just Quinn. The next? He didn’t know. This couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t be.
He arrived at the bottom of the hill and looked back. In the moonlight at the top of the hill, he could see the Headless Horseman. Kyle heard a deep laugh that felt like it rippled across the landscape.
For the first time, it occurred to Kyle that he might die. He took off running again, hearing the crash of trees as the Horseman began to descend the hill.
Kyle ignored the bridge, running to where he had parked his car earlier in the evening. If he could make it there…
The laugh followed him and seemed to echo everywhere. But Kyle never stopped running.
He raced down the road and looked behind him. The Horseman came down the hill at a full gallop, his sword slicing through branches along the way.
Kyle saw his car ahead and frantically tried to pull his keys from his pocket. But he had trouble grabbing them and he felt terribly slow.
He could hear the Horseman gaining on him with every step.
I’m not going to make it, he thought.
Kyle wrestled the keys from his pocket and signaled to unlock the car door.
As the Horseman closed the distance between them, Kyle threw open the driver’s side door and jumped inside. He started the car and threw it into reverse, pushing it as fast as he could.
The Horseman was almost to the car.
“Shit,” Kyle said again.
He backed up, trying simultaneously to keep an eye on the rearview mirror so he could see behind him, and look in front to where the Horseman was gaining.
He could not keep driving like this. If he did, he would crash into a ditch and be stuck on foot. Kyle slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel, trying to turn the car around as fast as possible.
The Horseman kept coming and vaulted over the car. Kyle strained his neck even as he shifted into drive to try and see where it was.
When he brought the car forward, he saw the Horseman facing him on the road.
Kyle fought to hold down his panic. The man astride the horse looked more like a decaying corpse than a person, his rotted uniform on and a tattered cloak cast out behind him. As Kyle watched, the Horseman pointed his sword in the car’s direction.
Figuring it was his only chance, Kyle floored the accelerator. Cars can run over horses and besides, there was no other place to go.
The horse stood there, Kyle waiting for the inevitable collision or to see the horse move out of the way. At the last minute, the Horse jumped again, easily moving out of the car’s path.
Kyle pressed the accelerator down and the car lurched forward faster. He would just have to pick up enough speed to outpace the thing.
How far was it to the highway? He cursed the dirt road he was on. He needed to get real speed, but the traction was keeping the car going only 45 miles an hour.
The Horseman appeared to be keeping up easily, gaining ground even. As Kyle watched, the Horseman disappeared from his rearview mirror to the right.
“Shit,” Kyle said again. It was coming up alongside the car. “You aren’t real, you fuck.”
Kyle watched in his rearview mirror as the Horseman swung his sword. The blow connected, smashing the rear windshield. Kyle felt glass shards hit him in the neck and he shut his eyes momentarily.
The car jerked to the left. Kyle opened his eyes quickly and tried to keep it on the road. He moved his car to the right and the Horseman dropped back.
Kyle saw with some relief that the main road was in front of him.
He saw the Horseman fall back even further in his mirror.
“What are you playing at?” he asked himself.
He accelerated to Route 7 in front of him and did not even pause at the stop sign as he finally pulled his car onto a paved road. Kyle shouted in triumph and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
“Let’s see if you can keep up with this,” he said.
He looked in the rearview mirror and saw nothing.
He breathed a sigh of relief, but kept the car moving fast. Its speed edged up to 80 miles an hour.
He was uncertain what his next step should be. Quinn knew who he was-if Quinn even still existed-so staying put was out of the question. He sped past houses, through stop signs and streetlights. If the cops were out here, they would just have to pull him over. He could deal with them.
Kyle knew he had to go back to his base of operations. There was too much stuff there for someone to find. If he acted now, hopefully Quinn would seem like a lunatic. After all, the DNA test would still confirm his “death.”
He kept his eye on the rearview mirror. Still nothing.
He had left the Horseman in the dust.
He sighed again and slowed down. It wouldn’t do to get a ticket. He should go back to base, pick up his stuff and leave town. Maybe someone would believe Quinn or maybe not. It wouldn’t matter. Kyle Thompson would disappear.
God, but it was frustrating. He had been so close to finishing up here. And now he was just running away. He checked the clock in the car. It was 11:40 p.m.
Just 20 more minutes and he wouldn’t have to worry about the Horseman anymore. That part he remembered from Kate’s conversation with Janus. Given what he had seen, he had no choice but to acknowledge some of that shit must be true.
He just hoped the deadline was one part that was real.
He pulled off on Mulberry Lane, still constantly keeping one eye out for anything behind him. At an empty post where a mailbox should have been, Kyle turned left, confident that no one had followed him.
Go in, grab the stuff and go. Deadline or no deadline, it wasn’t worth sticking around to find out. Winding his way down the long driveway, he pulled the car up to the house and stopped.
For once, he wished that this house had not been his choice for a base of operations. It was rundown, its steps were treacherous, and every creak of the floorboards could be heard throughout the house.
But that was what had made it perfect. It was Charles Holober’s house, the poor schmo whom police had tapped as Lord Halloween the first time around.
From the beginning, Kyle had known it was a perfect spot. Nobody wanted to buy the land, even in the days where everything was being plowed down to make way for new luxury townhomes. Not here. A house built in a swamp standing on rotten stilts.
Kyle could not keep his collection items at his own house. That would have made for easy discoveries by any curious person. So Holober’s it had been. Kyle had befriended him 13 years before, a lonely schizophrenic hermit with a house in the swamp. Kyle had set him up of course-he had wanted a patsy for police to find so they would stop looking for the real killer.
And Holober’s place remained an excellent hiding spot. No other houses for miles, and the creaky floorboards would easily tell him if anyone else was around. It was like a built-in alarm. Kyle had kept all his trophies there. The news clippings, the stack of post-it notes, mementos.
But now he wished he hadn’t. Kyle had never been afraid of the house before. After all, he was the thing that other people should fear. He was what went bump in the night.
Kyle got out of the car and checked his watch. 11:45 p.m.
But he was growing nervous. Far away, he thought he could hear a sound and it was getting louder.
“Damn,” he said, and climbed the steps.
He would be safe in here. He opened the door and went through.
The air in the place was stale and had a rotten odor. The house still had electricity, thanks to a generator Kyle had maintained in good order.
Kyle flipped on the light. But nothing happened.
“Damn,” he said again, and the sound of his own voice made him jumpy. He must not have charged the thing, he thought.
