HALLOW’EEN
(IN INADEQUATE, UNDERSTANDABLY INCOMPLETE SYNECDOCHAL DEMONSTRATIVE COLLAGE)
by Sam Cooper
Here are the weedy stores popped up in malls and strips, signs not solid but melted vinyl banners in black and orange, dripping words and snapping in the autumn breeze, and inside injuries and skins and deceits, auxiliary faces and fluids and bizarre one-use artifacts, and chirping mournful noises from somewhere in a forest of hanging fabric, and threadbare carpet embedded with twinkling, and lights flashing in the periphery, and from above novel songs you know by heart and you can’t remember where you first heard them and cinematic mnemonies and ambience that rises and falls and you are comforted by its rhythm, and smells like sweet glue and vacuum cleaners in the folds of the racks, and grotesqueries leaned against the wall and when you pass them you still can’t shake the childhood fear that one of them will move and you will embarrass yourself, and other human beings there with you averting their eyes but watching you warily like the disguises they are considering are reveling their secrets and deviations and desires and you realize that that’s exactly what’s going on but this thrills you instead of making you self-conscious about your own browsing, and too-many clerks who do not avert their eyes but desperately try to catch yours and just want to assist so they can break the tedium and mind-numb of spending temporary weeks scanning a landscape of unchanging gore and bad jokes and their heads tingling with loops upon loops of the same 80-minute soundtrack and they want to help you really just so they can talk to someone. But you imagine you are already disguised, and will not talk, not yet.
Here is a driveway scarecrow in the rain, stuffed and tied clothes like sausages, wet and lumpy, straw needles stabbing outwards through tiny holes and tears, a body slumped in a white plastic patio chair, darkening and slumping more with every passing minute and falling droplet, its head a pillowcase and crowned with a baseball cap, sitting for a week and a half now and removed tomorrow, unappreciated by trickortreaters more worried about the hems of their costumes quickly dampening and precipitation infiltrating the paper wrappers in jack-o’-lantern totes and printed bags, silently endurant of early frosts and lateral wind and rain like this rain for eleven days. When the scarecrow’s head, sodden and heavy, falls from its body, its cheeks are still tempera pink and its smile does not falter.
Here is a photograph of Keith’s Biggest Haul Yet, taken last year by his dad at Keith’s behest, in its glossy plane a mound of treasure as big as the boy himself or maybe it’s just a trick of the lens, but still it’s quite a Haul regardless, heaped in a way to suggest victory like the spoils of some battle, but neatly quadrisected and sorted taxonomically, Chocolate and Things Like Chocolate the biggest pile and deposited by Keith’s filmic left arm, and next to those Fruit Flavors and Bright Colors, and under those the Miscellaneous hill bristling with raisin boxes and hand-tied cellophane bundles, and Sour and Strange the smallest and farthest from him and under the Chocolate, and the boy sitting cross-legged and leaning forward with arms out like he’s trying to embrace his plunder, grinning hugely and eyes studded with red, and his mom’s leg in the background, practically saying itself did he know how far past his bedtime it was?, even though his face is flushed from just coming inside. In the photo, Keith’s costume is already off.
Here is a blank him or her spending the evening quietly and alone even if with other hims and hers, but in no way not celebrating or letting the night go by unmarked, answering the door and dolling out candy from a battery-operated bowl with a motion-activated zombie hand in the middle that he or she bought at discount at one drugstore or another, and maintaining the decorations that he or she is very proud of every year, but mostly observing internally, deliciously aware of something different about tonight, something in the air and all around, something like an unfocused image approaching but never attaining clarity, a tangible sense of mystery, not a question mark but a state of defined and complete being, more satisfactory and inclusive and right than any other he or she knows, a sense of being able to see through to some other side. His or her prayer is a long walk alone and silent under the moon and bony branches after the streets have emptied.
Here is Alexandra’s bee costume that hangs in a closet in her mother’s house, not exposed to anything but dust and darkness but still fading and becoming brittle even with such little time, collapsing in on itself, stripes of yellow and black both moving towards an eventual middle ground of dull brown, except now her mother realizes it has been some time since it was worn, and it was only worn three times, one day in the school pageant and once at a party and once on the Night Itself, some time since its handsewn hems were filled out with flesh, a little too tight in places but not too bad at all her mother thought, after all this time the felt and taffeta jealously holding the powdery bubblegum scent that was Alexandra’s when she was a little girl, hanging still and imploding incrementally, wrinkles deepening and sparkling wire wings shrinking and tights pulling up into themselves, slower than any perception, ignorant of the many years past, and the lives constructed and gone on with, and the unfailingly unringing phone, and the front door closing and opening and closing, and the temperature dropping, and the trees continuing to stretch heavenward. Soon, the bee costume will lose its retained odor and take on the smell of cedar shavings and lint.
Here are the leaves that crackle electrically under your feet and against each other as they waltz in the air, that are skeletons and gauze, shriveled and many-colored, landing on the ground softly with a sound that is more thought than sound. The shredded, outgrown, discarded skins of a season.
Here is the flickering scrying mirror of an art house screen, tattooed in silver and black 24 times every single second, the faces displayed huge and silent and pocked with dust and scratches, lips moving but no voices heard, dialogue divined in humorless and inky cards intruding periodically, the only soundtrack coming from the theater’s speakers a prerecorded plinking piano accompaniment, and the theater very small and the seats mostly empty, the audience nineteen in number and near-uniformly young, six watching unaltered and undistracted, five watching either high or drunk or both, three high or drunk or both and not really watching, two separate couples totaling four making out unabashedly in the next-to-last and last rows, and one homeless woman asleep near the exit, the eldest by far among them, all the faces illuminated by the screen’s reflected and strobing rays, blinking when the screen goes white and then darkens with the next presentation of the triple feature. When the theater lights go up no one will speak, having forgotten the shape of human speech.
Here is the house that Michael was so scared of one year, the one with the two guys in prefab-tattered polyester robes who stand sentry at either side of the door every year, the one with the blacklight in the porch sconce, the atmosphere and surfaces of porch not glowing but seeming to suck in light hungrily and this negative illumination somehow still luminous and beautiful, and the two guys not moving one inch but holding what Michael knew of course to be plastic axes but was scared of anyway and their angular robes fluttering slightly, haloed aurally by the noise of a sound-effects CD on a stereo inside the house sifting through the screen of a window, and the house is at best unassuming and at worst ugly and made of garish brick and faded shingles and ornamented with patchy lawn but was all the more frightening to Michael for these stanchions of normalcy so twisted and decorated nightmarishly, but still his fear balanced by his fascination, his unbeatable desire to go and stand between the two unmoving guards and say the three words that are one word and hope that nothing happens and hope that something happens, and he stood in the empty street and tried to decide, and an older kid in a hockey mask snuck up behind him and grabbed him and he screamed and almost peed his pirate pants, and the older kid ran off laughing and Michael found that he was laughing too and he went up to the sentried house and recited the spell and received his prize from a witch lady inside and nothing happened and he went to the next house and the next. That one year, Michael was nine.
Here is a party, and all its noise and light and life, variables and details too many to catalogue, an organism itself, breathing and secreting, stretching out and curling back in, broadcasting a tuneless and tidal symphony into the night. It falls asleep at dawn.
Here is where Lily stands, abandoned and crying, fist clutching the handle of a woven plastic sack half-filled with lumps of sugar and color, eyes searching the groups of kids in her field of vision on doorsteps and sidewalks but trying to look like she’s not looking, and her princess costume is now hot even though the air is cold, and she can feel how ridiculous it is, how stupid and ugly she is in it, feel it on her skin, and her tears flow thickly with the sensation in the pit of her stomach, the angry nausea that was born when she first realized that they had left her, growing when mix-up turned into a joke turned into cruelty, and now she scans the bushes with eyes and ears for vibrating shadows or stifled giggles, and resolves if she finds either to simply turn bravely and either go straight home or up the walk of the nearest house and get some candy by herself she can’t decide, but sees nothing and nobody, and takes a few steps one direction and then turns around and takes a few steps in the other, then reverses again and runs. Next year Lily will suddenly be too old to Trick or Treat.
Here are apparitions of unfound razor blades, apples never weaponized, candy never poisoned, Tricks never played, souls far from lost or even really tempted, lawsuits never filed, children not taken or lost, windows and mailboxes and trees and gardens intact, tears not shed, Satan unsummoned, cavities never saccharinely bored. All seen wandering in the black windows of dead dark houses and the caged eyes of uncostumed kids.
Here is the best Halloween you ever had. Never forget it, ever.
Here are houses, lining strands of streets in webs of neighborhoods, all adorned with trimmings of fear, windows bearing cutout shadows of murderers and bulbous oversized rubber spiders and dripping blood, doors shadowed and hung with chains and gargoyles and cardboard bones, lawns strewn with limbs and viscera and overgrown with tombstones, bushes covered in stretched multicolored webs, architecture glowing antinaturally in green or red or blue or purple blacklight or blinking in the machinegun flash of a strobe, corners and crannies and dead flowerbeds attended by upright forms of demons and killers and reapers and monsters statuesque and grimacing, porches bathed in fog, skulls in the trees, pumpkins grinning and screaming and looking shocked and miserable and curious and devious or else wounded with the illuminated representational lines of bats and ghosts and vampires and castles and celebrities and words and shapes too varied and numerous to attempt to index, pumpkins everywhere. In the daylight the houses look not sad or funny but merely waiting, even if the Night has already passed.
Here are things that people call ghosts, spirits, phantoms, specters, entities, whathaveyou, drifting without affect, their most central core essence no longer human, this kind of ghost invisible, and there are visible ones, but this kind invisible save for a slightest outline of refraction in the crisp air, too subtle to be observed or measured by anyone or anything, and traveling in groups or singularly but never interacting, incapable of real interaction amongst their own and other kinds alike but not really minding, incapable also of minding, and carrying with them, propelled by an energy like that of memory and a feeling like the last plummeting moment before sleep, drifting through some border more permeable tonight, drifting up into lightbulbs and candle flames and in the branches of trees and into dark pumpkins and out in open spaces, and passing through houses and touching the living who look over their shoulders and crack their knuckles and maybe even shiver, drifting away to destinations unknown. If you could see them, they would be the color of the spots on the moon.
Here is a different New Years Eve, more appropriately positioned it seems than The Real New Year’s Eve, closer to a middle point, to a momentary straightening of the earth’s drunken, tilted circumnavigation around her furious star, crawling along a border of lightness and darkness, heat and cold, a private holiday unspoken and outwardly unmarked but one felt bodily, an annual sea change, a turning of the year and a turning of age more profound and meaning-full than any Dec 31st/Jan. 1st or birthday could ever hope to inspire, but this New Years is backwards from the calendar’s and its peaks and troughs are confused, its Big Moment is opposite, not tragic or sad but definitely no cause for celebration because the night’s enchantment and potential should never come to climax or denouement, and the black of the sky at the transitory hour is empty of fireworks because all fireworks came earlier in a joyous cacophony on the sidewalks and on doorsteps and inside houses and everywhere at once but quickly silenced in unison it seems, but the whistle of the wind down an empty street is more than enough for anyone because it is the moan of contentment and happiness and real magic and something you can’t put your finger on, not ever, and the sound is there because there are ears to take it in, unseen and ecstatic. When midnight comes, it comes too soon.
MEMORIES REPORTED MISSING 2003
by Sam Cooper
“Memory believes before knowing remembers.”
William Faulkner
Light in August
[...]
II.
The air is cold. It has been cold, is seems, since before the turning of the seasons, stimulating arm hair, browning leaves, bringing rain. Inside buildings heat has been pumping for weeks, dry and eye-burning like oven air. The wound on his left middle finger is still red, scabbed, a work of dried blood under a single layer, translucent like onion paper, of regenerated skin. It does not hurt anymore, but he has slowed in his practice. Which is not to say that the songs have stopped coming (the one written before, so proudly inclusive of “fuck” and Chemistry-class-birthed, never did get clothed with guitar chords)—his notebooks are filling up, his pens running dry with lines of verse accumulating in towers of black against white paper sky. He has failed, is aware and ashamed of the failure—a feeling that will become, justified or not, objectively true or not, familiar—to finish the song that honors tonight. He started with the title, “Samhain,” and struggled on from there through images that felt inadequate, words that felt bullied, prodded, corralled into rhyme and architecture. After furious scratching-out, bold rewriting, days of stepping back, reattacking, he gave up. He concedes that he might never succeed in wrangling the feeling, the, for lack of any better word, magic of tonight. That day in school, some people were dressed up. A full-body cow suit, a homemade Superman cape, a few rubber masks worn briefly and never in class, innumerable fairy (correction: faerie) wings all aglitter and gauzy, among the anime fans unrecognized character accoutrement, many Renaissance Festival dresses, facepaint, etc.; no weapons allowed, or anything offensive, no blood, a maybe unspoken (he can’t remember) rule forbidding anything too gory/disturbing/inappropriate (the latter never defined really) which is probed but never broken. Most people wore what they wear every day. His girlfriend wore a fuzzy cat-ears headband, the type you can get at a drugstore for low-denomination bills. He made a paint to notice them, to call them, her, cute. He thought that the winks and feline pantomimes that accompanied the ears were anything but. Cute, that is. He wore ballooning black paints of heavy fabric, a black t-shirt with fender guitars warped into the shape of a grimacing skull, letters stretched and bent into shapes reminiscent of tribal tattoos defining cheekbones teeth sockets etc., and modeling clay devil horns, bound to his head with nylon cord running through both horns’ bases, purchased at the very same Ren Fest where the girls bought their dresses. The hours of school passed glacially, painful in a very real and physical way. The day he escaped to with Last Bell practically still tolling was flatly overcast and blustery, raw, perfect he thought. No Drama rehearsal that afternoon, so right home. He kissed her wetly goodbye at the corner where her house is, noted: her hesitation to release him from embrace, her microexpressed pout and big eyes, her hand in his sliding down his fingers as he pulled away, pressure light but communicative, willed—he resisted them all and walked the rest of the way home. His mom got home from the hospital shortly after, gave him an update that he did not hear. It is now dusk. The sky is cleared and holds the last residue of sunset. The doorbell rings and he is not surprised; he saw them come up the driveway seconds before, peripherally, from the table where he and his mom are eating an appropriately autumnal meal. Butternut squash soup, cider, bread, grain salad. His mom gets up and hefts the rustic basket heaped with candy to thorax level. He remains seated and chewing, slurping, and hears the door squeal on its hinges. Elfin voices from where, if he had been out on the porch, his thighs would be. Trickortreat. Warm (but tired, he hears, can’t help but hear, very tired) chatter from his mom. What great costumes. You’re welcome. Thank you. My son does it every year. I’ll tell him. Happy Halloween. She shuts the door, returns to the table, on top of which she drops the veritable sucrose product cornucopia. There was an adorable little girl in a Princess Leia costume. Cool. The mom was complimenting— I heard. They finish the meal with a few subsequent many-voiced interruptions, the intervals between which shrink and shrink. He brings his plate to the sink, tells her it was good, and goes to take a piss. As he exits the bathroom with moist hands he shakes lightly, the bathroom door being within close proximity to the entrance of the house, he catches his mom opening up to a new group of revelers. Trickortreat. He goes, stands beside his mom as she doles out sweets, looks at the costumes, smiles in what he hopes is a kind and not at all ironic or—God forbid—somehow pedophilic way at the children or maybe they’re preteens under all the paint and latex and polyester, looks at the costumes. One of them, a boy, has a gory headdress, a kind of half-head mask/hat, molded into an open cranium, rubber skin curled down like a banana peel, the furrowed mound of domed brain pink and wet with fake blood the boy must have added himself (it runs down the boy’s uncovered face which is smiling with eyes greedy and comically fixed, following the candy dropping into his bag, runs down onto his clothes, which are nondescript and will certainly be disposed of, ruined now, at the end of the night), nestled in shards of rubber bone, convincingly, horrifically, impressively. His eyes scan the children and their costumes and happy maybe uncertain or a little overstimulated or something faces, but he is watching his mom, watching for her gaze to hesitate on the boy in question, watching for some mineralization of her features or hiccup in her breath, listening for her “Happy Halloween!s” to becomes strained or pained or cold or disingenuous forced somehow telling or. None of it happens. This may be worse. His building annoyance loses bloodflow, deflates. The door closes and he can hear their voices, shrieking, getting quieter. His mom puts the candy basket down on the stairs. Getting low on Twix. She goes to the kitchen. There is a party tonight, a few minutes outside of town at a house in the country. A friend’s house, where most of everyone he knows will me. There will not be booze (he will never attend one of those parties all throughout high school, something he will later come close to regretting), only loud bassy music in the basement, the pop side of heavy metal, a cooler full of soda cans and upstairs plates of pizza rolls or maybe real pizza and certainly bowls of supermarket brand nacho cheese corn chips, and a blacklight—blacklights being something that have started to be a fixture for some reason at parties he goes to—so that every vein of lint, every flake of dead skin and daylight-invisible flaw is suddenly not just visible, but glowing, unmissable, unable to be ignored or remain uninspected. He does not want to go. He does not want to not go. The previous weekend he hosted a party of his own. He has had a Halloween party every year since he was two. They are now in some way legendary (sadly so, he thinks—only legendary in that their absence would be noted, not necessarily legendary in that they are expected or looked-forward-to or anything, although he likes to imagine that they are). No one would have blamed him if there was no party this year. He hand-made a Mad Hatter costume minutes before his first guests arrived. Sharpie checkers on an orange shirt (only one photo of him in this costume will ever surface, and he will hate it, his face scrunched and fatty and boylike, twisted into such happiness or at least what looks like happiness…he will hate this past self, will be jealous of him and hate him). He does not remember much past that. Tonight. Magical tonight. It’s not to be wasted, can’t be anything but wasted. I’m going for a walk to look at the neighborhood. Okay. Why don’t you take the dogs? … You don’t have to. Okay. Isn’t there a party tonight? He is out the door and the night is cold. There are families of shadows creeping on and off sidewalks, under porchlights, silhouetted in doorways. Clouds like milk in ink roil around a three-quarter moon. A car passes. A puddle of flashlight oozes up vinyl siding. He is down on the street, footsteps making no noise; there are no other cars in view. From somewhere comes the rasp of a creepy sound effects loop, so muffled and distant that it seems more a part of the wind and air than something carried on them. Shrubs bound in false webs, trees studded with twinkling strings of stars. The moon dims, cumulously shrouded. Triangles of bright gold staring, following his movements like the eyes of funhouse portraits, from every garden walk and concrete step. The overall decorative effect of the neighborhood is relatively disappointing. Half-assed. Although most made some effort. A few houses are coldly dark and apparently hibernating, stony and serious and no fun at all, just begging for Tricks that will not be dealt them. Kids today, too good for their own good. He is walking fast. He is half a mile from his home now, has hit a particularly thick flock—a seemingly full set of Power Rangers, a vampire, two Harry Potters, a unimaginative bloody psychopath, more—herded by a few parents wielding pumpkinheaded flashlights who look at him warily, openly considering him Up To No Good. He nods and smiles as he passes, can smell one father’s brown leather jacket, turns away. He hears the flock’s frenzied chittering recede behind him, veer off towards a house he has passed already (he is traveling the opposite direction as they are), a house whose lawn is bathed in fog machine haze. Trickortreat. He walks on, saluted by dying trees standing at ease on either side of the street. A shiver radiates through his body, from core outward. He should have grabbed a heavier coat on his way out the door, now has to hunch his shoulders up around his ears to combat the chill; the temperature is dropping. As in at this moment, and noticeably. He can feel it descending, falling, crumbling away and down and leaving his flesh vulnerable. His pace slows, gradually, so that at first he doesn’t know that he is stopping until he is no longer moving. Time slows too. His watch stops ticking. He only notices because it stops. There are no sounds. The wind has ceased. The air is dead. The moon is framed by smoky seas. Somewhere, nearby, he knows, children are thrilled, hissing between them, shouting laughter and mock-screams up into the dark, trying to freak each other out and probably succeeding but he cannot hear them. Tonight is when the veil is supposed to be thinnest. The two sides closer than any other annual point. Samhain. The Feast of the Dead. All Hallows Eve. The veil is thinnest, the membrane that lies between what’s living and what’s everything else (he knows now there are many kinds of dead) fragile, easily whispered through, parted for the passage of small folded messages, touched, pushed through, breached. Walking a razorblade. He is alone now. There is no sound. A streetlight blinks off. He leans forward to resume movement. Does not move. No sound.
THOSE WHO WISH TO SEE THEM
by Sam Cooper
The first night Molly saw the ghost, her mother had been sitting on the foot of her bed, reading her a storybook animatedly, but with her eyes fixed upon the page. It was something about a man with many hats, a story Molly had heard many times before. She let her mind and eyes wander. Her gaze fell upon the glass of her bedroom window, and then beyond to the shadowy trees a considerable distance across the back yard.
There, a luminous shape was moving slowly through the blackness. Molly tried to remain as still as possible; she didn’t want to attract the attention of her mother, who continued to read from the book with gusto. She leaned slightly forward from her pillow, and tried willing her eyes to focus on what moved in the trees. It definitely was the right shape and size of a person, shining white in the otherworldly glow of the half moon. A gauzy shroud trailed behind it, fluttering in a way that seemed independent of the breeze that rattled the dying autumn branches above.
The ghost moved smoothly and constantly, seemingly unphased by the thick underbrush it must have been crossing through. Now and again it passed between trees, its glow momentarily disrupted by an unmoving column standing sentinel against the night sky. But it would reappear, moving steadily towards the hill to the east. When they had moved her to this house, her parents had pointed out the cardinal directions relative to their property. And she picked it up quickly and solidly, as she did with most things.
Molly realized her mother had finished the story and was staring at her quizzically, waiting for a response. Molly pretended she had been looking out the window for only a moment.
“Mmm,” she said neutrally, “Great.”
“I know it’s one of your favorites. Now go to sleep, baby. It’s already too late for little girls to be awake.”
“Okay.”
“Alright. I love you.” Her mother stood up quickly and kissed her on the cheek. “Goodnight.”
“G’night. Love you too, mommy.” She smiled sleepily and snuggled down into the thick plush blankets of her bed. She closed her eyes.
As soon as her mother had flipped off the light and shut the door (almost shut the door; she had carefully left a crack open, a strip of hallway light spilling across the bedroom floor and cutting up the wall, as she was still under the impression her daughter was afraid of the dark), Molly sat straight up out of her covers and pressed her nose up against the chilled interior glass of the second-story window. It took her a moment to find the ghost again, but she did, and it was almost out of sight behind the eastern hill. Then it was.
She waited, feeling her breath fight against and fog up the glass. Just as she thought she better lie back down and resign herself to the thought that perhaps she was seeing things, the ghost reappeared. It glided up the hill again, moving back west and towards the woods nearest to Molly’s house. The little white shape grew larger and more substantial as it neared. It weaved between the immense tree trunks effortlessly, and now Molly thought she could barely make out its face. Pale, blank, thin. Mouth moving? Calling something? It shifted ever onwards. The minutes this journey took were seemingly eternal, and Molly savored every one of them. She watched, entranced, and her heart beat forcefully in her chest when it passed close. She strained to make out more detail, to see its face clearer, to listen through the window and through the wind for any faintest cry or unearthly moan.
“What are you doing still up?” It was her mother, who must have opened the door and entered the bedroom silently. Molly started and spun around.
“Thought I heard something outside.”
“You did, did you?” her mother made a motion to approach the window.
“It was nothing afterall.” Molly said suddenly as she slid back down under the covers. “Goodnight again.” She said, closing her eyes for emphasis.
“Goodnight, sweetie.”
Her mother remained standing halfway into the room. Molly couldn’t guess at what she was doing, and would not allow herself to open her eyes and find out. Maybe she was looking towards the window, out across the yard to the spindly branches reaching up to clutch like ancient, gnarled fingers at the setting moon. Maybe she was watching her daughter feign sleep with little shallow breaths echoing hollowly around the room. Maybe she wasn’t doing anything but standing with her back pressed up against the doorframe, eyes closed and arms folded. Molly didn’t hear her eventually almost close the door and walk away down the hall, because she found herself falling prey to sleep’s heavy embrace and soon did not have to feign anything.
The next morning, Molly yawned at the breakfast table. Her mother noticed and reprimanded her gently for staying up so late. Her father was already gone off to work at the base, which was some miles away. He left fairly early to get there by nine, and Molly was almost always still asleep when he tiptoed into her room and kissed her on the forehead before heading out the door.
“Do you believe in ghosts, mom?” Molly said over her bowl of cereal, her eyes looking down at the table.
“Oh I don’t know.” Her mother was distracted, washing a small plate under a light stream of hot water in the sink. “Why?”
“No reason. It almost Halloween.”
“Yes it is. What do you think you’ll be this year?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about a witch? I have an old black dress you could use. You could even cut it up if you wanted.”
“Maybe.”
Molly went to school that day, and the two days after left in the week. She sat in class and worked hard at not answering all the teacher’s questions, letting others have some chance to speak before rolling their eyes at her ever-ascended hand. She returned home those afternoons and did her dull homework quickly and without complaint, and then went up to her bedroom to read books purloined from the plain bookcase in her parents’ room. She waited for dinner and eventually nightfall. When night came, she acted especially sleepy for her mother, who chose shorter storybooks to read and who lectured her about a regular sleep schedule. When she heard her door being almost closed, she pressed her face against the glass and watched the ghost.
It traveled along its regular path: slowly through the trees, towards and over the hill in the east, and then back. And then it would be gone, disappeared into the thickening woods in the west. It did not stray from its course in the slightest, and it seemed Molly could have set her nightstand clock by its regularity. Molly thought for sure she saw the dark void of its mouth moving if she squinted her eyes hard. The second night she watched it make its lonely trip, she was positive it was the ghost of an Indian, whose grave lay under the bench at the edge of the woods, the grave marker had been moved by a real estate agent in a move of desperation and avarice in order to sell the property. The third and fourth nights, however, she was certain that it was the ghost of a waiting bride, forsaken by her lecherous husband on the day of their backyard wedding, and who hung herself by one of the thickest branches of a tulip poplar a hundred years ago. Now she wanders the woods, looking for her lover lost long ago, Molly thought, How tragic.
“The woods are haunted.” Molly said at her late Saturday breakfast of scrambled eggs and oatmeal.
“Don’t be silly.” Her Mother didn’t even look up from the paper.
“Well, I don’t know,” her father whispered ominously, putting on his best late-night horror movie face, and grasping at the air over his grapefruit, “They’ve always seemed spooky to me. Eerie.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake dear, stop it.”
“Really,” said Molly. “They are. Haunted, I mean.”
“By what?” Her father was now studying his own paper.
“I don’t know for sure. A lady I think, who died about a hundred years ago. She hung herself and died with her tongue hanging out, because her husband, only they weren’t married yet, didn’t show up at their wedding, which was going to take place in the backyard here, because he was off with some other woman and it drove the bride crazy. And now she’s looking for him in the woods and moaning because she knows what a horrible fate befell her.” Molly knew when she had finished, that she probably shouldn’t have said anything.
“That is absolutely horrible,” said her mother, now looking up at her daughter and husband, “You’ve been letting her watch far too much television.”
“Don’t look at me, dear.”
I don’t watch much TV, Molly wanted to say. And you know it.
“Well, she picked it up from somewhere.” She then looked at Molly, her eyes unexpectedly worried. “Sweetie, there’s no such thing as ghosts. You must have been dreaming, or imagining things.”
“Guess so.”
Her mother, using the psychic sense seemingly bestowed on all mothers at the moment their first child is born, did not buy Molly’s resignation. “I’m serious Mol. You need to put it out of your head.”
“Okay.” Molly looked to her father, but he was absorbed in a headline in front of him, and offered no help. The phone rang: a harsh artificial clang in the placid atmosphere of the breakfast kitchen.
“That’ll be Sophia,” said Molly’s mother. “She said she might call today.” She got up and went to the phone, and scooped it up out of its cradle within two more rings. “Hello? Well, hi. I knew it was you.” She stretched the cord out of the kitchen and sat down in a teal wing chair in the adjacent living room.
Molly turned her attention to her eggs and oatmeal, which she had been stabbing at and fidgeting with for some time. They were now lukewarm and both somewhat rubbery, but she ate them anyway. Her father rustled the newspaper a few times and then put it down, his brow furrowed beneath his gray, close-cropped hair. It was a look of put-on, unknown concern that Molly found amusing.
“Well, Kiddo,” he said. “I gotta go wrestle with the lawnmower. See you in… I dunno,” He was building up to it. “A week or two.”
She laughed a little. “Okay.”
He got up and took his dish and grapefruit rind to the sink. He left them there and exited the room. Molly could hear his footsteps going up the stairs. Unable to finish her breakfast, she pushed her plate away slightly and pretended to play with and fold her napkin as she eavesdropped on her mother.
“Yeah, it’s a nice place and all,” her mother said from the other room. “Although it is in the middle of nowhere. I have to drive fifteen minutes just to get decent groceries.” She paused, listening to the disembodied voice in the earpiece. “Not yet. I think the nearest neighbor is two miles away or something. No.” She laughed briefly, and then paused again. “Yeah, it’s not exactly an asylum, though.” Her voice was measured and decidedly unconcerned. “Some kind of facility. I don’t know exactly. And it’s pretty far off.” Another pause, this time, very short. “Yeah. No trouble so far, and don’t expect any.” She cleared her throat. “Hm? Oh, I guess around ten months now. It feels like I just put away the last moving box. It’s starting to feel like home already.” Pause. “He’s doing okay I guess. New base, new place. I keep trying to get him to think about retirement. I can’t do this every few years.” She got up and paced a little bit around the area of the chair. “Oh. She’s good I suppose. I try to keep her busy and everything. Supplement her school, feed that hungry head of hers.” Pause. “Yes, she just turned seven. And just entered fourth grade.” Pause. “I know!”
Molly hated listening to her mother talk about her this way, like she was the eighth wonder of the world, like she was a museum exhibit, or a trophy plaque on the wall. She took her bowl and plate to the sink, and headed to her room.
A little while later, Molly was lying on her back on her bed, her arms extended straight out and above from her, holding a copy of Dandelion Wine in front of her face. The window was cracked slightly, and a cool autumn breeze wheezed into the room occasionally, bringing the smells of dying leaves and crisp air. And, since her father was performing the last lawn-mowing of the season, cut grass. But it wasn’t the clean, fresh scent of cut summer grass. There was something rotten about this smell, something sickly. Through the stark wall of words and lines and paragraphs swimming before her eyes, Molly heard the lawnmower shut off and her father curse. Then the tiny sound of footsteps across wet grass clippings, and then the back door being opened and shut downstairs. The book was losing her interest, and she was thirsty. She got off of the bed to go down to the kitchen.
From the upstairs hallway near the stairway, she could hear her father complaining, and her mother rustling through the dishes in one of the cabinets.
“Goddamn lawnmower. I wish it just wouldn’t start at all if it gonna cut out in the middle of a goddamn job.”
“Well maybe you should get it looked at.”
“I have looked at it. There’s nothing wrong with it that I can see.”
“No, I mean get it looked at.”
“That guy Spielman up at the hardware store is an idiot. And he overcharges.”
“I’m worried about Molly.”
Molly stopped descending the stairs and sat on one. She pulled her knees up to her, and turned one ear down towards them, the other to the voices in the kitchen.
“Oh?” Her father sounded non-committal, even exasperated.
“Yes. I am. You should be too.”
“And why is that?”
“All this nonsense about ghosts.”
“She’s just a little girl, and it’s near Halloween. Let her have some fun for once in her life.”
“For one thing, I let her have plenty of fun. For another, you know she isn’t just any other little girl. And this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.”
“Oh God, you’re not talking about the rabbit thing last spring are you?”
“Yes, that it is exactly what I’m talking about.”
“It was a cute little dead bunny rabbit! She’s the one who found it all mangled near the road and everything. What’s not to be upset about?”
“She wasn’t upset. She was fixated. You didn’t have to hear all about it every night before she went to bed. About how it died, what it was thinking when its legs were crushed under the car wheels. About the pain and blood. About how sad its family was, how its wife and children cried all the time in their little rabbit hole. It went on for a solid week. It wasn’t right, and it isn’t right now. You heard her this morning.”
“What can I say? She has an overactive imagination. I hardly think two little instances of showing a tiny bit of a morbid side is anything to get all up in arms about.”
“She’s supposed to be so smart and mature. Prodigy, they keep telling us.”
“She’s still a little girl.”
“And this isn’t normal. Prodigy, little girl, whatever. This is beyond,” and here Molly’s mother did a spot-on impression of her husband, “An overactive imagination. I’m worried.”
“I know you are. But I also think you may be overreacting a little bit.”
“That is fucking easy for you to say. You don’t have to deal with her all the time.”
Molly’s father paused. “I’m going back outside. We’ll talk about this later.” The sound of the back door being opened and closed again. After a moment of silence, Molly gauged that it was safe, and went downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of juice.
As far as Molly could tell, her parents did not, in fact, talk about it later. Nor did they show any sign that the conversation had taken place at all. Dinner wasn’t memorable, and nothing but small talk was made. Molly’s mind was far from blank, however. She tread carefully and formulated a plan.
Once her mother had read her the obligatory bedtime story, and almost closed the door, and went to bed herself, Molly extracted herself from the grasp of her blankets. As quietly as she could will herself to be, she crossed her bedroom floor and slipped on her sneakers. What was next was what she considered to be the hardest part of the escape: getting out of her bedroom, past her parents’ room, and downstairs. After that was easy.
She opened her door in tiny increments. Reminded of “The Telltale Heart,” she smiled and pretended to have nefarious purposes to attend to beyond the door. She pushed it to the place right before its mid-open creak began, and slipped through the opening. The floorboards in the hall were mercifully silent beneath the old Persian runner, and Molly crossed the space in front of her parents’ door without difficulty or incident. The stairs moaned slightly under her feet, but not enough to cause her any worry. She was soon at the bottom, amazed at how well her escape had started.
Molly, her heart pounding, allowed herself to breathe a little easier, and looked at her surroundings. The house was still and chilly. Moonlight came through the windows and door cracks to make angular shapes that stabbed at the walls. Each room was made up of a different abstract pattern. Moonlight knives cutting through shadows of black construction paper. She crept through the house, towards the back door, nearly tripping over a coffee table and the leg of a chair on the way. Through the four glass panes set in the portal, Molly spied the woods beyond the yard and the bright coin moon nestled in the branches. She could not, however, see the ghost. She reached up to the lock and turned it, and heard the latch click away from its wooden doorframe sheath. Then she turned the knob and went outside.
The air was cold; Molly could see her breath and immediately wished she had thrown a jacket over her nightgown. She decay smell of the late-cut grass was all around. She crossed her small arms across herself and crossed the backyard, looking quickly behind her to see any signs of life from within the house. She saw none. Soon, she reached the portion of the lawn her father had been unable to mow, and the wet tips of the grass brushed against her bare ankles, dampening them. She shivered and hugged herself tighter. Then she was at the edge of the woods.
The autumn trees loomed overhead, the wrinkled bark of the oaks and maples coal-black against the moon’s oblong orb, the splotched skin of the tulip poplars spectral shades of gray and white. Molly crossed the threshold into the underbrush with a hand over her thumping heart. There was still no sign of the ghost. She went a little farther in, and stopped, listening. Nothing but the whistle of the wind in the dry leaves above and the tiny hum of natural things all around. She walked over fallen logs and around saplings. Her way was well lit by the moon hanging in a cloudless sky. She sat down on smooth rock. It was cold on her flesh, but she resolved herself not to move.
Minutes passed and the woods loomed ever higher above her. Molly’s confidence faded as a thin wind rattled the crooked boughs over her head. Her house seemed so far away, impossible to reach through the tangle of wood she had passed through. She suddenly knew she had to get back. It was bad to be here, this was a bad place. She had to just stand up and make her way back to the house as quickly as she could, and not look back over her shoulder. She would be safe.
But before she could move, she caught a glimpse of something to the east. Something white and luminous in the moonlight, coming over the hill and towards her. She was transfixed, she could not move. Moments ticked by in an eternity, and the ghost came nearer. It was wearing a gauzy, ethereal dress; a nightgown of some sort, very similar in appearance to Molly’s. Flowing white hair blew behind it in the light wind, and its long, graceful hands swayed gently from its sides as it moved. Molly heard something floating on the night air. Not a moan, but a song.
As the ghost approached, Molly realized it was actually she. The ghost was the spirit of an old lady, with a round and wrinkled face, lines all upward in a smile as she sang. Her voice was tremulous and thin, translucent like parchment paper. She headed straight for Molly and the girl could make out what she was singing.
“And when two lovers woo, they still say ‘I love you,’ on that you can rely, no matter what the future brings, as time goes by,” then she hummed the melody for a while, and repeated it.
Molly thought the song sounded very familiar, maybe from a late night movie on television. She couldn’t quite place it. The ghost was now beside her.
“Hello,” the ghost said, her singing halted. “I heard that song in nine-teen thirty-one. My family went all the way to New York City. Me and her and daddy and sister went to Broad-way.” Molly found it odd how she said the word. “Ohh, I wore my best summer dress. I was only twenty. So young! I thought ‘Everybody’s Welcome’ was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen.” The ghost twirled slowly, humming the song again, and then stopped, and stared at Molly with smiling, milky eyes.
Molly was paralyzed. “Oh,” she finally said.
“Have you ever been to New York City?” The ghost’s teeth were so white, and flashed in the night as she talked. She was so thin, so… luminous. Molly was sure she could see shades of branches through her.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Ohh, you should go.”
“Why are you here?” Molly realized now that this old woman spirit could not possibly be an abandoned bride.
“Stuck, it seems.” The ghost’s smile faded. “Doomed to loneliness, and wandering at night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You are just a little girl,” The smile had returned. “With very pretty green eyes. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not the way of things. You still have a life to live. Do not worry about me. This is what I am now. Wanderer, it seems. Trouble.”
“I had to come and see you. Why are you still here?”
“No where else to go.” The ghost was humming again between answers.
“What’s your name?”
“Sometimes I remember, sometimes I don’t. I don’t remember.”
“Mine’s Molly.”
“Ah.” The ghost did a funny little rickety dance, swaying from the waist to the rhythm of the words she was singing once more, her slender hands buried in the shimmying folds of her nightgown.
Molly watched her sing and dance for a few minutes. She tried to remember the ghost stories she had heard, the ghost books she had read. Comparing notes. Did ghosts answer questions? Did they dance? Did they sing old songs? Were they transparent, or were they opaque? Did they appear as they died or as they lived? Her head was too full of wonder and thrill to find satisfying solutions to any of the questions, and so she laid her chin in her hands and hummed along. Eventually, the ghost stopped and turned to the girl on the stone.
“It’s getting late. I have to go.” She said.
Molly frowned. “Where?”
“Where I came from.” The ghost smiled slyly. “There.” She pointed west.
“Will I see you again?” She was now certain she had broken the spell, and their brief meeting would soon be over.
“No matter what the future brings,” the ghost sang, “As time goes by.” And she headed west, swinging her skinny arms by her sides, gliding over the underbrush and between fallen trees. Her long nightgown flapped around her legs, moving in a way slightly incongruous with the breeze.
Molly turned around on the rock and watched her spectral acquaintance disappear into the trees. Then she got up slowly and smoothed her dress down on her legs, and wiped some of the chilled dew from her ankles. And then she was off through the woods, back across the lawn, into the house, and back up in her room.
She peeled off her sneakers and tossed them softly into a corner. Slowly, she pulled back the blankets on her bed and crawled under them. She tugged the bedclothes up around her chin and, without a further thought, was asleep.
Morning came quickly and gently, and Molly was awoken by her mother’s hand on her shoulder.
“Sleep well?” asked her mother.
Molly took it as a rhetorical question, but nodded anyway. “Yeah.”
“Good. C’mon. Breakfast is ready. You’ve slept in half the day.”
Molly looked at the clock and noted that, no, she had not slept in half the day. It was long before noon. “Okay.”
Downstairs, her mother served her the other half of the grapefruit her father had eaten the previous morning, and a bowl of oatmeal. The grapefruit was too cold, and had too much sugar on it. Molly scraped some of the damp sugar off, and decided to let it warm up a little bit next to the oatmeal. She looked up at her mother’s turned back near the sink.
“I know what I want to be for Halloween,” she said.
THE SHADOW OF THE JUNGLE
by Sam Cooper
They think me mad. They whisper in the cold white corridors of this suffocating hospital, casting worried glances towards my bed and shaking their heads. They blame it on the fever. And how I wish they were right. I wish that the images burned into my memory were only a product of insanity, and not a product of the horror I suffered in the choking, steaming jungle. I can never forget what has happened to me; my dreams will never let me be at peace. I live each horrible moment again and again. And so I recount my tale in hopes to impede these nightmares, for I can feel the terror coming closer every day. I must be at peace, so I must ensure that the story will live on, that others know how to avoid my fate. I alone can do this, for I am the sole survivor of the expedition.
My name is Thomas Ashley. I am a Professor in the fields of anthropology and linguistics. Ever since my studies on Central African Tribes at Oxford, I have become fascinated with the notion of contacting and observing one of these peoples for the purpose of advancing knowledge of the mysterious Dark Continent.
In the spring of 1920, I sent invitations to two of the most respected experts on the Congo, both of whom were in London at the time. The first to respond was Professor Aldus Bliss, an authority on African flora and fauna, and who had studied a great deal of anthropology at Oxford with me. I met him the year previous, and we toyed with the notion of voyaging to Africa, he to study bird species in the rain forest, myself to collect variations of tribal languages.
Bliss had taken a journey to Congo-Cameroon border the year before and was in London reporting his findings on the tribes he had encountered. While in Ouesso, he had heard of a certain clan, the Bokhari people, who exist deep in the jungle of the Congo, living off the river somewhere between Matadi and Kinshasa. No one in living memory had seen the people, and local legend insists that they are, in fact, spirits. Supposedly they wander the jungle, seeking to avenge the lost souls of their wives and children, who were killed by tribal foes.
I became obsessed with the idea of finding this “ghost tribe” and it is for this very reason that our doomed expedition commenced. I summoned him with a letter proposing this and he immediately and enthusiastically responded.
The latter to respond to my summons was renowned adventurer Sir Claude Talmage. He had recently returned from South America, and had just finished a tour of England, giving lectures on his venture. I do not know why he was in London, but I suspect it was to sell Aztec treasures obtained on his most recent journey on the Black Market. He responded promptly and, in typical Talmage fashion, included a certain amount of overblown fervor, so that the sincerity of his reply was somewhat suspect.
In a week’s time, both of my fellow explorers had met me in Southampton. We began to extensively plan our undertaking. We put out an advertisement requesting able-bodied men to join us in Southampton to “partake in an adventure of grand proportions” to the Congo. We asked that applicants have experience in hunting and cartography. This was probably asking for too much, since only one person applied: Talbot Hastings. When he arrived in Southampton, he informed us that he had a young, friend, Avery Graham, who could outfit our trip, and who had been in the jungles before. These two men seemed the perfect addition to our intrepid band of travelers.
When we were all assembled, we arranged for a group of African natives to meet us when we arrived, who could guide us through the jungle, from Boma to Kinshasa. We would follow the river, studying and observing everything we saw, and searching for the Bokhari tribe. We spent a month gathering everything that we would need, and then took a train to Portsmouth.
Our expedition sailed from Portsmouth on the H.M.S. Prometheus in October. I cannot recall the date, but I know it was early in the month. We had a fairly uneventful journey, only slowed by one night of stormy seas. After four weeks, we finally landed in Boma, a port-town on the Congo River. As soon as we disembarked from the ship, we found our guides, or, rather, they found us.
The man who would actually be guiding us was named Abdikarim. He was a tall, dark man, who spoke little, and when he did, spoke little English. He did, however, assure us that he could direct us safely to Kinshasa. He said that we would need him, because the jungle was very perilous. He mentioned something about how we would be watched, but I tried to put the thought out of my mind.
If only I had listened to him.
There were two other men with him, who spoke no English, but fortunately, I could understand them with my knowledge of tribal tongues. Their names were Issa and Savu.
We gave our guides some of the supplies to carry; the rest we bore in large haversacks on our backs. We stayed for two nights at an inn in Boma and then set off into the jungle.
The initial time in the forest was rather satisfactory, filled with scholarly exploits: taking notes on what we observed along the river and recording the happenings of the day in our journals. Talmage insisted on “leading” the expedition. He would position himself ahead of the guides, and hack and slash and fight with the vines and ferns. From time to time, he would glance back at Abdikarim, who would point in the correct direction, and he would continue swinging his machete.
After Talmage, Professor Bliss and I would follow in the procession, continuously scribbling in our journals and looking deeply into the underbrush. Bliss collected several specimens of insects: two large, patterned butterflies, a nasty-looking beetle, and numerous caterpillars. He also pressed an unrecognizable fern in his sketchbook. Meanwhile, I looked for evidence of native tribes, but found nothing. But one night, I could swear that I awoke to the sound of drums.
Issa and Savu would be behind us, laboring under the weight of the large chest of supplies we had given them to carry. They did not complain, however, and never seemed to tire.
Talbot Hastings would take up the rear, holding a rifle and looking around cautiously, as if a lion might attack at any moment. He hardly spoke at all, and when he did it was to Avery Graham.
The two were an inseparable team; they didn’t need to talk to each other to understand each other. They took care of such things as pitching camp, starting fires, and hunting for food. Most nights they brought a deer or hog, and when they couldn’t find those, they could catch fish.
The journey continued this way for some three weeks. After this time, however, we began to experience some trouble. The jungle started to grow increasingly darker, and soon we had to halt our travels earlier, for less sun filtered through the forest canopy.
As we traveled deeper into the jungle, it got hotter. Sweat poured from our faces and bodies, and we were as wet as we would be if we had fallen into the river. Every time we drew a breath, it was as like we were inhaling mist, as the air had gotten incredibly humid. Even when it did not rain, the leaves dripped with moisture.
And there were the insects.
We woke up every morning and fell asleep every night to the incessant sound of a buzzing hum. We constantly swatted in front of our face, so much, in fact, that we had to stop writing in our journals to devote both hands to driving away the little monsters. Their bites were painful and regular, and shortly we had to fashion ourselves crude mosquito nets to cover our face and any other exposed piece of flesh.
After two hellish weeks of this, right when we thought we could take no more, the insects disappeared. We arose one dawn to the sound of silence. The heat had even lifted a little. It was so refreshing, that we actually took the day off, and just rested, laughing and smiling.
The next morn, there was no silence. Instead, there was a gasping, and coughing. I looked to my right, where Bliss lay in his blanket. The Professor was very pale, and was shivering. He sputtered a cough and closed his eyes as if praying. Abdikarim squatted next to him, watching intently.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Our guide looked up slowly.
“Fever.”
My heart sank. I knew of such things. I knew of many who had succumbed to deadly jungle fevers brought on by mosquitoes. I knew…
I looked at Abdikarim. He understood, and replied, “Yes, deadly.” And then, not being able to find the right English words, he spoke in his native tongue, “We must get him to help.”
Progress was slowed by Bliss’ sickness; he was very weak, and could not travel very far in a day. Some days he was so feeble that we had to carry him in a stretcher fashioned from blankets and branches. For many days, the expedition carried on in almost complete silence, broken only by the occasional bird call, or a cough from Professor Bliss.
One dusk, when we set him down for the night, Bliss turned to me and said,
“I’m not going to see the end of this.”
“Of course you will,” I assured him.
“No. I won’t. Why don’t you just leave me here? We are just trying to delay the inevitable.”
I tried to provide comfort, but by the time I gazed back at him, he was asleep. I looked across the campfire. The rest of the travelers were staring at bliss and I in silence.
We ate a simple supper and went to bed.
In the morning, we woke up, and Hasting started to put out the remaining embers of the campfire. I went to wake Bliss, as I did every morning.
But Professor Aldus Bliss was not there to be woken.
His blanket was empty. There was no sign of him anywhere. His haversack lay beside the blanket, undisturbed. But something besides all of this struck me as strange. His glasses, without which he was quite blind, were lying on the ground. He could not, especially in his weakened state, have wandered off without his glasses.
I alerted my comrades to my startling discovery. I noticed that the natives’ eyes were particularly wide as they shot each other furtive glances. Talmage kept peeking over his shoulder, as if he expected to be attacked at any moment. Hastings examined the ground around Bliss’ abandoned blanket for tracks, but said he could not find any, not even the Professor’s.
We spent the rest of the day searching the surrounding forest for our lost companion, but our search was fruitless.
We camped in the same location that night, and all stayed up quite late, not wanting to leave the reassuring light of the fire.
There was no hope in finding Bliss, so, with heavy hearts, we pressed on. We continued for three days, saying little, and peering into the brush, as if we still expected to see Bliss walking beside us in the forest. None had the heart to do much of anything besides walk on in the direction that Abdikarim led us.
I heard our guides whispering to each other in quiet hisses at night. The seemed very distressed, and I felt as though Abdikarim wanted to tell me something, but was hesitant to do so. I once asked him about this, but he just turned away and continued hiking.
I also began to have the most peculiar feeling that we were being followed. Sometimes I would turn around and think that I saw a shadow duck into the forest. Or I would hear a snapping twig on the flank of our little parade. Once, in the middle of the night, I glanced into the trees and saw the firelight glint off two orbs that quickly moved away when I stirred.
On the third night I asked Abdikarim, “Something is following us, isn’t it?” He did not reply, but instead looked at me with eyes full of fear.
“Bokhari?” I said, hoping for a response.
The native looked up and shook his head. He whispered one word.
“Mbeti”
All I did was stare at him as he went on to explain the word in a mixture of broken English and his native tongue.
The Mbeti is a legendary spirit-creature that inhabits the jungle. Some say it is a man, twisted by evil powers, others say it is the evil power. But all agree that it is menacing and frightening. Abdikarim would not tell me more.
At first I was frightened, but then I laughed.
“Mbeti?” I chuckled, “I’m sorry, but there is no such creature. A figment of the imagination maybe, or, at most, a Lowland Gorilla. But a demon? No.”
Abdikarim seemed to be quite offended, and stood up and joined his indigenous friends on the other side of the camp. I went to bed smiling.
I awoke to a cacophony of quiet panic. Behind me, something was rustling in the bushes, and around the fire. There was a muffled vocalization as well. I wanted to roll over. I wanted to see what was making the sound. But I couldn’t. Instead I was enveloped by the banging of my heart against my ribcage.
Suddenly there was a hand over my mouth.
I tried to scream, but wasn’t able to. I heard someone behind me making a low shushing noise. I slowly turned to see Abdikarims’ body looming over me. His hand was over my mouth. He shushed me again and then took his hand off of my lips. I got up slowly.
There was near silence, except for Talmage, who was curled up in his blanket, snuffling. I looked to my left and saw Graham, clutching Hastings’ rifle, huddled against a tree.
A scream pierced the black jungle.
It came from far off to my right, and it was Hastings’ voice. But then I looked in front of me and saw Hastings in his blanket. Graham shook violently, rattling the fittings on the rifle. His knuckles were white.
Again, a scream.
This time, it was more behind me. Again, it was Hastings’ voice. Just to make sure my mind was not playing tricks on me, I looked again in front of me, at Hastings in his blanket. Why had he not arisen? I called out to him, but as soon as I did, I found a hand over my mouth again. I looked over my shoulder to see our guide, shaking his head. He removed his hand from my mouth and walked silently over to Hastings’ bed-roll.
He bent down, grasped the blanket, and flung it back.
There was Hastings, lying down. All was right.
Except Hastings had no head.
I was immediately and violently ill. Just as I was sick into the ferns, there was another scream out in the jungle. More distant now, though. Still definitely Hastings. It wasn’t possible.
For the rest of the night, the screams continued, getting further and further off. The remainder of the expedition clutched onto each other around the fire and listened.
I woke up and was surprised that I had fallen asleep. Graham and Talmage were already up. When I stirred, Talmage turned to me.
“They’re gone,” he said.
“Who?” I said groggily.
“The guides. They must have taken off some time near dawn. Scared out of their wits.”
“How’s he?” I asked, gesturing to Graham.
“Not too good. Hasn’t said anything.” Talmage looked at the ground. He looked up again with the same fear I had seen in Abdikarim’s eyes and said, “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
I didn’t say anything, for I didn’t know. I got up and walked over to Graham. He was wandering around the camp, distractedly packing things into haversacks. He glanced at me with wide eyes and said nothing. I turned back to Talmage.
“If my estimation is right, we are not too far from Kinshasa. Maybe a day, maybe more. If we start now-“
“If?” The word came from Graham. “If? Whatever that was, it killed my friend without leaving any tracks, or any blood. There wasn’t any struggle. Just a clean cut.” He dragged his finger across his neck. “There is no ‘if’ involved. We will not make it. We will die.”
Dumbstruck, I was silent for a moment, but then said, “I’m not ready to resign to that fate. I’m going to try. I think I know which way-”
I stopped, for I saw a shadow dart in between two trees. Two red points of light appeared in the darkness of the brush. The vines and creepers looked as if they bent around those two staring lights, creating a vague outline of something the size of a man in the dense growth. The glinting red orbs were unmoving. I couldn’t stare back any more. I spun back to my fellow prey, who were looking in the same area that I was.
“We need to go. Bring only your haversack. Let us make haste.”
We started to trek in the direction that I thought we should go, always glancing back to see a shadow swiftly fly out of view. Once, I saw the terrible red eyes again. We hurried along through the rainforest, being cut and scratched by creepers and tripping over tree roots. Talmage had left the machete at the camp, so we had to endure the plant life.
By the time we stopped for the night, we were exhausted, bruised, and bleeding. We lit a small fire, and sat alert, waiting for anything to happen.
We waited for several hours, rifle at the ready. Nothing happened. Not a single fern rustled in the stifling, choking, thick atmosphere of the Congo. I felt my eyelids getting heavy, and after a while, I could not force them open. Just as I was about to drift off, Graham yelled. Talmage and I jumped up, just as a huge shape retreated into the jungle. Talmage started screaming.
“I can’t take it! Just kill me! Kill me!”
He started walking towards the darkness. I tried to restrain him, but he was stronger. He pulled away.
“Kill me!”
As if on cue, two huge claws shot out of the darkness. One grasped Talmage’s head. He screamed as the Mbeti dragged him into the gloom. The other claw sunk into my shoulder. I cried out in pain and fought the thing trying to pull me into the black jungle. A single shot rang out and I heard a grunt from above me. Something warm and sticky spattered onto my face and the grip on my shoulder was released. I crawled towards the fire. Once in the warm light of the flames, I looked back.
Light glittered off of teeth and claws. Red eyes glowed in the black. It was huge.
The Mbeti was hunched over, but even so was the height of a man. Its black fur bristled and saliva dripped from its sneering maw. Its arms hung low, like a gorilla, but its head was more like a dog. It stared at me. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from its eyes. Those cold, merciless eyes that seemed to hold a certain amount of…joy.
I ran.
I ran long and hard, stumbling and tripping and cutting myself and sobbing. I could hear Graham trotting behind me. Occasionally, a shot rang out, and then a grunting that almost sounded like laughter. I made the mistake of turning back. The horror was sprinting. It vaulted over vines, and ran up and sprang off of trees. There was no way we could outrun it.
I stumbled. I fell. I knew it was the end of my life. I turned around to face my fate, and saw Graham standing in the path that we had created. He looked around and then twisted to me.
“Where is it?” he called.
I was about to answer when It made itself known. A hulking silhouette dropped from above Graham. The thing landed squarely on top of the man, knocking him to the ground. A shot exploded from the rifle, but did not find its target. I looked on in absolute terror as the Mbeti killed the screaming Graham and started to feed.
I could not watch anymore. With one last burst of strength, I lifted myself to my feet and stated running. I dashed onwards, and after a few moments, could feel the thing following me. But then I saw a light.
Ahead, through the trees, there was a light shining. I tried to run faster. The horror was catching up. Almost there. It was almost within reach. I could see a building. I felt it panting; I could feel its talons desperately scratching at my back…
I exploded out of the jungle. I fell, rolled, and stumbled onto a dirt road. Behind me, there was no more panting or sound of padded feet catching up to mine. Instead, I heard and anguished howl.
I fell to the ground and wept. I gazed up with blurry eyes to a sign that read, “Kinshasa.”
A nun from a missionary found me lying in the same spot an hour later quaking from fever, and now I lie in this hospice bed, awaiting nightfall, awaiting the return of the horror. I can only wait. But I hope to God that my warning is heeded. The Mbeti is coming for me. I cannot escape that. But others can.
Others can evade the shadow of the jungle.
THE PUMPKIN SEED
by Sam Cooper
A pumpkin sat in a field. It was not alone; other pumpkins joined it in sitting. Its world was new and pleasant, everything green and soft. And so it continued sitting. Green began to change to red and gold. The ground became crunchy underfoot. All of its kin were removed, all taken over time. Now it sat alone. It sat and sat and sat until it rotted.
It rotted until all that was left of the pumpkin was the seeds. And then the seeds were taken. By birds, by animals, by the water, by the rain, by the earth. All were taken but one. And so the seed sat. And amber grass grew around it and it was hidden.
Then the crows came. A murder of crows flew in from the west and took up residence in the trees by the pumpkin field. They were very hungry. Hungry from flying and famine. So they went foraging. The crows hopped and strutted in the pumpkin field, finding nothing for hours.
Then one found the seed. With a loud KRAWWWW she picked up the seed in her beak and flew to one of the trees. Alerted by the crow’s call, the rest followed her into the boughs of the giant sycamore.
The crow with the pumpkin seed was backed into the tree by her murder-kin, all of whom had their own desire for the seed. It was the only scrap of food they had seen for days and they were genuinely starving. The crow with the seed squawked and fluttered among the branches, all the while defending her seed-food and fighting the other crows. Only the youngest crow did not try to steal the seed for himself
Let us not fight. He said. We should think of each other and the future. Let us fly and find other food. We should not eat the seed and waste this gift. The crows turned from their brawl and laughed at the youngling. Waste? They said. How could this seed be wasted if we eat it? If we eat it then we will not be hungry.
Yes, but do you all intend to eat it? That, my murder-kin, is impossible. A seed is only so big. We should save the seed and grow it. When a pumpkin bursts from the earth, we will have much food. Again the older crows laughed. One spoke. By then we would have died and become one with the earth, for other pumpkins to grow in. Heh heh. No, no small one, that takes much too long. We are hungry now. We will have a competition to see who gets the seed.
The youngling started to argue once more, but wicked glances forced him to fall silent. The rest of the crows prepared to compete to for their hunger. The murder flew into the field and formed a circle. The eldest perched in the middle on a stick, the seed stowed safely below him. I shall not take this seed for myself. He vowed. Because I am The Eldest of this murder and think of it before myself. He went on. The first trial of five shall be a ground race, across the pumpkin patch. All at once…..GO!
The field erupted into a chaos of hopping, squawking, fluttering, flapping, and scratching. The murder of crows raced against each other across the field. It was close, but the female seed-finder won in the end.
The crows flew to the stick again and most breaths were short and sharp. Alright, the second trial, said the eldest crow, once more perched above the rest. Shall be an air race. Again, all shall compete. The first to fly to the end of the field and back is the winner….go!
The crows flapped into the air, a mass of bright black. Feathers flew, blows were dealt, but eventually all resolved their squabbles and swooped over the field. Some were too exhausted to go on and simply dropped to rest in the grass. One by one they flew back to the circle-stick. The first to do this was the female who found the seed, the Youngling close behind. All I have to do is win one more time and that seed is mine. Goaded the female between tired gasps. You might as well give up. The Youngling showed no signs of intending to do so.
We shall rest a moment, said The Eldest. Catch your breath and wait for those who dropped to return. When those who dropped did return, most revealed they were far too tired to continue competing and would rather go hungry than die of exhaustion trying to satisfy that need. And so The Eldest went on. In third trial, you must fly to that scarecrow and gather as much straw from it as possible in the count of thirty seconds. Begin.
One…two… the remaining competitors rose into the sky. Five…six… the crows were at the scarecrow and gathering as much straw as possible in their beaks. Ten… eleven…the murder was at the stick, dropping off straw. Fifteen… sixteen… at the scarecrow once more. Nineteen…twenty…at the circle-stick. Twenty-five…twenty-six…at the scarecrow, some lagging behind. Twenty-nine…CEASE! Most crows were already at the stick, dropping their loads. The youngling had the biggest pile of straw.
The entire murder’s beaks hung open. No one spoke, no one moved. All stared. None had had the faintest expectation that the Youngling would ever win, especially the female champion. Most had even smirked when he decided to compete. It was some time until The Eldest spoke. The fourth trial will be an honorable battle. He announced, drawing a circle in the earth with a long black claw. You shall fight two at a time until all but one removes themselves from the competition. Our champion will go first. And you there. You two…get in the ring and start.
One by one the crows entered the ring. One after another left. But not the Female. The Female seemed to have an advantage over everyone that could not be beaten. She was big and strong, and simply bashed her opponents into submission. When the cloud of black feathers would clear, the crow unlucky enough to face her would be down, moaning and nursing wounds. This was show-fighting, but it could be bone-shatteringly dangerous. The Female had gone through all the crows but one. The Youngling stood defiantly before her. The fight began with no warning. Feathers and cawing filled the air. The two crows were blurs, one indiscernible, even-changing black shape.
But when the dust cleared, when the plumage drifted to the earth, the Youngling was standing over a submissive Female. He had astonished the murder again. He was not supposed to win this trial. He was supposed to be shattered and beaten into jelly! He was the Youngling of the murder. Not supposed to be good at anything except being abused. It was now a competition between the Youngling and the Female. That was clear. And even the most starved, even the most ravenous crow was filled with anticipation to see what would happen next.
Erm…well then. Said The Eldest. Ehhhhhh I really did expect…umm...this to be over by now…let me see….uhhhhhhhh…ah yes. That’ll do. The final test shall be one of agility. The first competitor to successfully navigate the boughs of this great and mighty sycamore, upward and downward, shall be the winner. Remember, fly as much as possible. Who shall be competing? Actually, do not tell me. No, I know the answer. Are you two ready? The two champions nodded their onyx heads. Aaaaalright. Better get started. Get to the bottom of the tree….. okay…. GOOOOOOOO!
The two crows hopped into the air, wings flapping against each other, so neither really went any farther than where they were, a few feet off the earth. When they finally untangled themselves, they exploded up into the boughs, two jet black rocks shot from a volcano. The Youngling used his small size to dart in-between the branches. The Female used her brute strength to smash through the smaller branches. Both stopped very rarely, only when unable to dodge a limb while in flight.
Neither crow really had the advantage; neither was any more ahead of the other.
One would expect the race to be done rather quickly, but the sycamore was huge, shooting up towards the heavens. The crows did this also, the Female beginning to taunt the Youngling. You are never going to taste the delicious seed. She said maliciously. The Youngling said nothing, but she continued. How will you beat me, small one? To this the Youngling turned his head slightly and eyed his opponent. He said firmly: I can beat you because…because I know I can. The Female was so entranced by his determination that she turned to face him, not paying attention to the tree.
WATCH OUT! But it was too late. The Female looked up just in time to see a huge branch coming at her. There was a sharp crack. The Youngling winced and stopped, perching on a bough, watching as the broken crow below him descended to the earth. Her body hit the ground with a soft thud, the Youngling fluttering down shortly after.
The murder was utterly silent, a circle of black around the corpse. Only the Youngling stood separately. He was at the Female’s side. If crows could sob, the Youngling would certainly have been doing so.
Suddenly, the Youngling exploded upon his murder-kin. Look what we have done! He raged. A fellow crow is DEAD! We did this. No, not just you. Not just me. All of us. BUT if it had not been for that foolish competition, this would have not happened. We will bury her and the seed together. With whatever luck is still with us, her spirit will help the pumpkin grow. Until then, we will go as we are, hungry. But we will not leave this field.
The others had no heart left to disagree, and as one silently moved towards the body. Four crows picked up the corpse, the Eldest snatching up the seed in his beak, and they moved to the circle stick. The Eldest gave the seed to the Youngling and began to scratch in the dirt. The rest followed, and the Youngling watched the growing hole in the earth.
When the grave was dug, the four crows gently laid the Female to rest. Then all members of the murder stood in silence. The Youngling burst through the ring and scratched some dirt on the body. He then placed the pumpkin seed, the goal of so many, the cause of much pain, on the soil. That broke the trance. The crows each turned around and heaped earth into the grave.
When they were done, it was dusk. None of the crows spoke as the rose into the welcoming branches of the sycamore. Most stayed awake until dark, but when the blackness arrived, all were asleep with amazing speed, after an exhausting day. Around the mid-night it began to rain softly. The crows were too tired to notice the shower, but the water seeped into the ground. And so the seed began to grow.
A tiny sprout burst through the beige shell of the seed, pushing through moist earth, trying to fight its way to open air. Earthworms and beetles moved out of the way of the upward-moving tendril. The tiny green plant finally pushed is way through the soil, growing faster and faster as it tasted air.
The sprout curled and twisted while growing longer and thicker. Leaves sprouted from its sides as a small, dark green bud burst from the tope of the sprout. The bud grew larger and larger until it was the size of a fist, and then started to change color, from green to orange. Little tentacles of tendrils swirled and moved
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