Free Quoth the Raven by Jane Haddam Page B

path from the parking lot, Gregor thought it radiated the confidence of self-control.
    The campus had been built on what must have been the only piece of solidly flat land in this part of Pennsylvania, and at the moment it was crowded with students. Students in mummy costumes, students in Frankenstein costumes, students made up to look like undefined victims of bloody violence—in no time at all, Gregor began to feel shell-shocked by how many of them there were, and by how many of them seemed fascinated with death and gore. Obviously, Gregor thought, this must have been going on for some time. Tibor, usually the most squeamish of men, wasn’t fazed by it at all. Gregor caught a look at Bennis Hannaford and saw she wasn’t fazed by it, either. Maybe all those horror movies she watched with Donna Moradanyan had made her immune. Gregor refused to believe she had been inoculated by seeing her own sister dead on the floor.
    When they got to the very bottom of the path, Tibor turned slightly sideways, and waved his arms in the air.
    “There. There it is. Kings Scaffold and old King George. What do you think?”
    Gregor didn’t know what to think. The Scaffold was impressive all by itself, a massive outcrop of rock jutting straight up from the ground, at least as high as a three-story building and maybe higher. The bonfire, though, was the kicker. It didn’t make a bit of difference that it was unlit. Hundreds of logs climbed up the rock face of the Scaffold, decorated here and there by bits of paper and cloth. At the top, regally seated on a plywood throne, was a straw-stuffed dummy that looked too much like a man. Only the jack-o’-lantern head, made it possible for Gregor to look at it without cringing.
    “Good Lord,” Bennis said. “That’s very realistic, isn’t it?”
    “The pile has gone too high for you to see its hands,” Tibor told her. “You can see them if you try. They give it all away.”
    “I’m glad something gives it away,” Gregor said.
    “Just a minute, Krekor. It is that boy there in the bat suit that we need. I will be back.”
    Tibor darted into the crowd. Gregor returned his attention to the effigy, dodging visual interference from costumed revelers beneficent and malign: an Alice in Wonderland, a Devil with pitchfork and horns, a Little Red Riding Hood, a walking zombie from Night of the Living Dead. Everybody seemed to be carrying crepe paper streamers and confetti. Everybody seemed to be dancing to music that existed only inside their heads. Gregor kept having to beat back the nauseating suspicion that they all had the same music inside their heads. Finally he got momentarily clear of the crowd and caught a clear look at what he wanted: the effigy’s hands, white gloves badly stuffed with straw, much too small for anyone but a child.
    “Tibor was right,” he said to Bennis Hannaford, who was standing just behind him. “Once you see the hands, the illusion’s broken. The hands are so wrong, you start to see what’s wrong with the rest of it.”
    “That’s nice,” Bennis said. “I’m too damned short to see the hands.”
    “Take my word for it. It’s not just the hands. The shoulders are two different sizes. The arms have lumps in all the wrong places. There isn’t any neck.”
    “There isn’t a shred of mental stability on this entire college campus.”
    Gregor had often thought there wasn’t a shred of mental stability on any college campus—but this wasn’t the time to bring it up, and Tibor was coming back. Coming with Tibor was a man—given his enormous size and muscularity, Gregor refused to call him a boy—in head-to-toe black, his hair and face and neck encased in a mask-hood, his arms and shoulders attached to a broad cape that looked like wings when he moved. Gregor looked at Bennis and Bennis looked back.
    Tibor hopped to a stop in front of them—Tibor always hopped when he was excited—and pulled on the edge of the man’s cape.
    “Bennis, Krekor,” he