Haunted Nights

by Ellen Datlow

  “Over here,” George says, waving his light at the blackness on the far side of the stone rectangle. “Listen.”

  Everyone falls silent. From what seems a long way away, a faint groan is audible.

  “Is that Isabelle?” Chad says.

  “Who else would it be?” Kristi says. “Come on.” Now she takes the lead, skirting the edges of the stone design as she heads in the direction of the moaning. “Isabelle!” Kristi shouts. “We’re here!”

  In the middle distance, the cave floor shimmers white. This is not the crystalline fracture of broken glass; rather, it’s the flat glow of light on liquid. “What the hell?” Kristi says. She is approaching the shore of a body of water, a lake, judging by the stillness of its surface. Given the limited range of the camera’s light, the lake’s margins are difficult to discern, which gives it the impression of size. This close to the water, the groaning has a curiously hollow quality. The camera swings right, left, and right again. “Isabelle!” Kristi shouts.

  The rest of the crew catches up to her. Exclamations of surprise at the lake combine with calls to Isabelle. Flashlight beams chase one another across the water, roam the shore to either side. “Where…?” Kristi says.

  “There,” Sarah says, pointing her flashlight to the right. At the very limit of the light’s reach, a pale figure stands in the water, a few feet out. Camera bouncing, the crew runs toward it.

  Arms wrapped around herself, Isabelle Router stands in water ankle-deep. Her eyes are closed, her mouth open to emit a wavering moan. Priya splashes into the lake, at Isabelle’s side in half a dozen high steps. When Priya touches her, Isabelle convulses, her groans breaking off. Her eyes remain closed. “It’s all right,” Priya says. “Isabelle, it’s all right. It’s me. It’s Priya. We’re here.”

  “Priya?” Isabelle’s voice is a hoarse whisper.

  “Yeah,” Priya says, “it’s me. Everyone’s here. We found you. It’s all right.”

  Isabelle opens her eyes, lifts her hands against the lights.

  “Isabelle,” Sarah says, “are you okay?”

  “You’re here,” Isabelle says.

  “We are,” Sarah says.

  “What happened to you?” Kristi says.

  “You’re all right,” Priya says.

  Isabelle drops her eyes, mumbles something.

  “What?” Priya says.

  Her gait stiff-legged, Isabelle sloshes toward the shore. She does not stop once she’s on dry land; rather, she continues barefoot past the crew, the camera tracking her. “Wait a minute,” Kristi says, “where are you going?”

  Without looking back, Isabelle says, “Out.”

  “That’s it?” Kristi says. “We go to all this trouble and…that’s it? ‘Out’? Really?”

  “Kristi,” Sarah says.

  “No, she’s right,” Chad says.

  Priya steps out of the water. “She’s obviously freaked-out,” she says.

  “She’s obviously a pain in my ass,” Kristi says.

  “Guys,” Sarah says, “could we have this discussion while we’re keeping up with Isabelle?”

  “Yeah,” Chad says, “it’d suck to lose her a second time.”

  “Shut up, Chad,” Kristi says.

  Three quick scenes show the crew traversing the darkness that lies between the subterranean lake and the tunnel to the mine. Even after she cuts her right foot on a rock, leaving a bloody footprint until the others catch up to her and insist on bandaging it, which George does, Isabelle maintains a brisk pace. She does not let up after they have reentered the mine, though the comments from the others shift from complaint to relief. Throughout, Kristi continues to return to the question of what happened to Isabelle, asking it at sufficient volume for her to hear; Isabelle, however, does not answer.

  Not until they have reached the portrait of the woman nearer the mine’s entrance does Isabelle stop. Immobile, she stares at the artwork as the rest of the crew gathers around her.

  “What now?” Kristi says.

  In reply, Isabelle screams, a loud, high-pitched shriek that startles everyone into stepping back. The scream goes on and on and on, doubling Isabelle over, breaking into static as it exceeds the limits of the recording equipment. While Isabelle staggers from foot to foot, bent in half, her mouth stretched too wide, the soundtrack cuts in and out, alternating her screaming with an electronic hum. The members of the crew stand stunned, their expressions shocked. Tears stream from Isabelle’s eyes, snot pours from her nostrils, flakes of blood spray onto her lips and chin. The audio gives up the fight, yielding to the empty hum. Finally, Priya runs to Isabelle, puts her arms around her, and steers her away from the drawing, toward the exit. While she remains doubled over, Isabelle goes with her. Chad and George follow. For a moment, Sarah studies the portrait, then she, too, turns to leave.

  The camera remains focused on the wall, at the weird image that so strikingly resembles Isabelle Router. It zooms in, until the half-skeletal portion of the face fills the screen. As it does, the soundtrack recovers. Isabelle is still screaming, the sound echoing down the mine’s tunnels. The picture goes black. “Directed by Sarah Fiore” flashes onto the screen in white letters.

  “And that’s it,” Sarah says, freezing the film.

  “Huh,” I say. I’m suddenly aware that in the time I’ve spent viewing Sarah’s video, the sun has dropped behind Frenchman Mountain, hauling night down after it. The autumn light has slid from the windows at the back of the bar, leaving a tide of blackness pressed against them. I can hear the shouts and shrieks of the trick-or-treaters, somewhere in that darkness. It’s absurd, but after spending the last hour immersed in the film’s subterranean setting, I have the impression that the blackness of the mine has escaped into the night. I swallow, say, “That’s something.”

  “Larry was worried it was too oblique,” Sarah says. “He liked it, but he thought the film needed developing. I was—it was surreal, you know? I had this documentary I’d put together that showed…I don’t know what, and here was this filmmaker I respected treating it as if it was fiction, and I realized, Yeah, you could watch it that way, and then I thought, Wait, was that what it was?” She shakes her head.

  “Did you ever think of telling him the truth?”

  “For about half a second, until he started throwing around budget numbers, talking about possible distributors. All of it was extremely modest, but compared to what I was used to—that, and the chance it represented for me as a director—well, it wasn’t much of a decision.

  “My biggest concern was Isabelle. She was in pretty rough shape after we exited the mine. Priya drove her to the ER in Wiltwyck right away. She had stopped screaming not long after Priya took her away from the portrait, but her throat was a mess. She was exhausted, dehydrated, and there was something wrong with her blood: the white blood cell count was too high, or too low; I can’t remember. Anyway, she was in the hospital for a couple of days. I assumed she’d have no interest in a return trip to the mine, to put it mildly, but I felt I owed it to her to fill her in on the new plan.”

  “And?”

  “And she was completely into it, which was a surprise. She offered to help me with the screenplay, and she had some great ideas. A lot of the Bad Agatha stuff came from her.” Seeing me opening my mouth, Sarah holds up a hand to forestall the inevitable question. “Yes, I asked her what had happened while she was on her own down there. She shrugged off the question, said she’d gotten lost and freaked out. Okay, I said, but what made her leave us in the first place?

  “She heard something, what sounded like someone calling her name. She already thought the rest of us were pranking her with the woman’s portrait; she assumed this was more of the same. Her intent was to find whoever was saying her name and kick them in the ass. Instead, she lost track of where she was, and then she had a little bit of a breakdown, and that was all she could remember clearly until she was in the hospital.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Yes,�
�� Sarah says, drawing out the word, “but I was pretty sure there was more she wasn’t telling me. I couldn’t figure out how to persuade her to let me in on it. She told me she was fine with returning to the mine, but I was pretty nervous about it. Honestly, I would have been happier if she’d refused. The problem was, Priya and Chad had already bowed out, which meant we couldn’t use as much of the documentary footage as I wanted. If Isabelle hadn’t agreed, then we would have had to shoot an entirely new film, which might have exceeded our meager budget. So I went with her, and I have to admit, she did a terrific job. For all the years I’d known her, I had no idea she was such a convincing actress.”

  “What caused the two of you to fall out?”

  Sarah frowns. “Creative differences.”

  “Over?”

  “A lot of things.” As if she’s just noticed the night outside, Sarah says, “Holy shit. What time is it?” She closes the window on the laptop and squints at the corner clock. “I better go,” she says, folding the computer shut. While she slides it off the table into her bag, I say, “Anything else you’d like to add?”

  “It’s funny,” she says, easing out of the booth, “there have been moments when I’ve thought about posting the video online, putting it up on YouTube with no fanfare, letting whoever discovers it make of it what they will. Except, I knew people would view it as a publicity stunt, some old footage I’d stitched together to generate new interest in my movie. I had no plans to mention it during the interview for the anniversary edition, until there I was, talking about it. Once I started, I figured, why not?”

  “And people still thought it was a hoax.”

  “Yeah. What are you gonna do?”

  The walk from the booth to the bar to pay the bill is no more than twelve or fifteen feet, yet it seems to take us an hour to make it. My thoughts are racing, trying to fit what I’ve heard and seen this afternoon with everything else I know about Sarah and the film. After all, I’m the horror writer; it’s why the editors of this publication have asked me to conduct this interview. I’m supposed to judge the veracity of Sarah’s footage and, assuming I accept it as true, trace its connections to Lost in the Dark, explain the ways in which the fiction refracts the facts. It’s a favorite critical activity, isn’t it? Especially when it comes to the fantastic, demonstrating how it’s only the stuff of daily life, after all. The vampire is our repressed eroticism, the werewolf our unreasoning rage. The film Sarah has shown me, though, isn’t the material of daily life. I don’t know what it is, because to tell you the truth, I’m more of a skeptic than a believer these days. Strange as it sounds, it’s one of the reasons I love to write about the supernatural. The stories I tell offer me the opportunity to indulge a sense of the numinous I find all too lacking in the world around me. But this movie…I can’t help inventing a story to explain it, something to do with an ancient power captured, brought to a remote location, and imprisoned there. Those dead men at the entrance, maybe they were there as a sacrifice, a way to bind whatever was in that nameless woman to the mine. The stuff inside the tunnels, the caves beyond, was that evidence of someone or someones tending to the woman, worshipping her? And Isabelle Router, her experience underground—was the movie she cowrote an act of devotion to something that found her in the dark? I half remember the line from Yeats about entertaining a drowsy emperor.

  None of it makes any sense; it’s all constructed with playing cards, waiting for a sneeze to collapse it. I pay the bill, and we walk out of Pete’s. The sidewalks have filled with a mass of children and parents making their slow way up Main Street to the library to assemble for the Halloween parade. Zombies stagger along next to Clone troopers, while Batman brings up the rear. Clown parents carry ladybug children. Frankenstein’s bride towers over the hobbits surrounding her. Witches whose pointed green chins are visible beneath the broad brims of their black hats talk to fairies sporting flower crowns and wings dusted with sparkles. There’s a kid costumed as a hairy dog, an adult dressed as a boxy robot. The grim reaper swings a mean-looking scythe; Hermione Granger flourishes her wand. Vampires in evening dress walk beside superheroes in gaudier colors. A few old-fashioned ghosts flutter like sheets escaped from the clothesline.

  A number of Bad Agathas are part of the procession, one of them quite small. This diminutive form darts through the crowd to where Sarah and I are standing. The mask the girl tilts at us is too big for her. It’s an older design, the features angular, the left eye socket a black cavern. Sarah’s eyebrows lift at the sight. The girl raises her right hand. She’s holding a Bad Agatha mask, which she offers to Sarah.

  Sarah hesitates, then accepts the mask. Apparently released by her act, the girl sprints away into the costumed ranks. Sarah considers Bad Agatha’s stylized face, as if studying a photograph of an old acquaintance. She turns the mask over, tilts her head forward, and slides Bad Agatha’s face over hers. She straightens, turns to me. Whatever witty remark I was preparing dies on my tongue. Without another word, Sarah turns and joins the parade.

  For Fiona

  The First Lunar Halloween

  John R. Little

  October 1, 2204

  THE DISCUSSION TOPIC was buried in the last part of the Tranquility City Council monthly agenda: Halloween Celebration.

  It was brought forward by Susan Sauble, after she’d been inundated by requests from her students. Susan was the 149th Cohort Group Leader and had been in that position through all their school years, since they were five. Now the fifteen kids in the cohort were all twelve Earthies old (or nearly so).

  The mayor read the agenda item out loud and called on Susan to speak.

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

  “Here in Tranquility, we’ve always encouraged our kids to research their heritage on Earth. Nobody remembers all the details, of course, but we all feel the ties we have to our homeland.”

  She paused so that everyone could use their own imagination however they wished. She herself had only ever seen Earth directly twice. It was a bright, shining white sphere hanging above the moon’s surface, totally wiped of life but a constant reminder on video screens of their original homeland.

  “This year, one of our students found a reference to an ancient holiday tradition called Halloween. It is full of fun, laughter, delightful costumes, mock fear, and other attributes. The holiday seems quaint, while allowing our cultural roots to shine through. I’d like our cohort to be the first annual class to re-create Halloween here on the Moon.”

  She paused before adding the tough part. “And, I’d like it to be on the surface. The kids are ready to go out and see the face of Earth above them. Of course, I’ll supervise, and we have a surface leader who will be with me, Jonathan Petty, to ensure all safety precautions are followed.”

  At first there was stunned silence in the chamber. There’d never been a situation where that many kids ventured up to the surface at one time.

  The mayor broke the silence. “You know the risks.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “The surface is so harsh…and…”

  He looked to the other council members for help, but they all seemed to be busy staring at their desks.

  Susan decided to finish his sentence. “The Aliens?”

  He stared at her.

  “We all know the rumors,” she said. “Jonathan assures me the trip will be totally safe.”

  In the end, though, Susan convinced them that this was a perfect opportunity. In her mind, she had the perfect field trip planned, and she wanted it to be the most memorable event the kids would ever experience during their school years.

  The motion passed seven to two.

  October 31, 2204

  SUSAN HAD SPENT much of her spare time the past couple of weeks researching information about Halloween, and she was fascinated with what she found. She and Jonathan worked together to plan the field trip.

  The documents she could find were few, though. When the Earth was destroyed, so too was the vast repository of data t
hat Tranquility relied on. Now, the Internet seemed like a vague myth. All that survived was the random pieces that happened to be downloaded when the Earth-Link was severed, and memoirs and journals from the original Tranquility residents. These were the ones she pored over.

  “Susan?”

  She looked up from her monitor. Jonathan. She smiled at him.

  Jonathan was forty-two Earthies old, compared to her own thirty-nine. Tall, even for a Moonie, wide infectious smile, full of confidence. She liked him.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure, but I suppose I’m as ready as I’m going to be.”

  She could feel herself getting anxious, and she took some deep breaths to try to calm herself. Going up to the surface was still a big deal to her.

  Jonathan took her hand and half pulled her along. “It’s going to be fine. They’re going to have a blast.”

  “I know.”

  She didn’t know any such thing.

  Over the past few weeks, the pair had planned the trip. He was the surface expert and took Susan’s ideas and made them practical.

  The kids were all waiting for them at Groundport. Their parents were helping them into suits. Most of the kids were taller than Susan, and it was sometimes a challenge to find a suit that fit each person perfectly, but after a while, everyone seemed happy.

  First step: decorations.

  “Okay, parents, you can leave now. Kids, you need to decorate each other’s suits with your markers. Remember, the costumes used to be scary. Monsters, aliens, ghosts, whatever you like.”

  The decorations took about an hour. Susan decorated the front of Jonathan’s suit with a big mouth with two legs sticking out. She remembered seeing pictures of long-extinct giant fish when she was going to school herself, and she tried to remember what they might look like.

  “I love this idea,” Jonathan said to her. “I get this thing. Halloween. It’s a chance to pretend to be somebody else for a little while. You can use the occasion to become somebody frightening or someone who aspires to greatness. It’s a temporary do-over, a break from the boredom of our everyday lives.”