Authors: Al Sarrantonio
Grant took a long breath, and said, “Sure, Petee. Like I promised.”
Wilkins turned abruptly, almost stumbling into one of the grave diggers, who was loading his shovel into a wheelbarrow, and walked off, hitching sobs and wiping at his face with his hands.
Grant stared after him for a moment, then turned and made his way up the slope, lighting a cigarette. The rain had turned to a chill mist, coating fallen leaves and making their brilliant colors slick. The trees were almost denuded now.
It was two days till Halloween.
Grant had never heard Doc Williams sound flustered, let alone frightened. But frightened was what he sounded on the phone.
“You’ll come to see me right now, Bill?”
“Of course. But why don’t you just tell me—”
“Not on the phone. And for God’s sake not in the office. I’ll be in the coffee shop in the strip mall across the street.”
“I’m on my way.”
Williams was not there when Grant walked into the coffee shop, but he walked out of the men’s room a moment later. He was pale as a sheet, and looked unwell.
He motioned Grant to the booth farthest from the counter, in an empty corner of the shop. Grant sat down and the laconic waitress, chewing gum, ambled over and asked him if he wanted anything. “Doc here already ordered coffee for ya, new pot’s brewin’, be a few. Any pie? Cake? Pumpkin pie’s good t’day.”
She stared over his head, and Grant told her that just coffee was fine.
“Be back when it’s ready.”
She turned and shuffled back to the counter, where an open newspaper awaited her.
Grant turned his attention to Williams. “Let me guess before you tell me. Marianne Carlin is more than five months pregnant.”
To his surprise, Williams nodded and waved that off. “Yes. Actually, she’s almost reached term. I’m not even going to try to explain it.” Williams stared straight into Grant’s eyes. “I was threatened, Bill.”
“By whom?”
“He was . . . very insistent. Told me that if I went near Marianne again he would kill my family, and me. And . . . he told me not to go to the police for help.”
Williams glanced nervously past Grant to the front window. At that moment the waitress was shuffling toward them with two mugs of steaming coffee, which she set down ungracefully, managing to spill some onto the table.
“Sure you don’t want to try the pumpkin?” she asked, not quite stifling a yawn.
Doc said quickly, “Thanks, May. We’re fine.”
She turned and shrugged, shuffling back to the counter. “It’s real good pie . . .”
“Why did you call me, Doc?”
“Because he said I could tell you, and only you. He said to tell you his name was Sam.”
Samhain.
Doc Williams was still talking, and Grant had missed some of it.
“. . . on the telephone. I thought it was a prank at first. I was sitting in my office, and picked up the receiver, and
my hand up to my elbow went cold, as if it had been plunged into ice water. I thought for a second I was having a stroke. The voice told me what I just told you, and then said to tell you that Marianne Carlin was to be left alone until Halloween was over. He said you would understand. And that was it. When I put down the phone receiver my arm was back to normal, not ice cold anymore.”
Williams looked at Grant with a special pleading. “In the afternoon, when I was leaving for my rounds at the hospital, something was waiting for me next to my car in the parking lot behind my office. It was this ‘Sam’ creature, all black swirling shadows and a white face like a horrid Halloween mask. He repeated what he’d said and told me to call you. He came up close to me and his breath smelled like . . .
nothing
. Like empty space. I thought he was going to kill me on the spot. What the hell is going on, Bill? Would this thing really hurt my family?”
“Yes,” Grant said. “I think he would. Do what you were told. Let me worry about Marianne Carlin.”
Williams stared at his untouched coffee. “I’ve never seen anything like this, ever, Bill! I’m a
doctor
! Who the hell is this ‘Sam’?”
Grant waited a moment before answering: “He’s the thing you fight every day, Doc.”
Grant’s finger was getting numb from pressing the doorbell at Janet Larson’s house. He’d peered through the front windows—everything looked normal, a scatter of toys on the rug, a half-empty bottle on the coffee table in the living room, a changing bag nearby. There was a Buick in the driveway, the same one Grant had seen at Marianne’s house. The doors, front and back, were locked. An uncarved pumpkin sat on the porch next to the door, the outline of a to-be-cut face fashioned in magic marker.
“Y’ won’t find ’em there, mister!” a voice called, and Grant turned to see an old woman staring at him from the property next door. She had stopped precisely at the border between the houses, next to her driveway. She had a face like a lemon, and Grant noticed that there was no pumpkin on her stoop.
“Do you know where Mrs. Larson is?” Grant asked, stepping down from the porch to better talk to her.
“Left early this mornin’, the whole bunch of ’em! Piled
into the SUV like Satan was chasin’ ’em. Kid squawking like always.”
“Do you have any idea where they went?”
The old woman made her face look even more sour, turned around, waved her hand in dismissal. “No idea, ’cept they had a couple bags with ’em. Usually means they’re off to New Hampshire, to his brother’s in Derby. Only place they ever go.” She stopped and turned around, making a sudden fist and shaking it at the house. Her face became very red. “Used t’ take in their paper when they went away, but they’re ingrates! Not even a thank-you! Young and selfish.”
Her face lost its color, and she turned and walked slowly back to her house. “Well, they’ll get what they deserve when they don’t dish out any candy to the little monsters tomorrow and the house gets egged.”
There were three Larsons in Derby, New Hampshire, and the second was the right one. After some negotiation with Chuck, Janet finally got on the phone.
“Make it quick, Detective. Baby Charlie needs a change.”
“Why did you leave so quickly?”
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Let’s just say I was asked to.”
“By whom?”
“He said he knows you. He also said he’d kill Chuck and Baby Charlie if we didn’t go.”
“Did you—”
“I don’t have time for this, Detective. I’m too busy being scared to death. As you’ve seen, I put on a good bluff, but underneath I’m just a grade-A chickenshit like most people. I believed what I was told.”
“When—”
“I stayed at my sister’s house again last night, Detective. Most of the night there was nothing to look at in the corner of her bedroom but that ugly wallpaper. And then there was something else. And, well, here I am.”
“What if your sister needs you?”
“She’s on her own, now. All she did was coo and sing, anyway, when this thing appeared. He seemed pretty fond of her, too. Me, I don’t like ghost stories, much less the real thing.”
Grant started to ask another question, but the line went dead.
Riley Gates’ farm was, now, one of the saddest places on Earth. In its prime, when Gates, a former police detective and Grant’s mentor, had been alive, it was a place Grant always looked forward to visiting. When they had both been married, and before Rose became sick, there had been many parties at Riley’s place, and even after Riley divorced and Rose died, Grant had still considered Riley Gates one of the finest men he had ever known.
But now . . .
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.