There's one ironclad rule in this little town: On Halloween, don't be out after 9 PM.
Not even "don't stay out." Don't BE out. Period. Old custom around here is that if you find yourself caught out past 9 PM, anyone whose door you knock on has to take you in and let you stay the night, no questions asked. What happens -- well, what happened to people who used to stay out past 9 was that their bones were found by the side of the road. We all follow the custom strictly now, halloween parties are always sleepovers, and nobody gets got anymore.
But it used to happen reliably. The first year, back in '01, there were ten people out past 9 and we found their bones strung alongside Bloomfield Road, out near Mr. Guilford's farm. Next year it was three people, and their bones were laid out along Hillcrest Road near the cemetery. After that it was Roberta Jackson who got drunk, didn't listen to her friends, decided to walk home from the halloween party instead of staying put. Next morning Bessie Smith found her bones out along Lincoln Road.
Well it had been bad enough with the first set, let alone the second, and by that point we were damn certain there was a serial killer somewhere in our midst, or nearby, or something. Roberta really should have known better. Ah, but we didn't understand the timing, not yet. Not yet. That came when the town's two police officers tried to investigate.
Chief of Police Turner Jackson and Constable Elmer Brown. I won't say bless their hearts -- they were cops, after all, the sort of people who carry guns and get away with anything -- but I will say rest their souls. Because whatever the hell hapened to them, it sure sounded horrifying on their end. They decided to do a stakeout at the place where Roberta had last been seen by anyone. Frank and I were listening in on the police radio, hoping to hear anything about the cops catching the lurking bad guy, maybe some kind of exciting high-speed chase, and then we could say "oh yeah I heard it on the radio as it was happening." Bragging rights.
What we got, at 9:01 PM, was terrified screams from both officers, a few muffled snaps, and then silence. Next morning we found human bones strung out along Boomfield Road. Three guesses as to whose.
So then Mayor Stanley had to call in the state police. And they did their best to investigate. Asked everyone in town all kinds of questions. Got nowhere. The FBI sent a few field agents. Still didn't get anywhere. Nobody had seen a dang thing, nobody had it out for anyone in town, certainly not that much, okay I mean besides everyone hating old Mrs. McGillicuddy and her free-roaming pack of dogs and her awful floodlights, but really, if anyone in town wanted to kill the old b-word they could have just "accidentally" pushed her down a flight of stairs, and they would have done it years ago. And as for old Mrs. McGillicuddy, she didn't actually hate anyone, and never got into a dispute with anyone, because nobody had the heart to actually yell at an old lady. So that was a dead end.
So the cops and the feds gave up. Said they'd done their best, and left us to figure this out ourselves. What, no forensics or nothing? Thanks a lot.
Every few years after that, there was one dumbass who said they were going to stand out after 9 PM and try to catch the murderer. First it was Freddie Flint, then it was Mildred, then it was a visitor named Malik. Malik was smart, he wore body armor and carried a shotgun. Didn't help. Every time Frank and I listened to their progress on our cell phone, it would end at 9:01 PM with horrified screams. Guess where we found their bones. Go on, guess.
By that point people had started talking about disincoporating this town and moving away. Not that all of us had the money to do so, but, you know, every family for itself right? I cuffed Ms. Clinton for saying that. Honestly. We're a community. We stick together. And I for one wasn't going to give up Frank, and I wasn't going to give up Pearl, and I wasn't going to let the memory of all the people we lost be left behind, nor let their graves be covered over with leaves and long grass. I elected to be the next dumbass trying to do a stakeout on this damn murderer, and I asked who was with me.
Not even Frank or Pearl was with me, at first. But then a couple of things happened.
First, I ran over a rabbit out on North Street. It darted out in front of my car, I only saw it for a split second, then it was under the car with a dull clatter. (The memory of that sound still makes my skin crawl.) I realized what had happened, stopped the car, got out and tried to see if the rabbit had, by some insane miracle, survived. Plenty of folks around here don't give a god damn about running over animals, especially since they keep saying it might not have happened -- there's never a body left behind next morning, or even when the driver gets out to check. But I give a god damn. So I got out and looked for the rabbit and -- and I thought the rabbit had survived, because there it was, hopping into the bushes.
But then I noticed that its skull was crushed and its hind limb was bent backwards. It had left a trail of blood and a single foot bone behind. I picked up the bone and put it in my pocket, intending to bury it with proper ceremony later. And then I forgot it.
The second thing that happened was that old Mrs. McGillicuddy was looking out her windows at about 8 PM, a couple nights before halloween, and she saw some kind of huge animal dash through a bit of the woods lit up by her floodlight. She swore it was a moose, because it was about that big, and it had big antlers. But moose don't come anywhere near this state, and anyway, when we checked for tracks in the morning, they looked like gigantic dog tracks. Well, one of them did. Another looked more like a raccoon track and the other two looked like bear tracks. We followed the tracks as far as we could, but in one direction they hit North Street and stopped there, and in the other direction Frank said they started from Bloomfied Road and didn't start on the other side.
Now Frank and Pearl were interested. This hideous beast must obviously be the murderer. And even if it wasn't, it would make good hunting for sure. Frank got his shotgun and Pearl got her rifle and I got my revolver and, after considerable delays involving the proper technique for making squirrel stew, we met on Mrs. McGillicuddy's property at 8:50 PM, October 31. We grabbed whatever leafy branches and sticks we could find, threw them over ourselves in a pile we hoped would hide us, and took up our watch in a triangular formation. Whatever this beast was would certainly have been able to sneak up on a lone person, and apparently two people covering each other's backs, assuming the cops had been at all competent, but we were three, keeping watch in three directions, and nothing could sneak up on us.
Which is why I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a loud whuff behind me.
I turned. There stood a massive beast over us. In the darkness, it seemed to tower as tall as a moose, and its great rack of antlers spread wide. But it had made no sound of its passage despite the dry twigs all over the woods. I crouched low, hoping that it might not have noticed us. But then it bowed its head, and stuck its massive snout right in my face.
Frank clicked on his flashlight.
What I had thought might be a moose was, instead, a creature composed entirely of dead animal corpses. Its antlers were made of thousands of tiny bones; its legs were made of hundreds of longer leg bones; its head was made of tens of thousands of bone fragments; its body was a patchwork of fur from all manner of critters; its gigantic wings had the feathers of all kinds of birds.
"Holy," said Frank.
"Shit," said Pearl.
I was about to tell them not to make any sudden movements, but it was already too late, because Frank dropped his gun and took off running in one direction and Pearl dropped her gun and took off running in another, and I started to take off running in a third direction.
But then I thought, you know what, no, I'd rather give up the ghost here than let Frank or Pearl get got. So I screeched to a halt, and I whirled around --
And in that moment I realized two things. One, I'd dropped my pistol somewhere. Two, the beast was about to hit me in a split second.
So I tried to dive out of the way. I made it about halfway out of the way. But my legs didn't.
A minute later, when I came to, I was still feeling pain worse than anything I'd ever been in. But at the very least I could see what was going on. Frank was there putting splints on my leg, Pearl was there telling me that the EMTs would arrive soon, and the beast...was standing there, nosing my pocket.
I fished in my pocket and brought out the bone I had nearly forgotten. Just as soon as I did so, I heard a rattling voice in my head.
You remembered. You remembered us.
Your world kills us without care, without understanding, without realization. But you realized. You stopped. You remembered us.
Do this always, and we will have peace.
And then the creature just...fell apart, into bits of fur and feathers and bone.
The next morning at the hospital, Frank and Pearl and I had a long talk about a lot of things. Some of them involved apologies for abandoning each other like that. But mostly it was about what the beast had said. "Remember always." What the heck did that mean? Collect bones from roadkill? When roadkill always vanished immediately? And then what were we supposed to do with them? It was a real conundrum, but fortunately for us we had an entire year to figure it out, and an entire year to handle physical therapy, which, thankfully, only took a few months.
And then we went to work, trying to find what roadkill we could, which wasn't much, at first, because the damn stuff kept disappearing. We looked a bit odd, staying out by the roadside all the time. But once we found one smashed squirrel and we buried it and put up a tiny grave marker made of wood, all the other roadkill stopped disappearing so quickly, and stopped disappearing altogether.
I asked Mrs. McGillicuddy if she'd perchance seen the beast lately. And she told me that it was funny I should ask. Apparently she hadn't been telling the whole truth about seeing the beast -- she'd seen it come up to her door at least one night per week for the last ten years. It wasn't like there was anything on the porch that might interest it, just a mounted deer head in the living room, from a buck that her dear departed Arthur had bagged years ago. But, you know, maybe that was enough. And as for why she hadn't ever told anyone, well. Everyone in town hated her, for some reason, so why tell?
So we had a long talk about the dogs and the floodlights, and as it turned out, she didn't get as much help as she might have expected from a town that prided itself on being a community; the dogs roamed free because she didn't have strength enough to handle them staying indoors, and the floodlights were because a bunch of kids had egged her house once.
And I went home feeling rather foolish.
I've made it a point to visit her every week to see how she's doing, and she's made it a point to ask everyone to throw in a little money for a wildlife rehabilitation center, which should really be tax-supported, but you know how it is with municipal budgets these days.
So there's another ironclad rule in this town: if you run over an animal, stop your car, take the critter, bury it by the side of the road, and mark the grave. Makes things a bit odd for visitors, when they see an "I brake for animals" bumper sticker on every car in town, and it makes things a little annoying for some folk when they have to figure out how to hustle a flock of wild turkeys across the road. It also makes folks anxious when visitors come through and run over a rodent and don't stop -- that's why we still keep the first ironclad rule about Halloween night, just in case.
But Mrs. McGillicuddy hasn't seen the beast again, nor has anyone. So we're pretty sure things between us and the woods are better than they were.
Behold a Pale Horse: The 2021 Halloween Horrorquest