Johnny Halloween Read online

  “If you treat me to a slice of peach pie when this is over, and maybe toss in some Häagen-Dazs and a couple bottles of good beer as an appetizer, I’ll think about forgiving you.”

  “Sure thing.” Bill coughed as he reinforced the circle. “Really, this ain’t so bad. Hell of a lot easier than installing a new sprinkler system.”

  “It shouldn’t be long now,” Nardo said. “When we make our break, do you want to take the knife or the chucks?”

  Bill thought it over as he powdered the cultist’s head and siphoned the dust through his fingers. “Shit, Nardo, how about you be a real sport and let me take the .357?”

  Shaking his head, Nardo handed over the gun.

  Headlights bloomed out on 63. The bats didn’t seem to notice. Nardo and Bill stepped to the center of the circle, back to back, and the chalky boundary dusted around their boots.

  Nardo brandished the chucks, stirring a breeze all his own, and cocked the weapon over his shoulder.

  “Batter up,” he said.

  TREATS

  Monsters stalked the supermarket aisles.

  Maddie pushed the squeaky-wheeled cart past a pack of werewolves, smiling when they growled at her because that was the polite thing to do. She couldn’t help staring at the bright eyes inside the plastic masks. Brown eyes, blue and green eyes. Human eyes. Not the eyes that she couldn’t see. Not the black eyes that stared at her from Jimmy’s face, so cold, ordering her here and there without a glint of compassion or love.

  “Jimmy, get away from that candy!”

  Maddie covered her mouth, fearful that she’d spoken. No, she hadn’t said anything. Besides, Jimmy was at home with them. He’d said that they were preparing for Operation Trojan Horse and he had to speak to them before—

  “Jimmy, I’m telling you for the last time….”

  A little ghoul clutching a trick-or-treat bag scampered down the aisle. He tore at the wrapping of a Snickers bar and gobbled a big bite before his mother caught his tattered collar.

  “I warned you, young man,” she said, snatching away the bright-orange treat sack. “You’re not going to eat this candy all at once and make yourself sick. You’re allowed one piece a day, remember? That way your treats will last for a long, long time.”

  Maddie saw the little boy’s shoulders slump. Her Jimmy had done the same thing last Halloween when Maddie had given him a similar speech, except her Jimmy had been a sad-faced clown, not a ghoul.

  And not a general. Not their general.

  Maddie raised her hand, as if she could wave off the boy’s mother before she made the same mistake Maddie had made a year earlier. She saw lipstick smears on her fingers and imagined what her face must look like. It had been so long since they’d allowed her to wear cosmetics that she’d made a mess of herself without realizing it. The boy’s mother would see that, and she wouldn’t listen. She’d rush away with her son before Maddie could warn her.

  Defeated, the boy stared down at his ghoul-face mirrored in the freshly waxed floor. His mother crumpled his trick-or-treat bag closed, and the moment slowed. Maddie saw herself reaching into her shopping cart, watched her lipstick-smeared fingers tear open a bag of Milk Duds and fling the little yellow boxes down the aisle in a slow, scattering arc. She saw the other Jimmy’s mother yelling at her, the boxes bouncing, the big store windows behind the little ghoul and the iron-gray clouds boiling outside. Wind-driven leaves the color of old skin crackling against the glass.

  And then Maddie was screaming at the little ghoul. “Eat your candy! Eat it now! Don’t let them come after it!”

  ****

  She paid for the Milk Duds, of course, and for all the other candy that she had heaped into the shopping cart. The manager didn’t complain. Maddie knew that the ignorant man only wanted her out of his store.

  He thought that she was crazy.

  Papery leaves clawed at her ankles as she loaded the candy into the back of the station wagon. She smiled, remembering the other Jimmy, the ghoul Jimmy, gobbling Milk Duds. Other monsters had joined in the feast. Werewolves, Frankensteins, zombies. Maddie prayed that they’d all have awful stomachaches. Then they’d stay home, snuggled in front of their television sets. They wouldn’t come knocking at her door tonight. They’d be safe from her Jimmy and his army.

  Maddie climbed into the station wagon and slammed the door. She pretended not to notice Jimmy’s friends in the back seat. It was easy, because she couldn’t see them, couldn’t see their black eyes. But she could feel their presence nonetheless.

  Slowly, Maddie drove home. Little monsters stood on front porches and watched the gray sky, waiting intently for true darkness, when they would descend on the neighborhood in search of what Jimmy wanted to give them. Maddie glanced in the rearview mirror at the grocery bags in the back of the station wagon. Even in brown paper, even wrapped in plastic, she could smell the sugar. It was the only smell she knew anymore, and she tasted it in the back of her throat.

  God, she’d been tasting it for a year now.

  “Mommy,” Jimmy had cried, “you said my candy would last. Now look at it. Look at them. They ruined it. I want new candy. I want it now!”

  But Jimmy’s whining had been a lie. Maddie knew that now. Jimmy hadn’t wanted the candy. They had wanted it, and they’d coaxed Jimmy into getting it for them. And they scared her, even if they didn’t scare her son. They’d always scared her.

  Because they were everywhere. In the cupboards. Under the floor. In the garden and under the rim of the toilet seat. Maddie’s house swelled with them. And when she went to work, they were there, too, watching her through the windows. Black eyes she couldn’t see, staring. Through the winter cold, through the summer heat, they were always there. Studying her. Never resting.

  They had her son, too. He had a million fathers now, all who cared for him more than the man who’d given him his face and his last name before disappearing beneath a wave of unpaid bills. They nested in Jimmy’s room and traveled in his lunch box. Jimmy took them places and showed them things. He taught them about the town, and they told him how smart he was. They made him a general and swore to obey his commands.

  Maddie pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. She sat in the quiet car, dreading the house. Inside, Jimmy’s legions waited. Jimmy waited, too. But Jimmy wasn’t a sad-faced clown anymore. Now he was a great leader, and he was about to attack.

  The sky rumbled.

  Heavy raindrops splattered the windshield.

  Maddie almost smiled but caught herself just in time. She glanced in the rearview mirror and pretended to wipe at her smeared lipstick, but really she was looking for Jimmy’s spies.

  She wished that she could see their eyes.

  ****

  Jimmy was in the basement, telling the story of the Trojan horse. They stood at attention in orderly black battalions, listening to every word. Maddie didn’t know how they tolerated it. Jimmy had told them the story at least a hundred times.

  “The candy’s upstairs, Jimmy. I left it on the kitchen table.”

  Jimmy thumbed the brim of a military cap that was much too large for his head. He’d made Maddie buy the cap at an army surplus store, and it was the smallest size available. “I’ll grow into it.” That’s what he’d said, smiling, but he wasn’t smiling now.

  Maddie managed a grin. “The candy, Jimmy. You remember—”

  “Of course I remember! I only wish that you’d remember to call me the right thing!”

  “I’m sorry, General.” Maddie straightened. “The candy—the supplies—are upstairs in the mess hall.”

  Jimmy seemed pleased. “Very good. Bring the supplies down here, and we’ll begin Operation Trojan Horse.”

  Maddie stared at the black sea on the cement floor, imagining a million eyes focused on her. She wouldn’t walk among them. Not when she could see them clearly, not when she could feel them scuttling over her feet.

  “I don’t want to do that,” she said.

  The boy’s lips twi
sted into a cruel smile. “Maybe you’d rather have me send a few squads to your bedroom tonight, like the last time you disobeyed a direct order. You won’t get much sleep with a jillion little feet crawling all over you….”

  “Jimmy!” She stared at him, revolted by his black insect eyes, and then turned away.

  She got the candy.

  Jimmy used a penknife to make tiny holes in the packages. His troops climbed inside, listening to their leader talk of conquest and the Trojan Horse and the birth of a new order. He told them the best places to hide in a house and reminded the scouts that he must be kept informed at all times concerning the progress of their mission.

  And when they were all in place, why then…

  Silently, Maddie climbed the stairs. Rainwater ran down the front window, drooling from the rusty gutters above. The street outside was slick and black. The sidewalks were empty, gray; a flotilla of fallen leaves swam in the cement gutters. Maddie watched the leaves and imagined hundreds of little monsters washed into their homes by a great wave.

  She looked down and saw her son’s face mirrored in the window. His reflection was smeared with rain, sad, his straight lips twisted into a dripping frown, his black eyes deep pools overflowing high cheekbones. He exhaled sharply and the image fogged over.

  “They just told me,” he whispered. “It took them a long time to get out of the car. I guess you think that was pretty smart, closing the vents and all.”

  Maddie said nothing. She stared at the foggy spot on the window. Just a glimpse, she thought. Just a glimpse, but it was a clown’s face I saw.

  “I never thought about this.” Jimmy stared out at the rain. “They aren’t coming, are they?”

  “Not tonight.”

  Jimmy whispered, “Not tonight, troops. Operation Trojan Horse is scrubbed.”

  Maddie took a deep breath, hating the air, hating the stink of sugar. She thought about the little clown she’d seen mirrored in the rain-washed window, and she thought about the other Jimmy, the little ghoul, safe and dry in front of a TV set.

  Tiny antennae probed Maddie’s heel. Tiny feet, sticky with chocolate, marched over her toes.

  The rain came harder now, in sheets. Jimmy brushed his troops away from his mother’s feet. He rose and took her hand. Mirrored in the window, his lips were straight, his jaw firm.

  God, it’s been so long since he touched me, she thought, but she said, “Jimmy, let’s watch television.”

  He nodded, studying the rain, not really listening.

  His eyes narrowed until Maddie couldn’t see them anymore.

  “Next year,” he said, his grip tightening.

  THREE DOORS

  When Halloween rolled around that year, Johnny Meyers painted his right hand black.

  Of course, that right hand didn’t really belong to Johnny. It was made of rubber, and he’d only had it three months. Brought it back from the war with him. Doesn’t matter which war. They’re all the same.

  Now, Johnny didn’t paint his hand black because he wanted a costume. Sure, it was Halloween, but he didn’t care about that. It was more like he wanted that hand to do some things for him—things he couldn’t manage if it were pink and clean and ordinary.

  So Johnny got out some black enamel he’d used to paint model cars when he was a kid. He loosened up a stiff brush in a jar of thinner, and he painted the hand from its fake fingertips to its socketed rubber wrist. Then he sat and watched a monster movie while the paint dried. Trick or treaters knocked on the front door that Johnny never answered, and Frankenstein and the Wolf Man went at it on the TV. But Johnny Meyers paid no attention. He sat there as still as could be, cradling that rubber hand in his lap.

  An hour ticked by. The drying paint stretched like a new skin over Johnny’s prosthetic hand, pulling those rubber fingers tight, curling them into a fist sealed up by a rubber thumb.

  That was all right with Johnny.

  Tonight he needed a fist.

  Because a fist was built for knocking.

  ****

  Now, maybe that’s a little hard to believe. Not the part about a fist being built for knocking, but the part about a rubber hand curling into a fist because of a little black paint. But, hey...it doesn’t really matter if you believe it or not. That’s the way it happened. You can go ahead and fill in the blanks yourself if you need to. Figure someone cast a bucket of mojo over that fake hand while Johnny was in the hospital. Figure that a dying patient sweated some magic into that hand before he kicked off, and the folks in the PT unit decided to save the government a few bucks and pass on that five-fingered hunk of rubber to Johnny. Hell, you can figure the damn hand came from some haunted curio shop over on the far side of The Twilight Zone if you want to.

  Doesn’t matter to me how you explain it.

  See, I’m not here to draw you a diagram.

  I’m just here to tell you a story.

  So when Johnny got up out of his chair, he knew exactly what that mojo hand could do for him. He’d been thinking about it all week long—listening to dry leaves churn out there in the black October night…eyeing those fat pumpkins waiting for knives on all those neatly swept porches over in town…watching spookshows on his little excuse for a TV when sleep wouldn’t come.

  What Johnny was thinking about was the power that painted hand would hold tonight, on Halloween, when witches and broomsticks and all that other crap that goes bump in the night holds sway. And what Johnny’s brain told him was this: his mojo hand would give him three magic knocks on three ordinary doors. And it didn’t matter who waited behind those doors—every one of them would open for Johnny Meyers, and whoever waited on the other side would be his to command.

  ****

  And I know what you’re thinking now. Sure—I’ve heard of “The Monkey’s Paw.” Who the hell hasn’t? A bucket of sour mojo, three wishes going bad, a dead guy knocking on his momma’s door…all that. But that was W. W. Jacobs’ story. This one’s mine, and I’ll play it my way. It’s about a rubber hand that’s painted black, and a guy named Johnny, and three doors he’ll be knocking on before midnight rolls around.

  So Johnny moved on—the screen door banged shut behind him, heavy footfalls thudded across the porch, dry leaves crackled beneath his boots as he crossed the yard to the gravel driveway.

  Johnny’s pickup waited by the mailbox. It wasn’t much to look at. More rust than steel—a little bit like Johnny himself.

  A yank courtesy of Johnny’s real hand, and the door ratcheted open like an old man’s jaw.

  Johnny climbed behind the wheel, started the engine, and notched that sucker into gear.

  ****

  Lucky for Johnny, the truck was an automatic. Would have been hell shifting with a rubber hand if he’d had a manual transmission. But Johnny’s truck was easy—the only thing he’d really had to do as far as conversion was tighten down a clamp that attached a little knob to the steering wheel. After that, all he had to do was grab hold of that knob with his good hand, and he could make his turns one-handed.

  Johnny headed up a two-lane road. Country—not many lights out there unless you knew where to look for them. The truck’s radio didn’t work, and neither did the heater. The cab was cold enough to make a rattler sleep through the whole damn winter without feeling a thing. Johnny himself didn’t feel it much. He was a big guy. Lots of meat on him—minus that right hand, of course.

  It was a familiar road, and it brought familiar memories. There were lots of things Johnny remembered about the way things were before the war. Lots of things he’d forgotten, too…but, hey, a couple of grenades send you twenty feet in the air and take a couple pounds of skin and bone off you in the bargain, you’d figure it would shake a few parts loose in your brainpan, too.

  That’s the way it was with Johnny. Of the stuff he remembered, most of it was good. Like drives with Elena on nights like this. Banging around country roads in the old pickup, just the two of them. Driving down to the river where the water seemed to run cold
and clear any time of year. Finding the moon down there waiting above the trees like some kind of searchlight, and finding the shadows that could hide them from it.

  Laughter in the dark. Just the two of them. That was the way Johnny liked remembering it. Those nights by the river, and other nights before he’d gone away. That was what he had. See, Johnny hadn’t seen Elena since he’d come home. Mostly, it was because of her parents. They had their reasons. In fact, her dad had Johnny over for a beer when he first got home. Sat him down at the table. No one else in the house—not Elena, not her mom. The old man wasn’t what you’d call talkative but there were words, the kind that barely peak above a whisper. He explained things to Johnny, told him why he couldn’t see Elena anymore. But the words didn’t matter to Johnny. For him, those words were curled fists, banging away on a closed door inside…one that was locked and bolted and wouldn’t open for any-goddamn-one.

  But Johnny didn’t want to think about that. He rolled down the window, searching for those other memories. The good ones. The side mirror caught the moonlight, but he didn’t try to hide from it at all. No. This night was different. He’d do his hiding later, when Elena was with him.

  He drove on. The cold air combed through his hair, and he caught the smell of a dirt road still damp with the first rain of the season mixed up with the scent of the wild apple orchard that stretched from the county road to the banks of the cold, clear river below.

  The night was crisp and tart with the smell of ripening apples. Johnny didn’t like it much. Somehow it made him think of Elena’s father, and the things he’d said after Johnny came home. So Johnny rolled up the window and went searching for more pleasant scents that lingered in his memory.

  Like roses.

  Elena loved roses.

  Johnny brought them for her all the time.

  By any other name, they were just as sweet.