Once Upon a Halloween (16 page)

    "Hunter?" Charles yelled.

    Ignoring him, Hunter commanded, "Drop your weapons! Right now! Now! Drop 'em or I'll shoot!"

    They stood side by side, staring at him.

    "The knife!" Hunter shouted. "The hatchet! Drop'em!"

    Bryce and Simone glanced at each other.

    "Drop 'em!"

    "We just came for the woman," Bryce said.

    "Woman?"

    "Our friend."

    "Where is she?" Simone asked.

    "Gone."

    "Gone where?"

    "Away. I don't know. She ran out the door and got away."

    "That's her saber," Bryce said.

    "She gave it to me. Now drop your knife and put your hands up." He jerked the muzzle toward Simone. "You. Drop the hatchet."

    Frowning, she lowered her arm.

    "I'll be damned," Bryce said, sounding suddenly, strangely pleased. "What's that on your piece, kid? Is that a
trigger lock?"

    "Drop your knife or you'll find out!"

    "I'll drop it, all right. I'll drop
you,
you dumb fuck." He charged.

    Simone charged, raising her hatchet.

    Hunter whirled around and ran, yelling, "Watch out, Charles!" A moment later, he saw Charles in the foyer. Squatting, leaning back against the front door, trying to stand up. He was sobbing. He had terror in his eyes.

    
Shit! Dead meat!

    Hunter ran for the stairs.

    
Worked before.

    
I run get 'em one at a time when they come up...

    "Get that one!" Bryce gasped.

    "
No!
" Charles squealed.

    Hunter changed course. Threw himself against the newel post. It hurt him, but it stopped him. Pivoting, he slashed sideways with the sword and Bryce ran into its path. Bryce's hood had already slipped off. He had short, neatly trimmed hair as if he'd recently had a haircut. He looked young and powerful like a Marine. The blade of Hunter's sword clipped off the top of his ear and chopped into the side of his head.

    As Hunter jerked the blade free, Bryce veered off to the side and crashed into the wall beyond the stairs.

    Simone, hatchet raised over Charles's head, turned to see what had happened. Then she gave Charles a shove. As he cried out and fell to the floor, Simone turned to face Hunter.

    She reached up with one hand and swept her hood off.

    
My God, she's beautiful. Are they all this beautiful?

    Sleek, black hair draped the sides of her head. A loose hank of it dropped across her brow. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips a glossy crimson.

    She was breathing hard. She didn't look frightened, though.

    "Where's Eleanor?" she asked.

    "I already told you."

    "She really isn't here?"

    "She escaped."

    A smile lifted a corner of her mouth.
Not only beautiful, but smug.

    "In that case," she said, "I'll let you go."

    "Really?"

    She nodded. "Instead of kill you."

    "What did
you
do with Shannon and Laura?" The smile spread to the other side of her mouth. A big smile, but a cold one. "Oh, we had a very fine time with those two." He felt himself go cold inside.

    "Did you... hurt them?"

    She chuckled. "Maybe a touch."

    Then she must've realized something about the look on Hunter's face. Her smile died. She hurled her hatchet at him. As he tried to dodge it, she broke for the living room. The hatchet brushed the side of Hunter's arm.

    It didn't stop him.

    She was fast. Her sneakers pounded the floor. Her black hair streamed out behind her. Her robe fluttered.

    She made it into the middle of the living room before Hunter swung his sword.

    

    

    "This is no good," Rhonda said, sinking down and sitting on the curb. She put her knees up and rested her forearms on them.

    Bret sat down on the curb, too, but Mandy stayed on her feet. Though she was tired of standing, she wasn't about to sit on some dirty old curb. Not in her good poodle skirt that she'd worn for the past three Halloweens.

    If you don't take care of stuff you like, you ruin it and then it's no good any more.

    Down on the curb, Bret reached out and patted Rhonda on the arm. "It's okay," he said. "We'll find 'em."

    "I'm starting to wonder," Rhonda muttered. She looked up at Mandy. "I read on the internet where all these kids vanish
every
Halloween. Like
dozens
of them."

    
"No fooling?"
Bret asked.

    "They just... disappear into thin air. They go out trick or treating and they don't come home. A lot of them, they're never seen again."

    "Jeez."

    Rhonda shrugged. "And some, their bodies gel found later. You know, like in shallow graves and stuff. What's happening, they're like getting snatched by devil worshippers and stuff. You know, for human sacrifices."

    "Really?" Bret asked. He sounded impressed.

    "I've never heard anything like that," Mandy said.

    "I got sent an e-mail all about it. Just a few days ago. You know, to warn me. Told me I should forward it to everyone I care about so they'll be extra careful or not even go trick or treating at all."

    "I guess we didn't get that one," Mandy said.

    "
I
did. I sure wish I'd listened."

    "That stuff s mostly B.S.," Mandy told her. "All those warnings they send around. I bet nine out of ten of 'em aren't even true. Like that one about the deadly spider that hides under airline toilet seats and bites you on the keester? Not true. Hardly
any
of 'em are true. They're like urban legends and stuff? I think a lot of people like to get their jollies starting crazy rumors. Just to scare people, you know?"

    "I don't know if
this
one was such B.S.," Rhonda said. "I mean,
something
happened to..." Her voice cracked. She stopped talking and clamped her lower lip between her teeth and lowered her head.

    "It's all right," Bret said, patting her arm.

    "I'm sure they're okay," Mandy added.

    
Sure hope Dad is. He's been gone a long time.

    Well, maybe not
that
long. Ten minutes? But she'd expected him to be back before now.

    Though he'd supposedly run off to help rescue that Julie woman, Mandy couldn't exactly picture her dad taking on three attackers. He was pretty dopey in a lot of ways, but he wasn't stupid.

    
Not that there ever
were
three attackers,
Mandy reminded herself.

    What she pretty much expected to happen, her dad would come out of the woods with Phyllis in tow, and maybe some kind of a story about how they gave up on looking for Julie. And with any luck, maybe they'd lost the oddball in the sheet.

    Mandy'd had a funny feeling about that woman from the start,

    Wouldn't surprise her if there wasn't any Julie in the first place, and the gal just made her up as a way to get Dad to run off into the woods.

    The gal, after all, was butt-naked under her sheet. Maybe all horny.

    It's kind of a horny night, Mandy thought. She'd been feeling a little that way, herself. Maybe because of the strong, warm wind and how it felt against her skin and how it blew her skirt against her legs,

    It
would
feel great to run around in nothing but a sheet, she thought. Or in nothing at all.

    Not that she would do such a thing.

    You'd have to be a real mental case to actually do it - to go out on the streets like that where other people are around. Maybe okay in your own backyard...

    "Know what I think?" Bret asked, looking up at her.

    "What?" Mandy asked.

    "We oughta ring some doorbells."

    "We're done trick or treating."

    "I don't mean that. I mean, and ask people whether they know where Gary and Rosie and Doug are."

    "I don't know."

    "We're supposed to wait here for your dad," Rhonda told him.

    "He just doesn't want us going away and getting lost. We can go to some houses right here." Thumb out, he raised a hand above her shoulder and pointed behind him. "Like theirs. Maybe Laura and Shannon know where they are. And even if they don't, I bet they might help us look for 'em."

    "They didn't even open the door last time," Mandy reminded him.

    "That's 'cause maybe they were busy, I bet they'll open it now."

    Lifting her head, Rhonda said, "I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask around a little. Somebody might've noticed something."

    Mandy shrugged. "Okay with me. I guess it'd be better than just waiting."

    Bret grabbed his treat bag and sprang up grinning.

    

    

    The lashes seemed to be over. Finally. Shannon had lost track of the count, but she thought there'd been more than the twenty.

    Done flinching and thrashing, Laura seemed limp. She didn't move much except for the gasping and sobbing.

    "Now get up," Fain said.

    Shannon, herself weeping quietly, didn't move fast enough.

    "A lash for pokiness," Fain announced.

    Shannon heard the familiar
krak!
Laura jerked rigid and cried out.

    "Stop it!" Shannon yelled. She kneed the ground, twisted her body and rolled onto her side, taking Laura with her. Then she brought her legs toward her chest, bucked, lurched, tried to fling herself off the ground and sit up. Couldn't.

    She'd managed to sit up before. Then, however, Laura'd been helping.

    "You've gotta try," Shannon told her.

    Laura kept crying.

    "Come on."

    "Incoming!" a man called out.

    Fain reached down, grabbed the rope binding Shannon's upper arm to Laura's, and gives it a powerful pull. Shannon went with it, fighting Laura's weight. For a moment, ropes tore her in opposite directions. Then she was sitting up, cool grass under her buttocks.

    Fain stepped back. "Now stand up."

    Nodding, Shannon took a deep breath. She wasn't ready for the struggle to gain her feet, but...

    Fain turned away to look at something.

    Shannon glanced toward the others. They all seemed to be staring in the same direction as Fain.

    Shannon looked, too.

    Someone was coming.

    
Incoming.

    One of theirs, she supposed. But maybe they weren't completely sure. With the darkness and the distance, the person striding their way was hardly more than a pale shape.

    A pale,
strange
shape.

    Carrying something over its shoulder?

    Coming closer, closer. Vanishing in darkness, reappearing in moonlight, changing course to avoid trees and tombstones.

    The shape became a woman.

    A woman carrying someone over her shoulder.

    For a confused moment, Shannon thought this might be a mother bringing her dead child into the cemetery for a secret, nighttime burial. It shocked her, saddened her.

    Then she realized the burden was larger than she'd first thought. Not a small child, at all. Maybe a teenager... a brunette wearing what appeared to be a black dress.

    The woman seemed to be naked.

    
One of them, and she's got a kid. A prisoner to join the others.

    Fain glanced back at Shannon. "Stay," she said, then walked over to her group.

    Nobody seemed to be speaking. While the seven captured kids remained on their knees, Fain and the robed adults walked closer to the woman.

    In their midst, the woman bent forward and unloaded her burden, The kid flopped off her shoulder, fell, and landed back-first on the ground.

    Shannon winced.

    "What?" Laura whispered.

    "They've got another kid."

    The kid lay sprawled on the ground, not moving.

    Something familiar about the woman looming over her. There wasn't enough light to make out the features of her face, but Shannon was certain she'd seen her before: blond hair, wide shoulders, large breasts, slender waist, strong-looking arms and legs...

    
Her!

    One of the three who'd attacked them in the living room.

    I didn't just
see
her before, I
fought
with her.

    Shannon remembered being thrown to the floor by her, wrestling with her and Bryce while Simone held Laura at bay with a hatchet. This had been the one with the rope. But she hadn't tied them with it; she'd gone upstairs after Hunter.

    Just before taking them away, Bryce had called upstairs to her, Called her by name. Lenore? No, that wasn't quite it. Eleanor. She'd told them to go on without her, and Bryce and Simone had smiled about it. Smiles nasty with the knowledge of what Eleanor intended to do with Hunter.

    Probably along the same lines of what
they
did to us in the woods Shannon thought.

    
But this isn't Hunter.

    
Did she kill him?

    "What's... happening?" Laura asked. She didn't seem to be crying anymore, but Shannon heard pain in the low huskiness of her voice.

    "One of our pals is here," Shannon whispered, "The big blonde."

    "With the sword?"

    "Yeah. But no sword now."