Still, perhaps to comfort himself, Stuart began reciting such a litany, and visualizing the boy projectile vomiting like Regan in The Exorcist, or…
Joan Crawford.
Not the soul-withering old bat from the only horror movie his ma had ever watched—Whatever Happened to Baby Jane—but Pedro’s fat-ass Siamese housecat.
On the rare occasions when she broke jail, as Petey called it, she invariably found a patch of grass, ate her fill, then waited till she was caught and thoroughly chastised before unloading the green slop on the carpet, robbing Pedro of any hope he would ever again see his security deposit.
“Big, fat roaches from the cafeteria floor after last lunch,” Stuart said, as he dropped to his knees and started ripping up grass, “all full of whatever that Tuesday pudding stuff is…”
He stuffed the grass in DeShaun’s mouth and pushed some down his throat, where it would tickle him, and with any luck…
Stuart had gotten about four big wads of the dying lawn in when DeShaun bolted up and heaved a painful-sounding retch. Stuart smacked him on the back, harder still when the second heave failed to expel anything.
Stuart stood and battered DeShaun’s back with both open hands, like he remembered seeing Gordon Liu do while training “iron palm style” in some Shaolin kung fu flick.
DeShaun awkwardly worked himself to all fours and blasted out a massive wad of vegetation, mucus, fungus and what must have been the pizza they had shared earlier that day.
Stuart continued to pound. “Veiny eyeballs, served in a room-temp soup of bull urine, lard, and French dress—”
“Dude, okay!” DeShaun croaked as he collapsed to his side in a coughing fit. Stuart went to the garden hose rolled up beside the lawn shed, opened the flow, and dragged it to his friend. DeShaun drank gingerly between coughs.
* * * *
A sensation of movement and pain; her hair being yanked again. Jill’s vision returned, revealing the ground racing under her torso and legs. Mad laughter stabbed into her ears, joining Candace’s ever hoarser scream.
“Mask for Canniss!” said Everett.
“Please, no Everett!” Candace wouldn’t run away; wouldn’t abandon her friend. “I like her!”
“No, Candace… Guh…” Jill hadn’t even the strength to finish. “Go, Can…”
A rapid-fire, rhythmic thumping drummed the ground, and Everett’s hand was ripped from her hair. A cry of surprise escaped him as he was driven back.
“Get him, Bravo!” Candace shouted.
Jill raised her head and saw the dog, the very very good dog, mauling Everett, snapping, biting, shaking, barking, growling with ferocity to equal the skinwalkers—and not particularly fazed, not yet, by the silver blade that Everett plunged into his shoulder hock.
Bravo only grew more ferocious, tearing off the face and skull Everett wore, then snapping into Everett’s real face, tearing open his cheeks.
Everett stopped laughing. Instead he cried in terror and confusion. “No!” he said. “Bad doggie!”
He scrambled for the knife handle in Bravo’s shoulder, found it, yanked it free.
“Everett, Stop!” Candace cried. “Get away now, Bravo!”
Jill was shocked back to her senses by the dog’s yelping. Everett stabbed him again. Where, she could not see.
She remembered the jar she had grabbed in the barn, ran to it, picked it up. In her fatigued arms, it weighed a hundred pounds.
She stumbled toward the melee, grateful that Everett’s back was to her. She raised the jar in both hands.
Everett sensed her and swiveled to thrust the knife into her for the second time, piercing her stomach.
Jill brought the jar down on the walking horror show with all she had left, falling into the attack.
The shattering sound gave way to a great whooshing shockwave. It blew Jill’s hair back like a jet turbine.
Everett could no longer laugh, for he had to shriek, as the contents of the jar, some kind of powder or grain, spread down his body from top to bottom, adhering like paint from a can dropped from stage rafters.
The substance smoked and sparked like a fuse, instantly erasing all it touched.
Jill crawled backwards. She had barely enough strength to hold her face up, to watch the jar’s malignant contents fulfill its purpose.
Even with his head gone, the rest of the maniac danced and spun in confusion, batting at the material with fast-vanishing hands and arms, until the substance burned its way down to his bare feet and disintegrated them as well, along with the weeds beneath him and a good layer of soil beneath that.
Then it simply winked out.
From his head to his toes, Everett Geelens had smoked away to nothing.
Something large loped off into the dark woods. Aura was nowhere to be seen.
Jill checked on Candace and found her on her knees with her hands over her face, once again crying for her brother.
Chapter 30
The Evil Within
O’Herlihy grunted with fury, closing his choking grip on Bernard’s esophagus.
“It’s your body, not his, Abe. Let Bernard up now.” It sounded like simple mild admonishment; good advice.
O’Herlihy tried to stuff the mushrooms into Bernard’s mouth, but could not open his—make that McGlazer’s—fingers.
“That’s right, good. Now, just let him up before you hurt him,” she said this as she casually leaned to her side to pick up one of the burning magnesium ribbons. “Here, focus on this.”
O’Herlihy covered his eyes with his hands, emitting a cry of helpless anguish. Bernard rolled away, sputtering and coughing.
“Abe. Put your hands down. You need to see this.”
Trembling, McGlazer’s hands came away from his face, revealing rapidly blinking, bleary brown eyes.
“Look!” Stella demanded.
McGlazer brought his thumb and forefingers to his eyelids and held them open.
O’Herlihy’s enraged scream became McGlazer’s cry of effort, louder and louder, echoing and amplified in the chamber.
As the grunt faded, so did O’Herlihy.
Reverend McGlazer collapsed onto his face. Stella stood and pulled Bernard to his feet. “Help me with Abe!”
She wrangled her two burly menfolk to the top of the stone steps, where she was relieved to see Stuart tending DeShaun, now upright and lucid. “Whatever you did for him, you need to do it again.”
* * * *
“County sheriff!” called Hudson. “Anyone hurt?”
“We’re okay,” Jill responded. “Sort of.”
Bravo broke from the embrace he shared with her and Candace to meet the rescue party, barking assurances.
Hudson appeared, aimed his .44 from left to right, and holstered it. Behind him was Yoshida, essaying a weary wave as he slumped in exhaustion.
Then Dennis, the double barrel over his shoulder, his blood-spattered face going from worry to relief as he went to the girls. “Here to save the day.”
Jill wasn’t sure what to do—but Candace led the way. The little girl ran to meet Dennis, hugging him hard.
Jill joined them.
* * * *
The quintet limped their way to the church sanctuary. Once the lights were on, DeShaun and McGlazer were made to lie on pews, their heads elevated on hymnals. They were given cup after cup of water to clear the spores from their systems and restore their strength. Stella prayed over them, and Bernard even bowed his head, if only to be doing something for—and with—his beloved wife.
It was nearly twenty minutes before either of them could reasonably speak. DeShaun smiled at his friend and clasped his hand. “Man, you pulled me right outta the deep fryer.”
“Blood brothers,” said Stuart.
McGlazer sat up, his hair a comical mess. “I don’t know whether I want to
believe I just came off a bender or did internal battle with one of our town founders.”
“The latter,” said Stella. “You’re still a good many years sober.”
“There sure was some corny stuff coming out of your mouth,” Stuart said.
“Glad you’re back, Reverend,” Bernard said, and shook McGlazer’s hand.
The reverend drank another cup of water and eased back on the pew with a groan, grateful to be back in his own world of substance and sobriety.
Bernard took both Stella’s hands in his, wearing an expression so earnest it reminded the boys of Bill Paxton.
“Stella, my love,” he began. “I am so, so sorry for being a bug butt.”
DeShaun’s mouth squinched up as he stifled a laugh. Stuart put his hand over his friend’s mouth to help.
“I treated you like garbage. I got so caught up in this tainted candy mystery…I guess I thought it would make me a big famous hero. Like Thomas Rutherford or Arnold Orville Beckman.”
Stella furrowed her brow.
“I’ve taken you for granted for too long, my bride!” Bernard continued. “I don’t ever want to lose you. I can’t! I want us to have a family. I want to adopt Candace.”
All sat stunned.
The big room was so silent that the girl’s name echoed in Stuart’s head like the sweetest-sounding bell.
“Who’s corny now?” McGlazer whispered.
Stella stood. “Bernard? Do you…?”
Bernard rose too. “Yes! As soon as we can!”
“You think she’s okay?” Stuart asked DeShaun. “Candace?”
“Never bet against my dad, dude,” DeShaun assured him. “Or your brother.”
Epilogue
HALLOWEEN NIGHT
Gathered just inside the gates to Saint Saturn Unitarian, the survivors of Ember Hollow’s latest Halloween horrors—most of them bandaged or on crutches—gazed upon Main Street, where the town residents, many in their Sunday best, stood still and solemn on the sidewalks.
Some had painted their faces in exaggerated sad or happy expressions, others in skulls or caricatures of their deceased.
Candace, with the heavily bandaged but smiling Bravo at her side, took Stella’s hand on one side, Stuart’s on the other.
A little hand extended down toward her. Emera, Candace’s sister-to-be, perched on Stella’s hip, smiling and at ease. Bernard stood behind them, one hand on Stella’s shoulder, the other on the shoulder of his friend Abe McGlazer.
Dennis, having rediscovered his inner wiseguy, sat on the lap of his wheelchair-bound best friend Pedro. He and Jill weren’t holding hands again, not yet, but she stood close, and glowed like a moonbeam.
DeShaun proudly and gratefully stood tall beside his father.
At the church and on the street the spectators watched the corner where Shadwell Jeweler sat, just a few buildings down from The Grand Illusion Cinemas. In past years it would have been the towering orange-and-black-striped Uncle Sam dubbed The Night Mayor they were watching for. But not this year.
A whining buzz rose, a sound they had all heard throughout the days of every summer, when Guillermo Trujillo had more business than he could handle working his trade for various clients astride his triple bladed V-Ride mower.
De-bladed for safety, the mower moved at barely a crawl. His two little skull-faced girls stood on the garlanded platform Guillermo had made for them and gave out bread loaves and flowers to the bystanders.
Behind him came a flatbed truck from which a quartet of amateur mariachi performers serenaded one and all with the mournful yet lively strains of a song older than anyone there.
Then six smiling women in colorful dresses, swirling their skirts and waving to children.
Under Guillermo’s leadership, Ember Hollow’s Hispanic community had come forward with a solution to the parade issue. In lieu of the usual outrageous cavalcade of cartoonish creepiness, the parade was a Dia De Los Muertos-themed celebration.
Family and friends mourned and celebrated their loved ones in funeral dress or costume. Anyone could join or exit as they pleased. Memorial placards, photos, papier mache sculptures and favored belongings of the departed were held high.
Mayor Doris Stuyvesant, holding a feathered Mardi Gras-style mask, waved and smiled, mostly with relief, from the sunroof of her limo, driven by top-hatted vampire Hollis.
It was a beautiful understated compromise between the Day of the Dead celebration of the Mexican locals and the Annual Pumpkin Parade. The Bruner folks had picked up the tab for this improvisation. The community and the parade would survive.
The paraders, followed by the crowd, strode past Stella and company, through the gates and into the cemetery to place food, flowers, cards and art on graves celebrating their one-year birthday.
As the line wound its way up the hill and dispersed to various graves, the death of October approached too, and with it, the renewal and strengthening of family bonds.
Acknowledgment
Les Dutcher, in his endless devotion to helping others, has learned a thing or two about the adoption system. He shared his experience and knowledge to give this story veracity. Likewise, his brother Randy, a lifetime law enforcement officer, was happy to answer legal questions.
My wife, Jennifer, is my Mr. Spock, only she should get top billing. Actually, my job is more like Mr. Scott, or someone who works under him, I guess.
Horror punk bands are the friendliest and most outgoing in music. I’ve been lucky to strike up social media friendships with several. The Karnsteins and Lords of October and great people and great bands. Their music helped set the tone for much of this story.
The people at Lyrical are the best ever. Many thanks to Michaela, James and Lauren!
Sneak Peek
Don’t miss the next scarifying chiller in the
Haunted Hollow Chronicles by Patrick C. Greene
DARK HARVEST
Coming soon from Kensington Publishing Corp!
About the Author
Photo by Scott Treadway
Patrick C. Greene is a lifelong horror fan who lives in the mountains of western North Carolina. He is the author of the novels Progeny and The Crimson Calling, as well as numerous short stories featured in collections and anthologies.
Visit him at www.fearwriter.wordpress.com.
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