by Wither
Abby hung suspended before the altar, dappled in the kaleidoscope of filtered moonlight. She could hear the call of the moon beyond the glass, a single deeply resonant note, like the sound a mountain might make…
So intently was she focused on the moon’s song that she didn’t hear the chapel doors fly open behind her…
Didn’t hear her father calling her name…
Or the sudden explosion of stained glass, as the angel came to take her.
Flight. A dizzying somersault of light, stars, and streetlamps trading places as Paul was hauled aloft from the rooftop and carried screaming into the sky. His eyes and ears were filled with the icy rush of wind. His heart staggered midbeat on the exhilaration of flight, as for a fleeting instant he had a view of all of Windale spread out below him in its night colors, a horizon so vast he thought he could almost see the earth’s curve.
Then they plummeted together, Paul and this nightmare that had seized him, rushing earthward…
He clamped his eyes shut against the stinging wind as they fell together, the creature’s shriek keening like a hellhound missile And then he was dropped—
He fell, tumbling, while the nightmare that had released him corkscrewed with a shrieking hiss up and up and up like a mad balloon—
Paul’s death-descent lasted only a fraction of a second. He landed hard on metal, bounced once, again, rolled.
He was still alive. Bruised, not broken. He flipped over quickly, onto his stomach. Saw pale painted metal beneath him. A horizon of steel, glowing in the moonlight. His fingers found a welded seam. He pressed his cheek to the cool surface beneath him and waited for his heart to steady. Where the hell am I? The wind moaned in his ears. Wherever he was, he knew he was high above the world.
Calmer now. He raised a hand and brought the heel of his palm down on the surface below him. Heard the great echoing gong of hollowed metal. And then he understood where he’d been dropped…
On top of a water tower.
Time to think about climbing down from here. He slid forward across the painted dome on his belly, searching for a ladder. The wind came at him again, rising in pitch from a tremulous whistle to this keening shriek that wanted so badly to blow him off the tower. He shut his eyes against the stinging wind until it had subsided again. When he opened his eyes there were tiny beads of moisture clinging to them, and his vision had sharpened. He began crawling on all fours, the metal painful against his knees. He crawled carefully, fighting that primitive part of him that wanted only to hold on for dear life.
When he reached the curving edge of the dome he dropped back down again, flattening himself to offer the least amount of surface area to the wind, then inched forward on his belly. His mind was beginning to play tricks on him, convincing him of sudden unpredictable shifts in the metal surface so that he’d cry out and clutch the seams to keep from sliding. He braced himself against the vertigo, and peered over. He saw a strip of railing a few yards down, and a catwalk. If he could find the utility ladder that lead from the top of the dome to that catwalk, his chances of survival would suddenly leap into the double digits.
He shimmied around the perimeter of the dome on his belly until he found the utility ladder. It curved up one side of the dome and flattened out like train tracks near the top. He hoisted himself up onto the horizontal ladder, the metal rungs thin and sharp as dowels. He began climbing backward rung by rung; once the ladder had returned to the vertical it wasn’t so difficult anymore. Except for the paralyzing numbness in his rubbery arms. And the ever-present shriek of the wind…
Don’t look down…don’t look down… Rooftops didn’t bother him, but this was something else entirely. The dizzying vista hovered at the periphery of his vision, tempting him to look. He kept his eyes fixed forward at his hands upon the ladder, the spray-painted graffiti on the water tower’s metal flank. JOE + STAGEY it read in yard-tall letters.
His legs were shaking. The wind buffeted him, whipping and snapping his clothes like sails in a squall. His fingers were turning numb on the wind-chilled metal. He concentrated on his grip.
Steady now, you’re almost there…
Something shifted in the corner of his vision. He turned in reflex and saw it, the goblin-thing, scrabbling around the side of the water tank with spidery grace. Coming back for him.
He let out a yell and lost his grip on the ladder. His foot slipped through the rung and wedged. The world inverted as he swung upside down, the back of his head slamming hard against the water tank. He saw the catwalk beneath him, scattered with trash—beer bottles, a discarded sneaker, cans of spray paint.
He heard the insane cackle of the goblin as it came at him. He crunched upward, contracting his hip and abdominal muscles to raise his torso high enough so that he could try to free his trapped ankle.
He pulled his leg up and out, and dropped suddenly, slamming down onto the catwalk with a huge metal clang. The short fall was violent enough to knock the wind out of him, and in the choking silence where his breath had been he felt the shuddering diunk of a great weight landing on the catwalk beside him. He turned scrambling away from the thing that was approaching, its head cocked sideways in a horrible parody of human curiosity. As the nightmare advanced on him he realized—without understanding exactly how he knew—that it was female.
He scrambled backward, his hands knocking abandoned beer bottles across the catwalk. He smelled the sour dregs of stale beer, heard the bottles rolling clear of the catwalk and dropping through the darkness. He kept going until he bumped into an iron railing and could go no farther. His fumbling hands found spray paint cans the vandals had used to decorate the tower. He heard the hollow clank as the cans rolled across the catwalk, heard the distinctive rattle of the steel mixing marble inside—
Contents under pressure…
A chunk of memory fell on him from above, a childhood’s reckless game with aerosol cans…
Paul fumbled in his shirt pocket and found his Zippo. The creature took another step. With numb fingers Paul flipped open the lighter.
The creature took a step forward and brought its face in close to Paul’s. Its eye gleamed black as polished stone as it blasted him with a gust of rotten breath.
Paul lifted the paint can to its face and flicked the lighter.
The fire erupted in a startling cone of brilliant yellow, a scorching blast that engulfed the leering face.
The creature gave a furious shriek and reared back, blazing.
Burn, you son of a bitch! Paul held the funnel of fire out before him as he climbed to his feet. The burning creature howled in her agony…
And thrashed out, suddenly, one black claw striking Paul hard, tipping him back over the catwalk’s railing…
I’m dead, Paul thought as he fell. No time to think of Karen, or the baby he would never know, his daughter…only the dizzy cartwheeling sensation of falling toward a darkness that was eternal.
Art sped through the dark streets of Windale, pedaling furiously to outdistance the sirens that were just beginning to awake. He leapt the curb on Lore Avenue and dismounted smoothly, letting the ten-speed glide to a harmless collision with the forsythias. He dashed up the front steps to Karen’s porch, fumbling out the spare house key shed given him. Inside, he hid beside the front door, peeking out through the curtains, watching for the strobing lights of police cruisers. The sirens grew distant, and he knew for the moment he was safe.
T hump! His eyes shot to the stairwell at the heavy sound from above—as if someone had fallen out of bed. He hurried upstairs—
And found Karen, writhing in her sodden bedsheets, alone.
Where the ceiling once had been, there was now a ragged hole.
He rushed to her, tugging down her nightgown. She groaned and clutched at him, surfacing from her agony long enough to whisper, “Paul…it got Paul…”
The sheets were clammy and soaking, and when he looked he saw blood. At first hed thought she was hurt, then realized that her water had broken, that t
he blood that soaked the bedsheets had been diluted by the rush of amniotic fluid.
It was beginning…
“C’mon, sweetheart,” he said, sliding his hands beneath her. “Put your arms around my neck.” He struggled to lift her, and staggered toward the bedroom door.
She was unconscious by the time he got her to the garage and lay her out across the backseat. He gunned the Volvo’s engine and backed out of the garage with a squeal of tires.
Karen moaned from the backseat as they barreled down Lore and onto Main, headed toward Windale General. “Baby… the baby…,” she kept muttering, her eyelids fluttering. When Art turned to check on her he saw fresh blood on the seat beneath her, and a dark spreading stain across the lower half of her nightgown. She was losing the baby, and quite possibly hemorrhaging.
Ten mintes later he pulled to a screeching halt outside Windale General’s Emergency Room. The automatic doors whispered open as he staggered inside with Karen in his arms. The triage nurse and two tired-looking MDs ran to meet him. He relinquished Karen to their care, backing away helplessly as the trauma staff went to work on her. When he looked down he saw blood on his shirt. At the sight of it he knew suddenly that he shouldn’t linger here, that he would be recognized…
Simultaneously with that thought, a voice called, “Sir?” Art turned, saw a security guard approaching beside another triage nurse. Art began backing away. “Wait a second, sir—” the nurse said, closing the distance between them as the guard’s hand went to his walkie-talkie.
Art turned, sprinting out through the automatic doors.
BOOK THREE
* * *
“WOMEN ALONE”
Halloween Night
Transcript of live-feed interview, WPVI, Channel 5 Action News
Reporter: This is jade Welles reporting live from the steps of Windale’s city hall, where final preparations began early this morning and will continue throughout the day for tonight’s King Frost Parade. I’m joined right now by Windale’s mayor, Alfonse Dell’Olio—Mayor, you expect quite a few spectators to your town this evening, don’t you?
Mayor: That’s right, Jade. Each year over twenty thousand folks from throughout the county come out for the parade. It’s a tradition we’ve kept going for over sixty years—in fact, I remember marching in the parade when I was just this high!
Reporter: Well WPVTs weatherman is calling for clear skies through the weekend, so it looks like you’ll have a beautiful night for it.
Mayor: Absolutely! Tonight we welcome in Old Man Winter. Or, as he’s known locally, King Frost. So I invite everyone young and old to come out in costume tonight and enjoy the last outdoor blast for the season.
Reporter: Mayor, there are some who are criticizing your decision to hold the parade in light of recent alarming events in Windale—the disappearance of several Danfield College students and other residents, as well as one unsolved homicide. Do you care to comment?
Mayor: Those are isolated incidents of an unfortunate nature, and are still under investigation. But I will say that Windale always has been—and will continue to be—a safe place for children, parents, families, everyone—except witches, of course!
[He removes a tall black witch’s cap from offscreen and puts it on the reporter’s head.]
Reporter: Ah! So what d’you think my chances are of winning best costume?
Mayor: I don’t know, Jade—there’s gonna be tough competition in your age group! Maybe if we enter you under the category of Prettiest News Witch…
Reporter: Well! There you have it, folks. Down here spending a few hours with the ghouls and ghosts of Windale, this is Jade Welles, reporting live for Action News.
CHAPTER NINE
* * *
The pregnant woman, Karen Glazer, thirty-eight-year-old white female just entering her third trimester, spent the predawn hours of Halloween morning in the Emergency Room, being poked and prodded and generally frowned over by the exhausted house staff. They replaced the blood shed lost, noted that she was two centimeters dilated, monitored the baby’s fetal heartbeat (still strong), and paged her OB/GYN. Throughout the ordeal the patient floated in and out of consciousness, mumbling with only occasional coherence about someone named “Paul” (her husband, it was presumed) who had disappeared, about monsters trying to steal her baby, and about a “hole in the roof
The trauma staff pulled a blood sample for a toxicology screen, and while it was processed by the lab took bets among themselves on what cocktail of narcotics shed ingested. They examined the deep ligature marks on the patient’s neck and concocted their own cynical backstory of domestic violence and addiction.
When the tox screen came back clean, the chief resident on duty scowled. “Impossible,” he said with authority and turned to the nearest RN. “Pull another two vials. Fucking lab techs must be smoking their Halloween crack.” Then he promptly forgot about the pregnant head-case in Trauma Room A as he looked up at the sound of the automatic doors shushing open for his next customer: a townie cop, bleeding from a scalp lac that looked like it wanted stitches.
“What the hell happened to you, officer?” the resident asked.
The sheriff shot him a warning look and said simply, “Gallows.”
Wendy sat huddled in the wicker chair by her bedroom window. She had slept fitfully through the night, for once more afraid of the dawn than of dreaming. She pulled her flannel robe tight, hugged herself, but could not banish the unnatural chill she felt. A cup of hot chocolate might have done the trick, she thought as she watched the sun climb over the trees. But she was imprisoned by the notion that if she left her room, even for a moment, the spell would be bro ken. Dream would become reality. And she could not bear that. Soon enough, she heard a quick rapping on her door. “Come in,” she said, her voice quiet with resignation. Her father opened the door and walked over to her, his expression grim. “Wendy,” he said. “There’s been an accident at Marshall Held.”
She looked up at him, her lips pressed together to quell their trembling. Her voice would betray her if she spoke. Her father’s concerned face blurred before her as tears welled in her eyes. She wiped them quickly, pretended it was only sleep there. Only divination or uncanny premonition could account for what she knew, had known since late the previous evening.
“Come downstairs,” he said. “It’s on the television.” She nodded, stood up, and suddenly wrapped her arms around him. “Love you, Dad,” she said, her voice a strangled whisper. He patted her back, stroked her hair, his own voice lost. “It’s about Alex,” she said, her voice firm now, but still only a contained whisper, enough to dam the flood of emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. “Isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. It looks bad.”
Elizabeth Wither stares defiantly at the hardened faces of the people gathered in the commons. She stands on a wobbly platform, Sarah and Rebecca on either side of her, too far away to touch even if her hands were not bound. A noose around their necks connects each of them to the rough-hewn timber above. The knot bites into Wither^ flesh. The executioner moves down the line and kicks the platform out from under each of them. Wither feels the sharp pull of gravity until her body jerks at the end of the suddenly taut rope.
The crowd gasps. Wither can not breathe.
Her eyes roll back into her head and she lets the darkness consume her…
The sensation of failing caused Wendy to stagger into her father, who caught her elbows. She nodded at him that she was okay. But the long walk down to the family room was a blur forever lost to memory. Her legs were numb, her arms superfluous as she allowed her father to guide her all the way. She chewed her lower lip to hold back a wail that seemed to swirl inside her heart, battering her body like a ship on a storm-tossed sea, seeking escape. Her mother stood in the family room with her hands pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide, brimming with tears when she saw Wendy enter the room. Wendy choked back a sob, her mother’s reaction releasing a force within her.
On the big-
screen television, an on-the-scene reporter stood almost life-size near the fence at Marshall Field. In the background, Wendy saw the twisted, mangled wreck of the home team bleachers. “…as a freak accident. It is unknown at this time why the Danfield freshman was under the bleachers when they collapsed, although friends say he was in the habit of running on the abandoned track here. This is Michelle Lundquist, reporting live for WTKN, News Nine.”
The station cut to the news anchor. “Thank you, Michelle,” he said, turning away from his offscreen monitor to face the live camera. “Again, this was the scene last night after police received calls from a student in a nearby dorm who described what sounded like a series of explosions.”
Video footage replaced the anchorman. Marshall Field again, cloaked in night, the two security lights at either end of the field barely enough to illuminate the field. In the foreground, a police cruiser with flashing red lights and an ambulance, also flashing lights as attendants hurried a collapsible stretcher into the back. Wendy caught a fleeting glimpse of a bloodied face a moment before the EMTs slammed the ambulance doors shut. The ambulance drove off, sirens screaming.
Cut back to the anchorman. “Police are attributing the collapse of the bleachers to extreme metal fatigue, but there was clear evidence of vandalism to many of the benches. If other students were involved, their identities are not known at this time. Police are looking into the possibility of a fraternity prank gone awry”‘
“Again, the Danneld freshman suffered broken bones, internal injuries, and some head trauma. Police have notified the family of the student, who has been identified as Alexander Dunkirk of Minneapolis. He was admitted to Windale General and remains in critical condition.”
