rayaso

THE HALLOWEEN KILLER

Another Halloween had come and gone, and Frank knew what that meant. Another failure. Another killing to add to a sixty-year old list. This time there was a first: his first Halloween without a badge. He’d lost that last year, so now he worked in the gray world of private investigation.

No badge meant little money but plenty of booze, and not the good kind. Frank Williams, P.I., smelled of it when he got to the crime scene, but his old buddies let him in. The blue wall of sympathy. He couldn’t count on it much longer – soon it would be a wall of silence, as he became just another drunken ex-cop trading on his past, needing special favors for scumbag clients.

But now, he had something the Department needed. He was still an expert on the Halloween Killer, their former go-to guy, and that counted for something today.

“Good to see you, Frankie,” said the Lieutenant, holding out his hand, his nose crinkling at Frank’s breath.

“Go to hell,” said Frank, shoving past the asshole who had fired him last October.

It hurt that they’d once been friends, and in those rare times when Frank was being honest, he would have canned himself, too. You can’t break a lieutenant’s jaw and get away with it, even if that sonofabitch was asking for it.

“You just don’t say that about a friend’s wife,” thought Frank as he ducked under the police tape, “even if it’s true.”

It had happened at last year’s Monster Mash, as the press had called it. Frank had let his frustrations boil over, and then the Lieutenant . . . . Well, that was the past. The present was another body with her head blown open. The gruesome killings had been going on every Halloween since 1962, and all those old boxes of evidence hadn’t brought Frank any closer to solving any of them.

He couldn’t help but think of the old song, even though he hated it.

I was working in the lab late one night,
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight.

Frank didn’t want that stuck in his head, so he quickly jammed in his earbuds. You’re not punk, and I'm telling everyone filled his ears. He grimaced – he’d played his daughter’s music by mistake. It made his headache worse, but it drove Monster Mash away.

The killing had happened at a dingy club that hadn’t been popular in years. It featured live music on a small stage, and if you played at Ernie’s Interlude, you were either bottoming out or would never make it up. You got whatever people put in your tip jar, and since most of the regulars were waiting for their next Social Security checks, there wasn’t a lot of money floating around for bad music poorly played. When the best part of your day starts when you’re half drunk, music doesn’t matter, especially when your hearing aid needs new batteries.

Halloween was different; for some reason, Ernie loved it. This year he went all out -- he rented decorations for the bar that included pumpkins, spiders, bats, and some plastic ghouls and monsters to sit on a couple of stools at the bar. He also booked a real band and paid real money, not just free cheap drinks.

The band was Boris and the Crypt-Kickers, which had had a cult following that would have filled Ernie’s several times over in its heyday. They had been famous for a raucous cover of Monster Mash.

For my monster from his slab, began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise
He did the mash, he did the monster mash

Frank reached for his earbuds. My enemies are all too familiar/They're the ones who used to call me friend beat out the Mash again, and brought up thoughts of the Lieutenant.

“This case is getting to me,” thought Frank.

He saw all he needed at the crime scene. Dead body, exploded head, blood on the floor. The crime scene photographs would show anything he missed.

“Same as before,” he thought. “I need to look at those files again.”

As he left the bar, he had to clap his hands over his ears.

From my laboratory in the castle east
To the master bedroom where the vampires feast

“That damn song,” he thought, putting his earbuds in and turning the volume up. It was getting ridiculous.

Her hair was blue, now it's green
I like her mind, she hates the scene.

“I’m having a battle of the bands in my ears,” he thought when he got home and poured himself a drink. His head was pounding, but he carried his copies of the Halloween Killer files from the attic and started spreading them out in the kitchen. Soon the counters and table were full, so he moved to the floor.

“Needs cleaning,” he thought. He hadn’t cleaned the house since his wife and daughter moved out four months ago.

“It’s the booze, Frankie,” Marie had told him.

“Bullshit,” Frank had thought, “it’s the Lieutenant. If that’s who you want, I’ll take the liquor.”

But now he had this case and nothing else mattered. He picked up his old sax and started noodling. It helped him think. There were no connections between the victims, no obvious motive, the only common factor was Halloween – for sixty years. His fingers drifted along the keys until:

The Zombies were having fun, the party had just begun
The guests included Wolfman, Dracula, and his son
The scene was rockin', all were digging the sounds

Frank had never had a headache like this before. It just kept getting worse. He knew what he needed – he forced his fingers to play his daughter’s song.

I'm coloring outside your guidelines
I was passing out when you were passing out your rules

He felt better again, so he closed his eyes and tried to imagine what the latest victim had been doing just before she died. It was Halloween; it was midnight; there was music; maybe she was dancing. What music would’ve been playing?

An idea was forming, teasing at the ragged edges of his consciousness. Frank got some aspirin and washed them down with another scotch.

“But what about the other cases?” thought Frank, as he plowed through the old files.

Not surprisingly, all the victims had been at parties or bars on Halloween where music would have been playing. His head started hurting again.

They played the mash, they played the monster mash
The monster mash, it was a graveyard smash

Frank fought back, trying to clear his head.

Got a friend, her name is Boxcar
Cigarettes and beer in El Sob

“The one song everyone was sure to have heard on Halloween was Monster Mash,” thought Frank. “But what does that have to do with the killer? That’s almost 60 years of cases.”

Frank sat down on a kitchen chair and held his head in his hands. He couldn’t keep the music out, but now it was all garbled.

Out from the coffin, Drac's voice did ring
You're on your own
You're all alone
Seems he was troubled by just one thing

His limbs began to twitch and he stood up, fear on his face, and he began to dance the Mash.

It's now the mash, it's now the monster mash
The monster mash, it was a graveyard smash

The song was taking over. Nothing could stop it -- it got louder and louder. Frank kept dancing uncontrollably. When the song ended, his head exploded, releasing an earworm.

It had the body of a slug, with little legs and two large pincers. The back was ridged with spikes so once it got in, it could not be removed. It scurried through the gore and hid under the refrigerator, waiting for another victim to serve as a host, where it would grow until the next Halloween.

Frank’s body wasn’t discovered for several days. The Lieutenant arrived early to take control of the scene. At first everyone thought Frank had eaten his gun, but no one could find it or a bullet.

There were old files everywhere. Pictures were stuck haphazardly to the refrigerator and the Lieutenant moved closer to take a look. He didn’t notice the earworm crawl out and bite him on the ankle, before returning to the darkness to die, having implanted a tiny earworm in its next victim.

Frank’s murder was never solved. Everyone assumed it was some ex-con he had busted, out for revenge. The investigation went nowhere, however, and the Department let it go cold.

The old Halloween Killer files were boxed up and carried away.

Next year, a Halloween Task Force was assembled to prevent another killing. The Lieutenant was appointed to head it. As Halloween got closer, he began to complain of headaches to his new wife, Frank’s ex. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, and Halloween was coming up, so he just decided to tough it out.

Then, of course, there was the music he couldn’t get out of his head.

I was working in the lab, late one night

The Lieutenant hated that song, but there was only one more week until Halloween and then he wouldn’t have to hear it anymore.

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