That wasn’t the biggest issue he faced this year, though. Not by a long shot. The biggest problem was getting past the tree. The scary, gnarled tree at the corner a quarter of a mile down the road from Luke’s house. It was huge—maybe fifty feet tall. Luke was just guessing, of course, but it towered over all the other trees. If it had bark, he couldn’t tell—he’d never gotten close enough to check. Its trunk reminded him of the driftwood he found down at the beach, bleached gray by the water.
It had no shortage of branches, all sharp and menacing, pointing toward the road like a witch’s talons. In his mind he envisioned a handful of claws that would, without warning, reach out and grab him, piercing his body until he resembled a human pincushion. That image kept him up late at night. Terrified him.
The tree might look dead, but he was certain it was alive. Biding its time. And when better to carry out its nefarious scheme—a phrase he remembered from a Hardy Boys book—than Halloween night, when all the children in the neighborhood would be walking past? And it was children the tree wanted, Luke was sure of that. This was going to be its year—the first year he was allowed to trick or treat with his friends without adult supervision.
It wasn’t as if Luke never went past the tree—he did so all the time. Well, every now and then, at least. The tree was down the road and almost everything else in his life was in the other direction. His friends’ houses. School. The mill where his dad worked. The grocery store. The nearby town, with its department stores and pharmacies and the five-and-dime on Main Street. They only went down the road on alternate Sundays, when services were held in the other church, or if they were going to visit relatives or travel to the cities in the southern part of the province.
But that didn’t count, because those trips were in the car. They were past the tree in a few seconds and he was protected from it by the car’s metallic shell. Plus, he could sit behind his dad and stare out the window in the opposite direction. He didn’t have to look at the tree at all.
On Halloween night, they’d have to walk beneath it, and that was freaking Luke out.
—
The day finally arrived. This year, Halloween was on a Saturday, so Luke and his friends were able to get off to an early start. They planned to meet up at Benny’s place, about a mile up the road from Luke’s, at four o’clock, before it got dark. It was a cool, crisp afternoon, more winter than fall. Most of the leaves were already off the trees, crunching underfoot everywhere they went. The sky was gray and there had been speculation that it might snow, although that hadn’t happened yet.
Until the moment each of his friends arrived, their costumes were carefully guarded secrets. They never revealed their plans in advance or collaborated with one another, and on one occasion two of them showed up wearing the exact same store-bought mask, which they all thought was pretty hilarious.
This year, Benny was going as Robin Hood. He wore a simple black mask over his eyes and a shoe-polish mustache. He had on a green toque his mother had knitted and a green cape that belonged to his little sister. A quiver of arrows was slung over his back and he carried a fiberglass bow.
Terry had borrowed his dad’s plaid flannel jacket and had an ax in a sling at his waist. He wore big black boots and a plastic mask that sort of looked like Paul Bunyan, although to Luke it looked more like a pirate.
Donnie was the last to arrive. He had on a clown mask with bright orange woolen hair, but other than that, he wore the same clothes he went to school in every day. Luke didn’t think a clown was very scary, but he didn’t say anything. That wouldn’t be cool.
Luke’s costume was the uncontested champion that year, even if his mask weighed four or five pounds from all the modeling clay and he was sweating like a racehorse under the heavy fur wig. The other guys all wanted to touch the mask, but he wouldn’t let them. He had been up late the night before getting every detail just right.
Luke’s grandmother lived up the hill from Benny in a tiny house on the byroad that led down to the summer cottages that lined the bay. Hers was a favorite stop for everyone, because she always gave out homemade fudge, cookies, and Rice Krispies squares in little bags that had each kid’s name written on them. Although they usually measured the success of their Halloween night by the number of five-cent bags of chips they got, Luke loved the homemade stuff, especially when she made divinity fudge, which was his favorite.
After visiting his grandma’s place, the four boys went down the slope next to the bridge over the train tracks. There was a swampy area at the bottom where bulrushes grew, and they were in perfect condition for throwing at one another.
Luke found a safe place to store his mask and joined his friends in all-out warfare. The cattails exploded on impact like fluffy hand grenades, sending up clouds of feathery seeds. The flannel jacket Terry was wearing turned snow-white with seeds clinging to it. They got them in their hair and eyebrows—Luke even got some seeds up his nose, making him sneeze.
Even though he was having a good time, Luke couldn’t help thinking about the tree. It was more than a mile in the opposite direction, and it would be hours before they reached it, but eventually they’d have to face it. Still, he tried to force it from his mind and enjoy the evening. There wasn’t anything he could do about it now anyway.
Finally the sun disappeared behind the trees and darkness fell upon them. They brushed themselves off as best they could, gathered up their sacks, readjusted their costumes, and headed out on the trail in search of treats.
Everywhere they went, they had to go through the same ritual. The adults invited them into the kitchen or the parlor while they looked the trick-or-treaters over and tried to guess their identities. The grown-ups critiqued their costumes—Luke’s gorilla mask attracted a lot of questions and comments—and often made other demands before the treats were handed out. At Terry’s great-aunt’s place, the boys all had to sing before she would give them anything. Luke didn’t mind—he was in choir at school and at church—but he knew Terry hated singing in public. They did a couple verses of “Frère Jacques,” which satisfied the elderly woman, who rewarded them with oversized plastic coins instead of candy.
When they reached the railway tracks that divided the village in half, they crossed the highway and started back toward Luke’s place, hitting the houses on that side of the road. None of them were allowed to cross the tracks—that was the upper limit of Luke’s world.
Donnie had some firecrackers and sparklers that they set off every now and then, and they had all brought bars of soap to soap car windows. Their mothers would marvel at the oddly shaped remnants when they returned them to the bathroom sink later that night. Nobody ever complained, and Luke had once heard a woman at the store say that the first of November was the only time her husband washed the car windows all winter.
At Luke’s place, he hung back in the shadows because he knew his mom could identify him from his clothes. They’d done the same thing at each of the other boys’ homes, to give them all a fair shot at not being recognized.
When he heard his friends tromping down the porch stairs, Luke rushed past them and held open his pillow case. “Trick or treat,” he yelled, and was rewarded with a bag of chips from his mother and a pat on his head from his father. “Dad! Watch out. Don’t ruin my mask.”
“Don’t stay out too late,” Luke’s dad said. “And don’t get into too much trouble. No tipping cows or knocking over outhouses.”
Luke knew what an outhouse was. A few people in the village still used them, and his grandmother once had one perched at the very edge of the hill. He could imagine it falling down the slope, going end over end as it crashed to the bottom. But he had no idea what tipping cows was about, and he had no time to stop and ask. Maybe later.
If they made it past the Halloween tree, that was.
Luke swallowed. He cast a longing glance at the cozy kitchen, wondering if he’d ever see it again. Would it be the worst thing in the world if he decided to stay here and not go any farther?
He could say he wasn’t feeling well. That would work.
But what about his friends? If they went on without him, they’d get caught by the tree for sure. He was the one who lived closest to it. He could see it from the end of the driveway if he looked in that direction—which he usually tried not to do. He knew it was evil.
For a moment, he toyed with the idea of asking his dad to come with them, like he used to do when Luke was younger and wasn’t allowed to walk along the busy highway without an adult. What reason could he give, though? He was big now, practically a teenager.
No. He was being silly. It was only a tree. This wasn’t The Lord of the Rings, where forests could come to life, after all. This was the real world.
But terrible things happened in the real world, too. One of his sister’s friends had been murdered a few years ago. Killed by a man, not a tree, but still. There were whispers among his brother’s friends that the man had done terrible things to her—sex things. For the rest of the winter, no one had been allowed to go anywhere alone, even though the police had caught the guy the day after the murder. Luke sometimes wondered about the things adults knew, which they didn’t talk about when kids were around.
Several sets of footsteps pounded up the porch stairs—another band of trick-or-treaters had arrived. It was time to go—before Donnie decided to set off some firecrackers or Benny soaped the windows on his dad’s pickup, which Luke would end up having to clean tomorrow.
He went out the back porch door to avoid running into the new arrivals. On his way, he saw a long, thick wooden pole leaning in the corner near the window where his mother hung their clothes outside on the line to dry. It was part of the swing set that they disassembled and stored each winter. It felt good in his hands. He swung it around a few times and thought that it was just the sort of weapon a futuristic gorilla might use, even though they had pistols and rifles on the TV show.
None of the others made any comments about his new accessory when he rejoined them. They were already heading down the driveway. Luke ran to catch up. When they reached the road, they paused to let a transport pass. There weren’t too many cars out tonight, except for a few parents driving door-to-door with youngsters, and those would stop soon enough. But this was the main highway, so they had to be on the lookout for big trucks. Only Donnie had a flashlight, and their costumes were all on the dark side, except for the bright red squares on Terry’s jacket.
Luke looked down the road. Everyone called that direction “down” because it was south, which on a map was down, he’d learned in geography class. The houses were farther apart here. Up near the crossing they were practically on top of one another, but there were still farms down this way. Entire fields between neighboring houses where hay or potatoes or cabbage were harvested each fall. A big chunk of the backyard behind Luke’s house was occupied by a garden that they worked on every year, raising most of the vegetables they ate all winter.
There were two houses across the road and then none on that side all the way to the corner. On Luke’s side, there were a few more, but not many. One was set well back from the road, atop a hill that Luke and his friends went sledding and skiing on in the winter. The only streetlight between here and the corner stood just beyond the lane leading up to that house.
They decided to hit the two houses across the road first, even though they’d promised their parents they would cross the highway as few times as possible. Luke didn’t mind. That meant they would take longer to reach the corner. They even went down the gravel road to the old Jensen place, a five-minute walk, but the house was in total darkness when they got there, so they trudged back to the highway and turned once more toward the corner, which was by now very close indeed.
“Creeps me out,” Luke heard Benny say.
“What?”
“That tree. Seriously creepy.”
Luke felt a rush of relief flow through him. “Man—I thought it was just me.”
“Uh-uh. No way,” Terry said. “I’ve been thinking about it all evening.”
“All day,” Henry said.
“All week,” Benny finished.
The four of them stood on the side of the road and stared.
“It’ll be okay if we cross to the other side,” Terry said.
“Yeah, there aren’t any houses for a while, anyway,” Henry said.
“Just the Corrigans’,” Luke said. At this they all fell silent again. The Corrigans had dogs. Mean dogs that barked like crazy and liked to chase kids on bicycles. Their yard, filled with car bodies, washing machines, and other junk, was opposite the tree, right on the corner. Luke had never gone in there—that was one place they always skipped on Halloween.
Even now he thought he heard the low growl of an animal that was more wolf than dog. The kind that bared its teeth and drooled. The kind that might bite even the friendliest hand.
So—risk walking in front of the Corrigan place, where they knew there was danger, or pass beneath the shadow of the creepy old tree, which was probably safe as long as it didn’t decide to fall on them.
“Man,” Donnie said.
“Yeah,” Luke agreed.
“The McCormacks give the best treats, though,” said Terry.
“Yeah, and the Nichols, too,” Donnie said.
The moon, three-quarters full, chose that moment to disappear behind a cloud. The amber light from the lone streetlight between them and the tree didn’t penetrate very far into the darkness. Another transport blew past, engulfing the boys in a cloud of dust. Its taillights flickered red in brief acknowledgment of the corner. For a second, the tree was illuminated by its high beams. Then it was gone.
As much as he was tempted to turn back the way they’d come and call it a night, Luke couldn’t bring himself to do so. There were too many good treats ahead. “All right,” he said, squaring his shoulders. Sweat was dripping off the inside of his mask. He caught some on his tongue and enjoyed its salty tang. He took one step, then another, and his three friends fell in behind him. He gripped the sturdy pole in one hand like a martial-arts expert might, clinging to his candy sack with the other.
Two or three minutes, tops, and they’d be past the danger. The Corrigan compound to the left hulked in ominous silence and darkness, although Luke was still convinced he could hear at least one dog sniffing around the yard. Maybe more. They were being quiet for the moment, but he steeled himself for them to start howling and barking and snapping at them.
They passed the streetlight. Now their shadows marched in front of them, growing longer, overlapping, jockeying for position. A few snowflakes drifted before their eyes, little more than airborne frost, but the chill Luke felt despite his heavy costume was very real. The oval eye holes on his goalie mask restricted his field of vision, especially with the thick wads of modeling clay he’d applied to make a furrowed brow and a prominent muzzle. He stared at his feet, unwilling or unable to lift his gaze to the cluster of trees at the corner and the one that towered over them. He watched the ground, bracing himself for a new shadow to suddenly enter his field of view as the sharp talons reached forward to pluck him from the side of the road and toss him into the gaping maw he always suspected was concealed in the gnarled tree trunk. He wanted to pick up the pace, but he couldn’t make his feet go any faster.
Then he heard Terry sigh in relief. He looked up and realized they were beyond the tree’s reach. Around the corner and approaching the next cluster of houses. Upon the hill, past the rock quarry, three houses owned by the Hamilton clan huddled at the end of a steep driveway. So glad were they to be past the dangerous corner that the boys fairly flew up the gravel drive and continued their trick-or-treating adventure.
The houses they visited over the next hour were warm and inviting. The McCormacks even had little cups of hot cider to hand out, which tasted wonderful, although it meant removing their masks for a few minutes, except for Benny, whose shoe-polish mustache was starting to wipe off.
By the time they reached the Nichol house, bey
ond which the highway descended to a river with a train trestle on one side and a small boatyard on the other, the boys were starting to tire. Their sacks were heavy with treats, and they had covered several miles.
This was the other limit to Luke’s world. He wasn’t allowed to ride his bike down this hill, which had only a very narrow, rock-strewn shoulder, and his parents had told them not to go beyond it on foot tonight, either. Here, the village ended and another began, even though Luke never could see the difference from one side to the other. Phone calls to houses down here were long distance, so that must mean something—but he didn’t know what.
They prepared themselves for the trudge back home. They’d covered both sides of the road already, so they had no more stops to make.
Ahead, although the road was mostly straight for at least half a mile, it rose gently. The incline was more noticeable in this direction—they hadn’t appreciated it while walking downhill.
The moon, which had shone brightly on them for most of this part of their journey, once again retreated behind cloud cover, and the smattering of airborne frost had turned to real snow. The flakes were large and fluffy, most vanishing before they reached the ground, but they were increasing in number. Luke watched them land on Terry’s back, accumulating on the red and black squares of his flannel jacket.
When they reached the top of the rise, they paused to catch their breath. Benny unwrapped a chocolate bar and crammed the whole thing into his mouth. Donnie was chewing gum so vigorously his clown mask was practically jumping off his face. Luke rummaged through his sack until he found his grandmother’s package. He undid the twist tie and broke off a small piece of maple fudge, tilted back his mask, and popped it into his mouth, savoring the sugary sweetness as it dissolved, leaving behind a fleck of walnut that he crushed between his molars.
None of them spoke. They knew what lay ahead. Past the Hamilton houses and the rock quarry was the last turn before Luke’s house, with the Corrigans on the right and the tree—that blasted infernal tree—on the left.
Halloween Carnival Volume 4 Page 5
