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Fiction

Trick or Treat

©1999 John Tynes



The girl catches me in the middle of a crying jag. I answer the door red-eyed and bleary, snuffling a little. She takes this in and looks a little freaked. Asks if she should come back later. I tell her no, it's okay, and what are you here for? Cleaning service. Every other week. Okay. I wonder if I have money to pay her. She starts in the bathroom while I shuffle through the papers on the desk, find a check already made out and ready. Not listed in the appointment book, though. Blew that one.

I don't have time to muck around. There's a bag packed and waiting on the couch. I'm dating some woman named Sally and she's supposed to show up soon. We're going to the peninsula for the weekend, or so the appointment book says. No clue. There are photos of her tacked up on a cork board over my dresser. She's pretty. Nice eyes. We're dating?

The peninsula is this spur of land separated from Seattle by Puget Sound. Big park there, state or national or some damn thing. Some towns. I haven't been there much. My parents took me there a few times when I was a kid, driving tours of the woods and so on. A grade-school trip to some tribal reservation with a museum. I had an uncle out there. Dad's brother, Frank. Lived in Port Angeles. A drunk. He used to rant about Raymond Carver, another peninsula drunk, a writer. Swore he would kick the crap out of him someday. I never understood his anger until I read Carver's stories. Dead-end drunks in dead-end lives, weird domestic squabbles that went nowhere. I suspected that my uncle was jealous, or maybe he just wanted to be in one of the guy's stories, or maybe he was. Frank hung himself when I was twenty-three. Carver was at the funeral, a thick-faced fellow with shadowed eyes. He didn't say anything. Mom pointed him out to me in a whisper. Whatever beef Frank had with him went into the ground with the coffin. Carver died a while later. That was the peninsula to me: a place full of drunks and death and stories I could never make sense of. It was my first funeral.

Now a weekend trip. Halloween weekend. There's a party tomorrow night. Shit--costume? No idea. I rummage through the duffel that I apparently packed last night, according to the note I found. No sign of a costume in there. I guess I'm going as Mitch Renfrew.

The maid walks past silently, mop in hand. There's a knock at the door.

Sally. "Hi Mitch," she says, cheerful. She's dressed warm, jeans and a sweater and a heavy jacket.

"Hi." I'm unsteady. I hold out my hand.

She cracks a smile and hugs me. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah, uh, got a bag packed." Then I think of the maid. I go to the kitchen.

"I need to go. Can you let yourself out?"

"Sure thing." She looks a little unsteady herself.

"Oh, wait." I go and get the check, then give it to her. "Here you go."

"Thanks."

"Play some music if you want."

"Okay."

Back at the door, Sally waits. "Come on," she says. I put on my coat, take my bag, and follow obediently. She has a bag of her own in the hall, and she slings it over her shoulder as I close the door.

Outside, it's a grotty gray Saturday. Damp.

"So how are you?" she asks.

"A little rough," I say. "Not all there yet."

She shrugs. "No worries."

We amble over to the Ave and come to a bus stop. Sally sets her bag down.

"We're taking the bus?"

Sally nods. "I don't drive, hon."

I start to say something about my car, but then I realize that I don't have it anymore, or so I gather. I shake my head and smile.

"What?"

"I thought I had a car for a minute there."

She laughs. "Nope. It's public transit for us proles."

"Are we proles?"

"I think so."

This seems okay to me.

"So," I start, trying to make conversation. "You own a coffeehouse?"

"Yep. Up north of 45th."

"How's it going?"

"Eh. I just had to fire somebody yesterday."

"Yeah?"

"Kept showing up stoned. I caught her with a joint out back on her break."

"Great."

"Six fifty an hour plus tips. I'd probably get stoned, too."

This makes me laugh. I like her.

"So," I say again. "How long have we been together?"

She sighs a little. "About two years, give or take."

"Good years?"

"Yeah. Good years. Had lots worse."

The bus shows up. I fumble with my wallet and find a buck. Sally has a month pass.

We get on board and take the 73 express to downtown.

"You have any family?" I ask her when we get settled.

"Nope. My folks died years ago."

"You miss them?"

"Every day. How are your parents?"

A wave of panic washes over me. I have no idea. I sort of sit there for a moment, lost.

"Check the Brain, Mitch."

I dig the little book out of my duffel and flip through the pages until I find them.

"Uh, they're good," I stammer. "Looks like dad has a girlfriend now."

"Frances."

"Yeah, Frances. You know her?"

"Not really. Seen her around. Seems nice."

"That's good."

We sit there for a while. Sally holds my hand and looks drowsy.

The bus piles on through the slick streets. We go down Eastlake and so many things have changed. Different businesses, some new apartments. It's disconcerting. I put my arm around Sally and she snuggles a little closer, eyes shut. I don't want to look out the windows anymore.

We get out at the convention center stop. It's the entrance to the transit tunnel that runs underneath a stretch of downtown. The bags are heavy. At the top of the escalator Sally gets a mocha at the espresso stand and then we're onto the streets. People in warm clothes hurry about, going to shop or lunch or whatever. Sally nods to the Greyhound station. "That's where we meet the shuttle. You got your money?"

Shit. There wasn't anything about this in the note. "How much?" We check my wallet and take a detour to an ATM. Round trip is going to be fifty bucks.

At the station we hook up with the shuttle van to Port Angeles. The driver checks our names off on her roster and we get in. Fifteen minutes go by while a couple other people show up. Finally we're off.

As we travel, Sally explains that we're going to meet with a friend of hers who works at the park, some kind of educational facility. Schoolkids and retiree groups, hiking tours and so on. They're at the end of their season and there's a big Halloween party for the staff and their friends tomorrow night. I confess that I don't have a costume and Sally says not to worry about it.

Eventually we stop talking. Sally leans against me and naps. The van drives onto the ferry at Edmonds and we speed across Puget Sound. I remember that there's a book in my duffel. I saw it this morning but didn't notice what it was. While the van is stopped on the ferry I ask the driver to open the back and I dig the book out. Where I'm Calling From. Stories by Raymond Carver. I shove it into a pocket of my coat and decide to take a walk. Through a side window I see Sally, napping again, so I just wander off, up the stairs to the passenger deck.

In a few minutes I'm out on the forward observation deck or whatever they call it. We're really making time, churning through the slate-colored water towards the town of Kingston. Seagulls, a couple of little boats. In the distance to the left I can barely see the downtown Seattle skyline, obscured by fog. Around the horizon are the dim suggestions of mountains. It's still grotty, still gray.

I pull the book out of my coat and read the back cover. There's a photo of Carver down at the bottom, those eyes staring out at me from my uncle's funeral. It's not a color photo. It's gray. His face is like mountains glimpsed through fog. I turn the book upside down and hold it up in front of my face, aligning the photograph with the horizon, forming a continuum of land and man.

We're getting close to Kingston. The van driver had some stern words about being back in time, a veiled threat of leaving me behind. I put the book back in my pocket and wander down to the car deck again.

Back inside the van, Sally is still dozing. I settle in next to her and she sort of pulls close, so I wrap my arm around her once more. I wonder if she is dreaming.

The ferry docks and we drive onto shore. I read a story about a blind man smoking pot.

Sally wakes up as we're crossing the Hood Canal bridge. She takes the book and flips through it for a minute.

"You like this guy?"

I shrug. I don't really feel like talking about Frank.

"Depressing," she says, handing the book back to me.

"Tell me about Brenda," I say, setting the book down. Brenda is this friend of Sally's we're going to see.

"We went to college together. I see her a couple times a year, I guess. She's been out here for ages."

"What did you study?"

"Psychology."

This makes me laugh. "Really?"

"Yeah. I wanted to be a therapist. But I worked at this coffeehouse in school, and kinda got stuck on it."

"I wonder if I'm in a textbook someplace."

She smiles. "Maybe a journal article. Your fifteen minutes of fame."

"So is Brenda married?"

"Used to be. They got divorced last year. He was a real jerk. A drunk. Started beating her."

"Jesus."

"Yep. Bad shit. He showed up at her house last week, like two in the morning. Yelling and throwing rocks. That's sort of why we're here. She's kinda freaked out."

"What's his deal?"

"Oh, he used to be a park ranger. Real alpha. Lost his job 'cuz he turned into such a fuck-up. He works in a gun store now."

"Well, that's perfect."

"Yep. Hopefully he'll get drunk and drive off a cliff or shoot himself or something."

"I suppose that would fix things."

Sally's settling back down into another nap. I hold her and the van drives on.

We get to Port Angeles. There's this old mumbly guy on board and the driver offers to drop him off at his destination instead of going to the usual stop down on the waterfront. We spend a few minutes trying to figure out where he lives. He talks low and quiet, and he keeps digressing into stories about the neighborhood. He mentions a house on Lincoln so the driver turns to go there, but by the time we arrive we figure out that he just used to know somebody who lived there or something. It doesn't make much sense, but we figure out that it's not where he's going. It takes some more mumbly talk and a few more blocks and several turns before we get him where he's going.

The driver gets back in after she drops the guy off and gets his suitcase out. She checks her watch.

"We're gonna be a little late," she says to no one in particular. "Sorry. I just like to drop these old folks off, you know? Makes them less bitter. Safer, too, day like today. Cold and rainy. They shouldn't have to walk all over the place."

I make a vague noise of assent, to reassure her that there is still someone here in the back of the van, that we didn't sneak out with the mumbly old man.

In a few minutes we arrive at a hotel parking lot. I rouse Sally and we pile out, gathering our bags. A woman gets out of a car and hurries over, excited.

It's Brenda. She and Sally embrace, smiling and talking. Brenda is a short, squat woman with close-cropped black hair.

Sally introduces us and we shake hands. "I've heard a lot about you," she says, grinning.

"Yes, I've performed for the crowned heads of Europe," I say.

Brenda doesn't quite know what to make of this, and neither do I. Sally cocks an eyebrow at me, her face inscrutable but kindly.

We get into the car and Brenda drives us out of town. She and Sally chatter away in the front seat. I stare out the windows at the rolling landscape and the mist and the drizzle. I'm trying to recall what Frank's house looked like.

Soon we're in the thick of the forest. There are official signs here and there, announcing the park and so forth. There are references to both the Olympic National Park and to the Olympic National Forest. I'm not sure what the distinction is, but it's beautiful, whatever name humans have applied to it.

Brenda makes a few turns and then we arrive at the Olympic Park Institute. I haven't paid attention to all of their conversation, but I figure out that Brenda is in charge of the place. It's a little facility on the shore of Lake Crescent, a huge arc of water. There's a sort of lodge house and a number of little cabins and other structures. About a dozen cars and trucks are in the parking lot. Trees are all around.

We get our stuff out and Brenda leads us to another grouping of cabins off to one side. They're sort of like dormitories, little rooms full of bunk beds for visiting school groups. Sally and I drop off our bags and then follow Brenda to the lodge house.

It's called the Rosemary Inn, and Brenda tells me that it was just that: a little inn back at the turn of the century or so that later became part of the park. These two ladies named Rose and Mary ran it. There's some long-standing bit of local humor about how the official literature refers to them as "lifetime friends," and how they were never married, and the upshot is that this place was founded by a couple of woodsy lesbians. The building is a homey-looking place, a little ramshackle but pleasantly so.

Inside is a large dining area and common room. Assorted staff are hanging out drinking coffee, and introductions are made. The names wash over me, lost as soon as I hear them. I'll just forget them in the morning anyway. I gather most of these folks will be leaving soon, since the season is over. Halloween is sort of a farewell party.

I get coffee for me and Sally, and we sit around with Brenda and her crew. I listen for a while and then read another story from the book about a drunk at a sort of halfway house, trying to get his life together. I read something in the Big Brain this morning about being at a halfway house myself, after the wreck. There weren't any details. I check the Brain but there's nothing there about it. I suppose the Big Brain has the details, but that's back in the city.

Realizing this makes me a little nervous. The Big Brain is hours away. I'm on my own out here, just me and my little Brain. I feel incomplete and insecure. The conversation among the staff has turned to politics and an election next week, and I don't have the faintest idea what and who they're talking about. There's something about Bush running for president, and it takes me a few minutes to realize the guy isn't George Bush but his son or something. Then I get confused about what year it is and wondering if the election is a presidential election, but no, it's not, that's a year off. They talk about Clinton and I say something like "He got impeached?" and they sort of stare at me like I just fell off the turnip truck. Sally musses my hair and tells me not to worry about it. Someone snickers. I shake my head, bewildered, and decide to read another story. It's about a student's wife lost in her house at night.

The stories are reliable. They're there. You open the book and find a story and it doesn't really matter who you are or what you know or whether you've read anything else in the book. You just start from zero and go and then you're in somebody else's life for a little while. I could sleep for fifty years and pick up this book and read a story and get just as much out of it as I could today. For a minute I think that maybe I should read more and live less because it's less confusing that way. I sort of wander off in my head and have this fantasy about moving into some kind of sanitarium. I'd wear pajamas and slippers all day and eat Jell-O from little plastic tubs. Every morning I would get up and just read this Carver guy's book, once a day, like taking a pill, because every night I would forget it all and the next day it would be there on the table, fresh and simple, ready to be read again and again. The book is about the right size. I could read it in a day. A longer book wouldn't really do because I couldn't finish it in a day. I'd read half of it and go to bed and the next day I'd just read the same half again and never find out how it ends.

Pretty soon this all gets really depressing. Sally was right. This is a depressing book.

I go to the bathroom and throw the damned thing in the trash. Raymond Carver stares up at me from the wadded paper towels, his big face and dark eyes accusing me of cowardice, of not being man enough to read his stories.

"Fuck off," I say out loud. No wonder my uncle Frank wanted to beat this guy up.

My uncle Frank. Who committed suicide.

A coward.

I pull the book out of the trash and go back to the inn.

There's a girl of maybe nine or ten at a table off in the corner. She's just hauled a big pumpkin over there and she's got a couple of knives out to make a jack-'o-lantern. I set the book down on a table next to my coat and go over to join the girl. I'm not sure she should be fooling around with these knives unattended.

"Hi," I say, sitting down across the table. "I'm Mitch."

She looks up at me. "I'm Rebecca." She sticks her little hand out and I shake it politely. Rebecca is a skinny little kid, with black hair down to her shoulders and a purple sweater over a floral-print dress.

"Can I help you with that?" I ask, trying not to sound condescending.

Rebecca thinks about this for a moment. "Can you cut the top off?" she says finally.

"Sure," I say with the sort of glib confidence adults get when a child asks them to do something. I couldn't think of the last time I carved a pumpkin.

Still, I pull the pumpkin closer and pick up a knife and start working.

"Where are you from?" she asks.

"Seattle. Do you live here?"

She shakes her head gravely. "We live in Forks."

"You here for the party?"

"Yes. I'm going to be Queen Amidala."

"Who is that?"

I get that turnip-truck look again.

"From Star Wars," she says.

"You mean Princess Leia?"

She looks impatient. "No. From the new one. Queen Amidala. She goes in disguise to meet Anakin."

"The new one?"

"The new Star Wars movie."

"There's a new Star Wars movie?"

Rebecca rolls her eyes. "Are you from France or something?"

I go back to work on the pumpkin. "Sort of."

"In the new Star Wars movie Amidala is the queen of the Naboo. She saves her people from the trade federation."

"Oh."

"She's very brave."

"Sounds like it."

"You're not cutting it straight."

I look at the top of the pumpkin where I'm trying to cut out the cap. It's sort of ragged.

"Sorry," I say. "I'll try harder."

"My step-sister couldn't cut it straight either. We made a pumpkin at mom's house and she made it all wrong."

"Your parents are divorced?"

She nods primly. "It was a long time ago. I live with my dad and visit my mom in Port Townsend. That's where my step-sister lives."

"What's she like?"

"She's an idiot."

"Really?"

Another nod. "Totally stupid. And she keeps falling asleep all the time."

"That's weird."

"She's got narcolepsy. That's this disease where you fall asleep all the time. But that's not why she's an idiot. She's just really mean and stupid and I hate her."

"Well that's no good."

"Nope."

I finish cutting through the top of the pumpkin and lift the cap off. "There!" I say proudly.

Rebecca appraises my work and makes a face. "I'll do the rest." I push the pumpkin back to her side of the table and hand her the knife, somewhat cautiously. She stands up and starts in.

Sally comes over and puts her arms around my neck. She kisses my ear. "How's it going over here?"

"We're making a pumpkin!" Rebecca says as she saws with the knife.

"What's this about a new Star Wars movie?" I ask. Star Wars was a big thing when I was in high school.

"It kinda sucks."

"Does not!" Rebecca blurts.

"Oops!" Sally says, smiling.

"I'm going to be Queen Amidala for Halloween."

"Yeah? Which dress are you wearing?"

"The one where she's in disguise."

Sally nods. "That's good. The others need too much makeup."

"No kidding," Rebecca replies wearily, plucking out the first eye of the pumpkin. Her cuts are straight. "We tried to do it but dad was useless. He can't do makeup."

"I don't much like makeup," Sally says.

"Me neither. My step-sister says makeup makes you look beautiful. But she's an idiot."

"And she falls asleep all the time," I offer.

"That's because she's got narcolepsy." Rebecca says this word like it's the name of her favorite food. She sort of rolls it around in her mouth, savoring it.

Sally takes a seat next to me and holds my hand. It's damp with pumpkin juice. There weren't any napkins. "Well. Looks like I've found the table with the good conversation."

"Makes a lot more sense than the other one did," I mutter.

She musses my hair again. If I've learned one thing in life it's that girlfriends like to muss your hair. I have a secret theory that they want to make your hair look so awful that no other woman will deign to flirt with you. It's a secret theory because whenever I've shared it with someone I was dating, they got indignant and mussed my hair even more. So now I just keep it to myself.

"Do I even want to know what's going on with Clinton and Bush and all that crap?" I ask Sally quietly.

"No. Trust me."

I shake my head. "You were right, by the way. That book is depressing."

"Look, Mitch, she's winking at you," Rebecca says, wrestling the pumpkin around so we can see it. Sure enough, the pumpkin's second eye is just a curved slit. The effect is pretty good.

"She's flirting with you," Sally whispers cheerfully. She plays with my hair some more. I rest my case.

Sally and I sit and chat absently about the weather. Rebecca saws away intently at the pumpkin. After a few minutes a husky guy comes over in a flannel shirt.

"How's it going?" he asks Rebecca.

"Should she be smiling?"

"Sure," he says. "But her teeth should be all crooked."

I catch his eye. "I take it you're responsible for this little cyclone?"

He grins. "I am." He leans over and we shake hands. "I'm Derek. I guess you've met Rebecca."

"I'm Mitch. This is Sally."

"Hey there." Derek sits down next to his daughter.

"You don't mind her using those knives, do you?" I'm still nervous about the knives. Rebecca sticks her tongue out at me when her dad isn't looking.

"No, no. You should see her with clay. She's my little Rodin."

"Rodin's cool," Rebecca offers, focusing on the pumpkin. "He was a great sculptor."

"Are you going to be a sculptor when you grow up?" Sally asks.

"No," Rebecca says confidently, finessing the knife around a pulpy tooth. "I'm going to be a biologist."

Sally smiles, maybe thinking about little-girl dreams. "Why a biologist?"

"Because the salmon are all going to die. Somebody's got to save them."

"That's a good reason."

"What are you?"

"I run a coffeehouse."

"Dad likes coffee."

Derek nods agreeably.

Rebecca cocks a curious eye at Sally. "Is it true that if you drink coffee when you're a kid it'll stunt your growth?"

"I don't know," Sally says. "But I bet it'll make you all jumpy. You'd be just like a little cricket, bouncing off the walls."

"I like crickets."

I have to agree with her. I like crickets, too. Dad and I used to go fishing and we'd buy a box of crickets at the bait shop. I usually spent the whole trip playing with the crickets while dad fished, occasionally cursing when I jostled the boat in pursuit of leaping game.

Rebecca works away. I sort of gaze absently out the window at the lake in the fading light. Derek goes off to get us a fresh round of coffee and doesn't come back for a while, ensnared in some other conversational net. Sally strokes my hand and talks with Rebecca.

It gets dark. An OPI staffer lights candles and turns off the overhead lights. Sally helps Rebecca light a candle and put it inside the jack-'o-lantern, which Rebecca shows off proudly; it's the first one of the weekend, so everybody claps and Rebecca beams in the candlelight. There aren't any other kids here yet, though I gather more will come tomorrow for the party. I wonder if Rebecca would find them at all interesting. She seems comfortable around adults. I know: divorce makes you grow up a little faster.

We eat dinner. It's a sort of crunchy vegetable medley kind of thing with hunks of fresh bread. There are about fifteen of us eating, and it's a boisterous crew. As we eat, the staffers laugh and joke about work and about past Halloween parties and their plans for the winter.

Afterwards, we push our plates back and sit around. Somebody pulls out a guitar and a clot of people wander off to another room to sing folk songs. God help us.

At first no one pays attention to the noise in the parking lot. A big truck comes in fast, spitting gravel, headlights splashing briefly across the inn as the vehicle crunches to a stop. The engine keeps running. A few people glance out the windows, wondering who has arrived. A door opens and there's the sound of someone moving around, then a tremendous crash. The door slams shut and the truck speeds away into the night.

The conversation comes to a stop. People look around at each other. Someone laughs nervously. Two women and a guy get up and wander outside with flashlights to see what the deal is. We wait expectantly, chatting a little, but we're mostly just waiting.

Through the windows, we see the little group walk from the inn across the yard to the parking area. The flashlights jerk around in the dark. Then there's a scream and the guy starts yelling something to us.

Derek and I jump up, along with a grim-looking young woman in work boots. We're the first out the door. The noise behind us tells me the others are following.

We break into a run across the yard, flashlights forgotten, plunging into the night towards the trio amidst the cars. There doesn't seem to be anyone else with them, and they're talking excitedly. A wave of fear rolls outwards from where they stand.

We skid to a stop and see the horror in the flashlights. The bloody carcass of a large dog lies on the broken windshield of Brenda's car. We gawk for a moment, and then a voice I recognize as Brenda's screams from the yard: "Angie!"

Brenda breaks through us at a run and she hunches over the car and puts her arms on the dog, starting to weep now. "Oh God, oh no, Angie, no . . ."

The picture comes into focus. This is her dog. That was her ex-husband.

This is vengeance. It's something ugly, achieving escape velocity from the black hole of a marriage gone bad.

We crowd around, people are hugging Brenda. Rebecca is there and she sees the dog and screams. Derek gets a look on his face like thunder on a mountain and he scoops her up and carries her back to the inn. Sally is here and she comforts Brenda, both of them crying and yelling at the dark sky. The girl in the work boots throws a rock at the direction the truck went, shouting something unintelligible about fascists.

I feel useless. I don't know these people. I'm not part of this community. But I am very, very angry. I stride over to the girl and throw a rock in the same direction. She looks at me in the dim. "Goddamn right," she intones. Something in her face tells me everything I need to know about her rage.

The next few minutes are confusing and I do nothing of consequence except emote. A box is located and Angie is laid inside. Someone calls the rangers. Someone else volunteers to clean up the car. We drift back inside the inn, our mood wrecked by this explosion of hatred and violence.

Somehow it transforms into ritual. The box with Angie is set on a table and covered with a warm wool blanket. Candles are set around it in a circle. We gather about in chairs and Brenda weeps and talks about her dog, who had been with her before the marriage and remained with her when it was over, now its casualty. We take hands and somebody leads us in something that resembles a prayer, or a summons--a summons of strength and love and other good forces that seem far, far away here in the terror and the dark. Then the rangers show up and the moment ends, ritual flowing into routine: questions and answers, exhortations to catch this fucker and fast. There are more tears.

Sally is busy with Brenda. I orbit them, stopping by every so often to touch and hold and support, like all the others here in the inn. The rest of the time I sit with Derek and Rebecca. Rebecca is terrified and upset. Her measured composure of the afternoon is gone, and all the insecurities bred by divorce come spilling out. Eventually the intensity of her emotions wears her little body out, and we get flashlights and walk her to the guest cabins. Derek tucks her in while I stand guard outside, sweeping the light around the trails that circle a sort of gazebo in the middle of the cabins.

Waiting there, alone in the woods, I wonder what Brenda's ex-husband looks like. He morphs in my imagination from a wiry redneck to a burly biker, scenarios unspooling of him walking up the path, crowbar in hand, murder in his eyes. The flashlight is a hefty mag light, turgid with D cells. In my mind the fucker--for I have not yet learned his real name, unless that is simply it--comes looming out of the dark and I crack the mag light over his great and stupid skull, screaming at him for what he has done in his ignorant anger.

Eventually Derek emerges, pale. I see my imaginings reflected in his eyes and an understanding passes between us. At this moment we are no more than three or four branching decisions away from a moonlit burial of a hated corpse. The fucker would show up. A confrontation would ensue. He would get what was coming to him. The forest would devour his body. No one would ever tell.

Here on this peninsula, in this great and soulful wood, civilization is a distant dream. Here there is right and wrong. Here there is no doubt. In my mind I hear Rebecca's scream in the parking lot at the sight of that poor dog's wreckage, an idyll sundered, and my hand tightens on the flashlight. Her scream is so loud in Derek's mind that I can almost hear it pouring out of his ears. It is a sound no parent ever wants to hear, a sound no reasoning human could let pass unremedied.

"Fucker," Derek spits. Clearly, this is the man's true name, emblazoned forever on his screaming soul.

"She asleep?"

"Yeah. I'm staying here."

I nod. There's a silence. Finally I break it.

"I'm going back to the inn. I'll let you know if anything else happens."

"Okay. Good night."

"Good night."

We shake hands again. Here there is no doubt.

Back at the inn, the ritual has resumed in the flickering candlelight. The guitarist is back at his craft, strumming thoughtfully. The assembled throng is singing, chanting almost:

The earth, the air, the water, the fire
Return, return, return
The earth, the air, the water, the fire
Return, return, return

I ease over behind Sally and gently place my hands on her shoulders. She takes them in hers and I kneel down behind the chair, wrapping my arms around her. I hold her for a while and sing along.

Eventually we begin to disperse. In a corner, a handful of people draw up a watch list for the night, ensuring that there will be at least two staffers up and alert each hour through morning. Someone arranges for Brenda to stay on campus tonight in one of the staff cabins, guarded by her friends. Angie's shrouded box is placed in the cooler so as not to draw curious wildlife.

Sally and I say good night to Brenda and the rest and walk off to the guest cabins. Part of me wants to stay awake all through the night, so I will not lose this core of anger that I will need if the fucker comes to call. For in the morning it will be gone, and this evening will be a curious anecdote Sally will relate by the light of dawn to some incredulous Mitch, who will already have quite enough to deal with simply by virtue of waking up in a strange place with a strange woman.

At the cabin I write a couple pages of notes to that Mitch, explaining things. I try to describe the afternoon with Rebecca, and the terrible sound of her scream in the parking lot, and the unspoken knowledge that passed between Derek and myself, our willingness to do just about anything so that Rebecca and Brenda and Sally and all the rest need never go through this fear again.

As I write, my anger resonates with memory. I think back to the arguments between my mother and father, when I lay weeping and helpless under my bed with a pillow over my ears, trying not to hear the awful truth booming up from the living room, the truth that revealed how a chasm of horror could open up beneath the foundation of the soundest house, revealed by a flashlight beam like the sorry carcass of a good dog on a bad night.

Eventually I finish my notes, Sally lying in the bed, lonely for me, and I for her. I turn off the lights and go to her then, and we hold each other in the dark.

In the gloom I see a dim glow on the little table next to the bed: the luminescent face of my wristwatch. 1:25 in the morning of October 31, 1999.

It is Halloween.

--103199 Mitch



-END-


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