Halloweenland

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Eff you!”

  The black thing with the white face was gone. Now the blackness dissolved around Ganley, as if someone pulled a blindfold away. He saw the engine above him at the exact moment it slipped its chains and fell toward him.

  He got out one puppylike squeal before it hit.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Thanks for seeing me, Doc.”

  Williams smiled his crusty old doctor’s smile. “Country doctors always like seeing their old patients, Bill. I miss Rose a lot. I remember all those bridge games years ago—”

  Grant cut the doctor off before he could go into one of his ten-minute reminiscence sessions.

  “Doc, I’m here to talk about Marianne Carlin.”

  Williams’ long, hound dog face formed a frown. He rubbed his chin. “Well, gee, Bill, we might be getting into doctor-patient confidentiality areas there—”

  “I already know she’s pregnant,” Grant said. He wanted to reach for a cigarette but thought better of it here in Williams’ office. Out in the hallway a nurse stopped at a doorway directly opposite and slid a form into a plastic holder mounted on the wall. A moment later she ushered a woman and a young, sniffling child into the room and closed the door after them. She gave a quick glance into the office and nodded at Williams.

  “I’ll be there in a minute, Martha.”

  The nurse nodded again and walked briskly away.

  Williams leaned back in his desk chair and put his hands behind his head. “If you know she’s pregnant, then why are we having this conversation?”

  Grant said, “I need to know if she’s really pregnant.”

  Williams frowned again, then nodded. “You mean an hysterical pregnancy, something like that?”

  “Right.”

  The doctor scratched his cheek, rubbed his chin, looked at the ceiling. “Well, then, once more we enter that gray area, Bill . . .”

  “It’s important. I think she may have been raped the night her husband was killed. I thought it was Bud Ganley, but a DNA test cleared him.”

  “Bud Ganley.” Williams frowned. “I just got off the phone with the coroner not twenty minutes ago about Bud Ganley.”

  “What about him?” Grant asked. The hair on the back of his neck began to prickle.

  “He’s dead, Bill. Surprised you haven’t heard about it yet. Truck engine slipped its block and tackle chains while he was mounting it from below, crushed his head like, well, you provide the image. Grape, tomato, whatever. I was on duty at Orangefield General earlier today when they brought him in.” He made a sour face. “If it had been yesterday, would have been my friend Gus Bellow instead of me looking at him. Wish it had been.”

  “Is his body still at Orangefield General?”

  “Probably transferred it to the funeral home by now. He’ll be in the ground in a few days. Won’t be much of a wake, I imagine. I never did like that kid much. He was the kind that would take two lollipops from the jar.”

  Grant said nothing, which caught the doctor’s attention. “You okay, Bill?”

  “Just thinking . . .”

  The nurse appeared again in the doorway and made a scolding motion at Williams.

  “All right, all right,” the doctor said, nodding. He pointed to the watch on his wrist. “One more minute, Martha. I promise.”

  As the nurse retreated Williams turned back to Grant. “They’re stacking up out there like planes over an airport. Gotta go.”

  “Is she really pregnant?”

  “Now, Bill—”

  “I told you, it’s important. She seems to think she is.”

  Williams asked, “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “A week and a half ago. She came to my house. I’ve talked to her on the phone a few times since then, but haven’t seen her.”

  Williams rose and came around his desk as Grant got out of his chair. The doctor put his arm around the detective’s middle, brought it up to his shoulder and squeezed. “You know, if I was your doctor, and I am, I would tell you to cut down on the cigarettes, which I can smell on your breath, and your drinking, since I felt what is probably a pint bottle in your raincoat pocket as I reached around you just now to bring my hand up to your shoulder. You see, I have to be a detective in my work, too.” He sighed. “I remember ten years ago, when your Rose and my Gladys, God rest both of them, dragged us to all kinds of things, it seemed every Saturday afternoon . . .”

  His extended reminiscence was cut off by Grant’s stone face and the reappearance of Martha in the doorway. The doctor nodded to her and then leaned over to whisper into Grant’s ear.

  “Point is, you’re a lousy detective, Bill. She’s got a belly on her you can see a mile away.”

  “Wha—”

  Williams whispered, “She’s five months pregnant, Bill.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Think of it as a favor, Mort. A big one.”

  “You got that right. You think I’ve got nothing else to do than run lab tests on closed cases? That kid Ganley’s dead, right?”

  Grant spoke evenly into the receiver. “Right.”

  “And he was your number one, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “And he came up neg, right?”

  “Correct again.”

  “And now you want me to run not the other idiot, what’s his name, Petee Wilkins, but—”

  “Yes, Mort. That’s what I want you to do.”

  A long pause on the other end, then a snort. “You got it, hojo. Though God knows why I’m doing this.”

  “Tomorrow, Mort?”

  “A.M.”

  There was a click in Grant’s ear.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Marianne Carlin didn’t answer her phone, so Grant drove to her house. It was chilly and getting chillier, October marching steadfastly away from Indian summer and toward winter. The sky was a stark, cold, deep blue, a shade particular to this season. The elms and oaks were in full riot, bursting with red and yellow, already starting to shed. The road was littered with a beautiful blanket that had not yet become a nuisance and danger, waves and dunes of leaves that filled gutters, washed over curbs and clogged storm drains.

  Already, a few pumpkins were out on stoops, uncarved but waiting for nearing Halloween.

  Grant avoided the center of Orangefield, where the leftover bunting would still be strung for the Pumpkin Days Festival, which thankfully had ended. A week of drunken teens, greedy locals and a bloat of tourists in the Pumpkin Capital of the World living by the twin unwritten Orangefield codes of “Have A Good Time” and “Make A Buck.” Ranier Park had been turned once again into a mecca for commerce, with two huge circus tents erected—one filled with aisles of Halloween wares, the other a haven for lovers of bad live music, with seven days of varied fare: country, rock and roll, jazz and, heaven forbid, rap music. For the first time in ten years Grant had avoided Pumpkin Days duty, taking part of the week off and burying himself in administrative work the rest. It had been a blessing.

  Marianne Carlin’s house, a tidy ranch, was on a tidy street. The lawn was dotted with leaves not yet in need of raking. There was no pumpkin on the stoop, but a clutch of Indian corn hung from the front door, which was painted red.

  As Grant parked his Taurus, Marianne emerged from the side of the house, wearing gardening gloves. Sure enough, now that he looked, she showed a belly, even beneath her painter’s overalls.

  Grant caught up with her as she entered the yawning opening of the garage next to the house. He found her fumbling around in a wheelbarrow, which was filled with gardening tools.

  He cleared his voice and she turned around, startled.

  “Oh! Detective Grant!”

  Grant smiled. “Sorry.”

  She smiled, too, and regained her composure, handing Grant the trowel she had plucked from the wheelbarrow. “Would you carry this for me?”

  She walked past him, and led him back to the side of the house, where a tangle of dead weeds and still-blooming annua
ls clogged a small plot.

  “It’s a mess,” she explained, taking the trowel from him. “I pretty much ignored it this year. But I thought going at it might be good for me. For the plants, too.”

  “Marianne, why didn’t you tell me you were five months pregnant?”

  She had knelt down to plow at the black loamy soil, and looked up at him. “Because I didn’t know. I didn’t know until the day after Jack died. I started to feel sick, and then I started to show. And every day I seem to show more.”

  Grant heard a car door slam. He turned to see Marianne’s sister Janet trudging toward them over the lawn. In the backseat of her Buick, Baby Charlie waved his arms from his car seat. His face was red and he looked to be wailing, but the closed car and the distance prevented him from being heard.

  Janet stopped and put her hands on her hips, regarding Grant. “You again! Just the man I want to see!” She reached out and grabbed Grant by the elbow, tugging him away. As Marianne began to rise Janet pointed at her. “You stay there. I’ll be back in a few minutes and take you to lunch.”

  Marianne obeyed, and Grant was hauled over the front lawn toward his car, parked in front of Janet’s. She had a grip like a bench vise.

  She let go of Grant’s arm and faced him.

  “Actually,” Grant said, “you’re the one I want to see. Did you know your sister was five months pregnant?”

  “Five months my ass.” She pointed to her own belly. “I’m seven months pregnant, and I’ve been puking since day one.” She jerked a thumb at the Buick. “Same thing happened with Baby Charlie. Puking and feeling like puking for nine months straight, and showing after two. Big as a house. It runs in our family. Nobody escapes it. And I’m telling you, Marianne wasn’t pregnant five months ago. I would have known. I’ve got radar. I can sense it. When she started to feel sick after Jack died, then I knew she was pregnant. But she wasn’t till then. She couldn’t have been.”

  “Why?”

  “Jack had a vasectomy when they got married. In fact, he had it reversed the day he died. He and Marianne had decided to have a kid. Marianne told me he’d promised to come home early that night, so that they could start trying to get her preggers. But instead he went out celebrating with those two asshole friends of his. Macho manhood and all that crap. Did I mention I’m glad Bud Ganley is dead? One less loser in the world.”

  “Is there any chance Marianne was having an affair, and got pregnant five months ago?”

  “Ha! My sister? She was wild crazy in love with Jack Carlin, and he was the same with her. No way in hell.”

  She put her hands on her hips again. “My turn. You’re the guy who knows all about the weird stuff in this town, right?”

  “Well—”

  Janet didn’t let him continue. “Marianne’s been acting just plain strange. And getting stranger. She tell you about the guy with the cape?”

  “She came to see me right after it happened. I’ve been calling her on the phone every few days since then to make sure she’s all right. Every time I phone her, she says she’s fine.”

  “Oh, you need to catch up, Detective. This cape character’s been back just about every night. Now she says he’s her friend, and that she’s not afraid of him anymore. She even calls him Samhain. I stayed with her one night in her bedroom, but didn’t see a damned thing but that dog shit ugly wallpaper of hers. The next night she claimed he was back. Either she’s nuts, or there’s still something mighty screwy going on.”

  Grant said nothing.

  “It’s like she’s in a fog. A couple weeks ago, she was just beginning to show. Now she’s bigger than me.” Janet took a deep breath. “The thing I want to know is: if she’s pregnant, five months or otherwise, how the hell did it happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’ve said my piece,” Janet continued, shaking her head, “and now you know everything I do. I gave you that stuff of Jack’s you asked for when I was cleaning out the house, and I’ll help any other way I can. I think my sister would have been just fine by now, after Jack’s death, if all this other monkey business hadn’t started. I’m worried about her, but I don’t know what to do. Maybe you can worry about her, too. Between the two of us we can do a lot of worrying.”

  She turned and shouted to Marianne, “Come on! Let’s go eat! I’m starving!”

  Marianne threw down her tools and stood up. She looked even more pregnant than she had when Grant arrived.

  Janet was shaking his hand. “Thanks for listening, Detective.”

  She dropped Grant’s hand, and trundled over to help her sister into the front of the Buick.

  Grant couldn’t help but be struck by how much bigger than her sister Marianne looked.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “You’re sure, Mort?”

  “Ninety-nine point nine percent. I’m positive if we did the full test every marker would match. This is the guy, all right.”

  Grant was silent.

  “Just to make sure,” Mort said, “I took samples from both the hairbrush and the toothbrush. Same result.”

  Grant made a sound that was something like, “Thanks.”

  “And you said this guy was her husband? If he was dead how could he—”

  Grant said, “Exactly,” and hung up the phone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It always seemed to rain at burials. There was a blue tarp over Bud Ganley’s casket, which Grant had no doubt was a cheap one. There were only a handful of mourners: Ganley’s mother, his employer, Jim Ready, a couple of like-aged slouchers who looked like pool room buddies, and Petee Wilkins, who stood off by himself. Grant had made his way into the back end of the cemetery, through a small stretch of woods, and stood at the top of a moderate rise looking down at the proceedings below. His raincoat collar was up against the chill, and his cigarette was used up.

  He lit a new one and watched as the reverend finished his ministrations and the two slouchers, who turned out to be the grave diggers, began to lower the casket into the ground. They pulled the blue tarp off it then, and Ganley’s mother threw a clod of dirt on it and turned away, not looking at Petee Wilkins. The way she walked told Grant that this was the last in a long line of disappointments.

  Petee stood watching as the two grave diggers began to shovel the mound of waiting dirt into the hole. Grant ambled down the hill and approached him. Too late to flee, Petee noticed him and stood rooted to the spot, looking at the ground. Grant was struck by how much Wilkins looked like a skinny rat, down to the twitching nose and sniffles. He had always been a follower. Grant had first met him when Wilkins was twelve, and got caught trashing a house on Sagett River Road. The punk he was with got away, but Petee got caught. He was the kind who would always get caught.

  “ ’Lo, Detective,” Petee said, running the back of his hand across his continually running nose. He wouldn’t look up. Grant was reminded of Baby Charlie.

  “I just have one question to ask you, Petee,” Grant said.

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “I want you to tell me the dead-ass truth, and if you do I won’t bother you again. That’s a promise.”

  Petee’s nose twitched, and his shoulders spasmed up and down with what might have been a form of assent.

  “Okay?” Grant asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Just answer me this. Did you and Bud Ganley take Jack Carlin home before you took him to the hospital?”

  Petee drew the back of his hand quickly across his running nose. His nose twitched twice. “No, Detective Grant.”

  “Are you sure? Look at me, Petee.”

  Wilkins glanced up briefly. Even his dark brown eyes were small and ratlike. “He wanted us to, but we didn’t!”

  “He was alive after that car hit him?”

  Petee was staring at the ground again. Behind them, the two grave diggers went about their work, which lent a susurrus of shoveled dirt to the conversation. “Yeah, but just for a couple of minutes. At first he begged us to take h
im home. Then he got all glassy eyed and kept calling for Marianne, saying he had to go to her. That he had promised. He started yelling a bunch of stuff.” He glanced up at Grant briefly again. “Then he was gone. He died right there in the street before we put him in Bud’s car and took him to the hospital.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police that he was alive after the car hit him?”

  Sniffle, wipe. “Bud was afraid we’d get in trouble. And I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  Twitch, shrug. “Afraid . . .”

  “Tell me, Petee, or we end up down at the station with you in a holding cell.”

  “Oh, shit.” He shuffled his feet, looked back at the grave diggers, who were wiping their hands, stared at the ground again. Grant noticed that his knuckles were white, his hands trembling. “Afraid . . .”

  “Petee—”

  “I was afraid of what he said, and what happened! I believed Jack, is all! Bud ran to get his car, and Jack was all busted up and dying, and he stared right through me and was yelling, ‘I promised you a baby! I promised!’ And then . . .”

  “And then what?”

  “And then he died, and . . .”

  Grant was about to prod him again when Petee blurted, with a groan, “And something flew out of his body and away, Detective! Smoke, or fog, or . . . something that looked just like Jack!”

  “Petee—” Grant began.

  “Aw, shit, Detective,” Wilkins said, wiping his nose and then his eyes. He was crying now. “Can’t you leave me alone? Can’t you just leave me the hell alone? All my friends are dead now, and my life is shit. Can’t you just lay off me?”

  Grant took a long breath, and said, “Sure, Petee. Like I promised.”

  Wilkins turned abruptly, almost stumbling into one of the grave diggers, who was loading his shovel into a wheelbarrow, and walked off, hitching sobs and wiping at his face with his hands.