A Deadly Halloween

A DEADLY HALLOWEEN

A COLLECTION

OF

20 SHORT STORIES

Perley J. Thibodeau

Copyright © 2011 Perley J. Thibodeau

All rights reserved.

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TALES OF MYSTERY

PUBLICATIONS

E BOOKS

THE UNEXPECTED TRIP

THE DEVIL HIMSELF

A DEADLY HALLOWEEN

AUTHOR

PERLEY J. THIBODEAU

Perley J. Thibodeau was born and lived the first 45 years of his life in Bangor, Maine. He now resides in Manhattan, New York.

CONTENTS

1. A DEADLY HALLOWEEN

2. ALL AT SEA

3. NOT FOR SALE

4. 6 CHURCH LANE

5. THE HAUNTED MANSION

6. THE CURSE OF ALL EVIL

7. TO CATCH A KILLER

8. IF I HAD A HAMMER

9. THIS OLD HOUSE

10. AN ADDED VOICE

11. THAT’S SHOW BIZ

12. A HUNTING WE WILL GO

13. THE VICTIM’S REVENGE

14. THE READING OF THE WILL

15. THE BATS ARE RESTLESS TONIGHT

16. A SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS

17. WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE

18. DEAR OLD GOLDEN RULE DAYS

19. WHEN IT DOESN’T PAY TO ADVERTISE

20. THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE MURDERED BUREAUCRATS

1

A DEADLY HALLOWEEN

It was the printed familiar name of his former hometown in a New England coastal community up north that caught Delburt's eye when he got up one morning in mid October, and started to read the newspaper’s computer Blog for the city that lay forty miles upriver from his original birthplace.

It told how there were plans for a big Halloween Celebration that would be open to the general public, and it would be held at the old Civil War fort that had commanded a spot on a granite prominence overlooking the mouth of the river that ran into the inner section of the state, having been built originally to protect both the coastline, and the small lumber harvesting and processing towns to the north from the naval vessels of the enemy south that could have easily sailed on past and on up into northern territory..

However, as he quickly remembered, the fort was never finished because the Rebels to the south never got that far north in their quest to beat down the damn Yankees, and so that was the reason why the old fort was never fully completed.

What with the Civil War ending when it did, the massive half buried solid hillside fortress became a victim of the changing times, just as the Old South did with its cotton fields so far away.

Nostalgia for his former home place causes more than excitement over the thoughts of the upcoming Halloween event planned there was what actually took a solid grip to Del’s attention, for Del had now been living in Manhattan, New York for the previous twenty five years, and the world knows Halloween rivals Christmas in the big city for being the most anticipated and importantly celebrated day of the year.

Grown men and women start planning for Halloween in the middle of July, making the actual night an anti climax, he laughs out rightly at the reactions to this annual event in his now long ago adopted home port, of New York, New York.

A FORT FULL OF FRIGHT,

TO BE A SCARY BAD NIGHT

was the attention getting caption for the combination newspaper article-press release with the sub headline proclaiming;

Be scared — be very scared.

This manages to bring an even wider smile to Del’s still handsome face, as he reads further.

The whole idea is a fantastic one, and has grown over the years.

The official spokesperson stated. "The largest crowds have totaled between ten to fifteen thousand people during the one day and night event, and it generally brings in between $40,000 and $50,000 gross to the preservation committee’s general fund.

We take Halloween very seriously, he said.

A Fort full of Fright takes place on Saturday, Oct 31st, All Hallows Eve. from sundown until 11 o'clock p.m. Admission is 7 dollars, $5 for adults accompanied by a child and 2.00 for children under 12 years of age.

The spokesperson for the event has further stated. We want everyone attending to have a bloodcurdling experience, and to be scared to death,

With sudden plans to personally attend the event formulating quickly in Del’s now anxious brain, he can’t help but gloating silently.

The person who wrote the publicity release doesn’t realize just how prophetic their copy will turn out to be.

It was with a feeling of intensified excitement at returning to the town where he was born and lived the first twenty years of his life in that Del carefully made his weekend plans for murder.

He had to use his full identification with a current credit card and all the rest of the technicalities to rent a car for the more than four hundred mile journey up the highway that would tend to take him right back in time to his childhood. Not wanting to draw too much attention to himself he got a medium sized car, hardtop, in a sedate dark color, packed up the costume he intended to wear, and made sure he didn’t forget to bring along the few accessories needed for any basic homicide.

It was a tiring trip in that he had to keep his eye on the highway constantly even though it was a two lanner going north with a median strip and a two lanner on the other side heading in the south direction. Traffic was heavy what with big buses, eighteen and twenty wheeler trucks heading back north empty after delivering products in urban areas to the south, and now heading back north to pick up more products to repeat the southern deliveries in the return trips already scheduled for a couple of days later in the week. But it was the private cars with steel and iron traveling racks attached to their tops that made Del realize without really thinking about it that the two and four male filled passenger cars, and especially the single and two male passenger occupied pickup trucks were all heading north for the annual hunting season.

This later thought brought an actual smile to his face and caused him to relax more with a sort of odd feeling of both unspoken camaraderie, and unspoken companionship, but both enjoyed silently in knowing that they were hunters out for that prized wild animal that they had dreamed of shooting all the past year long, just as Del was now heading into enjoying the fruition of his dream of catching up with the human animals that he planned to kill, too.

Stopping the car now, and parking at an off season wooded and secluded highway rest area that was on his road map gave Del a chance to not only get out of the cramped car to stretch his legs, but to also get dressed in the costume, and accompanying makeup that he was to wear to the Halloween party at the old fort. A picnic table sufficed nicely for this task, and now fully prepared for the last ten miles of his journey, he got back into the car, and was soon on his way.

The man in a full white faced make up, black widow peaked hairline, and formally clothed Dracula costume now enters through the front gate having parked his rental car in the big parking lot between the roadway, and the fort along with the rest of the crowd that is all dressed up in varying degrees of frightening clothing styles to celebrate the fall event at the now spruced up looking old fort.

Del makes note of how well the newly formed local citizen group has managed the edifice since he remembers it as having been completely open and abandoned during all the years of his youth that was spent growing up just across the bridge in the small mill town on the opposite bank of the salty greenish water tidal river.

Deciding now that he can melt into the amateurish ghoulishly dressed crowd, he follows a large group of grown ups and smaller children past the toll booth so the tickets sellers, police officials, and other happily partying guests in full costumes don’t see him as being any different than they are.

It’s all in the spirit of the holiday, so to speak. Del now thinks, in his self assuredness that he can get away with his plan for a long wished for killing revenge

The whole country has now become Halloween crazy. The local uniformed sheriff laughingly says, while the crowded lines are buying their tickets, and entering for the anticipated fun, with a perfectly turned out Dracula in a scarlet satin lined full length black opera cape with standup collar fitting right in with the moving swarm of people.

The place is just crawling with ghouls and boys, The sheriff laughs, with red faced joviality.

They’re certainly into the spirits of the occasion, his deputy laughs in return, while letting go and displaying a very carefully fun side of his otherwise official acting serious nature.

I’m safely inside without incident, Del gloats to himself now, as he walks down the small familiar path that turns left at the bottom and brings the walker to the front of the river facing fort. Some things never change, a wisp of nostalgia takes over his thoughts as he enters into the walled fort’s grassy centered enclosed parade ground.

But I’d better just relax and do the visitor’s routine of smiling, and posing for requested pictures with the rest of the tourists, because if I don’t then the full costume and dead white facial stage makeup won’t hide the fact I’m here for murderous retribution, and not just for fun and games. He thinks, while nodding to a group of women dressed as Morticia from the television show, The Munsters.

He hurries quickly around a granite piled doorway, and starts up the roof covered matching grey curving stone stairway to the upper level.

I can’t get involved with those ditzes, he congratulates himself at his canny escape, while now looking out over the salt water bay. If I stop to talk to them, they’ll take up all my time, I won’t have time for killing the people I came here to kill, and they might well be able to identify me later after all the spilled blood has dried to a dull rust color.

As the late afternoon sky dims from brightness to it’s nighttime cloak of star studded black velvet, a huge full orange autumn moon rises slowly across the river to the east, and makes the small former fishing village, and now former paper mill town silhouetted in inky darkness.

The hoards of mingling revelers Ohhhhh, and Awwwwww at this scary vision of the moon looking like a gigantic self lighted Jack O Lantern, adding even more frightful drama to the surrounding area. But the man in the formal Dracula outfit curses this new revelation, as he feels a full moon will soon turn into a giant silvery bright glow in the sky, and it will illuminate the passage ways of the old fortress whose darkness he needs in order to slink silently around in to perform his evil get even wickedly deeds.

And now fellow revilers, we have a winning team for the coffin race, A male’s voice speaks excitedly, through an amplified megaphone.

The words are followed by several high pitched feminine screams, and the shocked announcement that one of the now opened coffins contains the mayor of the community just across the river, and he’s obviously been murdered with a stake driven through his heart.

Peeking though a crack between the stone building blocks, Del is completely hidden from observation and yet commands a perfect view of the macabre goings on in the parking lot where the crowds have gathered for the coffin pushing race.

Like the man said to his honor just before he lightly closed the lid in that dark deserted hallway, Del laughingly remembers, Just lie still now, mayor and before you know it the race will be over, and the audience will be hysterical with emotions when your familiar figure pops up. He now roars with mirth inside his mind. Well, I can see from the pandemonium that has broken loose among the spectators that they are all hysterical with emotions. It makes me delightfully emotion filled to know that I was the one who killed him. He gloats, while continuing to watch the confused crowd of former happy revilers below.

Okay, okay, everybody, the slightly recovered man on the megaphone now blasts his voiced message to the shocked crowd milling confusedly about without actually moving far in either direction. Let’s get on with the next exciting event. He realizes his faux pas but continues on his quest to control the crowd from stampeding, and get it to move slowly away from the gruesome scene before them.

Let’s all now head in a fun and orderly manner for the sea wall on the other side of the fort for our next featured attraction of throwing pumpkins into the ocean going waterway, his voice blasts forth electronically, with an even more fevered pitch, as the seriousness of the mayor’s killing now takes hold of both his outer and inner thought processes.

But these quickly improvised diversionary tactics on the part of the mega phoned officially appointed social director do no good when the crate of pumpkins is opened for the throwing of the pumpkins into the river, and it’s discovered that the severed head of the town’s long time manager is prominently displayed among the bright orange pumpkins, its grotesquely twisted open mouth, and its eyes staring unseeingly in a glassy dead motionless reflection while now plainly resting on top of the attractive autumn colored heap.

Del watching calmly, and completely unrecognized as the sole perpetrator of this monstrous chain of events is standing in the middle of the fear filled crowd looking at this latest grotesquerie that is a product of his own frantic handiwork, and his alone.

It’s seemingly only a matter of minutes before an unearthly bone chilling shriek piercing the early evening air, and emanating from one of the many small opened windowed canon mounts in the face of the fort just behind them stuns the spectators again.

It’s all that Del can do to suppress a soul satisfying smile as he recognizes the fact that someone has just discovered the rest of the town manager’s now headless body draped across a massive black painted iron civil war cannon that was once used to protect the land from atop the strategically placed artificially created mound that covers the solid granite stronghold overlooking the land on both sides of the river’s mouth below.

Taking a much needed breather from the butchered activities that he has been unfeelingly perpetrating, Del now sits huddled in a dark cold damp secret cobble stoned passageway below what he estimates from memory to be the cooking area of the old fort.

Pulling his black cloak around him for warmth, his thoughts start racing back to the time 25 years ago when he got the legal notice that the town across the river was taking his long time ancestral property by legal eminent domain, forcing him to leave town by paying him little or nothing of its full worth in order to widen a roadway that would only be serving the local pulp and paper mill next door.

‘Then the mill went out of business after polluting both the river way to the sea, and his former beautifully situated land on the opposite riverbank from the fort with useless highly health endangering contaminated soil, and leaving it, and the then poisoned waterway to the sea for the town and federal government’s enormous expense to clean up."

A calmer and more rested murder minded Dracula accedes the former information to be true, as he now stands and shakes his cloak from any dust accumulated, and prepares to continue his carefully planned homicidal trip that he has now made back to his childhood hometown.

Having now committed his first two bloodthirsty dastardly deeds, his furious thoughts for revenge are now replaced with more relaxed feeling ideas of the retribution gained as he remembers the mayor’s face with first the surprised look, then his features contorting in pain as the physical agony of the short wooden stake, and the rock he used as a hammer that had been carried inside his cloak were used to piece his cold and uncaring politician’s heart.

That, and the look of frightened recognition on the city manager’s face just as I was starting to slash his throat was almost worth the price of admission right there, he now laughs maniacally, knowing full well that there are only a few frightened scurrying rats about to hear him.

No one can see the lone black clad male figure with the strongly beamed pen light as he walks slowly down the totally pitch black long forgotten underground corridor flashing the ray from the light in his hand on the dark dank walls periodically in order to rediscover the white painted arrows that had been printed on the inner walls over a hundred and fifty years before in order to guide any union soldiers in their quest for easy and quick escape from the possible onslaught of troops of Johnny Rebels from the far away south.

Both Titters of laugher mingled with uneasy sounds of fright are elicited from the nearby uninformed, and still unsuspecting crowd watching as yet another body is forcibly thrown from the window of the sentry guard’s three story tall stone parapet.

That body falling looks like it’s almost real, a middle aged man in full army commando costume laughs, showing that he knows nothing of the previous killings; as he looks up to where the body had fallen from."

The fort’s conservancy members are really going out of their way to show us a horribly good time. His wife, dressed as G. I. Jane agrees.

But expressions of shocked horror replace the merriment when it becomes obvious that his head is twisted at an odd angle due to the fact that his throat had been slit, and is gushing blood profusely all over the collar and hood of his plain brown loose fitting Friar Tuck cord tied belted robe. The crowd that screamed when it slammed with a dull thud to the ground sees a dark shadowy movement in the direction that the body came from, and a goodly proportion of them point upward at the black cloaked figure that has thrown it off.

But by the time the police are galvanized into action and get to where the body has been thrown down to the earth below, the mysterious figure has seemingly completely vanished into thin air.

Some one screams, He’s not real. He’s an evil ghost, and he’s out to kill all of us for mocking the dead.

Or just to wreak vengeance, if he’s a phantom and he’s not real, then he’s a ghost out to cause lethal chaos. A full white sheeted human ghost accuses, loudly.

He’s not real. Another man stammers loudly. I know for a fact he’s a poltergeist, as I passed that caped man in a hallway over in that direction a while back, and he wasn’t solid. I accidentally walked beyond him, and I actually passed right through him.’ He says, whether or not he really believes it, or was just stating a falsehood as a fact in order to add to the excitement of the occasion.

He’ll follow one of us home, someone else proclaims in a loud warning.. We’ll all be killed in our beds!

I’m getting out of here, a woman in a fright wig hollers. The spirits have gotten angry because we’ve mocked them, and now they’re seeking their revenge.

But she seems so fascinated with what’s going on around her that she’s completely engulfed in the mood of the time, and doesn’t budge from where she’s standing amid the crowd of horribly excited people.

Well, they can’t hurt us, an ashen faced stiff walking zombie cracks lightly, to his clustered look a like appearing group. He philosophizes, lightly. After all, we’re already dead."

And more of us are destined to join you, A white and gold elaborately thought out Marie Antoinette with her head seemingly tucked under her arm states, prophetically.

I’m getting my teen aged kids out of here, a man with his wife, neither of whom are in costume, with their four children dressed as Goldilocks, and the Three Bears states all the while gathering them together, and herding them silently toward the exit to the fort.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, A town councilor announces, seemingly undaunted, not knowing it is to be his dead body that will be found floating in the river the next morning, when the flack from the town’s irate citizenry demands that the entire elected body of officials resign as accomplices to murder, and he commits suicide in total despair.

The person on the electrically magnified bull horn tries desperately to keep a calm voice as he calls for all guests at the now completely disrupted Halloween Celebration to file peaceably toward the exits.

No need to panic, people. No need to panic. His voice rings loud and clear over the commotion of the now thoroughly panicked crowd clustered around him.

But as they do push and shove frantically to get out of the fort area as fast as possible, there is yet one more shocking sight for their terrified eyes to behold, and that is the body that is hanging from the end of a rope, and swaying in the breeze. The corpse that Del has managed to hoist up the flag pole at the entrance to the fort. It’s quickly discovered that the dead body fully made up as a circus clown is that of a city councilor who only Del now remembers as having voted in formal open council session to steal his property away from him many years ago.

Laughing silently as he stares through a tiny crack between the square cut heavy New England grey granite blocks that make up the fort’s walls, Del takes special delight in knowing that the latest handy work had been accomplished in full sight of the crowds with the watchers believing that the body was a realistic looking dummy, that the hangman dressed as Dracula an actor who had engineered the hanging as all a part of the Halloween festivities. Not only the surrounding darkness aided and abetted him in his nefarious scheme of grisly murder, but the whole fort area was so spread out with such huge crowds, that even the screaming, and loud proclamations of death being present were interpreted in other areas as just other sections of groups having noisy uncontrolled campy fun.

Well, it was a part of the show, Del chuckles evilly, as he goes back underground to yet another long forgotten secret passage under the old fort. Almost too bad that I didn’t have the time to take my bows.

He now stops creeping along the pitch-black underground passageway until the white battery generated blaze of the flash stick in his hand catches the remembered marker on the wall that lets him know exactly where he now is.

It’s a good thing my revenge is now complete, Del thinks, as he again sits down to rest in complete stoned wall surrounded solitude.

The full moon has now made its way up over the walls of the fort facing east, Del reasons, and the dim theatrical lighting is being enhanced in its brightness by the light that the lunar orb is shedding almost directly down even onto the enclosed inner walled small center parade ground.

He gets up, and once again shakes the accumulated dust from the rich folds of his formal opera cape, and from the black trousers of his white tie and tails outfit.

And, it’s a good thing for me that I had time in my childhood to explore what was then an abandoned and lonely old fort.

This thought out as he starts his short underground journey to his next destination.

Not to gloss over, of course the ingenuity of the Union Army Engineers in carefully safe guarding their officers and enlisted men by attacks from the sea by building an entire underground escape route beneath the already partially buried upper fort that leads inland to tree shrouded safety.

He now flips on the small penlight that he uses for a small illumination when he finds himself surrounded by complete stone cold darkness, and he proceeds on his way after pausing for a second to regain his sense of direction.

Yes, he thinks silently. My vengeance is complete, and my night’s work is done, and now I must get out of this old fort, and back to big city civilization.

‘That’s him, a deputy sheriff shouts, pointing, excitedly. That’s the person that people have been describing as the villain who has been performing all of these deadly crimes."

I can see you’re right, a state trooper assures the speaker, as he raises his long distance rifle, and starts to take careful aim in the direction that the county deputy sheriff has pointed out.

Just fire a close warning shot, the sheriff requests, carefully. We want to take him alive as killing the insane creature won’t give the state courts chance to show its punishment toward his madness.

I don’t know but you are right, the rifleman says, taking careful aim.

Standing on top of the granite block sea wall in the light of the now fastly brightening full moon, the lone black figure of a man spreads his arms making his full length cloak look like bat wings as he drops head first over the side in a perfect swan dive, and then arcing majestically as it disappears into the lapping waves of water at least twenty feet below.

I don’t believe I hit him with the rifle bullet, the sheriff’s deputy says quickly. At least I didn’t mean to. I just wanted him to give himself up, that was all.

One way or the other, that was one perfect swan dive as far as I could see, the state trooper says, admiringly. With the moon shining on the water and making light and dark patches it’s hard to tell just how deeply he dove, and how high the tide is. If he’s going to surface we should be able to wait right here until he starts up the granite steps on the side of the sea wall, and we can nab him then."

Yeah, the sheriff adds, with mock skepticism, And I say that anyone who can take as precisely perfect a dive as well as that individual just did must also be an expert swimmer, and can probably swim to safety entirely beyond our reach.

If that’s the case, he’ll have to shed that heavy cloak I saw that he was wearing. If not it will soak up so much water it will drag him to the bottom, and hold him there in no time flat.

He’ll also have to have a wet suit under that costume in order to survive that cold water. the state trooper adds. If he doesn’t his dead body will be washing ashore in a couple of days.

Did the Dracula killer make it to the opening in the sea wall steps just under the surface of the water where he can disrobe from his outer garments including a wet suit