Waiting back in the last wagon, which was being pulled by the Haristeens’ truck, Pewter complained as she shifted to find a comfortable spot on the hay bale. “By the time we get to the church, there won’t be any food left. We’re the caboose.”
“Sure there will be,” said Tucker, an expert on dropped treats. She confidently predicted, “Stuff falls on the floor.”
“Tucker, here’s a frightening Halloween idea: I’ll jump on the table and make everyone scream, ‘Get the cat off the table!’ Now, that’s really scary.”
Mrs. Murphy laughed. “Pewter, you jump on that table and Mom will smack you. Then you’ll be the one screaming and that will scare the children.”
“I’m going inside the truck,” said Pewter, who leapt from the wagon’s hay bale to the truck bed, also full of hay. She started smacking the sliding window. “Release me from these trolls!”
Harry moved forward in the fluffed hay to also knock on the window. In the driver’s seat, Fair turned around and slid it open.
“Honey, Pewter’s being a pill. Will you take her with you?” Then she said to Susan’s husband, Ned, sitting in the passenger seat, “Ned, she’ll be on your lap.”
“Fine with me as long as she doesn’t drive.”
Harry grunted as she picked up the fat cat, passing her through the open back window.
Fair asked, “Do you have the .38?”
“I do.”
Ned looked at Fair with alarm. “What’s going on?”
Harry nonchalantly replied, “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
Susan, sitting next to Miss Mona in the wagon bed, patted the old lady’s hand. Miss Mona’s walker was strapped to the back tailgate. A stroke had affected her mobility, which sometimes embarrassed her, but the group of old friends pretended she was the Miss Mona they knew in childhood. She was, except that she couldn’t get around like she used to.
BoomBoom tended to Colonel Friend, also very old. Colonel Friend was a bemedaled World War II vet. Bunny Biedecke, another World War II vet, leaned against a small hay bale as he sat in the sweet-smelling fluffed hay. Dear old Bunny was already asleep. BoomBoom’s partner, Alicia, sat next to him. Bunny had to have been tired, because he was the kind of fellow who would normally revel in the experience of sitting next to a beautiful woman. Come to think of it, most of the men in Crozet fit into that category.
Tazio had interspersed the trucks with the horse-drawn wagons. If a horse threw a shoe, the people could get back to a truck wagon; these held fewer people but there was also room in the truck’s bed. Most people wanted to ride in the horse-drawn wagons, but some enjoyed the truck-drawn ride, mostly because all the kids were clustered together, noisy with excitement, in the horse-drawn wagons.
Aunt Tally hotly refused getting stuck with “old people,” as she called them. She sat in the first horse-drawn wagon up with the driver, regaling him, so she thought, with stories of her youth and her own “excellent” driving abilities. Big Mim grimly sat behind, fearing Aunt Tally had hidden a small flask in her heavy cardigan sweater.
As the mercury dropped, the screams rose up. Waiting to move forward, Harry and the passengers in the last wagon could hear them as they pierced the night in sequence. The temperature fell into the mid-forties. The beautiful stillness of this velvet black Halloween meant they could even hear the bellows of fright from the graveyard, a good mile and a half distant.
Checking his texts, Ned noted when the seventh wagon had been challenged by the Headless Horseman. “Okay, Fair, roll,” he ordered. “Lolly says we’re up. Neil said wagon number seven just passed him.”
Watch in hand, Lolly was standing just outside the first schoolhouse. She had wanted to do something to honor her boss’s memory, so she had volunteered for the job of starter in Hester’s pet project. Lolly was good with details. Dressed in a skeleton costume, the young woman checked and rechecked her watch and various texts. Naturally, some wagons clattered along more slowly than others, but in the main, the evening’s planned event was running quite smoothly. All seriousness, Lolly would call out each passing wagon’s number and say, “Move out.”
In the last wagon, driving at fifteen miles an hour, the cats, dogs, and humans passed the middle schoolhouse. Eerie lights showed a large beaker bubbling froth in green light. Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster lifted his bulky head. The doctor poised over him, gigantic hypodermic needle in hand. Snap, the bonds broke, falling away as the monster reached up with his right hand, grabbing Dr. Frankenstein by the throat. The furious struggle was enhanced by the green light. The contents of the giant needle shot upward in the air as the doctor helplessly sank to his knees. The monster threw up his hands in triumph, not unlike a football player in the end zone. He whipped his head around as best he could, despite the spike in his neck, then crashed out the side door, roaring as he did, rushing at the wagon. Hearing the riders’ screams, he then turned to disappear into the cornfield. As the wagon moved forward, one could hear the cornstalks bending and rustling.
“Good scream,” Susan complimented Harry.
Pewter, on Fair’s lap, pupils wide, meowed, “I don’t like the monster’s face.”
The back window, left open so Harry and Susan could holler at their husbands, allowed Mrs. Murphy and Tucker to hear Pewter. It sounded like a tiny meow to the two men in the cab.
“Scaredy-cat,” the two animals teased.
“Piffle,” the gray cat replied. “I just don’t like Frankenstein’s face. I’m not scared.”
The truck crept forward and for a moment they heard the far-off clip-clop of the draft horses pulling the cart in front of them, so still was the night.
“Don’t you love the sound of hoofbeats?” Shawl wrapped around her shoulders, Miss Mona smiled.
“I do.” Harry held one hand while Susan held the other. “Miss Mona, your hand is cold. Let’s put on your gloves.”
As they did that, two glowing goblins and two ghosts fluttered above the cornfield, moving from side to side, then up, only to sink back down.
Ahead, they heard an explosive scream of fright.
“Must be really scary,” Miss Mona said to Colonel Friend.
“We’ll see.” His voice quavered, but as he’d fought his way through Europe, it’s doubtful too much could rattle the colonel.
As they were poised between the two trees, branches twisting into the night, out flew Jeepers Creepers. So sudden and silent was this attacking nasty bird/human, wings outstretched, strange face looking down with a snarl, that even Harry drew deeper into the hay.
“Kill! That bird wants to kill us!” Pewter screamed.
Even Tucker barked in surprise, then breathed out in relief. “It’s Coop!” The corgi had recognized Cooper’s scent.
Mrs. Murphy inhaled the crisp air. “So it is. She scared me.”
High in the tree, Cooper folded her wings and gazed over the scene. She could see a little bit around the curve, back to the schoolhouses, which stood like clapboard rectangles in the darkness. Buddy was running through the cornfield, charged by Count Dracula. This seemed to be an impromptu scare as the last wagon rolled by. Now that Harry, Fair, and the others had passed, Cooper prepared to push off hard on the zipline and swoop in the opposite direction to get back into the tree and climb down.
As Fair slowly took his passengers around the big curve, out charged the Headless Horseman with a menacing howl, cape flying behind him, hoofbeats clattering.