halloween moon Read online

  I haven’t seen him since, although I knew he was never very far. Perhaps just a few homes down. I sensed that he haunted the entire street, flitting from one house to the next. And now that I had taught him to manipulate objects, his once-innocent hauntings might start turning out to be very interesting indeed.

  The night was warm and I knew little Anthony was burning up in his werewolf costume. Yes, werewolf. Now, where did he get an idea like that? Tammy was dressed as a witch...and not a cute one either. One of those big-nosed witches, massive wart and all.

  I’d spent the past few days doing research on a missing boy named Conner. It had taken me a while to scan missing-person reports and news articles and thousands of articles. I even had to go to the local library to scan microfiche.

  But I found him.

  Conner Murray, age five. Missing since 1967. Last known location: Santa Monica. Witnesses had seen the boy literally snatched off the streets and into a waiting van. The van was found in an alley miles away, wiped clean. The boy had been transferred to another vehicle, obviously.

  And never heard from again.

  Until now.

  Sweet Jesus.

  The neighborhood was unusually festive this Halloween. More homes than ever were sporting pumpkin-shaped lights, creepy posters, Styrofoam tombstones, and bloodied zombies poking up from lawns. I didn’t decorate for Halloween, mostly because my house was always a haunted house.

  Or a house of horror.

  Or maybe not. Now that both my children knew my deep-dark secrets, the home had become much more relaxed. It was easier for me to exist within. And easier for me to help my children deal with their own growing supernatural abilities.

  But who knew that a monster lived nearby?

  A monster of the worst kind.

  And his home was just a few houses down.

  * * *

  “I don’t like this house, Mommy,” said Tammy again.

  I stood outside the smallish home. Most of the homes in my neighborhood were small. Although one or two sported two-stories, my neighborhood mostly consisted of small, boxy homes constructed after World War Two with little imagination.

  The home we stood in front of now was exactly nine homes from my own.

  Too close, I thought again with horror. Far too close.

  The house had been recently painted and sported a chain-link fence that even now was covered in paper skeletons and strung with little pumpkin-shaped lights. Two jack-o’-lanterns with happy-enough faces blazed on the front porch. Creepy music issued out from speakers suspended in the tree.

  He’s trying too hard.

  The son-of-a-bitch.

  I’d seen the old man who lived alone here often enough, although not so much these past few years.

  But he’s still here. Right behind those doors. Giving candy out to kids. Unsuspecting kids and unsuspecting parents.

  Had I been an unsuspecting parent in the past? I couldn’t recall trick or treating at this particular home. Perhaps my inner warning system had kept me unconsciously away. And kept my kids safe, as well.

  I stared at the home even while I sensed my kids’ growing discomfort. For the most part, the other kids in the neighborhood stayed away as well. There was something about the house that I sensed now, that I had never sensed before. A darkness around it. And sadness. Extreme sadness.

  Not just sadness, I thought. Anger. Rage. Resentment. Horror.

  Try as the owner might, the home was mostly skirted by others in the neighborhood. Mostly. A young mom talking on her cell phone swept past us with her little mermaid, a girl no older than four. They went through the open chain-link door, up the cement walkway, and rang the front door. The mother stepped back, still on her phone.

  I waited, watching, unconsciously holding my breath.

  Tammy tugged on my sleeve. I ignored her. Anthony had stepped forward and was now leaning his elbows on the fence, watching as I watched. He was sensing something too. But Anthony, I knew, was quickly growing unafraid of anything. This worried me. Some fear was good, right?

  What he sensed, I didn’t know, but together he and I watched as the front door opened and a stooped, old man shuffled out, grinning broadly. He praised the mermaid outfit, ruffled the girl’s hair, and dropped some regular-sized candy bars into her plastic pumpkin.

  Regular-sized candy bars.

  Yeah, he’s trying way too hard.

  The mother had the little girl thank him and together they turned away, and as they did so, I saw two things. Two things that made the hair at the back of my neck stand on end. Something that hasn’t happened in a long time.

  The first was that the smile instantly left his face as he watched the two leave his porch. The smile was replaced by something unspeakably sinister. The second was that I saw a darkness swirling around him. A nearly pure-black aura. Darker than anything I’d ever seen before.

  I knew I was looking at pure evil.

  The old man then stepped back into his house and shut the door.

  “Did you see that, Mommy?” asked Anthony next to me.

  “Yes, baby.”

  “Is he the devil, Mommy?”

  I glanced at him--and thought about that. And thought about it the entire time we trick or treated.

  * * *

  “What evidence do you have, Samantha?” asked Detective Sherbet of the Fullerton Police Department.

  “A ghost told me.”

  Sherbet had been about to lift an old fashioned donut to his mouth when he paused in mid-lift. I opened my mind and memory to him and invited him in. He squinted irritably, then scanned my thoughts like an old pro.

  “Jesus, my life is weird,” he said.

  Sherbet, of course, had been psychically linked to me for a few months now, whether he wanted to be or not. Mostly not. But in this situation, our telepathic link worked miracles. He saw the ghost boy as I had seen him.

  “Is that a real ghost?” he asked.

  “Welcome to my world,” I said.

  “Jesus,” he said again, and finished his bite. A helluva bite. Most of the donut was gone...or in his mustache. He cleaned himself with a napkin, picking up on my thoughts. As he masticated the greasy donut, he frowned briefly, then looked at me. “What’s wrong with his arm and leg?”

  We were sitting in a donut shop off Harbor Boulevard. Mid-day traffic crept by. The day was surprisingly cool, considering the warmth of the night before. I continued holding Sherbet’s eyes and let him figure it out.

  It took him only a moment. “The bastard broke his arm and leg.”

  I nodded minutely.

  Sherbet went on. “And the slashing wound in his chest?”

  “A stab wound, Detective.”

  He sat silently, his partially-finished donut momentarily forgotten in his oversized hand. “And these...ghosts or spirits...how much can we trust them?”

  I knew what he meant. He wanted to know if we were being fooled with--or goofed with--perhaps by a mischievous spirit.

  So I explained to him how spirits often take on their appearance at death. That this wasn’t a mischievous demon or imp or whatever the hell else was out there. I also explained the darkness I had seen around the old man.

  “He killed the boy,” said Sherbet, not so much to me, but to himself, or to the heavens. Sherbet, I knew, had a precocious little boy of his own.

  “He did, detective.”

  “How sure are you?” he asked.

  “More sure than anything in my life.”

  “The evidence might be long gone, Sam.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Unless he’s killed recently.”

  “Do you feel like he’s killed recently, Sam?”

  I thought about that. “I don’t know that, Detective, but I do know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He wants to kill again.”

  * * *

  It was late.

  I was smoking my Virginia Slims and trying my best to feel human, mortal and no
rmal, knowing that in a very short time I was going to be anything but human, mortal or normal.

  I was sitting in one of my patio chairs, in my epic backyard that abutted the nearby Pep Boys, with their three sexually ambiguous mascots. The night was cool. I was dressed in sweats and a tee shirt. The kids were asleep. It was coming on three a.m.

  Sherbet wouldn’t like what I was about to do. Not one bit. He would chastise me and tell me me I was being reckless, all the while thanking me for ridding the world of a menace.

  The very worst kind of menace.

  A child killer.

  I finished the cigarette and lifted my face to the heavens and blew into the wind and watched the smoke swirl and morph and disperse. Then I ground out the glowing tip.

  Then, because I could, I crumpled the still-hot cigarette in my hand. It burned like hell, but I ignored the pain and continued grinding it even as I thought about what I must do.

  * * *

  I hopped over the chain link fence in a single bound. Like Superman, only shorter and with hips.

  I strode across the grass in the dead of night, brushing past some overgrown plants. The car in the driveway was an 80’s Oldsmobile. There was a front porch and a bench where, I suspected, the sick bastard watched the neighborhood kids.

  Still striding purposefully, I went up the stairs and didn’t miss a beat as I lowered my shoulder into the front door. It exploded nicely from its hinges, landing with a thunderous crash.

  Perhaps loud enough to wake the dead.

  Or, in the least, to wake some neighbors.

  Either way, I didn’t care.

  I continued forward, ignoring my inner alarm system which was ringing off the hook, and stepped over the flattened door and into the lair of the beast.

  * * *

  He was waiting for me in the living room.

  A small living room, to be sure. Smaller than my own, but filled with lots of crap. Everything from broken grandfather clocks to doll houses to train sets.

  A kid’s paradise, I thought.

  He was sitting in a winged-back chair, smoking from a very long and slender cigarette, and watching me from behind the barrel of a pistol.

  He adjusted the barrel, now pointing it directly at my head.

  “I’ve called the police,” he said.

  My inner alarm was raging so loud that I forced it to calm down. I get it, I thought. I’m in terrible danger here.

  “No you didn’t,” I said. “A scumbag like you does all he can to avoid the police.”

  The gun never wavered. The only thing that did was the billowing smoke, which drifted up from his slightly open mouth.

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “No. But you will never forget me.”

  He laughed. More smoke issued out of his mouth as he did so. He next sat a little more forward. “No, I suppose I didn’t call the police, but it hardly matters, right?” He waved the gun again, then settled it on a spot directly between my eyes.

  “How did you know I was coming?” I asked.

  “Oh, a little bird told me,” he said, and as he spoke, something dark and slithery appeared in his already-dark aura. It wrapped around him once, twice, then plunged into his heart area, where it disappeared as surely as the Loch Ness Monster might into the deep depths. He didn’t react to the evil surrounding him.

  The evil in him, I thought.

  It was no little bird. It was something evil--perhaps not as dark and evolved as the thing that lived in me, but it was a real thing. And it was hungry. I suspected the old man’s own evil, his negativity and hate, kept the thing alive. Fueled it. Gave it life. Kept it satisfied.

  For now.

  But it was hungry. Very, very hungry.

  “You killed a little boy named Conner,” I said, inching closer. A gun couldn’t kill me, unless the bullet was laced with silver. Either way, a gunshot wound to the head would hurt like hell.

  “Now that’s not a very neighborly thing to say, Samantha Moon.”

  That made me stop. My inner alarm rang all over again, louder than ever. “How do you know my name?”

  “Oh, I know all my neighbor’s names, Ms. Moon.”

  I shivered at the implication. “You mean, all those with kids.”

  He grinned broadly. “Children are so precious, don’t you think?”

  Was I faster than his trigger finger? I didn’t know. There was so much about me that I didn’t know. But I felt faster. More importantly, could I predict when he was going to fire? I didn’t know yet, either, but I was about to find out.

  “You’re a monster,” I said.

  “Sometimes, Samantha Moon. These days, not so much...although I feel my old hunger coming back. My old desires, so to speak.”

  Although he was sitting mostly in darkness, I could see him clearly thanks to the energized light particles that forever danced before my eyes. Danced and illuminated. And so I watched his trigger finger closely.

  He looked at me some more from behind the pistol. Then cocked his head as if listening to someone or something whispering into his ear.

  A moment later, he said, “I’m being told that you are not wearing a wire and that you are here alone, but also that I need to be very, very careful with you.” He raised the gun higher and straightened his arm. A shooter’s stance. His finger wrapped a little tighter around the trigger. “Now why is that?”

  And in that moment, I was nearly overwhelmed with horrific psychic images. I gasped as I saw the mutilation, the degradation, the perversion, the torture, the horror that this man inflicted on his victims. On children. The innocent of innocents. I stumbled as the images hit me in wave after sickening wave. Truly, I was in the presence of pure evil.

  And as I struggled to regain my composure--hell, just to stay standing--he said, “Now, why should I be afraid of you, Samantha Moon, mother of two darling children, Tammy and Anthony. And my, my, my aren’t they getting to be so big. So very, very big.”

  I didn’t wait for him to pull the trigger. I didn’t wait to test the limits of my own supernatural prowess and agility. I didn’t, because I didn’t have to.

  By mentioning my kids by name, he’d awakened something in me that was more primal--and more powerful--than any darkness that lived within me.

  I was, after all, a mother first.

  And a vampire second.

  I lunged forward, charging, hurling my body through the small living room. Closing the distance between us in a heartbeat, a blink. Instantly. I was on him before he knew what hit him, before he could even squeeze the trigger.

  Turns out my reflexes were pretty damn fast.

  He screamed because I had his arm and was twisting. The gun discharged into the ceiling. I still had hold of his arm as I lifted him from the chair and hurled him against the wall behind him.

  The gun went off yet again, shattering a window to his right.

  As he struggled, I punched him hard, perhaps harder than I had ever punched anyone. The back of his head exploded into the drywall, even as I shattered his jaw. I punched him again, as hard or harder than the first time, and felt the bones of his face shatter as well. I punched him again and again and again.

  And when I was done, when the rage that overcame me finally subsided, the man before me was a man no more.

  He was gone, forever.

  * * *

  Her name was Pauline and she was a medium from Los Angeles.

  She was a heavyset woman. Beautiful, she possessed a serene aura, full of violets and golds. I knew these were the colors of those who were on a spiritual path. I’d seen the same aura around preachers and priests and spiritual teachers.

  When I told her about the little boy, she instantly agreed to help, stating the boy had come to her in a dream just the night before. I wasn’t sure what to make of this on the phone, but since I had seen my share of crazy crap, I accepted it, thanked her, and gave her my address.

  She arrived two hours later.

  Now we were once again se
ated on my living room floor. Myself, her...and now a presence that was beginning to manifest to my right. Pauline smiled as the energy collected and swirled and began to form into a little boy.

  She looked at me. “You see him?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me some more, then nodded to herself. I sensed her deep understanding. Her knowing.

  She knows what I am, I thought. And doesn’t care.

  Pauline was a medium and psychic. I was drawn to her internet ad almost instantly, and knew I had to call her, knew she was the right woman for the job.

  A job for what, I didn’t know.

  Conner manifested by my side, holding on to my knee as he did so. His small touch sent a crackle of electricity through me, warming me instantly. He was clearer than I remembered. He was remembering who he was.

  “Hi Conner,” said the medium gently. “My name’s Pauline and I want to help you go home.”

  Conner looked up at me again. I smiled. He squeezed my knee tighter. I did my best to ignore his badly broken arm and leg. The bastard who’d done this was gone. The police had come and gone, too, after shutting down our street for a few days to investigate. Sherbet was front and center, looking like a man determined to find a killer. Never once had he contacted me or mentioned the incident to me.

  It was quickly discovered, through copious amounts of evidence, that the man, one Rudolph Vega, had been a killer of children. Apparently he enjoyed keeping souvenirs from his victims...and burying their bones in a makeshift basement under his kitchen. They had found seven in total, as I knew they would. I had, after all, seen their faces.

  My street would never be the same again. The families involved would never be the same. The sweet innocence of my neighborhood was forever tarnished.

  But at least the monster was gone.

  The police never did find Rudolph Vega’s killer, but it was believed to be someone who might have lost a child, or someone who had figured out Rudolph Vega’s dark secret.

  I will never forget the rage that gripped me, that overcame me. As I stood over him, delivering blow after blow, I was no longer a mother or a concerned citizen or anything with feelings or emotions. I was a monster fueled by hate. I would have killed him ten times over if I could have.