“You have to do it anyway—it’s the law,” Soames said. He was suddenly crafty. “I know the law. You’ll dry me out and stand me up. I can take it. Took it when Riley Gates hauled me in those two times. I’ll take it now.”
Grant fought to control his voice. “Who’s Sam, Marvin?”
“What?” Soames had moved off into another bubble of memory.
“Tell me who Sam is and I’ll see about getting you a bottle.”
“White zin?”
“Anything you want.”
Again, Soames’s face was a map of fighting bits of memory. He was staring at one of the blank walls.
“Man in a cape. No man there, really. Brings me white zin most every day.”
“I’ll bring you white zin,” Grant said.
“Behind the tree? Thanks, Samhain …”
Something went ice cold in Grant. He glanced out through the bars of the drunk tank to make sure the red light was on under the all-seeing video eye. “What did you say, Marvin?”
“White zin would be nice. Good lunch wine. Do whatever you ask.”
His head whipped around and he glared intently at Grant. “You’re not Sam! Get out! Lemme be!”
He lay back down on the hard bunk and curled away from Grant.
In another few moments he was intermittently snoring again, dead asleep.
Grant got up, pushed the stool back against the wall, and let himself out of the drunk tank.
When he checked the tape from the interview, Soames had said everything Grant thought he’d said.
Everything.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“One week.”
The wisp of smoke stood atop what had once been a mountain of sorts. Now it was a blackened pile of soot. The sky overhead, coal black, filled with a thick fog of dust, had been eaten half away; in the scant moments when the roiling clouds parted there was a ragged line separating something from nothing that looked as if it had been made by bite marks.
In a way it had.
The thin wisp of smoke repeated its mantra: “One week.” Beside it was the shape that resembled a cardboard cutout, and another that looked like a patch of red silk, floating off the ground like a manta ray.
“One week and the Dark One will have made it to the Untouched Lands,” the ray said, in a voice like air leaking from a tire.
The cardboard cutout said, “We’ll do our best to fight them off—”
As they watched, there was a booming sound like an immense tearing of fabric and another portion of the sky disappeared, leaving a fresh ragged bite mark.
The ground beneath them trembled.
The wisp of smoke said, “The three helpers have done their job well. But I’m afraid the girl is being brought along too quickly.”
“It can’t be helped. There’s no time—”
“This is true. Have the three withdrawn, now?”
“Yes, there are other things at work. More elaborate things. In a few days she will be on a level with the young man.”
“That is good, because both of them must be ready by Halloween.”
“They will be.”
“You still think the girl is our best hope?”
The cardboard cutout was silent for a moment. “Yes. The young man is … unstable. Perhaps untrustworthy.”
All three of them watched the ragged sky be eaten, listened to the booming of distant destruction.
“One week,” the wisp of smoke whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Hello, again.”
Corrie jumped, and turned around to see John standing behind him. The pumpkin man’s head glowed with an eerie, flickering light as if a candle within were being buffeted by a wind. John reached out and touched him on the shoulder.
“Visiting?” John inquired.
“Yes …” Corrie said vaguely. He couldn’t quite remember how he had gotten here. He remembered leaving the house, which had been lit up from within as if fires burned in every window; there had been the sounds of a volcano eruption, and he thought he had ridden down the stairs on a river of lava—
He looked at his hands — they were burned as if—
He remembered passing houses decorated for Halloween: uncarved pumpkins on porches, orange lights in strings across gutters, cutouts in windows. One of the cutouts, a black cat, turned its fierce yellow eyes on him and hissed as he went by. Another, of a cutout jointed skeleton, had looked at him and then begun to climb out of the window and follow him. When he blinked and looked at it, it was just a cutout in a window again. It must have been late; house lights were off and the distant sounds of barking dogs and a lonely, faraway train whistle was all he heard. He passed through town, quiet in the late hour, the orange stripe down Main Street still looking fresh after the Pumpkin Days Festival, the tents in Ranier Park gone. He felt like a visitor from another planet. He heard his own footsteps, looked down to see holes opening in the street in front of him which he avoided, weaving like a drunk. When he looked back the holes were gone. He passed a bar, still open, and crossed the street so he wouldn’t be seen.
The other side of town, past the municipal building holding the court and town government, a few restaurants and Mom and Pop stores, and then he was out of town again. Two rows of sleeping houses, and then a lonely country road lined with denuded trees. Leaves fell like snow. He broke out into a clearing, the waxing moon overhead staring balefully down at him, then suddenly resolving into a deformed face, the mouth opening wide in a howl:
“Corrie …”
He looked away, looked back, and the moon was growing, flying down at him out of the heaven, widening, filling the sky—
He closed his eyes and then opened them once more.
The moon was as it should be, hanging serenely in the sky.
Then the gate to the cemetery, creaking open, back and forth, back and forth on its rusty hinges …
“I can’t tell the difference between reality and … the other anymore,” he said, blinking at John. “I’ve been watching for you; you haven’t been in the cornfield …”
“I’ve been busy elsewhere,” John remarked. And as for …” He reached out a cornstalk hand, touched Corrie’s palm. “As I said, it will only get worse. For you, two worlds are merging. Mine is becoming more real to you. Be aware that the dead in your world appear differently than they do in mine. In my world they will look … extremely strange to you. Not like ghosts or goblins or the other manifestations of the next life you’re used to. Not like me. Your eyes will perceive them in …odd ways.”
“Like the shapes Reggie and I have been seeing in our dreams?”
“Yes.”
“The girl, Reggie, her father came to see me the other night, he doesn’t understand …”
John was silent; the light burned bright behind his eyes. “It will be very hard for her. Her parents will try to stop you. If you can’t make them understand, you must at least protect her.”
There was a long silence. “She may be very important in the end, Corrie.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s not something I should talk about now.”
A flare of anger shot through Corrie. “You’re doing to her what you did to me! After everything you’ve done to me, the horrors you’ve put me through, you have to do it to a little girl too?”
John’s voice was gentle. “I’m sorry, Corrie, but it’s necessary …”
“Let her go! Let her have her life back! It’s too late for me, I’ve been in a nightmare since I was seven, but let her go!”
John looked at the ground. “We can’t do that. I can’t do that. We just don’t know …”
“Jesus. Jesus …”
Corrie blinked, turned around. He was shaking. The gravestone he had been staring at stared back at him mutely: GRACE PHAEDER, it read on the dull gray surface.
Corrie’s voice caught in his throat. “I … came to tell her I’m sorry.”
Again John put a hand on him, removed it.
>
“I’ll see you again soon. On Halloween. Be strong until then.”
A rustling sound began in a whisper, quickly grew to a hiss and then a moan.
“What—”
Corrie turned around, but John had vanished.
The gravestones around him flared with light. In front of each stone, a line of smoke rose screaming, corkscrewing out of the ground and resolving into a human shape — man, woman, child — and then settling on the ground. Their movements were stiff, disjointed, as if they were unused to Corrie’s world.
His mother’s grave was silent; no ghost rose.
The ghosts turned their hollow eyes on him, and each held a hand out—
“Corrrriieeeeee,” one of them said, and then the others joined in chorus:
“Corrrrrrrrrieeeeeeeee …”
Corrie back away from his mother’s burial spot, holding his hands out to ward off the needy spirits who walked without touching the ground.
“Corrrrrriieeeee …”
He turned and ran, stumbling to the cemetery gate and then turning around.
The ghosts were spiraling back down into their graves, hisses of blue-white vapor.
“I’m sorry …” Corrie whispered, looking at his mother’s silent grave.
He ran back to his house, which waited for him, opening the door wide and then closing it behind him with finality.
Chapter Twenty-Four
After the ceremony for Rose, which, as Grant wanted, was a small one, and the one for Riley, which was even smaller, with just a few retired cops, and Captain Farrow conspicuously absent, Grant drove to the library. He hoped the librarian would be off that day, but she was working, so there was nothing to do but talk to her.
“Hello, Ms. Marks. Do you remember me?”
She stared at him a moment. “Detective … Grant?”
“That’s right.”
She looked much older than the last time he had seen her. Older, and used up. She looked more than tired; she reminded him of Rose, when the depression had first taken over. Rose would sit for hours, staring at the television but not watching it; when he talked to her she would listen, but not hear.
“Can I help you with something, detective?”
Grant had the feeling she had spoken the words by rote, out of habit.
“Actually, yes. I’m looking for a book called” — he consulted his open notebook — “Occult Practices in Orangefield and Chicawa County, New York, 1668-1940.”
A brief flicker of interest sparked on her face. She frowned. “That’s in the Local History section, upstairs. It’s a restricted book, but of course you can borrow it.”
“Thanks.”
He mounted the spiral staircase behind the librarian station, watching Kathy Marks as he went up. Her gaze had gone blank again.
He quickly located the Local History section, and the book he wanted. Sure enough, it was by Thomas R. Reynolds. His eyes browsed over a few other RESTRICTED titles: A Short History of Halloween, An Occult History of Orangefield by D.A. Withers — the last he paged through and then decided to take as well.”
As he descended the staircase to the main floor, he made a decision.
“Ms. Marks, can I speak with you for a moment?”
She looked up at him, seemed to stare through him. “Of course.”
Like an automaton, she processed his two books and gave them back to him. “There’s a conference room in the back we can use,” she said. After calling over one of the young assistants who worked with her to man the desk, she led him there, closing the door behind them.
She sat down on one side of the table in there, and Grant sat down on the other.
“This isn’t official business or anything,” Grant said, making sure that his voice sounded official enough, to get her attention. He opened his notebook and put it on the table in front of him, also to get her attention.
She looked at the notebook.
Grant said, “I just wanted to ask you if you’re all right.”
Another flicker of interest. “Personally? I hardly think my personal life—”
Grant held up a hand. “I’m not trying to meddle. But I know a little bit about depression — my late wife was a victim — and, frankly, you show all the symptoms.”
As expected, she reddened with indignation. “Detective—”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I know an excellent man here in Orangefield who can help you.” He scribbled a name down on an empty sheet of notebook paper, tore it out and slid it over to her. “I’m not telling you this as a cop. Believe me, I’m just trying to help.”
He got up and looked down at her — she looked as if she wanted to cry or scream or crawl deeper into her shell. On a whim he took out one of his cards and slid that over to her, too. “If you ever need someone to talk to, call me. I’ve been through it — all of it — with my wife. My home phone and cell is on there, too.”
He left her there, wondering if he had done the right thing.
At home, he cleared a spot on the kitchen table and opened the Reynolds volume. The first chapters were fascinating, covering Salem witch trial-like occurrences in the Orangefield area in the late 17th century — Grant hadn’t known that a total of fourteen persons had been executed by hanging or stoning for witchcraft. Reynolds’s contention was that the executions did not attain the notoriety of the Salem trials because no burnings at the stake were involved. Much of the rest of the book covered similar events from colonial times through the early 1900s, the standard ‘strange happening’ cases, unsolved mysteries, that sort of thing.
Then Grant hit the last chapter, titled THE PUMPKINFIELD ERA AND THE BEGINNING OF ‘SAMHAIN SIGHTINGS.’ and his interest picked up. He got a bottle of Dewar’s from the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff drink, then sat down to study Reynolds’s research.
Under the chapter title was a picture of the first pumpkin field in Orangefield. Grant already knew that the town’s name had been briefly changed to Pumpkinfield during the Depression.
There followed a discussion of “Samhain sightings,” or “Sam sightings,” which began around 1941. Apparently there was another rash of sightings in 1952, but that was covered in the second volume, which Grant had not been allowed to see. There were unsolved murders involved. Samhain was usually described as a cloaked figure who often appeared in pumpkin patches. The book ended abruptly. Grant was unsatisfied.
He turned to An Occult History of Orangefield by D.A. Withers, but discovered to his dismay that the book covered mainly colonial times. It had been written in 1953.
Damn.
Grant poured himself another Dewar’s and sat staring at the cover of the Reynolds book.
He had another scotch after the second, and then another after the third.
He decided he wanted to see the second volume.
Badly.
He took out his notebook and flipped to the page with the Reynolds’s telephone number on it.
There was the slightest of movements behind him, and then a voice said: “Perhaps I can help.”
Grant was not a jumpy man, but he nearly leapt out of his chair, spilling his drink as he spun around. His hand was already to his shoulder holster, drawing his 9mm out as he turned.
The kitchen door was open. In the opening floated what looked like a black cloak surrounding an amorphous figure. Grant couldn’t quite grasp the features; they were insubstantial, here and then gone, as if illuminated by a flickering low wattage light bulb. The face was pale gray, the eyes hooded, the mouth a cruel red slash.
Grant had his gun out, trying to point it.
“It will make a lot of noise, and accomplish nothing,” the figure said. The voice was rich, and not without a touch of humor. “Think about all the paperwork.”
“You’re Samhain,” Grant managed to get out.
“Yes. You could read about me in Volume Two of that fool Reynolds’s work, but I’ll save you the trouble. Volume Two is gone anyway, and young Reynolds and his moth
er with it. I asked them politely to leave, though I have a feeling the boy may be back someday. He’s a lot stronger — and even stranger — than his father.”
The cloak flapped, the face became more starkly lit for a moment. A shiver passed through Grant.
“There are things I can do, detective Grant, and things I cannot do,” Samhain said. Certain … humans, of a weaker mind, can be handled. Someone like you, on the other hand, would be impossible to influence directly.
“But there’s always the indirect approach. Your wife, for instance. Her doctor, or the attendant he left her care to, I should say, could be handled.”
“You murdered her …”
“Let’s just say I was able to put certain wheels in motion, which turned the way I wanted them to. Sometimes I can control some parts of nature: insects and, sometimes, animals. You’ll remember the first time we rubbed shoulders, detective Grant. The hornets at Peter Kerlan’s house. And later at the beekeeper’s. Marvin Soames has a weak mind, also. Do you see a pattern?”
“Riley Gates, Fred Willims, Charlie Morton, Rose …”
“Ah, ever the good detective. I’m glad you remember the district attorney, who was susceptible to a hornet sting. He was easy — as most lawyers are. I’m trying to control you indirectly, my friend. Through persuasion. We all work for someone. The someone I work for wants the wheels I’ve put into motion to continue to turn. My job is to insure that happens. Riley Gates was a potential problem, which was taken care of indirectly. The same could happen to you.”
The red slash of a mouth became very solid: a hard smile, sharp as a scythe.
“I would like you to stay away from Corrie Phaeder. For a short while, I hoped you would take care of him for me, but that didn’t happen. He didn’t kill his mother, by the way. Just as Riley Gates told you.”
Grant was staring at him. “Are you really …?”
The red sickle smile widened. “The ‘Lord of Death’? Something like that. But my subjects are unhappy, these days. Usually, I would have certain of them to assist me but these days those pickings are, shall we say, slim.
“The one I work for, though, is far worse than I am. I have always been interested in your species, in a clinical sort of way. My own master entertains no such foibles.”
The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus Page 32
