“You were born there?”
“Yeah—I was the youngest of three. I’ve got two older brothers.”
Gerald raised an eyebrow. “That must have made for an interesting household—all that testosterone flying around.”
Kelli nodded, the memories making her smile. “Oh, yeah, but my mom raised us pretty sternly—singlehandedly, too, after my dad injured his back in a work accident. He’d just gotten back from Vietnam when it happened. Turned out he had a piece of shrapnel in his back he didn’t even know was there. One day he just bent over and it severed a nerve or something. He could barely move his legs after that, spent most of his time in bed. Lucky for us, the veterans’ paychecks came through fairly regular so Mom could keep paying the bills and putting food in our bellies.”
Gerald rubbed his chin. “That must have been hard for your mother.”
“It was, but she had resolve. She made sure we went to school every day. After a while, Mom managed to get a job at the town library, and Dad wasn’t completely useless. If anything, he had plenty of time to talk to us, teach us with words rather than actions. It helped take the focus away from his back pain.”
“Sounds like you all worked well together,” Gerald said.
“We did, but Mom was the glue, you know—a real organizer.”
“A fine woman—is she still alive?”
Kelli shook her head. “No, she died about five years ago now. Dad died in 1982—heart attack.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Gerald hesitated; talk of death softened the conversation, but he knew he had to keep going. “How about school—did you like school?”
“Oh, yeah—I was pretty good at everything—except algebra.” A wry smirk wrinkled her nose. “Why does this sound like a counseling session?”
Gerald smiled. “Well, if it is, it’s doing me a world of good. Let’s just say that by you telling me your story, it might go some way to helping you understand mine when I tell it to you.”
Kelli nodded. “So you want me to keep going?”
“Please. Tell me about your friends. Did you have a bunch of friends to play with?”
She laughed and Gerald could tell she was invoking a very fond memory. She was calming down, which in turn was keeping his anxiety at bay.
“Just one—Marcia Hoffman,” Kelli said, staring off into the past. “She was such a tiny thing, all dark hair and freckles. She was always so bright and joyful, that girl.”
“You spent a lot of time together?”
“We were inseparable—both our families were. We went everywhere together: fishing trips in the summer, ski trips in the winter. It was almost as if we were an extended family. Marcia’s parents were real close to mine, and Marcia’s dad used to help out with odd jobs around the house, since Dad couldn’t do them. Marcia’s dad owned a corn farm, and we used to spend hours running through the stalks, playing hide-and-seek.”
Gerald chuckled, but the visualization of the two girls running and playing only served to evoke memories of his own childhood. A childhood plagued with guilt and fear.
“The holidays were always so much fun, Halloween especially,” Kelli continued, on a roll now. “It was a given in both households.”
The old man picked at a hole in one of the arms of his wheelchair. “So you and Marcia would have done the whole trick-or-treating thing, then?”
“Oh, definitely—we always tried to outdress each other. Marcia was into fairies and princesses, but it was witches and Vampirella for me.” She frowned. “I thought you hated the very mention of Halloween.”
Gerald nodded, still staring at the hole. “I used to be just like you,” he said. “Halloween was always something to look forward to.”
“So what happened?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to keep the pain of recollection at bay. He had to try and make the words come. He lifted his gaze to the nurse and tried to look into her, to find strength in the goodness of her soul.
“I had a friend once, just like your Marcia,” he said.
“What was his name?”
“Donnie—Donald Psalter. We used to do everything together, too, especially Halloween, but it was Halloween that tore us apart.”
“How?”
Suddenly a low moan crept in beneath the bathroom door, like the sound of something dying. Kelli sat bolt upright.
“Oh, God—was that the boy?”
“Yes—he’s crying,” Gerald said.
“Crying—why would he be crying?”
Gerald looked right into Kelli’s eyes. “Because he knows how the story ends.”
5
Kelli was torn between the desire to have Gerald speak the truth and the trepidation of just what that “truth” might entail.
She studied the old man and tried to compose herself; she didn’t want to trust him, but she had little choice. He’d destroyed her phone and now she was trapped with him. Worse still, a seemingly homicidal kid was lurking outside the bathroom door—and only Gerald knew why. She had her own notions about the connection between the old man and the boy, and she feared that Gerald was about to prove her right. She forced a reassuring smile.
“Go ahead—you can tell me,” she said.
Gerald scratched at his balding head and flashed his own, albeit nervous, smile back.
“Okay,” he said, but then he held up a palm to placate her. “Now, whatever I tell you, no matter how crazy it might sound, you just need to listen. Okay?”
Kelli took a deep breath, trying not to point out all the different kinds of “crazy” she’d witnessed in the past few hours.
“Sure, I understand.”
Gerald nodded and took a long, deep breath.
“You okay?” Kelli said, continuing to play the part of caring nurse.
“Yes—I just wish I had a bit of Dutch courage,” he said.
“You just take your time—start at the beginning.”
Gerald licked his cracked lips. “Well, here goes, then. As I said before, I grew up right here in this house, born in ’44, right smack bang in the middle of the war. My dad worked at the Tribune—in the printing press. Fortunately, the war meant there was plenty of despair to write about. My mother, God rest her soul, stayed at home with me. She was a wonderful woman, kind and forthright. My pa was a very tall, strong man, but he had a soft side, too. He liked to joke around, and when he wasn’t working he always had time for me.”
Kelli wanted to urge him on but only to bring a quick closure to the madness and her fear.
“You said you were an only child?”
“Yes, my mother ended up getting a severe infection, which left her barren.”
“Must have been hard for your family.”
Gerald nodded. “Sometimes, but my parents doted on me a lot, so I was never really alone. And once I got to school, finding friends became a bit of a…well…no-brainer. There were a lot of kids like me back then—only children, I mean. Times were pretty tough, and having too many mouths to feed during the war was fraught with danger. So our schoolmates became like the brothers and sisters I couldn’t have.”
Kelli looked to the door. “He’s…gone quiet.”
She watched Gerald turn to stare at the door; she imagined he could see straight through the wood at the boy standing on the other side.
“He’s listening,” he said.
“Who is he?”
Gerald turned back to face her. “I’m getting to that.” He interlaced his leathery fingers, then, and his knuckles turned the color of the first snow. To Kelli, it was as if he’d captured a memory in his palms and she wondered, if he opened them, whether the memory would fly away.
“Donald Psalter was his name,” Gerald said with a smirk. “I remember the day at school when he just came up to me and introduced himself. ‘My name’s Donnie—what’s yours?’ he said. He was so happy to see me, regardless of the fact that we were strangers. He must have been lonely, too, I suppose. He had this cheeky grin, really mischievous—pr
obably had something to do with the fact he had two or three teeth growing through crooked.” Gerald chuckled to himself. “He had this tattered Minnesota Twins cap on his head, which was one size too small for him, so all his curly hair stuck out at the sides.
“I can picture him,” Kelli said, and thought of what the Frankenstein child would have looked like—alive and well.
“He grabbed my right hand and just shook the blazes out of it,” Gerald continued. “My arm felt like jelly for the rest of the day.”
“What happened then?”
Gerald looked at her as if for the first time. “Oh, well, of course I told him who I was and that was it—it was like, ‘Okay, now we’re best friends.’ ”
Kelli laughed. “Just like that, huh?”
“From that day on, we did everything together: played ball in the park, rode our bicycles around the city, threw rocks at old houses—all the things little boys shouldn’t be doing, you know?”
The old man began to tear up. “I remember this one time when we went to the county fair, and Donnie, oh, he was a scamp—he stole this great big jar of toffees. We took them back to his house. We ate so many we were almost sick.”
“Really?” Kelli said, smiling.
“Yeah—he was a lot of fun, that kid.”
Kelli saw a wave of sorrow wipe the smile from the old man’s face; she now knew how strong the bond between Gerald and Donnie had been. Still was.
“Inseparable,” she said.
“In every way.”
From the corner of her eye Kelli could see the boy’s shadow move through the gap in the bottom of the door.
“So is that who this is—Donnie?”
Gerald raised his eyes to her; he looked pale and lost. “Do you really want to know why I live alone, Miss Pritchard?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Have you ever been alone—I mean, so alone that your only companion is the thoughts in your head?”
“We’ve all felt alone at some point—”
“No,” Gerald interrupted. “No, you don’t understand. Loneliness isn’t about not having anyone else around—it’s about…being alone…inside, being trapped inside your bad memories.”
Kelli saw that Gerald’s legs were shaking, and when he spoke next his words almost failed him.
“Every Halloween…every goddamned Halloween…it comes…haunts me.”
“The boy?”
Gerald nodded, and his trembling made it look like he was gripped by a tremor. “It started so long ago. One day he…it…just showed up…on my doorstep. After so many years. I’d forgotten…Then, there he was. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked and slammed the door in its face and hid like a cowardly dog.”
“When did this happen?” Kelli asked, swallowing hard.
“Not long after…after I was diagnosed with emphysema—was almost as if it knew. And for so long I’ve been able to keep it out and now it’s here. It’s waited years for this moment. It knows…it knows that I’m going to die!”
Kelli reached out and squeezed his dry hand. “You’re not going to die—”
“I am, goddamn it! Oh, can’t you see that?”
Kelli released his hand, eager not to inherit his despair. She saw his eyes pleading to her, desperate for understanding. Deep down she knew what he was saying, but the notion was still unbelievable.
“But…he’s just a boy,” she said, but it was more to convince herself than anything else.
“He’s not just a boy! It’s Donnie, for God’s sake! You know that! And he’s here—here for me!”
Kelli felt his panic threatening to overwhelm her. She retreated from the old man, sliding along the floor until her back slammed into the bathtub. She’d heard the truth and now she wanted to flee from it.
“But it’s just a kid—it can’t be Donnie!” she cried.
“Believe me—it is!”
“What happened to him?”
Gerald clawed at his face in frustration, drew blood from the bridge of his nose. He was mad—with grief.
“He died! He died…because of me!”
—
Gerald’s grief flowed out in his tears, like his secret had left his soul raw and bleeding.
Kelli watched the old man shake with sorrow, listened to it catch in his useless lungs. Anguish in all its hideous beauty, bringing a man down to the same level as a child. There was a child at the door—a dead child. A ghost child. Returned from the grave on Halloween to wreak what—vengeance—a message? Whatever it sought to do, Kelli knew Gerald didn’t want it, she could see that as plain as day.
As she looked at him, a question she didn’t want to ask parted her lips.
“Did…did you kill him?” she said.
Gerald lifted his head from his hands, a grimace expanding his moist cheeks.
“He died…because of me.”
“What happened to Donnie?” Kelli whispered, and her eyes moved to the door; the boy’s shadow was gone.
Gerald wiped the tears from his face with his palms, sniffed back the sadness, and swallowed it down.
“I’ve kept it a secret…for so long.”
“Maybe it’s time you let that secret out,” Kelli said, and she wasn’t making a suggestion.
The old man motioned to reply, but a knock at the bathroom door froze them. The skin of Kelli’s arm erupted with gooseflesh and rode the wave up her spine to the fear center of her brain.
“It’s the boy!” she gasped.
Gerald looked over his shoulder, his face contorting with terror. “I don’t know if I can face him!”
Kelli went to him and touched his arm. “I think…I think this is what he wants, for you to tell his story.”
“I can’t!” Gerald cried.
“Tell me, Gerald—tell me his story.”
Kelli clasped her hands around his and smiled reassuringly. Through the door they heard Donnie knocking, and Gerald knew it was time to open the door to his past and set it free.
6
DULUTH, MINNESOTA, OCTOBER 31, 1952
The roar of the wind rattled the windows, rousing Gerald Forsyth from his sleep. Exhilaration surged through his little body, like a switch had been turned on inside him. He threw the blankets off himself, seemingly ignorant to the biting cold, bounded over to his dresser, and opened the top drawer. His hands rummaged through the piles of comic books and baseball cards within until he found what he was looking for. He switched on the walkie-talkie and put it to his lips; it only barely covered the smile on his face.
“Donnie? Donnie?” he said and released the receiver. A hiss of static, heightened by the brewing storm outside, was the only reply. “Donnie? It’s Gerry! Pick up—over!”
The static was abruptly cut by a soft rustling.
“Yeah?” came a weary voice.
Gerald bounced on the spot. “It’s here!” he said. “Today’s the day—over.”
“What?” Donnie replied, and Gerald sighed at his friend’s inability to rouse in the morning.
“Halloween—it’s Halloween, you doofus!”
Another moment’s pause, then: “It is?”
“Check your calendar—it’s October thirty-first! Yesterday was October thirtieth, remember?”
Gerald listened as he heard Donnie stumble about inside his bedroom; he must have left the button on his walkie-talkie on. Gerald shook his head at his friend’s forgetfulness. He opened his mouth to chide Donnie about it when he realized he wouldn’t hear him anyway. He tossed his walkie-talkie on the bed and ran to his window, pulling it open. A wall of freezing air slapped Gerald in the face. The world was painted in gray, but Gerald ignored the oncoming storm and instead stretched his head outside to peer at the top-floor window of the house next door—the window of Donnie Psalter’s bedroom.
“Hey, doofus!” Gerald yelled above the wind. “You’ve still got your button down!”
A pale-faced boy with a scruffy bowl haircut appeared at his own window. Donnie opened the window and
instantly regretted it, wrapping his arms around himself in a wasted bid to protect himself from the cold.
“What?” Donnie cried back, the gale catching his voice and blasting it miles into town.
“You’ve left your button—oh, forget it! We can hear each other now anyways,” Gerald said, but then he reconsidered the sky. “Pretty much…”
Suddenly the window on the bottom floor of Donnie’s house slid open fiercely and the disgruntled visage of Margaret Psalter—Donnie’s mother—appeared. She cast both boys a look significantly icier than the blizzard about to bear down on Duluth.
“I can hear both of you!” she said.
“Sorry, Mom!” Donnie replied, shrinking back from the window.
“Sorry, Mrs. Psalter,” Gerald added.
“Get inside, the pair of you, before you freeze to death.”
—
Gerald’s mother, Bethany, wouldn’t let her son go outside with the blizzard, but she knew by his jittery excitement that she was going to have a lot of trouble just getting him to keep still.
’Is it okay if I go over to Donnie’s after breakfast?” Gerald said as he shoveled a forkful of pancakes into his mouth.
“You make sure you put on your winter coat and gloves,” she told him.
He looked up from his plate, frowning. “But Mom, I only have to walk from here to Donnie’s house—”
“You do as you’re told: coat and gloves, Mister. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a blizzard coming. And you stay indoors, young man.”
Gerald sighed. “Yes, Mom.” He wiped his mouth and stood to take his plate to the sink and charged out of the kitchen, eager for the day’s play, when he suddenly collided with his father.
“Whoa there, Gerry!” Lucas Forsyth said, taking his son gently by the shoulders. “There a fire or something in here?”
Gerald smiled and gripped his father about the waist, breathing in the smell of newsprint.
“Dad—you’re home!”
Lucas smiled down at his son and Gerald mentally counted the number of ink smudges on his father’s face.
“I hope you haven’t been giving your mother a hard time,” Lucas said, offering his wife a wink.
“No, Dad—I was just about to get ready to go over to Donnie’s so we can plan for the big day.”
Halloween Carnival, Volume 3 Page 12
