The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories Page 14

  Cecil Davis, despite his grief and rage, had not become sloppy in anything but his personal hygiene. If the woman had gotten wind of his presence, she’d have fled, he was certain, no matter how invested she was in remaining in Ashdown. He’d tracked her for so long and, having found her, rented a house two doors down and on the opposite side of the street. It gave him an uninterrupted view of her property. He kept the curtains closed, but affixed cameras under the eaves, trained them on the woman’s cottage. The place had come furnished, which was convenient, but hadn’t mattered one way or the other to him. He’d have happily brought along the sleeping bag and air mattress he’d once used for camping and then, later still, for surveillance after… .

  He’d even managed to plant a GPS tracking device on her car, something impossible to notice unless you were actively looking for it. He didn’t have to leave his four walls, just stared at the monitors he had rigged up so he could keep an eye on her comings and goings while he still managed to run his software support business from a separate laptop. The business he’d hoped to pass on now had as its sole purpose keeping the money coming in to fund his mission.

  She was going by Mrs. Morgan now, though his researches showed she recycled her names as she went, different ones each time, no discernable pattern, but he’d learned them, if not all, then many. Knowing what to look for meant he had found her at last, though it took him seven years. Seven years of hacking utilities records, bank records, seeing patterns, recognizing names, catching the scent. As much as anything it was his willingness to believe in strange things when no one else would.

  It had taken all his determination, all the internal resources that had made him a successful businessman, to keep him focused. To keep him going after… .

  Of course, he could only watch the exterior of the house. He’d not gone into her home, couldn’t bring himself to do that, though he’d never admit it was fear. It was caution, pure and simple. Caution, he’d have said if there’d been anyone to talk to about it; if the police in Ottery St. Mary had listened with anything but pity, or the parents in the other small villages he’d gone to after… .

  The young man who did the gardening was there again, in spite of the penknife Cecil had stuck in the back tire of his vehicle, trying to put an obstacle in his way. Cecil had to admit it hadn’t been a very effective obstacle. He was aware that if he approached the man, tried to tell him what he knew, he’d come across as a nutter; that the lad would back away, go straight to the woman and warn her. Though he’d let things like bathing and general grooming fall by the wayside, Cecil knew there were some illusions he needed to keep intact.

  He’d do what he could to protect the lad, within reason. He was someone’s son after all, and Cecil had no wish for another father, another mother, to go through what he had; to wake and find their boy gone forever, become no more than motes of dust on the wind. He blinked as thoughts of Gil, tall and strong, young and vital, made heated tears rise, made the tendons of his heart thrum deep and discordant.

  Cecil looked away from the screens, to the corner of the sitting room, where his gear lay in a pile. He still wasn’t sure what to take with him. He knew where she would be, where she’d been going these past weeks, the place she had been preparing. But he didn’t know what to take, what would work, he didn’t really know what she was.

  He only knew that when he confronted her there would be no words, no recriminations, no time wasting that might give her a moment’s chance to escape. He doubted she remembered Gil. He doubted she remembered any, certainly not by name. He suspected there had been so many she couldn’t keep track of them all.

  No. No words. Whatever he might say didn’t matter. Wouldn’t matter. It was only what he did tomorrow evening that mattered.

  She lay back, listening to Henry’s heavy footsteps retreating down the stairs, the rattling of the pipes as he ran a shower. The smell of him was strong in her nostrils, the sweat from manual labor ever an aphrodisiac. He’d been worried, when they first started this, that she’d become pregnant. She’d laughed so hard at the idea he’d been offended, thought she was impugning his fertility, his god-given right to get her up the duff. He’d required stroking, reassuring, promises that it wasn’t him but her. In their months together he’d had no more cause for complaint; his time might be brief but she gave him the best of herself, helped him live full. He got what he wanted and she took pleasure in it too; taught him a few things that had made his eyes grow round. Taught him a few more things she didn’t mind if he tried out on others, younger women. She was not jealous, did not need his singular adoration; considered her lessons a gift. You’re welcome.

  The mattress beneath her was soft and she gave it a fond pat. A fine thing that had done good service. She wasn’t always so lucky when she rented a new house: fully furnished was essential for her lifestyle. Having to pick up and pack everything once a year was a burden she’d long ago dispensed with. Only ever own what you can’t do without. Only ever have essential things that you can fit in a single small bag. Travel lightly, live deeply, serve faithfully.

  And she had done that. Done it for so long she could barely remember when she hadn’t been what she’d become. What she was. Could barely remember a time before that first fire, that first night, before she took the mantle from the one before her. She saw no time in front of her, either, when she might relinquish the position. It was her duty, her obligation, her keeping of faith. She would not let it go easily. Besides, where might she find someone to replace her?

  Sometimes it was hard, she admitted, to maintain such single-minded devotion when the world around her changed quickly, quickly. Much more so than before. Difficult to be a fixed point in a whirling universe, holding to an idea, a certainty, an allegiance, a moral obligation. She took some comfort when the core of things stayed true: soul cakes had become candy, but the idea of benefaction was still there.

  And the fires.

  The fires were always lit.

  The fires remained.

  And the sacrifices could still be made, though the ideas underpinning them drew cries and condemnations in this soft society. Still they were needful things; if only people appreciated that something had to be given back in order for the wheel to spin, for the earth to bloom anew. A child lost here, a pet taken there; the tiny sacrifices that kept the world going until the larger giving might happen.

  She did not like to take small girls, little cauldrons of life that they were, so much potential lost when their flame guttered. An unhelpful sacrifice that almost lost more than it gained. But the wee boys … ah, the boys were like tadpoles, only good for Mischief Night pranks, and so many of them spawned … how could one or three be missed? How could they be seen as anything but small coin in return for the greatest gift?

  But no one thought like her anymore. Or no one worthwhile. Murderers, cultists, wasters, and nihilists, who neither knew nor cared what they did. Whose killings and leavings brought no benefit, just the brief satisfaction of destruction for the individual.

  No, no one thought like her anymore. That was why she’d had to prepare the glade on the wooded tor herself, prepare the fire alone; there were no acolytes nowadays, no pretty maids to do the grunt work; her only handmaidens were black and feathered, sharp-eyed and beaked. She grinned. Just her, lugging branches, oak and larch and yew, collecting the smaller tinder, and constructing it all into something that resembled a bed, a bier, a pyre. Threading it with mistletoe, mandrake, mugwort, and rue. Doing what was required for when the doors between life and un-life opened and the dead danced through, to visit loved ones or to exact vengeance on rivals and enemies.

  Downstairs the closing of the front door sounded. Henry was gone. Strangely, she felt bereft. She rolled onto her side, curled into a ball and closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, commanding her body to sleep deep and late. Soon the changes would come and she would need all her energy for the next night.

  The day began deathly gray and did not improve. The afte
rnoon light into which Henry stepped was so weak and ineffectual that he almost missed the crouched man. If he’d not been heading toward the pickup he’d spent part of the morning changing the tire of, he’d not have seen the man at all. As he got closer Henry saw the dull gleam of a blade, not terribly big, but big enough to do damage. The man was about to puncture the tire yet again.

  A red veil covered Henry’s eyes. His temper wasn’t short, not by a long shot, but nor was he inclined to forgive this kind of spiteful vandalism. He didn’t know who the bloke was or why he was targeting Henry, and at that point he didn’t care. The youth took swift steps, got close enough for the other to hear him and begin to turn and rise.

  Henry threw himself forward.

  Henry stopped.

  The rank body odor hit him first, then the man’s fist punched him in the stomach. Henry caught a glimpse of a frightened weary face, rumpled as if someone had slept in it too long, mud-green eyes swimming in fear and guilt, and a mouth that kept saying something over and over. Henry’s hearing had deserted him, the world fallen silent, and his belly flared both hot and cold.

  He looked down.

  The knife was protruding from his hard-earned six pack.

  He didn’t think the man had meant to do it; it was just the angle, Henry’s momentum, the man’s fright. He wanted to say It’s okay, that he knew it hadn’t been on purpose. Noise began to seep back to him, and he heard the man yelling Help! Help! as he caught at Henry and laid him down on the footpath. Help! Help! as he ran away so he wouldn’t get caught. As if he had something better to do.

  Chills rushed through him, up and down. Henry hoped someone would let Mrs. Morgan know he wouldn’t make it tonight. He hoped he wouldn’t feel worse. He hoped someone would come soon.

  Cecil ran like he’d never done before. He wasn’t a runner. He was a short, fat, middle-aged man burdened by grief and junk food. After Gil had gone, after Cecil’s wife had left him, no one cared for him, not even Cecil. He just kept going, knowing he needed nourishment and nothing more. He didn’t eat for taste or enjoyment or health, just to exist. It meant he wasn’t fussy with portions or calories; it meant things fried deeply and provided quickly formed a major part of his diet. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a piece of fruit, or there’d been something in his fridge that was green because it was meant to be, rather than green because it was going off and Cecil’s refrigerator was the place things went to die. He ran, though he knew he couldn’t be as fast as he felt, as if things sped by in the gray dusk. As if he flew along the deserted streets as he fled the terrible mistake he’d made.

  He’d stopped shouting soon after he’d let the boy down, pressing the lad’s large hands to the wound. He’d pulled out the knife, knowing it would make the lad bleed all the worse, but Cecil couldn’t leave it behind. There were his prints—a drunk driving conviction fifteen years ago meant he’d be on file—and he didn’t want to let the thing go because it had been Gil’s. He hoped someone had gone to the boy’s aid, hoped it wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where shouting caused people to secure their doors and huddle inside until everything seemed quiet again. But he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t get caught. He was so close.

  He stumbled over the threshold of his rented house and slammed the door, pressed his forehead against it, then turned, rested his back on the wood, waited until the breath shooting from his lungs didn’t feel like fire, until the shaking of his limbs had calmed. And then he bent over and vomited hard on the tenant-resistant, slate-colored carpet. He huddled, hands wrapped around his head, ragged nails biting through his thinning hair into the pale scalp beneath. The pain brought him back to himself.

  He had to focus.

  He had to go on.

  This was his chance.

  He couldn’t let it—her—slip away again.

  He forced himself upwards. He had hours yet; he should clean the mess he’d made, watch the monitors. But somehow he knew he couldn’t wait them out here. He should go. He should go before the streets began to hold traces of random trick-or-treaters. What if someone had seen? What if he’d left some trace, though he couldn’t image what it might be. What if, what if what if? What if the police were already speeding toward this place?

  That thought galvanized him. He picked through the gear in the sitting room, extracted the sleeping bag for warmth and the ghillie suit for camouflage. In the end he took only the Swiss Army knife, wiping its blade as clean as he could, stuffing it in a trouser pocket.

  He knew where she would go.

  He knew where he would meet her.

  The air was brisk, lacing her lungs as she breathed deeply, taking long strides up the incline. Once she’d have carried a burning brand to illuminate her track, to ignite the pyre, but that might have caught attention. So, it was a Maglite in her hand, providing a bright circle to follow, but giving off no warmth the way an old torch would. It was enough that the form of things be honored in spirit, not slavish mimicry.

  Around her foxes yipped and badgers snuffled; other things she couldn’t identify made noise too, but Mirabel had no fear of the dark, no fear of the forest. She’d walked across the fields, then taken the path around the base of the tor, traversing rills and ditches, stiles and fallen trees, marking the way with light, the way that must lead ever upwards. When she passed under the canopy of trees that would take her to the glade, where Henry would be waiting, she sighed contentedly. In her long years she had never been let down by any of her chosen. All things had their time, their natural conclusion.

  Everything she directed her existence toward was coming to fruition.

  Cecil almost gasped as she moved past him in the darkness. Her face was shadowed, but he knew it was her, knew her shape; he’d watched her enough from the first time they’d met. From when she’d moved in across the street from his family home in Ottery St. Mary and lived there for a year. The lovely, gracious woman who’d asked politely if their son, their only child, just turned nineteen, might be kind enough to do some gardening for her. Effortlessly attractive, effortlessly desirable.

  The woman who’d come and gone like a storm, like a flood, stealing something so precious he’d not cared to see what she’d left behind, the benefits she’d given to a village that had been foundering, its crops poor and stunted, its children pale and sickly, its businesses and farms dying a slow death. A village that, after Gil had gone, began to breathe, to produce, to be fertile again, though that benevolence gladdened Cecil’s heart not a jot.

  She walked slowly, he noticed, slower than seemed normal. He wondered if she’d injured herself crossing dark fields, then reminded himself it didn’t matter. He waited until she was well ahead, then rolled from the sleeping bag, left it and the ghillie suit behind, and began to follow.

  She reached the top of the slope, stepped into the clearing. The bulk of the woven bed was there, picked out by the beam of the Maglite. On top lay the torch she’d made, a branch of yew, one end wrapped around with dried henbane and belladonna and other lesser kindling. She lit it with the matches in her coat pocket and switched off the flashlight. The burning brand gave better light and she nodded with satisfaction, feeling her blood warmed by the leaping blue-orange flame. She held it high and looked around.

  No sign of Henry.

  She frowned.

  Called his name and received no reply.

  Looked at the cheap watch on her wrist, though she didn’t need to; the tides in her veins kept track of the hours. Fifteen minutes. He still had fifteen minutes.

  She threw the brand onto the pyre; that at least could be started. She felt the heat and smiled, welcoming it like an old friend to warm her ancient bones. Once the blaze was settled, she turned her back to it as she always did, knowing the bright amber light made of her a silhouette so Henry, as he came up the bridal path, could not see the change in her. Could not see how, on Halloween Eve, age had rushed in upon her, how all the seasons’ endings had converged where she stood, rendering her ol
d, weakened, vulnerable.

  Tension was beginning to take a hold on Mirabel when she at last saw the blurred shape appear at the mouth of the path; her eyes aged too, let her down. A man, yes. Henry, she thought and relaxed into a smile. He wouldn’t see her face, not until the last moment and by then it wouldn’t matter.

  She raised her hands, stretched out her arms to welcome him, though it caused an ache in her hoary joints, a popping she feared was audible. Her smile would not be dimmed, however, as she felt the ebbing that was essential for a new beginning.

  Henry came toward her, faster now, faster, and as he got closer she knew something was wrong.

  Her face was a blank, black oval to Cecil, his eyes burned by the glare of the bonfire behind her, but he saw in the way she shifted that she knew. She knew somehow.

  That something was not right.

  And Cecil was filled with an unreasoning terror, that she would get away. That she would turn into a puff of smoke, sprout wings and fly, become airy in the extreme and sink into the earth’s arms, away from his. He put on a burst of speed, the last he’d ever make, propelling his fat little self forward until his soft body met her bony one, and he heard bones break with the impact, heard her gasp turn into a shriek as they both plummeted back, against the pyre, then into its heart as flames reached up and around to envelop them.

  And in that moment, that final moment, Cecil experienced with startling clarity a rare self-awareness. He knew, at last, that his question for the October Widow was not and had never been Why my son? but rather Why not me?

  When she woke she sensed an earth changed and not for the better, and that she had changed, also not for the better. She ached, not as badly as on her last night, but still a dull throb of pain ran through her. Where was the spring in her step, the strength in her form that renewal had always promised and ever delivered?