All Hallows

by W. Sheridan Bradford

  One thing she did know: monsters always had vulnerabilities, or they did in movies. The eye’s was easy: it would need to sleep. It would get tired. She closed her own in commiseration.

  Testing herself.

  She’d rubbed desensitizing gel on Kenna’s gums before clambering into the Power Wagon. It didn’t give them a full night’s sleep, nor a long nap, but it gave them temporary respite.

  Not hours. Minutes.

  She could… Abby wouldn’t sleep. But she could rest her eyes. They smarted when open, and her lids were greasier than her mother’s fried chicken. Infected. She’d have to go to the doctor again if it worsened.

  She wouldn’t fall asleep. Just think. Figure things out.

  Abby latched onto the idea: she had a few glorious minutes to think. She adjusted her neck until she was uncomfortable.

  Five minutes to go anywhere. To think anything. Anything except… but she knew that.

  Lived that.

  She would go somewhere nice.

  Summoning creative energy, she put herself inside a white balloon from the island. She was surprised to find the interior contained a thick, warm liquid—Abby could breathe, however; the goo was soothing.

  The balloon bounced and recoiled, slow and squishy, like footage from the moon landing. She was soft but safe. The skin looked frail, but the inside was strong, and she was part of a greater force.

  She was a guardian.

  Which island they defended didn’t matter—perhaps it was the cay her husband had pointed to, chugging beer and pretending not to hang from the rigging as the skiff cut through short waves.

  She would keep their island safe.

  It was a place of honeymoons and happiness, a former haven of rum-runners, unassuming enough to hide buried treasure; uninhabited. No facilities. A day-trip expedition.

  The island was a preserve, an emotional refuge she had never set foot upon, never would, and therefore could not ruin; it was a memento of the passionate, tumultuous period during which she and John had fought so fiercely they’d never doubted they were in love.

  The membrane of the balloon parted. The shallow water was the cobalt of John’s eyes after he’d been through a clinking six-pack. The balloon healed itself behind her, the salt sea sloshing as she stepped away, wax-hot muck pushing through the gaps of her toes like creamed wheat.

  Abby could hear waves catching on reef and rock; could smell raw fish in the air; tasted the antacid tang of coral, their tiny skeletons worn away to particles lighter than sand.

  Along the shoreline, groups of crabs scuttled in rally and retreat on a water-dark crop of rock, marooned, but in high spirits, the unified collection of claws moving together, dancing in foam as waves collapsed, their meticulous sprinting keeping the crabs damp, but unsubmerged.

  Why? Crabs couldn’t drown, could they?

  She watched until she was sure of their deliberate avoidance. What did they fear from the seething waters? Abby could discern nothing unusual in the shallows: creamy froth and bubbling scum dissolved and broke apart randomly and often—what could hide for long?

  Her feet were hot on the sand; she’d teleported up the beachhead. Abby looked at the onrushing ocean from her new angle, a hill the water had built, grain by grain.

  Beds of kelp and seabed weeds moved with placental calm, swaying at her, dull and velvet, pulling away with the thrust of a disturbed eel, sucking back and forth, interlaced in drowsy synchronicity, strands entangled, the parting kisses of new lovers attempting to delay the inevitable with an endless exchange of farewells.

  Farther out, beyond the carbonate platform on which the cay rested, waves wrinkled like wet silk, flattening to a rippled lens at the horizon—but it was the churning at the feet of the calcareous rubble that drew her gaze.

  Bobbing in flotsam, a coconut floated like the buzzcut head of a human body, face-down and beginning to attract a flotilla of hesitant, gray-bellied birds.

  Can you see him, Abby? Over there, by the barnacled rock—was that his hand? If he’s slick with algae, will you take him back? I think you would… There—did you see his spine break the surface?

  Abby listened to the commentary in a daze, for it began as any other feature of her fantasy, real and unreal, as expected as the lapping water. When she realized the voice was there—there in her sanctuary—Abby gasped as though she’d been thrown beneath a crushing wave.

  She’d had the impression that the voice couldn’t follow her there—would not, even if the voice were her own. A sob gathered and stuck in her throat, burning in her esophagus, choking her.

  God, she needed to sleep.

  Kenna’s misery had made the week unbearable, especially on the heels of the pink-eye scare. Kenna’s screams had plucked at her maternal drive until she was on the edge. Anyone would be. She wasn’t losing her mind. Everything would be fine, if she could rest.

  There was still a slice of time to visit the… not the island. Somewhere else. She had… had another minute.

  Do you, Abigail? Where is the infant? If she’s by your side, why can’t you hear her?

  Abby inhaled sharply, swinging her head like a shotput, her chin sliding over her chest, hair against her neck hot as a curling iron.

  Kenna kicked with extreme concentration, her extended toes just missing a crinkling star and a spherical rattle on the mobile. Abby crunched the star briefly in encouragement.

  Did I set the timer?

  Kenna would cry when she was hungry, but the timer was… It was lazy parenting to wait for your baby to squall when you could predict the storm. Her friends said that a good mother should prevent, not react. The timer was part of a proactive mindset.

  Timer… timer… Abby shied from the thought that it might be in the Power Wagon.

  The diaper bag?

  So close; so far away.

  Her lids fluttered, seeking that special last minute the voice had tried to steal.

  There would be no nap tonight. The front door would ring and ring unless she turned-out the lights and kicked the pumpkins off the porch—but no, to do that was to invite eggs, vandalism… worse.

  John had said not to spend a bunch of their hard-earned cash giving random kids diabetes. Kids were already fat. Not fat: obese. Kids today sat around the house until they got old enough to leave—and then they didn’t. They sat until someone gave them a kick in the pants, and even then, they decamped to a different room and lay down.

  Kids had become glorified pets. Hell, half of them wouldn’t bother to wear a costume. John thought it was criminal to hand candy bars to anybody like that, whatever their age. Might as well hand them a revolver and a box of wadcutters.

  This nation had better pray those slobs were never needed; never had to fight and die for freedom. The new waves of boots on the ground thought you could win bitter wars of attrition with cheat codes and a few respawns.

  The reality was, America would get her ass handed to her the second modern kids hit the front lines. If it kept-up, the superpower of John’s youth would be backed into the corner of diplomacy, groveling before her enemies, beaten by Asian-made video games, filth on the internet, fake news, and cushy living.

  Abby hadn’t exactly been consumed by the spirit of the holiday, but she was upbeat compared to John. She thought of the smudged pixels, the way he hadn’t stayed in frame for the web camera. He’d been so… animated.

  Despite their talk, Abby had pushed herself to buy a dollar-store costume for Kenna, she’d found a sack of sweets slightly older than their child—a prior year’s after-Easter sale—and she’d carved three pumpkins: two large, one little.

  Kenna had loved carving; parts of it. She’d become an orange-skinned, glue-covered baby, slipping seeds and pumpkin guts in her mouth if Abby focused elsewhere. Kenna couldn’t have a knife or saw, obviously, not even the crummy plastic ones that broke like sporks. That restriction had been the beginning of the end: Kenna had screamed like she’d been stabbed when Abby wouldn’t give her a tiny-toot
hed tool.

  They weren’t winning any contests for creativity or technical skill, but Abby had done what she could, and they had three reasonably suburban jack-o-lanterns.

  Why not four? Couldn’t you cut away his face? Do you not remember his features?

  8

  The timer—she’d been looking for the timer.

  Abby tried to think of where it would be. She visualized pressing the silicon arrow, saw the digital numerals begin to move in countdown… saw the timer, activated, entering a pocket in the diaper bag, each pocket secured by a Velcro strap.

  Yes, it was there.

  She remembered because the timer had snagged; she’d had to do the strap twice. She tried not to use the diaper bag’s flaps more than necessary, because they wore out, but mostly because the tearing sound reminded her of John’s range bags.

  There were two of those: expensive bags for expensive guns—not select-fire, but essentially the same rifles he carried in the Stan. The range bags had five pouches; each pouch held a magazine; each magazine held twenty or thirty rounds of ammunition, depending on the caliber.

  Abby never moved the bags, because John had said not to, and when she cleaned near that closet—if she so much as opened the door—John was sure to appear in the room. Not upset, just… enforcing. He wanted her safe, and rifles weren’t toys. It was fine not to learn how they worked, but that meant Abby had to promise never to… she had to remember…

  …The flaps ripping open, the black rifle in his hands, John’s face mad with loss, sobbing without sound. A man born to fight, a man socked by an unseen enemy that was incorporeal, impossible to hit. His stubble across the small of her back; John reaching for a pillow to bite, the bed shaking with his emotion.

  His white teeth in heat lightning, his bare footsteps pounding down the hallway. John outside, a downpour lashing his chiseled features, rain on the window making a mirage of his body—her John, so handsome in uniform. Decorated. Passionate about his career, his country, his family.

  John, a streak through dripping windowpanes, the vault of heaven flickering like a faulty bulb. His thumb on the safety, fish-white; the answering flick of muscle memory; the flash suppressor useless against the enormity of lightning; the muzzle disappearing into her husband’s mouth, a gaping hole in a man she had known since high school: her best friend, a man she did not always recognize now; a man locked with unquenchable hatred on whatever had ambushed his family.

  Her John, a man of calm smiles and easy laughter; John with metal in his mouth, roaring at God in the storm, demanding to be taken to their son, to be taken as Samuel had. John, screaming at an unknown enemy—an unconventional coward, the same sort of sick son of a bitch who would put improvised explosives next to places of worship, the kind of monster that was the thief of tomorrow…

  Abby’s friends used apps.

  Not dedicated, clunky baking timers like Abby’s alarm. Apps were software programs that ran on battery-powered devices. The whole concept was way smarter. Apps were the new mother’s little helper—the cheery screens and chipper beeps were the only way to get through the day.

  The programs helped with your entire life. Dieting was no big deal, because dieting meant cheat days. There was a reminder for mindfulness, which was when you thought about anything other than kids and supper.

  There was work, obviously.

  What looked like a seamless day could be broken-down and digested into a series of blocks—individual tasks—the apps then tracked and optimized for you.

  The programs weren’t magic, obviously. You still had to do the work. Abby’s girlfriends talked about long-stemmed glasses of wine, fruit-scented candles, luxuriously creamy baths—but talking was as far as it got: they never actually did those things.

  That wasn’t the fault of the apps, though. No matter how efficient you were, there were only so many hours in the day. Abby had to agree it was irresponsible to get tipsy in a slick porcelain tub. A rinse in the shower was enough. Not like work cared.

  Work.

  How in the fluff were her friends back at work?

  Nell Tanbows had dropped her fifth child this year. Her husband was a scruffy, six-string deadbeat who drifted in and out of bars and town just often enough to knock-up his wife.

  Pictures on the family mantle showed a young man who had been handsome in a stringy, bad-boy way, the bloom of youth concealing the man Abby knew as a chain-smoking musician entering his third decade with yellow fingers and a ponytail of thinning hair.

  Nell’s hubby had been around for a few weeks of Abby’s third trimester, the months in which she’d gagged at broccoli, fish, and the first hint of cigarette smoke—the real kind, with papers and lighters and cancer; insidious and clinging.

  And yet, with her husband back on the road, Nell—sweet, colt-skinny Nell, queen of mile-high legs—had missed less than a month at the early learning center.

  Nell’s early learning center.

  Sure, she’d had coverage—a revolving door of teeny-boppers, ditzy eye candy, and stiff retirees looking for something to do—but if she wanted things done right, Nell needed to be on site. She had been, too. Nell was an entrepreneur. She could drop her kids into her own business, sure; that perk wasn’t luck, it was acumen.

  As to Tina Masalla, her bladder was a shriveled grape these days, the kind you left on the stem even when you had a craving. Yeah, she wore a panty-liner as a second chance versus coughs and sneezes—but Tina had knocked-out a set of freaking twins in January, and she’d pressed the pause button on her catering gig for… what, three weeks?

  Not that Tina had sat around for three weeks. Oh no. Her stable of long, white, windowless Ford vans, parked like so many Clydesdales on the side of her enormous house, drove her bonkers while she was lazing about, because she’d decided the vans needed a vinyl wrap.

  Tina had designed an updated logo and color palette while her tiny, three-pound infants cracked her nipples. She’d brought-in a starving artist to finalize her vision for the remodeled brand identity, and that was that.

  The artist got a few bucks, a ton of exposure, and if anyone wanted to hire her on, Tina could point to the site. The artist was named something weird, but you could find her in a flash: how many freaks could there be, just doodling variations on vampire anime and druidic princesses lollygagging with trees, you know?

  Bunch of emo millennials; small wonder they couldn’t get a job—though the vans did look nice, Tina had to say. Whatever the goth-girl’s name was, she’d captured some of Tina’s original burst of energy, translating Tina’s verbal description to printed decals.

  Talk of vans and gas mileage and the artist with black lipstick and straight bangs had been the main course at the barbecue—you’d better be there; we picked-up a buttload of king crab for the grill.

  The cook-off had celebrated Tina’s last weekend stuck at home with the twins. Given what she’d plowed back into the catering upgrades—an investment in herself—she needed to get back in the saddle, same as Nell.

  As for the twins—politically, you had to vote your conscience, but the illegals were here, and Tina might as well put them to use. They knew babies; she’d give them that. Tina had talked to a couple of the ladies at the catering kitchen—she’d let them know she was looking (minimum wage, cash; rounded-down to keep the math easy) and Lord above, the next day there was a line at her door like she’d opened a ten-cent taco stand.

  Tina’s catering was certified organic, gluten-free, and—with a little notice—she could handle any fad out there. If it cost more than anyone should want to pay, Tina had it covered: raw, vegan, paleo, pescatarian, keto, carb cycling, you name it.

  Abby had attended the barbecue because that’s what friends do, and she had kept the king crab down until she’d driven home, throwing the lock and sliding Kenna (well, her carrier) through the entrance to the bathroom as Abby went to her knees…

  Her friends didn’t say getting back to the grind was easy—quite the opposite—but
they damn sure made it look easy.

  Easier than it had been for Abby.

  She’d been out of the game for months, and the lead-up had been no picnic. Abby had waddled around on swollen feet to keep her hours up, to stay classified as full-time. Hellish hours to maintain the smidge of extra income and reduce their copays. Hours to get benefits, locked-down and in duplicate, before Kenna was born.

  Hours on the chance that, if she added some extra cheddar to their account, John would stay home for longer than he ultimately had.

  It rankled that she had a four-year humanities degree from a well-regarded university, because the best job Abby had achieved since… since the move… was to be a paralegal.

  More of an assistant paralegal.

  If you wanted to get right down to it, an assistant to a paralegal.

  A temp.

  The agency’s plan was to get Abby recent experience and a title that fleshed-out her résumé—that gave it weight; that gave her a running start at the corporate ladder. Abby found the entire charade embarrassing and about as obvious as a push-up bra stuffed with boxes of Milk Duds.

  She’d never made much past minimum wage. Her take-home had been less, bottom-line, than the cash-based economy of Tina’s childcare ladies. Abby had hated it, and now the supplementary benefits were gone, the money was gone, and being an assistant-temp was fading into the rearview mirror. She didn’t have to squeeze Kenna’s toes to know she wasn’t going back, either.

  What in the hell is wrong with me?

  You know the answer to that.

  But it’s not just… it’s everything.

  You lost your direction. You measure yourself by others, and they don’t care much that you care for your daughter. You got out of shape, you quit running in the mornings, and now you’re run-down. Of course you’re sick. I saw that coming from a mile away.

  You never know when a baby will start teething.