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

by Douglas Clegg

  The howling of wolves filled his ears, then the sound of locusts as millions teemed overhead, and the burning light rose up from where the creature had stood and hovered.

  A whisper in his ear,

  But she was right, Stony. I needed you to let me out, to set me free—

  Your sister couldn’t do it. She was made wrong. She wasn’t formed as well as you. She was not of the flesh in as many ways as you are—

  But you, my child,

  You are the embodiment of my radiance, and now you’re making a child to be the New Adam for the world of Earth, so that we may walk again as gods in the light of day, in the dark of night—

  Let me show you the wonders of the gods—

  And then the light split apart and swooped down upon the people in the pews and the cries were so loud that Stony’s ears began bleeding before he even had turned around to behold the terrors.

  Warm rain fell from the ceiling of the chapel, and as it fell, Stony looked up and saw the light holding them, holding the villagers, Tamara was screaming trying to grasp the stone walls, and Martha smashed her fists against her breasts in agony, and Father Jim his hands clasped in prayer as he floated just beneath the ceiling—the invisible pincers tore at them—all who had come to worship their demon god, flying above, their skin begin ripped open with lasers, their blood pouring down upon the chapel floor.

  It rains blood, son, and power is in the blood—

  They trap their power within flesh, but shall release them from that cage—his mother watched from beneath her encompassing light, whispering fondly to him as if he would enjoy the carnage.

  Another whisper, but not from his mother, but as if Nora were there, inside him, a whisper of strength—

  “The power is in the blood, Stony, the strength is in the blood, remember...”

  And then her voice died within him, and he no longer cared if he lived or died. In a flash of lighting, the chapel returned to candlelit silence. The villagers were gone. Alan Fairclough, reciting some words silently, stood alone at the altar.

  The creature, all burning with radiance crouched upon the altar like a harpy, her leathery wingspan wide. She began cleaning her face like a cat.

  All along the ceiling, their bodies strung across what looked like razor wire, their torsos ripped open, their eyes torn out.

  “Why do you bring me to witness this?” he asked.

  But the creature at the altar dissolved again into shimmering light.

  Chapter Thirty

  THE STONE CAGE

  * * *

  1

  * * *

  After several minutes, Stony turned and left the chapel. He walked back through the long corridor, to the open front door. He looked out across the driveway to the woods, and above it the night sky. The rain poured, and seemed the only thing that would wash away the blood and the terror. He stepped out into the storm.

  Closed his eyes.

  Wished it all away.

  Opened his eyes, and it was still there.

  He dropped to his knees. Clasped his hands together in prayer.

  Please God help me stop this. Help it end. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be here.

  * * *

  2

  * * *

  THE MOONFIRE IS HIS ONE WEAKNESS

  BUT WHEN HE IS BURNED WITH IT

  HE USES ITS ENERGY AND DESTROYS THE OUTCAST—

  The words came to him, remembering The Storm King of his favorite comic books. MOONFIRE.

  The divine fire. Within me.

  It was in his mind— a new myth for the Storm King—a way of fighting that had not been imagined before by him—a way of drawing strength from the very thing that burned away who Stony Crawford was—

  I AM THE HALLOWEEN MAN!

  And in that second, he knew why Nora had told him the story of the slaughter on Halloween night so many years ago—

  She was telling him that he could fight this.

  She had warned him that he was enough, that the Halloween Man was not the evil one, but the force of the god in the flesh, the real power.

  He had already let it out. But he was the power. He was the one with the power. That thing at the altar was weak. It was trapped, it was held. Only he could let its power go free...

  Inside me. Moonfire.

  Stony closed his eyes, and brought the hunting knife up to his chest.

  It won’t hurt if you’re fast.

  If you believe, you can do this. You can do anything.

  He remembered the strange smile on Diana’s lips when the knife went into her. She wanted to be released. She wanted out.

  Do not fear death, the creature that was his mother had warned.

  The blade went in deep, and the pain was ice-cold, and spread like broken glass through his veins, through his flesh.

  * * *

  3

  * * *

  He opens his eyes and watches the fire—

  The Moonfire bursts and crackles along the edge of his skin—his skin blackens—burning—the PAIN OH PLEASE GOD DON’T MAKE IT HURT SO MUCH—He doesn’t resist—he lets the power come out completely, destroying the flesh that was Stony Crawford—like molten lava—

  Destroy my weakness!

  Destroy this cage of flesh!

  * * *

  4

  * * *

  His consciousness lay within the stream of fire as it pissed down his pant legs, down to the ground. The burning sap formed a pool beneath the blackened body of a boy of fifteen.

  Then, it re-formed again, bursting up from the ground in a tower of flame.

  For a moment, he looked back at the body of who he had been.

  Seared flesh, a mouth that lolled open, empty sockets where the eyes had melted...

  NOW, BRING ME BACK, BRING ME A NEW SKIN

  A NEW SKIN TO COVER THE MOONFIRE.

  STRONGER FLESH THAN HUMAN FLESH, ARMOR AGAINST MY MOTHER.

  He felt the change within his form, as if his consciousness alone could determine what shape his physical body could be. It hurt, it felt like small slivers of glass being shoved into nerve endings, and if he’d then had a mouth, he would be screaming—

  But as terrible as the pain was, it brought a numbing with it that was like ice.

  And then, he’d formed the flesh around himself again.

  He was Stony.

  He felt his own true power, the power of one who had died and been reborn, as much a god as any man had ever been.

  * * *

  5

  * * *

  I’m sorry Lourdes. I’m sorry my baby boy. I’m sorry Nora. I wish I had never been born.

  As much as something within him told him to escape, he turned around and walked back to the chapel.

  * * *

  6

  * * *

  Inside, all was silent. The candles were extinguished.

  Alan Fairclough stood alone by the savaged corpse that lay upon the altar. Hanging from the low rafters, the torn open bodies of people from the village that Stony had known since as far back as he could remember.

  “You must accept that these people were meant to die,” he said.

  “Just shut up you freak,” Stony said, walking up to the altar. “It’s like exhaust, isn’t it? I gave Nora her eyes, but something worse comes out afterwards. I make something good happen, but something terrible comes from it.”

  Alan Fairclough said nothing.

  The fire creature glimmered from within the metal coffin behind the altar.

  “You have to ask yourself,” Stony said, “why would it let itself be kept in a coffin made of what—lead?—from the very cave it had been trapped within for hundreds of years? Why would it wreak this small amount of havoc, harvest these sacrifices, play into your fucked-up sense of religion if it had all this power?”

  “We cannot question the gods,” Fairclough said.

  “I can. I’m the son of this thing. I can question anything I want,” Stony laughed. “How could a creatu
re with unlimited power be tamed by human beings, and kept in dark stone and in—this chapel, what is it made of? I’d guess the same rock as the rock from those caves, am I right?”

  Fairclough nodded.

  “You think this is really an angel from heaven, don’t you?” Stony asked.

  Alan Fairclough nodded. “As much of an angel as there can be. As much as a god as has ever existed.”

  “You’d think an angel would want to return to God,” Stony shook his head, smiling. “But not this one. This one likes to be kept in the dark, kept away from heaven, away from most anything but the few sad people who worship it.”

  “There were others, I have the fossilized remains of its—” Fairclough began, but when Stony shot him a mean look, he kept quiet.

  “I don’t want to hear any more of your crap. You don’t mind that all these people died, and died horribly, do you?”

  Fairclough shrugged. “Human beings die.”

  “I could kill you.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t care?”

  “I don’t love life over all things, no.”

  Stony went around and looked at the metal coffin. “Sort of like a vampire, huh. Comes out to drink blood and goes back in to snooze.” The fire flickered from within the small windows. “I think I know something about this thing now. I think I know a little bit about my mother. I think I know what she’s afraid of. I was afraid of it, too, but I don’t have to be. I’m solid. I’m flesh. I even killed myself out there, but I re-formed. I can’t be killed. But unlike her, I can’t float away, either. I’m going to forever be flesh and this creature all in one. But not her. She’s just that fire. She’s form without flesh. She’s got to be afraid—”

  “She’s afraid of nothing,” Fairclough said with malicious pride.

  Stony shook his head. “Oh, no, I think Mama’s afraid of the one thing that won’t keep her inside a stone cave or chapel. One thing.”

  “She’s all-powerful. She’s the divine fire,” Fairclough muttered, but Stony sensed his nervousness.

  Stony grinned in his direction. “Is she?”

  “What—what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that she needs to be set free,” Stony said, and he lifted the lid up. She was there, like a young girl—

  Like Lourdes, a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl, lying naked in a bath of fire.

  My love, she whispered.

  “Look at you,” Stony said. “You eat, you run wild in here, and now you’re exhausted. You need to rest after all this, don’t you?” His voice was almost sweet. He lifted her up in his arms, carrying her. The fire tingled across his shoulders and arms, but the pain was nothing now, all pain was gone.

  “What are you doing?” Fairclough asked.

  “I’m setting her free.”

  “No, you can’t, you’ve seen what she can do—” Alan began.

  Stony turned. His eyes bore through Fairclough. “You want to see what I can do? You want to see what I’m capable of? You know, I don’t even know what I’m capable of yet, but I’m willing to find out. Are you?”

  Alan Fairclough held his hands up in a peacemaking gesture. “Please, you can’t let it out now, Stony. You can’t. It can do terrible things. It has been trapped for centuries...”

  “Get the fuck out of my way!” Stony shouted. “I’m letting it out. I’m letting my mother go back to where she came from!”

  Fairclough reached over and grabbed Stony’s shoulder—smoke rose from where he touched the boy.

  A vision flashed out like lightning

  Fairclough saw it—

  He was crucified against a tree, his hair on fire—

  “I’m a god now, remember?” Stony said. “I’m your worst nightmare, I shed my skin, I let it go, and now I’m back from the dead. To be King, you have to die and be reborn, right? Well, say hey to King Stony.”

  He carried the creature out into the night.

  * * *

  7

  * * *

  Don’t, it whispered inside him. Please, I don’t want to—

  “You don’t want to return to your own source, Mother? After thousands of years imprisoned by these sheep?”

  “Please,” she gasped, and he felt her weakness, the body that had been fed and then its energy spent as it had bled its own followers.

  “I wonder why, mother? Why would you want to be here among men, trapped in rock?”

  He took her to the doorway, and laid her down on the grass just beyond the front steps and the columns. The rain poured across them, the lightning flashed over the trees.

  She looked up at him, and he could tell she was trying to burn more brightly, to shift into some creature, some power—

  “All Hallow’s Eve,” he whispered to her as he stroked his fingers through the sparks of her hair. “The old rituals, the harvest, when the gods would be killed, sent back to the other worlds. Sent back to where they belong. Demons, too, souls traveling to between the worlds, it’s the right time for that, isn’t it? That’s why Halloween is important to you. That’s why you need the sacrifices. Why you’ve been trying to mate with humans all these centuries, because you want to be here, you know what will happen to you in the other place. Call it heaven or hell or the idiot frequency of the divine damnation highway. I don’t give a damn. You have power here, but there, you’re probably nothing. You gave me my humanity, so I wouldn’t have to go there, so that I could have power here. Mother, it’s time for you to take off your mask, too. It’s time for you to move on.”

  “Please,” she whispered, and he almost responded to her pain—

  Too late.

  You’re free, he thought.

  Its pain, for the humanoid form no longer remained as the rain poured down, the cleansing rain, and then her light burst across the grass like a brushfire, up the trees, across the woods.

  Stony held his hands up to the sky.

  I am the Storm King. Bring on the storm of storms tonight. Take the fire back to heaven!

  He shut his eyes, grinding his teeth together, willing himself, willing what was of his mother within him to transform.

  He burst into thousands of bits of red and yellow and spread out across the land, following her trail as she tried to find a rock, a cave, a basement, something to hide within—

  Each time she did, her fire spreading after her, he brought her out again, into the storm that grew as he felt the power grow in him.

  Until, finally, at the Common, with the rain pouring hard, her light turned silver, he felt her inside him,

  Why do you do this to your mother? She asked. I carried you and felt the pain of human birth just so that you would live.

  Because, he told her, you do not belong here. Not with us.

  But you are of me.

  I’m more of them, he said. Return to where you belong.

  Her body turned to an enormous lightning bolt that grew from the burning grass and shot slowly towards the blackened sky, drawing streams of white electricity from all corners of the village and surrounding woods. For a moment, it was as if the most brilliant daylight erupted from the corners of the earth, and the village of Stonehaven seemed at the center of the light.

  Stony covered his eyes.

  * * *

  8

  * * *

  People in the village, in houses left untouched by wild Diana’s fire, those of the nonbelievers, those who had never been inside the Crown’s summer house, nor had they mingled much with those who had, waking in their beds looking at the blazing light—

  They saw for a moment the most beautiful thing they’d ever experienced.

  And then the pressure of air was too much—oxygen was sucked inward through some unseen vortex...

  Stony saw them, the men and women and yes even children, turning in their beds, looking at the bright daylight outside their windows—the horror of it struck him down—

  Bodies prolapsed, or sucked forward into emptiness, houses crushed in the path
of the divine MOONFIRE

  MOONFIRE

  OH GOD HELP THEM! Stony wept.

  He felt a suction of pressure from above, as if he were at the center of a cyclone, and he knew that it would take him, that he too would ride the elements to heaven, or to the sky, to the space between worlds where he belonged.

  Then the pressure slammed him back against the ground, into the mud, and he watched in horror as trees uprooted from the earth around him, and the earth shook, rooftops of houses smashed down, windows shattered.

  And then, there was an unearthly silence.

  He looked back toward the Crown place, and the mansion remained, seemingly untouched.

  It’s protecting her.

  It’s protecting Lourdes and the child.

  God is protecting them.

  When he stood, finally, he saw that the entire world seemed to be on fire. A green- yellow lightning bolt, so large it looked like a highway among the roiling clouds, shot across the sky into an infinite night.

  Then, the fires snuffed suddenly, and all was rain and darkness.

  The storm raged on, and Stony Crawford lay back down in the mud until dawn.

  * * *

  9

  * * *

  “Stony?” the man said.

  He opened his eyes. The sun’s light had just come up. It was Alan Fairclough standing above him.

  “It’s all right. It’s over.”

  Stony tried to open his mouth to lash out at the man, but was too weak to even utter a single word.

  “Yes, I’m alive. I told you, I am the keeper of the rituals. I will teach you some of it, Stony. I will teach you many things. It took a lot out of you, what you did. It did your mother, too. It’s a terrible gift, Stony. You can’t throw it away. And you’re not like she is. You won’t get caught up in the ether. Your element is the element of earth and water as well as fire. You are, for better or worse, one of us in as many ways as you are one of them.”