Chapter 4 #2
And in another few minutes—and only a few mishaps with the branches—they were on the road.
No stolen car was waiting there.
But evidently . . .
Jackson had hunkered down, studying the dirt by the pavement.
“There was a car here,” Angela said flatly. “So . . . he had his prison guard helper get him so far, and then he killed the man. Kill your witnesses and they can’t talk if they’re caught, that’s for sure.”
“Killed the guy, dragged his kidnapping victims through the woods, and came out to the road again,” Angela agreed. “There is evidence he took another car, and headed—”
“Northeast,” Jackson told her.
“Think it’s worth trying to walk that way—” she began.
“Check it out!” he said, looking at his phone. “Bruce got us a map; we know where our guys are starting and where Valiente and his men are and we know where all the houses are along each side of the road. We’re a quarter of a mile from one on this side—we should give it a try.”
“Let’s do it,” she agreed.
They began to walk and as they did, they felt their phones chiming. Bruce McFadden was calling.
They looked at one another. Jackson answered his, putting it on speaker.
There was no one near them to overhear—dead or alive.
“Just a heads up,” Bruce said. “We’ve spoken to a few homeowners on our end, and they haven’t seen or heard anything.
But there is a problem in the searching; people here seem to have gone nuts with Halloween.
It’s taking us some time. Yards are Halloween- decorated to the nth degree.
Scarecrows, pumpkins, giant skeletons, coffins .
. . ghosts, you name it. Naturally, we’re going over each one because—”
“Of the kind of soulless monster this man is, just what he might do—and, of course, the fact he stole everything possible from a Halloween shop,” Jackson agreed.
“And there’s no help for it—just keep moving the best you all can, and yes, it’s going to be tough because under the circumstances, we’re going to need to be thorough. ”
“Right. Well, we’re on it. Like I said, just a heads-up,” Bruce said.
They finished the call. And it was just a matter of minutes before they came upon the house closest to them on the road.
And Bruce was right.
The place might have been a Halloween attraction, done up almost as much as some of the major theme parks.
It was encased in pseudo spiderwebs, a giant movie monster sat to the one side of the house, leering over anyone who might head up the walk, and to the other side there was a massive scarecrow—one that was animated so that the creature laughed diabolically every few minutes.
And the rest of the place.
Ghosts and goblins. Some cute and little.
Some that seemed to flow and dance in the moonlight, large enough to enwrap anyone foolish enough to come too near to them.
There were many creatures, big and small, ranging around the front of the yard and deep into both sides of the house, one built in the old feudal style and offering a large, Greek formation porch where a zombie and a leprechaun sat on a swing-bench, apparently arguing over the meaning of the night.
“Wow. Talk about embracing a holiday!” Jackson murmured.
“Well, I guess we’d best try the front door,” Angela suggested.
“Past all those guys?” he said lightly, referring to the multitude of creepy creatures within the decorations.
She groaned softly, grinning and sliding past him.
But when she reached the front door, she paused, frowning.
The door was ever so slightly ajar.
“Jackson?”
He stood at her side and lifted a hand, knocking on the door. There was a bell; Angela pushed it.
They waited. No one came.
“Exigent circumstances,” Jackson muttered, pushing his way on it. “Hello? Is anyone here? Your front door was open!”
Angela followed him. The home offered a large entry hall with porticos leading off the left and the right.
“You know,” Angela said, “I think we should give Detective Valiente a call; he may know these people, and it might help to have him here.”
“Right. We can get going in case we do find someone injured, but he might know that . . . they’re careless with locking the front door or, um, yeah. Call him. This is his area of operation; he can help,” Jackson said.
She was able to connect with the detective in about an instant.
She explained where they were and he quicky said, “You’re at the Morton’s house, Bob and Sally.
They’re retirees who raised three kids there, and now they’re just enjoying their golden years.
Nice folks, I’m on my way. My crew can keep going without me. ”
“Okay, retirees who go decoration crazy when it’s Halloween?” Angela asked him.
“They have the land, they’ve done it forever, and the grandkids love to come over,” Valiente told her over the phone. “They bring their friends. Makes them the cool kids.”
“Okay, I can see that. The door was open; no response. We’re going to hope we don’t find one of them injured,” Angela told him.
“Gotcha. I’m already in the car,” he told her.
They ended the call. Jackson was already heading to the left of the entry.
“Right side?” she murmured.
“Want to head upstairs? I can sweep side to side.”
“Gotcha,” she said, grinning as she realized she’d repeated Valiente.
The curving stairway of the house was beautiful and ended in a balcony to see the floor below. But she ignored the temptation. She was certain the house was probably close to two hundred years old, but it had been lovingly maintained and restored throughout the years.
Their obsession with decorations seemed to have ended with the yard; there was nothing “Halloween” that she had noted downstairs, and upstairs she was finding nothing but three bedrooms, clean and neat, an office, and two bathrooms.
She went through the closets.
And she looked under the beds.
Nothing.
“Jackson?”
She called him as she hurried out to the balcony area.
He stood in the center of the great hall and looked up at her.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Nothing, no one.”
“Same down here,” he told her. “No one, but . . . in the dining room, one of the chairs was knocked over. That alone doesn’t show signs of a struggle, but . . .”
“Let’s try the yard again. Let’s ‘inspect every single decoration’ out there.”
“That’s a plan.”
He started for the front door, and she hurried down the stairs to join him outside.
“Okay, the giant scarecrow . . .” Jackson murmured, standing back and looking at it, moving closer and inspecting the way it had been set into the ground and assuring himself it was nothing but a metal structure with plastic to create the face and cloth to create the ragged clothing it wore.
Angela moved over to the monster featured in a series of movies.
Pretty creepy, she had to admit.
Again, she gave it a bit of distance, then hurried to it, searching through the rubber folds that created the massive body of the thing and then the long, extended neck.
Nothing.
Jackson had started with the various ghosts, vampires, witches, and zombies around the yard.
She took a long look around everything. The yard was incredible.
But then again . . .
She’d seen other neighborhoods where the holiday was truly embraced.
Some people kept their decorations for years and years and added more continually.
In fact, their son, Corby, had a friend in Forest Hills in New York who did an astonishing job with their decorations and loved getting into decorating every year.
She surveyed the many, many creatures and beings in the yard again.
One “zombie” seemed to attract her. It was good.
A stunning zombie, a woman zombie, created to appear as if she was in her mid-twenties.
She had beautiful long dark hair and reminded her of an actress Angela had loved.
Caroline Jones who had played a character in the ‘Adams Family’ shows that had aired years before—and were available for streaming now.
Blood dripped along her forehead to her cheeks. And her eyes . . .
They just weren’t staring the way they should have. Not in a “real” zombie.
She started for it as Detective Valiente arrived, jumping quickly out of his car.
“Just checking this out!” she called to him. “It doesn’t look like a commercial zombie from a shop to me.”
Valiente caught her briefly by the shoulders.
“Because it’s not.” he murmured miserably.
She burst from him, running to the supposed “decoration,” and swiftly touching her fingers to the woman’s pulse at the throat.
“No zombie, no zombie!” Valiente, now at her side, ready to lift the woman from the metal stand that was keeping her up. His eyes caught Angela’s for a second. “It’s Carla Hanson; she helps with Sally’s housework and hobbies! Carla, Carla—”
“Ambulance!” Angela shouted.
She stared at Valiente as he pulled his phone out.
“This zombie is still living.” he muttered.