This is Halloween

by James A. Moore

  “Like what?”

  “Like why I was following the murder victim.” Ray stared hard at him with eyes that almost accused him of something shady.

  “It was Christy?”

  “No, Neil, it was some other random college girl I was following around.”

  “Calm down. Tell me what happened.”

  Ray slid the pen across the scarred wooden table to him. “Check it out yourself. I think I caught most of it.”

  Neil’s heartbeat tripled for a moment. “Seriously?”

  “Of course I’m serious. I was right there watching when she died.” Ray’s voice cracked a bit and Neil saw for the first time how profoundly he’d been affected by what he’d seen.

  “I can’t watch these in here. Tell me what happened.”

  Ray’s composure cracked a bit more as he spoke, the words coming out in a rush. “I was watching her, playing with the pen, and I was snapping pictures because she was a looker, and something black moved in fast and touched her and the next thing I know is she’s screaming and bleeding all over the floor, Neil. She was fine and then she was screaming and dying and I couldn’t do a fucking thing to help her.”

  “Ray, calm down.” He spoke softly. There were already several people looking in their direction, and even in the areas of Black Stone Bay where the clientele didn’t make enough money to buy a house a week, the police tended to be fast at responding.

  Ray took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He repeated the process several times before he finally nodded his head.

  “It was bad, Neil. I think I’ve still got some of her blood on my pants, okay?”

  Neil slid the pen into his jacket pocket and nodded his head. “Go home, Ray. Go and get some rest. We’ll talk later, okay?”

  Ray nodded, relieved that there would be no more discussion for now, and was gone a few minutes later.

  Danny Holdstedter sat down where he’d been less than a minute after that.

  “Saw you talking to your friend at the crime scene. Wondered why you didn’t hang around.” Danny’s face was cold as marble.

  “I figured he’d get out of there faster if he didn’t have me eavesdropping on everything he said.”

  “Well, yeah. There is that.” A ghost of a smile played at Danny’s lips.

  “What’s on your mind, Danny?” Neil looked at his old friend for a moment. “Or under the circumstances, is it Detective Holdstedter?”

  “Oh, it’s Detective right now.”

  “Yeah, I sort of figured that.”

  “What did your friend just hand you?”

  “He gave me back my pen.”

  “Really? Can I see it?”

  Neil looked hard at the man and sighed. “Yes. But only after I’ve downloaded the content onto my computer.”

  “Does the term ‘hindering a police investigation’ mean anything to you?”

  “Does the term‘got a search warrant’ mean anything to you?”

  “Touché.” Danny frowned.

  “Look. You can have every image that I have, but I will have the pictures, Danny. I was working a case for the murder victim. I want to see what I can find out.”

  “I’ll tell you what. Let’s you and me go to your office. You can download the images and make me a disc. Then I won’t have to bother you anymore.”

  “See? Now we’re all being reasonable.”

  “Don’t get smart. I’ll have Boyd come ask you questions if you get all pissy with me.” He couldn’t decide if Danny was being serious or not, so he let it go.

  

  Later that night Neil sat in front of his computer and stared at the pictures Ray had taken. They were hardly award-winning stuff, but he could tell what was going on well enough.

  Christy sat at a table in the food court, reading a book and chewing on a slice of pizza in the first few pictures. Ray had been goofing around more than anything else, trying to make sure he could get the pictures when he needed to. If he hadn’t been playing with the controls he would have never caught what happened.

  After a few frames where nothing occurred but the girl eating—and the images zooming in on her legs and her breasts respectively—a dark shape came from the right side of the picture. It was a blur and little more than that, but there was exactly enough definition to let him see that the shape was feminine.

  If he had to guess, a woman casting the shape as a shadow would have been young, athletic and well proportioned. There was no face, per se, but the shape was pleasant.

  It was obvious when Ray noticed the figure. The attention moved from Christy to the dark splotch and at the same time, the shadow changed. It was no longer pleasantly rounded, but withered, worn down, the silhouette of a crone, not a young beauty. The limbs were thin and the hands hooked into claws that clearly showed the wicked nails at the end of each finger. The face was no longer featureless, but hinted at a bony chin, a long blade of a nose. The hair, which had been a cloud of fine strands a moment before was mutated into wisps of spider web thin streamers that belonged on an ancient hag.

  The shadow gave him the creeps.

  And then it got worse. The form was still in motion, still reaching for Christy. He moved to the next picture in his digital slide show and saw the darkness touching his client. The fingers disappeared into her skin. They didn’t stretch across her, but they sank into her flesh as if knives had been rammed into her.

  The next picture was blurry, distorted. In it Christy was rising from her seat, her eyes wide and her mouth an open wound made for screaming. The posture of her body spoke volumes for the unexpected pain she was surely experiencing.

  The next image was the worst. Christy fell forward, her body twisted into a new shape by agony as blood exploded from her mouth, her eyes, every available orifice; lethal quantities of blood, guarantees that she did not survive what happened to her.

  One more image, out of focus and aimed at the wall behind where she had been standing, revealed Christy on the ground, a red halo of crimson fluids painted around her body. Her eyes were gone, blown out by the force of her death.

  Neil stared long and hard at the picture, unwilling to believe what he was looking at. When he was done staring, he went back over the pictures again and studied the people around her. The area was crowded, filled with students and probably even a few teachers all there for the same reason, to eat whatever they could find that would pass for food.

  He looked at each individual carefully, because there was something that was off about the scenario, more than just the girl dying and more than the moving shadow.

  And after studying the third picture in the group for several moments, he realized what it was. There was a girl watching Christy, and the girl was smiling.

  Dark, curly hair, blue eyes, a perfect complexion. She was the sort of girl who could catch a man’s eye without any trouble at all. It wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong, so much as she wasn’t reacting like the people around her. To make sure he wasn’t imagining things, Neil went through the photos one at a time and fiddled with his photo-editor function until he’d copied the brunette in every one of the pictures.

  He watched the images in a slide show presentation and studied the girl. Everyone around her was screaming by the time everything was done and Christy was dead. The girl with the curly hair had a tiny smile on her face as the carnage unfolded. If anything.

  “Jesus. Is she getting off on this?” He spoke aloud without actually being aware of it. His pulse hammered at his skull softly and he stared, unbelieving, at the images, watching them again and again to make certain he was right in his assumptions.

  No mistake. Nothing that would stand up in a court of law, certainly nothing that would get the girl in any sort of trouble, but he saw it. She got a charge out of watching Christy die. He’d have gleefully paid a thousand dollars to have ten more shots of the girl at the table and how she reacted to Christy’s body on the ground.

  Frowning, he looked at the original shots agai
n. There was something else, something about the girl that was still sticking in the back of his head.

  And one look at the initial pictures told him what he needed to know: she was looking directly at the shadow form as it moved toward its victim.

  And the dark figure that attacked, that killed. It had the same style of hair as the girl who watched it, right up until it became a crone.

  Finally, when he was done studying the images every way he could, Neil printed them and slid them into a file folder.

  It was time to go back to the school. He wasn’t getting paid a damned thing, but he had to know.

  This one time, regardless of the expense, he had to know.

  Obsession can be a dangerous thing.

  

  He met with Ray at a small sandwich place across the street from the food court where Christy was murdered. Ray cast several glances at the gathering collection of cards and stuffed animals that surrounded the entrance to the student union. Somewhere inside the place, part of the area was still blocked off by yellow crime scene tape and a lot of the people eating in the restaurant were discussing the crime.

  Murders weren’t supposed to happen in places like Black Stone Bay. When they did, little else was discussed for a while.

  Ray was still noticeably shaken by the incident, and Neil couldn’t blame him. He’d seen pictures alone, and he was still unsettled.

  They’d gone over every detail of what Ray saw, and when they were done, they’d gone over all of it again, until he was sure Ray would hit him if he asked about anything again.

  Then, when he was sure the images couldn’t throw Ray’s perceptions, he showed his brother-in-law the photos of the mystery girl.

  “Have you seen her before?”

  “She was there when it all went down.”

  “Yeah, but have you seen her anywhere else?”

  “Neil, man, I take an occasional class. I’m not here socially. I’m here as a student who happens to be married.”

  “Ray, I’m not asking if you have her in every class of yours or if you’ve been having an illicit affair. I’m asking if you’ve seen her around the school anywhere else or if you know who she is or if you know where I can find out.” His voice rose a bit as he spoke, and by the time he was done speaking, Neil had been waving his arms around.

  Ray looked at him for several seconds without speaking and then the both of them cracked up. The tension had been there, but neither had known how to deal with it.

  “Seriously, Neil. You need to get laid.” He tapped the pictures.

  “She might be a bit young.”

  “Screw you. I think she’s connected to all of this.”

  “Well, leave her to your friend the cop and be done with it, man.”

  “I can’t. I need to know what the hell is going on here.”

  “Aren’t you usually cautioning me against that kind of attitude?”

  “Aren’t you usually the one telling me that there’s a world of stuff out there that we don’t understand?”

  “Yes. I’m also the one that says some of it is probably dangerous.”

  “I need to know what the hell killed two people. I don’t understand it either, except that one of them was supposed to be my client and I dropped the ball.”

  “You need to not get emotionally invested in murder cases. That’s the sort of shit that leads to rubber rooms.”

  “Just find out for me, okay? Just find out who she is so I can talk to her.” Neil ground his teeth together.

  “I’ll do it.” Ray shrugged. “Just don’t come crying to me if it all goes wrong.”

  “Why are you being so weird about this, Ray?”

  “Because I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.” Ray stared hard at him. “I think you’re just playing around and it’s gonna bite you in the ass, and your sister, my wife, is going to look at me and wonder why I didn’t stop you.”

  “I just want to check this kid out. See what she might know. I doubt I’ll even speak to her.”

  “There’s something wrong with that girl. You need to think about that. And if she has anything to do with that shadow thing, she’s dangerous.”

  “Seriously, Ray. Calm down.”

  “Neil, I think someone’s following me.” The words were blurted out in a hurry.

  “Say what?”

  “I think someone’s following me, okay? Ever since yesterday, even at home, I feel like someone’s watching me.”

  They were simple enough words and they sent chills through Neil. “So, maybe the girl can wait for a while.” Neil mumbled the words, more to himself than for Ray.

  Ray looked up sharply. “I don’t know. I can’t say she has anything to do with anything, but that girl? She gives me the creeps.”

  There was nothing more to say on the subject. They finished their meal in peace and went their separate ways.

  Less than four hours later, Ray was dead.

  

  Neil found out about Ray’s murder around the same time the police came to haul him in for questioning.

  There were a great number of questions this time around, and none of them were easy to answer. Several people had seen Neil speaking animatedly with his brother-in-law. No one claimed they’d been fighting, but a few people said there’d been “heated words.”

  Danny was as good as he could be about the investigation, but it was his partner Boyd who asked the questions.

  Richard Boyd didn’t actually pull out thumbscrews or take a rubber hose to him, but Neil fully expected it. While Danny didn’t participate in the interrogation process, he was present for it and Neil had no doubt in his mind kept things from getting absolutely horrific. Boyd was absolutely terrifying, which made no sense, as the man was several inches shorter than he was.

  In the long run, there was nothing he could say to them that would change their minds and there was nothing they could say to him that would make him confess to a crime he hadn’t committed.

  After several hours of what could be called “cooperation,” Neil was released. He never even considered calling a lawyer in to assist him. He knew they had nothing but a loose rumor that he had been arguing with Ray earlier in the day. Besides which, a lawyer would have kept him from his sister Carrie’s side even longer and that was where he needed to be.

  In the end, Danny and Boyd thanked him for his trouble. He managed not to spit at them.

  Carrie had heard, of course. They’d notified her as soon as the body had been identified. He tried calling her several times and failed to get through on either her cell phone, her office phone, or at home.

  Neil dropped by her house three times and even tried calling their parents, but none of it did the least bit of good. Finally he resorted to driving around the town and looking for her car, but to no avail.

  Close to eleven at night, after he’d finally given up and gone home to his apartment, he called Danny Holdstedter on his cell phone. The news was showing a crime scene, a spot not far from the campus of Sacred Hearts, and mentioned the murder investigation going on. The wounds were still too fresh, and no names were given, but Neil already knew. He was expecting to get an answering machine, and got the detective himself.

  “Little late in the night for social calls, Neil. What’s up?” Danny’s voice was musty with sleep.

  “Thanks for earlier. I know you did your best to make that painless.”

  “Comes with the job and I don’t think you did anything.”

  “Listen, I can’t reach my sister. I’ve been trying to get her since I left the station, to be with her, you know? And I can’t get an answer on any of her lines, and she isn’t home, and my parents haven’t heard from her.”

  “Shit.” The detective sounded far more alert than he had a few moments earlier. “Gimme her address, and tell me when you last spoke to her.”

  Neil complied quickly and felt his stomach do a few lazy turns inside his body. “What are you thinking, Danny?”

  “We don
’t know why Ray was murdered, Neil. We just know he didn’t die of natural causes, orif your sister is connected.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Jesus, who do I call in your department?”

  “You already have me, I’ll make the rest of the calls, okay? Just settle in and wait where you are.”

  “Yeah, that’s going to happen.”

  “Fine, then meet me at the Silver Dollar Diner on Sullivan Street. Boyd’ll meet us, too.”

  He hung up and got back on his feet. Sullivan Street was a good ways off, but he knew it well enough. The diner had burned down a few years earlier, but that was hardly unusual. No one knew what started the riots that hit along the roads joining the universities, but everyone paid the price for them in the long run. A lot of businesses had rebuilt afterward.

  The night air was damp, and a slight fog was building. Hardly unusual for a port town in New England, but he felt his skin draw tight anyway. The weather wasn’t helping his mood.

  “You’re looking for your sister, aren’t you?” The voice was soft and pleasant, with a slight accent he had trouble placing. Neil turned to see the source of the words and spotted the girl he’d sent Ray to find out about.

  “What would you know about that?” His tone was brusque, but there was nothing he could do about it. At best the girl was a distraction he didn’t really need and at worst she was responsible for several deaths, including a member of his family. He wished for a moment that he carried a firearm regularly.

  “I know where she is. I can lead you to her. Or I can just go away. The choice is yours.” Her tone didn’t change. She didn’t move toward him from her place in the parking lot near his car. She merely stood her ground and looked him in the eye.

  “Or you could just tell me and I could go get her.”

  “Fair enough. First tell me why you had Raymond looking for me.” He stared at her and hard. She was in her late teens, tops. If the girl standing in front of him was more than eighteen, he’d cut off a toe. She was far too confident for her age. It wasn’t just posturing; it was her carriage, her attitude, the way she stared at him without looking away. Her clothes marked her as a private school girl, though that hardly revealed much about her in an area where over half of the children went to private academies.