The Curiosities (Carolrhoda Ya) (26 page)

It occurred to me to discover if I could write a story without any dialogue. Instead of talking, there was a lot of food. —Tessa

T
he point is to be silent. The dead can’t speak, so in their honor, neither do the living.

I rarely talk the other three hundred and sixty-four days, so for me Halloween is not such a challenge. Nor do I invite any other living persons. I haven’t reached the point where I have to converse with myself to stay sane. Or I’ve never been sane, and so have never needed spoken words to ground me in the moment.

All day I’ve had chili simmering on the stove, with cinnamon, honey, paprika, red pepper, and clove. The apples are cut in half so you can see their seed-stars, pumpkin muffins are iced with thin cream cheese, and I pull rosemary bread out of the oven just at sunset. There’s cornbread, too, and dried plums. Two bottles of red wine are breathing next to the jack-o’-lantern waiting unlit in the center of my dining table.

My dishes are black, and the tablecloth, too. But I only have silverware. I like the contrast where they rest on the black napkins, especially when the candles are lit.

I brush my hair and put on slight touches of eye shadow and lipstick. My skirt flares just below my knees, and I have on decent stockings and solid shoes. The shirt is silk and buttons up to my neck. I have on small pearl earrings and a charm bracelet made of small golden headstones.

This year it is storming, and I part my curtains to see a family running between two houses, clearplastic ponchos distorting the costumes on the three little ones. Porch lights shimmer through the rain, their welcome glows ruined and sad. Most children will be eating bowls of candy meant for other trick-or-treaters but relegated to consolation prizes against disappointment and tantrums.

And I know that a mere storm will not keep the real tricksters away, the dead and their never-living brethren.

So I walk through the dark halls and rooms of my house and light candles in every corner. Black for warding off evil, orange for the holiday, and white to invite peace.

When all the air wavers with flickering flame, I go to the kitchen and bring out the chili pot. I ladle some into every place setting, and I break bread to dole out. I place a selection of dried fruits and apples beside chunks of cornbread, and last I pour the wine. Then I sit at the foot of the table, across from the blackdraped chair at the head. I fold my hands, bow my chin, and pray.

Silently, of course.

Restless ghosts, I welcome you to this table. It is filled with the year’s bounty, with my bounty, and I would share it with you that you not go forgotten or hungry.

Nothing happens, but I am not alarmed. The dead arrive when they will. I sip my wine, a heavy merlot with the hint of chocolate and smoke. And I wait. Excitement and dread mingle on the rim of my glass.

Outside, the wind rattles branches against my roof like a welcome knock. The first spirit arrives, and I feel it with a chill. It is a boy in an Irish cap and knickers, swinging his feet and watching me. I smile.

Next to him appears an old woman with glinting gold at her ears. Both ghosts are flimsy and white, and I can see the upholstery through their flesh.

More come. I smile welcome at each arrival, recognizing my regulars and being careful not to stare at those unfamiliar. The young woman in the empirewaist summer dress I’ve been seeing since I was seven takes the seat to my left, and my affection for her makes me raise my wineglass in salute.

I have done research, of course, on my local spirits to discover their identities, but only in one case has a ghost ever matched in death his final picture from life. I believe it is not the last moments that mark a ghost, but their happiest. I see no slit throats or gunshot wounds, no bloodshot eyes or yellowing lips. I see instead how they project themselves. For the little boy, it is not necessarily that he died when he was five—perhaps he was twelve or twenty or fifty-seven—but his moment of strongest self-awareness and identity was at such a young age.

But it is only my theory. There is no exact science to this, and I had no master or old crone to learn from.

Soon all the seats are filled but for the head. We do not eat until everyone arrives. I stare at the empty chair and wonder if this will be the year he does not come.

Travis Andrew McCarthy. I know his name because he showed it to me, one Halloween when I was thirteen. He wrote it in smoke at my girlfriend Ginny’s house, when I hid in the bathroom from her bullying older brother who said my costume made me look fat and trashy. Travis’s touch froze away my tears, and when he smiled I felt my sore heart soothed. I felt the flush of shame melt away. I said his name, and he mouthed mine back at me. I could not hear it, but I knew what he said. Every day between that Halloween and the next I thought of his slicked-back hair, the unshaved jaw and dashing jacket. He appeared perhaps nineteen or twenty, and I loved him as hard as thirteen-year-olds must.

I am older than him now, older than he seems, by several years. But every October thirty-first, I set my table to welcome the dead and wait for him especially.

They used to terrify me, the ghosts no one else sees. They like to slink into your peripheral vision and mouth words at you, words you have no way to hear. It is awful to stare and stare and not know what they are saying—it is a greeting? A warning? A dire threat? But Travis never frightened me.

At my dining table, candles flicker, casting shadows through the spirits. They move their lips, chatting to each other. But all is silent around me, except for the clang of my clock striking nine and the wind in the trees.

I sigh, and Travis forms himself beside me, brushing his cold fingers down my neck. I watch as he walks down the length of the table to sit opposite me. He nods and smiles, and I smile back. The table is complete.

I lift my spoon and dip it into the cooling chili. Taking a bite, I see all the ghosts mimic the same. With invisible cutlery they carve bread, stir soup, and pick the plumpest fruit. None of the food moves, of course, not even a drop of wine, but for my own. But if you let your eyes relax and did not worry about details, it might be a family, eager to join in supper together.

Travis leans his elbows on the table and says something to me. I demur and sip my wine. He grins and raises a ghostly glass that seems to lift out of the real one. We flirt across the table, him smiling and using his eyebrows, me bashfully fluttering my lashes, biting my lip, hiding behind the food. The wine fills my head and I am alive. I imagine color in Travis’s face, warmth in his lips. I imagine the feel of his hair, thick and rough under my hands. Superior to any living man’s. He is attentive and laughing, and he loves me.

Slowly, slowly, my plate clears. I pour a second glass of wine. Soon ghosts are patting my arm and mouthing their thank-yous, rising up out of their seats and vanishing up into the ceiling or zipping through the walls. My summer-dress girl takes the hand of the little boy in the Irish cap, and several of the older spirits twirl off together. I am left alone with Travis.

He stands, hands flat on the table, and smiles at me. It is a smile that says, well done again, my darling, a fine feast you set.

Travis and I, we do not need to talk.

I rise as he comes around the table. I close my eyes, and his hands press cold against my cheeks. It is like the temperature dropping suddenly, or the snap of frigid wind when he kisses me. Ten seconds of frozen bliss. My heart stops and I keep my hands at my sides, knowing that if I reach for him all I will find is cold, empty air.

Then he is gone. I look at the dumb supper, spread out in all its black, candlelit abundance. Except for my crumb-covered plate and empty bowl, every setting is filled still with food and drink, colorful and welcoming.

I sigh and sit back down. Dark rain pummels the windows. I drink more wine.

And next year, I decide, I will add sweet-potato
casserole
.

Sometimes the hardest story to tell is the one that everyone has already heard. I feel like readers have been trained, especially with short stories, to look for the trick, the switch on a switch, the twist ending. So if that’s what you are indeed going to give them, you must be very, very careful. This short story impressed me as both a reader and a writer because this twist is one that my generation is very prepared for. But still, Brenna sells it, and in the end I’m not sure it’s the surprise that matters. It’s one of those stories I dissected, trying to learn the secrets of its strange body. —Maggie

This story surprised me, even though I went into it knowing all the parts. As I was writing I felt like I already understood the basic layout and the reveal.
What I didn’t expect was the camaraderie between the girls and the fact that ghost stories, by their very nature, are sad ones.
—Brenna

I
t takes forever for the house next door to sell. Poor For-Sale Sign, rickety and crooked, like it’s been leaning there all summer, all year, all my life.

The real estate agent blames the lack of interest—no, the entire state of the housing market—on our yard. She leaves a note taped to our front door, saying that no decent family would move in next to a disaster like ours, that the lawn is an eyesore. And it kind of is. I want to tell my dad to get off his ass, crawl out of the bottle and pull-start that mower, but at the same time I don’t want to tell him anything. It’s easier, just walking past the mess like it doesn’t even exist.

And the house does sell, despite the condition of our yard. I lie out in the weedy grass and watch the people come and go, first the movers and then the family. Their son looks my age, maybe a year or two older. He’s tall and dark-haired, with great shoulders and long, graceful hands. He’s always texting—never even looks up or turns around, but I don’t need to know the color of his eyes to tell that he’s delicious. I watch from over the fence, hopeful and terrified that at any moment he’ll turn and see me there.

The girl is less oblivious. On the second day she comes wandering over with bare feet and a beat-to-hell
Polaroid camera
.

She’s younger, eleven or twelve, with a round, pale face and bangs cut short and straight across. Her hair is black and makes her look like a Gothic baby doll. She’s holding a handful of fresh photos and staring at me like I’m some kind of extraterrestrial. Her eyes are ice-blue with freakishly long lashes.

I flick a hand at her and smile. She’s way too young to actually hang out with, but maybe she’ll invite me over anyway.

“Hi,” she says in a flat voice.

“What’s your name?” I ask brightly, but I already know. Behind her the guy—obviously her brother—is sitting on the steps, gazing intently at his phone. There’s a box next to him with photo albums and notebooks and a well-loved plush unicorn sticking out of the top. The name Abby is scrawled down the side in marker.

At first she won’t answer or look at me, so I just keep talking, yammering about whatever, glancing past her every now and then to see if her brother is watching.

Finally, she takes a step closer. “How long have you lived here?” she asks in a tiny voice.

“Always—all my life.”

She tips her face to the sky. “What’s it like? Is there anything to do?”

“Well, what kinds of things do you want to do?”

“I like to take pictures,” she says, offering the handful of photos, fanning them out like playing cards. The paper is slick and glossy. The pictures are of the house and the yard, her brother standing by their one skinny tree, a burly pair of movers wrestling a red couch up the front steps in a long awkward diagonal.

“They’re nice,” I say. And they are. Surprisingly nice. The one of her brother makes me feel weirdly sad, like seeing a helium balloon tied to a railing somewhere and knowing that no one’s coming back for it.

Abby smiles and looks away. “I have more. I keep them in an album.”

“Will you take my picture?” I pose for her, leaning on the fence, propping my chin on one hand.

She regards me doubtfully, then raises the camera anyway. When she presses the button, there’s a click and a flash and the camera spits out a pale square of paper. Abby catches it and stands, head bent, watching it develop. Her expression is so blank that it could mean a million things.

“Well, can I see it?”

“No,” she says, holding it against her chest.

“O-kay, never mind then. So, does your brother have a girlfriend?”

“Yes. But she doesn’t live here. She goes to his old school.”

A tiny flare of hope—I mean, distance is a killer, and how long can you really stay together when texting is the primary basis for a relationship? If I can just get him to see that I exist, maybe I can cure him of the girlfriend. “Is he always on his phone like that?”

Abby shrugs and shakes her head. “He’s been really into it lately. He didn’t want to move.”

“Yeah, that sucks. Maybe I should go over and introduce myself. You know, show him around.”