Allhallow's Eve: (Richard Laymon Horror Classic) (2 page)

If it wasn’t Glendon in the house, though, who could it be?

Maybe some kids broke in. They’d done that once, a couple years back, and run around hooting and howling like a bunch of banshees.

She’d rung up Dexter, that night, and he’d gone in and rounded them up and brought them out in cuffs.

Clara frowned. She hated to bother him at this hour, just to send him on a wild-goose chase. Could be the noise she’d heard didn’t come from the Sherwood house at all.

She’d swear it did, though.

And she knew she wouldn’t get a wink of sleep, knowing someone was inside that grim old house, wandering its dark rooms, and probably up to no good.

Might even be the killer, himself. They never did find out who did away with all those Sherwoods. Maybe he came back, after all these years …

She got the shivers, just thinking about it.

‘Well.’ She sighed.

Letting the curtain fall, she stepped away from the window. She hobbled out of the darkness and into the comforting lights of her living room. Lowering herself to the couch, she picked up the telephone. She placed it on her lap and dialed 0. As she listened to the ringing, Alfred sprang onto the couch and nuzzled her arm.

‘Directory assistance,’ said a flat voice.

‘Put me through to Dexter Boyanski, on Jefferson Street.’

‘What city, please?’

‘Ashburg.’

She scratched Alfred’s neck. He purred loudly.

‘That’s 432-6891.’

‘I’m blind,’ she lied. ‘Would you dial that for me?’

‘Certainly.’

Moments later, she heard quiet ringing. Then Dexter’s voice. ‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘Dexter, this is Clara Hayes.’

‘How
are
you?’

She laughed softly. ‘I’m still in working order, thank you.’

‘Well, that’s mighty good to hear. Betty says you haven’t been to bingo lately.’

‘Nor will I, long as Winky Simms is calling. He calls so slow, I grow moss in my ears just waiting on him. Why they let him keep on is more than I can fathom – the poor man stutters like a scratched record.’

‘Well …’

‘Anyway, that’s not why I called. I was out back calling in my cat, a while ago, and I heard some noise in the old Sherwood house. Now, I had a long look at the place. It appears just as dead as always – but then, you
can’t tell much from looking ‘cause it’s all boarded up. I’m not up to snooping around to see if it’s still locked, but I’ll wager it’s not. Dexter, there’s somebody in that house.’

‘I’ll come out and have a look.’

‘I think you’d best.’

Dexter, having just finished a shower when Clara phoned, was wearing his bathrobe. Since he had to get dressed, anyway, he decided he might as well put on his uniform.

Too chancy, doing police work in civvies.

As he dressed, he thought about calling the station. Either of the men on night shift could handle this as well as him. Clara was an old friend, though. If she wanted Chet or Berney, she would’ve called the station. She was probably hoping he’d drop in, afterwards, and chat a spell.

Dexter got into his Dingo boots. He hurried out the front door, strapping on his gunbelt, and ran to his car.

When Clara heard an engine, she went to the side window of her living room and looked out. A car turned into the driveway of the Sherwood house. It wasn’t a white police car with a rack of lights on top, like she expected, but a big man in uniform and a Stetson climbed out. He turned toward her and raised a hand in greeting. So it was Dexter, all right. She waved back, and he turned away.

She watched him stride through the knee-deep weeds. He climbed the porch steps, vanished briefly behind the pillars of the veranda, and reappeared for a moment
before entering the recess that hid the front door from her view.

He wasn’t out of sight for more than a moment before he stepped back and trotted down the stairs again.

He walked toward her, shaking his head. At the corner, he turned and walked along the side of the house.

Face close to the glass, Clara watched Dexter until he turned the corner.

It’ll take him a bit to check the back door, she thought. If it’s locked proper, he’ll probably go around the other side of the house to the front, and then come over and say, ‘She’s locked up tight as a drum, Clara.’

‘I know I heard something.’

‘Well, maybe it came from the Horners’ place.’

Gazing out the window, she suddenly hoped the noise
had
come from the Horner house. She hated to think of Dexter finding the back door broken open, and walking into that dark house where such awful things had happened.

She wished, now, that she hadn’t called him.

Could’ve phoned the station house instead, and they’d have sent out one of those other cops. Wouldn’t matter so much, a different cop going in that dark old house.

They weren’t her friends.

Wouldn’t matter, so much, if they never came out.

The padlock was fastened in place, but four screws were missing from the latch plate on the back door. Dexter turned the knob. He pushed the door open.

Unholstering his revolver, he looked into the kitchen.
He shined his flashlight in. It lit the linoleum floor, the closed door to the hallway, the gap where the refrigerator used to be.

And he remembered that other night, so long ago. The refrigerator’s white door smudged with bloody handprints. Hester Sherwood’s handprints. She must’ve staggered into the kitchen hoping to get a weapon. Half-dead already. Bracing herself against the refrigerator, leaving those grotesque, three-fingered prints with her right hand. They’d found her severed fingers upstairs, on the bedroom carpet. Somehow, she got this far before the killer caught up to her. Just far enough to leave those deformed prints on the refrigerator, before he threw her down and did the rest.

Suddenly, Dexter didn’t want to enter the house. He didn’t want to take those two or three steps, and look at the place on the floor where they’d found Hester.

Found her naked.

He’d danced with her once, at the prom they’d both chaperoned a year before the killings. Held her in his arms. Felt the push of her stiffly-brassièred breasts against his chest. All of her encased under the soft gown, armored to protect her skin from touch. She even wore white gloves to her elbows.

There on the floor, armor gone. Flesh laid open, breasts …

Quickly, to stop remembering, he stepped into the kitchen. He swept the flashlight past the cupboards, stove, sink. Refused to look at the floor. Hurried into the hall.

It used to be carpeted with a plush, red runner. Now the hardwood floor was bare. He opened a door to his
left, and entered the dining room. He shined his light on the wall where kids had painted their names, a couple of years ago. The names remained, ‘John + Kitty’, circled by a heart. Innocent, out of place in this crypt of a house.

Dexter suddenly noticed splashes of red on top of the painted heart.

He raised his flashlight up the wall, and groaned.

Who the hell?

Someone had painted a large hand above the heart – a hand dripping blood from the stubs of two severed fingers. The paint glistened in Dexter’s light. He stepped close to the wall. Clamping the flashlight between his thighs, he raised a hand and touched the paint.

Still wet.

He grabbed the flashlight and spun around, shining it on the other walls, the ceiling. No more murals, thank God.

The guy who did this, though – the sick bastard who painted the hand – he might still be inside the house.

Dexter rushed across the empty room. The double doors to the foyer stood open. He stepped through them, sweeping his light from the front door to the living room entrance, and up the stairway on his right.

He’d leave upstairs till last, he decided.

Silently, he stepped past the banister. He looked down the narrow hallway that led back toward the kitchen. Then he crossed it and entered the living room.

His light cut through the darkness in a quick circle as he pivoted. Nobody in the room but him.

Something didn’t belong, though.

Propped against the wall.

He walked toward it, uncertain what he was seeing. It looked like a cage, or …

I’ll be damned
, he thought.

Window grates. Half a dozen of them leaning against the wall.

Somebody – maybe Glendon Morley – must be planning to fix the place up. Take the boards off the windows. Put up the wrought-iron bars, instead, to keep the vandals out.

Raising his light, he saw that grates were already in place on the living room’s three side windows.

On the inside though.

What kind of fool …?

Behind Dexter, a floorboard creaked.

He spun around, gasped, and raised his pistol.

Clara, still bent and peering out her window, was so worried she could hardly bear it.

Dexter must’ve found the house open, just as she’d feared. Otherwise, he would’ve shown up long ago.

He’s in there, this very second. Even with her eyes wide open, Clara could imagine him climbing those long, dark stairs, going into the very bedroom where they’d found James Sherwood with his eyes carved out – so they say. The real story never did come out, but she guessed that most of what she heard was true. Poor Dexter. Why, she wouldn’t set foot in that house for a million dollars.

Bad enough, just living next door. She’d have moved away, long ago, if she’d had the money to spare.

How could he go in there? Well, it was her fault. She’d asked him to.

Damnation, she wished she’d rung up the station house instead of Dexter.

Oh, thank goodness!

She breathed a deep, shaky sigh of relief as she saw him walk around the far end of the veranda.

Nobody in tow.

Must’ve been a false alarm, after all. What took him so long, though? He must’ve found the back door open, and gone in to search the place. Whoever made that noise probably ran off before Dexter got there. Either that, or hid real good. She didn’t much like the idea of
that
.

He waved to her.

Clara gestured for him to come on over.

He nodded, his Stetson tipping forward, and Clara left the window. She hobbled across the living room, opened the front door, and stepped halfway out to hold open the screen for him.

Dexter walked slowly through the darkness, his head down.

‘Didn’t find him, huh?’ she asked.

Dexter didn’t answer. He didn’t look up.

‘Dexter, what’s wrong?’

He shook his head.

As he climbed the porch stairs, Clara reached to the wall and flicked on the overhead light.

Blood! All over his uniform shirt and trousers as if a bucketful had been dumped on his head.

‘Oh my Lord!’ Clara gasped. She covered her mouth.

Dexter took off his Stetson and grinned at her. For an instant, she thought he’d put on a Halloween mask to scare the daylights out of her. Then she knew it wasn’t a
mask. It wasn’t Dexter at all, inside that blood-soaked uniform.

A bare foot kicked her cane away.

With a tiny gasp, she fell against the man. He flung her inside the house.

Her head smacked the floor.

Whimpering, she opened her eyes.

The front door swung shut, and the man stood above her.

Eric Prince woke up, that night, with a straining bladder. He climbed from bed, and made his way to the shut door.

A straight-backed chair was propped under its knob, a precaution he always took when he went to bed in the deserted house. Though fifteen, and too old to be afraid of staying alone, he liked the secure feeling that came from having his door barred.

As he removed it, he wondered vaguely if his mother was home yet. He had no idea what time it might be. When he opened his door, though, he saw that the hall light was still on.

Mom would’ve turned it off.

She must still be out. Eric’s worry came back, the same worry that fluttered in his stomach every time Mom went out on a date – that he would wake up, in the morning, and she would still be gone. He’d wait and wait, but she would never come back.

Maybe she had run away with a handsome stranger she met in a bar. Eric would get a postcard, a week later, from a distant city.

Or she’d been killed in a car accident.

Or the worst of all – a worry that started after he read an old paperback called
Looking for Mr Goodbar
– she’d met a terrible man on one of her dates, and he had slaughtered her.

Chief Boyanski would come to the house. ‘Son, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you.’