Halloween Haunts 2013: Halloween Stories by Steve Rasnic Tem

I wasn’t a social kid. I was bookish and shy and a daydreamer. We lived in a very small town and Dad was an alcoholic and everybody knew it. I imagined sometimes that we had kept it a secret and was always surprised that other people seemed to be aware of our circumstances. Other kids rarely visited our house. (It’s funny how I didn’t put those two things together until I was an adult.) To be honest, although the adult in me says that’s an unhealthy circumstance, I don’t remember feeling that I was suffering for it. I wasn’t developing very many social skills, but I certainly was getting a lot of reading and writing and drawing done. When you don’t witness another way to live you don’t always recognize that something is wrong.

What puzzles me, however, is that I didn’t visit the houses of any of my school friends. In fact I can’t remember visiting any houses other than those of a couple of my parents’ friends, and those of a few select relatives, until I went off to college. I knew far more about the interiors of the houses on shows like My Three Sons, Father Knows Best, and the Andy Griffith Show than those of the houses in our tiny town.

Halloween night, however, provided an alternative mode of sociability. I could dress up (in my plain homemade bum or ghost or lumberjack outfit, because at that time in the rural south you rarely saw costumes in the local stores other than the occasional mask) and walk up the sidewalk to those neighbors’ houses I’d never visited and stand on their front porches and peer inside while they supplied us with candy and fruit. Sometimes they even invited a group of us in to the front room and let us choose our own. I was fascinated by those different houses, of course, perhaps obsessively so. I was pretty sure they had their own secrets, but at least for that night they for the most part seemed polite, more “normal” than my own family, and not that different from the families on TV.

Even when the families didn’t appear to be all that “mid-American” at least they seemed to know how to handle things. I remember going to a house where the mother came out and apologized because they just couldn’t afford any treats that year. I was disappointed and charmed—I knew people who couldn’t afford Christmas, so of course they couldn’t afford Halloween. And her honesty was both embarrassing and impressive—I’d never seen anyone do that before. And there was the fellow who came out in his undershirt, cigarette in his mouth and ash dangerously long. I was wearing a paper bag over my head that year with eye and mouth holes poked through (this pre-dated “The Unknown Comic” on The Gong Show) and all I could think of was the disaster if he dropped the ash on my head. He squinted one eye shut and appraised us with the other, finally reaching into his pocket for a greasy nickel apiece.

I never told people who I was inside my costume, even when they asked. Some might have guessed, but a lot of these folks rarely saw me even though I’d lived there all my life. Wearing a mask and being anonymous had given me a social life for one night of every year.

I’ve written a number of Halloween short stories over the years, and although I’ve occasionally used the folklore of the holiday, it’s largely been the psychology of masks and anonymity and necessary transformation which has interested me in these tales. For your entertainment I’m sharing one of my best here, “Halloween Street,” originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1999. It’s part of my latest short story collection, Celestial Inventories, from ChiZine, http://chizinepub.com/books/celestial-inventories.php. The 22 stories in Celestial Inventories focus on the darkly absurd, the paranoid, and the hard-to-classify. The characters in these stories are expert not only in masks, but also in transformation. I’m very proud of this book.

STEVE RASNIC TEM is the author of over 400 published short stories and is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His story collections include City Fishing, The Far Side of the Lake, In Concert (with wife Melanie Tem), Ugly Behavior, Onion Songs, and his newest collection from Chizine, Celestial Inventories. His novels include Excavation, The Book of Days, Daughters, The Man In The Ceiling (with Melanie Tem), the recent Deadfall Hotel, and the forthcoming Blood Kin (Solaris Books, March).You may visit the Tem home on the web at www.m-s-tem.com. The Amazon Steve Rasnic Tem page can be found at: http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Rasnic-Tem/e/B001JRYPX6/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Read “Halloween Stories” from Celestial Inventories (ChiZine Publications, August 2013) by Steve Rasnic Tem:

(original appearance: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1999)

Halloween Street.  No one could remember who had first given it that name.  It had no other.  There was no street sign, had never been a street sign.

Halloween Street bordered the creek, and there was only one way to get in‑‑over a rickety bridge of rotting wood.  Gray timbers had worn partway through the vague red stain.  The city had declared it safe only for foot or bike traffic.

The street had only eight houses, and no one could remember more than three of those being occupied at any one time.  Renters never lasted long.

It was a perfect place to take other kids‑‑the smaller ones, or the ones a little more nervous than yourself‑‑on Halloween night.  Just to give them a little scare.  Just to get them to wet their pants.

Most of the time all the houses just stayed empty.  An old lady had supposedly lived in one of the houses for years, but no one knew anything more about her, except that they thought she’d died there several years before.  Elderly twin brothers had once owned the two center houses, each with twin high‑peaked gables on the second story like skeptical eyebrows, narrow front doors, and small windows that froze over every winter.  The brothers had lived there only six months, fighting loudly with each other the entire time.

The houses at the ends of the street were in the worst shape, missing most of their roof shingles and sloughing off paint chips the way a tree sheds leaves.  Both houses leaned toward the center of the block, as if two great hands had  attempted to squeeze the block from either side.  Another three houses had suffered outside fire damage.  The blackened boards looked like permanent, and arbitrary, shadows.

But it was perhaps the eighth house that bothered the kids the most.  There was nothing wrong with it.

It was the kind of house any of them would have liked to live in.  Painted bright white like a dairy so that it glowed even at night, with wide friendly windows and a bright blue roof.

And flowers that grew naturally and a lawn seemingly immune to weeds.

Who took care of it?  It just didn’t make any sense.  Even when the kids guided newcomers over to Halloween Street they stayed  away from the white house.

#

The little girl’s name was Laura, and she lived across the creek from Halloween Street.  From her bedroom window she could see all the houses.  She could see who went there and she could see everything they did.  She didn’t stop to analyze, or pass judgments.  She merely witnessed, and now and then spoke an almost inaudible “Hi” to her window and to those visiting on the other side.  An occasional “Hi” to the houses of Halloween Street.

Laura should have been pretty.  She had wispy blonde hair so pale it appeared white in most light, worn long down her back.   She had small lips and hands that were like gauges to her health: soft and pink when she was feeling good, pale and dry when she was doing poorly.

But Laura was not pretty.  There was nothing really wrong about her face: it was just vague.  A cruel aunt with a drinking problem used to say that “it lacked character.”  Her mother once took her to a lady who cut silhouette portraits out of crisp black paper at a shopping mall.  Her mother paid the lady five dollars to do one of Laura.  The lady had finally given up in exasperation, exclaiming “The child has no profile!”

Laura overheard her mother and father talking about it one time.  “I see things in her face,” her mother had said.

“What do you mean?”  Her father always sounded impatient with her mother.

“I don’t know what I mean!  I see things in her face and I can never remember exactly what I saw!  Shadows and . . . white, something so white I feel like she’s going to disappear into it. Like clouds . . . or a snow bank.”

Her father had laughed in astonishment.  “You’re crazy!”

“You know what I mean!” her mother shouted back.  “You don’t even look at her directly anymore because you know what I mean!  It’s not exactly sadness in her face, not exactly.  Just something born with her, something out of place.  She was born out of place.  My God!  She’s eleven years old!  She’s been like this since she was a baby!”

“She’s a pretty little girl.”  Laura could tell her father didn’t really mean that.

“What about her eyes?  Tell me about her eyes, Dick!”

“What about her eyes?  She has nice eyes . . .”

“Describe them for me, then!  Can you describe them?  What color are they?  What shape?”

Her father didn’t say anything.  Soon after the argument he’d stomped out of the house.  Laura knew he couldn’t describe her eyes.  Nobody could.

Laura didn’t make judgments when other people talked about her.  She just listened.  And watched with eyes no one could describe.  Eyes no one could remember.

No, it wasn’t that she was sad, Laura thought.  It wasn’t that her parents were mean to her or that she had a terrible life.  Her parents weren’t ever mean to her and although she didn’t know exactly what kind of life she had, she knew it wasn’t terrible.

Yes, she was born out of place.  That was a big part of it. She didn’t enjoy things like other kids did.  She didn’t enjoy playing or watching television or talking to the other kids.  She didn’t enjoy, really.  She had quiet thoughts, instead.  She had quiet thoughts when she pretended to be asleep but was really listening to all her parents’ conversations, all their arguments. She had quiet thoughts when she watched people.  She had quiet thoughts when people could not describe her eyes.  She had quiet thoughts while gazing at Halloween Street, the glowing white house, and all the things that happened there.

She had quiet thoughts pretending that she hadn’t been born out of place, that she hadn’t been born anyplace at all.

Laura could have been popular, living so close to Halloween Street, seeing it out of her bedroom window.  No other kid lived so close or had such a good view.  But of course she wasn’t popular.  She didn’t share Halloween Street.  She sat at her desk at school all day and didn’t talk about Halloween Street at all.

#

That last Halloween Laura got dressed to go out.  That made her mother real happy‑‑Laura had never gone trick‑or‑treating before.  Her mother had always encouraged her to go, had made or bought her costumes, taken her to parties at church or school,  parties the other kids dressed up for: ghosts and vampires and  princesses, giggling and running around with their masks looking like grotesquely swollen heads.  But Laura wouldn’t wear a costume.  She’d sit solemn‑faced, unmoving, until her mother finally gave up and took her home.  And she’d never go trick‑or‑ treating, never wear a costume.

Once she’d told her mother that she wanted to go out that night her mother had driven her around town desperately trying to find a costume for her.  Laura sat impassively on the passenger side, dutifully got out at each store her mother took her to, and each time shook her head when asked if she liked each of the few remaining costumes.

“I don’t know where else we can try, Laura,” her mother said, sorting through a pile of mismatched costume pieces at a drugstore in a mall.  “It’ll be dark in a couple of hours, and so far you haven’t liked a thing I’ve shown you.”

Laura reached into the pile and pulled out a cheap face mask.  The face was that of a middle‑aged woman, or a young man, cheeks and lips rouged a bright red, eye shadow dark as a bruise, eyebrows a heavy and coarse dark line.

“But, honey.  Isn’t that a little . . .” Laura shoved the mask into her mother’s hand.  “Well, all right.”  She picked up a bundle of bright blue cloth from the table.  “How about this pretty robe to complete it?”  Laura didn’t look at the robe.  She just nodded and headed for the door, her face already a mask itself.

Laura left the house that night after most of the other trick‑or‑treaters had come and gone.  Her interest in Halloween actually seemed less than ever this year; she stayed in her bedroom as goblins and witches and all manner of stunted, warped creatures came to the front door singly and in groups, giggling and dancing and playing tricks on each other.  She could see a few of them over on Halloween Street, not going up to any of the houses but rather running up and down the short street close to the houses in I‑dare‑you races.  But not near as many as in years past.

Now and then her mother would come up and open her door.   “Honey, don’t you want to leave yet?   I swear everybody’ll be all out of the goodies if you don’t go soon.”  And each time Laura shook her head, still staring out the window, still watching Halloween Street.

Finally, after most of the other kids had returned to their homes, Laura came down the stairs wearing her best dress and the cheap mask her mother had bought for her.

Her father and mother were in the living room, her mother having retrieved the blue robe from the hall closet.

“She’s wearing her best dress, Ann.  Besides, it’s damned late for her to be going out now.”

Her mother eyed her nervously.  “I could drive you, honey.”      Laura shook her head.

“Well OK, just let me cover your nice dress with the robe.  Don’t want to get it dirty.”

“She’s just a kid, for chrissake!  We can’t let her decide!” Her father had dropped his newspaper on the floor.  He turned his back on Laura so she wouldn’t see his face, wouldn’t know how angry he was with both of them.  But Laura knew.  “And that mask!  Looks like a whore’s face!  Hell, how can she even see?   Can’t even see her eyes under that.”  But Laura could see his.   All red and sad‑looking.

“She’s doing something normal for a change,” her mother whispered harshly.  “Can’t you see that? That’s more important.”

Without a word Laura walked over and pulled the robe out of her mother’s arms.  After some hesitation, after Laura’s father had stomped out of the room, her mother helped her get it on.  It was much too large, but her mother gasped “How beautiful!” in exaggerated fashion.  Laura walked toward the door.  Her mother ran to the door and opened it ahead of her.  “Have a good time!” she said in a mock cheery voice.  But Laura could see the near‑ panic in the eyes above the distorted grin.  Laura left without saying goodbye.

A few houses down the sidewalk she pulled the robe off and threw it behind a hedge.  She walked on, her head held stiff and erect, the mask’s rouge shining bright red in the streetlights, her best dress a soft cream color in the dimness, stirred lightly by the breeze.  She walked on to Halloween Street.

She stopped on the bridge and looked down into the creek.  A young man’s face, a middle‑aged woman’s face gazed back at her out of dark water and yellow reflections.  The mouth seemed to be bleeding.

She walked on to Halloween Street.  She was the only one there.  The only one to see.

She walked on in her best dress and her shiny mask with eyes no one could see.

The houses on Halloween Street looked the way they always did, empty and dark.  Except for the one, the one that glowed the color of clouds, or snow.

The houses on Halloween Street looked their own way, sounded their own way, moved their own way.  Lost in their own quiet thoughts.  Born out of place.

You could not see their eyes.

Laura went up to the white house with the neatly trimmed yard and the flowers that grew without care.  Its color like blowing snow.  Its color like heaven.  She went inside.

#

The old woman gazed out her window as goblins and spooks, pirates and ballerinas crossed the bridge to enter Halloween Street.  She bit her lip to make it redder.  She rubbed at her ancient, blind eyes, rubbing the dark eye shadow up into the coarse line of brow.  She was not beautiful, but she was not hideous either.  Not yet.  No one ever remembered her face, in any case.

Her snow‑white hair was beautiful, and long down her back.

She had the most wonderful house on the street, the only one with flowers, the only one that glowed.  It was her home, the place where she belonged.  All the children, or at least all the children who dared, came to her house every Halloween for treats.

“Come along,” she said to the window, staring out at Halloween Street.  “Come along,” she said, as the treat bags rustled and shifted around her.  “You don’t remember, do you?” as the first of the giggling goblins knocked at her door.  “You’ve quite forgotten,” as the door began to shake from eager goblin fists, eager goblin laughs.  “Now scratch your swollen little head, scratch your head.  You forgot that first and last, Halloween is for the dead.”