Not On My Patch
Diane Duane
The Badfort Press
County Wicklow, Ireland
This story was written
for the UNICEF 2011 Hallowe'en Pledge Drive
and is copyright 2011 Diane Duane. All rights reserved.
During October 2012,
50% of all proceeds from the sales of this novelette
go to UNICEF. Thanks for helping!
Not On My Patch
Nita Callahan was standing by the dining room table, scowling at it and having second thoughts about the items laid out ready on it for her…especially the big sharp knife.
I don’t know, she thought. I really don’t know if I want to do this. But now that it’s here, I guess I have to.
I guess—
She picked up the knife, toyed with it for a moment, warily tested its edge with her thumb… then looked for about the twentieth time at the thing she was preparing to stab.
The doorbell rang.
“Pff,” she said, rolling her eyes, for this had been happening all afternoon: every time she worked her courage up to do the deed, she got interrupted. Except maybe I think I want to be interrupted where this is involved…
“You want to get that one, honey?” her dad said from somewhere toward the back of the house.
“Yeah, no problem.” Nita headed for the front door, picked up a couple of trick-or-treat bags from the little table her dad had put by the doorway, and opened the door.
There was a tallish young guy standing there in a long plum-colored eighteenth-century frock coat that had with lace spilling out of the sleeves and collar. He was also wearing a tricorn hat jammed down onto a long dreadlocked wig, tight breeches and thigh boots, and carrying a silver plastic cutlass, which he waved at her jauntily. “ARR,” he said.
Nita looked Kit up and down, and finally had to laugh. “The mustache,” she said. “It’s crooked…”
Kit’s eyes widened and he reached up to push the stuck-on mustache back into place. “This thing’s stability,” he said, “leaves a lot to be desired.”
“So do a spell and stick it on that way.”
Kit laughed. “Waste a wizardry on this? Pass,” he said as he headed past Nita into the living room. “I’ve got spirit gum. Somewhere here...” He stuffed the plastic cutlass through his belt and started going through the frock coat’s pockets.
Nita’s big silver-haired dad came out of his bedroom at the back, just finishing the act of pulling on a pulling a sweatshirt decorated with flapping bats. As his head popped out of the neck of it, he ruffled his hair back into place and looked Kit up and down. “Cristoforo Rodriguez the Scourge of Tortuga, huh?”
“Hey, Mr. C. Yeah, more or less.”
“Looks good,” said Nita’s dad. “So how soon can we have this stuff off the table, honey? There are some other things I need to be doing here while I get ready for the slavering hordes.”
Nita sighed. “I’m working on it,” she said, and followed him into the dining room.
“That is one beat up pumpkin,” Kit said, looking at what sat on the table where the newspapers were thickest.
“Yeah,” Nita’s dad said as he went on into the kitchen. “I went over to that pick-your-own place between here and Uniondale: you know the one. I shouldn’t have left it so late, I guess—they’d been cleaned out of the biggest ones. All the pumpkins that were left were either on the small side, or lopsided or dented one way or another. Still,” he said, giving it a glance from the kitchen door, “this one has character.”
Nita was inclined to agree with him. The pumpkin was about a foot and a half across, and had probably been growing somewhere exposed, to judge by the dried-out veining all over the top of it. She ran a hand over the top of it, as she’d already done a bunch of times this afternoon, feeling the crinkly texture and reflecting that it was definitely more interesting than the smooth picture-perfect pumpkins she’d seen a few days ago in the grocery store but had gotten distracted and forgotten to pick up. More avoidance… she thought.
She sighed. “I guess I should get on with this,” she said, and picked up the knife.
The doorbell rang.
“Aaaagh!” Nita said. “This is never going to get done! And everybody’s showing up so early. I thought we were finished with the littlest kids now…” She went off into the living room, picked up the same pair of candy bags she’d picked up before, and opened the door.
Nita found herself staring at a tall gangly black-haired guy wearing a shaggy Alley-Oop style caveman skin over a green-and-white-striped soccer jersey that said SPORTS WORLD in big letters, and in smaller ones, around a little badge on the breast, BRAY WANDERERS F.C. The guy had more splotchy piebald skins bound around his legs and over his Doc Martens, and he was balancing a truly huge caveman club over one shoulder. “Hey, be happy,” he said, “it’s Samhain!”
She laughed at the sight of him. Ronan had purposely grimed himself up and punked his hair out into weird Celto-Goth points with some kind of hair wax that appeared to have the holding power of dried concrete, and he was carrying a rough burlap sack with a very dysfunctional one-eyed Jack-o-Lantern face painted on it. “Come on in,” Nita said. “But why so formal? Thought you were going to just appear out of nothing in the back yard, like normal people.”
“Because I prefer to yank your chain,” Ronan said as he came in, “as is traditional. And speaking of which… get a load of you. That’s a new look…”
Nita grinned, though she found herself blushing at the same time. “Not so new,” she said, brushing at the skirt— if that was the word for it— of her costume. “It was big on Mars, once upon a time.” …if “big’s” the right word to describe something there’s so little of! In its Martian incarnation the costume, heavy on gems and gleaming metal and filmy translucent drapery, could still have been described as fairly minimal—and more so depending on which Mars you were talking about. The wizardly jury was still out on exactly how Edgar Rice Burroughs had come so close to describing what the real First Race of Mars considered decent daywear. Nita had been less concerned about that issue than about how to adjust the design so that she would neither get arrested for indecent exposure or scandalize her Dad. She’d opaqued the long sheer skirt down and added an underskirt, as well as short filmy sleeves and a fair amount of coverage to the bodice, and then had sent the whole designs off to one of the retailers at the Crossings who owed both her and Carmela some large favors. The overall result was satisfying, even though she was still going to want a jacket if the temperature dropped too low.
“I got kind of used to it while I was working up there,” Nita said. She didn’t mention what she thought Ronan might be perfectly able to guess: that Kit had liked it on her, and had been too shy to say as much. “So if anybody asks, I’m an alien princess or something.”
“But as I understand it, you kind of were,” Ronan said, and smiled. It was a less jokey or edgy smile than she usually saw from him, and Nita blushed again. What is the matter with me stop it stop it stop it! she thought, but as usual the blush was ignoring her and would plainly be taking its own sweet time about burning out. Nothing to do but carry on…
“It got better,” Nita said, and grinned at him. “Anyway, why’re we standing here? Come on in…”
He followed her into the living room, where Kit had come out to see who was there. “Hey, look, it’s the Dread Pirate Rodriguez,” he said as the two of them clasped hands overarm. Then Ronan started snickering. “Jeez Louise, Kit! Worst…mustache…ever! Why didn’t you just give it up and grow one?”
“Don’t think he hasn’t been trying,” said a voice from the bathroom at the back of the house.
Kit turned a weary glance on Nita. “Is it all right if I d
estroy your sister a little?”
“Knock yourself out,” Nita said. “But even the Lone One’s had a run at that and didn’t get far…”
Kit sighed and leaned over the living room candy table, picking up one of the newly filled orange and black paper trick-or-treat packages and peering into it. “The problem is that if you use wizardry to get your beard growing, you’re stuck with it…”
“And you don’t want to start shaving yet. Fair play to you there,” Ronan said, rubbing his own face, which was adorned under the makeup-grime with what looked like about three days’ worth of stubble. “Believe me, I don’t mind having a little holiday from the face scraping every now and then…”
“How did you get here, though?” Nita said, taking the bag away from Kit and putting it back on the candy table. “I thought you’ve still got trouble with doing single teleports out of Ireland, because of all the old spell residue built up in the ground. Did you hitch over with somebody who had an authorized transit?”
“Nope. No problems at all with single transits today,” Ronan said. “Because in the enlightened land in which I dwell, Hallowe’en is an official government holiday… and this being the case, the local senior wizards always open some ‘safe transport’ spots so people celebrating The Day That’s In It can spelljump in and out of the place without too much trouble.” He glanced around. “But speaking of my usual ride, where’s wee Darryl? Thought he’d be here.”
“He had a change of plans,” Kit said. “Decided to stay over in Baldwin this year. It’s not that long really since he finished up his Ordeal, and his folks are still a little freaked out by it all. He doesn’t want to push them too hard on the letting-him-be-out-by-himself issue, so he’s letting them ride herd on him at Halloween this time.”
“Pity,” Ronan said. “And he didn’t want to do one of his be-two-places-at-once tricks?”
Kit shook his head. “Tom and Carl told him to cut back on the colocation stuff for a while till his power levels settle down. I think they’re afraid he’ll strain something.”
“Or find out something about himself he shouldn’t know?” Ronan said. “Oh well. Too bad: always like having his smiling face around. So what’s on the agenda?” He looked over the table and picked up the trick-or-treat bag Kit had just put down. “We doing the same drill he coached me on? Go door to door, say the magic words, get people to give us sweets for nothing?”
“That’s it,” Nita said, deftly reaching in as he was starting to open the bag, taking it away from him, and putting it back on the table. “And then over to Tom and Carl’s to see what their ‘haunted house’ looks like: it’s their turn to do one for the town this year. We’re just finishing up some last details here.”
“Meaning stuff that should have been done two or three nights ago,” Kit said.
Nita sighed: Kit had been teasing her about this for a couple of days. “Come on, it’s all in the dining room…” Nita said, and led the way through.
The dining room table was covered with newspapers, and the newspapers were covered with the remains of prep for the night’s trick or treaters. There were about sixty or seventy more of the little paper bags decorated in orange and black, all now stuffed with candy and twisted closed: and there, still untouched, was the pumpkin.
Ronan looked it over. “Not as big as some I’ve seen around here,” he said, sitting down at the table and picking up one of the bags. “Some of your neighbors have ones the size of beach balls.”
Nita considered taking this bag too away from Ronan, and then shrugged. “Yeah, well,” she said, and leaned on the table, gazing at the pumpkin. “We’re kind of working our way back in gradually.”
“Back in?” Ronan said, opening the bag and peering into it curiously.
“Yeah. The way school around here used to be, when you were twelve or so everybody started thinking that that was too old to be trick or treating any more, so I stopped. And then the year after that, Kit and I had our Ordeal, and I got kind of distracted. Hallowe’en didn’t seem like such a big deal all of a sudden, and except for Dairine, the family kind of went off it for a while. And then after Mom…” Nita sighed and shrugged. “That year no one felt much like it anyway. But this year, Dad was saying, ‘Why don’t we revive the tradition. Mom always liked it…’ And it seemed like a good idea. Dairine even got into it.”
“Goodness,” Ronan said. “Will she be honoring us with her presence eventually, do you think?”
“Don’t get snotty, Nolan!” said the voice from the back bathroom. “Unlike some people, who just throw themselves together with hair product and any old spare cowhide they have lying around, I like to make sure I look right before I go out.”
Nita snickered very softly, but then turned her attention back to the pumpkin. Better get on with this… she thought. She picked up the knife, and then hesitated yet again.
“What’s with you?” Ronan said as he emptied the trick-or-treat bag out on the table and began going through the contents. “You look like the reluctant axe murderer.”
Nita groaned under her breath and sat down in the chair at the end of the table. “I just don’t know if this is … strictly ethical.”
Kit pulled out a chair too and fiddled with his frock coat for a moment so that he could avoid sitting on it and messing it up. “You know,” he said, “you could always ask the pumpkin how it feels.”
She had in fact been avoiding this, nervous about what answer she might get. But there’s no avoiding it, I guess; pretty soon we’re going to have to get moving… Nita put out a hand and ran it once more over the scratchy veiny skin around the pumpkin’s stem. “Excuse me,” she said in the Speech, “but… exactly how are you about this?”
There was a brief pause while the pumpkin got its vegetable consciousness wrapped around the idea that someone was speaking to it, let alone someone who would be able to understand the response. This what? the pumpkin said.
Nita hesitated. “I’m about to stick a knife in you,” Nita she said after a moment, “cut off your top, and scoop out your insides with a spoon.”
There was another pause. Your point being? said the pumpkin.
Nita blinked, as she was generally used to more energetic responses from plant life. But then, those are mostly still growing in the ground… “Well, isn’t there some chance this might hurt you?”
Haven’t felt a thing since I got pulled off the vine, said the pumpkin. Just been taking it easy since then. It paused, for a bit longer this time. Besides, it saidafter a few moments more, it’s autumn, isn’t it? I’m supposed to die now. It’s all about the seeds, after all. I rot… but the seeds don’t. Some of them will come up. Then I’ll wake up in one of them, maybe more.
“So you really don’t mind if I cut off your top and pull your insides out and carve a face in you,” Nita said, still just slightly incredulous.
Well, what’s it all for?
“Celebrating the time of year,” Nita said. “The autumn. The year’s end … and the new beginning, I guess.”
Ronan nodded. “That’s what it meant when we invented it,” he said.
If a pumpkin could have shrugged, this one would have. Then do it. I don’t mind being part of a celebration, and maybe it’ll be fun to have a face.
The permission could hardly have been more clear-cut. Nita got up, picked up the knife again, and said, “Okay, here we go…”
She braced herself and made the first cut, half expecting to hear a scream: but there wasn’t any response at all. “Are you okay?” she said.
Sure. When are you going to start?
Considering that she was standing there with the cut-off top of the pumpkin in her hand, this was reassuring. “Uh, okay,” Nita said, and got to work in earnest, scooping out the seeds and the webby bits in the middle.
Within a few minutes she had all the pulp out and had begun cutting the face. Kit and Ronan immediately started offering helpful design tips and critiquing her cutting technique, so that Nita lost an
y further concern about the pumpkin’s feelings in a vague fog of annoyance at the kibitzing. “And how many of these have you done, oh great design expert?” Nita said to Ronan when she couldn’t bear it any more.
“Pumpkins? Not a single one, I’m glad to say.”
Kit glanced at him, confused. “Wait, I thought you guys invented Hallowe’en.”
“’Course we did. The pumpkins to carve, and the candy, though, that’s new. We didn’t get candy when I was little. Just nuts and apples.”
Nita and Kit looked at him, incredulous. “And that was all?” Kit said. “That wouldn’t get your house a whole lot of business around this neck of the woods. Might even get you egged…”
“Different times,” Ronan said. “Different traditions. Back then people just gave the kids what we grew at home: stuff from outside was too expensive. But nowadays you lot have ruined us. We’re coming down with pumpkins and plastic Jack O’Lanterns and crappy superhero costumes.” Then he snickered a little. “You know what we used before pumpkins?”
“What?”
“Turnips.” Ronan started laughing.
“Turnips,” Nita said in wonder. “But wasn’t the whole carving thing originally about putting something freaky enough in front of your house that it would scare the demons away?”
Ronan was still laughing, but he managed to stop himself after a few moments, wiping his eyes. “Yeah. And you do have to ask yourself what poor weedy wimp of a demon would be scared of a carved-up turnip…”
“Not that I’m sure why demons would be scared of pumpkins either,” Kit said.
Ronan shook his head, but he grinned a little. “Some traditions don’t make sense,” he said. “No point in paying attention to them if they don’t work for you. Like the apples and nuts. Lots of lovely fiber, no question. Good for little growing kids. But I think I prefer these wee marshmallowy things.” He reached into yet another of the bags he’d been plundering and produced a screamingly yellow cellophane-wrapped chick, eyeing its packaging. “Peeps? Poops?”