by Quan Barry
“You guys wanna play Truth or Dare?” asked Blond Mark.
It was a weird thing for a college sophomore to say. It had already dawned on most of us that the Marks and Guy Whose Name We Didn’t Catch maybe weren’t the most debonair of college sophomores. The Town & Country alone should’ve been a tip-off. That and the right-side parts in their hair, which reeked of politicians or used-car salesmen.
Julie Minh and Brunet Mark were still in the Town & Country. Heather said Julie Minh was okay, that she wanted to be in there with him, that they were mostly just talking about their faiths. It turned out that in addition to cartons of eggs, the minivan was also loaded with pamphlets and brochures about the Good News. Talk about attracting what you are. Both the Claw and le Splotch sighed simultaneously at the idea of newly adult Julie Minh sitting in a perfectly good love machine chatting with an anatomically correct boy about the Resurrection.
“Let’s get this party started,” huffed the Claw.
We walked off a little ways to give the lovebirds some privacy. It was dark, but one of the Marks had a flashlight. We found a path in the trees and followed it down to a great stone outcropping, boulders scattered about. “Guys, I think this is Proctor’s Ledge,” said Heather Houston.
“What’s Proctor’s Ledge?” said Becca Bjelica. It was starting to feel as if we only kept her around to ask these obvious questions on behalf of the rest of us.
“Nobody knows for sure where on Gallows Hill the victims of the hysteria were hung,” said Heather. She pushed her glasses farther up her nose. If she pushed them up any further, they’d be all the way in her brain. “But some historians say it was right here.”
“Creepy,” said Abby Putnam. Still, the idea of bodies swinging from nearby trees didn’t stop her any from peeling a new banana.
We found space on the rocks and took a seat. Sue Yoon passed around a pack of Parliaments; Little Smitty lit up her trademark cigar. Even in the limited moonlight you could see Redheaded Mark’s eyes go big. When the Parliaments came to him, he started to take one, but then Guy Whose Name We Didn’t Catch gave him a look, and he demurred.
Blond Mark got us started. “Okay. Who wants to go first?”
“I will,” said Jen Fiorenza. Moonlight poured through the leafless trees. Even at this late hour, the Claw looked alert, a canopy keeping her face in shadow.
“Cool.” Blond Mark thought long and hard before coming up with this hot turd. “If you knew somebody who wasn’t baptized,” he said, speaking like Rod Serling introducing the Twilight Zone, “would you conveniently spill a little water on their head and just tell them there’d been a mosquito?”
“Crisse de tabernacle, ça va faire là, je câlisse mon camp!” roared le Splotch. Mel Boucher jumped to her feet. She was still holding her stick. We all were. She whacked a tree with it, making an angry notch in the bark. “This is bullshit. I’m gonna go find something worthy of Halloween,” she said. “Who’s with me?” She reached over and grabbed the flashlight.
Little Smitty got up. “Yeah, this blows.” She took the cigar back from Becca Bjelica and followed Mel down the hill. Jen, the two Corys, and AJ Johnson went with them, picking their way through the dark. The rest of us stayed where we were.
“Your amie has a crazy mouth on her,” said Blond Mark.
“Yeah, that’s damnation talk,” said Guy Whose Name We Didn’t Catch.
“Whatever. It works for her,” said Abby Putnam.
“Does it?” said Redheaded Mark.
“You’re ones to talk,” said Heather Houston. “Egging innocent people.”
“They weren’t innocent,” countered Redheaded Mark. “They’re witches.”
“You guys are modern-day Cotton Mathers,” said Sue Yoon, pulling out her Crucible bona fides. “Back in the day, you probably would’ve believed in spectral evidence.” The Marks didn’t contradict her on this point. “Maybe you still do,” she added. They didn’t refute this either. The conversation stalled as if we were waiting for the right fuel.
“Oh, sorry,” said Becca Bjelica. “My bad. What’s spectral evidence?”
“Spectral evidence is what sent nineteen people to their deaths right here in this very spot,” said Heather Houston. She pushed her glasses up some more. That’s when we realized for the first time it was a tic, that she’d keep doing it even if someday she switched to contacts. “When the Witch Trials broke out, a band of young girls claimed they were being tormented by the spirits of local people recruited by the devil himself,” she said. “And only they, the afflicted girls, could see these spirits.”
“What kinds of stuff did the spirits do?” asked Abby.
“Pinching, poking, biting, stuff with needles,” said Heather. “In every case, the only proof was the word of these girls. They even accused godly people like Rebecca Nurse, an elderly woman who everybody said was a model Christian.”
“There was witchcraft afoot in Salem Village,” said Guy Whose Name We Didn’t Catch. “Just look at Tituba and her black magic.”
“That’s right, blame the slave,” added Sue Yoon. “Show some sensitivity to cultural differences.”
“The only Devil in Salem Village were the villagers themselves,” said Heather. “It was the villagers’ failure to forgive their neighbors, their tendency to remember every single little petty slight that ever happened to them. Like, ‘My cow died two weeks after Goody Jones didn’t wish me a happy birthday.’ Gimme a break.”
“The Pilgrims didn’t celebrate birthdays,” said Blond Mark.
“Whatever,” said Abby. She flung her banana peel at him.
“And what would you have done?” said Heather. “Would you have lied and saved your skin by confessing?”
“Never,” said Redheaded Mark.
“Really?” said Heather. “You would’ve let them wheel you in a cart right to this very spot.” She pointed to a large oak that was balanced on the ridge. “Maybe right there.”
We all contemplated the tree for a moment. Its boughs looked thick enough to support the weight of multiple bodies. In the dark under the stars by the roots of the great oak, the question of an honorable death versus a life marred by a confession didn’t seem all that far removed.
Sue Yoon spoke up first. “I’d cave in an instant,” she said. “I don’t like pain, plus what’s the point?”
“Your eternal soul,” said Blond Mark. We all ignored him.
“Yeah, I probably would too,” said Abby.
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Becca Bjelica.
“How do you know?” said Abby.
“Cuz I know you.” It was such a sweet thing to say. We all tucked it away in our hearts for a rainy day when we might need it.
“I might confess,” said Guy Whose Name We Didn’t Catch in a small voice.
“Billy!” said Redheaded Mark.
“I’m just saying,” Billy explained. “I could do more good alive than dead. I could preach the Gospel about the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.”
Suddenly we could hear a rustling coming up the hill. It was dark. We didn’t have the flashlight anymore. The trees were bare, the wind blowing right through the branches like breath through a single blade of grass.
“Argh!”
We all screamed, the Marks and Billy the loudest. Even in the dark we could tell the thing had a red face. There were two stubby horns coming out of its forehead, its skin shiny as if lacquered. Its face was permanently frozen in a terrible rictus of pain, like Melpomene, the tragedy part of those icons of the theater. Then the thing blew a stream of smoke out of its distorted mouth. Abby waved her hand in front of her face as she often did when that smell was around, to diffuse its awfulness.
It was Little Smitty and her cigar, all dressed up in a red devil’s mask. The others were standing behind her, their faces wearing the visages of various hobgoblins
and demons. “The party’s started,” she said, pointing to a spot somewhere behind her. We could maybe see firelight twinkling in the distance, hear music playing on the wind.
“We should go,” said Billy.
“Let’s get the stuff first,” said Blond Mark.
“Yeah, let’s go worship us some Satan,” said Sue Yoon. Jen Fiorenza handed her an ice hockey goalie mask, the kind Jason wears in Friday the 13th. It was the creepiest one of all.
We walked back to the cars. Happily, the Town & Country was all steamed up. “Nice!” said the Claw. Billy tapped on the window.
The passenger-side door slid open. There was classical music playing, maybe a requiem or something. “What’s up?” said Brunet Mark. He had a stupid little grin on his face. We got the impression he’d been waiting for us to come knocking just so that he could show off the Town & Country’s steamed windows. Julie was there beside him, rearranging her kilt. Her lips looked a little swollen, the way lips get after serious smooching.
“The party’s started,” said Blond Mark. “We wanted to get the brochures.”
“You guys are going to a Halloween party to hand out Christian literature?” asked Girl Cory. She couldn’t believe she’d ever struck up a conversation with these dweebs. Was she losing her touch?
“Somebody’s gotta do it,” said Redheaded Mark.
“I’m out,” said Jen Fiorenza. She took off her mask and tossed it over her shoulder.
“Yeah, enjoy your party,” said Heather Houston.
Brunet Mark crawled out of the minivan. He turned to Julie Minh. “You wanna come?” he asked hopefully.
Julie Minh was still fiddling with her kilt. It was dark inside the car. We couldn’t tell what she was thinking, her mind closed to us. “No thanks,” she said.
He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned her head and he planted one on her ear. “Okay,” he said, still trying to sound hopeful. “I’ll call you,” he yelled over his shoulder as he walked away with his friends, arms loaded with pamphlets with titles like Halloween Night or Halloween Light?
“Not if I can help it,” said the Claw.
We were standing around the cars playing our radios and finishing the last of our smokes, the Marks and Billy far away in the dark, the masks Mel and Little Smitty had scored from the party resting up on our foreheads, when Julie Minh started to cry.
“What happened?” asked Heather Houston. Already she was in fighting mode.
Julie Minh sat herself down on the ground. Apparently, this is what it meant to be an adult. There was no turning back. “He thumbed my nipples,” she wailed. Becca Bjelica was about to ask what she meant by that but decided it was obvious.
Sue Yoon was the first to pick up her stick. In some ways, she was the one among us who we could always rely on to do the one thing we wanted to do but were scared of. It was true. Sue contained multitudes. When someone contains multitudes, it means anything’s possible. She stood for a moment by the side of the Town & Country, windmilling her stick in the air as if ratcheting up her spite. Then the moon came out from behind a cloud. Some things should be done in the light. With that, she smashed in the driver’s side window. The sound was actually smaller and more anticlimactic than we expected.
“He did what?” shouted the Claw. It was purely rhetorical. The Claw was just doing Its part to egg us on.
“He pretended he was spelling words on my boobs,” Julie Minh said through her tears.
“That bastard,” said Heather. Sic semper tyrannis! Quick as a chemical reaction, she shot up on her feet and smashed in one of the passenger-side windows. Heather Fucking Houston, president of the Latin Club! She did it without hesitation and with such panache, we all realized still waters run deep. Then she spread her legs like a colossus upon the earth, raised her stick in the air, and brought it down with furious vengeance on the Town & Country’s hood, her glasses flying off into the night. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need to be able to see. She had seen enough.
Then we all fell to it, all of us except Julie Minh, who remained seated, the sound of our fury like a hailstorm, our car radios tuned to WBCN and their Halloween Headbanging Ball, Mötley Crüe’s “Shout at the Devil” filling the night.
“Why didn’t you whack him with your stick?” asked Boy Cory. Good God, Boy Cory! Way to blame the victim!
Still, her answer wasn’t what we were expecting. “Because I liked it,” Julie Minh replied in a small voice.
Instantly we all stopped what we were doing as if we were playing a game of freeze tag.
“Repeat?” said Boy Cory. He was wondering how he’d explain a vandalism charge on his college applications. (Could he simply claim, Emilio made me do it?) Heather Houston was standing with her stick frozen in mid-air wondering ibid.
“I said I liked it,” repeated Julie Minh. “I liked it a helluva lot.” Nobody commented on the way she smoothly strung the expletive together instead of spacing it out word by word. It was a big night for her. She’d come a long way, baby!
“Then why are you crying?” asked Abby Putnam, lowering her stick.
The moon sat uncertainly in the sky, wondering if it should shine down on Julie Minh hard without abandon or hold off a bit and give her some space. “I told you,” Julie Minh said. “BECAUSE I LIKED IT—EMILIO MADE ME LIKE IT!” With that, she picked up her own stick. The moon turned on its full wattage. Julie Minh stormed over to the Town & Country, a woman not scorned, and smashed in the back window. And thus pandemonium smoothly re-ensued.
At one point, one of us, maybe all of us, raised our faces to the half-moon and let out a bloodcurdling howl. Ah, the ladies (and gent) of Oniontown! May Salem never forget us!
Maybe that wasn’t the last car we smashed up that night.
DANVERS VS. PEABODY
From a distance, it probably looked as if Boy Cory was deeply enmeshed in a staring contest with the drain. There was a dark tangle of hair swirling in the water like a furry tornado. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. It didn’t seem promising, but he was determined to find out. Admittedly, the thought of combing through what looked like a month’s worth of hair was already making his stomach queasy. It was either that or face the wrath of the Claw bearing down on him with Its platinum-blond fire and brimstone. In comparison, the idea of pawing through the soggy pubes of his classmates didn’t seem half as bad. If only Brian Robinson and his crew of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals would hurry up and vamoose. Who did they think they were fooling anyway? No amount of water would wash away their teen-boy funk. He of all people should know. There was no escaping the strictures of the XY chromosome, even for someone like Boy Cory, who was pretty sure he wasn’t headed for typical American manhood, though he couldn’t quite imagine where he’d find the off-ramp that would take him somewhere else.
“Hey dingus!” Brian Robinson yelled. Boy Cory looked up from the drain. Quickly he scanned the room, searching for a wet towel coiled up in someone’s fist and ready to bite. “Drop the soap much?”
There was the usual snigger that accompanied such comments. Boy Cory sighed. He hated the way his peers unthinkingly stuck to the script life had handed each of them as they made their way onstage from the anonymity of the wings. In his estimation, getting picked on wouldn’t have been quite so bad if only his tormentors were a little more original. Really, was the well-placed bon mot too much to ask? Will someone not rid me of this meddlesome troglodyte, he heard his inner voice bemoan. Indeed! The parts of his day spent around his peer group made Boy Cory feel like he was trapped in a particularly awful after-school special.
“Soap. Nice one, dude,” someone offered, as the ritual required.
Yes, nice one, dude, cheerio, Boy Cory thought in the upper-class British accent he often affected when thinking to himself. Snide internal commentary with a touch of BBC Four had gotten him through many a tough spot. Other times he simply intoned to
odle-oo, fuckers, as he walked away from someone’s jeers.
Most days Boy Cory was in and out of the showers faster than Brian Robinson could say, where’s your stick, Penis Breath? but today he would be the last one out. For us girls, showering after gym was the bane of our existence. There were all kinds of tricks we used to fake out Ms. Sutter, the PE teacher. We would put just our feet under the water, then make a trail of footprints leading back to our changing stalls. Sometimes we would wet the ends of our hair, sometimes just our towels. It seemed cruel to expect a teen girl to shower in the few minutes she had at the end of gym. What were adults thinking? Showering with alacrity was not a skill teen girls are known for. Plus, the whole post-gym hygienic feint was archaic and a waste of water. Nobody even wore the official gym uniforms anymore, the ones still sold in the school store that had a blank patch on both the shirt and the shorts where you could write in your name. What was the purpose of that? In case the whole class did laundry together?
For us, not wanting to shower mostly had to do with not wanting to damage the load-bearing buttresses of our hair. Boy Cory’s desire to spend as little time as possible in the shower had more to do with wanting to avoid a towel whipping than with a fear of destroying his bangs. But being a member of a team is a powerful thing. Under certain circumstances, it can infuse a normally reticent person with the strength of the whole. That day Boy Cory stood his ground in the showers, watching the raft of hair circling the drain. He would not be moved until he’d had a chance to investigate.