Halloween Read online

  “What do you mean?” he inquired with oneiric inspiration, the normalcy of dream being the only thing that kept his mind together at this stage.

  “Mean? I don’t mean nothing, you meany.”

  Double negative, he thought, relieved to have retained contact with a real world of grammatical propriety. Double negative: two empty mirrors reflecting each other’s emptiness to infinite powers, nothing canceling out nothing.

  “Nothing?” he echoed with an interrogative inflection.

  “Yup, that’s where you’re going.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” he asked, gripping his cane tightly, sensing a climax to this confrontation.

  “How? Don’t worry. You already made sure of how-wow-wow . . . TRICK OR TREAT!”

  And suddenly the thing came gliding down through the darkness.

  IV

  He was found the next day by Father Mickiewicz, who had telephoned earlier after failing to see this clockwork parishioner appear as usual for early mass on All Souls Day. The door was wide open, and the priest discovered his body at the bottom of the stairs, its bathrobe and underclothes grotesquely disarranged. The poor man seemed to have taken another fall, a fatal one this time. Aimless life, aimless death: Thus was his death in keeping with his life, as Ovid wrote. So ran the priest’s ad hoc eulogy, though not the one he would deliver at the deceased’s funeral.

  But why was the door open if he fell down the stairs? Father M. came to ask himself. The police answered this question with theories about an intruder or intruders unknown. Given the nature of the crime, they speculated on a revenge motive, which the priest’s informal testimony was quick to contradict. The idea of revenge against such a man was far-fetched, if not totally meaningless. Yes, meaningless. Nevertheless, the motive was not robbery and the man seemed to have been beaten to death, possibly with his own cane. Later evidence showed that the corpse had been violated, but with an object much longer and more coarse than the cane originally supposed. They were now looking for something with the dimensions of a broomstick, probably a very old thing, splintered and decayed. But they would never find it in the places they were searching.

  MONSTERS

  Stewart O’Nan

  Some fundamentalist Christians have made Halloween into an opportunity for evangelism: dropping tracts into trick-or-treat bags and staging “Hell Houses” in which displays of sins and their horrifying consequences are supposed to scare visitors into redemption. But Father Don’s congregation in “Monsters” obviously enjoys Halloween as family event, and this church’s spooky displays are all in fun and for fund raising.

  There’s no hint of the fantastic or supernatural in “Monsters,” nothing truly shocking. It’s just a quietly brilliant story with its own singular darkness. It is a slice of everyday life. But it’s also, among other things, about learning there are “real things to be afraid of” and that no one’s life is entirely ordinary or free of shadows.

  They were going to be monsters, for the church—Creatures from the Black Lagoon. Mark wanted to be Dracula, but Father Don said only one person could, and Derek convinced him it would be more fun. You got to wear a suit with a zipper up the back and a head that fit like a diving helmet. They could scare the little kids and gross out the girls. No one would know who they were.

  “Plus it’s boring by yourself,” Derek said. “You just sit there.”

  "Yeah," Mark said, partly because he was secretly afraid of being in there by himself in the dark. "Do we get fangs?"

  “You don’t need fangs,” Derek said. “There’s already teeth in the head.”

  It was Mark’s only argument. It was like that with Derek, he was always in charge, which was all right, because Mark was shy and terribly aware and ashamed of it. Plus Derek never ditched him like Peter did. Peter was his brother; he was only two years older than Mark. They’d always played together, ever since they were little, but since Peter started at the high school this fall, he was never home after school. At dinner when Mark brought it up, his father just sighed. “Why don’t you go next door?” he said. “You and Derek should be able to find something to do.”

  That’s what they were doing, just messing around. It was a Thursday after school and there was nothing to do, so Derek brought out his Daisy and they took turns plinking the same six pop bottles off some old railroad ties Derek’s stepfather had piled in the back lot. The gun was so weak they didn’t even fall over sometimes, just tinked and wobbled.

  It was Derek’s idea to play Shooting Gallery. One of them hid behind the ties and then popped up and you had to shoot him. You only pumped the gun once, and they had their jackets on; it only stung if it hit bare skin. You crawled around behind the ties and then popped up and the other person tried to shoot you.

  They did that for ten minutes but it was boring. Then Mark came up with Moving Target. In this one, you jumped up and ran and then dove behind the ties. This was even more boring because no one got shot.

  Then Derek made up Ambush. The guy with the gun hid somewhere behind the piles of woodchips and gravel, and the guy who popped up threw hand grenades—just round stones Derek’s stepfather used to edge the little goldfish ponds he built.

  Mark had the gun. He pumped it once and crouched behind a sharp pallet of bricks, waiting for Derek to lob one of the stones. They were a little smaller than baseballs, and he didn’t want to get hit with one. He peeked around the corner and saw Derek start to pop up and toss the grenade like a soldier, like a hook shot—saw the stone leave his hand and arc towards him.

  He’d have time to think about this later: how impossible it all was. He saw the stone was going to miss, so he ducked around the corner, firing without even bringing the gun up. From the hip, just like in the movies.

  He expected Derek to run but he was watching the grenade like it might really explode.

  It was just one shot, from the hip.

  Derek grabbed his face and bent over, holding it.

  Mark thought he was faking. He loved death scenes on TV, dropping to the carpet in their rec room, one hand clutching his heart as he gasped out his last words, the other reaching for Mark’s sneaker. But then he was screaming—high and loud and over and over—and walking fast toward his back door, his hand still there, as if he were trying to keep the eye in.

  Mark dropped the gun and ran over and walked along with him. “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “Let me see.”

  “No.” He was walking slower now, and Mark could have stopped him, but there was blood coming out between his fingers and Mark couldn’t think. He went up the porch stairs in front of him and opened the storm door. He saw his own hands were empty, and thought: I shouldn’t leave the gun out there.

  “Sarah!” he called inside, because Derek’s sister was the only one home. He went through the kitchen into the front hall and called her, and she came running down, asking what had happened. When she saw the blood she grabbed Derek and hauled him to the sink and started running water. Mark had a crush on her—her lip gloss, her purple scrunchy, the way she bowed down and then reared up and flung her hair over her head—and her taking charge made her seem heroic, older, even more unreachable.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “It was my fault,” Mark said. “We were playing with the gun—”

  “God damn it,” she said. “I can’t believe it, you’re so stupid, both of you.”

  Sarah ran some water on a dishcloth and got right up next to Derek. She told him it was okay, everything was okay. They needed to see how bad it was. Derek wasn’t screaming anymore, it was more like crying, trying to breathe in too fast. She had her arm over his shoulders, her face so close they could have been kissing. “Yeah, I know,” she said, “it’s all right, we just need to see.”

  He nodded and Sarah took his hand away from his eye.

  “Oh my God,” she said, “Go get your mom,” and Mark ran.

  There was a path worn between their back doors
. He dodged the kitchen table, gave it the same move he did when Peter was chasing him in from something. “Mom!” he called, “Mom!”

  She was upstairs sewing costumes for the haunted house, pins between her teeth. She was so used to him screaming she didn’t even get up. She talked out of the side of her mouth. ”What is it now?”

  “I shot him,” Mark said, and tried to explain, but suddenly he couldn’t talk, and then he was crying just like Derek, trying to get enough air.

  His mother spit the pins out and grabbed his arm, dragged him along behind her as she ran down the stairs. He couldn’t believe she was so fast, banging out the storm door and flying across the yard and into the Rotas’.

  Derek was sitting at the kitchen table with Sarah holding a baggie of ice on his eye. He still had his jacket on. He wasn’t crying, just hunched over, rocking back and forth, saying, “Ow, ow, ow.”

  “Is he all right?” Mark’s mom asked.

  “No,” Sarah said. “It’s his eye. I called 911, they said they’d send an ambulance.”

  “Let me take a look at it.” His mother plucked the bag away and put it back fast. “When did they say they’d get here?”

  “Five minutes.”

  His mother sat down, then got up again and walked around the room, biting her thumbnail and looking out the windows.

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said, and again he began to cry, right in front of Sarah.

  “It was an accident,” his mom said.

  “It’s okay,” Derek said, but this only made it worse, and Mark ran out into the yard and didn’t stop until he reached the back lot.

  There was the gun next to the pallet of bricks, and there on a yellow leaf was a dark spot of blood, and another.

  “Mark,” his mom called. “Mark, get in here now!”

  He picked up the gun and the BBs shifted and clicked in the barrel. He loved the Daisy, the afternoons they spent winging cans and bottles and old archery targets Derek’s stepfather kept in the shed, but now as he walked across the yard, he promised—honestly, to God—that this was the last time he’d ever touch a gun.

  It wasn’t even a real gun.

  “Give me that,” his mom said on the porch, and snatched it by the barrel, something you weren’t supposed to do. He knew to just keep quiet.

  The kitchen was empty. They’d moved Derek to the front porch to wait for the ambulance. He sat on the glider, still nodding and rocking, making it move. “It hurts,” he said.

  “I know,” Mark’s mom said. “It’ll be here soon.” To Mark, she said, “I’m not mad at you, no one’s mad at you, just don’t run off like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said.

  “We know you are,” she said. “It was an accident, everyone knows that, now just calm down.”

  “Here it comes,” Sarah said, pointing at the ambulance.

  It didn’t even have its lights on, or its siren. It pulled into the drive and the EMTs jumped out. One looked at Derek while the other talked with Mark’s mom. The one with Derek knelt down by the glider and pulled out a mini-flashlight and waved it in front of his face.

  “Can you see it now?”

  “No,” Derek said.

  “How about over here?’

  “Yeah.”

  The EMT stood up and told Mark’s mom they were taking him to Butler Memorial and that she should contact his parents.

  “I already have,” his mom said.

  They put him in the back, and the one got in with him.

  “You can follow us if you want,” the other one said.

  The nurse at the emergency room said Mark’s mom could go in with Derek but Mark and Sarah would have to wait outside. Sarah lost herself in Cosmopolitan and Mark got up and looked at everything in the vending machines. The hospital had taped up the same cardboard decorations his Sunday school class had—the same pickle-nosed witches and rearing black cats and ogling, wide-eyed pumpkins. Mark tried to read a Sports Illustrated but it was too old. The last time he’d been here was when he broke his wrist trying a grind on a concrete bench in the back lot, and now he wondered if he was bad luck, if the rest of his life would be like this. It would be okay, he thought.

  Derek’s stepfather showed up first, his work gloves stuffed in his back pockets. He was small but he had a huge mustache; he wore his Steeler cap everywhere except church, where he played guitar up front with Mark’s dad.

  Mark stood up but he went straight to Sarah.

  “They were messing around with the BB gun,” she said, pointing to Mark.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I thought I showed you two how to handle that thing.”

  Mark just nodded.

  “Well, accidents will happen, I guess. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said.

  “Okay,” he said, and put his hand on Mark’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze before he went off to find the nurse.

  Ten minutes later, Derek’s mom ran through the electric doors. She was dressed for the mill, still wearing her clip-on nametag, and she smelled like pencil lead. She had steeltoed boots like Mark’s father and a line of grease across the front of her uniform. It looked like a costume on her.

  “How is he?” she asked Sarah, and when she didn’t like her answer, stalked right past Mark to the nurse.

  Mark’s mom came out after a while and said the doctors weren’t sure. He might lose the eye or it might get better, only time would tell. He’d probably have to stay in the hospital for a day or two, they’d see. While she was explaining everything to them, Mark’s dad walked in.

  The first thing he did was sit down. It was a thing he had; anytime they had to discuss something serious, he made everyone sit down. His other rule was no shouting, no matter how angry you were. His mom told him the whole thing, and then he stood up and took Mark’s hand and then his mom’s and then Sarah joined the circle and they all bowed their heads and they prayed.

  “Amen,” his father said, and gave a little squeeze which Mark returned out of habit.

  Sarah suddenly broke into tears, and his mom held her for a while, and then Derek’s stepfather came back out and gave his father a hug. Derek was resting, they’d given him something; Derek’s mom would stay with him tonight. Meanwhile it was probably best if they all went home.

  “Can we visit him later?” Mark asked.

  “Tomorrow,” his mom said.

  It was night out now, the moon almost full. In the parking lot they split up. “Why don’t you go with dad?” his mom said, so Mark climbed into the pick-up and buckled himself in.

  His dad would tell him a story, Mark knew that. It would be something from the Bible, a parable Mark could learn from, and he waited for it as they got on the highway and headed out of town. It wasn’t until they passed the salvage yard by the firehouse that his dad cleared his throat and said, “You know something?”

  “What?” Mark said.

  “It could have just as easily been you. You know that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember what it says in John about the two farmers?”

  “No,” Mark said, because he never knew what the Bible said. In Sunday school they read stories together that everyone had heard before, but his father knew all of it, pulled it out like a favorite wrench.

  “There were two farmers who lived next to each other, and one day a plague, of locusts came along, so thick they could hardly see. When the locusts flew off, the one farmer’s crop was all gone, bitten down to the roots. But the other farmer’s crop wasn’t touched at all. It was like a sign, people said.” His dad looked to him, and Mark said, “Uh-huh.”

  “The farmer who lost his crop thought it was the work of sorcery. The farmer whose crop wasn’t touched thought it was the hand of God. The two of them accused each other of being in league with the devil. Each of them set about to prove it in the courts. In the meantime no one was tending the fields and it was high summer. And you know what happened?”


  “What?” Mark said.

  “The whole crop burned up and was lost.”

  His dad looked to him again as if to make sure he understood, and then they drove along, nothing but the truck’s engine and the tires whining over the road.

  It was past supper so Mark’s mom heated up some lasagna from yesterday. Peter was home, and they had to tell him what happened.

  “Your brother and Derek were playing around out back,” his mom said. “And somehow . . . ”

  Every time Mark heard someone tell it, he could feel them blaming him. That was fine, it was his fault; he just wondered if it would get better. He hoped so.

  Peter washed while he dried and put the dishes away.

  “You weren’t trying to hit him,” Peter asked

  “No,” Mark said, angry at him. But was that really true?

  It was just a game. Now the crop was gone, the fields burnt.

  “He’ll be okay,” Peter said. “Plus he’s still got the other one, it’s not like he’s blind.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m just saying,” he said.

  It was a school night, and they had homework to do, and then when they were done they were allowed an hour of TV. His dad went over to the Rotas’ during Seinfeld and came back during Suddenly Susan. Nothing had changed; Derek’s mom was still at the hospital. Maybe they’d know something in the morning.

  In bed, Mark pictured the celebration they’d have when they found out Derek was okay. His dad would call for a prayer circle and they’d bow their heads and all of them—Mark, especially—would thank God.

  But in the morning Derek’s stepfather said the doctors still couldn’t say one way or the other. Derek’s mom was taking the day off to stay with him. Peter and Sarah walked together to the bus stop; the grass was frosted and they left footprints. Mark’s bus came later. He scuffed through the drifted leaves, his backpack a load on his shoulder. It was the last stop on the route, which was good in the morning but bad after school. On a regular day, he and Derek would jag around, maybe play kill-the-man-with-the-ball until the bus came. Today it was just him, and he waited outside the shelter, kicking stones across the road and thinking how impossible the shot was, the terrible odds of it, and how unlucky it was that the person firing the rifle had been him. Sometimes he couldn’t believe it was real, he could pretend it never happened. But it did.