Halloween Carnival, Volume 3

by Brian James Freeman (ed)

  The officers glanced at each other, surprised. Then the taller one nodded gravely. “I’m afraid it is.”

  I walked to Shane and bent. “It’s okay. These men just have some questions.” I ruffled his hair. “Go on home to your mom.”

  He took off. I scooped up the basketball and let the policemen lead me to their cruiser.

  —

  The officers put me into a room for questioning. I sat there for at least an hour before two men in suits walked in. One introduced himself as Detective Myers, the other as Detective Walker. Both sat down.

  For at least a minute, they just watched me. Then Walker said, “Tell me about Billy Carson.”

  My instinct was to clam up. Claim to know nothing. That’s what people in Franklin would expect. But this wasn’t Franklin. These were city police—smart men who might be able to prevent more deaths.

  I told the detectives how Billy had disappeared on Halloween all those years ago. Then Walker asked me about Sue. And finally Richie.

  I told the truth about Sue—how I’d spotted her that Halloween night, heading to the forest. With Richie, I said only that he’d asked to come trick-or-treating with me, and my mother said no, and I wished she’d let him. How I wished she’d let him.

  I didn’t admit that I’d seen Richie that night. I certainly didn’t tell them I’d faced the monster in the forest. That would have meant confessing to my greatest regret—that I hadn’t run home and told my mother about Richie. I presumed I’d seen the monster—not Richie—and the little boy was fine. But I never checked, and I couldn’t forgive myself for that.

  “Let’s go back to Billy,” Walker said. “Your old neighbor. You didn’t like him much, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. We had a dog, Scamp, and Billy used to tease him through the fence.”

  “But you did like Sue Parker, right?”

  “I did. We went to Sunday school together, and we used to talk.” I smiled. “I think I had a crush on her.”

  “You tried to kiss her when you were cleaning up together. She said no, but you kept trying until she told the pastor, who had a talk with you.”

  I frowned. “That’s not how I remember it.”

  “And what about Richie? You were jealous of him, weren’t you? It was just you and your mom, and then Richie comes along—”

  “And he brings his father,” Myers cut in. “It looked like you were about to gain a brother and a new dad, and you really weren’t happy about that, were you?”

  I looked from one detective to another. “What are you implying?”

  “We’re not implying anything. We’re pointing out the fact that three children died in Franklin, and you knew all of them. Had a grudge against all of them.”

  “Grudge? No. That’s not how I remember it. Yes, I knew three of the kids who disappeared, but that’s normal in Franklin. Everyone knows at least three…” I realized where I was going and trailed off.

  Myers leaned forward. “At least three what?”

  I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have just kept my mouth shut. But I couldn’t, could I? Not when they were insinuating that I’d done something to Billy and Sue and Richie.

  So I told them Franklin’s secret. I told them about the kids who lose their way.

  They looked at each other. There was a long moment of silence. Then Myers said, “So you’re saying that a kid disappears every Halloween? Just disappears. No one investigates. No one questions. No one even mentions it.”

  “Sure, they mention it. We were told that he—or she—wouldn’t be coming back to class, and we got to divvy up their stuff. But we weren’t supposed to talk about it.”

  Walker folded his hands on the tabletop. “All right, Dale. Name one other child who disappeared on Halloween.”

  I had to think. Ten years of trying to forget, and now I needed to dredge up those memories.

  “June Michaels. Or Mitchell.”

  Walker took a sheet from a folder and ran his thick finger down the page. “June Mitchell. Abducted by her father. Found alive and well ten years later. Still alive and well, it seems.” He looked at me. “Name another.”

  “I was a kid. I don’t remember—Wait, Martin. I remember a Martin.”

  Another scan of the page. “Yes, I’m sure you do. Because Martin Bowers was hit by a car, right outside your school.”

  “That’s just what they want you to believe,” I said. “The truth is that every year a child disappeared on Halloween—”

  “Martin Bowers died in January, during a snowstorm. June Mitchell was abducted by her father on the last day of school. In the spring. Yes, Richie disappeared on Halloween. So did June. But Billy went missing in September. You and your mother joined the search party that eventually found his body in the forest. He’d been hit in the head with a rock and hidden under some brush.”

  “That’s not how I remember it.”

  Walker put the paper down. “When we picked you up, you were playing basketball with a kid. Who is he?”

  “My son. Well, stepson.” I gave a wry smile. “Okay, technically not my stepson yet, but soon. I’m engaged to his mother.”

  “You’d better tell her that, then. We had a squad car follow the kid, and two of our boys chatted with his mother. She says you work at the factory together and you won’t leave her alone. Keep pestering her to go out with you. She had no idea you were playing basketball with her son. Seems you told him it was a secret.”

  I chuckled. “That’s Maura. She has a strange sense of humor. She’s probably just mad at me for making Shane walk home alone and—”

  With his fist hitting the table so hard I jumped, Myers slapped down a photograph of a boy, about eleven.

  “Want to tell us about him?” Myers said.

  I picked up the photograph. “He looks familiar, but…” I shook my head. “I don’t think I know him.”

  “He lived in your apartment building. Disappeared three years ago. Everyone in the building was questioned. Including you. But you don’t remember it?”

  “Did he disappear on Halloween?” I picked up the photograph. “Poor kid. That happens sometimes. They lose their way.”

  Myers squeaked his chair back and started to rise, but Walker eased him down and said, “Tell us about your mother, Dale.”

  I lowered the photograph as grief surged.

  “Died last month, didn’t she?” Walker said. “Cancer.”

  I nodded, my chest tight.

  “Before she died, she mailed a letter to the Franklin Police Department. She said that after Billy disappeared, you told her Scamp would be safe now…even before his body was found in those woods.”

  “Because I knew he was dead. We all did.”

  “After Sue disappeared, your mother found blood on your Halloween costume.”

  “I tripped and cut myself. I told her that.”

  “People in Franklin remember seeing you hanging around the forest. Were you visiting Sue’s grave? Reliving her murder? Or finding new hiding spots for new victims, like Richie Gibson?”

  “Richie got lost. He disappeared. It happens some—”

  “Your mother said she worried about Richie. She knew you were jealous. She tried to tell herself she was wrong about Sue, that it wasn’t her blood on your costume. Still, she didn’t want Richie going trick-or-treating with you that night. You did take him, though, didn’t you? Your friends said you quit early. You found Mr. Miller and snuck Richie away.”

  “That’s not how I remember it.”

  “But that’s how it happened.”

  Sweat trickled down my temple. I took a deep breath and blurted the truth.

  “There’s a monster in that forest. I saw it the night Richie disappeared. I went into the woods to save him, only it wasn’t him—it was a monster. I ran away, and it chased me, and I almost got lost, but I found my way back. Other kids don’t. They lose their way, and they’re never found. The monster takes them. Every year, the monster takes one.”

 
“No, Dale,” Walker said. “There were only three kids who disappeared in Franklin. Billy was found in the forest a week after he went missing. Sue and Richie were found just last week, with cadaver dogs, after the local police received your mother’s letter. The letter where she confessed to her suspicions. Where she pointed us to the truth.”

  “And that truth?” Myers leaned across the table. “The only person who lost his way was you. The only monster in that forest was you.”

  They were wrong. They had to be.

  Because that’s not how I remember it.

  Not at all.

  La Calavera

  Kate Maruyama

  This year, I would make her a calavera and lay it on an altar.

  Am I appropriating? Maybe I’m appropriating. I know I’m just a white girl. But Jasmine (don’t pronounce it Jazmin, she will bite your head off, it’s pronounced Yasmeen) was Mexican and I was doing it for her sake and goddamn it, the Día de los Muertos Festival in Hollywood was our thing. We went every time during those five years we lived together. It would feel wrong not to remember her in some way. I would paint a skull of her with green flowers, a seafoam green like her eyes. I would find an altar at the festival that she’d like and leave it there as an offering. I could at least do something for her. I missed her so much.

  Papier-mâché would be best for the skull. You could use a flour mixture for paste, but truthfully, a watered-down Elmer’s-glue solution worked better for a smoother surface. I balled up a sheet of newspaper and covered it with the sticky, gluey strips, trying to smooth out the edges as best I could. Leave one strip showing and the seam stays forever.

  It didn’t look like her at first.

  The Día de los Muertos Festival at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery falls on the Saturday closest to the holiday. November 2 was on a Monday this year, so the festival happened on Halloween night. This somehow filled the night with possibility, going to a cemetery on the eve of All Souls’ Day, when the spirits might wander. This, joined with the Mexican celebration of the dead returning to their loved ones? Magic would be in the air. Maybe I could see her again, say a proper goodbye. I could apologize for not being nicer in her final days. Just because I lost her didn’t mean I couldn’t still be a part of the holiday, even if I was a gringa.

  Once I smoothed the first layer of gooey strips onto the balled-up paper, it was clearly too small to be her. It had to be her. I plopped the heavy, soaked mess in the trash, where it landed with an empty thunk, and I dug in my closet for a better armature.

  I found the perfect thing—it wasn’t quite ready yet, but it was perfect—and started to coat it evenly with soaked strips of paper. Layer after layer, I covered the whole thing and shaped it. I pressed gently, creating indents for the eyes, and then pressed my palms into the sides of the skull. The cheekbones appeared, so close to hers, that high curve and the round apple of the cheek. Aside from the wet-and-sticky part, it felt like her. And there she was.

  The idea of the calavera is that we all look the same under the skin. Jasmine told me that all over Mexico people build reasonable facsimiles of their deceased loved ones in skeleton form, create altars with photos and marigolds hued from light amber through orange to crimson, lay out sugar skulls and pan de muerto, a sweet loaf topped with a cross of dough, glistening with a dusting of sugar. For one magical night, they celebrate the lives of those who’ve left them, walking with their loved ones once again.

  When my father died, we had a wake, a funeral, and a party with cold cuts, and then all signs of him were removed from the house. I tried to bring him up in conversation once in a while, laugh over a memory, but any time I did this, my mom would shoot me a look and leave the room. Feelings were not a topic of discussion at my house. Sports and weather and general plans, yes, but I think my dad’s dying was too big a thing to be kept inside our tidy home. It was best sent to the Goodwill with his clothes while we talked weather and…well, without Dad, sports were off the table, so we didn’t talk much at all.

  That’s why I loved Jasmine. She talked about everything. All the way. With that spark in her eyes: Interest? Joy? Whatever it was, she would get wound up and sit in front of me, looking at me directly (no one ever did that in my family), and describe a family trip, a Christmas, a birthday party, and it felt like coming home. I wanted to live in those eyes.

  Two more hours of smoothing, shaping, and finishing the calavera and she was perfect. I held her head in front of me, all smeared newsprint, and she looked at me steadily. Even unpainted, it was Jasmine, no question.

  Last year there was an altar bedecked by empty water bottles, lit by bulbs representing the 242 souls who had died trying to cross the border from Mexico in just that one month. Jasmine cried when she saw it. I reached for her cheek, smudging her greasepaint-skeleton smile, grateful that I could share something so deep with her. I felt and yet couldn’t quite reach her connection with this rich culture.

  I set her on the table, washed the glue from my hands, lay down, turned out the light, and noticed the red glow in the dark clock blinking 3:00 a.m. before I passed out completely.

  —

  The plan was to wear a costume that could straddle both events. If I was going to be the gringa carrying the calavera, I was not going to be the gringa in a sexy maid vampire’s costume carrying the calavera.

  The next morning before work, I laid out a green shirt dress and an orange wig (easy to remove) and some pumps…I would be a gringa in a hipster vintage fifties dress at the cemetery, Lucille Ball later that night for my friends. I set to work on painting Jasmine. I touched the surface of her smooth forehead, but I felt a warm dampness underneath. Despite all my efforts, she was still wet inside. I knew she hadn’t set long enough. No time, though. I had to start painting. One coat of gesso before work and she was ready for me when I got home. The eyes first: black circles, well set, nicely lined by the skull, rimmed in a delicate ruffle of seafoam green. The flowers to adorn her brow would be red, not green. Red like the color she dyed her hair to piss off her mother. Red like the thing I wasn’t ready to think about yet.

  She was perfected by the time I went to sleep. I painted on one coat of varnish, and when I awoke Halloween morning, she was ready. She would dry while I was at work.

  I was in my car at a stoplight when a parade of extremely short Spider-Men, Elsas, Harry Potters, and mad doctors crossed in front of me holding hands, led by their teacher, who wore green Shrek ears. They couldn’ta been more than eight years old. I missed the real Halloween. The months spent on a costume, the excitement of an autumn night, the hope of surprise, of treats, of an occasional scare. A night I got out of my house and into a neighborhood filled with people and monsters and creatures and excitement and lives much more interesting than mine—lives painted in color.

  At work, there was candy in a bowl next to a pumpkin at the front desk, but aside from that, Energen Solar Panels didn’t so much give a crap it was Halloween. It was only Dots anyway. Who the hell gives out Dots?

  I tried not to think about the day or about tonight or about Jasmine at all, but somewhere around my second cup of coffee, something like nervous excitement started boiling in my belly. It was a way-back Halloween anticipation, one I hadn’t felt since I was little. Promise tinged with fear and a bit of hope. It was hard to focus on my sales records, and I found myself surfing the Internet—a practice verboten at Energen.

  “Trish? For you…” the receptionist hollered from the front. She couldn’t figure out the intercom.

  Without thinking, I picked up the phone. “Happy Halloween.” I should have known from the pause to hang up.

  Hector’s voice was breathy and worn. “You can’t just avoid me.”

  Actually, I could. I hung up. Plus, wasn’t he supposed to be in jail?

  I heard the front desk ring again, my name hollered again. I said, “I’m not here!” Cindy huffed an aggravated objection, but I simply repeated, “I’m not here.” She’s a receptionist, for Christ’s sak
e. Receive. Refuse. Do your fucking job.

  I don’t know why he bothers. I was stupid to pick up the phone. Wouldn’t be doing that again.

  On the way out, I tearfully fabricated a story about a stalker boyfriend (I mean, how far off was I, really?), gave them his name, and told them never, ever to put Hector through to me again. They were to tell him I’d been fired.

  When I got home, Jasmine was gone…her head, I mean. Hector must have had a key. And clearly the jail thing hadn’t stuck. What a fucking thing to do to a person, but what really yanked my chain was that my dress was gone, too. This time I called him.

  “What the fuck, Hector?’

  “Trisha?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I thought you weren’t receiving my calls.”

  “Where is she? I know you took her.”

  He made this frustrated argh noise and sputtered and tried to form words. He sucked in his breath and said in the kind of calming voice my mom would use only when she was really angry, “No evidence. They couldn’t hold me. But. Well, I’d get your house in order, Trish, they’ll be paying you another visit soon.”

  “Ugh, that’s not what I meant!” I hung up on him. The phone rang soon after, but I didn’t answer. Not yet. I had things to do.

  He’d done it to punish me, taking her. It wasn’t like he was ever going to give her back.

  I had already made her, dried her, painted her lovingly. In a way, I’d already paid tribute, right? That was the part that counted, right? My chest seized up and tears welled in my eyes, but I was going to be goddamned if that fucker was going to ruin my night. I splashed some cold water on my face, put on some basic makeup, and got out my costume from last year: Shakespearean actor. Jeans, black turtleneck, and an old rubber skull I kept in the back of the closet.

  I had to walk past Jasmine’s room when I left. I kept the door open since she died, but I didn’t want to give in to another bout of crying, so I closed it without looking in. It was bad enough that the scent of her vanilla tickled my nose as the closing door poufed it out into the hall.