Halloweenland Read Online Free

his hands again and looked at the floor.
    “You can leave, Bud,” Grant said.
    Ganley looked up, puzzled. “But you said about the DNA—”
    “I didn’t say anything. And like they say in the movies: don’t leave town.”
    Ganley bounced out of his chair, suddenly grinning, his trademark bopping gait evident as he wove his way through the maze of desks in the bull pen. At the front desk he stopped and smiled at the sergeant. “Chip! How’s it hangin’!”
    Chip Prohman tried to put a dispassionate look on his fat face. “Hope you didn’t get yourself in big trouble this time, Bud.”
    “Nev-ah, my man! Nev-
ah
!”
    He was out the door, all eyes on him, except for Grant’s, which were set like lasers on his notebook, while he frowned.

C HAPTER N INE
     
    Something in the corner again.
    Marianne came awake at a sound like two pieces of soft fabric being drawn one over the other. Reflexively, she looked over at the bedside table, but the clock, set back in place, was blank, broken. It was deep night, the window open a crack, cold breath of breeze barely bothering the curtains, no hint of moonlight in the darkness behind the curtains.
    The sound came again, from the corner.
    Marianne pulled herself up in the bed and stared into the gloom.
    “Jack . . . ?”
    The sound increased in volume. Now she heard a louder, more distinct sound, like a cape flapping. The shadow in the corner grew deeper in the soft darkness surrounding it, and a hint of blank white, like an oval, peeked out at her and then was gone.
    “Jack, is that you?”
    “No.”
    The sound of the voice, suddenly loud and deep anddistinct, sent a bolt of ice through her. She clutched the sheets to her like a life jacket.
    “Who—” she began, her voice trembling.
    “Someone . . .” the voice said, and now the form took on more edges, moved out of the corner toward her. The pale oval appeared and disappeared again, cut with a slash of red at the bottom: a mouth.
    The figure stopped at the foot of the bed. Now the face became wholly visible: a pale oval the color of dead fish, two empty eyes like cutouts of darkness, a red bright slash of mouth like a wound. He was enfolded in a black cape that swirled and snapped as if it were in a stiff breeze.
    The temperature in the room dropped; dropped again.
    Marianne shivered.
    “Where’s . . . Jack?” she managed to whisper hoarsely.
    The figure tilted its head slightly to one side, but said nothing. Marianne noticed now that there were arms of a sort, also dead fish colored, and hands with unnaturally long fingers, enfolded in the cape.
    “I wanted to see you,” the thing said. It’s voice was deeply neutral, without inflection.
    Marianne shivered, hid her eyes as the thing drew up over the bed toward her.
    “No!” she gasped.
    She clutched the sheet and blanket to her face, felt a wash of cold unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was like being dropped into a vat of ice water. No, it was worse than that—like being instantly locked in a block of ice.
    There was a wash of breath over her, colder still—
    She opened her eyes, gasped to see that face inches from her own, the empty black cutout eyes regarding her, unblinking.
    The mouth opened, showing more blackness still—
    “No!”
    She covered her face again, and, instantly, she knew the figure was gone.
    She lowered the blanket and sheet.
    The room was as it had been, the corner a stand of gloom, empty, the cold gone.
    A breeze from the open window rustled the curtains, and she drew in her breath.
    Something beyond them, in the night, moved past the window, a flat retreating shadow.

C HAPTER T EN
     
    Bill Grant hated his empty house.
    It was full of memories, all of them bad the past few years. Even when his wife Rose had been alive the house had not been a happy place, her depression regulating their lives like a broken wristwatch. When they had bought the place on his lousy beat cop’s salary twenty years before, it had been filled