Halloween and Other Seasons

by Al

There was the squeak-shuffle sound of a ballet slipper dancing.

  He went to the window, sweating, and peeked out under the shade. An old man had set his hat on the ground in front of the building, and was doing a soft shoe dance.

  Lansing yanked up the window and screamed at the old man, who quickly moved off. He pulled the window back down and went back to the bed.

  Shutting his eyes, he tried to think of the girl and the train. But only the image of his mother came to him, dancing her hand in front of him, waiting for his baby smile, then the fist—

  Something was kicking around in the closet, and then the closet door opened.

  The foot was in the room. Lansing opened his eyes and saw it skitter under the bed. It began to kick things around, moving shoes around, jumping up and kicking at the bottom of the mattress.

  He screamed and stood quickly up as the foot leaped onto the bed. It disappeared under the covers; Lansing could see it moving around underneath them.

  He pulled frantically at the bolts on the door, missing and then finally unlocking them. He threw open the door. He heard the rumple of bedclothes behind him, as the foot kicked the covers aside to follow him. He ran down into the street and toward the subway. Looking back once over his shoulder, he saw the foot walking leisurely, keeping up with him about a half a block behind.

  He heard the soft shoe again. It was the old man; he had set his hat down by the subway entrance, and was dancing. Lansing ran past him, kicking the hat as he did so; the old man stopped his dance and yelled after him.

  Desperate, Lansing jumped the turnstile, and turned back to see the foot running underneath it. He began to scream, and the startled crowd moved aside in a swath to let him pass. A transit cop, seeing him, began to follow.

  He ran down the stairs two at a time to the lower level, and along the platform of the express track. The foot was behind him. There was a roaring in his ears; he looked back to see the transit cop in the distance, an express train coming in, and the foot a few feet behind him, taking great springing jumps into the air. He tried to duck as the foot leaped onto his back, kicking him over the edge of the platform onto the tracks in front of the train. He landed on his back between the two tracks. Wild with terror, he looked over to see the foot stamping at him, and with a convulsive effort he rolled over the track to his right to safety as the train screeched toward him. But then, he realized with horror, the foot was stepping on his left leg, holding it down over the track, pressing it down as the train passed.

  There was the shriek of steel on steel and then blackness.

  ~ * ~

  He awoke in the hospital to the sound of Morelli’s voice. The foreman was hovering over him.

  “Thank God, he’s coming around,” Morelli said. “Hey kid, how you feel?”

  “I…okay, I guess,” he replied. He tried to push himself up to a sitting position and discovered that there was nothing to push with on his left leg but a stump.

  Morelli moved quickly to help him sit up. “Hey kid,” he said, obvious concern in his voice, “I’m really sorry about what happened. I keep thinking about fooling you that day with my pants leg pulled down over my shoe and it makes me shiver. That didn’t freak you out, did it?”

  “No. No, I’ll be all right,” he said. “You were just kidding around. That had nothing to do with it.”

  Morelli looked relieved. “That’s great. I was really worried about it. You know, you were really lucky, kid. There was a cop right there when it happened, he said if you hadn’t moved at the last second you’d have been cut in half or mashed to a pulp. In fact, they might have been able to do something with your foot if…”

  Lansing immediately became alert with fear. “What happened to my foot?”

  “They…well, they couldn’t find it. It’s really weird.”

  Lansing said nothing; and then suddenly the vision of his apartment left open, with the clippings of the girl, sprang to his mind. “What happened to my apartment? I left it open—”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid. I locked it up for you. It was dark when I went over so I just shut the door. And don’t worry about your job, either, I’ll see you get it back when you get rehabilitated. There’s no reason why you can’t come back to work with…the way you are.”

  Lansing’s mind was racing. “Thanks, Nick. I mean it. I…think I’d better rest now.”

  “Sure, kid,” said Morelli. “I’ll come back to see you tomorrow.”

  In the quiet of his room a sudden peace came over Lansing. It was incredible how it all fit so neatly together. He almost shivered with pleasure. He had killed the girl, and she had gotten her revenge; she was dead and he was alive. She had taken his foot, but he could live without it; he would learn to work and do everything else with it. And he would always have that secret knowledge of what he had done and that he had survived it. He began to smile to himself and drew his knees up, resting gently on the stump of his left leg, rocking slowly. I’ve beaten them, he thought, and even the image of his mother’s fingers dancing before him didn’t bother him now.

  And then he heard the shuffling.

  It was very faint at first, very far away, as if it were way down the corridor or outside his window on the street below, but it began to grow in volume. A cold shiver went through him, but then he suddenly remembered the dancing old man outside the subway station, only a few blocks away. He gradually relaxed. It must be someone like that—maybe even the same old man—shuffling up and down the halls of the hospital serenading the patients. He thought of how foolish he’d been before, letting it all get to him. It was not bad sounding, although it needed a little work on coordination. It got louder; obviously the dancer was working his way down the corridor and would reach his door in turn. He settled back against the pillows and thought of looking through his trouser pockets for loose change so that he could give it to the old man. He began to get a little drowsy.

  The sound was very loud now; the dancer had reached his closed door and was tapping a beautiful, slow waltz. A smile came to Lansing’s lips.

  “Come in, old man,” he called as the door inched open; he would now be able to see who was dancing so he could compliment him. The door opened all the way as the waltz ended.

  There was no one there.

  There was a squeak-shuffle and Lansing began to scream hysterically as two severed feet came into the room. They stopped before his bed and began to dance again, a fast-paced tap dance this time. Lansing screamed and screamed but no one came to help him. One foot, a graceful, feminine one, was covered with a ballet slipper and was doing most of the work, while the other, the foot of a man in a workman’s boot, seemed to be getting better as it followed the other’s example.

  The dance ended, and after a short interlude for applause, another began.

  Lansing, screaming and screaming, knew that the dance, the beautiful unending dance, would always be for him.

  LIBERTY

  By Al Sarrantonio

  There’s a story they tell in Baker’s Flats that tells you everything you need to know about the town. It seems there was a Swede named Bergeson who moved in without permission from the town elders. He came from out East, and he was a little naïve because he assumed that since this was the United States, and that he was now a United States citizen, that he could go anywhere and do whatever he liked. Seems he believed all that business they fed him in Europe about this being the land of True Freedom and Golden Opportunity, and like any other poor fool who isn’t getting what he wants where he is, he packed up and got on a ship that sailed through the cold waters and came to America.

  This was 1885, the year those Frenchmen were putting up that Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. I know because I was helping them do it, working for five cents a day and drinking four cents of it at McSorley’s. I like to think that this Swede, Bergeson, got a good look at it half finished, because that’s just about where Liberty stands in this country.

  Anyway, to make a long story shorter, because I’
ve got other things to tell, they found this Swede staked out on his land in the sun, naked, blue eyes wide with surprise more than fright, because he was a big man and wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. They found his legal deed to the land he owned stuffed in his mouth, and a circle of bullet holes outlining his chest where his heart had beat. There were seven holes, just as there are seven elders of the town of Baker’s Flats, and the story they tell is that these town elders went and killed the Swede Bergeson and made a solemn oath doing it, a pact if you will, that they would take it to their deaths and conspire against anyone who conspired against them.

  That’s the story they tell, and I know the story because I came out West with the Swede, running from the law and the half-finished liberty that statue represented, looking for my own freedom, and eventually, unlike the poor Swede, finding it, which constitutes the rest of my story.

  As I said, the Swede was a naïve man, but he was a good man at heart, and when he told me the story of the land he’d purchased out West, the farm waiting for him in a town called Baker’s Flats, a place so new and untamed that there wasn’t a sheriff; was, in fact, no real law for three hundred miles to any compass point, only seven town elders who constituted the law and meted out justice; well, when he told me these things in McSorley’s Bar, in New York, the night I met him, and I watched his blue eyes imagining the clear, hot plains, and the freedom they promised, we made a pact over the ale I bought him (because there is nothing in the world better than McSorley’s Ale for pact making) that I would go out West with him, and that we would fulfill our dreams together. He would have his farm, and his wide-open spaces, and his America, and I would have—well, a chance at real liberty.

  We laid out by freight that very night. The Swede insisted on taking a coach train and showed me his money, which would pay for two passages, but I told him no, and told him as much as I could of my reason for it, and he was wise enough (though so naïve in other things) to see my point.

  Our car was a cold one, but the Swede was used to the cold, even to the point of giving me his coat when he saw the distress I was in, his big, open face splitting into a smile as he said in his thick accent, “Take it. If two men can share a dream, they can also share a coat.”

  The night passed slowly. We kept the car door slid open partway, because the Swede wanted to see the moon, which had risen white and stark over the east.

  “The East,” he said, “is where stars rise, and the moon too.”

  “But the West,” I answered, “is where we’re going, and where your face should be.” So I threw open the door on the other side of the car, and we looked out there together.

  We talked about a lot of things that night, about our hopes and dreams for a better life, and he showed me the Colt and the Winchester he’d bought “for the Wild West,” as he called it, and somewhere, just as the sun was pushing the sky from purple to blue, he said the thing I had been hoping to hear, the thing that made me trust him as I’d hoped I could: “You don’t have to tell me what you’re running from. I don’t believe you did it.” And with that he lay down and turned his back on me and slept, and I sat looking out to the west, knowing my chance at liberty was safe.

  We traveled a week by rails, till Reading, Pennsylvania, by boxcar, and then by first-class coach. The Swede insisted, showing me the roll of money he had saved and convincing me what I already knew: that the telegraphs weren’t likely to have my picture up on the wall out here yet, and so, this far from New York, I was no longer a wanted man. I balked a little at him spending his money on me, but only a little, because to tell the truth, I was getting sick of the bum’s life and craved a little cleanliness and a good cigar, and the Swede provided all this and good food to boot. And so on through St. Louis and then out to the territories, where the land got flatter but where, the Swede said, he could smell his new farm calling to him. I remember that day because it was the day he first showed me the picture he had of his wife and young daughter, and they were as blond as he was. The girl would be strong when she got older, and they would both join him when he was settled. I half wished, seeing the picture of that pretty blond girl, that she were here already.

  It was another half week before we reached Baker’s Flats, by short railway and then by stage and flatbed wagon, and when we got in there and the Swede made claim to his land, it was not a week later that the trouble started and the Swede was dead.

  ~ * ~

  The day after the funeral, being as there was no law for three hundred miles, I began to hunt the town elders of Baker’s Flats, one by one. It was not a quiet thing, and it got louder as it went along, and I have to say that in many ways I enjoyed it. I can tell you now I wasn’t a stranger to killing when it was necessary, and hadn’t been in New York. I kept the picture of the Swede in my mind as I went about it, and I kept the picture of his pretty daughter and wife in my pocket, and I thought about my own freedom, which made the killing easier.

  The first was a man named Bradson, who owned the General Store. He had given the Swede and I a hard time right at our arrival in town and had made a remark that had told me all I needed to know about him. We’d walked into his store for some chewing tobacco, and maybe a cigar, since the Swede knew I liked them so much, and when the little bell over the door had tinkled, he looked our way, and a look filled his eyes when he saw us that I immediately didn’t like, and he turned the bald back of his head to us and muttered, not so low that I didn’t hear, “Foreigner,” and went into his back room.

  We waited fifteen minutes for him, the Swede with patience and me with growing anger, but he didn’t come out. I had decided by that time that I wanted a cigar very badly, and was about to march into the back room after Bradson, but the Swede took my arm and quietly said, “Let’s be going.” I looked up into his broad face, and I knew at that moment that he had heard Bradson’s remark, too, but had chosen to ignore it. This told me that he was sharper than I’d thought, but I was still mad, and finally he took my arm and said again, gently, “Let’s go.”

  I went then, but I came back after the Swede’s death, and I found Bradson where I’d hoped I would, in the back room of his store. It was after dark and the store was closed, but the lamp was lit on his little desk and he sat doing accounts. He didn’t hear me slip open the front door and come in, and he didn’t hear anything again after I cocked the butt of my Colt across the back of his ear and laid him out on the floor. I put a bullet in his heart, at the top, where the top of a circle might be, the start of a circle, just the way the Swede had been killed. There was a cigar humidor on a shelf behind the counter in the front of the store, and I filled my pocket with coronas before I left.

  It was a dark night and stayed quiet after my shot into Bradson, and it stayed quiet after two more single shots, each continuing to advance a circle around two more hearts, rang out. There was the liveryman, Polk, who put up some fight and was strong but not strong enough, and the telegraph man, Cooper, who had a beard and was said to abuse his wife. He was in his office, too, with a bottle of whiskey instead of his wife for company, and I left him sprawled next to his telegraph, a bullet in the right of his heart, his spilled bottle inches from his cooling hand.

  I hit the hills for a while after that, because I knew they’d be after me the next day. And I was right. I went high up, where it was cold and even colder at night, but I had the Swede’s coat to warm me. Just as it had that first night in the freight car, and I made camp where they couldn’t see a small fire and where I could hear the echo of their horse’s movements a mile off. I waited two days and gave them enough time to get close, and then I fell in behind them and waited for them to splinter off, as I knew they would when they found the false clues I’d left for them that told them I’d gone one of two ways.

  They split off just as I’d wanted them to. The two toughest stayed together, and the two weakest, who I wanted to take together, rode off down what they thought to be the least likely trail, which was where I waited for them. I had the
Swede’s rifle, and I waited in the V between two rocks, and I almost felt bad when I picked them off because they rode right into me and never looked up. I took them out with two quick shots because the other two were the dangerous ones, and they weren’t all that far away and were sure to hear the gunshots.

  The two I took out were Maynard and Phillips, the bar owner and the fat banker, and I know I shot Maynard below the heart where I wanted, but I wasn’t so sure that my shot into Phillips continued the circle up toward the eight-o’clock position, because he didn’t go down right away and almost made me shoot again. But his horse was only carrying the dead body, and when momentum failed and Phillips fell, I took the time to check the body and found I had indeed hit him right on the eight.

  I had a bit of a rough time of it for the next twelve hours. It turned out that Jeppson and Baker, the two remaining, were closer than I’d thought. Baker even got a shot off at me as I rode off, and he was a good shot and took part of my right earlobe off, which only added to my resolve.

  They hunted me well, and for a while I thought they had me, but then they made a few blunders and I was able to play fox again. I left my trail in a stream, then falsified it on the other side, circling back to the water and running back past their position to fall in behind them. I was not stupid enough to try to pick them off then, but contented myself with letting them lose me, and I went back to the Swede’s farm.

  His body was long gone, buried out behind the farmhouse in the beginnings of his tilled field, but there was a bed to sleep in and a stable to hide my horse and some food in the larder to drive the hunger for real food from my belly. I even smoked a cigar after my meal, remembering the Swede, and took out the picture of his wife and daughter and looked at it for a while before I went to sleep for a couple of hours.

  I was up before sunrise. I had breakfast, and then I went out and fed the horse so he wouldn’t get hungry, and then I walked into town. It was Sunday. The moon was a thick crescent, waxing, much the same as it had been that night on the train when the Swede and I had looked to the west.