Early on Halloween morning, Janice appeared at Miss Mack’s door with a paper bag filled with sandwiches. When she answered the bell, Miss Mack fell back from the doorway in apparent alarm. Janice was wearing a Frankenstein mask.
‘Is that you under there, Janice? ’Cause if it isn’t, I’m sorry, Whoever-you-are, but I don’t have a piece of candy in the house. I ate it all up last night!’
Janice removed the mask. ‘It’s me, that’s all!’ She handed Miss Mack the bag of sandwiches. ‘I sure do wish I were going too,’ she sighed.
‘You come tomorrow,’ replied Miss Mack, ‘and you bring me some Halloween candy. I sure do love Snickers, and they go great with Coca-Cola.’
Miss Mack drove off alone in her purple Pontiac, and Janice went to the school cafeteria to begin decorating for the children’s Halloween party that night.
At Gavin Pond, Miss Mack altered her routine not one bit, though she admitted to herself, sitting alone in the little green boat in the middle of the pond, that she wished Mr Hill had chosen somebody else to help with the Halloween party that night. She sorely missed Janice’s company. Without her friend, Gavin Pond seemed to Miss Mack a different place altogether.
Just when Miss Mack was thinking that thought for the two hundredth time, she was startled by the sound of an automobile driving along the track that went all the way around the pond. Miss Mack looked up, but could not see the car through the screen of trees. She rowed to shore, hoping very much that it was Janice come to join her after all.
It was not. It was Mr Hill.
‘I had to pick up some things from my mama last evening,’ said Mr Hill in explanation, ‘and I thought I’d stop by on the way back home.’
‘How’d you find us? This place is about two hundred miles from nowhere!’
‘Us?’
‘Just me,’ said Miss Mack. ‘I’m just so used to Janice being out here, that I said us by mistake.’
‘Too bad she couldn’t come,’ remarked Mr Hill. ‘Well, it was Mama who drew me a map.’
‘Your mama! How’d she know about this place? Gavin Pond’s so little and so out-of-the-way they don’t even put it on the county maps.’
‘Oh, Mama’s lived around here all her life. My mama knows every square foot of this county,’ replied Mr Hill with some pride. ‘And my mama said to tell you hi, Miss Mack.’
‘Your mama don’t know me from Jezebel’s baby sister, Mr Hill!’ exclaimed Miss Mack in a surprise unpleasantly alloyed with a sense – somehow – of having been spied upon.
‘My mama,’ said Mr Hill, ‘has heard about you, Miss Mack. My mama is old, but she is interested in many things.’
‘I had heard that,’ said Miss Mack uneasily. Miss Mack had also heard that the things that Mrs Hill interested herself in withered up and died. But Miss Mack did not say that aloud to Mr Hill, because Mr Hill evidently loved his mama. He visited her often enough, and was wont to say, in the teachers’ lounge, that he always took her advice, and when he didn’t take her advice, he should have. Miss Mack just hoped that Mrs Hill hadn’t given her son any advice on the subject of herself and Janice Faulk. Miss Mack liked Mr Hill well enough, but she knew jealousy when she saw it – in man or woman.
Miss Mack cooked some bream for Mr Hill’s lunch, and they sat and talked for a while in the folding chairs. Miss Mack said how sorry she was that the ball season was over.
About four o’clock Mr Hill gathered himself up to go. ‘It sure has been pleasant, Miss Mack. Now I know why you and Janice come out here every single weekend. I’m just real jealous.’
‘We are pretty happy out here,’ returned Miss Mack modestly.
‘Hey, you know what? It’s Halloween. Aren’t you gone be scared, being out here all by yourself?’
Miss Mack laughed. ‘Janice came over this morning wearing a Frankenstein mask, and that didn’t scare me one little bit. I’ve stayed out here all by myself lots and lots of times. Before I knew Janice, I was out here all the time by myself. You don’t have to worry about me.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Listen, I got to get on back and help out Janice at the school.’
‘You go on, then. You give her my best, and tell her not to forget my Snickers.’
Miss Mack went inside the trailer as Mr Hill drove off. She was clattering with the pans, or she would have been able to hear that not very far from the trailer, Mr Hill stopped his car.
In the pine forest it was almost dark. Mr Hill had just turned onto the track that would lead him back to the dirt road to DeFuniak Springs. He killed the ignition, got out quietly, and opened the trunk. He took out a small corrugated box filled with heavy black ashes mixed with cinders. The rank odor and the lumpish consistency of the blackened remains suggested not the sweeping-out of a coal-burning fireplace, nor a shovelful of some ash heap, but rather something organic, recently dead or even still living, which had been burned, and burned with difficulty.
With a measuring cup that he took from a paper bag in the trunk, Mr Hill scooped out a portion of the cinders and the ashes, and sprinkled them in one of the ruts of the track that led away from the pond and toward the road. Then he poured a cupful into the other rut, and so alternated until he had distributed the ashes and cinders evenly. Then he tossed the measuring cup and the cardboard box back into the trunk of the car and shut it. Taking then a piece of yellow notepaper from his shirt pocket, he unfolded it, held it close to his eyes in the decreasing light, and in a low voice read the words that had been written upon it. From the same pocket he took a single calendar page – October of the current year – and set fire to it with his cigarette lighter. After this was burned, and the ashes scattered on the ground, Mr Hill pulled from his trousers a child’s compass and a cheap wristwatch – such items as are won in ring-toss booths at traveling carnivals. He checked that the compass needle did indeed point north. He put the wristwatch to his ear to hear its ticking. He dropped both into the heaps of ashes, and crushed them beneath the heel of his shoe.
As Mr Hill got quietly into his car and drove slowly away, the twilight was deepening into night. The piles of ashes began to blow away. The heavier cinders alone remained, dull and black and moist. The broken springs and face and glass of the wristwatch and compass gleamed only faintly. At a little distance, Miss Mack’s crickets in their rabbit cage produced one loud, unison chirp.
Miss Mack fixed more fish for supper. Afterward she cleaned up, and settled down to work a couple of crossword puzzles at the table, but soon gave this over. She had much rather be playing cards with Janice, or trying to guess the riddles that Janice put to her. She went outside, and looked up at the sky. She wore a sweater because the nights were chilly in October. There was a new moon, but the sky was so clear and so bright with stars that Miss Mack had no difficulty in discerning its circle of blackness against the black sky.
She went back inside and went to bed earlier than was usual with her. She was lonely and told herself that the sooner she got to bed, the sooner she might rise. She intended to get up very early, in expectation of Janice’s arrival.
Miss Mack awoke at six, or at least at what her internal clock told her was six o’clock. But it obviously wasn’t, for the night remained very black. Miss Mack could see nothing at all. She rose and went to the door of the trailer and peered blearily out. It was still deep night, and when she looked toward the east – directly above the little plot of Gavin graves on the far side of the pond – she could discern no lightening of the sky. Miss Mack thought that she had merely been so excited by the prospect of Janice’s arrival that she had risen an hour or so before her time. She was about to turn back into the bed for another while, when she suddenly noticed, in the sky, the same black circle of moon as she had seen before.
It hadn’t moved.
Miss Mack was confused by this. The moon rose. The moon set. It never stayed still. Perhaps, she attempted to tell herself, it had moved a little. In that case, she had been asleep not eight hours
but perhaps only one. That would also explain why it was still so dark. Yet she felt as if she had slept for six or seven hours at the very least.
Miss Mack went back into the trailer and lay down again. If she had slept for only an hour, then she ought to go back to sleep until morning. Perhaps she would be waked by the horn of Janice’s car.
But Miss Mack couldn’t go back to sleep. She wasn’t tired now. She was hungry. She wanted breakfast. So, thinking how foolish she was, she lighted a lamp, and set up the little stove, and cooked bacon and eggs and ate them all up. She stood once more in the doorway of the trailer, and looked out across the pond.
The sky was no lighter. The moon had not moved.
Miss Mack said aloud, ‘I am dreaming. I am asleep in the bed, and I am having a dream.’
She looked at the bed behind her, as if she thought she might indeed see her sleeping self there. She looked back out at the night. She pinched her arm, and held it next to the lamp, watching the flesh turn color.
Nervously, she opened a Coca-Cola, and pulling a sweater over her nightdress, walked out to her car, got in, and turned on the radio. There were only two stations on the air, so she knew it was very late at night. More stations came on at four or five with the farm reports. So it had to be earlier than that. She went to WBAM in Montgomery, and got the announcer.
Halloween night – don’t let the goblins get you! Lock your doors and close the curtains, boys and girls! It’s 2 a.m. and don’t walk past any graveyards. This next song goes out to Tommy and Julie, it’s . . .
Miss Mack turned the radio off. She was relieved in the main, for at least she knew the time. But still she was puzzled by the moon. She looked up at it, and for a second, was joyed to see that at last it had altered its position. Waking up in the middle of the night always leaves you in a confused state of mind, and she had only made matters worse by eating breakfast at one-thirty in the morning. Sighing, and trusting that now she would surely be able to sleep, Miss Mack got out of the Pontiac and slammed the door shut with a grateful bang. She smiled up at the moon – and all her relief washed suddenly away. The moon hadn’t moved, only she had. When she went back to the door of the trailer, and looked again, it still hung the same distance above the top of the same cypress as before she had prepared her untimely breakfast.
Miss Mack returned to the trailer and lay down a third time. Her nervousness she carefully ascribed to the strangeness of being up and about so late at night. She willed herself to sleep, slipped into unconsciousness, and woke at a time that seemed at least several hours later. Certainly she suffered the grogginess and physical lassitude attendant upon too much sleep. She went hastily to the door of the trailer.
The moon had not moved.
This time neglecting her sweater, she ran to the car and turned on the radio. WBAM was playing music, and she turned to the only other station. She heard the end of a song, and then the announcer came on.
And here’s the 2 a.m. wrap-up of some of the day’s top stories . . .
She turned the radio off.
She sat very still in the front seat of the car, with her chin immobile upon the steering wheel, staring up at the moon, attempting to trace even the slightest movement. She could see none at all.
Miss Mack, with nothing else to do, fixed more bacon and eggs. As she cooked, and as she sat at the table and ate, she refrained from looking out the door at the moon. She saved that for when she had carefully cleaned up. She went with conscious bravery to the door of the trailer and looked out, taking great care to stand exactly where she had stood before so that any slightest alteration of position would be detectable.
The moon had not moved.
It was still 2 a.m. on WBAM, and on the other station as well. This time she listened to the song that was dedicated to Tommy and Julie, and then turned to the wrap-up of some of the day’s top stories.
Not much happened on Halloween.
With sudden resolution, Miss Mack ran back to the trailer, quickly dressed, and came back out to the car. She started it up, and backed onto the track. The crickets were in their cage on the backseat, and they brought the voice of the forest along with them. Miss Mack would return to Babylon, and tell Janice that it hadn’t been any fun at all, alone on Gavin Pond.
The lights of the car were a little dim – that came from playing the radio so much, and running down the battery. She no longer kept a spare in the car, because ball season was over, and there hadn’t been any need for the extra security.
Miss Mack’s relief was so great, just to think that she was getting away from Gavin Pond, that she did not realize that she had missed the turnoff until she found herself passing the graveyard on the far side of the pond.
Don’t walk past any graveyards.
Miss Mack sped up. In another minute or two she had gone all the way around the pond and was passing by the trailer again. The turnoff was only twenty yards or so beyond the clearing. She put the lights on bright, and slowed considerably.
Before she found the turnoff, the headlights were glancing off the Gavin tombstones. She had missed it again.
Miss Mack went around the pond seven times, looking for the turnoff, and she missed it every time.
That was not possible. She had never once overlooked it before. It was a perfectly obvious break in the trees. The car lights at night would glance off the silicate pebbles in the ruts.
The car lights were growing dimmer with each succeeding turn around the pond. She could tell this by the amount of light that was reflected off the tombstones. The moon didn’t move. The chirping of the crickets in the backseat grew clamorous. Miss Mack threw the car into park suddenly, reached over into the back, and flung the cage out the window.
It hit the trunk of a tree, and must have broken open, for the chirping dispersed. Miss Mack immediately regretted her action. Having given Mr Hill all the fish she had caught the previous day, having consumed all her bacon and eggs in the course of the two nervous breakfasts, she had now nothing to eat. And she had just disposed of the bait she might have used to catch more fish. It was little comfort to remember that fish didn’t bite at night.
Miss Mack drove around more slowly now, and even began to look for the track leading to the DeFuniak Springs road on the opposite side of the pond from where she knew it to be. She pinched her fat arms until they were bruised and raw, hoping with each attack to wake up in any place but this.
Miss Mack realized suddenly that not only was she wearing down her battery, she was using up her gas. She had very little left. She hadn’t looked at the odometer when she first attempted to drive away from Gavin Pond – why should she have? – but she suspected that she had already driven thirty-five or forty miles. On a straight road, that would have carried her all the way back to Babylon.
The moon hadn’t moved.
Miss Mack stopped the car by the trailer, got out, and went inside. She sat down exhausted on the bed. She went to sleep again, and slept for she knew not how long. She hoped that when she waked it would be day, that Janice would wake her by knocking on the door of the trailer. She hoped all this had been a dream – it certainly had the qualities of a dream – and that she might precipitate its ending by rendering herself unconscious within its confines.
She waked, and it was night. Without daring to look at the moon, she went back out to the car. It started, but sluggishly. WBAM was still dedicating a song to Tommy and Julie, and she had very nearly memorized the 2 a.m. wrap-up. Miss Mack drove around and around the pond, and the Pontiac’s wavering headlights fell in brutal alternation, now upon the metal trailer, now upon the white Gavin tombstones. She was no longer even looking for the turnoff. She drove as fast as she could around and around the pond, until the car, out of gas, rolled to a standstill just beyond the graveyard.
Miss Mack tried the radio one more time.
Faintly came the song for Tommy and Julie. She listened to it all the way through, thinking, If he plays another song, then I’ll know th
at time is passing, and I’ll be all right. If he starts over again, then I’ll know that I’m dreaming.
The battery failed on the last notes of Tommy and Julie’s song.
The car lights, which she had left on, faded to blackness.
Miss Mack got out, and turned back. She walked past the graveyard, and slowly along the track from which the turnoff had unaccountably and indisputably disappeared. All the way back to the trailer, she stared at the ruts in the earth, and kept her mind solely upon the turnoff – she did not wish to miss it in her distraction. But the turnoff was not there. She did not stop at the trailer, but continued around again, until she came to the Pontiac, still ticking away its heat.
Don’t walk past any graveyards.
From this point, it seemed useless to keep on in the track. She struck out into the pine forest, heading directly north, to where the dirt road led up to DeFuniak Springs. Her way and her speed were impeded by tangled undergrowth and briers. The forest and the night were so dark that she sometimes walked directly into trees, not having been able to see them. Yet swiftness was not of such concern as was the maintenance of her direction. She forged straight ahead, knowing that if she only walked far enough, she would get somewhere.
She had lost sight of the darkened moon, for the canopy of tree limbs was too thick to permit her to see it. But it was behind her, she knew, and she took some comfort with the reflection that she was walking away from it. At last, after she had walked about an hour, Miss Mack came to a little clearing in the forest. She caught a glimpse of dark water – but even before she had seen the trailer and the gleaming tombstones on the far side, she realized that she had returned to Gavin Pond.
She made another attempt, and struck out directly southward. There was a farm road probably no more than a mile distant, with some old tenant-farmer shacks on it. Miss Mack no longer cared whether they were inhabited or not. If only she could reach that road she would be safe.
The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories Page 3
