Read Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre Online
Authors: Paula Guran
Tags: #Magic & Wizards, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Horror, #Anthologies & Short Stories, #Anthologies, #Fantasy, #Genre Fiction, #Literature & Fiction
the TV, now turned to some kind of Halloween gala in LA.
About ten minutes later, Samson heard his name on the PA system,
summoning him to the ambulance arrival doors. Without speaking to
Wadley, who was engrossed in the activity on the screen, he emptied out the last of his tea, rinsed his cup and left The Canteen to Wadley.
Doyle was waiting for him at the double set of doors. “Take the
patient into Bay 14. Conners will meet you there. I want your report on the patient’s condition as soon as it’s determined.”
“Who’s going to cover for me?” Samson asked.
“Baker will,” said Doyle.
“Let Spink know,” Samson said, and went off to Bay 14 to await
the arrival of the new patient.
“You got it,” said Doyle, sounding jittery.
An orderly and a cop accompanied the gurney with the well-
swathed patient as it was rushed into Bay 14, four minutes earlier than the cop had predicted; two minutes later, Doctor Richard Conners
opened the drapes that enclosed the bay, saying, “What have we here?”
He was taller than average, blocky of build, with thinning blond hair, a large broken nose, and great deal of pale body hair under his scrubs.
“This is the guy the two nurses hit,” said the cop before the
orderly could speak. “The EMTs said he had a rapid pulse and his
temperature was on the low side. They left his costume alone.”
Conners drew back the sheet that covered the injured man; he
gave a slow whistle. “That’s some costume.” He fingered the slithery, gray-green fabric that covered him from head to toe, and stared
for half a minute at the face, obviously a make-up appliance. “That head—it’s like something out of the movies.”
“Creepy, isn’t it? He really did it up brown—or gator-green,” the
cop said as if glad to find someone who agreed with him.
CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO [265]
“I’ll say,” Conners agreed, trying to find a pulse under the costume.
“I think I’ll go along with the EMTs. Let’s get some X-rays before we start working on him. We don’t want to make him more shocky than
he already is.”
“No, we don’t,” said Samson, and signaled to the orderly to bring
the gurney and its passenger along to the X-ray department. “Any ID
on him?”
“Not obviously,” said the cop. “Like I said: he looks a little too old for trick-or-treat to me. A party, or something no good.”
“Unless he went to the Halloween dance at the Metropolitan,”
said Samson.
“Then what was he doing out on Golden Hills Country Club
Road?” the cop asked, then noticed they were at the elevators.
“Someone will do follow-up on this, come morning.”
Samson shrugged and pressed the button for the elevator. “That’s
the next shift.”
“I’ll get your number from the nursing office,” the cop said, and
stood aside as the gurney was shoved into the elevator.
“This is going to get complicated,” Conners complained.
They rode the rest of the way in silence, emerging into a small
crowd gathered around the elevator doors.
“Coming through,” said the orderly, and began to move the
gurney without waiting for compliance from the crowd.
“Hey!” Conners admonished him. “Please move aside,” he told
the people, who slowly took a step or two back from the elevator.
Samson motioned the people to move farther back, and as the
gurney went past him, the patient’s taloned hand reached out and
grabbed his wrist. A few of the people saw it; one of them yelped in shock, and another gasped. Samson disengaged the eerie fingers, and slid the hand back under the sheet that covered the patient.
“Shit, man,” one of the crowd expostulated.
“He’s still in costume,” said Samson with his habitual calm. “That’s a glove.”
A few of the people laughed nervously, but one of the three
children among them shrieked.
An older man said to Samson, “Mother’s having a cancer
[266] QUADRUPLE WHAMMY
operation in the morning. We were given extended visiting hours,
you know, just in case. We’re a little jumpy.”
Samson nodded his acceptance of this apology, and followed
Conners, the orderly, and the gurney to the X-ray department, where they were sent along to Room 12, and found Jenkins waiting for them.
“See if you can take a pair of full-body shots before we start
getting him out of his costume,” Conners said, his voice lowered in case the patient was able to hear him.
Jenkins laughed quietly. “Looks like the Creature from the Black
Lagoon, only better face appliances. How long’s he been unconscious?”
“Not quite two hours, give or take,” said the orderly, flapping the yellow-tinted EMT report.
“Um,” said Jenkins. “Okay, I’ll do it.” He motioned to the orderly, and to Samson. “Help me transfer him to the table.”
Conners stood back to allow the other three men to work, saying
only, “Turn his head; as long as he’s got the costume on, we won’t try for a full-on face, it’ll push on his neck too much.” He watched them lifting the limp figure with the sturdy drape the EMTs had used to load him onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. At one point,
the patient made a kind of groan, but there was no other obvious
response. The room was very quiet.
“Align him, Samson,” said Jenkins. “Like he was a nine-year-old
who fell off his skateboard on a curl.”
“Will do,” said Samson, and unhurriedly maneuvered the patient
as nearly as possible into the preferred position for his X-rays. “Want me to take off his shoes? They’re forcing him onto the balls of his feet.”
“He’s lying down. We can take care of it later.” Conners glowered
at the patient as he stepped behind the shield in front of the controls for the machine. “God, I hate Halloween. We work with horrors every day of the week, then along comes Halloween, glorifying it all, and people wonder why our ER is so busy on this night.”
“Hey, get in here,” Jenkins called from his shielded control room.
“We’ll try a first shot.”
Conners and Samson obeyed, squeezing in with the orderly and
Jenkins, who pressed a series of buttons; there was a buzz and a soft CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO [267]
clunk, and an image emerged on the computer screen in front of
him.
“Holy shit,” whispered Conners. “What’s
that
?” He pointed to what appeared to be a malformation of the skull.
“Fan-fucking-tastic!” Jenkins marveled.
Samson stared at the screen and whistled softly, while the orderly blinked.
“What
is
that?” Conners wondered aloud.
“It ain’t one of us,” said Jenkins gleefully. “Look at the bone
structure. Well, let’s figure those are bones and not something else.
That’s from Somewhere Else. Not even the Elephant Man had that
kind of skeleton.”
“It’s a hoax. It has to be,” said Conner.
“Or it’s one hell of a trick-or-treat,” said Samson.
“I told you the flap was the real deal,” Jenkins said victoriously.
“What do we do now?”
“We report this,” said Samson.
“I’ll do it,” the orderly volunteered, hoping to get out of this small space and away from the unmoving figure lying under the X-ray
machine.
“To
who
?” Conner demanded, growing more and more disbelieving as he stared at the computer screen. “What do we tell them—it’s
Hal oween, it’s Saturday, the moon is ful ,
and
the aliens have landed?”
“Well, one has; you can’t pretend that’s human,” said Samson,
peering through the shield at the still figure on the table.
“Audioanimatronics,” said Conner suddenly. “It’s gotta be.”
“Except that it hasn’t moved and it’s silent,” said Jenkins.
The orderly gave a nervous sigh. “Is it alive?”
“No way to tell yet,” said Jenkins.
“Got to get it out of costume first,” said Samson.
“Is that a costume?” The orderly goggled.
“Is it dangerous?” Conner asked the air.
“Probably some kind of pressure suit, or body armor,” said
Jenkins, relishing the moment. “Hot-damn!”
Conners shook his head. “We ought to call someone. We have to
leave it alone.”
[268] QUADRUPLE WHAMMY
“But who do we call?” Samson’s repetition of Conner’s question
took the other two aback. “We can’t just let it lie here, can we?”
Then Jenkins beamed at the opportunity. “Ghostbusters!” he
exclaimed, and immediately shut up.
“Want me to find out who to notify?” the orderly asked, wanting
to get away from the alien being lying on the X-ray table.
“I’ll do it,” said Conners. “God, think of the press! I
hate
Halloween.
It’s just a left over beginning-of-winter pagan festival turned into a fancy dress party,” he complained as he left the control booth.
Before Conners reached the door, Samson said, “Yeah. An old
pagan rite turned into a festival.” He moved out of the cramped space to stand beside the supine alien. “Like Christmas.”
N
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
is the first woman to be named a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild. She has also been honored as a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement by the Horror Writers
Association, and as Grand Master of the World Horror Convention.
She is the recipient of the Fine Foundation Award for Literary
Achievement and (along with Fred Saberhagen) was awarded the
Knightly Order of the Brasov Citadel by the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in 1997. A professional writer since 1968, Yarbro has worked in a wide variety of genres, from science fiction to westerns and from young adult adventure to historical horror. Yarbro is the author of over ninety books, more than seventy works of short fiction, and
more than two dozen essays and reviews. Best-known for her Count
Saint-Germain series
, Night Pilgrims
(2013) is its twenty-sixth book and twenty-fourth novel. She’s just completed the next novel in the series:
Sustenance.
Her website is chelseaquinnyarbro.net.
a
WE, THE FORTUNATE BEREAVED
~
Brian Hodge
He’d been relentless about it throughout the whole of October, as
only a six-year-old could be, worse by the day as the month went
on.
“I want it to be Daddy this year.” Cody was up to what felt like a hundred times a day now that the end of the month was here, and
the night at hand. “We have to do a really good job so that it’s Daddy this year.”
Bailey had told him nothing about this night, ever, nor had Drew
when he was alive. For a few more years, at least, they’d wanted
Halloween, for Cody, to be nothing more than trick-or-treating.
And maybe, minus one congenital heart defect, undetected until it
was too late, that’s the way it would have been. Or maybe what they’d wanted wouldn’t have mattered anyway. All it took was one other
first-grader in the know, and soon enough they all knew. Children
shared secrets even more readily than they shared bacteria and head lice.
But knowing about it was one thing. Having such an enormous
personal stake in it was something else entirely.
“It’s
got
to be Daddy this year.”
“Then let’s finish picking what we want to leave to call him,”
Bailey said. “Let’s make it good. Have you thought really hard about what you want to pick?”
[271]
[272] WE, THE FORTUNATE BEREAVED
Of course he had. He’d been consumed by it all month. For Cody,
the problem would be narrowing it down to just one. Because those
were the rules. If he could’ve gotten away with it, he would’ve emptied his room of memories, harvested the closets clean, filled his wagon and more with them, then hauled them to the town square himself,
to dump them at the foot of the cross where the frightful thing hung, awaiting something that looked like life.
Bailey’s own choice had been easier, made almost by default.
Was it to be her wedding ring? No. For all it meant, it had none of Drew’s essence in it. His razor, still in the bathroom even though he’d been eight months in the ground? Improbably, it had survived since the first day of his freshman year of college, and had contoured his face nearly every day of his life since. No, not that either. It was too prosaic, with none of
her
essence in it.
In prior years, she’d heard local widows joke that what they
should’ve picked was the TV remote—if anything could call their
men over from the other side, that would do the trick.
In the end, though, on this morning of the thirty-first, what she
chose was Drew’s favorite shirt for nights and weekends during the long months of autumn and winter. It was the king of flannel shirts, blue and white, checked like a horse blanket and thick to keep out the cold. She’d liked to wear it too, even though it swallowed her whole—adored wearing it because of smelled of him, an enveloping