There’s only one way to make it all go away, Jordie.
They were so real now, so much a part of what he’d done, so much of what he was–
They’ll discover that the meds have balanced you, Jordie. The memories will never go away again.
He opened his eyes and said in sobbing awe: “I did these things?”
Oh, yes, Jordie, you did them all. And you’ll never forget. Unless you do what I say…
He quickly followed the Voice’s instructions. First he left a message, gouging his wrist with his teeth until enough blood flowed to write on the wall with. Then he fashioned what he needed from strips of the single sheet on the bed. One end of the makeshift rope he secured around the faucet of the sink, and then he sat on the floor and tied the other end around his neck.
Quickly, Jordie, before they find you and make you remember forever.
He had a momentary lapse of nerve – and the remembrance of what he’d done came rushing back into his head – all of it at once, like a large-screen movie, the silence in the house, the smell and taste of blood, the bits of flesh under his fingernails–
Now, Jordie. Just fall over.
He did as he was told.
Good.
And then a miraculous thing happened. The horror movie in his head was turned off. He was on the top of Josh’s roof again, at the apex, making windmill motions in the air with his arms and shouting, “Will you laugh? Will you laugh?”
The day was bright and sunny, and he felt warm air rush by his face as he jumped, shouting gleefully, hearing the whoops of disbelief and wonder from his friends, and then he hit the ground–
Chapter Forty-Six
The doorbell rang.
As Kathy Marks hurried to answer, it rang again, twice, insistent, with a murmur of voices behind it.
“Coming!” she called out.
She opened the door to another gaggle of costumed children. This group was composed of three pirates, with appropriate black buccaneer hats bearing skull and crossbones, blood-red scarves knotted around their necks and cutlasses. One of them had a plastic knife clenched in his teeth.
“Aaargh! Trick or treat!” the other two shouted.
Kathy smiled, and dipped into her black plastic cauldron filled with candy. The pirates greedily watched the booty into their bags.
“Thank you!” they cried, sounding very much like children as they bounded off her porch, making way for a mixed group of space aliens and witches behind them.
There was a lull after this bunch, and Kathy folded her arms against the chill and leaned against the open door. The night was perfect Halloween – cold and crisp, with a gibbous moon rising over the houses across the street. There were pumpkins everywhere, carved and lit, faces alive, faint breeze stirring their fires within. Every porch light was on, and, because this was Orangefield, many houses sported more than the usual window decorations of skeletons, broomstick-borne witches and black cats – most were lit with orange bulbs across their gutters, and two were involved in their annual battle to outdo one another, with full-size monsters – Dracula on one lawn, the Mummy on his neighbor’s – guarding their homes. The street was alive with marching costumed children, mostly in bunches, their adult chaperones safely warm in vehicles at the curb; there was a veritable caravan of cars, minivans and SUVs crawling up one side of the street and down the next. Distant cries of “Trick or treat!” wafted through the air like falling autumn leaves.
A perfect Halloween.
But Kathy still couldn’t get Annabeth Turner off her mind.
Shivering, she closed the door and went through her neatly furnished living room into her small, tidy kitchen, punching the girl’s number again on her wall phone and waiting while it rang. She was about to hang up after ten rings when a click on the other end announced that someone had picked it up.
“Hello?” Kathy said hopefully into the receiver.
“Wha…? Whoosit?”
It was Annabeth’s mother, obviously drunk. “Mrs. Turner, this is Kathy Marks–”
“Tol’ you stay ’way! No damn social services–”
Fearing the woman would hang up, she interrupted her: “Mrs. Turner, is Annabeth home?”
“Who? Don’ know. Mus’ be a dream…” As if coming to her senses, she added, “Tol’ you no social–”
Kathy hung up the phone.
At that moment she decided she had to make sure the girl was all right.
She was suddenly sure that protecting Annabeth Turner was what she had been waiting for all these years.
She stood looking at the phone for a moment, something dancing at the edges of her mind, and absently rubbed at her left forearm.
Fainting impressed there, mostly hidden by years of scarring, were the words, which had been carved with an opened paper clip many years ago, an act which she didn’t remember:
THREE WILL SHOW THE WAY
She threw on a coat, and filled the candy cauldron to the brim with all the candy she had bought. Leaving now, at the height of trick-or-treating, was sacrilegious, and she could expect her house to be at least egged, if not shaving-creamed or worse. But she taped a hastily written note to the front of the cauldron and set it up on a planter stand on the porch after locking the front door. The note read: Take Just One, Please!
She had no doubt the candy would be gone, and quickly, when that note was ignored – but it was the best she could do.
She had some trouble getting out of her driveway – a minivan was blocking it, and the driver nowhere to be seen.
But then she appeared, dragging a wailing bat-costumed boy of about five after her, shouting, “I told you, eight o’clock! You have enough candy!”
She pushed him, still wailing, into the van and drove off.
The night was alive. Things seemed a little more frantic this year, a little more on edge, a little more electric than usual. Maybe it was the cold coming on the heels of the earlier October warmth. There was a meanness in the air that normally wasn’t present. Kathy felt a prickling in her skin, as if the sky was alive with black autumn, with Halloween itself.
There were lights from pumpkins, porches and decorations everywhere along the few blocks she had to navigate to the main road. A group of teens, who seemed to be talking on a street corner, suddenly turned when she stopped at the STOP sign and, cackling, lobbed eggs at her car. Two eggs hit the passenger side window and stayed there, like yellow eyes. She swerved, cursing herself for doing so – they were only eggs, for heaven’s sake – but the look on their faces, pinched, almost malevolent, made her step on the gas and speed away. She heard them hoot after her, and watched them, in the rearview mirror, physically attack the car behind her as it stopped, smearing eggs over the windshield and climbing up onto its roof.
She kept a little above the speed limit after that, until she entered the Turner’s neighborhood.
Things were pretty much the same here as on her own street – except for the Turner house, which was dark, unlit. Already there were long lines of shaving cream across the front windows and siding, and the mailbox was covered with broken eggs. As Kathy got out of the car she saw a little girl, dressed as a princess with tiara and gold slippers, standing in the street, crying. At her feet was a dropped sack spilling candy.
Kathy took a step toward the girl and as if out of nowhere a woman appeared, shouting, “Get away from her!”
Kathy froze as the woman grabbed the girl with one hand, scooped up the spilled bag with the other, and hustled both off down the street, leaving a small scattered pile of candy bars and tiny candy boxes behind.
Somewhere a dog howled, long and mournful.
The moon, high in the east now, yellow as squash, was occluded by scudding clouds.
Kathy walked to the Turner’s front door, stepping over a broken pumpkin and an abandoned bicycle wheel.
A convertible full of teenagers roared by, shouting abuse. A line of eggs flew to Kathy’s right, peppering the already vandalized house.
Kathy put her head into the darkened entry, and said, “Hello?”
A cat, fat and dark orange, hissed and ran out past her, into the night.
From somewhere in the back of the house, beyond the stairway to the second floor, came a mournful sound, a miniature of the dog’s howl she had heard.
She stepped into the house, nudging aside a lopsided pile of newspapers which blocked the hallway with her foot. The pile collapsed, papers spilling like playing cards.
The pained sound came again.
“Ohhhh.”
“Mrs. Turner, it’s Kathy Marks. I’m in your house.”
“Ohhhhhh.”
Kathy slowly walked down the hallway, passing the living room, which was filled with deep shadows – furniture at odd angles, boxes that looked as if they had never been unpacked.
The sound came again from the kitchen.
Kathy stepped into the dimly lit room. There was a low-wattage bulb under the stove hood which was the only steady illumination. A round ceiling neon flashed once, stayed off. Everything looked orange. There was an open, unlit refrigerator, a door to the backyard, blocked by an open garbage can beside it, the smell of bad eggs and sour milk, a small rectangular kitchen table with a window over it covered with filthy dishes.
On a chair pulled up to the table at an angle facing the room was the slumped figure of Mrs. Turner.
“Ohhhhh…”
Mrs. Turner tried to raise her head but only managed to lift it high enough to moan again. Her face was bleary with drink. She lifted her right hand slightly, trying to reach the nearly empty blue gin bottle which teetered on the edge of the table. There was vomit in a pool on the table and on her left arm, on which she lay her head.
“Ohhhh, dreaming…”
Her right hand fell against the blue bottle, knocking it off the table. It fell but didn’t break, sloshing some of the remaining clear liquid on the dirty floor.
Mr. Turner sent up a louder wail.
Kathy Marks approached. “Mrs. Turner, your daughter…”
“Dreaming!” Mrs. Turner screeched, throwing herself back on the chair and pointing with a wavering right hand out the window behind her. She fell partially forward, now spying the clear bottle on the ground, and pushed her chair violently back, dropping to the floor and scrambling after the remains of the gin.
Out through the window Kathy saw unclear movement in the moonlight: a figure and something under a tree–
The librarian leaned forward, around the moaning figure of Annabeth’s mother, and peered out the window–
“My God–”
Annabeth Turner was trying to kick a chair that supported her aside. A rope suspended her by the neck from a sturdy branch of the tree–
As the librarian watched, the chair fell aside, letting the girl swing free, arms at her sides.
“Annabeth!” Kathy Marks screamed, moving frantically to her right. She pushed aside the garbage can which blocked the back door, knocking it over, spilling fruit peels and used slices of lime. She yanked the door open.
There were three wooden steps down to ground level. The top slat broke, sending her foot through and catching painfully at the ankle. She pulled it out, ignoring pain.
She ran for the girl.
The moon overhead was completely covered by clouds at that moment. The night became darker and colder.
Far off she heard the beginning of a roar, and the ground began to tremble.
Dogs howled as if in unison, and every light in Orangefield, as if on cue, went out.
The night was filled with a hush, followed by an unearthly, keening cry. Overhead the sky became impossibly dark, and a darker shape, boiling out like black ink, began to fill the heavens where stars and the moon had been.
The girl became still.
“Annabeth! No!”
Kathy Marks grabbed Annabeth by her middle and held her up. She was a dead, cold weight. The librarian tried to upright the fallen chair with her foot. Moaning with frustration, she let the girl down and quickly reached down and set the chair aright, then stood on it and took Annabeth in her arms again, lifting her against her own body while she worked at the noose, loosening it then tearing it away from Annabeth’s neck.
She lowered the girl to the ground.
“Annabeth!”
The girl lay cold and still, and the librarian took her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Annabeth, please!”
The girl gave a choking gasp, and looked straight up at the librarian.
“Nothing!” she cried. “I saw nothing but an airless place, a desert! He lied!”
Around them, the keening sound retreated, deeper darkness retreated, the lights in the houses around them blinked back on.
The night was filled with a sudden deathly silence.
The moon slid from behind its clouds.
Not her. You, Kathy. Finally, time to remember.
Kathy Marks gasped, looked around her frantically.
That voice. Like the voice at the library – like a voice she suddenly remembered from so long ago…
Time to finish it, this time, Kathy. Remember…
Memories, which had been locked safely away since she was eleven, began to flood back into her, a jumble of unrelated images, and she gasped again–
Don’t you remember, Kathy? Remember it all now…
It all came screaming back at her, suddenly sharp and clear, as if the door to a locked room had been kicked open.
A cold Halloween, colder than she ever remembered…
She ate her cold cereal at the breakfast table with her aunt and uncle, just like always. Uncle Edward was in a sour mood this morning, some trouble at the bank – but as always when he left, after carefully folding his newspaper and leaving it next to his empty egg cup and plate of toast, his empty orange juice glass and coffee cup, he rose and pecked his wife on the cheek and kissed Kathy on the top of her head. Today he pushed something into Kathy’s hand and whispered, “For Halloween. Have fun.” As he was leaving, closing the front door behind him she looked down to see two crisp dollar bills, folded in half, in her hand.
Aunt Jane’s hand quickly covered her own and pried the money loose. “I’ll take those,” she said primly, unfolding and studying the money, then making a snorting sound before putting it in the cookie jar, a fat green bear, on the shelf on the wall over the table. She gave Kathy a cold look. “Finish your cereal and get off to school. You’ll understand when you’re older.” Then she added, “Or maybe you won’t.” She was staring toward the closed front door as the sound of Uncle Edward’s car faded down the street. After a moment she spoke again, in a soft voice, still facing the front door. “Just because you’re his kin don’t make you mine. When your ma and pa died I told Edward not to take you in. I told him five times. But he didn’t listen. He said your pa was his brother, and that made him beholden.” Annabeth saw that her hands were trembling, and a single tear tracked her hard, pinched face. “I told him,” she said, a dry, bitter sob.
School was school. At lunchtime she talked with her friend Mary for a while, then went off by herself, behind the big elm, to talk to Sammy.
“How are you today?” Sammy asked, in a particularly jolly voice.
“Fine. How are you?”
“You know I’m fine, because it’s Halloween!”
Sammy gave a laugh, and Kathy couldn’t help smiling.
“How are things at home, Kathy? Mr. Marks still being bad at night, after the lights go out?”
Kathy said nothing, and her face darkened.
“Oh, don’t be cross! You know we’ve talked all about it. You know you can tell me anything.”
“Yes…” Kathy said in a whisper; she was thinking about the two crisp dollars in her hand that morning…
“Did you put that fun mark on your arm, the way I asked?”
“No…” Kathy said, looking at the ground.
“Why not?” Kathy kne
w he would be angry, but he wasn’t as angry as she’d feared. There was still happiness in his voice. Still staring at the ground, she drew the large paper clip from her pocket.
“And there it is!” Sammy laughed. “Why don’t we do it now – we’ve got time!”
For perhaps the fifth time, Kathy carefully unbent the outer section of the clip, making it straight. She could tell that it was weakening, and if she bent it closed again in would break. She poked at the point idly with her finger.
“Aw, don’t worry, it won’t hurt! I won’t let it!”
Again he laughed.
Holding the paper clip in her right hand, she turned over her left forearm and pressed the tip into the flesh. She pushed it in harder, seeing a drop of red blood rise from the skin.
“Now just make the words!” Sammy encouraged.
“Hey, Kathy–”
Her friend Mary was suddenly standing there, eyes wide. She stared at Kathy’s arm, at the paper clip.
“What are you doing?” Mary asked.
“Nothing.” Kathy lowered the paper clip, hiding it in her right palm.
“Who were you talking to?”
“Nobody,” Kathy answered.
Mary shook her head. “They were right about you. I was going to invite you to trick-or-treat with me later, but you’re whacko.”
Mary turned and ran off.
“Hmmm?” Sammy asked, after a moment.
Kathy drew the paper clip out again, and began to carve words into the flesh of her arm as Sammy encouraged her and laughed.
Just as Sammy had predicted, they sent her home after the nurse examined what she had done to her arm. Mrs. Marks and a beating were waiting, and then there would be no trick-or-treating.
And then Mr. Marks would come home from the bank, and night would come…
“But we don’t care about any of that, do we?” Sammy said. “Because today you’re going to see your ma and pa, right?”
“Yes…”
Walking down Main Street from the school toward home, Kathy noted a few strange things: an ambulance screeching through traffic toward the hospital, and then another from the opposite direction, and then, two blocks along, a crowd gathered around the front of the bank, and police cars.
A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult Page 20