“Every year,” he said. “But it’s not always this easy,” he sighed. “Sometimes it’s—” his voice failed him and she could see him struggling to continue. “Sometimes it’s a bit scary, to be honest.”
“Scary?” she whispered.
He smiled and took her hand. “Come with me,” he said and pulled her away from the living room and into the hallway again. There was a big mirror at the end of the passage. It had been there since before she was born, had been bought and paid for by her own father.
“Stand in front of the mirror,” her son said, “and tell me what you see.”
She looked at him and then she moved slowly toward the mirror, touching the wooden frame that was so beautifully carved with flowers and little birds. She kept her hand on the frame, fondling it lightly.
“Mom,” he whispered. “Focus.”
She looked at him again and smiled. He hadn’t outgrown his impatience, he was still the little boy she knew. She nodded her head, bewildered. Then she turned and stared at her mirror image. There was nothing particularly strange in the reflection. She had brown hair, like his. She had wrinkles at the edges of her blue eyes and dark bags underneath, which wasn’t unusual considering the journey she’d been on. Her clothes were a bit worn—a white blouse and dark jeans. She looked his age, and it wasn’t until she turned back to her son that she realized the significance of that.
“What am I looking for?” she asked.
“Just look closer,” he whispered, and she did as he told her.
At first she saw nothing. She was just a woman standing in front of a mirror in a house that was very familiar. It was home. She looked at him again, but he just nodded encouragingly.
Then she started to see something strange. It was as if her image in the mirror was dissolving, as if her body wasn’t tangible anymore. It flickered out of existence, came back and faded again. Her hair was suddenly silvery and her fingernails long. There was fire in her eyes—not enthusiasm, but real burning fire—and then she saw the teeth, sharp and pointy. It was like looking into the gape of a shark.
She fell backward, only then noticing the lightness of her body, the way she seemed to float without touching the ground. There was no thud as she fell to the floor, just the deadly silence. She looked up at him, but he just smiled at her.
“I wanted to—” she whispered.
“Sometimes you don’t remember why you’re here,” he said. “You rage through the house looking for something and never seem to find it. When I was nineteen you spent the entire night shaking the mirror in my room so violently that it shattered into a thousand pieces.”
“The entire night?”
“Always Halloween,” he added.
“All Hallow’s Eve,” she whispered. “When the souls of the dead go roaming.”
“We thought of moving, but—” he went silent for a moment “—but it wasn’t your fault.”
She saw tears in his eyes. She got up from the floor. She wanted to embrace him, but then she remembered what she looked like now. “How long?” she asked.
“Since the year you died,” he said. “It’s been terrifying at times, and of course Dad never believed me.”
She stood there, hands hanging by her sides, feeling the embers of her enthusiasm dying out as she listened to him.
“I was scared, but that wasn’t your fault.” He looked at her. “I won’t sell the house, I won’t,” he looked down, fighting the tears.
She tried to put her hand on his shoulder, but now that she’d seen herself, she couldn’t touch him—her hand just went through him. A feeling of violent disgust and anger passed through her but she pushed it down, had to listen to what he had to say.
“My wife wants to sell the house,” he sighed. “But you will keep coming here and—” he sighed again. “It’s not fair to you, not fair to the people who possibly buy the house and—” he raised his hand in a gesture she didn’t understand “—and I’d miss seeing you. It’s a reminder.”
“There’s life after death,” she whispered. “But I guess that doesn’t seem very comforting to you.”
He smiled. “It’s fine, Mom. We’re good. I just wish you were this communicative every year. Last year the kids weren’t out of the house when you came. Little Lina saw you like this. She had nightmares for months.”
“Little Lina?” Her name, she recognized it now that he said it.
“Your grandchild. She looks just like you,” he laughed. “It’s sometimes a bit disconcerting, to be honest.”
She laughed along with him, and with the laughter she seemed to release the tension that had built up inside her. She walked to the mirror again and tried to see herself and not the hideous image that was being portrayed. Slowly her features returned to what she was used to, calm settled again into her bones.
“Once you told me that if I didn’t want you to come, that I shouldn’t leave a lighted pumpkin outside the house. That you’d never find your way,” he said.
“I did? Does it work? Oh, you have such talent carving.”
“I always keep a pumpkin lit outside on this night, but I haven’t forgotten.”
“You keep doing that even though I scared your daughter?”
“You scared me more when I was a child. It’s hard having your mother haunt you, you know. Most mother’s cause their teenage sons grief in other ways, but not you. You haunted me on Halloween so grimly, I sometimes thought I must have done something horrible to deserve it.”
She stared at him.
“It’s fine,” he said, and gave a little laugh. “At least I’m unique, eh?”
It wasn’t rage she felt, but grief.
“You had such big eyes,” she recalled. “You asked me so sincerely if there was life after death. I always remember that, even when I forget everything else.”
“I know, Mom.”
“I just wanted you to know that—”
“I know, Mom,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Johnny.”
“I know, Mom. It’s fine.”
“Why do you keep the pumpkin?”
“Because it’s better than the alternative,” he said.
“Is it?”
“Thinking of you roaming out there, lost and bewildered. Maybe when I die you can come with me to some other place. Until then, I’ll see you on Halloween. No matter what.”
“You were so young,” she suddenly remembered. “Your father was always working. Couldn’t face what was happening to me. You were here, listened to my every word, ran when I needed you to run errands. Did everything I asked you. Brought me my medicine. Remembered where I put my glasses when I could hardly remember my own name anymore.”
She walked to the door and opened it. It was an easy maneuver. She didn’t even have to touch the handle. “And this is how I repay you?” she looked at the pumpkin burning outside. The demon was spectacularly carved, a terrifying creation.
“Well, maybe I deserve it,” he said.
She turned and looked at him. He was standing by the mirror, the light behind him casting a long shadow. She wanted to ask, but couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“You see,” he continued, as he walked toward her. “It may be my fault that you’re in this predicament.”
“How? No!” she said loudly. She could hear the floorboards trembling underneath her, though she couldn’t feel it.
“You were in such bad shape at the end,” he said. “All I had to do was give you your dose twice, and then three times. You couldn’t remember that you had already taken your pills. You took them and that was that.”
“You?” she whispered.
“So I guess in the twisted way of the world, it was actually a blessing.” He moved closer to her and, at that moment, his presence overwhelmed her. As she rose up from the floor, the howling she heard wasn’t from the wind but from her own throat.
“It was my fault though, so it’s only fair.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“It is
,” he said. “I did something terrible and I deserve this, you—” suddenly he smashed his fist to the wall. “I was just a kid, and I didn’t think it was fair and—”
She felt her hair standing on end. The door slammed behind her, opened and slammed again as if a defiant child was making a point. She could hear herself screeching, but couldn’t bring herself to stop making the sound, didn’t even know how she was making it. It just was, like she was—she had no control over that either.
“Mom, it’s all right,” he said.
“Have you told anyone?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I’ll take the knowledge with me to the grave and then we can haunt this house together, you and I.” He laughed.
She didn’t like hearing him so bitter. She settled on the floor again, the air calmed around her. “I forgive you,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
He stepped toward her and tried touching her arm, but it was phantasmal again. She felt an eerie draft, it chilled her to the bone. A shimmering sensation went through her as a hint of something entered her mind. A sense of the past, a glimpse into a realization she’d had previously, but her memory wasn’t what it used to be. She couldn’t easily recall, and she had no way of refreshing her memory, no way of triggering what it was that was gnawing at her. She looked at him and shook her head. Involuntarily she hissed, her teeth protruding in a gesture she could see reflecting back at her in the mirror.
“Of course, once I had got the taste for it, I couldn’t stop. I rarely do it, but sometimes I just can’t stop myself. I remember you and the peaceful look on your face and I just have to experience that again. The peaceful look on the women’s faces.”
She didn’t want to comprehend, didn’t want to hear any more. She rose up into the air, put her hands over her ears and flew up into the ceiling, then through the floorboards and up to the top floor. She saw the children’s room, small made-up beds and stuffed animals. She rose up further, through the attic, and suddenly she was hovering above the house, floating as she looked out over the village and over the acres that had once belonged to them so long ago.
She heard his voice echoing in her head again and again, remembered hearing him say these words before. She just wanted to forget. She just wanted to forget everything.
“I sometimes confess to you,” he had told her countless times. “They look so peaceful, and life is so hard.”
She screamed at the top of her lungs, she screamed and, before oblivion and forgetfulness came and started the cycle once more, she remembered everything. Remembered every complaint, every sigh and every whisper. Remembered the sorrow in his eyes, the ache as he saw his mother wither away. It was her fault, what he was—it was her fault. She screamed, and this time every window in the house shattered into a thousand pieces, along with the mirror in the hallway.
“Another seven years of bad luck,” she heard him say from inside the house as she was whisked away with the breeze.
“Is there life after death, Mom?” he cried.
She remembered his beautiful blue eyes, so big and questioning, so innocent.
“Is there?”
Soothingly, she had put her hand on his head and whispered, “There is and we’ll meet there, you and I, we’ll meet again.”
The sky was dark, had long since lost its colorful, orange hue. The pumpkin illuminated the front porch, the demon flickering silently toward anyone who happened by. The shards of the windows lay scattered on the ground all around the house, glimmering like stars in the sky. The crescent moon cast its pallid light on the villa for a moment, before it shied away again.
The man inside sighed, went to the kitchen and retrieved a bucket and a shovel and proceeded to clean up the mess. He would have to board up the windows too and contact someone in the morning. It would be fine. The air was wintry, but the cold never bothered him, so he started his work.
His footfalls were heavy as he descended the porch steps and started gathering up slivers of glass from beneath the kitchen window. The demon flickered silently in the pumpkin as if it was anxious to escape. But there would be no escape for it… .
Not tonight.
DUST UPON A PAPER EYE
CATE GARDNER
Cate Gardner has published more than one hundred short stories. Most recently, her work has appeared in The Dark, Black Static, Postscripts, Sherlock Holmes’s School for Detection, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017. She has been twice nominated for the British Fantasy Award.
“In ‘Dust upon a Paper Eye,’ Hen jokes that she is half-a-minute from living on the streets,” says the author. “Early in 2017, I attended a talk run by an aid-worker from the The Whitechapel Centre, a homeless charity in Liverpool. She told us how anyone can end up on the streets—they deal with solicitors, bank managers, secretaries, shop workers, etc.—and that we are all two or three months from living on the streets depending on our savings.
“Although, Hen’s story wouldn’t emerge for another few months, it festered in the background.”
STILLNESS.
Henrietta danced between the frozen people, tickling their skin with a feather duster, enchanted until she noted a shock of short blonde hairs rise on the arms of the ruby-red girl. She brushed her finger over them, to flatten. They lay for a moment and then sprang up again. Why go to so much detail when the audience wouldn’t note them? A cough caused her to fall against ruby-red and together they toppled to the boards. Like dominoes, others began to tumble. The owner of the cough saved the final doll from falling into the orchestra pit.
Untangling herself from the dolls, Hen asked, “Who are you?” of the boy in the torn jeans, dirty shirt, and month-grown beard.
“Just a fan.”
There were no fans of this show. It hadn’t opened yet and wouldn’t do so for a week. There were faded posters outside the theater and a list of invited guests, of which he would not be among, and there would be only one performance. She didn’t understand the whys of it, but she was paid to first dust the exhibits, then apply stage makeup. Her employment thanks to a City & Guilds course in the late 1980s.
“Sure. Help me pick them up and then scoot. You can’t be found here. How did you get in?”
“Stage door was open. Thought the place abandoned to be truthful, thought I’d catch a nice dry sleep with the company of a few pigeons. Thought there may even be others here from the street, like. Dominic.”
“Hen. Henrietta. But, just Hen.”
She couldn’t lift a doll alone, nor could he. Between them, they settled them into place, if not the right place. Hopefully, the theater owner and director, Herr Smithton, wouldn’t notice. Of course, he would. Scratches ran down ruby-red’s arm, where it had caught against the splintered boards. She’d have to paint over them. Hen traced the outline of the scars. So realistic.
“I live in the alley behind The Bridge, cardboard box number two, if you fancy a cuppa. Have to bring your own though. One for me would be good too.” With that, he disappeared among the frozen crowd.
A door opened at the top of the auditorium followed by steel-capped footsteps and the bark of Herr Smithton, “Are we finished up there? Are we done? Can we bugger off now?”
Then she, too, was gone from the theater and the dolls were alone with their creator.
The streets were dark. The day scurried behind thick gray clouds that offered downpour. She rushed to her home, the flat above a chippy with its greasy windows and permanent stink. Still, it had a roof and it would be warmer than a cardboard box in an alley behind a pub. She should invite Dominic around for a hot meal, but she could only afford one portion of chips and she’d made that mistake before with others. A blanket offered her warmth and the kettle whistled on the one hob that worked. The three-bar fire might provide heat, but she couldn’t afford to try it. She ate a chip, chewing it around her mouth as if it were made to poison her. She’d lived on the streets; she knew you couldn’t afford to be fussy about
what you ate if you wanted to survive. This was surviving. The chip caught in her throat.
“And action,” Herr Smithton said, as she entered from stage right. “What, what are you doing girl? This is a rehearsal. Can’t you see they are preparing to dance?”
If the audience had paid for tickets, they were going to demand a refund.
“Sorry, I thought you’d finished. I’ll come back later, start applying the makeup.”
“Oh yes, you are that girl. I forgot. You are such a mouse. Mousey girl creeping about the ghosts. Do your thing. Make my beauties stand out, their eyes, their lips; they are to engage our audience. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. I forget your name.”
“Hen.”
“There, it is gone again. You would like tickets for the show? Work hard and I’ll give you a front-row seat, hell, you could be center-stage if you so wished. Can you dance?”
Hen shook her head. “No, sir.”
“Probably for the best. You have family, no doubt. A drunken father and a dead mother. An aunt who cares but just doesn’t have the space to take you in because the third bedroom belongs to the cats. I will need your help on the night. Take tickets, offer champagne. Try not to piss yourself. You are available. Halloween, yes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe we’ll make a star of you yet.”
When he’d left, Hen dragged a stool to the mannequin standing next to ruby-red and began applying his face. His pupils seemed to dilate, but that would be her imagination. Either way, he stared. Instead of hardening her, the streets had left her unnerved. It would be that she wasn’t used to being seen. Stepped over, kicked, spat on, but not looked at, and certainly not with such intensity. These dolls were magnificent. A shame they were set for one brief show. As the hours passed, she constructed five faces, the instructions as to makeup were specific and she had to keep reapplying, mainly because her skills were at least two decades out of date. She would leave ruby-red until last. She was the centerpiece, the leading lady. Before packing the makeup kit away, Hen reached out, held ruby-red’s hand. Her warmth radiated into the doll until it seemed they were both alive. When Hen let go, they both returned to nothing.
The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories Page 26