Halloween

by Paula Guran

  That same feeling returned to her as she came off the last step and found herself in the basement.

  In the center of the floor, illuminated by the single bulb which hung from the center of the ceiling, was a pond of blood; there was no mistaking its color of its sharp, coppery scent. Though it had not turned the shade of rust as that in the bathroom, it was old enough to have begun coagulating.

  Just a deer, she forced herself to think. It’s just the blood from Dad’s deer.

  Her eyes followed the path of the arterial spray on the wall to the left of the blood, as well as the one directly behind it. She saw clumped bits of viscera and small chunks of shattered bone.

  “Look at it,” said Alan, pushing her toward the pond. “See how it glimmers? Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Deer blood, remember. Has to be deer blood.

  Even though she knew that wasn’t the case, Marian called on her training as an actress to make herself believe it; as long as she could do that, she might get out of her in one living piece.

  “This is where you killed Joseph?”

  “Yes,” whispered Alan, staring into his reflection as he knelt by the edge of the pond.

  “Joseph Comstock?” Marian asked once again.

  “Yes.”

  “Then where’s his body, Alan?”

  “It’s here.”

  “Joseph Comstock’s body is here?”

  “Yes. Our great-great-great-great-grandfather.”

  A layer of ice formed in the pit of Marian’s stomach. “What?”

  Alan looked at her. “Joseph Comstock was our ancestor, only he used to call himself Josiah. Came over here in the early 1800s and helped settled Cedar Hill. During the cholera epidemic he came down with a fever that drove him mad, picked up a scythe, and murdered his entire family. They hanged him for that, but when they went to cut down his body, it wasn’t there. He couldn’t be allowed to die, you see, because if he had, the bloodline which eventually led to you and me being born . . . it wouldn’t have survived. We never would have been. So he’s been hanging around, you see, in the cemetery, and can only move around during the month of October because it’s the month for ghosts, you see?” He stared back into the pond.

  Marian shook her head, but only slightly. I did not fuck the ghost of my great-great-great-great-grandfather. I. Did. Not.

  “The bloodline has to be kept strong,” Alan continued, “so it was up to us—you and me—to accept him.”

  Marian looked around for something heavy—but not too heavy. Something just weighty enough with which to knock him unconscious; then she could sneak back up the stairs and get out through the back door.

  She saw a pile of old pipes in one corner and started edging her way toward them.

  “So beautiful,” Alan repeated. “Come look.”

  Marian passed close enough to her brother to look over Alan’s shoulders and see his reflection in the blood—

  —only his was not alone; on either side of him were the faces of Mom and Dad, with Grandma and Grampa behind them, as well as countless others whose faces she did not recognize but knew they were Quinlan ancestors, be it from the shape of the jaw or the set of the eyes or the fullness of the lips, they were the rest of the family bloodline, going all the way back to—

  —Josiah Comstock, whom she had known as Joseph, who stood at the very back in the puddle of faces, slightly higher than the rest, the original patriarch smiling down at his lineage.

  Marian, dizzy, reached out and placed one hand on her brother’s shoulder to steady her balance.

  “I knew you’d come around, Sis,” Alan said. “Do you want to see the body?”

  Marian said nothing.

  Alan straightened himself, still kneeling, and removed his baseball cap.

  The back of his head was clump of raw, seeping meat speckled with strands of bloodied hair, bone slivers, and brain matter, covered with maggots. Both the skull and the brain had been split in half and pried apart, leaving a jagged, black horizontal gap where blood trickled down and out, drawing a straight line of crimson down his neck that disappeared into the collar of his shirt.

  Before she could pull away, Alan’s right hand snapped up and gripped her wrist, pulling her hand closer to the ruins of his skull.

  “You have to touch them now, Sis, you have to know what I know—”

  She kicked out at his back but it did not good; his grip was iron, and before Marian could pull in enough breath to shout or scream or laugh, Alan was shoving her fingertips deep into the bloodied chasm, and it was wet and crumbly and thick and cold, sucking her fingers in deeper as the pupa swarmed over her skin.

  “Feel them now?”

  “ . . . ohgod,” she chocked, on the brink of vomiting.

  “Give in to it, Sis, it’s the only way.”

  The basement spun, the blood mixing with the light and the stench. Marian went down on one knee, her chest pounding, and felt a small part of her mind start to shut down—

  —and then heard herself speak:

  “ . . . my goddamn prom dress . . . Mom spent months working on it in secret because she wanted to surprise me with it, she lost sleep staying up nights after we’d gone to sleep, and when she finally gave it to me I threw . . . oh, fuck! . . . I threw a fit because it was the wrong color, it didn’t match my shoes, and she felt so stupid because she’d never thought to ask me what color my shoes were, but I wasn’t about to wear any other shoes, so Dad had to dig into the savings to give me the money for a prom dress . . . ”

  Alan continued: “ . . . and Mom felt like she’d failed you again.”

  Marian felt one tear slip from her eye and slide down her cheek. “I never apologized for that. All these years, and I never apologized.”

  “Know what she did with the dress?”

  Marian shook her head and began to reach out with her left arm toward the stack of old pipes. “ . . . no . . . .”

  “She cut it up and used the material to start her Story Quilt. She’s got your prom dress, my Cub Scout uniform, a bunch of stuff from her and Dad, our grandparents and great-grandparents, a bunch of stuff. I even made a new patch from the top of the pajamas Dad was wearing the night he died. Now the time’s come for you to complete it; one Story Patch, and it’s done.”

  “Let go of me.” The strain of reaching was beginning to rip her shoulder apart, but she would not stop trying.

  “Just one, tonight, at the bonfire, just one and . . . you’ll see.”

  The rest happened quickly; she managed to grab onto one of the smaller pipes, swing it up, then down in a smooth arc, and connected solidly with the side of what was left of her brother’s head; he released his grip on her and tumbled forward. Her hand pulled from the grisly chasm with the sound of a plastic bag melting on a fire. She rose to her feet and staggered toward the stairs, made her up to the kitchen, and thought she saw Jack coming toward her from the corner of her eye; not bothering to check if he was indeed there or if she were imagining it, Marian pulled in a deep breath and ran out the back door, leaving behind her coat and car keys, sprinting through the yard, over the neighbors’ fence, and into the street, racing past dozens of goblins and witches and vampires and ghosts, all of them drawn toward the house of her childhood by the hypnotic figure of Jack Pumpkinhead.

  Candy and shivers.

  I want our family again.

  Giggles and whispers.

  Come to the shortcut tonight. We’re gonna build a bonfire and tell ghosts stories.

  She stumbled through the night.

  Make sure to bring your pumpkins and your magic seeds.

  She rounded a corner, clutching at her bleeding wrist, and nearly collided with a group of tiny clowns. She mumbled some apology, then took off again, not noticing the small spatters of blood that fell behind her like a trail of breadcrumbs through a fairy-tale forest.

  An unseen group of children chanted: “Who blows at my candle? Whose fiery grin and eyes/Behind me pass in the looking glass/And make my g
ooseflesh rise?”

  She looked back over her shoulder only once, and saw many figures behind her but couldn’t tell if any of them were following her.

  His head, you saw the back of his head, you felt it, it was real, it was real, it was REAL!

  The sound of leaves skittering along the darkened streets became the blacked fingernails of a corpse in its coffin scratching at the lid, serenaded by the trick or treaters.

  “Who moved in the shadow? Who rustled past unseen? With the dark so deep I dare not sleep/All night on Hallowe’en.”

  Gulping down air and panic, Marian ran on . . . .

  6

  If you failed to place strip sets together before cutting, place two segments right sides together, checking to be sure the colors and seam allowances oppose each other, and sew into a four-patch.

  Boots opened her front door and Marian, without saying a word, dashed past her and into the safety of the bright living room.

  “Marian, honey . . . what is it?”

  It all came out in a rapid, deadly cadence (except for the part about the back of Alan’s skull; Marian still couldn’t bring herself to believe it and didn’t want to sound crazy), broken only by a swallow here or a breath there to steady the beating of her heart.

  Boots put her arm around Marian’s shoulder and guided her to a chair. “You sit right here and calm yourself down some more. I’ll go fetch some stuff to take care of that wrist of yours.”

  Marian leaned forward and pressed her head against her knees, breathing deeply. Boots returned with a legion of medical supplies and two cups of cinnamon tea sprinkled with peppermint schnapps. Marian took three swallows, not minding that it burned her throat, then sat in silence as Boots cleaned and bandaged her wound.

  Afterward, she began to cry. God, how she hated crying in front of someone else! “I’m sorry, Aunt Boots.”

  “No need to apologize, honey. I had a nice crying jag myself after I saw your brother a couple of days ago. He and that house just seem to have that effect on people.”

  Marian smiled at her. Good old Boots. It seemed like everyone eventually turned to her. Fifty-seven and didn’t look a day over forty-five, provided you didn’t stare too closely at the amount of pancake she wore to cover the thin, jagged scar that ran from the left corner of her mouth and down her chin, only to curve back and go halfway up her jaw. Marian never knew how Boots had come by that scar, but she suspected that, like the marks on Dad’s back, it was courtesy of their mother.

  As she let go of her aunt’s hands, it occurred to Marian there was a lot about Boots she didn’t know, save that she used to play the organ at her church every Christmas, had never married, and always made sure no visitor to her home left without something hot in their stomach.

  “Now,” said Boots, brushing back a strand of her brilliant white hair, “tell me the whole thing one more time, from the beginning. I want to make sure I got it right.”

  “This is going to sound silly,” whispered Marian, “but could you answer a question for me?”

  “If I can, hon, sure.”

  “Why do we call you ‘Boots,’ Lucille?”

  She laughed rather loudly at first, the quickly silenced herself. “I shouldn’t make so much noise. I don’t want to wake Laura—”

  “Laura’s here?”

  “Uh-huh. Said she talked to you on the phone last week.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “When she wakes up. Now, take another sip of tea and tell me everything again, just a bit slower this time, okay?”

  Marian did, hitting on more details. Boots considered everything with an even, unreadable expression, her eyes never looking away, tilting her head to hear better, and asking all the right questions when Marian fell into confused and frightened silence.

  When she saw that her niece was finished, Boots half-smiled, rose to her feet, and walked to her front window; pulling back the curtain, she watched as a few costumed children ran down the street, then let the curtain drop back into place. “Honey, I think your brother has made you a part of his craziness. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt for a minute that he’s made himself some kinda scarecrow and is calling it ‘Jack’; I don’t doubt that for a second. He’s alone there with some pretty powerful grief.”

  “I know,” whispered Marian. “And I feel awful about it. I know that I should’ve come back the minute I received the telegram, but—”

  Boots raised a hand. “You don’t owe me any explanation. I don’t blame you at all for not wanting to be here. I saw your father during that last week. He wasn’t nothing more than a skeleton with a bit of skin on him. Scared me so much I could hardly look at him. I’ve been having bad dreams ever since. A death like that isn’t something a parent would want their child to see, so don’t feel guilty about not getting back here. A human being’s expected to take only so much.”

  “But Jack . . . that thing . . . it spoke to me! I saw it at the cemetery!” She held out her bandaged wrist. “It cut me.”

  “I’ll say it again, Marian. Grief can do things to a person, make them see things that aren’t there. Maybe you cut yourself on a busted pop bottle or something that was on the ground near your parents’ graves and didn’t notice. You said yourself that you’d been thinking about how your mom used to read to you when you was a kid, how you used to think Jack Pumpkinhead was your secret friend. Please don’t look at me like that. I know something terrible’s happened to you, I’m just trying to make some sense of things. Come on in the kitchen with me. I got a craving for some more of this nasty-ass tea.”

  When they were both seated at the kitchen table with a fresh hot cup, Boots lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl around her. Her face tensed as she thought of something, then she spoke up. “When the funeral was over, a bunch of folks came to the house with food and stuff for Alan. I hung around to help him clean up after they all left. He wasn’t in no condition to do housework, so I told him to go take a nap. ’Bout twenty minutes later I’m in the front room emptying ashtrays and hear Alan upstairs talking to himself. It was the damnedest thing. I swear that I could feel his heartbreak all around me, like it was as real as I was; I half-expected it to come through the front door and ask me where its supper was.

  “Then I heard another voice—sounded enough like your dad’s to give me the heebie-jeebies. So I left. Didn’t bother to say good-bye or put away the cleaning supplies or nothing. I just wanted to get away from your brother and his grief and that house as fast as I could. I think there’s a kind of sadness that gets to be so terrible a person can’t be around it for too long without going a little crazy themselves. I got enough people who think I’m batty. I don’t need to go hearing a dead man’s voice.”

  Marian inhaled the peppermint fumes from her fresh cup of tea. “How bad was it for Dad near the end? Did he really feel that . . . forgotten?”

  Boots took a deep drag from her cigarette, coughed, then sipped her tea. “Let me tell you something about your dad. When him and me were growing up, he was always made to feel like a failure by the other kids in the family. Our parents weren’t the kindest folks in the world, they never had much money and even less patience. Pop wasn’t too bad but our mama was one mean-tempered gal. She used to take off her one of her high-heeled shoes whenever she got mad and beat your dad on the back with it, making little holes until you couldn’t see his skin for the blood. Well, I saved up a bunch of money from collecting pop bottles and scrap metal and newspapers and such, and I bought Mama a new pair of boots. They fit her just right and she said they were comfortable. She took to wearing them quite a lot. So I either hid or threw away all her high-heeled shoes, that way, when she got the hankering to pound on your dad, she never made him bleed. Oh, she left some nasty bruises, but never again did she leave him scarred and bleeding. He was so grateful that he hugged me and said, ‘Thanks for the boots.’ That’s how I got my nickname.”

  Marian remembered how she used to giggle at those marks on her father’s bac
k when she was a child: What’s all them funny things, Daddy?—Why, those’re dots, honey, so you can play at connect-the-dots and see what kind of picture they make.

  “The one thing he kept saying to me,” whispered Boots, wiping something from her eye, “was that someday he was gonna do something great, something that would make Mama and the rest of the kids who used to call him a dummy feel sorry they’d ever been bad to him and me.

  “He used to ask me if he bored me with all of his talking, his out-loud daydreaming. I thought he was the greatest thing since Errol Flynn. He’d always stand in front of me when mama would go off on one of her pounding fits. Most of the time, he wound up taking my beatings for me.” She touched the scar on her chin. “When he was there, that is. He was a fine boy and an even better man, your dad. You should’ve known him back then, back when you could see his greatness instead of just hearing about it the way others remembered it. I’m gonna miss him so much—oh, goddammit!” She turned away and wept quietly.

  Marian reached over and took Boots’s hand. “Please tell me?”

  “Oh, honey . . . it was terrible for him at the end. I wish I had it in me to lie and spare your feelings but I can’t and I’m sorry. He kept . . . crying all the time, going on about how he’d never get to build his masterpiece. He figured that his life had been one big waste. There was no feeling sorry for himself, though. He had no sympathy for himself at all—he even said it’d make more sense if he did feel sorry for himself, ’cause that’d at least explain why he couldn’t stop crying. He never got to do any of the things he wanted to do, only the things he had to do. I just couldn’t stand it. He was so miserable. The cancer pain was too much. He needed . . . I don’t know . . . something so much and none of us could give it to him. It was terrible. He started drinking, to help kill some of the pain, he said. I knew that he shouldn’t have been pouring booze down his throat but when I said something to Alan, he only said—”