Angela continued the rest of the way down the stairs and headed toward the freezer against the far wall. As she walked she glanced in the direction of Hodges’ former tomb and was relieved to see that David had stacked the window screens over the hole.
Angela was just reaching into the freezer when she heard a scraping sound behind her. She froze. She could have sworn the noise had come from behind the stairs. Angela allowed the freezer to close before she slowly turned around to face the dimly lit cellar.
With utter horror, Angela saw the screens begin to move. She blinked, then looked again, hoping that it had been her imagination. But then the screens fell over with a loud, echoing crash.
Angela tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. She tried to move, but she couldn’t. With great effort, she at last took a step, then another. But she was only halfway to the stairs when Hodges’ partially skeletonized face emerged from the tomb. Then the man himself staggered out. He seemed disoriented until he saw Angela. Then he started toward her, his arms extended.
Angela’s terror translated to motion. She ran for the stairs in earnest, but she was too late. Hodges cut her off and grabbed her arm.
Feeling the creature’s hand on her wrist unlocked Angela’s voice. She screamed, struggling to free herself. Then she saw another ghoul emerge from the tomb, a smaller but equally hideous fiend with the exact same face. Suddenly Angela realized that Hodges was laughing.
Angela could only stare, dumbfounded, as David pulled off a rubber mask. Nikki, the smaller ghoul, pulled an identical mask from her face. Both of them were laughing hysterically.
At first Angela was embarrassed, but her humiliation quickly turned to fury. There was nothing funny about this gag. She pushed David aside and stomped upstairs.
David and Nikki continued to laugh, but their laughter soon faltered as they began to understand how much they had frightened Angela.
“Do you think she’s really mad?” Nikki asked.
“I’m afraid so,” David said. “I think we’d better go up and talk with her.”
Angela refused to even look at them as she busied herself in the kitchen.
“But we’re sorry,” David repeated for the third time.
“We both are, Mom,” Nikki insisted. But then both Nikki and David had to suppress giggles.
“We never imagined you’d be fooled for a minute,” David said, trying to control himself. “Honest! We thought you’d guess immediately; it was so corny.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Nikki said. “We thought you’d guess because next Sunday’s Halloween. These are going to be our Halloween costumes. We even bought the same mask for you.”
“Well, you can just throw it away,” Angela said.
Nikki’s face fell. Her eyes welled with tears.
Angela looked at her and her anger melted. “Now don’t you get upset,” she said. She drew Nikki to her. “I know I’m overreacting,” she added, “but I was really scared. And I don’t think it was funny.”
Eager to get started on what was easily the most intriguing case he’d landed since he started his little side business to supplement his pension and social security, Phil Calhoun drove into Bartlet in the middle of the afternoon. He parked his pickup truck within the shade of the Bartlet library and walked across the green to the police station.
“Wayne around?” he asked the duty officer.
The duty officer merely pointed down the hall. He was reading a copy of the Bartlet Sun.
Calhoun walked down and knocked on Robertson’s open door. Robertson looked up, smiled, and invited Phil to take a load off his feet.
Robertson tipped back in his chair and accepted an Antonio y Cleopatra from Calhoun.
“Working late on a Saturday,” Calhoun said. “Must be a lot going on here in Bartlet.”
“Goddamned paperwork,” Robertson said. “It sucks. And it gets worse every year.”
Calhoun nodded. “I read in the paper that old Doc Hodges turned up,” he said.
“Yeah,” Robertson said. “Caused a little stir, but it’s already died down. Good riddance. The man was a pain in the ass.”
“How so?” Calhoun asked.
Robertson’s face became red as he aired yet again his litany against Dr. Dennis Hodges. He admitted that there had been numerous times he’d almost decked the man.