Doorbells at Dusk

by Josh Malerman

  The jack-o’-lantern was raised off the floor by the new growths erupting from its every surface. The vines twined around each other, tighter and tighter, until they formed a thick stalk-like formation upon which the pumpkin was lifted higher into the air, growing taller than Travis before it finally stopped.

  New offshoots grew outward from the stalk, one sprouting from each side, like arms.

  Come to me, Travis. I need you to finish your job.

  Travis understood something in that moment. This thing he had created, it was not his friend. It wasn’t going to do anything for him. He would have to stop it.

  Stepping over his dead father, he reached down and pulled at the hatchet that still protruded from his mother’s face. It wouldn’t budge.

  What are you doing, Travis? I have plans for you, boy.

  The thing was laughing again. Its improvised arms stretched toward Travis, but they had not grown long enough to reach him.

  Travis tried again to free the hatchet’s lodged blade, but it was no use. He would have to tackle Jackass and take him apart with his bare hands. He whirled around and tried to step over his mom’s prone form, but his foot caught on her blood-streaked abdomen, tripping him. His arms flew out in front of him as he fell, but it was too little, too late. His face smacked the bedroom window, cracking but not shattering it, and his jacket met the fat black candle sitting atop the sill.

  An explosion of agonizing pain ripped through his head. Travis didn’t notice when the fallen candle ignited his jacket, but he felt the sudden concussion of the gasoline catching light, setting his entire body aflame.

  He screamed, windmilling his arms wildly as he ran right into the waiting embrace of his monstrous creation.

  Jackass embraced the burning boy, smothering some, but not all, of the spreading flames. The boy screamed and screamed as his flesh cooked; his head burned like a roman candle. The bloody, viscera-packed jack-o’-lantern face loomed in front of him as his eyes melted out of their sockets. Its laughter was the last thing he heard as the darkness took him.

  The fire spread fast. Within minutes, it had completely engulfed the top floor of the house, and soon the shocked trick or treaters standing around on the street, watching the house burn up, had to clear a path for the first responders, who arrived, sirens blaring, twenty minutes after a neighbor had called 911.

  The firemen bravely battled the leaping, crackling flames, hoping like hell they could rescue anyone who might be trapped inside the burning house. As they focused their attention on the front of the house, the back door creaked open and, through it, something crawled out into the chilly October night. Dozens of zippers jingled as it crept across the ground. Its jigsaw smile broadened as it emerged from the burning house into the October night.

  It was alive, and it was free.

  OFFERINGS

  Joanna Koch

  Blaine’s head hurts at the sight of Amelia shuffling up the block. Hot from raking leaves, Blaine stretches as she admires her new house in her new neighborhood. The cold pinch of October air and brisk setting sun anticipate kids pouring in tomorrow at dusk. This is prime candy territory, nothing like the streets where Blaine grew up. Children don’t trick or treat in Blaine’s old neighborhood, not with the fires and gunshots. Down there, they call it Devil’s Night. Blaine’s worked her way up and out, from dishwasher to sous chef to culinary manager. She’s hosting her nieces and nephews at the new house tomorrow, and she expects to show them the flawless picture of safety and charm she’s paying for. Being a member of this community doesn’t come cheap. Looking down the block, it’s a perfect Norman Rockwell until Amelia enters the frame.

  Amelia is the neighborhood chimera. Big moist eyes, throbbing temple bones and a perpetual brood in tow mark her as an anomaly. Maybe she runs some sort of daycare. Low cost, out of her home. The couple across from Blaine points her out as Amelia Something—do you think she even has a license? They raise their eyebrows in knowing distaste. Fiftyish and dressed for golf no matter the day of the week, they interrogate Blaine. By the time they spot Amelia, Blaine’s relieved to shift the critique to the other woman’s childcare credentials. She feels wrong about it later when Amelia shambles by. Nervous and harried, Amelia wanders the upscale streets like a restless spirit locked in a magic circle of misbehaving mongrel children.

  Blaine watches Amelia push the cumbersome double stroller with its side-by-side compartments for twins. It’s an old design, less streamlined than the front-to-back models used by jogging moms. Amelia’s posture recalls street people pushing shopping carts full of god knows what in Blaine’s old neighborhood. When Blaine was a child, she shunned the faceless figures covered in rags. She’d cross the street when she saw one coming. Moving away isn’t only about leaving behind the fear and filth. It’s about finding a place where it’s safe to be a better person, the kind of person Blaine wants to be.

  Blaine hushes the hint of a headache and waves to Amelia, “Hi!”

  Amelia’s profile passes unaware. Her eyes face front. Sundry children scamper behind. Tomorrow morning is curbside pick-up. The children grab loose garbage from waste bins and pull recycling out of neatly bundled stacks. They drag and kick their finds down the sidewalk, inventing games as they go. After exhausting the entertainment value of an empty bottle of bleach or a discarded pizza box, they fling it onto the nearest lawn.

  Amelia plods onward as cans and cartons and odd bits of trash spread through the street in her wake. She’s like a tanker spewing oil.

  “Hello there,” Blaine calls out.

  The rotten brood swarms around Amelia like flies. Although there are only three, they create the chaos of a full-blown horde. The children stop and look at Blaine, then glance at each other and continue their moving massacre.

  Blaine heads down the sidewalk after them. The three children, all girls, peek back at her with feral eyes. Amelia nears the end of the block. Before she disappears around the corner, Blaine jogs to catch up and shouts, “Hello there!”

  Amelia startles and turns. Her eyes are wide and glassy, her hands clutch the stroller, and her sunken face suggests nights of wakeful trance in lieu of sleep. Amelia bares her teeth and says, “Hi. How are you?”

  Moments ago, half the neighborhood toiled outside under autumn’s vaulted light. Now it’s getting dark. The birds don’t chirp. Houses are barren and hushed behind festive haunted facades. Blaine does her best to return what must be Amelia’s smile and says, “Good. How are you today?”

  Amelia’s brow furrows. Her watery blue eyes darken. She says, “Fine,” without conviction or irony. The horde has spread, triangulating the two women in their sites. One girl tears apart layers of cardboard from a warped packing sheet by peeling off thin strips and waving them in the air to be taken up by the breeze. The other girls fan the air with smaller sheets of cardboard, too far away to have any effect that isn’t imaginary. To Blaine’s surprise, a long cardboard curl bounces on the wind, rises aloft, and then snags in the high, bare branches of a deciduous shrub.

  Blaine nods at the tangle and says, “Someone’s going to need a ladder to get that down.”

  Amelia looks baffled.

  Blaine speaks up in case Amelia is hard of hearing. “They’ve been scattering things all over the street behind your back. I don’t mean to be rude.” Blaine maintains a deferential smile as Amelia stares at her wildly. Blaine gestures at the nearest shred of cardboard and then points to one of the girls. “I’m sure you want to talk to them about littering.”

  “Oh!” Amelia says. Her eyes bug out and zig zag around the perimeter of the triangle. Her voice is harsh. She punches out her words: “Don’t do that! You’re bad! Clean it up!”

  The girls don’t react.

  Blaine stutters. “Oh no, I didn’t mean—I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean you should—”

  On an impulse to evoke warmth, Blaine leans down to look in the stroller. Amelia blocks her. She swerves the stroller away and starts firing out questions: “Do y
ou have a job?”

  “Yes,” Blaine says. “Of course.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “A hotel.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Kentwood Astoria.”

  “What do you do?”

  Blaine wants to lie to Amelia but has no reason other than the urge to cross the street when confronted with a shopping cart person. Blaine acts like an adult and tells part of the truth. “I work in the kitchen.”

  Amelia’s eyes have the dark, desperate plea of a cornered animal. Her fingers twist on the stroller handle as though they can’t break free. Blaine wonders if the stroller is empty. There’s no movement or cooing under the blankets, no crying or kicks, and come to think of it, she’s never noticed Amelia tending to any passengers in the double compartments.

  Amelia smiles again, but she looks more like she’s in pain. She says, “I wish I had a job like that.”

  “It’s great. I love to cook. Always have.” Blaine doesn’t tell Amelia she’s the culinary manager of both restaurants in the hotel. She doesn’t offer Amelia a job. “Planning, making everything just right. You know what I mean.” Amelia stares. The girls amble in closer. Blaine chatters. “You’d think after fifty, sixty hours a week I wouldn’t want to do the same thing at home, but I love it. In fact, you know, I really have to go. My nieces and nephews are coming over for trick or treat tomorrow.” The girls saunter up behind Amelia like cowboys challenging Blaine to a draw. Blaine clears her throat to cover up an inappropriate laugh at the absurd image. In the silent intensity of their stares, Blaine says, “Why don’t you drop by?”

  Amelia says, “Oh. Okay.”

  The girls remain inscrutable.

  “I’m sorry,” Blaine says. “I have to go. I didn’t mean to be rude earlier. I can’t imagine. It must be hard for you, with so many.”

  Amelia’s eyes seek the horizon like a shipwreck victim. She looks over Blaine’s shoulder and speaks to the vanishing point in the distance. She says, “They’re not mine.”

  ***

  Blaine can’t lie to herself. She’s relieved when Amelia doesn’t show up.

  The house has been silent for at least an hour when the doorbell rings. The house is too quiet with the party over and the kids all gone, or maybe for Blaine, it’s just quiet enough. Blaine’s not sure she’ll ever be ready to have children, not after what she saw in Amelia’s eyes last night. She’s been savoring the adult version of the witch’s brew punch and contemplating her goals when the doorbell interrupts. It’s ten-thirty.

  Through a sliver in the curtains, Blaine spies Amelia clutching the stroller handle. She’s at the end of the walkway near the street, almost out of range of the porch light. In the dark, the stroller looks more like a shopping cart mounded with hoardings of homeless life than it does in the daytime. Amelia’s eyes jump from Blaine’s front steps to flutter moth-like at the motion in the window. Her mouth stretches into a desperate leer. Blaine sighs. A headache threatens. Placing her cocktail on the mantel, Blaine grabs a handful of good chocolate. The kiddie stuff is all gone. She wonders why the hell Amelia has the children out so late.

  The three girls present pillowcases faded and tattered from too many wash cycles. Frayed edges sag in tiny, expectant hands. The children wear the same clothes they had on yesterday when they plundered the garbage. Their only costumes are their masks. Blaine forces herself to say, “Well, aren’t you cute,” as she drops chocolate into each threadbare sack.

  The masks look realistic, like expensive theater props. Blaine appreciates the quality, but not the content. The first girl wears an Inuit style bird head with spiraling hypnotic eyes and blood oozing from its beak. As the blood accumulates, it drips on the girl’s clothes. The head is plumed with what appear to be authentic feathers that rustle when she receives her candy. The second girl has the red face of a devil with hairy ears, gnarled fangs and a long forked tongue that lolls out of the side of her mouth. In place of a nose, the devil face sports a fully formed miniature devil with arms, legs and tail that dances and gestures. The tiny devil double mutters and drives at the air with a pitchfork. The third girl is a faceless, pink, flabby thing with several soft, rounded horns that protrude from the top of her head. The horns are more like knobby tentacles or snakes that stretch and enlarge at the ends. They bob and pulsate with engorged veins along the shaft like a vulgar pseudo-medical device. When Blaine gives her candy, the horns throb and lilt.

  Amelia grins.

  Blaine does her best to keep smiling at the masks. She’s given away all the chocolate and the girls don’t move to go. Neither does Amelia. Blaine turns her palms outward and then clasps them together. “Well,” she says, “Trick or treat.”

  Amelia yells, “Say it!”

  “Wik yur ree,” the girls mumble under their masks. Then the smallest girl, the one with the flabby tentacles on her head says, “I gotta go potty.”

  Amelia doesn’t respond. Her teeth are clenched like a fiend and her watery blue eyes are frozen into hard, round marbles. The little girl bends her knees and bounces, pressing her hands between her legs. Her flabby horns wobble. “I gotta go now!”

  “Okay, hon. Come on.” Blaine grabs the little girl’s hand and takes her to the guest bathroom. The protrusions nudge Blaine’s forearm. Blaine isn’t sure if she’s more disgusted by the physical sensation of the soft horns or by the behavior of the girl’s mother. Or whatever Amelia is supposed to be. Blaine kneels, eye-level with the eyeless face. She asks, “Do you need any help?” The little girl giggles and slams the bathroom door.

  Blaine wonders how the child can see anything from inside the mask. She hopes she can take it off on her own. After several minutes of quiet, Blaine says, “How are you doing?” There’s no answer. Blaine tries the door handle. It’s locked. Blaine taps a few times. “Is everything okay?” The toilet flushes and the girl bursts through into Blaine’s arms. Blaine catches her and asks, “Did you forget to wash your hands?” The girl shakes her head, jiggling the mask’s rubbery horns. She squirms out of Blaine’s grasp and runs away.

  Cold air and scraps of leaf litter from the street tumble into Blaine’s living room through the open front door. The girls sprawl on Blaine’s Persian rug sorting mountains of candy. Their tattered pillowcases drape the room. A statue of Kuan Yin sticks her sutra out from under a worn floral pattern. Soil and rocks spill from a houseplant trampled by a herd of threadbare unicorns. Pink polka dots clash with tasteful earth tone upholstery. Blaine rushes past the disaster to fetch Amelia from outside.

  The walkway is empty. The street is deserted. Blaine looks up and down the block and jogs to the corner, passing plastic gravestones and cardboard skeletons. She runs to the opposite corner, searching by the orange glow of jack-o’-lanterns with wicked smiles that share an inside joke. Heading back up the other side, black cat decals mock Blaine’s panic with cartoon anxiety in their eyes. Swaying effigies of an old green-faced witch nod wisely, warning Blaine to be mindful of the historical fate of unconventional women. The same black-cloaked dolls with pointed caps hang from every porch except for Blaine’s, as though marking her lack of affinity with some unspoken tradition. Amelia is nowhere in sight.

  “Damn her,” Blaine whispers.

  Returning to the brood, Blaine crouches on the living room carpet. All three girls wear their masks. They sort candy in silence. Starting with the largest piece, regardless of flavor, color or type, they arrange stacks to achieve an even distribution of mass. Little hands weigh and move the candy each time the job appears done. Blaine guesses it must be a game with rules only the girls understand.

  The dissimilarity of the girls with other children leaves Blaine unsure how to act. Earlier, when her brother’s youngest spilled red pop on her pants, Blaine improvised a new costume bottom with a pair of patterned leggings. The girl stopped crying, the others quit teasing, and all of the children got curious about the hidden treasures in Aunt Blaine’s closet. Blaine raided her wardrobe for accessor
ies and ended up hosting a side party in her bedroom and dressing up with the kids. Her siblings looked at her askance, but it was more fun than listening to her brother-in-law pontificate about current events.

  Blaine breaks the silence. “That’s quite a haul. Looks like you guys hit the jackpot tonight.”

  The girls continue their candy game with the gravity of old men playing poker. They don’t eat any candy. They don’t battle or bargain for favorites. They measure and sort.

  “Which one do you like best?” Blaine asks.

  None of the girls says a word.

  Blaine takes a small cellophane bag of candy corn out of the middle pile and tears it open with her teeth. “You don’t mind if I have this one, right?”

  She’s got the girls attention. They stop playing and turn toward Blaine while she chews the sugary tidbits. The candy is so sweet it’s almost painful to eat. Blaine says, “Did Miss Amelia tell you where she was going?”

  Facing Blaine, the girls don’t answer or resume their game. They sit still except for the unnatural movement of the masks.

  “Can you tell me where Miss Amelia went, or make a guess for me? Did she say anything before she left?”

  The bird mask rolls its spiraling eyes in exasperation. The devil nose smirks. The flaccid horns quiver.

  “Has she done this before? Where does she go?”

  The autonomous devil nose can’t contain itself any longer. It blurts, “She can go to Hell!”

  Blaine keeps chewing as the nose does a little dance and the face around it glows a deeper shade of red. Blaine’s amazed by the craftsmanship. She can’t see any wires or strings. She says, “You look like you’d know the way there.”

  All three girls burst out laughing.

  Blaine isn’t sure if laughter is progress, but it’s better than weird silence. She addresses the autonomous devil nose. “Excuse me, sir. We haven’t been properly introduced. My name is Blaine. What’s your name?”