Authors: Al Sarrantonio
His attention was brought back to Marianne, whose cries were coming more closely together. Her stomach was taut with effort, her legs spread impossibly wide.
“It will not be long now . . .” Samhain said, in wonder. He moved up over the foot of the bed to hover above the birthing woman.
Grant took a deep breath and pushed himself back against the doorjamb. With a supreme effort he stood. For a moment the world went black, but he held his position and when his sight cleared he urged himself forward.
“Don’t interfere, Detective,” Samhain snapped.
“That thing will destroy the world.”
Samhain laughed. “Much more than that, I fear.”
Grant took two halting steps forward and then the pain in his left side flared to broiling heat. He stumbled, reaching out to clutch at the side of the bed as he fell to his knees. He pulled himself up, fighting for breath, to see the crown of a baby’s head appear between Marianne Carlin’s legs.
“Good, Marianne, good!” Samhain urged, as the young woman screamed and arched and pushed.
Grant took a long shuddering breath, put his right hand into his coat pocket, resting it on the butt of his 9mm handgun.
Samhain moved up and closer over the woman, almost alive with excitement.
“Push, Marianne! Push!”
Marianne Carlin screamed. The baby’s head appeared, a gray wrinkled thing with closed eyes and a puckered mouth.
It was followed in a rush of blood by the rest of the body, tiny hands and skinny legs and tiny feet.
Samhain moved over the baby, straightened, his head thrown back, his red mouth opened wide.
“Master!”
he cried.
The thing on the bed kicked, and then its tiny mouth and slitted eyes opened.
It looked up at the thing hovering overhead and wailed, a hollow, long, hoarse shriek of joy.
“How delightful—a girl!” Samhain cried.
Grant tightened his grip on the 9mm.
Marianne Carlin was not moving on the bed. There was a frozen look of abject terror on her face, and there was way too much blood.
Instinctively, Grant knew that she was dead.
The thing on the bed, gray and pale and otherworldly, held its tiny hands out to Samhain, and opened its mouth again.
Samhain turned to Grant. “I told you not to interfere,” he hissed.
Grant’s grip loosened on the handgun, and he fell to the floor and saw black.
“Hey, Bill, you see this?”
From his desk, where he sat contemplating walking out into the midmorning heat to smoke a cigarette, Grant swiveled his hooded eyes up at Desk Sergeant Chip Prohman, who was standing in front of him and pointing excitedly to the front page of the Orangefield
Herald
. There was a drawing of something that looked like a large Ferris wheel centering the page, and a banner headline with the word “Halloween” in it that Grant could not make out.
“What is it?” Grant asked unenthusiastically.
In answer, Prohman held the front page out straight, and now Grant could read the entire headline:
HALLOWEENLAND COMING TO ORANGEFIELD
!
“What the hell is Halloweenland?” Grant growled.
In answer, the sergeant lowered the paper to Grant’s desk and read, following along with his finger, “ ‘Halloweenland will be the largest Halloween-themed attraction ever mounted in the United States. “It’s a modern descendent of the quaint Halloween Hay rides and monster
walks,” said its principal owner, Mr. Dickens. When asked his first name, Mr. Dickens, who, this writer must admit, looked something along the lines of one of his scary attractions, smiled and said, “Just Dickens will do.” ’ ”
Grant grunted. “Just what Orangefield needs, another ghoul.”
Prohman went on, still following with his finger. “ ‘According to Mr. Dickens the theme park, to be built on a fallow piece of land just outside town, will employ some of the latest technology, but will mostly remain true to the traditional carnival Halloween scares and attractions that patrons have come to expect. “Some may find it quaint,” Dickens said, “but I can promise all will find it enjoyable.”
“ ‘Mayor Gergen, when reached for comment, stated that “Halloweenland represents a great leap forward for the Orangefield community. It will put us on the map once and for all as the premiere holiday destination for Halloween.” ’ ”
The desk sergeant paused and took a deep breath, as if reading were great exercise for him. He put his finger back on the story. “ ‘It is estimated that Halloweenland will generate, in its first year, upward of $200,000, some of which would benefit the town. Though the mayor would not give specifics, citing confidentiality, it is surmised that Mr. Dickens was given generous tax breaks to bring his attraction to Orangefield.’ ”
Prohman looked up. “That’s it.”
Grant pulled the paper toward him and turned it around. There was nothing more, and the picture of the Ferris, he noted, was nothing more than a stock drawing from the Bettman Archive.
He pushed the paper back at Chip Prohman, who took it eagerly and went back to his own desk. Grant would have bet a twenty that the fat desk sergeant was thumbing
his way to the comics page at this point, where the reading wasn’t such a chore.
Grant turned his eyes back to the classified ads of the
Boston Globe
, one of a pile of current major city papers on his desk. His cigarette break was forgotten; it would wait till later. His computer screen was on, too, set to one of a list of east coast dailies with online presences.
There was nothing in the
Globe
, either in the classifieds in answer to the discreet inquiry he’d been running there for more than four years, or in the news section. He dropped the paper onto the pile next to his desk and picked up the
New York Times
.
He felt eyes on him, and turned to his right to see Captain Farrow’s office door open. The captain filled the doorway, glaring at Grant. “See you a minute?”
It wasn’t a request.
The door closed in dismissal. Grant got up and crossed to it. He could see the captain settling himself behind his desk through the frosted glass as he opened the door and let himself in.
“Sit down,” Farrow ordered.
Grant left the door open and sat in the single chair in front of the captain’s desk.
Farrow steepled his fingers and continued to glare at Grant. His head was completely bald, which somehow accentuated his scowl.
Farrow said, “Have you gotten anywhere with the Pallman burglary?”
Grant shook his head no.
“Why not?”
“Nowhere to go. I’m sure it’s the same two high school morons who broke into that house on Saver Road two weeks ago. There’s only so much—”
“How much time have you logged on it? Mrs. Pallman
called and said you spent a total of four minutes at her house. She says she got the feeling that you had better things to do.”
“Your words or hers?”
Farrow’s face reddened. “Actually, mine. I repeat: how much time have you logged on it?”
Grant took a deep breath. “Four minutes.”
To Grant’s surprise, Farrow’s face went placid. He almost looked like he was going to smile. He put his hand on a sheet of paper on his desk. “Thank you for being honest,” he said. “I have your log for the past few months, and it looks like you haven’t been doing much of anything except this”—he waved his hand in dismissal—“five-year-old missing persons case.” His beady eyes locked on Grant’s. “True?”
Grant nodded. “True.”
Before Grant could continue or expand Farrow held his hand up. “I don’t want to hear again how important it is. I don’t want to hear anything. It’s over.”
Grant waited for more, and now Farrow was nervously moving the piece of paper in front of him around.
“You’re fired, Bill,” Farrow said quietly, not looking up. “I cleared this with Mayor Gergen, and with the district attorney. You’ve been drunk on the job eleven times in the past six months, you’ve been ignoring your duties, you’re a mess, it’s done.” His voice fell to almost a whisper. “Get your things together and leave.”
Now he looked at Grant again, and his eyes were filled with something almost like pity. “Look at yourself, Bill! You need to dry out! You need to stop smoking! You lost your house, you almost lost your car—yes, the finance company called here—you’ve lost almost everything. You can’t be a cop and act like that.”
Something in Grant’s eyes made Farrow look away again. “Please, Bill, just go. Before it gets embarrassing.”
Grant swiveled in his chair to see two burly uniformed cops, Paige and Jenner, standing just outside the doorway.
“We’ll help you with your stuff,” Paige said quietly, staring at the floor.
“There’s just one thing,” Grant said, turning back to look at Farrow. There was sudden quiet in the room. Despite all of the feelings running through Grant—sorrow, rage, regret for the badge he would no longer wear—he almost burst out laughing. The moment was just like one of the classic westerns or Dirty Harry movies he had watched.
The silence stretched, and then Grant said, pulling out his shield and pulling his .38 police special from its holster and placing them on Farrow’s desk, “I’m still a cop.”
The boxes of newspapers were under the card table that served as his computer desk. The screen displayed the homepage of the
Providence Journal
. Grant poured himself two fingers of scotch and put the bottle back down on the packing crate that served as his bar. There was an unmade bed against one wall, his television and DVD player on another packing crate next to the single window. Under the window was his only other luxury, a dorm-style refrigerator that hummed all night and sometimes kept him awake, when he was able to sleep at all. It was filled with beer and a single stick of butter. There were no pictures on the walls, no mementoes, knickknacks, keepsakes of any kind. When he had sold the house he had sold it furnished, by choice. Farrow had been wrong about that—he hadn’t lost his home. He had needed its sale to finance the search, the private detectives, the newspaper subscriptions, the occasional bribe for information—everything. If his nerve center wasn’t much to look at, it was still a nerve center.
And in five years he had found . . . exactly nothing.
Not one shred of evidence that the girl existed, or had ever existed. Grant had no doubt of that, and that was what kept him going. That and the look on Marianne Carlin’s face when she had died giving birth to that monster. That monster that he had protected and harbored and allowed to be born . . .
. . . and who was now five years old.
He drank the two fingers of scotch and, without conscious thought, poured another. It occurred to him vaguely that he had been fired and already did not miss his job. It had merely been another nerve center, and the paperwork had finally caught up with him. He had been half expecting it for a couple of years.
Maybe they would promote Chip Prohman to detective, and then they would see what
real
police work was all about.
He downed the drink in his hand and refilled, turning to the computer screen.
When he took his eyes away from the screen it was dark outside and the scotch bottle was nearly empty. Never fear, there was always another. He thought about dinner—a can on the hot plate, or the pizzeria? He decided he didn’t want to go out. He decided he wasn’t hungry, and that, yes, he was pissed about losing his job after all. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, and emptied the scotch bottle into his glass. There was a cool breeze coming in from the window. At least they let you smoke in the Ranier Hotel. Nice sleeping weather for early October, if only he could sleep. He knew he wouldn’t sleep tonight. He had barely slept for five years.
Where was she?
That was the one question that had centered his life since the baby was born. Where? No orphanage had harbored her, Grant was sure of that now. No foster home
had taken her in. He would have found out by now. Those eyes, those gray, flat shark’s eyes, they couldn’t be hidden. Someone would have noticed, someone, some
thing
should have sent up a flag by now.
There should have been some clue by now—and Grant was very good at finding clues.
And yet there was nothing.
As if she had dropped off the face of the earth.
For a while Grant had believed even that—that Samhain had somehow secreted the child away from all humanity, squirreled it away in a cave or bunker or underground warren, like a sick rabbit.
But the child was human, Grant was sure of it, and would have needed human things—food, shelter, warmth, perhaps even human contact, though the thought made Grant’s blood cold. Yes, it would need the milk of human kindness, to feed off the very thing, come one Halloween, it would wipe from existence.
Where?
Grant found that the scotch was gone, replaced by a headache. He was getting nowhere again. And tomorrow he would start over, doing the only thing he knew how—to look, to wait for that one clue, that one tiny bit of information that would lead to what he sought.