Horror at Halloween, Prologue and Part Five, Cody

Book 5: Horror at Halloween

by Stephen Jones

Genres: Horror

Synopsis

OXRUN STATION HAS ALWAYS BEEN DIFFERENT. Nobody can really explain it. You just have to understand that bizarre things happen there. They just do. Weird things. The kind of things you don't even want to dream about in your worst nightmares. Trick-or-treat is crazy enough, with ghosts and goblins and witches and warlocks and all manner of other horrors roaming the streets. But in Oxrun Station, the masks aren't always made of rubber. It's Halloween in Oxrun Station, and Cody Banning and his friends must find a way to stop a mysterious old man from slowly killing the kids in town so that he can live forever . . . The fabric of the cosmos is unravelling and dark and dangerous things are leaking across the borders . . . For five unsuspecting teenagers, their lives will never be the same again as they discover the hidden terrors lurking beneath the surface of their quiet town and experience the most horrifying Halloween of them all . . . This year in Oxrun Station, THE TRICK IS TO STAY ALIVE!

Release date: October 31, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 160

Sample

CODY

CHARLES L. GRANT

1

The week before Halloween, I didn’t believe in monsters. The week before Halloween, I didn’t believe in ghosts.

I still wouldn’t, tonight, if it hadn’t been for Angie, and a kid all dressed in black.

There wasn’t much light that Sunday, although it still wasn’t quite five. The sun was already halfway below the trees, and sharp-edged shadows pointed the way from
dusk to full dark. The street lamps were on, and the handful of cars that passed the house had their lights on too, glaring the way they do when it’s not quite their time.

Late autumn hung over Oxrun Station, a reminder that winter was just a few weeks away.

If you didn’t know that already, you could figure it by the signs – the last of the leaves slowly burning in trashcans and gutters, adding a sharp smell to the air you couldn’t
get any other time of the year; a feel to the air like thin ice on the park pond, brittle and cold; the way sound carried when a little kid yelled or a dog barked or a door slammed.

The way you took a deep breath and felt suddenly wide awake.

I was awake, but I was home, and feeling pretty miserable.

A single leaf lay on the front porch, serrated edges curled like the fingers of a dead man. Despite the breeze that once in a while skated across the lawn, it didn’t move but for a single
brief tremor, scratching at the air.

The dead man daring me to come over and have a look.

I watched it from the bench swing and had every intention of getting up, walking over there and crushing it beneath my shoe.

I didn’t move, though.

I sat on the swing, pushing a little with my heels, and watched it.

Mainly, it was a way to kill time. Mom wasn’t home from work yet, and wouldn’t be for a couple of hours, and I didn’t feel like getting the rake from the garage and clearing
the leaves from the yard. I wasn’t supposed to or anything. I mean, it wasn’t like it was my job for the day. For a change, I didn’t have one. Instead, Mom reminded me it would be
Halloween in a few days, and she wanted me to get my homework done, then “go out and have some fun”. Yeah.

Right.

To be honest, though, I hadn’t told her I was a hunted man, soon to be wiped off the face of the earth by a guy who had muscles where muscles weren’t supposed to exist.

A breeze touched the back of my neck then, and I zipped up my denim jacket, flipped up the collar, and figured that if I sat here much longer, I’d probably freeze to death.

When I stood, the chains creaked as the swing swung slowly back and forth. Ghost chains, my dad used to call them. When my dad was still alive. This was his favourite season, and even though
it’s been six years, I still feel a little down when October rolls around.

And you’d have to be dead not to know it was practically Halloween – carved pumpkins on just about every porch, cardboard witches and black cats and ghosts taped in some windows,
stalks of maize and promise dolls tied to a few front doors, things like that.

And things like the tiny red lights buried in the hedges in front of the Oppermans’ house, and the mechanical things Mr Opperman put in the leaves to make them rustle when you walked by,
making you think there was something in there, ready to jump out and tear your arm off.

Or the huge iron kettle on Mrs Galbraith’s stoop, with dry ice on the bottom to make it boil over with smoke that trailed down her walk to the kerb.

Or Mr Robson’s front yard, three doors down from mine, where he had a scarecrow with a painted gourd-head, dressed in a tuxedo, hanging by the neck from a twisted, fat maple, swaying over
a bunch of tombstones. They were on a long, narrow stretch of what, in spring, would be his front garden – five stones in front, four on the lawn behind. Weird, but no big deal, except that
he puts names on them, too. Not fake ones; real ones. Kids, grownups, anyone he would think of. No dates, just names. Mostly, they were the same every year, but there was always a blank one, and at
the last minute, he’d put something on it, just for the heck of it, I guess. Every year the little kids fought like crazy to get their name on that blank one, running errands for him, making
sure his paper didn’t. . .