"That's not him," whispered Jane. "I mean, it couldn't
possibly be him."
We were standing on the tilted deck of an 18th century privateer -- British, I think, but I'm not any kind of expert in naval history. The timbers creaked as the ship rose and fell gently in the calm seas. You couldn't actually
see the sea; thick plumes of very convincing fog had blown up from somewhere, hiding the hypothetical ocean quite nicely. But we could feel waves bumping the hull, we could hear the faint cry of sea birds far off in the distance, we could smell salt and damp and the faint, metallic tang of ozone hinting at a coming storm. The sky was a crisp shade of October blue darkening towards indigo, and the first timid stars of the evening were beginning to wink on.
Belson is nothing if not detail-oriented.
The "him" in question was tied or tangled in the rigging of the main mast, or the mizzen mast, or some damn mast or other. (Again, not an expert.) He was dressed in period costume, or anyway Hollywood's version of same: head scarf and tarred ponytail, kohl around the eyes, poufy laced shirt, pantaloons, leather boots with buckles, the whole bit. His bound form hung limply in a pose almost suggesting crucifixion. The two thick, blood-red candles affixed somehow to his upturned palms, burnt almost down to their wicks and dripping tallow between his fingers, certainly hinted at some kind of sacrificial goings-on. Damn, that had to
smart.
And it
did look like him.
"Maybe it's Keith Richards," I whispered back.
She stifled a laugh so quickly it made her snort. It was adorable.
Hell, for all I knew it
was Keith Richards. Or a clone, or some kind of doppelganger, or maybe even the actual actor. I never pressed Belson for any specifics regarding his little Halloween extravaganzas.
I was too afraid he might tell me.
Whoever or whatever he was, the man just hung there, twisting slightly in the breeze, apparently unconscious and in obvious distress, an occasional low moan escaping his lips. And, although he was quite a few feet above the dozen or so of us gathered in an embarrassingly tight group on deck, we seemed to be able to make out the tiniest details of his predicament with perfect clarity.
"So, when does the show start?" smiled Jane, sounding grateful for my breaking the tension but still whispering. Whispering was practically mandatory at these things. Belson didn't insist on it, you just felt as if you should. "What
is the show?"
"Dunno. I've been to all of them, and he's never repeated himself. Building a full-size pirate ship in his back yard is certainly a new twist, I'll tell you that much."
"I
know! How is that even possible?"
"Magic!" I twinkled. All right, I admit I might have been flirting, just a little bit. Jane was cute. We'd been kind of half-seriously circling around each other practically from the day she'd moved into the house next door last spring. She was recently divorced, and I was... no longer attached. And there comes a moment when being alone starts to feel like just too much damn work.
She punched me in the side, but playfully.
"Oh, all right, ya Halloweenie!" I grinned. "It beats the heck out of me, actually. All I can tell you is, the dude's rich as Croesus, he owns stock in just about any tech company you'd care to name, he cheerfully admits to being mad as several hatters, and he genuinely seems to enjoy doing these things. Don't ask me why he doesn't just open half a dozen theme parks and bankrupt Disney. And before you say it, no, I have no idea why he chooses to live here in suburban Mayberry. He says he likes the neighborhood."
"And exactly how did
you meet him?"
"At Costco," I deadpanned, arching an eyebrow at the implied insult.
Before she could punch me again, there was a loud rattle behind us, maybe from below decks, maybe closer. It sounded like someone rolling dice, or possibly bones.
"Shhh," I whispered, as we all turned around carefully. "I think the curtain's going up."
The cover of the main hatch leading down into the bowels of the ship was lowering. And something snaked quickly back under it and out of sight before it dropped with a muffled thump. Something bone-white and faintly luminous and much, much too thin to have been a human hand. Mrs. Dobbins from down the block let out a small shriek. I was grateful it hadn't been me. But all of us had at least gasped a bit. I was suddenly aware I was holding Jane's hand, and I honestly didn't recall who had grabbed whom. I don't know how he times moments like that so perfectly. Belson's an artist.
I think Jane was the first to notice the objects now scattered around the aft deck; she let out a short breath and pointed, anyway. They were small and flat and jet-black. They looked like stones or bits of pottery. Letters or runes or some kind of symbols were printed or painted on them in a much lighter color.
They seemed to be
moving, ever so slightly. Shifting around on the boards just subtly enough that you couldn't easily dismiss it as the motion of the ship. Yes, I had by then completely flensed from my mind walking up a long ramp from a leaf-strewn but perfectly manicured lawn not even five minutes ago. We were on a
ship.
And some stupid son of a bitch was walking over to pick the closest of the things up.
* * *
Belson had only two rules for his audiences: Adults Only and Don't Touch.
Adults Only didn't imply any prurient content, merely that his shows were usually far too intense for the kiddies. (Although those wood nymphs in the Haunted Forest the year before last would probably have rated a PG-17 at the very least.) And indeed, the youngest person here looked to be in her mid-twenties. The front yard was for the trick-or-treaters: scary, yes, but in a lighter, almost wholesome way.
Don't Touch, if anyone gave it more than passing thought, was only common sense. Too much delicate equipment (one assumed) to accidentally damage, too much risk of injury, too much chance of screwing something up and ruining the show for everybody.
Most of the people in our little group were from the neighborhood. Some were close friends, some I knew in passing, and a couple were completely new faces. There were always a few; word gets around. Not as much as you might imagine, though: the local news outlets always seemed to be surprisingly uninterested in the annual spooktacular thrown by our local reclusive billionaire.
I didn't recognize this guy. He was short, maybe in his mid-thirties, a bit on the pudgy side. He had one of those meticulously trimmed half-inch-wide beards I found instantly annoying and pretentious, and was dressed in just a t-shirt and jeans, despite the coolness of the evening. He at least seemed to realize what he was doing was probably not the smartest idea; his movements were slow, almost trepidatious, until he actually had the object in his hand. Then he spun around to face the rest of us, and I swear he looked like a kid who had just gotten a particularly awesome prize in his Cracker Jack.
"I've seen these markings before!" he breathed, but I don't think he was talking to us, or was even aware he was speaking out loud. "They--"
He suddenly screamed and dropped the thing like it had bit him. Maybe it had.
The symbols on the stone -- all the stones, in fact -- were now glowing a bright and sickly green. Columns of thick, black smoke began to rise straight up from the things.
Literally straight up, as if the billowing stuff were constrained to invisible cylinders, even though the slight breeze had by now become an actual wind. The effect was more than a little unnerving; our group had backed up several paces, leaving the annoyingly bearded guy isolated in the midst of whatever was happening.
Then the laws of physics decided to start working again, and the rapidly rising wind blew away the smoke, revealing... a bunch of upright human skeletons.
I know, I know. It sounds anticlimactic, almost laughable. The big payoff was Scooby-Doo ghost pirates? Jane breathed a sigh of obvious relief, and the twenty-something girl actually giggled. Beard Guy was holding his hand and wincing, but he looked more offended than frightened.
The veterans among us were not put at ease. We knew how expertly Belson could play an audience. And in the next few seemingly unending seconds, as the details of the scene before us grew clearer, the murmers faded into silence and our little knot of observers grew a bit tighter.
These weren't some kind of plastic animatronic ghoulies or 3D tricks of the light. These were
bones, incredibly ancient and worn, encrusted with coral and polished smooth by centuries, maybe even millennia of sand and sea washing over them, held together by some invisible and terrible inertia. They stood there in absolute silence, but their limbs shifted slowly, slightly, smoothly, like restless soldiers waiting for orders. The sockets of their skulls were dark and completely empty and radiated, if not an actual intelligence, at least a sense of unknowable purpose. Their eyeless regard fell on us with a real and malevolent weight.
I didn't think they were supposed to be pirates at all. They were something far older. Some of them held blades, but they weren't cutlasses or rapiers; they looked bronze, pitted and worn but still solid and deadly. Not a scrap of rotted cloth hung from their frames -- no eye patches, no tricorner hats, not a skeletal parrot on a single bony shoulder. These guys were something unknown and unknowable. And our brief and unfounded respite in tension was most definitely over.
* * *
When something else finally happened, it happened fast.
The skeletal thing which had emerged from the dropped stone shot out an arm and grabbed Beard Guy by the throat. Impossibly, it lifted him as easily as a man would lift a book or a glass of water. Almost casually, it threw him over the starboard railing. He didn't even have time to scream. The rest of us did, of course, so loudly that you almost couldn't hear the splash a second later.
The
splash.
Before I had time to fully process
that interesting little tidbit, Jane pulled me so close I could feel she was actually shaking.
"Ben?" she almost quavered. "
Please tell me that that was part of the show!"
To my credit, I only hesitated for a second. "Of course it was, silly. I warned you this was going to be intense, didn't I? Don't worry, we're perfectly safe." I thought I'd kept the jitters out of my own voice. In any event, Jane gave me a quick smile and hug. And another punch in the side, so I knew she was really okay.
But I was remembering the very first of these shows, a haunted house-themed tour of the mansion itself. Some guy had decided to sneak off from the group and do a little exploring on his own. I assume that was his motivation, because he never showed up again for me to ask him, not even at the party afterwards. And Belson had moved the shows to the back yard the very next year.
If that was scripted, it was a very
subtle bit of scripting. But it was exactly the type of detail Belson would include. I'd be willing to bet even the people who hadn't noticed the guy sneaking off left the show with a faint sense of unease.
I just wasn't completely sure. Belson was a pretty great guy, as self-professed deranged tech moguls go. But I... knew things about him that were not and would never be matters of public record, or even wild tabloid speculation. And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as the man said.
And all this introspection happened within just a few seconds of real time, because we were well and truly into Act II. The rest of the skeleton things were beginning to move.
Towards
us.
* * *
The wind had by then whipped up to what felt like a near-gale, flapping the sails above us noisily and alarmingly. Storm clouds were scudding across the sky towards us from what looked like every point of the compass, which was obviously impossible but, hey, what the hell, you know? The deck rocked back and forth, but somehow remained just steady enough for us to keep our footing, and the waves--
Holy Shit.
I registered the seeming existence of an actual ocean to all sides of us almost peripherally. Like everyone else, I was keeping my eyes locked on the advancing skeletons.
They passed us by as if they didn't see us, as if we didn't exist for them at all. We shrank our knot even further, though, giving them as wide a berth as possible as they headed for the lines and up the rigging, a couple apparently set on climbing to the wheel house. As we turned cautiously to keep them visible, a loud and hopeless wail, almost a scream, rent the increasingly churning skies.
I'm pretty sure we had all nearly forgotten Mister Possible Personality Pirate. His situation had not improved.
He was on fire. The flames were that same sickly green color the stones had begun to glow what felt like hours ago, and they engulfed him completely. But they didn't seem to be consuming him, just causing him horrible pain. The candles had long since melted away; in each hand he now cupped a green, sputtering sphere of ball lightning. Or maybe they were supposed to be will-o'-the-wisps. In any event, they were shooting out tendrils of that green fire which climbed the lines and spars like living lightning from the main sail all the way to the crow's nest. If this was supposed to be St. Elmo's Fire there was nothing even remotely saintly about it. As I gazed up, I saw the storm clouds spiraling in a sort of upside-down whirlpool directly above the mast, sucking tiny balls of that awful light up into itself.
And as we all stared into that
wrongness, right on cue, there came a familiar creaking noise from behind us.
Two of the skeleton things, unnoticed by all of us, had remained stationed at either side of the wooden cover to the main hold. They had opened it wide, and something was slowly climbing the stairs.
* * *
I guess the best word to describe the thing would be
lich. Some kind of undead king or priest of a land lost to time and tide, the paper-thin remnants of its skin barely still covering the ancient bones and skull underneath. It was dressed in what once might have been fine silk robes, now ragged and rotten. What was left barely hid a form that seemed at once terribly frail and terribly powerful. On its head it wore a rusted and ruined crown, its jewels and filigree long since vanished and gone. Unlike the skeleton things, it had eyes, which blazed with that same green fire; thankfully, they didn't seem to perceive us any better than the eyeless sockets of its servants.
It stood there unmoving for a timeless moment, then slowly raised its pale and wasted arms skyward.
All hell immediately began to break loose, I hoped not literally.
There was a blaze of that green light behind and above us, and we all turned and gazed upwards as if compelled. The entire mast was glowing almost blindingly, and if the pirate was still in the center of that inferno I couldn't make him out. The light seemed to be
breaking off the mast in jagged shards, rising up into the center of the cyclone. Now it looked uncomfortably like a monstrous green eye.
And a raspy and glottal voice, a voice that sounded like it hadn't spoken a word in aeons, barked a harsh and incomprehensible string of syllables. At the same instant, it seemed that my mind was hearing:
"Great One. We bid thee accept this offering from your faithful. We bid thee take us home."
Jane gasped. I tried to match my line of sight to hers. It wasn't all that hard, we were practically hugging each other by then.
The skeleton in the crow's nest seemed to be
dissolving. Bits and pieces of bone and dust were flaking off of the thing and flying into the eye of the storm. I quickly looked around for the others I could make out in the still-dazzling green glow. They all were crumbling into less than dust and being carried aloft.
Predictably and to a person, we all turned around again. The lich-king, or whatever it was, was also blowing away on the winds. Its remains fairly shot into the sky like a grisly green comet.
Two things then happened simultaneously: the eye
blinked, and the ship
lurched. Amazingly, we all once again managed to keep our footing. Most of us, anyway. Jane stumbled a bit, and for one awful second it looked like she was falling towards the railing. Somewhere very far off, my rational mind knew she was safe. But my rational mind hadn't been driving just lately.
And in that one awful second, I saw:
a car pushed sideways against a tree trunk, so close that it didn't seem physically possible, so close that you knew no one was getting out that door ever again...
...and I heard:
a voice both cultured and very, very sad, and the voice was saying, "I'm so very sorry. I couldn't get to her in time. Rest now."...
...and I felt:
cool, clean sheets in an unfamiliar bed, and the sure knowledge the only thing wrong with me was shock, but that would change in time, in time...
and I reached out and grabbed Jane, and pulled her to me tightly, so very tightly.
* * *
The eye storm was dissipating supernaturally quickly, as was the ghastly green glow. Soon all to be seen above us was a clear October sky sprinkled with stars. Neither waves nor mist were visible over the railings, just dying grass and dead leaves. The deck had become motionless, and the ship no longer felt like a ship, just some very odd construction someone with too much money and too much free time had had built on a whim.
Show's over, folks.
I realized I was still hugging Jane like she'd break if I let go.
"Um," I exclaimed brilliantly, disengaging embarrassedly and probably a bit too quickly.
She looked at me a bit oddly, then smiled. "Thank you," she whispered. She seemed to realize she might have meant more than one thing by that, and blushed slightly.
"Welcome," I smiled, knowing full well I meant more than one thing, and trying not to blush too brightly myself.
A section of the starboard railing slid away, and the big ramp we'd used to board (wheelchair-accessible, of course, Belson thinks of everything) rose to meet it. No one spoke as we descended; no one ever does, at least for the first few minutes after a show. There was no Beard Guy corpse lying broken amidst the leaves, but I hadn't really thought that there would be. I turned my head for one last look. The pirate was nowhere to be seen, either.
Maybe he was taking a smoke break.
* * *
As we crossed into the side yard, the spell seemed to break and everyone began babbling excitedly at once.
"Oh. My. God." breathed Jane. But she was grinning ear-to-ear.
"Told ya," I grinned back.
She stopped me on the stone path right before we turned into the front yard, and kissed me quickly but firmly on the lips. It felt several kinds of nice.
"Ben, thank you for the best Halloween I've had since I was seven!" she grinned.
"Oh, it isn't over just yet," I reminded her. "Belson throws a hell of an after-party. There's suitably adult treats for everybody, and the inside of the house is just gorgeous. He even keeps an assortment of costumes, if you're of a mind."
"I think I'm good," she said. "Maybe I'll be Catwoman next time."
I stopped short, for dramatic and hopefully comedic effect. "Am I crazy, or did you just ask me out?"
"Yes to both," she grinned evilly, and punched me in the side again. She ran shrieking playfully around the side of the house.
"Oww! Come back here, you wench! Oh, me poor left kidney!" I suddenly knew with certainty that Jane and I would be seeing each other often after tonight. And that was fine, just fine.
I turned the corner to find her staring in wonderment. Belson's house is small for a mansion, but it's still very impressive, especially on Halloween. Bats flew between the trees, somehow never gliding low enough to give anyone a real fright, but adding considerable atmosphere. There were roughly a bazillion Jack O' Lanterns strewn around the paths, the steps and the big front porch, the old-fashioned toothy kind--none of those fancy-schmancy carving-kit Marilyn Monroes or President Obamas, Belson is a traditionalist. The house itself was haunted-mansion spooky in an oddly friendly sort of way--a cobweb here or there in exactly the right place, a broomstick rack for any local witches who might happen to swing by, the occasional spectre (the sheeted kind) briefly floating by in an upstairs window.
"I have about a million questions I want to ask him!" she breathed.
"Of which he will answer exactly none. But he'll not answer them in an unfailingly polite manner, if that helps."
We continued up the path to the front porch. I noticed people were already lining up for the second showing. I briefly wondered if Beard Guy would be in the line, then dismissed the thought as unimportant. Besides, Belson would never slip up in such an obvious way.
I did not look towards the road, and a particular tree that might still have scars on its trunk. I felt a familiar pang of loss thinking of it, but it seemed somehow diminished, somehow a bit more bearable. Because there comes a moment when being alone starts to feel like just too much damn work.
When we reached the porch, Jane squealed in pure delight and I just stared. Belson was dressed as a live-action twin of Merlin from The Sword in the Stone, right down to the long white beard. (And if you had had the temerity to pull on said beard, I somehow knew that it would not come off.) He was stirring an enormous iron cauldron, which bubbled with--oh, let's say dry ice vapor, just for the hell of it. He was reaching into it and pulling out Snickers bars and Butterfingers for each shy and entranced trick-or-treater. Full-size, of course. I was weirdly certain whatever he came up with would be each particular child's most favorite candy in all the world.
Hiding in plain sight this year, are we? I mused to myself.
Just exactly then he glanced sidelong at me and winked, the barest hint of a smile on his improbably bewhiskered face.
He pulled himself away from the kids long enough for me to introduce Jane, then went right back to bolstering some happy third-grader's sense of wonder. I sighed a bit as we entered the house. A little knowledge...
And a voice both cultured and very, very impish said in my head:
"Learning. 'A little learning is a dangerous thing' is the actual quote. Henry David Thoreau, I believe."
I really hate it when he does that.
October 31, 2015
