by Tony Ortiz
A stone next to it had Colleen engraved on it. Another Irish name. None of the stones had dates or inscriptions. Just names.
“Halloween: the first,” Katie read from a tombstone at the summit. Not far away on a separate hillside, there was a broken-down roundhouse made of pieces of wood and clay. Two large chariot wheels were leaning against the side of it. Behind it, was a forest of baby sequoia trees.
I was about to go check out the trees, but I saw Katie sliding down the other side of the hill to a large two-story colonial home. Oz was climbing out of a broken window on the first floor. She was dressed in a silvery floor length robe and a pointy hat.
“How do you like the place?” she asked Katie as I carefully treaded down the hill.
“The greatest place ever.”
“You have to keep it a secret.”
“Okay. Who made all this?”
“I don’t know,” she said just as I arrived. “This place was here before I moved into the house. But Jess’s father made that house over there, the pumpkin patch, the graveyard and a few other things.”
“He really loved Halloween.”
“You want to go inside?”
“Yeah!”
Katie leaped up the oversized porch steps and walked up to two massive doors, towering three times her height.
“Someone’s excited,” smiled Oz, watching Katie tug open one of the doors. “Everything okay, Jess?”
“Yeah. Well, not really. I saw this ghost and this breathing pumpkin and . . ."
“So, do you like it?” She took a moment to scan the dark hilly landscape, which was growing foggier and darker.
“Yeah.”
“I knew you would like it.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Why don’t we have a look inside.”
I really wanted to know, but I said, “Okay.”
The foyer was huge. Everything was broken and covered in spider webs. The ruin walls were paved with the same black bricks and ragged wood seen in the passage above. Giant black pillars supported a domed ceiling crawling with glowing spiders, and endless dark hallways sprouted out in all directions. The only source of light in the main room was a candle chandelier hanging over a red-carpeted staircase.
“Oh, yuck,” said Katie at the top of the staircase, having just ran into spider webs. “They’re real.”
“I haven’t been down here in quite some time,” admitted Oz. “Come down, so we can pick out a bewitching dress for you.”
Katie ran down, and we followed Oz into a huge two-story corridor, lined with statues of grim farmers, standing fifteen or twenty feet tall. Their height wasn't the scariest thing about them. It was their eyes. They followed us as we walked by.
“Oh, yeah I forgot about these,” said Oz, a bit scared.
“How did he do this?” I said quietly, looking up at a statue that glared right back at me.
“I never asked. Your father believed this to be the realm of the second life.”
“What?”
“He was a spiritual man, Jess. This was a man who believed there was once an Easter bunny. He didn’t like getting into it that much, so I don’t know a whole lot about it. Katie, I’ve got a great selection of witch gowns for you. Oh, wait, watch this.”
Oz picked up a pebble and tossed it by a statue, and as it flew in the air, the statue’s eyes followed it. When it landed, the eyes turned back to her.
“Okay, let’s go,” said Oz uneasily.
We hurried after her, a bit spooked ourselves, and entered a stuffy room full of five-foot cauldrons, gigantic coffins, sticks, brooms, jars and other weird objects. Grimy glass lanterns hung on what looked to be the ceiling. The entire room had been tilted once so the ceiling and floor were now walls and two of the walls were the ceiling and floor. The ground was covered with bookshelves and doorways that looked more like endless pits.
“Sorry about the lights,” apologized Oz, carefully stepping across the fiction section. “I haven’t gotten the electricity running yet. Don't worry about the doors. They'll only send you back to Jess' room. Pick out whatever you want. The witch gowns and robes are over there.”
Oz pointed to a rack of vintage garments hovering perfectly above the ground.
“Hurry along. I don’t want to be in here after the sun sets. Katie, what time is it?”
“Almost four. Jesse, I brought the glue. But if you want to be a warlock, I–”
“No, I still want to be a dead boy,” I said.
“Good,” she said happily. She walked over to me and started spreading glue on my face. “Tilt your head back.”
“Don’t get it on my clothes,” I winced. “And don’t put too much dirt on me.”
Oz handed me a pair of giant pants and a ripped shirt. “I think these should fit.”
Oz, Katie, and I helped each other get dressed. We soon started a glue fight, smudging glue all over each other. I had never had so much fun. What I couldn’t believe was that Oz was joking around with us the entire time. She was never liked this. Never. When we were done, the three of us walked into a red room, decorated with portraits of scowling vampires dressed in red suits. Oz pushed a dial that read: House Floor, just as Duma scurried in after us. This place was so cool.
“I thought you didn't have that much money,” said Katie as the floor shook and the room started going up.
Oz thought about this for a moment as the room clanked and made a humming sound. “Uhmm . . . Jess’s father might have been rich.”
Might have been? What did that mean? And he couldn't be. He was a hotel manager in Hawaii. How could he possibly be this rich? Was she lying? Even now, Oz didn’t know that I had figured out that the hotel manager I ran into two years ago was my father.
One of the walls slid open, and we were back in the kitchen.
“What do you use to collect candy these days?” inquired Oz.
“Pillowcases,” answered Katie. “You get more candy that way.”
“Check the guestroom. There should be some extra pillowcases in the cabinet.”
Oz waited in the kitchen as we hurried into the guestroom, running back out seconds later.
“Come on, Oz!” I said excitedly as I dashed out of the house with Katie and Duma.
“You have Duma’s leash?”
“Yes!”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NIGHT WATCHER
Oz made us wait for her on the sidewalk before we could knock on the first door. Not many houses were decorated, and even those weren’t much to look at. I didn’t think it would be so quiet on Halloween.
“Where is everyone?” I said, my excitement starting to wane.
“It’s always dead,” said Katie, unfazed.
“Oh. Oz, come on!”
“Okay, go ahead,” said Oz, shutting the front gate.
I handed Duma’s leash to Oz, and Katie and I ran to our first house; our next door neighbors who none of us had seen before. The pink house didn’t have any decorations, just three pumpkins and some brooms on the front porch. A mat on the doorstep bore a friendly message:
WELCOME, CHILDREN
“Thanks for the welcome,” said Katie, wiping her dirty witch boots on it.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. I remembered kids coming to the door asking if I wanted a trick or treat, and every time I had said, ‘I don’t want either. Go away!’
“Give me candy!” I shouted at a white screen door. “We’re your neighbors! I live two houses down! We’re thirteen years old and we live with our single mothers!”
Katie laughed. “You’re supposed to say trick or treat. And that’s after you knock.”
I knocked hard on the screen door. Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Treat!”
“No,” said Katie, still laughing. “What are you, five? You have to say both: trick and treat.”
“Trick or treat!”
Still, there was no answer. Katie knocked a few times, but she got nothing, too. Great, this was fun. I saw a name painted on the
pink wall.
Witch Ridgway
“Trick – or – treat!” I yelled again.
At last, the doorknob was being jostled. Katie and I opened up our pillowcases as an old lady, with matted brown hair and a fake wart hanging halfway off her neck, opened the screen door. She wore a plastic witch hat and long stick-on nails. In the hallway behind her, there was a glass box of candy with no hinge or lid. It was an unopenable box.
“You children want to come in?” she asked and then pointed inside. “Look, it’s candy.”
She sensed something and looked behind us, spotting Oz tying Duma to the mailbox. After a moment, she reached into her pocket and pulled out two apples.
“Here you go, Jesse. And a sweet red one for you, Katie.”
We promptly stuffed the apples in our pillowcases.
“Hello,” said Oz, making herself known behind us. “I'm Becky. We live right next door.”
The hag cocked her head back, giving Oz a prickly look, and gurgled the mucus in her mouth. All of us stepped back.
“Katie, can you check that apple for me?” said Oz.
Katie took her apple out. Someone had already taken a big chunk out of it.
“Oh, dear,” croaked the hag. “I’m deeply sorry about that. Let me go inside and get something else.” She turned to Oz. “Such dreadful timing. This is your first time out, and you see me give a child a half-eaten apple. How awful. I’ll be right back.”
The hag rubbed the apple with her grubby sweater, then carefully pocketed it and shuffled back into the house, pushing her weight down the hallway like a slug.
“She’s a fast one,” I said jokingly.
“Push her, I dare you,” said Katie.
“What’s that?” mumbled the hag, not turning around, already struggling as it was.
Oz cleared her throat. “That’s enough, you two.”
The hag trudged back a few minutes later, holding a fogged-up plastic bag, filled with warm carrots and runny spaghetti, and in a separate bag a crispy brownie.
“Here you go, child. Now you listen to me, Oz. You take Katie into your home. It would be very wise of you.” As she handed me a bag of leftovers, she gurgled at me.
“Do you know us?" asked Oz, stepping in front of Katie and me.
"Yeeees. I am your neighbor."
The hag said nothing else.
"Well, thank you . . .” Oz pushed us along, her eyes never leaving the creepy old woman.
“Ridgway.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Ridgway. We should be off. Maybe we'll have dinner some . . .”
"Time," finished Mrs. Ridgway. "No. But we'll talk again in four more years. I will see you then."
The hag watched us leave.
“Katie, Jess, throw it in the trash,” said Oz the second we were out of sight. “Apple too, Jess.”
I was happy to get rid of it. I wasn’t going to eat fruit or vegetables on Halloween. That must have been the weirdest lady in the whole world. What didn't make sense was how did she know so much about us? She knew that I called my mom Oz. No one knew that, but Katie. I was going to have to investigate that later on.
Katie and I ran over to the next house. The door had a paper skeleton taped to it. No matter how many times we knocked, no one came to the door. The lights were on inside, too. They just weren’t answering. The same welcome awaited us at all the rest of the houses on our street.
“Jess, no one will come out while Duma is with us,” explained Oz. “Why don’t we drop him off at Lisa’s. Jess, don’t give me that look. I’ll be back in a minute. Stay right here.”
I watched glumly as Oz took Duma across the street. Lisa answered the door right away. She was short and blonde. That was all you could say about her.
“Great,” I said as they chatted their way inside. “Duma doesn’t even like Lisa’s cat.”
“Let’s go wait inside,” said Katie, suspiciously anxious. “Jesse! Come on!”
“Why are you so . . .”
I finally knew why. Katie’s old Mexican friends, Jean and Monica, were approaching us. I had never met the girls, but Katie had talked about them once. They were older than us. Jean was seventeen, and her sister was sixteen.
“Cat, wait up!” said Jean, who was thin as a stick and wore tomboy clothes. She caught up with us, breathing heavily. “Hey. I know you said you didn’t wanna see us again, but it’s been two years and . . . because you wanna be a perfect little angel now doesn’t mean you gotta freakin' ignore us. Right, Moni?”
Jean waited for her younger sister to catch up. Monica was just as skinny, with short black hair streaked purple. She walked up to us and spat in Katie’s face.
“You never dropped off my comb!”
“Don’t d-do–” I stuttered.
Monica swiftly pulled out a switchblade and pressed it to my neck. “Shut up, you dweeb!”
“What the hell you doing?!” yelled Katie, pushing Monica in the chest. “Don’t touch him!”
I had never seen Katie like this. She looked scary. She stepped up an inch away from the blade now pointing at her face.
"¿por qué? Is he your boyfriend?"
Katie wiped the spit off her face with the palm of her hand. "No, but he's my best friend."
Jean lowered Monica's blade and pushed me aside. "Cat, we ain't friends anymore. Leave or there's goin' be a problem."
"I said don't touch him!"
Jean flicked out her blade. "¿Qué?"
"You know what I said!"
As if suddenly struck by a bolt of fear, Jean dropped the blade. But it wasn’t because of Katie. There was an enormous bat-like creature flapping overhead. The creature landed coolly in front of Jean, putting himself in-between us and the sisters. He had a long snout, pointy ears, gray skin and wings like a dragon, and a tree branch for a left arm. A tiny brown spider crawled up the side of his normal arm and rested on top of his shoulder.
“You girls run home now," he ordered.
Jean and Monica just stood there staring at the creature, looking too scared to move. He flared out his giant wings, which got Monica moving. However, Jean remained. As she was about to walk backward, his wings curved around her.
“I decided I’m not going to let you go anymore. You can stay put.”
Tears streamed down Jean’s cheeks. The creature never glanced our way, all the while glaring down at Jean like an angry parent.
“Go to the fence and stick your head through it.”
Jean shakily waddled to the fence and poked her head through a hole in it.
“Now bark.”
And Jean did. She barked away like a wounded hound. Under different circumstances, this might have been very amusing, but now Katie and I looked on in shock.
“Do you understand you’re only a kid? Get moving.”
Jean couldn’t stop barking. Either she was too scared to or couldn’t hear him. This was truly a horrifying sight. She was crying and barking at the same time. The bat flicked one of his wings out, and she snapped out of it and staggered off in the same direction as Monica. And then he began to follow her. He followed her all the way to the end of the street and even turned the corner after her.
I didn’t know what to think. Was what we just saw real? Did this have something to do with the werewolf?
Katie and I sat down on the curb. I hadn't realized, but my hands were shaking.
“You think that was a–” I said, getting cut off by Katie.
“That was no costume.”
“It was like the movies.”
“Yeah. Do you believe in Satan?”
“That wasn't Satan. Satan wouldn't have rescued us.”
“I know. Just wondering if you believe in that kind of stuff . . . you know, weird stuff.”
I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. I knew ghosts, goblins and warlocks didn’t exist, and Katie had agreed, too. But what we had just experienced together seemed so real that I wasn’t sure what to think. Everything that had happened today felt
real.
“Katie . . .” I ventured.
“It wasn’t a costume, Jesse,” repeated Katie. “It was real. You said so yourself.”
“Said what?”
“You did see a werewolf–”
Katie shot up off the curb. A short dark boy wearing striped overalls was staring at us from the middle of the street. His ears kept fluttering and his skin was oozing black sap. The boy scratched his black face, casually peeling some of the skin entirely off.
“You know where the cemy is?” said the boy in a very mature manner. “Cemetery?” he explained.
We stood there speechless, just gaping at the boy. He rubbed his wet chin, thinking about what to say next.
“Lin,” the boy introduced himself. “My name is Lin. I like your costume, boy. Very original. You supposed to be a dead boy?”
I managed a nod.
“The closest cemetery’s miles from here,” said Katie in a monotone. “But . . . you might be looking for – there’s an abandoned one somewhere at the bottom of the hill on Acacia. Is that the one–”
“Thank you, beautiful,” chimed Lin with a pleasant smile.
He hurried down the street, appearing to be running, yet moving slowly. He glanced back, and, after seeing that we were indeed following him, immediately picked up the pace. Katie and I kept quiet for a while. After a couple of minutes, we reached the bottom of Beverly Street and spotted Lin just as he disappeared into an overgrowth of plants on a dirt crag just below my house.
CHAPTER SIX
The GRAVEDIGGERS
I wasn’t sure why we were following the tiny boy. Perhaps we were hoping for some clue to the recent events. I couldn’t believe all the bizarre things I had witnessed in one day. Was this what I had been sheltered from all this time? This had to be the reason why Oz didn’t let me go out on Halloween. There were too many weird things going on.
We pushed through the plants, stepped over a low black fence, and crossed a field of tall grass to a desolate scene of ancient tombstones and majestic trees, whose bushy tops veiled the sky like a thick fog. One side of the graveyard had evenly spaced tombstones, carefully arranged graves and neat piles of raked leaves, while the opposite side was in total disarray. That was where we saw Lin standing chatting with a peculiar-looking man. He was in his early forties, about six feet tall and thin, with scruffy black hair and dense stubble. The stranger wore a shabby brown shirt that hung down to his knees and tattered pants. He was covered in mud and grass head to toe. Despite his ragged appearance, there was something pleasant about him.
