The Police Get a Real Halloween It was pretty plain what these guys were up to. It was obviously two madcap Halloween revellers, one of them dressed like a gorilla and the other very humorously put together like one of those pumpkin-headed people who looklike well-fed scarecrows. They were walking down the sidewalk on Main Street, right in front of Ryan's Heating & Plumbing, when Police Lieutenant Starbuck nabbed them, stepping from a dark doorway with his flashlight in his left hand and a pair of handcuffs clenched in his right. The gorilla started making ridiculous hissing sounds and he opened his mouth to show his red jaws and dripping fangs. The Pumpkin Man appeared more faint at heart, and he collapsed in a heap right at Lt. Starbuck's feet. The Lieutenant felt almost sorry for at least this more fragile of the two marauders, but he knew what he had to do. "Come on," the policeman said, "you are wanted for questioning." "In connection with what!" drawled the Gorilla, who really was magnificent. Something in his voice indicated that, indeed, he had been through this kind of interrogation before. Well a good cop has no time for nonsense. You don't have conversations with suspects before they have even been dressed down at headquarters. Starbuck hastened them to walk spritely, right over to City Hall, which was in sight of this quick capture--after the Pumpkin Man, that is, had picked himself up and screwed his head back on. The Gorilla was marching forward with his hands raised in the air muttering in mocking tones his inane protests. In the Police Dept. office Sergeant Baldaxe was sitting with his feet up on the desk, talking on the telephone. The appearance of Starbuck with a couple revellers was the least of his problems, he thought. The Lieutenant heard the Sergeant talking in that raspy, phone-weary, Sergeant's voice of his. "Damn it," he was saying, "I've got enough to put up with, without you creating a holy hell of fire tonight." He held up his hug mitt of a hand in a threatening sort of hello to the entering Lieutenant, hardly acknowledging the two ridiculous figures who came with him. Sergeant Baldaxe was the only person in the city who was sufficiently aware what a foolish mistake it was for the Fire Department to be engaged in burning down an old abandoned house, in one of the Fire Dept.'s famous real-life practice drills, on Halloween Even. It wasn't that Baldaxe took seriously the people who said the old house was haunted--he certainly didn't believe in ghosts, he didn't believe in pumpkins!--he was so cynical. A good cop of necessity believes in nothing that isn't right in front of him. Sure! Though that was difficult even at the moment, when right in front of him were a Pumpkin Man, and a very lifelike gorilla, barely under control of the Lieutenant, but Baldaxe was proceeding with his demands over the phone well enough. "This is the stupidest piece of business," he was saying to Fire Chief Red O'Leary, "to be running a practice fire-fighting drill right at midnight on the most hazardous night of the year." Anything could happen! The so-called "haunted" house was located down at the edge on a long undeveloped valley north of Main street, and the former owner, Lyman McFaddin, a fashion photographer who left his hometown for California in 1983, had written a letter requesting the City take over the property and tear it down. He was plagued by thoughts of accidents, prowling children falling down the cellar stairs, etc., and insurance suits. Indeed, McFadden's house was the most wrecked-up miserable looking mansion left of the old days. Huge mushrooms were growing through cracks in the floors of the dining room, exposed thoroughly to the weather by the event of an oak tree having shouldered one winter the whole northern wall halfway off its foundation. Of course all kinds of nocturnal creatures like owls and bats, and runaway kittens, were fighting for space upstairs, in those cozy corners where the moonlight shone on old mattresses . . . where McFadden used to sleep in many visitors . . . visitors from out of town arriving under mysterious cover, some never leaving, some murdered it was rumored . . .what! Baldaxe was dreaming, dozing as he listened to the Fire Chief explain why they should torch this place, on midnight on Halloween. Damn, and with these two idiot revellers now standing in his office, whom the usually dexterous Starbuck had not yet managed to convince to take off their costumes, Sergeant Baldaxe was trying to call the conflagration off. He felt he had to. "Damn it," he said again, "I've got enough to put up with!" He slammed the phone down. He was really amazed that he hadn't broken that phone yet. "Now who do we have here," he said, switching to a tone of softly malicious interrogation. "Who do we have here?" Lt. Starbuck was meanwhile staring at the Pumpkin Man's left arm and hand, which seemed to be dangling quite loosely from his shoulder. It was hard to believe, but the guy must have really short arms, because he had rigged-up a very lifelike scarecrow effect here, by a pair of workman's gloves stuffed with hay or something and tied to his sweatshirt so tight at the wrist with a piece of twine that the resulting Pumpkin Man didn't have any wrists at all. Well right, Starbuck decided to grab the fellow by the elbow, just to show him he knew there was flesh and blood behind that costume. But the Pumpkin Man promptly collapsed in a heap on the floor again, and Starbuck found himself, absurdly, thinking to go after it. He looked pretty bad, Starbuck did, with his hand on his gun, standing guard next to this now headless scarecrow. Then the Gorilla managed to swoop up the pumpkin and put it back in place, on top of the sweatshirt stuffed with straw, and with the carved face staring straight at the Sergeant at his desk, as it had been. With that, Starbuck was kind of choked up, for some reason, while the Sergeant was still waiting for an explanation. "Pretty good," Baldaxe said, "you say this fellow was giving you trouble?" The Sergeant didn't believe in ghosts, or creatures whose one night in the world in Halloween, certainly--but he did believe that some people would go to extravagant lengths to amuse themselves by torturing a sensible man's understanding of reality. Well, the Lieutenant explained, he was following orders. He had discovered the Gorilla, and his more unassuming partner, strolling boldly down the sidewalk, and he had hauled them for questioning. Otherwise, he said, the streets were clear. New Halloween ordinances seemed to be generally working. This year, there were supervised parties in three different locations, at the Eagles Club, in the basement of the Congregational Church, and at the old Grange Hall. A special squadron of county Sheriff's deputies, posing as "trick or treaters", had confiscated some five garbage bags full of candy from houses on the backstreets. They went inside one house where an elderly couple had put on quite a nice display of old-fashioned apple bobbing, which they left alone, but for the rest all suspicious candy was right now being sorted and tested in Middlebury, then it would be melted down and thrown in the Sewage Treatment Plant. Neither Lieutenant Starbuck nor the Sergeant had apparently noticed it, but the Gorilla, meanwhile, who moved like a dancer despite his hairy bulk, had drifted over to the file cabinets and was right then thumbing through a series of folders. The truth was that Sergeant Baldaxe only knew how to deal with bold criminal action in theory. "Say now, Gorilla," he said in a teasing voice, as if at any moment he could drop him through the floor. "Say now, Gorilla, that's not the place for you to be looking." Then the Sergeant walked over and tried to lift the gorilla mask right off the reveller's head--which wasn't so easy. Starbuck was meanwhile trying to undo the handcuffs with he had put on the Pumpkin Man, without having the wordless fellow crumple up on him again. The hard part was looking at his face, because you could see right through the row of teeth, the triangular nose, and the eyes to the glow of candlelight that filled the inside of his head . . . The Gorilla, meanwhile, didn't exactly enjoy being boxed on the ears. So he poked the Sergeant in the stomach with his fat paw, and then arrogantly sat down himself at the Sergeant's desk, and picked up the telephone. "How do use one of these things," the Gorilla asked. "I'd like to talk with the Fireman, O'Leary I believe you called him, who you were talking to before. I think they should burn the house down, that's my opinion." "What is the meaning of this!" the Sergeant shouted. Great, he thought, I'm shouting at a gorilla whose parked himself at my desk. "Nothing to get upset about," the Gorilla said calmly. "Just the upper, or rather outermost, regions of hell have broken loose tonight. We are harmless--only we are easily offended, so watch your lip." It was hard to listen to a speech like that. Baldaxe found himself hoping the Pumpkin Man would say something. "This is absurd," the Sergeant weakly cried, "I must be dreaming." He kept hoping he would have the feeling he was dreaming, but the familiar reality of the Police Dept. office was cold water on that hope. He felt like he was caving in--he couldn't see straight. This show was going to lead to something . . . for which he wasn't quite prepared. The Gorilla kept talking. "The annoying thing about you people is your superior attitude," he said. "We're sick to death of your ignoring everything in the universe that doesn't happen to fit in with your definitions." "How's that again," the Sergeant said. "Just what I said," the Gorilla taunted him. "I see, a real intellectual!" the Sergeant shouted at the beast. "We listen to alot of crap in here. Why don't you just be a good gorilla and get out of my chair?" The Sergeant was saying that, but he was thinking about something else. It was something in the Gorilla's voice. Suddenly he got it. The Gorilla's voice wasn't coming out of the Gorilla's mouth. The Gorilla's mouth, in fact, wasn't moving. His voice was booming in the Sergeant's head. "You're giving me a headache," the Sergeant said. Then the worst thing of all happened. The Gorilla did seem to open his mouth, like he was going to scream . . . or roar. And the Sergeant fainted dead away on the floor. Starbuck, across the office, was still transfixed by the Pumpkin Man. When he heard the crash of the fallen Sergeant he moved over to help him, but the Gorilla leapt over the desk and blocked his path. Okay, Baldaxe was behind the desk, slumped on the floor, his feet were sticking out. Wait a minute!--those weren't his feet, but just an old pair of Army boots. Very calmly, and in a manner quite like the Police Sergeant himself, the Gorilla then started to dial the phone, while keeping his eyes right on the shaky Lieutenant. Starbuck heard him say, to the Fire Chief on the other end: "Okay, you can go ahead, have your drill, it's only a drill. We've had a change of heart around here. After all, Red Old Boy, it's Halloween." He was cheerful as hell, this Gorilla now completely in charge of the Police Dept. Now Starbuck was slow on some things, but when he head the Gorilla talking he knew he'd heard that voice before. Sure enough if that the wasn't the Sergeant's voice. It as the Sergeant's cheerful-as-hell voice, which the Gorilla had, somehow, commandeered. Just to make sure, though, of everybody's whereabouts, he checked behind the desk. Sure enough, the Sergeant was gone. So the Lieutenant become extremely thoughtful, and then he surprised himself with quick action. He hadn't thought he knew what to do, but suddenly he walked right over to the Pumpkin Man, and socked him in the stomach. "For mercy," he said, as he socked him. Then he proceeded to take his clothes, his gloves, and finally he took the pumpkin itself and put it on his own head. "Let's go," he said to his partner, "we're on the other side all year. Let's see what it's like to have a real Halloween." And thus transformed the fabulous duo went out into the night, out toward the practice fire at the haunted house, out amongst the other tricksters, feeling privileged and lucky that the ghosts of their real selves had come to fetch them on the night which, of all nights, they didn't want to be . . . policemen.