by Paula Guran
The October night was dark and cool. The rain was thick. The moon was hidden behind dark clouds that occasionally flashed with lightning, and the sky rumbled as if it were a big belly that was hungry and needed filling.
A white Chrysler New Yorker came down the street and pulled up next to the curb. The driver killed the engine and the lights, turned to look at the building that sat on the block, an ugly tin thing with a weak light bulb shielded by a tin-hat shade over a fading sign that read BOB’S GARAGE. For a moment the driver sat unmoving, then he reached over, picked up the newspaper-wrapped package on the seat and put it in his lap. He opened it slowly. Inside was a shiny, oily, black-handled, ball peen hammer.
He lifted the hammer, touched the head of it to his free palm. It left a small smudge of grease there. He closed his hand, opened it, rubbed his fingers together. It felt just like . . . but he didn’t want to think of that. It would all happen soon enough.
He put the hammer back in the papers, rewrapped it, wiped his fingers on the outside of the package. He pulled a raincoat from the back seat and put it across his lap. Then, with hands resting idly on the wheel, he sat silently.
A late model blue Ford pulled in front of him, left a space at the garage’s drive, and parked. No one got out. The man in the Chrysler did not move.
Five minutes passed and another car, a late model Chevy, parked directly behind the Chrysler. Shortly thereafter three more cars arrived, all of them were late models. None of them blocked the drive. No one got out.
Another five minutes skulked by before a white van with MERTZ’S MEATS AND BUTCHER SHOP written on the side pulled around the Chrysler, then backed up the drive, almost to the garage door. A man wearing a hooded raincoat and carrying a package got out of the van, walked to the back and opened it.
The blue Ford’s door opened, and a man dressed similarly, carrying a package under his arm, got out and went up the driveway. The two men nodded at one another. The man who had gotten out of the Ford unlocked the garage and slid the door back.
Car doors opened. Men dressed in raincoats, carrying packages, got out and walked to the back of the van. A couple of them had flashlights and they flashed them in the back of the vehicle, gave the others a good view of what was there—a burlap-wrapped, rope-bound bundle that wiggled and groaned.
The man who had been driving the van said, “Get it out.”
Two of the men handed their packages to their comrades and climbed inside, picked up the squirming bundle, carried it into the garage. The others followed. The man from the Ford closed the door.
Except for the beams of the two flashlights, they stood close together in the darkness, like strands of flesh that had suddenly been pulled into a knot. The two with the bundle broke away from the others, and with their comrades directing their path with the beams of their flashlights, they carried the bundle to the grease rack and placed it between two wheel ramps. When that was finished, the two who had carried the bundle returned to join the others, to reform that tight knot of flesh.
Outside the rain was pounding the roof like tossed lug bolts. Lightning danced through the half-dozen small, barred windows. Wind shook the tin garage with a sound like a rattlesnake tail quivering for the strike, then passed on.
No one spoke for a while. They just looked at the bundle. The bundle thrashed about and the moaning from it was louder than ever.
“All right,” the man from the van said.
They removed their clothes, hung them on pegs on the wall, pulled their raincoats on.
The man who had been driving the blue Ford—after looking carefully into the darkness—went to the grease rack. There was a paper bag on one of the ramps. Earlier in the day he had placed it there himself. He opened it and took out a handful of candles and a book of matches. Using a match to guide him, he placed the candles down the length of the ramps, lighting them as he went. When he was finished, the garage glowed with a soft amber light. Except for the rear of the building. It was dark there.
The man with the candles stopped suddenly, a match flame wavering between his fingertips. The hackles on the back of his neck stood up. He could hear movement from the dark part of the garage. He shook the match out quickly and joined the others. Together, the group unwrapped their packages and gripped the contents firmly in their hands—hammers, brake-over handles, crowbars, heavy wrenches. Then all of them stood looking toward the back of the garage, where something heavy and sluggish moved.
The sound of the garage clock—a huge thing with DRINK COCA-COLA emblazoned on its face—was like the ticking of a time bomb. It was one minute to midnight.
Beneath the clock, visible from time to time when the glow of the candles was whipped that way by the draft, was a calendar. It read OCTOBER and had a picture of a smiling boy wearing overalls, standing amidst a field of pumpkins. The 31st was circled in red.
Eyes drifted to the bundle between the ramps now. It had stopped squirming. The sound it was making was not quite a moan. The man from the van nodded at one of the men, the one who had driven the Chrysler. The Chrysler man went to the bundle and worked the ropes loose, folded back the burlap. A frightened black youth, bound by leather straps and gagged with a sock and a bandana, looked up at him wide-eyed. The man from the Chrysler avoided looking back. The youth started squirming, grunting, and thrashing. Blood beaded around his wrists where the leather was tied, boiled out from around the loop fastened to his neck; when he kicked, it boiled faster because the strand had been drawn around his neck, behind his back and tied off at his ankles.
There came a sound from the rear of the garage again, louder than before. It was followed by a sudden sigh that might have been the wind working its way between the rafters.
The van driver stepped forward, spoke loudly to the back of the garage. “We got something for you, hear me? Just like always we’re doing our part. You do yours. I guess that’s all I got to say. Things will be the same come next October. In your name, I reckon.”
For a moment—just a moment—there was a glimmer of a shape when the candles caught a draft and wafted their bright heads in that direction. The man from the van stepped back quickly. “In your name,” he repeated. He turned to the men. “Like always, now. Don’t get the head until the very end. Make it last.”
The faces of the men took on an expression of grimness, as if they were all playing a part in a theatric production and had been told to look that way. They hoisted their tools and moved toward the youth.
What they did took a long time.
When they finished, the thing that had been the young black man looked like a gigantic hunk of raw liver that had been chewed up and spat out. The raincoats of the men were covered in a spray of blood and brains. They were panting.
“Okay,” said the man from the van.
They took off their raincoats, tossed them in a metal bin near the grease rack, wiped the blood from their hands, faces, ankles, and feet with shop rags, tossed those in the bin and put on their clothes.
The van driver yelled to the back of the garage. “All yours. Keep the years good, huh?”
They went out of there and the man from the Ford locked the garage door. Tomorrow he would come to work as always. There would be no corpse to worry about, and a quick dose of gasoline and a match would take care of the contents in the bin. Rain ran down his back and made him shiver.
Each of the men went out to their cars without speaking. Tonight they would all go home to their young, attractive wives and tomorrow they would all go to their prosperous businesses and they would not think of this night again. Until next October.
They drove away. Lightning flashed. The wind howled. The rain beat the garage like a cat-o’-nine-tails. And inside there were loud sucking sounds punctuated by grunts of joy.
THE VOW ON HALLOWEEN
Lyllian Huntley Harris
Halloween is full of mysteries and deception, but little did I know I’d uncover both when I chose this tale for inclusion. I found it in a 1985 an
thology compiled by Peter Haining. He had attributed it to Irish author Dorothy Macardle, who is now best remembered for her novel Uneasy Freehold (1941), published in the U.S. as The Uninvited (1942), and then filmed under that name in 1944.
When the table of contents for Halloween were announced online, Douglas A. Anderson emailed me and soundly refuted Macardle as the author. Anderson and Peter Beresford Ellis have researched Dorothy Macardle, and when they discovered this story republished under her name, they immediately knew it was not by the author. Macardle’s few elegantly written short stories usually combined her interests in contemporary Irish politics and the supernatural. This story bears no resemblance to her style. Moreover, Anderson (and others) have noted that Haining is known to have cited incorrect sources in other cases.
Anderson tracked the original publication of the story to Weird Tales, Vol. 4, No. 2, May-June 1924, authored by Lyllian Huntley Harris. This was easily verified—but here the mystery arises. Who was Lyllian Huntley Harris and did she ever write anything else? All we know of her—other than this story—is that Lyllian Huntley Harris (1885-1939) was a Georgia native, the wife of a lawyer John Joseph Harris and that she is buried in Sandersville, Georgia.
This short story of supernaturally blighted love is pure pulp and quaintly romantic. It may not be—in modern eyes—a great work of literature, but it is a type of story that was quite popular in its era. It also gives us a glimpse of a holiday party of the early 1920s.
It was Halloween, the time of revelry, when mysticism holds full sway and hearts are supposed to be united beneath the magic glow of dim lanterns. It was the time of apple bobbing, fortune telling, and masking in motley raiment, the whole glamoured over by the light of wishing candles.
Amid such scenes one never thinks of tragedy, but it treads apace, sometimes among the gay revelers, and many a domino or cowl covers that which would make the staunchest heart quake and is as different from the gay exterior as darkness is from light.
The lanterns glimmered, the varicolored lights shading and darkening with the winds that soughed through the beautiful old garden where the fête was held.
The pergolas, standing whitely aloof from surrounding density, made wonderful trysting places for the age-old stories of love to be whispered.
“You have made me very happy tonight, Audrey,” a deep voice was whispering. “I think that all my life after will be a paean of gratitude for this moment of bliss. When you would vouchsafe no word of hope, not even one of pity, I felt hopeless, broken. Life seemed as senseless as a stupid rhyme! But now, dearest, life’s cup is filled to overflowing!”
His lips met hers in a lingering caress.
For a moment the lanterns seemed to flicker and dim. A slight shudder ran over her slender frame. She freed herself gently.
“I cannot expect you to understand, Arthur,” Audrey replied, “why you were kept waiting. The silence encompassed the whole of the earth and sky to me. It has been a frightful reality, which my tongue refused to explain until today, and my mental anguish has well nigh swayed my reason. A year ago tonight I experienced a terrible ordeal, more uncanny because it has seemed impossible for me to shake off the pall of it. It has changed the course of my life. For a year I have lived the life of a senseless thing, a piece of clay, merely breathing, eating, sleeping, but with no soul left me—”
Her voice trailed off into nothingness, and for a while both were silent. He was awed by her utterances. His arm tightened about her.
“Poor Audrey,” he whispered, “you must have worried yourself needlessly. Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind which we people with dreams?”
“It was no illusion, Arthur, but grim reality. But last night a dream came to me which seemed to awaken my dead sensibilities, cut loose the spell under which I was living. In it I was commanded to tell you all.”
Gently he caressed her.
“Tell me what you wish, dear, and nothing more. Remember, hope is better than memory. I am listening.”
“I shall tell you all. You suffered, so nothing shall be withheld. My troubles began when my father had financial reverses. I gave music lessons to eke out a meager income. About this time, Rothschild Manny came into my life. He loved me at sight, as intensely as I loathed him. One glance from his slanting, shifty eyes was sufficient to set me cowering in my chair, and if his hand by chance touched mine, cold chills chased over my body. He was like some demon, waiting his chance to spring upon his prey.
“Imagine my dismay, when my parents immediately began insisting on my marriage with this monster! His fortune would retrieve ours and would regain the position we had lost by financial reverses. The horror of it! After one lengthy argument I felt my brain reel, and I fell upon my knees crying and imploring my father to spare me this ordeal. He was obdurate and insisted upon my consent. Finally he sent for Manny, placed my hand in his, and gave me to him formally. But not once did I encourage him, and he seemed to change into a veritable demon. His eyes would become crafty as he looked at me and his face assume an expression of sardonic intensity.
“One day, the day that is seared upon my memory, one year ago tonight, he sought me out. I was alone in the house, my father having gone to the lodge. Manny was trembling under some terrible emotion.
“ ‘Your welcome does not shine forth from your eyes, my dear,’ he said as he seated himself and took my hand.
“With a gesture of horror I jerked it away. The motion seemed, to infuriate him, and deepened the intensity of his eyes.
“ ‘I came to take you driving,’ he said, with a quick intake of his breath. ‘The night is lovely and my new car is outside. It will be yours when you are mine.’
“There was a steely intensity in his gaze directed upon me.
“ ‘I don't care to go,’ I said quietly.
“ ‘Pray reconsider. I may be able to persuade you to feel differently if you give me a chance.’
“Here I interrupted.
“ ‘I will do nothing of the sort,’ I cried, ‘I will go nowhere with you. I want nothing to do with you, and God willing, I will never be your wife!’
“My words infuriated him. He was under some powerful influence of evil. He seized my wrist and, jerking me out of my chair, shook me violently. My senses reeled, and I must have lost consciousness. All I remember was being held up by brute force, those horrible evil eyes boring malevolently into mine while he shouted in my ear:
“ ‘Remember, young lady, you will drive with me yet! Maybe not now, but some day! This is not a threat, it is a declaration, and neither stars, moon, nor even heaven itself, shall deliver you from it.’
“I was thrown violently upon the floor. Merciful oblivion came to me.
“For days I was ill—not knowing, not caring what happened, craving death to relieve me from the sinister influence and deliver me from the effect of that horrible vow on Halloween. When I recovered I learned that Manny, driving his car that day madly, had lost control and had come to a horrible end. His evil influence seemed to hold me drugged in its power. I longed to die. But death does not come when one craves it. I lived, a piece of senseless clay, until you came to me; and when I looked into your eyes I felt that heaven had been kind in denying me my desire. My heart, my soul, went out to you, but I couldn’t let you know. I could never become your wife with that terrible vow sounding in my ears, that terrible power controlling me.
“Then yesterday, in the dim watches of the night a dream came to me. A voice spoke and said: ‘Love beyond price is yours. Take and cherish it, lest this priceless gift be withdrawn!’
“I awoke, happy, myself once more, grateful that life could come to me again.”
She nestled close and his hand caressed her hair.
“My darling, how you have suffered. My whole life shall be spent in keeping you free of the mirage of this terrible experience—”
“Beg pardon,” a suave voice interrupted, and a cowled figure drew near, “This is my dance, I believe. Is it not too warm to
repair to the ballroom? I have my car here. A spin will refresh us both.”
The cowled figure bowed low. Audrey glanced at her dance card, and arose with a little laugh.
“You will excuse me, Arthur, won't you? It seems that this august domino person has prior claim.”
With a light hand on the newcomer’s arm she was lost in the crowd. The music from the palm-shaded orchestra stirred forth, hummed, throbbed, and sobbed into a soft requiem.
Two days later, some belated wayfarers came upon a young woman, who seemed unable to move from her seat in an automobile. Upright beside her was a skeleton, whose sightless eye sockets even then bored into the soul from which the light of reason had fled forever more!
Manny had kept his threat.
And in an old moonlit garden, under the white pergola where he had lived his one moment of bliss, a figure fell, turned into sudden clay, as the smoking weapon in his hand could testify.
THE OCTOBER GAME
Ray Bradbury
This story appears only in the print edition.
Ray Bradbury’s Halloween fiction is so notable (and influential) he’s fondly known as “Mr. October. His novel The Halloween Tree (1972) has been called “a poetic instruction manual for the understanding of Halloween and its background history and mythology.” His early story “Homecoming” (1946) centers around a young outsider—born mortal in a family of supernatural beings—and his emotions as his preparations are made for an All Hallows Eve celebration. The story “Heavy-Set” deals with a man whose attachment to the childish aspects of Halloween leads us to understand a horrific situation. According to F. Paul Wilson, Bradbury is somewhat ambivalent about “The October Game” these days—still appreciative of his youthful technique, but now somewhat appalled by the subject matter.
We were pleased to be able to present this story with F. Paul Wilson’s story, “The November Game,”—the first time the two have ever appeared together—in the print edition of this anthology. However, Mr. Bradbury does not authorize any e-versions of his work, so we cannot include it here.