This is Halloween

by James A. Moore

  The stick he found was a good, sturdy piece of oak. He arced it back over his shoulder and took the last few steps forward. Reggie was not a heroic man; his best days involved looking at plants as the high risk factor. Of course look where that had gotten him.

  He brought the limb down as hard as he could and saw the bear’s skull crack at the point of impact. His oak branch broke in half, ricocheting merrily through the air and bouncing off his cheek in the process.

  The thing didn’t even flinch at the blow. Natalie looked over the monster’s bloodied shoulder and suddenly dropped, her body as lifeless as a marionette’s.

  Watching her slump sent a cold fear through Reggie’s body. He drew in a ragged breath and went a little out of his head, swinging the remaining part of his branch like an axe and trying his damnedest to hack the skeletal thing in front of him into pieces. He had to get her help, or she was surely as good as dead. He wasn't going to get her anything at all if he couldn’t stop the thing that was holding her still body off the ground.

  The bone monster turned around abruptly, dropping Natalie’s body to the soil, and reached for him. Reggie wasn’t fast enough to stop it. The thing lifted him into the air and rose to its full height.

  “Ahhh! Lemme go!”

  He saw the eyes clearly this time; dark, glittering orbs that looked at him from deep within the bear’s skull. The bones showed no reaction, no emotion, but the eyes buried deep inside revealed the rage held within whatever was hiding there.

  The skull moved closer to his face as whatever was inside of the skeleton looked at him, studied him. Reggie tried to get free, but the thick claws of the bear were sinking into his shoulders and he knew if he struggled he would only make matters worse. He felt a fine trickle of blood running down his arms and the tug of the claws as they cut into him, seeking purchase.

  Reggie kicked out with his foot, slamming the sole of his shoe into the broad rib cage of the dead bear. Once again it barely seemed to notice. He kicked again and a third time, feeling his hiking boot break through the thick ribs and then become lodged inside the framework of bones.

  He slipped as he kicked and the bear’s claws cut deeper into his arms.

  From somewhere deep inside the monster’s chest, he heard a faint, angry hiss.

  “God damn you! Just let her go! Let me go!” He blinked his eyes rapidly, dealing with the sting of frustrated tears waiting to escape him. “I just want to get her away from here and to a doctor! I didn’t do anything to you! I never did anything to you and neither did she! Leave us alone!”

  The thing inside the skull looked at him and the skull itself tilted slightly.

  And then the claws were ripping into Reggie’s arms, shredding away the muscles and tendons that held him together.

  Reggie screamed, the pain far greater than he’d ever believed he could experience. He remained conscious through the flensing of his arms, but passed out before the bear thing could finish its work.

  VI

  Robert Bathory finished cleaning the meat from the bones of his victim. He worked quickly and efficiently, unencumbered by human remorse or guilt.

  Yes, he saw the humans’ dreams. Yes, they were baffling and confusing and sometimes even wonderful. But they were not his dreams, merely a reminder of what he was not.

  He was not human, would never be human and could not on his best day ever pass for human.

  He was Robert Bathory, Bobby to his mother, and to the few who encountered him in the past, he had simply been Old Bones.

  He set aside the screaming man’s skeletal remains and reached for the one that was still bleeding and crying. After a while he found their noises stressful. So he rectified the situation. The screaming stopped around the same time he pushed his claws through the dying man’s eyes.

  He stripped clothing and skin from his second victim and couldn’t resist a small dance of happiness.

  Mother was alive, after a fashion. His brothers would be coming home and soon the family would be together again. Not just yet, but soon enough.

  There were so many things he had to do in preparation. He had been given a mission by his mother, one she felt no one else could be trusted with.

  “You’re the quiet one, Bobby. You don’t talk out of turn and you know that your brothers can’t hold their foolish tongues. So it has to be you, can you do it? Can you make me proud?”

  Yes, he could and he would.

  He had to find the right pieces and fit them together just so. That was the challenge. There were people who had to be placed in the right circumstances, and events that had to unfold in the proper manner or all would fall apart as surely as the bones of the man in front of him.

  He worked as quietly as ever, but swiftly, too. He did not savor the task, much as he wanted to, but instead made fast work of harvesting the bones he could use to make his body bigger and stronger.

  When he was done with the harvest, he drew the bones into himself, wrapping them into his body and limbs and practicing with his new accessories, the better to move quickly and kill if he needed.

  Bones shifted and grated against each other and he shuffled them into his new form. For now he wanted to move fast, so he extended his arms until they were the same length as his legs and fused the rest of the newer parts into a lump across his broad back.

  His mother wanted a puzzle laid out and solved and of all the creatures he had ever met, none could work with puzzles as well as he. In order to walk, he solved puzzles of bone and constructed legs from whatever myriad pieces he could find. In order to grow strong he built musculatures from bone that granted him the strength he needed. His life was an endless series of puzzles, and he savored them all.

  But this puzzle would be special. This puzzle involved a mystery he had never been very good at understanding: people. His mother had sent him the dreams, not to confuse or to torment, but to let him get a feel for the newest pieces he had to work with.

  Robert Bathory stood up and began walking on all fours, bones scraping and sliding as he commanded, moving him where he needed to go. Old Bones walked the Beldam Woods again, pleased with his place in the world and excited for what the future held.

  It was good to be needed, to be loved. Aside from the simple joy of killing, there was little else that mattered in his world.

  Harvest Gods, Revisited

  Sometimes people are cruel. That lesson comes to everyone sooner or later, I suppose. It came to me when I was very young. It came to the boy down the road from me a few hours ago.

  I watched, of course, because that’s what I do. One can hardly make judgments without a good reason, after all.

  His name is Ray Larkin, and like all children, he lives for certain events. Ray is the boy who best loves Halloween.

  Was. I suppose time will tell how he feels about the season in the future but just now, at this moment? Well, decide for yourself.

  

  Ray settled into the classroom seat with barely bridled impatience. Lunch was done, and there were still two more classes to endure before freedom came his way. Two more classes before he could prepare for Halloween. Halloween on a weekday. It should be illegal as far as he was concerned.

  At seven years of age, Halloween held a special place in Ray’s heart. Everything was scary, yes, but fun scary, not bad scary. There was a difference, as he’d learned a long time ago, when he was seven. When his dad died, Ray was too young to much understand what that meant, but in time he got to understand that part of what that meant was his mom was sad a lot of the time. Mom was a good woman, and a great mom. No two ways about that, but she sometimes waited until he was asleep—or thought he was—and crawled into her bed and cried for a long time before she fell asleep herself. He thought maybe he understood about her loneliness, but not as well as he thought he would someday. His Grammy and Grampy had told him that he would understand someday, but for now he just had to know she was missing her husband, his father.

  And then his mom met Lawrence. L
awrence was a big man—well, relatively. Most men were big next to Ray, who was only nine, after all—with a nice suit he liked to wear and a smile that was warm and friendly as long as Mommy was around and not always as pleasant when she left the room. That was okay at first, because Lawrence made Mommy happier and she didn’t cry as much.

  And then it wasn’t as okay. Then it became a problem, because Lawrence started coming around more and more often. And when Lawrence came around, Mommy smiled more and Ray started not being quite as important. He knew Mommy loved him. That wasn’t really it. More it was simply that she had to be shared with a man who didn’t know how to smile with his eyes and almost never smiled at all when he was alone with Ray. He’d tried to explain that to his Grammy once, but she shook her head and leaned in close so that no one else could hear, even though there was no one else in the house, and said “Your mommy needs to have Lawrence in her life, Raymond”—she always called him Raymond when it was time to discuss serious matters—”and she needs you to understand that. Lawrence is the key to your mommy being happy and we all want her to be happy, don’t we?”

  Well, there was simply no arguing with that. So Ray left everything alone. He kept his peace and he swore to himself that he would do nothing to stop his mommy from being happy.

  Lawrence was a nice man, really, but he was also too serious. He didn’t like to have fun. As a result, Mommy stopped liking fun, too. Or maybe that was one of those things he would understand when he was older, like why his mommy needed Lawrence in the first place.

  Instead of going out to Chuck E. Cheese’s for dinner once or twice a week, they stayed home to eat. Instead of watching Disney movies on DVD once a week as a treat, Ray and his mother only watched them when Lawrence was out of town. He did some kind of work with cars. Most of the time he stayed in town and went to an office a few miles down the road and came home by five-thirty in the evening. But maybe every other month he left town for a couple of days and they got to watch new movies. It was always fun. Ray started living for those times, because Lawrence didn’t like the TV on, and when it was on, he always had it set for one of his news channels.

  The news was boring, and mostly it made Lawrence go on and on about the liberals, and how they were trying to take over the world for the bleeding hearts. Ray wasn't exactly sure what a liberal was, but he suspected it was something to do with the library. He started dreading the idea of going to the library, because the last thing he wanted to see was a man whose heart was dripping blood while he was trying to decide which book he wanted to read. He was getting very good at reading, because that was almost all that Lawrence ever wanted him to do. The only exception was that his mother was teaching him to play the piano. He maybe would have hated that, but it was a little fun and sometimes Mommy sang and she had a perfect voice for singing as far as Ray was concerned.

  The thing was, come Halloween, Ray got his mother all to himself for a few hours. Lawrence didn’t like Halloween very much, either, but he allowed that Ray did and Mom insisted that she should take him out.

  So, yes, Halloween was only hours away and he wanted it now.

  Of course the hours crawled. But eventually they passed. Sometime later, much later according to Ray’s patience, he was allowed to run for home and get ready for trick or treating.

  That was the plan, at least.

  Ray took off from the school and made a beeline through the woods, heading for his neighborhood and planning to get home as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for Ray, the Beldam Woods were not always the nicest place to use as a short cut.

  In very short order he was lost.

  Within half an hour he was on the verge of tears, shivering in part because the weather was very cold and also because the woods were pretty darned scary at the best of times. The Beldam Woods were an ancient lot of trees, most of which had already been stripped of their leaves and all their colors. The trees were skeletal figures that loomed over his tiny body and creaked in the winds blowing from the north. There was a threat of winter weather come early and he knew that, too, because it was all they were talking about on the news the night before, and he’d have remembered it too, if he hadn’t been so determined to find the quickest way home for Halloween.

  Nine-years-old, just the right age to forget all about things like safety until it’s exactly too late.

  Ray wandered around and around, his feet kicking through the thick blanket of dried leaves as he got colder and colder. The air was dry, too, and he wanted something to drink. He also wanted to pee something fierce—that was one of Lawrence’s favorite terms, something fierce—but was afraid to get spotted breaking the rules. What if someone saw? What if someone told his mom? Trick or treating might get taken away and then what?

  No. He had to hold it in. That was the only option.

  Ray was on the verge of tears, cold and miserable and so desperate to go potty, when the stranger showed up. He was an old man, tall and lean and weathered. His skin was almost as wrinkly as the leaves on the ground and his hair, while long, was thin and wispy around his head.

  He carried a small pumpkin in one hand, and walked with a cane. The old man looked at Ray for a moment, his face set in a dour expression of disapproval. Ray found himself desperate to disappear. If he could hide away, maybe the man would simply go away.

  Instead the man continued to stare at him.

  “Would you be ‘Raymond?’” The voice was as creaky as the trees and almost as cold as the air. Just hearing him speak was enough to make Ray shiver. Still, he was caught by the dichotomy of his mother’s rules: He was not to speak to strangers. He was also always supposed to be polite. The two orders did not work well together and Ray was forced to choose which to follow. He finally decided that since the man knew his name he must not be a complete stranger. There were several friends of his mother that he had met before when he was very, very young, and didn’t really remember. They always seemed to remember him and to be surprised that he had grown so much. Maybe then, the old man was one of those sorts. A non-stranger that he didn’t remember.

  He answered, “Yes sir,” in a very small voice.

  After another long moment of looking at him the man squatted until they were closer to the same height and looked Ray in the eyes. “Your mother is worried about you. You weren’t on the bus.”

  “I tried to take a short cut.” He meant to explain more, but the tears started. A moment later he was crying like a little kid and the old man was suddenly holding him. He hugged hard, unable to stop the tears. And a few minutes later, all cried out, he looked on as the old man stood up.

  “Come on then, Raymond. Let’s get you home to your mother.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” It was a little late to point that out, but it was one thing to talk and another to actually go somewhere with a stranger. His mother might be even angrier and as it was, Halloween trick or treating might be taken away from him.

  “My name is Mister Sticks. Your name is Raymond. We are no longer strangers.” The old man shifted the pumpkin to his other hand for a moment and then changed his mind. “Here. You hold this for me, won’t you? And then I can lead you home.”

  The gourd was nearly perfect. It was just the right size for Ray’s hands, and the skin was a bright orange that was the color he always looked for when he eyed the pumpkins at the market. The same color as the one he’d picked last week and they’d carved just last night.

  He took the pumpkin and nodded his head seriously. This was, of course, a serious display of trust. Ray could have dropped the thing, and then where would they be?

  “Why didn’t you take the bus, Raymond?”

  “Because I wanted to get home sooner. I wanted to see my mommy.”

  The old man looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “You don’t see your mother often?”

  “I do, but today is special. I get her all to myself.”

  The old man nodded. “I have to share my mother, too.”

  “
You do?” He tried to do the math. The man was very old; his mother must be even older. Ray couldn’t begin to imagine how old the lady in question might be.

  “Oh, yes.” Mister Sticks nodded his head. “With my brothers.”

  “I have to share my mommy with Lawrence.” He couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from his voice.

  “Is Lawrence your brother?”

  “No. I don’t have any brothers. He’s my mommy’s boyfriend.”

  “You sound disappointed. Is it Lawrence that makes you sad? Or not having a brother?”

  He had to think about that. Maybe it was a little bit of both. Charlie at school had a big brother and liked to talk about him all the time. Eric at school had a little brother and was always talking about what his little brother did that was funny. Lawrence was never funny.

  Mister Sticks smiled then and nodded knowingly. “You’d rather have a brother than Lawrence.”

  Ray laughed. It was all he could think of to do. The man was right, but not completely.

  “Or maybe you’d like to have your father back and have a little brother.” Mister Sticks, who had been leading him through the woods very calmly, suddenly stopped moving and looked down at Ray again, his old, blue eyes staring hard. “Your mommy could be with her husband, and you could have a little brother, someone to show how to be a big boy. Am I right? Is that what you’d like?”

  Ray looked around, suddenly feeling guilty, though he had done nothing to make him feel that way. Maybe it was just knowing that someone could so easily understand his desires, even when he couldn’t figure out how to say them himself.

  Finally he nodded his head. Guilt or not, it was true and his mother told him he shouldn’t lie.

  The old man nodded his head. “I could make that happen, you know. I could bring your daddy back for your mommy, and they could give you a little brother, maybe a little sister. And you could spend more time with your mommy, too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”