Halloween (9 page)

Laurie blinked. "I'm impressed. Where'd you learn about the ancient Greeks?"

Brackett laughed. "You'd be surprised how smart dumb cops are. Now," he said, placing her in front of him, "put
this
foot here, grab me by the arms
this
way, then roll with your full weight . . .
whoa!
" Laurie threw her hip out and tossed the big man over her shoulder onto the lawn.

"Oh, Lord, I'm sorry, Mr. Brackett. I didn't realize . . ."

"Your own strength? That's the whole idea. I think!" he added, raising himself to his feet and brushing himself off. "Well, now you're ready for the bogeyman." He stooped to pick up her books again.

"Thanks, Mr. Brackett. Tell Annie I'll speak to her tonight."

"You bet." Still dusting leaves off his uniform, he ambled home.

She turned into her street, reflecting on the day's strange occurrences. "Well, kiddo," she said to herself, "I thought you outgrew superstition." For a moment, before she stepped onto the flagstone path to her front door, she observed a group of kids parading down the street in their goofy, store-bought costumes and wondered where it had all started, these traditions: witches, hobgoblins, pumpkins, and black cats. And she had to admit she knew no more about Halloween than she knew about judo throws—less, since she knew at least how to throw one sheriff if he stood still long enough.

Dimly she realized that the celebration must hearken back to the times when evil was more respected in the world. She'd seen
The Exorcist
and
The Omen
, and she knew it was possible that evil and its incarnations—like ghosts, the devil, and witches—really existed. But she'd never met anyone who truly believed it, and deep down she certainly didn't believe it herself. But what had changed since the time when priests had performed exorcisms, when people were afraid to go into cemeteries and attended rituals to make the devil appear or chase the devil away?

Have I ever known anything truly evil? she asked herself. Except for Mrs. Langholm's history tests, Laurie couldn't think of a thing.

Yes, there
was
one thing.

Something genuinely wicked had happened in this very town fifteen years ago, only a few blocks from where she now stood. There was no other way to describe the horror of a sweet little six-year-old boy stalking up to the room of a pretty, ordinary teenage girl and running a long knife into her guts dozens of times. That was evil. There was no other word for it.

With a shudder, she stepped into her house. "Hi, Mom, I'm home."

"Hi, darling." Laurie went into the kitchen, where her mother, a redheaded woman with the same angular slenderness of her daughter, was busy candying apples.

Laurie unloaded her books on the kitchen counter and stretched her weary arms. She kissed her mother and dipped a finger in the apple glaze, touching it to her tongue. "Mom, have you ever known anyone evil?"

Her mother cocked her head and looked at Laurie with arched eyebrows. "That's quite a question!"

"Well?"

Her mother washed her gooey fingertips in the sink, then wiped them on a paper towel. "Well, they said that Hitler was evil; but I was too young to remember the war, and of course the only thing I know about his atrocities is what I've read or seen in the movies. I mean, I've never experienced someone evil, if that's what you're getting at."

"I think it is. What about the little boy who stabbed the Myers girl?"

Mrs. Strode shook her head. "You're certainly thinking some dark thoughts today, young lady."

"I know."

"But it's interesting that you mention it. If you went to church more often, you'd understand why."

"Huh?"

"Yes. You see, the Myers case was mentioned by Reverend Peters in last Sunday's sermon."

"It was?" Laurie leaned forward, fascinated.

"Uh-huh. He started off reminding us that Halloween was coming up this week, and he said some real interesting things about the origins of Halloween, about how it goes back to festivals aimed at warding off demons at harvest time, way back when."

"What does that have to do with the Myers case?"

"Well, Reverend Peters said the Myers case, which happened on Halloween fifteen years ago, reminds us that true evil still exists in this world. He said that like everything else, we've tried to deodorize evil and put it in a bright new package and you can buy it at the supermarket for five cents off with a coupon. Then along comes something like the Myers case and we're left with our mouths open looking into the . . . what'd he call it? . . . the heart of darkness. Maybe that's why God put devils like the Myers kid on earth—to keep us aware of the darker side of human nature. And maybe you ought to do some studying. I doubt if you'll get much homework done tonight."

"Thanks, Mom. That was real interesting, what you said." Her mother looked at her skeptically, but Laurie had no mischievous look on her face. "No, I really mean ii." She hauled her books up from the kitchen counter and lumbered upstairs.

"Are you sure you're not coming down with something?" Mrs. Strode called after her.

"No, just a minor case of the spooks. It's Halloween, after all."

She dumped her books on her desk and made a beeline for her phone for her daily gossip fix, as she called it. The phone stood on a table near the side window of her room, which looked down on a pair of driveways belonging to her own house and the one next door. On sunny days her mother often hung laundry on a line there.

She looked idly out the window as she dialed two digits. Then she gasped and put the phone sharply back on its cradle.

He
was there
.

Partially masked by flapping sheets, he stood there looking up at her window. His face was flour-white, his lips rouge-red, his eyes dark and limitless. The texture of his skin was rubbery looking, but it was still impossible to tell if he was wearing a mask. Until this moment she'd had a sneaking suspicion it might be Eddie Lester or Paul Sheehan or one of those clowns who were always pulling practical jokes. And except April Fool's, when they worked overtime at it, if ever there was a day for practical jokes, Halloween was it.

But no, this person was different. He was huskier than any of the guys at school. And there was something about the way he hung back instead of tearing off his mask, identifying himself and saying the joke was over, the way any normal prankster would. And this person was so elusive. You looked at him and he was there, but if you blinked he was gone. And that station wagon. She'd never seen it around, and she and her friends knew every car in town, for sure. She'd noticed some kind of emblem on the door as it cruised past this afternoon. Next time it went by she'd look at it more carefully, or try to get the license number.

But now . . .

Now he was gone.

Biting her lip, she slammed the window down hard, rattling the sash, and locked it. Rubbing her knuckles over her teeth, she paced around her room, wondering what to do. She twisted her head suddenly toward the window to catch him unawares, but he was gone. She began to doubt her senses.

Her phone rang, making her jump as if a shotgun had gone off at her feet. She picked it up. "Hello?"

The line was open, but silent. Someone was listening at the other end.

"Hello?"

There was a sound like someone smacking his lips.

"Who is this?"

The sound grew louder, and someone made a muffled growl. Laurie slammed the phone down and wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shaking.

The phone rang again. Laurie looked at it, debating. Then, after three rings, she picked it up and held it to her ear for a long moment before venturing to speak. "Hello?"

"Why'd you hang up on me?" Annie said indignantly, swallowing whatever she'd been chewing.

"Annie, was that you?" Laurie's fingertips flew to her bosom in relief.

"Of course."

"Why didn't you say anything? You scared me to death."

"I had my mouth full of peanut butter. Couldn't you hear me?"

"No."

"What did you think it was?"

"I don't know, an obscene phone call or something."

"Well, now you hear obscene chewing." And she smacked her lips and tongue around the remnant of the soggy sandwich. "You know, you're losing control, Laurie."

"I think I've already lost it."

"I doubt that. Listen, my mother is letting me use her car. I'll pick you up. Six thirty."

"Sure. See you later."

"Don't speak to any strange bogeymen—unless they're good dancers."

"Okay. 'Bye." She put the phone down and tried to do some homework, but the books lay on her desk as if written in some extraterrestrial script. Every subject she tried to study led her by free association to the phantom prowler who'd been dogging her footsteps all day long. The English lit homework on the theme of fate brought her mind back to poor Judith Myers, who'd met hers precisely fifteen years ago this very day—almost this very hour! She tried math, but all she could think of were all those stab wounds seeping crimson blood from Judith's brutally violated body. In history they were studying Julius Caesar's reign, and she'd just begun to get into it when she came across the passage about the emperor's assassination by Brutus and his friends—by daggers concealed beneath their togas.

She pushed her chair back violently, stood up, and began to pace around the room, pounding her fist in her palm. "Calm down, Laurie, this is ridiculous," she told herself aloud.

And it was. But she kept glancing out the window anyway.

The sky had turned a marble gray with storm clouds rolling in from the west, but the setting sun ignited them from underneath like an orange blowtorch, illuminating the polished marble gravestones of the Haddonfield Town Cemetery in a rare display of joyous glitter.

Angus Taylor, the caretaker of the nondenominational cemetery, puffed up the sharp incline, reading from a note pad as he led his trench coat-clad guest along a flagstone path. "Can't take this hill like I once used to," he said between anguished breaths. "Too much beer, not enough sex. Of course, I hold that a man can't have too much of either, but I suppose if I had my druthers it'd be . . ."

A glance at the visitor, who stared at him with a mixture of indifference or repugnance, subdued Taylor's chatter. He stopped a moment, panting, to look at the map on his note pad. "Let's see. Myers. Judith Myers. Row eighteen, plot twenty. Over this way."

They veered onto a secondary path whose stones had all but sunk beneath the encroaching grass. Willow branches whipped their faces as they peered through the impending gloom at names and dates that bespoke lives rich and inglorious, lives joyous and sad, lives short and long, but all terminated inexorably by the same grim hand.

The garrulous Taylor waxed silent. Though he'd been in the undertaking business all his life, it wasn't until lately that he'd begun to realize that his interest had become more than professional. At the age of sixty-two, the dozens of graves whose excavation he supervised had begun to beckon to him, and he'd started to ponder what it meant to spend an eternity in one. He'd arranged to be baptized so that he could be buried in a churchyard, where at least there might be the illusion of grace and salvation, and where he'd be surrounded by people bound to him by their mutual faith. "You believe in God, mister?"

Sam Loomis studied the man from beneath craggy brows and decided it wasn't worth getting into a philosophical debate. "Doesn't everyone?" he said. "Which way?"

"Left."

They walked slowly, scanning the stones.

"Every town has something like this happen," the puffing man said. "I remember a guy over in Russellville, Charley Bowles? Nicest guy you could ever imagine. You could boot him in the tail, he'd never complain. Then, maybe some twenty years ago I recollect, he finished dinner, excused himself from the table, and went into the garage. Come back with a hacksaw, he did. Kissed the wife and two kids good-bye, then proceeded to . . ."

"Mr. Taylor, where are we?" Loomis snapped.

Taylor held his note pad up to catch the fading sunlight. "Just right over there a ways. And I remember Judith Myers. Talk about sweet girls. She'd bat her eyes at you, you wanted to melt through the floor. Of course, they did find traces of semen, and this fella did admit he'd been humpin' her a few hours before, but that doesn't make a girl a tramp. Not these days. I know of a
fourteen
-year-old who's been . . .
hmm
. I thought it was right about here." He consulted his pad and looked at a marble marker sunk into the ground at the convergence of two paths.

"Lost?" said Loomis with a sharp edge of exasperation.

"Should be right behind Ed Sanders and next to Cornelia Stirley. Aw, shit!"

They stepped up to the Judith Myers plot.

The stone was gone.

The earth had been exposed so recently, Loomis could smell the fresh loam and see long livid earthworms trailing into the ground after their violent disturbance.

"Goddamn kids. This happens to me every Halloween."

"You're sure it's Judith Myers?" Loomis's eyes glowed red in the direct glint of sunset.

"Here, see for yourself." Taylor held the note pad up for Loomis to read. Pointing a pudgy finger at the diagram, he said, "See? Seventeen, eighteen is Myers, nineteen is Cornelia Stirley. It's Judith Myers, no doubt about it. Stone should be lying around nearby, if you want to help me look for it. They usually get tired of trying to haul these things and give up."

"Who does?"

"The kids. Teenagers, college kids."

"What do they do with them?"

"Play pranks. Put them on people's lawns. One bunch two years ago put one in the principal's office at school. Ho, what a stink he made, whoo-boy!" Taylor took a few paces downhill, scanning the surrounding ground for the stone.

"You won't find it," Loomis announced calmly.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I'm sure. He's come home," Sam Loomis said, leaning heavily on a tombstone.