“Me too.”
And that's when the phone rang.
Bob stopped in mid-stroke, gripped with uncertainty. “Shit! Not again!”
“Forget about it,” Linda said. “We have more important things to do.” The phone sounded again.
“What if it's Annie?”
“She'll call us again.”
“And what if it's the Wallaces?”
“If it's the Wallaces and we answer, we'll get Annie into trouble.”
“Yeah, but what if...?”
“What if it's your mommy?” Linda taunted.
Bob laughed. “I'll just tell her I'm really into something right now that I can't get out of.
There, it's stopped. I'll take it off the hook.”
He reached across her body to the night table, where the jack-o'-lantern guarded the telephone, and took the phone off its cradle. Then he turned his attention back to her. “Now, where were we?”
“Old Mr. Zucchini's getting soft enough to mash,” she said, stroking him with artful grinds of the pelvis. “There, that's better.”
“Oh, yes, that's better. That's much better.”
He stood in the hall watching them resume their coupling, and the desire returned. His fingers caressed the handle of his knife in rhythm to the powerful strokes of the man's buttocks against the widespread girl's body. The voice spoke loudly to him, urging him to act, but he held himself back, anxious to see the climax of their performance.
He was soon rewarded. “Oh Bob, I think it's going to happen now... now...now!”
“Yes, yes, YES!” Bob cried, nailing her to the bed with his lanky, powerful body.
Their voices mingled moans and pants and endearments as they thrashed at the last lust out of one another's flesh. Then they lay still for a minute or two, the boy's back a tempting target for the blade of the man who stood outside their door, breathing deeply but silently. No, not yet.
At length Bob rolled off Linda and groped around the floor for his shirt. He found it and produced a pack of cigarettes and lit two, giving her one. They lay on their backs, blowing thin streams of smoke into the air.
“Fantastic,” Linda sighed. “Totally fantastic.”
“Yeah.”
“Want a beer?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“Yeah.”
“Go get me a beer.”
“I thought you were gonna get one for me,” Bob said.
“Yeah?”
“Oh well.” Reluctantly, Bob climbed out of bed and stepped into his jeans. Then he groped around the floor for his glasses and found them at last, donning them.
Linda looked at him. “Do you really need those?”
“I only wear them when I'm looking for beer,” he replied with a grin. “I'll be right back.”
He leaned over the bed and kissed her. “Don't get dressed.”
Silently, the visitor withdrew from his observation place outside the door and drifted soundlessly down the stairs, taking his place in the large utility closet in the kitchen. He waited and listened, knife poised. In due time, through the slightly open door, he saw the boy come into the kitchen. He had on jeans but no shirt or shoes and socks, and he wore horn-rimmed glasses. The boy's body was sleek, hairless, and muscular.
Bob went directly to the refrigerator in the dark and opened the door, sending a stream of light across the kitchen floor. He took two beers out, closed the door, and opened a cupboard. “Peanuts, peanuts, peanuts... ah, here they are. And potato chips are... here.”
He gathered the food in his arms and turned to leave, but didn't see the legs of a stool half under a counter, and he tripped, dropping everything. Muttering, he stooped and picked it up. Then he heard the creak of a door behind him.
Arms loaded, he freed a hand and opened the kitchen door. “Annie? Paul?” he called. “No jokes, huh? I'm in the midst of something very important.” No answer. He closed the door and locked it. Then he heard the creak again and realized it was coming from the utility closet. He put the beer and food down on the counter and stealthily approached the door. Then he flung it open. “Okay, Linda, come on out. Come on, I know it's...”
The thing lunged out like a leaping tiger, its left hand gripping Bob's neck in a death-clutch.
Bob fell back, grabbing at his throat, then swung at the head of his tormentor. The man took the blow full on the face, but it didn't faze him. He slammed Bob up against the wooden pantry door and lifted him clear off the tile floor by the throat. Gurgling noises came from his windpipe as he clawed at the rubber mask on his assailant's face. If Bob was going to escape he'd have to make his best shot now, because the oxygen supply was rapidly dwindling and he knew he had but a few seconds. He cupped his hands over his head and brought them down with full force on the man's head. It shook him but failed to weaken his grip on Bob's throat. Out of the corner of his eye Bob saw the blade in the man's free hand, and he brought his knees up in a helpless gesture of self-protection. He actually heard the whap of the knife as the killer drove it into his gut with stupendous force. Then the blackness came over him.
Linda dragged impatiently on her cigarette, then ground it out in the ashtray on the night table, just under the grimacing mouth of the jack-o'-lantern. “Well, Jack, where is he? I sent him down ten minutes ago for one lousy beer. Is he manufacturing it or what? If he were half the man he looks like, he'd have made the round trip in record time and would be back in bed by now. Isn't that right, Jack?” the pumpkin's flame answered her with mute flickering. Linda tapped another cigarette out of the pack and hung it on her lower lip. Then she grinned with inspiration. “Hey, baby, light my fire,”
she said to the jack-o'-lantern, thrusting the cigarette through the pumpkin's nose and lighting it on its candle. “Thanks. You may look like a punk, but deep down inside, you're a real gentleman. Not like some people.”
She heard the steps creaking and composed herself under the covers. The steps were heavy, like an old man's or someone laboring under a big load. “Thank God,” Linda sighed. “here's my beer?”
The door opened and she laughed, shaking her head. He wore a sheet over his head with eyes cut out, and over the eyes he wore Bob's heavy glasses. He stood inside the door, staring at her, breathing in long sighing wheezes that blew the sheet away from his mouth with each exhalation.
“Cute, Bob. Real cute. Come here, you fool.”
He came no closer.
“I'll bet I can get your ghost,” she said, sliding the sheet teasingly off her chest.
Linda laughed at her own joke, but when the ghost remained planted in the doorway, she frowned and brusquely pulled the sheets back up around her throat. “All right, all right. So where's the beer?”
No response.
“well, answer me! Okay, don't answer me. Boy, are you weird.” Still no response. The ghost stood fixed to his spot like a tree. “Bob, enough's enough, you're making me nervous.” No response. “Oh, shit. Okay for you.” She got out of bed. Completely nude, she walked to the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. In the soft glow of the candle she looked incredibly beautiful. She did not walk so much as glide. She knew what effect she had on men, and if this didn't do the trick, Bob must be made of brick. She pulled her panties out of the pile and dangled them in front of the ghost's glasses, stroking them with her other hand. “Last chance, pal, before I hide the jewels.” She paused, waiting for a reply. Then she shrugged. “Okay.” She stepped into her panties and turned away.
“Well, I'm going to call Laurie. I want to know where Annie and Paul are. This isn't going anywhere.” She picked up the phone and pivoted, turning her back on the ghost. She dialed the Doyles'
number.
The ghost began to advance. Linda could see him coming out of the corner of her eye.
While she waited for Laurie to pick up the phone, she said, “Well, I finally got you to make your move.
I knew it. As soon as I hide my ass, you want to pull m
y pants down. You men are all ali........................
arrggghh...”
He clamped one hand over her mouth and with the other wrapped the phone cord around her throat. She reacted with the ferocity of a victim in full panic, clawing at his knuckles with sharp nails and tearing strips of flesh off the back of his hand. He gripped her more tightly despite the searing pain. On the other end of the phone-line he could hear someone saying, “Hello? Hello?”
He gripped the wire tighter. The girl danced madly in his clutches, biting, kicking, wriggling, scratching, pounding, pulling, striking. She fought harder than any of them, fought with amazing pluck, but it was all for nought. All for nought. Her movements began to slow down and become more jerky and frenetic. Her face was turning blue, and her tongue flopped around her lips as if it had no organic connection with the rest of her body. Her eyes bulged like a frog's, the red blood vessels in the whites bursting with the overload.
With one last frantic effort she aimed ten fingernails at his eyes, but he buried his face in the back of her neck so that she had no good target. Her nails tangled in the bed-sheet. When her hands went limp at last, they dragged the sheet with them, revealing her assassin.
He wore a grotesque mask.
“Hello? Hello?” Laurie tapped her fingernails impatiently on the phone. “All right, Annie!
I've heard your famous chewing, now I get your famous squeals?”
The gurgles and sputters continued. “Annie? Annie, are you all right?” Now she heard a heavy, throaty breathing. “Annie, are you fooling around again? Annie, I'll kill you if this is a joke.
Oh, God, I can't wait for this day to end,” she said, slamming the phone down.
She went to the window and looked across the street. Bob's van was still parked there, but except for an orange glow from an upstairs window, all the lights in the Wallace house were out. Laurie decided to phone there one more time; if nobody answered, she'd have to run across the street.
She dialed the Wallace number and waited. The phone rang four, five, six, seven times.
With each ring, Laurie prayed harder that the joke would be over, that Linda or bob or Annie or Paul would pick it up and, with their inimitable laughter, tell her it was all a big put-on. Eight rings, nine, ten.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen.
Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen...
Chapter 14
Laurie put the phone down heavily and stood beside it, pondering her options. It was not so much that she didn't know what she must do; it was that she didn't want to do what she knew she must.
She tiptoed upstairs. Tommy and Lindsey were sprawled on Tommy's bed like a couple of rag dolls dropped from ten feet, hands and feet dangling over the sides and an assortment of dolls, game pieces, cars, trucks, fire engines, and Erector set components covered the bed and floor as if all had been packed into the muzzle of a mortar and fired indiscriminately into the room. Tommy was in his pajamas, but Lindsey, who had not been expected to stay so late, was still in her clothes.
Laurie felt safe in leaving them; she knew from countless babysitting assignments with them that their deepest slumber was immediately after falling asleep. They would not wake up and, not finding her in the house, push the panic button.
She went back downstairs and opened her purse. She had a ring with four or five keys belonging to the people she regularly sat for, and she selected the one to the Wallace house. She opened the front door of the Doyle house, stepped outside, and looking ruefully across the street, closed it behind her. She crossed the street and stood before the Wallace house, studying its hulking vastness for a sign of life. Except for the mellow flicker of a candle upstairs, there was none. She glanced in Bob's van, but nobody was in it either.
Her feet felt as if they'd been fitted with leaden shoes as she walked the last few yards and mounted the steps to the verandah encircling the house. She tested the knob of the front door. There was no need for her key. The door swung open.
She peered inside, listening. She she heard a floorboard groan, but perhaps not. She stepped inside and stood in the arched entrance to the living room. “Annie? Bob? Linda?”
The total silence that greeted her sent a shudder down her spine. She reached for the wall switch and flipped it.
The room remained dark. Cursing, she retreated to the entry hall and tried the switch to the big chandelier there.
No response.
“You guys have really been blowing some fuses,” she said with a nervous laugh.
She stayed in the hall a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Then she ventured into the living room. It was devoid of life, but an examination of the rumpled pillows on the couch indicated that some heavy petting had gone on. They were probably upstairs.
All of them? She wondered. “Oh Lord, just what I need – walking in on an orgy,” she said aloud.
She jumped when she heard something heavy, like furniture, being moved upstairs, followed by a crash. She rushed to the foot of the stairs and stared up. The bedroom door was closed, but an eerie orange light radiated from under it.
She managed a smile, shaking her head. “All right, meat-heads. The joke is over.” She took one tentative step up the stairs and paused to listen. “Come on, Annie, enough.”
A new sound greeted her, the sound of something being dragged across the floor. The sound stopped abruptly, followed by a closet door shutting in the upstairs bedroom.
Laurie took three more steps. “This has definitely stopped being funny, guys. Now cut it out!”
Now a scrapping sound.
Her heart began to thunder and she thought of fleeing, but she knew what kind of laughingstock she'd be at school if she did, when Annie and Paul and Linda and Bob told everybody how they'd scared Laurie Strode out of her shoes on Halloween.
“You'll be sorry!” she shouted as she made her way up the stairs with determination.
Sam Loomis was cold, and getting colder.
Had he known he'd be staked out in a hedge in the middle of a cold October night, he'd have dressed for the occasion. But he had worn his trench coat over a summer business suit, and he was cold.
Aside from the three kids he'd chased off, there'd been no activity at the Myers house, and as the evening wore into night, Loomis began to wonder why he had expected that there would be. Yes, the fellow had returned to the scene of the crime in the best tradition of criminals, but that was much earlier. To what end would he hang around the house? Wouldn't he seek elsewhere for victims?
Because he was cold, and because he'd begun to realize he was barking up the wrong tree, Loomis started to pace. He paced up the block and down, glancing over his shoulder often so as not to take his attention totally off the Myers house. He paced in an ever-lengthening pattern, and the more he did, the more certain he became that his quarry was near. His conclusion was based on reason ans emotion. Intellectually, he reasoned that with the strange affection of a hunter for his prey, his maniac had indeed come home today, and he'd seek victims in the immediate neighborhood.
But it wasn't just intellectual deduction; it was a feeling, a hunch. Loomis's spine quivered like a divining rod near water. Evil was afoot, and it was nearby. If only he could get some definite sign...
Loomis's pacing swept him farther and farther away from the Myers house, and soon he was turning his back on it with impunity, for he was now convinced his maniac was not there. Back and forth like a pendulum Loomis swung, attuning himself to the vibrations of evil in the air and trying to get a fix on them like a pilot seeking radio guidance on a stormy night.
He debated with himself as to whether he should continue going straight up and down the block, or turn corners and form a kind of search grid with his pacing. At a certain corner he felt strongly drawn and decided to let the force carry him even if he lost sight of the Myers house entirely.
It was as if he were the planchette on a ouija board and someone had asked him, Is a murderer near at hand? The force of the vibrations was s
ending him... where? Down this oak-lined street and toward that car. Why that car?
But it was not a car, it was a station wagon. A station wagon! Could it be the one? His pace quickened. It was hard to tell the color of the vehicle because of the yellow ark-light of the street lamps overhead, but it seemed to be that livid purplish brown of the state hospital's station wagon. One glance at the side of the vehicle would tell him. He strained his eyes seeking the emblem on the door, his legs churning at a pace they hadn't done for a decade. And inside his head, the vibrations of evil grew immeasurably stronger with each yard he covered...
She stood on the landing, paralyzed with uncertainty. At the foot of the stairs she'd been certain this was a big put-on by her friends. But with each step she mounted, her doubts had mounted too. If this were a practical joke, it was, well, too good, too professional. Where were the whispering and the giggling, the shushing and the tittering? There was too much silence. Entirely too much silence.
She peered at the crack under the door, a mellow orange line that line that shimmered seductively like a neon sign advertising some forbidden delight. She clenched her teeth. If this was a setup, they were doing a terrific job – special effects and everything! How could she not go in?
She stepped forward two paces and encircled the doorknob with her hand. The muscles of her legs were tense like those of a runner at the start of a race, prepared to spring back and down the stairs at the first sign of trouble.
She pushed the door open a crack. She could see a pair of feet on the bed, but whose she couldn't yet identify. Just out of the range of her vision, a candle or jack-o'-lantern cast an orange light on the legs.
Laurie opened the door two inches farther and stuck her head into the bedroom. She took in more and more of the figure on the bed. The feet, the knees, the thighs, the pubic hair, the pelvis, the...
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