Dark Harvest

PART ONE Stories

A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there.

It’s Halloween, 1963… and getting on toward dark. Things are the same as they’ve always been. There’s the main street, the old brick church in the town square, the movie theater — this year with a Vincent Price double-bill. And past all that is the road that leads out of town. It’s black as a licorice whip under an October sky, black as the night that’s coming and the long winter nights that will follow, black as the little town it leaves behind.

The road grows narrow as it hits the outskirts. It does not meander. Like a planned path of escape, it cleaves a sea of quarter sections planted thick with summer corn.

But it’s not summer anymore. Like I said, it’s Halloween.

All that corn has been picked, shucked, eaten.

All those stalks are dead, withered, dried.

In most places, those stalks would have been plowed under long ago. That’s not the way it works around here. You remember. Corn’s harvested by hand in these parts. Boys who live in this town spend their summers doing the job under a blazing sun that barely bothers to go down. And once those boys are tanned straight through and that crop’s picked, those cornstalks die rooted in the ground. They’re not plowed under until the first day of November. Until then the silent rows are home to things that don’t mind living among the dead. Rats, snakes, frogs… creatures that will take flight before the first light of the coming morning or die beneath a circular blade that scores both earth and flesh without discrimination.

Yeah. That’s the way it works around here. There are things living in these fields tonight that will, by rights, be dead by tomorrow morning. One of them hangs on a splintery pole, its roots burrowing deep in rich black soil. Green vines climb through tattered clothes nailed to the pole and its crosspiece. They twist through the legs of worn jeans like tendons, twine like a cripple’s spine through a tattered denim jacket. Rounded leaves take succor from those vines like organs fed by blood vessels, and from the hearts of those leaves green tendrils sprout, and the leaves and the vines and the tendrils fill up that coat and the arms that come with it.

A thicker vine creeps through the neck of that jacket, following the last few inches of splintery pole like a backbone, widening into a rough stem that roots in the thing balanced on the pole’s flat crown.

That thing is heavy, and orange, and ripe.

That thing is a pumpkin.

The afternoon sun lingers on the pumpkin’s face, and then the afternoon sun is gone. Quiet hangs in the cornfield. No breeze rustles the dead stalks; no wind rustles the tattered clothes of the thing hanging from the pole. The licorice-whip road is empty, silent, still. No cars coming into town, no cars leaving.

It’s that way for a long time. Then darkness falls.

A car comes. A door slams. Footsteps in the cornfield — the sound of a man shouldering through brittle stalks. The butcher knife that fills his hand gleams beneath the rising moon, and then the blade goes black as the man bends low.

Twisted vines and young creepers root at the base of the pole. The man’s sharp blade severs all. Next he goes to work with a claw hammer. Rusty nails grunt loose from old wood. A tattered leg slips free… then another… and then a tattered arm….

The thing they call the October Boy drops to the ground.

But you already know about him. After all, you grew up here. There aren’t any secrets left for you. You know the story as well as I do.

Pete McCormick knows the story, too… part of it, anyway. Pete just turned sixteen. He’s been in town his whole life, but he’s never managed to fit in. And the last year’s been especially tough. His mom died of cancer last winter, and his dad drank away his job at the grain elevator the following spring. There’s enough rotten luck in that little sentence to bust anyone’s chops.

So it’s not like the walls have never closed in on Pete around here, but just lately they’ve been jamming his shoulders like he’s caught in a drill press. He gets in trouble a couple times and gets picked up by the cops — good old Officer Ricks in his shiny black-and-white Dodge. First time around, it’s a lecture. Second time, it’s a nightstick to the kidneys. Pete comes home all bruised up and pisses blood for a couple of days. He waits for his old man to slam him back in line the way he would have before their whole world hit a wall, maybe take a hunk out of that bastard Ricks while he’s at it. But his father doesn’t even say a word, so Pete figures, Well, it looks like you’re finally on your own, Charlie Brown, and what are you going to do about that?

For Pete, it’s your basic wake-up call. Once and for all he decides he doesn’t much care for his Podunk hometown. Doesn’t like all that corn. Doesn’t like all that quiet. Sure as hell doesn’t like Officer Ricks.

And maybe he’s not so crazy about his father, either. Summer rolls around and the old man starts hitting the bottle pretty steady. Could be he’s noticed the changes in his son, because he starts telling stories — all of a sudden he’s really big with the stories. We’ll get back on our feet soon, Pete. They’ll call me back to work at the elevator, because that chucklehead Kirby will screw everything up. That gets to be one of Pete’s favorites. Right up there with: I’m going to quit the drinking, son. For you and your sister. I promise I’ll quit it soon.

It’s like the old man has a fish on the line, and he’s trying to reel it in with words. But Pete gets tired of listening. He’s smart enough to know that words don’t matter unless they’re walking the hard road that leads to the truth. And, sure, he can understand what’s going on. Sure, the nightstick that life put to his old man makes the solid hunk of oak Officer Ricks used to bust up Pete look like a toothpick. But understanding all that doesn’t make listening to his old man’s pipe dreams any easier.

And that’s what his father’s words turn out to be. The bossman down at the elevator never calls, and the old man’s drinking doesn’t stop, and things don’t get any better for them. Things just keep on getting worse. As the summer wanes, Pete often catches himself daydreaming about the licorice-whip road that leads out of town. He wonders what it would be like out there somewhere else… far away from here… on his own. And pretty soon that road finds its way into another story making the rounds, because — hey — it’s September now, and it’s about time folks started in on that one crazy yarn everyone around here spins at that time of year.

Pete catches bits of it around town. First from a couple of football players waiting to get their flattops squared at the barber shop, later from a bunch of guys standing in line at the movie theater one hot Saturday night. And pretty soon the story picks up steam at the high school, too. Again, Pete only hears snatches of it — in the bathroom out back of the auto shop where guys go to sneak cigarettes, in detention hall after school — and, sure, it’s pretty crazy stuff, but the craziest thing is that those snatches of conversation all fall within the same parameters, and that simple fact is enough to start Pete thinking this might be the rare kind of story that actually makes the trip from the campfire to the cold hard street.

“Got me a bat. Brand new Louisville Slugger.”

“That ain’t what you need. It’s too hard to swing a bat when you’re on the run, and you’re too slow as it is, anyway. Just look at that table muscle hanging over your belt. You couldn’t catch my great-great grandma rolling her ass uphill in a wheelchair with a couple of blown tires if your life depended on it.”

“I don’t have to catch your great-great grandma, stupid. I don’t have to catch anyone. All I have to do is plant myself in the right place. I’ll let my chuckleheaded cousins do the catching. They’ll flush that sucker like a prize buck, corral him in a blind alley. And that’s where I’ll be waiting, all ready to take my cuts.”

“Fat chance. You spend the night of the Run hanging out in some stupid alley, you might as well set up housekeeping there for a whole goddamn year.”

“Uh-uh. You boys’ll be the ones who end up hanging around this jerkwater town for another year, not me. I’ll have a walking nightmare’s carcass chained to my bumper, and I’ll be across the Line and gone for good by the time you take your first piss of the morning.”

Pete’s been thinking about that conversation for the last few days, putting it together with all the other stories he’s heard. Adding it up one way, then adding it up another just to see if he can make it come out any other way than the crazy spookshow equation it wears for a face.

And, hey, just lately Pete’s had plenty of time to think about all that stuff. Because it’s the tail end of October now, and his father’s had him locked in his bedroom for the last five days. Nothing to eat in there. Only water to drink, and — when the old man’s feeling generous — maybe a glass of OJ that’s a long way from fresh-squeezed. You want sufficient opportunity to become a believer, well, there you go. Try feeding a five-day hunger with some OJ that tastes like a cup of freezer burn, and nothing to wash it down but a bunch of words you can’t get out of your head.

But even with all that chewing around inside him, Pete can’t quite buy into the stories he’s been hearing. Oh, sure, he can believe the part about the kids and the crazy stuff they get up to with their baseball bats and pitchforks on Halloween night. After his run-in with Officer Ricks, he’s certain his hayseed hometown could breed a nasty little square dance like that. But the other part — the spookshow part — Pete’s not so sure he can make the whole trip there.

You can’t really blame him, can you? I mean, think about it. Remember when you were just a little kid, the first time you noticed your older brother locked up tight for five days and nights during the last week of October? Remember the first time you heard that the whole deal had something to do with a pumpkin-headed scarecrow that runs around on Halloween night? It wasn’t exactly easy to believe that one no matter how scared you were, was it?

Not until you experienced it yourself, of course.

Until you were the guy locked up in your bedroom.

Until you were the guy who saw what went down when you hit the streets on Halloween night.

But Pete hasn’t seen any of that. Not yet. Like I said, he just turned sixteen. Tonight is his first crack at the Run. So it’s not really surprising that his disbelief isn’t completely suspended. But he’s getting there. And the more Pete thinks about it, the less important the whole spookshow equation seems. The way Pete sees it, what he believes or disbelieves doesn’t really matter much when you look at the big picture.

Do that, and other stuff starts to matter.

Uh-huh. What matters is that his old man has kept him locked up for five days. What matters is that he hasn’t had anything to eat. What matters is that he’s dead cold certain it’s been just that way for every other guy in town between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. The high school is closed — has been for five days. The streets are empty. And guys all over town are pacing crackerbox bedrooms in the wee small hours, gearing up for Halloween night like bulls penned up in tight little chutes.

Pete sits on his bed and thinks about that. Right about now, it seems like a pretty full bucket of validation. So he lets his mind tote that sucker, and he gets comfortable with the load.

He thinks about baseball bats and pitchforks, and butcher knives, and two-by-fours studded with nails, and a couple hundred young guys hitting the streets as darkness falls.

He thinks about a scarecrow running around with a pumpkin for a head.

He thinks about what running down that scarecrow might mean for a guy like him.

Then, as the old Waltham clock on his nightstand ticks down the dying embers of Halloween evening, he stops thinking about all that stuff.

After that, he only thinks about a couple of things, the really important things.

He thinks about the door to his bedroom swinging open.

He thinks about what he’ll do when he steps outside.

If the October Boy had knees he’d be on them, kneeling as he is at the shrine of the autumn moon.

Or maybe it’s the shrine of the man with the knife. After all, that’s who’s looming over the October Boy like an onyx statue, his silhouette standing between the Boy and the large dome of a moon half-risen against the indigo sky.

For a moment, the Boy is lost in the man’s shadow. He tilts his blind, blank face upward. Then the man kneels, and moonlight washes both of them. The butcher knife catches the light like a mirror as he raises it. His other hand closes over the pumpkin stem, and he holds the Boy’s head steady, and he sets about his work.

Determined strokes of the blade give the Boy a face. First come the eyes, a pair of triangles sliced narrow. Then the nose, which, of course, is wider — a barbed arrowhead of a hole that will provide the illusion of flared nostrils when finished.

The blade works steadily as the nose takes shape. The pumpkin’s skin is thick, the meat beneath thicker. The carver flicks severed chunks to the dirt below. His wrist begins to ache, but his hand does not hesitate until an exhalation exits the October Boy’s spiked nostrils, warming the man’s cold fingers.

The butcher knife freezes in mid-air. The man’s own breath is quite suddenly trapped in his chest. He holds the stem tightly, and he stares at the half-face in front of him, knowing that he has made it what it is and that he will make it what it will be. As if reading his mind, the October Boy’s narrow eyes grow narrower still. He draws a shallow breath through his barbed nose, and a dull flickering light blooms behind those empty triangular sockets.

This unsettles the man, for there is no candle within the Boy’s hollow head. Still, the light is there, and so is the wet crackle of flame tasting fibrous yellow strands. These things the man recognizes clearly, though he cannot explain them.

So best not to think about it, the man tells himself.

No point in thinking, because there’s no explaining any of it.

Tonight, everything’s just the way it is.

Tonight, everything’s chiseled in stone.

Yes. The man with the knife could not possibly see this night any other way. For a long moment, he stares into the pair of flickering sockets where the Boy’s eyes should be. The man does not blink; the October Boy can’t. The Boy draws another tentative breath, and his exhalation carries the rich scents of scorched cinnamon and gunpowder and melting wax. Somehow, the mingled smells steady the man, and he raises the knife once more and sets about finishing the work he has begun.

Twin rows of jagged teeth appear below the arrowhead gap of the nose. Yellow light flickers across the man’s hand as the Boy inhales through his spiked mouth. His breaths are still shallow, still weak. But the light from his eyes paints harsh triangles on the man’s face as he carves, and the man works faster now, cutting twin ends into a wicked smile that cleaves cheekbones and just misses stabbing the October Boy’s eyes.

The man’s knife hand drops to his side; his other hand releases the stem attached to the pumpkin’s crown. The Boy’s head bobs low — by rights it should fall off his shoulders, for in truth he has no neck to support it. But this changes quickly as green creepers climb the twisted vine, which leads to the stem, twining as they go, growing thicker and darker as they angle toward the base of the pumpkin. They raise the Boy’s head on a strong, braided neck that drives barbed tendrils into the gourd itself.

That corded neck turns from green to brown as it roots in the heavy globe. Fresh growth scabs over with dark, rough bark. Vines and leaves rustle within the Boy’s coat as he takes his first deep breath. The Boy raises his head as the cool evening air fills him. He holds that breath for a long moment, and then it leaves him in a spiced exhalation.

A feeble tongue of flame follows it… and what most certainly is a word.

But the man with the knife will not acknowledge a word from the thing that stands before him. He has not come to listen to words. No. He has come to do a job that must be done, and that is what he will do. No more, no less. So he turns away with the knife still in his hands, and he walks to the road. The October Boy’s scrabbled footfalls follow the man’s even steps as he crosses the cornfield. But the man does not turn around, and it is only when he hears the rhythm of his own boot heels on hard pavement that his mind returns to the next task this night requires.

The man’s car is barely a year old. It’s black and sleek — not at all like the other cars you see around here. He sets the butcher knife on the hood and opens the door. There’s a grocery bag on the front seat, waiting there on expensive upholstery. The bag is heavy with candy. The man grabs a couple Big Hunks and stuffs them into one of the Boy’s coat pockets. He digs deep in the grocery bag and fills the other pocket with Clark bars. Next he unfastens the front button of the October Boy’s coat, and he shoves candy through those ropes of vines. Oh Henry!s; Hershey’s bars; Abba-Zaba’s.

Handfuls of Candy Corn nestle between leaves like secrets wedged into green envelopes. Red Vines and Bit-O-Honeys fill the gaps. The October Boy staggers a bit, for the man’s hand is as cold as the coming night, and the load is heavier than one might think.

And so he totters, but he will not fall. The Boy is not made that way. His severed-root feet scrape as he backpedals a few steps across the black road, and he leans against the car for support. The man closes on him and shoves one last fistful of candy against the gnarled vine of his backbone, and the Boy’s sawtoothed smile becomes a grimace. Perhaps another word waits within, in his mouth, ready to travel another tongue of flame. But before either thing can leave him, the man who has given him a face fills the Boy’s sliced grin with a handful of Atomic Fireballs, and then another, and another.

The light grows dimmer in the October Boy’s mouth.

The light grows brighter behind his eyes.

Soon the grocery bag is empty. The man balls it up and tosses it into the field. Now there is only one thing left to do. He retrieves the knife from the hood of the car. It only takes a second to do this, but in that second the man stares at the dead field and the indigo blanket of sky that has now grown very dark, and he sees the cold stars glimmering above him and the bright empty dome of the rising moon, and as he turns his gaze travels from the things that hang in the sky to the ribbon of asphalt that waits at his feet — the black road that carves a midnight path toward the cold white glow marking the town.

The man stares at the October Boy. He does not say a word. His actions speak for him. He extends the butcher knife. Thick tendril fingers vine around the hilt as the Boy takes it. And now the man’s hand is empty, and his white fingers stiffen as they stretch through the darkness, tracing the path of the road.

Every finger but one curls into a fist.

The man points toward the town.

The Boy with the knife starts toward it.

Pete hears them in the street. He turns out the bedroom light and parts the threadbare drapes so he can see what’s going on out there. Yeah. It’s just like everyone said. The town’s teenage male population is on the move. They’re running in packs, like dogs turned loose for the hunt.

The old oak in Pete’s front yard chokes off the moonlight, but he recognizes three guys from his gym class as they pass beneath the dull glow cast by the streetlight on the corner. They’re loping down the middle of the street, hooting at shadows as if calling down a dare. One of them has a baseball bat, another a ball-peen hammer, the last a two-by-four bristling with nails —

A car horn blares behind them as a rust-pocked heap runs a stop sign and makes the corner. The boys scatter, and the gap between two of them is just wide enough to accommodate a beat-up Chrysler hardtop with a pair of headlights that blaze like a Gorgon’s eyeballs. At least that’s the way those headlights seem to Pete, and he freezes behind his bedroom window as the twin beams hit the glass.

For a brief moment, the headlights frame him like a portrait nailed to a wall. The Chrysler completes its turn and roars up the street. Just that fast it’s gone, and Pete’s standing there all alone in the darkness. Outside, two of the guys from his gym class peel their skinny asses off the asphalt and dust themselves off while their buddy needles them from Pete’s front yard. “Crenshaw and his rattletrap,” the guy laughs. “Your sweet little asses nearly got chopped, girls. You almost greased that shitheap’s gearbox but good.”

The guy goes on like that for a while. He’s got a mouth on him, all right. His chatter seems pretty funny, considering, and Pete almost laughs until the other guys bark down the Mouth with a few choice insults of their own.

Those guys pick up the things they dropped when they scattered — that ball-peen hammer, and that two-by-four studded with nails. And then there’s nothing left to laugh about. Suddenly, it’s like that car was never there at all. The two kids take a few cuts at the shadows and move on, and their friend the Mouth silently cocks his baseball bat over his shoulder and follows them PDQ, as if the last thing he wants in the world is to be left alone.

Seeing the last kid do that, Pete feels a hole open up inside him. Not that he needed anyone to paint him a picture, but that little incident just did the job, because there’s no way he can ignore the score when it comes to this game. Pete’s alone right now, locked up in his room, and he’s going to be alone when he hits the streets. No friends, no car, no backup. And that’s not a feeling with a whole lot of good in it, even if you’re used to going solo. Fact is, Pete’s pretty sure that he’d be hiding under his bed right now if he had any sense at all.

But Pete knows he’d never turn chicken like that. Not as long as he has a reason to stand on his own two feet. He might not be able to put a name to that reason, but he knows he’s got it. It’s somewhere down deep inside him, in a quiet place his father could never understand… or maybe it’s somewhere just down the hall, behind another bedroom door marked with a little girl’s handprint in pink paint. And just as he’s thinking that, his bedroom door swings open. A hard slab of light fills the space, and a dull yellow carpet stitched by a single Westinghouse bulb stretches from the doorway to his bed.

His old man stands there in the hallway. Pete can’t see him clearly with the exposed bulb dangling behind his father’s head, but he can see enough. The old man’s hardly weaving at all, but Pete knows that he’s drunk. And when his father follows his shadow into the room, Pete notices that the old man’s got something in his hand.

Pete can’t see what it is yet. Neither can he see his father’s face. And then the old man turns on the bedroom light, and right off Pete sees everything real clearly. All the broken things that lie buried behind the old man’s eyes, and the honed thing gripped in his fist.

The old man hands the machete to his son.

“This saw me through the Run when I was your age. I figure it’ll do the same for you tonight.”

Pete runs his thumb over the oiled blade. Maybe he should keep his mouth shut. Maybe. But after five days locked up in this shoebox of a room, he just can’t do it.

“Looks like this thing could do some damage if a guy had the guts to put it to work.”

Pete speaks those words evenly. His tone is matter-of-fact. But those words are bait tossed in the water, and Pete knows it, and so does his old man.

“You have something to say to me, son?”

“I just did.”

“Listen, I know what you’re thinking — ”

“No you don’t, so don’t pretend that you do.”

“Pete, I know how you feel. But it’s one night, and you’ll get through it. And tomorrow I’ll get to work on things. I mean it. I’ll call Joe Grant down at the elevator, and maybe I can patch things up and get my job back — ”

“It’s too late for that, Dad. I’m tired of listening to you tell me how things are going to change when I know they won’t. You lost your chance to do that when you crawled inside a bottle.”

“Wait a second, boy. Hear me out — ”

“No. Our backs are to the wall. There’s only one way out, so I’m going to take it. I’m going out there tonight, and I’m going to change things. I’m gonna win the Run, and I’m not gonna do it with words.”

His old man grabs Pete then. It’s exactly the wrong thing to do. Pete pushes his father away, harder than he should, and he snatches his frayed denim jacket off the bed, and he heads for the doorway.

Outside, some guy screams in the street, but Pete doesn’t jump. Up the block, an axe handle rattles across a gap-toothed picket fence, but Pete doesn’t twitch. He starts down the hallway, leaving his bedroom behind without a backward glance.

The old man’s calling after him. Pete hears the words, but they don’t matter now that he’s said his piece. So he buries those words under his footsteps, and he leaves them behind. He only cares about what’s up ahead, ready to charge his ass like a rusty Chrysler with a pair of Gorgon headlights. And he walks down the shitty little hallway with its lone lightbulb and nicotine-stained paint, and he passes his kid sister’s bedroom, but not fast enough to escape the muffled sobs behind the eight-year-old’s painted handprint on the door. Kim shouts his name as another pack of guys scream by in the street, but Pete doesn’t slow a step.

He can’t afford to. That thing up ahead is suddenly real, and it’s pulling at him. The October Boy. It’s all he’s heard about for the last two months. The story’s been drilled into him and spackled over. He knows what it is, and what it means.

If Pete’s got the guts, he can grab it.

If he’s got the smarts, it’s all his.

So his lips stay buttoned as he opens the front door. His father’s footsteps are dogging him now, and his little sister’s still calling his name in a voice that’s burning a hole straight through his heart, but he’s through that door in a second, and he hits the street with his father’s machete clutched tightly in his hand.

He runs into the night. His Chuck Taylors don’t make a sound. But somehow, no matter how fast he humps it, that beat-up look in his father’s eyes keeps the pace. Pete can outrun his father’s words, but he can’t outrun that look. It’s welded to his spine like a shiny key stuck in the back of some cheap Japanese toy, and with every click-clack twist it winds his bones and muscles tighter, so when that key spins free he runs like the devil himself is cranking his gears.

And that’s the way it is for our buddy Pete, all the way from his front door to the alley behind a rundown bungalow that faces North Harvest Street.

Pete’s tennis shoes skid over gravel as he comes to a stop by the back fence. He cools his jets for a second, takes a quick look up the alley. There’s no one else around. So he tosses the machete over the fence, then jumps the sucker himself.

He comes down on a weed-choked lawn that died about two months ago. The backyard’s as empty as the alley. There’s not even a dog, but that’s no surprise. Because this house belongs to a cop named Jerry Ricks, and a brutal son of a bitch like Ricks sure wouldn’t figure he’d need a dog to scare anyone in this town.

But Pete isn’t scared. He’s sure Ricks won’t be anywhere close to home tonight — not with the Run kicking into gear. He also knows that the cop lives alone. So the house is dark. No lights on outside or in. Pete picks up the machete and crosses the lawn, dead grass crunching underfoot. There’s a hose by the back stairs, and he turns it on and has a quick drink. The water tastes like rubber, but at least it’s cold.

Pete sits down on the back steps and catches his breath. There’s an overhang covering a cracked cement patio, but it doesn’t look like the kind of place anyone would pick for a summertime cook-out or anything. Hanging from one thick beam in the center of the overhang is a heavy bag — the kind boxers use. For a second Pete remembers the job Ricks did on him with that nightstick. For another second he pictures the cop out here, working on that bag, pummeling hard-packed canvas with his fists the same way he jammed Pete’s kidneys with that nightstick, grinning like an ape while he works up a real good sweat.

That’s enough to get Pete moving again. He tries the back door, but even Jerry Ricks doesn’t trust his reputation that far — the door is locked. So Pete goes around to the side of the house, finds a window set low enough in the wall that he can work on without hunting for a ladder.

It’s a double-hung job — the easiest kind. Pete works the machete blade between the stool and the bottom rail, levering the steel sharply. This time luck’s on his side. The lower sash rises, which means the window wasn’t even locked.

Pete reaches inside and drops the machete to the floor. He slips over the sill and closes the window behind him. It’s dark inside the house, but he doesn’t turn on a light. Instead he waits for his eyes to adjust, and it doesn’t take long.

There’s the machete, lying on the floor. Pete snatches it up. If things go the way he’s planned, he won’t need it much longer. The way Pete’s got things figured, a twenty-year-old machete isn’t going to cut it when it comes to the job that needs doing tonight. It might have been good enough for his father all those years ago, but Pete’s all through fooling himself about what kind of guy his dad is. What did the machete get his old man, anyway? Twenty years stuck in this town. Twenty years spinning his wheels, so he could crawl inside a bottle when things got tough.

No way Pete’s going to end up like that. That’s why he’s here, taking a chance no other kid has even contemplated. Any other night, breaking into a house owned by the town’s leading hard-ass would earn you a one-way ticket to the graveyard. But not tonight. If Pete gets out of here without getting caught, and if things go the way he plans out there on the streets, well, no one will care how many laws he broke in this stinking little crackerbox as long as he ends up grabbing the brass ring before the bell in the old church steeple tolls midnight.

That’s a whole lot of ifs to swallow, but there’s no other way Pete can see this night going. Either he’ll end up a winner, or he’ll end up dead. As far as he’s concerned, it’s a one way or the other proposition. Forget settling. Forget compromise. Tonight he left all that behind in his father’s house, and —

Hell, Pete doesn’t have time to stand here jerking himself off with words. That’s his father’s game. First things first is the way he sees it. That means he’s going to worry about his belly instead of his brain, because he’s got a five-day hunger to kill if he wants to run full-out tonight.

He steps around the counter separating the dining room from the kitchen. Man, it’s rank in there. A garbage can’s jammed in the corner by the back door. A couple of empty TV-dinner trays that have done double-duty as ashtrays stick up over the rim, and shoved to one side is a nest of hamburger wrappers occupied by greasy fries that look like they’re ready to start crawling.

The sight doesn’t exactly whet the appetite, but Pete’s so hungry it doesn’t much matter. He sets the machete on the sidebar, opens the fridge, and takes a quick inventory. There’s a carton of eggs, a jar of pickles, and a couple of apples that are on the far side of withered.

“Oh, man,” he whispers, but he keeps looking. A couple of sixes of Burgie, bottles of mustard and mayo and ketchup, and — here comes the clincher — a quart bottle of orange juice.

That’s it.

“Just my goddamn luck,” Pete whispers, because OJ’s the only thing he’s had in the last five days. Still, he grabs the bottle and twists off the top, taking a long swallow as he steps over to the cupboards above the sink. Gotta be something better in there. Pete opens the door, but all he sees is a box of oatmeal, some pancake mix, and —

Behind him, the doorbell rings.

Pete freezes. Standing right there in Jerry Ricks’s kitchen, with a bottle of OJ in his hand. He glances over the counter. He’s got a straight view from the kitchen, through the dining room, to the attached living room. The drapes are wide open in there, and the front window is only a couple of feet from the door. All the doorbell ringer has to do is take a couple steps to the left and they’ll be sure to spot Pete standing in front of the moonlit kitchen window.

So Pete moves quickly, trading the OJ for the machete as he steps into the dining room. The hallway that leads to the other side of the house lies just beyond. At least he’ll be out of sight if he heads down there….

The doorbell rings a second time. A floorboard creaks underfoot. Pete pauses. There’s a little smoked-glass window set at head level in the front door — the kind of glass you can’t see through clearly, but Pete can see well enough to tell that there’s a shadow on it. By the height, his guess is that the shadow belongs to a man… maybe a friend of Ricks’s… maybe another cop —

And Pete knows what the guy’s thinking, because there are only so many things you can think when you’re standing on the other side of someone’s door. Either the guy will leave in another second or two, or maybe — just maybe — he might try the doorknob to see if the door is unlocked.

Just when Pete’s sure that’s going to happen, the shadow disappears from the dimpled glass. Footsteps click against the concrete steps leading down to the walk. In a second Pete’s over at the living room window, just in time to spot a dark figure walking around to the driver’s side of a sleek black Cadillac parked at the curb.

The man climbs inside and starts the engine. The car pulls away. Pete hurries down the hall. Forget food. Even if Jerry Ricks had something worth eating, Pete couldn’t put anything in his stomach right now. He needs to find the thing he came for and get the hell out of here.

The first room Pete enters stinks just as bad as the kitchen. It’s Ricks’s bedroom. Cigarette butts are heaped in an ashtray by the bed. Dirty clothes lie on the floor, along with a couple of unfurled bandages that look like they were shed by a mummy — boxer’s hand wraps.

No sheets or blankets, just a tangled sleeping bag and a pillow without a pillowcase on the mattress. There’s a dresser on one wall, a nightstand in the corner. A bunch of junk in the dresser, and the only thing in the nightstand is a big stack of Playboys. That’s not what Pete’s looking for, either, so he tries the closet. On one side, several police uniforms hang in dry-cleaner bags. On the other side, there’s a brand new vacuum cleaner, still in the box, with dust all over the top of it.

Jesus. Pete turns his back on Ricks’s disaster area of a bedroom. There’s another room at the end of the hall. That’s gotta be the place he’s looking for. He starts toward it, and he notices for the first time that the hallway walls are empty… so were the bedroom walls… so were the walls in the living room.

Every wall in this house is empty. There aren’t any pictures here at all.

But Pete doesn’t have time to wonder about that. He’s thinking about the room at the end of the hall instead. The door is closed… locked. Now he’s really rattled. Because he’s thinking about that guy in the black Cadillac, wondering if he might come back. And he’s wondering if maybe the guy was supposed to meet Ricks here, thinking that maybe Ricks might be a little late, maybe the lawman himself might be coming back any minute now —

Pete hauls back and kicks the door just below the knob. The molding splinters and the door flies open, banging against the wall with a thunderclap Pete’s certain they’ll hear at the police station a mile away.

No pictures in this room, either. Just a desk that looks like somebody’s castoff… a chair with torn upholstery that looks the same… another heaped ashtray… and over there, in the corner, the thing that Pete came looking for.

A locked cabinet.

Yeah. The cabinet’s the one piece of furniture in Jerry Ricks’s house that looks like it cost some money. It’s blond pine, polished to a heavy sheen, with a couple of grizzly bears painted on the locked doors. Those bears are reared up on their hind legs, teeth bared, claws slashing through forest green.

The grizzlies stop Pete cold, just for a second. He’s not sure exactly why. Because now he’s absolutely sure that the thing he needs is penned up in that cabinet, the same way he’d been penned up in his goddamn bedroom for five days and nights.

That thing is quiet.

It doesn’t say a word.

But it can talk, all right.

It can talk in a way nothing alive can ignore.

Pete clenches his teeth and works fast. The machete flashes out, scoring polished wood. Pine slivers fly through the air like needles. A door panel shatters, and Pete tears it loose. A couple seconds later, the lock and its hasp clatter to the hardwood floor, and he’s inside the cabinet.

A couple minutes after that, Pete backtracks through the kitchen, through the back door, across that dead lawn….

His father’s machete is buried in one of Jerry Ricks’s empty walls.

A stolen.45 semiautomatic is gripped in Pete McCormick’s hand.

Pete hops the back fence. His Chucks crunch over gravel as he runs up the alley. That gun feels solid in his hand, but it’s not the.45 that’s driving him. Pete’s doing that job all by himself now. The way he sees it, tonight’s his only chance at a fresh start, and he’s going to grab it.

You want to put a tiger in your tank, that’ll do the job. Our buddy Pete’s all gassed up and ready to go. You remember how that feels. It’s been a long time for you, but you can’t forget, not once you’ve made the Run on Halloween night. So you’ve got a pretty solid idea of the tracks Pete’s laying down as we follow him up a dark street that heads out of Jerry Ricks’s neighborhood. That boy’s motoring, all right, but he can’t keep our pace.

Not now, not where we’re going. Which is straight out of town, like a witch riding a broomstick. We leave our buddy Pete in the dust, whipsawing through the poor side of town and across the tracks, flying so low that the painted line on that black asphalt smears into a yellow streak that marks the whole town for a coward. We pass that movie theater with the Vincent Price double-bill. We blow by that old brick church in the town square. Like a wild stitch of midnight we weave through a crowd of teens prowling Main Street, and they look straight at us but don’t see more than a ripple of shadow and the swirling twist of a dust devil it leaves behind.

Autumn leaves and candy wrappers and wax-paper Bazooka Joe comics churn in the night. And now the town is behind us, and we’re racing down the licorice-whip road. By the time that dust devil stops swirling on Main Street, we’re a mile away.

Rows of dead cornstalks on each side of the road blur by like a crop of bones. There’s something up ahead in the middle of the road, something that’s pulling away even as we gear up the night’s own tach and close on it.

A pair of coal-red brake lights glow in the rusty ass-end of that thing.

A pair of dead-white headlights glare up front, raking the blacktop like a Gorgon’s stare.

Yeah. Mitch Crenshaw’s rattletrap streetrod is dead ahead, chewing a hole through the night. But that doesn’t cut any slack with us. Pedal hits metal that isn’t even there. In a flicker of moonlight, we’re even with the Chrysler’s rear bumper. Another second and we’re eyeballing the driver’s side window.

The window’s down. Inside, Crenshaw’s got a fistful of steering wheel and a brain crawling with pissed-off spiders. He sucks the last drag from a cigarette and flicks it into the night….

The cig sails through the window and kicks up a hail of sparks as if hitting something solid out there in the darkness, but Mitch Crenshaw doesn’t pay any attention to that. He knows there’s nothing outside his window but the night, and a shitload of dead cornstalks, and a pumpkin-headed monster he’s ready to carve up for Halloween pie.

So Mitch does what he does best — he hits the gas and drives straight ahead. He flicks the headlights to high beam, and they cut the belly right out of the sky, and he races along the gash feeling like a guy who’s just about to butt heads with his very own destiny.

Which is exactly what he’s gonna do. And, in this case, Mitch knows that destiny doesn’t stand a chance. The way Mitch figures it, he’s the only guy in town who’s smarter than the average bear. Being behind the wheel of the only car on this road proves that. This year, Mitch has it all figured out and —

“Slow down, Mitch,” Bud Harris says. “You ain’t gonna have a chance to kill the Boy if you kill us first.”

“Yeah.” It’s Charlie Gunther now, chiming in from the backseat like a goddamn alarm clock. “Ease off, buddy. You keep the hammer slammed and we’re liable to miss the whole damn field, let alone Ol’ Hacksaw Face — ”

“We ain’t gonna miss nothing,” Mitch says sharply, and his booted foot stays right there on the gas. Because he knows he’s right, and he’s not afraid to say it. Not tonight. Not when he’s been locked up in his room for five days without a thing to eat. Not when hunger’s burning a hole in his belly and his brain is clicking away overtime.

No. There’s no room for argument on Mitch’s agenda. Tonight the Run belongs to him. It’s his game. His second crack at the October Boy, and this time he’s going to get it right. Mitch doesn’t really count last year, anyway. Last Halloween, he was just two days past his sixteenth birthday. He didn’t even have a driver’s license. But this year, things are different. This year he’s seventeen, and he’s got the Chrysler and a switchblade knife and some other dangerous implements in the trunk that’ll spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E for anyone who gets in his way. But best of all, he’s got the whole deal figured out good.

“Hey, I ain’t kidding,” Charlie says from the backseat. “I think we missed the field. We better turn around, or someone’s going to beat us to the Boy — ”

“Didn’t you hear me the first time?” Mitch snaps. “We didn’t miss the goddamn field. And no one’s going to beat us to nothing. I mean, have you ever even heard of anyone doing what we’re doing tonight? You ever hear of anyone jumping the Line?”

“No, Mitch… but — ”

“No buts, stupid. I’ve got it all figured out. Those other dipsticks always treat the Run like it’s a game of hide ’n’ seek. They hang around town, waiting for the Boy to come after his ollie ollie oxen free. They don’t bust the city limits. But that ain’t the way we’re gonna play it tonight. We’re gonna take the Run straight to our buddy Sawtooth Jack, and I’m gonna splatter his ass before he even gets a chance to step across the Line.”

“But what if it don’t work? What if the Boy gets past us somehow?”

“You know, Charlie, there are two little words that can get your ass kicked out of this car. One of them is what, and the other is if.”

Mitch shoots a glance at the rearview, eyeballing the dope in the backseat. Charlie’s sitting there with a Mighty Thor comic book rolled up in his hands, and he looks like he just got whacked over the head with the big guy’s hammer. And that’s the way Charlie should look as far as Mitch is concerned. The way Mitch sees it, tonight you can screw what if… and second guesses, too. There’s no room on Mitch’s plate for any of that. He’s up for a one-course meal, and that means winning the Run. Then everything will be different for him. Sure, the town will get what it wants — what it needs to get through another year of raising prize crops from the same old dirt, what it needs to turn those crops into cold hard cash — the whole deal delivered with a king-size platter of blessings from above or below, depending on who the hell you listen to.

Mitch sees it this way: You can screw the blessings, wherever they come from. He doesn’t have a clue how anyone could settle for a life in this nothing little place, and he won’t need one after tonight. Not after he bashes that living Jack o’ Lantern’s head into the pavement and carves those candy bars out of its woven-vine chest. That happens, the whole damn town can bury their favorite spook story in the bottom drawer and forget about it for another year, the way they always do. Until the calendar flips a bunch of pages and another crop gets picked and shucked. Until another pumpkin starts growing in that same dead field. Until someone drives out there one night, hammers together a cross, and nails up an empty suit of clothes for a fresh tangle of growing vines to fill.

But Mitch Crenshaw will be long gone by the time that happens. Once he nails Ol’ Hacksaw Face, things will be different for him. Once he eats himself some of the candy that serves up a heartbeat, there won’t be anyone to stand in his way.

Yeah. Bring down Sawtooth Jack, and he’ll be the winner. And that’ll mean a whole hell of a lot… both for him and his family. The family will get treated differently around town. They’ll get a new house, a new car. They won’t see a bill for a year — not at the grocery store, no mortgage payments, nothing. That’ll make Mitch’s old man particularly happy. But Mitch doesn’t care about his hard-ass father, or his shrew of a mother, or his little snot sisters.

No. Mitch pretty much just cares about himself, and what winning the Run will get him. Do that and he’ll grab a pocketful of green, just like Jim Shepard did last year. Even better, he’ll be on this road again, headed out of town like a bullet, and for the very last time. Guys like Charlie and Bud, they couldn’t even handle that. Wouldn’t want to win. Wouldn’t want to see their hometown in the rearview. Wouldn’t know what to do if they could. Hell, they’d probably break down in tears, run screaming for mommy and daddy if someone kicked there asses across the Line for good.

That’s why those guys aren’t built to win the Run. But Mitch is. Winning the Run is the only way to get out of this squirrel cage of a town, and Mitch wants it so bad he can taste it. Hunger burns in his belly and burns in his brain. He wants that money in his pocket, wants everything that comes with it. Wants the town in his rearview. Wants to see what’s down that black road, and across those dead fields, and out there in the world.

So that’s Mitch’s game. You remember how it feels, don’t you? All that desire scorching you straight through. Feeling like you’re penned up in a small-town cage, jailed by cornstalk bars. Knowing, just knowing, that you’ll be stuck in that quiet little town forever if you don’t take a chance.

So you know what it’s like to want to fly down that road and see what lies beyond it… to want that so bad, you’ll do just about anything to make it happen. Sure. You remember Mitch Crenshaw’s game, the same way you remember that it isn’t the only one running tonight. Glance over at the side of that black road and you’ll see undeniable evidence of that. Might not be any little guy standing there in a black suit to set up the story for you, the way there is every Friday night on TV. But like that little guy says damn near every week, there’s a signpost up ahead, even if it ain’t a hunk of metal you can touch. It’s written on the darkness, and it tells us that we’ve got a few hard miles of prime-time Twilight Zone action ahead on this road tonight.

Picture if you will: The flipside of a game played by a pack of teenage hoodlums in a rusty Chrysler. It’s a solo B-side for a thing born in a cornfield, a requiem for the shambling progeny of the black and bloody earth. Because the October Boy has his own game. It’s played with pitchforks and switchblades and fear, and its first scrimmage is set to begin on a quiet strip of two-lane that marks the midnight trail to town. For this creature with the fright-mask face is both trick and treat. He comes with pockets filled with candy, and he carries a knife that carves holes in the shadows, and his race will take him from a lonely country road to an old brick church that waits dead center in the middle of a town square… in The Twilight Zone.

Uh-huh. That about covers it, if you want the teaser. Hang around for thirty minutes and we’ll give you the payoff. And the show can kick into gear right about here:

The October Boy spots the Chrysler’s Gorgon headlights about a mile off, but he doesn’t freeze. He makes for the side of the road and ducks into a clutch of cornstalks that close around him like a skeletal fist. He stands there with the butcher knife vined in his gnarled grasp, waiting as those lights grow larger… thinking… planning… and his thoughts aren’t so different from those of the boy behind the Chrysler’s wheel, because the October Boy has his own game to play, and its played with a deck that’s stacked against him.

Yeah. If there’s one thing the October Boy knows, it’s that. But he doesn’t have another way to go tonight. He’s already crossed the starting line, and there’s nowhere to head but the finish, though he can’t imagine how he’ll get there. It seems impossible. How he’ll make it from this spot into town, and how he’ll run the teenage gauntlet that’s itching to chop him down like a two-legged weed, and how he’ll reach that finish-line church in the town square before the steeple bell tolls midnight… well, it’s gotta be the longest of all long shots.

It never happens that way.

Everyone in town says it can’t happen that way.

But the October Boy has to make it happen that way.

If he wants to win.

So the Boy thinks about how he’ll play it. Not long-range, but step by step. He hears the Chrysler’s engine now, hears too the cool October breeze rushing in the car’s wake as the Chrysler speeds through dead corn a quarter mile away.

He sucks a breath through his arrowhead nose and steadies himself. The car’s coming fast. Forget miles… we’re talking yards, now… and the October Boy’s already moving. He slips free of that cornstalk fist, clutching the knife in his hand… racing through the ditch and up the incline… severed-root feet scrabbling over blacktop as he hits the road and crosses the white line.

The Boy’s head swivels as the Chrysler closes on him. He strains for a glimpse of the driver’s face through the windshield, but the window’s as black as the night. The Boy can’t see anyone behind it.

His carved eyes flicker in the darkness.

The dead-white headlights don’t flicker at all.

Mitch jerks the steering wheel hard to port, just missing a king-sized puppet scrambling across the road. Even as the Chrysler slips into a skid he’s cursing his capacity for instinctive response, because he realizes a second too late that puppet had a big orange head and hitting it head-on would have hammered flat every challenge this night holds as surely as a Sonny Liston right cross.

He doesn’t have one idea about the right thing to do. That bottomless hunger churning inside him has jacked his response time around but good. So he hits the brakes, because he hates indecisiveness. The wheels lock up, and the car keeps spinning, but it doesn’t go far. When it comes to a stop the rear wheels are on the edge of the road, just short of the ditch. The headlights are still trained on blacktop, only now they’re aimed in the direction of the town.

As far as Mitch can see, there’s not a damn thing between the Chrysler’s front bumper and Main Street.

The headlights reveal nothing but road.

There’s no walking nightmare in sight.

“Where’d he go?” Charlie asks.

“Has to be in one of those cornfields,” Bud says.

“Or maybe we hit him,” Charlie says. “Could be the whole thing’s over. Could be all we have to do is find out where he dropped and shovel him into a bag.”

“No,” Mitch says. “I didn’t hit shit. Nothing’s over.”

Mitch is out of the car before the words are out of his mouth. He slams the driver’s side door. A second later, he’s keyed the trunk and popped it. Bud and Charlie are standing at his side now, but he doesn’t even shoot a glance their way. They know what they’re supposed to do.

Mitch hands Charlie a big flashlight.

Bud gets a rusty pitchfork.

Mitch takes another.

Twin headlight beams stretch through the night like spun glass, but the car’s not moving. Not now. From his hiding place in the dead corn, the October Boy sees three guys coming his way. One of them carries a pitchfork down the middle of the road; in the headlight glow he looks like a man walking the length of a freshly blown bottle. Behind him, a dimmer light bobs through the darkness at the road’s shoulder. Two silhouettes trail along behind that solitary beam, so close that they melt into a shadowy pair of Siamese twins — a pitchfork in its left hand, a flashlight in the right.

The October Boy clutches his knife, waiting, listening.

“The Chrysler’s skid marks start here,” says the guy standing in the road. “See if there are any footprints down in that ditch.”

Boots kick through a tangle of weeds. The Siamese twins work their way down the berm, heading toward the October Boy. “Shit, this is slippery.” A splash through a puddle, and more cussing. And finally an old beer can crumples underfoot as the flashlight beam slides over the ground, marking a trail that leads from the side of the road to a break in the cornstalks.

“These don’t look like any footprints I’ve ever seen,” one of the twins says, “but something sure as hell ran through here.”

The guy walking the road doesn’t say a word. He’s standing in the darkness now. The Chrysler is a good distance behind him, and so are its headlights. That pleases the October Boy, because it means it’ll be tough going if these guys make a run for the car… especially if they have something chasing their tails that means business.

The kid in the road kneels.

“Hey,” he says. “Shine that light over here.”

The flashlight beam skitters across the blacktop and finds something waiting there.

The October Boy’s carved teeth chew over a grin.

The boys have found the bait.

Mitch drops his pitchfork, snatches up an Oh Henry! and rips into it. A couple quick bites and he’s got the whole damn candy bar in his mouth. He chews desperately, salivating like a son of a bitch, his jaws snapping together as if he’s trying to murder that hunk of chocolate before it starts crawling around in his mouth.

One hard gulp and a sticky lump of sugar makes a beeline for his belly. That sugar hits his stomach like a lightning bolt tossed by Mighty Thor himself. Man oh man. Five days with nothing to eat. Mitch doesn’t know how he managed to live through that, but he’s intent on making up for lost time now.

He isn’t the only one. Bud’s pitchfork is planted in soft ditch dirt. He’s on his knees in the mud, polishing off a couple of Clark bars he found down there. And Charlie’s ahead of both his pals. He’s filling his pockets at the same time he’s gobbling an Abba-Zaba. He’s working the flashlight with one hand, following the beam into that break he spotted in the cornstalks, picking up candy as he goes along.

Mitch wants to warn the doofus, but he’s got another Oh Henry! in his mouth and can’t say a word. He’s got to say something, though. After all, Mitch has a plan, and he needs Charlie. Charlie’s the guy with the flashlight. It’s his job to spotlight the October Boy while Mitch and Bud pin him to the ground with those pitchforks. That’s when they’re supposed to get the candy — when the Boy’s helpless, when Mitch can go to work on him with the switchblade and take the time to do the job right. Carving his orange skull until the light spills right out of it. Slicing through ropes of green innards until all that gutted candy falls to the ground, and they can chow down without watching their backsides.

Yeah. That’s the way it’s supposed to happen: kill first, eat later. But it’s no surprise that Mitch really can’t help himself any more than the others. He’s so damn hungry, and the candy tastes so damn good. Still, he knows he has to get a grip on things. He swallows hard, says, “Hey, that’s enough, guys. We gotta be careful — ”

“Yeah,” Bud says. “You’re right, Mitch.”

Charlie doesn’t say anything.

Charlie has already disappeared into the corn.

Charlie hears Mitch yelling, but that doesn’t slow him down. He’s ten feet into the field. There’s a narrow trail pushing through the dead stalks, and up ahead he spots a heavy sprinkling of Atomic Fireballs and Candy Corn. Hell, it isn’t exactly a trail of blood, but in this case Charlie’s pretty sure that it means the same thing.

The flashlight beam plays over the narrow path. Charlie follows along behind it, picking up those Atomic Fireballs as he goes. He’s starting to wish he’d brought a sack with him. And he’s starting to figure that Mitch has gotta be wrong about missing the October Boy with the Chrysler. Gotta be. Because Ol’ Hacksaw Face is losing candy like a busted piñata, which is about what you’d expect if a walking tangle of vines went head to head with a hunk of Detroit steel going eighty miles per.

The more candy Charlie finds, the more he’s convinced of that. Any second now, he expects the flashlight beam to reveal what’s left of Sawtooth Jack there on the ground, dim light flickering in his busted-up noggin, a thick patch of mushed Bit-O-Honeys and Red Vines staining his shirt.

But that’s not what Charlie sees up ahead. Not at all. In fact, it’s not what he sees that’s important. It’s the smell that hangs in the air that counts. And it’s not chocolate, or caramel, or marshmallow filling, but an odd mix of scorched cinnamon, gunpowder, and melting wax.

There’s a soft rustle behind Charlie. As he turns, he’s certain he’s going to see Mitch or Bud catching up to him, but you’ve already figured out that isn’t what’s creeping up on him out there in that cornfield.

Hey, that’s no surprise, because you’re a whole lot smarter than our buddy Charlie, aren’t you?

Tell the truth now — who the hell isn’t?

The kid with the flashlight is wearing a leather jacket and motorcycle boots, but the October Boy can tell right off that he’s not tough at all. The little punk nearly screams bloody murder as the Boy lays the well-honed edge of the butcher knife against his jugular.

But the kid doesn’t scream. He knows better. He barely whimpers. The October Boy’s razored grin glows fiercely, a tiger-stripe of yellow light spilling across his wicked maw. The man with the knife had tried to muzzle him, but the October Boy isn’t muzzled anymore. The Atomic Fireballs the man stuffed into his hollow head are gone now. The Boy spit every one of them onto the trail. He can speak again, and the words that cross his carved teeth are so simple and direct that even an idiot like Charlie Gunther can understand them.

“Give me the flashlight,” the October Boy says.

His voice is sandpaper and battery acid. Charlie does what he’s told, and right away. Back there on the road, Mitch is calling his name, but Charlie doesn’t dare answer him. Even so, the October Boy’s knife stays right there against his throat. Charlie feels his blood pounding against it, and the thing standing in front of him keeps right on smiling as Mitch yells louder and louder and louder.

“Don’t listen to him,” the October Boy says. “Listen to me.”

Charlie starts to nod, but he’s afraid he’ll cut off his own head if he does. And his fears aren’t misplaced — that knife blade presses harder, imprinting a deeper furrow in Charlie’s flesh. And the knife’s not even the worst of it. As far as Charlie’s concerned, that prize goes to the monster’s voice, which works over Charlie like some radioactive sandstorm in a sci-fi movie.

“You’re going to do exactly what I tell you.”

“Uh-huh,” Charlie says. “I’ll do anything.”

The October Boy steps back, taking the knife with him.

He shines Charlie’s flashlight at the road.

The instructions he gives aren’t complicated.

He says, “Run.”

“Maybe we should get the car,” Bud says. “We can drive it down here, aim the headlights where we want to. That way we can see what the hell we’re doing until Charlie drags his ass out of that field.”

Mitch shakes his head. No way. He’s not walking all the way back to the car, not with Charlie vanishing like the goddamn Invisible Man. That would put him a couple hundred yards up the road, and Bud right here, and Charlie god knows where. Splitting up like that wouldn’t be smart.

So he yells Charlie’s name. Loud. For the fifth goddamn time.

For the fifth goddamn time, he doesn’t get an answer.

“That dipstick.” Mitch sighs. “I should have left him back in town — ”

And just that fast there’s a sharp snap crackle pop of activity up ahead of them. It sounds like an avalanche of busting bones out there in the cornfield. Something bursts through the cornstalk wall on the other side of the drainage ditch. It crosses that dark furrow and is up on the road before Mitch can even close his yap, and it hits the blacktop running just as the cornstalks crackle again and a second figure emerges from the field like a misplaced shadow holding a flashlight —

And the running thing’s closing on Mitch. The first thing out of the chute. The thing without a flashlight. Mitch grabs his pitchfork. From the side of the road, the pursuer’s flashlight beam skitters through the darkness and plays into Mitch’s eyes, and then it’s erased by that front-running pocket of midnight heading straight for him, and he cocks the fork over his shoulder like a javelin, and he lets that sucker fly —

“Mitch, don’t!”

— and the running thing catches all four teeth square in the chest —

“Mitch! Jesus Christ!”

— and that’s Bud’s voice, coming from behind. But Bud can’t see what the hell’s going on from his position. Mitch is sure of that, the same way he’s sure that he hit what he aimed at, because the thing is staggering across the road now, nearly dead on its feet. And so he can’t figure out why Bud is pushing past him, ready with his own pitchfork, which he sends whistling through the night with a short, sharp grunt of effort.

It sails over the head of the thing Mitch speared, straight at the figure holding the flashlight.

Mitch shouts a warning: “Charlie! Get out of the way!”

The holder of the flashlight steps to the side, dodging the tossed fork, and Bud’s weapon clatters over the blacktop.

The figure turns off the flashlight just that fast.

Its triangle eyes glow in the darkness.

So does its sawtoothed grin.

Oh, shit, Mitch thinks. Oh, shit.

He looks down, at the thing lying in the road between himself and the October Boy.

There’s Charlie, crumpled on the ground with four steel spikes buried deep in his chest.

For a second, it’s quiet.

The stars shine down. The wind doesn’t even whisper.

Then the October Boy bends low and picks up Bud’s pitchfork. Mitch yanks his switchblade, thumbs the release, and starts to backpedal as the blade snicks alive in the night. He knows he can’t panic. Maybe he doesn’t need to panic. He’s still got the knife, and Bud’s got one, too. That means the odds are still two to one and —

Behind him, there’s another chorus of snap crackle pop. Mitch whirls. Bud’s nowhere in sight, but you can still hear him, plowing a path through the cornfield, running away —

The son of a bitch! He ditched me!

But Mitch doesn’t have time to worry about Bud. The October Boy is advancing. Mitch is on the retreat. You can’t really blame him. He doesn’t think much of putting down money on a one-on-one switchblade/pitchfork rumble with a monster. Not when he’s still got a set of car keys in his pocket. And not when he’s got twenty feet of blacktop on the October Boy.

Yeah. He can make it to the Chrysler before Sawtooth Jack catches up to him. Sure he can. He moves fast, careful to keep those twenty paces between them, because the Boy has that pitchfork. Mitch wants to have plenty of time to get out of the way if the Boy throws it. But now Mitch has retreated far enough so that he’s in the glow of the Chrysler’s headlights… and that means he’s one hell of a target. And he can’t keep backpedaling, either, because suddenly the October Boy’s starting to close the gap.

The hell with this, Mitch figures. I’ll take my chances. I’ll get myself pointed in the right direction and launch my ass like a Mercury rocket.

And he does just that. He turns, and his legs start pumping, and he runs for the light. And he’s smart. He doesn’t look back. He’s not going to take that chance, because he doesn’t want to see that goddamn monster closing on him with a nightmare stride that’s Wilt Chamberlain times two… doesn’t want to see the grim light spilling out of its hacked-up head like some crazy-quilt headlight as it freight-trains his ass… doesn’t want to do anything but pick ’em up and put ’em down ’til he’s safe and secure behind the wheel of the Chrysler, knifing the key into that thick neck of a steering column, twisting it sharply as his foot pile-drives the gas and he peels out, leaving five bucks worth of rubber there on the road… slamming that running nightmare head-on… threshing its scarecrow ass like a big old combine… grinding it under his Firestones until nothing’s left but a smear of pumpkin and chocolate on the two-lane blacktop.

Uh-huh. That’s what Mitch Crenshaw wants. He’s halfway to the car now, holding on to his resolve like a relay runner’s baton. He’s not going to look over his shoulder no matter what. But as it turns out, he doesn’t have to, because he’s got a handful of senses besides the one attached to his eyeballs, and they tell him exactly what’s going on behind him.

First Mitch’s ears do the work: He hears the crazy whiskbroom sound of the October Boy’s feet brushing the road… and then that even rhythm hits another tempo and changes up.

A couple of quick severed steps….

A staccato rasp of physical effort….

And then Mitch’s body takes over and does the sensory work. A hot spike of pain spears the back of his right ankle, ripping a path that notches bone, breaking skin as it exits his ankle and drives down through his boot and the foot inside it. The damage is done by one of four rusty spikes attached to a pitchfork, and for an encore it punctures the sole of Mitch’s boot and strikes blacktop so hard that the metal shaft rings inside his skin, and he topples in a scream of pain.

The switchblade flies out of his hand. The road comes up and whacks him like a black tsunami. Mitch’s scream evaporates as the wind is knocked out of him, and he sucks a deep breath, and another scream is right there filling up his mouth, because the pitchfork’s heavy handle is levering as gravity drives it earthward, and that metal spike is twisting simultaneously in Mitch’s ankle and his foot.

The wooden handle slaps the roadbed, sending another sharp vibration through the pitchfork. Mitch nearly blacks out. He bites his lip and rolls onto his side. It’s a hell of a mess. A rusty spike has torn a couple holes in him, and just for gravy one of the spike’s neighbors is locked around the inside of his ankle and his foot. He knows he should yank out the fork and try to stand, but he can’t seem to get moving any better than a turtle that’s been rolled on its back.

And that’s not the worst of it. The October Boy is standing about fifteen feet away, right in the middle of the road, staring straight at him. The Chrysler’s Gorgon headlights reveal the thing clearly… just as they reveal the gleaming butcher knife that feeds stiletto-style through the knotted vines that comprise its left hand, filling it as long fingers wrap around its hilt.

And, seeing that, you know exactly how Mitch feels. He’s belly to the ground, staring up at a legend. It’s like staring up at Santa Claus, or the goddamn Easter Bunny… but only if Santa was the kind of guy who’d strangle you with your own stocking, and only if the Easter Bunny was the kind of rabbit who’d stomp you dead and peel your cracked skullcap like a hardboiled egg.

Yeah. You remember how it feels to go nose to nose with a legend. That’s why the stories they spin about the October Boy are all about fear. You heard them around a campfire out in the woods when you were just a kid, and they were whispered to you late at night in your dark bedroom when your best friend spent the night, and they scared you so bad tenting out in your backyard one summer night that you thought you wouldn’t sleep for a week. So there’s not much chance of separating reputation from reality when you look the real deal straight in the face. He’s the October Boy… the reaper that grows in the field, the merciless trick with a heart made of treats, the butchering nightmare with the hacksaw face… and he’s gonna getcha! That’s what they always told you… he’s gonna getcha so you know you’ve been got!!!!!

Just ask Mitch Crenshaw if you’ve got any doubt about that. Because the October Boy’s stalking toward him now, and there’s a mutant fire glowing behind his eyes that looks like it could melt the lead lining off a bomb shelter door. That fire… it’s bottled-up Hiroshima… it’s 150-proof Nagasaki… and there’s so much more to it than what it is, or what Mitch believes it to be, that he can barely stand to look at it.

Mitch closes his eyes for just a second. He tries to move, but can’t. He hears the October Boy’s whiskbroom footsteps, and for him that’s the only sound in the world. There’s nothing else out there in the night. Bud is gone. Charlie’s dead at the side of the road; he’ll never make another sound.

Those last two realizations get Mitch moving. He grabs the pitchfork handle and yanks. The spike exits foot and leg in an electric jolt of pain. If he can use the fork to stand up, that’s a start. The Chrysler’s right behind him. If he makes it onto his feet, he can lean against the hood, maybe balance that way, maybe even manage to defend himself and —

The October Boy tears the pitchfork out of Mitch’s hands. He cracks the pommel of the butcher knife against Mitch’s jaw. Again, Crenshaw goes down hard, his spine ratcheting against the Chrysler’s front bumper as his ass finds its blacktop destination. The Boy squats in front of him, his eyes still blazing with that mutant fire Mitch can’t even comprehend, and the blade of the butcher knife comes up and fills the space between their faces, and the October Boy’s carved mouth chews over a single word.

“Keys.”

It takes a second for the word to register in Mitch’s brain, and then he digs his car keys out of his pocket and hands them over. The October Boy’s fingers vine around them like they’re a fistful of sunshine, and he stands and walks around the side of the Chrysler, and the driver’s door creaks open.

“You’d better move,” the October Boy says. “You’re in my way.”

The car door slams. The engine starts. The front bumper rattles Mitch’s backbone. Jesus Christ, but Mitch moves then, away from that thresher of a bumper, out of the path of those brutal Firestones.

He’s crawling across blacktop as the October Boy hits the gas. The stink of burning rubber fills the air. Mitch rolls down the embankment into the muddy ditch at the side of the road. An exhaust cloud follows him, settling low to the ground. Mitch lies there in the darkness. He doesn’t look up. The Chrysler growls in the night. A wind rises, sowing through the corn as if chasing the big black machine, digging its way down the drainage ditch. Hamburger wrappers churn under its breath, but it doesn’t last long.

And then it’s quiet.

The stars shine down. The wind doesn’t even whisper.

For a time. For a little while.

And then somewhere further down the ditch, a frog starts up. It’s the first frog Mitch has heard all night. He’s forgotten that there are frogs out here. And then another joins in… and another… and another… and it turns out Mitch isn’t alone in the darkness. There are frogs all around him in that muddy old ditch. They were right here all along, clinging to the shadows like a silent audience — dozens of them, maybe even a hundred — and Mitch didn’t know they were here at all, because they were smart enough to be quiet… smart enough to keep their little yaps shut when a two-legged legend came walking down the road….

Mitch buries his face in his hands, listening to those frogs work over the silence. Yeah… they’re sure talking now, he thinks, and then he laughs, because it really is kind of funny.

They don’t waste any time running their mouths once their little green asses are safe.

Not when they’ve got something to talk about.

Not when they’re telling a story….