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Terry and Cro different, but not once in thirty years had they spoken to each other--or to anyone for that matter--about it, and that had been Terry’s choice He’d taken his memories of that autumn and had boxed them up and stored them in a back closet of his ht about that autumn almost every day of his life, and he’d taken the other routes to defuse the ticking time bombs of memories First he tried to pickle the memories in bourbon, but that hadn’t really done the job, and had nearly ruined his life Then he went the other route and ed the spooky traps for the hayride Crow thought that doing that had more or less exorcised the de himself to talk it over with a shrink to find out

The upshot was that Terry was afraid of the dark, and Croas afraid of the light If they could have co to them

Yet, despite their private terror, both Crow and Terry took a wry a afraid of Halloween and at the saazine had once dubbed "the Most Haunted Town in America" Pine Deep was one of those peculiar little towns that sees; not just auards to town selectmen The haunted history stretched back to Colonial tihtered Lenni-​Lenape were said to haunt the new European settleends hadn’t dwindled with ti year It was on this rather spooky foundation that the entire financial structure of the toas built

Ever since the Black Harvest of thirty years ago when blight destroyed half the fare Developers had bought up the farms and built expensive houses and estates Moneywent, and with it caht stores and began shoveling in the tourist dollars The writers wrote horror or gothic novels that made the best-​seller lists, the artists painted moody pieces that became popular spooky posters, and the craftspeoplefrom miniature hand-​sewn scarecrows to fabulously expensive jewelry like the Vas that Anne Rice wore on the cover of Publisher’s Weekly The mood and the history of the town seehts of the artists, and the tourists loved everything they roup that capitalized on the haunted history of the town, and used that as gi Soon everyone up and down the eastern seaboard caames: the Halloween Parade, the Monster Mash dance-​concert--once, years ago featuring, appropriately enough, The S that attracted theantiquarians The whole town caers of nearly every store went quickly and happily from red to black between Septe the weeks leading up to trick-​or-​treat Chills and shivers helped Pine Deep prosper as an increasingly upscale community The fact that Terry Wolfe, with his secret fears, was mayor of "Spooksville," as the Philadelphia Daily News recently called it, was truly ironic

The topper of the whole strange pie was that, despite everything, Terry owned the Haunted Hayride

Crow’s reverie was broken by the ringing of the phone and he leaned across the counter and picked it up "Yeah…sure, he’s right here" S, he tossed the portable handset to Terry "For you Chief’s office"

"Uh-​oh!" Terry said in mock alarm as he reached out a hand to take the phone Crow strolled a few paces away and began idly poking in his box of rubber vermin and body parts

"Yeah, Gus, what is it?" Terry listened for a y What’s the hurry?" He listened for a while and then started saying "Jeez!" every couple of seconds Terry was a man incapable of profanity and "Jeez" was about as close as he ever got to an expletive Crow gave Terry an inquisitive look, but the er and mouthed the ait Terry listened for over a unmen?"

Crow arched his eyebrows and silently ain Terry held up his hand "Jeez-​oh-​, and that was him at his most profane "Okay, Gus, I’ll be there in a minute Yeah Bye" He punched the Off button on the portable and stood there, chewing his lower lip and tapping the phone against his thigh Crow cleared his throat; Terry looked sharply at him "Man, the manure has really hit the fan now"

"Why? What’s up?"

"You are not going to believe this one, ot a call froed all the jurisdictions from Philly to the state line because apparently three psychos shot a bunch of holes in sos and rinned in spite of himself

"Yeah, well, the kicker is that they’ve been spotted a few times and for so this way According to what Gus told o There were roadblocks set up Gus had already been working with Crestville and Black Marsh since late this afternoon Philly is sending a bunch of their ‘advisers’ up here to take over from Gus He said he tried to beep ured I’d wind up here Anyway, Gus and the other chiefs arranged some sort of road-​check system, some kind of observation-​post setup, I don’t know Anyway, there was supposed to be no way the psychos could get through it without at least being stopped"<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>