The Jack-o-Lantern Box
Page 24
When Twyla came back from Yearbook, she invited herself into Jessy's room. First she tapped at the paper kitten-and-pumpkin on the door.
“These were a good find,” she said.
She closed the door, and they both sat on the bed. “I was hanging out with Joe the other day,” Twyla went on. “And I asked him about his grandma.”
Jessy immediately sat up straight, intrigued.
“I guess when she was just out of high school, a friend of hers had a big Halloween party, that she and her sisters and all their other friends were invited to. The friend lived in one of those big houses along Main Street.” Jessy knew that stretch of old brick buildings, some of them turned into lawyers' offices. They had huge oval windows and cut-glass porches, so Jessy knew these friends must have been pretty rich.
“The sister, the one who became Mrs. Peterson, the hermit, helped her plan the party, and they got the book I gave you, to order the decorations. Apparently the house was completely decked out from top to bottom. Every table had an orange covering, and there were streamers, and paper black-cat heads strung from one room to another, and paper jack-o-lanterns all up and down the staircases. Every window had a lamp or a pumpkin it. And there was a table in the back, full of every kind of party food you can think of. They worked on it for weeks.” Twyla looked at Jessy. “Kind of like you and Karma do.”
Jessy picked up the Orange and Black Book without even thinking about it.
“On the night of the party, a handful of kids worked as spirit guides.”
“As what?”
“It was another idea they got out of a book. The invitations were on cards shaped like pumpkins, and they told the guests to wait outside their doors at a certain time, for a spirit guide to escort them. So people didn’t even know whose house the party was at. Joe’s Grandma was one of the guides. She had a costume on, but she wore a plain grey robe over the top of it, that covered her face, and she carried a lit jack-o-lantern. The guides went to people’s doors and sort of beckoned them, moaning and gesturing with the light, and the people followed them to the party. She said some people joked around and tried to guess who they were, but they usually ended up pretty creeped-out.
“Then when they got to the house, it was all lit up with lights, and it was just total Halloween. Once the guests had all been fetched, the guides took off their robes in a back room and joined in, and they all drank punch and toasted the grim reapers who brought them together for such a great party.”
“Look at this.” Jessy pointed out an illustration, a slim, elegant drawing of a girl in a sharp, feathery mask, covered with little circles that were obviously supposed to be sequins. Her orange and black gown was a gauzy checkerboard, with a skirt that flared out. Jessy would love a dress like that, although she didn’t have the figure for its shape.
“Yeah,” Twyla said. “That’s the other thing. A lot of the guests were wearing these paper costumes from out of the catalog. They must have looked beautiful in that old dark wood room, drinking punch out of fancy cups, with their masks on. The men had masks and some of them had costumes too, but not like bums and hobos and all the stupid things guys wear now.” She sounded disgusted with her own time.
“I don’t know why they even bother. Anyway, part of the whole point of the party was to do fortune telling. Especially about love. Joe’s grandma was kind of independent, she was going to college, so she didn’t have a boyfriend and kind of made fun of all the girls for taking it so seriously. Like a Halloween party was really going to tell them about their future, and it was going to come true. But her sister really liked a guy who was at the party, and she thought he might like her, so she was hoping that the fortune would turn out the way she wanted.
“They did a fortune-telling thing, where they walked one by one, up the stairs backwards, holding a candle. And when they got to the top of the stairs, in the dark, they’d look over their left shoulders really fast, and they were supposed to see the face of the person they were going to marry, in a mirror that was right there. Joe’s grandma was downstairs, with some friends, when her sister went up, and then when she came down, she was obviously upset. Mrs. Peterson had done the whole ritual, and when she looked in the mirror, all she saw was herself. Now, some of the girls said they had seen guys, one of them said it was someone she knew, but she wasn’t going to say who. Another that it was an unfamiliar face, tall, dark and handsome. A few admitted they hadn’t seen anyone, and the hostess said they must not have turned around fast enough to catch the spirit. That was the excuse for why it didn’t work, and I mean, it was all their imagination anyway.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, when Mrs. Peterson just saw her own face in the mirror, she took it to mean that she wouldn't ever get married, or that somehow she was going to be alone, just herself, all her life. Joe’s grandma tried to calm her down, and finally talked her sister into coming back to the party, but in a little while, the sister went into the kitchen, and she saw the guy she liked kissing another girl.”
“Oh, no.”
“So she told the hostess that she wasn’t feeling well, and had to go home early. Joe’s grandma took her home and tried to convince her that she was just being superstitious. They were getting ready for bed when they heard the fire alarm go off.”
Jessy was breathless by now. “What happened?”
“One of the candles had caught something on fire. There was all that paper, covering every surface of the house. Everybody was wearing paper. It was a huge fire. The whole house burned down, and a lot of people got killed. The friend who had the party, and the boy Mrs. Peterson liked, and the girl he was kissing.”
“Oh my God!”
“So that’s how she first got the idea that she was cursed.”
Jessy stared down at the book.
“How come this didn't get burned?” she asked.
“Joe's grandma had it,” Twyla said. “She helped make stuff for the party, and she was going to give the book back afterwards.”
“This belonged to somebody who died,” Jessy said, solemn.
Twyla grinned. “You knew that,” she said. “It was Joe’s grandma’s, and she’s been dead for a couple of years.”
“But I mean, really died. That's different.”
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