“If you won’t be silent, I’ll throttle you myself, Theodore!” threatened Farrady.
“It’s waiting out there to claim us all!” Theodore said.
“For God’s sake. Give him some of your accursed wine, Friedrich,” Farrady ordered.
Schroder stood frozen. His grandmother’s prophecy was coming true.
“Friedrich!”
“Wha…? It’s…not time yet.”
“You are both trying my patience. If you don’t give him the drink and calm him down, our plan will be compromised. And Conal himself will hold you accountable.”
Even in the candlelight, Friedrich could see suspicion forming on the faces of the men. He found a loose, fist-sized stone on the floor, picked it up and bashed the whimpering Theodore over the head with it, sending him to his knees, then to his face.
“Heaven above!” stage-whispered Farrady. “Have you killed him?”
A trio of the crew knelt to check on Theodore.
Farrady pointed at Schroeder. “You are as mad as he!”
“I…won’t waste my hard labor on a madman” was Friedrich’s excuse.
“We need every man, you miscreant,” Farrady chided. “Are you trying to sabotage us?”
“No!” Friedrich said. “It’s just…my nerves…”
“Why should we chance it?” asked someone behind Friedrich as he grabbed the Dutchman’s shoulder.
A knock came, neither in their secret, coded rhythm nor at a discreet volume.
Farrady stared at the door as he reached for his rifle. He motioned for the nearest man to open the door.
Remembering when he had found Hezekiah Hardison hanging in the stead of his crow-repelling effigy, Friedrich wanted to back away, to get behind every man he could. In that instant, he became convinced that Theodore had indeed seen the very personage of Death.
Someone swung the door open and lunged backward. Farrady tensed as stiff as his weapon.
There was only darkness—and the sound of disturbed horses.
“Go and look,” ordered Farrady.
The opener regarded Farrady as if he was insane.
“I’ll be with you,” Farrady promised. “Just behind.”
The man drew a deep breath, his countenance still doubtful, as he took up his own rifle. The other men began to follow suit. Friedrich took the opportunity to distance himself from the entrance.
With Farrady pointing his rifle over the opener’s right shoulder and holding the candle lamp high, the duo crept out into the silent darkness.
Three yards out, a flash, a boom and a truncated cry loosened the bladders and bowels of the heartiest settlers present.
Farrady’s groping hands and tan shirt were the first things to break through the dark, as his body ran back through the door and fell forward, squirting blood from his neck stump onto the stone floor and the nearest feet.
The clamor of panic had barely begun before a loose pattern of bangs and powder flashes filled the room; guns discharged pointlessly. Amid the yelling and stumbling, someone thought to close the door.
“Shoulders to!” cried the man, and four complied, smashing into one another and the door to keep it from being opened by whatever it was that…
Death.
It was the Angel of Death.
“God’s punishment!” called Schroeder. “For our chicanery!”
If anyone heard and believed, they did not resign themselves to their fate. Survival was the one and only consideration.
“Wait!” shouted Benjamin Gaffney. “There’s a knock!”
Dead silence fell like fast fog. Then, barely muffled by the all-too-flimsy door: “Triiiiiick or treeeeat, you funny men!”
The voice was at once that of a child and a demon.
“Don’t let it in!” cried Gaffney, just before the point of a two-foot scythe blade stabbed through the wood—and into his forehead.
The other men at the door swarmed backward, crushing each other and Schroeder into the rear wall.
“Trick it is!” Everett Geelens/the Grim Reaper excitedly announced through the bloody hole he had made. He yanked the scythe out fast and hard, smashing Gaffney’s head against the door hard enough to crack the wood.
A pale fist crashed through the weakened spot. The hand opened to give a “howdy” wave, then withdrew.
An eternal instant later, a face was framed in the splintered hole, and they all knew Theodore was right.
A blood-slick skull, to which bits of leaves, dirt and flesh stuck, grinned at them, hanging gristle dancing in the candlelight.
Its maddened eyes provided no suggestion of life. “Heeeere’s Evvie!”
The hole went black. A residual negative image of a skull remained, stamped on every mind’s eye.
“Out of my way!” Schroeder knew what he had to do. He wrestled past the men to get to the crate of liquor he’d left terrifyingly close to the failing door, sparing an instant to reflect on the irony that in his original plan, Schroeder was to be the only one not to imbibe the poisoned spirits.
The others stood silent as he uncorked a jug and drank mightily from it.
Schroeder gave them no thought, hoping against hope that it would be only oblivion, and not yet another unearthly angel, that met him in the coming minutes.
Chapter 37
Under Saturn’s Shadow
Modern day
“They’re clear!” Pedro called, holding a spotlight toward the wreckage of the hearse and gate.
“Hit it with the gas,” Hudson told Deputy Astin.
With a thunk and a whoosh, a gas grenade flew from Astin’s M4A1 into the growling jack-o’-lantern terror’s mouth and ignited with a flash.
The monster issued a cry of pain as it leaped eight feet in the air and came down on its back, scuttling and slashing helplessly at the air with its bizarre appendages. Light and smoke emerged from its mouth, making for the most horrific jack-o’-lantern ever.
“Good job.” Hudson brought his Famas bullpup to his shoulder and let loose a strafing line of rounds, tearing open the damned thing. “Go, Pete.”
Pedro got a few feet closer and took a knee, raising his sawed-off shotgun. “Stay down, Denny!”
He opened up with three shots, blasting off a leg and two massive chunks of bloody orange flesh.
The remaining legs extended, twitched and then folded in on the ruins of its bulbous body.
Pedro smiled as he wiped rain from his eyes. “K.O.!”
* * * *
Pedro jogged to them, followed by Hudson. “You dudes okay?”
“We are, but…” he gestured toward his ruined hearse.
“Maybe we can buff all that out when we do the cowcatcher,”
