The Box Set of Hauntings and Horrors

by Jeff DeGordick

  "Well?" Tommy said. He leaned forward expectantly, like he was ready to go on an adventure, despite the one he just came back from.

  Carmen looked at him with a flash of fire in her eyes. "If you tell Dad, I'll kill you, deal?"

  Her threat didn't seem to faze him as he jovially nodded his head up and down.

  She made sure they were both bundled up for the cold, then she stood at the front door, holding it open a crack and peering out into the night.

  "What are you waiting for?" Tommy said impatiently from behind her.

  She pulled back from the door. "Nothing." She opened it and reluctantly stepped out of the house. They took a similar route to the one she had taken on the way to the school. Breanna's house wasn't far from there, and they would need to head through downtown to get there. There were less cars driving by on the roads now, and as they got close to the main streets, they saw fewer people walking around. Stores would be closing soon, and everyone who didn't still have business to do was probably safely hunkered in their homes or out searching for Jeremy.

  A gust of wind picked up as they hurried down Forester Street, and this one seemed to cut through their clothes. Tommy shivered. Carmen looked around, expecting an owl to be staring at her or some strange sensation to befall them.

  "Do you hear that?" Carmen asked, stopping suddenly.

  "Hear what?"

  A gentle breeze rumbled through a set of bushes lining the edge of a park next to them. Tree branches swayed from side to side, and the soft buzzing of bugs' wings hitting streetlights drifted through the air. A car horn honked briefly about half a mile away.

  Carmen glanced around. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was wrong. She gripped her brother's hand, squeezing it too tightly.

  "Ow!" he cried.

  But she didn't hear him. The darkness encapsulated them, and Carmen realized that they were standing in a patch of shadow between streetlights. She pulled her brother forward, finding refuge in the muted glow.

  A scampering of little feet near the bushes. A flap of a bird's wings overhead. The creak of a stop sign as a stiff wind twisted it.

  Tommy peered into the dark. Outside the protection of the streetlight, it was nearly pitch-black—abnormally so.

  There was a thin space between the bottom of the bushes and the ground at the edge of the park that was shrouded in opaque shadow. Carmen felt something from there, almost as if the darkness and the cold emanated from the space.

  A flash of glowing eyes appeared in the black.

  Carmen jumped.

  The stray cat cried and ran out of the bushes, darting down the street.

  What was going on? Carmen couldn't figure it out. And whether he was influenced by her agitation or not, Tommy started to feel uneasy, too. He felt the pressure relieve from his hand as Carmen calmed down, and he took a deep breath.

  "Let's go," Carmen said suddenly, not wanting to linger any longer.

  Tommy turned back to the direction they were heading in from looking at the cat, and out of the corner of his eye he saw something streak by above him. He looked up.

  It was out of sight now, but for a second, he swore he saw something fly by in front of the full moon. It didn't look like a bird or anything else of the sort. It almost seemed like... a person. But that was impossible... wasn't it?

  He gulped. "I think I saw—"

  "Let's go!" she repeated frantically. She pulled on his arm harder and this time his legs were forced into motion. They moved down the street almost in a jog and came up to Rosedale. And though they moved closer to civilization, the heavy, negative feeling plaguing Carmen didn't go away; it was like a cloak of foreboding hung heavy on her shoulders.

  In the distance, away from downtown, she could see high-powered flashlights cutting through the darkness in a faraway stretch of woods. "Jeremy!" could faintly be heard above the swell of the wind. But Carmen tried to stop paying attention to her surroundings anymore, adopting a tunnel vision along the path toward Breanna's house.

  They cut through the town square in the middle of downtown, and there were still a few people walking around. Most of the stores had already closed up for the night, but a few were still open. They passed a few townsfolk they recognized, and they exchanged a brief hello, though Carmen could tell the looks on all of their faces were strained for some reason.

  When they arrived at Breanna's house, the two of them huddled close to the front door as Carmen knocked. She looked over her shoulder at the dark and didn't see anyone else in sight. If someone was prowling around, waiting to snatch someone up, this would be the place to do it.

  The door swung open and Carmen backed up with a gasp.

  "Oh, sorry," Breanna said. She grabbed something off a table next to the door and held it out to her.

  "It's okay, thanks," Carmen said. She took the clipped stack of papers from Breanna and held them tightly to her chest. "Sorry for being late today."

  "It's no problem. I'm just glad you could make it. Pretty crazy what's going on, huh?"

  "Yeah."

  "I'm almost sad to be going to the cottage for the weekend. It would be kinda preoccupying not knowing what's happening here."

  "I'm sure they'll find him," Carmen said, though in the moment she didn't mean her words at all.

  Breanna's hands were clinging tightly to the edge of the door, and Carmen saw an uneasy look on her face. "Well, bye," she said hastily, and she slammed the door shut.

  Carmen and Tommy took a step back, surprised.

  "What was that about?" he asked.

  "I don't know," Carmen replied, staring at the door. Something strange was going on in this town, and she thought that it had something more to do than just with the little boy's disappearance. She turned. "Come on, we gotta get back before dad knows we're gone."

  They traced their way back, cutting through downtown to get home, and when they reached the center of it, they heard a rumbling of voices and saw a waving of lights in the distance.

  Down the street, coming from the wooded residential areas, a crowd of townspeople marched in their direction. Some of the group broke off onto other streets, but the majority of them carried on toward the town square. Various members of the crowd shouted Jeremy's name as they searched around in every nook and cranny.

  Carmen shrunk back, fearing that their father would be in the crowd and spot them. She pulled Tommy into the doorway of a nearby shop, peeking around the corner at the approaching group.

  A car slowly rolled up the street, pulling to a stop by the curb next to them. The window rolled down.

  It took Carmen a few moments to realize that it had, then she slowly turned and saw her father sitting in his police cruiser, staring at her and Tommy. His face was painted with his displeasure.

  Her mouth fell open, trying to sort through the words to say in her defense.

  The search party entered the town square and suddenly all of the streetlights flickered. Everyone stopped and looked around. Then the lights went out completely.

  Darkness surrounded them from every direction, and the only illumination came from their flashlights. Murmurs rippled through the dark, and a growing sense of fear permeated them.

  One of the townspeople shrieked.

  Everyone spread out in a panic, trying to figure out what had caused the shock.

  Glowing orange lights appeared in the middle of the square. They came in strange, crazed shapes, like leering, taunting faces. They lit up one right after the other in rapid succession until a huge pile of glowing orange eyes stared at the townspeople. The beams of their flashlights illuminated the pile and they gasped at the enormity of it. A small mountain of carved jack-o'-lanterns with evil and demented faces filled the square.

  Robert's jaw dropped from inside the cruiser.

  Fear clutched the townspeople, and bad memories of surrounding the old woman's house on the hill with jack-o'-lanterns haunted them.

  "It's the witch!" someone shrieked. A man ran out in front o
f the others at the edge of the square, thrusting his arm toward the pile of jack-o'-lanterns. "She's back!"

  The townspeople shrunk away in fear at his words. They were illogical, because the woman had been innocent, and they all knew that. And now she was dead. But all the same, his words clung to their fearful, primitive hearts.

  "And she didn't just take Jeremy!" the man cried. "She's going to take all of our children!"

  Jail Talk

  Carmen cut off the crust on Tommy's sandwich, then she put the knife in the sink. "Come on, you're going to be late for school!" she yelled.

  A few seconds later, heavy footsteps came charging down the hallway to the front of the house. "I'm ready!" Tommy exclaimed. He was already dressed up in his coat, his boots, and he had his backpack slung over his shoulders.

  "Impressive response time," Carmen said. She wrapped up the sandwich in saran wrap and put it in his Iron Man lunchbox, closing it up and stuffing it into his backpack for him. She grabbed her own backpack and her purse, then she put on her shoes and coat. "Ready to go?"

  "Yep," Tommy replied.

  She opened the door and the cold air of the morning greeted them, and though the ominous night was gone, the feeling still remained, like something was off. They still hadn't found little Jeremy through the night, to her knowledge, and she wondered how the townspeople would react today in the sobering morning light.

  But Tommy didn't seem to be phased; no matter what happened, his boundless optimism shone through, and he seemed oblivious to the world around him as he skipped along the sidewalk to the bus stop. Carmen stood by his side and waited for the bus to pick him up before she took a city bus to the college. Sometimes their father would give Tommy a ride to school if the timing worked out, or sometimes he would wait with him for the bus to pick him up, but those occasions seemed to be getting rarer these days.

  Time seemed to pass at a crawl, and Carmen glanced up and down the road for the school bus. She checked the time on her phone.

  "It should be here by now, shouldn't it?" Tommy said, looking up at her.

  Carmen frowned. "Yeah, it's already 8:45. I'm going to be late."

  They waited a few more minutes, but the bus still didn't show up.

  "What do we do?" Tommy asked.

  "Come on," she said, thinking of something. She took his arm and pulled him up the street. "We'll take a city bus. There should be one hitting the stop at Rosedale in a minute or two." They jogged along the sidewalk for a couple blocks until they got to the bus stop. Cars rolled by on the road, and in the distance behind the sporadic line they could see the tall and lumbering bus rolling down the street. It stopped next to them and opened its doors, and Carmen and Tommy climbed into it.

  She said hi to the driver, but he only gave her an unimpressed look. Carmen furrowed her brow and reached into her pocket for some change. She sorted through a handful of coins and dropped the correct fare in the slot and turned to the aisle with her brother.

  The bus was half-filled, and all of them seemed to be in a glum mood. Carmen didn't blame them considering the circumstances, but it seemed to be something more than that; there was just a general sense of malaise and irritation etched into most of their faces. They both tried nodding or saying hello to some of them, but they didn't get anything more than a terse nod back.

  They sat down in an empty row by the back doors as the bus lurched forward and sped down the road. Looking out the window, it seemed like a normal day in the town with everyone going to work or running errands. When the bus came up to the intersection on Rosedale and Forester, Carmen pulled the stop request cord and the bus screeched to an abrupt halt.

  As they got up, Carmen yelled her thanks to the driver. Glaring eyes were all she saw on the rearview mirror. They left the bus and it sped off, leaving them standing in the cold and Carmen confused.

  "What's wrong?" Tommy asked.

  "I don't know," she said. "Do people seem a bit... off to you today?"

  Tommy thought about it. "Hmm, I don't know..."

  She shrugged it off and they walked down the road at a brisk pace, still a couple blocks away from the school. But as they got closer and the school came into view behind a row of tall trees, they saw a strange and unexpected sight.

  A large crowd had gathered in front of the school, all marching around in a circle and holding picket signs.

  "What the...?" Carmen muttered.

  "Higher wages now!" someone from the crowd shouted.

  "That's Mrs. Andrews!" Tommy said, pointing. "And there's my gym teacher, Mr. Weston."

  "They're on strike?" Carmen said. "I never heard about teachers going on strike today."

  Their signs were filled with statements demanding higher pay and better treatment. And the tone of not only their demeanor and speech, but even the way the lettering on their signs had been written and slanted, seemed aggressive.

  "What's going on here?" Carmen asked one of the teachers marching by.

  The older woman scowled at her. "Higher wages!" she shouted into her face.

  Carmen took a shocked step back.

  There were a few parents with children showing up to the school and then quickly turning around after they saw what was going on. Some of them milled about to watch the demonstration, and Carmen tried her luck with them.

  "Teachers' strike," a young father told her, holding his son in front of him by the shoulders. "Citywide."

  "Citywide? Like, all teachers?" Carmen asked.

  The man nodded. "The college, too."

  "But why all of a sudden?"

  "Beats me," he said. "Enjoy your day off, I guess. Not for me though; I've got to get to work." He looked down at his son. "Now I just gotta figure out what to do with this brat for the day." The look on his face as he stared down at his son couldn't have been interpreted as anything other than anger. "Let's go," he said, yanking his son away from the crowd.

  Carmen was speechless.

  "Okay! Okay!" Robert called to the agitated crowd standing in the lobby of the police station. There was a good dozen and a half of them that were pushing their way forward in the small space, shouting and demanding answers. "I'm going to give a statement at noon!" he called over the ruckus. "At noon!"

  His deputy and officers were holding the crowd back in front of him.

  "What's being done to find him?" one man demanded.

  "We've still got search parties sweeping the town!" Robert announced. "And we're going to keep them going until he's found, I promise you that!"

  "That's not good enough!" the man shouted back.

  Their back-and-forth struggle went on for another ten minutes until the officers finally managed to settle the crowd down enough to push them out of the station.

  "Lock the doors," Robert said to Don.

  "But Boss..."

  "Lock 'em!" he snarled. "Just for fifteen minutes, so we can all clear our heads."

  Don nodded, looking at the chief carefully, then he went to the front and locked the doors. Some of the crowd outside was still loitering, a few peering through the glass suspiciously at the officers.

  Robert retreated to his office, plunking down into his chair and leaning on the desk, resting his forehead against the surface. His head was pounding; he had a headache all morning.

  His phone began ringing. The sounds of more phones ringing drifted through the hallway.

  He sighed, then he reached over and picked it up. "Yeah? Uh huh. Not yet." He slammed it down.

  The phone rang again.

  He looked at it with a hateful eye, then he turned his head away and ignored it.

  Don spoke on the phone in the lobby to someone reporting a robbery. He took down notes, then he looked up quickly when he heard banging on the front doors of the station.

  Carmen and Tommy had worked their way through the crowd and slapped on the glass after pulling on the doors and finding them locked.

  Don held up a finger telling them to wait while he finished up his call. He put the pho
ne down and walked over to them, unlocking the doors. "What are you guys doing here?" he asked the kids as they came in.

  "School's canceled," Carmen said.

  "The teachers are on strike!" Tommy added.

  "On strike?" Don was confused. He hadn't heard about this.

  The two of them walked down the hallway to their father's office. Carmen knocked on the door and saw him groggily rouse from his rest on the desk. Strangely, he didn't seem surprised to see them. His face looked tired, like he hadn't gotten sleep in a week.

  "Hey," he said simply.

  "Are you all right?" Carmen asked, concerned.

  He grumbled something that was close to a yes as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Neck's killing me for some reason, but otherwise I'm fine. Why aren't you in school?"

  "All the teachers are on strike," Carmen said.

  Before he could react, he rubbed his neck more vigorously, squeezing his eyes shut like he was in pain.

  "Are you sure you're okay, Dad?" Carmen asked, stepping around the desk to him.

  "I'm fine, Sweetpea," he said, lifting her hand and kissing the back of it. "Don't you worry."

  The phone rang.

  Robert just stared at it.

  "Are you going to answer it?" Tommy asked.

  He grumbled. "Ughh, I better..." He reluctantly leaned forward and snatched the phone off the cradle. He said hello, then he pressed it against his chest and looked at his kids. "Look, I'm real busy here today. Carmen, Sweetie, why don't you take your brother somewhere for the day? It's probably going to be a late day for me."

  She nodded. "Yeah, sure."

  "Just make sure you stay safe. Don't go anywhere by yourselves."

  Carmen agreed, and Tommy looked at his father as he turned his attention to the phone call. Tommy thought of going up and hugging him, telling him that he missed him, but as he saw his father pour his attention into the phone call and not give him a second glance, he faltered, then he turned for the door.