B. James Wilson

Route 666: A Halloween Tale

By, B. James Wilson

Keith’s quiet groan drew Carol’s attention even before she heard the warning chime. She turned to him just as the amber check-engine light glowed to life on the dashboard.

“What’s that?”

“Check-engine light.” Keith’s answer carried the weight of someone whose good day had just taken a turn.

The trip to Maine had been perfect. After years of promising themselves, they’d finally done it. Now, halfway home, on Halloween night, with their PT Cruiser packed full of souvenirs and happy memories, the single amber light on the dash threatened everything.

Carol’s posture shifted, tension creeping into her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

Keith scanned the gauges. Engine purring smoothly, temperature normal, no other warning lights glaring at him. He exhaled slowly. “Could be anything. Probably just a sensor, maybe the oxygen sensor.”

He remembered the time their CD player triggered a fault code, lighting up the dashboard for nothing.

“Could be the CD player again.” He gave a half-hearted laugh and added, “Nothing to worry about.”

Even as he said it, he knew better. It was just wishful thinking.

Carol looked out through the windshield, saying nothing but unease was coiling around her, tightening with each passing mile.

Up ahead, a blue moon was playing a game of hide-and-seek with looming storm clouds—first appearing, then vanishing, and appearing again. Multitudes of sustained flashes of lightning flickered electric within the voluminous clouds, illuminating their fluffy outer edges with a promise of worse to come.

She hoped Keith was right about the check-engine light being “nothing to worry about,” though she feared he wasn’t. There was never a good time to be stuck on the side of the interstate, let alone with an approaching storm. They were in the middle of nowhere and the stormy sky filled her with a sense of foreboding. Thunder rumbled around them, even overcoming the car’s ambient road noise. Rain began to spatter the windshield, lowering visibility but they continued south for several more miles without further event. Long enough that Carol became complacent, though Keith gripped the wheel with white knuckles, anticipating problems. His senses were keen to even the slightest indication of engine failure and he wasn’t long disappointed. They had gone less than ten miles when he felt the first, faint stutter. He tensed. Carol felt it too. She asked, “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Keith answered, “but, considering the warning light, it’s not a good thing.”

Within a mile it happened again, and then again, increasing in frequency and severity as they drove on. Keith said, “We need to find an exit.”

Carol began scanning the dark shoulder of the interstate for signs. The rain was pouring down now, seriously reducing visibility. Keith slowed to fifty-five, but it didn’t help much, the car was bucking wildly by this time. A moment later, Carol announced, “Exit 11, one mile.”

By now Keith had been forced to slow to thirty-five, so he cautiously pulled onto the shoulder and continued driving with his blinkers flashing. It wasn’t long before a sign loomed in the headlights. It read, “Razorback Road, Exit 11, Lodging, 1/2 mile.”

Keith took the exit when it came. Halfway down the ramp, another sign materialized in the headlight beams—this one old, its paint faded to a ghostly gray: Hallowday  Inn .5 miles. An arrow pointed to the right.

At the bottom of the ramp, Keith brought the car to a stop. The Cruiser shuddered beneath them, its engine coughing like it was drowning in the pouring rain. He stared out at the empty intersection of Razorback Road, weighing their options in the dark. Carol asked, her voice shrill with anxiety, “What’s wrong with the car?”

“I don’t know, Carol!” The words came out in a sharper tone than he’d meant. Calming himself, he explained, “All I know is I can’t keep driving it like this.”

“So what are we supposed to do?”

Her tone matched his, two frightened people taking their apprehensions out on each other.

Keith looked both ways down the dark, narrow road. Nothing. No lights, no traffic, no auto repair shop suddenly materializing out of the rain. Not even a McDonalds or a Dollar Store.

He said, definitively, “We need to find that Holiday Inn.”

Carol began to correct him, “It’s not a…” but Keith cut her off, “We’ll get a room and deal with the car in the morning.”

Carol suggested, “We could call Triple-A.”

He turned on her, suddenly and inexplicably angry and, raising his voice, said, “And wait on the side of the interstate, in this?”

He gestured at the rain hammering the windshield. “That’s not a great idea, Carol. It’s too dangerous. You read all the time about people getting killed on the side of the road by out-of-control truckers.” He looked out at the lonely intersection where he’d stopped, then added, quieter, …or robbed and murdered.”

He paused again, his jaw working. Then confessed: “I …didn’t renew our membership.”

Carol exploded, “What? I reminded you twice!”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry, I forgot.”

Carol bit back the words forming on her tongue. How many times had this happened, that she reminded him of things that he still forgot? But picking that fight now, stranded on a dark back road in a dying car, would only make matters worse. She turned away, jaw clenched, silently watching large drops of rain trailing down her window.

Keith took his foot off the brake and turned right onto Razorback Road, nursing the sputtering engine. The road curved left, hugging the base of a dark hill. Half a mile, he thought in silence. Surely the car can make another half a mile.

Then he saw it, a faded white, reflective road sign emerging from the rain as if from under a waterfall. It read: Rt. 666, Razorback Road.

Keith’s fingers tightened on the wheel. An omen? he wondered, hoping Carol had not seen the sign. The road forked ahead. To the right it disappeared under an overpass. The left fork curved upward, climbing a dark hill. In the headlights, another weathered sign with an arrow pointing left read: Hallowday Inn.

Keith took the left, the PT Cruiser chugging like a one-lunger diesel as it began the winding climb up Razorback Hill. After a quarter mile, the narrow, winding road leveled off and straightened at a bridge that crossed back over the interstate. To the left, Razorback Road continued upward where another faded sign indicated that the Hallowday Inn was but .2 miles further. Keith misread the sign for a third time, assuming he was looking for a Holiday Inn.

Though the car coughed and sputtered worse than ever, Keith took the left turn and continued to climb up Razorback Hill. Almost there, he thought. Just a little further to the Holiday Inn. Then they could get some rest and forget this entire nightmare for a few hours. Carol, still not speaking to him, was oblivious to his mistake. She had read the sign herself and, knowing it was not a Holiday Inn, supposed the place must be a B&B.

At the top of the hill, the road took a sharp left, running along a ridge that Keith supposed was the razor-back alluded to by the name. There was no street lighting, but, in the headlight beams and during occasional flashes of lightening, they could see a long, chain-link fence paralleling the road. A sign read, “Private, No Trespassing.” Beyond the fence were the darkened shapes of derelict equipment looking like shadowy dinosaurs, and crumbling buildings, all in a state of rust and disrepair.

“Creepy,” Keith said, expressing his view of the scene.

Carol sat silent, still brooding. Keith turned left and followed the ridge road. A dense strip of pine trees lined the ridge, like the coarse hairs of a razorback hog. At the end of the chain-link fence and the line of trees, a lonely stop sign loomed out of the dark in their headlight beams. There was nothing else, no sign of life or shelter. From the stop sign, the road turned sharply left and descended the hill, all the way back down to the interstate. Keith took the turn. There was nowhere else to go, but when he pressed on the accelerator, the car suddenly and completely died. He coasted to the side of the road. Carol began to cry. Keith looked out into the surrounding darkness in frustration, and shouted, “Where the hell is the Holiday Inn?”

Carol turned and gave him an intensely angry stare. Tears were running down her cheeks. She asked, her voice filled with hostility, “What Holiday Inn?”

Keith was understandably confused, and yelled back at her, “The Holiday Inn on the signs that I followed up here.”

“It’s not a Holiday Inn!” Carol shouted back at him. “It’s a B&B, or something. It’s called the Hallowday Inn and, from the looks of things it’s probably a dump!”

She indicated the dark row of crumbling shapes beyond the chain-link fence and said, “That’s probably it over there.” She turned away from him then, so he wouldn’t see the angry tears streaming down her face.

Keith felt really bad about the whole situation, the car, the Triple-A oversight, and now the missing motel. It’s not like he planned any of this, but, considering his lapse, he could do nothing less than take the blame.

He pushed the button for the emergency flashers and said, “I’m sorry, Carol. I’m sorry I didn’t sign-up for Triple-A, but this is not my fault. As it is, we just need to work through this together.”

He opened the driver’s door, popped the hood release and stepped out into the stormy night. Carol watched him through the rain spattered windshield, a distorted figure, blinking on and off in emergency-orange. As he lifted the hood, he disappeared from her sight. She thought about that, him disappearing, …from her side, from her life. As she thought, the anger she was feeling melted away.

After a few minutes of wasting time looking at the engine, letting his emotions cool, trying to think what he should do next, Keith slammed the hood. He stood quiet for a moment letting the rain spatter down on his head before moving around to Carol’s side of the car and signaling her to let her window down. She lowered the window about an inch, just enough to hear him, but still avoid the rain.

“I’m going to walk up the road and see if I can find this B&B. I’ll be back in a few. Lock the doors and wait here.”

“No way,” Carol snapped back. “You’re not leaving me here by myself. I’m going with you.”

“It’s raining, Carol. You’ll get wet.”

“I can see that, but I’m not staying here alone. Besides, I won’t be as wet as you.” She reached around into the back and grabbed one of the rain ponchos they kept in the rear door panels.

Keith hadn’t remembered them, but, at her prompting, he stepped around the car and pulled the poncho from the other door. After donning it, he asked, “What will we need to take with us to spend the night. I’ll get it out of the back.”

~

In a few minutes the two were trudging along the descending grade of Razorback Road, searching the dark roadside for some sign of the illusive Hallowday  Inn. The tiny wheels on their suitcases rattled over the aging, pitted asphalt, and rain spattered their ponchos. As they followed the road downward toward the interstate, Carol spotted them first, twin carriage lamps glowing through the pouring rain, mounted on weathered gateposts that flanked a wide, brick driveway.

Light spilled across the entrance like an invitation, reflecting on the wet bricks in distorted streaks, looking like jagged arrows pointing the way. Keith thought it odd that he hadn’t seen these lights from the stop sign, but he quickly dismissed the concern, finding himself relieved to have found the place at all. Beyond the gateless posts, almost hidden in a thick copes of wood, Keith could see the lights of the inn.

“Look,” he said, pointing with equal measure of relief and excitement.

Carol gave no response but, with renewed determination, she put her head down and pressed on toward the glowing lights. Above her, the trees formed a skeletal arch over the brick driveway, their branches heavy with rain. Large drops fell through the canopy, drumming loudly against the plastic hood of her poncho.

Rainwater streamed from the poncho’s crude hem onto her face, running down her cheeks to her neck. Cold rivulets formed there and snaked beneath her collar, soaking through her blouse and trailing down the sensitive skin between her breasts, all the way to her navel. The water pooled there in a tiny reservoir, as if called by some mysterious force. The sensation caused her to remember the secret she held deep inside. She hurried on, towing her wheeled suitcase behind and complaining loudly, “This poncho is not worth a shit.”

Keith, similarly soaked, pulled up abreast of her and laughed. He said, quoting an old, corny joke he’d once told Carol, “I just can’t send a knight like you out on a dog like this.” Carol laughed, remembering the joke about a big dog, a tiny knight and a fierce rainstorm. Then, pulling the hood of her poncho down over her face, she leaned into the rain and began running for the inn as if challenging him to race.

The building loomed before them—three stories of nineteenth-century farmhouse architecture, complete with a wraparound porch that seemed to embrace the structure protectively. They clamored up the steps, laughing together, finally protected from the rain by the porch’s broad roof. Despite its age, the inn was impeccably maintained: freshly painted white with Kelly-green trim that stood out even in the darkness, and navy-gray porch flooring that gleamed beneath the overhang.

On the double entry doors, two elaborate fall wreaths hung just below small arched windows that glowed with warm light from within. Keith pushed back the hood of his poncho, exposing his thoroughly soaked hair. Water dripped down his face and neck. Carol laughed at the sight of him—really laughed—the sound bubbling up from somewhere genuine. The cold rain, the desperate run through the storm, even her earlier angst about the car seemed to wash away. In that moment, she felt strangely exhilarated.

Keith grasped the brass doorknob, then paused and grinned at her, remembering that it was Halloween night. “Should I holler ‘Trick-or-Treat’?”

Carol smiled back, warmth filling her eyes. “Just open the door.”

As it opened, a quiet chime sounded. Keith held the door wide and let Carol enter first. She stepped over the threshold and pushed the hood of her poncho back, fully realizing for the first time how much rain had found its way beneath.

They stepped into a soaring entry hall where the past seemed to breathe through every elegant detail. The interior married eighteenth and nineteenth century French and English furnishings in perfect harmony—polished antiques that gleamed softly in the warm light. An intricately patterned Persian rug stretched across the hardwood floor, its rich colors deepening the sense of timeless luxury.

Carol’s gaze was drawn irresistibly forward to a magnificent staircase that commanded the center of the space. White banisters rose gracefully alongside dark, scrolled railings that guided the eye upward to a broad mezzanine landing. There the stairs divided, sweeping left and right to reach the second floor where white balustrades framed hallway galleries. Six guest room doors—three on each side—spoke with the quiet promise of rest.

To her right, a small parlor beckoned with a glowing fireplace, flanked by shelves lined with leather-bound volumes that seemed to whisper her name. To her left stood the lobby and front desk. She felt something deep in her chest loosen and relax—a feeling of warmth and rightness. The elegance of old houses like this had always enchanted her, but this place offered something more: a hushed serenity that seeped into her bones and made her feel, despite everything, remarkably at home. Carol drifted toward the desk as Keith secured the door behind them, shutting out the fury of the storm.

The front desk consisted of a chest-high counter with an edifice of richly burled wood and a gleaming dark, oak countertop. An antique, brass call-bell rested there. Carol tapped it twice. A moment later, a woman appeared from a low, arched doorway on the right side of the alcove where the front desk was nestled. She smiled warmly as she greeted them, then, seeing how wet they were, said, “Oh my. You poor child. Let me get you a towel.”

She turned back to the office entrance, but before she disappeared, Keith called out, “Do you have a room?”

The woman stopped and stared at him for a moment, then said, “Of course we do. How could we possibly consider sending you away on a night like this?”

She smiled again, before ducking through the doorway and disappearing into the office beyond.

Carol turned to Keith and smiled approvingly. Finally, something was going right.

The woman returned in a moment with two hot towels and handed them across the counter. The clean warmth of them was a welcome comfort beyond any expectation Carol could have had.

The woman behind the counter was older than they, perhaps in her mid-forties. She was tall and attractive with hair that was long, a blend of blonde and silvery-gray tied up in a bun. She asked Carol, “Would you like a king, or a queen?” She laughed with a soft lilt and, observing their youth, added, “You don’t seem the type for twins.”

Carol smiled back, liking the woman’s sense of humor. She looked at Keith, seeking his opinion, but didn’t wait for it. “I think a king would be nice,” she answered.

The woman marked an old-fashioned registration card with their room number, 206, then pushed the card across the counter to Carol, handing her a pen. Carol filled in the blank spaces on the card, noticing for the first time that there was no computer. “Perhaps in the office?” she wondered, all the while thinking “No, this place is old-school.” The lack would be more fitting, considering the ambiance.

The elegant, older woman turned her back to them and fished an old-fashioned skeleton key out of a pigeonhole in a letterbox cabinet on the wall. She came out from behind the counter then and said, with an inviting smile, “Let me show you to your room.”

She wore a soft, gray, ankle-length knit skirt that clung to her athletic shape, and a white, long-sleeved ruffled blouse with the top few buttons undone. As she led them up the stairs, Keith, despite himself, found his gaze fixed on the motion of the woman’s shape beneath the clingy fabric of her skirt. Carol caught him staring and playfully punched his arm. Keith gave her a sheepish grin and shrugged, as if to say, “Can you blame me?”

Room 206 was a corner room at the front of the inn, overlooking the curving drive and the porch roof. Like the rest of the inn, it was elegant with antique furnishings, all arranged around a fairy-tale four-poster canopy bed that drew Carol’s attention in the same way the elegant woman’s lithe figure had drawn Keith’s.

The woman showed them the amenities, then paused at the doorway, turning to Keith and asking, “Can I have the valet park your car?”

Keith struggled to keep his eyes from drifting to the cleavage on display. “Oh, yeah, the car. I’m afraid it died a little way up the road.”

She smiled sympathetically. “No wonder you got soaked coming in. Well, give me the keys anyway and I’ll send my driver to retrieve it. He’s an excellent mechanic.”

Though he hesitated at first, looking briefly to Carol, Keith reached into his pocket and retrieved the keys. He handed them over without further question feeling a great relief as he did.

“By the way, welcome to the Hallowday  Inn,” she said.

Keith fumbled in his pocket again and pulled out a five-dollar bill. She gave him a disappointed look. “You don’t have to tip me—I’m the owner.” She extended her hand in introduction “Katherine Hallowday Roth.”

Embarrassed, Keith stuffed the bill back into his pocket and took her hand. She gripped his firmly and pulled him close, smiling alluringly. “Have you eaten? We serve a family-style dinner in the dining room in thirty minutes. You’ll have time to clean up and join me there, along with my other guests, if you like.”

Keith couldn’t seem to keep his eyes from the plunging neckline of her blouse. She pulled him closer still, the back of his hand brushing against her breasts. Behind him, unable to see, Carol answered, “Oh, dinner—yes, thank you. I’m starving.”

Katherine squeezed Keith’s hand once more, then let go. “Good. I’ll see you in the dining room then. Shall we say thirty minutes?”

After she left, Carol removed her wet poncho. Keith walked to the window and looked out into the rainy night, grateful for a clean, comfortable room and a hot meal. He watched a hooded figure hurry through the rain down the driveway toward the road. Her driver, he supposed, going out to retrieve their car. It occurred to him in that moment that he’d never asked how much the room cost. Stranger still, Katherine Hallowday had never asked for payment, identification, or proof that he could pay. It all seemed oddly casual, too trusting. But he had a sense that Katherine Hallowday Roth was a woman who knew exactly what she was doing at every moment.

Keith turned to ask Carol if she knew what the room would cost. He found her standing right behind him, still soaked, her blouse so wet he could see her pert breasts beneath the thin fabric. She seldom wore a bra—she really didn’t need one. She had that look in her eye as she slowly unbuttoned the blouse, teasing him with a pouty lilt to her voice. “I need a hot bath. Could you come and wash my back?”

~

Keith and Carol were the last of the guests to arrive. A formal dinner was being served in the dining room, though formal attire wasn’t a requirement. A long banquet table with seating for fourteen occupied the center of the elegant room. Sconce lights with frosted-glass shades in the Cleopatra style that Tiffany made famous gave the room a soft, candlelit glow. Above the table, two five-light chandeliers with peach-colored frosted glass added to the ambiance. The overall effect was almost surreal, creating a Gatsby-like atmosphere around them.

Ten guests were already seated when Keith and Carol hesitantly approached the dining room’s threshold. Katherine emerged from the servant’s door bearing wine and smiled warmly at them. “Please welcome our newest guests, Keith and Carol Markham,” she announced over quiet background conversations.

The other guests turned and smiled. Some nodded in their direction and raised glasses of ruby red wine. Katherine seated them in places of honor near the head of the table—Carol immediately to the left of the empty head-chair, and Keith on the right side, offset by an empty chair to his left. This positioned them diagonally across the table from each other.

“Wine?” Katherine asked.

Carol smiled and answered, “Yes, please.”

Keith just nodded. He was feeling a bit self-conscious, being separated from Carol this way, among so many people he didn’t know. Katherine disappeared through the servant’s door. She came back a moment later bearing an unopened bottle of wine, showing Keith the label, as a professional sommelier would do.

Keith knew little of wine, especially fine French brands, but he saw that the label was old, being faded and discolored. He could barely make out the words, Chateau de Bouchard, and below that, Beaune Les Aigrots – 1915. He’d heard somewhere that older wines were better so he nodded his approval, not knowing that he was giving the nod to a fifteen-hundred-dollar bottle of wine.

Katherine aptly pulled the cork and handed it to him. Keith took it and looked questioningly at Carol. She prompted him by placing her fingers under her nose. Keith modeled her movements, sniffing at the cork, not knowing what he was sniffing for. He looked up at Katherine with a satisfied smile and she poured a small amount of the precious wine into his glass, pausing again, waiting for his response. Carol signaled that he should drink. He did. Even lacking knowledge of what made a particular wine superior, Keith was impressed by the smooth warmth that flowed down his gullet. He smiled and again nodded his approval, to which Katherine poured a full glass, first for Carol, then for Keith, before placing the half empty bottle on the table in front of him. Her service complete, she pulled out the empty chair on Keith’s left and sat down next to him.

~

A moment later she lifted her own, full glass, stood up, and, facing the great hall, announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, my husband, your host, Mr. Dagon Roth.”

Dagon Roth swept into the dining room with all the flourish of a Broadway star. Carol actually drew her hands up to applaud but managed to stop before embarrassing herself. The other guests lifted their glasses in greeting, so Keith and Carol followed in like manner.

The master of ceremonies came wearing a seersucker suit and a bowtie, looking as if he’d just stepped out of a Harper Lee novel. He smiled benignly at his captive audience, then moved along the table, on Carol’s side, touching the shoulders of his guests as he went. He stopped beside Carol’s chair and stared down at her for a long moment, as if surprised by her presence. Then he held out his hand and said, in a soft baritone, “Dagon Roth. You may call me, Dag.”

Charmed by his theatrical manner Carol extended her hand saying, “Carol Markham.”

He bent low, his lips grazing the back of her hand in an oddly lingering kiss before straightening. “Miss Markham. Welcome to Hallowday  Inn.”

Then he swept around the end of the table and pulled Katherine from the chair on Keith’s left. Without preamble, he drew her against him and kissed her deeply, hungrily. Keith, seated mere inches away, found himself an unwilling witness as Roth’s hand brazenly kneaded Katherine’s shapely buttocks. When they finally broke apart, Katherine was flushed and breathless. She eased aside just enough to reveal Keith’s presence. “This is Mr. Markham, dear,” she managed.

Roth’s gaze fell to Keith with sudden intensity, as though Keith had somehow ruined Roth’s grand entrance. The air seemed to grow thick, until finally, Roth thrust out his hand. “Markham,” he said, his voice rising with the disdain his eyes had already expressed.

Keith took the proffered hand, meeting his grip with equal firmness.

“Roth,” he acknowledged with the same tone of disdain.

Dagon Roth towered over them—easily six-foot-three, with the bulk of someone who’d long ago abandoned any pretense of culinary restraint. He claimed his seat at the head of the table and lifted his wine glass high. “To our guests and our friends, and to a bountiful table on this stormy All Hallows Eve. Salut!“

The guests raised their glasses in unison and drank deeply of the ruby-red wine.

In that exact moment, as though the Spirit of Halloween itself had been invoked, lightning split the sky and thunder cracked around them, rattling the utensils on the table and sounding as if the earth was breaking open. At the same time, the room was plunged into absolute darkness.

“Everyone remain seated.” Roth’s command cut through the blackness, oddly calm, almost pleased. Then, after a pause that stretched too long, he said, in a tone that seemed to caress the shadows: “The lights will return shortly. Never fear.” Then, with a strange glee that seemed to border on threat, “I am here with you… in the dark.”

The words slithered into Carol’s ears like something alive, sending ice down her spine.

In the quiet that followed, Keith was startled by Katherine’s sudden firm grip on his inner thigh. He thought, at first, it must be a frightened response to the lightning, but, in the moment the thunder shook the table, her hand slid upward to his groin. Caught off-guard by her aggressiveness, Keith stiffened, but, before he could push himself away from her, the lights came back on, almost as if Roth had willed it from where he stood, for he never left the table.

Keith pushed his chair back and looked down at his lap. Though he could still feel her hand touching him, Katherine was turned away, Facing Roth, holding her wine-glass in the only hand she could have used to violate him.

He looked across the table to Carol. Her eyes were wide with angry surprise, and she was glaring at Roth, as if to accuse him of a similar violation. But Roth was standing at the head of the table holding his glass high, impossibly positioned to have molested her. He smiled down at each of his guests, his attention finally falling to Carol. He winked and grinned at her in a knowing way that made her squirm.

Roth lowered himself into his chair, pushing it back to make room for his ample belly. When he was fully seated, servants, costumed in black cloaks, their faces obscured by cowls, streamed out of the servant’s door bearing the first course of the evening meal, including hors d’oeuvres and bowls of hot soup to warm the guests. When everyone had been served, Roth lifted his glass again and announced, “Bon appetite.“

His guests followed in kind, each one drinking deeply of the delicious ruby wine, including Keith and Carol.

The grand dining hall fell quiet then as the gathered guests took up spoons and dipped into the hot soup. For a moment, Keith and Carol just stared at each other across the table. She bore an angry look, or perhaps it was terror, Keith couldn’t be sure. She silently mouthed something to him, something far too complex for him to read in lip language. She repeated herself and, when he failed to comprehend a second time, she became flustered with him.

Her miming was an often-failed form of communication that had driven a wedge of exasperation between them many times in the past. Still, Carol persisted in using it. When he noticed that both Katherine and Roth were watching them, Keith gave up trying to read Carol’s lips. Katherine leaned close and asked, in a tone laced with concern, “Is something wrong?”

In response, Keith silently threw Carol under the bus, staring at her across the table as if to say, “Well, is there something wrong?”

Carol was embarrassed and made all the angrier by Keith’s treason. She glared at him for a long moment, then, turning to Katherine with a forced smile, she said, with barely concealed frustration, “No. Everything is just fine.”

She glanced, hesitantly at Roth, then glared at Keith again before focusing on the hot soup in front of her.

The soup, like the wine, had a strange warming effect, calming her as it went down. By the time her bowl was empty, she had nearly forgotten her anger and convinced herself that Roth’s earlier, molesting touch was all somehow in her imagination.

“More wine?” Roth asked, interrupting her reverie. He poured her glass full, then, addressing the rest of the table he said, more a command, than a question, “More wine everyone.”

At those words, the cloaked, silent servants reappeared, quietly and efficiently filling glasses and clearing the table. Carol sat back in her chair and took a deep breath, glancing over at Keith, who was, at that moment, occupied in conversation with Katherine. She smiled at him then took the napkin from her lap and wiped her mouth. As she did, Roth leaned toward her and whispered hospitably, “Is everything satisfactory, my dear?”

His necrotic breath forced her to raise her napkin to her nose. She looked at him as he leaned in, too close, his eyes, like black pools, focused on hers. She could clearly see every imperfection of his sallow skin: deep, open pores, many plugged with grossly swollen blackheads. Dark bags hung beneath his eyes, whose lids were swollen and inflamed. Bushy, overgrown brows framed them above, and long, wild hairs sprouted from his ears and nostrils.

As she looked at him, disgust welled up inside her. Her mind flooded with the memory of his conspicuous entrance. The way he embraced Katherine, groping her and kissing her deeply, passionately, on the mouth. The sickening memory seemed to force itself into her thoughts, involuntary and inescapable. Carol shuddered and forced herself to respond to his question.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him any longer.

“More wine?” Roth asked, insistent this time, offering the bottle with a lecherous grin.

Carol’s head was spinning. She thought she’d heard the question from inside her head. Too much wine and too little food, she supposed.

With her eyes still closed, she took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, to bring her mind under control. But, in that moment, she could feel Roth’s presence all about her, pressing in on her, probing her in disturbing ways. She pushed herself away, stifling a scream, and when she opened her eyes, everything was as it had been. Roth was sitting in his place at the head of the table, wine in hand.

In a moment of déjà vu, he turned to her and asked, “More wine?”

Carol refused, feeling as if she were having an out-of-body experience, as if the whole uncomfortable situation was a hallucination. And not just in this one bizarre moment, but going back to the breakdown, the storm, the sign for Route 666 that loomed out of the rain like a warning, the mysterious, sudden appearance of the gate lamps, all of it seemed …contrived.

Roth placed his hand over hers on the table as if to comfort her. His hand felt cold, lifeless, like death itself. He looked her in the eye, and the table suddenly fell quiet, as if on cue. Then Roth asked, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “When is the baby due?”

Carol almost choked. She wasn’t showing yet, and she hadn’t even told Keith about her pregnancy, let alone anyone else. She wasn’t sure she even wanted a child or wanted to carry one to term. She wasn’t prepared for the things it would do to her body, or the kind of commitment a child would require of her. She wasn’t sure how Keith would react, or whether they were committed enough to one another to survive a pregnancy or raise a child. She wanted the sexual freedom, the pleasure, but this? And there was her career to consider. That was most important to her. It was the source of her personal satisfaction and independence.

She was considering an abortion for that reason. She hadn’t told Keith because she was afraid that once he knew, her options would be limited. If, God forbid, Keith wanted a child, her freedom to choose would become vastly more complicated. She would lose control over her own body; and never-mind the whole argument about the child’s right to life.

She couldn’t figure out how it was that this fat, disgusting old man knew she was pregnant. It was as if Roth was inside her thoughts, mingling with them. He said to her, “No need to worry, my dear. There’s plenty of time to remedy the situation.” He grinned the same evil grin that had given her chills earlier.

Across the table, Keith’s eyes had gone wide. He was struggling with the announcement and the effects of the wine. Time and place had become like an odd dream filled with strange people and even stranger circumstances. He tried to shake it off, to get his thoughts straight about what he’d just heard. For a long moment the young couple stared at one another in silence, then Keith asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wasn’t sure how you would feel about it,” Carol lied.

In truth, Keith really wasn’t sure how he felt about it. All the same, he began to smile.

It was Roth who saved her, distracting them both, as he turned to Keith and said, “Katherine tells me that your car broke down on Razorback Road.”

Keith had to force his thoughts back to the moment, responding as best he could, though his tongue felt thick from the wine, “Yes. I don know what’s wrong with it, id just …died.”

Across the table from him, to Carol’s left, a man expressed his surprise, “That’s what happened to us.” He indicated the woman sitting next to him, whom Keith assumed to be his wife. The man concluded, “So we’re stuck here until we can get it repaired.”

Keith nodded his understanding, assuming the couple’s coincidental breakdown must have occurred in less than a few days before theirs. He was about to ask the obvious questions when he noted that the couple were oddly dressed, the gentleman wearing what had once been called a leisure-suit, from the days of disco and she dressed in a miniskirt with high boots and a revealing tank-top.

As he looked around the table, he realized that all the guests were dressed in various, period costumes, going back to the late nineteenth century. He thought it odd, as if it had been planned. He’d supposed, until now, that he was a stranger among strangers, but the other guests seemed to know one another. It seemed an unusual situation to say the least, but that was not the only unusual circumstance. When he discovered the impossible coincidence that all of the guests at the table had suffered similar vehicle breakdowns, the gathering took on a strange, Kafkaesque abstraction.

At that moment, Roth, rising from his chair, raised his glass and offered yet another toast. “To Halloween, and the spirit it celebrates.”

Carol and Keith lifted their glasses, noticing with unease that they had somehow been refilled. They drank along with the other guests, celebrating something they didn’t truly understand—something only Dagon Roth and his wife, Katherine Hallowday, could comprehend. For Keith and Carol, the room began to swirl around them in a dizzying, dream-like haze.

After the toast, silence momentarily settled over the table. Then the woman on Keith’s right, a thin, sickly figure with dark, sunken eyes, spoke up in a raspy whisper. “I was pregnant too, when we first arrived.”

She said nothing more, but the other women at the table nodded in unison, each confessing the same in turn, “So was I.”

Carol and Keith exchanged confused glances. She couldn’t fathom the impossible odds of such a coincidence. Keith struggled to make sense of the timeline. The sickly woman wore a costume from the eighteen-nineties. Halloween notwithstanding, it had a worn, authentic appearance and bore the musty smell of its antiquity.

Carol’s curiosity overcame her. Looking down the table at the other women, all dressed in costumes from different historical periods, she asked, “Where did you all get your costumes?”

The women stared back at her in confusion. Carol, mistaking their bewilderment for offense, gestured to her own modern clothes and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get the memo.”

There was no response, only a look of deeper confusion appeared on their faces.

On her right, Roth intervened. “There may be a slight misunderstanding here, Miss Markham.”

Carol turned to look at him. Her head spun, and the room changed, taking on a macabre appearance. In that moment she thought Roth was wearing a mask, his face morphed into something like a strange animal, something amphibious, like a frog with sharp, dagger-like fangs. She squeezed her eyes closed and turned away. When she turned back, he was himself again, sallower, his chins and cheeks drooping, as if he were melting.

He looked her in the eye and said, “Like you, Miss Markham, all of our guests arrived on a stormy All Hallows Eve when the Blue Moon was full. All suffered breakdowns of one kind or another, and all of our women were pregnant at the time of their arrival. So you see, you are one among an elite.”

Both Keith and Carol struggled with the impossible statistic, not to mention the effects of the wine. Considering the rare event of a Blue Moon on the night of Halloween, Carol managed, “But that would take decades…” her voice trailed off, as her head filled with disturbing thoughts. She looked at him, and again, saw Roth masked as some hideous beast.

“More wine?” He asked.

As if by magic, her glass was again full. She took it up and drank deeply, almost involuntarily. Katherine spoke then, informing them, “Room 206 was our last vacancy. That makes you our final guests.” She lifted her own glass in toast, adding, “At last our table is full.” She indicated the gathered guests and said, “We’ve been waiting for you a very long time.”

“Well then,” Roth concluded, clapping his hands together, “let’s move on with our celebration, shall we?”

At his words, the cloaked servants returned carrying bowls of fresh garden salad, dinner plates with steaming vegetables and last, with great fanfare, a silver platter with an elegant lid covering it.

The room was instantly filled with delicious smells that made Carol’s mouth water. She took another sip of her wine as the servants placed the large silver platter in front of Roth. He stood up, tapping on his wine glass with a knife, and saying, “Even and especially on Halloween we should be thankful for our bounty, that which the master provides.”

He spoke words that were incomprehensible to Keith and Carol, but the other gathered guests began to chant in repetition, as if it were something rehearsed. Carol strained to understand the words. She thought she heard them repeating a monotone phrase, “Hale Baal Peor,” in ever rising volume.

She looked across the table seeking Keith’s help, and was shocked to see his head resting on Katherine’s breasts. She called out to him, “Keith!”

He pulled himself upright long enough to ask, in a stupor, “What?”

But Katherine pulled his head back into place on her bosom, shushing him by stroking his hair with her unusually long fingernails.

Before Carol could get Keith’s attention again, Roth took up a carving knife, asking in a loud, jovial voice, “Who will have dark meat?”

Before any could answer, he cast his eye on Carol and asked, “White meat, am I right?”

Carol absently nodded the affirmative, the slight movement making her head spin all the more. She looked at her wine glass and saw that it was nearly empty. She didn’t remember drinking it, but the room was swirling now in a confusion of shifting shapes and colors.

With dramatic flair, Roth lifted the lid from the platter. Carol had expected to see a turkey beneath, or perhaps a small pig with an apple stuffed in its mouth. She squinted, trying to comprehend what was on the platter. She had to blink and look a second time to confirm her first impression because it seemed so completely impossible. But, as she focused again, she saw it clearly. It was neither a turkey nor a pig, but a baby, a newborn child, trussed up on the platter and roasted a golden brown, like a sacrificial lamb at a banquet of wolves.

Carol’s head swirled, she began to feel faint and nauseated. She looked across the table at Keith, wondering if he was seeing what she was, hoping he would rescue her from the nightmare they were in, but Keith was being consumed in another way.

As he rested on her bosom, his face buried in her cleavage, Katherine Roth was brushing his ear with her lips and whispering her hellish desires. Keith felt helpless. The wine had made him hopelessly pliable. He wanted to withdraw, to take Carol by the hand and retreat to the privacy of their room, but he couldn’t seem to extricate himself from Katherin’s hold. He turned briefly and looked across the table at Carol. His mind reeled in a swirling confusion of sensuality, and terror. His eyes were pleading for help, like a man about to fall into a dark abyss. He saw the platter and, as he turned his face back to the pleasures of Katherine’s breasts, he wondered what he’d seen, “was that a baby?”

~

Dawn was breaking at the end of Sheriff Jeff Johnson’s shift. He turned his cruiser onto Razorback Road. He needed to check on the abandoned construction site—make sure no one was squatting there or vandalizing the heavy equipment that had been left to rust in the elements.

The site had a troubled history. Originally a motel built in the early fifties, now it was scheduled for demolition, to make way for a Holiday Inn Express, but the developer had run into money troubles. The bank seized the property, and the demolition had been stalled for years now, tied up in the courts. Until the chain-link fence was erected, the place had been a haven for drug deals and illicit encounters.

Sheriff Jeff Johnson passed the aging road sign that identified Razorback Road as State Road 666. The sign always gave him the creeps, conjuring images of the ruins that remained further up the hill, the old Hallowday  Inn. The inn had operated for a hundred years before the motel came along and ran them out of business.

Rumors of haunting had swirled around the old inn for as long as Jeff could remember. Back when he was a teenager, he and his friends gathered there on Halloween, daring each other to spend the night in the abandoned structure. Jeff was the foolish kid who took the dare. The things he experienced that night terrified him, but he stayed until dawn and collected his bet from those who’d dared him. He never told them what he’d seen and heard in strange visions that night. He just boasted that he was never scared. The reality was better left unremembered.

In the years since, the town aged along with its people, and the town’s teenagers were long gone, all but Jeff. He was still here, still unsettled by the strange things he’d experienced that night, alone in the abandoned inn. Over the years since, there had been many more strange things, things he equally preferred not to dwell on.

When Jeff reached the top of the ridge, he took the left turn that wound back down toward the interstate. As he passed the crumbling gateposts of the old inn, he switched on his spotlight and swept its beam down the overgrown brick driveway, expecting to find nothing of interest. But the light swept over something that caught his breath—a white PT Cruiser parked deep within the shadows of overhanging trees.

Jeff hit the brakes hard and cranked the wheel left, nosing his Crown Vic between the fallen gateposts. He trained his headlights on the unexpected vehicle and waited, watching for movement. He hated surprising lovers in the act. Some of his deputies considered it a “perk of the job,” but it always made Jeff uncomfortable. He preferred giving people a moment to make themselves decent.

When no one stirred in the car, Jeff eased his cruiser down the drive and pulled up behind the other vehicle. He radioed his status and requested a 1028—a registration check on the Florida plates. Then he grabbed his flashlight and stepped out into the cool morning air.

It was nearing Thanksgiving. The first snow of winter had already dusted the ridge, and the overhanging trees stood bare against the graying sky. Jeff could tell the car had been here for some time—a thick blanket of fallen leaves covered the hood and roof, undisturbed, except where a dusting of snow had begun to melt.

He shined his flashlight through the driver’s window. Empty. The back seat was full of luggage and packages—clearly the owners had been traveling. Nothing appeared disturbed, which seemed to rule out theft. Jeff tried the door handle.

Unlocked.

He opened it and leaned in. The keys dangled from the ignition. He reached across and popped the glove box. Unlike the usual jumble of receipts and trash in most vehicles, this one was meticulously organized. The Florida registration was tucked neatly into a leather sleeve in the owner’s manual. It was registered to a, Keith Markham.

Static crackled from his radio. Jeff straightened and walked back to his car, reaching through the open door for the mic, saying, “One-Zero, go ahead.”

“One-Zero, the Florida plate is registered to a Keith Markham.” Sally Banks’s voice was steady, professional. Then she paused. “No priors, but he and his wife have been reported missing.”

Jeff’s grip tightened on the mic. “How long?”

A moment of silence. “Almost two weeks ago. They were reported in early November.”

The pieces were falling into place with a sickening logic. Bells and whistles went off inside Jeff’s head, warning signals he’d long ago learned not to ignore. He was beginning to experience a certain deja vu. Eighteen years ago, standing in this exact spot on the grounds of the old Hallowday Inn. Another abandoned car. At that time another young couple vanished on Halloween night without a trace, as if something evil had reached out of the ether and snatched them from the earth.

A chill crawled down Jeff’s spine. The childhood stories came flooding back—whispered rumors of missing children, of unspeakable rituals performed in the dead of night. He turned his flashlight toward the abandoned ruin. Its beam found the mound of charred rubble, slumped between two ancient stone chimneys that rose like ghoulish sentinels standing watch over the remnants of an evil past.

There would have to be a thorough search and investigation, of course. But Jeff already knew—with a certainty that settled like ice in his gut—that the outcome would be the same as it was eighteen years ago. That investigation had uncovered records of four previous disappearances. Four couples, all vanished without explanation going back to the 1920’s; and who knew how many others went unreported? None were ever found.

Back then, Jeff convinced the volunteer fire department to burn the old inn to the ground as a training exercise, hoping to put an end to whatever darkness had taken root there. This morning it was clear that burning the place down hadn’t been enough. This time he would have it bulldozed, the debris hauled away to the county dump and buried deep. And while he was at it, he’d have the county remove those old lodging signs from the exit to Route 666. No sense misleading any more travelers. No sense giving evil another opportunity. Better to erase every last trace of the old Hallowday Inn, and hope that it will never draw another traveler to its door.

Katherine Hallowday and Dag Roth already knew that it would never happen again. There were no more vacancies. The inn was forever full.