by Paula Guran
“What in God’s name—!”
He ran to his desk, jabbed at the phone, rifled through the stacks of papers on his desk, looking for the phone number of Willims, the bee keeper.
A hornet was crawling tiredly across the front edge of the desk, and he swatted it angrily to the floor.
There was more yellow jackets, scores of them, moving toward the desk from the far end of the office, more climbing up the walls—
He found the number, punched keys, waiting impatiently.
Be there, dammit!
A sleepy voice answered the phone, yawned “Hello?”
Peter identified himself, and almost shouted into the receiver: “They’re back, dammit! All over the place! What the hell is going on?”
The bee keeper yawned again. “Fell asleep in front of the TV,” he explained. “Watching Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. Good flick.” He laughed. “Don’t get many trick or treaters. Kids are afraid of bees.” Another, more drawn-out yawn. “You say they came back? Impossible. We killed that nest dead.”
“Then what the hell is happening?”
A pause. “Only thing I can think of is that there was a second nest, like a mentioned to you. Real unusual, but it does happen. Two females, probably from the same brood originally, established nests near each other. This ain’t the original nest we’re talking about, but a whole new one. Wow. Haven’t seen this in a long time.”
“Can you get rid of it?”
“Sure. What’s probably happening now is the cold is killing off the drones. You must have missed a spot in the baseboard, and they’re being driven from the nest to the light and heat in your office. Why don’t you look for the opening in the baseboard while I get over there—plug that up with tape and that’ll take care of your office. Then we’ll find the new nest and knock ’em out in no time. They’re on the way out anyway.” He laughed shortly, giving a half-yawn. “Wow. Two nests. That’s somethin’ . . . ”
“Just get over here!”
Peter slammed down the phone and stalked to the sofa. He moved the coffee table in front of it, then angled the couch out, away from the wall.
A mass of sluggish hornets were clustered on the rug in front of a gap in the baseboard.
More in anger than in fright, he grabbed a wad of papers from the coffee table, rolled them into a makeshift tube and cleared the front of the opening of hornets. They moved willingly. He ran back to his desk, retrieved a length of cellophane tape, and, with a practiced motion, wadded it as he went back to the baseboard.
Already another hornet, followed by yet another sluggish insect, was crawling through the space.
Peter thrust the wadded cellophane at the opening, pushing the two new intruders backwards as the hole was plugged.
The sound of buzzing was very loud behind the wall.
And now, being this close to the wall, he noticed another sound.
A rustling movement, a thin sound as if someone was scratching weakly against the other side of the wall.
And then a pained, tepid whisper:
“Peter . . . .”
“What—”
He stood up, brushing a few slow-crawling hornets from the wall and put his ear flush against it.
It came again, the thinnest of rustling breaths heard behind a thick chorus of buzzing: “Peter, help me . . . ”
“Ginny!” he shouted.
“Yes . . . .”
“My God—”
“Peter . . . .”
He drew back from the wall, balling his fists as if he would smash through it—then he turned, throwing open the office door and dashing through and up the stairs. He ran for the back sliding door, nearly tripping over Ginny’s things in the hallway, his mind feverish.
“My God, Ginny . . . ”
He pushed himself out into now-cold night, a full October chill hitting his face as he shouted, “Ginny!”
The backyard was lit by the sharp circle of the moon, by a few orange and white lights still lit in houses behind his visible through denuded oaks. A pumpkin on a back deck railing, now carved, was still lit, the candle within it flickering wildly in the chill breeze, making the features wild.
“Ginny, where are you!”
He heard a rustle to his right, against the house, in darkness.
He stumbled down the back deck steps.
“Ginny!”
“Here, Peter, help me . . . ”
Breathing heavily, he found himself standing before the garden shed, its bulk looming in front of him. The sound of buzzing was furious, caught in the cold wind.
“Peter . . . ”
He screamed, an inarticulate sound, and pulled at the shed’s door, which wouldn’t budge.
My God, she must have been caught inside the shed. The door must have closed on her and trapped her inside!
His mind filled with roiling thoughts. He pulled and clawed and banged at the door, trying to open it.
“Help me please, Peter . . . ”
“Jesus!” The door wouldn’t move. He looked wildly around for a tool, something to pry it open with—and then spied the short handle of a spade lying close by on the grass.
He picked it up, noting faint scratches on the spade’s face—this must have been how Ginny had gotten the door open originally . . .
“Peter . . . ”
“I’m coming!”
Mad with purpose, he pried the spade into the thin opening between wooden door and jamb, began to work it back.
There was a creaking sound, but the door held firm.
“Dammit!”
“Peter, please . . . ”
He hammered on the handle of the spade, driving it deeper into the opening. He angled it sideways and suddenly the wooden handle broke away, leaving him with the metal arm which had been imbedded in it, attached to the blade. He pushed at the blade, getting faint purchase but shouting with the effort.
“Dammit!” The handle slipped, slicing into his hand, but he ignored the pain, the quick line of blood, and kept pushing and banging.
The door gave a bit, but still wouldn’t open.
Buzzing filled his ears, an angry sound now—he realized that when he opened the door the hornets might rush out at him but he didn’t care. He drove the thought from his mind.
“Peter . . . ”
The voice was growing fainter.
He shouted, and became aware that lights were going on around him—still he beat at the handle.
The door gave way another fraction; it was almost open—
“Jesus! Open, dammit!”
With a supreme effort, which caused the broken metal handle of the spade to push painfully into his open wound, the door opened with a huge groaning creak and flew back on its hinges.
“Ginny!”
“Peter . . . ”
There was darkness within, a seething fog of flying things—and then something stumbled out into his arms, something white and alive, a human skeleton with a skin made of hornets. Writhing alive orange and black insects covered her skull, her arms, her fingers gripped him tightly as he stumbled backwards screaming in its embrace. The thing walked with him, holding him tightly, hornets making Ginny’s face, boiling alive in the empty eye sockets to make eyes, and hair, and lips on the skeletal mouth.
The mouth moved, the opening jawbone hissing with the movement of hornets. The writhing face showed something that was almost tenderness.
“Kiss me, Peter. Kiss me . . . ”
He screamed, pushing at the thing which would not let him go, aware suddenly that there were others nearby. He turned his head to see detective Grant and the bee keeper Willims standing side-by-side, rooted with horror to the spot they stood in, flashlights trained on him.
“Kiss me, Peter. Samhain let me come back. The Lord of the Dead let me come back but only for tonight. Only for Halloween. I never stopped loving you . . . ”
And now Peter felt the first stings as the hornets began to peel away from Ginny’s skeleton, covering his own face,
attacking him—
“Help me!” he screamed.
Ginny melted away in his arms, the bones collapsing to a clacking pile as Peter fell to the ground, covered in angry hornets. Through his burning eyes he saw the bee keeper standing over him, wide-eyed, waving his arms, his flashlight beam bouncing, shouting something which Peter could no longer hear through his swollen ears, his screaming mouth filled with soft angry hornets, his throat, his body covered inside his clothing.
He gave a horrid final choking scream, and was silent.
“And that’s the way you’d like the record to read?” District Attorney Morton said. He was shaking his head as he said it—but then again, he had been shaking his head since the informal inquest had begun two hours ago.
Detective Grant spoke up. “This will be sealed, right?”
Morton laughed shortly, a not humorous sound. “You bet your ass it will be. We’re lucky nobody from the press got wind of this.” He looked sideways at the bee keeper. “We’re not going to have any trouble from you, are we, Mr. Willims?”
The bee keeper nearly gulped. “Are you kidding? If Detective Grant hadn’t been standing next to me, do you think the bunch of you would have believed me? I’d be in a looney bungalow right now.”
Morton nodded. “Yes, you would be. But since the two of you saw it—”
The bee keeper gulped again, and Grant nodded curtly.
“At least I don’t think he killed his wife,” Grant said. “It looks to me like she got herself stuck in that gardening shed, and the hornets got to her.” He looked at Willims, and suddenly everyone was looking at the bee keeper.
“You want me to tell you this all could happen? Sure, I’ll tell you—but I still don’t believe it. Could hornets strip a human body clean in a few days? Well, maybe. Usually hornets won’t eat human flesh, but if the opportunity presents itself, I guess they might. They probably stung her to death after she got trapped in the shed. And then the body was in there with them . . . so, sure, I guess it could happen.”
“And what about the supposed . . . ” Morton consulted the papers before him. “ . . . mobility of the skeleton . . . ?” He let the question hang, and Grant finally spoke up.
“The damn thing looked like it stumbled out of the shed. But it could have been a trick of the light. If the skeletal remains had been propped against the door when Kerlan opened it, which would have been consistent with his wife’s trying to get out of the shed until she was overcome by the hornets, then, sure, it could have tumbled out into his arms.”
He looked over at the bee keeper, who looked at his shoes. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I saw too.”
Morton addressed the bee keeper: “And the bees covering Mrs. Kerlan like skin—that could have been a ‘trick of the light’ too?”
“Well . . . ”
Willims looked up from his shoes to see Grant glaring at him.
“Sure, I guess so. And I guess the words we heard her say could have been in our minds—”
For a moment he looked defiant, before collapsing. “All right. It was all in our heads.”
“Fine,” Morton said. He had gained a satisfied look. He turned to the medical examiner. “Jim, you’re okay with the cause of death in both cases as being extreme toxic reaction to hornet stings?”
The M.E. nodded once. “Yep.”
“And there was nothing the two of you could have done to save him?” he asked Grant and Willims.
The bee keeper said, “By the time we got to him he’d already been stung hundreds of times. I was able to get some of them off, but it was too late. The weirdest thing is that they wouldn’t respond to light, which threw me. When I shined my flashlight on them they should have flocked to it.”
“But they could have been so angry at that point that they would have ignored the light, correct?” Morton said sharply.
“I guess so. But I still say they should have attacked the light, and left Mr. Kerlan alone.”
“But you’re fine with the way we wrote it up in this report?” Morton said, daring the bee keeper to contradict him.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Good. Anything else?” Morton patted his knees, making as if to rise, daring anyone in the room not to let him end the proceedings.
There was a glum silence. Once again the bee keeper was staring at his own shoes.
“I want to re-emphasize, Mr. Willims, that you aren’t to speak to anyone of what went on in here today. We’re all sworn to secrecy. This record will be sealed. Whatever was said in this room remains in this room. I don’t want to see anything in the newspapers about humans made out of yellow jackets or . . . ” here he consulted his notes again, “ . . . Samhain, the Lord of the Dead. You understand?”
Without lifting his gaze, Willims answered, “Sure.”
Letting a hard edge climb into his tone, Morton said, “If any of this finds its way into the press, or anywhere else outside this room, I’ll know who to call on, won’t I, Mr. Willims?”
The bee keeper nodded. His gaze shifted momentarily to Grant, but the detective’s face was blank; he had obviously decided the best course of action for himself.
“Just so you understand,” Morton continued. “There are licenses and such in your profession, and I would hate for you to have trouble in that area.”
The bee keeper nodded.
Morton’s tone switched suddenly from hard to hearty. “All right, then—that’s it!” He stood and stretched, glancing at the M.E. “Jim—lunch?”
“Yep,” the M.E. said.
On the way out of the room, the District Attorney put his arm briefly around the bee keeper’s shoulder and said, “Just forget about it, Willims. Chalk it up to professional strangeness.”
Willims looked up at the D.A., and for a moment his face was haunted.
“The thing I can’t get over,” he said, “is the stuff she was saying about the Lord of the Dead, how she’d been brought back only for Halloween—”
Morton’s scowl turned to an angry frown. “I warned you in there, Willims—”
“I heard you,” the bee keeper said resignedly. “Believe me, I heard you.”
Morton removed his arm from the other man’s shoulder, giving him a slight shove forward. “Just don’t forget what I said.”
They were in the marbled hallway of the court building, leading toward the revolving doors to the outside world. Morton watched Willims go through them, slouching with unhappiness.
I’ll have to watch that one, he thought.
The M.E. came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Meet you at the restaurant,” he said laconically. “I’ve got to dip into my office upstairs for a minute.”
“Fine.”
The M.E. peeled off into another hallway, his footsteps echoing away on the polished stone floor.
After a moment, the D.A. composed himself into his public face of smiling bluster, and drove through the revolving doors.
Outside it was cold and bright, early November chill making the recent October heat wave a memory.
The D.A. shivered, wishing he had remembered his topcoat. But the restaurant was only a block away.
He began to descend the wide stone steps of the courthouse, which led to the street, when something small and striped orange and black, an insect, brushed by his ear and settled lightly there.
He heard the faintest of whispers before he swatted it away—as if someone were talking to him from a far distance. Later he would wonder if he had heard at all what it said:
“Next Halloween . . . ”
PRANKS
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Although preceded by a number of “begging” customs—including guising in Scotland and souling in England—trick or treating, as we know it and by that name, did not become part of Halloween tradition until the 1930s. The activity seems to have started in the western states of the U.S. and then moved eastward. During World War II, sugar rationing (and its effect on candy production) sty
mied its spread until after the war, but by the early 1950s the custom had gone nationwide.
Nina Hoffman introduces us to a true trickster who really doesn’t care much about the candy.
The energy for good or ill was always stronger around Halloween, and this year he decided to accept it into his spirit and form himself a body, instead of jumping from one to another of the people already running around dressed as people they weren’t. He chose to become someone small, a child; that made a good use of the energy he could gain without too much trouble. He would spend it all before the night was over, causing mischief, but first he would look and listen.
He made himself small and dark and then drew fire from air to dress himself in clothes like flames. He made the flames settle into solid, streamers of spider silk, quieting their heat, light, and appetite. When he had drawn enough fire to cover himself except for head and hands, he ran down out of the forest on the hilltop and into the neighborhood, where children in costumes dashed from one lighted front door to another, while adults in normal dress waited on the sidewalk, watching.
The flame child joined a group of children who had separated from their grown-up. He slipped among them as they climbed the steps to a front door. The pirate girl he stood beside noticed him; she lifted her eye patch to look, but she didn’t say anything. The boy dressed as a dog on his other side was too busy knocking on the door to pay attention. The others, a ghost, a zombie, a witch, pressed forward, sacks held open.
A woman answered the door. She also was dressed as a witch, only an ugly witch, with stick-on warts and ragged gray hair, more cobweb than homegrown. All her clothes were dark green or black, and she cackled at them. “Trick!” she screeched before the children could yell the usual question.
Dog-boy stumbled backward, confused. The other children looked at each other. Jack, the name the flame child had decided to call himself, moved up a step and gestured toward the witch. He set her tall pointed hat on fire. “Trick,” he said.
She shrieked and snatched the hat off her head, dropped it, and stomped the fire out. “What was that?” she yelled. “Do you want me to call the police?”