Four Octobers Read online

  Andy lost track of the time. The hands on the clock were moving so slowly he finally gave up watching them. Instead, he just sat there cross-legged on the floor, tormented by his fear and gnawed by the worry about what would happen when he was late for Sunday lunch. Finally, once the sun had shifted enough so it angled through the window at the back of the house, Miss Henry began to stir. It started with a twitch of her left hand, which was resting across her stomach. Then there was a sharp intake of breath.

  “Miss Henry?” Andy said, his voice hushed.

  She grunted softly but said nothing. After a moment, she took a deeper breath. The rattling sound seemed to be gone. Her eyes remained closed, but he realized that she was conscious. Flooded with relied, Andy sat and watched her thin chest rise and fall.

  “Feeling any better, Miss Henry?” he asked after a long time.

  Miss Henry shifted her head ever so slightly, then opened her left eye and stared at him. For a terrifying moment, he saw a milky glaze in her eyes, but then her gaze sharpened, and she smiled weakly. Her mouth twitched as she tried to say something, but no sound came out. Her lips made a wet smacking sound, and there was mucous in the corners of her mouth.

  “You fell down,” Andy said softly. “I got you your pills.”

  He indicated the small brown bottle, which was lying on the floor beside her, but she didn’t shift her eyes to look at it. Instead, she stared directly at him for so long Andy became uncomfortable.

  “You stayed… by my side,” she said hollowly.

  Andy nodded. “You think you can get up?” he asked. “I—I was supposed to be home for lunch at noon.”

  Miss Henry shifted to one side as if trying to get up by herself, but after a moment of struggle, she exhaled sharply and sagged back down.

  “Do you have a phone? Maybe I should call an ambulance or something.”

  “No… No ambulance. It won’t be necessary.”

  Her voice was a grating whisper, but Andy heard her clearly in the pressing silence of the living room. He glanced again at the clock on the mantel, surprised to see that—finally—the hands had moved. It was now ten minutes past one.

  “Let me help you up,” he said as he shifted forward. Kneeling beside her, he reached out, unsure of where to grab her so he could help. He ended up getting behind her and grasping her under the arms, his hands securely under her arm pits.

  “On three, now,” he whispered. “One… two… and three.”

  He struggled to lift as she strained to gather her strength. If she had been a larger woman, he might not have been able to do it, but she felt almost bird-like in his arms as he raised her slowly to her feet. She grunted from the effort, and for a moment he was fearful that her legs would give out on her; but after a bit of a struggle, he got her over to the easy chair against the wall. Shifting around beside her, he eased her down into the chair. Once she was settled, she shifted until she was comfortable.

  “All set, then?” he asked, stepping away from her. He had to look away because her steady stare made him so uncomfortable. He felt hollow inside, drained of everything.

  “Yes, I—I’m fine now. Thank you,” she said. She appeared to be regaining strength with each second. “It’s my heart.” She tapped her chest lightly with her forefinger. It made a hollow thump. “Sometimes I forget to take my medications, and it just—” She finished by smiling weakly and tapping herself on the chest again.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ve gotta get going,” Andy said, trying to mask his urgency as he took another quick step backwards. “My mom and dad’ll be mad that I wasn’t home for lunch.”

  “Yes. Your mother and father,” Miss Henry said with that vacant look in her eyes. “Do you want me to call her and explain why you’re so late?” Before Andy could reply, she took a gulping breath and added, “It’s been years since I’ve spoken to her. Maybe it’s time I did.”

  Andy froze. “No… No,” he stammered. “That won’t be necessary.”

  Miss Henry smiled wanly at him and nodded.

  “Well then. I guess I should thank you for saving my life.” She looked at him, her features softening like putty in the dim light. “Thank you, Andrew.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Andy shrugged, then bent over, picked up the small, brown medicine bottle from the floor and handed it to her. For an instant, their fingers touched, and neither of them pulled away, but Miss Henry’s smile faded a little as she took the bottle from him and placed it on the table beside her chair.

  “Go on, then,” she said with a curt wave of her hand. Her shoulders shook, and she seemed to be choking back tears. “Run along. Don’t worry about me.”

  Andy didn’t need to be told twice. Turning quickly, he walked through the kitchen and out the back door, easing the screen door gently shut behind him. The wooden ladder was still propped up against the side of the house. He considered taking it down and dragging it back to the shed, but he left it there, figuring he could always come back later and take care of it. Besides, he had to finish cleaning the gutters, like he’d promised, and he had every intention of doing that later today, if he didn’t get grounded for missing Sunday lunch.

  ****

  As it turned out, his mother wasn’t all that angry, considering he was more than two hours late. He told her that he had simply lost track of the time, and—surprisingly—she let it drop without another word.

  His father, on the other hand, wasn’t so pleased. The day before, Andy had left the rake in the driveway when he was done raking, and he had backed his car over it. The back tire had snapped the handle and flattened the bamboo prongs, making them useless. After reminding Andy that a job isn’t finished until the tools are put away properly, he informed Andy that he was going to have to pay for a new rake so he’d learn not to be so careless.

  So his dad hadn’t been out driving around looking for him after all. Andy was so relieved he almost burst out laughing. A dollar fifty for a new rake was a considerable sum, but it was nothing compared to the punishment he’d been expecting.

  After lunch, Andy offered to clean up the dishes. He was just finishing when Jimmy showed up at the back door. His face was streaked with sweat and dust from the road. His bike was tipped over on the lawn by the back steps, its back wheel still spinning.

  “Why’d you go ’n ditch me today?” Jimmy snapped without preamble.

  Caught off guard, Andy walked out onto the back porch with his friend. The truth was, he had been so upset about what had happened to Miss Henry he’d completely forgotten about his plans to meet up with Jimmy.

  “I—ah, couldn’t make it,” Andy said, keeping his voice low so his mother wouldn’t overhear him. “There was some stuff I had to do around here.”

  “Oh yeah? Well I went home ’n called, ’n your mom said you was gone all morning.”

  “No, I—uh, I did some chores and then I went looking for you.” The lie was bitter on his tongue. “I must’ve just missed you.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” Jimmy said. One corner of his mouth curled into a sneer that reminded Andy of how Elvis Presley had looked on his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show a few weeks ago.

  “Honest to God. I had some chores, but to heck with that. We can do something now.” Without waiting for Jimmy’s response, Andy opened the screen door and shouted over his shoulder, “Hey, Mom. I’m taking off with Jimmy, ’kay?”

  “Just make sure you’re home before supper if you want to go trick-or-treating tonight,” his mother shouted back, but the boys were already down the steps and on their bikes.

  As they pedaled toward town, thinking maybe they’d find some of their friends and get a football game together, Andy kept thinking about what had happened at Miss Henry’s. He couldn’t stop wondering if she was all right now, or if she’d had another “spell” and was lying unconscious—or maybe dead—on the living room floor, the little brown bottle of pills clutched uselessly in her hand. The thought sent a cold shudder through him, and he kept wondering how he
could manipulate things so he and Jimmy could ride past her house. He wanted to see if she was in the window, ready to shout at them. Andy still had almost twenty-five cents left over from his yard work. Although he had to get the money for the new rake, he could always offer to buy Jimmy another Coke.

  “So, you decide what you’re gonna be tonight?” Jimmy asked as they pedaled leisurely down the shaded road. They were both riding no-handed, sitting back easily on their bike seats and shifting their body weight from side to side to take the gentle curves in the road. Andy looked at him blankly.

  “For Halloween,” Jimmy said. “What are you gonna wear?”

  “I’m still not sure,” Andy replied. It was a tossup between going as Zorro—again—like he had for the last two years, or trying something different. The problem was, he couldn’t think of anything different enough that would be as cool as Zorro even though he was getting tired of wearing the same black mask, sombrero, and cape.

  “We’re still planning to go with JJ and Tyler, ain’t we?” Jimmy asked.

  Andy started to say yes, of course they were, but for some reason he hesitated. They glided down the Story Street hill past the elementary school, but there was no one on the field. With a snap of his head, Andy signaled for them to head downtown.

  Tightness gripped his chest as they turned left onto Granite Street. Miss Henry’s house was straight ahead on the left, shaded by the tall horse chestnut trees whose remaining leaves were streaked with bright yellow and red. Seeing the lawn that he had so recently mowed made the tightness in his chest all the worse.

  Could it have really been just this morning that he had worked there?

  So much had happened since then that it seemed impossibly long ago, like a half-remembered dream. He knew he’d never forget how scared he’d been when Miss Henry had her attack of… whatever it was, but something else was gnawing at the back of his mind, too, a vague thought he couldn’t quite pin down until he looked over to where Jimmy had thrown his Coke bottles. In a flash, he remembered the fright Miss Henry had given him when she had caught him out there last night—

  —Was it really only last night?—

  —and he wondered how she had been able to sneak up behind him so quietly?

  She couldn’t have been in the house and then heard him out there and snuck around to catch him like that. She had to have been outside already, walking to or from… someplace.

  But where?

  “So are we?”

  Jimmy’s question snapped Andy back.

  “Are we what?”

  “Going trick-or-treating with JJ and Tyler.”

  Andy shook his head as though dazed as they glided past the old woman’s house. His bike chain rattled against the chain guard on the uneven sidewalk. The sound set his nerves on edge. He hoped Jimmy didn’t see the furtive glance he cast at Miss Henry’s house. He wasn’t sure which would be worse—seeing her there in the front window or not. Icy tension tightened his stomach when he saw that she wasn’t perched in her usual spot, waiting to yell at them.

  “Ahh—I’m not sure,” he said. “My dad’s still kinda mad at me. I broke his lawn rake. He said that I might not be able to go out this year. ’Sides, my mom thinks I’m too old to go trick-or-treating, that it’s for little kids.”

  “Too old?” Jimmy said. “What the heck’s she talking about? There’s high school kids that still go out.”

  “I know,” Andy said, “but she says all they do is vandalize stuff and cause trouble. She doesn’t want me doing stuff like that.”

  Even as he was talking, Andy was thinking about something else entirely. He felt a desperate need to find out if Miss Henry was all right. Try as he might, he couldn’t dispel the mental image of her sprawled on the living room floor, the amber-lit room filled with nothing but the rapid, watery sound of her gasping breath.

  “Well, we ain’t gonna cause any trouble,” Jimmy said, sounding as though this was something he had already argued this point with his own folks. “We just wanna get a mountain of candy, right?”

  “Right,” Andy replied.

  Even to his own ears, his voice sounded distant and distracted. All his life, Miss Henry had been the monster that lurked in the darkened window like a black widow spider caught in the tangled web of her curtains. Now, less than twenty-four hours later, she had become…

  –What?

  Andy wasn’t sure, but if she still scared him, it was because she was little more than a lonely ghost, the wispy remains of the person she must have once been, haunting the shell of her former life.

  The boys hung out together until suppertime, but they never found anyone else to do anything with. Still, they were content to do what most kids did on any given weekend. They just hung around doing nothing until it was time to go home, have supper, and then get their Halloween costumes on and start making the rounds. All day, though, Andy never stopped thinking about Miss Henry and wondering if she was all right. Something fundamental had changed inside him after meeting and helping her. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

  And all day, he couldn’t stop wondering if he was just as haunted by a ghost named Miss Henry as her house was.

  ****

  It was understood all over town that, on Halloween night, if you had candy or treats to give out, you left your front porch light on. If your outside light was off, it meant you didn’t have any candy or, more likely, had already handed out everything you had bought. In either event, you risked getting your windows soaped, a pumpkin smashed in your driveway, or the trees or bushes in your front yard—maybe even your house—toilet-papered. In a few cases, your property might suffer more serious damage, like the time a few years ago when a group of high school kids had taken Mr. Ives’ VW Beetle and turned it around so it was wedged neatly between two large oaks, front and back. Mr. Ives was the high school history teacher and was well-liked, so the next morning, several students helped him turn his car around. Even two of the perpetrators helped.

  Andy had so much on his mind he didn’t want to put very much thought or effort into his costume, so he decided to go as Zorro again. One last time, he told himself, as he slipped the black plastic mask over his eyes and pinned the black cape to his shoulders. As he adjusted the black sombrero, he couldn’t dispel the waves of melancholy emotions this stirred up inside him.

  Maybe his mother was right.

  Maybe he was too old to go trick-or-treating. He was always being told that he was growing up, but for the first time in his life, he actually experienced it because inside he somehow felt… different.

  Twilight came early on Halloween Eve, casting a pale, blue wash across the sky. The moon rose, a thin, bone-white crescent in the east, and stars twinkled like diamond dust overhead. The trees, many of them stripped bare of their leaves, looked like black lace against the fading sky. The night air was cold enough so everyone’s breath made little white puffs of steam that whisked away on the light breeze that blew out of the north as they trooped up and down the streets of town.

  After supper—which his mother insisted he eat so he wouldn’t stuff himself with candy—Andy met up with Jimmy, who was wearing a store-bought costume of Frankenstein’s monster, neck bolts and all. Carrying flashlights for safety, they took off down Stockholm Avenue, going to every lighted house on both sides of the road. Once they started along Oakland Avenue, they met up with their friends JJ, and Tyler, so the four of them raced from door to door, shouting “Trick or treat!” and waiting expectantly as the people dished out candy and, in a few instances, apples and oranges or baked goods.

  Andy was using a pillowcase to collect his goodies while Jimmy had a plastic Halloween bag his mother had picked up at the local grocery store. It wasn’t long before their treat bags were so heavy with candy they dragged their arms down. Jimmy couldn’t restrain himself and started digging into his loot before they were finished with Oakland Avenue. Andy had a couple of Butterfingers, but he was feeling an odd distance between himself and his friends. H
e had no idea why, but he just didn’t feel like running around and acting like a little kid tonight.

  But the more he thought about it, the more he thought he knew why.

  He was filled with a deep sense of sadness. He knew he could never mention or discuss with anyone—not his parent or friends, not even his best friend, Jimmy. He was alone with this, and it twisted like a knife in his gut.

  Andy’s mother wanted him home early, but even though his heart wasn’t in it tonight, he started going with his friends over to Curtis Street. At the stop sign, when they turned right to head downtown instead of left to loop around to Phillips Avenue, Andy hesitated. As he looked down the sloping hill that led to Granite Street, the cold, clutching sensation inside his chest got steadily stronger.

  Miss Henry’s house is down there!

  The thought shivered deep in his bones.

  Once again, the image of Miss Henry lying on the floor rose up in his mind, only now the living room was dark, and the old woman’s skin was pale white and glowed with an eerie, iridescent light. Her eyes were wide open—staring and unblinking. Andy had no idea if she was alive or dead, if she could see or not. In his imagination, her breathing was a long, slow, sighing breath like a blizzard wind, fluting under the eaves. And her hands—her hands clutched her chest as though trying to reach inside and grasp her heart, to still its feeble beating.

  “You comin’?”

  Jimmy’s voice brought Andy back to attention. Blinking his eyes, he looked up at the lighted doorway, where his friends were already gathered. In the side window, the toothy grin of a saw-toothed Jack ’o Lantern leered at them, reflecting light from behind the glass.

  “They’re givin’ out Milky Ways,” Jimmy shouted as he turned to Andy and urged him on.