by Hixon, Wayne
Rain got up from the bed and announced she should probably go to the bathroom before leaving. Rachel and Jacob also found this a good idea so they all took turns before filing out of his apartment and down the dimly lit stairway.
Outside, the air was brisk and bright. It didn’t seem like the right day to hunt the Devils. Jacob was infested with a mingling of fear and exhilaration. Part of him wanted to be on his way, toward the Devils, hunting them rather than the other way around. Another part of him felt hopeless, like they could hunt all they wanted to and not turn up anything. He knew the Devils liked to strike when you least expected it.
They walked the two blocks down Main Street until they reached the Wake Up Screaming. It was a good time to go. It was after the breakfast crowd and before the high school crowd. But, in Lynchville, a crowd was never really that much of a crowd. Stoop’s cafe had a very old fashioned wooden sign hanging over the sidewalk. Both the cafe and the bookstore seemed slightly out of place in Lynchville. The sign for the cafe had a large painted bloodshot eye carved into the wood. One could see the eye as someone in the throes of a caffeine high but Jacob had always thought it looked more like the eye of someone gripped in fear. Like something you would see on the cover of a horror novel. The sign for the bookstore, Den of Iniquity, featured the Devil sitting on a chair and holding a book with his left hand, his pointed tale wrapped around his hooves, his right hand adjusting a pair of very studious looking reading glasses. Jacob was amazed the Baptists hadn’t cried for the sign to be torn down yet.
Jacob opened the cafe door and held it open for the girls. It was a heavy wooden door and you had to step up a concrete step to get inside. Once inside, he followed Rain who followed Rachel to their customary spot in one of the booths toward the back. Rachel and Rain sat down, sitting next to each other so they faced the front door and the window overlooking the sidewalk. The barista would come to the table and take the order but Jacob didn’t really like to be waited on so he went to the bar and got three coffees. The mugs were large black heavy things, indicative of the coffee contained therein. Each mug was printed with a big white eye. The creamer and sugar were kept at the table.
The boy behind the counter, after waiting on Jacob, went back to leaning on the counter. He sat down on a stool and put Beck’s Sea Change into the stereo. This was one of the reasons Jacob always loved Stoop’s. Nowadays, it was nearly impossible to find a cafe where you could listen to semi-decent music.
Jacob sat the mugs down at the table and slid into the booth, his back to the window, feeling slightly hunted.
Rachel added an abundance of cream and sugar to her coffee. Rain drank hers black like Jacob.
They sat for awhile in the dimly lit cafe, the somber music playing around them, not saying much and sipping their coffees.
“On Halloween night, nearly two years ago now,” Rachel said. “I made a big mistake.”
Sixteen
A Halloween Interlude
1.
Two years ago and it still amazed Rachel how fast it could all come back to her. Just a second of thinking about it and she was there, standing on her front porch, watching the costumed children parade through the dead leaves of the neighborhood.
And it smelled just like every Halloween she could ever remember:
Candle wax.
The latex of the masks and the weird smell of the greasy make- up.
The smell of sugar, drifting out of mouths and from cotton pillowcases and crinkly plastic bags and hard plastic pumpkinhead buckets.
Fires, burning off in the distance. Fires that burned for the children to come home so the whole family could gather round and have one last weenie roast, one last marshmallow roast, all gathered round and sipping cider and waiting for the bitter winter to come on.
Clean air, always so crisp. Always so perfect for this day.
And the smell of dead leaves, the cold damp coming up from the ground. The smell that, to Rachel, symbolized Halloween more than anything else.
The fallen leaves.
The fallen leaves were everywhere.
She could smell them. She could hear them, crunchy and brittle as the trick-or-treaters went from yard to yard.
The leaves were beautiful. They looked beautiful. They smelled beautiful.
The leaves were dead.
This was the peculiar thought she recalled with perfect clarity as she stood there and watched two gorillas, much bigger than the other trick-or-treaters, march up the walk to her front porch.
They weren’t completely gorillas.
They only had gorilla heads.
The rest of them: the leather jackets, the jeans, the black combat boots, were more recognizable.
Dave Gross and Steve Kenyon.
It had to be.
Dave was the shorter and stockier of the two. He was on the left.
“Trick-or-treat,” he said gruffly.
“My,” Rachel said. “You’re a big one. Aren’t you?”
“Growth disorder,” the gorilla huffed. “Trick-or-treat.”
“Do you have a bag or something?”
“Trick-or-fucking-treat,” Dave said.
“Dave!” Rachel said. “There are kids behind you.”
“I’m not Dave.”
“Sure.”
“What are you doin?”
“What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to give out some candy but there are two big effing gorillas in my way.”
“Huh-huh,” he laughed. “‘Effing.’”
“Will you guys move?”
The gorillas moved off to her right. She sat on the top step of the porch. They leaned against the base of the porch. An alien approached her and she tossed a couple of bite-sized candy bars into his pillowcase.
“You wanna come out?” Steve asked.
“Not right now. I’m passing out candy.”
“We could go out later.”
She tossed some candy into a little girl’s pumpkin pail. She couldn’t tell if the little girl was supposed to be a princess or a hooker. A princess, she figured.
“I don’t know. I’d have to ask Mom.”
“No problem,” Steve said.
He climbed the porch steps beside her, hoisted open the storm door and called, “Mrs. Stokes! Mrs. Stoookes!”
“Yes?” she heard her mom’s voice call from inside the house, probably the kitchen.
“Can Rachel come out after she’s passed out all the candy?”
Now her mom had come to the door. She was covered in blood from head to toe. Rachel had told her she was too old to go to their Halloween party as Carrie and her mom had told her to get bent.
“Sure. We’re not going to be here to entertain her. What are you guys going to do?”
“Oh, Dale Septum is having this Halloween party at his house. He invited just about everyone.”
“Is there going to be drinking there?”
“You bet. Drinking, pot, sex... someone was even talking about scoring some crack.”
“You’re such a goof.”
“I know. It’s totally punch and cookies. Supervised and everything.”
“Yeah, right. You were probably closer the first time.”
Except there is no one in our school named Dale Septum, Rachel thought.
Rachel’s mom leaned her head out the door to address her, “Be back by one?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“I mean it. It’s best to get home before all the drunks are on the road.”
“You mean like you and Dad?”
“We’re meth-heads. You know that. It helps the concentration. At first anyway... You’ll have your phone. Call if there’s an emergency.”
“There won’t be any emergency,” Rachel said, exasperated.
“Fine, fine. Just make sure it’s charged.”
“We’ll take good care of her, Mrs. Stokes.”
“All right. Poke your head in and holler before you go. And there’s still a half-hour left so don’t just dump all t
he candy on the next kid who comes. Or else his diabetes will be on your hands.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Have fun.”
Her mom, thankfully, disappeared back into the house.
“Your mom’s kinda hot when she’s all covered in blood,” Dave said.
“If I give him a sucker, will he shut up?” she asked Steve.
“Only if it’s the kind with gum in the middle,” Dave said.
Rachel rummaged through the bowl until she found a cherry Blow Pop. She threw it at Dave. It plunked against his jacket and he trapped it with his hands, greedily unwrapping it and pulling off his gorilla mask so he could suck on it. Rachel noticed he had a huge black eye.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Car accident.”
“Well then you’re certainly not driving.”
Rachel deposited a random handful of candy into a Day-Glo plastic bag held by a pudgy kid in a Jason mask. Hopefully, the sugar wouldn’t send him into a homicidal rage.
“He’s shittin you,” Steve said, still wearing his gorilla mask.
“No accident?”
“Not a car accident,” Steve said.
“She doesn’t have to know...” Dave said.
The next handful was larger. This one to Harry Potter.
“We’re buds. We tell each other everything,” Rachel said.
“See, Davey here had a run-in...”
“Man, it’s embarrassing.”
“With Bryan Adams and Darryl Hall.”
“I can’t believe those two guys hang out with each other. I mean, they know, right? About their names.”
“At least one of them isn’t named Oates. I don’t remember his first name,” Steve said.
“See, now why’d you have to tell? Feel better now?”
“It’s just Rachel,” Steve said.
“Thanks,” Rachel said.
Double-handfuls to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t until they were walking away Rachel noticed they had nooses around their necks. She rolled her eyes.
“You know what I mean,” Steve said.
“Yes, I’m too short and pudgy and don’t buy my clothes at the mall and until I do I’m just Rachel.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m just kidding.” She was, too. She didn’t mind being “just Rachel.” At least, not around Dave and Steve anyway. To her, they would always be just the boys down the street. The ones who went way back to when boys were kind of icky.
“Besides,” she said, “don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not the one who got beat up by Darryl Hall and Bryan Adams.”
“Real nice. Good going, Steve. Well, I’m not the only one,” he said, yanking Steve’s gorilla mask off. His top lip looked kind of mashed and swollen.
Rachel, knowing she probably shouldn’t, burst out laughing.
“You’re on thin ice, Missy,” Steve said. “We don’t have to take you anywhere.”
“Fine. Then I’ll just call Anna and we’ll have our lesbian sleepover lingerie party and you losers will most definitely not be invited.”
“Where is hottie Anna, anyway?”
“I don’t know. I left a message but she wouldn’t call back. Probably out getting an abortion or something.”
A kid dressed like Jesus came up and handed her a Jack Chick comic. Rachel smiled and dumped the rest of the bowl into his brown paper sack, figuring he was going to need it, diabetes be damned.
“I didn’t think Jesus freaks were allowed to go trick-or-treating,” Steve said.
“Well, he’s not the Jesus freak. His parents are. We ready to go?”
“Whenever you are.”
“Let me grab a coat and compliment Mom on her dirty pillows.”
“Right on. Tell her what I said about the blood,” Dave said.
Rachel snorted. “Come back next week. I think she’s on her period then.”
That shut him up.
2.
They walked to the corner of Maple Street, to Dave’s house.
“We takin the van?” Rachel asked, the contempt naked in her voice.
“Ah, the Shaggin Wagon, of course.”
“You know,” Rachel said. “I had a little more faith in you than that. Every pathetic teenage boy who’s left with his soccer mom’s hand-me-down minivan calls it his ‘Shaggin Wagon.’ Ironically, you’re usually all virgins.”
Dave pulled open the driver’s side door. Rachel called shotgun and went over to the passenger side. Steve quietly got in the back, looking embarrassed to be anywhere near a minivan.
“I’m not,” Dave said.
“Not a virgin?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, right,” Steve said from the back, yanking his door closed.
“Really,” he said.
“Yeah? Who would fuck you?” Steve asked.
“Kyla Richards, that’s who.”
“She’s like twelve!” Rachel said.
“She’s thirteen. Well, she was thirteen, anyway. That’s only four years difference, you know.”
“Oh God,” Rachel said. “What did you do? Play Barbies with her first?”
“She was very adult about it,” Dave said.
“You’re full of shit,” Steve said.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “From what I’ve heard, she’s screwed just about everybody else.”
“Not Steve,” Dave said. “Besides,” he said, casting a glance into the rearview mirror as he backed out, “she’s a little too young for Steve. He likes em, ah, older.”
“Oh, keep your fucking mouth shut, fucker.”
“I don’t know. I asked you not to talk about the fight.”
“You have a fuckin black eye! Eventually, the truth was going to come out.”
“Mrs. Jenkins,” Dave coughed.
“Fuck you,” Steve said.
Rachel turned around in her chair. She was actually surprised. Mrs. Jenkins was married to their science teacher. She lived a couple streets over. Not bad looking but she had to be like forty.
“Really?” she said. “Why didn’t I know all this stuff? I would have reconsidered spending my evening with the Pedophile and the Graduate.”
“It wasn’t sex anyway. I never had sex with her,” Steve protested.
“Why not?” Rachel asked. “If you had the chance? She’s not hideous.”
“She wouldn’t. She said it was too much like cheating. But she did give me a blow job.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I didn’t come though. I was too nervous or something. I cut their grass last summer, by the way. That’s how it happened. I wasn’t trying to seduce her or anything. She couldn’t find her checkbook one day. She drinks a lot and she was pretty sauced so I jokingly told her she could pay me with a blow job. And she did. It was nice. Besides, come on, spending the evening with us’ll be better than the Big Green Monster, right?”
Rachel flushed.
“That was in strict confidence.”
“Dave knows. He was there. He was the one who tried to get you to demonstrate it.”
“You were never supposed to bring it up. I was very drunk.”
“Okay. Okay. At least you didn’t put on a demonstration.”
“I didn’t want to make you guys wild.”
“Just talking about it makes me kind of wild,” Dave said.
“Gross,” Rachel said.
“That’s okay,” Dave said. “I’m sure neither of us could live up to the Big Green Monster.”
“Speak for yourself,” Steve said.
“Enough,” Rachel said. “That night didn’t exist.” Then, looking at Dave, she said, “I guess we’ll have to ask Mrs. Jenkins to find out, anyway.”
“Nah. You just have to be real nice to me.”
“Gross,” she said.
“Big Green Monster!” Dave shouted, just so he could try and get the last word about the whole thing.
They navigated from downtown Lynchville and through the neighborhoods, driving slo
w and braking for the costumed trick-or-treaters. Now it was just the older ones and the die hards. The herd had thinned. Eventually, they were on the backroads. The backroads were plentiful in Lynchville.
“Well,” Rachel said, “what do you guys have planned for us?”
Steve reached under the seat and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels.
“Drinking and driving,” Steve said. “The hobby of teenagers the world over.”
“Oh, God, I’m not touching that stuff,” Rachel said.
“And for the lady...” Dave said, twisting a knob that released the console between the seats.
Nestled in the console was a bottle of strawberry Boone’s Farm.
“That’s just as gross,” Rachel said.
“Gee, ‘Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Steve. Thanks for thinking of me,’” Dave said in a voice that sounded like a petulant transvestite.
“Well, I guess it won’t make me throw up.”
“That’s more like it,” Dave said, gently slugging her in the arm.
They drove around the reserve and the backroads, Rachel nursing her bottle of strawberry beer and the boys slugging back hits of Jack, all of them on the lookout for cops. But, as they had often speculated, cops seemed to be mostly absent around Lynchville.
3.
Eventually, Dave was too drunk to drive, swerving all over the road, so Rachel took over.
“Shit, man, he’s wasted,” Steve said from the backseat.
Dave fidgeted with the radio dials and laughed a lot. He could hardly keep his eyes open. Rachel figured, if they were pulled over, the fumes alone would get their licenses revoked.
“What now?” Rachel said. “Maybe we should get him home?”
“Aw, fuck that, the fat bastard’ll be okay,” Steve said. “How ‘bout you drive us into the woods and let us double-team you.”
“Gag,” Rachel said. “Think again.”
“We could go out to that house that’s s’posed to be haunted. The Sad House? Good night for it.”
“That it is. The one on Barker Road?”
“No. The other Sad House.”
“There’s more than one?”
“Sar-casm.”
“Oh. You ever been there?”
