Halloweenland (29 page)

Driving past the long-closed farm stand on the main road, with its faded sign
RILEY’S PICK YOUR OWN PUMPKINS
, and then through the broken front gate over the rutted road and up to the blackened, gutted, burned house, Grant felt nothing but hollow. He parked near the barn, its paint peeling, one door off its hinges and the other ajar. He got out of his car and walked toward the rutted field that, in earlier years, would have been filled today with families picking their last minute Halloween pumpkins. This year only a few misshapen rogue fruits had grown, pale-colored, wilting and untended. There was a cool
breeze in the late day kicking up dust devils in the fallow plot. The sky was growing blue-purple, and the sun in the west, directly across the field, looked shimmering orange, like a pumpkin hiding behind a veil.

Riley’s weigh station—a hand-built square booth that had once held a huge scale, long stolen, with a chair beside it, still, miraculously, in place—stood forlorn at the edge of the field. Grant went to it and sat down in the chair. He faced the lowering sun, shook out a cigarette from its pack, lit it, and waited.

“Hello, Detective Grant.”

Grant came awake with a start. For a moment he was disoriented in the darkness, then he remembered where he was. There was something in front of him, moving in and out of vision, a deeper darkness than the night. It had turned colder, and Grant felt a chill. The sky had clouded over, and it felt like it might rain.

Grant sat up, pulled his raincoat closed and shivered. His hand went to his pocket and pulled out the remains of a pint of Dewar’s.

“Still imbibing, I see,” the shape in front of him said.

“Any reason not to?”

“It’s been a while.”

“Not long enough for me.”

The thing was silent for a moment. Grant felt a deeper chill, catching a glimpse of that white face, that cruel red line of a mouth.

“I hoped I’d never see you again,” Grant said.

Samhain’s smile widened perceptibly. His surrounding black cloak hung almost lifeless, swirling slightly at the
bottom. “I’m sure. But I rather enjoy your company. And it seems we have mutual business—again.”

With every ounce of his courage, Grant fought to stay under control in front of this . . .
thing
.

“Oh, come now, you’re not afraid of me anymore, are you, Detective?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“What is there to fear? You already know who I am, and what I represent. All men face me eventually. Don’t you consider it a privilege to . . . shall we say, interact with me now and again, before your time?”

“It’s a privilege I could pass up.”

Samhain threw back his head and gave something like a laugh. It sounded hollow and cold. “I have been studying your kind for thousands of years, and still you puzzle and interest me.”

“What is it you want, Samhain?”

“Ah.” The blackness swirled, the Lord of Death came closer. Grant felt the temperature drop, a dry cold that belied the weather.

“I merely want you to leave Marianne Carlin alone.”

“Why?”

“Because she has something I’m . . . interested in. Mr. Ganley was going to bother her, so I had to dissuade him.”

“I thought so.”

Samhain turned back to Grant and came even closer. “I cannot scare you off, Detective, like I did the doctor and the sister. We both know that.”

“You tried once before.”

“I did. And I failed.”

“You’ll fail again. I won’t let anything happen to Marianne.”

“You think I want to
harm
her, Detective? You don’t understand at all. That’s the last thing I want.”

“Then what
do
you want?”

“I’m not ready to tell you, Detective. But I will tell you this. Tomorrow is Halloween. Please leave her alone until the day is over.”

“I won’t let you near her.”

Samhain gave something like a sigh. “We both know that I can only bring direct harm to those who can be influenced. I cannot influence you. You know many of my tricks, but not all of them. I would prefer that we discuss this reasonably.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

After a pause, the shape said, “I thought we understood each other.”

“I doubt it.”

The thing swooped up very close, its surrounding black form snapping and moving in the cold breeze. Grant felt the deeper cold of its breath on him, and the white face was very close to his own.

“Don’t. Interfere.”

Grant held that empty gaze, felt bile rise in the back of his throat, felt a black cold charge run up his back and make his teeth chatter. Samhain reached out a spectral hand, long white vaporous fingers ending in short, sharp silver claws, and held it in check in front of Grant’s face.

“Listen to me, Detective.”

“I won’t let you near her.”

The figure receded to its former position. The face was half-hidden again, the shadowy folds of its surrounding darkness part of the night itself.

“We’ll see.”

All at once the thing was gone, leaving only the cool night and a few stars peeking from behind scattering clouds.

His hand trembling, Grant brought the last of his whiskey up to his mouth and drank it.

“Wake up, Petee.”

Petee Wilkins was having the only good dream he ever had. He had it every once in a while and always enjoyed it. In it he and his best friend Bud were in the house they broke into on Sagett River Road, eating from a huge box of chocolates they had found in the kitchen. Petee had never seen a candy box so big, covered in gold foil and tied with a silky red ribbon. The card had said, “To Bonny, Please, please forgive me! Signed, Paul.” They had gotten a good laugh over that.

“Wonder what the old poop did!” Bud laughed, stuffing his face with what turned out to be chocolate-covered cherries. After a moment of bliss he cried, “Ugh!” and spat them out onto the kitchen table, which was huge and marble topped. “I
hate
chocolate-covered cherries!”

Petee laughed and then gagged, spitting out his own mouthful of candy, which he had actually been enjoying.

Bud started laughing, holding his stomach, and then Petee began to laugh, too.

“Funny!” Petee said.

Bud took the box of chocolates and dumped it out on the floor. Then he began to stomp on the candy, making chocolate mud.

After a moment Petee joined in, and then Bud said, “Come on!” and they tramped into the living room, leaving chocolate sneaker prints on the white rug.

There was much more to the dream, trashing the living room, throwing a side chair through the large screen TV—

But now Petee abruptly woke up.

“Oh, no—” he said, looking at the hovering, flapping, black thing above him with the oval white face.

“Now how can you say that, Petee?” Samhain asked.

“I thought you were gone for good,” Petee whimpered.

“Didn’t I tell you I might need you someday?”

“Sure. But I didn’t think . . .”

“That’s right, Petee, you didn’t think. But you don’t have to. I did you that favor back in . . . what was it? Junior high school?”

Petee nodded, wiping the back of his hand across his running nose. He sat up in bed and looked down at the covers, not at the thing.

“That’s right,” Samhain said, “I kept you from getting into big trouble when you and that idiot Ganley drowned the Manhauser’s cat. Oh, your father would have beat you to death if the police had been involved in that one, don’t you think?”

Petee would not look up. “Yeah,” he said, grudgingly.

“And what did you promise at the time? Didn’t you promise to do me a favor if I ever needed one?”

Eyes downcast, Petee nodded.

“Good. And now it’s time. Here’s what I want you to do, Petee . . .”

Another Halloween.

The day dawned gray and bloodshot. Grant woke up in his lounge chair in the basement with a sour taste in his mouth. A finger of scotch lay pooled in the bottom of the Dewar’s bottle on the table next to the chair. The glass next to it was empty. The television volume was low, the movie on Turner Classic Movies a film noir with too much talking.

Grant got up, walked to the casement window and pushed the partially open short curtain all the way open. A mist of rainwater covered the storm window, and the sky through it was battleship gray–colored and low.

He could just make out a row of pumpkins, already carved into faces, frowns on one end slowly turning into smiles by the other, on the rail of his back neighbor’s deck. It was a yearly tradition.

He turned off the television, oddly missing the sound after it was off, and trudged up the stairs to the kitchen. He checked the back door, which was locked and bolted, and then the front.

Back in the kitchen, he made eggs and toast and a pot of coffee, then dialed into work from his cell phone.

“Chip? This is Grant. Captain Farrow knows I’m not coming in today, right? You told him, like I asked?”

The desk sergeant said something, and Grant snapped, “Then tell him now, you dimwit. I won’t be in.”

Grant pushed the off button on the phone and tossed it onto the kitchen table.

From upstairs there came a sound, and Grant froze in place, listening. Then it came again, bedsprings creaking. The detective relaxed, turning back to his eggs, which were bubbling and snapping in the frying pan now.

After breakfast he cleaned up the kitchen, poured a second cup of coffee and went back down to the basement. A sour rising sun was trying to fight its way through the scudding clouds.

Maybe it would clear after all.

Grant settled himself back in his chair, turned the television back on and watched two westerns back-to-back, muting the sound every once in a while to listen for sounds upstairs.

At eleven
A.M
. he went back upstairs and pulled a fresh bottle of Dewar’s from its bag, which he had placed on the dining room hutch the day before. He brought the bottle downstairs. He emptied the last finger of scotch from the old bottle into the glass, twisted open the new bottle and added another finger.

A sound from upstairs, a moan, and Grant set the bottle of scotch on the TV table, took his glass, and went up to the kitchen.

“Shit.”

Another moan followed, and Grant slowly trudged up the stairs to the second floor of the house. There was a short hallway with two bedrooms and a bath off it. He
passed the bath and his own bedroom and stood in the doorway of the other, sipping scotch.

Marianne Carlin lay on her back on the guest bed, the covers kicked aside, half-asleep.

Her belly under her nightgown was huge.

As Grant watched, she moved her head from side to side, eyes closed, and moaned again.

Grant went to the bed, put his glass down on the bedside table and picked up the washcloth that lay folded on the edge of the water bowl there and dipped it into the water. He wrung it out and patted the young woman’s forehead with the cloth.

Marianne mumbled something in her sleep, the name, “Jack,” then wrenched herself over onto her side away from him and began to softly snore.

Grant rearranged the covers over her, folded the washcloth back on the edge of the bowl, retrieved his alcohol and left.

Another movie brought him to lunchtime—a grilled cheese sandwich—and then two more short old westerns got him to four o’clock in the afternoon. The schools were out by now, and the younger trick-or-treaters would start soon. He went upstairs to check his candy bowl by the front door, and for good measure added another bag to it, which made it overflow. He picked up the fallen Snickers bars and put them in his pocket.

He glanced outside and saw that the sun had lost its all-day fight with the gray clouds and was dropping, a pallid orange ball, toward the western horizon.

A porch light flicked on at the house across the street, which seemed to trigger a relay—two more houses lit up, one of them with tiny pumpkin lights strung across its gutter from end to end, the other with a huge spotlight next to the drive illuminating a motor-driven, wriggling
spider in a rope web arranged in the lower branches of a white birch.

Back in the basement, Grant noted that the pumpkins on his back neighbor’s deck railing were now lit, flickering frowns to smiles.

He tried to watch another movie, but his palms had begun to sweat.

Upstairs, the doorbell rang. He went up to answer it. Two diminutive sailors, one with a pirate’s eye patch, looked up at him and shouted, “Trick or treat!” They thrust their near-empty bags up in a no-nonsense manner, glaring balefully at him.

He gave them each two candy bars, and they turned immediately and fled sideways across his lawn to the next house. Grant was closing the door as a mother, parked watchfully in a Dodge Caravan at the curb, began to shout, “Use the sidewalk, Douglas . . . !”