Halloween III - Season of the Witch Read Online Free

a pool of vomit glistened.
    Raul leaned over the counter. The father dove to help his son.
    “Oh God,” said the father, “I told him not two cheeseburgers!”
    Challis went into action, his professional reflexes taking over. But before they could get to him the boy straightened up, grinning devilishly. Casually he plucked up the vomit and tossed it in the air. It was plastic. A perfect replica.
    “Can I have it, Daddy? And I want some vampire bats for the party. Okay, Dad?”
    The three men exhaled.
    “Would have been a mess to clean up,” said Raul. “Really had you goin’ there, didn’t he? You want it?”
    “Come on, Dad!”
    The man considered, reaching for his wallet. “You do have a bag to carry it in, don’t you?” he asked.
    They all laughed over that.
    “Don’t forget the punkin!” said the boy.
    “How about you?” Raul asked Challis.
    “The small ones. Two of the small ones. You can throw in a couple of vampire bats while you’re at it. And a half-pint of Wild Turkey . . .”
    Outside again, sitting in the car, Challis watched the father and son walk back across the lot, hand in hand. He felt an overwhelming pang of sadness.
    The boy was no more than six or seven, about Willie’s age. Having Willie two weekends a month wasn’t enough. I have so many things to tell him, he thought. Only by the time it rolls around most of them have slipped my mind. Half the time when I call she won’t even let me talk to him. I wish he’d call me more often, thought Challis, a profound sense of melancholy blowing like a cold wind through his chest. I’ll bet he has a lot of things to tell me, too, things I’ve forgotten and things I’ve never heard before. I’ll slip him the hospital number again. She doesn’t have to know. He can call me from a pay phone, for God’s sake. Anytime.
    Anytime you’re thinking about me, Willie. Thinking about your dad. If you ever do think about your dad. You do, don’t you, son? Sometimes? Sure you do. And I think of you, too, and Bella. All the time. And when I’m not I should be. I’m going to be thinking a lot more about you as the years hurtle by. I hope you know that.
    If you don’t, then I guess it’s up to me to tell you.
    He tromped on the clutch and shifted gears, noticing that the gas gauge was a quarter of a tank lower than when he’d started out. It was because he had left it running while he was in the store.
    But that was all right. He had enough left to get him home. He would always have that much.
    As he pulled away from the 24-hour market, he saw or imagined that he saw a tall, stiff figure walking deliberately out of the shadows and past the glass siding, away from or toward the entrance. He couldn’t be sure. On the other side of the glass, the store’s three video arcade games blipped on through the night, even though no one was playing them; the greenish glow from their cathode ray tubes sent an eerie spill of unreal light outside to tinge the edges of a gathering mist which was beginning to blow into the lot.
    Whether or not there had ever actually been someone lurking there was moot. It might as easily have been a branch, a reflection, a moving shadow.
    Shadows that moved? There was no such thing.
    It’s the bogy man, thought Challis, feeling nothing in particular about the realization yet, and drove on.

C H A P T E R

2
    It was storming again by the time he reached the corner of the street where he had once lived.
    Waves of rain broke directly against the windshield, so that he was unable to make out house numbers or even the configuration of the rest of the block. So much had changed in the last few months—trees trimmed back, at least two yards landscaped and a new sidewalk put in—that it was doubtful he would have recognized the house on the first pass, anyway.
    He drove blind, steering between parked cars as if navigating a mined canal. Estimating his distance from the corner, he slowed and rubbed out a clear circle on the glass,