The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Annabeth Turner?” the librarian replied in disbelief. She stepped forward and yanked the book out of the crouching girl’s hands. The exposed face behind it was suffused with a look of remorse and terror and something else — almost defiance.

  “Please don’t tell my mother! Please just let me go!”

  Startled by the girl’s frantic reaction, Kathy softened her tone. “Just what were you doing in here? Don’t you realize you would have been locked in the library overnight?” She added, in a slightly sterner voice, “Stand up this minute.”

  The girl did as she was told.

  She looked older than her twelve years — thin, pale, almost as tall as the librarian herself, with straight brown hair cut in bangs. Her haircut, her awkwardness, her height, her way of dressing — in obvious hand-me-downs a decade at least out of date — made her, even to Kathy Marks’s less-than-trendy, Talbot’s-styled sensibility, a walking poster girl for peer ridicule.

  Something more easily accessed in the librarian, an echo of her own awkward and unhappy past, sympathized with the young girl. When she spoke again her tone was almost gentle.

  “Tell me why you tried to stay here overnight, Annabeth.”

  The girl stared at the floor.

  “Trouble at home?” Kathy asked. “I know you haven’t lived here long, but believe me, there are people in Orangefield who can help you with —”

  “Nothing like that,” the girl replied quickly, not looking up, which told the librarian that there may be something there after all.

  “Annabeth, look at me.”

  The young girl raised her head slowly — and Kathy blinked, startled by the intensity in her eyes. She had expected them to be full of tears, but here was that hard, defiant look again.

  Recovering, Kathy said, “Is there anything you want to talk to me about? You’ve spent almost every day since you moved here in July in the library — first there was the astronomy section you tore through, and then the encyclopedias, and now heaven knows what else. I thought from the talks we’ve had that maybe we’d become friends. I know how hard it’s been on you since your father died, Annabeth. You know I lost my own parents when I was your age—”

  “My name is Wizard,” the girl announced, “not Annabeth. I don’t let anyone call me that anymore.”

  At a loss for words, the librarian replied, “You still haven’t told me why you tried to lock yourself in here—”

  “There are books you won’t let me take out.”

  Something that had been lurking at the very back of Kathy Marks’s awareness now came forward. She realized they were standing in front of the section marked LOCAL HISTORY.

  “You have a project to do on Orangefield? I’m sure I could arrange—”

  Her eyes still defiant, the girl answered, “Not that.”

  Kathy turned over the book she had taken from the girl’s hand; the title read Occult History of Orangefield by D.A. Withers. There was a RESTRICTED stamp on the cover.

  The librarian looked at the girl. “You’re interested in ghosts and such?”

  An almost secret smile came to the girl’s lips. “You could say.”

  For the first time since the strange interview had started, it occurred to Kathy Marks that the girl standing before her might be on drugs, or worse.

  “I want you to give me your home phone number, so I can talk to your mother,” the librarian said in a sterner voice than she had yet used. She dug into her bag for the pen and notepad always there.

  The girl said nothing, then recited the number in a curt voice.

  There was a sudden loud sound below, from the first floor.

  The front window with the pumpkin in it began to rattle, as if someone were rapidly knocking on it with a knuckled fist.

  The librarian stared at the window, trying to see if anyone was there, but the sound abruptly stopped.

  When she turned back to Annabeth the girl had reached down to pick up her backpack.

  “I have to go,” Annabeth said. Her voice had become almost sweet, making the librarian reassess her yet again. The awkward girl, lonely, trying to find her way, trouble at home, just like the spinster librarian. “Will you let me check out that book?”

  The librarian said, “I’m sorry, Annabeth, but I can’t do that. Perhaps if you come back tomorrow, we can talk about this project of yours.”

  Again a sea change in the girl. She became furtive. “Maybe,” she said.

  She brushed by the librarian, mounting her backpack as she skipped down the metal circular stairway to the first floor. She was out the front door of the building before Kathy Marks could react.

  Absently, the librarian lay Occult History of Orangefield in the retrieval cart; Marjorie could put it away tomorrow along with the books she’d neglected.

  She was dismounting the spiral staircase, lost in thought, when another series of loud rappings came against the front window.

  She froze and stared in that direction.

  To the side of the cutout pumpkin, Annabeth Turner’s face was pressed against the glass, with the strangest look of triumph and fright on her face. She waved at the librarian and then pulled away from the glass into the night.

  The librarian heard a single bark of laughter.

  It wasn’t until the next day that her assistant Marjorie discovered that three other restricted books, all on the occult, were missing from the LOCAL HISTORY section.

  Chapter Thirty

  You’ve done very well, Wizard.

  She wanted to shout, “Thank you!”

  Two blocks from the library, on an empty side street, she suddenly became short of breath. A whirling screen of dizzy images replaced her vision as she stopped dead in the street, putting her hands down to the sidewalk to steady herself, trying to calmly regain the flow of air into her lungs.

  Faces, twirling pictures in orange and black, pumpkins, always pumpkins, sheeted ghosts like the white sheet she wore when she was little, a bag in her hand, two poke-holes in the eyes, the faces of mother and dead father, his face as white as the sheet, a swirl of candy corn, orange-and-white, a black cat filling her vision with a hiss, red tongue, white teeth and whiskers, green wild eyes and then gone, the steady of the sidewalk suddenly under her hands and her wheezing, throat constricting—

  Asthma attack—

  She tried to even her breath but it was too late. Knowing from experience not to move, she relaxed and raised one hand from the sidewalk while resting on the other hand and her knees. Slowly she reached around into her pack for the inhaler.

  There was no air —

  Now panic began to set in. She curled down onto the sidewalk, still rummaging in the bag and then suddenly ripping it off her shoulders, pushing it away from her arms and clawing in the front pocket—

  The inhaler wasn’t there!

  And then suddenly it was — her fingers closing around it and yanking it to her mouth, she was on her back now, staring at streetlights and night sky, the sharp corner of an empty house, and with both hands she pushed the instrument into her mouth, began to breathe in slowly…

  Breath came.

  Still slowly, she pulled air in, pushing it out in little gasps and then in larger gulps, as the attack subsided.

  She waited for him to talk to her, but there was nothing in her head.

  She stared at a scattering stars between the corner of the house and a streetlight, a tall tree limb shorn of most leaves.

  As if in answer, an oak leaf pirouetted down into view, landed next to her face.

  She wanted to laugh.

  And then cry.

  “I’ve done well, haven’t I?” she said into the night. “I’ve done well as Wizard?”

  There was no answer.

  The house was dark, but that was no surprise.

  Annabeth pushed her key into the front door, opened it with a creak. The porch light overhead was off, had been since the bulb had burnt out a month ago. It had gone unreplaced. Just to make sure, she checked the swi
tch on the inside wall — it was off, as she had expected, and when she jiggled it on nothing happened. There was another switch next to the outside light and she flipped it up, which turned on a single lamp on the far side of the living room.

  The room was a mess, as always — magazines, newspapers scattered, unpacked boxes, a nest of cat hair on one side chair where their feline slept, furniture, mantle, a few knick-knacks all undusted. The rug was stained, soiled, hadn’t been vacuumed in weeks. Under the single lamp was an ashtray full of cigarette butts, a near-empty tumbler with clear liquid nesting the bottom, a single ice cube almost extinct.

  This is what you get when you have nothing.

  With no expectations, Annabeth walked past the stairway, back to the kitchen, which was in similar disarray — stacked dishes, a vague ammonia smell battling the odor of soured milk, a broken dish on the sideboard kept from tumbling into the sink by a half-eaten sandwich perched on the sink’s edge, a full garbage can blocking the door to the backyard. The overhead florescent light, a round, naked white curl whose ornamental glass cover had long disappeared, flickered fitfully and never quite blossomed on.

  The short hallway behind the kitchen was lined with dust bunnies, two unmatching shoes side by side in the center, incongruous.

  Loud snoring came from the bedroom at the end of the hall, the door of which was ajar. As she stopped Annabeth sensed movement, saw Ludwig, their cat, staring out at her balefully from the end of the rumpled bed.

  Her mother made an interrupted snoring sound, turned away toward the wall.

  Annabeth retreated to the stairway and climbed up to the other bedroom, her own. Within there was another world. The walls were freshly painted, the floors dusted, the throw-rug bright with its original colors. The desk beneath the single window was tidy, one side stacked with schoolbooks, the other, in front of the cane-backed chair, fronted with a clean blotter and a neat row of pens and pencils. The bed was crisply made, covered with a quilt showing a shower of yellow stars and moons against a deep blue background. Over the bed was a single poster, framed, not thumb-tacked, of a white observatory dome, its slit open, revealing the huge telescope within pointed at the night sky. It had been a time-motion shot, the shutter kept open for hours while the stars revolved in the sky, and they formed streaked halos around the dome.

  Annabeth’s own telescope, a sleek white tube four inches in diameter and nearly three feet long, mounted on a sturdy wooden tripod, stood vigil beside the bed.

  Behind it against the wall was a bookcase crammed with astronomy books and fantasy novels.

  Annabeth put her backpack on the bed, opened it, and drew out the three stolen library books from inside it. She put them on the blotter on her desk, face down. She leaned over them to look out the window.

  Above the huge oak tree in the backyard there was a scattering of stars, but clouds were already moving up from the western horizon into the chill night, and there was a waxing moon still high enough to wash out whatever would be visible.

  She could just make out the Great Square of the constellation Pegasus, and, next to it, the constellation Andromeda, which, along its split lines, contained the only galaxy outside the Milky Way visible to the naked eye. She could just make out its faint oval blush. In her telescope, it was a magnificent cloud possessing billions of stars far beyond our own galactic neighborhood.

  It was said that our own galaxy would someday crash into it.

  That, she had decided before coming to Orangefield, was where her dead father’s soul was.

  Her father’s soul, along with all the others, was in the Andromeda Galaxy, which would one day crash into our own galaxy, and bring all the dead back.

  That had been her belief

  Now she no longer believed it — but she believed other things instead.

  Things that might actually be true.

  She turned from the window and looked down at the stack of stolen library books on her blotter.

  She turned back to the window and located the Andromeda galaxy again.

  “I promise,” she said, to the Andromeda galaxy, to her father, to the other billions of souls in that hazy oval of false heaven, “that I’ll find you. I promise.”

  She pulled the shade down over the window, sat down at the desk, and turned over the first book: Halloween in Orangefield.

  On the front cover had been stamped the word: RESTRICTED.

  She opened it up; the binding didn’t crack, the way an unused book’s would; this opening was smooth, the latest of many.

  Good, Wizard. Good, the returning voice in her head spoke.

  “Everything was fine before he died. You promised when you first made me Wizard three weeks ago —”

  And I’ll keep my promise, Wizard, if you do what I say.

  She smiled to herself and turned the page.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  As far as the eye could see.

  The Pumpkin Tender woke up, and was nearly blinded by autumn colors. There was wetness on his clothes and face, and he shivered as he sat up. The ground had been hard the night before, under the sickle moon, but overnight it had softened beneath him with dew. He had been foolish not to use the Army blanket, one of his only possessions, along with his felt hat and leather boots and his rabbit’s foot.

  As if to answer his own fear, he reached into his pocket and felt the soft length of the good luck charm. He immediately calmed enough to rub his eyes and really wake up.

  The sun was resting on the Eastern oaks, which meant it was 7:00 A.M. or so. The sky was autumn blue and cloudless — later the sun would climb and warm the dew back into the air, and it would probably be in the 60s in the afternoon.

  He wondered if this would be the day.

  He wouldn’t have long to find out.

  He had chosen to sleep in a low hollow, one of the shallow valleys just outside the town limits, and that had been a foolish thing. He had done many foolish things lately, which vaguely bothered him. Some of the memories crowded into his head, and he pushed them out, physically driving them back with his hands, making agitated sounds with his mouth.

  He closed his eyes and the memories were gone.

  Frankenstein, the kids in Orangefield called him, because he was big and wore shabby clothes and had rough hands and could no longer talk.

  Not since—

  Again he became agitated, and looked to the sun for help. It was above the trees now, free of them, climbing. In another hour or two it would show him what he lived to see.

  The only thing he lived for.

  That and the other thing…

  The worst memory of all came into his head and now he cried out, making the same sounds Frankenstein made in that movie he saw before the Army. He could speak, then, and walk without a bad hitch in his right leg. Sometimes he almost had clear memories of the way he had been before the Army, when he drove a ’64 Mustang convertible which he’d restored himself, and smoked cigarettes and drank beer and was on the bowling team at Ace’s and there was the girl Peggy…

  His loud sounds turned to mewling and he sat down facing the sun. He found his Army blanket at his feet and pulled it up around him.

  He had been another man before the Army. The training he remembered, Fort Bragg, shipping out, Somalia, but all of it was speeded up like a fast-motion film with a cartoon whirring sound which got higher and higher pitched until it stopped dead on the moment his foot was resting on the antipersonnel mine and froze there, his eyes looking down and his brain screaming What the hell? even as his weight lifted off the mine and it went off, and his leg, his thigh, his hip was blown to bits.

  He knew that wasn’t quite right, that there was more, but that he couldn’t quite remember…

  He had a feeling if he did it would make things even worse.

  Felt like someone tearing the meat up off my bones was the last rational thought he had before a piece of his own ankle bone ripped into his mouth and then up through his palate, severing his tongue on the way, stop
ping in his brain.

  “Kid made his own bullet,” one of the field doctors said later, laughing in that sardonic, funeral parlor way MASH doctors had, and even now part of him wanted to laugh the same way when he remembered that.

  Then he came home and after a while was Frankenstein.

  No more Peggy, no siree, not with three quarters of a brain and no tongue and a hitch in his walk bigger than Festis on TV…

  He watched the sun climb ever higher — he’d know when it was time — but already he felt it warming the wet off him, inside his blanket.

  No more Aaron Peters, he’d had a tongue and a good leg and a girlfriend and a car and liked to read history books. A pretty good pitching arm, too, and not a bad quarterback for a lefty.

  He became, instead, Frankenstein.

  And the Pumpkin Tender.

  Peggy married a guy named Turk, who laid a hand on her now and then, he heard someone say. The same someone said it was a shame, that Aaron would have made a wonderful husband.

  Maybe it was his mother who said that, he wasn’t sure…

  No more bowling, his kid brother took the Mustang and wrapped it around a pole six months later, walking away from the wreck but in a way The Pumpkin Tender was glad the car was gone. One thing less to think about when he looked at it, memories firing off like pistons in his broken head.

  He knew they were uncomfortable when he was home so he’d started staying away as much as he could, and took care of their guilt at least in the summer and fall when old Joshua Froelich hired him to weed and tend his pumpkin patch.

  “Better’n a dog,” Froelich had said, since Aaron tended Froelich’s land like a hawk on legs, killing anything — weed, insect or animal — that went after the pumpkins. Soon word about this wonder had spread, and The Pumpkin Tender found himself taking care of most of the pumpkins in Orangefield. In the winter he stayed mostly at home, making them all nervous and irritable, becoming Frankenstein, but in the spring, after the last snow, he began to wander the still-fallow fields which surrounded the town like a wreath, pulling up rocks which had been forced up through the frozen ground, cleaning out dead vines and late weeds he had missed the previous autumn, making his fields ready for planting. By the time planting came in summer he lived in the fields, tending each shoot like a baby and nurturing each budded fruit as if it was the only one in the world. The pumpkins he tended were the best grown, the cleanest, the fattest, brightest-colored, longest-lasting-after-picking, finest in all of the Northeast. Froelich, and the other growers, had customers drive two hundred miles just to buy one of those pumpkins.