Another blast rocked through the train table, blowing up one end where the artificial lake had been painted. Tiny painted water skiers and plastic boats flew into the air.
“Pell,” Samhain called in a loud voice, “turn on all the burners on the kitchen stove and then run out to the barn. Riley Gates kept dynamite out there for getting rid of tree stumps. Bring all of it into the kitchen. And hurry, Pell.”
There came a shout of assent from below.
Grant looked again at his watch: 11:54.
“Six more minutes,” Samhain assured him. And then they will pass from here to my own world. And if that happens, they will deal with something far worse than me, Mr. Grant.”
“But then you might lose.”
Grant, sure that Pell had left, went quickly to the access panel and tried to remove the studs he had nailed across it to keep it in place. He couldn’t locate the hammer. Samhain was floating nearby, chuckling, watching him.
“Not enough time. But for me, I think, there is.”
Grant spied the hammer, next to one of the shotgun holes, under a pile of splinters.
He reached out for it and a green vine snaked up from below, snatching it down and away.
Samhain chuckled again. “I still have a few tricks of my own, Mr. Grant.”
The vine continued to rise, and a pumpkin head rose into view in the opening.
Grant turned his shotgun around and butted the head into pieces. It fell back into the hole, the green vine snaking down after it.
Grant’s watch said 11:56.
He heard Pell banging around down below, back in the house.
“Got the dynamite!” Farmer called up, almost happily.
“Put it in a pile on the kitchen table. And light it.”
A sound of assent came from below.
Desperately, Grant reloaded his shotgun. Breathing heavily, he ran to the boy and girl.
Samhain was gone, but Grant heard muffled voices downstairs, Samhain’s orders and Pell’s replies of “Okay.”
Grant told the boy and girl to move aside, and they stepped together out of his way.
He aimed his shotgun at the floor behind where they had been standing, which was over the patio, and fired off both shots.
A six-inch ragged hole formed.
He quickly reloaded, firing again.
The hole widened, showing Riley’s back porch, the white wicker chairs still arranged next to the table.
Grant reloaded, shot, reloaded, shot.
He butted the hole wider. It was now about a foot.
Again he reloaded, shot, again, then reached back into his pocket and discovered he had only one more shell.
He pushed it into the chamber, closed it, and widened the hole a little more. The girl could now fit through.
Samhain appeared next to him, his mouth opening to say: “In another few moments—”
His voice flared into rage as he watched Grant order the girl into the opening. She dropped onto the wicker chair below.
“What are you doing!”
“Now walk into the field, away from the house!” Grant ordered her.
He began to hammer on the opening’s edges with the stock of the shotgun, widening it still further.
Corrie Phaeder followed the girl down.
Grant eased himself into the opening, snagging for a moment on a ragged edge of plywood. He could feel it ripping into his thigh.
He looked back at Samhain.
“I have a few tricks left, too,” Grant said, and dropped down onto the chair.
He hobbled after the boy and girl, who were halfway to the edge of the pumpkin field. Coming toward them were a new rank of pumpkin men, their glowing eyes filled with rage.
Grant looked behind: he saw Samhain flowing through the attic opening after him, mouth open in a scream, and Pell Simpson trying to climb from the kitchen window as something ignited behind him and then flared into brilliance like the noonday sun.
The house trembled — then there was a huge explosion which threw Grant to the ground.
He covered his head until the rumblings stopped.
He looked up to see Samhain in front of him, hovering over Corrie Phaeder and Regina Bright, the pumpkin men surrounding them—
Grant looked at his watch—
It was just midnight—
“Noooooooooooooo!” Samhain screeched, as the vines collapsed under the pumpkin men. Their heads fell to the ground, cracking open.
Grant stared at the spot where the boy and girl had been.
It was empty.
Samhain turned to look at him for the briefest moment. His eyes were wide with what looked like fear and his mouth was open in an empty “O” of despair.
“It—” he said.
Then he was gone, melted into the suddenly quiet Halloween night. Behind Grant, the destroyed house was still.
Grant kept staring at the empty spot.
“My God,” he said, putting his head down to the ground and closing his eyes. “What the hell just happened?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Where—
“Mommeeee?”
Where—
The sky opened up in front of him. It was mustard yellow, banked with odd, low, sickly gray clouds.
He stood on a high bluff. A dry, stale wind, antiseptic-smelling, blew past him. It deposited a thick layer of gritty silt at his feet. The air tasted dry as toast, weak in oxygen.
“Momeeee?”
He looked down to see the girl huddled on the ground, shivering, her eyes closed tightly.
“It’s me, Reggie. Corrie. Open your eyes.”
She did so, blinking. Her eyes were still pitch-black, filled with darkness. Her hair had turned bone white. Reggie noticed that the thin hairs on his arms and the back of his hands had done the same.
“Where are we, Corrie?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
Corrie patted her head, as she closed her eyes again and began to whimper.
It looked different than it had in the dreams, or whatever they had been. He imagined that when they had been examining it from the balloons it was a mixture of Earth and this world. Now it looked totally alien, like another planet, only once removed from reality. It was like looking at an exposed negative, everything stark and too bright.
He looked up. There was no sun, but the yellow sky held a singular bright illumination. He wondered if there was a version of night.
“I can’t breathe right,” Reggie complained. She had opened her eyes again, and now she stood up next to him. She took his hand and held it very tight. “When I try to breathe it sticks like in the back of my throat and I don’t think it’s getting to my lungs can you—”
“Shhhh,” Corrie said, smiling inwardly at her resilience: already she was reverting to her run-on manner of speaking. “Be quiet, Sniffles. Just breathe normally, only pull the air in slowly and a little bit deeper.”
“Okay I will but I don’t know if it will work who is Sniffles?”
“You’re Sniffles.”
“But I don’t sniffle I—”
“Shhh, and do what I say.”
“She was quiet, and Corrie heard her breathing, practicing what he had told her.
The bluff they stood on led down a gentle slope to something on Earth that would have resembled a river. But it was chalky-looking and he could detect no movement of water. To either side of it were stubby trees and, far in the distance, where the river wound to, a thicker grove of trees, yellow-green in color. The ground was desert-like, but pocked with different colors of tan, some light, some darker. Clusters of boulders and rocks protruded from the silt and, far to his right, where the land dipped down even lower, he saw the top of what looked like a structure, flat-topped and wide, with a single tall spire.
I guess we should head that way, he thought.
At the far horizon was a black thin smudgy line which ran half way across his vision; it was upset here and there by rises of what looked like
thunderheads.
Corrie studied them for a few moments, remembering the black, eaten-away sky in the dreams—
“Come on, Reggie. Time to go.”
“All right, Corrie, I think I can breathe now boy your hair is white I guess mine is too—”
He smiled down at her.
“You look weird, Corrie—”
“So do you, Reggie. Come with me.”
He clutched her hand and led her down the slope to the valley below.
They walked for what Reggie estimated to be an hour, stopping frequently due to lack of breath. When they got to the floor of the valley there was more perspective to the landscape: rock shapes took on three dimensions, and the “river” proved to be filled with something that looked, and tasted, like salt. The structure he had seen from above disappeared behind a canyon wall, but he had marked the direction and they continued that way.
It occurred to him that, except for his own voice and Reggie’s, he had not heard a single sound since they got here. Even the wind was silent, though it did stir up dust devils and blow something that looked almost like tumbleweed across the landscape. The air was oppressively dry and Corrie was surprised to find that he was hungry.
“I want a drink of water, Corrie,” Reggie complained, after what Corrie estimated to be another hour of trekking.
“I’m with you, kid,” Corrie answered. “Got any ideas?”
She stared around. “The river had no water but maybe there’s some underground, like the oasis in the movies I remember—”
“That’s enough, Reggie. Let’s look for a cluster of bushes or trees and try there.”
She nodded.
She proved to have better eyes than he, and in a few moments was pointing to a not-too-distant cluster of plants.
“There!”
“Good enough. Let’s check it out.”
When they reached the plants, which were farther away than they had looked, Corrie’s hopes sank. There were five reedy, yellow-green piece of vegetation, but they looked too scrawny to mark water. He yanked one out of the ground, and noted its wide, flat root system. But he was wrong.
“Here!” Reggie called out, and when Corrie reached her, on the far side of the cluster, he found a shallow gray pool of what resembled water.
“Let me,” he said, bending down to scoop up the liquid, which looked like quicksilver in his palm.
He brought it to his lips and tasted.
It was water, brackish but, to his surprise, almost cold.
“It’s water, Reggie.”
“Hurrah!” She knelt down and put both hands into it, making a cup and drinking.
“So we know there’s water here,” Corrie said out loud. “I wonder if there’s food, too. Are you hungry, Reggie?”
“Yes!”
Corrie eyed the plant he had yanked out of the ground, breaking off a thin branch and tentatively biting it.
“Phoo.” He spit it out. It tasted acidic and bitter.
“Try this end!” Reggie called. She already had picked up one of the shallow, thin roots, and nibbled on it. “Tastes like celery!”
Corrie followed her example. It did, indeed, taste something like celery, more like scallions, almost sweet.
They finished their meal, and Corrie stuffed some of the roots into his pocket.
“Feel okay, Reggie?”
She nodded, and Corrie noted no ill effects from the meal himself.
“Then let’s keep walking.”
They resumed their trek toward the structure.
On Earth, if they had started in the early morning, Corrie reckoned that it would now be late afternoon. Periodically, he had stopped to turn and mark the bluff from which they had started, and though it looked farther away each time, finally blending into the landscape behind them, they seemed to be making little progress forward. The wall of rock hiding the structure he had seen from them looked to be as far away as when they set out.
After another hour or so of walking, Corrie stopped again and said, “You tired, Reggie?”
“Yes.” As she said so she yawned, and Corrie added, “Then let’s stop here to sleep.”
Without hesitation, she curled up on the ground next to him and in a few moments was asleep.
Amazing, Corrie thought. She was probably worn out an hour ago, but waited until I said to stop. And then instantly asleep.
Corrie monitored his own stamina, and found that though he was weary, he knew he would not be able to sleep.
He sat down next to Reggie, pulled a stub of the onion root out of his pocket and chewed on it thoughtfully.
So this is where you go when you’re dead.
The sky, the landscape, the brightness of the sky, nothing had changed a bit since he’d gotten here. Was this what eternity was like? Eternal … sameness? If there was, indeed, a place beyond this one, as John had hinted, was it the same as this? If this was just a way station, was the real afterlife anything better? He sure as hell hoped so. It hardly seemed worth dying to get here.
If this was the Kingdom that Samhain ruled, Corrie almost felt sorry for him.
Not much good being Lord of the Dead, if this was what you lorded over.
And what about the dead? Where were they? Where was John, and all the weird-shaped beings he and Reggie had seen in their dreams?
Corrie found himself yawning. He had been more tired than he thought.
He looked down at Reggie, peacefully asleep, and wondered what he and she were. Were they dead? Alive? Something in-between? He had been hungry and thirsty enough. He doubted that when you were dead you had to eat, or drink, or …
He yawned again, and walked a discreet distance away from the sleeping girl to relieve himself.
So you can piss in the afterlife, he thought, and almost laughed.
He walked back to the girl and lay down on the silty desert floor.
He yawned yet again.
And then, like a light switch being thrown, was asleep.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I don’t know whether to arrest you, shake your hand or shoot you,” Captain Farrow growled.
Grant stood on the other side of the captain’s desk. He had refused to sit down. He was dog tired, and all he wanted to do was sleep, but instead he was here being grilled in an interview that might end with handcuffs on his wrists. He had noted the jackal’s look on the face of Chip Prohman, who was back on duty as desk sergeant.
“I can keep telling you one thing, and that’s what happened,” Grant said.
To his surprise, Farrow didn’t hit the roof. Instead, he got up, walked around his desk to the office door and closed it.
“Sit down, Bill. Please,” he said, his voice low and serious.
Intrigued, Grant slowly lowered himself into the chair he had been standing in front of, while the captain settled back into his own. Farrow picked a pencil up and studied it.
“How well did you know Pell Simpson?” Farrow asked.
Grant shrugged. “Well as you know somebody you work with, I guess. He was a little reserved, but I’ve seen worse.”
Like an actor, Farrow waited two beats before replying. “I have no doubt that he tried to kill you, just like you said. We visited his house yesterday, after the … incident out at Riley Gates’s farm, and found some interesting evidence of what he’d been up to for quite a long time.”
Grant waited.
Farrow turned in his chair and put the pencil down. “Now I know why they called him Farmer,” the captain said. “He had bodies planted all over his basement, all over his property.”
Grant opened his mouth to speak but Farrow held a hand up. “Nobody knows this but you and me, and the two guys I sent out there yesterday, and the mayor. Do you know what it would do to the department and this town if it got to the papers that we had a serial murderer on the force? If it got to television? It would destroy Orangefield, and all of us with it.”
Now Farrow waited for Grant to speak, but he said nothing.
“This is the deal,” the captain said, slowly and evenly. His eyes never left Grant’s. “You keep quiet about this, and nothing happens to you. Nothing. There are about eighteen things you did yesterday that I don’t understand, and now I don’t want to understand them. Regina Bright’s parents we can handle. I promised to call in the FBI to find their daughter. I will — eventually. They’re acting half nuts anyway, with all their paranormal claims, and we’ve got them isolated in Killborne at the moment. As far as I’m concerned, Corrie Phaeder abducted her, and that’s the way we’re going to play it. The fact that you helped Phaeder at one point will have to be explained, but, at the mayor’s express request, I’m working on it.
“On the other hand,” Farrow went on, and now the familiar nasty bulldog spark was in his eyes as he put his folded hands on his desk and leaned forward, “if you throw a wrench into anything Mayor Gergen or I am doing, if you go to the press, if you even think bad thoughts for the next chunk of forever, you’ll be in Killborne yourself” — here Farrow almost faltered, and Grant knew he was remembering Grant’s wife Rose, and trying to deal with it, which he did by just plowing ahead — “and then hoeing pumpkins for a living because you’ll never be a cop here or anywhere else again.” He leaned back in his chair and turned his attention back to his pencil. “Clear?”
“Clear as glass,” Grant said.
Captain Farrow looked at him with surprise. “You’re okay with this?”
Grant forced a grim smile onto his face. “Any choice?”
Farrow shook his head. “None.”
“Then I’m okay with it.”
For a bizarre moment Farrow reached across the desk as if to shake Grant’s hand, then abandoned the idea. “It’s for the good of the community,” the captain said as Grant got up. “And for the good of everybody in this department.”
Grant turned to the door.
“And one more thing, Bill,” Farrow said, his voice once again almost friendly. “Take the next week off, paid vacation. Gergen insisted on it.” He gave a false laugh. “He’ll find the money somewhere in the budget. He called it pin money.”
The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus Page 38
