“I don’t know what it means, Kate. But everything here means something.”
With that, Kate walked out the door.
Zora sat at her desk after Kate had left. She had seen more than wanted to admit. A dead woman, lying on a bed. While the cards weren’t about Lord Halloween, she had seen something else, too.
“He’s coming for you, Trina,” she said.
But only her kewpie dolls heard her.
LH File: Letter #5
Date Oct. 15, 1994
Investigation Status: Closed
Contents: Classified
Mr. Anderson,
Half of the month is gone and from my point of view, much of it was a waste. Where is the mass panic? Where is the fear? Where is the publicity? I’ve killed seven people. You’ve written about four. You didn’t even mention the cop’s wife! Do you not know about it? You’re supposed to be a reporter, Anderson. I can’t hand you everything on a fucking plate.
I can’t do everything, Mr. Anderson, and I’m growing so tired of waiting. I’ve encouraged you, warned you, even threatened you, and I get no respect. Are some of the articles good? Yes, they are all I could ask for. But it’s not enough. It’s not close to enough.
I want speculation about me. Who am I? Why do I do it? Can the police catch me? All you have are straight- laced stories with no hint of speculation.
How are they supposed to fear me if they never really know who I am? I chose you, Mr. Anderson, because I thought you would give flight to this fantasy of mine. We would be partners. But you are no partner at all. You’re just another parasite, another sign of the problem.
So I’m through treating you gently. Write about me the way I deserve, or victim #8 will be familiar to you. Very familiar.
Signed,
Lord Halloween
Chapter 11
This isn’t a date, Kate thought. She sat having dinner with Quinn and trying to convince herself over and over. She could see he thought it was. After all, he had asked, and she had immediately said yes. She should have thought more about it, with Zora’s predictions still hanging in the air, but she hadn’t. She didn’t want to be left alone to think of those Tarot cards and the false psychic. So here she sat, eating bites of her pasta primavera and wondering if she had slipped from the frying pan to the fire. Hadn’t those predictions been about Quinn? Shouldn’t she be trying to stay away from him?
“So evidently I’m psychic,” Kate said for lack of something better to say. Quinn had almost appeared content just to sit in silence. Ordinarily, she would have loved that trait. She hated people who had to have conversation every minute of every day. But not today. Today she was worried the silence would strangle her.
“Huh?” Quinn asked, not sure he had heard her right.
“That’s what the great Madame Zora tells me, at any rate,' she said and tried not to say it with any bitterness in her voice.
“Someone has to tell you that you’re psychic?” Quinn asked. “I thought the point was that you just knew stuff.”
“Yes, I thought so too,” Kate said. “It’s silly. The woman was… a fraud.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised. There are about a million stories about her in this town.”
“She read my fortune,” she said, and was horrified she was talking about this. She hadn’t meant to bring it up, but it had just popped out.
“Riches, romance and fame?” Quinn asked.
“Truth, sex and death,” Kate said.
“Your death?” Quinn asked, because he didn’t want to ask about sex. Or, rather, he desperately did want to do so, but was worried that was the wrong approach to take on a first date. “And this woman gets repeat business?”
Kate laughed and it sounded forced to both of them.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Like I said, a fraud.”
“You don’t sound too confident of that,” Quinn said.
“Well, it was unnerving,” she acknowledged. “It isn’t every day someone tells me I’m going to die.”
“I hope not,” Quinn said. “That would get awful repetitive.”
Kate laughed at that and this one came out sounding genuine. She liked him. Her mind flashed back to the pack of tarot cards.
“How about you? What was your assignment?”
“Terry Jacobsen, the local ghost hunter.”
“That sounds decent, right?”
“It was all right, if you believe in that kind of stuff. To be honest, it got a little technical for me. There’s a whole theory behind ghosts, involving electromagnetic fields and living people as batteries. It felt a little like science class.”
Kate was smiling now. The feeling that she had at Zora’s was starting to fade. Now it felt like a bad dream. Cards don’t tell the future and psychics aren’t real. It’s all just smoke and mirrors. There was no reason to let it get her worked up.
“Are there a lot of haunted houses in Leesburg?” she asked.
“He called it ‘the most haunted town in America,’” Quinn replied. “He and his team have been to nearly every house or business in the main center of town. He even claims the Chronicle building is haunted.”
The smile dropped from Kate’s face. She had just been starting to enjoy herself. But now she could think of nothing but the vision she had seen in the printing press room.
“Did he say what part?” she asked.
Quinn looked concerned.
“I wouldn’t take it too seriously. We probably have…”
“Did he say which part?”
“He just said the basement.”
“Where the printing press is.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
Quinn stared at her.
“Your vision,” he said. “I didn’t even think about it when he mentioned it.”
“Well, it feels connected to me.”
“Then there’s one thing else you should hear.”
“What?” she asked, and she hated herself a little for asking. She didn’t want to know anymore. She wanted all of this to go away.
“When I said I had trouble believing that, the guy just smiled at me. He said there have been complaints from some people. People who work there late at night.”
“Complaints about what?”
“I thought maybe people were just hearing the printing press. It can be quite loud and honestly late at night, it’s very creepy.”
“Complaints about what?” she repeated.
“I don’t want to freak you out,” he said.
“Quinn, today a woman in a gaudy Middle Eastern dress turned up the three worst Tarot cards you can get during a divination, using a pack of cards she didn’t even know she had. I’m having constant nightmares reliving the
