The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Well, now, sure you can handle that, podna?” Riley laughed, trying to help the child with his burden. But he wouldn’t let go.

  “Give it to me! Give it to me!” he shouted, when Riley tried to lift the pumpkin out of his hands.

  “Gotta weigh it, podna, to see how much it costs!”

  He gripped it tighter, his face screwing up in effort.

  The boy’s father said, “Sorry. We’ve been trying to get him to let go of it for ten minutes, but he’s says it’s the perfect pumpkin and nobody else is going to get it.” He nodded his head wearily at his other kids.

  “Well, now,” Riley said, rubbing his chin. “How much does he weigh?”

  Without hesitation, the boy’s haggard mother said, “Forty two pounds.”

  Riley nodded. “Fair enough.” With a grunt, he bent down, instantly regretting it, and lifted both boy and pumpkin up onto the scale.

  “Weighs just a shade over fifty, now. We’ll call it eight pounds even.”

  To his relief he watched the boy’s father help his son down.

  Riley spent the next five minutes weighing the other pumpkins, including the one carried by the twelve year old girl who said, to no one in particular, “Can we go now?”

  Riley waved them off, closing his cash box, and entertained a few secret thoughts about big families and parental discipline. He shook his head and sat back down in his chair with a grunt.

  There was only one customer left in the field, and he seemed to be taking a long time rooted to a single spot. Riley watched him for a while, then lost interest and picked up the paperback mystery he was reading.

  In five minutes, when he looked up, the man was still bent over the same spot.

  Riley tried to go back to the mystery novel, but finally gave up, concentrating on the customer. If he didn’t move soon …

  The man finally straightened, then bent down again, as if examining the ground.

  Riley hauled himself out of his chair and sauntered over, favoring his aching feet …

  “Havin’ trouble deciding?” he said amiably.

  The man stood up, but kept his back to Riley.

  Gates drew up close to him. “I said, podna—”

  The man turned around, and Riley saw something flash in the late day sun — the long edge of a blade which punched into his middle. For a few seconds there was no sensation, and then a burning began which went up his spine—

  “Marvin Soames—” Riley gasped, and the other man stepped forward, driving the blade deeper.

  “Sure as hell is, Detective Gates,” Soames said into Riley’s face as he pushed the knife in deeper, to the hilt. His breath smelled like alcohol. He followed Riley over and back as the big man collapsed to the ground, and straddled his middle, still driving and moving the knife. “Sure as hell is. I don’t forget nothin’, and I don’t forget what you did to me.”

  Riley was fighting for breath, and the heat was driving up into his head. “You …” he gasped. “You …”

  “Let me say it for you, fat man,” Marvin hissed. “You arrested me for vagrancy, and you arrested me for public nuisance. I did ten days for each. I never forgot.”

  “But …this …” Riley said, perplexed.

  “I got a friend asked a favor,” Soames said. He edged the blade up, keeping pressure on it.

  Behind Marvin Soames, something cut off the lowering sun. It was black, and moved more than the breeze should cause it to — a cape, hanging in mid-air, with something barely seen filling it …

  “Sam …Samhain …” Riley gasped.

  That’s right, Mr. Gates. That file of yours was a big one. I thought we should meet.

  “But …”

  Riley screamed as Marvin Soames yanked the blade up through his middle another inch.

  When the fire cleared from Gates’s eyes, he saw the pale, ashy outline of a face with no eyes just in front of him. The mouth was empty blackness.

  “Wh …” Riley tried to get out.

  You’ve become a bother, Mr. Gates. You could get in the way of certain plans. If you were to ask me why, that’s what I would answer …

  Riley fought for breath, felt a copper taste in his mouth, could no longer see.

  But actually, Samhain said, if you were to ask me why, I would answer: “Why not?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  For the hundredth time in the last few days, Corrie checked the telephoto lens set up in the guest room trained on the cornfield. But the scarecrow was not there. The light of a waxing moon showed an empty pole where the pumpkin-headed man had been. Corrie kept expecting John to show up — to feel the sudden crackly, feathery weight of his arm thrown around his shoulder, or to turn around and have the grinning pumpkin mouth there. But there had been no further visits. In a bizarre way Corrie was disappointed, as if an old acquaintance had suddenly vanished without leaving a forwarding address.

  And John had said things would get much worse …

  So far, nothing had happened that Corrie hadn’t experienced in the past. Growing up, he had become almost accustomed to the occasional odd noise, the shifting geometries in walls and ceilings, the sudden plasticity of a piece of furniture or the floor beneath his feet. The fact that others, including his mother, could at most hear a particularly loud noise but could see none of the things he saw had become normal to him.

  This was his world, and welcome to it.

  He swiveled the telephoto lens away from the cornfield, toward Orangefield. The town was lit up like a lantern. The beginning of Pumpkin Days, and they could keep all of it. He had gone out that afternoon for some groceries, and couldn’t find a parking spot. Finally he had parked in front of a fire hydrant, and gotten a ticket for his trouble.

  He would stay away from town for the next week …

  Through the lens he could see some of the decorated light poles, the flash of a strobe set up outside Ranier park, which threw a light deep into the sky, illuminating the scant clouds like a horizontal movie screen with the grinning happy face of a pumpkin …

  There, on the ground next to the strobe, was a figure who resembled John …

  It was gone the next moment, lost in the milling crowds.

  There was a noise behind Corrie, and he turned, half expecting the pumpkin man to be there—

  “John?”

  There was nothing—empty hallway illuminated by a nightlight.

  Another sound—from down below, on the first floor.

  Corrie left the telephoto lens, walked out into the hallway, stood at the top of the stairs.

  “Hello?” he said.

  Silence — then that sound again: something straining, like two nailed pieces of wood being pried apart—

  “Who’s down there?”

  He expected John’s voice—but there was only dead silence followed by that peculiar creaking sound.

  He quickly dismounted the stairs, checked the front door (closed and locked) and went into the kitchen (nothing), the dining room (nothing), the living room—

  The sound came again, startlingly loud, in the direction of the sofa against the wall.

  As he touched the couch, the sound came again from behind it.

  Corrie switched on the table lamp next to the sofa, and inched it away from the wall.

  He saw nothing. Then the creaking sound came again and his eyes instantly focused on the baseboard molding. Where two pieces met, one of them was straining away from the wall. Something like a black hairy finger was poking out from behind the wall.

  The straining sound again— and now the finger thrust out farther into the room, becoming thicker, matted with long, midnight-black strands of hair.

  A mighty heave, and part of the sheet rock at the base of the wall cracked outward. The finger jutted farther, becoming thicker and thicker, forcing the sofa farther away from the wall.

  A second finger appeared beside the first, extending—

  The hole widened. Another finger, and yet another appeared, prying the sheet rock asi
de as the first black fingers, now three feet long, jointed with slick black knuckles, resolved into jointed legs—

  There was a horrid sucking sound and more legs, followed by a huge bulbous body, popped out of the hole in the wall. Now a creature resembling a spider, nearly five feet wide, stood panting behind the couch. Two ruby eyes regarded Corrie maliciously. Already it was nudging the sofa aside, advancing on him.

  Corrie stumbled backwards and reached for the table lamp. As its cord was pulled from the wall and the room went darker, the red eyes of the spider thing like tight stoked coals, its mouth rasping like a bellows as it crawled forward toward him.

  Corrie gasped and took a swing as the spider lurched at him, feinted one way then crouched and lunged outward, low and left. Corrie, still backing away, hit the entry way to the living room and stumbled back into the hall. The spider followed, balancing on all legs save two, which it thrust out in front of it, trying to gouge at him first low, then high. Corrie fended off the attacks, but now found himself on the stairs leading to the upper rooms.

  He threw the lamp, turned, ran up the stairs, stumbled and fell halfway, felt the thick hairy appendages of the spider on his feet, moving up his legs.

  He turned on the stairs and kicked outward. The spider hissed, backed away, then lunged; Corrie kicked with both feet, driving it aside and, as it screeched and fell back, he crawled to his feet and ran up the stairs and into the guest room.

  The walls were gone, the doorknob disappearing in his hand. He was on a flat dark plain, endless in all directions, a single brightness at one horizon which looked like the rising sun but, as it brightened, became the spider in negative image, glowing gray-white, even more horrid, one eye, now green, growing balefully as it scuttled at him across the plain. The other eye pulsed palely as it hung like a broken egg yolk from the thing’s face.

  Corrie turned and ran —

  — and hit a wall, as the guest room returned. He fell, stunned, to the ground, listening for the monster.

  There was silence again in the house.

  After a time, after arming himself with a curtain rod, he cautiously opened the door and looked out.

  The hallway was empty, the stairway empty.

  Tensed to run or fight, he slowly descended the stairs and looked into the living room.

  The sofa was back in position, the lamp on its table.

  He inched his way in, pulled the sofa away from the wall.

  The wall was undamaged, the clamshell molding in place.

  Corrie’s breathing slowly returned to normal.

  He pushed the sofa back into place.

  And noticed the long scratches down his arms — one of them a deep gouge filled with blood.

  One leg of his pants was shredded, another gouge in his leg, deeper than the other.

  They had not gone away.

  The wounds were real.

  He felt real pain, not illusion.

  Things will only get worse, John had said.

  Now dreams and reality were melding.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Grant was going to say, “I want to know all about weird shit,” but when the door opened — and it was an extremely strange door, dark orange, with a stained glass pumpkin set into the half circle that topped it; the house itself was dark and gloomy, surrounded by dead, fallen trees and live ones in dire need of trimming — and he was faced with an attractive young woman, dark hair, doe eyes, who looked as frightened as anyone he’d ever seen, he kept his mouth shut.

  “May I help you?” she asked, in a faint voice tinged with a heavy accent.

  Grant took his cigarette from his mouth, showed his badge, said, “I was hoping to speak to someone about Thomas Reynolds’s work.”

  “He was my husband. He’s dead.”

  “I know,” Grant said. “I thought perhaps someone else in the household …”

  “You would want my son,” she said, and opened the door to let him in.

  Grant threw down his cigarette and toed it out on the front step.

  The inside of the house was even gloomier than the outside. It was much too dark, for one thing. The entry led into a hallway lit only by a pumpkin-shaped sconce; there was a piece of furniture in the hall that looked like a carved wooden skull with a hinged open cranium; it was lined with felt and empty. The pictures on the walls were dark, tossed-sea images and small houses surrounded by hills under threatening skies, and the living room she led him into looked like a funeral parlor from a horror film. The sofa was upholstered in black or dark blue fabric, flanked by two red damask chairs and fronted by an ebony coffee table. The fireplace, filled with ashes, looked like it hadn’t been used in some time. Above it were three stuffed animals, a field mouse, chipmunk, and, best of all, a squirrel which had been mounted on its hind legs in at attack pose, complete with open mouth and wild eyes.

  Grant almost said, “I don’t believe this,” but, again, kept his mouth shut.

  “Is there anything in particular you wanted to know about my husband?” his hostess asked; she hadn’t offered her name or her hand or her hospitality. She stood in the entry to the living room, hugging herself as if she were cold.

  “And your name is …?” Grant asked, deciding on acting official as the best course of action.

  She hesitated a moment. “Anja.” She spelled it for him. “Anja Reynolds.”

  Grant thought he had her accent pegged. “You’re Russian?”

  Again a hesitation, and Grant suddenly had her figured out.

  “I’m not from the INS,” he said. “I’m just a local cop, trying to get some information.”

  Instantly, she warmed a bit, though she still wouldn’t come into the room and continued to hug herself. “You are like that other man who was here earlier this year, Mr. Gates?”

  “I’m a friend of his.”

  She nodded. “As I told Mr. Gates, my husband and I were married in London, and there was some question about my status here, even though my son was born in America. I’m afraid—”

  “Not from me,” Grant said. He smiled, and took out a cigarette, only to put it back in the pack when she frowned. “Can I talk to your son?”

  “Certainly. Please.” She motioned that he should sit, but instead of coming into the room herself she disappeared into the recesses of the house. Grant heard the distant deep tick, tick of what he guessed to be a grandfather clock. A heavy door was opened with a creak. He heard muffled conversation. Then the door was closed again.

  Grant sat on one of the damask chairs, which proved to be so uncomfortable that he moved to the couch, which was even worse. He had never liked Sheridan sofas — one had a tendency to slide off them.

  He was about to go back to the damask chair when a boy of about thirteen strode into the room. He looked like a miniature man. He was dressed in a white shirt and tie, dark slacks, cordovan loafers. He wore spectacles — Grant couldn’t call them eyeglasses they were so round and old-fashioned looking — and his hair was slicked back with what proved to be Vaseline when Grant later got a whiff of it. Behind the spectacles he had guppy eyes, large and goggling. He didn’t smile. Under one arm he carried a large portfolio, which he placed gently on the ebony coffee table.

  Then he stepped back, and bowed!

  Grant didn’t know what to say. He took out his notebook and flipped it open.

  “Alright if I write some of this down?” he said, in a neutral voice — he didn’t know whether to treat this creature like a boy, a man, or a headwaiter.

  “That would be fine,” the boy said, in clipped, accented English. His diction was too perfect.

  “Would you sit down and help me?” Grant offered.

  The boy bowed again and sat stiffly down in the damask chair Grant had abandoned.

  Grant became aware of another presence, and turned slightly to see the boy’s mother, just outside the room, standing in the gloom of the hallway with her arms folded, watching them.

  “Doesn’t your mother like this room?�
� Grant asked, loud enough for her to hear.

  The boy blinked. “No. She’s afraid. It was there” — he pointed to an ornate table on the far side of the room, which held an old fashioned rotary telephone — “that my father died. All that was found was a pile of bones.”

  Grant was startled to see a flare of excitement in the boy’s face.

  “Aren’t you afraid to come in here?” Grant probed.

  “I find it fascinating.” His voice was so perfect it sounded robotic. “I find everything to do with this house, this town, fascinating. She” — he raised his voice at the word and looked quickly toward his mother and then back at Grant — “does not.”

  “I see.” Grant indicated the portfolio. “And what’s that?”

  “The answer to all your questions, I imagine. It is the second volume of my father’s occult history of Orangefield. I trust you’ve read the first volume, Occult Practices in Orangefield and Chicawa County, New York, 1668-1940?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “You should start there.” He abruptly rose, and retrieved the portfolio from the table, placing it firmly under his arm. “This will do you no good until you’ve read volume one. Volume two is unpublished.” He stood as stiff and proud as a toy soldier. “Someday I will write volume three.”

  He marched to the hallway; Grant was interested to see that his mother had disappeared. The boy stopped and turned around.

  “I must tell you, detective Grant, that you will examine this volume at your own risk.” He held it out, and at the same time lowered his voice. “Samhain himself told my father not to publish it, though it was ready for the printer. My father followed his instructions, but then betrayed Samhain at the last minute. Hence …”

  He looked toward the ornate telephone table again, and Grant made a note to talk to whoever in the department had handled the death.

  At the mention of Samhain, Grant thought of Riley Gates. “So you believe Samhain is real?”

  Again that flush of excitement on the boy’s pale face. He nearly ran back to the coffee table, placed the portfolio carefully back down and sat back down in the damask chair.