The Deadly Fields of Autumn

by Dorothy Bodoin

  “I’m convinced the weather determines what it plays,” I said. “For me, a lightning bolt brings the movie on. Maybe, way back, it was struck by lightning, and that set the anomaly in motion. It turned the set into a Stephen King monster.

  “That’s an interesting theory, but if it were true, my aunt never made the connection.”

  I took a sip of my coffee which was the right temperature for me and delicious, better than the coffee I brewed at home.

  “How did you know about the TV being blessed?” I asked.

  Stacia rifled through the papers and withdrew a blue sheet torn from the kind of pad that comes in four pastel colors. She handed it to me. “Because of this note.”

  The few sentences appeared to be hastily written, possibly scrawled under duress.

  At my request, Father Drake blessed this television set in an attempt to alter its unnatural behavior. It didn’t work.

  The note was unsigned.

  “It was taped to the side of a cabinet,” Stacia said. “Now I have my own information here.”

  She glanced at her notes. “Aunt Eustacia saw the television at Roland Radio Repair. She wanted a small TV to keep in her bedroom for nights when she couldn’t sleep.

  “I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Roland. He had retired by then and sold the store. He claimed he didn’t notice anything unusual about the set. The first he knew of a problem was when my aunt complained that she couldn’t get even one of the three channels. When she turned it on to demonstrate, it showed a modern program.”

  “Naturally. It’s the most perverse bit of electronics in the universe.”

  “Mr. Roland told me he’d purchased the TV from a man who said he found it in somebody’s trash. He didn’t usually operate this way, but there was something appealing about the set. He knew he could sell it.”

  I sipped more coffee and remembered a detail that might be relevant.

  “I bought a TV exactly like it in the Green House of Antiques, but so far there’s nothing strange about the duplicate.”

  “I think my aunt’s television—now yours—must be the only one like it in existence.”

  “But why is it like that? A Western movie for me, a concert for your aunt, who knows what else for the owners who came before us? Because of lightning?”

  “That’s what we have to find out,” she said. “I assume that’s what you want, too.”

  “I do—definitely.”

  Although I also wanted to see the movie in its entirety. If I didn’t manage to exorcise the demon that controlled the rogue TV, how would I ever know what happened to Susanna and Luke?

  “The trail ends with the unknown person who took the TV out with the trash,” Stacia said. “We can guess why he wanted to get rid of it. There’s no way to know who he was, and no way to look farther back into its history.”

  I refused to accept that. When one reaches a dead end, what is there to do but take a few steps backward?

  Stacia rose. “Will you let me know if you find out anything else?”

  “I will, and you do the same.”

  All I could do then was go home and wait for the next electrical storm.

  ~ * ~

  On Friday the spirit of Halloween pervaded every corner of Marston High School. The bulletin board in my classroom was covered with information about the Salem witch trials, although we’d passed that point of history in our chronology. In addition, the familiar motif of a witch riding her broomstick across the moon called attention to the theme.

  It was going to be a disruptive day. During second period, the Student Council had sold doughnuts, which students were allowed to eat in the classroom on this day only. Now, during fourth hour, National Honor Society members were delivering personal messages and candy to certain lucky students, an event which had already elicited chattering and giggling and the rattling of wrappings.

  The spell cast by sugar and secrets would last throughout the day. Enterprising students might also come to class masked although, we could hope, not in costume.

  Happy Halloween, I thought as I opened a message addressed to me and accompanied by a chocolate marshmallow ghost.

  You’re a nice teacher, Mrs. Ferguson. Guess Who. ???

  I glanced at my American Lit class and continued taking attendance. Did anyone who sat before me think I was nice?

  Not likely. I dropped my message and the ghost into my shoulder bag.

  Today’s story, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, was one of my favorites, although it was sad, and I cringed at outmoded nonsense like ‘her sister who had sinned.’ For added color, outside the window snowflakes drifted along in the frigid air. As they were light, no one was in danger of being snowed in. In the unlikely event the snow increased, we had plenty of chocolate in the room for sustenance.

  I turned my back on the class—always a risky move—to write a few background notes on the chalkboard. A shrill cry erupted at the back of the room. Jocelyn Masters stormed out of the room, her long blonde hair flapping in the air like wings. She took her purse but left her books on the desk.

  “Jocelyn…”

  But she slammed the door.

  I opened it and looked for her in the hall. In seconds she had disappeared, and I couldn’t leave the class unattended to follow her.

  “What happened?” I demanded.

  The two boys, Will and Rob, sitting closest to Jocelyn, looked like innocence personified, and the girl, Meghan, was turning pages in her textbook. I’d noticed that the four young people appeared to be the best of friends, often talking and laughing together during class when they should have been reading.

  “Did somebody say something to Jocelyn?” I asked.

  “She just got up and left,” Will said.

  “I saw that. Why?”

  Will shrugged. “Girls.”

  “She wasn’t feeling well, Mrs. Ferguson,” Meghan said.

  In that case, there was something I could do.

  “Start reading the story,” I said, and wrote a brief notice to the office, stating the time Jocelyn had left the classroom and the lack of an apparent reason. That would cover me in case Jocelyn left the building without permission.

  “Now,” I said. “When Mr. John Oakhurst steps out on the street of Poker Flat, what did he notice?”

  Three hands waved in the air.

  “Guys playing poker in the snow.”

  “Nothing.”

  “A lynch mob.”

  “Let’s go back to paragraph one,” I said.

  I glanced at the clock. Forty-five more minutes of class. Forty-five minutes until lunch. Forty-five minutes with my favorite author and an uninterested class.

  I thought of snow and being trapped and the chocolate marshmallow ghost in my purse—and started reading.

  Forty-two

  We plowed our way through The Outcasts of Poker Flat to the bitter end, as, one by one, the outcasts faced their destiny.

  Joyce, one of the more emotional members of the class, peered into her compact mirror and wiped her eyes.

  “Why did it end like that?” she demanded. “Why couldn’t they be saved?”

  “Get real, Joyce,” Rob said. “Who would save them?”

  Outside the school, in twenty-first century Michigan, it was snowing, still lightly, providing a perfect background for our story.

  “People can get snowed in and starve to death even today,” I said. “Sometimes they can’t be saved.”

  “Not in Oakpoint, though.” That was Rob, always wanting the last word. “You can always walk to a grocery store.”

  “I agree. It could happen in an isolated cabin up north or out west, in the mountains, though.”

  Five minutes before the bell rang, a shadow fell across the doorway. The new assistant principal, tall, intimidating Mr. Boski, said, “Excuse me, Mrs. Ferguson. Mr. Holloway, come with me.”

  “Who, me?” Will looked around, as if one of his classmates had the answer. “What’d I do?”

  Mr. Boski glared a
t him. “Yes, you. Take your books with you.”

  With a sullen face, Will obeyed.

  A hush fell over the class. When the bell rang, the usually rowdy group left the room in a near-decorous manner. The appearance of an administrator had that effect.

  Later, as Leonora and I ate our sandwiches in her room, I described Jocelyn’s dramatic exit.

  “I can’t imagine what that was about,” I said.

  “A lovers’ quarrel?”

  “Could be.”

  “Maybe she got a mean Halloween message from somebody,” Leonora said.

  That could happen, although sellers were cautioned to read the messages carefully to weed out any hint of insult or worse. But kids could be crafty and subtle, and not every exemplary student was above reproach.

  Jocelyn’s friend, Meghan, had taken Jocelyn’s belongings, including the message and a chocolate pumpkin, with her. I had planned to question Meghan privately, but she made a dramatic exit of her own, practically the first one out of the door.

  “I’m sure I’ll find out eventually,” I said.

  Later that day, in my conference period, I looked up from grading papers to see Mr. Boski at my door again. This couldn’t be good.

  “The Holloway boy has been bullying Jocelyn,” he said without preamble. “She asked to be transferred out of your class.”

  Nothing could have surprised me more.

  “But they seemed like such good friends,” I said, recalling all the times I’d seen them engaged in flirtatious banter and walking down the hall, hand in hand.

  “I don’t know about that, but he’s been sexually harassing her. If she can’t get a transfer, she wants you to change her seat.”

  And that would stop the harassment? Well, it would help if they weren’t sitting close to each other.

  “I had a talk with him,” Mr. Boski said. “He’s not to have any contact with Jocelyn in this school. If there’s another incident, he’s getting suspended. That won’t sit well with Coach Barrett.”

  Will was on the varsity football team, one of their star players, I understood. He might have more to worry about than his grade point average.

  “I’ll move Jocelyn to the front of the room and keep an eye on Will,” I said.

  “Do that.”

  In the interest of being proactive, I added, “What about the other girl, Meghan?”

  “I talked to her, too. Will hasn’t been bothering her. Just Jocelyn.”

  Of all the problems I’d encountered in this second class from hell, harassment was one I had never anticipated. If Will and Jocelyn had been boyfriend and girlfriend at one time, their romance had obviously degenerated into something quite different.

  “Thanks for letting me know,” I said.

  As if he’d do anything else.

  When I was alone, I reflected on what had happened and might have happened on past occasions.

  Sexual harassment was rampant, constantly in the news, and alive and well in my class where every student had a right to feel safe. How sad that Will had tarnished the happy spirit of Halloween Message Day with his behavior.

  What could I do now? Give them a lecture on harassment and bullying? That would be helpful, but another idea came to me almost immediately. I would introduce All Summer in a Day into our course work, even though that it was a modern story and we were in the nineteenth century in our survey.

  Like my World Lit students, they couldn’t possibly miss its lesson, and we could follow up Bradbury’s theme with discussion and writing.

  ~ * ~

  I couldn’t find my peaked witch’s hat, but the rest of my costume was in the bedroom, in one drawer or another.

  I didn’t need a hat. I had my black midi-dress, a crystal cat pin, an onyx dinner ring, and black fingernail polish. I also had a shade of lipstick so dark a shade of red, it was almost black. But the hat would have been a nice touch.

  Crane wouldn’t see me in my witch’s costume unless he stopped at the library after his shift.

  “That’s okay,” he’d said this morning after breakfast. “Leave it on till I come home. We’ll have our own Halloween party.”

  Julia was going with me. Among her possessions was a diamond tiara. When I asked her how she’d gotten it, she only said that it was a present. She intended to leave her long golden hair down and wear a pink dress with a sequined bodice.

  “If anyone asks, I’m a princess,” she said.

  “You’ll look like one.” We’d be quite a contrast, two sisters, one a princess and one a witch. “This is going to be more fun than renting a costume.”

  Only when I was dressed, I looked like I did every day, although I rarely wore black and didn’t care for dramatic makeup.

  Misty had been lying in the doorway observing me while I dressed. When I sprayed Joy perfume on my wrists, she began to growl softly.

  “What?”

  I stared at her, remembering another time she’d objected to a scent I wore. It was the bottle of Ann Haviland’s Wood Violet toilet water from the dime store in the ghost town known to us at the time as Forever.

  There was nothing unique or threatening about Joy, nothing to cause a dog to growl. Of course Misty wasn’t just any dog. She was my psychic collie.

  I crossed the room to pet her, and she nudged my arm with a whimper.

  Don’t go. Stay with us.

  What an inauspicious beginning to a Halloween party! I tried not to read anything sinister into her behavior. Maybe Misty just didn’t like seeing me in black.

  Forty-three

  We drove to the library on a magical white road that glistened in the October moonlight. Snow clung to the branches, held there by the cold temperature. It was easy to think that one could stop the car and scoop up a handful of diamonds embedded in the ground cover.

  “What a beautiful night!” Julia said. “But it looks more like Christmas Eve than Halloween.”

  A sudden wave of euphoria washed over me, bringing along with it an uncharacteristic bit of giddiness.

  “At a time like this, I feel like I could ride my broomstick across the moon,” I said.

  “You didn’t bring a broom,” Julia pointed out.

  “No, I didn’t. Maybe Miss Eidt has one in her office.”

  Julia laughed. “She might at that. Jennet, If you could fly anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

  “Wherever I could make the most mischief,” I said.

  “How unlike you, Jennet.”

  “Well, I’m a witch for the night.”

  The drive to the Corners was short but marginally hazardous as even a dusting of snow could turn a road into a skating rink. But, to Julia’s chagrin, we made it without incident. She thought I was driving too fast.

  Fairy lights hung from the lower branches of the library’s trees, and it seemed as if Miss Eidt had turned on every lamp inside the old white Victorian and lit every candle. She had banned overhead lights for the party, which was ideal for atmosphere but possibly not so conducive to safety.

  Blackberry, wearing a large orange ribbon around her neck, sat on the single wicker chair left on the porch for the winter, giving us her cold, jewel-eyed stare. From within, an eerie sound of agonized wind drifted out into the night. Miss Eidt had found her Ghostly Sounds of Halloween CD.

  She was waiting in the entrance to welcome her guests, dressed as the Queen of Hearts and wearing a prodigious amount of Valentine jewelry. At her side, Debby was a demure Alice in Wonderland in blue and white with a long straight blonde wig.

  “Jennet and Julia,” Miss Eidt said, “welcome to Fantasyland. That’s the name of the library tonight. Go and mingle. Sample our buffet. Lucy Hazen is in the Gothic Nook reading passages from her scariest books. Have a ball.”

  “At ten-thirty she’ll be reading tea leaves. It’ll be first come, first served,” Debby added. “You won’t want to miss that.”

  The mighty wind blew in a wolf howl that might have originated in the heart of the frozen north. I shive
red, feeling as if, with one touch, my body had just been encased in ice.

  “Good grief,” Miss Eidt said. “What’s that? Jennet, did you bring one of your pretty collies to the party?”

  “I’m sure they’re all at home,” I said.

  But were they?

  I remembered Misty growling at the scent of Joy and following me anxiously as I went downstairs. But surely she was home. I’d said goodbye to each of my dogs in the kitchen before I left. That included Misty.

  Don’t be silly, I told myself. It’s the CD, not a dog.

  I followed Julia to a buffet table spread with desserts, picked up a Halloween-decorated paper plate, and eyed the selections.

  “Look!” Julia said. “It’s a Yule Log.”

  Behind us somebody said, “It’s a Halloween Log. I made it.”

  The voice was familiar; so was the face. I’d met Edwina Endicott several times at the library, always browsing in the Supernatural section. Edwina was a self-proclaimed ghost hunter, the one other person who had seen the spirit of Violet Randall traveling on Huron Court with her collie. Or so she claimed. Edwina was also a little unhinged.

  On the other hand, why doubt her? I knew Violet haunted that insidious road. Perhaps she had shown herself to Edwina.

  “I’m a ghost,” Edwina announced.

  Her costume was a long white dress with wide, flapping sleeves. It looked like an exquisitely embroidered nightgown.

  “You look—er—ghostly,” I said.

  Julia appeared to be captivated by Edwina’s culinary creation. “It looks like a Yule Log to me.”

  “It’s a Halloween Log,” Edwina insisted. “Observe the orange icing and the chocolate bats on top.”

  She turned to me. “The ghosts of Foxglove Corners have been quiet lately, but maybe they’ll come out tonight. This is their night, you know. That’s why I decided to come as a ghost. To make them feel welcome.”

  I didn’t agree with Edwina about the lessening of psychic energy in Foxglove Corners. I could tell her about the ghost dog who cried inconsolably in the untenanted house where she’d died. But that was a ghost I didn’t want to share with her. In any event, it was futile to argue with Edwina about supernatural matters.