Halloween Carnival Volume 2 Read online

  I thank him and run off. I’m a blood vessel among thousands, being pushed away from the brain and rushing through a swarming vein until I again reach the heart.

  The Port-o-Johns stand in rows. Five to a side, like pale blue booths, but it is another flash of blue that catches my eye. Along the tree line, sixty feet away, a blink of color that can only be Joyce’s jacket appears between the trunks and then vanishes.

  I run at full speed and begin shouting my sister’s name. I do this for an eternity of seconds until I’m at the treeline, panting, holding my side, and peering into the shadowed woods.

  Joyce stands twenty feet away. She is smiling and waving with a near-devoured cone of pink, spun sugar. A man holds her other hand.

  He is a rotten man. His appearance suggests a festering life. At first I think he is wearing a mask. His bulbous forehead runs above narrow, dark eyes. Stubble, like smears of mud, clutch his cheeks and jaw, emphasizing the doughy paleness of his skin. Tiny ears jut away from his round face and would be comical on a man who wasn’t so wholly terrifying. A limp, dirty white shirt with the sleeves rolled tightly to above the elbow is tucked into a pair of brown pants, one size too small for his barreled stomach.

  I think he is an ogre, pulled from the pages of a story unfit for a child, and given life.

  “Davey,” my sister shouts. “We’re going to see the Miraculous Movie Show.”

  The man beside her cracks his mouth to smile, revealing gaps between his upper and lower teeth.

  “Come with us,” Joyce says.

  The ogre nods but says nothing. His head turns from side to side as he looks around the woods. The hand that isn’t holding my sister’s opens and closes as if he’s working an invisible pump.

  If my Ultra Glove had been a real weapon, I would use it on the man to force him away from my sister. I would use it to bash his grotesque head into pulp, but the glove is only a bit of imagination, harmless to anything that resides in the real world.

  I am defenseless against this man, and I’m alone. But imagination has saved me before.

  I throw a look over my shoulder and shout, “I found her. She’s over here,” as if I’m calling to a search party or a mob of townsfolk tromping the midway with pitchforks and torches.

  “Mother’s ready to go,” I say, turning back to Joyce. “She sent me and Annie’s mom and Mr. Havish to get you.” Again I look over my shoulder. “It’s okay. She’s right here,” I shout.

  The man opens and closes his free hand more furiously. His head notches from side to side like a broken, windup toy.

  “But I want to see the Miraculous Movie,” Joyce says through a pout.

  Her protests are insane. Can’t she feel how terrible this man is? Can’t she feel it?

  “Mother wants to go.”

  The ogre releases Joyce’s hand. He says nothing but backs away from my sister. Then he turns and walks slowly, deeper into the woods, finally disappearing behind an evergreen trunk a hundred feet away.

  I run forward and embrace my confounded sister, and I hold her tightly and I take her hand and I hold it. I hold it for the rest of the night.

  —

  The bandages circling Joyce’s head reminded me of her white knit cap, but nothing else about the figure was familiar. Her face was too wounded and covered with the paraphernalia of medical science to be recognizable.

  Though I couldn’t know the details, I knew what had happened to my sister—her husband; the motherfucker I’d warned her about; my mother’s “good earner”—I knew what he’d done to my sister, but I wanted others to know. I wanted Mother to know. Yes, it was cruel. In the end, it would change nothing for Joyce, but she deserved to be remembered honestly.

  “Isaachar Marx,” I whispered.

  A tremor shook her form. Her eyelids twitched and then sprang open, revealing white orbs, streaked with crimson veins.

  “Joyce,” I asked, “can you hear me?”

  The voice that emerged from her throat, low and gurgling and muffled by the tubes keeping her alive, turned my skin cold. She shouldn’t have been able to speak, but she did.

  “Yes, Davey. I hear you.”

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “In a sea of blood,” she replied. “It’s cold and red and thick. It wants to pull me under.”

  “Stay with me,” I said. “Just for a while.”

  “Yes, Davey,” the warbling voice said. “For a while.”

  —

  Jimmy Pepper, a nine-year-old from Joyce’s class, disappears from the Harvest Carnival. His parents leave him at the Clown-Pop. He is happily spraying water into a plastic clown’s mouth, and watching the balloon on its head expand. They take his distraction as an opportunity to sneak behind the attraction to smoke a bowl.

  When they return, Jimmy is gone. At first they laugh. Their child is curious and finds every inch of the world a magical place that he insists must be investigated and explained. Even something as common as a mote of dust triggers a slew of questions as he follows it around a room.

  Their humor fades as the sun begins to set and the string lights burst on along the midway. Desperation seeps into their organs like acid as the police insist they wait at a patrol car while the authorities sweep the woods. Concerned neighbors gather around them. Some join the search.

  Jimmy’s head is found three days later.

  —

  The doctor was confounded. He shined a light over the veined surface of Joyce’s eyes. Mother stood in the corner, hugging herself against a chill. Grief stole her warmth. I waited in the chair for the doctor to complete his examination.

  He cleared his throat. “This might be the result of a seizure. I haven’t seen it before, but it’s certainly within the realm of possibility.”

  “Tell them,” I said.

  “Tell them what?” the doctor asked.

  “Please, Davey, no,” the warbling voice of my sister said.

  The doctor reared back. Mother gasped and threw her palms to her face, covering her mouth. Her eyes grew wide as she looked from the doctor to me to the figure on the bed and back to the doctor.

  “I don’t—” the doctor started to say.

  “Joyce, tell them.”

  “He calls me whore,” Joyce said. “He accuses me of a thing I would never do. Never. He slaps me. Not as hard as usual, and I feel grateful. I feel grateful. It won’t be bad this time. I apologize for upsetting him. I’m sorry. Then he punches me and his ring splits my lip and the pain explodes and blood drips into my mouth, and he punches me again and again. He calls me shit.”

  Mother trembled in the corner. She shook her head and wrapped her hands more tightly over her own mouth.

  “What’s happening here?” the doctor asked.

  “He kicks my stomach,” the horrible voice continued. “I’m trying to breathe and he goes away. He goes away. I am grateful.”

  “No,” Mother sobbed into her clasping palms. “Dear Lord, bless my…”

  “He comes back with his nightstick, and he hits. He hits. My bones break. I hear them. Crack. Crack. He hits. Seconds. Minutes. I don’t even feel myself being lifted and thrown at the staircase. I don’t feel anything as I break and bleed against the steps. I don’t feel.”

  “Stop this!” Mother shouted. “Please, Joyce. Please.”

  And I was about to ask Joyce to stop. I hadn’t accurately calculated the cruelty of my plan. The voice and the horrors it detailed sickened me. They heightened my grief and did nothing to salve it. My sister deserved peace.

  “My eyes won’t close. I want them to close. He stands over me, and my eyes won’t close. His eyes burn. Spit glistens on his lips. His teeth show as he growls and shouts at me. I want my eyes to close. I don’t want to see him. He is a monster, but I don’t believe in monsters.”

  Joyce’s declaration sprayed acid on my thoughts, burning them away, leaving nothing but a key and a red book and devastation. My organs constricted, pushing a sob from my throat. Tears spilled in streams
down my cheeks. Her drowning voice and the message it delivered horrified me, but I couldn’t form the words needed to end her testimony.

  “I didn’t believe,” Joyce screamed into the room. “I couldn’t see it, and I didn’t believe.”

  Mischief Night

  Holly Newstein

  In Pennsylvania, the night before Halloween is known as Mischief Night. Kids play harmless but annoying pranks, like throwing toilet paper into trees, soaping windows, and egging cars. Occasionally lines are crossed, and what was annoying becomes malicious. Sometimes even deadly…

  Willard Cole came out of his glassy-eyed stupor as an acrid wet stain spread across the front of his pants.

  “Oh, Christ. Not again,” he muttered to himself. He reached over with a trembling hand to the bottle of whiskey on the end table and took several deep swallows. Only the flickering of the television illuminated the room. His red-netted eyes fell on the bookcase in the corner. On it were the many awards he had collected over his career as an insurance salesman—or consultant, as he preferred to be called.

  “You piece of shit,” he said to himself, and passed his hand over his eyes. “I’ve turned into my father.”

  Willard Cole’s father had drunk himself to death at fifty-three. He had been a mean drunk, taking out his rage and frustration on the minds and bodies of his wife and sons. At fourteen, Willard had gazed at his reflection in the mirror, lightly touching the puffy bruised tissue around his left eye—a result of coming home from his friend’s house five minutes late the previous evening—and wincing.

  “I will never, ever, EVER drink alcohol. NEVER!” he said to the boy in the mirror.

  Fired with the desire to show the world that he was not his old man, Willard worked hard. He married his college sweetheart and raised two children, a boy and a girl. He rose in the corporate ranks, bought a nice house on a quiet street, and retired at sixty-six, a successful man, with a loving family and two adorable grandchildren. And he never took a drink. Not even a beer. Willard kept the promise he had made to his fourteen-year-old self.

  But now that he had achieved everything he’d planned, a little voice whispered to him that it would be okay to have a cocktail now and then, like everybody else. He could drink now, socially, of course, and on the elegant vacations his wife had planned to fill their golden years.

  Sure, he thought. Now it’s all okay.

  And it was, for a while. An occasional glass of wine with dinner, or a whiskey and soda on the nineteenth hole with his golf buddies. But, having waited sixty years, the siren’s call of alcohol had grown loud and powerful within him, and the craving overcame him quickly.

  The occasional drinks became daily drinks, and then several daily drinks. He began hiding bottles around the house to conceal how much he was taking in. He arranged for the liquor store to deliver cases to the house, explaining to his wife that it was cheaper that way and assuring her that there would always be something for company and impromptu parties. But there never was any company or parties.

  His temper became shorter. He changed from a thoughtful spouse and doting grandpa into an irritable man who preferred to be alone so he could drink in peace.

  He took one vacation with his wife to Paris. Between the drinking, the fighting about his drinking, the hangovers, and more fighting, it was misery for both of them.

  After they returned home, his wife staged an intervention with his son about his drinking. She showed him several half-empty bottles she had found stashed in the linen closet, under the bed, and in the toilet tank. She offered to take him to a hospital, and showed him some literature she had picked up at an Al-Anon meeting. Willard responded by shoving her into the wall and slapping her backhand across her face, splitting her lips. His son punched him, breaking his nose. She left that night with her son, returning the next day to pack her things. She did not speak to him. He watched her balefully, over his swollen nose, a drink in his hand.

  His daughter had called a few days later.

  “Dad, how could you? How could you do this to Mom?” He could hear the tears in her voice, and his heart hurt. But the whiskey made him say that it wasn’t his fault that her mother had become such a nag and a bitch, and it was probably better this way.

  “Then I’m sorry, but I can’t allow you to see your grandchildren until you stop drinking. And I won’t see you, either. Please, Daddy, please stop. I can look into rehabs for you—”

  Whiskey made him hang up on her.

  A year later, the house was coated in dust, the yard unkempt and full of weeds. He hadn’t spoken to his wife and children. Or anyone else, really. The divorce papers were probably in the pile of unopened mail on the dining room table. His life was spent now in front of the TV, sitting in a urine-stained La-Z-Boy. His skin was yellowed, his belly stretched tight over his enlarged liver.

  By following the siren’s call, Willard had wrecked himself on the rocks of acute alcoholism and self-pity.

  As he tried to gather enough energy to go and change his wet pants, a clattering crash came from the basement. He heard the sounds of breaking glass and then a low moan.

  —

  Three shadows crouched behind a rhododendron bush in front of a well-kept and brightly lit home a few doors down.

  “Oh man, this is going to be so awesome,” Nolan said in a whisper.

  “Yeah, if we don’t get caught,” Dustin replied.

  “Don’t be such a pussy. We won’t get caught.”

  Meanwhile, Tyler was carefully reaching into a plastic bag. He pulled out a wet-stained, foul-smelling paper bag. The boys made exaggerated retching sounds.

  “OMG. This is so gross,” he muttered. “Nolan, didja bring the lighter?”

  “Yep. Criminy, how much poop did you put in that bag?”

  “I scooped my yard and the neighbor’s yard. And he’s got a German shepherd.”

  “This is going to be so great,” Nolan said again.

  The boys were all seventh-graders at Merion Junior High. They were well acquainted with the resident of the home—Mr. Worrall, the assistant principal. As the chief disciplinarian at the school, he struck terror into the student body.

  Nolan, in particular, held a grudge. His parents were going through an acrimonious divorce and using Nolan as an emotional tug toy. Nolan retreated into himself, and since he couldn’t talk to anyone, he started to act out his pain. He began clowning around in class and being hostile to his teachers. This led to a few unpleasant conversations with Mr. Worrall in his office.

  “I hear you called Mr. Osman a stupid shithead, since he had the nerve to disrupt your little comedy act in the back of class,” Mr. Worrall had said, looking over the top of his glasses at Nolan.

  Nolan tried to summon his inner thug.

  “So?”

  “So that’s not acceptable here at Merion.” Mr. Worrall looked through a file on his desk. “Your grades have gone from a solid B average to a D. I’ve gotten a few complaints about you and your behavior in class. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  Nolan thought about his mother moving to California, and her empty promises about taking him with her. About losing the house he’d grown up in, and living in a tiny apartment with his father, who was silent and morose these days. Except when he launched into angry tirades about how Nolan’s mother was just a stupid, greedy bitch. He thought about how his life just blew chunks these days.

  “I’ve got nothing to tell you,” he replied, and slouched lower in his chair.

  Mr. Worrall sighed. “In that case, I’m giving you three days of detention, and I’m going to have a chat with your father. Don’t let me see you here again.”

  Nolan had waited for an opportunity to revenge himself, and Mischief Night presented a perfect opportunity. He consulted with his buddies on the best and most obnoxious prank to play. Since there was no tree in the Worrall front yard, TPing was out. Egging the house was not enough. So the three of them had decided on the flaming-dog-poop-bag trick. Watching
their nemesis stomp on the bag and get dog poop all over his slippers would be excellent payback, they thought.

  “Gimme the lighter,” Tyler said. Nolan reached into his pocket and handed over a Bic lighter. “Now be cool.”

  Creeping carefully in the darkness, Tyler moved silently up the front walk and gingerly placed the bag in the center of the front porch. He flicked the lighter into flame and lit the edge of the bag. He waited until it was burning brightly, rang the doorbell, and hightailed it back to the rhododendron bush. He had just managed to hide himself when the door opened. A man was silhouetted in the doorway, and he jumped back when he saw the burning, stinking bag on his porch.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” He grabbed the doormat and beat at the bag, scattering embers and decaying poop all over his porch.

  The boys were racked with laughter, choking it back.

  “You little punks! I know you’re out there, and I have a pretty good idea of who you are.”

  Dustin started a little, but Nolan put a hand on his arm.

  Just then, a large dog appeared next to Mr. Worrall. It barked once, a deep booming bark, and sniffed the air. The rottweiler’s neck hairs bristled.

  “Shit, I didn’t know he had a dog,” Nolan said. Fear shot suddenly through all three boys.

  The dog let out a low growl and bounded off the porch toward the rhododendron bush.

  “Thor! Get back here!” Mr. Worrall yelled.

  The boys scattered like dry leaves in the wind.

  —

  Nolan ran blindly, looping around through the backyards of the houses on the street. He sucked air into his lungs in deep tearing gasps.

  Just don’t fall down, he thought.

  He could hear the pounding of his heart and the slap of his sneakers on the dew-slicked grass. He strained to hear the thudding of paws gaining on him, the teeth ripping into his flesh.

  Hide…I have to hide.