Page 13 of Haunted Horror on Halloween

But throughout history, it had been so many things.

The time when the last of the harvest must be brought in. The time when the days would grow colder and colder, the darkness of night would fall sooner . . .

It traced back way before to ancient Celtic tradition of Samhain. Sometimes, there were just bonfires. Sometimes, those who were poor and broken could take the night to go door to door and be helped by neighbors who would give them food and sustenance when the holiday came, a practice that segued into the concept of “Trick or Treating.”

Now-a-days, the “trick” might be somewhere covering a house in toilet paper.

But there were times in history when the “trick” might have been something far worse . . .

Angela looked back at the entry to the shop. At the leering scarecrow, at the ghosts and goblins dotted here and there on the windows, the fake spiderwebs . . .

Sinister grinning jack-o-lanterns.

Darkness and shadows, fog . . . the air thick . . . a sense of death and evil in the air.

Maybe.

Or just a night leading into fall. Could be a lovely night, not too cold yet, just lovely and rich with the verdant smell of the woods and the trees and the earth.

But . . . everything had a season. And now . . .

Halloween. So much fun, spooky, great costumes, candy apples and oh, yes, fun for kids and grown-ups alike.

They stepped out the back door. There were no decorations here. Just the forest by night, the moon rising, stars dotting the sky. A time that could be so beautiful.

Except, well . . .

They had dealt with banshees, with other crazy crimes during the season.

But Angela didn’t think they’d ever dealt with an evil as great as that offered by Darrell Manderley when the clock was turning toward All Hallow’s Eve.

Chapter 3

“He came out through the back door with both women,” Angela murmured as they headed out themselves. “The question we need answered is this—did he keep going into the woods or did he circle through some of the woods and head back out to steal another car on the road somehow—or to one of the cars he’d already stolen and left in a certain place on purpose?”

Jackson nodded. “That’s the question. And they’ll get dogs out here who can follow scents; they should be here at any minute. But look at the woods facing us—at first, you don’t see a trail, but then you do.”

The trees appeared to grow thickly together with strings of vines curling around them.

Fall was upon them. The leaves hadn’t gone yet—there was a variety of striking oranges and reds.

Autumn. A season that could be so damned lovely. Before the cold set in, before the leaves fell.

Angela read his mind too easily, he thought dryly.

“The good thing is,” she told him, “we can see broken branches there—and he’s going to leave broken branches because it’s not easy to drag two women through trees and shrubbery when they’re half knocked out without breaking some branches.”

“I believe,” Trent Fielding’s spirit told them solemnly, “that he took them separately—at least to a point in the woods where they wouldn’t be seen. Did he go back to a car that he’d stolen? Possibly. That would make sense because he’d know that law enforcement would bring dogs and he’d be followed—but a dog can’t really follow a long car trail, even out here.”

“Good point,” Jackson told him. He looked at Angela. “So, where did he go from here? He has a plan; we know it. The man always has a plan. But as we’ve said, he’s had to do a fair amount of manipulation on his usual agenda.”

Jackson’s phone rang and he answered it quickly—it was Bruce McFadden.

“With Angela and Trent getting ready to walk into the woods,” Jackson told him. “You’re on speaker.”

“Okay, great,” Bruce said over the line. “So, Jackson, you ordered an all-hands-on deck on this, and we sent a few of our agents out to the prison interviewing anyone Darrell Manderley might have any conversation with whatsoever. So far, we haven’t gotten much—even some of the hardened inmates feared the guy and stayed away from him. They haven’t discovered which of the guards might have given him a bit of a hand slipping out of the infirmary into the ambulance, but there was this—when he talked, he talked about the wonder of Halloween, that the ancients had it right, those who wanted a decent survival way back when were required to make sacrifices, to understand the darkness that really controlled the world. It’s not much, but I thought we should report the idea that he is obsessed with Halloween.”

“Good to know and not a surprise. So, what kind of a reaction did most of the men have?” Jackson asked.