Ghouljaw and Other Stories (27 page)

Drew obeyed, giving the paint-flecked door three small raps.

Neither boy budged. The wind was in the trees, their limbs sending bars of restless shadows across the front of the house.

Brian peered up toward one of the second-floor windows, fixed his gaze, and froze.

A pale shape—not necessarily a face or a body, just the grayish flash of a
thing
moving—had momentarily appeared in one of the upper windows before disappearing. Brian stared, narrowing his eyes, trying to understand what he’d seen. Suddenly, to describe it to his own confused mind, he had the image of dark water, as if the pane of glass was a transparent barrier in an ink-filled aquarium, containing some skittish gray thing.

Brian bristled as Drew gave the front door three solid raps with his small fist. “Trick or treat,” said the little boy.

Movement now in the first-floor window—the folds of the faded drape swaying. Brian was certain he’d seen fingers withdraw from that dark slit.

“Drew,” Brain said, disturbed to find his voice no more than a breathy croak. He took a few steps forward to grab his brother’s flannel shirt. “Drew, we should—”

The weathered doorknob creaked and turned, and with mesmeric slowness the door simply eased open, widening to expose the unlit interior.

The inside of the house was a confusing jumble of dark folds and jagged silhouettes. Brian thought he could make out a hallway corridor and staircase railing, but aside from that, the interior contained only heavy darkness.

Without looking, Drew took a step back, but slipped when his foot came off the front concrete step, spilling his candy-filled pumpkin pail. Brian rushed forward. He crouched and clutched hold of his brother, but faltered before he could haul him to his feet.

Down the dark passage of the hallway, something was moving—a writhing, huddled shape crawling. Again Brian had the notion of something in the water. But the image refined itself now.

He’d seen his mother poach eggs for breakfast, dropping them in the steaming water, the translucent whites spilling out in cloudy threads.

Threading—that’s what this thing was doing. Brian was watching something murky and gelatinous forming itself into a tendril-edged mass of shadow—something bleeding itself into a single shape. Suddenly, it reared up, the dark thing taking up the space of the entire threshold.

A gray-fleshed arm shot out from that darkness. The pale limb was inhumanly long, and its out-of-proportion fingers wriggled and skittered with arachnid-frantic movements.

Brian hoisted Drew back with an uncoordinated tug, and the boys spilled into the front lawn.

Brian scrambled to his feet but was again hypnotized by the thing in the doorway. It had a face now. Or rather, something that had once been a face. What he saw now was a malformed skull in mid-decay, flecks of gray flesh peeling from the bone. But its enormous eyes were impossibly alive—slick and searching in their lidless, rot-rimmed sockets. Within the ever-shifting blotch of darkness, Brian caught glimpses of gray skin, fragments of a body, what may have once been a man.

He had enough time to see the thing’s oversized arm extending again, the hand reaching out to clutch hold of Drew. Too late.

Brian watched his little brother raise the hatchet.

The blade glinted for a moment just before Drew took an awkward swipe at the thing. Brian heard a moist
slish
sound as the hatchet connected with something, and saw a pale flash as the thing recoiled its now mangled hand. Those unblinking eyes were lolling in their sockets, darting around frantically. The eyes settled on Brian. To Brian, what existed in that lingering stare was not fear or pain or panic. Its eyes—the only thing alive in that decaying mask—somehow looked pleased.

A hissing sound emerged, something between a rattle and the insectile clicking of a cicada.

Brian bolted forward, grabbing Drew’s flannel shirt and dragging him back. Both boys spun around and rushed across the yard.

Once they rounded the wrought-iron fence and hit the concrete, Brian broke out into a sprint and made sure Drew did the same. He gave a hasty look over his shoulder at the house. The porch was empty. The front door was closed.

They slowed down when they started seeing trick-or-treaters again. On the sidewalk, Brian lifted his hockey mask to his forehead, placing his hands on his knees and moving toward a shrub, preparing to vomit.

Drew tugged off his werewolf mask and let it drop by his feet. He was sniffling, his cheeks smeared with tears. “Brian,” the little boy mumbled, his lips quivering. “I didn’t mean to.” His voice broke as he began hitching sobs. “Are we in trouble?”

Brian stood up. He noticed Drew’s hands were empty. No candy. No hatchet. He wanted to cry too. He reached out and gripped Drew’s shoulder. “Just relax, okay?” He scanned the neighborhood, wondering if he was going to hear the sound of sirens. Brian pulled his brother to his chest, embracing him, and needing a hug himself. “It was that guy’s fault for trying to—”

Drew bristled and pulled away. “Guy?” said the little boy. “What guy?”

Brian could only blink. “The guy who came out of the house.”

Drew stared at his brother. “It was an old lady.” The little boy was on the verge of tears again. “She was in a”—he fidgeted—“a hospital dress or something.” Drew looked over Brian’s shoulder, as if seeing it again clearly. “It . . . it . . .”

Brian gently gripped Drew’s arm. “You saw a woman in a hospital gown?”

Drew wiped his nose with his sleeve and nodded. “It had . . . blood on it.” Brian’s neck went cold. “When she reached out . . . I don’t know . . . I thought she was going to hurt me.” He sniffled, his small chest rapidly rising and falling. “Brian—her fingers . . .”

Brian blinked, raising a hand to stop him. For a long time, the boys stood in silence. Eventually Brian said, “You’re right.” Drew tensed. “That lady was trying to hurt us. It was my fault for bringing the hatchet, but it was her fault for trying to grab us.”

Drew narrowed his eyes on his brother. His lower lip trembled. “What are we going to do about Dad’s hatchet?”

Brian shook his. He spotted Drew’s mask on the ground. “Come on,” said Brian, reaching down and picking up the mask. He handed it to Drew. “We need to go meet Mom.”

As they ran, Brian thought he heard the wail of sirens echoing somewhere in the distance.

The elementary school’s principal was a younger guy named Wilkes, not much older than Brian, who even in the midst of tense conversation had a tendency to flash wide, irritating smiles.

The children had been dismissed for the day, and within minutes Brian was paged to the principal’s office over the intercom.

He sat there now across from this man’s desk. There was another person from the front office present, a rigid non-speaking female counselor. Brian supposed they needed to make this official with a witness. Brian declined any union representation. He scanned the office, noting a small paperweight in the shape of a Christian ichthys.

“Our policy has been clear,” said Wilkes, leaning back in his chair. He was a smaller man—a small man in a big suit. Brian mentally amused himself with the notion that this guy wore a sort of costume on a daily basis. “This Halloween
party
”—he scratched at the air with his fingers, indicating the scare quotes—“you conducted in your classroom—”

“It wasn’t a
party,
” said Brian, imitating the other man’s gesture.

Wilkes continued, “That may be true, but it was a flagrant violation of our standards.” Over in the corner, the female counselor pursed her lips and jotted something on her notepad.

Brian rested his elbows on the arms of the chair. Although he and Wilkes were roughly the same age, Brian felt he was being spoken to as if he had no understanding of his actions. Yes, he understood this was considered gross insubordination. Yes, he understood how this would surely undermine the policies of the administration.

Maybe Wilkes is trying to give me a chance to defend myself, thought Brian. Maybe he wants me to verbally braid my own noose. Maybe.

As he listened to the principal with growing agitation, Brian had a dizzy moment where he actually imagined that he was twelve years old again, sitting in his father’s office, being berated for some trivial mistake.

At the end of the mostly one-sided conversation, it was determined that Brian would be suspended pending termination.

No surprise. It was about what he’d expected.

Brian and Drew waited over two hours for their mother, neither wanting to run the risk of abandoning their spot to make a phone call. They sat on the curb, watching the number of scurrying trick-or-treaters dwindle until the sidewalks were empty and the houses were dark.

Eventually, headlights fell on them, and the vehicle came to a jerky stop. But it wasn’t their mother. It was their father.

Gordan Cline stumbled out of the car. “Boys,” he said. Their father left the car door open as he crossed through the headlights, nearly falling to the curb next to them. His eyes were red and swollen. He touched the boys’ heads and face as if to make sure they were actually there. “Boys,” the man stammered again, and this time his voice broke. His lips trembled and he began blinking rapidly. “Your mother—” His voice was hoarse. Drew was frowning—confused, not understanding. Brian knew.

Kathy Cline died at the hospital later that night. On her way back to the neighborhood to pick up her sons, a drunk driver had careened through an intersection, smashing into Kathy’s vehicle with horrific velocity.

Neither of the boys mentioned trick-or-treating again. Or the Hoffman House, for that matter. Brian thought he understood that what had happened that night had been some sort of violation, and he thought they were being taught a lesson. He often wondered if Drew believed the same thing.

Even on the morning of their mother’s closed-casket funeral, Brian had discreetly examined the newspaper, trying to find anything about an attack on an elderly person in the old neighborhood. Nothing.

After Brian turned sixteen and received his driver’s license, he’d several times worked up the courage to drive by the Hoffman House. On each occasion he merely slowed the car. Everything was the same. But that wasn’t quite right. Brian had the idea that the house was watching him, playing possum.

Drew’s personality had grown colder as he grew older, becoming more clinically solemn and withdrawn. He seemed gravely intent on producing scientifically sound answers to difficult problems, so it was no surprise when he moved away to attend medical school and later become a pathologist.

As the years passed, family members who dared speak of that Halloween in 1987 as if there had only been one tragedy that night. But Brian and Drew knew better.

Brian pulled into the parking lot at the local hardware store around five o’clock that Friday evening. Halloween.

Back at school, he’d left all the decorations hanging in his classroom and only toted a small box of belongings to his car before driving directly to the hardware store.

Brian pulled up the collar on his jacket as he crossed the parking lot. The kids around town would have to bundle up tonight.

A cashier in a red vest greeted him as he entered. Brian smiled warmly and nodded. Yes, he knew what he was looking for. No thanks, he didn’t need any help.

Brian slowed his pace as he approached the hand-tool section, reverently inspecting the selection of hatchets.

The Hoffman House stood before a curdled backdrop of slate-colored clouds. Brian sat in his car. The engine was off.

Again, Brian called up the memory—a memory that had taken on variations over the years. He sees the dark cloak of shadowed tendrils covering a shape of bone and dead flesh. He sees the old woman—he’d always thought of it as Drew’s witch—in her blood-soaked hospital gown, her hair hanging in wiry clumps. But in his worst recollections, the thing that appears at the door is no monster at all, but simply a feeble old man—confused, fumbling out of the darkness.

But Brian’s mind no longer permits this trick, and the scene sheds itself, revealing its true face beneath the mask of memory.

He missed his little brother. He missed his mom. Brian took a hasty swipe at his eyes. There was a brown bag on the passenger seat. Brian reached over, the bag making a parchment rustling as he withdrew the hatchet.

Brian got out of the car, giving the neighborhood an uninterested glance. His heart began to surge as he crossed the leaf-blanketed yard, the rest of the world became obscured by an unseen screen.

Brian approached the front porch and looked up to one of the second-floor windows. Something was standing up there. Unclothed. Its gray flesh was shaded here and there where the withered skin was stretched over ridges of misshapen bone. Prodigious eyes. The thing’s angular face was smiling, leering.

Brian clenched a fist to knock on the door, but thought better of it. Instead, he clutched the hatchet and kicked in the door, the paint-flecked panel of wood easily splintering from its age-rotted hinges.

For a split-instant, it was the normal interior of an outdated house. But all that grew murky and indistinct. As if the sun were setting with startling swiftness, shadows clamored and stretched over one another.

Brian swallowed, licked his lips, and whispered, “Trick or treat.” He hefted the hatchet and strode through the threshold, disappearing within the overlapping shadows.

This is it. This is where I’m going to die
. On a gray-brisk November morning, Paul Dawson walked into the forest clearing. He’d been hiking for a little over three hours, trying not to dwell on painful images of his two daughters, trying instead to preoccupy himself with what comforting image he would cling to as he slammed the black door on his ridiculous life once and for all. In the end, not long now—hemorrhaging blood and embracing his final seconds of consciousness—Paul chose the jellyfish.