But standing there in the doorway were two people who were obviously very into Halloween. It was a woman and a man, and they were dressed like rag dolls, like Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. It made me think, just for a moment, of the Mr. and Mrs. Scarecrow figures on the porch of the house that used to be mine. The house I would never go back to. Though there was no reason for it to, not now, my arm under the bandage began to ache anew.
Far from sounding put out by my late arrival, Raggedy Andy chanted: "Trick or treat, smell my feet, gimme something good to eat."
"No, Andy," Raggedy Ann told him. Bonnie. Bonnie Ryan. My real mother. I immediately liked her voice. Kind of smoky like Lauren Bacall's, but friendly, too, like Julia Roberts. Obviously part of a spiel they'd worked out, she said, "We give them something good to eat."
Clearly Raggedy Andy—Marty Ryan—knew that, because he was holding a big black bowl full of candy. But he asked, in the simple way you'd expect from a person with rags in his head, "And do we smell their feet?"
"No, Andy," my mother told him firmly. "Nobody smells anybody's feet."
He bowed, holding out the candy bowl, which was probably more necessary for the average-sized trick-or-treater than for someone of my age and height.
Despite that extra two and a half hours in the car, I hadn't come up with just the right entrance line. "Um...," I said.
Marty cocked his head, like androids always seem to in sci-fi films, to show he was concentrating so as not to miss anything.
My mother smiled graciously. With all of their theatrical makeup, it was hard to tell what they really looked like. But they had kind eyes. And I knew she was beautiful, and he was handsome.
"Are you all right?" my mother asked, and suddenly the playfulness was gone from her voice. She sounded concerned, not impatient to get me off her front stoop.
"Yes," I managed to squeak.
"Your heart's beating so fast," she said.
"You can hear it?" Maybe it was about to explode.
Gently, she rested a fingertip at my throat, and I realized she could see the blood pulsing through my veins. My mother was as observant as she was kind. I wondered if she was a doctor or a nurse.
Marty was still in his Raggedy Andy persona. "Maybe we should invite her in?" he suggested, acting as though he was having trouble holding his head up straight. "I sometimes get wobbly when I stand too long."
"Marty," my mother chided him, letting him know this was not playing, and she took my arm and led me into the living room.
From outside, it had looked like a nice house in a nice neighborhood, but inside was very impressive. It looked like the kind of house that ends up as a six- or eight-page spread in a magazine about elegant homes. Marty and Bonnie had done quite well for themselves in the years since they'd had to give me up because they couldn't afford a good home in which to raise me.
Bonnie had me sit down on the couch, and she sat next to me.
I was sitting next to my real mother.
"Marty, why don't you get the poor child a glass of water?" she said. "And turn off the front light. I don't think there are going to be any more trick-or-treaters tonight."
Child? I was disappointed. "Oh, dear," I said. "I hoped to look like an adult princess." My first sentence to my real mother.
"Well," Bonnie said, trying hard to please, "a young adult princess."
I appreciated the effort.
Marty sat down on the other side of me and handed me a frosty glass of water, complete with ice cubes. Very thoughtful.
I sipped at the water.
"So...," Marty said, friendly but inquisitive, the Raggedy Andy muddleheadedness gone entirely. "May we ask who, exactly, you are?"
"Evelyn Parkhurst."
No reaction at all.
Which made sense. The adoption agency wouldn't have given them the name of the woman who adopted me.
"Evelyn," I repeated. The papers just said "baby girl," but I thought it could have been that my mother had suggested the name to the social worker or the person in charge; she could have said, "That's what I've been calling my dear baby that I have to give up for her own good, and maybe you could ask her new, rich mother to call her that."
But apparently not.
"You drove here," Marty said, which meant they'd heard the car—either that or he'd seen it in the driveway when he'd gone to the kitchen to get the water. He continued, "Most of our trick-or-treaters don't come by car."
"I imagine not," I said. I was about to say it—I'm your daughter—when he kept on talking, asking, "So where are you from?"
"Corning."
His eyebrows—both the yarn-colored painted-on ones and the real ones—went up, and he glanced at his wife. They both moved in a bit closer to me as though they could tell I needed comforting, and she put her arm around my shoulders—a very friendly gesture.
Again I was about to tell them, when he asked, "Lost?"
"No," I admitted. "Looking for you specifically."
Neither of them appeared as surprised as I would have thought.
"I think," I said—I was sure, but needed a running start before I could get it out—"I think I'm your daughter."
"Really?" my mother asked.
I was a bit disconcerted how evenly she said that: not surprised; neither pleased nor distressed. "And how did you find us?" Marty asked. "Internet." Somehow, though he had moved no closer, my perception of his closeness veered abruptly from making me feel comfortable to making me feel uneasy. I was aware of my stepbrother Bradley's plastic pumpkin, which was still looped over my arm, pressing into my side. I shifted myself away from my father, closer to my mother.
"Did you tell anyone you were coming here?" my mother asked.
"No," I said, a moment before I realized her arm had me pretty much blocked in.
"One way to be sure...," Marty murmured, leaning toward me.
The next thing I knew, he had put his hands on my thighs, pressing me down into the couch so that I could not get up. And my mother—my real mother—grabbed my shoulders, then sank her teeth into my neck.
My mother was drinking my blood.
There must have been something in my mother's saliva, some anti-panic enzyme, to keep me from struggling—either that or she exerted some sort of mind control. I knew she was a vampire. I mean, come on!—she was sucking blood out of my neck. But the horror was more on an intellectual level than the stomach-churning, frantic, I'm-about-to-die terror that it should have been. At the same time, it wasn't that my mind had shut down, because I was aware of the ticking of the clock on the mantel. I had dropped—all unaware—the glass of water Marty had brought for me, but now I could feel that cold wet spot on my hip. I could also feel the fabric of the couch scratching the backs of my thighs, and I could see the strands of yarn that formed the curls of my mother's Raggedy Ann wig. I could smell the thick stage makeup she wore, and I could smell my own blood.
Was I about to die, or were my parents going to make me into one of the undead to join them forever? I wasn't sure what to hope for.
My mother shoved me away from her and spat my blood out onto that expensive hardwood floor. She made a disgusted, boy-have-I-bitten-into-something-bad sound to go along with her boy-have-I-bitten-into-something-bad expression.
"She's right," my mother told her husband, "she has our blood in her veins. But with the human gene, not the vampire."
"Drat!" Marty said. "One of our worthless offspring coming back like a bad penny. I was hoping she was wrong entirely and we could have her."
One of?
Worthless?
"Well, the night's still young," my mother consoled him. "We'll find someone." My real parents were disappointed that they had to go out rather than have home delivery.
She hauled me up off the couch and started dragging me toward the front door. "So nice of you to come to visit," she said. "Now scram."
"But...," I said. "But ... but..."
"We didn't want you—which one are you?—fifteen ye
ars ago. We don't want you now. We can't raise you as a vampire; we can't feed on you. You're totally useless. Go back to where you came from."
"But...," I said again.
She closed the door in my face.
"But..."
I stood on their front step like an idiot, thinking I couldn't go back to Corning. My arm throbbed. Considering the mess I'd left, there was no way I could go back.
But my choices had gotten dramatically fewer.
In the end, I suppose I was lucky. They could have killed me, even if my blood was no good to them—just to make sure I didn't turn them in. Maybe they knew nobody would believe me. Maybe they changed their identities periodically. They must, at least once every twenty years or so, being creatures that never aged or died. Even if I did get someone to believe me and go there with me, my vampire parents would have moved on.
Hard to say, because I couldn't see how telling about them would help me.
It took me even longer to drive back to Corning because I still couldn't understand the map directions, plus I was so upset with all that had happened that I kept losing track of what I was doing.
So it was four o'clock in the morning when I pulled into the driveway of my adoptive parents' house. Another hour before the easternmost edge of the sky would be turning pink.
I didn't even try to put the car back in the garage.
The pumpkin was smashed on the front walk, the TV tray was upside down in the bushes, and the plastic bowl—empty, of course—had been tossed onto the garage roof.
So much for hoping for civilized trick-or-treaters.
I sat down between Mr. and Mrs. Scarecrow, leaning against the front door so that I felt the coolness of it through the fabric of my adoptive mother's party dress. I didn't want to go in, face that mess in the living room, all that blood, including a bit of my own.
I touched the bandage on my arm, where I'd used the knife on myself to get blood to leave a handprint, as though, wounded, I'd tried to get to the phone. So I'd look—even though I was missing—like another victim, an abductee.
"Well," I said to Mr. and Mrs. Scarecrow's burlap-covered faces, "you were wrong about life not being like the movies. This evening has been very much à la Alfred Hitchcock."
Luckily, no one had messed with them. Or not badly, anyway.
I'm guessing, by their slightly altered positions, by the way they were doubled over, that someone had given them a kick or two. Whoever had done that hadn't carried on, for whatever reason. Perhaps from a slightly skittish feeling that something was amiss, a feeling too vague—or too real—to investigate.
Or maybe Mr. and Mrs. Scarecrow's positions had shifted when the rigor mortis set in.
I readjusted the hat on my adoptive mother's head.
It had seemed such a good plan this afternoon.
Holding On
Harlan is playing with the cat when the cat suddenly focuses its attention on a spot somewhere behind Harlan's left shoulder. Harlan feels a sudden chill, as though he had been sitting cross-legged in front of a refrigerator whose door someone opened.
Harlan tries to tell himself that the steady gaze at something no human can see is in the nature of cats. He has just articulated this explanation to himself when the cat bristles its fur, arches its back, and hisses.
At the same moment, Harlan catches the whiff of smoke.
It must be Halloween again, Harlan thinks.
He stands and turns.
He can see through the boy, a boy whom Harlan estimates to be about fifteen or sixteen. Harlan has been seeing the boy for what must be eight years now, and in that passing of years, they are finally the same age.
Harlan wonders if this is significant in the interaction of ghosts with the living.
As has happened before, but only on Halloween nights, Harlan can make out not only the boy, but some of his surroundings—as though, on this one night of the year, the fabric that separates the living from the dead grows thin enough to see through.
It is night, and the boy is in a room whose ceiling has caved in and is open to the sky. There is broken furniture and debris, great gaping holes in the walls, and stains of both fire and water—evidence that the firefighters came, though obviously not soon enough.
Harlan very much doubts that this room exists anymore, in either world. It is more a state of mind.
The boy is sitting cross-legged in a space in the rubble, a position very similar to how Harlan had just been sitting, but without the cat.
The cat, fickle friend, has abandoned Harlan to face on his own whatever is coming.
"Helloooo," Harlan calls, trying to sound friendly.
Sometimes the boy seems able to hear him, sometimes not.
Harlan can never hear the boy.
The boy shivers, which may or may not mean that he has heard Harlan.
There are dark circles under the boy's eyes, and he rocks back and forth, his arms tight around himself as though his stomach hurts.
Harlan wishes there were something he could do to ease the boy's pain, but there is not.
"It's all right," Harlan tells him. "Don't be afraid."
Harlan knows he has no idea what he is talking about. Things may or may not be all right in the boy's world. For all Harlan knows, the boy may have every reason to be afraid.
During previous visits, not much more than this has ever happened:
• Harlan sees the boy.
• The boy is in distress.
• Eventually the boy fades away.
Sometimes the boy has broken down and cried, great wracking sobs, more heartbreaking for the fact that Harlan cannot hear the slightest whimper. Once, the boy had picked up one of the pieces of charred wood, a section of ceiling beam or wall brace—thick, but no more than a foot or so long. To Harlan's horror the boy had smacked the wood against his own forehead, repeatedly.
"Stop!" Harlan had shouted at him. "Don't do that!"
He didn't think the boy had heard him.
The boy had stopped, finally, worn out, blood streaming down his face. Then he had curled himself up into a tight ball and stayed that way, unmoving, until his image had faded away.
Now, there's a fevered look in the boy's eyes that reminds Harlan of that day, and he hopes not to see that awful scene reenacted.
The boy reaches behind himself.
Harlan is cringing, but it isn't a piece of board the boy brings forward; it's a backpack.
A backpack is such an ordinary thing that for one moment Harlan dares to believe all is well.
The boy opens the pack and takes out a rope.
There is no instant of confusion or doubt for Harlan. No search for an alternative explanation. Though he's never seen this before, Harlan knows what the boy plans to do with that rope.
"Stop!" Harlan shouts at him. "There's no reason to end your life!"
The boy flings one end of the rope around a beam, which extends jaggedly partway across the ceiling, and secures that end; then he makes a noose of the other end. He finds what's left of a chair. The red plastic seat has partly melted, then solidified, but the boy is able to stand up on it. He passes the noose over his head and around his neck.
Harlan knows there is a heaven, but he doesn't want to see the boy take that step. "Stop, stop, stop, stop!" he yells.
He suspects the boy might hear a whisper of this, for the boy claps his hands over his ears.
Then he steps off the chair.
The rope goes taut.
The boy's arms instinctively jerk out as though to break his fall.
And he does fall—but it's all the way to the floor, because the beam has broken beneath his weight.
The boy crumples in a heap, the rope landing around him, the piece of beam the other end is fastened to smacking him on the back of the head.
For a moment, as the boy lies motionless, Harlan wonders if he has succeeded in killing himself—except by blunt-force trauma rather than by hanging.
But apparently he has just had
the wind knocked out of him. He stirs. He raises his hand to where the chunk of wood struck his head. He moans.
He moans, and Harlan can hear.
For the first time in eight years, Harlan can hear the boy.
He doesn't know if it's that synchronicity, after all this time, of their ages, or if it has something to do with the boy almost—though not quite—dying.
But Harlan steps forward and suddenly finds himself going through that barrier of cold that separates their worlds, and into that room with the singed and water-damaged wallpaper that hangs in dusty, smoky sheets.
He kneels beside the boy. His hand passes through him, but Harlan feels something—like a slight electric tingle.
The boy whips around on the floor and looks at Harlan in terror. Even though he was about to take his own life, now he's afraid, and he cringes and backs away from Harlan.
Harlan can hear his slight gasp. He can hear the scrape across the wooden floor of one of the metal studs on the boy's jeans pocket.
Since the rules appear to have changed, Harlan says, "I don't mean you any harm."
The boy goes to wrap his arms around himself, and feels the rope. He looks down at the rope, then at Harlan, then he looks up at what's left of the broken beam by the ceiling. Then back at Harlan.
"I know who you are." The boy's voice is a whisper, but clear.
Harlan says, "Fine. I know who you are."
The boy reacts as though Harlan has slapped him. He puts his face in his hands—as Harlan remembers, again, that time the boy sat here rocking and hitting himself in the face. Harlan realizes he's seen, without noting, lines—scars—on the boy's forehead.
"I'm sorry," the boy says. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
He keeps on repeating this until Harlan can take it no longer. He puts his hand out. If they were two living people, he would be resting his hand on the boy's shoulder. It's a sensation like trying to hold on to a handful of water.
"It was an accident," Harlan says.