All Hallows' Eve (2 page)

"Please state your home address," MARIAN said, "and define 'best' as 'most scenic,' 'shortest distance,' or 'quickest time.'"

"Three seventy-six Buggy Whip Lane," Justin said, "in Baldwin. And
of course
'best' means 'fastest.'"

"Calculating route," MARIAN told him.

A moment later the voice resumed: "Normally, the fastest route would be via the 790 expressway, but there is an accident in the eastbound lane 4.3 miles beyond the Jefferson Avenue access road."

"How do you know that?" Justin asked.

"From monitoring police-band frequencies. A gasoline tanker has overturned and is leaking, so traffic is being detoured off the expressway at Jefferson Avenue, then being routed through the town of Hadleyport and sent via Goose Hill Road to Route 37 in Craigmont. Unfortunately, the satellite feed shows there are construction delays on Route 37 due to a repaving crew working from 7:00
P.M.
to 4:00
A.M.
, but—"

"Never mind," Justin said. Even this late at night when the traffic wouldn't be too heavy, he didn't want to do that. It was a good thing MARIAN had turned on when she had. "What do you recommend?"

"Recalculating," MARIAN said.

Then she said, "You can avoid the expressway entirely by turning right at the next intersection, Pinnacle Road. Estimated time of arrival at 376 Buggy Whip Lane is 11:42
P.M.
, eastern time, twenty-five minutes, twenty-six seconds. Pinnacle Road intersection approaching in 2.66 miles, approximately two minutes, twenty-five seconds away—estimations made at your current speed of sixty-six miles per hour. The speed limit on this stretch of Church Street is posted at fifty-five miles per hour."

"Yes, Mother," Justin grumbled.

"A speeding ticket that indicates a speed of eleven miles per hour over the posted limit would range in cost—"

"You aren't going to turn me in, are you?" Justin whipped his foot off the accelerator. That would be worse than being caught by radar—having his own vehicle report him to the police.

But MARIAN said, "The MARIAN system can listen in on the bands used by emergency vehicles but will not contact them except when the driver directs me to, or when catastrophic system failure of the car has occurred, indicating an accident."

"Okay," Justin said, putting his foot back on the accelerator. He made the right-hand turn onto Pinnacle Road with a screech of tires. Perhaps slowing down a bit might not have been a totally bad idea.

"You are now traveling southbound on Pinnacle Road. Recalculating. Estimated time of arrival to 376 Buggy Whip Lane, twenty-two minutes, forty seconds. Next turn will be in 5.8 miles—a left-hand turn, east-bound, onto Lincoln Road/Route 81."

"This is great!" Justin said. He slowed down or speeded up simply to hear MARIAN say, "Recalculating."

"Would you like to utilize the points-of-interest function?" MARIAN offered.

"We're in the town of Waverly," Justin said. "There
are
no points of interest."

"You have crossed the border into the town of Stewart," MARIAN corrected him.

"Whatever. All I see is farms."

"Gus's Auto Transmission and Fresh Vegetable Mart is on the left-hand side of the road in another 167 yards."

Sure enough, they passed Gus's, though, being almost eleven thirty at night, the place was closed—much good it would have done him, even if he had been looking for it. The chalkboard sign in front of the place advertised:
HALLOWEEN SPECIAL
—
PUMPKINS
75%
OFF
.

Just to see what would happen, he intentionally drove past Lincoln Road, even though MARIAN reminded him of the turn at five hundred feet away. She then said, "Off route. Recalculating." Rather than telling him to stop the car and turn around, she figured out a new route from the point where he currently was.

A few more turns, and Justin had absolutely no idea where they were, but that was okay since MARIAN obviously knew
exactly.

And then, suddenly, out there in the middle of nowhere, the engine stopped and the car coasted to a standstill.

Justin checked the gas gauge, but it indicated he still had a little more than a quarter of a tank.

"What's up?" he asked.

MARIAN was just a GPS, but she was so interactive—so personable—he was not surprised when she turned out to be an engine diagnostician, too.

"Vapor lock," she said.

"'Vapor lock'?" Justin repeated. "While I was moving?"

"Coupled with bad antifreeze."

"'Bad antifreeze'?"

"Turn the key to off," MARIAN said. "Wait five minutes, then turn the key in the ignition
without
pumping the accelerator. Recalculating. Estimated time of arrival to 376 Buggy Whip Lane, fourteen minutes, three seconds."

Justin muttered that he'd never heard of such a thing, but he did as MARIAN instructed.

The fall night was perfectly quiet.

Justin tried humming, but he couldn't carry a tune, and he sounded bad even to himself. He had asked his parents for a new CD player for the car for Christmas, but he didn't think he'd be able to wait two months.

MARIAN announced: "Four more minutes till you can turn the engine back on."

"Hey," Justin said. "How come you're still working when the engine is turned off?"

"Backup generator."

"Can the backup generator keep the heat on?"

"No," MARIAN said.

Not that the heat worked much better than the air conditioner.

Justin leaned back in the seat and looked around.

This was when he noticed that his car was sitting directly on some railroad tracks.

"Ahmm, MARIAN," he said, "did you happen to notice where we've stalled?"

MARIAN said, "CFX line on the Syracuse to Buffalo route."

"But," Justin said hopefully, "not currently in use?"

MARIAN said, "Three more minutes till you can turn the engine back on."

Justin tried again. He asked, "Is this, like, one of those abandoned railroad lines?"

"No," MARIAN said.

And just as she said it, Justin heard, in the distance—but not-too-great distance—the wail of a train whistle.

There was also a bell.

A mechanical arm lowered and came to rest on the roof of Justin's car.

MARIAN told him, "The next train is scheduled to pass this spot in two minutes, twenty-seven seconds."

Justin hurriedly leaned forward to turn the key in the ignition.

MARIAN warned, "If you turn the key, you will delay the release of the vapor lock for another five minutes, and the train will pass here in two minutes, fourteen seconds."

"But," Justin said, "but—"

"Two more minutes till you can turn the engine back on. That will give you twelve seconds to start the car and drive it off the tracks."

"Twelve seconds?" Justin couldn't get his voice above a whisper. "That's cutting it awfully close." He looked to his left and thought he could see the light from the oncoming train. "Surely it doesn't need to be exactly five minutes for me to turn the car back on—"

"Five minutes total," MARIAN told him firmly. "From now: one minute, fifty-four seconds till you can turn the engine back on and be certain the vapor lock is gone."

And what if the vapor lock
wasn't
gone? What if the engine didn't start on its first try? Justin asked, "How sure are you about that train? If you're off by just a couple seconds—"

"Monitoring by satellite feed. At current speed, the train will arrive at this spot in one minute, fifty-one seconds. New York State regulations stipulate a train should reduce speed when approaching an intersection, so in theory you will have even more than twelve seconds."

The train's headlights shone in the distance. The whistle sounded again. Would the engineer be able to make out that there was an obstruction on the tracks? Justin's hand itched to turn the key. Could there really be that big a difference between waiting the full five minutes and waiting only four and a half minutes?

Twelve seconds. Twelve seconds to start the engine and to get the car off the tracks.

And if—for some reason—the car didn't start right away, he'd have time to try, maybe, once more. Twelve seconds to watch the train crashing into him. Twelve seconds to die.

"One more minute till you can turn the engine back on," MARIAN announced.

The train's whistle was blowing frantically—surely a sign that the engineer had spotted him.

"The train is decelerating," MARIAN said, and sure enough Justin could hear the screech of brakes. "Fifty seconds till you can turn the engine back on; sixty-seven seconds till the train reaches this spot."

Justin knew that a train could not stop quickly. The more cars the engine was pulling, the more time the train would need to come to a standstill. Justin couldn't take it any longer. He fumbled for his seat belt.

MARIAN said, "Don't panic. There is enough time to restart your engine and to drive to safety."

Justin yanked on the door handle but got caught in the seat belt, which hadn't had time to retract fully yet.

MARIAN said, "If you leave the car, the train will collide with it, and your vehicle will be destroyed. Thirty-six seconds till you can turn the engine back on; fifty-five seconds till the train reaches this spot."

Justin disentangled himself from the seat belt and stumbled out of the car.

MARIAN said, "Outside of the vehicle, you are likely to be injured by flying debris. Return to the car. You may now restart your engine."

She'd just said thirty-six seconds, and all of a sudden she was saying he could do it now.

MARIAN said, "The train is fifty seconds away. Return to the car."

She was lying. In horror, Justin realized she was lying. She wanted him to get back in the car so he could drive off the tracks—even though that would put him in danger. She was saying it because there was no way for
her
to leave the car.

For
it
to leave the car.

The GPS wanted him to risk his life so
it
wouldn't get damaged.

Tough luck, despite the sexy voice.

Justin began running.

Marian Bartholomeo let her consciousness seep out of the car radio, even though she could not be damaged by anything in the physical world.

She watched as the train smashed into the stalled car.

As she had predicted, pieces went flying. But the boy was far enough away that none of them hit him. That was okay. She would have liked to kill him, because he was a bad driver and a dangerous jerk, and it would have been a good deed to get him permanently off the streets, but he hadn't been her primary target. The train stayed on the track, which was fine with her—she didn't have anything against trains.

But she was delighted to see the wreckage of the car. For it had been this very car that had ended her life not two months ago.

Of course her first target had been the driver, that terrible college kid who had been drinking and driving and had not even known that he had run her over.

Already dead, she'd watched him wake up the following morning and waited for him to realize what he'd done. She waited for him to express his grief and remorse.

He saw the broken headlight, the dent in the fender, her blood on the bumper. She had thought he would cry out in anguish, beg forgiveness from her and from the heavens, and dedicate his life to good deeds in reparation.

Instead, he hosed the blood off, bought a replacement headlight, and placed an ad in the local paper to sell the car, to get rid of the evidence.

She had spent the last two months hounding him, whispering to him in his dreams, whispering to him when he was drinking. "Your fault," she had whispered. "Your fault, your fault, your fault."

She didn't know if it was the whispering or the drinking, but at the Halloween party his dorm was hosting tonight, he had tripped over the hem of his Phantom of the Opera costume cape, fallen down a set of stairs, and broken his neck.

That was when she'd gone after his car, and found it just as that other reckless boy was tearing through the apartment-complex parking lot—another driver looking for an accident to happen. She had used his hitting those speed bumps to make him think he'd jostled something loose in his dashboard.

So now, her task on Earth was finished.

Except...

It had been kind of fun pretending to be a GPS.

Maybe, she thought, she'd find another bad teenage driver.

Or two.

Or three.

Ashley rearranged the dead bodies, because there's nothing worse than a messy dead body.

Witches, people could recognize by the cackling laughter; werewolves growled and lunged; and vampires swooped. All of those induced honestly earned alarm. But dead bodies just lay or sit there like so much bloodstained laundry, and if people couldn't tell this was a scene of mass murder and were only startled by the light coming on, what was the point of that?

Ashley centered the pitchfork, which had a tendency to sag, in the chest of the man tied to the chair, and she fluffed the hair of the severed head, making sure the executioner's ax was perpendicular against the neck of the torso a yard or so away, so that the woman's decapitation looked recent, not like tired, old news.

"Barn ready," she said into the microphone of her headset. She took the time to make sure the hanged man—who had a tendency to rotate at the end of his rope—had his face turned toward the door for best effect. She had as much time as she needed between wagonloads, within reason, for the drivers slowed their tractors by the hedgerow, waiting for her all clear. This ensured she had the light off before they turned the corner, even though the dim red light, enough for her to set up by, was not likely to be glimpsed from among the orchard's trees. Once she gave the okay, she had about thirty seconds to turn off the light before the tractor would circle around and be facing the barn; but she had another two minutes to settle herself before the tractor, pulling the hay wagon, would actually drive in through the open doors. At that point she would flick on the regular light, which was still dim to maximize spookiness.