Halloweenland (26 page)

And then, abruptly, she was gone, leaving Grant with only his job, and all that other business—what Grant liked to call
weird shit
—that seemed to happen in Orangefield every Halloween.

And
weird shit
left nothing but more bad memories, which made his empty house feel even emptier.

So he did what he often did now, especially as Halloween approached, which was to sit in his chair in his finished basement with an open bottle of Dewar’s scotch,
get drunk, watch old movies, and hope to God that
weird shit
wouldn’t happen.

Grant poured two fresh fingers of scotch into his favorite glass—what had once been a jelly jar from the sixties encircled with pictures of the cartoon character Yogi Bear (outlined in yellow), his friend Boo Boo (outlined in blue) and Jellystone Park (drawn, originally in a garish green). Over the years and thousands of dish washings, all but the faintest outline of Yogi’s fat head was still visible, none of Boo Boo but one of his feet, and some bizarre section of Jellystone Park that may or may not have been a picnic table, Grant no longer remembered.

Grant used the jelly jar because it reminded him of himself: slowly fading away with each new washing of
weird shit
. . .

He downed the two fingers in two neat swallows, and refilled the glass with two more fingers of scotch.

He hit the remote change button hard, angry that AMC had started to show commercials with their movies—he liked his westerns as neat and unblemished as his whiskey.

But Turner Classic Movies was showing a period piece, something along the lines of a 1930s version of
Dangerous Liaisons
without sex, so, grumbling, Grant hit the button hard again and put up with the few commercials breaking up the old John Wayne western
Stagecoach
on AMC.

“That’s more like it!” Grant toasted the TV as the movie came back on. What a great John Ford flick. The only one he liked better was
The Searchers
. He’d have to buy it on tape someday to avoid all the breaks.

He was refilling his glass yet again when a tap came on the casement window to his left.

He nearly spit his whiskey back into the glass, remembering
the last time that had happened (
weird shit
), but then he went smoothly into cop mode, rose, and drew his 9mm out of the drawer in the side table next to his lounge chair.

The tap came again as he reached the window. Reaching up, he pushed the dirty white curtain abruptly aside.

There was a face there. A young girl . . .

She made a motion, and he recognized her. He nodded and pointed up.

The face retreated and Grant dropped the curtain back into place.

He grabbed the scotch and his glass on the way, thought better of it and put it back.

Leaving the TV on, he went upstairs, hearing his own heavy tread on the creaking stairs.

She was not at the back door, which was closest to the basement window, so Grant went to the front door and snapped on the porch light as he opened it.

“Come in, Marianne,” he said, holding the screen door open for her.

“I’m s-s-so sorry—” she began, but he cut her off.

“Nonsense. Come in and sit down. Can I make you some tea or coffee?”

She looked like a scared rabbit. “C-c-coffee would be great.”

“Are you all right?”

She nodded, but was shivering like a leaf.

Grant moved past her into the kitchen, and she followed, sitting at the kitchen chair he pulled out for her. He fiddled with the coffeemaker, which had already been preprogrammed for tomorrow morning. After a few minutes of trying to fool the computer chip in it, he was able
to get it to work. In a few seconds the comforting
blurp
and
drip
sounds commenced.

Grant sat down at the table across from the young woman. She was looking at her hands, locked in a prayerful grip on the top of the table, as if she had never seen them before.

“I haven’t seen you in . . . what, two weeks?” Grant said, mustering his soothing cop voice. He knew he was pretty drunk, but was able to overcome it. He tried to lighten his tone and gave a small smile. “What’s bothering you? Besides everything, that is?”

The girl continued to stare at her hands on the table. It was obvious she was trying to bring herself to say something, so Grant continued his monologue.

“I know what you’re going through, Marianne. I lost my wife a few years ago. That hole still hasn’t filled up completely. But it does get better, I can tell you from experience.”

She was still fighting with herself.

“I . . . heard about your pregnancy, of course,” Grant went on. “As you probably know, the DNA results on Bud Ganley were negative.”

This was the spot where, like it or not, he would have to harden his voice a little. “You obviously did have relations with someone that night, Marianne. What I have to ask you is a hard question: who was it?”

Her eyes darted up from her hands, and Grant saw that they were filled with terror. For a moment, darker thoughts than Marianne Carlin’s private life assaulted him.

“Detective—”

Her hands were trembling, now, and when he reached over to steady them they were cold as winter.

“Don’t say anything yet.”

He abruptly got up and went to the coffee machine.
The cycle wasn’t finished yet but he yanked the carafe out and poured a cup for her anyway. He pushed the carafe back into its place and noted the spilled coffee hissing on the hot plate beneath it.

He wanted very much to go back to the basement and get his bottle of scotch. But after putting the steaming mug down in front of Marianne and taking a step toward the cellar door, he abruptly turned back and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Milk or sugar?” he asked the young woman.

Her teeth chattering, she answered, “Milk, p-p-please.”

He yanked open the refrigerator door, pulled out a quart of 2 percent milk, let the door close.

He sat down in front of his own black coffee, pushing the milk carton over to Marianne. When she made no move to open it, he did so himself, pouring it into her mug.

“Say when.”

She focused on him, not on the coffee.

“Someone in a black cape with a white face was in my bedroom tonight,” she said in a rushed, terrorized voice.

It might as well have been shouted through a loudspeaker. Grant dropped the milk carton, which hit the table and began to spill. He stared at it for a moment and then reached out and righted it.

Oh, God. Weird shit.

Marianne’s eyes had never left his face.

To take his mind off of what she had said, he grabbed a dish towel from its rack behind him and sopped up the spillage with it. His mind was tightening and loosening like a fist.

Samhain.

When he was finished he tossed the wet towel into the sink and sat back down. She was staring at him with a pleading look in her eyes.

“Just tell me what happened,” Grant said.

She did, every detail, and Grant’s faint hope that she might have been delusional, or worse, faded.

“Detective Grant, what’s happening to me?”

He opened his mouth to speak, thinking of a hundred ways to answer her question, but then said nothing. Mustering all of his cop’s resources, he forced his lips into the same small smile he had showed her at the beginning of the interview.

“Drink some of your coffee. Believe me, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Like hell there isn’t.

For a brief moment, her face showed relief. “You know what I saw? I’m not crazy?”

With all of his effort, he made his smile widen. “The last thing you are is crazy. I’ve seen this kind of thing before in Orangefield. For now, I just want you to forget about it.”

“Really?” Her voice was filled with something like hope. “I called my sister, and she said it sounded like a Sam Sighting. She was laughing when she said it. But I heard—Janet heard—that you’ve been involved with this kind of thing before. The trouble at the Gates farm—”

It took all of his effort not to scream. “Leave it to me, Marianne. I’ll look into it for you. If it makes you feel any better, other people in Orangefield have reported the same kind of thing you have.”

And almost all of them ended up dead.

Her hands had stopped trembling, and were cradling her coffee cup.

His forced smile widened even more. “You’ll do what I say?”

She suddenly nodded. “All right. But what was that thing I saw?”

His smile was locked into place, and he let his tired eyes crinkle in what may have looked like merriment. “It may be something, or nothing at all. Let’s call it a ‘Sam Sighting’ for now, if you want.”

In all innocence, she said, “What if I keep seeing it?”

“Just . . . don’t worry. It won’t hurt you.”

A lie. You don’t know that.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

She looked down at her coffee cup, nearly empty, and nodded, then smiled. “Better than I have in . . . a while. Thank you, Detective Grant. I . . . usually end up talking to my sister, and she’s . . . well, a bit overbearing.”

Grant forced himself to laugh in concurrence.

“Are you seeing a doctor?” he asked.

“Doctor Williams.”

Grant nodded. “I know him. That’s good, Marianne.”

Without realizing it, he had risen and was ushering her out of the house. At the front door he stopped her and gently took her arm.

“If you need me, anytime, night or day, call me.” He fished one of his ever-present business cards out of his wallet and gave it to her. “All the numbers are on there, at the station, home and cell. Don’t hesitate. I’ll . . . protect you, Marianne.”

“Protect me?”

He forced a smile back onto his face. “Don’t worry. I’ll call you to make sure you’re all right.”

She took the card and suddenly raised herself on her toes and pecked him lightly on the cheek.

“Thank you, Detective.”

“I need to ask you one more time, Marianne. Are you absolutely sure it was your husband with you that night?”

Her eyes were unblinking. “Yes.”

“All right.”

She was out the door and gone into the night.

He closed the door, locked it.

Samhain.

Ignoring the dirty cups in the kitchen, the coffee still warming which would taste bitter in the morning, he stumbled to the basement stairs and forced his feet to descend them. He sat in his lounge chair and, after looking at the curtained casement window, stared at the television.
Stagecoach
on AMC had been replaced by another, inferior western, riddled with commercials he didn’t even register.

Weird shit.

Slowly, methodically, he emptied the Dewar’s bottle, hammering himself down into sleep, and false peace.

“Bud?”

The voice was deep, not at all friendly, and Bud Ganley didn’t even bother to stick a hand out from underneath the truck and give the finger. After all, he was earning a buck now, and didn’t owe anyone anything. This clown could wait. If it was a cop, screw ’im, if it was a customer, screw ’im, too. Whoever it was, he could talk to the boss, Jim Ready. Bud was just the hired help.

“Bud Ganley?”

“Eff off,” Bud said from beneath the truck, continuing to work on mounting the rebuilt engine. He’d been sloppy with the chains and the block and tackle, he knew, but if he got it in place soon everything would be fine. If he didn’t have this truck finished and ready to go today, Ready would really fire him for sure.

“I’d like to talk to you, Bud.”

“I said—” Ganley began to snarl, but suddenly it became very dark around him and he was no longer beneath the truck in Ready’s Garage.

“What the—”

“I was polite, and that didn’t work. So, now I’m not polite.”

It was so dark he thought he was in the middle of the woods somewhere. But it had been broad daylight, eleven-thirty in the morning, almost lunchtime, so this couldn’t be . . .

He tentatively reached up and felt the engine block, swinging slightly on its chain cradle, above him.

“Jesus, I’m blind!”

“And dumb, and deaf as well, Bud. I’ve watched you for a long time, but never been much interested in you until now.”

“I can’t see!”

“You’ll see again. Don’t worry about that.”

Now there was something in front of him in the darkness, where the engine block should be—a swirling black thing that came closer and then hovered above his face. He saw something rise out of the folds of black—a pasty face with no eyes and a smiling red mouth.

“Let’s talk, Bud.”

“Who the hell—”

“I’m someone who wants to talk.”

“What do you
want
?” Ganley said in a panic.