Are they real? Is this happening?
What have they done to my home?
She is off balance, unsure of her footing. Initially poised to retake control as soon as she was home, she hesitates, dazzled and confused by the change in the place and the multitude of costumed characters milling about.
Costumes! That's it!
Understanding brings relief-a costume party.
How fitting.
She catches a glimpse of her host's image as he passes a mirror. No costume. Equally fitting, she thinks, since he will soon be making a permanent costume change.
With party guests-friends and family-numbering over thirty, neither the entrance hall nor any other room on the first floor was large enough to contain them all. Jen and Jeremy reigned over the revelry, suitably dressed as Alice's Red Queen and the bird-eating 01' King Cole. Both of them relished their roles as regal hosts and played the parts to the hilt. Jeremy faithfully manned the door, with Jen by his side most of the time-when she wasn't running from the kitchen to the dining room making sure there was enough food-until all the guests had arrived. Jen was a bundle of energy and personality. More than once during the night, guests commented to each other how happy she looked, and how much in love she and Jeremy seemed to be. Jen sensed their approval, like a heated blanket wrapped round her life, and was more content than she could ever remember being.
By 9:00, the first floor was so crowded, people were congregating halfway up the main stairs, and the kitchen stairs as well, and the party was in danger of overflowing onto the second floor and areas that were still under renovation. When no other guests arrived by 9:30, Jen was relieved and had a moment to actually enjoy herself and look around. Though not all guests wore costumes, the majority did, but many had not bothered to adhere to the fairy-tale theme. Thus, costumes ranged from recognizable theme characters like Little Bo Peep, Shrek, the Big Bad Wolf, and Little Red Riding Hood (Jeremy's friend, Ed, and his wife, Melissa), to Jason in a hockey mask and several characters from Star Wars including Princess Leia and Darth Vader. A few movie superheroes, like Batman and Spiderman, were represented also. One ofJen's college friends, who had made the trek up from Rhode Island, came dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West, complete with a fake hooked nose and green skin. But the show stopper was Debbie Watson. When she appeared at the top of the stairs over the main entrance hall and lobby crowded with milling, chattering guests, the entire room grew quiet and people from other rooms on the floor, sensing something in the silence, came to see what was going on. Even those people who could not identify her costume or knew why it was significant, recognized that it was, indeed, significant to many of the other guests.
Jennifer had her back to the stairs when Debbie made her appearance. She turned to see what everyone was looking at. Her initial reaction was puzzlement; like many of her guests, she couldn't figure out who Debbie Watson was supposed to be.
Jackie Nailer was one of the few guests who recognized her costume. It sent chills through him.
After shedding his coat upon his arrival and verbally sparring with his sister, Jackie had declinedJen's offer to lead him through the house and introduce him around to the guests. He beat a hasty retreat to the dining room where he helped himself to the lavish spread of shrimp, clams casino, Buffalo wings, every kind of sliced meat you could want, not to mention salads of the leafy vegetable and pasta kind, meatballs, lasagna, pepper and sausage, plus a wide assortment of dips and things to dip with. It looked like Jen had spared no expense.
Jackie filled a paper plate with an assortment of finger food and went into the kitchen where he stood, cramped by the stove with barely enough room to eat. He gave up and headed back to the lobby, via the hallway, admiring again how bright and livelyJen had made the creepy old place.
I wonder what Eleanor would think of the place if she could see it now, he mused. He stepped from the hallway into the lobby. The stairs were to his immediate left. At the same moment, Debbie Watson made her appearance at the top of the stairs. Seeing everyone turn and look up, Jackie followed. For a moment, the world felt squeezed; he felt constriction in his chest and it was suddenly hard to take a breath. He gaped at Jeremy's sister, her hair frizzed out wildly around her head and streaked with gray and black amid the blond strands; her long black dress, buttoned high on her neck and reaching to her ankles. Though she was too young, too short, and just too attractive, Jackie immediately recognized that she was dressed as Eleanor Grimm. Despite the shortcomings, Jackie thought she had done a great job of capturing the essence of Eleanor Grimm somehow.
It was unnerving.
When she started down the stairs, the way she moved, the way she walked, were not the movements of Debbie Watson but rang true of how Jackie remembered the witch. But most of all-and worst of all-she became Eleanor Grimm when she looked at Jackie, sending chills from his head to his bowels.
Expecting at any moment to hear the witch's cackling voice inside his head, Jackie Nailer pushed through the crowd to the office coatroom, grabbed his jacket, and beat a hasty exit avoiding another glance at Debbie Watson.
Steve Nailer was in the kitchen, tucked in shadow at the corner of the kitchen table, when he saw, amid the flow, Jackie standing and eating by the stove. He wanted to speak up and say hello to his brother, but as when he tried to ask anyone for help, he found he couldn't and a dull throbbing headache was born in his brain. Instead, he scrunched down to avoid being seen, and sipped at the Styrofoam cup in hand, wincing at every taste.
Once he'd gotten inside and realized he wasn't going to black out-not right away at least-Steve had avoided his sister and mother's hug-fest and quickly made his way through the party. Hungry, he followed Darth Vader and Batman to the dining room. Once there, however, seeing and smelling all the food, he felt nauseated. A strange thought suddenly occurred to him that he was unable to resist-namely that tequila would settle his stomach and taste very good. Though he had never had the stuff and knew nothing of its taste, he was seized with a craving for it, as if it were something he loved and had not had for a long time.
The bar was set up on a side table in the dining room, also, and was self-help. The table was stacked with a healthy assortment of liquor around two metal ice buckets and a stack of large, heavy-duty Styrofoam cups. On the floor next to the table were two coolers, one filled with an assortment of beer and wine coolers, and the other soft drinks, water, and juices. With people constantly moving about and paying no attention to him, it was easy for Steve to fill a cup with Jose Cuervo tequila. The corner seat at the kitchen table was the perfect spot to sit and sip his drink, unobtrusively.
He took a 'sip, grimaced, and wondered why he'd ever thought this was going to taste good. Yet, he couldn't stop himself from taking another sip, and another. That was not a good sign. Nervously, his hands began to tremble. He became aware of a shift in the sound level of the party. The music was louder, more abrasive. Suddenly, people were moving through the kitchen quickly, going by him with direction and purpose, heading for the front of the house. Something was going on; something was happening.
Placing his cup on the table, Steve slid out from behind it and stood. He tottered and nearly fell over. He managed to grab the edge of the table just in time to stay upright. The room twisted around him and curled back into place. Feeling the effects of the tequila, he staggered into the hallway. His brother, Jackie, was in the lobby at the other end of the hall, looking up the stairs. Abruptly, Jackie disappeared into the crowd and reemerged a moment later at the front door with his coat on. Without a look back, he left.
What's wrong with him? Steve wondered. Why's he leaving so early and looking so scared? Steve could see other people in the lobby, too, standing in a semi-circle around the bottom of the stairs, looking up at whatever had caused Jackie to flee. Peter Pan, Luke Skywalker, and Little Bo Peep, among other costumed characters both familiar and not so, stood transfixed, piquing Steve's curiosity. The crowd moved back as one and the doorway to the hall
darkened as a figure reached the bottom of the stairs and turned toward Steve in the hallway.
He stiffened as the high-pitched whirof electric cicadas filled his head, along with the smell of cotton candy. He flinched, expecting his next waking moment to be hours, even days, later; instead, he stepped out of his body again, just as he had at Thanksgiving and in his dreams. Again, he had the sensation of being bal- loonish, attached to his body by an invisible tether, forced to watch from outside his own head as his body acted with a will not his own.
"How do you like it?" Debbie Watson asked, walking slowly up to his body. Though he couldn't see his own face-had no control over his floating existencehe could tell from Debbie's beaming reaction that his own countenance must be smiling.
"It's perfect," he heard his voice say and shivered at the sound of it-so different, so alien, so not like his normal voice.
How could Jen's sister-in-law not hear that?
The answer came to him: she didn't notice a difference because she knows that there is a difference. She knows that's not me in my body! He was sure of it, just as he was sure she knew who was in him.
His body leaned close and whispered something in Debbie's ear. As they separated, Steve could have sworn that his head turned and his eyes looked directly at him for a moment, recognizing him, seeing him. In that moment, Steve got a hint of who Debbie Watson was supposed to be.
His thoughts were scrambled again when his body set off down the hall, Debbie Watson in tow.
Diane Nailer started after Jackie and the cute Pied Piper, but there were suddenly a lot of people in the hall, going toward the front hall, cutting her off. Over the shoulder of a tall Darth Vader she saw Steve go by in the hall in the same direction as Jackie. When she finally muscled her way into the corridor, it was just in time to witness Debbie Watson's approach.
Like her eldest son, Diane immediately recognized Debbie's costume and who she was supposed to be more by the way she carried herself than anything else. Her entire scalp went cold and prickly. She was filled with an immediate sense of outrage stronger than any she'd ever felt before.
How dare that girl dress like that! Is she teasing Steve? Why would she do that?
These thoughts raced to her mouth as Debbie and her son turned and came toward her. Just as air was about to pass over her vocal cords, giving sound to her words, Steve looked at her-
-and she turned to Jennifer, next to her in the lobby, and said: "I just love your sister-in-law's costume."
"She made it herself," Jen replied and looked at her mother with concern. "Are you feeling okay, Mom? Are you all right? You look kind of peaked."
"Yeah, sure," Diane lied. She didn't know why, but she suddenly felt anything but all right.
Hovering disembodied in the hallway, Steve saw his mother in the dining room doorway, watching, a look of horror on her face. Steve's heart soared with hope. He could tell by the look on his mother's face that she recognized who Debbie Watson was portraying and that she knew something was wrong with him, even if she couldn't see the physical separation of his mind and body. But in the next moment, his hopes were dashed as his body reached her, his head looked at her, and his mother reacted in the same way that Debbie Watson had that day upstairs. Her eyes widened, her face muscles slackened, and she nodded, a goofy smile on her face. His body continued by and his mother wandered aimlessly toward the front hall as Steve was tugged along behind.
He knew where his body was going before it got there-the third-floor corridor with the secret panel and stairway leading to the attic. Whatever was at the top of those stairs, Steve sensed he had spent a lot of time there during his many prolonged blackouts while at Jen's the past week. And it looked as though Jeremy's sister had spent the time up there with him. He wondered why and wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
His hand touched the wall, and the panel slid open. His body, with Debbie on his heels, went up the narrow stairs, the panel closing behind them. Bumping and bobbing against the low stairway ceiling, Steve followed, stunned and disoriented by what he suddenly knew to be the truth about his blackouts, what he should have remembered all along from the TV show at Halloween. His body had been up there, looking for something, all week. It appeared that with Debbie Watson's help, it had found it.
A loud, female voice suddenly spoke up in his mind and his head turned and winked at him. You're a bright boy-when I let you be!
Steve cringed at the sound of the old woman's words followed by cackling laughter, making his disembodied head feel like it would explode-only how could it, when he wasn't in his own head?
This can't be happening. What the hell is going on?
At the top of the stairs, his body and Debbie Watson entered a small room whose every space was inhabited by books and loose-leaf manuscripts piled on and around a small, old-fashioned banker's desk. His body went to the desk and pushed aside books until retrieving a long, silver letter opener with a razor-sharp edge. Pulling the terrified Steve along, his body went to the lectern where Debbie stood. His hands flipped a few pages. Debbie held out her wrists. His eyes looked back at Steve again and his mouth loudly spoke a litany of foreign words. Though the strange words came from his lips and vocal cords, Steve could hear the old woman's voice in them, just the same. Worse, looking at his body now as it made a deep puncture in Debbie's arm and, mumbling the foreign incantation, bent over to drink the purple blood flowing from the wound, he could see the old woman inside his body and knew, irrevocably, who it was possessing him.
Run and hide orI'm gonna get you! the witch, Eleanor Grimm crowed, her tongue, lips, and teeth stained with Debbie Watson's blood.
Run, Steve did; chased by howling laughter from his own mouth, he reflexively pulled away and felt the tether connecting him to his body snap. Reality disappeared, he tumbled into a deep darkness, and kept on falling.
IV
VALENTINE'S DAY
Roses are red ... violets are blue ... out with the old .. . and in with the new.
Mt. Sugarloaf Middle School was about as architecturally attractive as a headstone. It, in fact, resembled a gravestone when viewed head-on. Three floors with an arching roof into the apex of which was set a clock whose hands were perpetually fixed at 3:47. On Monday, January 2, Diane Nailer dropped Steve off in front of the school. Parking at the curbside, she reached for a hug and kiss. He pulled back and shot her an angry look. He quickly got out of the car and walked to the building without a glance back.
He won't even touch me anymore, Diane thought as she drove away, battling tears. She had planned on testing her interview skills today by applying for several local jobs she'd found in the newspaper, but after the way her youngest son, her Little Steve, had just treated her, she no longer had the desire. She went home instead, parked herself in front of the tube, and spent the morning intermittently sobbing, eating, and feeling sorry for herself.
She is enthralled with the place. It is so alive, so full of movement the very air seems to hum from the constant activity. And the noise. Hundreds of voices all jabbering at once-shrieks, laughter, howls, whoops, lockers banging, books dropping, doors slamming, feet stomping--all come together in a barrage of sound that is like a symphony. Inside the front door, turning this way and that, she listens and looks at the diverse scenes going on around her.
Most beautiful of all, the sight, sound and smell of children. Delectable, innocent, prepubescent children.
I think I've died and gone to heaven.
She bursts into laughter at the hilarity of the thought.
Randy Gaste closed his locker and stood on his toes to see over the throng of kids surging through the main hall of the school. Randy's locker was on the first floor, within sight of the front doors. Normally, he would hang out in the caf with his friends until the bell for homeroom, but today he had promised his dad, and Mrs. Nailer, that he would meet Steve at school and help him through his first day. Randy didn't mind; Steve was okay, if a little weird. They hadn't seen much of each o
ther since Halloween, and Randy looked forward to rekindling the friendship now that Steve was going to regular school.
There!
He saw Steve standing in the middle of the hallway, laughing as if he'd just heard a great joke. Randy walked up behind him and slapped him on the back.
"Hey, Kid! What's so funny?"
Steve flinched and looked angry for a moment. Randy didn't notice and stood next to him surveying the scene that was Sugarloaf Middle School on a typical Monday.
"So, whaddya think?" Randy asked.
Steve's expression softened and he gave him a goofy smile. "It's delicious!"
Randy laughed. "Come on. I'll show you to homeroom so you can get your locker number and combination." He led the way through the throng of adolescents, and Steve followed.
Oh, the smells! She catches the scent of each individual she passes.
The freckle faced girl in jeans and a Power Puff Girls T-shirt had chocolate frosted Pop-Tarts for breakfast. She brushed after with bubblegum flavored toothpaste. She washed her hair with strawberry-scented shampoo and her soap has the distinctive scent ofIvory brand.
The tow-headed boy with the big nose and the hand-medown clothes too big for him had bacon and eggs for breakfast. His teeth haven't been brushed in months and he hasn't bathed in days.
She lets the odors wash over her and opens her thoughts to the minds around her.
Like a camera flash going off right in her face, the tumult of thoughts and feelings that rush in stun her.
There are too many.
They are too loud, too strong.
Children bump into her-their touch assaults her.
She must withdraw...
The experience leaves her shaken.
A younger student, half Steve's size, bumped into him and Randy Gaste laughed.
"Ya gotta watch out for the puny fifth and sixth graders," Randy said. "They're deadly. Some of them are so small, if they bump into you, they end up head- buttin' you in the balls!"
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