaded?
    I considered turning back and running for the house, but that would take me closer to the creatures. So I ran forward, instinctively heading for the mausoleum where Jacob and I had our clubhouse.
    The door was open. The moment I entered, I knew things were as bizarre in there as they were out in the cemetery. Instead of being black as a coal bin at midnight, the place was filled with a thick, gray mist. The mist itself was laced with lines of flickering purple light. The air smelled clean, the way it does after a nearby lightning strike. I flinched the first time one of the purple lines touched me, but it did no more than send a tingle over my skin.
    Terrified, but also excited, I groped my way forward.
    I didn’t scream until a figure stepped out of the mist, grabbed me by the arm, and hissed, “What are you doing here?”

14
(Jacob)

WHAT CAME THROUGH THE CLOSET
    A s I sat at the kitchen table that Friday night, sneaking tidbits of food to Luna, I wondered if I should warn Mrs. McSweeney about what might happen. Problem was, I couldn’t figure out how to bring it up without sounding like I had gone bonkers.
    Maybe she would just sleep through the whole thing.
    The thought wasn’t all that comforting.
    Of course, that was assuming it was actually going to happen.
    I wondered if I would hear that voice again. Well, not if I had to go back in the closet to do so; I had no intention of doing that a second time. But I kept thinking about what the voice had said about the baby not being ours. I knew he wasn’t ours, not really. But the note in the basket certainly made it seem as if he had been left on our porch by his mother. Was the note a fake? Had LD been kidnapped? If he didn’t belong in our world, it would be good if his people could come for him, wouldn’t it? Was that what the voice intended to do?
    I hated that idea, and I knew Mom would totally freak out. On the other hand, we didn’t really have a right to the baby. And what about when he became a teenager? They grow hair and get weird all on their own. Who knew what would happen if you added a monthly monster transformation into that mix?
    These things were tumbling through my mind as—an hour after Mrs. McSweeney had tucked LD in for the night—I quietly set up the camera and tripod in the little guy’s room. True to my father’s style, the camera was top quality. By plugging it in so it didn’t rely on battery power, then setting the image