Halloween (11 page)

As Loomis passed a liquor store, he nodded, remembering his teenage son's recent tirade about the hypocrisy of Loomis's generation that punishes drug use but proudly displays its alcoholic orientation as if drinking were a virtue to be encouraged. The boy was right. But it would be another decade before you saw a head shop in Haddonfield, Illinois.

Brackett was just finishing writing up his report and supervising the hasty assembly of a saw-horse barrier around the hardware store. Mr. Nichols put the finishing touches on a wooden Panel to cover the broken window until a glass replacement arrived in the morning. He stepped back to survey his handiwork and examine the rim of the window as if to contemplate the possibility of putting up a locked iron gate. He shook his head sadly. He hated to do that. To put up a gate would not only be ugly, it would symbolize his concession to the growing vandalism that existed in his town.

"May we sit in your car, Sheriff?" Loomis asked.

"Suit yourself, Doctor." They slid into the front seat. Brackett turned the heater on. "Getting a bit chilly. Winter'Il be here any day now."

"
Mmm
," Loomis said distractedly, running his fingers down the blue barrels of the sheriff's over-and-under twelve-gauge shotgun propped vertically between the seats. "Have you ever had to use this thing?"

"Can't catch quail with my bare hands," Brackett laughed.

"You know what I mean."

Brackett shook his head. "I've pointed it at one or two 'alleged perpetrators,' as my colleagues like to call them."

"Who do you think perpetrated
that?
" Loomis asked with a jerk of the head toward the hardware store.

"Kids, most likely. Who else would steal Halloween masks?"

"And knives? And rope? What do kids need with those?"

"Beats the hell out of
me
. Sometimes they break in and grab whatever's near to hand, just because it's there for the grabbing." He gazed at Loomis, whose face glowed green in the phosphorescent light of the dashboard. "You got any better ideas?"

"I might. Do you remember the Judith Myers case?"'

Brackett's gaze narrowed to a suspicious stare. "Of course I do." There was a silence as Loomis ran his fingers with a scratchy noise through his goatee. Brackett waited impatiently, studying this man whose intrusion into his life had brought with it intimations of grisly horror, a horror made more dreadful because it had happened in this idyllic setting. Over the police channel, staticky squawks proclaimed petty vandalism occurring throughout the area. "Intruders reported on Carter Road around the Gleason farm"; "windows broken by four persons in masks, believed children, Carry house at Post Road near Deller"; "three trespassers reported writing on doors with spray paint . . ."

"What are you saying, Doctor?"

Loomis told him about the escape from the sanitarium last night. Brackett listened with a troubled expression. "The Myers house. Will You take me there?"

Brackett tapped the steering wheel with his nails. "I don't know, Loomis. I got my hands full tonight. Halloween is one of my profession's busy seasons. Can you hear what's coming down?" He turned the radio louder.

Loomis listened stolidly, expressionlessly. "This is all the work of children!" he protested at length. "Harmless pranks!"

"Do you call broken windows and spraypainted doors harmless? Try repairing them sometime. Try paying for them. Across the country the damages amount to
millions
.
Millions!
"

"But we're talking about something else, Sheriff, another . . . another
dimension
."

"I don't know about other dimensions, Loomis, but I do know that the harm being rendered by your so-called sweet innocent children tonight is more real to me than something perpetrated by a nut case fifteen years ago."

"An
escaped
nut case."

Loomis's distinction made a telling point on the sheriff. "
Umm
, that's true," he conceded reluctantly.

Loomis drove the point home. "Do you think this man has come here to soap people's windows?'' He rubbed his goatee heavily, until it sounded like a carpenter sandpapering a table.

Brackett shrugged. "I suppose it's worth a look, but I guarantee you're not going to find anything."

"That, Sheriff, is a guarantee I would too gladly accept."

Another squawk came over the radio. "Fire reported in meadow behind Kochner farm, route 167-A off Market Road," the voice droned.

"Kids will be kids," the sheriff laughed bitterly.

Loomis still wasn't sure Brackett had grasped the problem.

As Brackett nosed his car into the dark, cloudy night, he reviewed for Loomis everything he knew or had heard about the Myers case. Loomis listened attentively, though from his half-closed lids Brackett might have concluded the man was dozing off. Brackett said nothing Loomis didn't know, until something slipped out casually that made the psychiatrist's eyes widen and his back stiffen. "Would you mind repeating that, Sheriff?"

"I said, the kid's great-grandfather had done something similar."

"Tell me about it." Loomis was breathing harder. Brackett's casual remark had excited him as if he were a starving man that someone had dangled a piece of cake in front of.

"Well, I don't know much about it, and it was never brought out in the hearings, but Mrs. Myers, that night, was overheard saying, 'He's come back,' or maybe 'It's come back.' Over and over again. I didn't live here then, so this is all second-hand."

"Go On."

"So Ron Barstow, he was sheriff at the time, Ron asked her, 'Who's come back? What's come back?' And she mumbled something about the thing that had got inside her grandfather. I guess she meant taken possession."

Despite the coldness of the evening, Loomis had begun to perspire. His breath hissed noisily. "Did she explain, about the thing that had taken possession of her grandfather?"

"No, but Ron went to the records at town hall and checked out the newspaper clippings at the historical society."

"And?"

"It seems the man had gone Berserk back in the eighteen nineties."

Loomis was on the edge of his seat, his eyes bulging. "Berserk? How?"

"It was at a Grange dance, I think Ron said. The man just upped and pulled a revolver from his belt and blasted a dancing couple. They hanged him."

They drove silently for a moment, Loomis struggling to contain his excitement, almost savoring the next question. "When did this happen?"

"Eighteen ninety-eight, ninety-nine, something like that."

"No, no, I mean, what date?"

"How should I . . . ? Wait a minute. Of course I know! Ron remarked on it."

"Yes?"

"All Hallow Even. It was a harvest dance. Halloween!" Brackett's toe unconsciously depressed the gas pedal and the car accelerated into the dangerous night. "Jesus," the sheriff breathed.

"Why wasn't this mentioned at the hearlng?" Loomis demanded, slumping back into his seat, still panting.

"I think Ron said it was because the defense attorney thought it was either irrelevant or damaging to the kid's case."

"Irrelevant? Damaging?" Loomis chuckled drily, a laugh totally devoid of humor, like a rattle. "Tell me, did your friend tell you anything more about this great-grandfather?"

"I'm thinking." The seconds ticked ponderously around the clock on the dashboard. "Voices."

"Voices?"

"The man heard voices, voices telling him to kill these two."

"Kill those two specifically. In other words, he didn't fire into a crowd at random? He knew the victims?"

Brackett scratched his ear. "I'm a little confused about that part. The way Ron explained it, the guy
claimed
he knew who he was shooting, but when they asked him to identify his victims, he called them some weird names he said he'd heard in his dreams." Brackett pointed to his own skull and made a rotary motion with his finger. "Crazy."

"Perhaps. These names, Sheriff. Were they Celtic? Would you recognize them? Deirdre? Cullain?"

"Sorry, my friend, they don't ring a bell. Who are they?"

"Names of victims in Michael's dreams. If we could establish a continuity from the great-grandfather to the boy . . ." the psychiatrist mused.

"A continuity?" Brackett gasped. "Come on, Loomis. In order for a dream to jump two or three generations, you'd have to believe . . ." He shook his head. "Doctor, I think you may be touched yourself."

"Probably. It's an occupational hazard."

Brackett swung right and glided to the curb before the gloomy, weatherbeaten house that stood out among its white, neatly kempt neighbors like some shriveled crone in a row of teenagers. They climbed out of the car and stood before it, listening to the sound of branches whipping against an upstairs window. "Has anybody lived here since . . . ?"

"You got to be kidding," Brackett said. "Every kid in Haddonfield thinks the place is haunted. Maybe every adult too."

"They may be right."

Brackett reached into his car and produced a long flashlight. Pointing it at the "For Sale" sign thrust into the scrubby lawn, the sheriff said, "His parents found him standing right there in his clown costume with the ruff around the neck, cute as could be except he held a butcher knife as long as this flashlight and he was smeared with fresh blood." He flashed his light on the sign. "This should come down. I hear it's been sold. Chester Strode must be drunk with relief. He's the agent."

"Sold?" Loomis repeated, shaking his head with disbelief.

"I know what you mean. New York people. They thought it would be fun to own a haunted house. New Yorkers," he groaned, using the word almost as a curse.

"Can we go in?"

"I don't have a key, but maybe . . ." They mounted the front porch.

"We could go in through one of the broken windows," Loomis suggested.

"That's what I was going to sug—
hmm
." Loomis stepped to the front door, on which the sheriff held his light. The knob dangled at an odd angle, and there were fresh gouges in the wood around it. Brackett touched the knob and the door swung open. "One haunted house, complete with creaks," he said.

"If you find it so amusing, why are you taking your gun out of its holster?" Loomis asked with a grim smile.

Brackett didn't care for the remark. Flashing the light around the entry vestibule, he stepped in cautiously, crouched tensely as he scanned the rooms with his light-guided eyes, then gestured with his head for Loomis to come in. Carefully they trod the floorboards, Loomis moving back to back with his friend, like a pair of eyes in the back of the sheriff's head. The psychiatrist kept his right hand plunged deep in the pocket of his trench coat.

Suddenly Brackett stopped. Loomis backed into him. "What is it?"

Brackett trained his light on a corner of the parlor next to the kitchen. "That's a good question. What
is
it?"

The light revealed something resembling a white and black shaggy throw rug with jagged red streaks. Brackett kneeled over it and gulped. "It's a dog." He reached out and dipped a finger into the entrails that had been ripped out of the creature and draped across its hind legs casually. "Still warm. Lord!"

Loomis looked at the mutilated creature, its bulging eyes orangely reflecting the light. "He got hungry."

"He? You mean . . . ? Come on, Doctor. It could have been a skunk. Or a raccoon."

"Could have been," Loomis said unenthusiastically.

"A man wouldn't do that," Brackett said, holding the light on the glistening guts.

"He isn't a man," Loomis replied.

They turned their back on the remains and searched the rest of the downstairs. The place was a shambles. Floorboards ripped up, plaster and lathing chipped or ripped off the walls, damp spots in the ceiling. Brackett made several more sarcastic remarks about the people from New York.

"Shall we go upstairs?" Loomis said.

"Uh, of course. What tour of a haunted house would be complete without a look at the upstairs?"

"After you, Sheriff."

Brackett snorted and stepped ahead of Loomis. They inched up the stairs, staying close to the wall, for the balustrade was a wreck. As they approached the landing, Brackett paused and caught his breath. "What do you suppose that noise is?"

Loomis cocked his ear. "I believe it's a branch slapping a window. It's coming from that room there. I saw it when we were on the lawn."

"Of course," Brackett said, crunching over some plaster pebbles.

Holding gun and flashlight close together, he stepped into the near bedroom. The noise was indeed what Loomis had said. "This is where it happened. She was sitting there, brushing her hair. I'm told she just had panties on. He came in here, and of course she recognized him and did nothing to defend herself. Why should she? It was her six-year-old kid brother, for crying out loud! They found her here, under this . . ." A sudden gust of wind slapped the branch against the window with terrible force, smashing it and showering glass at their feet. Both men leaped back, uttering curses. Then they laughed nervously.

Brackett led Loomis through the rest of the upstairs at double time, then said, "Nothing here. Let's go."

Outside, Brackett leaned against his car. "What do we do?"

"He was here and he may be coming back. I'm going to wait for him."

"I keep thinking I should call in help, maybe get a warning broadcast."

"If you do, people will see him everywhere, on every street corner, in every house. Just tell your men to shut their mouths and open their eyes."

The sheriff gestured at his shotgun. "You want something?"

"I've got something." Loomis pulled a .357 magnum out of his raincoat. Bracket whistled. It looked like a naval gun. "Don't worry. It's licensed."

"Lord. You're loaded for bear."

He kept his headlights off as he followed the red car with the two girls in it, and he kept his distance. His heart beat heavily but rhythmically, but the beat had accelerated since sundown, and it was beginning to make him nervous and agitated. His palms were sweaty and his mouth dry, and he was uncomfortably aroused, a condition of pain and not pleasure. He drove past the orange-glowing pumpkin-faces that seemed to mock him, past the eager, laughing children parading from house to house in their foolish costumes.