 Good evening, friends of the creaking door. This is your host, inviting you into the inner sanctum. Come in, come on in. Oh, come on, we love companies. Simply can't do enough to them. We've got lots of games custom designed for our guests. They are simply slayer. The favorites called a tisket, a casket. But the game we play best is called revival. Oh, it's wonderful. You pass out and we try to revive you. If we don't, you don't. Now for our eerie spell. The hitchhiking corpse. Climb up on the driver's seat. Sit close to the driver. Sean O'Hara, the bewitched man with the deep-set eyes. Hear what he has to tell about the beautiful corpse of Maidot County. The girl who lost her head over him. Eileen, the last time I saw her, she was standing where she always waits for me. The rain on the little white bridge where the road takes a bend around Moon Hollow. I could hear her call for me to stop her. My mind was made up to that. And then the lightning flash burned over her like a mission lighted candles. And she was standing there where she always waited for me. Without her head, Eileen had lost her head. Am I right in my mind now, I'm wondering? These things I know, these things that I saw. Was it a dream? The man's imagination gets tipsy when he drives a great silver van 400 miles in the lowliness of the night. Eileen, the first time I saw her, she was standing where she stood the last time on a little white bridge near Moon Hollow. Climb in, miss. Sit deep in your seat with your head low. It's a black mark on the book for me if the company inspectors see you riding in the cab. I'll be docked. They won't see me. Only you can see me, son. Only I can... You're calling me by name. No. I'm making up a name for you. But it is my name, Sean, Sean O'Hara. That's an uncanny bit of making up you just did, miss. Try, Sean. If you try, you too can do an uncanny bit of making up. With your hair like it is, and your face, just one name suits only one name. And my name? Eileen. I am Eileen. And just where are you riding to? To Nader County. But someday, not tonight. Nader County's a good 80 mile ride from Moon Hollow. Is it someday, I heard you say? Yes, someday I'll be riding to Nader County. And it will be you all who will take me there. This little to that I always pass through, mate. I could sign my route. My people came from up there. It's a big house, we once had. A great big house. Without windows. Without windows, you say? There was a great hall. And a great long table. With my people sitting round it. The living and the dead. The living and the... A house without windows and now it's the living and the dead. You're a pretty one. But you're as bad as a loon. Am I really a pretty one too, you Sean? Sure. Pretty hair. Eyes to light up a man's dream. Dirty little hands. The two of them fit into one of mine. The face. A face, Sean. No, the face I cannot praise. Why not? With all the war paint on it. If I didn't bite my tongue, I might say that what I see smeared over your cheeks is... is blood. Don't bite your tongue, Sean. If you aren't getting out, trust Shauna Harrow to pick up a jubilant farm girl who smears her face with chicken blood. Good night to you. Good night, Sean. I'll be waiting again tomorrow night at Moon Rallo. I watched her go sailing off on the mist. As high as my eyes could go, I could see her riding into the sky like a night witch. And then blowing into the smoke of the moon. There had been no Irene. I dreamed her up in my fat head. A man's imagination gets tipsy when he drives a great silver van in the loneliness of the night. I pulled into the yard behind old Morgan's diner to sleep the night from two to six curl up on my cab like I always did. I'm a hearty man and a steady sleeper, not given to dreaming. But this night, bad luck to me, I dreamed. She was leaning over me. I leaned through the moon in her eyes. And now the blood was wet on her cheeks and running down in big red beads to splash my shirt. Old Mill House in Nadak, where the water flows. The dreamin' man doesn't turn on the radio. I guess you've had all the music you need to wake you up. Was you able to turn my radio on? Me it was. Were you thinking the radio turned itself on? I had a dream about a girl. A nightmare's more like what you had. The looks I hear you were thrashing about in that seat and beating yourself on the face with your fists. Beating myself. Why is that? Through the blood. All over your shirt. Blood. Stop looking bewitched, O'Hara, and look in your truck mirror to your nose. You gave yourself a nosebleed in your sleep and that, my boy, was an old dream. An hour late for unloading in the Cloverville depot. O'Hara. Yeah, Rick. Come over to the van a minute. Well, the loaders can't get an air full. You're acting funny. We've got everything off the inventory calls for. But there are three other items. I threw a canvas cover over them before the boys got a look at them. Did you look into your van? What's under the canvas cover, Rick? Coffins, O'Hara. Three old pinewood coffins. You want to tell me something? What? To tell you? Oh, sure. I almost forgot about those coffins. It's a side job, some yokel undertaker down by Moon Hollow. I have to drop them off somewhere. Save them truck and charges that way and make myself $20 side money. Quit lying to me, O'Hara, and to yourself. Lying is safe, but it's a fact, Rick. Positively affected. I'm giving you half of the $20 for covering me. Wasn't one to pass up $20 for truck and three empty coffins. The coffins are at empty, O'Hara. And you never took a job from any local undertaker either. You seem to know a lot about something. I know Route 266. I was born and raised here. What is there to know? For one thing, the red-headed witch of Moon Hollow, maybe. You might be trucking the dead for her. Eileen? Or any name you give her. She was Katie to a trucker named Conway who had your run once. To hear Conway tell it, Katie or Eileen was always trying to get him to take her dead out of Moon Hollow to somewhere else. Tomato curry to the old millhouse. Or somewhere. Anyhow, that's how the story usually goes. But what she's really out to do is drive you crazy. How do you know there is such a girl? There's pine boxes in there. I saw them on Conway's truck once, like they're on yours now. Conway dumped them right back in Moon Hollow. Take my advice. From now on, pass the red-headed up. Jam your accelerator to the floorboard and go pass the red-80. I don't know what I'll do. What I did, bad luck to me on the trip back, was look for the waterfalls and the old millhouse when I came to the Maidock County line. Was there an old millhouse where the waterfalls I was wondering? Or was I a man looking hard to lose his mind? I brought one of the caskets to the ground. It wasn't empty, but there wasn't much weight toward either. I opened it. Held the dead all right, but not the face or the body of the dead. It was only the skeleton. The skeleton of someone dead more years than the mind can imagine. There was a waterfall in the deep woods. The music of water, Lylean's voice splashing in it. There was an old millhouse down below the rocks. A stone house without windows, like Lylean had said. I pulled an old rusted boot and opened the door to one great room and a table that went from wall to wall. It was old and the flying dust could blind a man so he'd only see what his tipsy imagination would want him to see. I saw Lylean. Lylean standing before me with her arms out. I could thin shadow my eyes could see through to the wall. Go bring the casket's shun. Go bring the dead home. Here's something terribly new in summing a ride. A witchhiker. And it eats witch too on the old boy meets girl formula. This one's boy meets girl. Lylean, now there's a funny last dead set on getting ahead. And if she keeps up the pace, she'll have a horror shun of his sanity any mile now. But let's get back beside our bewitched truck. A man's imagination gets tipsy when he drives a great silver van in the loneliness of the night. But there was an old millhouse where the water falls, as Lylean had said. And it was there I left three caskets of the old dead. Passing moon hollow on the way back, I stopped in at Morgan's diner for some Mormon coffee. It was just a little morgan putting his profits into the screamin' jukebox. Oh, her! It's you! Nobody else. I've been waitin' all night for you to come. I stopped for a time in my duck. Well, I just take it the way you look. Have I slipped out on you for a meal? No. I don't understand the looks of you. This shoebox. Oh, you see. Your name's rippin' on it. Sean O'Henner. And left by home. The devil's own daughter. Her face was enough to send a man hidein' in his crown. Her face sold smooth with blood, was it? I've seen her, too. We are all acquaintances by now. When I left Morgan's prying eyes, I opened the shoebox. It held a small white envelope, and an old rusted tin can. I opened the envelope. Two tickets there were, to a costume party in the moon hollow firehouse for the next night. And the tin can, full of money. A shower and a Vindian pennies and buffalo nickels, coins with a grit and tarnace of years on it. Like some miser had saved them in a secret nook of the kitchen. That was too much for a tired working man to puzzle out. My poor head would have none of it. Oh, to hold back that night. It was time enough for puzzles another night. She'd be standin' on the little white bridge where the road takes a bend. And then I would put my questions to her. And for me to stop. Her dress was changed. It was a costume now she was wearin'. All silk and gay, like she was dressed up for a party. You weren't going to stop. In fact, no, you'll not be ridin' in my cab. And I'll not be truckin' your dead ancestors any more. Not for a barrel of nickels and pennies here. Take your money. No. It was grandmother's savings. She wants you to have it. Oh, so there's a grandmother too, isn't it? Yes. And when will she be ridin' along to the old millhouse? Tonight, Sean. She will ride with you tonight. And after that, I'll be ridin' with you to made up too. And that settles the count of your people? No. It still is you, Sean. Am I here when you say me? Yes, you too will sit at the long table in the great hall of the dead. You will sit beside me. Alive, is it to be, or dead? Dead, Sean. Like us. And what will snuff me out a hearty man like me without a sickness? You will just die. Your heart will just stop. My heart will stop. Don't want to sit beside me. It's not my way of woein' a lady. Sean? Yes, I need. Do you like my costume? I do. And what's it for? The dance at the firehouse. I thought you would take me. I think not. Then I will go along. Good night, Sean. Compliments of the evening to you, miss. Dead of sleepin' in old Morgan's yard. There I was just before the midnight hour. In the costume of a trucker with a totter in mind. And lookin' for Ileane in the firehouse. I found her in her stilkin' gaze here where the Japanese lads were dimmest. The dirty mask that the others were. Dancing like the others. Sean? You're not surprised I came? I knew you'd come. You're not dancing? The music is stopped. It's unmasking time. Midnight's not a minute away. The caller's another... Attention! Attention, everyone! Where's Sean O'Hara? Speak again. Say my name again. Your voice. Is that the voice of Ileane? I am not Ileane. Put your hand to my mask, Sean. I am old. And the life you see is the last I have to show. Look at me for the last time, O'Hara. I am Ileane's grandmother. But Ileane, she was here. Her hand was in mine. Dressed in the costume with the silk and gear that you're now wearing. Ileane slipped away. To leave me with you. You have business with me now, Sean. Business, you see? Take me to Maida County. The old millhouse where the water falls. I'll be waiting tonight with you, O'Hara. I drove the lonely night to the Maida County line. With my freight of storage eggs and canned puts. I met dead in a pine box. The old grandmother and her silks was in her casket. I didn't bother to ask whose job it was. I put the questions to Ileane the next time she waited for me where the road takes a bend around Moon Hollow. And she was there like I know she'd be. Pointing her thumb to hitch a ride. I did what the checker read late. She said Conway failed the tour. I passed her up. I pushed the gas accelerator to the floor and passed her by and ate. A streak where the highway bends into Moon Hollow. But I didn't leave Ileane behind. She was on the seat beside me. You didn't want to stop, Sean? Beside me. Without her head. I did, Sean. Now drive me to Maida County. Imagination gets tipsy. The sheriff of Maida County is one to know it. And the doctor beside him looking at me with eyes of pity is one to know it too. I hear them talking to me. But the words go sailing into the smoke of the moon. I listen. But I do not understand. You ran over on the bridge down in Moon Hollow last night. A 20-ton truck or her. Her head was severed. I'll tell you all you need to know about Ileane Grant, her grandmother and her people. They were run out of the old mill out of Maida County about 30 years ago. Native superstition did that. The family was thought to have, well, called it evil powers. Where did you take Ileane to, Hannah? No. Ileane. What did you do with the body? I'll take you to her. Come, I'll take you to her. I took the sheriff and the doctor to the old mill house where the water falls. Here, sheriff, is Ileane and her people sitting around the table in the great hall of the dead. Who, Hannah? To do this, to set them around the table like that, you couldn't be in your right mind, man. No, I couldn't be. And I'm no one to admit that. I'm not in my right mind to sit here beside Ileane now. What can there ever be between a man and a girl sitting in rotten in an old mill with her ancestors looking for none? Oh, Harry, take a look at him. To sit down and die just like that. Just like that, sheriff. Oh, Harry's heart just stopped. As if. As a special inducement to insanity, a pretty girl can tell you which of the two jobs is the more harrowing. Well, I've got one carved right here on my vertebra. This is for any motorist who runs across Ileane. Give her the go-by, Bob. Or she'll get you with dead mileage. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Pleasant.