“You hope,” said Samson, remembering that they could be kept over the end of their shifts if they were needed for an emergency.
“You’re on overtime already,” said Wadley. He, too, sat down, choosing the chair opposite Samson, one that enabled him to watch the TV, now turned to some kind of Halloween gala in LA.
About ten minutes later, Samson heard his name on the PA system, summoning him to the ambulance arrival doors. Without speaking to Wadley, who was engrossed in the activity on the screen, he emptied out the last of his tea, rinsed his cup and left The Canteen to Wadley.
Doyle was waiting for him at the double set of doors. “Take the patient into Bay 14. Conners will meet you there. I want your report on the patient’s condition as soon as it’s determined.”
“Who’s going to cover for me?” Samson asked.
“Baker will,” said Doyle.
“Let Spink know,” Samson said, and went off to Bay 14 to await the arrival of the new patient.
“You got it,” said Doyle, sounding jittery.
An orderly and a cop accompanied the gurney with the well-swathed patient as it was rushed into Bay 14, four minutes earlier than the cop had predicted; two minutes later, Doctor Richard Conners opened the drapes that enclosed the bay, saying, “What have we here?” He was taller than average, blocky of build, with thinning blond hair, a large broken nose, and great deal of pale body hair under his scrubs.
“This is the guy the two nurses hit,” said the cop before the orderly could speak. “The EMTs said he had a rapid pulse and his temperature was on the low side. They left his costume alone.”
Conners drew back the sheet that covered the injured man; he gave a slow whistle. “That’s some costume.” He fingered the slithery, gray-green fabric that covered him from head to toe, and stared for half a minute at the face, obviously a make-up appliance. “That head—it’s like something out of the movies.”
“Creepy, isn’t it? He really did it up brown—or gator-green,” the cop said as if glad to find someone who agreed with him.
“I’ll say,” Conners agreed, trying to find a pulse under the costume. “I think I’ll go along with the EMTs. Let’s get some X-rays before we start working on him. We don’t want to make him more shocky than he already is.”
“No, we don’t,” said Samson, and signaled to the orderly to bring the gurney and its passenger along to the X-ray department. “Any ID on him?”
“Not obviously,” said the cop. “Like I said: he looks a little too old for trick-or-treat to me. A party, or something no good.”
“Unless he went to the Halloween dance at the Metropolitan,” said Samson.
“Then what was he doing out on Golden Hills Country Club Road?” the cop asked, then noticed they were at the elevators. “Someone will do follow-up on this, come morning.”
Samson shrugged and pressed the button for the elevator. “That’s the next shift.”
“I’ll get your number from the nursing office,” the cop said, and stood aside as the gurney was shoved into the elevator.
“This is going to get complicated,” Conners complained.
They rode the rest of the way in silence, emerging into a small crowd gathered around the elevator doors.
“Coming through,” said the orderly, and began to move the gurney without waiting for compliance from the crowd.
“Hey!” Conners admonished him. “Please move aside,” he told the people, who slowly took a step or two back from the elevator.
Samson motioned the people to move farther back, and as the gurney went past him, the patient’s taloned hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. A few of the people saw it; one of them yelped in shock, and another gasped. Samson disengaged the eerie fingers, and slid the hand back under the sheet that covered the patient.
“Shit, man,” one of the crowd expostulated.
“He’s still in costume,” said Samson with his habitual calm. “That’s a glove.”
A few of the people laughed nervously, but one of the three children among them shrieked.
An older man said to Samson, “Mother’s having a cancer operation in the morning. We were given extended visiting hours, you know, just in case. We’re a little jumpy.”
Samson nodded his acceptance of this apology, and followed Conners, the orderly, and the gurney to the X-ray department, where they were sent along to Room 12, and found Jenkins waiting for them.
“See if you can take a pair of full-body shots before we start getting him out of his costume,” Conners said, his voice lowered in case the patient was able to hear him.
Jenkins laughed quietly. “Looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, only better face appliances. How long’s he been unconscious?”
“Not quite two hours, give or take,” said the orderly, flapping the yellow-tinted EMT report.
“Um,” said Jenkins. “Okay, I’ll do it.” He motioned to the orderly, and to Samson. “Help me transfer him to the table.”
Conners stood back to allow the other three men to work, saying only, “Turn his head; as long as he’s got the costume on, we won’t try for a full-on face, it’ll push on his neck too much.” He watched them lifting the limp figure with the sturdy drape the EMTs had used to load him onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. At one point, the patient made a kind of groan, but there was no other obvious response. The room was very quiet.
“Align him, Samson,” said Jenkins. “Like he was a nine-year-old who fell off his skateboard on a curl.”
“Will do,” said Samson, and unhurriedly maneuvered the patient as nearly as possible into the preferred position for his X-rays. “Want me to take off his shoes? They’re forcing him onto the balls of his feet.”
“He’s lying down. We can take care of it later.” Conners glowered at the patient as he stepped behind the shield in front of the controls for the machine. “God, I hate Halloween. We work with horrors every day of the week, then along comes Halloween, glorifying it all, and people wonder why our ER is so busy on this night.”
“Hey, get in here,” Jenkins called from his shielded control room. “We’ll try a first shot.”
Conners and Samson obeyed, squeezing in with the orderly and Jenkins, who pressed a series of buttons; there was a buzz and a soft clunk, and an image emerged on the computer screen in front of him.
“Holy shit,” whispered Conners. “What’s that?” He pointed to what appeared to be a malformation of the skull.
“Fan-fucking-tastic!” Jenkins marveled.
Samson stared at the screen and whistled softly, while the orderly blinked.
“What is that?” Conners wondered aloud.
“It ain’t one of us,” said Jenkins gleefully. “Look at the bone structure. Well, let’s figure those are bones and not something else. That’s from Somewhere Else. Not even the Elephant Man had that kind of skeleton.”
“It’s a hoax. It has to be,” said Conner.
“Or it’s one hell of a trick-or-treat,” said Samson.
“I told you the flap was the real deal,” Jenkins said victoriously. “What do we do now?”
“We report this,” said Samson.
“I’ll do it,” the orderly volunteered, hoping to get out of this small space and away from the unmoving figure lying under the X-ray machine.
“To who?” Conner demanded, growing more and more disbelieving as he stared at the computer screen. “What do we tell them—it’s Halloween, it’s Saturday, the moon is full, and the aliens have landed?”
“Well, one has; you can’t pretend that’s human,” said Samson, peering through the shield at the still figure on the table.
“Audioanimatronics,” said Conner suddenly. “It’s gotta be.”
“Except that it hasn’t moved and it’s silent,” said Jenkins.
The orderly gave a nervous sigh. “Is it alive?”
“No way to tell yet,” said Jenkins.
“Got to get it out of costume first,” said Samson.
&nbs
p; “Is that a costume?” The orderly goggled.
“Is it dangerous?” Conner asked the air.
“Probably some kind of pressure suit, or body armor,” said Jenkins, relishing the moment. “Hot-damn!”
Conners shook his head. “We ought to call someone. We have to leave it alone.”
“But who do we call?” Samson’s repetition of Conner’s question took the other two aback. “We can’t just let it lie here, can we?”
Then Jenkins beamed at the opportunity. “Ghostbusters!” he exclaimed, and immediately shut up.
“Want me to find out who to notify?” the orderly asked, wanting to get away from the alien being lying on the X-ray table.
“I’ll do it,” said Conners. “God, think of the press! I hate Halloween. It’s just a left over beginning-of-winter pagan festival turned into a fancy dress party,” he complained as he left the control booth.
Before Conners reached the door, Samson said, “Yeah. An old pagan rite turned into a festival.” He moved out of the cramped space to stand beside the supine alien. “Like Christmas.”
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is the first woman to be named a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild. She has also been honored as a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement by the Horror Writers Association, and as Grand Master of the World Horror Convention. She is the recipient of the Fine Foundation Award for Literary Achievement and (along with Fred Saberhagen) was awarded the Knightly Order of the Brasov Citadel by the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in 1997. A professional writer since 1968, Yarbro has worked in a wide variety of genres, from science fiction to westerns and from young adult adventure to historical horror. Yarbro is the author of over ninety books, more than seventy works of short fiction, and more than two dozen essays and reviews. Best-known for her Count Saint-Germain series, Night Pilgrims (2013) is its twenty-sixth book and twenty-fourth novel. She’s just completed the next novel in the series: Sustenance. Her website is chelseaquinnyarbro.net.
WE, THE FORTUNATE BEREAVED
Brian Hodge
He’d been relentless about it throughout the whole of October, as only a six-year-old could be, worse by the day as the month went on.
“I want it to be Daddy this year.” Cody was up to what felt like a hundred times a day now that the end of the month was here, and the night at hand. “We have to do a really good job so that it’s Daddy this year.”
Bailey had told him nothing about this night, ever, nor had Drew when he was alive. For a few more years, at least, they’d wanted Halloween, for Cody, to be nothing more than trick-or-treating. And maybe, minus one congenital heart defect, undetected until it was too late, that’s the way it would have been. Or maybe what they’d wanted wouldn’t have mattered anyway. All it took was one other first-grader in the know, and soon enough they all knew. Children shared secrets even more readily than they shared bacteria and head lice.
But knowing about it was one thing. Having such an enormous personal stake in it was something else entirely.
“It’s got to be Daddy this year.”
“Then let’s finish picking what we want to leave to call him,” Bailey said. “Let’s make it good. Have you thought really hard about what you want to pick?”
Of course he had. He’d been consumed by it all month. For Cody, the problem would be narrowing it down to just one. Because those were the rules. If he could’ve gotten away with it, he would’ve emptied his room of memories, harvested the closets clean, filled his wagon and more with them, then hauled them to the town square himself, to dump them at the foot of the cross where the frightful thing hung, awaiting something that looked like life.
Bailey’s own choice had been easier, made almost by default. Was it to be her wedding ring? No. For all it meant, it had none of Drew’s essence in it. His razor, still in the bathroom even though he’d been eight months in the ground? Improbably, it had survived since the first day of his freshman year of college, and had contoured his face nearly every day of his life since. No, not that either. It was too prosaic, with none of her essence in it.
In prior years, she’d heard local widows joke that what they should’ve picked was the TV remote—if anything could call their men over from the other side, that would do the trick.
In the end, though, on this morning of the thirty-first, what she chose was Drew’s favorite shirt for nights and weekends during the long months of autumn and winter. It was the king of flannel shirts, blue and white, checked like a horse blanket and thick to keep out the cold. She’d liked to wear it too, even though it swallowed her whole—adored wearing it because of smelled of him, an enveloping scent that was entirely male, entirely Drew. And he’d adored getting it back, once it smelled of her.
Just a shirt, but still, it was what love would feel like if you could wear an emotion. She couldn’t imagine anything more appropriate to leave as his lure.
And Cody? She watched from the doorway of his room before he knew she was there, and saw that he’d narrowed his choices to only enough to cover his bed. It was progress. Toys and books and items of clothing and things dragged in from the yard, and it made her sad in a way she’d never been before to realize that she really had no idea what many of these things even meant to Cody in relationship to Drew. Six years old and already he lived half the time in a world of secrets, and it was only going to get worse from here.
“What’s it going to be, champ?” she asked.
“This,” he said, after one final deliberation that twisted him into knots, then he turned around holding his Pinewood Derby car. “We built this. We built it together. This should be right . . . right?”
One of the last great projects of the previous winter. Cody hadn’t even been eligible for Cub Scouts yet, much less the race. He’d just wanted the practice, to be ready for the day he was. As he had wanted nothing else, he’d wanted to build that car. She never would’ve guessed how much pride and joy that a $3.99 block of wood and four wheels could bring a kindergartner and a grown man.
“It’s perfect,” Bailey said. “Now get your jacket and let’s get going.”
Dunhaven was the only town she’d ever heard of where Halloween was a school holiday, but then Dunhaven wasn’t like other towns. It was the only place she knew where the night brought more than just trickery and mischief. In Dunhaven, genuine magic, dark magic, pierced the veil on All Hallows Eve.
This would come in its own time. For now, morning was bright with the golden light of a cool sun, and the streets were uncommonly busy. Everybody had business on a day like this. Along the seven-block walk from home, she saw neighbors and friends, fellow teachers from the high school, students past and students present, as well as people in from the countryside that she might not see again until next year.
Everyone had business with the dead today, or believed they did.
And she couldn’t help but wonder: Who among them would die in the year to come, and who would be hoping to call them forth next October?
The town square was less crowded than she might have guessed, green and crisscrossed with sidewalks that converged at the fountain in the middle, and nearly empty. More sunflowers than people, more shrubs than visitors, vibrant with the yellow of goldenrod and beds of sedum whose close-packed blossoms looked like bright red slashes in the earth.
One presence, at least, was a permanent fixture, and if it was an illusion of life now, no more animated than one of the benches flanking the walkways, night would change everything. Darkness would remind people why they tended not to idle about while this thing hung waiting for a soul.
It was just clothing and straw, a stuffed burlap bag for a head with buttons for eyes and stitching for a mouth and a broad-brimmed hat to hold the horsetail hair in place. Affixed to a rough-hewn field-cross in the heart of town and looking as if it had gotten lost from the corn, drawing stares instead of frightening crows . . . yet even now, it felt possible to offend it.
She held Cody’s hand tighter as they approached. Usually he s
quirmed and pulled away when she tried that. Not today.
It seemed to wait for them, the slumped head looking down as they neared. Too light to hang there sagging like the agonized Christ of a crucifix, its pose looked casual, its weathered denim arms draped wide over the crossbar like someone stretching with a yawn across the backrest of a bench.
On the bottle-green grass, before the towering fencepost that pierced the earth, they set down their summonses: the well-worn flannel shirt and the beloved Pinewood car. These joined other items left by other hands: a book, undoubtedly the favorite of someone’s lifetime, and a baseball glove, and a folio of sheet music, and a Purple Heart medal from some war. The most unusual was a cake that looked not just frosted but frosty, as though until some time around dawn it had spent months in a freezer, never sliced and eaten, someone’s happy occasion turning tragic before the plates and forks came out.
There were so many little stories here, each of them sad in its own way.
She would have to check later, though, to make sure that the shirt and car were still here. There was a strategy to this. Put your offering out too soon, and you were only prolonging temptation, increasing the odds that it might disappear. This day did not always bring out the best in people. Lonely people, bereaved people, who wouldn’t mind sabotaging their neighbor’s chance at a reunion if it meant improving their own.
Put your offering out too late, though, and . . . well, nobody could say for sure when was too late, when these pieces of lives left behind started being noticed.
By the same token, nobody could say with any certainty when this custom had even started, or how. The oldest families in town—the Ralstons and the Goslings, the Chennowics and Harringtons—all claimed some propriety in the matter, but none of their stories matched up very well with any of the others, so much so that blows had been struck over it in the past . . . at least one, ironically, fatal.
What was beyond denying, though, was that it had been going on for at least 162 years, maybe longer, from a time when the land they stood on was the town commons, bordering a cornfield whose earliest ownership would be forever disputed. The records had been lost well before the arrival of the twentieth century, in a fire that had leveled the county clerk’s office.
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