Halloween Carnival, Volume 3
Page 15
“Don’t!” Gerald screamed. “Wait!”
Donnie stopped and slowly lowered his hands to his sides. His lurid, Frankenstein’s monster head cocked to one side in curiosity. Gerald was amazed the boy seemed to understand him, seemed interested in having a conversation.
So what to say to a friend you damned to hell?
“Donnie, I…” Gerald began, and the ghost looked eager to hear more, taking a step closer. “I know I’ve said sorry to you many times before…and I know that’s not what you want to hear.”
Donnie straightened and his eyes were like hooks, reeling Gerald in. The old man swallowed before continuing.
“So…I’ll say what you do want to hear.” He took a deep breath and his chest retaliated with a wheeze. “I deserve to die. I deserve whatever it is you want to dish out to me. I know that. I should be punished for what I did, and all these years I’ve just been delaying the inevitable. I think…deep down…that I did really die that day, but it just took my body a hell of a long time to catch up. And I’m still a coward in the face of death.
“So if you want to kill me and drag my miserable excuse for a soul away with you, then be my guest. I’m not gonna stop you.”
Donnie’s ghost remained silent but not still. Gerald watched as he turned and walked to the front door, reaching out with a frosted hand to unlock it. Then he turned back to face the old man, still with that same blank expression.
“You want me to go outside with you?” Gerald said.
Donnie’s eyes spoke for him, pools of beckoning. Gerald nodded in acknowledgment and rose up to his knees, his weary bones protesting, his lungs sacks of broken glass.
“Okay,” he said. “Just give me a sec.” He pulled himself to his feet and felt a wave of dizziness. He thought he would fall again, almost as if his body was getting ready to finally give up his ghost. He shuffled to the front door, eventually coming to a halt at Donnie’s side. His end was in sight.
He looked down at Donnie. The boy’s nose had stopped bleeding some time ago, and there was a thin layer of glittering frost coating his body. The boy’s time in the cold and the dark was, he hoped, about to end, too.
“I’m ready, Donnie,” he said.
Donnie reached out and turned the doorknob to open the door. Blake Street was bathed in a dull purple fog. To the east, Gerald could see the first blood-red sliver of the new dawn. Halloween was drawing its curtains for another year. Donnie took Gerald’s hand and walked him down the front steps to stand on the front lawn. Blake Street was quiet, all the trick-or-treaters curled up tight in their beds, deep in the grip of sugar-induced dreams of fancy.
Sleep: Gerald so wanted to sleep.
When he turned his head to say something to Donnie, the boy had somehow gone back inside and retrieved his wheelchair. The old man gratefully took his seat, wondering why Donnie was suddenly treating him with kindness.
As soon as he sat, there was a flash, and when it faded a moment later Gerald discovered they were traveling along the sidewalk, Donnie wheeling him away from his house, in the direction of Blake and Washington.
“Oh,” Gerald said, simultaneously fascinated and anxious. “We’re going back here, then? It’s been a long time.”
In the predawn blackness, the only sound to be heard was the creaking of the wheels on the sidewalk, the tremor of his heart, and the wheeze in his chest. The very air seemed to crackle with energy as they approached the intersection. Donnie brought their procession to a halt in the middle of the street, and the boy walked around to face his long-lost friend.
“What do you want me to do now?” Gerald asked him.
Donnie’s mute ghost waited patiently.
“What—what are we supposed to do?” Gerald said.
His chest rattled and Gerald felt a blockage in his chest. He began to cough harshly, the effort becoming involuntary and incessant. He covered his mouth with his hand as a great gob of blood burst from his lips into his palm. He gaped at the stark redness of it as it dribbled between his fingers, down to the asphalt beneath their feet.
Light struck them then as the world split in two. Through the veil of reality, Gerald could see the wide green mirage he’d first witnessed with his friend so many years before. When he looked at Donnie, the boy appeared brand-new, clean and fresh…almost alive. Yet there was no life in his face.
Gerald smiled in wonder at the sight of him, at the world on the other side. If his punishment meant he had to spend eternity with his friend here, then maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
“You know the real reason I’ve hated Halloween for all these years, Donnie?” Gerald said. The boy turned to look at him forlornly and shook his head.
Gerald said: “Because I never got to spend all those Halloweens with you.”
Gerald smiled anew and they were moving again, Donnie silently wheeling him through the crack to the other side. In the distance, Gerald saw the great oak tree, its top leaves glistening emeralds in the ever-midday sun. Beneath the tree was shadow, a lush cool place to spend the rest of—
Gerald saw one of the shadows beneath the tree move: a thin, wiry silhouette, gangly and broken, hair swaying as she walked. Gerald gasped as realization gripped his chest, but his lungs failed him, and as his soul left his body Martha smiled and claimed it for her own.
—
Kelli could see herself from the outside in. She was lying on the bathroom floor, cold in unconsciousness. Her point of view swelled, rose so she could take in the entire room from above. She saw herself on the floor and Gerald Forsyth curled up in the corner, assuaged by guilt.
The bathroom door crashed open in a swarm of splinters and white mist. The shape of Donnie slinked into the room, his silhouette like a knife. His grubby, frozen fingers reached out for Gerald, clasping around the old man’s throat. In seconds Gerald froze over, encased in a tomb of ice, sheer terror forever etched in his face.
As the boy turned his attention to Kelli’s unconscious form, she came to, as if roused from a nightmare. Her scream was muffled as Donnie plunged his burning-cold fingers into her mouth, filling her up with icy death from the inside out.
—
Kelli woke on the bathroom floor, screaming. Her heart trampolined in her chest and only slowed when the miasma of shock cleared. Realizing it was only a dream, she sucked in deep, calming breaths and scanned the room.
The last thing she remembered was Gerald striking her in the head. Oh, boy, would she give him a piece of her mind when she found him.
It was at that moment she realized Gerald Forsyth wasn’t in the room—and the door was wide open.
Oh, God!
Kelli scrambled to her feet and stepped out into the hallway. Furtively, she looked over the house from where she stood. Dawn was slowly painting the world in vermillion. She could barely think for the sound of her terrified heart.
She saw no sign of Gerald—or the boy. Had Donnie finally gotten ahold of the old man? She sincerely hoped not. She so wanted a happy ending to this nightmare—anything but Gerald’s death. She did like him, despite his faults; he was still a fellow human being who didn’t deserve to die at the hands of some supernatural evil.
Slowly, she walked up the hallway to the living room. The house was empty, and a frosty breeze from the open front door told Kelli the boy and the old man must have gone outside. Kelli ran out onto the porch, desperately hoping she’d find them standing on the front lawn but to no avail.
Seeing the street was devoid of anyone, Kelli instinctively ran to the next house and banged on the front door. After a few moments a man in his mid-forties, unshaven and half-awake, answered the door with a look that could have even rivaled Donnie Psalter’s.
“Call the police!” Kelli told him.
“Say what?”
“Call the police—your neighbor, Gerald Forsyth, has been abducted!”
Kelli’s final word seemed to get the man’s attention, and instantly he went back into his house to pick up the phone. Kelli left h
im to his task and ran into the street, past so many sleeping houses, everyone completely oblivious to what had happened on Halloween night—what was still happening. She felt like she should knock on every door and warn them, but her only priority was Gerald—her patient.
As she approached the intersection of Blake and Washington, she glimpsed a figure standing in the middle of the street.
“Gerald!” Kelli cried.
The figure turned toward her voice. It wasn’t Gerald but rather a woman, tall, slender, to the point of being anorexic. She wore a nightgown, fastened with a thin cord, of all things. Yet it was her face that made Kelli flinch—like thin leather stretched over a bulbous skull. Her eyes were the color of oil and her hair like snakes. The woman’s head was awkwardly cocked to one side.
“Alas, poor Gerald’s gone now,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry?” Kelli replied.
The strange woman smiled, revealing yellow teeth. “He’s with me now,” she said. “Through the veil; you shan’t be seeing him again.”
“What are you talking about?” Kelli tried to mentally get her heart to slow down, but something about this woman kept her fear center firing.
“I had Donnie collect him—they deserve to be together, those two.”
“How do you know about Donnie—” Kelli stopped mid-sentence and clamped a hand over her mouth. This made the woman smile even wider.
“Gerald Forsyth’s childhood tale was mostly true,” Martha said. “All except the part where I told him and Donnie that I weren’t a witch.”
“Oh my God!” Kelli said, sobbing.
The witch took a step backward and the space behind her split like a torn seam. Through the gap in reality, Kelli made out a wide expanse of hills, but they were gray, not green; dead and gone. And a fierce storm was brewing.
“No one ever escapes from my crossroads,” Martha said. “They all come home to me eventually—you’d do well to remember that.”
With those final words, she was gone, swallowed into hell: her, Donald Psalter, and Gerald Forsyth with her—forever.
It wasn’t until she felt a hand on her shoulder that Kelli remembered to breathe. She turned and found Gerald’s neighbor with his wife and children, gawking at her.
“Miss—did you find him? Did you find Gerald?” the man said.
Kelli stared at the children—two little boys. After a moment she shook her head.
“No,” she said. “He’s gone.”
Kelli looked from the boys to their parents. “You keep those boys away from that corner—you hear me? You keep all the children away!”
The man frowned. “Excuse me?”
Kelli ignored him, running past them to the police car that was turning into Blake Street. She had to find a way to warn them about the corner of Blake and Washington, about the witch that lived there. But most of all, she had to warn them about Halloween.
For Ray Bradbury, whose kind words to a young fan made all the difference in the world…
With special thanks to Norman Prentiss for his editorial assistance, and to Sarah Peed, Matt Schwartz, and the entire Hydra team for going above and beyond to make these anthologies everything they could be
About the Editor
BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN is the general manager of Cemetery Dance Publications and the author of several novels and novellas, including The Painted Darkness and The Halloween Children (with Norman Prentiss), along with his short-story collection Walking with Ghosts. He is the coeditor of the Dark Screams ebook anthology series and the editor of Detours and Reading Stephen King. He is also the founder of Books to Benefit, a specialty press that works with bestselling authors to publish collectible limited edition books to raise funds and awareness for good causes.
brianjamesfreeman.com
Facebook.com/BrianJamesFreeman
Twitter: @BrianFreeman
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