Halloween Carnival, Volume 3

by Brian James Freeman (ed)

  “Stop!” he told the boy.

  The child stopped and cocked his head at the old man like a dog trying to compute a master’s command. Kelli saw Gerald shudder as he struggled to stay upright. A combination of muscle weakness and fear, she imagined. She was paralyzed as well, both in mind and body. What was occurring in Gerald Forsyth’s home should have been a joke, a child’s idea of giving an old man a scare on Halloween, but the blood looked so real and the boy looked as if he was—

  “Is he—?”

  Gerald’s hands became fists. “Shut up! Shut up, you stupid woman, or you’ll attract his attention!”

  Kelli swallowed and watched the two of them. There was history between the old man and the boy—something dark and terrible. For a moment she wondered if Gerald had done something to this boy, that maybe the old man’s gruff exterior covered a past unthinkable sin.

  “You tell me who he is!” Kelli said.

  This time Gerald whirled on her. “Listen to me! Just shut up and listen!”

  Kelli flinched, but the boy simply watched and listened.

  “You have to get out of here!” the old man said.

  “How?”

  “The back door—it’s off the kitchen! Go now, goddamn it!”

  Kelli looked to her right and she saw, past the kitchen bench, was the back door. She looked back to Gerry, uncertainty festering in the pit of her stomach. She looked into Gerald’s eyes and saw the sadness and guilt residing there, and she realized he was trying to save her. For the first time she felt truly sorry for him, but her sympathy was short-lived when the bleeding boy suddenly reached out to grab Gerald’s wrists.

  She shrieked as the two of them struggled. Despite the constant flow of blood and his deathly appearance, the boy was impossibly strong. Gerald dropped to his knees and the boy shifted his hands to grip his throat. The boy smiled in delight as his captive began to suffocate. It was at this moment something inside Kelli snapped.

  It happened so quickly that she couldn’t remember herself moving. She simply found herself standing beside the boy and with one hand, shoving him off her patient. As the boy toppled into the TV table, Kelli reached down and lifted the gasping Gerry to his feet, placed him in the wheelchair, and wheeled him out of the kitchen. The rubber tread left black marks on the floorboards.

  “Is the back door unlocked?” she cried at Gerald, but the old man was hunched over.

  Kelli steered past the kitchen bench, past the 1980s Formica cupboards and small sink, toward the door. Panting with exertion, she glanced over her shoulder—no sign of the boy. She reached down and tried to turn the handle as fear burned in her throat.

  “It’s locked!”

  She scanned the wall beside the door for a key hook, but there was none.

  Even if there was a key, was it Gerald who locked the door, or had it been the boy? How could he lock the entire house if he hadn’t been in the house before, stupid!

  She gently shook Gerald’s shoulder and pressed her fingers to his throat to feel the steady thrum of his pulse.

  “Mr. Forsyth—wake up!”

  Gerald stirred and coughed, gasping for air; Kelli quickly put the oxygen mask over his face.

  “Gerald—is there a key for the back door?”

  Fear filled the old man with alertness and he began to fish around frantically in his pockets. Kelli watched him stare at the edge of the wall separating the kitchen from the living room as he searched; she looked at the same spot, dreading what might emerge there. The old man almost jumped up from his wheelchair when he finally found the key. He pushed it into Kelli’s palm and she tried it in the keyhole.

  “It won’t turn!” she said.

  “No, that’s impossible.” Gerald turned in his chair to reach back and turn the key with his gnarled hands. He grunted and strained to unlock the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Goddamn it!” he said.

  Kelli wrapped her own hands around his and twisted, but not even their combined strength could unlock the door.

  “It’s no good,” she said.

  They looked at each other, tears in each other’s eyes, an equal sense of hopelessness. The moment was lost, however, when they both realized neither of them had been watching the wall. A shuffling noise wrenched their gazes back to that awful spot.

  The boy staggered into the kitchen area from the other side of the wall. His nose still trickled blood and his entire front was now covered in a thick red tar. Droplets fell to the floor like deformed rubies, exploding on the linoleum floor to be smeared beneath the child’s lethargic footsteps.

  Kelli screamed; there was simply no reason for what she was seeing. The boy was coming for them and intended to kill them both. The reason why hardly mattered anymore. She just needed to escape.

  “What are we going to do?” Her voice broke in fear.

  Gerald had again been left paralyzed by the boy’s horrifying march, so she reached down and shook his shoulders.

  “Mr. Forsyth!”

  He shuddered and blinked, his eyes locked on hers. A moment passed, until his eyes widened in recognition. He reached past her and pointed to the hallway just off the kitchen.

  “The bathroom!” he said. “Go!”

  Kelli followed his pointing finger and nodded in acknowledgment. Quickly she pushed him through it just as the bleeding boy came within a few feet of them. The child hissed as they made their escape. Despite Kelli’s speed, the boy was relentless and immediately gave chase, one shambling footstep at a time.

  “Hurry!” Gerald cried, and his pleas pushed Kelli into a panic. In her haste to get them across the hall into the bathroom, the wheels of the old man’s chair twisted and almost toppled the chair over. Kelli summoned one last ounce of strength and managed to keep the chair upright and lead it through the door.

  “Close the door!” Gerald said. Kelli left the safety of the chair and hurried to the door, and as she pulled the door closed, she saw the terrifying child advancing. She slammed the door closed in the boy’s bleeding face.

  “Now put something against it—we need to keep him out,” he told her.

  Kelli grabbed the fortunately overflowing cane laundry basket and thrust it in front of the door. A moment later the door shook under the weight of a great pounding.

  “Don’t let it in!”

  Kelli leaned her back to the door. Her body jerked and rocked under the impossible power of the boy’s urgent thrusting. How the boy had so much strength, yet little movement, Kelli had no inkling. From the terror in Gerald’s eyes, she knew there was little a door could do against such a horror. She watched the old man run his hands through the few strands of hair left on his pate.

  “Oh, God, please—make it go away!” he sobbed.

  The door boomed again and almost came open. Kelli shrieked and slammed her shoulder into it. The boy’s cold, alabaster fingers crept through the gap and clawed at the air, as if tasting the fear in the room.

  “No—get out!” Kelli said.

  “Move out of the way!” When the nurse looked at Gerald, she saw him frenetically wheel his chair backward in the direction of the door. She moved out of the way as the chair crashed into the door and forced it closed.

  “Lock the wheels!” he said.

  Kelli bent and clicked the wheel locks firmly into place. The boy, now unable to exert any pressure on the door, went into a frenzy of kicking and hissing, his fists like hammers on the wood. The door rattled with the resonance of a jackhammer on the back of Gerald’s wheelchair, rocking the old man forward and back. Kelli saw tears roll down his weathered cheeks. He covered his ears to block out the child’s wailing, and it was several minutes before the tirade ceased. Eventually, a grave silence overwhelmed everything.

  “He’s stopped…gone!” Kelli said, smiling; she couldn’t hide the relief on her face, but Gerald hadn’t lost his somber expression.

  “No, he’s still there…” he muttered.

  He gazed up at her, then, and Kelli could tel
l by his gaunt face and sorrowful eyes that he was speaking the truth.

  “…and he’ll never leave without me.”

  4

  Gerald wanted it all to disappear: the boy, Kelli, his emphysema—the whole goddamned world. But he knew that wish, his one hope, would never be fulfilled. Not without one significant sacrifice.

  He wasn’t certain how long he’d been crying, sitting in a miserable heap in his wheelchair. He didn’t know how long Kelli had been trying to talk to him. He only focused on the silence coming from the other side of the bathroom door, from the ever-patient demon he knew all too well.

  Yet this time was different; the boy was, for the very first time, inside his house. Gerald had never allowed that to happen before. It was the damned nurse’s fault, he told himself. If only she’d never opened the door; if only his regular nurse, Doreen, who was much better—quieter and efficient—at her job, hadn’t been sick, then none of this would ever have happened.

  If only…if only he’d never decided to go trick-or-treating in a blizzard all those years ago.

  Kelli’s voice, taut with desperation, brought him out of his reverie.

  “Mr. Forsyth—can you hear me? What are we going to do now?”

  Gerald lifted his head to look at Kelli. Her eyes were wide and white, pupils dilated with terror and a glaze of sweat on her brow. The old man knew this experience would age her ten years.

  “What is going on?” Kelli said, her voice quivering. “You know something about that boy—don’t deny it.”

  He wiped the sweat from his top lip with the back of his hand. “We need,” he began, “to be very quiet.”

  “Who is he?” Kelli cried, pointing an accusing finger at the door.

  Gerald took a deep calming breath, but instead of providing life-giving oxygen, his chest pressed in on him like a giant vise. He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to ignore the fact that soon his need for oxygen would overwhelm everything.

  “Just…just a kid.”

  “ ‘Just a kid’—what sort of kid walks through your house, bleeds…pint after pint…of blood all over your floor and tries to choke you to death?”

  The old man scowled. “You let it in.”

  Kelli recoiled and looked away from him. He watched her swallow down the guilt. Yet she didn’t avert her gaze from him for long, her inquisitive green eyes burrowing into his.

  “Why do you refer to the boy as ‘it’ or ‘a kid’ when you know very well who he is?”

  “Please…be quiet.”

  She grabbed him by his shoulders and shook him. “No—you need to tell me who that boy is and what he wants with you!”

  The old man slapped his hand down on the arm of his wheelchair. “Shut up! Just shut up! Your stupidity allowed him to get into my house and now I have no idea how to get him out!”

  Kelli winced, feeling the sting of the stupid comment again, yet, in his rage, Gerald had also begun to open up about his knowledge of the boy.

  “You said ‘him.’ ”

  “For God’s sake, will you be quiet?”

  Kelli sighed and reached into her coat to retrieve her cellphone.

  “Wait—what are you doing?” Gerald said.

  “I’m calling the police!” She began to dial 911.

  “No! You can’t!” he reached for her, but Kelli turned her back and put the phone to her ear.

  “Please, don’t call the police!” he said behind her, his voice cracking.

  Kelli turned back to face him and pulled the phone away from her ear. “Then tell me why! We need to get the police here to help us.”

  The bathroom door shuddered with a terrifying jolt and the pair froze. The thing—the boy—on the other side was still there. Gerald knew it was listening in, biding its time, savoring the fear escalating between him and the nurse. This was what it wanted—to induce terror in their hearts.

  The old man looked at Kelli holding the phone in her hand. She was shaking. From where he sat, he could hear the 911 dispatcher calling out for someone to respond.

  “Nine-one-one—what’s your emergency?”

  “Hang up the phone, Kelli,” Gerald told her as gently as possible.

  Kelli looked at the phone in her palm and suddenly realized what she’d been doing. She raised the phone to her ear.

  “Don’t!” he begged.

  Kelli’s eyes flared at him with disdain as she spoke to the dispatcher.

  “Hello? This is Kelli Pritchard. I need help.”

  “Hang up the damn phone!”

  Boom. The door rocked against the old man’s chair.

  “I’m a nurse…from Saint Stephen’s Hospice Care,” Kelli said. “I’m at a patient’s house…at Gerald Forsyth’s house…and someone is trying to hurt us.”

  “What’s your address, ma’am?” the dispatcher’s voice came back.

  “One-sixteen Bla—”

  Gerald strained his arm to grab the phone from Kelli’s hand, but he didn’t hold on to it for long. Before the nurse could object—and finish telling the dispatcher his address—he threw the phone hard into the bathtub, where it smashed into half a dozen pieces, the back cover, battery, and plastic screen sliding around the inside of the tub to settle near the plughole.

  “Why the hell did you do that!?” Kelli said.

  Gerald watched her try to salvage the phone from the tub and wondered the same thing. Had all these years of terror finally sent him mad? Even if he were, he couldn’t risk having the police come to his aid. Who knows what it might do if it were cornered. Its…capabilities were essentially limitless. If he could just keep it at bay until dawn, then it would be gone…at least for one more year. He checked his watch. It was almost 8 p.m.

  “What is wrong with you?” Kelli said, and when she looked at him her eyes were reddened with hot tears.

  “You need to listen to me now,” Gerald said, trying not to look her directly in the eyes.

  “Listen to you! What are you going to say that will be of any use to me? Unless you’re willing to tell me who that boy is and what the hell he wants, then I don’t want to hear a single word from you. You got that, old man?”

  Silence filled the room for several moments as Gerald battled with guilt and fear. Kelli chose to sit on the floor and lean against the bathtub, exhausted no doubt from the adrenaline rushing around in her blood. Gerald studied her and found himself admiring her courage and determination—perhaps not so much her disrespect for her elders, but her take-no-crap attitude was, he admitted, endearing. He wanted to trust her with his secret, but he didn’t know where to begin.

  “My son is going to be wondering where I am,” Kelli said suddenly.

  “I thought you said your son hardly spoke to you?”

  “What I meant was he’ll be wondering where I am when he comes home and finds there’s no dinner,” Kelli chuckled.

  “Oh, I see.” Gerald felt a release of the tension in the room. “What’s your boy’s name?”

  “Adam.”

  “That’s a good name.”

  “Thanks,” Kelli said, but Gerald saw that uncomfortableness surfacing on her face again.

  “So no one else at home—no father, boyfriend?” Gerald asked.

  Kelli chuckled derisively. “No. I kicked his ass out years ago, unfaithful SOB.”

  “Ah—but forgive me, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Kelli waved a hand to dismiss him. “No, no it’s fine—looks like we’ll be spending the night together, so we might as well get cozy, right?”

  Kelli smiled and Gerald smiled back; it would take time, but the old man felt that the two of them could get along if they put their minds to it. The nurse looked to the bathroom door again, a worried expression returning to her face.

  “So what about your boy, then, Gerald—what’s his name?”

  The old man felt his shoulders sag and a heavy, grating sigh pass his lips. He closed his eyes, so tired, so eager for rest. Tears rolled down his cheeks, dragging him down into the abyss
of despair that kept him breathless, kept him in his chair.

  “It’s…a very long story,” he replied.

  Kelli got to her knees to crawl over to him. Gingerly she rested her hand on his.

  “I’m willing to hear it, if you’re willing to tell it,” she said.

  Gerald saw sincerity—and trust—in the nurse’s eyes. She smiled and he found himself smirking.

  “It’s from when I was…a boy.”

  Kelli looked from him to the door; no doubt she was thinking of the boy on the other side. She would be putting two and two together; he certainly hoped so, because it would make the telling much easier.

  “So a long time ago, then?” she said.

  Gerald nodded and exhaled a long, wavering, tremulous release. He tried to think of the words to choose. He hated talking, preferring the confines of his own head, but there was no turning back now. He’d already given birth to the secret and now he had to nurture it. Perhaps by letting it free he would finally free himself. When he looked up, he found Kelli staring at him, waiting desperately.

  “Would you mind—I mean, just to help me out a little—tell me a little about your childhood?” he asked.

  Kelli’s eyes widened. “I thought you were going to tell me your story?”

  “I will, I will—I’m just trying to…talk.”

  “I thought we needed to stay quiet?”

  “Just…keep your voice low and I think we’ll be fine.”

  Kelli’s brow softened. “Okay…if it helps.” She rubbed her palms on her knees and Gerry understood she felt anxious, given all she’d witnessed so far this evening.

  “I don’t know where to start,” she said with a nervous laugh.

  The irony wasn’t lost on Gerald, but if she could just show him courage then he might be able to use it. He reached out and patted her hand.

  “Tell me where you grew up,” he said.

  “Iowa—Des Moines.”

  “You were born there?”