Halloweenland (23 page)

“What about you?” Grant said to Reynolds.

The impresario smiled. “I’ll be staying here, of course. I could never leave Gina again. And what better place to write the third volume of my history than the very place that inspired it!”

Reggie nodded.

“We will miss you, Detective,” she said. “I can tell you that your friend Tom Malone is in peace. In fact, he is about to leave us. You have learned a very great secret, one that no man who returns to Earth should know. I will take the knowledge from you, but not the certainty. That will be my gift. Good-bye.”

She leaned over, and kissed him.

And then Grant was suddenly gone.

Another Halloween gone.

Grant found himself in Riley Gates’ old folding chair, facing Riley Gates’ empty pumpkin patch, with a cigarette in one hand and a half flask of Dewar’s in the other. Overhead, the moon was in its accustomed position and shape. Off in the distance he heard a police siren, which abruptly stopped.

There was silence in the new November night.

To his right, about a hundred yards away, lay the twisted remains of what had been the Halloweenland Ferris wheel. Grant stared at it hard, having no memory of how it got there.

Where have I been?
he thought.
What did I miss?

Vaguely, he knew that momentous things had happened. But he had no memory of them.

He closed the flask and tossed it away, suddenly not thirsty, and flicked the cigarette into the cold, still night.

He reached for another cigarette, then shoved the pack back into his pocket. The thought of nicotine made him ill.

He pushed himself up out of the chair, hearing his own bones creak.

At the edge of his memory something flared, and for a moment he was sure that he had seen wondrous things.

But then the half memory, a place with thin air and a yellow sky and a parched landscape, dissipated like cigarette smoke.

Just a dream.

No: something more.

He knew that if he walked over to Halloweenland that there would be little left to see, that the impresario Reynolds was gone, and Reggie Bright, too.

Reggie . . .

Again a memory flared, then faded.

There was a girl named . . . Anna, but she was gone now, he was sure.

It had been important to find her, but it was no longer important. He was sure of that, too.

He stretched, feeling his bones settle into place, shivered, and turned to leave.

The moon, which was just the moon, made him feel suddenly secure, for some reason.

And Orangefield was still Orangefield.

And there was always next Halloween . . .

For the first time in eons, Samhain felt at peace.

There was no job to be done, no impetus driving him on—no false prophet to follow.

He looked down at his body and laughed: a child’s balloon shape, with two rubbery arms, and two rubbery spindle legs which wobbled when he walked. He laughed again and the cardboard cutout next to him turned its three eyes on him and scolded, “Is it funny, pilgrim?”

“To me it is, yes,” Samhain answered.

The line stretched for miles behind him. In front was the wall that had been impenetrable to him. But when he came to it he passed through with ease, feeling a pleasant tingle over his shape.

And now the yellow sky he had beheld for so long changed into a deeper color, almost blue. In front of him a whirlpool had formed, and, in its center, a fiery hole.

He felt light as air, felt his body melting away as he moved into the whirlpool, which became a tunnel of light. He was drawn forward, forward, and watched the
cardboard cutout that had been with him sucked into the light and away, dissolving with a sigh.

And then he was through, and someone was there in this new place, this glorious landscape, to welcome him.

He felt his body again, his true body, and now his memory returned to him in a flash, and he knew who he was, and was filled with a stunning instant realization of fulfillment and happiness.

He felt his wings, strong and rigid on his back.

“Welcome home, Gabriel,” someone said.

Where do stories come from?

They come from all kinds of places.

“The Baby,” the novella you’re about to read, came from a rather curious place—and taught me a rather valuable lesson about the differences between long short stories and novels.

Here’s what happened: a couple/three years ago, a dynamic young writer and editor named Kealan Patrick Burke got in touch with me and asked if I’d contribute to a book of novellas he was editing. An Orangefield tale seemed just the thing, and before long I had dived into it head first.

Immediately, I realized that it had the makings of a novel, and tucked that fact in my back pocket. I already knew where it would go, and what it had to do to be a novel.

The present problem was to make it into a fully rounded novella.

That turned out to be fairly easy. As I approached the end (a little over 16,000 words) I knew how it would wrap up—and in suitably lurid fashion.

I also already realized that the same material used in
the novel, which turned out to be
Halloweenland
, would set out into uncharted waters, and that the ending of Part One, which would incorporate much of “The Baby,” would be nothing like the novella version.

To make a short story shorter: I finished the novella for Kealan—and then his project, through no fault of his own, rolled over and died.

So now I had this beautifully rounded novella, with a horrific ending that would be nothing like the novel version, and it was an orphan.

Cue: Richard Chizmar to the rescue.

It turned out Rich had just started a series of beautifully illustrated, oddly shaped-lengthwise books called The Signature Series—and it turned out that the novella “The Baby” fit it like a glove.

“The Baby” was finally published, and sold out in a matter of months.

In the meantime, I began
Halloween
, which melded “The Baby” into the first part of the book, the way I had always planned.

I had, in the end, two versions of the same basic story with utterly different conclusions. The novella had to end with a bang, and the novel version had to open a portal to further adventures.

A valuable lesson, indeed, for any writer to learn—and, I think, a vivid illustration about the elasticity of language and, especially, of story.

Following, for your enjoyment, is the original version of “The Baby,” lurid ending and all.

I hope you enjoy it in a whole different way—and learn something, as I did, about the difference between long short stories and novels.

—
Al Sarrantonio

“I’m asleep, Jack.”

Annoyed: his cold hands on her at one in the morning, she could see the illuminated clock face now that her eyes were open, hear his breathing, the catch in it that would make him snore later. Even facing away from him, she could smell the beer on his breath.

“I promised—”

“I don’t give a
shit
at this point,” she snapped, still curled up in a fetal position, legs pulled up, defensive, half-asleep. “You were supposed to come home five hours ago. We were going to try tonight. But instead you went out beering with your moron friends. Don’t deny it, Jack—”

She gasped, not letting him hear it as he slid into the bed behind her, naked she could tell, his hands ice cold but soft as they had always been when he had first caught her eye, this boy of a man with the lock of hair in front that wouldn’t stay put, and the violet eyes and the crooked smile. Her heart had melted the first time he looked at her. Melted like the saints and the nuns could
not articulate, melted like time stood still and the moon froze solid in the sky and she knew her life was changed forever. His mouth on her later that first time and a kiss unlike any she had dreamed about, two mouths becoming one and then, much later, after fumbling and some laughing, two bodies becoming one. This was nothing like the fairy tales, or the dirty books, or the cable channels only for women where everything was clean and bland with guitar or piano music and then the commercials. This was magic that no one could write or sing or tell you about in the bleachers behind the soccer field when you shared a cigarette with your friends and felt the first chill of autumn blowing up under your Catholic skirt like Marilyn Monroe’s in that movie with the sidewalk grating. What the hell were the nuns thinking? Plaid skirts that looked like nothing but delayed sin, in navy knee socks and those black shoes shined to mirrors that made boys look up at your panties—

“Jack, at least let me turn around!” she gasped, surprised at his ardor which was never lacking.

And then turning in the dark to meet his lips and hands and her nightgown pulled up over her head and the panting and the arched back and then three wonderful bit-lip screams while he tasted her nipples and nipped her neck once and then again as he always did, little bites that left pale red marks and she had to wear a turtleneck for two days.

The nuns couldn’t change you but they could make you blush at your own body still—

And then it was over. He ran his hand through her short hair and whispered, “I promised,” and then added, which made her heart flutter, “a baby,” and she murmured, sleepy, and then rolled over away from him again, naked, too tired to pull on the flannel, and returned to sleep.

Then:

Six hours later in the police station in shock, with her sister Janet with the pinched look and Baby Charlie asleep in the stroller behind her.

Detective Grant: he looked old, tobacco stains on his teeth and the index and middle fingers of his right hand. A sot’s nose, webwork of tiny broken veins. But the eyes: they were hooded in the shadow of their sockets but wary as a hawk’s. He was definitely paying attention.

He had a notebook out and a pencil, and kept looking from the pad to her and back again.

“Mrs. Carlin, let me make sure I have this right.” He flipped back a couple of pages and read to himself, lips moving silently. Then the eyes were on her. “You say your husband came home at one o’clock this morning?”

She nodded, and Janet, beside her, shifted in her chair, plastic seated, uncomfortable. “Only tell him what you want to, Marianne.”

Detective Grant ignored Janet. Those eyes of his, still waiting . . .

“Yes,” Marianne said. “He . . . woke me up when he came in. I was asleep facing the clock. I’m sure it was one.”

“And he was gone when the phone woke you up an hour later, at two o’clock?”

“That’s right.”

Cold. She felt so cold and numb and dead.

The eyes looked down at the notebook, then back at her. “You’re
sure
of this?”

She hesitated, looked at the floor. Embarrassed. “We . . . made love when he came home. Then I went back to sleep.”

The eyes. But she said: “I’m
sure
it was one o’clock when he came home!”

“Don’t say another damn thing, Marianne,” Janet snapped. Baby Charlie snuffled in the stroller behind her, then settled back into sleep. “We’ll get a lawyer. I’ll call Chuck now. He’ll know what to do.”

She made to get up, huffing her pregnant belly out of the chair, but now Grant turned to her. “Mrs. Larson, I’m just asking your sister some questions. This isn’t an interrogation and I’m certainly not charging her with anything. I’m just getting the time line straight in my mind.”

Janet glared down at him across the desk. “Then why are we in an interrogation room? I know that’s what this is. I watch TV.”

Grant leaned back in his chair. “As I told you, I thought it would be more comfortable, especially since they’re painting the area where my desk is today. I didn’t want you to have to inhale those fumes . . .”

“So you said,” Janet said. She was studying the far wall, a mirror, and walked toward it. “There anybody behind there? Like I said, I watch TV—”

“No, there isn’t,” Grant said, trying to hide his impatience. “Though you’re right, it is a two-way mirror.”

Before Janet could say it, Grant heaved himself out of his chair. “Let me show you.” He walked briskly past Janet to a door beside the mirror and held it open for her. “Have a look.”

Janet peered in, noting the short, empty hallway, the view into the room through the visible part of the twoway mirror. “Just like television,” she said.

Grant waited for her to have her look, then waited for her to return to her seat before reclaiming his own. As Janet sat down with an “Ooof,” she commented: “If this was a real interrogation, you’d offer us a Coke or coffee.”