by Al
Then the foot was reattached to the leg and the Pumpkin Boy stood up with a groaning, complaining metal sound.
The Pumpkin Boy reached back down, creaking loudly, to pluck two fat organic pumpkins from Mr. Schwartz’s field that grew in back of Jody’s yard, and began to move off, away into the night.
“Wow…” Jody whispered against the window pane, making it fog. He quickly cleared it with the cuff of his shirt, and watched the Pumpkin Boy stiffly climb the fence that bordered Mr. Schwartz’s pumpkin patch from another behind it. In the process the Pumpkin Boy lost hold of one of the pumpkins he held but paid no heed.
“Wow…” Jody whispered again.
Jody was alone in the house; it was the half hour in-between-time when the afternoon sitter went home and his mother came home from her job in town.
He had been told repeatedly that he was not to leave the house during in-between-time.
The forgotten box of corn flakes lay spilling cereal into the kitchen sink as he climbed down, pushed his arms into his jacket and opened the door which led from the kitchen to the back yard.
As Jody Wendt stood on the top step of the back stoop, the storm door closing with a hiss-and-bang behind him, he saw the Pumpkin Boy once again outlined against the moon, but moving quickly away. He was already two fields over, and would soon drop behind the slope that led down to Martin’s Creek and the valley beyond.
Mouth still open in amazement, Jody was working at the zipper to his jacket, which wouldn’t zip. His feet were already carrying him down the steps, across the yard, to the split-log fence.
He dipped under the fence, forgetting the zipper, and stood in Mr. Schwartz’s pumpkin patch on the other side.
The Pumpkin Boy’s head was just visible, and then the slope down made him disappear.
Jody hurried on.
Mr. Schwartz’s pumpkin field was furrowed, bursting with fat vined pumpkins that would soon be picked and sold for Halloween. Jody tripped over the first row he came to, and landed on his hands.
He found himself face to face with a huge oval orange fruit, its skin hard and strong.
It looked like a human head.
Jody pushed himself up and stumbled on.
He fell twice more. But still, in the distance, he could hear the metallic creaking sounds of the Pumpkin Boy. There were two more fences to manage, one again of split logs, which Jody scooted under, and the other of chain link, which he climbed with difficulty.
He nearly toppled over when he reached the top, but then, in the distance, he saw an orange flash in the moonlight: the top of the Pumpkin Boy’s head. He held on and descended to the other side.
There was a rock wall, which Jody had never known existed, separating two more pumpkin fields.
Jody was now in unfamiliar territory. Even from his bedroom window, just before harvest, the fields surrounding his house were awash in taut orange fruit, and now, for the first time, he knew just how complicated the layout was.
At yet another rock wall he paused to look back. He could no longer see his house.
He heard a sharp metallic creak in the far distance, and hurried toward it.
The pumpkin field ended in a tangle of weeds and brambles and a ledge. Abruptly, Jody found himself teetering at the top of the slope. A tuft of brambles caught his foot and twisted his ankle and, with a short surprised gasp, he was tumbling down the damp, soft bank.
At the bottom, he came up short against an uprooted oak trunk, and came to a stop with one of its gnarled roots pointing into his face like an accusing finger.
He sat up, soiled and wet.
Suddenly, he realized what he had done.
He looked back, up the slope, and shuddered with the thought that, even if he could climb the steep incline, he would not be able to find his way back home through the tangle of pumpkin fields.
A quick, hot shiver of fear shot up his back.
But then: in front of him, like the sound of the pied piper’s flute, there came the creaking sound of the Pumpkin Boy moving. The pumpkin head flashed through the trees, and Jody forgot his fear. His wonder renewed, he stood and ran after it.
~ * ~
The moon was partially hidden by a thick tangle of trees on the far bank of Martin’s Creek, which made shafts of gray-white light on the ground. Jody splashed into the water before he knew it was in front of him. His hurt foot slid down nearly to his shin into icy tumbling water and lodged between two rocks.
Jody cried out in pain. For a moment he couldn’t move, and panicked—but then, suddenly, one of the stones upended in the water and rolled over, and he was free.
Now, both sneakers were in the water, and the slight current tugged at his legs.
He tried to turn around, but the water hurried him out further.
He sank another half foot.
The current was trying to make him sit down, which would bring his head under water.
He gave a weak cry as he lost his struggle—and then there was water in his mouth and he could see nothing but the blur of moving wetness.
Almost immediately, his body pressed up against something long, dark and solid, and his forward progress stopped.
It was a half-submerged log.
Jody clung to it, and slowly pulled himself up.
To his surprise, the creek was only two feet or so deep here; the whooshing sound of water angrily churning around the log filled his ears.
He held onto the dry part of the log, and coughed water out.
He wiped his eyes with one hand, and had another surprise: not only was the water shallow, it was not half as wide as it had been just a few yards up-creek.
Holding the log, he pushed his way through the shallow water to the far bank.
He sat down, and his eyes filled with sudden tears.
I want to go home, he thought.
He stared out at totally unfamiliar territory: the creek, he now saw, twisted and turned, and he could not make out the spot where he had descended the slope, which was nearly a hundred yards away, and impossibly wide. At the top of the ridge, reflected in moonlight, were the green-vined tops of a few elongated pumpkins.
He turned, and saw that the line of woods was close, and darker than it had looked from the other side of the creek.
The trees were nearly nude, a carpet of yellow and red fallen leaves at their bases looking light and dark gray in the moonlight.
A few late leaves pirouetted down as he watched.
Deep in the woods, he heard the Pumpkin Boy move.
Jody looked once again behind him, and then back at the woods.
He got painfully up and hobbled toward the trees.
~ * ~
It instantly became darker when he entered the woods, a grayer, more sporadic light.
Almost immediately, Jody lost his bearings.
There were many strange noises, which confused him. He thought he heard the Pumpkin Boy nearby, but the sound proved to be a partially broken oak branch, creaking on its artificial hinge. There were rustlings and stirrings. Something on four legs scuttled past him in the near distance, and stopped to stare at him—it looked like a red fox, bleached gray by the night.
Jody tried to retrace his steps, but only found himself deeper within the trees, which now all looked the same.
Jody’s ankle hurt, and he was beginning to shiver.
He stopped, even hushing his own frightened breathing, and listened for the Pumpkin Boy.
The sound of the Pumpkin Boy’s movement was completely gone.
A soft wind had arisen, and now leaves lifted from the forest floor, as if jerked alive by puppet strings.
It had turned colder—above, the moon was abruptly shielded by a gust of clouds.
The woods became very dark.
Jody sobbed again, stumbling forward, and stopped in a small clearing surrounded by tall oaks. Again he heard scurrying in front of him and felt something watching him.
The moon blinked out of the clouds, and Jody saw what was, i
ndeed, a red fox, regarding him with wary interest.
The fox became suddenly alert. As the moon’s nightlight was stolen again by clouds, the animal bolted away, seeming to jump into the gray and then darkness.
Jody stood rooted to his spot, trying not to cry.
Something was out there.
Something large and dark.
The bed of leaves shifted with heavy, creaking steps.
Something ice cold and long and thin brushed along his face in the darkness.
“I want to go home!” Jody blurted out in fear and despair.
The cold air was suddenly steamed with warmth.
Cold braces closed around Jody’s middle from behind.
He shrieked, and wrenched his body around.
He was blinded by something larger and brighter than the moon—a face staring down at him made out of a jack o’lantern, warm wet fog pushing from its triangular eyes and nose and impossibly wide, smiling mouth. A slight, mechanical chuff issued along with the sour, oily-smelling steam.
The slender mechanical steel arms tightened around Jody.
He shrieked again, a mournful sound swallowed by the trees and close night around him.
As he was carried away he saw, as the moon broke forth from the clouds again, on the forest floor, caught in gray light, the smashed leavings of a dropped pumpkin.
2
Another damn Halloween.
Len Schneider was beginning to work up a deep and real hatred for holidays in general, and this one especially. Halloween, he knew, meant nothing but trouble. He’d moved to Orangefield for lots of reasons—among them the fact that it had a real town with a genuine small-town feel—it was the only place he’d lived in the last twenty years that didn’t have a Walmart and wasn’t likely to get one. The people seemed friendly enough, but he’d found, as a police detective, that people were pretty much the same everywhere, from the inner city to Hometown, U.S.A. “People Are Funny,” Art Linkletter used to say, and one thing Len Schneider had learned after eighteen years in law enforcement was that they were anything but.
And now this thing came along—the thing he’d left Milwaukee to get away from…
“When was the last time you had a missing kid case?” he’d asked Bill Grant, the other detective on Orangefield’s police force. Grant had been at it a long time, too, but all of it in this town. In the year and a half Schneider had been here, he’d found Grant polite but almost aloof. No, aloof wasn’t the right word—it was almost like he wasn’t completely there. The two packs of cigarettes a day he smoked didn’t seem to help, and the emphysemic cough that went along with them, along with the booze he drank, had turned him almost sallow.
Schneider thought he was haunted himself, by what had happened back in Milwaukee—but this guy looked like he was haunted by real ghosts.
He’d tried to get Grant to open up a few times, once over a bottle of Scotch, but all that had happened was that he’d opened up himself, letting his own bile and anger out. He wondered if Grant even remembered, though he had a feeling he did. Behind the hollows of those eyes the cop-mind still worked—and Schneider had been told that Grant was very good at his job.
He had found out on his own later that Grant had begun to change after a case involving a local children’s book author, Peter Kerlan. Something about Kerlan’s wife being eaten alive by insects…
Grant was leaning back in his chair, his fingers idly drumming the neatly arranged desk in front of him. The man’s skin looked almost jaundiced. Just as Schneider was about to repeat his question, Grant said, without moving his eyes or head, “We’ve had a few over the years. They almost always turn up.”
“Ever anything…”
“Like yours?” Grant almost snapped. The confirmation that Grant not only remembered The Night of Scotch but had absorbed and catalogued everything that had gone on, startled Schneider.
“Yes, like mine,” Schneider replied evenly.
“Not unless you go back a long way. Long before you or me.”
Schneider waited for elaboration, but there was none.
“Any chance you’d like to take this one?” Schneider tried to keep his voice light, but knew he may have failed.
Another silence hung between them, and then Grant’s voice came out of the emaciated face again: “None.”
Schneider was swiveling toward his own desk with a sigh when he caught Grant leaning forward, his eyes finally giving him attention. He swiveled back, his hands on his knees.
Grant was staring at him, a bit too intently. His own yellow fingers had stopped drumming, and lay perfectly still on his desk blotter. Schneider suddenly saw the intelligence in the sunken light blue eyes.
“It’s got nothing to do with you,” Grant said, carefully. For the first time his gaze fell on Schneider as something more than a concept—Grant was actually looking at him. “It’s just that this one has that…aura around it. And, frankly, I couldn’t go through that again. There are things that happen around here that are perfectly normal, and then there are other things…”
“If you’re talking about the Kerlan murders—”
“That,” Grant shot back, “and other things. Usually around this time of year.”
“All right then, Bill.” Schneider moved to swivel back to his desk, but Grant’s eyes held him.
“There are worse things than a kid getting killed,” Grant said quietly.
Sudden anger flared in Schneider, but he saw that Grant seemed to be looking inward, not at him anymore.
Grant seemed to catch himself, and his sallow neck actually reddened. He fumbled with the small notebook that lay neatly on his desk, opened and closed it.
“I’m sorry, Len,” Grant said, his voice lowered almost to a whisper. “I can imagine what that case of yours was like in Milwaukee. That kid’s parents, especially his father going insane. Wasn’t he some kind of genius or something?” He shook his head slowly from side to side; the flush of color had left his features. “There are some things you never forget. Sometimes I think about myself too much…” For a brief moment his neck reddened again. “Sorry…”
Then Grant leaned back in his chair again, his fingers drumming lightly on the neat desk.
The interview was over.
There are worse things than a kid getting killed…
“No, there aren’t,” Len Schneider said to himself, and loud enough for someone else to hear.
~ * ~
The kid might have been eleven or twelve. Without a face, it was hard to tell if he had been good-looking or not—sometimes by that age, you can tell how the features will set through the teen years. He looked like he was sleeping when they dug him up—resting his hand under his head; the face, or where it would have been, was turned into the dirt so that it looked like he had nuzzled into a pillow. The hand was covering a ragged hole in the boy’s head where his brains had literally been beaten in. He was still fully clothed, except for his shoes and socks—later they found that he had been undressed and then redressed by Carlton, who had kept the footwear—along with one of the boy’s toes—as souvenirs.
Jerry Carlton had almost boasted about it at his trial—his shaggy hair had been cut and combed, his red tie knotted, his eyes covered with mirrored sunglasses which, thank God, the judge had made him remove. He smiled through the whole proceeding, and played with his watch. He could fix a tractor, a television set, could build just about anything, and had murdered five boys in three states calling himself Carlton the Clown. He’d worn a different clown costume for each murder.
Len had never forgotten that: Carlton the Clown.
He’d wanted only three minutes alone with Jerry Carlton, but they wouldn’t give it to him.
Just three minutes…
And nearly every night, because he made a mistake, Len Schneider dreamed of a kid with no face, turning his head from where it was nuzzled into his pillow and staring at him with empty eye sockets, trying to speak without lips…
This time, Len Sch
neider vowed to himself, he’d get his three minutes.
And he wouldn’t make any mistakes
~ * ~
Schneider was convinced the Wendt kid was not merely missing. Everything pointed to it. The kid’s mother (another thing that made it worse: there was no father, he had died in a construction accident four years ago) swore her son had never left the house by himself before. Which led Schneider at first to conventional lines: that whoever had taken the child had learned the house routine, and knew that there was a window of opportunity every once in a while when the child was alone for a half hour, between his afternoon sitter leaving and his mother getting home from work.
But there were no signs of forced entry, which led Len automatically to the next line of enquiry: that the child had unlocked the back door himself and let the abductor in.
Which could have happened—although, again, there was no evidence that anyone had been in the house. It had been a quick snatch, if that had been the case—which meant that the boy had probably known the assailant.
Which was possible, up to a point—the point being a weird one. It had rained a few days before the abduction, and the ground had been fairly soft—but there were only one set of footprints in the backyard, leading away from the house to the back fence.
Indicating that someone had lured him over the fence—something he had never done before—without actually stepping into the backyard himself.
When he asked Mrs. Wendt for a list of people, with the emphasis on males, who might be enough of authority figures in her son Jody’s eyes to entice him to do such a thing, her face went blank. There were no clergy, no relatives, no real male role model who he would follow over that fence, she was sure.
