It was like the scarecrow knew I didn’t belong with the rest of them, like it sensed that I was not from around these parts, not one of the people that normally celebrated Halloween in the square. I was certain that the thing would come to me and strike me down for having the audacity to be seen in the presence of its followers. I knew that I was as good as dead, and damned if I didn’t almost wet myself. Then it turned its gaze from me and looked toward my right. Just around that time is when I remembered how to breathe.
I had trouble accepting it; the more I looked at the scarecrow, the less real it seemed. The thing’s face was impossibly mobile, and still seemed so much like a pumpkin carved for the event. The mouth moved. The head craned easily as the thing looked around. I couldn’t stop myself; I reached out my hand and grabbed at the scarecrow as it came past me. My mind, the logical part at least, demanded that I prove once and for all that the creature was a figment of my imagination.
My hand touched the heavy, coarse wool of its jacket and felt the hard bony frame beneath the material. And the thing turned back to look at me with eyes older than all of creation. That nasty-looking smile grew even more sinister, and the hollow mouth ignited with the same glowing energy that fueled the monster’s gaze.
As God is my witness, the thing seemed to know me. It reached out with a gloved hand and touched my face, as gentle as a kiss from your first love. My nerves screamed out at the contact, and my flesh tried to crawl away from the rest of me and hide somewhere. I felt the years of dust and mold held in that glove, and the cold, hard weight of the bones that rested just beneath their cotton surface.
The demented cavern of a mouth moved, its grin growing even wider, and then it talked to me. The chilling voice called out in a faint whisper, “Welcome home, Benjamin.”
I screamed myself silly as it turned away, walking through the crowd that moved to avoid being touched. All around me the good people of Summitville were touching me, slapping my shoulder, or hugging themselves to me like I was a long-lost relative. I wanted to run, but there were too many people surrounding me, pressing close to me and making me notice them. I was numbly aware of Helen next to me, still holding my hand.
I watched the scarecrow move through the night, stepping regally past its followers in pursuit of the one it had chosen. It stopped at last before Ned Graber, and it held out a hand to him, silently demanding that he join it.
I saw a thousand looks cross his face in just a few seconds. I saw surprise, happiness, anger, denial, something like ecstasy, and happiness again. Then I saw fear and a sad resignation. The scarecrow walked away with Ned, and everyone stepped aside for them, letting them pass like a newly married bride and groom. Ned’s shoulders trembled as he walked into the darkness. It was the only sign of weakness I saw.
There was no movement after they disappeared, and everyone around me went silent, again holding their breath and waiting patiently for a sign. They weren’t alone; I couldn’t move either. I was still too stunned by what I’d seen.
Less than five minutes later I heard Ned Graber scream. Seconds after that I heard the demon’s chilling laughter ripping through the night.
Of course, I’d like to say that I charged into the woods to protect my friend. I’d even be happy with saying that I’d run away into the night. God above knows I wanted to run, but my body disagreed. My body decided to outdo me. I had my first stroke right there on the lawn. I remember looking up at Helen’s pretty face, covered with worry, and I remember all the scarecrows that loomed above me. Then everything went black.
Well, I just said I had my first stroke, and that’s true enough. But the other three that came right after the initial one were probably what put me in this damned “retirement facility.” The only good news is I’ve got a great view of the rest of Summitville from up here. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything screwier than a town the size of this one having its own retirement home. They call this place Shady Acres. I call it a nightmare.
I’ve been here for almost a year, just about long enough to make me scared. At first I held to the hope that I could be up and walking inside of six months, but of late Doctor Lewis has just about given up on the hope of my ever walking again. I guess in his eyes it’s a miracle that I can even get into the wheelchair by myself.
I hate feeling helpless. I hate having a nurse shave me every day, and even more, I despise looking in the mirror when she’s done and seeing my face try to slide off my skull. The left half of my face is frozen in a suspended scream of fear. The right half of my face only looks that way when I want it to, but the left half is just stuck that way. Frozen in a silent scream.
I’m lonely these days, too. Owen and Helen used to come by once a week or so, but when they finally got sick of looking at me and hearing my grunts and groans, they both stopped visiting. I can’t blame them, watching a man struggle to swallow his water instead of just dribble it down his face can’t be a lot of fun, if you catch what I’m saying. They never once brought up what happened at the Halloween Ball, and I was certainly in no shape to bring it up myself. Still, I wonder what they would have said. I suspect they’d both have feigned ignorance about the whole thing, pretending that poor old Ben had lost his mind along with the use of his legs and bladder. They sure didn’t warn me beforehand, and I guess they’d have gone on living the lie afterward as well.
I spend most of my time staring out the window and enduring. I endure the loss of dignity that I guess anyone who is mostly paralyzed is forced to endure: sponge baths, being fed like I was a baby—though of late I am finally feeding myself, thank God above—and wearing a disposable diaper instead of having the chance to sit on a toilet like any person should be able to do. I endure the indignities because I have to. Whether I like it or not, I am crippled in my body. I just wish that maybe a little of my mind had gone as well. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel so damned bad about being left to the mercy of people I don’t even know.
I stare out the window for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes, I stare out the window at the town below and I think about my Emma. She’d have loved Summitville, I’m sure of that. Sometimes I stare out the window just for the warmth that the sun lays on my skin. But mostly, I stare out the window and I wait. It’s toward the middle of October now, and I know what’s going on down there, down in that pretty little town. The families are gathering the materials for building their scarecrows, and they’re all planning what costumes to wear this year. Just a few more weeks, and Halloween will be with me again.
For a while I still had my illusions to protect me. I actually believed that, at least in good old Shady Acres, I would be free from the festivities. I know that a few more months of trying, and I’d be able to walk again. I can already wiggle my toes if I try real hard, and I can even move my right foot if I don’t mind breaking a hard sweat.
But just this morning I got the good news from Doctor Lewis. It seems Helen wants to make sure I don’t miss the festivities, and she’s coming up herself to escort me to the Halloween Ball. She even told Doc Lewis that she’d saved our scarecrow from last year. It’s been waiting in her basement for the time we could attend the Ball together.
I keep thinking about those scarecrows, and I keep thinking about the way Albert Miles’ scarecrow looked at me when I was foolish enough to touch it. I keep wondering what it meant when it welcomed me home. I’m afraid I might even know. I get the nasty feeling there might be one more scarecrow perched in the town center this year, one with a face shaped an awful lot like Ned Graber’s face, only minus all the flesh.
I have a worse suspicion that there will be one more next year as well, one that bears a strong resemblance to yours truly. I guess that’s the other reason I like to sit near the window and look down on Summitville: I keep thinking that the view is nice from three stories up, and I keep wondering if my arms will hold my weight for the time it would take to open the window, and maybe just lean out a bit too far for safety.
I’m pretty sure the fal
l will kill me. But I’m afraid to die, afraid that maybe all that stuff they taught me in my Sunday school classes was true. They told me that suicide is a sure way to go to hell. Even after all these years, I guess there are still some parts of my upbringing that just can’t be escaped.
I imagine I’ll still be here when Helen comes for me. I’ll be waiting and wishing with all my heart that I could stand up and just walk away from this town. Maybe if the scarecrow comes for me, I’ll manage to live through it, get passed by for some other poor fool that asks too many questions. Maybe he’ll even forgive me my trespasses and let me live as a whole person again; I’m almost certain that he could heal me if he wanted.
I guess at heart I’m just a coward. I’d rather take my chances with the devil I know than with what might be ahead of me if I take the plunge out of this window.
From here I can even see the town square, and I can count a good ten figures down there, all staring toward the center of the small park, looking with frozen fascination at the bandstand, or maybe at the bronze likeness of “Charles S. Westphalen — Our Town Founder.” I think maybe the folks here in Summitville are getting a big head start this year. It’s never too soon to get into the spirit of Halloween in Summitville, I reckon. One way or the other, I should know about that myself in the very near future.
Hathburn Avenue
Candles lit the insides of carved faces on nearly every porch on Billings Street. The sun was almost gone and the jack-o-lanterns were more obvious, more deliciously sinister as the darkness swallowed most everything. I remember looking at the glowing caricatures with a mix of fear and anticipation. It was excitement at first; but even as the night started, I had a strange feeling that bad things were coming.
There were seven kids in the group and we were all supposed to follow Mike Berry’s mom as she lead us door to door. Mrs. Berry was a heavyset woman who wore baggy clothes to hide her size and covered her face in enough make up for a dozen teenaged girls, but she was also a very nice lady and seemed, to me at least, a little sad. That night the makeup wasn’t as out of place as usual. In the spirit of the evening, she’d dressed herself as a gypsy in the tackiest run of clothing I’d ever seen and enough scarves to open her own accessories shop. Her son was dressed up, too, in a long, dark cloak with a cheap plastic skull face that was far more effective in the growing darkness. Mike Berry was always a weird kid, sort of prissy and prone to laughing at the strangest things, but his mom was our chaperone that night and we all had to hang with him by default.
There were supposed to be nine of us, but Rick Treacher wasn’t there yet. Chuck Willinger wasn’t there. That didn’t seem right at all. Chuck had been planning his Halloween the way generals planned wars. He had a list of the best houses to get candy from and a second list of the ones he intended to visit after the official fun was done with. Chuck had a memory for slights, and at least three grownups had caused him enough grief to get on his bad side. Chuck was a little too intense sometimes, a little too willing to hold a grudge or work out the details for elaborate revenge plots. Mostly, he was also too willing to go through with his plans. No one should be that vindictive at the age of eleven.
Rick being gone was weird, and unusual, but not as important as Chuck not being there. The three of us had been friends for as long as any of us could have remembered, but that Halloween, I was the only one of us ready to go out and have fun. I had no idea why Rick hadn’t shown, just knew that he was missing. In the grander scheme of things, Rick was always the least predictable of us.
It took me a second to remember that Chuck was dead, and when I did I felt a shuddery breath slide out of me. Chuck Willinger was dead, along with his entire family. I knew that. But part of me kept trying to forget it. Like I could ever really forget the heat from the flames of the house next door burning away, or the wheezing sound in my father’s voice for the next couple of weeks afterward. Dad had tried to go in and save our neighbors right after he’d called 9-1-1, and he’d failed. I watched my best friend’s house burn down to nothing but a few walls and a mountain of ash, and I knew that he’d died in the same fire. The police said the fire that took them was probably an accident, but I could remember the spokesman on the evening news, a round faced man with a tight crew cut who made the statement about the Willinger family and seemed, to my eyes at least, to doubt the very words he spoke.
I pushed the thought out of my head. Chuck had loved Halloween and I decided that I’d have fun that night despite the relatively fresh wound of losing a good friend to a stupid fire. Not all that far away, just past my own house, the remains of the Willinger place sat brooding and scorched in the dying light; a ghost of what it had been, a memory of sleepovers and watching crappy horror movies and talking about everything from comic book heroes to the way we’d started noticing girls. It was only Chuck I talked to about those things, because Rick would have never understood. Rick didn’t let his mind wander the same way. Chuck should have been with me. He should have been there in his zombie costume or whatever he’d spent half the summer working on. You could always count on Chuck to have the coolest costumes.
I was eleven, just at that age where people start looking at you funny if you still go out trick or treating. (By people I mean my older brother Troy, who was fifteen and thought I was the world’s biggest loser. That was okay; I thought he was up near the top of the charts for being a dick, so it balanced out.) I didn’t care if they looked. I had a mask and I had a bag waiting for candy.
Mrs. Berry pushed several of her bracelets aside and looked at the delicate watch on her ham hock wrist and frowned. “I think we’re going to have to go without Rick, kids.” A few of us made token noises of disappointment, but let’s be honest here, we wanted goodies and if Rick lost out, well, that was his problem, not ours. Oh, who am I kidding? It was also a perfect chance to tease one of my best friends about what he didn’t get to snack on for the next week, and to get closer to Mindy Carruthers, who we both wanted to know a lot better. Mindy had never been all that interesting in the past, but she managed to turn pretty over the summer and it wasn’t easy to look away from her sometimes. She’d always been short and a little pudgy—not that I had room to talk about on those fronts—but these days she was vital, energetic and had the ability to catch my eye from thirty yards away. The freckles that used to look like mud splatters on her skin were somehow more interesting than when I was younger and her eyes didn’t seem to have changed that much but were now absolutely fascinating. Mindy, if I didn’t mention it already, was one of the other seven kids in our group.
After the false protests, we were on our way, and it pleased me to no end to know that the pirate standing next to me most of the way was Mindy under a tricorn hat, an eyepatch, and a stuffed parrot.
We’d only made four houses—my entire haul of candy consisted of a bite sized Snickers bar, a piece of petrified bubble gum that would require nothing less than the teeth of a shark to make chewable, one candied apple from Mrs. Murphy, the widow on the corner, and a religious tract with a Hershey’s Kiss taped to it—when I first got the feeling that someone was watching me, maybe even following me.
Now, I bet most people could tell you that at one time or another in their lives they felt like they were being followed. I bet you could tell me about a time or two yourself. But this didn’t feel like eyes watching me so much as it felt like eyes intent on killing me. My skin crawled beneath the rubber werewolf mask I’d begged for and finally gotten, and I know I wasn’t the only one feeling it, because Mindy turned and looked behind us a couple of times and so did a few of the others. It wasn’t a cheap rubber mask like at the grocery store, but a Lon Chaney Jr’s The Wolf Man mask from Don Post Studios that cost my parents a cool forty-five dollars. I’d have never gotten it if my birthday wasn't two weeks before Halloween. The only one who didn’t seem to notice anything strange on that chilly night at the end of October was Mrs. Berry. The kid who lived next door was six years old and stuck with the unfortunat
e name of Kilroy Houseman. He was dressed up as a clown, with oversized shoes and a red and blue jumper that looked almost big enough for me. He kept peeking over his shoulder so many times that he managed to trip over his own feet and gave himself a goose egg on the head. Poor Kilroy was hardly the most graceful kid, and the knot was big enough that when he started crying, no one thought he was being a baby about it.
Four houses in, and already things were going bad. I might have worried a bit more about that, but Mindy was there and I had to look brave for her. This was my chance, you see, to get in good with the girl who was occupying most of my daydreams even when I didn’t want her to.
After a few minutes of hemming and hawing about what to do, Mrs. Berry decided it would be best if Kilroy went home and she would gather the rest of his treats for him. Kilroy didn’t cry about it, but his disappointment was written on his face and in his wide, shocked eyes.
She gave me his bag to hold, as I was the oldest. I promised Kilroy I’d make sure he got the good stuff and he smiled his thanks before leaning in close and whispering “There’s something out there, Tom. Something bad.” I wish I could have told him it was just because it was Halloween and the wind was blowing just so, but I couldn’t. Deep down inside, I agreed with him.
So did all of the others. I think there’s something almost paradoxical about adolescence and childhood. Think about it: as a whole, I’m convinced that every single kid there knew something was wrong, really wrong, and maybe even dangerously wrong. We were scared enough that not a single one of us even gave the notion of skipping on to the next house consideration, because there were no parents to watch us. And at the same time, I seriously doubt that any of the kids that stood around waiting for Mrs. Berry to come back even considered leaving, because it was Halloween, and this was our night to have fun. So instead of moving forward with the whole group or even retreating to our homes and hiding under the covers—that trick still worked when I was eleven, but not for much longer—we stood around and waited in a rapidly growing, uncomfortable silence, for our leader to return.
This is Halloween Page 5