Blood Games

    Reaching the middle of the lawn, she whirled around in time to see the man throw open his door.

    ‘Shit!’

    He leaped over the threshold and stomped the blazing bag. Embers flew. Abilene heard a soft splat. His ankle, bare above the top of his house slipper, went dark.

    ‘Yeeeuug!’

    But he kept stomping until the fire was out. Then he lifted his foot and looked at it. Then he looked at Cora.

    ‘Trick or treat!’ Cora called.

    ‘Cunt! ’ He lurched across the porch, gasped when his clotted slipper skated sideways, but kept his balance and raced down the stairs.

    Cora took off.

    The man dashed after her.

    He was hot on her tail by the time she reached the sidewalk. There, she ducked her head and sprinted. The guy went after her. A moment later, they were both out of sight.

    ‘Man, was he ever pissed,’ Finley said.

    ‘What if he catches her?’ Helen asked.

    ‘He won’t,’ Finley said.

    ‘Come on.’ Abilene rose from her crouch. She led the way along the front of the porch and up the stairs toward the open door. Her legs felt weak and shaky. Her heart pounded.

    ‘I sure hope nobody else is here,’ Vivian whispered.

    ‘Who would live with a jerk like that?’ Abilene said.

    ‘Another jerk, maybe,’ Helen suggested.

    Careful to avoid the charred remains and brown smears, Abilene stepped onto the threshold. She leaned forward. To the right of the tile foyer was the living room. From where she stood, she couldn’t see much of it.

    She heard nothing except her own heartbeat.

    ‘Let’s do it and get out,’ Vivian whispered.

    Nodding, Abilene shook the can of shaving cream and pried off its lid. She crept across the foyer and stepped onto the carpet. The television was off. The only light came from a single lamp at one end of the sofa. Its dim bulb left deep shadows in the corners of the room.

    ‘Nobody here,’ Finley said.

    ‘I guess…’

    An egg came from behind, dropped just in front of Abilene’s face and shattered on the carpet at her feet.

    ‘Watch it.’

    Finley laughed.

    Another egg sailed by. This one smashed against the wall above the TV set. Its viscous contents splattered and dribbled. Turning around, Abilene watched Finley and Vivian pluck more eggs from the carton in Helen’s hand and hurl them. The missiles exploded, splashing yellow glop against walls, the ceiling, a lamp table, a rocking chair barely visible in one corner.

    Abilene hurried over to the coffee table. A glass half full of soda was there. With a quick squirt, she gave the soda a frothy head of shaving cream. Eggs exploding all around her, she drew curlicues of suds on the table top. Then she went to the sofa. Its upholstery was covered with something that looked like an old bedspread, so she figured the shaving cream wouldn’t do any real damage. She started at the lighted end of the sofa and made her way down its length, leaving thick, fluffy designs along its cushions.

    She kept her eyes on the job.

    Until she came to the far end of the sofa.

    In the gloom between Abilene and the wall, some five feet away, she saw a chair. She’d noticed the chair earlier. Hidden in a dark corner as it was, however, she hadn’t realized it was a wheelchair. Nor had she noticed that it wasn’t empty.

    Something was in the chair.

    A bundle of blankets topped with a small, gray orb that almost resembled a head.

    Her heart gave an awful lurch.

    She stared at the thing. It didn’t move. It didn’t make a sound. The head really didn’t look much like a head, at all, more like a shriveled grapefruit perched on a stalk above the blankets. But it seemed to have a face.

    A dummy? A mannequin? Maybe one of those inflatable sex dolls.

    ‘Hey,’ she gasped. ‘Over here.’

    ‘What is it?’ Finley came up beside her. ‘What is it?’

    ‘I don’t know.’

    ‘We’ve gotta get out of here,’ Vivian said, hurrying over with Helen to see what they’d found.

    Finley pulled a flashlight out of a pocket of her coveralls. She switched it on. She aimed it at the thing in the wheelchair.

    The small head was hairless, the color of wet, dead leaves. Its face looked like something that a careless child might’ve formed out of papier-mache: lumpy, ragged flesh; eyes holes poked by fingertips; a couple of quick pinches to make the nose; a slit for a mouth; a tiny knob of chin.

    ‘It… it isn’t a corpse, is it?’ Helen whispered.

    ‘Christ, no,’ Finley said. ‘It’s just a dummy. A homemade dummy, at that.’

    ‘It’s hideous,’ Vivian muttered.

    ‘Maybe that bastard has some Halloween spirit, after all,’ Finley said. ‘Hold the flashlight. I’ve gotta get this.’

    She gave the light to Abilene.

    Then she raised her video camera, turned around for a slow pan of the trashed living room, and pointed her lens at the ghastly thing in the chair. ‘Say cheese,’ she said.

    It said, ‘Cheese.’

    The slash of its mouth spread open and it said, ‘Cheese,’ the word rolling out slow and deep like a voice on a record player at low speed. A tinny, scratchy voice. A voice that resounded as if spoken in an echo chamber.

    Finley gasped, ‘Fuck!’

    Helen made a high, whiny noise.

    Vivian gagged.

    Abilene wet her pants.