Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 11/05/2011 05:51:00 PM Permanent Link       | | Home

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Saturday, October 29, 2011

The Halloween Visit

Reposting this story. According to my tracker, someone came onsite specifically looking for the tale. Maybe next Halloween I will have written a new story.

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Halloween isn't a joke in my house. Not anymore. There are no chocolate candies or cut-out goblins, no taffy apples, no smiling spiders plastered to windows. And there's definitely no laughing. My sisters and I learned a long time ago not to laugh or even talk too loudly. Everything from midnight to midnight on the 31st is spoken softly in this house. It's been this way since we were young, since before I could remember.

Around the time my father went away.

"You took the garbage out, Annie?" my mother asks. The grooves around her eyes are deeper this morning.

"Yeah." Can't help the peeve in my voice and my mom looks up from scrambling the breakfast eggs, spatula paused over a popping skillet.

"So what's your problem today?"

"Don't have a problem."

"Sounds like it. Now go upstairs and wake your sisters. They're sleeping like the dead."

She realizes what she's said, shuts up and goes back to the eggs. And I go upstairs to my sisters' bedrooms.

Jordan is lying face down, her head half hidden under her pillow. It's nearly eight; she went to bed at seven last night. She's trying to escape in her dreams. My own dreams have never provided any safety.

"Get up, already!" I yell, then realize my mistake.

She stirs slowly, mumbling. "Leave me alone," she finally gets out, softly like it should be spoken. Like I should've spoken a second ago.

She moves slowly, almost painfully as she realizes the day is here and she does have to leave the haven of her bed. She sits on the edge of her bed, rubs her eyes and looks at me finally.

"Damn," she says mournfully.

I nod. "Yeah, I know. I gotta go get Taylor up."

But when I go to Taylor's bedroom, she's not there. The bathroom door is open and she's not there, either. So I know where she is.

I head to the north closet, pull the step ladder to the center, push open the door to the attic and climb up. No proverbial spider webs up here; my mom keeps it tidy.

Taylor's sitting on the trunk near the window, her head down. She looks up at me and I can see tears in her eyes.

She's thirteen, but looks ten, small chest, babyfaced. She gets teased about it enough. Girls can be bitches. Today, she looks much older.

"You didn't sleep?"

She shakes her head. "Couldn't? Did you?"

"A little. Not much."

She's silent as she twiddles a finger. "Why is it like this?" she asks. "Why are we so different?"

"Mom says we're special. At least Daddy is."

She looks out the spotless window. Not even a flyspeck. "You ever thought about running away?"

I shake my head and think about Angela. "Not anymore."

"Maybe if we all left?"

"We tried that, remember? Oh, I guess you don't, you were only three."

It had snowed that Halloween, an unexpected October blizzard. Still mom had wrapped us up and bundled us four girls into a car. The car didn't make it very far before it stalled. For some reason, she didn't try to go any farther. As though she knew that she couldn't go any farther, that there was nowhere to run to.

Because we had run before.

And he always found us, despite the moves from state to state, despite name changes.

This house was our fifth in ten years. Before that apartments. Two years in any given house, not enough time to make or leave any memories. The houses were larger in the beginning. But the need for lots of space has gotten smaller. Daddy left us plenty of money for moving. But money could never compensate. Daddy.

I remember my loud words minutes before. I had broken a silent covenant.

Strangely, I wasn't frightened, not like I should've been.

I was tired of the fear.

In the corner, on an old Spinet, lay pictures of all of us, face down. But I remember the faces: Mom, Daddy and seven sisters. Five are gone now. They went to live with Daddy. Lynn, Sada, Donnie, Sienna, and Angie. Angie had run, but like mom, learned she couldn't run far enough. We'd moved afterward; people might ask questions.

Hell, we could leave this planet, and he'd still find us.

"I wish things were different. Maybe this time, he'll…I don't know. Maybe he's not as mad as before."

I didn't say anything. I wished the same thing when I was her age. That was two years ago. We never knew when he would want any one of us to go live with him.

And always, he'd say the same damn thing: "So, the court said I can't have my kids. Fuck the courts! I'm gonna have all my kids. All of 'em."

Mom said he yelled that on the courthouse steps; we were staying at my aunt Sylvia's at the time. Taylor was a baby. I was almost three.

I don't remember Aunt Sylvia. He killed her some years ago when I was still small.

The police chased him down and he got killed. We thought we were safe.

But that first Halloween after Aunt Sylvia's murder, he came to the apartment door, smiling, all of his teeth and a good part of his lower skull showing. His eye was shot out, and the dirt fell from his burial clothes.

Only we heard my mother screamed as he said, "I'm backkkk!"

No one ever heard us scream, like no one cared. He could do what he wanted to us, and no one would call the police. But what could the police do to a dead man?

I talked Taylor down from the attic. It was Saturday, no school. But there were still chores. My mother learned a long time ago it was better to keep us busy, to keep our mind off of things to come.

So, for the rest of the day, floors got swept, rugs vacuumed. Mom cleaned out the refrigerator. We girls cleaned up our rooms – although they were always clean. The way Daddy had always instructed her. Sheets were ironed, toilets brushed white and sinless.

Mom never forgot the punishments for crumbs.

Jordan remembered the broken arm when she had shouted while playing in the living room. She never forgot that Daddy liked quiet.

So, on Halloween, we keep quiet. And we do what females are supposed to do – shut up and do what we're told.

Only three of us left to take. Which one tonight?

That's the thought on all of our minds as the sun drifts away, condemning us to the night. We turn on all the lights, turn on the television, turn the volume down.

I want to run to the Stanleys across the way. But in the years, another lesson learned: you pull other folk in, they get hurt, killed even. At least those who would give you help. We also learned the truth about All Hallows Eve - the dead do walk, seeking vengeance for wrongs done to them.

See, I found out some time ago that it wasn't the police who killed Daddy. After he slit Aunt Sylvia's throat for hiding us away from him, and after the police got after him, Mom found out he hadn't run far; one day while she walked to her car in a dark parking lot, he showed up. He didn't know she kept a gun since the murder. Probably didn't realize when the bullet ripped the top of his face apart.

The police said self-defense, and so did the courts. Everything should've been all right after that.

Sometimes he simply broke open the door. Other times he managed to slip through locked windows. One year, we boarded up windows. Didn't work. A couple of years, it seemed he forgot us. But then he came for Sienna (we called her Sinny; she was always getting into stuff, always laughing), and then Angie last year.

"You're older than both of us," Taylor says to Jordan as Jordan sits staring in front of the television. Survivor is on. Taylor's thrown up about three times and has just come down from cleaning the bathroom.

"Does that make you feel any better, you little turd?" She's angry, but not at her sister. That's how it is when you're maybe about to die. Or something much worse.

"Don't call your sister that, Jo..."

My mother is sitting in the armchair, her face drawn. Watching her, I hate her for not protecting us. I hate her for being stupid enough to marry someone like him. Someone like her own father. Between those two, she simply doesn't have enough fight left. My hate ebbs away. A little.

But I do have some fight left. I will do something. Somehow.

He wasn't going to take me or my sisters. Not this Halloween.

I run upstairs and pull out every aspirin bottle, every prescription bottle (my mother has several) and I run downstairs.

"Here, we can take these. C'mon, we don't have to wait for him anymore."

For a second, my mother's eyes brighten, then just as quickly dim back to lifelessness. "I don't believe in that. You can lose your soul."

"Mom, we don't have any souls left! He took all of our souls a long time ago, even before he died."

"Is that right?" a whisper comes from over my left shoulder. He has snuck in again. How? Jordan jumps up and runs to the kitchen. I hear the rattling of chains, I hear the door open; I hear it quickly slam shut. She didn't make it out.

Taylor draws into a corner, whimpering.

Mom just sits there in the chair, staring away from us.

I turn and look at the decomposed face. Twelve years can ravage a dead man like that. He's smiling, always smiling. Because he knows he owns us. Not that he really wants us. He just doesn't want Mom to have us.

I hear the breaking of glass from the kitchen. Jordan again.

He doesn't even go through his usual spiel: "These are MY kids, bitch! They were never yours!"

Before anyone can blink, he swoops up Taylor and she screams and screams.

Mom doesn't move, but has started crying. Hearing Taylor's screams, Jordan runs in from the kitchen, shaking her head. "No, no!"

In the morning, Mom will tell people that Taylor has gone to live with her father. That's what she tells everybody when one of us is suddenly gone. And then the rest of us moves again.

But not this time.

I thought Jordan had been trapped in the kitchen. But it seems she did make it outside. The glass must have been her breaking in again. Because she has an axe in her hand; where did she get it from? Probably from the Stanley's shed next door.

Seeing the axe, I don't wait. How can no one hear Taylor screaming? Enough to wake the dead - if the dead weren't already awake.

My sister's face is contorted with terror as Daddy lays a kiss on her forehead and says: "My baby; you're going to like the grave. It's so dark down there."

I grieve for all my sisters as I grab the axe and without a thought wham it into Daddy's head. The skull rolls away. And then rolls back.

He drops Taylor to pick it up. And he places it back on his ravaged body, clothes all shredded to hell.

He cackles, then shrugs as if to say, "See...you can't kill me."

I still have the axe in my hand. And suddenly I know what will end all of this. Because it occurred to me seconds before.

He doesn't want us. He never wanted daughters anyway, wished we were boys. All he wants is to hurt Mom.

This is between them. He wants to destroy her. To reduce her to nothing.

He wants what I am about to do.

I look at her, just a second.

She nods then. No suicide for her.

But this is all right.

She understands as I swing the axe. I don't feel the splatter.

But I do see my father suddenly shake and howl. Before he disappears into nothing but dust. Something he should have done a long time ago.

Taylor grabs my other arm. And Jordan cries silently behind me.

And a second time on Halloween, I break the silence as I scream in grief and triumph.

Labels: Halloween

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