Harvest Moon

by James A. Moore

  “How’d he get it under his skin?” Will leaned forward; caught up in the memories of the old stories they’d all heard.

  “He didn’t have skin like you and me, son. When he wanted a new bone the flesh on his body just sort of wrapped around it like rope binding a bundle of sticks. There was a reason they called him ‘Old Bones,’ instead of Robert. By the time he was finished at the cemetery there wasn’t much left of him that wasn’t covered in the bones he found there.” He looked up, his eyes seeking the gaze of people around the lantern, and finding them. “He didn’t look human by the time he was finished.” The old man lowered his head and looked up at Heather, his eyes gleaming. “Not that he ever looked very human.

  “Then there was the second boy, Patrick. Patrick was dark where his brother was pale, and he hardly looked at all like a human being.” He looked away from Heather and she sighed softly, not aware until that moment that she’d been holding her breath. His gaze locked on Liz, and Heather saw her friend stiffen just a bit, like a rabbit spotting a big dog that was far too close for the bunny’s comfort. “Patrick was short and fat, but he was also very, very strong.” He lifted his hands and hooked them into imitations of an animal’s claws. “He had long, wicked fingernails that were hooked and strong as steel. He could use them to cut just about anything, but his favorite thing to slice apart was a good hunk of human skin.”

  Will fidgeted on his sleeping bag, his eyes wide and worried. Kimmie wrapped her hand around his and leaned into him. Almost as if her presence were a reminder, he straightened up and tried to look a little more macho. As far as Heather was concerned, it was a failed effort, but at least he tried.

  Tim cleared his throat and spoke. “Why did he like cutting up skin?”

  “Because he needed the flesh of others to make himself complete.” The old man looked away from all of them for a moment, his face bitter and haggard. “The things Alvina called her masters were hard on their servants. They made demands of her body and soul. They gave her power but robbed her of her youth, and they gave her sons but made sure they could never live comfortably. Patrick was born with most of his insides on the outside as it were, and he needed to replenish his own body with parts from other people. That was what earned him the nickname ‘Patches’.”

  When he looked back at the kids, his face had softened a bit. “Patrick was bitter about that, but accepted it was a part of what he was.” He flashed a smile at Tim. “He was a monster. It was what he was made to be and what he had to be if he wanted to live, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t enjoy it.

  “The last of her sons born was called the Pumpkin Man by some people in town—after they’d seen him that is—and he was also called Mister Sticks.” The old man leaned back and reached into his shirt pocket. He took out another cigarette and lit it from the remains of the first one. “Neither name was really very fair. He didn’t have a pumpkin for a head or any other part of his body, but it sort of looked like one. And there wasn’t a single stick on his body for that matter. But his fingers were long and brown and tapered down to sharp points. So, again, he sort of looked like he had sticks for hands.” He blew a thick plume of cloyingly sweet smoke into the air and grinned. “He was old before he was even born.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Heather couldn’t stop herself from speaking that time, and she regretted it almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

  “It does if you understand the nature of magic.” He pinned her in place with his stare, and Heather thought for sure her heart would just stop. “He was old before he was born, because he’d walked the earth for a long time before he was born.”

  He stared at Heather and she felt her skin break a light sweat, despite the chill in the late October air. Everyone was silent for a moment, and Jack finally looked away from her and crushed the tip of his cigarette out by pinching the hot ember between his fingertips. “He lived a long time ago and committed many sins. Because of his actions in life he could not go to Heaven when he died. But he was also forbidden to go to Hell. He was supposed to walk the earth for all eternity, but not as a living being. No, he was supposed to walk as a ghost.”

  Will looked over and smiled. “Sounds kind of like the story of Jack of the Lantern.”

  “Funny you should say that.” The old man winked. “His real name was Jack.”

  “So what made Jack so special?” Heather was pretty sure the man was making it up. But that was okay, it was a fun story, properly creepy.

  The man looked at her and smiled again, his face buried in deep shadows. “Well, the way I heard it, he really was the spirit of Jack of the Lantern, and he was given a body again. But that didn’t mean he was happy about it. After a few hundred years of wandering the underworld with nothing but a piece of burning hellfire in a turnip to guide him, he’d gotten bitter. Not that I reckon too many could blame him for that attitude.”

  “What did he have to be bitter about?” That was Tim again, who seemed to have reverted to a five-year-old since the start of the story. “Didn’t he beat the Devil at his own game?”

  When the old man looked at Tim, his eyes almost seemed to flare with a light of their own. It must have been the angle he was sitting at, because it happened every single time he looked toward Liz’s boyfriend. “There’s winning and then there’s not losing. I imagine after a while he figured he hadn’t won so much as not lost. He was stuck by himself, lost to all the world for a few hundred years before he finally got reborn.”

  “Okay. But just being angry isn’t enough to make him a monster. How was he different from anyone else?” Kimmie’s voice was breathy. Under other circumstances Heather would have thought the girl had been necking a bit too heavily to hide it.

  “He got reborn into the world with the same gift he’d been given by the devil, girl.” Kimmie’s face remained curious, but she wasn’t making the connection. The old man explained calmly. “He was reborn with the same hellfire that had been given to him as a guiding light. If he called on that blaze, he could burn a person with a touch. Unless that person was truly without sin.” The man looked at Kimmie and winked. “And there aren’t a whole lot of people in this world who are without sin.”

  Lance spoke up, his voice sounding unusually stressed. “How did she die? How did they really kill Hattie?”

  “They tore her apart. When it was all said and done, they had her drawn and quartered, and then they burned her body and scattered her ashes all over this little hollow.” He was silent for a minute, his face lost in reflection, instead of staring hard at one of them. Heather rubbed her arms in the chill. “They say her head screamed and screamed the entire time she was burning.”

  He stood up then, his knees making faint popping noises, and his gnarled hands sliding up to his lower back, as if to work at a throbbing pain there. “They burned her alive and scattered her all over this place. Funny thing about that. Almost every plant that grows here in the Hollow is only found here. What do you suppose that means?”

  Heather looked around at her friends and wondered what they were thinking. All of them were silent as the old man started to walk away.

  When she couldn’t take the silence anymore she spoke up. “What do you think it means?”

  He looked at her and smiled. In that moment he looked like a kindly old grandfather, the sort she’d always wanted to have. “I think it means that maybe she isn’t quite as dead and gone as everyone thinks. I think that she’s everywhere around us right now. Who knows, maybe she’s planning on coming back some time soon.” He waved a hand by way of wishing them a good night and started walking into the darkness. “Maybe she’s watching all of us right now and wondering if there’s anything she can do to make us help her come back. Good night, youngsters. Have a happy Halloween.”

  They said their goodnights to the old man and watched him wander away. It was Tim who thought about what he’d said and chuckled. “I hear the mushrooms on the ground here are like LSD. They’re supposed to make peop
le have serious delusions.”

  Liz looked at him like he’d lost his mind and then shook her head. “You’re crazy, Tim.”

  He blinked, looking a bit defensive. “Hey, it’s what I heard. I didn’t say I’d ever do it.”

  “No, you’d try to talk other people into doing it, so you could watch.”

  Will reached over and thumped Tim playfully on the shoulder. “I thought you only did that with sex, dude.”

  Liz laughed, and Heather saw the look on Tim’s face when she did it. His expression was a blend of anger, disappointment, and maybe just a little fear. Then his face changed, the doubt fading away and the smallest of smiles creeping over his lips. He reached down to the sleeping bag and pulled it aside.

  The light from the lantern was more than enough to show the mushrooms growing in the pale moss under the cloth. They were black growths, with a peppering of red wet spots on them. Will plucked one from the ground and held it up in front of his face for everyone to see.

  Heather started to stand, her throat working but her tongue practically glued to the roof of her mouth. Witch’s Tongue was well known in the area for its poison qualities. Hell, her mom had told her a few stories about kids who’d tried the mushrooms back in the early Seventies, who had died after eating a few of the ugly toadstools. And there were even rumors that a few of the people in town had actually used them in food to commit murders—not that she’d ever heard of anyone really using them, just rumors. She reached out with her hand, intent on knocking the mushroom out of Tim’s grasp, but she was too late. He popped the whole thing into his mouth and started chewing before anyone could so much as yell boo.

  Tim made a face, and forced himself to chew quickly before swallowing. Liz let out a faint gasp of shock, her eyes flying wide in her pretty face. “Tim! Are you crazy? That’s poisonous!”

  Tim laughed; his eyes wide and his teeth bared. “Got’cha! What are you crazy? You think I’d actually eat one of those things?” He looked around, the grin slowly falling from his face. He looked puzzled, his mouth slackening. “I was just fooling.” Tim looked to Lance, doubt making him look even younger than usual. “We set that up, didn’t we?”

  Lance looked right back at him, pale and worried. “No, dude. We didn’t. We have to get you to the hospital and right damn now.”

  Tim started to say something in response and stopped abruptly. His face grew red and his eyes bugged. His hands clutched at his throat and he fell backwards, kicking and thrashing, his left leg almost kicking the lantern over. Will grabbed for him, trying to hold him down, almost screaming incoherently as he pulled at Tim’s hands. A thick red foam began spilling from Tim’s mouth, and as the boy coughed, ropy tendrils of the stuff flew through the air, spraying across Will’s shirt and neck.

  Heather finally found her voice and screamed at Lance to do something. Lance looked around, his expression wild, and almost leaped over Kimmie in an effort to get to Tim. Tim was bucking hard, his body trying to get away from the grasping hands of his two friends. Liz had both of her hands on her face and was screaming bloody murder. Heather knew in that instant—though she wasn’t really conscious of that knowledge—that her friend was really, truly serious about Tim. The girl’s eyes were as round as saucers and her skin was almost as pale as cream.

  Lance flipped Tim over onto his stomach, fighting against the convulsions that threw limbs back and forth. The bloody foam had slowed down and Tim’s eyelids fluttered, the eyes behind them moving at high speed, as if they were trying to see everywhere at once. Lance sat on the backs of Tim’s legs, and Will helped him keep the boy from crawling anywhere on the still twitching wave of seizures.

  Everything calmed down for a few seconds, and Heather felt her pulse start slowing down from the jackhammer pace it had started into. Kimmie crawled across the ground, moving over to see if by some miracle Tim was still alive. Heather didn’t move. She could see his chest rising and falling from where she was; though his breaths were as rapid as a hummingbird’s wings.

  “Is he dead?” Kimmie’s voice was sounding a little weird, or maybe it was just Heather’s imagination. The girl almost sounded excited by the idea of seeing someone else perish in front of her.

  “I don’t think so.” Lance sounded almost clinical, which was not at all what she expected from him. Lance was a teddy bear of a man, and normally his voice was a dead giveaway for whatever he might be feeling. His broad face was pinched with strain, but his voice gave away nothing. “But Will and I got this shit all over us. We gotta wash it off. I hear it can get you through a scratch on your skin.”

  Will shook his head. “If that’s true, we’re all screwed. We were sitting on this stuff.”

  “No, man. We were sitting on sleeping bags.” Lance looked his way. “But we got off the bags to roll around with Tim. And he puked all over you, dude.”

  “We gotta get you guys to the hospital.” Kimmie shook her head. “There’s no way you’re gonna get over this without treatment.”

  Lance looked up at her. “We can’t just get up and walk away. We can’t carry him the whole way.”

  Heather reached for her purse. “I’ve got a cell phone.” She fumbled for the damned thing, which had decided now was a great time to play hide and go seek. After tossing her fold-up brush and three different shades of lipstick on the ground, she finally grabbed the phone and turned it on. At the same time, Tim was doing his best to stand up, dragging Lance with him and screaming, his face a deep, dark red. Heather slapped the numbers as quickly as she could, punching in 911.

  The receiver rang three times against her ear and then cut off. There was nothing but the faint hiss of static. She ended the call and then hit the redial button, her heart sounding so loud in her ears that she could barely hear the dial tone. “Come on, come on, come on!” After what seemed like around three weeks, the ringing started again. Lance had his arms around Tim’s chest and had lifted him completely off the ground. Tim didn’t seem to like that idea much. He snapped his head back and Heather heard the sound of Lance’s nose breaking even over the sound of her pulse and the phone ringing.

  Lance dropped Tim and fell back, his eyes rolling in his head. Tim wasn’t looking ill anymore, he was looking full-scale psychotic. Heather let out a gasp as she saw the flow of blood that started at Lance’s nose and ran quickly in dual streams down to his chin. It was hard to follow as it fell, however, as Lance was in the process of doing the exact same thing.

  Will circled around Tim, looking more than a little terrified. Kimmie was screaming again, and Heather was looking at Lance on the ground. The phone kept ringing and ringing and she looked down at her boyfriend as he rolled over and tried to stand up. Lance did not fall down like that. Not ever. She’d seen him hit by guys who outweighed him by fifty pounds on the football field and never seen him dropped.

  Lance looked her way, his eyes blinking back the tears from getting his face smashed by one of his own friends, and Heather looked back, her own expression worried and frightened. Someone finally picked up on the other side of the phone connection. The voice was old and scratchy, bringing to mind images of a man who had to be at least in his nineties. “Hello?”

  “Help! We’re at the Witch’s Hollow and one of my friends ate one of the mushrooms!”

  “Is this Heather?”

  “What? Oh, yes, yes it is. Can you please send an ambulance?” And who the hell needed to know her name when she was in the middle of an emergency? It wasn’t like she’d make a crank call about something this serious.

  “I wanted to make sure. Tim ate a mushroom, didn’t he?”

  “Yes! It was Tim, and we need help! Can you please send an ambulance?” Her voice broke and she sounded about twelve to her own ears.

  “I already have someone on the way. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Thank you! Oh, God, thank you.”

  “I wondered who would try one first.”

  “What?” She had no idea what the old man was
prattling on about, but it was just off enough from the response she expected that it caught her attention. “How did you know someone would eat a mushroom?”

  “Well, I made the proper incantations before I sat down to tell you a story or two.”

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Jack Bathory.” The gloating voice on the phone croaked. “We met earlier, when you and your little friends were mocking the memory of my mother.”

  “You work for the ambulance service?”

  “No, child, I work for me. You dialed the wrong number, I’m afraid.” The voice didn’t sound so ancient anymore, but it was still gloating. “There won’t be an ambulance tonight.”

  “But you can’t do this!”

  The old man’s voice cackled so loudly that the sound broke into static against her ear. “Oh, child, that is exactly what my mother said before they tore her apart.”

  The cell phone let out a shriek of white noise that Heather soon mimicked, and she dropped it to the dirt at her feet. Tim chose that moment to fall to the ground again, his body moving slowly now, writhing like a snake’s. Lance was starting to stand again, swaying a bit, his face covered in the thick waste that had spilled from Tim when he vomited, with a liberal dose of nose blood added in for color. Will wobbled for a few seconds and then fell backward, landing hard on his ass. For a second Heather felt like she was watching an episode of Whose Line Is It, Anyway? One stood, another lay down and the other sat, just like on the show. It wasn’t funny, although Lance and Will seemed to be leaning toward thinking it was. Both of them were giggling.

  Heather might have paid them more attention if Kimmie hadn’t started screaming in a new pitch around the same time. The noise she’d been making had been annoyingly loud, and certainly heartfelt, but not really devastating. Now that changed. Her screams became more frantic, louder and a good deal higher in pitch. She was looking at the Victim Trees and shaking her head violently, but whatever she saw was too low to the water for Heather to see.