Halloween
Page 29
A few houses down the sidewalk she pulled the robe off and threw it behind a hedge. She walked on, her head held stiff and erect, the mask’s rouge shining bright red in the streetlights, her best dress a soft cream color in the dimness, stirred lightly by the breeze. She walked on to Halloween Street.
She stopped on the bridge and looked down into the creek. A young man’s face, a middle-aged woman’s face gazed back at her out of dark water and yellow reflections. The mouth seemed to be bleeding.
She walked on to Halloween Street. She was the only one there. The only one to see.
She walked on in her best dress and her shiny mask with eyes no one could see.
The houses on Halloween Street looked the way they always did, empty and dark. Except for the one that glowed the color of clouds, or snow.
The houses on Halloween Street looked their own way, sounded their own way, moved their own way. Lost in their own quiet thoughts. Born out of place.
You could not see their eyes.
Laura went up to the white house with the neatly trimmed yard and the flowers that grew without care. Its color like blowing snow. Its color like heaven. She went inside.
The old woman gazed out her window as goblins and spooks, pirates and ballerinas crossed the bridge to enter Halloween Street. She bit her lip to make it redder. She rubbed at her ancient, blind eyes, rubbing the dark eyeshadow up into the coarse line of brow. She was not beautiful, but she was not hideous either. Not yet. In any case no one ever remembered her face.
Her fine, snow-white hair was beautiful, and long down her back.
She had the most wonderful house on the street, the only one with flowers, the only one that glowed. It was her home, the place where she belonged. All the children, all the children who dared, came to her house every Halloween for treats.
“Come along,” she said to the window, staring out at Halloween Street. “Come along,” she said, as the treat bags rustled and shifted around her. “You don’t remember, do you?” as the first of the giggling goblins knocked at her door. “You’ve quite forgotten,” as the door began to shake from eager goblin fists, eager goblin laughs. “Now scratch your swollen little head, scratch your head. You forgot that first and last, Halloween is for the dead.”
TRICKS & TREATS: ONE NIGHT ON HALLOWEEN STREET
Steve Rasnic Tem
Halloween is a night when anything can happen. We sometimes forget that. The holiday is what anthropologists call an “inversion ritual”: proper order and the usual ways of things are reversed. When we ritualize something, it retains its power, but it also becomes socially acceptable; normative. So, we have certain expectations of Halloween and feel there’s no real harm, no actual consequence to intentionally inviting the world to be turned upside down and inside out. Tem reminds us our only expectation on Halloween should be to expect the unexpected.
TRICKS
It was supposed to be the last time they’d all go trick or treating together, but it didn’t seem right that the gang go out now that Tommy was dead.
Every year all the gang had gone trick or treating together: Allison and Robbie, Maryanne and John, Sandra and Willona and Felix and Randall. And Tommy. They’d been doing it since fourth grade. Now they were teenagers, and they figured this was the last time. The last chance to do it up right.
Not that they’d ever done anything particularly malicious on Halloween. A few soaped windows. A few mailboxes full of cow shit. Not much more than that.
But Tommy had said this particular Halloween needed to be special. “For chrissakes, it’s the last time!”
But then Tommy had died in that big pile up on the interstate. They’d all gone to the funeral. They’d seen the casket lowered into the ground, the earth dark as chocolate. It wasn’t like in the movies. This movie, Tommy’s movie, would last forever. Sandra kept saying that word, “forever,” like it was the first time she’d ever heard it.
The dead liked playing tricks. She figured that out quick. Dying was a great trick. It was great because people just couldn’t believe it. You’d play the trick right in front of their eyes and they still just couldn’t believe it.
He’d only been dead a week when Sandra wondered if Tommy’s life itself had been a trick. She couldn’t remember his face anymore. Even when she looked at pictures of him something felt wrong. Tommy had this trick: he was never going to change, and because he didn’t change she couldn’t remember what he looked like.
Sandra and Willona had both had crushes on Tommy. And now he was going to be their boyfriend forever. He used to take them both to the horror shows, even the ones they were too young for. He knew places he could get them in. Sandra thought about those shows a lot—she figured Willona did, too. Tommy loved the horror shows. Now he was the star of his own horror show that played in their heads every night. He’d always be with them, because they just couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Sometimes it felt so great just to be alive, now that somebody you knew was dead. Sandra thought that must be the ugliest feeling in the world, but it was real. That was what Halloween was all about, wasn’t it? Remembering the dead and celebrating hard because you weren’t one of them.
Tommy had liked Halloween the best of all of them—he’d been the one who’d organized all their parties, the one who’d come up with the tricks they would play. So this last night as they went door to door they thought of him when they called out “Trick or treat!” They thought of him while they munched on the candy on their way to the next house, like they were eating his memory a piece at a time.
Halloween Street was always the last place to go. It was traditional. You could play the best tricks on Halloween Street, too, since none of the neighbors ever came out to bother you. You could just do whatever you pleased.
Sandra led the way to the first house on the street: a tall thing missing most of its roof and leaning toward the rest of the block like it was drunk. She knocked on the door and knocked on the door until finally they gave up and started to go away. But as they turned away the door opened and oranges came rolling out for all of them. They put them into their sacks and walked on down the street.
At the next house, a wide place with fire damage on the outside walls, Willona did the knocking. An old man with no teeth gave each of them a peanut butter log and then they left and walked on down the street.
The middle two houses looked even emptier than the others, twins that seemed to be looking at each other all the time with small window eyes. Maryanne and John knocked at both houses and at each house one of the old twin brothers who lived there gave them a box of raisins.
By the time they all got to the end of the street the sacks were getting heavy, unbelievably heavy and Sandra insisted that they sit down to rest. The gang sat in a circle and reached into their sacks for the goodies.
When Sandra looked into her sack her orange had turned into Tommy’s head, bleeding from a gash that crossed the crown of his head.
When Willona reached into her sack for the peanut butter log she found a slippery finger instead, Tommy’s ring wedged on it so tightly she couldn’t get it off no matter how hard she tried.
What John and Maryanne found in their sacks when they went looking for the raisins was a mass of black insects, each one carrying a small pale bit of Tommy’s broken flesh.
But the gang never said a word to each other about what they had found, nor did they show any alarm on their faces. They went on munching and smacking their lips, giggling to themselves because it was so good to be alive on this the final Halloween of their childhoods.
And thinking about how this was Tommy’s last trick on them—and what a grand trick it was!—and how this was their last trick on Tommy.
THE INVISIBLE BOY
J.P. was acting stupid again. Susan was sorry she’d brought him along, as usual, but she never had any choice anyway. J.P. always went where he wanted to go, and unfortunately the places he wanted to go always seemed to be the places she wanted to go.
He looked so stupid in his regular street clothes on Halloween night. That yellow shirt and those brown corduroy pants he always wore. Always. He never took them off, and she didn’t think he ever washed them. It made her mad that Mom let him get away with stuff like that.
J.P. was so ignorant. I’ll be the invisible boy, he said, and laughed that stupid horse laugh of his. I’ll wear my same old clothes but I’ll be the invisible boy so that no one can see me!
“J.P., you’re so ignorant!” she’d said but he’d just laughed at her. That stupid laugh. Here she’d worked forever on her fairy princess costume—it had wings and everything—and her brother thought he could be the invisible boy just by saying he was the invisible boy.
You can’t see me! he’d said.
“J.P., that’s dumb! Of course I can see you! You’re wearing that stupid yellow shirt and those stupid brown pants and no way are you an invisible boy!”
He’d looked worried then. Don’t tell anybody you can see me, then . . . don’t tell or you’ll ruin everything!
It made her mad when he asked her that because he knew she could never tell him no. He always took advantage of her. It made her feel stupid, too.
“Okay, okay . . . let’s just go.”
So they started across the street just as a car was coming across the bridge onto Halloween Street when J.P. turned to her and started making faces just like he always did. And Susan started screaming just like she always did.
And the car passed through J.P., the headlights trapped inside him for a second like he was burning smoke, just like it always did.
J.P., the Invisible Boy, turned around and looked at her and laughed that stupid horse laugh of his before jumping backwards onto the sidewalk and then walking backwards like that all the way up Halloween Street.
J.P. was so ignorant.
PAINTED FACES
She always thought that the costumes which were just painted faces were the best.
You could make almost any kind of face with the paint. You could tear the skin in red or bruise it in blue. You could dirty it with brown or you could make it shine with the heat of the sun. If anybody said you were ugly you could make yourself beautiful.
And if anybody said you were beautiful you could make yourself ugly, too.
On Halloween Street the painted faces were always the best. Somebody would always paint themselves up to look like your mother or to look like your father, your brother or your sister. Faces you knew so well but which you were afraid you really didn’t know at all.
Because faces were painted and you could always wash them off. Because faces were painted and you could always change them.
Every once in awhile she would reach up to her mom or her dad’s face and rub and rub as hard as she could.
And sometimes, after a long time of rubbing and crying about the rubbing, the paint would come off.
SACK LUNCH
He was just a little boy but he carried the biggest treat sack any of the kids had ever seen. It grew out of his hands like a big dark hole and it reached to the ground and even dragged behind him for several feet.
Some of the big boys thought it was silly—he looked crazy dragging that big sack around, almost tripping over it every second and stepping on it all the time. But what if he got more candy because he was such a little boy carrying such a great big sack? Adults were funny that way—they might think it was cute.
So they stopped him, and they took the big sack away from him, and just for a moment they considered dropping it and running away because the sack was so light, and felt so strange in their hands—like an oily cloud as it rose and drifted and hummed as the October wind wrapped it around them.
But they just had to look inside.
Later, when the little boy picked the big sack up out of the street it felt just a little heavier, and there were harsh whispers inside.
But they didn’t last for long.
SWEET & SOUR
The boy loved the taste of sweet and sour. Sweet, then sour. Sour, then sweet. Ice cream, then pickles. Lemons, then peaches.
“That’s the way of things,” his daddy used to tell him. “You wouldn’t know the good without the bad to compare it to.” His daddy used to say that over and over to him, like some kind of preacher with his sermon. But his daddy just had no idea. Why was one thing good and the other thing bad? Sweet and sour. It was just another flavor, another kind of taste.
Grapefruit and strawberries. Kisses and slaps. Silk and razor blades. Living and dying.
The boy was too old to be out trick or treating. He knew that but he liked the candy too much. He had a sweet tooth. He had a sour tooth.
That night on Halloween Street he was having the best time. Hardly anyone seemed to be home in those houses but he didn’t care. There were lots of little kids running up and down that street with their silly store-bought costumes and their grocery sacks full of treats.
He helped one little kid pick up all his spilled candy. He took another kid’s mask off and threw it in the creek. He cut a little girl’s arm with the penknife he carried and tried to comfort her when she cried. He pulled her arm up to his lips and teeth and tasted her frightened skin: he couldn’t figure out if it tasted sweet or if it tasted sour, and finally decided it was both.
He ate as much of his favorite candy as he could steal, until he was almost sick with it. Almost, but not quite. Sweet and sour. Sour and sweet.
Rhubarb and honey. Sugar and alum.
He liked being the biggest one out on Halloween Street, using just his sweetest smile and his most twisted snarl for a costume. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be an adult. Adults didn’t know a thing, for all they acted like they knew everything. They didn’t know that clover stems were sweet, or that dandelion stems were as sour as can be. They never tasted them like kids did.
Adults had the power, but they were just a few trick or treats away from dying. Sweet and sour. Sour and sweet. The boy didn’t want to die, although sometimes he didn’t much like living. Limes and strawberries. Hugs and teeth.
He ran up onto each house on Halloween Street, knocking on doors and ringing bells. Sometimes the curtains moved, but no one came to the door. Sometimes someone came to the door, but you couldn’t see their face.
A little goblin came around the corner, an ugly mask on the beautiful little body. The boy smiled and frowned, took out his knife and went to give the goblin a little kiss.
The goblin reached up its arms to hug the big boy, but the goblin’s little fingers were too sharp, and the big boy’s skin too thin.
The boy smiled and frowned, and turned upside down.
He lay there until morning came up and his eyelids went down, smelling the fruit trees and tasting his own blood.
Was it Delicious? Or was it Granny Smith? The boy couldn’t decide.
BUTCHER PAPER
Jean had spent weeks arranging the outing. The terminal kids got out all too rarely, although most of them were still ambulatory. Just bureaucratic hospital regs that made no sense. Anxieties over law suits. But she’d gotten to the right people and worn them down. And they put her in charge.
The kids were given any materials they wanted so that they might construct their own costumes. The first few days they’d just stared at the materials—picking up glue and markers and glitter and putting them right back down again, touching the giant roll of butcher’s paper again and again as if it were silk
—as if these were alien artifacts that they were handling, objects which might have been contaminated with some rare disease.
She wasn’t prepared for what the kids finally came up with.
Each kid had wrapped his or her body in the stiff brown butcher’s paper. Wide rolls of tape were used to fasten the pieces together securely. When t
hey were all done they looked like a walking line of packages. Packages of meat.
And that was the way they went out on Halloween Street. And that was the way they went out.
CLOWNS
The only ones that really scared her were the clowns. Clown masks always smiled, but that made it even harder to guess at the faces underneath.
Sometimes you could tell from the eyes inside the holes: they’d be red or dark above the impossible ugly smile. But sometimes you couldn’t see the eyes.
Sometimes all you could see were the spaces where the eyes were missing. Sometimes all you could see was the space where the mouth was missing.
She thought it must be terrible pretending to smile all the time. She thought it must be terrible to be a smile.
But the clowns filled the streets during Halloween every year, more and more of them every year, and the most hideous of all the clowns seemed to be on Halloween Street this year. She saw clowns with large scars across their faces and big ball noses chewed by something worse than a rat. She saw clowns with vampire teeth sticking out from their messy red lips and clowns with mouths and ears sewn shut by bright blue shoelaces. There were mad clowns and suicidal clowns, crazed and sick and dead clowns. And half of them didn’t carry treat sacks. And half of those were much too large to be children in disguise.
Laugh, child! said a voice behind her. She turned and there was the fattest clown she had ever seen, with rolls of brightly painted fat spilling out of his baggy white pants.
Be happy! said another voice, and suddenly there was the thinnest clown she had ever seen, his shirt torn away to show the white flesh like tissue covering the narrow rib cage.