Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (39 page)

packed around something inside, to pull out—

Melanie again. Melanie Pemberton, shouldering her way to the

front of the crowd, past well-intended men trying to hold her back.

—a music box. Old, chipped, adorned with painted arabesques.

A music box.

Angela?
This
was her sister Angela? Now, three years after she’d . . . ?

And then, apart from her own losses, maybe the most

heartbreaking sight Bailey had ever seen: the scarecrow trying to

wind the music box’s key, to hear its song once more, but unable to, its gloved fingers not nimble enough, strong enough.

“You all gave her up for dead! Remember?” Melanie screamed at

the crowd, as she broke free to take her place at the front. “All of you!

That made it easier for you to stop looking, didn’t it! ‘Oh, Angela has to be dead by now! What can we do, life goes on!’ ”

Oh god
, Bailey thought.
We just assumed . . .

“Well, she’s dead now! And that’s on you! All of you!”

“Mom?” Cody looked up at her, his face pleading. “What’s going

on, I don’t understand.”

Nobody did, apparently. It was the noisiest Bailey had ever heard

the crowd on Halloween night, confusion rippling back and forth,

ricochets of resentment. It surged with unease, like an animal on the verge of being spooked.

[292] WE, THE FORTUNATE BEREAVED

How could this have happened? They’d found a blouse with

Angela’s blood; two days later, two of her fingers out by the highway.

Then nothing. No word, no sign, no more evidence at all. Days

passed, then weeks turning to months. The conclusion came by

gradual default, spreading from person to person like a cold: The

poor young woman was surely dead, the rest of her sure to be found someday.

But why the subterfuge? Why the cake, to hide something in

plain sight . . . unless Melanie didn’t want to set out something that she feared someone else might recognize. But if that was it . . .

No. No, the notion was too vile to entertain.

Cody tugged at her coat sleeve. “I want to go home.”

By now, Melanie had managed to struggle around the end of

the front row, circling to get to the scarecrow while pushing past the mayor, who must have thought he was helping by trying to stop

someone he believed was making a scene. Melanie dropped beside

the bundle of cloth and straw and burlap, touching it tenderly, as if anything more might drive her sister away, and it touched her back in recognition.

Bailey didn’t have to hear the woman to know what was coming

next. It would be the questions Melanie had been waiting years to

ask.

Who took you?

Where were you kept all this time?

Who killed you?

And
, you had to consider,
is he here tonight? And was there more
than one?

Though they were head to head, could Melanie even hear what

her sister would say? That was why the quiet of the crowd was so

important. It wasn’t simply reverence or being polite; it was practical, too. Those who would know had told her that the voice of the dead

sounded thin and faraway, as though it emanated from a realm

within the scarecrow rather than from the thing itself.

Abruptly, then, there was no chance of hearing it, no matter

how keen Melanie’s ears, as somewhere close behind, in the packed

and straining crowd, a string of firecrackers went off like a volley BRIAN HODGE [293]

of gunshots. It was all the reason they needed to panic, a surge of bodies pressing forward from behind as people scattered from the

rising cloud of smoke and flashes.

Bailey held Cody tight to her as she took a shoulder hard in the

back and, along with others in the front row, went spilling into the empty space between them and the fencepost. Gifts were scattered or trampled, and she caught sight of Mrs. Hughey trying to snatch up

her husband’s Purple Heart, only to have her forearm snapped under an errant foot.

Worse, far worse, because it was deliberate, and like killing

Angela all over again, was the second pack of firecrackers that an unseen hand lobbed toward the scarecrow. Melanie saw the fuse

spitting and hissing through the air, then it landed on the effigy’s back and erupted in an endless barrage of hot white pops. The first flames danced to life in seconds, then spread, feeding on shirt and straw alike. In moments it was a mass of fire, and Bailey was sure she saw the thing twist and writhe even after Melanie’s hands let it go, unable to beat out the flames, forced to quit by singed palms and the shredding assault of the firecrackers.

Leaving Angela dead and gone for good, and her secrets with

her.

Bailey got to both feet, pulling Cody with her, to her, and moved

to the other side of fencepost, so they wouldn’t be squashed against it. Cody wanted to go home, of
course
he wanted to go home, but for now they might as well have been trapped on an island, keeping to

this makeshift tree in a patch of green, surrounded by the surging sea of an unruly mob.

Close enough to spit at, the scarecrow continued to burn, its head and limbs ablaze, its back a scorched black cavity. Just as close, but out of reach, Drew’s flannel shirt and the Pinewood Derby car were crushed into the ground by lurching feet and sprawling hands.

And it seemed as if all of Dunhaven wallowed before her.

She looked out over them with growing loathing, this town

that hid its secrets so well that captors and murderers could walk in confidence across the placid face of normal life. Wearing masks not just on Halloween, but every day of the year. Had she smiled at

[294] WE, THE FORTUNATE BEREAVED

them at the market? Chatted with them in line for coffee? Let them go first in traffic? Had she taught their children in school, or driven past their homes never suspecting what may have been chained in

their basements?

She hadn’t known, hadn’t
wanted
to know, and now felt as guilty as any of them.

I want to go home too
, she thought, only now grasping the truth that home was someplace she’d never been.

From out in the street, Bailey heard a man’s voice yelling above

the rest, then another, and another, and realized they were shouting about Troy. Whether instigation or ignorance, it didn’t matter. The thought spread effortlessly, viral: It was always the boyfriends, always the husbands. Living out there all alone . . . who knew what he got up to? They would set it right.

Good god, were they even thinking straight? Were they capable of

it anymore? Troy had been looked at, investigated, cleared. She knew his home, knew his grief. But none of that mattered. Not tonight.

Tonight was a night for scapegoats.

Bailey fished the phone from her pocket to call him, but after the first couple of rings, got only his voice mail. Tried again; the same.

Turning in early,
he’d texted.
Thought I’d be OK with this tonite
but now I just want it over.

Yet again; the same.

Please answer,
she begged.
Please. Please wake up
. . .

As she clutched her phone in one hand and her fatherless son

in the other, confined by the mob to this tiny plot of earth, she

remembered the adage she’d told Troy earlier in the day:
Hel is other
people
. All around her, they seemed so intent on proving it.

The scarecrow was ash now, nothing left to burn.

Finally she understood what had eluded them all for 162 years:

why there was only ever one. If Hell was other people, then the dead had already escaped it, and so maybe coming back through was, for

them, no privilege. Maybe it was a curse.

N

BRIAN HODGE [295]

Brian Hodge
is the award-winning author of eleven novels spanning horror, crime, and historical. He’s also written over one hundred

short stories, novelettes, and novellas, and five full-length collections.

His first collection,
The Convulsion Factory
, was ranked by critic Stanley Wiater among the 113 best books of modern horror. Recent

or forthcoming works include
No Law Left Unbroken
, a collection of crime fiction;
The Weight of the Dead
and
Whom the Gods Would
Destroy
, both standalone novellas; a newly revised hardcover edition of
Dark Advent
, his early post-apocalyptic epic; and his latest novel,
Leaves of Sherwood
.

Hodge lives in Colorado, where more of everything is in the

works. He also dabbles in music, sound design, and photography;

loves everything about organic gardening except the thieving

squirrels; and trains in Krav Maga, grappling, and kickboxing, which are of no use at all against the squirrels.

Connect through his web site (www.brianhodge.net) or on

Facebook (www.facebook.com/brianhodgewriter), and follow his

blog, Warrior Poet (www.warriorpoetblog.com).

a

ALL HALLOWS IN

THE HIGH HILLS

B

Brenda Cooper

Mel picked up the box of glass. Butterflies, flowers, and birds lay nestled inside of old newspapers he’d been saving all summer, picking up the freebies from people’s driveways whenever it was clear they weren’t actually going to read them. He knelt carefully, as worried about his right knee as about the box. “Everything’s breakable,” he muttered as he carried his work carefully out to the battered old VW

van sitting beside his equally battered workshop.

Two more trips and he had secured a second box of glass and two

fists of long metal rebar. He made a third trip to retrieve his coffee, a late afternoon cup laced with the tiniest bit of whiskey as medicine for his sore muscles.

In spite of the autumn leaves on the oak beside his driveway, a

spear of bright sun forced him to pull his sunglasses off of the rearview before he drove out onto Laguna Canyon Road. Even though it wasn’t yet four in the afternoon, he passed a woman with three costumed

kids in tow. A princess hung onto a small indeterminate superhero’s hand and a pirate swaggered behind the others. He wouldn’t be

missing them: it had been years since any trick-or-treaters made it all the way to his door. Over a year since anyone had visited at all.

Justine had helped him unpack when he’d returned from the festival summer-before-last.

[299]

[300] ALL HALLOWS IN THE HIGH HILLS

Five minutes later he pulled up in the artist’s loading area of

the Sawdust Festival grounds. There were only two other vehicles

there—the night manager’s battered green truck and Paulette’s little Pinto, which might be the last Pinto on the road anywhere on the

West Coast. The ugly rattle-canned deathtrap had been young when

he was young, and it was possible it looked even worse than he did.

Given that it had a flat front tire, maybe it felt worse, too.

He sat and finished his coffee, contemplating the tall walls and

the fancy sign, now wedged with red and gold for the upcoming

holidays. He’d been part of the festival for so long that the constant changes in the festival signage and walls had become the way he

marked years. Some people did this by how old their children were, but he never had a family. There had been cats, but now he only fed the feral ones outside, afraid he’d die and leave a pet behind.

He used to have a key to the festival grounds, but now he was

forced to pull the bell-string, which rang the night manager’s

cellphone rather than ringing a real bell.

At least Jack showed up in just a few minutes, opening the door,

and offering a wide smile under his strange multi-colored eyes,

which always appeared to Mel to be full of the blues and greens of the sea, touched by the gold of the sun, and full of mischief. “Was about to give up on you.”

“I never miss opening day,” Mel retorted. “I’m just old and slow.”

He opened the van door. “Care to help?”

Jack laughed. “Of course.”

Even though Mel liked Jack, who wasn’t quite into middle age,

and seemed to be around whenever anyone needed help, he didn’t

quite trust him. An air of oddness clung to him, something more

than just his strange eyes. He had quite a reputation with the ladies, although he seemed to love all of them—young and old, thin and fat, pretty and not so pretty—and they all loved him in return. Mel had never quite understood this, and didn’t quite approve of it, either.

At least Jack was strong. He managed one box and all of the rebar, and still had to stop twice to let Mel catch up to him as they made their way along the wide paths to Mel’s small booth huddled between two bigger ones near the back. The sawdust had all been laid down

BRENDA COOPER [301]