Abruptly, then, there was no chance of hearing it, no matter how keen Melanie’s ears, as somewhere close behind, in the packed and straining crowd, a string of firecrackers went off like a volley of gunshots. It was all the reason they needed to panic, a surge of bodies pressing forward from behind as people scattered from the rising cloud of smoke and flashes.
Bailey held Cody tight to her as she took a shoulder hard in the back and, along with others in the front row, went spilling into the empty space between them and the fencepost. Gifts were scattered or trampled, and she caught sight of Mrs. Hughey trying to snatch up her husband’s Purple Heart, only to have her forearm snapped under an errant foot.
Worse, far worse, because it was deliberate, and like killing Angela all over again, was the second pack of firecrackers that an unseen hand lobbed toward the scarecrow. Melanie saw the fuse spitting and hissing through the air, then it landed on the effigy’s back and erupted in an endless barrage of hot white pops. The first flames danced to life in seconds, then spread, feeding on shirt and straw alike. In moments it was a mass of fire, and Bailey was sure she saw the thing twist and writhe even after Melanie’s hands let it go, unable to beat out the flames, forced to quit by singed palms and the shredding assault of the firecrackers.
Leaving Angela dead and gone for good, and her secrets with her.
Bailey got to both feet, pulling Cody with her, to her, and moved to the other side of fencepost, so they wouldn’t be squashed against it. Cody wanted to go home, of course he wanted to go home, but for now they might as well have been trapped on an island, keeping to this makeshift tree in a patch of green, surrounded by the surging sea of an unruly mob.
Close enough to spit at, the scarecrow continued to burn, its head and limbs ablaze, its back a scorched black cavity. Just as close, but out of reach, Drew’s flannel shirt and the Pinewood Derby car were crushed into the ground by lurching feet and sprawling hands.
And it seemed as if all of Dunhaven wallowed before her.
She looked out over them with growing loathing, this town that hid its secrets so well that captors and murderers could walk in confidence across the placid face of normal life. Wearing masks not just on Halloween, but every day of the year. Had she smiled at them at the market? Chatted with them in line for coffee? Let them go first in traffic? Had she taught their children in school, or driven past their homes never suspecting what may have been chained in their basements?
She hadn’t known, hadn’t wanted to know, and now felt as guilty as any of them.
I want to go home too, she thought, only now grasping the truth that home was someplace she’d never been.
From out in the street, Bailey heard a man’s voice yelling above the rest, then another, and another, and realized they were shouting about Troy. Whether instigation or ignorance, it didn’t matter. The thought spread effortlessly, viral: It was always the boyfriends, always the husbands. Living out there all alone . . . who knew what he got up to? They would set it right.
Good god, were they even thinking straight? Were they capable of it anymore? Troy had been looked at, investigated, cleared. She knew his home, knew his grief. But none of that mattered. Not tonight. Tonight was a night for scapegoats.
Bailey fished the phone from her pocket to call him, but after the first couple of rings, got only his voice mail. Tried again; the same.
Turning in early, he’d texted. Thought I’d be OK with this tonite but now I just want it over.
Yet again; the same.
Please answer, she begged. Please. Please wake up . . .
As she clutched her phone in one hand and her fatherless son in the other, confined by the mob to this tiny plot of earth, she remembered the adage she’d told Troy earlier in the day: Hell is other people. All around her, they seemed so intent on proving it.
The scarecrow was ash now, nothing left to burn.
Finally she understood what had eluded them all for 162 years: why there was only ever one. If Hell was other people, then the dead had already escaped it, and so maybe coming back through was, for them, no privilege. Maybe it was a curse.
Brian Hodge is the award-winning author of eleven novels spanning horror, crime, and historical. He’s also written over one hundred short stories, novelettes, and novellas, and five full-length collections. His first collection, The Convulsion Factory, was ranked by critic Stanley Wiater among the 113 best books of modern horror. Recent or forthcoming works include No Law Left Unbroken, a collection of crime fiction; The Weight of the Dead and Whom the Gods Would Destroy, both standalone novellas; a newly revised hardcover edition of Dark Advent, his early post-apocalyptic epic; and his latest novel, Leaves of Sherwood.
Hodge lives in Colorado, where more of everything is in the works. He also dabbles in music, sound design, and photography; loves everything about organic gardening except the thieving squirrels; and trains in Krav Maga, grappling, and kickboxing, which are of no use at all against the squirrels.
Connect through his web site (www.brianhodge.net) or on Facebook (www.facebook.com/brianhodgewriter), and follow his blog, Warrior Poet (www.warriorpoetblog.com).
ALL HALLOWS IN THE HIGH HILLS
Brenda Cooper
Mel picked up the box of glass. Butterflies, flowers, and birds lay nestled inside of old newspapers he’d been saving all summer, picking up the freebies from people’s driveways whenever it was clear they weren’t actually going to read them. He knelt carefully, as worried about his right knee as about the box. “Everything’s breakable,” he muttered as he carried his work carefully out to the battered old VW van sitting beside his equally battered workshop.
Two more trips and he had secured a second box of glass and two fists of long metal rebar. He made a third trip to retrieve his coffee, a late afternoon cup laced with the tiniest bit of whiskey as medicine for his sore muscles.
In spite of the autumn leaves on the oak beside his driveway, a spear of bright sun forced him to pull his sunglasses off of the rearview before he drove out onto Laguna Canyon Road. Even though it wasn’t yet four in the afternoon, he passed a woman with three costumed kids in tow. A princess hung onto a small indeterminate superhero’s hand and a pirate swaggered behind the others. He wouldn’t be missing them: it had been years since any trick-or-treaters made it all the way to his door. Over a year since anyone had visited at all. Justine had helped him unpack when he’d returned from the festival summer-before-last.
Five minutes later he pulled up in the artist’s loading area of the Sawdust Festival grounds. There were only two other vehicles there—the night manager’s battered green truck and Paulette’s little Pinto, which might be the last Pinto on the road anywhere on the West Coast. The ugly rattle-canned deathtrap had been young when he was young, and it was possible it looked even worse than he did. Given that it had a flat front tire, maybe it felt worse, too.
He sat and finished his coffee, contemplating the tall walls and the fancy sign, now wedged with red and gold for the upcoming holidays. He’d been part of the festival for so long that the constant changes in the festival signage and walls had become the way he marked years. Some people did this by how old their children were, but he never had a family. There had been cats, but now he only fed the feral ones outside, afraid he’d die and leave a pet behind.
He used to have a key to the festival grounds, but now he was forced to pull the bell-string, which rang the night manager’s cellphone rather than ringing a real bell.
At least Jack showed up in just a few minutes, opening the door, and offering a wide smile under his strange multi-colored eyes, which always appeared to Mel to be full of the blues and greens of the sea, touched by the gold of the sun, and full of mischief. “Was about to give up on you.”
“I never miss opening day,” Mel retorted. “I’m just old and slow.” He opened the van door. “Care to help?”
Jack laughed. “Of course.”
Even though Mel liked Jack, who wasn’t quite into middle age, an
d seemed to be around whenever anyone needed help, he didn’t quite trust him. An air of oddness clung to him, something more than just his strange eyes. He had quite a reputation with the ladies, although he seemed to love all of them—young and old, thin and fat, pretty and not so pretty—and they all loved him in return. Mel had never quite understood this, and didn’t quite approve of it, either.
At least Jack was strong. He managed one box and all of the rebar, and still had to stop twice to let Mel catch up to him as they made their way along the wide paths to Mel’s small booth huddled between two bigger ones near the back. The sawdust had all been laid down neat, and the whole place smelled like wood chips. Clean. Tomorrow there’d be hot dogs cooking and lemonade stands and pumpkin ice cream and a myriad of other smells, but for now there was only the new sawdust.
In the early years, they’d had to spread the stuff over mud. Now a company spread it over concrete.
Jack stayed to help Mel slide the fragile lawn ornaments onto the rebar and set each piece into the holder Mel had fashioned from strong metal grating years ago. “Is opening for the holidays going to help?” Jack asked.
“I don’t much like the holidays.”
“Not even Halloween?” Jack asked.
Mel frowned. “Not really, and besides, I’m not having Halloween. I’m busy setting up.” He sounded like an old grouch. “Something’s gotta help. I’m more than halfway through last summer’s earnings.”
Jack stopped, his big hand holding a bright yellow flower. “Already?”
“Medical bills.” Mel looked away so Jack wouldn’t see that it bothered him. He jammed a blue butterfly down too hard on the rebar, cracking off a glass wing. He cursed under his breath. “That was my favorite piece for this season.” Mel held up the broken part. “See how this line of gold shoots all the way through the wing? That was pure serendipity.”
“It is a pretty one. I’m sure you’ll do more that are as nice.”
“If I’m around for it. I’m going to die in my traces soon.” As far as he knew, Mel was the last artist alive from the first year of the festival in 1965. After Justine of the long blond hair and bellbottoms had disappeared last year—her hair gray but still swinging in a long braid past her butt—there was no one else left of the old founders.
“Not yet, I think,” Jack said.
Mel put the last bird onto the last rebar and cradled it in an open spot on the stand.
“The booth looks good.”
“Lately, it hurts to hold the blowpipe up long enough to make these.” Mel assessed the impression his booth would leave. Not bad. It was sandwiched between ornate house-cats fashioned of multi-colored wood on one side and mirrors decorated with bronze and beads on the other. The cats would draw a crowd. “At least there’s no Christmas decorations up.”
“Yet. Committee won’t allow them before Thanksgiving.”
Mel snorted. “But we are opening the day after Halloween.”
“You could have been on the committee.”
“They kicked me off ten years ago for being a curmudgeon.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
Mel looked at the broken butterfly. “I should take this back to the studio and fix it.”
Jack offered a slow smile, his eyes catching the last bit of daylight. “Meet you at the waterfall.” He practically sprinted off, leaving Mel to limp after him with a broken bit of blue butterfly in each hand. The place looked a bit eerie as the long shadows of dusk faded into each other and became part of the approaching night. Only the safety lights were on, small yellow sun-globes lining the paths somewhat irregularly.
Brighter light beckoned around the last turn, and Mel emerged just as the waterfall started flowing. Strings of tiny blue and pink lights had been embedded in the rock behind the water at each edge. The waterfall was about ten feet wide and seven feet high. It flowed down a rock face into a shallow pool where the water slid down a drain to be pumped back up to the top to start falling all over again. “Do you like it?” Jack asked.
“They look like fairy lights.”
Jack thrust a glass into Mel’s hand. “Come on, have a drink.”
Mel sniffed. “Bourbon?”
“You can spend the night here. After all, it’s a holiday.”
Mel had drank himself through the whole night here before. “I’ve got a blanket in the truck.” He took an experimental sip and sighed with pleasure.
Jack disappeared for a moment and came back with a bag of potato chips, two apples, and a half-finished round of mixed nuts. The salt on the nuts tasted like heaven, and went with the next sip of bourbon.
They drank in companionable silence. Food and a stiff drink and the quiet of his favorite place mellowed Mel. Jack poured water into the empty cups. “You know this is a magical night.”
Great. Jack’s mystical side. Mel had heard tales of nighttime séances and late-night parties inside the festival grounds that included some of the less-wrapped denizens of the small beach town. Well, big beach town these days. He could play along. “All Hallows Eve.”
“And you know this is a magical place. You helped create it.”
“Yeah.” No point in disagreeing.
“Care to come with me to a better place to fix up your butterfly?”
Mel narrowed his eyes. “I shouldn’t be driving.”
Jack looked positively full of mischief. “And I can’t leave the grounds.”
“Well. Where’s the glue?” Not that glue would fix it.
“Do you trust me?” Jack went all serious. Or as serious as anybody who’d just downed two fifths of good bourbon ever looked.
Mel’s stomach knotted up and his head felt light and odd, but he nodded.
Jack picked up the bigger piece of broken butterfly and took Mel’s hand in his. “I think this going to work for you.”
The gesture scraped Mel the tiniest bit raw, and he stiffened. “I don’t like men.”
“Don’t blame you. Girls are curvier.”
Jack’s hand was warm and firm. Mel couldn’t remember holding another man’s hand as an adult, but he let it be and let Jack lead him toward the waterfall.
Into the waterfall.
The bourbon must have been stronger than he’d thought. Jack disappeared, although Mel would swear there was no opening behind the water. You could see the whole rock face the water fell down when the pump was turned off, and it was mostly smooth. If it weren’t for the pull of Jack’s hand—and to be honest, for the bourbon—Mel would have stopped.
Instead, he closed his eyes and put one foot in front of the other. Just as he started to flinch away, sure he was about to get soaked, he felt the cool stream of water for just a second, and then a soft push as if he were moving through a wall of blankets. The push and the pull of Jack’s hand, and the swaying dizziness of standing after eating and drinking and walking through a waterfall as if he were dreaming—Mel doubled over.
He opened his eyes, in full possession of both his hands and in a place he had never seen before. He closed his eyes, and tried again.
Same result.
He and Jack stood side by side with a small cliff-face behind them, the kind that’s really just a flat area in an otherwise rolling hill. A path wound from under their feet along a cleared meadow, over a wooden bridge, and west into scrub oak, directly toward a sunset that hadn’t finished yet here.
Jack let him take it all in for a bit, and then he said, “This is my home.”
“No shit.”
“I’m glad the waterfall door worked for you.”
“You didn’t know it would work?”
“Even when it’s working, it doesn’t open for everybody. If you try all by yourself, you might scratch your nose.”
“How does it work?”
Jack merely shrugged.
“You come here a lot?”
“Some years I winter here.”
The conversation seemed way too normal for what had just happened, but Mel couldn’t think of an
ything else to do but go on the same way. It was that or scream or pass out or ask to go back, and he didn’t want to do any of those things. “Do they trick-or-treat here?”
“Tricks might be . . . interesting . . . over here.” Jack smiled. “There’s a bit of magic in the High Hills.”
“I don’t believe in magic.”
Jack laughed. “Come on, old man. Want to go to the beach?”
“There’s an ocean?”
“The High Hills and the town of Laguna Beach used to be the same. Mostly the directions and the main physical landmarks are the same, except of course the modern one has decapitated some of the hills and built roads where we have paths.”
“That must explain why Laguna’s so New Age.”
“California. Shasta is here, too. I think maybe everything, but I’m a west coast kinda guy.”
“So you don’t lie when you say you winter at Shasta, huh?”
“I never lie.” He grinned. “I like the modern Shasta better. There’s a ski lift.”
“Did you bring the bourbon bottle over?”
“No.” Jack started down the path, and Mel followed, both men still carrying bits of blue glass. At least this time they weren’t holding hands.
The spears of setting sunlight made it hard to see, but mostly the hills seemed to be yellow with fall grass going to seed, and most of the trees were dark green and low scrub oaks. Here and there, the red branches of Manzanita bushes added color. Rabbits hopped through brush at the edge of the meadow, and hawks circled overhead.
The path wound through a small, empty town. “Do people live here?” Mel asked.
“Of course. They’re all where we’re going.”
Mel’s knee hurt, but he didn’t want to admit to Jack that he couldn’t go much farther.
After two smaller rises Mel had to struggle up, and a gentle turn, they met up with the beach just as the orb of the sun fell into the water. High clouds cherished the last bits of sunfire, just a bit less crisp than the yellow-white of a bonfire a few hundred yards down the beach. They stood right in the middle of Main Beach, although there were no parking lots or tall swings or lifeguard towers, and also no boardwalk. But the open beach gave way to hills and wave-worn low cliffs just like at home.
HALLOWEEN: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre Page 28
