MORENO, CALIFORNIA
Anson Kilpatrick, a former Pomona, California, police lieutenant, looked down the empty street the locals called, rather euphemistically, Main Street and shook his head. He had never seen a town before that was so void of life. The empty shops, the civic center, the entire town was lifeless and barren. He knew he only had one more option in his search for Dylan Hanson and his two friends—the record store across the street. He spied the sign—K-Rave, as it was still apparent on the lifeless signage over the entrance to the old radio station—and he could see movement behind the filthy glass as someone watched him. He crossed the street without bothering to look, dodging, of all things, a lone tumbleweed as it rolled down the empty boulevard. He shook his head at the mall joke the town threw his way.
The detective had been looking high and low for the three missing high school kids for seven full days. Dylan Hanson’s well-to-do father had guided him here but, thus far, he had found nothing.
As he faced the glass door and was about to reach for it, it opened, and a chubby, bearded man with an even heavier woman behind him greeted him with a smile.
“Didn’t think you would ever come calling,” the man with the ponytail said as he stepped aside to allow Kilpatrick entrance.
The detective looked around in what used to be the front lobby of the radio station. Racks and boxes of old vinyl records were everywhere. He saw the old triple-paned glass that used to house the disc jockey booth, and he could see the dangling wires and old empty-shelled broadcast equipment that used to send out fifteen thousand watts of rock-and-roll power to the Inland Empire.
“You’re just in time! We just got a batch of brand-new titles in from Capitol Records,” the woman proclaimed proudly. “We were the highest bidder when they cleaned out their warehouses.”
The detective smiled as he took in the sad reminders of yesterday’s technology all stacked and sorted.
“We have an original Greatest Hits of Tommy James and the Shondells, unopened and no damage to the cover. Still has the shrink-wrap on it.”
“Tommy who?” the detective asked.
The man and the woman looked at each other as their hopes faded fast at a prospective customer gone awry.
“Anyway, have you seen this boy hanging out in the town?”
Both old hippies looked at the picture the detective produced of an unsmiling Dylan Hanson. His pockmarked face stared back at them, and they could see that he was a boy they would not have gotten along with as youths.
“Nah, we don’t see many kids here, at least in the daylight hours. And those that come around here at night are troublemakers,” the woman said.
“You?” the detective asked the woman’s husband.
“Can’t place him, man.”
The detective took a deep breath and was about to place the photo back into his jacket when the man stayed his hand.
“Wait,” he said as he examined the picture again. “You know, over a week ago, we were just closing up the store when I noticed movement where there should not have been. I think it was near, or even in, the old theater. Wouldn’t swear on it.”
“The old theater, you say?” the detective asked with hope. “That place looks like it was completely gutted by fire.”
The man and woman moved away as soon as they both knew there would be no sale today, at least from this guy. The woman stopped short and turned as she moved a fresh box of old records out of her way.
“No, it’s still mostly there. Only the old façade and main floor burned. Most of the interior, while not show ready, is still intact.”
“Thanks,” Kilpatrick said, turning to leave. He stopped when he saw that he needed to do something. He turned and faced the old hippie couple. “You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres, would you?”
The woman’s smile lit up the dingy old radio station, and her large bulk moved like an agile gazelle’s as she made her way to the back. She was back momentarily and handed him an old album that had seen better days.
“Sorry about the jacket’s condition, but the vinyl is just fine. Only one or maybe two scratches.”
The detective looked at the album and then smiled. “I’ll take it.”
He didn’t even own a phonograph any longer, but he felt obliged to give these people something in return for the little information they had given him.
“Nine dollars and fifty-five cents,” the ponytailed man offered when the detective reached for his wallet.
He gave the man a twenty. “Keep the rest.”
The man and the woman watched the well-dressed man leave the store, and they went to the window and watched as he turned right and then crossed the street once more.
“ZZ Top? Is he kidding?” the man asked.
“There’s no accounting for taste, honey. Besides, there’s one hell of a lot more than just a couple of scratches on that thing. I think I spilled a milk shake on it last year when I unpacked it.”
“Serves him right,” the man said as he watched their customer vanish down the street. “Rock and roll went downhill when Janis Joplin died.” The man sniffed and turned as his wife handed him a lit joint. “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz—”
His wife joined in singing the old Joplin tune as they turned away from the window and continued their preservation of sensible music restoration and salvage.
* * *
Kilpatrick stood under the partially collapsed marquee of the Grenada Theater. He eased himself over and around some of the neon light tubes that had once made up the garish display that once upon a time illuminated the entirety of Main Street after dark. The theater was one of the old chain of movie palaces that crisscrossed the nation in the Hollywood heyday of yesteryear. He took a quick look inside the old pagoda-style box office that sat twenty feet into the courtyard leading to the main entrance, just as he had on his previous cursory search of the Grenada the week before. The old ticket dispenser was the only item recognizable inside the box office encased in fogged and broken glass. He turned to his right and left and saw the old spaces where posters advertising what films were coming to a theater near you were once displayed. The glass in the cases was long since gone and the lights that had occupied the same memory—gone. The tattered remains of the long strip of blue ribbon lay half-attached on the filthy tile. AIR-CONDITIONED FOR YOUR COMFORT, it said. The little penguin on each end of the banner proclaimed that at one time it was the only building in town that actually had real air-conditioning.
The intricately laid tile under his feet was covered in over fifty years’ worth of grime and filth, to the point the yellow and gold tiles could no longer be discerned. Of the eight glass doors fronting the main lobby, only three were still hanging. The ticket-collecting podium was long since gone, and the carpeting, once a brilliant red color, was faded, scorched, and even missing in most places. As his feet slowly sank into the mushiness of the flooring, he saw the half-circular snack bar.
As the private detective looked around the shattered lobby area, he pulled out his flashlight and shined it around. The twin sets of stairs wound upward on either side of the large snack bar. He allowed the light to shine up those stairs, and a chill coursed through his body as he remembered the tales from that long-ago Halloween night. Because of what happened inside this theater, every police department in Southern California was trained on how to get patrons out of a burning movie house. He had to remind himself that six kids had been burned to death up in the balcony and five more crushed beneath it when it fell to the main floor after structural damage had weakened it.
Kilpatrick placed the album he had just bought, even though he wasn’t really a ZZ Top fan, on the unbroken section of countertop and moved to the far right of the snack bar. His light fell on the manager’s office he had searched the week prior, and then the light went to a spot in the darkened far corner. Just behind an old and tattered red curtain was a door. It was partially opened, and it was also a door he had not ventured through on his first trip. It was next to the manager’s office, and he suspected that was the way to the basement. With a deep breath, he managed to sidestep debris that had fallen from the ceiling over fifty years earlier and made his way to the door. With the glass end of the flashlight he eased the door open and shined his light inside. The small platform vanished after only a few feet, and he thought that was where his investigation would end, as the light went away into nothingness. Then he saw there was a reason. The steps vanished down a very dark and very unstable-looking set of wooden stairs.
“Hello?” he called out. He felt stupid for doing so. The voice did not echo the way that he thought it would have. It was like his words went down and were captured and consumed by the darkness below. He stepped onto the landing and shined the light downward. He tested the first stair and then the second. They creaked and moved uncomfortably beneath his feet, and he stopped. The light illuminated the dust at his feet, and he saw the fresh footprints. He leaned over, careful to keep one hand on the railing, and examined them. It looked like three sets. One set was brave in nature as they traveled down the center of the stairs while the other two sets hugged closely to the railing on each side. He smiled as he suspected the brave one was the boy he was hired to find—Dylan Hanson. His father had detailed how the boy was brash and arrogant and was afraid of nothing.
He straightened as he knew his missing boy most likely had indeed come this way. The small set of prints had obviously been laid down by a girl. That also fit. He started down the stairs. Halfway down, he saw that the staircase took a sharp right and continued into oblivion. He made the junction, and as he did so, he felt the stairs shake under his loafers. He stopped. He shined the light around to make sure the whole thing wasn’t coming down around him. There was nothing. No movement.
“Calm down,” he muttered to himself. He shined the light downward as far as he could see, but the bottom stairs were still hidden from the weak light. He would have sworn the movement he felt was as if someone had stepped onto the stairs from below, ventured up a few steps, and then stopped. He swallowed as he felt like he were being watched—no, examined was more the word he was looking for.
“Dylan, are you down there?” he called out. The last two words faltered as he said them. He felt ridiculous for being so nervous. Still, what if it wasn’t Dylan and his two companions? What if he had stumbled into a nest of homeless people who liked their privacy? Not uncommon in Southern California, as almost any abandoned building could be called home to many of the transients of the state. As the scurry of some sort of furred creature moved below through the water he was smelling, the detective leaned over and raised his right pant leg and brought up a lightly weighted .32-caliber pistol.
The stairs became oppressive. It was as if the oxygen were being usurped by an unseen force, and he was starting to feel dizzy for the lack of it. He steadied himself and was about to openly rebuke his faltering bravery of the dark when the stairs moved again. This time, the movement was accompanied by loud footfalls. The steps became heavier and more insistent.
He brought the pistol up and aimed into the darkness below what was still hidden by the turn of the stairs as they reached the bottom. He did not like his point of view and knew that whatever it was coming up those stairs would be hidden from him until it and he were nearly face-to-face. That wasn’t a good proposition for the former police officer. He took a step backward and up, as he wanted to give himself time to react.
“Dylan, if that’s you, you’d better let me know before you get a bullet in your face!” he said as his words once again faltered.
Two more pounding steps, and then they stopped. Kilpatrick backed up three steps and he also stopped, mimicking the action from below. His gun was still pointing down into the dark. Then the wooden steps started shaking and moving once more, this time more insistently. The detective swallowed, only this time, his throat movement stopped, as there was nothing but dryness there. He used the flashlight in his left hand to keep the beam pointed at the stairs in front and below him. The light showed nothing but the dust falling from the low ceiling as the heavy bass drumbeat of footfalls built to a booming crescendo. The movement below ceased.
As the detective let out his breath, the light bulb in the flashlight slowly dimmed. He banged on it with his pistol barrel, and the light flickered and then went out once more. He cursed and then banged the light again. This time, it came to life and remained that way. He smiled, relieved to be seeing again when he brought the light up. He saw what had come up the stairs to greet him—the entity stood right in front of him. The face was a mass of churning grays and blacks, looking as if it were nothing more than a swirling hive of insects. The darkness curled and swirled into itself as it stood over eight feet in height. As he looked into the blackness, he felt his extremities go numb. The gun slipped from his right hand, but the light remained frozen on the thing in front of him.
The detective’s eyes widened when the blob of blackness moved closer. Another step up, and he knew he had disturbed something that was meant to be left alone. It was breathing. The entity moved slowly as it examined the man before it. Kilpatrick felt his bladder let go, and all thought of his duties as a detective fell away along with all the other accumulated knowledge of his life as the blackness slowly wrapped its mass around him.
Private Detective Kilpatrick was torn limb from limb just as the scream of rage and forlorn hatred shattered the stillness of the old theater.
As the door to the basement slowly closed up above, half of what troubled Moreno was now coming to full wakefulness and was gaining strength.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The First Lady of the United Sates waited outside of the family quarters as the team of doctors finished with the president. She sat in a chair and read over the legalities of taking over the family investments, which had come as a surprise benefit of having an insane husband. If things continued as they were, she wouldn’t need any signatures; there would be no court battles and no accusations from both parties of infidelity. She allowed a hint of a smile to cross her lips. It turned out that after the small fortune she had spent as seed money to Avery and his cronies in the intelligence field, all Dean had needed was a little shove from his past. If it weren’t for the financial gain she would receive, she might actually have been interested in who this girl was who had haunted the man.
The news of the president’s illness had made the papers and cable news shows. The White House damage control teams were kept busy by saying the president had a minor cold and that fever kept him isolated for the time being. It had been ten days since the events inside the Oval Office. Thus far, the secret that the president had been ready to resign from office had been kept strictly between those staff members and the vice president, who had also been there to witness the events.
The office area was still cordoned off as engineers and every intelligence agency in the nation went over the damage to the Oval Office inch by inch. It had been this way since the attack days before. Thus far, they could find no connection to an outside hostile source that could have caused the damage to the office and the assault on the president. Just in case, Herb Avery had managed to get the old photographs and the glasses out of the office immediately after the assault. Confusion had been his ally.
First Lady Catherine Hadley had not the faintest care how or why it happened; she was more concerned with the timing. Her placement of the items from his past had been a little too effective, if somehow it turned out that was the cause.
This may actually work against her. Had she pushed too hard on her husband? It cut short his fall from grace. It was now possible she would have to wait for him to get better before he could resign. Herb Avery said this could only go on for so long before the change at the top would be necessary. This was something unexpected in her plans. Instead of walking off with half the familial proceeds and fortunes through an uncontested divorce no one in the country could ever deny she had earned, she sat here with an uncertain diagnosis on a man who had clearly gone insane. The time was ripe for her views to be made public. Avery had been right on another, very unexpected point—this episode may just earn her 100 percent of Hadley Corporation, not a mere piece.
The team of United States Army and United States Navy doctors, everyone from psychologists to neurosurgeons, had gone in soon after the CIA and FBI made their official reports to the generally nonresponsive president. They had reported that they could find no external influences responsible for the attack in the Oval Office. The CIA suspected the Russians, while the FBI still hoped for an inside job. Both theories weren’t holding much water since the wording left behind, smashed into the ornate walls of the office, were found not to have been accomplished by any action that required engineering. In layman’s terms, the damage was not accomplished through any blunt-force delivery. The psychologists, on the other hand, suggested the episode had been caused by the president himself—his mind possibly doing the damage. This theory was scoffed at and disregarded by every physician outside the field of neurology. Even so, as a purely cautionary measure, the FBI had done background checks on any staff member within the White House that may or may not have issues in any form of mind control.
“Are the doctors still in there?”
Catherine looked up and saw the face of the man she could not wait to get rid of when all was said and done. The chief of staff for the sitting president slowly sat next to the First Lady without invitation.
“Look,” she said as softly and silently as she could with a wary eye toward her Secret Service protection, “apparently, everyone in the Oval Office knew what that fool was going to do; you told me yourself. You were about to be roasted over a spit in there, and then we would have been exposed. Dean may be a very bad man and a womanizer, but he has never been anyone’s fool, Herb.”
“Look, I know I screwed this up. I just want you to know—”
“Although the doctors can’t get much out of him because he comes in and out of consciousness, he ordered that his resignation from office be concluded.”
“Excuse me?” Avery said, astounded that this had not been passed on to him.
“The vice president is being sworn in this afternoon. The chief justice of the Supreme Court arrives in four hours. Every news organization in the world will soon learn the truth. Not the real reasons, but they all know the Washington rumor mill and will be watching everything about me and you for the foreseeable future.” She looked directly at Avery. “A future of mine that no longer includes you. That’s the way it has to be.”
The look on the chief of staff’s face was priceless, and like her husband, she had a perverse fascination about making people hurt and could coldly rejoice at their failure. That failure was what she was seeing at the moment, and that made her mood a little better.
“But—”
“You’ll still get what you want the most, Herbert. You’ll have your money.” She leaned even closer to the man. “But now you’ll have to be patient, as the situation is too unstable, and too many people have hints as to why he was resigning. Some in that office know the truth about you and me, but decorum keeps them from saying anything since they all want to hop on the new ticket with the vice president. I have to wait to conclude our business with his companies and other assets.” She smiled. “I hope you’ve been saving your money, because it may be a while.”
The door opened to their private quarters, and the ten doctors stepped out to greet the First Lady. With one last look of disdain directed at Avery, she got up with a smile.
Avery winced as he stood to leave. It was all falling apart. He now knew he had been used to undermine the president for the gain of the First Lady. He now knew who the real rat in the White House was. The First Lady had played her cards, and him, very well.
* * *
Catherine Hadley joined the group of military doctors with the appropriate concerned face of a shocked and grieving wife. She made a show of twisting her handkerchief in her hands as she listened to the seven male and three female military officers. The group was joined by the vice president, who was now in silent if not total charge of the nation.
“First,” said a tall, silver-haired commander who served as the chief resident of psychiatry at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, “we have agreed that we need to bring in Dr. Haslam Assad from Johns Hopkins for a consult. He’s the top man in the field of psychosis. The president only had very brief moments of clarity before he drifted off in what we think is a deep REM sleep, almost a memory state.”
The lights in the room suddenly went out, and the emergency lighting came on. The two Secret Service agents flinched and then quickly relaxed when light filled the large room once more and then dimmed again.
“This is just like last week,” the vice president said. He saw the faces of the doctors and the First Lady vanish as the light was sucked out. Only the weak light filtering in from the shaded windows made it into the room before even the sunlight slowly faded.
The scream startled all those present. The Secret Service agents moved to the bedroom shared by the president and the First Lady, and when the first man opened the door, he was thrown backward until his body smashed into the far wall, knocking free a painting of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The doctors stood in shock, and the vice president’s eyes widened as the last of the light vanished. It was as if the White House had been knocked into another world with no sun.
The second agent pulled a nine-millimeter handgun. He failed to see anything in the inky darkness, but his feet hit something wet and slippery. He fell to the floor, and his eyes saw the black-against-black movement near the far wall. He hesitated, aiming the gun from his back since he didn’t know if his eyes were betraying him in the dark or if he was actually seeing movement. He couldn’t afford to shoot for fear of hitting the president, whom he couldn’t see lying in his bed with the now-powerless medical monitors around him. He stood and then finally found the bed by waving his free hand frantically. He threw himself on the prone body of the president.
The doctors decided they had to act, and with several Secret Service agents bursting through the door with flashlights waving, they also entered the bedroom. The lights picked out the bloodstained carpet and what looked like a small, thin arm that had been thrown halfway under the president’s bed. Their eyes widened when they saw the Secret Service agent lying atop the leader of the free world with his gun out. And then the four flashlights died at the same time.
The First Lady backed toward the doorway without any chance at seeing into the room. The vice president stood next to her in the dark hallway. Before they could react to the darkness beyond the threshold of the open door, one of the four agents who had entered the bedroom came flying out, and his weight knocked both frightened observers from their feet. The First Lady hit with a crash, and the vice president fell atop her as the agent’s momentum carried him to the far wall. All of this was happening in the dark.
The president’s scream pierced the darkness, and all who had heard it felt their blood freeze. It was like he had seen the true presence of hell. Then three agents were thrown from the room, one right after the other, and then the door slammed closed and they were cut off and in the dark. A shattering boom sounded, and the house located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue jumped on its foundation as if an earthquake had lifted its old brick-and-mortar base. Alarms started sounding as far as the fire station a block away.
As soon as it had started, it ended. The lights flared to life, and the sun once more shined through the expensive drapes. Everyone was on the floor. Then they all looked up as the door to the family bedroom slowly opened on its own.
More Secret Service agents burst through the family quarters and then made for the bedroom. The first three inside vanished, but the fourth stopped and then, with a white face, turned and stumbled out of the doorway. The vice president saw this and then fought to get to his feet and then entered. He saw the three agents lifting the first responding agent off the president. The vice president’s eyes widened when he saw that most of the agent’s back was missing. It looked as if a giant spoon had simply scooped out his spine and ribs. The agents rolled the agent off until they could gently lay him on the floor. They then checked the president.
The vice president’s eyes saw the carnage. The attending nurse that had been assigned to the president was lying in pieces on the carpeted floor of the bedroom, looking as if she had stepped on some antipersonnel mine in a forgotten field of war. Then his eyes fell on the far wall near the three windows of the east side. As more agents and the doctors entered the room, they all stopped suddenly as the written words once more greeted them. They were smashed into the wallpapered sides of the room and looked as if they had been written in perfect cursive with a gentle hand.
“My God,” the vice president said as he took in the message.
The First Lady stepped inside the room and then quickly brought her hands to her mouth. The doctors even stopped taking the president’s vital signs when they too saw the words that had been carved into the wall as if by giant clawed nails or talons.
You are cordially invited. The vice president read the top line nearest the ceiling. Be there, don’t be square. Now everyone was reading the strange words. The wallpaper and the drywall was strewn across the bedroom and lay in a dusty white mess. Bingo, bobbing for apples, and games to suit the average ghoul, the vice president read as his eyes followed the strange script. Spook show for the teens and treats for the kids. The whole town is talking. Celebrate the ending of the Cuban crisis and party with the ghosts! Start at the factory and work your way to town. A fun night for all!
The vice president stopped reading as the doctors started administering to the president. When the First Lady started shaking and let out a miserable whine, all eyes went to what she was looking at. On the far wall was the conclusion. The same message as before. Only this time, it was a little more personal.
Come home, Dean, we’re waiting for you. And again, the one word that made them all ask if they had lost their minds. BOO!
“My God!” the female lieutenant colonel said as she had unbuttoned the president’s pajama top. They saw her jump back as the other doctors crowded around.
As every set of eyes in the room watched, the words were being carved into the president’s chest. Something unseen scraped the skin and chest hair free as the words were brutally sliced through the layers of skin and blood flowed. The doctors at first stayed back until they saw how deep the cutting was. They moved to stem the flow as they applied pressure. One set of hands was violently slapped free of the injury, and the cutting continued. Doctors were slapped, hit, pulled, or pushed away from the bed by a force they couldn’t see. The First Lady turned away and felt sick to her stomach as doctors fought to stop what was happening but were helpless to do so.
“Dear God,” the colonel said as the carving finally stopped and three of them again hovered over the bed and applied the necessary pressure to get the wounds to stop their flow of blood. Even the Secret Service agents were frozen in place watching the strange events unfolding before their eyes. As blood again filled the deep cuts and then spilled over onto his open pajama top, they all saw what had been written.
Trick or Treat!