“Jesus—”
“I must talk with you,” the thing said, as Grant fumbled for the door handle behind him, pushed himself out of the car onto the ground, grabbing for his 9mm in its holster.
The pumpkin creature calmly opened the back door of the Taurus and stepped out.
Grant had the gun out, pointing it.
Incongruously, he was still listening with pleasure to the movement of the river across the road …
The pumpkin creature stepped calmly away from him a few feet, then settled on the ground, sitting Indian fashion.
It held a hand out toward him. “I only want to talk. And I don’t have much time. You can call me John.”
Grant thought he smelled the same fresh-cut-pumpkin odor he’s smelled in town as the creature spoke.
“Please,” the thing said.
“All right then, talk.” Grant pushed himself into a crouching, then standing position, still aiming the 9mm.
“I understand you’ve met Samhain.”
Grant said, tentatively, “Yes.”
“That’s why it’s very important that I speak with you. This is going to be an extremely vital day, for all of us.”
Grant said nothing, so the creature went on: “Corrie Phaeder is very important to your world, as well as mine. It’s essential that nothing happens to him in this world today. Samhain will do everything he can to try to harm him, as well as a little girl named Regina Bright. If Samhain is able to harm or kill them today, I’m afraid both of our worlds will be—”
“What do you mean: both of our worlds? Where the hell are you from?”
The pumpkin stared at him. “The next world. The place humans go when they die.”
“You’re dead?”
“Of course. But I remember very little of my time on this world. I don’t know who I was, for instance, when I lived on Earth.”
Grant closed his eyes, then opened them. His mind was a mixture of numbness and crystal clarity.
After a moment, he said, “Isn’t Samhain the Lord of the Dead?”
“Yes. In a way he’s our master. But just as on earth, when your master passes a line, does things that are detrimental to you, you fight back.”
“Can’t he destroy you?”
John gave a grim smile and tilted his head. “We’re already dead. But the Dark One he works for is the opposite of you and me. You’re life, and I am what comes after life. The Dark One wants only the annihilation of everything to do with life in the Universe. He is the Uncreator.”
“What about the Creator?” Grant found himself saying. He suddenly felt as if he was back in bible school. “What about God?”
The pumpkin creature was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I don’t know.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know, just as you don’t know. I doubt that Samhain knows, either. Being Death, he has been compelled to work for the Dark One. But even in him I’ve felt a certain reluctance, as though he feels that what he does is a perversion of his calling. In a way, he must know that if the Dark One succeeds, he too will cease to exist.”
“The death of Death. He told me it would be a rest for him.” Grant shook his head, still not believing the Alice in Wonderland conversation he was having with someone who claimed to be dead. “Ever since I was in short pants I was taught that after death all the questions are answered …”
“There are just more questions, I’m afraid,” the pumpkin creature said. “There is a place we inhabit that would seem very strange to you. It is a sort of way station. Sometimes some of us move on from it. But to where I have no idea, just as you don’t.” John leaned forward, almost eagerly. “Let me explain something to you, quickly. Here on earth, all of the real supernatural occurrences, the ghost sightings, monsters, poltergeists — all of the things that Halloween has turned into a game — are the result of certain … minor overlaps between your world and mine. When something … supernatural happens here, it is because a momentary, and never permanent, crossing has taken place. We are the source of all your boogie men, detective Grant. Sometimes these crossings are benign, at other times they are less so. You must remember that everyone who dies on Earth crosses to this way station, the good and the bad.”
John sat back. “Corrie Phaeder straddles both worlds, and so does the little girl I mentioned. We don’t know why this happened, or who allowed it to happen, but for a long time we realized that Corrie, as a bridge between worlds, represented a way to battle the Dark One and prevent him from using my world as a stepping stone into yours, destroying all of us in the process. Tonight, Corrie Phaeder and Regina will cross from your world into mine alive, something that has never happened.”
Grant, overwhelmed, said nothing.
“Already half of my world is gone,” the pumpkin creature explained. He spread his hands, which were made of dried yellowed corn husks. “If Corrie and Regina cannot help, the Dark One will soon be here, where we sit in this pleasant place, and he will turn it, and all of this world, into … nothing.”
Grant opened his mouth. “I—”
The creature held up a hand. “I need your help, detective Grant. I need you to help protect Corrie and Regina until tonight at midnight. They are already partly into my world, and this offers them, as you will see, some amount of protection. Samhain will do everything he can, use any power he has, to try to stop them from completing the journey. He’s already shown you what he is willing to do. He will not stop there.”
“You visited me at my house, and when I chased you into the park …”
The pumpkin head nodded. “My calling card. To ready you for this meeting.”
Grant said, “My wife Rose … she just died …”
John sighed. “I wish I could tell you something specific, detective, but, as I said, when those of your world pass into mine, they lose all memory of their former standing. I can tell you that she is with us. But if we all fail tonight …”
“I don’t believe this is happening.”
“The things that will happen in the next few hours will seem like a nightmare. They will be all too real. Remember that, detective.”
The light suddenly went out behind the pumpkin creature’s eyes, nose, mouth. The voice became very grim. “I must go. Good-bye, detective Grant.”
Grant blinked, and the creature was gone.
Grant realized that he had been aiming his 9mm at the creature the entire time, his grip too tight, and that his hand was shaking.
On the ground where John had been, a sliver of dried corn husk rustled in the wind with fallen leaves, spinning, then was still.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Halloween.
Orangefield, unaware of the greater drama, reveled in it, swam in it, put in on like a huge orange coat and pirouetted, showing it off. Bowls and plastic cauldrons were filled to the brim with fresh candy, waiting. Children, finally home from school, tried their costumes on for the fiftieth time, but this time kept them on, ready. Empty trick-or-treat bags, paper with handles, white pillow cases, fancy baskets painted black and orange, plastic pumpkins, were clutched in tiny hands, looking to be filled. Supermarkets ran low on eggs, shaving cream, toilet paper.
The day, hovering at an exact and perfect forty-eight degrees, moved into late-day. The sun arched over and began to fall. The blue sky deepened, turning leaves from bright golden and crimson to deeper roasted hues. The temperature, incrementally, began to drop toward chilly. A few lights blinked on, bright orange string lights across gutters, spotlights on front lawn tableaux: a papier-mâché spider caught in a huge rope web, a Frankenstein monster made of old clothes stuffed with newspaper. Carved pumpkins blinked on with candle light within, first one, then another, then a legion of porch dwellers. One house sported twenty lit pumpkins, all with different expressions, lined up along the front foundation. Another had twice that lining the long curving driveway.
The town held its collective breath before launching into th
e day’s reveries:
Then the first tentative toe (appropriately a girl in ballerina costume) set forth from the first house, followed by another and another until a flood of costumed miniature monsters and cartoon characters and celebrities past and present and the occasional hobo and spaceman, filled the sidewalks and spilled, excited and expectant, into the streets.
Halloween.
Orangefield jumped into it with both feet.
And, off in the far indistinct corners of the town, the darker places, the unvisited and inappropriate regions, the hollows, the gorges, the districts of rotting fallen trees and dampness, the hidden unwholesome areas, things stirred, and began, at the behest of the Lord of the Dead, to align and move …
Chapter Thirty
In the gloom of dusk, the front door to the Phaeder home was wide open.
Grant called out Corrie’s name, but was met with unnatural silence. He took a step inside. There was no sound in the house — not a creak, the breath of wind through curtains, the snap of the same curtains in the breeze, a cough, a sniffle, a snore. It was as if the house was dead space.
He stepped all the way in and closed the door behind him.
Then Grant saw Corrie sitting in a chair in the living room.
At first he thought the boy was dead. He looked as if he had been placed in the chair, the way a little girl places a rag doll. His arms rested on the arms, fingers curled down over the ends. His body was ramrod straight, his feet planted firmly on the floor. His head rested on the back of the chair as if he had fallen asleep. His face was bruised, his mouth open, eyes closed.
Something like a halo encircled his head.
Grant stepped into the living room, found a light switch and flipped it on. Nothing happened. He tried a nearby lamp, but the light failed to go on when he turned the switch.
It was cold in the room, and Grant closed the two open windows.
He approached the boy in the chair, reached out his hand —
The doorbell behind him went off — DING-DONG! — startling him to the point of jumping.
He retreated to the front door and opened it, his hand resting on his 9mm.
“Trick or treat!”
Two little pirates and a Snow White stood with open bags, staring up at him expectantly.
He rummaged in his pocket, brought out a handful of change, gave two of them quarters and the other one two dimes and a nickel.
They gave him a sour look and turned away.
Grant closed the door.
Corrie Phaeder still hadn’t moved, and Grant was still not sure if he was alive or dead. He went back to the boy and reached out to touch him.
Something prevented him from doing so.
The vague halo of light around his head intensified. It was as if he was surrounded by some sort of force field. Grant thought about what the pumpkin man had said about Corrie being to some extent protected.
Corrie’s eyes opened — they were black and empty, like two pools of inky black space — then closed.
Again the doorbell rang.
Grant went to it, opened it, pulling out his remaining change.
Three identically dressed goblins in head to toe costumes, green skin, ugly faces, pointed ears, clawed hands, large, hairy feet, stood there, bags in hand.
“All I have is pennies—” Grant began.
The three creatures rushed at him, knocking him down. He felt the weight of one of them, much heavier than a child.
Grant fought himself to his feet, but the creatures were past him, in the living room now, rushing at the figure of Corrie Phaeder in the chair.
Grant shouted at them but they ignored him. The one in front raised its claws, hissing, and ran straight at Corrie.
The goblin was thrown back, repelled by the force field.
The other two goblins were busy grabbing weapons — one snatched the lamp Grant had tried to turn on, yanking its cord out of the wall and marching toward Corrie with it. The third smashed a picture frame on a side table and tore out a long sliver of broken glass.
The one with the lamp beat at Corrie with no effect, the lamp base bouncing harmlessly off.
Grant had his revolver out.
The third charged screeching at Corrie with the glass sliver raised like a dagger. Grant shouted for it to stop but it ignored him.
Grant fired off one shot, and the goblin disappeared in a flash of fire, leaving an odor like sulphur behind.
The other two renewed their attack on Corrie, and Grant fired a shot at each, making them disappear.
The room was filled with the stench of sulphur.
“Jesus,” Grant breathed, lowering his gun.
He opened the windows, but quickly closed them again when he heard an ominous and growing buzzing sound.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
“Oh, shit.”
Something rose from the other side of Sagett River — a huge dark amorphous cloud that flowed toward the house. Grant slammed the front door shut and ran from room to room, looking for opened windows which he closed.
Upstairs he did the same, pushing aside a camera on a tripod in one room. As he closed the window something slammed against it like a fist. A solid wall of hornets hit the glass with a thousand taps and then flowed outward, looking for another way in.
Grant thought of the fireplace in the living room, and ran back downstairs to see a cloud of insects flowing from the open hearth and surrounding Corrie like a cloud.
A second cloud broke away and flowed toward him, buzzing angrily.
He ran for the kitchen, looking madly for something to burn — the one thing he had learned from the beekeeper, Fred Willims, was that smoke would instantly turn hornets sluggish and harmless.
The kitchen sink was filled with dirty pans and dishes — Grant grabbed at a greasy looking pot and turned a top burner on to high. As it began to heat and burn he added other greasy-looking items to it from the sink, then yanked open the refrigerator, pulling out the butter dish and emptying it into the mess.
The room began to fill with acrid smoke.
The fog of hornets reached out at him. A few individual insects, filled with rage, landed on his arms and one on his face. It stung, then fell away.
The room was filling with thick smoke now. The cloud lost its energy. A smoke detector somewhere went off. Grant grabbed at a magazine on the kitchen table and fanned the smoke out of the kitchen, into the rest of the house. In a few moments another smoke detector went off, adding to the shrieking drone of the first.
The smoke reached into the living room, and the hornets began to settle away from Corrie’s figure. He looked unharmed.
Grant looked through the front windows.
The fog of insects was gone from the front of the house.
“We’ve got to leave,” Grant said, not knowing if Corrie could hear him.
Grant went back into the kitchen, stepping over a carpet of dead and inert hornets. Choking, he reached out and turned off the burner, satisfied that the smoke would continue to pour from the mess in the pot for a while longer.
When he went back to the living room Corrie was standing, his eyes open. The insects had left him alone. A few confused rogues crawled aimlessly on the floor and walls.
“Corrie, can you hear me?”
Phaeder nodded.
“Then come with me.”
Choking against the fumes, Grant led Corrie to the front door. He pulled it open quickly, stepping out and looking to left and right. Clear. His car stood at the curb.
“We’re going to my car, Corrie. Get in as fast as you can.”
Corrie gave him a single nod and followed Grant to the Taurus.
As Phaeder climbed into the back seat Grant heard a shriek from up River Road.
“Now what,” he mumbled, climbing into the driver’s side and gunning the engine. He looked briefly back at the Phaeder house. Smoke was billowing from the open front door, but already lessening.
Past a thick sta
nd of trees was a newer house. The porch light was on, and two spots lit up the driveway. It, too, had been attacked by a cloud of hornets. Only this time they had been more successful. They covered the upper part of the house like a blanket, and were streaming into an open upper story window. A man lay unmoving on the front lawn, and a young woman clutching what looked like a young girl, the upper part of her body covered by a blanket, stood over the man, screaming.
Grant watched the last of the hornets filter into the house, then almost immediately begin billowing out again.
Grant jumped out of his car and threw the back door open.
“Get in!” he ordered.
The woman looked up at him in shock.
“I can’t touch my baby!” she moaned, and now Grant saw that the blanket kept sliding off the girl as if she were covered in grease.
“Is that Regina?” Grant asked.
She nodded weakly.
“Get into the car.”
She moved toward it, obviously in shock.
Grant let the blanket fall to the ground and said to the girl, “Regina, Corrie is in my car. Will you go with him?”
She nodded; her eyes were as black and depthless as Corrie’s.
“Go to the car.”
She began to walk toward the Taurus.
Grant saw that the insects were beginning to congregate into a thick cloud around the second story window.
He reached down and took the unconscious man under the arms and began to drag him toward the automobile. The man’s face was swollen, but he looked like he was breathing.
The woman was sitting in the front seat, staring straight ahead, trembling. Her daughter sat beside Corrie in the back seat, leaving just enough room for Grant to manhandle the unconscious form in a heap next to them.
The cloud, buzzing madly, was flowing toward them.
Grant slammed the door shut, ran around to the driver side and got in.
He threw the car into drive and made a sharp turn, kicking stones, and rammed down River Road toward the main road. He was already on the radio, telling the dispatcher to notify the hospital emergency room that two patients, one in need of immediate attention for anaphylactic shock, were on the way.
The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus Page 35
