by Alan Spencer
“Oh, I believe you,” Craig joked. “Now go wipe your ass.”
He saluted them both. “Happy Halloween, boils and ghouls!”
They walked by the defiled jack-o’-lantern, both of them pinching their noses. Alice turned to him. “It’s strange that we’ve been next-door neighbors since kindergarten, and we’ve barely started talking until two years ago. I mean really being friends.”
“You didn’t talk much when you were a kid,” Craig defended himself. “You hung out with Neil and J.J. and you watched us do stuff.”
“Life’s easier that way. You can’t mess up.” She thought about Neil. “And since when did Neil become such an asshole? He won’t talk to us anymore.”
“Neil’s got a girlfriend, and he plays football. Hot shit, man. We don’t participate in extracurricular activities either. That makes us losers, remember?”
“It’s just you and me,” Alice reiterated. “It’s too bad J.J. moved to Tennessee to live with his uncle.”
Alice mulled over something as if concerned, and Craig pressed her to speak, “You’re thinking about something? Are you thinking about lighting something on fire?—forking a yard?”
“My parents are out of town, you want to get drunk?”
Now I get it. This is why I’m living this memory. Another life-changing decision. I get it, Dr. Krone. Real smart. Regrets are a bitch. I’m not sure where this is necessarily going, though.
That night, Craig feared his father would notice his absence and punish him accordingly. Alice read into his hesitation. “You’re afraid your dad will smell booze on your breath? Hey, we’re next-door neighbors. Check in, and sneak out your window. I’ll unlock the back door. They won’t notice. They’ll be asleep by now.” She widened her eyes, emulating a ghoul. “The night is ours.”
She was correct by mentioning his parents. Brandon often stayed up late on Saturday nights, but after midnight, he was passed out. He normally watched late-night Cinemax, while Tina was asleep on the couch.
“They’ll probably both be asleep.” Alice was building him up to drink with her. “I have something I want to tell you too.” Her eyes widened like a witch before her cauldron. “I want to make a pact.”
“What?—like with one of those Ouija boards?”
“Something like that.” Her lips twitched. She bit them to subdue a grin. “Just do it. I’ll wait for you. It’ll be worth it, I promise.”
They walked the rest of the way home. He checked his watch, and it read three in the morning. Arriving in his yard, and Alice going to her house, they split up. Walking to his house, Craig peered into the front bay window. Brandon was unconscious in front of the television, sprawled against a stack of pillows. He caught two bare-chested women necking in a hot tub on the television screen. Craig stifled a laugh, and then noticed Tina was on the couch asleep as well, her head resting in Brandon’s lap. The two had a party of their own. A bottle of vodka, a carton of orange juice, and two cans of pineapple juice were strewn on the coffee table.
“Now it’s my turn to party.”
Noting the scene was clear, he skipped to Alice’s house next door. What did she want from him that night, he had always wondered even into his adult years, and now he was going to find out the truth. He didn’t go to her house originally. He was too scared to go against his father, but now, he didn’t care.
He was starting to enjoy his treatment. How many more mysteries would be unraveled by the end of this session?
Walking into her backyard, standing outside in front of the sliding glass door, Alice stood on the opposite side. She pressed her face against the window, and using her open mouth as a suction, she turned her mouth into a huge gaping maw. The expression always made Craig belly laugh.
She pushed open the sliding glass door after enjoying Craig’s amusement long enough. “Let’s get fucked up.”
He air toasted, tipping his head back, then bellowed in an accent like Bela Lugosi’s, “Happy Halloween, my darling, can you tell me where the open bar is?”
Inside the house, the kitchen was decorated with black and orange balloons taped to every surface. A plastic tarantula and a black cat poster were on display, a background of cheesy Halloween fun. The sound of screaming echoed from the other room, and Craig followed the alarming noise. A guy in his late teens was watching The Exorcist on television, sitting on a recliner with red glazed eyes. Craig heard a demented demon growl, “Your mother sucks cock in hell!” and he lost it to a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
He composed himself, and then asked, “Did I miss the part where she masturbates with a crucifix?”
The guy watching the TV was unaffected by Craig’s question. He enjoyed another toke from his joint, and then he raised it to Craig. “Here y’ go.”
Alice nudged him. “Don’t be a chicken shit. It’s Halloween. It’s a toke, it’s not like he’s asking you to smoke his pole.”
He accepted the offer despite himself, despite knowing his father would smell it on him from a mile away and beat him to an inch of his life. But now he didn’t care about his father’s wrath. He sampled the joint. Waiting for a big change, he didn’t feel anything different. No hallucinations or munchies. What he really wanted was a shot of booze from the table behind the stranger. Five kinds of off-brand whiskey stared him down. The amber-brown fluids refracted the television’s light, begging him to take a nip. Craig had sampled many bourbons and whiskeys from his father’s collection in the past and accumulated an appreciation for hard liquor. He learned if he sipped a little from each bottle, his father wouldn’t notice his dwindling reserves.
After finishing another round of smoking the jay, Alice introduced the guy watching the movie. “This is Jake. He’s my cousin. He lives out of town, but he stopped by to say hello. He visited his girlfriend, but they broke up tonight.”
Jake enjoyed another toke, his eyes refusing to leave the screen. “Ah, whatever, she wouldn’t put out anyway. After a month of dating, what’s the point if they don’t put out?”
She motioned for him to leave the room, and Craig swiped the bottle of Brown Barrel Whiskey. He aimed to get drunk. It was happy Halloween time. And he was ready for the secret he never learned from his past. She had something to tell him, and he was ready to hear it.
They walked upstairs to the kitchen. Alice wore a concerned expression on the way. Her eyes were glazed, and she hadn’t smoked that much weed. Was she going to cry? His concerns were proven wrong when she removed a four-inch kitchen knife from the kitchen drawer.
“Take a drink,” she insisted, running her finger down the dull side of the blade. “And I’ll have one too.”
Craig threw back a swig, scrutinizing the blade. “What’s wrong? You look really upset. And, um, what’s with the knife?”
She smirked, though she only briefly wore the expression. She drank with purpose, swallowing it like water. “You mentioned Neil. It got me thinking, what’s it going to be like when we graduate high school? Will we move on and not see each other anymore? If so, I think that’s bullshit.”
He was honest—and this was the adult talking, “People get jobs and married, and it’s hard to stay in touch. We’d have to be next-door neighbors for the rest of our lives. How about that? That’d be fun. You could borrow my scotch, and I could borrow your whiskey.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes spaced out on the knife. “So let’s make it official. Really seal the deal.”
She slit the underside of her forearm, inches from her wrist, and it cut deep enough to bleed a good deal. She extended the knife to him, the tip red with her blood. “Now you do the same.” She wrinkled her nose, experiencing the first inklings of pain. “We’ll make a blood pact not to lose touch when we graduate.”
He eyed the knife pensively. This is what she wanted. After all this time wondering what she was going to do that night. You idiot. You thought she wanted to ask you out on a date or something. She really wanted to make a stupid pact.
He slammed another mouthful
of whiskey, and feeling the buzz now, he sucked in a new breath, building his confidence, tightening his body, preparing to watch skin part via a sharp edge. He seized the handle, placed the tip of the blade on his forearm, and guided it, parting enough flesh that blood seeped free, willed to the surface when he gripped his arm above the wound. Now bleeding freely, she offered her arm to him. “Rub your blood against mine. Doesn’t it make sense to form a blood pact on Halloween?”
They grinded arms and the blood mixed together, the connection warm, metallic, and binding.
He offered another thought on the future, “Even if we don’t live in the same area, there’s always the phone or a weekend getaway trip. It’d be nice to escape the wife and kids—whoever they may be.”
“I’m not having any fucking kids.” She took her arm back, smeared with two types of blood. “They can suck somebody else’s tits for milk.”
“Right on.”
They toasted to the anti-child cause, enjoying a nip straight from the bottle. Afterwards, they washed off their arms and bandaged the cuts. Craig asked, “Where did you learn to come up with a blood pact?”
“The Boy Scouts used to do it for tribal stuff before AIDS and hepatitis became such a serious concern.”
They overhead the screams from the basement, and Alice suggested, “Let’s get high and finish watching The Exorcist.”
Before he could answer her, she hurried to the other room, and Craig following after her, enticed by the prospect of watching Linda Blair levitate.
Dr. Krone poured himself a screwdriver because the Horsy residence had the ingredients right there on the coffee table. He looked down at Tina and Brandon fast asleep, then he peered at the television screen. A man was smearing whipped cream and pouring chocolate sauce on a naked woman in a chef’s hat. They were romping in the kitchen of a greasy spoon. He turned down at Brandon and asked him, “Porn is ageless, isn’t it?”
He parted Tina’s hair, his hip popping to bend down to her level. The doctor caressed her hair with a feather’s touch. He didn’t want to wake her. He focused on her and the bruises on her arm from where Brandon had grabbed her the other day during an argument.
He whispered to her, leaning in so Brandon couldn’t hear him, “I know about the things you always wanted to do to your husband.”
Mason Owens Woods
Craig checked his arm. There was no healing mark, or wound, or scar. The drunken sensation vanished. The stench of weed was missing too. He watched Linda Blair on the screen one moment, and the next, he was riding his Huffy bicycle down the bike path in Mason Owens Woods. The overhead Shagbark, hickory, and oak tree limbs draped him in shade. He caught a white-tailed deer shoot through a pair of trees. He kept pedaling, ignoring nature. His destination was Lake Jacomo. He wanted to swim, even if it was alone. Neil and J.J. were at Boy Scout camp, and he was alone right now for the summer.
His mother thought he was riding in the neighborhood, but he changed course without telling her. Three blocks of the same street was repetitive, but this bike course was much more adventurous.
I’m not sure what memory this is. I can’t remember.
He looked around, sensing a person was following him. Craig slammed the brakes and listened. The ruffle of leaves and the soft breeze circled him, and he trained his ears harder, trying to hear his stalker’s mistake. Perhaps the follower would step on a twig or crunch over a patch of leaves. After a time, he gave up and continued to ride his bike. But there it was again. The roll of his tires against the path, it was matched by another set of tires.
He hit the brakes again and turned around sharply. “Is anybody there?”
Craig was scared. Tina advised him not to venture out too far from the house. There were strangers out there, she warned, and he was not to talk to them.
What if a stranger really was following him?
He pedaled in retreat, not knowing how to escape. Craig looped back the way he’d come. The matching roll of tires didn’t change.
He peddled faster.
Craig shouted, his voice cracking, “Leave me alone!”
Then his bike chain snapped. He tipped over and slammed onto his side.
With the rush of pain arriving, now he remembered this memory.
“Ahhhhh!”
He cried so loud it hurt his own eardrums. Craig bounced three times onto the bike path. He turned his ankle and slammed his knee into the pavement. A large gash bled from his knee. He couldn’t move his right leg. The ankle was broken. The agony was threefold in a child’s body, a paralyzing endeavor. He wept, unable to move, his back flat against the pavement, saying, “Help me, help me, help me, help me, help me!”
The mysterious stalker didn’t show up to nab him. The wind brushed on the gash, and it burned in increasing conflagrations. “It hurts,” he complained to nobody. “Ouch, it hurts, it hurts.”
And then there she was, standing above him—Alice Denny. The woman had regressed from blooming post-puberty woman to an eight-year-old. Her hair was fashioned in two ponytails, fastened by lady bug hair clips. She wore purple sweatpants and a purple top. Alice was the one following him on bicycle. Ironically, the bicycle was purple too and had a banana seat. Pink streamers shot out the handlebars, wildly whipping in the wind.
She was shocked, viewing the blood. It stole what bravery it required to confront him. She stood still as a statue. The only things moving were her widening eyes and jaw that steadily dropped. Finally, she managed a question. “A-are you okay?”
He stifled his initial response to cry some more. She wanted to help—to be his friend. He sensed now that he was thinking through an adult mind. “I’ll go tell somebody,” she relayed, speeding off for help. “Hold on, Craig!”
Before anything else happened, he was now sitting in his backyard. How he got there, it was blink-instant and without explanation. He rested on the patio furniture in his backyard with his bad ankle propped on a plastic bucket, his foot wrapped in a splint. He was bored and punished to house arrest. It was two days after the bike accident. Alice eyed him through the notches of the wooden fence. Craig noticed her but didn’t say anything. That’s when she started randomly throwing things into the yard—a beach ball, baseball, aluminum bat, football, and then a yo-yo.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking over the array of toys. “Hey, come over here.”
He was desperate for company and was delighted when she raced around the other side of the fence and opened the gate. She was eager to play. She too was experiencing a droll summer.
Craig smiled at her, and this was the adult in him. “I’m bored.”
He knew those two words would send her into game mode. Alice picked up the aluminum bat and politely handed it to him. “You swing, I’ll pitch the ball. You don’t even have to get up out of your chair.” She raised her voice to a shrill, putting her entire body into the statement. “Knock it out of the park!”
This was the beginning of their friendship. Craig loved this moment. But he never thanked her for saving him in the woods.
And now was his chance.
Dr. Krone walked the bike path in Mason Owens Woods in a calm swagger. Again, he couldn’t get enough of the summer air. The present winter was miserable in Indiana. Bitter cold. It was hard to wake up from bed, it being so frigid. He wanted to stay under the toasty blankets and sleep the winter away until spring. Summer and spring were perfect, he kept telling himself. But fall was the best season, especially with the rain. It wasn’t anything an umbrella couldn’t fix. It brought people closer together, the rain.
But the mind is the greatest escape, he thought.
He sighed, enjoying the wistful moment by keeping his easy pace down the path. “I’m very comfortable in here, Mr. Horsy. I think I’ll stay for a while.”
Nobody utilized the bike path. He willed them to go away. He could do that.
He could do a lot of things in Craig’s mind.
Dr. Krone completed his trek. Stopping, he bent down onto his
haunches. “Ah,” he announced jubilantly, “fresh air!”
He dipped his two fingers in Craig’s spilt blood and tasted it.
Trapped
“Stay the hell in there!”
“You’re drunk again.”
The throaty roar of “Woman, you’re controlling me. Why don’t you go out more? You can fuck about with Betsy. Go shopping with her, whatever it is you women do without your husbands around. You’re always home, and I’m tired of it. A man needs time to himself, but that’s something you don’t understand. Stay in there. Don’t say anything either. Shut your mouth. I don’t want to hear a word.”
Tina was startled by the fu-whump of the mattress being wedged against the bathroom door. She tried to open the door, but she second guessed herself, rattled, her face a mess of emotions. Her hair hung in split ends and random tangles. Craig observed purple-black bruises on her arms. She slid down the door and closed her eyes, her breath expelled in weak gasps as if afraid to breathe at all. “I’m safe here,” she whispered under her breath, “he’s outside…he’s outside.”
Craig hid under the large wicker laundry basket during the ordeal. It tipped over when he fidgeted, his legs tingling, losing circulation. She was startled, but then relieved. She drew him close, pressing his head up against her chest, her arms bringing him in smothering tight. Her trembles abated the longer she cradled him. She smelled of body odor. He also recognized another smell, categorized from an adult olfactory index. Sex. Her undershirt clung tight to her. She had no bra underneath. The top button of her blue jeans was undone.
“He’s drunk is all,” she murmured trancelike. Her lips were so close to his ear every word was clear, though she didn’t mean for him to hear. “He gets horny. And then he gets angry. He’s dropped from the greatest feeling after we’re done, and then he’s brought back to reality. It makes sense. He doesn’t mean to hurt me. He doesn’t mean to…”