The October Boys Read online

  THE OCTOBER BOYS

  By Adam Millard

  © 2019 by Adam Millard

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author’s written consent, except for the purposes of review

  Cover Design © 2019 by Don Noble

  https://roosterrepublicpress.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1-947522-02-2

  ISBN-10: 1-947522-02-7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  READ UNTIL YOU BLEED!

  “First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.” – Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

  “Man is the cruellest animal.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

  ONE

  October 31st, 1988

  Havering, London

  The werewolf reared up, its thick brown fur buffeted by the outside wind, its howl guttural and authentic. Standing in the hallway behind the lamenting wolf, a short vampire watched nervously through the eyeholes of its plastic mask. The miniature bloodsucker clutched a large cauldron of treats—some good stuff, too, the quartet of boy-callers noted as the werewolf did its thing—and waited for the trick-or-treaters to legitimately announce themselves.

  “Trick or Treat?” the four boys on the step called in unison. It came out all as one word: Trickertreeeeeeat?

  The werewolf stopped howling and ferally pawing at the air long enough to usher the small vampire forwards, and the vampire held out the treat cauldron as if it were a ticking time-bomb. Clearly the wearer of the Bela Lugosi mask was not a fan of Halloween, unlike the werewolf—perhaps the Lugosi boy’s father—who had, judging by the decorations inside and out, gone to a lot of trouble. The boys had ventured through machine-created fog, past cemetery gates and foam headstones, to reach the house. This was a family which took its Halloween celebrations very seriously indeed.

  “Offer them the cauldron, Jake,” said the werewolf, the fur-and-rubber mask muffling his voice. “They’re not real monsters, are you boys?”

  The boys laughed; two of them—Luke Davis, zombified to within an inch of his life, and Ryan Fielding, a decent Pugsley Addams—shook their heads. Despite their assurances, the Lugosi boy still appeared reluctant to draw closer. The werewolf clicked his tongue and snatched the large cauldron out of the Lugosi boy’s hand.

  “You’ll have to forgive him,” said the werewolf. “It’s the first Halloween we’ve dressed up for, and it’s really freaking him out.” He crouched down next to the Lugosi boy. “Go and help your mother with the vol-au-vents. I’ll make sure the trick-or-treaters get what they deserve.”

  The Lugosi boy pulled the plastic mask from his face and disappeared through a door at the end of the hallway. Once he was gone, the werewolf straightened up and held out the cauldron. “Go on then,” he said, now sounding a little disappointed, as if the romance had been stripped from the night by his son’s apparent reticence.

  The boys exchanged glances, each one waiting for the next to dip into the cauldron first. Ryan Fielding shrugged, took a dainty step forward, and grabbed a handful of treats. “Love your decorations,” he said, as if the moment required something—some little observation—to fill the awkward silence which seemed to have descended.

  “Yeah, no-one else in this street’s bothered,” Tom Craven said, adjusting his neck-bolts and wiping green face-paint from the back of his hand. “Apart from the old bloke at the end. He’s put a pumpkin out. It’s not a very good one, though. Hasn’t even carved it. It still has the supermarket sticker on it.”

  “Well that’s not very good, is it?” said the werewolf, dishing out treats to the three boys yet to help themselves.

  “My mom says Halloween’s just a stupid American holiday,” said Marcus Berry as he struggled to remove his boxing gloves so that he could make a start on the snack-size chocolate bar the werewolf had just dropped into his bucket.

  “Mark my words,” said the werewolf, “ten years from now, this whole street, the whole borough, will have spooky decorations up. Halloween’s going to take off big time.”

  Marcus smiled slightly. He had never been comforted by a werewolf before. Brightening even more, he said, “Guess who I am?”

  The werewolf took a step back, appraising the black kid’s costume. Boxing gloves, a stars-and-stripes robe, a black eye which the werewolf hoped was simply a make-up effect, and not something the boy had received for believing in the magic of Halloween. “I’m going to take a guess and say you’re a boxer.”

  The boys all erupted in laughter, all except Marcus, who didn’t see anything funny about being the only one of them in an ostensibly ambiguous costume. “Of course I’m a boxer,” he said, trying not to sound hurt. “But which one?”

  Sensing the boy’s chagrin—and not wanting to give the poor kid’s friends any further ammunition—the werewolf said the first thing which came to mind. “Ali!” he said. “You’re Muhammad Ali!”

  The boxer visibly deflated. “I’m Apollo Creed,” he sighed. “You know, from the four Rocky films?”

  “That was going to be my next guess,” said the werewolf. Lying to children was easy; doing it convincingly was not. “I love those movies. Especially the one with Mr T.”

  “I don’t like the one with the big Russian,” said Marcus. “Apollo dies in that one.”

  “Marcus is going to be a boxer when he grows up,” said the little zombie, Luke. “Isn’t that right, Marcus?”

  The werewolf didn’t think it possible, but the little boxer shrank even more, as if ashamed that the subject had even arisen. He looked as if he might cry, which was the last thing the werewolf wanted: a teary-eyed boy standing on his doorstep with a black eye. He did the only thing he could in that situation and thrust the large cauldron in the general direction of the boxer. “Here you go,” he said. “Go on, take it.”

  Marcus frowned, as if unsure whether this was some sort of elaborate prank, one which would result in disappointment. He could not read the werewolf’s face, could not see whether there was a malicious grin beneath the fur and rubber.

  “Please,” said the werewolf, and Marcus had to admit, the man sounded genuine. “I doubt I’ll have any more trick-or-treaters tonight. It’s already pushing eight, and apart from you boys and a couple of Disney princesses, it’s been a bit of a wash-out.”

  The four boys exchanged tentative glances, and then Tom Craven stepped forward to accept the cauldron and its myriad goodies. “That’s really kind of you,” he said, taking the cauldron by its handle. It was heavy, filled with enough sweets to last them a week, if they rationed—which they wouldn’t. “We really appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, and it’s good to see that at least someone in the area is getting in the spirit of things,” Luke said, motioning to the cemetery comprising the front garden.

  “It’ll be even better next year,” said the werewolf. “I’m going to build a crypt, and it’ll be filled with all manner of nasty shit.”

  The boys giggled. Swear words were funny.

  But as they walked away, with a full cauldron of treats and a spring in their step, they had no idea that next year—by the time the nice werewolf had erected his crypt and filled it with all manner of nasty shit—things would be very different indeed.

  The sound of an ice cream truck off in the distance, incongruous for late October, was how it all began.

  TWO

  Tom heard it first; the faint jingling of some off-key melody dopplering through the night. For a while Tom just stood there listening, t
rying to figure out the tune. And then he got it; it was Pop Goes the Weasel, only not the way he had ever heard it before. Not a single note was in key, and so the tune meandered up and down, one note three octaves too low, the next an octave high. It resulted in something nightmarish, the kind of thing one might hear on the soundtrack to some bad horror movie. Tom wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t.

  “What’s the matter with you, Frankenstein?” Ryan had stopped stuffing penny chews into his mouth long enough to notice Tom had stopped walking behind them.

  “I’m not Frankenstein,” Tom said, turning his head this way and that in order to gauge just where the tinkling melody was coming from. “Frankenstein was the name of the creator, not the monster.”

  “So, what was the monster’s name?” Ryan said, a confused expression upon his face.

  “Do you guys hear that?” Tom said, holding a finger up as if testing for wind direction.

  “Hear what?” Marcus said. “I can hear Ryan chewing blackjacks.”

  “The old man with the shitty pumpkin at the end of the street can hear Ryan chewing blackjacks,” added Luke, slapping Ryan playfully on the shoulder.

  “Just listen,” Tom said. “There it is… I think it’s coming from over there.” He watched as his friends tried to figure out just what it was they were meant to be hearing, and for a moment Tom wondered whether he was hearing things. Perhaps it was tinnitus. But tinnitus didn’t usually sound like Pop Goes the Weasel; at least, he didn’t think it did.

  “Is that a… is that an ice cream truck?” Luke said, incredulous.

  “Thank God for that,” Tom said, heaving a massive sigh of relief. “I thought I was going mental.”

  “What’s an ice cream truck doing out on Halloween?” Marcus said. The boxing gloves were now draped over his shoulders, the laces wrapped loosely around his neck.

  Tom followed the atonal music as it moved around them—and that was the strange thing. It seemed to be circling them, had gone from left to right in less than thirty seconds.

  “Whatever it is,” Ryan said, “it needs tuning. Sounds bloody awful.”

  “It’s Pop Goes the Weasel,” Tom said, for now he was certain he was right.

  “That’s not Pop Goes the Weasel,” Marcus opined. “That’s Pop Goes the Chime Cassette. I think it’s been chewed up by the deck.”

  It was only then that Tom realised it had begun to rain. October rain was not uncommon; October ice cream trucks were. “He can’t be doing much business tonight,” Tom said. For some reason his mouth had dried up. He licked furtively at his lips in an attempt to moisten them.

  “I don’t know,” Marcus said. “I think it’s a smart move. Think about how many kids are out tonight, trick or treating, some with their parents. All that guy has to do is pull up right next to a throng of ghouls and, wham! Easy money.”

  “How many trick-or-treaters have you seen tonight?” Tom asked. “According to the guy at the last house it’s just us, Belle, Snow White, and Cinderella.”

  Marcus shrugged. He was just as clueless as his friends, it seemed.

  “Are we going to knock any more doors, or what?” Luke said, pulling the hood of his coat up to cover his hair, which was already painted to his forehead in thick slices. “Getting a little bit wet just standing here.”

  Tom sighed. Something about that ice cream truck really bothered him, and yet there was nothing really strange about it, not really. Times were tough, people were struggling for cash, that bitch Thatcher had put more people out of work than the Black Death. Was it so weird that some guy had chosen to make a couple of extra quid while the getting was good? “We can do a couple more,” he said. “But if I’m being honest, I don’t think this rain’s going to stop. The green’s already dripping from me, and Marcus’s black eye is washed off. I’m thinking we do three more doors, then head back to Luke’s. Does your dad still keep his dirty magazines in the shed?”

  Luke nodded. “Behind the lawnmower. He knows Mom doesn’t like gardening. Safest place to stash his filth.”

  Tom straightened his neck-bolts, perhaps for the final time. “We can eat some sweets, look at some ladies for a while, then I’d better get home. Mom finishes her shift at eleven. If I’m not in bed by the time she gets back, she’ll have a conniption.” And she would. As far as she was concerned, Tom was home watching kid-friendly horror movies with Luke. He knew he was pushing his luck already; his mother didn’t often finish her shift early, but it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. If tonight was one of those rare nights, then Tom would be in for a good hiding. He wouldn’t see daylight until January, for his mother was strict. When I say jump, you say how high was one of her favourites. Tom thought the saying was odd, as she had never had reason to ask him to jump.

  The next door they knocked went unanswered. There were people in there—Tom could see them moving around, could hear the TV blaring—but apparently trick-or-treaters were just as unwelcome as Jehovah’s Witnesses or insurance salesmen. It’s not like we’re trying to sell you double-glazing, Tom thought as he knocked for the final time. They were just kids, having a little fun on Halloween. Whatever happened to spirit?

  In the distance, the ice cream truck played its cacophonous chimes.

  Half a pound of tuppeny rice…

  Half a pound of treacle…

  Tom, half-soaked from the rain, shivered. He still couldn’t shake the fact that there was something odd about that truck, something… wrong. Every now and then it would fall silent, and Tom would forget about it, concentrate on the job at hand: extracting treats from unwilling residents. But then it would reappear—one moment from the north, then from the south, sometimes near, others far—and Tom’s blood would turn to mercury once again. It was childish, he knew, the ridiculous imagination of a twelve-year-old boy working overtime. He could see, however, that his friends were just as perturbed by those discordant bells. None of them voiced it, but each of them felt it.

  Tom just wanted to go home, wash off what was left of the green face-paint, and wait for his mom to return from the hospital. She would chastise him for waiting up for her—she always did, but nine times out of ten she would settle on the sofa next to him and attempt to engage herself in whatever Tom was watching on the TV—but Tom didn’t care. The whole night had been a washout, and not just because of the inclement weather.

  That’s the way the money goes.

  Pop goes the weasel.

  “I think we should call it a night,” Luke said, surreptitiously checking the darkness all around them, as if searching for some hidden predator, some wild animal hiding in the shadows. Tom knew it was the chimes that had pushed them all over the edge, and now they were just children, out after dark, scared of the night the way they had been when they were six- or seven-years-old.

  Every night when I go out.

  The weasel’s on the table.

  “It is getting pretty late,” Marcus said, checking his watch. It was a Thundercats wristwatch. Marcus had made no secret of the fact that, if he failed as a boxer, he wanted to be Lion-O when he grew up.

  Take a stick and knock it off.

  Pop goes the weasel.

  “I’m not going to argue,” Ryan said, peeling the wrapper off a blackjack and pushing the chew into his mouth. “I don’t think we did too badly, considering we’re surrounded by cynics.” His tongue and teeth had already turned black; he looked like a demon. A fat demon wearing a stripy tee-shirt and a bad haircut.

  Up and down the city road.

  In and out of the eagle.

  Tom suddenly realised that the chimes were drawing near again. The ice cream truck was on its way. And it shouldn’t be, Tom thought. It shouldn’t be. “You want to walk back to mine?” Tom asked Luke, trying to hide the fear from his voice and failing miserably. If his friends noticed, though, they didn’t show it. They were probably just as frightened as he was. Four little boys, all in a row, terrified of the jaunty song. “I’ve
got Gremlins on VHS. We could watch that—”

  “Gremlins is a Christmas film,” Luke said, laughing nervously.

  “Not really,” Tom said, annoyed that Luke was trying to wriggle out of it. Tom didn’t want to walk home alone, not tonight, not with that thing out there. If he could just convince Luke that—

  That’s the way the money goes.

  Pop goes the weasel.

  Tom saw it first. It appeared at the end of the road like a phantom, its white and yellow paintwork—even from this distance—scratched and rotten. The chimes had stopped, but its engine continued to chunter away, a sonorous grumbling which was more animal than mechanical.

  There it sat, at the end of the road. Watching.

  “Okay, is anyone else creeped out by the spooky ice cream truck?” Black chew-juice dripped from the corners of Ryan’s mouth.

  Although he was scared, Tom knew they were probably just letting the night get to them. It was Halloween, after all. They were seeing monsters in everything—even a beat-up old ice cream truck. Still, he had been wrong before. Heart in mouth, he said, “We start walking. It’s probably nothing, but I say we get to Marcus’s house, and then—”

  “Wait, my house?” Marcus said.

  “Your house is the closest,” Tom said. And it was, although at four streets away it was still a fair walk.

  Marcus thought about it for a moment, shrugged, and said, “So we’re going to run away from an ice cream truck? Is that what’s happening?” He shook his head, tried to force a smile, behind which the fear remained. Tom could see it; no matter how tough Marcus was trying to act.

  “Do you think he sees us?” Luke asked, motioning toward the idling truck at the end of the street. “Maybe he’s just waiting to make a sale. Maybe Marcus is right; tonight’s a great night to earn a little extra selling cones to trick-or-treaters.”

  Tom shook his head, doubtful. “Let’s just get to Marcus’s. We can discuss the guy’s strange business practices there.”