Blue World (17 page)

Old Ironsides.

God, it was insane! Did these men really believe they were making sacrifices to a satanic trick-or-treater?

Roy lifted his eyebrows. “You didn’t return the shotgun, did you? Or the money. You didn’t refuse the promotion.”

“I

earned that promotion!“ Dan insisted, but his voice was strained and weak, and it shamed him.

“You signed the agreement in blood,” Roy said, and Dan remembered the drops of blood falling from his cut finger onto the white paper of the lease, right underneath his name. “Whether you knew it or not, you agreed to something that’s been going on in Essex for over a hundred years. You can have anything and everything you want, Dan, if you give him what he wants on one special night of the year.”

“My God,” Dan whispered. He felt dizzy and sick. If it was true… what had he stumbled into? “You said… he wants two things from me. The fingernail clippings and what else?”

Roy looked at the list and cleared his throat. “He wants the clippings, and… he wants the first joint of the little finger of your child’s left hand.”

Dan sat motionlessly. He stared straight ahead, and feared for an awful moment that he would start laughing and giggle himself all the way to an asylum.

“It’s really not much,” Roy said. “There won’t be a lot of blood, will there, Carl?”

Carl Lansing, who worked as a butcher at the Food Giant in Barrimore Crossing, raised his left hand to show Dan Burgess. “Not much pain if you do it quick, with a cleaver. One sharp blow’ll snap the bone. She won’t feel a whole lot of pain if you do it fast.”

Dan swallowed. Carl’s slicked-back black hair gleamed with Vitalis under the light. Dan had always wondered exactly how Carl had lost the thumb of his left hand.

“If you don’t put what he wants in front of your door,” Andy McCutcheon said, “he’ll come in after them. And then he’ll take more than he asked for in the first place, Dan. God help you if he has to knock at your door.”

Dan’s eyes felt like frozen stones in his rigid face; he stared across the room at Mitch Brantley, who appeared to be either about to faint or throw up. Dan thought of Mitch’s new son, and he did not want to think about what might be on the list beside either Mitch’s or Walter Ferguson’s name. He rose unsteadily from his chair. It was not that he believed the Devil was coming to his house tonight for a bizarre trick-or-treat that frightened him so deeply; it was that he knew they believed, and he didn’t know how to deal with it.

“Dan,” Roy Hathaway said gently, “we’re all in this together. It’s not so bad. Really it isn’t. Usually all he wants are little things. Things that don’t matter very much.” Mitch made a soft, strangled groaning sound. Dan flinched, but Roy paid no attention. Dan had the sudden urge to leap at

Roy and grab him by the front of that blood-red sweater and shake him until he split open. “Once in a while he… takes something of value,” Roy said, “but not very often. And he always gives us back so much more than he takes.”

“You’re crazy. All of you… are crazy.”

“Give him what he wants.” Steve Mallory spoke in the strong bass voice that was so distinctive in the Baptist church choir on Sunday mornings. “Do it, Dan. Don’t make him knock at your door.”

“Do it,” Roy told him. “For your own sake, and for your family’s.”

Dan backed away from them. Then he turned and ran up the stairs, ran out of the house as Laura Hathaway was coming out of the kitchen with a big bowl of pretzels, ran down the front steps and across the lawn to his pickup. Near Steve Mallory’s new silver Chevy, Walter and tom were standing together. Dan heard Walter sob “… not her ear, tom! Dear God, not her whole ear!”

Dan got into his truck and left twin streaks of rubber on the pavement as he drove away.

Dead leaves whirled through the turbulent, chilly air as Dan pulled up into his driveway, got out and ran up the front-porch steps. Karen had taped a cardboard skeleton to the door. His heart was pounding, and he’d decided to take no chances; if this was an elaborate joke, they could laugh their asses off at him, but he was getting Karen and Jaime out of here.

Halfway home, a thought had occurred to him that had almost made him pull off the road to puke: if the list had demanded a lock of Jaime’s hair, would he have given it without question? How about her fingernail clippings? A whole fingernail? An earlobe? And if he had given any of those things, what would be on the trick-or-treat list next year and the year after that?

Not much blood, if you do it quick.

“Karen!” he shouted as he unlocked the door and went in. The house was too quiet.

“Karen!”

“Lord, Dan! What are you yelling about?” She came into the front room from the hallway, followed by Jaime in clown makeup, an oversize red blouse, patched little blue jeans, and sneakers covered with round yellow happy-face stickers. Dan knew he must look like walking death, because Karen stopped as if she’d run into a wall when she saw him. “What’s happened?” she asked fearfully.

“Listen to me. Don’t ask any questions.” He wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead with a trembling hand. Jaime’s soft brown eyes reflected the terror he’d brought into the house with him. “We’re leaving right now. We’re going to drive to Birmingham and check into a motel.”

“It’s Halloween!” Karen said. “We might have some trick-or-treaters!”

“Please… don’t argue with me! We’ve got to get out of here right now!” Dan jerked his gaze away from his child’s left hand; he’d been looking at the little finger and thinking terrible thoughts. “Right now,” he repeated.

Jaime was stunned, about to cry. On a table beside her was a plate with the Halloween candies on it--grinning pumpkins with silver eyes and licorice mouths. “We have to go,” Dan said hoarsely. “I can’t tell you why, but we have to.” Before Karen could say anything else, Dan told her to gather whatever she wanted--toothpaste, a jacket, underwear--while he went out and started the truck. But hurry!

he urged her. For God’s sake, hurry!

Outside, dead leaves snapped at his cheeks and sailed past his head. He slid behind the pickup’s wheel, put the key into the ignition, and turned it.

The engine made one long groaning noise, rattled, and died.

Christ! Dan thought, close to panic. He’d never had any problem with the truck before! He pumped the accelerator and tried again. The engine was stone-cold dead, and all the warning lights--brake fluid, engine oil, battery, even gasoline--flashed red on the instrument panel.

Of course, he realized. Of course. He had paid off the truck with the money he’d won. The truck had been given to him while he was a resident of Essex--and now whatever was coming to their house tonight didn’t want him driving that truck away from Essex.

They could run for it. Run along the road. But what if they ran into the Halloween visitor, there in the lonely darkness? What if it came up behind them on the road, demanding its trick-or-treat like a particularly nasty child?

He tried the truck again. Dead.

Inside the house, Dan slammed the door and locked it. He went to the kitchen door and locked that too, as his wife and daughter watched him as if he’d lost his mind. Dan shouted, “Karen, check all the windows! Make sure they’re shut tight! Hurry, damn it!” He went to the closet and took out his shotgun, got a box of shells off the shelf; he opened the box, put it on the table next to the pumpkin candies, broke open the gun’s breech, and stuffed two shells into the chambers. Then he closed the breech and looked up as Karen and Jaime returned, clinging to each other.

“All… the windows are shut,” Karen whispered, her scared blue eyes flickering back and forth from Dan’s face to the shotgun. “Dan, what’s wrong with you?”

“Something’s coming to our door tonight,” he replied. “Something terrible. We’re going to have to hold it off. I don’t know if we can, but we have to try. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“It’s… Halloween,” she said, and he saw she thought he was totally cracked.

The telephone! he thought suddenly, and ran for it. He picked up the receiver and dialed for the operator in Barrimore Crossing to call for a police car.

Officer, the Devil’s on his way to our house tonight and we don’t have his favorite kind of candy.

But on the other end of the line was a piercing crackle of static that sounded like a peal of eerie laughter. Through the static Dan heard things that made him believe he’d truly hurtled over the edge: the crazy theme music from a Porky Pig cartoon, a crash of cymbals, the military drumming of a marching band, assorted gurgles and gasps and moans as if he’d been plugged into a graveyard party line. Dan dropped the receiver, and it dangled from its cord like a lynched corpse. Have to think, he told himself. Figure things out. Hold the bastard off. Got to hold him off. He looked at the fireplace and felt a new hammerblow of horror. “Dear God!” he shouted. “We’ve got to block up the chimney!”

Dan got on his knees, reached up the chimney, and closed the flue. There were already pine logs, kindling, and newspapers in the fireplace, ready for the first cold night of the year. He went into the kitchen, got a box of Red Top matches, and put them into the breast pocket of his shirt; when he came back into the room, Jaime was crying and Karen was holding her tightly, whispering, “Shhhhh, darling. Shhhhhh.” She watched her husband like one would watch a dog with foam on its mouth.

Dan pulled a chair about ten feet from the front door and sat down with the shotgun across his knees. His eyes were sunken into his head and ringed with purple. He looked at his new Bulova watch; somehow, the crystal had shattered. The hands had snapped off.

“Dan,” Karen said--and then she too started to cry.

“I love you, honey,” he told her. “You know I love both of you, don’t you? I swear I do. I won’t let him in. I won’t give him what he wants. Because if I do that, what will he take next year? I love you both, and I want you to remember that.”

“Oh, God… Dan…”

“They think I’m going to do it and leave it outside the door for him,” Dan said. His hands were gripped tightly around the shotgun, his knuckles white. “They think I could take a cleaver and--”

The lights flickered, and Karen screamed. Jaime’s wail joined hers.

Dan felt his face contorting with fear. The lights flickered, flickered--and went out.

“He’s coming,” Dan rasped. “He’s coming soon.” He stood up, walked to the fireplace, bent down, and struck a match. It took four matches to get the fire going right; its orange light turned the room into a Halloween chamber of horrors, and smoke repelled from the blocked flue swept around the walls like searching spirits. Karen was pressed against the wall, and Jaime’s clown makeup was streaming down her cheeks.

Dan returned to the chair, his eyes stinging with smoke, and watched the door.

He didn’t know how much longer it was when he sensed something on the front porch. Smoke was filling the house, but the room had suddenly become bone-achingly cold. He thought he heard something scratching out there on the porch, searching around the door for the items that weren’t there.

He’ll come knocking at your door. And you don’t want that. You really don’t.

“Dan--”

“Shhhh,” he warned her. “Listen! He’s out there.”

“Him?

Who?

I don’t hear--“

There was a knock at the door like a sledgehammer striking the wood. Dan saw the door tremble through the smoke-haze. The knock was followed by a second, with more force. Then a third that made the door bend inward like cardboard.

“Go away!” Dan shouted. “There’s nothing for you here!”

Silence.

It’s all a trick! he thought. Roy and tom and Carl and Steve and all the rest are out there in the dark, laughing fit to bust a gut!

But the room was getting viciously cold. Dan shivered, saw his breath float away past his face.

Something scraped on the roof above their heads, like claws seeking a weak chink in the shingles.

“Go away!”

Dan’s voice cracked.

“Go away, you bastard!”

The scraping stopped. After a long moment of silence, something smashed against the roof like an anvil being dropped. The entire house groaned. Jaime screamed, and Karen shouted, “What is it, Dan, what is it out there?”

Immediately following was a chorus of laughter from beyond the front door. Someone said, “Okay, I guess that’s enough!” A different voice called, “Hey, Dan! You can open up now! Just kiddin‘!” A third voice said, “Trick-or-treat, Danny boy!”

He recognized Carl Lansing’s voice. There was more laughter, more whooping cries of “Trick-or-treat!”

My God! Dan rose to his feet. It’s a joke. A brutal, ridiculous joke!

“Open the door!” Carl called. “We can’t wait to see your face!”

Dan almost cried, but there was rage building in him and he thought he might just aim the shotgun at them and threaten to shoot their balls off. Were they all crazy? How had they managed the phone and the lights? Was this some kind of insane initiation to Essex? He went to the door on shaky legs, unlocked it--

Behind him, Karen said suddenly, “Dan, don’t.”

--and opened the door.

Carl Lansing stood on the porch. His black hair was slicked back, his eyes as bright as new pennies. He looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary.

“You damned fools!” Dan raged. “Do you know what kind of scare you people put into me and my family? I ought to shoot your damned--”

And then he stopped, because he realized Carl was standing alone on the porch.

Carl grinned. His teeth were black. “Trick-or-treat,” he whispered, and raised the ax that he’d been holding behind his back.

With a cry of terror, Dan stumbled backward and lifted the shotgun. The thing that had assumed Carl’s shape oozed across the threshold; orange firelight glinted off the upraised ax blade.

Dan squeezed the shotgun’s trigger, but the gun didn’t go off. Neither barrel would fire. Jammed! he thought wildly, and broke open the breech to clear it.

There were no shells in the shotgun. Jammed into the chambers were Karen’s pumpkin candies.

“Trick-or-treat, Dan!”

the thing wailed.