Halloween III - Season of the Witch (17 page)

Cochran snapped his fingers. A gray suit held out three masks.

“Which one? Ah, I think
this
one will suit you perfectly. It becomes you. It
will
become you, you know.”

He selected the painted skull and pulled it over Challis’s head like a hood.

“Tell me one thing first,” said Challis. “Why
children?”

“Do I need a reason? Oh, I could tell you that they are the easiest prey—and they are, you know. People nowadays no longer listen to them. They provide the easiest entry, the path of least resistance. What better reason, from a purely pragmatic view? But they
are
such irritating little creatures, don’t you agree? You know that you do, deep down. They are as noisy as wretched sheep and twice as dirty, given to us from out of the filthiest part of woman. And you know what happens to dirty little lambs, don’t you, Doctor? They are invariably given over to the slaughter.”

“I want to see Ellie.”

Cochran jerked the mask down. He laughed crookedly. “Oh, you will, Doctor, I promise you, you will!”

He lowered the mask all the way and snapped his fingers again.

“Take him away.”

It was a small room. Not unlike the examination cubicle adjoining his own office at the hospital. Except that this one had soundproofed walls and a door that locked from the outside.

Challis sat strapped down, his feet bound at the ankles and his hands taped to the arms of the chair, which was bolted to the floor. There was only one other object in the room. A television set.

Before him on the screen was the image of a young woman with dark, disheveled curls and burned-out eyes. She was sitting on the floor in a concrete-walled corner, with indirect light playing down on her from above.

Challis breathed rapidly, sucking the mask to his face.

“Ellie . . . !” he said, his breath condensing.

Then, at the edge of the frame, the tall, immaculately outfitted figure of Conal Cochran appeared with his hands folded at his back.

Ellie greeted him weakly. “Hello, Daddy.”

“Hello, Ellie,” said Cochran. “Been a good girl, have you?”

“Yes, Daddy. I just played.”

“Good! Very, very good. And now here’s something I’ve brought for you. A special present for such a good girl.”

He unclapsed his hands from behind his back.

He was holding a rubber witch’s mask.

“What do you say?”

“Oh. Th-thank you, Daddy.”

“That’s better.”

Challis fought his bonds but it was no use. The graysuits had done their job. The mask threatened to smother him. When he raised his head again and found the holes, Ellie was alone in the ring of light, the agape witch’s face resting innocuously in her lap.

He heard a scraping of metal on metal. It was magnified enormously by the walls.

A door in his steel room opened, and Conal Cochran let himself in.

“What have you done to her?”

“See for yourself.” Cochran gestured with his wrist at the screen.

Challis was overcome by a desire to be with her, to be there with her, to go all the way down and be there so that he might make it as easy, as painless for her as possible at the end.

Cochran seemed to read his mind. He towered over Challis like a straight-backed headmaster.

“Even if I were to let you say your good-byes, she wouldn’t know you. You’ve lost her, Daniel. Ellie is six years old, now and forevermore—for as long as is left to her. Such a lovely and wretched age, six. Wouldn’t you agree? I’ve made her just the way I want her. The perfect age for a victim.”

He placed a hand on the television controls.

“She does have a strong face. Good bones. The wrong coloring, of course. But we could fix that.”

He winked over his shoulder at Challis.

“Of course, were I to use her, by the time her face reached the toy stores of Europe her features would be unrecognizable. Even her best friends won’t know her then.”

He rested his index finger on his lower lip and considered the dial.

“But let’s change the channel, shall we? Unless you’ve any further questions. I do have a few last-minute preparations. Minor technical adjustments, a phone call or two. I wouldn’t want the heads of broadcasting to miss the big night! After all, we’ve projected a forty-three share. All those greedy little hands reaching up for something their pathetic parents can’t provide! I’ve bought two minutes of very special screen time at all three networks. That should be more than enough . . .”

Challis found the mouth hole in his skull mask and spoke. His voice came back to him as through cotton. He tried again, shaping his lips around the word with greater care than he had ever taken with any other word in his life.

“Why?”

Cochran reset the selector to the commercial mode and tuned the picture with his tapered fingers.

“Mischief, Dr. Challis,” he said briskly. “Mr. Kupfer was right on at least one point. I do love a good joke. The jokers are the great men of history. It’s what we do best. It rules the world. And when we finally transform it into our own image—and we will—that’ll be the biggest joke ever!”

He sorted through his keys and let himself out.

“The world is going to change tonight, Dr. Challis. I’m glad you’ll be a witness. Only a few more hours. Enjoy the Horrorthon. Don’t forget to watch the Big Giveaway afterwards.

“And . . .
Happy Halloween!”

C H A P T E R
13

A skeleton. A witch. A pumpkin.

The three figures floated down a tree-lined residential street, oblivious to the cars that passed them by. An autumn wind rustled the oaks and a flurry of gravyboat leaves coasted down at their feet. Already the sun was slanting low through the branches and a few jack-o’-lanterns, silent watchmen of the coming night, burned orange beacons in the otherwise drab windows and porches of this quiet suburban block.

The words
MUNCIE, INDIANA
appeared at the lower border of the screen.

“IT’S HALLOWEEN TONIGHT, KIDS!” said a breathless announcer. “GET YOUR SILVER SHAMROCK MASK NOW!”

A row of masks in a toy store, balanced on their necks like helmets of a secret army.

Small hands darted out and plucked one after another from its pedestal as a cash register rang up more sales.

The children donned their masks and ran out of the store.

BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY.

“IT’S HALLOWEEN TONIGHT, KIDS! GET YOUR SILVER SHAMROCK MASKS AND WATCH THE BIG HALLOWEEN HORRORTHON!”

A tank-sized delivery truck bearing the sign of the shamrock negotiated a rustic corner,
SOUTH AMERICAN STREET
, read a sign.

STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA.

“TONIGHT’S THE BIG NIGHT, KIDS! WATCH THE HORRORTHON WITH YOUR SILVER SHAMROCK MASKS! AND BE IN FRONT OF YOUR TELEVISION SETS AT NINE O’CLOCK, NO MATTER WHAT!”

PHOENIX, ARIZONA.

DAYTON, OHIO.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
. . .

“NO MORE DAYS TO HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN . . . NO MORE DAYS TO HAL-LO-WEEN, SIL-VER SHAM-ROCK!”

The three dancing faces faded out in a flourish of trumpets.

Challis dropped his chin to his chest to block out the pictures.

In front of him was a TV monitor. Its sound would not go off, its maximally-adjusted screen recreating images so vivid they seemed to penetrate the overhanging brow of his skull mask and even the eyelids, his eyelids, which were no longer under his control.

Nothing else in the room moved.

Only his hands, working feverishly at the reinforced strapping that bound them.

Now, however, there was a new sound: a mechanical buzzing. It came from the wall, as if an insect were trapped within the soundproofing panels. The buzzing continued.

It was the sound of a fan exchanging air in the room.

How considerate of Cochran, he thought. He wouldn’t want me to die of asphyxiation. That would be too prosaic.

And premature.

He wore away at his bonds.

But the graysuits, perfect machines that they were, had done their duty without a slip. His fingers cooled and became thick and dull as his straining cut off the pulse at his wrists.

He eased up and sensation returned, his hands prickling with pins and needles as the flow of blood was restored to his veins.

The sound of a young woman’s scream blasted from the TV, assaulting his ears, as the movie resumed.

He refused to let the pictures in. But the voice was strong and persistent, striving for control and yet dangerously near the edge.

It reminded him of Ellie.

Now he saw her face before his mind’s eye, tender and vulnerable and, in its way, indomitable. He saw her face close to his own, nearly touching, her eyelashes brushing his cheek, then turned away and buried in his chest. He was combing his fingers through her hair, her dark, fragrant curls . . .

The memories were intercut with the gray, washed-out face Cochran had shown him on the monitor a few minutes or hours ago. The face of a subdued child who had been drugged and regressed to some point in a long-forgotten past before she had learned not to be afraid of the dark.

For the moment he gave up.

Then he remembered how few moments more there were left to him. And to Ellie. And to the rest of the country. And to his children. And to his children’s children, generations yet to come.

He shook his head and arched his back.

Agnes, he thought, drifting, where are you when I need you?

Good, kind Agnes, who believed with a faith she had never seen verified by empirical evidence, who had ignored her own discomfort for so long that she had ceased to be conscious of it, until it no longer mattered. Did she do it for the promise of some amorphous reward in the Great Beyond, the mere existence of which was denied by every aspect of her profession? No. She did it to save lives. Which was another way of saying she did it for her soul. For her own kind. For all of them.

For all of us.

And, so believing, nothing could stand up in her way.

She did it because they needed her, because she needed them, because they needed her, because she needed them.

And so the circle of self-perpetuating life continued. Hardly powered by the Stone relics of a doomed past. But a living energy that dwells in all that breathes.

He did not hear the screaming so loudly now. It faded away like the momentary diversion that it was.

There are only two screams worth heeding, he decided. The scream that ushers in the beginning of life. And the scream that ends it. All the others in between are useless indulgences.

And so he again took up the fight.

His muscles renewed. His chest expanded and his legs swelled against his ankle bindings. He scrunched down in the chair, but that gave him no slack; it merely served to draw his bonds tauter. The keys in his trouser pocket dug a circle into his flesh.

Keys?
He had no keys. His own keys were in his jacket, which had been stripped off him as soon as he was caught.

A circle?

Something round against his leg. In his pocket.

A quarter? Thicker. It had sharp edges and cut into him when he moved.

Then he remembered.

It was the chip. The round Silver Shamrock seal. The one that had come off the mask in Marge Guttman’s room. He had picked it up and put it in his pocket.

The idea of that bloody wafer against his body repelled and sickened him. The Silver Shamrock badge at the back of his neck, of course, embedded in the skull mask on his head, was already in place. But at least that one was for his own death, his own failure and no one else’s. If it came to that. But the one in his pocket had already served its purpose. It had done its work. It had done enough.

He bent his hand back to the point where it almost dislocated from his wrist. Then, starting with his little finger, he burrowed his hand down into his side pocket. It took several minutes.

The nightmare of violence and destruction that was the Horrorthon played out in front of him, only a few feet away. It meant nothing to him. It was about as relevant now as a cartoon is to reality.

Meanwhile, the token in his pocket became a focus for his anger and hatred.

There. Two of his fingers closed around its engraved surface. He read the grooves of microcircuitry, the stone chip backing with his fingertips. If he closed his eyes the weight of the button seemed to conjure visions of needless suffering, the legacy of stone that was its origin. It wore his skin raw.

You can go to hell, he thought, you miserable, perverted piece of technological shit. You’ve earned it. Just get the hell away from me. You and everything you stand for.

He snapped the stone symbol as far away from him as his wrist would allow.

Like a bottlecap, it sailed through the air in a low, spinning curve, until it struck the face of the television picture tube.

Inside the room there was a blinding flash.

The explosion knocked him back and then he was falling, toppling backwards until his head met the tiles. Bolts groaned. Wood splintered.