Halloween Chillers: A Box Set of Three Books of Horror & Suspense

by Douglas Clegg

  “Maybe,” Stony said, when they’d started walking out across the flagstone path in front of her shack. “I just wish Lourdes would show up.”

  “Maybe she’s having second thoughts, too. Or maybe she’s just sleeping. She didn’t steal money. She has less to feel guilty about.” Nora grinned, reaching out to find Stony’s shoulder. When she did, she drew him close to her. She smelled like lavender and vanilla. “She’ll come. Don’t worry.”

  “Yeah I guess,” he said. He was uncomfortable with her touch. He pulled away.

  “Watch out that you don’t step in that mud,” she said.

  He glanced over at her. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re really blind.”

  “Sometimes I do, too,” she said, her grin growing broader. “Let me tell you, you live seventy years at the edge of these woods, you know where the mud seeps and where the pricker bushes are, real fast. Listen, Stony, seeing as how it’s Sunday and the last day of October, why don’t you lead me over to the stone garden? I need to pay my respects.”

  “You got a stone garden? I never saw it,” he said, eyeing her suspiciously. “What you got up your sleeve?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, almost gravely. “Just something I think you should see before you run off with your girl. Follow me.”

  * * *

  2

  * * *

  She led him around grasping vines and fallen and rotting trees, between laurel, and around undergrowth. “Mind your feet,” Nora said as she took him down a narrow strip of muddy land between a pond and some bushes.

  Then, he saw it.

  A rusty gate, barely noticeable for the tangle of dried vines that clutched at it, stood in the middle of a clearing. Ferns grew up around it, and within:

  A circle of stones.

  * * *

  3

  * * *

  Some of the stones were large, some small, but all were neatly arranged. When they went through the gate, Nora stepped carefully over stones the precise location of which she must have memorized. She knelt down in the middle of the circle, and patted a small place beside her for Stony to do likewise.

  “What is this?” he asked, squatting down upon the damp moss-covered ground.

  “My family,” she said. She felt along various rocks, and then lifted a small stone. “This was my sister, Angelina. She chose the stone herself when she died. It’s not like we could afford expensive grave markers, Stony. And Mama never wanted any of us to be buried in the village. She said all my grand-daddies and grand-mamas were put in the sacred place, not in those devil places.”

  The stones around him all had initials carved into them.

  Then, as Stony glanced about the soft earth, he noticed the slight mounds. The stones formed a small circle, but radiating out from them, the mounds. “It’s a graveyard.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Crawford,” Nora said. “My grandmama told me that all of us Chances and Owldeers—that was my grandmama’s side—were buried here clear back before the village even existed. Back when I could see, I used to tend these graves and mow down all the new growth from the woods, but as you can probably tell, the woods have reclaimed much of it.”

  Stony nodded, noticing how even further away, where the pricker bushes grew, the ground was raised or dropped like a brief trench. “Amazing.”

  “I come out here when I’m troubled, to pay my respects, to put things in perspective, sometimes,” Nora said. Then, she picked up a small stone, and held it out for him. “Take it.”

  Stony hesitated.

  “Feel it first. Feel this stone. They say stones can speak if we listen.”

  No initials were carved along its edge. It was nearly smooth.

  “Let me spin a story for you, Stony. One last story. One I’ve been saving for a long, long time, but now that you’re going to be a man, I think you can hear this one. I think you’re ready. Many years ago,” and Nora began her final tale. “You listening, Stony?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  * * *

  4

  * * *

  Stony, now, you got to listen to this one. And not just listen but really hear it, you understand? This is the last spin you’re ever gonna hear from my lips because this is the last one I know. I told you all the others. But I’ve been holding back on this one.

  A woman who drank too much gave birth to a baby. The baby didn’t have much of a chance. The baby was too small, came too soon, the baby was twisted around and backward inside this woman. It wasn’t the baby’s fault. It wasn’t even the woman’s fault, even though her drinking didn’t help. Didn’t help that she got kicked in the stomach that morning, either. But it was just life doing its worst to the most innocent of us I guess. This baby, he tried to get born but he couldn’t. He might’ve had two minutes of breathing clean air and seeing daylight, but then the Lord took him back. Maybe it was the Lord’s plan. Maybe it wasn’t. But this baby did not breathe too long or suffer more nor less than any of us will suffer in this life.

  * * *

  5

  * * *

  “Was it yours?”

  “No. Nor was it one of my friends’ or relatives’ child, but I come from a long line of guardians of the innocent lost.” She pointed to another grave.

  Stony glanced at it. The initials carved in it:

  I-M-P

  Nora leaned back on her haunches. “Remember that story about the misshapen Crowninshield boy?”

  “The Halloween Man,” Stony nodded. “Sure. He slaughtered a bunch of people and crucified his father.”

  “That’s the story that’s told. But there’s a deeper truth to it. The deeper truth is, Imp knew that something was in the blood of this town. Something that turned bad like the way milk turns sour, the way flies hover around a corpse. He was almost killed by the people of this town, and something maybe from the Devil got into him and he went on a rampage. But we knew, we who were of the slave families and natives, we knew...it was the earth here and it was the darkness within some of the people who had founded Stonehaven in the first place. Both within and without. That family called Crowninshield and the Randalls, they weren’t just nice Puritans coming here. You know their history? They got expelled from the Massachusetts Colony.”

  “Witches or something?”

  Nora smiled gently. “We would’ve been lucky if they’d been witches. No, these folks were too good as Puritans. They were too close to the source of divine evil.”

  “I never heard of divine evil.” Stony would’ve laughed at the term, only Nora looked too serious.

  “It’s worse than any other kind. You know how a fire can warm your bones in a hearth? But that same fire, if it jumps can burn your house down? That’s what divine evil is. It’s the power from the source of all, taken out of itself. That’s what those people did. That’s what Imp came from. That’s what he tried to destroy. But it got him, too, finally. But not before he fathered a child. Deformed and twisted just like him, that child fathered a child and so on. Imp had a bloodline.”

  Stony looked at her curiously. “Maybe we should get back.” He glanced beyond her, toward the trees, and her shack. “Why did you bring me here?”

  Nora put her hands on Stony’s shoulders. “Your mama and daddy are not who you think they are.”

  Stony, holding the small stone from the grave, felt something squeeze inside his head—a pressure he hadn’t felt before. Swiftly, it became a throbbing headache. Then, he felt warm, too warm—warm like he had a fever.

  Nora leaned closer, her breath against his face. Her glassy white eyes almost seeming to watch him. “The stone in your hand, that is who you were meant to be.”

  “What? I don’t get it.”

  “A baby was born fifteen years ago and breathed for only a few minutes. Then he died. His mother was in a station wagon down on Water Street. The rain began to fall. I could not see, but I saw within my mind. I am the last of my family here. I am the last who knows the true history of this place. I was afraid I might die bef
ore telling you. But you and this girl are going to start a family, and you need to know.”

  Stony looked at the rock. It was as if something in his brain were squeezing, like a sponge, and it hurt so badly he couldn’t make sense out of what she was saying to him. He looked from her to the stone, back again. He was not even sure if he could breathe. “What—I don’t—what is...If this is my mother’s baby, who am I?”

  Nora wrapped her arms around him. He tugged away.

  “You’re angry,” she said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She drew him back to her, her arms around him, pulling him so close, her heat, her love, it was smothering, it was something he’d never felt...his mother had never even held him like that...not like that...not where he felt both safe and afraid...

  He felt her breath near his ear as she whispered the damning words.

  “You’re from the bloodline of the Halloween Man.”

  * * *

  6

  * * *

  Stony pushed her away, and Nora fell back slightly. He stood up, brushing dirt from his knees. “Shut up, just shut up. You and your stupid stories. Your stupid stories all these years I been listening to and buying into and making believe because I thought you made up—”

  “You’re a man now,” Nora said. Her voice was deep and firm. Nothing about her face betrayed any emotion. “You should know. They should’ve told you, but I know they never would. Not until it is too late. And now—”

  “Stupid bitch,” Stony snapped. Then, he said, “I’m sorry.” Then, he was almost afraid to ask the next question. He stood over her, not knowing where to turn. Who else could he trust but Nora? Who else would ever tell him?

  And then all the fights came back, the nasty knock-down-drag-outs of his childhood, of his father screaming:

  THAT BASTARD! EVER SINCE HE WAS BORN THINGS JUST GOT RUINED FOR US!

  And his mother, holding him over the flame of the gas stove, his face so close to it. The Moonfire burning, weakening him.

  It was almost a surge of relief that went through him now.

  “So who is my father? My real father?”

  “Your birth father is Johnny Miracle,” Nora said. “And he, in turn, is the descendant of Imp.”

  Stony caught his breath. He felt blood pounding through his body like hammers. His heartbeat zoomed. He felt feverish, his hands trembling. “I came from him?”

  “Don’t judge that man,” Nora spat, and for the first time Stony felt venom in her tone. “Do not dare to judge that man! He is from a sacred bloodline. You too are from that bloodline and you should look at what it means. You people in town with your cold ways and your attitudes judging those you best not pass judgment upon! Your birth father is a man of divinity and if you knew yourself better you would understand...” Then she knelt down again. Her tone softened. “It’s too much for you to understand. Sometimes I don’t even believe or understand it.”

  “Who’s my mother then?”

  Nora was silent. “Something I know nothing about.”

  “Is it someone in town?”

  Nora closed her eyes. She brought her hands to cover her mouth as if wanting to keep something in, to keep it from escaping over the dam of her lips. A hissing sound came from the depths of her throat. Tears pressed from her eyes like wine from grapes. She brought her hands down to her lap, holding them together in a fist of prayer. “I wanted to never have to tell you any of this. I wanted you to grow up and I wanted to hope that all these years it could be forgotten. Buried like the baby from your mother’s body buried beneath that stone. But I can feel them, I can feel them.”

  “Feel who?”

  “Them. Those people.”

  “Who?”

  “The ones who own Stonehaven,” she said. “The ones who did this.”

  “Someone owns Stonehaven?”

  “They’ve always owned it. They own every piece of property in the village. They have owned it since the village began.”

  Stony brought his hand up to Nora’s face. He cupped it beneath her chin. “I always wished that you were my mother. I sort of wished that my mother was like you.”

  “And I wish I had had a son like you, Stony, as badly as I wished for my sight to return, I’ve wished for that,” she whispered. “But I’m not your mother.”

  “I know. But in a lot of ways you are.”

  When she calmed, she said, “I told you all those spins about the children with flies in them, and about the ice house of damnation and about the Halloween Man, because you needed to know. Your mind needed to work those stories out.”

  “What were you trying to tell me?”

  “It’s not that everyone in town knows. Some are strangers, and have only come here in the past thirty years. Some commute in the summers from New York. Some just don’t know. But others do.”

  “What’s so secret?” He felt the chill of morning seep into him, and the sun’s light felt cold on his back as it cut a swath through the trees.

  “You’ve always heard about how you were born, Stony. And it’s almost the truth, what you heard. You always heard stories about how things happened before you were born and it’s almost the truth...but I have lied to you. So have others. Oh, I have lied like the worst sinner on the face of the earth.”

  Something went placid like the calm surface of a pond, only inside him. “I don’t care. I forgive you. I really do. What is it? Tell me. Tell me the truth.”

  She opened her eyes to him, and began.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  NORA’S PAST

  * * *

  1

  * * *

  This was back when I could see just like you can. I had pretty brown eyes flecked with cinnamon. They were my best feature my mama told me. They say the eyes are the windows of the soul. My windows were always sparkling, I can tell you.

  You know we got two lives, sometimes more. I don’t mean like reincarnation, I mean like we have our life of innocence and then it rams right into the real life. The life where innocence is just a mirror—looks nice, reflects a lot, but it ain’t the real thing.

  I was not a God-fearing girl when I was growing up. I ran wild. I never finished grammar school, and never worked. My mama was always chasing me with a broom, and telling me I was going to hell. When I was seventeen, mama threw me out of the house. I lived in the streets most nights, searching trashcans for food, or going to the backdoors of restaurants for scraps like a dog. This was over fifty years ago, and I can tell you that in a little village like Stonehaven, girls like me were not well treated. I drank too much, too, which always got me in trouble, and then one day this nice man told me that he needed someone to help with his sick wife. I refused at first, but he told me I’d have a warm bed to sleep in, a roof over my head, and three meals a day. Plus all the liquor I could hold when I wasn’t working. Something about his offer got to me, and he seemed not only kind but also enormously wealthy, at least to me. “I ain’t no nurse,” I told him. He told me that was all right, his wife didn’t need a nurse, mainly a companion to sit with her, perhaps play cards. This sounded like the easiest job in the world to me then.

  I went to this man’s house. Did I just say house? Stony, it was a castle. It was the biggest place I had ever seen the inside of. Marble and big fireplaces and views of the water and martinis as big as lobster traps. No fish-stinking men pawed me, no cheap whiskey, no sleeping under a gutter while the rain got under my bones. My room was small to this man who took me in, but looked like a room at the Ritz to me. I had my own big bed, and a private bathroom with a full tub. I thought I’d made it. My mama thought I was his whore, but she didn’t understand. The man never touched me. I spent mornings and afternoons sitting beside his wife. She seemed to be in a coma to me, but sometimes she’d flutter her eyes open and look at me almost serenely. I’d sit there and sometimes talk about nothing but the weather and what was in the magazines. Or I’d turn up the radio and we’d listen to the good shows, and I’d laugh wh
en Jack Benny came on, and she’d flutter her eyes open. Easiest living I ever had. I was drunk half the time. Sure, sometimes I had to spoon-feed the old lady tapioca or wipe spit from her lips. But someone else did the bedpans, and another nurse was there for her at night. I never asked what was wrong with her, since I figured you don’t kill the golden goose, right? It was their business anyway. I was just happy to have a spring of comfort and good living.

  Then, one morning, I had some beer, it was a hot summer day. Beginning of June. A cold beer with a little lemonade in it. I came up to her room, and drew back the heavy curtains.

  “Rise and shine my mama always said,” I told her.

  When I turned around, the bed was empty.

  It had been neatly made.

  I stood there looking at the bedspread as if I didn’t understand what this meant.

  I went downstairs, looking for one of the other servants, but couldn’t find anyone. I had never looked around the house all that much. Never had much interest in it. But I got a little attached to the old lady, lying there practically dead but still there, still a resident if you know what I mean. She was really the only person I ever spent time with in that house. The servants didn’t talk much to me—they were too good for me I guess. So I figured oh Lord she died, or they took her down to the hospital or something. I wandered room to room, trying to find the man. But everyone was gone. I went into the kitchen, made me a cup of tea and sat for a bit. It was just too silent. Too damn silent.

  I was feeling a little bad, too. I mean I had this gravy train in that house. I could have whatever I wanted there. And now, if the old lady died, I’d be out on the street again. I didn’t want that.