This is Halloween
Author: James A. Moore
Date: 2016-10-09 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Halloween; Short Stories; Anthologies; Supernatural; Holiday; Fiction; Adult Fiction; Novella; Short Story Collection
Description: Author James A. Moore offers up ten autumnal tales of the darker things that lurk just around the corner of Indian Summer. A man learns of a town's obsession with scarecrows and tries to find the answers as to why they are so important. Children move through familiar streets and find that Halloween makes everything different. Tis' the season when ghosts are real, witches soar through the night, and things in the Beldam Woods are not always what they seem. Sometimes it's the monsters that wear the masks.
Publisher: Haverhill House

“THIS IS HALLOWEEN is a book full of love letters from James A. Moore.  Love letters to all of the things he loves about the things that scare you.” — Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of DEAD RINGERS

“The next best thing to trick-or-treating at James A. Moore’s house! And in this book, he’s only giving out the good candy.” — Jeff Strand, author of DEAD CLOWN BARBECUE

“James A. Moore’s stories are a treat any time of the year and THIS IS HALLOWEEN is no exception.”  — John McIlveen, author of HANNAHWHERE

ALSO BY JAMES A. MOORE

The Jonathan Crowley Chronicles

Under the Overtree

Vendetta

Cherry Hill

Boomtown (Forthcoming)

Crowley: One Week (Forthcoming)

The Serenity Falls Trilogy

Writ in Blood

The Pack

Dark Carnival

The Chris Corin Series

Possessions

Rabid Growth

Newbies

The Blood Red Series

Blood Red

Blood Harvest

The Subject Seven Series

Subject Seven

Run

The Seven Forges Series

Seven Forges

The Blasted Lands

City of Wonders

The Silent Army

The Tides of War Series

The Last Sacrifice

THIS IS HALLOWEEN

Ten Tantalizing Treats (and a Few Tricks)

James A. Moore

Haverhill House Publishing

A River City Writers Publication 2016

The Dry Season © 2010, James A. Moore

Harvest Moon © 1994, James A. Moore

Hathburn Avenue © 2008, James A. Moore

Bone Harvest © 2008, James A. Moore

Harvest Gods Revisited © 2013, James A. Moore

Patchwork © 2009, James A. Moore

Night Eyes © 2011, James A. Moore and Charles R. Rutledge

Blood Tide © 2004, James A. Moore

Shades of Grey © 2009, James A. Moore

The Walker Place © 2011, James A. Moore

A River City Writers Publication

THIS IS HALLOWEEN © 2016 by James A. Moore

Cover design and illustration © 2016 Dan Brereton

Cover formatting and setup by Dyer Wilk

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electrical or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

The stories contained in this collection are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by

Haverhill House Publishing

643 E Broadway

Haverhill MA 01830-2420

Visit us on the web at www.HaverhillHouse.com

🎃

Dedicated to every trick-or-treater, regardless of age.

We are kindred spirits.

Special thanks to Dan Brereton for the amazing cover art, to John McIlveen and Bracken MacLeod for the major assist in layouts and to E.J. Stevens for the technical support, know how, and patience.  This book could not possibly exist without your help and patience, guys, and I appreciate it more than you know.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introductioni

The Dry Season              1

Harvest Moon13

Hathburn Avenue35

Bone Harvest48

Harvest Gods Revisited              68

Patchwork 78

Night Eyes122

Blood Tide138

Shades of Grey              153

The Walker Place181

INTRODUCTION

Early in 2015, I drove fourteen hundred miles with Jim Moore, all so he could fulfill his lifelong dream of living in New England. As a kid, Jim moved around a lot. No, no…you’ve got some idea in your head about what “a lot” means, and I’m going to tell you that idea is wrong. Whatever you think moving “a lot” is, banish it from your brain. Jim’s family moved more often than any three military families. More often than any six fugitives from justice. More often than desert nomads.

Okay, maybe not the nomads thing, but you get it.

In essence, the Moores were a nomadic family. But young Jim, he read horror stories, and so many of his favorite horror stories were set in New England that the region wove its mystique into his brain. He longed to live in that place where the nights would grow so very long, where the leaves would turn the colors of beautiful fire, then fall and skitter along the streets or dance and twirl in the autumn breeze, whipping up in a swirling wind so that they almost seemed—for a moment—to take the shape of a man. Or something like a man.

Now you understand.

Jim wanted to live in New England because, to him, that’s where Halloween is at its finest. New England, with its centuries of ghost stories and haunted houses, with its lonely villages and remote mountains, with its history of horror fiction. New England is Edgar Allan Poe country. H.P. Lovecraft country. Stephen King country. It is the ancestral home of horror.

In early 2015, James A. Moore moved to a place he’d never lived before, but which nevertheless was home.

These days, thanks to his Seven Forges series, Jim is best known as a fantasy author. With its dark philosophies and savage violence, his fantasy is of the variety labeled “grimdark,” and that label is more than appropriate. But when I read the Seven Forges novels and meet warriors on lonely roads, desperate people encountering dark and capricious gods, and shadowy, uncanny pirates in black ships, I can only think, “Jim, your roots are showing.” I love to see the influences of Lovecraft and William Hope Hodgson and so many others looming in the background of these excellent fantasy tales. (And they are excellent. If you are reading this, no doubt you’re a horror fan, but don’t shy away from the grimdark fantasy of James A. Moore. You’ll find all that you love in those pages, too.)

I first met Jim more than twenty years ago, when I was serving as Secretary of the Horror Writers Association (Jim foolishly agreed to take the position when I abdicated the role). We were just getting started back then, but Jim had already had his first comics story published at Marvel, and had been quickly earning a rep as one of the architects of White Wolf Games’ World of Darkness. It wouldn’t be long before he’d start showing his true colors in novels like Under the Overtree and the massive Serenity Falls (later revised and released as a trilogy). The former introduced Moore’s fan-favorite, immortal, do-not-fuck-with-me antihero Jonathan Crowley, who went on to appear in the latter novel as well. Serenity Falls also introduced the world to one of Jim’s most memorable and most disturbing characters, Rufo the Clown. If you’ve yet to encounter Rufo in your own reading, the less I say about him the better. But y’know…he’s a clown, created by James A. Moore. Draw your own conclusions.

Speaking of clowns…

Sure, Jim loves New England. He loves his new home because he feels so at home here. James A. Moore draws the haunted autumn Halloween fabric of New England around him like a favorite blanket, swaddles himself in it like a contented baby, warm and safe, wrapped inside the things that scare you. Jim Moore loves the things that scare you. If you tell him you’re terrified of clowns—that even as an adult, the very idea of clowns makes your skin crawl—then there’s nothing Jim wants more than to write you a story about clowns. I’ve seen him do it. For Jim, it’s almost a love letter, a hymn to fear, personalized just for you.

THIS IS HALLOWEEN is a book full of love letters from James A. Moore.  Love letters to all the things he loves about the things that scare you. A book full of his hymns to fear.

Be afraid.

But sing along.

Or he will find you.

Happy Halloween….

Christopher Golden

Bradford, Massachusetts

6th October, 2016

The Dry Season

The air was dry that year, dry enough that hair took on a static charge and the leaves fell from trees and commenced a hissing sigh when they were caught by the arid winds. Not that the kids seemed to care. If anything, the dry atmosphere made costumes just a little easier to breathe in, and added to the snap of cheap plastic capes in the wind.

The air had the perfect bite of cold to it, and the wind carried hints of distant conversations and the far away sound of cars on the highway. The scent of autumn mingled with the bite of candle-roasted jack-o-lantern. It was Halloween, and Linda loved that.

All around the town there were decorations aplenty, ranging from the cut out paper pumpkins in front of the Mueller house to the elaborate displays of jack-o-lantern artwork in front of Arielle Wilson’s home. Arielle was a longtime fan of Halloween and spent most of her time running the most prestigious art gallery in town. Some of the pumpkins she carved herself and others were by special arrangement with her creative friends. Her house, as was traditional, would be saved for the very last, because all the kids wanted to go there the most.

On Harper Street, the kids wandered mostly in groups, sometimes closely supervised by parents and sometimes barely watched over, but always with at least a token amount of adult supervision.

No one liked to talk about it, but everyone liked to make sure that the sins of the past never happened again.

There were rumors, of course. Always rumors. The man they caught, the man they arrested, the man they killed. Some people said he was innocent. Most people knew better. Some claimed he was a drifter. Some said he was a local who almost never came out of his house. In the end it didn’t matter. He died for what he’d done to three children. That was enough.

Most days.

People felt differently on Halloween. The anniversaries of atrocities are often remembered better than the celebrations of happier things.

There were ten of them that moved closer to the house where the children were killed. It had been a long while back, since the adults in the group were children themselves, and the legends of what Martin Lundgren had done were little more than legends any more. That was for the best.

There were differences this year, however. For the first time in memory, the house where Lundgren lived and died was occupied. After decades of being locked in probate and becoming little more than a haunted myth, the legal issues had been resolved and someone had moved into the place.

Linda was delighted. The old house was a beautiful affair, with three stories worth of gingerbread shingles, three gables and a wrought iron and stone fence around the place that added heavily to the creep factor, even after the entire place had been cleaned up. The large lawn was well maintained these days and the seven old oak trees that guarded the property were currently shedding the last of their leaves and were left reaching in all directions with long, skeletal limbs. She was staring right at the uppermost window—the one on the same level as the widow’s walk—when Nancy started talking.

“There is something seriously wrong with that kid.” Nancy laughed as she said it, but Linda couldn’t quite tell if she was joking. Of course that was hardly unusual when it came to Nancy. The two of them had been friends since high school, well before they were married, settled down and had kids of their own, and Nancy was officially her BFF, but that didn’t mean she could always tell what was on her best friend’s mind.

Except, of course, that Nancy hated Halloween. She always had. Couldn’t stand being scared. But she tolerated it for the sake of their kids. Nancy had her twin girls, Katie—currently dressed as Cinderella—and Mary—currently dressed as a black cat, because she hated looking like her sister. Nancy also had her newest, Tyler, who was only six and always half a second from getting himself into trouble. Currently his older sisters were reigning-in his worst habits with threats of taking away his candy. Linda didn’t really approve of using threats to manage her kids, but she wasn’t about to criticize, especially if it was working. Tyler was dressed in a ratty old sheet that had been converted into a proper ghostly outfit—complete with chains and bloodstains, because if Nancy was going to put up with Halloween she would at least do it in style—and twirling himself in circles and then staggering around like a punch drunk pugilist.

For Linda’s part, Halloween was still fun. The kids loved it and she had a good time herself. On the weekend she and her sister had gotten their tykes together and made candy corn balls and caramel apples and then watched a couple of kid friendly Halloween flicks while the kids were jazzed on sugar. Then they’d sat around and gossiped and caught up on life in general while the kids crashed and burned and slept off the end of the sugar rush.

Linda’s kids were in the mix too, of course. Barry, Tyler’s counterpart in the age department and currently dressed as Spiderman, was firing imaginary webs at anything that moved. Jack was dressed as a witch. It was driving Linda’s husband Mark just a little crazy that his son was dressed in a witch’s dress, but Linda worked it out with him.

They had five other children they were watching over as well. The Hall’s two little girls, both dressed as Powerpuff Girls, a very small Darth Vader, one clown complete with rainbow hair and shoes so large they were comical when the kid wasn't tripping over himself, and a very large, glittery thing with antennae and wings that was either Toby Martin or the world’s tackiest giant butterfly. Apparently, there was nothing more terrifying in the kid’s eyes and he wanted to be scary.

Halloween is for kids, right?

The sun was setting. Nancy made sure to hand all the tykes their flashlights, complete with pumpkin shaped shades that lit up and made them noticeable from the street, even though there was still a goodly amount of light left. The sun set quickly in the neighborhood.

Linda found herself looking up at the window of the house again. There were no decorations up, and there weren’t any lights, either, but someone had moved in.

“Honey, I know what you’re thinking and not for all the chocolate in North America.” Nancy’s voice cut right through her contemplations.

“Seriously? How can you be like that? We haven’t met them. We should meet the new neighbors.”

“It doesn’t look like there’s anyone home, for one thing, and for another, we can meet them another time. Not tonight.” Nancy’s nasal voice had an edge to it, but as she joined Linda in staring, her voice softened a bit. “Wait a week. I’ll even make them a big old pan of my lasagna.”

“Forget that. Make me a big old pan of lasagna.”

Nancy’s voice was smaller when she spoke again. “Deal.”

“You okay, Nan?” Linda looked toward her friend, frowning. Nancy had a very simple philosophy: if something scared her, intimidated her, or made her in any way uncomfortable, she got louder, not quieter. That was her defense and always had been. That simple fact had caused no end of trouble for her when it came to relations in high school and college, back when every guy she liked automatically intimidated her. It took Robert to sneak past her defenses long enough to get to know her and marry her. Linda sort of loved Robert for that, platonically of course. Nancy would kill her if she ever got any ideas about messing around with Robert. And Mark would kick her to the curb besides.

She shook that notion away as she did at least once a month. It was silly, really, being her age and having a crush on her best friend’s husband.

Nancy spoke up and broke her daydreams about being in Robert’s arms. “Is there somebody up there watching us?” Nancy’s hand rose toward the widow’s walk of the old house and Linda looked just in time to see what might have been a shadow and what could just as easily have been a person peering around the edge of the structure.

“Well, if I had that old place I’d be up there all the time. How neat is that thing?” It was an old discussion between the two of them. Nancy hated the house for what had happened there. Linda loved it because it was just plain the most unique structure on the block.

“You’d live with the Addams Family or the Munsters, too.”

“Heck, yeah!” That did it. Nancy was properly distracted. That was the idea, of course. To lead her friend away from the bad nerves and back to the fun of having kids.

Speaking of which, Linda looked around and did a head count. They were all present and accounted for, though Tyler was terrorizing the tiny Lord of the Sith. “Tyler, leave Ollie alone.”

“I wasn't doing anything,” Tyler whined-explained.

“Don’t sass your aunt Linda.” Nancy’s response was completely automatic. She was back to looking at the old house though they had moved on a few paces.

Linda looked back, too, frowning. “You thinking about sending the kids up there to get candy?”

“Not on your life. Don’t even joke about that.”

Nancy wrapped her arms around her narrow torso and shook. Linda couldn’t help but smile a little. Scaring her friend on Halloween was almost too easy. Almost. She was about to make a response along those lines when the shadows shifted at the corner of the old house and a dark form slipped from the house to the closest old tree.

No damned way.

She looked at Nancy. Nancy had not noticed. For a moment she warred with herself over whether or not to point it out and then decided against it, because if Nancy freaked too hard Halloween would officially be over and she didn’t want to deal with a herd of unhappy, mostly candy free kids.

Despite the logic of her inner argument and her satisfaction at winning the same, a chill ran through Linda and her arms pimpled into gooseflesh. She smiled at the notion of creeping herself out. When she looked at the tree there was nothing there, nothing moving.

And the kids were not suffering from that problem, so the whole lot of them moved forward.

The Addison place was up and the Addisons knew how to do up a proper Halloween. There were three old mannequins dressed as a mummy, a witch, and a zombie in the front yard. Each of them had a lit lantern with a handle motif - with LED lights because accidents happen when kids are involved - and scattered body parts lying around them. They all pointed toward the front of the house, where loud Halloween music was blaring and black lights added to the creep factor of several ghosts that had been drawn in glow-in-the-dark chalk on the walls leading to the front door. Adding to the fun was a long stretch of day-glow spider webs that turned the walkway into a sort of tunnel. The kids didn’t know if they should be terrified or ecstatic.

Eventually greed for candy won over fear.

Linda and Nancy hung back. They were there for safety, not for getting in the way.

Nancy looked back behind them and frowned. The sun was almost gone now and the shadows were getting heavier. Dusk had taken the world and leeched away most of the colors, but the Halloween decorations, the slowly roasting jack-o-lanterns, the flickering strobe lights, they all added their own illumination and their own deliciously creepy charm.

The kids knocked on the Addison door and hollered out a scattered “trick or treat!” as Mrs. Addison answered, dressed in a witch’s hat and sporting a plastic cauldron filled with candy bars.

And somewhere behind them, a shadow moved and rustled the leaves that were bumbling along in the soft breeze.

“What’s wrong?” Linda turned to Nancy, who was still looking the way they’d come.

“I thought I heard that old gate creaking open.”

Linda’s head snapped in that direction so fast she felt a muscle in her neck fire off a warning flare. She winced at the unexpected pain.

The gate to the Lundgren place stood open.

Another chill slid up Linda’s spine. This one was not quite as pleasant. Before her imagination could do her in too heavily, however, Nancy came up with an answer. “I guess someone is braver than us,” she laughed.

Linda was quick to recover. “You mean braver than you.”

“Whatever, Linda.” Nancy was good-natured about the ribbing.

“I wonder who finally moved into that place.”

Before Nancy could come up with a response the kids were ready to move on again, all of them bouncing with eagerness after the bounty from the Addison place. The street was full dark now, but the streetlights kicked in and offered pools of illumination amid the scattering of house lights and Halloween decorations.

They ushered the kids down to the Winston house. There was little by way of decoration, but they’d been warned that Stan planned on giving all the kids a proper scare-he was sitting on the porch, dressed in the ratty old clothes of a scarecrow, complete with a straw hat and a cheap rubber mask. And when they got close enough. Pow!

Both parents held back from getting too close and waited for the screams. There was a real chance that Toby was going to cry, but if he did, they’d be ready to handle it.

Nancy looked back at the Lundgren place again. “His mother.”

“What?”

“His mother moved in,” she spoke softly. “It was the family home before the dad passed away and the mother moved back to their old home somewhere in Europe. I think she’s supposed to go back there after she sells the place or something.”

“How could you know that?”

“Home Owners’ Association Treasurer. Hello?”

“Well, I could never stay there.” Linda frowned after she spoke. “I mean, if it had been my son. I still think the place is awesome.”

“Well, I guess she has a few fond memories at least. You know, of before her son lost his freaking mind.”

“Listen, don’t.” Linda couldn’t apologize quickly enough. Sometimes it was easy to forget the connections. “I didn’t mean to bring up all of that.” Linda’s tears, Linda’s warnings had brought the wrath of the local police department down on the house so many years ago. She’d narrowly escaped getting done in by the bastard when he tried to grab her.

“It was a long time ago.” Linda’s voice was soft. “I don’t even really remember him.” She shrugged and looked back over her shoulder again. “If I did, I would have moved away from this town a long time ago, you know?”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t.” Linda put a hand on her friend’s shoulder and squeezed with her fingers. The two of them shared a quick hug.

The kids broke the moment apart with a series of loud shrieks that had Nancy half jumping out of her skin before she remembered what was going on and started chuckling.

Sure enough, it took a few minutes to calm Toby down. The only kid in the world who was terrified of butterflies added scarecrows to his personal phobias that night.

After the chaos had calmed down and Toby stopped hyperventilating—candy bars have charms to soothe the savage beast—they continued on the way. By the time they reached the Wagner house even Toby was laughing again.

And Linda was convinced that they were being followed.

She felt positively paranoid as she looked over her shoulder time and again.

Nancy might have corrected her on it, but she apparently felt the same sensation of being watched.

“Seriously, Linda, what the hell?”

Normally Linda would have called her on the language, even if she was speaking softly, but she felt it too. “Should I call Mark?”

Nancy looked back the way they’d come for several seconds and finally shook her head. “What would you say?”

“That some creepy freak is stalking us?”

“On Halloween?”

Linda leaned in closely while the kids were talking with Mitzy Wagner. “He ever wants to sleep in the same bed with me again, he’ll get his ass over here and never say a word about it.”

“Yeah, that could happen.”

They looked at each other for a long moment and then started chuckling. They were being silly. It was All Hallows’ Eve and the night was surrounding them. Of course they had the creeps.

“Fine. I’ll hold off, but when we get back to your place, I want Zinfandel.”

Another house, more candy, more creep out. By the time they were done at the Carpenter house the feeling of being watched was far worse. Even the kids were starting to catch onto something, because now it wasn't just Toby who was making odd little noises and looking around.

It all came back to Lundgren. The very fact that the house was occupied was enough to be unsettling, but when you added in the weird stuff that seemed to go on around the place as the sun was setting and she was thinking about the murders, well, it was almost impossible not to get a freaky feeling in your guts, wasn’t it?

“What do you suppose she’s like? His mom, I mean?” Nancy’s voice was strained.

Linda thought long and hard before she answered. “She’s got to be at least in her eighties, right? I mean, he was in his forties and that was when we were in elementary school, so if that really is his mom in the place, she’s got to be a little old withered crone.”

“Yeah.” Nancy snorted. “You know, that doesn’t really help all that much on Halloween.”

Linda wanted to laugh, but her skin was crawling again. “Let’s just get to Arielle’s place and then we’re done.”

Nancy shook her head; showing a bit of the backbone Linda knew she kept hidden for just such emergencies. “No way. If someone’s following us, I’ll call ‘em on it. And if they have a problem, I have pepper spray and I’m not afraid to use it.” Her hand patted the canister that Linda knew she kept in the back pocket of her jeans for any possible situation. When you considered that she’d narrowly escaped getting grabbed by the creepy bastard all those years ago, it was hardly surprising.

“There!” Nancy’s voice was shrill and she pointed down the road, back toward the Addison house. “That tree, Linda! Someone’s right there. I saw them this time.” Her nerves were shot and Nancy couldn’t control her natural tendencies any longer. She was afraid and she acted like she had since they’d met in middle school. She charged the source of her fear with her teeth bared and her back straight.

Linda wanted to go after her, wanted to stop her from either making a fool of herself or getting into a situation she couldn’t get herself out of, but the kids were right there and Nancy was moving with a full head of steam.

And when she got where she was going, there was nothing to see.

Nancy circled the tree twice, a scowl making her pretty face ten years older the entire time. When she found nothing she came walking back with the same scowl locked in place.

And while she was looking at Linda and trying to figure out what to say about her rant and her acting out while the kids were watching, Linda saw the shadowy form that slithered up the tree and half crouched on a tree limb that creaked only slightly under the unexpected weight.

It must have shown on her face, because Nancy stopped and looked at her and then turned to where Linda was looking.

There was something solid up there. That much they could both see, but exactly what that something was became a bit more challenging. Whatever it was, it looked down at them in darkness and it laughed. The sound was exactly the sort of laugh that made witches so damned scary in movies.

And the thing slipped closer, crawling out on the long branch of the tree until it was almost directly over Nancy.

Nancy looked up and stared, her eyes half bugged out and her mouth hanging open.

Linda shook her head and stepped closer to her friend, but Nancy stayed where she was and trembled. The sound that came from that shape could not quite be called a voice, not really. It was more and it was less; it was the rustle of leaves, the hiss of the wind and the shifting of sand or fine debris but just the same it made words. “You told them tales, little Nancy. Told stories about my poor boy.”

“I didn’t.” Nancy shook her head but her voice was so small that Linda could only barely hear her answer. “I never did.”

It moved just a little and looked down on Nancy. Nancy, who looked up with wide eyes and did nothing but tremble.

“What are you doing?” Linda’s voice rattled as she spoke.

Nancy did not look at her, but the shadow-thing did. And when it spoke the voice crept through her, slithered like sand into her ears. “Little Nancy hid the truth. She said such awful things about Martin.” Linda blinked and in that brief instant the shadow shape disappeared. When it spoke again the voice was to her left and behind her. Linda turned fast and stared into darkened features in a field of gray, but oh there were eyes, weren’t there, locked in a maze of wrinkles and withered, ancient flesh. There was hair, too, but like the rest of that shape it was wrapped in shadows, hidden in folds of night. “Little Nancy told a lie and my little boy died for her sins.”

Nancy did not move. Her shoulders shook and her body moved as she wept, but she did not move, did not flee. Did not defend herself from the accusations.

That voice of grit and dust hissed in Linda’s ear and breathed out a breath that was cinnamon and sand and ashes. “Do you know what it’s like to lose your baby, little Linda?”

Linda shook her head and as she did, that presence vanished again and was suddenly standing with Nancy. “So a question little Nancy. Answer now before I answer for you. Do I take you, my sweet girl? Or do I take your Tyler?”

Of course Linda looked. How could she not? She turned her head to Tyler in his ghostly costume and she looked hard for him because he was half buried in darkness, despite that tattered white sheet. He stood as still as his mother, his body frozen in place, the sack that carried his candy dangling from fingers that twitched as his ghostly features stretched in a painful, silent scream.

“I can take him. A life for a life. You can live on, little Nancy. Or I can have you. I can take you to Martin. He has been alone for so long, lost without anyone to hold.”

She turned back to the voice and saw the shadow-woman open one long-fingered hand. Gray dust fell from her palm and the motes danced in the air, shifted, and formed an image of a man she had never seen before, his arms crossed over his chest, his face locked in peaceful repose. He was dead, of course, and she could guess his identity. The image shimmered and blurred and changed, the dust swirling into a shroud of smoke and flames that consumed the corpse in moments.

“They burned my boy’s body. I couldn’t even give him a burial.” Oh, the hatred in those words was a physical thing and Linda staggered back from it, unable to stay any closer to her friend.

Nancy shook her head and cried openly. Her eyes stared at Tyler for a long moment and then turned to the woman behind her. Woman, or ghost or demon or witch, whatever it might be that could come out on a Halloween night and demand payment for sins committed.

“Take. Take T-”

“Too late!” The dark thing slipped back and rose up, a fluttering cloud of shadows that opened arms wide and scattered more gray dust from both palms. The dust swept through the air, defied the mild breeze that should have sent it back toward the Lundgren place, and flowed over Nancy, coating her in a layer of gray that drained her of color. “Too late for you to decide, little Nancy. Too late by far!”

Nancy coughed and sucked in dust and coughed again, her hands moving to wipe the dust from her eyes. She shook her head and staggered toward Linda before falling to her knees. And as Nancy took her steps and faltered, the shadow thing behind her fell away, little more than dust and sand scattered to the winds, gone in an instant.

Linda moved automatically, heading for her friend, horrified by the accusations, but also needing to know that Nancy was okay. Nancy had always been there for her, had always been her shoulder to lean on.

She was going to let that thing have Tyler.

That thought slithered unwanted into Linda’s mind even as she reached for her friend.

Nancy coughed again and shivered. And as she coughed, a gust of gray spilled from her lips. She looked toward Linda for a moment and then toward her son, and she reached for Tyler, surely intent on going to the boy she’d almost betrayed.

Her fingers crumbled into powder and fell away, and that powder, heavy and gritty, slipped through the air and painted Linda’s tongue. Linda closed her mouth instinctively and held her breath as she backed away, but the taste was already there.

Nancy looked toward her and tried to speak, but that was not meant to be. Her mouth split and collapsed on itself, her face following suit. In less than a minute, Nancy simply ceased to be. She fell into gray powder that spilled across the sidewalk and puffed into the breeze.

And Linda stepped back, horrified, the taste of ashes in her mouth. Ashes. She spit and spit but the flavor would not go away. Nor would the memories, or the screams of the children behind her.

Harvest Moon

Stay around the country long enough, you’re bound to see your fair share of scarecrows. That’s why I prefer the city. Summitville’s a grand enough town, certainly larger than most farming communities, but even with the increased number of shops and a new mall on the way, the damned straw figures were everywhere.

Summitville is also a little off; the only place I ever lived where the people thought as much of Halloween as they did of Christmas, possibly even thought better of it. Summitville was also maybe a little too well known for its scarecrows.

I chose to live in Summitville because I wanted a nice, quiet place to spend my retirement. I had been in the city for far too long, I had suffered through the break-ins, holdups, and traffic jams for most of my adult life. There comes a time when you just don’t want to deal with the worst parts of modern civilization anymore. I had reached that decision three years before I could finally retire, and I was more than eager to get on with my move.

Summitville was a long move but, after hearing from an old college chum of mine that he had visited family in the area and decided to move there himself, I figured I should give it a try.

I have seldom seen a prettier town. With only about five actual streets, I figured the place to be a good area for escaping the noise and rampant crime in Los Angeles. In my time in the “Big City,” I saw news broadcasts about unsolved murders every night, and I was held up myself on two separate occasions. Listen, after you’ve stared down the barrel of a pistol - screw the caliber, ANY pistol—you start thinking that maybe you could do without the excitement. I hit the old nail right on the head. Summitville is isolated, separated by a lake that actually rests above the town itself and holds the interstate roadways at bay.

Lake Overtree is filled with trout and bass, and is just about the most glorious place you can imagine to sit and watch the sun rise while you’re dropping a line and waiting for a bite. Tranquil, that’s the word I guess I’m searching for. Why there aren’t a hundred boats on that lake every day of the summer is one mystery I still haven’t figured out.

All it took was one trip down the gravel road that leads to Summitville, around Lake Overtree and then down into town, and I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life there. Damn it, I’d earned the right; I’d put up with too much in my lifetime, seen too many violent deaths and crimes of every type. The view was stunning: a small gem of a town surrounded by forest and hills in one direction and sprawling, lazy farmland in the other. It was simply too pretty for words.

I wish I’d never seen the damned place.

All was well enough when I moved there, the people were a little standoffish, but you expect that moving into a small town. If you expect open arms in a tight-knit community, then you’re a damned fool. I knew they’d come around in time; I just had to be patient.

I got there toward the middle of August, about a year and half after putting my Emma into her final resting place. Death took Emma in stages, eating her body and her mind away as the brain cancer got a firm grip on her. Lord, that was the hardest time of my life, just trying to cope without my Emma after over twenty years together.

Cold as it sounds, after receiving the life insurance money from Emma’s death, I decided for early retirement. And like I’ve already said, Summitville was as fine a place to retire as any I could imagine. I figured to maybe write a few pulp Westerns and become the next Louis L’Amour. What the hell, it was worth a shot.

By the end of September I had the neighbors calling me by name and waving at me as I sat out on the porch with my note pads and Flair pens, scribbling notes on what was certain to be the first of a dozen or more bestsellers. Hey, if you’re gonna dream, you may as well do it right. My home was just a little place, one of a few dozen houses that made up one of the more urban neighborhoods in Summitville.

My closest neighbor was a woman a few years younger than myself, somewhere around forty-five. Helen Crasworth. She was in fine shape, did the jogging routine, and exercised her little fanny off every morning. What she saw in a marshmallow like myself I’ll never know, but we started becoming something of an item in no time flat. Nothing physical, mind you, just going out to the movies together, and sharing dining rooms every so often. I got to where I loved to see those blue eyes of hers smiling, and to where I darn near lived to smell the fresh scent of her auburn hair. I think my Emma would have understood; it had been a long while since I’d been close to anyone, and I just needed to have a friend.

On the other side of my house was where you could find possibly the grumpiest old man I had ever met - eighty years old if he was a day, and fit to be tied anytime the local boys crossed over his yard and got close to his garden. Even with his generally nasty disposition, we got along just fine. On the nights when Helen couldn’t come over, old crotchety Ned Graber and I would sit on my porch or his, sip a few beers, and talk over the good old days when the whole world seemed a little bit saner. Ned liked to call it the “years before Nixon.” That term fit as well as any I guess. Ned liked to complain, and I never minded hearing his tales, though I’d have probably gotten along with him better if he’d have worn deodorant now and then.

The rest of the neighborhood was filled with younger families, newlyweds, and those that had just started their own crop of children. The few that were my age had families they were raising, and while we chatted and were civil, we could never really have gotten close, not with my wife gone and their families having such a social outlook in comparison to my own.

By the middle of October, I felt as at home as I ever had, and with Helen and me practically dating, I lacked the empty spot in my chest that had bothered me since my Emma had died. That was about the time I started noticing the Halloween preparations all over the place. Most of them started in the homes with children, little die-cut paper witches and black cats with a few sad-eyed Frankenstein’s Monsters hanging on doors. Sort of like I remembered Halloween when I was a child. Before the scuzzy punks started lacing candy and apples with razor blades and rat poison. Before the “Nixon years.” I guess maybe you can understand why I got along with Ned so well.

It was when I saw the decorations going up at Ned’s house that I realized the whole town was a little Halloween crazy. Ned Graber actually started smiling around that time, waving to the children he had cursed with damnation only a week earlier. I didn’t like Ned quite as much with a smile; it looked too strained to be natural for him. More like rigor mortis than a grin, if you see what I mean.

Helen was just as crazy about the whole thing, pulling down her curtains and replacing them with sets of black drapes that were practically crawling with smiley-faced straw men. Scarecrows. Something about those button eyes and stitched mouths sent shivers down my spine, call it a premonition if you will. Still, Helen hadn’t changed at all, and I must admit I was starting to get sweet on her. The chill faded quickly.

I even got into the old Halloween spirit myself, shopping in town for those hokey old Sounds to Make you Shiver and Scream records at the local record store. I was only a little upset at having to deal with compact discs instead of good old vinyl. I bought a few dozen bags of candy, shaped like pumpkins and about as tasty, and even decorated the house with still more tacky paper skeletons and werewolves. It was fun, almost like being a little kid all over again.

Well, I was living in a residential area with lots of children, and if a few of them were too old to be out trick-or-treating in my opinion, that was no one’s problem but mine. Who was I to say if they were too old anyway? I never had any of my own, and in truth I never missed the lack of them until after my Emma passed on.

For that matter, how did I even know that the older kids would be out in costume?

About a week before Halloween, I saw the first of the scarecrows put out in the town square. The square was a massive lot of land, complete with bandstand and a statue of the town founder, surrounded entirely by shops of every imaginable type and style. I loved it; it was just like a town square should be, right down to the sculpted hedges and the crew-cut lawn. I had doubts that so much as a stray piece of litter had hit that grass in the last three decades, and that was the way it was meant to be. If there are trash cans to be used, I say use them. And if you’re too good to use a trash can, then stay the hell home and litter your own place, thank you very much.

So I was a little surprised, as you might well imagine, by the sheer number of scarecrows that seemed to just pop up overnight. There, sitting in that pristine little island of Americana, somebody had planted what had to be no less than two dozen scarecrows. Now, as I said before, even I was getting into the Halloween spirit by then, but this seemed a bit much to me.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if any of the fool things had even been fun to look at, if any of them had been more than drab. Lifeless stuffed clothes that had been bleached by too many seasons in the rain and blistering sunlight, with straw bleeding from every section of them. All of them looking into the center of the square, too, rather than facing outward so you could at least see the faces. I was so enthralled by the concept that I just had to stop and take a closer look.

I parked the car and hopped on out to take a long gander at the straw men, and what I saw was a touch unsettling. Now I’m the first to admit that the purpose of a scarecrow is self-evident in the name: scare plus crow does indeed equal scarecrow. But these things would have scared five years off a child’s life, and that was just unnecessary.

Each had a different style to it: some were made from rags, some made from old hand-me-downs, but they all had one thing in common: faces designed to look as if they had been stuffed with only a skull, as if nothing else had been available to fill their artificial heads. Whether the faces were made from papier-mâché, old denim, or potato sack, they all grinned down with the same evil sneer. I resisted the impulse to touch one of the long leering faces, afraid to feel the hard bone that might be hiding beneath the cloth covering. In some cases, they had eyes made of buttons, in others, they had no eyes at all, just empty sockets that seemed to look at me, almost to follow me wherever I went. Some had straw hair, and others had old wigs that looked as if their best days had been sometime in the previous century. A few even had old mop heads on top of their macabre faces, long strands covered in particles of dirt that had never been rinsed out when they were retired from their days of cleaning floors.

And all of them were better detailed than I could have guessed when only looking at them on the street. The designers of these straw men had even gone so far as to waste perfectly good gloves on them, just so the things would have fingers. And shoes. I took off quickly after I noticed the shoes. One pair still had the price tag in place. The whole thing was just a little strange. Well, okay, a LOT strange. That stupid price tag messed with my sensibilities, and I couldn’t stomach the thought of staying there a second longer.

Halloween in Summitville. The very idea was starting to give me the creeps. I went home and made a mental note to talk with Helen about the scarecrows over dinner that night.

Dinner was at Helen’s place, and let me tell you, that woman knew how to cook. Helen had made a meal for a king, provided of course, that said king liked chili slightly hotter than the deepest pits of hell. My kind of food. While I was putting down my second bowl of the stuff and sweating enough for a whole herd of rutting pigs, I finally got around to the subject of the scarecrows in the town square.

“Helen,” I said, gasping for air after biting into a particularly succulent lump of jalapeño pepper, “Just what the devil is going on in the park? I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a collection of scarecrows in my life. Is it just me, or does this town have a thing about Halloween and straw men?” Helen almost seemed hesitant to talk about the odd set up, then she just smiled and said, “It’s just sort of a tradition in these parts, Ben. Nothing to fret about.”

“Well, what kind of tradition? I figure if I’m going to spend the rest of my life here, I should at least know what the local customs are.” Helen looked at me for several seconds, as if she were trying to read my intentions. I did my best to make her believe that I was simply curious about the town, and truth be told, that wasn’t very difficult. I was interested in the town.

Finally she smiled, and I knew that I had put just the right emphasis on my living in Summitville for the rest of my life. I still planned on doing just that, I had no idea just how...off the rest of the people in town were at that time. I still rather liked the place, even if they did have some odd little traditions.

Helen walked over to the fridge and got each of us a Rolling Rock. I’d always preferred Budweiser, but what the hell, it was her home, her beer. I accepted the bottle and thanked her, and then I waited as she tried to explain the town’s little attraction to ugly cloth sculptures. “It isn’t really a Halloween tradition. It’s a harvest moon tradition. It’s just that this year’s harvest moon is only a day before Halloween.”

“Listen, I’m from the city. I don’t know a blasted thing about harvest moons or any other type of moon. What’s so special about a harvest moon, what makes ‘em different?”

Helen kind of smiled at my naiveté, no doubt thinking it was just like a retired city slicker not to know shit about something as important as a harvest moon. “Well, traditionally, the harvest moon only comes out in autumn, when the time has come for harvesting all the crops. In reality, it’s the moon that comes closest to the autumnal equinox. But that’s boring. In old folk tales around here, a harvest moon is one that is very large and very orange, almost the color of the setting sun. But that’s only a part of the whole picture again. The legends around these parts go back to when Summit Town, Summitville’s predecessor, was first founded, a little over a hundred and fifty years ago. The land wasn’t doing so well back then, and we had troubles from wolves, Indians, and drought. I know that sounds odd what with the Overtree right up at the top of the hill, but the lake was supposed to be haunted and no one went up there if they could avoid it.”

I avoided the strong temptation to ask about the supposed ghosts up at the Overtree and waited for Helen to continue, helping myself to another bowl of her gourmet chili in the process. It didn’t take her long to catch the hint from me.

“The harvest was supposed to be one of the worst of all times, and that says something in a community of farmers.” She stopped for a few moments to suck down half of her beer, staring off into the great unknown. “Well, the legends say that everyone was having a bad time of the harvest except for Albert Miles. Albert was having a just fine crop, better than most anyone had seen in any other place for as long as they could remember. Well, considering the times and all, a lot of people figured that old Albert Miles was up to no good. I mean, the man ran the local mercantile, never really had time to tend his crops, but somehow the man had managed the best harvest in seven counties. Enough crops to darn near feed all of the people who hadn’t so much as grown a potato worth mentioning, and enough hay to feed every horse in town. A lot of people were saying Albert Miles had made a deal with old Lucifer himself.”

I couldn’t help myself, that one got me to chuckling. I was relieved when Helen chuckled too, because for just a second there, I was pretty certain she actually believed her own line of donkey droppings. I was glad to see that she wasn’t that far into the old traditions of Summit Town, or Ville, or city.

“It is sort of strange, especially since the man went to church just as regular as anyone else in town, more regular than some of the people on the outskirts for that matter. So everyone decided that he must have some other secret to his crops, and the town leaders decided that they should have a talk with him.

“Albert Miles was hardly what you could call a nice man. He was charitable enough; he’d give to the church and let people slide a bit on what they owed at the mercantile, he even gave some of his crops to those in the worst shape, but he was not a nice man. While he always did the neighborly thing when someone was in need, he was known to beat his wife, and he was very secretive about what happened out at his farm. He didn’t take well to guests, and he certainly didn’t like people nosing around in his personal affairs. Like his farming. He slammed the front door in the town leaders’ faces and told them not to come back again.”

She smiled and got us each another beer before continuing. “Well, Albert had most everyone in town owing him money by that point, and none of them was fond of actively making him angry, just in case he decided not to be so lenient with the payment schedule. So the town elders did what they thought was wisest, and asked his wife about what made his crops so fine. She looked at them all with a little surprise, and told ‘em that it was the scarecrow that made his crops so good.”

Helen hesitated there, just a small thing really, nothing more than a quick sideways glance out of her eyes, but I knew that the next words from her mouth were lies. “Ever since then, people have imitated the way his scarecrow was made, sort of like a contest to see whose scarecrow is the most original and at the same time the most like the one Albert Miles made.”

I am not a wise person; I’ve certainly had my share of trouble during my life. But now and again, the old stew I call my brain sends me a good clear signal, and now and again I even listen to what it tells me. I listened that night; I stopped asking questions and went about having fun with Helen instead of alienating one of the only good friends I had made in town.

But I also promised myself a visit to the town library to see what I could find out about Albert Miles. Now, a while back I mentioned an old college chum of mine, one that had retired to Summitville. Well, Owen Kingsley was hardly the type that would ever truly retire; while he was supposed to be enjoying his golden years, Owen was busily writing a half-dozen atrociously bad romance novels under the name Louise Starlight—yes, I’m sure you’ve seen a few of them, but Owen would deny to your face that he’d written them—and working on yet another hardboiled detective novel that he’d never be able to sell. That was when he wasn’t working as one of the volunteers in the Summitville public library.

Owen made the research much easier, even with all the ragging on him about how his good friend Louise was doing. Believe me, you’ve never seen a man turn red until you’ve seen Owen blush while you’re quoting the dirty scenes from his last trashy novel. He helped me with the old newspapers and with the copies of the town ledgers, and all the other nonsense that accumulates in a library over the years. We didn’t talk as much as we used to, but Owen had always been a hell of a fine friend.

Even with all of Owen’s help, I could find no reference to Albert Miles. All I found was that the woods under the Overtree held the remains of where Summit Town had once been. Whatever records might have existed about the man had apparently been destroyed in the fire that took Summit Town. I was left with only one recourse. I paid a visit to Ned Graber.

Well, I’ve already said that Ned was a bit of a grump, much in the same way that King Kong was a mite on the tall side, but he was also one of the proudest people in town as far as his heritage was concerned. It just didn’t seem to me that there was likely to be anyone better at telling me the truth about all of those scarecrows. I suppose by that point I was a touch obsessed with solving whatever secrets lay behind those odd figures, the ones in the square and the ones I’d seen in front of almost every house I passed, Ned’s included.

I met with Ned in the usual place, his porch, and brought over a twelve-pack of Buds to make the meeting go easier. Ned and I got along well enough, but normally it was him inviting me over, not me just coming over to ask questions. Ned was in a good mood, and his mood was made even better by my bribe. After a few minutes of just shooting the breeze, Ned finally decided that enough was enough and asked me what brought me over to see him.

I told him about my curiosity involving the scarecrows, gave him the same story that Helen had given me, and Ned just smiled. “And you fell for her line of shit?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Ned.” I did know what he meant, but I didn’t want to sound too suspicious.

“You ain’t half so bright as I was givin’ you credit for. Ben, there ain’t no record of Albert Miles, ‘cause the old sonuvabitch burned down the whole damn settlement of Summit Town.” Old Ned had on his ornery smile, the one that seemed to say without words that he was breaking the rules just talking to me. He almost looked friendly with that smile and, give or take the wrinkles and the dentures slipping out of his mouth, that smile made him look like a little boy heading for a heap of mischief. I think of all his attempts at smiling, that one was the only one that was real. “The scoundrel went nuts one day, kilt his wife, and dropped his son down a well. Just ‘cause his wife was foolin’ around.” Ned gave me a slow wink, more like a lizard blinking than anything else. “Hell, son, everyone about these parts knows the man was a sorcerer.”

“Ned, that’s the biggest load of cow-flop I’ve ever heard.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself from talking, and I just knew Ned was going to blow a gasket on me, start ranting about my lack of manners, and maybe start questioning whether my parents were married.

Instead, Ned just started chuckling deep inside his scrawny little frame and slapped his knee a few times when he couldn’t get the laughter out anymore. “Of course it’s a load of shit, Ben. All of them old wives’ tales are a load of shit. But that’s where we all get our customs from.” Ned pulled another beer from the twelve-pack, popped the top, and started sipping like it was tea. “But the fact of the matter is, the man had a reputation as a wizard, and his crops really did grow better than anyone else’s did.”

Ned stared off into outer space, and for a few seconds I was afraid that he’d died on me he was so still. Then he smiled at me again. “My grandfather used to tell me tales about old Albert Miles, always called him ‘Stoney’, ‘cause that was his nickname. Had to do with the man’s demeanor one must guess. Man made me seem downright congenial.” Ned laughed again, apparently imagining the old tales his ancestor had told him. “Ben, the townsfolk didn’t go out there with any sort of kindness in their hearts; they went out there and demanded that the man tell them how to make their own crops grow better. They were all scared of him, but they were also real desperate by that point.”

Ned paused again and, before I could speak, went into his house, telling me to wait where I was. I waited, and some ten minutes later, Ned came back out with a book that had to be almost as old as the town. “My grandfather left this to my father, and as his only son it went to me,” Ned explained as he carefully shifted the old pages in the book. Looking at what went past I saw a lot of the town’s history in ancient photographs, the sort that you see now and then in books about the old West. Finally, Ned stopped on a page and, gesturing to remind me that this book was older than the both of us—use caution please—handed the volume to me.

And for the first time, I saw the scarecrow that Albert Miles had made. The old picture was very faded, and less than clear, but I could still see that figure with enough detail to make me shiver. The body was long and gaunt, almost skeletal. The clothes were like nothing on any of the scarecrows I had seen in town; they were almost Elizabethan in style, lots of ruffles and buttons. A pair of shoes that even looked new in the photograph adorned the scarecrow’s feet, and the hands were made from fine white linen gloves. Covering the entire body was a cloth much like a funeral shroud, resting on the shoulders and falling to the ground.

And then there was the head. The head was adorned by a huge hat; much like a Puritan’s but with a brim that looked like it belonged on a hat a hundred sizes larger. And framing the face was a mass of fine white hair, almost down to the shoulders in length. The face itself was much like the other faces on the many scarecrows in town, not surprising when you considered that they were modeled after the one I stared at in an ancient photograph. But this face was different; it was hollowed out, and the features seemed more sinister by far than the imitations that surrounded the square at the heart of Summitville. For all the world, it looked like someone had found a perfectly head- shaped pumpkin, carved a grinning skull into the gourd, and placed it as a head upon the strangest looking scarecrow ever created.

And even in the photograph, the damned thing seemed to stare at me. My flesh crawled as I studied the faded photograph. My mind almost reeled when I moved away, and the figure in the photo seemed to follow me with its eyes.

Ned pulled the book away from me, softly but firmly. “That’ll do ya, Ben. You stare at that picture any harder and you’ll burn a hole in the blasted thing.” Ned’s voice sounded different, weaker than it had before. Ned sounded like a man who suddenly realized that he’d just made a big mistake, panicky, but in a quiet way.

Ned walked away with the book and came back out a few minutes later popping two more beers without even thinking about it. Even as we sat together and sipped at the cold brews, I think we were both lost in our own thoughts. I was busy thinking about that damned picture, and Ned was busy thinking about how big his mouth had grown over the years. At least that’s what I think he was thinking about; his tanned face had grown pasty, and his normally steady hands had begun to twitch and jerk a little bit.

The silence lasted through those two beers and well into the next pair.

Then Ned spoke again, smiling tightly and shaking his head.

“Well, my momma always said my mouth would get me into trouble one of these days.” Ned looked at me, stared me in my eyes for a good ten seconds, and then started talking again. “Ben, I wish I could tell you it was all just a load of crap, but I can’t. For a little while, at least if my old grandpa can be believed, the people of Summit Town got into human sacrifices.”

I must have jumped halfway out of my seat, because Ned was looking at me and smiling again, and it was that vicious little victory smile of his, the one that always made me want to punch him in his head.

“You sap! You fell for it.” Ned started laughing out loud, and after a few seconds, I started laughing too. The look of relief that crossed Ned’s face told me all I needed to know in order to find the truth. Ned wasn’t laughing and making a joke; Ned was laughing and trying to make a joke out of the town’s past, because Ned was scared. Because Ned wanted me to believe that everything he had told me was a load of manure. He wanted to make absolutely sure that I knew he had been telling a funny all along. He desperately needed to make me believe that, because everything he had told me was absolutely true. Even the part about human sacrifices.

I played along, mostly because Ned was so desperate to see me laugh. And maybe a little because I didn’t want to believe that Ned was serious. It was just my senses and my mind telling me that he was afraid. Anyone that tries can lie to his or her senses; it just takes a little practice. I left a little while later, leaving behind an honest man who suddenly felt he had to lie.

Ned and I never got together for beer again. It’s been a long while, and I still miss sitting on his porch. Sad the way things always change; sadder still that they seldom change for the better.

I kept pretty much to myself for the days remaining until the harvest moon, and just as Helen had predicted, the bloated orange moon showed itself on the twenty-ninth day of October. I’d seen a harvest moon before, though I’d never really understood the term before Helen explained it to me. But I had never seen one so large. That moon didn’t just occupy a portion of the sky, it invaded the sky. The harvest moon seemed to stretch from one end of the horizon to the other as I stared out my living room window and faced the East. I spent the entire night sitting in my living room sipping at beers, wondering just what was supposed to be harvested. No one left their homes; no one did anything out of the ordinary. I figured that maybe I’d been fooling myself, giving myself over to silly little flights of fancy, and me at an age when I was supposed to know better.

On the thirtieth I went into the center of town and did some shopping. The damned scarecrows were still in the town square, and I still hated them. Very little in this world has ever sent shivers through my spine the way those morbid straw statues did. When I heard that the Russians had sent up Sputnik, and when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot and killed, and maybe even when I heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, those things bothered me about as much. But I can’t think of another thing in this world that so unsettled me as looking at the rows of scarecrows in the town square. The worst thing about it was that since last I’d looked, the damnable things had multiplied. There looked to be a good fifty or more of the scarecrows surrounding the perimeter, looking across the freshly mown field at each other, and maybe thinking about how nice the sky had looked last night.

Above them, spanning the length of the square, a giant banner stretched. It read “COME ONE COME ALL TO THE SUMMITVILLE HALLOWEEN BALL!” in garish orange letters on a field of black. The letters seemed to drip orange blood, and in small print beneath the larger letters: “Fun for the whole family! From 7 P.M. to midnight. A festival not to be missed.”

I stared a long time at that banner, and I suppose I would have left well enough alone, but for the children coming from school and walking through the square. I saw them walking among the hideous straw men, proudly pointing to the ones that they and their families had assembled. Grade-school students, and they were unaffected by the things that littered the park. I decided to attend the Halloween Ball, because I realized that I was being foolish. If these things didn’t bother the children, then how could I let them bother me so much?

Enough was enough; I forced my morbid thoughts aside and decided to enjoy the holiday properly. With that decision, I went about my business, pleased that a few of the children recognized me, more pleased still that they waved and smiled. After a week and a half out of the picture, I was home again.

When I went to the store I made sure to grab several bags of candy. I decided that, if I were to be a part of Summitville, I would do it the right way. Strange traditions be damned, I decided that it was time to be a part of the community. I even went so far as to make a scarecrow. Maybe I was a little obsessed, or maybe I was a little crazy. Who can say? I only know that I spent a great deal of that night working on my straw man with an almost religious vigor. Around seven at night Helen joined me; we were supposed to have dinner and it was my turn to cook. We ended up ordering Chinese and calling it a meal.

It was almost midnight by the time I finished, and I felt a little feverish from all of the efforts. One of my old pairs of denim pants and a corduroy jacket were sacrificed for the clothes. I didn’t go quite as far as some of the people had - I just used old tennis shoes and my gardening gloves to finish him off. Oh, and a cowboy hat I had sitting around. The only Country & Western scarecrow in the whole lot of them, even if he didn’t have the cowboy boots and chaps.

I dragged him out to the town square, with Helen’s help, and set him up before retiring for the night. The square was crowded, and it took a little time to find a good location, but I finally managed. I would have never asked for Helen’s help, but it was a part of the town tradition, and it was early in the morning on All Hallows’ Eve by the time I was finished with him anyway.

By the time I awoke the next day, the sun was almost all the way to high noon, and I had a nasty headache. I felt as if I’d been drinking all night instead of working on a mannequin. I hadn’t done any real hard work, but every muscle in my body felt as if I’d spent the last few weeks hauling bricks instead of just one night stuffing a dummy with paper towels and old newspapers. It took me over fifteen minutes lying in bed to decide I could brave the floor and the shower.

But after twenty minutes under the old Shower Massage I was feeling mostly human again. A little after lunchtime, Helen gave me a call, and we cemented plans to eat together and to head off to the Halloween Ball together. Helen made it clear that everyone had to wear costumes and hinted that she was maybe gonna be dressed up as a witch. It didn’t take too much rummaging around in my attic before I found clothes suitable for dressing myself up as a magician. I’ve always had a bad tendency to keep all my junk from over the years—probably the main reason I didn’t just opt for a condo somewhere when I retired—and I found an old tuxedo of mine, half a size too small, and a top hat that I guess used to belong to my father or maybe Emma’s. A few old scarves and a stuffed rabbit that Emma had carried through most of her life pretty much finished off the costume. It took me most of the day just to alter the damned tuxedo so it would fit well enough for the night’s events, and then it was off to Helen’s for dinner and then to the town square for the big to-do.

My first sight of the square filled me with awe. Here was this little park, in the middle of Summitville, that had been making me nervous for over a week. It was entirely different. Somehow, between midnight and seven P.M. the whole place had been transformed. Lights, like the little white ones you see on Christmas trees, and hundreds of balloons in black and orange covered the area; paper streamers of every possible color were spread all over the field. Jack-o’-lanterns of every shape and size were perched on benches and in some cases held in the hands of the scarecrows. The whole place was festive, lit by powerful halogen lamps bright enough to imitate daytime, designed only for a night of fun.

Everyone was dressed in costume, from the youngest child all the way to Ned Graber, dressed as a cowboy in clothes that looked awfully authentic except for the cheap plastic guns. Werewolves, ghosts, Frankenstein’s Monster, even that busty woman, Elvira; they were all around me, along with more clowns and fairy princesses than you could shake a stick at. I’m pretty certain that it was the entire town there that night, every last one of them.

I wish I could explain how much I enjoyed the first half of the evening. I stared at all the costumes and talked with people I had seen a few times but never really got a chance to know. And everyone treated me like an old friend. Maybe it was that I was with Helen - maybe it was just that I was finally giving the town and its people a chance - who can say for certain? I had so much fun dancing, visiting the little haunted house that the Jaycees had put together. There was holding hands with Helen. Watching all the little ones run around and try to scare each other in costumes that were mostly homemade instead of cheap plastic masks and the nylon aprons—the ones with a picture of what the mask is supposed to represent and the name there in bold print for the terminally stupid—that normally pass for costumes in the big city. It was like being a kid again myself, like Halloween should be.

Before the night had even begun in earnest I had promised myself that I would make myself as much a part of Summitville’s community as the natives of the town. By the time we had danced to a few songs, I had decided that I was in love with Helen. Maybe it was time to get on with my life, or maybe it was just time, but I decided that Helen and I were an item that night. We kissed for the first time in front of half of the town, in public and without embarrassment. I felt as good when I kissed her as I ever have. I felt like a young man again. We must have spent two hours with our hands locked together in a gentle grip. I never wanted to let go of her again.

Then it all changed. Right around nine o’clock everyone started getting a little edgy. I could even feel it in Helen’s grip on my hand, the way her fingers started flexing and fidgeting against my own. One by one, all the kids started migrating away from the square, escorted by their parents or just going on their own. They all ended up across Main Street, at the cinema across from the square. Mind you, this was nothing that I noticed at the time, only something that I noticed in hindsight. The Rialto Cinema had a set of cartoons advertised on the marquee, but I hadn’t really noticed it in a conscious way at that point.

By nine-thirty, all the children were inside the cinema, and the adults were all gathering around the edges of the square. Right around then I noticed that there was something a little off about everything, like everyone was waiting for something to happen. I noticed that Helen was squeezing hard at my hand. And still I was almost fanatically determined to ignore any possible signs of worry and to enjoy myself. Sometimes, I think I’m just too damned stupid for my own good.

It was just after ten that I had finally started noticing the changes that had rippled through the crowd, when I heard the laughter that came rushing from the West, from the direction of the farms and the ruins of Summit Town. God help me, I swear I’ve never heard laughter like that before. It sounded insane, filled with malice and with a cold hatred that sent shivers through my whole body. I tightened my grip on Helen’s hand and turned my head to ask her what the hell that sound had been. One look at her face told me that she wouldn’t be listening to anything I had to say. She was lost, looking expectantly toward the direction of the laughter and smiling. Her face looked twisted and mad, far worse to me than it would have to anyone else, because I knew her face so well, had studied her face whenever I could. Helen managed to look excited and frightened, happy and appalled, all at the same time. The look was so alien to her normally serene face that I tried to pull away from her; her fingers clenched so fiercely at my hand that the only way to escape would have been to forcibly pry her fingers away from mine.

Maybe I would have done it anyway, but then the laughter came back, closer than it had been before. I heard the whispers from the people around me, whispers like you’d expect to hear in a church: “He’s here. He’s come to us again. I wonder who’ll be chosen.” My heart did acrobatic tricks in my chest, and my knees grew weak. I felt my eyes drawn to the darkness from which the laughter had exploded. And there it was, walking slowly and proudly from the woods.

Albert Miles’ scarecrow in all its glory. The old photograph I’d seen had been intimidating; the reality was utterly terrifying. The figure was gaunt, dressed in the same clothes I had seen in a photo that had to be at least a hundred years old, but the face was what registered most powerfully in my mind. The features were the same, the very features I had attempted to re-create only the night before, but much more real, more powerful than those I had formed. What I had thought could possibly be flesh was in actuality a pumpkin, or something so closely akin in texture that you couldn’t tell the difference. Its features were carved into the thick skin of its head, a Jack-o’-lantern mouth smiled at everyone as the thing came into the square, not seeming to walk fast enough for the distance it covered. That pumpkin-like head came into view, held proudly and tilted just a bit to the left. High, arrogant cheek- bones, like those of a human skull, were framed by corn silk hair. A cavernous grin showed a faint glow from inside, like the flickering of flames. Twin hell-fires burned intently from hollow eye sockets, shifting from person to person and causing faces to grimace in fear. Until they focused on me.

It was like the scarecrow knew I didn’t belong with the rest of them, like it sensed that I was not from around these parts, not one of the people that normally celebrated Halloween in the square. I was certain that the thing would come to me and strike me down for having the audacity to be seen in the presence of its followers. I knew that I was as good as dead, and damned if I didn’t almost wet myself. Then it turned its gaze from me and looked toward my right. Just around that time is when I remembered how to breathe.

I had trouble accepting it; the more I looked at the scarecrow, the less real it seemed. The thing’s face was impossibly mobile, and still seemed so much like a pumpkin carved for the event. The mouth moved. The head craned easily as the thing looked around. I couldn’t stop myself; I reached out my hand and grabbed at the scarecrow as it came past me. My mind, the logical part at least, demanded that I prove once and for all that the creature was a figment of my imagination.

My hand touched the heavy, coarse wool of its jacket and felt the hard bony frame beneath the material. And the thing turned back to look at me with eyes older than all of creation. That nasty-looking smile grew even more sinister, and the hollow mouth ignited with the same glowing energy that fueled the monster’s gaze.

As God is my witness, the thing seemed to know me. It reached out with a gloved hand and touched my face, as gentle as a kiss from your first love. My nerves screamed out at the contact, and my flesh tried to crawl away from the rest of me and hide somewhere. I felt the years of dust and mold held in that glove, and the cold, hard weight of the bones that rested just beneath their cotton surface.

The demented cavern of a mouth moved, its grin growing even wider, and then it talked to me. The chilling voice called out in a faint whisper, “Welcome home, Benjamin.”

I screamed myself silly as it turned away, walking through the crowd that moved to avoid being touched. All around me the good people of Summitville were touching me, slapping my shoulder, or hugging themselves to me like I was a long-lost relative. I wanted to run, but there were too many people surrounding me, pressing close to me and making me notice them. I was numbly aware of Helen next to me, still holding my hand.

I watched the scarecrow move through the night, stepping regally past its followers in pursuit of the one it had chosen. It stopped at last before Ned Graber, and it held out a hand to him, silently demanding that he join it.

I saw a thousand looks cross his face in just a few seconds. I saw surprise, happiness, anger, denial, something like ecstasy, and happiness again. Then I saw fear and a sad resignation. The scarecrow walked away with Ned, and everyone stepped aside for them, letting them pass like a newly married bride and groom. Ned’s shoulders trembled as he walked into the darkness. It was the only sign of weakness I saw.

There was no movement after they disappeared, and everyone around me went silent, again holding their breath and waiting patiently for a sign. They weren’t alone; I couldn’t move either. I was still too stunned by what I’d seen.

Less than five minutes later I heard Ned Graber scream. Seconds after that I heard the demon’s chilling laughter ripping through the night.

Of course, I’d like to say that I charged into the woods to protect my friend. I’d even be happy with saying that I’d run away into the night. God above knows I wanted to run, but my body disagreed. My body decided to outdo me. I had my first stroke right there on the lawn. I remember looking up at Helen’s pretty face, covered with worry, and I remember all the scarecrows that loomed above me. Then everything went black.

Well, I just said I had my first stroke, and that’s true enough. But the other three that came right after the initial one were probably what put me in this damned “retirement facility.” The only good news is I’ve got a great view of the rest of Summitville from up here. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything screwier than a town the size of this one having its own retirement home. They call this place Shady Acres. I call it a nightmare.

I’ve been here for almost a year, just about long enough to make me scared. At first I held to the hope that I could be up and walking inside of six months, but of late Doctor Lewis has just about given up on the hope of my ever walking again. I guess in his eyes it’s a miracle that I can even get into the wheelchair by myself.

I hate feeling helpless. I hate having a nurse shave me every day, and even more, I despise looking in the mirror when she’s done and seeing my face try to slide off my skull. The left half of my face is frozen in a suspended scream of fear. The right half of my face only looks that way when I want it to, but the left half is just stuck that way. Frozen in a silent scream.

I’m lonely these days, too. Owen and Helen used to come by once a week or so, but when they finally got sick of looking at me and hearing my grunts and groans, they both stopped visiting. I can’t blame them, watching a man struggle to swallow his water instead of just dribble it down his face can’t be a lot of fun, if you catch what I’m saying. They never once brought up what happened at the Halloween Ball, and I was certainly in no shape to bring it up myself. Still, I wonder what they would have said. I suspect they’d both have feigned ignorance about the whole thing, pretending that poor old Ben had lost his mind along with the use of his legs and bladder. They sure didn’t warn me beforehand, and I guess they’d have gone on living the lie afterward as well.

I spend most of my time staring out the window and enduring. I endure the loss of dignity that I guess anyone who is mostly paralyzed is forced to endure: sponge baths, being fed like I was a baby—though of late I am finally feeding myself, thank God above—and wearing a disposable diaper instead of having the chance to sit on a toilet like any person should be able to do. I endure the indignities because I have to. Whether I like it or not, I am crippled in my body. I just wish that maybe a little of my mind had gone as well. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel so damned bad about being left to the mercy of people I don’t even know.

I stare out the window for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes, I stare out the window at the town below and I think about my Emma. She’d have loved Summitville, I’m sure of that. Sometimes I stare out the window just for the warmth that the sun lays on my skin. But mostly, I stare out the window and I wait. It’s toward the middle of October now, and I know what’s going on down there, down in that pretty little town. The families are gathering the materials for building their scarecrows, and they’re all planning what costumes to wear this year. Just a few more weeks, and Halloween will be with me again.

For a while I still had my illusions to protect me. I actually believed that, at least in good old Shady Acres, I would be free from the festivities. I know that a few more months of trying, and I’d be able to walk again. I can already wiggle my toes if I try real hard, and I can even move my right foot if I don’t mind breaking a hard sweat.

But just this morning I got the good news from Doctor Lewis. It seems Helen wants to make sure I don’t miss the festivities, and she’s coming up herself to escort me to the Halloween Ball. She even told Doc Lewis that she’d saved our scarecrow from last year. It’s been waiting in her basement for the time we could attend the Ball together.

I keep thinking about those scarecrows, and I keep thinking about the way Albert Miles’ scarecrow looked at me when I was foolish enough to touch it. I keep wondering what it meant when it welcomed me home. I’m afraid I might even know. I get the nasty feeling there might be one more scarecrow perched in the town center this year, one with a face shaped an awful lot like Ned Graber’s face, only minus all the flesh.

I have a worse suspicion that there will be one more next year as well, one that bears a strong resemblance to yours truly. I guess that’s the other reason I like to sit near the window and look down on Summitville: I keep thinking that the view is nice from three stories up, and I keep wondering if my arms will hold my weight for the time it would take to open the window, and maybe just lean out a bit too far for safety.

I’m pretty sure the fall will kill me. But I’m afraid to die, afraid that maybe all that stuff they taught me in my Sunday school classes was true. They told me that suicide is a sure way to go to hell. Even after all these years, I guess there are still some parts of my upbringing that just can’t be escaped.

I imagine I’ll still be here when Helen comes for me. I’ll be waiting and wishing with all my heart that I could stand up and just walk away from this town. Maybe if the scarecrow comes for me, I’ll manage to live through it, get passed by for some other poor fool that asks too many questions. Maybe he’ll even forgive me my trespasses and let me live as a whole person again; I’m almost certain that he could heal me if he wanted.

I guess at heart I’m just a coward. I’d rather take my chances with the devil I know than with what might be ahead of me if I take the plunge out of this window.

From here I can even see the town square, and I can count a good ten figures down there, all staring toward the center of the small park, looking with frozen fascination at the bandstand, or maybe at the bronze likeness of “Charles S. Westphalen — Our Town Founder.” I think maybe the folks here in Summitville are getting a big head start this year. It’s never too soon to get into the spirit of Halloween in Summitville, I reckon. One way or the other, I should know about that myself in the very near future.

Hathburn Avenue

Candles lit the insides of carved faces on nearly every porch on Billings Street. The sun was almost gone and the jack-o-lanterns were more obvious, more deliciously sinister as the darkness swallowed most everything. I remember looking at the glowing caricatures with a mix of fear and anticipation. It was excitement at first; but even as the night started, I had a strange feeling that bad things were coming.

There were seven kids in the group and we were all supposed to follow Mike Berry’s mom as she lead us door to door. Mrs. Berry was a heavyset woman who wore baggy clothes to hide her size and covered her face in enough make up for a dozen teenaged girls, but she was also a very nice lady and seemed, to me at least, a little sad. That night the makeup wasn’t as out of place as usual. In the spirit of the evening, she’d dressed herself as a gypsy in the tackiest run of clothing I’d ever seen and enough scarves to open her own accessories shop. Her son was dressed up, too, in a long, dark cloak with a cheap plastic skull face that was far more effective in the growing darkness. Mike Berry was always a weird kid, sort of prissy and prone to laughing at the strangest things, but his mom was our chaperone that night and we all had to hang with him by default.

There were supposed to be nine of us, but Rick Treacher wasn’t there yet. Chuck Willinger wasn’t there. That didn’t seem right at all. Chuck had been planning his Halloween the way generals planned wars. He had a list of the best houses to get candy from and a second list of the ones he intended to visit after the official fun was done with. Chuck had a memory for slights, and at least three grownups had caused him enough grief to get on his bad side. Chuck was a little too intense sometimes, a little too willing to hold a grudge or work out the details for elaborate revenge plots. Mostly, he was also too willing to go through with his plans. No one should be that vindictive at the age of eleven.

Rick being gone was weird, and unusual, but not as important as Chuck not being there. The three of us had been friends for as long as any of us could have remembered, but that Halloween, I was the only one of us ready to go out and have fun. I had no idea why Rick hadn’t shown, just knew that he was missing. In the grander scheme of things, Rick was always the least predictable of us.

It took me a second to remember that Chuck was dead, and when I did I felt a shuddery breath slide out of me. Chuck Willinger was dead, along with his entire family. I knew that. But part of me kept trying to forget it. Like I could ever really forget the heat from the flames of the house next door burning away, or the wheezing sound in my father’s voice for the next couple of weeks afterward. Dad had tried to go in and save our neighbors right after he’d called 9-1-1, and he’d failed. I watched my best friend’s house burn down to nothing but a few walls and a mountain of ash, and I knew that he’d died in the same fire. The police said the fire that took them was probably an accident, but I could remember the spokesman on the evening news, a round faced man with a tight crew cut who made the statement about the Willinger family and seemed, to my eyes at least, to doubt the very words he spoke.

I pushed the thought out of my head. Chuck had loved Halloween and I decided that I’d have fun that night despite the relatively fresh wound of losing a good friend to a stupid fire. Not all that far away, just past my own house, the remains of the Willinger place sat brooding and scorched in the dying light; a ghost of what it had been, a memory of sleepovers and watching crappy horror movies and talking about everything from comic book heroes to the way we’d started noticing girls. It was only Chuck I talked to about those things, because Rick would have never understood. Rick didn’t let his mind wander the same way. Chuck should have been with me. He should have been there in his zombie costume or whatever he’d spent half the summer working on. You could always count on Chuck to have the coolest costumes.

I was eleven, just at that age where people start looking at you funny if you still go out trick or treating. (By people I mean my older brother Troy, who was fifteen and thought I was the world’s biggest loser. That was okay; I thought he was up near the top of the charts for being a dick, so it balanced out.) I didn’t care if they looked. I had a mask and I had a bag waiting for candy.

Mrs. Berry pushed several of her bracelets aside and looked at the delicate watch on her ham hock wrist and frowned. “I think we’re going to have to go without Rick, kids.” A few of us made token noises of disappointment, but let’s be honest here, we wanted goodies and if Rick lost out, well, that was his problem, not ours. Oh, who am I kidding? It was also a perfect chance to tease one of my best friends about what he didn’t get to snack on for the next week, and to get closer to Mindy Carruthers, who we both wanted to know a lot better. Mindy had never been all that interesting in the past, but she managed to turn pretty over the summer and it wasn’t easy to look away from her sometimes. She’d always been short and a little pudgy—not that I had room to talk about on those fronts—but these days she was vital, energetic and had the ability to catch my eye from thirty yards away. The freckles that used to look like mud splatters on her skin were somehow more interesting than when I was younger and her eyes didn’t seem to have changed that much but were now absolutely fascinating. Mindy, if I didn’t mention it already, was one of the other seven kids in our group.

After the false protests, we were on our way, and it pleased me to no end to know that the pirate standing next to me most of the way was Mindy under a tricorn hat, an eyepatch, and a stuffed parrot.

We’d only made four houses—my entire haul of candy consisted of a bite sized Snickers bar, a piece of petrified bubble gum that would require nothing less than the teeth of a shark to make chewable, one candied apple from Mrs. Murphy, the widow on the corner, and a religious tract with a Hershey’s Kiss taped to it—when I first got the feeling that someone was watching me, maybe even following me.

Now, I bet most people could tell you that at one time or another in their lives they felt like they were being followed. I bet you could tell me about a time or two yourself. But this didn’t feel like eyes watching me so much as it felt like eyes intent on killing me. My skin crawled beneath the rubber werewolf mask I’d begged for and finally gotten, and I know I wasn’t the only one feeling it, because Mindy turned and looked behind us a couple of times and so did a few of the others. It wasn’t a cheap rubber mask like at the grocery store, but a Lon Chaney Jr’s The Wolf Man mask from Don Post Studios that cost my parents a cool forty-five dollars. I’d have never gotten it if my birthday wasn't two weeks before Halloween. The only one who didn’t seem to notice anything strange on that chilly night at the end of October was Mrs. Berry. The kid who lived next door was six years old and stuck with the unfortunate name of Kilroy Houseman. He was dressed up as a clown, with oversized shoes and a red and blue jumper that looked almost big enough for me. He kept peeking over his shoulder so many times that he managed to trip over his own feet and gave himself a goose egg on the head. Poor Kilroy was hardly the most graceful kid, and the knot was big enough that when he started crying, no one thought he was being a baby about it.

Four houses in, and already things were going bad. I might have worried a bit more about that, but Mindy was there and I had to look brave for her. This was my chance, you see, to get in good with the girl who was occupying most of my daydreams even when I didn’t want her to.

After a few minutes of hemming and hawing about what to do, Mrs. Berry decided it would be best if Kilroy went home and she would gather the rest of his treats for him. Kilroy didn’t cry about it, but his disappointment was written on his face and in his wide, shocked eyes.

She gave me his bag to hold, as I was the oldest. I promised Kilroy I’d make sure he got the good stuff and he smiled his thanks before leaning in close and whispering “There’s something out there, Tom. Something bad.” I wish I could have told him it was just because it was Halloween and the wind was blowing just so, but I couldn’t. Deep down inside, I agreed with him.

So did all of the others. I think there’s something almost paradoxical about adolescence and childhood. Think about it: as a whole, I’m convinced that every single kid there knew something was wrong, really wrong, and maybe even dangerously wrong. We were scared enough that not a single one of us even gave the notion of skipping on to the next house consideration, because there were no parents to watch us. And at the same time, I seriously doubt that any of the kids that stood around waiting for Mrs. Berry to come back even considered leaving, because it was Halloween, and this was our night to have fun. So instead of moving forward with the whole group or even retreating to our homes and hiding under the covers—that trick still worked when I was eleven, but not for much longer—we stood around and waited in a rapidly growing, uncomfortable silence, for our leader to return.

And all the while I felt those eyes on me. I was surrounded by a very small witch, a female pirate, and two unknown kids in ghost makeup with sheets wrapped around them and billowing in the light breeze, and the Grim Reaper, all of whom looked exactly as worried as I did if I could judge by the way they fidgeted. I looked at every house, near the ground and even on the roofs to see if I could locate the source of my unease, but there was nothing. The scent of Chuck’s ruined house—burnt plastic and wood—was gone from the air, replaced by the smell of dying leaves and the promise of winter just around the corner. The houses I knew in the light of day were still there as the last of the dusk died and gave birth to the night, but they were made unfamiliar by shadows and patches of darkness so complete that anything could have been hiding in them. The trees I walked past on the way to school were barren now, skeletal ghosts of their former selves, bathed only occasionally in the luminescence of the street lights.

I lived seven houses down the block from where we stood, but my house may as well have been a thousand miles distant. It made no sense to me. It made no sense to the kids around me. We were neighbors and friends or even just friendly acquaintances, but you couldn’t have proved it at that moment. We were all scared of nothing.

Mrs. Berry finally came about after what seemed like half the night but was really only a handful of minutes. She forced a pleasant smile on her round face and took Kilroy’s bag from me and we were off again.

The Bowers family had popcorn balls. A lot of hype had been in the newspapers and on the five o’clock news about how dangerous homemade treats were, but everyone knew the Bowers and this year they’d added M&Ms to the family recipe, so no one was worried or upset about the treats.

Mindy and I ate ours on the way to the next house, sneaking back a little from the rest of the group to flirt with our eyes and finish our treats. We didn’t lose sight of them though. That little notion never crossed our minds, because we knew that something was out there, watching us and hating us. By the seventh house we were holding hands and ignoring the fact that the remnants from the popcorn balls practically fused our fingers together. I couldn’t imagine a better person to be glued to for the rest of my life.

We kept looking over our shoulders from time to time, too, because whatever was looking at us seemed to be following us as well. There was another group of kids that passed us at one point, and I watched them as closely as I could from the corner of my eye to see if they were going to start looking over their shoulders. They did, but they were still laughing as they reached the house we’d just finished at.

We rounded the corner of our street, moving around to Hathburn Avenue, a larger road that had more houses, better houses and not a single street light. Most of the homes had lanterns or light posts of their own, but there were none of the sodium lights I was familiar with spilling beams of bright yellow illumination across the road and sidewalks.

The feeling of being watched got worse as we started walking. I think by that time even Mrs. Berry with her perpetual smile was starting to notice something was wrong, even if it wasn't on a conscious level. She pulled her shawl in a little tighter and rubbed her arms amid the chiming tinkles of her costume jewelry as if to ward off the chill of the autumn night. It wouldn’t have seemed so unusual, but the temperature wasn’t that bad. Something about that simple gesture of hers made the paranoid feelings of being watched even more intense and for the first time in several minutes I was thinking more about heading home than I was about candy or even Mindy.

I don’t know about where you grew up, but in my home town the idea of showing you were scared at eleven was almost a death sentence, so I braved the new street and the dread that grew inside of me. Potential ridicule was easily outweighed by the need for candy corn and chocolate bars. I’m weak like that.

There are sayings in this world that make no sense until the first time you experience them. That night, after the third house on Hathburn Avenue, a goose walked over my grave. I felt the chill start at my feet and move like frozen lightning all the way up my back and I wasn't the only one. I saw the rest of the kids as the feeling hit them and I saw Mrs. Berry tightening her shawl around her oversized torso at the same instant. Next to me, almost in my blind spot, I heard Mindy let out a small gasp of surprise and quickly turn around, trying to look everywhere at once. Mike was the same age as me, but I saw him step closer to his mom without even realizing he’d done it. Death comforted by an overweight gypsy. I couldn’t blame him; I wanted my mother around then too.

Mrs. Berry put an arm around her son and he let her for a few seconds before stepping back. The matron looked at us and forced a smile that looked more like a stifled scream onto her face. “Does everyone have enough now? It’s getting sort of late.”

My bag had ten, maybe fifteen pieces of candy, nowhere near the usual amounts, and I was seriously considering nodding a yes anyway. Mike blew that chance away when he stepped back from his mother.

“Mom, no!” His voice brooked no argument. As far as he was concerned, she may as well have pantsed him in front of everyone there and all the girls in class at the same time. His mother was sounding scared and instead of being afraid himself, he decided to take offense at the very idea that Halloween was done. I know the reasons and I bet you do, too. When you’re eleven there’s little as important as being seen as one of the cool kids and having his mother ruin Halloween for everyone was just about a guarantee of public humiliation.

Mrs. Berry, who made the best lemonade and always had some kind of treats for us when we came over, looked at her son as if he’d slapped her, and blinked her eyes several times in rapid succession before answering. “Well then,” her voice was half an octave too high and as cheery as her attempt at a smile. “I guess we better keep going.” I couldn’t help wondering exactly when Mike had become the head of the family, but even at eleven I knew he was in charge and I felt embarrassed for the woman who was watching over us. He might have felt like he’d been humiliated by her, but the truth was closer to the other way around.

She didn’t walk to the next house, she stormed toward it. Any of the kids who’d been thinking about going home and calling it quits got over that idea around the same time Mrs. Berry turned her back on us and started for house number four.

There was a pumpkin sitting on the stoop of 362 Hathburn Avenue, but the candle that had been burning away inside of it was dead, and only the faintest hint of roasting pumpkin aroma still wafted around it. There were no lights on, either.

Have you ever had a moment when you realized you knew a place? I’m not talking about Deja vu where you think you might have seen a place before, but a sudden realization that you know a house as well as you know the back of your hand. I felt that when I looked at the dark building in front of us, and there was no denying the feeling.

362 Hathburn Avenue, two blocks away from my house, was a perfect duplicate of Chuck’s place before the fire burned it to the ground. I hadn’t been on Hathburn Avenue very often. It wasn’t a part of my world. I headed the other direction for school, and the woods back behind our street were far more interesting than a busy road with oversized houses. I can’t say I’d never been down to that road in the past, but I can tell you this: I never once saw a perfect copy of the Willinger residence, a location I knew very well before it was consumed in flames.

I stopped walking and looked at the house. It had the same style of shingles on the roof, the same front porch, with three steps leading to the front door with the oversized knocker. I counted the number of posts on the railing, and noticed that post number seven was missing, just like at Chuck’s place.

Mindy bumped into me lightly, and I kept staring, not believing what I was seeing.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice was a whisper, the same sort reserved for libraries and churches.

I shook my head and took off my Wolf Man mask to speak to her, feeling the chill in the night air erase the moisture from my skin. “Not that house. I’m not going to that one.”

“Why not?” Her lips asked the question, but her eyes moved from me and studied the house. Finally, she nodded her head ever so lightly and backed up two paces, as her eyes widened. “Okay. We’ll skip this one.”

We stepped back to the sidewalk as the rest of the group walked across the boards of the porch, their feet thumping and clumping along as the wood creaked in mild protest.

Mrs. Berry lifted the ornate brass knocker from its resting spot and I swear her hand trembled, though from fear or effort I could never guess. The metal let out a squeal of disuse as she caught it, held it, and waited. Beside her, Mike reached toward the knocker, his face still covered in his cheap plastic skull mask. I think he meant to stop that knocker from coming down. I really do. Why? Because he jumped when he saw her hand in motion. His whole body shook a bit as if he’d been startled out of a daydream.

As her fingers dropped the knocker, a deep thump issued from the wood and that feeling I’d had of being watched, of being hated, increased. Every kid on that stoop backed away from the sound, because no piece of wood ever made a noise like that. It was a bass drum, a hollow deep booming noise that made as little sense as the Willinger house being on the wrong road.

Mrs. Berry stepped back, too, her foot catching on an uneven board and her weight suddenly plummeting, falling, landing roughly on the planks that let out a deeper groan of protest that almost hid the sound of her grunt of pain. I don’t think it was my imagination, I really believe to this very day that I heard the sound of her arm breaking as she hit the deck, even though the sound was covered over by the scream that came from Mike when the door opened.

Scream? No, it was more than that. It was a primal jolt of fear that was ripped from his soul. The sound dwarfed everything around it, consumed the other noises like a banshee’s wail. Mike Berry, resplendent in his Grim Reaper’s outfit, staggered back as if he’d been shot in the chest and clutched at the area over his heart as the door swing inward.

Mindy and I stepped back too, ready to bolt back toward our homes, to do almost anything to get away from whatever was coming out of that doorway. Every kid there moved, stumbling, falling, running, and crawling as the darkness seemed to swirl from inside of that impossible house.

Darkness, and something else.

I don’t think it could have spoken. It didn’t have a mouth or a face for speaking. Or maybe it could have and simply chose not to speak.

The darkness moved, a chaotic cloud of smoke and soot that whipped around itself in a frenzy of activity. It rose from the threshold and stepped onto that porch, barely acknowledging the existence of the heavyset woman lying at its feet. Mike Berry didn’t seem to care that his mother was in front of the thing, close enough to feel the wind from its passage and to be left with a trail of black soot across her body and face where it touched.

Mike was too busy trying to get away from it, to run as fast and as far as he could. The skull mask fell away from his face, torn aside to let him see his escape route better. I remember watching it drift and fall, before one of the eye sockets got tangled in the shrubs at the front of the porch. The cheap plastic face stared at me with blank, idiot eyes and seemed to accuse me.

Mindy’s fingers clenched in mine painfully, but I was barely aware of them. I was too busy looking at Mike as he tried to run, tried to get away from the thing that moved after him.

The blackened shape had grown, taken on a form that was unsettlingly similar to the costume Mike wore. Not quite a human shape, but similar enough to be unsettling.

Mrs. Berry rolled over, her face pasty under her makeup and the layer of soot, and screamed for the thing to leave her baby alone. It paid her no attention.

Mrs. Berry stood up, bracing with one arm while the other hung loosely at her side, and swayed toward the thing, reaching out, doing all she could to stop the monster from touching her precious boy. It was one of the most amazing sights I ever saw, a colossal act of courage and determination that still leaves me a little awestruck when I think about that night. I could see the blood dripping down her arm and spilling in thin streams down from her useless fingers. She should have been curled up and moaning on the deck, not moving to save her son.

I still remember her face when her good hand grabbed for the body of that darkness. She staggered forward and her hand pushed into the seething blackness and came out on the other side in a shower of white hot sparks. It stopped moving toward Mike for a moment and simply stood still, the rough head shape craning down to look at the dark hand that thrust from its torso.

I don’t know if it meant to hurt her. I really can’t say. All I know is that an instant after her hand plunged into the figure, Mrs. Berry let out a wail of pain and forgot all about Mike’s health. She was wearing all of those scarves, all that costume jewelry. It only took a second to realize that something was wrong with her skin after she’d plunged into the shape. You could tell by the way her bangles stuck to her flesh, taking on new shapes as the heat softened them.

The woman let out a second, weaker wail as her clothes caught aflame. Fabric shrank back from the inferno that must have been cooking inside of the ghostly figure and then exploded into tongues of fire that enveloped her in seconds. She drew in a deep breath, surely for another scream, but the heat must have cooked her lungs away before that could happen. In a matter of seconds she was a column of fire that fell to blazing knees and bowed toward the porch of the house, supplicant to the pain of her own death.

Mike’s sense of preservation outweighed his need to check on his mother. He jumped over the railing of the porch and landed in the dark lawn to the side of the house, stumbling to catch his balance and pin wheeling his arms madly.

And the smoldering reaper went after him, flowing over the boards of the porch without causing them any damage and moving through the railing as easily as the smoke it resembled.

Mike’s eyes were wide and rolled blindly in their sockets, looking for some way to avoid what was coming next. He focused on me for the briefest moment and called my name as if I could somehow make what was about to happen stop. I couldn’t do a damned thing but stare. My feet felt like they’d been fused to the lawn, and my legs hadn’t enough strength to step in any direction.

“We didn’t mean it! It was an accident!” Mike’s voice cracked as he spoke, and I felt an involuntary shudder move through me as his words struck a chord deep inside.

An accident. A little mishap. I looked at Mike as he ran, heading further away toward the back of the house, and thought hard about his words.

Mike had always loved to play with matches. If there was something he could burn and a lighter or a book of Diamond matches to be found, there would be a fire inside of five minutes. It was almost guaranteed. Mike and Rick Treacher used to be thick as thieves, but while I still saw Rick regularly, Mike didn’t show up as much as he had before the fire.

I couldn’t believe what I was thinking, couldn’t get a solid grip on the notion of them burning down the Willinger place, because at eleven years of age, I’d have never considered letting something like that get out of hand. Still, it made sense in its own way and, really, of all the people I knew, I could see Mike starting a house fire easiest.

“I’m sorry!” Mike fell on his knees in the back lawn, and I saw him for only a second before the black form fell over him. Mike screamed as it touched his skin. He was only a silhouette in the darkness by then, more easily heard than seen, but oh, how he screamed. “I’m saaaawwwreeee!” His voice broke and was silenced, leaving only the sound of my panicked breathing and Mindy’s next to me.

Breathing and the sound of something hissing, like bacon in a hot skillet.

In the midnight shade of the house, the ash and smoke monster turned and I saw glimmers of red light within its form; coals burning within the heart of the demon.

It moved toward me and my legs remembered how to run after it had come only a few paces closer. I looked to where its face should have been, even as I turned away, and saw the hatred that burned inside of it, the merciless rage that seemed to emanate from it like heat from an open over door.

I also saw something of Chuck in that darkness. Not his face, not really, just a hint of his face.

My feet bolted hard toward Billings Street and my right hand, still stuck to Mindy’s, hauled her along for the ride. She didn’t protest. I don’t think she could have.

Somewhere behind me, I heard one of the little kids cry out, one of the ghosts, I think. I’d been so fixated on the burning ash and dust that walked when it shouldn’t have been possible, that I never even noticed the car coming. I can only guess that the ghost never saw it either. I heard the bloody shriek of tires locking and scraping along the road and I heard a loud thump. My mind told me the rest of the story. I didn’t stop running.

By the time I got back to my house, my parents were already on their way out the door, coming looking for me, no doubt, and the distant cry of an ambulance siren was coming closer. I was breathless and sweating despite the mild air. So was Mindy beside me.

I know there were a lot of questions. I answered them as best I could and so did Mindy until her parents arrived to pick her up. The police came by to ask more questions, having been summoned by my father who went over to Hathburn Avenue to investigate the incident himself.

I wish I had all of the answers, but I don’t. There was no sign of Mrs. Berry ever found at the sight and the same is true of Mike. There was a trail of burn marks that ran from the front of the house along the porch, and inside the house there were more scorch marks but no bodies were found. Tina Lawrence was hit by a car that Halloween night and lived through it, though there were several surgeries she had to look forward to, if she ever wanted to walk right again. Her leg was nearly severed when the driver of the car tried to back his vehicle off of her. I never knew the driver’s name, or whether or not charges were ever pressed against him. My parents did their best to shelter us from the ugly realities of daily life, and that was one of the things that simply was not discussed around me or my older brother.

I learned about crematoriums later on and learned that the human body is a pretty amazing thing. Even after being deliberately set ablaze, there are some bones that have to be ground into dust to add to the ashes of a loved ones remains. Fifteen hundred degrees of heat and parts of the body are still intact. There was nothing left of Mike or his mom. There was nothing left of the people who lived at 362 Hathburn Avenue. I checked, believe me.

It was almost a month later when I went down Hathburn again. My mom had to take me to a dental appointment, and she drove that direction without even thinking about it if I remember it right. But she stopped when she reached the house where it all went down, and she stared for a few moments, as if trying to reason out what had happened for herself.

The house looked nothing like Chuck’s place. Not from the front and not from the back, which I knew a lot better from the numerous times I’d gone there to play at Rick’s. I hadn’t recognized the place on Halloween, hadn’t even considered it, because we always went in through the back door at Rick’s place. It was easier to cut across the back lawns and through the woods than it had ever been to walk along the side of the street.

Was it Chuck I saw that night, coming from Rick’s house? I don’t know. Whatever it was, I know I never saw it again. All I can tell you is that Halloween was never the same for me after that, and neither was the neighborhood. We moved away less than a year later, when my father got transferred to a different branch of the bank that he worked for. By that time Mindy and I had already sworn undying love to each other, roughly a month before her family moved away. There were no letters, no phone calls. We each went our own way and moved on in the world; still, I remember her now and then and miss her a bit. I think my dad might have requested the move, because really, I don’t know that anyone who was there that night was ever comfortable in the neighborhood again.

Bone Harvest

Reggie Harker ran as hard as he could, pumping his legs furiously and praying to God that he could get away. Whatever it was that chased him sounded big, and he had no desire to see it.

The early spring’s chill embraced the world and Reggie was lost in the bitter weather, lamenting that he’d ever come to Beldam Woods. The town was picturesque and everything he thought he was looking for, but that was before he’d pissed off something that was most decidedly not human.

Whatever the hell it was, it wanted to tear him apart. Just like it had torn Natalie to pieces.

All this, he thought, because I wanted to add to my rare flora collection. The notion pushed into his thoughts like a mantra, an inescapable chant that seemed to let him focus. And he desperately needed to focus, because his mind was all over the place.

There were a few things that had helped him make his decision to vacation in the small town; one of the major factors came from looking in Crowley’s Compendium of Exotic Botanicals, 1842 Edition. Jonathan Crowley was something of a nutcase to most people; his examinations of the unusual flora and fauna had been the cause of a few arguments in the field of plants. Reggie, ever the one to try to keep the peace, had decided to explore what the man spoke of in the area. Either he was an eccentric, who couldn’t catalogue to save his life, or Crowley had run across truly unique plant life; Reggie wanted to know, and so did Natalie. They arranged to take their vacation together for the first time, a step forward in their sometime relationship. One quick look around on his vacation and he could end the arguments between the other members of the Melmouth County Botanical Society. He had his camera and a few specimen jars. He also had Natalie and her copy of Crowley’s book. Not that big a challenge, really but it would be fun.

At least he thought so until he went into the woods. He’d never seen such a mess in his entire life. The homes that bordered the area called the Witch’s Hollow were all very nice, upper middleclass, and as homogenous as he could have hoped to find; the woods, on the other hand, were insanely dense, packed with undergrowth and virtually a fire waiting to happen. The hills in the area sloped gently, but the obstacles the woods provided were enough to ensure he got winded. Thick vines ran through the shrubs and bushes, thorny tripwires waiting to snare an unsuspecting ankle.

From somewhere behind him, closer than he wanted to think about, Reggie heard the distinct sound of a green sapling snapping in two. Whatever was behind him roared; and Reggie whimpered in return, wasting precious breath to do so.

He’d found what he was looking for, that was the part that bothered him the most about the whole sordid affair. The actual location wasn’t on a map and hadn’t been carefully laid out with a pen and paper by any of the locals. He had to trust a few people in town who claimed to know the area and most of them admitted readily enough that they hadn’t been to the Hollow in years. One old timer looked at him and then promptly stared at Natalie’s chest as he spoke, and shook his head when he asked about it. “That’s a trek for a younger man, son,” he’d said. With little coaxing he had admitted to knowing the place well and then had given detailed instruction as to how to get to it. When he was much, much younger, he’d gone there on several occasions. Despite decades having passed away in the meantime the instructions were very good. Some things just don’t change much, and apparently the Witch’s Hollow qualified.

The sounds from behind him got louder, and he heard panting for the first time. Whatever was after him was feeling winded and that was good, because currently Reggie was feeling like passing out and dying wouldn’t be a bad idea. His side hurt from running and he couldn’t catch a breath to save his life.

Dying and saving his life, he was on a roll. Both of those very things were heavily on his mind.

He’d gotten out to the Hollow fairly early in the day and started looking around. It hadn’t taken him even five minutes to realize that Crowley was right on the money: there were easily a dozen types of plants and fungi he’d never seen before and they’d virtually been in his own back yard the entire time. Reggie lived in Serenity Falls, which was only fifteen miles or so from Beldam Woods. He’d never once bothered with the town: it was too rich for his tastes. Damned near everyone who lived in Beldam Woods came from old money and acted the part.

Reggie had practically danced he was so excited. Yes, he knew it was geeky, being a big fan of plants, but they excited him. They were such amazing marvels of nature and he could spend hours looking at trees and shrubs without getting bored. When you got right down to it, the love of exotic plants was really all he and Natalie had in common.

This? This was almost paradise. The text had spoken of the Victim Trees, a collection of five wretched looking black trees that stood out in the virtual center of the Hollow. They looked dead and never bloomed or even grew a leaf. He had thought they were probably just waterlogged elms that refused to die all the way until he saw them. Their bark peeled away from the tree, splitting and rolling into scabrous lumps, like a birch, but without the grace and eloquence of the thin beauties; closer, maybe to an aspen tree, but only in texture. The Victims were larger for one; with heavy trunks and thick branches that would have shamed either of the other trees he’s seen with similar bark. He was so excited by the sight of the trees that he almost forgot himself and touched one. He probably would have, too, if Natalie hadn’t been there to stop him.

“Oh, Jesus, Natalie.” He was tired and winded and sobbing, too scared to look behind him at what might be coming his way.

He didn’t know what had happened to the woman. Natalie Porter was a short, buxom woman with crooked teeth and the world’s worst hair—an uncontrollable mess that she had long since given up trying to tame. She was a fellow member of the Botanical Society and an on and off steady of his. She was also the only person in the society that wasn't twice his age.

Natalie was as close as he’d ever come to a serious, long-term relationship and as soon as the noises started, he’d turned tail and abandoned her.

They were together; carefully studying the witches tongue fungi around the area and marveling at the deep red fluids that spilled from their soft black crowns. Natalie recited the words from Crowley’s book and both of them put on double layers of latex gloves before they considered touching the deadly little mushrooms. According to Crowley, most anything that even brushed against the fungi died within a few minutes. The toxicity of the things must have been immense. So, yes, Natalie had been wise enough to bring along gloves for the both of them.

The entire hollow was inhospitable and ugly, and that was part of its charm. The plants and fungi, even the odd moss that grew on a lot of the trees in the area—but not, he noted, on the Victim Trees—was all genuinely unpleasant. What grew in the area was aesthetically unpleasing to the senses. The grasses were all dead or dying, the trees were unique but unlovely, and most of the area was covered in a thick, sucking mud that squelched under their hiking boots. Both of them loved it. Natalie practically squealed when she discovered the pale moss growing on the trees. It was white and unpleasantly pungent, but it also appeared that Crowley had been right again; no insects fed on the stuff. It was obviously related to Spanish moss, but only distantly.

They would have probably spent hours examining each and every plant, but Reggie heard the growling sounds around the same time that Natalie spotted the deep impressions in the ground. Several of the black mushrooms on the far side of the Victims had been mashed into the ground and where they should have been situated there were animal tracks of some kind. The prints were massive, and bore claw marks that cut through the fungi and the muck alike.

Natalie was the one who realized there was a problem. She pulled out Crowley’s Compendium in an instant, flipping through the thick book until she found the section she’d marked earlier.

“The most interesting of these fungi is a mushroom known locally as a “Witch’s Tongue,” a black, spongy growth that is uneven in shape and covered in droplets of red that strikingly resemble fresh blood. The toxicity of these fungi cannot be disputed. I watched as a swallow landed on a patch of these mushrooms and mere contact with the syrupy red fluids that spill from them killed the poor creature a few minutes later. While it remained alive, it struggled through a series of seizures that actually caused it to break its own wings as it fell to the ground.” Natalie looked his way with nervous eyes.

“You think something ate them or what?” Reggie frowned, not getting it.

“If something did and it isn’t dead yet, it might come after us. Sick animals are known to attack people, Reg.” Thinking about the growling sounds he’d just heard, along with that little tidbit, was enough to make Reggie nervous.

“We should pack up and leave.”

Natalie nodded enthusiastically, and stood up. Nervous as he was, Reggie was still glad that she was with him on this trip. He grabbed up his backpack and slid it over his shoulders, groaning at the mud that spilled across his waist as he set it in place.

And while he was busy taking care of that nuisance, something reached out with black paws and grabbed Natalie by her shoulders. Both the shape and the woman vanished behind the Victim Trees a few moments later, and that was all there was to see as far as Reggie was concerned. He heard the screams, heard the wet ripping noises, and then he ran like hell.

Which led him to the moment, the time when he could hear it coming closer and knew for certain that he was about to die. He could hear the thing running him down, hot, labored breaths and ungainly noises echoing behind him.

Reggie whimpered again, his body weakening and his mind stuttering over the last few minutes, playing the moments again and again as if he could find some small way to escape the madness.

He should have been dealing with the present, not the past. He figured that out around the same time the thing hit him across his back. The impact sent him sailing through the air and then sliding across the rough ground, where several thorns made themselves at home in his flesh. Multiple lines of warmth ran down his back, followed a moment later by a sharp pain that made the thorns seem like a minor distraction. His backpack was in shreds, his camera and the rest of his supplies scattered across his back and the ground around him like debris from a downed airplane.

Reggie shook off the impact as best he could and looked over his shoulder just in time to see the beast. It was a bear, and at least from his current perspective, a big one. The creature shook its head several times, growling low in its throat as thick black foam spilled from its muzzle.

Reggie froze, completely unable to move as he looked at the bear moving in his direction. Its fur was wet and matted in several spots, and he could see a crimson gleam on those damp areas.

That’s Natalie’s blood. He tore her apart and I’m next.

The bear moved a step closer, shaking its head and rumbling deep in its chest. One paw lashed out at his camera and sent his six hundred dollar toy sailing through the air.

Then it turned and stared at him, the eyes almost glazed, and roared. Thick ropes of spittle lifted from the wicked looking teeth and it charged, a mountain of fur and muscle descending on him like an avalanche.

Reggie closed his eyes and prayed for a miracle.

And his prayers were answered.

A thick column of yellowed bone launched itself out of the ground directly beneath the bear, impaling its chest and rising even higher. The beast let out a shriek and bucked hard, dancing madly in the air as it tried to understand what had just happened.

Reggie opened his eyes to see the dying animal kicking and clawing, trying to force the gigantic barb from its chest. He looked on, stunned, his eyes barely understanding what they were seeing. For all the world it looked like a tree made of bones had spontaneously grown through the animal’s torso. Dark red stains fell down the column and spilled to the rich soil, soaking into the forest floor in a matter of seconds.

The black bear let out a low whine and died. Reggie thanked God and slowly stood up, adrenaline making his legs wobble in a dozen different directions. The thing in front of him fell down, a cascading wave of bones that crumbled and shattered as they collapsed on themselves, with a sound like a cord of wood falling down.

Reggie looked on, at least as puzzled as he was scared. The bones made no sense to him; they shouldn’t have been there. They made even less sense than the fact that they had popped out of the ground to kill the bear. There was nothing at all to indicate that a graveyard was in the area, and even if there were, he could tell by looking that not nearly all of the skeletal remains belonged to humans. The entire situation was baffling, to say the least.

He sat down, hard, his mind running through the series of events as carefully as it could. Nope, he wasn’t finding any solid logic to anything past the mushrooms at the hollow.

But thinking about Natalie was a painful process. He eyed the bear warily, half expecting it to stand up, and when he was satisfied that it had no intention of getting up and coming after him again, he stood and headed back for the Victim Trees. It was possible that Natalie was still alive and just badly injured. He had to make sure one way or the other.

He walked as quickly as he could manage, getting lost on two separate occasions before he figured out where the hell he was. What should have been a ten minute hike became almost twenty before he finally found the Victim Trees and Natalie.

She was alive. He didn’t know how she could be, but she was. The bear must not have spent too much time working her over. There were deep claw marks across her side that ran down to her thigh, and she had a matching set of wounds on her shoulders, but if he could get her help soon enough, he thought she’d make it. Natalie moaned, her skin pale and sweaty, and though her eyes did not open, she mumbled his name.

“I’m here, sweetie. I’m gonna call for help.” His own cell phone had been in his backpack and he had no idea where to start looking, so he took the one Natalie wore from her hip and tried to dial 9-1-1.

No signal. He cursed and moved out of the hollow proper, up the steeply sloping side, and tried again when he reached the pinnacle. The signal was patchy, but it would have to do.

“Nine-one-one, what’s the nature of your emergency?” The voice was cool and detached.

“Yeah, I have a friend who just got attacked by a bear. She’s badly mauled and we need an ambulance right away.”

“And where are you now, sir?”

“We’re in the Witch’s Hollow, in the woods west of town.”

The voice on the other end broke up for a moment, and he thought he’d lost the signal for certain, but finally there was an answer.

“Sir, we’ll have someone there as soon as we can. Whatever you do, don’t touch anything.”

Before he could respond the signal broke up completely. Reggie looked down at the trees in the center of the deep, muddy spot and shook his head. However fast they were, he still had doubts about Natalie’s wellbeing.

“All this,” he sighed, “for some fucking plants.”

II

He drank deep of the offering from the bear’s body, thin pale lips sucking the red moisture from the soil as he slowly began to awaken. He tasted the spoor of the mushrooms carried in the blood and woke just a little faster for the nourishment they offered.

The process of waking up was slow and tedious. He had been far too long asleep in the woods and his mind wanted little more than to drift back into a deep, dream-filled slumber. The Sandman had been generous of late and let him sample the dreams of the people in Beldam Woods.

He had dreamt of so many things that he had never known and likely never would, things that made him feel more a part of the community than he could ever be in real life.

And he loathed the humans all the more for their unintentional offerings. They were weak things, the humans, their hatred and fear of his mother, siblings, and self, had cost him his life and he detested them for that. Worse still, he could empathize with them now, and that was something he would have rather avoided.

He did not wish to have sympathy for his enemies. He preferred to wait in ignorance and let them remain unknown and unknowable. There was a boy in the town that seemed to call to him, and he resented that fact. The beacon of the boy’s psyche did not call for him to take what he wanted and destroy everything else; it called to ask for aid, and he had no desire to help the human, even if it benefited his mother.

At the thought of her, he shivered, running long thin arms over his body, and crooned softly at the memories of her savage death. Three people in the entire world had ever treated Robert Bathory with kindness or even simple respect. Of those three, it was his mother he missed most profoundly.

Oh, how the villagers had screamed when he came out of the woods to defend her! The memory of their bodies breaking beneath his hands was enough to rouse him further. That simple recollection was one of the few he had that did not involve negative connotations.

Enough. It was time to rise, time to seek out the one who called to him. Not the boy; the boy could wait. No, he had to find the woman who had the spoor of the mushrooms coursing through her blood. She was going to die, that much he knew, but the taint that marked her dying breaths was a special thing and one he needed if he were to grow strong again.

His shell had loosened the ground when he attacked the bear; so climbing free from his earthen womb was easy enough. The joints in his pale body ached from inactivity and his muscles would surely have atrophied if not for the spoor from the witch’s tongue. That few simple drops had restored much of his vitality.

He was vulnerable, and he knew it. Unlike his brothers, Robert was not physically powerful. Most of the bones he’d surrounded himself with previously were water-damaged and impossible to use. Time had decayed them beyond any sort of function.

But there were new bones to be had. All he had to do was get past the meat. He scrambled from his hole in the ground and walked over to the bear’s carcass, pausing long enough to lap at the remaining tainted blood that still rested on the cooling body. The fur tasted horrible, but he could tolerate that.

Then, freshly fed, he got to work. Wickedly sharp claws ripped into the massive bulk and tore fur and muscles away with frightening ease. The bones were bloody and still had a few tendons and lumps of flesh on them, but they would do for now.

Powerful filaments lanced out from Robert’s thin frame and adhered to the bones he chose. He pulled and the skeletal remains separated, drawn to him with the greatest of ease.

Dressing himself with only one decent collection of bones was a challenge, but Robert had always had a certain affection for puzzles.

III

Reggie paced anxiously. Natalie was not doing well at all. The blood flow had been staunched: he remembered enough of his basic first aid to manage a few pressure bandages. It had cost him his shirt and hers, but the wounds had been dressed as best he could manage.

He’d been waiting for almost half an hour when the paramedics arrived. He understood the problem well enough; there was no easy way to access the Hollow. It was definitely off the beaten path.

Two men came his way, both of them sweating as they carried a stretcher between them. The board and brace combination was fully covered with several boxes of medical supplies.

Natalie moaned at his feet, her body writhing slowly and her mouth opening as her tongue licked her lips. If he hadn’t known the distress she was in, he would have thought the sounds almost sensual. She opened her eyes and stared into the sky with eyes that saw nothing.

Reggie waved frantically to get the attention of the paramedics. It was unnecessary and he knew it, but he had to do something. The men moved as quickly as they could with their burden, slipping and stumbling down the steep hill, but never actually falling.

They didn’t bother with speaking to Reggie when they finally got to him. Instead they focused all of their attention on Natalie. Reggie wanted to scream, wanted to demand that they save her, but stopped himself from being a complete ass.

In the distance, over the sound of the men working on Natalie, Reggie heard a different noise, a clattering cadence that simply did not fit with the sounds he expected to hear in the woods.

He looked around for the source of the disturbance, but saw little aside from the trees and plants that made the area unique. Even now, he marveled at them, though in truth he felt ashamed of himself for doing it. They were just plants, and nowhere near as important as Natalie.

“Okay, let’s go.” The deep voice of the paramedic surprised Reggie, and he looked down just as the men were putting Natalie on the stretcher. Her shoulders were re-bandaged with proper dressing and he could see the tape on her back.

He grabbed up their medical supplies while the two men lifted Natalie between them. Natalie was petite in comparison to either of the men, but she was also deadweight and they needed their strength to carry her without risking dropping her on her head. The ground was slippery with mud and covered in a heavy scattering of the damned mushrooms. All three men had to watch their steps to avoid taking a spill.

He walked carefully, thinking of the equipment in his hands and the woman in front of him. She was groaning now, loudly enough that he could hear her even from ten feet away. He could also hear that clattering sound again, and it was closer. Reggie looked back at the Victim Trees and saw it for the first time.

The thing was a cacophony of bloodstained bones, an almost skeleton from some large beast, but assembled in ways that made no sense. The thick legs were long, but made to seem shorter because of the other bones that were attached to them, mimicking the movement of muscles. Bones slid across each other and creaked as the thing walked around the tree, seeking something. A skull with massive curved fangs swiveled back and forth, the hollow sockets looking at the ground and the tracks he and the other men had made.

Then the oddity turned, the bloody, raw looking head cocking to the side slightly as it looked in his direction. There was a shuffling, scraping noise as several of the bones that made the body of the creature rearranged themselves and it reached down to awkwardly pluck a few mushrooms from the ground.

Reggie stared at it, uncomprehending, as it shoved the mushrooms into its open mouth.

The hand it had created ended in thick black claws, sharply hooked and curved.

That’s the bear. He looked at the thing and knew he was right; something had torn the bear apart and made it a puppet somehow.

While he was thinking about what could have done something like that, the bear-thing was heading in his direction. It walked surprisingly well all things considered. He looked for the wires that held it together but saw none.

Reggie pinched himself in the arm and tried to snap himself out of his shocked state. The pain helped.

“Guys? Gentlemen? I think we have a situation.”

The paramedics stopped, irritated by the interruption. They were half way up the steep hill and saw where he was pointing.

One of the men, the taller of the two, looked down the hill and scowled, as confused by what was there as Reggie was. The other man, a stout, shorter individual grew almost ghostly pale.

Shorty looked at his partner and said, “We need to get the fuck out of here, now.”

“What the hell is that thing?”

“Old Bones,” Shorty said.

The first paramedic looked to his partner and then back over at the thing coming their way. He looked like he wanted to piss himself. “Just go. Go, go, go!”

The two men started climbing, careful of their passenger but eager to get gone from the area.

As soon as they started moving faster, the thing down in the hollow reacted. The bones on its body shifted and relocated themselves and it dropped to all fours, moving more like a dog than anything else.

Enough was enough as far as Reggie was concerned. He dropped his packages and started running. Medical supplies fell and clattered back down the steep slope and he scrambled after them, using his hands to grip the rough grass for extra purchase. As he looked up the hill, he saw the paramedics finally cresting the top and vanishing from his sight.

Reggie scrambled faster, afraid to look behind him. He finally made it to the top of the steep slope and ran as fast as he could. It wasn’t long before he caught up with the men.

“What the fuck is that thing?”

“Just…just run, mister. Just get away. We’ve got your girlfriend and we won’t leave her.”

He’d run earlier, as hard as he could to escape from the bear. He’d abandoned Natalie once and didn’t think he could face himself in the mirror if he did it to her a second time.

Reggie looked around for any kind of weapon and found nothing, It was very possible he’d have found some excellent choices if he’d kept the medical supplies with him, but he would also have been torn apart by now.

The rattling noises were coming closer and he turned to face the thing coming up from behind them while the two medics did their best to haul ass with Natalie between them. Natalie wasn't moving at all.

The thing looked at him from empty sockets. He thought he saw a glimmer of light cast back by something deep inside the skull. He couldn’t be sure.

“What do you want?” Why am I asking it questions now? What the hell is wrong with me, I should be running!

The collection of bones moved forward again, ignoring him as if he didn’t even exist. The bear skull craned and looked in the direction of Natalie on the stretcher. There was no mistaking what it was looking for.

Reggie watched it walk past, watched the bones that slid and creaked and the drying blood and gristle that were gradually flaking away from the animated nightmare. He could almost make out a form lost inside the bear’s ribcage, but there was too much flesh left covering those bones for him to be certain. Natalie was dying and this thing wanted to do something even worse to her.

He couldn’t let that happen. He just had to figure out how to stop it.

IV

The human looked at him and asked questions, as if he would speak with it, even if he could. They stank of fear, the whole sorry lot of them. He was disgusted by their proximity.

The taste of mushrooms was still redolent on his tongue, and he could feel the restorative effects of the fungi as they entered his system, but it wasn’t enough. He needed more; he wanted to cleanse his pallet with the blood of the woman up ahead.

She was already dying, but she was not like most of the humans who ate the mushroom; they were trying to change her to make her into something else and he wanted that change for himself. He wasn’t really sure what would happen if he feasted, but he was willing to take the chance.

Two men carried the woman on a board between them. They kept looking in his direction, afraid of what he might do to them. They were unimportant to him. The scent coming from the woman was what mattered most. He had to have her.

Robert moved forward, cursing the limited tools he had to work with. He stretched out his limbs and moved faster, not willing to let her escape from him.

The one he’d already walked past tried to stop him. As he continued onward, the man took a running start and then jumped, fully intent on knocking Robert over.

Warm, soft flesh met with his bone shield and the man let out a gasp of pain as the sharp edges of the bear’s vertebrae cut into his meaty parts. Robert stopped moving forward and sagged under the unexpected weight.

“Ahh, shit that hurts.”

The words were clear enough, but even if they hadn’t been, Robert would have understood. The fool hadn’t given any thought at all to what he was doing.

Robert turned and looked at the man. He was trying to pull his hands away from the bones without hurting himself any further. Robert flexed his hands and shuffled the bones of his form, seeking the best way to kill the nuisance.

The woman was getting further away and he was feeling the need for her more than ever before.

The spoor from the mushrooms was on the one attacking him as well, but he had not been affected by it. It had not entered his system. The man finally pulled his hands free, whimpering as the blood flowed from his palms.

Robert reached out and slashed him across the chest, drawing bright red lines of pain across the human’s flesh. He fell back, screaming, his eyes wide as he realized that he’d been injured. Blood from his wounded palms mingled with the stains on his bleeding chest and he fell, landing on his rear end as he looked at the smears that covered him.

Robert looked at the man for a moment longer, contemplated killing him and decided against it. He could come back later if he wanted to, but for now the man’s whimpering was annoying and the meal he sought was being carried away.

His stomach ached from the lack of nutrition. His senses still seemed dulled from his years of deep hibernation, and he needed to satiate his hunger if he wanted to adjust fully to the world around him.

He moved away from the fallen man and charged as quickly as he could for the remaining humans. The men looked his way and trembled. They were weaker stuff than he recalled; in times past they’d have had reason to be afraid, but as he was now, he was barely a threat.

Robert shook his head, hating that the faces in front of him seemed familiar. Not from his life, which had been without senses for a very long time, but from his dreams. The mortal dreams that had run through his head and left him feeling emotions he did not care to experience. He knew them, knew their pains and ambitions and worst of all, he empathized with them. It was repugnant.

Angered by his sudden fit of sentimental weakness, Robert lashed out, striking the taller of the men and carving trenches into his chest. The man wailed and dropped his precious burden, making it that much easier for Robert to finally reach his prey. The other male pulled a thick black thing from the side of his pants and slammed it against the bear skull Robert wore. The bone was thick and fresh and strong; the black thing was not and broke on the second impact.

As he seemed to like the skull, Robert let him see it up close and used the fangs to bite down on the fool’s face. Flesh and meat and cartilage tore away from the skull beneath and the man shrieked, forgetting all about trying to hurt Robert. He was by far the most traumatized of Robert’s victims, his wounds almost immediately mortal.

Robert ignored the screams coming from three different sources and looked instead to the woman who had partaken of forbidden fruit.

She lay strapped in the device the men had used to carry her, pinned and ineffectual. Her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids and her mouth opened and gasped greedily for air. Robert looked down at her, suddenly unsure of his motives. Was he supposed to drink her blood? He was no longer certain.

Deep within the recesses of the bear’s skull, Robert closed his eyes and listened to the wind, the straining for the voice he knew was out there, somewhere, waiting to tell him what he needed to know.

He mewled, the sound a faint thing, barely audible, and then struck his borrowed bones together in a rapid succession of clacks and rattles that meant nothing to anyone save for him and his blood relatives.

When he got an answer, it came from the woman before him. With unnatural strength she tore the straps that held her in place, snapping them easily. The bones in her arms broke in the process, but she barely seemed to notice. With hands dangling loosely from ruined forearms, the woman reached out and wrapped herself around the skeletal fusion of bear parts that made Robert’s new body.

Dry lips brushed against the muzzle of the bear’s skull and found a spot to whisper to Robert where he hid deep inside.

“My sweet boy, my little Bobby.”

Joy swept through him, not the dreams of other’s happiness, but pure, undiluted love. Robert’s hands clattered together stuttering out his excited words. He had hoped and yes, even prayed that his mother had survived what was done to her, but to know, at last to know finally that she still existed in some form was enough to make him feel complete again.

She brushed her lips across the bone and meat of his face and sighed. “I’ve very little time, my sweet boy. Listen to me and listen carefully.”

Robert leaned in closer to hear her words.

V

Reggie sat on the ground and looked at his blood for a long, long time. Or maybe it was a short time. He’d lost track of everything but the free-flowing red that ran from the wounds until it slowed a bit. It hadn't stopped, but it was getting close. When he could finally focus on anything else, he saw things that left him decidedly unhappy.

The bone-thing was holding Natalie in its arms. Her face was pressed against the creature’s rot crusted skull and it looked like she was kissing the thing. Nearby one of the paramedics had fallen to the ground and was no longer moving; most of his face had been torn away and the one remaining eye stared toward the sky. His chest did not rise or fall. The other man was on his knees, pressing his hands against a large bloodstain that blackened his shirt.

“Natalie?”

Reggie stood up, groaning with the effort. The world tilted a little to the left, but he managed to right it. The trick was in not moving his head too fast.

He took a few tentative steps and when he was sure he wouldn’t fall on his face, he moved closer to where the monster and Natalie were holding onto each other. She was speaking to the thing, probably begging for mercy. The problem with skulls is you can’t really read a lot of emotions off of them. Nothing moved except the jaw: there was no way to gauge any reactions when there was nothing to show an expression.

He came up from behind the thing a second time, pausing long enough to find a stout stick, because his hands were already in enough pain. He’d stop the damned thing anyway he could, he owed that much at least to Natalie.

The stick he found was a good, sturdy piece of oak. He arced it back over his shoulder and took the last few steps forward. Reggie was not a heroic man; his best days involved looking at plants as the high risk factor. Of course look where that had gotten him.

He brought the limb down as hard as he could and saw the bear’s skull crack at the point of impact. His oak branch broke in half, ricocheting merrily through the air and bouncing off his cheek in the process.

The thing didn’t even flinch at the blow. Natalie looked over the monster’s bloodied shoulder and suddenly dropped, her body as lifeless as a marionette’s.

Watching her slump sent a cold fear through Reggie’s body. He drew in a ragged breath and went a little out of his head, swinging the remaining part of his branch like an axe and trying his damnedest to hack the skeletal thing in front of him into pieces. He had to get her help, or she was surely as good as dead. He wasn't going to get her anything at all if he couldn’t stop the thing that was holding her still body off the ground.

The bone monster turned around abruptly, dropping Natalie’s body to the soil, and reached for him. Reggie wasn’t fast enough to stop it. The thing lifted him into the air and rose to its full height.

“Ahhh! Lemme go!”

He saw the eyes clearly this time; dark, glittering orbs that looked at him from deep within the bear’s skull. The bones showed no reaction, no emotion, but the eyes buried deep inside revealed the rage held within whatever was hiding there.

The skull moved closer to his face as whatever was inside of the skeleton looked at him, studied him. Reggie tried to get free, but the thick claws of the bear were sinking into his shoulders and he knew if he struggled he would only make matters worse. He felt a fine trickle of blood running down his arms and the tug of the claws as they cut into him, seeking purchase.

Reggie kicked out with his foot, slamming the sole of his shoe into the broad rib cage of the dead bear. Once again it barely seemed to notice. He kicked again and a third time, feeling his hiking boot break through the thick ribs and then become lodged inside the framework of bones.

He slipped as he kicked and the bear’s claws cut deeper into his arms.

From somewhere deep inside the monster’s chest, he heard a faint, angry hiss.

“God damn you! Just let her go! Let me go!” He blinked his eyes rapidly, dealing with the sting of frustrated tears waiting to escape him. “I just want to get her away from here and to a doctor! I didn’t do anything to you! I never did anything to you and neither did she! Leave us alone!”

The thing inside the skull looked at him and the skull itself tilted slightly.

And then the claws were ripping into Reggie’s arms, shredding away the muscles and tendons that held him together.

Reggie screamed, the pain far greater than he’d ever believed he could experience. He remained conscious through the flensing of his arms, but passed out before the bear thing could finish its work.

VI

Robert Bathory finished cleaning the meat from the bones of his victim. He worked quickly and efficiently, unencumbered by human remorse or guilt.

Yes, he saw the humans’ dreams. Yes, they were baffling and confusing and sometimes even wonderful. But they were not his dreams, merely a reminder of what he was not.

He was not human, would never be human and could not on his best day ever pass for human.

He was Robert Bathory, Bobby to his mother, and to the few who encountered him in the past, he had simply been Old Bones.

He set aside the screaming man’s skeletal remains and reached for the one that was still bleeding and crying. After a while he found their noises stressful. So he rectified the situation. The screaming stopped around the same time he pushed his claws through the dying man’s eyes.

He stripped clothing and skin from his second victim and couldn’t resist a small dance of happiness.

Mother was alive, after a fashion. His brothers would be coming home and soon the family would be together again. Not just yet, but soon enough.

There were so many things he had to do in preparation. He had been given a mission by his mother, one she felt no one else could be trusted with.

“You’re the quiet one, Bobby. You don’t talk out of turn and you know that your brothers can’t hold their foolish tongues. So it has to be you, can you do it? Can you make me proud?”

Yes, he could and he would.

He had to find the right pieces and fit them together just so. That was the challenge. There were people who had to be placed in the right circumstances, and events that had to unfold in the proper manner or all would fall apart as surely as the bones of the man in front of him.

He worked as quietly as ever, but swiftly, too. He did not savor the task, much as he wanted to, but instead made fast work of harvesting the bones he could use to make his body bigger and stronger.

When he was done with the harvest, he drew the bones into himself, wrapping them into his body and limbs and practicing with his new accessories, the better to move quickly and kill if he needed.

Bones shifted and grated against each other and he shuffled them into his new form. For now he wanted to move fast, so he extended his arms until they were the same length as his legs and fused the rest of the newer parts into a lump across his broad back.

His mother wanted a puzzle laid out and solved and of all the creatures he had ever met, none could work with puzzles as well as he. In order to walk, he solved puzzles of bone and constructed legs from whatever myriad pieces he could find. In order to grow strong he built musculatures from bone that granted him the strength he needed. His life was an endless series of puzzles, and he savored them all.

But this puzzle would be special. This puzzle involved a mystery he had never been very good at understanding: people. His mother had sent him the dreams, not to confuse or to torment, but to let him get a feel for the newest pieces he had to work with.

Robert Bathory stood up and began walking on all fours, bones scraping and sliding as he commanded, moving him where he needed to go. Old Bones walked the Beldam Woods again, pleased with his place in the world and excited for what the future held.

It was good to be needed, to be loved. Aside from the simple joy of killing, there was little else that mattered in his world.

Harvest Gods, Revisited

Sometimes people are cruel. That lesson comes to everyone sooner or later, I suppose. It came to me when I was very young. It came to the boy down the road from me a few hours ago.

I watched, of course, because that’s what I do. One can hardly make judgments without a good reason, after all.

His name is Ray Larkin, and like all children, he lives for certain events. Ray is the boy who best loves Halloween.

Was. I suppose time will tell how he feels about the season in the future but just now, at this moment? Well, decide for yourself.



Ray settled into the classroom seat with barely bridled impatience. Lunch was done, and there were still two more classes to endure before freedom came his way. Two more classes before he could prepare for Halloween. Halloween on a weekday. It should be illegal as far as he was concerned.

At seven years of age, Halloween held a special place in Ray’s heart. Everything was scary, yes, but fun scary, not bad scary. There was a difference, as he’d learned a long time ago, when he was seven. When his dad died, Ray was too young to much understand what that meant, but in time he got to understand that part of what that meant was his mom was sad a lot of the time. Mom was a good woman, and a great mom. No two ways about that, but she sometimes waited until he was asleep—or thought he was—and crawled into her bed and cried for a long time before she fell asleep herself. He thought maybe he understood about her loneliness, but not as well as he thought he would someday. His Grammy and Grampy had told him that he would understand someday, but for now he just had to know she was missing her husband, his father.

And then his mom met Lawrence. Lawrence was a big man—well, relatively. Most men were big next to Ray, who was only nine, after all—with a nice suit he liked to wear and a smile that was warm and friendly as long as Mommy was around and not always as pleasant when she left the room. That was okay at first, because Lawrence made Mommy happier and she didn’t cry as much.

And then it wasn’t as okay. Then it became a problem, because Lawrence started coming around more and more often. And when Lawrence came around, Mommy smiled more and Ray started not being quite as important. He knew Mommy loved him. That wasn’t really it. More it was simply that she had to be shared with a man who didn’t know how to smile with his eyes and almost never smiled at all when he was alone with Ray. He’d tried to explain that to his Grammy once, but she shook her head and leaned in close so that no one else could hear, even though there was no one else in the house, and said “Your mommy needs to have Lawrence in her life, Raymond”—she always called him Raymond when it was time to discuss serious matters—”and she needs you to understand that. Lawrence is the key to your mommy being happy and we all want her to be happy, don’t we?”

Well, there was simply no arguing with that. So Ray left everything alone. He kept his peace and he swore to himself that he would do nothing to stop his mommy from being happy.

Lawrence was a nice man, really, but he was also too serious. He didn’t like to have fun. As a result, Mommy stopped liking fun, too. Or maybe that was one of those things he would understand when he was older, like why his mommy needed Lawrence in the first place.

Instead of going out to Chuck E. Cheese’s for dinner once or twice a week, they stayed home to eat. Instead of watching Disney movies on DVD once a week as a treat, Ray and his mother only watched them when Lawrence was out of town. He did some kind of work with cars. Most of the time he stayed in town and went to an office a few miles down the road and came home by five-thirty in the evening. But maybe every other month he left town for a couple of days and they got to watch new movies. It was always fun. Ray started living for those times, because Lawrence didn’t like the TV on, and when it was on, he always had it set for one of his news channels.

The news was boring, and mostly it made Lawrence go on and on about the liberals, and how they were trying to take over the world for the bleeding hearts. Ray wasn't exactly sure what a liberal was, but he suspected it was something to do with the library. He started dreading the idea of going to the library, because the last thing he wanted to see was a man whose heart was dripping blood while he was trying to decide which book he wanted to read. He was getting very good at reading, because that was almost all that Lawrence ever wanted him to do. The only exception was that his mother was teaching him to play the piano. He maybe would have hated that, but it was a little fun and sometimes Mommy sang and she had a perfect voice for singing as far as Ray was concerned.

The thing was, come Halloween, Ray got his mother all to himself for a few hours. Lawrence didn’t like Halloween very much, either, but he allowed that Ray did and Mom insisted that she should take him out.

So, yes, Halloween was only hours away and he wanted it now.

Of course the hours crawled. But eventually they passed. Sometime later, much later according to Ray’s patience, he was allowed to run for home and get ready for trick or treating.

That was the plan, at least.

Ray took off from the school and made a beeline through the woods, heading for his neighborhood and planning to get home as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for Ray, the Beldam Woods were not always the nicest place to use as a short cut.

In very short order he was lost.

Within half an hour he was on the verge of tears, shivering in part because the weather was very cold and also because the woods were pretty darned scary at the best of times. The Beldam Woods were an ancient lot of trees, most of which had already been stripped of their leaves and all their colors. The trees were skeletal figures that loomed over his tiny body and creaked in the winds blowing from the north. There was a threat of winter weather come early and he knew that, too, because it was all they were talking about on the news the night before, and he’d have remembered it too, if he hadn’t been so determined to find the quickest way home for Halloween.

Nine-years-old, just the right age to forget all about things like safety until it’s exactly too late.

Ray wandered around and around, his feet kicking through the thick blanket of dried leaves as he got colder and colder. The air was dry, too, and he wanted something to drink. He also wanted to pee something fierce—that was one of Lawrence’s favorite terms, something fierce—but was afraid to get spotted breaking the rules. What if someone saw? What if someone told his mom? Trick or treating might get taken away and then what?

No. He had to hold it in. That was the only option.

Ray was on the verge of tears, cold and miserable and so desperate to go potty, when the stranger showed up. He was an old man, tall and lean and weathered. His skin was almost as wrinkly as the leaves on the ground and his hair, while long, was thin and wispy around his head.

He carried a small pumpkin in one hand, and walked with a cane. The old man looked at Ray for a moment, his face set in a dour expression of disapproval. Ray found himself desperate to disappear. If he could hide away, maybe the man would simply go away.

Instead the man continued to stare at him.

“Would you be ‘Raymond?’” The voice was as creaky as the trees and almost as cold as the air. Just hearing him speak was enough to make Ray shiver. Still, he was caught by the dichotomy of his mother’s rules: He was not to speak to strangers. He was also always supposed to be polite. The two orders did not work well together and Ray was forced to choose which to follow. He finally decided that since the man knew his name he must not be a complete stranger. There were several friends of his mother that he had met before when he was very, very young, and didn’t really remember. They always seemed to remember him and to be surprised that he had grown so much. Maybe then, the old man was one of those sorts. A non-stranger that he didn’t remember.

He answered, “Yes sir,” in a very small voice.

After another long moment of looking at him the man squatted until they were closer to the same height and looked Ray in the eyes. “Your mother is worried about you. You weren’t on the bus.”

“I tried to take a short cut.” He meant to explain more, but the tears started. A moment later he was crying like a little kid and the old man was suddenly holding him. He hugged hard, unable to stop the tears. And a few minutes later, all cried out, he looked on as the old man stood up.

“Come on then, Raymond. Let’s get you home to your mother.”

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” It was a little late to point that out, but it was one thing to talk and another to actually go somewhere with a stranger. His mother might be even angrier and as it was, Halloween trick or treating might be taken away from him.

“My name is Mister Sticks. Your name is Raymond. We are no longer strangers.” The old man shifted the pumpkin to his other hand for a moment and then changed his mind. “Here. You hold this for me, won’t you? And then I can lead you home.”

The gourd was nearly perfect. It was just the right size for Ray’s hands, and the skin was a bright orange that was the color he always looked for when he eyed the pumpkins at the market. The same color as the one he’d picked last week and they’d carved just last night.

He took the pumpkin and nodded his head seriously. This was, of course, a serious display of trust. Ray could have dropped the thing, and then where would they be?

“Why didn’t you take the bus, Raymond?”

“Because I wanted to get home sooner. I wanted to see my mommy.”

The old man looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “You don’t see your mother often?”

“I do, but today is special. I get her all to myself.”

The old man nodded. “I have to share my mother, too.”

“You do?” He tried to do the math. The man was very old; his mother must be even older. Ray couldn’t begin to imagine how old the lady in question might be.

“Oh, yes.” Mister Sticks nodded his head. “With my brothers.”

“I have to share my mommy with Lawrence.” He couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from his voice.

“Is Lawrence your brother?”

“No. I don’t have any brothers. He’s my mommy’s boyfriend.”

“You sound disappointed. Is it Lawrence that makes you sad? Or not having a brother?”

He had to think about that. Maybe it was a little bit of both. Charlie at school had a big brother and liked to talk about him all the time. Eric at school had a little brother and was always talking about what his little brother did that was funny. Lawrence was never funny.

Mister Sticks smiled then and nodded knowingly. “You’d rather have a brother than Lawrence.”

Ray laughed. It was all he could think of to do. The man was right, but not completely.

“Or maybe you’d like to have your father back and have a little brother.” Mister Sticks, who had been leading him through the woods very calmly, suddenly stopped moving and looked down at Ray again, his old, blue eyes staring hard. “Your mommy could be with her husband, and you could have a little brother, someone to show how to be a big boy. Am I right? Is that what you’d like?”

Ray looked around, suddenly feeling guilty, though he had done nothing to make him feel that way. Maybe it was just knowing that someone could so easily understand his desires, even when he couldn’t figure out how to say them himself.

Finally he nodded his head. Guilt or not, it was true and his mother told him he shouldn’t lie.

The old man nodded his head. “I could make that happen, you know. I could bring your daddy back for your mommy, and they could give you a little brother, maybe a little sister. And you could spend more time with your mommy, too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. Yes I would.”

“What would you trade to have that, Raymond?” Mister Sticks was looking away again, like the answer didn’t really matter, but Ray wasn’t fooled. He knew the man was still listening. Ray was not silly or stupid or even a little slow. He knew exactly what was happening, even if he lacked the right words to fully understand and express it. This was a deal. He knew that, like when he traded his bologna sandwich to Deidre at lunch because Deidre liked bologna more than she liked grilled cheese and grilled cheese was the best stuff ever as far as Ray was concerned.

“I don’t have anything to trade.” Ray sighed. A little brother would be neat. A daddy? That would be pretty cool, too, especially if it meant his mom never crying herself to sleep again.

“Don’t you?”

He thought hard as they walked. The woods looked like they were thinning, he could see the sun between the branches and that hadn’t happened since he got lost. And there was a thrill in his chest at the thought of getting home to see his mom. Still, there was unfinished business here, wasn’t there? What could he trade for a brother and a father? What would he be willing to trade?

“How about Lawrence?”

“What about him?”

Ray looked at Mister Sticks and swallowed. This was it. This was the bargain chance. “What about if I let you have Lawrence?”

“You’d let me have your mother’s boyfriend? What if she likes him?”

“Well, she’d have Daddy, right?”

“Well, yes, of course. But are you sure you want to trade? Once we agree, there’s no going back.”

“Yeah. Deal.” Ray smiled and held out his hand, and Mister Sticks took his hand and shook. The old man’s skin was dry and hot and almost as rough as the wood on the trees around them.

The leaves hissed and the wind roared and for a moment the old man’s face was wrong. He looked too weathered, his eyes and nose and mouth fading into the shadows until he almost looked like a jack-o-lantern.

And then all was well again.

Mister Sticks led the way and in only a couple of minutes they were free of the woods and walking up to the back yard of the house where Ray had lived his entire life.

Ray ran fast, heading for the front door of the house. He moved around the side of the place at high speed, because he knew for certain that he would be in trouble because he was so late already. He might have used the back door but his mommy always left that locked, just in case someone should try to sneak in.

And as he rounded the corner of the house he saw the school bus just coming up the road. His mother should have been outside and calling his name, but instead there was just the bus rumbling as it slowed down. The number 83 was clear on the side. It was his bus, not the one that came by later to drop off the older kids.

Ray looked behind him to see if Mister Sticks was there. It was always possible that the man could help him explain to his mother—but even as he thought that he knew that what had been said between him and Mister Sticks had to remain a secret.

Ray moved around to the front of the house exactly as his mother was opening the front door. She saw him and looked no further. The bus had stopped and kids were already piling out and that was enough of the equation to make sense to her.

Somehow he had gotten home in time, despite the old man telling him that his mother was calling for him. Ray frowned for a moment, puzzled, but then decided to merely be glad he was okay and that Halloween was not ruined.

Half an hour later he had changed into his costume—this year he was Captain America—and they were ready for the sun to set, the better to go trick or treating. Four other mothers came to the house and brought children the same age and even younger than Ray. The group would be going together, because, as his mom said “youneverknowwhosoutthere,” which as near as he could figure meant that there was less chance of getting hurt if you walked with other friends. He could have told her that all by himself, because she’d taught him as much years before.

House after house, with a group of kids who were all alien in their masks and oddly familiar as well. He knew it was Jay under the Darth Vader mask, but the voice and the face together made a wonderfully dizzying confusion ring in his head. That, too, was part of the fun. Of course the candy that was starting to make his bag feel heavy was a nice part of the night as well.

But this year was different. This year he saw a few grownups in costumes too. The strangest was the man with the pumpkin head. He knew the stories, of course. Just last week at the library—look out for liberals!—Missus Sue had read the tale of old Hattie the witch and her three sons.

Ray’s skin crawled. He’d heard the term before but never expected to feel it for himself. His skin tried to slither away and hide, because the name of the old man he’d dealt with was Mister Sticks.

Mister Sticks, the oldest son of the old witch. Also known as the Pumpkin Man.

He spun in a circle, looking for the man with the jack-o-lantern head.

And the world spun madly with him as he tried to catch a breath, tried to find out where the giant shape with the pumpkin head and the old clothes had gone. He even wore an old Pilgrim’s hat with a wide brim, like all the old stories said.

But Momma said that the stories were all just fairy tales. Make believe, like ghosts on Halloween and witches.

Ray looked at his mother, where she was talking with a woman he knew, but couldn’t for the life of him remember by name. She was just Tory’s mom as far as he was concerned.

The two women kept speaking as he tried to raise his voice. And behind them he saw the man again, standing above them, on the branch of an old oak tree that dominated the front yard of the Stack family’s house.

The man looked down, and held up one finger. He placed that finger over the glowing slash of a mouth that dominated his pumpkin face. His white hair was as thin as it had been when he was just a man, and it moved against the faint breeze.

The fires that burned inside of that face looked cold instead of warm, and Ray felt himself shiver.

He reached for his mommy, so very, very afraid.

And then he collapsed.



Are you expecting to hear that I killed a little boy?

I didn’t. I have before and I likely will again, but I rather like Raymond. He was innocent and he wanted a lot of the same things I wanted when I was younger.

Mostly he wanted the attention of his mother, and to have his father close by.

The only thing in the way was Lawrence.

Getting rid of Lawrence was easy. You’d be surprised how many people are susceptible to fear. And the light I carry with me is an ember straight from Hell. Rest assured, I can be scary when the mood strikes me.

Lawrence died screaming.

Long before I answered to my current names, I was known as Jack and then Jack of the Lantern. To this day my visage is celebrated come Halloween. Through my incarnations I have learned a few tricks as it were.

One of my gifts in this world was granted by the boon the Devil himself offered me when he handed me the ember from Hell to guide my way through the afterlife. Hellfire can feel a soul, can burn the sin right out of a soul, no matter how innocent or corrupt.

Lawrence is gone. He will be remembered. He left his girlfriend with a child, you see, and she will raise that child, because she does not believe in coincidences, nor does she believe that she could ever give up a child for adoption. She is, in short, a good woman with a good heart. She is raising one child already. She will raise a second without giving it a moment’s thought. I know this, because I can see the intentions within her soul.

Lawrence would have made a good provider. He might even have made a good father, but he was not a good man. I know that, too. I saw it in his eyes when he was dying.

Now why would I care about that?

I don’t, not really, save in that I see something of myself in the eyes of a child who is currently recovering from a deep scare he received on Halloween night.

Even a little sin can make me a frightening sight. It’s a gift, I suppose.

Of course, that hardly makes me an innocent. I don’t judge anyone. I merely observe and from time to time I remember that I am a Harvest God. I will gladly offer prosperity in exchange for a sacrifice.

Witting or not, young Raymond offered me a sacrifice. I accepted it. In return, he receives a brother or sister that his mother is already carrying.

Next he gets his father back.

I wonder if his mother will scream when she sees what time has done to her dead husband, or if she will recognize him at all.

Patchwork

I

Patrick Winter was out of the shower and drying himself before the alarm clock started screaming for him to wake up. He normally was. Somewhere along the way he’d gotten very good at beating the clock. The advantage was it meant he had extra time for handling his daily chores before it was time for work. The routines of the day always brought him a certain level of comfort.

The sun was still a few hours from rising, so he took advantage of the darkness and slipped out the back door of his house on Rimbauer Street and walked into the woods.

It was time to pay a visit to his mother. His dreams of late told him that she had something to say and he had been ignoring her for long enough.

The path through the woods was barely noticeable even after years of him making the trek regularly. He seldom took the exact same steps to reach his destination, but he also knew better than to walk too far from the proper stretches of trail. There were traps laid out in the woods, traps he had put there himself. Some of them had been there a while and he preferred the idea of being cautious to the notion of losing a limb or two.

The Beldam Woods are dark and a little on the creepy side under the best circumstances. There are heavy layers of undergrowth and the area is rife with brambles and thorns. There are people who swear that the woods are haunted and Patrick Winter would probably be the last one to disagree with them.

Eventually he made the spot he was seeking and rested on his haunches in front of the massive old tree where he always went to speak with his mother. He had, in the course of time, come to think of the tree as a sort of shrine for her.

“I’ve been away for a while, I know. But I’ve been busy. There’s the job to consider, and I’ve started doing woodwork again. I like to keep my hands occupied. It keeps my mind off of, well, off of things.”

The wind picked up around him, shuffling dead leaves and running fingers of the coming autumn through his hair. The wind spoke to him and he listened.

“You’ve chosen?” He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.

The air ran across his body, cold spots touching his face and caressing his skin through the thin clothes he wore.

The chill was pleasant, compounded by the knowledge that he would soon have another purpose in his life aside from waiting.

A few minutes later he was on his way back home, stepping carefully through the traps he’d laid and ready to have breakfast.

II

The drive over to the Mayflower Dairy plant was short, but long enough to let him suppress his usual excitement. Denny liked his job for the most part. It left his evenings free, it paid the bills and he got a chance to look at a lot of the local girls without getting himself in too much trouble.

He’d been working for six years with the same man, a brick wall who went by the name of Patrick Winter. Pat was good people, if a little set in his ways. As long as Denny didn’t talk about sex or the fact that a lot of little girls shouldn’t be allowed away from their homes without parental supervision, all was well.

The simple fact was that Denny liked women of all ages; normally from around the same time they started developing the first hint of a curve. It wasn’t something he’d ever planned and he figured it as one of those tests that God puts before His children: temptation to lead him astray if he wasn't smart about things. He didn’t act on his likes, but he thought about them constantly. Five days of the week he got a chance to see them and admire their shapes and their sweet faces, even if he never got close enough to touch.

He clocked in and discovered that Pat was there early again. The man had already finished loading everything and putting the orders with each and every crate to be moved. That just guaranteed that Denny wasn’t going to screw anything up.

Mayflower Milk believed in doing things the old fashioned way. That meant that for no extra charge, the customers around Beldam Woods could call for delivery service, and a lot of them were more than glad to take advantage of the situation. The large white refrigerated truck was loaded down with bottles of chilled milk, sour cream, cottage cheese and everything else that could be found in a dairy section. Patrick had been busy for at least an hour to match up all the orders. Denny considered double checking and then decided against it. In six years his partner had never made a mistake. The boy was thorough, even if he was a stick in the mud.

Just as he was closing up the back of the truck, Patrick came from the offices carrying two large coffees in one hand and his usual three loaves of bread in the other. He had a thing for the birds over at the private school and as sure as the sun rises in the east and there was a massive duck pond situated on the property, he would head there as soon as they parked for the deliveries. That was cool with Denny, because he had a lot harder time ogling all the little girls when Patrick was hanging around.

Either Patrick Winter had no sexual drive at all or he was getting some forbidden tail or he was gay. Whatever the case, Denny didn’t much care. As long as Patrick decided to be even just quiet, Denny could handle the situation. He didn’t like to imagine what the oversized ape would look like in the buff. Patrick was muscular and stocky. He almost had to turn sideways to get through regular sized doors and there was something about the crew cut hair and rugged face that just promised anyone who messed with him would experience a lot of pain.

Denny had been around on the two separate occasions when someone got lippy with Patrick. It was never pretty, but telling the stories normally earned him a few beers a month at the Ugly Mug Tavern in town. Denny was no slouch in the muscles department: you couldn’t be when you were hauling several hundred gallons of milk a day. It just wasn't possible. But next to Patrick he looked like a scrawny little kid. Patrick was the sort of guy that made most people hesitate a bit when he came by in a bad mood. Not only was he big, but also he looked dangerous. They’d had a run in with a drunken idiot from Maine once. The guy came out of the same convenience store they were about to pull into and side swiped the truck. Neither vehicle was going very fast and the damage was minimal, but the idiot tried to make a run for it. He gunned his engine and backed up and was ready to go over the curb to avoid a ticket. Patrick was out of the driver’s side door and next to the car before Denny knew what was happening. He reached onto the car and turned off the engine while the moron behind the steering wheel was looking at him in fear.

Patrick just walked away from the car and pulled out his cell phone, ready to call the police over. Before he was finished dialing, the drunk got out and decided to take having his car keys stolen as a personal affront. He only paused long enough to get a firm grip on what was left of an industrial sized bottle of cheap tequila. Denny could still remember the sloshing contents of the glass container rolling around with each step the man took.

Patrick was chatting into his phone and the loser from Maine tried sneaking up behind him. Denny got a warning out before the man could actually hit his partner with the bottle.

Patrick caught the man’s hand and stopped the swing, and then he started squeezing his fingers over the man’s hand and the bottle until the stranger in town let out a yelp and sat down hard on the curb. He held the man there until the cops finally showed up.

When he finally let the man go, Denny could see the red marks on the drunk’s hand from where Patrick had been holding onto him for so long. He knew the fool would have nasty bruises before it was all said and done.

The other time was messier, and that one actually took place in the Ugly Mug, which was Denny’s favorite watering hole. Getting Patrick to enjoy a night on the town had been an effort in the first place—the man always went home after work or directly to the antique store in town; Denny was almost sure his partner had a thing for the woman behind the counter, but was, again, a little too smart to ask.

Everything was fine and they were having a good time until Herb Doretevsky and Dominic Fortussi got themselves into an argument. Dominic was busy doing his own thing when Herb decided to take offense at something. Denny couldn’t even remember what, because he’d been drinking like a fish. It was his birthday, which was the only reason Patrick decided to go along with him to the bar in the first place.

Herb and Dom had been friends for years, but now and then they just felt the need to kick the sin out of each other. It would have worked out just fine, too, but Herb shoved his drinking buddy into the next table over so hard that poor Dom started a short lived domino effect that ended with Denny on the floor and half a pitcher of beer covering Patrick.

Patrick never touched Dominic, but he beat the living shit out of Herb. The man never even had a chance to try apologizing; Pat just stood up and landed a roundhouse across the drunk’s head that sent him into the nearest wall. Then Patrick helped him meet the wall a second time and then slammed him into the floor and another table. By the time it was done half the people in the Mug were looking like they’d decided never to piss off Patrick Winter and the other half were thinking about buying him a beer.

So, really, Denny preferred his partner stay cheerful whenever possible.

Patrick always had coffee waiting for him and half the time he brought donuts. It was Denny’s turn on the donuts and he’d forgotten them again. Pat would be annoyed, but they’d work it out, same as they always did.

Denny climbed into the passenger’s side seat and looked at the box of donuts sitting on top of the dashboard. His stomach rumbled at the thought and he opened it carefully, examining the dozen sugar bombs sitting inside.

Patrick slid in on the driver’s side and gave a small smile. “You touch my raspberry filled ones, and I’ll rip your arm off.”

“Fair deal. It was my turn though, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you never remember. So remember tomorrow.”

Denny grabbed his pen and jotted DONUTS on the back of his hand. “Done.”

“Good. Let’s go deliver milk.” Patrick was normally the quiet one of them. It was kind of unsettling having him in a semi-chatty mood, but in a good way.

The truck lurched forward and did a slow crawl away from the loading docks. Not only was Patrick a careful driver but also a smart one; the number of glass bottles required that they take it easy over the rough spots.

Highlights for the morning trip included seeing Kimberly Montgomery run out to get the newspaper in her shorts—a treat, because even at thirteen the girl was built like a brick house and had an ass that was made for pinching—and seeing Mrs. Williams—all of twenty-five and a borderline exhibitionist, God love her—through the bathroom window as she was stepping out of the shower. Burt and Lacey Partridge were climbing into their Ford Festiva, and both of them waved as the truck went past. Burt was a bit of all right, even if he was the sort who was just as likely to glare as he was to grin. Lacey was a decent looking woman, even though the last few years had taken their toll on her. She had a sweet smile, but normally looked ready to rabbit if anyone tried to talk to her.

She still had her figure after four pregnancies, two of which had delivered nothing but heartbreak, and the two that survived the full nine months in her womb had come out as pretty as peaches. Heather, the oldest daughter, was slim and attractive. Her little sister hadn’t started developing yet, but Denny could tell she was going to be a looker one of these days.

He’d seldom seen a family so afraid to smile, but figured it was probably something to do with their religion. He’d never once seen any of them in church, not even on the important days, like Easter and Christmas.

Still one house and three good looking girls, even if he only got to see one of them, wasn’t a bad run. There wasn’t a female in that house he hadn’t fantasized about on a dozen or more occasions.

He has the good sense not to make any comments about any of the ladies in question to Patrick.

Then it was off to the Watersford Academy. Watersford was, as far as Denny was concerned, a promise of Heaven shown to one and all on earth. There were girls from all over the country and probably all over the world in that place and every one of them wore a short skirt. If any of them were unattractive, they hid them in a dungeon somewhere, the better to make the place appealing.

True to form, as soon as they parked, Patrick was heading for the duck pond. Sadly they were there at just the wrong time and all of the pretty little things he normally got to see running around were in classrooms.

Still, the day hadn’t sucked so far and maybe if he got really lucky, he’d still spot a few of them.

“Ain’t no law against looking, Denny. Not a single one.” He started hauling the first crates off the truck and onto the dolly. It was a big order because the weekend was coming up. Even if the school didn’t have classes there were plenty of kids stuck eating in the cafeteria for all of their meals.

III

Patrick scattered the bread quickly, watching the ducks waddle out of the water and attack the offered food like they’d been starving for weeks. Winter was just around the bend and they’d be leaving for the season soon. The Mayflower Milk baseball cap he wore kept the sun out of his face and he smiled, enjoying the mallards and the pekins and their antics.

There was a sign that clearly asked people not to feed the ducks. Patrick had special permission from the headmaster. He’d been feeding them long before the sign went up.

Not far away a group of kids was getting lined up for an excursion into the woods. He knew where they were going in a matter of seconds. They were dressed in their civilian clothes, every last one of them wearing long sleeves, gloves and thick pants with boots and socks.

There was only one place in all the woods where they were allowed out of the standard uniforms and that was the Witch’s Hollow. There were only twenty or so kids all told and there were four adults to supervise them. The reason was simple enough: damned near every plant that grew in that region was poisonous. Not all them would kill an unwary traveler, but even the milder ones would make them sick to their stomachs.

Patrick felt his insides tighten as he looked over the group. Was it coincidence that he had chosen that very morning to visit his mother, or was there something more involved? He couldn’t say, just as there was no easy way for him to decide whether or not the gathering in front of him had been planned by fate, by his mother or was simply a happy accident.

One of the students would be the one his mother had chosen. The thought gave him a thrill.

They were all younger students, not much beyond freshmen if he had to guess. The oldest wouldn’t be much more than thirteen or fourteen. Denny would have loved to see them.

Patrick pressed his lips together at that thought. If he believed for one second that the man had ever acted on his perverse thoughts regarding younger girls, he’d have gleefully castrated him. There was an even mix of males and females, most of whom were looking less than thrilled with the idea of a hiking trip.

Patrick studied them all and finally decided on three of the girls that would suit his mother’s needs. One was a willowy girl with deep red hair and perfect posture. She had obviously been raised in money and trained heavily in etiquette. The second was a blonde who cast her eyes on all the rest of the students with a decided air of superiority. She was used to being in charge and she was used to taking no flak from any of the others. He thought her very likely to be the one. The last was healthy and smiling and slightly gawky, but she was surrounded by boys who seemed to find her absolutely fascinating.

She was young, true, but she was also attractive and more developed than any of the other girls. Naturally the boys flocked to her; she was less of a threat to them than the other girls. This one was still smiling and shy. The other girls were migrating together, and while it was nothing that any of the kids seemed conscious of, Patrick suspected battle lines were being drawn.

As he watched, the adults called the children to order and prepared to be on their way. It was time for him to go too. There were still a few more places that were expecting deliveries and then they would be done and he could head into the woods. One of them, he marveled, one of those children will be marked before the day is through.

IV

Lacey sat perfectly still for most of the trip into Utica. The weather was nice and she savored it, rather than making any unwanted sounds. She had no choice, not really. Burt was behind the wheel and if she wanted to keep him happy it was best not to cause too many distractions while he was busy. Her husband was not a man who liked to be distracted once he’d decided he wanted to concentrate.

They were off to see her sister, Teresa, because Teresa said she had something to discuss with the two of them. That worried Lacey a lot, because normally Teresa and Burt didn’t exactly get along well. It was one of the many things in her life over which Lacey truly wished she had more control. There had been a time, back in high school, when her sister and Burt were very close. They’d actually dated for a while before Lacey came along and caught Burt’s eye.

Oh, and hadn’t that just caused a storm to end all storms? Teresa was furious about the whole situation. They’d fought and screamed and raged for almost three weeks after he broke it off with her little sister to hang with Lacey. The good thing about it was that they were flesh and blood relations and flesh always forgives flesh sooner or later. Still it had been years before they were really close again.

He’d been something back in those days, tall and strapping and twice as handsome as most of the guys she met. He was practically Prince Charming.

Lacey rested her head against the passenger’s side window and stared at the stretch of road in front of them, reflecting on the fact that his froggier tendencies didn’t show up until after they’d married. Oh, he was a fine provider and he could be wonderful when the mood struck him, but after they’d settled into a life of marital bliss, he just sort of started noticing her flaws more than he had when they were going steady and when they were engaged.

Suddenly it wasn’t cute when she forgot to pick up something at the Acme; it was a reason for him to get upset. At first he’d just scolded her. It was only later, when he realized she wasn't going to change that he started hitting.

Even that wasn't so bad in the very beginning. Now and then he might cuff her on the arm, but he apologized a few minutes later and did everything he could to make up for it for days on end. She tried to change, but some things just can’t happen overnight.

And then Thomas came into their world. That was the name they’d chosen for their first baby; Thomas, a beautiful young boy who stole his father’s heart. Burt had been like a saint throughout the pregnancy. If she needed anything at all, he was there for her, ready to help, ready to protect her, the way she’d always felt a husband should be. He doted on his son and he doted on his wife and for a very short time everything was perfect.

Then came the morning that Burt found Thomas in his crib, cold and lifeless. He was horrified and so was Lacey. The only consolation either of them got was that he’d died in his sleep and had not suffered as far as the doctors could tell. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was the verdict. Lacey was pretty sure that meant they didn’t really have a good reason for why her little angel stopped breathing.

It was months before Burt would even look at her if they weren't in public. He didn’t have to say that he blamed her; she knew it. As far as her husband was concerned, Lacey had let his son die.

That was a devastating blow to their relationship. Lacey was still trying to figure out how to broach the subject of divorce when Burt came back to being himself again, or closer than he had been in a while.

He came fully back to being himself when they discovered she was pregnant with another child. Heather was born into a family that seemed happy again, and Lacey made it a point to thank God every night. Heather was fair skinned with pale blond hair and the fair looks of her mother. She was happy and healthy and stayed that way. And if Burt was a little disappointed not to get a son out of the bargain, he tried his best to hide it.

A year after that, they conceived Melissa, who looked more like Burt than she did like Lacey. She had dark hair and dark eyes and a quiet demeanor. Burt called her his little scholar. And once again, if he was disappointed because he did not have a son, he hid it well.

They had two beautiful children and Lacey did her best to gain back her girlish figure when she realized that Burt wasn’t as amorous as he had been. She did the workouts and dieted and raised their little ones while she did her tasks around the house. Money was always a little tight, but Burt wouldn’t hear of her working. She had a more important job than any other as far as he was concerned: she took care of the children.

Lacey was never the stay at home type, but she understood where he was coming from and as long as he was mostly behaving himself she was happy enough. His work as an insurance adjustor kept him hopping and from time to time he had to leave town for conventions or to handle claims in the middle of nowhere, and she was stuck at home with the kids. She got a little solace on the Internet, looking at various news groups, etc., and she managed to get some time every week to spend with other moms when she started taking the kids to the park near the center of Beldam Woods. There was a playground and lots of kids that her little ones could play with. Some of the other parents there were stand offish, as if not being from the wealthier side of town was possibly contagious, but not too often. It was a small town and it was almost impossible not to know everyone else.

Her dieting and working out paid off and Burt started paying her attention again. It was a wonderful feeling to be loved, one she had almost forgotten about until he finally came around again.

He was loving and caring and doted on her right up until the time of the second miscarriage.

And after that he grew sullen. She’d been handling his brooding for over ten years now, and had grown accustomed to it. Lacey still kept herself fit, still tended to the house and to the children and still loved Burt. But if anyone had asked her if she was in love with him, she would have been lying if she said yes. She loved him, but that was hardly the same thing. There was no romance anymore and hadn’t been for quite some time. His passions were dedicated to his work and hers were simply left unattended. Twice, perhaps three times a year he would get amorous and she went through the motions because it was expected of her and it was easier than saying no.

Was her life perfect? No, but it was hers and it was all she had.

Out of the blue, Burt reached over and took her hand in his while he was driving, his rugged features calming a bit as a smile crept across his face. She smiled back and squeezed his fingers.

Maybe love wasn’t always supposed to be about passion. She thought about that as they drove. Maybe it was the small gestures that mattered.

V

They moved in rows of two, and somehow she managed to get lucky enough to walk next to Tim Bueford. Tim was cute, and he was nice, and she knew for a fact that Shannon Whitechapel thought he was something pretty special. Anything she could do to make Shannon’s life miserable was just payback as far as she was concerned.

And she was standing with him. She wasn't even sure how it had happened, but she was certainly happy about it.

Even if most of the time they weren’t talking, just making eyes at each other.

Erika was new to the school. She’d been transferred over at the beginning of the quarter when the old school had gone belly up. She didn’t know all of the details, only that she found herself very suddenly in a new place with new kids. Most of them took to her pretty well. There were a few exceptions, like Shannon. Shannon needed to be the head of the class at everything she did: for her school was a competition and for reasons unknown, Erika bothered the other girl. That wouldn’t have been a problem, but what bothered Shannon bothered most of her cronies in the class.

Something was going to have to change, and soon, or there was going to be trouble. Erika did everything she could to avoid conflict, but nothing was working and she had never been raised to take grief from other kids. So far they hadn’t actually gotten into any serious skirmishes, but she could sense that the other girl was getting ready to do something.

Mr. Humphries was going on and on about the plants in the Witch’s Hollow. They’d spent the last two weeks learning about adaptation and evolution and at least half of that time had been a detailed study of every plant in the Hollow. Nothing that grew in the area was known in other parts of the country and as a rule it seemed that the plants and fungi were universally ugly and toxic. She couldn’t bring herself to be overly enthusiastic about the whole thing until she saw the place for the first time.

It was amazing, a sight she’d never expected. Oh, they’d studied plenty of pictures of the plants but seeing them all in one place was different; it was like looking at chunks of a masterpiece and then seeing the different splices all put together.

The ground was dark with a scattering of different mushrooms and patches of strange lichen. What little grass grew in the area looked sickly or already dead. A lot of the trees in the deep pit of a place were struggling to survive and covered with heavy coats of ivy and layers of moss. The whole thing made her think of those old black and white monster movies she used watch on her father’s knee when she was very young, before he had remarried. It wasn’t pretty in the traditional sense but it made her feel good because of the visual association.

Mr. Humphries once again cautioned everyone about leaving their gloves on and not touching anything without getting permission, and then they proceeded down into the area.

There were twenty students and four teachers. Five to one odds. Something was bound to go wrong.

Naturally enough, something did.

VI

Patrick had to make a detour on his way back to the Beldam Woods. One of the orders had been put together the wrong way and he wanted to make it right as quickly as possible. Mayflower Milk had a reputation for excellence and rather than wait for the next day, he took the extra gallon of chocolate milk and two pints of cottage cheese to the Partridge house on his way. It wasn't really much of an issue anyway, the Partridges lived only a block and half away from his own place and he needed to drop the car off. He wouldn’t have need of it for the rest of the night.

He walked up to the tidy house and rang the buzzer, waiting patiently. He’d seen the parents leaving the house earlier in the day but for all he knew they’d gone shopping.

Melissa Partridge opened the door, her expression a little nervous. She relaxed when she saw who it was. She was one of the better kids in the neighborhood and he had already used her car washing and lawn mowing services on several occasions. He didn’t need his car washed and he was perfectly capable of mowing his own lawn, but she always asked nicely and she was a cute kid. Her older sister was nowhere near as eager to make money. Melissa wanted to save up for something special. He had no idea what that something was, but in the long run it would have meant nothing to him.

“Hi, Patrick.” She craned her head to look up at him.

“Hi, Mel. Looks like we forgot some stuff earlier, so I thought I’d drop it by.” He offered her the milk and cheese and smiled as she took it.

“My folks aren’t here, but I can get you the money if you need it.”

“No. It goes on the weekly bill. Nothing to worry about.” He looked past her into the house. “You here all by yourself?”

“Only until Heather gets home. She’s got band practice.”

“Well, make sure you tell everyone I said hi, okay?”

She nodded and said her thanks. He noticed the bruises on her arm and her leg and the fact that they looked fresh. They were minor, but they hadn’t been there the day before and if anyone on the planet knew the nature of bruises, it was Patrick Winter.

“Okay, thanks for bringing it by.”

“Melissa? You fall down the stairs again?” He looked pointedly at her bruises.

She flushed and lowered her eyes. “No, I got into a fight after school yesterday.” A lie and he knew it. Still, he let it go. For now.

“Did you win?”

“Of course!” She smiled. She was a scrappy little thing, and very proud of her abilities. At least that was the way she played it off.

He smiled back and nodded. “Good going, tiger.”

He left a moment later, knowing that a child didn’t make the marks. The bruises were too deep.

Patrick took his time after he dropped off his car. He wasn't in anything that even vaguely resembled a hurry, because he knew exactly where he was going. Denny had offered to take him out for a beer, an offer the man made at least once a week. To his knowledge Denny was not a lonely man, but he seemed to think that Patrick was.

In certain ways that was probably true, but there were things he did that made up for the solitude he imposed on himself. He had his hobbies and his fairly regular visits to see the antique store in town, and many lively conversations with Allyson  Winston, the owner of the place. He suspected that Allyson worried from time to time that he would take a shine to her, but she wasn’t exactly his type. He didn’t know if he had a type for whatever that mattered.

She was lovely, true, and she was always happy to see him, but he sensed that the mild attraction he felt was no stronger in her and that someone else held her romantic interest. He liked what they had, a friendship. That was rare enough in his life.

Denny probably couldn’t hope to understand that sort of thing. He was not designed to think or feel that way toward a member of the opposite sex. His was a primitive drive, an imperative to procreate.

Patrick cut the thoughts off as he neared the Hollow. He could hear them down below him and knew from their voices and tones that someone was planning to cause grief for one of the students.

For over fifty years he’d done his best to maintain his human guise whenever possible. Living among them was easier when he could almost convince himself that he was one of them. Now, at his mother’s behest, he allowed himself to change for the first time in the life span of most of the people below in the woods.

Patrick stripped off his clothes as quickly as he could, folding them neatly and ramming them into the narrow hole at the base of a birch tree. He wore no jewelry except for his watch and that he set on top of everything else.

When he was fully naked before the animals and plants, Patrick Winter relaxed the hold he had on his own body and felt the flesh fold outward and expand like a wave.

Denny had often wondered where Patrick was from and he normally gave noncommittal answers. The truth was that Patrick had been in the area for a very long time. Unlike his brother Jack he saw no reason to go to other places and unlike his brother Robert he never felt the need to sleep for several centuries.

He’d just learned to hide in plain sight, thus avoiding conflicts with the descendants of the louts who’d murdered him the first time.

He’d died for a good cause.

VII

They were out when she called for them. The brothers were doing as they always did and following their mother’s orders. Jack was off gathering the rare plants she needed for her recipes and spells. Some of them were fairly easy to find and others took tremendous effort. He liked to boast that he did the most for their mother, but then he was the youngest by several hours and considered himself their mother’s favorite.

Robert was gathering wood in the forest, as he planned to build additions to her small house that would allow each of Alvina Bathory’s children to have a room of his own. The winter would be upon them all too soon and they had all grown so much since she’d given birth to them only a year before.

Patrick was trying to take forms other than that of a sheet. There were issues that came with being born without bones, and one of them was trying to manage to stand upright and possibly even mimic the people of Beldam Woods. If he could look like them they would have less reason to fear him.

He never had a chance to finish his practice session before they stormed the small hut he shared with his family. He knew that the people hated his mother and his family in general. He was not a normal toddler of only a year’s age; he was the son of a witch, born to serve her and to protect her from harm.

He, like all of his siblings, came back to her at the first sign of trouble. By the time he arrived, their small hut was a burning ruin, the thatch roof burned away and the walls already falling in on themselves. Four villagers were dead and several more were changing, their bodies wracked and twisted by his mother’s fury.

As old and decrepit as she appeared Alvina Bathory was a powerful witch. Still, most of the men in the village had brought themselves to the woods, including the miserable wretch who’d fathered him. If there was love in Patrick for his mother, there was only rage and disgust for his father. In her fury she cast forth every spell she could manage, hurling lightning from the heavens and other insurmountable agonies upon the foolish. Patrick saw his father scream and watched with a perverse glee as the flesh on his body rotted away in a matter of seconds. Skin blackened and swelled and then wept a rain of bright blood into the soil as the man tried to escape his fate. His death was not kind and as far as Patrick was concerned he deserved far worse.

Patrick killed four of the swine, wrapping himself around their bodies and crushing until the bones hidden within them creaked and then shattered under the pressure. The first of them died quickly, but after that, the fight became a struggle. His body was never meant to generate that sort of force and he was still learning. By the time the fourth of the sorry humans had expired he was exhausted.

He was weak. He failed his mother. She was dragged out of her perch in the trees even as they killed him. In the end they rammed pitchforks into his flesh and cast him into the burning ruins of the only home he had ever known. He died roaring his pain for the world around him, screaming in rage as he withered and burned.

He would surely have died completely had it not been for his brother Jack sneaking in closer and taking him from the fires.

VIII

Patrick shook the thoughts away and then lay down on the ground, letting his flesh liquefy until he could slither across the earth and hide himself in the shadows of the trees. He took the time to place his carefully preserved skull in the hollow of the tree along with the rest of his possessions. Most everything else he could fake, but the skull made it easier. Damned hard to make teeth out of flesh and have them come out looking like they should.

Then he moved closer, listening for the signs that would tell him which of the girls below was the one he was supposed to touch and grant his mother’s blessings.

They had spread themselves out in the area, and already half of them were risking their lives, unaware of the dangers around them. Two of the adults who should have been supervising were hidden behind a copse of small trees, their hands pawing at each other and their bodies eager to rut.

He ignored them; they were not his concern.

Not far away one of the older men was lecturing to seven students who actually listened to him, discussing the dangers of the plants and either pointing or in rare cases touching the foliage with his gloved hands. He had respect for the power of the woods around him and was doing his best to teach that respect to the children.

Several more students were gathered in a semicircle around their instructor, who was currently scolding one of their number and waving a handful of white moss in the air. Apparently the boy had thought it would be fun to try forcing one of his friends to eat the stuff. The older woman had caught him before the situation could become fatal.

And off to the side, near the Victim Trees, the very plants created by his mother to guarantee the endless suffering of the villagers who’d dragged her from her home, four girls stood together, whispering threats and choosing sides in the battle for who would be allowed to rule among them.

The blonde child he’d seen earlier was holding a mushroom in her hand. The red-headed girl was with her, nodding her approval, as the blonde girl held the mushroom out to the dark-haired one, who was looking very dubiously at the fat fungi. Not just any mushroom had been chosen, but the Witch’s Tongue, a particularly lethal mass with dark skin and red seeping sores.

He slithered closer, listening intently, while the fourth child, a young girl with nervous features and a rapid pulse, kept lookout for the adults who could stop their games.

“He already said they’re dangerous.”

“So? You can eat this, Erika, and prove that you belong here with us, or you can just keep hoping for things to get better.”

“Why don’t you eat it Shannon?”

“All of us have eaten them before, haven’t we?” Patrick could see the lie on the girl’s face. She was crafty, that one, but she was not as sly as she thought she was.

To his surprise the other two nodded their ascent, claiming that they had eaten the Witch’s Tongue, tasted her secrets and lived to tell of it.

The redhead spoke up, her voice calm and cool. “You don’t even have to eat it, Erika. Just lick it.”

The girl who had earlier been surrounded by boys had looked prepared to leave without consuming the toadstool. Now she hesitated, measuring the looks on the other girls’ faces and trying to decide.

Patrick planned to stop her if he had to. He intended to make sure she did not consume any part of the mushroom that he knew was deadly and more toxic than any of them understood.

He shifted himself closer to them moving slowly and quietly, as he stretched into a new shape. There should have been pain involved; he had been a long time hiding his true form from the world. Instead the process was easy.

All it would take would be one swift strike and he could end this without being seen.

“Jesus, what is that stench?” The blonde girl, the one called Shannon, wrinkled her nose in disgust and looked around. “Smells like something died over here.”

Patrick stood perfectly still, aware of the breeze that blew past him. He was the source of the offending odors, of course. Without the stability of one shape his body tended to rot and he had forgotten that little fact.

As if to remind him a second time he felt he burning sensations start in several small areas of his body, signs that the flesh was weaker than he liked to think about and already starting to die.

“What are you children up to?” The woman’s voice was shrill and her face set in a frown of disapproval. The blonde girl quickly tossed aside the mushroom she’d held as an offering, her skin flushing slightly.

“Nothing, Ms. Watkins.” She was quick to recover from her surprise and cast a look at each of the other girls to make sure they agreed with her...or else.

If Patrick had expected the outcast girl to reveal the others’ plans for making her eat a poisonous plant, he was disappointed. She kept her mouth firmly closed.

It was then that the teacher with the girls spotted the two other adults off to the side. Likely she expected to find two of the children locked in an embrace. Her reaction would probably have been no more fearsome.

While she was off and tearing into the two younger supervisors, the girls started to move away from their little spot and over toward the main group of students, who were once again gathering. The end of their excursion was upon them. The girl called Shannon crossed her arms over her chest and flipped her hair out of her face.

“This doesn’t prove anything. You still need to show us you’ve got what it takes to fit in.”

The dark haired girl rolled her eyes and looked toward the sky as if praying for patience.

“Fine. What do I have to do?”

“Come back here tonight and bring proof that you were here.”

“I’m here now, what does it prove?”

“It proves you’re not as stupid as you look.”

“You know what, Shannon? You call me stupid one more time and I’m just going to kick your ass.”

“You and what army?” Shannon was laughing.

“So why don’t you come out here with me tonight and we can get this solved.”

“I don’t have anything to prove.” She spoke fast, but the blonde girl was starting to look a little nervous.

“Chickenshit.” Erika shook her head, disgusted.

Shannon looked back over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed. “Fine. I’ll join you tonight.”

And as he slid along, watching them from the patchy grass, Patrick knew that it would be one of the two who was chosen. Their conflict was intense and personal and their spirits were exactly the sort that would attract his mother’s attention.

IX

The day had been calmer than Lacey expected, and Burt and Teresa were getting along. Her sister had promised a surprise before the end of the night and both of them were waiting patiently for the announcement.

In the meantime it was just nice to relax.

Burt was in a remarkably good mood and that was close to a miracle these days. Just the night before he’d come home in as dark a mood as she’d seen in a while, earlier than expected and angry at some poor schlub who’d had a house fire or was claiming he had, at least. She hadn’t expected him home until after nine, but he made it home in time for dinner and did his best to be good about it.

So he only hit Melissa three times when she brought home the disciplinary report from school for talking in class.

Lacey closed her eyes and forced the thoughts out of her head. She didn’t want to dwell on Melissa crying in her room, when she was out for the first time in weeks and everyone seemed like they were having a good time.

She loved her children. She loved her husband. Sometimes he had to discipline the girls, and maybe more than if he’d had a son, true, but sometimes it happened.

Lacey thought about how it would be when her daughters were allowed to date and felt a tremor in her stomach. Enough. Think of happier things. Don’t ruin this day, damn it all. Don’t you dare go all emotional when he’s finally in a good mood.

Still, she had to chew on her nails, wondering if he was ever going to go too far, wondering why it was that sometimes he took the girls to the cellar and locked the door before he meted out punishment. And that thought, oh my, that thought was enough to make her stomach seethe with acids.

But he was in a good mood, damn it all. And it was so rare to see him when he was happy and smiling and not just waiting for more bad news. It had to be something that she had done, something that was wrong with her. That was the only reason Lacey could imagine for him to be such a (cold-hearted, sadistic little prick!) stern man. It had to be something she had done, and sometimes she wished he would just (keel over and fucking die!) tell her so she could make it right. She did whatever he wanted her to do at home—barring a few times when she got absent minded and forgot to make what he’d asked for in the dinner department—she was a tigress for him in bed, or submissive depending on what he wanted, and she took care of his children, took care of him to the best of her ability.

And God damn you for not noticing or caring!

And she did it because it was the right thing to do, her only way of making his world a better place. Burt deserved that. He’d sacrificed so much to keep her in a good home and to provide for her and for the girls.

She watched him sitting nearby and smiled, noticing every detail, from the clean and pressed shirt to the nice slacks, to the way his left foot sat on his knee and shook up and down as he looked at the painting of a seascape above the mantle of Teresa’s fireplace.

He looked at his watch, his dark eyes watching the second hand and it moved, and Lacey hoped he got busy with the surprise soon, before he lost his patience.

Please, God, don’t let him lose his temper. Don’t let him make a scene, because I don’t know how many more of them I can take. I don’t know what will happen if he blows up in front of Teresa.

Teresa knew, of course. You can’t hide things like that for very long. It just isn’t possible. She knew about his temper and about him hitting the kids now and then and even about him hitting Lacey.

She couldn’t prove any of it, because Lacey wasn't dumb enough to let that sort of thing be known in public, but she knew.

And sometimes Lacey hated her sister for that knowledge.

X

Curfew for the Watersford Academy was a simple affair: after dinner you went to your dormitories unless you had extracurricular activities that had been approved. The school prided itself on academic excellence and that meant the students worked their collective asses off.

The security at the academy normally came down to a large stone wall surrounding the private establishment and a few trips through the campus courtesy of the Beldam Woods Constables.

So sneaking off campus was easy enough and so, for that matter was sneaking onto the school grounds.

Denny certainly didn’t plan on taking it any further than that, especially since he had to go to work in only a few hours. He’d been smart this time, however, and picked up the donuts in advance. He wouldn’t disappoint Patrick two days in a row.

No one was more surprised than Denny when he saw the girls leaving the campus. Not one, not two, but a total of five of them. With visions of nubile young things dancing in his head, he followed them.

They didn’t leave all at once. The first to go was a dark-haired girl who walked like she was on her way to a death match. She was followed a short time later by the other four, all of whom seemed intent on being as quiet as possible while keeping their eyes on the first one who’d taken off.

Denny carefully concealed his binoculars inside his sweatshirt and followed after them. Whatever they were getting themselves into had to be more fun than wandering around the grounds in the hopes of seeing a girl heading for the showers.

They moved like kids, which was almost a shame. They were quiet enough, but he’d almost expected them to move like, well, like women. Instead they were goofing around and getting themselves psyched up for something. They had plans for the brunette, but he couldn’t have guessed what those plans were, save that the girl they were targeting probably wouldn’t like them much.

He was half tempted to warn her. There was a part of him that felt that would be the decent thing to do. Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t feeling very decent. Denny figured if he played his cards right, he might get to see a little skin. That would be lovely.

It took almost thirty minutes before the first girl got to the Witch’s Hollow. Denny hated the Hollow and always had. When he was little his brother had taken him to the spot and told him all about how the men in town had dragged an old lady down there and chopped her into pieces because she was Jewish. They said she was a witch, but everyone with a brain knew that had to be a lie.

Witches weren’t real, except the new agers who thought they were witches.

Ghosts on the other hand, he wasn’t so sure about.

Still, there were girls to be watched and he figured if a ghost was going for anyone it would be one of them.

Denny crouched low and settled in to see what would happen. He pulled out the binoculars, too, because he wanted to have a good view of everything.

XI

Erika waited for ten minutes, trying her best to be calm. She heard them before she saw them, of course. They were trying to be quiet, but she didn’t think Shannon and her friends could manage quiet if their lives depended on it.

One of the girls was giggling. If she had to guess, she thought it was probably Karen Natchez. The girl was pretty and about as dumb as a stump. Mostly she was harmless, but really not very bright at all. She also tended to go with the flow when it came to who was popular and who wasn't. Erika had already decided she could take or leave the girl.

She’d been here since early September when the school year started, and so far the only person she could truly say made her feel at home was Beth Chambers. The pity there was that Beth was a local girl. She attended classes, but she also lived with her family. It was rather depressing when she let herself think about it. Also, Beth hadn’t been in school the last couple of days. She’d been in on Monday, and when Erika asked her how her date went with the boy she’d been hoping would ask her out, her friend broke into tears. So while Beth would normally have had her back, her friend currently had other things to deal with. Erika didn’t know for sure, but she had suspicions that Barry Foster had lived up to his reputation of taking what he wanted from the girls who didn’t want to make him happy.

She didn’t even know Barry, but she hated him for that.

The Hollow was dark, save for a little starlight that managed to shine down. Erika had walked the entire course, never once worrying about making a wrong step.

Erika had a secret, one that she hadn’t told anyone about, not even Beth. Erika was almost certain she had a guardian angel, and if she was right, that angel would help her tonight.

She really, really hoped she was right, or with as many voices as she heard coming, it might be a very bad night.

They came from four different directions, but she heard them all. There was Shannon, there was Monica—the red-haired bitch that was practically Shannon’s shadow, coming in from the left. On the right was Tracy, curly hair and a jockette’s body—she could potentially be trouble—and lastly was Karen. Erika felt her heart thump a little harder in her chest. This would not be pretty.

They didn’t understand. It wasn’t that Erika was afraid to eat one of the mushrooms so much as she didn’t want them to see her do it. The mushrooms were something special, something no one was supposed to know about, and her angel had told her that much when she came to the Hollow during her first week at the school.

In the dream she followed the old woman’s voice, listening to promises that her life would get better if she just followed a few simple rules and did as she was asked. The ancient voice was confident, certain of what it said, but the dream-voice was also weak and failing with age.

That had been a full month ago now, and the time for her to have a little faith was upon her.

The four girls moved closer, each looking at Erika, each willing to do whatever it took to make sure she knew her place.

Shannon got there first, a smirk on her face. She was feeling good about herself, and probably felt she had every reason to be satisfied.

Erika crossed her arms and looked daggers at the girl. “So how are we settling this, Shannon?” Her voice didn’t shake enough for anyone to notice. That made her very happy.

Shannon looked back at her and smiled. “I figure we should just do this the easy way. You eat a mushroom and everything is cool. You don’t want to eat one, we work out something else.”

“Yeah? Like what?” She was doing her best to stay calm, but it wasn't easy. The rest of the girls had shown up now, and they were all looking ready to have a lot of fun at her expense.

“Well, either you eat the mushroom and prove yourself or we take your clothes and you have to get back to school that way.”

“Or I could just kick your ass, and then we can start all over like nothing ever happened.” Of the three choices, Erika liked her own option best.

Shannon shook her head. “No, I don’t think that last one counts.”

Tracy was nodding her head in agreement. If it had been anyone other than Tracy it might have worked. She was pretty sure the girl could beat her into putty without working up a sweat.

“What’s it gonna be? You can eat the mushroom or give over your clothes.”

“You’re a dyke, aren’t you, Shannon? Just can’t stand the idea of not seeing a few naked bodies.” She was trying hard to figure a way out of this, but it wasn’t looking good.

“Please, I want to see a naked girl I can just look in the mirror. I want to see a naked cow, I can go look at the ones in Dover’s field, I don’t need to see you strip down.”

Erika took two steps forward and jacked Shannon’s jaw with a vicious right hook. She didn’t even think about it, she just took a swing. Shannon let out a yelp and hit the ground.

Erika looked down at her and shook her head. “Yeah, see, I thought about it. I’m going for door number three.”

Shannon was just standing up when the other three girls moved in and tackled Erika.

XII

Erika was right. Tracy was a problem. The other two she could have managed to hold off, because neither of them were fighters. Tracy didn’t bother with the feinting or trying to psyche her out like the others were doing; she just bulldozed her way forward and grabbed Erika by the hair, yanking her off her feet and slamming her face into the mud and filth of the Witch’s Hollow.

Erika fought back for all she was worth, cursing and spitting while the other girl used sheer body strength to pin her in place. Then to her complete surprise, she felt her shoes being pulled from her feet. Her left shoe came off first, followed by the right.

Erika fought harder, reaching with her hands to claw at Tracy, but the girl kept up the pressure, pushing her face into the muck and hissing angrily when Erika took off a few layers of her skin.

“Stupid bitch!” Tracy’s voice was strained, but she was still winning the argument.

Erika tried to turn her body and almost managed to slip sideways where she could get decent leverage before Shannon caught her left leg and hoisted it into the air.

“Got her leg! Unh...! Stop squirming! I got her leg, now you guys get her pants!”

Erika went crazy, bucking as best she could, but her head was still pinned and now her leg was captured and despite her every attempt she couldn’t stop Monica and Karen from pulling her pants down from her hips and then off of her completely. It was degrading and enraging.

Erika whipped her free leg back and caught Karen in the face with her heel, just as the girl started waving her blue jeans around like a victory banner. Karen slipped, dropping her prize and fell back into the mud, squealing and clutching at her jaw and mouth.

Shannon used her own foot to kick Erika in the stomach. She’d never understood the term “knocked the wind out of her” until that very moment. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t fight, but instead fell back weakly trying to draw in a gasp of air.

Tracy had to be a wrestler in a past life or something. She wrapped her body around Erika’s, locking arms around Erika’s shoulders and clasping her hands behind her neck in a full nelson. Then, just to make sure she got her point across, the girl scissored her legs around Erika’s waist and squeezed hard, guaranteeing that getting a breath was physically impossible.

When Erika was completely incapacitated, Monica pulled off her shirt and bra, leaving her in nothing but mud-stained panties.

Erika felt the tears coming from her eyes and could do nothing to stop them. She was humiliated. She hated the girls in front of her, all of them, and wished they were dead.

Then Shannon made it worse. The girl reached down and grabbed one of the black, blood-stained mushrooms and smeared the red over Erika’s face.

When Erika tried to sputter and spit the vile substance away from her lips, Shannon shoved the oversized fungus into her mouth, crumbling the fibrous mass in and then covering Erika’s mouth.

Half a second later, a man’s voice called out, “HEY! You kids stop that right now!”

Tracy let go in a flash and was backing up, looking for her escape route. Shannon didn’t bother to stay around either, but bolted like a deer from a loud noise. Karen, still sitting on her ass, started crying, and Monica, perhaps the coolest of the four culprits, headed in the direction of the man’s voice, a calm expression on her face.

Erika fell face first into the mud, her muscles quivering but otherwise unresponsive. Her mind shattering into fragments as the powerful toxins inside the Witch’s Tongue began to have their effect on her.

She was in the woods and crying, naked and lost, more frightened and confused than she could ever remember being. There was a horrid sense of Déjà vu, and a stronger sense of imminent danger. Erika hadn’t felt this miserable since the day they put her mother to rest in the cold October ground.

“There you are, child, I thought I’d lost you.” The voice belonged to an old woman, frail and weak, but still filled with confidence and resolve.

“I’m here! Help me please!” She was frantic, the voice, she knew, was there to help her, but she couldn’t locate the source of it.

“Relax now, you just calm yourself down.” There was no one to see, but she felt a cool, soft touch across her forehead.

“I’m lost and those girls.”

“Shhhh...I know, child. I know. Would you like to make sure it never happens again?” The strength was there, and comfort too, but there was some other quality to the voice that left her wondering if she should trust it. Something dark and menacing in the tones.

“Yes, I want it to stop. I don’t want to be a stranger anymore.”

“Is that all you want, child? Friends to call your own? Don’t you want to get back at them?”

It was wrong to hate, but yes, she did want to make them suffer. She wanted revenge, not just satisfaction.

“Yes. I want them to suffer.” The thought brought greater pleasure than she would have expected. “I want them to feel like I feel.”

“Well, do you trust me?” There was that tone again, dark and threatening, yes, but also comforting in its honesty.

Erika thought for a moment and finally nodded her head.

“Will you let me into your heart, Erika?”

“Yes. I’ll let you in.”

“Then you shall have your wishes, but you must be patient. Some things take time.” The woman’s voice was fading, drifting away like a feather caught in the wind. “Others are easier to handle.”

Erika’s face sank deeper into the mud as she lost consciousness, barely able to breathe, her eyes open but seeing nothing.

XIII

Lacey squealed with excitement! Her little sister was getting married! She’d been so worried that there would be bad news, but it turned out that Teresa was just waiting for the right moment to let them know.

Her future husband was a doctor, and he was supposed to have the night off, but it was always business before pleasure in the medical field and they were understaffed at the hospital.

She wrapped her arms around her sister’s neck and held her tightly, happy, so very happy for the fact that Teresa had finally found her Mr. Right. She’d been looking for so long, trying to find the perfect man.

Burt was speechless! He was sitting and looking at the two of them with a shocked look on his face. Oh, to have a camera, because she didn’t think she’d ever seen her husband looking so stunned.

Teresa was talking a mile a minute, asking if she would be the matron of honor—as if there was any way she could say no to that request—and trying to explain that Daniel was a good man, a strong man, and as gentle as a baby in his own way.

Lacey could see the love for Daniel in her sister’s eyes and it warmed her soul. Of course they had to meet him, and Teresa was still upset that he couldn’t be there, but he was a doctor, and you had to expect them to be called away at all hours sometimes.

Did she have a picture of the man? Of course she did! Teresa fairly flew from the den and moved toward her bedroom to grab one.

Lacey looked around, wanting more than anything to share this moment of happiness with Burt, who had always put up with so much from her and who had said on a hundred occasions that Teresa needed a man in her life or she would never be happy. He was right, too. Burt was almost always right.

Burt was not in the room. She didn’t let it bother her. He’d probably slipped off to answer the call of nature. He’d never had a very big bladder.

When five minutes had passed without seeing Teresa or Burt, the euphoria of her sister’s announcement began to wear a little thin. How long could it take to find a picture? Surely she had to have dozens by now.

Lacey stepped from the den and headed for her sister’s bedroom, walking with the same careful tread she had acquired over the years of her marriage. A soft step does not add to existing headaches.

So she heard the grunting noises very clearly.

Lacey forced the sound out of her head, refused to accept that it was anything but her imagination. If she let herself think too much about it, she would turn around and not check on Teresa. And she had to check on her sister, just to make sure that

Christ are you BLIND? How many trips to Utica has he made in the last eighteen months? How many times did you try to call Teresa and get her answering machine when he was out of town on business calls? What better way for her to get her revenge for stealing her man all those years ago? She’s always been a petty little bitch and now she’s fucking your husband in the next room over.

Everything was okay. It wasn't like Teresa to take so long, and there was the chance with those noises that she was hurt.

She opened the door to her sister’s bedroom and saw her husband on top of Teresa. Was there passion involved? Oh, yes indeed there was.

Teresa lay on her back, gasping for air, her legs thrown apart and her hands clawing at Burt’s thick arms. He was between her legs, his teeth bared in a snarl, grunting with effort. At first she thought her worst hidden fears had come true. That nasty little voice she tried to ignore had been putting two and two together and getting four for a while now, and much as she hated to even think it, she thought they were banging away on Teresa’s bed.

It was only when she noticed his hands that she understood. At first glance she thought his hands were resting on the bed, the better to support himself as he rutted like a pig. But there was more to it. His hands were just above her shoulders, holding a thick wooden handle on either side of Teresa’s neck. She was red in the face not from passion, but because he was choking her to death.

“Burt! What are you doing?” She asked, already knowing, and charged into the room, sliding on the photos of a man she’d never met as she went to stop her husband’s madness once and for all.

Teresa’s eyes were watering and they rolled in her skull as she looked toward Lacey. Burt’s eyes were focused only on Teresa, and the scream that Lacey had let loose fell on ears that refused to hear her.

She tried to tackle him, tried to push him away from her little sister, but she failed. Burt was just too big, an ogre, not a prince, and he continued to ignore her until she raked her clawed fingernails across his face.

That got his attention better than she ever meant for it to. Burt let out a scream and took his hands off the wooden handle to hit her across the jaw with a right hook.

Lacey staggered, not at all prepared for the sudden attack, but she didn’t fall back. For the first time in years, she retaliated. Her hands flew out, lashing at his face, his arms, his chest.

“You bitch! This is all your fault!” Burt warded off her first few blows, scowling angrily and then he reached down and grabbed the wooden handle he’d been using in an effort to strangle Teresa.

The handle came complete with an ax blade.

xiv

Up the hill from where Erika lay and Karen sat crying, Monica met up with a man she’d seen in passing a few times. He delivered milk at the school. Not far away, Karen was gathering Erika’s clothes, still crying to herself as she finished her collection with a pile of shoes and a bra.

Denny Halloran looked at the girl coming his way and put on his best serious scowl. “Have you girls lost your minds? Those mushrooms are poisonous! Everybody knows they can kill you.”

“It’s just a fake out, mister. We wanted to give her a scare is all.”

Denny looked down into the Hollow, where he could see the dark-haired girl laying naked as the day she was born, her face half buried in mud. He had his doubts about the explanation.

“It didn’t look all that fake from here.”

The redhead looked back and him, smiling softly. She was a beauty, the kind of girl he expected to see on the cover of a teen magazine. Her eyes seemed almost luminescent in the faint light, and she had a perfect smile.

“No, we’re not crazy.” She even had a laugh that was cultured. “We’re just having a goof with the new girl. We told her she had to eat a mushroom or walk home naked. She didn’t like either option, so we decided to fake her out. She gets to walk home, but she thinks she had a real poisonous mushroom. We planted it here a couple of hours ago.”

He still had his doubts, and as nice to look at as the girl in front of him was, he was curious about the one down below, lying in the muck. He looked again, hoping to catch a second glimpse of her body in the starlight. Even with his binoculars he could only see so much in the darkness.

The girl was gone. He double checked, looking around the area in front of him, and yes, she was definitely no longer in the same spot. He could still see her imprint in the mud.

“Well, looks like your friend is up and moving at least.”

The girl in front of him chuckled softly and put her hands on his chest. “Don’t sound so disappointed, I’m still here.”

“Huh?” Not his wittiest comeback, but the idea that a sweet little girl like the one in front of him might be coming onto him was enough to send a few thousand volts through his head.

“Well, I was just thinking, since you’re here, maybe you could walk me home?”

He felt his heart beating fast and licked at nervous sweat on his lip and mustache. She was a damned fine looking girl.

Who could get your ass put away for a decade, the voice of reason reminded him.

Still, it was dark out and he didn’t like the idea of leaving the girl to walk home alone.

“Okay, let’s get you on your way.” He looked around. “Say, should we help your friend?”

The girl looked around and stared at the spot for a few seconds before answering. It might be that she was sounding a little hesitant. It might be that he overlooked it, more worried about getting the girl he had home safely. There were a lot of variables to consider.

“No, I guess she’s okay. Maybe one of the other girls came back for her.”

In the end he told himself it was just wanting to make sure the girl he was with got home safely. That was all the excuse he really needed.

They turned and headed for the private school, moving away from the Hollow and anything that might be in their way. Denny said nothing at all when the girl wrapped her fingers into his own.

XV

Almost half a mile away, Shannon and Tracy were running next to each other and finally slowing down, winded from their unexpected sprint. Somewhere behind them, crying from time to time for them to wait up, Karen was heading in the same direction, burdened by the new girl’s muddy clothes and shoes. It never crossed her mind to drop the dirty garments. She’d been raised to believe that you did not take what belonged to other people. It just wasn’t done.

Some lessons go away over time; some are ingrained.

Karen wiped at the blood still spilling from her lip. The damage was mostly done; it was just a matter of getting the swelling to go down before she had to go to class in the morning. She was trying to be rational about everything, but it wasn't always easy.

Shannon would shoot her if she talked, but she wanted to talk, wanted to let someone know that Shannon had pretty much committed murder. That was the only word for it, really. She’d made the new girl eat one of the mushrooms and everyone knew those ugly things were the worst of the worst. She’d even heard from some of the local kids that people had been deliberately murdered with the plants before.

Did that make her an accomplice? The thought settled into her head and started worrying at her mind like a termite taking to balsa wood. She couldn’t go to jail for murder! Her dad would kill her! But there it was, plain as day, she had watched Shannon commit a murder and she was carrying the evidence in her hands.

Karen threw the clothes to the side and shivered in the chill night air. Something reeked around her, a dead skunk or maybe a possum. Whatever it was, it smelled bad enough to make her gag.

A second later she felt a powerful hand slide across her face, covering her mouth and her nose completely.

“You’ve been a naughty little girl, haven’t you?” The voice was deep and raspy and sounded very, very angry. She tried to breathe in to scream, and gagged again on the thick odor of rot that smothered her.

Her hands beat at the meaty limb that covered her face, nails carving trenches into flesh that was too soft to be alive, but that bled blackness over her hands just the same.

“Naughty girls get punished. You should never leave home without a parent to watch over you.”

That was all she needed to hear to know she was in deep, deep shit. Karen tried a second time to pull her face away from the hand holding onto her and discovered that she was too firmly held.

The hand that matched the one covering her mouth reached around her and ripped at her Watersford Academy sweatshirt, tearing the dark gray fabric and baring her stomach and chest to the world.

For one brief moment Karen thought she was going to get raped and her actions reflected her fear and desperation. The idea of being physically violated was enough to refuel her panic, to make her forget all of the petty considerations, like her inadvertently helping to murder the new girl, that had clouded her judgment. Whatever silliness she’d gotten herself into was strictly secondary to getting away from the nightmare of having some foul-smelling pig of a man force himself on her.

She needn’t have been worried. Sex seemed to be the farthest thing away from the man’s intentions.

She realized that around the same time his fingers spread wide and then started peeling back her skin like it was just another layer of clothing to be discarded. She looked down past the hand holding her face, her eyes wide with pain and desperation, just as the other hand exposed bared raw muscles and violated nerve endings.

There were worse things than being accused of murder. Much worse. She might have even decided there were worse things than rape if she’d lived long enough.

XVI

They sat together in the darkness, worried less about bug bites this time of year than they would have been even a month ago. The woods were creepy this late in season and they both knew if they were caught off campus they would be in for a healthy dose of disciplinary action.

And they both knew that a few days of detention would be nothing at all if anyone found out about what they’d done to Erika. That was murder, plain and simple. Shannon knew it and so did Tracy. Tracy’d set her up and Shannon had knocked her down. And the worst part was they couldn’t have said why they’d done it five minutes after it was over.

Erika hadn’t done a damned thing to either of them, but they’d felt an automatic hostility toward the girl. Oh, there was always a pecking order to maintain, sure, but they’d never felt compelled to take it so far before. Normally it came down to a quick push and shove match at the worst. This was different.

This was murder. Neither of the girls wanted to talk about it, but both of them were thinking the same things, feeling the same things. There was guilt, of course, but there was also the simple knowledge that they were fucked.

“We screwed up bad, Shannon.”

Shannon nodded her agreement, trying not to cry. She hadn’t meant to do it. Somehow she didn’t think a judge or a jury was going to care.

But Shannon was nothing if not self-serving. True, she was feeling bad for Erika, but at the same time what good could possibly come of getting herself locked away for the rest of her life?

“We have to go back and see if she’s still there.”

“Say what?”

“We have to go back, Tracy. We have to see if Erika’s still there and if she is we have to do something with her body.”

“You’re fucking crazy.” Not too many people could call Shannon crazy. Tracy was allowed because they were friends and because Tracy could probably knock her teeth straight down her throat. Tracy was a big girl, several inches taller than Shannon and about as strong as an ox. As she’d already proven tonight, she knew how to use her size and strength to her advantage. One of the first rules Shannon had established for herself was to stay on the girl’s good side. For that reason alone, she calmly explained the facts to the girl.

“Okay, there are signs of a struggle all over the place, right?” She waited for the girl to nod her head. “So if we don’t do anything, and they find her in that spot, they’re gonna know it wasn’t an accident.”

“They’re gonna know that already! We took her clothes!”

Shannon hadn’t thought about that. She wondered idly where the hell Karen was, but decided not to let it bother her. “Okay. Well, you saw the creep in the woods. Monica was going to go calm him down. Maybe we can use that.” And again there was that niggling little issue in the back of her head: where was Monica? It didn’t take that long to get rid of the average loser. Unless of course he was something a little worse than average.

“Use it how?”

“Hey, he was out where he shouldn’t have been and probably spying on us. We can skip all the trouble if we make it look like someone was stalking her.”

“Jesus, that’s sick.”

“Then you think of something better!” Shannon’s nerves were feeling stretched fairly thin. She was losing her patience at high speed.

“I don’t know!” Tracy was screaming back and that couldn’t be a good sign. Shannon held out her hands and sighed and shook her head.

“Okay, forget it. Let’s just go and look and see if there’s anything we can do to fix this, okay?”

Tracy crossed her arms and thought hard for a few seconds before nodding her agreement. It was better than not checking, really, and there was always a chance that they could somehow fix the fucked up situation they were in. If it was possible, they had to try.

The two of them started walking, seeking the trail that had led them to the Hollow before.

Ten minutes later, they were truly, deeply lost in the woods.

XVIi

Patrick looked down at the remains of the girl he’d chosen and swallowed his regret. He’d done what he had to in order to survive. He’d done as his mother asked of him along those lines and now he had to find the girl who’d eaten the mushroom. If she were truly chosen by his mother she would still be alive, but possibly lost in the woods and though winter was not on them, the cold could cause her almost as much harm as the woods around them.

Her state of mind was an entirely different matter. Even if the mushrooms hadn’t been fairly common knowledge to the locals, Patrick would have known about their more unusual effects on people. The poisons that could ruin the body were nothing compared to the toxins that could alter a mind. There had actually been a few cases where people had consumed the Witch’s Tongue and quickly learned to regret it. He knew, because he had used the fungi himself on a few people who had begun to suspect the truth of his nature.

He used his foot to push the carcass off to the side and partially behind a tree. Then he went back to where she had dropped the other one’s clothing.

Not too far in the distance he heard two of the girls screaming at each other, raging over having killed the one called Erika. He hoped not for their sake. Otherwise they would soon know what pain and suffering were all about.

He looked to the east, to where he knew Denny was walking a young girl through the woods, and shook his head in silent rage. Any other time and he could have done something about it, but currently he needed to listen to his mother’s desires above all else.

Deeper in the woods he could hear another noise, a faint laughter. The girl he was looking for was close by, close enough that finding her should prove easy.

The operative word being should. The laughter was moving, going to different places in the woods and going to them at running speeds.

XVIIi

It went well at first, and then, just like that, his fantasy and his reality blew up in his face.

The redhead, her name was Monica as he soon discovered, seemed okay with the idea of fooling around. It was, to Denny’s mind, a perfect example of fantasies coming true.

Somehow they’d drifted as they walked and before he knew it they were leaning up against a damned big oak tree and getting into some heavy petting and even though he knew he was in the wrong and that the girl was years away from legal, he couldn’t stop himself from touching her body and kissing her face and wanting so very much more than that.

And then she suddenly pushed away from him, her eyes wide and her pretty face showing nothing but disgust and confusion. She had instigated the entire thing, but now she acted like he’d been forcing himself on her.

Where the hell was the logic in that?

“Mister? You get away from me or I’ll see you in jail! I know you, you’re the goddamned milkman.” She backed away, readjusting her clothes and looking venomously at him.

“Hey, Monica, come on now. What’s all of this?” His body was primed for action and suddenly the little bitch was turning into a tease. Denny didn’t like teases; teasing was all good and fun if it went somewhere but he was definitely getting the feeling that Monica wasn’t going to finish what she’d started.

The girl wiped at her face, her mouth, as if to make sure she could erase all contact with him. Her expression was enough to annoy him, but the idea that somehow he’d suddenly made her feel dirty was offensive in the extreme. He hadn’t forced the issue; she’d been the one coming on to him.

“You know what? You’re just a little cock tease. Why don’t you run on home to your fucking prep school?”

He started away from her and would have kept going if she hadn’t actually started crying on him. He’d made about ten paces before he heard the soft sound of her drawing in fast breaths and exhaling in moans.

When Denny turned around she was standing in the same spot, looking down at the ground, her face twisted in misery and her arms wrapped around her narrow torso as if to keep warm.

Seeing her like that made him realize for the first time since he’d been caught up in his sick little fetish that he was dealing with a child. She was maturing, sure, but really she was a kid and that in turn made him feel like a complete ass.

Having a conscience was not making his night any sweeter.

“What is it now, Monica?”

She looked his way, her face wet from her tears. “I don’t know where we are.”

Damn. That one knocked him for a mental loop. They were in the Beldam Woods, and as a rule the woods were dangerous.

“Come on, then. I’ll get you home.” She looked dubiously at him. Denny raised his hands. “No touching or anything okay? I’m just gonna walk you home.”

After a few seconds of staring, she nodded and started in his direction.

If Denny knew his work partner as well as he thought he did, he would have known that the dangers in the Beldam Woods were far greater than he’d ever expected. He would, in fact, have done anything to avoid going into the woods at all.

Denny was ignorant to a great many facts of life. He was also completely unaware of how lucky he had been to even get to the oak tree where he and Monica had come close to statutory rape.

Monica put her foot down in exactly the wrong spot, and everything that Denny should have known was made abundantly clear to him. The traps Patrick Winter had set and maintained for years were not completely mundane in their nature. As should be expected when dealing with a monster, there were certain supernatural elements involved in their creation. One second Monica was looking distraught and disheveled and the next she was looking very dead.

Cords of hardened, dried tendon lifted from the ground and lashed at the girl. Where exactly they came from, how they were anchored and all other mechanical aspects of the trap were lost on Denny. All he knew, all he saw, was the sudden and violent dismemberment of a girl he’d been close to having sex with ten minutes earlier. The fibrous trap flew from the ground and wrapped around her lower face, her neck, her left arm, her midsection and both legs and then pulled with incredible force. Wire thin blades of tendon cut into and through her body in an instant, effectively slicing her body into so many bloody pieces of different size and shape.

Denny watched her literally fall apart, and then he started screaming.

XIx

The two of them had made it most of the way back to the Witch’s Hollow before they heard the laughter. The sound was high pitched and strained, and completely devoid of anything like humor.

Both Shannon and Tracy tracked the sound for almost a minute before they saw Erika. The girl was still dressed only in her underwear, but she was covered in mud and there were several deep cuts on her body where she had apparently failed to notice branches and the heavily barbed vines in the area. Her eyes were wide open and she was smiling and giggling as she ran past them.

“Holy shit,” Tracy spoke with the soft tones of shock in her voice. “She’s still alive.”

“We have got to catch her and right now.”

Off in the distance they heard a man screaming, but they didn’t have time to pay him any attention. The lunatic naked girl was their top priority.

Erika looked right at them and right through them, as if they weren’t even there. Then she started running again, heading further into the deep woods and the night.

Tracy was the first one hot on her trail, moving with ridiculous ease when you considered everything they’d already been through. Shannon was fast in pursuit, but Tracy absolutely tore all hell out of the distance between them and their prey.

Shannon wanted to be upset with Erika, because, really it was very inconvenient, this whole running away thing. Instead she was elated. Erika was alive...a little whacked on the mushrooms, but alive. That had to count for something. If they could just get the girl back to the dorms quietly, she could apologize and grovel tomorrow and the whole ugly mess could be behind them.

She saw something moving across the forest floor at high speed, something dark and fast and heading straight for Erika.

Shannon froze, her skin crawling as she tried to track whatever it was. The thing moved like a snake, undulating across the ground, sometimes going around obstacles and other times going over them.

Whatever it was, it moved faster than Tracy and was almost to Erika already.

Erika turned sharply on one bare heel and started back the same way she’d already come, her feet lifting high and her naked body almost dancing as she came back, a look on her face that had nothing to do with happiness or any other emotion that Shannon could easily comprehend.

She bolted right past Tracy, and the bigger girl made a grab for her but captured only mud and debris that slipped from Erika’s sweating body.

Erika slowed down when she reached Shannon, panting heavily and looking her straight in the eyes. Erika’s expression slowly grew into a smile and she spoke softly. “Not you. I like you.”

“Ummm...I like you too?” She had no idea what else to say.

Erika nodded her head slowly and then fell to the ground, unconscious and barely breathing.

Shannon was still watching the fallen girl and trying to decide what to do about her when the darkness wrapped around her body and started squeezing.

There was no air to breathe that wasn’t deeply rancid. There was nothing to see but strained, red and black flesh, rotting and bleeding around her. She pushed and kicked and tried to scream, but to no avail. All too soon the darkness grew deeper and she felt the world fade away.

XX

The girl fell unconscious and that was good. Not being seen by her would make everything else much easier to handle.

The one called Shannon stared down at her and looked ready to panic. Whatever the case, she could not be allowed to hurt Erika. Patrick wrapped himself around her and squeezed as gently as he could until she passed out.

Then he slipped away from her and looked over the muddy form on the ground. Erika’s breathing was fast and shallow and she looked feverish. He touched her tentatively and she opened her eyes slightly.

“Patrick, my boy.”The voice was a little girl’s; the words spoken came from his mother. “There’s not much time and this is the one I want. She’ll die if you don’t make it right. Save her for me, Patrick. Make her whole and take her where she belongs.”

“Mother...I don’t know how to save her.”

“Take my tongue from her, draw it away like breath from a dying man and it will come to you. Then deliver it to another, pass the poison to one of the other girls. Not this one, and not the little bitch who started all of this. I have plans for her.”

“Mother, when are you coming home? When will you be back with us?”

The girl’s blue eyes fluttered several times and her voice became slurred. “Not yet, my sweet boy. Soon, but not yet. It is not time.”

“Mother, I’ve waited for so long.”

His mother gave no answer and the girl shivered in the cold. Patrick moved over her and formed a mouth to place over her full lips. As she exhaled he drew in her breath and felt the poisons leave her body, drawn out not by his stealing of her breath so much as by his mother’s will. His was not to question the ways of a witch, but merely to obey.

When he pulled back from her, the girl was pale and close to death. Still, she drew in a lung full of air and gasped, shivered again and began to breathe normally.

Behind him the blonde girl did not move save to draw in a breath, but not far away the other girl-child, the one who had been trying to capture Erika saw him and shook her head, horrified by the sight.

Patrick shifted, changing his shape and taking a form closer to human. His flesh was raw and wounded and would need still more repairs.

The tall girl looked on, mesmerized by the changes he made in his flesh. Before she could recover her senses, he lunged and grabbed her, pulling her closer to him. She was strong for a little girl, but no challenge for him. Patrick had been a child when he failed his mother, barely an infant. These days he was much, much more than that.

She fought, trying to break free, but he pulled her closer until he could press his mouth to hers, and expelled the poisons he had drawn from Erika. The girl fought harder still, trying to escape, and he held her tightly, idly curious as to the appeal of a kiss. This was his second in only a few moments and it did nothing for him.

For the girl, the kiss was devastating. He felt her skin grow hot and feverish, felt her muscles relax as the toxins poured into her body and her spirit.

He’d have left her to die peacefully, but that was not an option. He was damaged by the forest, cut and bleeding in a hundred small places and just as importantly, Erika needed to be repaired.

Before her flesh could be ruined, Patrick skinned the dying girl, taking her epidermis into his body and leaving her bared for the world. He drew in her unmarred youthful skin and moved quickly to the girl called Erika, pushing aside the mud and filth and delicately layering new skin over the cuts and wounds that covered her.

She was young and lovely by human standards. He cleaned her of muck and filth as he carried her away from the death he’d been forced to deal out.

Shannon he left by the dead girl, unconcerned save that he not harm her. Where she woke was unimportant. How she lived was not his concern.

Patrick lay Erika on the ground and dressed her as best he could in her muddied clothes. He then slipped her over his shoulder and moved back toward the Academy.

He’d heard Denny’s screams earlier and knew where the man was. He would check on him later if he needed to, but for now, the girl was his only concern.

It was almost time for the sun to rise when he had finished his tasks.

Denny was not present when he found the remains of the other girl, the one he’d thought safe from all of the mayhem. She had triggered one of his many traps and died for her folly.

Her flesh was fresh enough and he used it to repair himself one more time before assuming his human guise again. After so long as a human the form was comfortable. He found he liked having teeth again and there was comfort even in the skull he had used for so many years.

Patrick felt for the children that died that night. He pitied them for their foolishness, just as he had always pitied the foolish. But he did not miss them and there was no deep remorse within him.

He could hide among the humans, and that was a very good thing, but he could not be a human: Much as he might want to dwell among them and much as he found comfort in their presence, they were still as different from him as the fingerprints that each of them held distinctively as their own.

Patrick had the truck loaded with fresh milk by the time Denny showed up. He quelled his excitement over the contact with his mother, knowing that someday soon she would need him again and he would answer her call: How could he not? She was his mother and he was her servant for all time.

Denny remembered the donuts this time and that was good.

Neither of them said anything about their night in the woods, and if Denny was subdued through the daily rituals, that was fine with Patrick.

There was a storm brewing at the Partridge house. Both of the daughters stood outside, holding on to each other and crying, as the Chief Constable looked at them, his face a study in anxiety and grief.

Before Denny could climb out of the truck, Patrick was standing and taking the delivery to the front door. The last thing he wanted for either of the girls was for them to deal with Denny and his stares.

Melissa walked over to him as he put down their delivery, her eyes puffy and her face streaked with tears. “I don’t think we can pay for that.”

Patrick looked at her closely and nodded. She was in shock, unable to fully register whatever tragedy had befallen her. It was hardly the first time in his life he had seen grief knock the pins out from under someone.

“What happened, Melissa?”

“My Dad...He had a fight with my Mom.” Her face broke a little, scrunching up as the tears started. Patrick put out his arms and she fell into them, crying, wailing her grief into his broad chest, her body wracked by sorrow.

Patrick held her, doing his best to calm her down. He spoke very little, but his hands stroked her hair and he rocked her softly while she cried. It took very little effort for him to understand the depths of her pain. Once upon a time his mother had been killed too.

When she had cried herself out, Patrick led her back to her sister, who looked to be handling things a little better, for the moment at least. “You two watch out for each other, okay?”

Both of the girls nodded their heads.

“What about your milk?” Her voice was as small as she was.

“I’ve got it covered. It’s yours. Drink it and stay healthy.” He had every reason to believe the milk would sit on their stoop and curdle before either of them remembered it. There was nothing he could do about that, but he also knew no one would begrudge them the cost of a couple of quarts. He left the girls alone, but marked them. He would watch over them for a time, because that was what you did when you ran across people in trouble and because, in the case of Melissa, he understood her grief.

The rest of his day was uneventful and that too, suited Patrick’s desires. The simple routines of the day gave him comfort as few other things in the world ever did.

Night Eyes
with Charles R. Rutledge

Halloween, 1973

Wellman, Georgia was not a big town. Nestled in the north Georgia mountains, surrounded by hills, valleys, the occasional river or creek and enough farmland to guarantee a few good harvest festivals, the town didn’t need to be much larger than it was, and none of the people living there ever seemed to mind the lack of extra traffic or crime.

It would be very easy to say that times were simpler back then in 1973, but it would also be a lie. There were issues that still needed tending to, social and political alike, and plenty of both. Asia was causing a few problems, and while a lot of people believed that the status quo was just fine as it was, there were people of color who were unsatisfied with their lot in life and Caucasians who thought those very same people were getting “uppity.” No, life was not simpler, but in Wellman it certainly seemed that way to the boys and their solitary female companion.

It was Halloween time, and the autumn was just about as perfect as it could be. The air was cold and crisp, the scent of wood smoke could be caught on the breeze—and if you looked to the hills around Wellman, more than one fire could be seen in the distance, several of which led to campsites, but a few of the older folks in town would have sworn they led straight to hippies who were out to destroy the rights of Americans everywhere with their strange notions of how the world should work and their insanely long hair. Sometimes change takes time and almost always there’s a bit of resistance along the way.

All of which was as far removed as the moon to the kids who gathered together in the town square to compare their collections of candy that night. The square was decorated with Halloween in mind, with a collection of decorations in the windows of all the shops surrounding the square proper, and a graveyard of Styrofoam headstones scattered across the lawn of the small grassy park in the center of town. Mostly the headstones bore names like M.T. GRAVES and FRANKENSTEIN, and mostly they were fairly simple in design, but they had the proper creepy effect in the darkness that swallowed Wellman when the sun set. Several adults were out that night, mostly in front of the various shops that were open for a little late night fun. And of course there were the monsters. The local chapter of the Jaycees always had fun with Halloween and the decorations. They also had fun with dressing up and having a town sized party in the square. There was music—recorded music only that year as half the band members that should have been there were currently off in basic training at Fort Bragg—and there were decorations and old man Harper—possibly the only man in all of Brennert County who would prosecute a shoplifter of any age at all—had stretched a sheet across the side of the Harper’s Rexall drugstore and a few horror movies would be played with the projector that he’d arranged to liberate from the high school. It was too early for the really scary movies, so currently they were playing “The Ghost and Mister Chicken.” Later in the evening they’d be playing something with a few more teeth.

Todd Wellman—who swore, incorrectly, that the town was named after his grandfather—was dressed as a scarecrow. He looked impressive enough, but the resulting rash he got would linger for almost a week. The burlap sack he chose was a little gamey and he didn’t listen to his mother when she told him to wash the fool thing first. At eleven years of age, Todd was one of the oldest of the group and fairly sure that he was in charge. Some days he was right. Others he was sorely mistaken.

Josh Larkin was nine that year, and for the first time in his life his parents were letting him go trick or treating without one of them along to make sure he was safe. He’d had to beg for the privilege. Not only was he among the youngest of the group, he was also the shortest by several inches. That might have held back some kids, but as Josh had made very clear a few months earlier to Blake Kincaid, the class bully, he wasn’t the least bit afraid to get into a fight. Blake had kicked the crap out of him, but it hadn’t been an easy fight for the bigger boy and by the time it was done he’d decided maybe there were easier targets than the kid he’d always called “Inch Worm.” Josh was dressed in a homemade Superman suit that his mother had sewn for him. He might have lacked the fancy boots, but every boy there was envious of the shirt with the flawlessly sewn S shield on the chest. Josh never noticed the envious looks. He was too busy wishing he had real x-ray vision whenever he looked at CeeCee.

CeeCee Taylor was the only girl allowed to run with the guys that particular year. Mostly she was allowed because she played better baseball, willfully got into trouble with the best of them, and was, frankly, a bit meaner in a fight than the rest of them. She was a tomboy, of course, because no other type of girl would have been caught dead with the group. CeeCee conceded to being a girl at Halloween only because she had no choice in the matter. Her mother had made a witch outfit for her the year before and seeing as she hadn’t grown out of it she got to wear it again. She didn’t mind at all. CeeCee rather liked being a witch. Also, the broom was just the right length for bonking people on the head when she got bored. CeeCee was easily bored, as all the boys had learned.

Bodey Harper—grandson of the nearly legendary old man Harper—was wearing a white sheet over his body and his face was painted white, except for the skull like shadows his older brother had painted over his eye sockets to emphasize the shape of his face. The end result was a rather unsettling looking ghost shape. Bodey was big and he was pudgy and he had exactly no modesty. He was probably a little bigger than Mikey Foster, but no one ever called Bodey fat and almost everyone called Mikey fat. The difference a little confidence can make is often astounding.

Mikey was not there that year. He would have been, but a bad spill off the dirt bike his parents had given him had resulted in a very badly broken leg and hip. Instead of trick or treating, he was laid up in the hospital. Because he was forced to by his parents, Josh was also gathering candy for his friend in the hospital. Not being completely altruistic, Josh had managed to smuggle a few of the candy bars from Mikey’s bag into his own, but he had also replaced them with bubblegum, because he wasn't a crook.

Paul Griffin was dressed as a clown, with green hair and a hobo style face. His clothes belonged to his uncle, and had all been altered just enough to let him wear them without tripping over the length of the pants or the sleeves. Paul had started puberty a little faster than the rest. At ten he was already dealing with growth spurts and towered over everyone else.

The last boy in the group was Walt Raley; everyone called the boy Raley, not by his first name, but by the last, because that was how he’d always introduced himself. Even the teachers at school called him by his last name. Raley was possibly the most likely to get everyone in trouble with his mouth. Not because he was firing off insults—which he did, but always under the right circumstances—but because no matter what the situation, no matter how insane or potentially dangerous, it was Raley who was most likely to say “I dare you,” or, heaven forbid, to go one step further with “I double-dog dare you,” which everyone knew couldn’t be turned down without looking like a complete coward.

No one was quite sure what Raley was dressed as, but there was a cape thingy and there were bones painted on his shirt and his pants. He seemed offended that no one recognized what he was supposed to be and refused to speak further of the matter. None of the others really cared enough to push the matter. There was candy to consider.

That particular night wasn't too much different for the group, except, of course for Mikey. It was Halloween and they’d finished their candy hunt, but now they were wired on sugar and they were looking to have fun. And unfortunately for the group, it looked an awful lot like they wouldn’t be having their fun with everyone else in the Square. The why was simple enough to answer: the Blackbourne Boys were heading into the Square and at that particular time the whole lot of them needed to not be seen by the Blackbournes.

Four days earlier the deadly mouth of Raley had started troubles by double-dog daring Todd to taunt Jonah Blackbourne. Unfortunately, Todd had listened.

The Blackbournes were a large group, to be kind. Most people in town referred to them not as a family but as a clan because there were brothers, sisters, cousins and second cousins in such abundance that remarkably few people could keep the family members separate without a chart to sort them out. A good number of the clan lived in Crawford’s Hollow and there were many rumors that not all of the children who lived in the Hollow were getting their proper education, but over time the officials had stopped trying to rectify the situation and had, apparently, accepted that some of them would never manage to get to school with any regularity.

Jonah was considered a perfect example of why so many of the Blackbournes would never get a proper schooling. Jonah was healthy enough, but he was also unattractive to a fault and he was also slow. Not retarded, not according to the school at least, but slow. The boy almost never participated in class, seldom spoke unless he was asked a question, and tended to keep to himself. In other words, he was a target waiting to get aimed at.

And Raley was just the person to find that target. And Todd was just the weapon to aim. While they were at lunch on the Monday before Halloween, the boys were all sitting at the same table in the cafeteria—it was pizza day, so everyone was in a good mood—and as they ate their food, Raley started looking for something to do. When he spotted Jonah picking his nose, he knew he had a perfect target.

“Lookit him.” He shook his head. “Boy’s just digging for gold right there in front of everyone.” Those who knew Raley could almost see the gears in his head working out the proper way to respond.

CeeCee rolled her eyes. She was one of the guys, true enough, but she had the common sense to leave Jonah alone. He was a sad case and deserved pity, not ridicule. “Leave him be, Walter Raley.”

Raley looked at the girl as if she had accused him of molesting the local stray dog. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You were gonna.”

“Was not.” He stared hard until, finally, CeeCee looked away. He wasn't worth having a fight with in her estimation. Instead she turned to Josh and asked him if he wanted to trade his apple for her brownie, because just of late she’d decided that brownies would make her fat. Josh—who would have gladly traded his kidney for her apple if it made her smile—said yes and a moment later was the proud owner of two chocolate brownies. Sure enough, she smiled like he was doing her the biggest favor ever, and he, in turn, smiled like he’d just been granted his life’s ambition.

So CeeCee was distracted when Raley looked at Todd and pointed at Jonah. “You should go over there and take his pizza.” He chose Todd with great care. Todd had already lamented that his rectangular slice of school pizza was smaller than everyone else’s in an effort to find someone who would take pity and switch with him. To that end, he had eaten everything on his plate except for the pizza, and then watched as those around him failed to offer up their larger and no doubt far tastier slices.

“No way.”

Raley looked at his friend with disappointment. “Just do it. He hasn’t even touched his slice. It ain’t like you’re stealing, just trading, and if he says anything you can just call him on digging in his nose like he’s digging a ditch.”

Probably it was the pizza that brought about his ruination. Pizza was, as Raley knew full and well, the number one food in Todd’s life.

“I couldn’t. He’s a Blackbourne.” He said it like that explained everything, and for most people it would have, but Raley was not like most people. Raley was a trickster through and through.

“I dare you.”

Todd looked at him with wide eyes, knowing what was coming next. “No sir.”

“It’s pizza, Todd.” Raley spoke seductively, his eyes looking at the pallid, failed slab of cheese and tomato sauce on the green tray in front of his friend. So meager, so very tiny. “I double-dog dare you.”

And that was it, really. That was all there was to it. From that moment on, Todd had no choice. He had to trade pizza slices with Jonah Blackbourne. His stomach gave a rumble almost as feeble as his slice of pizza in agreement.

He pulled a napkin from the tin dispenser on the table and used it to lift his slice of lunch. Without letting himself think, Todd walked over to where Jonah was still vigorously digging at his left nostril and grabbed the boy’s slice of pizza. It was, in fact, almost twice the size of the slice he’d been given. He was justified. The boy hadn’t even bothered eating anything and the lunch break was over halfway done.

Several people saw Todd walk over. More saw him switch the pizza slices. CeeCee looked his way and stared hard, her mouth hanging open in shock. Not because Todd would do something rude, but because he did it to a Blackbourne.

Todd walked back and ate his pizza on the way, blushing because people were looking at him. Really, as far as he was concerned it was a horrid thing he’d done. He hadn’t asked, he’d just taken what he wanted, but it had been a dare and there was no choice.

On the other hand, Jonah seemed absolutely unconcerned. Whatever he’d been digging for was apparently still up in his nose, but he pulled his finger free and studied it hard.

And Raley looked on, his eyes taking in every detail.

“Good job. And now you have enough to eat, too.” That was good enough for Raley. A dare had been taken, bravery shown and no one was hurt in the process—though, in truth, Raley could have lived with a quick butt kicking had it come from the dare as long as the fanny getting the boot was not his.

It seemed like all would be well, but for the appearance of Lament.

Lament Blackbourne was either the older sister or the cousin of Jonah. No one was completely sure. Either way, she was one of the Blackbournes who attended school every day and managed to get good grades. She was, in many ways, the complete opposite of Jonah. Jonah had dark hair and mottled, unpleasant skin. Lament had porcelain flesh, a perfect complexion and hair so pale blonde it bordered on white. The only feature they shared was their shockingly blue eyes. Where Jonah was unattractive, clumsy and not very bright, Lament was pretty enough to make most of the boys stutter, graceful enough to be a dancer if she decided that was what she wanted to do with herself, and a straight A student. Sadly for Raley, she was also far less forgiving than her male counterpart.

While he was feeling ever so satisfied with his latest manipulations, the older girl came up behind him and grabbed a handful of his hair. She pulled it hard before he could do more than realize he was being touched and she leaned down until her lips were next to his ear. “You think you’re funny. You think picking on Jonah is a good time?”

Raley froze. He wanted to yelp. He wanted to scream. He very possibly even wanted to run or turn and swing, but there were too many problems with that. He couldn’t run from a girl. He couldn’t scream either, without looking like a sissy. He couldn’t hit a girl and even if he’d been inclined to do so, he didn’t dare hit Lament. Because Lament was maybe a sister to Jonah, but she was definitely a sister to Lorne Blackbourne.

Lorne Blackbourne could easily have been called the boogieman by almost every kid in the school. Hell, it could be said that he was the source of a lot of nightmares and a few situations where the kids at the school had prayed to wake up before things got too messy.

Lorne looked a lot like his little sister Lament. He was lean and pale and dressed in jeans and wore black shirts. His hair was too long—almost hippy long, if the truth had to be told—and even though he’d been sent home a couple of times for having his hair so long, he hadn’t cut it yet. Apparently his parents had pulled some strings. Or at least his mother had. No one knew for certain who his father was. He came from a broken home and everyone knew that meant all kinds of trouble.

“We were just funnin’, is all!” Raley’s words were rushed, and he looked around to see if a teacher might be close enough to do anything about the situation. There were no teachers to be seen.

“Lorne will be funnin’ too, when he cuts your ugly face off.” Lament let go of his hair and stormed away, not bothering to look back.

That had been five days earlier and no one had seen any of the Blackbournes at school for the rest of the week. It was long enough that they could almost forget the incident, right up until Lament and Lorne showed up on the other end of the Square along with the hulking form of their cousin Frank, who could only be called gigantic by anyone’s standards. Frank was a grown up. He should have been seen as a source of possible protection from any troubles, but he was also known for his temper and he’d be more likely to beat any grownups who tried to help than to stop something from happening.

CeeCee saw them first. “We gotta go. Now.” She didn’t suggest it; she ordered it. One look where she was pointing and they all agreed. They moved as quickly as their costumes would permit, slipping out of the square before the situation could get bad.

If the energy of the average highly sugar-charged ten-year-old could be bottled, cities could be spared enormous electrical bills. The group proved that fact over the next fifteen minutes, half running and half speed walking their way to the edge of town while they looked over their shoulders again and again.

They did not dawdle, of course, but took the opportunity to knock on doors they otherwise might have ignored. If they could not have the fun of movies and music in the Square, then they would surely have extra candy.

And when they finally slowed down again, they looked at the long, winding road that lead to the old Gramling Place and knew another reason to fear.

Old Whit Gramling, as everyone knew, was a scary old coot. No one ever dared head toward his place on Halloween. You never knew what sort of trouble you could get into.

So naturally Walt Raley took one look at the path and felt a smile start to grow on his lean face.

“Hey guys, I got an idea.”

“If it’s like last year, forget it, Raley,” Todd said. “Mr. Cantrell is probably sitting there waiting for people to try and roll his yard this year.”

Raley waved his hand in the air as if he were waving away the protest. “None of that rock salt hit you.”

“It didn’t hit you either because you were running away crying like a big baby when he unloaded that shotgun, Raley,” CeeCee said.

“I wasn’t crying,” said Raley.

“What’s your idea?” said Bodey, trying to head off an argument. It always seemed to fall to Bodey to play peacemaker somehow.

“Let’s go trick or treat at the Gramling place.”

Five blank faces stared back at Raley. Not surprisingly, it was CeeCee who spoke first. “You are out of your tiny mind, Raley. Nobody goes out there.”

Raley grinned. “That’s why it’s such a great idea. We’ll be the first. When we get to school tomorrow we can say we went right up to Whit Gramling’s front door and asked for candy.”

Todd said, “I don’t know, Raley. My grandmother always says you shouldn’t be out in the woods on Halloween.”

There were nods and grunts of general agreement. In Wellman, Georgia, everyone knew you didn’t go into the woods on Halloween. The only thing worse than that would be going up on Mooney’s Bluff. Most people weren’t sure exactly why the woods were supposed to be dangerous. The tradition went back over a hundred years to when Wellman could barely have been called a town. But folk tales from the mountain people and legends from the Cherokee all agreed that the woods were a bad place on All Hallows’ Eve.

“Now who’s a baby?” Raley taunted. “I ain’t afraid to go. Now who’s with me?”

“I’ll go,” Paul Griffin said. Paul didn’t talk much, so when he spoke the group tended to listen.

Bodey Harper said, “Count me out. My dad says Whit Gramling can witch water and line bees and all kinds of other stuff. I’m not going out to his place in the dark.”

That gave even Walter Raley pause for a moment. He had heard stories about Gramling as well. That he was a, whatever it was that you called a man who was a witch. A warlock, that was it. People said he knew all kinds of things that regular people didn’t know about or want to know about. But the idea had been his and Raley couldn’t back down now.

“He’s just a crazy old man,” Raley said. “Now how about you, CeeCee? You ain’t afraid of an old man are you?”

It was CeeCee’s curse that she had always felt the need to be the equal of any of the boys. Maybe it was because her dad had wanted a boy and CeeCee was the youngest of three sisters and she had always tried to win her daddy’s attention. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t about to let Walter Raley get bragging rights about visiting the Gramling place on Halloween.

“Of course I’m not afraid, bone-head,” CeeCee said. She turned to Josh. “How about you, Superman?”

Up until that moment, Josh had absolutely no intention of following Raley into the dark woods. If his dad found out he was even this far away from the town square, Josh would be grounded for the rest of his life. But somehow he couldn’t say no. CeeCee might think he was scared and he could not stand for that to happen.

“I’ll go,” Josh said.

“Down to you, Todd,” said Raley. “You going to show some guts or slink back to the party with fraidy-cat Bodey here.”

“I am not a fraidy-cat!” Bodey said, and stalked off toward the lights of the edge of town. “I'm just not as stupid as some people!”

“Should we let him go off by himself?” CeeCee said. “The Blackbournes are back there somewhere.”

“Bodey will stay clear of them,” Raley said, dismissing the other boy’s chances of getting himself hurt. “Now how about it, Todd?”

Todd didn't want to go. Not one bit. But he didn't like the idea of Raley taking charge of 'his' group, so he said, “Yeah, I'll go. But won't we need a flashlight or something? There are no lights on that road.”

Raley said, “Nah, the moon is bright enough. Let's get going.”

The witch, the clown, the scarecrow, the superhero, and whatever Raley was supposed to be left the last few houses on the edge of Wellman and started down the winding dirt road that led past Whit Gramling's house.

Raley regretted his rash notion almost as soon as they were among the trees. He had been right about the moon being bright, but he hadn't counted on how dense the woods were. The branches seemed to almost lace overhead, blocking out most of the light, and wherever the silvery moonlight did break through, it cast wavering shadows of the leafless branches on the ground, looking for all the world like grasping claws and withered, skeletal hands.

The brisk October wind seemed to be picking up and dead leaves went spinning past the group. The woods were so dark on either side of the road that it was easy for Paul Griffin to imagine they were walking through some deep forest like the one the dwarves went through in The Hobbit. He had read that book last summer and several times since.

“Jesus!” Todd said without warning.

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” CeeCee said. “What is it?”

“Sorry, sorry,” said Todd. “I stopped to fix my mask and I thought I saw something move back there behind us.”

CeeCee said, “You’re just trying to scare everyone.”

“No, I swear I saw something. Just for a second I thought I saw someone run across the road and into the trees.”

“Maybe the Blackbournes followed us,” said Paul.

Raley said, “Nah, they were all going into the Square when we left. They didn’t see us. You’re just imagining things, Todd.”

“I’m not,” insisted the boy. “I think it was a man, but he was kind of hunched over. Like Quasimodo!”

“You’re crazy,” said Raley, holding his hand up beside his temple and twirling a finger.

“Maybe we should go back,” Paul said.

Raley said, “Come on. There’s no one back there. And besides, we’re probably half way to Gramling’s place by now. Let’s get going.”

Raley wished he were as confident as he was trying to sound. Todd looked genuinely spooked. Maybe he had seen something. Then again, it was Halloween and they were out in the middle of the woods. Probably he saw a deer and his imagination did the rest.

The group walked on in silence. It hadn’t rained for several days and their feet made dry, crunching sounds on the old dirt road. Despite his dismissal of Todd’s story, Raley kept glancing back and forth to the darkness on either side of the road. They had gone perhaps another two hundred yards when Raley saw the eyes.

He never questioned that they were eyes. They were too big and too round to be human eyes and they seemed to glow with an inner, baleful light, but they were eyes. Raley stopped in his tracks.

“What is it,” CeeCee said. “Not getting scared are you?”

Raley said, “I thought.”

“You thought what?” said Todd.

Raley looked at Todd’s expectant face. He said, “Nothing. Just an owl.”

Raley started walking again but now he didn’t look at the sides of the road anymore. He just kept his eyes focused straight ahead. The Gramling cabin had to be around the next bend or two. As many scary stories as Raley had heard about Whit Gramling, he all of a sudden wanted very much to see the lights of the house. Of any house.

“Guys,” Paul Griffin said. “Guys, there’s someone following us.”

The group stopped again and Raley turned to look at Paul. “Aw man, not you too.”

Paul said, “I can hear them. They walk when we do and stop when we stop, but there’s somebody moving in the woods. They’re quiet but I can hear the leaves crunching.”

Raley felt a stab of fear. Maybe the Blackbournes had followed them. If so they could be in deep, deep trouble. That Lorne Blackbourne was crazy and the older kids said he carried a switchblade. And if their cousin Frank was with them? He was as big as a mountain and everyone said he was mean as a snake.

“Eww,” CeeCee said. “What is that smell?”

Raley sniffed the air and coughed. The smell was like rotten fish and the sewage treatment plant with some week old roadkill added. It was all Raley could do not to gag.

“Look,” Josh said, pointing towards the woods on their right.

Raley looked where the younger boy was pointing. Eyes again. But this time there were three sets.

“Those are just deer,” CeeCee said without conviction.

“I’ve been deer hunting,” said Paul. “Those aren’t deer.”

“There are more of them,” Todd said, pointing to the opposite side of the road where two more glowing sets of eyes regarded them from the woods.

And then they were running. There had been no command or signal. Just a silent understanding that they needed to run and right now. CeeCee gathered the skirt of her witch costume and took off. Josh was right beside her, his red cape flapping behind him. Todd ripped off his burlap bag mask and tossed it away and Paul was very glad that he had decided earlier not to wear the oversize clown shoes his father had suggested.

And Raley? Raley was a gym class washout. Always the last in every race. Always complaining he was tired or that his legs hurt. Not tonight. Not in the dark on the old dirt road. No, tonight Raley was the king of speed, outdistancing the other children as he ran full out.

Far ahead, through the dense web of tree limbs, Raley saw flickering yellow light. That had to be Whit Gramling's cabin. The electric company hadn't run lines out this far yet and so folks like Gramling still had to use fires and lamps. All they had to do was reach the house.

“Look out!” Josh yelled. His voice was high pitched and held a tremor.

Raley glanced back to the road ahead. There was a break in the trees and something was crouching in the irregular patch of moonlit road. Raley didn't get a good look. He didn't want a good look. Whatever it was, it was pale and vaguely man-shaped but there was something wrong with the way its limbs sprawled as it crouched there like some bloated spider.

“This way!” Raley yelled as he left the road and ran into the trees, trying to cut through the woods to the cabin. The other four followed, too afraid to do anything else. There was enough ambient light that the children could keep from slamming into the dark forms of trees but they tripped on underbrush and slender limbs slapped and scratched them as they ran. Raley fell and scrambled to his feet and stumbled on. He couldn't stop thinking about all those horror movies he had seen where someone tried to run from the monsters but fell and sprained an ankle. If he fell would the others leave him? If any of them fell would he leave them?

Raley heard a high-pitched shriek and then he could hear Todd Wellman screaming, “They got me! Oh God don't leave me! Don't let them take me!”

Raley froze. He couldn't see Todd clearly but he could see that the boy was struggling and that something was holding him. Two pale eyes glowed in the darkness behind Todd. There was nothing Raley could do. Todd was a goner and the rest of them were soon to follow.

Then Raley heard a solid, meaty impact and one of the pale eyes vanished. Another impact and the thing that held Todd grunted.

“You got his eye, CeeCee!” Josh Larkin shouted. “Throw another rock!”

“Last one!” CeeCee called and Raley could just make out her slender arm whipping toward the dark form. She was always the best baseball pitcher of all of them. The rock went wide, but the thing jerked aside, expecting a third hit. In that moment, Paul Griffin dodged in, and grabbing Todd's arm, he pulled the boy free and then the two of them were staggering Raley's way.

“Go! Go!” CeeCee shouted.

Raley turned to run but he felt something take hold of the back of his shirt. He spun, striking out at whatever held him and looked square into one of the pair of glowing eyes. A hot, horrible stench washed over him as the thing breathed in his face and Raley screamed.

He was still screaming when the shotgun boomed and there was a bright flash of light. Raley never forgot what he saw in that moment of illumination. It would haunt him for the rest of his life. All around him were twisted, malformed figures. Some clad in rags, some naked. Some almost human and some hideous clumps of flesh that somehow lived and moved.

The shotgun went off again and the pale creatures began to flee, howling in rage and frustration. Apparently some of them had been hit by whatever load the shooter was using because they limped and lurched after the others. The next moment the shooter turned on a big flashlight and Raley could see him.

He was a tall, rangy looking old man in blue overalls and a snap brim hat. He slipped the shotgun under one arm and stepped over to Raley and helped the boy to his feet. Raley didn't remember falling down, but he would always remember the strength in that huge calloused hand.

“Up you go, son,” the man said. His voice was deep and held the sort of deep Southern twang that Raley's grandfather had spoken with when he was still alive. “I don't think they'll be back, but you never know. It is Halloween. Let's get you kids inside.”

“Are you Mr. Gramling?” Paul said.

“I'm Whit Gramling. Don't much like being called mister, but I guess you folks are a bit young to be on a first name basis with a codger like me. Now come on. Can everybody walk?”

All of them could. Gramling played the flashlight on the ground ahead so they could see where they were going. They followed him to the big front porch of the cabin. There were a couple of rocking chairs and several straight-backed wooden chairs on the porch. It occurred to Raley that he was about to enter Whit Gramling's house and he stopped on the porch's bottom step.

Gramling looked down at him and Raley saw that the old man was smiling. Gramling said, “Marsha! Come out here and show yourself so these kids know I ain't going to eat them!”

The front door swung inward and a tall woman with short gray hair looked out through the screen door. “I made him give up eating children, kids. Gave him a belly ache.”

Raley smiled in spite of himself. The woman seemed to radiate warmth. Gramling opened the door and the five youngsters filed in. Raley could smell apple pie baking somewhere close.

“You're just in time for pie,” Marsha Gramling said. “I'm afraid we don't have any candy.”

“Go see about it, please, dear,” Gramling said. “I want to talk to these youngsters for a minute.” Marsha smiled and went through a door that presumably led to the kitchen. When she was out of earshot, Gramling leaned over and said, “Not a word about what you saw. We'll have some pie and then I'll drive you back to town.”

“But Mr. Gramling,” CeeCee began.

Gramling held up a finger. “My wife doesn't need to know what almost happened out there. I don't know what those things were doing so far from their usual stomping grounds, but we'll discuss it later.”

And so they had pie and they didn't talk about pale monsters with glowing eyes. When they were done, Whit Gramling told his wife that he was going to get the kids back to town before their parents got worried. Marsha bid them all farewell and made them promise to come back and visit in the daytime.

Once they were outside, Gramling led the group down to his gently used green Ford. When they were away from the house he said. “It'll be a tight fit for us all in the cab, but it's a bench seat and Superman there can sit in the floorboard if he has too. Don't think anyone better ride in the bed, given what happened.”

Raley, who had gotten back a little of his confidence, said, “What were those things, Mr. Gramling?”

Gramling said, “Here's all I'm going to say on the subject, son. There are old things in these hills and in the shadows of the mountains. Things best left alone. So from now on, when your elders tell you not to go into the woods on All Hallows’ Eve, you listen.”

“Yes sir,” said Paul Griffin. The others made noises of assent, but Raley still wanted to ask questions. Gramling wasn't any more forthcoming though on the ride back to town and the group lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

Gramling stopped the truck once the lights of downtown were visible. The party in the square still seemed to be going strong. The kids got out of the truck. Josh turned to Gramling who was leaning out of the open window and said, “Thanks for saving us, sir.”

“Yes, thanks,” echoed CeeCee.

Gramling smiled. “I saw the way you were winging those stones at those devils, CeeCee, and the way Paul and Josh here stood up for Todd. You didn't need much saving. I want all of you to come back and visit me. You too, Raley. It will make the wife happy and make me happy. But come in the daytime, okay?”

“Okay!” said Josh.

“There's just one more thing. I didn't tell you much about those things you saw because it's best if you leave them alone. Go on with your lives and just leave them be. But, and this is important, as you grow up, people are going to try and convince you that there are no such things as monsters. When they do, you just smile and nod. But inside, you know better. Now you get on home.”

With that, Gramling pulled away. Raley watched the truck until all he could see were the taillights glowing like two red eyes in the darkness.

Blood Tide

I

The Cliffside Walk in Black Stone Bay was one of the most popular attractions the town had to offer, but that was in the daytime, when the sun shone down on the jagged black teeth thrusting from the waves, and when a person could easily see where each foot was settling down.

Currently, it was just after two in the morning, and while a lot of people might have been hassled by the police for being out on the long run of private property that late, the issue never came up with the owners, all of whom the police knew very well.

Besides, neither of the men was making much noise aside from speaking softly.

“You’re certain this is the property you want?” Albert Miles spoke with genuine regret. “I’ve grown very fond of the old place over the years.”

Jason Soulis smiled and nodded his head. “Oh, yes, Albert. I am certain.” He cast his dark eyes over the waters of the bay and nodded again, slowly, as he drank in the fresh salt air. “It’s as perfect for me as any location I’ve seen could be, don’t you think?”

Miles grinned, looking more like a stocky old trucker than a multi-millionaire. He would have probably been perfect cast as the stodgy old grandfather in almost any 1960s sitcom. He dressed in flannel and jeans, because that was his preference.

Jason Soulis on the other hand, dressed in a gray pinstripe suit and wore a thick coat over it. The air was very cold as it came off the ocean.

“Well, I suppose a deal is a deal. Still, I’m going to miss this spot.” He looked at the estate behind him and sighed. “Lots of fond memories.”

“Well, of course you can visit, Albert.” He lifted one eyebrow and let his lips play at a hint of a smile. “There’s nothing to say you can’t come back and chew the fat with me from time to time.”

Albert Miles looked at his longtime associate and chuckled. “You’re still planning to go through with everything, aren’t you?”

The smile stayed on Soulis’ lips but left his eyes. “What on Earth would you know about that?”

“Remarkably little, actually. What you do is only of minor concern to me, Jason. You know that.”

“Let’s try to keep it that way. We have been friends for a long time and I value that.”

“Relax, Jason.” Albert Miles pulled out his pipe and fumbled with a match for several second before he finally got it lit. Soulis watched, but otherwise made no moves. “Who warned you in Ohio?”

“That’s very true.” The man nodded and eased up on the tension in his face. “You could have just left well enough alone and eliminated me if you wanted me gone.”

Miles laughed openly. It was a friendly sound, a jovial noise and it helped relax Soulis even more. “Jason, my good man, I have no reason to want you hurt. What you seek from the world and what I seek have never been at odds.” He put his hand on Soulis’ shoulder, which, considering the man’s idiosyncrasies, would have left many people dead a few moments later. “We’re friends, Jason. I know that isn’t easy to accept. I’m in the same situation as you along those lines, but we are friends.”

Soulis leaned against the narrow railing that separated the two of them from the cliffs below. At this particular juncture, the water was almost a hundred feet down and the jagged rocks that rose from the waves looked as deadly as they were. More than one person had been shredded against the black stones, torn apart by the pounding seas as it battered the coastline.

“Forgive me, Albert. It’s not always easy to trust someone.”

“Oh, hellfire, Jason, I wouldn’t trust me as far as I could throw that old house you just got from me.” He was still laughing, but it had muted down to a chuckle. “I’ve killed more friends than most people have.”

“True enough.” Soulis smiled again. “I suspect we both have.”

“Side effect of living, my friend.” He shrugged. “Live long enough and you make enemies more often than you make friends. I like to keep the few I have, whenever possible.”

“True.” Soulis pursed his lips and nodded again, his eyes drawn to the waves that slammed themselves blindly against the rocks. He smiled when he noticed the motion of the waves and that they hid something below the surface.

“I have another favor to ask of you, Albert.”

“Just feeling frisky tonight, aren’t you?” Miles was in a good mood. He hadn’t made a single demand for payment on any new favors. Not yet, at least. But he might. Soulis knew the man that well.

“I need a contact here in town. Preferably a young lady.”

“There’s a college girl I know of.” Albert Miles stayed silent for a long time before he answered. They had always had that sort of conversation and the long stretch before he got a response didn’t offend Jason Soulis in the least. “She’s a rare beauty, and might have certain...talents you are looking for. But I’m also rather fond of her.”

“You’ve sampled her talents then?” Soulis’ voice was lightly mocking.

“What? Heavens, no. Not along those lines. I haven’t had sex in forever.” Albert Miles sounded offended.

“My apologies, Albert. I forget myself.”

“Not at all.” His friend leaned against the railing to his right and looked down at the waves as they pulled back with a whispered moan. “You never met my wife. You couldn’t possibly know how wonderful she was.”

“It has been a long time, Albert. Don’t you still feel the need to be with a woman?”

“Of course I do.” He chuckled and then puffed away at his pipe for a moment. “I just don’t listen to that need very often.”

“I do. Mostly it’s force of habit.”

“Then Maggie will be perfect for you. She is a wonderful girl.” He looked at Soulis and winked. “I also hear she is very imaginative and quite accommodating.”

“Well, then I shall ask you for the proper way to contact her. I have a few needs that I must take care of before I can settle in properly.”

“I already thought of that. You’ll find her picture and her current address in the upper right hand drawer of the desk in the den. You’ll also find the name of the man who will procure her for you.” Miles puffed away contentedly on his pipe for a moment and then winked. “Don’t you worry, Jason. We’ll get you situated in town.”

“Where will you be going, Albert?”

“I have several irons in the fireplace.” He shrugged. “There are things I need to take care of in Europe. I might go there for a while. I haven’t really decided yet.”

“I think I like the feel of this place. I think I shall like it much more than I did Ohio.”

“Well, really, what is there to do in Ohio, anyway?”

“You might be surprised.” Jason leaned out over the edge of the railing and studied the waves as they crashed. There were secrets under those waves, and he knew he would be exploring them soon.

Albert Miles reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. They tinkled together softly as he tossed them in the air and caught them several times. When he bored of the game he threw them toward Jason Soulis, who caught them effortlessly.

“There you go, old man. All yours.”

“Will you be staying the night?” He pocketed the keys.

“What? No. No, we’re friends, Jason, but I don’t feel quite that foolish tonight.”

Albert Miles chuckled to himself as he walked away. He did not look back and Jason Soulis did not watch him go.

II

Matt Casey was unaware that he was being watched. He probably wouldn’t have cared either way. He was running on a serious high and the only thing he much had a desire for currently was anything that could keep his high going.

Of course, that required money, and Matt was running low. He had paid his tuition over at the Winslow Harper University earlier in the week and that had pretty much drained the coffers until his father sent his next allowance check. He’d paid, because he knew good and damned well that if he didn’t maintain good grades his parents would cut him off. He wasn't quite far gone enough to want to try living on the streets.

But he was getting there.

Beside him, his best buddy and roommate, Louis, was grinning ear to ear and looking at things that only he could see. From time to time he came back to the real world and asked what they were going to do next. If he asked again, Matt was pretty sure he’d have to cave his skull in. Lou was a bit of a downer when he started asking too many questions.

“What are we gonna do next, Matt?” Yep. There it was, that need to snap his friend’s neck. He held it in check.

“We’re gonna get more money, is what we’re gonna do.”

“How? Dude, we’re all tapped out.”

Matt closed his eyes and tried counting to ten. He made it to seven before he forgot what he was doing, but by then he’d grown calmer again.

“Lou, old buddy, old pal, just shut the fuck up and let me think.”

“Oh. Yeah. All right. It’s all good.”

They were standing in the shadows of Parminter Street’s alleyway, the only source of light near them coming from the liquor store across the street. If he could just focus for a minute, Matt knew he could remember the reason that he’s chosen this spot. There was a good reason. A damned fine reason.

That damned fine reason walked out of the liquor store a minute later. Margaret Preston, Maggie to her friends. And to her clients. She was dressed just the way he liked to see her, like she was all money.

Maggie had dark, curly hair pulled back into a ponytail and small, expensive diamond stud earrings in her ears, and a face that had visited his wet dreams more than a few times. She was hot, and she knew it, but she was also unavailable for dating.

Her dates had to pay for the privilege. And they had to pay plenty for it, too. He knew a few guys who’d scraped up the cash, and she was supposed to be a pretty amazing lay. Normally when he saw her at school, she was dressed as casually as possible and looked like the girl next door. He’d heard she dressed for whatever was required of her when she was working, and apparently that meant that she was supposed to be dressed like a high-stepping bitch tonight. Her pants were black leather, supple and tight in all the right ways, and her shirt was a little pink baby-doll T with the word Princess stretched across her impressive breasts. Her shoes were dark leather short boots with just an inch or two of heel, and designed for walking all over a man. Matt figured he could spend a week or two nailing her and never have a reason to get soft. Something about the good-girl-gone-bad look always did that to him.

Not that he wanted her just for the pleasure of sticking it to her. He had other plans. He wanted her for the wad of cash she probably had stuffed into one of her too-tight pockets. If what he’d heard was true, a night with her cost enough to pay the rent for his house for about a month. Not a bad trick to turn.

“Dude, that bitch is hot.” Louis was giggling. That couldn’t be a good sign. He reached over and pinched Lou’s arm hard enough to leave a dark red mark. “OWWW! What the fuck?”

Maggie turned sharply, her dark eyes hidden in shadow, and her sweet mouth stuck in the sort of pout that made him think bad things about what he’d like to do to her.

Before Lou could open his stupid mouth again, Matt slapped a hand over it and pushed him as quietly as he could into the darkest recess of the alley. Lou struggled for a second and then relaxed, his breath and spit covering Matt’s palm.

“You shut up, Lou. You shut right the fuck up. You ain’t gonna fuck this up.”

“mumm wumph umf?” Fuck what up? Even when his mouth was open and free to flap away, Matt could always understand Lou, which was pretty damned impressive considering how often he slurred his speech. Understanding him while he was gagged didn’t cause a problem.

He moved out of the way so Louis could see Maggie again. “She’s our meal ticket tonight? Get me?”

Lou watched the girl for a second or two, as she finally decided she hadn’t heard anything to worry about and started walking again. He nodded enthusiastically. Both of them had talked about how much they would like to use her as their sperm bank on more than one occasion.

“Wn munna fug erm?” Are we gonna fuck her?

“Maybe. But not if you screw this up, so keep your fucking mouth shut.”

He watched Maggie walking, mesmerized briefly by the shape of her ass as she swayed softly down the sidewalk. It wasn't a forced sashay, just the way her hips were designed to work.

Maybe, hell. He had every intention of peeling her out of those pants and having a party. She might scream, but he could arrange for that to be muffled. Just let her chew on Lou’s thing for a while, or make her eat a few pieces of newspaper.

Either way, he was going to get what he wanted from Maggie. The right drugs always helped him feel good about taking what he wanted and she probably had enough money on her to keep him guilt free for at least a week.

Maggie Preston turned a corner, taking the short cut through the park back to the apartments where she lived.

With several urgent gestures and a warning to stay the fuck quiet, Matt led the way. The hunt was on, as it were, and adrenaline mixed with his high and a serious case of blue balls to make him feel down right predatory.

Halfway down the alley, he forgot all about all of that. Maggie had company. Tom Pardue was standing next to her and grinning like a baboon.

At thirty-five years old, Pardue tried his best to look like he was twenty. He had thin blond hair, more than a few acne scars and a face that bore a strong resemblance to a chimpanzee’s. He was also the man to talk to if you wanted to pay for Maggie’s services.

Okay, so he dressed like a loser; normally doing his best to look like he belonged at the beach and ready to catch a few waves, with oversized shorts and baggie shirts that failed to completely hide the fact that his muscles were like steel. If the rumors were true, he also carried a weapon or five almost all the time.

Tom was also the number one source of fun when it came to getting a good high, and he knew both Lou and Matt as members of his regular clientele.

It looked like the two of them were going to have an argument. Maggie had her arms crossed over her chest and Tom had his hands planted on his hips. There was no way in hell to get close enough to hear what they were saying, but the expressions on their faces made it clear they weren’t having a social moment.

The argument started getting heated, but in a quiet way. They hissed whispers at each other and Matt put a hand on Lou’s shoulder to make sure he kept his mouth shut. Excitement mixed with disappointment. On the one hand, he wanted to get his hands on Maggie and her cash. On the other hand, it might be fun to see what Tom did to her if she gave him too much lip. Just thinking about being the one to put her back in her place was giving his desire for her a major boost.

Tom’s phone let out an annoying little chirp and spoiled the moment. He held up one finger to shut Maggie’s mouth while he answered and then spoke quickly, turning in Matt and Lou’s direction. Matt hauled Louis back again, his heart thudding hard. Tom didn’t like peepers. He didn’t like them enough to hospitalize a few of them in the past.

Not really a plan that suited Matt’s desires.

A half a minute went by without a word being heard, and with Lou getting edgier and edgier. Lou never took it well when he had to behave himself and also he might be seeing things again.

Matt shot him a look: What? What is it this time, Louis?

And Lou pointed with his right hand to the tops of the buildings around them.

Matt swallowed his little yelp before it got out. The buildings looked wrong in the darkness. It took him a second to realize that the roofs of the structures were moving.

They were covered with crows. Hundreds of the carrion eaters were perched along the edges of the buildings and looking down at Matt, Lou, Tom, and Maggie. Four people to scores of birds.

Matt felt his skin crawl. He didn’t have a problem with crows, thought they were kind of neat, actually, but there were so damned many of them and they were all silent. It wasn't natural.

As he looked up, several of the birds turned their heads and looked down at him, inspecting him like they would a tender piece of dead rabbit in the road. It was unsettling.

“What the fuck, dude?” That was Lou, but his voice was soft and nervous.

“I dunno...Weird shit, Lou. Really weird.”

Before either of them could say anything else, Tom came stomping out of the alleyway, his phone to his ear. He didn’t notice them. He looked far too busy handling whatever crisis was coming over the phone for him.

Tom looked back into the alley and pointed a finger at where Matt guessed Maggie was still standing. “This isn’t over. You get your ass home, and I better not have to double count tomorrow, you understand me?”

If Maggie made a response, it was hidden by the walls of the alleyway.

He risked a look down the alleyway when Tom stomped his way toward the campus. Not much of a reason to drive this time of night. Everything was close by in Black Stone Bay. Maggie was leaning against the wall, and lighting a cigarette. His lips parted in a small grin. He’d never have guessed she was a smoker.

“I wonder what else I’ll find out.”

Matt started walking, and Louis was right behind him. This was going to be fun.

III

Maggie leaned against the wall and willed her hands to stop shaking. He was being an asshole again, which was one of his specialties. She took a drag off the Salem in her mouth and blew the cloud away, barely taking the time to savor the burning nicotine. She didn’t really even want a smoke, just a good reason for her nerves to calm down.

Now and then Tom liked to accuse her of a few misdeeds, knowing full well that she wasn't stupid enough to steal from him, just so he could rough her up. It was his thing, his fetish. And while she supposed she had to accommodate the man to keep him happy, she did not have to like it. She’d had enough of the rough and ready for one night. Lance Brewster was one of her regular clients and while he was normally a gentleman all the way through the proceedings, he was currently having arguments with his soon to be ex-wife. That meant he had to take it out on someone, and with what he paid Maggie, he figured she was a good whipping post.

Bad move. As of now, Lance wasn’t getting any ever again. Not unless there was a lot of groveling going on. She wasn't a hooker, she was a call girl. She could always decide not to answer a call. And there wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do about it. Not even Tom, who had tried more than once to convince her to do things the same as all the other girls working for him.

“Not gonna happen, you prick.” She threw down her cigarette and crushed it under her toe. “Not for you or anyone else. I pick, I choose and if that changes, I don’t play anymore.”

She reminded herself that this was strictly temporary. It helped to remind herself of that fact at least once a day. This was a means to an end, nothing more. It sure as hell wasn't her career for the future.

One year to go and she would be done with the university. Then she could have a life. A real life. Damned near anywhere she wanted.

Someone giggled down in the alleyway, back toward the liquor store, and she looked that way as casually as she could. Two guys, both of them students at the school. They were looking her way and trying to be sneaky, but neither of them was acting very sober. Okay, to be blunt, they were wasted.

And she wished Tom was still there, just like that. He was a known threat. He was not two losers hopping on the sort of stuff that made their eyes all glassy and their hands twitch.

Her hand slid into the left hand pocket of her leather pants and she caught the top of her pepper spray canister. Then she turned away and started walking, her skin crawling, knowing full well that they intended to do something.

Never show them fear. That was a lesson her father had taught her a long time ago. He told her that fear was like a wounded animal to predators. It made them twice as hungry and dangerously stupid.

So she walked with her back to them and prayed she’d be able to hear them coming closer. So far, no problem, because they were both doing their best to whisper—and failing.

“Damn, Matt, lookit that ass!”

“Dude! Shut up!” Neither of them was speaking loudly, but at two-thirty in the morning they may as well have been using bullhorns.

Maggie turned and faced them when they were only fifteen feet from her, crossing her arms and hiding her hand on the trigger for the pepper spray. “Hi. Matt, isn’t it? What can I do for you?”

She looked him dead in the eyes, not allowing herself to blink. And he blushed. He actually blushed.

“Hi, Maggie. Yeah. I’m Matt. This is Louis.”

“I know both of you.” She looked from Matt to the other one, a skinny dark-haired boy who couldn’t stop smiling if his life depended on it. “Louis and I go to the same church. I see him there every week with his mother and father, isn’t that right, Louis?”

Matt was doing the school-boy crush thing, which was kind of cute. Louis was looking very, very embarrassed, as if he’d just realized he was walking the streets without his pants on.

Subtext was everything here and she knew it. She had identified both of them and pointed out that it wasn’t a casual thing. She could tell people who they were if they tried anything stupid.

Louis finally nodded and looked away from her. She’d just won the battle with him, if she could do the same thing with Matt, they wouldn’t have to get sprayed and she wouldn’t have to risk getting the crap beat out of her or worse. They were high as kites, but they weren’t so far gone that they didn’t understand there could be bad consequences if they did anything to her.

At least that was what she was counting on.

Matt nodded his head, and looked at Louis, who looked away from his friend like a kicked puppy trying to find an escape from its master’s shoe.

“You guys have a great night. Be safe. There’s a lot of weirdoes out.”

And off she went, heading back toward her apartment. Listening carefully. She heard only silence, and that was a good thing.

IV

Matt spit on the wall as soon as she was out of view. “Fucking bitch.”

“Dude. She knew us. There’s no way in hell we can do anything to her. She’d point fingers and I am not getting busted again. I barely got out of it the last time.” Louis was sounding a lot more sober and more like a wimp with every passing second. Matt was feeling a lot more sober, and that wasn't making him happy either.

He clenched his hands together until the knuckles creaked and he could feel his nails biting into his palms. “Yeah? You want to go a week or two without any money? ‘Cause right now? We’re almost broke.”

“So we’ll find someone else, dude. Or we can hock something. Let’s just go.” Lou was whining. One mention of his sainted mom and he became a pussy.

“No. I want her. She’s got cash and I want to fuck her.”

“Dude, she’s Tom’s girl.” Louis was trying to talk reason, a sure sign that he was coming down fast. In half an hour he would be ready to go to sleep.

“Lou. Tom’s not here. I won’t tell if you won’t. She’s going into the park, Louis. Into the park. There’s no lights out there and there’s no patrols or any of that shit. I say we do this.” He stared hard at Lou. The thing he liked about Lou was that he was a good follower. Matt could normally browbeat him into doing almost anything. Especially if it involved getting high or getting laid. This situation had both as benefits.

“Lou. When else are you ever going to get a chance to nail Maggie Preston?” He was winning the argument. “Dude, whatever we do to her, we just gotta make sure she isn’t gonna talk about it later.”

“Yeah?” He could almost hear the drool forming in his buddy’s mouth. He had him.

“Let’s go. We don’t do this right now, we might never get another chance.”

They started moving, silently this time, truly silently, remembering that this was a one-time chance, a one-time deal. And remembering what their goals were. Sex and money; the greatest motivators known to man.

V

She heard them as they came for her again and felt her stomach rime over with frost. They were running hard and she doubted that they were just going to talk this time.

Maggie ducked down low and tried to hide behind a bush only a few inches shorter than she was, cursing the pants she was wearing and the way they cut into her midriff. Hard to breathe when your pants are trying to strangle you.

Matt, the one with the scary eyes, was in front again and close enough that she could get him with the spray, but he was going too fast. The only good news was he had to slow down to veer her way. The bad news was that he’d spotted her.

“Come on, Maggie, we just want to play.” He was panting hard from running, but he was doing his best to look cool and relaxed. His face was too flushed to actually carry it off.

“Don’t you come near me, Matt. I’ll hurt you. I shit you not.” Her voice was level and calm. She was good at holding things in. Always had been.

“You and what army?” He was laughing. So she took aim at his snotty, happy expression and sprayed red liquid over his eyes and into his nose and mouth.

Matt screamed, rearing back and covering his face, doing exactly what he shouldn’t have been doing and rubbing furiously at the pepper, smearing it across his flesh and into his pores.

“Oh! Oh, fuck it burns!”

Maggie didn’t wait around to see if he was okay. She got to running, putting her years on the track team to good use and hauling her ass for home at top speed.

Louis had different ideas. He came at her instead of going to help his friend. She was hoping they were close enough that Louis would worry more about him than about trying to get to her. She had miscalculated.

“Louis! You let it go and I won’t have to tell Father Wilson what you’ve been doing!”

“You can’t tell him if you can’t open your mouth anymore.” He didn’t sound right. He wasn't even breathing hard. He should have been, if Matt was any indication, but he wasn't. He sounded like he could go a couple more miles without getting too tired.

She was just preparing to take aim with the pepper spray when he tackled her, sending her sprawling and practically riding her down to the ground like a toboggan. His hands were all over her arms, pinning them, and his sweating, heavy body pressed her into the dirt and grass.

“What are you gonna do, Maggie? Tell Father Wilson that I didn’t pay for a suck and fuck?”

More than the snide tone in his voice, the words hurt. She’d done her best to keep anyone from learning what she did for a living. Most of her clients wouldn’t have considered talking, but someone had loose lips.

Louis ground himself against her ass and used his left hand to start pulling at her shirt, keeping both of her wrists pinned with his right.

“Get off of me!”

“Fuck you, you tease.” He grunted, his breath spraying the side of her neck as he groped her and then slid his hand lower, fumbling first at his own jeans and then going for her pants.

The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once, a loud screaming cry, a thunderous cackling laughter that froze both of them where they were.

Maggie looked around and saw only the night and the darkness, and then she saw Matt standing up, swinging his hands at the sky and screaming.

“Louis! Help me! Help, oh God, help me it hu-urts!” Whatever was happening, it wasn't a joke. Maggie could hear the pain and fear in every word the creep spoke and she wasn't alone. Half a second after the screams started, Louis pushed off of her and stood up. The sick bastard had already gotten his jeans open and had meant to take what he wanted by force.

He zipped his pants, narrowly missing cutting into his own penis with the teeth of his zipper, and then ran back the way he’d come. “Matt! I’m coming!” She couldn’t see his face. That was just as well, she never wanted to see him again. He hadn’t actually done it, but he’d been willing to rape her and she hated him for making her powerless.

Back toward the alley and the campus, she saw Matt fall down, screeching and begging as something tore at his flesh. She saw the wounds appear, saw the gashes open on his skin as something in the darkness tore at him again and again. His face appeared briefly in the darkness, his eyes wild and tear-stained. Then the seething black mass covered him again, shifting, sliding around. When next his features appeared for an instant, his left eye was nothing but a black pit crying crimson tears down his cheek.

Louis had almost made it all the way back to where Matt lay on the ground before he was swallowed by the obsidian cloud. His screams were loud and thunderous, agonized bellows as he vanished into a flurry of black, swirling insanity.

Maggie sat up, barely breathing, and looked on as the fluttering darkness kept tearing at the two of them. Her eyes adjusted and revealed what she hadn’t seen clearly before: crows. Maggie’s heart stuttered in her chest as she let herself absorb the information her eyes sent to her brain. There had to be close to a thousand crows hovering over and covering the two men, ripping at flesh with sharpened beaks and plucking away soft bloody gobbets to eat. They tore and clawed and chewed and the two would-be assailants died while Maggie watched.

She started to be afraid and then forced it down, pushed the emotion away. It wasn't appropriate, not now. Emotions were for later, when she was safe.

She didn’t stay to watch. She left, her eyes constantly scanning the skies and making sure that none of the birds came for her.

None did. They focused solely on Matt and Louis. By the time Maggie reached her home a few blocks away, the bones of the men had been picked clean. Then, working with an unsettling precision, the birds gathered the grisly remains of their feast and lifted them into the air. It took a lot of crows to carry a human femur, but they managed it, settling a few times to recover their strength before they continued on.

By three in the morning, the remains had been taken away. The black birds dropped the debris into the ocean, scattering bones along Black Stone Bay and watching them sink into the waters.

By four in the morning, a stray dog had managed to devour what little was left of blood and evidence that there had ever been a crime.

By five, Maggie had convinced herself that she’d been slipped something in her drink. That Lance Brewster was starting into the wonderful world of drugs and that she now had one more reason not to see him again.

By six, just as the sun was getting ready to rise, Maggie drifted into sleep, completely unaware of the man who looked into her third-story window and watched her as she relaxed into a peaceful dream.

He made sure her dreams were peaceful.

He smiled and watched her as she curled into a loose fetal position, looking far younger than her years.

Jason Soulis nodded to himself and spoke only to the wind. “Yes, Albert. I think she’ll do perfectly.”

Shades Of Gray

“I’m not imagining shit, Christy. Something is following me.” He didn’t mean to hear the conversation, but it happened, a snippet of words that had nothing to do with him, but Neil heard them and, once heard, they couldn’t be easily erased from his mind. They stood out too much.

Not someone is following me, but something. It was enough to pique his interest. Neil looked over at the source of the comment as casually as he could, covering his actions by dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

The words came from an androgynous youth. Neil was guessing male as the voice was moderately deep, but it was hard to say with any certainty. The hair was too long, with deliberately messy bangs that had been colored blue along the edges and a dark red closer to the scalp. There was a moderate amount of make-up, and the face was as sexless as the body hidden under baggy jeans and layers of shirts. Probably male. Maybe. Either way the face was attractive in an uncertain way. If there was a boy under all of that, he bordered on pretty. If there was a girl, she could have been a looker with a little work.

The kid turned sideways for a moment, reaching down to pick up a coin on the ground. The angle was right to show that there were breasts somewhere under the layers. A girl. Not unattractive, but trying hard to look the part.

The one standing next to her was much more obviously female. The hair was an atrocious shade of red that had come from a bottle or from a bad marker, it was hard to say for certain, but the curves on the body stood out a great deal more, helped along by the dark jeans and T-shirt that could well have been painted on.

She rolled her eyes as she responded. “Look, if there’s someone following you, call the cops. If not, let it go. It’s not even funny anymore.”

“It’s not supposed to be funny.” The girl’s voice was sharp and frustrated.

Curiosity had to wait. Just when the conversation was getting interesting, the woman he was actually supposed to be watching came out of the restaurant, a college-aged boy in tow.

Meredith Beaumont was a good-looking woman, as attractive as money could make her. Her hair was perfectly coifed, her clothes were the sort of casual that designers charge an arm and a leg for, and the breasts under her clingy blouse probably cost more than he’d made in the last seven months.

The money came from her husband, who was currently paying Neil top dollar to make sure his money wasn’t wandering too far from home. The kid on her arm was almost half her age, and looked like the sort women like Meredith gladly gave money to in exchange for affection and the sort of attention husbands forgot to provide when they were writing checks.

He watched them go past and took a few candid shots with his camera. Taking pictures was made easier by the fact that the camera was in the pen he was carrying. Ah, the miracles of modern science. The shots would probably not hold up in a court of law, but Neil wasn’t worried about that aspect yet. He was worried about letting Beaumont know what his wife was up to, end of discussion. If the man wanted shots for a divorce proceeding, they would come later.

He sat where he was until the couple got into the Beamer Meredith had driven over in, and then he stood up and left the table. He’d paid for dinner as soon as he sat down, knowing full well that there was little chance he could finish the meal and pay before having to leave abruptly. That had been two hours ago. The waitress was probably thrilled to see him leaving. He made sure to leave a suitable tip to cover for the inconvenience. She was cute enough to justify the extra expense.

The silver BMW was just pulling out of the parking lot, heading toward the left and the college campus, when the hairs on Neil’s body stood on end. Not a few of them, all of them. Every single hair on his body seemed to tingle and he looked at his arm, saw the fine strands lift from his skin and stand at attention.

Half a second later, something dark and very, very fast tore past him, crouched low enough that he had trouble making out the basic human form for a moment. It was close enough that he should have felt the breeze of its passing, but there was nothing.

The shape stopped with its back to him and looked past the thick foliage of a holly bush between the road and the area where Neil had been eating. Whoever it was had done a masterful job of completely hiding inside some sort of black gauzy material.

The camera pen was still in his hand. He didn’t even think as he aimed and snapped a shot; it was purely instinctive.

Whatever he was looking at noticed, though, and stopped long enough to stare at him for a moment.

It looked human enough. Thin and angular, but human. He couldn’t make out a face through the black fabric covering the features, but he felt the eyes that stared at him and the gaze made him want to shiver.

He looked away, reminding himself that there was a couple he was supposed to be following. The car and its occupants had made it to the next intersection and turned again before he spotted it.

“Damn it.” He’d let himself get distracted and lost his tail. Not that he was worried. He had what he needed. Not enough to prove anything conclusively, but enough to keep him employed for a few more weeks while he looked deeper into the life of the Beaumont woman.

Ten minutes later he was in his Tempo and on the way back to his office. Work did not go home with him under any circumstances. He had an office for a reason and he would, by God, use it. Especially since Laurie was getting serious about moving in and the documents he had at the office were often of a sensitive nature. The last thing he needed was to have his girlfriend stumbling across photos he’d taken of other women having sexual congress with men who were not their husbands. Especially since a few of the ladies in question were damned good-looking.

He copied the images from his digital camera to the computer and made the usual number of backups for a paranoid. Piece of cake. Only when he was done did he really take the time to look at the images in depth. The first four were exactly what he’d expected, shots of the Beaumont woman with her boy toy. The last one was unsettlingly out of place.

He stared at the image for a few moments before realization sank in. The picture he’d snapped by accident; the dark shape that had bolted past him and stared hard enough to freeze his blood. He remembered the jerk of his finger and taking the shot, but it hadn’t really registered at the time, not consciously.

Neil studied the picture intently, hoping to understand what he’d seen, what had come over him when it looked his way, but all there was to see was a black shape as featureless as before.

He almost deleted the image, but at the last moment he decided to keep it. If nothing else it would make for interesting conversation with his brother-in-law, Ray. Ray always loved looking for the out of the ordinary, and as a photographer, he’d get a kick out of trying to decipher the image.

Done for the night, Neil printed his copies of the pictures, complete with the special one for Ray, and closed up shop. He was supposed to meet up with Carrie and Ray for dinner if he could still manage, and it looked like he had just enough time.



Ray shook his head and shrugged as he studied the photo and chewed savagely at his steak sandwich. The thick mustache over his lip wiggled and danced until he finally swallowed the oversized chunk of his latest culinary victim. When Ray spoke, his voice belied the angry expression on his face. Ray wasn’t angry; he just always looked like he was. “Looks like a skinny girl in black cloth.”

“A girl, huh?” Carrie’s voice teased as she looked over at Neil. No matter what happened, he would always be her little brother and therefore a target of potential ribbings.

“How do you figure that’s a girl?” Neil ignored his sister for a moment and focused on Ray.

Ray’s finger hovered over the photo, not quite touching the glossy surface. That suited Neil just fine, as the grease on the man’s hands would have easily lubed an entire fleet of car engines. He’d never understand how it was that the man could eat that much cholesterol and fat and never seem to gain an ounce.

“Look down here. Tits.” Neil studied the curve and shook his head. He wasn’t disagreeing; he was just surprised. He’d stared at the picture half a dozen times and never seen any hint of breasts, but where Ray’s finger almost touched, the shape of a breast was obvious. He’d have bet the money he’d earned earlier in the night that the picture didn’t look the same as it had earlier. Foolish, of course, but Neil couldn’t imagine how he’d have missed the details when he’d studied the shot before.

“So who is this mystery person? Have you figured it out yet?” Carrie nibbled on a celery stalk as she spoke, oblivious to the smear of blue cheese dressing that threatened to fall on her chin.

“No idea. That’s where your husband comes in. I work on tailing promiscuous spouses. He gets to handle the strange pictures of shadow girls.”

“Yeah, like he needs any more mysteries in his life.” Carrie rolled her eyes. She tolerated her husband’s hobbies, but sometimes only just barely.

“There are always more questions than there are answers.” Ray was trying to sound somber, but it wasn’t working. He was a geek for the unexplained and that would likely never change.

“Yeah? Well if you do figure out any answers, I’d actually be interested in hearing them.”

“Really?” Ray sat up straighter in his seat. “Why?”

“Well, because it happened to me, not to some person whose cousin knew a person who thought they saw something weird. I don’t care about urban legends, Ray, but unusual phenomena are a different story.”

Ray looked at him for several seconds in absolute silence and then he nodded and smiled. “If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

That was the end of the conversation. For a while.



Beaumont acted exactly the way Neil had expected him to. He ordered a closer surveillance of his wife and damn the expenses.

Neil took him at his word. The next evening he slid a GPS unit under the wife’s car and hid two very small cameras inside the vehicle as well. Modern technology had made his life much easier, even if the good stuff cost a fortune to own. Thank God for tax write-offs.

After that it was just a matter of waiting in the right places. He chose the same restaurant at the edge of the college campus that he had used before, and ordered something called a “roast beef wedge.” Turned out the wedge was just a hot sandwich. It was good, but costly.

While he was waiting he read the paper someone had left behind. First up was the sports section. His luck was standing true and every team he would have bet on lost by leaps and bounds. There was a reason he wasn’t a gambling man.

He had moved on to the second part of his wedge when he spotted the headline about the murder. A nineteen-year-old named Sonia Fullbright had been killed in what the paper called a “grisly fashion, with details being withheld by the authorities.” They showed a picture of Fullbright.

The girl had long blond hair and a light scattering of freckles. She had perfect teeth and full lips; her expression said that she’d gotten used to having braces so the smile was wide enough now to avoid catching her flesh on the metal wires. Her eyes were calm and warm, and even in the stupid picture, he suspected she was happy. She was easily ten pounds heavier in the posed photo than she had been a few days earlier, when she mentioned to her friend that something was following her.

Neil looked at her again and concentrated, checking to make sure he had the right girl.

Then he called Danny Holdstedter.

Holdstedter had gone to the same school. The difference was that he’d decided to actually pursue a life as a police detective and Neil had become a private investigator. Otherwise they shared a lot of the same interests, including an aversion to the idea of ever getting married and a passionate desire to screw every eligible female who looked like she needed a good orgasm. Well, except for the unattractive ones. As Danny had said more than once, a man had to have certain standards that should only be compromised by a copious flow of alcohol.

For a change of pace, Holdstedter actually answered his phone. “Danny? It’s Neil Hemingway.”

“Neil! What’s new and happening, my man? Finally decide to become a cop and work for less money?”

“Not a chance! I was about to ask if you’d decided to make real money and avoid getting shot at.”

“Never gonna happen. I like beating on perps too much.”

The jokes were old and dry. The two of them had used variations on the same theme of conversation for as long as they’d known each other. That was all right. There was a certain comfort in the rituals.

“Listen, you want to get together for lunch?”

“What? Turn down food?” Holdstedter was no more likely to pass up a meal than he was to avoid flirting with a woman. “Hang on.” Neil waited and heard the voice of Danny’s partner through the phone.

“Yeah, Boyd says I can come out and play, but no funny stuff.”

“Dude, I’ve already done your sister. One member of the family is enough.”

“Yeah, you wish. Where are you?” He could hear Danny’s smile on the other side of the line. That was one of the reasons he stayed in contact with the man. He loved a good sense of humor. The other reason was purely mercenary. It helped to have a cop on your side now and then.

“Nelson’s Pub on Holy Innocence Street.” Holdstedter laughed like he always did. Holy Innocence was strategically located between two college campuses. The bars and clubs did a thriving business that belied the name of the road.

Twenty minutes later, Holdstedter showed up, looking like a male model just past his prime. That didn’t stop every woman in the area from zooming in on him. The man’s face was ruggedly handsome and his clothes spoke of money. Holdstedter came from one of the oldest families in Black Stone Bay, and as far as anyone could tell worked as a cop more as a hobby than anything else. He would never want for money.

After the pleasantries were done, Danny ordered two appetizers and a main course, fully aware in advance that Neil would be paying. Neil ordered a round of nachos. He’d already eaten half an hour earlier.

“What’s on your mind, Neil?” Danny drank coffee with enough sugar to kill a diabetic and enough cream to guarantee clogged arteries.

“That story in the paper, college girl that was found dead?”

“Yeah?” Danny’s face changed slightly, a subtle thing, but he could see the shields go up.

“Well, I saw a girl the other day, in passing, and I want to know if it’s the same girl. If it is, maybe I can help with something, maybe I can’t.”

Holdstedter relaxed, but again it was a subtle change. “What makes you doubt if it’s the same girl?”

“Ten pounds less baby fat, hair that was colored red and blue, paler skin, way too much make-up, and if I’m remembering correctly, a pierced eyebrow.”

Danny stared hard for a moment and then nodded. “Sounds like the same girl.”

“Well, all I can tell you is she was walking with another girl and said she thought something was following her. Not someone, something. That’s why she stood out for me.”

“I appreciate that, but it’s not much to go on.” Danny wasn’t joking. That was one of the other things he liked about the man.

“Well, I don’t know if it’ll do you any good, but I might have a picture.”

“Might?”

“I snapped it sort of on reflex and I don’t know if it’ll do you any good. I’ll e-mail it to you.”

“Don’t have it on you?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly expect to open the newspaper and see the girl, if you see my point.”

Danny flashed a very brief smile. A few minutes later, they were conversing about old times and new ones as well. The detective paid for lunch, which was a pleasant surprise.

After that the matter once again became a peripheral thing. Neil emailed the file to Danny and thought nothing more about the incident. It was a tragedy that another life had been lost, but in the grander scheme of things, he’d never even really met the girl and he had other business to attend to.

It took three weeks to get the pictures he needed of Meredith Beaumont and her paramour. By that point, he’d learned the boy’s name was Cory Langston, that he was twenty-four years old, getting ready to graduate from college, just barely, and had gone through a long string of older women who were willing to treat him with a little TLC and some extra cash now and then. He didn’t ask why the man who’d hired him wanted extra information on the boy. It wasn’t his job to ask questions, merely to get results.

The money was good and in the end that was enough.

Life went on for a while and the strange death of Sonia Fullbright became a thing of the past, along with his relationship with Laurie that ended mere days later.

Six months later, Neil got a new client. This time the recognition was automatic and there was no reason to doubt his memory. The shapely woman in front of him had changed her hair color, but he recognized her as the girl that had spoken with Sonia Fulbright just days before the college student was murdered.

Her name was Christy Benson, and she was a student at Sacred Dominion University. The hideous color she’d dyed her hair in the past had been replaced with a light brown shade that he had to guess was the original tone. Her make-up had been cut back to more acceptable levels, and her clothes were positively conservative.

He didn’t say a word about the changes, but it must have shown on his face. Her expression was one part defiant, waiting for him to make a comment, and one part apologetic, worried that whatever comments he made might be true. In all likelihood, she came from a very religious family and had finished sowing her wild oats before they could be her downfall. It happened a lot at Sacred Dominion. One taste of freedom meant little to some and meant a devastating change of lifestyle to others. Some, like the girl in front of him if he were guessing properly, fell somewhere in the middle and either pulled out of their tailspins in time or wound up being the disgrace of their conservative families.

He opted not to mention what he saw when he looked at her, and she, in turn, opted not to acknowledge his kindness with words, but merely with a very brief nod and smile. That worked just fine for Neil. His motto still stood: It wasn’t for him to judge, merely to get the job done.

“You said you’ve been having problems, Ms. Benson?”

She nodded in response, and he stared at her for a few long moments. “Perhaps you could elaborate?”

She got a sheepish look on her face and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m trying to figure out what to say.”

Sometimes it was hard for people to get to the point. It was a natural side effect of the situations they found themselves in. What she meant was I’m trying not to sound crazy. Or possibly I don’t want to do this because it’s embarrassing.

“Listen, I’m paid to provide a service. I’m not paid to provide judgment on you or on anyone else, okay?”

She flashed a tight smile and nodded. “I think something’s following me.”

Neil stared at her for a moment and finally nodded. “Tell me more.”

“Well, last year a good friend of mine was murdered. You might have heard about it in the papers. Her name was Sonia Fullbright.” Her voice cracked a bit, and he thought there were going to be waterworks, but the girl composed herself.

“I remember the case. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Another nod to acknowledge his words. “I knew Sonia most of my life growing up, you know? We even decided to go to the same school together. But that’s not what’s important here. What’s important is she was murdered. And I think whatever murdered her might be coming after me.”

“Okay, first you said something was following you and now you said whatever murdered Sonia is coming after you, so I have to ask: what makes you think whatever is chasing you is inhuman?”

Christy hugged herself in an effort to get warm. “I saw it once, when it was chasing after somebody else.”

“You’re losing me.”

“I saw it once.” Her tone was defensive, the look she shot his way a warning that she would not speak more on the subject. He’d have been annoyed, but he never allowed himself that luxury when dealing with potential clients. “That’s all. I saw it, and now it’s after me, and I need to know what it is and how to stop it.”

“Have you gone to the police?”

“I don’t have any proof to show them.” Her hands moved around in front of her, aimlessly, as if seeking a way to pull exactly the right words from the ether. “That’s why I need you, so I can convince them I’m not just crazy.”

“So, let’s go over the details. What makes you think someone is following you?”

“I can sense it.” Her eyes narrowed. “Have you ever felt it when someone is watching you? I mean really, really watching you, like a hawk. Not all the time or anything, but several times I’ve had the hairs on my arms freaking out.”

“What else?”

“That’s it, mostly. I just, I feel it.”

“Okay, so no clue who it is? No idea why someone is following you?”

“Can’t you just trust me on this?” Her voice gave away her frustration.

“It’s not a matter of trusting you or not trusting you. It’s a matter of being able to prove anything at all to the police.” He shook his head as he spoke. “You want evidence, and that means I need as much detail as you can give me, because I have to see what you’ve been feeling and I have to get pictures and proof. Do you understand?”

Christy looked hard at him and finally relaxed, slumping back into her seat. Despite the situation, he let himself appreciate her body, just, discretely of course.

“If you have any idea why your friend was followed, or why you might be followed by the same person, you need to be upfront with me and tell me. We also need to discuss the cost factor. You’re asking for a lot from me here, Ms. Benson. My services aren’t the most expensive in town, but they aren’t cheap, either, especially since I’m going to have to invest in 24-hour surveillance if I plan on catching any images that are useful to you.”

“How much are we talking?” Her face did the slow collapse of the desperate.

“Realistically, you’re talking about at least two hundred dollars a day plus expenses, and believe me, that’s the discounted rate.”

Her eyes lowered to the ground for a moment and then she stood up. “I see. Thank you for your time. I can’t afford that.”

Desperation is a strange thing. On some people it’s damned near a curse and on others it wears like a perfume. Neil sighed. “Okay, look, I can give you a day, maybe two. We’ll work out a payment plan. I don’t normally do this, but you seem too worried to let you go off on your own.” He knew he would regret the words even as they came out of his mouth.

His slate was clean, so Neil started the very next day. He did not, however, inform his client of that fact. There was always a chance she was, for whatever insane reason, trying to scam him or to scam someone else. If she were doing anything illegal, he’d capture the evidence on film and then, depending, probably turn the evidence in to the police. If she was innocent of wrongdoing, he’d have already started the work and he could report back to her all the sooner if he found anything.

He tried to convince himself that he was wasting his time, but there was something about the case that intrigued him. It was a mystery, pure and simple. Not just another divorce case, or even one of the rare situations where he was actually paid to track down someone who ran away from home, but instead there was an actual mystery.

He’d begun to think they only existed in novels. Now, finally, there was something he could sink his teeth into professionally. There was a chance to solve more than a case of wanderlust. Of course the fact that the client was also a looker didn’t exactly hurt, either.

The morning was uneventful and the afternoon looked like more of the same until Christy ran into an acquaintance of hers. The two didn’t seem too excited to see each other. In fact, the man she started talking to looked like he wanted to be almost anywhere else and Christy herself acted as if speaking to him was an effort.

Neil cursed himself for not being able to hear what they were saying. The problem here was simply that he couldn’t get involved, not unless he wanted to blow his cover. He hadn’t thought to bring a targeting microphone with him. If he had, he could have at least gotten some of the conversation. Much as he wanted to know, keeping his target unaware was more important for the moment. Just the same, he took a few pictures.

The body language and attitudes that flashed between the two of them said they were having a polite argument. The situation changed when Christy stormed away from the man, who then refused to follow her, despite the expression on his face that said he wanted to.

Ex-boyfriend? Acquaintance who owed money to Christy or vice versa? There were too many variables. He was just getting ready to set down the camera and follow Christy when he saw the figure slip across the street, moving fast and low to the ground, like a pack of squirrels trained for commando attacks. Whatever it was, it had no set shape, but moved with a strange undulating motion that had nothing to do with stealth.

Neil sat up straighter and aimed his camera, trying to capture the strange patch of darkness as it blurred across the street, but the thing was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared. The only proof he had that anything was there was purely objective: a car on the road swerved slightly as the black field slipped over the pavement, a no doubt purely reflexive reaction from the driver who caught the thing from the corner of her eye.

Neil watched on, slowly recovering from the sudden appearance, and looked for Christy. He spotted her a moment later, almost out of easy following range, heading for the common on the other side of the campus.

He didn’t want to risk being seen, but on the other hand he really didn’t have much choice if he was going to follow her properly. With a groan of disgust, he got out of his car and locked the doors.

Even as he walked, he was on the phone again, speed dialing the number and waiting with the barest shred of patience for an answer.

After seven rings, a very sleepy Ray finally picked up. “If this isn’t an emergency, I’m gonna have to hurt someone.”

“Ray, try to get up at a reasonable hour and I won’t have to wake you every time I call.”

“It’s not even noon.”

“Dude, seriously, get a real life.”

“I set my own hours.”

“Set better ones. I need you.”

There was a pause for a moment while Ray contemplated the benefits of a few hours of legitimate work as opposed to the same hours spent in bed. In the long run, there wasn’t much of a contest. One call to his sister about Ray not being willing to work, and Ray would be in extremely deep water with his better half. He was a photographer and he made money, but he seldom made enough to pay the bills. Now and then Neil needed extra help, and he got to help his sister and her husband out at the same time. It worked well for everyone.

“Fine.” The voice was resigned to the unpleasant notion of having to earn a living. “Where are you?”

He gave Ray explicit directions, which he knew from experience Ray would follow. His sister had married a lazy man, but not a stupid one.

Ray showed up fifteen minutes later, dressed as a college student should be, which, considering the fact that the man still took an occasional class, was absolutely perfect. He didn’t seem overly thrilled.

“I was having a killer dream about being stuck on an island with Kate from ‘Lost.’”

“That sort of dream is the kind of thing that can be used against you in a court of law and therefore should never be mentioned.”

“I would never leave your sister.”

“Just as well, because she’d cut your balls off and then kill you.”

“Which is why I would never leave your sister,” he responded in a bad Groucho Marx voice.

“I need you to tail someone for me.”

“I hate that shit and you know it.”

“Yes, I know you do.” He pulled out a candid shot of Christy that he’d taken earlier. The picture was small as it was still on his camera, but it was enough to make the point clear.

“Okay, maybe I won’t mind so much this time.”

“See, you keep saying shit like that, and you know I’ll hold it against you one of these days.”

“I have to trust in your ability to know when to keep your mouth shut.”

“You’re married to my sister.”

“Who would never consider paying you to spy on me.”

“Good point.” Neil sighed. “Look, just tail her for a while. Keep her in your sights, and if you happen to get close enough to hear her talking to other people, all the cooler. I have to run back to the office and get a few things I should have gotten earlier.” He handed Ray a small bundle of supplies, including one of his camera pens. Ray looked at the thing like it might bite him but took it. Ray was a photographer by trade. He considered spy cameras about as useful as whoopee cushions.

“You could have had me pick them up.”

Neil rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t trust you with half of my equipment any more than you’d trust me with your cameras.”

“Okay. Got me on that one.”

“Go, hunt, and find out what I need to know. Then I can tell you why I took on a case for almost no money.”

“Okay, that might be worth it alone.” Ray looked both ways and crossed the street, heading for the main quad on the other side of the closest building.

Neil sat still for a few more minutes and contemplated exactly why he had, in fact, taken on a case where he was guaranteed to lose money. In the long run, he decided it was simple curiosity. He wanted to know what the shadow thing was, one way or another.

By the time he’d gone back to his offices and grabbed the microphones and long range cameras he wanted, the ambulances were in place and the crime scene tape was covering half of the campus.

A deep dread filled Neil. An irrational fear that somehow Ray had gotten himself hurt by whatever the hell was stalking and killing young women in Black Stone Bay sent ripples of ice water through his body.

Neil climbed from his car and moved as casually as he could toward the scene.

Danny Holdstedter and his partner, Boyd, were both on the scene. Danny nodded toward him and warned him away with a shake of his head. Boyd, the man in charge of the crime scene, cast a look at him and dismissed him without expression. Whatever was going down, it had to be a bad case. Normally the two men were notorious for their gallows humor. Of course, he’d never actually dealt with them when they were on the scene of a murder before. That was what they specialized in. The two of them were in charge of virtually every questionable death that came to Black Stone Bay and they kept their positions because they were very, very good at what they did.

Ray showed up a few minutes later, shaking his head as he stood on the other side of the yellow tape.

Neil walked over to his brother-in-law without crossing the line and looked at him expectantly.

The man shook his head. “It’s bad. Can’t talk right now. Meet me at the Chowder Pot.” Neil nodded and left the area. He took his time and knew as surely as he knew his name, that Danny would have words for him later.

He spent four hours at the Chowder Pot waiting for his brother-in-law. The Chowder Pot was one of those restaurants that seemed to stay in business despite the odds. He’d never been in the place when it was busy, and yet, it served some of the best seafood he’d ever run across and the prices were reasonable. He was nursing his third mug of clam chowder when Ray finally showed up, looking a little scared and very, very tired.

“You said you know those cops?”

“Yeah, Ray. I went to school with the blond one.”

“Yeah? He’s a dick.”

Neil didn’t feel much like arguing the point. “What did he do?”

“Kept me answering the same questions about a thousand times.”

“Like what?”

“Like why I was following the murder victim.” Ray stared hard at him with eyes that almost accused him of something shady.

“It was Christy?”

“No, Neil, it was some other random college girl I was following around.”

“Calm down. Tell me what happened.”

Ray slid the pen across the scarred wooden table to him. “Check it out yourself. I think I caught most of it.”

Neil’s heartbeat tripled for a moment. “Seriously?”

“Of course I’m serious. I was right there watching when she died.” Ray’s voice cracked a bit and Neil saw for the first time how profoundly he’d been affected by what he’d seen.

“I can’t watch these in here. Tell me what happened.”

Ray’s composure cracked a bit more as he spoke, the words coming out in a rush. “I was watching her, playing with the pen, and I was snapping pictures because she was a looker, and something black moved in fast and touched her and the next thing I know is she’s screaming and bleeding all over the floor, Neil. She was fine and then she was screaming and dying and I couldn’t do a fucking thing to help her.”

“Ray, calm down.” He spoke softly. There were already several people looking in their direction, and even in the areas of Black Stone Bay where the clientele didn’t make enough money to buy a house a week, the police tended to be fast at responding.

Ray took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He repeated the process several times before he finally nodded his head.

“It was bad, Neil. I think I’ve still got some of her blood on my pants, okay?”

Neil slid the pen into his jacket pocket and nodded his head. “Go home, Ray. Go and get some rest. We’ll talk later, okay?”

Ray nodded, relieved that there would be no more discussion for now, and was gone a few minutes later.

Danny Holdstedter sat down where he’d been less than a minute after that.

“Saw you talking to your friend at the crime scene. Wondered why you didn’t hang around.” Danny’s face was cold as marble.

“I figured he’d get out of there faster if he didn’t have me eavesdropping on everything he said.”

“Well, yeah. There is that.” A ghost of a smile played at Danny’s lips.

“What’s on your mind, Danny?” Neil looked at his old friend for a moment. “Or under the circumstances, is it Detective Holdstedter?”

“Oh, it’s Detective right now.”

“Yeah, I sort of figured that.”

“What did your friend just hand you?”

“He gave me back my pen.”

“Really? Can I see it?”

Neil looked hard at the man and sighed. “Yes. But only after I’ve downloaded the content onto my computer.”

“Does the term ‘hindering a police investigation’ mean anything to you?”

“Does the term‘got a search warrant’ mean anything to you?”

“Touché.” Danny frowned.

“Look. You can have every image that I have, but I will have the pictures, Danny. I was working a case for the murder victim. I want to see what I can find out.”

“I’ll tell you what. Let’s you and me go to your office. You can download the images and make me a disc. Then I won’t have to bother you anymore.”

“See? Now we’re all being reasonable.”

“Don’t get smart. I’ll have Boyd come ask you questions if you get all pissy with me.” He couldn’t decide if Danny was being serious or not, so he let it go.



Later that night Neil sat in front of his computer and stared at the pictures Ray had taken. They were hardly award-winning stuff, but he could tell what was going on well enough.

Christy sat at a table in the food court, reading a book and chewing on a slice of pizza in the first few pictures. Ray had been goofing around more than anything else, trying to make sure he could get the pictures when he needed to. If he hadn’t been playing with the controls he would have never caught what happened.

After a few frames where nothing occurred but the girl eating—and the images zooming in on her legs and her breasts respectively—a dark shape came from the right side of the picture. It was a blur and little more than that, but there was exactly enough definition to let him see that the shape was feminine.

If he had to guess, a woman casting the shape as a shadow would have been young, athletic and well proportioned. There was no face, per se, but the shape was pleasant.

It was obvious when Ray noticed the figure. The attention moved from Christy to the dark splotch and at the same time, the shadow changed. It was no longer pleasantly rounded, but withered, worn down, the silhouette of a crone, not a young beauty. The limbs were thin and the hands hooked into claws that clearly showed the wicked nails at the end of each finger. The face was no longer featureless, but hinted at a bony chin, a long blade of a nose. The hair, which had been a cloud of fine strands a moment before was mutated into wisps of spider web thin streamers that belonged on an ancient hag.

The shadow gave him the creeps.

And then it got worse. The form was still in motion, still reaching for Christy. He moved to the next picture in his digital slide show and saw the darkness touching his client. The fingers disappeared into her skin. They didn’t stretch across her, but they sank into her flesh as if knives had been rammed into her.

The next picture was blurry, distorted. In it Christy was rising from her seat, her eyes wide and her mouth an open wound made for screaming. The posture of her body spoke volumes for the unexpected pain she was surely experiencing.

The next image was the worst. Christy fell forward, her body twisted into a new shape by agony as blood exploded from her mouth, her eyes, every available orifice; lethal quantities of blood, guarantees that she did not survive what happened to her.

One more image, out of focus and aimed at the wall behind where she had been standing, revealed Christy on the ground, a red halo of crimson fluids painted around her body. Her eyes were gone, blown out by the force of her death.

Neil stared long and hard at the picture, unwilling to believe what he was looking at. When he was done staring, he went back over the pictures again and studied the people around her. The area was crowded, filled with students and probably even a few teachers all there for the same reason, to eat whatever they could find that would pass for food.

He looked at each individual carefully, because there was something that was off about the scenario, more than just the girl dying and more than the moving shadow.

And after studying the third picture in the group for several moments, he realized what it was. There was a girl watching Christy, and the girl was smiling.

Dark, curly hair, blue eyes, a perfect complexion. She was the sort of girl who could catch a man’s eye without any trouble at all. It wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong, so much as she wasn’t reacting like the people around her. To make sure he wasn’t imagining things, Neil went through the photos one at a time and fiddled with his photo-editor function until he’d copied the brunette in every one of the pictures.

He watched the images in a slide show presentation and studied the girl. Everyone around her was screaming by the time everything was done and Christy was dead. The girl with the curly hair had a tiny smile on her face as the carnage unfolded. If anything.

“Jesus. Is she getting off on this?” He spoke aloud without actually being aware of it. His pulse hammered at his skull softly and he stared, unbelieving, at the images, watching them again and again to make certain he was right in his assumptions.

No mistake. Nothing that would stand up in a court of law, certainly nothing that would get the girl in any sort of trouble, but he saw it. She got a charge out of watching Christy die. He’d have gleefully paid a thousand dollars to have ten more shots of the girl at the table and how she reacted to Christy’s body on the ground.

Frowning, he looked at the original shots again. There was something else, something about the girl that was still sticking in the back of his head.

And one look at the initial pictures told him what he needed to know: she was looking directly at the shadow form as it moved toward its victim.

And the dark figure that attacked, that killed. It had the same style of hair as the girl who watched it, right up until it became a crone.

Finally, when he was done studying the images every way he could, Neil printed them and slid them into a file folder.

It was time to go back to the school. He wasn’t getting paid a damned thing, but he had to know.

This one time, regardless of the expense, he had to know.

Obsession can be a dangerous thing.



He met with Ray at a small sandwich place across the street from the food court where Christy was murdered. Ray cast several glances at the gathering collection of cards and stuffed animals that surrounded the entrance to the student union. Somewhere inside the place, part of the area was still blocked off by yellow crime scene tape and a lot of the people eating in the restaurant were discussing the crime.

Murders weren’t supposed to happen in places like Black Stone Bay. When they did, little else was discussed for a while.

Ray was still noticeably shaken by the incident, and Neil couldn’t blame him. He’d seen pictures alone, and he was still unsettled.

They’d gone over every detail of what Ray saw, and when they were done, they’d gone over all of it again, until he was sure Ray would hit him if he asked about anything again.

Then, when he was sure the images couldn’t throw Ray’s perceptions, he showed his brother-in-law the photos of the mystery girl.

“Have you seen her before?”

“She was there when it all went down.”

“Yeah, but have you seen her anywhere else?”

“Neil, man, I take an occasional class. I’m not here socially. I’m here as a student who happens to be married.”

“Ray, I’m not asking if you have her in every class of yours or if you’ve been having an illicit affair. I’m asking if you’ve seen her around the school anywhere else or if you know who she is or if you know where I can find out.” His voice rose a bit as he spoke, and by the time he was done speaking, Neil had been waving his arms around.

Ray looked at him for several seconds without speaking and then the both of them cracked up. The tension had been there, but neither had known how to deal with it.

“Seriously, Neil. You need to get laid.” He tapped the pictures.

“She might be a bit young.”

“Screw you. I think she’s connected to all of this.”

“Well, leave her to your friend the cop and be done with it, man.”

“I can’t. I need to know what the hell is going on here.”

“Aren’t you usually cautioning me against that kind of attitude?”

“Aren’t you usually the one telling me that there’s a world of stuff out there that we don’t understand?”

“Yes. I’m also the one that says some of it is probably dangerous.”

“I need to know what the hell killed two people. I don’t understand it either, except that one of them was supposed to be my client and I dropped the ball.”

“You need to not get emotionally invested in murder cases. That’s the sort of shit that leads to rubber rooms.”

“Just find out for me, okay? Just find out who she is so I can talk to her.” Neil ground his teeth together.

“I’ll do it.” Ray shrugged. “Just don’t come crying to me if it all goes wrong.”

“Why are you being so weird about this, Ray?”

“Because I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.” Ray stared hard at him. “I think you’re just playing around and it’s gonna bite you in the ass, and your sister, my wife, is going to look at me and wonder why I didn’t stop you.”

“I just want to check this kid out. See what she might know. I doubt I’ll even speak to her.”

“There’s something wrong with that girl. You need to think about that. And if she has anything to do with that shadow thing, she’s dangerous.”

“Seriously, Ray. Calm down.”

“Neil, I think someone’s following me.” The words were blurted out in a hurry.

“Say what?”

“I think someone’s following me, okay? Ever since yesterday, even at home, I feel like someone’s watching me.”

They were simple enough words and they sent chills through Neil. “So, maybe the girl can wait for a while.” Neil mumbled the words, more to himself than for Ray.

Ray looked up sharply. “I don’t know. I can’t say she has anything to do with anything, but that girl? She gives me the creeps.”

There was nothing more to say on the subject. They finished their meal in peace and went their separate ways.

Less than four hours later, Ray was dead.



Neil found out about Ray’s murder around the same time the police came to haul him in for questioning.

There were a great number of questions this time around, and none of them were easy to answer. Several people had seen Neil speaking animatedly with his brother-in-law. No one claimed they’d been fighting, but a few people said there’d been “heated words.”

Danny was as good as he could be about the investigation, but it was his partner Boyd who asked the questions.

Richard Boyd didn’t actually pull out thumbscrews or take a rubber hose to him, but Neil fully expected it. While Danny didn’t participate in the interrogation process, he was present for it and Neil had no doubt in his mind kept things from getting absolutely horrific. Boyd was absolutely terrifying, which made no sense, as the man was several inches shorter than he was.

In the long run, there was nothing he could say to them that would change their minds and there was nothing they could say to him that would make him confess to a crime he hadn’t committed.

After several hours of what could be called “cooperation,” Neil was released. He never even considered calling a lawyer in to assist him. He knew they had nothing but a loose rumor that he had been arguing with Ray earlier in the day. Besides which, a lawyer would have kept him from his sister Carrie’s side even longer and that was where he needed to be.

In the end, Danny and Boyd thanked him for his trouble. He managed not to spit at them.

Carrie had heard, of course. They’d notified her as soon as the body had been identified. He tried calling her several times and failed to get through on either her cell phone, her office phone, or at home.

Neil dropped by her house three times and even tried calling their parents, but none of it did the least bit of good. Finally he resorted to driving around the town and looking for her car, but to no avail.

Close to eleven at night, after he’d finally given up and gone home to his apartment, he called Danny Holdstedter on his cell phone. The news was showing a crime scene, a spot not far from the campus of Sacred Hearts, and mentioned the murder investigation going on. The wounds were still too fresh, and no names were given, but Neil already knew. He was expecting to get an answering machine, and got the detective himself.

“Little late in the night for social calls, Neil. What’s up?” Danny’s voice was musty with sleep.

“Thanks for earlier. I know you did your best to make that painless.”

“Comes with the job and I don’t think you did anything.”

“Listen, I can’t reach my sister. I’ve been trying to get her since I left the station, to be with her, you know? And I can’t get an answer on any of her lines, and she isn’t home, and my parents haven’t heard from her.”

“Shit.” The detective sounded far more alert than he had a few moments earlier. “Gimme her address, and tell me when you last spoke to her.”

Neil complied quickly and felt his stomach do a few lazy turns inside his body. “What are you thinking, Danny?”

“We don’t know why Ray was murdered, Neil. We just know he didn’t die of natural causes, orif your sister is connected.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Exactly.”

“Jesus, who do I call in your department?”

“You already have me, I’ll make the rest of the calls, okay? Just settle in and wait where you are.”

“Yeah, that’s going to happen.”

“Fine, then meet me at the Silver Dollar Diner on Sullivan Street. Boyd’ll meet us, too.”

He hung up and got back on his feet. Sullivan Street was a good ways off, but he knew it well enough. The diner had burned down a few years earlier, but that was hardly unusual. No one knew what started the riots that hit along the roads joining the universities, but everyone paid the price for them in the long run. A lot of businesses had rebuilt afterward.

The night air was damp, and a slight fog was building. Hardly unusual for a port town in New England, but he felt his skin draw tight anyway. The weather wasn’t helping his mood.

“You’re looking for your sister, aren’t you?” The voice was soft and pleasant, with a slight accent he had trouble placing. Neil turned to see the source of the words and spotted the girl he’d sent Ray to find out about.

“What would you know about that?” His tone was brusque, but there was nothing he could do about it. At best the girl was a distraction he didn’t really need and at worst she was responsible for several deaths, including a member of his family. He wished for a moment that he carried a firearm regularly.

“I know where she is. I can lead you to her. Or I can just go away. The choice is yours.” Her tone didn’t change. She didn’t move toward him from her place in the parking lot near his car. She merely stood her ground and looked him in the eye.

“Or you could just tell me and I could go get her.”

“Fair enough. First tell me why you had Raymond looking for me.” He stared at her and hard. She was in her late teens, tops. If the girl standing in front of him was more than eighteen, he’d cut off a toe. She was far too confident for her age. It wasn’t just posturing; it was her carriage, her attitude, the way she stared at him without looking away. Her clothes marked her as a private school girl, though that hardly revealed much about her in an area where over half of the children went to private academies.

“Maybe Ray told you already.”

“Maybe he did.” Her expression gave away nothing. “He’s dead, you know.”

“Oh, yes. I know.” And there was the first tell. She should have at least given a quick expression of shock if she didn’t already know, and the news had not spread around yet. It hadn’t even made the news except as a mention of a murder near the campus. “Did you kill him?”

“I was there when he died.” The smile she cast was enigmatic and infuriating. He had to resist the temptation to lash out at her.

“Where is Carrie?”

“Where she can do no harm.”

“What sort of harm was she planning on doing to you?”

“She’s not the one who’s been doing me harm, Neil Harrison. Her brother has been doing enough of that for the entire family.”

“Really? And what harm have I done you?”

“You’ve taken my picture with your cameras and you’ve given my image to the constables of this town.” Her voice was sharp, stern, and came with an odd reverberation to it. The sound was so off from what he expected that Neil stepped back, confused and frowning.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

The odd doubling was still there, as if two women spoke at the exact same time. “I’ve no desire to be seen, to be examined. I’ll not tolerate the interference of your likes in my works.”

“Tell me where my sister is.”

“Safe for the moment. That will pass unless you swear by all you hold dear to stay away from me and mine.”

Neil started to see red. The girl had to be working with someone else, someone who had a few tricks to scare away anyone who got too close to whatever they were hiding. He needed to make the girl understand that he wasn’t kidding around and he wasn’t going to let anything happen to his sister.

“Listen, you let my sister go, or I’ll make a point of ruining you, do you understand me?” His voice was harsh, demanding, because he had to make her understand he wasn’t kidding, wasn’t bluffing.

She laughed at him. Not a loud sound, but a mild scoff, as if his threats meant nothing at all in the grander scheme of things.

“You are a fool.”

Neil stepped toward the girl, looming over her. She was young and while she might have been athletic, she was slender. He was trained in hand-to-hand combat, and even if he weren’t, he had her by ninety pounds.

“That’s about all I’m going to take off of you.” His hands caught her wrists and he hauled the girl toward him, fully intent on subduing her and dragging her to the police if he had to. “Tell me where my sister is, you stupid bitch!”

The blue eyes widened with anger and the girl’s hands moved, twisting and thrashing as she spoke.

“Never touch me, foolish man.”

The pain that lanced through Neil was worse than anything he’d ever experienced, ever imagined in his life. His vision jittered and fragmented and his nerves shrieked inside his flesh. He tried to scream but couldn’t find the strength, the energy to do more than gasp as his knees collapsed.

Neil fell on his face on the hard asphalt of the parking lot and shivered, unable to control his body. Slowly, after what could have only been seconds but felt like a month of pain, his vision came back to him and he saw his hand in front of his face, twitching spasmodically.

“Your sibling is the least of your concerns.” The girl’s pretty face was made ugly by the sneer she cast at him. Not merely dislike, but hatred and contempt marred her features.

It was thinking of Carrie that gave him the strength to try again. She had been through enough already, lost so much in so short a time, and he was damned if he’d see his sister lose anything else.

Neil forced himself to his feet, swaying drunkenly, his pulse hammering at his ears.

“Wha’dchoodo?” What did you do? The words should have been simple, but he couldn’t make his lips form them any more than he could make his limbs obey simple demands.

The girl moved closer to him, but not, he noted, quite within reach of his hands. She was cocky, but not foolish.

“‘Tis but a little hex, a tiny storm cast upon your mind. It will pass if I let it, or it will grow larger, until the storm consumes you completely.”

Neil shook his head as best he could and felt the world tilt around him in a maddening display. He fell back to his hands and knees, retching and fighting against an overwhelming tide of nausea.

The girl’s laughter echoed through his head and he saw her feet only a few paces away, seesawing along with the ground below him.

“I like you, Neil Harrison. You’re a very pretty man. But I do not like you enough to risk the constables knowing me or mine.” It took all of his concentration to look upward, to see the girl where she stood over him, her body seeming gigantic in comparison.

“Whyyy?” He tried to speak more, but the saliva in his throat gagged him before it drooled down his chin. Why are you doing this? How can you do this?

“’Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’”

The girl squatted, her legs primly held together, her knees inches from his face. Delicate fingers curled into his hair and held his head up so she could study him better.

“Who do ye love more, brother to Carrie?” That odd effect was back, the doubling of her voice. She spoke with young lips and a crone’s gravelly tones. “Is it yourself you’d save? Or your sister and her man?”

“Ray is dead.” The words came easily, and he knew it was because she let him speak.

“He is as dead as I decide he is, no more, no less.” She shrugged. “Will it be you, or them that lives this night?”

Oh, how he longed to lunge for her, to strike her down and beat her savagely, his vision blurred from the shedding of tears that glistened at the edge of falling. But his arms were like lead, his legs almost useless, barely able to hold his weight.

“’Twas a bet, foolish man. A simple game of truth or dare. The children wanted to know if I lived and found out more than they should have. You do not know my name yet, but I know your ilk. You’ll learn it if I let you, if I grow careless. So you have one chance. Do I let you live? Or do I spare your sister? If it’s you I let survive, you’ll know I can kill you with a word and you’ll mayhap be wiser. If I let her live, she’s never seen me, has no clue of my existence and I can be freed of this worrisome task.” Her voice was a girl’s again, wistful, and perhaps a touch bored.

“Snot fayur.” It’s not fair. “Ebil.”

“No, my pretty man, it is not fair, but it is all that I will grant you. And yes, my lovely lad, I am most decidedly evil.” She looked away from him to the slim watch on her slender wrist. “I grow tired of this game. Answer now, or I shall simply kill the lot of you.”

One chance to save his sister, to save Ray. One chance only to save himself. In the end the decision was easier than it should have been. He could live with guilt if he were alive.

“Let me live.”

“In the end, Neil Harrison, that is always the answer I receive.” The girl stood and started walking away from him. “Tell your constables you were mistaken. Show them nothing of me, or I shall strike you dead.” Neil watched her go, his body still trembling and useless.

Fully ten minutes passed during which time he could not move, could not speak. No one walked the streets nearby or looked out their windows to see him in the parking lot, or if they did, they chose to pretend otherwise. He wondered if that too was the witch’s power, or merely coincidence.

At the end of ten minutes the fog that covered his mind lifted and his muscles were once more his to use. He felt control coming back to him as his cell phone rang and he answered it, closing his eyes against the tears that fell freely now, tracking down the planes of his face and spattering to the cold ground beneath him.

“Hello?”

“Neil, it’s Danny. I have good news, old buddy. Your sister is fine! We just found her at the hospital. Looks like it’s your lucky day. The call earlier, the preliminary identification, they were wrong. Ray’s alive.”

“What? How?” Oh the swelling of blood in his heart, the change in the tears that fell, from bitter to joyful. “How the hell did that happen, Danny?”

“Somebody mugged Ray earlier, my man. Preliminary ID was off his driver’s license, but it wasn’t on his body when we found it. There wasn’t...there wasn’t enough face left to make it easy to know for sure.” The apology in his voice was irrelevant; Neil was alive and so were his sister, her husband.

Had he seen her just then, he’d have gladly kissed the witch’s feet to show his gratitude.

Neil stood, a deep shuddering breath escaped him and he sobbed out loud.

“Danny, oh, God, Danny, that’s wonderful! I—” His words stopped abruptly and Neil dropped the phone from his hand, staring as it struck the ground at his feet and skittered under the rear tire of his neighbor’s car.

His hands were numb, his lips felt cold, but there was heat inside his chest, and a jittering muscle twitched inside his right eyelid.

Neil fell forward but could not catch himself, could not so much as move his wrists or his hands to brace for the inevitable impact.

The asphalt slammed into his chin and tore at the flesh with savage abandon. He felt the warmth of blood flowing and the sting of offended nerve endings.

His eyes fluttered again and his jaw muscles clamped together until he thought he could hear the enamel of his teeth cracking.

A moment later, the girl was back, her feet directly in front of his face.

“Auuuhhhnnn.”

“Shhh, child. There shall be no comfort granted you.” There was only one voice now, that of the withered old hag. “Thou art a greedy man, Neil Harrison. Had you chosen to spare your sister, I would have known I could trust you to keep your word, but you chose to spare yourself instead. Greedy men are notorious liars to my mind. A promise of reward shall make them lie, cheat, and steal.”

He felt her fingers touch his forehead but could not move, could not so much as blink.

“Yours are the last eyes to witness me. Ray loves your sister. He chose to spare her. I know I can trust him to do all he can to keep her safe.”

If he could have screamed, Neil would have howled his anger to the universe and sworn a thousand times over to avenge himself.

Instead he merely died and felt the final humiliation of having his soul torn from his body and consumed whole by the young woman in front of him.

There are some who say the spirit cannot be deceived once it is freed from the trap of living flesh. Perhaps that is true. Whatever the case, it was not the fair face of a young woman that Neil saw at the last as he was devoured. It was the ancient, withered face of Alvina Bathory, who some claim was the wickedest of witches.

In the end, Neil knew no peace, no solace from his suffering. The witch had sold her soul a long time ago, and now and then the powers she served demanded fresh sacrifices as payment.

The witch was not known for failing to keep her promises.

The Walker Place

“Chicken.” Larry’s voice teased, but with an edge that was accusatory. The tone said that he not only thought cowardice was funny, but maybe a criminal offense. If he were a fraction less restrained Tom would have called him a bully. He wouldn’t have been wrong.

“I am not.” Tom’s defense was hardly original, but it was heartfelt.

“It’s Halloween. We’re supposed to get candy, and we’re supposed to look for ghosts.”

“It’s Halloween. Our parents are going to ground us forever if we get busted again.”

The year before Larry Reddington, Tom Efron and Sam Kramer had all run off to the graveyard four blocks away and tried to summon a ghost to answer their questions about what lay on the other side of death. What they’d summoned instead was the nasty old bastard who cleaned up the cemetery every day, Elliot Burnside, who had called the police on them and locked the gates so they couldn’t just sneak back out.

Their parents had not been amused. Well, that wasn’t true. Tom’s dad had thought it was hilarious, especially when all three of them spent a week picking up trash at the graveyard after school, and for almost the whole day on the following weekend. Tom hadn’t thought the graveyard could lose its mysterious appeal, but he’d been wrong. It was still creepy and all, but he didn’t much feel like going out there again in an effort to find ghosts. He could think of better things to do than spend a week with that old fart groundskeeper yelling at him.

“So we won’t go to the graveyard this time.” That was Sam, whose voice had taken on a level of challenge even before the gauntlet was thrown. There was no mistaking that this would be a proper dare, a task that must either be met or dismissed and the latter would almost certainly guarantee the label of coward.

Tom crossed his arms. “Well then, where are we supposed to go to look for ghosts?”

“The Walker place.” Sam said the words and Tom looked from Larry to the other boy and knew they’d lost their minds. They were serious, and that was as scary as anything else he’d ever heard.

Parents didn’t talk about the Walker place. They also got irritated when kids brought up the house on Asbury Lane. Fully a dozen years earlier something very bad had happened at the place and no matter how hard they tried to hide it the parents couldn’t keep all of the details secret. Despite the best efforts of grownups to hide the facts from their children, the Internet had made it possible for kids who wanted to know the truth to find it with ease.

The simple fact was that every member of the Walker family had been murdered, and no one had ever found out who committed the atrocities. The murders were common knowledge. What was not known was exactly how the parents or the four children who lived in the house were done in.

According to Eben Murphy, the mom and the daughters were all raped and chopped into bits while the dad and the boys were forced to watch.

Kristen Brockheimer swore that it was devil worshippers. Her dad worked for UPS and she said he had delivered a package up there the day the bodies were found.

Megan Powers heard that the oldest boy, Joe, had taken an ax to everyone in the house and then hanged himself, and even if the story wasn’t true, it sounded creepy enough to give Tom nightmares, not that he would ever admit it.

Sabrina Cooper said it was all a drug deal gone bad, but she said everything was a drug deal gone bad. She was sort of the local anti-drugs poster, only with moving lips.

“There’s no way we can get into that place.” It was a weak argument. People had tried to get into the Walker residence before and the door was always locked. The windows were locked, and the whole place was considered off limits.

“See? I told you he’d pussy out.” Larry’s voice carried a note of disappointment. It was a deliberate note and it was meant to offend and to ignite moral outrage and it was very successful.

“You tell me how we’re getting in there without getting arrested for breaking a window and then maybe we can work something out.” Tom crossed his arms over his narrow chest and glared at Larry with as much menace as he could muster, which wasn’t all that much.

Larry smiled and pulled a single key from his jacket pocket. “With the key to the back door, dummy.”

“How did you?” His voice trailed off.

“My brother works for the city. He has to check out that sort of stuff. It’s his job.” Larry puffed up and his smile grew even cockier. Tom could have shot him down, pointed out that his brother’s job was to sweep the streets and pick up dead animals from the same—a job he didn’t do all that well, thanks very much—but he bit his tongue. He was far too worried with trying to figure a way out of the latest situation.

There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t have him looking like a big baby in front of his friends. Oh, they’d still be his friends if he said no, but he knew they’d hold it over him, his moment of cowardice. Larry and Sam would act like they were better than him, simply because he had backed down from entering the scariest house in town, a place a lot scarier than whatever the Jaycees put together this time around, and The Jaycees were pretty much the only haunted house in town. Bowden’s Point wasn’t big enough to warrant one of the places run by Hollywood companies. You got what you got in a small town.

“Fine. When?” It was the best he could get out now that all the spit in his mouth had dried up.

“We go trick or treating. We go home. Then we sneak out.” Larry grinned and rubbed his hands together like a mad scientist in an old movie. “You’ll see, Tom. This time we’ll find a ghost.”

Tom nodded and tried to swallow the dust that had appeared in his mouth. That was what he was afraid of.



“So how come no one ever moved into the old Walker place?” Tom asked Mindy, his older sister, when their parents were out for their weekly game night with the other parents on the block.

Mindy was seven years older than him and ready to head to college in a year, and was a lot cooler than the big sisters they always showed in movies and stuff. Yeah, she could be a bitch when she had a boyfriend over, but mostly she remembered that Tom had a name and didn’t mind answering questions as long as he left her alone most of the time. She was his big sister, so it wasn't like they had that much in common, but come Wednesday nights, she had to watch over him and she wasn’t allowed to have boys over when the folks weren't home so they were stuck together and made the most of it.

She’d probably answered a million questions in the last hour, while they ate pizza from Carlotti’s, and he could tell her patience was starting to wear thin. He’d planned it that way. This was the last question he intended to ask before giving her some peace and quiet.

“Okay, you know what a will is?”

“A will?”

“Last will and testament?”

He nodded.

“Well, Mr. Walker left everything to his wife if he should die. Only she died with him, which means that she couldn’t get the house and everything. If they both died, all of it was supposed to go to their kids, only all of their children were murdered too, right?”

“Yeah.” He wasn't sure where it was going, but the logic of her argument made perfect sense.

“So, the house and everything in it has to go to someone, only the only people left are the families of Mr. Walker and Mrs. Walker, and they don’t know what to do with the place.”

“Well, they could sell it.”

“Yeah,” she answered. “But would you want to live in a house where everyone was murdered?”

“No way!”

“See? No one wants to buy the place, because of the murders. So they’re kind of stuck with it.”

It made perfect sense. Well, almost. “Didn’t some people move in there once?”

She nodded her head. “Yep. They heard all kinds of creepy noises and left a week later.”

Tom nodded his head and reached for another slice of the Carlotti Master Munch Pizza, which had everything but anchovies on it. He chewed and Mindy looked away, her eyes drifting back toward the TV.

He could work with that. Scary noises? Noises couldn’t kill, could they? So he was in good shape. An hour in the house and they’d be gone again and all would be well.

“Of course, there were supposed to be others, you know.” Mindy’s voice had taken on an ominous tone he knew all too well. When she’d read him stories when he was just a kid she had used the same voice whenever something bad came along.

“Other whats?”

“Other victims. People who tried to sneak into the house and were never seen again.”

“No way.”

“Way!” She wiped at her mouth with her napkin and he wasn’t sure if she was trying to hide a smirk—she did that sometimes when she was teasing—or if she was serious. “Had a couple of homeless people who tried to sneak in there to sleep and they were never seen again. Well, not alive anyway.”

He made himself keep eating, because Carlotti’s pizza was his favorite, but suddenly he didn’t have much of an appetite left.



Halloween came in with a howling cold wind that was perfect for the day. Leaves jumped and curled and hissed into streams that washed through the air and wrapped themselves into every possible crevice before flying off again.

Tom spent the first part of the day at school, wishing he could wear his Jason Voorhees costume to class, but knowing he’d get yelled at for it. So instead he just kept his cool and waited like everyone else.

When the last bell rang he bolted for home, walking the eight blocks with Sam and Larry and going over the plans. Trick or treating came first, of course. After that, they were all going to get together at Larry’s place for dinner. Mrs. Reddington, in addition to being one of the prettiest moms Tom had ever seen, was also making everyone dinner and letting them sleep over. No one expected there would be much sleep, or course, because there was a marathon of horror movies to watch and Mr. Reddington—who had to be the luckiest man in the world when you thought about his wife—would be making popcorn and handing out sodas. It was what they did every year.

And then, after the Reddingtons went to bed, they’d be sneaking out of Larry’s bedroom window and heading for the Walker place. Easy-peasy, as Larry and his mom were fond of saying. Tom didn’t know if he should be worried because he could spend time with Mrs. Reddington—who made him feel nervous every time she smiled in his direction—or because he was going to see a real ghost or maybe even more than one.

Mrs. Reddington was the sort who insisted on coming with them when they went trick or treating and though Larry moaned and groaned about it, Tom was secretly delighted. She’d dressed herself in a slinky witch’s outfit that showed off her figure and Tom enjoyed stealing glances—a task made easier because his mask hid so much of his face. He walked into a few things, but it was worth it for the furtive looks he used to study the woman he wanted to marry someday.

The neighborhood was done up, almost every house on the block was festooned with orange and black decorations and several of the houses had parties going on, a pleasant side effect of Halloween falling on a Friday. There were plenty of adults dressed in costumes too, and more than one man stared at Mrs. Reddington’s creamy cleavage even as all of the kids got candy from the offered bowls of treats. Tom felt involuntary flares of jealousy each time, but wisely suppressed them. They’d carefully plotted out the path they would take, one that guaranteed maximum chances for candy, of course, and halfway through the entire trek across the neighborhood streets they came to the Walker house and everyone stopped and stared.

Mrs. Reddington stared hard at the house and Tom wondered what, if anything, she knew about the secrets that were locked inside the place. For a moment he thought she might actually cry with the way her lower lip trembled, but then she closed her eyes and quickly crossed herself—an unusual thing to see a witch do, surely—and told them it was time to get to the next house in a voice that was almost normal. And then they were off, seven kids total and one parent to watch over them, and he forgot about the house for a while.

After they got back to the Reddington house—minus Megan, Sabrina, Jason and Eben who were all dropped off at their own houses—the world’s prettiest witch handed them all plates of spaghetti and meat sauce and then changed herself into the world’s prettiest friend’s mom again. Mr. Reddington kept his word and made popcorn with insane amounts of butter and salt, and they ate until it was hard to move, all the while watching some of the newer horror movies, which had been edited for content and formatted to fit the TV, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

At nine-thirty they were put to bed, and even though they were maybe getting too old for kisses good night, Mrs. Reddington kissed them each on the cheek anyway and only Larry didn’t blush because of it. It seemed crazy to think she might not realize how amazing she was, but that appeared to be the case.

At ten o’clock Tom was just drifting toward sleep when Larry shook him awake. “It’s time.”

Tom nodded his head and clamped his lips shut against a moan of panic. The Walker house scared him, more so since he’d seen the fear on Mrs. Reddington’s angelic face earlier.

Sneaking out was not hard. It never is, really, for ten-year-old boys on a mission. Larry gathered his Ouija board and they carefully climbed out of his bedroom’s ground floor window, moving single file and dressed in their costumes again, because Halloween only comes once a year and costumes are far too cool not to wear. Batman—Larry, a ghost named Sam and Jason Voorhees practically slithered across the lawn and then scurried through the shadows as they covered several blocks. Jack-o-lanterns leered and screamed in silence from stoops and porches, their eyes and mouths flickering with orange light, and the sweet smell of roasting pumpkin seemed to permeate the cheap hockey mask that covered Tom’s face. The air was cold enough to stop sweat from spilling across his eyes and despite himself he felt a grin growing on his lips as he anticipated the possibilities of a visit with the specters of the dead.

They crept across lawns and down streets and people saw them, perhaps, but if they did they paid them little mind. They were grownups and the time had come for them to have their older Halloween fun. Or maybe, they simply remembered being ten and celebrating the scariest night of the year.

And all too soon the Walker place was looming over them. Earlier he’d been too enthralled by Mrs. Reddington’s beautiful face to notice the house that he ignored most times, but now, in the darkness, he couldn’t help but stare at the old structure that seemed too large somehow, too dark and too menacing. The windows were closed, he could see the glass panes, but they refused to cast a reflection from the moon or the stars above. The wraparound porch was strong and sturdy, the boards seemed perfectly even and yet they gave a sense that anyone walking across them would risk falling to his death. The doors, surely no larger than the doors at his house or Larry’s, seemed too big, swollen and distorted. The knobs were thick cut glass, beveled into the shape of oversized diamonds, but even that glass refused to offer a glimmer of refracted light. They seemed instead to absorb the very night and hold onto it greedily.

There was a small part of Tom that looked forward to entering the house, the same part that thrilled at lurking among the dead a year before. Somehow, that inner voice seemed quieter this year, tinier, a fading ghost of courage that spoke out as loudly as it could and still only managed a whisper.

Larry coughed into his hand, and Sam, who sometimes had asthma and sometimes did not, sighed out a soft, whistling breath from lungs that seemed smaller than they should have. Knowing that they were both scared too helped Tom’s tiny flame of courage bloom larger than before.

“How long are we staying?” Sam’s voice was even squeakier than before.

Larry got braver just like that. His infectious grin grew a bit broader and Tom’s eyes widened for just a second as he realized a simple truth: Larry was braver because he knew Sam was scared. They were more alike than he had ever realized. Of the three of them only Sam still seemed to feel the worst of the fear.

“We’re in for as long as it takes, dummy.” Larry moved up the stairs with all the courage in the world and Tom made himself follow before he could think about it. A moment later they were both looking back at Sam, and Tom felt another thrill: the last of them was more afraid than he was. It was a good feeling.

All of the courage drained from them as soon as Larry’s hand on the backdoor knob turned and the door opened. They’d known it would open, of course, because Larry had managed to sneak off earlier and unlock it. Still, the squeal of hinges was enough to send shivers across young flesh.

Flashlight beams cut through the darkness that filled the old house, carving tiny gashes of illumination that hardly seemed significant against the weight of night they tried to hold at bay. Larry was the first to walk inside. Larry was always the first. He was brave that way. Still, his hands trembled a bit and the beam from his light jittered against the floor and then the far wall.

The house was not in perfect shape. It had been without life for too long to keep itself pristine. There was a faint smell of rat droppings but not as strong as Tom expected. The air was still and oh, so very cold in the deep, dark heart of the place. He wasn’t sure past the eyeholes in his hockey mask, but he thought he could see Larry’s breath as he exhaled past his batman cowl.

Sam honked out a breath and then took a deep sucking gasp off his asthma pumper. Tom managed not to let out a shriek, but it took a lot of effort.

They looked around the barren living room for several moments. It wasn’t really empty. There were still pieces of furniture, end tables and book shelves and a rolled up rug along one wall, but everything else had been taken. The rumors that the house was still full of furniture weren’t quite true. But there was enough left to hide a hundred monsters if Tom had to guess. Enough, surely, to make his nerves moan.

“Let’s go. Come on. I don’t wanna be here all night.” It had been Larry’s idea, but he didn’t seem so psyched about hanging out in a haunted house any more.

They settled on the ground with the unconscious grace that only children and contortionists are allowed to share and Larry opened his Ouija board’s box with a flourish. The old board had been his mom’s before it had been his and the edges of the cheap cardboard were stained with dust and mildew. That just made it seem more authentic in Tom’s eyes.

“So, who are we calling on?” Sam’s voice shook, but the gasping quality was gone.

Tom opened his mouth to answer and realized he had no idea. He turned toward Larry.

“All of the Walkers. Any of the Walkers. Who else, dude? What other ghosts are there?” His voice was confident again, and as abrasive as ever. There was some comfort in that simple fact.

Tom started to speak a second time and let out a squeal instead as the flash light he’d been holding in a death grip—hard enough that his hand ached from squeezing, though he was barely aware of it—was torn from his hand and thrown across the room. He watched the beam of light flip end over end into the darkness, saw bare floorboards and then the black soulless eye of a window that refused to send back a reflection of the light, and then the ceiling and then the wall and then the light exploded into darkness amid a tinkle of thin plastic.

“You trying to fucking kill me?” Larry’s voice was sharp and he’d used the F word, which was normally absolutely unthinkable, but at the moment Tom barely even noticed.

“I didn’t throw it! Someone took it from me!” Tom bristled. The light had never even come close to Larry, whose hand was clutching at his chest like he was afraid his heart would explode.

Sam scoffed. “You did too, I saw you! Well, you can’t have mine!” Sam’s voice was sounding mousy again and he’d pulled the sheet from his face and left it lowered, his eyes glassy in the glimmer from his flashlight. He waved the light like a sword. “You’re gonna have to walk home in the dark!”

Maybe he planned on saying something else; maybe he was done with his rant. Whatever the case, the light he’d been wielding soared away and skittered down the long hallway toward the back of the house. Long before it reached its destination the lens broke and the bulb beneath followed suit.

The Ouija board slithered across the ground and hissed along the hardwood floor as it vanished toward the back of the house. It’s possible that a group of adults would have discussed options, but the boys were only ten and they did exactly what they should have at their age. They panicked.

Larry stood up and held his light in both hands, trying to aim at every shadow at the same time. He let out a nervous moan that seemed to go on and on as Tom ran toward the door they’d used to enter the house and Sam let out a braying sob while he tried to pull himself into a ball on the ground.

The voices came from everywhere. The walls, the ceiling, the floor beneath his feet. As Tom clutched the door knob and tried to twist it frantically to the left and the right without any success.

“Who are you? Why are you here? Did you want to play with us?” The words merged into a mass of sounds, young and old voices speaking over each other, a nearly meaningless cacophony.

Tom looked back toward his friends, his heart thudding madly and breaths lost in a cloud of panic. He could barely see Larry behind the flashlight’s erratic beam, but he could see Sam clearly enough. Sam was still curled in on himself, his hands over his head to ward off any possible blows—sometimes Sam had bruises and no one ever talked about them—his eyes were closed and his mouth was open in a breathless scream.

And then Sam flipped over onto his stomach and his left leg lifted high into the air. The impact was unexpected and Sam’s nose and chin smacked into the flooring hard enough to make him wince. His eyes flew wide and his hands left their place around his head as he started moving backward, dragged by the darkness toward the hallway.

“Larry!” Sam’s voice was loud and clear as he looked toward the remaining flashlight and the boy who held it. Larry trained the light on him and let out a sound that wasn’t at all like his normal voice, not at all calm or in control and this time around Tom found no comfort in that unsettling noise.

“Sam, what’s happening?” Larry’s voice shivered.

“Don’t let them get me! Don’t let them get me!” Sam’s hands clutched at the floorboards, fought to get a proper grip on the old wood, and failed. His skin squealed as he was yanked brutally backward, and his voice echoed the sentiment.

He vanished into the darkness of the long hallway. His scream did not peter out. It ended abruptly.

“No fair,” the voice whispered near Tom’s left ear. “No fair, Daddy always takes the best ones.”

Tom jumped away from the doorway as surely as he’d have backed away from an angry cobra. His skin felt cold and his heart, well, his heart was working as hard as a hummingbird’s. “Uhh.”

The light disappeared. Maybe it was taken away; maybe it was simply turned off. He had no idea. All he knew was that by the time he’d turned to where the light should have been, Larry was screaming. Not a little yelp of fright, but a wrenching bellow of terror that surely tore at vocal chords and left his throat bloody and raw.

Tom stood perfectly still and looked around wildly, wishing for more light, praying to somehow be allowed to see in the darkness.

His wishes and prayers were not answered favorably.

“Larry?” His voice was a gasp. He cleared his throat and tried a second time. “Sam?”

“They’re here with us now.” The voice belonged to a little girl, maybe his age, maybe even younger, it was hard to tell when he couldn’t see anyone.

Through the one window in his range he could see a faint glimmer of orange. The jack-o-lantern on the stoop of the Lambert house still flickered in the late night, despite the cold air and the strong breeze.

He took a trembling step toward the glow of the pumpkin’s light and a second later the darkness ate the light from the window completely. Tom froze, afraid to touch whatever might have blocked his view of the one window.

“I’m sorry.” He cried, tears stinging his eyes as they started down his face. “Please let me go. Please let me go. I want my mommy.” Because the words sounded too distant, he pulled off his Jason mask and gasped in the musty air. “I want my mommy.”

The voices kept talking, the words mixed into a twisting whisper of noises.

And then the first hand touched his face, feeling the features. Tom tried to back up, to recoil from the cold contact, but something pressed against him from behind. More hands, perhaps, or just maybe a wall. He couldn’t tell for sure.

Cold hands touched his face again, cupped the back of his head and forced him to look up, into the darkness that buried any hint of light or the outside world.

“Shhhh. Your mommy isn’t here. But I am. We are. We’ve been waiting for you. All of you. We have been so alone.” The voice was kind, the words meant to be loving, but the hands of ice that held his face stole away any possible warmth. “We are always so alone.”

Tom tried to scream but the hands that held his head were not alone and cold fingers covered his mouth before he could utter another sound.

JAMES A MOORE is the award-winning, bestselling author of more than forty novels, thrillers, dark fantasy and horror alike, including the critically acclaimed Fireworks, Under the Overtree, Blood Red, the Serenity Falls trilogy and his most recent Seven Forges series. Along with Jonathan Maberry and Christopher Golden, he hosts the popular Three Guys with Beards podcast. He has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and spent three years as an officer in the Horror Writers Association.

http://jamesamoorebooks.com/
https://www.facebook.com/james.a.moore1
@JamesAMoore

Table of Contents

- THIS IS HALLOWEEN
- James A. Moore
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- The Dry Season
- Harvest Moon
- Hathburn Avenue
- Bone Harvest
- Harvest Gods, Revisited
- Patchwork
- Night Eyes
- Halloween, 1973
- Blood Tide
- Shades Of Gray
- The Walker Place