Glancing up, she noticed a look of disgust on the caretaker’s face before the woman looked away and said, “Damn.”
Dana couldn’t blame her. It was a dark story. And they wanted visceral reactions.
Aaron motioned for the recorder, so she passed it to him to continue the background information. “He then proceeded to slice the base of her skull, scraping down her spinal cord, here…” He demonstrated the incision on himself, using the recorder in lieu of a kitchen knife. “Then, as she turned and raised her hands in self-defense, he continued stabbing into the arteries and nerves of her palms, like so…” Again, he mimed the cutting motion and paths with the recorder. “Once she collapsed, three more stabs in her sternum, piercing her heart.”
Judging by her sickened grimace at the lurid re-enactment of Michael Myers’ first murder, the caretaker clearly regretted asking the question and hoped she’d forget it all before it became nightmare fodder. “I don’t know about sternums,” she said with a shudder. “All I know is, we’ve had to replace this stone two times. People come around and put demon pentagrams and voodoo shit on it.” She shook her head. “Every Halloween. Crazy coconuts.”
Dana looked up at Aaron. “We should use that,” she said excitedly. “As part of the background, and as a postscript to Laurie’s story.”
“Agreed,” Aaron said. “Reminds me of the ham and eggs fable.”
“What?”
“The ham and eggs breakfast fable,” Aaron prompted. Dana shook her head. “What’s the difference between the chicken and the pig? The chicken contributes the eggs. The pig gives up its life. So, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.”
“How’s this related?”
“Graffiti and vandalism versus a lifetime commitment.”
Dana arched an eyebrow. “So, in this scenario, Laurie is the pig?”
“She gave up a lot,” Aaron said defensively. “Obsession, a lifetime of fear. Lost her child to social services.”
Frowning, Dana said, “We are definitely not using that fable on the podcast.”
“Well, it was…”
“Seriously,” she said firmly. “Not a chance.”
Aaron raised his hands in surrender.
Dana stood, brushed off the knees of her black slacks, then reached into her bag and removed a camera to take pictures of the grave and the tombstone from various angles. She planned to use the images in their promotional material, their website, and for any mailers.
The caretaker stood nearby while they wrapped up.
Dana wondered if the woman suspected they’d steal the gravestone as a macabre souvenir to take back to the UK.
Across the cemetery, standing inhumanly still under a group of shady trees that have shed their leaves, The Shape watches them. The tall man taunted The Shape with the Mask. And the woman carried the Mask in her bag.
From the man’s words and taunts, The Shape knew they would come to this town. To this place. And that they still possessed the Mask.
14
After leaving Mt. Sinclair Cemetery Aaron drove their Ford rental car onto the lot of the Stallion Service Center for a fill-up. Dana sat in the back of the car, flipping through their storage box of research material, including a laminated binder with photos of the 1978 incident. She spread out selected items, with an emphasis on newspaper clippings, across the other half of the seat, creating a makeshift desktop.
With Dana engaged in research, Aaron switched off the ignition and got out to fill the gas tank from a self-service pump. He stood and waited while the pump gave him a running count of gallons pumped and dollars sunk. While he waited for the final tally, he thought about the obstacles they’d faced—their inability to get a reaction from Myers at Smith’s Grove and Laurie’s unwillingness to confront her attempted murderer—and what they needed to do next to complete the story. With Myers’ transfer, they’d missed the window for a face-to-face meeting between the two. Of course, they could build the story without that, a complete story, but that confrontation would have been a brilliant highlight.
Aaron tapped the window, catching Dana’s attention. “Any chance at all Colorado would reconsider?”
“The ‘less than desirable’ location?” she asked, referring to Sartain’s open disdain for Glass Hill. Aaron nodded. She flipped through some pages in the storage box. “Looked into it some more. Not as bad as Sartain implied. If anything, a bit more modern than Smith’s Grove. But he’s right about one thing. They will put him in a deep hole. No contact. Sorry.”
“Shame,” Aaron said.
“Besides, there’s no chance we’d convince Laurie to go.”
Dead end, he thought with a sigh. But we’ll work around it.
At the full-service pump opposite the self-service side, a red Ram 350 van refueled. Hand-painted white lettering arced across the side of the extended van advertised The Holy Apostle’s Resurrection Church in what amounted to a four-wheeled billboard. An older couple sat in the front seats. They looked like grandparents, but the van was large enough to transport a modest church choir. An old woman in the back seemed to stare at Aaron without seeing him. Not wanting to draw attention to himself or incite any attempts at proselytizing, he resisted the urge to wave.
Dana had already moved on from the Colorado roadblock. She called out to him from the backseat, “If we could get those initial police transcripts from the press conference and post-conviction proceedings we might have a great prologue for our story there.”
After following the man and woman to the gas station, The Shape parks the stolen Bronco across the lot and walks behind the man as he pumps gas. The Shape approaches the service center and its open garage bays.
An old woman inside a red van watches The Shape without reaction. She sees an old man in a white tunic, white trousers, open shoes. She does not see The Shape because The Shape is incomplete. But soon…
Pushing the storage box out of her way, Dana climbed out of the backseat of the rental car to stretch her legs and make use of the restroom. She approached Aaron to let him know.
“We have access to Brackett’s personal journal on Michael,” Aaron said, “as well as city records.”
“What are you waiting for?” she said, smiling.
She squeezed his upper arm and strode toward the service center’s office to inquire about the restroom. On the way, she passed one of the open garage bays. For some reason, the employees had left a stack of loose tires outside between each bay. She glimpsed a mechanic in a jumpsuit in the first bay, raising the hood of a pickup truck.
Before ducking into the office, she glanced over at Aaron and saw a woman and her son get into the church van with the elderly couple. The old woman seemed to stare at her impassively. But Dana couldn’t think of anything about herself that would warrant that level of scrutiny. She’d dressed rather conservatively in a gray sweater vest over a striped long-sleeved blouse, black slacks and boots.
Not that it mattered. With everyone back onboard, the church van drove off the lot as Dana stepped into the office. Behind the counter, next to an electronic cash register and a transistor radio tuned to a classic rock station, a man wearing the same style dark coveralls as the mechanic aimlessly flipped through the pages of a tabloid-sized newspaper. At the sound of an overhead door chime, the clerk looked up at her expectantly.
“Bathroom?” she inquired.