by Joseph Fink
They were quiet for a long time, except for the occasional sniffle, as the big orange moon placidly shone from precisely the position in the sky where it had been shining since the adults had gone to sleep and the monsters had appeared.
“Why,” said Esther, and even as she said it she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, “why are you such a bully to me?”
Sasha pulled away from her. “What?”
“You’re always so mean. You’re always making fun of me. It sucks. Why do you do that?”
Sasha looked down at her hands, twisted them this way and that. “There are always bullies.”
“Yeah, but why do you have to be one of them?”
“I don’t know,” whispered Sasha. “People say cruel things about me, and I get so caught up in the anger. And I just want to do what they do to me. I don’t even believe the things I say.”
“I know,” Esther said. “But they’re still awful to hear. It’s awful to be told that who you are is wrong or inhuman.”
“I know. I hear it all the time too.”
“It’s terrible, being on the wrong side of it.”
“It is.”
There was another long quiet, but this one felt different. Neither of them was crying anymore. They were caught in something heavy and tangled and vast, and neither of them could see a way out.
“I’m sorry,” tried Sasha.
“I don’t know if that’s enough.”
“Okay.” Sasha nodded.
“I’m sorry that people are cruel to you too.”
“I know.” Sasha looked at her. “Are we okay?”
Esther thought about this. “No,” she decided. “I don’t think that we are. But I think that we could be.”
Esther looked solemnly at Sasha, and there was a moment where the conversation could have gone further, and then every remaining window downstairs exploded all at once.
ESTHER AND SASHA SCREAMED, an automatic reaction to the sudden noise. After the explosion, there was the soft tinkling of glass settling into itself. Then a heavy footstep, and another, and another. Large feet stomping through the downstairs.
“They’re coming!” Agustín called unnecessarily from the hallway.
“What are we going to do?” said Sasha, shutting her eyes under some half belief that if she didn’t look at the world for long enough it would leave her alone.
“Okay, we’ll . . . ,” Esther said, and then realized that she had no idea. She had no more plans, and no more contingencies. Her knowledge mostly extended to horror movies, and none of those offered useful advice in this situation besides filling her head with the most inventively awful things the monsters might do to them.
“Stay in the bedroom, kids,” hollered Mr. Gabler. “I’ll protect you.” And maybe he could. He had before. But Esther didn’t think so. Esther didn’t think a knife was going to do anything to ward off what would be coming up those stairs. Those creatures were expecting a fight. They were ready for it this time.
Which was when a genuinely useful idea came to Esther. If the creatures were expecting a fight, what if Esther gave them the opposite? What if she could catch the monsters off guard? “Hold on,” she shouted, and ran for the bathroom.
“You have to go now?” said Sasha.
Esther ignored her, skidded into the bathroom, and used her entire arm to scoop all of the fake wounds she had left on the counter into her hand. Then she was back in the hallway.
“Can you hold them off?” she asked Mr. Gabler as she sprinted across to the bedroom. He stood on the top landing of the stairs, knife held before him.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay in the bedroom? And the answer is yes, very maybe I can possibly hold them off.”
“Well, just try to delay them,” she said.
“Roger that,” he said, in that goofy way adults do when they think they’re being funny.
Agustín was already in the bedroom, and he was looking out the window. “There’s more of them down there. We can’t escape through here.”
“I know,” said Esther, and then to Sasha: “Lie down.”
“What?” Sasha folded her arms again.
“It would take too long to explain, just lie down.” Also, Esther didn’t want to explain that she would be using Sasha as bait, as she felt that Sasha might not approve of a plan like that. Sasha sighed and lay down, and Esther did her best to stick the wounds to her face.
“Okay,” said Esther, “no disrespect to Mr. Gabler, but I think we’ll have company soon. And I need your help.”
Sasha tried to ask more questions, but with the fake scar pasted across her lips, the most she could manage were a series of inquisitive mmms.
“Yeah, exactly.” Esther nodded, in a way that she hoped was reassuring. “You don’t have to do anything at all. Just, you know, play dead.”
Sasha’s eyes went wide.
“No, no,” said Esther. “The exact opposite of what you’re doing now.” Agustín shouted alarm from the doorway while Mr. Gabler hurried in as best he could on an injured ankle. “Okay.” She patted Sasha reassuringly. “Keep real still, and we’ll all be fine.”
Then she grabbed the others and pulled them down behind the bed. There was a moment of silence. Esther hoped Sasha would be able to play her part.
The door creaked open. A wheezing laugh, and behind it a disharmonic chorus of clicks and buzzes. The shuffle of footsteps.
Esther had assumed that whatever these creatures were in their trick-or-treat costumes, they would be expecting a last stand from their targets. They had prepared for a fight. And so she had presented them with the opposite of what they were prepared for. No one in sight, except one girl on the floor, lying limp and still, covered in wounds. There would, Esther hoped, be confusion. And in that confusion lived their only chance to escape.
She dared a glance around the bed. Sure enough, the three trick-or-treaters were bunched up by the door, apparently unsure of what to do. Finally they shambled forward, fanning out through the room. The clown slumped down to check on Sasha.
Don’t move, Sasha, thought Esther. Please don’t move. And although she did not believe in telepathy, she could feel Sasha respond: I hate you so much, Esther Gold.
But Esther had no intention of leaving Sasha defenseless for long. As soon as the other trick-or-treaters moved away from the door, she bellowed, “GO!” and started running without looking back to see if the other two were following. As she went, she scooped Sasha up to standing with one arm. Sasha was light, and she came up stumbling.
“I’ve got you,” Esther said.
“I hate you so much, Esth—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Unprepared for this series of events, the trick-or-treaters did nothing to stop the four of them from tearing out of the room, down the stairs, and through the still-open front door. She could hear Mr. Gabler grunting each time his weight shifted to his right foot, but he managed to keep up all the same.
They made it as far as Mr. Nathaniel’s immaculate driveway next door before Dan’s apple truck roared in reverse up the lawn and blocked their escape. They turned to go the other way, and there was Ed’s truck, churning up the grass as it cut them off. Now the only way was down the driveway and into the street, and so they started for it.
Esther came tripping to a stop, along with the others, when an obstacle she absolutely did not anticipate appeared before her.
The woman who had stepped out into the driveway was wearing a purple gown, with trims of green and accents of glittering jewels. These reflected the streetlights and the giant orange moon in a scattered gleaming. But more than light, the woman radiated power. She looked as though not a single person had ever said no to her, not once in a thousand years. (This impression was, more or less, accurate.)
In her hands she cradled, as though it were a fragile and beloved child, a small black box locked with a complex silver clasp.
Esther felt the turkey she had eaten in Mr. Gabler’s kitchen start to return
on her as she realized she recognized the woman. The woman had been floating in the park outside of school that morning, however many hours ago that morning had been.
“So,” the woman said, in a voice as expensive and gaudy as her jewelry, “you’re the ones causing a fuss.” She scrunched her nose. “I thought you’d be taller.”
“Who are you?” whispered Esther.
“Yeah,” said Agustín a little louder. “Who are you?”
“Ah,” the woman said to Esther, with a laugh that sounded like coins thrown in a fountain. “You have your own lackeys. Good for you.”
“Hey!” said Agustín.
“Hey!” said Mr. Gabler.
Behind their queen, the buzzing and clicking trick-or-treaters gathered. Mr. Gabler clutched his knife, but the creatures made no move to approach. Instead, they were lowering themselves onto whatever part of their body was similar to a knee. On either side, Dan and Ed were also kneeling, heads bowed.
“Hello,” said the woman. “I am pleased to make all of your acquaintances, however brief that acquaintance will be. I”—she put one regal hand upon her regal chest—“am the Queen of Halloween.”
“I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING. You didn’t even know that Halloween had a queen. But children, and here I include you, Mr. Dentist. Mr. Dentist, I’m unclear how you managed to stay awake, but I’m sure the answer is utterly uninteresting. Children, you understand so little about this holiday. For you it is a time to dress up and gorge yourself on catastrophic amounts of sugar. For me, it is my territory, my domain, that I can rule and alter and destroy as I see fit.
“Now, you were given a chance, weren’t you? To go to sleep like the others? It’s nice in the Dream. In the Dream, nothing hurts, and nothing matters, because nothing is real. Out here everything is real, and so everything hurts very much indeed. Here the treats are loaded with blades and the decorations explode and the costumes are tattered and hold horrible creatures within. And none of this has to be yours to confront. All you would need to do is close your eyes and dream.
“Ah, but why speak of regret? What should have been. What could have been. Ugh. A sad business, and not worth our time. Instead, let’s talk of what’s going to be. So much more hopeful, the future.
“Not that the future exists, per se, at the moment. Time doesn’t so much exist. It’s Halloween night, and as long as that Halloween moon shines in the sky, it will continue to be Halloween night. I’m sure you’ve felt it. It has been Halloween night for far too many hours already, yes? And it will be Halloween night for many hours more. Many days more. Months. Years.
“Time doesn’t work that way, I know. But that was in your world. And you’re not in your world anymore, not exactly. Once the sun set, you and everyone in this neighborhood crossed the borders into a wild country, one in which lives everything you’ve ever been afraid of. And I am its queen. So it will be Halloween night, and the adults will sleep, and my creatures will creep forever. Because that’s what I want.
“And I always, always, always get what I want.”
As she spoke, she stepped closer and closer up the driveway, and Esther and the rest stepped back and back, until they had run into Mr. Nathaniel’s garage door and there was nowhere else to retreat. Now this strange woman was only a few feet away, and she held out one hand, in invitation or threat, Esther wasn’t sure. She wouldn’t find out, because the queen was interrupted by the sound of a hose turning on, followed by a gushing of cold water.
“No, no, no.” The queen coughed with a guttural fear that confused Esther. The self-proclaimed monarch, now dripping wet, retreated back down the driveway, putting the little black box behind her back to better protect it.
There at the top of the walk was Mr. Nathaniel, with his hose.
“Hey!” he shouted, spraying again. Dan and Ed and the trick-or-treaters all scrambled to avoid the water. “Get!”
“Thank you, Mr. Nathaniel,” said Esther.
“Mmm,” he grunted, not taking his narrowed eyes off the woman at the bottom of the drive.
“Yes, thanks, Charlie,” said Mr. Gabler, using a name that Esther had not known until now. “I know this must all seem so unbelievable, but you see those costumed children down there don’t seem to be children at all, and—”
“Shut up,” said Mr. Nathaniel.
“Excuse me?” said Mr. Gabler.
“That’s right,” said the Queen of Halloween, trying to regain some of the dignity of her posture. She brought her voice back up to a commanding register. “Be quiet, all of you, for you are in the presence of—”
“Shut up,” repeated Mr. Nathaniel, and wheeled the spray of water in her direction. She yelped and scrambled backward.
Now everyone was quiet. Mr. Nathaniel put one hand on his hip.
“All of you out here on this night, making all kinds of ruckus. I hate ruckus. I hate this night.”
“Well of course you would,” said Dan, and then he immediately cowered back behind his truck as Mr. Nathaniel flicked his eyes toward him.
“I didn’t know you were here,” said the queen. “I would have chosen another . . . but it’s too late now. Just, you stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours.”
“You know Mr. Nathaniel?” Esther asked her.
“Mr. Nathaniel.” The queen laughed. “I know this man, but not by that absurd little name.” She flicked her head derisively at Mr. Nathaniel. “Really, is that the kind of title you chose for yourself?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” said the old man.
“Charlie,” said Mr. Gabler. “Do you know these creatures? What is going on?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to anyone,” said Mr. Nathaniel. “I moved to this neighborhood for peace and quiet, and by god that’s what I’ll have.”
He marched down the driveway, the denizens of Halloween moving away from him to keep out of range of the hose.
“So you all”—he shouted at the queen and her minions—“you all will move on and leave these people alone.”
“That’s right, get out of here,” said Agustín.
“And you,” said Mr. Nathaniel, wheeling on the small group standing in his driveway. “You aren’t nearly afraid enough, so you must not know anything at all. Because anyone who understood what was happening here would get as far away from it as possible. I suggest you run.”
“What is happening?” said Esther. “Please, if you know, tell us.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Have you seen that moon move even a little, in hours and hours? Now I said run.” Mr. Nathaniel made one last spray with his hose for emphasis, the vapor drifting by them, chilly in the fall night air.
So they ran. They ran down the driveway and then down the street. Dan and Ed and their queen and the mysterious trick-or-treaters made no move to stop them. All seemed paralyzed in fear of Mr. Nathaniel, whoever he actually was.
As they ran, Esther puzzled over one detail. The vapor from the hose hadn’t tasted like tap water. The water was salty and full of minerals and a little bit alive. It wasn’t tap water. It was seawater.
“WHO WAS THAT WOMAN?” SAID AGUSTÍN.
“I have no idea. And I have no idea why they all seem to know Mr. Nathaniel or why they’re all afraid of him,” Esther said.
“Well, Charlie is a little scary, I guess,” said Mr. Gabler.
“Let’s just keep moving,” said Sasha, glancing back.
“I want to check on my mother,” said Agustín.
“Of course,” said Esther. She hated that she hadn’t suggested it first, that he had had to remind her that he also was scared because this situation was, objectively, scary.
They moved as quickly as Mr. Gabler was able, keeping an eye out for anyone following them, but no one did. Passing by the canyon, the high school party there seemed to have grown. Lights and voices, celebrating, barbarous and remote from the considerations of the town around them. Something about the party made Esther shudder.
But she s
oon forgot the high schoolers’ party as they approached Agustín’s block and saw something truly extraordinary.
Agustín’s house was easy to spot, even from a distance, because it had transformed completely. Where once had been a modest plot with a few sample grave markers in the front yard, now there was a massive cemetery with tall black fences. The gate to the cemetery was chained shut. The gravestones were ancient black monoliths, several stories tall. The writing on them was in glyphs that did not look like any language Esther knew. Badly maintained paths wound their way through the overgrown cemetery as it sloped up a steep hill. More and more vines appeared among the other plants, until the hillside became choked with vines in its upper slopes, steep cliffs that were more vine than rock. And at the summit, Agustín’s mother’s workshop, perched atop the vine-shrouded hill. The light in the workshop was on, and even from that distance they could see the shadow of his mother, moving back and forth. Somehow, they could also hear her, humming and hammering away, hard at work and seemingly oblivious to the inexplicable transformation of her yard.
“Mom!” shouted Agustín. “Mom, can you hear me?” But there was no response. His voice echoed out through the gravestones, until it was absorbed by the choking vines that covered the hill.
He rattled the locked gate. “What is happening?”
“I don’t know,” said Esther, because how could she? Nothing she had thought she had known about the world would explain what was happening here. “But I do know we need help.”
“Maybe we should go to the police,” said Sasha. “I know 9-1-1 isn’t working, but we could walk to the station.”
“No,” said Agustín and Esther.
“No!” said Mr. Gabler with a vehemence that surprised them all.
“Okay, it was just a suggestion.” Sasha threw up her hands. “You all are so mean.”
“I’ve got to try to climb up there,” said Agustín, touching the fence experimentally.
“I know from climbing,” Mr. Gabler said. “And I don’t see a way. Even for me.”
“We could go to the hospital,” said Esther.
