Stuart yelled like a berserker as he ran to Kerwin’s aid, slamming the sharp corner of his push broom onto the vine that constricted his brother’s ex-manager’s leg. The vine splintered and went limp.
Stuart helped Kerwin to his feet.
* * * *
Once they got Jill and Dennis pealed apart—a group effort—Ysabella marshaled her troops for a brainstorming session. She needed a large space that was sheltered, yet open, with a roof but no walls. There was a circle to be drawn, using salt and chalk, and it had to be safe from the supernatural torrent Violina had raised.
Dennis broke the news about Maisie. For a moment, it seemed that Ysabella’s rejuvenation was nearly reversed. Brinke had to help her to the bed, where they sat together. Ysabella gripped Stella’s wrist and closed her eyes to dam tears. “Poor, poor wonderful Maisie.”
They were soon joined by Brinke, who laid her long arms across their shoulders. “She’ll come to us in time.”
The three of them sat and wept together for little more than a minute, which was more than they could spare.
Ysabella had a job for Dennis and Bernard. “You know where Violina cast her sigil?”
“Yeah,” Dennis said grimly. “Right around Bennington’s stone.”
“I need you to go there and erase it.”
“We’re on it.”
Turning to Stella, Ysabella took her hand and held it like a sister. “I want Candace to go with us, but there is some danger.”
It had been little more than a whisper, yet Candace heard. She went quickly to them, eyes imploring. “Yes. I have to go, Mom. The town needs me.”
Stella swelled with admiration for the little girl and realized how valuable her courage and strength would be. “You will stay right by my side every instant!”
Finally, Ysabella turned to Leticia and Elaine, who would remain there with Emera and Wanda. She gave them very specific instructions.
Emera was set to protest vociferously, until Candace told her that Bravo would stay with her.
Then the witches piled into Stella’s car to head to the Grand Illusion Cinemas.
* * * *
Settlement era
The house where the nice big man and strong lady let Everett rest had been warm and comfortable. Better than any of the little shacks where his parents made him live. Better even, than his very own bedroom in the big house, from when he was a little boy, before the priests.
The scarecrow clothes made for a great costume, but they were itchy and dirty and not very warm. Everett knew someone in the odd little town had to have something better. Now that they were all out admiring the wonderful decoration he’d made, he could go into their houses and get warm and find stuff to eat.
Peering in the window of Marion Stansler’s house, Everett saw a nice fire burning in the fireplace.
Corn was growing in the field behind the house. Everett went to gather a few ears. When he came back, he found something very nice, hanging on a nail on the back of the warm little house.
It was so shiny at the top. It was like a bird with a long beak that pointed back to the town, where all the people were surely marveling over the man-in-half display he had made.
The handled scythe, many times larger than the hand sickle he used when he first got to this funny little place, called to mind another of his favorite Halloween figures—the Grim Reaper.
Everett laughed, and even checked above his head to see if a light bulb had appeared there, like in cartoons, because he had had a good idea.
He went in the horsey barn, where people always kept nice blankets for their animals for the cold days that came not long after Halloween. Sure enough, there was a nice big brown one lying across the gate that kept the horse inside. The horse on the other side of it scooted and scooted until it was against the wall, far away from Everett, but that was okay. He would bring it an apple later, or some fingers, and see if it would be his friend.
Everett found some rope, too, and used it to tie the blanket around his waist and his neck to make a hood. Then he picked up the scythe and studied his moon-cast shadow. It was just like the Reaper!
Wait. He needed more. No one had face paint or decent plastic masks around here, but that was okay. Everett was a big boy. It was time to move on from kid costumes.
Everett thought of the witch and the motorcycle people from the last Halloween, and how he made masks out of their faces, but the best part was the skull part, under the skin.
Everett had a skull too. But his face was in the way.
Everett went inside Marion Stansler’s house with his ears of corn and his new costume. There, he found a really nice knife to help him with both.
Chapter 33
You Always Stand In My Way
Adonijah Cooke stood facing Conal, now behind the skinned-maple bars of the town jail, as though his candlelit glower could bypass Judgment and send the Irishman plummeting into hell.
“Adoni, why don’t you leave this to me?” Bennington stepped between Cooke and the cell, placing loving hands on his friend’s shoulders. “Go and mourn your boy. When you’re ready to bury him, I’ll pay for the box.”
“This scoundrel would just as soon have seen you hang, Bennington,” said the grieving father.
“Yes. We cannot let ourselves descend to such a state.”
Adonijah finally turned and shuffled out, followed by his devastated sons.
“It wasn’t me who…killed Jonas, Bennington,” hissed O’Herlihy. “Your old house whore lied.”
“Guilty of this murder or not, your sins have found you out, Conal.”
Bennington checked that the door of the jailhouse was closed tight, then slid the flimsy chair, last occupied by Jonas, against it. “Just count yourself lucky you’re locked in here now.”
“You know the killer?”
“I only know there are worse men than even you loose in the world, Conal.”
Conal opened his mouth to boast of just how much worse he could—and would—get, but stopped himself.
* * * *
Two full cups of his own corn whiskey had become a nightly habit for Schroeder, the only thing to silence his increasingly troubled mind as the settlement’s turmoil filled his thoughts.
For the last week, he had been preparing a special batch, though he was certain he could never gain the courage to distribute it.
Even so, when he heard the knock, he sat up so fast his addled mind swam.
“Good heavens!” said his wife, Olga. “Between you and the door, I might have died of fright.”
“Hush, Olga!” Schroeder tossed off the quilts and reached for his rifle.
“You hush yourself. It’s only your…‘customers.’”
It was unlikely to be anything so mundane.
The floor’s cold planks against Schroeder’s bare feet made him curse, fully waking him from the nightmare image of Hezekiah Hardison—first hanging in his field like a crucified corn god, and then lying pale and bloated as he and Conal rolled his corpse in the oilcloth.
He skimmed a mental list of all possible visitors, the first space on this list occupied by a black question mark for the unknown killer-on-the-loose.
The knock had come from Gregor Tiernan at the door, with Theodore Blaisdell mounted on a restless mare behind him. “We need you, Friedrich. Conal needs you!”
“Conal? What has…?”
“Bennington and his fellows have moved to blame Conal for murder,” said Gregor.
“Jonas Cooke!” shouted Theodore. “Cloven in twain!”
“He’s in the jail now, Conal is,” Gregor explained. “We’re gathering in the secret hall.”
“We go now!” Theodore yelled.
Schroeder turned and peered into the darkness of his house to buy a moment of thought. “Move on to the next man, and I’ll be on your tr
ail,” he said. “I’ll bring something useful.”
* * * *
Schroeder’s mother had been born with a caul, a sign of clairvoyance.
She had never spoken of it, until the day Friedrich told her he was leaving for the new world. Then she wept with despair, telling him Sensenmann would follow him there.
Schroeder’s horse was small and old. With the dark seeming to slowly enclose him like a crushing chrysalis, Schroeder was tempted to push the nag to hurry, fearing that moving too slowly would make him a tempting target to whom or whatever (Sensenmann) was doing all the killing.
He had been dismissive of his mother’s reaction, right up until this very moment when dissension was coming to a head, the leaves were dropping like frogs upon Egypt in the book of Exodus and a very real Angel of Death was creeping among them.
The night ahead bore a weight of fatefulness that made him regret leaving Holland, of ever even meeting with the ambitious Anglos who had mapped this leaf-covered corner of hell.
Yet turning back to his settlement home was no more an option than turning back to Europe.
Olga would be up worrying very late this night, and a good many after.
* * * *
Modern day
With Dennis and Bernard drawing the few pumpkin demons that hadn’t made their way to the Community Center, the witches’ drive to the theater was uneventful.
“I’d hoped for something open all around,” Ysabella said, “but we’ll make this work.”
The Grand Illusion Cinemas was Ember Hollow’s most recognizable landmark other than Saint Saturn Unitarian and had been its most popular social spot—before Dennis almost died falling from the top of the marquee.
Supported by a pair of thick cement columns, it projected out over the ticket-queue area and main structure about fourteen feet. Except for the glass-face front and doors, it was all clear, open space.
A crashing sound and a nerve-splintering shriek, only a couple of streets over, startled the newly-extended coven. At least one of the pumpkin monsters was close.
“Let’s get to work.” The women went about drawing a circle with chalk, spreading salt evenly outside the perimeter. Stella listened to the invocations the witches spoke and repeated them. Candace joined in as well, falling easily into the role of white witch as if she had done it all her life. The look she gave Stella, the search for guidance, told the adoptive mother it was her commitment giving Candace courage and confidence.
Chapter 34
Back to the Cemetery
“This thing could use a cowcatcher right now,” noted Bernard, as Dennis veered the hearse toward a tractor-sized orange ogre that was advancing toward them on a dozen thin multi-jointed legs.
“Like that truck in Jeepers Creepers?”
The hearse bashed into the crawler doing forty, hurling it thirty feet into a sidewalk planter, where it broke apart on the red-brick corners.
“Careful.” Bernard lowered the forearm he had reflexively raised when Dennis accelerated toward the miscreation. “Jeepers Creepers. Is that the one with the pervy gargoyle?”
“Yep.” Dennis stopped at the intersection.
“You and I could slap one on this baby in a single afternoon,” Bernard noted.
Dennis raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Might look pretty badass.”
The hearse shook with the boom of something landing hard on its roof.
“Aaah, cripes!” exclaimed Bernard.
A firehose-thick scorpion’s leg bashed the windshield, cracking a spiderweb network of white lines right in Dennis’s line of sight.
“Dammit!” Dennis swerved. “Get off my car, you big tick!”
“Watch out!” Bernard’s side of the windshield was mostly clear. He was able to see the light pole coming at them with terrifying velocity.
Dennis braked, hoping to throw the thing into the pole. But it stayed in place, bashing at every window with its claws.
“How are you gonna…?” Bernard didn’t finish his question. Dennis ducked to see under the breakage and gunned it. Seeing that he was torpedoing toward the church drive’s iron fence like a bullet, Bernard raised both forearms this time.
The hearse crashed into the black gates with a roar to match the hitchhiking demon’s. Dennis, having wrecked a few times before, knew to lean right so his head wouldn’t hit the wheel.
There was a split second of relative silence. Then Bernard screeched like a monkey.
Dennis popped up, “What!?”
Bernard took a deep breath of relief. “When your head hit my lap, I thought it was…no longer attached.”
Their horrific hijacker recovered as well and shrieked its rage.
The rear window cascaded inward. Then Bernard’s.
Now it was Bernard’s turn to crowd into Dennis’s side. The windshield caved in as a single piece, covering the pair like a blanket.
A shout, in a familiar voice, said, “Get down as much as you can!”
Dennis pushed Bernard’s head down and lay over him.
Staccato gunfire punched the air, plunking pumpkin flesh. The stalks withdrew, then the hearse rose six inches as the abomination leaped off with an enraged roar.
“Come on!” Dennis dragged Bernard toward him as he opened his door.
* * * *
“Good boy!” Elaine told Bravo.
The dog had posted himself at the door as always, his tail held high. It was clear that the thunder frightened him, but duty called. His pleasant-smelling charges came first.
Per Ysabella’s instructions, the little girls were given lots of paper and colored markers from Brinke’s bag—a step up from crayons for the smaller girl. “Girls, can you draw me a picture of a storm, like this one over the sky of our town?” Leticia asked.
The little ones quickly set to work, losing their fear of the storm as they drew. As Emera raised a red pen, Elaine stopped her. “Hey, I have an idea! Let’s make the lightning green, like pretty trees!”
“Okay!”
* * * *
As the latest and loudest burst of thunder boomed, Elaine turned to Leticia. “I’m sorry I was ever angry with you about leaving. You certainly can’t be blamed.”
Leticia smiled at her friend. “Don’t think I’m gonna give up on trying to get you to come too.”
“Wook!” Wanda raised her and Emera’s latest drawing, completed in minutes. It depicted the Green Man on Emera’s bracelet, smiling placidly as he blocked red lightning with one hand and projected green lightning with the other.
The mothers stared at each in astonishment. “That’s…brilliant.”
* * * *
Conal, the pumpkin demon, forced his giant face into the window frame and opened his jagged-toothed maw with a cry of rage. He blasted another stream of pumpkin-seeded placenta onto the gymnasium floor, dispensing hundreds of his horrific offspring.
Much of the mess landed on McGlazer’s back, shocking him out of his pain trance. The spores spread instantly and wound their tiny twine vines around his face and neck before they were even out of their shells, drawing lines of blood and trails of pain.
McGlazer dug his fingernails into his own flesh to gain purchase under the wire razors, breaking them apart at the expense of deep gashes in his fingers.
“How much longer on the corndog!?” Stuart shouted.
“Half!”
Three full-grown pumpkins reappeared at the high windows and reached in again. Their vines, having grown longer from the mystical rainwater, brushed against the embattled Community Center occupants now.
Soon their prey would be within easy reach to strangle and drag across the broken glass of the window frames, to consume or simply dismember as they saw fit.
The rain suddenly ceased.
Chapter 35
Hellstreet
With its
mother dead, the red-lit storm quieted quickly under the influence of Ysabella and her apprentices.
The bright red flashes softened to a rather mute pink, the thunderclaps to subdued grumbles.
But the oddball cadence of vine-tacles and tree-limb spider legs making their way over and through Main Street’s structures only grew louder.
The witches, old and young, kept their eyes closed as they spun leftward and repeated Ysabella’s passionate words, having fallen in sync with her long before a reasonable learning curve.
The witch queen stopped mid-spin, unaffected by the law of momentum. Without opening their eyes, Brinke, Stella and Candace followed suit a split second later, all facing toward the Community Center.
The first leering, fiendish face, peering down from the roof of the now-closed sporting-goods shop, put a serious dent in their collective resolve and courage. Stella felt Candace grip her hand harder.
When it roared down at them, yellowy saliva spraying from its unnatural maw, a withering wave coursed through the coven. Ysabella’s power and determination quickly brought everyone back.
She began to turn again, in the opposite direction. “Spirits! Bring down the rain!” they all intoned. “Reverse the tide of infection! Halt the impetus of evil!”
The sky began to rumble again, sounding less like invasion, more like cleansing.
The horror on the roof leaped to the ground and charged, only to be bounced back violently by the invisible wall of the magic circle.
Gaelic flowed seamlessly into Greek, then Chinese, then Arabic, the feminine chorus a perfect harmony of goddess-mother intention, with no hesitation or lag time from one woman to the next, child or crone.
A half dozen more orange goblins appeared, all eager to test the circle, all quick to learn their lesson.
Clouds that had just separated and dispersed now rejoined. Flashing within was a vital bright green.
Now smaller pumpkins, soulless children of the original horde, began to appear and crawl toward the circle, threatening, but for the moment harmless.
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