Halloween Chillers: A Box Set of Three Books of Horror & Suspense

by Douglas Clegg

  “Someday maybe we can get married in a church,” she said. “If we decide that’s what we want.”

  “I want it,” Stony said. He glanced at the saints and the windows, and no longer felt tied to the town or his family. The church was a world where they could not touch him. “Come on,” he said. He stood up, offering his hand. She looked at him, questioning, but took it, and rose. They went to the railing before the altar. Kneeling down, he said, “I take you until the end of time to be my lawfully wed wife.”

  She cracked a grin. Out of the corner of her mouth, she whispered, “You’re crazy.”

  “To love, honor and cherish till the end of my days,” he continued. “To protect and care for in sickness and in health...”

  “That’s not the exact wording.”

  “Till death do us part. No, till God parts us, till you don’t love me anymore, till the universes collide,” he said, and looked up at the cross.

  “You don’t believe in God, heathen,” Lourdes said, shoving him slightly.

  “If you do, I do,” he said.

  “I do,” she said.

  “I do,” he grinned, leaning over and kissing her, feeling his mouth open to her, and hers opening in return, not devouring as when they’d made love, but sweetly, as if inhaling each other’s breath.

  * * *

  4

  * * *

  Lightning lit the church, the blues and reds and yellows of the stained glass flashing for an instant.

  “I better go,” she said after a while. The rain let up, and they’d been kneeling at the altar for several minutes. He didn’t want to let go of her hand.

  “I’ll walk you,” he said.

  “No, I think maybe I need to be alone. Just to think. We both have a lot to think about, Stony. If we get married...”

  “If? Now it’s official. Before God,” he said. “You, me and the baby. A family.”

  “Ah, I see,” Lourdes shook her head. “You tricked me.”

  “There’s no divorce in heaven,” he said. He helped her get up.

  Tears played at the edge of her eyes. “It’s not a joke.”

  “No.” He kissed her eyelids. “I meant every word.”

  “My father will kill me.”

  “Mine won’t be too happy either.”

  “I mean it. He will.”

  “Then let’s run away.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I mean it,” he said. “I can borrow my mom’s car. We can get away and I can get work somewhere. I’ve saved some money.”

  “From what?”

  “All those rich people’s lawns I’ve mowed,” he grinned. The lie hurt. But he wanted to make her confident now. Right now.

  “We’ll talk about this later on.”

  “When later? You’re beginning to show,” he said. “They’ll guess soon. You’ll need to see a doctor and stuff too.”

  “Please,” she said, wiping her tears back. “If we run away, we’ll end up back here. And it’ll be worse.”

  “Tell you what,” Stony said, and almost could not believe the words spilling from his mouth, but he felt an urgency. “Meet me at Nora’s tomorrow morning before school. Maybe at seven. We can decide then, okay?”

  She nodded. She looked at him curiously. “Okay. But I’m not promising anything, Stony.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me walk you home though. We can talk.”

  “No, I really want to be alone now, just to think about all this,” Lourdes said, and touched the edge of his face sweetly before she left.

  * * *

  5

  * * *

  He remained behind, sitting at the railing, after she’d gone. What was he doing? What the hell was he doing? Fifteen, married, kid, wife, responsibilities...

  He imagined his father’s face, his mother’s tears, his brother’s disgust...

  “Can I help you with anything?” a man asked.

  Stony turned around. He hadn’t heard the man come in. Not just a man. A priest.

  “Hi,” Stony said, fumbling in his mind. Was it illegal to go into a church without permission? “I was just...admiring your church.”

  “It’s a nice one. We’ve lost a lot of congregation over the years to the churches down the road, but this is one of the most beautiful ones, in my opinion.” The priest was in his forties, and a light frost of gray had settled along his light brown hair. He walked up to the altar, extending his hand. “I’m Father Jim.”

  “Stony Crawford.” Stony shook the man’s hand. A very cold hand.

  “I know,” the priest said. “I was there when you were born.”

  Stony felt a slight chill. He had lived his life in the Borough and never had run into this priest before. He stood up. “Yeah? I’ve heard every story in the book about that day. How Mom was in the station wagon, and Johnny Miracle was yelling.”

  “Rain coming down,” Father Jim nodded. “I heard Johnny from across the Common, and came over to help out. But you’d already come into the world.”

  Stony grinned. “Well...”

  “You feeling all right, Stony?”

  “Sure.”

  “You look a little pale is all.”

  “Maybe a little bit cold.”

  “Good,” Father Jim said, touching him on the shoulder. “Well, if you ever need any counsel, be sure and come see me. All right? Catholic, Protestant, even if you don’t feel very Christian, we’re all one fellowship in the divine light. Do you understand?”

  “Sure,” Stony said. He could not wait to get out of that church. He had never liked churches all that much, and priests bothered him. Father Jim in particular, now that they’d met. Father Jim had something in his eyes that seemed less than priestly, and Stony was not sure what that was. He just didn’t want to see it again.

  “Stony,” Father Jim said when Stony was halfway out of the church.

  Stony turned. “Yeah, father?”

  “You look so much like your mother in some ways. It amazes me.”

  On his way back home, Stony thought that was the strangest comment of all, since he and his mother looked nothing alike as far as he could tell.

  * * *

  6

  * * *

  “What are we hunting?” Van whispered, his tongue lapping at the back of her neck.

  Diana remained silent, crouching down beside her horse. The rain was letting up, and the moon, nearly full, shone across their domain of tangled vines and branches.

  I have my knife, he thought, clutching it, unsheathing it the way she unsheathed his manhood just minutes earlier and wiped it across her womb—it wasn’t a pussy or a vagina with her—it was a womb, it was a sanctuary there between her legs. And my knife is ready. We will hunt! I am hunter of all I see! He wanted to cry out, but remained silent.

  A lone figure walked along a slight ridge near the opening of the woods.

  “Our prey,” Diana whispered, rising up on her haunches, bow and arrow in her hand.

  Then she did something that confused him. Her voice was somehow inside his head. Like a mosquito wriggling into his ear, and moving to his brain, it tickled and buzzed at first, and then he heard her clearly—

  Who do you want to kill more than anyone in the world?

  no one

  Oh yes you do, Van Crawfish, you want someone to vanish from the face of the earth.

  no

  Yes, don’t hide from me Van, tell me who it is, tell me—

  the bitch

  Who?

  the bitch trying to stop Stony from having his freedom

  Her name?

  Lourdes Maria. She’s a Spanish bitch from Wequetucket, she wants to get her claws into him and bring him down.

  You want to kill her don’t you?

  YES! YES I WANT TO KILL THAT DAMN BITCH BEFORE SHE DOES TO HIM WHAT MY MOTHER DID TO MY FATHER!

  You want to take your knife and open her up.

  YES! I WANT TO OPEN UP THAT BITCH WITH MY KNIFE AND MAKE HER BLOOD SPURT
OUT LIKE JUICE! I WANT TO TEAR THAT BABY OUT OF HER! I WANT TO MAKE HER TASTE HER OWN SKIN! I WANT HER TO SUFFER AS MUCH AS A BITCH LIKE HER CAN!

  * * *

  7

  * * *

  Stony sat out on the back steps to his house before going in to supper. He was wishing he’d just grabbed Lourdes and brought her with him, that they would run off tonight, just get it over with before either had a chance to change his or her mind.

  He glanced up at the emerging stars.

  Closed his eyes.

  Life was beautiful. It was. He loved her, she loved him. In spirit, they were already married.

  It’s starting now, he thought. My life. My real life. The future of all I will be begins tonight.

  I’ve been bad before, I’ve done terrible things, but from here on, if you’re up there listening God, from here on, because you have given me such a beautiful wife and such a happy beginning to a family, I will never do bad things again. I won’t lie, I won’t sneak beers, I won’t even look at another girl as long as I live, I won’t be all the things that my dad and brother and mom are. I’ll be the best damn Stony Crawford there ever was.

  If...

  And there’s always an If, but you’d know that if you’re really God and you’re really listening.

  If only you’ll promise me that I’ll never have to come back here again, not to these people, not to this place. Promise me we’ll get far from here, just me and my baby and my baby’s baby.

  Then, Stony felt it. As if God had answered. As if whatever ran the universe was in accord with his wish. He felt something inside him give, and an overriding calm came over him.

  He felt a strength inside him, and all anxiety vanished for a few moments as a cool salty breeze blew in off the water.

  “Thanks,” he said, knowing that it was all his imagination, but he didn’t care. He felt confirmed in his conviction and he knew that marrying Lourdes was going to be the right thing, and that he would be a good father and everything would turn out better than just okay.

  Sometimes, shit happens.

  But from here on, miracles are gonna happen.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lourdes stepped cautiously over a low tangle of dried vines, her feet smushing down in the mud.

  She felt stupid for not having thought to bring a flashlight. She usually did. But then, you could walk through these woods blindfolded and you wouldn’t trip over much. She had been walking these trails her entire life. She had fallen in love with loneliness at an early age. Her family was smothering. Her four brothers hovering around, either teasing their only sister, or trying to protect her. Her father, with his old ways, believing that she should never leave the house unchaperoned until the day she married.

  Maybe even not then.

  Her mother distrusted Stonehaven Borough as well as the apartments and gas station areas out where they lived. By the time Lourdes was seven, she had managed to sneak away on summer afternoons and just roam. She would spend hours gathering berries, or hiding from yellow jackets, or watching the shadows for fireflies. She created make-believe creatures among the trees, and every bog and pond contained a mermaid or two. She spoke with the invisible spirits of Indians, too, whom she still believed, at fifteen, wandered between the thick bundles of birch and oak.

  Nothing scared her here. Nothing ever could.

  These were her woods.

  Within them, she felt protected, and knew every tree, every moss-covered rock, every pond and bog, every blackberry bush. She even knew the ancient stonewall that was full now of hibernating snakes, and she knew where the mosquitoes attacked the most aggressively in the summer and how to avoid them.

  Now, following the thinnest of trails, the fallen wet leaves slippery like eel skin, the mud sucking at her sneakers, the only thought that frightened her was the idea that she and Stony would be running away from all this.

  Every childhood has to end. It was something her grandmother used to tell her when Lourdes was eight or nine and asking about when she would grow up. Every girl becomes a woman, and there is often sorrow on that day. Do not rush ahead to meet the woman you will become.

  And now, this will be it, she thought. Tomorrow morning. He wants me to meet him at Nora’s and run away with him. Like prisoners escaping. I just can’t. But I love him. We’re going to have a baby. We’re going to bring life into the world.

  After their moment together in Our Lady Star of the Sea, something felt even more sacred to her than it had previously. The baby growing inside her had a family around him, a father and a mother. That Virgin Mary had blessed the baby, and she and Stony were bound together at the altar, before the eyes of God.

  It was stupid, she knew. As she crossed a thin trickle of stream, Lourdes felt what seemed to be a spark leap within her. We are one. Stony and I are one. No one will separate us. Not my parents, not his, not anyone.

  She pressed her hands upon her slight paunch.

  (the baby!)

  What would he be like? Or she? Would he have Stony’s eyes, or hers? Her hair, she hoped. His smile. Then, a terrible thought occurred to her as she slowed to a stop.

  What if the baby looks like my father?

  Or his mother?

  (It’s okay, you’ll be the most beautiful baby ever brought into the world. Don’t worry!)

  Carefully avoiding low-hanging branches that shivered as she touched them, Lourdes giggled aloud. She imagined a child with all the worst physical and mental attributes of both their families. Moles on the neck. Large ears. Crooked nose. Lazy eye. Non-existent lips. Big blubbery lips. Short and fat. Boxy...

  She had to remember to make a joke about it with Stony in the morning.

  (Don’t worry, hijito, you’re gonna be as gorgeous as your mother!)

  All her life, she’d known she would one day marry and have children. Her mother had only been seventeen when she’d married, pregnant with Lourdes’ older brother, Miguel. Mom was two years older than me. Not that much different.

  Please, Blessed Virgin Mary, bless us three, and protect us with your love and purity. Don’t allow temptation or the shadows to fall on us.

  Praying like this, in her woods, seemed as natural to her as breathing.

  Lourdes’ father had warned her not to ever think of marrying a huero. This was the word for the blue-eyed, blond-haired Anglos, but it encompassed all non-Latinos. Lourdes had an Aunt Elena who married a huero and they divorced within four years. “They never work out, ever,” her father had warned. Her father considered Stony a huero, too, and had told her so. This had led to the first actual fight she’d ever had with him. He called her every name imaginable and she had thrown those words right back at him. In the end, she’d cried and her father had gone off angry. Only her mother had comforted her, telling her that her father would eventually come around to liking the “Anglo boy.”

  And now...

  Marriage.

  A baby.

  God, what will Dad do now?

  The moonlight turned a small oval pond into liquid gold. Lourdes looked up for the source of its light.

  The moon was huge and round, filling all the sky that could be seen beyond the greedy treetops. It was turning an orange hue, almost like a sunset. She closed her eyes. Harvest moon. God, please make sure this is the right thing. Please help me and Stony.

  Without realizing it at first, Lourdes found she was saying the prayer aloud, now in the cathedral of wood. “Please make sure our baby is healthy and help us learn to handle my family and all the problems we’re gonna have. Mother of God who looks out for babies and mothers, keep your hand upon me, let us have a good life together as you will.”

  Opening her eyes again to the expansive moon, she shivered. The temperature was dropping. She could feel a difference between the few seconds before and now. The smells of the bogs and wet leaves were almost humid despite the cold. She glanced down at her own dark reflection in the moonlit water. “Two in one,” she whispered, touching her stomach. “Be safe
, hijo.”

  She turned about, thinking,

  (Hijito, you had better not make me sick tomorrow morning like you did yesterday)

  When a flashlight beam blinded her.

  She put her hand up to shield her face from the light. “Who is it? Stony?”

  All she could see was a silhouette and the round white beam.

  “Victor? Miguel?” But her brothers would not do this. Not at this hour, maybe later at night. It wasn’t even suppertime yet.

  Then, the flashlight moved up beneath the chin of the boy who held it.

  A ghostly light distorted the features, but Lourdes recognized him. “Oh, Van, it’s just you,” she sighed. “You scared me for a sec.”

  Van grinned. His smile, wide and gap-toothed, reminded her of a jack-o’-lantern.

  “So,” he said, his voice low and almost a growl, “here’s the bitch who’s trying to fucking ruin my baby brother’s life. I’ve been looking for you all day. I got a game we can play. You and me.”

  Then, the flashlight shut off.

  “Let’s play ‘Skin the Bitch’,” he said.

  INTERLUDE

  DAWN, SEVERAL YEARS LATER

  Chapter Sixteen

  A MAN, A BOY, AND THE ROAD HOME

  * * *

  1

  * * *

  It seemed like yesterday. Tears streamed from his eyes, and he felt like an old man. He felt that awful thing inside, too, that thing that he’d managed to keep down within him, that terrible feeling that meant only bad things were going to happen.

  He could not stop the tears, and when they were all poured from his soul, he wiped at his face.

  The boy had told him all and more than he could himself remember. Nora’s voice from the boy’s mouth...Every detail of his past life was laid bare for him. How could this child know? Had he been there? It was as if he had raked his small fingers through the hair of Stony’s memory. Stony, now, twenty-seven, driving a car up 95, nearly there, nearly to the town of his birth. Time had held and stopped as the tale had spun out, and he glanced in the rearview mirror at the boy. He was sound asleep. He had not been telling Stony the tale of Stony’s past, of things Stony could not have seen, but somehow did see, and did know. He had known it all as if from a distance, watching—part of him that did not even know he was then watching the world unfold.