Halloween III - Season of the Witch (8 page)

I should see them, he thought, I know that. God, do I know it. I
want
to. But I’m no good to them, to myself, to anyone yet. There’s some unfinished business to take care of first. Then, with luck, I’ll know more—enough to understand and pass along the warning to someone else. Like Bella. And Willie. But until I get my own act together . . .

“Do me a favor,” he told her. “Don’t say anything for a while. It’s nothing personal. Just . . . don’t say anything. All right?”

Ellie handed him a map and he traced a route for them out of the maze of L.A. freeways.

The main arteries were printed in different colors, blue lines feeding into the cloverleaf downtown and thick red lines leading away; it reminded him of a circulatory chart of the human body. They bypassed the central bundle and merged onto a branch which avoided the major interchanges and soon swept them along into open country where the air was still relatively clean and the hills had not yet been subdivided into tacky, jerrybuilt housing developments with exotic names. After an hour or so they were driving into the sun. The warm glare made Challis sleepy.

“. . . My father and I,” he heard her saying. Her voice assumed a low, soothing drone like the air conditioner. “You know what I think started it? A bird.”

“Mmm,” said Challis.

“He bought me this bird in a cage. For my birthday, big deal. I was six. One of those little red-nosed kind, he looked so sad. He wouldn’t sing. So I took him out of the cage and threw him into the sky, like that.”

Challis opened one eye in time to see her lift her hands from the wheel and relive the gesture. Her eyes converged on a distant point, erasing the hills and the years.

“So he could find a place to sing. My dad beat me real good for that. He should have known.”

“Known what?”

“A child never forgives a beating. Like a cat doesn’t.”

She fell silent.

There was only the drone of the tires again, the occasional swish of a car or camper eating up the miles in either direction. Challis extended his legs as best he could and gazed with her at the exit signs whipping past.

“How are we doing?” he asked.

“We’re almost there. Next turnoff, I think. I think . . .”

His eyelashes feathered shut and he allowed himself to fall into a dream.

It was all right. She didn’t need him to tell her what to do. She knew where she was going. She had never been there before, yet he was sure they would make it. Not like Linda, who would only go as far as her limited experience could take her, and then only with his urging and constant support. But this one. Ellie. She was different. An old burden lifted from his chest and rushed away on the wind. It was as easy as the releasing of a breath.

In his dream he awoke to find himself in a place he had never seen before but which was maddeningly familiar.

It was a town of the kind which exist only in dreams, where the safety net of reality is no longer operative and matters of life and death lie in wait around every corner. In this intensified, exaggerated geography Challis was searching desperately for something he could not name. It eluded him at every turn; but the rapidly darkening sky reminded him that his time was about to run out.

It was almost nine o’clock. For some reason the hour took on great significance. How could he complete his task if he did not know what he was looking for? And yet the day was rushing past. With each tick of the clock in the sky, with each scythe-like stroke of the minute hand, time contracted until it was impossible to keep pace. He wanted to rest. But even that ultimate reward would be denied him. If he could not find the solution.

And then. Time. Would stop.

He concentrated on his surroundings—here, where the night fell too soon and the landscape was suffused with mirages of moonlight. In this place, he realized, the only sound to be heard was a great weeping.

It was the weeping of children.

Perhaps they were confused and could not find their way home.

He saw one now, a boy, at the end of a tunnel-like passage where the walls glowed with an orange-red color. The child was dressed strangely, his clothing from another era and his head too large so that it resembled a fully-grown man’s. He could not see the boy’s features but he heard the crying, muffled as from beneath a false face.

The children, Challis understood with the sudden clarity of dream logic, had disguised themselves so as to pass through this place without harm. They were crying out to warn each other of the danger.

As he listened, he heard the cries become a chorus of wailing throughout the land.

A tall, very tall figure appeared at the end of the tunnel. Challis was not immediately afraid. Apparently the figure was a priest of some kind. Other children, also wearing colorful disguises, came out of hiding and followed the tall man. They trusted him because of the way he was dressed.

The tall guide led them past wood-frame houses, all but hidden by giant oaks in which girlish spirits murmured at their passing, then between modern buildings with clean walls and a succession of rooms in which people were trying to sleep; over the entrance to one, a restless snake climbed a pole or a vine.

They came to a barren plain, dotted with rocks which jutted out of the ground like jagged teeth. A fire was burning. The tall figure stopped and gathered the children into a circle. The sun began to rise between the rocks, and at last the figure turned and revealed itself.

It had no face, only blank, fleshy-white skin with no discernible features and icy eyes lost behind dark slits. It was a face without guilt or remorse or compassion or any vestige of human feeling.

The children fell back.

The figure produced a long, shining device from beneath its robe. The object gleamed there long and curved and silver-red in the eye of the sunrise.

A knife.

The children screamed. Their screams became the mourning wail of human beings everywhere, begging for mercy and the future of their race as the sky became red and runes of blood divided the landscape of the world.

Wait!
cried Challis.

He ran forward to stop the slaughter.

But he was too late.

The figure turned on him, laughing insanely, the knife raised high.

It was nine o’clock . . .

“Want an apple?”

Challis fought his way up.

A glare of red sunlight illuminated the veins in his eyelids. He forced his eyes open.

He was still in the car. Ellie was biting into a ripe, juicy apple and steering with one hand. She gestured at her purse which lay open between them on the seat.

“Have one,” she said. “They’re good for you.”

“Trying to keep the doctor away, eh?” His voice didn’t come out right. He massaged his eyes.

The car was climbing a gentle grade above the main highway. It was late, much later than he expected. They had come a long way. The windshield was dirtied with the remains of countless flying insects. He saw a bee smashed under one of the wiper blades.

He drew himself up in the seat.

“There it is,” she said.

The car slowed to a halt. She rolled down the window.

A half-mile down, partially hidden by rows of high vegetation, was the tip of a small rural community. The sun was low and from this perspective the simple roofs of the wood-frame houses were shingled by a mirage of silver. Beyond, the Pacific Ocean glittered like spilled mercury flecked with blood.

Challis whistled softly. “Looks innocent enough,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t it?”

Challis found that difficult to answer.

But perhaps she felt it, too, the sense of foreboding, because her arms were covered with goose-flesh.

Then she put the car into gear again and started the descent.

As the angle changed and the view became less spectacular, Challis tried to break the spell.

“That crappy little place is where all those masks and commercials come from? It doesn’t even look real.”

Ellie smiled tightly and opened her mouth to speak.

At that moment a truck roared around the bend ahead, bearing directly at them.

Challis fell across her and jogged the wheel.

An air horn sounded and the truck swerved, scraping by on the shoulder in a cloud of dust.

“Jerk!” she shouted.

Challis spun around in his seat and watched the truck bounce back onto the road. Barely visible through the exhaust was a large green-and-white four-leaf clover decal on the tailgate.

“Silver Shamrock,” said Challis. “I should have—”

“Don’t worry about him. Look at that guy up there! He’s got to stop! He’s—!”

Ellie was straight-arming the horn and bulldogging the wheel as a second bullet Mack truck charged them head-on.

Somehow it got by. The force of its passing left the car rocking like a straw in the wind.

“Welcome,” said Ellie, “to Santa Mira.”

C H A P T E R
6

Santa Mira was real, all right.

Challis leaned out the window to clear his head.

He recognized the scent of alfalfa and the dank salt pungence of the sea lacing the air, and something else that was distinctly unpleasant. Sulfur? That was probably what was pouring out of the brick smokestack that dominated the western end of the town. It was billowing with a vengeance. A huge shamrock like the belly of a spider identified the building as the factory. It couldn’t be anything else.

At the foot of the rolling hills, nestled at the edge of verdant fields, they came upon an old-fashioned unbranded gas station attached to a weathered cottage motel.
RAFFERTY
’
S DELUXE
, proclaimed a hand-painted sign. Whether that was the name of the station or the motel was not clear.

As they drove on, a sandy-haired attendant observed their passing from beside the pumps.

By the time they hit the town square, Challis knew that something about the town was seriously abnormal.

Though it was not yet dark, nothing moved on the street. Not a dog nor a pedestrian nor another automobile.
No one.
Not even children.

Yet, as the storefronts slid by, he was aware of the presence of eyes in every window. There was a shop full of workers’ uniforms; there what appeared to be a quaint, tidy bank; there a grocery store, and the like. All were operating under the sign of the Silver Shamrock.

Now a few ruddy faces revealed themselves in doorways, some freckled and red-haired, all silently observant.

Ellie broke the uneasy silence. “Kind of ethnic.”

“You could say that.”

“I feel like a goldfish.”

“Company town,” Challis reminded her.

“Irish
company town.”

“You know where you’re going?”

“To the factory. Where do you think?”

“Might be a little late for that. Looks to me like everybody’s about to batten down the hatches and call it a day.”

“Well, then, we’ll at least get a look at it up close.”

The last of the stores fell behind them. Ahead lay a tarnished railroad track and, among the plain, utilitarian residences, an old church of unidentifiable denomination.

As Ellie swung the car around and changed direction, Challis noted that the front of the church was boarded up. The spire had gone long unpainted. A signboard reading
CHURCH OF SAINT PATRICK
/
REV. FATHER TOM MALONE
was hanging peeled and broken from one upright.

He decided not to call that detail to her attention. Her knuckles were already white on the steering wheel.

She took her foot off the gas and braked.

There was the plume of smoke and there was the factory. It was visible from all vantage points, but now they were in position to view it head-on. The front of the plant loomed a hundred yards ahead—and
loomed
was precisely the word—huge and eerie, bathed in light that was rapidly deepening to crimson.

“Looks a little spooky,” she said.

He did not like the hunch in her shoulders, the contentiousness in her eyes. “What do you expect? They make Halloween masks.”

“I’m not ready for this.” She sat back. “We need a plan.”

Challis reached for a cigarette but his jacket pocket was empty. He remembered that it had been empty for a long time.

“How about this?” he suggested. “We drive down that road, get some more beer, and go to the beach?”

“I’m serious.”

He was feeling fresh and awake now and was determined not to let the day end on a note of despair, no matter what. There was always hope. I for one don’t need to drive all afternoon to find more doom and gloom, he thought. I can get that at home.

He tried another tack.

“All right, here’s one. We go back to that gas station and see if they know anything. We could pose as buyers. Maybe even rent a room at that motel.” That sounds eminently reasonable, he thought. Realistic. And realism is what we need. “Then we’d have someplace to talk without the whole town watching.”

She accepted that without a blink. “Good point. It’s getting late, anyway.” She drew her jacket liner closed, pulled her sweater sleeves down over her arms.

They bounded back over the railroad tracks. He thought of taking over the driving for her, letting her rest. But it was a little late for that. Besides, she was doing fine on her own. And he did like that. He liked it a lot.

“What’s that?” she said, her eyes riveted to the rearview mirror.

Challis stretched around.

A winglike metal garage door in the side of the factory was lifting, reflecting like a signal mirror. A long silver limousine purred out into the street, hovered to get its bearings. It was impossible to see the driver behind the tinted windows.

“Probably the boss,” said Challis.

They drove on.

The Irishman at Rafferty’s Deluxe saw Ellie’s car coming. Now his flushed face was all smiles, all charm. As if he were expecting them.

Ellie smiled back.

“Good day to ye! Fill ’er up?”

“Please.”

“Ahh, and another grand day it’s been in Santa Mira, where the sun smiles down and takes care of its own. A grand day, so it is!”