The Search
Althea had taken the train back home alone. All Tony had said was he and Doug needed to help a coworker before rushing off. When Ann left to join them, she knew they weren't going to be back that night. Ann had said something about the coworker being hospitalized, but didn't know much about it. Tony's work as she knew it was saving items and information for posterity, nothing dangerous. Someone came to collect them every so often, she once encountered a young man at his apartment when they returned from a ballgame, another time traveler who Tony invited in and sent off with a prepared suitcase in a matter of minutes.
"Is that you, dear?" her aunt asked from the other room as she hung up her coat.
"Yes"
"Is Anthony with you?"
"No, he isn't." He usually did see her home after a date.
"We had a bit of excitement around here." Aunt Edwina greeted her in the foyer, "Did you see the elm in front? One of the neighborhood boys tried sawing it down. I heard him and went out swinging my cane and ran him off. Most cane-raising since Eve raised Cain!" She laughed at her own joke. Althea's mother's sister had moved to America with her husband thirty years earlier, now a widow, it was important to her to have other people around.
Althea smiled, "Happy Halloween, Auntie." she kissed her on the forehead and retired to her room for the evening.
It was getting late; Tony, Doug, and Ann were driving up and down the bowery searching for the mummy to no avail. Tony pulled over seeing a policeman pounding his beat. "Officer," he chose his words carefully, "we can't find a friend of ours, did you happen to see anyone in a mummy costume?"
"No. Arrested two sheiks, a Roman senator, and a witch earlier tonight, though." He answered with an inflection of levity. Halloween wasn't making this search any easier, investigating broken windows and other random vandalism had slowed their search.
"We'll split up," Tony suggested, "Doug, you take the wheel, and I'll search on foot."
He hopped out and Doug scooted over.
"Look out!" Ann screamed immediately as a riderless horse came bolting by, nearly knocking Tony over.
"Rotten kids!" the officer ran after the horse, almost cornering it in a doorway but it slipped past him, escaping down an alley with the officer tailing it.
"You check Chinatown, I'll see if we missed anything here, we'll rendezvous back in an hour," Tony said, unshaken.
"I still think it's a waste of time," Ann said.
"Then it's a waste of time," Doug answered, "but would you want to miss the opportunity if it isn't?"
Ann smiled, "Oh no, I'd love nothing better than to meet a living mummy in a dark alley."
Tony poked his head in a few saloons, nothing out of the ordinary for the neighborhood. The juvenile pranks and hijinks from earlier in the night seemed to be winding down. Until reading about it in the newspaper a few days earlier, he had been mostly unaware of what the locals called "The Halloween Problem." Something he just vaguely remembered people of his parents' generation mention here and there in October. So much for a normal evening, he thought. Maybe he was being selfish considering what happened to Jim, but he wished his friends had had the opportunity to get to know each other. Walking down the sidewalk he could faintly hear a chirping noise in the distance. He ran to its source, the policeman who was chasing the horse less than thirty minutes earlier blowing his whistle in front of a small church as he knelt over the pale, lifeless body of a sixteen-year-old boy.
"This is going too far," the officer said, visibly shaken. Something had forcibly drained the blood from the boy's body. By the nearby lamplight, Tony could just make out a sort of moldy gray residue left around his broken neck.
