A Soul To Steal

by Rob Blackwell

  (If I’m as powerful as you said I would be, do we need to risk it?)

  Kate shook her head.

  (It’s not that) she said. (I want to be there when you face him. I want to watch him die.)

  Chapter 24

  “ Fear is your salvation, my friends. Do not shy from it. Do not run from it. If you do, it will control your path. It is only by grasping it and absorbing it that we can truly understand it, that we can revel in it and turn its power into our own. Fear is not the enemy. Fear will set you free.”

  — Letter from Robert Crowley, Oct. 31, 1873

  Tuesday, Oct. 31

  All Hallow’s Eve

  Quinn pulled onto the road feeling the butterflies in his stomach. He eased the car back from his not-very-fast speed of 15 miles an hour. It was tough even to go that fast without feeling like the car was shaking all around him. Easy does it, he thought. Easy does it.

  Some part of him still wanted to run. No matter how angry he was, no matter that he wanted to face this thing once and for all, it was hard to put himself in a position where two bad things were liable to happen, maybe at the same time. Even if ol’ Headless didn’t show up, Kate and Quinn had made sure someone else would.

  My God, we are desperate, he thought. There must have been another choice or some other way. But they couldn’t think of any. The Horseman would be here. To defeat Lord Halloween, Quinn must destroy the Horseman. And Quinn could think of no more worse spot than here, heading into a trap of his own making.

  And what did Quinn have to protect him? Nothing. Not a gun, which he had no idea how to use and would probably end up in the hands of his assailant anyway. Not a knife or a sword. Nothing.

  He had come empty-handed, unless he counted Janus’ lighter, which he still carried in his pocket. It was the only thing he had of Janus. And if he was going to do this, he needed all the support that he could get. He hoped it would be his good luck charm.

  Not that he was entirely alone. Kate was waiting a couple of miles away. When he needed her, she would be there. He just wondered if it would be in time.

  (I’ll be in time) she thought.

  (I know.)

  The road got bumpier and Quinn knew he was only a mile from the bridge. Not that he believed it would keep him safe, as it had in the dream. Quite the contrary, given whom he thought would be waiting for him. But it was one of the few landmarks he knew on the road.

  A large popping noise came and Quinn felt the car shift violently to the left. He pressed the gas to keep it steady, but knew immediately one of the tires had blown.

  He brought the car to a stop and got out.

  Outside the car, he saw the problem immediately. The two front tires were both blown. He leaned closer to the road and saw why. Nails had been laid across the road.

  Quinn shivered.

  (Well, we knew he would do something.) Kate thought.

  (Yeah, but I thought I would at least get to the bridge.)

  (Don’t let it throw you.) she thought.

  (Easy for you to say. Or think, rather.)

  So Quinn’s car was out of it. And this meant the trap had been sprung. Lord Halloween was here.

  Quinn looked up the road and then behind him nervously. The scene was too familiar. The moonlight shone brightly through the treetops, which waved slightly in the breeze.

  How many times have I dreamt this scene? But this time it’s real. He took some comfort in the fact that this was the last time he would have to make this trip. One way or another.

  He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked down the road. He was only about a mile away, he thought. He moved slowly, however. As much as he wanted to run, he was afraid of doing so. Whatever was planned for him at the other end of this little trip, he did not want to run in blindly.

  And then he started to hear it. The sound was far away now, but in the distance he could hear a horse at full gallop. Quinn knew it would be here soon. He started jogging, but did not push himself too fast. It would not be good to run out of energy already.

  He looked behind him, as he had hundreds of times before in his dreams, and saw nothing. Nothing but the forest on all sides.

  Looking ahead, he hurried. Maybe the Horseman would find him too soon. Or finish him off. And Lord Halloween would find nothing out here.

  Quinn picked up the pace and saw the field on his right. He had stood there only a week before, looking at a tree carved with the word Sanheim.

  The sound of the horse was louder now. Quinn chanced a look behind him. Did he see it already? That figure at the end of the road, riding with his cape unfurled behind him?

  (You will have to face him.) Kate thought.

  (I know.)But he kept running instead. Now that the moment was on top of him, he did not want to face this thing. He was not ready.

  Quinn reached the curve in the road, ran around it and could see the bridge ahead.

  In that moment, the question of who might be waiting for him under the bridge was gone. Instead, the dream reasserted itself-he needed to get to the bridge.

  Quinn hoped he would make it in time. He looked at his watch. It was almost 10 o’clock. Quinn heard the hooves louder now and then heard something else-the sound of menacing laughter.

  He turned to look, actually stopping dead in his tracks. And there in the distance he came, tearing around the bend in full fury. A headless figure astride a horse, with a blade swinging at his side.

  (How could I ever think this was a good idea?)

  (You have to face him, Quinn. You have to face him before you get to that bridge. You can’t go in there. It’s not safe.)

  But he could feel her fear as well as she saw the thing bearing down on him. The Headless Horseman crossed the distance between them as if it was nothing.

  (Move, Quinn, now!) she called.

  Quinn’s only thought was for the bridge. But he knew he would not reach it.

  Instead, he panicked and darted into the trees on the side of the road. Quinn ran through the forest, with tree limbs tearing at him. Everything seemed horribly familiar.

  The Horseman did not stop. He followed at full speed, and the noise sounded as if the trees themselves were being thrown aside to make way for the headless Hessian.

  (What do I do?) he yelled out in his mind.

  But now he heard nothing, nothing but the terrible sounds behind him. Quinn suddenly felt very alone.

  He ran deeper into the woods, afraid to look behind him. He went to the left, hoping the Horseman would not see the change fast enough to cut him off. But he seemed to predict Quinn’s moves. The crashing sounds were near deafening.

  Quinn turned to the right again, back the way he had come earlier. He had to reach the bridge. Some part of him knew he would not be safe there either. He had to find a way to face this thing before he got there. But he couldn’t think clearly anymore. Around him, he heard what sounded like trees being ripped from their roots.

  Quinn’s hands were now scratched and bleeding. He saw ahead of him a break in the trees and knew that the bridge would not be far beyond it.

  The Horseman was almost on top of him. Quinn looked behind only to see the horse’s hooves about to crush him. He dropped and rolled to the right, and the Horseman shot by.

  As the Horseman sliced his way through the forest and came about, Quinn threw himself to the left again and heard the sword slice near his head as the Horseman came by.

  Quinn darted forward and zigzagged through the trees. He had to get out of there.

  And suddenly he was out. He stumbled up the hillside. The bridge was 20 feet away.

  Quinn ran and waited to hear the sounds of the Horseman behind him. But now he heard nothing.

  Quinn didn’t stop to look back. He did not know what had happened and he didn’t care. He almost jumped to the bridge.

  I’m going to make it, he thought. I’m finally going to make it.

  He stole a look behind him, but nothing appeared to give chase. Instead Quinn stepped i
nto the enfolding darkness of the bridge and could have dropped to his knees in thanks.

  As he crossed the threshold, though, he saw another figure move in the shadows right toward him. It happened so fast, Quinn could not block anything, and suddenly someone grabbed him by the shoulders.

  Quinn tried to break free of the grasp, but the figure held him steady. For a second, Quinn was worried it was the Horseman. That somehow he had gotten into the bridge and had been waiting for him.

  “Calm down, Quinn,” a voice said as he struggled. “I don’t know what you have been running from. But you look like hell. Relax.”

  Quinn suddenly focused on the face before him. At first, a sense of relief washed over him. A friend was here, he thought. Someone who could help him face what was out there in the darkness waiting.

  And then all the memories of the past few weeks flooded back to him like a punch in the stomach. Quinn had not escaped anything. He had traded one monster for another.

  The figure in front of him was Kyle Thompson.

  “Hello, Quinn,” Kyle said and smiled benevolently, still holding his arms. “So nice to see you here.”

  Quinn shook himself loose and practically fell over. By reflex, he looked again to the road behind him, but there was nothing there.

  Quinn started, momentarily at a loss. They had known, of course. They had figured out who Lord Halloween was. But that was theory, this was reality.

  “Quinn-honestly you’ve looked better. You look, and please don’t take offense at this, like shit.”

  Kyle looked different than when he had last seen him. There was a large mark just below his left eye. It looked like a burn, one that wasn’t healing well.

  “I’ve been wanting to congratulate you on your new relationship with sweet Trina. I had been expecting her too, you know.”

  “You’re a sick fuck, Kyle,” Quinn said.

  “You know what’s sick, Quinn?” he said. “You are the second person to learn my identity and not go to the cops. Is there something in the fucking water around here that makes people act so stupidly?”

  “Buzz,” Quinn said. He tried to send a mental image to Kate, but there was nothing. Whatever was blocking them from communicating was still doing so.

  Quinn could barely see Kyle. The moonlight crept just to the edge of the bridge, but they stood toward the middle, where the light appeared to be swallowed whole.

  “Yes, Buzz,” Kyle said. “Dear old paranoid Buzz. He came to warn you two, did you know that? He came to the hotel once he figured out that Kate was really Trina.”

  Quinn thought of the security video and nodded. He had seen Buzz’s jacket, then. It was one piece of the puzzle that hadn’t worked with the theory, but now it fell into place.

  “So one day I find Buzz skulking around my house, even sitting in my chair,” Kyle said. “For the life of me, even now, I can’t think of why he didn’t confide in someone. He could have told the police, or you, or Laurence, or somebody. I don’t get it, I really don’t. When I saw him in that chair, I thought the game was up. Seriously, he should have at least passed a note, or left something in his will, right?”

  “He was paranoid,” Quinn said. “Just like you said.”

  “Yeah, he had that whole thing with the police,” Kyle said as if reminiscing good-naturedly about an old colleague. “I thought that was pretty funny, actually. I have to say-Buzz was not on my target list at all. I never liked him, but he was respectful of me. Not of Kyle Thompson, I mean, but Lord Halloween. He was always talking me up. Talking about how I would come back, about how the police would never catch me. I thought he was a pretty good PR man myself. It is a real shame he had to die.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, Buzz pulls out this gun and starts like he is the psychopath. I thought I could bluff my way out at first, but he didn’t go for it. No, he knew he had the right guy.”

  “How?”

  Quinn waited for Kyle to make a sudden move, maybe pull a knife, but he seemed enraptured by his own story.

  “Who knows?” Kyle said. “I went to his house and there was a file on me that was unbelievable. He had detected movement patterns, sketches, a whole bunch of stuff. It was a pretty accurate record. I mean, I didn’t stop killing in those 12 years, did I? And Buzz somehow could see my work all over the place. Out in West Virginia. On the Appalachian Trail. Most of the time he got it right. But I still don’t know how he landed on me.

  “So he sits there with a gun in his hand. Now I don’t like guns myself. I think they are overly violent and not as… artistic as a serious person would like. A knife-that is a weapon I can really embrace. But good ‘ol Buzz waited too long. I think he wanted to ask questions or something. He told me not to move, but I knew what was coming if I stayed still. So I jumped. He fired and missed me. I, on the other hand, did not miss. I never miss.

  “He had guts, I’ll give him that. Not like you-running through the forest like a man being chased by a bee.

  “So I looked at Buzz and realized it was time for Kyle Thompson to sail out of the picture. It was very liberating, Quinn. I just sliced and diced, and suddenly I didn’t have to worry about how Kyle looked anymore. Kyle was dead. And all I had to do was call Laurence once and talk with a really low voice. He really thought I was Buzz. That man is an idiot.”

  “The police identified your body. They even had DNA testing. We couldn’t figure out how you pulled that off,” Quinn said.

  “Come on, Quinn, catch up,” Kyle replied. “I mutilated Buzz’s corpse and killed a police courier that was taking the DNA sample for testing. I replaced the kit with some of my DNA. No one even thought about why I would kill a police courier. That is the benefit of being random all these years. When you do it on purpose, nobody knows.”

  Kyle cocked his head to the side and grinned.

  “Am I scaring you?”

  “How many people have you killed?”

  “I’ve lost count,” Kyle said. “I really have. But now it’s my turn to ask questions. You figured me out. How?”

  “You just said it yourself. Not all your killings were random over the years.”

  “Good. Very good.”

  “This whole ‘Lord Halloween’ thing was a shtick, wasn’t it? I mean, you enjoyed killing people, but you could have done that without drawing attention to yourself.”

  “I had become quite good at it,” Kyle replied.

  “But you invented Lord Halloween. Why?”

  “I think you must know,” he replied.

  “It was so simple we didn’t see it,” Quinn said. “Tim Anderson said you were always hanging around, that you were obsessed with the paper. You wanted to be a reporter.”

  “Not just any reporter, Quinn,” he said. “I wanted to cover crime. I enjoyed it. I reveled in it. Crime was the beat for me.”

  “But they already had a crime reporter.”

  “And he was good,” Kyle said. “No, he was fantastic. There was no way they would give me that beat as long as he was there.”

  “So why not just kill him? Why invent a whole persona?”

  “For one, it was a fun challenge,” he said. “I’d been killing for years, but changing patterns, changing methods, ensuring not to draw attention to myself. This was different. This was a direct challenge to God and man to find me. Secondly, I wasn’t even a reporter yet, Quinn. If I had killed Tim, someone else at the paper would have taken his place. Then I would have had to kill them. At what point would someone figure out what I was up to? No, I had to create a disincentive to being the crime reporter. It had to be a job no one wanted 12 years ago. And it worked like a charm. Anderson ran off and… there I was.”

  “The girl in the basement? She wasn’t random either, was she?”

  “No,” Kyle said. “She wasn’t. I went on three dates with her, did you know that? I thought the whole fireman-thing would really work, you know? But she just wanted to be ‘friends.’ And man, was I cool about it when she told me. But I kn
ew she was into Tim. Everyone was into Tim. So I made sure she was on the list.”

  “Why not kill Tim?”

  Kyle paused at this.

  “Cause he’s the only one that truly stood up to me, Quinn,” he said. “His last article was begging for me to kill him. So I didn’t. He wanted death. I thought surviving would be harder for him. And it was.”

  “Why now? Why bring Lord Halloween back now?”

  “Look around you, Quinn,” Kyle said. “The world is dying. Journalism is dying with it. How long before Ethan sells the paper? The Chronicle is struggling and you know it. It’s not the business it once was. Even the mighty Post is going to die soon. So I wanted a good story before it all went down. And Lord Halloween was the best story this county ever had.”

  Kyle paused and Quinn could see him smiling, even in the darkness.

  “Of course, that was before someone tried to hone in on my story,” he said. “Before someone tried to steal it from me.”

  “I never did, Kyle.”

  “Oh, who could blame you?” Kyle said. “Lord Halloween is a sick, sick fuck. I’ll admit I’m laying it on thick. The theatricality that comes with that persona is addictive once you get started. But it’s not me. Lord Halloween will have his final stand tonight, and I’ll move on. Maybe I’ll get a reporting job in Bluemont, what do you think? You could have joined me, if you hadn’t left that message on my cell phone-a dead man’s cell phone-asking to meet me here. You were a good reporter.”

  “I am a good reporter,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah, gotta say-I just don’t think of you in the present tense anymore,” Kyle replied.

  He laughed. But far from a maniacal laugh, this one was quite casual.

  “You know, I’m really enjoying this,” he said. “All the others I wanted to put on a show for. You know? To live up to their expectations. But I’m just chatting with you. It’s very freeing.”

  “So glad I could help,” Quinn replied.

  “It was more than just the paper, though,” Kyle said. “I did this because it’s what I do. To know that every October, you aren’t like the bogeyman, you are the bogeyman. You are the thing that keeps people up at night, the bump in the dark, the figure they see out of the corner of their eye. You own these people. Is that enough for you?”