“Daisy!” Sinclair shouted after me. “Should we . . . ?”

“I don’t know!” I called over my shoulder as I hurried to catch up with Cody.

My first thought when I saw the apparition shambling toward the rear of the parade was that it was one hell of a costume, or maybe a larger-than-life puppet like the Pumpkinhead. What else would you think if you saw a seven-foot-tall skeleton clad in steel-plate armor, wreathed in crackling blue lightning, holding a wicked-looking axe in one hand? As it drew near, spectators were craning to get a better look at it and already beginning to cheer.

But then Cody stopped dead in the intersection, so quickly I nearly ran into him from behind.

It wasn’t a costume, and there were no clever puppeteers controlling it with poles. Those discolored bones were real, and a foul, acrid scent mingled with the odor of rot and decay hung in the air around the figure. That axe wasn’t plastic; it was a serious and deadly sharp-looking tool for splitting wood. Whatever was causing the lightning, it wasn’t some clever use of LED lights. And the armor . . . I don’t know what the hell the armor was about, but it definitely wasn’t decorative.

The Tall Man’s grinning jaw gaped and blue flames flickered in his hollow eye sockets as he released a booming laugh that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, reverberating against the walls of the buildings.

The pit of my stomach dropped and my blood felt like it was turning to ice water in my veins.

“What the hell?” It was Chief Bryant, sounding angry and bewildered. “What the hell is it?”

“Talman Brannigan, sir,” Cody said flatly.

Sinclair arrived at a run, breathing hard. “And my grandfather’s duppy.”

Chief Bryant stared at all three of us, at the members of the coven, the Scooby Gang, and the ghoul squad converging behind us. The Tall Man stood motionless, axe raised. Several yards away, Stacey Brooks stood frozen in terror, the camera forgotten in her hands.

The noisy crowd had fallen silent and uncertain, and the parade participants were retreating into an uncertain cluster.

Behind the figure of the Tall Man, an elderly man in a leisure suit capered and cackled. There was something familiar about the tenor of that voice. I’d heard it over an intercom, although it hadn’t been cackling at the time. The Tall Man’s jaw gaped again, one bony hand rising to point at Stacey Brooks as he uttered a single word.

“CAVANNAUGH!”

Stacey let out an earsplitting scream.

Oh, shit.