“I personally won’t be able to do anything about a severed limb, but even with Earth’s current medical science—”
“Severed . . . limb!?”
“But the training will be useful.”
“I don’t want my limbs lopped off!”
Ken sunk to his knees. These women really were going to be the death of him.
Chapter Eleven
Or, A (Not So) Healthy Dose of Halloween!
“What are you doing?” Katrina asked.
“I’d like to know as well,” Angelica added.
Ken was in the downstairs storage room, looking among large orange tubs that were stacked against both walls.
Katrina peeked her head up in the room and sneezed. “It’s so dusty in here!”
“It’s the only room I don’t clean as much as I should.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m trying to find the Halloween decorations,” Ken said, shuffling some plastic tubs around.
“Hallo-what?”
“Here they are,” he said, grabbing an orange tub with ‘Halloween Decorations’ written on the side of it in magic marker. He moved to the door. “Hey, Angelica, could you take this upstairs to the living room? Don’t worry. It’s really light.”
He handed it to Angelica and she moved out of the room. Katrina and Ken left as well, and he closed the door.
“What is this for again?” Angelica wondered
“Halloween, of course.”
“Halloween? Who is that?”
* * *
“Halloween is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Depending on the culture, it’s sometimes good, sometimes bad.”
“What does it mean here?” Angelica said, looking at the open tub of decorations.
“It’s just an excuse for children to dress up in costumes, and go door to door to get candy.”
“Candy? They get candy from houses?” Katrina blinked, excited.
“They have to knock on the door and say ‘Trick or Treat’!”
“And they receive candy?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds like fun!”
“What kind of costumes are there?” Cassandra asked.
“Ghosts, zombies, monsters, super heroes, angels, pixies, and just about anything else you can think of.”
“I don’t know what most of those are, but I’ll take your word for it. And what are these decorations for?” she continued.
“We’re going to put them in the windows, trees, and in the yard.”
“And just for walking around, they get candy?” Katrina asked again.
“Yes. Didn’t I say that?”
“And what do you get out of all of this?” Natalia asked from the couch.
“What do I get? Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Do I have to get anything for it?”
* * *
The decorations consisted of three signs near the driveway, a couple of decals with a string of pumpkin lights in the front window, and some plastic ghosts in the tree in the front yard.
Ken turned from the lights, and saw a white handkerchief floating in air as if it was draped over something. In this case, someone.
“Boo!” it said in a not-so-unfamiliar voice.
“Um, what are you supposed to be?”
“A ghost! Boo!”
“Cute ghosts aren’t scary. Besides, you forgot the eye holes.”
“Oh, I did think it was kind of hard to move, since I couldn’t see where I was going.”
“Come to think of it, don’t you use your wings to fly?”
“Nah,” Katrina—the ghost—said, pulling her costume off. “Betlinians can naturally fly. We just use the wings for turning and for balance.”
“Do you float when you’re asleep?”
“No. We have to be awake. But some people have a condition called ‘sleep flying’.”
“Wow.”
“Anyway, where is all the candy?”
“It’s downstairs. We’ll make up small bags when everyone gets home.”
Ken turned back to the lights, adjusted two of them, and turned back to Katrina.
The handkerchief was floating in front of him again.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Boo!”
“You still forgot the eye holes.”
“Dang it!”
* * *
“Okay, take some candy at random and put them in the little bags here,” Ken instructed, pulling a half-handful of candy from the box in the middle of the room. Everyone was seated in a circle on the floor. Ken had taken all the candy he bought and dumped it in the cardboard box.
Rustle, rustle.
“Make sure you don’t put the same piece of candy in a bag. We want some variety.”
He finished up the bag, and put it aside.
Rustle, rustle.
“Why do I have to do this kind of work?” Natalia whined.
“Just call it ‘cultural experience’.”
Rustle, rustle.
“Couldn’t you just give the pieces out as they come?”
“You can, but when you have a line, it’s faster this way.”
Rustle, rustle.
“Say,” Cassandra remarked while putting some candy in a small plastic bag, “where’s Katrina?”
Candy flew everywhere as Katrina jumped out of the box. “Boo!” she shouted in a feeble attempt to scare everyone.
Ken picked her up by the back of her collar. “No slacking off. And clean up the mess.”
“Yes, sir . . .”
An hour later, they were finished making the candy bags.
“Now time for the pumpkin.” He stood up and went to the dinner table.
“Pumpkin? What’s a pumpkin?” Alisa asked.
They gathered around the table, Ken pulled the large orange vegetable out of a paper bag on the floor and set it on the table. “This is a pumpkin.”
“Never seen one of them before. Is it edible?”
“The inside is. You can make pie and other foods out of it.”
Angelica poked it with her finger. “It’s kind of hard. What do we do with this?”
“The goal is to cut a face in it. However—”
“Leave that to me!” Cassandra said, unsheathing her saber.
“But—” Ken tried to voice an objection.
A couple of strokes of her weapon and she carved a smiley face into the outside skin of the pumpkin.
She sheathed her saber and smiled. “Pretty good, huh?”
Ken took a closer look at it. “Not too shabby. I suppose you also cut the top off, scooped out the insides, and made his face go all the way through one layer so that we can put a light in it, right?”
“Uh . . .”
Ken sighed, and handed her a carving knife and a large spoon. “I’ll get the other two pumpkins from downstairs.”
* * *
“Decorations, done. Candy, done. Pumpkins, done. T-minus two days and counting. Oh, and the pumpkin croquettes are finished.”
Ken finished putting the food out on the dinner table.
“There are lots of unique customs here, aren’t there?” Cassandra asked.
“Yeah, and we’ve only just started. There are two more important ones before the end of the year.”
“What are they?”
“It’s a surprise. One is arguably the most important holiday of the year. And Alisa’s birthday is coming up toward the end of the year, so we’ll have to do something special for her. Getting back to Halloween, you all can dress up if you want, but you’re a little too old to go Trick or Treating.”
“Then we can’t get any candy?” Katrina asked.
“We still have a quarter of a box over there! Have at it.”
* * *
Ken had turned off the lights, and the living room was illumina
ted only by four candles on the coffee table.
He stood up, and cleared his throat. “This is a story from many years ago. It’s so terrible, so horrifying, that not many people have heard it. It’s a tale of something that happened in this very neighborhood.”
His tenants were sitting in various spots around the living room, listening to his story.
“Mister and Misses White lived down the street, living a peaceful life like any other family. They had a healthy son who was working at a local factory in order to pay his way through college.
“One day a dear friend of the family, Mister Morris, stopped by to pay his respects after a long time. He had just retired from the Armed Forces after a long tour overseas, and returned from a vacation in India.
“After many stories about his time overseas, he presented them with a souvenir that he had picked up in a curio shop. It was a small, mummified hand with three fingers. He said it was a paw from a monkey, adding that there was a little bit of magic in it. It could somehow grant three wishes, but the shopkeeper he purchased it from had warned Mister Morris that there are consequences to what one wishes for. Mister Morris was tempted to use it at least once, but considering how the White Family had been so kind to him over the years, he decided to give it to them.
“After Mister Morris had left, Mister White humorously contemplated what they could use the wishes for. Their house had about twenty-thousand dollars left on the mortgage, and playing along with Mister Morris’s obvious joke, picked up the monkey’s paw and wished just for that: twenty-thousand dollars to pay off the mortgage.
“All of the sudden, he let out a gasp and dropped the paw. His wife and son came to find out what was wrong. He was simply staring at the paw on the ground, and he told to them that the paw had moved after he made the wish. His son laughed, as did Misses White, telling him that it was his imagination. Mister White swore otherwise, but since nothing else had happened, he cautiously picked it up the paw and put it on a shelf, thinking nothing more of it.
“At home the next day, Mister White and his wife were having dinner. Their son was late, and they were worried, since they hadn’t heard anything from him at all. It wasn’t like him to be late without telling them.
“There was a knock at the front door, and they were relieved, thinking it was their son. Mister White answered the door, and saw a solemn man waiting to address them.
“The man had come to inform them of a terrible accident at the factory their son worked at. Their son had been crushed when a metal container broke loose and fell on him.
“Mister and Misses White couldn’t believe the story; it had to have been a lie. Then the man told them there was an insurance policy for every member of the factory to be paid to the worker’s beneficiaries. It was in the amount of . . . twenty-thousand dollars.”
Cassandra, Angelica and Katrina gulped in shock.
“After the funeral for their dear son, they didn’t know what to do. Mister White felt responsible, as what they received was the exact amount that he had wished for. But without their son, paying off their house was meaningless.
“That evening, in a fit of despair, Misses White took the monkey’s paw from off the shelf her husband had left it on.
“Mister White, knowing what she was going to do, tried to reason with her, but to no avail. She made the wish that her son was alive again.
“But nothing happened. She tossed it on the ground, lamenting that her wish wouldn’t come true. They sat in silence for some time in the living room, trying to come to terms with what had happened to their son, and how they would go on with their lives.
“All of the sudden, there was a slow knock at the door.”
Ken knocked on the wall next to him for added effect.
“They wondered what it could be, when Misses White realized what it was: it was their son. It could be nothing else.
“She was ready to go and greet him, when her husband attempted to stop her. He knew that if their son was brought back to life, he would look nothing like the son they had loved. His body wasn’t shown at the funeral due to the wounds his body suffered.
“She struggled with him, summoning the strength to push him aside, and headed for the door. All Mister White could do was take up the monkey’s paw once more and, for the sake of his wife’s sanity, used the third and final wish as his wife opened the door.
“Opening the door, she found nothing there but the cold wind of the night.”
Angelica and Katrina were scared. “That was so . . . creepy.”
Cassandra shook her head. “You all are . . . such babies. That . . . wasn’t scary.”
Anyone with half a brain and at least one eye knew that she was lying through her teeth.
“The story doesn’t end there,” Ken said in a deadly serious tone. “Shortly afterward, the White family moved away. When I was younger, I stopped by their empty house. The front door was unlocked, and I went in. You’ll never guess what I found.”
He went to the cabinet Katrina lived on, opened a door near the lowest part of the unit, and pulled out a shoe box.
“No . . . way . . .” Katrina gasped.
Ken showed the box toward the three of his most frightened tenants.
“Care to make a wish?” he asked, opening the box.
There it was: a small, mummified, monkey’s paw.
And that was it for Angelica, Cassandra and Katrina. They let out screams that could shatter glass on a continent across the ocean, and with a vapor trail and speed that rivaled Olympic runners, disappeared into their rooms.
Ken could only laugh.
Natalia rolled her eyes. “Boring!” she announced.
Sasha clapped and smiled. “That was a really creepy story!”
“I love telling it,” Ken laughed. “It never fails to creep people out, especially when I bring the box out.”
“Did you come up with it?”
“Not at all. It’s a made-up story written by a gentleman with the last name of Jacobs. I’m not sure what his first name is. He wrote it in the early nineteen-hundreds in Great Britain. I made a couple of additions, but I can’t claim credit for the story.”
He noticed Alisa standing in the corner of the living room, away from everyone.
“Alisa, you don’t have to be so scared.”
She took a step forward toward Ken. “Don’t make any wishes on that. Think of what happened to Mister and Misses White.”
“Alisa, the story was fiction. It’s made up. And this paw is just paper mache. I made it in junior high school.”
“Just . . . don’t make any wishes on it,” she said with a really concerned look.
Giving up, he simply nodded, adding an “Okay” to humor her.
* * *
Halloween came without incident: no combat, issues, problems . . . not even a sneeze from Ken nor his tenants.
He brought the box of small candy bags outside and put it on the back of the car. He also brought out chairs for everyone.
Cassandra shivered and rubbed her arms. “It’s kind of cold out.”
“Get a jacket from the closet. Didn’t you bring one from home?”
“No. When does this start?”
“It starts at six, and ends at eight.”
“Shouldn’t we wait inside?” Natalia wondered.
“Outside is easier.”
“It’s almost six!” Katrina shouted.
A few minutes later, they could hear the sounds of children of various ages from down the street.
Halloween had officially begun in their area.
While his tenants had forgone costumes, the children of the neighborhood were dressed as ghosts, some princesses, a few zombies, a couple vampires, a handful of cheerleaders, and a number of ninjas.
“Trick or Treat!” was the phrase of the evening.
Smiles from his tenants were many and frequent, seeing the children from toddlers all the way up to junior
high school dressed up.
Ken’s tenants were a big hit. Angelica was instantly recognizable, and the children and parents commented on her wings, thinking they were part of a costume. Sasha had to keep telling people that her maid outfit was her uniform, and not a costume. Katrina was the cutest attraction of the evening, because of her size.
When it got around that she and the tenants were otherworlders, they had a line of people wanting to see them. Almost everyone who came were surprised that they were so ordinary and not that different looking than any other person on Earth.
Near eight o’clock, the children all but disappeared. There were still a few bags of candy left.
The last child left, and they waited for a little while longer for stragglers, but no one else showed up. As they cleaned up, Angelica sighed.
“Something wrong?”
“It seemed to end so fast.”
“There’s always next year.”
“Do we have to take down the decorations already?” Cassandra asked.
“We can leave them up for a few more days.”
As they cleaned up the furniture, a handkerchief floated in air in front of Ken.
“Boo!” it said.
“You forgot the eye holes again.”
“No I didn’t.”
The handkerchief moved like a shirt that was being turned around while still being worn. Once finished, two cute eyes looked out from holes in the handkerchief.
“See?”
“Yeah. Too bad Halloween’s over. Try again next year.”
“Boo . . .” the ghost whined, sadly.
* * *
Ken brought a basket of clean laundry to the living room—
—and found Katrina lying on a pile of candy wrappers.
“I can’t eat anymore . . .” she moaned, punctuating it with a burp.
“Great Scott! What did you do!?”
“It seemed to be a waste to leave all that candy around, so . . .”
“So . . . ?
“I ate it all.”
“How much?”
“A quarter of that box.”
“A quarter . . . !? Where did you put it all!?”
“In places I didn’t know I had . . .”
Ken shook his head. “You little dummy. The candy would have kept for a couple of months.”
Not being able to move on her own, Ken picked her up and stood on a step stool next to the cabinet so he could reach her living area. He put her into her bed, and pulled the covers over her.
“I take it you’re not going to eat that much again, are you?”