“They’re safe.”
Anna laughed, a booming sound. “Safe? No one is safe! Nothing is safe! When I’m finished there won’t be anything anymore!”
She took three quick strides and stood before Gina. “Don’t you understand?” she screamed. Her white face was livid with triumph. “In a few seconds none of this will exist anymore! ALL OF IT WILL BE GONE!”
Gina said nothing.
Anna grabbed the other girl with both hands and stared into her calm eyes.
Midnight, the twelfth stroke.
“TOUCH! LOOK!” she roared.
Gina fell dead.
And the world went away from Anna, who screamed once as she was yanked from the Earth.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“SAMHAIN!” the voice, filled with a bottomless fierce rage, tore through the Land of the Dead. In the tall tower of the jagged stone structure he called home, the Lord of the Dead faced his two guests, who stared out across the ledge which bordered one side of the tower at a blasted alien desert landscape pocked with pale canyons and stone walls. The sky was the color of mustard, flecked with thin wan gray clouds. It was hard to breathe in the thin, hot air.
“Then Reggie is dead,” Reynolds moaned. There was pain in his voice, and he put his head in his hands. “She didn’t tell me that was the price.”
“Yes,” Samhain replied. “She knew it was the only way.”
“And it’s not over,” Grant added.
“No,” Samhain answered. He seemed oddly distant, preoccupied. He turned toward Reynolds, and Grant was startled to see him reach out a long slender white finger and touch the impresario lightly on the shoulder.
“There is no need to mourn,” he said, in a voice that was almost gentle. “You will see her again.”
Reynolds raised his tear-streaked face. “I loved her.”
“Yes. And as for your father—”
“I know. It was the Dark One. Not you.”
Samhain stared out over the spotted plain which surrounded the tower, out past the miles of arid emptiness, toward a distant range of low mountains that resembled blunt pointed teeth.
Grant had noticed a series of movements in the near distance, strange shapes barely visible — geometric squares and rectangles, balloon shapes, stringy things and things that looked like crawling insects. They were all headed vaguely in the same direction.
Samhain explained, “Those are the dead. They come here for a time, and then they leave. This is only a way station, you know.”
“Where do they go?”
“That is the great question, isn’t it?” Samhain answered cryptically.
The boom of the Dark One’s voice, imbued with savage rage, came again:
“SAMHAIN!”
Samhain pointed to the distant mountains. “That is where I must meet him,” he said. For a moment his voice regained its old witty edge. “For better or worse.”
Grant put his hand on his .38 and drew it out. “I’ll go with you.”
Now Samhain laughed. “That won’t do you any good here, detective!” As Grant’s look turned sour he gestured with his hand. “Please! Fire it at will! At me, at the sky, anywhere you like!” Again he laughed.
Grant shrugged and aimed the police special at the Lord of the Dead. “Something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
The gun discharged, but it was as if the bullet didn’t exist, or was absorbed by the very air around it. There was a bullet, but it had vanished.
Samhain roared with laughter. “You humans continue to amuse me to the last! Surely I will miss you, detective Grant.”
“What’s going to happen to you?” Grant asked.
“Oh, we shall see,” Samhain replied, still cryptic.
“Can the Dark One still get back to Earth?”
“Oh, yes. If I fail, I’m afraid everything will be destroyed, after all. This world, your own, everything.”
The booming cry of rage sounded again in the distance.
Samhain said, “I’m afraid I must leave soon.”
“Please let me go with you.”
Samhain shook his head. “I must do this alone.”
Samhain stared down at the dry plain below them and said, “Ah! Mr. Reynolds, I believe your prayers are answered.”
A shape — a wisp of smoke in the shape of a ring, had detached itself from the line of pilgrims on the plain below and was making its way to the base of the tower. It passed out of their sight and Grant imagined it floating across the wide entryway and up the huge set of stairs — one flight, two, a third, and then, finally wending its way up a spiral staircase.
The three of them watched as the wisp of smoke, the lightest blue in color, made its way onto the platform and stopped before them.
“Gina?” Reynolds said hopefully.
A voice came, a faraway whisper, tentative. “I … knew that name.”
“Do you remember anything about Earth?” Reynolds asked.
“Very little. I know I was another place. And now I am here.”
The roar of the Dark One’s voice rattled the stone around them: “SAMHAIN!”
“That voice I know,” the ring of smoke said, with a trace of fear.
“Don’t worry, Gina. Samhain told us that you must stay here with us.”
Reynolds stepped forward and attempted to touch the smoke ring, but it backed slowly away from his touch.
“Yes. I will stay here.”
The ring seemed to solidify a little, and settled gently to the floor of the platform.
Grant turned to address Samhain.
“Now what —?”
But Samhain was gone.
Chapter Fifty-Four
A stranger in my own land.
These words went through Samhain’s mind as he made his way away from his stone palace into the wilderness. There were parts of his own world that he hadn’t been to in ages, and this was one of them. He remembered the mountains as being low and ugly, nothing like the magnificent peaks he had seen on Earth, but he remembered little else about them.
He missed Earth already, and was surprised at the fact. He missed Ireland, and he missed Orangefield, the Adirondack Mountains which ringed it like a halo of lush green. Though he had not been blessed with the sense of smell, he could almost feel the moist fecundity of those evergreens, those thick forested areas and even the wet furrows of the pumpkin patches after a rain. The air had shimmered then, and the soil was so rich and dark it was a living thing itself.
Living things.
And he the Lord of the Dead.
Perhaps that was it: after all these centuries, all this vast expanse of time since the beginning of life on Earth, when he had suddenly found himself there and knew he had a job to do — after all these countless days and years of ushering the dead from Earth through his own kingdom — he suddenly realized that he didn’t hate life at all. That had been the Dark One’s biggest trick — to make him feel that he despised life as much as the Dark One did — and to believe that, as the Dark One did, that he wanted to erase every speck of life from the Earth and wherever it was found.
But he didn’t want this as all.
After all this time, life was as mysterious to him as ever — a mystery he could not understand and which, he now knew, fascinated him.
Though he was Lord of the Dead, he loved life itself.
The braying cry of his name rose over the distant mountains and flowed over the dry plains and washed over him.
“SAMHAIN!”
“Coming, master,” he said, to himself, and allowed himself a thin red smile.
He passed through the line of pilgrims and, as if they knew, they parted for him. And still they continued their trek to the east, where their ultimate destination lay. He only knew that they went, and then were gone. When he had tried to investigate this phenomenon he had found himself stopped by a gentle wall. The pilgrims passed beyond, and he was not allowed. It was the only place in his whole domain from which he
was barred.
The pilgrims closed their line again after he had passed through, as if he had not been there. A few turned to regard him — a thing shaped like a triangle with three eyes, an impossibly slender thing which slithered along the ground, pushed by four sets of tiny legs, a box with eyes on all sides — but quickly lost interest and resumed their separate journey.
Once, long ago, he had sought to map the four corners of his world and discovered that it was not round, as he had supposed. When he had reached a certain point in his landscape he merely found himself back where he had started.
He remembered that the mountains were at the edge of the world. As they grew closer he began to study his surroundings more closely. The pale patches of brown and tan which dotted the land were more numerous here. There were less of the dry-rooted plants which sprung up here and there near the tower, and almost no boulders or other markings. Soon the plants had disappeared altogether, leaving him with a flat, dry, blotchy vista.
He name, louder now, blared out at him from the rising hills.
He noted that there was a darkening patch in the sky above the central mountain, taller and sharper-toothed than the rest. So, she was trapped, but fighting. Samhain remembered how the Dark One had, the other time he had attempted destruction, eaten away part of the sky of the Land of the Dead, and how long it had taken to heal.
As he watched, and as his name was roared out once more, the patch darkened to a ragged angry cut.
Samhain quickened his pace, floating like a black-caped wraith toward whatever came.
Hours later, as he reached the base of the mountain, the sky had darkened overhead, making it look like night. Samhain looked back the way he had come: in the far distance lay his tower, sitting serenely in the pale light of its own sky.
Another roar, another gouge in the sky overhead.
“Where are you?” Samhain called, and in answer was the girl’s voice deepened to despair and rage.
“Inside! Come to me now!”
Samhain passed along the base of the mountain and began to climb. He looked up, the naked peak devoid of foliage or snow, like a single snaggle tooth high above.
“Where?” he called.
When his name was called again, in a fitful scream, he saw, a third of the way up, a cut in the side of the peak.
He made his way up to it; it was a tall and narrow opening to a shadowed cave.
He went in.
Immediately, the cut closed behind him, with a rending bellow of rock and stone.
Samhain passed deeper into the cave, following the cry of the Dark One’s voice.
And there, in a cavern within the belly of the mountain, chained to the smooth floor of a cavern lit by the surrounding walls which glowed a sickly green, was the girl.
There was no longer a pretense that she was a young girl. Though her body was still small, her face was ravaged with the deep lines and creases of an aging beast. Her eyes were hooded black pits, her lips cracked.
“Let me go, Samhain,” she spat.
Samhain shook his head. “It took much to get you here, and this is where you will remain.”
“I COMMAND YOU!”
Samhain hovered over the writhing thing. “No. And you never did.”
Calculation and desperation crossed the thing on the floor’s face. She became calm, and she showed something that was supposed to be a smile.
“I will share everything with you.”
“Everything of nothing?”
“Why not? There will be a kingdom of nothingness, and you and I will rule. No life, no humans, nothing to stand up to our domination.”
Samhain slowly shook his head. “More lies, Dark One? You would destroy this place, and me, if I release you.”
“RELEASE ME AT ONCE!” she screeched hoarsely. “RELEASE ME OR I WILL TEAR THE SMILE FROM YOUR FACE AND TURN YOU TO DUST!”
“We both know that you cannot do that either. Not as long as you are here.”
The voice became calm. “Let me go back to my own place, then.”
“Yes,” Samhain said, and lowered himself over the chained figure. “You may return to your realm, but you will offend this one no more.”
Anna smiled.
“Do it, then, Samhain.”
Samhain lowered himself even farther, and, sighing, kissed her.
She grabbed his cape in her claw-like hands and howled, “Die, Samhain!”
“Yes …”
The cape dissolved, the white face turned to dust, and there was nothing.
Anna, screaming triumph and vindication, vanished from that place.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Grant and Reynolds, and the thing that had been Regina Bright, heard the echoing scream from the far mountains.
“It is over,” Gina said, a whisper.
And now, as the other two watched, her smoky form began to lengthen and fill out. The smoke vanished, and, slowly, in its place appeared something that looked very much like Samhain. The face was less rigid, the eyes less hard, the long-fingered hands softer-looking.
Before Reynolds could speak, Gina said, “Yes. I will be the new Lord of the Dead. It is fitting, don’t you think?”
She turned to Grant, and her thin red lips smiled. “Things may be a bit different from now on, detective. I don’t know if Orangefield will be seeing quite as much of me.”
“Samhain?” Grant asked.
“He is provided for.” She looked out at the line of pilgrims making their way across the barren landscape. “Those are my charges. Perhaps I can make their time here more pleasant than it has been.”
She regarded Grant again. “And you, detective, must return to Orangefield. It is not your time.” She smiled again. “Yet. And if you forego the cigarettes and alcohol, I may not see you again anytime soon.”
“What about you?” Grant said to Reynolds.
The impresario smiled. “I’ll be staying here, of course. I could never leave Gina again. And what better place to write the third volume of my history than the very place that inspired it!”
Reggie nodded.
“We will miss you, detective,” she said. “I can tell you that your friend Tom Malone is in peace. In fact, he is about to leave us. You have learned a very great secret, one that no man who returns to Earth should know. I will take the knowledge from you, but not the certainty. That will be my gift. Good-bye.”
She leaned over, and kissed him.
And then Grant was suddenly gone.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Another Halloween gone.
Grant found himself in Riley Gates’ old folding chair, facing Riley Gates’ empty pumpkin patch, with a cigarette in one hand and a half flask of Dewar’s in the other. Overhead, the Moon was in its accustomed position and shape. Off in the distance he heard a police siren, which abruptly stopped.
There was silence in the new November night.
To his right, about a hundred yards away, lay the twisted remains of what had been the Halloweenland Ferris wheel. Grant stared at it hard, having no memory of how it got there.
Where have I been? he thought. What did I miss?
Vaguely, he knew that momentous things had happened. But he had no memory of them.
He closed the flask and tossed it away, suddenly not thirsty, and flicked the cigarette into the cold, still night.
He reached for another cigarette, then shoved the pack back into his pocket. The thought of nicotine made him ill.
He pushed himself up out of the chair, hearing his own bones creak.
At the edge of his memory something flared, and for a moment he was sure that he had seen wondrous things.
But then the half-memory, a place with thin air and a yellow sky and a parched landscape, dissipated like cigarette smoke.
Just a dream.
No: something more.
He knew that if he walked over Halloweenland that there would be little left to see, that the impresario Reynolds was gone, and Reggie Bright, too.
Reggie …
Again a memory flared, then faded.
There was a girl named … Anna, but she was gone now, he was sure.
It had been important to find her, but it was no longer important. He was sure of that, too.
He stretched, feeling his bones settle into place, shivered, and turned to leave.
The Moon, which was just the Moon, made him feel suddenly secure, for some reason.
And Orangefield was still Orangefield.
And there was always next Halloween …
Epilogue
For the first time in eons, Samhain felt at peace.
There was no job to be done, no impetus driving him on — no false prophet to follow.
He looked down at his body and laughed: a child’s balloon shape, with two rubbery arms, and two rubbery spindle legs which wobbled when he walked. He laughed again and the cardboard cutout next to him turned its three eyes on him and scolded, “Is it funny, pilgrim?”
“To me it is, yes,” Samhain answered.
The line stretched for miles behind him. In front was the wall that had been impenetrable to him. But when he came to it he passed through with ease, feeling a pleasant tingle over his shape.
And now the yellow sky he had beheld for so long changed into a deeper color, almost blue. In front of him a whirlpool had formed, and, in its center, a fiery hole.
He felt light as air, felt his body melting away as he moved into the whirlpool, which became a tunnel of light. He was drawn forward, forward, and watched the cardboard cutout that had been with him sucked into the light and away, dissolving with a sigh.
And then he was through, and someone was there in this other place, this glorious remembered landscape, to welcome him.
He felt his body again, his true body, and now his memory returned to him in a flash, and he knew who he was, and was filled with a stunning instant realization of fulfillment and happiness.
He felt his wings, strong and magnificent, on his back.
“Welcome home, Gabriel,” someone said.
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