Halloween Carnival: Volume Three is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Hydra Ebook Original
Copyright © 2017 by Brian James Freeman
“The Way Lost” by Kelley Armstrong, copyright © 2017 by KLA Fricke, Inc.
“La Calavera” by Kate Maruyama, copyright © 2017 by Kate Maruyama
“The Devil’s Due” by Michael McBride, copyright © 2017 by Michael McBride
“A Thousand Rooms of Darkness” by Taylor Grant, copyright © 2017 by Taylor Grant
“The Last Night of October” by Greg Chapman, copyright © 2013 by Greg Chapman
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Hydra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
HYDRA is a registered trademark and the HYDRa colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
“The Last Night of October” by Greg Chapman was originally published in the United States by Bad Moon Books, Garden Groce, CA, in 2013.
Ebook ISBN 9780399182051
Cover design: Elderlemon Design
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
The Way Lost
La Calavera
The Devil’s Due
A Thousand Rooms of Darkness
The Last Night of October
Dedication
About the Editor
The Way Lost
Kelley Armstrong
Every Halloween, one child in Franklin lost his way and never came home. The next morning before school, we would circle the playground, trying to figure out who was missing, locating our friends with relief…and our enemies with disappointment. The bell would ring, and we’d file into class, and if every seat in the room was full, we’d nod, as if satisfied, but deep down we felt cheated of the excitement that came with a missing classmate.
If the empty desk was in our room, the teacher would start the lesson with “June is no longer with us. If anyone would prefer her seat, please move there after lunch. You may clear out her belongings at recess.” Come recess, we’d bicker over who got June’s fancy fountain pen or dog-eared copy of Charlotte’s Web. Quiet bickering—anything louder disrespected the dead.
Not that we knew June was dead. No one ever said that. No funeral would be held. No new grave would appear in our town cemetery. Even her family would continue on as if nothing had happened. As if she’d simply grown up, moved away, and didn’t care to return.
But we kids knew that June was dead. We just knew.
We also knew that we weren’t supposed to ask questions. I don’t know how many stuck to that in the privacy of their homes. I did, mostly, but now and then I couldn’t help bringing it up. The first time I remember doing so was when I was nine, after Billy Carson disappeared.
I’d known Billy. Didn’t like him much. He’d lived next door and used to torment our dog by sticking food through the fence and then yanking it back, laughing when Scamp smacked into the wood.
But Billy was still the first kid I actually knew who disappeared on Halloween, and so naturally I asked my mother what happened to him. We were in the kitchen. I sat on the stool by the counter and watched her chop carrots for soup, and I asked about Billy Carson.
“He lost his way,” she said, still chopping.
“How?”
She shrugged. “He just did. It happens.”
Three years later, after Sue Parker disappeared, I was back on that same stool, my sneakers knocking against the wood as my mother rolled dough for pie.
“I liked Sue,” I said.
She kept rolling. Five minutes had passed before I said it again: “I liked Sue.”
“I know.”
“She was pretty.”
“She was.”
“And nice.”
“Yes.”
“But she lost her way?”
My mother took flour from the bag and sprinkled it. “She did.”
“Last night, when I was trick-or-treating, I thought I saw her.”
My mother stopped, her hand poised over the floured counter.
“She was cutting through the forest,” I said. “Is that where it happens? In the forest?”
She reached for the dough. “Yes.”
“So if I avoid the forest on Halloween, I won’t lose my way?”
“Yes. You should avoid the forest on Halloween.” She set the dough down, hesitated, and then lifted her gaze to mine. “Please.”
I said I would.
I lied.
—
I did not avoid the woods next Halloween night. Or the Halloween after that. I couldn’t. I needed to see for myself what was happening.
At Halloween, I would race from door to door with my friends, collecting just enough candy so my mother wouldn’t be suspicious. Then I would go into the forest. I watched, and I listened, and I waited.
Every time I heard a shriek, I’d startle, only to realize it was just a kid in the distance, shrieking in feigned terror. I’d hear a rustling in the fall leaves and shimmy down to accidentally scare a rabbit or deer from its hiding spot.
No one came into those woods. No one even came near them. Most people who lived along the edge turned out their lights to discourage trick-or-treaters. So I passed those nights seeing nothing untoward. Yet the next morning, even if no child was gone from our class, we knew one had disappeared. A child gone. A desk emptied. Belongings divided.
Children whispered, too. They always whispered. Each year, someone would claim to have spotted a child heading into the forest. Some even claimed to have tried to stop him, warn him, call him back. To no avail, they said. They watched, helpless, as he walked into the forest…and never walked out.
I spent two Halloweens patrolling those woods and saw nothing.
The year I turned fifteen, I decided to stop watching. It would be my last time trick-or-treating, and I would make the most of it. If kids were foolish enough to venture into the woods on Halloween night, that was hardly my concern. Or so I told myself, determined to fill my bag and my memories one last time.
When I got home from school on Halloween day, Richie Gibson was there, on my stool, watching my mother make dinner. Richie was eight and had lived down our street all his life, but until this year, he’d been just another neighborhood kid. Then his mom got cancer, and my mother was one of the neighborhood women who stepped in to help—bringing food and taking care of Richie and his dad.
Richie’s mom died six months ago. After that, the other women returned to their lives, as if their obligation ended on her death, forgetting that Richie needed them more than ever now. My mother did not forget. He joined us for dinner a few days a week—it was just the two of us, so there was always room at our table.
I liked Richie. He was a good kid, and he looked up to me, followed me around, wanted to do stuff on weekends. He treated me like the coolest big brother ever, and I liked that.
Soon Richie’s dad had started joining us for dinner, and later, he would stay in the kitchen with my mother and help clean up, and I’d hear them talking and…Well, I wasn’t sure if something was happening there, but I’d be okay with that. My father died just after I was born, and Mr. Gibson seemed nice, like Richie.
That day, though, it was just Richie for dinner, and afterward, my mother said it was time for him to run home and get ready for Halloween.
“What are you going to be
?” he asked me.
“Cowboy,” I said, and mimicked pulling six-guns from my hips, which made him laugh.
“That’s cool,” he said. “I’m going to be a ghost. Again. That’s the only thing Dad could think of.”
“Oh, Richie,” my mother said, coming out from the kitchen. “I wish I’d known. I’d have made you a costume.”
He shrugged. “I’m okay with being a ghost. But a cowboy is way cooler.” He shyly lifted his gaze to mine. “Maybe we can go together. I could carry your guns.”
I hesitated before I said, “Sure, we can do that.”
“No,” my mother said, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “I’m sorry, Richie, but this is Dale’s last Halloween, and he’ll want to spend it with his friends.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll understand—”
“No.” She slung the towel down and walked to the phone. “I’m calling Mr. Webster. He takes a group with his kids, and I’m sure you can join them.”
“Maybe next year,” I whispered to Richie. “I’ll be your escort, and it’ll be just the two of us. This year, if you want, you can take one of my guns, and you’ll be the ghost of a cowboy.”
His thin face lit up. “That’d be cool.”
I patted his shoulder. “Good. Just let me get it.”
—
My friends and I stayed out late trick-or-treating. As I headed home, I found my feet straying toward the forest. I couldn’t help myself.
I was almost there when I spotted a lone figure trudging along the street bordering the forest. A figure draped in a white sheet. A ghost, holding a bag of candy in one hand…and a toy pistol in the other.
“Hey, Richie!” I called as I broke into a jog.
He slowed, and I stopped, ready to wait for him, but he had only slowed to turn up a laneway.
He must have slipped away from Mr. Webster. Easy to lose a kid when you’re in charge of a dozen, all of them in costume. Richie probably felt overwhelmed and wandered off to trick-or-treat on his own, poor kid.
The lights in the house were off, and I began jogging again, to tell Richie it was late, time to go home. When I made it to the house, though, the porch was empty. I ran up to the door and rapped, in case he’d been invited inside.
No one answered, and I peered in to see a dark house.
That’s when I heard dead leaves crunching underfoot. I followed the sound to the backyard and got there just in time to see the white-sheeted figure heading into the forest.
“Richie! No!”
I dropped my treat bag and tore off after him. I kept calling, shouting louder and louder, until there was no way he couldn’t hear me. But he didn’t stop. Didn’t look back. He just kept walking.
Richie strode into the forest, mowing through the undergrowth. As I stumbled after him, my feet caught on vines and in brush.
“Richie! Wait!”
He stepped into a thicket of trees…and that white beacon vanished.
I ran as fast as I could, staggering and tripping and grabbing trees for balance. I made it to the thicket, charged past the trees, and…
Nothing.
I spun, squinting into the darkness.
There was no sign of Richie’s white sheet.
I shouted his name and heard only my own voice echoing back. The forest had gone silent.
Absolutely silent. Eerily silent.
Then a twig snapped, and I spun.
“Richie?”
Nothing.
Dead leaves crackled just to my left, and I stumbled back.
“Richie?” My voice wavered as a chill crept up my spine.
Then, through the trees, I saw a shape. But it wasn’t a little boy wearing a sheet. It was a dark shape, bigger than me.
At first, that was all I could see—a large, dark shape. Then eyes. Glowing red eyes.
A mouth opened. Teeth flashed. A growl rippled through the night. And I ran.
I found a path. Fate favored me with that. Somehow I found a path, and it let me run full out.
I ran as fast as I could, ran until my lungs burned and my calves screamed, and the whole time I could hear that creature right on my heels. Hear the pounding of its feet, the huffing of its breath, the growls when it lunged and missed me.
The forest wasn’t more than five acres. This path had to lead out—they all did. There was a maze of trails in here, for hiking and dog walking, but they all linked up, and they all led out. Yet I saw no other branches to take. And I saw no end to this trail. No glow of houses through the trees. No landmarks I recognized.
That wasn’t possible. I’d spent the last two Halloween nights in this forest. I knew every stump. Every dilapidated fortress. Every shoe hung over a branch. But nothing here was familiar. Nothing showed me the way out.
He lost his way.
It happens, now and then, in the forest.
I finally understood how it happened. How kids who knew better ended up in the woods on Halloween. They chased another child, someone like Richie. They chased him into the forest and then something happened, and suddenly they weren’t in our forest anymore. And it wasn’t a lost child they were chasing—it was a monster, and there was no way out. No way but lost.
I left the path. It was the only thing I could think of.
A path is supposed to help you find your way. Keep you from getting lost. But this one wasn’t. It was getting me lost. Keeping me lost. So I left it.
I veered off the trail and into the forest. I dodged bushes and leaped over trees, and I ignored the thing behind me. I focused on running. Nothing but running.
And then I saw it. A light. Just up ahead.
Even as I ran for the light, I expected a trick. That I would never be able to reach it. That I would reach it…and run right into another monster. It was my only chance, though, so I hunkered down, and I ran as fast as I could and—
I burst from the forest so fast that I slid across the damp grass and fell flat on my face. I flipped over, ready to fight off whatever had been chasing me. But there was nothing there. Just me, lying on the grass, in someone’s backyard.
I lifted my head and looked around. I was two houses from the spot where I’d gone into the forest. That was it. I’d run for what felt like hours, and I’d barely traveled a hundred feet.
I blinked and looked around. Then I smiled.
I’d done it. I’d solved the mystery. I’d survived. I hadn’t lost my way, and I had survived.
When I could breathe again, I rose and brushed off my jeans. Then I fetched my bag of candy from two yards down and went home.
—
The next morning at school, I waited for kids to discover that no one had disappeared the night before. It might take awhile, but kids would talk, as they always did. They’d whisper until they figured out that no one had an empty chair in his class.
It wasn’t until after school that one of my friends caught up with me and said, “Did you hear about Richie?”
I looked over sharply. “Richie Gibson?”
“Yeah. Poor kid. He’s the one.”
“The one…”
“From last night. The one who disappeared.”
—
After school, I walked into the kitchen to find my mother chopping onions. Or that was what I thought she was doing. Her eyes were red. Nose red, too. Her hands trembled as she chopped.
“Here, let me,” I said, and she jumped, knife flying up, as if under attack. She saw me and quickly lowered it. Then she returned to her work, and I saw she was only chopping walnuts.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
She said nothing, just kept chopping. I climbed onto my stool. My feet touched the floor now, and the seat felt too small under me, but this was still where I sat, my favorite spot.
“You heard about Richie,” I said.
She tensed.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
No answer.
I shifted on the stool. “He was a good kid.”
“Yes, he was.”
“But he lost his way.”
She resumed chopping. “I guess so.”
“It happens.”
“It does.”
She pulled over the bowl, and as she dropped in the nuts, I saw chocolate-chip batter.
I smiled. “My favorite.”
She nodded.
As she stirred, I watched, and there was a long silence before she said, still stirring, “I thought you promised to stay out of the forest.”
“I did.”
Her gaze lifted to mine, and I realized she knew I’d been there last night. That was why she was so upset. Someone had spotted me by the forest.
“I’m too old for Halloween anyway,” I said. “That was my last year. I’m done now.”
Her gaze bored into mine. “Are you sure?”
I smiled. “I am. I promise.”
“Good.”
—
I grew up. I left Franklin. And, to my shock, I discovered that children in other parts of the country did not disappear every Halloween.
In retrospect, I realize how strange that sounds. But I grew up in Franklin, and that was the reality I knew, and I presumed it was the same everywhere else, and if they never talked about it on TV or in the newspapers, well, we didn’t talk about it, either, did we?
It took a long time to acknowledge that what happened in Franklin was not normal. And that’s when I began to expect a knock at my door.
Someday, that knock would come. The outside world would discover what happened in Franklin. We all had televisions now, and radios and telephones. People traveled, and secrets traveled, too.
I saw something that Halloween night when little Richie Gibson disappeared, and I knew that had not gone unnoticed. The day would come when someone would knock on my door and say, “I want to talk to you about Franklin.”
And so I waited.
It happened while I was on a basketball court, shooting hoops with Shane. He was only eight but already beating me, and he was laughing at another of my failed throws when a voice said, “Mr. Tucker?”
I turned to see two police officers.
“It’s about Franklin, isn’t it?” The words came before I could stop myself.
Halloween Carnival, Volume 3 Page 1
