by Paula Guran
“We were just little babies, and we wanted some of those good old Halloween scares. Like those dumbbells out on the street, tossing firecrackers at each other.” Hat wiped his free hand down over his face and made sure that I was prepared to write down everything he said. (The tapes had already been used up.) “When I’m done, tell me if we found it, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
3
“Dee showed up at my house just after dinner, dressed in an old sheet with two eyeholes cut in it and carrying a paper bag. His big old shoes stuck out underneath the sheet. I had the same costume, but it was the one my brother used the year before, and it dragged along the ground and my feet got caught in it. The eyeholes kept sliding away from my eyes. My mother gave me a bag and told me to behave myself and get home before eight. it didn’t take but half an hour to cover all the likely houses in Darktown, but she knew I’d want to fool around with Dee for an hour or so afterwards.
“Then up and down the streets we go, knocking on the doors where they’d give us stuff and making a little mischief where we knew they wouldn’t. Nothing real bad, just banging on the door and running like hell, throwing rocks on the roof, little stuff. A few places, we plain and simple stayed away from—the places where people like Eddie Grimes lived. I always thought that was funny. We knew enough to steer clear of those houses, but we were still crazy to get out to The Backs.
“Only way I can figure it is, The Backs was forbidden. Nobody had to tell us to stay away from Eddie Grimes’ house at night. You wouldn’t even go there in the daylight, ’cause Eddie Grimes would get you and that would be that.
“Anyhow, Dee kept us moving along real quick, and when folks asked us questions or said they wouldn’t give us stuff unless we sang a song, he moaned like a ghost and shook his bag in their faces, so we could get away faster. He was so excited, I think he was almost shaking.
“Me, I was excited, too. Not like Dee—sort of sick-excited, the way people must feel the first time they use a parachute. Scared-excited.
“As soon as we got away from the last house, Dee crossed the street and started running down the side of the little general store we all used. I knew where he was going. Out behind the store was a field, and on the other side of the field was Meridian Road, which took you out into the woods and to the path up to The Backs. When he realized that I wasn’t next to him, he turned around and yelled at me to hurry up. No, I said inside myself, I ain’t gonna jump outta of this here airplane, I’m not dumb enough to do that. And then I pulled up my sheet and scrunched up my eye to look through the one hole close enough to see through, and I took off after him.
“It was beginning to get dark when Dee and I left my house, and now it was dark. The Backs was about a mile and a half away, or at least the path was. We didn’t know how far along that path you had to go before you got there. Hell, we didn’t even know what it was—I was still thinking the place was a collection of little houses, like a sort of shadow-Woodland. And then, while we were crossing the field, I stepped on my costume and fell down flat on my face. Enough of this stuff, I said, and yanked the damned thing off. Dee started cussing me out, I wasn’t doing this stuff the right way, we had to keep our costumes on in case anybody saw us, did I forget that this is Halloween, on Halloween a costume protected you. So I told I him I’d put it back on when we got there. If I kept on falling down, it’d take us twice as long. That shut him up.
“As soon as I got that blasted sheet over my head, I discovered that I could see at least a little ways ahead of me. The moon was up, and a lot of stars were out. Under his sheet, Dee Sparks looked a little bit like a real ghost. It kind of glimmered. You couldn’t really make out its edges, so the darn thing like floated. But I could see his legs and those big old shoes sticking out.
“We got out of the field and started up Meridian Road, and pretty soon the trees came up right to the ditches alongside the road, and I couldn’t see too well any more. The road seemed like it went smack into the woods and disappeared. The trees looked taller and thicker than in the daytime, and now and then something right at the edge of the woods shone round and white, like an eye—reflecting the moonlight, I guess. Spooked me. I didn’t think we’d ever be able to find the path up to The Backs, and that was fine with me. I thought we might go along the road another ten-fifteen minutes, and then turn around and go home. Dee was swooping around up in front of me, flapping his sheet and acting bughouse. He sure wasn’t trying too hard to find that path.
“After we walked about a mile down Meridian Road, I saw headlights like yellow dots coming towards us fast—Dee didn’t see anything at all, running around in circles the way he was. I shouted at him to get off the road, and he took off like a rabbit—disappeared into the woods before I did. I jumped the ditch and hunkered down behind a pine about ten feet off the road to see who was coming. There weren’t many cars in Woodland in those days, and I knew every one of them. When the car came by, it was Dr. Garland’s old red Cord—Dr. Garland was a white man, but he had two waiting rooms and took colored patients, so colored patients was mostly what he had. And the man was a heavy drinker, heavy drinker. He zipped by, goin’ at least fifty, which was mighty fast for those days, probably as fast as that old Cord would go. For about a second, I saw Dr. Garland’s face under his white hair, and his mouth was wide open, stretched like he was screaming. After he passed, I waited a long time before I came out of the woods. Turning around and going home would have been fine with me. Dr. Garland changed everything. Normally, he was kind of slow and quiet, you know, and I could still see that black screaming hole opened up in his face—he looked like he was being tortured, like he was in Hell. I sure as hell didn’t want to see whatever he had seen.
“I could hear the Cord’s engine after the tail lights disappeared. I turned around and saw that I was all alone on the road. Dee Sparks was nowhere in sight. A couple of times, real soft, I called out his name. Then I called his name a little louder. Away off in the woods, I heard Dee giggle. I said he could run around all night if he liked but I was going home, and then I saw that pale silver sheet moving through the trees, and I started back down Meridian Road. After about twenty paces, I looked back, and there he was, standing in the middle of the road in that silly sheet, watching me go. Come on, I said, let’s get back. He paid me no mind. Wasn’t that Dr. Garland? Where was he going, as fast as that? What was happening? When I said the doctor was probably out on some emergency, Dee said the man was going home—he lived in Woodland, didn’t he?
“Then I thought maybe Dr. Garland had been up in The Backs. And Dee thought the same thing, which made him want to go there all the more. Now he was determined. Maybe we’d see some dead guy. We stood there until I understood that he was going to go by himself if I didn’t go with him. That meant that I had to go. Wild as he was, Dee’d get himself into some kind of mess for sure if I wasn’t there to hold him down. So I said okay, I was coming along, and Dee started swooping along like before, saying crazy stuff. There was no way we were going to be able to find some little old path that went up into the woods. It was so dark, you couldn’t see the separate trees, only giant black walls on both sides of the road.
“We went so far along Meridian Road I was sure we must have passed it. Dee was running around in circles about ten feet ahead of me. I told him that we missed the path, and now it was time to get back home. He laughed at me and ran across to the right side of the road and disappeared into the darkness.
“I told him to get back, damn it, and he laughed some more and said I should come to him. Why? I said, and he said, Because this here is the path, dummy. I didn’t believe him—came right up to where he disappeared. All I could see was a black wall that could have been trees or just plain night. Moron, Dee said, look down. And I did. Sure enough, one of those white things like an eye shone up from where the ditch should have been. I bent down and touched cold little stones, and the shining dot of white went off like a light—a pebble that caught the moonlight ju
st right. Bending down like that, I could see the hump of grass growing up between the tire tracks that led out onto Meridian Road. He’d found the path, all right.
“At night, Dee Sparks could see one hell of a lot better than me. He spotted the break in the ditch from across the road. He was already walking up the path in those big old shoes, turning around every other step to look back at me, make sure I was coming along behind him. When I started following him, Dee told me to get my sheet back on, and I pulled the thing over my head even though I’d rather have sucked the water out of a hollow stump. But I knew he was right—on Halloween, especially in a place like where we were, you were safer in a costume.
“From then on in, we were in No Man’s Land. Neither one of us had any idea how far we had to go to get to The Backs, or what it would look like once we got there. Once I set foot on that wagon-track I knew for sure The Backs wasn’t anything like the way I thought. It was a lot more primitive than a bunch of houses in the woods. Maybe they didn’t even have houses! Maybe they lived in caves!
“Naturally, after I got that blamed costume over my head, I couldn’t see for a while. Dee kept hissing at me to hurry up, and I kept cussing him out. Finally I bunched up a couple handfuls of the sheet right under my chin and held it against my neck, and that way I could see pretty well and walk without tripping all over myself. All I had to do was follow Dee, and that was easy. He was only a couple of inches in front of me, and even through one eyehole, I could see that silvery sheet moving along.
“Things moved in the woods, and once in a while an owl hooted. To tell you the truth, I never did like being out in the woods at night. Even back then, give me a nice warm bar-room instead, and I’d be happy. Only animal I ever liked was a cat, because a cat is soft to the touch, and it’ll fall asleep on your lap. But this was even worse than usual, because of Halloween, and even before we got to The Backs, I wasn’t sure if what I heard moving around in the woods was just a possum or a fox or something a lot worse, something with funny eyes and long teeth that liked the taste of little boys. Maybe Eddie Grimes was out there, looking for whatever kind of treat Eddie Grimes liked on Halloween night. Once I thought of that, I got so close to Deep Sparks I could smell him right through his sheet.
“You know what Dee Sparks smelled like? Like sweat, and a little bit like the soap the preacher made him use on his hands and face before dinner, but really like a fire in a junction box. A sharp, kind of bitter smell. That’s how excited he was.
“After a while we were going uphill, and then we got to the top of the rise, and a breeze pressed my sheet against my legs. We started going downhill, and over Dee’s electrical fire, I could smell wood smoke. And something else I couldn’t name. Dee stopped moving so sudden, I bumped into him. I asked him what he could see. Nothing but the woods, he said, but we’re getting there. People are up ahead somewhere. And they got a still. We got to be real quiet from here on out, he told me, as if he had to, and to let him know I understood I pulled him off the path into the woods.
“Well, I thought, at least I know what Dr. Garland was after.
“Dee and I went snaking through the trees—me holding that blamed sheet under my chin so I could see out of one eye, at least, and walk without falling down. I was glad for that big fat pad of pine needles on the ground. An elephant could have walked over that stuff as quiet as a beetle. We went along a little further, and it got so I could smell all kinds of stuff—burned sugar, crushed juniper berries, tobacco juice, grease. And after Dee and I moved a little bit along, I heard voices, and that was enough for me. Those voices sounded angry.
“I yanked at Dee’s sheet and squatted down—I wasn’t going any farther without taking a good look. He slipped down beside me. I pushed the wad of material under my chin up over my face, grabbed another handful, and yanked that up, too, to look out under the bottom of the sheet. Once I could actually see where we were, I almost passed out. Twenty feet away through the trees, a kerosene lantern lit up the grease-paper window cut into the back of a little wooden shack, and a big raggedly guy carrying another kerosene lantern came stepping out of a door we couldn’t see and stumbled toward a shed. On the other side of the building I could see the yellow square of a window in another shack, and past that, another one, a sliver of yellow shining out through the trees. Dee was crouched next to me, and when I turned to look at him, I could see another chink of yellow light from some way off in the woods over that way. Whether he knew it not, he’d just about walked us straight into the middle of The Backs.
“He whispered for me to cover my face. I shook my head. Both of us watched the big guy stagger toward the shed. Somewhere in front of us, a woman screeched, and I almost dumped a load in my pants. Dee stuck his hand out from under his sheet and held it out, as if I needed him to tell me to be quiet. The woman screeched again, and the big guy sort of swayed back and forth. The light from the lantern swung around in big circles. I saw that the woods were full of little paths that ran between the shacks. The light hit the shack, and it wasn’t even wood, but tar paper. The woman laughed or maybe sobbed. Whoever was inside the shack shouted, and the raggedy guy wobbled toward the shed again. He was so drunk he couldn’t even walk straight. When he got to the shed, he set down the lantern and bent to get in.
“Dee put his mouth up to my ear and whispered, Cover up—you don’t want these people, to see who you are. Rip the eyeholes, if you can’t see good enough.
“I didn’t want anyone in The Backs to see my face. I let the costume drop down over me again, and stuck my fingers in the nearest eyehole and pulled. Every living thing for about a mile around must have heard that cloth ripping. The big guy came out of the shed like someone pulled him out on a string, yanked the lantern up off the ground, and held it In our direction. Then we could see his face, and it was Eddie Grimes. You wouldn’t want to run into Eddie Grimes anywhere, but The Backs was the last place you’d want to come across him. I was afraid he was going to start looking for us, but that woman started making stuck pig noises, and the man in the shack yelled something, and Grimes ducked back into the shed and came out with a jug. He lumbered back toward the shack and disappeared around the front of it. Dee and I could hear him arguing with the man inside.
“I jerked my thumb toward Meridian Road, but Dee shook his head. I whispered, Didn’t you already see Eddie Grimes, and isn’t that enough for you? He shook his head again. His eyes were gleaming behind that sheet. So what do you want, I asked, and he said, I want to see that girl. We don’t even know where she is, I whispered, and Dee said, All we got to do is follow her sound.
“Dee and I sat and listened for a while. Every now and then, she let out a sort of whoop, and then she’d sort of cry, and after that she might say a word or two that sounded almost ordinary before she got going again on crying or laughing, the two all mixed up together. Sometimes we could hear other noises coming from the shacks, and none of them sounded happy. People were grumbling and arguing or just plain talking to themselves, but at least they sounded normal. That lady, she sounded like Halloween—like something that came up out of a grave.
“Probably you’re thinking what I was hearing was sex—that I was too young to know how much noise ladies make when they’re having fun. Well, maybe I was only eleven, but I grew up in Darktown, not Miller’s Hill, and our walls were none too thick. What was going on with this lady didn’t have anything to do with fun. The strange thing is, Dee didn’t know that—he thought just what you were thinking. He wanted to see this lady getting humped. Maybe he even thought he could sneak in and get some for himself, I don’t know. The main thing is, he thought he was listening to some wild sex, and he wanted to get close enough to see it. Well, I thought, his daddy was a preacher, and maybe preachers didn’t do it once they got kids. And Dee didn’t have an older brother like mine, who sneaked girls into the house whenever he thought he wouldn’t get caught.
“He started sliding sideways through the woods, and I had to follow him. I’d seen eno
ugh of The Backs to last me the rest of my life, but I couldn’t run off and leave Dee behind. And at least he was going at it the right way, circling around the shacks sideways, instead of trying to sneak straight through them. I started off after him. At least I could see a little better ever since I ripped at my eyehole, but I still had to hold my blasted costume bunched up under my chin, and if I moved my head or my hand the wrong way, the hole moved away from my eye and I couldn’t see anything at all.
“So naturally, the first thing that happened was that I lost sight of Dee Sparks. My foot came down in a hole and I stumbled ahead for a few steps, completely blind, and then I hit a tree. I just came to a halt, sure that Eddie Grimes and a few other murderers were about to jump on me. For a couple of seconds I stood as still as a wooden Indian, too scared to move. When I didn’t hear anything, I hauled at my costume until I could see out of it. No murderers were coming toward me from the shack beside the still. Eddie Grimes was saying You don’t understand over and over, like he was so drunk that one phrase got stuck in his head, and he couldn’t say or hear anything else. That woman yipped, like an animal noise, not a human one—like a fox barking. I sidled up next to the tree I’d run into and looked around for Dee. All I could see was dark trees and that one yellow window I’d seen before. To hell with Dee Sparks, I said to myself, and pulled the costume off over my head. I could see better, but there wasn’t any glimmer of white over that way. He’d gone so far ahead of me I couldn’t even see him.
“So I had to catch up with him, didn’t I? I knew where he was going—the woman’s noises were coming from the shack way up there in the woods—and I knew he was going to sneak around the outside of the shacks. In a couple of seconds, after he noticed I wasn’t there, he was going to stop and wait for me. Makes sense, doesn’t it? All I had to do was keep going toward that shack off to the side until I ran into him. I shoved my costume inside my shirt, and then I did something else—set my bag of candy down next to the tree. I’d clean forgotten about it ever since I saw Eddie Grimes’ face, and if I had to run, I’d go faster without holding onto a lot of apples and chunks of taffy.