Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

“What?” Pete asks. “What about everyone else?”

“Every kid in this town, chasing after a boogeyman with a pumpkin for a head, scared to death of a walking scarecrow with a big sharp butcher knife. Every kid in this town, thinking that there’s a way out of a nightmare through a fairy tale, when there’s really no way out at all.”

“You’re telling me that the October Boy isn’t real?”

“Oh, he’s real, all right. Sawtooth Jack is out there. But I don’t think he’s the boogeyman, Pete. I think he’s something else entirely… something that’s not really that different from you or me.”

Pete sits there. He’s planted in a plush chair in a movie theater. He’s hanging on to every word Kelly says. He doesn’t even realize it, but he just grabbed another handful of popcorn, the way you do when things are getting really good. And now he’s staring straight ahead at those midnight blue curtains that hang across the stage, and it’s almost as if he’s expecting them to pull back and reveal that big-ticket plot twist that’s been hiding up there on the king-size CinemaScope screen all along —

“Who won the Run last year?” Kelly asks.

“A guy named Jim Shepard.”

“And what happened to him?”

“Hell, everybody knows that. Shepard got a pocketful of money, and he got out of town. I heard he’s out west somewhere, and — ”

The words die in Pete’s mouth just that quick. It’s Kelly’s knowing smile that killed them. But that’s okay with Kelly. Pete’s silence means his brain’s finally kicking into gear.

Yeah. Pete’s starting to think. Maybe he’s thinking about Jim Shepard’s parents, who don’t seem very happy in spite of their brand-new house, and the free ride at the bank and the market, and that shiny black Cadillac parked in their driveway that doesn’t even have 1,000 miles on the odometer. Or maybe he’s thinking of Shepard himself, what kind of kid he was, what kind of trouble he might have caused in a town like this if he’d been bottled up here for another year and started to wise up to the way the wheels really spin.

Or maybe, just maybe, Pete’s thinking about a group of men called the Harvester’s Guild, and a thing that grows out in a cornfield. Maybe he’s wondering what kind of horror might sprout a misfit like that, wondering too if the seed was planted last Halloween night in dirt tamped down with a murdered kid’s blood —

That midnight blue curtain still covers the movie screen like a shroud, but Pete might as well be the Man with the X-Ray Eyes because he can sure enough see a movie running in his head. It’s called The October Boy, and that sucker has just kicked off the cinches.

You know how that works, even if we’re only talking revelations of the creepshow variety. You lay down your money, you get real comfortable in your chair, you eat your popcorn… and all of a sudden here comes twenty feet of cross-dressing Norman Bates heading your way with a knife in his hand, or Vincent Price pulling the strings of his killer skelo-puppet up there in the house on Haunted Hill, or that poor son of a bitch who discovered that first pod in Invasion of the Body Snatchers . Those are the kinds of surprises that make you jump in the dark, but you can leave them right there if you want to. The credits roll, and you suck that last sip of Coke out of your wax-paper cup and shove that empty popcorn bag under your seat along with Normie and Vince and all those rubbery pods and the guy who found them, and you walk out of the theater and down the street and back into the world where you live.

But that’s not the way it works with the October Boy’s story. Darkness… light… it all lives here. Real is real, no matter where you’re sitting. Once you’ve ripped the Phantom’s mask off this sucker, you’re knuckle to door with the truth. You’ve dug a hole in that monster’s ugly skin, and it’s scabbed over the top of you and scarred over, and there’s no way out now that you’re living in the place where black blood flows.

Yeah. That’s where we are right now. Pete McCormick’s sitting in the movie theater, wheels turning in his head like they’ve never turned before. The October Boy’s behind the wheel of Mitch Crenshaw’s Chrysler, driving through a town he hasn’t seen in exactly one year. They’re a study in before and after, these two. This year’s best shot at winning the Run, and last year’s undisputed champ.

Because the October Boy has a name, and if you haven’t already figured it out that name is Jim Shepard. One year ago on a night just like this one, Jim brought down the ’62 version of Sawtooth Jack with a length of case-hardened chain. Shepard caught last year’s model trying to crawl down a manhole over on West Orchard Street, cut the goggle-headed sucker off at that particular pass, and got down to the business of a no-holds-barred, one-on-one rumble.

And that was okay with good ol’ ’62. He’d already killed seven on his way into town that night, and he pegged Shepard for an easy number eight. So the Boy came straight at Jim with his butcher knife, and it was touch-and-go for a while. With a single slash, Ol’ Hacksaw Face notched Jim’s wrist to the bone. He creased the meat between a couple of Shepard’s ribs with another, but that didn’t even slow Jim down. He came back hard, caving in the Boy’s serrated grin with a whip of the chain, turning those taut links on the follow-through and pulverizing half the thing’s head.

When Jim was done wailing away, all that remained of ’62 was a broken thing twitching on the ground. Yet the moment of victory wasn’t the way Jim thought it’d be. It was weird… unsettling in a way he could never anticipate… like winning the Indianapolis 500 but running over his own dog to do it.

In the heat of the moment, Jim couldn’t understand that feeling. But even in the heat of the moment he understood that there was no going back — once the thing was done, there was no undoing it. So he watched the October Boy twitch and die, and doing that made him go a little nuts. You understand. All those conflicting emotions slamming around inside Jim, and all at once. They had to go somewhere.

So Jim turned them loose. He raised his face to the moon and screamed. That’s what the whole town wanted him to do, anyway. This year’s winner was screaming in the streets, and everyone turned out to celebrate. First it was the other guys on the Run, because the dead thing in the middle of West Orchard attracted them like a raw steak draws flies. They came by the dozen, and they ripped the Boy apart and chowed down on those treats buried inside him, and they slapped Shepard on the back and raised him onto their shoulders.

And to the victor went the spoils. Someone shoved a handful of Bit-O-Honeys into Jim’s hands. The candy bars were tied up in a knot of Red Vines that gleamed like blood vessels, but Jim didn’t care. He peeled those Vines and gobbled them down as the guys carried him over to Main Street, not even realizing that the mass of honey-flavored candy clutched in his hand had pulsed like a human heart just a few minutes before.

The parade made its way up Oak Street, hung a right onto Main. You know the route… and you can see them there, even now. You see them in your mind’s eye. There they are… the town fathers wait for Jim over in the square, the mayor and the minister stand stiff and proud on the steps of the old brick church. People crowd the streets, driving up in family sedans, hurrying in on foot from nearby neighborhoods.

Jim’s dad pulls up in his old beater of a pickup truck while the mayor’s glad-handing his son. Jim’s mom smears tears all over her son’s cheek when she hugs him, and he can’t even figure out why she’s crying. He can barely keep track of everything that’s going on. The bell in the church tower is clanging away. Jim’s little brother stands at his side in a bathrobe, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. The street’s alive with headlights, car doors slamming, and footsteps. Rock ’n’ roll’s blasting from dashboard radios. Everyone’s whooping and hollering. Caught up in the celebration, Mr. Haines opens up the movie theater lobby. He’s giving out free popcorn and Cokes and candy, but the real show is out in the street. No one really wants to be stuck inside when there’s a party like this going on.