The Litter of the Law (25 page)

Brows wrinkling for a moment, Tazio asked Neil, “No one using candles tonight, or torches?”

“No, too dangerous,” said Neil. “We have a fake torch at the end, when the monk”—he nodded to Reverend Jones—“calls the spirits to order and points the wagons toward the old Mount Carmel Church, where it all ends festively.”

“And safely,” the reverend reminded them.

“All right,” said Tazio. “After the goblins and ghosts, Frankenstein’s Monster should be back in the schoolhouse, ready for the next wagon. Okay. Now, the first wagon goes between the two big trees on either side of the dirt lane.”

“That’s my cue.” Cooper smiled in her Jeeper Creepers costume. “And given that I need to get hooked up to a darned cable, I’m leaving now.” What she didn’t say was that Dabny, who would fasten her to the guy wire between the trees, would be observing from an old farmside road along the edge of the cornfield, ready in case trouble occurred.

From her perch in either of the trees she would swing between, Cooper would have as good a view as possible, given it was five days after the dark of the moon. Both on-duty officers would have cellphones, but should a cellphone not properly work, Cooper and Dabny also carried a piercing whistle.

“Once people recover from the Jeepers Creepers scare,” said Tazio, “they round the bend and the Headless Horseman gallops toward them before going into the open-air shed, disappearing from the hay wagon’s sight. Is there any way to throw a pumpkin for a head from there?” Tazio asked her boyfriend.

“It would scare the driving horses,” said Paul. Despite his assigned
role, his head was always screwed on straight. “Basically, I’ll be running toward them, then veering off. We did set out a jack-o’-lantern on a fence post about a quarter of a mile down the road from me and Dinny.” He named his horse, a lovely old hunting fellow who had done it all, seen it all.

“Neil, you’re all in black near the shed,” said Tazio. “If the wagons need to move along, you call Lolly. Hopefully, no one will see you as our secret traffic manager.”

“Right.” Neil nodded to Tazio.

“The wagons pass the hayfield, large rolls stacked together. There will be a green-eyed goblin on top—again courtesy of our high-tech guys. Then, the evil Jason and his chainsaw, meaning you, Blair”—she tipped her paper toward Little Mim’s husband—“will jump out from behind the tall obelisk in the graveyard.”

“And I’ll turn on the ghost noises and wails from the graveyard before I jump out,” Blair added with enthusiasm.

“We’ve got lights on one bony arm coming up from a fake grave—we didn’t want to desecrate a real one,” said Tazio. “We were going to have a witch in the graveyard, but after Hester’s death that seemed insensitive.”

“Good thinking,” Neil complimented her. “Jason beheads the vampire, Count Dracula, who is the undead, so of course he just puts his head back on.”

“You’ve always had a good head on your shoulders.” Reverend Jones laughed at Barry Betz, the batting coach whom Cooper had started dating. Barry would portray Dracula this evening.

As Cooper had talked him into it, everyone assumed the relationship between them was heating up. They were right.

“Any questions?” asked Tazio.

“We aren’t allowed to drink inside the meeting room at Mount Carmel, right?” Wesley asked.

“Now, Wesley, when has anyone been allowed to drink inside a church building?” Reverend Jones winked at him.

“Right.” Wesley smiled.

“The second hay wagon, the one pulled by the team of Belgians, has a full bar under the driver’s seat, since we knew how parched some of you can get from your labors.” Tazio smiled broadly.

“Belgians …?” Neil looked for direction.

“The cream-colored draft horses,” Paul informed him.

“Ah.” Neil nodded. “I’m glad to know the Belgian is a horse of a different color.”

“We’ve got this covered,” said Tazio. “It’s going to be the most exciting Halloween Hayride this county has ever seen.” She laughed. “And I’m the Fallen Angel who appears as the hay wagon reaches Mount Carmel, holding up a crucifix to our vampire, head back on, who shrinks and screams in horror, vanquished at last. Hey, we’ve thought of everything.”

“What about the kids who wet their pants?” Wesley joked.

“That’s up to Mom and Dad. By now they should know to bring Handi Wipes and towels.”

W
aiting back in the last wagon, which was being pulled by the Haristeens’ truck, Pewter complained as she shifted to find a comfortable spot on the hay bale.
“By the time we get to the church, there won’t be any food left. We’re the caboose.”

“Sure there will be,”
said Tucker, an expert on dropped treats. She confidently predicted,
“Stuff falls on the floor.”

“Tucker, here’s a frightening Halloween idea: I’ll jump on the table and make everyone scream, ‘Get the cat off the table!’ Now, that’s really scary.”

Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“Pewter, you jump on that table and Mom will smack you. Then you’ll be the one screaming and that will scare the children.”

“I’m going inside the truck,”
said Pewter, who leapt from the wagon’s hay bale to the truck bed, also full of hay. She started smacking the sliding window.
“Release me from these trolls!”

Harry moved forward in the fluffed hay to also knock on the window. In the driver’s seat, Fair turned around and slid it open.

“Honey, Pewter’s being a pill. Will you take her with you?” Then she said to Susan’s husband, Ned, sitting in the passenger seat, “Ned, she’ll be on your lap.”

“Fine with me as long as she doesn’t drive.”

Harry grunted as she picked up the fat cat, passing her through the open back window.

Fair asked, “Do you have the .38?”

“I do.”

Ned looked at Fair with alarm. “What’s going on?”

Harry nonchalantly replied, “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

Susan, sitting next to Miss Mona in the wagon bed, patted the old lady’s hand. Miss Mona’s walker was strapped to the back tailgate. A stroke had affected her mobility, which sometimes embarrassed her, but the group of old friends pretended she was the Miss Mona they knew in childhood. She was, except that she couldn’t get around like she used to.

BoomBoom tended to Colonel Friend, also very old. Colonel Friend was a bemedaled World War II vet. Bunny Biedecke, another World War II vet, leaned against a small hay bale as he sat in the sweet-smelling fluffed hay. Dear old Bunny was already asleep. BoomBoom’s partner, Alicia, sat next to him. Bunny had to have been tired, because he was the kind of fellow who would normally revel in the experience of sitting next to a beautiful woman. Come to think of it, most of the men in Crozet fit into that category.

Tazio had interspersed the trucks with the horse-drawn wagons. If a horse threw a shoe, the people could get back to a truck wagon; these held fewer people but there was also room in the truck’s bed. Most people wanted to ride in the horse-drawn wagons, but some enjoyed the truck-drawn ride, mostly because all the kids were clustered together, noisy with excitement, in the horse-drawn wagons.

Aunt Tally hotly refused getting stuck with “old people,” as she called them. She sat in the first horse-drawn wagon up with the driver, regaling him, so she thought, with stories of her youth and her own “excellent” driving abilities. Big Mim grimly sat behind, fearing Aunt Tally had hidden a small flask in her heavy cardigan sweater.

As the mercury dropped, the screams rose up. Waiting to move forward, Harry and the passengers in the last wagon could hear them as they pierced the night in sequence. The temperature fell into the mid-forties. The beautiful stillness of this velvet black Halloween meant they could even hear the bellows of fright from the graveyard, a good mile and a half distant.

Checking his texts, Ned noted when the seventh wagon had been challenged by the Headless Horseman. “Okay, Fair, roll,” he ordered. “Lolly says we’re up. Neil said wagon number seven just passed him.”

Watch in hand, Lolly was standing just outside the first schoolhouse. She had wanted to do something to honor her boss’s memory, so she had volunteered for the job of starter in Hester’s pet project. Lolly was good with details. Dressed in a skeleton costume, the young woman checked and rechecked her watch and various texts. Naturally, some wagons clattered along more slowly than others, but in the main, the evening’s planned event was running quite smoothly. All seriousness, Lolly would call out each passing wagon’s number and say, “Move out.”

In the last wagon, driving at fifteen miles an hour, the cats, dogs, and humans passed the middle schoolhouse. Eerie lights showed a large beaker bubbling froth in green light. Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster lifted his bulky head. The doctor poised over him, gigantic hypodermic needle in hand.
Snap
, the bonds broke, falling away as the monster reached up with his right hand, grabbing Dr. Frankenstein by the throat. The furious struggle was enhanced by the green light. The contents of the giant needle shot upward in the air as the doctor helplessly sank to his knees. The monster
threw up his hands in triumph, not unlike a football player in the end zone. He whipped his head around as best he could, despite the spike in his neck, then crashed out the side door, roaring as he did, rushing at the wagon. Hearing the riders’ screams, he then turned to disappear into the cornfield. As the wagon moved forward, one could hear the cornstalks bending and rustling.

“Good scream,” Susan complimented Harry.

Pewter, on Fair’s lap, pupils wide, meowed,
“I don’t like the monster’s face.”

The back window, left open so Harry and Susan could holler at their husbands, allowed Mrs. Murphy and Tucker to hear Pewter. It sounded like a tiny meow to the two men in the cab.

“Scaredy-cat,”
the two animals teased.

“Piffle,”
the gray cat replied.
“I just don’t like Frankenstein’s face. I’m not scared.”

The truck crept forward and for a moment they heard the far-off clip-clop of the draft horses pulling the cart in front of them, so still was the night.

“Don’t you love the sound of hoofbeats?” Shawl wrapped around her shoulders, Miss Mona smiled.

“I do.” Harry held one hand while Susan held the other. “Miss Mona, your hand is cold. Let’s put on your gloves.”

As they did that, two glowing goblins and two ghosts fluttered above the cornfield, moving from side to side, then up, only to sink back down.

Ahead, they heard an explosive scream of fright.

“Must be really scary,” Miss Mona said to Colonel Friend.

“We’ll see.” His voice quavered, but as he’d fought his way through Europe, it’s doubtful too much could rattle the colonel.

As they were poised between the two trees, branches twisting into the night, out flew Jeepers Creepers. So sudden and silent
was this attacking nasty bird/human, wings outstretched, strange face looking down with a snarl, that even Harry drew deeper into the hay.

“Kill! That bird wants to kill us!”
Pewter screamed.

Even Tucker barked in surprise, then breathed out in relief.
“It’s Coop!”
The corgi had recognized Cooper’s scent.

Mrs. Murphy inhaled the crisp air.
“So it is. She scared me.”

High in the tree, Cooper folded her wings and gazed over the scene. She could see a little bit around the curve, back to the schoolhouses, which stood like clapboard rectangles in the darkness. Buddy was running through the cornfield, charged by Count Dracula. This seemed to be an impromptu scare as the last wagon rolled by. Now that Harry, Fair, and the others had passed, Cooper prepared to push off hard on the zipline and swoop in the opposite direction to get back into the tree and climb down.

As Fair slowly took his passengers around the big curve, out charged the Headless Horseman with a menacing howl, cape flying behind him, hoofbeats clattering.

Through the fake neck, Paul could see pretty well. His horse, Dinny, wondered why they just kept going into the shed again and again. His job was to chase hounds who were chasing foxes. This back-and-forth stuff was boring, but being a good soul, he did as he was asked, ears twitching as people screamed. What a racket!