by Joseph Fink
Her face and body were blurred. She was mostly a cloud of red mist now. Her voice sounded like her tongue was formed from a swarm of wasps.
Esther watched all this, her hands going itchy and her face going sweaty. She had never in her life been so afraid. She had known there would be anger, but she had underestimated the depth and the shape of that anger. But she was comforted by the knowledge of what she would do next. She had known what she would have to do since the moment they had arrived in this terrible place.
“I used to not want change,” she whispered. “I thought I didn’t need it. But before tonight I thought Mr. Gabler was a boring nuisance, and now I know he’s the bravest, most interesting person I’ll ever meet. I hated Sasha Min, and she hated me, but that changed. That change was good. And the change between me and Agustín . . .” She wavered for a moment before finding it in herself to finish. “There is no life without change. In order for good things to happen in our lives, we have to grow older and change. Denying that would make me as selfish as you.”
The queen laughed. She had no face anymore. Her laugh sounded like a boulder rolling down a mountain.
“And yet you gave all that change up,” the queen sneered. “Now there will only be pain. Now there will never be anything different. Not for you. Not ever again.”
“Well,” Esther said, looking out over the swirling ocean to the broad orange moon that hung over it. The ocean sounded as violent as ever, water in constant argument with rock, and neither giving in. The red mist of the queen was inches away from her, some of the mist already wrapping around her wrist. She felt a sharp sting where the mist was touching her, the queen starting to deliver on her promise. Behind the queen was a dead, empty plain for miles and miles, maybe even forever.
“Here,” Esther said, “is something different.”
Esther Gold jumped off the cliff.
FIRST THE AIR. Whistling air. Howling, rushing air. Faintly in the moonlight, Esther could see the sheer black face of the cliff as a blur next to her.
Then the water. The moment before she hit the water, she saw a monstrous wave, almost as tall as the cliff. A mountain of water topped with a whitecap like snowfall. And then she was under, with a shock that spread across her entire body. She immediately plunged deep, terrifyingly deep. Well below the movement of the waves, to where even the orange moonlight did not shine, where all was still and dark.
A fall from that height, even into water, should have killed her. And maybe it had. She couldn’t tell in the motionless, wet dark if she still had a body or not.
Gradually, she decided that she was not dead. She could feel the water, brutally cold, pricking at her skin. There were things moving in the water with her, just as she had suspected, huge creatures. She felt one swimming next to her. The slow movement displacing massive volumes of water. Part of the creature brushed against her, and she felt frozen, leathery skin.
Shouldn’t she be drowning by now? It had been a while since she had gone underwater. But air hadn’t become a problem for her yet. She wasn’t breathing, and for the moment that seemed to be fine. While it felt like water, and she floated in it like water, she didn’t think this ocean was made of water. Not like water back in her world.
She saw a glimmer far in the distance. Up until then, it had seemed that all around her only ever would be dark. She had lost track even of which way the surface was. But she saw a bit of color and a bit of movement and swam toward it.
As she kicked her way toward the glimmer, she realized what it was. It was her. She was seeing her own life. Not like a movie projected on a screen, but more like a memory. The way that an image in our head can be simultaneously sharp and clear but also not actually there. She could see only the dark water, but also she saw herself. She watched herself, a year older, in high school. Not always happy, but making do. She wasn’t alone as she had sometimes feared. In fact, she had a small group of friends, all of them going through the good and bad process of growing together. There were moments when she was generous, was kind, made good choices. There were moments when she cheated on tests, when she ignored people who reached out to her, or lashed out at people who didn’t deserve it. Like life, she was both good and bad, a complicated mix that was impossible to sort neatly into either category.
The future she was watching skipped forward a couple years. She saw Agustín and herself, and they were both older, and she saw their hands clasped around each other. Holding hands. Walking. She saw lunches with Sasha Min, chatting and trying to guess what the test in the next period would be covering. Lunch after lunch, day after day, a friendship. She saw herself sitting in room after room, leaving each room a little older and a little different than she had entered it. High school and, past that, college. Which was still more rooms. More lessons. Different friends. She wasn’t sure if Agustín was there anymore. The memory of her future was moving so fast now. It was a blur, like the face of the cliff as she had fallen.
She saw her family sitting in rows of chairs. They were all crying, and she knew that Grandma Debbie had died. But it was okay, her father was telling her. It was okay because death is part of the deal. If new people are going to be born, then older people must someday die. It was okay, but she still was sad, and being sad was okay too. Sadness is also part of the deal sometimes.
Now she watched herself graduate from college, the start of the rest of her life. No more rooms full of lesson after lesson. Instead, grown-up life was one long corridor, with only one lesson, which was how to make it from one end to the other. She looked different each time. She was always different. She was always still her.
The years moved faster. They whizzed by, with jobs that went nowhere and then a job that went somewhere, or seemed to, but that job ended unexpectedly, and then another so-so job that she took just because she needed a steady gig, and that ended up being the job she had for the next forty years. Evening hangouts with work friends, a house, bills, lots of bills, trying to understand tax forms. In all the motion and the passing of time, she couldn’t clearly see who was with her, or if anyone was with her. She was so different now. She was decades older. Her hair jumped into different lengths and different colors. Her skin remembered her habitual expressions, bookmarking them in the folds of her face. Her face became a living record of all it had ever expressed.
And behind her, through all of this, she saw Sharon, who also grew older, who also passed through a series of rooms, a series of moments, and all of those rooms and moments added up to a life, and in front of her she saw Ben, and far in front of her she saw her parents, growing and changing too, until she didn’t see them anymore, and she knew that they had stopped changing, and that the opposite of change was not stasis, but nonexistence. Eventually, her parents would stop changing, and that would mean they wouldn’t exist anymore.
And then herself again, well into middle age. Nothing about her life was what she, her thirteen-year-old self, would have wanted, precisely. But there was so much good in all of the changes that had happened to her. And also so much bad. It hurt so much, the growing and the years. But those years also contained every wonderful experience that had ever happened to her. The older her looked back to the younger her floating in the water. Their eyes met. Between them were decades of life and untold volumes of dark water.
The older her smiled at the younger her. And then the older her, which was really only one possible life that she could lead out of an infinity of possible lives, started moving farther away, drifting in a restless current. For a moment the younger Esther thought, Let it go. I don’t want it. But even as she thought that, she was already swimming frantically toward it. Paddling and kicking with everything she had, until she was close enough to reach out her hand, and the older her, a woman older than her mother, older maybe than her mother would ever get to be—who knows?—reached out a hand full of deep grooves and creases, which was her own hand, and the two hands met, and she felt her head break the surface.
She was back in the can
yon, neck deep in the runoff pond that marked the finish line of The Feats of Strength. Above her was the ledge she had never been able to jump off. She crawled, gasping, to the edge of the pond and pulled herself back onto land. As the water ran down her face, it did not taste foul or swampy, but alive and salty. It was not pond water. It was seawater.
“WELCOME BACK,” SAID DAN APEL, leaning on his truck.
Esther stood at the edge of the queen’s court, the water dripping off her clothes in such a quantity that she was immediately standing in a puddle of mud.
The moon was no longer on the horizon. It had moved slightly up and to the west, shedding most of its orange already. She could feel in the air and in her body that time was moving again for good. The endless Halloween night had ended.
She had half expected all signs of the queen and her court to have melted away, leaving only her unreliable memories to prove that what had happened was real. But no. Here was the huge camp, and the plants that had been knocked down and cut back to make room for it. There were clean-cut Dan and scowling, greasy-haired Ed, standing by their trucks. All over the camp were the trick-or-treaters, in their ripped and filthy costumes, with faces obscured in shadow. The trick-or-treaters were all sprawled on the ground, fast asleep. And there, on the burned throne at the center of the camp, was the queen. Also completely asleep.
“Yep, you did it, kid,” said Dan. His nose was broken, and he had a black eye. “You trapped her in the Dream. Without her, none of this power holds. Your friends and all these kids will wake up soon. Isn’t that right, Ed?”
Ed looked like he had gotten it even worse than Dan. His jaw was swollen, and there were puffy bruises all over his face, courtesy of Sasha and Agustín. He spat on the ground and grunted.
“Ed, that’s disgusting. In front of a member of the public like that, even. Disgraceful.” Dan gave her an apologetic smile, but his eyes remained cold and unmoving. “As I feel I will spend the rest of my life doing, I apologize for my brother. But the sentiment in general is shared. We’re not huge fans of yours. I guess we could say we’re enemies. But in defeat, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
She watched the brothers warily, waiting for them to open up their trucks and unleash the weapons within. Dan caught her cautious glance.
“Oh, don’t worry. Without our queen’s power to back us up, there’s not much point in us making a fuss. It’d be a heap of trouble for a fight that’s already lost.” He looked at the dreaming queen. “She had a lot of power, but no one said she was bright.”
“Blasphemy,” shouted Ed, balling his fists.
“Shut up, Ed.” Dan appraised Esther, his face unfriendly but thoughtful. “No, she wasn’t as bright as you. You are very clever. Me and Ed, we won’t forget that. We won’t forget you.” He stopped a moment, narrowed his eyes. “If you ever decide you want to rule the Dream of Halloween, you just might have what it takes to pull it off. And I just might be willing to be your loyal adviser . . . and enforcer.” He smiled his biggest customer-service smile and shrugged. “But in the meantime, we’ll be out of your hair. Enjoy this victory while it lasts. Come along, Ed.”
Ed spat again, to a disgusted sigh from Dan, and then the two of them started lifting up the trick-or-treaters and loading them into the trucks. Finally they approached the queen and carefully carried her onto Dan’s truck. When they were finished, Dan tipped his hat to Esther and made a small, polite bow.
“Goodbye, Esther Gold,” he said. “Keep my offer in mind.”
He got into his truck. Ed was already waiting glumly in the other. The two trucks made their way out of the canyon. Dan switched on the mournful, warbling chimes of the truck, and the discordant waltz accompanied the vehicles back up onto the suburban streets and away into the last few hours of this Halloween night.
Esther stood in the deserted camp, uncertain what to do next. A young child sat up in his cot, blinking his eyes in confusion. He immediately started crying. Soon he was joined by another sleepy little girl, and then more children, all of them waking up from their long Dream.
“Sharon,” Esther called, and ran over, scooping her sister up and holding her.
“Hi,” Sharon said happily, not understanding what this game was but enjoying it. “Hi.” She patted her sister’s head.
Esther stayed on her knees, holding her sister for a long time, until she felt whatever inside her that had been broken by this ordeal come back together. This was the first moment since they had all been cast into the Dream that she hadn’t had to face this night alone.
There were footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Mr. Gabler, Sasha, and Agustín groggily walking toward her. She shouted, no words, just a joyful sound, and ran toward them. She put her arms around each of them in turn, Agustín first, then Sasha, and then Mr. Gabler.
“You’re all here,” she said. It was all she could think to say. It was the best fact she had ever known. “You’re all here.”
“Yes,” Mr. Gabler said. “Here but still trying to work out what is real and what isn’t. I feel like I’ve been asleep for days. My back is killing me.”
“Did we do it?” Sasha said. “Did we kick their butts?”
“No, Sasha,” she said. “You kicked their butt. Man, I wish you could have seen them. Those brothers won’t ever want to face someone like you again.”
“Felt good to take things out on someone who deserved it, you know?” Sasha said, and smiled sweetly. Then she shouted, startling Esther.
“Edward!” Sasha grabbed her little brother from the confused and sleepy crowd of children. “Eddie, you’re safe. I thought Mom was going to kill me.”
“What about all these other kids?” Agustín said.
“Right, yeah, we should get them back to their families,” Esther said, clutching Sharon’s hand.
Mr. Gabler considered this, and looked around.
“Well, the good news is that most of them are patients of mine, so we can find out where they live. The bad news is that this is going to take all night. And from the looks of things”—he considered the moon, which was higher still, and the clouds rolling quickly over the stars—“that is way less time than it used to be. We should get started.”
Esther took Sharon home. Sharon went happily to her bed, lay down, and, right before settling back into a completely unmagical sleep, gave Esther a big wink. For the first time, Sharon got it right, managing to wink with just the one eye. Esther winked back and turned off the lights.
THE LAST CHILD was returned to the last house, through doors left unlocked the night before to receive trick-or-treaters who never came, to parents who were still sleeping, but the natural and finite sleep of tired adults. Sasha was carrying Edward, who had fallen back asleep against her shoulder.
“Well, Esther,” Mr. Gabler said. “Say hi to your folks for me.”
She gave him a hug, squeezing as hard as she could to replace everything she wanted to express but didn’t know the right words to use.
“I will, I will” is all she could think to actually say. “Thank you so much for everything.”
“Oh sure, I mean, probably anyone would have done the same in my position.”
“No,” she said, letting him go. “I’m sure that they would not have. You’re a wonderful man, Mr. Gabler.”
He blushed. “Well,” he said. And then didn’t say anything else. He gave a little wave and walked to his front gate.
“Hey,” Esther said. He turned.
“Yeah?”
“Ditch the toothpaste next year. Give out candy like everyone else?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Maybe sugar-free gum.”
“It’s a step.”
“Good night, Esther,” he said, and was gone.
Then it was just Esther, Agustín, and Sasha. They said nothing for a moment, unsure of how to say goodbye after their long night together.
“Sasha!” said a voice from the street. It was Mrs. Min, pulling up in the minivan. “Oh my god, Sasha. How
late is it? I’m so sorry. I must have fallen asleep, and I didn’t pick you up. You must have been worried. Were you worried? You must have been so worried.”
Sasha handed Edward to Agustín, who took him uncertainly, as though terrified he would drop him, and she ran to throw herself into her mother’s arms.
“Mom, I am so, so, so glad to see you.”
Tears welled in Mrs. Min’s eyes. “Oh, honey, you were so worried. I’m sorry I dozed off.”
“It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay.”
Edward woke up when he heard his mother’s voice and wriggled his way out of Agustín’s hands to run up to the minivan. Mrs. Min scooped him up.
“Eddie! What in the world are you doing out of your car seat? What is going on here, Sasha?”
The Min family held each other. Soon Edward got bored and wriggled into the back seat where a couple of his toys had been left. “Vroom,” he said as he moved a wooden airplane around in the air.
Mrs. Min noticed Esther and Agustín. “Oh, hi, kids,” she said with surprise. “Sorry, I must look a mess, crying like this.”
“Hi, Mrs. Min. Don’t even think about that. We’re glad you’re here,” Esther said.
“Do you kids want a ride? I know it’s not far, but you could hop in.”
“Yeah, we’ll give you a ride,” Sasha said.
Her mom gaped at her. “Sasha, I’m so glad to see you learning manners for once. And also making friends. You all are friends now?”
Sasha opened her mouth, but she looked at Esther and closed her mouth again, waiting for Esther to answer. Esther smiled.
“Yes, Mrs. Min, we’re friends,” Esther said.
Sasha broke into a relieved smile.
“I don’t think we need a ride. But want to hang out tomorrow, Sasha?” Esther said.
“I would love to. I would . . . yeah. See you then. See you tomorrow.”