Halloweenland Read Online Free Page A

with nothing but good memories. But when the dark moods began to overtake her, the parties stopped, and then the socializing altogether, and eventually even the amenities with family.
    And then, abruptly, she was gone, leaving Grant with only his job, and all that other business—what Grant liked to call
weird shit
—that seemed to happen in Orangefield every Halloween.
    And
weird shit
left nothing but more bad memories, which made his empty house feel even emptier.
    So he did what he often did now, especially as Halloween approached, which was to sit in his chair in his finished basement with an open bottle of Dewar’s scotch,get drunk, watch old movies, and hope to God that
weird shit
wouldn’t happen.
    Grant poured two fresh fingers of scotch into his favorite glass—what had once been a jelly jar from the sixties encircled with pictures of the cartoon character Yogi Bear (outlined in yellow), his friend Boo Boo (outlined in blue) and Jellystone Park (drawn, originally in a garish green). Over the years and thousands of dish washings, all but the faintest outline of Yogi’s fat head was still visible, none of Boo Boo but one of his feet, and some bizarre section of Jellystone Park that may or may not have been a picnic table. Grant no longer remembered.
    Grant used the jelly jar because it reminded him of himself: slowly fading away with each new washing of
weird shit
. . .
    He downed the two fingers in two neat swallows and refilled the glass with two more fingers of scotch.
    He hit the remote change button hard, angry that AMC had started to show commercials with their movies—he liked his westerns as neat and unblemished as his whiskey.
    But Turner Classic Movies was showing a period piece, something along the lines of a 1930s version of
Dangerous Liaisons
without sex, so, grumbling, Grant hit the button hard again and put up with the few commercials breaking up the old John Wayne western
Stagecoach
on AMC.
    “That’s more like it!” Grant toasted the TV as the movie came back on. What a great John Ford flick. The only one he liked better was
The Searchers
. He’d have to buy it on DVD someday to avoid all the breaks.
    He was refilling his glass yet again when a tap came on the casement window to his left.
    He nearly spit his whiskey back into the glass, rememberingthe last time that had happened (
weird shit
), but then he went smoothly into cop mode, rose, and drew his 9mm out of the drawer in the side table next to his lounge chair.
    The tap came again as he reached the window. Reaching up, he pushed the dirty white curtain abruptly aside.
    There was a face there. A young girl . . .
    She made a motion, and he recognized her. He nodded and pointed up.
    The face retreated and Grant dropped the curtain back into place.
    He grabbed the scotch and his glass on the way, thought better of it and put it back.
    Leaving the TV on, he went upstairs, hearing his own heavy tread on the creaking stairs.
    She was not at the back door, which was closest to the basement window, so Grant went to the front door and snapped on the porch light as he opened it.
    “Come in, Marianne,” he said, holding the screen door open for her.
    “I’m s-s-so sorry—” she began, but he cut her off.
    “Nonsense. Come in and sit down. Can I make you some tea or coffee?”
    She looked like a scared rabbit. “C-c-coffee would be great.”
    “Are you all right?”
    She nodded but was shivering like a leaf.
    Grant moved past her into the kitchen, and she followed, sitting at the kitchen chair he pulled out for her. He fiddled with the coffeemaker, which had already been preprogrammed for tomorrow morning. After a few minutes of trying to fool the computer chip in it, he was ableto get it to work. In a few seconds the comforting
blurp
and
drip
sounds commenced.
    Grant sat down at the table across from the young woman. She was looking at her hands, locked in a prayerful grip on the top of the table, as if she had never seen them