Halloweenland (16 page)

“Eileen, the three-thirty is here, it is! What’s the bet, then?”

There was a mumble on the other end.

“Ha!” Meg chortled. “And take it I will! Stinkin’ bus people! And I know that not one of the cheap bastards’ll cross the street, just like the last one!”

She stood in the now open doorway staring at the bus as Malone and Grant walked down to the car.

As they got into the car Malone laughed sharply and said, “Did you believe a single word she said?”

Grant stared through the windshield.

“Every word of it,” he said.

After an hour of argument, Malone agreed to take Grant to the Burren the next day. They ate dinner at the hotel in Killarney. Grant was already sick of the Irish custom of serving potatoes with every meal, sometimes in three different forms. The steak Grant had ordered (local Angus beef, which was excellent) came on a bed of mashed potatoes, with a bowl of boiled potatoes for the table. And every lunch and dinner he had had was also accompanied by family-style vegetables in the Irish flag colors: inevitably green beans, cauliflower and carrots, all steamed to tastlessness.

Malone speared a boiled potato and held it up. “Do you know where this comes from?” he asked.

Grant shook his head.

“Cyprus. They’re imported, all of them. I have yet to eat a potato that was grown in Ireland.”

Malone’s face was more flushed than usual, and Grant asked, “Are you okay, Tom?”

“Just a little tired, is all. You’ve already given me more
activity than I’ve had in years. I must say I’ve enjoyed it, though.”

Grant leaned across the table. “This stuff is real, you know.”

Malone shrugged, put another potato on his dish and cut into it with his fork. “It’s all the same to me, Bill. I don’t mind telling you I don’t believe a single bit of it. But you do, and it gets both of us out of the house. I forgot how much I missed real police work. I told you before, Riley Gates vouched for you and that’s all I need. The rest is just recreation. Whether you find your boogeyman or not, the chase has been fun. And I want you to look in the mirror before you go to bed tonight. Two days off the hard booze and butts and you look like a different man. I’m proud of myself, I am.”

Grant nodded. “I have you to thank.”

“Yes, you do. It’s been good for me to boss somebody around. Been a while.” He pointed to Grant’s plate with his fork. “Eat your potatoes, boyo. Good for you.”

Grant groaned.

After dinner Grant was ready for bed but Malone dragged him to a singing pub in time to hear some traditional Irish music. It was crowded and noisy, but the music was good. The Guinness, though, only made him sleepier. He had actually nodded off at their tiny table when he was jostled awake by Malone’s beefy hand.

“Time to go,” the old cop said. “I’m tired myself and we have a bit of a drive tomorrow. We’ll go on to Galway after the Burren, if you like. Cheaper than staying here another night. You’ll like Galway, you will. Everybody does. We missed the Oyster Festival a couple weeks back but there’s plenty else to see. And it’s a college
town, so maybe we’ll see some pretty girls.”

Malone smiled at him. “So what’ll it be? On to Galway after tramping around the Burren looking at nothing?”

“Galway sounds fine.”

“Good then.”

Grant didn’t tell him that he had no idea if they would ever leave the Burren alive.

“They brought Neil Armstrong, the Apollo astronaut, here, and he said it was the only place on Earth that looked like the surface of the moon.”

Malone stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the rocky landscape while Grant searched the four horizons. It was a raw, blustery day, clouds and blue sky occasionally trading places, and there had been a sprinkle of rain on the ride up. They had checked out of their hotel in Killarney, their bags thrown in the back of the Toyota.

Below and to their right lay a verdant green valley, as out of place in this alien landscape as a golf course on the planet Mars. All else was limestone, the rocks so densely packed together they looked in places like the bottom of a quarry. And yet tiny wild flowers, yellow and purple, had found purchase here and there in cracks, in the narrow spaces between rocks.

Grant made a slow surveying circle, and Malone laughed, then coughed.

“No sign of your boogeyman, Bill?” he asked, laughing
again. “We’ve been here a bloody hour and the rocks haven’t changed, far as I can tell.”

He coughed again. “I’ve got to sit down, boyo.”

He ambled off to the car, and Grant looked after him with concern. Malone looked no better today than he had the night before—his ruddy complexion had washed to paleness, and twice they had to pull over for him to catch his breath. He claimed it was nothing, that he was “just tired and old,” but Grant wasn’t so sure.

“Maybe we should head out to Galway soon,” he said, reluctantly, and Malone gave a wave as he climbed into the car and sat down, putting his head back on the rest and closing his eyes.

“Anytime, boyo,” Malone said.

Grant shaded his eyes against the sudden appearance of the sun, and looked to the north, the west—

There was a figure to the west, darkly outlined against the gray-white rocks. A black cape, swirling independent of the breeze.

“Tom,” Grant said, but the figure in the car looked asleep.

Grant began to climb over rocks toward the distant specter, who was unmoving, staring out across the Burren, seemingly unheedful of Grant.

The day darkened, gray clouds rising from the west behind Samhain and climbing the sky. The sun retreated and then was gone, and a chill rain began to fall.

“Samhain,” Grant called, as he got nearer, but the figure refused to acknowledge him.

Grant drew close, and now Samhain turned slowly to face him.

“We meet again,” he said, the slash of mouth forming something like a smile. But the hollow eyes were empty,
and there was, as Meg Conner had said, a great aura of melancholy about him.

“Where is she?” Grant said.

Slowly, the specter shrugged. “Not here. Not anymore. She went on without me.”

“Why?”

Samhain paused, then looked to the west once more. “Because I failed her. Because I won’t help her.”

There was a long pause. “Because, Detective, I discovered that there is another hand in all this.”

Again he looked to the west.

“She has to be stopped, Samhain,” Grant said.

“I agree. There are . . . things already in the works.”

“What things?”

“The future,” Samhain said, again turning his blank oval face to Grant, “remains to be seen.” Without pause he said, “For millennia, I thought the Dark One was my master. I always knew who the Dark One was. But I never knew who
I
was.

“Do you know, this is where I started on this planet. It was a long time again. It was barren then and it’s still barren. I used to treasure the barrenness. But now I don’t. Something has happened to me and I don’t know what. There were other places, before this planet, and I don’t have a clear memory of them. Only hints that have come back to me. Don’t you find that sad, Detective? I have no memory of my own . . . beginnings.

“In a way I thought myself a god—but what am I god of? Death? It happens every day, every hour, every second. It’s happening as we speak, all around us. I could raise one of these sterile-looking stones and we would find some vile insect eating some other vile insect. Within twenty miles of where we stand, someone is dying.

“I thought I hated life, Detective, but I don’t. This is the odd and dangerous truth, and something I never fully realized.

“And I served a false god, it seems.”

“If we don’t stop her, she’ll destroy everything.”

Samhain sighed. “Oh, yes, she certainly will. It’s what the Dark One has always longed for—the absolute negation of life. And, if there is no more life, there will be no more death. I knew that, of course, but I’m afraid the finality of it escaped me.”

Samhain turned slowly to face Grant. “There are a few things I want to get . . . straight, Detective.” He smiled grimly. “Off my chest, if I possessed one. You see, I’ve never actually . . . killed anyone. I’m powerless to do so. You must believe me. It’s one of my tricks. I can cloud a man’s mind into thinking or doing something, but only if he is susceptible, and only if he is willing. Bud Ganley, for instance. He unhooked the chain holding that car engine himself. All I did was . . . suggest.”

“What about Marianne Carlin?” Grant snapped.

Samhain’s stone face regarded him silently for a moment.

“It was the Dark One who caused her death. Though I do now regret it. I suppose you might call me an . . . accessory, if you like. A tool. I’ve never been able to influence you. And I must tell you that I’ve grown quite fond of you over the years. I have come to regard many of you as interesting creatures, deserving, even, of an amount of respect. All the bugaboos I’ve tossed at you were in your own mind. I have no power over anything. I didn’t kill your wife, you know—I only let you believe I did. She was not a bad woman, but she was tired of life. I merely . . . abetted her, if you will. And sometimes I was a conduit for the Dark One himself—which was, I suppose, my greatest crime.”

“You’ll help me, then.”

It began to rain harder, a mist rising over the rocks which had turned chalky white with the wetness. Samhain turned away. “You? You can do little, Detective. And I don’t know if I can even help myself.”

“Where did she go?”

“To Orangefield. To Halloween. Where else? Though neither of us will find her until she wants to be seen. Midnight on Halloween, four days from now.” He sighed again, a sound beyond sadness. “Your friend, the other policeman, please believe that it was not me. It was merely his time.”

“What do you mean?” Grant said in alarm.

Samhain began to slowly drift away over the rocks, his black cape swirling as he receded. “You must talk to Reggie Bright, Detective. She is our only hope in this matter. And you must hope that I am truly strong this Halloween.”

And then the wraith was gone, melting into the rain and mist, and Grant was running back to the car.

It took almost two days to arrange things for Malone’s burial and the disposition of his possessions. The police in Galway, and then in Killarney, had been helpful and even respectful, but they made it clear that Grant wasn’t to leave the country until the coroner was finished with his report. Malone had a brother in Milwaukee, who flew over, and finally Grant was able to hand him the car and house keys and head for Dublin airport.

It was raining, had been since the funeral, and Grant was relieved when the Aer Lingus Airbus climbed above the clouds and the sun emerged, glaring coldly off the tops of the clouds below. Soon the sun set and the stars shone even more coldly. And then Grant sank into blessed sleep.

New York looked strange after the wet bright green of Ireland, but by the time he drove onto the Northway into the Adirondacks he began to feel at home. The trees had dropped many of their leaves, but there was still a riot of colors from the elms and oaks nestled in with the upstate pines. The radio said it was thirty-eight degrees, and
Grant thought of the light overcoat packed in his luggage in the trunk and turned the heat on in the car.

Orangefield was bedecked for Halloween, pumpkins everywhere. An orange stripe had been painted down the center of Main Street, and Grant was relieved to see that the Pumpkin Days Festival was over and that the tents had been taken down in Ranier Park.
THE MAYOR GERGEN WELCOMES YOU TO ORANGEFIELD, THE PUMPKIN CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
banner was still up on City Hall, though, Grant noted wryly.

Out of habit, Grant slowed down as he passed the police station, but then he drove on, turning ten minutes later onto Sagett River Road.

The Bright house had a real estate sign on the front lawn that looked like it had been there for quite some time. Grant noted the phone number and punched it into his cell phone.

“Boskone Realty,” a hopeful chirpy female voice answered.

“I’m looking for the Bright family. One of your signs is on the front lawn.”

“You interested? Haven’t been able to move that property in almost two years. Now it’s the market but it should have sold in a minute twenty-four months ago. Beautiful place, a little high end for the area but that’s a plus. The newest asking price is”—Grant heard shuffling papers—“three twenty. I’m sure I can get them down near three at this point.”

“I’d like to get in touch with the Brights.”

A short laugh. “So would I! They owe me a fee or two.”

Grant asked if there was a forwarding address.

“Only thing I have is her sister, who’s handling the
house sale. They split up a while ago. I think he’s dead but I’m not sure.”