Halloween Is For Lovers (11 page)

Hugh, head bowed, sheepishly tucked into a dark corner. He nervously darted his eyes up and scanned the crowd for Lily.

This was a bad idea.

The lights suddenly went out, and a table full of candles was lit at the center of the room. The music was turned off and voices were hushed as the sexy witch set up a Ouija board. She dramatically took a sweaty quarter out of her bustier and placed it on the paranormal playing surface. "An offering, oh spirits of the night ... Quiet, guys, this will be fun. Oh Ouija, will you please bring forth a spirit of the dead?"

The girls zigzagged the pointer to Yes.

"Oh spirit, what is your name?"

The pointer slid to C then R then A then I then N.

Hugh stepped out of the corner and watched, emitting a sour whimper under his breath. "Crain?"

"Oh spirit Crain, do you have a message for us?"

Back in the Kingdom of the Dead, Crain stood on the parapet of the council building and stared at the fog beyond the gate. "Death reigns ..."

The pointer came to rest on E and the sexy witch repeated the message. "Death reigns supreme."

The sexy pirate took her hand off the pointer in a huff.
"That is not funny. You said this would be funny."

The sexy witch crossed her arms. "This is fun. It's spooky. Come on, let's ask Crain who we're going to marry."

Before they could get their fingers back down on the pointer it began to move slowly on its own.

Sexy pirate huffed, "That is not funny. Are you playing a trick on me?"

The pointer came to rest on Goodbye, and the sexy witch shook her head in disbelief. "Whoa, that was so spooky." She picked up the Ouija board and turned it over, inspecting it closely. "There must be like magnets in this."

Hugh turned to leave, but a girl dressed as a sexy Dora the Explorer cornered him. Her thigh-high platform boots were distressed to a rough-hewn brown and the binoculars around her neck stuck crookedly into her heaving cleavage, plumped up by her khaki backpack straps. "Hold on, I know you."

Hugh tried to duck past her.

"Wait a minute, I remember you. Hold on, where do I remember you from ..."

He jostled to get past her but she headed him off. "You're the guy that used to live here, with that girl that used to live here. Yeah, that's it, the engaged couple from a couple of years ago."

"I think you're confusing me with someone else."

"No, you're that guy. You used to come home all sweaty and itchy with your hair full of pink insulation."

He tried to sidestep her again but her friend was in the way. The friend was dressed as the sexy-sexy girl—she just wore thigh-high boots and lingerie. She didn't have the time or the imagination to craft a sexy Halloween costume but she didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to be sexy in public.

"Don't you remember this guy?"

"Yeah, he lived here, right?"

"Yeah, with his fiancée."

"Right, and they were supposed to get married but something happened."

"Yeah, totally. What happened?"

Startled, sexy Dora remembered. "He stood her up at the wedding."

Hugh could swear he felt his heart pumping as they closed in on him. Sexy-sexy cocked her finger and she backed him into the corner. "You got cold feet on your wedding day and stood her up and then ..."

Dora and sexy-sexy looked at each other, confused.

"Something happened ..."

"Yeah, something crazy happened ... With midgets?"

"Freaks. You crashed your car into a bus full of circus freaks and ... I think you ... died."

The blood jet-flushed out of their faces. Suddenly sober, they simultaneously dropped their cups and screamed in horror.

Out on Victoria Street a mom was walking with her eight-year-old son, who was dressed as Boba Fett. Hearing the scream, she stopped and grabbed him, hugging him close to her chest, crushing his blow-molded Mandalorian battle armor and causing him to drop his EE-3 blaster rifle. He barely had time to snatch it off the sidewalk before she retreated down the street with his hand held tight.

Inside, Hugh tried to jockey his way out of the crowded riot of screaming women and confused revelers.

"What's going on? Are you okay?" Ro-butt tried to comfort Dora without taking his eyes off her cleavage.

Breathless and in shock, she couldn't get the words out of her mouth.

"Do you need a drink, a couple of shots? Maybe chill out in my bedroom?"

She gasped a breath and pointed at Hugh. "Ghost!"

The party fell silent and cleared a space at the center of the room to ostracize Hugh into.

Ro-butt tried to clear things up. "No, he's a zombie Celtics player. I guess that's kind of a ghost."

Dora screamed, "It's Hugh Rudd, he used to live here, he died."

Sexy pirate took a step toward Hugh and studied him. "No way. It's just a guy that looks like him."

"The guy that stood up Lily at the altar?" Sexy witch inspected him as he scrambled for an opening to escape the house. The circle closed tighter around him and he tried to hide his face.

"Where's Julie?" Sexy pirate barked. "Julie knew that guy."

Julie had briefly dated Hugh the summer after she graduated from college but broke up with him after two weeks, when she realized he wasn't good at making money.

Drunk and disheveled, she pushed her way through the crowd, dressed as a sexy angel. Her white wings pulled off her back as she wove through the tight mob, almost taking her top with them. She held her bustier up with one hand as she broke through to the center of the circle. Stepping toward Hugh, she used her free hand to push the white glittered wig out of her eyes. "Who?"

Before anyone could answer, she recognized him and screamed.

Three guys dressed as lumberjacks moved in to capture Hugh, but before they could land a hand on him, Morton burst into the circle, violently wielding a 1.75-liter plastic bottle of Souska Russian Styled Vodka. "You wanna fight? I'll fight all of you. Come on! I've gutted hogs bigger than all you guys put together."

They gave Morton a wide berth. Clearly he wasn't just dressed as a bum, he was the real thing: a drunk homeless guy with nothing to lose. They could fight him, but some of his stench would rub off, and whatever skin diseases he had were probably catching, not to mention the risk of fungal contamination.

He put his arm around Hugh and ushered him to the door. "Come on, kid, she's not worth it. Besides, there's gotta be better parties to go to."

A guy with a rugby build, dressed as a sailor, blocked the door and tucked his gold chain into his shirt, ready to fight.

Morton bared his stained teeth and hissed, "I'll pound you into a mud-hole squid."

The sailor backed away and Hugh and Morton escaped out the front door.

Ro-butt quickly locked the door and put his arm around sexy Raggedy Ann. "Don't worry, you can stay here tonight," he assured her.

Outside, a short fellow dressed as a cowboy was using a tree as a urinal. Unaware of what had happened inside, he nodded to Hugh and yelled, "Go green, Celts!"

Hugh stopped. "Hey, do you know what happened to the girl who used to live here, Lily?"

"Yeah, she moved out last winter. She's getting married."

"Married?"

"Yeah, like tomorrow. Halloween wedding. I know, it's crazy."

The cowboy zipped up and adjusted his gun belt, "Didn't you used to live around here?"

Hugh shook his head no and limped quickly down the street with Morton in tow.

The Bride

It was a beautiful estate. Dr. Steve Moore referred to it as a homestead; he thought it sounded less uppity. Several outbuildings and barns were set along a single-lane drive of tumbled slate pavers. The buildings could have been used as stables or garages for a collection of luxury cars. The homestead was big enough that it had its own name; all one hundred and four acres of rolling meadows, hardwood forests, babbling brooks and gentle ponds was called Frederick. Nobody was sure how they decided on Frederick, but it seemed like a fitting name. Frederick's crown jewel was a French colonial mansion that sat confidently in a saddle between two hilltops.

Upstairs in Frederick's east wing, down a long hall with large windows looking down on the courtyard, was a room fit for a princess. And it just so happens one was inside.

Lily sat staring into an ornate dressing mirror. Her auburn hair, limp and lifeless, framed her vacant eyes. The light that used to arc and fill her had retreated deep within. Looking at her, a beautiful girl not smiling, it was easy to imagine that the spark had extinguished and there was only hollow darkness left inside.

Suffice it to say, she had been through a lot—jilted on her wedding day and then quickly shuffled to a funeral for the bastard she had fallen deeply in love with. She spent more than a year in shock. Rather than schedule time for heartbreak, depression, mourning and regret separately, she lumped them all into one ugly mess and spent eighteen months sitting on the transitional couch, staring out the window of forty-nine Victoria street.

Realizing she needed help, her friends and family got her to a doctor who somehow managed to pull out the drain plug on her soul. It all leaked out, good and bad. Black gelatinous sorrow flecked with golden joy. She shrank, and the person she thought she was poured out from under her skin. The joy evaporated into the sky, the sorrow soaked deep into the earth. Hollow. She was an empty vessel, insides stained, ready to be filled up with whatever the rest of her days had to offer.

Her best friend and maid of honor paced behind her in Frederick's east-wing master suite. Gilda was short and compact, a girl with A-cup breasts who trained for marathons but never ran any. Her brown hair was pulled back tight, and she talked with her hands, often emphasizing the lack of any jewelry on her fingers. "How you doing, Lil?"

"I've got to cheer up. If mom-in-law-to-be sees me without a smile tonight or tomorrow she'll never forgive me." Lily exhaled and tried to smile. She turned to Gilda. "How's this? Does this look, you know, like blissed-out bride?"

Gilda shook her head. "What's a matter with you? This is it, you made it, you're hitting it out of the park here, Lil."

Lily sighed. "I guess Steve came along at the right time and, you know, he sort of checks all the boxes."

"Sort of?!? Are you kidding me? He's a six-foot-tall doctor who wants a family. And he's a high-earning doctor, not one of those short, balding little general practice guys that are always trying to get their tiny little hands up in your stuff." Gilda shuddered at the memory of a recent date and swatted imaginary hands away from her crafted bosom.

"You're right, I should be happy." Lily tried to smile again. "He's a very convenient choice."

There was a knock at the door and a beleaguered florist entered with an autumn basket full of gourds and miniature pumpkins nestled in hay. She was nearly the same age as Gilda, with a similar build and no wedding ring. Gilda sized her up, realizing that although she was just a florist, she had a rockin' bod and was a worthy adversary in the blood sport of husband hunting. They would both appeal equally to the conventional high-earning winner, and Gilda needed to assert her supremacy.

"Sorry to bother you,” said the florist. “I just wanted to show you the centerpieces for the rehearsal dinner."

Lily nodded. "That's nice. That'll be fine."

"You don't like it, I can tell." The florist grabbed her chest, her sternum well defined by years of aggressive yoga practice, and winced like a blunt stake had just been slowly stabbed into it.

"No, really, they'll be fine."

"What is it? Is it too public grade school? I just wanted to do baskets of apples but I was afraid the guests would eat them."

"Apples would have been nice... but this is fine."

"What is it? I desperately want to make you happy." The florist squeezed the basket, flexing her muscled arms. Gilda raised a brow. The florist had pipes. Gilda's marathon training had done nothing for her arms.

"It's just the pumpkins. They're sort of ... I don't know, Halloweenie?" Lily tried to smile.

The florist pivoted the basket at eye level and twisted, showing off her core body strength. "I can't lose the pumpkins, it would throw the color balance off."

"No, you're right, you're the expert. I think they'll be fine, I just wanted to try and stay away from the whole Halloween-theme thing."

Gilda sensed that Lily's every little whim wasn't being accommodated adequately and tensed up her quads. "You're being too nice, Lil. This centerpiece is crap. It looks like a bunch of moms in puff-paint sweatshirts made it in a church basement."

Gilda and the florist locked eyes and crunched on their war faces.

"In all fairness, the wedding is on Halloween," the florist retorted, realizing it was too late to change anything about the arrangements that were being placed on the tables of Frederick's grand hall as they spoke.