What October Brings

Hum—Hurt You. Hum—Hurt You. Hum—Hurt You. John Shirley

Elwin McGrue was not ready for Halloween. He had not set up his sprinklers, to spray the bastards T.P.-ing his lawn. He hadn’t bought the novelty store candy—super sour and super-hot and a few with ants in it—to drop in the bags of any who persisted in tormenting him. He hadn’t yet received the mail-order recording of a vicious dog snarling and brutishly barking, which would trigger when anyone came up the walk…

It was already October 30, and he wasn’t ready. Something else was troubling him more. The new house, a hundred feet from his, across the circle at the dead end of this street—the brand-new house that no one would ever live in. It bothered him. Indeed, it seemed to target him.

“Sometimes I think you like fighting with the kids on Halloween,” said His neighbor Mary Sue.

“I don’t relish the conflict, Mary Sue”, he said, as he stood on his lawn in the morning mist.

“Certainly, you do, Elwin,” she said, locking eyes with him, matching him frown for frown as they faced each other over the wooden fence—the decaying fence she said was on his property and he said was on hers.

Mary Sue was sixty-five, about seven years younger than him, but just as stubborn. She stood there with her arms crossed, the wind stirring her long, white hair. It was a hair style she’d kept from being a damned hippy in the 1960s, he supposed. Her blue eyes were fading but could be just as chilly as ever. Secretly, he had always admired her.

“No,” he said. “It’s what happened to Andy.”

It was true. McGrue had turned his back on Halloween, long ago, because of what had happened to his grandson, and he wasn’t going to have it forced on him.

Her eyes softened at the reminder.

“He was a sweet little boy, Irwin.”

“He isn’t dead, Mary Sue.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“These kids now…they’re no better than the ones who hurt him…”

And one of those kids, McGrue realized then, was riding down the street on a bike, without his hands on the handle bars. Lon Kimble. Maybe fourteen by now, Elwin thought. Acting like a drunk teenager just to mock him and Mary Sue.

Lon had his hands up in the air, and was whooping, steering by leaning this way and that as he came to the circular cul-de-sac at the end of Skellon.

Skellon Way, with its prominent Dead End sign, followed the top of a small branching ridge, right where the road ended in an ivy grown cliff. The cul-de-sac overlooked another neighborhood street below. Some of the Skellon kids last Halloween had gotten in the half-finished new house—the house where no one was ever intended to live—and stood on the raw wood planks of the second floor throwing bric-a-brac down onto the roofs below.

This kid—Lon was his name— was one the chief culprits, making twisted faces at Elwin as he circled on his bike, look-no-hands, around in the end of the road.

“Hon, I wish you wouldn’t ride in a circle, with no hands,” Mary Sue called to him. “You’re gonna fall and break something!”

But Lon handily completed the turn, still no hands, giggling out, “Oooh, look I’m gonna fall off the bike and break my ass! Yahhhh!”

McGrue watched in hope, but unfortunately the kid didn’t take a header. Off he went, peddling and chortling down the street.

“Disrespectful little bastard,” McGrue said. “Behaving like that toward you.”

“Oh, I’m an old veteran,” she said. “I’ve got a skin like a rhino by now.” She was referring to having been a schoolteacher. She had taught Jr. High English for thirty-seven years before retiring. Teaching was something they had in common. He had taught at the same school, though he’d retired the year after she’d transferred in. He’d taught shop class before the District, in its infinite wisdom, decided that shop class was a waste of money.

He remembered a lot of good kids who spoke respectfully to him, in the early days, called him “Mr. McGrue”. He’d liked most of them.

But something was screwing kids up now. Was it cellphones? Videogames? Parents more interested in social media than their kids?

Whatever it was, the kids around here, anyway, were worse than ever.

He couldn’t afford to move away. He’d have to sell his house, which wasn’t worth much, and live in some old folks’ home, no other option. So, he stuck around, clinging like a barnacle to the ridgetop, working on little home repair projects, doing maintenance jobs part time. But now, at the end of the street, was the house not intended to be lived in, the house that buzzed and hummed and kept him awake at night. Sometimes he could feel it, the powerful field put out by the house. Microwaves, electromagnetics? Both? He wasn’t sure.

“Mary Sue—your television working okay? Mine’s getting interference from that thing.” He nodded toward the buzzing house.

“I don’t watch television much. I like to read.” She looked at the billowing fog below the ridge. “But I’m having trouble concentrating lately.”

“Me too. And it started when they turned that damn thing on, up there.”

“We were canvassed, the whole neighborhood was, Elwin. We had hearings about it.”

“I was there. But they threw me out.”

“You were unruly, Elwin.”

“There were going to put in that big cell tower a hundred feet from my house!”

“The whole valley voted against that tower.”

“So, what’d they do? They installed that camouflaged monstrosity!”

She sighed. “It looks like a house, it’s cosmetic, I guess. I don’t like it either. All the people with cell phones voted for it.”

“You?” McGrue asked, looking at her with a scowl and narrowed eyes.

The expression on his face made her laugh. “No, Elwin. I’ve got a cell phone but service before this thing was good enough for me. I guess they all wanted to get all the internet all the time on their phones, or…And there they go.”

She nodded toward a young couple pushing a stroller, each with one hand on the stroller and one hand holding up a cell phone. They gazed fixedly at their cell phones as they walked along. Occasionally the woman giggled.

“God help that child,” Mary Sue muttered, as the couple pushed the stroller around the circular sidewalk, past the faux house, without looking up from their phones or speaking to one another.

McGrue noticed someone else coming down the sidewalk. “And who’s that?”

The stranger wore a shabby gray suit, had noticeably muddy shoes, and toted a largish brown suitcase that looked to be heavy, judging from the way he carried it. McGrue could see the man had a scrappy short white beard, but his face looked fairly young. He wore a gray tweed cap, and had a long nose, a narrow face, red pouting lips.

The stranger paused by the fence and looked over at them. “Good afternoon,” he said, touching his hat. Some kind of northeastern accent, McGrue judged, maybe some place like Rhode Island or Connecticut. He set down his suitcase and rubbed his arm. “I’m looking for a house that was built last year—a decorative shell for transmitters…”

“That’s it,” McGrue said, pointing. “Are you here to burn it down? I’ll get you a match.”

“Elwin!” Mary Sue hissed. “For heaven’s sake!”

The stranger tilted his head and gave him a crooked smile. “The structure is, I take it, problematic?”

“It sure as hell is! You can hear it buzzing and throbbing—you can even feel it! Keeps me awake at night and gives me nightmares. Screws up my television so I can’t see the Home Repair Show! Is that problem enough?”

“I see.” The stranger looked at the house and said, just loud enough to hear, “Very good.”

“Very good, that what you said?” McGrue snorted. “Is misery good?”

The stranger looked back at him and pursed his lips. “No sir. Misery is not good. I hope to end some of mine, here.” He flexed his fingers. “Rather too much equipment for one suitcase.”

“You’re a technician, then? They send you to work on that thing?”

“Ah, well, as to that—I do intend to work on it, yes. I can make certain adjustments.” He looked at McGrue quizzically. “I am missing my usual assistant today. You look like a fellow who might be handy? I wonder if I could trouble you to assist me, for just a few minutes. When all is done, I may be able to…modify the device, so it doesn’t trouble you. I can even recompense you.”

“That right?” Maybe this fellow could make the damned thing less obnoxious. “Why not!”

Mary Sue cleared her throat. “Mr. uh—Could I ask your name?”

“Oh, yes, forgive me, Ma’am. My name is Tillinghast. Oswald Tillinghast.”

“I’m Mary Sue Ellsworth, this is Mr. McGrue. Don’t you have a company truck, of some kind? I’d think whoever was tasked to work on that thing would be, you know, in an official vehicle…”

“Ah yes, that too is absented along with my assistant. It’s a long story. And now I must get to work.” He turned to McGrue. “No time like the present, do you agree sir?”

“Sure, let’s have a look at the damned thing,” McGrue said, stepping out to the sidewalk. “Let me help you with this.” He picked up the suitcase.

“Very good of you, Mr. McGrue.”

“Elwin—are you sure you should be going into that place?” Mary Sue called after him. “We’re not supposed to get near it!”

Who does she think she is, my wife? McGrue thought. “I’ll be fine, fine…”

He led the way around the circle at the end of the street, to the final house on Skellon Way. The house where machines lived.

“Really quite extraordinary, their choosing this exact site for the transmitters,” Tillinghast said.

“Why’s that?” McGrue asked, breathing raspily, beginning to regret offering to carry the suitcase. It was damned heavy.

“It’s at the exact convergence of the sympathetic and disharmonious waves from a number of other transmission sources,” said Tillinghast, the words tripping lightly off his tongue. “One is a cell phone tower, one is a satellite. The third is a signal bounced from the ionosphere—a signal that started at the HAARP array, thousands of miles north. And then the additional electromagnetic field created by intense microwave transmission from within the house…”

“Seems to me those microwaves are dangerous, down at this level, close to the people living on this street. They said those transmitters were aimed away from us, but I’m not so sure…And look at that!”

They had reached the house, and in front of it, at the foot of the steps, were several dead animals. A dead blue jay was half covered by the body of a striped tabby cat, and, nearby, facing away from the house, lay a dead racoon. All of the animals, McGrue saw now, had no eyes. Only little pockets of dried blood where eyes should be.

McGrue put the suitcase down and pointed at the dead animals. “You see that? I noticed the dead bird the other day…”

“Ah, most disturbing,” Tillinghast muttered. “It appears there’s already been a preliminary resonance wave.”

“A what?”

“Resonance wave—ah, an unfortunate radiation leak as a result of the convergence of several resonation sources. It can be lethal. It’s not typical of these cellular telephonic devices. Extraordinary conditions here. And yet, contained and controlled, it can…it can be useful. But it seems there has been an uncontrolled resonance wave here recently, perhaps over several hours. The bird died, the cat investigated and died, and the racoon investigated the first two dead creatures and died itself, trying to get away.”

McGrue took a step back from the house. “So—how do you know it’s not firing up that way right now?”

“Oh, I would sense it, if it was. I’ve become quite…attuned to it.”

“Sense it?” That sounded kind of nutty. Could be Mary Sue was right? Maybe he shouldn’t be here with this guy.

“However, I will check for you…” Tillinghast partly unzipped the suitcase, reached in, rummaged around, and took out what looked like a modified EMR meter. “Now… let me see…” He peered at the instrument. “No, you see, it’s in the green range, here. No resonance waves. And I wouldn’t expect another for some time—we won’t have the full convergence here till tomorrow evening. Shall we go in?”

“You have a key to this place? That door’s double locked.”

“A key? Of a sort, come along, if you’re coming, Mr. McGrue,” Tillinghast said briskly. He picked up the suitcase, lugged it up the stairs, then took a tool from his pocket and did something to the front door locks that McGrue couldn’t see. He heard a humming sound—and the front door popped open.

McGrue hesitated, looking up at the house—or the faux house, really. It was the equivalent of a cell phone tower disguised as a tree. The microwave transmitters were inside the shell of the house, which at a glance looked like a new, two-story tract home, its dormer windows tinted dark, and four dead junipers in the front yard. The house was eyeless, and empty of soul, and yet it hummed with an unnatural life. He could hear it; feel it in his back teeth. To McGrue it stood for the stupefying excesses of civilization in the twenty-first century.

Should he go in? No. But then again, this guy said he could turn the damn thing down some, and he needed help doing it.

McGrue growled to himself and shook his head, but he went up the stairs.

Inside, he found that Tillinghast had already unpacked the bag in a space behind two humming, circular microwave transmission drums, facing the front windows. There were three metal “drums”, each ten feet across. Tillinghast was setting up a tripod.

“Hand me that thing that looks a bit like a small movie projector, if you please, Mr. McGrue…very good.” He fitted it onto the top of the tripod, and tightened wingnuts to hold it in place. “This is my own new variation of my grandfather’s resonance manipulator. I will be testing it shortly…Ha ha, can you feel the intense electromagnetic field here? Even Tesla would have been impressed. Grandfather knew Tesla, you know, they corresponded…”

“Nikolai Tesla! And your grandfather?”

“Yes. My grandfather was Crawford Tillinghast.” He adjusted the manipulator and swiveled it. “You have perhaps heard of him?”

“I don’t believe so. This humming…this place is giving me a headache…Smells like something’s burning…”

“Crawford Tillinghast was a great scientific genius. His work was suppressed, by the usual bumpkins. I managed to find a way to adapt his system in a more…what is the contemporary expression? Ah! A more ‘user friendly’ way, ha ha! I will induce a localized resonance wave with this device. But it will be limited to a small area in front of the projector. Hand me that octagonal crystal there, please…”

That peculiarly giddy look on Tillinghast’s face, and his odd tendency to articulate each syllable in a burst of laughter—it made McGrue uneasy. “You say your grandfather developed the, um, the prototype of what you have here? It’s kinda funny, you working for the cell phone transmission company, and using something in the job that was developed by your grandfather…”

“Funny? Yes! Ha ha!” He clapped his hands together once and wrung them in quiet delight. “Now, I’ve got the booster ready—and we have the proper convergence of wave-transmissions. I believe we can run a short test, Mr. McGrue!”

McGrue’s mouth felt dry. He felt hot and unsteady. “You feel kind of nauseated? Headachy?”

“Oh, that’s merely the radiation. We’ll soon be done here, for today and the effect will pass. Please be good enough to hold this attenuator…”

He passed McGrue a device that looked like a microphone with two crystal spikes sticking to the sides at the top. “Now, Mr. McGrue, if you will hold that device out at arm’s length…Just take a step back…a foot more…that’s it…and…hold it steady, a trifle higher…” Tillinghast looked through an eyepiece atop the device that resembled a little movie projector. “Ah ha! It’s coming…”

A translucent shimmer emitted from the “projector”. A loud repetitive thudding sound shook the walls, followed by a hum that filled the world. Then, over the floor near the front door an oval shape glimmered, rippled, and formed what looked like a window…

Through the vertical oval, McGrue could see a squirming thing resembling a giant centipede with a human head. Above it fluttered a baby with batwings flashing a long black tongue at another creature that was something like a jellyfish with legs. The odd tableau was lit by a sickly green luminosity.

McGrue was coming to the conclusion that Tillinghast was definitely not a cell phone tower repairman.

Something squished into view, within the oval. It was like a giant slug, big as a bear. It reared up, its front end opened and it inhaled the flying baby, swallowed it down, and then galumphed off.

“Oh, my dear God,” McGrue said. Surely this was an illusion, a video projection, something unreal…

Flying, transparent, wormlike creatures, long as a man’s arm, whipped through the green air in the other world. They squirmed in the air, spitting sparks. Beyond the flying worms was a mist the dull-green of mold—the mist parted, then, to reveal a faintly glowing metal cage. Standing in the cage was a young man, quite human, waving frantically at them…

“There he is!” Tillinghast crowed. “My assistant! I am relieved to see he’s safe. The repulsor cage is holding up! I’m coming, Syl! I’ll be there soon! Hold on!”

Then something that looked like a reptilian goat standing on its hind legs stepped up, within the oval, and blocked the view. It was a goat, a man, a snake all at once. It turned to look through the oval with the wickedest eyes McGrue had ever seen. It hissed and bounded forward, then stopped to sniff the air, squatted as if preparing to leap through…It thrust out a scaly hand red and yellow hand, reaching through the oval, into the room with McGrue and Tillinghast.

McGrue, paralyzed with shock, shouted wordlessly.

Tillinghast said, “Don’t worry, I’ll shut it off, it won’t get through! I hope…”

“The Hell with this!” McGrue forced himself to move. He dropped the attenuator and turned to stagger toward the rail-less staircase leading to the second floor. He pounded up the creaking wooden steps, feeling as if that thing with the murderous look on its face was going to pounce on him from behind at any moment. He reached the second floor where another set of microwave drums aimed at the front windows. A dormer window looked out on the weedy backyard. He kicked at the glass, it shattered, he knocked out the ragged bits with an elbow and climbed through, in his hurry moving as lithely as a young man. There was a ladder from the roof line under the window. He scrambled down it to the overgrown grass, and ran, puffing like a locomotive, for his own house.

Halloween was barely less boring than any other damn night, Brian thought. It was cold up here, it was dark, the crickets were calling, some owl was hooting. Whatever. He wanted to be somewhere else, where there was light, and music, maybe dancing. But all he had was this place, and these guys.

He and the new kid Terry and that older kid Lon and his cousin Bud, and little Rudy who trailed after Bud, were all staring at Old Man McGrue’s house hoping he’d come outside to get egged. That’s what they had in mind this year.

Lon especially liked to go after McGrue, because a few years ago the old guy had tried to get Lon arrested after he chased Andy McGrue off the top of the hill. Brian hadn’t been there, but he’d heard about it. Andy was eight years old, dressed like a fairy—his mom had put fairy wings on him for some reason—and that got Lon and the others making fun of him and Andy’d told them to shut up and they’d chased him, throwing rocks at him, and he’d fallen down a steep hillside, cracked into a rock and….boom, brain damage. So now he had to wear a special helmet and go to a special school and McGrue blamed Lon, calling him the ringleader. Which actually sounded like Lon. So, Lon had been taken to court and his attorney got him off, saying Lon was just a rambunctious eleven-year-old kid.

So here they were, three years later, with a lot of old eggs. They crouched near the weird house with the machine guts in it, and Brian just did not like to be here. He felt the house putting off pulsations, waves, or something. Whatever it was, it was making him feel kind of sick to his stomach.

And he could hear it. Hum. Hum. Hum. Hum. And then would come HUM HUM HUM and then back to Hum. Hum. Hum….

Maybe it was the pot he’d smoked with his Lon’s brother Tommy, but it sure seemed like the hums had another sound in them. Like…Hum—hurt you. Hum—hurt you. Hum—hurt you.

Imagination, that part. Right? But the humming itself was something everyone heard. That’s why Bud thought it was funny to call the place the Hummer.

“I’m sicka hanging here,” he said. “Lon—let’s go around behind his house, throw the eggs at his window!”

“Naw, he’s got it all fenced really good, hard to get over, barb wire along the top. Too high to see over.” Lon spat some of the smokeless tobacco he swiped from his dad. It was already making his teeth brown. “He’d hear us. Probably got a shotgun.”

“He totally has a shotgun,” Bud said.

“Oooh, a shotgun, cooooool,” said young Rudy.

“You’ll think it’s ‘cool’ when it blasts your nuts off,” said Terry, the tall, goopy looking new kid.

Rudy just looked at him with his mouth open, his big eyes goggling. Brian had to laugh at that.

“I got another idea,” Lon said. “There’s a ladder out back of the Hummer. We go up on the roof of the Hummer, we pitch the eggs high, so they hit his roof. He’ll come outside to see what the hell, then we pepper him with ‘em!”

“I don’t wanna go up on this thing,” Brian said. He heard a new sound, then, from the house—a clattering metal sound. Was someone in there? “I heard something…”

“You’re being all scared little bitch on Halloween?” Lon sneered, showing his big mouthful of huge brown teeth with braces on them and too much gums. “’Oh, there’s ghosts in the scary house!’”

“Fuck off!”

Lon looked at him, teeth bared in a different way now. “You want to get your ass kicked?”

Brian, who was thirteen, was almost as big as Lon, and not bad in a fight. “Don’t be so sure how that’d turn out, dude.”

“Oh, come on, Brian,” Terry said. “Let’s do it. Then we can put on the stupid masks and get our goddamn candy and see if Dee’s having a party.”

“I don’t think we’re invited to that. But whatever.” It was some kind of a plan. And he was no fan of McGrue, who’d yelled at him for skateboarding around a supermarket parking lot.

“Goddamn candy, hells-yeah,” said little Rudy, making them all laugh.

Some people thought Brian and Lon were too old to trick-or-treat, but dude, free candy is free candy, especially good after a hit on a bong, and Brian had a mask in his coat pocket of Donald Trump with fangs.

“Come on,” Lon said, and led the way around back. There was a ladder fixed to the back of the house, so workers could go up to that big metal utility box on the backside of the roof. It was tricky getting the four cartons of eggs up, and one fell, busting most of the shells.

But they managed to get three cartons up, and then Lon said, “Whoa! The windows busted out!”

It was true, the back-dormer window had been shattered, and there was broken glass on the roof.

“I think I heard someone in there, before,” Brian said.

“This shit was probably done a long fucking time ago,” Lon said. He had his cheap rubber Scream mask hanging from its rubber band down his back, till it was time for trick or treating, and Brian felt a clutching feeling in his gut from the way the mask was looking at him. Like some evil face just lived on Lon’s back. “They’re gone,” Lon went on, looking inside. “Let’s check it out. Might be some stuff we can sell. My uncle sells metal stuff. Leave the egg cartons on the roof.”

Caught up in a sense of adventure made sharper by Halloween, the others followed Lon inside. Brian hesitated—then decided he had to go along or he’d never hear the end of it.

Inside, those big humming metal drums that pointed out over the valley. And there was another row of them downstairs. “Man, that shit is loud tonight,” Terry said.

Hum. Hum. Hum. Hum. HUM HUM HUM HUM.

They looked around, saw nothing but stuff they were afraid to touch. Lon led them to the exposed-wood stairs going down to the first floor—and they all stared down at the man in the funny old suit.

He had a short white beard, a gray cap, and muddy shoes, and he was adjusting something that looked like an old movie projector on a tripod. A little ways away a microphone-type thing with something like crystals on it hung from a string. It was glowing…

“I told you somebody was in here!” Brian burst out, louder than he intended.

The character tinkering with the gizmo turned and looked up at them. “It’s ready to go!” he called, shouting over the rising hum. “I must open the way! Get out, the way you came! Get out! Stay away! It’ll shut soon and you’ll be all right if you just go!”

“Fucking burglar telling us to get out!” Lon shouted. There was something strange about Lon’s voice. And there was something strange about Lon’s face. It was twitching. And his eyes seemed like an animal’s, and he was breathing really hard.

“That guy might have a gun!” Terry yelled.

Lon was putting his mask on, maybe thinking of scaring the burglar away so he could take all his stuff….

He started down the stairs.

But now Brian was looking at the space in front of the tripod machine. It was glowing. It was an oval kind of picture of something hanging in space in front of the closed front door. Through it, Brian could see another place,

“It’s one of those Halloween gimmicks people put up to scare you!” Bud yelled. “It’s bullshit! It’s like a video!”

But Brian plain did not believe that. It didn’t just look real, it felt real—he could feel that place from here. It was like he could touch those things from a distance. And they felt nasty.

It was some other…real…place—where electric snakes flew around, and a giant slug wriggled by—and a little way further in, there was a man in a cage, waving.

Hum. Hum. Hum. Hum—HURT YOU. HUM-HURT YOU. HUM. HURT YOU.

“I’m coming, Syl!” the burglar yelled. “I’m coming! Open the repulsor!” He rushed at the oval…and jumped through. He was there, in the place beyond, dodging a flying giant worm, sprinting to the cage—which opened up to receive him. The cage floated upward, carrying the two figures away from the portal.

But something was coming at the portal—like it was outside a window and about to break through to Brian and the other kids. It was reptilian goatish thing saying, “HUM. HURT YOU. HUM. HURT YOU.”

And now it was leaping through, and other things came with it, and Little Rudy was screaming as Lon picked Rudy up and carried him like a sack of potatoes under his arm down the stairs toward the portal…

Was Lon insane going down there?

Brian forced himself to look away and scrambled up the stairs, yelling, “Come on, you guys!”

He heard Bud and Terry and Rudy screaming. But he couldn’t go back. The look on that thing’s face…that much pure evil, that much rage, that much lust for killing…You see something like that, you ran.

In seconds Brian was through the window, down the ladder and sprinting to find the nearest help.

McGrue called Mary Sue again, and again she didn’t answer, and then he remembered that last year she’d taken her grand nieces to a Halloween party for kids at the YWCA and that’s probably where she was tonight. He only had her land-line number, didn’t know her cell. Dammit. She might listen to him—she knew him well enough to know he wasn’t crazy. Cranky, sure. Crazy, no.

He was having a hard time thinking things through right now. He needed to talk to someone. That hum seemed to get louder and louder. McGrue had barely slept the night before. And when he had slept—nothing but nightmares.

If he could talk to Mary Sue…

He hadn’t gone out since he’d seen those things in Tillinghast’s window. He just felt like he was too shaken up. He needed to process what he’d seen. Some kind of trick photography? A prank? But somehow, he knew…it just wasn’t that.

For the dozenth time he thought about calling the cops. And again, he told himself they’d only laugh at him, or they’d investigate and find nothing, because Tillinghast had shut the thing down and gone away.

But Tillinghast was coming back.

McGrue figured he could drive away somewhere. But he had lived next to Mary Sue for years, he liked her, and he couldn’t leave her with that door into hell going on within spitting distance of her house.

So, he lay huddled in his bed, in his bedroom, listening, thinking. The house lights were out except for a lamp in the back bedroom. No trick or treaters bothering him so far.

Then—he heard faint screams. Kids yelling for the hell of it? Or something else?

It seemed to him the humming from the fake house was getting louder…and louder still. The windows began to softly vibrate in their frames.

And a knock came at the door. Someone was yelling out there.

“Mr. McGrue!”

This was something he could deal with—a Halloween prank. He’d open the door, keeping the screen closed, and tell them the cops were coming, and then he’d point the unloaded shotgun to scare them away.

Energized by having something solid to confront, McGrue grabbed the 12-gauge from the closet, and went to the front door.

He hefted the shotgun in his most threatening manner, opened the door

—and saw Brian Worth, that kid with the skateboard he’d given a talking to, standing on the porch, panting, mouth and eyes wide open.

Beyond him were some kind of Halloween costumed kids or…

No.

Those weren’t costumes. That thing that was like a boneless human being moving across the grass like a snake, rippling its way to his house—that thing with the face of a boy he’d seen on the street, glowing a faint sickly green.

And the flying creature, the size of a large owl, an infant with large batwings of human flesh, its face contorted—another child’s face. It was flying in a zig-zag moth way toward his window.

And that one, a slug with a human face, glowing from within in purple-green coruscations. That was not a costumed child.

Tillinghast was at it again. He’d made an error. He’d let them through…

And there, the goat-headed lizard man McGrue had seen through the portal—head of a snake-skinned goat, body of a nude scaly man, hooves…loping toward McGrue’s house. And on its chest, fused there, was a mask from that movie Scream, and as Brian turned to look the mask’s mouth opened and showed big teeth and big gums and braces. The boy Lon—melded with the mask.

“Oh fucking shit shit shit, it’s got Lon inside it!—”

The snake-skinned goat-headed creature, the giant slug with a boy’s face, the snake-thing, coming across his lawn. And over them the flying child flashed by, shrieking, “Mamaaaaa!”, then circled to come around again. McGrue opened the screen door and shouted, “Brian get in here!”

McGrue ran to the armoire he kept his shotgun shells in, as Brian rushed in to the house, slammed and locked the front door. McGrue filled his jacket pocket with shotgun shells, cursing to himself and not even sure what profanities he was using.

With trembling fingers he loaded the gun as something shrieked in agony and hate just outside the front door. There was a crash from the living room window, and the flying infant flew in—it had a face of a child about seven but the body of an infant, the legs of a giant fly, and it swished back and forth shrieking for its mother.

Instinctively, McGrue aimed at the flying infant—and then Brian yelled, “No, it’s Rudy!” and knocked the gun muzzle up just as McGrue squeezed the trigger. One shell fired and knocked a hole in the ceiling, so that the room choked with a cloud of plaster. The flying infant flew shrieking out the window

—just as the door crashed inward, splintering, and then the snake boy was there, the size of an anaconda swaying in the doorway.

At the broken window the goat-headed lizard man with the cackling Scream-face in its chest was climbing through, snarling, the goat hissing, “HUM. HURT YOU. HUM. HURT YOU. HUM—”

McGrue pushed Brian aside and fired the second shell almost point blank into the Scream face.

Lon’s mask face vanished in a welter of blood and yellow effluvia, and the goat-thing staggered back. McGrue thumbed in another shell and fired again.

The thing threw its head back and howled, the howl combining with a roaringly loud background hum; a hum and a howl and a bellow of rage…

McGrue reloaded the gun and the thing turned and fled across the lawn.

Brian was throwing a brass vase at the snake. “Get out of here, Terry! He’ll kill you!”

The snake turned and rippled into the shadows out front.

Heart pounding, McGrue, ran through the door. Time seemed to move in staccato flashes. From somewhere, a siren screamed, seamless with the sound from the goat-headed thing rushing into the fake house. And McGrue heard, “HUM. HURT YOU. HUM. HURT YOU. YOU. YOU…”

McGrue ran across the lawn, through the gate, and it seemed to take forever for him to reach the house. His lungs and knees ached. He just knew he had to kill that thing, had to send it definitely away from this world forever…

The front door of the false house was open, waves of energy rolled through it, invisible but palpable, like a current trying to press McGrue back. But he pushed upstream, climbed the stairs, entered the house—and saw the goat-headed thing turn toward him, hissing, in front of the shimmering portal.

“You’re the one changed those kids!” McGrue shouted, even as the realization came to him. He fired one barrel from the hip and the thing was knocked off its hooved feet, backwards through the portal. The second shot he aimed at the projector.

It shattered, in a coruscation of sparks, and the portal vanished. Then the projector burst into flame—and the flame seemed to feed on the very air, spreading out, coming at McGrue in a wall of fire.

He turned, stumbled out the door, almost fell down the steps. Brian was there, now, steadying him, helping him down.

The light of the fire made the circular street area as bright as day, and McGrue felt the heat on the back of his neck.

Brian helped him back to the house…and he saw three kids curled up in the grass. They were moving, but shaking, weeping. But back to human again.

Brian went to kneel by the smallest one—Rudy, was it?—and McGrue found his way into the house, tossed his shotgun on the sofa, and sank down beside it, gasping.

Four days later. McGrue woke up groggy, the sleeping pill still with him. What was that sound?

Hammering, from the front of the house.

He pulled on his pants, and came out into the living room, to find plywood over the front window, someone nailing it in place from the outside.

McGrue went to the front porch and found Brian, nails in his mouth, a stepladder set up, nailing up the last corner of the plywood.

“Kid, what the hell?”

Brian climbed off the stepladder and took the nails from his mouth. He shrugged ruefully. “I…um…you had flies and stuff getting into your house. Mary Sue said it’d be okay. She loaned me the ladder.”

“Oh, she did, did she.” He went to look. Was surprised. “You did a good job. Not a crooked nail. The whole thing’s squared. Nailed minimally because…temporary. Where’d you learn that?”

“My dad was a construction guy. He taught me some. I always thought I might want…”

“What?”

“To be a carpenter. Or something. Maybe make cabinets.”

“No kidding?” McGrue rubbed his forehead. “Damn I need coffee. Well—thanks, Brian. I should’ve done that myself. And you did a good job, I gotta admit.”

“That’s okay, Mr. McGrue.” The kid beamed at the compliment.

Mary Sue came to the gate, and, despite his pajama top, pants with no shoes, and rumpled hair, McGrue walked out through the crisp November morning to join her. They looked at the burned-out shell of the cell-phone transmitter house.

“The police been back?” she asked.

“Naw, they went with the kids smoking pot and seeing things and an electrical fire. That’s the official line. And that Lon kid vandalizing my house.”

“He still hasn’t turned up.”

McGrue thought, And he never will. But he didn’t say it. He and Brian had decided, that night, they shouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. Neither wanted to be ridiculed. And neither wanted to think about that night any more than they had to. The three other boys didn’t remember much of anything.

“Looks like the boy did a good job blocking up your window.”

“Yeah. I guess…I could teach him some stuff. He’s got talent. Maybe want to learn more about woodworking…”

“McGrue—is that icy heart of yours melting? It’s going to run down onto your shoes.”

He laughed softly. “I don’t know.” He smoothed down his hair with a hand. “I must look like a bum. I should go in and clean up. Maybe you and the kid could come over for, I don’t know, hot chocolate.”

A teenage couple was walking down the sidewalk together, hand in hand, their other hands occupied by their cell phones. They gazed fixedly at the cell phone screens. They passed McGrue and Mary Sue, never looking up from their phones.

And as they passed, McGrue heard a sound from the phone speakers. The same from both phones…

“HUM. HURT YOU. HUM. HURT YOU.”