Trick or...Terror
By
Carter Swart

    He watched from the shadows, a thin, darkly clad and wary man, a determined man, too, one on a zealot’s mission.
    Excited children were gathered inside the grammar school gymnasium across the way.  He envied them their warmth and the exhilaration of the moment.  Soon they would enter the unseen danger of the town, wearing the usual trappings of Halloween and carrying their booty bags with them.  Their teachers were probably assembling them into groups at this very moment.  They always went in groups--for safety.  But there were always strays.  These were the ones he was interested in.
    He coughed and emitted a cloud of vapor into the frigid air.
    Feeling around for the heavy pistol in the deep pocket of his Pea coat, he could almost smell the metal skin of the .44 magnum and imagine the six hollow point rounds snug in their chambers.  He coughed again, a harsh and hollow sound--the sound of a serious illness.
    He shivered and turned up the collar of his coat.  Something moved off to his right and he squeezed against the building, slipping deeper into the shadows.  But it was only a couple of late-comers, a boy and girl, holding hands and skipping through the dry leaves on the playground.  They were laughing.
    Shifting his feet, the watcher felt the switch-blade knife in his pant’s pocket rub against his thigh.  It had a bone handle and was very sharp, with a serrated edge top and bottom, a knife made for one purpose only, to tear and gut and rip flesh.
    Twenty minutes later he watched the kids emerge from the building, a raucous stream of laughing witches, goblins, and ghosts.  The crisp October air rang with their hilarity.  They were bunched together at first, but soon they began moving boisterously in twos and threes into the dark streets of Mallow Falls.  Some of them had parents or teachers in tow, but many did not.  Time being the great healer, people hereabouts had almost forgotten the thing that had happened ten years ago this very night.  Even a good town can slumber in its collective ignorance.
    Time to go.
    The watcher crept away from his corner and moved silently through the bare trees, following a rutted path that led toward town.  He needed a cigarette, but he couldn’t have them anymore.  He was a sick man, but one fueled this night by the flame of an extreme enmity.  He stumbled in the dark, cursing but pressing on.  He had to reach the crossroads before the first kids got there.
    Later, from the steeper pitch of the hill, he could tell that he was nearing his destination.  The agitation and anxiety began to build as his pace quickened.  Abruptly the moon drifted from behind a cloud and lit the hillside.  Panicked, he ducked into a clump of bushes and remained still.  Nothing moved.  The night was soundless, the rugged landscape seemingly frozen in time.  After awhile, he crawled from his sanctuary and carefully picked his way down the path.  Ahead lay the remote confluence of Quill Lane and the narrow hunter’s trail he traveled, the junction which held that ghastly memory.
    He reached the crossroads and slipped silently through the brambles and into a small copse of trees.  From here he could see the kids lanterns and flashlights begin to drift up Quill Lane.  Soon they would approach the old Deveroux House, standing shrouded and mute across the narrow lane, its blank windows reflecting the cold moonlight like the sightless eyes in a dead face.
    He glanced at his watch. Almost nine.
    His rapid breathing formed a voluminous shroud around him.  He pulled out the knife and snapped it open.  Moonlight gleamed along its razor-sharp blade.
    Something moved near him, the dry brush exposing the unseen person's presence.  Just then a powerful hand reached out of the gloom and grabbed his wrist in a vice like grip!  He gasped and the knife dropped onto the ground.
    “Steady, Harry,” hissed an authoritarian voice.  "It's Ed."
    “Ed!” cried the watcher, his heart pounding wildly.
    “Shhh.”
    “Jesus!  Let go.  You scared the livin' shit out of me."
    "Sorry."  The hand relaxed and a squat, elderly man, dressed in sheriff’s raiment, joined him.
    “Gee whiz, Ed, don't ever do that to me again."
    “I said I was sorry."
    Both men caught their breath.
    “Figured you’d be here,” murmured Ed after a pause.  “You still thinkin’ it’ll happen again?”
    “Might.  Always been about 10 years between `em.  Guess you and me are the only ones who remember.”
    “I suppose.  The last one was your little niece, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah.”  Harry briefly recalled the tragedy of her disappearance.  “Lost, but not forgotten.”
    “And before that?”
    “The Donnelly boy, I think.  And before him, little Esther Finch.  All of `em gone with the wind.”
    The distant sound of high-pitched voices stilled them.  A troop of kids came up the road, paused to throw stones at the Deveroux House, then passed on up the lane.  The men silently counted fourteen children, while the wind rattled something in the Victorian house across the street.  They studied the old house with bated breath, poised for action.  But after the fourteen kids had come safely back down the road, the men relaxed.
    “Maybe we broke the spell, Harry,” murmured Ed, pulling out his Red Man.
    “Perhaps.  It’s been a long time.”
    “Still--”  Ed paused a moment, bit off a plug of tobacco and masticated it for a moment, getting it settled comfortably twixt cheek and gum.  Then he spit.  “Funny, though, the way it always happened right here, and on this night.  Kids swallowed up.  No arrests.  No suspects.  I’ve thought that maybe something, something unseen, maybe supernatural, something in that there House got `em.”
    Harry nodded.  “There's pure evil in there.  You can feel it.  It makes my skin crawl.  I believe it's some sort of unearthly entity that requires a sacrifice, for whatever reason, once every decade or so--and always on All Hallows Eve.”
    “That’s been the pattern, all right.  But Harry, I been over every foot of that place.  Never seen a thing suspicious.  Nothing.”
    “I know.  Me too,” grunted Harry, uneasily observing the silent house while smothering another racking cough.  When he was through, he said: "Clever devil, though, whoever or whatever he is.  Perhaps he knows we're waiting for him to show his hand."
    “Perhaps,” murmured the sheriff, his hard eyes seeking answers from the abandoned, ramshackle Victorian shell across the road.  He sensed the silent horror lurking within those stained, cob webbed walls.  A shudder rattled his teeth.  “Looks like maybe it took some time off, though.  Something would have happened before now.  So, will it wait another ten years, you think?”
    Harry shrugged.  “Who knows?”
    The sheriff spit into the brambles.  “Well, I won’t be here with ya next time, Harry.  Madge wants me to retire.  We bought a lot in Florida.  Guess it’ll be your responsibility from now on.  God help you.”
    Harry looked away. No--not if the doctor is right.
    They rose, walked into the road, and stood there together, contemplating the house with their dread and unmentionable speculation.  Then they turned and trudged down the road toward town, two men harboring a secret they dared not share with anyone else, powerless to prevent what was sure to come again, with neither one of them here to stop it.
    Before they reached the bend in the road, Harry looked back and had the sinking sensation that the Deveroux House was laughing at them.

Copyright, 1998, Carter Swart

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Trick or Terror first appeared in "Sinister Intent," online, 10/1998