by P. J. Night
CHAPTER 12
Miss Bernice was just locking up the Heaton Corners Grocery and Dry Goods when Ashley and Joey arrived, sweaty and red-faced from running. She didn’t seem surprised to see Ashley.
“Was wondering when you’d turn up,” Miss Bernice said. “Expected you yesterday, to be frank.”
“You know,” Ashley said, pressing a hand over her chest as she tried to catch her breath. “You know what happened to them.”
Then Miss Bernice sighed and reached for Ashley with a gnarled hand. Ashley tried not to flinch as Miss Bernice patted her shoulder. The old woman’s touch was strong and steady.
“Not your fault, dearie.” She sighed. “Not really. The fault goes back a long way, back before your grandparents were even born. Why don’t you come inside for a bit? Settle yourself before you go home?”
Miss Bernice unlocked the door to the store. Ashley and Joey exchanged a glance before they followed her inside. The black cats looked up from their food bowl, startled by Miss Bernice’s unexpected reappearance.
“You have to tell me what happened to them,” Ashley said. “I know you know. I know it.”
“Why do you think that?” Miss Bernice asked as she reached down to pet her cats.
“Well, that room,” Ashley said. “With all the names! And the lemniscate on the door! And you warned me. None of the other adults in this town warned me, but you did.”
Miss Bernice didn’t say anything.
“Please,” Ashley said, and her voice wavered on the brink of tears. “Please. I have to help them. I have to get them back.”
Miss Bernice sighed heavily as she rose to her feet. Then she shuffled off to the bathroom, where the cleaning supplies were kept, and opened up the secret room. To Ashley’s horror, she saw three new, crisp white slips of paper with the following names written on them: Mary Beth Medina, Danielle Ramos, Stephanie Gloucester. To see their names written out like that only strengthened Ashley’s resolve to save them. If she could.
“I keep this room so they won’t be forgotten,” Miss Bernice said. “This whole town is set up for forgetting. But I think these unfortunate kids deserve better than that.”
“Miss Bernice,” Joey spoke up. “Can you tell us about the curse?”
There was a long silence. “I can’t,” Miss Bernice said. As she turned away, despair surged through Ashley; she’d been so sure that Miss Bernice, at least, could help—
“I’m afraid it takes too much out of me these days,” Miss Bernice continued, her voice muffled as she rummaged in a small cupboard. “But read this, and if you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.”
Miss Bernice dropped a slender book in Ashley’s hands, then shuffled out of the room. Ashley and Joey huddled close together as Ashley opened the burgundy leather cover. She didn’t realize that she was holding her breath as she read the first page.
October 31, 1957
My name is Bernice Jackson.
I write this chronicle on the twenty-fifth anniversary. It is based on the stories that Chester Matthews told me, in secret, late at night, when no one was listening.
At least, I don’t think anyone was listening.
Chester is gone; he couldn’t bear to mark another anniversary. He does not write to me. To anyone. He said, before he left, that one way or another, he was never coming back.
I believe him.
And so I think it is acceptable for me to break my promise and commit this account to paper, so that it would not be lost with Chester, or if anything should happen to me.
I hope that Chester will forgive me.
But more than that, I hope he will forgive himself.
Ashley paused and glanced at Joey out of the corner of her eye to make sure he had finished reading the first page before she turned it.
From the whiteness of his face, she could tell that he had.
1931 was a hard year for most places. Not even Heaton Corners was spared. Two years of bad weather left more ruined farms—and ruined families—than the community had ever seen before. And yet they pulled together, best as they could. Most of them. After all, neighbors helping neighbors is the Heaton Corners way.
But not everyone suffered during the lean times. Charlotte Snowden was a lucky one. Her father’s fortunes only increased, amid all the suffering, and she lorded it over the other children, some of them going to bed hungry at night, and Charlotte stuffing herself with anything that her heart desired. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. But that didn’t matter then, and it hardly matters now. When Halloween came around, the children cobbled together their costumes out of scraps and cast-offs. Nothing fancy, no, not for the children of Heaton Corners. Except Charlotte, of course. Her parents hired an honest-to-goodness dressmaker to fashion her whatever she wanted. That’s the way Charlotte lived, and Chester says she wasn’t even grateful for it. She just acted as though the whole world owed it to her. And so the dressmaker sewed for Charlotte a glorious snake-charmer costume, with a green shimmering skirt stitched with golden thread. There were more gold bangles on her arms than you could even count, and earrings made with real rubies. They even special ordered a rubber snake in a basket, for Charlotte wanted to put on a big show in her father’s barn. All the children were invited and it didn’t matter if they wanted to attend or not; their parents commanded them. That’s how much power the Snowdens had. Charlotte bragged for weeks, until the other children were so consumed with jealousy that they could no longer tell right from wrong. At least, that’s what Chester said. I suspect he is too hard on himself. He was only a child. They all were.
And so it was decided, among the children, that it was time for Charlotte to be taught a lesson. A little bit of comeuppance after how she’d rubbed their faces in her fortunes. So on Halloween night, out back behind the Snowdens’ barn, somebody—Chester never would tell me who—swapped the rubber snake for a real one. Charlotte started her snake-charmer dance, and then she reached into the basket and pulled out a real snake. She started screaming, and all the kids laughed and laughed and laughed at Charlotte. They’d waited a long time to see her get what she deserved.
But what they didn’t know was that the snake was poisonous, and it had bitten Charlotte on the thumb. Her screams weren’t from fear, they were from pain. But nobody realized that until Charlotte dropped to the ground, twitching and shuddering with pink foam bubbling out of her mouth, and then she went quiet and still. So quiet and still . . . because Charlotte was dead.
Ashley turned to Joey. “That’s the Halloween tragedy?” she asked, her voice hardly louder than a whisper.
Joey slowly shook his head. “I think . . . I think that’s just the start.”
Ashley didn’t want to keep reading. She did. She didn’t.
She didn’t have a choice.
Of course the children were horrified by what had happened.
They were severely punished. Even now, twenty-six years later, Chester couldn’t speak of it without all the color draining from his face, his skin the color of chalk. After all the punishments, after all the remorse, there would have been forgiveness, though, especially in a town like Heaton Corners.
But sometimes the dead don’t forgive.
It’s not right to speak ill of the dead. However, by all accounts, Charlotte was small and mean-spirited in life.
Death only magnified those qualities, transforming them into a toxic swill that poisoned her spirit.
Chester believes, really and truly believes, that Charlotte’s spirit spent the next year scheming so as she could enact revenge from beyond the grave that would be so gruesome, Heaton Corners would never recover.
Halloween Night, 1932. The town wanted to forget what had happened to Charlotte. The children carried on with their festivities as they’d always done, dressing up as scary monsters and attempting to have a little fun in a year that somehow was even worse than the last. Then, after the trick or treat, that’s when it all went so wrong.
One by one, t
he children started eating their candy—the very candy that their families and friends and neighbors had given them—and then the fits started.
In her haste to turn the page, Ashley accidentally tore it, just a little . . . but she didn’t even notice.
Chester, the lone witness; Chester, the lone survivor; Chester, the diabetic boy who every year watched his friends with longing as they devoured their Halloween candy. Chester, spared by a quirk of physical infirmity. He never could speak of all that he saw as the children were transformed into monsters, though I coaxed and coaxed—told him he was safe now—begged him, really, to share what he knew.
And now he is gone, and he is never coming back, and so here I am, left to bear my guilt alone for what I did, twenty years after these events, a new girl in this old town, making friends with children who were too young to remember; too young to know. I miss you, Cecily. I miss you, Sarah. I am so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?
I’ll never leave you. I promise. I will be here for all the days of my life, and I promise I will find a way to bring you back.
That was the end of the account; Miss Bernice hadn’t written another word. As if she somehow knew that Ashley and Joey had finished reading, she slipped back into the secret room without making a sound.
“So, I’m confused,” Joey said before Ashley could ask the question pressing down on her heart. “What happens to the kids? When they disappear?”
“They don’t disappear,” Ashley corrected him. “They turn into their costumes.”
“You’re both right,” Miss Bernice replied. “After they consume the candy and the curse takes a hold of them, they disappear. And they only reappear once a year, on Halloween night, forever doomed to be the actual monster their costume had represented. But, you know, what I think is that they’re never very far away. Right now, even, they might be all around us.”
Ashley remembered the odd trick-or-treaters they’d encountered in front of the school—the witch and the werewolf and the zombie and the goblin—and felt like crying.
“But you kept your promise, right?” Ashley blurted out. “You found a way to undo the curse?”
Miss Bernice’s lips were so pale that they seemed invisible against her ashen face. “I never should have made that promise. There was never any way to keep it.”
“But how can that be?” cried Ashley. “It’s been, like, eighty years! Surely someone found a way—”
“If only.” Miss Bernice sighed. “Would you be standing here now if they had? The people tried everything to get their children back. There was a desperate ritual for some years. . . . On Halloween night, the parents would round up all the snakes they could and twist them into the symbol for infinity, partly as an offering to Charlotte’s spirit and partly as a plea for forgiveness.”
“So that’s where the snake lemniscate comes from,” Joey said.
“Well, it’s all a bunch of bunk.” Miss Bernice sniffed. “The lemniscate is more useful for identifying who knows about the curse than it is for warding it off.”
“You’re wrong,” Ashley said, louder than she meant to. “Because I went trick-or-treating and I ate some candy and look at me. I’m fine.”
“Oh, dearie,” Miss Bernice said, giving Ashley a smile full of pity. “Of course you’re fine. You weren’t born in Heaton Corners. Didn’t I mention that? It’s only the children who were born here who are in danger. I should know. I moved here when I was twelve years old. Convinced all my new friends to sneak out and trick-or-treat with me.”
Miss Bernice turned to the wall and grazed her hand across two of the slips of paper, very yellowed and nearly crumbling with age. After all these years, Ashley thought, she still misses them. She still feels responsible.
It was, for Ashley, like peering into a crystal ball and glimpsing a future from which there was no escape. But there must be, she thought desperately. I can’t live with this shadow hanging over me for the rest of my life.
“I don’t get it,” Joey said suddenly. “How come nobody knows about this? How come nobody talks about it? If Mary Beth and Stephanie and Danielle had known . . . ”
“It was a bad decision,” Miss Bernice said. “There was a town council meeting in the late 1940s that lasted into the wee small hours of the morning. And by the end of it, everyone so fraught and exhausted, so many despairing parents, a vote was taken by secret ballot, and it was decided that the curse should never be spoken of. There were economic concerns, you see. If word got out, who would want to live here? Who would want to buy the food we grow? It was decided that the curse must be kept secret for the town’s survival. And what happened? People forgot. Sure, Halloween wasn’t practiced anymore, but people forgot why. They figured they wanted to keep their living children safe from the monsters who roamed the streets, but they didn’t know the real and horrific danger was that there was a chance their children could turn into those monsters.”
“Where are their families?” Ashley asked. “I went by their houses—”
“I assume they were forced to leave,” Miss Bernice replied matter-of-factly. “After all, the townspeople wouldn’t want a scene.
“Makes it all the more heartbreaking on Halloween night—the plight of the lost children, I mean. They always go to familiar places, when they can remember how to get there,” Miss Bernice continued. “Home and school especially. That’s why the townspeople started putting candy on their porches. It’s the last way they have to show the children that they’re loved. Still. Always. After all.
“Of course, they’re not really children anymore.” Miss Bernice brought her voice down to a hush. “And they get more vicious as the night wears on. Quite nasty they can be, especially if someone forgets the candy. The Petersons learned that the hard way. Skipped the candy bowl one year—and that night their house was burned to the ground.”
“So there’s nothing I can do?” Ashley asked. “There’s nothing I can do to help my friends? Nothing I can do to . . . to save them?”
She held her breath while she waited for Miss Bernice’s answer. The rest of Ashley’s life hinged on it—whether all the years to come would be tainted with the memory of what had happened to her friends, or whether she could somehow redeem herself and somehow make amends for the worst thing she’d ever done.
“No. Nothing.”
Ashley turned away then, so consumed by her shame and guilt that she couldn’t bear for anyone to see her. She wanted to run away to some deserted place so that she’d never have to face anyone ever again.
“Wait, dearie.”
Miss Bernice knew, of course, exactly what she was going through.
“There is one thing.”
Ashley spun around, her eyes—her entire face—bright with hope.
“On Halloween night, you can try to reach them,” Miss Bernice said. “To remind them of their humanity. To show them that they haven’t been forgotten. If you’re brave enough, of course. It won’t be easy. And it won’t be safe. But I always felt . . . well . . . it’s the least I can do.”
There was a long silence.
“Can I just—have a minute in here?” Ashley finally asked. “By myself?”
“Whatever you want, dearie,” Miss Bernice replied. “This room will always be open to you.” She guided Joey out the door and gently closed it behind them.
Ashley looked from wall to wall, from name to name; she was surrounded. There was too much to register, at least in one night, but Ashley knew that was okay. She’d have plenty of time to get to know each one.
Besides, right now, there was something very important she had to do.
The names of Mary Beth, Danielle, and Stephanie were lined up in a row, three friends who would never be parted. She brought up images of her friends in her mind. The freckles across Danielle’s nose. The dimple in Stephanie’s chin. And the kindness in Mary Beth’s eyes. She reached up and touched each name in turn, just as she’d seen Miss Bernice do.
“Whatever it takes,” she whispered to th
eir names. “Whatever it takes. I’ll be here for you. Forever.”
She whispered because she wasn’t alone; Ashley was sure of it. And then she felt it; someone’s fingers snaking through her hair.
Missssssss you, Ashhhhhhhleeeeeeeey.
Missssssss you.
EPILOGUE
She was polishing her necklace with the edge of her shawl, not that it did much good; the necklace was old now, tarnished with age and wear, but she still liked to shine it up when she had a spare minute. It was a comfort to feel the familiar, serpentine curves in her hands, to hold something that had stayed the same even though so much had changed.
She was polishing her necklace, just to pass the time, when the little bells above the door tinkled. She looked up and saw the girls, so young, so giddy, so unaware, and her heart sank.
How many times, she thought sadly. How many times must I bear witness?
“The chocolate ones!” one of the girls giggled.
“Sugar-crystal sticks!” cried another.
“Wait a minute.” The third laughed. “You don’t need to buy a bunch of candy. The whole point is that other people give it to you!”
“But I don’t want to wait!” replied the first girl. “Trick-or-treating doesn’t happen until nighttime, right? And it’s still an hour until sunset.”
“Okay, fine.” Her friend sighed. “Just get a little, though. Believe me, you’re going to have a candy stash that will last for weeks!”
“No,” the old woman said.
Either they ignored her, or they didn’t hear her. The old woman didn’t care.
“No,” she said again, louder. And then louder still: “No! Trick-or-treating is forbidden here! You cannot do it! You cannot do it!”
The three girls exchanged a glance, right in front of the old woman, as if she couldn’t see the mockery in their eyes.
“I beg you,” she continued. “You can’t imagine the danger. Go home! Go home to your parents and stay inside today!”
“Okay! Okay, Mrs. Carmichael! Don’t get upset,” one of the girls said quickly. She put her candy back on the shelf and gestured for her friends to do the same. “Don’t worry, okay? We’ll be fine.”