Harvest Moon

by James A. Moore

  Just to the left of the Ugly Mug was one of the two theaters in Beldam Woods. The Leonard Cinema was closed, and had been for the last five years. Despite that fact, the windows were decorated for the special event. No one really understood why Rick Leonard had closed the cinema house; it had been doing well enough. Yet the old man still decorated for every holiday, even if the decorations were getting a little threadbare of late. The decorations weren’t exactly original. They were just movie posters in frames, but each and every one of them was for a classic—or not so classic, but popular—horror movie. Pumpkinhead, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Norman Bates, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Vincent Price in The Raven all glared menacingly out from the bay windows. Each and every one of them was backed by an original poster from one of the Halloween movies. The place would be jumping on Halloween night. Rick Leonard gave the kids at the academy special permission to build a haunted house every year inside the old cinema. Every year they got a little more creative. There was a lot of talk about what might be waiting inside this time around.

  Carson’s Pharmacy was decorated with bright orange posters exclaiming the fabulous savings to be had on costumes and Halloween candy alike. Everett Carson was not exactly known for his Halloween spirit; or his Christmas spirit, or any other kind, really. But he was sure to let everyone know that his prices were always the best. When it came to kids hanging around his store, on the other hand, he was known as a creep. He did not, as a rule, like kids or trust them. On the average, anyone under twenty could count on brisk service and a glare. Window shopping was not encouraged.

  Just across Wendover Street, caddy corner to the pharmacy, was the other movie house in town. The Regal Cinema was newer and had a tendency to run only the biggest blockbusters it could get. The inside of the theater was tacky enough to lead most people to believe the decorator was either very, very drunk when the designs were set, or colorblind. Most people would have guessed both. The carpet was purple, the walls violet, and the concession stand covered in maroon linoleum. All in all, it was a painful area to walk into. But the movies were good and the popcorn actually popped on the premises instead of shipped in pre-popped. Several plastic pumpkins that, at first glance, looked like real jack-o-lanterns, glowed from near wherever a cord could be plugged into the wall. The only other change was a recorded loop of horror movie theme songs that ran in place of the usual elevator tunes.

  Allyson’s Antique Boutique was an explosion of knickknacks and odds and ends, most of which were for sale. But the proprietress had a few pieces she set up every year specifically for the holiday, including an ancient iron pot that was just about the right size for boiling a car. That, she claimed with a big toothy smile, was the actual cauldron used by Hattie all those years ago. For all anyone knew, what she said was the truth. The style of the ugly thing was about right for the era. She put an assortment of ancient brooms—some real and some about as old as a year or so—around the cauldron and dressed herself up as a witch for the entire week of Halloween. Any kids who dared her store on October Thirty-First were rewarded with a full size chocolate bar if they came in dressed for the occasion.

  There were other places as well, like the post office and the run of furniture stores that had sprouted over the last few years. To one degree or another they all got into the spirit. It was hard not to when most of the folks who owned or ran them had all grown up on tales of the local witch and her goblin children. But by far the place that got the most thoroughly into the event was the library. There wasn’t a window, door, or spare section of wall that wasn’t covered with illustrations from books or the multiple doodles done by kids from the elementary school. In Beldam Woods a visit to the library was tradition. No self-respecting kid over the age of five wanted to miss out on Mister Habersham’s stories at Halloween.

  Craig Gallagher remembered the tales very well. He’d grown up on them and now and then, when he could manage it, he still did his very best to be there when the old man started up his stories. Mostly he could arrange it, because he normally took whatever shift it was that allowed him to show up. Sometimes it was good to be the boss.

  That didn’t leave him off the hook for doing at least a little work though. Craig always showed up at the show in his uniform and made sure to reinforce all the little rules that kids should follow when the stories were finished. Especially when it was Halloween again and the little ones were likely going to spend half the night running through the streets with too little parental supervision. His speeches were as much for the adults as they were for the kids, but he was pretty sure it was the kids that did all the listening.

  Craig didn’t use the cruiser all that often, at least not during the weekdays. Weekends were an entirely different story. Most of his work revolved around walking through the center of town and making sure the gossip was at least mostly harmless. He was almost done with his rounds, and that meant it was almost time to go back to the office and pretend he was actually earning a living as the chief of police.

  Only half a block from the office—shared with every town official outside of the police force, which was exactly eleven other people—he stopped in front of Kinder’s Garden. The daycare was small, only held around twenty kids all told, but popular. Kinder’s Garden was located in one of the oldest houses in the entire town, a three-story home made of brick and stone and mortar, with four gables across the roof. Hell would freeze over before it could legitimately be called a landmark—there had been far too many alterations over the years—but it was still a slice of history, and remarkably well kept, all things considered.

  There had been a few times when the old structure had not been so well kept. He could remember when he was just a kid walking past the old building and just knowing that something was inside there, looking back at him and thinking about how best to cook him up.

  Of course, the old campfire songs he and his buddies used to sing didn’t help any. He had no idea who had come up with the verses over the years, but he still remembered them. These days they weren’t reserved only for the campfire tales told at the end of summer, either. Somewhere along the way they’d become another little verse for the kids jumping rope.

  He knew every word by heart, of course, just like any man who’d grown up in Beldam Woods knew all the words. But he remembered them better than most because of days like this one. The air was fairly warm for October, especially late in October, and the kids were out at the day care. Three little boys and at least twice as many girls were jumping rope on the side lawn of the house. They were halfway through a verse, but he mouthed the words silently as they went along with their game.

  Late at night when the moon is full

  Old Bones comes looking to find a skull

  Patches comes slinking to find some skin

  And the Pumpkin Man looks to find a sin

  Down in the old Witch’s Hollow

  Old Hattie is known to wallow

  Dancing around the house she built

  Where she lived ’til she was Kilt.

  Everyone says that she ain’t dead

  Just resting a bit and planning instead

  Biding her time and waiting for when

  Her children can put her together again.

  The witch’s old house now long gone

  Her body rotted down to mold and bones

  But when the moon is full at harvest time

  She plans to wake up and do her crimes

  Dead a long time is what they say

  But everyone knows she’ll have her day

  She’ll kill all the children is what she’ll do

  And serve her sons up a baby stew

  So if you want to live and if you’re smart

  You’ll hide yourself away ’til she departs

  And if her children find you, you best run away

  Or the witch will come to get you on Judgment Day

  He let himself have a half-smile; a little recollection of how scary that shit had been when he
was still knee high to a shrub. The witch might not be real, but the nightmares she’d generated had been real enough to keep him sweating as a kid. There’d been plenty of nights when he’d spent what should have been his sleeping time with the flashlight at the ready, listening to the sounds of the house settling. It was the side effects of growing up near the little sheltered swampy area they called the Witch’s Hollow. It didn’t matter that intellectually he knew the little marshy depression was just another piece of land. Deep in his heart, he’d been convinced as a child that Hattie really had lived out there, and her children had really, truly hunted down and killed children for their mother.

  Of course, his older brothers had made sure that he knew what they claimed was the absolute truth about the witch. It was their sacred duty as older brothers to scare the bejeezus out of him. They’d taken it to heart, telling him all of the gory details about the old hag.

  According to his older siblings, Hattie was about as wicked a witch as there had ever been. She made the one from the Wizard of Oz seem positively kindly in comparison. First off, they were quick to point out that Hattie had come to the Colonies—and it took him a while to figure out what a colony was—with the people on the Mayflower. Not as an actual registered guest or anything, but as a stowaway. They said she’d actually been on board and had helped the pilgrims find solid land, because she wanted an innocent place without God’s interference, so she could torture as many people as possible. When the pilgrims found out about her, they drove her away by building a church and asking God to curse her.

  He was pretty sure that was all nonsense, even as a kid, because if she was so scared of God she wouldn’t have actually gotten on a boat full of people who were seeking religious freedom. But it was a neat enough way to explain the ancient old crone getting there.

  And then there was the matter of her children. His brothers claimed that the men in town didn’t help her build them, but rather had sex with the old witch to make them. Well, even a nine-year-old knows men don’t want to have sex with ugly old women. So he knew his brothers were lying right then and there, until they said she made herself young and pretty just for the purpose of getting the best-looking men. That sort of made sense to his young mind, but if she could make herself look pretty, why not be pretty all the time?

  Well, the answer was as plain as day, his brothers assured him. She couldn’t be pretty all the time, because she was a witch. She was supposed to be old and ugly. If she looked hot all the time, she’d be something else entirely. Just what that was, they couldn’t tell him. He chuckled to himself thinking back about how gullible he’d been. His brothers had specialized in terrorizing him with that stupid old story, and he’d eaten it up.

  His remembrances of the past were cut short by the radio on his hip giving out a loud static crackle and then the voice of Glenn Donner buzzing nasally through the air. “Craig, this is Glenn, come back.”

  Craig sighed and shook his head; too much time on his hands and too much daydreaming. “You got me, Glenn. What’s new that I should know about?”

  “I just got a call from Eli Walters about Douglas Habersham. He hasn’t been able to get him on the phone and no one answers at the door.”

  “How long’s he been trying?”

  “About two days now. Figured the old man might have gone out for a while, but now he’s starting to get a little worried.”

  Craig looked around and sighed again. Eli Walters was not a friend of Douglas Habersham. They had never been close and they never would be, but he was a neighbor and he was the sort of person who loved to snoop in on every one else’s affairs. He’d already been warned against it at least a dozen times, but that never stopped him. Hell, the crusty old bastard had even been dragged in on three separate occasions when one neighbor or another heard strange noises and found the man looking through their windows at inappropriate times. Despite that fact, he swore he was a devout Baptist, and as a side effect, he and Habersham were not exactly on good terms. Old Eli’s faith frowned on the whole Halloween concept and he considered the retired librarian as little better than the Antichrist for daring to tell ghost stories.

  So if he was actually calling in, it was likely a bad situation. “I’m on it.” He paused and took a deep breath. He’d been getting a feeling in his stomach that things were going to go wrong today, and he decided to check if the weird vibe he was getting had any actual cause besides whether or not old man Habersham was injured. “Anything else I should know about?”

  “There’s a call from the Haverty farm. Someone dug up the grave of Arnold Haverty’s dead bull and took off with it.”

  “Someone stole the carcass of his bull and he wants us to investigate?”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “I’ll get there when I damned well can.”

  That was pretty much the end of the conversation. There were rules and regulations to be followed and radio codes to call in. But Craig didn’t much worry about them unless there was a real crime. So far this was nothing to fret. At least he hoped it was nothing to fret.

  He could have walked the distance, Beldam Woods was hardly a big enough town to make a car a true necessity, but he felt better driving. Like damned near everyone in town, he’d practically grown up listening to Douglas Habersham telling tales at Halloween and Christmas. He didn’t like the notion that the poor old man might have had a heart attack or fallen and hurt himself beyond his ability to cope.

  Craig wasn’t exactly a sentimental man on most days, but when it came to the librarian, the regular rules didn’t seem to apply. He pulled in front of the old house on Maple Crest Avenue and stepped away from his cruiser. The air was no cooler here than it was at the center of Beldam Woods, but for some reason he got a deeper chill as he looked at the two-story dwelling. The wind was picking up a bit and his short crew cut hair stood even more on end as the chills stepped through his body. Maybe it was the time of the year—autumn always made him melancholy, edgy, or both, a trend he’d never really figured out—but he was definitely not getting a good vibe about the situation.

  The walkway from the old cracked sidewalk was made of stepping-stones that meandered up the short hill to the front door of Habersham’s place. The breeze caught a few hundred of the fallen leaves littering the dead grass in the lawn and threw them into a rattling, hissing flurry that skittered around the car and then down the avenue to parts unknown. The big block of ice that had formed in Craig’s stomach was telling him that departure from the premises might not be a bad idea.

  “Fuck this…” It was an old trick and one that worked like it always had for him. Craig spoke to himself and forced his ass in gear. He wasn’t exactly known for his cowardice. Then again, not too many people knew that he talked to himself for courage, either.

  Craig took the stepping-stone walkway, one hand on his pistol holster, and unsnapped the leather strap that held the handgun safely locked in place. Worst case scenario: the old man was dead from a coronary and a little ripe from two days of lying on the carpet.

  He made the door with no problems, meaning his legs did not tell him it was time to go loudly enough to override his brain telling him to get his ass up there and find out what was what. He tried the doorbell three times, waiting for almost a minute between efforts and then knocked vigorously just to be safe. After close to five minutes, he tried the front door and found it locked.

  He had better luck with the back door. A quick check of the windows along the way confirmed that they were closed and locked as well, but the door that faced away from the road and looked out on the quarter-acre back lawn was not only unlocked but open. Before entering he called in on the radio and explained the situation to Glenn Donner.

  “You need back up, boss?” Glenn sounded a little too eager, and Craig didn’t figure he’d need assistance to see if Douglas was alive or dead.

  “Negative. I’ll call you if that changes though.” There, that sounded sort of like he had a little confidence. At least he tho
ught it did.

  “Got’cha. I’ll be waiting.” Glenn sounded like a kid who was told he’d have to wait until New Year’s Day to open his Christmas presents, but that was just too damned bad. Barring the budget to really go crazy and hire a few more people, Craig had arranged for cell phones in the event that all available units were needed at one location. The phones were set to reroute emergency calls to the officers in the field in the event that even Glenn was called out. The set up was arranged two years earlier and to date had never been needed. Glenn was still shit out of luck on that front, but he just kept hoping. As far as Craig was concerned, his dispatcher could keep hoping until he was blue in the face. He preferred the idea of never running across anything remotely like a major crisis in his town.

  He clipped the radio back onto his service belt, stepped through the door and into the spacious kitchen of the retired librarian’s house. The heat was on, which would have made sense two nights earlier, but the weather was only slightly chilly and barely required a jacket, even when outside. He liked the whole situation less by the second.

  “Anyone home? Mister Habersham? Douglas?” The only answer was the sound of his own breathing, which was about what he’d expected. “Sonuvabitch.”

  Craig stepped in further, looking around the utilitarian kitchen. The man had absolutely nothing out of place and not a solitary dirty dish in the pale yellow sink. In comparison to his own apartment, the place was positively empty.