Halloween IV: The Ultimate Edition (12 page)

“Trick or treat!” Jamie said, at the same time the lady held out the candy.

“My,” the woman said, “what a cheery little clown. Look what I’ve got for you.”

Jamie’s eyes immediately lit up into a felicitous resplendence. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, honey.”

Jamie walked toward her foster sister, who was waiting on the sidewalk listening to the meager sizzling of the electric cables of the telephone poles above, her mind on the pleasantries of the remainder of the evening, back at home, Jamie asleep and Brady downstairs with her.

Jamie halted beside her for a moment, her fingers sifting through the bulk of her plastic jack-olantern/ghost bag.

Rachel looked down at her. “Had enough?”

“No way,” Jamie said. She turned, and Rachel followed her past a series of hedges enroute to the next house. “Halloween is great. Can we stay out all night?”

“Forget it, kiddo. We’re home by eight o’clock.”

As they came upon the next house, the last house on the corner past the hedges, they saw that the porch light was off. Rachel told her to ignore the house, and that the family living there was either sick or out somewhere on vacation or at a party. In Haddonfield, most everyone participated in one way or another in this particular holiday, unlike other cities Rachel had heard about where churches had condemned the celebrations as being paganistic and therefore sinful to practice. All Rachel knew was that tonight, in the world of the contemporary, all of the parties and bobbing for apples and putting on costumes and going door—to—door was as innocent as a newborn baby. She had many fond memories of the custom from her childhood, and Jamie and every other little girl or boy would not be the least bit harmed with the same fond memories.

Besides, wasn’t
Christmas
’ origins paganistic, too?

Anyway, aside from what
other
people did or did not do on this night, Rachel knew that it was also a night for little, quiet get-togethers get-togethers in livingrooms,
dark
livngrooms, maybe even dark
bedrooms
while certain parents were having a good time with their friends somewhere, too.

Rachel directed Jamie across the street to start on another block, and when Rachel looked down at her glow-in—the-dark Timex, she knew that this block would be the last. As they arrived at the other side, they came across a small group of children who appeared to be around Jamie’s age, wearing brightly colored clown suits with awkward-looking shoes and ghost white sheets and there was even a kid with a huge, plastic buffalo head which forced him to hang his bag of candy by a string around his neck in better effort to hold up the monstrosity. They looked like refugees from a Saturday morning cartoon nobody wanted to view. The one with the stupid floppy shoes, the clown with the stripes as if posing as an escaped convict from the circus, went up to Jamie.

“Wow!” Kyle said to her. “That clown costume’s really cool.”

Jamie didn’t know what to say. She was fearful the first instant, but the fear soon evolved into a certain delightful surprise. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry about today,” the boy said sincerely. “I didn’t mean it.”

She was stunned. “Really?”

She knew it; it
was
the clown suit. It was a miracle suit.

“Yeah,” Kyle admitted, “I was sort of a jerk.” Then, “Hey, you wanna go with us?”

“Sure!”

Jamie joined the kids, Rachel exhaling arduously, trudging along behind. They walked down the sidewalk and up the cobblestone path to the next house. Rachel waited at the sidewalk again as she watched the kids scramble up to the porch. The kid in the flimsy clown outfit, the boy, rang the doorbell. The front door swung open.

“Trick—or-treat!” Kyle said, holding out his bag, the other children echoing at his sides.

Kelly stood within the doorway before the parade of candy-moochers, and she smiled as she grabbed a fistful of candy from a table just within the entrance. She was wearing absolutely nothing save for an oversized t—shirt with bold, black letters on the front reading COPS DO IT BY THE BOOK. From Rachel’s point of view, she appeared ludicrous, standing there before children in that attire. At first, Kelly did not see the other girl gazing in.

Then she did.

Their eyes locked for a moment.  Rachel noticed something etched across Kelly's face…..something like and overwhelming shock…or guilt.

“Rachel……..” she exclaimed.

Then Rachel saw movement behind her. Curious, she advanced across the cobblestones. The moment she drew close enough to behold what it was she was seeing, she halted. At first, she thought she was mistaken. It didn’t take too long for her to realize that she wasn’t.

It was Brady.

Holy shit
.

It
was
Brady; she was simply having one hell of a time believing it. That bastard. He was there, lounging around on the sofa inside, in the livingroom, his shirt unbuttoned, a beer in his hand. The moment he saw her, the moment the realization absorbed through his consciousness, he bolted to his feet. Kelly was going about her own business with the children as if nothing else interesting was happening.

“Rachel!” Brady was yelling. As the trick-ortreaters went their way to the next household, Rachel turned, her face flushed with mixed anger, disappointment, and hurt. Brady continued to call out, running for the door. “Rachel, wait a minute give me a chance to explain!”

Frantically, he sprinted past Kelly, who was gazing on in amusement, and caught Rachel at the sidewalk, grasping her forearm desperately.

She could not meet his gaze; instead, she turned from him, her eyes somewhere upon the darkened street. Softly, she replied back. “You don’t owe me anything, Brady. No explanations necessary.”

Contemptuous, she pulled her arm free, only for Brady to regain his grip. It was even tighter this time, and she winced, trying unsuccessfully to pull away.

“Listen,” this bastard was saying, “you blow off our date at the last minute....”

“So you hop on the next best thing!” she yelled. “I thought you were different from the other guys.”

“I
am
different,” he pleaded. “I was just pissed off, that’s all.”

“Oh, really? Well, I’ll just let Little Miss Hot Pants get back to nursing your bruised ego.”

Finally, Rachel managed to break free and walk away, leaving Brady standing there, watching her as she went.

“
Rachel
!”

“Brady,” called another voice, a female voice, emanating from the house. It was sensual; beckoning. It was Kelly. “Are you coming?”

Brady looked back at the figure in the doorway. She was standing there, longing for him, silhouetted under the porch light, the outline of her figure visible beneath the thin t—shirt.

***

Rachel half-trotted down the center of the empty street under the few scattered lamp posts. The encounter with Brady had made her lose track of Jamie, and now Jamie and her little band of midgets had vanished. There was absolutely no sign of them anywhere. In fact, there was absolutely no sign of
anyone
, for that matter. It was as if her very presence had summoned all the citizens of the town into their homes.

At first this absence didn’t phase her; the bastard
ex
-boyfriend of hers rattled her brains to such an extent that they were like a puzzle that some little kid came across and tore apart, flinging the black and white pieces into the air. In order for her to think soundly again, the pieces had to be regained. Rachel had to face the possibility that some of these pieces may be forever lost, and it was all because of the little kid symbolized as Brady. Yes, her life was black and white; she felt that nobody ever had their life totally together and figured out. But at least she knew the puzzle fit. Now, it may not ever fit again.

She knew she was a typical young seventeen year old girl. Once, her school counselor had a talk with her about her class schedule---one of the teachers suggested she belonged in a higher English class, and one thing led to another—-—and it was this counselor who told her that she appeared to understand about herself more than was usual for someone her age. She didn’t agree with him at first, but later she realized that he might have been right. She had a sort of phobia that she kept to herself; a phobia about presenting herself as being too egotistical, talking about herself too much, and so whenever she saw a problem in a friend she thought she could help, she would most likely say nothing. Of course, there were exceptions, but she didn’t want to be a “miss know—it-all.” Who knows, maybe she’d be a counselor herself when she got older.

But this was all complicated, an overwhelming, often unbearable botchery of living, and explaining the whole thing proved to be even more frustrating and confusing. All she could think of was the puzzle. The missing pieces. And.....

Brady.

But she’d rather not think about him. That bastard. He was such a typical guy, and she had him figured out to be something else. Perhaps her counselor
was
wrong. Maybe she was just lucky when it came to understanding people. Then again, she wasn’t perfect.

I mustn’t dwell on this
, she told herself.
I must not let something like this get me on. I have to show him that I’m not jealous anymore; that I could just as easily drop him and go on to someone else and not
think twice about it. I must
.

She realized she was dwelling on the subject too much now. She had to concentrate on her most current problem:
she had lost Jamie
.

Well, not
lost
. Wasn’t that putting things a bit drastically? Actually, though, there was no other word she could think of to replace it. Yes, Jamie was lost. Jamie was

“Jamie?” she called.

There was nothing. Not a sound around her save for the rustling of maple leaves around her feet and down the street and sidewalks; the gentle swaying of the trees in the wind, the shutters at the windows of nearby houses to the left and to the right.

“Jamie?” she spoke louder.

Still, there was no sign of life in the streets.

“Just great,” Rachel grumbled to herself. “Just wonderful, Rach. First you lose your boyfriend, then you lose your sister.”

She could not seem to be able to get over the fact that there was
absolutely no one around
, where once there were dozens of clusters of trick—or— treaters and opened screen doors. True, the porch lights of many of the houses were still on, but
was Halloween over with
? She checked her watch.

Suddenly she thought she heard something; something almost behind her and to her right. She recognized it as a sort of a loud, echoing crackling sound, like that of a... .a…..what did it sound like? A twig. It was the sound of a twig snapping amidst the rustling of the leaves. She turned towards the sound.

There, a half of a block away, hovering in the darkness beneath the phantom-like blackness of a tree alongside a parked car, was a face. It was a white face, suspended there, and as close as Rachel dared squint her eyes to see, she could not visually detect the presence of a connecting body. The shadowy-white face just hung; no,
floated
, there, like the cabalistic configuration of a mime wearing nothing but black save for a painted-on face. But this face did not seem to possess any specific features; of course, she was too far from the figure to tell, but it appeared as if whatever it was she was gazing at had no eyes.

But this glimpse was momentary, and within the next second the whiteness was gone, having suddenly withdrawn into the obscurity of the night.

She stood there, profoundly startled, looking fearfully into the space where the thing---whatever it was---had been, or she
thought
it had been. It didn’t take her very long at all to realize that the streets were empty....so
totally empty
... .and she was a girl alone in the center of a lonely street.

Slowly, she drew in a breath and managed to call out, attempting to show no signs of fear. “Who’s there?”

But there was only the forlorn answer of the wind rustling against hedges, and of the leaves.

Her frustration with the recent past had now switched dramatically to fear of the present. Nonetheless, she knew she had to find Jamie, had to find
anybody
, even if it was Brady, just to feel safe again. She advanced a step, then her pace quickened down the street once more until the dark figure appeared abruptly in front of her.

She halted.

She could see now that there
was
a body attached to it, a body of extensive proportion, a man’s body, and she could see that he was garbed in a ragged mechanic’s coveralls that appeared not to fit him properly. He remained there, at the end of the block, a tall, unmoving figure, standing as if engaged with Rachel in an old-fashioned showdown she’d see in the old Westerns on television. But, unlike those old Westerns, she felt an overwhelming surge of terror and panic. For another lingering moment, neither Rachel nor the shadow figure moved. They simply stood there, eyes staring into hollow eyes.