Ysabella dropped to one knee and brought her hands down with a snarl of her own.
The fringe tree crashed atop Conal, smashing him down to half his height.
He screeched like the damned—and pushed himself up, raising the tree.
“No, Conal.” Ysabella barely murmured the sentence.
Like automatons programmed in perfect sync, the sorceresses pointed at the monstrosity, shouting no particular words.
Lightning as bright and green as a sun-soaked grass field arced onto and into Conal from all directions. For the second time in less than a millennium, Conal had time to realize that his lust for power would go unfulfilled.
The sustained strikes pierced and pounded Conal O’Herlihy into a million sparking, flaming flying pieces that scattered for hundreds of yards.
Weeping, Stella lifted Candace into her arms, as if trying to regress her to girlhood from the hyper-speed maturation she had been forced to do.
Pedro covered his head as he ran to check on Hudson. He smacked the heavy clods of mud off his friend and turned him over. “Dude, you better n—”
“Don’t!” Hudson’s eyes popped open in terror as he grabbed Pedro’s jacket. “Don’t mouth-to-mouth me!”
* * * *
DeShaun and Stuart hit the Community Center doors together, knocking them open with a steely echo.
“Dad!” DeShaun cried, seeing his father on the ground and Pedro kneeling to hold him.
“He’s okay, dude!” Pedro said.
“Candace!?” Stuart strained to see into the center of the witches’ circle—and there, in Stella’s arms, was the girl with the familiar streak of white hair; it was flowing amid the wet and messy chestnut locks of his best and only girl.
Still loosely under the command of Pockets, DeShaun and Stuart’s army of pint-sized pumpkin smashers continued to patrol the corners for any ghoulish gourds that had escaped their wrath. For a wild, sugar-fueled mob, the children had been surprisingly thorough.
Unlike the previous year’s mushroom zombies, though, the killer squash did not smoke and melt away to black goo but remained as a litter of broken shell, scattered seed and, more disturbingly, teeth, eyes and brain matter.
The triumphant children essayed prolonged disgusted expressions of “eeeww” and the like, but they also seemed eager to play in the bloody mess like it was a fresh mudhole, daring glances at the grown-ups to see if they were going to be shushed or made to sit.
“It’s Halloween. Let them have their gross fun,” was the collective opinion.
McGlazer finally felt like he could see the light at the end of his pain tunnel.
He’d be in bed for a few weeks, maybe even need his cane again for a while. He would probably come to curse cold days. But he’d live.
Kerwin came to sit beside him, just being someone’s old friend for the first time in years. Maybe for the first time in his entire life.
McGlazer patted Kerwin on the shoulder and raised his weary head to smile—his blood freezing at the sight of a shadow writhing behind the sound system’s massive amplifier.
“Get back!” he cried, yanking Kerwin away. The speaker fell face forward with an echoing thud, as the last remaining pumpkin demon, a beachball-sized specimen with gleaming yellow eyes, crawled out into the open, and hiss-screeched at the two men.
In the dark, something about its shape seemed, even for a demon squash, wrong…
Pockets’s soldiers stomped toward it with shrill battle calls, raising their fitness-themed weapons.
The thing didn’t run from them, though, but toward the double doors. Just before a barrage of small weight plates could smash onto it, the thing leaped into the air and spread two gigantic leaves from its back.
Pushing off with its tendrils, it began flapping these bizarre wings furiously. All watched in horror as it gained height with unnatural speed.
“Stop that goddamn thing!” McGlazer heard himself say, as all his pains flared worse than ever from pure, sudden, hopeless stress.
The pumpkin-bat, seeing the witches below, veered east to avoid lightning spells.
Chapter 40
Where the Sky Ends
Dennis and Bernard, having made their way down the cemetery hill, stopped for a moment to examine the wreckage of the hearse and the gate.
“Metal as hell,” said Dennis.
But Bernard was frowning toward the sky. “What the…?”
Dennis followed his gaze to the odd black spot that crossed through and around patches of fog and smoke. “Moving fast, whatev—”
A jagged green bolt missed the thing by a few yards. Voices from Main Street were faint, but the context was clear. The witches were trying to bring it down.
“The rifle, bro!”
“Huh?” Bernard just held it out and stared at it.
Dennis pushed it up to his shoulder. “Shoot it down, man!”
Bernard peered through the scope—into utter blackness.
“Judas Effing Priest…” Dennis clicked a button on its side, and a green-black sky came into Bernard’s view, framing the flying object.
“Holy rock and rolly!” exclaimed Bernard. “It’s a—”
“Just shoot it before it gets out of range, dude!”
Bernard tracked it for a second or so, then pulled the trigger. Dennis winced at seeing the rifle barrel jump.
“It’s too small!”
“The wings are bigger,” Dennis said. “Just time their rise and fall.”
As Bernard followed the thing, it grew smaller and fainter behind the fog.
Dennis wanted to take the rifle away, yet knew he would never line up the shot in time.
Bernard fired, re-chambered and fired again, almost immediately.
Dennis felt a rush of relief—the tiny black shape abruptly began to fall.
Even at this distance, the satisfying sound of its thunk onto some hard roof reached their relieved ears.
“My hero!” Dennis hugged Bernard so hard it drew a squeak from the chemist.
* * * *
McGlazer lay in his hospital bed, floating on the cloud of painkillers in his system, but wide awake.
The television news was locked on the incoming reports from Ember Hollow, how the world was being forced to reconsider all notions of the supernatural, all because of three strange autumns in one sprawling farm town.
His name rose occasionally, in tones of admiration. But he wasn’t interested.
He switched it off and thought of all the strangeness of Ember Hollow and his life,
