Tales Around the Jack O'Lantern by Terri Reid

Author:Terri Reid [Reid, Terri]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2014-10-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

“How come you never told us about this before tonight?” Sean asked his brothers.

They both shrugged. “It wasn’t time yet,” Art said.

“Yeah, tonight, it was the right time,” Tom added.

A soft, sniffling noise was heard coming from their mother’s direction.

“Hey, we didn’t tell it to make you cry, Ma,” Tom said.

“I’m not crying at all,” Margaret contended. “It’s a bit of a cold I’ve had for a day or so.”

“Well, my story will scare the snot right out of you,” Sean announced.

“Sean,” his mother reprimanded.

“Sorry, Ma,” he said, with a very unrepentant tone while his brothers snickered in the dark.

“I was a rookie in the force,” he began. “And it was just about Halloween…”

The rookies always got the worst beats and even though Sean O’Reilly was fifth generation Chicago cop, there were no exceptions. So, he walked the graveyard shift around Lincoln Park on the north side of the city, next to the lake. Although Lincoln Park stretched for over seven miles along Chicago’s lakefront, Sean’s area was twelve hundred acres of grass, trees, bike paths, jogging paths, museums and even a zoo that bordered Diversey Parkway on the north and North Avenue on the south. During the day, this area was a mecca of activity for families on picnics, joggers running alongside the lake and buses filled with children going on field trips. At night, it was a mugger’s paradise. This was why Sean O’Reilly was required to walk the nearly two square miles over and over and over again every night.

With the leather band of his flashlight swinging slowly from his hand as he walked, Sean started on the farthest north portion of the park and followed the bike path along Stockton Drive, passing by the statues, the softball diamonds, the benches and the landscaping. After exploring this part of Chicago by foot for over a month, he had become familiar with every dark shadow and each unique sound. He experienced, in his own mind, a symphony of the lake shore at night. The waves slapping the rocks were the percussion, the sailboats rubbing against their moorings created the high-pitch cry of stringed instruments, the breeze whipping through the tall masts of the sailboats in the harbor were the wind instruments and the honking from the cars on Lake Shore Drive were the brass. Occasionally, especially if the moon were full, some of the animals from Lincoln Park Zoo would be featured as guest soloists, leaving their haunting cries echoing throughout the park.

Sean even got to know the difference between the sound of a squirrel in the brush and the sound of a rat searching for food. He avoided them both, he was a cat person.

It was on one of those nights, when the moon was full and the leaves had nearly all fallen off the trees, that he met August. The old man sitting on the park bench in the dark startled him at first and then concerned him. “Excuse me, sir,” Sean said as he approached the motionless man.

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