Fiendish Deeds (11 page)

That would be awful. Field Agent Wagner, Joy guessed, was probably much like Dr. Ingram himself. Brave, inquisitive, ever calling “Hullo there!” into the black hole of the unknown.

Maybe she could just call him back and suggest he bring an assistant….

There was a knock on her door.

“Come in,” said Joy, startled.

“Sorry to disturb you,” said Mrs. Wells. “I just wanted to talk about Halloween next week.”

Halloween was Joy’s favorite holiday, when Spooking was at the height of its powers. She loved rummaging through the cellar for some new costume, and then stalking the streets with Byron under an evil moon.

“What about it?”

Mrs. Wells took a deep breath, which was a sign for Joy to brace herself for bad news. Could Halloween be canceled or something?

“Byron was hoping to go trick-or-treating down in Darlington this year.”

“Darlington?” shrieked Joy, outraged. “Why?”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the opportunities are somewhat limited up here.”

“That’s ridiculous—it’s much, much scarier!”

“I’m not talking about that—I’m talking about going door to door getting candy. For example, how many homes in Spooking actually give out any?”

“Plenty,” said Joy. She counted. “Six. Wait, seven if the Van Hurkles are back from abroad.”

“The Van Hurkles? Didn’t they give out those disgusting black things you said were like salted slugs?”

“They’re a European delicacy, actually.”

“You spat them on the carpet!”

Joy shrugged. “Well, I’m not from Europe.”

“Anyway,” said Mrs. Wells, changing the subject, “Byron heard at school that down in Darlington almost everyone gives out candy—the sweet kind. Not only that, a lot of people make a really big effort to decorate.”

“Pfff.” Joy was unmoved. Halloween in Darlington—what a ridiculous notion! It was like having Christmas in a volcano. Besides, their particular brand of horror was more of an everyday event.

“Joy, I thought you might not want to go,” said Mrs. Wells sympathetically. “Especially after what happened on Sunday.”

Joy blinked nervously. She had been careful not to mention getting ambushed by Tyler and his friends in Darlington. Her mother loved to “talk through” that kind of thing, which was often more painfully embarrassing than the actual event itself. She played dumb. “Sunday? The birthday party?”

“Byron told me that some boys threw leaves at you while you were waiting for the bus.”

Joy could just see the incident as replayed in her mother’s mind. The horrible sneers turning into cheeky grins, the mud-caked missile becoming something worth pressing in an album to preserve the wonderful seasonal memory. “I don’t want to talk about it,” said Joy. “Please?”

“But it’s important, Joy. I think someone should explain how those things happen at this age, which is a very funny time for boys and girls. Remember, I was once almost twelve. And I was embarrassed by the sudden attention from boys, who tend to develop a bit slower than girls and do very silly things to impress whoever they have a crush on.”

This particular misreading was more than Joy could stomach. She shuddered. “Mother, they do not have a crush on me, believe me,” Joy said forcefully. “If they did, the next thing I’d want thrown at my head is a bowling ball.”

“Joy Wells, why do you have to be so disturbingly graphic just to make a point?” asked her mother with frustration. “All I was trying to say is that I understand your feelings. And if you don’t want to go trick-or-treating with Byron in Darlington, that’s fine—I will take him around myself.

“I just thought maybe you’d enjoy a change of scenery and the opportunity to actually get some real candy for a change. But obviously I was wrong, as usual….”

Joy watched her mother turn with a heavy sigh toward the door. She was a black belt in guilt trips!

Then something occurred to her. Halloween was the one time a year she could tramp around unsupervised at night without fear of grounding. It seemed a bit of a shame to waste it. For one, she had to speak to Madame Portia again, who was almost certainly hiding her knowledge about the bog creature. With FISPA possibly on their way, such information could very well save somebody’s life. Not only that, she had to let Madame Portia know that Field Agent Wagner was on her side.

“Okay, maybe I could use a change of scenery,” said Joy. “I’ll do it. I’ll take Byron trick-or-treating in Darlington if he wants to go that badly.”

“Wonderful!” said Mrs. Wells, beaming.

“But I want to be picked up so we don’t have to walk all the way back up.”

“Of course!”

“We’ll meet you at the bottom of the road up to Spooking Hill then,” said Joy, “by the bog.”

“What time?”

“Midnight?” said Joy.

“Try eight thirty,” replied her mother. “Good night, sweetheart.”

G
olden sunlight glinted off the steel and mirrored glass front of City Hall. Phipps passed purposefully through the automatic doors into the lobby. It was immense, made to look as if hewn from ancient sandstone, with tropical plants and a towering waterfall crashing from its apex. It was as if the architect was posing a rather clever question with the design, Phipps thought: What if the ancient Mayans hadn’t vanished mysteriously with rare and remarkable dignity, but had instead become a sad race of civil servants? Of course, the plants were all plastic and the stone shaped from some sort of Styrofoam, but the piped-in animal cries were a nice touch, Phipps thought, smiling every time a visitor jumped in fright at the howler monkey.

Phipps rode the glass elevator past giant artificial parrots dangling from wires. The mayor’s office was on the top floor, and had its own gym, sauna, lounge, and theater. Phipps’s office was a floor below. It had no windows and faced a sea of gray cubicles, home to hostile city employees who glared at him as he passed.

“Mr. Phipps!” bellowed the mayor as the elevator doors opened. He was hanging around the pretty receptionist as usual, this time wearing a light blue, terry cloth sweat suit and smelling not unlike a particularly ripe grizzly bear. “You caught me on the way to the shower,” the mayor explained, inhaling as if in superior need of oxygen. The receptionist giggled. “Just finished my morning run. No better way to start the day, I tell you.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Phipps. He followed the mayor into the main office, trying his best not to breathe in the mayor’s foul slipstream.

The office had a commanding view across Darlington. The mayor tossed his soaking work-out towel onto a chair in front of his broad mahogany desk—the very chair he himself usually occupied, Phipps noticed with disgust. “As a matter of fact,” he continued, “I did get some exercise yesterday, hiking the length of Spooking Bog.”

“How’d it go? Is the old woman packing up yet?”

“She’s coming around to the idea,” said Phipps with false optimism.

“I need better than that!” barked the mayor angrily. “I just took a call on speakerphone during my run—that’s what they call multitasking, my man—and they say the dozers are ready to go. They can get in there as early as beginning of November. Remember, my investor friends aren’t putting up a cent before the site’s been cleared. Not a pretty little penny! And we can’t keep floating this thing using the city’s money. So I don’t need sissy little assurances—I need a guarantee that goes
gong
when you slap it on the backside!”

Phipps clenched his jaw so hard, he thought he might spit a mouthful of broken molars right into the mayor’s face. Instead he answered calmly: “She’s packing up. Which reminds me, I made a few purchases—here are the receipts.”

The mayor glanced at the slips. “Two wetsuits? A fourteen-volt reciprocating power saw?”

“A few items our animal handling contractor requested to complete his assignment,” replied Phipps.

“Huh?”

“The reptile wrangler, sir.”

“Pardon? It sounded like you just said
reptile wrangler.
”

“Mayor, we discussed this before.”

“When?”

“A couple of weeks ago. We had a meeting while you were on the cross-training machine.”

“The cross-trainer?” Mayor MacBrayne snorted. “You know I can’t hear diddly on that thing, son!”

“Sir,” said Phipps with a sigh, “in order to secure planning permission for the Misty Mermaid, we had to promise the Federal Imperiled Species Protection Agency that we would relocate some snapping turtles to another bog—”

“All right, more than I need to know,” said the mayor, holding up a hand as he turned in his chair. “I just gotta keep an eye on the purse strings.” There was a short whine as the huge paper shredder turned the receipts into confetti. “The best office is a paperless office. Did I ever tell you that, Phipps? Pay yourself back out of petty cash.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now, was there anything else? Because I have a date with a dollop of lavender shower gel and some essence-of-mint shampoo,” said the mayor, dropping his sweatpants.

Phipps winced. It was the mayor’s new method of terminating a meeting—sudden displays of unwarranted nudity.

“Good day, sir,” said Phipps, his morning appetite ruined thanks to the mayor’s luminous rear. With a curt nod to the receptionist, he got back on the elevator.

“Have a wonderful day!” called the receptionist cheerfully after him.

He returned to his office, where a lopsided pile of mail sat on his desk. One of his chief duties was to make sure that Mayor MacBrayne only reviewed correspondence requiring his immediate attention: complimentary sports tickets, free movie passes, or black-tie dinner invites. The rest Phipps was to delegate or destroy as he saw fit.

Stomach grumbling, Phipps opened the first piece, addressed with tight, childish letters.

This Mealey kid was like a chafing rash, one that wasn’t responding to over-the-counter creams. And were there any children in the city not privy to Phipps’s plans for Spooking Bog?

Phipps balled the letter up and threw it out. He didn’t have time for this, any of it. In a fury, he snatched up the remaining mail and hurled it into the wastebasket.

But the mention of the bog reminded him: He had to go see Vince. With any luck he hadn’t strayed too far from the flea-bitten motel on the edge of town where Phipps had left him.

Because there was something else on the shopping list Phipps wanted Vince to pick up.

Something scary, for Halloween.

A
fter a hastily eaten supper of canned clam chowder, Joy and Byron began getting ready to head out for Halloween. Byron was dressing up as a knight despite Joy’s trying to talk him out of it.

“I’m just surprised, that’s all, after the beating you took at Kiddy Kingdom.”

“Knights are cool,” Byron had retorted grumpily. Plus, he thought, princesses liked them.

“What about something more original? Like a flesh-eating zombie dwarf? Or a moldy mummy from Pygmy Island!”

“Mom!” he’d shrieked. “Joy’s making fun of my height again!”

Which was the end of the discussion. He looked good, though, Joy had to admit. The costume was made from an old wool sweater Mrs. Wells had spray-painted silver to look like surprisingly convincing chain mail. Then he wore a cape, a pair of rubber boots also sprayed silver, and a cardboard helmet and shield covered in tinfoil.

Byron’s favorite part of the outfit, however, was the sword, which was the real deal. Steel with a leather scabbard, recovered among the forgotten personal effects in the basement. It was a fairly short sword, but nonetheless barely cleared the ground once attached to Byron’s belt.

Of course, the thought of Byron running around with it caused Mrs. Wells considerable alarm until they demonstrated how utterly dull the blade was. It had been intended for display rather than decapitation and disembowelment. Reluctantly, and with the order that Byron keep it in its scabbard at all times, his mother agreed to let him take it.

Joy, on the other hand, had opted for a less fussy costume. She had decided to go as 1930s adventure-woman Miss Melody Huxley, which essentially meant wearing her tweed adventuring outfit with her hair pinned up in an approximation of Melody’s short flapper hairstyle. Joy would have happily left it at that, but she then remembered that she needed some sort of disguise to operate undetected among the Darlings. So she quickly painted her face a ghostly white and smeared black around her eyes until they looked more like gaping sockets.

“Melody Huxley,” Joy announced to the mirror, “undead adventure-woman!”
Good enough,
she thought, slipping a heavy flashlight into her side bag.

“You two look so cute!” gushed Mrs. Wells as they came downstairs. “Stand together, I want to take your picture.” She pointed a tiny digital camera at them as they stood with fixed smiles on the bottom stair. “Show your teeth, Byron! Better…Say cheese!”

Joy and Byron squinted at a pulsing red light before being blinded by a white-hot flash. They stumbled down uncertainly, unable to see anything except green splotches.

“Oh, look—so sweet!” said Mrs. Wells, showing the picture to her husband.

Mr. Wells opened the front door. “Here’s a couple of pillowcases to carry your treats in,” he said. “Your mother is going to drive you down. I’ll stay home to give out candy in the unlikely event anyone comes by.”

Indeed, the streets of Spooking were lifeless as they stepped out, and not a single trick-or-treater was anywhere in sight.

“It’ll be a shame to miss all the fun up here,” said Joy with a sigh.

“What fun, Joy?” asked Mrs. Wells, fetching the car keys from a hook near the door. “It’s like a graveyard outside!”

“Exactly.” What a great night she was going to miss, stalking the streets of Spooking under the dim amber streetlights. The houses cloaked in darkness and dripping with dread, daring her to ring their ominous doorbells. Then the delicious wait, wondering what shambling horror might answer…. She couldn’t get enough of it.

Byron felt relieved. Joy always insisted on stopping at the most foreboding residences, where clearly no one had lived in fifty years or more. And not only was it terrifying, it was usually a complete waste of his trick-or-treating time. He wanted candy, great helpings of it.

“By the way, honey, I would watch your speed,” said Mr. Wells. “There’ll be a lot of excited kids out on the streets tonight.”

“Of course, Edward,” replied Mrs. Wells defensively. “I’m not such a menace, you know!”

“I wasn’t saying you were—”

“I always drive carefully, dearest, Halloween or not. Because I don’t think any night is a good night to hit a pedestrian, do you?”

“No, dear,” answered Mr. Wells.

They climbed into the station wagon and belted themselves in. Mr. Wells waved from the porch as they slowly reversed down the drive before crawling down the street.

“Mom, this is ridiculous!” said Joy finally. “Halloween will be over before we even get there!”

“I don’t want your father nagging me when I get back,” explained Mrs. Wells. “Anyway, don’t worry—I’ll make up the time around the corner.”

And so, as the lights of Darlington twinkled below, they hurtled down the crooked road. As they leveled off, Joy glimpsed the wooded perimeter of the bog, its spidery fingers flashing in the headlights. Beyond, its interior was an impenetrable blackness.

Back in a bit,
she silently promised as her white painted lips turned up at the corners. She then spotted a curious sight—a black car, parked in the shadows by the side of the road.

At high speed, they passed a few strip malls and convenience stores before entering a residential section of Darlington. They roared past a sign: SUNNYVIEW STREET.

“Stop the car!” Byron cried. “STOP!”

Mrs. Wells slammed on the brakes.

“What is it, Byron?” she demanded, terrified. “Did we run someone over?”

“Um—I thought this looked like a good block,” he answered, looking guiltily at his sister.

Joy simply agreed: “Yeah, this is far enough.” She opened the passenger door. “C’mon, Byron, we don’t have much time,” urged Joy, looking at Melody Huxley’s gold pocket watch, fastened to a buttonhole by a slim chain.

“You have plenty of time,” assured Mrs. Wells. “I’ll meet you at the bottom of the hill at eight thirty. Bye, kids! Be careful crossing the roads!”

Mrs. Wells pulled a U-turn, bumping up on the opposite curb before peeling out. Joy noticed a steady wind had picked up—some sort of storm was coming.

“Let’s go,” said Joy, glancing up at the branches flailing against the muddy evening sky. “By the way, I forgot to mention—I have a little errand I need to run before we meet up with Mom.”

“Uh-huh,” replied Byron, galloping ahead without listening. He’d actually made it to Sunnyview Street, home of the Primroses. The word around school was they had the best Halloween display in town, with their entire property transformed into one long terror-walk. Byron had been lost in a daydream for a week, imagining the possibility of a little strawberry-blond ghost leaping out to cocoon him in her sweet-scented sheet.

It had seemed like such a long shot that Joy would ever agree, and even if she did, that he would ever locate this particular street within the sprawling grid of Darlington. But here he was, like it was destiny.

But apparently it wasn’t only the Primroses who made an effort. On every porch sat glowing pumpkins leering at them as spiders with pipe-cleaner legs crawled across giant synthetic webs. Cardboard headstones lined the lawns as hidden speakers howled and moaned and clanked.

“Like I’m so scared,” remarked Joy. “Sunnyview Street—what the heck is the
view
supposed to be anyway? Your neighbor’s garage?”

“It’s called Sunnyview,” replied Byron defensively, “because they mean it has a view of the sun.”

“That’s so stupid, Byron, it’s probably true.”

They went up to the door of the first dwelling they came to—which looked even more featureless and box-like up close, observed Joy—and rang the bell. A moment later someone dressed as a witch answered, wearing a grin so toothy and crazed that Joy shuddered to think they’d somehow stumbled across Miss Keener’s house.

“Hello there, my pretties!” she cackled maniacally in an unfamiliar voice.

“Trick or treat,” Joy said with relief. Byron stood mutely by.

“Oh, what great costumes!” enthused the witch. Unlike her counterparts up in Spooking, the householder apparently expected a verbal exchange before handing over any candy. “Let’s see, you’re obviously a brave knight. And you, young lady? What are you supposed to be?”

“Me? Just some dead old woman whose wardrobe I raided.”

Horrified, the witch quickly dropped a big handful of candy into their bags.

“Happy Halloween!” called Joy as she headed down the stairs.

Darlington was definitely a busy place on Halloween night. Sunnyview Street was packed with trick-or-treaters. Crowds rushed from door to door and bowled each other over as they took shortcuts across lawns. Among them were the usual vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and witches, but what struck Joy was how many were wearing the exact same costume: a black hooded cloak, a droopy-mouthed ghost-face mask, and blood-streaked plastic butcher knife—licensed properties, as her father would have said, from a recent movie featuring an unstoppable homicidal maniac. It was typical, Joy thought—even on Halloween they can’t help dressing alike.

Byron hadn’t noticed, however, as he tore up and down stairs, candy raining down on him in a deliciously sticky storm. After a night in Spooking, Byron could usually transfer his entire haul into the plastic happy-face mug on his desk, but down here, his bag was weighing him down after half a block! Shaking with excitement, he paused long enough to cram four toffees into his mouth. Then a flash of artificial lightning illuminated the next house, where jaunty lettering on a painted wooden mailbox spelled out a family name.

THE PRIMROSES

“Ow! What the heck?” protested a rotund little skeleton after a hard ball of brown toffee bounced off his head.

“Sorry!” sputtered Byron, choking.

The little skeleton stomped off.

Byron shivered as the ominous tones of a pipe organ began foreshadowing danger. Bloody figures swung above shadowy headstones rising up from a thick carpet of mist on the lawn. From somewhere indistinct came a disturbing babble of sinister voices.

This was it—the Primrose Halloween display. It was legendary at Winsome, with its trail of terror leading down into the dark satanic bowels of the usually welcoming home. And Byron had waited an eternity to see it.

Admiring the gruesome contrast of hanging, bloodstained bodies from an otherwise cheerful-looking cherry tree, Joy had to admit this place was pretty good. But it was starting to get late, she realized. She jogged after Byron, who was already elbowing his way through the crush of children on the front porch. From inside came sudden howls and terrified screams. Mounting the front steps, Joy saw a costumed group emerging from the garage, leading away a sobbing toddler.

“What, we’re supposed to actually go
inside
?” demanded Joy with disbelief as she caught up with Byron. Stepping into a Darling’s lair—now that was a horror she wasn’t prepared for.

“Let’s do this thing!” shouted a familiar voice behind her. She glanced over her shoulder as three kids in the droopy-mouthed maniac masks leaped up the steps, one of them landing in an action pose as if ready to plunge his plastic butcher’s knife into some cheerleader’s chest.

It was Tyler, she realized. Cringing, she turned quickly around.

“No stupid monsters better mess with me in there!” shouted Tyler, unleashing a flurry of knife work that sent Byron’s cape flapping.

Byron turned with a glare—he wasn’t in the mood to be backstabbed with a butcher’s knife, plastic or not. In a few moments, he would be entering the home of Lucy Primrose!

“Did you see his face?” Tyler laughed. “Hahahahaha!”

“You better watch it, Tyler, or the little pipsqueak’s gonna stick you with his sword!”

Byron turned with another black look. They burst out laughing again.

Joy dragged her brother forward. What was he doing? Now was not the time to get into something with these idiots. She had important business to attend to! Tangling with a bunch of Winsome cretins was only going to make them late.

Just then, Joy heard the unmistakable snip of a pair of scissors as the three maniacs began laughing hysterically. She quickly shoved Byron inside as the line surged forward.

They stumbled into a flickering strobe-lit hallway, their ears ringing as scary sound effects blared. As they followed the procession of children ahead, a hand suddenly shot out from behind a sofa chair, grabbing at them. Joy slapped it away impatiently as she read a sign above some stairs going down: this way to your doom.

“It says it’s this way!” she yelled over the noise at Byron, who was locked in a hopeless struggle with the grabbing hand. Rolling her eyes, she yanked him free. “Downstairs!” she yelled in his ear. Looking back, she could see Tyler and his crew close behind them. She quickly headed downstairs after Byron.

The basement was bathed in black light and an ear-splitting loop of cackling noises was playing. An impenetrable fog of what Joy guessed was dry ice hung at waist level in the room.

“Where’d the other kids go?” asked Byron, alarmed. Joy shrugged, looking around for an exit.

Then the mist swirled and a lacquered coffin appeared for a moment in the center of the room, with a glow-in-the-dark sign pinned to the open lid: here lies your candy…or your doom!