Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (5 page)

near a thick stand of cattails.

[40] THE MUMMY'S HEART

At that moment, we had no idea what he was up to. But it came

clear later. With his three-fingered hand, Charlie Steiner was ready to grasp for the final straw that might seal the deal he’d tried to cut with the powers of darkness.

That meant he’d gotten down to the portion of night that was

really bad business.

The worst.

The mummy stopped at the rear of a station wagon. Swaying just

a bit, as if it were fighting gravity itself. Then his fist swung down, and the tailgate dropped, and a light came on in the rear of the vehicle.

We couldn’t see much by that light, but we could see the mummy

bending low. He reached inside, grabbing for something. There was a muffled scream as he took hold of it, and something tumbled to the sand.

“Sweet Jesus,” Roger said. “It’s a little girl.”

The mummy bent low, staring down at the prone figure before

him.

He wasn’t chanting anymore.

Three words crossed his ruined tongue and bubbled over his

bloody lips, and they were the only words he said that night that we truly understood:

“Dream . . . wish . . .
sacrifice!
”

The girl was nine, maybe ten. In the moonlight, I could see

that her ankles and wrists were bound with ropes. And she wore

a princess mask—the cheap plastic kind you found at a drugstore.

Expressionless, with black hair cut straight across in bangs, and

lips as red as red could be. That mask was taped to her head, thick swatches of sticky plastic stuck to her own black hair as if she’d been mummified herself.

If she hadn’t screamed, I would have thought she was dead. She

lay there on the ground, gasping now, the breath knocked out of her.

She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. I stared at her, still unable to move myself. Roger was staring at her, too.

“We’ve got to stop him!” Roger said.

He wasn’t whispering, and he was moving forward, flicking on

his flashlight as he advanced.

NORMAN PARTRIDGE [41]

“Hey!” Roger shouted. “Stop!”

The mummy whirled, holding up a hand against the bright beam.

For the first time we saw that he truly was as gray as a grave, except for the places he was black-red. One hand was missing a couple fingers and dripped blood. More gore spilled from the thing’s mouth—it

looked like he’d been chewing razor blades.

Given all that, it was amazing how fast he moved when he saw

Roger coming. One big arm swung down, and he snatched up the girl, and his bandaged feet kicked up gouts of sand that hissed against the October wind as he walked toward the edge of the lake.

His back was to us now, and he raised the girl over his head.

“He’s going to toss her in!” Roger said. “He’s going to drown her!”

I started across the beach, following Roger. He’d already covered

ground. He’d dropped the flashlight and was closing on the mummy’s back with his Louisville Slugger in his hands.

Someone else was coming, too. At least I hoped there was, because

I heard police sirens rising in the distance. But I couldn’t be sure they were headed in our direction, and there was no time to waste. The

mummy already had that girl over his head, and before we knew it

she was sailing through the dark night.

A hollow splash, and the lake took her. All I could think of as

the water closed over her head was the black and bloody pit of that mummy’s mouth snapping closed. And then the mummy whirled.

Perhaps it was the sound of the sirens that brought him around, or maybe he heard Roger racing toward him. But that wrecking ball fist of his swung out, and it banged my brother to the side.

For a moment, Roger was airborne. He hit the sand rolling. Then

he came up, but he’d lost the baseball bat in the fall. By that time I was already halfway across the beach, splitting the distance against the mummy to come at him from the other side.

“No!” Roger yelled. “Get the girl! She’ll drown!”

I was close to the mummy now. Close enough to see the crazy

gleam in his eye. People have asked if I realized that he was a man in a costume, or if I thought he was real. To tell the truth, I can’t remember any of that. I only knew that he was dangerous, and that if he had a chance he’d kill both my brother and me.

[42] THE MUMMY'S HEART

And that’s what he tried to do. His fist flashed out again. I ducked and dodged the blow, trying to give Roger a moment to recover the

bat. The mummy lurched forward, gaining ground for another strike, but I’d given my brother the moment he needed. Roger was up again, charging the mummy with his Louisville Slugger. As I turned toward the lake I heard it land once, and the mummy grunted. Another blow struck home and the mummy groaned, but I couldn’t afford to look

behind me. I already had my eye on the water and the dull moonlight washing those little bands of wave.

I searched the surface for a ripple . . . any sign of the girl as I tried to remember where she had gone under.

I should have had my eyes on the shadows.

Because the mummy was still coming for me, even as Roger

struck him again with the bat.

He was coming with one fist raised like a wrecking ball.

And the sirens were louder now. Definitely coming our way. I was

skirting the shore, moving quickly, when I realized that I had almost run into the rear of the station wagon. I got my hands up before I slammed into it, and then the mummy’s fist cut a path through the

shadows.

I never saw it. I never heard it. I can’t even remember the first

blow striking me. I know it caught me from behind, and low on the

base of my neck, because I still get a little
click
in my top vertebrae anytime I turn my head to the left. Anyway, I staggered and spun on my heel like a drunk.

Roger bashed him again, but it didn’t do any good. The next blow

crashed against my forehead, just above my left eyebrow. It opened a two-inch gash. Not that I knew I was bleeding . . . or falling. I don’t even remember falling into the lake. But the next thing I knew, I was underwater. I came up coughing a mouthful of sludge that tasted

like something a frog had vomited up. For a moment I thought the

mummy’s fist was coming at me again, but I realized it was only a

clutch of cattails waving in the wind.

The moonlight shone down, riding black ripples. My stomach roiled, and I retched. The sound of prowl car sirens still rode the night, but NORMAN PARTRIDGE [43]

I saw no light cutting through the eucalyptus grove, and no light on the beach.

I didn’t see Roger or the mummy. Apart from the sirens, there was

no sign of activity behind me. It was as if they’d disappeared. And then I heard a splash out there in the darkness, somewhere near a large stand of cattails that cut in from the shore, and I thought maybe it was Roger.

Sure. It had to be. Maybe Roger had dropped the mummy with

his bat. He’d dived in to join the search, and now he was out there in the lake, looking for the girl.

“Roger!” I shouted. “She went in over here . . . over by the road!”

I didn’t get a reply. Maybe the splash I’d heard was Roger going

under, looking for the girl. One thing was for sure, if I was right and he’d found her, he would have called out. But I hadn’t heard anything.

And I didn’t hear anything now, except for the sirens drawing near.

Quickly, I pulled myself onto the muddy bank and kicked off my

shoes. Then I shucked my father’s jacket and sucked a deep breath, and dove back into that cold water.

The girl was still out there.

Maybe my brother was, too.

Hitting that water the second time was like swallowing an iceberg.

My chest froze up, but my thoughts cleared as that icy black water shocked my brain alive. I didn’t know how much time had passed

between the mummy tossing the little girl into the lake and the time I went in after her. All I knew was that enough seconds—or maybe

minutes—had been burned off the clock that the little girl couldn’t have too many left.

I knew some other things, too. As big as he was, the mummy

couldn’t have thrown the little girl far. I had a rough idea where she had to be, because I’d made my dive from the spot where I thought

the mummy had been standing when he heaved her in. But the water

was deeper there than I’d expected. The sand didn’t slope down from the water’s edge the way a beach does. It was a sheer drop-off from sandy shore into murky lake—maybe a foot or a foot-and-a-half

drop in some places—and the water was deep enough that I barely

skimmed the sludgy bottom when I dove in.

[44] THE MUMMY'S HEART

I couldn’t see a thing, of course. Even on a sunny day, that water was nothing but thick murk. I swam forward, my hands sweeping

before me, but all my fingers found was slick bottom and broken

cattail shafts. I covered ten feet that way—maybe fifteen. Then I came up for air, turned, and immediately dove again.

This time I reversed course, swimming back towards the shore,

covering the area to my left. My hands sweeping out, sure I’d hit

something solid any second. I didn’t find anything—not even a

junked spare tire. Just that sludgy bottom and rotting slime a catfish wouldn’t want in its belly.

Again I came up for air, breathing harder now. I was closer to the shore, and I could stand. A case of shivers rattled up my spine, and I was shaking now. The cold . . . the blows to the head . . . whatever the reason, I nearly lost it and passed out.

But I caught myself. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Roger!” I called. “Are you out there? Did you find her?”

No answer.

I sucked another deep breath, but it came up in a wet cough that

seemed like a slap against the quiet night. I cleared my throat and got another breath down and held it. It was only then that I realized the sound of sirens was gone.

Just that fast another sound replaced it.

The sound of a shotgun blasting away in the night.

I didn’t have time to listen.

That little girl was down there somewhere.

I had to find her.

She’s alive
, I told myself, and even in that moment I knew it was a wish as much as a prayer.

She’s alive.

Apart from that wish, I can’t say what I thought about as I searched for the girl. Diving, coming up for air, diving again. It happened a long time ago, though I still dream about it sometimes. Over the

years, those dreams have come and gone, but they always seem to

come around . . . the same way that night has never left me.

Sometimes I dream about that mummy, too. And sometimes

NORMAN PARTRIDGE [45]

I think about him in the light of day. The mummy . . . Charlie Steiner . . . in my head, they’re a pair. I don’t know what emotions were squirming in Charlie’s guts by the time he found his way through the eucalyptus grove. He certainly wasn’t walking out of there with a

black-magic dreamgirl on his arm, the way he’d imagined. I’m sure

anger and betrayal boiled in his crazy brain . . . maybe even fear. But all that’s speculation. The only thing I know for sure is that by the time Charlie turned his back on Butcher’s Lake his fate was sealed, and in more ways than he could ever imagine.

Because the preacher’s kid hadn’t chickened out. He had more

stones than Roger or I had imagined. He’d run to the nearest house, banged on the door, and told the owner to call the cops because there was a crazy man loose in the woods.

God knows how the sheriff and his deputy reacted when they

rolled in and caught their first glimpse of that bloody mountain of cobwebs coming out of the trees. Of course, I’ve heard the stories over and over. And, like I said, I’ve had dreams, too. And it’s the dreams I see when I picture the scene in my mind’s eye:
The mummy
staggering backward when the patrol car lights hit him, then realizing
he had nowhere to retreat because the cops were already out of the car.

Sheriff Cross and Deputy Myers barking orders, drawing down. The
mummy’s black pit of a mouth opening like a sinkhole, and words and
blood spil ing out that no one ever remembered because his wrecking-ball fist was rising in the air as he lumbered forward, charging the cops.

Then the sharp bark of gunfire, and the thunder of shotgun blasts, and
a rain of blood and bone and flesh slapping against a straight and tal
eucalyptus trunk as that bloody mountain of meat avalanched to the
ground, leaving a wake of shotgunned Egyptian cotton fibers floating
on the October wind like its very own ghost.

You kill something that dead, you don’t worry about it getting up

again no matter what it looks like. At least, that the way Sheriff Cross and Deputy Myers saw it. They weren’t going to worry about a dead

kid in a Halloween costume. And that’s what they saw when they

looked at Charlie Steiner’s corpse. That’s all they saw. A dead kid in a Halloween costume.

But that didn’t mean they were done for the night. Cross and

[46] THE MUMMY'S HEART

Myers worked their way through the eucalyptus grove, guns raised,

not sure what they’d find when they reached Butcher’s Lake. And the first thing they found was me, still diving in that black water, still looking for the girl in the princess mask. Sheriff Cross jumped into the water and grabbed me, and he always tells me I put up one hell of a fight, even though I was just a kid. I didn’t want to give up the search. I told him the whole story. Practically screamed it in his face.

The mummy . . . the little girl with the princess mask . . . Roger and I fighting the mummy. All of it.

The sheriff went into the lake himself that night, and he found