Halloween

by Paula Guran

  “I used to,” Kate said, a faraway look coming over her face. William glanced at the poster of Doug the Dinosaur Boy, a tyrannosaurus in a schoolboy’s tie and short pants. Would he be the sort of thing that counted for a dragon in this mechanized day and age? he thought.

  Kate shook her head. “ . . . But I think he’s most likely moved on by now.” Far away, something howled. It was certainly a dog. It couldn’t possibly be a wolf. It couldn’t possibly be a lonely timberwolf keening over its empty belly. The wind cut through the thin places in the old man’s coat. He shuddered, and wrapped his arms around himself.

  Kate forced a smile. “You should think about getting yourself home soon, William. It’s Halloween, and things will be coming out to play soon. This is a night for haunts and fairies.”

  William winked. “Goblins, too?”

  “What!” gasped Kate, in tones of deepest mortification. “A goblin, me?”

  “And where else would a tail like that come from?”

  Kate huffed. Her tail flicked indignantly. “From my mother’s side of the family. And you watch your mouth, or you’ll be a toad come morning.”

  “Your mother had a tail, too?” William asked.

  “She had a nicer tail than I, but she took better care of it. French shampoo, German vitamins, and plenty of exercise.”

  “And what about her mother?”

  Kate looked down at William for a long time. Her tail was stiff and still. “My grandmother’s tail was the world champion. She could serve tea with it. She even traveled around with a carnival for a while. That’s where all the posters come from.” She stepped down off the porch, standing on the first stair, her hands on her hips, her tail slowly arching. “You knew her, didn’t you?”

  William shook his head. “No. But I saw her once, just once, when her circus passed through. I must have been, oh, twelve. Around there. That was the last year before I was too old to let my friends know that I still liked circuses, and too young to know that they all felt the same way. In fact, that was the last circus I ever went to, till I had kids of my own and a good excuse. And I was just on my way home that night, licking the cotton candy off my fingers, when I saw the Lion-Tailed Girl herself in front of the old freakshow tent, working the crowd for their last dimes.”

  Kate jumped down onto the grass in the midst of her posters, landing on her feet without a sound. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she called out to an invisible crowd, and though she did not shout, still every word rang down the street and around the corner. Her voice circled around William’s ears and would not be ignored. “Ladies and gentlemen! Every one of you knows the wonders that God made in the six days of Genesis. But have you seen what his hands made in those same six nights, in the dark, when no one was looking?”

  She strode over to a poster filled entirely by a mass of swirling darkness, with two large eyes in the midst of it. “Have you seen our famous Blackwidow, the most horrifying perversion of nature in history? She’s inside, just a dime away.”

  Kate’s fingers slipped into a jacket pocket, and came back up with a thin dime flashing, rolling over her knuckles. “Have you seen the real refugee from Oz, our own Jack Pumpkinhead?” She pointed to a poster of a huge, smiling, orange, empty-eyed face. It must have been a mask, because it looked exactly like a tall, thin man with a pumpkin for a head.

  “They’re all inside, and it only takes a dime to see them, just the skinniest coin of all, slap it down and walk on in.” Kate hopped back onto her porch and flung her front door open wide. Darkness gaped inside. “If you walk away now, you’ll wake up in the night, in the dark, and wonder what it was you missed. But you can see it now. For one dime. Just one—thin—dime!”

  Kate froze in a theatrical pose, both hands pointing into the darkness inside her house. William had watched it all with misty eyes. He shook his head.

  “You are her spirit and image,” he said. “You are that.”

  Kate relaxed and leaned against her porch railing. “So I’m told.” She shrugged. Her tail drooped.

  “You know,” William said, “I always wondered what was that Blackwidow’s ‘perversion of nature’ that was so horrifying?”

  “You mean you didn’t go in?”

  “No. I spent my last dime on one of the games. Throwing baseballs at milk bottles.” He reached into one of his deep pockets and pulled an ancient flattened rag doll into the light: a lion, with a mangy mane and a wind-up key in its back. “I won this for knocking them over three times in a row. I named him Raleigh. He used to play a little song when you wound him up.”

  “What was the song?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t really remember anymore. It was . . . ” He closed his eyes, and, after a moment, began to hum. He hummed a tune that was somehow melancholy and jaunty at the same time: the sort of tune you might want to hear after a long, bad night, in the blue, foggy light, just before the sun rose. Finally, he gave up. “But it wasn’t really like that at all . . . Oh well. It’s a funny thing about music, isn’t it? You can still feel what it sounded like, years and years ago, even if you can’t really remember how it went.”

  “And what happened to Raleigh?” Kate sat down on her top step, her chin in her hands, her tail curled around her side. “One day you wound him up too tight, and something deep down inside of him snapped?”

  “No, no. Truth to tell, I just set him down one day and forgot all about him. I found him in a box, years later. And he just wouldn’t play anymore. I turned the key, and nothing happened. I kept him around, ever since, but . . . nothing, of course. I took him to a toy shop once, to see if I could get him fixed, but the man said he’d have to cut Raleigh open, and I couldn’t do that.”

  “May I see him?” Kate asked. William slowly walked forward, through the midst of the faded carnival posters, and gently laid the little lion in her hands.

  “You know,” he said, “I thought, that night, I might give him to your grandmother. But she’d already gone inside the tent. I’m sure she could have gotten one of her own, of course, but . . . ” He shrugged. “I was twelve.”

  Kate gently turned Raleigh over and over in her hands. “Those carnival games were all rigged,” she said softly. “Grandmother told me. The balls were full of sawdust, and the bottles were nailed down.”

  “Maybe I really wanted that lion.” William chuckled. “Maybe I just believed I could do it.” He reached into yet another pocket and brought an ancient, yellow baseball up into the light. He tossed it from one hand to the other. “Maybe I switched the balls. This one has lug nuts in the middle.”

  “What don’t you have in that coat?” Kate asked.

  “The devil’s three golden hairs and a cure for cancer. I’ve got just about everything else, though.”

  Kate smiled and held Raleigh out for William to take back. William shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “He’s most of why I came by. He’s always been your grandmother’s, really, at least to my mind. So that pretty much makes him yours.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, and she hugged the little lion tightly.

  “Not at all,” said William. He touched the brim of his hat, and turned away.

  “Blackwidow’s act,” she said, and he stopped. “It was pretty simple. She could swallow a four-inch-long tarantula and bring it up again, alive.”

  William shuddered. “That’s it?”

  “Well, she could do some other things, too, but they were too much for the show. And you don’t want to know, even if you think you do.”

  “Ah well. I suppose that’s what I get for spending my dime on milk bottles instead of the show.” He walked back down the walkway, but stopped on the curb. He half-turned back. “So your grandmother’s name was Kate, too, then?”

  Kate’s tail twitched. “And my mother’s. It’s a popular name in the family.”

  William tipped his hat one last time. “You have a good rest of your Halloween, Miss Kate.”

  As quick as a big cat pouncing, Kate jumped down
from the porch and ran up to William. She pressed her dime into his palm, and whispered, “One more ticket to see the show.” She smiled. “Save it this time.”

  “Thank you much,” said William, closing his hand tightly around the little coin.

  “Good night to you, William Wildhawk,” said Kate over her shoulder as she walked back to her house, her tail swishing.

  “Goodbye,” said William Wildhawk. Kate ran lightly up the stairs and inside, shutting the door behind her.

  For a long time, the old, old man did not walk down the road. He stood beneath the streetlight, looking at the dime flashing in his hand: purple-white, when it reflected the halogen lamp above his head; blue, when he tilted it to catch the moonlight. And then there was another light caught in the coin’s face, a warm and golden light that he hadn’t seen in years, the kind of light you could only get from old, old bulbs, like the ones over a carnival midway. He looked up, and saw that warm light flashing inside Kate’s house. She passed by a window, and she waved to him, a flourish of fingers matched by a flourish of her tail, and then the curtains fell closed, and the lights went off.

  As William turned away, he thought he could hear music playing from somewhere far away: a simple music-box tune, somehow both jaunty and sad, the sort of tune you might hear at the end of a long, cold night, as the sky grows blue, just before the sun rises.

  He held the dime tightly, and shoved both hands deep into his pockets. “Just one thin dime,” he chuckled, “to see the show.” And he walked slowly towards home, humming the little tune to himself as he stepped into the shadows.

  MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE

  E. Nesbit

  In her long career as an author Edith Nesbit published over a hundred books, but she is best remembered for her many children's books, most notably The Railway Children (1906). Considered by many as the first “modern” children's writer, she often connected the “real world” with the magical. Her influence on children's literature and fantasy is considerable. Nesbit also wrote a number of supernatural stories. This one was first published (1893) in the late Victorian era when telling ghost stories at Halloween parties was part of the spooky fun. Few Victorian stories refer to the holiday directly, but this one does. It also uses two interesting terms which may be unfamiliar: bier-balk and corpse-gate. The first is a path in an English churchyard (or across a nearby field) along which a bier or coffin is carried. A corpse-gate—also known as a lich-gate or lych-gate—is a roof over a gate where the bier stands during the reading of the first portion of the funeral service before it is carried inside.

  Although every word of this story is as true as despair, I do not expect people to believe it. Nowadays a “rational explanation” is required before belief is possible. Let me then, at once, offer the “rational explanation” which finds most favour among those who have heard the tale of my life's tragedy. It is held that we were "under a delusion," Laura and I, on that 31st of October; and that this supposition places the whole matter on a satisfactory and believable basis. The reader can judge, when he, too, has heard my story, how far this is an "explanation," and in what sense it is “rational.” There were three who took part in this: Laura and I and another man. The other man still lives, and can speak to the truth of the least credible part of my story.

  I never in my life knew what it was to have as much money as I required to supply the most ordinary needs—good colors, books, and cab-fares—and when we were married we knew quite well that we should only be able to live at all by “strict punctuality and attention to business.” I used to paint in those days, and Laura used to write, and we felt sure we could keep the pot at least simmering. Living in town was out of the question, so we went to look for a cottage in the country, which should be at once sanitary and picturesque. So rarely do these two qualities meet in one cottage that our search was for some time quite fruitless. We tried advertisements, but most of the desirable rural residences which we did look at proved to be lacking in both essentials, and when a cottage chanced to have drains it always had stucco as well and was shaped like a tea-caddy. And if we found a vine or rose-covered porch, corruption invariably lurked within. Our minds got so befogged by the eloquence of house-agents and the rival disadvantages of the fever-traps and outrages to beauty which we had seen and scorned, that I very much doubt whether either of us, on our wedding morning, knew the difference between a house and a haystack. But when we got away from friends and house-agents, on our honeymoon, our wits grew clear again, and we knew a pretty cottage when at last we saw one. It was at Brenzett—a little village set on a hill over against the southern marshes. We had gone there, from the seaside village where we were staying, to see the church, and two fields from the church we found this cottage. It stood quite by itself, about two miles from the village. It was a long, low building, with rooms sticking out in unexpected places. There was a bit of stone-work—ivy-covered and moss-grown, just two old rooms, all that was left of a big house that had once stood there—and round this stone-work the house had grown up. Stripped of its roses and jasmine it would have been hideous. As it stood it was charming, and after a brief examination we took it. It was absurdly cheap. The rest of our honeymoon we spent in grubbing about in second-hand shops in the county town, picking up bits of old oak and Chippendale chairs for our furnishing. We wound up with a run up to town and a visit to Liberty's, and soon the low oak-beamed lattice-windowed rooms began to be home. There was a jolly old-fashioned garden, with grass paths, and no end of hollyhocks and sunflowers, and big lilies. From the window you could see the marsh-pastures, and beyond them the blue, thin line of the sea. We were as happy as the summer was glorious, and settled down into work sooner than we ourselves expected. I was never tired of sketching the view and the wonderful cloud effects from the open lattice, and Laura would sit at the table and write verses about them, in which I mostly played the part of foreground.

  We got a tall old peasant woman to do for us. Her face and figure were good, though her cooking was of the homeliest; but she understood all about gardening, and told us all the old names of the coppices and cornfields, and the stories of the smugglers and highwaymen, and, better still, of the “things that walked,” and of the “sights” which met one in lonely glens of a starlight night. She was a great comfort to us, because Laura hated housekeeping as much as I loved folklore, and we soon came to leave all the domestic business to Mrs. Dorman, and to use her legends in little magazine stories which brought in the jingling guinea.

  We had three months of married happiness, and did not have a single quarrel. One October evening I had been down to smoke a pipe with the doctor—our only neighbor—a pleasant young Irishman. Laura had stayed at home to finish a comic sketch of a village episode for the Monthly Marplot. I left her laughing over her own jokes, and came in to find her a crumpled heap of pale muslin weeping on the window seat.

  “Good heavens, my darling, what’s the matter?” I cried, taking her in my arms. She leaned her little dark head against my shoulder and went on crying. I had never seen her cry before—we had always been so happy, you see—and I felt sure some frightful misfortune had happened.

  “What is the matter? Do speak.”

  “It’s Mrs. Dorman,” she sobbed.

  “What has she done?” I inquired, immensely relieved.

  “She says she must go before the end of the month, and she says her niece is ill; she’s gone down to see her now, but I don’t believe that’s the reason, because her niece is always ill. I believe someone has been setting her against us. Her manner was so queer—”

  “Never mind, Pussy,” I said; “whatever you do, don’t cry, or I shall have to cry too, to keep you in countenance, and then you’ll never respect your man again!”

  She dried her eyes obediently on my handkerchief, and even smiled faintly.

  “But you see,” she went on, “it is really serious, because these village people are so sheepy, and if one won’t do a thing you may be quite sure none of the others will
. And I shall have to cook the dinners, and wash up the hateful greasy plates; and you’ll have to carry cans of water about, and clean the boots and knives—and we shall never have any time for work, or earn any money, or anything. We shall have to work all day, and only be able to rest when we are waiting for the kettle to boil!”

  I represented to her that even if we had to perform these duties, the day would still present some margin for other toils and recreations. But she refused to see the matter in any but the grayest light. She was very unreasonable, my Laura, but I could not have loved her any more if she had been as reasonable as Whately.

  “I’ll speak to Mrs. Dorman when she comes back, and see if I can’t come to terms with her,” I said. “Perhaps she wants a rise in her screw. It will be all right. Let’s walk up to the church.”

  The church was a large and lonely one, and we loved to go there, especially upon bright nights. The path skirted a wood, cut through it once, and ran along the crest of the hill through two meadows, and round the churchyard wall, over which the old yews loomed in black masses of shadow. This path, which was partly paved, was called the “bier-balk,” for it had long been the way by which the corpses had been carried to burial. The churchyard was richly treed, and was shaded by great elms which stood just outside and stretched their majestic arms in benediction over the happy dead. A large, low porch let one into the building by a Norman doorway and a heavy oak door studded with iron. Inside, the arches rose into darkness, and between them the reticulated windows, which stood out white in the moonlight. In the chancel, the windows were of rich glass, which showed in faint light their noble coloring, and made the black oak of the choir pews hardly more solid than the shadows. But on each side of the altar lay a gray marble figure of a knight in full plate armor lying upon a low slab, with hands held up in everlasting prayer, and these figures, oddly enough, were always to be seen if there was any glimmer of light in the church. Their names were lost, but the peasants told of them that they had been fierce and wicked men, marauders by land and sea, who had been the scourge of their time, and had been guilty of deeds so foul that the house they had lived in—the big house, by the way, that had stood on the site of our cottage—had been stricken by lightning and the vengeance of Heaven. But for all that, the gold of their heirs had bought them a place in the church. Looking at the bad hard faces reproduced in the marble, this story was easily believed.