FSF, December 2007

by Spilogale, Inc

  He turned around in a warehouse lot and headed back north on Lueders.

  The Nite-Lite was newer than he'd expected—all ground-floor, a long, narrow building. The Bone Man was obviously excellent business: the lot looked full, but the neon sign said VACANCY. Actually, Conlin noticed, it said ACANCY—the NO in front was so enthusiastically dark it had taken the V with it. A modest little motel, just what one would expect for the size of the town—no swimming pool, no boasts of fitness rooms or Internet connections.

  Two more cars drove in as Conlin approached the office door. Good: the crowd made it all the easier to blend in. Filling out the registration card, he knew he could write anything he wanted for his name, car make, and plate number—and he did. The pot-bellied owner didn't even look askance when Conlin said he'd be paying with cash. A sign taped to the desk informed him payment was required in advance. Fine with Conlin. Even better, the owner had filled the place up from the front, so Conlin's room was around back, where his car wouldn't be visible to anyone but the residents of a nursing home beyond a chain-link fence—not that it mattered. As he cruised the lot, he saw that no more than half the license plates were Illinois. There were ones from Indiana, Kentucky, even Florida. Bizarre. Having eased up to the concrete bumper in front of Room 18, he locked the car and tested the handle on the driver's side. This was the only parking space he'd need until morning. He preferred to walk the ten or twelve blocks to the parade.

  The motel's key was modern, a gray card-key. Conlin took a glance at the room to satisfy himself he could sleep there—no tractor-sized holes in the wall or corpses sprawled across the bed. Corpses. He'd heard an urban legend once that hit men sometimes disposed of a mark by cutting out a human-sized hollow in the box springs under a motel mattress. Stupid, of course—all that lifting, cutting of fabric and metal, and smuggling a body into a motel room—no one reasonable would go to that much trouble to hide something that was about to start stinking to high heaven anyway. Still, Conlin could never lie down before he'd checked.

  Three forty-two. Too early to go walking, and he wasn't the least bit hungry. He pulled off his shoes, grabbed the remote, and surfed the TV channels for news. Another big earthquake in Japan, a plane crash outside Madrid, not believed to be terrorist-related. He flipped to a soap where some babe was sneaking through an apartment, rifling the drawers. Conlin would have liked to rifle her drawers. Then a guy came home to the apartment with a blonde hottie glued to him, and the first babe was staying out of sight, all scandalized and freaking out as the two were going at it on the couch, and then she whipped a sub-compact piece out of her purse. You go, baby, Conlin encouraged her—but then the station cut away to a commercial, and Conlin cut away for good. No chance of anyone being definitively shot before the weekend.

  He thumbed the off switch. The TV was more irritating than relaxing.

  Instead, he watched the light slanting through the curtains. He reclined against the headboard, hands folded across his stomach, ankles crossed. Motionless except for the occasional blink of his eyelids. Like a reptile, a kid had told him in high school, the way he'd sit on a corner of the bleachers in the gym during the free period after lunch: Man, you're like some freakin’ snake. Watching, watching the show. In public places, he watched people breathing, watched where they put their keys, what they had in their hands, how they sat. It hadn't won him any popularity points in school. Then he'd made a career of it.

  The light deepened, lengthened across the cheap carpet, ripened from gold to burnished orange. Conlin sat up on the bed and hugged his knees, expectant as a hungry dog beside his dish. Light crept up the dresser, over the TV, over the painting of a bowl of fruit.

  Five fifteen.

  Conlin left the bed, a crocodile slipping into the water. He stepped into his shoes, retied them. Shrugged into his sportcoat, smoothed it over the holster beneath his left arm. Made sure he had his keys, including the motel key. He laughed at himself for being so quiet.

  But he did feel as if he were doing something forbidden, something voyeuristic, as if he were about to stroll invisible through a girls’ locker room and take all the time he wanted as an entire volleyball team undressed. It was a good analogy—he felt a mounting heat in his groin. He never felt evil doing a mark, stalking some poor bastard down, clubbing him, taping his mouth and limbs, driving him out to the woods, putting the Glock to his head, seeing the last plea for mercy in the terrified eyes. Never a bit of remorse.

  Conlin's “soul,” if that's what a guy wanted to call it, was like the closed-down packing plant that the kids had been scared of in junior high. Haunted place, all the usual stories, crazy guy living inside, steel hook for a hand, missing pets and homeless people hanging in there, in the dark, dripping, disappearing piece by piece. Conlin had never been scared of the building, not by then. That was after. After he'd found out what his hands could do. In the summer following eighth grade, he'd ripped a piece of plywood off a window and crawled right in there, and he'd found exactly what he'd expected. Nothing. Nothing at all. Emptiness.

  So why this tantalizing feeling now, the sense that there was something here he might actually violate? A strange idea came as he stepped out and studied the red glare west of town, where the sun was a fat, bulging ball above the horizon, like those occasional eggs cracked open that are full of blood.

  The Bone Man knows I'm not afraid of him. He's afraid of me.

  He locked the door, circled the motel, crossed Lueders Road, and walked into the dark heart of the town.

  Black bushes, spreading trees—there seemed more of them at night, with glowing plastic lanterns strung among the last brittle leaves: lanterns in the shapes of jack-o'-lanterns, white ghosts, green-faced witches. (Whoever came up with the idea that a witch should have a green face?) It was dark ahead of him, though fire still hung in the vanished sun's wake. Slowly the sky's lavender changed to deep blue, and stars glittered.

  All around him, it was as if veils dropped away, and Conlin was walking back into the streets of his childhood. Here, under the breeze-shivery maples and oaks slouching toward cold, it was no longer the age of the Internet and little phones in your pocket that took pictures and movies; it seemed more the era when cars had lock-levers like golf tees, phones had round dials, and TVs were controlled by big, stubborn knobs on the front. Conlin passed over sidewalks that veered to accommodate trees, some concrete sections pushed up into humps by the roots. Trees owned these prairie towns, he mused: trees’ crowns were crossbeams above; their roots shot far into the earth and spread beyond the last houses; their trunks were spikes that held the community to the land.

  Bicycles leaned against front porches, toys lay scattered in the yards. Wooden rungs nailed straight into bark climbed to ramshackle platforms and clubhouses, their canvas door-flaps bellying like the sails of pirate ships. The light was a warm, gold suffusion, partly from the lanterns, partly from streetlights, partly from the windows of houses.

  People congregated in driveways, on breezeways, along the curb, chattering, laughing, hands thrust into jacket pockets for warmth. Some nodded at Conlin, some smiled, some took no notice. Old couples sat in lawnchairs, quilts shared between them. Porch swings creaked and rocked. Steam rose from mugs of hot cider, its tart-sweet scent triggering Conlin's saliva at the back corners of his tongue. Two teenage girls swished by through the drifted leaves, their white teeth biting into caramel apples. Conlin stared unabashedly after them, at the denim riding their curves.

  Most jack-o'-lanterns here were true works of art, carved with care—with love. Their faces seemed to shift with the dancing light inside, eyes following Conlin, cheeks bunching, nostrils dilating at him.

  A police cruiser glided down the street, silent and slow, lights flashing red-blue-red-blue. Conlin made brazen eye contact with the officer driving, who waved. Howdy. Evening, fella.

  Then, with a sound like an approaching stampede, costumed children exploded onto the scene. Conlin had wondered if trick-or-treating fit in
to this town's Hallowe'en ritual—apparently so. But he'd never seen trick-or-treating like this. It was not just door-to-door, but through the crowds as well, like a wild charge of highway robbers, like forty thieves, like Vikings pillaging. And the townspeople were ready for it. They forked over candy from shopping bags, from backpacks, from car trunks. Grinning, Conlin held up his palms in a gesture of haven't-got-any, and the tide of witches and aliens and serial killers broke around him. In some of the eyes behind the eyeholes, Conlin thought he saw flickers of uncertainty as they appraised him and dashed away. You couldn't fool kids, not the smart ones. They knew whom to be afraid of. They knew when something wicked this way came.

  Six twenty-four. Conlin looked hard at his watch. Had he really been here that long? He'd walked the entire parade route clockwise and wandered through several sidestreets beside, listening to the peals of laughter, the excited calls, the ding-dong of doorbells, the crunch of running feet in dry leaves. He'd been watching the phosphorescent batons and flashlights in the hands of kids, the distant silhouettes of their antennaed, helmeted, peak-hatted shapes as they huddled under streetlights to compare their loot and plan their next assaults. He'd found delight in the way their shadows loomed huge on the undersides of leaves as doors opened for them.

  No parents. That was the fundamental difference here. Conlin had never seen trick-or-treating done without parents a few steps in the background, their eyes alert for the real Hallowe'en horrors. Was it okay here because the whole town was outdoors anyway, a universal army of guardians ... or was it something more...?

  The Bone Man takes care of things.

  Right. That had to be it, Conlin thought gleefully as he turned the corner of Howlet Street—Howlet?—and headed toward the V.F.W. The Bone Man watches over his own. No one wants to step on the Bone Man's toes, just like Billy had said.

  People were coming out in ever-greater numbers with their folding chairs, blankets, and thermoses. Some spectators had cameras, getting ready to take more Bone Man pictures that would fill other scrapbooks, archived for visitors to wonder or scoff at, on and on into the future, page after page piling up like the falling leaves of autumn. Belief and unbelief. To some the mystery was hidden. Having eyes they saw not; having ears they heard not.

  Conlin saw, and he heard. Whatever this Bone Man was—and he meant to find out, soon now—this night had always belonged to little Jack Conlin, the haunter of the dark. The Earth-rim-walker. He'd found it again, after too long away. “The dog returns to its own vomit,” said the Bible. Conlin shivered with a visceral thrill at the frisson of dead leaves.

  Half a block from the V.F.W., he was already among the costumed participants of the parade, who milled around adjusting each other's wings or cloaks or headgear, receiving numbers for the judging, holding muffled conversations through their masks. As in the photos, the costumes were mostly good, some astoundingly so. Modern movie characters mingled with the old traditionals, the creative originals, the truly bizarre. There were vampires with flour-white faces and red lips, a mummy bound head to foot with toilet paper, and probably close to a hundred witches of all sizes. There was a wolf-man who looked more like a dog-man, fur spilling out through the tatters of his clothes. Clowns and fairies sashayed and floated. A woman in a rubber crone mask clung to the arm of an old-fashioned policeman; Conlin speculated on whether their pairing was supposed to mean something. He saw a hunchback, a pirate, a samurai ... an ordinary-looking gentleman who walked deftly on three legs ... a tall thing with red-flashing eyes and the wings of a gigantic moth. Twice, bobbing through the crowd, he glimpsed a kid made up to look like a hideous dwarf. Or maybe an ugly dwarf only lightly made up.

  Elaborate floats hulked in the parking lot, their tractors rumbling and puffing smoke. On one flatbed wagon rose a medieval castle; on another, an entire crumbling mansion, thrusting up turrets, bats bouncing on elastic cords, a fiery glow bleeding through its shutters. Another tractor pulled a rolling graveyard in which a mad scientist and a beast-man were packing dry ice behind the headstones.

  Conlin paced through the lot and no one seemed to care. There were other uncostumed people, too—family and friends of the paraders, assisting them like pit crews. There were officials carrying clipboards, checking their watches, possibly inspecting for safety. No flaming rags allowed, no moving chainsaws. Conlin kept his left arm close, making sure his reliable Austrian friend stayed concealed. And there were other tourists, rubbernecking and talking too loudly, as if having driven a long way gave them special rights. “Wheah is he?” bleated a woman in some variation of New Englandese. “Wheah's the Bone Man?"

  "He likes a dramatic entrance,” called one of the officials brightly, whisking past. “May not be here right at the beginning, but he never misses a Parade!” Conlin was pretty sure this was the same heavyset, silver-haired businessman he'd seen coming out of Stacy's Kitchen.

  Conlin had reached the lot's far corner, farthest from the light, from the strobing police car that would lead the parade out under the limbs, under the October stars. Turning, he put his back to a tree trunk. Always on the fringe of the crowd, in the dark corners, that was Conlin. When he was a kid, this night had been less about going up to doorways for candy and more about hanging back, invisible.

  It was about watching the other kids, watching how they stood, how they ran together, stopped, and ran off in a new direction. Conlin was never really one of them, but he never stopped studying them, and he could function in their midst when he needed to. He knew what they'd do, what they thought. He could always sense the scared ones, the weak ones. The sick ones.

  "Sick” came in many forms. Once it had appeared in the form of a kid named Brian Delaney.

  They'd been in third grade, Conlin and Brian, eight years old. Brian's mom was never home at night; Conlin's parents were too stoned to care what he did—so both Brian and Conlin had the run of the town. They weren't friends. Conlin was following Brian because he could do it without being seen—to watch. To see what another loner did on the night of nights.

  In a lonely place between the park and the train tracks, Brian knelt down by some bushes and stayed there for a long time, his back to the street. Conlin, spying from a patch of brown weeds, couldn't see what he was doing, couldn't tell what Brian had, as he stood up, in his folded arms.

  Couldn't tell until he saw Brian's shoulders shaking, heard the yowling, saw the lashing tail. Conlin's memory held a popping, crunching sound then, but his imagination may have added that. Then Brian had turned around with a vacant smile, and from his scratched-up arms, he dropped a cat onto the sidewalk. It landed with a plop on its side, very twisted. Very dead. Its green eyes were open, staring.

  Brian saw Conlin then, who had stood up in surprise. Not outrage—no, Conlin hadn't felt sorry for the cat. But something was dawning on him, an amazement that filled his chest like an inflating balloon, making it hard to breathe. As in a dream, he'd walked straight over to Brian, looking from the cat to Brian's blank eyes.

  The cat had been alive. Now it wasn't. Brian had changed it. Conlin had looked down at his own hands as if seeing them for the first time. Then he'd put them around Brian's neck in a kind of wild, wondering experiment. Even bulging, Brian's eyes stayed somehow blank, but he clawed and fought like the cat had done.

  Someone in another town found Brian inside an empty boxcar, with the dead cat beside him. No one had even asked Conlin any questions—there was just a detective who came to the classroom once and said if anyone knew anything to please talk to him or the teacher. But everyone knew Brian had no friends. No one was ever with Brian ... except on the night he died, when they figured he'd been the victim of some drifter riding the rails.

  Conlin scratched his chin, watching the parade take shape. He could still see Brian Delaney clear as yesterday in his head. A shrink would probably say Brian had killed the cat because, in a world of powerful, abusive adults, it was a creature smaller and weaker than him, over which he could exert control. Conlin k
new it was simpler than that. He was pretty sure Brian, like himself, was born without the insulation that, for most people, held in a little warmth. Brian could see the Nothing behind, under, and inside all the lies people told about existence. There was ultimately Nothing. No reason to be happy or to hope or regret or feel guilty. No reason to be afraid.

  * * * *

  "He wants to see you."

  Conlin jumped, one hand almost—but not quite—going for the Glock. He habitually kept track of who or what was behind him and how close, but Billy had taken him by surprise.

  It was Billy, still wearing his red ball cap. He'd added a quilted vest over his pink-and-white plaid shirt.

  "What?” Conlin asked.

  Billy's shoulders were rounded, his hands stuck deep into the vest's pockets, his blue eyes catching the light. “He wants to see you,” he repeated in a good-natured tone. “The Bone Man. It's quite an honor."

  Conlin tipped his face, searching for humor, for context. He felt his left eyelid twitch.

  Billy beckoned with his frosty, close-shaved head. “This way."

  When Conlin wasn't following after a few steps, Billy paused and looked back.

  Conlin stared, waiting for more of an explanation.

  Billy spread his arms and raised his eyebrows, as if to say What's the problem? Then he pointed at a watch that hung like a loose bracelet on his wrist. “The Parade's about to start. Don't worry,” he added, as if concern over the starting time were holding Conlin back. “This won't take long."

  "The ... the Bone Man talks to people?"

  "I didn't say ‘talk.’ Maybe he just wants to have a look at you."