BY CORRIE HALDANE
Copyright is held by the author.
Hiding underneath my blanket, my heart’s pounding too hard and too fast. Pop woke up mean this morning, and neither the thin walls of our tent nor my hands clapped tight over my ears are enough to block out the sound of Mama paying the price.
“I just don’t feel safe, Pat,” Mama cries.
Even with my eyes scrunched closed so tight I see stars on the backs of my eyelids, Mama’s scaredy-face floats across my brain: eyes red and wet, mouth as wobbly as her voice.
“You saying I can’t protect what’s mine?” Pop’s voice is growly and dangerous. Careful, Mama.
“Course not,” she says. “But we’re on our own out here. Nobody to help us. And not even real walls to keep out the —”
Thwack. The sound that Pop’s fist makes when it hits.
Oh, Mama.
“Quit your crying, woman, or I’ll give ya something to really cry about.”
Mama’s voice, quiet now. Can’t hear what she says.
“Enough of that superstitious Halloween nonsense. I don’t give a damn what day of the year it is. You need to spend more time worrying about building up our stores for the winter and less about ghosts and bogeymen.”
Pop pushes into the tent. I lie still, pretending to sleep. He ignores me, just grabs his pack and then leaves.
“Going scouting,” he mutters, stomping off.
When I’m sure he’s really gone, I throw off my blanket and head outside.
Mama touches my bruised cheek. Gentle. “Oh, Faith,” she says. Then she sighs and hands me a basket. “Let’s go.”
***
Mama and I spend the day foraging. We follow the broken road, looking for fallen-down fences and piles of broken brick. Places where the Before-Time People used to live. She points out what’s safe to eat, saying the names softly, like prayers: Mint. Kale. Maters. Beans. We fill our baskets.
From time to time, Mama looks backwards, past the concrete pilings and the dead tree where Pop strung up our tent. Past the blackened skeleton of the burned-down barn where Pop smacked me for walking too slow. She’s looking at Town, even though its crumbling, falling-down buildings are too far away to see.
I poke through the weeds that grow beside the road, hoping for what Mama calls Relicks and I call treasure. I find a dirty stone carving of a man with long hair and long robes. Its cold, empty eyes give me the creeps though, so I leave it behind.
Late afternoon, we discover an overgrown apple tree. Mama tells me to gather the fruit on the ground while she plucks the last few apples still holding on to their branches. When she’s done, she walks hunched over through the tall grass, looking for anything I missed.
She cries out and I spin around, heart pounding, ready to run. But Mama isn’t in danger, she’s smiling.
“Look, Faith,” she says.
I look. And I can’t figure out what Mama is so excited about. She’s cradling something in her arms. It’s dirty, warty, and orange.
“It’s a punkin,” she says. “I haven’t seen one since I was your age. Maybe younger.”
“It’s, um, really nice, Mama,” I say, fingers crossed behind my back to counter the lie.
Mama laughs. “Not nice. Special. For tonight. For Halloween. You’ll see.”
***
When we get back to our camp, Mama gets a wooden bowl and our sharpest blade from inside the tent. She sits cross-legged on the ground with the punkin in front of her, raises the blade, and begins to cut. A few quick strokes and she pulls off the punkin’s top by its stem, like taking off a hat.
She reaches inside and pulls out stringy orange flesh flecked with pale seeds. She fills her bowl with handfuls of the stuff. It glistens wetly in the late afternoon sun.
“Get your plaxtick scoop,” she urges. “We gotta scrape the insides clean.”
The scoop is one of my treasures, something that belonged to the Before-Time People. I run and fetch it, take my place in front of the punkin, and scrape, enjoying the sweet, earthy smell while I work.
On the other side of the road, Mama sets up a snare using bits of string tied to the one lonely little tree growing among tangled vines and weeds. She baits it with the fresh punkin guts.
After the trap is set, she crosses back to me and picks up the hollowed-out punkin. She studies it, runs her fingers along its bumpy skin. Then she picks up her blade again and begins to cut.
While Mama works, I do my chores. Pop will be back sooner or later, and he’ll be mad if the firewood isn’t stacked and the water jugs aren’t full. And since we left Town, there’s nobody for him to take his mad out on except Mama and me.
Just as I’m finishing up, she calls me over. “This here is Jack,” she says. She’s carved a face into the punkin, with big eyes and a sneering, jagged-toothed mouth. “Tonight, we’ll light him up with a candle and leave him just outside our tent. He’ll guard us, keep out unwanted visitors.”
Before I can ask any of my million questions, Mama whips around, suddenly alert. My breath catches in my throat. Pop?
Not Pop. Not yet, anyway. It’s Mama’s trap. She’s caught something. “The sacrifice!” she says.
The squirrel is dead by the time we reach it, dangling by the noose around its neck. Mama frowns as she pulls it free. “I’d hoped for a rabbit, but this’ll do.”
She hurries us back to our tent. “Get me the teacup,” Mama orders when we get inside. I don’t have to ask which one. Since Pop broke her favorite blue one, there’s only the yellow one with the chip in it left.
She gestures at me to put it on the table, and then, quick as a flash, she lifts up the squirrel and runs the blade across its tiny, furry neck.
Blood spills out into Mama’s second-best teacup as she mutters strange words under her breath.
Once the cup is full, Mama puts the squirrel aside, then looks up at me. “There are certain days of the year where the veil between worlds grows thin, Faith. And sometimes, there are things that cross over.”
My mouth is dry, my heart is racing. “What kind of things?” I ask.
“Bad things,” she says. “When we were in Town, with the others, we were protected. The priests performed their rituals. But now, after what Pop did…”
“Now we’re by ourselves,” I say.
Mama nods. “And tonight, Halloween night, while we’re tucked in our blankets, strange creatures will walk the land, looking for trouble. Looking for defenseless folks. Like us. Tricks or treats, that’s what they say. So we’ll leave out a treat for any dark visitors, and with luck, there’ll be no tricks.”
“Woman!” Pop bellows from the doorway of our tent. “What did I tell you about this hoodoo nonsense?”
He rushes in, grabs the cup full of blood with one hand and Mama’s skinny arm with his other. He drags her out of the tent.
I follow, but keep my distance, crying out when he pushes her to the ground.
Pop dumps the squirrel blood out into the dirt beside Mama, then whips the empty teacup out into the road. It smashes when it hits the cracked pavement. Mama flinches but says nothing.
The setting sun lights upon our grinning punkin. Pop catches sight of it and growls. He kicks it, caving in the face Mama had so carefully made. Then he stomps it and stomps it, until nothing but tattered orange scraps are left.
He’s madder than I’ve ever seen him, red-faced and squinty-eyed, his lips pulled back from his teeth like a snarling animal. Scary, even for Pop.
Mama curls up into a ball on the ground as he shouts at her, kicks at her. I run back into the tent, pull my blanket over my head, and try not to hear Mama’s moans of pain.
***
A little while later, Mama stumbles into the tent. She curls up in the blankets beside me, crying quietly.
“Is he gone?” I whisper. Mama nods yes, and then cries harder.
I pat her back, the way she does for me when I’m sick or scared. It doesn’t help.
I reach for the words she’s said to me so many times and give them back to her. “It’s okay, Mama. He’ll be back. He just needs to cool off. He doesn’t mean it. Don’t cry, okay?”
But Pop doesn’t come back. Night falls, time passes, and there’s no sign of him.
Mama peers out into the darkness from time to time. Her eyes are wide and dark. She’s twitchy and nervous, and every strange noise makes her jump. When the wind picks up and rattles the sides of our tent, she pulls me into her arms and squeezes so hard I almost can’t catch my breath.
“They’re coming,” she mutters to herself. To me, she says, “We’ve got to get back to Town. We never should have left.”
“Now? But Mama, it’s dark. And besides, Pop said—”
“Never mind what Pop said. We’re not safe here, Faith. Town is our only option.”
Mama pulls me along behind her as she exits the tent. She bends down in front of our cold fire pit, scoops up some ashes and rubs them on my face, and then her own. “This will help us blend into the night.”
Once she’s happy with our disguises, she packs a bag with a few apples, a jar of water, and her blade, then we wrap ourselves up in our cloaks, and set off.
A few steps down the road, I turn and look back towards the tent, but it’s been swallowed up by the night. I face forward, and hurry to catch up with Mama.
By the pale light of a crescent moon, we follow the dark ribbon of road towards Town. We walk as fast as we can, stumbling over chunks of rock and jagged cracks in the pavement.
The shadows play strange tricks, and the wind rustles through the dead, dry leaves scattered across the ground. Mama squeezes my hand tight and we keep walking. But morning, and Town, are both still so far away.
Suddenly, Mama stumbles to a stop. “Oh, no. Gods, please, no.”
I peer into the dark, at the shadowy shape on the road ahead.
It’s Pop, his body weirdly twisted beside a dark, shimmering puddle. Blood. It’s his blood.
“Don’t look, Faith. Keep walking.” Mama tugs my hand, pulling me forward. Practically running now. Sobbing, I run with her.
After a time, we slow to catch our breath. Somewhere behind us in the dark, an animal cries out in pain. Mama whips around, places a hand over my mouth to stop me from speaking, and listens to the night.
The animal’s gone quiet. But footsteps crunch on gravel, now. And they’re close.
We aren’t alone.
Mama crouches down in front of me, passes me her pack, then takes my face in her hands. “You’ve got to run, find somewhere to hide until the sun comes up. Don’t come back this way for anything, Faith, do you hear me? Wait for morning and then follow the road back to Town.”
“Yes, Mama,” I whisper. But Mama’s already walking back the way we came. Towards the footsteps.
She doesn’t look back, just disappears into the dark, whooping and shouting out nonsense words. Calling attention to herself to give me a chance to go free.
Hot tears splash my cheeks as I run off the road and into the shadows, as quietly as I can. Behind me, Mama’s shouting suddenly stops.
I duck behind a pile of rocks, curl up in the shadows, and wait for this terrible night to end.
Oh, Mama.
***
Corrie Haldane’s work has been featured in a number of online and print anthology publications. Most recently, her work can be found in the print anthologies, Spectacular, Spectacular!: An Anthology of Circensian Horror, What We Talk About When We Talk About It Vol. 2, and Branching Out. Corrie lives in Holland Landing, Ontario, Canada with her husband and an assortment of their mostly-grown children. She finds inspiration in nature, bubble baths, and carefully curated playlists.
