The Halloween Girl

by O'Brien, Jeff

  “I didn’t know you were taking me to set up a love connection,” Cassie said with a sigh.

  “Oh come on, hunny. I can read your thoughts, duh. You don’t even know what he looks like now but you’re wet just thinking about him!”

  “I am not,” Cassie insisted, almost laughing.

  “I can read your thoughts, dear,” Stephanie informed her once again. “Loud and clear. And trust me, he turned into a real cutie. Lost his hair, but still a real cutie. Now come on. Strip down and let’s get you all dressed up for the prom.”

  Cassie felt hesitant at first, but took her uniform off. She thought of that dress and what had happened the last time she wore it and was alone with a girl; instead of the very dead Brent busting in, she was afraid of Red Eyes.

  “Don’t be shy, Cass. I did delve into some girl-on-girl stuff in my living years, but don’t worry. I belong to someone else now, exclusively.”

  “Whatever you say, Stephanie,” Cassie said, giving in and letting her guard down.

  “That’s the spirit. Girl, you are going to look dynamite in this dress. When was the last time you even wore it?”

  “It’s been…fuck, about twenty-four years.”

  “Well tonight you’re gonna look gorgeous. Now put this thing on.”

  Cassie began pulling the bodice of the dress up over her legs but stopped as a thought occurred to her.

  “Stephanie?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I’m going to have to die tonight to make this all right, aren’t I?”

  Stephanie looked her deep in the eyes.

  “Just get dressed, hun,” she said. “We can talk all about that on the ride up to Leedham. Trust me. It’s all going to be fine. Better than you ever dreamed. But I’ve got to pop out again for a few minutes. Finish getting ready and go.”

  “You just said you were going with me.”

  “Trust me, I am. I’ll meet you halfway. Just get ready and go.”

  “What?” Cassie asked, but Stephanie was gone.

  ***

  Tom had no time for fear and apprehension anymore. He had seen and dealt with enough now, and whatever was beyond the open doors of that church would be met head-on, whether it be Cassie waiting for him with open arms or Red Eyes waiting to drag him to a fiery death.

  Tom ran up the stone steps and strode right into the church. The big oak doors slammed shut behind him, but he almost expected that to happen and was not startled by it in the least.

  Nothing about the scene before him was right. This was a long abandoned church that had been set fire to sixteen years ago. The church smelled of incense. The lights hanging from the ceiling were on and shining brightly. The sounds of an organ came from the massive pipes, and Tom saw a hunched old man playing it over by the side of the altar. Something about the man looked familiar, but he was unable to place it at first.

  Slowly and cautiously he made his way down the aisle. At the front of the church sitting in a pew he saw the back of a woman’s head. He could hear her crying, and the cry sounded all too familiar. It had to be Cassie! He couldn’t mistake the sound of her cries for anyone else’s.

  “Cassie!” he shouted and ran for her in a furious sprint.

  She didn’t acknowledge him, and remained silent even after he shouted her name twice more.

  “Cassie!” he yelled again as he reached the pew she sat in, and touched her shoulder.

  The face that looked up at him was that of a decrepit, old woman with pale, milky eyes without any hint of iris or pupil. This woman was living death, much like Brent. And she was not Cassie. Not by a long shot. It was another ghost of his past.

  Tom’s long dead mother, in her advanced stages of decay, looked up at him and wept dead, black tears. He cringed in terror but was unable to remove his hand from her cold, hard shoulder.

  “The truth, Tommy,” she hissed. “You’re almost there.”

  “What truth?” Tom begged, barely able to squeak the words out through his clenched throat.

  “You’re almost there, Tommy,” she said again, each word softer than the one before it.

  Tom felt his fear begin to subside when the corpse of his mother smiled at him.

  As he took his hand off her shoulder she immediately crumbled and turned to a pile of dust on the pew.

  Tom had no time to curse or scream as the sickening laughter of the one he knew had played this trick on him boomed through the church.

  Upon the altar sat Red Eyes, once again perched upon the throne of twisted and stitched up human flesh.

  “Don’t tell me you thought it was going to be that easy,” the dark man said. “Brent was right about you not looking at the big picture and focusing on only your own desires. Arrogant boy.”

  “What do you want from me!” Tom cried out.

  “To open your eyes, you fool!” Red Eyes pointed up to the crucifix that adorned the back wall of the altar. “You’ve got such bad tunnel vision you didn’t even say hi to your girlfriend. Or have you already forgotten about her? She’s been here the whole time!”

  Tom looked up in terror as he saw Sand naked and nailed to the cross. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out as the weight of the sight rendered his vocal chords useless. He knew she was dead.

  “Sand,” he was finally able to say in barely a whimper. He turned to Red Eyes and scowled. “Why? What do you want from me?”

  “To see your heart be ripped from your chest,” Red Eyes answered. “But only figuratively, of course. I’m not that much of a sadist. But hey, now that your girlfriend is dead you can dispense with any guilt over infidelity.”

  “I hate you!” Tom spat, balling his hands into white knuckled fists.

  “I know. But stay strong, young man. You’re getting warmer.”

  Red Eyes, along with his flesh throne, vanished after saying those last words.

  Tom now felt cold and alone in the church, which once again looked as it should, dusty and decrepit. He stared with teary eyes at the dead body of Sand nailed to the cross. Guilt hit him hard like a baseball bat to the head, and he felt his skull begin to throb and his throat go dry.

  However, the organ continued playing. Tom looked over to it and now recognized the man. It was old Tom Seeley.

  The old man stopped playing and stood up from the organ bench.

  “It’s all true, Tommy,” the tortured looking shopkeeper said. “Be careful.”

  And then the old man’s specter vanished too.

  Tom looked back up at the altar and took one last look at his dead girlfriend.

  A bright light appeared under the horrible sight, and then again came the woman in white with her crow perched atop her shoulder. The beautiful, glowing woman touched Sand’s corpse, and some invisible feeling of peace radiated from her body to Tom.

  “It’s okay, Tom,” he heard Sand’s voice say. Turning his head he saw her standing next to him as though she were alive and corporeal as she was just last night, untouched by wounds and cuts.

  Not another word was spoken. She knew he was sorry for getting her dragged into this.

  And he knew his apology was accepted.

  A warm light appeared next to her spectral body, radiating peace and comfort. She smiled. Obviously she knew something that Tom did not. It seemed like the forgiveness came all too easy, but that smile on her face told him, much like Brent had said, that the laws and ways of life and afterlife were vastly different.

  “Go find her,” she said, curling her lips up into a smile that Tom simply couldn’t fathom, then disappeared into the light.

  The woman in white approached Tom. Up close, he saw that the strange angel looked little more than an eighteen-year-old girl.

  “Please tell me you have some kind of answers for me,” Tom said and shamelessly burst into tears.

  “Of course I do, Tommy,” she said.

  Her voice was soothing and soft, too beautiful for human ears. Tom found his anxiety easing more and more as he looked upon her.
>
  “Where can I find her?” he asked.

  “Where the darkest shadows of this town exist,” she said.

  “I would have thought that’s where we’re standing right here. What can be darker than this?”

  “You remember reading about those two kids who started that fire here? Or so everyone seems to think they did?”

  “Of course,” Tom answered.

  “Well they didn’t exactly start that fire. But that’s kind of irrelevant I guess. One of them became an angel, you know. A very special kind of angel. She’s buried not far from here. And let me tell you, Tommy, where the body of an angel is buried, well…all kinds of supernatural craziness takes place. I think you might find a few answers there.”

  “The big oak tree at Woodlawn cemetery,” Tom said in hurried breaths. “That’s where that girl Stephanie was buried. She’s an angel?”

  The woman in white laughed and vanished from the church.

  .

  ***

  Tom was back in his car and speeding toward Woodlawn Cemetery, which he would arrive at in mere minutes, given the excessive speed at which he was driving.

  Somehow, hours had passed and the sky was now dark; certainly wasn’t the first time he’d experienced a loss of time when Cassie and Red Eyes were involved. He relished it instead of questioning it. The return of the time anomaly made him feel that Cassie was truly close now.

  An unwelcome presence made itself known once again, and Tom found himself sitting next to Brent.

  “Congratulations, kid,” the undead man said, sounding genuinely happy for him. “You done good. Though I think that chick in white kinda’ gave you some of the answers, and that’s cheating. But, ahh fuck, she’s a dirty player. And I’d say you earned it anyways.”

  “Does this mean I don’t have to see you ever again?” Tom asked as he pressed his foot further down on the gas pedal, caring less and less about a cop pulling him over.

  “You are correct, Tommy-boy. I have now been written out of this here story. My character has been killed off, as they say.”

  “Goodbye then,” Tom said flatly, not taking his eyes off the road to truly bid his visitor a fond farewell.

  “Bye now,” Brent said as his image vanished forever from Tom’s eyes.

  Simultaneous with the vanishing of Brent, Tom pulled up at the open gates of Woodlawn Cemetery and drove in hastily.

  Stephanie Waltman’s grave was a landmark to urban legend enthusiasts, and Tom now knew there was damn good reason for it to be so. And from all his reading up on his hometown’s urban legendry, he knew just what that big old oak tree looked like.

  Even in the dark of night it was easy to spot. But what stood beneath that tree was not as easy for Tom’s eyes to take in.

  It was actually her, living and in the flesh.

  Cassie.

  Tom brought the car to a screeching halt and burst out the door.

  “You’re alive!” he screamed. “And you’re here! Do you remember me?”

  The question seemed stupid after he spoke it, but he did not dwell, for there were far too many emotions involved to leave room for petty embarrassment.

  Underneath the tears that flowed from Cassie’s eyes, Tom saw her lips curl up into a smile. She was still beautiful. She looked as though she had not aged a day in twenty-four years.

  Tom threw his arms out to embrace her, but was halted by an unwanted presence that made itself known again, and how Tom truly wished it would be the final time. He figured he should have expected Red Eyes to crash the reunion.

  “There you go once again, Tommy,” Red Eyes hissed. “Thinking it’s all going to end so easily.”

  Cassie reached out and embraced him anyways, uncaring of the vile presence standing before them.

  “Don’t get too cozy, you two,” Red Eyes spat at them. “This is far from the end. Cassie has a little confession to make. Don’t you, Cassie?”

  Cassie looked Tom square in the eyes.

  “I do,” she said.

  Tom couldn’t have cared less about any stupid confession. He could die right here in this very moment with Cassie in his arms and it would all have been worth it.

  Cassie opened her mouth to speak, but was silenced by a wave of Red Eyes’ hand.

  “Have you not yet figured out who I am, Tommy?”

  “Why should I care who you are?”

  “Oh, there you go again with that blind arrogance. I am the king of demons, Tommy. The prince of darkness. All those other nicknames you’ve heard.”

  “You’re Satan?” Tom asked, clutching Cassie’s thin body tighter. “Honestly, I’m not impressed.”

  Cassie kept struggling to speak but was still bound to silence at the hand of Red Eyes.

  “You truly will be a cocksure fool until your last breath, Tommy. I’d recommend you change that. I am only one branch of the ever-present, ubiquitous dark lord who has been made so popular by those bands you listen to. This image you see here, this dark shadowy man with the red eyes…saying this image is the whole of Satan is like saying one of your fingernails and its ass-scratching capabilities are the sum total of Thomas Sullivan. So I suggest you shut up and do so quickly.”

  Tom admitted to himself that he was intimidated now, and did as Satan ordered.

  “I decided,” Red Eyes continued, “that I’d make this fun. I wasn’t just going to let Cassie speak her confession to you. For one thing, that would just be too easy. And, there’s no poetic beauty in that. The shadows, Tommy. Look in the shadows. I can’t let a simple spoken confession rob those haunting words of their magnificence. It’s time for you and Cassie to take a little trip, Tommy boy. Back to the real darkness. Back to where it all unfolded. The darkest place in that sad little head of yours.”

  Tom didn’t bother asking. He knew.

  “Time to go back home, Tommy!” Red Eyes shouted.

  Tom and Cassie released themselves from their embrace and clutched each other by the hand as tightly as they could.

  The lord of all evil snapped his fingers, and Tom and Cassie were thrown into a dark tunnel that spit them out right in front of the house Tom grew up in.

  It looked darker than he ever remembered.

  FIVE

  Tom felt the icy grip of fear suffocating him. Every breath was labored as he and Cassie stood in front of the cursed old house. Everything was just as he remembered, and turning to his left, he realized he was not actually there. He couldn’t be. The house that Cassie lived in ─the massive three-decker─ stood next to his old house, looking exactly as it did twenty four years ago. Though, the house didn’t seem as big right now as it did to the ten-year-old Thomas Sullivan. Perhaps it was just a result of aging and experience, he wondered. To a child, that house was full of endless mystery. But to a thirty-four-year-old who had grown up and seen countless replicas of the drunks, drug peddlers and abusive spouses that the three-decker housed, something about it just looked a lot smaller.

  He looked around the snow-covered street. The cars that once looked brand new to him, The Ford Tempos and the Mercury Sables, all looked vintage.

  “We just traveled back in time, didn’t we?” he asked Cassie.

  “Well, Tommy, we’re not really here,” she said, solving the mystery for him. Her ice-cold hand still held his and she clutched it a little tighter. It didn’t even matter what she was saying. The sound of her voice was the sweetest and most beautiful thing he had ever heard, even in this moment of absolute unrest. “We’re just sort of watching. It’s time for you to learn the truth.”

  Her voice turned sorrowful and pathetic with her last words.

  “Then why am I freezing if we’re not here? The snow that we’re almost knee-deep in, why do I feel it?”

  “Because you’re going to see what happened that day, Tommy. What really happened. This is just how learning the truth is. It would be dishonest if you didn’t feel all that you’re feeling right now.”

  “You seem to know more about this than I do,�
�� he said.

  “Oh, I do, Tommy. I did something horrible that day, the day they took you away. And I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

  “What does it matter what you did? It’s long over now.”

  “I know it can’t all make sense to you, Tommy. But it will.”

  Tom said nothing, and pursued no further questioning. He instead just listened to Cassie, letting the reality of her being with him sink in. What did it matter that nothing in her cryptic words made any sense at all to him. The sound of her voice overrode the terror and anxiety that stirred within. Being here in whatever this strange state of limbo was made the years of mental torture worth every second. Just hearing her voice speak to him, and knowing that he had not only found her, but had her full attention, was all he ever needed. A little piece of the boy who marveled over her was smiling inside. But that comfort faded as Cassie began crying again.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Seeing this isn’t going to be easy for me, Tommy. You think you’re haunted by this day? You can’t imagine what it’s like for me.”

  “Just tell me. Why did you disappear? Why can’t we just go away from here and be together.”

  “We can do that, Tommy,” she said between sobs. “It all depends on you, sweetie.”

  Tom felt it highly inappropriate that he was getting excited at being called sweetie when he was standing here twenty-four years ago on the day that his mother killed his father.

  “Well, whatever it is Cassie, can we just see what it is we’re here to see and then figure out getting away from here?”

  “Any second now,” she told him, as if she didn’t even hear his last words.

  “Any second now, what?”

  “Shhhh,” she hissed and pointed to the window of her old apartment. A younger looking Cassie, the Cassie that Tom remembered so vividly from his childhood, peaked out the window and looked in the direction of Tom’s old house. The look on her face was one of terror. A darkness filled the room behind her. A darkness with two glowing red eyes.