Halloween III - Season of the Witch (2 page)

“Well, all I know is that a person can’t keep working double shifts for as long as you have and not expect to pay the piper sooner or later.” Her voice took on a maternal quality, scolding and solicitous at the same time.

“Everything,” said Challis matter-of-factly, “has its price. I knew that. But it didn’t stop me, did it? No, not me.” His voice trailed off bitterly. He snorted to clear his throat.

With surprising tenderness the nurse said, “You know, sometimes the price isn’t worth paying. Ever think of that?”

“I did, Agnes. Truly I did. Thought about it night and day for six months. A lot longer than that, if you want me to be honest about it. More like since the first year Linda and I were married, how do you like that? Then, after a while, that was all I did. Think. I couldn’t even sleep.”

“And are things any better now?”

To that Challis said nothing.

From outside on the highway came a bleating of horns, followed by a siren. A streak of red light swept across the dripping panes.

“Well,” said Agnes finally, massaging her strong thumbs deep into his medulla. “I think it’s time for you to get on home. Nothing personal, now, but I do believe we can manage without you for a few hours.”

“Home?” said Challis bitterly. “What home? I know, I know. I made my bed. Now I have to lie in it. Isn’t that what you were about to say?”

“Well, as I believe Our Lord once told Pilate, ‘You said it, I didn’t.’ ”

“At least I have a bed. Even if it’s only a mattress on the floor.”

The nurse lowered her hands from his neck and wagged her head behind his back. “My, aren’t we feeling sorry for ourselves tonight?”

“If I don’t, who will?” he snapped.

He unbent and turned to her, his spine cracking like breadsticks.

“Hell, Aggie, you’re the only one I can talk to. Crying in my beer again, am I? Well, why the hell not? I put it to you. Seriously, now.” He tried a smile. It came out brave but crooked. “Agnes, tell me you’ve got a nice cold beer stashed somewhere with my name on it. You were just about to say that, weren’t you? I can tell. My mouth feels like a bedpan.”

The nurse’s eyes twinkled in spite of her best efforts. “You get on out of here, Daniel Challis. Go on, now.”

“Want to get drunk with me tonight, Agnes?”

“Thought this was the night you’re supposed to see those beautiful kids of yours.”

He made a fist and slammed it into his forehead. “Oh, Jesus. You’re right.” He sighed hoarsely. “That means I still have to pick up something for them. Another peace offering. You know, it never ends. I never spent this much money on them when I was living there.”

“They don’t want your money,” she said reproachfully. “They want you.”

“Spare me.” He pulled back his sleeve and checked his watch.

“They want their daddy, don’t you know that? That’s all they want. They—”

He rose abruptly.

“It’s not what they want or don’t want that’s at issue anymore.” He unbuttoned his white coat and headed for the door. “Their mother’s the middleman now. She’s worse than that pimp of a lawyer. The two of them won’t be satisfied till I’ve sold off my body parts to keep them comfortable. And you know what? Even then they won’t be happy. They’ll still think I’m hiding assets.” He was in the hall. “See you in the morning, Agnes. You know where to reach me if there’s an emergency.”

“At the house, Dan?” she said hopefully. “I remember that number by heart. I’ll bet Linda’s going to be so glad to see you that—”

“At the apartment, Agnes, at the apartment. I don’t
live
at the house anymore, Agnes. It’s not my
house
anymore, Agnes. Do me a favor and try to get that straight.”

“Why, it’s still your house. If you want to live in it, I’m sure—”

“I’m sure, too.” He cut her off. “I’m
sure,
understand? Anyway, use the pager. It’s simpler.”

She watched him go.

“Poor man,” she whispered sadly. “Poor, foolish man. They’re all the same. They never learn.” The rain bled down the windows like tears, casting rippled shadows over her. “By the time they do, it’s too late.”

She let her eyes close and lifted her face to the dim ceiling in the empty room.

“He’s a good man, Jesus,” she said. “Lift the scales from his eyes that he may see, and put Thy Word in his heart that he may listen, and hear. Before it’s too late for him, too. Before it’s too late for all of us.

“This man matters. He can make a difference. I believe he can . . .”

THE NIGHT
HE CAME
HOME AGAIN

C H A P T E R
1

The headlights stabbed the road like icepicks.

Challis left Main Street behind and cut across town to Chestnut. The rain had let up but his wipers continued to skitter across the windshield, doggedly trying to clear his field of vision. Now they began to drub the glass, the rubber blades tearing under the useless effort. He gave up and shut them off.

It was Sunday night and virtually every place of business in Sierra Mesa was locked up until morning. The only potential signs of life he encountered were a taco stand, an automated Terrible Herbst gas station, a Weenee Wigwam drive-thru and a self-serve laundromat within which sleepwalking shapes glided in slow-motion as if underwater among gaping washers and dryers, laboring through the night over vaguely disturbing mounds of dirty linen. As he drove past the steamed-up front, an elongated figure of impossible height seemed to emerge from the depths of the store, growing larger in a sickly green glow from behind the coin-fed machines.

Challis accelerated and left the area, his unease increasing as he made for Tenth Avenue and his last remaining hope.

Otherwise he would have to throw himself on the mercy of Linda and the kids empty-handed.

Kids, he thought. They don’t forget—they’re too young—and so they don’t forgive. They’re the only truly uncivilized beings left on earth, a race apart, a primitive tribe and a law unto themselves. Like Linda. She’s allowed herself to regress to their level without bothering to reacquire any of their saving graces. Somewhere along the line she became a beautiful woman with a steel bar shoved up her ass all the way to her brain. She can’t bend an inch; it might kill her. She could relax her sphincter muscles and let it go anytime she wants to. But she won’t. It’s her choice. And that’s something I can’t forgive her for.

Unlike Bella and Willie, who are growing all the time. Unless she succeeds in shoving a rod up their asses, too. With her help they’ll grow straight, all right—they’ll turn into petty fascists, all intolerance and kangaroo court judgments and inhumanly rigid verdicts. Like machines.

I’ve got to get over there, he thought, and let some real life blow through that house right now, tonight, no matter what. If it’s not already too late.

He peered ahead for the convenience market, his last chance. They never close, he thought, isn’t that right? Raul’s there night and day, every time I stop by. He’ll have something. Something to get me off the hook so my kids won’t think I’m the schmuck their mother tells them I am.

The sky cleared above the trees and the
STOP
’
N START MARKET
sign materialized out of the mist.

Well, praise the Lord, he thought, easing up on the accelerator. I’m saved, after all. At least I hope I am.

As he pulled in next to the curb he saw Raul’s back inside the glass, bent over the counter and a copy of Kustom Kars Magazine. Steam was rising from the electrified sign and the parking lot was black and shiny as a snail track. He set the parking brake, left the motor running and dashed in.

As he swung the door open, two cars screeched into the parking lot in the manner of drag racers and braked in tandem at the walkway, their chrome bumpers stopping inches from the glass. A Marshall Tucker tape reverberated from the interiors of both cars. Stereo, he thought. He started to step through.

Just then he heard footsteps from the far side of the lot.

From around the trees an uncommonly large person—male or female?—came walking in slow, oddly regular steps. But before the figure reached the throw of light from the storefront, one of the car doors opened and blocked his line of sight. Distracted, Challis let the heavy door to the store close behind him and turned to the brightly lighted interior.

He ignored the magazine racks and aisles of wine and deli food and headed straight for the sundries, hoping against hope that he would spot something for a nine-year-old girl or a seven-year-old boy, or both. That’s right, he reminded himself, I have to bring something for each of them. Or I’ll never hear the end of it. If there’s only one present they’ll tear it apart in front of my eyes and it won’t do either of them any good. It would almost be better to come without anything.

He came to a display of Frisbees stacked like Day-Glow pie plates, plastic value-packs of remaindered comic books, hot water bottles, disposable diapers, infant formula, the latest in aluminum cookware from Hong Kong, and a half-row of the newest fad, something called Shuttle Shoes.

He opened one of the boxes.

They were roller skates with see-through wheels and pictures of the space ship
Columbia
embossed on the sides. The box promised that there was a built-in AM-FM radio receiver in each pair. Very futuristic. Not bad, he thought. Absurd, of course. But not that bad. They might like it.

What size? he wondered in a panic. Wait, maybe they come in three convenient sizes. They would both be medium, wouldn’t they? Or no, Willie would be small and Bella would be medium. Or maybe they’re marked according to age. He shuffled through the stock.

Then he saw the price.

Right, he thought. Shuttle Shoes would just have to wait for a more important occasion, like a birthday. Or a raise. If he was still alive by then.

What do you want for Christmas, Bella?

Shuttle Shoes, Daddy! Oh, please!

Shuttle Shoes? Why, of course, angel. I know right where to get some. If your mother hasn’t bought them for you already.

He gritted his teeth and made his way to the checkout.

Raul was busy ringing up cigarettes, beef jerky and L’eggs pantyhose for a painted alabaster hooker. Behind her, two guys who looked like they operated heavy machinery by day were weighted down with a pair of Olde English 800 six-packs each. Challis shuffled his feet and took his place in line.

The lights of the store beat down on him with an almost palpable pressure. He pinched the bridge of his nose. The two in front of him were talking.

“. . . So she says, ‘Don’t stop, lover boy, you’re just like a goddamn machine!’ ”

The first one, whose moustache drooped so low over his thin-lipped mouth that Challis wondered how he managed to eat (through a straw?) nudged his partner and howled.

“Well all ri-i-ight!” said the partner, and broke up guffawing.

Just like a goddamn machine.
That’s it, thought Challis. That’s what they want to be these days: as much like machines as they can possibly make themselves. For unfathomable reasons some people delight in pretending to be as machinelike as the law will allow. It’s an old story. It goes back to goose-steppers and the whole military mystique. No, it goes back further than that. A lot further. People who act like machines, machines that imitate people. Cute. Real cute. The height of chic. It’s growing all around us, the Fourth Reich, like smog and inflation. I wonder what it’s really about?

Challis breathed deeply to clear his head. His eyes wandered.

There was a closed-circuit TV camera mounted in the corner above Raul. It panned the register area slowly, making a potential arrest record out of everyone and everything. Smile, thought Challis, you’re on “Candid Camera.” For a wild second he considered making a face for whoever was watching. The watchbird, he thought, is watching me watch it watch me, and so on, to infinity. Like mirrors. It made him dizzy. He forced his eyes elsewhere.

He heard a soft
ding
as the hooker, leaving, passed through an electric eye at the door. Jesus, he thought, the familiar sound of a bell ringing hollowly in his ears, I feel like I’m still on duty. It’s all the same. I can’t get out of the hospital; it’s with me wherever I go; it’s inside me. That’s why there’s never any peace.

Well, he tried to tell himself, it’s a living, such as it is.

Yeah. What you get is a living. What you give is a life.

The door whispered shut and a draft of air disturbed strands of crêpe paper over his head. Orange and black. On one looping strand a cutout witch flew a broomstick toward a soft landing in a pyramid of Charmin bathroom tissue. He smiled tightly. The witch bore a strong resemblance, he could not help noticing, to Linda.

Halloween.
It was coming—it was here—and nothing could stop it. As if those advertisers with all their money could let us forget. And this Halloween seemed so much more oppressive and commercial than ever before. Maybe it was always like that and he had never noticed.

Halloween, he thought, is a state of mind. It’s always here. Only the true ugliness of their money-grubbing doesn’t show through so blatantly the rest of the time.

The guys with the beer left. It was his turn. He stepped forward and scanned the counter. Nothing there but TV Guides, cigars, blister-packs of Bic disposable pens and Bic disposable lighters and Bic disposable razors, the usual. Nothing to interest a kid.

“Hey, Raul,” said Challis. “How’s it going?”

“Can’t complain.” The night man gazed past Challis as if he didn’t recognize him. Or didn’t care to. “What you need tonight?”

That, thought Challis, is a pretty tall order. Don’t ask.

“My kids. It’s their birthday,” he lied. “I wanted to pick up a little something extra before I go home. What would you recommend?”

Raul waved his hand to indicate the displays. “Take your pick. It’s all good stuff. Just what the doctor ordered.”

Challis ignored the unintended irony. “See, the thing is, I thought maybe you’d have something, you know, special. Not a hell of a lot of places open tonight.”