He unrolled the top of the sack very slowly and slid the contents out onto his lap. Amidst the Zagnut bars and the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and the Teen Titans annual were the things he’d picked up as he stood in the aisle of the drugstore and surveyed the Halloween supplies and wondered, What if? They were the tools of his desperate doomsday plan: two sticks of clown-white facial paint, a pair of Vampire Teeth, and a thick tube of stage blood appropriately titled in dripping letters Tube O’ Gore. He laid them out on his leg like surgical instruments. First the face paint. There wasn’t enough light to read the instructions, but he remembered glancing at them in the store—the sticks needed to be moistened for application. He tried to spit into his hand but nothing would come out. His throat was too dry. He had to work at it, dredging it up with his tongue just like when he used to hocker out the window of the school bus onto passing cars. He finally got a drop or two into his palm, just enough to wet the stick. Then he ran it across the back of his hand. The grease came off thick and lumpy but was the right shade of death, and the lumps looked like the flesh was beginning to decompose. Neat. He covered his hands and then his face, all over, even up into his hairline and down his neck. Then he put the teeth in. If only he had a mirror . . . As a finishing touch, he used the Tube O’ Gore to smear his lips red and dribbled the fake blood from the corners of his mouth, just like they always did in the Hammer films. The stuff had a pungent, plastic taste when he inadvertently licked his lips. He was careful not to do it again.

He was hyperventilating by the time he finished. It has to work, he repeated. It has to, it has to. He took a deep breath and stood up.

No one turned to look at him. The vampires, which he could see more clearly now, were hunched over their prey and much too engrossed to notice him. So far, so good. But how will you ever get past them? It was like an obstacle course and an Indian gauntlet all rolled into one.

He stepped slowly, hesitantly around the furnace. Out into the open.

There was immediate movement to his right. He froze. His neck refused to turn; only his eyes would obey, sneaking to the corners to see.