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“What I figured. ”
“Garlic is good, though. It’s deadly poison to vampires. It weakens them and if it gets into their bloodstream it might be fatal. I’ll ask some of my guys about it. ”
“Good, we’ll offer them garlic bread next time we see one. ”
“I’m sorry, Crow…Val…I thought I’d be able to find something comforting…”
“Actually,” Val said, her voice tight, “you’ve at least told me what I need to know for now. Keep researching this, Jonatha. Right now you’re the most important person in the world to us. ”
Jonatha looked at her, head tilted to one side. “But…no pressure, right?”
Val actually smiled. “No, of course not. Another sunny day here in Pine Deep, America’s Haunted Holidayland. ”
“I should have stayed in Louisiana. All we have there are killer hurricanes. ”
Crow and Val turned to Weinstock, who had been silent throughout, his face buried in his hands. “Saul?” Crow asked.
Weinstock raised his head and gave them the bleakest stare they’d ever seen. “I need to get Rachel and the kids out of this godforsaken place. ”
Val nodded.
“Can we stop the Festival somehow?” Newton asked.
“No,” Crow said. “Sarah Wolfe won’t even discuss the matter. All she says is that the town lives or dies on this Halloween. ”
“Christ,” said Newton, “she’s not joking there. ”
2
Mike fled into the night as if all the demons of hell were in close pursuit. His life seemed to be nothing but horror and flight from it. No matter how far he went, no matter what direction he took, it always seemed to circle back around to another, far worse horror.
And now this, the worst of all.
Legs pumped the pedals, hands clutched the ribbed rubber grips, lungs heaved, and pulse hammered furiously. His shirt snapped and fluttered as he rode, and though he was unaware of the chill of the air against his bare forearms, his heart was heavy with black ice.
With each hill he climbed, his legs ached more and more.
He could not think. Could not bear to think.
All he could do was fly. From horror toward nowhere, through the shadows that opened wide to receive him.
The Bone Man stood in the road and watched the boy fly, feeling the eerie déjà vu that was actually memory. He had stood here before, had watched the boy flee before. It had ended badly that time.
It would be worse this time. Halloween was in two days. There was no turning back for anyone now.
3
When the manhunt for Ruger and Boyd was at full burn, all of the town’s former and inactive police officers had been called back to duty, but just as the threat diminished the Halloween season kicked into full gear and most of the officers remained on the job. Tow-Truck Eddie Oswald liked working as a part-time cop, partly because he loved his town—despite its tradition of celebrating the pagan holiday—and he hated the wretched excesses of the un-Christian tourists who had to be kept from running amok. The other reason he liked the job was that it gave him yet another reason to be prowling the streets and roads of the borough in his hunt for the Beast. He needed to complete that task to both honor and appease his Father, whose wrath had turned to a cold and disappointed silence in Eddie’s head.
He drove the main drag now, alone in his cruiser, neat and tidy in his crisp uniform, his sidearm a comforting weight at his hip. His mind, however, was an untidy mess—a ransacked room where hope and trust in his own judgment had been thrown to the floor. Doubt seemed painted inside his brain like some vandal’s graffiti. For a while he thought he’d known the direction of his purpose; for a while he thought he’d known exactly who the Beast was and in which body he was hiding. Now the only thing of which he was certain was that he was now completely uncertain…and uncertainty in his holy purpose filled him with shame.
“Base to four. ” The sudden squawk of the radio made Eddie twitch and he snatched the handset up.
“Four,” he said, “what’s up, Ginny?”
“Got a job for you, Eddie. Domestic disturbance. ”
Great, just what he needed. Eddie sighed. “Give me the rundown. ”
