Johnny Halloween by Partridge Norman

Author:Partridge, Norman [Partridge, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications
Published: 2011-10-15T23:00:00+00:00

“The darkness, the darkness,

The light, the light,

At midnight, at midnight,

On Halloween night.”

Nardo dipped low, taking cover behind a leafy oak. He’d nearly walked right into it.

There were about ten of them, and just like Dennis Wichita had said, they were flying kites. Nardo saw three bat-shaped silhouettes darting and diving before the bright moon, though it didn’t appear that any of the men were holding kite reels or paying much attention to the aerial acrobatics.

One of the men came forward, pushing something that looked like an old lawn mower. The chalker. The man bent low and jammed his arm into the machine, first to the wrist, then the forearm, then the elbow, and when he stood up, in the brief moment before the heavy, leathery sleeve of his robe descended, it appeared that he had lost his right arm.

Nardo inched back toward his patrol car. It was a trick, he told himself. Damn spooky, but just a trick. Still, he wanted to call Ron Allen for backup.

The one-armed man pulled another man forward, and a third man started to push the chalker, circling the first two. Nardo’s hand drifted to his gun.

Darkness… Light… Midnight…. There was a sudden series of sharp beeps—someone’s wristwatch signaling the hour—and a circle of flame exploded between Nardo and the crowd. Inside the circle, two ashen faces swam against a roiling red-orange background, and Nardo immediately recognized Bill as one of the men.

A glint of metal amid the flames. A knife arcing above Bill’s head.

Bill and the other man disappeared behind a curtain of sparks.

Nardo banged through the gate and sprinted through a tombstone obstacle course. The sparks were flickering low, but rising curls of mushroom-colored smoke hid his progress from the chanting men. Again, he went for his gun, hesitated just an instant at the thought of an elaborate prank, and instead pulled his chucks and dove for the circle just as a dozen sprinklers fountained water over the cemetery lawn.

The flames were quenched almost instantly. The edge of the circle glowed orange, and as Nardo passed over it he saw Bill again, saw the cartoon-like outline of a bat glowing red on the grass at his brother-in-law’s feet. Then the wind kicked out of Nardo’s lungs and he felt like he was elbowing through something alive, like you’d feel if you were flailing around in the guts of a whale, and the chanting that boomed in his ears suddenly increased in pitch until it became a shrieking whine. But all he could think about was getting there, getting to the knife that even now was descending toward Bill’s heart, and he whipped the chucks around the one-armed man’s wrist and levered the two sticks together.

There was a sound like an ear of corn being stripped from its stalk as the man’s wrist powdered. His hand fell away. The knife landed at the point of the bat-design’s left ear.

“Jesus.” Nardo pulled his gun as the tall man dropped to his knees. “Jesus!”

The screeching whine screamed to a deafening pitch.

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