Halloween and Other Seasons

by Al

  The cock was crowing when I reached Jeppson’s church. It was small and empty, and I let myself into the back room where Jeppson bunked and waited. He had a nice collection of guns, and a bowie knife, and I admired the couple of Comanche scalps he had hanging on hooks over his shaving mirror. Services started at eleven, so I expected him around ten. I was disturbed once, about eight o’clock, but it proved to be a dog scratching at the door. I found a scrap bone for him and he went away.

  There was a Bible on the desk, which I began to read, and I was so absorbed in my reading that I didn’t hear the Reverend Jeppson enter his church a little while later and open the door to his office. He froze, and so did I, but he was more startled than I was, and that gave me enough time to get my gun up and drill him in the heart. His Colt was halfway out of his holster, and it fell to the floor as he dropped. He said, “Oh, God,” which I thought appropriate. I walked over to him and was pleased to see I had hit him just where I’d wanted, around the eleven-o’clock mark.

  I figured that if Jeppson was home, then so was Baker. He had the biggest house in town, because he was the biggest man, and naturally leader of the town elders, and the best shot. I had my healing earlobe to attest to that.

  I figured rightly. I found him at breakfast with his family, ranged round their big oak table as if nothing had happened. His wife, a pretty little thing with dark red hair, was dishing out potatoes and eggs to three boys and a little girl, and there was Baker at the head of the table, dressed in his churchgoing best. I saw all this through the picture window. I could have broken the window, but I thought it would be better to go in the front door and make sure of my shot.

  Again he proved to be the sharpest of the seven. He must have seen me move away from the window, because he was waiting for me behind the stairway banister when I pushed the door open. He winged me in the left shoulder, but I did the same to him, and then he panicked and ran for the stairs. I heard his wife and children screaming in the dining room as I mounted the steps after him.

  We went through the upstairs of the house, and I got him to empty his revolver. I found him cowering in the room of his little girl, squeezed down in the corner next to her crib. He had his six-shooter on his lap, with the empty chambers out so I could see it. A scatter of unloaded bullets spilled from his shaking hand. “Please, don’t do this to my family,” he begged, but I took careful aim at his flushed face and then lowered the gun to his chest and put the last bullet into his heart at the twelve-o’clock spot, completing the circle I’d started with Bradson.

  ~ * ~

  I was tired then. I told Baker’s wife to leave with her children and get the rest of the town together for a meeting at three o’clock. Then I bolted the doors and slept in Baker’s big, comfortable bed. The Colt was loaded under my pillow, but I didn’t think I’d need it, and I was right.

  At three o’clock I got up and shaved and took one of Baker’s fine cigars from his study and lit it and walked out into the street to have my say.

  They were all waiting for me out there. I showed them the Swede’s Colt, and his Winchester, and I told them how I had killed the Swede and the seven town elders. I told them about the story they would tell in Baker’s Flats about how all this had happened, and I told them what would happen to any of them if they got it wrong. They were farmers and women and children, and they all knew what I meant. They knew there wasn’t any other law for three hundred miles.

  Just to be sure they understood me I told them about the man I had murdered in New York, throwing him from the scaffolding of the Statue of Liberty when he laughed when I told him that no man can be free under the thumb of any other man or government, that a man can only achieve true liberty by controlling all other men around him.

  I knew they understood me, because they went home when I told them to. I stood on the porch of my new house and watched them go, and then I took out the picture of the Swede’s beautiful wife and daughter and thought I’d write, in the Swede’s name, to tell them to hurry out here, that there was a fine life waiting for them.

  For the first time in my life I felt true liberty.

  In Baker’s Flats, they tell my story still.

  DUST

  By Al Sarrantonio

  They passed the signs, three in a row a half-mile apart, off Route 40 just after the sun went down. The first read:

  G

  It was white metal, with green lettering, just like all the road markers and speed limit signs they’d passed all the way through the Appalachians.

  “What do you suppose it means?” Mary asked, and then they came to the second, which read:

  2

  followed by the third, which stated simply:

  7

  Mary strained her eyes ahead, looking for more signs, but that was all. She was propped forward in the front seat, in the same expectant position she’d held through the whole car trip. Though it had started out as a vacation, with a short side trip to Chapel Hill to pick up a few personal effects (a favorite serving dish, a bible, a picture book Mary had loved to look at when she was a child) of her Aunt Clara, who had passed away the year before, it had turned into something more: a revisit to her childhood.

  She turned in the seat to regard her husband. “What do you suppose they were? I don’t remember them ever being there when I was young.”

  “Beats me,” Adam answered, shrugging. He was mid-thirtyish and open faced, a man who worked for an aerospace firm and looked it: there was always a semi-dreaming look on his features. He grinned. “Maybe they’re like those old Burma Shave signs that used to line the highways—some kind of advertising. Maybe a come-on for another one of those antique places or phony country stores we’ve been stopping at for the last three days.”

  “We’ve gotten some good bargains!” Mary protested. “That old chest for the hallway, and—”

  “A lot of other junk,” Adam laughed, hitching a thumb at the back of the minivan, behind the kids.

  “Oh, pooh.”

  They drove in silence for a stretch, listening to the soft rock station Mary had found on the radio, the road winding at the edge of the mountain down into a little dip, hiding the sky from them momentarily. Mary drank it all in. After two weeks at this rental-car driving they’d gotten so used to being in the Ford Windstar that it seemed like the natural thing to go exploring through the countryside she’d grown up in. Up until tonight they’d stuck religiously to the main roads; but the late afternoon had looked so gorgeous, with the promise of a high crescent moon later in the evening, that it seemed like the only thing to do would be to take a detour through the inner mountain passes she remembered. After all, Adam was from the Northeast, where they lived now, and the Appalachians were something he and the kids had never seen before. They’d even planned to possibly camp out, though they had hotel reservations a hundred miles further on Route 40. Adam wanted badly to take the telescope out of the trunk and do a little of the sky-gazing he hadn’t managed yet. Such a clear sky. Such a beautiful Moon.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” Mary said, pointing up the dark mountain to their left, “But the hills and hollows around here are packed with people. There are cabins and cottages—”

  A moment later, when they emerged into sky again, everything had suddenly changed.

  “I don’t believe it,” Mary said, her mouth opening.

  Swirling clouds of dusty fog had appeared out of nowhere. Adam cursed; now they’d have to drive on without stopping and find their way back to Route 40.

  “Sorry, Adam,” Mary said, putting a hand on his arm.

  “Oh, well. I can always see the stars when we get back to Boston. I love that light pollution.”

  Mary smiled, and checked on the two girls in the back, who were gazing sleepily out the window.

  Five minutes later a wind picked up, and what at first looked like rain began. It came on gently enough, and Adam immediately snapped on the headlights and wipers, but it increased in a steady, serious blowing way that soo
n alarmed him, to the point where he could barely see the road. The wind increased, and Adam realized that what was swirling around them was not rain but dust.

  “What the—”

  Dust or ash had completely blanketed the road in front of them, and suddenly, incredibly, when the car shifted to the side under him, he knew that they were in trouble.

  He stopped the car when he couldn’t see anything at all. Rolling down the window, he put his head out to check how close to the end of the road the car was. With a sudden drop in his stomach, he discovered that not only couldn’t he see the road but that the road was disappearing beneath them, melting in an upward build of dust. To their right was a steep slope that seemed to be growing closer.

  “Jesus,” he said, pulling his head back in and rolling the window back up, trying not the let his hands tremble.

  “Adam—”

  “Don’t panic.” He wanted to panic himself, but some deeper instinct than fear took over.

  Gently, he tried to pull the Windstar to the left, away from the edge of the road. There was no response from the car. It was like being on an icy road in New England winter, only worse. This stuff was worse than ice. It reminded him of some of the dry lubricants he had used at work.

  He put his head out the window again, and saw that they were sliding toward the edge of the slope.

  He forced the wheel to the left, but it was too late to do anything.

  Mary saw the cliff, too, and let out a strangled cry—but she quickly muffled it. She reached over the back seat to grab at the two girls, who had begun to wail.

  “Hang on,” Adam said grimly.

  “Oh, God,” Mary moaned.

  The car slid over.

  Then stopped.

  At that moment, as if by magic, the dust storm let up. Adam pushed out his breath evenly, gradually unclenching his hands from the steering wheel, and forced himself to look through the slashing wiper blades and dust-caked windshield.

  The car was tipped forward at an ominous angle, but was anchored, at least for the moment. He gave silent thanks for the weighty antiques cluttering the rear of the minivan.

  “Mary—don’t move.”

  She looked wide-eyed at him, still clutching at the crying girls, but said nothing.

  Slowly, deliberately, Adam rolled down the window and put his head out.

  Just as he’d thought, the car was braced on the brow of the ledge. There was more of it on the road than off, but he could distinctly see the left front bumper dangling over a long, deep drop to the bottom of a shallow canyon.

  The sky was an angry, sallow gray-yellow color, filled with swirling dust.

  “Oh God,” he said under his breath, and forced himself to begin breathing again.

  He brought his head back into the car and rolled up the window.

  The car glided forward a foot, then stopped.

  “Mary,” he said, forcing his mouth to say the words calmly, “we’re going to have to leave the van.”

  She stared at him with animal fear in her eyes. “No,” she said. “We can’t. We’ll fall—”

  “We have to, Mary. I want you to move the kids over to my side; I’m going to get out and then open their door and help them out. I want you to slide across after me.”

  The wind was howling again, throwing a ticking hail of ash at the van.

  “Now, Mary.”

  The car edged forward another foot, jerking a little to the right, and once more came to rest.

  “Put your baseball cap on, Cindy,” Mary said, trying to sound calm.

  “No, Mommy, no! I’m scared!”

  “It’s all right to be scared. Just do what I say.”

  Adam pulled at his door handle, moving the door open a bare inch.

  The dust swirled in at him—there was silt nearly up to the floorboards.

  Sucking in a breath, Adam stepped out into it.

  The viscous dust, like quicksand, took hold, tried to drive him subtly forward toward the precipice.

  He put both feet firmly into the silty mass, sliding them back away from the softly insistent pull. It was like the waves they’d played in at the Massachusetts shore, a gentle but strong undertow. Calmly, with light, constant pressure, he pulled open the passenger compartment door of the van, sliding it back on its rail. He tried to keep all pressure out of his hold on the handle; he had the distinct feeling that any slight push from him on the side of the vehicle would send it tumbling off into the valley below.

  “Come on, kids,” he said evenly.

  “I want to bring my Harry doll!” Lucy said, straining to reach under the seat for a floppy thing made of felt and buttons.

  “Leave Harry, we’ll get him later,” Adam said. He reached in and pulled gently on her arm. She resisted for a moment and then stepped out into the mud.

  “Yuck,” she said, as her little sister, crying, followed.

  Adam turned back to help Mary out of the front seat.

  “My God,” she exclaimed, stepping into the silt and suddenly seeing where the front of the car was. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  The car tipped forward, halted.

  “Lucy!” Mary screeched.

  Lucy had crawled back into the van and was reaching for her Harry doll.

  The van began to move again and this time it wasn’t going to stop.

  Pushing Cindy down into the dust out of the way, Adam lurched into the back seat, catching Lucy by the back of her light jacket and yanking her out before she could get to the doll.

  “My Harry doll!”

  For a moment Adam lost his footing in the slippery dust and fell forward, half in the van and half out, still holding the child.

  With Mary screaming hysterically, he felt the two of them being pulled over the cliff along with the vehicle. But then his dragging foot miraculously found a rock under the dust and he pulled himself backward, out of the van, bearing his daughter with him.

  As he fell to his knees in the dust the van, with agonizing inevitability, slipped over the cliff and was gone. They watched its tail lights disappear like angry red eyes into the surging storm.

  “Oh, Adam,” Mary sobbed.

  “It’s all right,” Adam answered. As he stood, his hand brushed against something in the mass of dust and he grabbing it; it vaguely resembled a chicken bone but then disintegrated in his hand. He pulled Lucy up after him. She stood unsteadily, crying over the loss of her doll.

  He looked into his wife’s eyes, but said nothing.

  “Okay, kids,” Adam said, “it’s time to walk.”

  As they began to work their way through the silty dust to the lee side of the road, the wind came again, and the dust began to blow.

  ~ * ~

  A flash of lightning, without thunder.

  Ahead of them, down in a little hollow, in the midst of the roaring storm, stood a small cottage. Lightning came again, and in this second flash Adam grabbed Mary’s arm and pointed the dwelling out to her.

  “I don’t remember anything like that being there,” she said.

  “Well, it’s here now. Let’s get the kids down,” Adam answered, peering unsteadily through the whorls of dust.

  Mary nodded, and then, in the next lightning illumination, looked behind them.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  A solid wall of silt was flowing down the mountainside toward them. There was no hint now that there had ever been a road where they stood. It was as if some mammoth volcano had reared up within the mountain and spewed a hundred thousand tons of ash down on itself, obliterating everything. They could see, up the mountainside, by the light of now almost continual, thunderless lightning, a few weather-beaten tips of pine trees, but nothing else. The dust, like liquid, flowed with silent determination down the mountain, toward what had once been the road.

  “Quickly,” Adam said, and this time he couldn’t hide the fear in his voice.

  There was a broken stone path down the hollow to the cabin, already slicked with viscous silt. They half walk
ed, half slid their way down.

  When they reached the front porch Adam saw with sinking hope how delicate and vulnerable the structure was. It was painted an odd dark color that might have looked quaint in summer sunshine but couldn’t hide the fragility of the place.

  Above and around it loomed most of the mountain.

  The door opened easily. Inside, it looked like some sort of summer weekend place, one large room outfitted with the barest of necessities: a wash sink, cupboard, a few sticks of furniture including a small table with four chairs. Everything was painted in dark colors. There was a low ceiling of unpainted boards, and a picture window that looked out on the mountain and where the road had been.

  Mary closed the door, took hold of Adam’s arm and pointed through the window. There was awe and fear in her voice.

  “Look.”

  Where the wall of dust had been flowing determinedly toward them, covering everything, it had stopped short of the hollow they were in.

  “There wasn’t any wall up there,” Adam stated.

  “It’s almost as it if’s waiting,” Mary whispered.

  They heard a loud creak and felt the cottage shudder.

  ~ * ~

  Night came on, and stayed. The dust storm beat without mercy against the cliffs, drove in whistling tornados around the hollow. Intermittently, lightning flashed, without sound. By its light, they could see the wall of dust at the base of the mountain, hanging over them.

  Inside, the small family, in the half-light of candles Mary had found in a cupboard, waited for sunrise.

  “It sounds like it won’t ever end,” Adam said. He glanced furtively out the front picture window.

  Mary stared at him without speaking.

  The wind picked up with renewed fury, blowing its dry, moaning burden of dust against the fragile structure.

  “I wish to hell daylight would come,” Adam said.

  His wife moved the blankets closer around the two children, who lay side by side on the cabin’s single bed. They slept fitfully, their young minds drifting in and out of reality. “Mommee…” Cindy said suddenly, half asleep, then sank back into unconsciousness with a fitful breath.