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480. PROMOTION A child's imagination is a rich imagination, Willamina reflected, smiling at the children scampering up onto her front porch, thrusting out pillowcases or plastic sacks or withie baskets or plastic pumpkins -- "Trick or Treeet!" -- and she dispensed goodies into each, delighting in the high, juvenile "Thank you" with each dispensation: for the occasion, she wore a McKenna gown, with a wig and a fashionable little hat that matched the dress. Last year a matter came up that required her to shut off her porch light and report to the Sheriff's office, and she ended up helping process a major crime scene in just such a gown; it was a complex scene, the State Police were in on the investigation as well, and the senior ranking officer made a point of removing his cover, gravely hand-kissing her, and saying that in his father's day, such a sight would be unimagined, and that he was most grateful we were not stuck in the bad old days. Willamina gave him a warm look, she rested a gloved hand on his forearm: they ate at the Silver Jewel later that night, back in the Lawman's Corner, two old friends talking and relaxing, but never completely relaxed ... and for some odd reason, on Halloween, no one thought the sight of a woman in period correct 1880's attire, dining with a uniformed State Trooper, to be odd or out of place at all. The Ladies' Tea Society met the next day, in the back room of the Silver Jewel, and it was not at all uncommon for the ladies to bring younger relatives -- nieces, daughters, sometimes little boys in knee pants and neckties, but all in period attire. Willamina noticed a newcomer -- properly attired -- brought her daughter. This would not normally command much of Willamina's attention. The child was in a proper little girl's frock, but she was also wearing dark glasses. Not just dark glasses. Black glasses. Willamina noticed the child sized white cane slid discreetly under the seat and she remembered the second-grader was newly enrolled in their school, and she'd lost her beloved grandmother a very few days before: for some reason, Willamina did not greet the ladies with her usual opening: instead, she slid from behind the podium, squatted carefully in front of the child, took her hands. "Good morning," she said gently, and the little girl's face lit up as her chubby little hands squeezed Willamina's with what was obviously an enthusiastic delight. "I thought she might like different surroundings," he mother explained, almost apologetically: "her Grandmother's death has been so very ... difficult." The child reached up, caressed Willamina's face: her other hand rose as well, and she read the pale eyed Sheriff with her fingertips, her mouth open a little, lifting at the corners. "Gammaw," she said, "tell me a story." Willamina sat down on the floor in front of the little girl, crossed her legs under her gown's skirt: she reached up, brought the child into her lap, one arm around her, drawing her close, her other hand very lightly gripping the child's off hand. "Once upon a time," she said, and the ladies began to rise, and surround her, for they knew any story Willamina told, just might be interesting. "Once upon a time is the same as saying hold my beer and watch this," Willamina confided quietly to the child, who giggled, leaning her head happily against Willamina's collarbone. "There was a pale eyed woman who was a deputy back East. She worked in a little coal mining town that had more beer joints than churches, and she regularly threw drunken hellraisers over the nearest roof, or into the river, whichever was closer." Her fingers stroked the little girl's cheek, a mother's gesture, remembering the many times she'd stroked her own children's cheek while telling them a story. "It was Halloween, when the veil between the worlds is thin, and sometimes creatures can cross over and cause trouble. That's why we dress up for Halloween, so these evil creatures won't recognize us, and they'll think they are outnumbered, and they leave. Only ..." She paused, took a breath. "Sometimes they don't." Carla Bayless toweled the last plate dry, her hair hanging in sticky ringlets, partly because of the day's work she put into cleaning house, partly because of leaning over a steaming sink full of dishes for the past hour. She wished for a window over her sink like she used to have at home, before she got married, before she moved. She liked being able to see outside, and had she been able, she might have seen a cadaverous looking man in an immaculate, formal, tuxedo-like suit step from a glowing oval that appeared, and disappeared just as quickly. She looked up, surprised, as someone knocked on her back door. Nobody ever comes to the back door, she thought. Something cold ran its finger down her back bone and on impulse -- afterward, she really couldn't say why, but she snatched up the phone and quick-dialed the village hall, hoping, hoping, hoping the town cop would be there! "The pale eyed deputy answered the phone," Willamina said, "and she could tell from the woman's voice on the other end, that something was genuinely going on, something that shouldn't be going on, and so she said 'I'll be right there,' and it was quicker to run to the house than it was to get in the cruiser and drive down, so she grabbed the shotgun she kept behind the desk and ran down the street and up the alley, and she swung into the back yard just as something went BLAANNGGG and a man fell backwards out of an open, lighted doorway. "The deputy walked up to the man -- he was dressed kind of funny, very formal, he wore a long black cloak with red velvet lining, he wore white spats on his shoes and he had a jewelled medal of some kind hung around his neck, but what struck the pale eyed deputy was how pale his face was -- even with his nose flattened, there was no blood -- and his teeth in front were pointed." "Like a vampire?" the little girl breathed, and Willamina hugged her reassuringly. "Yes, sweets. Just like a vampire." She felt the child shiver a little. "What did she do?" "The woman in the doorway -- the woman with the frying pan -- told the pale eyed deputy that the man looked at her with glowing eyes and he said "You vant to invite me in," and she said "Please come in," and then he stepped inside and grabbed her shoulders and said "I vant to drink your blood," and she broke his grip, grabbed a cast iron frying pan and gave him a face full of What Part Of No Don't You Understand, and that's when the deputy arrived." The little girl giggled and Willamina lifted her face, smiling, looked around: the ladies were listening closely, clearly enjoying the tale she was spinning. "Do you know how magic works?" Willamina asked. The little girl shook her head, a little, and Willamina explained, "It's all a matter of belief. "The vampire was from another plane, a place where everyone believed in vampires and believed they could hypnotize you with a look, a place where everyone believed vampires can only be killed with a wooden stake through the heart." She paused, took a breath, continued. "He'd arrived in a place where no one believed in vampires, where a pale eyed deputy believed she could bring him to heel fast, hard and nasty, and when the vampire shook his head and got to his feet, he was angry and he decided he would be unkind to the first soul he saw." "What happened?" the little girl asked in a tiny, frightened voice. Willamina laughed. "I was young," she said, "and I had the absolute knowledge that what I was doing, was absolutely RIGHT. I brought my shotgun barrel down and I drove a charge of buckshot right through his wishbone and a second one through his head." Her voice was quiet, steady, confident, her gaze seeing something through the opposite wall, her eyes unblinking as she looked back at her own memory. "I sent him back to his own plane, deader'n a hammer, because my belief was stronger than his." "But he was a vampire," the little girl protested, her voice a little uncertain. "How come he didn't believe?" Willamina laughed. "We women," she said, "have a gift, and that is the Dreaded Intercontinental Ballistic Frying Pan, and when we smack someone in the face, hard, it's because someone believes they are going to do us harm, and that mighty and righteous face full of Cast Iron Justice knocks that belief right out of their head!" Silence filled the room for several long moments, and then the little girl's mother asked gently, "Did that really happen, Sheriff?" Willamina rose, lifting the child with her: she placed the little girl on her Mama's lap and caressed her cheek, she smiled and looked at the young mother hugging her child. "Yes it did," she said. "It most certainly did. It was Halloween, and things like that happen on Halloween." Willamina rose, turned, leaned back against the table her speaker's podium sat on. "Now that's not to be confused with the year following," she smiled. "My partner and I were patrolling the graveyard. We'd received intel that some kids were going to conduct Rites of Spring among the tombstones, and we intended that they should not. There was a full moon and we were cat footing through the graveyard -- it wasn't a big one, it filled up overnight when the Millfield mine blew up -- and as we crept like to shadows through the darkness, the moon came out from behind a cloud just as a cat jumped up on a tombstone and MEEYYYOOOWWW'd at us, all hunched up and bristling" -- Willamina's hands came up, empty, but clearly in firing position -- "and that cat has no idea how close it came to inheriting enough .357 Magnum justice to lose seven of its nine lives!" The ladies filed out, chattering happily, settling among the tables, as the Tea Society invariably had their lunch after their morning meeting. The young mother and her blind daughter hung back. As Willamina approached, the little girl turned, slipped her hand from her Mama's, tilted her head as she looked with blank, black spectacles at the pale eyed woman in the electric-blue McKenna gown. "You're the Shewiff?" she asked, and Willamina squatted, rolled forward on to her knees. "Yes, sweets. I'm the Sheriff." The little girl dropped her cane, rushed forward, embraced Willamina happily. "Gammaw Shewiff!" she declared happily, hugging with all the delighted strength of a little child, and Willamina hugged her back. She looked up at the young mother, her pale eyes bright and glittering, and she almost whispered, "I think I've just been promoted!"

479. WELL TEMPERED Chief of Police Will Keller looked up, saw a shadow on the other side of the frosted glass of his office door: there's been a quick rat-tat, not so much a summoning knock as a percussive request to come aboard. "IN!" Will barked, and it was hard to tell which grinned the more: pale eyed uncle, or pale eyed nephew. "You need something." Linn handed his uncle a paper bag, set a paper coffee cup down beside it. "Bad manners to show up empty handed if I'm asking." Will opened the sack, looked inside, nodded his approval: he dove a hand inside, pulled out a wax paper wrapped sandwich, and took a long, appreciative sniff of the good smells coming from within the sack. "Didn't know how hungry I was," he mumbled as he bit into the still-hot-from-the-grille bacon cheeseburger: he closed his eyes and chewed happily, swallowed, groaned. "Thought you'd like that." Linn folded his long tall carcass into a chair, waited until his uncle finished with the sandwich: Will reached into the sack, dumped the fries out of their sleeve, tore open a salt packet, dumped this in, seized the sack and crushed the neck, shaking it briskly to salt his fries. Linn sat straight, but relaxed; he almost looked sleepy, which Will knew was deceiving: he also had a revolver under his coat, which Will personally approved of: Linn had a set of standards, and those who lacked standards didn't much like that, and even though Linn was a year from his high school graduation, he'd had to have an understanding with the Philistines on two occasions that Will knew of ... and when dealing with Philistines, one is wise to have the jaw bone of a jack mule ready to hand. Matter of fact, Will considered, was he to lift Linn's coat open and take a look, he'd find the word JAWBONE hand chased on the flat top of his three-screw .44, inlaid with gold ... genuine gold leaf, the same stuff that filled the double ring around the muzzle, and the roses carefully and expertly engraved into blued steel, tiny little roses that vined their way on either side of the front sight base. Will didn't lift the coat. That would have meant getting out of his chair, and going around the desk, and he was too busy filling his growlin' gut with still-hot, still-crispy fries. Once he was done, he carefully, precisely, folded the sack flat, folded it into thirds, set it very exactly in the bottom of his empty trash can: he took a long drink of coffee, came up for air, and loudly, inelegantly, belched. Linn blinked lazily, his smile getting no further across his face than the corners of his eyes. "Didn't realize how hungry I really was." "Kind of figured." Will took another long drink of coffee, sat down an empty cup, disappointment plain on his face. "Damned thing's dry," he grumbled. "Must have a hole in it." Will dropped the empty cup on top of the folded sack, drummed neatly-trimmed fingernails on the desk on either side of his stained, scribbled-on desk blotter. "Now." He frowned at Linn, closed one eye. "What brings you here today?" "Other than makin' sure you don't starve plumb to death?" Linn asked mildly. "Uncle Will, I came here with the honest fear you'd lose so much weight from not eatin', why, you wouldn't throw a decent shadder in the noonday sun!" "Look who's talking," Will reposted good-naturedly. "Was you to drink a redpop, you'd look like a thermometer!" "Don't I know it," Linn muttered. "I played hell findin' jeans with a 32 waist and a 34 inseam." Will nodded. "I used to be built like you." "You were better lookin'." "Crystal thought so," Will admitted, and a shadow of sadness crossed his face. "Uncle Will, I could use some good sound advice." Will nodded slowly, considering. "I notice you didn't ask for some free advice." "You get what you pay for." Will nodded again. "How can I help?" "Uncle Will, I have a ... an honest fear." Will raised an eyebrow and Linn knew he suddenly had his uncle's undivided. "You may speak frankly," Will said slowly, and Linn had the impression his Uncle Will's elbows were pulling in tight against his ribs as he raised invisible fists against whatever might be causing Linn's discomfiture. Linn's jaw slid out a little and he frowned as he took a deep, slow breath. "Uncle Will," he said, "I am honestly afraid of my temper." Will's brows crowded together a little and he lowered his head a fraction. "Go on." Linn closed his eyes, considered. "I find there is a rage within me," he said slowly, almost formally: "it is like a great, dark monster, it lives within me and it wishes to take me over." "And what happens if it does?" Linn looked beyond his Uncle, seeing something well beyond the pale eyed police chief's left shoulder. "Given my intelligence and my skills," Linn said slowly, "if I ever give that monster its head, I am capable of terrible destruction." Uncle Will nodded slowly, leaned back, steepled his fingers. "Ever hear of the Little Tar Baby?" Linn frowned, blinked, nodded. "Uncle Remus tale, wasn't it?" "Yep. You can't play with tar without getting stained." "True enough." "Evil is the same way, Linn, and you and I have both had to fight monsters." Linn leaned forward, frowning, elbows on his knees, listening closely. "You were in third grade when you took your Granddad's revolver and killed the man that tried to kill your Mama, and you slugged her chief deputy when he tried to pull you off doing CPR on her." "Yes, sir, I did that." "You've taken down hellraisers and troublemakers when they needed a good dose of headache." "I did that, too." "And you took a knife in the guts to keep a girl from being --" Will saw Linn's eyes grow hard and pale, just as fast -- just as frigid -- as his legendary mother ever did. "My point --" Will raised a teaching finger, rolled it point-down, tapping the blotter for emphasis -- "is that you've known evil. You have known absolutely black contamination, you've known the depths of hell's damnation. It stained you, Linn, just the way it stained me, but it stained you harder and deeper because you were just a child -- the same way it stained your Mama." Linn's face was hard, but the flesh hadn't drawn tight across his cheek bones: to the pale eyed police chief, it seemed that Linn -- despite his relaxed appearance -- was containing himself to prevent a minor detonation. "You know what it is to stop evil and you know what it is to act when that action is necessary, and you are one HELL of a lot smarter than most men, because you recognized that you could cause hell itself if you were to let slip your dogs of war." Linn nodded slowly. "Yes, sir. I reckon that's so." "If you're smart -- and you've already proven you are -- you'll keep that scaly gut-monster inside of you where it belongs. You are its monster, it is not monster over you." Will relaxed his face, considered. "Linn, do you control your dreams?" It took Linn a moment to process this complete change of subject: he blinked, shook his head a little, then smiled ever so slightly. "Yes, sir. I do that." Will nodded. "And where did you learn that?" "Readin' Mama's Journals. I don't recall which I read about first. I don't think it was Old Pale Eyes, but it was one of 'em ... and I went into my dream and I decided I was going to have fun with it." "How did that go?" Linn laughed, a little, leaned back in his chair, his eyes swinging up to the stamped tin ceiling. He looked down at his Uncle Will, visibly relaxing. "I must have a comedian somewhere inside me," he said somewhat ruefully: "my dreams are written for a comedy act." "That is a healthy sign," Uncle Will nodded. "Did your Mama tell you about that idiot instructor she had that spoke of humor as a coping mechanism?" This time Linn laughed more easily. "I recall, sir. She said she looked at the instructor and thought, 'Sister, you don't know the half of it,' and then she said humor is not a coping mechanism, it's a SURVIVAL mechanism!" "It is that," Will agreed. "We deal in grief and loss enough to last ten men their lifetimes and if we didn't have that survivor's rotten sense of humor, we'd end up piled in a corner cryin' like a lost child." "You," Linn said slowly, "are not the first to tell me that." "I didn't think I was." Linn's gaze crawled down the back wall, then tracked along the ancient baseboard trim, ornate and dark with varnish and years and many memories. Linn was silent for long minutes; Will let him think, knowing the younger man was settling realizations into place. Linn finally rose, leaned over the desk, thrust out his hand. "Thank you, Uncle Will. I appreciate your kindness."