Halloween (18 page)

He shuffled toward the closet and rattled it with tornadolike force. Laurie retreated to a corner of the closet and slumped to the floor.
So this is where you die
, she declared inwardly.

A second later the fist came through the louvres with the ease of a hammer smashing a balsa toy. The blood-clotted hand swept the closet, fingers seeking a piece, any piece, of Laurie's body, but finding only clothes and hangers. These fell on her, and with them fell on her exhausted mind the only, the last, thing to do before succumbing to the assassin's crazed assault.

She picked up a wire hanger.

She began to untwist the handle, which consisted of the two ends of the heavy-gauge wire wrapped around themselves. As the killer's hands played up and down the louvre slats she at last managed to separate the two ends of the wire and unbend the hanger. She grasped it tightly halfway up and held it ready.

The door hung on a splinter. The next strike would destroy it. Sure enough, it belled in, buckled, and exploded in a million fragments, and Laurie seemed to see them all in sharply focused slow motion, like the fragments of a life blasted beyond recognition—a father, a mother, a home, a school, a friend, a past, a future, a present . . .

The snarling thing was inside the closet with her, lashing out at the limp clothing and sweeping it aside or tossing it to the floor. The ferocity of it was wonderful to see, and some detached, dispassionate part of her watched the performance with admiration, as if it were a circus ring and she safely stood outside.

Then she was no longer a spectator. She was now the prize at the bottom of the bin. Though dark as a coal mine, she could see that he had turned away from the far corner of the closet and now faced her, his eyes as keenly focused in the darkness as hers were. They confronted one another silently except for the hiss of their breath. There followed a moment when Laurie fantasized that he would not make his lunge, that he would tear off his mask and laugh and say it was all a Halloween prank and the bodies across the street were just cleverly made-up store dummies and you could get up now and go home and we'll see you next Halloween.

Or maybe he had decided he'd had enough slaughter for one night and would turn away and deliver himself into the hands of the police. Or maybe he'd succumb at this very last instant to the wound in the neck she'd inflicted in his neck with Mrs. Doyle's needle.

Sure
, Laurie,
sure. Still dreaming right up to the last, aren't you?

Slowly, deliberately, he drew the knife out of his belt and knelt before her, gauging the precise spot where he would plunge the blade in. She wondered what part of her he would consider prime. He seemed to be studying her the way a butcher studies the carcass of a steer.

She clutched the wire hanger with both hands and concentrated on the one vulnerable area she thought she could damage. She felt his hot stinking breath on her face and knew he would never be closer while she lived. With a prayer to God she thrust the hanger into the black hole in the mask where a glint of eyeball reflected what scant light there was in the room. For a second there was resistance, as if the wire had struck his cheekbone or nose or eyebrow. Then the point punched through with a squish and he recoiled with a primitive howl that would stay in her mind forever as the most chilling sound she'd ever heard.

Reflexively he swung at her with the knife, but she'd already slid out from under and was rolling out of the closet and staggering to her feet. The assailant lurched out after her, both hands covering his face. His knife had dropped to his feet and she saw it and wondered if she could snatch it before he did. Her jab with the wire hanger had penetrated one eye but he had one good one left, and she knew that as long as his heart beat at all he would come on, his determination as fixed as if his entire system had been programmed with but one function: to kill.

She circled out of range of his good eye, but he stood almost atop the knife and she had to get him off it. What she did next was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid, and maybe it was a little of both. Picking up one of Mrs. Doyle's perfume atomizers, she threw it at him, shouting, "Over here! Over here, buddy!"

He pivoted in the direction of her voice, and as he did she pivoted with him so as to keep to his blind side. He staggered toward the spot she'd been in, giving her the opportunity to lunge for the knife. She grasped the handle with both hands. Suddenly all the agitation drained from her, and a calm and clarity settled upon her. "Over here, pal. Here I am. Come and get me," she beckoned, almost seductively.

If anyone had told her a mere three or four hours ago that she would be shoving a knife into a man's body she'd have had that person certified and committed to the funny farm. But now that she realized that this nightmare wasn't going to end by itself, that no one was going to shake her shoulder and say, "Come on, wake up, it's time to go to school," she felt capable of anything. She had, in the course of a half hour, gone from a wide-eyed innocent to a willing, even eager participant in this deadly game. No soldier had ever gone through a quicker basic training.

With one hand over his blind and bloody eye and the other swiping the air for a piece of his tormentress, he stumped toward her, bellowing in rage and pain. She crouched so that he loomed over her filling the space above with his black presence.

Now, Laurie?

No, not yet, one more second, let him get close enough to stumble over you.

Now, Laurie? Now, please? Hurry, before it's too late.

Yes. Now. Do it now, Laurie.

Just as his knees were about to collide with her, she plunged the blade upward with both hands into his groin. The knife went in so easily she wasn't sure if she'd actually stabbed anything. Only his bellow of pure pain confirmed the strike. She wanted to twist and slash the blade inside his guts the way he'd done to Annie, but he dropped away from her, groaning, to a corner of the room, and she didn't want to risk administering a
coup de grace
in the dark.

The kids, meanwhile, were crying hysterically in the bathroom, and she had to get them out. She'd heard of people actually being frightened to death, and now she knew it was entirely possible. As it was, the kids would bear the mark of this traumatic night in their souls forevermore. And you, Laurie said to herself as she rushed to the bathroom door, won't do so badly in that department yourself.

It took her several minutes of pleading and reassuring to get them to open the door. She kept looking over her shoulder and listening. There was a stirring in the corner, but presently it ceased. He's
got
to be dead, she told herself. But her mind played back the memory of the big pickerel her daddy had caught on a trip he'd taken her on to the Wisconsin woods, having forgotten to bring his creel, he wrapped the fish in newspaper and placed it in an old shopping bag. On the way home a half hour later, the fish, which she had thought long dead, began a violent death thrash that had startled both of them so much, her father had nearly driven into a tree.

At last she coaxed the children out of the bathroom. They fell blubbering into Laurie's arms. Their eyes were swollen from crying, and they trembled like puppies. "Listen to me, listen, children," she begged them. "Catch your breath. Breathe deeply, and don't think about it anymore. It's all over."

"You said that before."

"No, this time it really is all over. Now, I want you to walk to the door, down the stairs, and right out the front door."

"You're coming with us," Lindsey said, a question and a command.

"
Listen to me
. I Want you to walk down the street to the MacKenzies and knock on their door. You tell them to call the police and send them over here. Do you understand?"

"Laurie, you come with us," Tommy pleaded.

"No! Do as I say."

She guided them across the bedroom to the head of the stairs and sent them off with a smack in the fanny each. They scampered downstairs and fled screaming into the night as Laurie collapsed on the top step to catch her breath and summon her wits for one last visit to the bedroom to make sure the monster was dead. She would never be able to sleep again if she did not witness for herself that it would never more raise a hand against mankind.

She buried her face in her hands and fought to regain control of herself.

Thus situated, she did not see the shadowy shape dragging itself out of the bedroom.

The shrieking came from the next block, and Loomis knew this was no Halloween prank. It was too late for children to be outside, and if that was not true terror in their cries for help, Loomis did not know what true terror was.

He cut across a lawn to find them racing up a walk to a white ranch house. They saw him, a Mephistophelean figure in goatee, bald head, and trench coat fluttering in the wind, and they shrieked even louder, turning tail and fleeing into a backyard. "It's him, the bogeyman!" he heard one shout.

He hurdled a rustic fence and dashed int;o the yard. "Children, it's all right," he murmured in his most reassuring tone, "it's all right, kids, I'm your friend."

They were not difficult to find, He spotted their light clothing behind a tree too narrow to conceal them, and though he knew it would scare the wits out of them if their wits hadn't been totally scared out of them already, he had to capture them to find out what they were running away from.

He tiptoed up to the tree, then dashed around it, tackling them both in strong but gentle arms. They broke into hysterical cries and wriggled in his arms in a desperate effort to escape. He clutched them tightly, uttering tender blandishments to soothe them until at last they relaxed long enough to answer his questions.

"Where are you coming from?"

"There," the little boy said with a general sweep of the western horizon.

"Where's there? Show me."

They escorted him back to the front lawn. Tommy pointed to a house catty-corner from their position. Its lights were out, its front door wide open.

"What's going on out there?" a voice shouted. A porch light went on and a man in pajamas stormed out of the house.

"There's trouble across the street. Serious trouble," Loomis said, dragging the children to the man by the collars of their shirts. "Take these kids and call the police at once. Get Sheriff Brackett. Tell him I've found our friend at . . . at that house there."

"The Doyle house?"

"Whichever that one is with the open door."

"Mister, this is no joke? I mean, I've been trick-or-treated to death tonight."

"You don't know what death is," Loomis hissed, drawing his gun as he rushed across the street.

Laurie inhaled deeply, realizing it was the first calm breath she'd taken since it all began. She lifted her face from her hands and contemplated the next move. She wasn't sure what it should be. She would have liked to wait for the police, but God knew if the kids had done what she'd instructed them to do. So she didn't want to wait. But she didn't want to flee the house either. Suppose she did and when she returned with the police he was gone. Would she ever sleep peacefully again, knowing he was out there, alive, lurking, stalking? No, she must either stand guard here outside the bedroom door, or . . .

. . . or go in there and look upon the still corpse, so that she could comfort herself with the image of his dead body whenever the horror visited her dreams.

That is, if he were dead.

Suppose he weren't?

She knew he was badly hurt. A needle in the neck, a hanger in the eye, a knife in the groin, surely no one who wasn't supernatural could endure such injuries and still live.

Then what held her back from going in there?

It was the realization that if by some miracle he
were
still alive, she would have to finish the job. She was no longer afraid that he could harm her; it was inconceivable to her that he could be
that
alive, let alone alive at all. No, it was the idea of actually murdering someone in cold blood. Self-defense was one thing. But a helpless man, even one who had slaughtered her three friends, who had attempted to do the same to her—well, she wasn't sure she could bring herself to do it.

Essentially she was not an avenger. Civilization was too deeply bred into her. The killer instinct had been diluted to the point where normally she could not imagine doing anything more harmful with a knife than cutting a slab of roast beef on her dinner plate.

The longer she sat the more confused and uncertain she became. She wished the decision could be taken out of her hands.

A moment later, it was.

In a night filled with startling horrors, this was the most startling and horrible of all, the hand on her hair, pulling at her scalp until she was sure he would tear it off her head like an orange peel. His other arm enclosed her throat, and only because she'd had her arms in front of her face did she prevent him from snapping her neck on the first blow.

As it was, she heard a bone snap in her wrist, and she knew it was all over this time. She'd been lucky three times, but she'd underestimated her foe. Now she was his. She kicked to her feet and squirmed in his grasp, hoping to kick them both down the stairs where he just might release her, but he guessed her strategy and yanked her away from the landing. His forearm tightened around the wrists pinned to her face, and the pain was so excruciating she knew she would pass out in another second.

Then she heard the explosion and felt his body jump as if someone had struck him with a fist. She was free. She fell to the floor. In her hand was a damp rubber mask. She looked for her assailant and found him leaning against a wall, a dark blotch spreading quickly over his right shoulder. Through the darkness and the flashing lights dancing in her eyes she looked at his face and saw it, white with whiter, fanglike teeth. His wet black hair was matted over his forehead, and one eye bulged like a dead fish's. Where his other eye had been was a wet bloody hole.

A movement on the stairs caught her attention. A bald man with a goatee was running up them, holding a huge black revolver with trembling hands. "Get out of the way!" he shouted at her.