Free Halloween III - Season of the Witch by Jack Martin

this perspective the simple roofs of the wood-frame houses were shingled by a mirage of silver. Beyond, the Pacific Ocean glittered like spilled mercury flecked with blood.
    Challis whistled softly. “Looks innocent enough,” he said.
    “Why wouldn’t it?”
    Challis found that difficult to answer.
    But perhaps she felt it, too, the sense of foreboding, because her arms were covered with goose-flesh.
    Then she put the car into gear again and started the descent.
    As the angle changed and the view became less spectacular, Challis tried to break the spell.
    “That crappy little place is where all those masks and commercials come from? It doesn’t even look real.”
    Ellie smiled tightly and opened her mouth to speak.
    At that moment a truck roared around the bend ahead, bearing directly at them.
    Challis fell across her and jogged the wheel.
    An air horn sounded and the truck swerved, scraping by on the shoulder in a cloud of dust.
    “Jerk!” she shouted.
    Challis spun around in his seat and watched the truck bounce back onto the road. Barely visible through the exhaust was a large green-and-white four-leaf clover decal on the tailgate.
    “Silver Shamrock,” said Challis. “I should have—”
    “Don’t worry about him. Look at that guy up there! He’s got to stop! He’s—!”
    Ellie was straight-arming the horn and bulldogging the wheel as a second bullet Mack truck charged them head-on.
    Somehow it got by. The force of its passing left the car rocking like a straw in the wind.
    “Welcome,” said Ellie, “to Santa Mira.”

C H A P T E R

6
    Santa Mira was real, all right.
    Challis leaned out the window to clear his head.
    He recognized the scent of alfalfa and the dank salt pungence of the sea lacing the air, and something else that was distinctly unpleasant. Sulfur? That was probably what was pouring out of the brick smokestack that dominated the western end of the town. It was billowing with a vengeance. A huge shamrock like the belly of a spider identified the building as the factory. It couldn’t be anything else.
    At the foot of the rolling hills, nestled at the edge of verdant fields, they came upon an old-fashioned unbranded gas station attached to a weathered cottage motel. RAFFERTY ’ S DELUXE , proclaimed a hand-painted sign. Whether that was the name of the station or the motel was not clear.
    As they drove on, a sandy-haired attendant observed their passing from beside the pumps.
    By the time they hit the town square, Challis knew that something about the town was seriously abnormal.
    Though it was not yet dark, nothing moved on the street. Not a dog nor a pedestrian nor another automobile. No one. Not even children.
    Yet, as the storefronts slid by, he was aware of the presence of eyes in every window. There was a shop full of workers’ uniforms; there what appeared to be a quaint, tidy bank; there a grocery store, and the like. All were operating under the sign of the Silver Shamrock.
    Now a few ruddy faces revealed themselves in doorways, some freckled and red-haired, all silently observant.
    Ellie broke the uneasy silence. “Kind of ethnic.”
    “You could say that.”
    “I feel like a goldfish.”
    “Company town,” Challis reminded her.
    “Irish company town.”
    “You know where you’re going?”
    “To the factory. Where do you think?”
    “Might be a little late for that. Looks to me like everybody’s about to batten down the hatches and call it a day.”
    “Well, then, we’ll at least get a look at it up close.”
    The last of the stores fell behind them. Ahead lay a tarnished railroad track and, among the plain, utilitarian residences, an old church of unidentifiable denomination.
    As Ellie swung the car around and changed direction, Challis noted that the front of the church was boarded up. The spire had gone long unpainted. A signboard reading CHURCH OF SAINT PATRICK / REV. FATHER TOM MALONE was hanging peeled and broken from one upright.
    He decided not to call that