The Jack-o-Lantern Box
Page 12
Saturday afternoon, Jessy sat in her room, stretched out on the bed. She had just started a new book from the Scholastic Book Club, called Spooks and Spirits and Shadowy Shapes. She was deeply enthralled in a story about some kids out trick or treating, who were walking around the block and creeping themselves out. That made total sense, since it seemed just like her own neighborhood, and she could imagine perfectly how creepy that might be, under the right circumstances. There was a knock on the door, and Twyla stuck her head in without getting an answer.
“Are you home?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Twyla came in and closed the door behind her. Then she noticed that the haunted papyrus was hanging in the window, rigged up and bulging a little awkwardly over the top of the real shade.
“Nice,” she said, then added, “I have something for you.”
“What?”
There was a small book in her hand.
“I’ve been going through some of those papers in that box, you know, the one with the window shade? It came from the Storvigs. Joe says it was a bunch of stuff that came from their mom’s family, that they decided to get rid of. Did you ever hear the story about Mrs. Peterson?”
“No,” Jessy said, like it was Twyla who was stupid.
“Well, Joe says Mrs. Peterson was his grandma’s sister, who became kind of a recluse. She was a widow, and she lived by herself near the end of town. His grandma said that she always thought she was cursed, even before her husband died, since she was a teenager.”
“Cursed how?” Jessy asked.
“That she was doomed to unhappiness, and anyone she loved would die a horrible death. When her husband proposed, she kept refusing. She finally gave in, but then when he died, she got kind of -- crazy.”
“What happened to her?” Jessy asked.
“I don’t know for sure. She died, probably just old age. Joe’s grandma died a while back, that’s why they had those boxes of stuff that belonged to her, and the old furniture to get rid of. They finally got around to it now.”
They both sat for another minute. Curses didn’t really exist, Jessy thought. Just like ghosts didn’t. They were just stories.
“So anyway, I found this in the box.” Twyla handed over a small, old-looking book. It was slightly stiff, like a hardcover, but it had a paper cover, almost like a magazine. Jessy could tell right away that it was old, just from the style of it, and the way the paper edge looked slightly discolored.
On the cover was a painting of an enormous orange moon, a startled look on its face, peering down at a scene where a green-faced witch stood in front of a gnarled tree. Wispy shapes of narrow ghosts, with tiny faces, stared out of the night sky background.
“The Orange and Black Book,” it said. “Suggestions for Hallowe’en.”
“Wow,” Jessy breathed.
She opened the front cover delicately, as if she was afraid it would crumble in her hands. But once she touched the creamy paper, she could feel how sturdy it was. The print was fairly small, and the pages were full of fine line drawings, girls with slick bobbed hair in knee-length gowns, printed in Harlequin patterns, with tutu-like protruding skirts, all inked in orange and black. The whole book was in orange and black and white.
“It’s like a catalog,” Twyla said. “You could order the patterns for the dresses, and all these paper decorations from it, for Halloween parties.”
“When is this from?” Jessy asked, turning it around, looking at the front and back covers. There it was. 1925. That was a long time ago.
“Wow,” she said again.
“I don’t think Dad’ll care that I gave this to you,” Twyla said. “But I don’t know if you want to mention it.”
“Probably not,” Jessy said. That was always the safest course of action.
After dinner, she stayed up in her room with the book. The first section was titled “How to Throw a Hobgoblin Party,” and she imagined herself hobgoblining like crazy. A two-page spread showed an enormous hall, like the old high school gym, only with giant orange chandeliers, dripping with black crepe paper banners. A long table was spread with a solid, bright orange tablecloth, and on it, a punchbowl sat on top of a lacy, spiderwebbed doily. The inside of the punchbowl was orange, too, with daintily drawn orange slices floating in it.
The women were all slim and delicate, wearing burglar masks with black cat ears, or half-masks with small pointed devil horns.
Another part of the book was about a “Homey Harvest Home,” which was a party to have in the house, for friends. The Hobgoblin Party was for a “club,” although it didn't specify what kind of club they were talking about. They advised you to use every room in the house for the Harvest Home Party. “Don't forget the attic, or the coal scuttle.”
Paper ghosts and paper pumpkins dangled everywhere; paper skeletons sat on top of hay bales; and ruffled paper centerpieces folded out into fat, serious-faced owls.
The book also described a bunch of different fortune-telling games, which they already said were old-fashioned. “At Hallowe’en, the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, and in some cases, it can even be parted,” or at least that's what you were supposed to tell your guests.
If her mom found about the book, she'd want to put it in the Jack-o-Lantern Box. Jessy had a section in her bookcase that made up her Halloween library, so before bed, she tucked it in safely with those books.
Besides Spooks and Spirits and Shadowy Shapes, she also had one called Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts. She still had the Georgie book, about a little ghost, and Georgie’s Halloween, even though they were for little kids, because the drawings were so beautiful. They were all black and white and orange, too, just like the Orange and Black Book. Next to those was Something Wicked This Way Comes, a grown-up looking paperback with a shiny white spine.
On the same shelf was a random assortment of Trixie Beldens and Cherry Ameses, passed down from Twyla, along with a book called The Silver Spoon Mystery. It seemed like there was nothing that couldn’t be haunted, everywhere had a mystery, it was continually The Mystery of the Haunted This and That.
The Mystery at the Monkey Bars, she thought.
The Mystery of the Haunted Record Player.
The Phantom at the Dime Store.
That last one almost sounded like the title of a real book.
To Trixie Belden or Cherry Ames, a story like the one about the lights in the cemetery would just be another mystery. But if she wrote about it, then she'd have to know how the mystery was solved, and what it really meant. It wasn’t like real life, where they could go out on Halloween night to be detectives, and just see what happened.
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