The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus

by Al Sarrantonio

  He cringed at the words: writer’s block.

  After a moment he looked up over the top of the monitor at the casement window over his desk. Outside the sky was high and pallid blue and the window itself was open, letting the unnatural warmth in. It felt more like late August.

  While he watched, a hornet bumped up against the window screen, followed by another. After tapping at the unbroken screen in a few spots, trying to find entry, they moved off with a thin angry buzz.

  Not gonna get in here, boys.

  Again the thrill of a shiver went up his spine as he remembered the story from the morning paper.

  Too bad I can’t turn that into a piece for Parade magazine…

  The phone rang.

  He grabbed at it, as much in relief from the prospect of work as in annoyance.

  “Pete, that you?” a falsely hearty voice said.

  “Yeah, Don, it’s me.”

  His agent Don Revell’s voice became guarded. “I hesitate to bother you on a Sunday, but…”

  “I’m not finished with it, Don.”

  A slow long breath on the other end of the line. “They need the story by Tuesday, Pete. Halloween’s only three and a half weeks from today and they have to coordinate graphics with it and—”

  “I know all that, Don,” he said, with annoyance. “It’s just going slow is all.”

  “All that local research stuff you found — did it do you any good?”

  “Fascinating stuff. But it hasn’t helped me yet. I just can’t seem to get a handle on this one.”

  “Jeez—” Revell started to sound frustrated, but held it in check. “Come on, Pete. You’re one of the most popular children’s horror authors on the planet. Your stories have sold in the millions in every language on Earth. You can do this stuff in your sleep. Bogey man, a nice little scare, kids save the day, end of story. Tuesday. Two days from now. Can you do it?”

  “Sure I can do it. In their hands Tuesday.”

  “You sure, bud?” Revell sounded doubtful.

  “No problem.”

  There was a hesitation. “You… sure you’re all right, Pete?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You sound… weird. A little strange.” A pause. “You been drinking?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Everything okay between you and Ginny?”

  Maybe I should ask you that, you bastard.

  He said, with sarcasm, “Sure, Don. Just fine.”

  “Oh.” After a long moment, Revell added, “Anything I can do?”

  “Fifteen percent worth of advice?”

  “No need to get nasty, Pete. I’m just trying to help.”

  Before Kerlan could stop himself it came out: “You’ve already helped plenty, Don.”

  The longest pause yet. “I told you, Pete, there was never anything between Ginny and I.”

  “You know how much I believe you, Don? Fifteen percent.”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t work together any longer, if that’s the way you feel.”

  “You really want that, Don?”

  “Actually no, I don’t. But if you can’t get over this idea that Ginny and I had an affair, I think we’d better think about it.”

  Something far in the back of his mind, in the place that still was rational and mature, told him to stop.

  He took a long breath. “Let’s just forget it,” he said, reasonably.

  There was a long breath on the other end of the line. “I’d like that, Pete. Get back to where things were.”

  Continuing in a reasonable tone, Kerlan said: “I’ll have that piece in by Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday it is, bud. Maybe we can meet up early next week for a Halloween drink?”

  “Sure, Don. Whatever you say.”

  “Talk to you soon.”

  “Right.”

  There was a click and the phone went dead.

  He held it in his hand for a moment, staring at it. Did she have an affair with him or not? The truth was, he didn’t know. He was smart enough to know that the root of his problem with Ginny was deeper than that — deeper in himself. She was perfectly correct when she told him that all of his problems were rooted in his own frustration with his writing. He knew that was true. But didn’t everything else flow out of that? He’d always been a grouch — but had his moods grown so dark in the last months that he was actually driving her away from him?

  Wasn’t it reasonable to suppose that if he was driving her away, she would be driven into the arms of someone else? Someone like Don Revell, who was handsome and younger than he was, and made plenty of money?

  Did it matter that he had absolutely no evidence of an affair between the two of them, except for that fact that he realized he was such rotten company that she had to fall into someone else’s arms?

  That and the fact that he’d seen Revell put the moves on Ginny once?

  God, Kerlan, you’re an asshole.

  He still loved Ginny, still loved her with all his heart — but had no idea how to tell her that.

  The phone receiver still clutched in one hand, he lowered it slowly to its cradle and reached for the half empty fifth of Scotch, which had been open since noon. He poured two fingers of the honey-colored liquid into the tumbler to the left of the keyboard.

  I do think I’ll have that drink with you now, Don, he thought, staring at the white sheet of the computer screen in front of him.

  Chapter Three

  Four more fingers of Scotch and two hours later, he was no closer to filling the white blank space with words, but was at least enmeshed in the research in front of him.

  Why the hell can’t I get this down on paper?

  It was fascinating stuff, the legends of Halloween and how they eventually became the relatively benign children’s holiday of the present age. It was not always so. Halloween’s roots were deep in pagan ritual, specifically the Celtic festival of Samhain, the Lord of Death. Samhain had the power to temporarily return the souls of the dead to their earthly homes. The Samhain festival had eventually turned into Halloween.

  Why can’t I turn this into a nice, not-too-scary children’s story for the Sunday supplements?

  He’d tried it a thousand ways — with pets, with witches, with scary monsters — but always it came out too frightening, too strong for children. Always it came out with Samhain as something not benign at all — but rather a hugely frightening entity to be feared more than life itself.

  How the hell do you turn the Lord of Death into a warm, fuzzy character?

  How the hell do you keep making a living, and straighten your life out, you dumb, useless bastard?

  After another two fingers of Scotch, and another two hours, he gave up, went upstairs, and fell asleep on the couch in the living room, dreaming of endless white pages filled with nothing.

  Chapter Four

  He heard Ginny come in, heard her hesitate as she beheld his prone body on the couch, heard her mutter, “Wonderful,” and waited until she stalked off to the bedroom and slammed the door before trying to rouse himself. Blearily opening his eyes, he saw the orange sun setting through the living room window. It looked like a fat pumpkin.

  Maybe there’s something I can use there, he thought blearily. A fat old pumpkin named Pete….

  He closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

  A noise roused him. He knew it was much later, because it was dark through the window now. A dull white streetlight lamp glared at him where the sun had been.

  He stared at the grandfather clock in the adjacent dining room, and saw that it was nearly eleven o’clock.

  He heard noise off in the hallway leading to the front door.

  He hoisted himself into a sitting position on the couch. Head in his hands, he saw the empty Scotch bottle on the floor on its side between his legs.

  “Wonderful indeed,” he said, remembering Ginny’s use of the word hours before, as the first poundings of an evening hangover began in his temples.

  He stood, and di
scovered he was still mildly drunk.

  And there, piled in the hallway leading to the front door, was much of what Ginny owned, neatly stacked and suit cased.

  Holy shit.

  He suddenly discovered he wanted another drink. He found his way to the liquor cabinet, and was rooting around for an unopened bottle of Scotch when Ginny returned.

  In a cold, even tone, she said, “Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink for one day?”

  “Just one more, to clear my head,” he said. “I get the feeling I’m going to need it.”

  She was beside him, her hand on his arm as he removed the discovered fifth of Dewers. To his surprise, her grip was gentle.

  “Please don’t,” she said, and moved her hand down to take the Scotch from him.

  Sudden resentment and anger boiled up in him. He pulled the bottle away, keeping it in his own hand. He turned away from her and twisted the cap off, looking unsteadily back into the living room for the glass tumbler he had used.

  Ginny, amazingly, kept the gentle tone, but it had hardened slightly into urgency: “Please don’t, Peter—”

  “Just one!” he said, swiveling back to take a fresh tumbler from top of the liquor cabinet, where they stood, cut crystal sparkling like winking eyes.

  He poured and drank.

  “I really can’t take this any longer,” Ginny said quietly, and the continued mild tone of what she said made him focus on him.

  “Take what? Me?”

  “Yes.”

  He grunted a laugh. “So you’re going to — leave?”

  “I think I have to.”

  “You gonna run to your lover? Fall into Don Revell’s arms?” Even as he said it, even with his drunkenness, he knew it was a mistake.

  Silence descended on the room like a cold hand. “I told you, Peter—”

  He poured another drink, downed it. “You told me! You told me!” He waved the tumbler at her. “What if I don’t believe you?”

  With iron control she motioned toward the dining room table. “Sit down, Peter.”

  He moved the neck of the Scotch bottle to the tumbler, but her hands were firmer this time, yanking the bottle and glass out of his grip.

  “Sit down.”

  He did so, fumbling at the chair until she pulled it out for him. He sat, and watched her sit on the opposite side of the table. Startled, he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  “I’m going to say this for the last time, Peter,” she began, and suddenly he was focused on her as if he’d been struck suddenly sober. He knew by everything — by her posture, her voice, the tears in her eyes — that this was the pivotal moment they had been moving toward for the past weeks.

  “I’m listening,” he said, the fight out of him before it had even begun.

  She studied his face for a moment. “Good. Then please listen closely, because this is the best I can do to explain what’s happened to us.” She took a deep breath. “First of all, I never had an affair with Don Revell, and never would. He’s your agent, and, quite frankly, I don’t like him. He’s smart but he’s ruthless, and the only reason he’s with you is that you’re making him money. We both know he would drop you in a second if you stopped producing.”

  Kerlan thought of his conversation that afternoon with Revell. “You’re right about —” he began, but Ginny cut him off.

  “Let me finish. I was merely being polite to him at that party in September. He tried to kiss me and I didn’t let him. End of story.”

  “I saw—”

  “You saw him try. I turned my cheek and let him peck me there. That’s what you saw. After you turned away I told him as nicely as I could that if he ever tried to kiss me again I’d knee him in the balls.”

  Kerlan felt an odd urge to laugh — this sounded so much like the old Ginny, the one he had fallen in love with. But instead he just stared at her.

  “You said that? You never told me—”

  “You never let me tell you. For the last month you’ve been treating me like a leper. Ever since you started that Halloween magazine assignment Revell got you.”

  He found that his head had cleared to a miraculous extent. It was as if the importance of the moment had surged through him, canceling out the liquor.

  “You know I’ve been having trouble with it—”

  Ginny laughed. “Having trouble? Like I said this morning, you’ve been nothing but a monster since you began researching it.”

  “The money’s too good—”

  “To hell with the money — and to hell with Don Revell! Just tell him you can’t do it!”

  “I’ve never had trouble with anything before—”

  She leapt on his words as if she had been waiting for them. “Isn’t that what this is all about, Pete? Isn’t this all about you not being able to pull the trigger when you want to? It’s always come easy, hasn’t it? You’ve always been able to write when you wanted or needed to — and now for the first time you’ve got… writer’s block—”

  “Don’t say that!” he nearly screeched. She had touched the nerve, and even she seemed to know she had gone too far.

  “All right then,” she said, backing off. “Let’s just say you’re having trouble with this one. Isn’t that the root of all our problems lately?”

  After a moment, when he found there was nothing else he could say, he said, “Yes.”

  She seemed to give a huge sigh of relief. In the gentlest voice he had ever heard her use, she said, “Peter, do you think we can stop fighting?”

  His eyes were drawn to the pile of her belongings waiting in the hallway. He found that the last thing in the world he wanted was for her to leave. To hell with his work — to hell with everything. He wanted her to stay.

  “I… love you, Ginny. I’m… sorry for everything I’ve done.”

  Then suddenly she was around the table and holding him, and they both were crying.

  “Oh, Peter, it’s all right, everything’s going to be all right.”

  “Yes, Ginny, I promise…”

  “And you’ll tell Revell you can’t do that piece?”

  He stiffened, and she pulled away from him.

  “You’ll tell him that?” she repeated.

  The old anger tried to boil up in him — all the feelings of inadequacy, of helplessness, of everything that was mixed in with it, of him hitting middle age, getting older, afraid of losing his talent, afraid of losing her —

  With a huge effort, he brought himself under control and said, “If it doesn’t work in the next day or so, I’ll toss it.”

  “You mean it?” Her huge beautiful eyes were searching his own, studying him, begging him —

  Again he had to control himself, and knew she sensed it. She was waiting for him —

  “Yes.”

  She hugged him tighter. “I can’t tell you how happy I am. I didn’t want to leave. I was going to go to my sister’s, and you know I can’t stand her—”

  “Neither can I,” Kerlan said dryly, and Ginny laughed.

  “I love you more than anything in the world, Peter,” she said, kissing him. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

  She kissed him again, and Peter said, “I love you, too. More than you’ll ever know.”

  She pulled away from him, smiling, and said, “I’ll put everything away in the morning. It’s Monday, and I want to get the rest of my gardening done early, before I go to work. I’ll put my stuff away after I get home tomorrow night, all right?”

  “All right,” he answered, smiling back at her.

  “You coming to bed?”

  He almost said yes, sensing from the look in her eyes that she might want more than sleep, but instead he said, “I’m going to spend a little time in my office.”

  Her face darkened slightly. “You’re not going to—”

  “If it doesn’t work immediately, I’m giving it up. Let’s call this a last stand.”

  He could tell she was thinking of arguing, but instead she nodded. “All right, Peter.
Give it one more try.”

  “I’ll be up later.”

  She stopped, looked back at him. “I’ll wait up for you, if I can keep my eyes open.”

  “See you later.”

  She went down the hall to the bedroom. Kerlan, grunting with the continuance of a well deserved hangover, made his way downstairs.

  Chapter Five

  At three in the morning, he was finally ready to give up. The piece, no matter how he came at it, was just much too dark. The more he delved into the character of Samhain, the more frightening the Celtic Lord of Death became. There were hints of human sacrifice as tribute for good crops and prosperity. There were various dark tales of horrible deaths and evil perpetuated in his name. There was just no way to lighten him up. Peter tried making him into a character with a black cloak and pumpkin for a head — but when he read over what little he had written, the Lord of the Dead was just too scary for children. It just seemed that no matter what he tried to make the Samhain character do, he always ended up surrounded by death.

  The real stuff.

  And if little kids didn’t like one thing, it was the real stuff.

  He stared at a sketch he’d made of Samhain to help him, with the folds of his bright pumpkin head set back into the dark shadows of his cowl, a horrid sickle grin on his cut-out face, a spark of terrifying fire deep in the ebony eye sockets, stark white bone hands reaching from beneath the folds of the cloak, and shivered.

  “Hell,” he muttered to the picture, at the end of his rope, realizing that it just wasn’t going to work, “I’d even pay tribute to you, Sam, if you’d help me finish this damn story.”

  Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, it came to him.

  Sam.

  That was it!

  Call him Sam.

  Just like in the local Orangefield myths and legends about Samhain, which the locals called ‘Sam sightings.’

  Almost before he knew it, he was tearing through the story, and, in what seemed like no time at all, it lay all but finished in front of him.

  He came out of what felt like a trance, but what must actually be, he realized, a mixture of waning work-adrenaline, the remains of a Scotch hangover, and just plain tiredness. Through the window above his desk, the sun had already circled the globe and come up over the back of the house. Brighter than it had been the evening before, when it had hovered in the living room window, it now resembled a happy pumpkin.