Johnny Halloween

by Partridge, Norman

  “Twenty years ago, you wouldn’t have needed the gun.”

  “Twenty years ago, I would have been kicking your ass, youngster.”

  Steve Marlowe laughs. The chief’s pushing forty, but not too hard. And Kehoe’s fifty-five.

  “You seen Jack?” Marlowe asks.

  “No,” Kehoe says, because he has no idea where the other cop working the Run is. “What’s up?”

  “He said he was going to check the Line. That was more than an hour ago. Someone called in a tip about some jumpers. I’ve been trying to raise him for the last half hour, but all I get on the radio is dead air.”

  “Damn.”

  “How about you take a look out there?”

  Kehoe swallows. The mic’s right there in his hand. Open channel. His finger’s perched over the button, but he can’t think anything to say. He doesn’t know why…or maybe he does. Maybe that moment is still eating at him—the moment when he waited for those youngblood’s to react. Or maybe it’s the sudden quiet that’s fallen over the cemetery. Maybe it’s the simple fact that he’s sitting here, all alone among the tombstones in the quietest place in town. Knowing what’s right here, six feet under his boot heels.

  Yeah. Maybe that’s it. Because for some reason Dan Kehoe can’t quite understand, tonight he’s feeling closer to that boxed and buried stretch of real estate than he does to the streets of this town, or the kids running those streets, or the October Boy. Call it instinct if you want. Or call it premonition, maybe. But the feeling churning in Kehoe’s gut is definite if not quite definable, and—

  “You still there, Dan?”

  “You really want me heading out of town, Chief? If the Run hits rough water without a cop on the streets, you’re up shit creek.”

  “Could be I’m already there.”

  “What are you saying, boss?”

  “I’m saying I want you to find my other badge before the water gets too deep…and I want you to do it now.”

  ****

  Walking the black road is like walking a prison corridor. Dead cornstalks rise like a crop of iron bars on each side of the asphalt, leading toward the only real cage the October Boy has ever known.

  The town. The Boy moves toward it, wondering if he’s walking his first mile or his last. If he beats the odds and makes it to the old brick church before midnight, then this is his first mile. If he fails, then it could be his last.

  And once he crosses the Line that separates the town from the fields, every step he takes will be a hundred times more dangerous than the ones he’s taking now. He raises his head as screams rise in the distance. Howls and roars spill from the mouths of hungry boys who’ll hunt him this night. The October Boy understands his pursuers just as Dan Kehoe understands them, for he has traveled in their shoes. He knows the fate they plan for him is no different than the fate suffered by that hacked-up head in the clearing—a living thing severed from that role by a murderous hand…now no more than an object.

  But the Boy cannot dwell on such things. And, when it comes to fate, he has a knife of his own—one he will use this night to carve his own quotient of same.

  So he moves on, blade at the ready. The screams in the distance trail off. The road stretches ahead, a licorice whip even when washed in moonlight. Suddenly it’s quiet here…almost. Only the whisper of the October Boy’s feet on asphalt. Only the croaking of frogs in the deep ditches at the side of the road.

  And now the Boy spots something just ahead…something in that ditch…something much too large that the moonlight paints the same way it paints the road. The Boy’s carved eyes narrow, and the orange glow spilling from his head brightens as Atomic Fireballs crackle in his skull. His gaze spotlights the center-line of the road until it slices over the body of a car.

  The car is black.

  The car is white.

  It’s two-tone: a police cruiser.

  The Boy freezes, remembering the severed head in the field. The predatory scent is gone, but perhaps there is a greater danger here. The prowl car door hangs open. There’s another crackle, and this one is not contained in the Boy’s skull. It’s the police radio, but no one’s there to answer it.

  The Boy can see that. The cruiser’s interior fills with orange light as he draws near. He fears a trap, but the road is empty, and the cornstalks do not rustle. The wind has suddenly died. The frogs are quiet. He’s sure he is alone…at least for the moment.

  The Boy ducks his misshapen head inside the prowl car. He may not have long. But no keys hang from the ignition. He exhales hard, hot breath scalding his crosscut excuse for a smile. He’ll have no shortcut into town tonight. It will not be so easy.

  But there’s something else there in the car. Not the thing he thought he’d find, but something he can use.

  The Boy buries his butcher knife in the driver’s seat, making a trade.

  In a second, he has a Winchester Model 97 shotgun in his hands.

  Quickly, he fills the pockets of his tattered coat with spare shells. A V8 guns in the distance, and the Boy senses it’s the same big block engine he’d find under the prowl car’s hood if he gave it a pop.

  A half-mile away, headlights drill through the night. By the time those lights reveal the abandoned police cruiser, the October Boy is already gone.

  He’s cutting through the dead corn, a shotgun in his hands.

  ****

  Kehoe stares at the butcher knife buried at spine-level in the driver’s seat of Jack’s squad car. That familiar fear churns low in his gut, so thoroughly he doesn’t even notice the missing shotgun.

  Because he’s alone here on the black road, just the way he was in the cemetery.

  Or maybe he’s not alone at all.

  After all, this is someone else’s territory. Someone he remembers very well. The October Boy. It’s been more than thirty-five years since Dan was part of the Run, thirty since he became a cop and separated its truths from its lies, but fear of the Boy is hard-wired in everyone who grew up in this town. Sawtooth Jack…Ol’ Hacksaw Face…whatever you call him, you never completely shake that primal terror or the adrenaline that makes it pump. Not really. Not even when you’re clear of your eighteenth year.

  It’s always with you—especially if you stand out here on the black road, alone under the stars. Especially if you catch the odd stink of scorched cinnamon, gunpowder, and melted wax lingering on the night air. Yeah. The October Boy’s been here, all right. Kehoe’s sure of that. And now a squad car sits empty on the far side of the Line, and a cop is missing.

  It’s Kehoe’s job to find him. He steps away from the car, shines a flashlight down the licorice whip two-lane. “Jack!” Kehoe calls. “Jack! You out there?”

  No answer.

  Kehoe starts down the road, feeling like there’s a black cat squirming in his belly. He keeps his eyes on the corn, wary that a pumpkin-headed thing is going to rush from the fields and try to kill him…maybe just the way it killed Jack.

  But even as Kehoe walks, a calmer part of his brain works over that idea. It doesn’t make sense, not when you consider it within the parameters of this night. The Run is a young man’s game. The Boy only hunts those between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. They’re the ones he’s looking for, because they’re looking for him, too. Kehoe’s never heard of the Boy tangling with a cop, let alone murdering one.

  And, hell, Jack’s as old as Kehoe. He’s no kid. He’s got a son of his own. His boy tried to shoehorn a spot on the force last year. Just twenty-two, and already pushing to get a badge. As if his old man and Kehoe were ready for pensions and retirement and the quiet that comes when you aren’t part of the Harvester’s Guild machine anymore, when all that’s left for you is to sit back at night and let the things you did and didn’t do in your life eat at your guts.

  No man needs that. Not Kehoe, anyway. He doesn’t want to retire. Do that and he might as well put a down-payment on a pine box. Just like the October Boy, Dan Kehoe needs to keep moving to stay alive. That’s why
he’s still out here tonight. And that’s why Jack got his kid a job over at the slaughterhouse. Jack doesn’t want to slow down, either. Told his kid to bide his time, wait for his own moment. Told him he needed to learn to butcher animals before he learned how to butcher—

  There’s a light up ahead, flickering low in the corn.

  Too low to be the October Boy.

  Still, Kehoe eases his .38 from the holster. Cocks it. Steps through the brittle stalks without another word. A dead man’s skull waits in a trampled clearing. Flames where its eyes should be, because a half-dozen candles fill the hollow place that once housed its brain. Flickering sockets gleam over half a face that’s just plain gone, sliced into a wide naked smile that stretches ear to ear, revealing gums and teeth still wet with blood.

  Kehoe recognizes the face, of course—even if it’s one that never smiled much.

  It belongs to a cop he’s worked with for thirty years.

  A man named Jack Ricks.

  ****

  Jack Ricks’ son drives through town, a bloodstained butcher knife on the car seat at his side. No one’s supposed to be on the road, of course. But young Jerry Ricks isn’t exactly worried about getting a ticket. Thanks to that bloody butcher knife, one cop—his own father—is dead. By now, Jerry’s sure that another cop—Dan Kehoe—is staring at what’s left of Daddy’s corpse. Jerry plans to deal with ol’ Dan before the night is through. As far as Jerry’s concerned, Officer Kehoe has written his last ticket.

  Tonight it’s time to get that ticket punched. That’ll happen soon enough. A grin creases Jerry’s thin face. He hammers the gas, laughing as those Goodyears peel. Daddy’s dead and ol’ Dan’s occupied. That only leaves one other cop in this one-horse town—and Jerry knows exactly where Chief Steve Marlowe is at.

  Fact is, he’s on his way to see the chief right now.

  ****

  Marlowe’s voice crackles over the radio as Dan Kehoe’s story settles in. “So you think it was the Boy?”

  Kehoe thumbs the mic. “Everything points that way. Or seems to…but it doesn’t make sense. It’s been a long time since any of us were eighteen. We’re not exactly the Boy’s meat. And Jack wouldn’t get in the Boy’s way—he knows that a kid has to bring down ol’ Hacksaw Face on the night of the Run or this whole town might as well get shoveled in a bucket.”

  “Maybe the Boy’s just hard for anything wearing a badge,” Marlowe says. “You factor in how he ended up in the game tonight, I wouldn’t blame him for that. I think we’d better tag-team this action. Get over to the station and pick me up. We’ll figure out what’s gone wrong with that monster.”

  “Will do,” Kehoe says. “But I’m making a stop first.”

  “Where?”

  “Jack’s house. We should check on his kid. He and the old man had their troubles. The level of violence we’re looking at, we’ve got to consider there was some strong emotion cooking here. I want to know that Jack’s kid is exactly where he belongs before we go any further.”

  “Look, Dan. We don’t have time to play hunches tonight—”

  But Kehoe has already cut the radio.

  Now he hits the gas.

  ****

  They’re twenty feet away when they glimpse the October Boy’s glowing face in the cornfield on the edge of town. Six boys, football players from the freshman class. Armed with axe handles, ballbats…one kid with a machete.

  They charge as one.

  They haven’t noticed the shotgun. Spitting laughter that stinks of gunpowder and scorched cinnamon, the October Boy whips it up—but not too high. One quick pump and he lets loose. Shot splatters in front of the charging pack, and the load kicks off the blacktop, hitting the boys low, shredding blue jeans and chewing like hungry metal ticks into the young flesh beneath.

  Two of the boys go down instantly. The October Boy jacks the slide handle, chambering another shell as the mob swallows its first collective taste of real fear. He fires again, and suddenly they’re not a mob anymore. Now they’re only targets, and scattering ones at that.

  Hollow laughter spills over the Boy’s carved smile. The sound sweeps the boys down the street like a gigantic broom. The October Boy squints tightly, tracking them with the shotgun, one tendril finger quite literally twined around the trigger while his spotlight eyes gleam from rear bead to front. But he doesn’t pull that trigger. Not now. Not when he’s got six backsides in his sites, growing smaller in the distance.

  No. He’ll save his shells. Tonight he’ll need them, sure enough. He looks around. There’s nothing behind him in the field. For the moment, this little street on the north side of town is empty.

  But he’ll have to move fast, because word will spread just that way now that he’s crossed the Line. Soon everyone will know he’s entered town with a shotgun. By the time that knowledge becomes common, the Boy hopes it will be too late to do his pursuers any good. If things go right he’ll be close to the heart of town by then, cutting a zigzag path to the church that marks his finish line. Pulling that trigger when he has to, killing when he must.

  This is what the Boy thinks as he advances into town, severed-root feet sweeping over pockmarked blacktop where six boys have spilled blood.

  He turns down an alley that’ll trim two long blocks off his journey.

  He slips into the darkest shadows.

  And finds that he is already there.

  ****

  Jerry Ricks stands at the back door of the police station. The door is metal—reinforced steel—but Jerry has his father’s key. Chief Marlowe is the only man inside. Outside, in the alley, it’s just Jerry and the October Boy.

  Jerry’s fingers are closed around the key, but he doesn’t give it a twist. It’s a strange moment. There’s a bloody butcher knife in his other hand, and a rubber pumpkin mask on his face. It’s the same mask he wore when he surprised his father earlier that night and murdered him out in the cornfield.

  Jerry can’t help it. He shivers at the sight of the only bogeyman he’s ever feared. The October Boy stares at him, spotlighting Jerry’s rubber mask with Halloween eyes, raising a shotgun like a poised gavel of eternity. As the gun sweeps up the Boy’s gaze drifts lower, to the bloodstained blade in Jerry’s hand.

  The October Boy pauses.

  His eyes narrow to slivers.

  A crosscut mistake of a smile arches high on his face.

  And just that fast, laughter spills from the Boy’s head—the same dark laughter that a few minutes before swept a half-dozen boys off a street just like a broom. It’s a sardonic laugh brimming with realization, but it doesn’t scare Jerry Ricks. No. It infuriates him. His fear is suddenly gone. He won’t have this thing laughing at him like he’s some pretender to its dark throne. Because he knows what the October Boy is, and what he isn’t. He’s not like those kids running the streets tonight—the ones who think the nightmarish scarecrow is a ticket to a dream.

  No. Standing there in a frightmask of his own, Jerry knows better. He understands the truth. There is no escape from this town. The Run is a self-fullfilling prophecy, and so is the Boy, and so are those who long for that fabled one-way ticket across the Line. Because what would Jerry have gained if he’d been one of the kids who brought down the Boy and earned a trip on the black road, anyway? Not a one-way ticket out of this dead-end little nowhere. Just a detour to a hole in the ground—and without the benefit of a pine box.

  Once Jerry thought it was different. He didn’t understand that winning the Run meant having worms chew your corpse through a long winter and spring and summer, or coming back to the same damn town a year later with a twisted body and a knife in your hands. But now he understands everything. It’s all about lies here. Lies his father told him. Lies every father told. Lies about the town, and the Run, and the October Boy himself.

  Lies about death, and—even worse—lies about life.

  The way Jerry sees it, the biggest lie of all stands in front of him with a shotgun. The October Boy’s eyes burn brightly, a
s if Jerry’s fate is cooking around in its brainpan and the clock is just a handful of ticks from dinnertime. Like everything else around here, the Boy wants blood. Ricks understands that, because he wants blood, too. Blood washes away every lie. Blood is how you pay your way in this town. With the Boy. With the Harvester’s Guild. And even with your own family.

  Jerry smiles behind his mask. Yes. Blood is the only currency that counts around here, and it’s all about paying the price.

  Jerry raises his butcher knife. The Boy jacks a load into the shotgun chamber, but Jerry doesn’t hesitate. He steps forward. Inside his Jack o’ Lantern mask, he laughs a laugh all his own. It’s higher than he wants, and it bottles up inside the mask as if it has nowhere to go, and he can’t control the way it spills from his lips any more than he can control the blade of the knife.

  That honed hunk of stainless steel gleams as it opens a quick, sure slice along the heel of Jerry Ricks’ palm. He flicks his hand toward the Boy. Blood splatters the alley. It rains over blacktop. A fat drop hits a garbage can, and another the brick wall behind it, and another still a window smoked with grime.

  Another kick of his hand, and his blood slaps the October Boy’s tattered coat.

  Another flick. And another…and another…

  ****

  “You want more?” the masked killer asks. “Is that what you want?”

  He’s descending the cement stairs at the rear of the police station, sweeping his cut hand before him, spraying blood across the alley.

  “A cup gonna do you? A pint? A quart?”

  Blood splatters the ground at the October Boy’s gnarled feet.

  “Is that enough for you? Let me know, Boy. Because I’ll give you all you want. I’ll give you all you can handle.”

  The October Boy’s arrowhead nose flares to a tighter point. He holds his ground, even though the wild red stink chokes him. How could he have missed it when he entered the alley? It’s the same predator’s scent that he smelled in the clearing where he found the severed head.