Harvest Moon

by James A. Moore

  So, finally, he was on his way home. He should have felt great about it, but he still felt a little nervous when he thought about his skin. Any way you looked at it, it was just plain weird.

  He hadn’t really done anything all day, but he was tired when he got home. Josh made an early night of it, eating a cold ham sandwich on his way up to bed. Once in his room, he took off all his clothes and looked at his unmarred skin before he slipped into his pajamas. The flesh was flawless as only the skin of a child ever seems to be, but he imagined he could still see the angry red marks. Across the street he could see right into Heather and Melissa’s room. There was no one there to watch or to worry about watching him. He hoped Melissa was okay.

  When he closed his eyes he could still hear her screams and he had to wonder if anything he’d felt was real or if it was all just his imagination. He could remember that face grinning over him, the eyes burning, and the mouth stretched into an impossible leer. And the other one, the one who seemed to be rotting from the inside out, grabbing him roughly and holding him tight, the arms around him like vines around a young sapling.

  Maybe it was the mushrooms. They’re supposed to be poisonous.

  Yeah, that was a comforting thought. But if it was the mushrooms, he’d lived through whatever poisons they might have. That had to be worth something. It just didn’t make him feel any less freaked out by his dreams and the day he spent getting poked and prodded.

  He stared out the window for several minutes, unaware of how much time was passing, lost in his thoughts. Outside his window, the figure of his neighbor looked up from the darkness, staring at him, her face almost completely blank.

  Perhaps they both thought similar thoughts. In the long run, it is hard to say.

  Around them, the world that had been holding its breath finally exhaled.

  Chapter Six

  I

  As has been stated already: Beldam Woods was never exactly a town overflowing with crime. It happened, true enough, but seldom with a great deal of excess. Really, when you get down to it, that’s one of the good things about rural life. Not really a lot of street gangs to promote a violent lifestyle. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, and one of those particular exceptions was almost always to be found on October thirtieth. As with many places, though not many as small as Beldam Woods, the town had a long tradition of enduring Mischief Night.

  What did that mean in the area? Why, it meant toilet papered trees, soaped windows, the occasional bag of burning dog feces and, of course, rotten eggs. Some traditions refuse to die, no matter how unpopular they are.

  And you may rest assured that Craig Gallagher did not like Mischief Night in the least. As much as he could still clearly recall egging the bejeezus out of Old Man Hadderstrom’s barn as a kid, he didn’t relish the phone calls he’d get throughout the course of the night. There were too many kids with too many chances to vent some steam.

  Hopefully there wouldn’t be too many people who took a little mischief as hard as Hadderstrom had back in his youth. The old farmer had been just shy of psychopathic, and if it hadn’t been for his predecessor a few decades back knowing about the man’s dangerous temper, there was every reason to believe Craig Gallagher would have never graduated high school. He’d have been too busy being dead. Unlike most of the old school farmers back then, the only sort of shot Hadderstrom ever carried in his shotgun was lead. If it hadn’t been for a timely visit from the police chief—brought about by a phone call from the next farm over to complain about what had been done to the front porch of the farm house and about the toilet paper decorating the trees—Hadderstrom would likely have wound up in jail several years earlier.

  Remembering the old man and thinking about the kids who weren’t as lucky made Craig worry all the more. He started going over a list of the places where he had to visit during the night to make sure everything was all right. It was not a short list.

  He already had one murder, possibly two, six missing kids, and a lunatic in his jail cell to contend with. Yep. Hating Mischief Night more every single minute. And the day was only just starting.

  You could add in the fun and games at the campus, too. Car vandalism wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that happened all the time in Beldam Woods either. He didn’t like the trend so far for this year. It didn’t bode well for any of this coming out with a happy ending. On the other hand, it could have been worse, he supposed. At least there was one little shining jewel in all of the nonsense going down. Barry Foster, one of the most annoying cretins in the Underage category in Beldam Woods, was about to get a surprise visit. It seemed that Barry’s fingerprints had been all over the headmaster’s car. The very car that had been vandalized the night before last.

  That thought brought a tight smile to Craig’s lips. Little Barry, it was rumored, though never confirmed, liked to force the issue of going all the way with his dates. If it was true, none of the girls would admit to it. If it was false, there were other things on the list of not-very-nice-habits the kid had that would justify taking him off the street before he became more than a mere nuisance. He dealt a few drugs, according to everything Craig could find out. Not enough for a felony rap, not really at least, but enough to stay on Craig’s radar. Besides which, Craig had never liked the little shit. It was maybe a petty reason to enjoy what was about to happen, but the police chief enjoyed it just the same and without the faintest hint of guilt.

  The boy had it coming. And maybe, just maybe, a good scare and a few nights in a jail cell would do him some good. And if not, he was pretty sure he could get the charges to stick. The kid had already been in enough trouble in the past, and George Burgess was not at all amused by what had been done to his car. Oh, to be sure, Barry’s folks would make right on the repairs, but that wasn’t really the point, was it? Burgess might well press charges anyway, to teach the kid a lesson long overdue.

  Barry lived in one of the finest houses in town. The Foster family fortune was old and well-established, and the house they lived in was even older. A massive, sprawling three-story affair with enough gingerbread and gables to write a book about, the place had even been featured in a few architecture magazines over the years. What they didn’t own, they probably owned stock in. Like too many kids, he was easily bored and convinced of his own invulnerability.

  Craig was going to relish this bust. Maybe he was supposed to feel bad about that, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Like too many of the upper-crust kids in the area, Barry Foster thought he was immune to the rules. The fingerprints were all the evidence needed to teach him otherwise.

  He made himself calm down. Barry was just a kid, and there was really nothing other than a little circumstantial evidence to go on. So far no one had come forward to claim they saw him in the headmaster’s car, and he doubted anyone would. The catch here was to play it nice and slow and careful if he wanted the charges to stick.

  Craig pulled onto Sullivan Street, looking down the long line of houses that had stood proudly in the area for as long as the town had been around, or close enough to it not to matter. The old blood families in Beldam Woods had a stranglehold on the neighborhood, and that was just one of the things that the newer members of the township had long since had to accept. The Fosters had been living on Sullivan Street since some time in the previous century, in the sort of home that most would easily call palatial. Like everyone else on the street, they went a little crazy with the Halloween decorations. In their case the entire front yard had been made into a cemetery, with Styrofoam headstones and a few holes dug up where, on Halloween night, the family would place a few dummies dressed up as zombies. They got into the spirit, but mostly because the entire block got into the spirit. There hadn’t actually been any changes to their decorations in the last five years.

  The house looked empty, with no cars in the driveway and no sign of anyone inside. But it was the early part of the day and there were no lights burning. That didn’t mean no one was home.

&nb
sp; Craig parked at the curb and waited. Sooner or later Barry would show up. In the meantime, he wasn’t really in much of a hurry.

  He let his eyes scan over the decorations at a dozen or so houses he could see, and was as impressed as he had been as a kid by what he saw. Back when he was young enough to go trick or treating, the houses had all been elaborate affairs, most of them hosting parties for a few close friends—be it a dozen or a hundred—and the entire stretch of road was lit up with a variety of decorations ranging from the cute to the terrifying. It had been magical as far as he was concerned.

  The Evans’ family had always given out full size candy bars, to each and every kid. And the Hollisters had allowed any child brave enough to get through the hellish maze of their front yard—complete with several members of the family dressed in costumes and willing to scare a kid into a pair of wet pants—the opportunity to grab as big a double handful of candy as they could manage. After a session of scary stories at the library, it was harder for a lot of kids to get up the nerve to walk through the makeshift haunted house in the front yard of the mansion than many people would have imagined. It took three years before Craig had finally gotten up the nerve to try it without his mother holding his hand. Remembering that fear brought a smile to his face and made him wish he could go back to those simpler times. Life was pretty good when the only fear you had was a man in a mask trying to give you candy. Then again, these days, that was really something to worry about.

  These days there were people out there who would tear a man’s skeleton out of his body, or nab six kids who were necking in the wrong part of the woods.

  “Shit. What the hell am I doing worrying about Barry Foster when I should be trying to find the real sickos out here?”

  He didn’t have an answer to his own question. Craig tried to get back into the spirit of the season with a few more memories of what the past had been like, but there was too much going on for him to have any fun.

  It was over three hours before Barry Foster came home from wherever he’d been. By then Craig had worked himself into a properly shitty mood. Barry didn’t try to resist. That just made his mood a little sourer.

  II

  Jeremy Koslowski looked at his pumpkins and allowed himself a small victory smile. The small smiles were acceptable, because they didn’t hurt so much. Too much more than a little grin and his jaw ached from last night.

  Daddy had come home in a mood, and Jeremy had been his target for the night. That was okay. He liked it better when his father got angry with him instead of with his mom.

  He was normally a little gentler with Jeremy, because the law looked out for kids a lot more. At least that was what he had figured out. No one in the family ever discussed what his father did. It wasn’t done.

  Best not to think about it at all, really, so he concentrated on the pumpkins and the faces he’d given them. The one for Josh was everything he’d hoped for. The face it bore was terrifying, and made him think of what a demon’s skull might look like if the demon had a pumpkin for a head. He’d almost felt like no matter what he did, that one would work out to be everything he was hoping for. If he’d believed in God—as opposed to merely saying he did for the sake of not getting his father riled—Jeremy would have believed that his hands had been guided in their mission.

  The day was turning bright but chilly and his father was still sleeping off the latest binge. So Jeremy grabbed the pumpkin, carefully placed it inside a black trash bag and slid out the back door before he could think about it any longer. The desire to keep the newly carved jack-o-lantern was strong, but he had made a promise and intended to keep it. He might be proud of what he’d accomplished, but that didn’t mean he was going to hoard it away. Besides, he would know who had made Josh’s costume. That was enough.

  He left his house and his neighborhood as quickly as he could. He was allowed to walk these days, but there was always the risk that that privilege would be revoked if his parents caught him walking halfway across Beldam Woods. Josh lived in the town’s center, and Jeremy lived in the east end, or as it was sometimes called, the Barrens. The woods there were old and scattered, many of the trees dead and diseased, which is where the place got its name. The houses were, by and large, not very impressive. A lot of them had been built at the end of the Second World War, and were slapped together with cheap aluminum siding and even cheaper wood. Jeremy lived in exactly that sort of house.

  The difference was one that he knew was growing. There were already some kids at school who couldn’t seem to look past the fact that he wasn’t exactly living in a classy neighborhood. He didn’t understand what the big deal was—or at least he kept telling himself that—but for a few of the locals, where he lived seemed to be more important than who he was.

  Jeremy was not a large boy, but he was too skinny to really be called average. If his father was any indication, that wouldn’t last, but for now, he was rather on the scrawny side. So the jack-o-lantern, small as it was, began to feel like he was trying to carry a bowling ball in a short while.

  He walked quickly to compensate for the extra heavy package and to keep warm in the late October chill. He also walked a little faster in an effort to get over the sensation that he was being followed. He didn’t really notice it at first, but as he made his way, he began to feel like someone was watching him. The fine hairs on the back of his neck rose and the flesh on his arms pimpled into cold rough spots; he felt the presence of someone else, even when he didn’t see anyone.

  The potential threats were numerous. Jeremy knew that for a fact. According to his mother, there were any number of sexual predators in the area, many of whom would gladly do things to a little boy if they couldn’t find a little girl to do them to. Now, it’s one thing to know that you aren’t really a little boy anymore—otherwise, why would his folks let him walk alone?—it’s another thing entirely to feel like you’re grown up enough to handle a problem if it arises. He walked as slowly as he had before, but he walked with his eyes wide and his ears alert for new and different sounds.

  The old man was in front of him before he knew what was happening. One moment he was looking at the narrow path around the back of the houses on Rimbauer Street—where his own home resided—and the next the way was blocked by a figure that was gaunt to the point of being nearly skeletal, with thinning white hair and a face that was almost comically old. The features brought to mind a vulture that was trying to hide behind a human-faced mask. The eyes were narrow and pale blue in color, the nose was damned close to a beak. The thin lips under the nose were a slash of pale flesh in a wrinkled mass of weathered skin, surrounded by uneven silvery stubble.

  Jeremy backpedaled, let out a squeak of surprise, and dropped his jack-o-lantern all in one motion. He reached for the bag he’d been carrying, knowing already that he was too late to save his prize. His hands encountered nothing but air. In front of him the old man was holding the bag, offering it to Jeremy with a wry grin.

  “I think you dropped this, my good lad.”

  “Unnh,” he replied, his tongue not quite up on how to respond to the sudden changes in his plans. At no point had he penciled in getting molested, and yet, standing right in front of him was the dirty old man his mom had warned him about.

  The old man looked at him, lifting one eyebrow in a way that said he was either moderately offended by Jeremy, or mildly amused. He held out the wrapped, carved pumpkin, waving his long-fingered hand. It looked like a bag surrounded by a gigantic spider, attached to a corpse’s arm. “I think this is yours…”

  Just in front of him was his prize, the pumpkin he’d spent hours and hours envisioning and then carving into the perfect jack-o-lantern. All he had to do was reach out and take it from the scary old man who was holding it out to him. Easy as you please. Just. Take. It. He looked at the deep shadows on the old man’s face and thought that there was something almost familiar about him, though he was damned if he could decide what that something might be.

  He want
ed to run. He wanted his pumpkin. He wanted the old man in front of him to go the hell away and never come back. He wanted so many things, that in the long run he simply stood there, too uncertain as to what to do for his own good.

  The man made it easy. He reached out with his free hand, and grabbed Jeremy’s wrist. The fingers that held him were cold to the touch and callused to the point where they felt like they were formed from sandpaper.

  Before he could do more than flinch, the package was set in his hand and held there until he managed to get a solid grip on the plastic bag. He looked into the yellowed eyes of the man in front of him and swallowed hard. His heart was doing a nervous sort of stuttering pulse in his chest and he was having a hard time breathing properly as a result of the whimper that his throat seemed to generate spontaneously.

  The old man’s bony fingers patted Jeremy’s hand before letting go. “Caution is the rule to follow.” The stranger’s voice was raspy to the point of sounding almost painful. It brought to mind a door that had been swollen shut by humidity and then abruptly forced open.

  Before Jeremy could respond, the man’s fingers slid over the bag that held his pumpkin and peeled the plastic back, revealing the carved gourd to the light of the morning sun. “It would be a shame to see so fine a jack-o-lantern ruined by a misstep.” The long fingers caressed the ripe orange flesh, barely touching, certainly not marking the carved pumpkin, but seeming to taint it nonetheless.

  “I-I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, mister.”

  The man nodded, his head bobbing but his eyes staying locked on Jeremy’s. “A wise rule to follow. I’ll leave you be, lad.” He stepped back and Jeremy released a breath he hadn’t even been aware of holding. The old man stepped back and didn’t so much seem to walk as to glide away, never bothering to turn back.