Halloween

by Paula Guran

  The button rose to meet his thumb. He pushed as hard as she did.

  Then he knew why he had waited so long.

  First to go was the ’Busa’s fairing, where it had cracked in the spill before. As the nitrous oxide poured into the engine and ignited, the stars blurred horizontal. A wall of air hit him, almost peeling him off the bike. In the rush that enveloped him, he could see but not hear the crack along the left side widen bigger than his gloved fist. It spidered into a jigsaw cobweb for only an instant, then shattered, the razor fragments swirling around him, then gone in the bike’s streaming wake.

  Pinned, the tach and speedometer were useless now. He couldn’t even see them, unable to bring his sight down from the black horizon racing toward him.

  Do it, she whispered somewhere. Harder.

  The wind tore his jacket into tatters, stripped it from his chest. Her hands held tight, cupping his heart.

  The front wheel came up from the road, spun free in hurtling air. The distant mountains tilted as he rolled in her embrace, face full against hers. He let go of the handlebars and pulled her tighter to himself, her knees crushing his hips. Beneath them, the motorcycle broke apart, into fire as meteors do, a match flame struck against the earth’s atmosphere. Fiery bits of metal skittered along the road, white heat dying to red sparks.

  “We’re not going back.” He turned and kissed her. “We’re here already.”

  Lies and stories. There’d never been any going back. That’d all been crap they’d told him, that he’d told himself, to get to this point.

  The old faith would have to do without them. If the children out at night looked up at the incendiary wound bleeding across the dark, they could take it as a sign.

  Just before they struck the earth, she opened her eyes and looked into his. The road would strip their flesh away, their entwined bones charring to ash.

  “Fierce.” She smiled. “As the grave.”

  MEMORIES OF EL DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS

  Nancy Kilpatrick

  Nancy Kilpatrick sets her haunting story on the Latin American holiday el Día de los Muertos. It’s not exactly Halloween, but it occurs about the same time of year and, like Halloween, its origins can be traced back to pre-Christian culture. The Catholic Church adapted an Aztec festival for the Queen of the Dead, the goddess Mictecacihuatl, with All Saints and All Souls Days. Like Guy Fawkes Day/Night in England, the nearness of the dates brings some crossover with Halloween, but the connection to death and the dead give the Days of the Dead an even closer affinity. Various observances of the Mexican Days of the Dead are, more and more, combining with U.S. customs in many areas.

  You call me death bringer, as though ancient words can wound me. When I was mortal, as you are still, that name filled me with loathing. Now, because I live forever, because I have seen your grandparents rot and will watch los Gusanos devour your children, your words fade like the ghosts of memories.

  This eve of the Day of the Dead—my day, although you do not yet realize there are many ways to be dead—I watch you enter the cemetery just after sunset. The crude wooden crosses as well as those of fine marble are draped with fragrant bougainvillea and gardenia and you add your marigolds—the flowers of the dead—to the stones you stop beside. I see your wife spread a colorful blanket over the graves of your ancestors and open jars and boxes for the long night of sharing. A night when the dead will consume the spirit of the food you offer. Food you expect to devour.

  Your son and two daughters pulse with life. Life I no longer possess. They skip along the dusty paths eating sugar skulls and clutching papier-mâché skeletons until the sky blackens and the few fires scattered throughout the graveyard become the only light under a moonless sky. The children fall silent and huddle near you, fearful, expectant. You tell them a story. Of how the dead, on this Day, return to converse with the living. To fulfil promises and offer guidance. To bring good fortune. As you strum your guitar and sing a song, your eyes are sad and fearful. Years have passed since you have visited the dead. Few still come here to spend the night.

  By the flickering embers you stare at the worn oval photograph of your mother and imagine her returning. You want this yet fear it. To speak with her again, to feel her bless you and the ones you love . . .

  Your son and daughters have fallen asleep. Your wife is drowsy. She leans back and closes her eyes, her long black hair and the crucifix she wears falling away from her throat. You are alone.

  Outside the cemetery walls the mariachi band has stopped playing. A cool wind caresses you, blowing hair up the back of your head, exposing your neck. You shiver. I laugh, and you turn abruptly at the sound. Familiar. Alien. Darkness presses in on you and the dead beneath you struggle to call a warning, but their voices were silenced long ago by the worms. You look again to the picture of your mother, then to the sky, and cross yourself, sensing she can no longer help you.

  Something flies through the night air, beyond the illumination of the fire. A bat, you hope. Wings flap and you listen as though to a voice. The tequila bottle is less than half full; you take another swallow and I can see you are wondering how you will endure this night.

  Once, long ago, when your ancestors and I walked in daylight together, I sat where you sit now. Honoring the dead. Singing sad and joyous songs to them. Telling their tales of grief and bitterness and of how they loved. Of how they lived, and died. Memories stir in me like petals rustled by a breeze.

  At last you see me, a shadow among shadows. The guitar slips from your hands. I have come for you. Your eyes are red-rimmed with the knowledge. You plead. Your wife, you say, and your children. There are things you have not yet done. You beg me to spare you until morning, imagining I do not know my powers will wane with the sun. I laugh as tears spill down your weathered face. I am incapable of pity. When I reach out to stroke your cheek, to feel the warmth pushing against your flesh, salty wetness coats my dead fingers. Astonished, I remember.

  On a Day of the Dead such as this, when I sat where you sit now, my loved ones beside me, music floating on the cool breezes drifting down from the mountains, I, too, wept. My vulnerable tears betrayed me then, as yours betray you now. My tears did not save me.

  What warms your body will soon warm mine. I nod at the boy child, the youngest. A substitute. You decline, as I knew you must. I do not see this as heroism or bravery, simply what you would do.

  You turn to the picture of your mother. She will intercede, you think. You pray to her. To anyone. A small iguana springs onto the tombstone next to the melting candle you have placed there. He pauses to stare at you; he is a sign, you believe, good or ill, how can you be certain? I step into the firelight. Neither the dead nor the living can help you now.

  “Why?” you ask me. This question I have heard many times over the years. Many times. It is a question for which there is no answer. Your life does not mean to me what it means to you. I feel no love or sympathy, no pity; I no longer understand remorse. All I can tell you is that I long for your hot blood to swirl through my cold body. Your eyes are the only reflection I am capable of seeing and in them I find myself as I once was but am no longer. This image cannot sway me. What I need I must have.

  You suddenly understand a horror that all your life you have avoided. You find this incomprehensible: dead exist to whom you mean nothing. And yet even you must know that blood is all that matters on this day when los Muertos are honored.

  Across the graveyard another calls his ghosts and I listen, intrigued by the bitter-sweet song. The night is long; there are many here with offerings. Many. To one such as myself, all are equal.

  Before I turn away, I glimpse disbelief in your eyes. Gratitude. You cross yourself and fall on your knees before your mother. Before me.

  I drift between the worn stones toward new warmth. You are a memory already fading. A memory that will die. A memory of the dead.

  HALLOWEEN STREET

  Steve Rasnic Tem

  Steve Rasnic Tem has written a fair number of
Halloween tales. The two included here—actually thirteen since the second is a dozen linked vignettes set a single night—involve Halloween Street. It’s one of those mysterious locales that may exist the entire year, but becomes significant on this one special night . . . the night when even those born “out of place” find their places.

  Halloween Street. No one could remember who had first given it that name. It had no other. There was no street sign, had never been a street sign.

  Halloween Street bordered the creek, and there was only one way to get there—over a rickety bridge of rotting wood. Gray timbers had worn partway through the vague red stain. The city had declared it safe only for foot or bike traffic.

  The street had only eight houses, and no one could remember more than three of those being occupied at any one time. Renters never lasted long.

  It was a perfect place to take other kids—the smaller ones, or the ones a little more nervous than yourself—on Halloween night. Just to give them a little scare. Just to get them to wet their pants.

  Most of the time all the houses stayed empty. An old lady had supposedly lived in one of the houses for years, but no one knew anything more about her, except that they thought she’d died there several years before. Elderly twin brothers had once owned the two center houses, each with twin high-peaked gables on the second story like skeptical eyebrows, narrow front doors, and small windows that froze over every winter. The brothers had lived there only six months, fighting loudly with each other the entire time.

  The houses at the ends of the street were in the worst shape, missing most of their roof shingles and sloughing off paint chips the way a tree sheds leaves. Both houses leaned toward the center of the block, as if two great hands had attempted to squeeze the block from either side. Another three houses had suffered outside fire damage. The blackened boards looked like permanent, arbitrary shadows.

  But it was the eighth house that bothered the kids the most. There was nothing wrong with it.

  It was the kind of house any of them would have liked to live in. Painted bright white like a dairy so that it glowed even at night, with wide friendly windows and a bright blue roof.

  And flowers that grew naturally and a lawn seemingly immune to weeds.

  Who took care of it? It just didn’t make any sense. Even when the kids guided newcomers over to Halloween Street they stayed away from the white house.

  The little girl’s name was Laura, and she lived across the creek from Halloween Street. From her bedroom window she could see all the houses. She could see who went there and she could see everything they did. She didn’t stop to analyze, or pass judgments. She merely witnessed, and now and then spoke an almost inaudible “Hi” to her window and to those visiting on the other side. An occasional “Hi” to the houses of Halloween Street.

  Laura should have been pretty. She had wispy blond hair so pale it appeared white in most light, worn long down her back. She had small lips and hands that were like gauges to her health: soft and pink when she was feeling good, pale and dry when she was doing poorly.

  But Laura was not pretty. There was nothing really wrong about her face: it was just vague. A cruel aunt with a drinking problem used to say that “it lacked character.” Her mother once took her to a lady who cut silhouette portraits out of crisp black paper at a shopping mall. Her mother paid the lady five dollars to do one of Laura. The lady had finally given up in exasperation, exclaiming, “The child has no profile!”

  Laura overheard her mother and father talking about it one time. “I see things in her face,” her mother had said.

  “What do you mean?” Her father always sounded impatient with her mother.

  “I don’t know what I mean! I see things in her face and I can never remember exactly what I saw! Shadows and . . . white, something so white I feel like she’s going to disappear into it. Like clouds . . . or a snowbank.”

  Her father had laughed in astonishment. “You’re crazy!”

  “You know what I mean!” her mother shouted back. “You don’t even look at her directly anymore because you know what I mean! It’s not exactly sadness in her face, not exactly. Just something born with her, something out of place. She was born out of place. My God! She’s eleven years old! She’s been like this since she was a baby!”

  “She’s a pretty little girl.” Laura could tell her father didn’t really mean that.

  “What about her eyes? Tell me about her eyes, Dick!”

  “What about her eyes? She has nice eyes . . . ”

  “Describe them for me, then! Can you describe them? What color are they? What shape?”

  Her father didn’t say anything. Soon after the argument he’d stomped out of the house. Laura knew he couldn’t describe her eyes. Nobody could.

  Laura didn’t make judgments when other people talked about her. She just listened. And watched with eyes no one could describe. Eyes no one could remember.

  No, it wasn’t that she was sad, Laura thought. It wasn’t that her parents were mean to her or that she had a terrible life. Her parents weren’t ever mean to her and although she didn’t know exactly what kind of life she had, she knew it wasn’t terrible.

  She didn’t enjoy things like other kids did. She didn’t enjoy playing or watching television or talking to the other kids. She didn’t enjoy, really. She had quiet thoughts, instead. She had quiet thoughts when she pretended to be asleep but was really listening to all her parents’ conversations, all their arguments. She had quiet thoughts when she watched people. She had quiet thoughts when people could not describe her eyes. She had quiet thoughts while gazing at Halloween Street, the glowing white house, and all the things that happened there.

  She had quiet thoughts pretending that she hadn’t been born out of place, that she hadn’t been born anyplace at all.

  Laura could have been popular, living so close to Halloween Street, seeing it out of her bedroom window. No other kid lived so close or had such a good view. But of course she wasn’t popular. She didn’t share Halloween Street. She sat at her desk at school all day and didn’t talk about Halloween Street at all.

  That last Halloween Laura got dressed to go out. That made her mother happy—Laura had never gone trick or treating before. Her mother had always encouraged her to go, had made or bought her costumes, taken her to parties at church or school, parties the other kids dressed up for: ghosts and vampires and princesses, giggling and running around with their masks like grotesquely swollen heads. But Laura wouldn’t wear a costume. She’d sit solemn-faced, unmoving, until her mother finally gave up and took her home. And she’d never go trick or treating, never wear a costume.

  After she’d told her mother that she wanted to go out that night her mother had driven her around town desperately trying to find a costume for her. Laura sat impassively on the passenger side, dutifully got out at each store her mother took her to, and each time shook her head when asked if she liked each of the few remaining costumes.

  “I don’t know where else we can try, Laura,” her mother said, sorting through a pile of mismatched costume pieces at a drugstore in a mall. “It’ll be dark in a couple of hours, and so far you haven’t liked a thing I’ve shown you.”

  Laura reached into the pile and pulled out a cheap face mask. The face was that of a middle-aged woman, or a young man, cheeks and lips rouged a bright red, eye shadow dark as a bruise, eyebrows a heavy and coarse dark line.

  “But, honey. Isn’t that a little . . . ” Laura shoved the mask into her mother’s hand. “Well, all right.” She picked up a bundle of bright blue cloth from the table. “How about this pretty robe to go with it?” Laura didn’t look at the robe. She just nodded and headed for the door, her face already a mask itself.

  Laura left the house that night after most of the other trick or treaters had come and gone. Her interest in Halloween actually seemed less than ever this year; she stayed in her bedroom as goblins and witches and all manner of stunted, warped creatures came to the front door singl
y and in groups, giggling and dancing and playing tricks on each other. She could see a few of them over on Halloween Street, not going up to any of the houses but rather running up and down the short street close to the houses in I-dare-you races. But not near as many as in years past.

  Now and then her mother would come up and open her door. “Honey, don’t you want to leave yet? I swear everybody’ll be all out of the goodies if you don’t go soon.” And each time Laura shook her head, still staring out the window, still watching Halloween Street.

  Finally, after most of the other kids had returned to their homes, Laura came down the stairs wearing her best dress and the cheap mask her mother had bought for her.

  Her father and mother were in the living room, her mother having retrieved the blue robe from the hall closet.

  “She’s wearing her best dress, Ann. Besides, it’s damned late for her to be going out now.”

  Her mother eyed her nervously. “I could drive you, honey.” Laura shook her head.

  “Well okay, just let me cover your nice dress with the robe. Don’t want to get it dirty.”

  “She’s just a kid, for chrissake! We can’t let her decide!” Her father had dropped his newspaper on the floor. He turned his back on Laura so she wouldn’t see his face, wouldn’t know how angry he was with both of them. But Laura knew. “And that mask! Looks like a whore’s face! Hell, how can she even see? Can’t even see her eyes under that.” But Laura could see his. All red and sad-looking.

  “She’s doing something normal for a change,” her mother whispered harshly. “Can’t you see that? That’s more important.”

  Without a word Laura walked over and pulled the robe out of her mother’s arms. After some hesitation, after Laura’s father had stomped out of the room, her mother helped her get it on. It was much too large, but her mother gasped “How beautiful!” in exaggerated fashion. Laura walked toward the door. Her mother ran to the door and opened it ahead of her. “Have a good time!” she said in a mock cheery voice. Laura could see the near-panic in the eyes above the distorted grin, and she left without saying goodbye.