by Jack Martin
“Look at that,” he said. “A TV camera, by gosh. They don’t leave you alone for a minute, do they?”
“They probably want to get our reactions,” said Betty, primping self-consciously.
“Shh!” said Little Buddy. “I’m listening!”
“Watched a lot of TV in my time,” said Buddy. “But this’ll be the first time it ever watched me . . .”
“TIME! IT’S TIME! ALL THOSE LUCKY KIDS WITH SILVER SHAMROCK MASKS—AND THIS MEANS YOU—GATHER ’ROUND!”
“Don’t get too close,” Betty said to her son. “You’ll ruin your eyes, honey.”
But the boy was shaking out his Silver Shamrock pumpkin and dragging it on over his head. He stretched the nose and found the eye holes.
The announcer’s Irish brogue chanted on.
“AND NOW, WATCH THE MAGIC PUMPKIN! WATCH!”
The screen was taken up corner-to-corner by a vivid two-dimensional pumpkin graphic. Electric orange against a neutral background. Extreme close-up, with broad sawtooth mouth and triangular eyes.
There was a high-voltage crackle in the back of the set as the screen went black.
Not blank. Black.
“Now what is this?” said Buddy. “They screwed up the commercial.”
The pumpkin flashed back on the screen.
Then black.
Then the pumpkin.
“I think this whole thing is a big joke,” said Betty.
The flashing alternated faster and faster so that the pumpkin’s afterimage remained while the background changed. Black through the eye holes, then white. Black, white. The pumpkin shimmered and seemed to lift off the screen.
As the room strobed with bright and dark frames, Little Buddy’s hands crept up to his mask.
“Little Buddy?” said Betty.
The stroboscopic effect speeded up until the room was blazing under a machine-gun assault of orange phosphor.
The shamrock button on the back of Little Buddy’s mask became activated.
It glowed red-hot.
The boy lurched back from the set, clutching the mask. A strangled moan came from beneath the mouth holes as he attempted to remove it.
“Little Buddy!”
Betty stood up in shock as the boy pitched forward headfirst onto the carpet.
Little Buddy kicked and tried to raise himself.
His pumpkin head melted.
The orange rubber wrinkled and ran like dissolving flesh, uncovering his eyes. They were two blood-red orbs.
His parents were both on their feet.
But it was too late.
The mask hole which was his mouth tore open in a rictus.
A wiry appendage poked forth. Covered with bristles. It hooked to the carpet and pulled another appendage out after it.
Another. And another.
It was a spider the size of a black hand.
Betty released a half-scream, half-whimper and fell upon her son.
The spider sprang to her face.
She shrieked in horror as it stung her again and again.
Buddy had to do something. He dove down onto his wife, covering her. But already she was twitching into paralysis.
Then, out of Little Buddy’s throat came the writhing extension of something long and impossibly thick, sheathed in slime, like a swollen, blackened tongue.
A snake.
As it forked the air and unveiled its dripping fangs, Buddy inserted his arms under his son in an attempt to turn him over, to lift him away. But the fangs sank deep into his leg, cutting through his trousers and burying their needle-sharp injections to the bone.
His legs numbed and collapsed under him.
Little Buddy fell back, mask and face crumbling as one into the discoloring carpet.
Like a cripple Buddy tried to stand. He could not. He confronted the camera in the corner, tears streaming down his face.
“Damn you, Cochran! Liar! Murderer! Damn you to hell! Damn you . . .!”
He was pulled down with the rest of his family.
As the defiled head of his only son opened like the doorway to another dimension and spewed forth darkness and decay.
Buddy Kupfer wept impotently, pounding his fist into the carpet which now crawled with the unspeakable malformations of nature’s underside. His fist rose in a last spastic gesture of defiance as his physical body and the family he had created, the substance of his life and the world of his choice, all he had lived and worked for and the only dream he had ever known degenerated before his eyes into a churning, formless mass of unleashed chaos.
Then there was only the sound of two long, pale hands clapping.
Conal Cochran clasped his manicured hands to his breast and said with quavering voice, “Lovely! Lovely! Doesn’t it simply surpass one’s wildest dreams?”
Challis could no longer look at the screen. His eyes blurred and a terrible agony clutched his heart.
“Children,” said Challis, his words slurring. “All the children . . .”
“Yes,” hissed Cochran, “the children! A plague is on them. Now think of that—in fifty million homes!”
“Sacrifices,” said Challis. His cheeks were burning and his body quaked. Strong black-gloved hands restrained him. “To what pagan god, Cochran? For what purpose?”
“God? What a quaint word! I am speaking to you of our way, the one way, the old way, as it was done long before your unshorn carpenter from Galilee chose to destroy himself on that rude cross. Do you know anything about Halloween, Doctor?”
“I do now,” said Challis. His arms nearly broke as he strained forward.
“Tsk, tsk, my good man! Ignorance is such a convenient excuse for self-righteousness. No, of course you don’t know. How could you? You’ve thought no further than that strange custom of letting your children dress themselves in morbid costumes and go begging for handouts.”
He extended his arms to give audience to the entire chamber. As if the technicians and graysuits could hear and understand his words. But he had not bothered to program them for such a function. He was himself his own best audience.
Now he spoke to the far reaches of the hall, to the prehistoric stone monolith rather than to its custodial minions, who continued their chipping, multiplying the icon to spread its body across the land.
“It was the start of the new year in our old Celtic lands. We would wait in our houses made of turf. The barriers were down, you see, between the real and the unreal. The dead might look in, sit by our bit of fire. It was our glorious festival of Samhain. The last great one was three thousand years ago . . .”
His eyes glazed with rapture, mirroring some previously unspoken memory. He continued in a faraway voice.
“The hills ran with the blood of countless animals . . . and countless children . . .”
“I don’t want to hear this,” said Challis.
“Oh, but you really should. It was part of our world, our craft.”
“Witchcraft!”
“Your term. To us it was a way of controlling our world. The only way. As it is once again.”
Cochran glowered at the television equipment, the high-tech products which surrounded him.
“All this has failed you and your kind, hasn’t it, Doctor? You can’t predict with certainty any event in your world, not even the rudimentary workings of your own bodies. Isn’t that so?”
“We try,” said Challis. “We’re getting better at it all the time.”
“But will time wait for you? I think not. Even my ancestors were left behind by the machinations of history. They had the power. But they lacked one ingredient: the harnessing and storing of that power. Which, ironically, is what you and yours have now provided.
“Times have not really changed, my friend. The quest for control remains a constant. And now it’s time again. In the end, we don’t decide these things, you know. We are but a part of the great plan. Today the planets are in alignment, the moon is in syzygy, and it’s time. That’s all.”
Cochran snapp
ed his fingers. A gray suit held out three masks.
“Which one? Ah, I think this one will suit you perfectly. It becomes you. It will become you, you know.”
He selected the painted skull and pulled it over Challis’s head like a hood.
“Tell me one thing first,” said Challis. “Why children?”
“Do I need a reason? Oh, I could tell you that they are the easiest prey—and they are, you know. People nowadays no longer listen to them. They provide the easiest entry, the path of least resistance. What better reason, from a purely pragmatic view? But they are such irritating little creatures, don’t you agree? You know that you do, deep down. They are as noisy as wretched sheep and twice as dirty, given to us from out of the filthiest part of woman. And you know what happens to dirty little lambs, don’t you, Doctor? They are invariably given over to the slaughter.”
“I want to see Ellie.”
Cochran jerked the mask down. He laughed crookedly. “Oh, you will, Doctor, I promise you, you will!”
He lowered the mask all the way and snapped his fingers again.
“Take him away.”
It was a small room. Not unlike the examination cubicle adjoining his own office at the hospital. Except that this one had soundproofed walls and a door that locked from the outside.
Challis sat strapped down, his feet bound at the ankles and his hands taped to the arms of the chair, which was bolted to the floor. There was only one other object in the room. A television set.
Before him on the screen was the image of a young woman with dark, disheveled curls and burned-out eyes. She was sitting on the floor in a concrete-walled corner, with indirect light playing down on her from above.
Challis breathed rapidly, sucking the mask to his face.
“Ellie . . . !” he said, his breath condensing.
Then, at the edge of the frame, the tall, immaculately outfitted figure of Conal Cochran appeared with his hands folded at his back.
Ellie greeted him weakly. “Hello, Daddy.”
“Hello, Ellie,” said Cochran. “Been a good girl, have you?”
“Yes, Daddy. I just played.”
“Good! Very, very good. And now here’s something I’ve brought for you. A special present for such a good girl.”
He unclapsed his hands from behind his back.
He was holding a rubber witch’s mask.
“What do you say?”
“Oh. Th-thank you, Daddy.”
“That’s better.”
Challis fought his bonds but it was no use. The graysuits had done their job. The mask threatened to smother him. When he raised his head again and found the holes, Ellie was alone in the ring of light, the agape witch’s face resting innocuously in her lap.
He heard a scraping of metal on metal. It was magnified enormously by the walls.
A door in his steel room opened, and Conal Cochran let himself in.
“What have you done to her?”
“See for yourself.” Cochran gestured with his wrist at the screen.
Challis was overcome by a desire to be with her, to be there with her, to go all the way down and be there so that he might make it as easy, as painless for her as possible at the end.
Cochran seemed to read his mind. He towered over Challis like a straight-backed headmaster.
“Even if I were to let you say your good-byes, she wouldn’t know you. You’ve lost her, Daniel. Ellie is six years old, now and forevermore—for as long as is left to her. Such a lovely and wretched age, six. Wouldn’t you agree? I’ve made her just the way I want her. The perfect age for a victim.”
He placed a hand on the television controls.
“She does have a strong face. Good bones. The wrong coloring, of course. But we could fix that.”
He winked over his shoulder at Challis.
“Of course, were I to use her, by the time her face reached the toy stores of Europe her features would be unrecognizable. Even her best friends won’t know her then.”
He rested his index finger on his lower lip and considered the dial.
“But let’s change the channel, shall we? Unless you’ve any further questions. I do have a few last-minute preparations. Minor technical adjustments, a phone call or two. I wouldn’t want the heads of broadcasting to miss the big night! After all, we’ve projected a forty-three share. All those greedy little hands reaching up for something their pathetic parents can’t provide! I’ve bought two minutes of very special screen time at all three networks. That should be more than enough . . .”
Challis found the mouth hole in his skull mask and spoke. His voice came back to him as through cotton. He tried again, shaping his lips around the word with greater care than he had ever taken with any other word in his life.
“Why?”
Cochran reset the selector to the commercial mode and tuned the picture with his tapered fingers.
“Mischief, Dr. Challis,” he said briskly. “Mr. Kupfer was right on at least one point. I do love a good joke. The jokers are the great men of history. It’s what we do best. It rules the world. And when we finally transform it into our own image—and we will—that’ll be the biggest joke ever!”
He sorted through his keys and let himself out.
“The world is going to change tonight, Dr. Challis. I’m glad you’ll be a witness. Only a few more hours. Enjoy the Horrorthon. Don’t forget to watch the Big Giveaway afterwards.
“And . . . Happy Halloween!”
C H A P T E R
13
A skeleton. A witch. A pumpkin.
The three figures floated down a tree-lined residential street, oblivious to the cars that passed them by. An autumn wind rustled the oaks and a flurry of gravyboat leaves coasted down at their feet. Already the sun was slanting low through the branches and a few jack-o’-lanterns, silent watchmen of the coming night, burned orange beacons in the otherwise drab windows and porches of this quiet suburban block.
The words MUNCIE, INDIANA appeared at the lower border of the screen.
“IT’S HALLOWEEN TONIGHT, KIDS!” said a breathless announcer. “GET YOUR SILVER SHAMROCK MASK NOW!”
A row of masks in a toy store, balanced on their necks like helmets of a secret army.
Small hands darted out and plucked one after another from its pedestal as a cash register rang up more sales.
The children donned their masks and ran out of the store.
BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY.
“IT’S HALLOWEEN TONIGHT, KIDS! GET YOUR SILVER SHAMROCK MASKS AND WATCH THE BIG HALLOWEEN HORRORTHON!”
A tank-sized delivery truck bearing the sign of the shamrock negotiated a rustic corner, SOUTH AMERICAN STREET, read a sign.
STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA.
“TONIGHT’S THE BIG NIGHT, KIDS! WATCH THE HORRORTHON WITH YOUR SILVER SHAMROCK MASKS! AND BE IN FRONT OF YOUR TELEVISION SETS AT NINE O’CLOCK, NO MATTER WHAT!”
PHOENIX, ARIZONA.
DAYTON, OHIO.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA . . .
“NO MORE DAYS TO HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN . . . NO MORE DAYS TO HAL-LO-WEEN, SIL-VER SHAM-ROCK!”
The three dancing faces faded out in a flourish of trumpets.
Challis dropped his chin to his chest to block out the pictures.
In front of him was a TV monitor. Its sound would not go off, its maximally-adjusted screen recreating images so vivid they seemed to penetrate the overhanging brow of his skull mask and even the eyelids, his eyelids, which were no longer under his control.
Nothing else in the room moved.
Only his hands, working feverishly at the reinforced strapping that bound them.
Now, however, there was a new sound: a mechanical buzzing. It came from the wall, as if an insect were trapped within the soundproofing panels. The buzzing continued.
It was the sound of a fan exchanging air in the room.
How considerate of Cochran, he thought. He wouldn’t want me to die of asphyxiation. That would be too prosaic.
And premature.
He wore away at his bonds.
But the graysuits, perfect machines that they were, had done their duty without a slip. His fingers cooled and became thick and dull as his straining cut off the pulse at his wrists.
He eased up and sensation returned, his hands prickling with pins and needles as the flow of blood was restored to his veins.
The sound of a young woman’s scream blasted from the TV, assaulting his ears, as the movie resumed.
He refused to let the pictures in. But the voice was strong and persistent, striving for control and yet dangerously near the edge.
It reminded him of Ellie.
Now he saw her face before his mind’s eye, tender and vulnerable and, in its way, indomitable. He saw her face close to his own, nearly touching, her eyelashes brushing his cheek, then turned away and buried in his chest. He was combing his fingers through her hair, her dark, fragrant curls . . .
The memories were intercut with the gray, washed-out face Cochran had shown him on the monitor a few minutes or hours ago. The face of a subdued child who had been drugged and regressed to some point in a long-forgotten past before she had learned not to be afraid of the dark.
For the moment he gave up.
Then he remembered how few moments more there were left to him. And to Ellie. And to the rest of the country. And to his children. And to his children’s children, generations yet to come.
He shook his head and arched his back.
Agnes, he thought, drifting, where are you when I need you?
Good, kind Agnes, who believed with a faith she had never seen verified by empirical evidence, who had ignored her own discomfort for so long that she had ceased to be conscious of it, until it no longer mattered. Did she do it for the promise of some amorphous reward in the Great Beyond, the mere existence of which was denied by every aspect of her profession? No. She did it to save lives. Which was another way of saying she did it for her soul. For her own kind. For all of them.
For all of us.
And, so believing, nothing could stand up in her way.
She did it because they needed her, because she needed them, because they needed her, because she needed them.
