October (22 page)

"Oh, God," Buddy said.

"Who—" Nick
Backman
began. He rose from the floor as the stranger slashed out with the knife, cutting a clean line through Brenda
Valachio's
neck under the chin.

Brenda staggered back. Her gasp was cut short as a flood-line of blood burst from her severed jugular.

"Jesus!" Nick
Backman
cried. The tall stranger faced him. Nick moved back toward the bar.

Andrea Carlson made a dash for the cellar steps. The tall man kicked at her feet, tripped her to the ground, drove the knife deep across the back of her neck. Her head dropped forward in a gurgling scream as blood poured across her back.

"Jesus God! Somebody help me!" Nick said. He backed up until he hit the edge of the bar. He started to slide to one side. The tall man held his arms wide as he advanced, compensating, restricting
Backman's
movements.

Crying, Nick fumbled behind the bar, producing a highball glass. He brought it down on the bar top, but as the brittle glass broke, it cut his hand across the palm. He dropped the weapon.

"Davey!" Buddy screamed. "Davey!"

The tall man closed in on
Backman
. Nick pushed himself up onto the bar, managed to swing his legs over the back.

The tall man lunged, threw himself across the top, and stretched his long arms over, catching
Backman
by the hair.

Thrashing at his ropes, trembling with cold terror, Buddy twisted his head to see the tall man holding Nick
Backman's
head up, while his other hand drove the knife across in short, savage half-circles. Nick gave an unearthly scream. There was a liquid ripping sound. The tall man straightened, holding Nick
Backman's
severed head, the open mouth dripping blood. It landed sideways on the bar where he dropped it.

The tall man approached Buddy, his face a stony mask.

"Jesus, no!"

The tall man stabbed viciously down with the knife. Buddy felt a burst of hot pain in his leg above the knee. The tall man turned the knife, wrenched it out, raised it to stab again.

There was a howling from the locked tool room, a desperate scratching sound against the door.

The tall man straightened. The mouth split in a thin, almost lipless smile. The hooded eyes looked like those in a jack-o'-lantern. "Rusty?"

The tall man walked to the tool room door. He raised his foot, kicked the door.

The door flew open. The tall man stood waiting, nearly filling the dark doorway.

"Rusty?" His voice was filled with hollow affection. "Come on out, boy." He stepped into the room. Whimpering with cold, fright, and frustration, Buddy pulled against his ropes. As if by magic, the bond holding his right wrist gave way. He sat halfway up on the billiard table, yanking at the rope on his other wrist, working it loose.

In the tool room, the dog growled. Buddy heard the tall man curse loudly.

The knot on Buddy's left wrist gave way, unraveled, fell aside.

"Here, Rusty!" the tall man shouted.

Buddy's trembling hands worked at the rope around his left ankle. He struck the deep wound in his leg accidentally, cried out.

The tall man stood looking at him from the tool room doorway.

Buddy pulled the rope from one ankle, then the other. He tumbled off the table. When he tried to stand, his wounded leg collapsed. He pulled himself up, using the billiard table for support, and, crying in pain, launched himself toward the stairway.

As the tall man stepped forward to block Buddy, the dog attacked, hitting the tall man on the right side, closing over the hand holding the knife.

Buddy hobbled to the stairs, fell, boosted himself up, and began to climb.

The tall man jerked his hand up and threw the dog off. The dog yelped, moved back, avoiding the tall man's knife thrust.

Buddy was halfway up the stairs. With each step, a bolt of agony fired through his leg.

The tall man stumbled toward the stairs. Once more, the dog attacked. The tall man sheltered his right hand so the dog could only bite at him below the shoulder.

The tall man reached the bottom step, started to climb. "Little bit more," Buddy begged, fighting the agony in his leg. "Little—"

The tall man's hand gripped his leg, crawled up it, found the open wound, dug into it.

Buddy's eyes went white with pain.

"Davey!"

The tall man raised his knife hand, hammered it down into Buddy's back.

"Davey . . ."

Buddy heard the dog fighting, ripping at the tall man.

"Too late, boy . . ."

Through the descending curtain, Buddy looked up. The top step was only inches from his face. He saw the dog vault overhead to the top of the stairs, felt the tall man scramble over him, screaming rage, stepping on Buddy's ruined back.

"Davey . . ." Buddy breathed.

Davey had waited forty minutes in the shadows when the dog appeared, running like a greyhound from Nick
Backman's
house. The dog jumped at him, grabbed his sleeve with its teeth, tried to push him off the sidewalk.

"Hey—"

The dog kept pulling at him, growling.

"All right, all right."

He backed across the darkened front lawn of the nearby Cape Cod, stopped in a deep pool of shadow near the side. There was a lawn chair there, a Halloween figure sitting in it, newspaper-stuffed clothes, plastic pumpkin for a head.

"Where's Buddy?" Davey said.

The dog eyed the street intently.

Suddenly, the dog tensed.

Davey caught sight of something: a tall, dark shape among the street shadows, moving silently by.

Davey's heart went numb as the tall man in suspenders, his white shirt drenched red in blood, entered the illuminated cone of the single streetlight.

As the tall man passed silently on, Davey bent, held the dog's head.

"Where's Buddy?"

The dog huffed hoarsely, tried to nose Davey back into darkness.

"I've got to see what happened to him."

The dog whined, then followed.

Davey moved across front lawns until he reached Nick
Backman's
house. He went quietly to the back. The sliding door was open. He pushed past the curtains, walked to the cellar door in the kitchen, looked down.

"Oh, shit," he said. He stared down at the reaching, silent body of Buddy
Scalizi
. Davey touched the black handle of the knife in Buddy's back, tried to pull it out.

The coppery smell of blood rose from the cellar like stomach-churning perfume.

The dog barked in protest as Davey descended the cellar steps. Davey's eyes, his nose, registered blood. There were bodies everywhere. The dog, at the bottom of the stairs, whined.

In a daze, Davey saw a paper bag, reached into it, lifted out a plastic Baggie filled with what looked like cocaine. "My God, boy—"

"Don't move," a voice said behind him. Davey heard sirens. He looked up to see Officer Johnston's .38 police special aimed at him. The officer advanced, lifted Davey's jacket, yanked Davey's .38 out of his belt.

"Run, boy!" Davey shouted, and the dog mounted the stairs and ran off.

"On the floor," Johnston's hard voice said. The cop pushed Davey flat on his stomach, yanked his hands around his back, cuffed him.

"Oh, good Christ," another cop said, moving down into the cellar. "There was a dog—"

"Fuck the dog," Johnston said. To Davey, he said, "Get up."

Davey began to cry. He felt a blow across his face. He looked up into the angry face of Officer Johnston and said, "I know who did this."

Johnston hit him again. "So do I, fucker."

Davey wanted to cry again, to be five years old with his tiny hand lost in his mother's. But that real world was truly gone now, and he knew, suddenly, that he had grown up.

"I know who did this," he repeated.

The cop kicked him. "Keep your mouth shut."

Later, after Officer Johnston had hit him again, when they were putting him in the patrol car, with the ring of sleepy, curious, bath robed neighbors staring in at him, Davey thought about the dog, and smiled.

There was blood on his shirt, but it didn't matter. It was Halloween, his day, and no one would notice.

There had been plenty of times, before the soaps and TV movies, when James Weston had done his own makeup. If it had been necessary, he would have brought enough of Weston up to do it.

But there was no need.

He brought Weston up to let him see the house, to let him know what was going to happen. To hear him scream.

Quiet
, he said, and James Weston stopped screaming, continued to see.

Watch
.

He knocked on the door.

A girl answered. Thin. Sad faced.

"I'm looking for your mother," he made Weston say pleasantly.

"I'm sorry, she's not here."

He smiled. "Don't you recognize me?"

The girl studied him. "I'm sorry. No."

He told her who he was.

She cried and held him and made him come in. She made tea. For an hour, he listened to her, let James Weston, anguished, helpless, listen to her talk about her mother, herself, her sad attempt to love a man she despised named Kevin Michaels.

She was very sad, and wan, and thin.

Then she told him where her mother was, and he killed her.

White walls.

Were these the walls of her office? No. White walls. Where . . . ?

Lydia? Was Lydia here, in those walls, perhaps, pressed into them like a dried flower? Pale, indistinct . . .

"Lydia! Tell your father dinner is ready!" she called.

But Lydia wasn't here. Lydia was home, in the empty house, and she was . . .

Yes. A memory. The ride in the ambulance. Dr. Carpenter's face, so long and earnest. She wished she had her legal pad, her pencil now, to describe his face. She imagined he had been thinking more about his dinner than her.

"Nurse!" she cried. But no one came. There had been a visit earlier in the day: a white uniform, the flat smell of stiff starch. A bland face looking into her eyes, rough hands under her body, tucking, pushing sheets, a flat hand on her back (the Time Machine? No), propping her up like a doll, knocking pillows into shape. The sound: whump
whump
, little puffs of air on the back of her neck. She felt light as a pillow feather, frightened.

Lydia?

"Lydia, tell your father . . . !"

The witch,
The Wizard of Oz
. Lydia hid her eyes when the monkey men stole Dorothy into the air. The boys liked it. Almost Easter, on television every year. It was on so many times, Lydia hid her eyes . . .

"Tell your father!" she shouted.

The walls.

Scrubbed white. The smell of disinfectant in the corners. They should have water-mopped it out. She hated white. The dirtiest color. The illusion of cleanliness.

The door opened, old oak painted white, three panels. A face looked in.

"Are you all right, Mrs.
Connel
?"

Witch's mask.

The Wizard of Oz?
No.

Starched white uniform. The nurse lifted the mask. Halloween. Blank face. "Did you call?"

"Lydia?" she said.

The nurse shook her head, retreated. The sound of a party, the nurses' station, someone laughing. Halloween.
Har
har
.
An unpleasant sound.

I observe, Mrs. Greene, I observe!

The funeral procession going by the house, her face at the window, pushing at the pane with the flats of her hands, feeling as if she must float through and over the heads of these living like an angel. . . .

Lay me down with lilies
, she wrote in her secret diary. The first doctor read it; he said he didn't but she saw him take it when she was supposed to be asleep. Pills. Her mother and Mr. Fields talking to the doctor. He took the diary out of his white coat pocket. Where is Father? Is Columbus, Ohio, far away? He won't come, her mother said, lips tight. Take your pill, to sleep. Mr. Fields pretended to study the walls.

Lay me down with lilies, the fields of night my blanket bright. . .

The black caissons, her hands on the flat, lucid panes, sadness only. Peace. If she told the doctor that she was changed, that it was only a poem about peace, would he believe her?

No.

What happened to me? Why do I know these things . . .

The cold up her arm .

Halloween.

That ugly laugh,
har
.

Jerry Martin.