Autumn Bones

Forty-six

Cody had succeeded in rounding up four Townies. Two had gotten away, as well as all of the Easties. The only information the Townies could give us was their next rendezvous point in East Pemkowet.

“Sorry about your brother,” Cody said to Jen. “I came as quickly as I could.”

“I know.”

While Cody dealt with the Townies, we cruised around East Pemkowet looking for Brandon and the other tween-aged bike hooligans. No dice. Even the Townies’ rendezvous point behind the storage shed at Tanner’s Landing was deserted, abandoned after their friends were caught. No one knows hiding places like twelve-year-old boys do. After half an hour, we gave up and drove back across the bridge to rejoin the others, eating cold pizza and watching the number of trick-or-treaters dwindle.

Ten minutes or so after full nightfall, Bethany called her sister back and promised to look out for Brandon. That was considerably more reassuring than I ever would have imagined just a few short weeks ago.

Otherwise, nothing continued to happen.

By nine o’clock, it was quiet on the hill. If the dead were waiting for an audience to make an appearance, it was obvious that it was going to happen elsewhere. Technically, that could mean any bar in town, but my money was on the adult parade in East Pemkowet, and everyone else agreed. Like I said, this community goes all-in for the holiday. It makes sense in a way. As far as tourism goes, for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, ordinary mundane mortals play second fiddle to the eldritch. On Halloween, they set out to join them, which is why the adult parade has become such a massive spectacle. And this year, it seemed the parade participants were determined to pit themselves against whatever spectacle the dead might offer.

Back in East Pemkowet, we staked out a position on the front stoop of the State Farm Insurance building, which gave us a good vantage point to see over the crowds already beginning to throng the sidewalk. The other members of the coven joined us, and, to my considerable relief, Cody and Lurine also showed up: the former in uniform, the latter wearing a fabulous mask of feathers and an embroidered velvet robe that made her look like something out of a Venetian masquerade.

“I thought you weren’t worried about being recognized,” I whispered to Lurine.

She ruffled my hair. “Just a precaution, cupcake. I trust your little coven here, but if I should have to shift for any reason . . . well, better to be safe.”

“Good thinking.”

Stefan came to take up a post at the foot of the stoop, pale and somber, his broadsword strapped to his back. Jen elbowed me in the ribs when he and Cody exchanged curt greetings. “Hel’s liaison.” Stefan inclined his head to me. “One of the Outcast is in place on every corner. In the event of trouble, I’ve bidden them do what they may and hold their positions as long as discipline allows.”

“Thank you.” It was hard not to think about the fact that he’d kissed me. Yes, even now. I pushed the thought away. “I appreciate it.”

He inclined his head again, then turned to survey the crowd.

I’m not good at estimating numbers and the tally probably wouldn’t sound that impressive if I was. After all, the entire length of the parade route is a few short blocks. But if you cram, say, several thousand people into that space, it’s a lot. And I’m guessing there were at least three thousand spectators lined five- or six-deep along the route on both sides of the streets, some in costume, many in ordinary clothes. Police tape cordoned off the street, Ken Levitt and Bart Mallick were stationed next to their squad cars at either end of the route, Chief Bryant was observing on foot, and there were a dozen volunteers in SECURITY T-shirts doing their best to keep visitors in line, but it was still a recipe for mayhem. A lot of spectators were already drunk and raucous, getting amped up further by the Halloween spooktacular sound track blasting from the speakers that the owners of one of the boutiques had set up across the street.

A block and a half from our post, the parade participants were amassing in front of Boo Radley’s house. Stacey Brooks was flitting around filming or taking photos. She wasn’t exactly in costume, but it looked as though she had on a headband with a set of plush cat ears. Gah, it figures.

At a quarter after ten, the parade still hadn’t started and I was getting jittery. In less than two hours, Pemkowet gained permanently haunted status, and I officially failed utterly and completely in my duties as an agent of Hel. “C’mon, Grandpa Morgan,” I muttered. “Where are you? You’re never going to have a bigger audience than this one.”

Sinclair, holding the empty pickle jar, shot me a miserable look. Cody laid a hand on my shoulder and gave it a surreptitious squeeze. “Hang in there, Pixy Stix.”

“You should take up knitting, dear,” Mrs. Meyers said calmly, needles clicking away. “It calms the nerves.”

“I’m considering it myself,” Sandra Sweddon murmured, fingering a set of crystal worry beads.

“Dahling, I think we should all take up knitting when this is over,” Casimir said, his voice strained.

“I just wish I knew where my goddamn brother was,” Jen said. “Or my goddamn sister, for that matter.”

“You don’t have to stay,” I said to her. “We’ve got enough backup.”

She gritted her teeth. “Oh, I’m staying.”

“Well, I think it’s quite exciting,” Lurine said idly. “But I do wish they’d get the damned thing under way.”

At approximately ten thirty, half an hour late, the parade finally began.

Unlike the children’s parade, there was nothing quaint about the adult parade. There were mad scientists in goggles and blood-splattered lab coats, rotting zombies with latex eyeballs falling down their cheeks. There were ugly witches and sexy witches. There was a guy in a skeleton suit walking expertly on stilts and brandishing a plastic axe who was clearly meant to be Talman Brannigan back from beyond the grave.

That got a big round of applause.

There was a middle-aged heavyset guy in a corset, fishnet stockings, and pumps, with a placard around his neck and a whip-wielding dominatrix beside him, representing some political scandal I’d missed out on. Actually, there were several of those. I really needed to pay more attention to the national news. There was a twelve-foot-tall Pumpkinhead puppet operated by a local theater troupe. Like the Headless Horseman, it was a regular feature. Even though you could see the puppeteers working the poles that supported it, the effect as it bobbed and swayed above the crowd, an evil grin fixed on its ginormous orange head as it turned this way and that, skeletal hands outstretched, was pretty uncanny.

There were nuns and priests and pirates and mummies, and there was a group dressed as the cast of The Wizard of Oz. There was always a Wizard of Oz group. It wasn’t a regularly planned appearance, it just happened that way.

And of course, there was the squadron of Lurine Hollisters from Rainbow’s End. Drag versions of Lurine paraded down the street in a bloodstained lace slip and stiletto heels from her B-movie horror classic Revulsion Asylum and the bloodstained wedding dress and deranged streaks of mascara from the sequel, Return to Revulsion Asylum. There was the famous scarlet suit, pillbox hat, and veil that she’d worn during the trial regarding the challenge to her late husband’s will. There was the figure-hugging, sparkling Dolce & Gabbana gold gown—well, a decent approximation of it, anyway—that Lurine had worn after the verdict was announced in her favor.

Okay, I admit it, I got caught up in the moment enough to cheer.

There was even a Drag Lurine in the dowdy gingham dress she’d worn in one of the few serious movies she’d done, an indie film called Lindy’s Crossing.

The real Lurine smiled beneath the edge of her feathered mask. “Well done, boys. I wasn’t expecting to see that one.”

“You know, that was actually a really good—” I stopped when Cody grabbed my shoulder again. “What is it?”

“He’s here.” Cody’s fingers tightened on my shoulder. His head was up, nostrils twitching, and there was a feral sheen in his eyes. “The Tall Man, or at least his remains. Come on!”

Without waiting for a response, Cody vaulted off the stoop and began pushing his way through the crowd, ignoring complaints. I followed in his wake, stepping awkwardly over the police tape.

“Daisy!” Sinclair shouted after me. “Should we . . . ?”

“I don’t know!” I called over my shoulder as I hurried to catch up with Cody.

My first thought when I saw the apparition shambling toward the rear of the parade was that it was one hell of a costume, or maybe a larger-than-life puppet like the Pumpkinhead. What else would you think if you saw a seven-foot-tall skeleton clad in steel-plate armor, wreathed in crackling blue lightning, holding a wicked-looking axe in one hand? As it drew near, spectators were craning to get a better look at it and already beginning to cheer.

But then Cody stopped dead in the intersection, so quickly I nearly ran into him from behind.

It wasn’t a costume, and there were no clever puppeteers controlling it with poles. Those discolored bones were real, and a foul, acrid scent mingled with the odor of rot and decay hung in the air around the figure. That axe wasn’t plastic; it was a serious and deadly sharp-looking tool for splitting wood. Whatever was causing the lightning, it wasn’t some clever use of LED lights. And the armor . . . I don’t know what the hell the armor was about, but it definitely wasn’t decorative.

The Tall Man’s grinning jaw gaped and blue flames flickered in his hollow eye sockets as he released a booming laugh that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, reverberating against the walls of the buildings.

The pit of my stomach dropped and my blood felt like it was turning to ice water in my veins.

“What the hell?” It was Chief Bryant, sounding angry and bewildered. “What the hell is it?”

“Talman Brannigan, sir,” Cody said flatly.

Sinclair arrived at a run, breathing hard. “And my grandfather’s duppy.”

Chief Bryant stared at all three of us, at the members of the coven, the Scooby Gang, and the ghoul squad converging behind us. The Tall Man stood motionless, axe raised. Several yards away, Stacey Brooks stood frozen in terror, the camera forgotten in her hands.

The noisy crowd had fallen silent and uncertain, and the parade participants were retreating into an uncertain cluster.

Behind the figure of the Tall Man, an elderly man in a leisure suit capered and cackled. There was something familiar about the tenor of that voice. I’d heard it over an intercom, although it hadn’t been cackling at the time. The Tall Man’s jaw gaped again, one bony hand rising to point at Stacey Brooks as he uttered a single word.

“CAVANNAUGH!”

Stacey let out an earsplitting scream.

Oh, shit.

It had been right in front of us the whole time. It wasn’t a descendant of the Cavannaughs that had stolen the Tall Man’s remains. That capering man in the leisure suit was Clancy Brannigan. It was the Tall Man’s sole living descendant that Grandpa Morgan’s duppy had possessed in order to work death magic. Unless I was mistaken, it looked very much as though Clancy Brannigan, former inventor and self-proclaimed man of science, hadn’t been building a spaceship or a new and improved widget in his basement. He’d been welding armor onto the stolen bones of his dead ancestor, now inhabited by the duppy and hell-bent on carrying out the Tall Man’s dying curse.

And not only had we conveniently assembled the parade outside the decrepit old Tudor house, but we’d provided a scion of the Cavannaugh bloodline as a handy target.

“Do something!” the chief shouted at us, then turned toward the crowds and the huddled parade participants, waving his arms. “Clear the street! Get off the street!”

After that, things got chaotic.

The Tall Man lunged toward Stacey Brooks, swinging his axe, and I reacted without thinking, summoning my mental energies the way I’d been drilling for hours. Stefan had made me promise not to attempt using them as a weapon, but I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even know if I could do it, but as much as I disliked Stacey, I couldn’t just stand there while the resurrected corpse of Pemkowet’s infamous axe murder hacked her to bits. And so instead of kindling a shield as I’d been taught, I visualized a bullwhip of blinding light and cracked it in my mind, wrapping it around the Tall Man’s right arm and yanking on it.

It worked. The axe didn’t fall.

For a split second, I was suffused with a sense of power and triumph. Sinclair, who was closest to Stacey, sprinted forward to haul her behind him with one arm, breaking her paralysis and backing her out of danger.

And then the Tall Man turned his skull in my direction, gas-lamp blue flames flickering in his eye sockets, the end of my mental bullwhip wrapped around his bony fingers, and I realized I couldn’t retract my energy, realized he was drawing on it, the flames leaping higher, and I could see the malevolent joy of the obeah man’s spirit in those fiery hollows, riding the madness of Talman Brannigan’s ghost like some supernatural jockey, working death magic and sowing destruction, draining my very life essence to gain even more strength.

All the power and triumph I’d felt leached out of me, pouring into the apparition along the invisible tether that joined us, the tether I’d created. The sounds of shouting in the background grew faint and muffled. It felt like I was falling into a deep well of sleep, and I wondered if this was what dying was like. My knees hit the concrete, the spirit lantern falling from my nerveless fingers.

If I’d had the strength to cry, I would have.

A voice raised in bronze-edged fury rent the night, penetrating the cotton wool that seemed to be stuffed into my ears.

Lurine had shifted, her basilisk stare fixed on the Tall Man behind the feathered mask as her powerful coils lashed out to encircle the skeleton’s armor-clad waist. The invisible tether broke as he turned his attention to chopping at her with his axe, and I fell to my hands and knees in the street.

“God’s blood, Daisy!” Stefan’s hand jerked me partially upright, his eyes searching mine, pupils as dark as night. “I told you not to use it as a weapon!”

“I know,” I whispered. “But—”

Somewhere beyond us, Lurine snarled in ancient Greek, a note of pain mixed with the fury.

“Tend to her,” Stefan said to Cody, stepping back to draw his sword. “Kyria!” he called to Lurine. “Guard the innocents, leave the creature to me!”

“Daisy.” Cody crouched in front of me. “Are you with us?”

I managed to shift one hand to point at the spirit lantern, lying on the street a foot away. “Take it.”

Cody hesitated, then gave a grim nod, picking it up and opening the shutter. Nothing happened. He swore, gave it a shake, and tried again, to no avail. “Either it’s broken, or it has to be you, Daise.” He wrapped my limp fingers around the lantern. “Try.”

I promptly dropped the lantern, then fumbled for it on the ground. Sitting on my heels, I struggled to pry open the shutter. It seemed to take forever, the sound of steel clashing against steel ringing in my unstoppered ears as Stefan engaged the Tall Man, but at last I succeeded. Blue-white light spilled forth, illuminating the combatants’ lower legs and feet, shinbones behind steel greaves, blue jeans and motorcycle boots. Somewhere something was buzzing, a shrill voice spitting out curses.

“Daisy.” Cody’s voice was strained and urgent. I found the strength, barely, to lift my chin and look up. “Daisy, we need you.”

I looked past him. It was Jojo I’d heard, the joe-pye weed fairy darting around Stefan’s head, slingshot in hand, hurling pebbles at the Tall Man’s eye sockets. With no shield or armor, Stefan had his leather jacket wrapped around his left arm, and he was fighting for his life against an immensely tall armor-clad opponent who couldn’t be killed. Off to the side, Lurine had drawn herself to her full height, coils stirring as she stood guard over Sinclair and Stacey.

“Daisy!”

I placed my free hand on the concrete, pushing and trying to rise. My arms trembled with the effort. “Sorry,” I whispered.

“Beslubbering, addlepated apparition!” Jojo shrilled, amethyst eyes ablaze, tattered wings gone dry and brown, beating the air as she fitted another pebble into her slingshot of woven grass. “Vile, grave-ridden—”

In the heat of her furious passion, she darted too close to the Tall Man. It happened so fast, the axe rising and falling in a swift flash. One second, Jojo was there in midair, a look of terrible agony on her tiny face.

Then, gone. A flurry of glittering pollen drifted away, and a limp, ragged stalk of joe-pye weed fell to the street.

A wave of rage filled me, lifting me to my feet with an incoherent shout. I held up the spirit lantern, sending the Tall Man’s bony shadow stretching the length of the street. The concrete street, unfortunately.

“Over there!” Cody pointed toward a patch of landscaping on the corner, tall plumes of grass nodding. “Either corner, Daise!”

“Go!” I shouted, moving sideways to angle the Tall Man’s shadow toward the far corner. My arm was still trembling with the effort, but the anger burning inside me gave me strength. “Anyone who can! Go!”

Cody was already dodging past the Tall Man, but the Tall Man was pressing Stefan backward toward me, and I had to retreat. All along the sidewalks, the remaining spectators were shouting and shoving in a frantic effort to flee the scene, terrified parade participants crowding them from behind.

“Daise!” On the near corner, Jen signaled me with raised arms, waving wildly, light glinting off the hammer. Amid the chaos, she’d managed to slip down the street unseen. “Here!”

“Bingo,” I whispered, sidling to the left to send the Tall Man’s shadow in her direction. She hammered the nail into the soil with one solid thwack.

And nothing happened.

The Tall Man loosed another booming laugh, making the windows rattle all along the street. The capering figure in the leisure suit echoed it with a demented cackle.

Shit.

Hel had warned me that the spirit lantern and an iron nail might not work on Grandpa Morgan’s duppy because his spirit had never been laid to rest in the first place. And it didn’t work on the Tall Man because he wasn’t a spirit; he was flesh and bone, or at least bone and metal-plate, thanks to former inventor and insane agoraphobic Clancy Brannigan. Although I guess he wasn’t agoraphobic anymore, since he’d emerged from his lair for the first time in decades. Maybe being possessed by a duppy before it ditches you to animate your great-grandfather’s corpse has that effect.

“Man of science, my ass!” I shouted across the intersection at him.

He cackled in reply. Maybe he wasn’t agoraphobic, but whatever shreds of sanity he’d been clinging to were gone.

“Hel’s liaison,” Stefan said in a formal tone, parrying another mighty swipe of the Tall Man’s axe. “I fear my strength is not without limits. The same does not appear true of the creature.”

I winced. “Sorry!”

I knew what I had to do. I just didn’t know how the hell I was going to do it. I set down the spirit lantern. Dauda-dagr sang as I drew it, the hilt cool and reassuring against my palm. The ridge of hair along my tail prickled as I assessed the embattled Tall Man for a weakness in his armor at a vital point.

There was one—there, when he turned his skull, his spine was exposed beneath his helmet at the nape of his neck.

Only I hadn’t the faintest idea how to reach it.

There was a thrumming sound from the rooftop of one of the buildings on the intersection, one that had sat empty and for sale since the Birchwood Grill it once housed had closed. A thrumming sound followed by a splat.

The Tall Man staggered backward as a water balloon filled with red dye burst against his breastplate.

Atop the roof, there were cheers and whoops, heads peering over the edge. I felt a fierce grin stretch my cheeks. “Go, Easties!”

“Oh, I don’t think so. No, I’m afraid that won’t do at all.” In the middle of the intersection, Clancy Brannigan calmly withdrew a pistol from the waistband of his polyester leisure suit. Considering that he’d gone entirely around the bend, he sounded surprisingly coherent. He raised his arm to take aim at the figures on the rooftop and cocked the safety. “Let’s let this play out, shall we?”

I froze in shock. A gun, or an insane mortal with a gun, was the last thing I’d expected. But Cody spun around and drew his service pistol, his expression grim and determined. “Drop it!”

Talman Brannigan’s last living descendant moved with startling dexterity, grabbing Jen around the neck with his left arm and positioning her between them, his gun to her temple. “I’d say it’s a standoff, Officer. Why don’t you drop yours?”

Jen let out a faint squeak, her dark eyes wide with terror and helpless fury, showing the whites. Cody hesitated.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, the blood running cold in my veins. “Jen, no!”

There was another sound, a whooshing sound, as one of the figures atop the roof vaulted over the edge, the panels of a long coat flaring like dark wings, briefly blotting out the streetlights overhead. Someone let out a shriek as the figure dropped like a stone. A highly cinematic stone. Clancy Brannigan swung his pistol and fired at it, the gunshot echoing loudly along the street.

“Missed me.” Bethany Cassopolis landed in a three-point stance, straightening to adjust the folds of her long Victorian frock coat. She showed her fangs. “No one fucks with my brother and sister, creep. Not anymore.” Brannigan lowered his pistol and fired on her at point-blank range, but a bullet to the chest barely even slowed Bethany down as she fell upon him with inhuman speed, wrenching the gun from his hand as she jerked him away from Jen and sent him stumbling in Cody’s direction. “Count yourself lucky I don’t drink you dry, asshole!”

Cody slapped a pair of handcuffs on Clancy Brannigan. One psychotic mortal down, one possessed zombie skeleton to go.

Okay.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Stefan, everyone, just hold on!” I addressed the Tall Man’s figure. “Mr. Morgan, I want to parley!”

The helmeted skull turned toward me, eye sockets filled with blue fire, blue fire crackling along its bones. Grandpa Morgan was listening. Opposite him, Stefan braced his hands on his knees, keeping his grip on his sword, taking deep breaths. Blood was running down his left arm, dripping from his wrist.

“Let Talman Brannigan’s spirit go,” I said. “He committed a terrible crime. Don’t let it happen again. That can’t be what you want.”

Blue flames surged in the hollow sockets. “Let my grandson go, she-devil!” It was a different voice, not as booming, but creaking with sharp, rusty edges. Well, that and a Jamaican accent. “That’s all I ask. Give me my grandson, and you and your cursed bloodclot of a town can have your murderer’s bones!”

“No one has me, Grandfather!” Emerging from behind the protective barrier of Lurine’s coils, Sinclair confronted the apparition. There were tears on his cheeks. “This is my town and these are my friends. I chose this path, and you have no right to choose a different for me; not you, not my mother, not my sister! No one! You can force me to change my mind, but you can’t change my heart.” He opened one hand to reveal the withered remnants of a joe-pye weed. “You can only break it.”

On the outskirts of what had been a crowd of spectators, there was still shouting and pushing, but the street surrounding us had gone quiet. Everyone who wasn’t already fleeing was transfixed with a combination of horror and fascination. I caught Lurine’s eye and pointed toward the Tall Man’s ankles, then held up one finger to indicate she should wait for my signal. Lurine nodded, slithering forward a few feet. Behind her, Stacey Brooks stood with her arms wrapped around herself, teeth chattering in the warm night air.

In silence, we waited for the Tall Man’s—for Grandpa Morgan’s—response.

“Sorry, bwai.” There might even have been a hint of regret in the rusty voice. “But your mother bound me to her will.”

And then, “CAVANNAUGH!”

Grandpa Morgan had loosed the reins on the Tall Man and given him his head. The axe rose, the skull turning in search of Stacey Brooks. Stefan straightened, hoisting his sword, his irises like pale rims of frost around his pupils.

“Easties, fire!” I shouted, praying that Brandon and his friends were still up there manning the ramparts.

My prayers were answered. Atop the roof of the old Birchwood Grill building, the industrial-strength water-balloon launcher twanged over and over, launching a barrage. The Tall Man flailed, batting at the onslaught. It wasn’t anything more than an annoyance to him, but all I needed was a moment’s distraction.

“Now!” I shouted to Lurine.

Her iridescent tail shot forward, snaking around the skeleton’s bony ankles, upending him with a single yank. The Tall Man clattered to the ground, bones and armor rattling. Stefan was on him in a flash, both booted feet stomping down hard on the skeleton’s axe-wielding arm, the point of his sword jamming into the exposed vertebrae at the back of the Tall Man’s neck through the same gap under the helmet that I’d spotted.

Of course, there was no magic in his blade, only skill, and it seemed the skeleton was held together with death magic, not sinew. Blue lightning crackled as the Tall Man flung him off with supernatural strength, rising to one knee.

One knee was good enough for me. It put the nape of the Tall Man’s neck at right about eye level.

Stealing up behind him, I drove dauda-dagr home.

It cut through the brittle old bones like butter. The blue lightning vanished. The Tall Man’s figure collapsed.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Too soon, of course. The air around the fallen heap of bones and metal roiled, smelling of scorched hair and rot. Without a host to contain it, Grandpa Morgan’s duppy was manifesting at long last.

“Gentlefolk of the coven!” Casimir called in a fierce, determined voice. “My darlings, our time has come!”

Sinclair turned to me. He held the empty pickle jar in one hand and the sad, trampled reminder of Jojo in the other, and the determination in Casimir’s voice was echoed in his level gaze. “Stand back, Daisy. We’ve got this.”

I nodded. “Do it.”

I admit it—I’d had my doubts about the coven. But they converged in a circle around the Tall Man’s armored bones and held hands, with Sinclair in the center, facing his grandfather’s spirit. Sandra Sweddon, Warren Rogers, Mark and Sheila Reston, Kim Crandall, Mrs. Meyers, whose first name I really ought to learn . . . their ordinary, mortal faces were strong and beautiful as they chanted an invocation.

Grandpa Morgan’s duppy fought them. It manifested in a shifting array of forms: a bull-calf with fiery eyes, chains jangling around its neck; a black dog with its hackles raised; a giant fish leaping and twisting in midair.

Members of the coven held fast to one another’s hands and chanted louder, their voices strong.

In the center of the circle, Sinclair opened the empty jar, the sprig of joe-pye weed tucked into the breast pocket of his polo shirt. He uttered a word—a word like the word his mother had uttered in the cemetery, all stern, tolling syllables that sounded as if it came from before the dawn of recorded time.

The duppy’s appearance dwindled into that of a stooped, elderly man with tired, bloodshot eyes, gazing at his grandson with a pleading expression.

Sinclair said the word again.

A cool, crisp autumn breeze sprang up, banishing the scent of decay and blowing the manifestation of the duppy into tatters. There was a . . . a sucking sensation, like what happens when contestants on Iron Chef America use the vacuum sealer.

With a deft, deliberate twist, Sinclair screwed the lid onto the pickle jar, capturing his grandfather’s spirit.

It was done.