Halloween and Other Seasons

10

Grant could see the roof flashers of the cruisers ahead of him. He felt as if he was in a dream. Charley Fredericks had talked all the tire-screaming way out, but Grant felt as if he was alone in the car.

It all came down to this.

To this: the most horrible thing of all, at least in this world.

For a tiny moment he almost wished it was the other business, weird shit, that he was dealing with.

With a shiver, he let that thought go.

His only hope was that he wasn’t too late.

The car bumped in and out of two successive dirt ruts, and he slammed the brakes behind the first of the lined-up patrol cars.

There wasn’t a cop in sight—but flashlight beams danced in the woods off to the left.

His gun was already out of its holster as he pushed himself out of the car.

“Hey, Bill!” Charley Fredericks shouted behind him, unheard.

Grant pushed through the brush as if it wasn’t there; dried vines and branches slapped at his arms and across his face.

Behind him, Charley, his own flashlight on, made his way carefully along the path into the woods.

Grant heard voices now, one of them loud and irrational:

“Hold those lights on the front of it, dammit!”

Grant broke into the clearing—into a tableau from a nightmare.

Like a nightmare, there was a strangely ethereal beauty to it. Three uniformed police officers stood stock still, holding their flashlight beams on a single spot up in the trees. The gnarled mass of denuded branches there at first showed nothing to the eye, they were so tangled and uniform—and then the eye resolved a section of them pinpointed by the triple beams into a manmade opening, a brown door set neatly into the branches.

In the doorway, frozen in place and looking confused and lost, staring straight into the lights pinning him like a butterfly, was the orange-and-white motley clown Grant had seen in the tent at Ranier Park. His pom-pomed cap was gone, showing a thinning head of light-colored hair; there were rips in his orange and white motley costume and his makeup was smeared, pulling his smile into a high, grotesque grin on one side. The blacking around his eyes, which had been used to line his lashes, had run together.

On the ground in front of the three police officers, Len Schneider, looking disheveled himself, a pajama top peeking between his shirt and pants, stood in a two handed firing position, his eye sighting down the barrel of his .38 police special trained tightly on the figure in the doorway.

Grant, holding his own revolver at his side, but in a tight grip, said, in as reasonable a voice as he could, “Len, put your gun down. It’s all right. He’s Ted Marigold’s father, Lawrence Marigold.”

There were tears streaming down Schneider’s face, but his hands were rock steady on his revolver. “He’s Jerry Carlton!” he screamed. “And this time I got here in time!”

Grant kept his voice level, but slowly brought his handgun up. “Jerry Carlton is in Madison State Prison, Len. I talked to the warden there twenty minutes ago. The man you’re aiming at is Lawrence Marigold, the father of the last kid Carlton killed. Ted’s father. Remember him, Len? The genius biotech engineer? How he went insane after his son was murdered? He escaped from his institution. You couldn’t save Ted, but you can save Ted’s father. Just lower your gun.”

Schneider ignored Grant. “I told you!” he screeched at the figure in the doorway. “Send them down now!”

The clown turned away for a moment, and then a long rope ladder rolled out of the doorway like a red carpet, its end swinging to rest just inches from the ground. The clown stepped aside, and Jody Wendt appeared in the doorway and carefully descended the ladder.

“Jesus,” Charley Fredericks, who had stopped beside Grant and was aiming his own flashlight at the opening, said.

“Now the other one!” Schneider screamed.

The clown moved aside and said something that sounded like a sob. “Ted.”

There was darkness in the doorway and then something else, not a boy but boy-sized, with impossibly thin, bright metal limbs and a head made of a pumpkin, climbed out and began to descend the ladder with practiced ease. Little puffs of steam issued from the cutout holes in its face as it came down, gazing mechanically back and forth.

Charley gasped and said: “Je-sus!”

Grant’s own gun-hand began to tremble, but he steadied it with the realization that what he was looking at was something real, something that had been made by a man.

The Pumpkin Boy stood at the bottom of the tree, next to Jody Wendt. He continued to stare back and forth, with a look almost of fright on his cartoon face. His gaze finally settled on Jody. “I’m ssssssscared…” he said in a horribly distorted, faraway voice.

“Where’s the other boy! Where’s Scotty Daniels!” Len Schneider screamed, his attention still riveted on the doorway in the trees.

“I—” the clown said confusedly, his voice swallowed by the night.

Then he turned back into the doorway and disappeared.

Grant took the opportunity to say, “Len, please listen—”

“Shut up! Shut the hell up!” Schneider wheeled on him for a moment with the gun, his eyes wild. Grant could see the muscles standing out like taut cables in his neck. “If you shoot me in the leg, Grant, to try to stop me, I’ll blow the bastard’s head off!”

There was movement in the tree-house doorway and with an almost animal growl Schneider swung his aim back that way.

“Here…” the clown said.

Charley Fredericks gave a shout of horror: there in the doorway was the body of a young boy, trussed upside-down and suspended from some sort of wheeled rack. On his head was a silver cap with a thick arm of wires leading from it.

“Oh, God, what did he do to that poor kid…” Charley Fredericks said, reaching for his own revolver.

Even Grant hesitated, starting to move the aim of his gun from Len Schneider to the doorway of the tree-house. “Son of a—”

The boy moved. He twitched in his bonds, looking like Houdini trying to make an escape.

“Let him go, Carlton! Now!”

Lawrence Marigold made a confused motion, and then his shoulders sagged. He looked down at the pumpkin-headed robot at the bottom of the rope ladder, who turned his face up to regard him.

Marigold sobbed out, “Do you remember…what I used to say to you when you were a baby, Ted? When it was just you and me and mommy, and I stopped at the store after work and bought you the candy you loved? Do you remember what I always said after you squealed and held your hands out, laughing, when I gave you your candy? Do you remember what I used to say? Uncle Lollipop loves you!”

Still weeping, he disappeared into the opening, then reappeared, reached down and did something to the bundle of wires on the boy’s metal skullcap.

And then something happened which caused even Len Schneider to open his mouth in wonder—

The steam issuing from the Pumpkin Boy’s facial cutouts increased in intensity, until an orange fog engulfed its head. A thin trail of something that resembled fire and smelled like electricity curled out of the cloud, rose up the bole of the tree and snaked into the tree-house opening.

Two flashes of tepid lightning lit up the doorway. Grant could see the edge of another poster inside the hut like the one the clown had mounted in the tent in Ranier Park.

The boy suspended from the rack began to writhe and cry out in pain.

On the ground, the Pumpkin Boy stood mute.

Len Schneider again had his .38 trained on the tree-house doorway.

“Cut him down! Now!”

In another few moments the boy was loose and rubbing his hands and legs.

Lawrence Marigold, his face a nightmare of streaked makeup and tears, stood dumbly as Scotty Daniels climbed slowly down the ladder.

“Get the kids out of here, Charley,” Grant said.

Fredericks nodded. When Scotty reached the ground he herded the two young boys, Jody Wendt limping slightly, away from the Pumpkin Boy and down the path to the cars.

Grant thought, At least they won’t see any of this.

Out loud he said: “Len, you’ve got to put the gun down right now. It’s all over. You did a great job.”

“I won’t make any mistakes this time, Carlton!” Schneider screamed, ignoring him.

“I just borrowed them!” Lawrence Marigold said, throwing his arms out in supplication. “I thought you would let me!”

Grant saw Schneider straighten his aim. “Not this time, Carlton!”

Oh, God, Grant thought, his own finger tightening on the trigger of his police special. In the next split second he thought, Goddammit, Len, don’t make me do it—

Two shots that sounded like the echo of one rang out.

Two bodies crumpled.

Shit!

Grant saw that, by the length of the time he had allowed himself to think, he had been too late to save Lawrence Marigold.

Len Schneider was down, unmoving, and in the doorway of the tree hut Marigold collapsed with a huffing grunt. He sat tilted on the sill of the tree hut for a moment, then fell forward.

He hit the ground a moment later, groaned once and was silent.

Grant walked over and knelt down to study his face.

It had the same lost, mad look on it that it must have held for many months and years, since the night his boy had been taken.

“I’m so sorry,” Grant said.

“Ted…” the clown whispered, staring past Grant at nothing, and then was silent forever.

Grant stood up. Two of the uniforms were working on Len Schneider, but Grant knew it was a waste of time. He hadn’t missed.

He was good at his job.

Hands shaking, he lit a cigarette, coughed, and thought about the bottle he would have to open later.

Another nightmare for the menagerie.

And Jerry Carlton sat snug and warm, reading a magazine in his cell at Madison State Prison.

Idly, Grant wondered if the Warden would let him visit with Carlton, for just those three minutes Len Schneider had so badly wanted.

~ * ~

It wasn’t until much later that Bill Grant discovered that the Pumpkin Boy was missing.