Halloween

by Curtis Richards

  Grass never did much for Laurie, and she didn't expect it to do much this time, but it was the social thing to do, so she dragged on it the way she'd been taught. She must have hit a hot spot in the joint, or perhaps it was a particularly rough weed, because she started to cough uncontrollably.

  Annie took the joint back. “You'll never make a good dope addict,” she said, hitting it again.

  They drove casually in the general direction of town, Laurie holding in her lap the pumpkin she'd brought for Tommy Doyle. They passed a few friends, nobody special, so they honked and waved and drove on.

  “You still spooked?” Annie asked her friend.

  “I wasn't spooked.”

  “Lies.”

  “I saw someone standing in Mr. Riddle's backyard, that's all.”

  “Probably Mr. Riddle.”

  “He was watching me.

  “Mr. Riddle was watching you?” Annie gave that three-note giggle she always seemed to utter when she was getting high. “Laurie, Mr. Riddle is eighty-seven.”

  “He can still watch.”

  “That's probably all he can do.” Annie looked in her rearview mirror before hanging a left, and casually noted the same station wagon she'd shouted at after school. It was about fifty yards behind her. It was probably nothing, and not wanting to alarm Laurie more than the poor girl was already alarmed, Annie decided to say nothing. But she wondered who this El Creepo was. If you're trying to meet a couple of chicks, this sure wasn't the way to do it. And if you're some kind of pervert, tailing chicks through the streets of a small town is about as subtle as throwing a bomb into a police station.

  She checked the rearview mirror again and he was gone. Too bad. Now she'd never know.

  But she had a thought by association, and she uttered it. “Have you ever worn a mask?”

  “Huh?”

  “When you wear a mask, like at Halloween? But I mean a really good one that disguises your face so that people really don't know who you are?”

  “What about it?” Laurie's brow wrinkled as she waited for the punch line.

  “I was just thinking, you can say or do anything from behind that mask, because people don't know who you are.”

  “It's like the Alexandria Quartet,” said Laurie. “Lawrence Durrell?”

  “I never read that.”

  “I'm sure,” Laurie teased. “Somewhere in one of those novels Durrell describes the terrible things that happen on carnival night because people wear masks. Murders, rapes, people hiding behind the anonymity to take advantage of each other...”

  “Oh, goody, can I get a student discount on a ticket to Alexandria?”

  “Be serious, Annie, you're the one who started this conversation.”

  “Sorry. But see, that's just what I mean. The idea of not being responsible for anything I do because I'm wearing a mask – it's kind of arousing.”

  “For you, maybe. But then, you find everything arousing.”

  “Oh, well, that's the kind of girl I am. Maybe you ought to put on a mask and let some of your inhibitions out, do something mad. It's Halloween, what better time to raise a little hell? I'll bet that deep down in you there's a fiend who'd push little old ladies in front of cars if you thought you could get away with it.”

  “Never!” Laurie gasped. Then, pausing a beat as a sly smile spread over her face, “Little old men, maybe, but never little old ladies.”

  They burst into gales of laughter.

  “What's the pumpkin for?” Annie said, tapping the object in her friend's lap.

  “I brought it for Tommy. I figured that making a jack-o'-lantern would keep him occupied.”

  “I always said you'd make a fabulous girl scout.”

  “Thanks.”

  “For that matter, I might as well be a girl scout myself tonight,” she sighed.

  “Because you got shot down, you mean,” Laurie said.

  “Yeah. I guess we'll make popcorn and watch Doctor Dementia. Six straight hours of horror movies. Little Lindsey Wallace won't know what hit her.”

  “Better horror movies than the real thing.” said Laurie wistfully.

  Annie's brows furrowed. “Now, what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, just some morbid thoughts I've been having today.”

  Annie offered her friend the half-smoked joint. “You'd better take a great big hit of this thing, honey. It's a sure cure for the morbids.”

  Laurie pushed it away. “Annie, do you ever think about, well, evil?”

  “Uh-oh, it's serious time.”

  Laurie held her peace, forcing Annie to reflect.

  “Well, you know, daddy's a cop, and he's told me some things. I don't know if you could call them evil, exactly. We don't get much of it around here. We don't get much of anything around here! But when he worked in Columbus? He saw some pretty heavy things go down: beatings, rapes, murders. Sounded evil enough to me. Anyway, I try not to think about stuff like that. Whenever I do, I switch the channel...”

  “I wish I could turn my mind off as easily as you,” Laurie lamented.

  “It's easy when you don't have that much of a mind to begin with. Hey, talk about my father!” As the car bore around a gentle curving approach to town, they saw the sheriff's car parked outside Nichols's Hardware Store. The car's revolving red and blue lights and flashers illuminated the hardware, candy, and liquor stores adjoining it as darkness began to descend on Haddonfield. An alarm bell rang shrilly, and a knot of onlookers stared at Annie's father as he stood in front of the broken plate glass window examining the damage.

  Annie and Laurie hastily rolled their windows down and waved their hands like frightened birds to chase the cloying smoke smell out of the car. Annie noticed the station wagon that had been following them peel off down Main Street as she pulled her car over to the curb. Lee Brackett brightened and ambled over to the car. “Hi, Annie, Laurie.”

  “Huh?” He pointed at the hardware store and Annie realized the man hadn't heard her over the clangor of the alarm bell. She repeated her question louder. “Someone broke into the hardware store. Probably kids.”

  “You blame everything on kids,” Annie rejoined.

  He shrugged. “The only things missing were some Halloween masks, rope, and a set of carving knives, as far as Mr. Nichols has been able to figure. What does that sound like to you, a middle management executive for IBM?”

  Annie looked at her friend. “It's hard growing up with a cynic.”

  “Don't you have a babysitting job, sweetheart?” her father shouted.

  “What?”

  “I said, 'Don't you have a babysitting job?' You're going to be late.”

  “He shouts too,” Annie said, waving at her father. The girls rolled up their windows and laughed.

  “Do you think he smelled anything?” Laurie asked, testing the air with her nostrils.

  “My father? He's a good cop, but he's a lousy detective.”

  “I hope so. I'd hate for it to get back to my folks.”

  “Listen, Laurie, if your parents don't know you smoke grass, they probably haven't noticed you've grown boobs, either.” she glanced sidelong at Laurie's chest. “I take that back. I'm not sure anybody's noticed you've grown boobs.”

  “Damn daughter's been smoking whoopee-weed again,” Sheriff Brackett muttered to himself as he observed a dour-looking, bald man with a gray goatee stepping out of the crowd. The man wore a chocolate-colored suit beneath a rumpled trench coat.

  “Sheriff? I'm Dr. Sam Loomis,” the man shouted over the alarm.

  “Lee Brackett,” the sheriff said, looking at him critically. “We don't need a doctor. It's just a routine break-in.”

  “I'm not that kind of doctor. I'd like to talk with you, if I could.”

  “It may be a few minutes. I gotta stick around here.”

  “It's important.” His eyes, sunken and slightly red-rimmed, appealed to Brackett like a hound's at the dinner table.

  Brackett looked at his watch and shrugged.
“Ten minutes?”

  “I'll be here,” Loomis said, turning just a moment too late to notice the station wagon he'd been hunting pull away after its occupant had stopped to observe him.

  Brackett didn't see it either. He had heard the call come over the radio last night and this morning, and though nobody had fully explained who was supposed to be driving the liver-colored station wagon with the state emblem on the doors, he'd have chased it down routinely.

  Loomis killed the ten minutes with a stroll down Main Street, looking indifferently into windows of stores and shops that were interchangeable with those of any town this size in the Midwest.

  There were a few signs of changing times, such as an organic health food shop, a bookstore with a surprisingly intellectual selection of titles in the window, and a coffee shop specializing in espresso, cappuccino, and herb teas, a far cry from the usual Midwest coffee shop purveying the kind of diner fare that truck-drivers thrived on. But at least there was no head shop, as one commonly saw in bigger mid-western towns and cities: no shop selling cigarette papers, pipes, coke spoons and the more exotic paraphernalia of the dope trade. Though Loomis knew that the kids used drugs in these towns, the town governments came down very hard on any overt display of drug cultures.

  As Loomis passed a liquor store, he nodded, remembering his teenage son's recent tirade about the hypocrisy of Loomis's generation that punishes drug use but proudly displays its alcoholic orientation as if drinking were a virtue to be encouraged. The boy was right. But it would be another decade before you saw a head shop in Haddonfield, Illinois.

  Brackett was just finishing writing up his report and supervising the hasty assembly of a saw-horse barrier around the hardware store. Mr. Nichols put the finishing touches on a wooden panel to cover the broken window until a glass replacement arrived in the morning. He stepped back to survey his handiwork and examine the rim of the window as if to contemplate the possibility of putting up a locked iron gate. He shook his head sadly. He hated to do that. To put up a gate would not only be ugly, it would symbolize his concession to the growing vandalism that existed in his town.

  “May we sit in your car, Sheriff?” Loomis asked.

  “Suit yourself, Doctor.” They slid into the front seat. Brackett turned the heater on.

  “Getting a bit chilly. Winter'll be here any day now.”

  “Mmm,” Loomis said distractedly, running his fingers down the blue barrels of the sheriff's over-and-under twelve-gauge shotgun propped vertically between the seats. “Have you ever had to use this thing?”

  “Can't catch quail with my bare hands,” Brackett laughed.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Brackett shook his head. “I've pointed it at one or two 'alleged perpetrators,' as my colleagues like to call them.”

  “Who do you think perpetrated that?” Loomis is asked with a jerk of the head toward the hardware store.

  “Kids, most likely. Who else would steal Halloween masks?”

  “And knives? And rope? What do kids need with those?”

  “Beats the hell out of me. Sometimes they break in and grab whatever's near to hand, just because it's there for grabbing.” He gazed at Loomis, whose face glowed green in the phosphorescent light of the dashboard. “You got any better ideas?”

  “I might. Do you remember the Judith Myers case?”

  Brackett's gaze narrowed to a suspicious stare. “Of course I do.” There was a silence as Loomis ran his fingers with a scratchy noise through his goatee. Brackett waited impatiently, studying this man whose intrusion into his life had brought with it intimations of grisly horror, a horror made more dreadful because it had happened in this idyllic setting. Over the police channel, staticky squawks proclaimed petty vandalism occurring throughout the area. “Intruders reported on Carter Road around the Gleason farm”; “windows broken by four persons in masks, believed children, Carty house at Post Road near Deller”; “three trepassers reported writing on doors with spray paint...”

  “What are you saying, Doctor?”

  Loomis told him about the escape from the sanitarium last night. Brackett listened with a troubled expression. “The Myers house. Will you take me there?”

  Brackett tapped the steering wheel with his nails. “I don't know, Loomis. I got my hands full tonight. Halloween is one of my profession's busy seasons. Can you hear what's coming down?”

  He turned the radio louder.

  Loomis listened stolidly, expressionlessly. “This is all the work of children!” he protested at length. “Harmless pranks!”

  “Do you call broken windows and spray painted doors harmless? Try repairing them sometime. Try paying for them. Across the country the damages amount to millions. Millions!”

  “But we're talking about something else, Sheriff, another... another dimension.”

  “I don't know about other dimensions, Loomis, but I know that the harm being rendered by your so-called sweet innocent children tonight is more real to me than something perpetrated by a nut case fifteen years ago.”

  “An escaped nut case.”

  Loomis's distinction made a telling point on the sheriff. “Umm, that's true,” he conceded reluctantly.

  Loomis drove the point home. “Do you think this man has come here to soap people's windows?” He rubbed his goatee heavily, until it sounded like a carpenter sandpapering a table.

  Brackett shrugged. “I suppose it's worth a look, but I guarantee you're not going to find anything.”

  “That, Sheriff, is a guarantee I would too gladly accept.”

  Another squawk came over the radio. “Fire reported in meadow behind Kochner farm, route 167-A off Market Road,” the voice droned.

  “Kids will be kids,” the sheriff laughed bitterly.

  Loomis still wasn't sure Brackett had grasped the problem.

  As Brackett nosed his car into the dark, cloudy night, he reviewed for Loomis everything he knew or had heard about the Myers case. Loomis listened attentively, though from his half-closed lids Brackett might have concluded the man was dozing off. Brackett said nothing Loomis didn't know, until something slipped out casually that made the psychiatrist's eyes widen and his back stiffen.

  “Would you mind repeating that, Sheriff?”

  “I said, the kid's great-grandfather had done something similar.”

  “Tell me about it.” Loomis was breathing harder. Brackett's casual remark had excited him as if her were a starving man that someone had dangled a piece of cake in front of.

  “Well, I don't know much about it, and it was never brought out in the hearings, but Mrs.

  Myers, that night, was overheard saying, 'He's come back,' or maybe 'It's come back,' Over and over again. I didn't live here then, so this is all second-hand.”

  “Go on.”

  “So Ron Barstow, he was sheriff at the time, Ron asked her, “Who's come back? What's come back?' And she mumbled something about the thing that had got inside her grandfather. I guess she meant taken possession.”

  Despite the coldness of the evening, Loomis had begun to perspire. His breath hissed noisily. “Did she explain, about the thing that had taken possession of her grandfather?”

  “No, but Ron went to the records at town hall and checked out the newspaper clippings at the historical society.”

  “And?”

  “It seems the man had gone berserk back in the eighteen nineties.”

  Loomis was on the edge of his seat, his eyes bulging. “Berserk? How?”

  “It was at a Grand dance, I think Ron said. The man just upped and pulled a revolver from his belt and blasted a dancing couple. They hanged him.”

  They drove silently for a moment, Loomis struggling to contain his excitement, almost savoring the next question. “When did this happen?”

  “Eighteen ninety-eight, ninety-nine, something like that.”

  “No, no, I mean what date?”

  “How should I...? Wait a minute. Of course I know! Ron remarked on it.”

&nbs
p; “Yes?”

  “All Hallow Even. It was a harvest dance. Halloween!” Brackett's toe unconsciously depressed the gas pedal and the car accelerated into the dangerous night. “Jesus,” the sheriff breathed.

  “Why wasn't this mentioned at the hearing?” Loomis demanded, slumping back into his seat, still panting.

  “I think Ron said it was because the defense attorney thought it was either irrelevant or damaging to the kid's case.”

  “Irrelevant? Damaging?” Loomis chuckled drily, a laugh totally devoid of humor, like a rattle. “Tell me, did your friend tell you anything more about this great-grandfather?”

  “I'm thinking.” The seconds ticked ponderously around the clock on the dashboard.

  “Voices.”

  “Voices?”

  “Kill those two specifically. In other words, he didn't fire into a crowd at random? He knew the victims?”

  Brackett scratched his ear. I'm a little confused about that part. The way Ron explained it, the guy claimed he knew who he was shooting, but when they asked him to identify his victims, he called them some weird names he said he'd heard in hid dreams.” Brackett pointed to his own skull and made a rotary motion with his finger. “Crazy.”

  “Perhaps. These names, Sheriff. Were they Celtic? Would you recognize them? Deirdre?

  Culain?”

  “Sorry, my friend, they don't ring a bell. Who are they?”

  “Names of victims in Michael's dreams. If we could establish a continuity from the great-grandfather to the boy...” the psychiatrist mused.

  “A continuity?” Brackett gasped. “Come on, Loomis. In order for a dream to jump two or three generations, you'd have to believe...” He shook his head. “Doctor, I think you may be touched yourself.”

  “Probably. It's an occupational hazard.”

  Brackett swung right and glided to the curb before the gloomy, weather-beaten house that stood out among its white, neatly kempt neighbors like some shriveled crone in a row of teenagers.

  They climbed out of the car and stood before it, listening to the sound of branches whipping against an upstairs window. “Has anybody lived here since...?”