by Joseph Fink
The yard of the school was broad, a huge expanse of lawn, five acres or more, now crowded with costumed students parading. Esther won her grade, of course. She waited until halfway through the parade to activate the extra heads, and even the many kids who had seen them before applauded. It was a really good effect. She didn’t win every year out of legacy. She worked for and earned every win. She was great at Halloween.
Brad Winters was dressed in a store-bought zombie costume. He had given up trying.
As Esther accepted the prize, a brief ceremony that was important only to her, she looked over the crowd of kids who were no longer paying attention and had moved on to shoving each other and playing basketball in full costume. Esther saw something that made her heart beat strangely.
It was a woman, standing in the park on the other side of the fence from the school. She was wearing an old-style gown, Victorian maybe, although Esther had never been particularly good with fashion. Clothes only interested her when they were called costumes.
This didn’t look like a costume. This didn’t look like a woman dressed up as a Victorian lady for Halloween. The woman looked like she lived in those clothes, and she looked as lost in time as her dress. Her hair was piled on itself, messy but in a way that seemed intentional, and her face was the imperious face of a woman used to giving orders and having those orders followed. Or else.
The woman was watching the Halloween parade from the edge of the canyon. The bottom of her dress must be getting filthy in the dust, Esther thought. It was when she thought this that she realized what else was peculiar about what she was seeing.
The woman’s feet were not touching the ground. She was floating several inches off the dirt.
“Take the award, Esther. Come on, stop dragging this out,” Mrs. Hooper said, thrusting it at her again. Esther took the piece of paper, hot from the break room printer, and said, “Thanks, Mrs. Hooper.”
She looked back to the canyon, but the woman was gone. No one floats. Esther wasn’t the best in science class, but she understood that no one floats. What she had seen wasn’t real. But she had seen it. The woman’s face had been set into a cruel sneer, like she had done terrible things and planned to do even more terrible things soon. It was impossible that she had seen the woman. She knew she had seen the woman.
“If even Esther doesn’t care,” said Mrs. Hooper, “then I don’t know why we do this whole prize thing.” She grumbled the whole way back to the office. “How did Howard convince me to be in charge of this anyway? I don’t even like Halloween.”
SCHOOL ENDED, and the flood of imaginary characters, shorter and younger than traditionally portrayed, roared out the front gates. There was excited talk of who was going to what party or going trick-or-treating where.
No one should have been more excited than Esther, but she felt weighed down by the odd things she had seen. The creepy apple man and those weird kids last night were one thing, but what to say about a woman whose feet did not touch the ground?
Agustín could tell she was bothered, but he misunderstood the source of it.
“Man, I know, I know,” he said. He did not know. “It sucks that your parents are making you sneak around like this, but you’re smart. You’ll get away with it.”
“Thanks to you.”
“That’s right,” he said, laughing. “Don’t forget it either.”
“See you later?”
“My mom will be back in her workshop all afternoon. It’s been really busy lately. Which is good, I guess. But mind if I walk with you for a bit?”
“What is it this time?”
“What is it any time? I mean, she makes money. Got us our house in this bougie white neighborhood. So. But it’d be nice to see her more.” He tried to play it off as complaining, but his voice was deeply and truly sad. “Just be nice to see her more is all.”
As they walked down the sidewalk, Sasha Min’s mom leaned out of her minivan.
“Hey, kids, sure I can’t drive you home?”
“No, Mom!” Sasha said from the passenger seat.
“Sasha Elizabeth Min, you will be polite or you will be walking home,” her mom snapped. This was an empty threat, as there was no way that she would ever let Sasha walk home.
Esther found herself feeling sorry for Sasha, who had never wandered the after-school sidewalks, the neighborhood yards, or the dirt trails in the canyon. So much of Esther’s life was made of those wanderings, and it seemed that so much of Sasha’s was from the passenger seat of that car. Then she caught herself. What did she care about Sasha’s life?
“That’s okay, Mrs. Min,” Esther said. “I like walking.”
“How about you, Agustín?” Mrs. Min said.
Sasha stared glumly at her feet.
“No, Mrs. Min. That’s very nice of you,” he said. “We’re going to walk.”
Sasha’s mom shook her head, clearly baffled by the choices that some people make.
“If you’re sure,” she said, and turned on the engine.
“Thank god,” Sasha said, loudly and clearly.
“Sasha, you knock it off right now or I won’t take you trick-or-treating.”
Esther and Agustín walked away laughing.
“Looks like someone is in trouble,” he said.
They crossed the park next to the school. She couldn’t stop staring at the place where the woman had been. Now it was only another part of the park. A man was throwing tennis balls for three pit bulls who scrambled and wrestled on their way to fetching them. The high school cross-country team was running on a long loop back to the school. A group of community college students were parked in the lot, hanging out and eating fast food. Everything was normal. She had mistaken what she had seen was all. Still, she couldn’t make herself believe that.
“Gus, you should go to the movies with your mom.”
He glared at her. “You’re changing your mind now? I already canceled on her.”
“No, not changing my mind, no. It’s just . . .” She tried to find a way to form the thought that wouldn’t offend him or make him feel pitied. Feeling pitied was horrible. “It’s just you haven’t gotten to see your mom much lately. Because of how busy she is. I mean, you see me every day. So I appreciate what you’re doing, but maybe you should spend that time with your mom, not me.”
He stopped walking, so she stopped walking.
“Est, listen. She makes the choices she makes. You didn’t make those choices for her. If my mom wanted to see me more, she could see me more. You’re not responsible for that. Don’t try to fix my relationship with my mom, okay?”
He turned and started walking again, faster than before. She hurried to catch up.
“Okay, sorry, I just thought—”
“You were wrong. How’s the essay in English going for you?”
She accepted this change of subject gratefully, a sign that he had no interest in spending the day annoyed with her. “Mostly good. Geometry though, right?”
He stuck his tongue out at her. “I’m doing pretty great in geometry actually.”
They made their way down into the canyon. With Agustín at her side, the tunnel didn’t creep her out. Instead, it was merely a nice respite from the sun. As pleasant as the weather in Southern California was, sometimes all any of them wanted was an escape from it. Thus the hours spent inside on the internet, looking at pictures of the world outside, or under the blue chemical waters of swimming pools, smelling chlorine instead of sagebrush.
“Feats of Strength,” she blurted.
“What, really?”
They hadn’t done a game of Feats of Strength in a year, partly because they felt like maybe they had outgrown it, and partly because their parents would kill them if they found out.
But Esther was already clambering up the rocks on the side of the tunnel entrance, so Agustín took after her. They scooted carefully over the narrow ledge and then back down the rocks on the other side.
Then into the drainpipe. She had grown a bit sinc
e the last time they had done this, and it was even tighter than she remembered, squeezing at her shoulders. She didn’t want to think what would happen if she got stuck. The worst part was when the pipe turned, and everything was completely dark for several feet until you felt the exit to your left, and made your way down the even more narrow pipe to the bit of sunlight ahead, hoping no snakes had decided to make their home in the darkness. She pushed her way out and ran up the hill, dodging cacti.
Agustín’s shoulders had gotten broader, and so he struggled to get out of the drainpipe, but he finally was up the hill too. Then along the top of the hill, to the final ledge, where Esther was waiting, looking down at the pond far below.
“This time I’m gonna do it,” she said.
“Man, don’t do that,” he said. “That water is disgusting.”
And the fall is so far, she could feel him thinking, because she was thinking it too.
“If we don’t do it now,” she said, “when are we going to do it? We’re getting too old for this game.”
He took her point, but it didn’t make the ledge they were on any less high.
“Do you really want to explain to your mom why you’re soaked through with gutter water?” he said. “Because I don’t.”
“Alright,” she said. “Another Feats of Strength without a winner. Except I won.”
“No one won.”
“I got to the end first.”
“It doesn’t count if you didn’t actually finish.”
They argued happily down to the trail and up the steep slope out of the canyon, back up to the streets. Mr. Nathaniel was out washing his car, of course. When he saw them, he stopped the spray of the water.
“Hey, kids,” he barked.
Esther couldn’t remember a time he had ever talked to any of them. His voice was higher and lighter than she expected, given his age and his constant glower. They kept walking, unsure of how to ignore him but desperately wanting to.
“Hey, kids,” he said again. They stopped.
“Do you smell that?” Mr. Nathaniel said.
“What?” Agustín said.
Mr. Nathaniel took a long sniff in. They could hear the mucus in his nasal passages and were both silently grossed out, but there was something magnetic about how unabashed he was. When he was done with his snorting, he shook his head.
“Unmistakable, that smell.” He pointed at them, a finger that was halfway between cautionary and accusing. “You kids stay inside this evening. Stay safe. It’s a Halloween moon tonight.”
“Okay, Mr. Nathaniel,” Esther said.
One more loud sniff, then Mr. Nathaniel went back to spraying his car.
“Unmistakable. She’ll be out tonight,” he muttered.
The two of them took the opportunity to speed-walk away.
“What a psycho,” Agustín said. “I’m glad I’m not his neighbor.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Mr. Gabler was pulling into his drive. “Oh, hi there, Esther,” he said as he got out of his car.
“Hello, Mr. Gabler,” she said. “Home early?”
He grinned. “Not a lot of dental appointments on Halloween afternoon for some reason. See you tonight?”
He held up the plastic shopping bag full of miniature tubes of toothpaste.
“Maybe!” she said, as brightly as she could in order to hide her disgust.
“I know, I know, not as exciting as candy, but you can get candy anywhere else. You can only get dental health from one place. Say hi to your folks for me.”
He cheerily carried the plastic bags of toothpaste that no child would ever use into the house.
As Esther and Agustín neared her corner, they slowed down.
“See you in a couple hours?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll bring a costume for you.” She looked thoughtfully back the way they had come. “He’s not wrong, you know.”
“That Mr. Gabler’s house is the only place you can get dental health?”
“No, what Mr. Nathaniel said. Tonight will be the first Halloween full moon in nineteen years.”
“So you think we should stay inside for our safety?”
“Are you kidding? I would hate to miss the only time I’ll ever be able to go trick-or-treating under a full moon. It’s going to be so cool.”
“Alright, Halloween Girl, see you then.” He started toward his house.
She stayed on her front steps for a bit, trying to get as excited about tonight as she wanted to be. As she stood there, she heard what sounded like the laughter of children, but with a grating, mechanical edge to it. She looked up to see, at the end of the block, a small group of trick-or-treaters. A clown. A robot. And a dinosaur. Dirty. Costumes ripped. Faces turned so she couldn’t see what they looked like. The kids were running after someone who had already passed out of sight around the corner. Esther could just see the adult’s long shadow in the afternoon sunlight, and then the shadow was gone, and then the children were gone too.
“Happy Halloween,” she said to herself. “Looks like it’s going to be a scary one.”
THE AFTERNOON PASSED in a blur of nervousness and homework. She had never snuck out like this on her parents. But she didn’t have any choice. They were keeping her from her most important holiday. It was like persecution or something.
Once her homework was done, she put on another of her favorite scary movies. This was about a rich family in an isolated house deep in the woods. Men with animal masks start attacking them. It was a gory movie, and Esther had to keep reminding herself how movie effects worked and that no one was actually being injured. Her parents would have shut that down pretty quick, so she kept the volume so low she could barely hear the masked men saying creepy things to each other.
Her dad practiced saxophone in the garage for hours. She had to admit he was getting better, but woodwinds still eluded him, and he mostly sounded like someone whose lunch had disagreed with him. When she couldn’t concentrate on the movie over the groaning and farting saxophone, she settled on organizing her costume and makeup. She carefully packed it all into a three-ring binder. That way she could leave home with it under the guise of taking some homework over to Agustín’s house.
She knocked on her brother’s door. No answer. She knocked again and then opened it a crack.
“Ben?”
But he was out with his friends, she knew he was. She also knew where he kept his old costumes, in a plastic bin on the floor of his closet, along with old T-shirts that he liked but that were too ripped up or faded to wear.
She had to wade through the sea of dirty clothes, food wrappers, and crumpled-up paper that made up the base of any teenage boy’s room.
“Gross,” she said, but she didn’t really care. She was on a mission. She managed to open the closet door through the debris blocking it, dug around a bit, and pulled out the plastic bin of old costumes. She went through them for one that she thought Agustín wouldn’t hate. Then she did her best to arrange the mess back the way it had been. She couldn’t imagine her brother would have noticed if she had driven a bulldozer through his room, so she wasn’t too worried about exactly how things looked when she was done. She put the folded-up costume in the now bulging binder.
As she got up to leave, she saw Sharon at the door watching her. Esther gave her another big wink. Sharon laughed and blinked back, having not yet learned how to wink herself.
Finally it was time to go meet Agustín.
“Where’s Dad?” she asked her mom, who was reading the news on her phone, shoes off, feet up on the coffee table.
“He’s taking a nap. Guess all that saxophone tired him out. Let’s hope he sleeps through me destroying it.”
Esther laughed and her mom smiled. It was a little disappointing though. Her dad was usually easier to run stuff by. He asked fewer questions.
“I’m going to head out to meet up with Agustín and his mom.”
Her mom put her phone down and looked Esther in her eyes for a
long moment, until Esther started to feel uncomfortable.
“Okay, hun. What movie are you seeing?”
“Um.” She hadn’t actually thought to look up a specific movie. The only ones she kept track of were the latest low-budget, trashy horror movies, of which there were usually a bunch around Halloween. She could rattle off a number of those that she wanted to see, but there was no chance that Agustín or his mom would have been interested in watching them, and it wouldn’t have been believable at all. She realized that she could not name a single other movie that was out at the time. Well, there went the plan. It was a good try. She’d be staying in tonight after all.
“Uh,” she said, “Agustín’s mom isn’t sure what she wants to see. She’s going to pick one when we get there.”
Her mom held her gaze for a moment longer, but then she yawned deeply.
“Geez. I guess I’m more worn out than I thought. I’ll probably go to bed early tonight.” She shrugged, looking unable to focus on anything but how exhausting her day had been. “Okay, well have fun. Try not to wake us up when you get home.”
“I won’t, Mom, thank you, love you.” She hugged her mom.
“Alright, alright,” her mom said. “I’m probably letting you get away with something, but I’m too tired to care. It’s your lucky day.”
“Of course it’s my lucky day,” Esther said. “It’s Halloween.” She skipped away, threw on her costume, and grabbed the binder that the makeup was hidden in. By the time she headed out the door, her mom was already dozing off on the couch.
Esther figured that when she was older she would be that tired at the end of the day. But for now, she felt the excitement and energy of the holiday burbling inside her.
“It’s Halloween!” she allowed herself to shout, scaring a dog across the street who barked grumpily at her and then went back to sleep. “It’s Halloween,” she said again, quieter, but no less happy.
