I got there toward the middle of August, about a year and half after putting my Emma into her final resting place. Death took Emma in stages, eating her body and her mind away as the brain cancer got a firm grip on her. Lord, that was the hardest time of my life, just trying to cope without my Emma after over twenty years together.
Cold as it sounds, after receiving the life insurance money from Emma’s death, I decided for early retirement. And like I’ve already said, Summitville was as fine a place to retire as any I could imagine. I figured to maybe write a few pulp Westerns and become the next Louis L’Amour. What the hell, it was worth a shot.
By the end of September I had the neighbors calling me by name and waving at me as I sat out on the porch with my note pads and Flair pens, scribbling notes on what was certain to be the first of a dozen or more bestsellers. Hey, if you’re gonna dream, you may as well do it right. My home was just a little place, one of a few dozen houses that made up one of the more urban neighborhoods in Summitville.
My closest neighbor was a woman a few years younger than myself, somewhere around forty-five. Helen Crasworth. She was in fine shape, did the jogging routine, and exercised her little fanny off every morning. What she saw in a marshmallow like myself I’ll never know, but we started becoming something of an item in no time flat. Nothing physical, mind you, just going out to the movies together, and sharing dining rooms every so often. I got to where I loved to see those blue eyes of hers smiling, and to where I darn near lived to smell the fresh scent of her auburn hair. I think my Emma would have understood; it had been a long while since I’d been close to anyone, and I just needed to have a friend.
On the other side of my house was where you could find possibly the grumpiest old man I had ever met - eighty years old if he was a day, and fit to be tied anytime the local boys crossed over his yard and got close to his garden. Even with his generally nasty disposition, we got along just fine. On the nights when Helen couldn’t come over, old crotchety Ned Graber and I would sit on my porch or his, sip a few beers, and talk over the good old days when the whole world seemed a little bit saner. Ned liked to call it the “years before Nixon.” That term fit as well as any I guess. Ned liked to complain, and I never minded hearing his tales, though I’d have probably gotten along with him better if he’d have worn deodorant now and then.
The rest of the neighborhood was filled with younger families, newlyweds, and those that had just started their own crop of children. The few that were my age had families they were raising, and while we chatted and were civil, we could never really have gotten close, not with my wife gone and their families having such a social outlook in comparison to my own.
By the middle of October, I felt as at home as I ever had, and with Helen and me practically dating, I lacked the empty spot in my chest that had bothered me since my Emma had died. That was about the time I started noticing the Halloween preparations all over the place. Most of them started in the homes with children, little die-cut paper witches and black cats with a few sad-eyed Frankenstein’s Monsters hanging on doors. Sort of like I remembered Halloween when I was a child. Before the scuzzy punks started lacing candy and apples with razor blades and rat poison. Before the “Nixon years.” I guess maybe you can understand why I got along with Ned so well.
It was when I saw the decorations going up at Ned’s house that I realized the whole town was a little Halloween crazy. Ned Graber actually started smiling around that time, waving to the children he had cursed with damnation only a week earlier. I didn’t like Ned quite as much with a smile; it looked too strained to be natural for him. More like rigor mortis than a grin, if you see what I mean.
Helen was just as crazy about the whole thing, pulling down her curtains and replacing them with sets of black drapes that were practically crawling with smiley-faced straw men. Scarecrows. Something about those button eyes and stitched mouths sent shivers down my spine, call it a premonition if you will. Still, Helen hadn’t changed at all, and I must admit I was starting to get sweet on her. The chill faded quickly.
I even got into the old Halloween spirit myself, shopping in town for those hokey old Sounds to Make you Shiver and Scream records at the local record store. I was only a little upset at having to deal with compact discs instead of good old vinyl. I bought a few dozen bags of candy, shaped like pumpkins and about as tasty, and even decorated the house with still more tacky paper skeletons and werewolves. It was fun, almost like being a little kid all over again.
Well, I was living in a residential area with lots of children, and if a few of them were too old to be out trick-or-treating in my opinion, that was no one’s problem but mine. Who was I to say if they were too old anyway? I never had any of my own, and in truth I never missed the lack of them until after my Emma passed on.
For that matter, how did I even know that the older kids would be out in costume?
About a week before Halloween, I saw the first of the scarecrows put out in the town square. The square was a massive lot of land, complete with bandstand and a statue of the town founder, surrounded entirely by shops of every imaginable type and style. I loved it; it was just like a town square should be, right down to the sculpted hedges and the crew-cut lawn. I had doubts that so much as a stray piece of litter had hit that grass in the last three decades, and that was the way it was meant to be. If there are trash cans to be used, I say use them. And if you’re too good to use a trash can, then stay the hell home and litter your own place, thank you very much.
So I was a little surprised, as you might well imagine, by the sheer number of scarecrows that seemed to just pop up overnight. There, sitting in that pristine little island of Americana, somebody had planted what had to be no less than two dozen scarecrows. Now, as I said before, even I was getting into the Halloween spirit by then, but this seemed a bit much to me.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if any of the fool things had even been fun to look at, if any of them had been more than drab. Lifeless stuffed clothes that had been bleached by too many seasons in the rain and blistering sunlight, with straw bleeding from every section of them. All of them looking into the center of the square, too, rather than facing outward so you could at least see the faces. I was so enthralled by the concept that I just had to stop and take a closer look.
I parked the car and hopped on out to take a long gander at the straw men, and what I saw was a touch unsettling. Now I’m the first to admit that the purpose of a scarecrow is self-evident in the name: scare plus crow does indeed equal scarecrow. But these things would have scared five years off a child’s life, and that was just unnecessary.
Each had a different style to it: some were made from rags, some made from old hand-me-downs, but they all had one thing in common: faces designed to look as if they had been stuffed with only a skull, as if nothing else had been available to fill their artificial heads. Whether the faces were made from papier-mâché, old denim, or potato sack, they all grinned down with the same evil sneer. I resisted the impulse to touch one of the long leering faces, afraid to feel the hard bone that might be hiding beneath the cloth covering. In some cases, they had eyes made of buttons, in others, they had no eyes at all, just empty sockets that seemed to look at me, almost to follow me wherever I went. Some had straw hair, and others had old wigs that looked as if their best days had been sometime in the previous century. A few even had old mop heads on top of their macabre faces, long strands covered in particles of dirt that had never been rinsed out when they were retired from their days of cleaning floors.
And all of them were better detailed than I could have guessed when only looking at them on the street. The designers of these straw men had even gone so far as to waste perfectly good gloves on them, just so the things would have fingers. And shoes. I took off quickly after I noticed the shoes. One pair still had the price tag in place. The whole thing was just a little strange. Well, okay, a LOT strange. That stupid price tag messed with my sensibilities, and I couldn’t stomach the tho
ught of staying there a second longer.
Halloween in Summitville. The very idea was starting to give me the creeps. I went home and made a mental note to talk with Helen about the scarecrows over dinner that night.
Dinner was at Helen’s place, and let me tell you, that woman knew how to cook. Helen had made a meal for a king, provided of course, that said king liked chili slightly hotter than the deepest pits of hell. My kind of food. While I was putting down my second bowl of the stuff and sweating enough for a whole herd of rutting pigs, I finally got around to the subject of the scarecrows in the town square.
“Helen,” I said, gasping for air after biting into a particularly succulent lump of jalapeño pepper, “Just what the devil is going on in the park? I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a collection of scarecrows in my life. Is it just me, or does this town have a thing about Halloween and straw men?” Helen almost seemed hesitant to talk about the odd set up, then she just smiled and said, “It’s just sort of a tradition in these parts, Ben. Nothing to fret about.”
“Well, what kind of tradition? I figure if I’m going to spend the rest of my life here, I should at least know what the local customs are.” Helen looked at me for several seconds, as if she were trying to read my intentions. I did my best to make her believe that I was simply curious about the town, and truth be told, that wasn’t very difficult. I was interested in the town.
Finally she smiled, and I knew that I had put just the right emphasis on my living in Summitville for the rest of my life. I still planned on doing just that, I had no idea just how...off the rest of the people in town were at that time. I still rather liked the place, even if they did have some odd little traditions.
Helen walked over to the fridge and got each of us a Rolling Rock. I’d always preferred Budweiser, but what the hell, it was her home, her beer. I accepted the bottle and thanked her, and then I waited as she tried to explain the town’s little attraction to ugly cloth sculptures. “It isn’t really a Halloween tradition. It’s a harvest moon tradition. It’s just that this year’s harvest moon is only a day before Halloween.”
“Listen, I’m from the city. I don’t know a blasted thing about harvest moons or any other type of moon. What’s so special about a harvest moon, what makes ‘em different?”
Helen kind of smiled at my naiveté, no doubt thinking it was just like a retired city slicker not to know shit about something as important as a harvest moon. “Well, traditionally, the harvest moon only comes out in autumn, when the time has come for harvesting all the crops. In reality, it’s the moon that comes closest to the autumnal equinox. But that’s boring. In old folk tales around here, a harvest moon is one that is very large and very orange, almost the color of the setting sun. But that’s only a part of the whole picture again. The legends around these parts go back to when Summit Town, Summitville’s predecessor, was first founded, a little over a hundred and fifty years ago. The land wasn’t doing so well back then, and we had troubles from wolves, Indians, and drought. I know that sounds odd what with the Overtree right up at the top of the hill, but the lake was supposed to be haunted and no one went up there if they could avoid it.”
I avoided the strong temptation to ask about the supposed ghosts up at the Overtree and waited for Helen to continue, helping myself to another bowl of her gourmet chili in the process. It didn’t take her long to catch the hint from me.
“The harvest was supposed to be one of the worst of all times, and that says something in a community of farmers.” She stopped for a few moments to suck down half of her beer, staring off into the great unknown. “Well, the legends say that everyone was having a bad time of the harvest except for Albert Miles. Albert was having a just fine crop, better than most anyone had seen in any other place for as long as they could remember. Well, considering the times and all, a lot of people figured that old Albert Miles was up to no good. I mean, the man ran the local mercantile, never really had time to tend his crops, but somehow the man had managed the best harvest in seven counties. Enough crops to darn near feed all of the people who hadn’t so much as grown a potato worth mentioning, and enough hay to feed every horse in town. A lot of people were saying Albert Miles had made a deal with old Lucifer himself.”
I couldn’t help myself, that one got me to chuckling. I was relieved when Helen chuckled too, because for just a second there, I was pretty certain she actually believed her own line of donkey droppings. I was glad to see that she wasn’t that far into the old traditions of Summit Town, or Ville, or city.
“It is sort of strange, especially since the man went to church just as regular as anyone else in town, more regular than some of the people on the outskirts for that matter. So everyone decided that he must have some other secret to his crops, and the town leaders decided that they should have a talk with him.
“Albert Miles was hardly what you could call a nice man. He was charitable enough; he’d give to the church and let people slide a bit on what they owed at the mercantile, he even gave some of his crops to those in the worst shape, but he was not a nice man. While he always did the neighborly thing when someone was in need, he was known to beat his wife, and he was very secretive about what happened out at his farm. He didn’t take well to guests, and he certainly didn’t like people nosing around in his personal affairs. Like his farming. He slammed the front door in the town leaders’ faces and told them not to come back again.”
She smiled and got us each another beer before continuing. “Well, Albert had most everyone in town owing him money by that point, and none of them was fond of actively making him angry, just in case he decided not to be so lenient with the payment schedule. So the town elders did what they thought was wisest, and asked his wife about what made his crops so fine. She looked at them all with a little surprise, and told ‘em that it was the scarecrow that made his crops so good.”
Helen hesitated there, just a small thing really, nothing more than a quick sideways glance out of her eyes, but I knew that the next words from her mouth were lies. “Ever since then, people have imitated the way his scarecrow was made, sort of like a contest to see whose scarecrow is the most original and at the same time the most like the one Albert Miles made.”
I am not a wise person; I’ve certainly had my share of trouble during my life. But now and again, the old stew I call my brain sends me a good clear signal, and now and again I even listen to what it tells me. I listened that night; I stopped asking questions and went about having fun with Helen instead of alienating one of the only good friends I had made in town.
But I also promised myself a visit to the town library to see what I could find out about Albert Miles. Now, a while back I mentioned an old college chum of mine, one that had retired to Summitville. Well, Owen Kingsley was hardly the type that would ever truly retire; while he was supposed to be enjoying his golden years, Owen was busily writing a half-dozen atrociously bad romance novels under the name Louise Starlight—yes, I’m sure you’ve seen a few of them, but Owen would deny to your face that he’d written them—and working on yet another hardboiled detective novel that he’d never be able to sell. That was when he wasn’t working as one of the volunteers in the Summitville public library.
Owen made the research much easier, even with all the ragging on him about how his good friend Louise was doing. Believe me, you’ve never seen a man turn red until you’ve seen Owen blush while you’re quoting the dirty scenes from his last trashy novel. He helped me with the old newspapers and with the copies of the town ledgers, and all the other nonsense that accumulates in a library over the years. We didn’t talk as much as we used to, but Owen had always been a hell of a fine friend.
Even with all of Owen’s help, I could find no reference to Albert Miles. All I found was that the woods under the Overtree held the remains of where Summit Town had once been. Whatever records might have existed about the man had apparently been destroyed in the fire that took Summit Town. I was left with only one recourse. I paid a visit to N
ed Graber.
Well, I’ve already said that Ned was a bit of a grump, much in the same way that King Kong was a mite on the tall side, but he was also one of the proudest people in town as far as his heritage was concerned. It just didn’t seem to me that there was likely to be anyone better at telling me the truth about all of those scarecrows. I suppose by that point I was a touch obsessed with solving whatever secrets lay behind those odd figures, the ones in the square and the ones I’d seen in front of almost every house I passed, Ned’s included.
I met with Ned in the usual place, his porch, and brought over a twelve-pack of Buds to make the meeting go easier. Ned and I got along well enough, but normally it was him inviting me over, not me just coming over to ask questions. Ned was in a good mood, and his mood was made even better by my bribe. After a few minutes of just shooting the breeze, Ned finally decided that enough was enough and asked me what brought me over to see him.
I told him about my curiosity involving the scarecrows, gave him the same story that Helen had given me, and Ned just smiled. “And you fell for her line of shit?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Ned.” I did know what he meant, but I didn’t want to sound too suspicious.
“You ain’t half so bright as I was givin’ you credit for. Ben, there ain’t no record of Albert Miles, ‘cause the old sonuvabitch burned down the whole damn settlement of Summit Town.” Old Ned had on his ornery smile, the one that seemed to say without words that he was breaking the rules just talking to me. He almost looked friendly with that smile and, give or take the wrinkles and the dentures slipping out of his mouth, that smile made him look like a little boy heading for a heap of mischief. I think of all his attempts at smiling, that one was the only one that was real. “The scoundrel went nuts one day, kilt his wife, and dropped his son down a well. Just ‘cause his wife was foolin’ around.” Ned gave me a slow wink, more like a lizard blinking than anything else. “Hell, son, everyone about these parts knows the man was a sorcerer.”
This is Halloween Page 3
