Dark Hallows II: Tales from the Witching Hour

by Mark Parker

  “You? You took these things?”

  “Will was my half-brother, you know.” Timothy said, ignoring his question and setting the can aside. “No, of course you didn’t. I didn’t know it either. Not till the summer before he died.” He dropped the knife back into the can before sealing it and returning it to the space where it had spent the past six decades. “The idiot was my own flesh and blood brother. Well, half.” He looked up at Jonathan. “Back before we were born, Miss Tanner left town for a year, supposedly to attend a piano conservatory in Chicago. Mrs. McIntosh, her cousin, couldn’t have children, so the McIntoshes agreed to adopt her son and raise him as their own. My dad’s son. Of course, everyone knew Will was adopted, but no one had any idea Miss Tanner was his mother. And no one, certainly not my mother, could’ve guessed the identity of his father. Or at least my father thought so. But my mother knew. That’s why she insisted that I take piano lessons from the woman.”

  His gaze seemed to turn inward. “Miss Tanner told me where she hid her key, supposedly so I could let myself in if she were running late. My mother assured her that I wouldn’t be able to resist snooping. They wanted me to snoop. They wanted me to know that Will and I were brothers.” He laughed. “They must have thought they were doing me a kindness. That I could embrace that dull mouth-breather as my brother. One rainy day, when I had a lesson scheduled, but Miss Tanner was nowhere around, I found a letter my father had written her.” Timothy seemed to jolt back to the present, focusing on him. “He told her he didn’t want a thing to do with her or ‘her’ kid. Recommended she use a crochet hook or May-apple to deal with the situation.”

  “You know of the May-apple, don’t you?” Jonathan’s eyes shot to the head of the stairs, where Mrs. Dempsey stood with one hand on the railing, the other behind her back. “It grows wild all around here. Women used to use the green fruit to induce miscarriages. Ripe May-apple is delicious. You had some of the jam on your scone. The green fruit is toxic, though. So are the other parts of the plant, including its seeds.” He steadied himself against the wall. “You had some of those today, too. Just not enough to kill you. A shame, really. It would’ve been such a poetic end.” She took a few steps down. “Really, though, you could’ve made this so much easier on all of us if you’d just shared the whiskey with the others the way we’d planned.” She gave him a wink. “There was a generous dash of GHB mixed in.” She paused. “I’m not a purist. I have nothing against modern chemistry when it proves efficacious. Your friends never even felt it when you slit their throats. Did they, Tim?” She held the still bloody serrated hunting knife out where Jonathan could see it. Jonathan startled. “They just drifted off to sleep and justice was done. Now it’s your turn, though I’m afraid you’ll be awake to know what’s happening.”

  “Justice?” he said in disbelief, his heart pounding. He focused on Timothy. How had he not noticed the red sheen on Timothy’s hands, the crimson stains on his cuffs that were now so plain? “But you had a hand in his death. You convinced the rest of us he was stealing.” Jonathan’s mind reeled through the memories of the day, adrenaline sharpening details he’d long sought to repress. “Up in the loft. You were the one standing closest to Will.” The memories slowed, and Jonathan turned them to examine each facet. “Will didn’t stumble back off the loft. You pushed him.”

  Timothy nodded. “Yes, I did,” he said, his features relaxing as he acknowledged this truth. “You have no idea how much I hated him. I was ashamed that he was my brother. I wanted him dead, so I killed him.”

  “But the rest of us were innocent,” Jonathan said. “I’m innocent…”

  “Innocent?” Timothy said. “You laughed as he died.” Timothy’s words cut through his denial, brought the full memory back to him in sharp detail. The laughter he had heard, as Willy swayed in an arc, had been his own. “We were all guilty to a degree. Stanley, Max, Gordon, and you, too. Though it’s true I’m the guiltiest by far.” Timothy looked at him through calm, accepting eyes. “I’ll be remembered forever as a murderer. A madman. You. You’re lucky. You’ll escape any stain on your memory.” He reached up and took the knife from Mrs. Dempsey’s hand. “There’s a noose. The one outside in the tree. It looks like a decoration, but it’s real, and it’s waiting for me. I’m gonna write my confession about what happened here tonight, about what happened all those years ago with Will. And then I’m going to put that noose around my neck. I won’t die from a swift break like Will did. I’ll go slowly, kicking and struggling, the rope rubbing my skin raw as it chokes the life out of me. But they’re going to make me kill you first. Just like they made me kill Max and Gordon. Just like they made me kill Stanley, then lure you all here. Just like they made me kill the women who owned this place.”

  “Made you? How can they make you do anything?”

  The woman who’d masqueraded as Mrs. Dempsey laughed and raised one hand. The riser that had been leaning against the wall flew toward Jonathan’s face, the pointed end of a nail stopping a hairsbreadth from his eye before the board fell and clattered to the floor.

  Jonathan spun and lunged through the doorway into the kitchen. He bounded toward the kitchen’s back door in three steps, a distant part of his mind telling him that maybe he did have something to live for. That he hadn’t felt so vital in years. But another voice, riding on the first one’s coattails, wailed in mourning that his life would soon be ended.

  Timothy gained on him, then flung himself forward, reaching out to grab his ankle and trip him, but Jonathan avoided his grasp and brought the heel of his dress shoe down on the other man’s fingers. A loud crack was followed by an enraged howl. “You’re making this easier for me now,” Timothy growled. “I’m going to make it hurt.”

  Jonathan grasped the doorknob and tore open the door. He was moving with such force that he rebounded off the leather-jacketed woman’s sturdy frame. His whirling mind pointed out she wouldn’t be able to wear that jacket over a cast. He tumbled back into the room, only just managing to keep his balance. The woman stepped over the threshold and into the kitchen. “Where you off to, Kid Killer?” There was something about her, her large gray eyes, the sound of her voice. It’s impossible, he thought, realizing that he was staring into Mrs. McIntosh’s face, unchanged by the decades. But no, it was her. He felt certain of it. Guilt had burned her features into his memory.

  She grabbed Jonathan’s upper arms in a steely, bruising grip and spun him around. Timothy stood before him, his left hand held close to his chest, its fingers bloodied and broken. The knife was clutched in his right hand. He took a step closer, then another, bringing the blade within striking distance.

  Mrs. Dempsey—no, the woman who had called herself Mrs. Dempsey—glided up to Timothy’s side and laid a hand on his forearm to stay him. “I remember you, boy,” she said, addressing Jonathan. “Unlike your friends, I can still see you behind that wrinkled mask you wear. And the only thing that can make this moment more perfect would be for you to remember me. Think back. Back to the Halloweens you stood out on this house’s front porch—that year you came with a pirate’s hat on your head, or the one before, when you came dressed as that ridiculous cartoon duck. Think back to the woman at the door. That loveless spinster librarian.”

  “Miss Tanner,” he said, his own voice sounding distant, alien.

  Her eyes widened in delight. “Yes, that’s right. Now you know. And the look on your face in this moment makes it worth all the terrible things I’ve done—” she glanced first over his shoulder at Mrs. McIntosh, “—all we’ve done to avenge Will. The son you and your friends took from us. The son my poor cousin here sold her immortal soul to bring back.”

  From behind him, Jonathan heard a shuffling movement. Dread washed over him, followed by a horrible certainty. The corner of his eye caught a shadow, and then a boy circled around to face him. The Tanner woman went to the boy, and took his face between both hands. She leaned in and placed a mother’s kiss on his brow. She released him with care, and his head droo
ped to the side. The boy reached up to right it, and dead eyes, so appallingly familiar, stared at Jonathan. What did they do to him?

  He flinched in Mrs. McIntosh’s grasp as she laughed, a wild, high-pitched screech that reminded him of the holiday door buzzer. “What can I say?” she snarled into his ear. “If you ever come across a man dressed all in black out in the forest, make sure you’ve ironed out the details before you sign his damned book.”

  “When our plans to resurrect Will fell short,” Ms. Tanner added, “I made a deal of my own, to see to it that you little bastards would pay for your complicity, and this one—” she shook a quivering finger at Timothy, “—would finally be known for the murderer he is.” She was shaking with anger now, her limbs trembling, her words spewed out in a hate-filled staccato. “No. This moment won’t go wasted,” she said, taking a moment to gather herself. “I’m going to allow myself to enjoy this.”

  Ms. Tanner traced a finger along Timothy’s arm, along his hand, down the blade. She touched its sharp tip, then raised her hand so Jonathan could see the drop of blood forming on her finger. “You’re a lucky boy, you are,” she said. “This day would’ve come much sooner if we’d had our way, but it pleased Him to wait until He considered the lot of you ripe for sacrifice.” She stood before him, taking him in from head to toe. “A bit overripe by my estimation. But now your time’s drawn to a close.” She turned to Timothy. “Tick tock.”

  Mrs. McIntosh tightened her grip as Timothy stepped forward and pushed the blade, serrated edge up, into Jonathan’s navel. At first it felt like being punched, then Timothy jerked the blade up toward his sternum. The pain seared through him. His arms still held securely at his sides, Jonathan could only watch as his blood and viscera spilled out before him. His knees began to buckle, and his childhood friend gave him a rough shove to the side. He landed, falling on his back. The room around him pulsed alternatively between a bright light and total darkness. His brain told him that his body couldn’t move. Wouldn’t move. Still it did, pushing backwards with his elbows and feet, trying to aim itself toward the doorway, trying to escape but slipping on his own fluids.

  Another flash of light, and he saw Miss Tanner’s solemn face bent over him. Her features shimmered, then reassembled themselves into that of the trick-or-treater who’d looked up over her plastic pumpkin at him. “See? I told you that you weren’t so scary.” A glacial chill fell over him. The girl’s face gave way to blackness, an utter absence of light.

  Jonathan’s first thought upon being immersed in darkness was that he must be dead. But no, the sensation of icy agony continued. He could still feel the slippery tile floor beneath his hands. He jumped to the conclusion that as his body gave out, as the synapses of his brain died, his sight had failed him before his other senses. But then he sensed movement in the darkness; the lightless world around him condensed, reorganized itself into a man’s lusterless face. The kitchen, once again visible, dissolved around them, leaving just this man woven from shadow and Jonathan, still supine on what now felt to be a bed of moss, alone in a murky wood. The sound of running water caused Jonathan to turn his head. A wide stream, a near river, of liquid onyx flowed beside him.

  Jonathan felt the weight of the watcher’s stare on him, and he turned back to find the creature had drawn near. “Yes,” he answered its silent question without even moving his lips. “I was the one who laughed.”

  The shadow came another step closer. He tried to close his eyes, to ready himself for his end, but he could not. The being knelt beside him, and out of nothingness, produced a large book, bound in what appeared to be leather and filled with ancient vellum sheets. The man fanned the sheets of the book, each page covered with line after line of signatures, some in Roman script, some in foreign characters, though most of them were nothing more than simple Xs scrawled by uncertain, illiterate hands. The man stopped at a fresh, uninscribed sheet, marred only by the seal of an anchor clutched in an eagle’s claws. Although there was only silence between them, Jonathan began the most intense, painstaking contract negotiation of his life. It might have taken a millisecond. It might have taken a millennium. But he came to an understanding with the living shadow, and when he did, he dipped his finger into his own blood and traced his name on the page.

  THE TRESPASSER

  Joshua Rex

  How had they gotten so lost?

  Todd certainly didn’t know. This was Jed’s neighborhood, after all. He was supposed to know where he was going. Todd had, as usual, just been following the big kids, trailing behind his cousin and older brother from house to house, dressed in his Sergeant Surge costume and glorying in the fistfuls of candy filling his bag a little fuller with each block.

  Spencer and Jed were collecting candy as well, though with much less enthusiasm. They were going about this whole Halloween thing rather lackadaisically, Todd thought. Both were costumeless except for monster masks they wore up on their heads, the grisly faces pointed skyward (Jed a grinning werewolf with a mane of bright orange hair, and Spencer a white-faced goblin with black-rimmed eyes, red teeth, and pointy ears) carrying their sacks of Halloween loot synched in their fists like bank robbers.

  Todd understood what was happening. Spencer and Jed, both recently thirteen, were doing the unthinkable; they were outgrowing trick-or-treating. Todd had observed this brand of indifference before in adults, whose Christmases didn’t seem to revolve around the getting of presents any longer. The two older boys were much more interested in locating a spot in which they could set off the fireworks Jed had acquired on the blacktopped black market of his junior high parking lot, than they were in gathering free sweets. Earlier that day, Jed had spread the explosive contraband out on his bedroom floor, the red and yellow rockets and firecrackers brilliant against the drab, threadbare carpet. His eyes had lit up as he gazed upon them, already imagining their crackling blasts and stellar flares.

  “There’s an abandoned school down the street. It burned when our parents were kids. We can shoot them off after we’re done taking him around,” Jed said with a tick of the head in Todd’s direction, making Todd feel in that moment like the world’s smallest third wheel.

  This had been the first thing their father and mother had warned them about on the ride up to the city from the affluent suburb in which they lived. Their parents were leaving them, reluctantly it had seemed, for the weekend while their mother attended a business conference downtown. Don’t wander off from the neighborhood. And don’t, for any reason, go into any abandoned places, their father had said. He’d grown up in the city—in the very same house, in fact, where Spencer and Todd would be staying. Aunt Jennet, their father’s sister, being the last to live at home (as her brother was already established and quite wealthy) had inherited the homestead by default after the boys’ grandmother had died. Their aunt had had Jed when she was sixteen, and their cousin had grown up there, though during decidedly less prosperous times than when their father was a boy.

  Their father had used the adjectives “rough” and “overrun” to describe the declining place he hailed from. The latter designation had perplexed Todd. Overrun by what? He’d pictured hordes of Grim Ghouls, the enemies of Sergeant Surge and his Interstellar League, roaming through the streets in search of Star Elixir—that highly coveted astral booty. But then the thought of anyone raiding and pillaging these houses for anything that could be deemed “highly coveted” seemed ridiculous. Most of them appeared to have been raided and pillaged long ago, and if they were anything like his aunt’s house, with its outdated appliances and stuffy, stinky furniture, the thieves would hardly be lining up with their ski masks and pry bars.

  “They’re disadvantaged,” their mother had said about the people who lived in their father’s former neighborhood, a statement that made their father scoff in the leather driver’s seat of the family luxury sedan.

  Regardless of the semantics, it was obvious to both brothers as they drove past the rows of run down bungalows with their unkempt yards hedge
d in by mangled, rusting chain-link fences that something had gone awry here. Compared to their townhouse in White Lane Commons, with its freshly paved and track-lit sidewalks, neatly groomed lawns dotted with beds of seasonal flora, and gates that rose and closed automatically behind your car when you came home, this place seemed almost third-world. But these differences also held some allure for Spencer and Todd; the decay and lack of order was appealing. There were no security cameras bolted to the buildings, no security guards keeping watch, no neighbors shaking their fists at you if you cut through their identical square of green grass. But, most enticing of all, there would be little or no adult supervision for the entire weekend. Aunt Jennet worked twelve hour shifts at a factory, and during the few hours she was home, she smoked and sipped wine coolers and insisted that the boys play outside, even after dusk. They would get to go on adventures and explorations led by their tough, streetwise cousin Jed.

  Which is how they’d ended up lost.

  “The school’s down here. Not far,” Jed had said at the threshold of a road whose street sign hung bent and crooked from a leaning telephone pole that resembled the rotted mast of a sunken flagship. Spencer threw a long, apprehensive gaze down the dodgy looking road while Todd regarded Spencer, waiting, as he always did in such instances, for his older brother’s decision.

  “I don’t know…”