Here's the title story:
The Moonlight in Genevieve's Eyes
(original version in Crime and Suspense, November, December 2007)
It's October, Genevieve, October, and you know what that means.
They'll be running the streets in sheets, in sheets the streets, streets, sheets, yes, yes I know, rhymes, I'm caught in them again.
But they'll be in sheets, they will. Delicious. There’ll be a moon this year, maybe not full, but a moon nonetheless though I must check, I must check to be sure because you know, Genevieve, how the moon lights your eyes.
Ah, I can see it now. With one or two shots I put out the street light at the end of the driveway and plunge the night, frosty and white, night and white stop! plunge it into lovely half-light, so spooky, so spooky, the people in sheets and black capes will look around nervously because they have lost the comfort of sodium glow, the safety of it.
They'll be vulnerable.
Do you remember the first time, Genevieve, the first time we dressed in sheets and ran through the alleys and caught up with your sister and my little brother and we jumped at them and they screamed and screamed and it was so delicious, so fun, we run, fun and run, fun and run and we kept finding them at the ends of the streets because you and I know these ways so well who can stop us, who? and finally they were crying, so afraid, so afraid, and we laughed. We laughed, Genevieve.
We were ten. And your eyes in the moonlight, Gen...
I have to carve the pumpkin.
It might be too early because there's still September in the air, still too much of the heat that September steals from August and pushes past its borders fooling us all, fooling us because it's too hot, just too hot for October but, wait it's cooling off a bit so maybe, finally, but no, no, warm again. Damn damn damn. So if I get the pumpkin now you know what'll happen, you know, the melting, the scrunching so it looks like an old geezer pumpkin, the bones of its face sagging to a blur and you don't know who it is, you don't recognize him unless you see a picture of him younger then maybe you can recognize the misshapen, wrinkled, smooshed thing he's become.
Like Mr. Gardner. Do you remember him? I saw his picture, Air Corps uniform and smiling and young and looked so devil-may-care, Gen, had a scarf around his neck. Imagine! And unless you saw that photo on his mantel with the blue medal draped over it you would never have known, ever, Genevieve, that it was Mr. Gardner. Old, sour, mean Mr. Gardner who yelled at us and put the hose on you for riding your bike across his lawn.
I saw the picture just briefly, Gen. And he burned, oh did he burn.
I would have loved to see the orange in your eyes.
That was when we were twelve, Genevieve, and I came over and you weren't even dressed yet and I said, hey, are we going, or what? And for a second, just a second, you hesitated and I thought, Genevieve, that you had somehow forgotten and how can you forget Halloween? Just how? And you laughed and said ohmigod a ghost, Teddy, Teddy the ghost and I was pleased when you said 'wait up' and got your sheet and we got the bikes and we were fast, so fast, and there, Mr. Gardner, lumbering on his lawn and you, you jumped the curb! I was so proud, so thrilled and you know, just before he turned the hose on you, just before you rent his roses, you looked at me and there was the moon in your eyes, Gen, there.
I always want to see that.
So, what, I should wait two more weeks, I think, and I will go out to the country and look over fields and pick one, a big one, always a big one because I want everyone to see. The candle has to be big, too, big light, so bright, the only thing in sight for the ghosts and black capes and skeleton boys and little princesses as they stand in the dark under the broken globe trembling a little and there, over there, what's that? The biggest, glowiest, orangiest, scariest pumpkin on the block.
They'll all want to come and see.
Like when we were fifteen, Genevieve, and I had it, the biggest, most orange of them all, sitting on my porch. I put dry ice and a blue candle inside with a glow stick and it was eerie, really eerie and I knew we could scare the kids and make them cry. But what did you do, Genevieve, what did you do? You just looked, you just stood there at the bottom of the driveway and you didn't even come close and I kept saying come here, come here, there's nothing to fear, here and fear, nothing to fear here
But you didn't come, you didn't. You looked at me kinda like you looked at the frog we had to dissect (and you didn't even dissect it with me, did you, no, no you didn't, but with Franklin. Franklin!) and you said, gee, nice, and your eyes were all away, no moonlight in them, and you were not my Genevieve, no you weren't, you were someone else, a junior varsity cheerleader and steady of a football player
(a football player, Gen?)
and you had that face, that face I always got from all the girls and not just the cheerleaders and I knew that face would go somewhere later, the girl's bathroom, and laugh and call names. And you just walked away.
And when I came to your house, you weren't even there.
Oh, Gen, you shoulda seen my fury. I was the white-sheeted fury and I raced on my bike and I hit the alley, spraying puddles and pebbles and there was a full moon, Gen, there was a full moon and I did not get to see it in your eyes. But I did see the kid in the ninja costume at the end of the street.
With a rock, Gen, with the proper application of a rock you just happen to find like it was purposely placed there by the gods of all the carved pumpkins that come alive when the moon, the full moon, is shining down on them, Gen...you can get a kid down a storm drain. Mostly in one piece.
I will carve the vicious grin, the most malicious grin, just dripping with scorn. I've gotten very good at that, don't you think? And everyone will stand at the end of the drive and crane their necks and be disturbed because I will use the blue candle and the glow stick and the dry ice. They will all want to come closer. They will all want to look.
Franklin standing over me and I am bloody and black-eyed and crying and everyone's laughing at me, all of them as usual but you're there, you're there, too, Gen, and you look down at me and your face is screwed up like an old, heat-shrunk pumpkin and your mouth is open and it's twisted into that same look of malice I have gotten so good at carving and I see, I see, Genevieve, not the moon in your eyes, not the orange. I see something else, Gen.
Contempt.
For me, for me, Gen? Don't you remember the runs through the alleys and the scaring of the little kids and the slingshots at the cats and the ghost bikes tearing such big holes in so many people's yards and you laughing, laughing and we are free and scary and screaming and wet from Mr. Gardner (and he was orange later) and you looked at me with the moon, the silver power of the moon, shining so bold in your eyes? We were of the moon, Gen. And you traded the moon for contempt.
When I got out of the hospital that other time, Gen, I read that you and Franklin were engaged and you were going to some school. Maybe you shouldn't put stuff like that in the papers, Genevieve, maybe you shouldn't because I got upset and stopped taking the medicine. Mom moved out. She did. The state sends a nurse but I can lie, oh yes, 'cause we both learned how together, didn't we?
Can you hear them shuffling up the driveway, Genevieve, drawn by the light because it's so dark on the street now? They all want to look. Oh please let there be a full moon.
So I put on the sheet and had with me the best of my carvers, the very best, so sharp, so precise, for such delicate work.
How many years now, Gen? I'm not very good with time, but I can rhyme, rhyme with time, and climb, in time I can climb and there I am supine and you whine 'what's that noise?' and sublime! the balcony door slid too fine and you, you, the moon in your eyes, divine
I am so fast.
They came to ask me questions but, Genevieve, I can lie.
So maybe I will shoot out the other street light and make the whole place dark so the only attraction, the only thing to see is the big, big orangey pumpkin on my porch, delicious and malicious, and they will shuffle an
d sidle and look at each other and feel scared, oh, scared, because those eyes, those eyes, they look so real.
And if the moon is up, Gen, if it's there, and if there's still enough frost from the freezer, you will gleam at them.
Just gleam.
And if it's apocalyptic mayhem you crave:
John Rashkil is having a very bad day.
On his way to work, CDC thugs force him off the road. DC cops (or whatever they are) harass him at the Key Bridge checkpoint.
And then he finds a body hanging from the ceiling...
Based on an Irish legend of the same name, Partholon is post-apocalyptic, alternate history.
No law, no help; just you.
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