Halloween

by Paula Guran

  Just as he hit sixth, the ’Busa screaming into triple digits, the siren and the flashing red light jumped in front of him. How’d that happen? He didn’t have time to wonder. A shining white wall reared before him. The ’Busa’s headlight painted a big red X in the middle of it. That was all he saw as the brakes grabbed hold, too late to keep the bike from hitting broadside, even as it fell.

  “You with us, pal? How many fingers?”

  He wasn’t sure. “Two?”

  “Close enough.”

  He tried to turn over on his side, but couldn’t. She was still hooked up to him, arms encircling him on the cot where they lay.

  The paramedic van was like the inside of his head. Eye-achingly lit up, smelling of chemicals, and filled with mysterious objects that he didn’t recognize.

  “You hit us a good one.” One of the EMTs had a knotted ponytail. He pointed to a spot near the van’s floor. “You can see the dent from in here.”

  “I can pay for it.” He pushed himself up on his elbow. “Not right now, but—”

  “Forget that.” The other EMT, looking back from the driver’s seat, had tattoos and smoke-reddened eyes. The whole van reeked of party atmosphere. “This is not good.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He tugged at the handcuffs but they stayed locked. “Look, just don’t hand me over to the cops—”

  “Cops? What cops?” The EMTs glanced at each other, above him. “We didn’t see any cops.”

  A small comfort, that he was just screwed up and not pursued. I must’ve made ’em up. Another good reason for not riding in that kind of condition—all that beer and the hit off the dip that Edwin had given him.

  “I’ll just be on my way.” The van’s interior swam and tilted as he sat up, dragging her with him. “You don’t have to report this—”

  “Report it? Are you kidding? This is a frickin’ fatality situation.”

  “What?” Then he realized what the tattooed one was talking about. “Uhh . . . actually, she was this way before.”

  They weren’t listening to him. “I’m not calling it in,” said Ponytail. “You call it in.”

  “Screw that. I’m not filling in all that paperwork again. I did the last one we had. Remember? The coronary?”

  “Guys—”

  “Well, we can’t just let him walk.”

  “Why not?”

  They both looked at him, then at each other, then back to him. Ponytail slowly nodded. “Maybe . . .”

  He put his weight on his left foot. The resulting bolt through his spine nearly took the top of his skull off. He collapsed backward, propped up by the dead girl.

  “You’re not going anywhere in that condition, pal.”

  He looked down at himself and saw how ripped-up his trousers were. The whole long seam along the left leg had been torn open, the skin beneath bruised and chewed red by a skid over asphalt. God knew what condition the bike was in.

  “I don’t care.” He gripped the edge of the cot with sweating hands, trying to keep from passing out. “I gotta get out of here. I got a delivery to make.”

  “Her?” Ponytail nodded toward the shackled weight, with the long dark hair and dreaming face.

  “Give him something,” said the driver. “Just get him on the road. Long as I don’t have to fill out any paperwork, it’s cool.”

  “Right—” Ponytail nodded as he fumbled around with the equipment shelved on either side. He spun a valve on a chrome canister, the tethered plastic mask to his own face. He inhaled deeply, then held it out. “Here, try this.”

  The van expanded and dissolved with the first hit. The blood throb in his battered leg faded, along with any other sensation of having a body. All he could feel was her pulseless hug around his chest. He pushed the mask away. The paramedic van slowly coalesced, now formed of sheets of vaguely transparent gelatin, warping beneath him and yielding to a poke of his finger.

  “Off you go, pal.” Ponytail maneuvered him toward the van’s open doors, like a parade balloon. “You have a good night. Try and stay out of trouble, okay?”

  He found himself standing in the middle of an empty road, his wavering legs straddling a long scrape mark gouged out of the pavement. At its end, the ’Busa leaned on its kickstand. The EMTs must have picked it up after he T-boned their van. He wanted to thank them, but they were already gone.

  He pulled his passenger along with himself, over toward the bike. She seemed weightless as well, the handcuffs the only thing keeping her from floating away, into the glittering night sky. The toes of her boots seemed to barely trail across the earth’s surface.

  “That was nice of them.” He laid his hands on the tank. He could smell gasoline, but the bike didn’t seem in too bad of a shape. The left fairing was a total write-off; that must have been the side he laid it down on. The pegs and bits of engine on that flank were scraped gleaming and raw. It could probably be ridden, if he could figure a way of holding on to it without getting blow away by the wind, like roadside scrap paper.

  Whatever the EMTs had given him, he was still way slammed by it. The chemical tides in his bloodstream would have to roll out a bit—or a lot—before he’d be able to climb on the ’Busa again. Sleep it off, he told himself. Maybe he could just curl up at the side of the road, wrap her tighter around himself, spooning like old times . . .

  Better not. A soft voice whispered at his ear. I can’t keep you warm anymore. Not like this.

  That was when he knew exactly how screwed up he was. And not by whatever was still percolating in his brain. That you could get over. The past, you never did.

  He looked around and spotted, if not refuge, at least a waiting room. One that both of them were familiar with. How had he wound up in this part of town?

  It didn’t matter. He gripped her arms and brought her up higher on his back, her cheek close beside his, and stumbled toward the bar’s sputtering neon.

  “The problem’s not Hallowe’en,” said Ernie. “It’s you.”

  Don’t listen to this guy.

  He didn’t know if the bartender could hear what she said. Maybe the dead spoke only in private whispers. Like lovers. He knocked back the latest beer that had been placed in front of him. “Why is it me?”

  Like I said. Her voice again. This one was always full of crap.

  “You really want to know why?”

  He shrugged. “Do I have a choice?”

  “You don’t even want one.” Ernie wiped his sodden towel across the bar. “Here’s the deal. You’re blaming the world for what happened to you. That’s all backwards.”

  Right now, the world consisted of this bar and its tacky, orange-’n’-black decorations, courtesy of the beer distributors. He looked around at the dangling pasteboard junk, then back to Ernie. “I didn’t do this.” He pointed to the grinning, long-legged witches. “You can’t blame me.”

  Yes, he can. You just wait.

  The bar had emptied. He was the only one left inside, after Ernie the bartender had switched off the outside neon. While he had nursed one of the string of beers, Ernie had started stacking the chairs up on the tables. Then he had come back behind the bar to finish sorting out the world’s problems.

  “Just hear me out,” said Ernie. “I mean, it’s cool that you came here with your iced old lady cuffed to you. That shows some effort on your part.”

  “Hey. We broke up, remember?”

  Did we?

  He ignored her whisper. “Long time ago,” he told the bartender.

  Not long enough.

  “Whatever.” Ernie seemed not to have heard anything she said. “But that doesn’t suffice. You gotta look inside yourself. It’s not what Hallowe’en did to you. It’s what you did to Hallowe’en.”

  He wished Ernie hadn’t said that. Not because the bartender was wrong. But because he knew—standing at the edge of a vast, lightless abyss inside himself, looking down into it—he knew that the bartender might be right. About too much.

  “You can’t expect things to sta
y the same,” said Ernie, “and you just get to change all you want. Like there’s no connection between the two.” Ernie uncapped another beer and set it on the bar. “But there is.”

  “He knows that,” said another voice. “But he’s got it backward. Like usual with him.”

  He turned and saw, a little farther down the bar, Buzz Cut taking a pull at a half-empty bottle. The other motorhead, the one with the red hair, sat on the next stool over, drinking and nodding slowly in agreement.

  “You should’ve heard him before,” continued Buzz Cut. “With his whole Hallowe’en rap. Boo hoo hoo. It’s all so frickin’ sad.”

  He had thought the bar had all cleared out. Where’d these guys come from?

  “Sad, all right.” Red set his own bottle down. “Just listening to him.”

  “He’s got this whole thing, you see.” Buzz Cut tried to explain it to Ernie the bartender. “About how Hallowe’en has changed. It’s like really important to him. The poor sad bastard.”

  “Yeah, right. I’ve heard it.” Ernie pointed around at the decorations. “He goes off about all this stuff, too.”

  “Wait a minute.” It ticked him off, the way they were talking about him. In the third person, like he wasn’t even there. When he wasn’t even sure that they were there, or were just drug vapors. “Just because you guys—”

  Set me as a seal upon your heart.

  The whole bar went silent. As though they all could hear her now.

  For a moment, she wasn’t draped across his back, her pale hands cuffed in front of his chest. She sat right next to him, leaning forward, those hands wrapped around her own beer. She turned and looked at him, beautiful and unsmiling, her dark hair a veil.

  As a seal upon your arm, she whispered. For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. She took a sip, then continued. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame . . .

  “Okay, now I’m totally spooked.” He gripped the edge of the bar, forcing it to become real and solid. “Give me a break.”

  She leaned over and kissed him. If all the wealth of our house were offered for love, she said, it would be utterly scorned. When he opened his eyes, she wasn’t sitting there anymore. Her hands pressed against his heart once more, her cold arms wrapped around him.

  Still full of surprises, even dead; he had to give her that. Though not totally a surprise; she’d come up with stuff like that when they’d been together the first time. Pentecostalist childhood, for both of them. He recognized it: Song of Solomon, chapter eight, verses six and seven. There were some hot bits in that Bible book, favorites of hers. Though he couldn’t recall her spouting that one before.

  “You gotta go back.” Ernie’s voice penetrated his meditations. “That’s what she’s trying to tell you.”

  Maybe they had heard her. He didn’t know what that might mean. “Go back where? I already been all over town.”

  “Not where. When. You gotta go back to when you went wrong. The two of you. And then do it right.”

  “He’ll never make it.” Another voice came from the end of the bar. He looked and saw Edwin down there, stubbing out a cigarette butt in a drained highball glass. “He’s too screwed up.”

  “Up yours.” The motorheads came to his defense. Buzz Cut nodded along with Red. “He can do it. We gave him all he needs. In this world, at least.”

  “I’m not following this . . .”

  “Pay attention.” Ernie leaned over the bar, bringing his face close to his and the dead girl’s, as if they were in a football huddle. “I heard you out before. I know where you’re coming from. Believe me, I’ve heard it from other guys like you. You think the world changed out from under you, and that’s why things are all wrong.” Ernie tapped him on the brow. “But it’s the other way around. You changed. You gave up the old faith. You thought you could mess around all you wanted, and the world would still be the way it was, the way it’s supposed to be, when you got done. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Listen to the man.” Somebody shouted that from one of the tables in the corner of the bar. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the EMTs sitting there, empty bottles soldiered in front of them. And outside the bar—he could sense the Metro patrol car and the tourist family from Idaho, slowly circling around. Except that he had made them up. So they at least were gone.

  “Is this one of those Twilight Zone bits?” He felt even creepier than before. “You know, like where the guy is dead, only he thinks he’s still alive?”

  “You should be so lucky,” said Ernie. “Don’t change the subject. Don’t try to get yourself off the hook. You want the world to be the way it should be? Then you need to go back and be the way you should’ve been. You and her.” Ernie reached out and stroked her dark hair, tenderly. “You should’ve been different. All this screwing around, and being trashy and wild—yeah, that’s fun and I’m happy to help you do it, but it doesn’t get the job done.”

  “What job?”

  “Come on. You and her, you were supposed to be the people handing out the candy. To the kids. On Hallowe’en. You were supposed to have a house, with a front door, and the bowlful of candy beside it. That’s what you were supposed to do. That was your job. Instead, you screwed around. All of you.” Ernie gestured toward the bar’s walls. “You think all this crap isn’t here for a reason? It’s because of you. People like you. Not doing your job. That’s how it got here.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s real great. Telling me where—or when—I need to go, and all. Only problem is, there’s no way of getting there. It’s gone.”

  “Strictly a technical problem.” Buzz Cut shrugged. “Just need to know how. That’s why you have friends like us.”

  “What’s the matter?” Edwin had the kind of sneer that revealed a line of yellow teeth. “Didn’t you read Superman comics when you were a kid? You weren’t one of those Marvel faggots, were you?”

  “What’s Superman got to do with it?”

  “Don’t you remember?” Buzz Cut regarded him with pity. “Jeez, what a wasted childhood you must’ve had. No wonder you turned out this way.”

  “When Superman needed to go back,” said Ernie, “remember how he did it?”

  “Uh, that was a comic book.”

  “Regardless. Remember how?”

  “He went real fast.” A page full of bright yellows and reds and blues surfaced in his memory. “In a circle. Spinning, like.”

  “Going in a circle doesn’t cut it. If you think about this.” Buzz Cut might have been explaining the difference between Keihin carbs and direct fuel injection. “It’s the going fast that does the trick. Obviously. Go fast enough, you can get anywhere. Or when. The spinning around in a circle, that was just so Superman would still be where he started out. Right? Otherwise, he would’ve gone back, but he would’ve been out around Neptune. Or Alpha Centauri or some other rat-ass place like that.”

  “Going fast, huh?”

  “That’s why people like to do it. Go fast, I mean. Even when they have no place to get to. Even when they’re just going around in circles. They know what they’re doing. They’re trying to get back. And you know what?” Buzz Cut leaned toward him, imparting a secret, but loud enough that everyone in the bar could hear. “Sometimes they do.”

  Some of it made sense, some of it didn’t. “Don’t you have to go as fast as Superman? To make it work. Super fast?”

  “Hell, no. That was just because Superman had to go back to ancient Egypt, or go fight dinosaurs or something. You don’t have that far to go.”

  Red chimed in. “You just have to get back to where you went wrong. And start over. The two of you. That’s just not that far back.”

  It’s not. Her whisper. Let’s go for it.

  “And no circles?”

  “I told you already. Head down, full tuck and accelerate.” Buzz Cut got nods of agreement from the others along the bar. “Strictly straight line.”

  “Kinda hard to tuck down behind the windscreen, with . . .” He tilt
ed his head toward hers. “You know . . .”

  “Do the best you can,” said Buzz Cut. “Do it right, you won’t even be outside the city limits. When you make it there.”

  He knew what they were all going on about. “You mean the nitrous.”

  “Well, of course. We put it on there for a reason. Now you know.”

  Go for it.

  They all watched him. Their gaze weighed heavier on him than she ever had.

  They were right. Buzz Cut and the others, Ernie the bartender, even Edwin. They were right.

  “I’m not paying you, though.” Edwin had pointed that out. “This is some other deal you got going.”

  Once he got himself and her on the ’Busa again, and started it up, he realized how right they were. He didn’t make it to the city limits. Out in empty desert again, sawtooth mountain silhouettes against the night sky—but if he had looked over his shoulder, he would still have been able to see the city’s clustered neon, a single blue-white beam bending its trajectory above him.

  He didn’t need to look back. Her face was right next to his, her eyes closed, dreaming into the wind.

  Straight shot, up into sixth gear, the road a knife’s edge in front of them, throttle rolled to the max. Nothing left but the red button on the handlebars, his leathered thumb already resting upon it.

  Now’s the time.

  Her whisper a kiss at his ear; he turned his cheek closer against the brush of her cold lips. He could barely breathe, she held him so tight. If his heart beat any stronger, it would break the links of the little chain.

  Come on . . .

  Or maybe the handcuffs had snapped apart already—he couldn’t feel them—and it was her own locked grip binding her to him. The way it had before, her eyes closed, velocity and dreamless. His hand at the center of a small world, trembling with both their pulses, every small motion a new possibility.